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Within the confines of an old and dusty inn called the Dry Bar, you find your hands combing through the bookshelves. Precariously stacked upon its slabs were several recent articles, one of which caught your fancy. It was entitled The Asurans by Everard Bertram. The prose appeared poor, the ink smeared at some parts, and the number of run-on sentences could make a grammatical person's head spin. Nonetheless, it was a candid account of an adventure that had transpired a few years ago into the unplundered depths of a cave system far away. It appeared to be a recently published article given the year affixed to its title. Year 167. The Asurans “She came to us in Darkness, She offered us a hand where all the others had abandoned us. Then these silver ingrates came into our caves and sought to take her from us. Now is our chance to undo the work of that perfidious Stag. Now is the time that we are to pursue our freedom.” – Keeper Belyaev The Asurans, the worshipers of the Fel Daemon Asura, are an organization native to the Hollow Grotto. Considering themselves the Clerics of Asura, the Daemon of Chaos, though there is little veracity to their claims of being clerics since the Dark Itharel were defeated four centuries ago. Upon entering the dark caverns, I came across a tribe of Goblins who went by the name of Zharul. I could make neither heads nor tails of their use of Blah, but they ushered me on my way upon pain of death, and charged me a toll to pass. Upon reaching the encampment of the so-called Asurans, I was spoken to by their Grand Keeper. It appeared that the encampment totaled about fifty or sixty people, but when I asked her about their mission she remained vague. She said that another organization inhabited the opposite wing of the caverns. Whilst trespassing upon the Goblin Lands, I spotted a mural of an Angelic figure with their wings spread. I was chased off before I could properly articulate my thoughts… [The next piece of this is omitted, only frenzied smears of ink remaining, possibly due to time restraints.] Belyraev was a woman possessing brown hair and blue eyes. She was of an eerie disposition and appeared fraught with tension. She demanded that I leave until I offered the Asurans my rations in exchange for information. The Cleric of Asura explained to me that after the Dark Itharel fell, their Daemonic goddess had been imprisoned by the Aengul Tesion for interfering in the Mortal World. However, she insisted that the actions of her predecessors were just, and were ultimately to “free” mortals from a much greater sin – the Rule of God. I thumb my nose at this notion; but seeking to preserve my own life, I nodded along. It was tough at points to make sense of her tongue due to her Raevir background. The woman explained to me that she had been born in Haense about thirty-three years ago and that she was approached in her teens by the former Grand Cleric – the Keeper, they say – and offered a chance to join the ‘Order’. She explained to me that the Aenguls sought to oppress people and that God was dead. When I asked if she was a Xionist, Belyraev refused and grew angry, saying that she would revoke the guest’s rites and banish me into the dark caves without an escort back past the goblins for that grave insult. I chose my next words rather carefully seeing as I was dealing with the adherents of a Dark Faith. Though I saw no Undead and only rundown vagabonds, I did not desire to become one of the many skeletons at the bottom of that damned ravine. She warned me to stray from what she called ‘Tahariaens”, a group of High Elves, proponents of what she called “Maehr’sae Hiylun’ehya”. She said they had killed many visitors to the shrines here in the past few years based on race, and that only High Elven visitors were known to escape unscathed. It appears upon coming here I stand on the precipice of a brewing Holy War and all that stops them from enacting their bloody retributions against one another is the Goblin Camp at the epicenter of this old complex. It appears the power of the local Goblins keeps them all in check. They must pay fees to reach the areas of worship. And trade is limited by their control of the Inner Sanctum, so all trade that happens in the caverns is presided over by Chief Ulbek according to her. I left from there on and was provided safe passage by a man named Gustaf. He was much more talkative and friendly. A Heartlander like me, he had been banished from Aaun for revolutionary activities during the assassination of the King years prior, and was once a bannerman of the ostracized House of Stassion, what he dubbed to be “Horen pretenders”. He remarked on that war bitterly, but we parted amicably and agreed we would write. Upon reaching the surface, I saw it fit to write all this down, and I hope to reach the Pontiff once fortune favors my hand once again, and see what he has to say on this matter.
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The Reckoning of the Bridge 1784
