Call to Arms! (Closed to Redford, Rayleigh, and Itenerant)
The Osiris Manor, Beinost.
“The time has come, Mr. T’vorall.”
Two men sat in relative silence in a luxurious room, illuminated only by the flickering light of a low burning fire resting at the hearth. Vincent Cain, lord Emperor of the Tarot Hierarchy, sat with one leg crossed in a plush velvet armchair, swirling red wine in a crystal goblet.
“The time for what exactly, Mr. Cain?”
Joseph T’vorall sat across from Vincent, a glass of mead in another goblet. The fire crackled softly, the only sound in the room for a moment before it was broken by a low chuckle from Vincent. The scholar uncrossed his leg and leaned forward, a grin on his face.
“Why, it’s time for phase two my good man.” The two sat in silence for a moment. Vincent was simply letting the magnitude of what he’d just said sink in, Joseph was simply waiting for an explanation.
“Phase two?” Joseph asked, eyebrow raised. “Is this another one of those earth things or…?” The merchant shifted in his seat uncomfortably for a moment before taking a sip from his drink. Vincent simply stared at his partner aghast for a moment.
“Dude, we talked about this.” Vincent uttered annoyedly as he rose from his seat. “Like…a month ago or something.” He paced forward taking a sip of his drink. “I thought you were in on this whole thing.” Joseph nodded for a moment, as if he had suddenly remembered.
“Ah yes!” Joseph cooed, letting out a chuckle to match Vincent from earlier. “How could I forget…” he paused. “How did that go again?”
Vincent sighed and hung his head in defeat for a moment. “For fucks sake dude, we’re cleansing Raiaera.”
“For real this time?” Joseph quipped.
“Fuck you dude, we’re doing it for realsies.” Vince grunted and pointing a finger at Joseph. “We’ve been waiting, it was all a part of the four phase plan remember? We had the fancy dinner and sat down and outlined the whole god damned thing. You said it was the best plan you’d ever seen, I agreed, we signed it and everything!” The scholar snapped his fingers and pulled a scroll from a blink of blue light.
“It’s all right here, look.” He offered the scroll to the merchant, who rose from his seat and unrolled it, squinting in the dark light.
“Well shit, it’s got my signature and everything” The mechant cooed. “Phase two it is!”
He peered closer, turning the thing toward the firelight.
“What’s phase two again? Yes, there. So we just finished phase one then, which is...gather a bunch of money and build a base of operations in Beinost.” The merchant pasued and nodded. “Okay, we did that pretty well. Phase two, put out a call to arms and begin our three pronged assault plan of the blight of Raiaera.” The merchant looked up for a moment. “We have an assault plan?”
“We outlined it that very night.” Vincent replied sighing. “We said that we were going to have three teams, remember? A Containment team, a Funding team, and a Research team.” The merchant nodded along as the scholar spoke.
“Oh yeah, I remember. We were gonna pick leaders for each too!” He paused for a moment. “But doesn’t it seem silly for us to go looking for one leader? I mean clearly you’re going to head up research, and I’ll take care of funding…” Vincent tutted and wagged his open hand at his friend.
“Wrong, we’re not going to lead any teams. We need a little more traction than just the influence of the two of us in the long run.” The merchant paused for a moment and took his eyes off the scroll to peer at Vincent curiously.
“Traction? For what?” Vincent let out a bit of a chuckle and downed the rest of his drink.
“We need to put some fresh faces in charge of these teams so that the political sphere of Raiaera is changed up a bit. You and I have already shaken the scene up a bit. We need to make sure the people who become heroes in this whole campaign are...fresh. We have to play the political long game if you will.” Vincent strode forward and leaned against the mantle, peering into the flame.
“Isn’t that a little fucked up?” Joseph asked cocking his head to one side. “I mean...we’d be basically hand picking political puppets…” Vincent shook his head and let out a chuckle.
“I thought so too, but then I meditated on it. I spent the last two weeks using my little foresight into the workings of Fate as much as possible. The people I have picked are...well...the people who I’ve seen will do the most good for the land.” The two sat in silence for a moment before Joseph grunted.
“Fucking magic.”
The silence continued for several minutes as Joseph read over the plans he had no memory of even coming up with, his lips silently moving as if he was reading it aloud to himself.
“So Phase two is the start of the assault. We begin large scale operations in order to discover the cure. Phase three is the application of the cure and an all out war on the vestiges of this ‘Xem’Zund’s undead.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “And phase four is full reconstruction post-war. Is that right?” he asked looking up. “And who’s Xem’Zund again?”
“Correct,” the scholar nodded, pausing as he registered the merchants question. “Xem’zund is the Forgotten one who made this whole undead mess in the first place.” Joseph nodded.
“Like Pod, yes?”
“Pode, but yes.”
“Gotcha.” Joseph looked back to the paper. “Now where were we?”
“Now we have to start out plans for phase two. I have three people in mind for our leaders, you do have the power to veto any of them if you would like.” The merchant nodded along as Vincent spoke, stepping up to the flame to stare into the embers along side him.
“Let me hear them…”