The Rangers have disappeared. Nickar has gone with them. Enquiries with Ivar Forkenbeard, whose halls at Ringrond are linked to their base by a teleport ring, suggest that whatever happened was not entirely a surprise to the Rangers. There had been some sort of recall message and those Rangers who had been in Ringrond suddenly left. The Ring is no longer operational. Eggo who also has a teleport ring reports the same.
Grettir and his companions attempt to enter the Ranger base in the Hall of the Mountain Kings. They spend a couple of hours in the tunnels before Paradoxides realises there is something odd about the passage of time and recommends that they abort their efforts. When they return to the surface, they find that 17 days have passed. Whatever has happened to the Rangers, it is plain that there is some sort of temporal anomaly separating them from any outside interference – at least by mortals.
Hypotheses abound as to what must have happened. Some posit some intentional act of sacrifice by Nickar and the Rangers to prevent an existential threat to the world; others suggest that one of the notoriously powerful but erratic magician’s spells had had unexpected consequences; some saw the hand of the XX Legion; some thought that they might have discovered something in the Hall of the Mountain Kings and bitten off more than they could chew; others speculated on the return of the Ogri. That all the Northern Rangers had been recalled to base prior to the event, meant that they had at least some prior warning of something. Grettir finds himself irritated that no-one amongst the Rangers had thought to inform their allies of what was going on.
Grettir prays to Osiris for guidance and is mildly surprised to receive a fairly straightforward response to his oracle. Osiris bids him find a Phthet of Ptah – a holy artefact of the ancient God of the Void. Visiting the rather dusty and ill-kept temple of Ptah in Chittagong, a rambling, sycophantic High Priest eventually informs him of three places that their records suggest had a Phthet of Ptah at the time of the Fall. They were: Ushkedir, an imperial city on the border between the Empire and the barbarian lands of Atlanea; Byzantos, the ancient Imperial capital, now known to be a haunted ruin full of orcs and much worse; Lydius a rocky island in the uttermost East about which almost nothing is known.
An initial consultation with Londur and Kjalmark, Atlaneans who farm lands granted to them by Grettir in South Sequarl, paint Atlanea as a hopelessly hostile environment for any outsider to navigate – as well as being on the other side of the world. However, Ubaron is an Atlanean and can teleport. There are places in the main settlement of Atlanis that he thinks he can visualise well enough to teleport to. He equips himself and with a pop disappears. When he returns sometime later, he looks a bit dishevelled and has plainly been in combat. He reports that he has identified a better place for a teleport just outside Atlanis.
(F23a) Paradoxides secretes himself away in Basi and immerses himself in study for the next three months. asking deep questions about Time and how to manipulate its passage.
F-23
OE Date: April 694
Characters: Grettir, Paradoxides, Wilf, Ubaron, Girindor NPCs:
Real World: Late 2002 ; Where: Marsden
See also Salrod’s Diaries