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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(contact)" data-source="post: 480473" data-attributes="member: 41">Interlude:  Information is the currency of power.One raise dead spell later, the party is together again, whole and sane.  Elenthal and Thrommel are both marked on their skin from their acid wounds, the scarring looking disturbingly like the marks on the Bleeding Stone.Dabus shares his doubts about the likelihood that the Bleeding Stone is destroyed, but hopes that in defeating it, they have forced it far away from the Iuzian forces seeking to claim it for their own.  The group returns to Cur’ruth, and examines the letters kept by Festering from his masters in Dorakka. Festering the Diseased was compulsive enough to keep draft copies of all his correspondence to his superiors, enabling the Liberators to piece together details some of the more high-level Iuzian activities in Tenh:Festering was in correspondence with two of his superiors, Jumper and Althea.  The name of Althea is known to the party as a member of the Greater Boneheart, Iuz' personal servants and high council.  Althea's name is familiar to the Liberators—she is the current High Priestess of Iuz, and most senior of his servitors.  The scrolls from both Althea and Jumper were delivered inside of beautifully crafted scroll-rings, carved with the holy symbol of Iuz, the Great Seal of Dorakka, and a third symbol unknown to the group.Jumper's letters were primarily concerned with the issue of Festering's command of the Giant Conversion Process—a systematic corruption of the local hill giant tribes with the eventual goal of merging them culturally with the Men of the Stonefist (producing hill giant barbarians) and turning them to the worship of Iuz.  The notes detail the locations of four other hidden bases in Northern Tenh, and mention the former Tenha city of Calibut as a gathering place and meeting ground for the Iuzian leaders in the occupied East.Althea's correspondence relates entirely to the Bleeding Stone.  According to her letters, the Bleeding Stone is one of seven great artifacts that predate and presage the birth of Iuz in the Flannaes, objects that are considered sentient (if entirely alien) and self-aware.  The Seven Stones appeared in what was to become the land of Iuz, and prepared the tribes there for their eventual unification under his tyrannical rule.  Shortly after his birth, they disappeared, and were assumed to be scattered to the far corners of the Flannaes.  The Stones are apparently resistant to normal divinations, and their locations have only gradually been discovered by Iuzian search teams, operating under the direction of Cranzer of Riftcrag, a member of the Lesser Boneheart.Althea mentions three other Stones that are in the possession of the Iuzian forces, and levels the threat that the last stone to be reclaimed will result in the death of the official in charge of its discovery.  She hopes that this will spur Festering and the others on toward an ever-greater zeal in their service to the Old One.Althea states in one letter that the Seven Stones are fractured parts of one great whole—an object of epic power that would “open lost gates” and “hasten the alliances for which we have worked since the Great War”.Unfortunately for the Iuzians, Festering was apparently embezzling the greater part of the funds allocated to his conversion and reclamation efforts for his own malign research.  Festering's necromantic study was directed toward the creation of greater constructs—disease carrying flesh golems capable of self-aware thinking.  To this end, he was stalling for time, claiming that his work was hindered by the unruliness of his Stonefist associates, and attempting to place all the blame on Martak, of the Curruth mines.Festering's research tomes further indicate that he was also sharing information with Martak on the creation of necromantic constructs, and that recent Iuzian discoveries in the area of free-willed undead, made by the wizard Maskaleyne, had contributed also toward his foul ambition.The recent failure of the mines at Curruth to deliver their ore quota was mentioned in passing by Jumper, and Festering was commanded to investigate—a command that he apparently ignored.  A fatal mistake, as things turned out.  ------Next:  Powerful divinations, riddles and mysteries.</blockquote>

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