Heimurn Chronicles (No, SV, you're a young valkyrie in the middle of a bizarre and dangerous journey)

"We must press on. Even though the main threat has been neutralized, we achieve nothing by sitting here. Besides, with lurks rattled like this, we don't know how safe the survivor is."

"Damn right!" cried out Loїс, drawing Sephorah's unamused glance, which then gravitated to Elgar and, in the end, to you.

"Are you sure about that?" She asked you, "We can cull their numbers more or less safer in here. Which is not a small thing when we have one person injured."

"I understand your concern, Seph, but biding our time in relative safety incurs its own risks. For one, I'm concerned about the survivor and whether or not lurks would attempt to smoke him out from wherever he is hiding. Secondly, I can still feel the pulsation of the bodily arcane aspect - the reason behind local plant life and animals' abnormal sizes. It's still somewhere deeper in the cave."

"Wait, do you mean that this ugly chunk of meat was not the source of all this?" Archer's inquiry carried fretting vibes.

"No," you replied dryly, "Chaos spawns are conceptually inept of creating anything. All they could do is possess, distort, consume, or destroy. This means that whatever infused local life with excessive vigor isn't something we have faced directly. Moreover, it appears the voidling we got rid of formerly established a symbiosis of a sort with this source of power."

"Blast it," muttered Loїс under his breath.

"If you feel like fighting, I'm not the one to stop you," were your words when you stepped closer to leaning on the wall Elgar, to which he just produced an "uhuh" sound.

"If so, then perhaps Seophorah would share her knives with you," you continued while looking at Seph. She wasn't pleased about your idea, but after a moment of pondering, she took the last five knives from her flank pouches and handed them to the beastmaster, who nodded in return. It appeared as she doesn't seem to dislike the raven-haired sibling like the other one.

"That settles it, then," you commented the exchange, "Our goal is deeper down the cavern - somewhere below the entry point through which we came in. In a way, our course resembles a downward spiral, and we are in the middle of it. The greatest threat has been eliminated, but there are still scores of lurks waiting for our next move right beyond the grate and even more of them on the way down. Our plan is to aggressively push towards the survivor's location, maintain the momentum, and neutralize the opposition to the best of our capabilities. Should we be successful, lurks' further resistance might be crippled."

"Fine by me," grumbled Elgar; Loїс spared a humble "aye," Seph just shrugged, not entirely enthusiastic but neither skeptical to the point of arguing for alternatives.

"Good. Seph, take my left side. Elgar, take my right, and Loїс secures us from the rear. Once the gate opens, I go in first to disperse the crowd, and then you follow to clear it out."

Without any injections, your teammates proceeded with the plan. Elgar leaned away from the wall, leaving a bloody imprint of the top of his back on it due to earlier bleeding; he did not even notice it behind fiddling with one of Seph's knives, possibly to determine their weight balance. Seph slinked close to the door, throwing a single glance behind bars before putting her arm onto the lock and staring at you for a signal. It followed shortly, taking the form of your slight nod to Seph, which you gave after a moment of apprehension. After all, it was you who pushed everyone to take even more risks, and, despite shrugging it off, Elgar did not look so well after the last gamble. Should he get hurt any further, this whole raid might lose its purpose of saving a life. But it was a bit too late for second thoughts, and the only thing left for you was the idea that you must lead out everyone safely from this.

With this thought weighing on your chest and the soonest Seph slid the doorlock's bar, you rushed out into the darkness of the grotto. With an unstable light orb gravitating in between your palms, you yelled cried out "Flash!" to let get up the guards of your groupmates to what was about to follow. A heartbeat after, the promised explosion of light momentarily ripped the darkness, casting shadows onto the cavern's uncut walls and chiseling an agonizing choir of the dark dwellers. Although, your part has only begun, with you conjuring two luminal shields and swiping around with them relentlessly, overpowering three or four disoriented lurks and shoving one or two of them down into the watery pit.

Right by the time you had to recover your poise from kicking off the assault, Seph stormed forth to your left in her dance-like fashion. Under the ensued circumstances, her new lethal choreography consisted of the methodic combinations of forwarding steps with vertical windmill slashes shuffled with the phases of retractions and diagonally ascending feints. What she performed could've been confused for a fiery folk dance during a seasonal fair if not for the act's harmful intent and lurks' limbs flying around in its result. Her ferocious flings were perfectly timed, given that it did not take long for the lurks' hoard to recover from your initial suppressive maneuver, and those species that weren't ramming, gnawing, and beating against your aegises of hard light had to be taken off your flanks, which she did pretty well.

Contrary to your friendly descendant from the Kathor valley, Elgar was slaughtering the scattered lurks in a manner a butcher would slice meat in the heat of a business day - impassively, unceremoniously, and pretty routinely. Sparing no more than one grapple and up to swings per beast, Elgar tirelessly sent the beast's nasty limbs flying, sometimes sinking Seph's knife into the throats of the occasional specimens. Despite the lack of flashiness, the beastmaster's praxis was ruthlessly effective; whether it was fuelled by previous experience or the thirst for payback remained your guess.

With both of your flanks secured and Loїс taking care of the scarce leftovers, you, true to the announced plan, pushed deeper down the cave, breaking the carnivorous, dark-scaled hoard with your radiant barriers. As you did so, the opposition grew; not only in numbers but also in the class, as the crowds of predators began to dazzle with taller and bulkier specimens. These beasts - the nest's fighters - turned out more problematic than the shorter drones. Taking advantage of their higher mass and referring to the synchronous flings tactic, your reaction and attention were tested under the unceasing attempts of the fighter lurks' flocks to overpower you or create a gap in your defenses and exploit it. With you wrestled into pure defense, the group's advance has been slowed down almost to a crawl.

While you were stubbornly rotating your shimmering shields to take the hits and lunges on, Seph's dance with a sword lost a lot of its elegance, replaced with rather underhanded moves.

"That's why one never..." she grunted out while delivering a slash onto lurk's side shortly before twirling to the side.

"throws out food..." she continued a second before hopping over a lunging lurk fighter.

"for button-eyed scum to get fat on," she growled while backstabbing the lurk that she just somersaulted over, following up the stab with a mighty kick on its scaly fanny.

It's unclear whether her humor was awoken under pressure or was it her deliberate attempt to keep the morale up, but you wouldn't say it was uncharacteristic of her. Who knows, maybe a part of her even enjoyed this confrontation to a degree, which can't be said about Elgar, who had the debatable "fun" of being ganged on by a trio of lurk fighters. Elgar was quick and precise enough to neutralize one of the charging lurks with a staggering toss of a knife into its eye but not solid and steady enough to withstand the tackle of the remaining two. Unlike the last time, however, Loїс was close enough to forcefully pick out one of his brother's assailants, moving in from the rearguard and furiously piercing the blood-crazed amphibian.

You did not need to be a tactical genius to understand the nearing collapse of the formation's right flank and its potentially disastrous implications. Just a couple of steps to your right, Elgar was wrestling for his life, with you realistically being his best chance for salvation. Unable to refocus onto the high priority target without collapsing the frontal guard and exposing Seph to encirclement, there was only one viable move, the idea of which struck your mind.

"Flash!" you screamed out into the putrid, growling darkness of the grotto at the exact second you shattered the shields and their simmering shards onto the mass of fanged and clawed scaly flesh. A heartbeat after, you pumped a generous dose of vigor converted into thaumaturgic mana through your hands, blasting a blinding burst right in front of you. The exertion raised up the residual echoes of pain in your palms from the strain sustained in the cursed valley, but it also granted a crucial couple of seconds for your companions. Taking advantage of the poisoned and dazed state of his attacker, Elgar lodged a knife into its throat before aggressively kicking off the maimed beast. Loїс, after running the blade through the guts of the other lurk he dragged off his sibling, immediately helped the latter on his feet. Seph used the narrow pause of the scuffle to finally swap the stance into which she was forced by the ceaseless stream of hostiles while you reformed a couple of glowing shields in front of you, anticipating the continuation of the slaughter.

And your expectations were indeed met: unlike your first promenade of mass suppression, this time, the lurks' contingency resumed their counter-offense without even rubbing off the dazzle you subjected them to, aiming to simply bury your party under the mass of their flesh. Seph's elegant choreography turned into an array of underhanded strikes and rough moves, more characteristic to alleyway ambushes than dignified tourneys. Elgar's butchery spree decelerated noticeably, pushing his brother to his side to manage the relentless onslaught. The moment's pressure wasn't merciful to you either: with all the thoughts streamlined towards making it through this horde, you clench-bashed the limbs and heads with the left barrier's dexter and the right one's sinister, slammed the downed and kneeling beasts with the bases of both baffles, and frenziedly bashed forward with the fess zones, at times breaking a step or two ahead of the formation.

But regardless of how desperate you fought, there seemed to be no end to the beast's numbers: the entire pit seemed to be filled with this clicking and hissing wave. At some point, a thought pierced your mind like a searing needle: despite your best efforts and focus, your mind opened to the possibility of you not being able to stand the pressure any longer. Spurred by the disgust of this idea, you prepared to push yourself even harder, fancying the border between fervor and recklessness. But, for once, the tide began to turn to your favor before your very eyes.

The wave began to rapidly disperse, with some of the beasts throwing their last-ditch attempts to stall your progress and others breaking off from the crumbled horde and retreating back to where they emerged from. With the intensity of the fight rapidly dropping, everyone finally got a breather and enough leeway to reinspect their surroundings. Your charge has led you to the bottom of the cavern's main "hall". Above you, there was the outline of the natural bridge from below which the voidling ambushed you. Ahead of you - around at the water level - there was a natural sidewalk branching and cutting through two subterrane ponds of unequal sizes. Cairns made out of dirt, debris, dead fish, and eggs pierced the dark tides of the ponds, increasingly so further and to the side of your position - in the spot where you could see the lurk's shapes and sense the sparks of the remaining beasts in significant numbers. Without a doubt, you were staring towards the center of their nest.

To the side of it, there was a sizeable hollow in the wall, hosting four structures resembling pillars, a pile of something indistinguishable from where you stood, and a rectangular object in its center. An altar, perhaps? Witnessing the signs of people's involvement, you took a look around, noticing fragmentally polished walls with rough drawings on them, vaguely depicting various scenes from peasants or tribesmen's lives. There were pieces of pottery by the walls and all around the floor, with scarce pitchers surviving all this time and an active infestation more or less intact. All the clues suggested that this place had a ceremonial function. This hypothesis became immutable after you sensed the strength of the bodily arcane aspect vibrations from the cavern's hollow with an altar. A further probe into the nature of the magic anomaly revealed no further details on its source or principle, but the memories harvested from the ceremonial dagger filled in the gaps left by your underdeveloped spiritual senses. You haven't figured out the tenet on which it worked, but you found the local mystical nexus on top of getting hold of its key item.

Yet, the central insight came not from uncovering the distanced chamber but rather what was beyond it - the soul spark of a survivor appeared to emanate from the tunnel branching out of the cell. All you had to do now was to cross the ponds through one of the few available pathways, pass the altar chamber, and retrieve the person from the passageway they were hiding in.

A gentle tap on your left shoulder made you face Seph, who nodded in the lurk's nest's general direction.

"Do you sense them?" she whispered, in reaction to which you levitated the trusty light orb in the mentioned direction, scaring away one or two lurks who took the risks of testing how close they can get to you. The shifted light source illuminated the dark waters in which your group saw the movement of the amphibians; some of the beasties were sitting on the sidewalk, occasionally hopping into the water after voicing one or two intimidating warbles.

"There's about twenty of them. Maybe up to two dozens. Not sure why they stopped charging at us, though."

"Survival tactics," Elgar clang in after exhausting a vague grunt, "We've culled their vanguard fast and adequately enough for the colony to resort to regrouping into the last line of defense, utilizing the terrain advantage and the remaining numbers the best they could."

"Do you mean they won't try to charge at us anymore?" For once, Seph sounded hopeful. You struggled to recall the last time she sounded this way.

"Not exactly. They would likely dispatch small groups to prod us for focus unless we charge straight at them. I don't think they would leave their hotbed all in one in hopes of swarming us, though."

Suddenly, a faint echo of someone's voice reverberated from the walls, coming from the direction of the podium with an altar. The voice sounded male; the most likely language was Turanian; the tone was cautiously inquiring. Apparently, the person must have heard the sounds not characteristic to lurks or the demon shell, hence sending forth a cautious que.

"I'll be damned if that's not Altan!" Loїс's voice burst out, raising a wave of hisses from the remaining lurks.

"And there we were, having such a good run relatively the uncanny odds..." Seph needled Loїc's blind eagerness and got blatantly ignored by him.

"Do we have any torches left?" you inquired in a purposeful tone, trying to stave off Loїс from breaking off and running to, presumably, Altan.

"The last one," Elgar answered uneasy, confirming your suspicion of unavoidably becoming the sole source of light for the group soon enough.

"What's with the projectiles?" you asked again, with an even more urgent tone.

"None left," Elgar answered somewhat apologetically, "no javelins or knives..."

The impatient shuffling of Loїc's feet signaled that you have but a couple of moments to come up with a decision of how to proceed further.


[] Take the remaining lurks head-on! (57 team offense check, 68 team defense check)
[] Send someone to fetch the survivor while the rest cover them before evacuating! (34 team offense check, 41 team defense check, the selected party member won't participate in a fight)
-[] Yourself
-[] Sephorah
-[] Elgar
-[] Loїс

Lucy's engagement style:
[] Full arcane style (Lucy's offensive arcane skill check score adds up 0.3 of its total value to the defensive arcane skill score when dealing with lurks)
-[] onslaught (full arcane skill roll for offense, 1/2 arcane skill roll defense, luck roll. This action provides a bonus defense score against lurks)
-[] warding (1/2 of arcane skill roll for offense, full arcane skill roll for defense, luck roll. This action provides a bonus defense score against lurks)

Your companions' preferable styles (unless overdriven by previous voting options)
[locked] Sephorah: melee skill roll, defense skill roll, luck roll (still has 1.3 melee score modifier from poison and +1 melee bonus against lurks)
[locked] Elgar: melee skill roll, defense skill roll, luck roll (still has 1.3 melee score modifier from poison and +1 melee bonus against lurks)
[locked] Loїс: melee skill roll, defense skill roll, luck roll (has +1 melee bonus against lurks)

The group should probably be more protective of this one because she turned out to exude strong waifu energies; they don't want her to get stolen or something >__>

Excerpt from "Navigator's memoirs" by Stanely Rogerson, commemorative of the crew of "Venturer."

Writing about the Ars ocean is akin to writing about one's hometown: if one is a seaman and does not have pointy ears or horns, then with four out of five cases, their sea salt sanctification happened in the Ars ocean. Even though I may not have all the port ledgers of the world to confirm it, but after years in the grand azure, I can toss voice in support of the claim that two-thirds of all the sea freighting in the known world takes place within the eastern Ars ocean and its adjunct seas. The inhabited to traversable parts, or, rather, the home waters of the Ars ocean stretch from the Yrsengardian Buron Point to the tip of the Ebongale's Marble Reach. The shoreline parts of the Ars ocean can be further divided onto the Soltsveig Sea - the body in between the samely-named islands and the Blugd-Tur's shore, the Selune Sea - the gulf sea of the Western Rimlands, and the Red Sea - the waters around Eiborea Peninsula and Ebongale's southern tip point. Some navigators also consider the White Sea and Sarenar Seas to be parts of the Ars ocean. Still, as someone who experiences the unrestrained and unique willfulness of those tides, I'll refrain from being too geographically pedantic, treating them as separate entities further down these memoirs.

As you might have guessed from the mentioned location, Ars ocean connects quite a few capitals of the shore kingdoms, granting the established sea routes not only economic but also geopolitical significance. In this regard, the Westlanders might be the ones blessed the most with the capacity to run trade vessels through the warm Selune sea, supplying their largest cities with goods even when on-land logistics fail due to natural or military causes. Islander Alvizians and western Turanians also built their lives around the Soltsveig sea, using it for security from the hostile forces (in the case of Alvizians) and the prime source of sustenance such as liehvals meat and fat (in the case of Turanians). The same can be said for Eiboreans: being separated from Pheotor by a thin gulf, everything that comes or goes from their land will one way or another hit ships' decks. And if that wasn't enough, the precariousness of Eiborean agriculture often drove these southerners out into the sea in search of sustenance, from generation to generation, shaping a culture of bold and proud sailors.

But Ars ocean does not end with the gentle home waters: its tide is considered endless by many since there is no solid evidence that would support the existence of land on its other side. Indeed there is a staggering number of legends, claims, and tall tales mentioning outlandish islands populated by beastmen, freaky kingdoms residing on a mountain right in the middle of the ocean, and even flying islands at the "world's edge" from which Ars's waters fall down into the "bottomless pit of cosmic nothingness." But, as you can already presume, all of these tales are supported by nothing more than drunken chatter at best or feverish delirium at worst. Unlike casual sailors, geographers from the Lyf academy put in some calculations of theirs together. They spawned a theory that was picked up by some navigators, hence entering the limelight of the seafaring community. That theory says there's a real chance of the existence of the vast landmass across the northern portion of the ocean - the reverse side of the Yrsengard continent. But, just like the more outrageous theories, this claim is not yet substantiated by any solid evidence.

So why is there yet no proof of land by the other side of the Ars ocean? The answer is made out of three factors: logistical inaccessibility, navigational complications, and natural factors. There were quite many expeditions aiming to find a virgin land across the ocean which I personally knew of. Still, all of them - unless stopped or sabotaged at early stages - ran into the issue of sustenance. The ocean is so vast that even the most capacious vessels run out of supplies, imposing on their crew a choice to either return with nothing or to venture forth with little to no hope to return. Needless to say that it was from those who picked the prior choice that I learned of their attempts. The second issue is brutally simple: there are simply no reliable charts that maintain acceptable accuracy deep into the ocean. And finally, the ocean itself prevents its exploration by throwing a powerful warm stream that follows in the direction of Guljarr and Yrsengard. Even worse than this stream: the expeditions that ventured the furthest into the ocean reported windless pockets, where no winds can be expected for multiple weeks on end, exacerbating the issue with supplies even further.

But despite all these challenges, after taking a look at the naval technologies of our time and the advances that have been made in my lifetime, I firmly believe that, perhaps in a few generations or even ten, the mystery of what lies on the other side of the Ars ocean will be unveiled by the captains to whom my and all the generations before will pass our collective knowledge. Call it sentimental if you will, but this is one of the main reasons for this book's existence.

Okay, I already see what's the next action gonna be. Lucy is not into murder-hoboism, apparently.
I'll do the rolls tomorrow. In the meanwhile, do take a moment to vote for the worldbuilding topics of interest that you want to be revealed.

As the title of the post says: we have cleared the old lore topics queue, which means it is the high time for you to decide which topics you want me to reveal next.

Here is the list excluding the ones already filled:


Cultures:

[] The Lyf Kingdom (Lyflanders) overview
[] Nyth-Rhathon (Bhiroths) overview
[] Corethian Empire (Choroths) overview
[] Eloran Empire (Alvizians) overview
[] Olfadir theocracy (Westlanders) overview
[] Olfadir theocracy religion (The Highfather's cult)
[] Eastern Kingdoms (Eastlanders) overview
[] Turanian clans (Freelanders) overview
[] Pherin Empire overview
[] Kathor (Daevish) social system
[] Kathor (Daevish) culture
[] Kathor (Daevish) religions
[] Draconic culture
[] Draconic language

History and events:

[] The War of the First Star overview, northern front
[] The War of the First Star overview, central front
[] The War of the First Star overview, southern front
[] Siege of Krodoss
[] The reservists' counter-offense
[] Forcing of Ruby river
[] Fall of the Lothar kingdom
[] Olfadir-Rhathonian wars
[] The recent history of Pheotor
[] The fall of Beilford
[] The Strasford incident

Geography:

[] The Northern Pheotor
[] Eldheitaed Mountains
[] Erbon Mountains
[] Sud Dalur Valley
[] Ebongale Peninsula and Archipelago
[] Cullanor valley
[] Gulljar Island
[] Soltsveig Islands
[] Riverlands
[] Western Hinterlands

Races:

[] Roths overview
[] Landers overview
[] Bhiroth
[] Gvuroth
[] Choroth
[] Hodaroth
[] Lyflanders
[] Eastlanders
[] Yrslanders
[] Westlanders
[] Daevas biology
[] Tiamachs

Nature:

[] Blightspawns overview
[] Undead overview
[] Dragons overview II
[] Wargs
[] Dreadmares
[] Dread rats
[] Chimeras
[] Manticores
[] Gorgons
[] Wyverns
[] Lindwurms
[] Behemoths
[] Trolls
[] Giants
[] Cyclops

Arcane and natural science:

[] The sphere of aspects
[] Thaumaturgy
[] Seers
[] Saints
[] Spirit aspect II
[] Spirit traces
[] Necromancy
[] Body aspect
[] Conflagration and radiation aspect
[] Statics aspect
[] Morphosis aspect
[] Alchemy II
[] Arcane crafting
[] Enchanting
[] Runecrafting
[] Arcane resistance (haber vita)
[] Gaian rejuvenation theory
[] Gaian flood seasons
[] Gaian metamorphosis
[] Limbus

Miscellaneous:

[] Balls on Skald mountain near Edenbridge
[] Ghost chases over Blug-Tur


The rules are simple: each voter can pick up to ten topics of interest regardless of the section for me to orient towards. The most popular topics will be unveiled first. Apparently, it's a simple vote and not a plan format.

I encourage everyone to vote on these as there are no right or wrong answers but just your interest and preferences in worldbuilding :3