MAJOR DEEJ UNIVERSE

Oregon Trale is a true hero; a hero who fought against an alien invasion, a hero who fights to save lives and uphold the law every day...and a hero to his magically hidden community of Gold Hill, Oregon.

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To tell of Oregon Trale, you must first know about where he comes from and how it came to be.

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Back in 1860, a group of families, most originating from Europe, helped found a hamlet named Dardanelles, located along the Rogue River in Oregon. The T’Vaults, Ambroses, Swindens, Hawkinses, Rhotens, and Evanses families were immigrants who had left Europe because of one secret - MAGIC.

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An adventurous immigrant known as Thomas Chavner, a veteran of the Mexican-American War, had originally founded the area and took to exploring the region with his newfound neighbors.  It didn't take long before Chaver quickly learned that his neighbors were magic users.  At first, Chavner was concerned about 'the devil being in them', but when he saw that they used their magic to help others, he agreed to carry on their secret.  Sadly, this became an issue when he and his neighbors soon discovered gold in the hill above Dardanelles.

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Chavner, upon finding gold, bought up mining rights all over the area, where he successfully extracted gold from a 'pocket gold' bloom that eventually earned him the equivalent of $40 million in today's money. Once the word of gold spread, thousands of folks came from all over and tried to do the same as Chavner, buying up land, setting up mines and tearing up the beauty of the region in the process.  Dardanelles quickly gave way to the new town of "Gold Hill" and became an overnight boom-town complete with saloons, house of ill-repute, hotels, liquor stores and a stagecoach stop. Chavner and his 'secret magical' neighbors made a lot of money in the process. Although money was good, the magical families really wanted seclusion to enjoy their way of life and not become ostracized from a town they'd helped build.  This caused a bit of irritation with Chavner, seeing as he was now the wealthiest man in the region and his indifference to his 'magical neighbors' became more apparent each year.

 

In 1883, Chavner gave some of his land in the town of Gold Hill and made it public for further town expansion...just as he finished a deal with the Oregon & California Railroad to make a train stop (and station) in Gold Hill, ignoring Dardanelles (where most of the magic community stayed). This made Chavner and his family richer and in turn, drained Dardanelles of nearly all business and commerce, causing Dardanelles to turn into a ghost town withing the next 4 years.  Bad blood flowed between Chavner and the magical townsfolk, leading to first fights and even a few 'unusual' happenstances attributed to 'strange occurrences' but were actually magical 'attacks and mischief' against Chavner. Chavner, although in failing health, held firm on his anger against the secret magical neighbors, but never outed them for their magical ways. 

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Finally In 1888, on Chavner's death bed, he had his will changed to give a 20 square mile chunk of land in the hills north of Gold Hill and alongside Sardine Creek and the Rogue River to the T’Vaults, Ambroses, Swindens, Hawkinses, Rhotens, and Evanses - his secret magical neighbors - free and clear.  In the will, he stated the land was "the most beautiful land [he'd] ever seen and that the mining boom and [his] greed destroyed it. Make the land as it once was, maybe even a better place. Rebuild the Dardanelles into 'your' unique community that you've always wanted.  I know what you do with it will be magical".

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As such, over the next several years, the mines and gold all dried up; the miners, vagrants and boom-towners all left, and Gold Hill practically became a ghost town unto itself.  In the land deeded to the Chavner's 'special' neighbors, no one saw any new housing permits, fresh businesses, or for that matter those same neighbors.  They all seemed to 'disappear', and along with them, any expectation of further development in the region...all except for one strange curiosity...the Oregon Vortex.

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The Oregon Vortex was an old Gold Assay office that collapsed aat an angle off its foundation one day and seemed to operate with a strange new set of physics in the land in and around the office.  The entire office building, angled at 40 degrees relative to the ground, gave the perception that you were standing straight up; pictures of people standing next to each other on the property conveyed differing heights from picture frame to picture frame, seemingly like human perception was warped in that area.  In 1930, this 'curiosity' opened to the public and has even to this day been a tourist attraction, but the truth behind the Oregon Vortex actually ties into the disappearance of the secret magical families as well.

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Back around 1890, the T’Vaults, Ambroses, Swindens, Hawkinses, Rhotens, and Evanses, a new Chinese family, the Chos, and even one of Chanvner's sons (who, unknown to his father, was having an affair with Katrina Swinden and learning Arcane magic secretly) went to their newly deeded land.  There, they spent a month performing a difficult 24-hour a day, 7-day a week magical ritual that created a magical 'vortex' barrier; a barrier that, anyone NOT of magical powers, would ever perceive of the barrier simply due to an alteration of their own human perceptions that 'nothing was there' and that anyone walking toward, near or at the barrier instead would have their internal sense of direction altered to prevent them for even getting close to the stealth-like barrier of the deeded property.  Even from the air, the land below seemed nothing different than standard trees and vegetation, bereft of human habitation.  Although many entered the land illegally or in search of squatter's rights or an old vein of gold, the barrier's 'perception alteration' spell always made the curious wander away from the property with no inkling of anything being amiss.  So what was the secret the magical families were hiding?

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The newly created secret mage-town of Dardanelles.

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The magical families who set up the barrier decided to create a new magical township on their newly deeded land; one of the few ever created in the world.  The magical families had a unique set of skills as well; they were all from DIFFERENT schools of magic - Arcane, Nature, Spirit, Divination and even Technomagic. As such, their use of magic was unlike anything anyplace on the planet. Different schools of magic NEVER interacted in one community; one usually became the dominant school, but in this town, all were treated equally, even the Chinese Cho family and their Spirit school of magic.

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To explain the Oregon Vortex anomaly, when the magical stealth perception barrier was created, it used the veins of quartz, as well as a prominent magical ley line, to provide the magical energies needed to maintain the barrier.  Sadly, a branch of the Ley line and a high concentration of underground quartz next to that Gold Assayers office created a 'spur' that unfortunately couldn't be fully masked.  The shack and the grounds around the shack still altered human perceptions, but did not allow for a stealth field/shield to form, thus making a 200 yard area now known as the regional curiosity (previously mentioned) as the "Oregon Vortex".  Try as they might, even to this day, the magic users of the the hidden mage-town of the Dardanelles could not and have not been able to undo the Oregon Vortex spur.

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From 1890 until 1999, the hidden mage-town Dardanelles was never found or breached unknowingly.  The families grew over the years, sometimes bringing in new wives and/or husbands they'd found in the neighboring towns and region.  The Dardanelles mage-townfolks did leave their town on a routine basis, going into Gold Hill or neighboring towns to get supplies that they needed, making friends, but never directly inviting said friends to Dardanelles or telling their secrets of magic (that is, until one 'married' into the family - for good). The township made its own laws and rules, and had a mayor, a council (veteran and esteemed town mages), a sheriff and, by 1999, had a bustling town of nearly 3,500 townfolks. 

 

The town of Dardanelles was beautiful; an old west style town from the late 1800s, but with magical intonations here and there. Everyone was civil and courteous, as in 1800s-style formalities, civility and gestures (tipping of hats to women, polite conversations, respect, etc.) Magic was taught in the schoolhouses for children, as well as standard American studies, all predominantly towards benevolence.  A couple of 'trade schools' were made available in the town, including magic-fighting, known as "magefighting", which was taught mostly to the town's sheriff and deputies).

 

The town rules on its laws by Council vote. Law enforcement done by the Sheriff and his deputies. Punishment and inquisitions were performed by Prosecutors; there are no lawyers or prison wardens in Dardenelles. Prosecutors are trained to use magic to punish or extract confessions.  A prosecutor's methods, by today's ethical standards, would be mostly considered barbaric, but as such, kept a health 'air of fear' from attempting to perform any illegal or immoral act.

 

Everyone in town was allowed to use magic; up to age 16, children and young teens were only authorized to use magic in the presence of their parents or guardians (and if misused, the child AND the parents were 'prosecuted'). Between one's 16th and 18th birthday, you were allowed 'probationary' authorization for non-supervised use of magic, however, infractions would lead to 'severe prosecution'; a path most teens feared more than anything.

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Punishment was meted out in several different ways, but the most extreme was banishment.  Murder, grand larceny, malevolent use of magics against a person (i.e., curses) or sustained maleficent magical infractions would lead to prosecutors 'ripping the magic' from the accused's body and soul, ripping their memories out of their minds about Dardanelles and banishing them out into the 'real world' as shells of the accused's once former selves.  These cast-out individuals usually became the bums and dregs of the outlying non-magical towns and cities in Oregon.

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The sheriff and his police force were responsible for maintaining law and order.  The Sheriff was usually the best magefighter in the town; a title that was tested every 4 years in the "Sheriff Electoral Battle", wherein anyone who wished to challenge the sheriff for the job would do so; the winner, as judged by the council (not the mayor), would become (or continue to be) Sheriff for the next 4 years.

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As stated earlier, from 1890 to 1999, the mage-town of Dardanelles went on in a relatively blissful utopian self-governed state of being. In January 2000 though, that all changed with the Soltan Star Empire invaded Earth.

 

A battalion of Soltans landed IN the Dardanelles town square (and nowhere else in Oregon) and destroyed the town, obliterating the stealth and perception spells around the town and killing 9 out of every 10 of Dardanelles magical citizen.  During that invasion, Sheriff Humphrey Trale and his deputies took out over 100 Soltan warriors themselves before each one of them were killed.  Humphrey Trale's son, Samuel Trale, picked up his dad's magical guns and gun belt and went on a rage-driven assault on the Soltans, killing over three dozen himself.  Just as Samuel was about to be killed in an epic battle with the Soltan Battalion Commander, the Knights Arcanus arrived and joined in on the fighting. The Knights Arcanus, coupled with the remaining Dardanelles townfolks, fought like warriors born against the Soltans.

 

As the tide seemed to turn against the town's few remaining defenders, the 'non-magical folks' from the neighboring towns of Gold Hill, Sam's Valley and Medford, along with the Oregon Army National Guard arrived and started fighting the Soltans. Thanks for quick thinking and actions from all non-alien combatants, the magic siphoning equipment that the Soltans were trying to set up was quickly destroyed.  Without the siphon, the Soltans failed in their mission.  The Soltan Battalion retreated back into space to one of their in-orbit Soltan Battle Cruisers (where if was later discovered that that same Soltan Battalion Commander was executed for his failure in the taking over Dardanelles), however, out of the original 3500 magical residence at the time of the invasion, only 350 Dardanelles citizens remained.

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For the next few weeks, the non-magical communities helped bury the dead and care for the wounded.  The town, 90% destroyed, would have to be rebuilt from scratch.  The Dardanelles neighboring townships offered up their homes for the homeless magical community, vowing to keep their magical community's existence a secret as best they could.  Sadly, with the stealth and perception fields down, the town was visible and accessible to anyone now.  Nonetheless, the Oregon Army National Guard cordoned off the town to keep trespasser at bay (even making a no-fly zone over the town), with only one condition - that should Oregon ever need their help, Dardanelles would reciprocate when the call was given by Oregon. 

 

Surviving Dardanelles Mayor Ambrose agreed to the deal.

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By 2003, Dardanelles had its stealth and perception field up again, but this time, the site of the "Oregon Vortex" now became a gateway for any and all in the area to be allowed 'day passes' to visit Dardanelles that were on 'the list'. With the approval of the Dardanelles Mayor and Council as well as the outlying township's, a 'short list' of authorized visitors, town government councilors and benevolent businessmen/women, equating about  300 to 350 people, were allowed to enter Dardanelles between 9am and 5pm, Monday through Saturday.

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Sadly, word got out about the 'hidden' community.  Reporters, paranormal experts, ghost-hunters, treasure seekers and the curious spent the better part of the last decade trying to 'find and access' the Dardanelles.  There were a lot of rumors created about the "Oregon Vortex" as being a portal to the 'hidden dimensional old west town', but as usual, the locals explain away the 'crazy notions' of the 'whack-a-doodle' people trying to find something 'that didn't exist'.  The outer-lying communities did all they could to keep Dardanelles from the rest of the world, and as such, Dardeneles' citizens and the local towns and the communities all worked together to help each other out like family.  A grievously ill child would get poenicilin or antibiotics from the 'non-magicals', while the 'magicals' would provide 'ever-burning firewood' to say, Gold Hill's less fortunate, so as to stay warn during the cold snowy winters in the region. Even the local newspapers helped to protect the Dardanelles by running  stories about people caught creating 'hoaxes' about magical things and made-up accounts of 'invisible secret magical cities in people's backyards'.

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In 2010, Samuel Trale, the son of the Sheriff who died protecting the town during the Soltan Invasion, entered himself in the magefight for Sheriff in the town's every-4-year Sheriff Electoral Battle.  Along with him was a 30+ year old Dardanelles survivor of the Soltan Invasion named Mordecai  T'Vault, who was horrendously scarred (and unable to be magically healed) while trying to save a couple of the surviving town's council members (Mordecai, however, was also chided for protecting ONLY the two council members in an underground cave and not fighting off the hordes of Soltans with the rest in the streets alongside the Knights Arcanus and the other remaining town defenders). The defending Sheriff, Clarence Chavner, was considered only 2nd best to Samuel's father in magefighting.

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In the first round, it was Trale vs. T'vault.

 

Not only did Trale beat D'Vault in record time, but new employed new magefighting techniques no one had every seen before; techniques that he learned from being exposed to 'the internet' and how to use gun-fu and crav maga in his fighting techniques.  D'Vault was furious about the 'unauthorized' techniques (which weren't really unauthorized) and demanded Trale be disqualified.  In a 5-4 vote by the Dardanelles Council, Trale was deemed the winner.  D'Vault left the town, never to return (maybe...).

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The next round, it was Trale vs. Chavner.

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The battle turned into a 15-minute all out epic event, the likes of which had never been seen before.  Trale countered everything Chavner threw at him, all the while Chavner fought with the skill of a warrior born.

 

In the end, Trale won the magefight.

 

The Council voted and agreed that Trale was to be their new Sheriff, the youngest ever appointed in Dardanelles' history. Chavner gracefully and courteously acquiesced his job and title to Trale.  Ensuingly, Chavner was promoted to be the next Master Magefighter for the town's Magefighting School.

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Between 2010 and 2017, Sheriff Trale did his job better than any mage-town Sheriff before him.  Not only did he help to maintain law and order in Dardanelles, but he also assisted other local town sheriffs and police chiefs in maintaining their law and order.  As part of the Sheriff's role for Dardanelles, Trale had to wear traditional 'magical gear' that bore a semblance to clothing styles of the late 1800s.  His magical gear provided his body armor, magical alerts, sensors, alarms, perception, true sight and several amplifier and magical artifacts needed in performing his duties.  As such, when people saw Sheriff Trale walking down the streets of, say, the non-magical town of Gold Hill, people took notice to his 'out of date' clothing style and mannerisms.  Most non-town folk chalked this up as a 'tourist trap' tool to lure curious out-of-towners to 'buy' things in their towns; the locals however, had nothing but respect for Trale and the Dardanelles community.

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That all changed in mid 2017.

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A band of radical protestors, without warning or notice, converged on the town of Gold Hill (located just south of Dardanelles) and began barricading themselves in for a stop-traffic 'sit-in' protect against 'magic users' in their state.  The protesters were secretly led by none other than Mordecai  T'Vault in disguise. The protest turned violent in less than an hour, with local police overwhelmed at the hundreds of crazy radical protestors, who began turning over cars, throwing Molotov Cocktails into Gold Hill town businesses and setting fire to stacks of old tires piled up in the middle of the town's roads.

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When Sheriff Trale showed up, the protestors mobbed him.  Using his natural fighting skills and not his magic powers (or magic pistols) to subdue them, he battled through the mob, trying his best to prevent any injuries to the innocent or the rest of the town, but the mob was too much.  Trale called for his deputies, thus leaving Dardanelles without any law enforcement...and a means for Mordecai to enter Dardanelles and get his revenge.

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After an hour of fighting the protestors, the other local town police forces combined their efforts and arrested all the protesters, however, it was too late.  The media arrived ignoring the damage and strife done to the town, but instead highlighting the the 'bloodied' and 'unnecessarily arrested peaceful protestors', while vilifying the police and Sheriff Trale for inflicting such cruel abuses in the face of freedom of speech and the right to protest (which no permit had ever been authorized for said protest).  The media seemed abnormally fixated on Sheriff Trale, grabbing at him and pinning him against a news van, demanding answers. It was then that Trale saw it; the look in the reporters' eyes - they were under a 'fixation' spell; a spell that would cause a normal person to become fixated on an implanted image, action or a named person, but only at the bequest of the one crafting the spell.  He remembered who was the best at formulating that spell - Mordecai D'Vault.

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Trale climbed up on the van, with the reporters tearing at him, trying to pull him down, even beating on him in the process.  He leapt and  hopped from car-top to car-top, eventually escaping the mob of crazed reporters. He ran back up the hill to the Dardanelles. When he got there, everything would change for Trale and his community thereafter.

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The Dardanelles' stealth and perception field was down.

 

The town was visible to the naked eye once again.

 

As Trale entered the recently rebuilt old west style town, three or four 'non-magicals' dead batlle-gear ladened bodies were lying in their own pools of blood, each next to AR-15 machine guns.  Along with the non'magical bodies, there were several 'magical' town residence lying dead on the ground, one being a little girl. Amongst the dead was one of the nine Town Council members, and next to him, ex-Sheriff/Master Magefighter Chavner, whose body seemed positioned to have tried to shield the now 'dead' councilor.

 

At the town center stood Mordecai, the Mayor and 4 of the 9 Town Council with the look of shook and dismay on their faces.  Mordecai bellowed how Trale "failed" to protect Dardanelles from the dangerous 'non-magicals' and instead 'ran to help them' instead of 'doing his duty and protecting Dardanelles'.  Mordecai stated that if he hadn't been keeping a watchful eye on Dardanelles, far more would have died at the hands of these 'radical non-magicals' that wanted to kill anyone else 'not like them'.

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The four town Councilors in the town square, seemingly slow to respond, possibly in shock over what they'd just witnessed, demanded an emergency vote on the spot for the sheriff's expulsion from his duties and potential banishment by the prosecutors for Trale's failure in his duties. Four Councilors voted for expulsion and banishment, the other four Councilors, who arrived moments later, voted against, thus leaving a tie vote; a tie which the town Sheriff, by law, was normally required to cast a tie-breaker vote on, but with the charge being AGAINST said Sheriff, the responsibility, by law, fell unto the Mayor; Mayor Everett Evans, a man with a weak will, but a man of moral aptitude and kindness. The mayor's decision would either negate the charges against the Sheriff...or banish him forever from the town as nothing more than a shell of a man, bereft of all knowledge and memories of Dardanelles and anything related to magic...and a violently ripped-out soul.

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The mayor, fumbling with the decision, was looking for any distraction.  He didn't want to banish Trale; after all, he respected and admired Trale since the Soltan Invasion.  The Mayor, instead, knelt down beside the prone figure of the 'dead' Councilor, pleading with the Councilor's dead body to help him in making the 'right' decision.  Mordecai was quickly growing impatient and continued screaming at the Mayor to make the decision now to banish Trale and get it over with...but that's when fate stepped in.

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The 'dead' councilor wasn't dead after all.

 

He was alive...but just barely.

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The Mayor hollered for a Healer, but before one could arrive, the dying counselor said, "I can vote...and I say - NO - to the charges against the sheriff....he is...after all...Oregon's Trale.".

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The councilor died in the Mayor's arms.

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With the dying councilor's vote cast, Sheriff Trale was cleared...but the situation wasn't over.

 

Trale, in turn, accused D'Vault of orchestrating this whole event to push Trale out of the town, to murder Chavner, and to take charge of Dardanelles and the council for his own lust for power.  As Trale was about to arrest D'Vault, the remaining Councilors stopped him.  They told him that something WAS amiss about all this, but they weren't sure if now was the time to jump to such conclusions amidst 'the murderous and horrific acts' they'd all just witnessed.  As such the Councilors deemed that D'Vault would be 'watched', but that, for now, to prevent any further disruption in their community, D'Vault would take over as the new Master Magefighter for tthe Magefighter school...unless Trale wished to relinquish his job as Sheriff and become the new Master Magefighter himself.

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It was a Catch-22.

 

Trale knew he had no choice.

 

He HAD to remain Sheriff or D'Vault would get the Sheriff's job and then have a deciding vote against ANY tied council vote (and since D'Vault was older than Trale, D'Vault had a better shot at being a Councilor in the next few years over Trale).

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Trale said he'd stay on as Sheriff.

 

D'Vault graciously accepted the new role as Master Magefighter and stated, "I can't wait to mold the young minds and bodies of today into PROPER magefighters to PROPERLY defend the innocent of Dardanelles".

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With D'Vault in a new position of influence and power, Trale knew he had to stay close to the town to keep Mordecai in check.  Of course, it didn't take but a week later for the Council and the Mayor to create a new proclamation that Trale was now also "Dardanelles' Ambassador to the World"; an idea Mordecai brought to the council's attention. In Trale's new duties, he was to tell the world about the Dardanelles and to promote the exemplary being of a true Dardanellian to leaders all over the world...an effort that would required LOTS of travel.

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Thanks to quick thinking and working with the non-magicals and several young computer geeks from Gold Hill, Trale was able to promote the Dardanelles as an established United States community with a new town charter and PR firm (which locals for Gold Hill were only too happy to oblige with (more tourists and people for town businesses!)).  Using state laws, protocols and legal precedence, access to the town would be (as it once was) only by cleared personnel authorized by only country and town leaders, thus preventing a trampling of the town and the region.

 

The hardest part to deal with was the fact that the whole world now knew about what once was their secret existence.

 

The stealth and perception shields never came back up after Mordecai's attempted coupe, thanks to Mordecai's new influence over the Council. 

 

Mordecai, as the new Master Magefighter, enlisted 20+ new students, the largest class size ever in the town's history, all of which have now formally sworn 'allegiance' to their new Master Magefighter, now called Master D'Vault.

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Recently, several super-villains have attempted to steal magical items from Dardenelles and/or take over the town for their own malevolent means (or possibly, as Trale suspects, manipulated and sent by Mordecai). Trale and his remaining deputies stopped them, but each time, one of his deputies either became severely injured, maimed or killed in the process, leaving fewer people to protect the town.

 

In one such battle, a handful of super-powered heroes arrived to aid Trale and Dardenelles against a super-villain.  These heroes, led by Doctor Warder, wanted more than anything to have Sheriff Trale join them in creating a new mid-western hero team.  Trale declined initially, stating his responsibilities to his town. Doctor Warder, over a beer, let Trale know that he 'understood' the politics of what was happening in Dardenelles and offered a counter-proposal.  Trale join them, should he be able to, if summoned or called upon by any of the team, but if Trale had to stay to protect his town, he could do so at his own desire, with no repercussions or judgement. This way, they could help each other should any need arise, yet provide the freedom needed to fulfill one's own personal or greater duties.

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Trale agreed with Doctor Warder, and within days, they all became the American Patrol.

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Today, Trale is inundated with media interviews, paparazzi, curiosity seekers, thieves, protestors and the routine demands of his job to not only maintain law and order in Dardanelles, but in the neighboring communities, the state, and now via the American Patrol. His brother, Kit Trale, is now a new Sheriff's deputy; his sister, Sarah Trale, is the new gunsmith for the town.

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It's only a matter of time before Mordecai finds the right time to make his next move...

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