After Johanna’s visions, the team remains locked in Zahl, as winter travel is always hard in the Northwest. Johanna does research for the vision she got from Moore’s subconscious in his dream, and she quickly figures out that it can only be The Library of Congress. While the four elaborate plans to get there, she notices an ice adept serving as a bartender at their inn, Petra Veldhuis.
Once spring approaches, Johanna tries to recruit her. And as she owns an Ancient book, Johanna – or rather, Moore – has little difficulty providing her with a starting set of spells as an Earth Shaper that fits better her profile rather than a Water one.
Doing a quick expedition to a local mana zone for training and money objectives, the four-plus-one get saddled with a guard from Zahl. And when they find ancient hymnals in a transposed village, the guard gets promoted by Moore as a Ranger, fittingly for his guard skills.
While Mark Kunst does not want to leave his city, the rest head southeast to the distant state of Independence, where their legal status as deserters may be legally contested if need be. While the second largest state of the Union by territory and first by population is a cultural shock for all the Northwesterners, they use the contacts from Countess Rocastle and head to New Sandusky, at the edges of the northern Marches.
There, they start recruiting salvager teams for their planned expedition. They convince two veterans, Miles Bertram and Ulrich Sengfield, a thirster – an albino “vampire” Changed race – of their capacities and provide them, in turn, with a large number of Talents. With an in into the salvager community of New Sandusky, they recruit two groups of scavengers as escorts.
The two men also provide invaluable advice into starting to set up the organization of Talented that Johanna has envisioned, the Talent House. Johanna, in particular, needs convincing from Laura that the Talents will inevitably have to be monetized if only to support that very organization.
Once preparations are complete, they get ready to set toward the East Coast and its mana zones. They are joined by an old member of Miles and Ulrich’s team, Kartmann the minotaur, who picked a Duelist specialization, and Ernesto Gomez, a scholar studying the skills and who realizes that his world is also going to change forever.
The expedition sets out for Washington across the increasingly dangerous mana-heavy zone that borders the entirety of the East Coast. The expedition is not uneventful, but it offers Gomez his first opportunity to tease out unsuspected data – because he now has some tools to measure how the unseen System behaves.
Along the way, Johanna’s expedition takes on unseen followers. Isolated in the mana zone for 150 years, Changed spot them and follow them. The diminutive nocturnal Mooneyed, survivors of the Camp David presidential retreat, are puzzled by their presence and spy on them, realizing quickly that the “Tallers”, as they call them, have access to what they call mount-skills, the Talents exhibited by the tame Canids they use as mounts and protectors for their Camp home.
When Johanna and the expedition finally arrive at Washington, Johanna is vindicated in her vision. And as they set camp next to the Library of Congress, they begin their real work – making as many parchments as possible to carry back to New Sandusky.
But Moore takes the opportunity to provide data. He might be limited to selecting what scrolls he makes, but that lets him dump the entirety of his knowledge on the System. What skills exist, how they are clustered, how many prerequisites they have, the specialization, everything. The sheer amount of XP he gets from converting ancient books is enormous, and he now feels comfortable spending XP to see what lies ahead.
Meanwhile, the unsuspected Mooneyed spy on the expedition’s activities and quickly discover what the Tallers are there for. Making scrolls with “mount-skills”. Their mounts can obtain any skill, but they can receive some, too, although they make mistakes in picking their skills. They realize they need to report, and quickly, because the elders of the Mooneyed, back in Camp David, have no idea how much their lives are about to change.
Once their provisions become close to insufficient, the expedition packs and goes back to civilization, loaded with collector books – and nearly 140,000 parchments. Enough to promote and fully empower more than ten thousand people.
While Ernesto Gomez heads back to his academy to study skills, the rest arrive back in New Sandusky, where they now have everything to set up shop there and start slowly expanding the Talent House, what they expect to be the future network that will distribute and manage Talents across the state, then the entire continent, and maybe one day the world.
Alas, the secrecy surrounding their activities is increasingly fragile, and people start noticing what’s happening. Unfortunately for them, the first to truly take note is Adjutant Agnello, the right-hand man of the Warden of the Montana, and he wastes no time trying to secure not just parchments but the means of their production. Using stolen parchments from Gomez’s university, empowered teams strike in New Sandusky, confident that their strategy will prevail, with splitting and using each other as hostages will allow the Montana to control the source of Talents.
But Moore is not about to let them do that. The cost in XP may indeed be horrendous, but having hoarded enough from the expedition, he activates Exchange. He puppets Johanna’s body and shows high-level, impossible-to-use skills. The Warden’s agents realize they are facing the actual Ancient, not knowing his presence is temporary and limited, and are forced to retreat rather than face a supernatural enemy of immense power.
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Meanwhile, Johanna has seen the Beyond, the place where Moore resides. And she has questions.
But those questions will have to wait because all hell is going to break loose. And the Fourth War of Unification might be about to begin.
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Timeline of the Awakening
August 22, 2023 - Finn Albert becomes the first Changed of the Fall. He promptly dies at his workplace.
Also, August 22, 2023 - Douglas Moore has a seizure a short time after the Fall begins, but remains conscious somehow despite dying. His senses fade quickly and he is relegated to the Realm of the Ancient where sensory deprivation suspends his sense of time.
October 2, 2024 - A large Changestorm dumps part of various towns from all over northern America into a ruin near the sanctuary established by Josh Valetta. Half of Douglas Moore's old house on the East Coast gets spliced into the ruins there. The other half ends up... somewhere else.
May 22, 2152 - A group of youths leaves New Willapaga for their traditional coming-of-age quest.
June 2, 2152 - Hector Zaknussen (born Valetta) and others find The End of the World.
February 2154 - Ancient Exemplar of Battle Tom Virgil Welter is born in Avon, near Valetta.
April 2154 - Ancient Exemplar of Fire Johanna Marcia Milton is born in Anasta, near Valetta.
October 2154 - Ancient Exemplar of Improvisation Peter Malik Donnall is born in Anasta, near Valetta.
November 2154 - Ancient Exemplar of Health Laura Anna Vogel is born in Virtu, near Valetta.
2165 - Shortly after the death of his father, Northern Tribes declare war before Edgard Maistry, heir to the Wardenship of the Montana can.
2166-2168 - Elena Worchester manifests a mist ability. She travels south to New Colorado State to meet with a member of the old Society of the Sorcerers and Sorceresses of the Americas and learn more about her abilities before offering her services to Edgard Maistry in the ongoing war.
June 21, 2171 - Johanna Milton meets Tom Welter during a Summer Solstice feast in Anasta. The two hit off early on.
September 22, 2171 - Peter Donnall meets Laura Vogel at a marriage in Virtu. She shows him her ... never mind.
June 2172 - Johanna Milton hatches the plan to delve into ruins as a way to get money to establish her and Tom’s household, as she’s too far on the ladder of inheritance to get anything, and she’s not interested in staying as a menial farmhand in Anasta or Avon. She ropes in her childhood friend Peter in the scheme after discussing it with his girlfriend.
Summer 2173 - The Warden of the Montana decides to activate the draft. Notices and “recruiters” get dispatched in late spring and during summer to all major cities and towns of the State with quotas to fill.
July 30, 2173 - Day of Awakening. Johanna’s team finds a skeleton preserved by mana in the ruins. Douglas Moore, the Ancient Power awakens, and nothing will be the same ever again.
August 13, 2173 – Johanna finds Swordcutter.
August 30, 2173 - Tom Welter marries Johanna Milton; Laura Vogel marries Peter Donnall.
September 19, 2173 - The Four get drafted under murky pretenses for the Fourth Northern War.
October 30, 2173 - Battle at Kootenai Gap. The same day, the Wendigo Snowbound Glatteis discovers the scheme of the Warden of the Montana and informs the Four. They desert two days later.
November 8, 2173 - Johanna finds Tree Refuge.
November 20, 2173 - The Four reach White Meadows, near the frontier between the Marches of Montana and Dakota.
November 21, 2173 - First Awakened. The Four break down two Ancient Books into Parchments of Powers for the direct benefit of Catherine Rocastle and Valentin Rosenberg.
December 8, 2173 – The First Quest. Johanna enters the Dream of the Ancient Power and gets a quest for The Power the World needs.
March 14, 2174 – Petra Veldhuis is the third person to receive a direct blessing from the Ancient and joins the four Exemplars in their quest.
March 19, 2174 - Mark Kunst is the fourth person to receive a direct blessing from the Ancient and stays in Zahl to create a branch of the Talent House.
April 9, 2174 – The four Exemplars find Water Treads.
May 24, 2174 – The four Exemplars reach New Sandusky and start recruiting for the quest.
June 16-17, 2174 – First mass elevation of Talents.
July 9, 2174 – The expedition to the Library of Congress starts from New Sandusky.
July 31, 2174 – The Mooneyed of Camp David discover the expedition.
August 8, 2174 – The expedition reaches the Library of Congress. The mass production of Parchments of Power begins.
August 9, 2174 – The Mooneyed discover the Parchments of Power and how they can empower any of their Canid mounts and themselves. They steal some stock and run back to Camp David to consult with the elders of their community.
August 22, 2174 – The expedition leaves Washington DC. On the way back, Monica Silvers of the Mooneyed sneaks in, using the stealth Reconnaissance she and her mount obtained by subterfuge.
September 22, 2174 – The four Exemplars, along with Ulrich Sengfield and Miles Bertram, establish the Talent House in New Sandusky.
September 27, 2174 – Ernesto Gomez disappears in Nashville. Agents of the Montana steal his store of parchments of power.
October 1, 2174 – Monica Silvers of the Mooneyed officially presents her Elder’s requests in the town of Cheat to assist in obtaining “mount-skills”.
October 14, 2174 – The Warden’s agents attack New Sandusky. Moore the Ancient incorporates and effortlessly sweeps aside the group attacking the Ancient Exemplars of Fire and Strength. Johanna Milton gains temporary access to the Realm of the Ancient.
October 14, 2174 – Book 3 begins.