As the Future Takes Root
Twenty-Seventh Day of the Seventh Month 293 AC
Naria called the Loreseeker was not generally one to complain about difficult tasks, such as say making trees as old as time and magical as anything she had ever seen fireproof, but the dreams were starting to fray her nerves... just slightly. "I know you are trying to help! Stop trying to help! I don't talk tree, and I don't dream in
pictures!" she shouted at the Weirwood Heart Tree planted above the ancient Flesh Forge where she had been doing her research. Some of the other supplicants were looking at her strangely. Maybe it had something to do with the conquest she had heard about in passing when they were forced to close the passageways to the lower levels.
Or maybe they just weren't used to hearing people shouting at gods for being too helpful, a small annoying voice at the back of her mind noted.
"What do you dream in, then?" a soft voice like the whisper of leaves called from behind her.
"Numbers," the incarnate sighed, turning to face the lotus spirit. "Or musical notes sometimes, so having pictures shoved into my head night after night is frustrating. I understand they are impatient, but it's not helping."
"Well then... I myself cannot sing, but the Dreamers are quite skillful in weaving melodies. Perhaps it might serve us both to meditate over this matter."
Anger did not come naturally to Naria, but curiosity certainly did. She sat cross-legged under the tree and listened. It would take many days for her to truly grasp the alien language of the green dream, but it would be worth it to build on what she had already studied.
Weirwood Hybridization: 9/25
***
A ways below Naria's feet, though still a stone's throw away as measured by one who could cross a thousand leagues in an instant, another student of magic and of life toiled away at her project. Vee did not have any issues of communication, for though the girl was young she knew more of Gods than most high priests counted both learned and wise. To her way of thinking there was no more difference between a small spirit like the fungus incarnates who were her assignments and a god than there was between a tiny sapling and the great tree above. Her issues were what Naria would have called 'technical' and what Vee herself called 'not making things blow up like a pig's bladder filled with too much air'.
The notion of a fungus sack like a magical womb that would sustain other fleshy magical bits was a sound one, but the devil was as they said in Braavos 'in the details'. Sadly it was not a literal devils she could kill but something that would require yet more experimentation to get right. Vee was nothing if not stubborn, a quality she could bring to her studies every bit as much as she did to battle.
Fungal Pods: 16/35
***
Further north in Tyrosh the works of arcane transformation were visible in a much clearer manner, writ in brick and mortar, linking the islands together for the first time since the Arm of Dorne shattered in the Dawn Age. Carts and caravans passed over stones fused by sorcery, while merchants made use of arcane far-speech to know when their goods would be best received at market while legionnaires marched proud under their banners, satisfied to see the new guard posts set to hold down the lands of Tyrosh to the Dragon King's law. In the shadows others moved to ensure that peace would not be troubled by more subtle foes.
Construct Guard Posts (Tyrosh): 23/28
Establish Inquisition Base (Tyrosh): Complete
Thus through it, all eyes mortal and immortal, some friendly others decidedly not, looked upon the birth of a new and much different world.
OOC: Naria crit failed her Knowledge (Nature) roll, but she rolled very well for Knowledge (Arcana), so it balanced out.