The Infernal Letter
From Atlantic Roleplay Wiki
Title: The Infernal Letter
Author: Garrett Granth
I had been fishing yet again near the Isle of Magincia (for more on my adventures in fishing, see "Again I Fish" from the Britannian Publishing Company). It had been quite some time since my initial reconassiance of the combined Bane Chosen and Deamonic invasion (for details see "New Magincia Recon" from the Britannian Publishing Company) and I was again on the ground examining the situation. I had seen a massive and relatively unguarded altar on the site of the old moongate, and while my manipulations with it proved to bear fruit it was, unfortunately, the kind of fruit that is also a deamonic assault.
I unleashed crossbow bolts and spells into the fiend and I was forced to take the fight in a hit-and-run fashion, using the speed of my trusty mount and my archery skills to outlast the interloper as I moved ever north towards the beach where the rune library and the headquarters of the Republic of Magincia are settled, a bulwark against the depravity in the southern part of the isle.
It was near the headquarters for that Guild that I felled the fiend by firing an explosion potion attached to a crossbow bolt directly into the mouth of the beast as it chanted the fell syllables of it's dark magic. The thick skull erupted and the towering wings fluttered one last time as it crashed to the ground.
Members of the Republic ran to the scene as I checked the prodigious deamon for any clues to it's origin.
Nothing. The Republicans and I set into a fevered discussion of the question "Why" - namely, why had the Bane Chosen, and these deamons, assaulted the unwanted ruins of Magincia and destroyed the moongate?
The opinion of Joanna Weaver of Magincia was that they had chosen Magincia precisely for it's moongate, and it's lack of connection to most other points in Sosaria. Just as she and I launched into a detailed analysis of such a theory - involving the magical nature of the Moongates, the drawing of ley lines, and a philosophical musing about the nature of space, we were assaulted directly by a fast-moving, highly aggressive deamon far in the northern reaches of the island where the fell guardians never tread.
To the mighty warrior Isk, leader of this republic, this insult was too much. He gathered those there, and with your hapless author in tow, moved us towards the center of the isle.
We fought valiantly - or at least, those members of the Magincian Republic did. Isk utilized the art of bushido as he parried and evaded the most dreadful of blows, and even incoming deamonic magics, as I let loose arrows while dispelling poisons and utilizing healing magics to keep the Magincians fighting.
In a matter of long and exhausting minutes, we had approached their tents, dispatching deamons, dragon riders, and recruits by the dozen.
At the tents, they held the forces at bay, slaughtering many, as I looked through the massed equipment. None of it seemed particularly noteworthy, until I found what I was looking for.
A letter, one corner covered in the blood of the man I'd just impaled with a crossbow bolt then hit with a Mind Blast. I looked over it, but alas - it was in an unknown code, or else some language I did not know.
Still, I took the letter, and we made a quick escape before the Bane Chosen could rally a counterattack.
Deciphering this eldritch text would prove quite difficult, and much more dangerous than your usual job in inscription and translation. Would we be up to it?
Garrett Granth, BPC