Disclaimer: Don't own anything in here.
Chapter 2
This is really starting to hurt, Kyle thought as he continued to stand in place on the eighteenth floor, still held by the binding spell. Sunlight shone in through the windows, and a digital clock lying in a pile of junk read 6:00 a.m. Both he and Dan had been frozen for three hours after the other Drow had left along with the Discharger.
Relief flooded through both of them as they heard the passenger elevator ascend from the first floor. Someone was in the building, probably the morning chef coming in to prepare the cafeteria.
The elevator continued past the eighteenth floor and stopped at the top floor of the building. Gromph Baenre stepped out as the doors opened, the centuries old Drow archmage still keeping the look of a young Elf in his early 100's from the enchanted Brooch of Eternal Youth pinned to the front of his black suit.
Near 1100 years ago, the wizards of Menzoberranzan had defeated the ruling Matron Mothers in a devastating war. With Lloth already gone, the Wizards formed a new government and extended their rule to the surface. As time passed, the Realms began producing new technologies. Gunpowder brought new weapons into production, steel and iron made new vehicles possible, flight was eventually achieved, and trade across the different lands brought up new ideas, which quickly spread.
Gromph had found a profitable business years ago in writing computer software, and he was now the owner of one of the largest technology companies in the realms. Though he continued to experiment and create numerous magical items in his free time.
Gromph walked into his office and sat down at the large oak desk in the center. With merely a thought from the archmage, a computer monitor rose from the center of the desk, along with a keyboard and mouse. "Where are my security guards?" Gromph muttered to himself as he opened an application, and a black triangular prism on the desk hummed to life. A blue bolt of lightning shot from the top of the prism, and separated into two, which spread apart, leaving a dark hole in midair, a window into the Astral Plane.
Silvery chords of light ran by the window, pulsating and thrumming with a magical hum. This was a system developed by Gromph years before, a system that integrated magic with modern technology to allow access to the Astral Plane from a computer. That wasn't the half of it though.
Every living being in the Realms has a physical presence in the Material Plane of existence. The mental presence of every living being is in the Astral Plane. Beings that exist on the material plane have both a physical presence and a mental presence, whereas beings that normally live in the Astral Plane have either one or the other. Astral dwelling beings are mentally present until they are summoned to the Material Plane.
Nearly every Man, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, etc. in the Realms had their mental presence logged in Gromph's system at birth. The system was designed to monitor the lives of every being in the Realms, and a force of trained system operators (The Sys-Ops) handled thousands of suspicious reports each day. Some were murders, and others were robberies, bomb threats, etc. Activities unrelated to crime were ignored to ensure privacy among the public.
The health of the general public is closely monitored as well. Abnormal pulses in certain Astral threads are picked up by a computer system and sent to the Sys-Ops. The Sys-Ops determine how serious the situation is, and are authorized to dispatch the nearest medical team if necessary.
Two miles below the main building was the computer system that monitored the Astral threads of life. Protected by three feet of Grade-A Titanium and a six inch thick coat of lead, the machine could withstand a direct surface blast from a fifty megaton Nuclear Warhead.
The computer itself was no less impressive. Two hundred and seventy 24- terabyte hard drives stored countless numbers of uplinks from the Material to the Astral Plane. Seventeen thousand 15-Gigahertz CPU's processed billions of functions daily, many of them queries from the criminal record, or health record mainframes.
The entire system was basically rigged to monitor the lives of every person in the realms.
Gromph typed in the I.D. numbers of both security guards, and the view from the planar window moved like a camera through countless numbers of other silvery threads. The window stopped at two threads, which, unlike the others, were motionless except for a few slight tremors indicating a heartbeat and breathing. The computer monitor showed that both were on the eighteenth floor.
Gromph was immediately on alert. The eighteenth floor... Weapons development. What the hell are they doing down there!? Waving his hand, he closed the portal and slapped the top of the desk, the prism immediately sinking into it.
The watch on Gromph's wrist was another development of his, which stored numerous spells in a 728-megabyte chip. With only a thought from the user, any spell could be called upon and used. As with any spells, there were limitations to the amount of magical energy that could be used, and each spell in memory needed approximately six hours of recharge time after an average of eight uses.
Gromph called up a magical doorway to floor eighteen and stepped through. His shoulders drooped when he entered the lab and saw Dan and Kyle frozen in place. "Lloth be damned! What in the Nine Hells happened here?" The counterspell Gromph knew was not in his watch, but a muttered incantation and a few hand gestures released the spell, and Dan and Kyle fell to the floor in pain.
"What happened?" Gromph asked again.
"The Discharger...." Kyle managed to gasp, "stolen..."
Discharger... The word took a moment to register in Gromph's mind, then his eyes widened. "You're telling me that a weapon of mass destruction was stolen!?"
Gromph had given extra funding to the weapons department for the Discharger project. The Discharger was built with the latest plasma technology, and was a new breed of weapon that could be set to a certain yield between one and twenty Megatons. Four tanks fed hydrogen gas through a microwave chamber and into a cylinder wrapped in superconducting magnetic coils where twelve high output lasers heated it to the point where plasma was created. The magnetic coils contained the plasma until the onboard computer sent the detonation signal, then they released.
"Who were they?" Gromph questioned.
"Drow," Dan spoke for the first time.
"Shit..." Gromph closed his eyes and thought for a minute before speaking again. "I'm going to call Jaradir on this one. This matter stays in the building, we do not want anyone outside to know that a weapon of mass destruction is in the hands of thieves!
Jaradir was the head of security, a five-hundred year old Dwarf who had spent sixty-seven years as an FBI agent before better pay brought him to Baenre Technologies. If anyone inside the business had the best chance of finding the weapon, it was him.
Gromph looked down at his security guards and hid a look of disgust. "You'd best sit in the Jacuzzi for a while." He walked away without another word, leaving them to worry about the severe interrogation they were sure to receive from Jaradir.
Kyle rolled over and let out a sigh. Awwww fuck...
Chapter 2
This is really starting to hurt, Kyle thought as he continued to stand in place on the eighteenth floor, still held by the binding spell. Sunlight shone in through the windows, and a digital clock lying in a pile of junk read 6:00 a.m. Both he and Dan had been frozen for three hours after the other Drow had left along with the Discharger.
Relief flooded through both of them as they heard the passenger elevator ascend from the first floor. Someone was in the building, probably the morning chef coming in to prepare the cafeteria.
The elevator continued past the eighteenth floor and stopped at the top floor of the building. Gromph Baenre stepped out as the doors opened, the centuries old Drow archmage still keeping the look of a young Elf in his early 100's from the enchanted Brooch of Eternal Youth pinned to the front of his black suit.
Near 1100 years ago, the wizards of Menzoberranzan had defeated the ruling Matron Mothers in a devastating war. With Lloth already gone, the Wizards formed a new government and extended their rule to the surface. As time passed, the Realms began producing new technologies. Gunpowder brought new weapons into production, steel and iron made new vehicles possible, flight was eventually achieved, and trade across the different lands brought up new ideas, which quickly spread.
Gromph had found a profitable business years ago in writing computer software, and he was now the owner of one of the largest technology companies in the realms. Though he continued to experiment and create numerous magical items in his free time.
Gromph walked into his office and sat down at the large oak desk in the center. With merely a thought from the archmage, a computer monitor rose from the center of the desk, along with a keyboard and mouse. "Where are my security guards?" Gromph muttered to himself as he opened an application, and a black triangular prism on the desk hummed to life. A blue bolt of lightning shot from the top of the prism, and separated into two, which spread apart, leaving a dark hole in midair, a window into the Astral Plane.
Silvery chords of light ran by the window, pulsating and thrumming with a magical hum. This was a system developed by Gromph years before, a system that integrated magic with modern technology to allow access to the Astral Plane from a computer. That wasn't the half of it though.
Every living being in the Realms has a physical presence in the Material Plane of existence. The mental presence of every living being is in the Astral Plane. Beings that exist on the material plane have both a physical presence and a mental presence, whereas beings that normally live in the Astral Plane have either one or the other. Astral dwelling beings are mentally present until they are summoned to the Material Plane.
Nearly every Man, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, etc. in the Realms had their mental presence logged in Gromph's system at birth. The system was designed to monitor the lives of every being in the Realms, and a force of trained system operators (The Sys-Ops) handled thousands of suspicious reports each day. Some were murders, and others were robberies, bomb threats, etc. Activities unrelated to crime were ignored to ensure privacy among the public.
The health of the general public is closely monitored as well. Abnormal pulses in certain Astral threads are picked up by a computer system and sent to the Sys-Ops. The Sys-Ops determine how serious the situation is, and are authorized to dispatch the nearest medical team if necessary.
Two miles below the main building was the computer system that monitored the Astral threads of life. Protected by three feet of Grade-A Titanium and a six inch thick coat of lead, the machine could withstand a direct surface blast from a fifty megaton Nuclear Warhead.
The computer itself was no less impressive. Two hundred and seventy 24- terabyte hard drives stored countless numbers of uplinks from the Material to the Astral Plane. Seventeen thousand 15-Gigahertz CPU's processed billions of functions daily, many of them queries from the criminal record, or health record mainframes.
The entire system was basically rigged to monitor the lives of every person in the realms.
Gromph typed in the I.D. numbers of both security guards, and the view from the planar window moved like a camera through countless numbers of other silvery threads. The window stopped at two threads, which, unlike the others, were motionless except for a few slight tremors indicating a heartbeat and breathing. The computer monitor showed that both were on the eighteenth floor.
Gromph was immediately on alert. The eighteenth floor... Weapons development. What the hell are they doing down there!? Waving his hand, he closed the portal and slapped the top of the desk, the prism immediately sinking into it.
The watch on Gromph's wrist was another development of his, which stored numerous spells in a 728-megabyte chip. With only a thought from the user, any spell could be called upon and used. As with any spells, there were limitations to the amount of magical energy that could be used, and each spell in memory needed approximately six hours of recharge time after an average of eight uses.
Gromph called up a magical doorway to floor eighteen and stepped through. His shoulders drooped when he entered the lab and saw Dan and Kyle frozen in place. "Lloth be damned! What in the Nine Hells happened here?" The counterspell Gromph knew was not in his watch, but a muttered incantation and a few hand gestures released the spell, and Dan and Kyle fell to the floor in pain.
"What happened?" Gromph asked again.
"The Discharger...." Kyle managed to gasp, "stolen..."
Discharger... The word took a moment to register in Gromph's mind, then his eyes widened. "You're telling me that a weapon of mass destruction was stolen!?"
Gromph had given extra funding to the weapons department for the Discharger project. The Discharger was built with the latest plasma technology, and was a new breed of weapon that could be set to a certain yield between one and twenty Megatons. Four tanks fed hydrogen gas through a microwave chamber and into a cylinder wrapped in superconducting magnetic coils where twelve high output lasers heated it to the point where plasma was created. The magnetic coils contained the plasma until the onboard computer sent the detonation signal, then they released.
"Who were they?" Gromph questioned.
"Drow," Dan spoke for the first time.
"Shit..." Gromph closed his eyes and thought for a minute before speaking again. "I'm going to call Jaradir on this one. This matter stays in the building, we do not want anyone outside to know that a weapon of mass destruction is in the hands of thieves!
Jaradir was the head of security, a five-hundred year old Dwarf who had spent sixty-seven years as an FBI agent before better pay brought him to Baenre Technologies. If anyone inside the business had the best chance of finding the weapon, it was him.
Gromph looked down at his security guards and hid a look of disgust. "You'd best sit in the Jacuzzi for a while." He walked away without another word, leaving them to worry about the severe interrogation they were sure to receive from Jaradir.
Kyle rolled over and let out a sigh. Awwww fuck...