12th of Thirdmonth, 10006 DK
The group started the day by checking their box at the local night folw depot for a return letter from Traith Harris. There was no return letter, and in fact, their night fowl had in fact returned with the letter they had initially sent, and it appeared to have been unopened. Still reeling from their situation and the fact that they had lost ten years of time some how, they opted to head to a local library to check back issues of newspaper and recent historical events.
The library they found looked battered and abused, and inside they discovered that it had been heavily abused ten years ago when Cenn the Reaver died and Kusseth was ousted from control. They found that an Elduman librarian had remained in Meroteth for several years attempting to care for the books, but he eventually left because of Nakmander's progressively more violent pogroms against Eldumans and Kussethians. They discovered this information from journals strewn about the library. In the head librarian's office, they discovered a well kept area including travel gear, food rations, and a collection of spellbooks. All of this stuff looked fairly well cared for and lacked the dust and debris that coated the rest of the library. There was also a firepit and a smoke hole in the ceiling of the room. Xein rifled through the spellbooks whyle Ran'dahl climbed up through the smokehole and lurked, waiting for the owner to return. Looking through the spellbooks and papers in the room, they discovered someone's writing, different from the librarians, and some notes about looking for information on the house of Byr, specifically Morlen of the House of Byr, and Elduman.
When they grew bored, they decided to leave the library and investigate the lightning artifact in the center of the city. As they approached the artifact, they saw that there were armed blockages across most of the streets, but they seemed half hearted, like they were merely a reminder. They snuck around a blockage and entered what appeared to be an abandoned section of the city. As they drew closer and closer to the artifact and the Sorcerer Magistrate's office, they noticed the city was growing cold, despite the sun hanging high in the sky and beating down upon the black stone of the city. When they were within a mile of the center of the city a creature of dark shadows that stood twelve feet tall, that radiated a crippling cold, floated out of a shadowed alley and began literally freezing the group to death and filled them with some sort of primal fear they felt down to their bones that they could not explain. Even the Rankethlek Kethralzahn was crippled by it. As they lay frozen to the black streets of Meroteth, a bolt of white lightning shot out from the artifact, and the shadow monster let out a scream, and flew up into the air. After it fled, soldiers of Meroteth wielding a long silver wand, approached the players and warmed them up, insulted them and called them fools for venturing into the section of the city without a visa or an escort and they were forcibly removed from the area.
The group returned to the library and found Krieg Byr'ger, the owner of the spellbooks and dweller of the library. He expressed irritation over the fact that they had rifled through his belongings. They asked him a few questions about the past and the area, he thought they were odd questions, and Pyrel eventually told Krieg the whole truth about the situation and their time loss and random memory recovery. He also mentioned Nakmander. Krieg mentioned that some spells can put people in stasis and sometimes particularly potent magic can leave gaps in memories. Krieg also mentioned that Nakmander was responsible for the death of his mother and the disappearance of his father and if they were interested in issues of sorcery and Nakmander, Krieg knew of a sorcerer named Kalarel Nerk'mef, a Fell Human on his way down that once was a powerful member in Nakmander's regime. Krieg also asked if he might be allowed to hang out with the group, if they were enemies of Nakmander, or working against him, they were allies of his, and his studies here in Meroteth were not coming to much fruition. The group agreed that this would be ok and they all returned to the rowe'dhauss.
13th of Thirdmonth, 10006 DK
The group sat around the table in their rowe'dhauss and the group were struck by a series of memories. When they came out fo the memories, Krieg asked what had happened and commented that they had ignored his speaking and had looked vacantly off into the distances and twitched uncontrollably. The group decided to return to the library and research events from around the world, Krieg offered up a few its and pieces of information as well. While at the library, Kethralzahn commented that Krieg resembled Nakmander slightly and asked if anyone had ever said that to him before. Krieg very akwardly claimed that no one had ever said such a thing. No one else in the group had anything to say about the exchange. After they had received more information from the library, the group decided to investigate Kalarel, rather than go see the bards, as was suggested by Kethralzahn.
The guys tracked down Kalarel, who appeared frantic and unreliable and convinced them to pay his bar tab, which was ridiculous, before following him back to his home where he claimed he had something to show them. At his reseidence he kind of puttered around the place basically ignoring them and kind of expectantly eyeballing the door. Eventually two tattooed sorcerer thugs with sorcerous blades appeared at the door demanding Kalarel be brought to them. Kalarel desperately yelled for them to kill the thugs and he would tell them everything. Xein was convinced that Kalarel was useful and they should fight the thugs to keep him alive and in their service. Krieg advised against this, as Kalarel was a drunk and a gambler and had dug his own grave. The thugs stated that they needed to hurry up and figure out whether they were prepared to fight for Kalarel, as he owed their employer several thousand marks and Kalarel was scheduled to be tortured and disappeared in the very near future. The group decided to pay the thugs for some time alone with Kalarel, they agreed.
Kalarel revealed that Nakmander came back to the city half-dead, but a shaman called Daun'Mok was here waiting for him and brought him back from the brink of death. Kalarel explained that necromancy could heal Soulless, but wondered why they would want to heal Soulless, as Kethralzahn was a Rankethlek, not a Soulless. He also explained that Nakmander was attempting to create some sort of almost Soulless based on flesh ten years ago, in addition to engaging in heavy research on stabilizing sorcerous items. He also mentioned that Nakmander and his organization began murdering diviners. Feeling that Kalarel was out of useful information, they turned him over to the thugs.
The group left Kalarel's place and found a gun shop and pawned some of their older guns, Xein used the proceeds to purchase more modern firearms and to repay Krieg for the money he had loaned the guys over the course of the day. They ended the day by venturing to the Eastern Bardic College and mentioned that they were interested in performing freelance work for the college. The college clerk asked their area of expertise, and they stated that it was violence. The clerk asked for where they could be reached and said a contract would be sent there later that day. Later that day, the group received standard bardic college freelance work contract and Pyrel and Ran'dahl signed it.
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