The Terror Disease
45th trial of Zi'Da, arc 716
The rumors, among the mage circles, that Chief Adviser Vuda, of Etzos' Tower of Ministers, always placed magic users in the army to keep them monitored was far from true. Of course, there were a number of magic users that would attest to the veracity of such claims. But they tended to be the ones that resisted the application of Tower authority over their comings and goings too stubbornly.Vuda would of course claim that his need to maintain protection over Etzos' population gave him no choice but to go to such extremes to curb the potential threat of unchecked mages within the city's walls. It could even be said to be true for the most part. But there were other mages that had their growth checked and monitored on other fields of battle.
The one in Foster's Landing fell under the purview of politics. Though the enemies in Rhakros were surely in a rebuilding mode for some time, retribution would certainly be on their agenda in the future, possibly the near future. Etzos needed to be sure that this threat was not taken lightly or forgotten. There was a furious construction project going on throughout the Southride Plains. Numerous small walled towns were being built to be an early warning system for Etzos against Rhakrosi aggression.
Some of these mages were stationed there to activate alerts and cast delaying magic against hostile troops. But with Rhakros, it needed to be remembered that their "troops" were less likely to be soldiers and more likely to be insects and germs. Vuda had decided to give the southern region a taste of this less-conventional warfare. As this was more of a propaganda move than an actual attack, he felt it to fall under the umbrella of politics. Vuda's version of politics always included the policy that occasional sacrifices had to be made to ensure the safety of the majority.
One of his recent acquisitions, the mortalborn agent, Kovic, had a peculiar affliction, which caused his body to deteriorate into a monstrous form when he got hungry enough. This hunger extended to a willingness to sate it upon human fare. Vuda had tested this supposition already and had found that the subject's only problematic tendency was that he became the center of a cacophony of endlessly shrieking demands to be fed. And Vuda wanted him starving for this "mission".
Now the mage accompanying the wagon transporting this freak to the Foster's Landing area had no means to counter this noise. He had the ability to deceive eyes from seeing anything other than clear landscape, when that even became necessary. So the noise problem was solved by a quartet of Vibatir plants, growing in pots connected to the wagon itself. This unusual plant swallowed noise with it's sympathetic "sound bowl" which vibrated a neutralizing wave of countering frequency to whatever set it shaking.
This of course created a dead sound zone around the wagon, but the wagon did not pass through any of these burgeoning new towns on its way south. Nor did it pull into Foster's Landing, but stopped a few hundred yards short, and another thirty or so off the track in some high shrub growth that had not been burned in the recent sack of Rhakros.
It had the additional effect of rendering communication impossible for the bulk of the journey. Vibatir thrived mostly underground, so it was actually beneficial to the plant to keep it enclosed in a dense housing until needed. Once Kovic had gotten hungry enough to begin his relentless din of howling, the plants were brought out and conversation ceased abruptly. But this was alright; the agenda was already set.
The second mage was a rupturer, a creator of portals from place to place. And one of his places was back in Etzos. So the wagon was stopped, acid was poured over the lock, and the mages disappeared into a circle of fiery-looking ether that crossed the hundreds of miles in a single step. A few bits after the portal closed, the lock burned through, and Kovic was free...
