------------- The Chronicles of Taure – Brian

Brian O’Hanlon looked about. He was far from home, farther than anyone in Snowhill had ever been, he guessed. He’d certainly never read anything in the archive of the library that suggested anyone from the order had come this far east. But then again, there had never been a Mystic in the Church of the Land before, at least none anyone would admit to. The Church of the Land was the predominant faith of Edandor, West Edandor, and the other kingdoms primarily populated by the Edan people. It was manned mostly by Druids, as was tradition. They practiced their rites and their ceremonies in the wilds most of the time, but their records, their history, and their greatest secrets lay within the Colleges of Faith, the great libraries like the ones at Edanfell and Snowhill. And for the greatest portion of his life, Brian had been a librarian in the great College of West Edandor. Like the cloistered monks of the Anglan faith, he was not a Druid, but a Cleric, a true and faithful servant of the Gods, not a practitioner of nature’s magic. And his God, Math Mathonwey, was a God of knowledge and magic. He had become the first recorded Mystic of the Church of the Land in a thousand years. As such, one would think he would have been guarded, protected, and kept all but a prisoner in the abbey at Snowhill. Well, he was sure that’s what the Druids would have preferred. He had other plans.

A year or more back, when he was first learning to harness what appeared to be sorcery through the divine power of his God, Brian had met an older warrior, a guardian of the wall at Wintercross. That man had become something of a hero to him, a big brother of sorts. He had visited the graves when Lorren Smythe’s family had been killed and he had seen the light go out in the warrior’s soul. He also heard the Sentinel’s warnings of a coming darkness, warnings that fell on ignorant ears bent on celebrating minor victories while the real war had yet to come to their doorstep. Time passed, and as his skill in magic grew, he also found that his knowledge of the library gave him certain benefits. He found the ancient manuscripts, those of the seers that had lived even before the time of the Great Dragon Wars, and he connected the dots. Lorren Smythe’s warning was part of the prophecies, the writing of the legendary Arch Druid Tannothwy.

In the chronicles of Saint Argent, he found it, a telling of giants and ogres, the return of the dragons to the land, and a great plague of corruption and living death. It would follow the creation of an Outlander kingdom, and only the Outlanders would hold the key to saving the world from utter destruction. He was not sure how much of the script was flowery prose and how much was actual prophecy. But one thing he was sure of, the details surrounding Lorren’s heroism, the giants coming down from the Icefangs, the departure of the hero for the east, and the Outlander Queen Rachel, all fit Tannothwy’s telling too closely to be ignored. However, the vapid ravings of an eighteen year old librarian could hardly move the Druids to action. So he took it upon himself to steal as many books as he could carry, pursue Lorren and aid him in any way he might. How he managed to make it this far without getting “crunched”, as Lorren used to put it, was beyond him,… but the mysteries of Math’s power were not his to question.

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