[Private RP] The Cold North

[Synaxis]

Jarigos' face hardened for a fraction of a second at the sight of some of the specimens in the jars, but it wasn't long enough for anyone else to take notice of or become suspicious of. To say he was a little surprised by the collection of information that the cult had amassed was a bit of an understatement; the great number of scrolls and tomes and apparent experiments told him that this cult was not just a bunch of overzealous crazies, but a group willing to research to meet their goals. They were not so different from, say, the Kirin Tor.. but these guys were twisted.

Allowing his face to go blank again, he quite casually strode through the library, briefly perusing the titles within before finding a door they had not come in through. He glanced over at Morzath and Alythaku and with a 'well, let's try it then' look, he confidently walked over to the door and walked through it. Nobody noticed or tried to stop him from doing so. A faint sigh of relief, then, and he continued on through the threshold to find the door led to a fairly wide hallway with doors on either side. At the opposite end of the hallway was an open archway. It intrigued Jarigos, so he blindly walked toward it. Beyond the arch, he could just barely see a very high, wide chamber that was fairly well-lit with the blue torches. There was another wide, sweeping staircase within along the circular walls. Directly opposite the arch and on either side were doors.

The blue dragon paused in the archway, looking into this atrium with a thoughtful look. Up? Down? Forward? "Down," he murmured in a thoughtful tone, going on nothing but instinct. He went to the right and started down the long, curved staircase along the wall. Somewhere far below the sounds of agonized shouting could be heard, but if there were any words they were too indistinct to understand. Sounded like somebody was in pain, though, for sure..

[The Madgod]

The trio went further into the depths of the citadel, deep down until they were in the bowels of the earth. The stairway they used soon became a flat, high-ceilinged tunnel, which ended with a large iron door guarded by four cultists. When the three magi approached, the leader of the cultists held up a hand. "Halt. No unauthorized personnel are to enter."

Thinking on his feet, Morzath unexpectedly lashed out at the cultist with a fierce mental assault, and said, "But we are authorized. You cannot tell who we are?"

The cultist shook his head and looked at the three again. "O... Of course, I am deeply sorry sir. Please forgive my forgetfulnes." The other three cultists looked uneasy, but a quick mental revision from Morzath soon made them as sure of the group's authenticity as their leader. The cultists opened the door to reveal a gigantic room, filled with cultists.

And dragons.

There were several dragons of different flights, all female, shackled to the high arching ceiling. One or two were being let down to be brought to a large pile of hay, where they layed eggs. The females had scrapes and punctures, signs of experimentation, and the eggs being layed were of a sickly brownish-green color. There were also whelps and drakes, the same color as the eggs, who looked as sick as death, yet at the same time, moved in a way that was in no doubt healthy. These cultists, just as Morzath had learned from his spy, were trying to recreate the plagued dragonflight from the remnants of the experiments within the Scholomance.

[Synaxis]

The dragons made Jarigos actually stop in his tracks briefly before he realized that would look suspicious, and he continued onward. A sinking feeling was beginning to form in the pit of his stomach. His eyes landed upon the sickly eggs which was an even more alarming sight. What the hell was going on here? For a moment he ground his teeth in well-suppressed rage before relaxing himself once more. He couldn't let the nearby cultists pick up on his emotion, as difficult as it was for him to not say something about it. He knew that the Sphere was behind this experiment somehow - he just knew it. He couldn't imagine it would be a simple task to infect a dragon with the plague and not kill it. The blue dragonflight's lost artifact had the power to contain infections and dark magic to an area or stop it from progressing uncontrolled..

"Must be nearby," he breathed to Morzath and Alythaku, careful not to rouse the attention of the nearby working cultists. A couple of the cultists occasionally glanced at the three suspiciously, perhaps because they'd never seen them before, but if they suspected anything they did not act on it immediately.

Casually walking along the outside of the room, Jarigos allowed himself to simply feel. The air down here was much thicker, and those magically inclined would be able to feel the soft ebb and flow of magical energies from some invisible source in another chamber. Jari gravitated toward what he identified as the source direction. A wall with two doors, spread some distance apart, stood before him. With a glance to Morzath, he decided to take the right door on a whim. Letting himself inside and inviting the other two along, he found this room to be nothing more than a small office, empty except for the three of them.

"I don't know what they're doing out there, but I'll bet it's being aided by the artifact," he said in a hurried, hushed tone despite the three of them being the only ones in the room. While he spoke, he paced along to what he imagined to be the desk of the person running the apparent dragon breeding operation. On there were diagrams and things detailing the procedure. "I think we are close now. If this was their goal, to do - to do this, then.. we'd best find it fast. I'm sure they have it highly guarded. I doubt that trick you just pulled will work when we get to it."

[The Madgod]

Morzath and Alythaku, while both outwardly calm, were worried beyond belief, especially the young netherdrake. The last thing she wanted was for the cultists to shackle her up and force her to lay plagued eggs, from which drakes that not only were able to spread plague, but also able to use her flight's unique abilities. It would not bode well. The pair followed Jaradil into the office, and immediately shut the door. "They are trying to recreate the plagued dragonflight, a top-secret project only found deep within the scholomance, the Cult's... school for dark magics." whispered Morzath, "And you're right, I can't risk it..." finished the archmage, though Jaradil woudn't know the reason for it. The truth was that Morzath had previously been undead. And the cult had found out. If he was caught, he would be experimented on even moreso than Alythaku would.

Alythaku piped up. "Then how should we proceed?"

[Synaxis]

Jarigos looked down at the diagrams on the desk for a minute, apparently deep in thought. That Morzath knew the intentions of the cult was a little suspicious to Jarigos, but he figured if one knew enough about the cult in the first place, their intentions might be obvious - he did not question the knowledge immediately. Flipping over one of the pages on the desk, he found notes, hastily scrawled in the common tongue, though they did not appear to be of particular importance.. Flipping over another piece of paper, he found a letter that bore a rather official-looking signature. Intrigued, he skimmed through it, only half processing the words while thinking of a tactic of acquiring the object in question.

"Create a diversion," he mused thoughtfully. The letter he was reading detailed the trip from Coldarra to here, including the capture and enslavement of a blue drake when it was found that none of the cultists could handle the artifact for more than a couple of minutes without grave injury or death occurring.. He had known, of course, that he would ultimately need to be the one to grab it - there was no other way. He was beginning to fear for his identity, and that it might be blown in the near future. "Create a diversion," he repeated, this time more seriously. "One of these.. yes.. This one here, they mention the security of the artifact. Magical enchantments and constant guards.. The enchantments we should be able to deal with, but we'd be better off without the guards. We need a way to.. to get them out of there."

He looked up toward the closed door. Beyond it, there were dragons bound and forced to lay eggs for the experimentation. If any of those dragons were to get loose, they could do some serious damage to the place. Killing two birds with one stone: freeing the dragons and creating a perfect diversion. But would it work..?

"Did you get a look at what kind of bindings they had on those dragons?"

[The Madgod]

Morzath pondered the idea. Those dragons would certainly be a useful distraction, AND they could help those poor souls out in the process as they freed them. But... they would have to actually safely free them first.

The archmage shook his head at Jaradil's question, "No, I'm afraid I did not, which means that if we even get close to them, we would need to scry them and find out what sorts of enchantments are on them and then find counterspells for those enchantments; a process too delicate and too long for us, I would imagine. We would need a distraction to even have the other distraction."

Unbeknownst to the group, their unusual presence had been found. A lich and a contingent of cultists was heading straight through the great hall to the office that they were in. They did not have much time.

[The Madgod]

((hey syn, totally found it!))