Dark Jack

The Prophecy

The indignation Gerald felt towards the Grand Master for having revealed their secrets was, contrary to what one would be tempted to believe, caused almost entirely by the intent behind the revelation. What angered him was not that Jillian had learned these things about him, but that the information was revealed as a means to spite them. These parts of the warlock's past were personal, certainly, and by no means things that he wanted anyone to know about, but ultimately they had no practical importance. Besides, if he was going to be teaching Jillian necromancy - or at least try to do so, if she was indeed still interested - she would inevitably come to have a much greater insight in his core nature than any amount of unveiled secrets could give her. That was one of the things he had been the most surprised about when he had been taught by the Black Tribunal's emissaries; the exercises of a fledging necromancer under the tutorage of an experienced one, when done right, laid bare their souls to one another and forced them to share their innermost beings with one another. His teachers had not been alarmed by what they had witnessed, apparently, since they kept teaching him, but Gerald's resolve to betray them had been reaffirmed greatly through the boundless greed and ambition he had witnessed in his teachers. Perhaps their lack of suspicion came from them seeing that very same greed and ambition in him? He would probably never know, and he suspected that he really was no better than them, but it did not matter. They had been a means to an end, a way to obtain necromancy in a world that abhorred it, nothing more. He needed their knowledge to acquire the skills required to fulfill his goals; he did not need them.
Of course he was a little worried how the witch might react to learning that the source of his necromancy was none other than the notorious Black Tribunal, and that he had tricked, used and betrayed them, but not too much; if she wanted his necromancy she had to stay regardless, and if this made her reconsider her decision to learn... well, he would be alone again, but she would never have made it through the training anyway. He would do things differently with her than the Tribunal had done with him - teach her through self-devised methods that were less macabre and cruel, but were likely to take longer time - but necromancy was a disturbing magic to learn no matter what, not to mention extremely testing in regards to one's mental, spiritual and moral fortitude. If something like this put her off, she would never be a true necromancer, and she would soon leave him anyway.
He was slightly more concerned about the revelation that Jillian had apparently killed the witch that had taught her black magic, which undeniably was at least one step worse a betrayal than he had wrought against his teachers, but hot as her temper had proven to be he doubted that she would kill without good reason. Additionally, her reaction seemed to suggest a sincere disagreement with the Grand Master's claim... but he doubted that the demon, Lord of Lies or not, would lie about this. A murder that was not a murder... an accident, then? Black magic was extremely volatile and dangerous, after all; it was only a few hours ago that she had warned him that her spells might hit themselves in addition to their intended targets. If so, he would be far less worried; necromancy was probably the least volatile school of magic, and while it could kill, he had never heard of such a thing occurring accidentally.

When the Grand Master posed his demand of something to be paid in return for the information they needed, Gerald's mind was already racing before the demon had even finished his sentence, trying to work through various possibilities of what they could think to offer that would be seen as fitting recompense by the infernal salesman before them. Power demands sacrifice, after all, and for something as incredibly valuable as a means to end the Withering he suspected that the sacrifice would have to be great indeed.
His initial reaction to Jillian's hasty and arrogant reply was outrage and panic, thinking that a response like that might put the Grand Master off the deal entirely and make him refuse to bargain with them on principle unless they offered even more. What did I just tell you about not being stupid, girl? You just ruined everything! But as she explained just why it was that they would offer nothing for the knowledge, the withered man's expression quickly softened as he inwardly chastised himself for thinking her stupid and started wondering if she was perhaps even more insightful than he had already given her credit for.
Overconfident as she may be, there is truth to what she's saying. The demon causing the Withering is not one of his servants, which means it's one of his rivals; aiding someone in obstructing this demon's work would actually be beneficial for him. This knowledge is extremely valuable, certainly, but this definitely lessens his sacrifice in revealing it.

Turning his attention back to the fiendish mirage on the water, Gerald found the Grand Master staring blankly at Jillian, his head cocked to the right. His arms no longer hang down his sides but were crossed over his chest.
"My minions are... oh, you mean Hazzergash's puppets!" He laughed, a strangely human and almost likable laughter. "The so-called crusaders are Hazzergash's, Jillian, not mine. Surely you can't expect me to hold that dog's leash while I'm still stuck were the Nomad put me? No, I have nothing to do with what Hazzergash and his minions are doing. But..."
He paused, staring at both of them with frightening intensity. "Yes, you are rather insightful for a mortal. Very few realize that the truest distinction between myself and the Lord of Darkness is that while he seeks to destroy, I merely desire to rule. It would sour my eventual return as ruler of your world significantly if you mortals had been wiped out before then. I do want the Withering to end, and my Crimson Dawn has indeed tried to act upon my knowledge... tried and failed.
But surely you see that this information is still much too valuable to give away freely?" he explained with a vague gesture of his right hand. "And it is a deal I will likely only ever be able to make once... and even if I do tell you where to go, there is no guarantee that you succeed. My agents failed; why would you not? Then I will have gained nothing."
He sighed. "Tell me this: how am I supposed to believe that two mortal mages could have any hope of vanquishing a demon with the power to kill millions? And who, as I'm sure Gerald will have figured out already, has bolstered its own strength with the power stolen from the victims of the plague? I do enjoy a good gamble, Jillian, but you have to admit that the odds are not exactly in your favor. And I don't make bad bets."

The Prophecy

It seems that there is a pretty wide agreement that it would definitely be preferable to stay here, but a willingness to endure a temporary move - until this site works properly - if conditions here do indeed prove unsustainable. Collecting the other half of the votes isn't really necessary, I think, since I suspect the opinion will be much the same. So the decision ends up being that we stay, but if more of these downtimes that make RPGuild inaccessible for several days at a time come around, we'll find somewhere more stable to keep the RP active until RPGuild is back in working condition.

It's all right, Nessa; I know that you've had it rough for a long time now, and I've always stressed with you all how real life must take priority over the RP. Although I admit that a post would be extraordinarily welcome, I won't blame you if you have to delay for personal reasons... within reason, of course.

And I am indeed quite colorblind; you may recall some of the earliest maps I made for the early iterations of The Prophecy-RP, and how weird the colors on those were (I've been told that I made the oceans a shade of green back then... teal, I think?). I'm so very happy that most programs nowadays have text that announce the name of colors, which I can then check the definition of, or things I made now would be just as horrid as back then.
I tried logging into the Compendium again, and it does indeed notify me in the corner that "Session set active", but there are no random numbers and letters and it still gives me the exact same message when I try to view one of the sections. I do use Firefox and run Windows 7 (pauses to check) Home Premium, if that makes any difference. Whatever it is, it seems that the Compendium does not like me.

The Prophecy

Okay, good, I just wanted to be sure that no one was actually waiting for me (particularly in the Zerul-scene, since I was quite uncertain whether Rhaevnn or Merc were actually going to post). I've been pondering whether to post in our collab, but always end up deciding against it due to things having occurred that I figure would be important to Thaler to have a chance to react to, at least, and that the collab has almost outlived its usefulness as the characters there will return to the main thread.

I don't know about a lot of roleplaying sites, but I, too, have noted Iwaku being mentioned here as the destination of a migration from RPGuild. And I'll grant you that while I do not share your problem born from an apparently very acute color-vision (being quite blind to hues myself across most if not all of the spectrum), there are some cases of pretty sharp colors, and when I switched the style to "medium light" and "light"... it was horrible. So blindingly bright. That said I know next to nothing about the site (apart from having observed that they divide their RPs into more categories then RPGuild does and seem more lenient as to what content they allow), but since I have no alternatives, if the players want it, I suppose it would serve as a temporary base for The Prophecy, at least until Mahz gets RPGuild working properly again.

And I hadn't noticed the addition of a login-link at the Compendium, no, but I just went to test it, and while I was indeed able to log in, when I try to access any of the sections while being so I simply get

Unable to connect to database [Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO)]

The Prophecy

Before RPGuild becomes unavailable again: who is waiting for who right now, and what suggestions do you all have as to what to do about the mess that is the current RPGuild?

The Prophecy

Yay, for the first time in 2015 - three days into the year - I'm actually able to connect to the RPGuild again! Happy New Year, everyone!
...Seriously, screw this site. I'm pissed. You can't run a roleplay while only being able to check in on it once a week. I may not post often, but I'll be damned if I don't check on it at least several times a day.
*sigh* Let's see for how long we're allowed to connect this time...

The Prophecy

Don't worry about disturbing things, the way this RP works is sufficiently organic that it can adapt to just about anything, and when it comes to the character working as a part of the group, I think disturbances would come down to personality and motivations over actual combat ability (and other abilities, for that matter; far from every problem is solved by fighting, even though it might not seem like that sometimes).
A god of wisdom and strength sounds like Deliph, the god of tactical warfare, to me, if it's specifically those two qualities you're looking for. At least I think it'd be the best fit without me having to create a new deity.

The Prophecy

Well, the actual order of events are always up to the characters, but I believe the plan is for the group traveling there to rest up and restock on supplies, and for them to receive the information they were going there for in the first place in regards to how a person recovered from the Withering. They will probably receive the information immediately upon arriving (that is one of the tasks given to the representative meant to meet them), but what happens after that is at the mercy of free will. I suspect that they will either take a day or so to recuperate right away, postponing everything until they are all at least somewhat healthy again, or they might want to seek out the survivor of the Withering themselves to ask their own questions and get their own answers. Eventually they will most likely go to investigate exactly how the recovery occurred, though, and continue their quest to end the Withering.

The Prophecy

Quite frankly I'd say that the "highly trained" and "knight type" troops would be the first ones selected to accompany the duke, and thus likely the last ones available to send on an errand to escort a group of what is essentially just another band of unaffiliated questing adventurers. With a large chunk of the elite forces of the duchy off to the wedding, another part in Etlon to guard an excavation there, and the rest being busy trying to keep the city safe even with the confusion caused by the large number of incoming refugees, I sincerely doubt the Zerulic military has any kind of manpower to devote to things like this. Besides, the duchy already stationed a representative to receive the group at the gate; I doubt they'd send an escort on top of that.
But as I mentioned earlier I expect the main group to reach Zerul City very soon (at least I hope they will), and there are even already characters waiting in the city, so rather than sending your character to meet them on the way I'd suggest having it meet them in the city.

The Prophecy

If you just give me access to whatever you've got up and running with the Compendium, Shien, that'll be fine for the time being. And I can definitely relate to your reason for not posting here before now; the constant unavailability of the RPGuild has been keeping me away for the past... several weeks by now, I think, too. My patience is certainly starting to run out by now, and if Mahz doesn't find a solution to the problem - or finds someone that can do so for him - it won't be a matter of subjectivity anymore; the current state of the RPGuild is going to kill the RP.

@Veridis Quo: The "Story so far" is a little outdated, actually, but not nearly as much as one would expect from something that hasn't been updated for that long. There are actually three groups of characters currently active within the RP: the group that was outside the gates of Zerul City, which has actually moved inside the city by now and has been brought together a little more intricately by an encounter in there; another group is by a secluded lake in Pelgaid, currently conversing with the demon lord known as the Grand Master and planning to head out in pursuit of Hazzergash, another demon lord; and lastly, one group will leave the borderhouse they have been staying at "very soon" and head to Zerul City as well, so they should arrive there "very soon" (the quotation marks are there because things never go as I plan or envision them).
The races are actually mentioned in the Compendium, yes; they can be found in the section called "Races of Reniam". They aren't the Tolkien-races, no, though part of the inspiration behind their design undeniably came from that, but essentially they are mostly my original creations.
And see, choosing a role that the group is missing gives a bit more freedom when there are multiple groups, although the group in Zerul City is supposed to soon merge with the one heading there. The two merging groups do seem to have just about all roles covered, however, except perhaps a proper mage. The other group desperately needs just about any kind of brawny backup, though, as it consists of just two mages, neither of which has any kind of prowess in physical confrontation (or they will, as soon as they aren't accompanied by a two thousand-year-old dragon anymore). A ranger/hunter, as you call it, would fit into that massive gap in ability as well as any kind of fighter. As for elves, the RP doesn't have them, but the deigan race is probably the closest match to the popular depiction of them.