Mystery

### **Why was it created/Why hasn’t it been used again?**

What started out as a mere scientific curiosity and a hypothetical challenge soon became a matter of essential necessity. No one had anticipated that the invading forces from other realms would break through the barrier.

Facing a life or death situation, those remaining survivors chose life. Knowledge is power. Taking the collected knowledge that had been gathered, one of the doomsday artifacts was fully assembled and used. When it was used, it unleashed a massive black wave that caused a devastating that expanded well beyond this realm. It damaged the fabric of the universe itself, and ever since then, the World Tree has steadily been decaying. The World Tree will not survive another encounter like that. If it completely dies, then the barriers between all the realms collapse.

### **Where is the assembled Doomsday device?**

Heru’s coworkers saw to the task of scattering the fragments and shards after seeing the first doomsday artifact’s destruction, so no one would be tempted to repeat their folly. However, there was still the matter of the fully assembled artifact still needed to be dealt with. They tried to dismantle it but could not.

It was Heru’s successors who took up their teacher’s unfinished burden and took the responsibility for protecting it. For generations, each of Heru’s successors took their life-long task with due seriousness. Until one day, one mentee noticed her mentor was developing an increasingly unhealthy obsession with the First Doomsday Artifact. The mentee grew fearful that her mentor would attempt to repeat Heru’s folly. She stole the assembled artifact from its vault before fleeing into the night.

While on the run, the mentee had begun to hear tales of four renowned and talented mages. These mages were Wilona, Henri, Luana, and Orthia. In addition to forming Trefoil Academy, the four mages were dedicated to the task of safeguarding dangerous magical artifacts. When the four academy founders attempted to dismantle the First Doomsday Artifact, they found they could not. It kept releasing increasingly dangerous flares of energy.

Left with no other option, they opted to try to hide it. While none of the founders were Blood Heralds, one of the founders had close ties with the leader of the Blood Heralds. Enlisting their help, the Doomsday Artifact was hidden. Unknownst to the academy founders, their Blood Herald ally made a map to the location. As an additional security measure, the map was then destroyed and its pieces scattered. A tracer was placed on the map pieces so that a compass could be used to pinpoint the location of the pieces if the map ever needed to be reassembled. This compass is contained in a book known as “Whispers of the Void”.

### **Where is the unassembled Doomsday device?**

For simplicity’s sake, each component will be addressed separately.

#### **Map Pieces**

The founders of Trefoil Academy of Magery and Sorcery were approached and their assistance requested to help with the destruction and subsequent hiding of the assembled Doomsday device. Luana Artemis belonged to a descendant bloodline called the Varig Bloodline. This was a descendant bloodline of the Vek Bloodline. (A descendant bloodline is an offshoot of an older bloodline. A family branch gets large enough that it is able to support itself. A descendant bloodline may be established either peacefully or through open armed conflict. Normally, it is the first for the latter is rarely successful.)
Luana Artemis’s fifth cousin was the leader of the Blood Heralds. It was because of this blood connection that prompted the academy founders to approach the leader of the Blood Heralds, 293821, for assistance in hiding the assembled doomsday artifact. The assembled doomsday artifact was hidden in 1450. During this time, the leader of the Blood Heralds, 293821, order the creation of a map in case the assembled doomsday device needed to be retrieved. She had disagreed with her fifth cousin, Luna Artemis, that it would forever remain buried because of the Heru Cipher.

To make sure that the pieces would not be forever lost in time, the map was then divided up into 25 different pieces. Each map piece was marked and a tailored scrying potion recipe was created just for those markers. The clues to the recipe were then placed within the diary of her status partner. The diary was called Whispers of the Void.  When Lady Kerowyn Vek was buried, her status partner was also buried with her in a tomb that was guarded by a Sphinx.

Whispers of the Void is an ancient diary that contains many long lost secrets. One of the secrets is a scrying potion recipe that can be used to identify the general location of all the map pieces. It is the diary of Aziza Fiak of the Vek Bloodline. She was alive when the assembled Doomsday artifact was buried in 1450 and was the status partner of the head of the Vek Bloodline, Lady Kerowyn Vek aka 293821.