NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="seasong" data-source="post: 799794" data-attributes="member: 5137">Preparing For WarThe message went out before Olympiad ended. The decision had been made before Athan fell, but the Generals behind it had waited until the fervor was at its height. The content of the message was simple, an invitation to serve a second year of Service for all citizens, young or old, and an assurance that no one was required to do so. There was a further assurance that those entering Service for a second year would be given very generous time off, particularly if they had crops to maintain.But what it said was more complex than the mere content. It meant Theralis was no longer fending off raids, training their youths, or driving off the occasional monsters of the wilderness. Theralis was going to war. A war they would win, possibly at grievous cost in lives.In addition to the basic message, Captains from all over the valleys were sent basic qualification tests for arcanists, espers, healers, illusionists, and careful instructions on what qualified. They were told to test everyone they saw, and to be generous in their estimates. In the normal course of events, only the most talented would be allowed to join the ranks of each spell casting clique, but what Theralis needed now wasn't immense talent but immense numbers.Merideth signed up for a second year of Service almost immediately. Not because she particularly relished being in a command structure again, but she relished being in a command position within in a command structure - Merideth and two others were given the task of training the next batch of espers, the other two for their long history of excellent apprentices, Merideth for her immense talent.Nor was she considered a healer on the front lines, anymore. There were plenty of healers, almost one per ten soldiers, but espers were few and far between... and Agina had been very insistent with the Generals that espers were a priority now.As she tested and taught, and both children and adults, eager to learn how they could help Theralis by casting spells, looked up to her for her wisdom and knowledge... Merideth began to find something akin to happiness.Bellos, swiftly manipulated into proving himself as a slinger (Agina and Greppa had asked if he would be willing to learn "a real weapon" in the form of a spear, so he could join the fighting), but not a citizen, nonetheless worked closely with the slingers he had competed with in Olympiad. It took a week to convert them to beer, and three more weeks to teach them moderation.Despite the havoc he'd wreaked on their sense of order, Bellos was swiftly grasping the fundamentals of Theralis strategy, and was soon given an outside leadership position as advisor to Lykos, the almost invisibly average-looking slinger's Captain who'd hunted the wilderness in his youth with the same sling that served him now. The two, despite their wildly variant appearance, seemed as well matched as any soldier and Captain could be, and Bellos and Lykos were soon matching stories of monsters and places.Greppa was in charge of numerous things, enough so that he was having a tough time of it just to run back and forth between them. Not skilled enough in any particular field of arcanist to be a full teacher, but having the most solid grasp of arcane theory of anyone in the valley (including Kyriotes, who was hopelessly specialized in just one aspect of it), Greppa was a natural for testing and teaching the basics to the hundred or so citizens who had tested "adequately" on the arcanist tests.Plus he was attempting to teach flying to every arcanist who could learn it, and every illusionist they were paired with... and working with Agina on his Uripedas bombardment ideas. Only a generalist like Greppa would have thought of summoning something to help him as an evoker - bombardment was useless to a summoner, and largely impossible for an evoker.And, just to add to the mess of his duties, Merideth and Bellos were pushing him to look for "ancient places we can loot during our promised vacation". That last, he'd already put off for weeks, and the month of time off was looming.He put it off another day, and went back to explaining fundamentals of magic to an sharp-minded elderly gentleman who had somehow (Greppa had no idea how) been missed by any arcanist in his youth.</blockquote>

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