Kuludar sat back in his usual spot. On the floor, beside the fireplace. He was leaning against the wall, allowing the fire to drain some of the cold from his bones. His nose in a book, he hardly noticed the goings-on around him. It was unnaturally quiet though. That much did not escape him.
Dog-earring the corner of the page he was on, he looked up for the first time in hours. Yes, it was quiet. As a matter of fact, it seemed like there was no one there but himself.
"Strange..." he thought to himself. He placed the book carefully back into its place in his lightly worn bearskin pack and lashed it shut.
After tossing a couple more logs onto the fire, he stood up from his rest. His knees and back ached. He was still cold. His head was throbbing. And something felt... wrong. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something was amiss.
He walked over to the bar, and looked through the bottles lined up behind it for something to ease the pain. There wasn't much left. A half bottle of elven wine. "Never really cared much for that." Just a dribble left in a smaller bottle of brandy. "Hmm... not enough to make a difference." The barrels were empty as well.
He decided to check the cellar, maybe there was still something in there. Going down the steps shot new pain through his legs. Wincing, he held his lightstone near some of the barrels. There were holes chewed in them. Nothing left inside. The bottles were overturned on their shelves, and missing entirely from their racks. It had been sitting this way for a while, judging from the thick layer of dust that had settled across everything.
"This isn't going to do. Not at all," he muttered as he headed back up the steps. "Maybe I'll go out and find something elsewhere." He smirked as he remembered the last time he tried to make his own. Replacing brew barrels was not a cheap thing to do, and he wasn't about to buy another one.
He climbed the stairs up to the second floor and turned down the hallway to head to his room. Upon opening the door, he was greeted with a surprise. The room was in total chaos. The stand mirror was shattered. The basin of wash water was smashed. The mattress on the bed had been torn to pieces, and feathers lay strewn across the floor. "What? Who? When?" He stammered. The answers did not come to him.
None of his equipment was missing though. He double checked to make sure of that. Nothing else was missing from the room at all. This made no sense to him at all. What he did understand was that someone had slipped inside. Someone had broken the peace of this place. And someone was going to have to answer for it.
He strapped down all of his gear and bolted down the hallway, down the stairs, and grabbed his pack from the floor near the fireplace. He slung it over his shoulder and headed toward the door. He glanced back over his shoulder and frowned. There really was no one inside. He turned back to the door and stepped outside.
The forest outside seemed much darker than usual. A cold wind blew, stirring the branches of the trees. He could not sense any animal life around at all. Not a sound to be heard other than the wind in the trees. Something was definately wrong.
Originally posted on the old msg board by Kuludar
With her mind's eye, the ancient old wiza saw things were amiss as well. She had also noticed that, recently, her spells were not casting as well as they once were. At the time, she had attributed it to her age, maybe that she had forgotten one ingredient, or put too much of something in that had required only a pinch, but, looking back now, she thought that there might be more to this than meets the eye.
She looked around, noticing that her surroundings too, were in shambles, just like the young rangers abode. Moving slowly, her old bones wracked with arthritis, she made her way down to her supply room. To her surprise, she saw everything had been ransacked! Her potion bottles were lying on their side, some broken, with the precious fluids that were once contained therein dripping and drying out. And, it had only been a few hours since she had been working her magic here in this very room. Who or what was behind all this mischief?
Not being one to let things like this pass, she gathered her spell book, a few spell ingredients, some food and water staples together; and, slinging her heavy robe on her shoulders, she was prepared to embark on the long and sometimes dangerous journey to find the answers for this chaos.
And, she knew the answers were out there.........
Waiting~
orinally posted by Diametria
He headed away from the tavern, out into the forest. He still felt nothing but the wind beating down on him. Now that he was outdoors, he began to call upon wolf spirit to speed him on his way. Except there was nothing when he tried to call on it. Nothing.
"What in the name of Tunare is going on today?!?" he said aloud. The sudden sound of his own voice startled him. He decided to try some of the other magics that the Mother granted to him. None of them worked.
He felt naked without his magic, without his tracking skills. All he had was his armor and his thoughts, which were jumbled at the moment. He couldn't think clearly without the constant knowledge of what was going on around him. It was like half of his consciousness had been ripped away from him.
He tried to force himself to concentrate, but had no luck. All of a sudden he heard one voice in his head clearly. It was a sharp pain behind his eyes, and it said "Come to me Kuludar.. and I shall show you the TRUE power... power over nature rather than from it...."
As the voice faded, waves of agony washed over Kuludar, and he passed out.
orinally posted by kuludar
As the old wiza emerged from the tavern, she automatically clicked her journeyman's boots, for the little extra speed they would provide. Nothing. She clicked again, wondering how in the world her boots could fizzle. Again, nothing happened. Hmmm, maybe they needed cleaning...... Oh well, she could make it through the forest on her own speed. Next, she clicked her improved invisibility spell, knowing she would need to be hidden to get by some of the forests' inhabitants. No fizzle this time, just no invisibility. What was going on here? She quickly switched to her lvl 16 invisibility spell, knowing that sometimes lesser spells work when higher level ones failed. Ahh! Success at last. Now she was able to proceed with at least a little more confidence.
She made her way to the well worn path, listening intently for some sound of life in the forest. It was unnervingly quiet. She began running as well as she could; she was encumbered ! In her haste to find the answers to this malady, she had forgotten to pack the frost giant steaks that would have provided her with some much needed extra strength.
With sense heading maxed, she felt confident that she was headed in the right direction. There was a tunnel ahead. Strange, she could not recall this being here before, but there it was in plain view. She was well aware that her mind sometimes played tricks on her, so she passed it off as just that, and ran forward.
Upon entering the tunnel, she took one step back. She felt something, something very evil, a vile presence. Even darker than the tunnel itself, this presence loomed over her, choking her, engulfing her in darkness. Panic seized her. A non-melee hit her for 550 damage. Instinct told her this was not good. She immediately cast her largest dd spell. She saw the fizzle message as the darkness washed over her. Terribly wounded, obviously stripped of her magic, she turned and ran back toward the entrance. A quick glance at her icon box told her she had been dotted with doom ? gloom? Her eyes failed her, she could not make out the name of the dot. Her mind felt fuzzy. She was disoriented.
She tripped over something on the ground and fell, feeling a wave of nausea wash over her, as she, too, passed out...............
Originally posted by Diametria
Kuludar lay in a dark sleep-like state for a very long time. It seemed to him like weeks were crawling by. The whole time, the voice in his head kept repeating to him.. "come to me..."
Slowly, light began to seep back in around the edges of his vision, and the pain began to subside. He could feel the cold wind blowing again, a big improvement over the billions of tiny white-hot needles he felt pricking him before.
He tried to raise himself to a sitting position, but found that he still could not move. He could feel strips of something hard binding him at the wrists and ankles. He became aware of a swaying, heaving motion to the ground that he could not reason out. Suddenly, the swaying stopped.
His mind was still too clouded to think straight, but he could now see a little better. There was a grey blur rather than nothing at all.
He could hear a pair of low, scratchy voices saying something in a language he was could not understand, but there was something strangely familiar about it. They seemed to be arguing, by the way the tones of their voices were shifting.
Just as he was beginning to realize what was going on, his captors realized that he was coming to. A sudden blow to the back of his head put an end to his reasoning and sent him back to unconsciousness.
Originally posted by kuludar
The ancient old wiza, wise beyond her years, was dead.
Whoever or whatever the evil presence in the tunnel had done her in.
She seemed to be floating on a cloud, surrounded by brightly lit skies and thousands upon thousands of flickering candles. Wiza heaven? She cackled softly to herself, as she realized she had not died; she had been transported mysteriously into the Plane of Growth.
She looked up, seeing the beautiful face of her god, Tunare.
Tunare beamed a smile on the wizard, softly smoothing the tired gray hair away from her face.
Her voice was that of a thousand angels as she spoke.
"There is much evil in Norrath, Diametria. You have been a faithful follower, a true believer, and you must continue with the quest. There has been awakened a very vile presence, one who's power is immense. You must go back, gather your forces together, and defeat this being, returning him to the vast emptiness from which he came."
"Take with you this gift from me, a mere token of my love. It will stay with you always, protecting you from all harm."
"Be brave, my child."
With that being said, Diametria, the ODW, the ancient beyond years wizard, was whisked back into the land of Norrath.
But there was a lighter step in her gait, a new found cheerfulness in her heart. And, as she quickly found out when a mean greenie out of no where attacked her, her spells were working again.
Diametria smiled.
Diametria saved.
Originally posted by Diametria
"Hmm. This will be a good chance to show you what I mean," the voice said through the murk inside Kuludar's head. "I won't take a more active role yet, but here. Use the power I have given you. And wake up already, I didn't go through the trouble of tormenting you just to see you end up dead this way."
The ranger's eyes snapped open, all the cloudiness inside his head dispelled. He glanced around. He was bound to a tree. Bones lay in small piles on the forest floor around him. An enormous cookpot boiled above a blazing fire in front of him. His armor was in another pile next to the fire. And two green-skinned goblins were pretending to fight each other with his weapons.
He realized what the pile of emerald armor on the ground meant, and pure hatred raged inside him. Hatred stronger than anything he had ever felt. The goblins were going to die. He knew it. He tensed the muscles in his arms and legs, and with little effort pulled himself free from his bindings.
The sound of the cords snapping startled the goblins from their play. They rushed towards him. He began to cast a snare on them, to give him more time, but the magic felt different. Rather than roots springing from the ground to trip them up, they were engulfed by darkness. The goblins began to howl in pain.
"What the...." Kuludar had no idea what was going on. He decided maybe it would be better to think about it after he finished the goblins though. He had only his bare hands to kill them with. With hate burning in his eyes, he grabbed the closer one by the head in an attempt to snap its neck. The goblin writhed in agony the second Kuludar touched it, and dropped to the ground, dead. Beginning to get an idea of what was happening, he directed magic at the other goblin. He couldn't describe how he did what he did, but the magic pulled the life from the goblin and strengthened his own.
"This... it cannot be. No." Kuludar went over to his armor and began to get dressed in silence.
"So. What do you think, ranger," the voice sneered at him.
"Who are you, and why are you doing this to me?" Kuludar thought.
The voice replied, "You will see in time. Come to me, and we will discuss my plans for you."
"I will not serve you, not you or anyone else. Only Tunare!" Kuludar thought.
"You will come to me. You have no choice." And with that, the voice was silent.
Grimly, Kuludar finished strapping his armor back on. He set off towards the beacon in his head. He would find some way to restore his power.
Originally posted by Kuludar
The old wiza looked around, trying to establish where in Norrath she had been deposited by the great Tunare.
There was a great roar overhead; was that water? Moist earth beneath her boots, a layer of water above her head. Where in the world?
A memory snapped into her mind, a vision of a young ranger, his words full of excitement, telling her of a secret place, beneath the waterfall, encouraging her to run there now and see the discovery. She remembered following him thru the hillsides as excitement built in her as well, to discover for herself this place of wonder.
Following his instructions, she dove into the water, and swam toward the great waterfall. Keeping a watchfull eye on her air bar, she surfaced two different times before she found what he had been so excited about.
Underneath the great waterfall, there was an area of land, an air pocket if you would, where one could meditate and heal without the dangers of mob attacks from the land above.
She was here now. She quickly did an inventory of her bags: food, drink, few odd runes, some skill stuff. All seemed to be in order. She stood, stretched, and began to cast her shields in order to leave the secret place prepared and protected from any mobs that she might encounter. She felt a pulsating warmth down by her left leg~ something in the pocket of her robe? Placing her hand inside, she discovered the tiny token Tunare had given her. Shivering slightly as the warmth distributed itself throughout her being, she emerged from beneath the waterfall.
She headed toward the old wooden bridge, secure in the knowledge as she ran that she would now find some answers to the chaos that had enveloped the wonderful land of Norrath. This evil MUST be undone!
Originally posted by Diametria
The beacon forced out the awareness of everything else around him. He could feel it, pulling him deeper into the forest. He refused to use the tainted magic put into his head by... whoever was drawing him nearer. He couldn't figure out who would do something like this, or why, much less the how. How he had been filled with a dark knowlege. It was something that he'd never heard of before.
Summoning his willpower, he shut out the beaconing, or at least muted it somewhat. He tried to come up with a rational course of action, but was having trouble coming up with anything. Finally he decided that maybe the best place to start was with an experienced magic-user, or someone well-versed in the dark arts, to see if he could get a better idea of how to combat his unseen enemy.
He knew there was a quadrolith somewhere close, that would be a good place to start looking for a wizard.
Originally posted by Kuludar
