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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edward Kann@StoryART" data-source="post: 1782238" data-attributes="member: 23128">The Dread Legion Advances...Wow.  Thanks a million Rakhir.  That is high praise indeed!  The encouragement definately keeps me excited to keep submitting the daily updates.  They are short but regular. EdUpdate 09-29-04The Dromite and I watched the moonlet of the City of Doors slowly dwindle as we sat on the deck of the Rigger Ship, The Poison Arrow.  Our right hands were wrapped in bandages having suffered the crisping of angry spell fire channeled out of the gladius during Officer Sorrow's intercession on our oath.I recalled Officer Sorrow's words as the old man put healing salve and bandages on our smoldering flesh.  My throat still felt raw from screaming and I was sore like I had been beaten in the streets by a gang of Noz addicts."Keep still while your wound is tended and listen well to my words."  He began."The Nameless are the eyes and the ears of the Legion.  They are the fist inside of the velvet glove that enforces order between the Legion and the Black Fleet when palace politics spiral out of all proportion."Officer Sorrow leaned against the wall and toyed with the pommel of his sword as he spoke."Within the Free Provinces we have a need for eyes and ears.  The enchantment of the Gladius is such that any named Brother in the Legion can be identified immediately by a Guild Wizard or ranking priest of the Order of the Inquisition.""Because the Order of Sorcery, being the first and most important magical Order within the world has, as you know, existed at the center of the Dominion from before its inception to the present day the rebels in the Free Provinces have got it into their heads that all born of Sorcerous blood are infernal and allied with the Empress.""The Inquisition has been spilling blood into the streets of the cities in the Free Provinces.  Their agents root out any possible "Imperialist" and most especially search out the secret chapter houses of the Order of Sorcery wherever and whenever they can.""These Guild Wizards are mostly former lower members of the Order of Sorcery who have betrayed their own Order and who have created a new one where simple unblooded Wizardry, the magic of the under classes, is supposedly supreme.  What it amounts to is treachery, pure and simple and a group of vile villains who have taken advantage of the ignorance of the masses in the Provinces and their current hatred of the Dominion to further their own goals."I winced and risked a question of my own."But the first Legion...it is supposed to be..""Destroyed?  Yes, the members of the First Legion were destroyed at the Battle of Argos in the Realm of the Hinterlands during the second century of the Age of Artovan.""Artovan himself secretly rebuilt the first Legion to serve as the secret watchmen of the Empire, who were known only by him, who answered only to him...."Silence hung in the air for a moment."As they still answer only to him, today."That got our attention.  Our eyes grew wide and the Dromite and I stared at one another in disbelief.  No one had seen Artovan, the immortal, self proclaimed God Emperor of the Known Universe of nine centuries for many years.  He had simply vanished and left the entire Dominion in chaos and civil war.  By now most people agreed that he had either ascended into the higher planes and become an actual God like they claimed in the temples of the Imperial Cult or his time had run out.Nine centuries is a long time even for one of the most skilled Sorcerers in history to cheat death through magic.  The last centuries had taken their toll and Artovan had long ago stopped receiving visitors and courtiers at his court unless he summoned them specifically for a private audience.  The magics that had long held off the advance of age, weakness and death had begun to mutate Artovan into something else, something no longer human.Eight years ago the worst of the civil war in the immediate moonlets of The Dominion had come to an end with the appointment of Artovan's daughter, the First Empress, to the Ivory Throne.  Civil War continued out in the three other realms long the territory of The Dominion.  So far the Empire had failed to reign in these territories in The Provinces, Cantons or Hinterlands of the Dominion.I looked up at the enormous balloon under which our rigger ship hung suspended, swaying and creaking in the wind.  The elemental enchantment on the ship's keel imparted the open sky with the properties of water to allow the ship to tack and turn like it was a smaller vessel sailing over the waters of a sea.  The keel rune altered the air into water in the space immediately surrounding the prow and center line of the vessel.  As we rocked and creaked and nosed our way into the Umbral Empyrean, the prow of The Poison Arrow rose and fell throwing up a light shower of spray and leaving a trail of fog and mist behind the ship as we sailed into the open sky away from my home.Neither the Dromite or I had said a word to one another in the first hours on board ship.  We were on our way to train.  But where?Artovan.  I could not get my mind around the notion that he still ruled and watched The Dominion but from deeper in the shadows.  Artovan who had raised the entire civilization of the Halfling folk to ashes for daring to resist being brought into the fold of the Dominion.  An entire race picked up scattered and laws set in place making it a death sentence for any of them to set foot on their home moonlets.Artovan, who after the Third Elf War had cast forth a spell that had insured the slavery of every being of elf blood for the first two centuries of life.  Not only that but within the confines of the four realms all Elves were forced to serve a human master or suffer a lingering and painful destruction from the weave of his magic.  For six centuries the elves had known this slavery.I watched the birds trailing in a flock behind the ship hoping to snatch up some left overs and sent up a silent prayer to Father to keep me from ever having to stand before Artovan personally.<img src="http://www.storyartgames.com/filevault/Poison-Arrow.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></blockquote>

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