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Message: <blockquote data-quote="seasong" data-source="post: 897040" data-attributes="member: 5137">Eureka, By JoveThe reading room was silent, as it often was in the pre-dawn night. For Elorit nal Quesad, that was the best time to read. She was poring over the details of the Consumét Chronicles, a long and rather boring series of prophecies and predictions written by the famous Kumaté prophet, Emalgihn(1). She had a suspicion, a very small one, about the presence of several artifacts encoded in the predictions.Thus far, it looked like she was right.The "ebon length" was referred to in no fewer than sixty four passages, including the one which had seemed to indicate that the ebon length would be instrumental in the breaking of the "shadow empire" (which most scholars agreed was the present empire). That the Edge of Night(2) had been involved in the rise of Gabrianna as Emperor(3) seemed a bit much to be coincidence... and the "ebon length" was mentioned in at least a few other places the Edge of Night had been mentioned.Elorit was not interested in the Edge of Night, however. By all accounts, it was broken anyway. No, her quarry this night was the Book of Runes... and she suspected (strongly!), that the "orb of salt" and "bitter sphere" were either one or the other or both, Emalgihn's euphemism for the Book of Runes.So she was reading through, and marking each page and passage that contained a reference to either, and slowly putting together a complete list of references. Further, surrounding her was every book, rumor and possible lead that had been found on the Book of Runes from other sources. Her plan was simple - to assault the preponderance of truthful and false information with comparisons to the body of the Consumét Chronicles, and with luck, sift the wheat from the chaff.When she awoke, head lolled across her desk like a rag doll, there were other academicians loudly discussing their latest findings. It was evening, and the faux intelligencia were re-establishing their pecking order of academic "wit".She looked about her, rubbing salt from her eyes, and discovered that she had finished at some point in the wee hours of the morning... a complete index lay before her, cross referencing the useful from the useless. Stifling a grin behind a practiced, aristocratic yawn, she carefully reshelved her books, copied quick notations on each of the useful clues, and hurried from the reading room, index tucked jealously beneath her arm.The urgency was almost overwhelming. A key to the Book of Runes. Places it had passed through. She could find it! It took all of her long years of upper crust training to suppress the squeal of delight that threatened to press its way out of her throat. Thinking swiftly (the hallmark of a successful noble), she decided that action would serve better in this case than concealment. And to do so, she would need the services of someone suited to action. She would need friends, and she would need to leave the city as soon as possible.That meant the Brimming Vine. Most of the truly adventurous among the Lower Court aristocracy, when in need of refreshment, rest, and relaxing company, hung out there - a result of sanguinous location, as much as for the expertise of the staff - and so she hoped that someone she recognized might be there.And fortunately, there was.(1)Emalgihn is actually only "famous" among a small circle of eofihn mystics and scholars, particularly those who utilized the besarît seed for visions. He was very fond of giving coordinates by the position the stars took from a certain spot in a certain year, and dating by the same method, making locations more difficult than strictly necessary to find... but if you found the correct spot, he was almost always spot on. He was most famous for the Consumét Chronicles, however, which portrayed the passage of future empires with more than reasonable accuracy, if vaguely, and was the book which (upon predicting the death of the Kumaté cilvization) got him crucified until dead.(2) The Edge of Night was a legendary blade, known for making or breaking heroes from countless generations. It was broken shortly before the previous Emperor died, and was said to have been part of the release of an ancient biomancer with near-godlike power, before he was killed.(3) Gabiranna Muenerra, current emperor of Pauk, had become so by military force when the former emperor had died in an unfortunate incident involving the waking of a malrakhi god, decades before - prior to becoming emperor, however, she had been involved in the finding and breaking of the Edge of Night.</blockquote>

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