Mounavernor spent some time in Melkalund recovering from his journey to Idia'Sheola. He mentions a “disturbance” in his soul and a curse on his magic: blighted from the dreadful time there. His time of healing was in the palace of Jubales Muou, a Dreamweaver in the service of no other. One who was independent of all worldly whim, who bowed only to the power that slept until the final night in the abode of dreams.
Mounavernor dwelled in a land of softly blowing snows that seemed to hold dominion in Jubales' palace. There he took solace in the embrace of eight-armed women, supped at a table seated with saints, gods and demons; drank from the waters of a fountain formed in dreams made crystal and mended. He writes of the time in an almost awed fashion, filling several paragraphs with the wonders of glass trees, starlit skyscapes and wondrous things both magic and mundane. And in time, when he took his full of healing, he went back into the world; or so he writes, to face its troubles, its transgressions and its pain.
Word came to him of his old companion Bealwuel; it burst into his dreamland and drug him back, resisting all the way, into reality. Bealwuel was a scarred companion of many an adventure, able bodied still but bearing the marks of (un-) successful crawls to places such as the Skull Tower, Tumble Walls, the Tomb of Ghue-amara and the Laps Lazuli Gate of Speared Faith. He had lost his life in the Skull Tower and found it again in the arms of the Silver Lady. Buelwuel took up her banner and walked his way through the horrors of the Tomb of Ghue-amara, cleansing its dark legions with the power of his faith and the magic of his shield brothers. It took its toll of his body and mind, as did Tumble Walls and the other places. The last adventure snatched his limbs from his body, tearing his arms and legs from torso like they were but slips of paper and shattered his faith like glass on an unholy altar dedicated to a journey of no return. Time heals many things, though, and even to the bereft comes the strength to walk the length of the journey that is life and to see its end, be it fair or foul.
So when the cycles of darkness opened a portal in the heart of Bealwuel’s adopted home, he once again stepped on the path he hadn’t taken since his fall from the service to the Bright Lady. Fetid and foul, things poured from the tear in dimension their scrofulous hides ridden with the darkness that creeps out of the shadowed recesses of the hell.
Strapped to the back of his only son, limbless Bealwuel met them, hard faced and resolute. His son was equally tempered and when the waves of horror fell on them, the last any saw of their presence was the son wielding Bealwuel’s burning blade and Bealwuel shouting words of encouragement from his back.
The messenger finished and Mounavernor looked away. Gazing out a window, he looked upon the snowy peace outside. Long he looked, plumbing the depths of his own soul then he made a choice.
So it was that Mounavernor left the peace of Jubales’ abode and in quick time found his way to a small camp near the once peaceful Vale of Athiqui in southern Khorsar. There he found friends long unseen and new ones. Lost Raiko, foresworn but filled with such honor that had outlasted the end of two worlds. Keizerin, her sharp tongue stung like acid and still the power of her voice was welcome. Bested only once, she had song duels with demons, wrestled riddles with Sphynx and once wooed the stars in the sky of a distant world into a conjunction that opened the door back home. Edrun was there with his black axe, Aefimir, the magic within his body shining forth from the 888 shards of stone embedded in his skin and more, many more. Heroes and heroines all, some friends and others enemies, but they were all together for a sole purpose: the retaking of the Vale of Athiqui.
They struck right for the heart, at the portal that yawned open to form this darkness. The hand that took up the pen for Mounavernor falters here: it is plain in the writing. So much of the saga of the battle that ensued and the famous charge that birthed two songs is irritatingly glossed over. Only one brief note is given in passing. That of the song “The Charge of Nineteen into the Face of Hell”. Those who were there say it gives a good rendition of what happened. The song seems to portray “the awful and sublime grandeur of that trot into nightmare”.
For good reason, perhaps. When they reached the portal that spewed forth this night, Mounavernor, Aefimir, and Nabhan (wielder of the Peacock Twins of Destruction) dove directly into it! The other side was a dismal landscape full of squamous creatures that exploded into frenzy when they plunged through. Here the portal was the gaping maw of some chthonic beast and they stood in its teeth. Without thought, Mounavernor and Aefimir unleashed the deep pool of their power, exploding every magic spell they knew in a cannonade of destruction right down its throat! The result was chaos and carnage and as the beast died. Nabhan kept them safe with his twin blades. As the great beast breathed its last, in its maw they could see the gate to home fading away, its power dying with the great beast.
While the horrible beasts gathered around them, Mounavernor triggered his trump card and brought forth a shard of the Stone of Ntheisborie. All three grabbed the crystal. Even as its power activated to tear the dimensional fabric to reunite with the motherstone, the creatures charged! Nabhan fought them with one blade while Mounavernor and Aefimir kicked and punched to stay free of their grasp until the stone tore through the dimensions to home. Bleeding but still alive, Aifimir forced himself through the opening to the motherstone, and Nabhan followed, but Mounavernor went down under the charge of three creatures. They kept hold of the stone but creatures began forcing their way through as well. One of the guardians of the motherstone, realizing their peril made a horrible choice. Raising his blade high, he smote Mounavernor’s hand holding the crystal, shearing it away at the wrist! The rip sealed and the last sight of Mounavernor was his bloodied face, back dropped against the darkness enveloping him.
Mounavernor obviously gave Idia'Sheola its name after the people he encountered there, or perhaps it should be more appropriately said "joined" there. Mounavernor mentions the name in his book but then segues into how he had spent some time "off" from world jumping "to rest up". He casually mentions a foray into the Hell Wurm Fens of Arduin, calling it "a hellish morass of heat, sweat and humidity; a knot of adamantine sinew bulging with the miasma of life and equally thronging with an insatiable hunger rivaled only by the dread gray lizards beyond time". He spends some time depicting one of the more accurate descriptions of a Dragonwurm in writing, enchanting the reader with an idea that he may have seen one quite close up—closer than is perhaps safe!
Mounavernor lingers on a few other things, namely some research he did in Talismondé concerning the Howling Tower and a side sortie with his old companion, the (Chorynth) Baron of the Flaming Palisades Elisetti dne Outhor. Still, he moves to the point at last, re-engaging the world / people he named Idia’Sheola. The shift is sudden, as Mounavernor shifts gears to talk about a seven to nine year period in Melkalund, where he spent most of his time transiting between the city and the Sun Moon Wood. He was investigating one of the higher points within the wood, named Matyr’s Doom. A focus point for many cults and prominent religions, he was interested in it less for its religious aspects than its ability to potentially open volatile nexus points. While he studied it for some time and included the major cults and their finer (and less than salient) points in his studies. An event that changed his information gathering into active participation occurred during summer solstice. While watching the ritual of the jumpers, Mounavernor was excited to see shafts of light play across the mound from his position, bathing the jumpers in luminescence glory as they leapt into open air. Some seemed to disappear while others fell to a (supposed) gory afterlife! He takes time to note his overwhelming excitement and use of magic to scrutinize the event, testing some of his newest arcane power, spells he had forged to plumb the depths of knowledge behind nexus. His eagerness and lack of situational awareness was also his bane. So caught up was he in researching the nexus he failed to notice its hand dropping over his position. Only at the last instant, when the light of the nexus fell about him like bouncing sparks cast from the forge of Heldoré.
His translation was painless but poignant; Mounavernor’s memory is of falling a great distance and of an eventual impact. His return to consciousness was slow but as painless as his translation. The impact of his awareness, however, was much more moving than the heights he had fallen. He looked upon himself and was shocked, for he wore not the form of his birth but that of an androgynous being. His skin was colored in shades of pale milk and gray green, with crystals embedded in his hands, chest, forehead, cheeks and around the eyes. The shock was as powerful as his realization of the loss of his magic. In its place beat a resonance almost as powerful, a paean of cogency born in the subsonic harmony of the gemstones embedded in the foreign body he found his own.
Mounavernor glosses over much of what was in Idia'Sheola. His obvious difficulty with the change is apparent and his lust to return home and to his own form is evident in every word and turn of phrase. He blurs the information, using a few cheap paragraphs to cover his discovery of the Idia'Sheola, the once star reaching and nexus walking civilization and their unique life view. He mentions only briefly the Dances to the Concordance, the Twirling of the Spheres and the Song of Epochs. Instead, he concentrates on the unfathomable time that passed while his entire being was bent on wrenching the resonance of crystals embedded in him into a harmonious cry of power that could send him back to his own.
That he achieved it is evident for he ends speaking about finding a way to achieve this desired resonance and begins talking about shuttering himself in the darkest room he could find in Melkalund. The shock of return and reorientation was difficult, he says, and he mentions only in passing his regret (obviously not too overwhelming) that he did not spend more time delving into the civilization and knowledge of the Idia'Sheola.
Mounavernor spent two year recovering from his disastrous time on Urlabur. Discovering when he returned to Khaas’ green fields that his magic was all awry, he retired in disgust and weariness for almost a year on the Mountain of Iliek-Kiran. He stayed with the Azure Order of Chindenadon, mystik monks dedicated to spiritual transcendence through the powers of the arcane. His contemplation was disturbed by his old friend Breaja, who is a misbegotten mix between a Khai-Shang, Kobbitt, Hawkman and something weird. The result was something upright, human looking except for the fine pelt of fur, feathering around the head, neck, shoulders and lightly around the joints; thick curved horns that protruded from his back and arms and glassy black eyes much like shark eyes.
Mounavernor writes that Breaja came to him with tales of a white city, tall and high in the sky, carved from a single mountain made entirely of pristine snowy white marble. Mounavernor, stung with his previous venture into a nexus, ignored him. Or, at least, managed to do so for most of the following year until out from exasperation at Breaja’s persistence, he agreed to go. He bluntly admits to not wanting to go until he heard about the sky. Its aquamarine hue with a triple sun, one perpetually three-quarters eclipsed by a great moon, another a dim greenish ball and the last a bluish burning fire, never quenched on the horizon. It’s a tale from his childhood, told to him by his father with a sky so described. His father painted it in wonder and it was one of the spurs to take him world hopping.
The trip to the nexus that opened to this place was some distance away but seemed easy to enter. Breaja had already done so several time and had some information on the place already. He called the place Waoroah, after some writing he had found within the great white city. Breaja led Mounavernor to the Giant’s Cup and tossed the great rolls of rope he had carried with him into it. Scaling down the ropes, they went to near the extent of the long ropes before Breaja indicated one of the splits along the side. Mounavernor used the stone trays formed by condensation as a walkway to go within and soon found himself navigating stalagmites. It didn’t take long before he found what was the nexus, a strange incongruously located shaft of the purest white marble, glowing with black runes carved out in a trapezoid shape. He mentions turning to Breaja and incredulously asking him how he found the place. Breaja shrugs and tells Mounavernor about his two-week chase to run down a blue stripe mane and how he ended up slaying it in the Giant’s Cup.
The gate’s runes are in Eldarin, though strangely accented. Mounavernor deciphers their secrets and verifies the way of opening it even as Breaja relates his own information to the fact. Before long they are past the silent majesty of the stone portal and step into the aquamarine sky and he sees the white city with his own eyes. It is exactly as Breaja described, with great pillared archways that lead everywhere and yet always see to open to the sky.
Why he speaks of many wonders, such as the wine that pours from fountains and springs everywhere, perhaps the most moving or fascinating is the large metal beast that moves with neither wheels or feet and races over, under and through the city, turning sides and upside down at times as it goes. It makes not a sound but is very fast. Mounavernor pondered on it many times, just as he did the fate of the people who must have dwelled here. Their tongue to too difficult to decipher (he shows several examples) but he found many notes from previous explorers.
Descending from the mountain seems next to impossible. As one descends their weight grows by great amounts and soon it is too such an amount one can barely move, even with the power of magic. After more than six attempts, Mounavernor gave up and chose to ponder on other wonders hidden here.
Urlabur is one of the more bizarre worlds Mounavernor traveled to in his nexus jumping. Everything here is smaller than their equivalents in Khaas and while the world seems of reduced size, it (according to statistics Mounavernor seemed confident in quoting) supports around 45 million people. The people of the land are about two feet tall, very pale skinned and highly developed physically. They have a sophisticated agriculture and the use of bronze tools and weapons. But it is not the strength of their limbs that sets the Ur (as they call themselves) apart. The blending of their social and mental communion is what imparts their strength. The Ur have a communal psyche that allows them to grow more intelligent as their numbers increase. Individuals are quite dull while tight knit groups are powerfully keen of intellect.
Visitors will find that all the towns of the Ur are built to the same pattern. The capitol of their sprawling (to them) empire is Oto-toomo and is a walled city built on a large plain. Only two miles square, it contains a population of 5 million. Streets radiate out from a large open gallery in the middle of the city, which hosts the 45287 gods of the Ur. The gallery is the center of religious life for the Ur. The houses—all nine stories high—are painted reds, greens, and yellows.
The Society of the Ur is based on a hierarchy of orders, each distinguished from another by the color of their clothing. Ur flock to one another and they rule by council and quorum, which due to their odd mental communion allows for strangely intelligent and speedy decisions. The highest quorums wear red with colored belts to indicate their function and rank. Magistrates and religious members wear blue and don belts and sashes to show what they do. Poets, writers, and orators wear white while merchants, laborers and those involved in commerce wear dark green. Doctors, miners, those who deal with the dead and warriors wear black, streaked with blue if they are religiously based. The rest wear yellow and are considered the lowest of the low.
Mounavernor had little praise for this place and was very uncharitable towards the inhabitants. His entrance into Urlabur was leisurely compared to many other gates but the reception was as opposite as the entrance. Mounavernor typically donned on gray clothing or similarly drab colors when nexus hunting. This was one time when neutrality backfired, as his Ur reception committee was quite hostile at his entrance into their world. The gate was partially to blame as was his mode and color of dress. The nexus into the world was particularly spectacular. It was conjunction based and tied to the star sign referred to as “The Bride”. Mounavernor happened upon the documents describing in detail how to open the nexus at an auction in Melkalund and researched them for 16 years while waiting for the right time frame. The nexus responded to the ritual he performed, framing its dimensions out of multicolored popping sparks, resembling the yawning mouth of some great beast. Hesitant, Mounavernor stepped through the fireworks into an even more spectacular pyrotechnic display of snapping fire, lights, and roaring bursts of sound. He tumbled into a small group of Ur, drawn to the fiery display. They took in his appearance and reacted with great violence, greeting his unsteady and wobbly form with a mob of fists, knees and elbows. It was only his blood that saved him. Kicked and bludgeoned near senseless, it was the spilling of his vermillion blood (a sharp contrast to their yellow-orange gore) and its painting of their limbs that gave the mob of Ur pause. Red was the color of their highest and its sight brought rationality back from the edge of senseless violence.
Mounavernor glosses over some of what happened next, primarily focusing on the fact that he was accepted, not as a god but as a minion of one. He was given freer rein but made to conform as well. He quickly found the Ur immune to his magical ability and most of that magic (as he knew it) failed to work at all here. He warns that all visitors must accept the local costume and moral customs. The Ur eat no meat or fish nor consume any fluid found in a living being (from milk to blood). Food is quite plain though the wine here is quite rich, mellow, and very alcoholic.
While given quite an amount of freedom to roam and interact, Mounavernor was warned their laws are rigorously enforced. Murder is punished by shutting up the murderer in the body of the victim for five days. Rape is punishable by being eaten alive by Tlech (a lizard that resembles a longer limbed, twelve-legged crocodile), whose lack of teeth (they have “gums” of cartilage, sawing and masticating to break apart any food) makes the death long and painful. Most other crimes are punishable by hard labor in the mines or farms.
Mounavernor had little to say about the fauna of the place, other than they have a miniature jade elephant that is highly revered. Tlech are everywhere and are kept like men keep dogs, serving most of the same purposes.
The Ur cremate their dead and keep them in the great bronze bulbs that decorate their tallest towers and buildings. Only those guilty of criminal trespass are allowed to decompose or rot on the top of the earth.
Unhappy with the place, Mounavernor waited and watched the stars for several years before seeing the proper conjunctions that signaled the re-opening of the nexus. His escape, for a flight for freedom it was indeed (they had finally decided to add him to their museum and he spent the last 4 years caged like an animal) was as spectacular as his appearance, though for different reasons. Sundered from his magic by the place and held like an animal in the latter years infuriated him beyond all control. Striving with the utmost of his fiber, Mounavernor eventually was able to master some of the most minor magiks he knew. Having ample time to note the construction of the Ur and armed with a few small magiks, Mounavernor made his escape as the conjunction heralded the return of the nexus. While the Ur focused on the pyrotechnics that heralded the gate’s return, he used one of the few magiks he had mastered here to weaken the bronze bars of the cage holding him.
Making an escape was simple: he scaled the outside of his museum to gain access to the even taller tower next to it. Climbing to the top, he used one of the large bronze tools up there to tip over the burial urn and send it spiraling into the street. The cloud of ash that ballooned up terrifying them and Mounavernor built on this by moving from tower to tower until a pall lay over the city from the ash dumped out from the urns.
Mounavernor glosses over a lot of what transpires, simply saying he navigated his way through the chaos to the pyrotechnics of his gate and leaped within it. His contempt for the world leaks through everywhere in his writing. He ends his recitation of Urlabur by declaring it as a worthless and decadent world, not worthy of thought or even journey to again.
We continue with the journeys of the Elven Warrior Mounavernor duLesmque. His next brush with the nexus was almost his last one. While on the Plains of Paranon seeking information on the Tomb of Gold and Shadows from certain restless Elven spirits, he heard word of a nexus that had sprung full form right in the center on New Kamarden. Intrigued, he turned away from his fruitless bickering with ancient spirits to get their secrets to investigate this new nexus instead. He heard about it long before he saw it. People were both worried and intrigued by it, as it formed between three stone buildings, where the new roof tiles installed on each reflected the light towards the road. The light actually impacted and slivered off into individual rays as they struck one another, sending burning shards flying in all directions and causing a horrible blast of heat and stench. At night, the area dies out, leaving bits of glass like fragments everywhere. While hot to the touch initially, they cooled rapidly. One child, enamored with the impacting rays of light watched it enthralled, ignoring the repulsing stench and heat. He later babbled on about the strange world he could see through the light as his mother wiped down his scorched skin.
Some thought the glimpses of a world were prophetic visions while others realized it as a nexus. When Mounavernor showed, the breaking effect of the light rays impacting one another had lessened while the gate they created was much clearer. A cult had started, seemingly overnight to the thing and its adherents keened, shrieked, and rolled in the hot fragments of light as they fell free. Disgusted and amused, Mounavernor watched both the gate and the people for a day, quickly surmising this gate would not last long. Finding out it had dimmed in light and power since its first forming, he figured it would cycle to its end quickly, if not disturbed.
Still, he was intrigued. The glimpses showed him a mint-colored sky with odd shaped clouds wreathing impossibly tall mountains. The mountains looked to be made out of something other than stone, and that, more than anything, called out to be investigated. Mounavernor attempted to approach the nexus but was violently warned away by the religious zealots. Not wanting to kill them and jeopardize his good position with the authorities, he relented. Undaunted, he waited until night and then used his ample magic to sneak past their sleeping bodies and waited for the first light of dawn. When it beamed down its first light and the gate started to form, Mounavernor leapt through much to the horror of the religious zealots.
Their anguished shrieks ringing in his ears, Mounavernor quickly found himself rolling down a very hard surface and gasping for breath. His ears popped and bled while his eyes felt swollen and painful. Mounavernor careened into something hard and managed to scramble to a stop, realizing with great panic that he was half-hanging over some great abyss. Concentrating on just getting some air, Mounavernor closed his eyes and gathered his focus. Power came slowly as if very far away but he managed to form an iris of air around his head.
His body felt strange and alternating heavy and weightless. Mounavernor found that he could move if he concentrated fully, but only very slowly. The glare was frighteningly horrible and Mounavernor fast realized that at least two suns beat rays down on this world. The gate was massive on this side, he realized. It was also a long way above him on the mountain he stood upon. It didn’t take long to identify what the mountain was formed from either. Iron. Raw iron ore. It had all kinds of textures, ranging from utterly smooth to a rough, bumpy bark-like covering. The mountain and its neighbors seemed to extend endlessly, piercing the clouds into a haziness that severed sight.
Mounavernor trekked upwards slowly, keeping his focus on the gate. It looked like a miniature sun of its own on this side. With no way to track time, he had not idea how long it took, only that it completely exhausted him. Beyond caring what danger it involved, when he came close enough to the near blinding glare he plunged in headfirst.
His landing was as rough leaving as coming in. He dropped into a shrieking mob of people, kicking, yelling, and fighting. In mere seconds he was beaten black and blue and thought he would die before mustering enough power to wrap himself in a hard shield that rebuffed blows. It didn’t keep him from being buffeted beyond his control, however. The zealots were fighting with Borthos soldiers and crown alike, tearing and savaging at them like wild dogs. Pressed beyond control, Mounavernor heard the lieutenant’s command to run them down and burned as much mana as he could to transport himself about a mile out of the city. Laying in the muck outside of town accompanied by a pair of silver tailed rats, he listened and watched the riot.
Mounavernor noted his chagrin at being so stupid as to enter a nexus unaided and realized it might one day be the end of him. While he did presumably die when Moon Mind rapidly cycled to an entropic end, one can never know with the nexus. The New Kamarden gate was destroyed forever in the rioting. Still, Mounavernor recorded the name of the world as Ironfang, for its tall, iron mountains that bit at the sky.
Mounavernor duLesmque found an interesting surprise when he investigated the next rogue gate to another world. He chronicled in his journal that the nexus Whisper Kiss was among the most unexpected. Fresh from a rest after his conquests in Morvaen, he turned away from his previous plans to investigate an odd region off the Bone Wood in Arduin called "The Midden" for his friend, Lord Conn Ghodhund. In the last year, this region of woods had claimed more than 90 lives from the ranks of the lord’s retainers and another two score or so adventurers. Curious as to the strange way they disappeared, Mounavernor turned away from his path to investigate the circumstances. Possessed as he was with a deep knowledge of the nexus, Mounavernor was not surprised to find an active nexus gateway as a portion of the mystery. What astonished him, (and almost took his life) was finding the nexus was a floating (!?) one, disconnected from any landmark or geographic feature he could fathom from the surrounding area. More intrigued by this nexus than any previous one, he watched it for four years, only taking a break to make a short jaunt to succor some friends that were in dire peril at Skull Tower.
He chronicled the strange behavior of the nexus in his spidery handwriting, remarking frequently in the three volumes these notes consumed, that it was so unlike any other he had encountered, read or heard about. It absorbed (for the lack of a better term) living creatures of any size larger than a rat, but left trees, vegetation and other things it came into contact with intact. Its path appeared random at first, but after some observation, it was obviously confining its travel to the roughly the proximity of the Midden.
Puzzled in many ways, Mounavernor tested it with magic, prodded it with inanimate objects and even convinced Lord Conn to let him release two convicted robbers and murderers marked for death into it. When its path seemed apparent and predictable enough to track, Mounavernor dug up several areas on its path, looking for some underground reason for its trek across the Midden. It was during one such excavation that the Whisper Kiss abruptly switched course, absorbing the person on watch for its gentle zephyr that was its trademark "kiss", and sunk down over the excavated hole. Realizing in horror what had happened when several workers around him abruptly disappeared, and feelings its trademark "kiss", Mounavernor desperately barked out the words to Brekerdoan’s Dimensional Juxtaposition just as its "kiss" wet its lips on his body. He recorded later in his journal about feeling a bewildering twist of dizziness followed by a great tearing that jarred him from head to foot; and eventually, world fading darkness.
He woke with pain shooting up his left leg and covered in a sheen of perspiration. After quickly taking stock of the situation, Mounavernor breathed a sigh of relief when he realized he was still on Khaas, but horrified to find he was in the Green Hell! Unsure of why he landed in this location and nursing a thoroughly shattered left leg, he slowly but diligently searched the area. Verdure covered stone littered the area where he had woke and mountain spires pierced the cloudy sky in the north, barely seen through the vine shrouds of the light-sealing canopies created by the giant trees the were everywhere.
By the light of the next morning, Mounavernor reconsidered his original plan to stay in the vine littered ruins until he healed well enough to travel. Finding the ruins were of Oos’al origin heightened his curiosity, but fighting off the myriad inhabitants that wanted to devour him that night (typical of the Green Hell…) left him no doubt he would either be dead or digested within a few nights. That starlit evening had shown him more wonder and terror than he could have imagined, as he came to the realization that he had not totally escaped the grasp of the Whisper Kiss. As the stars drenched the ruins in their light he watched in mixed horror and intrigue as a slowly pulsing dimly lit pathway wiggled and wound through the ruins and the surrounding trees. Each pulse seemed to cause it to shift slightly, the whole moving sluggishly in response. In places, bits and pieces or whole carcasses of (and in some cases still living) animals and people dropped from these pulsating paths of light. A horrific epiphany struck Mounavernor: a vision of the paths as the digesting intestines of some great unseen thing. One whose "openings" were nexus that "devoured" living things and transported them here, moving them towards some final digestion!
Shivering in the horror this vision evoked, its flesh-creeping shock was compounded as he realized some of the denizens of the jungle were keen to the occasional droppings of this unseen thing and came to devour the droppings that littered the ruins. The worst of which, a Spiga of very massive size and scarred with a jagged "bolt" design on its carapace he hid from in a cold sweat.
Hardened to his findings by the next night and growing desperately short on magical power to defend himself, Mounavernor torturously traced the twining and twisted whorls of the unseen creature’s intestines. He eventually found a relatively intact vault of basalt and black mithril, heavily carved with grotesqueries and the Oos’al script. Here the bulbs of the intestines were the thickest and he could see the still living and dead matter slowly coursing towards some destination that lay within the vault.
Seeing no other course, he tread his way carefully, cringing at the first accidental brush with one of the intestines, at once repulsed and fascinated to find it rubbery and solid. He made his way below, treading on it where no other way existed, until he found the origins, or at least its entrance to our world. Deep below, beyond the spiral passages of Oos’al construction was a circular room, complete with massive stones topped with black ivory tusks. Inlaid circles of black ivory bedecked with yellow pearls and chromatic metals lay behind them on the round walls. From one such was stuffed the great intestines of the weird unseen creature.
It took the rest of the night but he deduced from the arrangement of the tusks on the obvious altars that they formed the runes that opened the nexus gates. With great dread and a little excitement he altered the arrangement of the black ivory tusks, disrupting the runes, and watched in satisfaction as it sundered the nexus created from its power.
The intestines snapped out of existence instantly and everything within them disappeared as well (later, Mounavernor heard that there were torrents of digested and partly digested matter that rained down in odd places all over Arduin, Khorsar, and other countries. He notes it absently in his journal while talking about this strange nexus portal, as if he was curious, but repulsed enough not to find out for sure).
Mounavernor found time to test the other possible portals, but could not unlock the secret arrangements of the tusks to open any portals. In time he re-opened the other portal, more from curiosity than need. He watched for a time, gazing upon a savage and strange world, a moonless one with a green sky. He surmised from its inhabitants, only great dinosaurs, roamed its lands in a grand dance of survival of the fittest.
In the end, necessity did force this hand, as the Spiga he had previously encountered, eventually found him in the Oos’al vault below and he was forced to flee its assault using his remaining magic. While recovering from his hasty departure in the town of Hill Haven roughly a month later, he recorded in his journal that he had pieced some the Oos’al together to learn the name of the bizarre world was Torsh. He also wondered when or if the Whisper Kiss nexus would some day return, or something akin to it, to once again devour and digest the unsuspecting.
Eonju is the next world covered in Mounavernor duLesmque's journal. He spent some time here and all but outright says he used it as a retreat when life was too complicated or difficult to bear. He described the world as a rustic paradise, reminiscent of the tales of the first home of the Faerie, before they came to Khaas (in myth) via the First Faerie Circle so long ago. He referred to it little else and even hid the access to its location, describing very little about it beyond its sense of peace and tranquility. He did mention, with a certain amount of bitterness, the presence of some who sought to destroy the pleasing atmosphere of the world. Referenced as Miminak’s Brood, Mounavernor spent some time describing how he and a few trusted comrades dealt them a crippling blow and all but stompted out their numbers there. With blatant happiness, Mounavernor also noted how he ended up meeting them on Khaas as well, and managed to deal them several devastating blows, particularly in Morvaen and Falohyr.
We present another look into a world from the book titled, "Journeys of an Iterant Elf", a discourse by the Elven Warrior Mounavernor duLesmque. Mounavernor duLesmque spent only a short amount of time on the next world. His name for the world was Cidrii’l and he recorded it was a strange place. One that reminded him of the desolate view of the Dark Plains when he was there hunting for Trelve following the Adjuren Disaster. The world is cloaked in the shelter of night for very long periods. Life on the world only seemed to wake during short time of the day before returning to another long night. A great reddish orb dominated the night sky, like the pupil of some great god whose vision was ever on the horizon. Even when the greenish sun cast oblong rays across the land, this blood colored eye gazed down on Cidrii’l. A great diorama of stars burned out of the black tapestry of the night sky though their display seemed washed out by the light of the great red (gas giant) that dominated the skyline.
He recorded that little seemed to grow on the strange world and those things that thrived in the darkness were, "not fit for Elf, man, or Dwarf". What goes for vegetation on the world is sickly and pallid. It also usually is interested in making a meal out of whatever else is lurking about in the darkness, lit only by the red cast of the "eye" that stares forth in the nighttime. The glassy remains of tall building and great scars on the land point to some great catastrophe or war in the past. What little remains of what once dwelled there is an enigma; where little remains but strange glassy buildings and places where the land looked like it had ran like a wax candle held to close to great heat. The enigma was one which Mounavernor was happy to leave behind, or so he recounts.
What little is left about this world in his journal is about the nexus he used to venture to it. Its opening in Khaas was in the Brass Mountains, on the Viruelandia side. The small vale that housed it was very narrow and difficult to find, much less traverse. Mounavernor only located it through a stray description of the small valley in the library at the College of Magik in Talismondé. It described the valley as, "the home to giants of mind and power. In their footsteps ring the strength of eons and the world shattering strength of the gods." Intrigued by this scrap of information, Mounavernor found his way there, but beheld little there to fortified such words. Still, when he used the Eye of Kuudrōs, he found a nexus situated with the dimensions of a statue in the vale. The statue was worn horribly by time and the elements, and little was discernable about it outside of its relatively humanoid shape. The nexus lay within the opening of what was likely hands, though they were little more than blobs at this point. Still, it led to this strange would and was a two-way nexus. The opposite side on Cidrii’l was little more than a solid glassy heap from which inner lights and shadows played.
We present another look into a world from the book titled, "Journeys of an Iterant Elf", a discourse by the Elven Warrior Mounavernor duLesmque. This world is one known as Manveinoe, and is the next of the worlds from that volume we will reveal over the next couple of weeks.
Manveinoe is an ocean-covered world of archipelagos where Humans are found only in small numbers and never with any great power. Most of the races of Khaas are present as well as dozens of other beings with no analogues. The sky holds no moon but is instead a vast diorama of stars and nebulae. So humbling and awe-inspiring is this sight that strangers who first arrive to Manveinoe are overcome by the spectacular display of their nights. Mounavernor duLesmque had little to say about this world outside of how he found it quite wondrous and seemed taken in enough by the starscape to extol about it for many pages. He also spent several pages on the plight of the Elves in this world, who were greatly diminished from their usual glory. His outright disgust for their lives bleeds through heavily in his writing and it is obvious he believes they are destined for extinction out of their pallid cowardice.
Mounavernor duLesmque records the location of the gate as deep within the Great Sunless Forest, some five miles eastward from the Crystal Peacock River in Arduin. The crumbling vine covered ruins of an Elven settlement lie about the gate, surrounding it like the portal was the hub of their community. Mounavernor duLesmque theorizes the settlement likely traded through the gate in the past, perhaps sometime before the onset of the Nexus Wars. The gate is a giant stone protruding from the earth incised deeply in with the Elven tongue. The script speaks of the Piadahr, the Singer in the Woods and relates his quarrels with the demigod Lobos. Hidden in the whorls and twists of script are the directions to awaken the stone and open wide the portal to Manveinoe.
On the other side, the sight meeting the curious is a great ocean and sky. Outside of the looming cliffs on the small (3-mile) island, there is little to see, as even vegetation is scarce on the isle. Still, should one make it from the isle to the west, there is an isle known as Glovendus, home to the villages of Siermê and Kuelmô and the small house of the wizard Chuik Starshaker.
The latest offering from is about a book titled, "Journeys of an Iterant Elf". This volume is a discourse by the Elven Warrior Mounavernor duLesmque. Harking from the Glitter Grove in Arduin, this Elven Warrior made a name in Khaas for his exploits time and time again in his homeland of Arduin. Lesser known but no less impacting is his contributions to exploring rogue and established nexus gates. His book was written just prior to his exploration of the nexus known as Moon Mind but sadly never finished as he disappeared within and never returned. Said gate rapidly cycled to an entropic end and Mounavernor was considered lost if not dead.
The unfinished volume was sold with the rest of Mounavernor’s belongings by mistake at an auction in Melkalund. Angered, his family actually burned down the auction house in Melkalund, something that ended with two duLesmque dead and them owing the city and crown a staggering 200,000 GS in damages! The volume’s trek is unrecorded after its puchase, though it eventually found its way into the private collection of the wizard Thumulot “Sagenwixen” Skorvd, a somewhat reclusive if recognized wizard in Viruelandia. Thumulot lost the volume to Kiret, Corelwen, and Jusef, three Arduinian thieves who were following a lead on the lost Blue Opals of Arduin. Finding "their way" into his library, they "confiscated" this book and several other things in the name of the crown and made their way back to Talismondé. When they were "detained" by crown authorities, the volume was one of things confiscated. King Elric held the volume for several years in his personal library but later turned over the unfinished book to the duLesmque family to Dourvekal duLesmque a short nine years before his (King Elric’s) disappearance.
Several worlds are mentioned within the unfinished volume. Zharvanex is the first of these worlds we shall reveal from the pages of this volume. Over the next couple of weeks, we shall reveal the other mentioned within the pages of Mounavernor duLesmque’s journal. You can find each new world hosted in the tales of known gates section of this website. Once we have displayed all these worlds, the whole shall be complied into one downloadable file.
Zharvanex is a world of huge, global empires, most similar to ancient earthly Rome at its height. The differing empires quarrel, fight, and politic with each other in a highly confrontational and aggressive manner. Most of the races seen in Khaas are found in this world and they have a powerful magik and religious base equal in strength and facility as Khaas. The gate to Zharvanex is in the Prismatic Mountains, on the Arduinian side. Physically , it sits in a slender valley with sheer sides, lightly vegetated and containing a thin, 888 ft. dropping waterfall of crystal pure liquid. At the pool created by the water are two large behemoth trees that dominate and shade the area. The water drops on the outstretched branches of the two trees and creates a rainbow hued mist that drips from their canopies. While Wobra and Quarl like to nest in the area, the valley is otherwise quite placid.
The rising loop of the largest tree’s roots form a rectangle sized portal, sized for a wagon or a fat Ogre. The mist creates almost a curtain or sheen over the area and the tree’s root is set in a girdle of smaller roots at the base. This open dimension is the gate and it is historically very stable and two-way. Previous adventures to the other side have carved profanity, dates, and numerous other things all over the roots and tree. The other side of the portal opens to a wind tossed stretch of rocky beach and high surf. The portal on the other side is incised into the sheer rock face and is formed in the shape of an arched doorway with a Human maiden on the left, and a tangle of snakes resembling a hand on the other. A unit of soldiers from Menjanit, the closest nation, is posted in a small fort barely a mile down the beach.
The few who have heard of this portal know it as the "Twist Tangle", or even more rarely as "Root Hive".
A milder world found on the other side of the nexus discovered by fortune (or misfortune as it may be) and now forgotten to the mists of the past. Still, while milder than most, Candãna deserves mention among the worlds of the nexus and takes a place, even if a mundane one in the chronicles of worlds found by the errant and reckless, and the brave and bold few adventurers of Khaas.
Care to trek and find out what the mists of this world hold for the adventurous? You can find the path to its download right here!
Here, we seek to open another world that has touched on Arduin’s bountiful nexus. Certain quirks of fate and unforeseen events surrounded the discovery and eventual loss of this strange island and portal. Still, lost does not mean forgotten and there are those who sit and tell over flagons what roads may lead to an island, where the sand is honeyed amber, and the shores are loaded with treasure bountiful beyond imagination!
Interested? Then jump to download the PDF of the Island of Honeyed Sands!
In a continuing theme of releasing material we believe fans new and old will find interesting, we present one of the worlds trekked to during the past. This world opened up to curious adventurers when a stable nexus appeared in 65 Roccahr on a grassy sward between two Firecoal trees in Talafar. A chance encounter with the near invisible nexus sent a full carriage out of Nastryllia to unknown doom, and the call to discover the circumstances of its disappearance soon led to the discovery of this nexus gate. For 22 years after its initial discovery by those adventurers seeking the fate of the travelers in that carriage, the world beyond this gate (sometimes called the Azure Elephant Portal) has seen a steady trek of intrigued adventurers, traders, and scholars.
It closed in 66 Fenris as abruptly and mysteriously as it opened, trapping a few in the subterranean world it opened. While not uncommon, this unfortunate occurrence trapped the merchant prince Illinmyor Baksör (head of the Baksör Trading Company) in the odd, subterranean world. His trading company posted a 3,700 GS reward for information on how to reach this world, or his whereabouts. His family has equally sworn a pick from their herds of Ironleg horses (as many as 20 of the fine horses!) as an incentive to this as well.
Details on the world beyond this nexus are included in this small download provided below.
The presentation holds the information that was commonly available when the gate was still open.
We at Emperors Choice hope you will enjoy this view into one of the more intriguing and different worlds
that touch on Khaas via the nexus.
The Azure Elephant Portal PDF Download
©2003-2004 Emperors Choice Games and Miniatures Corp. All rights reserved.