Knowledge of All Things Bound = 49 from Ptolemaeus, a good enough roll to ID these extra-nasty looking Orcs, know where they are from and what they do, but not quite a 50, so he doesn’t have the deep story. Sable, on the other hand, did have a 50 on his roll for culture/street savvy, so he recalls everything he knows about them… limited somewhat by the source, but still very informative. Sable recalls the entire Story, in fact several of them.
Vir apparently passes along the images from the parrots onto the main Link, and Sable recognizes them immediately, with Ptolemaeus able to add quite a bit of information as the two of them jog each other’s memory in rapid discussion.
This is another shocker for Sable, a lot like his recognition of Bane, but… why not! Sable can observe to Ptolemaeus that Meridian City was plenty weird, and Darth Bane stepping out of Story is no more weird than some other things Sable has seen… maybe even not as weird as when he and Star were in the infamous smash hit rock band “Ifrit and the FaceMelters” touring the Nine Hells. Now it seems the next band he will see is “Thrash and the Witchlights”…
Yes, just like Lord Bane. Sable recalls several sources of Story with Orcs that look and strut just like these, but they weren’t just ordinary Orcs, they were called: Uruk-Hai. As Ptolemaeus recalls, the Uruk-Hai were an advanced breed of Orcs specially spawned to wipe out humans and their Elven allies in the events of another world, a remote, isolated world and Timeline; but as Sable knows from Story, it was quite unlike Meridian City but not too unlike some of the pastoral areas remaining on Meridian’s world.
Beyond Ptolemaeus’ recall of the straightforward facts about the creatures from Time Guardian Archives, Sable also recalls the reasons from Story, that an ancient Evil of at least demigod power, a Maiar, had corrupted the archmage of a Wizards’ council, a council of the most powerful Mages of that world who had been created and sent specially to defeat him. Sable even recalls that the corrupter was himself corrupted by another, even more ancient Deity, a Valar from the beginning of that world’s creation, whose fall into Evil and eventual incarnation by the sheer force of His own will to dominate that world and all its creatures was also part of the Story. The Valar Morgoth, and his proxy, the Maiar Sauron, hungered after the power to create life, held solely in that world by Iluvatar, the Creator of that world, of them, and ultimately of all in it. Earlier in the world, Morgoth had only been able to create life in His evil image by twisting the life that Iluvatar had already created; thus the Orcs, Goblinkind, and other Fell creatures. But later, the Uruk-Hai were created anew, Orcs far more powerful and Evil, by Sauron vested with the larger part of Morgoth’s power, and his own corrupted pet and former archmage, the Wizard Saruman, who labored under Sauron’s watchful, baleful Eye to brew thousands upon thousands of these new creatures into a mighty army as large or larger than any before seen in that world. Their purpose: Kill all humans, and their Elven allies, Iluvatar’s Second and First Children.
The Uruk-Hai of Story were notorious. Bitter foes in war, they fought and ran and fought again nearly without rest; their energy was nearly inexhaustible. Both Ptolemaeus and Sable recall they are also notoriously difficult to kill, beheading the Uruk-Hai was the one sure way with any speed to it. And they almost always fought unhesitatingly to the death, especially when they felt victory for their forces was assured, which, in their pride and overreaching, was almost always. And as Sable recalls from Story, they were brought to Shadow-linked life by Evil that reveled at last in true creation of such creatures: the Uruk-Hai were made for the purpose to die serving their Evil masters’ goals, attacking viciously, ferociously, with little regard for their lives.
Seven of the Uruk-Hai with Thrash… or is it now eight? …are worth seven hundred of lesser Orcs, and seven thousand of the Goblins now flooding through the compound.
As Sable can tell Ptolemaeus, all of the Story, much more than this, lingers in Sable’s memory, and even the flood of Goblins in ancient Dwarven halls seems familiar, but events are pressing, so their discussion on the Link is limited to this, for now.
As Ptolemaeus recalls, there is no connection whatsoever between that remote, isolated world and Timeline and the Illithid Empire; Illithids have never gone there; but nevertheless...
Another ancient Evil has stepped out of Story, or in Ptolemaeus’ view, is stepping from another real world and Timeline, and seems poised to destroy the party, Bral, and whatever else they can reach from the primary Spelljammer port serving the Multiverse.
