Heralds of Valdemar/Recap: Difference between revisions

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== The Mage Wars ==

The earliest story in the setting, it takes place several thousand years before anything else. It covers the eponymous war between Great Mages [[Big Good|Urtho]] and [[Big Bad|Ma'ar]], the resulting [[Endofthe World As We Know It|Cataclysm]], and the recovery afterward. Stars [[Two Lines No Waiting|two main characters]]: Skandranon, the de facto leader of the gyphons (a race magically created by Urtho), and Amberdrake, a kestra'chern (a type of "[[The Shrink|spirit healer]]") of clan Kale'da'in.

The earliest story in the setting, it takes place several thousand years before anything else. It covers the eponymous war between Great Mages [[Big Good|Urtho]] and [[Big Bad|Ma'ar]], the resulting [[Endofthe World As We Know It|Cataclysm]], and the recovery afterward. Stars [[Two Lines, No Waiting|two main characters]]: Skandranon, the de facto leader of the gyphons (a race magically created by Urtho), and Amberdrake, a kestra'chern (a type of "[[The Shrink|spirit healer]]") of clan Kale'da'in.

=== The Black Gryphon ===

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Amberdrake's other patient is a female Healer named Winterhart who suffers from crippling headaches and back pain. She is also the coldest [[Ice Queen]] he's ever encountered. He surreptitiously treats her emotional issues even as he treats her physical ones, and discovers that she was an unrecognized [[The Empath|Empath]] in the presence of a [[Emotion Bomb|potent fear spell]] unleashed by Ma'ar early in the war, which left her with terrible emotional and psychological scars. In working through this trauma, Amberdrake is forced to open up about his own past and finds that the [[Defrosting Ice Queen|defrosted]] Winterhart is becoming his own spiritual and emotional partner.

Unfortunately, the war is going badly for Urtho's forces, and Ma'ar has reached striking distance of his fortress. This is largely due to one of Urtho's generals [[Face Heel Turn|betraying]] him to Ma'ar, deliberately losing battles and even managing to dose Urtho with a slow-acting but invariably lethal poison. The energy in Urtho's magic artifacts will be released [[No Ontological Inertia|when he dies]], destroying his citadel and everything nearby. The war is lost, and Urtho clings to life as long as possible while his people evacuate through his [[Cool Gate|Gates]]. Skandranon, furious at the loss of Urtho, takes a secret Gate into the heart of Ma'ar's citadel and uses an [[Anti Magic]] device, causing Ma'ar's magic items to explode in the same manner as Urtho's.

Unfortunately, the war is going badly for Urtho's forces, and Ma'ar has reached striking distance of his fortress. This is largely due to one of Urtho's generals [[Face Heel Turn|betraying]] him to Ma'ar, deliberately losing battles and even managing to dose Urtho with a slow-acting but invariably lethal poison. The energy in Urtho's magic artifacts will be released [[No Ontological Inertia|when he dies]], destroying his citadel and everything nearby. The war is lost, and Urtho clings to life as long as possible while his people evacuate through his [[Cool Gate|Gates]]. Skandranon, furious at the loss of Urtho, takes a secret Gate into the heart of Ma'ar's citadel and uses an [[Anti-Magic]] device, causing Ma'ar's magic items to explode in the same manner as Urtho's.

As Skandranon makes a narrow escape by rapidly-closing Gate, Urtho finally succumbs to the poison. The combined magical destruction of Ma'ar's and Urtho's strongholds interact, [[World Wrecking Wave|devastating the surrounding landscape]] and disrupting all magic for thousands of miles in an event that will eventually become known as [[The End of the World As We Know It|the Cataclysm]]. With magic no longer reliable, the survivors of clan Kale'da'in find themselves cut off and alone, forced to create a new home where they ended up, in the far West.

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=== The Silver Gryphon ===

A coming-of-age story for the newly grown children of White Gryphon's leaders -- Skandranon's son and Amberdrake's daughter both find themselves squirming under the burden of the expectations of their famous parents. As newly minted Silver Gryphons -- the city's elite soldiers -- they take it upon themselves to investigate the predation of a new breed of ''wyrsa'', a vicious magical beast created during the Mage Wars. They find out the hard way that the ''wyrsa'' have mutated into [[Anti Magic|magic-eaters]]. Injured in the crash landing of their previously magical conveyance, and cut off from all hope of communication, they must struggle to survive in the forbidding wilderness.

A coming-of-age story for the newly grown children of White Gryphon's leaders -- Skandranon's son and Amberdrake's daughter both find themselves squirming under the burden of the expectations of their famous parents. As newly minted Silver Gryphons -- the city's elite soldiers -- they take it upon themselves to investigate the predation of a new breed of ''wyrsa'', a vicious magical beast created during the Mage Wars. They find out the hard way that the ''wyrsa'' have mutated into [[Anti-Magic|magic-eaters]]. Injured in the crash landing of their previously magical conveyance, and cut off from all hope of communication, they must struggle to survive in the forbidding wilderness.

Meanwhile, Amberdrake and Skandranon, desperate as only parents who have lost their children can be, launch a hurried rescue mission. As their party dwindles one by one, they find themselves in as much danger as the people they are searching for. They discover and defeat the queen ''wyrsa'', and in the process realize that their children have finally grown up.