Authors Note(s): This story has been extensively edited to even out chapter lengths, make characters more cynical, and to add what are probably too many footnotes, purely for entertainment purposes. Character names have been changed, chapters have been spliced, and laws of physics have been revised. I'm now permanently retired from RuneScape (and am using that as an excuse for my pathetic lack of updates), so further chapters are not so much Fanfiction as further twisting JaGex's twisty little twisted world for my own twisted amusement. I still own nothing to do with the game (except the free poster I got when I registered my PMod account. Nifty!) But nevertheless, enjoy!
In Which the Scene is Set
The sun was setting on the city of Varrock, covering the city in a sea of deep orange light. In the centre of the city stood a fountain, the water glowing red from the last rays of the setting sun and the four marble figures, faces hidden and heads bowed, looked out with unseeing eyes. A few guards loitered around the entrance to the palace, shifting their awkward(1) uniform and re-adjusting their grip on the heavy shields they carried, none really paying any attention, there was little threat here(2).
The square was almost deserted, the citizens of Varrock having already retreated behind the safety of the locked doors of their houses, knowing better than to be caught outside at night. The only people there where a few merchants and stall-keepers, busily packing away their goods, pockets jingling with hard-earned coins but their stock somewhat depleted.
But if one was to stray off of the main street they would quickly come to a place the sun's light couldn't penetrate, where high, filthy buildings loomed depressingly overhead and the only red on the walls was not from the sunset, but from caked dried blood, probably all that remained of some innocent soul who had strayed into a place where every shadow posed a threat, and someone could lose their belongings, and often their life, in a flash of a well-aimed dagger.
Indeed, behind the bright splendor that screens the average adventurer from this realm, RuneScape can be a bloody depressing place.
(1)And utterly ridiculous
(2)This was, in fact, untrue. As long as a single adventurer remains, there will always be a threat to those who are easily accessible, are relatively puny, and give exp when bludgeoned to untimely, quickly reversed death.
"You should really cut down on the drink you know" commented the bartender absent-mindedly as he dried out a beer glass with a grimy cloth.
The figure at the bar smiled slightly, although the man was non-the-wiser due to the heavy brown hood that shadowed the figure's face.
"I think I'll manage" came the reply from somewhere in the recess of the cloak. After pausing to take another sip from the foaming glass in front of them, the stranger continued "besides, the more I drink the more coins go into your pocket. Dissuading customers could be considered bad for business you know. "
"Yes" the the barman replied then, with the earnestly of the delusional, pressed on "but it's really only virtual money, pretend money, seeing as we're in a computer game." He glared defiantly at where he guessed the eyes of the cloaked person were.
"Yea, yea, heard that one before." The hood jerked in what could have been a hiccup, and could have been barely restrained mirth "I think I'd know if we were stuck in a little magic box. And besides, I still have to work for it" they drawled, setting down both an empty glass and a battered coin onto the smooth wood of the bar and rising from the bar stool.
Then, with a sweep of their cloak, the type which can only be achieved with hours of practice in front of a mirror, the stranger stalked across the worn dirt of the tavern floor and out into the cool air of the evening, where the shadows rose up to greet them.
West of Lumbridge, the swampy excuse for a township where even the mightiest of adventurers all first swung a bronze sword, where new citizens of Geilenor learn the basic skills of survival and where noobs accumulate like limescale, there is an equally squalid little accumulation of life. Deceptively quaint, Draynor is possibly one of the liveliest of places on the map. At a first glance, you see a few innocent people, living out their lives(1) if not to the full, then at least to the half full. Or half empty, if you're going to be pessimistic about things.
The point is that people what people don't see is not what lies just beneath the surface(2) but what looms overhead, watching, waiting, and getting sizzled on electricity pylons. And the air did sizzle, not with the produced energy of combustion of fossil fuels, but with magic. Over the recent years this been largely attributed to the presence of the Wizard's Tower, but the power that had really been behind the strange phenomena that you could set your village clock tower by was nothing as feeble and adulterated as runecraft magic, but something much more fundamental.
It has been said that the Creator is most fond of small rocks, sheep and weeds. If so, Draynor was the rockiest of all rocks, the ultimate bane of gardeners and farmers alike, and the pure essence of wooly, sheepy goodness. It had been there a long time. It had always been there. Even before there was anywhere else to be.
(1)Or just generally lurching around, in the case of the unusually animated skeletons in the sewers.
(2)In the water around Draynor this is mostly dead giant rats which have been carried in by the current, freshly killed from Tutorial Island.
The Wizard's Tower did not carry its name lightly. It, or at least its inhabitants, carried the name, the Title, with almost the same pride as they bore their pointy hats. They were Wizards thank you very much, not so much powerful as Power itself or at least wielders of it for the greater good(1). The building had a lot of history, and the scrolls it had been written in would still exist had it not been for those meddling Zamorakians who had, some time in the course of history, been a bit careless about where they dropped their cigarette ends. The hierarchy of these cone shaped fellows is strange and as dubious, unstable und unpleasant smelling as the wizards themselves, but there is a general air of survival of the pwnest, and whomever emerged from the charred ruins of the frequent squabbles was put forward to be charred, grilled and then thoroughly soaked by whoever had a more sought out position and intended to keep it.
Wizard Grayzag was a prime example of this, mainly as he sat at the desk in his office. Only the very highest of Wizards were granted the privilege of having their very own office(2). Well, if you could call it an office. It was really just a small dark room, barely the size of a cupboard, and most of what little space there was taken up by an old oak desk, overflowing with towering piles of parchment that cast dark shadows into the dark corners of the even darker room.
There was also a battered and rusty metal filing case and one of those plastic computer chairs that spins around, often with a satisfying squeak and several people getting knocked over. Guthix only knows where he got that.
There came a knock on the door, which seemed to materialize in the wall as it opened, either by magic, or, more likely, due to the fact it was painted the exact same shade of black as the walls. The wizards liked to cut down on costs by using the same paint wherever and whenever possible. Grayzag looked up sharply; banging his head on the filing cabinet and brushing rust into his hair. "Who's there?" he barked. It had to be a wizard, the outside of the room was cleverly "disguised" as a broom closet so the many dregs of society who called themselves adventures wouldn't find it unless they where looking for cleaning materials, which, taking into account the personal hygiene of most of them, was highly unlikely.
A ragged, weedy and somewhat worried looking wizard nervously stepped into the doorway, ringing out his hat which, like his robes, was soaking wet.
"Sorry sir" he choked "But the imps – they've got out of the cage and somehow got hold of a bucket of water balloons!"
Grayzag pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ward away a headache he could feel coming on. From somewhere below them he could hear someone franticly shouting "No. No! Put that down- Argh-!"
"We've been through this before; you bind the imps, disarm them and lock them back in the cage, just like we did in training." He said, slowly, putting emphasis on the words.
The wizard flinched "Yes sir, we know, but they've also found the runes"
The young wizard was saved the inconvenience of being fried to a crisp by a well timed water balloon that chose the opportunity to hit Greyzag squarely in the face.
(1)Which to them meant their own.
(2)The tower, while sufficiently large and looming from the outside, was otherwise rather cramped. It had originally been large enough to hold the entire order of the White Knights, but some particularly inventive spells had rendered large sections uninhabitable by those who wished to wake up with the correct number of limbs, if they woke up at all.
It was just after daybreak, the first rays of the sun's light just starting to creep across the fields, reflecting off of the dew and casting soft orange light onto the sleeping landscape.(1)
But for the citizens of Varrock, life had already begun, in its own busy, selling, buying and stealing way, the guards trying not to yawn as they patrolled the streets with thick woolen jumpers under their chain-mail, fantasizing about a nice hot cup of coffee(2).
(1)This is inaccurate since most light-dwelling animals are awake by this time, and plants probably don't sleep; even the strange ones that can grow on the second floor of buildings and attack people if they don't pick their fruit.
(2)Or at least would have had they had known coffee existed.
Four criminals followed this rule as well, already awake they where pulling on dark clothes and trying to hide as many weapons as they could around their person for quick accessibility.
Lirazan was watching with interest as Syril tried to hide yet another dagger about her person, along with the other twenty that where already hidden in inconspicuous, yet easy-to reach places.
"I think you've got enough weapons already" she mused as Terrig hopped by with one boot on, tying to force his head through the sleeve of his jumper(1).
"So where exactly are you going?" Syril asked, having given up and thrown the dagger into one of the wooden beams that held up the ceiling.
"Draynor, someone wants me to investigate a thief-"
"Isn't that the kind of things the guards do?" Syril interrupted.
"-who's been stealing the stuff they bought illegally and to get rid of them before the guards start getting suspicious." Lira continued, as though she hadn't heard Syril.
Syril opened her mouth to speak but at that moment the trapdoor opened and Kyril climbed down holding four small loaves of bread. "Breakfast" He announced.
"Cheers." Terrig said, grabbing one of the loaves with the hand that wasn't still trying to find its sleeve and promptly cramming half of it into his mouth. The other three started on their bread with considerably more grace.
Lira brushed imaginary crumbs from her dragonhide and pulled up her hood. "I'lll probably be gone a few days. Try not to cause too much trouble while I'm gone." Syril snorted defiantly.
And with that Lira shouldered her bag and walked over to the trapdoor and, after perring out dubiously to check that the coast was clear, grabbed the edge and pulled herself up heady wood slamming down behind her. There was a pause, a muffled curse, and then the scrabbling sound of the hem of a cloak being pulled free.
Terrig meandered over to where the other two were.
"Where's sh' goin'?" Terrig asked with his mouth full.
(3)Vomit green.
Grayzag leaned against the wall, exhausted. It had taken them three hours to round up all the imps in the tower without magic, and still several of them had made a bid for freedom, squeezing under doors and jumping out of windows. Eventually they had just had to throw nets over everything in hope that they would catch something other than the upholstery. He didn't really need to keep the imps any more, his research was complete, but he couldn't bear the thought of all those things running around lose.
Grayzag had first become interested in imps when he had learned of there unique teleportation ability. Imps had the ability to teleport to anywhere. As a rule, teleportation had to have a set point that you could focus on, like the wizard in Ardougne who had apparently made a device that could be teleported to wherever it was in the world. They had received a crumpled up note saying how sorry he was that it hadn't arrived and how he would use a more reliable postage service to send it once he found it again.
But imps didn't follow this rule. Grayzag had done every test he could think of, countless pages of results and diagrams. All of them had failed; he still couldn't reproduce the teleportation spell the imps used. He had heard a vague rumor that adventurers were plagued by something called the "Random Event", but since the informer had been quite past tipsy when they were replaying this information, he dismissed it as the usual nonsense you could expect from such types.
"Grayzag, sir!" Shouted a wizard as he ran up to him, caught his foot on one of the nets that hadn't been cleared away and crashed into a table, knocking it over and breaking one of the legs off. He carefully untangled himself from the wreckage, balanced the table back on it's remaining legs and stood up smartly before the senior wizard, taking a bit more care about where he put his feet.
"We found out who released the imps, sir." He said conclusively.
"Oh really?
"Ya really Sir."
"You sure?"
"Sure I'm sure. Sir. "
"Well who is it!?" Grayzag bellowed, his patience having been pushed to it's megre limits.
"Err…" Muttered the wizard, his eyes unfocusing momentarily "Oh, I must have forgotten when I banged my head on the table. Sir." He said. He grinned sheepishly as the older wizard's eyes burned into his with the barely repressed menace of a bull that is about to charge. Then he yelped. "He's down in the basement with Sedridor, sir!" He added hurriedly as he started to frantically pat his hair which had caught fire. Grayzag gave the wizard a final glare and hurried out of the room towards the stairs
"That was close" the wizard muttered to himself, extinguishing the last of the flames and pulling his hat back onto his smoldering hair as the point of Grayzag's hat disappeared down the staircase.