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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jon Potter" data-source="post: 4136505" data-attributes="member: 2323">[PLAIN][Realms #431a] Memento Mori[/PLAIN]Ayremac smiled at Doctor Akerman and held up a finger. "Sir, please excuse me for a moment," he said and raised the Ring of Communication to his lips. Into the Ring he said, "Morier, come on up. I think we have stumbled onto a bit of luck for once." Akerman looked at the distant group and arched an eyebrow at Ayremac as the holy warrior lowered his hand."So you know of Alechtus of Gudiberg, do you?" he asked, removing his hat to fuss momentarily over its rumpled brim. Ayremac saw that the top of the man's head was bald and tattooed with geometric patterns."Dr. Akerman, we are tracking this man right now," the Officer of Umba answered. "He has just left a keep near here and has laid waste to it and, we believe, killed at least one if not two of our own." Akerman looked up, concerned."But you're coming from the south," he said and Ayremac nodded which prompted Akerman to hurl down his reins and clap the hat back on his head. "The bastard's doubled back on his own trail again! That's how he lost me outside Flavonshire." Ayremac had heard of Flavonshire from Morier and Karak and knew that it was over a moonsdance of hard travel away, north of the Altan Tepes."You've been after him for a long time then," he observed and Akerman nodded, but he seemed distracted now as if he were only half listening. "Why are you tracking Alechtus? And how do you know he has eluded Umba's judgement?""He has something I want and I am a wizard of no small skill," the man answered with a wave of his hand. "I have resources to draw upon that you would not understand.""Try me!" Huzair remarked as he and the rest of the group approached."Dr. Akerman, please allow me a moment to introduce this party," Ayremac said. He indicated each member in turn, starting with the druid who stood off to the side with his arms crossed. "This man is Ahlear, he is new to our company as of this morning; this is Huzair and Morier and Shamalin, whom I have traveled with for some time. This less vocal member is Anania." Akerman looked appraisingly at each of them, as Ayremac made introductions. When it was done, Ahlear spoke up, his tone carefully neutral."Saying, I told you so would be appropriate, Ayremac, but I will not," the druid said. "I will, however, tell you that next time please try a less aggressive stance with anything neutrally unknown. It might actually do more good than you would expect.""Ahlear, Ayremac's caution is-" Morier began but Ahlear cut him off."I intended my comment as a direct response to you, too," he said simply before slipping into elvish to direct a few words at Anania. "Elellalle seler'di'thang vithel." She regarded him with a rare expression of emotion for a moment and then turned away, her lips set in a tight line."My sweet flower is nobody's 'lackey'! Huzair protested. "Least of all Morier's!" Ahlear snorted at the mage's words and directed his attention to Doctor Akerman."How is it that you come opposite the trail we have been following Alechtus on and have not met him on his way towards us?" he asked. "It seems very unlikely""What are you insinuating, goodman?" Akerman countered. He shifted his weight, his hand drifting toward the staff on the seat beside him."I'm insinuating nothing," Ahlear replied. "Perhaps if you could please explain how you could miss the quarry you seem to know is around here, yet not intercept him when that same quarry should have been right between you and us.""Ah... I see," Akerman said, drawing himself up to his full height so that he could glower down his pointy nose at Ahlear. "So I am either incompetent or a liar. Is that it?"Ayremac intervened quickly, flexing his wings to break line of sight between the two men."I am sure that's not what he meant," the holy warrior said, stepping forward to ply the diplomatic skills honed a lifetime ago when he'd been a yeoman to Duke Brelton. "I am curious though, sir. Our tracking has led us directly to you, so I must think that Alechtus has either passed right by or possibly been hidden from you somehow... which seems a difficult task given how easily you discovered me.""As I told you, he's undoubtedly doubled back on his trail, probably back in Colybury," he said, cocking a thumb over his shoulder in the direction he'd come. "Alechtus has been pursued by some of the most determined hunters in the Realms. He's a wily devil.""So if you do not know where Alechtus is why were you driving so fast?" Huzair countered and Akerman scowled."Because, as I said, I did know where he was," the Doctor snapped. "I was following his divine energy trail from Colybury, but he doubled back-""Divine energy trail?" Morier interrupted. "Alechtus is a divine caster? We had not heard that." Doctor Akerman's expression grew guarded at that question and he shook his head."I did not say that," he muttered and his hand stole again to the staff on the seat beside him.At the rear of the party and off to the side, Shamalin warily continued to concentrate on her Detect Thoughts spell. She'd already determined that Akerman was inhumanly smart, possessed perhaps of the single greatest intellect she had ever encountered. But, as she tried to probe deeper and actually read his surface thoughts, she felt that intellect form itself into a bulwark against her, repelling her voyeuristic attempts and dissipating her spell at the same time."Who is casting against me?" Akerman roared, springing at once to his feet, his staff held in one hand and the other clutching at something in the folds of his clothes. Magical energy began to gather spectacularly in the air around him.Shamalin stepped meekly forward, her hands held in a position of peace. "Forgive me, sir, for I meant no insult," she said and Akerman brought the brass loop on his staff to his eye, peering through it at her. "We have been beset by enemies often of late and I was only seeking to divine your intentions."After a moment, the magic energy dissipated and Akerman lowered the staff snorting, "There are other ways to determine such, priestess. Less uncivilized ways." He pursed his lips and nodded before lowering himself back to his seat. "What knowledge do you seek?""What kind of Doctor are you?" Ayremac asked first and this made Akerman smirk."I received a Doctorate of Arcane Studies from Mageholme in Barnacus," he said. "It is an honorary title, but one I earned by virtue of my training as a Loremaster.""Does Sir Alectus know you are after him?" Huzair asked next and Akerman shrugged."I doubt it. We crossed paths but briefly," he told them. "I was studying some rare texts at the Redhurst Academy at the same time he passed through Battle City. He is used to pursuit, however. The Sanctifiers have been seeking him with a fervor I have not seen before. And he, in his turn, has been hunting them.""If an entire sect of holy warriors haven't been able to stop him, how do you hope to take on this Alechtus of Gudiberg alone?" Shamalin asked and Akerman looked at her with a merry twinkle in his eye."Why from a distance, of course," he said. "The Sanctifiers have all made the same mistake: they've tried to get close enough to use the Rite of Ending on him so that he cannot return from the dead again!""Again?" Morier asked. "He's undead?" The Doctor shook his head."Not in the truest sense, but the Sanctifiers see any magic that returns a departed soul to Oerune to be necromancy," he explained. "To them he is no better than undead.""So he's returned from death," Ayremac stated and Akerman nodded. "How do you know he has eluded Umba's judgement?""Yes," Huzair suggested. "Perhaps you should tell us all you can about this man." Akerman considered this, tugging on his goatee as he ruminated."Perhaps you're right," he began. "Have any of you heard of an organization called Momento Mori? No? Well, I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose. Outside the Walk of a Hundred Days, there's precious few of us who devote any attention to the study of dead gods."Sir Alechtus of Gudiberg was once a good man, a Sanctifier of some fame in the areas around Gessex, Restenford and Battle City. He'd defeated undead of every stripe and personally put to the sword a cabal of druids who were selling Reincarnation magic to noble families in Farmin. He then journeyed to the Freeport of Farmin to find and cleanse those aristocrats who had defied Calaam.It was while in Freeport that Alechtus ran afoul of a group devoted to the trickster aspect Lukane. He stumbled quite unwittingly upon their plot to create something called a Faith Golem and handily disrupted the attempt, earning himself more glory and the undying ire of a halfling named Harcourt. Irritating these vindictive followers of a trickster god proved to be Alechtus' undoing.While on the way back to Restenford, Harcourt and his band ambushed Alechtus, slew the man and smuggled his body into Battle City. There they Raised him from the Dead - a fate far worse than dying to one who worships Calaam. The process apparently drove Alechtus mad, for he never behaved the same again.He spent some time wandering Battle City shunning friends and clashing with his former brothers-in-arms, the Sanctifiers of Calaam. After that, he cut a bloody swath eastwards to Barnacus. At this time, the capital city was suffering from plague, and it is unknown what Alechtus did within or what drove him there in the first place. But when he reappeared less than a week later in Strenchburg Junction, he had with him the samsara sword that he now carries at all times.There were some deaths in Strenchburg Junction attributed to Alechtus, and then he vanished, resurfacing in Battle City where he crossed paths with Akerman for the first time. Akerman has often wondered if some divine hand was not guiding his own that day as he brought the staff of blood to his eye and looked upon Alechtus. For if he had not, he might never have realized the truth: the man housed within him the Divine Spark of a dead deity, the goddess of freedom, Rhianne, who was slain centuries ago by Cretia, the Blood God of Hule.With his staff it was a simple matter for Akerman to see the power that Alechtus housed, and with another object in his possession, a Divinity Collector, it would be just as simple to harvest the spark once Alechtus was dead.</blockquote>

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