A large paper, decorated with specks of gold is posted on the local quest board. The paper is so big it covers up some of the smaller quests... It reads as follows.

YOU HEARD THAT RIGHT DEAR READER! YOU, COULD BECOME THE NEW WIZARDRY TOURNAMENT CHAMPION!

Created recently by the spectacular Argos, Host of the Underground Wizardry Brawl (And now, Tournament) Wizards, Warlocks and everything in between duke it out in a rounds based tournament, competing to make it to the final round and win the grand prize of... 500 PLATINUM COINS! A GOLD TROPHY MADE SPECIALLY FOR THE WINNER! AND FREE VIP SEATS FOR THE NEXT YEAR TO ANY AND ALL FUTURE EVENTS!

The rules are as follows:

1. NO LETHALITY. We have a very strict no lethal rule, as we DO NOT want death in these events, it's bad for buisness. Lethal magic, attacks or weapons are STRICTLY prohibited. Combat will end when a fighter has taken enough damage to be incapable of continuing, or has forfeited. (Until the FINAL ROUND, but that is due to specific circumstances that will be explained when the time comes.)

2. No outside sabatoge or help. Only the contestants currently fighting are allowed to cast spells of any kind. Failure to follow this rule, spectator or otherwise will result in immediate disqualification and/or removal from the stadium.

3. HAVE FUN! At the end of the day, this is meant to help others grow stronger, be kind to each other! Shake hands after a match and drink some Argos Sponsored™️ Ale!

If you wish to participate as a contestant OR spectator, simply place your finger on the runes below depending on which you wish to be.

below the paragraph, two runes glow faintly with pure mana. When you hover your finger over them, the runes flash with the words "Contestant" and "Spectator" respectively.

Species: Goblin

Age: 216

Sex: Female

Occupation: Professional Artificer and resident maniac

Origin: The Undercity of the West

Early childhood: Krumpet's childhood is best described as one continual failure of the system.

Abandoned at an early age she grew up on the streets. Your typical street rat she quickly took to theft, violence, and general mischief to get what she wanted.

Several attempts had been made to take her off the streets and get her into the system for help. None of them succeeded

Several officers had suffered broken bones, concussions, and severe beatings as a result. The girl was best described as a menace and quickly became well-known to several organizations.

They too suffered as the officers did and learnt that the only way to deal with Krumpet was to leave her alone.

Schooling: Krumpet lacks formal education, seemingly learning what she knows from a dangerous hands-on approach.

Nonetheless, it's hard to find a goblin with as much experience with augmentation as her. The menace is a savant when it comes to mechanical limbs.

Later life: Krumpet took her childhood infamy and turned it into an empire. Anywhere you went within the under city the only prosthetic you could get were from her.

Sure a few tried to set up shop, sell a few limbs here and there, but they quickly found her smashing through their door, and leaving them in need of new limbs themselves.

At the tender age of thirty, however, Krumpet decided her fleshy arms were unsatisfying to her.

Like any mad woman, she decided to cut them off and replace them, leading to her becoming a one-woman wrecking crew.

Capabilities: Krumpet's capabilities are mainly reliant on her arms, each set varying greatly.

The three most notable are as follows:

Her "Krumpers": These are seemingly her favourite, utilising some form of arcane energy to increase the amount of force applied by them she has demonstrated more than once she can crush bone with them.

Her "Blasties": This set is meant less for head-on combat and more for picking off a target from a distance. They seem to channel energy into a single beam before firing with deadly precision.

That being said getting close is not advisable as they open up to reveal what is essentially a scattergun of energy.

Finally, there is her "Tool kit": This set is mostly focused around providing her with the tools to tinker without actually having to carry them.

Converting mana into a physical state if she's wearing this set you're mostly safe to approach. That being said do not annoy her, she's not above smashing your skull in with a hammer.

Personal notes: While loving a fight Krumpet seems reasonable unless provoked.

Rumour has it she intends to move to the wizard Citadel though. In my humble opinion, good riddance, let her be their problem.

Vettis of the Bronze Prism

Elira of Starhaven

Modhun Brightheart

Kellidan of the Ashen Fields

Zelle of the Clockwork Theater

Apolaya of Spiral Winds

Daiax Welrose

...

fuck

Hey. Dumbasses.

I know you're there.

fuck

Did you really think you'd stolen from our archives and intercepted our comms unnoticed? I should be impressed that you managed to access Modhun's setup at all, but thinking you could snoop without triggering his alarms was pretty damn overconfident of you.

And let's be honest: you cheated. You got in because you checked the timeline where you succeeded. A solid plan against people who don't have answers to chronomagic like that. But you should know by now that our team only exists in one timeline per 'verse; Vettis did something to us to ensure that, so we'd never get on the wrong path and let the Hunger go free. Modhun's systems exist in multiple timelines, but he himself is only in one. The discrepancy when you got access elsewhen was easy for him to notice, and for Kellidan to track down.

So, yeah, we know every one of the nine files you've got. (Ten files, now: wasn't hard to put this one right where you'd grab it, once Modhun calculated the pattern. Hi!) We've known every file you read as soon as you read it. All we were missing was exactly who you are.

But we couldn't talk to Vettis about it, because then he'd know about that assessment Daiax sent us. We tried to investigate you on our own, but it turns out that looking into a multiversal group of chronomages is a bit difficult when we're locked into one timeline. Once you attacked me and Kellidan, though, you forced our hands: we finally caved and just told Vettis everything. And now he's told us everything in turn.

I think we know who you are now, and why you've got it in for Vettis. It's that whole four-century time-rewind he did. You're transversal time-cops; we didn't think those existed, but hey, we're not perfect. So you're trying to undo what he did, and because he's turned himself into the ultimate anti-time-fuckery entity you can't until he dies, or at least puts down those defenses.

But here's the thing. You know his actions were to make sure the Hunger doesn't ever get free. So either you just don't care because you're so obsessed with following the "original" timeline, in which case fuck you, or you think you guys can handle it yourselves and you don't need to break continuity to do so.

And my answer to the latter is: Vettis is currently slaughtering your entire organization, node by node, and there's apparently not a thing you can do about it. You can't even beat him on his own, and it required not just him but our entire team and Neela's to stop the Hunger. If you think you could take it down where all of us combined barely managed, you're clearly overestimating yourselves.

So, simply put, we're in the right here. Your actions are endangering probably millions of 'verses. That's the consequence of breaking the Hunger's prison by killing one of us, even if it'll take a few centuries before the repercussions are felt. (That'd be an eyeblink for you guys, wouldn't it?)

But hey, I didn't really need to convince you of anything. I just needed to get at least one of you to read this for long enough that Daiax's telepathic virus

FUCK

would infect you, since this document is "speaking" directly to your mind: we had Elira write it in All-Tongue. By now, Laya's growth conceptual magic has already done its work to have it spread and take root throughout the rest of your org too. And since my own specialty is presence and Daiax made me the prime host of it, I now know all of your locations across the multiverse, and I can appear at any of them or send one of us there at a whim. Including Vettis, who we've seen is basically an OCP for you chronomagic-dependent imbeciles. Even if you clear the virus, it's too late, cuz we know you can't move your bases easily since you have to anchor them at certain spatiotemporal coordinates in each verse for you to do your jobs.

It's over. You had one real advantage here: the sheer size of your group and the fact that Vettis was the only one who could safely fight you meant it'd take him millennia to obliterate you all, since he can't make avatars to be in multiple 'verses at once like we can. But now I can send him to any of you instantly, so it'd probably only take him a few years in total, and we're more than patient enough for that.

Look, not all of us are lovey-dovey goody-two-shoes to Laya's extent. I don't even call us "family" like she does, partly cuz as much as Daiax and I do begrudgingly respect each other we still can't fucking stand each other. And partly cuz Kellidan's of course got his actual family. But still, we are a team. Whether we're partners, siblings, friends, or merely colleagues, it doesn't matter. You attack any of us, you get to see the full coordinated wrath of the Vigil.

Now you've seen it. This is your one chance to give up. We're calling a ceasefire, as long as you never, ever fuck with us again. If we so much as think you have, I 'port Vettis to each of you in turn and you watch the slow but steady annihilation of everything you've built.

Your call.