Far Favor Trading
...Do not speak to me of how Aenarion or Caledor would treat the Little Folk. House Blackfang marched by his side, and my brother still burns in the Great Vortex saving your worthless hide, Prince Anadian.
As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, I have made a trade with one of their Runelords. I was eager to see if their Zhufazul could be a functional replacement for the Moraidyr, or more properly its shells. I found the dealing itself much easier than the others suggested it would be; Lady Snerra was a pleasant, chipper, reasonable woman who treated with me fairly, and I in turn. She showed me what she could of the Zhufazul, and I showed her what I could of Moraidyr...
-Loremaster Loken Blackfang of Chrace, On the Crafting of Wonders
Snerra walked through the snow, her curiosity piqued and her target near. The peculiar smell of magic, thick and heady and disquieting, filled the air. More important, however, was the smell of decay, of passing, of rot. Prey hung from trees, the preserved meat eventually to be the sustenance of the great beasts--though not, in this particular case, their spawn. Occassionally she saw them as she walked, their long, undulating forms burrowing through the snow, their form most remininscent of a more brolic centipede in spite of the spider-like webbing that also covered the trees in thick nets. Each was as long as her forearm, filled with enough poison to kill a deer, and covered in a bright black, blue and white shell, glossy when living and nourished by the animals. Death, death, seemed to cling to them.
And they were (mostly) safe, these Moraidyr (A name connected to one of the elves' goddesses of death, though precise translation and etymology would require her to look at her letter).
Of course, they were wild animals. Make them feel threatened, get too close to the hives where they lay their eggs, that sort of stupid, reckless behavior--as the elf that reminded her of more than a few of her fellow Runelords liked to mention called it--and then they would attack, but by and large they wanted to eat and breed and not be eaten before they could breed. A Dwarf, by all accounts, was not worth the trouble, for the beasties hardly only ate meat: they...subsisted, that was the best word the Loremaster could provide for it, on the kind of magic that death provided. As creatures fundamentally not of magic, a dwarf would provide scarce little nourishment for the little things on that account, and they were smart enough to realize that killing a dwarf was not a great plan--mostly a good way for large bodies of armed men to come about with fire and burn the place down. Perhaps that was why they had not been catalogued in great detail yet?
She tried to ignore them as they swarmed about the place, not reaching for her axe, even as the bones that littered the place all shook and jiggled and rattled in the thick silk, serving to make the place more nourishing as one might place food in the soil to make it more nourishing for the plants. Almost as much as she tried to ignore the gift dangling from her waist.
Where she was headed was blessedly far away from anywhere that could enrage the cursed creatures too much.
She stopped as she saw it, matte shell after matte shell littering the earth, marking the snow. The place where the creatures molted and shed shells too small for them. Some were small as her pinky finger, and some were big as her whole entire leg, and she thanked her lucky stars that the things did not eat bipeds. Magic, muted but present, was woven into the things. She could feel it, sense it, with the finely tuned senses of age and time.
And so she set to work gathering some of the shells even as she thought very hard about getting an apprentice so she could make them work with shed bug skin.
Apparently, some of the Elves worked the stuff directly into armor, the better to keep it from interfering with their magic: priests of Morai-Heg--the Dark Seers. Loremasters, Wizard-Thanes with little regard for the concerns of others. Any mages wanting to perform magic without losing protection, for whatever the Elves considered it. They, apparently, would simply chop into the shells, cut it into scales or lamellae, or if very lucky shape it around the parts of the body.
Snerra had no such interest. Not when gromril was right there, singing for her. Not when she hardly had to consider the effects of magic on her except how to keep it as far away as possible.
But experimenting with the shells? Seeing if she couldn't use them for the death related Runes in her repertoire? That was worth her attention. If nothing else they ought to be useful for the Rune of Gazul, as creatures so intimately connected with death. She tried very hard to think about that and not what she was doing. She thought more about the creatures themselves: they were commensalists with Nurgle, flourishing as he brought death to mortal kind, and so their presence in Norsca, though apparently according to Loken it was slighter than the gatherings in the far west, and roughly equal--perhaps slightly larger, perhaps slightly smaller, but not worthy of shame or acclaim in either case-- than their number in Ulthuan, where they stayed around shrines and temples to Morai-Heg, hence the name; they were, in particular, rich in Nagarythe, which was so full of death from fighting the forces of Chaos, Daemons and Beasts and Mortals alike.
Snerra blinked as she realized her bag was full, and shut it. And then, as recommended by the Loremaster, she pulled the gift from her belt and put it on the ground.
Another skull to join the many already in this lair.
And she left, to learn.
--
Eltharin Corner: Moraidyr-"Morai Bound." Theoretically, any creature associated with servitude to Morai-Heg, Elven Goddess of the dead. Practically, a member of a small genus of Athropods, weaving webs, laying eggs, and generally built like centipedes. Mostly only dangerous to the ability to get a full night's sleep.
