Intermission II, Part I: A Plea for Help

By Dagoth Odros, First Councilor of the Sixth House

Tholer,

I pray this message reaches you and I hope you know the pride I feel in seeing you have risen so far. When news reached me of your ascension, I finally opened that bottle of brandy and had a glass to your good health and your future prosperity, but now I write to you after all these years because there is a shadow over my house and I see within it the potential to grow and be a shadow over us all. I know that my correspondence places you in great danger, but if I do not make every effort to reach out to you, then if my suspicions are correct, then we face a threat far greater than either of our houses—the House of the False Gods or the House of Lord Dagoth—may hope to combat. That is why I write to you and I pray you read this letter and take action, but if you are still the man I knew all those years ago, then I know that you will do what must be done to protect our homeland as you always have.

The Shrine-City of Sanurdipal has fallen and I know that under normal circumstances, you would be unfazed by such news, but it was not your Ordinators or Omayn’s warriors who did this act; it was a lone agent whose name I do not know, but who sends chills down my spine. I felt the deaths of those in the Shrine-City and their final cries into the void were silent. I felt no last gasp or death rattle, only a quieting of voices one-by-one, and whatever it is that has done this, it still lives. I felt another, even after the last of Sanurdipal’s devotees fell and it was Milos. Milos has fallen Tholer and it pains me to know it as I know it does you too, but we must hear his loss and know that it is a call to action for us all.

We must speak in person to discuss this matter, for if it felled Milos, I fear for all of us regardless of which House we are sworn to.

We must put aside our differences and stand together, Tholer. I know you have not forgiven me for what came to pass all those years ago, but I ask you, what do you weigh more heavily? My past failures or our people? I ask this of you, Tholer, because if you will not stand with me, then I will do what I must to save our people—even if it means countless will be consigned to a fate worse than death. I beg of you, not as your teacher, but as your friend, please do not force my hand—you know that it is by my actions alone that Lord Dagoth has been stopped and if we do not stand together against this—this—destroyer—he will ignore counsel and he will do what he must to save our house.

I pray this reaches you, Tholer, and I pray that you weigh what I have said carefully—you know as well as I do what await if we can not stop it.

-Odros