Off-topic at this point probably but are Ulric and Olric the same entity in this version of Malus or are they separate beings due to cultural differences between Norscans and Imperials? Hopefully, Olric(Ulric?) isn't dead due to the mountain switch, having a local deity who is hopefully amenable to working together against the assholes from the North would be helpful.
The Rim and the Hammer (Exalted/Warhammer Quest)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Almost certainly Ulric, so not a problem. But we are a long way from dealing with gods of concepts.
Been looking at Martial Arts we could try, and get. Dagger Wind Style would be ideal, but it is beyond rare as it requires wings to learns, so only the Dragon Kings really know it. We are not going to be able to just summon some demon or elemental that knows it easily. Hurricane Fist Style is a decent backup style, but not as good for us overall.
Update for this will be tomorrow. I did two updates for Green Flame Rising today because were getting close to a major vote and I did not want to leave it on a cliffhanger.
Good night guys.
Good night guys.
OK, looks like are are going to attempt communication.
Interlude 2: Sign of the Exile
Sign of the Exile
Carrier of Incandescent Truths from the Silver Mountain knew many things that were hidden from the great and the mighty, from the Chosen of the Dragons whose eye was ever upon the highest of peaks without needing to follow the trail. She knew that as every pebble on that path had its place so too it had its spirit, its pride and its small wisdom, so she was not surprised to be called to deal with the spirit that clung to the wing of a traveler as a mere bur. What she was a touch surprised by was the tale of the ambush, again the sickness that haunted these lands. Her dreams had been filled with it, with hollow skulls made the abode of pallid maggots, with wounds that did not heal and could not be mended, with sickness of the mind that dragged all thoughts to ruin. This wasn't natural, more voracious than just humble scavengers that returned the weary flesh to the embrace of Gaia, more perilous than even the parasites that blindly windowed the strong from the weak and the lucky from the ill fortuned. This was a sickness from which there could be no cure, this she knew as well as she knew the faces of her grandchildren.
Yet something had survived it, something now bound in a dome of crystal circled in iron and silver and brass and one final time in imperishable ornichalum of which none in all of Sezekan could hope to forge. If the the mote of green had been even a little larger it simply would not have fit inside the circles at all. What was now one of the most powerful binding circles in the whole city had once been little more than a toy for some wealthy bureaucrat, a way to bind one of the tempestuous Fire Butterflies into a reading light, a show of middling artistry and good taste as far as Sezekan-that-Was went. Sometimes Carrie thought Sezekan-that-Was did not have a lick of common sense, which may have just been the reason why it fell, not that this was a thought she would share with any of her colleagues.
"So..." she twirled a cold iron talisman in her hand in a way that she had been assured by many sources, some of them even mildly trustworthy, looked menacing to lesser spirits. "I heard you do not like being drowned, from the looks of things you do not like fire either." It did look like a bur so that was probably a good guess even for a wyld-touched thing. "If you don't want to be meeting either now would be the time to start talking, and if I like what I hear then maybe we can help you. That which you claim to fear we despise and would see undone."
"You can't kill him. He... he's bigger than the biggest oak, crueler than the stranglevine, poison, death and ruin. Always spreading, always killing."
"Mountains are vast, yet they can be delved through, seas are trackless yet they can be bridged, flame is all consuming yet it can be quenched, the wind endless flowing yet it can be directed."
The sutra was old, Carrie was not even sure whence it had come from, it was a thing taught to children, more prod to ambition than prayer to salvation, for it was said that those who took it to heart would be chosen of Mela. For her part the Envoy to the High Ones did not believe it, at least not in the detail, but in essence... aye she believed that the order of the world would bind the madness beyond, she believed that any storm beyond the dome would still sooner or later and no matter what ruin it left behind it would be but the foundation of a new house for the people to build.
Though the little spirit bouncing around in the crystal dome did not have eyes with which to blink at her she could sense the bewilderment in its haphazard dance as if it could not quite believe her words or her tone.
"You can't... you can't believe that!"
Carrie did not say anything, she just waited for the answer that had been demanded, more words would not more trust beget as her grandmother used to say.
Result 107 (Success)
So as she had hoped the spirit tells its tale and the tale of those mortals who, as it most often the case, had brought it to this lands. Once it had been a Polevoi a spirit of the fields in a village upon the wide barren plains of the north tilled by the hardy but respectful folk of Ungalya. Though winters were harsh and the crops often watered with human blood it was a fair enough existence until a company of men ahorse had come to the village one misty eve and from among them one proclaimed himself boyar. By the sword he demanded that seven parts in ten of the bounty of the land be given to him, but he did not respect the land, not seven parts in ten, not one part in ten even and he asked of the people of Ungalya that they bow their heads and look ever into the dirt that was by his words not even theirs and that they should never gazes into his eyes with challenge.
It was not long before the blood of the boyar fed the fields, but the people knew they could not linger here lest other riders come and so with great sorrow they hitched their beasts to what wagons they had or could make and with all their meager treasures headed north, bearing with them the shrines of their gods and a small pooch of the land the Polevoi had tended to over the long years.
Knowing that without mortals to break the earth the weeds would return then the roots and shrubs and finally the forests which had held dominion along the river before the Ungol had come the spirit had gone with them on a journey long and perilous, battling white furred beasts that walked like men and giants that could heal from all but the touch of flame. At last came they to a place that seemed to have good water and fair grazing and they called it Nevungalya and there they settled working again the rites and the prayers of their ancestors.
Alas on the long journey the old hetman had perished and the new one his nephew had fallen into despair which gnawed and gnawed at him, body and heart until at last with the death of his wife and daughter it flowered into a deadly infection of the spirit. Alas for the people that he had found a new god, a black choking thing that lived in the putrid exhalations of the earth called Burgoz the Black Smoke, slave of the servants of the servants of Grandfather Plague.
This was the thing, the little spirit claimed that had plucked it in its dark hand and used it as bait to trap Willing Student of the Unseen Signs. Yet as it choked in the sorrow of its own recollection it also revealed one other thing.
"Once all their hearts are turned to rot so too will I be. I don't know how much longer I have."
Reward: Information about exiled Ungols and the Nurgle worship that has started among them, Diplomacy and Martial options unlocked
OOC: No vote this time around since it is going to take a full turn action to do anything about this of you guys so choose.
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So a Nurgle worshiper is afoot.
Sir_Travelsalot
Never wakes up tired.
- Location
- At Home
There's Dragon-blooded Charms that can be used for inflicting Holy damage, for which Chaos would probably be close enough to Creatures of Darkness to count. There's also the possibility of Sezekan's populace having people with the Priest merit, which would let them beseech various gods to intervene. Given that Mice of the Sun have appeared, there's decent odds that UCS (or the various gods filling in for him while he's in the middle of the Games of Divinity) can hear us and respond from where we are.
The Priest method has the benefit that it doesn't even require Enlightened Mortals to make use of, let alone Dragon-blooded.
Honestly best to try diplomacy we cannot afford a to fight Nurgle's worshipers. From helping for a alliance against him, to just hitting him with the DragonBlood version of know the souls price.
- Location
- Georgia
huh, that's some EU level taxes
Nice update otherwise. That nurgle shit needs to stop, it has a nasty habit of infecting even uncorrupted - human, animal and land itself. Even quite a few locals would be against nurgle here. Need see what's the options for the next turn fiirst tho.
Keep in mind this is Norsca worshiping Nurgle is not a problem, to the locals.
Well yes, but these are not locals, the paradigm is more cultist than legitimate shaman with the normal consequences thereof.
Fair point best to play up the hostile outsider angle then.
- Location
- Georgia
Oh it's not like in Empire - sure. But if not forced locals don't really like him either. Of course Nurgle doesn't give a fuck and just infects everyone. A hermit Shaman of nurgle is no problem for locals, but when people not a previous crow devoted suddenly starting to rot is.
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That is not entirely true, there are faces of Nurgle which are worshiped as say a fertility god, or even a healer god. He does at the very least give you the endurance to outlast the wound or sickness. There are probably whole tribes of Norscans who worship Daemon Princes of Norsca as honored ancestors. That said among the four I would say that Nurgle probably has the weakest place among the tribes . Khorne appeals to warriors, Tzeench to scholars and magicians and Slaanesh to leaders broadly. Nurgle is more a god of the downtrodden masses when one is being accurate to something like his core nature and to the Norscan Ethos if you are downtridden you already did something wrong.
Also writing has begun
- Location
- Georgia
fertility god - definitely. There is some wild shit going on Slaaneshi/Nurgle borders
Interlude 3: Elemental Matters
Elemental Matters
To the uninitiated, the ill educated all the works of the Chosen, all efforts that are as much of the soul as they are of soul as they are of the body seem as 'magic', they are of the unseen and unknowable. In the hour of their Second Breath all Chosen learn that this is folly, that a charm which conjures fire is no different from a exhalation of warm breath and one which conjures a windstorm bears a kinship to the motion of a lazy fan. Having so drawn back the veil most are content and to not seek the next veil and the next, even those who turn their hand to the Procedures of Creation which most call simply Thaumaturgy do so in a simple instrumental manner, enhancing innate talents, empowering ancient artifice as the rain flowing through long delved channels turns the wheel of the mill grinding seconds minutes, hours and days.
It would be madness to seek delving one's own channel, unnatural some claim, dangerous and liable to lead to ruin. You had heard it all, from parents and from honored mentors, from peers and rivals alike. But what the fear of true sorcery is, you have found, is an understanding of new limits to replace those which the Chosen of Mela fly past in the moment of Exaltation .
Everyone' knows' that the Lawgivers had arts that you cannot match, their their craft is to yours as the glazed and fired urn of a master is to a child shaping a cup out of wet mud, but there is knowing and there is knowing, one that ripples on the surface of the mind and the other which pierces the soul. That is the price of sorcery and that is the beginning of its wonder, for that which cannot be simply willed into being or by a weaving of Essence manifested can still be contemplated and by subtle persuasion and cunning threats bargained for.
The flames of Gaia may not burn as pure nor yet as deadly as the sun, but they burn still in Sezekan and in this world also, you feel it in the earth, you taste it in the water, you hear it rustling among the trees, you see it in the dance of flames, you smell it in the air, just as there are gods in this realm, strange and tainted so too are the elementals, wild and untamed, knowing not the mandate of the Chosen.
No messenger will bear a stroll of summons through the Dragon Lines, summoning by vows imperishable the spirit to your command and yet you have no doubt that they will hear for the words of the spell speak of the nature of all five elements: Wood to grow and water to flow, fire to burn and earth to endure... air most familiar of all to freely blow.
Perhaps those faint of heart might say that feeling the strangeness of this realm one should turn back... but the faint of heart are rarely sorcerers.
What Element do you invoke seeing out a spymaster for your city?
[] Earth, enduring and invested with the slow wisdom at the roots of the world
[] Fire, pyre of destruction and purification, well shall it serve you to burn away the taint it might find
[] Water, swirling, flowing serene clarity and murky depths alike, that which drowns and which reveals, liar's greatest friend and foe
[] Wood, growing strong and ever-changing, what but life would know the living?
[] Air, to you most dear, most familiar and fair, far it sees and far it travels ware only that it not miss that which is nearest to hand
OOC: I was going to give you guys plates from Scrolls of Glorious Divinity, things like 'the Hunter' or the 'Courtesan', but the thing is that would not fit on two levels, one the one hand you are not an Old Realm or even a dynast sorcerer with access to their formalized understanding of elemental templates and on the other you are not even in Creation. So pick an element of three and we will see by the rolls what sort of spy you get.
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K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
[X] Fire, pyre of destruction and purification, well shall it serve you to burn away the taint it might find
Sir_Travelsalot
Never wakes up tired.
- Location
- At Home
[X] Water swirling, flowing serene clarity and murky depths alike, that which drowns and which reveals, liar's greatest friend and foe
- Location
- France
[X] Earth, enduring and invested with the slow wisdom at the roots of the world
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Water swirling, flowing serene clarity and murky depths alike, that which drowns and which reveals, liar's greatest friend and foe
