17th of Davor, 1329 Avard

Droog started as alarm bells sounded. Half of his face was covered in elven script, and he saw how the spine of the book was soaked through with his drool. He had fallen asleep translating Rahob's spellbook into the dwarven script.

The alarm bells stopped a moment later. Apparently, it was a false alarm – there were no ograns attacking, no roc-hawkes diving out of the sky.

Droog grabbed up Rahob's spellbook, glanced in disgust at the damage he had done to the elven book, and left the library of Lok Magius for the stables. The night air outside was chilly, despite the mid-summer's night. Dim red light filtered into every corner of the fortress, and the great mass of the gas giant Maroth loomed overhead, obscuring more than half of the starry sky. Silent lightning flickered in the depths of Maroth's orange and red clouds.

Droog shivered, not in the chill of the air, but in the chill in his soul. He placed the spellbook safely in the lock-box of his carriage, and then curled up on the bench seat of his carriage.

Around him, the familiars of the night continued their slow, quiet preparations for war. His last vision, before his eyes closed, was of a large rat wearing leather body armor, with a variety of rat-sized blades in small sheathes.

* * *

During the twilight hours of dawn, Barome headed on into the fortress. The guards at the gate let him in, knowing the hatred all desert elves had for the ograns. Barome led his camel, Poncor, towards the stables.

Inside, he found his bald dwarf's carriage easily enough, and the dwarf was inside, laid out on the bench seat asleep. His draft-mule was content in the next stall, munching on some grain.

Barome saw that the dwarf was all right, and then saw a rabbit bound by. He almost drew his bow and and arrow, but thought better of it, as the rabbit leapt up onto a stall door, and then leapt up into the hayloft, its backpack barely swaying from the great jump.

A huge spider was laying trip-lines and net traps along the main rafter.

A ferret climbed out of a tube made from webbing and straw and hay, and began to help camouflage the tube against a corner.

A hummingbird flitted into the stables, and paused in the air near Barome, eyeing him for a moment. Once the hummingbird had given its approval, the flock of blood-hawks swooped in behind it, and took up observation points around the haylofts.

Barome backed out of the stables, subjugating his fear of magic to his iron will.

He looked around at the massive structures of the mages' academy, and found other tasks to occupy his mind.

* * *

Droog woke with a start, again. Daylight blinded his light-sensitive eyes for a moment, before he adjusted to it. He muttered a dwarven curse against the light-loving humans, and rolled over. His inner eye swirled with the scripts of four languages, and his head ached. He knew he was close – so close! – to finally unravelling the initial steps of the arcane, and bringing him one step closer to his goals of power.

He curled his fist, feeling his smith's knuckles crackle and pop.

After a moment's check on the mule, he knelt down with his holy symbol in his hand, and invoked Galgiran's prayers.

* * *

Barome used a bit of chalk to write upon the large stones of the inner wall. He wrote in the common script, “Move guards to parapet; cannot see rocs from base of wall.”

The desert elf had taken to studying the fortress, with an eye towards defense.

Lok Magius was made of three concentric rings of walls, with a large tower in its center. Each of the walls looked like a great hexagon from the air, and each wall was taller than the next, with the tallest being in the center, nearly one-hundred feet in height, and fifty feet in width. The two inner walls also had rooms built into them, and were used for a variety of purposes. At the vertex of each of the walls was a large tower, with laboratories, libraries, and other instruments of the arcane – as well as more mundane defenses.

Each of the tower's supported armories, ballistae, weapons, and more.

Over 300 full-time guards helped protect the mages' academy during peace-time. With the war on, contingents of guards from Lok Giran, Rilan, and further away had begun to arrive.

Barome could imagine a seige of Lok Magius, but was curious about the inner courtyard. The courtyard was being filled with supplies and equipment, and bands of people walked about in odd groups of four and five inside the courtyard. It seemed as though everyone were preparing for a trip, and yet as near as the desert elf could tell, they had just arrived at Lok Magius.

One wall of the inner hex had been cleared of equipment and supplies, and near the middle of the wall, three dwarves in the full plate and regalia of Galgiran's clerics kneeled in prayer.

The desert elf wanted to ask them what they were doing, but was more interested in the supplies and armor and equipment in the courtyard. He watched as one band went from wagon to crate to an elderly robed man just picking up whatever they chose.

A steady supply of fresh equipment, and even the most masterwork of weapons, came from inside the fortress, from inside the academy.

The three dwarven clerics stood up. On the wall, perhaps four feet in the air, was a star plucked from the heavens in brilliant blue. The star held steady, an infintessimally small point of light, with the brilliance greater than the sun, casting odd blue-black shadows around everything about.

The dwarves stood free, chatting with one another, and no one else in the courtyard seemed to remark on the blue star, as though it were a common occurrence for the mages' academy.

Barome strode boldly forward, and asked the middle dwarf in the common tongue, “Where are these armors and weapons coming from? Where do I go to get some?”

The dwarf, an elder known as Bishop Rolth Wirebeard of the Rakanus Clan – second-in-command of the Rakanus Clan.

His understanding of the Common tongue was rough, but he squinted up at the tall elf, and said, “Thedlar. Find you – go Thedlar.”

Barome frowned in confusion, and asked, “Where is this 'Thedlar'?”

Bishop Rolth pointed towards the Blue Tower, where the train of people hauled mage-made items out of The Hoard.

The desert elf turned in confusion, trusting his instincts to take him to the Thedlar.

He asked directions once or twice more, and managed to follow the line of men down into the depths of one of the inner wall's towers. More of the strange iron statues lined the halls, and the large set of double doors that stood open behind a low counter.

Inside, someone yelled in a thick, insulting barbarian accent. “You puny dog! Go!” There was a crash of something heavy, and then a dog lumbered through the double doors, loaded down with saddlebags so heavy that the dog was whining beneath the load.

Barome could see the intense determination, bewilderment, dedication, and intelligence in the dog's eyes, as it slowly wobbled and lumbered its way past the desert elf with a grim glance.

Barome the 'Revelstoke' grinned, walked around the corner, and stepped through the double doors.

Inside, the strange iron statues held up the ceiling with their arms, and a massive cavern held crate after crate, aisle after aisle, shelf after shelf of weapons, armor, potions, scrolls, jewelry, arrows, ballistae bolts, and even dozens of identical statues with massive shields and huge fists.

The desert elf grinned, and his eyes lit up.

The insulting barbarian said, “Goot! Now we have Taller girlie man to bring the heavy loads upstairs! Catch!”

A human as tall as Barome, and twice as thick, lifted a four-foot high statue-like object, and tossed it in an arc to the desert elf, fifteen feet away. Barome barely managed to catch the statue and stay on his feet, as the 250 pounds of stone weight struck him. It was more than stone, though… It had a… charge, the kind one felt before a thunderstorm. Something within the stone buzzed, and felt angry, as though it had power within it.

“Well, girlie elf? Will you stand with it in your arms forever? Is it your lover! No! Take it all the way up the stairs, and show me you are strong!”

Barome snorted, and lifted the heavy statue, hefting it. With a last look around, he moved back out of the hoard of magical items.

When he finally set the statue down in the courtyard, his skin was soaked with sweat, and his muscles cried out in pain. He leaned on the statue, feeling it buzz through his arm, and heaved in ragged gasps of air. Nearby, the immense walls of the middle tower reached up into the blue sky.

The mid-morning sun had not yet penetrated the chasm of the walls, but the blue light from the star still stood along one wall. One of the armored clerics stood on either side of the star, with some fifteen feet between them. The third cleric stood before the star, perhaps fifteen feet back, forming a triangle.

As Barome watched, the star pulsed, and expanded into a circle nearly ten feet wide, and nine feet tall – a foot of it cutting down into the earth of the courtyard. Inside the circle, was darkness, but along its edges, energy crackled in blue ripples of light and power.

The elder dwarf motioned a group of four people forward, each wearing dark leathers and shouldering loads of scrollcases and books. They stepped into the darkness, and then the ring collapsed into a star again.

Droog ambled up to Barome from behind, and said, “I see they've opened the Eye of Galgiran.”

The desert elf said, “Ah! That makes sense, to call it that… Looking into its depths, is like looking into the eye of a god.”

Droog chuckled. “More like Galgiran has blue eyes, elf.”

“Ah. Hey, think you could get us through the Eye of Galgiran, and get us into some orcs…?”

Droog grinned, and shook his head. “Perhaps, elf, I can.” He sobered a bit, and said, “I'll be back.”

Barome, still recovering from the weight of the statue, let the dwarf move forward.

Droog approached the elder cleric, wracking his memory for an answer.

The elder grinned as Droog approached, even as he motioned for another group to step forward. “Ah, Droog. It's good to see you again.”

“I remember, you were at my vestment ceremony… You were only an abbot, then,” said Droog, still trying to place his name.

The other dwarf motioned another group forward, even as the ring expanded to accomodate them. “Unfortunately, the War of the Undead was good to the Wirebeards,” the bishop said, trying to give the younger dwarf a hint.

Droog grinned, and placed the name. “Abbot Rolth!” He blinked, and realized, “You're the Bishop Wirebeard that follows Father Bryan, now. I thought it was your brother, Glamrol.”

Rolth changed the gate destination again, and said, “It was going to be him, but-”

In slow motion, Droog saw horns emerge from the opened gateway, followed a moment later by a huge reptilian snout. The ograns used the giant minotaur lizards of the desert for mounts, and the minotaur lizards could reach forty and even fifty feet in length, with their horns swept forward and spines all along their backs. The lizard's head finished coming through the gate, its eyes focusing on Father Rolth and Droog.

A heartbeat later, the driver could be seen on the lizard's neck, sitting in its saddle where the spines were smallest – an orc clad in a strange breastplate of smooth stone-like metal and the reins firmly in its grip. Another heartbeat passed, even as Droog was shoving Father Rolth aside, and the great rib cage of the beast emerged. Hanging along the lizard's sides were orc archers in baskets, suspended from poles across the beast's back. They gimballed and swung with each step of the horrific lizard, but not so much so that the orc archers could not fire indiscriminately at the surprised people in the courtyard.

The lizard ran over Droog and Father Rolth without pausing, and ran almost straight at Barome's statue, even as Barome himself ran off to one side, drawing his bow and an arrow as quickly as he could. The lizard over-ran the statue in a moment, and skittered up the side of the tower. Behind it came several more of the armored and armed orcs, and then an immense ogre, also clad in the strange armor from head to toe.

Father Rolth scrambled clear as Barome fired an arrow into the first orc he could, striking it in the greave of one thigh.

A hail of blasts and fire and arrows began as a melee broke out in the courtyard. Father Rolth managed to collapse the gate, cutting off the arm of another ogre, as the ogre that had come through the gate used its massive two-handed sword to try and beat one of the other dwarven clerics into the dirt.

Fireballs and magical darts exploded about the fast-moving minotaur lizard. The gimballing mounts of the orcs allowed them to fire even while the lizard was vertical, but the initial surprise was over.

Barome threw down his bow, and drew his scimitar, running an orc threw, as a column of heavenly forge-fire fell from the heavens and incinerated the ogre with a concussive blast of hot air. Droog's battle-axe batted aside an orc shield as he rushed to aid a fallen cleric. Another fireball detonated atop the central tower, and as bits of lizard and orc limbs rained down around them, Barome threw his scimitar down and pulled his longspear from his back as he ran.

As an orc drew back to slay a young human, a spearhead suddenly appeared from its chest. Barome lifted the orc into the air, and shook it until its guts exploded out of it, raining down on the desert elf.

Suddenly, the battle was over.

Calls for healers and clerics went up, and the courtyard began to be packed with people come to help – either to attack more intruders, or offer aid where needed.

The headmistress of the academy, Mistress Brin, arrived on the scene. Her secretary, a man with color-changing eyes that went by the name of Reed, answered questions and helped direct the operation.

It was through Father Rolth, Reed, and then Mistress Brin, that Droog was allowed to help, somehow. It was a way to help that Barome approved heartily of: an insertion deep behind enemy lines, into a supposedly abandoned canyon within the Choranil Desert. Their task was to find some very ancient ruins that appeared on some of the maps they had – ruins that the ograns likely did not know existed. The ruins held secrets that related to the origins of the desert elves, and though Mistress Brin could not say why the information was needed, bid them luck and haste.

Reed gave them a pouch of wooden tokens, to be broken to deliver messages by arcane means. One of them, different than the others, would signal Father Rolth that they needed to be retrieved, and the dwarven elder would reopen the Eye of Galgiran to the same point he sent them.

After a bit of preparation, they were sent through the Eye of Galgiran, and found themselves in a small, steep canyon. Barome ensured that the carriage and the mule were well-hidden and camouflaged, and then set about to explore the canyon, going south from Droog.

Droog trusted the desert elf in his home terrain, and patiently waited through the afternoon, until almost a mark before sunset. The desert sun had been brutal on the dwarf, until he had enacted one of Galgiran's most basic of protections, to protect his smiths against the heat of the forge.

Barome returned in that mark before sunset, and explained that there was little enough ahead of them. Behind them, the canyon continued to stretch, but nightfall was coming on. The orcs would mostly travel at night, though they had seen none – but they began to hear the howls of coyotes. Coyotes were a favored mount of the kobolds, the scouts of the Ogre Nations…

So ends the 18th of Davor, 1329.

I'm getting long-winded with some of these recaps. No worries.

It dawned on me, as I was writing these, that neither James nor Erin ever actually introduced one another's characters. Notice how they never call one another by name – probably because they don't yet know one another's names! Interesting group dynamics, so far.

I'm still trying to figure out whether Mistress Brin is trying to kill them, or sees something in them that I don't, because sending just two guys deep behind enemy lines, blind, sounds like murder to my military-trained mind. Then again, Thedlar the barbarian (who also teaches blood-sorcery at the academy) could vouch for the desert elf, and Father Rolth could vouch for the dwarven cleric, but, still… You'd think she or Reed would have sent in more than just a camel, a mule, a dwarf, and a desert elf. Don't you?

750. (total character XP to date is 4,500)