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+---- Thread: The Death of Illusions (/showthread.php?tid=1340)
The Death of Illusions - Balanor - 06-29-2012
The rumors continued to swirl around Eltabbar, even a day after the incident occurred.
A troupe of ‘concerned citizens’ led by the Red Wizard Kaiser Signe who was following the command of Szass Tam himself, had arrested the man known as Blackie in Vurman’s Tavern without incident.
After being brought to the Redhall, he had been found guilty of wearing Red Robes -claimed by the man to be simply an illusion- to impersonate a Red Wizard. However, just before the verdict was pronounced, the man disappeared in a blast of magic. The Judge, not to be dissuaded, successfully scried on Blackie and found he had been somehow transported to caverns of Eltabbar and tasked the Red Wizards gathered there to find and execute the condemned, proceeding to place an anti-recall spell over that section of the city and ordering the legion commanders to block all entrances except the one the hunting party went through to find him.
The remainder though seemed quite the mystery. Apparently no less than four Red Wizards joined to bring Blackie to ‘justice’ - Master Kaiser, Dread Lord Maurin, and two newly robed additions to the school of Necromany - Sargatha and Marrick. They, in turn, were joined by a sizable number of witnesses at the trial, as commanded by the Judge of the Redhall.
They entered the sewers and rumors spoke of battles with many duplicates of Blackie striking at the party from the shadows. Illusions? Dopplegangers? Magic, most certainly. In all cases though, the normally boisterous man said not a word. In the end, the hunt proved almost anti-climactic as the hunting party, on edge, attacked one copy of Blackie only to then, in turn, be attacked by a large contingent of his clones. After their deaths, yet more copies appeared however and were dispatched.
And then...nothing.
The head of one of the dead was taken, along with the body, to the Judge of the Redhall, and the head placed on a stake outside the Redhall entrance as a warning to other imposters who would impersonate a Red Wizard. The head also disappeared from the Redhall entrance within hours.
Surely with the power of four Red Wizards leading the hunting party, as well as the magical dampening field around Eltabbar meant the man could not have escaped. Yet questions remained and conspiracy theories run rampant. The man seemed truly dead, but which of those killed was the true perpetrator? How were there so many of him? Was the man powerful enough to transport himself to the caverns and create the illusions of himself? Was he used by some greater power and sacrificed simply to draw individuals after him to the caverns of Eltabbar? Or did the Red Wizards set it all up?
Many questions remained, but few answers.
Perhaps most perplexing of all though, was the whispers of the strange thought that insinuated itself into the minds of those in the hunting party as they recalled each death of Blackie:
“What, no hug?”