To Shield the World (Warhammer High Elf Mage Quest)

Wyssan's Wildform


The magic of Ghur is a thing laced in contradiction. Instinct, best wielded by thought. Wildness, only truly mastered by the thoughtful. Flight, better grabbed by the brave and bravery, wielded by cowards. It is many things.

But most of all, it has been your friend. When you were a young stripling mage, you excelled with the Wind above your peers, above your classmates, above even some of your elders though you were not mad enough to call yourself the equal of Inith Spiritcaller or Thalnan Caverndelver, never mind the true luminaries, Savan and Vinweth and the other doomed, damned students of Caledor blessed and cursed in equal measure to survive the Great Catastrophe and return to Ulthuan, to try and rebuild what was lost. For two hundred years at this point you have studied magic, whether as a student or as a mage proper.

In that entire time, Ghur has been a confidant, a friend, a companion, even as your family...was indisposed.

But when you start meddling with Battle Magic, that dynamic shifts. The forces you harness remember what they are, and they want to remind you, vividly. Even the signature spells, the Battle Magic so simple you will learn it if you have a pulse and a talent for the Arcane Arts (if not necessarily for every Wind) contains so much of the magic necessary to be dangerous, unless you spend effort upon effort upon effort studying to make it not so.

And Ghur is no exception.

The miscasts of Hysh, of Aqshy, of Azyr tend to be both blatant and incredibly dangerous and so they tend to dominate the lectures of the White Tower, a reminder for constant vigilance and care, and even more so the lectures of Isha's Blessings that everyone, from the Cinderseers of Ellyrion to the Judges of Tiranoc, recieve before they begin the path of magic (and weren't the Cytharai cultists always pleased about that?). "They lost control of their magic and accidentally burned down the building while also killing or even worse, maiming themselves" is very blunt.

But there are plenty of miscasts, unpleasant ones at that, buried in the Annals of Ghur magic. Just looking within Ulthuan itself, stories of transformations going awry and a someone's heart being so squeezed by the muscle that they simply stop are shared and plenty of it is true, if often stripped of all nuance. Limbs deformed. Kadon's fate, trapped in the shape of some beast. Or worse, the spirit hollowed out of the body itself, left puppeted by some wild thing for who knows how long until it tires or keeps its end of the bargain, if it ever does.

This, without even gesturing at the stories from the Rishis of Ind or the ancients of Lustria. Or even worse, the shambolic madness of the Ogres or the Bray Shamans.

So there is plenty of danger in simply attempting to cast the spell you're about to cast, without even considering the fact the spirits of Norsca are strange.

But you are a mage, a wise one, one sworn to knowledge at the feet of both Hoeth and Asuryan and so you will not falter from seeking knowledge. Yes, to risk the world entire for but a little scrap of knowledge is the foolishness that saw Hoeth's library burned by Asuryan, but to risk yourself for great knowledge is how Saphethion was made to fly, once upon a time, when the world was young.

You start to growl and shift your hands in the intricate motions required of the spell. It is simple, so painfully simple, even as the Winds begin to gather around you, letting the world humor start to pour into your spirit, letting the inner wild thing start to merge with out wildness. Muscle expands, and you feel your robes start to tighten around your form. You grow taller, broader, your limbs lengthening and remaining proportioned, even as your braided hair starts to grow into a true warrior's mane.

Wyssan's Wildform: 51+60=101/70

And the wild spirits of this place are not slow in coming as the perturbations of your spell start to ring out through the aethyr. A Great Eagle, aye, prowls near in your Windsight, watching, waiting, cawing as she stares at you and the Slaves to Darkness alike with something resembling contempt, though it quiets some as she sees the Mark of Asuryan on your spirit. The stubborn, inexorable ram, stamping and pounding on the dirt, ripping great trenches in it all the while. Serpents coil about the place, pristine, white things each so tall you can't trace their entire body even as the wrap themselves around trees. The tortoise, long lived, wrinkled and gray and enduring, starts to approach.

But they are not alone.

A great wolf, eight-legged and eight-eyed and eight-headed, growls and snarls, spilling blood from each cavernous maw, anger and rage, contempt and disgust written on it and in its brass eyes. Only the presence of the Great Eagle seems to keep it away, even as its rage builds and builds and builds at your challenge, here, in all places, of its master, who holds himself sovereign over all the beasts that run and hunt, of the constant hunt for life.

Nine Eagles with nine heads and nine wings and nine claws wheel and spin and fly overhead, their color and size and appearance changing every second, so much that you'd lose your minds if you paid attention for too long. Each caws in a maddened cacophony that promises knowledge, so much knowledge and so much power and so much potential if you will just listen. Listen, and embrace the wild madness within your heart. Change, eternal constant change, and the hope of change for the better at that! Parents who won't abandon you. But the fear of the ram, of stubborness, a stoutheart, an honest heart, repels them.

Odious, fat little salamanders dart around the place, each with six limbs, and six eyes, and six tails. They sing with a voice like mortal minds, promising perfection: true mastery of magic, true lordship over the mysteries, and more beside: pleasures of the mind neither Asuryan nor Hoeth could ever offer. But they scatter as the serpents approach, hungry, pristine and burning, and it's hard even for these spirits, warped by their nearness to this wrongness, to lie and run at the same time.

Carrion crows, seven-headed and seven-winged and seven-clawed, a vibrantly-putrid melange of greens and yellows and browns gained from eating the dead and the decaying, caw as they, too, circle overhead, their sickened spiritual form covered with scabs that ooze pus, innards no longer in, vomit pouring from beaks and a constant rain of tears. Their caws bear the promise of disease, of decay, of death, of loss and pain and death and suffering and hopelessness, so much sheer hopelessness. But resilient grandfather tortoise, old and withered and scarred yes, but alive, alive and enduring and not fallen to despair, why the creaking of his bones and the sound of his shell, they are so loud you scarcely hear the sounds of the carrion-feeders over it.

This continues as they approach, closer and closer and as you channel more and more of the Wind through yourself, taking on the bestial nature you need.

A roar, dragon's roar, dragon's song, dragon's hunger--

And then all at once it's over.

You are tall and strong, fast and wild and untamed as you heft your blade.

Tethia double takes as she sees you, and your own heart beats a bit faster to see--her--to know she is watching, sees you like this. More surprisingly, the thrall also looks at you, not in fear anymore, but instead in confused recognition, not of, not of you, but of the magic.

Questions for later.

Instead, you turn towards the enemy, still brawling it out with the line of staunch spearmen and the Phoenix Guard, heft up your blade, and start to approach.
--
Clean Up: 20+25=45

The Norscans were never going to win. No amount of Chaos Spawn was going to outweight the fact that you, the forces of Ulthuan, had Archmages and Ceyla and Ythil, Ythil who slayed seven, never mind the rest of the army. Spells ravaged them of every Wind, never mind you, Wyssan bearing, fell upon them with deathclaw, steel blade flashing, and oak-staff cleaving, breaking, shattering.

But they die stubbornly, you must give them that, bleeding themselves, dashing themselves, against the hard Ithilmar of the line, pouring out everything in one last exultant praise of the gods who enslave them, use them, abuse them, torment them and ruin their lives, offering up their souls in an orgy of blood and thoughtless, hopeless, violence, vengeance, battle and blood and suffering without hope or ambition or wisdom. Many good elves die to see the thing done, stubborn slaves to Chaos ignoring arrows as long as their forearms put through their body to keep attacking.

It tastes a little of the War of the Beard for your liking, an inferior foe destroying itself in the hope that they can bring some kind of praise to gods not worth the sacrifice for anyone with half-a-thought in their skull.

You have the Dawi on your mind not only because of the family legacy, of course. Among the dead, the shieldmaidens, there are artifacts of plainly dwarf origin scattered among the bodies, axes and hammers and shields and helmets and one, particularly wealthy looking maiden wearing an entire harness of (mismatched?) dwarf maille and plate and helm.

Have they truly fallen so far, to throw their lot in with Chaos just to further spite the world?

You know the Haclad split themselves between Chaos and Ancestor long, long ago, for all the Haclad themselves would sooner shave one of those rags they call a beard, and sailors spread tales of smoke-belching, iron-bearing ships, small but well-armored and incredibly fast, corraling beasts using collars similar to those they enslave the cave-kin of the Ulthuan Dragons with to attack ships. On the other hand, these same vessels then attacked other Dwarf ships, but on the third hand, Chaos attacking itself is not only usual but the norm. Even beyond the conflict between Daemon and Beast and Mortal, the three war among themselves plenty enough.

As for other matters, Tyrial is translating for the Thrall you saved--her name is Annora. She says she comes from somewhere called "Tilea", what you believe to be the southeastern-most peninsula of Elthin Arvan. She says northmen have begun not only raiding but settling the region, enslaving locals for a...queen?...Myrmidia has apparently died and her heirs are too busy fighting among themselves to solidly remove the invaders. Your own historical curiosity desires to know what these humans have been up to in the land you once colonized, of course, even beyond more recent happenings in the Fated Place. And, of course, there is the question of her seeming familiarity with magic given her response to your casting Wyssan's Wild Form.

Tethia and the other generals not currently questioning the girl, meanwhile, are attempting to figure out what the next task should be. About half are in favor of immediately moving on Stahlheim and freeing the thralls immediately, their slavery an insult to Asuryan, to Isha, to Hoeth and Asur everywhere: so long as one is not free somewhere, there are none free anywhere.

The other contingent wants to move immediately on the Shaman's Sanctum (for any wizard worth his salt has some kind of sanctum) for that is almost certainly where he slunk off to to try and recover. While not in as quite a bad position as he would be immediately after you vaporized most of his body, it's been all of twelve hours since and the lore of Slaanesh is not a lore of healing. The biggest issue would be finding it, but not to toot your own horn too much, you are a hell of a bloodhound.

What do you do?:

[] Examine the Dwarf artifacts to see if you can't figure out how they got here.
[] Talk to Annora
[] Argue for taking the town
[] Argue for attacking the Sanctum
--
Not quite sure how long the moratorium will be, I'm thinking five hours but I may change my mind.

Vote is Open!