Based on the works of SidheLady: https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=264120.0 (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=264120.0)<br/><br/>The reading of the will was a ritual that went back through the mists of time, ages hence, possibly back to the first age.  It is a somber occasion, where the wishes of one who has departed; sometimes dead, sometimes digitized, sometimes simply lost (or found) in another dimension but in all cases the intent is the same.  One who shall not return in the life span of those summon bequeaths possessions, well wishes, intents, insults and numenera to those their thoughts and focus doth divine appropriate for their absent, often one sided attention.<br/><br/>Each of you has been summoned hence, the drawing of strings for a corpulent puppet master.  Each of you is known and unknown.  Here is the cycle of your story.<br/><br/>Everfree, daylight side of the dual city, that gleaming metroplis with shining spires that glowed day or night, watched over its majestic burrows.   This is a place of fun, of mystery, of hope, and today; of celebration.  Your host picked the wisdom to die on the High Festival; a deliberately merged state and religious holiday, a celebration of the Knights of the Protectorate, those fellows who watched the roads between the cities when one was not wise enough to hire flying as a means of transportation, wandering judges and jurors in the worst of times, the protectorate celebrated its protectors.  It was also a celebration of three....terribly sorry, four, major religions.  In Everfree, those were the church of Elv, the immortal king who rose again and again in times of need.  Depending on which sect, that was at least once in every age, possibly hundreds.  Many believed he was due for another incarnation in this, the 9th age.  They were joined by the Church of Grom, a sexual sect that involved a battering ram and his perpetually giggling concubine; Hola.  The Church of Truth had been for a lingering persisting time the third and usually smallest sect in the city, a secure sect for the somber, staid and those who needed guidance and ritual in their lives. It worked and thus the wealthy enjoyed it in particular.  Lately, however, another religion had arisen; worship of the Savior of the World, Zax the Divine.  Healer, warrior, wonder maker, it was said that he had saved them from the Golden Legion in the north and that all other religions must bow before its mighty Apostle, Gristleworth the Unworthy.  Stories varied as to whether or not Zax had or had not died for their sins.<br/><br/>But all were celebrated.  Tensions and strains were drowned out in booze and alcohol and drugs and sex and symbology and good fellowship.  To be unhappy on the High Holiday was the greatest of social faux pax, and yet this funeral was likely a blow to the mourners, forcing the delay of the procession until the marrow when such rituals and victuals could be done with out the risk of being torn to shreds by an angry mob.  It would wait, and the corpse was carefully preserved by the mightiest of numenera.<br/><br/>And who, who was this our mourners came to hear of? Tesseract the Librarian, mightiest scholar of the Protectorate, some argued of the age.  In the Southern Protectorate their were wonders, singers, craftsmen, prophets and madmen but in the Library of Everfree were more secrets than anywhere else in the Known World.  There were many who said that this was the real reason the Church of Truth had sent missionaries here to the Protectorate.  Membership of the Library was more coveted than that of nobility in some of the minor Bergs and Towns that lay in the shadow of the protectorate between the City States.<br/><br/>Tesseract was a Barbarian Librarian, for her literacy had come at great personal sacrifice, separating her from her tribe.  From then on, she had dedicated herself to the Library, rising up through its ranks; first in Circulation, tracking down and impaling those who stole from the Library or had overdue fines.  Later, she rose to Acquisitions, daring to enter ruins of ages past to bring back books.  The 'toys' as she called them she sent to other cities, but the books and the data, those the Library kept.  Finally, she had risen to the head of the library itself, using funds from her adventures to rebuild and refurbish the library until it was now once again the tallest brightest spire in the city; its crumbling edifices restored to what they had once been.<br/><br/>Rumors:<br/><br/>A strange prophesy has predicted that the lights in Arbor will not shine at the solstice in a moon's time.  The elders of the city are concerned enough that they have sent pilgrims to the library to find out to stop this.<br/><br/>A singing man sized frog has been seen wandering around the Black City, taking in wanderers with its haunting voice and sending them on oddly specific tasks to retrieve oddly specific things inside its terrible walls.  It is said he is building something in the hills to the north with what the wretched burned souls bring out of it piece by piece.<br/><br/>The city of Arn is in chaos as each district is sending its best warriors into the under city to find out if the rumors of The Ultimate Weapon are true.  It is said that he who wields it can conquor the Protectorate...if not the world.<br/><br/>In the city of Hasari a number of oddly specific numenera have begun to appear at oddly cheap prices.  Merchants of a particular dialect and cadence have peddled their wares and collected other numenera or oddities in trade.   This has put great pressure on the economy of Kayolith and there are rumors of potential unthinkable war between the two.  As it is, there are definitely agents of Kayolith among the streets trying to find out who these merchants are and whither they come.<br/><br/>A small sect of philosophers in Seren are said to be tampering with the projectors in the Observatory  The artists are incensed but these mad rogue philosophers are said to mutter, "But the stars must not align!" The city mothers have ensured that this tampering is minimal and; aligning or not the rate of and quality of art has drastically increased.<br/><br/>In the shadow of Kayolith, in glades and sunlit glens some whisper that the reason the city must fear the windows is not the trinkets but what comes with those trinkets that must be feared for merchants often have most unsavory creditors...and the bill has come due.<br/><br/>Someone has paid half of the schools of Assassins in Tallinar to do....something.  No one agrees on what it is but every night rich trains of shins and other luxury goods flow into the city.  A kings ransom for every blade, but so far nothing has been done (that they know of) and the other schools grow jealous.  The singers, of course, have their own theories about it and sing on every corner.<br/><br/>It is said that while the game is plentiful in most of the city, in the last four moons, in the north quarter of Ibren, something large, something horrible has been eating ALL of the almost limitless game to be found there.  And is growing larger...and hungrier.