------------- Lost Angel – Together at Last

With the Rimefire stone removed from the altar, the cavern lost its freeze. Any other creature would have died. Thirty years frozen as a block of Froststeel however had done little to Ygrid but give her immunity to cold. Once she began to thaw, they were all shocked to see her open her eyes. She was soon well again, showing no sign of her imprisonment. She waved off Gwyldorf’s concerns, but graciously accepted a few healing spells anyway. They had something of a challenge getting back to the world gate. Seemed the Gnolls had learned of the breaking of the spells that protected the cavern and were determined to take its treasures. Now that those treasures were in the hands of humans, they should have no trouble taking what they wanted. Dumb dogs.

Back in Xanthius with their first serious adventure under their belts, Halgir suggested they seal their partnership and form the Lost Angel Venture Company. Strangely enough, Master Trajan Kantu had no issues with his new apprentice running off on adventures. In Master Trajan’s words, there was no substitute for real world experience, something that could not be supplied in a dojo.

Soon they would be faced with real threats and horrible villainy. Xanthius, after all, was not like any other town on the continent of Callona. Xanthius had little that would pass for law. The Equideyeans didn’t really care about what happened in the mountains. They lived on the plains, raising horses. The Symballans and Frelenat only cared that their cultural treasures weren’t being smuggled out of their empire through the city. The Hergovites saw nothing this far south of any value. No one else saw any reason to go to war with the assorted warlords and syndicate bosses that ran the real government of Xanthius.

The city ran on profit from trade, legal and illegal. The Symballans mostly followed Haziz Fekesh, a fat, greasy, repugnant man found of wearing white suits and a ridiculous red fez. He paid large sums to the local Temple of Isis for their blessings, but made sure not to draw too much attention. The Tarkanians followed whichever nearby warlord was in ascendance. That changed more often than the weather. The vampire clans were run by the Mordentshir family, though there were a few who threatened their security from time to time. These rogues were usually tied out on the rock face of the Duergar mine shaft, just before sunrise, by their own kind. Then there were the gangs, simple bullies or drug crazed maniacs, driven by the law of the horde. Take what you want, do what you want, kill anyone who gets in your way.

Living in a town like this was tough enough, but using it as a base of operations to go to even more dangerous places? That took real guts. Out in the wild Equideyean Mountains there were untold monstrosities. Most avoided the main roads, but there were few of those. Just a jump off the cliff, and twenty thousand feet straight down, was the Deep Desert, once the bottom of the sea, pushed up from the ocean floor and drained by the Planet Shift 18,500 years ago. Now, it lay thousands of feet below sea level, but was as dry as the surface of the moon. Out there, even more terrible things walked the sands,… and burrowed beneath them.

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