The Long Night Part One: Embers in the Dusk: A Planetary Governor Quest (43k) Complete Sequel Up

@Durin
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The sun papyrus plant is a strain of papyrus native to the planet Caerel and is considered to be the sun goddess Ilfeliare's sacred plant. It has traditionally been processed to make medicine, incense, and parchment. After over ten thousand years basking in the sun-home of a god, or within eyesight of the palace of a god, the plant has evolved to become receptive to divine power.

When grown outside the presence of divinity, it's merely high quality papyrus. If, however, raised in the glow of divinity, whether that of a god, divine servitor, or particularly blessed mortal, it gains holy and psychic properties. This makes this holy sun papyrus an invaluable plant for priests, psykers, and those who combat the forces of the Ruinous Powers.

When turned into medicine, sun papyrus acts as an effective remedy for mild headaches and stomach aches. Holy sun papyrus doesn't have any restorative properties greater than that, but it does help suppress the more Warp-tinged aspects of Chaos-born diseases, allowing for mundane treatments to be more effective.

When used as incense, holy sun papyrus acts as a more potent version of ordinary incense when it comes to warding away the daemonic. It also allows for a faithful inhaler to gain closer communion with the gods.

Holy sun papyrus is most potent when rendered and processed through semi-sorcerous methods by a deity's priests (or monks, divine servitors, or other vested servants) into parchment. On its own it does nothing, but when inscribed with holy words related to the parchment's relevant god, it accomplishes a number of effects, depending on its purpose. In a book, it can aid the faithful in understanding the words imprinted on its pages, and in the case of fell knowledge, can be written down and read with less risk of madness and corruption. As a scroll, it acts as a focus through which a chanted psychic power, whose words must be what's written on the scroll, may more effectively counter the daemonic. Purity seals (the use of the device having being shared throughout the alliance by Zaghâsh) with parchment made from holy sun papyrus give their wearers greater protection. Ordinary parchment is merely high quality and long lasting.

The potency of holy sun papyrus depends on the holiness of the being under whose light it grew. A Greater Divine Servitor's presence would give it more potency than a lesser servitor's would, and a god's would give it the most potency possible.

Chaos is incompatible with sun papyrus; it's too tied to the power of the divine. The growth of juvenile papyrus plant is retarded and will eventually be killed by the presence of Chaos. Mature papyrus plant will resist it, and if overwhelmed by a truly overpowering amount of Chaos will simply die, leaving nothing behind but base plant matter.

While sun papyrus plants are most receptive to the goddess under which they evolved under, they can be cultivated by any god not of Chaos, and as such they have been shared amongst the members of the minor god alliance.

***
So far, the most powerful artifact created with sun papyrus was made by Ilfeliare herself - the Sunfate Enchiridion.

Well after the Firmanent was founded, but before Pants Nurgle Day, Ilfeliare had managed to uncover a veritable treasure trove of intelligence regarding a Lord of Change operating relatively close her demesne, pieced together from one of its (many, many) rivals, one of its subordinates, and her own astromantic divinations. Immediately after gaining the last of the information she needed, she got Karzarot to join her and quickly launched an assault on its base in the Warp; it would know Ilfeliare gained intel on it, and it was vital to strike before it could set up preparations.

The assault went exactly as unplanned. The awesome power of the two bonafide deities was enough to blow away the outer defences, designed to counter entirely the wrong enemy, leaving only the Lord of Change itself and its minions to contest them. To the daemon's credit, its magical ability was powerful, and its minions many and relatively gifted, and working together could have defeated the two gods without much issue, were it not for the unreliability of daemons.

Ilfeliare, the stronger of the two gods in raw divine strength, engaged the Lord of Change personally before it could undertake any grand sorcerous workings. But even with her power, its magical lore was too much for her and it began overwhelming her, though slowly. As they fought, Karzarot engaged the petty creatures subordinate to it. They could've overpowered him, but they didn't, because they would take casualties doing so. True casualties, for in the Storm Wyrm's mouth, even daemons may die. The fodder forces of the Greater Daemon had no interest in contesting such a creature, and so what should've been a battle quickly turned into a rout. This left Karzarot free to flank the Lord of Change and quickly end the battle in a decisive victory.

With the daemon defeated and subjugated, Ilfeliare pressed her demands. If it failed to meet them, Karzarot would take a chunk out of it. It wouldn't kill the Feathered Lord; it was too powerful for that and protected by the effects of a ritual of its besides. But it would permanently weaken it, and given the enemies the Lord of Change had made, it would be in no position to survive that once it recovered. Begrudgingly, it accepted, and gave them the secret to the ritual that had made it all the enemies it had, yet let it survive them - a ritual that would capture the untethered fate of a worthy being truly killed and mould it to buttress its new master's.

It was, of course, a ruse. The ritual was the magnum opus of a Lord of Change. The knowledge of it was so dripping with the nature of a daemon of Tzeentch that it could even corrupt divinities. It wouldn't begin immediately, but after enough time, the knowledge would finish boring through a deity's mental defences and begin infecting its very being. Then, it would twist and corrupt it, until it was nothing more than another pawn of the Changer of Ways'. Then, the Lord of Change would gain great favour from his patron for corrupting a pair of gods. The sun god smiled as it banished him away for a thousand years or so, thinking itself victorious, but the Lord of Change knew better. He had lost the battle, but won the war.

But, in this case, the Lord of Change didn't know better. Karzarot's mind was, like the rest of him, electric. The corruptive knowledge was fried from his mind as it entered, neutering it entirely as a threat. As for Ilfeliare, she already knew about the corrupting nature of the ritual. The knowledge she had on the daemon painted it as having been a typical member of its kind (or as typical as one could get with the daemons of Tzeentch), but after it developed its ritual, it changed. It grew far more ambitious after that, enormously so, making enemies of creatures of such power in such quantities that even with its trump card, its doom was all but inevitable. Its own knowledge had driven it insane by daemonic standards. Ilfeliare knew she would have time, however. She was a true god, she wasn't naturally prone to what the knowledge would drive her to as only a daemon might be, and it didn't have that special resonance that only a creator and its creation would have.

Fresh from her victory, she immediately returned to Caerel and manifested on the planet, bringing out a writing kit she had prepared long ago, along with a blank book. The pen she used was constructed of minerals made by the Earth Titan himself. The ink, the blood of an avatar Ilfeliare was inhabiting, a brilliant, rich red. As for the parchment the book was made of, it was the highest quality sun parchment that could probably exist: sun papyrus, kept in the personal presence of Ilfeliare herself throughout its entire life, tended to by her own hand and watered in her blood, willingly spilt. Then, processed by her own hand as well. The parchment glowed golden.

There, in the apex of her greatest temple, with the stone doorways sealed and only the sun shining in from above to provide light, she began to write. As her hand moved across the pages, inscribing their blank faces with the knowledge of the ritual, she allowed the fell knowledge to flow out of her and into the pages, freeing her from the curse and locking it inside the divine tome.

As she wrote, a war raged between the supreme sanctity of the parchment and ink, and the only-technically-describable pollution of the profane knowledge. The knowledge was more powerful, but it was outside its home, the Warp, whereas its prison and jailers were rooted in the Materium by their physicality. Its creator was banished so very recently, while the daemon's vanquisher was flush with glory and in the centre of her power. Coronas of gold and blue erupted from the pages, but ultimately it was the gold that was winning out. The words were bent and beaten to accommodate their vessel, losing their innate profanity and transforming into something else, something pure, wondrous, and awesome in its power.

And so at last Ilfeliare was left pure of mind, victorious over Chaos, and with her prize in hand: the Sunfate Enchiridion, a text of holy magical lore as sublime and radiant as the sun itself - the power to create new fate in the heart of a star.

It's a rare day when a daemon is beaten at its own game without a significant advantage, but on such a day, if one pulls back the veil and listens quietly, one may hear the laughter of laughing gods.

***