BNN: Message to Crawworth Meets with Unexpected Resistance
Caitlin Elopidat July 10, 1998
Trinsic -- The crowds in Trinsic heaved a collective sigh of relief as the group came into view outside the city walls. The message from Vesper had arrived safely, though not without complications. Word had reached Trinsic earlier in the day that several attacks had been made on the messenger and the escorts who were to bring the package from Vesper.
The message was originally found on a ship that was sunk off the coast of Vesper by G'Thunk and his devilish band of troll warriors. The only readable part of the note were the words URGENT: ZOG CABAL. The rest of it was a non-sensical jumble of symbols, signs, and pictograms. Sage Winslow himself made a journey to Trinsic around the same time as the message to help Lord CrawWorth make sense of the note.
The message itself was assailed from all sides, and at what seemed like every turn. From the moment the group escorting the note left Vesper things were clearly out of hand. Just minutes after exiting the city's boundaries a large force of orcs and ettins, armed with magic and weapons, assaulted the group in what appeared to be an attempt to stop the message from reaching it's destination.
After making their way past this threat, and closer to Britain, they were again confronted with a massive force determined to block their way, this time in the form of the undead. Skeletal knights, bone mages, skeleton warriors, zombies and liches unleashed their unruly brand of destruction in the messages general direction.
To make matters worse there is a swamp that must be crossed to reach Britain, and it was here that the forces allied against the messengers were at their most deadly. A huge band of lizardmen swarmed through the swamp in search of the message (or so it seemed) and made a desperate attack against the escorts. The mercenaries guarding Atalanto had become wise by this point, and Atalanto was kept out of harms way for the most part. At one point of the journey she was surrounded by warriors with their backs to her as they fought off one vicious attack after another.
Was this the work of the Zog Cabal? Could they possibly wield this much power. It is interesting to note that not a single troll was sighted during the messages march from Vesper to Trinsic. Some speculated that this was a sign that the two groups work alone. Others think just the opposite. Deliberately keeping trolls out of the picture could mean that they are trying to make the populace think that there is no connection, but if it were a random gathering of monsters and evil forces then by all means one or two should have been spotted.
More importantly, what exactly is contained in that message? Is it a note from one Zog Cabalist to another? Surely they wouldn't have labeled it in clear Britannic if it were. Was it a warning from someone who knows more than he is capable of telling the public? And who was the intended recipient? CrawWorth has used his influence to gain the note, and knowing him, he will get to the bottom of this mystery.