After nearly a year, the Isles saw a great influx of applicants who wished to revive the old guild and begin a new era among the wizards. Some of the more learned and aware initiates began to question Invidia, the High Scholar, about the leadership of the Astral Isles.
“Why have you not yet deemed anyone worthy of being an Archivist?” many asked, “Don’t you need help to protect the Archive? Only two guardians thus far with thousands of applicants seems dangerous.”
Suspicion began to grow among the wizards, and worry among the scholars. Some feared that the new era would collapse as quickly as it began if the Archive were to be corrupted once more. What’s more is that Zauber Voxel was nowhere to be found most days of the week, and when he was around, he and Invidia grew ever more argumentative.
For a while, the guild had been somewhat nomadic, moving over Robloxia in order to find isolated locations to host trainings. They had no place to settle down that had not been partially settled already, as the Isles they were based in long ago are now barren and full of ruins. Wherever they moved, they lugged around a large stone with strange carvings over it.
This stone was their access point to pocket dimensions which included the Astral Sanctum, what remained of Ravenspire, their former capital, and, supposedly, the Archive. Control over access to these places were split between Invidia and Zauber; Invidia was given control over the Astral Sanctum, and Zauber was given control over Ravenspire. There had been a few scares that the stone was being attacked while trainings were happening within those pocket dimensions, which would have locked it from the outside, which seems like a very poorly planned mechanism, but they were all just rabbits or turtles investigating what a big rock was doing in the middle of nowhere.
You may have heard tales of Old Locindor, the great shining city in the sky, the capitol of the Knights of the Splintered Sky. A great battle was waged there once. Many great knights fought there, including former Elite Commander Benzo and Invidia Hammerfist, amongst the legendary figures of Newtrat and Sorcus. The battle was won, if you had any doubts about that, and was celebrated for the months to come. What nobody paid attention to was the architect who built Locindor, who was badly wounded in that battle by friendly fire.
The architect could not find anyone or anything capable of healing his wounds neither in the Splintered Skies nor in Redcliff. He ended up finding his panacea in Korblox. The Korblox did this for him in return for a couple of favours. Angry at the fact that it was friendly fire that nearly ended his career, the architect gladly agreed. Now, the details on the sequence of events between the architect and Korblox is not entirely known, but what is known for sure is that the DarkAge Ninja were quickly under new leadership and were quickly rising to be a formidable power.
The band of wizards were moving their base of operations to a new location, as their last one was recently swamped. They had been travelling along the North-Western coast of the mainland when a few initiates saw a wave swelling toward the shore.
“Master Invidia, I think we should start heading inland,” said an apprentice who had her robe on inside out without noticing it.
“Now why would we do that? We’re nowhere near our final destination,” said Invidia, oblivious to the wave that was going to crash into the shore and soak the entire band of wizards in about thirty seconds - now twenty nine seconds - because some numbskull broke his glasses during a training - twenty five seconds. “WAIT!” shouted Invidia, “I hear something like a wave that’s about to crash into us in twenty one seconds.” He waited for fifteen seconds to see if his suspicion was right, decided it wasn’t, and had the band keep walking along the shore. Now, the rest of the camp of the camp of wizards were- CRASH!
Many of the wizards woke up on the shores of a string of islands about 2.91 miles from the mainland, and the others…well, we don’t talk about them.
“Why didn’t anyone warn me we were about to get hit by an enormous wave? You’re all so irresponsible,” shouted Invidia to all of the wizards that were able to hear him, choosing to forget about the comments made by a wizard that wore a strangely fuzzy gown, who was nowhere to be found. “I should have you all demoted for that!”
“Master, where are we?” asked an appropriately curious wizard who had a bandage on the bottom of their foot from stepping on what used to be glasses.
“Just wait until we get back to the mainland! You’re all doing thirty seven laps around the Pegasus course when we get back!” continued Invidia, his ears filled with water that drowned out all of the questions.
“Why are there mossy structures everywhere?” asked another, less observant wizard.
“Who’s that a statue of?” asked the wizard farthest inland from the group.
“How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Bloxie Pop?” pondered the philosopher of the group.
All of these question and more were ignored as the water drained out of the ears of the High Scholar. After he finished ranting on about how insolent the thinned out band of wizards had been, he finally began taking note of his surroundings. A rock, some sand, a small bay, a very tall mound of moss that would have appeared to be a tower if he had his glasses on, an iceberg drifting by, forty nine feet from the shore, towards a giant flaming castle that looked as if it could cause a tidal wave the size of the one that crashed into the party if somehow it had fallen out of the sky from 8.848 kilometers above sea level, and a few frogs that had suddenly had their party crashed twice in the same day.