22nd of Frost, Year 120
His eyes were affixed to the vastness of the desert, from the broken shambles of rusted pews that loomed above the walls of Shitport, the Badland's commerce-heart. The sands before him were the first he'd really ever seen, outside of the meager decks of a beach, colors of grey and white. The golden grains blew with the wind, whistling in the air, lodging their way into everything they touched. Even now the man stood in a suit-like embrace of cloth, with remnant Clockwork goggles of glass and iron protecting his eyes from the pervasive dust.
He'd arranged with the local merchants here -- supposedly under the auspices of the Bloodbreakers -- a single vessel, meant to take him out to the Straits of Adena where he could meet Daravin's old foe. Lord of the Brine. A being he'd heard about countless times, often in stories of tragedy passed down for so long. He imagined a shambling mess of a creature; a crustacean-being, five hundred feet tall, wielding a triton of corrupted coral and with a fuming rage. Had Taelian been any better at flight, he would've considered ascending above the waves and attempting to find him by roaming above the waters. But he was poor, and as storms came with their heavy winds, he knew he would only plummet beneath the surface and be devoured by corruption. He needed one of the old, heavy, Clockwork boats. He even needed a crew. But the man had already handled that part, or tried to.
The man had posted more than a few notices on the boards of Lower Nivenhain. Most people would likely call them the ramblings of a mad-man, but those who had any connection to the old heritage of the Elves would know that what he called for was very real. That his words meant something, calling for a subset within the populace that many would have imagined did not exist; those within the disjointed Remedy cells of Lorien.
From Oaths, Order.
Order is your commitment. Strength is your tool. Belief is your weapon.
You are one blade among a million, pointed to the forms of our slavers; meant to drive through their necks. To rectify their scourge.
You are the Clerics that will cure the land. If you remember your oath, the time to cure the land has come; come to the Imperial Badlands of the Daravinic Empire by the twenty-fifth of Frost. The capital of those lands is where I will be. There, we will meet with a God of the land itself, and we will bring him to heel to save Sil-Elaine.
Another notice of the same kind was left in Brandt, in the city streets, the Draedan hoping it would catch the eye of Haldir, who he had not seen in some time. A man who probably thought he'd died, pulled away by the orders of Aldrin Sil'Jalus before never appearing again. Most of the members of the Remedy, in Sil-Elaine and Tyrclaid, believed him to be dead and gone -- and he imagined the others thought the same. Heroically, in their minds, he fell at the rake of a gang of Cardinals as his Lord and mentor shaved off the head of Lady Helena Flowers, a newborn Huntsman.
They were wrong, though. He was alive. And while the events of that day had pushed him astray from the idea of rejoining the order, his passion for restoring the land he left still remained, burning within much like the Beacon he once held.
After a while of staring out towards the distant seas of dunes and stray winds, he returned to the grit-filled metal market of Shitport's interior, the old Outpost carrying with it a strange charm. His eyes peered towards another notice he'd left on the board there, calling for a Daravinic resident to help guide him along the coast. He offered sufficient pay, he thought, though he supposed there was no sum large enough to be worth the life that his fellow sailors would likely give. Going out to find Lotheric like this was a mission that craved one's demise -- but he had to do it. This was his purpose. His people depended on Lotheric's aide, and any lives that needed to be sacrificed of those willing to surrender them, were necessary collateral for a feat so likely to shift the tide of the Age.
