Age of Ice and Blood: A Pathfinder System Heroic Fantasy Quest

Eighteenth Day of Ikomi-hamba (Ikomi Descendant) 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)

The walls were tall and thick and plastered white, not to keep out the snow and chill, but to keep in the powers which might in this hall be invoked. It was a circle a dozen paces across, because for of all the shapes that the mind of man had conjured it was the circle that was the most sublime and yet the one which escaped the canon of Pythagorean understanding, with even Archimedes of Syracuse admitting with uncommon humility that his calculation was mere approximation. Yet the old man insisted that the circle was as close to that shape as the cunning of his mind could dream and the craft of Orinilu the Fair could make manifest.

Circles of crystal upon the sky, where wander the planets bright and all the visible worlds in Spheres of Being were held, so said the books written by a dozen quills and in the hand of a madman kept. Thus all existence was in circles writ and in this narrow hall of stone and wood it was reflected that burning hope and dread desire of all mankind to be the petty demiurge of their own small makings.

Power bubbled from his cauldron with the breath of heavy fumes, of slumber, perchance of death, blood seeped between the broken scales still ruby red as though the beast had just been slain rather than laying in the depths of the hold for three full moonturns and more. A dragon's blood scorns the passage of the years and through it passes uncorrupted.

With steady hands, accustomed to the risk of vitriol and noxious humors, Zaia of Alexandria poured it into vials, mixing in shavings of gold and seeds of pepper that stings like fire and does not burn. With wine-numbed lips he spoke the words of power and command that would ignite within the secret fire. Use thou the tongue of thine soul and keep it in the deepest secret of thine heart, that was the advice that Moru, servant of Inoko, had given him, adding that even when two magicians started from the same tongue they would soon part ways in the making of their particular magic, like branches of a tree dividing so that their leaves may drink in the light above.

For Zaia it was his mother tongue that no other soul upon all the world spoke, not even his fellow travelers upon strange currents. It was the tongue of saints and martyrs, of scholars and mystics, going back how far even Zaia did not know save that when the Father of History laid down his first account the land on the banks of the Nile was already old beyond his reckoning.

With these words and by these signs, half of one world and half of the other, did the scholar lay supple leather about the hilt of the sword Durendal and of the black tipped spear which had laid low the beast as day passed into twilight, though he had not meant it so. In halls new raised that which was ancient passed to new purpose by one who had already crossed the greatest of all borders.

In the depths of the world, far beyond the reach of his new awakened sight, felt only in the hand and the heart, something stirred. Zaia of Alexandria knew that he had in this moment a chance to shape more than leather onto steel and bronze.

By a combination of circumstance, skill and sheer good fortune in his first act of arcane crafting Zaia of Alexandria has invoked a deeper magic in one of the weapons he was bending his mind upon.

Which is the weapon?

[] The spear of Black Iron, the dragon-slayer unleashed, it sings most loudly in this hour, but dark is its song

[] Durendal, blade of a great hero, fire to fire is called

OOC: You may be wondering why this is an interlude... you may also be wondering why the hell an alchemist with no crafting feats gets a free crafting. Well he only had two rolls to make since with the wine he auto-succeeded the alchemy. He rolled this... and this. That is not a nat 100, that is the equivalent of rolling 400 on a d400. So there you go, choose which one he accidentally magickes harder like a dwarf fortress dorf in a fey mood.