<span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: impact;"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 24pt;">CHAPTER 1: Exile &amp; Discovery</span></span><br/><br/><br/><div class="floatright">(http://i1117.photobucket.com/albums/k581/Am_Dreams/96077.jpg)</div><em><strong>Cornellius Argentstaff, once Philip Renfeld of her majesty’s United Kingdom paced quickly.  The chambers of the council were far above him, but this was not his concern.  Instead, he quickly made his way towards the lower levels of Al-Cairsinal with but one objective in mind.  Before he entered into the underground sections of the sanctuary, he spared a quick glance skyward where the great zeppelins were holding position, his eyes fixed upon the stylised sunburst symbol upon them within which a curling flame, stylised almost in an ‘S’ shape, was visible.<br/><br/>The Saeropaneans had found their way to Al-Cairsinal.<br/><br/>The old man was certain there was a twisted irony in the situation, but couldn’t find it in himself to smile, though his bright eyes were lit with iron laughter.  Fire an bodies were dotted all over the compound as though splashed by the hand of some expressionist painter.  Or butcher.  They were the lucky ones, he thought bitterly.  But there was no time now.  He ducked into the stone archway and was gone.<br/><br/>The door was opened and closed and bared, and Cornellius took a deep breath as he looked upon the great stone column that encased a deadly secret.  "It would appear that all things have come to pass as you predicted Lord Ashram," he grimaced bitterly.  Looking over the column, he compared it to the message he had received, before he took up the hammer and chisel that had been laid at the floor and began to chip away purposefully at the stone.<br/><br/>He was still chiseling away at the stone, when the heavy wooden door burst into smoking splinters, raining a deadly hair of broken wood.  As Cornellius griped his arm in which a broken splinter had pierced him through, he looked up in time to see a squad of men enter, protected in red steel and gold, the mark of Saeropane emblazoned on their coat-of-arms.  The old man did not spare these much time, but rather the enormous figure who was encased in black iron.  There was no helmet upon its head, but an elongated pyramid-like construct that might have been a substitute for a helm.  Nothing was visible of the body of this giant figure, who stood twice as tall a man, and whose broad shoulders and stooping posture was suggestive of an ape.  Now, as it shuffled and pushed past the red reavers, it dragged a great sword behind it upon the ground, that resembled a giant meat cleaver.<br/><br/>Towering over Cornellius, it stopped before him, looking down.  Or at least gave the impression it looked down upon him.  Cornellius looked up defiantly, but was aware of a queer chill that passed down his spine.  Then the brute lifted the pitted blade, but Cornellius grimaced savagely and he reached down into the hole he had chiseled into the rock.<br/><br/>"Hail Hydra!" he exulted.</strong></em><br/><br/>In the distance from where the party is camping, a sudden flash of light brightens the sky blindingly, a thunderous clap, as though of the loudest thunder the mind can conceive and in the distance they can see an titanic ball of fire, red along the edges and white at the core, and accompanying it, an ominous rumbling roar that is approaching at breakneck speed.  The shock-wave snaps trees sapplings and hurls rocks and detritus like spume before a storm.<br/><br/>What more could anyone do as the instinct for survival kicks in and the accompanying mad dash for the only visible shelter of the cave.  You are all barely inside when you are picked off your feet and hurled and land tumbling, with all the breath and half the life knocked out of you.  The fragile entrance collapses under the shock and crumbles in a deafening roar of rock and dirt.<br/><br/>None of you are certain when you regain your senses, but eventually you are picking yourselves up in the pitch darkness of the cave's bowels, battered and bruised.  Somewhere above you, it seems as if a great rumbling storm is still passing.<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">GM Notes</div><div class="spoiler_body">Everyone has sustained 4 points of damage to their HP, and suffered 3 points of loss to their Mental Stability.<br/><br/>All character's have achieved Level 2, so update those character sheets.</div></div>