It feels as if I went back in time by about sixteen years.
I've been staying with Ivella Odgen, Cray Fenton, and Peter Quora at the Guesthouse near Cabotton University. And just today, we were sitting in the Dungeonmaster Office with Skylar Meredyth, who was the Dungeonmaster sixteen years ago.
Skylar retired from the Dungeonmaster role a number of years ago. Two other people sat the role in the time that passed. But then two years ago, the Society voted Skylar back in again. The reason is a long story that I don't have the energy to explain, not only because of how late it is but also because of the reason I came back to Cabotton in the first place.
There is apparently, somewhere in the Arturian Realm, some sort of scroll with real darkfire scripts on it.
That is literally all we know. We have no other information.
And things had been going well for us too. Not even two weeks ago, we were on the cusp of establishing an integrated project dedicated to the construction of a dymensional plane of all of Remikra, with the hope of expanding it to cover other parts of Circlaria. I guess one could argue that Cray Fenton started this initiative, but it really is Peter Quora who came up with the concept to expand Cray's dymensional plane to encompass the world we know today, and also to create a consistent system of multiple ports of entry between Cray's plane and the Arturian Realm. We had finally had a point in our schedules where we could have a Conference in the Galleston Farmhouse, a Conference led by myself, Cray Fenton, Peter Quora, and Ivella Ogden. We were making headway on the plan when Peter suddenly received an electronic message over his OCEA digital ticker from an unknown contact, warning him of the said darkfire scroll and the potential "dangerous consequences" if the scroll was not dealt with.
While it's true that darkfire is now legal, the stakes are still high when it comes to an unchecked scroll with darkfire scripts. From what I've gathered so far, the script on this said scroll in particular are unusually high in quality and caliber, making this scroll very desirable. The Knights of the Common Good, that far-right terror organization still determined, to this day, to overthrow Prime Minister Finzi and the Commonwealth government, has a bounty on that scroll for its destruction; and that bounty grows each day. Of course, the Third Level Society has plenty of safeguards established to prevent a KCG infiltrator from doing any sort of damage or espionage.
But of course, once again, this said scroll contains some of the most valuable darkfire scripts ever made. There are many people within the Darkfire Community determined to take credit for locating it. The intent is to invest in it and split the returns evenly among the community, but there is still incentive, if you know what I mean.
All of this I gathered before we met with Skylar. But during the meeting with her, I learned when and where that scroll was made.
Apparently, it started with a man named Tom Kearney. The first I heard about him was from Sophia Qalmers, who had a lot to complain about him. For a short while, they were friends, or at least on friendly terms as co-workers for the newspaper: The Three Points. They worked together on the same column, and Sophia agreed to have Kearney write some sort of cross-examination on her observations of both Cabotton University and the Third Level Society.
That was about fourteen years ago. And it was during that cross-examination that Kearney expressed his true thoughts and intentions.
It was clear that he was salty about Sophia having been promoted to the Field Journalist role. He did not convey that outright. But he did express a lot of disdain for her on a sensitive subject: the morality of darkfire. He seems to have been raised from childhood to view darkfire as dangerous and morally corrupt. Even now, I do not know if he believed in the Reonard Chaney propaganda, but Kearney was very much opposed to the integration of the Darkfire Community into mainstream society and was especially opposed to the idea of anyone with Involuntary Darkfire Conjuration Syndrome taking any sort of political power.
So he intended to "expose darkfire for what it really was," in the article he wanted to publish. At one point, Sophia went on some sort of vacation, during which Tom saw his opportunity to do his field work and write the article for publication before Sophia's return. However, any article had to be approved by the person serving as the supervisor over both Tom and Sophia in order for the work to be published. When the supervisor in charge rejected Tom's article, Tom was apparently livid and resigned from his post. And perhaps Sophia would not have wound up telling me what happened had it not been for a digital OCEA message that Tom wrote her expressing his spite, falsely blaming her for "boss favoritism" over this, in an act of retaliation.
Sophia and I had a bit of gossip over all of this at the time. We had thought that was the last that we would ever hear of Tom. But then Kearney somehow attained money and resources to gather a group of friends for a project for an independent film. He went back to Cabotton University and filmed interviews with random Cabotton students, especially freshmen, asking them very pointed questions in order to "build evidence" to claim that darkfire was supposedly corrupting the Third Level Society and the University. And in short order, he had the film edited and released.
And it would have been a success had it not been for Tom Kearney's bad timing. He did this film project in 1301, the year that all of the Remikran tradestone markets collapsed. That of course destroyed Middle Remikran society as we knew it, therefore taking center stage while Tom Kearney's propaganda film did not. The Third Level Society also filed a lawsuit against Kearney, which succeeded and forced his media platform to disband.
None of us know what happened with Kearney immediately after 1301. All we know was that, in 1308, he returned to Cabotton University bearing the false name: Stephen Mackwell. Under this guise, he posed as a recruiter for the University's Legalize Darkfire Coalition, and targeted two freshmen: Paul Mirkwynn and his roommate, Tyler Benjamin. Tom went first to Paul and convinced him to travel with him to the Mount Carris Perimeter to copy darkfire scripts onto a scroll. Kearney was stealing these scripts but had convinced Paul that he had special permissions to retrieve the scripts. Paul was then tasked with placing the scripted scroll into a special quest box and hiding said box in one of the cottages near one of the docks on the Isle of Antemearsa. As his third assignment, Paul was assigned to find someone willing to purchase the darkfire scripts. After the payment was made, Paul would give the coordinates of the quest box with the scroll to the client.
Kearney, still as Stephen Mackwell, then went to Tyler Benjamin and lied to him, telling him that Paul had actually stolen the Mount Carris darkfire scripts and instructing him to find the scroll and destroy it.
This of course would work with Tyler, not only because he was Paul's roommate but also that he had been inspired by Paul as a friend to support the Darkfire Legalization movement and join the Third Level Society. This, combined with the feeling of betrayal at learning Paul's supposed wrongdoing, would compel Tyler to act accordingly. Kearney, meanwhile, knew that this would either lead the client of Paul Mirkwynn to confront Paul over the now-missing scroll or lead Tyler and Paul to confront each other. This, Tom Kearney hoped, would lead to in-fighting within the Legalize Darkfire Coalition base and ultimately weaken Finzi's political side against the far-right figure Walter Scott Mason.
Or all of that would have played out, had it not been for Tom Kearney's faulty assumptions.
On the evening of June 15, 1308, Tom got a message from Tyler regarding an "urgent issue" and that he needed to come meet him. Tom thought that some sort of in-fighting was about to brew, much to his desire. When they met at the Slack, Tom encountered Tyler and Paul, who knew all along that Tom was not Stephen Mackwell but was, in fact, the notorious Tom Kearney. As it turned out, Tyler and Paul were actually seasoned Members of the Society tasked with protecting the Society and the Legalize Darkfire Coalition by watching out for infiltrators; so they immediately recognized him. They attempted to perform a citizen's arrest on Kearney on the charge of incitement of violence. But Kearney resisted them and escaped while attacking them with spellfire discharges. Tyler and Paul chased after him, but Tom fled into the woods outside of Cabotton University.
Holz Finzi, himself, was made aware of this and dispatched numerous spies and affiliates in an attempt to catch Tom. But all came to no avail. And it was unfortunate that the search stopped here, because the government of the old Early Republic was not willing to help. While it was true that the Finzi Coalition, like the Knights of the Common Good, were equally legally protected as a vigilante law enforcement group, the pro-Waltmann/anti-Finzi authorities refused to see Tom Kearney as a threat. They openly preferred a far-right figure like Mason to the Darkfire Community in terms of political control. So that meant that no further tracking of Tom Kearney was made after the June 15 incident.
On the other side of this, the scroll went missing. After the incident, Paul went to the place where the darkfire scroll was stored and found it empty. Whether Tom took it, or someone either took it or destroyed it, remains to this day to be a complete mystery. But it feels like a good probability that Tom may have some knowledge of where it could be, if it still exists and I can find him.
Getting the information from Tom Kearney will be the most difficult matter though. The most practical method I can think of would be for me to pose as an ally to him and somehow get him to open up his trust to me with this knowledge.
This is all, of course, why I would like to avoid having to find Tom in the first place. Perhaps I can get some contextual clues from Tyler and Paul, even if they may not know anything about the scroll.