Ohm Keogh knocked at the door of Myrddhin Torched's
room, at the cleric hall. There was no answer. The
Guardians Mascot stopped a cleric, who was walking
through the hall.
'Excuse me, but do you happen to know if Myrddhin is in?'
'I haven't seen him go out, why do you ask?'
Ohm pointed at the door.
'My knocking isn't answered.'
The cleric grinned.
'Maybe the old bugger is finally paying Zaal a visit.'
Bloody zealous zaalites.

Ohm decided to try opening
the door, and to his surprise it wasn't locked.
As soon as he opened the door, the sweet scent of pipe
smoke flowed out to him. Ohm let out a sigh relief
when he heard snores coming from the old gnomes room;
the zaalite let out a sigh of regret. Ohm entered the room.
'Uhum'...
'Uhum'...
'Uh-'
'What do you want Ohm? Don't you see that I'm busy
writing my biography?'
'-hum. Eh I can see that you were snoring, and
drooling all over your desk, Elder'
'I was thinking about my own past, Ohm. But you still
haven't told me why you were disturbing me.'
'I wanted to ask you something of the past.'
Myrddhin shrugged.
'If you want to know more of the past, talk to the
ancient Boromir. He is this worlds historian.'
Ohm thought a moment about this.
'But Myrddhin, I wanted to know something of our guilds past.'
'Our Guild. Hmmm. What do you want to know?'
'Kyr Keep. I want to know about why we're here, and why it is called Kyr's keep.'
Myrddhin grinned.
'So you want to know the truth. Not caring if it
completely distorts your vision of what you think the
Guardians are and were?'
Ohm nodded.
The old gnome squinted his eyes a bit and looked at Ohm intensely.
'Are you really sure lad. Because I'm afraid that you
can't handle the truth.'
'Myrddhin, I'm quite positive that I can handle the
truth, no matter what.'
'Brave lad. Very well, I shall tell you. We will have
to go back into history quite a long time. Now just let
me fill another pipe and I'll start.'

'It all started when the Paladins were disbanded, and
from that carcass the Guardians of the Shire emerged.
We were founded by the legendary hobbit, or halfling
as hobbits were called back then. By the legendary
hobbit, I said, called Tunnely. Have you ever heard of
Tunnely my lad?'
Ohm shook his head.
'Well that's a complete other story which I'm not going to
bore you with right now.
Now, where was I?'
'Tunnely.'
'Didn't I just tell you that I'm not going to tell you
that story now lad. It would just take too damn long,
and I have yet to work on my biography. By Ianthe, the
youth these days.'
Myrddhin sighed, and pressed the burning tobacco in
his pipe a bit.
‘At a certain point Tunnely left us. He wanted to
explore the world, and to see whether or not there
were any unimaginable dangers lingering, waiting to
get their clutches on the guilty and innocent of this
world. Or something like that. You know lad. I've
never been much of a writer. And I hardly ever tell stories.’
‘Myrddhin?’
‘Yes lad?’
‘Just continue the story, please?’
Myrddhin shrugged.
‘Ok, so Tunnely left us. We were lead by Jstlook and
Bamf. And all was peaceful and all was calm. And all
that was to a certain degree, because it is never very
calm and peaceful in these realms. We fought hard in
invasions. All our actions were planned from our base and…’
‘Myrddhin’
‘What is it now you brat?’
‘You haven't told me where the first base of the
Guardians was.’
‘I haven't? Oh. Well. You see, I was just coming to
that. But you just keep interrupting me. Now, I don't want
to hear another word from you, you hear?’
‘Yes Myrddhin, I'm s…’
‘Ah, not one word!’
Myrddhin raised a finger angrily up in the air. With
his other hand he pointed the smoldering pipe at Ohm.
Ohm nodded meekly.
‘Right. All our actions were planned from our base,
which was located in the Sivan forest.’
Ohm opened his mouth and closed it again quickly, as
he saw Myrddhin glancing at him over his pipe.
‘Surprised?’
Ohm wanted to open his mouth again, but nodded
instead. Myrddhin smiled.

‘We stayed there for many years. Never eating in the
Guildhall, for we swore that to Tunnely. We had built
a massive lair. It consisted of an office, a
restaurant, a bar, some stables and we even had our
own personal sage. We spoke in our own language,
Westernese, and we were powerful enough to protect all
of the realm, and everyone in it. Or so we thought.

We mortals are always somewhat blind to what is going
on between the Gods and between the immortals. This
can be both boon and bane. Boon, for ignorance
sometimes is bliss, bane because of something I like
to refer to as Omen's betrayal.

Omen once was an immortal. He used to work with the
other immortals, but where people work together, there
will always be a little disagreement from time to
time. But sometimes, exploding situations occur. This
was obviously the case between Omen and a few other
immortals. The trouble with immortals, at least I
think, is that the power makes them slightly insane,
and in anger they sometimes forget the huge effects of
their emotional actions. Omen obviously was so upset
about something, that he decided to sell his soul to
the out most dark forces to be found. Everywhere evil
things happened. It started with the loss of a few
religious items, the disappearance of mortals,
immortals. And it ended with the utter destruction of an
invading force of the most vile and dark creatures.
In short: All hell broke loose!

Ours was the first Guildhall to be attacked, and after
a short but bloody fight, we were the first Guild to
be vanquished. I remember standing in the smoldering
remnants of our hall, weeping for the loss of so many
loved ones. Screaming on top of my lungs because of
the sudden drop in power we all had. With my
diminished healing skills, I helped as many wounded as
possible. I was just giving aide to Lita, bandaging
her head, when I saw him walking towards us. He was
just as I remembered, only a lot older. A whisper went
through the crowd naming the figure coming to us.’

‘Tunnely’
‘I told you to keep quiet, didn't I?’
Ohm nodded, looking slightly ashamed of himself.

‘It was Tunnely all right. Dressed in dented plate
armour, a grim look on his face. We offered him food in
the place where once his proud hall stood. He kindly
accepted it and started to eat. We all had something
to eat at that moment. It was quite impressive, and
thinking about it still makes me shiver.

When we all had tended to the dead and wounded, our
leaders came forward and proclaimed that for the
second time there would be a disbanding of the guild.
The ones that still wanted to be active in an
honourable guild such as first the Paladins and later
the Guardians of the Shire had been, should follow
Tunnely. The rest were to go their separate ways. We
were to leave the next morning.

It was a morning filled with tears. A lot of us joined
Tunnely, as did I, and about as many went their own
way. We walked for many days through the scarred
lands. We helped the people wherever they needed help.
Or buried them. I didn't recognize any of the lands.
So much had they changed under the beasts wrath. Then
at one day I started to recognize the landscape around
me. We were near the coast. A fresh salty wind was
blowing in my face. I was daydreaming a little, when I
suddenly heard a lot of commotion. I turned around as
quickly as I could, and I saw Lita holding Tunnely in
her arms, crying. Then I saw Titan running to
something that looked like a goblin archer. Tunnely
had been shot. The arrow was removed as gently as
possible, and the goblin archer was turned into
mincemeat as quickly as possible. Tunnely was healed.
But he was still very weak. He ordered us to walk
these lands till we reached the first ‘doghouse’ we
saw. There, or in the radius of 50 meters in case of
habitation we would build another hall.

We left Tunnely alone, with some water and some food.
And Lita promised to get him as soon as possible.
We wandered about 3 three days along the coast until
Lita saw something strange embedded in a cliff. It
looked like a sort of stairway. We all went up. And
there we saw an old hut, with next to it a doghouse.
We looked inside both the doghouse and the old hut,
and we decided to bury both the dog and his master or
mistress as best we could.

Lita sighed.
‘The first doghouse, Tunnely had said.’
Titan nodded
‘The old bugger must have known. Myrddhin I think
something is written above the entrance of the
doghouse. Can you read it to me please. You stand
nearest.’
I bent over to the doghouse.
‘I think it is the name of the dog, Titan. It reads
Kyr.’
Titan grinned
‘Then that will be the name of our new Guildhall. Kyr
Keep. For the dog has served his master as a guard
even into death.’
And we all nodded in agreement.

So now you see, Ohm, Kyr Keep has its name after a dog.
Don't you find that somewhat unsettling?’
Ohm shook his head.
‘Well lad, why aren't you speaking? Ah well, that's
all I've had to tell you. Please go now, I have a lot
of work left to do.’
Myrddhin tended to his autobiography again, and within
a minute or so snores could be heard coming from the
old gnome.

Ohm closed the door gently and saw the cleric waiting
outside.
‘Zaal will have to wait a good many years before he
will have Myrddhin's soul.’
The cleric shrugged.
‘My master is patient.’
Bloody zaalite zealots.