The dishonorable, cheating Forces of Good have been defeated!Tom Perkinje, the reluctant Greater Demon and recent transplant from Harding NJ to the Abyss has defeated and captured the not-so-valiant Sir Talarius, Knight Rampant of Tiernon and has humiliated and demoralized the army known as the Rod of Tiernon, that helped Talarius cheat in battle with Tom. Unfortunately, to do so, he had had to hack the mana streams between the god Tiernon and his High Priests, and now his buddies are telling him that Tiernon is going to send a Host to investigate this unprecedented event.Oh, and the fact that he reversed a Holy Artifact of Tiernon has not gone unnoticed either. The folks upstairs are not pleased. His actions have completely disrupted the plans of not only the Rod of Tiernon, but also the Sky Fleet of Oorstemoth who had thought to bring Tom to justice for illegally destroying the ship trying to obliterate Tom and his friends. The two armies are now looking to unite and rescue Talarius and arrest (permanently) Tom.Of course, there are also the three Arch Demons trying to steal a book that Lenamare, Tom's Accursed Master, stole from Oorstemoth; and whose demon horde had been infesting the wizard city of Freehold.So Tom has managed to anger both the Forces of Good and the Forces of Evil. However, that pales before his current problem, what exactly does one do with a hostage?
Special Thanks and Dedication to:
Michael Begal, Jay Haesly, Sean Jones, Bob Bingham, Jeff Hodapp, Rick Szekeres, Don Meyer
Edited By: nrc1963@zoho.com
Cover Art By: Jacob Atienza (http://jacobarts.weebly.com)
Visit http://www.Astlan.Net for Maps, History, Details and Artwork.
Special thanks to all the Beta Demons who helped get the story into shape:
Reminder from Volume I: The planet of Astlan has two moons, Uropia, the closer moon orbits Astlan around the axis of rotation from East to West (like Earth’s moon) and Anuropia, the further out moon orbits Astlan over the poles of rotation from North to South and then South to North.[1]
Uropia, the moon with a feminine aspect has 10 months per Astlanian year, Anuropia has 5 months per year and thus for every one Uropian month, there are two Anuropian months. The five months of Anuropia conveniently correspond to the five seasons: Hearth, Winter, Spring, Summer, Harvest.
Anuropian months are not specifically named, given that they also correspond to the seasons which are reversed in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Anuropian quarter months are however named, each named quarter month has two ten day weeks that correspond to the relative positions of the two moons.
While timekeeping does vary across Astlan, the dates are fairly standardized for trade purposes. Typically, dates are given as Anuropian Quarter Month/Day of Quarter Month/Year. In texts, the quarter month is denoted by either a number 1 to 20 or the name of the month.[2]
There are multiple calendars that designate the current year depending on specific events; over the last few centuries, those calendars that do not start and stop at the same time have fallen out of favor so that currently the major calendars in use have years that are only offsets of each other.[3]
The Council States, where most of the humans in Demons of Astlan live, officially uses the Post-Vargosian Calendar which dates from the fall of the Vargosite Empire 424 years before the arrival of the Dark Lord Tommus. Mount Doom is obviously in the Abyss which does not have real days or nights, nor seasons. However, they do use a rough calendar system in which the years seem to roughly correspond to Astlanian years, although this is a completely arbitrary choice made by various demon lords.
To understand time tracking during the day, please refer to this Appendix on Time of Day[4].
As a reminder, here are some recent historical points.
• Approximately 10 years ago, Lenamare the Great learns of a book of immeasurable value to both conjurors and demons alike. Lenamare’s nemesis, Exador and his allies Ramses and Bess were already aware of the book and had been trying to locate it for many years.
• A few years ago, Lenamare ascertained a very likely location for the book and hired a band of interdimensional rogues and bounty hunters to retrieve the book from ruins inside of Oorstemoth.
• Lenamare’s agents acquired the book but were captured; Lenamare, however, had planted magic items on his agents that caused them to blame Exador for the robbery.
• Exador spent nearly a year clearing himself of the charges, and determined that Lenamare had the book that he and his allies wanted.
• Exador and his allies plot to seize Lenamare’s Academy of Wizardry and more specifically the book. Lenamare discovers the plot by Exador and begins planning his defense.
• On Cyclos 7th 440 PV during a training session with students, Lenamare and his partner Jehenna discover what they thought was an unbound lesser demon. Upon trying to summon the demon for the first time they realize it was actually a Greater Demon. With great risk to themselves and the students Lenamare succeeds in binding the demon to his will.
○ Cyclos 7, 440 is Day Zero for the events detailed here. It is the day that the Demon Tom is first summoned.
• 14 days later (DZ+14), Lenamare blows up his own school and takes out the majority of Exador’s forces.
• The following evening (DZ+15) the Verigas, High Priest of Tiernon in Gizzor Del has his own demon summoning hijacked by a Demon Lord with a party of humans. This begins the Rod’s involvement
• A few days later, an Oorstemothian ship attempts to apprehend a smuggler and is illegally destroyed by one Lord Edwyrd, a powerful animage that also controls demons. This begins Oorstemoth’s involvement
