A t E: Session 04 - Epilogue

General Summary

It is on the nights when the sky is clear that I miss my old friends the most. I am taken back to evenings spent recounting tales of, “…that time when you fell in front of the careening carriage… or the moment when it looked like all was lost and then you managed to open that trap door and escape the horde...” Stories listened to with an appreciation for not only the memory but for the one retelling the tale for the hundredth time. It was this way for me at least. My good friends have all perished. Nobody alive remembers the events of my stories of adventuring youth. No one is left to appreciate the daring, the wisdom – or the lack thereof! I still remember and with these memories I honour those that have left me behind. The past is that way for the last one left. More meaningful than the present or any potential future.     Or so it might be.     In the details of time’s passage from then to when, there are avenues available if one has been told how to look for them. I am lucky to have known a man who had this knowledge. His name when I first met up with him was, Friar Entotaph. When we had each earned the other's trust, he told me other titles he had been known by; Wraac, Ironmane, Cytoclastei, Oathstriken. Of these I liked Wraac, as it seemed to suit his unschooled manner. Despite the tremendous amount of lore he possessed, he never lost his abrupt way of presenting the most esoteric bits of history. I was often as interested in how he was going to tell me something, as the knowledge itself! He saw in me, Tattersall, the opposite. I have had the best of educations. It is what my youth was about. Before the war came. Before the fall of my race, the Roffsor. I was being groomed for a high position in my people’s academeocracy. I had studied many things; geography, celestial rotations, chronomancy, chromamancy, foliamancy, automancy, martial laws, warfare, agriculture, hydraulics, too many other subjects to name here… From the highest lectern, I would have been making pronouncements that would be made edict and law for my kind. Then the Arcithian Empire arrived with its belching engines of death. Sederra had no answer. Our leaders failed to understand the invaders’ technology quickly enough. Like many others, I fled our foundry schools and headed for the relative safety of the wilds. There I met the Entotaph. He was ministering to the wounded when I saw him. He told me later, that my questions to him that day, convinced him that I had a role to play in what he had planned for the future. I thought at the time he meant our future. In fact, he meant the entirety of future possibility.     What he and I inhabited was a ‘Lackblue future’. That is to say, an existence that while moving forward in time, goes nowhere. A “dead-end”, Entotaph called it. You may travel within the passage, but it leads to an abrupt halt. Progress, until there suddenly is nowhere to turn and then – it is too late. Time must move forward. “Ptah’s clock cannot be made to move backwards”, was the mysterious way he put it. Then as if to explain this enigmatic statement he produced from his friar’s cassock, a clock. Glass cracked, face damaged, works frozen. He stared at it for a period. Then with a shrug he handed it to me. I knew nothing of clock making and told him so. He laughed until he coughed and said that this clock wasn’t made, it was coalesced. As of now, I still don’t know what this means.     One evening, as I chewed on thick mouthfuls of meat, cut thick and dripping with gravy, his manner turned serious. Under a clearing sky whose clouds had earlier deposited a watery sheen upon the grass around where we lay propped up on elbow, in our weather-proofed bed-rolls, he told me why I would go to Miranse.       “You will take a trip. I will not go with you. You will need to be fit. No more fatty meats after tonight. You’re going to be readied as a festive meal yourself if you carry on eating so many roasts… This trip, it is crucial for you. Our time comes to an end. My own time as well. I can bear no more of this realm. I weary of my losses. They weigh on my shoulders. My crimes as well. These cause me to lose focus almost all the time. I can’t do this as easily as before. Now, Tattersall, you being young and too young to face extinction of your world and people and self, you can make amends for what I have done. I have shown you what I can. You knew much before and I have only added to that in our time together. Now, you will fulfil my dream, as I can’t manage it myself.     A time ago, I came to learn that a hope I held for others of the old realm I have told you stories about, might be realised. Word came to me that a small vestige of what was once there had been saved. Not only saved but placed within this realm. Saved but only in a sense. This place was purposely left without power or means to gain power. In this, it was kept unknown and secure. There were only a handful within this place. I knew that whoever they might be, I would know them. You will remember the name I have used in reference to my clock -- Ptah? It is this being who gave me this knowledge, through the means of my clock. This dream is what broke the clock’s mechanism. Or maybe, once the information had been delivered the clock was destined to stop working to prevent the knowledge being learned by another… A face came to me in this dream. Axewing. He had to be one of those hidden within this small space. It came to me as did that name I gave you some time ago. You remember, the name of Kade the Praetor. I still do not know as much of this one but I have seen his importance in this time, though he hails from my own. Here is the ‘Key Mortal’. I can’t tell you if this means he is key or if he becomes a key, and if he does, what he unlocks. I did know a Praetor in my old realm and this one must have a hand in this other Praetor’s fate. I see another name, Sala, a cat-like female. She must not see this Kade more than is necessary. She is important to us but if she and he meet and get to know each other too well, she will lose her way. Her heart will be softened. She will get overwhelmed and uncertain and perish, when she must live. She must be prevented somehow from learning too much of this Kade the Praetor. You must find him. She will not believe. He may. Now I know that Kade and Axewing, also known as Conan, and the Lord Carmine, are together. How it is done I don’t get. It has happened though. You will know him if he can tell you my affiliations to the Battering Lions. Tell him of your knowledge of your Lord Carmine. His story will interest my Axewing. Be sure to remember me to him and tell him I couldn’t wait.”     His voice trailed away. I took him to be reflecting on his life. Then he did a strange thing. He asked me to look upon his face. I had never seen him without his friar’s mask. When I said as much, he laughed that laugh of his, low and harsh. He said, "It is not from this realm but my old one. I would have you hear my last words. These always take the form of a curse. It is my last duty. I will say it. You will bear witness. Then it will be done.” I heard his words, as I stared into a face worn beyond whatever years he might have lived. It was a statement of hope for me and the realm. As he replaced his helm, I asked the question but he spoke no more.       Six months passed. I spent them in a place called Tighan. I waited for the two known as Kade the Praetor and Axewing Carmine. Then they appear to my summoned creatures. This summoning is a small thing for me. I am skilled in this Hybridomancy. They report their appearance in the gorge that leads to my camp. I am thrilled! I make my way to them to reveal all that Wraac has told me.     When I arrive, my servant troops have begun an ambush that despite my efforts to halt, they follow through with. They are angered. It is natural enough for them to strike out at the one the two men travel with. Relisck has come again to the gorge. He has brought allies. Two in a chariot. A man and a woman. With these, the two I have awaited. No doubt Relisck is emboldened by the two he travels with. I feel my summonings’ spite as they throw their strengths toward the newcomers. I do less than I might, I suppose. I would see these men of another time and associates of Wraac, display their skill. It is my fault that some will die as a result. I should feel worse about this than I do. I have seen many undeserving people die. Colour me jaded. For his part Ren attempts to diminish the contest by warning off my charges. His sword is thrown down between the two parties. This has little affect. Mine are filled with vengeful thoughts for Relisck. Rocks descend at them from traps laid over the months we have been in the gorge. Kade moves swiftly out range and then attempts to gain a physical advantage in a test of strength with a Pantahake. This goes against him and I cannot hide my amusement at first his trying to best a being so evidently strong and then at the creature’s apparent ease with the man. There is more to him, as Wraac had told me to expect. Pantahakes are not at ease with much.     Then while the fight is all but slowed, new arrivals on the scene confuse matters. A series of cast attacks are sent against any in the gorge. My commander is struck and badly hurt. Still it could be far worse as a mighty ball of fire winds up exploding harmlessly high above everybody. At the same time a woman caster appears near me and Axewing – who calls himself, Renaissance – and she attempts to entrap him in an antiward. He does well to anticipate this though I see no sign of his watching her. He then attacks with a speed and practiced dash I have rarely seen. He moves almost as a Roffsor, such is his speed and power. My attention is drawn to the resounding crash of Kade the Praetor’s weapon. This looks like an Arcithian thing. The effect on the caster it strikes is death instantly given. I feel no remorse for the decades of training lost in that flash of salvo. Kade seems unconcerned as well. A hard man when need be then. Ren has reached the woman of red casting colour and she makes a desperate evasion, leaping and turning backward in the air and fleeing up the gorge. While airborne she appeared just as a fish struggling to be free of the angler’s hook. She is a lucky fish. Ren seems amused or respectful of her skill and leaves her be. That or it is the arrival of another female that turns him from the red caster.     This new woman is seen attacking my commander that previously had launched the boulders down into the visitor’s train. She looks for all the money like a statue brought to lifelike semblance. The wind lifts her grey hair from her equally grey features. This then is a thing of wonder to me. She is also fearsome. I sense about her something of the other. I know little else as I watch her cause my charge to struggle for life, wracked by her attack upon his nervous system. Later I will restore this one but only because she decides to break off her attack. She decides she has seen enough and calls things to cease. This is done. All are confused as to the reason for the conflict in any case. Anger will be served. As she calls things to truce, she shifts her shape, and becomes a Thale. This is what she calls her kind. Now uncovered from her stone-like armour, she is a dominant female. I have seen more males of this kind than females. As males dominate a place with their presence, so too does a dominant female with her’s. This one tells us her name is Oleihne. She has come not for the two men as I assumed, but instead for me. I am secretly pleased. I have no issue with talking to one so evidently strong. It might be that I can learn more than she from any conversation we might share. Of the two conversations I am faced with, there is no doubt which is more important, so I dispense with her's first.     In this interruption, another two fellows appear to Ren and Kade. One leads the other into the scene. The led is a purg – a goat-like beastman. He is an ally of mine, after a fashion. More that he refuses to leave my area but has given me no reason to doubt. His name is Aadu. The one who has captured him is a Thale. This one is male and seems subordinated to the Thale woman. He calls himself, Narahre. His conversation with Kade and Ren seems coolly cordial, if not fraught with barely hidden contemptuousness on both parts. It is a thing that precedes them in a sense. The Profane and Men have a long-standing dislike for each other. It is difficult to ignore all that has passed between them in the course of histories. Ren especially, seems to be filled with a righteous unease. To the extent that he is moved to come to where I speak with Oleihne. He suggests the conversation is over. I can see he means for no counter to this suggestion and make my farewell to the interesting lady. She has something about her I cannot quite put my finger on…     She and her underling who had interrupted the talk she and I were having, only to be soundly rebuked for his rudeness by her hand across his face, depart. I watch her go. It is hard not to wish to speak with her more. Kade too, seems to have an eye for her but I note Ren is far less watchful of her. As they leave, Kade takes from my armour a medallion that Narahre had placed there. Ren takes it and throws it after the two Profane. It strikes Oleinhe on her bottom. She takes up the medallion with only a sly glance at us. Once she identifies it, she turns and continues away, evidently irate with her male colleague.     After we watch the chariot depart, we make our way up the gorge to my campsite. Once we are there, I reveal my story and that of our mutual acquaintance. Kade is thoughtful when I speak the words told to me for him. Ren, is more concerned for his old comrade than the information I reveal. At least that is my take on him. Later my keen hearing overhears them planning next things, and I am edified that Wraac has chosen these two. They discuss the information’s importance and what they will do to make certain that all is changed as I have implored. Wraac would be pleased. Maybe his last words will prove prophetic. Like he said, therein lies hope.

Character(s) interacted with

Kade   Renaissance   Relisck   Takaal   Wukonne   Tattersall   Oleihne   Narahre   Aadu