Difference between revisions of "The Fate of Maldegen Dirz"
From Wiki Confrontation
| Line 35: | Line 35: | ||
| + | '''Meeting Incarnation''' | ||
| + | |||
| + | In 668, an enigmatic nomad going by the name of Djabril the Voyager traveled to Akkylannie to speak with Maldegen Dirz. This faithful of Arh-Tolth was a sage who knew the many secrets of the desert. He converted Dirz after demonstrating that both their gods were different faces of a same deity. Maldegen Dirz off ered his friendship to Djabril. Once the Alchemist converted, Djabril taught him his secrets, including the location of a lost city in the eastern parts of the Syharhalna: Shamir. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Maldegen Dirz and his disciples returned to the Syharhalna. They discovered a ravaged city at the location known as Shamir. As excavation workers removed the rubble, they made an astonishing discovery: a wild eyed man dressed in rags who seemed to have been living there “forever”. He spoke none of the known languages of the time. It is only after much eff ort that they managed to get his name: Arkeon Sanath. His saviors shrugged their shoulders and ignored his eccentricity. What could you expect of a man who spent years “living” alone among these ruins? While Arkeon Sanath made his return to human society and learned to speak Akkylannian, his knowledge of the city rocked the comfortable certainties of the explorers. He was brought before Maldegen Dirz, who discovered the truth after a long conversation: Arkeon Sanath had survived the cataclysm that had annihilated the Ishim’Re civilization hundreds of years before. | ||
| + | |||
| + | He had survived alone all this time. Confronted with the immortality of Incarnation, Maldegen Dirz understood that Death could be defeated and that Man was imperfect by nature. From this realization, he elaborated the idea of creating a being freed from time and death. This goal would haunt him for the rest of his existence. In the meantime, Arkeon Sanath had stepped into the unique position of favorite experimental subject and first lieutenant of Maldegen Dirz. The settlers had built prosperous cities and had their own cult. All they were missing to claim their independence and form a nation was a leader. Maldegen Dirz added the resources of the Alchemists of Merin to those of the disciples he already had. He made some major breakthroughs in the understanding and applications of more Ishim’Re artifacts. For the first time he got a glimpse of how to defeat death. There was a possibility he could even reach the level of Arh-Tolth by giving life to a being liberated of all “natural defects”. | ||
| + | |||
| + | These resources also allowed him to rebuild Shamir and find out more about the mysterious civilization that had left such treasures behind. | ||
| + | |||
| + | '''The Heretic''' | ||
| + | |||
| + | Maldegen Dirz was twenty-four when he set himself to furthering the discoveries of the Black Togas by combining their knowledge of mana with the science of the alchemists. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The work of Maldegen Dirz and his disciples went on for five years, traveling back and forth from Akkylannie to the Syharhalna. | ||
| + | In Akkylannie, the aura of the Prime Alchemist continued to grow. His collaborators and the population itself considered him a genius capable of feats that greatly surpassed the abilities of any normal scientist. His reputation reached another peak in 671 when Dirz stopped a cattle plague epidemic that threatened not only to destroy the livestock of Akkylannie, which would have caused a famine across the country, but also to spred to human populations. But this feat was a trifling compared to the real work of Maldegen Dirz. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Very early in his research, the Prime Alchemist had been forced to admit that his contemporaries were not prepared to comprehend | ||
| + | the extent of his research. Maldegen Dirz took the decision to build secret research laboratories under the excavation sites. At the height of his glory, supported by the Black Togas and financed by many Akkylannians, he had no problem getting hold of the necessary supplies and transferring them to the desert. He made sure one of his interlocutors could ever understand the greater picture of the project, not even Rhea de Brisis; his disciples were given orders to keep their discoveries secret. While aldegen Dirz shared his most orthodox inventions with Akkylannie, his closest assistants kept exploring the stems and codes their master had entrusted them. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Their work was focused on size and several colossal creatures were engineered in tanks. The Prime Alchemist was ruling a state | ||
| + | within the state, built in the heart of the Syharhalna. With its own cult, separated by weeks of seafaring from Imperial administrative centers, the Syharhalna was almost independent and attracted all the free thinkers of Akkylannie. The name | ||
| + | of the Alchemists of Dirz no longer designated a society of scholars but all the pioneers who followed the doctrine of the young visionary or those who left to live in the desert. The population of Djaran, Shamir and Tarsith soon grew beyond the ten-thousand residents mark. In addition, the reputation of the scientist soon challenged that of Pope Demetrius. Some people whispered that if the pope were to die, Maldegen Dirz ought to be next in line! The pope’s official successor, Cardinal Lazarus, | ||
| + | took these rumors very seriously. He commanded the Seat of Internal Affairs, the ecclesiastic court of justice, to find evidence to convict Dirz of heresy. | ||
| + | |||
| + | In 673, Maldegen Dirz and his closest disciples were arrested. The Black Togas quickly reacted and to defend Maldegen Dirz they sent Iandorias Lazarian, who was very much in the Akkylannian public eye. Renowned theologian and scholar, Iandorias Lazarian was a jurist specialized in canon law. He was also the adopted son of Cardinal Lazarus himself. By the end of the trial, the verdict was straight forward acquittal, which forced the Seat of Internal aff airs to present apologies to the Prime Alchemist. | ||
== Dirz the Heresiarch == | == Dirz the Heresiarch == | ||
