Project Prometheus (Warhammer Fantasy OC Civ Quest)

Turn 2 Results

Vernthalu looks with eyes beyond eyes. His tails swish behind his back, his ears twitch as they catch the noise.

It is odd. The clearing he sits in, tapping his thick white claws on the stone, resting his feet in the stream, the sound of the jungle life and the flow of water fading to background noise in his mind as he examines the extrusions of what was home into this, his new place. There is an odd smell, an odd taste, an odd color to the glimmering breezes that seems to flow all around the world.

Or rather, don't.

The magic has segmented itself off and apart from itself, rather than flowing together into pure Magic. Some clings to the stream and to the trees and to the grass, green like glimmering shades of emeralds plucked from a princeling too proud and given to the people he stole from, the apples stolen from a farmer who felled a father trying to feed kits, as the cheap glass bottles he'd had broken over his head the last time he'd manifested. Some of it, higher up, blue. Blue like the water he bathed in, blue as the berries plucked from bushes, blue as the berries plucked out of the realm of the Liar.

And lurking, somewhere just beyond the horizon.

Black. Black like the night sky plucked from the orrery and soothed, whispered, woven into a blanket. A dull, soft, warm looking thing that seemed to promise so much to him. Comfort, security, peace were his if he would just...

Listen.

He reaches for it--

"No."

A voice like brittle glass, and Ehfeyos, mother Ehfeyos, Ehfeyos Who Brings Magic seems to appear from nothing and nowhere. He is ashamed.

He is ashamed of his nudity, his nakedness, even as she bore the bright robes, layered about her body, offering her dignity.

He is ashamed that he has reached for this darkness, this corruption, even as she stands bright, even as prismatic light lesser only than noble Methel, righteous Methel, casts itself into the world from her. That he can see the cancers, weeping blood and pus and bile from holes, some little as a pinprick, some great bite marks, massive teeth each larger than he is, for what they are now. See the bodies bobbing up to the surface, Ruwunurak and Bajalthray and Avelatax and more, always more, taken and broken and ruined by what it is, something unnatural to the world he had come from.

Something only here.

"Dhar."

She speaks again and he withdraws into himself in yet more shame even as her eyes scan over him, even as she peers at him with many-hued eyes. Ehfeyos who sees all, Ehfeyos the wise, Ehfeyos who has spent centuries altogether simply learning from the elves and the humans and the gnomes and more all about magic in all its shapes and forms, sometimes slinking in, sneaking in to learn without being detected, a shadow, a lie unseen as she had taken knowledge right under the nose of the humans of Altdorf, the Druchii of Ghrond; open, proud, in Athel Loren, in Saphery, knowledge traded for, knowledge fairly gained.

She taps her staff on the ground. "Come."

He steps gently, and quietly, behind her as she walks through the jungle that surrounds them as though she has lived in it for centuries rather than merely a handful of days, same as the rest of them, and perhaps to an extent that is because she has, as one who has come to this world, incarnated herself like the Daemons again and again and again, a thing of knowledge. Dererhan has spent more time incarnate, more time in this world; but hunting, feasting, seeking, finding.

And fighting. Always fighting.

Never learning; not in the way Ehfeyos has learned, anyway. He might have stood with the Star of Fate to avenge himself upon the Ruwunurak. Might have have exulted in the blood of Erangor. Might have struck at monsters in the service of one lord or another and learned the forests and jungles to protect them and to hunt in them in equal measure. But he has not learned as the mortals learn.

Not as she has.

All he has learned is how to die.

He notices more spirits gathering with them, more of the Foxes, More like him, for all he is the most human of them all at the moment, with only a sparse two-tails. Most have five or six, a handful alike seven, one has eight proud, bristling tails of the eight colors of magic though she misses the prism arising from Ehfeyos. They are few in number, few in prowess, few in many things, and yet there is weight to them, girth, something heavy placed on their shoulders, as though simply being there, whatever is to come, has changed them. They stream to her as she wields her magic to speak to them all, coming at her command in little clumps and great groups, sometimes alone, sometimes together, but always they come as though she has been plotting and watching and waiting and planning and more.

Finally they are all gathered into a great clearing. Thick, massive, towering trees rise up all around them, thick with flowers and fruits and vines and life.

"You all have been summoned here by me." She speaks to them, seeming to look all of them in the eyes. "All we spirits, all we Foxes, we are touched by Magic. We are all capable of it. It will flow through us, will answer to even the least of us, even incarnated in mortality. But you are they who are curious in it. You are they who, incarnating, studied it. You are they who, brought here, have yet again studied mysteries. You shall teach the others how to control themselves with it; how not to bring the enemy to this place, how not to summon evil things here, how not to ruin all that we could be in strife. And in return I shall pass on to you what I know."

It is fair dealing.

"Now, let us begin..."

---

Arthit fights.

Arthit fights because that is all he can do.

He hears people die as the gors swarm them, beastmen contracted by Chaorat, slaughtered in an instant. He smells blood and sweat and release and worse as bodies hit the ground. Some were good; he knows this. Some were bad; he knows this. He has talked to them all, spent days and weeks and months and sometimes years with all of them, seen them grow and ascend or fall, seen them become men of worth or scourges to others.

They all cry and weep as they perish either way.

He stops thinking about that as a red-as-rust but harder than steel ax flies over head. He only just ducks, stabbing out with his own daab, and puts it through the thing's head, letting it fall to the earth. Not a moment later he has to fling up his rattan shield, letting the ax slide off of it, as two more of the damn Beasts attack him. He stabs out and kills one, but two more come, and his arm was growing tired, the bruises were riding up and down his arms and his legs, the little wounds growing.

And there it was. The problem. For each one he killed, another, or two, or three seemed to appear out of nowhere to take the thing's place trying to kill him. Many gaps opened in his warcoat, the tough leather decorated in flows cut into like so much paper, the maille hidden with holding for now but the bruises appearing all along his body. They will swarm him, overwhelm him, overcome him, and eventually kill him.

He is going to die.

He accepts this.

He gets tackled from the back and falls on his face. He manages to spin around with his knife, only to feel a grip like a vice wrap itself around his wrist.

The grip hoists him up, almost wrenching his arm from his shoulder in the process, and he looks into the eyes of the beastlord. Eight horns split the flesh of a thing born of Chaos, a thing born of Khorne's Nature etched in matter, spiraling out of the head of a wolf, with a jaw that could fit three-by-three of his head if the abomination wished it so. Eight tongues fall from its mouth, spilling spit and venom that sizzles as it touches the dirt, the road, the trees and leafs and its own dead. Its leg, bovine, unholy thick with muscle and fur made of strands of brass that fall on cloven hoofs, hot enough that they scorch the world as it walks. Eight fingers on each hand. It growls as it looks at him.

He spits in its face.

The thing raises its ax even as he prays Sutras.

Then a hum cracks the din like rock under a chisel, and a streak of brown and silver flies through the air and through the beastlord's chest, carrying the abomination's life with it before turning around midflight and punching through another's belly, then flying back into the trees and to whoever tossed it so ably. Arthit falls as the Beastlord's body plummets with a satisfying thud, but he manages to scramble up in time to see what happens next, to see him appear from the wildness.

A man mixed with a fox.

Slender, but tall and strong, his hair black as night. Two ears of brown fur rise from his head, and nine tails of the same color thrash about slapping bolts and arrows and rocks before they can strike him as the beastmen turn around and see this new foe. His armor, hued of bronze and carved with symbols of war and battle and defiance, jingles as he goes, his face twisting and turning in an impossible hate and an endless anger. He throws his spear again and lets it punch through them, drawing a sword even as he races towards the foe and plunges into battle. Bestigors, Ungors, Gors and Centigors and more all fall before him like a tree before an elephant, forced down, pushed down, crushed down under something, someone they could no more resist than he could resist the fall of rain or the heat of the sun,. His bronze blade, a long, single edged thing of the best of work, carves through them even as his spear goes in and out of their lines, through the horde, driven by his rage and will.

They come next, yet more fox spirits, yet more creatures, magic on them as clothes. Green mist flows from them like a breath, covers fallen men, sewing together cuts, setting limbs, making new flesh grow. In some case entirely new parts sprout up to replace those lost at the hard edge of Chaos. Though dressed as simple farmers in good robes, they have a dignity around them.

In moments the Beastmen break and flee, their lord dead, their spirits shattered by the Fox.

Arthit breathes and looks, looks and breaths, only thinking, only living, simply just trying to force his heart to stop hammering for the long moments that follow.

And then he hears footsteps, and looks up, and sees the fox.

This close, he can tell more. The fox is handsome. Scarred, in a roguish way. Soaked in blood, Arthit can only look up, up, and further up still at the thing, whose gaze is stern, bleak, grim of countenance and grim of nature. Blood is spattered on him in little bits and pieces, little remnants of what he just killed.

And then he smiles brightly and leans down and looks Arthit in the eyes. "Hello there. Do you think you can tell me where we are?" He looks up for a moment like in thought. "Well, not quite where we are. Khuresh, I know that much. But where, precisely, there?"
--
They hunger. They are hunters and foragers yes, but they lack the strength they once had, are reduced to mortality and have not learned it yet.

So Menleth teaches them the simplest tools she can. She takes wood from fallen branches and hardens it in fire that springs to life from his will, from nowhere, as he breaks the rules of magic, and hardens it, watched by her people, all watching him. He takes stone, good hard stone, and breaks it apart into flakes, hard and sharp and keen, into spear heads, and wraps it together with vines and leaf and grass and all together makes a spear for her people. And they emulate him to hunt, and so they return with skins and meat to supplement fruit. She teaches them how to make sickles of stone and teeth and wood, to cut down the fruit and harvest it better.

They fear. They know they are still hunted. They know the Hound will never stop seeking a fox.

So he teaches them more, makes for them axes and hammers of wood and stone, for war and to build alike. Hard and heavy and sharp and cutting, they can bite into wood and flesh alike. Build and destroy, kill and create, harvest or steal, in some ways she has cursed them as surely as blessed them, and he knows this as surely as she ever knew anything, but what other choice does he have?
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Gain: Knowledge of where you are (On front page when updated), basic stone tool further reducing food pressure, new options, mini-update for Question of First Wind coming soon

The Question of the First Wind

And in that bleak time when the Grogori first benighted the East, already damned by Drakumgi, Elgi, Gori, Ogri, and no end of other, viler things, their Witch of an Ancestor, known as Ehfeyos to the Grogori, to the Cathayans as Lingwen, to the Zonelgi as Draeddu, to the Wutelgi as Cadedri, conspired to further damn their soul with zhuf nonsense, claiming to "master" the fundamentally untrustworthy forces of magic when in truth only Runesmiths might...
-Being an excerpt Runelord Austri Brokkr, The Sagas of Austri

"He forgot Drungnoli, but why is that not shocking?"
-Ehfeyos

They are all gathered, fox spirits one and all, to listen at the feet of Ehfeyos. She has called them; she has power over them. They feel it, as one feels the air on their skin on a calm day; ever present, pushing down, inescapable, comforting, affirming, bringing life and hope with it.

"You are, all of you, eager to learn to master these new and strange gifts. That is well. I will teach you, and so we shall have a joy."

The first thing to choose, of course, is which magic to teach them first, for that is the basis on which all magic is taught, all magic is understood, all magic is affirmed. Though all will be balanced out by learning to wield all eight of the Winds of Magic given time, one cannot spend so long walking through the same paths without having the dust layered on their boots, as it were. Aside from that influence, to one must consider the other scholars who study that Wind, for there is a great trade of scholasticsm within the magical community. In some cases good and consensual, spreading their knowledge the better to work together in the face of Armageddon: the Archmages of Ulthuan instructing the Colleges of Magic how to wield the eight Winds separately, the Skink Priests of Lustria conversing with the Prophetesses of the Lady to understand Azyr, the Alchemists of Ind and Cathay and Araby and the Empire spreading their potion work all throughout the world.

Sometimes this is not so. Of course, it can be as simple wizards killing each other to steal spellbooks and grimoires but it has gone deeper than that. Eshin Shadowmancers attempting to assault the Conjurerer's Guild to steal their secrets and destroy competitors. The Bray-Shamans of the Beastmen, trying to kill the Shamans of the Empire to work their bones into fetishes. Nagash murdering the Sorcerecess of Naggarond to steal the secrets of Dark Magic from them.

So which does she teach teach; which risk does she bring upon them ?

It could be Ghur, the Wind of Beasts; the urge to be wild, to live free, to survive. It is the first magic the depraved Shamans of the Beastmen study, but so too is it the first magic of the Spellweavers of Athel Loren. At worst surly, asocial, and crude; at best strong, patient, and independent. This is perhaps the closest to the wind that the Fox Spirits embodied before mortality, though they were always more complicated than only an apparition.

Aqshy. The Wind of Fire. The Wind of passion, of destruction, of the lack of calm. It is the first magic that students of the White Tower study in that role, and it is that magic which the Dragon Mages of Ulthuan harness to its apogee; but too it is that which the cursed Shamans of Norsca study the better to survive the cold in their harsh home. At its best brave, decisive, loving; at its worst, wrothful, intempermate, impatient.

Shyish. The Wind of Ending. The Wind of Death, of cessation, of certainty. By their nature all Vampires, all undead, understand it and are touched by it. The Colleges of the Empire, precarious as they are, have made their own, more wholesome path in embracing it. At worst morose, passive, grim; at best serene, ataraxic, equitable.

Ulgu, the Wind of Shadows. The Wind of deceit, of confusion, of ephemerality and nonsense. The mearghs of the Fimir study it first, the better to canopy themselves from the hateful rays of the sun, to hide from the vengeance that lurks waiting for them. The Conjurers of Nippon wield it well, using the little lie to serve a greater truth. At worst, arrogant, hypocritcal, paranoid; at best cunning, thoughtful, patient.

Azyr, Wind of the Heavens, Wind of aspiration. The Ogre Slaughtermasters are drawn to it, as the home of their bleak god the Maw. But so too the Astromancers of Cathay, who with foresight deftly carve through a thousand and one problems. At worst air-headed, breezy, uncaring; at best detached, forward-thinking, driven.

Chamon, Wind of Metal, Wind of Logic. The Dawi Zharr Sorcerer-Prophets make much use of it, first Wind, and one nearest and dearest to their own nature. The Rishis of Ind often study it themselves, the better to understand the same creative energy that drives innumerable numbers of their gods, Brahmir and Gilgadresh among them. At best scholarly, logical, enduring; at worst vain, conceited, cold.

Ghyran, the Wind of Life; that which is patient, and calm, and nurtures. A Wind oft studied first by the Sorcerecces of Naggarond, the better to cultivate poisons and their own plantations; but too that of the Damsels, just, nurturing, and righteous. At its worst stagnant, idle, unenthused; at its best calm, serene, caring.

Hysh, the Lore of Light. The ordered, the rational, the pure. The Wind that first saturates the Slaan, was there when they were born, which is theirs by right as they work to bring the world to reason and order and purity. The Wind that saturates the Snakemen, devourers, monsters, killers, who seek to sear one truth into the world: their superiority. At its worst? Proud, intolerant, inflexible. At best? Reasonable, compassionate, fearless.

So which shall mark the wizards of the fox spirits? Which shall change them, shall leave its touch upon their nature whole and all, shall make them both friend and foe and target and archer in all ways?
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Vote will open tomorrow, Jan 7, 2024 at 7:30 AM . Sorry short update but I want to get back into the swing of things. If you have any questions, poke me.