Midnight Study Pt. 1

Job Details:

Job Sign-Up: Page 11, Post Number 252

-Silver Wolf Guild Hall, Leona's Room, 10:00 P.M.-

After a busy day in the office dealing with paperwork Leona had closed down the office and went back to her room to try and read one of the books that she had spent so much time looking for in Capital Crocus. Leona had been busy with back-to-back adventures in Midi and Motor City and had not really gotten the chance to sit down and read one of the numerous books she had purchased. Tonight she was going to actually read one of them before going to sleep because she was trying to improve something of hers other than her personal arsenal or her power level, which had somehow still been increasing despite having surpassed the original limit of a mage's power that had been set several years before she came on the scene.

The trailblazing Rune Knights Serilda Sinclair and Mythal Ragnos led the way as the first and second mages to be registered in the new power ratings. Third in line was the formidable Dies Irae mage Johann Von Weiss. Fourth was Leona's frequent companion and Sabertooth mage Samira Nassar. Fifth was Leona Jarnefeldt of Silver Wolf.

Since the new power ratings had come out Johann and Samira were neck-and-neck for the lead while Serilda and Mythal tied for second place. Sitting in third was Leona. Leona did not envy her peers because once she thought about it a little she realized that being in third place was no mean feat. Being third in power behind the leader of Dies Irae, Sabertooth's strongest mage, and the trailblazing power couple of the Rune Knights was nothing to be ashamed of. Considering that she came on the scene later than Samira or Johann, she was in a pretty good place for someone who started being a mage a little more than two years ago.

Leona turned her attention away from competing with her fellow Wizard Saints to the large tome sitting on her desk, which was Ancient Desierto by Professor Henry Rosetta. That behemoth was purchased in Jobaasa's Rare Tomes a few weeks ago and was easily the lengthiest book in the collection at 1,200 pages. Ancient Desierto was large and heavy enough to be used as a blunt weapon if someone attacked her in her room, but it would be a waste of a 20,000 Jewel book. Besides, she had PG-13 to protect her and kept the knife her brother had made for her and Ses Revanche close at hand.

Before the blonde sat down to study she needed to change her clothing. PG-13 looked away as Leona took off her green, white, and gold outfit and changed into a plain white t-shirt and "chocolate chip" pattern desert camouflage shorts. Once the change was complete Leona shut the wardrobe door and walked over to her bed to sit down and take off her boots, which she had somehow forgotten to take off when she had changed out of her "formal" outfit. Leona took off her boots and collected Ses Revanche so that she would have a weapon close to hand if there was a late-night intrusion into the guild hall.

Once she had changed and gotten a weapon Leona sat down at her desk and tried to find the will to force open Ancient Desierto and begin reading it. The large book with the tan cover and title written in black letters loomed in front of the seated blonde. She had bad memories of her first attempt to read Henry Rosetta's guide to Ancient Muserian and how the thickness of that book and the academic writing style had stymied her halfway into the work.

Leona took a deep breath. Tonight things were going to be different. Tonight she would sit there and read at least halfway through Ancient Desierto before calling it a night. Then her resolve wavered. Why was she going to punish herself by reading a 1,200 page book written decades before her parents had even met?

Leona took another deep breath. She had to do this. Leona had to prove to herself that she could start an academic undertaking and see it through to the end.

Leona fished a blue spiral notebook out of the right desk drawer and found a sharpened yellow pencil. She set them to the right of the large tome and took one last breath before taking the plunge. She gently exhaled and used both hands to force the front cover open, coughing as a cloud of dust was kicked up and flew right into her face. It had not even been five minutes and this endeavor was already off to a bad start.

Tonight was going to be a long night.

[Post Word Count: 788]
[Total Word Count: 788/5,000]

-One hour and thirty minutes and 200 pages in-

Leona had spent an hour and a half reading the ponderous text and had barely finished slogging through the first two hundred pages of Henry Rosetta's lengthy book named Ancient Desierto when she turned to the next page and learned that what she had slogged through was only the introduction. The introduction. Professor Rosetta was a verbose man and it showed in his writing. Leona tried her best to focus as she read over the page she was on and finally started to read about the political climate of Ancient Desierto. That was when she began taking notes on the material because there was no way in Ishgar that she could remember every last thing she was going to read.

-Twenty pages in, twenty minutes later-

Leona had read twenty pages deeper and learned that Ancient Desierto's political climate back then was one of separate tribes trying to eke out an existence in a harsh and unforgiving desert with no thought of uniting to pool their manpower and material resources; in contrast, the tribes jealously guarded their independence. Most of the tribes were nomadic and moved from place to place to find a safe haven, but a few of Ancient Desierto's tribes were farmers who diligently worked what little arable land there was to eke out a living that did not require roaming the hostile desert. One of those farming tribes was the Muserians, a tribe that lived in Southern Desierto and was notable for having a large number of mages among its population.

Leona wrote down the pertinent points of those twenty pages and skimmed over them a second time to make sure that she had gotten everything of value before moving on. She did not want to have to backtrack to earlier pages after plowing through another one hundred pages or so of new material and finding that she did not understand the previous material. Once she had completed the skimming of the first twenty pages past the introduction and was satisfied that she had written down all the pertinent points, she carefully labeled those notes with page numbers and moved on to the next twenty pages. For the moment Leona was going to break up the notes taken into twenty-page increments, but later she was going to try for fifty pages so that she would not spend an entire week reading and taking notes on one book.

-Forty pages and forty minutes later-

The next forty pages told more about the Muserians and their unusually high population of mages, a concentration of magic users which was as unusual for Desierto then as it was now. Somewhere in the past Leona had heard that only 25% of modern Desierto's population could use magic, which made her something uncommon, though not as much of a rarity as in some other places. She also learned that Museria's mages tended to possess elemental control magic such as earth, wind, fire, and water and used that magic for defense against hostile neighbors as well as for making their everyday lives easier. She made notes of all of that information and wrote the page numbers beside them before moving on.

-Sixty pages and one hour later-

It was well past midnight and Leona had muscled past the 300-page mark some number of pages back. The book was not getting any easier to read, but she was starting to learn a lot from it. One important thing she had learned was that the man who made the Kingdom of Museria possible was one ambitious ruler named Hammun. He united the Muserians behind him and took the offensive against a particularly hostile neighboring tribe named the Urrikans and conquered them in the span of a year. Hammun added the land of the Urrikans to his own and had carved out a small empire in Southern Desierto, an empire that he expanded through a mix of diplomacy and warfare.

By the time Hammun died fifteen years later the Muserian kingdom encompassed all of Southern Desierto. His son and successor Hammunbari decided that further expansion would be a waste of men and resources and that any gains he made would be difficult to hold onto. Hammunbari was content with having all of Southern Desierto under his control and focused on consolidating what his father had won, emphasizing the study of science, engineering, and medicine over that of war. That was the real start of the Kingdom of Museria.

Leona stood up from the desk and stretched her legs, which were beginning to go numb from sitting still for so long. She had slightly under 900 pages to go before the behemoth work in front of her would be finished. It was a daunting prospect, but Leona was going to do her best to finish reading it so that she could truthfully claim that she had read one academic work that she had purchased. Aside from the not-so-trivial matter of getting the most out of a 20,000-Jewel investment, Leona also wanted to prove to herself that she could do something intellectual and learn about a subject so that she did not always have to rely on someone explaining it for her.

After a ten-minute break to stretch her legs, Leona sat back down and began to read more about the Kingdom of Museria after it had attained undisputed control of Southern Desierto.

-Sixty pages and one hour later-

In the space of an hour Leona had managed to make it through another sixty pages of material and had learned more about the Kingdom of Museria. The period of the first one hundred years of the kingdom's existence was a time of consolidation and reorganizing the various tribal governments that the kingdom had absorbed during its fifteen-year campaign to unite Southern Desierto under its rule. The tribes, far from accepting what had happened to them as a fait accompli, continued to behave as autonomous tribes rather than as part of a new empire.

King Hammunbari, unwilling to tolerate dissent in the kingdom his father had won through much expenditure of blood and treasure, was reluctant to engage in more bloodshed to quell the dissent so soon after his father's passing. Rather than suppress them by force, Hammunbari brought the dissenting chiefs into the government and gave them a vested interest in the new empire's success. The arrangement worked beyond all expectations because most of the chiefs gladly accepted the role of a provincial governor in the new order in exchange for being permitted to keep their religions and social customs intact. The only obligations to the throne in exchange for this freedom were that the new governors submit taxes and supply men for the royal army when needed.

[Post Word Count: 1,128]
[Total Word Count: 1,916/5,000]

-Five minutes later-

Motivated by what she had read so far, Leona found a little more energy to plow through the text after reading about how King Hammunbari of Museria brought the tribal chiefs into his new kingdom as provincial governors rather than as prisoners. The newly minted provincial governors were allowed to keep the religion and customs of their respective peoples provided that they did not attempt to usurp the central government. The only obligations to the throne for this unprecedented level of freedom were that the governors pay taxes to the central government and supply soldiers and mages for the royal army when demanded. Seeing that King Hammunbari could lead with the carrot as well as with the stick, most of the chieftains who were hostile or indifferent to the king eagerly accepted the role offered to them and in one stroke were converted from enemies to allies.

Leona eagerly read on to learn more about the kingdom after it had finally united under one ruler and had either co-opted or eliminated the few dissident chieftains who refused to accept the new ruler.

After about a century of consolidation, the Kingdom of Museria was united and at peace. The emphasis on science, engineering, and medicine had produced a kingdom full of wonders that were well ahead of their time such as somewhat reliable medical care that integrated magic as well as herbal remedies and surgery, buildings for the treatment of the ill that could arguably be called the forerunner of modern hospitals, a rudimentary public school system, and libraries. Leona also caught her first glimpse of the kingdom's crowning achievement, the Palace of Knowledge that was the subject of at least two of the books she had purchased during her trips to Capital Crocus.

According to Professor Rosetta, the Palace of Knowledge was Museria's crowning achievement in a series of achievements that were well ahead of their time. Within the palace was contained written records of all of Museria's discoveries in science, mathematics, engineering, medicine, and a host of other scientific subjects. Rosetta's tone in the thirty-page section devoted to the topic hinted that he did not believe that such a thing had really existed, that it was only the product of boasting from a people who had truly discovered a lot in their time. However, Leona was a novice and was thus unable to ascertain whether Rosetta truly did not believe that the palace existed or if he was only expressing skepticism that an impartial scholar would. She reached the end of the segment and moved onto a segment about troubles that loomed on the horizon that would one day bring about Museria's downfall.

-Two hours and one hundred pages later-

At some point around the one-third mark of the book Leona felt the effects of fatigue and knew that to read on further would be folly. She had completed a section describing the troubles that Museria faced in its two hundredth year of existence and those troubles were numerous. Among them were a looming menace from a warlike tribe to the east named the Kurrans, who were said to be descendants of the Urrikans who had fled east to escape the Muserian conquest of their patch of Southern Desierto. Aside from the threat of an old enemy with a century-old score to settle, Museria also faced a slight but gradual decline in the birthrate of mages, a slowing economy due to gold and silver mines beginning to be depleted, and a series of rulers that were of questionable ability.

Leona left her notebook open and set the yellow pencil aside, then placed a brown paper bookmark she had received from Jobaasa's Rare Tomes when she had purchased the book in between the pages to mark where she would pick up tomorrow night. Leona then went to bed without changing her clothes. She had a busy day in the office tomorrow and a lot of paperwork to face, so she needed to sleep before she got up to face it.

-The next night, Leona's Room, 10:00 P.M.-

After a lengthy day of handling paperwork in the Guild Master's office Leona opened the door to her personal room and walked inside. Ancient Desierto loomed on her desk and so did the notebook in which she took notes on the book. Leona changed out of her blue, white, and gold outfit and back into her white t-shirt and desert camouflage shorts before sharpening her nearly dull pencil and getting back to reading further about the troubles that were just beginning to manifest in Museria in the second century of its existence.

-Two hours and one hundred pages later-

Leona finished the section on the kingdom's troubles and learned that in addition to the growing threat of the Kurrans to the east, the kingdom's gold and silver mines were starting to run out of the precious metals that fueled Museria's coin-based economy. Another serious problem was that the kingdom was starting to experience a small but noticeable decline in the birthrates of mages, the backbone of the royal army that had kept the threat of the Kurrans manageable. Furthermore, starting from the thirty-first year of the second century Museria started to suffer from a series of rulers of questionable ability whose right to rule was based on being scions of Hammun's dynasty, not any real governing talent.

Leona read on and learned that the system of provincial governors that had been painstakingly built by King Hammunbari was starting to come apart thanks to the ineptitude of the monarchy. The monarchy had taken its right to rule for granted and took steps to bring the governors under royal control as subordinates rather than as allies by rescinding the rights to religious tolerance and respect for social customs that had been granted to them long ago. The angry governors, no longer seeing the throne as worthy of respect, began withholding taxes from the royal treasury and men from the royal army; the most powerful of the dissidents even started forming their own armies with the intent to leave the kingdom and found their own countries. The ruling Muserian king, King Murabbi, vowed that subject peoples leaving the kingdom would not be tolerated and that all necessary force would be employed to keep them in the royal fold. That royal declaration inaugurated a thirty-five-year period of internal warfare known as the "Age of Crimson Sand" for the intense and frequent violence employed by the royal army as part of a determined effort to bring the errant governors to heel and forcibly remind them of their place in the kingdom.

Curious as to how the long period of strife with such a descriptive name ended, Leona stood up and stretched her legs for ten minutes before plunging back into the section appropriately entitled "The Age of Crimson Sand."

[Post Word Count: 1,144]
[Total Word Count: 3,060/5,000]

-One hundred pages and one hour later-

Mustering enough energy to get through the lengthy segment of the "Age of Crimson Sand", Leona learned about how the age had earned its name and the conclusion to the thirty-five year conflict between the king and his rebellious governors.

The "Age of Crimson Sand" earned its name from the constant violence employed by both sides in pursuit of their goals. Both the royal and rebel armies frequently put the towns and villages of their enemies to the sword, looted anything of use, and then burned them down to deny the opposition shelter and supplies. Whenever one side took a settlement they often executed suspected spies on the spot, usually on suspicion and not firm evidence. Sometimes entire settlements fled ahead of the approaching armies... unless the settlement was besieged, in which case the occupants had no choice but to weather the storm. Sieges were few and far between, but the royal army almost always won those thanks to its mages, who could use focused earthquakes to undermine the foundations of walls or just hurl stones through them.

The two sides occasionally clashed in open battle, but the bulk of the fighting was hit-and-run raids conducted by the rebels since they did not have the numbers and the mages for a head-to-head fight. The fighting continued without end for thirty-five years until a later king named Hamuri brought an end to the fighting with one of the first treaties in Desierto's history named the Treaty of Reconciliation.

In the treaty King Hamuri apologized for the actions of his predecessors who rescinded the ancient rights of the governors and promised to restore them immediately. They were also permitted to retain their status as allies, not royal servants directly under the king's thumb. To sweeten the deal, the rebels were promised full amnesty. In exchange for these concessions the governors were to reaffirm their allegiance to the throne forevermore and resume the obligations of paying taxes and supplying men to the royal army. The effect of such a conciliatory treaty was immediate.

Three-fourths of the rebels, tired of the endless war and willing to accept peace under such generous conditions, immediately broke ranks with the dissidents and rejoined the kingdom, leaving only a few holdouts who either wanted more concessions from the throne or who were sincere in forming their own countries. Mere months after the Treaty of Reconciliation took effect the holdouts were swiftly eliminated by the royal army, leaving only loyalists in charge of the provinces in the 266th year of the kingdom's history.

With the end of the Age of Crimson Sand the Kingdom of Museria had five years of peace until their old enemies to the east decided that they would settle accounts with Museria once and for all. The rebuilt royal army immediately went into action against the Kurrans and held them off in a series of border clashes that lasted for over twenty-seven years. In the 293rd year of the kingdom the Muserians clashed with the Kurrans in Eastern Desierto in a battle that was supposed to be decisive. As Leona learned, it was decisive, just not in the way the Muserians wanted.

In the battle both sides were evenly matched until the Kurran leader King Saarghon took to the field and the Muserian army was "swallowed by the sand." With its army decisively defeated and many of its mages lost, Museria lay open for conquest. However, Museria was not going to go down without a fight. In the autumn of the 293rd year the first batch of Muserian Focusing Stones were commissioned by King Hamunraki to strengthen the magic power of what mages remained in Museria. Armed with these stones, the royal mages held off the armies of King Saarghon for seven years before finally being overwhelmed in the siege of Museria's capitol city.

After Museria's termination as an independent nation, it became the staging ground for King Saarghon's conquest of Western Desierto. Aside from getting revenge for an old grudge, King Saarghon also wanted to get his hands on the Palace of Knowledge. However, King Hamunraki had ordered its destruction to keep its records out of the hands of the conqueror from the east. Thus deprived of his prize, King Saarghon was forced to continue his campaign of conquest without Museria's advanced knowledge at his disposal.

The destruction of the Palace of Knowledge was where the historical record got a little spotty. Rosetta wrote that scholars had long debated whether the destruction of the Palace of Knowledge was literal or metaphorical. For those who believed it really existed, the believers fell into two camps; those who believed that only all the records of the palace's location were destroyed and those who believed that both the records and the palace itself had been destroyed. With no definitive answer to be had, Leona stood up and took another ten-minute break. Up next was a section on the Kurran Empire under King Saarghon.

-One hundred pages and sixty minutes later-

Another hour had passed and Leona had read some about the Kurran Empire under King Saarghon. According to Rosetta, Saarghon had been born into a humble farming family but had joined the Kurran Army at the age of twenty. There he demonstrated an aptitude for warfare and rose in the ranks until he was inducted into the royal guard of King Mur, the king of the Kurrans. Only two years later the childless King Mur died in battle against rebels, but not before appointing Saarghon as his heir. With the death of King Mur the newly crowned King Saarghon initiated a campaign of conquest that took three years and consolidated all of Eastern Desierto under his rule. Once that was done he turned his attention to the Kingdom of Museria, which had emerged from the Age of Crimson Sand only five years previously.

It took over thirty years and countless lives, but King Saarghon eventually conquered Museria. Despite that great victory his ambition was not yet sated... he longed to unite all of Desierto under his command and his next target was Western Desierto. That was where Leona's fatigue took over and she was unable to read any further that night. Bowing to the inevitable, Leona stood up and prepared to go to bed because yet another day of paperwork lay ahead of her.

Leona lay on the bed and went to sleep without bothering to change her clothes. She would be up for another day of paperwork and another night of study. She was slightly over halfway through Ancient Desierto, but depending on how tomorrow went she may or may not have time to finish the book. It all depended on the responsibilities she had to fulfill.

[Post Word Count: 1,128]
[Total Word Count: 4,188/5,000]

-The next night, 11:00 P.M.-

Leona had returned to her room an hour late thanks to more paperwork that she had anticipated. She had some energy to read Ancient Desierto, but there was no way that she was going to be able to pull off a multi-hour study session like she had on previous nights. Leona changed her clothes to her white t-shirt and desert camouflage shorts and sat down at her desk, opening the large book to where she had left off. The Wizard Saint was having difficulty focusing on the text and considered saving the study session for another night, but she decided to at least try and read as much as she could before fatigue robbed her of the focus to even get past the first ten pages. She had made it slightly over halfway through the book in three nights, so she might as well try to read a little more of Professor Rosetta's work.

-One hundred pages and one hour later-

Leona plowed through the section on King Saarghon's new empire and learned that after a lengthy campaign of twenty years he finally brought all of Desierto under his command. He was pleased with this victory and ordered a new capitol to built in Central Desierto to symbolize his control of all four corners of the desert country. In four short years the new capitol was complete and King Saarghon declared that his new empire would last as long as that of the Muserians he had conquered. Vowing not to repeat the mistakes of Museria, he planned to rule his holdings as the one and only source of authority. For ten years the Kurran Empire was at peace, but beneath the surface was a lot of discontent among the subject peoples that was suppressed by spies and by royal army garrisons.

However, armed force would not be enough to suppress signs of discontent forever.

For one thing, the surviving Muserians were looking to avenge their defeat at the hands of King Saarghon and awaited the day they could rise in revolt in concert with other discontented subject peoples. For another thing, King Saarghon's insistence on bring the sole source of authority made it difficult to effectively govern his holdings because instead of having governors to manage the affairs of each province he managed them. Royal decisions were slow in coming and that slow response only furthered feelings of discontent because subject peoples on the periphery felt that their needs were being ignored in favor of the capitol. As it turned out, those people were correct to feel that way.

Confident that all his enemies had been brought to heel, King Saarghon spent much on furnishing the capitol city Niveneh with monuments commemorating victories over his enemies and praising his benevolent rule. He also spent much on lavish entertainments for his idle nobles, who occupied their days with music, poetry, and plots to replace King Saarghon with someone who was more willing to delegate power to the nobility. But those were not the only problems with the kingdom.

Rightfully distrusting the nobility and perhaps looking to make his mark on history, King Saarghon looked for ways to extend his life so that he might control his holdings indefinitely. He gathered around him magicians and alchemists to concoct elixirs that would extend his lifespan far beyond its natural limits. Those magicians and alchemists concocted elixirs of all kinds and some of them were apparently successful because the king lived to be 160 years old when his empire fell. However, he apparently required regular doses of the elixirs and the ingredients were not cheap; among them were gold dust, silver dust, and crushed diamonds. Much of the empire's treasure went into sustaining the life of its ruler, who wanted to rule forever and was willing to spend every last gold coin to make sure it happened.

All of those problems combined to form a powder keg that only awaited a spark, a spark that occurred in the ninetieth year of King Saarghon's empire after he had an entire village exterminated for failing to provide enough limestone for yet another monument to his reign. The Muserians, having found backing in a coalition of rebellious provinces and having experienced a strange increase in the birthrate of mages, started a rebellion in Southern Desierto that snatched the province away from King Saarghon in the space of six months. The fires of rebellion spread to Western Desierto and to Northern Desierto as emboldened peoples rose up to cast off the oppression of King Saarghon.

That was the point where Leona's flagging energy gave out and she got up to go to bed.

-The next night, Leona's Room, 10:00 P.M.-

After another day of paperwork and other administrative tasks Leona repeated the routine she had been doing for several nights now. She changed out of her "formal" clothing and changed into the white t-shirt and desert camouflage shorts and sat down at her desk. She opened the book to where she had left off, which was the start of the rebellion led by Museria. Leona felt tired, but she wanted to at least find out what happened to the rebellion before she went to sleep.

-One hundred pages and sixty minutes later-

Sustaining her reading speed of a hundred pages every sixty minutes, Leona finished reading about the rebellion and how it spread like wildfire from Southern and Western Desierto to Northern Desierto. Eastern Desierto, being the Kurran homeland, remained loyal to King Saarghon but was hard-pressed to provide the constant stream of men needed to replenish the ranks of the thinly spread and badly depleted royal army. After nine years of constant fighting the royal army was pushed back to the gates of Niveneh and it prepared for its last stand. After a year-long siege the Muserian-led rebellion won and the Kurran Empire was toppled, but King Saarghon himself was nowhere to be found.

The Muserians suspected that he had fled to his homeland in Eastern Desierto and immediately led the coalition there to finish the tyrant once and for all. However, upon arrival in that region the former king was nowhere to be found. A thorough search of the region turned up nothing. Thus the Kurran Empire ended after only one hundred years of existence.

Leona paused at that point to stand up and stretch her legs before she read about the period leading up to the sultans taking power and the Tri-Council Cities being established. At this point her energy threatened to give out, so she decided to take a trip to the cafe to get some coffee to try and revitalize herself long enough to at least start the chapter.

-Ten minutes later-

Having fortified herself with two cups of coffee, Leona returned to her room to begin reading again but found her enthusiasm flagging as soon as her backside hit the chair. Leona tried to will herself to read, but it was just not happening. Forcing herself to read would only be a waste of time because she would not learn anything. It was best just to go to bed and pick up where she left off at a later date.

Thankfully Leona had taken plenty of notes on what she had read to date, so she could look at them to remind herself of what she had already learned. Leona got up from the desk, placed the brown bookmark in between the pages, closed the book and went to bed so that she could be ready for another day of Guild Master responsibilities.

While Leona had not totally succeeded in reading Ancient Desierto from cover to cover, she had still learned a lot from what she had read. She learned about Museria, about King Saarghon, and about Desierto long before the sultans had gotten the idea to build their cities and establish them as the center of the country. Leona would finish Ancient Desierto later and take a break before reading more of the books she had bought. The search for knowledge was a marathon, not a sprint.

[Post Word Count: 1,351]
[Total Word Count: 5,539/5,000]