The Magi of the Realms have a number of Tenets that it’s members try to follow. They are as follows: Seek Knowledge for ignorance is death. Spread wisdom, for experience unspoken is lost. Ascertain the Unknown, for life not questioned is wasted. Quest until the last quest is done. And finally to support the role of magic in the Realms. To that end, Spreading Wisdom is a series where we are going to get people knowledgeable about known upcoming adventures, and have them share their wisdom. Today, we will have Janus discussing Norlund.
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Back in 1015, a group of us went to enjoy a day of fun in Rhiassa. It was here that we first met and learned about the people of Norlund. Their world is one which is similar to some of the northern regions of our world, with similar gods such as Loki and Thor. A world where Ragnarok comes, destroys all, and allows a fresh world to be reborn. It was during the start of Ragnarok that the Bedlam (which they referred to as the black death) had hit Norlund, breaking the cycle, leaving stagnation in its wake. So Ulric made the journey to us to ask for our aid in restarting Ragnarok, as we were the people who destroyed Bedlam.
It was with this knowledge that we began helping Ulric bring forth Ragnarok (I won’t go into the full exploits, as they are chronicled at http://rhiassa.com/questing/echoes_event_history.htm ,) but I will cover some of the highlights. We helped craft the bifrost, a way to travel from the realms to Norlund and back. We dealt with various creatures that were acting well outside their normal nature. We repaired the way for dwarves to craft the weapons of the gods. We safeguarded the passages of the world tree and rebirthed giants. But throughout, it seemed there was a person manipulating things behind the scenes, and it appeared that he was doing so with the essence of Bedlam. The person was injecting the essence of death and madness directly into his troops. We found that this was being done by Jarl Thorafin, who wished to prevent Ragnarok from occurring, even though the world was soon going to perish into ice.
Around here in our story, I shall bring up Saegan. He had been opposed to restarting Ragnarok. While he does not agree with Jarl Thorafin’s means at all, he agreed we should not start Ragnarok, and instead, we should devise a way to save the world itself. And with this goal in mind, not one of madness and destruction, but life of rebirth, Saegan began seeking alternate pathways. Following his lead, the adventurers destroyed an artifact that would help restart Ragnarok and in doing so, saved what was left of Odin’s Essence.
With this new mission leading us, we restarted the moon, and devised a way to travel to Asgard. And that brings us to this upcoming weekend. We have a way to Asgard, the land of the gods. From there we shall hopefully find a way to make life worth living for those still alive in Norlund. We shall learn from the gods of Norlund.
There are a few last bits of information to be aware of. First, there is a great power that had been kept from Mortal minds. They are legendary sigils called Asirrunes. These symbols may hold the secret to what we need to do in Asguard. A copy of what was known was sent to us, and here is what we deciphered:
(Image provided by Laika)
We believe the drawn symbol to be one of the Asirrunes and each piece we found was instructions on how to draw a single line of the Asirrunes, where each piece was a formula for drawing a single line. The top section was the formula while the bottom section was constraints for where the line would be drawn. Second, here is the map of Norlund in case it becomes relevant:
And finally, here is a copy of all of the runes. Their starrunes (the circles) are portrayed by overlapping multiple letters into a single word.
