The Descendi Continuation

[Aurangzeb Khan]

The Mors Taverna, Nordagaat, Mirioth
22 Agnifiero, 2277 ASC

It was another fetid day in the tropics. For those unacustomed to the heat even sitting in the shade of a gloomy bar, with the tired old electric fans whirring overhead was enough to induce fatigue and topur. Jesus Sabatini suddenly found himself pinning for the long vanished snow of northern Elwynn, and the piercing cold which could peal the exposed flesh from a man's bones. At least knew where you were with the cold - you could wrap yourself up, protect yourself from its worst effects, savour even the most minute sources of internal body heat as though basking in the glow of a roaring log fire. Against this heat however there was no protection, it was all pervading. Even if Sabatini were to strip off and expose his modesty to a doubtless reluctant public it would not in the least part assuage the omnipresent heat that left his body glistening in a film of sweat and his clothes, khaki fatigues, of the sort issued to troopers of the Imperial Army, soaked through, dark with absorbed fluids and clinging to his body. It was all he could do to sit in this dingy dark hole and drink chilled glasses of the local lager, some sort of weakly fermented piss with seemingly zero alcohol content.

"Keep'em coming." He beckoned to the barman. The barman a portly fellow sporting a waxed moustache and a dirty apron, which may once have been white but was now impossible to verify, sized up his customer - the only one in his establishment, for it was three in the afternoon on a weekday and most respectable folk in Nordagaat were at work or taking more wholesome forms of recreation - and decided it might just be worth his while to strike up a conversation with his melancholic client.

"If you think this is bad - you should be here during the rainy season."

Sabatini managed a wane smile in reply. "How do you people cope? The heat here is so oppressive."

The barman shrugged his shoulders. "What can I say? If you are born into it you become use to it. Humans are remarkable creatures don't you think? Drop them down in any clime and within a generation the descendents of those who have survived will have adapted completely."

Sabatini grimmaced. "You reckon?" He replied, not really caring if there was a reply or not.

"Sure" replied the fat beermonger, "take yourself for instance - now I don't know your accent, where are you from friend?"

"San Martin, but I have been in Elwynn for so long that I am afraid that I have gone quite native."

"Indeed so." Replied the barman. "And how is it in Elwynn - I imagine it must be pretty cold."

Sabatini found his habitual skill returning to him, overcoming his lethargy, for he had a knack in as much as he could make a loyal ally of a stranger instantly. He smiled what he, in vain selfawareness, called the 'rabbit smile' and with his eyes conveyed his his customary devoted spaniel expression. Immediately he made it plain to the barman that he was his very best and most loyal friend without even saying a word, and the barman believed it, what is more he believed that Sabatini was about to confide in him some profound revelation - which of course was nothing of the sort.

"Were I used to live and work was on the edge of the tundra, and a great desert and wilderness brought about by man's own inhumanity. It was so cold, so bitterly cold as you could not imagine. And yet I felt more alive there than I did at any other time in my life." Sabatini neglected to mention that the reason that he had then, as at no overtime, felt truly alive was that as an Evocatii of the Descendi he had come within a mere key turn of overturning all of creation. He had been there at the appointed hour, at the gate itself, with the handmaiden of destiny and the very key to Balgurd - everything had been in place. It was the fortuitious conjunction, long foretold. Nothing could prevent what was destined to occur, everything had been taken into account. Everything that is, except for the bumbling ineptitude of the wretched Babkhans, with their singular knack for blundering in uninvited, shooting first and asking questions later. So it was that the Descendi had been thawted not by the armies of the light but by the forces of mediocrity. Trooper Sabatini, taken at the scene, had been given a choice - fortitous as it happened - between carting ash in the wilderness and honest service in the Elwynnbrigaden. Service in the Elwynnbrigaden turned out to be considerably less honest than the magistrate had made out and rather more lax than the regime in the Baron's Gulags. Opportunities for both corruption and leave were ample and frequently intertwined. Thus Sabatini was in short order able to purchase a generous spell of leave from his captain in order to pursue his overriding objective, the recovery of the handmaiden and the key.

None of this could be shared with the barman however - so Sabatini resolved upon a circumlocution. "It was only after being touched by the dread cold of the eternal night that I truly understood what it was to be alive."
Curiously the barman nodded his head as though he understood. Sabatini was intrigued and resolved to test the barman.
"I have heard it said that what exists below proceeds from that which exists above."
The barman nodded gravely and wiped his hands upon his dirty apron.
"And it has been truthfully said that what exists above proceeds from that which exists below." Came the reply.
Sabatini now smiled warmly.
"And we who inhabit the middle sphere we follow that which proceeds from below for it leads to that which exists above." He completed ritual greeting of the Descendi. They shook hands across the bar.
"Hail brother," said the barman "how may I be of service?"
"I am a Evocatii of the Port Illumination Contubernium. I seek your knowledge."
"An Evocatii? Then I am truly honoured. Ask of me what you will."
"I seek to recover one of our number who has fallen from the truth. Do you know the whereabouts of one Cerene Russell?"
"My Lord I do not know this myself but I can take you to one well placed to provide the answers you seek."

[Gman Russell]

(We never did finish the last thread, 'lies from within, lies from without' did we? What exactly is assumed after my last post?)