The Heavenly Host

Vargg was shaking his head. “I think the real problem is that these groups try to force some sort of huge narrative on everything. Every conflict must be a battle between the so-called ‘good’ and the so-called ‘evil.’ It’s not just a territorial or trade dispute. No, it’s an ultimate battle for the survival of their way of life!”

Arg-nargoloth sighed. “Seriously? A trade route? That’s the one thing that allows you to keep your way of life intact. Your entire civilization will collapse without that trade route through our territory, and you can’t afford to pay us a toll for traveling on our land?”

“What about grazing lands? Or a mine that they absolutely must have, that we happen to possess?” Darg-Krallnom said. “Really, unless we hand over our mine at sword point, your way of life is over, and the FOG is defeated?”

“In any event,” Vargg said, “that was why you, or rather your previous self, so proudly chose to take on the mantle of the FOE, the Forces Of Evil. Someone had to stand up for the oppressed and downtrodden. And you, Great One — you saved us!”

“Your leadership allowed our people to build unified armies to defend ourselves against the depredations of the FOG,” Roth said proudly. Once again, Tom was feeling a heck of a lot of weight on his shoulders. What had he signed up for?

“So...” Tom said, attempting to move the topic along and pull this group out of the funk it had suddenly descended into. Who had ever heard of depressed orcs? Tom wondered, but maybe that was just FOG propaganda. “We need game for the feast; that means we need to send out hunting parties, which means we need to open gateways to the Planes of Orcs and the localverse, and that means reestablishing links with any remaining shamans.”

Vargg sighed and scratched his chin. “After this long, it may be tricky. On none of the planes do our people live longer than about one hundred Abyssal years, maximum.”

“Generally, a lot less,” Darg-Krallnom snorted.

“Shamans live longer than most warriors,” Roth said.

“In any event...” Vargg cut them off. “The temple will have link stones to the various tribes. On the off chance anyone out there is listening, you may be able to contact them.”

“The temple?” Tom asked.

Vargg grinned. “We call it ‘the temple’ because it’s where we store the talismans that are the other side of the shamanic links, and thus it is where the dream walkers are drawn to.”

“That makes sense,” Tom said.

“Back in the day, we had someone monitoring it in case a dream walker showed up,” Arg-nargoloth said. “If we are activating the links, we may want to do that again.” Tom nodded in agreement.

“I will set up a rotation schedule so someone is always on duty. In fact, I believe my great grandfather said his father had two on duty at all times,” Zelda told Tom.

“Indeed he did,” Vargg agreed. “Kept them from falling asleep, and if a dream walker did appear, there was always another to attend the dream walker while the first called on the master or steward.”

“Excellent; let’s head over to the temple to see who we can contact,” Tom said.

“As you wish, My Lord.” Zelda nodded with a truly horrifying smile. “The Temple of Doom awaits!”

Tom blinked at her in surprise and then grinned himself. Naturally, one would expect the temple in Mount Doom to be the Temple of Doom!

∼

Exador materialized in the arrival alcove in his suite in Freehold. Time to deal with the Council and get the details of what had been going on since his forced departure. He did not expect it to be pleasant, but it should still be better than listening to his Nysegard allies whine about their defeat at the hands of the Nimbus.

If they were going to whine like this after their own failure to marshal sufficient forces to take advantage of the intelligence he had provided, it would probably have been better to not have told them. Talk about ungrateful.

That is odd, Exador thought to himself, suddenly realizing that the wards to his suite had been triggered. Someone had been in his suite, at least once.

He had not received an alert due to Lenamare’s giant barrier, or so he assumed. This was quite unusual; Exador went around his suite, through the multiple rooms but did not see anything obviously missing. Nothing sensitive was kept here. His laboratory was a different matter, but he could sense that the wards were on and fine. Perhaps Randolf would know something.

Exador headed out, down the hall in the direction of Randolf’s suite. As he walked along, he surveyed the damage done by his escaping demons. He had to admit this whole fiasco had been a learning experience; he shook his head thinking about it. It took him a good ten minutes, but he finally decided that people he was encountering were acting a bit odd.

Not everyone, but several people he passed gave him odd looks. Once he noticed the first person or two, he noted what he thought were people whispering behind him as he proceeded. Something was definitely amiss; very few people were willing to look him in the eye.