Cold Comfort

Cold Comfort was a cabal of mages that took part in the Clash of the Cabals in Armakania the city state based around the city Tor Armakan before it was joined to the Aurian Empire. It was led by the mages Olquam and later Glacius.

## Organisation

Cold Comfort was a cabal based on membership, elite status and a single powerful leader.

Members had to raised to elite status by the leader and this was usually done based on arcane talent or individual favour.

## History

371BE: Arkadius Secondsight died leaving no clear heir to the rulership of Armakania. His apprentices sought to claim his inheritance and this resulted in a conflict called the Clash of the Cabals.

Several of Arkadius' apprentices were extremely powerful wizards in their own right. In the modern era none of them would still have been called apprentices but Arkadius reserved the title of Arcmage for himself alone. After his death all his apprentices claimed the title and their own followers and apprentices were marked as mages if skilled and apprentices if yet in learning.

Olquam and Ebsix, two of his more ambitious (if not necessarily the most gifted) apprentices lay claim to Armakania officially. Either of them could have been successful, but they both violently opposed the other's claim. This led to threats and open disputes. Both of them had gathered as many of the former apprentices of their master as possible. Olquam's supporters were the precursor to the cabal Cold Comfort.

Breesal 371BE: A gathering was called in hopes of settling the dispute and finding a new leader for Armakania to have peace.

The talks were ruined however when one of the delegates, it was never conclusively recorded who as each faction claimed it was a member of the other, used magic to try and slay the others. Though it was uncertain who instigated this, it appeared clear that all sides were ready for this as it quickly became an all out spell battle of tremendous proportions.

Named the Conflagration this battle resulted in the surviving apprentices fleeing with their followers. Many left the central city of Armakania and set up in surrounding towers, villages and forests. What followed was a time of spell skirmishes and recruitment. Each of the pretenders attempted to seduce, bribe, coerce and induct as many spell weavers as possible. The regular men and women of Armakania lived in constant fear of any wizard who looked their way. Most solved the problem early on though by simply switching allegiance to whichever wizard was in front of them at any given moment.

The Cold Comfort formed at this time behind Olquam but Ebsix's Circle of Friends organised to oppose them. Interestingly the Archmage Volkalis, though he joined to none of these and had few allies, managed to take the Ark-Tower itself and was for all intents and purposes unassailable due to this fact.

Icesal 371BE: A mage called Glacius came to Olquam one of his allies in the Circle of Friends had told him the location of Ebsix's secret base. Cold Comfort led by their leader immeadiately planned and excecuted an assault on the hidden base. Due to the unexpected nature of the attack Cold Comfort were able to kill many of the cabal and capture Ebsix herself.

Even so not everything went the way of Cold Comfort. Not only was the capture of Ebsix not enough to destroy the rival cabal (The Circle was set up with a council style leadership so removing its founder did not prevent it functioning) but Cold Comfort also lost many of their most potent wizards.

Risal 370BE: Ebsix was extensively interogated, but she could not be broken by the mages of Cold Comfort. The Circle tried several rescue attempts. The first was an ill fated teleporting attempt. This resulted in several members of the cabal killing themselves teleporting inaccurately. The second also failed as the members of the Circle who were to form the rescue team were ambushed enroute by Glacius. Glacius used frozen water elementals and ice-golems as part of his defense because these details are recorded in multiple accounts from at least five different witnesses and those include his own apprentice, one of the rescuers whon survived and the bard Sybilant. The attempt utterly failed.

Lifsal 370BE: Olquam planed to excecute Ebsix as she would not reveal her important secrets or submit and join herself to Olquam's cabal. This was thought to be an opportunity to lure the rest of her cabal in to be destoryed. There was a rescue attempt a week later but though they were misled into thinking Ebsix was being held in the false location most of the mages survived the traps.

The Circle did manage to sneak in a strike team and they were initially successful in releasing Ebsix and getting her a staff with stored magical energy so she could use her powers. Yet Olquam's forces were present in large numbers and the team were surrounded and cut off from retreat. However Ebsix refused to back down and they attacked the guards ferociously. Though in the end this proved to be in vain with each of them dying in the conflict that resulted, Ebsix and her team still managed to kill Olquam and several of his cabal in the process.

Glacius then took control of the cabal in a brief internal power struggle and he withdrew Cold Comfort from the dispute claiming the deaths of the two rival leaders to have ended the conflict and making it clear that he was content to rule the cabal and not make a bid to control the country. Thus Cold Comfort managed to avoid most of the damage when Hollow Truth decended to take control of the city.

370BE: The Cold Comfort Cabal moved north under Glacius' direction and occupied the old ruin of the fortress of the Calin Order at the opening of the Scholar's Valley. There they sat out the next several years of the Clash of the Cabals. It was in these years that Glacius solidified his control of the cabal. The ruin was partically rebuilt including a small settlement at the opening of the valley. Opportunities for learning and growth were explored reminding the wizards of a better time and a reason for uniting in the first place.

368BE: After the fracturing of Hollow Truth left the cabal vulnerable Volkalis turned the power of the Ark-Tower on the cabal and the city. This caused many more refugees to flee the city and more went to Cold Comfort.

3688-366BE: Cold Comfort built their strength and Glacius in particular worked on the use of arcania to manipulate both Talia and Talium. He successfully created linked himself to the elemental who was his bodyguard and closest ally in later years. The elemental was able to reside in the phyical plane for extended periods over months without needing to return to the Eternal Vistas. He became the example given of a mage using elemental magic.

365BE: After the failure of various cabals elsewhere to remake an Armakania the remaining wizards began to look back to their home city. So Cold Comfort harkened to the call of the Crystal Scepter cabal to meet at the convocation at Golden Lake.

The main point of this meeting, that was attended by six full cabals including Cold Comfort, was to decide what was to be done about the Eye of the Tower and Volkalis.

The convocation's key findings were:

One was that Armakania needed to be reclaimed.

Two, that single dictatorial leaders using magical power to compel subservience was not to be tollerated.

It was this second point on which Glacius was so adamant and he openly promised to commit his cabal's full force if the others would agree to an accord without magical compulsion. Indeed, he spoke passionately about the need for trust to be a founding principle of the alliance.

365-364BE: The united cabals turn on Armakania and fight against the Eye of the Tower and Volkanis. The battles seemed hopeless as Volkanis had access to powers none of the human mages currently comprehended. Yet thanks to the intervention of a small group of heroes including a templar from Tor Celer who was armed with a spear that Cold Comfort had found in the ruin in the Valley of the Scholars and others enemies of the Eye of the Tower, a quest was undertaken. As a result the Tower Eye, the item which powered the magical eye brands through which Volkanis controlled his slave wizards, was broken.

Then this allowed Volkanis' own erstwhile allies and apprentices to turn on him. They threw him out of the Ark-Tower and left him to face the wrath of the united cabals alone. Facts were sketchy some claimed Glacius hunted him down personally, others that it was the band of heroes who broke the Eye that eventually toppled him, but the story most often repeated was that he attempted to use one of the magical weapons he had taken from the Ark-Tower in a desperate bid for ultimate victory and it destroyed him in the process.

364BE: Glacius along with the other mages agreed to form The Archmages' Council. This ended separate cabals. Glacius was also determined to have agreed that the new Armakania would be a place of learning rather than an expansionist battle power. As a result Tor Armakan looked inwards and developed an elitist educational society.

The council would be run by those of magical superiority (The idea was so ingrained they couldn't quite move beyond it) but they would do so with common consent and only allow policy changes to be done with majorities and as the council ran to the number eight it made it easy to deadlock it. No movement or slow progress was seen as infinitely better than the fatal mistakes of the last 7 years.

Glacius was the second name on the Archmages' Council under the name of the Scepterial the previous leader of the Crystal Scepter Cabal.