To Shield the World (Warhammer High Elf Mage Quest)
- Thread starter Voikirium
- Start date
- Fantasy
Introducing Spell Proposals
Voikirium
SV's Estalia Guy
- Location
- Ruritania Illinois
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Now Introducing:
Spell Proposals!
To broaden the effective spell book and worth of foreign lore (And since if I keep waiting for you to actually finish your training as an Archmage or Loremaster I will be dead long before this can happen) I am now opening Spell Proposals, in this format:
Wind: Wind(s)/Dhar/Qhaysh
Comprehension: Mystic/Cardinal/Elemental/Other
Effect: Spell Effect
#Spell-Proposal
Spell Proposals!
To broaden the effective spell book and worth of foreign lore (And since if I keep waiting for you to actually finish your training as an Archmage or Loremaster I will be dead long before this can happen) I am now opening Spell Proposals, in this format:
Wind: Wind(s)/Dhar/Qhaysh
Comprehension: Mystic/Cardinal/Elemental/Other
Effect: Spell Effect
#Spell-Proposal
What about Conjure lasagna? With the Wind of Aqshy.
Majority votes rules. Time to leave the Asuryan's chosen alone.
First Contact
Voikirium
SV's Estalia Guy
- Location
- Ruritania Illinois
- Pronouns
- He/Him
First Contact
You roll about in the dirt, forcing yourself up, letting yourself get a good view of what's going on, trying to prop yourself up. The world is by turns both sluggish and quick, your broken right arm protesting any time you so much as move it, as the Haclad advances with great menace indeed. Her dragon scale, vibrant red and young, glimmers and shines with an inner light, the bright red catching the gold of the sun to become dancing fire, armor arrayed in mighty form.
The belt.
The belt is missing. That, you realize. The wood of the haft of her ax is indeed made from the flesh of Dryads, but there is something off about it, veins of what look like brown sap: but in examining it you find the faintest glimmers of Dhar, bleakest Dhar. The head of black Gromril is layered with precious jewels, seven of them socketed in gold with what must be Klinkarhun etched in it. The Runes, old Runes from your studying, burn on it in bright teal light like trapped fire that sizzles at your soul, a warning not to dare to so much as examine it.
If you raged at this shaman.
Then her face is thunderstruck, like a grim warning etched in mountain stone.
She slowly advances towards the shaman, the sunlight seeming to glitter and glisten around her ax, as though it rejects whatever evil the shaman sought to perpetrate.
Shaman Against Runesmith: 24+50 Vs Irrelevant
He lashes out with his spear and she, with bleak contempt, lashes out with her ax, the gromril biting through the wood and sending the head to land with a thud. A moment later she knocks him to the earth.
A third. She raises her ax.
And then with a scream of pure rage and malice and despair and fury and loss, she kills him.
Unless the forces of Chaos have figured out how to survive without their head, anyway.
She breathes hard once, twice, thrice, and roars her victory to the wind, letting it be carried through the forest that surrounds you. You hear the army of Ulthuan that followed you start marching quicker, in fact, the sound of hooves and the rolling of wheels as charioteers and cavalry pull up, driving their steeds as quickly as possible.
Then she turns to you, and it is the most disturbing possible thing.
For she is not...contemptuous. Not dismissive. Her face does not scrunch up like she just saw something foul, or like she stepped in something, the way you would expect the city-burners, the forest breakers, the slayers of the surrendered, the child killers to react upon seeing one of you. Her grip does not go white upon her ax, there is not tension in her shoulders, her teeth do not grit. She is not counting the insults (and what of the insults to you, the attempted genocide of the dragons, of the colonists, of the spirits, are you not allowed your anger), counting the ways she can repay them like some blithe barbarian.
Instead she seems concerned, the way you might be upon seeing someone wounded. Concerned and surprised and most disconcerting and worrying of all, happy, not in some sickly way that you suffer but that...that she may have someone to speak with. Shocked, deeply shocked at that, in the same way you might be to discover a black swan.
With little sloth she approaches Tethia even as you try to push yourself up, yelping, making the Scratch-Mage turn about as she hears you, confused and surprised even as you try to force your body to respond, to get back up. Magic slowly suffuses your form, in spite of her nature, rebelling, burning, seething as you remind it that it is a natural force and not a play thing for these creatures. Your arm mends, slowly but surely, you can feel the bones knitting back together by the Will of Isha and your own will.
You will not let her harm the one you lo--swear fealty to. Your blood ought spill on the forest floor before you allow that. So you wrap your hand around Deathclaw's hilt and use it to prop yourself on to one knee, face written in Ithilmar, defiant and sky and steel.
She speaks but it is no Khazalid you know, in one ear and out the other. She realizes the issue and taps a ring on her finger.
"Someone else lived?"
Stilted, overly formal, ancient Eltharin. The kind of thing your grandparents would have considered old-fashioned. More properly, "In spite of dark tidings, still hearts beat! By joy, let me see! One of the Zhuful, one of Caledor's Folk! Alone no longer!"
But it is Eltharin nevertheless. Your people live too long for the kind of absolute linguistic fragmentation that comes about for younger races to take place too easily and too completely. You would not try and use Tar-Eltharin among Druchii, of course, nor vice-versa, and the both of you are left confounded by the accents that colonists of Athel Loren have taken up in their conclusion; indeed there are portions of vocabulary the three of you would not share. But that is a matter of politics, more than anything else.
And if eaten by the Aethyr then spat back out in the Golden Age, you would understand.
"Yes, we live, in spite of your people's best efforts." You finally manage to stand up properly, your clothes still intact but stained and covered with mud and filth and worse. A little Aqshy and Hysh should go a long way in dealing with that problem, anyway.
Leaving you time to ponder about this newest surprise.
You think.
And you think.
And your mind races, even as she tries to understand what you've said.
Premise one: She did not call you Elgi, or Zhufaki, or knife-ears, or any of the other rote insults those short freaks have sharpened in centuries of hate. Rather instead, she called upon the oaths sworn between Caledor Dragontamer and Grimnir Ifulvar, Bitter Fire.
Premise two: She does not seem to bear the usual seething, seering, unholy contempt they cultivate like the booze they scarf down in that wretched heap Karaz-A-Karak, instead actually seeming to bear something resembling happiness, insofar as the murderers can feel happy when they're doing anything other than slaughtering another one of the ever-rarer wonders of the natural world.
Premise three: She has not tried to strip your magic away from you out of spite, has not drawn her own ax in response, and seems confused about what you mean as you mention the War of the Beard (Why not the War of Kor Vernath?), as though she has never learned about it and while the Dwarf education system, such that it is, is a shoddy, obscurantist-inclined excuse for early adopters to lord their power over apprentices at the best of times, not telling them about perhaps the most pivotal war in both your long histories that didn't involve the possible end of everything would be out of character, even for them.
...And long, long ago,
in snowy times long passed
did Prince Malekith, noble born,
and Grim Mantled Whitebeard
seek knowledge of north...
It is a story you all are taught as children. The failures of both Malekith and of The Whitebeard. How they sought to find the colonists and Karaks who lived there before the Great Incursion. How they were forced back under the weight of abominations, daemons and beastmen and the Fimir and worse. How in the end it was believed that they must have died, for none could survive in that place. And perhaps they did not look too hard for many reasons, among them that those Holds were established by renegades and near-renegades from the Runesmith Guild, which would have made them very unpopular to Thungni's own brother.
But no body was ever found. No shattered Karaks were ever reached. Not Drak. Not Ornsmotek. Not Ravnsvake. Not Dorden. Not a one. A few fortresses overrun, and the way itself shut by those self-same dwarfs; but not the scenes of battle, not the dead bodies, not the haunting remnants overrun by things that should not be.
Only just the arrogant presumption of a man so inclined to his own power that when Asuryan said no he still yet rebelled, and the Dwarf who would insure that nothing but the Grudge would endure among his people, a dragonslayer, a killer of the innocent.
It is a simple axiom practiced by the Cult of Hoeth, one you strive to let guide you even now:
When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
These are Norse Dwarfs, the descendants of those colonists who, by hook or by crook, have survived the many long centuries to reach this moment, to come to this place, to endure and survive if only out of raw naked spite. Surviving Storms of Magic, enduring raid and war and pillage and spoliation, in spite of the evils manifesting against them.
Speaking of Hoeth, you can only hope that He is willing to guide you in His wisdom as the army of elves and a seeming army of Dwarfs both enter the clearing at the same time, though with very different attitudes. Perversely you are made only more sure as Grungni's Sons enter the clearing that you are right: these are the remnants of the Norse Dwarfs, whatever that may be.
They lack guns, for one, instead all being armed with crossbows and throwing axes for their ranged assaults. Their armor is different as well, for one not a damned sign of the heraldry of any of the Holds south of Norsca, but many dragons and ravens and other signs of the lost holds of the Norse, as well as being aesthetically more inclined to horns upon their helmets, lined with many jewels and precious metals. They bear many more Runed pieces than any Throng of the south would by those scattered reports that reach you still in Ulthuan, entire units armed with burning axes and glinting hammers and shining armor, not all of it a masterwork but it hardly needs to be to make them a threat to the kind of shoddy, cold-beaten nonsense the Norscans were running around with.
And perhaps that leaves you an explanation for how the Norscans gained Dwarf goods in the first place. As low as your opinion of the Haclad might be, they would not have sold such to raiders like this: but been extorted at worst, or raided at best? Yes, that may well have served to at least allow the Norscans to arm their best with Dawi weaponry, a damn sight better than the usual shoddy garbage they would have had to try and use.
The spearmen have formed a shieldwall, presenting glimmering spear tips and hard wooden shields even as archers grab their arrows. Ythil and Tyrial and the mages they brought with them begin chanting and preparing spells of healing and abjuration to get you and Tethia back into the fight and force back the Haclad even as cavalry make themselves known, while your keen senses allow you to see the Shadow Warriors entering position around the trees, throwing knives and other weapons ready to plant themselves into weak points.
To their credit the Haclad, for all shock is written on their faces, react as well as can be expected, leveling crossbows and forming their own shieldwall, shorter and less aggressive but a dense knot of steel and gromril. Elites, more heavily armored, quickly rush to the Scratch-Mage's side, even as she herself seems somewhere between disturbed and confused.
You turn around, presenting your back to the Haclad (your grandmother would be so embarrassed), and raise a hand. "Calm! She is an ally, she has helped me and killed the shaman! Lower your arms! They are Norse Dwarfs, not the servants of Karaz-A-Karak!"
While your explicit position in the chain of command is unclear, romancing the boss is a good way to get some authority and so they do, lowering weapons even as the Haclad themselves seem split between confusion and concern. "Then our southern kin still live! But, why would the difference matter, zhuful?"
How to explain to someone that if this were but millennia ago, you would be honor-bound to kill her in the name of Hoeth as surely as she would be honor bound to kill you in the name of Thungni?
[] Be Honest. You will not enter into the grisly details, but she will know the truth. That there was a war between her southern kin and your people, a war they seek to continue in Athel Loren.
[] Be very honest. Let none say you are afraid to be painfully truthful: The Burning, The Shaving, The Murder. The Haclad will know all of it, and let the chips fall where they may.
--
??? Deed - Kinfinder: "Did you hear? The Chracians are trying to claim they located some lost Haclad civilization in Norsca!"
--
Moratorium for twenty-four hours.
[X] She was chosen by Asuryan. Let her go about her business
The belt.
The belt is missing. That, you realize. The wood of the haft of her ax is indeed made from the flesh of Dryads, but there is something off about it, veins of what look like brown sap: but in examining it you find the faintest glimmers of Dhar, bleakest Dhar. The head of black Gromril is layered with precious jewels, seven of them socketed in gold with what must be Klinkarhun etched in it. The Runes, old Runes from your studying, burn on it in bright teal light like trapped fire that sizzles at your soul, a warning not to dare to so much as examine it.
If you raged at this shaman.
Then her face is thunderstruck, like a grim warning etched in mountain stone.
She slowly advances towards the shaman, the sunlight seeming to glitter and glisten around her ax, as though it rejects whatever evil the shaman sought to perpetrate.
Shaman Against Runesmith: 24+50 Vs Irrelevant
He lashes out with his spear and she, with bleak contempt, lashes out with her ax, the gromril biting through the wood and sending the head to land with a thud. A moment later she knocks him to the earth.
A third. She raises her ax.
And then with a scream of pure rage and malice and despair and fury and loss, she kills him.
Unless the forces of Chaos have figured out how to survive without their head, anyway.
She breathes hard once, twice, thrice, and roars her victory to the wind, letting it be carried through the forest that surrounds you. You hear the army of Ulthuan that followed you start marching quicker, in fact, the sound of hooves and the rolling of wheels as charioteers and cavalry pull up, driving their steeds as quickly as possible.
Then she turns to you, and it is the most disturbing possible thing.
For she is not...contemptuous. Not dismissive. Her face does not scrunch up like she just saw something foul, or like she stepped in something, the way you would expect the city-burners, the forest breakers, the slayers of the surrendered, the child killers to react upon seeing one of you. Her grip does not go white upon her ax, there is not tension in her shoulders, her teeth do not grit. She is not counting the insults (and what of the insults to you, the attempted genocide of the dragons, of the colonists, of the spirits, are you not allowed your anger), counting the ways she can repay them like some blithe barbarian.
Instead she seems concerned, the way you might be upon seeing someone wounded. Concerned and surprised and most disconcerting and worrying of all, happy, not in some sickly way that you suffer but that...that she may have someone to speak with. Shocked, deeply shocked at that, in the same way you might be to discover a black swan.
With little sloth she approaches Tethia even as you try to push yourself up, yelping, making the Scratch-Mage turn about as she hears you, confused and surprised even as you try to force your body to respond, to get back up. Magic slowly suffuses your form, in spite of her nature, rebelling, burning, seething as you remind it that it is a natural force and not a play thing for these creatures. Your arm mends, slowly but surely, you can feel the bones knitting back together by the Will of Isha and your own will.
You will not let her harm the one you lo--swear fealty to. Your blood ought spill on the forest floor before you allow that. So you wrap your hand around Deathclaw's hilt and use it to prop yourself on to one knee, face written in Ithilmar, defiant and sky and steel.
She speaks but it is no Khazalid you know, in one ear and out the other. She realizes the issue and taps a ring on her finger.
"Someone else lived?"
Stilted, overly formal, ancient Eltharin. The kind of thing your grandparents would have considered old-fashioned. More properly, "In spite of dark tidings, still hearts beat! By joy, let me see! One of the Zhuful, one of Caledor's Folk! Alone no longer!"
But it is Eltharin nevertheless. Your people live too long for the kind of absolute linguistic fragmentation that comes about for younger races to take place too easily and too completely. You would not try and use Tar-Eltharin among Druchii, of course, nor vice-versa, and the both of you are left confounded by the accents that colonists of Athel Loren have taken up in their conclusion; indeed there are portions of vocabulary the three of you would not share. But that is a matter of politics, more than anything else.
And if eaten by the Aethyr then spat back out in the Golden Age, you would understand.
"Yes, we live, in spite of your people's best efforts." You finally manage to stand up properly, your clothes still intact but stained and covered with mud and filth and worse. A little Aqshy and Hysh should go a long way in dealing with that problem, anyway.
Leaving you time to ponder about this newest surprise.
You think.
And you think.
And your mind races, even as she tries to understand what you've said.
Premise one: She did not call you Elgi, or Zhufaki, or knife-ears, or any of the other rote insults those short freaks have sharpened in centuries of hate. Rather instead, she called upon the oaths sworn between Caledor Dragontamer and Grimnir Ifulvar, Bitter Fire.
Premise two: She does not seem to bear the usual seething, seering, unholy contempt they cultivate like the booze they scarf down in that wretched heap Karaz-A-Karak, instead actually seeming to bear something resembling happiness, insofar as the murderers can feel happy when they're doing anything other than slaughtering another one of the ever-rarer wonders of the natural world.
Premise three: She has not tried to strip your magic away from you out of spite, has not drawn her own ax in response, and seems confused about what you mean as you mention the War of the Beard (Why not the War of Kor Vernath?), as though she has never learned about it and while the Dwarf education system, such that it is, is a shoddy, obscurantist-inclined excuse for early adopters to lord their power over apprentices at the best of times, not telling them about perhaps the most pivotal war in both your long histories that didn't involve the possible end of everything would be out of character, even for them.
...And long, long ago,
in snowy times long passed
did Prince Malekith, noble born,
and Grim Mantled Whitebeard
seek knowledge of north...
It is a story you all are taught as children. The failures of both Malekith and of The Whitebeard. How they sought to find the colonists and Karaks who lived there before the Great Incursion. How they were forced back under the weight of abominations, daemons and beastmen and the Fimir and worse. How in the end it was believed that they must have died, for none could survive in that place. And perhaps they did not look too hard for many reasons, among them that those Holds were established by renegades and near-renegades from the Runesmith Guild, which would have made them very unpopular to Thungni's own brother.
But no body was ever found. No shattered Karaks were ever reached. Not Drak. Not Ornsmotek. Not Ravnsvake. Not Dorden. Not a one. A few fortresses overrun, and the way itself shut by those self-same dwarfs; but not the scenes of battle, not the dead bodies, not the haunting remnants overrun by things that should not be.
Only just the arrogant presumption of a man so inclined to his own power that when Asuryan said no he still yet rebelled, and the Dwarf who would insure that nothing but the Grudge would endure among his people, a dragonslayer, a killer of the innocent.
It is a simple axiom practiced by the Cult of Hoeth, one you strive to let guide you even now:
When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
These are Norse Dwarfs, the descendants of those colonists who, by hook or by crook, have survived the many long centuries to reach this moment, to come to this place, to endure and survive if only out of raw naked spite. Surviving Storms of Magic, enduring raid and war and pillage and spoliation, in spite of the evils manifesting against them.
Speaking of Hoeth, you can only hope that He is willing to guide you in His wisdom as the army of elves and a seeming army of Dwarfs both enter the clearing at the same time, though with very different attitudes. Perversely you are made only more sure as Grungni's Sons enter the clearing that you are right: these are the remnants of the Norse Dwarfs, whatever that may be.
They lack guns, for one, instead all being armed with crossbows and throwing axes for their ranged assaults. Their armor is different as well, for one not a damned sign of the heraldry of any of the Holds south of Norsca, but many dragons and ravens and other signs of the lost holds of the Norse, as well as being aesthetically more inclined to horns upon their helmets, lined with many jewels and precious metals. They bear many more Runed pieces than any Throng of the south would by those scattered reports that reach you still in Ulthuan, entire units armed with burning axes and glinting hammers and shining armor, not all of it a masterwork but it hardly needs to be to make them a threat to the kind of shoddy, cold-beaten nonsense the Norscans were running around with.
And perhaps that leaves you an explanation for how the Norscans gained Dwarf goods in the first place. As low as your opinion of the Haclad might be, they would not have sold such to raiders like this: but been extorted at worst, or raided at best? Yes, that may well have served to at least allow the Norscans to arm their best with Dawi weaponry, a damn sight better than the usual shoddy garbage they would have had to try and use.
The spearmen have formed a shieldwall, presenting glimmering spear tips and hard wooden shields even as archers grab their arrows. Ythil and Tyrial and the mages they brought with them begin chanting and preparing spells of healing and abjuration to get you and Tethia back into the fight and force back the Haclad even as cavalry make themselves known, while your keen senses allow you to see the Shadow Warriors entering position around the trees, throwing knives and other weapons ready to plant themselves into weak points.
To their credit the Haclad, for all shock is written on their faces, react as well as can be expected, leveling crossbows and forming their own shieldwall, shorter and less aggressive but a dense knot of steel and gromril. Elites, more heavily armored, quickly rush to the Scratch-Mage's side, even as she herself seems somewhere between disturbed and confused.
You turn around, presenting your back to the Haclad (your grandmother would be so embarrassed), and raise a hand. "Calm! She is an ally, she has helped me and killed the shaman! Lower your arms! They are Norse Dwarfs, not the servants of Karaz-A-Karak!"
While your explicit position in the chain of command is unclear, romancing the boss is a good way to get some authority and so they do, lowering weapons even as the Haclad themselves seem split between confusion and concern. "Then our southern kin still live! But, why would the difference matter, zhuful?"
How to explain to someone that if this were but millennia ago, you would be honor-bound to kill her in the name of Hoeth as surely as she would be honor bound to kill you in the name of Thungni?
[] Be Honest. You will not enter into the grisly details, but she will know the truth. That there was a war between her southern kin and your people, a war they seek to continue in Athel Loren.
[] Be very honest. Let none say you are afraid to be painfully truthful: The Burning, The Shaving, The Murder. The Haclad will know all of it, and let the chips fall where they may.
--
??? Deed - Kinfinder: "Did you hear? The Chracians are trying to claim they located some lost Haclad civilization in Norsca!"
--
Moratorium for twenty-four hours.
Last edited:
[] Be very honest. Let none say you are afraid to be painfully truthful: The Burning, The Shaving, The Murder. The Haclad will know all of it, and let the chips fall where they may.
Very honest elgi is a rare find
Very honest elgi is a rare find
- Location
- USA
I haven't read this quest in a LONG time but what did Haclad mean again?
Voikirium
SV's Estalia Guy
- Location
- Ruritania Illinois
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Insulting word for Dwarf, roughly "Endlessly Vengeful Ones". Arising from the Elven sigil Harathoi and Thalui.
[] Be very honest. Let none say you are afraid to be painfully truthful: The Burning, The Shaving, The Murder. The Haclad will know all of it, and let the chips fall where they may.
- Location
- NYC
[] Be very honest. Let none say you are afraid to be painfully truthful: The Burning, The Shaving, The Murder. The Haclad will know all of it, and let the chips fall where they may.
Not seeing how it would help to be vague, it's not like he'd be diplomatic and polite about it.
Not seeing how it would help to be vague, it's not like he'd be diplomatic and polite about it.
Always Late
Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains
- Location
- Ohio
[X] Be Honest. You will not enter into the grisly details, but she will know the truth. That there was a war between her southern kin and your people, a war they seek to continue in Athel Loren.
Think about what "very honest" actually means: We say that we hate her very guts because her and her kind represent everything vile and hateful. That what was once the fruit of kinship is now the utmost betrayal. This isn't the honestly that admits culpability for an aspect of the problem and how they had been manipulated. It's the "honesty" that justifies genocide.
Just say that the bonds of friendship have been severed for a long time, and even now we still don't have any hope of reconciliation with those who have walked away from the sons of Caledor, Dawi or Elgi.
Think about what "very honest" actually means: We say that we hate her very guts because her and her kind represent everything vile and hateful. That what was once the fruit of kinship is now the utmost betrayal. This isn't the honestly that admits culpability for an aspect of the problem and how they had been manipulated. It's the "honesty" that justifies genocide.
Just say that the bonds of friendship have been severed for a long time, and even now we still don't have any hope of reconciliation with those who have walked away from the sons of Caledor, Dawi or Elgi.
[X] Be Honest. You will not enter into the grisly details, but she will know the truth. That there was a war between her southern kin and your people, a war they seek to continue in Athel Loren.
[ ] Be very honest. Let none say you are afraid to be painfully truthful: The Burning, The Shaving, The Murder. The Haclad will know all of it, and let the chips fall where they may.
-{ ] Tell them we wish to stop the fighting. To promise to come with us as we return them to the KA. If only to ease the tensions that were ruined by our favorite metal clad mommasboy.
They not gonna like us hiding stuff.
Dawi are weird like that.
Edit: Moratorium Warning observed
-{ ] Tell them we wish to stop the fighting. To promise to come with us as we return them to the KA. If only to ease the tensions that were ruined by our favorite metal clad mommasboy.
They not gonna like us hiding stuff.
Dawi are weird like that.
Edit: Moratorium Warning observed
Last edited:
Voikirium
SV's Estalia Guy
- Location
- Ruritania Illinois
- Pronouns
- He/Him
He's understanding that she's freindly.
At least he's able to admit he loves her even if he doesn't want to think about it.
Props to Vardanis for putting it together that quickly.
The seems to be an important deed.
[] Be very honest. Let none say you are afraid to be painfully truthful: The Burning, The Shaving, The Murder. The Haclad will know all of it, and let the chips fall where they may.
Dawi would respect the truth the most.
- Location
- Australia
[] Be Honest. You will not enter into the grisly details, but she will know the truth. That there was a war between her southern kin and your people, a war they seek to continue in Athel Loren.