From: bshsiung@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Bernard Hsiung)
Date: 25 Nov 92 00:42:46 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: [MI] Introducing:  Mar, of the Reaver


     Step up, step down, step up, step down, down, down...

     Mar wasn't First; not by a long shot.  He wasn't ranked in the Ten
Thousand anymore, though long ago he had been part of one who held Third.
His memories stretched back that far, too, to the Power and the glory of
which he had partaken... a hundred, no, a thousand Places crushed beneath
his iron footstep.  Then he recalled lying critically injured, broken on
seven Warriors, schemes for conquest scattered as completely as the form
had been.  The myriad fragments had been hunted down and snuffed out, one
by one.

     Only Mar had survived, all his Power devoted to evasion and escape.
He had thrown off pieces of himself as deceptive debris until he had been
reduced to his very Essence--which was, in turn, a miniscule portion of
the Essence of the once mighty and terrible being that was the Third
Servant of the Reaver.

     His interactions with Power were cut off completely, for fear of
discovery.  The splinter named Mar slept, drifting unseen along the
Pathways for millenia.

                        *          *          *

     The two Archmagi were quite distinct.  Nescie, Archmage of Education,
looked like somebody's balding uncle, beer belly and all.  He held a book
and gestured with it as he talked.  Dasham, the Archmage of Research, was
a young woman with flaming red hair and jade green eyes.  She might have
been stunningly beautiful, except that her face perpetually bore the sour
look of one who had bitten too deeply into a lemon.

     Yet appearances were deceiving.  Dasham had held her position
jealously for the last two centuries against all challengers.  Nescie,
on the other hand, had been only recently promoted and was still feeling
out the responsibilities and powers of his appointment.

     They were intensely studying a tiny fragment of material.

     "So, what do you think?" Nescie asked at last.

     "I don't know.  It's not anything that I've seen before.  See--it
actively diverts my probe.  But I don't know how it generates the effect,"
said Dasham.  "In nature, I'd guess it's closest to a piece of the
Negative Material plane, except that it's totally self-contained.  No
connections to anything."

     "The Negative Material plane?  Say, do you think it'd make a good
base for a magic eater?  Or maybe a wither-staff..."

     "If I were you, I'd toss it into the Formless One and forget all
about it," she responded.  "No--I'd bind it first, _then_ toss it into
the Formless One.  I mean, do you really want to mess around with a chip
of something that scared the bejimminy out of Shadratch?"

     Nescie chuckled.  "Maybe you're right.  Still, it must be powerful.
The last time he turned that pale was when we tried to get him to identify
that thigh bone you dug up that happened to belong to the Archliche."

     "Oh, ye gods, I'm never going to live that one down," Dasham complained.
"How was I supposed to know that it laid a compulsion on everyone who saw
it to put him back together?  And that Shadratch, being a demon, knew where
more than nine-tenths of the bones were?"

     "It all turned out for the best, anyway.  I wouldn't have made Archmage
so quickly if an eighth of the Guild hadn't been wiped out putting him down."

     "Hrm.  Well, I've some errands to run.  Catch you later.  And be
careful with that thing, will you?"

     "Certainly."

                        *          *          *

     Thorn, the Archmage of Politics, was a pleasant-looking, middle-aged
man.  An observant person, however, would notice that his mouth smiled far
more often than did his glittering, ice-blue eyes.  His voice could be
honey-sweet when he was attempting to persuade others to his point of view,
or harshly grating when announcing his disapproval.  He was another
relatively new appointment to the Council, having risen rapidly through
the ranks to reach his position by a skilled combination of cunning and
smooth-talking--or back-stabbing and blackmail, if his detractors were to
be believed.

     Thorn was feeling irate, as usual.  Filing progress reports on the
diplomatic relations between the various planes always annoyed him.  When
_he_ was Supreme Archmage, the first thing he would do would be to reduce
the Department of Bureaucracy--and that whining idiot Rivy--to ashes.

     Dasham appeared before his desk.  "What is it?" he snapped without
looking up from his work.

     "Nescie has found a primal artifact."  That got Thorn's attention.
Dasham gestured and the image of an obsidian-black chip smaller than a
fingernail materialized in her hand.  "I don't know what it is, but
Shadratch refused to identify it."

     "Really," Thorn said, narrowing his eyes.  "It's very small to be so
potent.  Are you sure?"

     "Yes.  Nothing I tried gave any hint to what it is, but it feels as
if it contains an immense amount of potential."

     "Does Nescie know?"

     "Of course not.  I told him it was like a piece of the Negative
Material plane."  She laughed disdainfully.  "I recommended that he throw
it into the Formless One."

     "Good.  I take it that the collectors we set up there are still
operating."

     Dasham nodded.

     "Excellent.  Keep trying to find out what it is--and keep an eye on
Nescie just in case he figures something out.  Maybe we can find a way to
use it against Delalle."

     Thorn watched as Dasham performed the passes that took her back to her
laboratory.  He snorted to himself.  An artifact, indeed!  Still, it was
better to be prepared.  And she _had_ dug up the Archliche...
--
Comments, compliments, and complaints can be conveyed to:
Bernie Hsiung (bshsiung@eecs.umich.edu)