1. Ghyran is both in lore, on the tabletop and in total war; the best healing wind. It is focused on cycle of nature, but its only one of its expression, restoration of forest after the fire, natural healing after injury, and water that carries away the pollution is also the domain of Ghyran.
2. Hysh healing also does not go backwards; it attacks what is wrong and cleanses it.
An example would be that Hysh would be better at healing a sickness by getting rid of germs but would be slightly weaker than Ghyran at healing someone who lost an arm, with the longer the arm was missing being the harder it is to regrowing, because mind and soul got used to not having said limb.
As for Shyish, it is a very poor understanding of the wind. Shyish is the wind of mind, memory and the spirit.
It is time, but not as entropy; it is time as a river with the understanding that mortals shouldn't try to reverse its flow. This isn't contradictory to Ghyran, as we are trying to heal somebody, not raise the dead. Here, I invoke Shyish Domain over memory and sleep to make sure that we will get to know who we saved and, if possible, bring her back to her family.
Most particularly about Shyish. Shyish isn't the Wind of sleep or dreams, as far as I known. Morr is a god of sleep and dreams but Morr and Shyish are very much not the same thing.
It's the Wind of Endings. Of death and times arrow and things coming to a final halt. It's all about the passage of time and of mortals' fears of their own mortality and the inexorable toll that time takes on them and other things.
Ghyran is the best wind at healing at battle magic levels. It's very much not a good wind at healing at sun-battle magic levels.
[X] Plan: Heal the body, purge the evil
-[X] Ghyran
-[X] Hysh
"Breathe, my friend."
Her eyes widen as you begin to move your hands in the intricate patterns tattooed within and onto your ontology by the Mark of Asuryan on your hand, the rune glowing, burning, shining as you draw together the Winds into the one, great work, folding it together like steel into a billet. "Asuryan, righteous Emperor of the Heavens, Asuryan the most able and the most excellent, Asuryan who was friends with the Dragons, guide my hands, burn away the wickedness of Dhar, salvage one innocent life, let one stand redeemed, and justified and so let the harp of her spirit play its music full--"
You have theorized how refining Rebuke the Warp may effect the nature of the spell, but it is only in doing that you can be sure that what you have hoped is truth, radiant, resplendent, righteous, affirming of life, affirming of the world you shield, that your people have sacrificed so much for. Prismatic light begins to surround the both of you in bands that flow like auroras (if only four colored), quilted together the same way you have woven the magic as humming begins to fill the air.
(Integrating Azyr: 85+50 (Veteran White Tower Mage) +10 (Extra Comprehensions) + 20 (More Than Sufficient Magic) -20 (Dhar is a No-No, thanks) =145/80)
First, Azyr. This is a two pronged portion of the nature of that Wind, for in it is the nature of Asuryan, Asuryan Emperor of the Heavens, Asuryan who tires of Dhar harming people, Asuryan who burns away the corruption, Asuryan who slew Chaos once and will slay Chaos again at the end of time.
More concretely, of course, you can trace the threads of fate and chance to find each and every single ounce of the spiritual corruption, from the most minute atom to the great fractal runes of Dhar trying to spread along her spirit, and make her one with the wicked, with corruption. These humans' lives are short enough as is--better not to have them cut down even further by the machinations of Dhar and its puppets.
(Integrating Ghur: 58+50+10=118/80)
Next, Ghur. Asuryan, Emperor of the Heavens.
Asuryan, friend of Dragons.
The Wind of Survival, and the Wind of the Brolic. The effect is straightforward, if not entirely artless: Removing even minute amounts of Dhar is invariably physically arduous, even for a healthy, well-fed, well-watered, and cared for mortal, nevermind a Thrall kept in the pits by these Norscans. The Might of Asuryan, the Might of a Dragon, fills her body, strengthens her constitution, strengthens her form against the physical ravages and hardens her will against the desire to survive.
And then spirits of ephemeral amber surround the both of you, arising in your sixth sense. A great lion, his man braided into eight lines threaded with beautiful gold and jewels. A raven, its tails vast, its beak long and its claws vast, circles overhead. A bear, thrice as tall as you, simply sits and watches, waits, licking its jaws and claws of some spiritual efflueva. A wolf watches and howls, its amber form lightly dusted with frost.
If you were not concentrating on your spells, your eyes would certainly have widened at this point.
Memories of long decades of training at the White Tower, of lectures delivered by Inith Spiritcaller, a Loremaster with a particular focus on Ghur, a singular hatred of the Snakemen, and one of the figures responsible for establishing the curriculum of the White Tower and, funnily enough, an ardent supporter of beginning instruction in the White Tower proper with Aqshy.
Flickers of spirits being called up when you call them up to borrow their sight, their hearing, their strength is hardly unknown. Bear paws around your hands, wolf ears peaking out of your hair, falcon's wings out of your shoulders, in spiritsight that is, all of this is fairly normal. Indeed, if one looks at a wizard casting Wysann's Wildform they would find, spiritually, that they have melded with some spirit to take on its strength and its nature, hence why it is considered battle magic--if simple battle magic--in the first place: meddling with your own soul, of course, is dangerous, and the consequences terrible if you fail.
But a bunch of random nature spirits all deciding they want to have a look-see when they haven't been called on is very different.
That should not have happened. It is not quite a could not have happened, magic being more of an art than a science in scenarios and environments far more forgiving than Norsca, but by rights it does mean things have gotten weird.
Actually, is it Norsca? Is it you? Is it both?
You push the question aside, still watched by the spirits, and continue integrating, weaving and chanting and gesturing, even as the wound begins to weep and heal, heal and weep, brown blood tainted with puss and filth and worse thing constantly pouring out but not being replaced, and yet it would not be enough, for the flesh is still heir to the poison.
If you could not add yet more.
(Integrating Hysh: 81+50+10=141/80)
Hysh. Pure, raw, scintillating Hysh. Not of Asuryan, but bright, revelatory, cleansing light that burns away tainted flesh, scorching it, even as it scorches at the soul too, burning away things wicked, wretched, foul and perverse to leave them yes, blackened, but only just waiting to be repaired, healed, soothed, which is a damn sight better condition to be in than poisoned, waiting for your soul and your body alike to betray everything you are, hearing the constant whisper of gibbering idiots demanding your allegiance. Instead there is only the song of Hysh, a song of wisdom and reason and order, a song of comprehension, a song of revelation, notes boiling out of your throat in a chorus despite that you speak alone.
(Integrating Ghyran: 83+60=143/80)
A part of you pauses before you start grabbing Ghyran. You have already called up Ghur spirits on accident, which is bad enough (what fortune that you only called up things of Nature and not the unnatural), but you know there are things linked to Ghyran and for all none have abominized it the way they have Shyish, Chamon, or Ulgu they hardly need to institutionilize the monstrous for there to be threats within the Emerald Wind, monsters and spirits and creatures, only just ask the Druchii who reached Avelorn how friendly, how soft, how nonviolent Ghyran is. There are things you would not want to meet in a dark place within it, if only because they would never let you leave.
On the other hand, if you don't do it, she might die.
No, she will die, slowly, and painfully, and it would be on your conscience.
The choice, at that point, becomes the easiest of all things as you start to gather the Ghyran.
Ghyran is the Wind of Cycles, the Wind of Growth, the Wind of Flourishing and of life and so you wield it, expertly, to make her soul regrow from the parts still extant, replacing what was burned, carbonized, scorched or otherwise ravaged. There will be a scar there, of that there is no doubt, you are no Priest of Isha, but the first spells any Asur learns are the Blessings of Isha for good cause, they are as second nature to you as eating at this point. So her soul begins to regenerate, even as the scorched flesh begins to regenerate.
And nothing is called up.
Finally the light starts to end, and the spirits of Ghur begin to turn away, to tromp back to the wild places, as the Dhar is purged from her at last. She passes out even as the magic continues to work, but no longer requiring your presence, allowing you to turn back to the field.
(???)
The first thing you do, of course, is check where the Shaman had fallen after you had burned him to ash and dust and cinder. The scorched glass, dead grass, pink ash and bubbling mud gives you a pretty good idea of that and, calling on Ghur to enhance your vision, it is no great surprise to you to discover that the majority of his body is no longer there, though whether this is because he died and was carried away to be properly buried by one of his sycophants, he was still burning and the bits of meat and blood that do still litter the field represent everything that was left, he survived and escaped from the field to wherever, he was snatched away to the realm of Chaos, or he descended into Spawndom is not a bet you want to make. All you can say for certain is that without a body, he may be dead, or he may not be.
At least, not without getting your observatory ready.
That as squared away as you're going to get it, you decide to examine the field of battle to determine the current situation.
(Asur Vs Norscans: 66+25(Shaman Defeated)+15(Asur Army)=106 Vs 62-25(Shaman Defeated)+15 (Realm of the Gods)+5(Souped Up militia)+25(Saw it coming)=82
Your force is winning, no particular surprise there. An army of Asur was always going to outpreform a militia, even a forewarned milita. Their best hope was an ambush led by their damned shaman, and their best hope was just smote with all the power of the Sun. It should be the least surprising thing in all of history that they are not winning.
But they are defiantly, stubbornley standing, fighting for every single inch of ground, thralls, youths and shieldmaidens throwing their lives away against the stern line of Asur spears in fruitless endeavors. Smarter, no less doomed bands form their own shieldwalls to contest your forces, but brawn, slavery to evil, and mindless belief in their own superiority because they live in this icy hell is proving less than sufficient against Asur warriors, who are entirely free to unleash magic as they wish with the enemy shaman dead.
Which is not to say there have been no losses. Plenty of Asur bodies lie commingled with dead humans (Whose armor and weapons look odd, though further examination on those grounds can wait until you are no longer actively fighting for your life on a battlefield). Sons shall not return to the shores of Ulthuan in this life, and each loss stings to see, from the lowliest white clad spearman to even Phoenix Guard.
But now, victory is only a matter of time.
And yet the whole endeavor is a matter of time, isn't it? The entire point of the exercise is to get Tethia to the staff and the abandoned city, ideally before the Druchi can. With enough of a force to contest them in case worse comes to worse and the Druchii do get there first, rather than having to pull some nonsense out of a can.
Which leaves you rather with a question, a problem, and a possibility, all at once.
On the one hand, as you were thinking as you added the Ghur to the Spell, Wyssan's Wildform is potentially dangerous in this place; dangerous enough that you can, given you have not disseminated the information to anyone, only justify casting it on yourself and therefore taking all the risk on to yourself. The possibilities of miscasts are bad enough when the spirits are doing as the spirits should be doing, never mind in this frozen hell.
On the other hand, this is the kind of data, of knowledge and experience, the White Tower, the Archmages, the Loremasters, and any other students of Ghur would intereted in having, never mind the possibilities of your own research. And this is maybe the most unimpeachable, and most justified, reason you would ever have for doing such a thing, turning your already impressive prowess with swordsmanship into the kind of pure, unrelenting warrior spirit these northmen can only dream of.
So, what do you do:
[] Cast Wyssan's Wildform, and help grind down enemy forces more quickly, as well as gaining knowledge but also risking Very Bad Things
[] Do not cast Wyssan's Wildform, do not risk Misscasts, but take longer and potentially lose out on chance of gaining valuable knowledge
--
Going to open the vote when I wake up tomorrow.
Looks like the creation of the spell went really well, man Vardanis is a monster of a spellcaster sure he has a lot of room to grow but he's covered a lot of his bases.
[] Cast Wyssan's Wildform, and help grind down enemy forces more quickly, as well as gaining knowledge but also risking Very Bad Things
We're sorta the reason these people are here, personal danger is secondary to supporting them in the field, I think, and additional information would be good to have.
Killing that Shaman represented a swing of 50 Points in combat, I've just realized. That is absolutely massive. Also without it the Norscans would currently be winning.
