Eldritch Guidance

In the heart of the Graheel University inside a heavily enhanced meeting room was a gathering of mages. The mages gathered here were some of the most influential mages in the whole of the Union States, and possibly the entire continent.

There were seven of them, each an archmage and respective headmaster for each of the colleges of the university.

Dakka Vinko of Grayscale, Jenna Lor of the Gilded Sun, Cooper Stanis of Ember Gear, Linda Yazhu of Silverwing, Marlyn Koa of Lionheart, Yaren Zuzanna of Shroompact, and Lazarus Vaal of Arcane Eye. All here wearing their respective robes of their college while sitting around a table.

The combined arcane power of the individuals gathered here was enough to destroy nations.

Jenna: “I hope you have some good news for you to call this meeting. Specifically related to that necromancy matter.”

Dakka: “It is related, but it’s not good news.”

Jenna: “Uggh. Dakka, please. I can’t take this anymore. I have hordes of nobles banging at my door, calling for me to explain ourselves to them. So, either give me some good news that I can show to those people, or clean up the mess you made.”

Linda: “Hey now. It’s not Dakka’s fault that this happened.”

Jenna: “Isn't it. Sorin was a professor at the Grayscale college. It’s Dakka’s responsibility to manage the professor that works at that college.”

Jenna: “Stop making excuses! None of you here have the right! It was me who pointed out something strange was going on months ago, but no one here listened to me. If you had all just done a thorough investigation like I wanted, we might have avoided all this.”

Cooper: “Jenna, there was no basis to do an investigation.”

Jenna: “The cosmic forces were off!”

Cooper: “This is ridiculous. We can’t make policies off of constellations,” the archmage of the ember gear college rebuked.

Jenna: “You wanna know what’s really ridiculous! Having a necromancer as a professor working here while he conducts experiments on our precious students!”

Linda: “Calm down Jenna.” she said, the Silverwing archmage trying to de-escalate the situation.

Jenna: “I will not calm down! It seems that I'm the only one here that cares about the thirty students that are now dead,” the archmage of the Gilded Sun said, angrily.

Lazarus: “Jenna, I will not ask you to calm down and will give you full credit that you were right at the time, but please let Dakka talk. We’re here for a reason,” he said, his word carrying more weight due to being head of the Arcane Eye.

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Jenna just puffed out her cheeks and crossed her arms. She then slightly nodded in agreement to Lazarus' words and turned to Dakka to hear what he had to say.

Dakka: “Thanks, Lazarus. So, I’ve called a meeting today to discuss the investigation me and the rest of the Grayscale and enforcers have done,” he said, clearing his throat before continuing. ”Through our investigation, we have concluded that Sorin was not acting alone. He had additional help.”

Marlyn: “That is to be expected. I’m sure his assistant Jixi was in on it. He went missing after we found out about Sorin’s deception.”

Dakka: “No, it is not just that. We are suspecting he had outside help…from a cult. Specifically, Rattle Bone.”

The room went deathly silent. Having a cult involved was serious, but having one of the big three cults involved brought the severity of the situation to an extreme level.

Cooper: “Are you sure? What basis do you have to conclude that?”

Dakka: “We confirmed the claims of those students who stopped Sorin. They said he was using spirit binding magic, and we found prohibited materials in his private lab on campus that would suggest he was using that type of magic.”

Jenna: “He had prohibited materials, and that didn’t send off alarm bells in your head?”

Linda: “Jenna, please let Dakka finish.”

Dakka: “As you all know, we at the Grayscale college study dark magic, as a means to create countermeasures for it. It is not strange for Sorin to have that kind of material, what was strange was that he never registered the material, so no one knew he had it in his private lab.” he said, responding to Jenna’s comments.

Marlyn: “OK, but that doesn't explain cult involvement,” the archmage of the Lionheart said, expressing doubt.

Dakka: “We…I have concluded that the magic Sorin was using is beyond his level of skill. Pulling souls out of people's bodies while not damaging them is not a simple type of magic. It comes with too many difficulties, and you need a lot of talent and expertise, or you risk killing yourself with it. It’s the kind of expertise I believe that you can only find in the biggest necromantic order in the world, the Rattle Bone cult.”

Cooper: “Maybe he was skilled enough to cast that spirit binding magic himself. There is no reason to assume cult involvement.”

Dakka: “You didn’t know Sorin as well as I did. He definitely couldn't have cast that kind of magic without some help.”

Cooper: “This is still speculation.”

Yaren: “It is speculation, but we should still assume Dakka’s right. Too many innocents have died already. We can’t afford for this to happen again. We need to make sure no cultists are hiding in our school somewhere,” the archmage of the Shroompact said, finally speaking up in this meeting.

Linda: “Agreed, we’ll do a thorough investigation to make sure there are no Rattle Bone cultists in our midst. Is there anything else your investigation turned up?”

Dakka: “We do have some names of people to look into, but…” he stopped mid-sentence, as he began to think about what he was going to say.

Lazarus: “But what?”

Dakka: “Many of them are off campus. Our enforcers have no authority outside the university. So, we can’t look into it as efficiently as we want.”

Lazarus: “I see…” he said trailing off into thought for a moment. “I may have a plan that might help with that issue, and it might help with Jenna’s problem as well."

Jenna: “You have a solution to our problems? Please tell.”

Lazarus: “We'll have to go back on our previous policies involving local government, and we’ll have to make use of the hero narrative we cultivated with those students that stopped Sorin. My plan is simple, first we will—”