Shrouded Mystery

[Brian]

After watching Nathan leave, and shifting his shoulders and an odd, eerie sensation that someone was watching him (which fades when Nathan passes through the doors), Phil turns his attention to the books, contemplating asking the librarian for help finding specific volumes.

[Dracos]

Dracos, eventually overcoming his natural tendancies with his engrained training, turned to the librarian.  "Where are the oldest archives that are held here?  Anything from around the time of the original dreadmarch attacks?"

Dracos

[Brian]

The librarian looks up from his tome and blinks.  "Those archives?" he asks thoughtfully.  "No ... we don't really have much that old ... those books have crumbled to dust long ago.  I have re-creations of some of the histories...."  He looks contemplative for a minute, and then carefully marks his place and closes the large tome.  "This way."

Marching into the wings of the library, he locates a specific shelf (Phil could have sworn he walked by it twice and saw none of the books the librarian indicates).  "Here we go.  These are the records of the Dreadmarch wars from the begining," he says, pointing at a single slim volume, "and then, successive sieges."  More books follow.  He pauses in his sweeping gesture, a finger pointing at a specific book, which must be as wide as it is deep.  "And this is the saga of Hadrick ... and then up through the last," he completes, pointing across an array of smaller books, until he gets to a medium-sized book at the end of the shelf.

Blinking somewhat lazily, he asks, "Is there anything else?  I have parchment if you need to take notes ... or could record them for you.  And of course, you can borrow anything you need."

[Dracos]

"Thank you.  I don't think I'll need it for now."

Dracos...began... by checking on Hadrik's tale, swiftly reading through and trusting to his general recollection to pick up on mentions of Archanoe, the crystals, major battles, or his sword.

Dracos

[Brian]

Hadrick's tale is a mainstay -- he was revered above almost all other heroes of, well, almost any other Dreadmarch.  The man was a living legend, because he slew not one, but two generals.

Apparently that's quite a feat.

But the book mentions about twenty other 'Heroes of the land' at the time.  Melnichor Strong-Arm, the Emissary of Kith wrestled a Troll to the ground, apparently, while Hadrick was taking a breather.

Looking at the number of 'heroes' usually involved with any given fight does certainly explain why Kevin was so grim about only having Breke and Dorian on hand ... and both of them are dead now.

Either way, the ceremony of the crystal is mentioned in passing, but this is mostly a history text.  Really, it's a glorified fairy tale.

The person to ask for old stories would probably be Durant ... but he's not around at the moment, so that could be a mite difficult.

[Dracos]

Dracos quickly goes over one of the general fights if it's detailed looking for any notice of the teamwork that's generally been used and considered acceptable practice as far as he knows from the beginning.

Dracos

[Brian]

Not much evidence of teamwork ... looks like the closest they came to proper teamwork was tagging in and out of a fight with a General.

[Dracos]

Dracos quickly looked for any information on Hadrick's sword.

Dracos

[Brian]

According to the annals of history, Hadrick's sword granted the strength of twenty men, shattered lesser weapons, destroyed armor, and glowed.  It was pretty keen.

Further back in history (and there's lots on Hadrick) the sword was evidently created by the Archonae for use in the final war -- it was the First Sword.  No other weapon was ever created in the history of the world before that blade, and its twin was the Last Sword, which the Archonae also forged.

Not much information is availible about the sword's evil twin, though.

Also an interesting note, Hadrick evidently journeyed to Soth on the wings of an eagle to claim the sword from an Eldest Brother whom he bested in a drinking contest.  That part's kind of hard to believe, though.

[Dracos]

Dracos pondered and decided to go look for Rez.

Dracos

[Brian]

The librarian puts all the books back away while Phil leaves the library and searches for Nathan.

[Brian]

Phil now moves to Masquerade.

[Brian]

After returning to the library to wait for Nathan, Phil finds that the librarian has returned everything that Phil had leafed through back to its proper shelf.

[Dracos]

Dracos skims over that area, looking for any books that seem to be dedicated to the crystals or famous magical artifacts in general.

Dracos

[Brian]

The closest thing that Phil can find is a small document that seems to be about Lorekeepers.

Apparently, there are two kinds of Lorekeepers, though.  There are the primal lorekeepers, who use the four elements of the world, and then the celestial lorekeepers, who use the more advanced concepts of the world.

It's kind of vague, and there's not a lot in it ... but it seems to indicate that the majority of lorekeepers are elementalists, while those few that have other abilities tend to be much weaker.  One does wonder at the validity of this report.