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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(contact)" data-source="post: 1208161" data-attributes="member: 41">93—Another year older, another year wiserThe brothers Tar-Ilou return home without Elgin.  While they both know that this should be a mournful thing, neither of them can bring themselves to grieve.  They are both filled with a giddy light-headedness, and describe to one another a sense of pervasive warmth—although it doesn’t seem to be related to temperature; their skin grows cold upon their return to the North, but no matter what their nerves tell them, they can’t shake the belief that there is this great warmness spreading throughout them.Taran starts to call his commanders together to double the watch assignments, fearing reprisal from Torm’s hosts, but as he does so, he has the strangest sensation that he can smell Kyreel.  As if she were standing just over his shoulder.  The small hairs on the back of his neck hop to attention, and he hears Kyreel’s voice, as clear as day:  “Rest easy, I will take this watch.”Without questioning the event, Taran retires to his chamber, and takes his former companion’s advice, falling into a deep and dreamless sleep.-----Two days after their fight in the marketplace, Thelbar has discovered Elgin’s whereabouts—he has been imprisoned deep beneath the earth.  Thelbar has researched the necessary counter-spell, and is ready to free his companion.  While Thelbar was lost in research, Taran has compiled the intelligence he gathered on the Truesilvers’ military preparations, and drawn up a plan of attack.The brothers Tar-Ilou return to Arabel, and finish what they started two days before:  Elgin is recovered from his magical imprisonment, and both he and Thelbar direct their spells at the apparatus of the Truesilver military machine:  fireballs, lightning bolts, acid storms and fire storms; storm of vengeance, elemental swarm and acid fog; earthquakes, transmute rock to mud and disintegrate; all these spells and more are used at Taran’s direction, and by the time the city grows quiet again, the adventurers are gone, and House Truesilver is utterly de-fanged as a military entity.  They estimate that they have set Arabel’s rulers back by at least a year, possibly two—a fact that will probably be music to Sembian ears.“See how you like getting sacked, f-ckers,” Taran mutters as they leave Arabel, intending never to return.-----Over the next several weeks, Elgin and Thelbar work closely together and establish a workshop for their magical-craft hidden within the Astral plane, accessed by permanent gates leading to the Tar-Ilou’s home in New Ithor.  Putting their workshop to use, Elgin enlists Taran’s help to craft a new suit of armor—the most elaborate, functional and flatly powerful Taran has ever possessed.  It is mastercrafted plate, enchanted to be as light as mail, and imbued with a strong alteration that makes its wearer both difficult for the eye to fix on as well as nearly soundless.  Wearing his new armor, Taran looks and feels like a great and shining champion, and some of his melancholy begins to leave him.-----Weeks pass, and months fall away.  Just before winter arrives, Thelbar announces that he will be sequestering himself for the season in magical study, learning new spells and crafting items, most notably a mirror of mental prowess.  Elgin also spends the majority of his time working on projects, and traveling to and from Suzail, assisting with the affairs of his church.  He is pleased to report that the situation there has stabilized somewhat.  As the remaining population are primarily Lathanderites, religious tension in what remains of Cormyr is relatively low, and as the leaves turn and the first crisp wind whips through closed shutters, the nation grows stable, if not well.The brothers Tar-Ilou make large amounts of adventurer’s gold available for the Church of Lathander, and ensure that the populace of New West Cormyr, as it is coming to be called, are at least fed and housed.  Taran spends some time meeting with the Red Wizards of Thay, hoping to ensure that a quiet flow of arms and armor will reach the nation as well.Arabel, as expected, is unable to press an attack, and they also grow quiet at the approach of winter.  The new Truesilver patriarch signs a formal recognition pact with Sembia, however, and the two “nations” exchange “ministers.”  The Steel Regent bitterly calls these Sembians “string-pullers,” and the “mutual admiration and defense pact” is widely viewed as a bloodless conquest of Old Cormyr’s South.Despite this acrimony, Cormyr signs a formal peace treaty with Sembia, signing away their former territory in exchange for a promise that the sliver of land remaining to the nation will be held, “As a sovereign and separate state, for now and for evermore.”  Mother Talendiira leaves Cormyr, and returns to her accustomed haunts among the drow of New Ithor, alternately blessing and teaching the drow, and gone entirely.  The drow call her, “the forest mother,” and a small cult of rangers devoted to the sight of her forms among the recent Ermathan converts.As the gods feud, Bane looks to benefit most of all.  Scardale and Harrowdale in the Dalelands fall to his Zhentarim, . The dwarves surrounding Kor’En Eamor come to a sort of blustery peace, marked by occasional mass-brawls and some bloodshed, but after three or more months of futile waiting, they set out to return home as the first snows begin to fall in the lowlands.The Southern dwarves move into what was Northern Cormyr, and begin to make what seems like a half-hearted military occupation of the land.  The Northern band, however, is facing bleak times—their homes in the Silver Marches have been overrun in their absence by Obuld Many-Arrows.  Unlike the human and elven settlements, the dwarves of the North were by and large unable to flee before the overwhelming horde.  Orcs poured into their caverns and underground halls, and Obuld’s Legions do not take prisoners.Left homeless and bereaved, Moradin’s faithful grimly march through the first snows of the year, intending to either rip the throat from Obuld’s force, or throw their lives away in the effort.The Orcish king, growing fat on the plunder of last spring, is more than willing to accommodate them.  As a canny tactician who knows all to well how difficult it can be to assault a well-defended dwarven burrow, Obuld has cruelly sworn to fight to the last dwarf.Taran begins a plan of organization for his drow forces.  Beset by raiding orcs to the North, and this new prospect of dwarven fighters to the East, the drow begin to learn the subtle art of the ambush, and practice guerilla tactics, taking a cue from their surface-world kin.  The priesthood of Solonor Thelandir aids in this task, teaching traditional elven archery and forest-craft to the drow.The worship and lessons of Sharlaquannan, formerly Lolth, begins to coalesce into something resembling a religion, and her first true clerics emerge, preaching the faith on the unsteady legs of a new-born colt.  But New Ithor is a safe place for religions to grow—the pasoun asserts its inevitability but does not dictate paths.</blockquote>

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