Book of Brightblaze

[iviaen]

[Story] Down in the Underground

Somewhere in the Eastern Thalassian Mountains, nestled in a tiny valley, stood a small, dilapidated, three floor elven building surrounded by a powerful barrier, which shielded it from view of outsiders. The top floor was round and wider than the lower floors and the front door petrified ages ago.

A flurry of arcane energy surged on the top floor and the chubby white haired Magister, Iviaen Brightblaze, arrived carrying a large satchel slung on his back and several large white five-pound boxes of candy in his arms. He looked around the room, the carpet was aged, faded, dusty, and the furniture was still in shambles from the scourge, but arcane golems stood dormant along the walls.

The residual energy from the teleport stirred the constructs, which whirred to life and emitted a magical hum. They began to charge arcane energy, prepared to attack. One mechanical voice spoke, "Intruder Alert. Activate termination protocol." In a haunting mechanical choir, the rest of the machines echoed. After a moment, one of the machines cast a light on Iviaen, scanning his person, a small charm in the shape of a phoenix that dangled from one of the mage's highly pierced ears lit up red. "Phoenix Fall Identification Detected. Abort. Welcome Back."

Iviaen smiled and waltzed down into the lower level and over to a bookshelf. He grabbed a book and opened it up, then placed a palm on the blank pages within and the shelf pushed out towards him and revealed a secret room with a translocation orb.

Iviaen Brightblaze put the book back on the shelf and stepped into the room. The door closed behind him and he touched the translocation orb. It teleported him into another room with a door that had no handle. A panel beside the door had a single button that he pushed, and then waited.

Eventually the door opened and a cheerful young man's voice greeted him with music playing in the background as Iviaen descended a twisting stairwell, "Welcome back to Phoenix Fall Repository, Brightblaze. It's been real quiet out here since the Legion started invading. Please tell me you brought something good."

Iviaen reached the bottom of the stairs, a thick metal door stood between himself and his destination. A buzz and the door popped open. Inside sat a young, bored looking man at an L desk, one leg of it facing the door, the other against a wall full of magi-tech consoles that would arouse average gnomish or goblin engineer.

The young man wore a violent vest and goggles with gold frame and violet lenses, attached to the lenses were a number of magnifying lenses on either side, most sitting upright and not in the young man's field of vision. He hunched over the side of the desk not occupied by consoles, which was covered in papers, tools, and tinkered toys, including vials of samples from a blood golem and miniature weapons made with bits of the animus.

An elderly Magistrix entered the room from another door and looked at Iviaen, "Well look who the lynx dragged in. Please tell me you have news."

Iviaen set his boxes on the desk, which required pushing the young man's tinkers aside, "I brought you both the usual assortment of candidates plus seasonal goodies like chocolate covered fruits.

The young man busted open a box and began to devour chocolate covered strawberries.

The woman smiled, "Is this a social visit, Brightblaze?"

Iviaen shook his head, "I've got a bunch of null boxes in my satchel that need safe keeping. Some of it is dangerous stuff I will want to submit later. Other things are just dangerous in the wrong hands and you are the safest place I know to hold on to them."

He moved into the next room, and both the woman and the boy followed him. He pulled the boxes out and set them on the floor, then waved his hand and the shrink spell wore off.

The boy grabbed one and wandered from the room, leaving Iviaen and the old Magistrix, who asked, "Brightblaze, what's going on?"

Iviaen frowned, "A while back someone tried to kill me. In addition, we stole the possessions of a traitor Magistrix who lives in Dalaran who is trying to kill everyone in the boarding house I live in. This is stuff stolen from them as well as my own personal collection of toys for safekeeping until we get this mess cleared up. In one of the boxes is an artifact in a chained box. It will fucking kill you if you don't know what you are doing, it almost killed me."

The two talked for hours about what was in the boxes and what was going on.

Phoenix Fall knew of The Society, but their secrecy and isolation kept them safe from the organization. Lady Phoenixfall worked directly with the upper echelon of the Reliquary, and few even knew of the facility's existence.

[iviaen]

[Story] To Tempt Fate

Iviaen Brightblaze, the heavy-set Reliquary Magister with long white hair, decided to tempt fate after his colleague, Nuada, found himself the target of an anti-magic plague carrying dart buried deep within a magitech device. He knew Nuada went to the Registry and to the Spire seeking information on Shiverqull's backstabbing twin brother, Lord Shiversteel, specifically with the intent to visit sweet sweet justice.

Before he left, the mage slipped into the workshop and pilfered some of Zan's prototypes, two spell-barrier generators and his spell guns. Iviaen loaded them with holy-charged crystals, turned them on, and then used his own arcane magic to mask the spells' visuals and power surges from the charging guns. He stuck them in a satchel. Iviaen also grabbed a large heated food box of fruit-filled eggy toast wraps he'd made with a smile, and trotted happily off in the direction of the Registry, then to the Spire.

The Magi in the spire were unused to seeing Brightblaze early in the morning, as he usually came around in the afternoon, which prompted many raised brows.

Brightblaze made his usual rounds, offering fruit and sweet cream filled eggy toast wraps rolled in cinnamon and sugar to various other magi. Some accepted and some declined, and those unused to his presence just stared. A few circles knew him as the weird Magister who brought boxes of candy, cookies, and cupcakes, or the 'Fat magister who is trying to make the rest of us fat,' while others did not know or care for him at all.

Iviaen then went and inquired about the status of Nuada's inquiry about Shiversteel. As the person, he spoke to went off to check the status of it, Iviaen turned around, put his hand in his bag, pulling out a crystal orb charged with arcane energy, and put it near his ear. He spoke in a pleasant almost singing tone, "Yes?" Iviaen feigned a conversation with an unseen individual as if the orb was a com device. "Yes. No. Of course. Of course. No, not really." He paced back and forth and the orb recorded the images of the figures in the room for later use, and carefully avoided eye contact with others.

The worker behind the desk told him that the research was not yet complete and Iviaen nodded. He started towards the door, looking as oblivious as ever and then stopped in his tracks. He spoke to the crystal, "Oh Light. I almost forgot the food box again." One of the magi had let loose another cloaked mechanical scarab and it was heading quickly toward Brightblaze.

Iviaen turned on his heel and walked back to the desk, collected the large and now empty food box, and started towards the door again. He stopped a few feet from the door and spoke to the orb, "You can't be serious. Really?"

The scarab collided with his holy shields, making a small but loud explosion behind him—the toxin was extremely volatile when it came to the Light. Iviaen spoke, "Hold on a moment." He pulled the crystal away from his head and spun around, looking for the source of the explosion while the orb once again recorded images of the other Magi in the area. He glanced down at the remains of the scarab on the floor, "Oh. I'm fine. Someone's Spell-Tinker just backfired. It happens sometimes."

Iviaen then returned home without further incident. It was a high probability that the culprit was in that room, which narrowed the suspects down substantially from being potentially everyone in the Spire to being no more than one of a dozen Magi. Iviaen would study the images, names, and faces then figure out who each potential target is and more information about their areas of study and connections.

[iviaen]

[Story] Little Things

Iviaen kept a strange sleep schedule, typically sleeping in the morning after breakfast until midafternoon. Today he jerked awake early on high alert, something triggered his wards on the Pyreanor household. He stumbled out of bed, slipped on his robes, and wandered down to the bottom floor, to the inner doorway of the vestibule.

He raised his staff and a little glowing sphere of arcane energy lit up in the upper left-hand side of the doorway. With a hand gesture, Brightblaze pulled the sphere down and looked at it, "Hmmmmm."

It was an unusual device made from both magic and technology in the form of a mechanical scarab with a shining metal carapace in hues of green. He would have to show this to fellow members of the household and see what they thought.

@on-elven-wings