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The Winds and the Mage

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Sooo, my distance job training is catching up to me, I was hoping to finish up next chapter today or tommorrow but I have a sizable assignement to do, and while it doesn't technically have a deadline anytime soon, I'd like to finish up with it ASAP. I'll try and finish that up today and tomorrow so I can go back to fun writing... Which means I'm hoping for a chapter thursday or friday.
 
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Turn 2-1
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Nope, they're barely dressed at all.
    [X] Green
    [X] Plan: Eager Novice
    -[X] Explore Tobaro
    --[x] Harbour & Porto District XH
    -[x]Learning a language (2 actions) H
    --[x] Estalian
    -[x]Attempt to learn to channel Azyr X[M]
    -[X]Studying the complex web that is Tilea's flow of goods (stewardship) H


    "First thing first, Casandora, those are Magisters Egon and Reinhild Prager," your Master tells you, indicating first the Amber, then the Jade Wizard. Now that you are looking at them more closely, those two are obviously siblings, which makes their membership in two different Colleges surprising. The Jade College is known for the families within it, some of which have been part of the College since its creation. They both sport greying blond hair, a telling sign of Norscan descent, but that's a common trait in Nordland and many coastal towns. But this isn't really what you want to speak about right now.

    "Happy to meet you, Magisters," you say, wondering why there are so many Magisters in a Tilean City-State. "I wasn't expecting to meet more Wizards from the Colleges in Tobaro."

    "The Tobaro Branch College for Seaborne Magic Research's existence is a secret to most of the Empire," your Master explains.

    "And its name is a damn lie on top of that," Magister Grey adds. You're pretty sure she's smiling?

    "Apologies, Magisters," you say with a sweet, if forced, smile. "But while I would very much like to come back to that later, I would like to know why I had to be incapacitated. It must've taken at least two more weeks for us to go up the River of Echoes, down the Cristallo River, and through the Tilean sea, correct?"

    "A bit less," your Master corrects. "Ethel accelerated our travel as long as we were on land. As for why you needed to be put to sleep..." She trails off, glancing at Magister Prager- the Jade one.

    "The River of Echoes was saturated with Dhar," she explains. "As an Apprentice, the exercises you've been taught and are applying subconsciously allow your soul to absorb the Winds. Sooner or later, you will learn to take in Azyr alone, especially if you get an Arcane Mark. But Ethel correctly determined that letting you take in Dhar at the rate you were had a chance of having permanent consequences. Frankly, even the little you were exposed to might have left a stain on your soul. Knocking you out meant stopping you from taking it in, and hurrying out and to me meant giving you the best chance of preventing damages. If you had developed a minor mutation, I might have had a chance of stopping it by amputating and regenerating the lesion."

    Well, isn't that delightful? "I'm assuming the River of Echoes being saturated with Dhar is a recent development?" You ask your Master.

    "Yes. We know the reason, but I think it would be better to see if you can deduce it yourself," she says while tussling your hair affectionately. "Would you mind humoring your old teacher? I have a few hints for you, and it would give you something to do while your hands heal up."

    Now that wasn't fair. You just nodded and addressed the next pegasus in the room. "It might be a little personal, but...I heard the barge's captain calling you her great-great-aunt?"

    Magister Grey and both Magisters Prager glanced at each other and left the room with grins on their faces. You're quite sure you can hear them laughing outside, while your Master scowled.

    "I'm old, and they find it funny," she explains with a long-suffering sigh. "What do you know of the origins of the Celestial Order, Cass?"

    Well, you didn't expect a digression like this one. You hold back from frowning at the non-sequitur and answer the question, trusting that there's a point she's driving to. "As I understand it, we and the Bright Wizards were the orders with the least original members, and the sparsest pre-Teclis spellbooks, ma'am. What does it have to do with your family history?"

    "Everything," she answers. "The Petru clan is a Strigany family, and its members accounted for a third of the founding wizards of the Celestial Order."

    The word "Strigany" jogs your memory, and you groan. "That should have been obvious."

    The Strigany people, you now remember reading, were, a long time ago, refugees from the long-ruined Empire of Strygos, in the Southern Badlands, between what is now the Marshes of Madness and the Black Gulf. The country was founded by a mad wizard who was quietly replaced by Ushoran, the progenitor of the Strigoi vampires. From the stories they told, the mortal population of Strygos did not suffer under the vampiric nobility he proceeded to spawn... But the empire was ravaged by Waaaghs so great even said vampire nobility couldn't hold the country together. The survivors of the civilian population were mainly river-faring merchants who evacuated through the Black Gulf to what is now the Border Principalities, then slowly filtered into the Empire, where they were rapidly denounced as servants of Dark Forces by the Sigmarites and as a people not descended from the original tribes that constituted the Empire by the Ulricans. Witch Hunters still regularly raid their barge convoys in the hope of finding proof of sorcery, or worse, pacts with a Strigoi vampire.

    "I've never met anyone named Petru at the Celestial College," you observe.

    "I'm the only one who made it out of the Night of a Thousand Arcane Duels." She explains, her expression bitter. "We embraced the elemental aspect of Azyr that the elves taught us, as I once told you. My family was the vanguard of the College that day."

    Something's odd about this, you decide. "If the elves gave us the bones of elemental Azyr... Was the Petru clan's original contribution its conceptual aspect? Why did you give up on it?"

    "Shame, mostly." She answers. "The Petru clan brought many of the lesser divinatory spells to the College, as well as the foundations of a particular spell I'm sure you've heard of quite a lot, but we didn't properly invent any of them." She looks at you gravely. "this is a secret I'm not certain even the current Lord Magisters and the Magister Patriarch are aware of. You earned the right to hear this as my apprentice, and I trust you will not reveal it until you attain the rank of Magister and deem the time is right or the need urgent."

    Well, that gets your attention. If this is a secret your Master has kept for all her long, long life... You give her a solemn nod. Hers is not a trust you will break easily.

    "Witch hunters weren't always wrong about the Strygani's association with Strigoi vampires, you see. When the empire was dislocating under the Waaaghs, one of them paid for passage across the Black Gulf with a roll made of wooden plates covered in symbols, and notes about each symbol's signification he'd written himself when he was wherever he found it. After the Colleges became well-established, we investigated and concluded it was some sort of Cathayan spellbook. The original was destroyed during the Night, but I still have a copy. I initially came to Tilea to speak with any mercenary who would be able to craft a better translation, since we've been working on an incomplete translation from Cathayant to Strygan, then to Reikspiel, but I had no luck. I stuck around, though."

    Well then.

    A.N.
    No vote for this one, just a lot of reveals. Depending on how much length I can give to the rest, I might ask for more rolls. Sorry for the long wait !
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Btw, that "gun bigger than child" that Casandora was found with, it's Iron Hail Gun (which essentially "Cathayan blunderbuss")?
     
    barty said:
    But the empire was ravaged by Waaaghs so great even said vampire nobility couldn't hold the country together.
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    When in doubt, blame Neferata, the progenitor of the Lahmian bloodline and the woman who was behind the rise of the Vampires as a whole. She was very salty at the Strigoi for actually building an empire and make it prosper so she had it torn down through the Orcs out of spite. Along with cursing the Strigois to never be able to return to their former glory.

    Also I think you forgot to threadmark the chapter.
     
    Interesting. I hadn't thought of that, but it makes sense. The Strigani are inspired by the Romani people, and one cliché about them is that they read the palm of your hand.
     
    Talon TigerDino said:
    Long rifles are practically our birthright, it was foolish to reject gun lessons
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    Celestial Wind Long Rifles are our birthright apparently, so I seemingly have retroactive justification for the Magic Gun Project! :V

    barty said:
    The original was destroyed during the Night, but I still have a copy. I initially came to Tilea to speak with any mercenary who would be able to craft a better translation, since we've been working on an incomplete translation from Cathayant to Strygan, then to Reikspiel, but I had no luck. I stuck around, though."
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    I like the heavy implication of a Plot Thread for us to leverage our Polyglot and Photographic Memory traits to eventually accomplish the translation ourselves, assuming this never got sorted out between then and now.
     
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    • So... I have bad news.
    I don't know enough about warhammer fantasy to write a warhammer fantasy quest. That's the conclusion i got to when I tried writing the chapter about Cass miserably failing to understand what was going on with Tilean commerce. So far, every chapter took me twice as long to research on than it took me to write, and I'm not a quick writer. I made things worse by placing Cass in a cosmopolitan city where she has conceivable odds of meeting beings from about any major species of the warhammer fantasy world (except lizardmen and chaos dwarves, I guess?)
    So I've decided to go back to writing the pokemon quest I was on half a year ago. I'm sorry for the warhammer fans, but I just don't see a good way of continuing the winds and the mage.
     
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