Mendings, Minor and Major - Ruthenia Truelove - 12/7/24
Aug 20, 2024 15:48:35 GMT
Andy D, Orianna Èirigh, and 2 more like this
Post by Ruthenia Truelove on Aug 20, 2024 15:48:35 GMT
I have refrained from documenting this series of events thus far for I am not proud of how I conducted myself during the tail end. That isn’t to say I regret the content of what was said; I meant every word without exception, that this plane should not have to suffer the influence of these cosmic interlopers, supposedly good or evil. No, I regret the manner in which I did so. I am an educated woman. 18 years in an Ilmateri monastery, over 7 years of necromantic and medical tutelage, 4 years in the military field followed by over 20 in academia and hospitals and finally a lifetime on the open road. My arguments should be considered, composed and rational. To reduce myself to a shouting wreck debases my very argument. I am so much more than that little priestess girl. I should be better than this.
And yet, it seems nobody else wishes to criticise the manner in which these Heralds have conducted themselves on our plane thus far, so I suppose it will have to fall to me, no matter how childish my outbursts become.
The endeavour began with a knock on my door. By and large people that aren’t named Dr Archie Haltuhr do not seek out my company for simple tea and conversation, so regardless of who it was I knew they would be seeking my services in one way or another. And who should walk through my door but Ms. Orianna Eirigh.
If I made it seem like I had a negative opinion of her beforehand, it was only due to the association with this heraldry business; she in and of herself was a perfectly competent adventuring companion and a good enough friend to at least make that Digs try to see some sort of sense. I on the other hand had clearly left a bad impression on her, likely from when I admonished Calla previously. I knew that the only reason she could possibly have to contact me would be related to Calla so I was perfectly willing to hear her out; she however was keen to keep the conversation as one sided as possible. So I let her vent her frustrations at me and for my troubles received an invitation to her residence. Apparently she had determined that now was the time to retrieve Calla’s soul. No other words were needed.
At the Eirigh residence I was reacquainted with some familiar faces; the congested dragon taming kobold Frigus, the disaster prone tabaxi kitten wizard Mittens and a young druid by the name of Levuka. I was also made aware that the cosmic traveller who we briefly encountered during a run in with The Infinite Staircase was in fact Ms Eirigh’s husband, or at the very least, live in partner (a matter of semantics these days for me but I know many care about the titles. It’s only a matter of time, anyway).
To make a terribly long story brief but equally as terrible, the Archwyrms are a group of nine draconic minor deities (they contest this fact, but again, semantics) who currently find themselves locked in an interplanar war with the Primordials, a set of four ancient elementals (whether I can classify these too as minor deities has yet to be determined). This is all well and good, little to do with us except that both parties have seen fit to involve parties of the Material Plane, a prospect that I cannot stand. The worst part is how they treat these ‘heralds’ as if they are some sort of lost family, which I can only interpret as a method of manipulation to keep them on side. Disgusting. If they used the proper terminology, that being conscripts, I might almost be able to respect them. Almost but not quite. I once considered whether I was being too harsh, but on reflection I shouldn’t need to give deities the benefit of the doubt.
I will proceed to make things incredibly brief because while there was a fantastical lightshow, ultimately the important part was that Calla’s soul was retrieved from Arcravine, the First Mountain’s container. The rest is just cosmic beings quarrelling among themselves. Strategy is the art of using limited resources to maximal effect. I cannot bring myself to be impressed with infinite power. For reasons unknown the fire Primordial is working alongside the archwyrms. And while Calla’s soul was captured, her corresponding archwyrm was berserk. Again, extraneous detail.
During the effort to dispel the restraints holding Calla’s soul my magic proved ineffective where my other peers succeeded. They each reported signs of witnessing a figure that could only be assumed to be Mystra herself. Wonders never cease in this frontier land. On reflection it is probably more fortuitous that I didn’t encounter her myself; for years I’ve often considered all the things I would tell to the gods if I were ever to encounter them, Mystra in particular given her connection to the weave, for if there would be anyway to relinquish the stranglehold that the divines have on divine magic, it would have to be through her. And as such, it wouldn’t do me well to encounter her unprepared. All things in time, I suppose.
Safely in a soul cage procured from Azherul, the archwyrm of death, it fell to us to convey Calla’s soul back to her crystalline body. An interesting prospect to be sure as this required us to unite our myriad forms of magic. It felt almost like the circle magics of Thay and for a brief moment, I felt I was back in the land I was once at home in, creating warforms with my prized colleagues. Weaving my ground based runes among druidic vines, stars and yarn(?) was an exercise for sure but we’d somehow managed to make it work. For my part I repurposed several methods for transferring souls. We wizards are woefully inept at retrieving a soul that isn’t immediately before us but the movement of souls once obtained is a particular specialty of ours; it's the foundational principle of higher order concepts such as magic jars, soul cages and clones. Still, an application like this is unheard of, the kind of thing that thesis projects are made of. You could never do such a thing in Thay; when a body is equally as valuable, arguably more so, than a life, why would you ever bother with resurrection when there are engines of death and destruction to create? Arriving in Thay was the best decision I made in my life, but that is very closely followed by leaving.
I digress. Our once in a lifetime magical bodge actually worked and we beheld what could only be described as a minor miracle; the crystalline form broke and in its place was Calla, whole and with something new, but most importantly returned. The others surrounded and embraced her. I stood back. They are the ones that designated each other as family. I was merely a colleague, a contractor that was begrudgingly called upon when no other would do. And yet she still beckoned me forth to join them. I almost relented on two grounds. The first being professional boundaries. I do not play favourites and would like to think that I would have put in equal effort for a total stranger as I did for her. I am not a hero, a saviour or a martyr; I am a professional. The second was an insidious thought that I had throughout this trial, that of premeditation. The girl plans, and there is no way that she hadn’t been planning to break this contract for some time. If our interactions and indeed her interactions with all others were to that specific end, then unfortunately I’d only be able to take that as something just shy of manipulation. I thought I was done with the shadow games when I left Thay and to say I’d be disappointed to be dragged back to those days by someone I otherwise respect would be an understatement.
I let the first point go as I concluded that if I don’t play favourites then degrees of familiarity don’t matter. The second I will address in due time.
Restoring Calla and breaking Arcravine’s bond proper also had the added effect of freeing her designated Archwyrm, Kesserax from her temporary insanity. An interesting ploy to be sure, to use one minor deity to break free of the control of the other, if extremely irresponsible and reckless, but I know only too well that sometimes you simply have to play the hand that you’re dealt. I thought that but it seems the two are on similar terms to the others. Disappointing but not entirely surprising at this point. And then this minor divine cloaked in the feeble facade of humanity had the gall, the utter cheek, to thank us. For ‘returning her herald’.
The presumption that we went out of this way for her sake!
I was about to let her have several pieces of my mind but in this life, troubles come in threes and peace can never last, as proven by the tree that now found itself lodged in Ms. Eirigh’s ceiling.
It appeared the star dragon’s master stratagem of throwing a downed but clearly not subdued Arcravine as far away from her as possible, thus taking him outside of her threat range and allowing him sufficient time to recover and then vacate the Plane of Earth to enter our own plane was flawed after all. Again, those who want not for power will want for strategy. So it fell once again for us mere mortals to clean up this cosmic mess.
The battle was an untidy affair to say the least. Arcravine transmogrified Calla’s old familiar into a form resembling the descriptions of the tarrasque of lore, and similar to the fabled beast seemed near immune to magic. I sent Nightshade to harass it for as long as possible but I doubt I accomplished much in the grand scheme of things. Ms. Eirigh got some good hits into both Arcravine and the pseudotarrasque, and the prior ward on her residence greatly aided in giving us space in which to act. The kobold fell in battle to the beast and his dragon just about kept its wits together and pulled him out long enough to be healed. Young Mittens however was not nearly so lucky and found himself swallowed whole, and was almost certainly dead long before we were through. The fate of many a wizard who finds themselves in melee range. I know it well.
Calla on the other hand found herself perfectly comfortable with it and rightly so, given that she had absorbed some amount of power from her herald Kesserax who was by and large inconsequential to the fight besides soaking some damage. She had attained flight and had some serious weight behind her spells, rivalling and in a particular case exceeding the best evokers I’ve met to date when she point blank disintegrated Arcravine to dust. Of course, that only served to send him back to the Plane of Earth, but it would work for now. The rest was in subduing the pseudotarrasque which fell in quick order, and thank goodness for that too, for I was almost forced to use my skills to heal Kesserax. These are mortal hands trained to help the helpless. Divines should make do.
The situation was sorted, but what did it leave in its wake? An entire street destroyed, family homes established for years torn apart in seconds. Damage to life was minimal only because the citizens of this town are so used to this song and dance already, this hold that planar beings and forces outside of their control have on them. Again and again I am forced to witness this same scene. Do not misunderstand me. I have fought in battle. I have killed. And I accept responsibility for the lives that were lost at my hand and the misery that caused. I have also healed. And when one devotes themselves to healing eventually one fails and blood once again lies on one's hands. I accept responsibility for this too. In both cases I have taken the blame. People acting for and against other people. It cannot even compare to the scale of misery that I have witnessed from disease, disaster, famine and cosmic beings. And we are just expected to cope. To accept that this is the way of the world, that there is nothing to be done, that there are forces with power overwhelming that will watch and do nothing at best, and actively make things worse. The best that we can do is curse our luck, or the stars, or the gods. Given that a player of this insipid war was in front of me, I went one better.
One wants composure when it comes to stating your case. What I should have asserted was that the toll of war would always be dealt to the weakest among us and that it was therefore utterly irresponsible to take on these ‘heralds’, especially seven who dwell in the same city. It was unfair to the citizenry and the administrative board of Daring Heights, who, unaware of the situation now finds itself inextricably embroiled in an entirely new incident only a year after the githyanki invasion. Toril is a large enough planet to factor this in. The planar cosmos is larger still with plenty of forces to draw upon. If ye be servants to the gods petition them for assistance from their empyreans and solars. There are no doubt plenty of mercenary companies operating in Sigil. If you must you could even hire yugoloths. So why does it have to be feeble mortal people? Are you too cheap for good labour or do you just get off on the reverence? I wouldn’t need to ask this of the Primordials, because they simply don’t care. These Archwyrms do, or at the very least, attempt to as best as they can, with lofty ideals and logic from on high that simply doesn’t translate to us born of clay and salt. So I needed her, this Kesserax, to stand and listen to me and accept her failure for what it was. No excuses. No arguments. No apologies.
Even as I write this I tremble with rage. Is it any wonder then that in the moment I was positively incandescent? How couldn’t I be? Standing there and giving us gratitude when she should have been begging for our forgiveness. The spark of anger had ignited, and I ignored the lessons of my youth to forgive and forget, the lesson of my adulthood to channel it and wield it as a weapon and the lesson of my later years to nurture it and use it as fuel for the future. I just let it be, and hurled it at her with full force. I could barely even get words out by the time I was done, but it seems that I at least was partially understood. The indomitable spirit of mortal beings goes beyond words, after all.
She at the very least made some effort at contrition, but then gave explanation that like it or not, the Primordials actions would have been visited upon us with or without them. While I concede that due to the relationship that Calla and Arcravine held that may have been an inevitability it still does not forgive the other heralds being embroiled into this situation, turning Daring Heights into the locus of this conflict and a target yet again. And from someone who has been on the battlefield, a war’s toll is your responsibility, regardless of who dealt the actual blow.
I also made it extremely clear that we didn’t do any favour to her whatsoever; that us saving Calla wasn’t in service to their war or to them but to Calla herself. Not as representatives of a cosmic deity but as friends, colleagues, adventurers. Mortals helping other mortals not for any higher objective or goal but because it’s what we want to do. She did not deserve to die without seeing her full potential. Nobody does. That is why I do the things I do. And that’s why these Archwyrms and Primordials need to, in the most emphatic of terms, fuck off.
I was done with her. Further words would be wasted and I now had more work to do. I wasn’t about to allow the paladins from the Order to start healing broken wrists without making sure they were properly aligned first. I deigned to let Calla recover with her other friends and once I was sure that my services were no longer required I retired to my quarters.
Ordeals, ordeals. I come to this land for a quiet corner to perfect my art and continue my research and I am met with nothing but ordeals. Fine, it is overcoming trials that one improves anyway, if the rest of my life is anything to go by. So fine. I will ingratiate myself in this insipid war, if only to bring it to a swift and uncontestable end so that both the Primordials and the Archwyrms can vacate themselves from our presence and release their hold on these Heralds. People are plenty exceptional enough without the influence of divinity. It’s that very fact that drives me. Beyond the fickle boundaries of good and evil, right and wrong, what I hate most of all is squandered potential. Anyone, regardless of species, of sex, of age, of any nationality, shouldn’t be denied their right to a full life. That’s why I work to the ultimate end of making resurrection a viable prospect for all, not just those who are born fortuitous enough to have the financial means, access to the vanishingly rare divine casters or the geographical closeness to the foremost adventuring hub on this continent. One too many children have died in these arms for me to be swayed from my task. And until the work is done, I must ensure that I am ready to repel threats against the people of the city I now call home. This is a place of limitless potential, and I must keep it so. Call it professional duty.
And yet, it seems nobody else wishes to criticise the manner in which these Heralds have conducted themselves on our plane thus far, so I suppose it will have to fall to me, no matter how childish my outbursts become.
The endeavour began with a knock on my door. By and large people that aren’t named Dr Archie Haltuhr do not seek out my company for simple tea and conversation, so regardless of who it was I knew they would be seeking my services in one way or another. And who should walk through my door but Ms. Orianna Eirigh.
If I made it seem like I had a negative opinion of her beforehand, it was only due to the association with this heraldry business; she in and of herself was a perfectly competent adventuring companion and a good enough friend to at least make that Digs try to see some sort of sense. I on the other hand had clearly left a bad impression on her, likely from when I admonished Calla previously. I knew that the only reason she could possibly have to contact me would be related to Calla so I was perfectly willing to hear her out; she however was keen to keep the conversation as one sided as possible. So I let her vent her frustrations at me and for my troubles received an invitation to her residence. Apparently she had determined that now was the time to retrieve Calla’s soul. No other words were needed.
At the Eirigh residence I was reacquainted with some familiar faces; the congested dragon taming kobold Frigus, the disaster prone tabaxi kitten wizard Mittens and a young druid by the name of Levuka. I was also made aware that the cosmic traveller who we briefly encountered during a run in with The Infinite Staircase was in fact Ms Eirigh’s husband, or at the very least, live in partner (a matter of semantics these days for me but I know many care about the titles. It’s only a matter of time, anyway).
To make a terribly long story brief but equally as terrible, the Archwyrms are a group of nine draconic minor deities (they contest this fact, but again, semantics) who currently find themselves locked in an interplanar war with the Primordials, a set of four ancient elementals (whether I can classify these too as minor deities has yet to be determined). This is all well and good, little to do with us except that both parties have seen fit to involve parties of the Material Plane, a prospect that I cannot stand. The worst part is how they treat these ‘heralds’ as if they are some sort of lost family, which I can only interpret as a method of manipulation to keep them on side. Disgusting. If they used the proper terminology, that being conscripts, I might almost be able to respect them. Almost but not quite. I once considered whether I was being too harsh, but on reflection I shouldn’t need to give deities the benefit of the doubt.
I will proceed to make things incredibly brief because while there was a fantastical lightshow, ultimately the important part was that Calla’s soul was retrieved from Arcravine, the First Mountain’s container. The rest is just cosmic beings quarrelling among themselves. Strategy is the art of using limited resources to maximal effect. I cannot bring myself to be impressed with infinite power. For reasons unknown the fire Primordial is working alongside the archwyrms. And while Calla’s soul was captured, her corresponding archwyrm was berserk. Again, extraneous detail.
During the effort to dispel the restraints holding Calla’s soul my magic proved ineffective where my other peers succeeded. They each reported signs of witnessing a figure that could only be assumed to be Mystra herself. Wonders never cease in this frontier land. On reflection it is probably more fortuitous that I didn’t encounter her myself; for years I’ve often considered all the things I would tell to the gods if I were ever to encounter them, Mystra in particular given her connection to the weave, for if there would be anyway to relinquish the stranglehold that the divines have on divine magic, it would have to be through her. And as such, it wouldn’t do me well to encounter her unprepared. All things in time, I suppose.
Safely in a soul cage procured from Azherul, the archwyrm of death, it fell to us to convey Calla’s soul back to her crystalline body. An interesting prospect to be sure as this required us to unite our myriad forms of magic. It felt almost like the circle magics of Thay and for a brief moment, I felt I was back in the land I was once at home in, creating warforms with my prized colleagues. Weaving my ground based runes among druidic vines, stars and yarn(?) was an exercise for sure but we’d somehow managed to make it work. For my part I repurposed several methods for transferring souls. We wizards are woefully inept at retrieving a soul that isn’t immediately before us but the movement of souls once obtained is a particular specialty of ours; it's the foundational principle of higher order concepts such as magic jars, soul cages and clones. Still, an application like this is unheard of, the kind of thing that thesis projects are made of. You could never do such a thing in Thay; when a body is equally as valuable, arguably more so, than a life, why would you ever bother with resurrection when there are engines of death and destruction to create? Arriving in Thay was the best decision I made in my life, but that is very closely followed by leaving.
I digress. Our once in a lifetime magical bodge actually worked and we beheld what could only be described as a minor miracle; the crystalline form broke and in its place was Calla, whole and with something new, but most importantly returned. The others surrounded and embraced her. I stood back. They are the ones that designated each other as family. I was merely a colleague, a contractor that was begrudgingly called upon when no other would do. And yet she still beckoned me forth to join them. I almost relented on two grounds. The first being professional boundaries. I do not play favourites and would like to think that I would have put in equal effort for a total stranger as I did for her. I am not a hero, a saviour or a martyr; I am a professional. The second was an insidious thought that I had throughout this trial, that of premeditation. The girl plans, and there is no way that she hadn’t been planning to break this contract for some time. If our interactions and indeed her interactions with all others were to that specific end, then unfortunately I’d only be able to take that as something just shy of manipulation. I thought I was done with the shadow games when I left Thay and to say I’d be disappointed to be dragged back to those days by someone I otherwise respect would be an understatement.
I let the first point go as I concluded that if I don’t play favourites then degrees of familiarity don’t matter. The second I will address in due time.
Restoring Calla and breaking Arcravine’s bond proper also had the added effect of freeing her designated Archwyrm, Kesserax from her temporary insanity. An interesting ploy to be sure, to use one minor deity to break free of the control of the other, if extremely irresponsible and reckless, but I know only too well that sometimes you simply have to play the hand that you’re dealt. I thought that but it seems the two are on similar terms to the others. Disappointing but not entirely surprising at this point. And then this minor divine cloaked in the feeble facade of humanity had the gall, the utter cheek, to thank us. For ‘returning her herald’.
The presumption that we went out of this way for her sake!
I was about to let her have several pieces of my mind but in this life, troubles come in threes and peace can never last, as proven by the tree that now found itself lodged in Ms. Eirigh’s ceiling.
It appeared the star dragon’s master stratagem of throwing a downed but clearly not subdued Arcravine as far away from her as possible, thus taking him outside of her threat range and allowing him sufficient time to recover and then vacate the Plane of Earth to enter our own plane was flawed after all. Again, those who want not for power will want for strategy. So it fell once again for us mere mortals to clean up this cosmic mess.
The battle was an untidy affair to say the least. Arcravine transmogrified Calla’s old familiar into a form resembling the descriptions of the tarrasque of lore, and similar to the fabled beast seemed near immune to magic. I sent Nightshade to harass it for as long as possible but I doubt I accomplished much in the grand scheme of things. Ms. Eirigh got some good hits into both Arcravine and the pseudotarrasque, and the prior ward on her residence greatly aided in giving us space in which to act. The kobold fell in battle to the beast and his dragon just about kept its wits together and pulled him out long enough to be healed. Young Mittens however was not nearly so lucky and found himself swallowed whole, and was almost certainly dead long before we were through. The fate of many a wizard who finds themselves in melee range. I know it well.
Calla on the other hand found herself perfectly comfortable with it and rightly so, given that she had absorbed some amount of power from her herald Kesserax who was by and large inconsequential to the fight besides soaking some damage. She had attained flight and had some serious weight behind her spells, rivalling and in a particular case exceeding the best evokers I’ve met to date when she point blank disintegrated Arcravine to dust. Of course, that only served to send him back to the Plane of Earth, but it would work for now. The rest was in subduing the pseudotarrasque which fell in quick order, and thank goodness for that too, for I was almost forced to use my skills to heal Kesserax. These are mortal hands trained to help the helpless. Divines should make do.
The situation was sorted, but what did it leave in its wake? An entire street destroyed, family homes established for years torn apart in seconds. Damage to life was minimal only because the citizens of this town are so used to this song and dance already, this hold that planar beings and forces outside of their control have on them. Again and again I am forced to witness this same scene. Do not misunderstand me. I have fought in battle. I have killed. And I accept responsibility for the lives that were lost at my hand and the misery that caused. I have also healed. And when one devotes themselves to healing eventually one fails and blood once again lies on one's hands. I accept responsibility for this too. In both cases I have taken the blame. People acting for and against other people. It cannot even compare to the scale of misery that I have witnessed from disease, disaster, famine and cosmic beings. And we are just expected to cope. To accept that this is the way of the world, that there is nothing to be done, that there are forces with power overwhelming that will watch and do nothing at best, and actively make things worse. The best that we can do is curse our luck, or the stars, or the gods. Given that a player of this insipid war was in front of me, I went one better.
One wants composure when it comes to stating your case. What I should have asserted was that the toll of war would always be dealt to the weakest among us and that it was therefore utterly irresponsible to take on these ‘heralds’, especially seven who dwell in the same city. It was unfair to the citizenry and the administrative board of Daring Heights, who, unaware of the situation now finds itself inextricably embroiled in an entirely new incident only a year after the githyanki invasion. Toril is a large enough planet to factor this in. The planar cosmos is larger still with plenty of forces to draw upon. If ye be servants to the gods petition them for assistance from their empyreans and solars. There are no doubt plenty of mercenary companies operating in Sigil. If you must you could even hire yugoloths. So why does it have to be feeble mortal people? Are you too cheap for good labour or do you just get off on the reverence? I wouldn’t need to ask this of the Primordials, because they simply don’t care. These Archwyrms do, or at the very least, attempt to as best as they can, with lofty ideals and logic from on high that simply doesn’t translate to us born of clay and salt. So I needed her, this Kesserax, to stand and listen to me and accept her failure for what it was. No excuses. No arguments. No apologies.
Even as I write this I tremble with rage. Is it any wonder then that in the moment I was positively incandescent? How couldn’t I be? Standing there and giving us gratitude when she should have been begging for our forgiveness. The spark of anger had ignited, and I ignored the lessons of my youth to forgive and forget, the lesson of my adulthood to channel it and wield it as a weapon and the lesson of my later years to nurture it and use it as fuel for the future. I just let it be, and hurled it at her with full force. I could barely even get words out by the time I was done, but it seems that I at least was partially understood. The indomitable spirit of mortal beings goes beyond words, after all.
She at the very least made some effort at contrition, but then gave explanation that like it or not, the Primordials actions would have been visited upon us with or without them. While I concede that due to the relationship that Calla and Arcravine held that may have been an inevitability it still does not forgive the other heralds being embroiled into this situation, turning Daring Heights into the locus of this conflict and a target yet again. And from someone who has been on the battlefield, a war’s toll is your responsibility, regardless of who dealt the actual blow.
I also made it extremely clear that we didn’t do any favour to her whatsoever; that us saving Calla wasn’t in service to their war or to them but to Calla herself. Not as representatives of a cosmic deity but as friends, colleagues, adventurers. Mortals helping other mortals not for any higher objective or goal but because it’s what we want to do. She did not deserve to die without seeing her full potential. Nobody does. That is why I do the things I do. And that’s why these Archwyrms and Primordials need to, in the most emphatic of terms, fuck off.
I was done with her. Further words would be wasted and I now had more work to do. I wasn’t about to allow the paladins from the Order to start healing broken wrists without making sure they were properly aligned first. I deigned to let Calla recover with her other friends and once I was sure that my services were no longer required I retired to my quarters.
Ordeals, ordeals. I come to this land for a quiet corner to perfect my art and continue my research and I am met with nothing but ordeals. Fine, it is overcoming trials that one improves anyway, if the rest of my life is anything to go by. So fine. I will ingratiate myself in this insipid war, if only to bring it to a swift and uncontestable end so that both the Primordials and the Archwyrms can vacate themselves from our presence and release their hold on these Heralds. People are plenty exceptional enough without the influence of divinity. It’s that very fact that drives me. Beyond the fickle boundaries of good and evil, right and wrong, what I hate most of all is squandered potential. Anyone, regardless of species, of sex, of age, of any nationality, shouldn’t be denied their right to a full life. That’s why I work to the ultimate end of making resurrection a viable prospect for all, not just those who are born fortuitous enough to have the financial means, access to the vanishingly rare divine casters or the geographical closeness to the foremost adventuring hub on this continent. One too many children have died in these arms for me to be swayed from my task. And until the work is done, I must ensure that I am ready to repel threats against the people of the city I now call home. This is a place of limitless potential, and I must keep it so. Call it professional duty.