Lament of Vilarus

Arcanists' Dungeons, midday

Visiting the Arcanists' Dungeons is never a pleasant experience. Having to turn over all weapons and magical equipment before entering, and then being inspected by wardens with true seeing... it's almost invasive. But after the last couple of breakouts (both attempted and successful), the dungeon's guards are done with taking chances.

Waiting inside, bereft of his own magical accoutrements, is the Lord Archmage Telamon Lupecyll-Atlon. He's dressed in a long-sleeved white silk blouse with ruffles, deep gray breeches, and simple walking boots. His expression is serene, though he offers a smile to the quartet as they arrive. "Excellent. It's good to see you all again. We're going to need seasoned veterans for this one, I think." The sorcerer leads the group down towards the cells. "I think Corey and Karasu in particular will find this interesting."

Karasu of everyone is perhaps particularly displeased to be without his weapons of choice. He never goes to *sleep* unarmed, and being in a place where the bulk of the population has access to magic - even if they are bereft of it momentarily - does not in fact make him feel particularly good about being divested of his armory. (Though watching the sheer number of items come off of him and the many varied locations from which they hailed makes for entertaining viewing.)

Hearing Telamon call him out specifically, the one-time assassin watches the mage's retreat down the stairs and into the cells with interest. "Why us in particular?" There's a beat of cautious silence and where most would have asked a question there is only more silence. Karasu is not prone to asking questions that might be revealed in due time.

Magpie is something of a hoarder, if her name wouldn't be the first clue. A *lot* of her favorite toys remain on her person at all times, and so when she learned she was to visit the dungeons of the Guild for this meeting? The first thing she asked them to scan was a simple blue sun-dress, after which she took herself off to a spare alcove to just change her clothing entirely, right down to clashing socks instead of her favored boots. The entire bundle is just dropped off with the minder, her token collected, and the gnome simply toddles into the room, giving the dress an experimental swish here and there.

When Telamon begins the opening sally of his briefing, she looks up, one eyebrow rising. "...Well *that* sounds personal..."

The Goblin is highly reluctant to give up her magical accoutrements, and does so grudgingly. Her weapon is the hardest to leave behind. One cannot blame her, with the city's past history with demons, it is understandable why one might want to keep a holy, demon-slaying blade close at hand.

Once in the archmage's presence, she crosses her arms, frowning deeply. "While I am happy to be called an seasoned veteran, you must have something heavy and deep to drop if we're having the conversation in this godless, forsaken place."

In contrast to Karasu, Corey is very sunny. That's par for the course when it comes to the paladin of Gilead, of course, but he's just happy to be here with his husband. The rapier is, of course, a missed thing, as is the dagger that Karasu had given him, but they'll reunite with their magic weapons soon enough. He smiles at Karasu's question. "That's kind of exciting. Us specifically. Maybe it's got to do with fae. Or Mother's new 'friends'. Or maybe it has to do with that creepy fellow that we met that one time! The possibilities are endless."

Magpie makes her comment, and Cor'ethil, of course, reassures his friend. "Yes, but I am here, and we're going to be okay." A bright smile before he looks at Telamon. "So, what's the deal?"

The path they take leads away from the 'normal' cells, and down into the healer's wing of the dungeon. Where inmates who may be suffering from some malady might be kept. Well, that's ominous. Telamon nods to the others. "In a moment. Please, bear with me -- this is something you should see."

He stops to speak with a warden. "How is she?" he inquires. The makari warden hrms. "Stable, now. But fragile. Prisoner she may be, but press her do not. Her body, intact, her mind, battered." With that, the warden unlocks the door, to allow you entry.

The room beyond is divided by iron bars, with a door built into them. The antechamber where you stand has a couple of stools and naught else, while the 'cell' portion of the room is furnished simply: a stool, and a bed. And sitting on the bed, legs drawn up and arms wrapped around them as she stares over her knees, is a war golem. Crafted to appear as an athletic human woman, with pewter skin shot with soft green lines, her graven face surprisingly attractive, dominated by large glowing green eyes. But her posture is one of fear, not confidence.

Karasu recognizes the war golem immediately from a previous job of his which resolved around a jail break at this exact location. His eyes narrow at the golem, remembering its involvement in the fiasco quite clearly. While others might be swayed with sympathy for her posture and attitude, Karasu is not. Instead he remarks to Telamon without any concern for the wargolem, "What is her malady which brings her here, and what about it brings us here?"

Fair questions. Though perhaps a bit rudely brooked.

The magical maladies wing... Well *this* is unsettling. There but for chance goes Magpie, and her time spent planes-trotting...

It's at this point that the gnome wonders... just *how much* of her initial days back on the material was to evaluate whether she belongs here? Most, probably, if not the whole of it.

Giving herself a full-body shake, she looks up, minding well the words of the guard, and as they're let into the antechamber... Magpie tilts her head, scrabbling up onto one of the stools.

A War Golem, with a hale frame but fragile mind...

"...What happened to her?"

The words are whispered just at the edge of volume, as if her mouth decided to patch directly into her brain for a brief moment.

Murder follows in silence, trusting the good wizard that answers will make themselves available in time. An eyebrow raises at what the warden says. "A battered mind. So she has endured abuse?", the Goblin wonders, quietly.

She looks over the Golem's body, eyes wide in appreciation for the work done to make the being look as human as possible, despite it's obvious metallic properties.

"Magic. Or demons. Or both?"

Cor'ethil winces as he catches sight of the war golem. "Lancet," he says, before looking to Magpie and Murder. "She helped a very morally bankrupt wizard by the name of Urvis Ironshanks. We should take precautions..."

He frowns. "But last time we saw her, she fled from the scene. How did she end up here?" He nods to Karasu's sentiment. "I don't like this one bit, Karasu."

The golem's eyes lock onto Telamon, before shifting to the others. They linger on Corey and Karasu, and her voice comes out, a trembling sound. "You... I remember you. You were there. You came hunting Urvis."

Slowly, Lancet uncoils from her hunched position, though there's still something tentative and fearful about her. A far cry from the confident golem wizard Corey and Karasu saw, if briefly. She approaches the bars, wrapping her fingers around them. "Are we safe?" There's something desperate in her tone.

Telamon glances at the others. "No one's sure. She appeared in the Alexandros heartlands, unconscious. When she came to she was incoherent. A friend of mine got a message to me, and I came by to pick her up." The half-sil rubs the back of his neck. "The healers said she'd been afflicted by a powerful magical assault targeting her mind."

Karasu moves forward a half-step, his dark eyes on the golem. "We are as safe as one can expect to be." He does not give false platitudes to the golem, but rather the stark truth. "Magic can not touch you here." Though there are other means to cause harm, and Karasu well knows it. "Would you speak of what you know to us?"

Though not usually the most diplomatic of individuals, at least Karasu knows that honesty is something that the golem might appreciate at a moment like this.

"As safe as they can make it," Magpie answers, her voice gentle, and puzzled... But lacking any history, all she sees is a soul under deep, deep distress. Intellectually, she can understand that she might still be a threat, but... Well, the gentle heart sees pain before danger.

Karasu has asked the single most important question to be asked, and Magpie herself saves her breath for the questions to come *after.*

"None of us are armed, and there is no magic to harm you." Cor'ethil reassures Lancet gently, looking at Telamon as he explains, then looks back at Lancet. "Yes, Karasu and I were there. Do you remember anything prior to your awakening in the Heartlands? Were you attacked? Or is someone hunting you?"

He puts a hand on Karasu's shoulder as he also takes a step forward. "We may have been enemies once, but while we are not exactly friends nor allies, we are not seeking to harm you. You still have crimes to answer for--and that is not at our hands." Then Corey smiles. "I'm not a Sunblade, after all." His demesne is that of taking care of dogs and cats who present at the Temple of Gilead with splinters in paws and broken bones.

The Goblin's frown is near instant. "Urvis. Name rings a bell." She looks to the others as they say the place is 'as safe as they can make it', at the same time bringing up the name of someone who literally escaped a place that is supposed to be inescapable. Murder opens her mouth to say something, but then closes it. She appears to be counting to ten.

"I'll be honest. What you say and do determines what happens here. I didn't come in here with any ill intent towards you, and I doubt the others here have any bad ideas either. Safe? Let's just say it would take such a huge threat to get to you down here, the world may ending at that point, so safety would be moot, there'd be nowhere to hide."

"After I abandoned Urvis," and here the faintest trace of the Lancet she once was seems to surface. Just a little smug. "I wandered. Seeking knowledge. I stayed out of Alexandros. Skirted Charn, found myself in Xiang-Sei." She trembles slightly. "I found the references there. Old, but accurate. Vilarus's retreat."

Her fingers tighten on the iron bars. "I managed to get there, and... I thought it was empty. The wizards were long dead, only the lake plants and the lichen on the walls. But... there's something there. Something -else-." Lancet's voice quivers with fear. "Don't make me remember more."

Telamon frowns, tilting his head. "Vilarus? That's not a name I'm familiar with, but..." He furrows his brow, glancing at the others. "Any ideas?"

GAME: Karasu rolls Knowledge/Arcana: (7)+12: 19
GAME: Murder rolls knowledge/arcana: (4)+13: 17
GAME: Magpie rolls knowledge/arcana: (2)+16: 18

Karasu thinks for a moment, to see if the name is familiar to him, either from Xiang-Sei, or from some other means. "A mage, of the wizardly variation. He was notable enough for me to learn of him in my studies despite the fact that he lived over a thousand years ago. Though I fail to remember what he was so famous for aside from his skill with magic." Karasu keeps his attention on the golem for the most part. "If these ruins of his are active, that does not bode well."

Her voice small, the Goblin nods to Lancet. "He was powerful, possessing great skill." She gestures to Karasu. "Yeah, a thousand or more years ago. Magic was likely... different. Maybe there's something deeper behind his powers? Some dark god or goddess, or something from the depths?"

"If your name survives that long," Magpie muses, "most of the details are *gonna* fade, but... Worth looking into. Meantime..."

She looks up, lips pursing at the distress in the golem's voice. "Okay, so... you can back up from there. ...Can you tell us *what* references you found?"

If it would hurt too much to probe further into the memory, after all... might as well see if there're clues to *get* there again, and face as a group what one couldn't overcome.

Corey frowns deeply as he looks at Karasu. "Over a thousand years ago... I'm inclined to agree with you, my nightingale," he says in a murmur. Then he nods at Magpie's question. "I'm sorry that it's troubling to remember, Lancet, but we really would appreciate everything that you can remember. What brought you to Vilarus's retreat? Did you know something was there or did you happen upon it?"

Knowing Lancet, it's probably the first. "Again, I'd appreciate anything you can give us. Anything at all."

Telamon nods. "When I was doing research on the convocations at Rune, Vilarus was mentioned as having set down some interesting foundations for magic, particularly in conjuration." He pauses, then looks at Lancet. "And the planes."

Lancet nods, her eyes flaring a little. "His retreat. He built a demiplane. Carved it from the nonreality of the Astral, poured earth and water and air from the Elemental Planes into it. It was supposed to last forever..." Her eyes drop. "It didn't. I found the directions, the path that leads to it. But it's not empty." Her head comes back up. "Something is -there-. Something -wrong-."

Karasu nods once. "We need to know what, and if she is unwilling to relive the memory, I have a spell that would allow me to see it. Assuming that we can convince them to release her into our custody for a moment. The spell does not take long, and with the Archmage to ensure her compliance the risk is minimal." He glances at Telamon then. "If you are willing."

Murder's hand smacks against her forehead and she turns away briefly. "It's a trap.", she says with a huff. She turns back to stare at Karasu. "You know what they say about staring into the Abyss, right? If the lady here is having difficulties, and you're going to tap right into those memories... how do you protect yourself from that?"

Corey frowns quite heavily at Karasu's suggestion. "My love... If it has traumatized _Lancet_ so much, I don't think you should see this." His emphasis on 'Lancet' suggests that if the war golem complicit in so much pain and bloodshed was disturbed, Karasu (who Corey holds in high esteem and knows better than anyone else) shouldn't peer into her mind. He gently squeezes Karasu's shoulder.

"And you share an empathic link with Wuya." Corey frowns even more. "I don't know..."

GAME: Magpie rolls knowledge/the planes: (14)+15: 29
GAME: Magpie rolls knowledge/arcana: (8)+16: 24

Magpie listens very closely to Lancet's story, brow furrowing. "Air, Earth, Water... no Fire? Why no Fire? If you're gonna make a retreat, you're gonna want to cook a sausage once in a while at least..."

Her mutterings go on like this for a fair bit, before she interrupts the entire conversation. "THE SUNDERING!"

And immediately slaps her hands over her mouth, shooting Lancet a very apologetic look. "Sorry... Vilarus disappeared around the Sundering... Which means it could be *anything* that holed up there, even Vilarus himself. Only, y'know... thousand years warped by isolation and planar emanation... Either way *yeah* this is not a job for the greenies."

Telamon firmly shakes his head. "Not happening, Karasu." His voice is calm, but unyielding. "The wardens aren't letting her out -- one, there's still the question of what came -before- her association with Urvis, and two, she's still not fully recovered from whatever happened to her."

Lancet, for her part, has backed away from the bars and looks like she's about to curl into a ball again. She actually flinches a bit at Magpie's outburst. "Please..." she whispers, her hands held up as if to ward off a blow.

Telamon makes a gesture towards the door. "Let's step outside. Before the warden drags us out." Indeed, the door is already opening, the heavyset makari peering in with suspicious eyes.

Karasu is not swayed by any of those speaking. Not even Telamon himself really save that Lancet will not be coming out. Which means that their ability to identify what it was that harmed her is severely curtailed. He remarks upon none of it, simply turning around and following Telamon back up the way that they had come. There seems to be no further reason to linger in the confines of the jail, so Karasu is eager to return to his weapons.

Murder peers at Magpie a moment, head canted to one side. "I was going to suggest that maybe the fire was already there? Perhaps some creature of fire who would do the heavy lifting? Maybe it got free of his control? I mean, it's not like mages ever lose control of their summoned beasts or anything." She frowns. "You know who I mean. But uh your idea is also quite plausible. Can you imagine getting trapped inside your own little demiplane, unknown to the world, like you simply just ... poof .. disappeared?"

The Goblin's already moving to the exit, she doesn't need to be asked twice.

"Yeah," Magpie says as Telamon suggests they leave, sighing. "Yeah... sorry, Lancet... I'll let you be. ...Sorry..."

Why is she *like this?* It's a question that has ricocheted around her head more than once in her existence, and her demeanor is much more subdued as she follows Murder toward the exit, mulling over his suppositions. "I mean... magic *broke* during the Sundering," she says once they're well away from the cell. "Summoning or pocket plane, it could easily have gone completely pineapple-shaped, too much even for someone we're still referencing *today* to handle..."

"Let's go," Corey says, also eager to get out while the going's good. He sighs once they get a little distance away. But he looks over at Magpie and smiles a little, even if that smile is delivered through worry-knit brows.

"I think you're right," he says. "And also, if I was going to trust anyone's theories on magic, it'd be you and the Archmage Lupecyll-Atlon." A beat. "The male one. Although I am told the ladies are very powerful and apt." There are three of them, after all.

Then Corey says, "I'd rather not think about getting trapped in my own demiplane. Mother's ideas of execution for traitors to her new Court are bad enough already."

"I remember reading that even the planar boundaries were... rearranged during the Sundering. Corey, you might be on to something. Could Vilarus have been trapped there? Could he -still be there-?"

Telamon shudders. "In any case. Yes. This is -exactly- why I want you four. I want to send an expedition to this retreat. Make sure there's nothing nasty that's set up camp in it -- clearly, something got to Lancet. Regardless of her villainy... she's an accomplished mage and good enough to leap to other planes."

He glances at the others. "Don't take any chances. We'll figure out how to send you there, and bring you back, but I don't want you getting killed over some moldy spellbook. Your lives and well being are not worth that."

-TBC