Part 23: The Eye of Thalor
Connacht heads into the Black Tower to kill Thalor, the most powerful Myrkridian Pack-Mage to ever live
Blip YouTube Part 2
Goons present:
Warrior
x_countryguy
Triple A
Goldjas
RulebookHeavily
Rhumbus
McTimmy
Senrath
Iron Saber
MechaBread
Dwarf
Broken Box
SSJ Reeko
Evil Urchin
Archer
Wanamingo
Xiahou Dun
DeltaOmega
Saltiest Hobo
Ilanin
Rezkain
Narrator posted:
February 11th, 1435 A.E., In the dungeon of Thalor's black spire.
Even without the power of the Tain, the walls of the dark spire were broken. The forces of Llancarfan swept into the fortress, laying sword to bone against Myrkridia and undead alike. Within minutes, the defenders of the keep lay dead or dying, and the army of Llancarfan stood victorious.
Connacht and his men searched the corpses strewn about the courtyard-yet, the Pack-Mage was not among them. An old and crumbling passage led into darkness beneath the spire. It was the only means of escape.
Connacht began gathering a small group of veterans at the archaic passage. They were to follow the Pack-Mage into the bowels of the keep-and make sure it never drew another breath.
A dwarf did suggest that they simply should destroy the spire, bringing it down upon the beast's cowering head. Connacht replied that they must be absolutely sure that this Pack-Mage was slain-not just buried alive.
One erudite scholar of the Heron Guard seemed to grasp Connacht's concern. He recalled an obscure legend dating back to the end of the Age of Reason. Moagim, having brought the Myrkridia into this world, began to teach them the ways of battle-and of sorcery. The most learned and powerful of his students was a Myrkridia who dubbed itself 'Thalor the Black'.
As the legend tells, so powerful was Thalor's sorcerous abilities, that he could halt the workings of magical relics or even destroy them from afar. He created a powerful artifact known only as the 'Eye of Thalor'-into which it infused its very soul. If its body were to meet death, the device could conjure a new body from its ashes, granting the fell beast life eternal. If the Pack-Mage that held this spire was indeed Thalor the Black, his death would be the end of the Myrkridia.
Connacht merely nodded at the Heron.
With his force assembled, Connacht led them into the crumbling dungeons of the dark fortress-hunting for the most powerful Myrkridian sorcerer ever to live...
I'm stealing this image from the Johnny Law Myth: The Fallen Lords LP, who noted that the Tain's design was pretty clearly inspired by M. C. Escher's "Double Planetoid".
As we have seen, the Tain is a device that draws enemies inside it, and traps them there. It's such a powerful artifact, that if the Tain were broken, even a shard of it retains the power of the full Tain. As seen in Myth: The Fallen Lords the inside of the Tain is a cavern system containing remnants of Myrkridian activity (but no living Myrkridia), and lots of spiders. The Smiths of Muirthemne feared that the Tain might one day be used against them, so they created a 'back door' so that if they were captured in the Tain, they would be able to find a way to escape. What the Smiths feared never happened, and no one escaped from the Tain for over 1000 years. So where are the Myrkridia inside the Tain by the time Myth 1 rolls around? When your forces escaped the Tain in Myth 1 it took them two days to accomplish that, but to an outside observer it took a few seconds. Time is greatly accelerated inside the Tain, very roughly by 50000 times normal, give or take how long "a few seconds" is. This means that the Myrkridia captured by Connacht have been trapped for around fifty million years before the Tain was used again in the Great War. As of this mission, Myrkridia are the only thing inside the Tain. The Myrkridia inside likely resorted to cannibalism before the remaining survivors starved to death. Not a pretty end for the Myrkridia.
And as far as spiders surviving inside the Tain for millions of years, without new sources of food being drawn in - that story is still to come…