of a Desert Mission, voices in one's head and an old old Forge

from the journal of Jarl!!, elementalist and more.

Silence descends in the safehouse. The screaming, shouting and sickening thuds and rips as blows and dagger stabs were exchanged finally fade out. Fastar lays battered and limp at the bottom of the stairs, her body broken and very close to death. I observe her for a few seconds while I recover myself, I am heavily wounded as well, but alive; upstairs her companion's body is already cooling.

We search both our assailants, again, and retrieve an Esparga cloak and some silvers. The cloak goes to Ivor after a quick random call. We contact Varadi Farion through the speaker stone, while outside Ahmok informs us we being watched by an elf who quick disappears when we spot him. We have to wait some time before Varadi Farion sends his man to cleanup, and we settle in. Elessar asks the rest of us to leave him with Fastar alone to do some nethermancing ritual and we oblige. He soon returns back bloodied and explains that she died. A heated discussion ensues as Elessar had broken one of the Flames' tenets of not killing a helpless opponent. Elessar confesses it was the voice in his head that made him do it, not very reassuring as we previously only knew this as a harmless quirk of our mysterious nethermancer. We decide to let this one go after several stern warnings to Elessar and reassurances from him.

We leave to Varadi Farion after his cleanup man, an interesting character with a wolf pelt on his back and shades, takes over the situation. Back at the embassy Varadi is still eager to continue on the plan and asks us to go on a mission to spy on this meeting at Blackrock ridge. At midnight we board the airship. The voyage for myself passed like in a dream, I sleep heavily and recover my wounds, the next day I spend focusing on my spell matrix talents. The heat of the desert brings me back to our mission, Blackrock ridge looms huge below us and we land next to it. As the airship leaves we remove any excess items we had and start exploring.

With a stroke of luck we spot a hidden entrance in the ridge, the passage looked man-made. Inside a wall covered in runes read 'Behind these runes is the inner sanctum of Dol Kral'. Immediately upon hearing the name, our weaponsmith Ivor blurts out excitingly the story of Dol Kral, a great weaponsmith of old. His name is steeped in legend and revered almost as a Passion amongst the weaponsmith. After the temple of twelve and the second book of Harrow, this is another huge find indeed. We rest in the shade of the entrance and try to figure out the message. Suddenly it dawns on me and, almost unheeded, I press the wall at certain points and it slides back. Inside is a chamber, names carved in runes cover a wall, the rest of the room empty except for a hugely intricate locked double-doorway, embedded with cogs and wheels and inscriptions. Doubtlessly behind the doorway's riddle lies the Forge of the great weaponsmith. On the walls the runes were of the men and women who manned the forge through the eons. It is pretty clear this riddle will take a lot longer to solve than the previous one, and we decide to leave it for now and prepare hideouts to observe the meeting.

Hours pass, and we are drenched in sweat and nerves are fraying. The meeting hour comes and goes and nervousness besets us. Suddenly the sky darkens and a huge Crystal Raider ship passes over us and lands heavily. Trolls in full gear emerge and secure the place with military precision. We lay hidden. The trolls sound an arrival horn but no-one replies. We wait with them.

The minutes pass by like hours and the hours like days. We look at each others in our hideouts, each of us in slow agony, the heat sapping at our strength and the waiting sapping at our will. Suddenly a familiar voice rings out in the silence, and unbelieving i turned round to see Elessar walk out of his hideout shouting to the trolls that he arrived. The trolls turn to face him. I stare in disbelief and press my back more in my hole.