The Catacombs of Scara Brae: Dead Sun Rising

[Caden Law]

I have now been at ground zero for the violent deaths of three striking demigods. Three. Count 'em, History.

Even if that last one was more of an actual god, now that I think about it.

I think it's safe to say that I live in interesting times. Maybe someday they'll write stories about the Wizard Blueraven?

At any rate, it's been a long few weeks so I'll just hit the high notes. I'm tired.

• We're all alive.
• I repeat: We're all alive.
• Even that godsforsaken idiot I call an apprentice.
• We killed a fucking god. I couldn't stop the Penitent, but we still killed the Year of the Black-Silk Son in its crib. There are no casualty estimates right now, neither in Scara Brae or elsewhere, but I'd wager it's in the tens of thousands at least...counting the populations in Kevyraz and the other formerly underground cities. The entire island's been rearranged. Scara Brae is mostly below sea-level now. But this land isn't a bowl full of dirty seawater and dead bodies. It's not a clean win but it's still a win. I'll take it.
• I don't know if it'll actually 'take' though, so to speak. From what I've observed of Liquid Time throughout all this, and before, it's like...things only happen if the Gods will it? The world itself is inconsistent to the point of insanity. And now that I see it, I don't think I'll ever be able to unsee it...

There was a lengthy pause here. Several hours. Then more.

I guess it'd be rude of me to not mention what actually happened to us after the battle, wouldn't it? Obviously, we all survived the impossible. That doesn't happen every day. Not even for me.

Yours Truly - Came through with broken everything. It took me slow-freezing several hundred yards' worth of land and sea before I was even able to mend enough bones to move properly. I was able to avoid resorting to necromancy, but only barely. I didn't finish recovering for a week. I'm still not fully recovered. I'm sore all the time and I've got a whole cartload of new scars to show for it.

Wormaxe - Survived. I have no idea how. His pet skull wasn't even broken, even though Savas claims to have been grievously injured during the fall. I'm assuming he ate souls of the dead or something, but I honestly don't know and don't care. He's got fresh scars for this too. We all do. He either lost my rod or stole it, but at this point I don't care. If he took it, good on him. It shows initiative, if nothing else. His old home was destroyed, but he seems happy to...adjust. Or something.

Rowan - Survived. Came through with the least scars of all of us, but he lost the most blood and what injuries he did get were definitely the worst. I think he only survived because he knows how to live on chi the way a Wizard can live on ambient energy.* Lost everything but the clothes on his back. I feel bad, but he wrecked my chestplate, so not too bad. Maybe I'll buy him a new sword for his troubles or something. Not that he ever even used the one he had.

* I have no idea what the distinction is between chi and magic. I'm assuming it's Akashiman snobbery, but he fights differently from most mages I've seen so there might be something to it...

Aeraul - Killed a god with a toothpick, by every account I've heard. Valeena apparently had people scrying the fight as it wound down.** From what I've heard, it sounds like he was gifted with Draconus' Tooth, arguably the most formidable sword in Althanian lore. I've recorded what he told me of its use and effects, and quizzed one of the scrying magi on it, but I don't think I'll ever know the whole story and it drives me nuts.

After Aeraul killed Sijal Kar, the dead god's power basically imploded. Scara Brae suffered an eight hour eclipse. I don't know if the rest of the world was treated to such a thing or not. I'll probably find out wherever I end up landing next.

And it turns out that Draconus took the sword back right after the job was done. Aeraul told me that he remembered feeling it leave his hand right after the eclipse started. He described it as vanishing so quickly that he felt air popping in to fill the gap. We managed to find his old jian, at least. He literally yanked the thing out of solid granite.

** Valeena survived, incidentally. A few of the more troublesome nobles in her court did not. Draw your own conclusions. Whatever the case, she had people watching and that helped us talk our way off the chopping block for participating in mass murder and crimes against everything from Letters A to Z. Once the truth came out, Aeraul and Rowan were basically instant heroes to the point that they're just plain sick of it by now. People have been giving me a colder shoulder than usual but nobody's gotten violent yet. Savas somehow managed to slip away unnoticed. I envy him.

Another lengthy pause, marked by a few blotches of ink on the page. Caden wrote more after that.

N'Thayn'sal won't happen. I know that for sure now. I've averted too many apocalyptic events for it to go down as it could have, but something the thing called Undulent Sin told me has been giving me more nightmares than usual.

"N'Thayn'sal is more than a mere chain of events... It lives even as it dies. It is the end and it will come, no matter how many errant heralds you strike down."

I still have the information from the N'Thayn'sal Greyspine's Grimoire. I know where the next three or four dozen apocalypses should start. But what about the ones I don't know? How many more Penitents are out there, dredging up dead gods to unleash on the world? How many more cities am I going to destroy before all this is over?

...I was joking with Rowan earlier and my record came up. So far I've...

• Scourged Tembrethnil
• Transmuted an entire city
• Destroyed most of Knife's Edge
• Rearranged an entire island

Rowan thinks the only way I can top myself now is to crack the moon in half.

Except that there's something inside the moon. I saw its body burning when I was in N'Thayn'sal. I tried laughing at that but I couldn't.

My only real condolence is this: It isn't due for another year. Or more, maybe. Sijal Kar's coming was actually supposed to happen years ago. Maybe all the things I've been doing, combined with the ripples from Denebriel's death, have rearranged the schedule?

...and maybe the Thaynes just want to survive.

I don't know. All I know is that I've got time for a beer and there's a newly opened pub down the street from my inn. Fireside Company, together again, plus Redwind and his...other, I guess you could call her. Not even all this could get those two married.

The journal ends here, for now.

The story does not.

[Aeraul Smythe]

Aeraul didn't get any peace until days after Fireside Company's last get-together.

"There's an opening at a place called the College Arcana, over in Raiaera, if you're interested. We could use a melee instructor," Caden had told him. Aeraul refused then, and he still refused now, but it was enough to give him pause. He was nearing thirty years old, and he was growing tired of the pitfighting and he had already grown weary of Scarabrian hero worship. He was, by nature, a scholar. Not of the arcane, but of people, places, things. He was the kind of scholar who went out and studied the world, and studied himself in the process. And he had been idle for far too long.

On his first day of peace, Aeraul ventured out to the crater where Sijal Kar's bones still lay, slowly but inevitably bleaching as the last traces of godly power seeped out of them. The crater had already turned into an enormous bowl-shaped garden of poisonous plants, none of them particularly natural. There were spiders and dragonflies everywhere, in species that weren't native to any place in Althanas. Aeraul stood at the edge of the crater and drew his sword for the first time in days. He twirled it a few times, getting a feel for the balance, and it felt...inadequate. Less than the weapon he had wielded to kill a god.

He went through a number of kata that afternoon and well into the night.

He ended the entire routine with a thrust at the crater. Flame burst from the guard of his sword, sweeping down the length of its blade and passing out into the air in bright red waves of water on an invisible sea. Second by second, the decorative paints and markings on the blade burned away, until only tempered steel remained. Aeraul gave it another few twirls, but the weapon still didn't feel right. He waited for the heat to die down, then sheathed it and went home again. What was left of it.

He started packing the next morning.

[Leaf on the Wind]

Rowan woke up one day in a bed occupied by himself, two women, no sheets and even less clothing. He stared at the ceiling for a minute or two, grinned to himself and got up. He didn't care to think about how he'd gotten through so many women without any bastards, nor did he really remember the names of his latest conquests. They were pretty and he was heroic and that was good enough for a night.

He went through a morning routine of stretching and kicking at things that weren't there. He mustered enough chi that his veins glowed teal through the skin. Then he dressed himself in red silks; pants and an open shirt, accompanied by a teal scarf wrapped high around his stomach. The outfit clashed horribly, but it did a bang-up job of showcasing the network of scars on his chest and neck. He sported more on his arms and legs, and a particularly large one that ran across his right cheek.

They were his only real souvenirs from the Catacombs. Rowan still didn't know what happened the night he didn't go into the cemetary. Anymore, he didn't care.

He walked the streets unarmed and barefoot, watching at ground level as the city of Scara Brae reassembled itself from wreckage. There were huge ramps and stairwells leading up to the docks now, and the Queen had suspended Malleus policies to reinforce the land separating the city from the ocean above it. Redwind and Blueraven had been actively working with a dozen or more rookie geomancers and masked Warlocks to solidify the ground, keep it from every being pushed over. There was an sea wall under construction as well, set to cut right through the docks so that the city would have some protection from tidal waves and the like.

In the span of two hours, Rowan ate a sandwich, chugged a beer, and watched a shop come together from nothing but sweat, blood, tears, and elbow grease. He saw bodies being fished out of rubble, packed away on carts and shipped off to the Temple District for whatever funerary rites they could be given prior to cremation. Too much of the city had died, and too quickly at that, for anything else to be practical. There had been outbreaks from corpserot all over the place.

He walked in the shadow of the Dajas Pagoda complex, cracked and covered in ruins that just made it seem more ancient and mystical, but otherwise intact.

He passed by a brand new Zirnden, little more than a pit walled with wood slats and covered by a flimsy looking dome of wire and badly bent metal. Some things would never die.

He passed by a park where old monks and young people were going through the motions of kata. It looked like group therapy. The younger participants, male and female, all had the same tortured look in their eyes. The monks looked almost parental in this light.

Eventually, Rowan came to a shop that hadn't been there five seconds ago. It was one of those creepy little places that a Wizard might go to, complete with a lopsided sign hanging above the door. There were two or three dozen lines etched into the sign, framing the words Danny DeMon's Bazaar of the Bizarre! with two signs nailed to the underside: One clearly read Not even mad gods and unnatural disasters can put us out of business! The second was more lines. Rowan thought about it for a moment, eventually assumed that the lines were Sideways writing, that this was a bad idea, and that he was going to go through with it anyway.

He put a hand to the door and felt a jolt run through his arm as he pushed it open. Rowan stepped inside.

The door slammed shut and the shop wasn't there anymore.

[Savas Tigh]

To be any kind of necromancer, you have to start out as a graverobber. It is, quite literally, Step One. Most people who take up the Dead Art don't start making fresh corpses until they've burned through existing supplies. Savas was a slight exception to this, but only by virtue of circumstance. He turned to the Dead Art after first hearing the whispers of Xem'zund in his mind. Everything before that had just been affinities for darkness and fire, talents that had long since atrophied or been consumed by the way his power had grown as a thaumaturge.

But the man still knew how to plunder for corpses.

And there was, at least, absolutely no shortage of those. Neither in the city of Scara Brae, nor the wreckage of the old Catacombs, now known to most people as the Labyrinth of Scara Brae. Not that it was a very functional labyrinth by any standards. Maybe the interior was more of a maze; Savas hadn't gone in yet and he had no plans to do so. There were already stories of things moving in the dark passages beneath the Labyrinth's surface, and that wasn't even half of it. Whole civilizations had existed in the old Catacombs. Most of them now lay strewn about the island of Scara Brae, ruins from ages that the daylit world had never even seen. There was a mushroom city lying broken on the mountains, and a whole section of Brokenthorn Forest had been annihilated by virtue of a kobold tunnel network falling on it. Kevyraz itself now lay scattered in pieces all over the island, and any survivors had either assimilated into the city proper or gone to ground in the Labyrinth. One of the Eight Elder Cities had been ripped apart and Savas was partially responsible for it.

He felt more smug than anything.

How many Dark Wizards got away with genocide before they'd assembled their first army?

"Here," Blightcrow informed him. The skull rode shotgun in a satchel that Savas had borrowed from a wrecked Guard armory. "Twenty feet down. You'll be better off using a ritual."

Rod in one hand, wand in the other, Savas nonchalantly started scorching a ritual circle into the rubble under his feet. It was slow work, but he had kept a stash of unmarked ribs at his apartment. It was easy to carve the necessary spellwork for a magical blowtorch into one. Not so easy to refine the spell so that the wand wouldn't break from the power the rod gave him. Savas was still getting the hang of most things, but he was a fast learner if nothing else.

The entire ritual took him the better part of an hour, even with Blightcrow's guidance. Wormaxe was just glad that he'd chosen to do it at night. Fear and reconstruction had kept most of Scara Brae's would-be explorers too busy to come looking for anything in the Labyrinth's ruins. When he was done torching in the lines, Savas broke open a few vials of alchemist's light, went to the Western edge of the circle, then placed the wand down and snapped it in two with the rod's tip.

Over the course of seconds, the lines of the spell absorbed the light, glowing green with pulses of purple light courtesy of the broken wand. When the glow ended, several tons of rock and dirt simply rolled out of the way as if it was being polite.

What lay at the bottom was an enormous wing, severed almost at the joint from the dragon it belonged to.

Of all the graves Savas had robbed in the past few days, this one was easily the biggest catch. It didn't hurt that there was a stray long bone lying next to it, still covered in meat and gristle from whatever had taken it out of the dragon's body.

"I think I can work with this," Savas announced to nobody in particular.

"Provided you can get it into the front door."

[Caden Law]

It was almost a month since the Day of the Dead Son, and looking at Scara Brae now, you'd be hard-pressed to tell that the place had been hit by one of the worst disasters in recorded history. The truces that had held the people together through the initial surge of rebuilding were starting to break down. Scourge knifed Guard called in Malleus crucified Warlock butchered citizen was gyped by Scourge and the whole cycle was starting up again in bits and pieces. Harbor industry came to life in a blur of building and rebuilding, helped along by the fact that news traveled so slow from continent to continent. Nobody even knew about the disaster until the ships were already unloading, and by that point the worst damage had at least been covered up if nothing else.

The scars were still there though, if you knew where to look. Piles of rubble here and there in the street. Several Temples had been completely repainted with ash of the dead as a color base. The Fountain at its heart had been utterly demolished, filled in with newly engineered cement, smashed down and then filled in again. Temple occupancy had gone through the roof as people turned to their faith in times of hardship. Malleus membership spiked, but so did the number of students learning actual magic.

In a pale, disaster-driven imitation of Ethereal Salvar, Scara Brae acquired its own corps of truly Sanctioned magi. Most were geomancers and the like; people whose talents could help with reconstruction. Others were witchkillers who could fight fire with fire. The Wizard Redwind taught all of them sooner or later, and it wasn't long before they were calling him Scara Brae's own Archwizard, though he never accepted or answered to such a title. How he kept it from going to his head, Caden didn't have a clue. It probably helped that he was an explicit pacifist where possible. Caden passed him notes where it was convenient.

The Zirnden came back in full force. For about a week, it actually ran inside the Dajas Pagoda, seemingly right underneath the monks' noses. Then it was back in the taverns, back in the sewers, back wherever it could hide from the watchful eyes of the barely disapproving authorities. The captains of both Watch and Guard would make renewed pledges to hunt the Zirnden down and destroy it at least. Come game night, both would be found in the audience, gambling on the outcome of any given match while drunk to high Hell and back.

Caden returned to the Temple District a few times, just to watch for patterns in the air and on the ground. Water spilled unevenly. Leaves fell everywhere. Blood spatters were plain old droplets. Nothing to report, nothing to see, nothing to worry about.

He went to the Labyrinth and poked around for a little while. There were signs of fresh graverobbing, of old fashioned dungeon raiding and even Greyhawking, another Ethereal tradition that had gone global in the wake of the Saint's death. Assuming it hadn't been global in the first place. Caden ran afoul of a tomb raider here and a traumatized fungan there, but it never came to blows. It ended in laughter more often than not. He didn't turn anyone in, nor did he worry much about the things that might come out of the Labyrinth or the people who might be lost in there. As awful as it was, he had enough on his plate to deal with right now.

He paid a few visits to the crater too, where Sijal Kar's bones had finally collapsed to little more than inert lumps of black dust surrounded by variously lethal and unnatural plants. Caden set fire to the crater each time he visited, and the plants became less and less poisonous until they were simply unnatural. The spiders and snakes were gone for good by his last visit. He saw a native Scarabrian wildcat eating one as it fled into the night, and knew then that the godling was truly gone for good.

Eventually, Caden started putting his affairs in order to leave. He ventured this way and that, taking notes of the city's progress and also taking stock of his own losses.

His knife never turned up. All of his armor had to be repaired, especially the chestplate. Damn thing had holes in it the size of a fist by the time Caden got it back from Rowan. The blacksmiths had to reforge the whole thing from scratch. His rod was off in Wherever Land, and Caden didn't mourn it all that much. It had originally been a stopgap anyway, back when he was still trying to find his staff.

He hit a few of the shops as they reopened, raided some of the Warlock dens alongside the Malleus, took notes from Judd and all that. Then he found a trustworthy courier and had the whole pile shipped out to Beinost's College Arcana, including notes on spacial manipulation and the concept of Liquid Time. Maybe someone would find use for it. Maybe not. Either way, Caden washed his hands of all that and spent his last few days trying to relax. He had dinner with Judd and Rita. Rita tried to hook him up with one of her Temple Sisters, who smelled Khal'jaren on him and politely declined. Caden lost nothing; she was a butter mind and he was cynical enough to be picky.

On one of the nights before his scheduled departure for Raiaera, or wherever the winds might take him, Caden stopped off at a busted-up little hovel just below the Docks District. The ground floor was empty; its owner had disappeared during the disaster. Caden didn't ask too many questions about it. He went to the door to a cellar-level apartment and started knocking. Loudly.

Eventually, Savas opened. He was no longer bothering with the cover story of Yanov Cross. Judging by how pale he looked, he probably hadn't even left the cellar for days, except maybe to get food or rob tombs.

"Apprentice," Blueraven greeted him.

It was with a special kind of disdain that Wormaxe answered, "Master," Speaking through grit teeth with murder in his eyes. Whatever hostility there still was between them though, it wouldn't manifest tonight and they both knew it. The skull had taken a prominent place on Savas' new desk, alongside a suspiciously familiar rod that lay on a 'cushion' of tanned leather.

"...now where'd you get that?" he wondered.

"Stole it," Savas answered with absolutely no shame whatsoever.

"...I meant that," Caden said, pointing to the enormous wing hanging on one of Savas' walls. It was so big that even folded, there was barely enough room to accomodate it.

"...stole it," Savas answered again with a shrug.

Caden wandered over and inspected it while Wormaxe grabbed an axe off the wall. For a few seconds, it looked as if the lesser Wizard was going to terminate the apprenticeship in one of the Five Traditional Ways, but Wormaxe stopped himself with a sigh. Caden was too useful. And Savas was willing to bet that he had some kind of defensive magicks in place anyway.

"What do you plan on doing with it?" Caden eventually asked, studying the patterns that Savas had begun sewing into the leathery skin between wingbones. "Looks like you're setting it up to anchor a crapload of spells."

"I am," Savas answered. "But my main goal is to make it so that I can fly."

"With one wing?"

"Dragons are hardly aerodynamic. Blightcrow and I spent three days looking that thing over before we found the magic that enables one to fly. I've been trying to modify the process enough to enable some kind of flight under my own...power. Sort of. It's complicated and I don't feel like explaining."

"You could also charge it up for some pretty nasty melee attacks," Caden noted. He rapped a fist on the thicker parts of the wing. It was no different from smacking a steel pole. "Or generate wind magic. Among other things. Have you decided on a handle yet?"

"As is, it'd be impractical to fit any kind of handle on it," Wormaxe answered. "I need to work on mass compensation first. I can't even hold the damn thing without both arms right now."

"That would be problematic," Caden admitted. "And I'm assuming you got something else too. You're not the type to settle for just one chunk of a dragon when you could cram more in your armpit."

"...fuck you," Savas replied, just before opening up what looked like a broom closet and taking out a very long, smooth, bleach-white bone. It was probably as long as he was tall, if not more so. And it was heavy, so much so that when he dropped it, the floor sounded like it might break. Before Caden could so much as whistle or ask a question, Savas explained, "I'm going to try and build a staff of power out of it somewhere down the road. I couldn't get any leftovers from Sijal Kar-"

"So you settled for the next best thing on site. Shrewd."

"At least I didn't go digging for Horrors," Savas shrugged. "I can think of a dozen parts of those things that might be useful for enchantment or necromancy or worse."

"Assuming you could find one that didn't flash decay," Caden said. Savas laughed at him. "...right. I'm guessing you have ways of undoing that."

"Necromancy, you twat."

"...right," Caden said again. "Well, as impressed as I am, I came here for two reasons. One is to tell you that you shouldn't try setting up a demesne here. The Malleus are fully aware of you and it won't be long before you wear out whatever good will you earned by saving the day, assuming you haven't worn it out already. I expect they'll come in with every witchkiller trick in the book, up to and including stuff passed down from the Salvic traditions. Unless you want to die screaming, have your head cut off and buried at a crossroads while the rest of you is fed to dogs who end up being drowned at sea, it'd be a wise idea to get the hells out of here as soon as you can."

"Noted," Wormaxe said. "And point two?"

Caden took off his Hat, reached inside and pulled out his Grimoire. He put the Hat back on and Said, "Let's sit down. We're gonna be here a while."

Evil, violent, cannibalistic and just plain crazy as he was, Wormaxe was still Blueraven's apprentice. And at the end of the day, for all the good he did to make sure that the sun kept coming up and the world kept turning and the gods all stayed right in there heavens, Caden Law was still a Wizard. And a Wizard is, almost always, amoral.

It isn't about Good or Evil.

It's about magic and knowledge.

[Caden Law]

According to the traditions I was taught, there are five completely accepted ways that a Wizard and his apprentice part paths.

1. The apprentice 'graduates' and is acknowledged by his master.
2. The apprentice dies or is otherwise disowned and disavowed as a Wizard.
3. The master dies or is otherwise disowned and disavowed as a Wizard.
4. Apprentice kills master.
5. Master kills apprentice.

I have a distinct impression that one day, Wormaxe and I are going to settle on #4 or 5. Until then, he is my apprentice. And I am tasked by my own Word to guide his development for better or worse. I told him I wouldn't settle for a half-ass. That he would either conquer a continent in my lifetime or I'd kill him.

He seems to have taken that to heart in the worst way.

Gods have mercy on my blasphemous soul for the knowledge I have given him, let alone the awful things he will do with it. I fear I'm creating the next Xem'zund. The only solace I draw from it is that I might be able to aim him at another disaster down the road; that I may, by the skin of my teeth, trick him into saving the world.

Among other things, I've given him all my notes on N'Thayn'sal. It was with a morbid sense of pride that I observed the anger in his eyes when he failed to find his own Name anywhere in there.

I should also mention that Fireside Company has officially disbanded. Rowan disappeared a few weeks back and Aeraul left the city for parts unknown. When I leave, Savas is going to be the only one still here. I have no idea where I'll end up. I know I'm not going near Corone. I've had enough wars and that place just doesn't feel magical enough to produce an apocalypse. I could be wrong. On the bright side, I think Savas might head that way. With any luck, he'll get killed. With any bad luck, he'll thrive the way I did in Raiaera.

Time will tell.

A harbor bell rang at high noon.

Caden's ship had come in and it was time to leave. He took one last look at Scara Brae, committing the place to memory, then shouldered his bag and got a move on.

[Savas Tigh]

There was an insane assortment of formulae, the likes of which normal eyes can't read. It looked like row upon row of lines, little different from poorly printed barcoding. In truth, it was all Sideways writing.

The Wizard called Wormaxe had been a busy, busy boy lately.

I am nothing if not brazen.

But I am also conflicted.

On the one hand, the five tome stack of notes I took from Blueraven's Grimoire make mention of a place called Beinost, which has plenty of empty space to go around and a dedicated Magic District. I could go there, set up shop, and probably establish a fully warded demesne far enough in advance that anyone stupid enough to try and stop me would suffer dearly for it.

On the other, I could go to Corone, where civil war reigns supreme and death is the order of the day. War always does a bang-up job of upsetting the balance of the spirit world, and the local authority would presumably be so fractured that I wouldn't even have to bother putting much effort into hiding from them. There would also be an abundant supply of corpses, enough that I could stop doing my own dirty work.

There are problems with both. There are lots of problems with both.

I could always try going back to Salvar, or see what fortunes I could turn up in Alerar, but I don't expect much luck in either region. Dheathain's a bit too pompous and I hate deserts, so Fallien's right out. Blueraven's notes make mention of Kebiras, but I am not going on an odyssey just to end up in some kind of orc-addled shithole where everything and its mother is out to kill me. Aeraul was all the experience I'll ever need with orcs.

...and oddly enough, I hope that one's doing well. Rowan too. They struck me as relatively decent people. I'd eat their hearts for strength any day.

My main concern is just trying to move all of my belongings at this point. Scara Brae is woefully inadequate when it comes to arcaneries, and I've not yet got the hang of compressing matter and negating weight. I'm assembling a Trunk of Holding, with some of the notes on Hat construction and Blightcrow's help to guide me, but it isn't easy. Nor will the end result be very lightweight. I fear I'm in for an ugly journey regardless of where and how I end up.

On a lighter note, I've begun experimenting with wing enchantments. Specifically: I've killed a whole shitload of birds, chopped the wings off and rigged them up to a wood bo. Tack on some enchantments reminiscent of my efforts at bonecarving. First test run is tonight. Let's see how this goes!

Over the course of a week, Scara Brae developed a new urban legend. The story went to and fro among the back alleys and the dark corners, among the dirty orphans in the street and the cold-eyed women beneath the red lantern. There were a hundred different versions of it, but all kept one thing in common: a man, or something like a man, jumping higher than any man could or should as he went from rooftop to rooftop in the dead of night. Sometimes, the story would say, the man jumped so high and so far that he didn't land until he went from one district to another.

Such stories were inevitably dismissed by skeptics.

There were, after all, plenty of other, more important things to tell stories about.

Note to self: Buy goggles.

Always knew there was a reason he wore those stupid things...

...and this, it bears mention, is as good a place as any to mark the end of Fireside Company -- the end of the saga of the Catacombs of Scara Brae.

There are stories to tell. There's a labyrinth to explore. There's a great big world out there, with the odd chance that the four of them might meet again someday.

But for now, this is enough.

[Caden Law]

A Minor Dedication: To Teric Bloodrose, who damn near stuck it out with me during the first Catacombs thread way back when, and who proved invaluable in killing off one of the Big Bads of To Rule All Flesh.

'Cos goddammit, that was a huge-ass thread and it's a shame it didn't go to its originally planned conclusion. Kudos for letting me bunny your character into a murderous Sean Connery.

Thanks for reading!

And now the spoils...for all four characters, listed here for recordkeeping purposes when I get around to updating them.

Caden Law: -Arcanist's Rod, -Masterwork Bowie Knife, all Raiaeran armor is now Average

Savas Tigh: +Arcanist's Rod, +Dragon Wing, +Dragon Bone, +Battleaxe (Average Steel), +Ritual: Holocaust of Worms, +Ritual: Energy Funnel, +Fighting Style: Dark Messiah (Below Average)

Aeraul Smythe: +Steel Great-Jian (Above Average Steel), +Above Average Pyromancy (Saiko Hirei), +Fumomancy (Saiko Hirei), +Chi Control? (TBD During Character Updates), +Improved Empathic Resonance, +Mental Shielding (Above Average)

Rowan Stormwind: -Chokuto, +Improved Chi Control, +Fighting Style: Above Average Falling Leaf

Scara Brae: Barring a retcon of Liquid Time, Scara Brae has been geographically warped by the emergence and subsequent destruction of the Catacombs. Most of the city itself has sunken below sea level, with the Docks and several other parts remaining high enough above the water that the city hasn't been flooded; like New Orleans, basically. The city was essentially destroyed and immediately rebuilt, with many noteworthy landmarks surviving and being repaired or modified to accomodate the changes. The population now includes refugees from the old Catacombs civilizations, mostly the pale, human-derived Kevyrazians and the chittering, relatively peaceful Fungans.

The city's Status Quo is gradually reasserting itself now that the disaster has passed, although there are now full-blown Sanctioned mage squads operating as Warlock hunters for the Ordo Malleus, as well as the beginnings of a small school of forensic magic and alchemy among the City Guard.

Politics: Queen Valeena took advantage of the chaos to bump off a few problematic nobles. Use that however you will. Magic has also become a trickier deal among the people of Scara Brae: any magic that can build things or maintain them is WONDERFUL! while any shows of destructive magic are likely to get you lynched if you're not careful. Religions -- all of them -- have experienced huge surges of attendants, polarizing the populace even further.

General: The island has actually gotten bigger, specifically stretching out to the West by a few miles.

The Labyrinth of Scara Brae: The not-nearly-abandoned-enough ruins of what used to be the Catacombs beneath the city. Exploded out from under it, ripped apart, collapsed, and ultimately ended up being a ten mile long pile of dead cities, broken tunnels, shattered temples, and Gods-know-what all stacked on top of each other and strewn about in every direction. There are probably still monsters, monstrous peoples, and old magicks still lurking inside. There are probably priceless treasures, bits of lore, and who knows what too. Raid at your own risk and pray the place is dead enough that you don't end up lost forever in its depths.

Lake Valeena: The Lake is now shaped like a crescent, its tips pointing East and South, respectively.

Brokenthorn Forest: Has been devestated. The Northeastern edge of the Forest has been smashed flat, with nearby castles bowled right over like they weren't even there. A kobold city has crashed down at the heart of the Forest, and it's anyone's guess if those blind, vicious little bastards survived it.

Windlacer Mountain Range: The Southern faces of most of the central range have been blasted clean and then littered with rubble and debris. An entire fungan city crashlanded in the peaks on the North side of the range. No expeditions have been made to see if anyone survived.

Sijal Kar: The crater where the misbegotten son of Draconus and N'jal died has become a major attraction for daytime tourists and researchers and nighttime cult activity. The crater has also taken on his name, along with an insane collection of plants, spiders, and dragonflies that are not natural or native to any part of the world. Very few of these creatures are poisonous, but some are worryingly large. While the godling himself is thoroughly and utterly dead, hope remains among some that traces of his power might yet endure...

Potential Plothooks or Notes for Others: Bits and pieces of the Catacombs basically went all the way around the world and back again. It is not unreasonable to have a chunk fall into another region. The sudden, violent expansion of the island has probably triggered severe oceanic activity, including tidal waves on the shores of neighboring continents. The death of Sijal Kar triggered an eight hour solar eclipse over Scara Brae -- it's possible that other parts of the world also experienced this.

As always, all this crap's public domain to Althanas. Do as ya will.

[Lord Anglekos]

I just want to start with that it was an honor to read and be able to Judge this thread, Caden. The amount of work and quality put into this thread really deserves attention, and I only wish you could write faster so we could have more of these great, world-changing threads decorating the walls of Althanas. That being said, onto the Judgment!

STORY: 29/30
Practically perfect. The very ending was not as great as the rising action or introduction part, but still wonderful besides.

CHARACTER: 25/30
There were a couple of places where I thought that the four main character's personalities were too similar and distinguishing between them was only capable due to origination, but overall this still remains one of your strong points; bringing forth huge, powerful personalities and having them just grab the attention of the reader and not. Let. Go.

WRITING STYLE: 23/30
Unfortunately I caught a few unnecessary errors here and there; for example using the wrong sense of "there" when you should have used another. This dropped your score a few points lower than it needed be. Still, you're a great writer, and your grasp of the English language obviously is above and beyond the par.

WILDCARD: 10/10
Fantastic, exemplary patience and effort. There are no further words needed for this.

FINAL SCORE: 87
Caden Law gains 4100 EXP and 350 gold, as well as loses 7391 gold.
Savas Tigh gains 2500 EXP and 700 gold.
Leaf on the Wind gains 2200 EXP and 700 gold.
Aeraul Smythe gains 2200 EXP and 700 gold.

All spoils are approved, pending RoG updates; good job, Caden. You deserve it.

[Yari Rafanas]

EXP and GP added.