Role

Chapter 5

Conspiracy and intrigue shroud the history of Thera from its origins to present
day. Secret societies hoard hidden magicks and play kings of men as puppets.
Shadowy cults and forbidden guilds rule with fear from the shadows. People
scheme and deceive each other and themselves for a thousand different ends.
With layer built upon layer of plotting and concealment for ages, no one could
possibly make sense of all of it.

Meet a man who thinks he has.

Cabdru always had a limitless curiousity for matters that others considered
settled or uninteresting. Most of the smarter fire giants were content to
learn magic and put it to use setting villages on fire and creating general
mayhem. Cabdru, however, was obsessed with the why. As a boy he had heard
in passing the legend of the Teacher who had brought magic to the fire giants.
Ever since hearing about it he was sought to understand such mysteries, such
matters of history, find out who was behind them, and learn the mystery behind
the Mystery. Because, of course, there always was a mystery behind another.
Since no one he knew had the answers to these kinds of questions, he thought
that they must be great secrets, even though the reality was that the other
fire giants just didn't care.

Leaving his volcano and being exposed to the outside world, he found many
more mysteries, things more alien that he did not understand. His imagination
ran wild and paranoia began to consume him.

Strange Khar-Zhur trees were everywhere, enveloping him in an eerie orange
light, but leaving others unilluminated. It was obvious they were marking him
for arrest and torture by some shadowy group of secret police. The Coven
whose conjuration magic was stolen during the Tailed Star affair clearly was
still out there somewhere, using even more forbidden magic and plotting
horrible things. The Blood Tribunal was on the take, allowing many citizens
of their cities to be cut down without interference. Wild men in the woods
sought to sacrifice simple fire giants such as himself to their dark and
ancient gods, then throw others off the scent of their true plan by also
butchering dwarves and starting fires. A mighty Empire only sent out two
soldiers at a time to secure territory, obviously because the puppet masters
that pulled their strings didn't really want that territory conquered.
The game was afoot, the fix was in, and everyone was in on it.

There was only one way to get to stay alive and get to the bottom of things.
Killing would solve all the problems. He would need to grab some of the
conspirators, force whatever information he could from them, and then dispose
of the bodies so as not to scare off others. He would need a place to put a
lot of bodies and perhaps a small group of conspirators of his own. Someone
would need to watch the watchers, and they would need to watch them with axes.