The adventure for the people not present …
Nameless joined with the group because of the sudden alignment of goals; namely that the war caused Shadowlands to pepper the land where the battles raged and a big bad enemy surfaced who may have manipulated the events in the north to her favour for centuries.
He admitted as much, that he had been manipulated. But now he was going to change that. And he had heard that there were other Solars who perhaps knew more and he thought that he should join up with them and change the world.
The first step was to make peace with the dragon-blooded and their Allies, or at least a truce to be turned into a peace and from there an alliance. The next step was to tackle the Deathlord directly. Things did not work well in that way initially because the allies of the Cult of the Illuminated, the Sidereals have a myopic vision of reality. Are you sure? Could they not be Solars acting against us? Or We would know if there was a super powerful intelligence directing Marama's Fell; we have informants in the underworld you know. Or, but you have no proof of what you say, nothing that we can bring to Heaven.
The hard part was how to make contact with the Realm and get them to talk to the Anathema. How to get them to see when they were raised from birth to believe the Anathema were the worst of the worst; the greatest danger Creation has ever faced. And after a humiliating defeat. Twelve thousand Dragon blooded and forty-eight thousand mortals killed in battle or murdered after routing. There was little opportunity to get their attention to open the dialogue.
Well there was one thing that might get one Dragon Blooded's attention. Tepet Arada had lost his daiklave in battle with Deepwater Siaka. She now used it and fought with it. A trophy to her and a symbol of the hard choices that had to be made in hard times. And she was not going to give it up. Nameless tried to explain what she would be helping people in the whole of Creation through this sacrifice. She countered like the sacrifices she already made. And they re-countered that she was powerful not beyond where she would be in the millennia to come. It came down to taking her sword would mean that she would be less capable to fight in the next battle and she might fail because her weapon was not up to the task.
They relented and promised at the first opportunity they would enchant a blade worthy for her, one that her current blade was not. And in the meantime, the Messenger, gave her the artifact he had taken from other Dragon Blooded.
With the sword, the Nameless and Messenger headed to the Realm to find Tepet Arada to try to make contact. The first step in that was to contact his Circle mate that was lodged in the Realm, Yaage Fahi. Contact was made and the Nameless was able to learn the location of Tepet Arada. He also learned that there was a force attacking in Amber River, attempting to overwhelm the Slave nation. Nameless stated, "your information is old. We are not attacking."
Yaage queried, "you are not attacking with a force of ten thousand walking dead?"
Nameless-, "It is not us, it is that Deathlord!" The meeting ended as mobilizied troops headed toward them going to board ships to head to Amber River to fight the "Anathema and their Undead"
The Messenger spent that night far away learning what he could about the Realm's political situation.
In the Camp of Tepet Arada, Nameless dropped in to speak with the General at bath time. He stated his case and explained his failures and how he was manipulated by a dark foe called The Black Sun, a Deathlord who controls Marama's Fell. He told him that neither the Realm nor he should be enemies in the face of that evil. And he then presented him with his ancestral sword, Relentless Wind. He parted ways, saying that he would be in contact with him soon.
Talking to the Practitioner he asked what could be done about the devastation of Amber River, which seemed about to fall into the underworld at a moments notice. The Nameless base him to do as much as he could to diminish the threat to the land. Powerful magics were prepared and the spell was unleashed that scoured away all the small Shadowlands that had peppered the landscape. Nothing could be done for the massive encroaching Marama's Fell, which had swollen to engorge a third of the Satrapy.
Will the Heroes be able to stop the invading undead and figure out the curse to the lands of the North. Will they get proof that is incontrovertible, that even the Bronze Faction could dot dismiss?
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