Tea and Intelligence

The warm scent of a floral tea wafted through the study strewn about with tomes half scribbled notes and inches of dust, though Shiro supposed that the dust in this case was from the decaying crystals rather than centuries of neglect.

At least she hoped that was the case, it struck her that it would be weird and said if , after all the hype about the Dwarves being the closest to these legendary giants, they did not revere their Champion to the same degree the Elves and Slimes had exhibited.

Granite had been embarrassed for a moment, not at the state of the place, but rather that the neat little fireless stove he had originally attempted to make tea had not produced a lick of heat and he needed to seek an alternative.

"Its fine Granite,' Willow assured him, 'If I remember your lectures correctly then it is because the main forges have gone cold while everyone was trapped in that stupid crystal."

Granite returned with a teapot his size, one scaled for guests and the matching number of cups.

"Quite right Willow, I should have supposed as much myself but with everything going on I must allow for embarrassing moments of habit." He replied with good grace while opening a dusty tin of tea biscuits.

"What exactly is going on?' Hassium asked as they took their portion of tea and biscuits 'Even with my natural gifts for seeing the nature of things I cannot puzzle this one out."

"I have my theories,' Granite said 'but I would like to hear everything that has transpired for you all before voicing them."

So the party in a round robin manner retold of their adventures thus far, about mid way through Granite pushed aside a stack of books to recover a writing tablet and a charcoal pencil after several inkwells proved to be to dry for use.

At the end of the recounting he went over his notes several times before speaking again

"So, we all had those cups from this saint fellow, now it is obvious that they were the catalyst for whatever spell.' It was hard to tell if he was musing out loud or asking for actual input.

Regardless, he continued 'Whether the spell was inscribed in the cup and put on a timer or trigger, or even used as a focus to launch the spell at range is of no consequence."

Aspen started to protest but Granite shook his head, "I say it is no matter because the nature of the spell itself is not of human make, tis Dwarvish."

The room erupted in confused disbelief

"You mean your people are responsible for all this?"

"That cannot be, the Dwarves have no spell craft to speak of save what they put into their creations!"

"We got the cups from the Holy Kingdom so there is no way they could have been from the Dwarves!"

Granite held his hands up to silence everyone, "Let me give you some context:

In the centuries after the last of the giants moved out of history a splinter group of Dwarvish mages developed who initially sought to better understand the balance of all things by disrupting it in a controlled manner.

The theory ran that by doing so we would have a better idea of what the consequences of imbalance were as well as having examples of what to look for.

After such experimentation destroyed a whole colony of our people it was deiced unanimously that such lines of inquiry were to dangerous due to imbalance having the tendency to spread like mold.

At that point the history books called that matter settled."

The party nodded along, following so far.

Granite took a sip of tea before continuing:

"Now the histories of all races young and old teach us that forbidden knowledge never dies off completely, it just goes underground like a peat fire.

With that in mind I put forward two things,

Firstly, after that ill fated dinner party I was struck by the craftsmanship of our keep sake and had been conducting my own research into its markings right up to the moment it was activated.

The results of which were that there were some markings in a branch language that appeared to have Dwarvish as a parent script.

Which indicates there is some sort of person or persons who have been passing down information in some form from that initial research group.

All that by itself would be circumstantial without the second point.

Which is, the chalice that bound Willow was taken by that one soldier once she was released."

Everyone thought on the implications of this line of reasoning, Shiro was the first to voice her concerns, "Does that mean the Holy Kingdom has been working on leveraging this imbalance for centuries now?"

Granite shook his head "Not necessarily, it could be that there is an international group working on some project with only a handful of Holy Kingdom officials being a part. Yet you are right that we cannot rule out the possibility that this scheme comes from the highest offices in that land. After all, if my records are correct the kingdom was well on its way to learning how to access the balance for the first time when that young man who hosted the dinner party started modifying the local religion."

Shiro frowned, "You mean the Holy Kingdom did not always believe the way it does now?"

Granite laughed "Stones and ore no. Heck it was not until he started his rounds as a preacher that anyone even considered calling it anything besides 'refugee of the other lands."

Granite saw Shiro's confusion and looked around the group. "Did no one tell her that the original populace of the Refuge were other worlders who literally washed ashore one day?"

The elves and Hassium squirmed uncomfortably. Ezma's eyes lit up as she interjected "So that is not just a myth?"

Granite shook his head in acknowledgement "Now mind you that is only the case with the blonde strain of humans on this continent. There are several other branches that were also giant born like the rest of our races.'

He nods in Ezma's direction 'your kin for example miss. It is just that since most humans acted as mercenaries in the great wars before the naming of Champions the giants figured if they taught the tribes hiring the humans how to get along, the humans would stop fighting too.

And by the time the humans had developed enough of their own lands to need champions they had decided that those powers for better or worse were only available to the nonhuman."

"I can nare prentend to ken half of what yea be saying.' Lorna chimed in 'Yet I ken this much, we say it afore that every crystal we break be maken it worse for thems is still stuck. So then what we do next and yonder? We needs be clearing out the last three quick like, then I ken we needs find who woven em in the first afore they be maken more or worse."

The stove connected the great forge creaked to life as everyone looked at Shiro.

"One more question before we make those decisions,' She said thoughtfully 'Those in the Holy Kingdom who told me about the crystals in the first place said that only I could break them, while everyone else I have talked to has seems to think it just takes the powers of a Champion to do so. What do you think Granite?"

Granite thinks long and hard before replying "Give me a day or two to do some research on that. It is plausible that through either some fluke of resonance or the balance asking the race that caused this mess to take the brunt of fixing it that what you heard in the Holy Kingdom is right. Then again, since this is affecting the balance enough to generate chaos beasts it is just as likely that any Champion of balance will do."

Shiro nods, then turns her attention to everyone "With this being the case we will prepare as if we are splitting the party until Granite can tell us otherwise.

Lets get back to work."