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Runtime	Break start
3h 36m	2h 09m

Episode 12: The Giant's Belt

We come now to the adventure of our Seeker's table, headed east from the city of Dol-Makjar, where last we left our adventurers. They had been brought to the east by none other than the Stone of Nightsong and its role in the destruction of the Palazzo Davinos.
Indeed.
For the events of the past several days have been pretty harrowing, I would say.

• The execution of Thjazi Fang (and a funeral following
• Occtis being pursued by his family across the city
• An ancient artifact of the elven people (stolen by Thjazi fang and his constant companion, Thimble, from the Sisters of Sylandri, far north in the Mournvale) pursued all the way to the very doorstep of his brother's home.

The stone no longer in the Fang family's confines, we found that it had been taken by the Tachonis family. To what dastardly ends we cannot possibly say, merely that we know those ends were foiled by the passionate, heartfelt, and sacrilegious ministrations of one Thaisha Lloy (who, for the first time in her life, begged a soul not to travel the paths of reincarnation; to follow the firelit way through the woods beyond) saying it was not the young lad's time.
Occtis, thinking quickly to remove the stone from his very soul, only to unravel in the Tenebral Reaches, instead reconstituting as something not alive under the careful hands of a fellow wizard of the Penteveral, Murray Mag'nesson, and the invisible knife of one Bolaire Lathalia (himself no stranger to being an unusual sort of being).
Occtis awoke in that moment with visions of horrifying aims beyond. The Tachonis family (a priestly house of the fallen Obridimian Empire and the destroyed god of the sun, Tansul) held a role opposite the Halovars. The Halovars being a family of light, the Tachonises a family of shadow, preparing for the journey through darkness to arrive in Exara, the promised paradise of the god of the sun. The Tachonises, like all the Sundered Houses, had to deal with the arrival of the Eternal Night, but seemed to have kept busy. Some rumors saying that they even had a castle in death itself.
Death itself, something that Sir Julien Davinos is only too familiar with (having watched his father, his lovers, his house die before the onslaught of the Tachonis, who announced aloud that on that very night, the Davinos and the Royce would fall). It seems that his pronouncement may have been premature, for in the last moment before Occtis unraveled, he heard the spectral voice of some predecessor of his family screaming "No." some horrifying act of magic foiled.
Still, your family dead, and those beyond Dol-Makjar, your sister, your mother, who can say? Indeed, word had already reached your family that your caravan had been halted at the eastern edge of the Dvalmar Pass. Who knows in how much danger you lie. You've already tried to skirt the Tachonis guards that you found at the Dvalmar Pass. Things dead walking once again, visions of a young orcish man, deep in some subterranean ancient temple of old Obridimia, connected somehow to the visions od nightingales, fairy song, and death, things perhaps either poetic or prosaic. Nonetheless, tried to teach this young wizard something in his last moments in the realm beyond.
A druid walks shepherding something dead and a man whose mind is bent towards revenge with a long shadow trailing behind him. We return to Aramán and the adventure of the Seekers.
At the far eastern edge of the Dvalmar Pass stand the miughty towers of Riesingürtle, a massive metropolis and the seat of the power of House Einfasen (one of the five Sundered Houses). Approaching it from a distance, you see the craggy summits of the Kavrosi Mountains and see huge architectural monoliths supporting vast, craggy towers. This city rests like a belt of stone and firelight. The wall at the western edge of the old Obridimian Empire. These stones were not moved here merely by might, but magic as well. It is, in so many ways, an answer to its sister city on the other side of the pass, Dol-Makjar, City of the Shield, Riesingürtle, the Giant's Belt. Two cities that for thousands of years knew only war and now know something that each celebrates far more:
Profit. Trade between these two cities.
As you can see, the mighty stone towers, the faces of those lords of the ancient Einfasen house, you see amongst the firelight also enormous, brass-handled bellows (their coverings in fine-wrought metal, covered in ancient runic script of old Obridimia with huge wheels and cranks). Not only portcullises and gates to rise and fall, but also cranks to call these bellows upon them. You look out and see scattered on the mountainsides around here the erosion of ancient winds (for indeed, Einfasen, known by some as the House of the Western Wind, was capable of calling up great storms and mighty clouds). Some say that their ancestors were giants themselves who lived aloft far int he sky. And it is those same winds you now feel as a chill breeze here at this high altitude, approaching vast and mighty Riesingürtle.
You see a gate before you, trade streaming in and through. There are some gate guards moving to and fro, mostly checking in with people, taking names. Very few carriages are being actually inspected. And of course, you're not traveling with any cargo. So you see that mostly people are giving names to the guards at the gate. As you approach, what do you do?