The Story So
Far:
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/features/travels/week1">Part
1
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/features/travels/week2">Part
2
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/features/travels/week3">Part
3
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/features/travels/week4">Part
4
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/features/travels/week5">Part
5
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/features/travels/week6">Part
6
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/features/travels/week7">Part
7
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/features/travels/week8">Part
8

Travels Through Telara

By Padraic



Greetings, dear reader. Today you  find me scribbling my entry
in a ditch beneath a hedgerow. This ditch is rather muddy. Why am I
doing this, I hear you ask? Well,  some of you may have
noticed the absence of Bran in last week’s missive. No? Well I can't
blame you. I, myself, barely noticed his absence. That was, until I
needed a new nib for my quill. After wandering around for most of the
afternoon, asking local villagers if they had seen a slack-jawed young
man staring into space, I eventually tracked him down to where he was
sitting outside a local tavern.



And what was he doing there? Waiting, that’s what. Waiting to catch
a  glimpse of a local barmaid he seems to have fallen for.



How, I hear you ask, does that lead to you lying in a ditch, Padraic?
I’ll tell you, shall I? Bran wants me to feed him some lines to impress
the object of his desire. So I lie here in the mud, while Bran stands
above me spouting off-the-cuff poetry to the love of his life’s bedroom
window.



Sigh. The things I do for… well, for what? I was going to say, ‘the
things I do for good help’, but we all know that would be a lie.



Anyway, while I am waiting for Bran’s barmaid to appear, I thought I’d
jot down some notes about the Endless Court. We all know there are six
dragon cults, one for each of the Blood Storm, but let’s face it, the
strongest and most terrifying of these is Regulos’s cult.






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The Endless Court began as a conspiracy between two of the most
powerful figures of the day. They were the dark mage Alekor Devishnille
and the warlord Mahr Rilthain. These two men were the vilest of
creatures. Beings of pure evil. Mahr sacrificed his own children to
prove his loyalty to Regulos. There are many tales of how he did this,
ranging from tying them to posts and letting them die of exposure, to
tossing them into a pit where feral dogs had been starved for days, to
murdering them in their sleep. Alekor, meanwhile, slaughtered entire
villagers to harvest their body parts to use in his dark magic. Once he
was done, he left a pile of hollowed out bodies for the scavengers to
devour.



This is Regulos’s demand. That his followers must embrace death – not
the natural cycle of decay and rebirth, but the void of all life. There
is no room in the Destroyer’s service for attachment to life, and
especially not for that which makes us human - attachment to love. The
first task of piety to Regulos is for the hopeful cult member to sever
all attachments to their old lives by sacrificing the one they love the
most. Initiates must allow the cult to capture the person closest to
them, whether it is a wife, a husband, a child, or a sibling. During
the rite of initiation, the initiate is required to murder the person
on an altar dedicated to Regulos. All love and hope drain away with the
victim’s blood. Only then is Regulos convinced of the supplicant’s
dedication.



Alekor and Mahr were the first to wear the black robes of Regulos.
Other followed, the dispossessed, outsiders, murderers, rapists, those
who had been expelled form normal society. They all found a home in the
Endless Court, where their debased and evil… proclivities were not
handicaps but rather a means of promotion. They all work toward the
final day of Telara, and the traditions started off by these two men
were passed down through the generations. Even once Regulos was
banished beyond the Ward, the Endless Court carried on. In fact, this
only seemed to anger them, and they vowed to free their dark master.






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Oh. Excuse me. Bran has just coughed out the signal that he needs a
line.



“Your skin is as white a freshly fallen snow and your hair as yellow
the kiss of the winter sun,” I whisper to Bran.



“Your skin is as yellow as winter snow and your hair as white as a
fresh sun,” repeats Bran.



Oh dear.



Anyway, the Endless Court. They have always been with us, a secret
society moving behind the most powerful of thrones, corrupting,
planting thoughts of evil, always pursuing the ends of their dark
patron. Every once in a while, they played their hand too forcefully
and have been discovered, their members then rooted out and punished.
And always, the variety of those willing to give their lives for
Regulos is a surprise. Knights, Dukes, scholars, mothers, 
philosophers. All seemingly normal people who under cover of night
commit debased deeds in the name of their master.

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Since the Ward broke, things have changed slightly. Instead of keeping
to the shadows, the Endless Court  have been stepping up their
activities throughout Telara. They no longer stay hidden, but proudly
proclaim their loyalties for all to see. Worse, they are finding many
new converts, as the threat of extinction has left many Telarans
utterly without hope, filled with despair. These are the emotions that
Regulos feeds on, drawing in the hopeless with whispered promises of
eternal life and endless rewards.



Behind this rebirth in the Endless Court is Alsbeth the Discordant, the
greatest servant of the Destroyer since Aedraxis fell.  She is
the Betrayer, the Guardian who used Defiant technology to breach the
Ward in Port Scion. It is her fault the once-glorious city is now a
decaying hive of the undead, ready to spill out and cover Telara in a
wave of corruption. If the Endless Court is successful, it will be
down to Alsbeth's actions.



Excuse me again. Bran is signaling.



“Your voice is like the melody flowing from the beak of a morning
finch, while your features look like they are hewed from the finest
marble,” I say.



"Your features look like a finch’s beak while your voice is like the
gravel of a marble statue,” repeats Bran.



Right. That should do it. Ah good. There we go. A bucket of water over
his head. Maybe now Bran can get back to focusing on the job at hand.
Until next time, dear reader.



The Story So
Far:
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/features/travels/week1">Part
1
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/features/travels/week2">Part
2
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/features/travels/week3">Part
3
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/features/travels/week4">Part
4
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/features/travels/week5">Part
5
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/features/travels/week6">Part
6
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/features/travels/week7">Part
7
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/features/travels/week8">Part
8


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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