[@Rhiven Knight][@AtomicNut]
Rose had oftened imagined this moment to be filled with sunshine and rainbows, with gentle harps strumming somewhere in the distance as Prince Darvus Dragan walked into her life.

Instead, it was rather...quiet, dusty, and smelled of old books. Much like the library.

Rhayven hardly broke a sweat. "Ah, hello Prince Darvus! We werent expecting anyone to join us in our research." With that brief greeting, he resumed his conversation with Rose, as if she were more important to him than the [i]Prince of Drakengard.[/i]

It felt nice.

"As to your question, Rose," he continued, "that is a treatise I wrote, and recently, on a ruin I explored, and the nature of the magical secrets I discovered within and its relation to our known history. That is what I do: I explore, mostly as a way to study magic, to deepen my understanding- our understanding- of the magic we use. It also helps further my research into the development of new forms of magic."

She touched her chin and nodded. His methods, while uncommon, were not wholly outlandish. After all, whether one studies magic from a book or from a ruin, they're still learning it from dead people, are they not? And, to learn the magical technology of a superior civilization from ages long past surely could not be inferior to learning from a book written only a few decades ago.

Rhayven attempted to loop Darvus into their conversation. "Still, it is a pleasure to have you join our research inquiry, Your Highness. What Rose and I have been researching is a confluence of historical detail and fictional writing. Which is to say, some of the presented fairy tales bare a striking resemblance to places of historical fact, and that appear to connect to the artifacts of legend. It is far from a settled matter, but our current theory is that the truth of the weapons lies somewhere between the truth of established history and the supposition of folk lore, and it should mean we have deciphered candidates for probable places to look for specific weapons. Further, I think (though Rose will need to look over that treatise I wrote), that I have been to a site linked to one of these sites and might be in possession of an artifact to facilitate gaining entry into the dungeon, in which is stored one of the so-called keys."

Rose paged through the treatise. His meticulous style made it easy to read, despite its dense content, which earned him some kudos in her view. Rhayven had visited numerous ruins in his time, some fruitful, some sparse, all of them interesting. Most ruins, he'd found, were found in desert regions, and grew less and less ruinous as they drew closer to the Haven towers- with the notable exception of Midhaven. Despite having no access to the immediate area around Midhaven Tower, thanks to the odd wall that cropped up around it in recent years, Rhayven found pieces of man-made materials all around the area, and in fairly dense scattering, which strongly suggested a previously inhabited area. He'd speculated, as other historians did, that the region was Ground Zero of the Apocalypse War.

Though the ruins of Ancient cities were endlessly interesting for a variety of reasons, of peculiar interest were the golems. Throughout his journeys, he kept finding them in all shapes and sizes- small golems, large golems, epic golems, battle golems, frail golems- humanoid constructs made by the Ancients for all kinds of functions. A few were in sufficiently good condition that he was able to confirm that they were, in essence, machines, and as an inventor, he knew full well that all machines need maintenance. And the biggest, baddest golems would need the biggest, baddest maintenance.

Which meant, of course, that they needed the biggest, baddest infrastructure to maintain them. That was how, over a year ago, Rhayven became the first man on Aion to discover an Ancint Stronghold. The place was a veritable treasure trove of Ancient engineering, with partially intact war golems, damaged magitech equipment, advanced materials and architecture, and even electronic systems resembling those created in modern sages' laboratories (albeit advanced to incomprehensibility).

The main problem was getting inside. While the advent of teleporting magic theoretically meant one could go inside whenever they wanted, there was no telling whether there was sufficient space to teleport into, since the vast majority of the structure had collapsed. The government whose territory it was in, Drakengard, was curiously reluctant to help clear it, so the stronghold's contents had yet to be explored.

Rose piped up. "The stronghold Sir Rhayven discovered is mostly obscured by debris, which the Crown has been unwilling to deal with. If I may be so bold, Your Highness, do you have any...pull? Can you...you know...get help with that?"