The Nameless was traveling to Wallport to pick up news from various centers when he got he news. Jafar, the Southern Guild trader who headed the trading concerns in Whitewall and who was the Nameless's partner in a little venture had left a note that something had happened to the venture. The caravan had been successful, but had not returned from the expedition. Jafar had gone out just before the trade season closed for the winter to attempt to find the caravan. This was clearly very foolhardy of him because winters in the north are unpredictable and storms have in e past been known to freeze a man solid in under an hour. The Nameless immediately decided that he would offer his help to Jafar and headed north.
When he arrived in Whitewall he made a cursory inquiry to see if Jafar had come back yet, the missive he had recieved was many months out of date, but there was no word of his arrival and the first snows had already arrived in Whitewall, which meant further north, Winter would be in full swing. Unfortunately, he was waylaid by his friend Bertrod who told him that she had business in Gethamane, her mother lived there. What is more, she had made the extremely dangerous passage between the two cities in the winter before and she could then act as his guide. The trip to Gethamane was indeed difficult and Bertrod did hold the Nameless back as he surmised, but he was happy that he could spend more time with her so he was not too upset.
On the way they encountered a Realm Caravan heading to the north with three large Yedims pulling heavily laden wagons and they decided to tag along as the well equipped expedition would be safer than traveling alone. The Caravan was not allowed to stop in Gethamane because the Realm had been barred from the City under the Mountain. So while they stayed briefly in the city so that Bertrod could meet up with her mother, the Golden Raven.
It was in Gethamane that the Nameless found Jafar. He told Nameless that he managed to get to the Haslanti League town that the caravan last traded in and that it therefore disappeared between there and Gethamane. He back tracked to Gethamane just before the winter truly got very bad and was forced to stay here. It was obvious to The Nameless that Jafar was hiding something from him but gave him the benefit of the doubt because he appeared to be more concerned for the caravan people than the cargo that they carried. Together, Jafar and Bertrod headed out to find the Caravan a few days later, as The Nameless was confident that he could find it. There was some concern that they had met some foul end since the North was alive with the rumours that there was a Lunar Anathema loose in the area.
Not far from the Haslanti League, the Nameless felt as though the trail they were on diverged to the West and he was sure that the lost caravan had been dragged off in that direction. The last minutes of the day were dwindling and he thought that to send his two mortal companions on alone to the town that he was sure just over the rise was too dangerous, so he brought them along with him. His intuition was corrects and just a few hours later he found the ruins of the Caravan, but by then a group of marauding creatures had also picked up their scent and had begun tracking them. There was no cover anywhere near by, so he made for the Caravan.
Upon arriving at the caravan he learned a horrible truth, the caravan was sitting in a very small Shadowland, just a little larger than the caravan itself and by approaching the wreckage he and his companions had slipped into the Underworld. The Underworld was immediately and noticeably different. The cold, wind swept snowy plain was replaced by a stark and drab plain of dirty covered with sickly dead grass. Stepping away from the caravan did not restore the misstep; they were trapped until dawn.
Making the best of the situation, he noted that there was a town in the near distance. He alone approached the town and began to feel that the area was familiar to him, not the town itself but the entire region. He also noticed that there was someone who was watching him from the town. And this made him curious enough to plan to come back here when everything was done. He determined that the lightening of the Eastern sky meant that the dawn was not to far off so he set off for the ruined caravan to collect Bertrod and Jafar.
With dawn, they were able to leave the Underworld and reenter Creation, however this also meant that they had to suffer through the temperatures and the cold. The Nameless ushered his companions onward toward the Haslanti League and to the safety of the first town of the League. It took nearly two days and all the time there were hints of wild men dogging their heels. When they arrived, the Nameless, bade his companions to stay in the safety of the inn in the town and the safety of the walls, while he went back with a sleigh and supplies to retrieve the materials on the ruined caravan.
Alone, the nameless was able to make better time even while pulling the heavy sleigh laden with materials. He arrived before the evening but stayed away from the caravan and the possibility of entering the Shadowland and the Underworld again. In the morning he loaded the supplies onto the sleigh and began to make his way back to the town. The going was tough initially until he pulled on the essence in the air and fueled his strength, then the journey was just as easy as the trip there. He arrived just as the sun was setting. He pulled the sleigh up to the inn so that he could be ready to start out early the next day, but he realized that there was something wrong. The inn was broken and burnt out shell and from the pooled ice at its base, it happened the previous evening.
The Nameless quickly assessed the situation and studied the scene. He discerned that the damage to the inn was from great physical damage, from either a huge animal or a siege weapon. He saw from the footprints in the in the snow that there had been a large force of beastmen along with a very large beastman, probably the Lunar Chimera that he had been warned about. And he also discerned that he was not the only one who looked over this scene. There were five people in heavy armour that had surveyed the scene as well. Just out of the town he discovered the Source of the latter. The caravan that he had travelled with to Gethamane was there and it was unloaded. The twenty-five guards were in tight fitting armour and the caravan masters were dressed in Warstriders. And they were already heading out to hunt down the Lunar Anathema.
The largest Warstrider turned to him and the helmet cleared to transparent and the leader of the Dragon Blooded Wyld Hunt spoke clearly, "We will find your wife, Whitewaller," using the assumed name that he gave them, "we'll hunt it down and save the townsfolk if we can". The Nameless was not confident that if they cornered the Chimera and the Beastmen, there would not be much left of the townsfolk, Bertrod or Jafar. He set out immediately, trailing the Wyld Hunt and attempting to pass them by.
The Realm Warstriders needed to pick their paths so that the ground was level and their prey knew this and took a path that went over harsh uneven terrain and took to narrow paths through gullies. The Nameless had no such limitations. He tracked his prey though these harder paths until he saw that the group had split into two groups and took different paths. He hesitated only a moment, looked at the tracks and saw that there were two sets of beastmen, one that was a carnivore animal hybrid and the other something else. Not knowing which was worse, he chose the path with the known predator. He quickly gained on them as it became clear that their destination was a tall butte of rock overlooking the plain.
He caught up to the group of animal men, part wolf and part human, as they were pushing their captives through a narrow crevasse and up onto the plateau. The beastmen were savaging the towns folk if they were slow, between the last of them, they were sharing a couple of limbs from one such person. The Nameless, took a knee and raised his bow targeting the last beastman in the pack. The arrow took his target silently in the base of its head and it fell without making a sound. The second and the third were standing together when they each fell. The forth was amongst the townsfolk and a panic began.
The beastmen charged straight for the Solar bowman running to close the distance and the Nameless, did the unexpected and charged straight for them as well, firing his arrow as he advanced. By the time his bow ceased thrumming, all the charging foes were dead, the last took a shot straight through its eye. The remaining beastmen were pushing their prey forward with savagery meant to hasten them. The Nameless took note of which beastman used violence and which merely pushed hard. The latter's lives ended quickly and the former he wounded or hamstrung to be left to die from exposure. Once rescued, the Nameless gathered the towns golf together and equipped them with their foe's armaments and told them if they felt able to head back home, if not to wait until he returned. The Townsfolk thought that they might have a better chance to leave right away, as they were not sure if their rescuer could defeat the main foe.
Sounds of battle rose from the far end of the plateau. It sounded as if great magics were being hurled. Great claps and echoes rebounded from the surrounding cliff walls. The Nameless ran with no undo haste. The threat that the Lunar and the Wyld Hunt might cause to his friends and the other captives, inadvertent and real, pushed him on. When he came into the clearing where the battle was being faught, he found that his fears were at once unfounded and real; no civilian was injured or even present, but the Realm hunters were shattered and broken, even the colossal Warstrider, juggernaut class was down and chunks of its armour lay scattered. The twelve foot glowering man-beast, part wolf and part man, all muscle and covered with massive thick plates crouched over its downed foe like some great carnivore worrying its prey to eat the most succulent parts. At once it heard the approaching Solar and it stopped and turned its head. The Dragon Blooded general seeing a momentary respite fired a chemically fired spear from its launcher at point blank range into the unarmoured gut of the beast. The spear, thicker than the leg of a man, did not gore it's target, but instead the spear stove in and splintered, falling to the side after directly hitting the creature. It's claws returned to the jade steel armour and tore them like paper. From its terrible mandible covered maw, it emitted a blood chilling howl.
The Nameless did not want to battle, so instead identified himself for all to see, most especially the Lunar foe. His caste mark glowed with the light of a large bonfire, dispelling the darkness of the night out to a spear cast distance. The Chimera roared out a challenge and leaped to his feat, charging The Nameless. Checking his ammunition, he pulled the sharpest armour piercing shafts from his quiver and he drew his bow back so that the fetching was against his ear and loosed shaft after shaft into the beast. Each volley he took a step back towards the edge of the butte and called out to the creature that was in a blind rage, that he was weak and impotent as compared to him. The beast in turn charged wrecklessly forward ignorant, or else unconcerned, of the edge of the cliff. Each haft struck and broke upon the armour and yet each such insult seemed to score an inversely deep wound. The charge ended predictably, arms outstretched to bear the Solar with him as he ran off the cliff, claws ready to rend the Solar as he flew off the edge and down, but then it was not so, as the beast hurtled towards the bottom of the drop, The Nameless managed to impossibly step out of the way. One moment he was staring at the beast an arrow length away, and the next he was watching the beast tumble down towards plain floor, three hundred meters down. The Nameless, never willing to leave things to chance pried a chunk from the wall and sent it down to crush the beast.
The Lunar Chimera crashed into the frozen ground. The snow and ice covering it puffed up like a summer cloud and the dirt and rocks split apart at the violence of the impact. But there was still life left in the beast, it howled defiance and clawed at its impromptu barrow, when the side of the cliff that Namless Wolf had pulled of and threw down impacted and split his skull like a rotted melon tossed from a precipice at great height. The stone lay still, gore slowly froze in the snow and ice.
The Nameless Wolf, rose and checked on the damaged Warstrider. The Dragon-Blooded General was slowly extracting himself from the ruined battle armour. "Do what you will Anathema, I will, or someone like me will hunt you down next!". The Nameless, picked up his Diaklave and tossed it casually over the cliff and then helped him out of the Warstrider. His arm was clearly broken and he had been bleeding.
"As you will, but first take care of your men and get the townsfolk back to the town safely.". He then began to look for his companions and the rest of the people. He had not taken a step before he heard a commotion from within a cave in a nearby cliff top. There was a beastman fleeing from its confines and a man fox amalgam chased after it cutting it with its claws and jaws. Fearing yet another unholy assault he charged forth and raised hi hand to his quiver to draw and shoot at the fell beast only to realize he had no arrows left. He was stayed mid stride when a mad of twins folk spilled out of the cavern following behind. Together they stoned the fleeing beastman and cheered the Foxman like a hero.
Upon getting closer the brown fox man began to loose his lupine features and regain his normal dark skin tone. The Foxman was Jafar and one of the townsfolk was Bertrod. The Nameless turned to them all and told them to stick near the Wyld Hunt soldiers and they would see them all to safety. Then he took hold of Bertrod and ushered her ahead of him. When they were safely away he stopped her and kissed her deeply and inquired as to whether she was safe and uninjured. To Jafar, he simply asked what had happened? Meaning his new and exalted status. Jafar, broke down, he was afraid that he had been possessed and was now a demon Anathema too. Nameless did not wait for him to stop, but instead slapped him once across the face. "Stop it, you saved those people. You are a hero, not a demon. Just like me. The stories are lies, never forget that."
"He speaks truth," a voice from above restated. A large Hawk man down from his glide to land gently. "You are chosen of Luna, and you are meant to safeguard the lands of Creation from the its enemies." After a long conversation establishing who this person was and his claim in the area, Jafar continued his story. Jafar said that he had lied about part of his story from before. He had travelled from Gethamane to find the caravan as he had said, but an unexpected fog had descended upon his small train of animals freezing them solid in an instant. The cold would have froze him just as quickly except he was leading the animals and had seen them freeze quickly one by one and he had kept his head and threw himself deep into a snow drift. It was terribly cold but only his feet remained exposed to the cold and so it was only there that he suffered instant freezing. When the cold had passed, he climbed out of the snow and crawled the remaining several kilometers into civilization. When he got to the inn they took him in and treated his injuries, but he felt fine otherwise. His feet had the appearance of severe frostbite, they were frozen solid he said, but examination proved that he was incorrect, just the skin was as black as coal. He found out what he needed to know and began to head back to Gethamane. On the journey there he discovered his ability to change into a desert fox. This distressed him and he hoped it was just his imagination.
The Hawk man, reassured him that he was indeed a Lunar Exalted and that the desert Fox was his totem animal and he was lucky that he did not just sneak off and ignore what had happened, as that is what had happened to the one that had attacked the inn. He was Chimera, one who could not control his powers and whose powers controlled him. He said when you are ready seek me out in the wilderness north of Gethamane and I will tell you more of what you can do and introduce you to the rest. With that he once again took to the skies and flew off.
The Nameless gathered the supplies and the sleigh and placed Bertrod comfortably in the furs there and began to pull everything off towards Gethamane with Jafar. A short distance from Gethamane, the nameless bade Jafar to seek out the strange Lunar and learn his ways, he only wished that he had been able to receive guidance as well, and that it could only help him if he accepted it. He installed Bertrod with her mother the Golden Raven and set off again to find the Shadowland and from there to discover what it was so familiar to him, thinking when he returned, Bertrod would be ready for e perilous journey back south.
The town through the Shadowland and thus in the Underworld was situated on the shores of the Icy Sea, but this icy Sea was without pack ice and was permanently becalmed. The people of the town were strangely green in hue, but otherwise perfectly normal looking, empowering clothing that was out of fashion. A voice over his shoulder answered his unasked question, they had h
died in the Contagion, a disease that had swept the world at the dawn of the fallen Second Age. He turned, and saw a man dressed in a immaculate black and white uniform. He told the Nameless that he was his servant, First Servant, his household's Stewart.
Nameless asked how this was so? The story came out that in the First Age he had been his most trusted servant and as such he had provided the very best care and was able to live for over a thousand years in return for such indispensable service. When the Age came to an end, First Servant still served his master as his butler when he took over the running of Camp 17. He was at his post serving when he died, but failed to notice his passing. The Nameless's previous incarnation accepted his continued servitude without hesitation but set him upon his current task of observation. When he saw the Nameless he recognized him right away a came to renew his servitude.
He asked Nameless if he came here to observer that his ancestral estates were still being adequately being taken care of and he gestured out to sea. The Nameless was confused. First Servant chuckled and stated quietly, they were not always covered in water, but only since the wicked Terrestrials betrayed the Solars. He answered the blank stares that the Spider Silk damn must have failed filling the Vale up with the waters, drowning a hundred million souls. While the deluge must have been a disaster close to the damn, the waters this close to the edge rose steadily but slowly enough that the lands could be evacuated. The sea at this point is very shallow for a long time. Would you like to see your estate, Master he asked?
The journey was slow by rowboat, but since he refused to allow the Nameless a turn on the oars, he instead inquired as to things from the first age. When he arrived, First Servant informed Nameless that the manse was fifty meters down from where they were and that he would be here when he returned.
The water was cold, but not frozen as it was in Creation. The manse was where First Servant said it was and despite the thousand plus years underwater there was still air in the spectral dome. He found the hearthstone and nothing of any value so he returned to the surface. While First Servant rowed back to shore, the Nameless, insisted that when he was done this service, he should be dismissed to go where ever he wanted. First Servant, also pleaded stating that he still could be of service to him, acting as eyes and ears to him in the underworld, as he, First Servant, was wise to the ways there and he was not. His argument must have swayed him as Nameless did not dismiss him before he left.
Nameless vanished in the grey dawn of the Underworld as he stepped into Creation. The sand of the Underworld shifted a scant five feet from First Servant. The granules of sand vibrated gently then fell down into the earth. The sand beside the spot began hour glassing into the ground a little vortex spreading to a larger one, within seconds a black void began eating up the light in that spot and the sound of the sand draining away dissipated. A rasping voice croaked out from the void, "Report." First Servant bowed deeply and replied. "All is well Master, your replacement took the bait and has accepted my service.". The void slowly dwindled and the sand reversed its flow, the granules of sand jumped back into place and as the word "Good" rasped through.
The Nameless learned from First Servant that if there existed a manse in the Underworld under the sea, then surely there was one in Creation too. He walked out across the pack ice out to where he thought he was on the other side and began to chip and dig into the ice. After descending through two meters of ice he broke through. The water was much colder in creation than it was in the Underworld, but the Manse was there also and there was a stream of bubbles rising up from the doors. The grounds of the underwater manse were covered with a colourful verdant growth of various seaweeds and kelp. The forest mimicked the appearance of a real live forest that no longer existed in the North. Indeed there was a great abundance of life surrounding the manse. Fish of all sizes and colours used the foliage as food and shelter and large seals swam from the manse itself and to the forest eating from the bounty. Far in the distance the silhouette of massive sharks could be seen lurking just out of reach of the light of the Nameless's caste mark. Inside the manse was ruined as only water could do, that and the continuous habitation of seals for a thousand years could do. Still the air was fresh and clean and it was only the numbing cold of the water that forced him into the colder air of the surface. The hearthstone recovered from two manses, one in the Underworld and one in creation, a Wood Manse.
The Nameless quickly gathered up Bertrod from Gethamane and headed to to Whitewall. On the way he reflected on his experiences and he realized that he now understood that the fabric of reality could be altered with words of power and be reshaped under his direction; he had learned the first step in understanding Sorcery and how the world really works. In Whitewall he asked to study sorcery in the university and the Syndics granted his request.
It took him three days to travel the distance to Nowhere that normally took him three months. This time he did it in style, appearing as a figure in a tornado that moved under his control.
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