The Marches of Edonis

by G. R. Cooper

  "So, what do you think?" he asked, leaning onto the top of a stone merlon with his left elbow.

  "The ley lines are good. Really good," she said almost to herself, nodding. "This place would serve nicely." She seemed to ponder for a moment.

  "What do the lines do?"

  She shrugged, "They allow me to focus my magical energy. They give a bonus, not only in spell power but in experience earned."

  "Why haven't I heard about it?"

  "It's really a night Magus thing. Our magic really takes advantage of long periods of focus. Concentration. That allows us to really build up the power of our spells before launching them." She smiled, "For example, Plane Travel. If I just launched the spell right now, off the cuff, I could travel to another plane for a little while. A minute or two. Then I'd pop back here."

  She turned toward Wulfgar, "But if I really focused on the spell, for a long time, I could transport our whole group for hours, or days even."

  "Focus a long time?"

  She nodded, "The longer the better. For a long group transport, it would take, at my level at least, days if not weeks of focus."

  "Shit," he muttered in wonder.

  "But that's where this place comes in handy. You don't have to do all of the focusing at once. I could spread it over time, even months. And having a spot here, on these ley lines, where I can create a ritual space, would reduce the time it would take."

  "Ritual space? Like pentagrams and candles and such?"

  She nodded, "Something like that, yeah. That's why a Magus of Night is always on the look out for someplace like this."

  "So you'll take it?"

  "Mmmhmm," she nodded happily. "I'm just glad nobody else has claimed the spot."

  "Wouldn't matter," smiled Wulfgar, "it's part of my, uhm, realm." His eyes seemed to un-focus, looking into infinity, as he brought up the control menu. He selected the keep, then added Soulcatcher as the owner.

  "There you go, it's yours."

  "Thank you, my liege," she chuckled dramatically, bowing.

  He thought for a second, "Would I be able to use something like this?" He thought that his new room at the top of the larger keep in the village, would make a good wizarding spot as well. He had no idea how to go about assessing the ley lines, but figured that Catcher would be able to.

  But she shook her head, "Only works for night specific spells. Like, I couldn't focus my Fire Shot spell before using it. That just factors in your level and checks for the reagents required. That's kind of a morning thing, by the way, all of their branch specific spells require some kind of resource that's consumed on usage, but just because you got the reagents doesn't mean that you could use any of their spells."

  He nodded, "Is there anything specific like that for evening? So far, I just have the two spells, one of which takes reagents."

  "Not that I've heard of," she shook her head. "Evening is, no offense, a more kind of generic magic. You have a much wider breadth of spells, but they're not as powerful, individually."

  "No offense taken," he laughed.

  "But those variety of spells do come with a greater ability to directly effect individuals. Morning's spells are more focused on nature, night's on weird, metaphysical crap. I mean we all have access to a lot of the same low level spells for attack and defense, but even some of those can have path specific differences."

  "Such as?"

  "Such as the familiar skill. Night and evening, from what I can tell, match up. We can only have one, and we have to get it into the red first. Morning can have multiple familiars, but they are limited to only being able to get a familiar that's within a few levels of themselves. And they sort of have to earn its trust. Kind of a like a tamer in that regard. So a high level morning mage can have a bunch of familiars, but they're all within a few levels."

  "And the one you want to get, an, uhm ..." he looked down at her, trying to remember what she's said.

  "An imp," she nodded, "Yeah, they're kind of night sorcerer monsters. One of those would greatly increase my power."

  "So how do we get you one?"

  She looked a little surprised, as if considering the new situation's impact on her goal. "Well, we'd have to plane travel, first of all," she shrugged, "I mean technically you can run into an imp anywhere, but they're pretty rare except on one of the levels of hell that is their home. So, I could focus on a plane travel spell here until it was powerful enough to take our entire group through to hell," she looked into the sky, calculating. "We'd probably want to be able to go for at least a few hours. To make sure we had enough time to get in, find one, and capture it before coming back."

  "Can you end the spell at any time? To bring us all back?"

  She nodded, "Yeah, but if I end it early, we can't loot our corpses. Insurance doesn't cover items lost in plane travel."

  "Good to know. We should probably equip based on that. Leave all of our uber loot here for that trip." He thought for a moment, "Does that apply to bound items?"

  "Don't know," she admitted. "Best to play it safe."

  He nodded.

  "So, what else can I do for you? To get you setup here?"

  "I'll need some items to setup the ritualized space. I've got most of it, but I still need a rarer item."

  "Like what?"

  "The list is long. I'll need one item that's kind of hard to get. A magical reagent. Most of the stuff on the list is necro kind of stuff. Foul. Evil."

  Wulfgar raised his left hand, extending his index finger high, "Hold on a sec," then he reached into his pack and pulled out an item.

  "Something like this?"

  "YES!" she exclaimed happily. "Where the hell did you get a Heart of the Revenant?"

  He just smiled and shrugged his shoulders innocently.

  Wulfgar returned to the inn and found himself in the middle of a stand-off. He'd left Catcher in the small keep to begin the ritual process with the understanding that as soon as she'd established herself there, she would begin focusing, preparing for the plane travel that the group would take to try to find her an imp. He'd made doubly sure, first, that her ability to close the plane travel - to return the entire group - was instantaneous on her part. Wulfgar had already decided to play it as safe as he possibly could; Catcher would be under notice to end the spell the instant the group looked to be in any kind of trouble. Until they established what was going on with resurrection, caution would be his byword.

  But that was probably a month away. There was plenty he had planned to keep himself and, hopefully, his friends busy in the meantime. A long list; but at the top was trying to figure out what was happening in front of him.

  Just inside the doorway to the tavern were half a dozen or so agitated dwarves, couched and crouched for battle. Standing in front of their half circle was Lauren, both hands raised in supplication. She was looking from dwarf to dwarf, smiling at each in turn. Behind her, Tim stood glowering; towering over the little blond blacksmith.

  "Tim!" yelled Wulfgar. "Back up." He sighed in relief as the troll did as ordered.

  The largest of the dwarves turned to face Wulfgar. He looked Wulfgar up and down.

  "Why is he," the dwarf jammed a stubby thumb over his shoulder, "listening to you?"

  Wulfgar smiled broadly, "Well, first of all, I'm in charge here. Second, he's my friend."

  "How can you be friends with that? With a troll?" the dwarf's voice dripped with a combination of surprise, disdain and disgust.

  "The same way that I can be friends with you," smiled Wulfgar.

  "You are marked as friendly," admitted the gruff little guy, "but I still don't understand. It makes no sense. Humans and trolls can't be friends."

  "You'll just have to take it on my word that this human is. And, by the transitive property, so are you."

  The dwarves growled a little at that. Wulfgar feared that he was pushing too far, too fast.

  "Look," he began, spreading his arms, "know, know, that I truly am a friend to the dwarven folk. Trust in tha
t and trust in me. And trust enough to know that this single troll is also my friend. On my honor, he will not harm you or yours. I vow it on my life."

  "You have pledged peace with the Dwarven folk. Your reputation with them has increased to High Esteem. You are now a Dwarf Friend."

  "Your reputation with the Elven Folk has fallen. They now hold you in suspicion."

  Wulfgar smiled outwardly, but groaned inwardly.

  Whatever you do, you can't win all the time, he thought. Maybe he could declare his friendship with the first Elf he met. He shrugged; that problem would present itself eventually. There was nothing he could do about it now.

  "I am Wulfgar," he said, "Laird of Marchstone." He extended his right hand.

  The dwarf nodded, "Snorri," he took Wulfgar's forearm in his hand and Wulfgar grasped his in return. "Prince Snorri."

  Wulfgar shot his Viking friend a look and for once Snorri didn't seem inclined to make a smart-ass comment or joke.

  "Well met, my prince," nodded Wulfgar, looking back into the dwarf's eyes. "Long may our peoples prosper alongside each other."

  Prince Snorri nodded, his companions bowed and the NPCs in the sparsely populated tavern room cheered happily.

  Wulfgar's relief was rapidly overshadowed by planning as he worked through the possibilities of this new situation.

  "My prince," he began, "can we speak. Just you and I?"

  Wulfgar looked across the little table in the corner of the tavern's common room as the dwarf prince chewed through a deep fried turkey leg; the already large drumstick gargantuan in the dwarf's hand. After gnawing a huge bite off of the bird's leg, he dropped it back onto the pewter plate on the table in front of him, wiped his large hand across his beard, then picked up a tankard and drained it in one quaff of the ale within.

  "Will your father agree?" Wulfgar asked.

  Snorri nodded.

  "The king has long wanted an agreement with the humans in this valley, but there has been no one with the authority to grant one," he nodded toward the human, "until now." He held up his mug. The server - awed by the Laird and the Prince - rushed to replace it.

  Wulfgar looked to the larger table. His friends were keeping the Prince's companions good company. Tim, once again, stood silent, forgotten, in the corner. Catcher was, obviously, not there. Wulfgar ran his eyes over the crowd. RaNay wasn't there either. Nor Schwartz. Bear was curled underneath Lauren's chair. Wulfgar shrugged mentally. He wasn't worried that RaNay - Shannon - would leave without letting him know, but it was a bit odd that she was foregoing the opportunity for a little social day-drinking.

  I'll have to see if I can either acquire or invent Champagne for her. Then she'll never leave.

  He smiled and nodded.

  "I agree," said Snorri.

  Wulfgar was brought back to the present, he ran his perfect recall back a few seconds; relived and caught back up on the conversation. Snorri had presented a plan in which the dwarven kingdom would provide a small army of their workers that would work to mine the untapped veins in the range that formed the eastern border of the valley, just behind the village. In return, the village would receive half of the ore.

  "I agree," said Wulfgar, "but on one condition."

  The dwarf looked at Wulfgar shrewdly, "Yes?"

  "I need your people to first help me make this valley defensible."

  Snorri raised one eyebrow, "How so? You're already surrounded, for the most part, by steep mountains."

  Wulfgar nodded in agreement, "For the most part. Yes. But there remains at least one weak point. One area in which my people lay open from invasion."

  "Yes?"

  Wulfgar nodded again, then began spelling out his plan to the dwarf lord.

  Wulfgar looked around the table at his friends. The dwarves, happy, had left the hour before; to return to their kingdom which lay in the mountains to the west. Wulfgar had learned that in the root of the largest mountain, directly west of the village vale, a large door was carved into a cliff face that gave access to the dwarven kingdom. As new allies of the kingdom, Wulfgar or his representatives would be allowed entry.

  Wulfgar laughed a little to himself - he wondered what would happen if he sent Tim as an envoy.

  He had also learned that the wood to the northwest - to the north of the dwarven mountain kingdom - lay the realm of a particularly nasty wood-elf king. When Wulfgar had first mentioned the need for a defense, Prince Snorri had assumed that Wulfgar was referring to the verge that lay into the elven forests. He'd tabled that decision for a later date, more concerned with the eastern approaches, as he'd explained to the dwarf.

  "Well, what do you think?" Wulfgar asked his friends. All except Catcher were gathered once again within the tavern. He had explained his plan to her, and had just finished explaining her role in the plan to the rest of the players. He had also presented his thoughts on what the dwarven artisans would be creating.

  "I'm in," said RaNay quickly. Wulfgar looked to his old friend in gratitude. Even outside of the game-worlds they'd shared, she always had his back. He was especially grateful since his plan didn't really have a specific role for her that allowed her to develop her skills. She would remain just a friend; supportive as always.

  "It sounds interesting," said Corwin. "I think I might give it a shot for a while."

  Wulfgar had explained that as part his ability to establish specific buildings within the area, he could also expand on existing structures. Corwin had been intrigued at Wulfgar's suggestion for him - Corwin would be ensconced as the "owner" of the table games that he would place within the tavern. Wulfgar had guessed that Corwin's Fortune score would be put to good use. Neither of them had enough experience within the world to know if that would translate into more favorable house odds once players began gambling at the tavern. Wulfgar had, if he was honest with himself, only grabbed at that role as a method for keeping Corwin in the town. He still assumed that being grouped with the lucky player would serve to influence all of their activities. He thought that Catcher's agreement to remain played as much role in Corwin's decision as anything else.

  He looked to Lauren. He'd offered her the ownership of the currently empty blacksmith shop. He pledged that she would be provided all of the raw resources she needed to advance her skill-set. The dwarves, only interested in the more valuable ore that they'd be mining within his territory, had readily agreed to giving Wulfgar the iron, tin, and other metals that they considered worthless in return for only a percentage or two increase in the gold, silver or more valuable minerals that may be found within the range. Wulfgar considered that fair exchange since the dwarves would deliver the "scrap" directly to Lauren's shop. She would have all of the material she needed in order to raise her skill and equip whatever future forces Wulfgar might be able to gather.

  Lauren returned his smile and nodded. She was in.

  Wulfgar looked to Connor; he'd been worried about what he could offer the Ranger that would entice him to be a part of his group, permanently. He had, he admitted to himself, formulated the plan on the fly, almost as he'd presented his idea to the tall red-head. Wulfgar had been gratified that Connor had so readily agreed to use the village as a base of operation and move into and explore the elven forest kingdom to the northwest. Connor had assured him that he would be happy to try to establish good relations between Marchstone and the as yet unmet elves.

  Wulfgar looked to Snorri and smiled; the Viking had been nodding enthusiastically throughout the presentation. The big man was up for anything, as long as it was new. The fact that the plan felt more than a little to be rebellious appealed to his adventurous side. Wulfgar had never doubted that Snorri would want in, and his friend hadn't disappointed.

  Still smiling broadly, Wulfgar looked to the last spot around the table.

  To Rydra.

  The little man, who Wulfgar had begun to think of as his mentor in this world, just smiled sadly and shook his head.

  "What can I do to sweeten the pot?" asked Wulfgar.
He and Rydra had moved back to the corner table where he'd presented the alliance to the prince. He smiled across at his friend, willing him to change his mind. He tried to think of a more specific role that Rydra could play in the village, worried that the man felt left out; there was nothing for him along the lines of his skill-set like there was for the others.

  Rydra just shook his head again.

  "Nothing, I'm sorry."

  "Pretty please?"

  "Not even with sugar on top," laughed the little thief. "Look, it's nothing to do with you or what you're doing here. It sounds like a great plan. Really it does. It just doesn't track with any of my goals."

  "Remember," shrugged Rydra gently, "what I've always told you. What I want to do in this world. I'm here to relax. To enjoy the retirement that I couldn't enjoy before I died." He laughed, "Setting up our own little fiefdom, likely to draw the ire of the king to the east, is not what I'd call a relaxing way to spend my golden years."

  "Besides," he continued, "remember the benefit I got from the rat-folk. Once a week, they'll lead me into any building in Edonis, where I can loot to my heart's desire. That does nothing for me here, and," he shrugged and smiled ruefully, "if I didn't have a week to burn after that last time, I wouldn't have even come on this little adventure with you."

  Wulfgar nodded.

  "I mean, I love you man," said Rydra, "but I'm not about to join you in what is more or less a declaration of war against King Clive."

  "That seems a bit melodramatic," said Wulfgar defensively.

  "Does it? You're taking over a town that was within his sovereignty. You've made an alliance with another kingdom, for god's sake. Really, what would you think if you were Clive?"

  Wulfgar thought for a moment then nodded, "Yeah, I get that. But, really, even given everything I've told you, do you still think that Clive didn't set this up?"