The Pure Hearts of Calaelan

Agamemnon sat atop one of Calaelan's towers, looking out towards the forest.  It was strange; all his life he'd been in and out of wilderness areas and he'd never really felt an attachment to them, but now, sitting in a castle at the heart of a burgeoning town he felt the call of the green.  He looked up at the sky.  No moon tonight, so it was dark and he could see the constellations clearly picked out as pinpricks of shimmering light.  He saw Fayar Nocht, the great Bow of the Elf Father, cresting the forest, the arrow literally pointing towards the trees.  Agamemnon knew it wasn't a sign, but it was still a good idea.  Tomorrow he would visit Drusilla.

It was becoming increasingly apparent that Shades was going to call a third Righteous March.  Rappan Athuk wasn't a dungeon, it was a country, a nation of evil, with its own cities and towns, its own road network, its own farms and civilians, and you did not conquer a nation with an army of eight people and a castle which, although it was in much better repair than when he had last seen it, was still but one castle.  They needed an army.

Mort was doing a good job on that front, ensuring the antique, fledgeling nation of Mosswood had a standing army, at least enough to slow any invaders who mistook the place for a soft target.  And with the political situation as Shades had described it, Mosswood would be protected long enough for it to find its feet and develop its strength.  Which was great, but that did not address the real issue, which was Orcus.

Agamemnon was a student of history.  He knew about the previous Marches.  He knew their strengths, and their weaknesses.  He knew that at the core of any successful crusade had to be a righteous will, a drive to act out the will of the divine.  Arcanists sought power and were easily corrupted, mercenaries sought coin and were not committed, and soldiers, valorous and skilled though they may be, would retreat before overwhelming odds unless they were presented a very compelling reason not to.  The devout, however ... the devout would march into the very gates of hell if the divine were on their side, and assaulting Orcus at the heart of his kingdom would involve a very long march into a very terrible hell.

Not that the religious were beyond corruption.  Agamemnon knew that well - if your motivations were not pure, if your heart was not clear, the devout could fall just as far as anyone.  Just like he nearly had, before Darach-Albith had called him back from Rappan Athuk and sat him down and given him a chance to realise the simple fact that if you fight with anger you become anger, and if you fight with love you become love.

Agamemnon had spoken to Shades, and Shades had agreed.  Tomorrow he would forge his own Tian Tu Lan, his own unbreakable sword, the devout backbone of the inevitable Third Righteous March - the Pure Hearts of Calaelan.  He would invite clerics and priests, holy warriors, paladins, divine protectors of the forests and the wild places, and the devout to come to Calaelan, to be trained in what to expect in the darkness of Rappan Athuk, to be skilled in facing this overwhelmingly evil foe, but most importantly to have their hearts fortified with love so as to stave off the corrupting influence of the god of power and death and destruction.

And it would start with the forests of Mosswood, with the pure heart of Drusilla.