The Grey Tower

Ubriel entered the library and sought out the section on Shadowspawn. She had gone straight from the stables to dinner and Zacharyn had insisted that she get a bath before going to the library. The drips of water in her still wet hair were cold as they ran down her back and under the tunic of her uniform.

There he is, she thought as she rounded a corner. She slowed and took a moment to admire him. She had no intention of getting sidetracked from her goal of becoming a warder but it never hurt too much to look at something so tempting. She had to admit to herself if to no one else, if anything could distract her, it would probably be him.

She walked up to the table where he was reading and said, "I bathed. What have you got?" She sat in a chair across from him and pulled a book toward her.

Zacharyn sat reading a book on Shadowspawn. The evil creatures that filled the blight and occasionally spilled out into the rest of the world. Growing up on the blight boarder, he himself had seen several of these creatures, but didn't know enough about them to make much difference for anything.
"I bathed. what have you got?" Ubriel plopped down in a chair across the table from him, looking as thought she hadn't bothered with drying too much. Zacharyn started at her approach and tsk'd at the water that dripped from her short, freshly fluffed, hair onto the table.
"This my dear Bree, is a Drakhar!" He said pushing a book with a picture of a winged leathery looking creaute, towards Ubriel. "I've found a nice pile of books on Shadowspawn, I was hoping you could look through these with me." Zacharyn picked up and waggled a several books at his partner. "I've seen a few of the monstrosities in these, but some of the things I'm reading hear are absolutely disgusting." Zacharyn flipped through another book to find a particular picture. "This one looks like someone mangled a corpse before it rotted and it got up and started running around....Nasty stuff." Zacharyn finished with a fake gag.

"In all the history texts I have been reading, the most common thing to come out of the blight is Trollocs." Ubriel looked at the thing on the page that Zacharyn pointed to and made a grimacing face. "I don't think that is a real thing. It looks... made up." She pushed the book away. "Have you ever seen a Trolloc?"

Ubriel knew that Zacharyn had grown up on or near the blight border and she thought it was possible. She herself had never seen any type of shadowspawn, save maybe a rat or raven that she wouldn't have been able to tell from a regular rat or raven. She flipped open a book conveniently titled Trolloc Battle Formations.

"I haven't been close enough to get a good look at them, but I have seen them from a distance... The smell travels well if nothing else." Zacharyn paused for a moment, remembering. "A few years ago I was brought to the Aesdaishar palace in Chachin to repair an antique piece that had been broken in some sort of...altercation. While I was there, there was a morning I was looking over the city walls into the blight, and they were moving...Almost forming ranks if you could call it that. As soon as they would do something, they would start attacking one another, and then they just ran off."

Zacharyn scratched at his beard, and flipped through a different book before he started again. "Trollocs seem like they're really stupid, but when one of these guys gets in the mix, everything gets super serious, very quickly." He laid the book on the table for Bree to see. There was a portrait someone had painted of a...thing that looked like a man, but not. Standing just taller than the average man and holding a long jagged black sword. It's skin painted a sickly shade of maggot gray/white and the most taking of all it's features, was the lack of eyes. Where it's eyes should be, there were empty holes scarred over the inside with the same milky, sickening flesh.
"A Myrdraal, or a fade. These half-men lead armies of trollocs. Not much is going to make a trolloc move more than one of these guys scaring the blood and ashes out of them."

Ubriel nodded. She had read about those. "They give me the creeps. They are born to Trollocs. Just imagine a baby fade suckling at the teet of a pig headed Trolloc mommy." She gave a shoulder wiggling shudder and shook her head. "Nah-ah, no thank you."

She sighed and opened a new book. "Okay so we know about Trollocs and Fades. Draghkar are scary soul suckers. What about Gholam?" Ubriel pawed through the books on the table and rooted out a thin volume. Flipping through it's pages she found a small text block.
Gholam are legendary shadowspawn said to have been created by Aginor during the War of Power specifically to attack channelers of the One Power. It is unknown how they are controlled and little is known about how to fight them. None have been seen since they were created in the Age of Legends and it is assumed that if they ever existed, they no longer do.
They were said to be able to move as if bonelessly. They could walk through a sword without injury and squeeze through an opening as small as a key hole. Their diet consists only of the fresh blood of their victims and they can sense the use of the One Power from some distance.

"What would you do about that?"

"Die I imagine." Zacharyn said without blinking... "I'm sure there are one power weaves that may be able to contain the area they're in instead of the creatures themselves though... " He trails of near the end of his sentence thinking about the possibilities.
"I don't know where the Shadowspawn came from, but I'm not particularly keen of my family living so close to their breeding grounds... Do you know when the next class on shadowspawn is going to be held?

"No idea, but you can use the archived courses over in the back, dusty section and submit your course work to the Master of Soldiers. I think." Ubriel squinted, thinking about it. "Hey, do you want to help me find out something?"

She pulled Farstrider's Medallion from her shirt, where it dangled on a chain around her neck. "This is the only family heirloom I have. It was supposedly a gift to my mother's father from Jain Farstrider himself. He is supposed to be some kind of uncle. Anyway, it is supposedly made from a coin from Shara that he brought back on one of his trips." She bit her lip. "Do you want to help me find out if it's real?"

"I would love to help... but aren't the Jain Farstrider stories way older than.. Your grandfather?" Zacharyn watched the hopeful look on Bree's face become one of disappointment..and then almost anger?
"Er uh...What I mean is, it just seems older than that..but I wasn't there, and I'm excited to learn about your family's history." Zacharyn finished in a hurry trying to avert the crisis that he thought he caused in this...friendship? Somehow it felt like it was more than that, but it probably wouldn't be for long if he didn't keep a reign on his mouth... .Dad always did say a woman scorned was the worst thing to make...

Ubriel tried not to growl at Zacharyn. The great lummox wouldn't know his history... She got up and left the table.

A few minutes later, she returned with a book on blight border history. Opening the large and dusty book, she flipped it around and read through a few pages. Finally she spun the book so that Zack could see it and stabbed her finger at a paragraph about half way down the left side page. "Read that." She was impressed with her own calmness. So much so that she began to summarize the text to which she was pointing. "Jain 'Farstrider' Charin was born in Malkier. After the fall of Malkier and well after his return from his famous travels, Jain Farstrider captured the treacherous Cowin Gemallan. Gemallan was the instrument of the betrayal and fall of Malkier. That happened around 40 or 45 years ago."

Satisfied with her triumphant presentation of the facts she sat back in her seat and said, "How young do your folks have kids if you think that is too old to be a grandfather or great uncle?" She softened her voice and continued. "Anyway, he isn't my grandfather. He was the younger brother of my mother's grandfather." She didn't think she could have cleared it up for him any more than that.

"You knew all this already?" Zacharyn looked up at Ubriel with surprise and a bit of wonder. "I didn't realize you were such a history buff, it may be family history, but this is still really interesting!"

Zacharyn picked up the book at began to peruse through the pages. "What EXACTLY should we be looking for do you think?"