[X] Allow Tethia to try and negotiate
To Shield the World (Warhammer High Elf Mage Quest)
- Thread starter Voikirium
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[x] Allow Tethia to try and negotiate
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- United States
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[X] Allow Tethia to try and negotiate
[X] Allow Tethia to try and negotiate
[X] Allow Tethia to try and negotiate
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Allow Tethia to try and negotiate
- Location
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[X] Allow Tethia to try and negotiate
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Voikirium
SV's Estalia Guy
- Location
- Ruritania Illinois
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So uh, I wanted to let you know update's going to be up I'm shooting for Tuesday.
Also:
Sword of the Ways
Wind: Ulgu
Comprehension: Mystic/Other
Effect: A blade forms made of Ulgu, the blade that brings confusion to certainty and questions to fate, allowing it to sever both the bounds of surety and the veil of destiny, carving through it like glass. As a potent and terrible spell, those who learn it are few and they are eager to ensure it does not spread and on that account alone, those who cast it are invariably questioned by relevant authorities: The Shadow Weavers of Ulthuan, for instance, are quite fond of it, for all it is of Mysticism and not their preferred Elementalism.
Also:
I figure I should provide an example, don't know if I did earlier but eh:
Sword of the Ways
Wind: Ulgu
Comprehension: Mystic/Other
Effect: A blade forms made of Ulgu, the blade that brings confusion to certainty and questions to fate, allowing it to sever both the bounds of surety and the veil of destiny, carving through it like glass. As a potent and terrible spell, those who learn it are few and they are eager to ensure it does not spread and on that account alone, those who cast it are invariably questioned by relevant authorities: The Shadow Weavers of Ulthuan, for instance, are quite fond of it, for all it is of Mysticism and not their preferred Elementalism.
Last edited:
Voikirium
SV's Estalia Guy
- Location
- Ruritania Illinois
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Kill Stuff Dead, even if it probably/definitely shouldn't die.
Not "Absolutely Unweave Daemons" tier or whatever but pretty dead. Even if they have wardsaves or whatever for protection. Even if not so protected, big sword, good for slaying.
Take your time. No need to rush.
Priestesses Speaking
Voikirium
SV's Estalia Guy
- Location
- Ruritania Illinois
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Priestesses Speaking
Allow, indeed. What are you going to do, try and tell the princess of Chrace leading her army she can't negotiate what's to be done with it?
Something about this heaven hated peninsula enflames the worst portions of your instinct. Balance, balance necessary to the world, to your soul, seems to flee you any time you don't keep a grasp on it here, where the Winds of Magic buck and bray like a wild stallion, rather than constrained by the more or less gravity of the Great Vortex the eight becoming one are allowed to play merry games along your mind. The control you need, the control of your passions, you must grasp it, and hard, and now.
Fortunately, there is a weight greater than the Winds could ever be.
You look to the Ha-the dwa--to Hadra. "I will be brief. This is Tethia, Princess of Chrace. A friend to me and mine, and the cause that brings this army out. Our leader, our commander. She will negotiate with you. I must... I must meditate."
You may not like the dwarfs, but you dislike letting any of the idiotic godheads drag sticky fingers through the darker recesses of your mind even less. In Ulthuan it is quite one thing; but to be on guard against the influence the Enemy may have here is only good sense. Vice versa, of course, should a slave to darkness ever end up on Ulthuan and end up testing themselves against the influence of Cadai and Cytherai, of course.
You nod slightly and back away, moving off by yourself, to keep your counsel for a time. You heard muttering from the Dwarfs as they you do, and even the hefting of weapons and the testing of crossbows though that is followed soon after by the sounds of heads hitting helmets. "We've enough woes in the moment, why try you to add more?"
Ha, and they said studying Khazalid in the tower would be useless. The grammar might be burned right to hell, but it's not the hardest thing in the world to understand.
You walk a few dozen yards away, disappearing into the shadowy boughs: far enough that you have some slight privacy, near enough that the sound of you tossing around fire balls will let anybody know there's trouble afoot if trouble should, indeed, be afoot. The clearing itself is a relatively mundane place, only just eight mounds of red rock, like dried mud perhaps, splitting the snow, all surrounded by pine trees the shade of river water. It's unusual, actual, that somewhere so far north is so mundane, and the bit of you that knows Loec in particular is keenly aware of the possibility of a trick.
Of course, there may not be a trick. In Ulthuan, most of the lands are also imbued with magic, imbued enough for Dragons to live and lions to hunt and phoenixes to roost and yet there are still cedar orchards as natural moth repellents or to be cultivated to relax the mind and prepare for the study of Ghyran. Why should Norsca be free of any such thing? Saturated in magic, yes, but not supersaturated.
On the other hand, if it is a trick, perhaps part of the trick is convincing the wise, who should know many ends, to fear that something untoward should come to pass and make an ass of themself in that way, bind them in inaction, in sloth.
Looking at the rocks, fair is as fair does, they are positioned in such a way as to be (very roughly) equidistant. The work of the Old Ones? The work of Magic? The work of Chaos? The work of the Gods? The work of natural forces that your mind attempts to pin to higher things because that makes a better story? Who can say?
Only one way to find out.
You sit down, cross legged, at the center point of that equidistant bunch of stones and pay attention to the magic. For too long you've been trying to be a wizard; for too long, you've forgotten the Wild Wind that sustains you. Yes, one may see it in many places and only a fool ignores its possibility in the orchard, the mound, the hive; but it is good, for the soul and for the mind to go where it is strongest. The gods are all connected to this, the wild world: Some are obvious, Kurnous the Hunter, Isha the Harvester, Ladrielle of the Mists, but all have their touch upon nature.
Words flow from you like silvery, misty water from a fresh spring as you pray to each in their guise as the patrons of nature and protectors of the world of beasts.
Asuryan, Friend of the Dragon, Lord of the Eagles. By His touch and His Edict your people were bound together, a binding so tight that even the treachery of the Druchii, of the so-called Sword of the World, cannot break it. More reservedly, He is touched by the Phoenix and yes, by the Eagle, by Talin. For He is the Thunder-Cracker, the Just, and the Holder of Balance and He can no more abide an imbalance in the Circle of Life that moves you all than He can any other imbalance.
Hoeth, The Good Steward. He passes on restraint, wisdom, and good practice to the farmer, different and yet interwoven with the practices of Isha the merciful: there is a reason all of his students also learn the benefices of Isha as young academics, and it is not merely for the benefit of having such bountiful healers. Broader theorems, broader laws, perhaps, are the best place to contextualize Him in the realm of nature, where Isha offers the ability to survive it: If She offers the wisdom to know that geese will migrate and how to make use of it, then He offers the wisdom to know why.
Vaul, The Inspired. His is a more tenuous connection than most, but it certainly is there: for one, it was Vaul's work that allowed you all to shape the Dragon dens, the Lion bits, the Phoenix roosts, that allow you to hold the beasts. And in turn, their forms, their aesthetic, their shape inspires His craft: How many blades hilted with the head of a lion, how many shields shaped like the form of a phoenix, how many suits of armor wrought with dragon fire?
Loec of the Night. How should the owl, the bat, the wolverine survive if the Cunning One had not set about weaving the blanket of night and set it in the sky to blanket the bright light of the sun? And what of the lion, the axolotl, the peregrine if He had not been convinced to relent, if the Creator had not convinced Him that even in the darkest night, sparks of light must endure, and the darkness must end? If He had not burned His own veil and set His own great pyramid ablaze to act as the spark of the sun?
Lileath, the Maiden, Lileath wife of Asuryan. She who set the Moon in the sky and allowed the tides that keep the world watered and fed, She who protects the young, She patron of wild horses, She the lord of Cindermane. All that is familial, all that is the pack, all that is cooperation in the great web of life is, if not Her creation, favored by Her.
It all flows back to nature. It all flows back to the web, a great flowing connection of all things that swim and walk and fly in the world. All drinks, all eats, all grows in a great, balanced, cycle as written in the words of Asuryan.
Perhaps the greatest sign of the daemon's evil is that they upset the cycle. They live and yet do not eat, they live and yet do not drink, they live and yet do not grow. They linger, a cancer both spiritual and physical, expanding and taking, choking out the possibilities of all life not like them, of all mortal souls not like them, of all things not like them. There are...entities, of a similar nature, of course, less repugnant to the senses, born of the Aethyr and yet of a mind disinclined to such odious behavior: The Incarnate Elementals may be dangerous but even they at their most natural are closer in nature to a primal force of nature that happens to have opinions than they are to the malevolent, primordial, walking, talking cancer that is a daemon.
Or perhaps you simply have more tolerance for that which saves elvish lives on occasion than you do for that which only takes and takes and takes. Summoning the Horned Man had saved Tor Yvresse from the Druchii, summoning the Charred One had broken the raiders outside of Tor Gard, the Coiled Serpents allowed Tethlis to land on Naggaroth. Straddling the line between thought and force, they had their role to play in any environment interlaced with the Winds of Magic.
The Daemons? Aberrant. Not simply thought, but unhealthy thoughts, unbalanced thoughts, made manifest and allowed to poison life and nature around them. Not merely courage but insane, wildman fury. Not merely desire but all consuming obsession. Not merely sorrow but wallowing in despair. Not merely knowledge but arrogance. Not merely self-comprehension but self-loathing. Not merely leadership but tyranny of the worst sort.
Distantly you hear the words being bandied about by both Tethia and Hadra getting a bit louder and a bit quicker, more animated.
And then there are the servants of the Cadai and the Cytharai themselves. The Arcane Phoenixes, the Bloodwrack Medusae, the Hounds of Orion, different from the Daemons in that they are variably, at base, physical, you could walk into their dens (if you have a death wish, a very painful death wish, and sufficient treats respectively) but if you think the influence of their gods does not seep into the stone and connect Aethyr and physicality in those places, making one the echo of the other, you're a shoddy wizard ignorant of the effects of the gods upon the magic you cast, blinded by facile thoughts of independence as though it matters in comparison to the sublime.
And of course, even Atharti, Atharti Euhedonia, is infinitely to be more respected than the forces of Chaos. At the least She may be satiated by a warm meal and a cool pillow, which would be...insufficient, to say the least, for Her competition.
Or perhaps you're simply a hypocrite, who'd tolerate a damned Troll Hag in Tor Enthlui as long as you could steal some magic from her for your own devices as long as she looked different enough and kept her worst behavior confined to those you didn't like.
As though drawn by your meditations and prayers, you hear them, you see them, flowing around. Beasts, common beasts, the bird and bear and beaver and dog and elk, they all gather around the stones, seeming to be drawn to the Ghur that flows from your soul and from the gods themselves to you.
Different bands gather around different stones, animals landing on the different rocks, which begin to faintly thum themseves with energies of intermingled Ghur and Other, combinations of the Winds entire that distantly draw the mind to the Cadai. The clearest, to you at least, is a particularly potent form of Qhaysh that screams of the facet of Asuryan you have found in your abandoned temple, a thing of flickering sky blue studded with stars of the other seven Winds that cracks with lightning and the screams of birds. The others are less familiar to you, but you can make an educated guess, of course. You could try and figure out who is linked to the other stones, or you could simply focus on the king of the gods.
[] The rock of Asuryan
[] The other rocks
--
Moratorium until .
[X] Allow Tethia to try and negotiate
Allow, indeed. What are you going to do, try and tell the princess of Chrace leading her army she can't negotiate what's to be done with it?
Something about this heaven hated peninsula enflames the worst portions of your instinct. Balance, balance necessary to the world, to your soul, seems to flee you any time you don't keep a grasp on it here, where the Winds of Magic buck and bray like a wild stallion, rather than constrained by the more or less gravity of the Great Vortex the eight becoming one are allowed to play merry games along your mind. The control you need, the control of your passions, you must grasp it, and hard, and now.
Fortunately, there is a weight greater than the Winds could ever be.
You look to the Ha-the dwa--to Hadra. "I will be brief. This is Tethia, Princess of Chrace. A friend to me and mine, and the cause that brings this army out. Our leader, our commander. She will negotiate with you. I must... I must meditate."
You may not like the dwarfs, but you dislike letting any of the idiotic godheads drag sticky fingers through the darker recesses of your mind even less. In Ulthuan it is quite one thing; but to be on guard against the influence the Enemy may have here is only good sense. Vice versa, of course, should a slave to darkness ever end up on Ulthuan and end up testing themselves against the influence of Cadai and Cytherai, of course.
You nod slightly and back away, moving off by yourself, to keep your counsel for a time. You heard muttering from the Dwarfs as they you do, and even the hefting of weapons and the testing of crossbows though that is followed soon after by the sounds of heads hitting helmets. "We've enough woes in the moment, why try you to add more?"
Ha, and they said studying Khazalid in the tower would be useless. The grammar might be burned right to hell, but it's not the hardest thing in the world to understand.
You walk a few dozen yards away, disappearing into the shadowy boughs: far enough that you have some slight privacy, near enough that the sound of you tossing around fire balls will let anybody know there's trouble afoot if trouble should, indeed, be afoot. The clearing itself is a relatively mundane place, only just eight mounds of red rock, like dried mud perhaps, splitting the snow, all surrounded by pine trees the shade of river water. It's unusual, actual, that somewhere so far north is so mundane, and the bit of you that knows Loec in particular is keenly aware of the possibility of a trick.
Of course, there may not be a trick. In Ulthuan, most of the lands are also imbued with magic, imbued enough for Dragons to live and lions to hunt and phoenixes to roost and yet there are still cedar orchards as natural moth repellents or to be cultivated to relax the mind and prepare for the study of Ghyran. Why should Norsca be free of any such thing? Saturated in magic, yes, but not supersaturated.
On the other hand, if it is a trick, perhaps part of the trick is convincing the wise, who should know many ends, to fear that something untoward should come to pass and make an ass of themself in that way, bind them in inaction, in sloth.
Looking at the rocks, fair is as fair does, they are positioned in such a way as to be (very roughly) equidistant. The work of the Old Ones? The work of Magic? The work of Chaos? The work of the Gods? The work of natural forces that your mind attempts to pin to higher things because that makes a better story? Who can say?
Only one way to find out.
You sit down, cross legged, at the center point of that equidistant bunch of stones and pay attention to the magic. For too long you've been trying to be a wizard; for too long, you've forgotten the Wild Wind that sustains you. Yes, one may see it in many places and only a fool ignores its possibility in the orchard, the mound, the hive; but it is good, for the soul and for the mind to go where it is strongest. The gods are all connected to this, the wild world: Some are obvious, Kurnous the Hunter, Isha the Harvester, Ladrielle of the Mists, but all have their touch upon nature.
Words flow from you like silvery, misty water from a fresh spring as you pray to each in their guise as the patrons of nature and protectors of the world of beasts.
Asuryan, Friend of the Dragon, Lord of the Eagles. By His touch and His Edict your people were bound together, a binding so tight that even the treachery of the Druchii, of the so-called Sword of the World, cannot break it. More reservedly, He is touched by the Phoenix and yes, by the Eagle, by Talin. For He is the Thunder-Cracker, the Just, and the Holder of Balance and He can no more abide an imbalance in the Circle of Life that moves you all than He can any other imbalance.
Hoeth, The Good Steward. He passes on restraint, wisdom, and good practice to the farmer, different and yet interwoven with the practices of Isha the merciful: there is a reason all of his students also learn the benefices of Isha as young academics, and it is not merely for the benefit of having such bountiful healers. Broader theorems, broader laws, perhaps, are the best place to contextualize Him in the realm of nature, where Isha offers the ability to survive it: If She offers the wisdom to know that geese will migrate and how to make use of it, then He offers the wisdom to know why.
Vaul, The Inspired. His is a more tenuous connection than most, but it certainly is there: for one, it was Vaul's work that allowed you all to shape the Dragon dens, the Lion bits, the Phoenix roosts, that allow you to hold the beasts. And in turn, their forms, their aesthetic, their shape inspires His craft: How many blades hilted with the head of a lion, how many shields shaped like the form of a phoenix, how many suits of armor wrought with dragon fire?
Loec of the Night. How should the owl, the bat, the wolverine survive if the Cunning One had not set about weaving the blanket of night and set it in the sky to blanket the bright light of the sun? And what of the lion, the axolotl, the peregrine if He had not been convinced to relent, if the Creator had not convinced Him that even in the darkest night, sparks of light must endure, and the darkness must end? If He had not burned His own veil and set His own great pyramid ablaze to act as the spark of the sun?
Lileath, the Maiden, Lileath wife of Asuryan. She who set the Moon in the sky and allowed the tides that keep the world watered and fed, She who protects the young, She patron of wild horses, She the lord of Cindermane. All that is familial, all that is the pack, all that is cooperation in the great web of life is, if not Her creation, favored by Her.
It all flows back to nature. It all flows back to the web, a great flowing connection of all things that swim and walk and fly in the world. All drinks, all eats, all grows in a great, balanced, cycle as written in the words of Asuryan.
Perhaps the greatest sign of the daemon's evil is that they upset the cycle. They live and yet do not eat, they live and yet do not drink, they live and yet do not grow. They linger, a cancer both spiritual and physical, expanding and taking, choking out the possibilities of all life not like them, of all mortal souls not like them, of all things not like them. There are...entities, of a similar nature, of course, less repugnant to the senses, born of the Aethyr and yet of a mind disinclined to such odious behavior: The Incarnate Elementals may be dangerous but even they at their most natural are closer in nature to a primal force of nature that happens to have opinions than they are to the malevolent, primordial, walking, talking cancer that is a daemon.
Or perhaps you simply have more tolerance for that which saves elvish lives on occasion than you do for that which only takes and takes and takes. Summoning the Horned Man had saved Tor Yvresse from the Druchii, summoning the Charred One had broken the raiders outside of Tor Gard, the Coiled Serpents allowed Tethlis to land on Naggaroth. Straddling the line between thought and force, they had their role to play in any environment interlaced with the Winds of Magic.
The Daemons? Aberrant. Not simply thought, but unhealthy thoughts, unbalanced thoughts, made manifest and allowed to poison life and nature around them. Not merely courage but insane, wildman fury. Not merely desire but all consuming obsession. Not merely sorrow but wallowing in despair. Not merely knowledge but arrogance. Not merely self-comprehension but self-loathing. Not merely leadership but tyranny of the worst sort.
Distantly you hear the words being bandied about by both Tethia and Hadra getting a bit louder and a bit quicker, more animated.
And then there are the servants of the Cadai and the Cytharai themselves. The Arcane Phoenixes, the Bloodwrack Medusae, the Hounds of Orion, different from the Daemons in that they are variably, at base, physical, you could walk into their dens (if you have a death wish, a very painful death wish, and sufficient treats respectively) but if you think the influence of their gods does not seep into the stone and connect Aethyr and physicality in those places, making one the echo of the other, you're a shoddy wizard ignorant of the effects of the gods upon the magic you cast, blinded by facile thoughts of independence as though it matters in comparison to the sublime.
And of course, even Atharti, Atharti Euhedonia, is infinitely to be more respected than the forces of Chaos. At the least She may be satiated by a warm meal and a cool pillow, which would be...insufficient, to say the least, for Her competition.
Or perhaps you're simply a hypocrite, who'd tolerate a damned Troll Hag in Tor Enthlui as long as you could steal some magic from her for your own devices as long as she looked different enough and kept her worst behavior confined to those you didn't like.
As though drawn by your meditations and prayers, you hear them, you see them, flowing around. Beasts, common beasts, the bird and bear and beaver and dog and elk, they all gather around the stones, seeming to be drawn to the Ghur that flows from your soul and from the gods themselves to you.
Different bands gather around different stones, animals landing on the different rocks, which begin to faintly thum themseves with energies of intermingled Ghur and Other, combinations of the Winds entire that distantly draw the mind to the Cadai. The clearest, to you at least, is a particularly potent form of Qhaysh that screams of the facet of Asuryan you have found in your abandoned temple, a thing of flickering sky blue studded with stars of the other seven Winds that cracks with lightning and the screams of birds. The others are less familiar to you, but you can make an educated guess, of course. You could try and figure out who is linked to the other stones, or you could simply focus on the king of the gods.
[] The rock of Asuryan
[] The other rocks
--
Moratorium until .
Last edited:
- Location
- Alice Springs, Australia
Amazing
Voikirium
SV's Estalia Guy
- Location
- Ruritania Illinois
- Pronouns
- He/Him
What father keeps dangerous dogs around his kids?
A Proud Dog Dad.What father keeps dangerous dogs around his kids?
- Pronouns
- sapper
another great update.
some spelling corrections:
- The Lion den, I think you mean? That is what a lion's home is generally called in our world. Lair is sometimes used as well. Pride is the term for their social groups, I believe. Might be different for White Lions's of Chrace though, I'm uncertain
some spelling corrections:
familiar
- allowed you all to shape
- The Lion den, I think you mean? That is what a lion's home is generally called in our world. Lair is sometimes used as well. Pride is the term for their social groups, I believe. Might be different for White Lions's of Chrace though, I'm uncertain
Last edited:
Voikirium
SV's Estalia Guy
- Location
- Ruritania Illinois
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Fixed, thanks. Bits is correct though (or correct enough anyway), like a horse bit.
- Location
- alphen aan den rijn
Uhm kind of want to check other rocks. King is saver choice.
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