>>14728060Kanscar, Ordelai, Iglem, and Nov were, none of them, the sort of people you would expect to see traveling on the road together. A ward-brother of Kord, a disgraced acolyte of the Arcana, an almost foppish minstrel, and a half-orc? It sounds like the lead-in to a bad joke, not the roster of the greatest team of heroes in our history.
In truth, no one is certain how they met, or who among them devised the plan. How they were granted audience with the Guardsman-General of the Arcana just three weeks before Second Offering, when another 700 acolytes would lie down on the Crimson Altar, is equally puzzling.
What is known is that their proposal was accepted. They would be allowed through the Bear Wall, carrying a special talisman. When they had cleared a wedge of the Clawed Lands of ursine influence, the talisman would signal the Arcana, who would stand ready to advance the Wall. In this way, these heroes would reclaim the ground we had lost for so long.
By Third Offering, the Earth had regained nearly a third of the land once lost to the snarling monsters that inhabited the Clawed Lands. Unfortunately, by this time Ordelai and Nov had already succumbed to the touch of the Elemental, and the others were running for their lives.
Kanscar was the last to fall, but with his last breath he destroyed the talisman. Kanscar knew that in the hands of the Elemental, this relic could be used to topple a section of the Bear Wall, releasing a flood of claws and teeth onto the unsuspecting world beyond.
Many would-be Kanscars or Iglems have swaggered through since that day, but none of them has recovered so much as a single inch of the lands beyond. What makes you think you're any different?