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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2800740" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 516Cal spent his tenday in a much quieter fashion than his companions; he faced no fantastic monsters or dire plagues.  But nevertheless, the gnome archmage was incredibly busy, and in that relatively short period of time he covered more ground than some merchants crossed in their entire lifetimes.  His interview with the Blackstaff was brief but fruitful.  Khelben Arunsun, the Archmage of Waterdeep, was sympathetic to his situation, and was able to provide the gnome with access to several tomes and other sources of at least reasonably reliable information about the Abyss and its lords.  There was a lot of misinformation about the Prince of Shadows, the master of Azzagrat, but Arunsun promised that he would dedicate more resources to the topic and forward any information he uncovered to Cal at the Traveler’s Rest.  The Blackstaff was also able to help Cal in another way, granting him a recommendation that got him free access to the extensive library and laboratory facilities of the city’s renown Mages’ Guild.  That was particularly useful, for while the Traveler’s Rest had a decent study, Cal’s resources were scant indeed in comparison to the rich amenities offered by the Guild to its inner circle of arcanists.  Arunsun also gave Cal a reference to a contact at the Guild who was able to provide the gnome with a pair of items of great use to one in his position; a blessed book to augment his bulging, overfull spellbooks, and a small magical container akin to Dannel’s efficient quiver, only designed to hold magical staves, rods, and wands.  The ornate leather sleeve held up to twenty such devices, and produced the proper one upon a simple voice command.  Given the recent growth in Cal’s collection of such devices, the compact cylinder found a ready home at the gnome’s belt.Cal already had a good number of scrolls he wanted to scribe, and with the library of the Guild at his disposal he was set to make a good start at filling the magically-enhanced capacity of his blessed book.  But first, he had other errands to complete.  He still had a good quantity of treasure in his magical haversack, mostly specialized magical items left over from their errand at Skullrot, or from Hookface’s horde.  Those items required unique buyers, so he spent the better part of three days making contacts, collecting references from the other Guild mages, and even delving briefly into Skullport, the corrupt outpost situated deep beneath the city.    He had mastered the ability of magical teleportation, and almost every day he used the power at least twice, transporting himself to distant cities and returning later, worn out by full days of activity.  With his greater teleport ability, honed to full potency by his archmage abilities, he could travel to destinations he’d never even visited, needing only a detailed description of the place upon which he could focus the energies of the spell.  In that tenday he traveled to seven cities scattered all over the Realms, seeking out buyers for his remaining treasures, collecting more spells, or digging up small threads of information that each fit into the puzzle that he was constructing.  That last, in particular, was especially troubling.  Few knew much about Graz’zt, and even fewer were willing to speak of the demon prince openly.  But what was odd was a pattern he was beginning to sense.  Faerûn already had plenty of evil gods; the demon princes acted within a crowded field.  But the hints that he learned suggested that Graz’zt’s power had, of late, been in decline upon the Prime Material Plane.  There were no hard facts to clarify this suspicion, and nothing at all about events upon the Outer Planes, and especially the Abyss.  Cal actually knew more than most about Graz’zt’s own realm, having traveled there personally, almost twenty years ago. It was not a journey he was eager to make again. Another errand he’d attended to shortly after his meeting with the Blackstaff.  While in Waterdeep, he traveled to the busy crafts district situated along the broad avenue that led up from the city’s docks.  It had been decades since he’d lived in the city, but a few probing questions and well-placed gold pieces led him to the shop of a craftsman who could fulfill the unusual commission that he had in mind.  A much larger quantity of gold set his request in motion.  Toward the end of the tenday, he returned, and accepted a fairly large bundle wrapped in cloth that barely fit into the extradimensional space within his haversack. The rest of his time he spent in a private cubby deep within the Guild library, scribing spells into his book.  Even here he was forced to choose among the new spells he’d collected, and while he would have liked to scribe a few scrolls as well, there was no time.  The lazy pace of magical item creation he’d followed over the last decade, while the Rest had been constructed, and Ember Vale grew from a waystop into a community, seemed a lost luxury. Finally, on the last day of the tenday since he’d left Lok and Mole at that distant outpost so far away in the North, he returned home.  He materialized in the small secure chamber beneath the Rest, and despite his exhaustion carefully disabled each of the wards that were designed to ensure a most unwelcome reception to those who arrived uninvited.  After securing the heavy iron door behind him, he headed up the stairs, crossed directly to his room, and without even bothering to undress collapsed into his bed, instantly falling asleep.  Outside, the last glimmers of the sun were already vanishing over distant western horizon, but the gnome was oblivious to the coming of the night.</blockquote>

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