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It Belongs to a Museum

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Dragonofelder said:
Epic Corpse Battles of History.

Who would win? Abhorash, Blade Immortal and First of The Blood Dragons, or Asavar Kul, the Anointed and The Twelfth Everchosen?

Of course, it's all fun and games until the real Abhorash shows up.
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Bonus points if they're not even dressed-up humanoid skeletons, just normal dinosaur exhibits with particularly grandiose names.
 
Boney said:
"I am one who has conquered death," you intone, smiling at the melodrama of it, but giving the smile a bit of a mysterious curl to match the tone. "A Mortuary Priest of the Kingdoms of the Sun. I was a Prince of Lahmia during our Third Dynasty, your Fourth Reign, and was tasked with preserving the body and the souls of the dead against the ravages of time and the predations of evil spirits. Its current state has rendered that task redundant, and yet I remain, still whole of limb and hale of body four thousand years after my youth. So I journey, and take on interesting hobbies and students where I find them."
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Well that's one way to make himself knwon.

Boney said:
"There's something about a rivalry with a fellow in a whirlpool, but yes, it really is just a prestige project. The concerns of nobility tend to remain the same, whatever the form. I've been given a broad remit as to the details, and I decided that you could be the most important of his contacts to get to know, and to find out if there's any service I can perform for you."

You can see it in her eyes and her soul when she very quickly makes the connection you intended her to make, but it is to her credit that she draws the conversation out as she considers it. You sit there and play along with the conversation as she does so, waiting with the patience of millennia. The best students are the ones who realize just how badly they need the lessons, and the ones that are harangued into it have a tedious habit of deciding they never actually made the decision in the first place.
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Man is old enough that he's gotten really good at social stuff.

Boney said:
You don't believe the Elven Gods would be willing or able to shepherd him to the afterlife from here?" you attempt to prompt her to continue.

Her silence speaks volumes. You're far from an expert on the subject, but your understanding is that Asur believe that outside Ulthuan, proper transition to the afterlife - as opposed to falling prey to the beings that would feast on a wandering spirit - depends on the scarce mercy of Morai-Heg, the assistance of one of Her Priests, or swearing oneself into the service of Ereth Khial. The alternative would be forever haunting wherever the spirit ends up, or attempting to travel somewhere that it would rather haunt. You'd guess that the local Priest for the civilian portion of the Citadel of Dusk might be seen as good enough for the local farmers and fishermen, but a Princess might have reservations about entrusting her beloved to their care.
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The situation of his soul ain't doing to good.

Boney said:
The Princess turns to look at her Mage, and her expression grows insistent as the Mage remains silent. "It's a Wayshard," the Mage says with clear reluctance. "They resonate with the Waystone Network, and can be used to locate the nearest Waystone. It's believed by many that the spirits of the dead can travel back to Ulthuan along the network, allowing them to either return to their homeland or seek the sacred sites of Morai-Heg to have a better chance of crossing into the afterlife."

"That would be quite a journey," you say with affected mildness, your deliberate understatement immediately understood by your audience. Clearly if the Princess had any faith in this Network, you wouldn't be having this conversation, and sure enough she simply nods, her face bleak. You allow the moment to hang in the air for a moment, and then move on. "Well, at the very least it doesn't appear to be compromising the rest of the structure. The peaked roof could be adapted into a Wind-sump of sorts - it would be more work and materials than a capstone would, but less than rebuilding the structure to make it the right shape for a capstone. I'll have to have a word with the local metalworkers to see what materials would be available, but it should be simple to add it to the schematics. As for the body itself, considered on its own I would critique the preservation methods, but accounting for the remaining poison it had to content with, I'd say this was respectable work. Your Mortuary Cult's work?"
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Man she really went all into helping his soul.

Boney said:
Hmm. That could mean that Telsomar here raises those plants for their usefulness as potion ingredients, making it even more impressive that she was able to do such good work purely as an apothecary, or that she is accustomed with the proper handling and storage of the dead as a necessity for handling the diet of those plants. You could compliment her further to fish for more information, but she'd likely take that as the prying it would be, so for now you simply move on. But you resolve to keep half an eye on Telsomar in the future.
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She's a pretty impressive mage, makes sense given who she's employed by.

Boney said:
"How is the soul eating food without a body?" Talsomar asks.

"It is absorbing the spiritual energy of the food, which is released by the enchanted flames," you explain patiently.

"But why food?" she insists. You're not sure if this is part of her interrogation or if you've piqued her curiosity. "Surely as a spirit, it can absorb any kind of magical energy."

"Even when energy can be absorbed in many forms, doing so in ways the soul does not understand can distress them and have strange and unwanted side-effects. The soul is most familiar with taking in nourishment from food, so is most open to continuing to do so." W'soran and his students proved that. He insisted that taking in sustenance from blood was pointlessly inefficient when the transformations of the Elixir made them able to sustain themselves by absorbing ambient magical energy, and even though his willpower was sufficient to overrule the thirst, over time those that did so had their physical bodies wither away until they resembled corpses.

Aelsabrim stares at the tomb, her hand on her stomach, likely considering how long her husband has gone without eating. Her expression grows determined and she gives her assent for you to begin your work.
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He's an old hand at explaining this and seeing people's reactions to it.

Boney said:
You wave a hand. "Barely. The enchantment is less damaging to a living soul than the fire itself is to the flesh that contains it, and even that can be ameliorated." You check that Telsomar is watching closely, and then you weave together a Death cantrip, the flames taking on a purple tinge. "This is a divinatory spell used to commune with the dead at a very surface level," you say to Aelsabrim. "I would be willing to teach it to your Mage so that she might perform it for you." It was very widely distributed to tomb caretakers during the dynasties as a way for them to be able to check that everything was functioning correctly, so it wouldn't even be a violation of the rules of the Mortuary Cult. "If you place your hand in the fire, you will be able to sense the current emotional state of your husband's spirit." This part, on the other hand, would be unauthorized. It would be nice if this was because of concerns about feeding an obsession in those with lost loved ones that would come at the expense of living their lives, but in reality it was so that nobody else would be able to check up on exactly how many of the tombs were still occupied and secure.

You watch with your face neutral as Aelsabrim hesitantly approaches, and very gingerly inches her hand into the flickering magenta of the fire, then her face transforms as the magic allows two souls to brush. To you, you'd simply pick up on a sensation similar to finally being able to reapply one's unguents after a long walk through the desert - or, for a more familiar example for the conventionally living, of returning to bed after a long, stumbling path to and from an outhouse on a cold and blustery night. To Aelsabrim, finally brushing against the achingly familiar soul of her lost beloved and receiving confirmation that he's still here and still okay...

You and Telsomar turn away from her to give her some privacy as tears stream down her face.
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That was a very emotionally heavy moment for her.

[x] Relics
 
The Phoenixian said:
Hunh. That little bit of soul and vampire minutiae feels like it has some fascinating implications.

If deriving energy from something non-food like ends up with an inhuman vampire, then that would explain not only the corpse like figures of the Necrach, but also has implications for the why the Stirgoi are like that.

On the flip side, it would also imply that a vampire that knew exactly what they were doing might well be able to push that same force into appearing (almost?) entirely human. Just by taking pains to turn their sustenance into something their bodies recognize as food before they eat it. And of course, the vampire in the best position to know that... is Nefereta, who talked to her uncle Paht and might have shared speculation with him about why W'soran was turning out like that.

It might not be the only force acting on a vampire's form, and it might tie into Liche priests in Nehekhara decaying too after Nagash's ritual, but the rule being "you are how you eat" just as much as "you are what you eat" feels like it one of those little things that goes a long way.

And who knows, maybe it means there's a vampire chef somewhere out there. Roving around for thousands of years, utterly indistinguishable from human~ And very good with the blood pudding. :V

But also the question of "ooooh, so what if you wove the magical energy you're using for sustenance into food and then ate it?" (If only you had some kind of food specifically good at absorbing magic to test it with.)

I could probably go on for pages, but this little morsel is so delicious.
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Now this is not the same timeline But did we not discover mushrooms that held magic energy quite well in the other quest? A mushroom stew of Dhar Waaagh Mushrooms might actually sate a vampire better then pure dhar. heh vegan vampires!
 
Beasts could be used to show the monsters that the Admiral has had to fight. Kill em stuff em and put em on display! Look at all the terrible monsters Lustria holds! The grand Admiral has killed atleast 20! Zoological and historical and making Luth look good at the same time!
 
LockedMind said:
I like how the mage was unnamed in Pahtsekhen's thoughts until he realized that she actually is competent (and maybe a pupil candidate) after which he starts using her name when thinking about her.
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Potential Student ------> Neuron Activation

[X] Plants
[X] Skeletons
[X] Relics

Relics probably most time into Harkon given his love of Lizard Trinkets, but also I like skeletons, but also murder plants are probably something the average VS citizen isn't too familiar with, given they are usually either in a port city or at sea, while large dead monsters are something they very much are familiar with.
 
picklepikkl said:
"I'm out here flexing on death, no cap. I used to be big deal royalty in Lahmia, keeping unalived folks safe from the opp, but that was my basic era. Still slaying after 4000 years though, don't even need a glow up cause this glow never left. I'm all about that journey life now, picking up hobbies and taking on students who hit different along the way." -Pahtsekhen's TikTok, probably
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I'm imagining him as a cosmetics influencer who got their fame through reviews / unboxing / tutorials for makeup due to one too many rants about how gross the crusty liche priests are and how to fix their cosmetics routine being recorded and going viral (some kind of Hysh and Necrotecty and papyrus scroll and Pyramid Wall Inscription and Electrum mirror + capstone based TikTok), and him ending up having to manage a cosmetics brand deal to fund his Inauspicious Tutoring. Maybe in a Bloodbowl spin-off AU of this Quest.

Edit: This is, under the current kind of political economies dominant in the Warhammer World, Inauspicious Tutoring is usually self-funding or even an income source, as long as patrons and the local political concerns are effectively managed. But under Bloodbowl (or the kind of world that could have something like TikTok influencers) most political economies would work more like an integrated global world system of modern capitalism, so Inauspicious Tutoring would mostly be more costly than you could recoup through student fees; hence needing advertiser support or a side hustle.
 
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them8 said:
Now this is not the same timeline But did we not discover mushrooms that held magic energy quite well in the other quest? A mushroom stew of Dhar Waaagh Mushrooms might actually sate a vampire better then pure dhar. heh vegan vampires!
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It's an interesting thought, but something tells me the shroons would mutate if exposed of Dhar, it doesn't behave like the other Winds, particularly when we are talking about interactions with living things.

Or to put it another way I think you would get mutant mushrooms that would try to bite the vampire back.:V
 
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