33: The Stalborgs

Wellentag 31^st Sigmarzeit

As it turned out, despite having been ill and not eaten for a few days Dietrich decided not to touch the food, but waited until later when he could tuck into the Carroburg cake he had carried with him since Carroburg. And Balden had some of the food but laid off the wine.

After dinner Celia Stalborg returned to tell you that her father would not be able to make it this evening, after all, and you would be welcome to stay the night in the guest room. You made some small talk and Max tried to impress Celia but annoyed her by calling her ‘dear.’ You thought about just leaving, but you realised it was much too late for that.

So you settled into your makeshift guest room where Ethel, the maid, had made up some beds for you. Max wondered whether you had been locked in and opened the door, to see Ethel walking down the corridor, and so he pretended he was looking for a towel. You thought about snooping round the house that night but in the end decided to just go to bed, but to keep watch.

Dietrich wondered about the state of the magical winds in the room, but the presence of Azyr was so overwhelming he couldn’t focus on anything else. He also checked around his bed for traps and didn’t detect anything. Max cleaned his guns and set them on the bedside table ready for use in the night. Although it wasn’t very clear what you had all been so wary of, you had a perfectly restful night’s sleep, apart from getting woken up by the frequent lightning and thunder bursts.

Aubentag 32^nd Sigmarzeit

You were woken in the morning and offered a nice breakfast. Celia told you that her father would be able to see you soon. And after breakfast Ebel Stalborg turned up. He wore the blue robes of a celestial wizard, but with much more bling than his daughter. And he seemed to be wearing a metal helmet thing on his head which covered much of the right side of his face with a tinted lens over one eye, which presumably, he could see through. Max admired the fine workmanship but wondered what it hid, and it looked to him like the metal was permanently riveted to Stalborg’s skull.

Stalborg welcomed you and asked why you had made the journey and you said ‘Knowledge!’. You talked about finding the wyrdstone on the wrecked Olovald. And he seemed to think it belonged to him, but Balden said that you had salvaged it fair and square.

Then Stalborg insisted on giving you a tour of the building. You climbed some stairs and entered an ancient tower that the house had been built around. And there was a very complex arrangement of spheres and clockwork devices. Max sort of appreciated the workmanship, but no one else really understood it. And Stalborg got annoyed at this and tried to explain that this was a model of the solar system but he was just getting blanks from you, and Celia had to calm him down.

Then he took you to the top of the tower where an iron cage-like chamber had recently been built, with lots of strange metal prongs and devices. And when the lightning hit the metal spike at the top of the cage you could see how the lightning was channelled around the cage. And you could also see how the lightning seemed to be focused by the six rods that had been set in the ground around the tower, about half a mile away, one of which Max had inspected the evening before.

You asked him what it was all for and Stalborg explained that lightning contained Azyr so harnessing the lightning meant that he could channel prodigious quantities of the blue wind. You asked him why he might want to do that and he went on about uniting the various winds and colleges. Dietrich decided that that sort of thing went against the fundamental principles of college magic.

And then he talked about buying the wyrdstone from you, and you went back down to the dining room to discuss it. And you settled on two hundred crowns, which put Stalborg in a better mood.

He then spoke to you about breaking away from the elf-inflicted dogma of college magic, and he told Balden that he could be useful because having never been indoctrinated by the colleges his mind might be more free to adopt a more holistic approach to the winds of magic, which all sounded pretty dangerous to Dietrich.

And then he brought you down into a chamber beneath the tower and showed you where some sort of magic circle had been etched into the rocks. It looked to Dietrich like the sort of thing you learn at college, to separate the various winds, but it was more complex than that and it looked like it was intertwining the winds, and uniting them somehow. And it looked pretty feasible, in theory. And even though Balden hadn’t ever studied at college, the diagram seemed to make sense to him from his instinctual understanding of the winds of magic, too.

You had a bit of a disagreement, but to back up his claims, Stalbirg said that many elves were against the Teclisian theories of magic and wanted to help humans cast off that oppression. And it was only the rulers of the elves who were trying to keep the human wizards down.

And when Dietrich doubted him he left the room for a bit, and then took Dietrich to his study where he unveiled a mirror, and when Dietrich looked into the mirror, the face he saw was not his, but an elf.

It looked like the elf was in an obsidian chamber. The elf introduced himself as Malathiel and they had an awkward conversation about magic and wielding multiple magical winds. And Malathiel seemed to imply Dietrich would be serving him, until Stalborg decided that was enough and threw the cover back over the mirror.

So they went back to the dining room, and Dietrich sort of agreed with everything Stalborg said after that, just to keep him happy, while indicating to the others that he thought he was mad. You agreed to be in his circle of wizards that would be dedicated to advancing magical discovery and knowledge.

You discussed how you might communicate with each other and you gave your address in Marienburg as Frau Hoogenbaum’s guesthouse in Arabierstad. Stalborg mentioned that the monastery of Blechwenden contained a tapestry that might have information that would help you with your quest to unite the winds of magic.

You wondered about leaving the place that evening but it was already a bit late and you were aware of the goat-headed beastmen so you decided to stay another night. And you assured Stalborg that you would be up for joining his circle of like-minded wizards.

Ethel had made the beds for you, again. And so you settled down for the night, not decided as to whether you would have a snoop around this night, or just get to sleep and leave first thing in the morning.