To Shield the World (Warhammer High Elf Mage Quest)

[Voikirium]

Speaking to Annora

Spoiler: Winning Vote

[X] Talk to Annora

There are plenty of things you could be doing, that by rights perhaps you should be doing. The Haclad may be a much of insane murderers but they have less than no love lost for Chaos, unless they have changed in the past two-millennia and since the very of notion of change or adaption to the dynamic circumstances of the world as it is rather than the metal thing they desire it to be may as well be anathema as leaving their grandparent's homes, that seems unlikely, especially in such a deranged direction. Whispered rumors of affairs in the War of the Beard do not constitute sufficient evidence for such an accusation to be worth your time or the insult layered on them. Too much trouble by half, to be sure. Of course, they could have been stolen by the northmen, or unknowingly sold to them, "deep vetting" only has to fail so often for examples of such work to make their way into the hands of these humans.

Or you could be arguing to find the Sorcerer-Shaman's Sanctum. Pillar of Radiance is a miserable spell to be struck by, a burning, searing thing could melt Ithilmar given sufficient time, and Gromril given sufficient spite, but if no-one ever survived the unsurvivable most of the Blackfang estate wouldn't currently be floating as part of a fortress dedicated to misery and woe for anyone not pointy eared and wearing black. Now would be a good time to unmake him, while he is weakened and wounded, and further whatever lore, such that it is, he has may be useful in broadening your horizons. While properly unweaving it from the tangled mess of Dhar and barbarism that human sorcery consists of this far west is more the work of Loremasters than the work of an Archmage, it would at least earn you some favors. Or you could give it Ythil and her husband: whatever was inside it would be enough to fulfill your obligation, leaving you free to examine anything you found later in the journey, for instance whatever the Druchii have with them when you put them down and win. Your council would not mean nothing, in any case, as a mage, if not a full Archmage as yet.

Or you could head to Stahlheim itself. There are slaves to be freed and wrongs to be right, shrines to evil gods cast down and defaced to weaken them, and perhaps even the hope of some sort of lore gathered from some lesser shamans bound to the will of the Sorcerer? Perhaps most importantly, it will take a haven of raiders, pirates, slavers and killers off the board for a good long while, a few generations of the admittedly stubborn humans at least, until they return. Particularly if you manage to dedicate some sort of marker of Hysh in the place, and turn the whole thing into an oasis of order in this snowy pit.

All of these would be expected, considered, usual, not without preccedent in the time of your forefathers nor in the time of their forefathers.

Instead you examine Annora. She devours the soft, honeyed bread, quaffs the wine, and rips into the chicken your quartermasters have managed to find for her with a ravenous, uncivilized hunger, trying to fill a body that seems thin, reedy, undernourished (and so just this once you shall suspend judgement), all the while seated on a stump from a tree blown apart by one of Tethia's spell. She's swathed in some of Tethia's old blankets, to keep her from freezing to death in the cold, and when she isn't eating like a Gor she's looking around wide-eyed at everyone involved.

The others may not notice. Their sixth-sense may not be developed enough for it, as is the case with the common folk of your land: all of you have it to some extent, but much like eyesight, it does vary and unlike eyesight, it needs to be trained.

As for the other mages, well, they're busy.

Ythil, for all she may be an Archmage now, was trained as a Shadow Weaver and they are hungry for foriegn lore like few others except, perhaps, the Loremasters of Hoeth themselves. Admittedly, as she weaves the mist to show a Sorceress, out of more military concerns, rather than the innate curiosity of the Loremasters: The Druchii are, by and large, too stiff-necked and stubborn to really integrate foreign lore into their workings, too concerned with their own sense of superiority to even concede that there may be the nuggets of something useful in the knowledge of their so-called "inferiors". There are exceptions, of course, there always are, in particular Morathi herself has apparently taken knowledge from...well it would be easier to name who she hasn't taken knowledge from at this rate. Her library would be a treasure trove to examine indeed, if it were not for the owner.

So any knowledge you manage to integrate is knowledge the Druchii will not have, and that can be worth its weight in gold, particularly for those most inclined to fight them, to beat them, and to win.

As for her husband, Tyrial, he desires to journey to Stalheim immediately, post-haste, without even the slightest restraint in the matter. A bleeding heart, he would free the slaves and immediately setting about to offering them such aid and comfort as he is able, as well as fortifying the taken town against the return of the raiders and other menfolk. He also desires to burn the halls of Chaos to the ground with his magic, testing spells he has been devising since the last raid on Ulthuan by the dreaded beastmen and their allies. He, it seems, still has not forgiven nor forgotten their menacing his children.

Tethia, meanwhile, is mostly focused on getting to the lost city before the Druchii, and therein acquiring the staff so that Hekarti does not strike her down and devour her soul. She catches your eye and you see an understandable tinge of worry in her own blue eyes but beyond that, an Ithilmar-made will and certainty: she'll not kneel to fate itself, not to this. You nod and offer her a smile, as well as you can.

But in any case, to that end she examines the arguments of each and the lesser mages that have gathered around the wife and husband pair, their connection keeping the arguments more cordial than many other military engagements that you have heard the sordid stories of from your mother, including her own drawn out battles with your grandfather in centuries now long passed.

But that inability, or that distraction, keeps them from noticing something important.

Annora's gaze flickers from Tethia, to Ythil, to Tyrial, to the other mages--only for her to stop, iron-backed, as she catches your eyes. She looks down and gets back to eating her chicken and drinking her wine, hoping that you might brush it off as a fluke, much as you hd hoped your professors would not notice the glimmer of Ulgu you used to cloak yourself in your late night escapades with Urian as a much younger mage of the White Tower.

Much like your professors, you noticed. You march towards Annora, cloak fluttering in the wind, perfectly adequate wizard's staff digging a slight trench in the snow. You let your own windsight peer at her, looking at her spirit on the most surface level, and find something intriguing, concerning, and impressive in equal measure:

She's full of Ghur.

Absolutely, positively, sopping with it like a towel full of too much water.

Almost like she intentionally gave herself an Arcane Mark. Rumors say that the Rishis of the Land of Ind do much the same, intentionally maiming their souls so the gods they worship, Gilgadresh, Brahmir, and She'ar Khawn among a thousand others, to sew them up with the Wind they study. The ignorant tend to regard this as a sign of humanity's inferiority as mages.

The ignorant are wrong.

On the other hand, the mages of the West have not impressed half as much. Even the most able of them grab at strands of magic they aren't ready for and so end up spilling Dhar all over the place like a band of dumbasses, ignorantly furthering the destruction of everything. And the most coherent cabals of them all kneel to the gods of Chaos, nhilistic and ignorant screaming voids of thought or meaning or excellence, just rage and sorrow and ambition and depravity in the face of the evils of the world.

On the third hand, she is not dripping Dhar, which is a good sign. And there are no particular whispers of Ghur being used by the Shamans of Norsca, only a handful of rumors from the Kurgan, and some, admittedly powerful but unrefined in the Court of the Khan far to the East if the Indans are to be believed. Supposedly the humans living in the snow plains north of long-burned Athel Numiel may have some grasp of it, if whispers filtered through the long lines of history are to be believed, but that seems doubtful.

Extremely doubtful.

You should know, your treacherous granduncles wrote the damn things.

You stand before her and clear your throat. She looks up, and up, and up-- You may not be quite as tall without Wyssan's Wildform strengthening you, but you are substantially taller than her. "The others may be too blind to see or too busy to look, but my eyes, my eyes work young one. You were examining me with...windsight?"

A blank look. Ghur is a good Wind, a primal Wind, a Wind of freedom and self-reliance, there is a reason in your century of isolation you turned to it for comfort, for survival, for all those good things it could bring. But its nature does not lend itself to meetings of the mind, to scholarly debates, to academia, unless significant efforts are put into the affair. There is a reason the Beastwalkers' great hall is filled with sweat lodges and peyote, it is a thing of instinct and communion with the world.

And instinct does not develop coherent terminology. But communion with the world may.

"Sixth sense?"

Dawning comprehension blooms on her face, but mixed with the fear that she may be wrong and make a fool of herself, perhaps the most you've ever empathized with a human in your life. You must seem not entirely unlike Thanian as you struggled with Azyr to her: knowing they did not think you were a fool, knowing they thought you were capable otherwise they would not have instructed you, only made it worse.

"Witchsight?"

Her nose crinkles but she finally nods in understanding before looking down. "You're all so...vibrant. With the World Humors, I mean. The one who cast the spell on me so I even know what you're saying is the least, and even he's like particularly shiny pearl, bright and resplendent. When everything else in this pit has been so Tarred, that's a comfort in its own right. The other mages, the ones not leading, they're all like stars in the sky when I look up at night, a million-million pretty little sparks of every shade and every color without the brown sludge all around them. The woman, she's like the aurora overhead without the glare, braided together into a necklace of jewels all set in silver so fine you could weave a rope from it. The other, the red-haired one, she's eight bowls of fire, eight-colored and arrayed in as a pattern like the constellations."

You file away the use of World Humor for a second to instead ask the obvious question.

"And when you see me?"

"Like," she pauses for a second, considering the next words to come out of her mouth as carefully as she can, "like me. Brother wolf, sister serpent, and Mother Bear." She moves her hands, something you notice usually comes out when she talks. "And not at the same time. Mother Bear is part of me as surely as my own arms, and the others tell me things but you, they listen to you but you haven't burned yourself into them." She pauses. "And I swear, I can hear leathery wings overhead everytime you ask them to do your work for you. Like there's something waiting for you to grasp it, but you just won't. For one reason or another."

You pause, considering several things.

For one, that even the humans are now mocking your plodding pace in refining your magic.

For another, less sobering note, that she is not wrong about the similarities in your magic, of course. Ghur is Ghur. Cardinal, Elemental, Mystical, indeed even that which arises as the Emperor of the Heavens Commands is at its root, the same. The stuff of Beasts. Of Bestial behavior and of the control therein. The Aqshy wielders, the Chamon bearers, the students of Shyish, they are all touchy at best, precious at worst, about being compared to the western wielders of their winds among the humans and not without cause. A band of raiders coming down from the north to pillage and slaughter at worst, and at best a barely-tolerated band of bumblers tossed to the mob to be slaughtered like sheep or treacherous, ignorant priests unknowing of the fact that they are only barely spared the same fate.

But you have nothing to be precious about.

"Yes. I suppose I am like you." You sniff. "To an extent."

As you said, Ghur is Ghur. Your magic is more refined, more capable, more broadly grounded than hers but at the end of the day, you still go out into the wild woods to commune with the spirits of the land, still take on the shape of eagles to speak with crows, still run the plains with wild stallions, all the better to understand. All the better to grasp.

"But it was my understanding that your people, this far west, have no mages, no organization of magic except, well," you broadly gesture at the place where you had seared the Shaman which still lightly smokes from the heat and light, "that."

She spits in the direction of where his body, hopefully dead, probably alive, had landed. "They should be so lucky. I am a noble one, a protector of the people. I sniff out where the Enemy Wasp makes its nest and I destroy it. I take on the shape, I take on the form, and I fight them with weapons of magic, I fight them with all I am able and still yet more come. They follow the northerners." Her face takes on the ruddy red of rage as she talks about them. "Hateful creatures. Ignorant creatures. Soulless creatures."

"And they beat you to bring you here, then?"

"Hardly. Those fat-headed Estalian pigs," she sneers as she remembers, "Oskar would have been one thing, he doesn't like magic, he doesn't like wizards, and his god justifies it. But no, the damned cultists of the Menhirs," your own eyes widen and freeze as she says those words, "I saw what they did. They killed a man and spread his blood all over the damned thing to keep them functional, assuming they aren't crazy in the first place when they try and claim that nonsense at all, and for that they ambushed me in the dead of the night and sold me off to that animal." You have to grasp your head in your hands, trying not to weep.

"They aren't crazy," you say bitterly at the thought of the works of your ancestors and the Wise fallen into these hands fills you, "at least not about that."

It's her turn for her eyes to widen like saucers as she turns to look at you, examining your face like a sculpture. "You mean to tell me those menhirs actually do what they say they do?"

"Yes. They were the creation of Sky Giants in times now long since passed, who kept that land before they marched to war to aid their kin against the ogres, and never returned except as reduced as the rest of them after the Ogres did what they did. They keep magic at bay, the Windsflowing, the lands functioning, and you mean to tell me a bunch of bumbling cultists who have been reduced to human sacrifice are the only things keeping them from exploding?"

"I don't know that they only know human sacrifice and I don't know that they all do," she says at last with her own grim finality even as you distantly hear Tethia beginning to settle on a plan of whether to march for Stalheim or march for the Sanctum, "All I know is that I saw them do it once and rather than think, for even a second, about what was happening, about the fact that we are all going to die if the Norscans manage their conquest, they decided to sell me off to keep their secrets.

Rage. Shame. Sorrow. Despair.

Good magic work, fallen into the none-too-tender grasps of those who, at best, had a barely functional comprehension of the forces involved, at worst were genuinely deranged themselves, or more likely both.

It is the duty of the White Tower of Hoeth, and of every member therein to guard the world. It is the duty of an elf to embody excellence and ability in everything you do. It is the duty of every scholar of worth to spread knowledge to those who require it. Though not connected to the Network of the Great Vortex it is still, fundamentally, protecting the world to keep the Menhirs functional. More obviously, the Norscan invasion sews sorrows throughout the land.

It would be deeply unusual and, if word ever got out, you would have to explain what you're considering doing.

But.

She is a wizard. Not fallen to Dhar.

So...

So she can learn...

[] Offer a knowledge trade to Annora of Tilea, with all the possible consequences. Mad, yes, but possible, and perhaps necessary both to repel the northerners and protect the menhirs.
[] Do not offer such a trade. The humans have not proven they are worthy of such knowledge and "is not fallen to Dhar, is not fallen to Chaos, is not fallen to depravity" does not a worthy student make.
--
Moratorium on, I will let you know when it's time to vote.

 

[Voikirium]

A Return To Roots

Spoiler: Winning Vote

[X] Offer a knowledge trade to Annora of Tilea, with all the possible consequences. Mad, yes, but possible, and perhaps necessary both to repel the northerners and protect the menhirs.

Bold, decisive, necessary action is the way of the Asur.

Aenarion casting himself into the fire of Asuryan when there was no hope, no alternative, no choice. Caledor Dragontamer and his disciples journeying to the Isle of the Dead, putting their everything into creating the vortex, creating a way forward, making themselves fuel in a fire that still burns--and still burns them-- all for the possibility that the world entire could be saved from the endless tide of Daemons, monsters, and beasts that flowed from the Broken Gates at the very edge of the world, a wound that still bleeds the blood that grants you your profession. Tethlis, namesake of Tethia, beginning the Scouring, finally driving your wayward kin from Ulthuan, forcing them back to their lands to the west.

Rash, thoughtless, ill-considered action is the way of the Asur.

Aenarion drawing Widowmaker, cursing his bloodline for the rest of all of time, creating the worst villain your people will ever know and the architect of the Sundering. Caledor the II, arrogantly, thoughtlessly, shaving the Dwarf ambassador, turning what could have been a singular conflict into the War of The Beard in some deranged attempt at revenge for Kor Vernaeth, striking at a man who was uninvolved. The Siege of Tor Lehan, blood poured not by the bottle or by the gallon but by the barrel to try and force out the Druchii from a position not worth the effort nor the trouble.

The Menhirs protect the world you love, guarding it from magic. They are a last, forlorn monument from a people now all but disappeared, faded, lost, to the hunger and cruelty, and thoughtless desire for more from the Ogres. An entire peninsula divvied up between Norscans would see gold, iron, and sweat flood the coffers of the Great Enemy, wealth and labor alike turned to creating new monstrosities, new abominations, new things that should not be. But beyond any of that...beyond questions of the Fate of the World, of geopolitical realities, of the flourishing of Chaos, it is not right to turn aside. To shut your eyes and ignore cities burned, people slaughtered, a peninsula ravaged for the greed and cruelty and ignorance and malice of slaves who think themselves free in their servitude to Chaos and the Four, the enemy, the dreadful.

The humans of the west do not impress. They are arrogant, and ignorant, and cruel. They have burned children at the stake for the touch of magic, have attacked your kinsmen in the wood of Athel Loren either in service to the capricious cruelty of the Dwarfs or out of their own greed and desire for riches and power. They fall to Chaos at the merest sign of trouble it seems, so very many of them, and the exceptions, those who rise above, seem so few. Even those not fallen to the Great Evil, The Foe, The Long Night, kneel to pettier, lesser mortal evils with a disquieting ease, layered with civil war and kinstrife on levels beyond even elveness--you wage one war against each other, their empire and kingdoms and tribes and lands wage a thousand wars, against outsiders and against themselves.

So in either case, a choice is placed before you. Do you teach--do you instruct--do you share and spread your knowledge, risking it will be turned to the unrighteous, the ignorant, the Corrupt? Do you turn your back, ignore blood and suffering and tears and orphans and widows because of that paranoia, the mere suspicion that the knowledge may turn, at some point, to those not worthy of it? For it is choice, not to, as surely as it is a choice if you do. Apathy in the face of evil, against investment in the face of an unknown. Which the heavier weight, which the bigger question, what the biggest matter? Either way it will decide much of what you are.

In the end, it isn't really choice.

You can turn away.

You won't.

"Annora of Tilea," you say even as the army finishes gathering up the dead, Tyrial and his followers cleansing the bodies in Hysh even as they bury them, ensuring whatever else is to come they will not be raised, that they may have that dignity if no-other, "I vow to you as servant of Asuryan, as Mage of the White Tower, as Asur and Protector of the World, before you leave this place I will teach you to wield magics terrible and dread in the face of your foes, to protect your lands from those who would ravage them and destroy the menhirs. It will be a difficult, dangerous path, one littered with obstacles and problems, but it will mean you can save your people and perhaps, through them, all people.

In the distance, you hear some great bird's screech.
--
Finally, after the bodies of both friend and foe have been consecrated in Hysh and buried, it is time to go. The plan they have decided on without you is refreshingly straightforward: Without a body, the Sorcerer is probably dead. But probably is a lot to hang strategy and tactics and possibly the entire campaign on. If he is alive, he will have fled to his sanctum, to recover, to heal, after you smote him to the earth with bright light and cleansing ray. So you will go there, smoke him out, and kill him.

You have been asked once again to help with this process.

You approach the scorched, burnt, blackened grass and baked mud, now only lightly frosted where once it had all been buried under feet upon feet of thick, crunching snow, and begin to chant. The Spirits once again stir, their amber forms approaching from the edge of your vision as you shift your hands and invoke the powers, as you grasp and weave and roar and cry and bring upon the matter all the wisdom of a Mage of the White Tower, of a wizard worthy of the name.

The mantle of the Talking Best falls upon you, so that you may speak.

And then Mother Bear approaches.

She knows your heart.

You know her will.

You are the same.

And finally as you return to the material plane, still sheathed in golden life, you have taken on much of her form, though not all. A great grizzly bear, a mighty grizzly bear, a strong grizzly bear. Your hearing sharpens from the already grand state to one deeper, losing range for depth. Your sight becomes blunter, less detailed, even as it shifts, as you shift, your angle becoming higher even as details become blurrier, lost, trading in keenly-mystic elven eyes.

For it is not your eyes you need.

It is your nose.

Your nose catches the smell of salmon in the near river, a wounded reindeer--easy prey--perhaps a dozen miles to the northwest, and a rich bee's nest twice that to the east, full of honey just waiting to be taken, and in Stalheim itself, the shit and blood and booze and iron of a slave quarter, just waiting to be cracked like a shell. But you ignore that, and join Indrast and Indiron in sniffing at the patch. It's hidden, first, under the smell of burning meat and roasted grass, but eventually you catch it. A perfume, unwell, somehow both sickly sweet and burning acrid, clogging your throat and your nose with its strength. Smoking wood, whence his spear had caught fire and set alight, the shaft bursting into red fire from the heat. Coal and molten metal, too old, too aged to be from his recent run in with a superior wizard; something older than that even. The Nothing-Something of Warpstone, tangy and bland, lightning and windswept day, the dried and sopping, infinite possibilities and all of them bad. Rat droppings, rat fur. Ale, very strong ale, that seems oddly familiar, as though you've had it at some point, or something related to it anyway, though what brews you could share with this thing are beyond you.

You, Indrast, and Indiron get the scent.

And then immediately you are off, following the trail.
--
Time: 36+20 (Beast Magic Master Hunter) + 10 (White Lions of Chrace)-10 (Time):56

The trail is misty, mildly faded, warping and juking and moving. Your shaman, it seemed, understood even in the throes of agony that you could, would track him in several different ways so he took a long, looping route; add to that the time, both winning the battle, speaking to Annora and clearing the bodies and getting organized to set out and it has certainly faded from its peak. But it was strong, so many unpleasantly potent stinks that it would make you throw up if you still had an Asur's sense of refinement; but in this form you do not.

In this form you are the hunter.

In this form, he is the prey.

The three of you cut through the forest, ignoring easy pickings, bird nests and badger holes and reindeer herds, to instead hunt a better prey than them all:

A traitor.

Not to something so comparatively petty as a tribe or a city or a kingdom.

A traitor to mortals. A traitor to the world entire. Either ignorantly believing the promises of things that have no honor, that hold no oath nor keep no promise nor follow any vow; or a willing soldier in an army that sees destruction as freedom and death as liberty, a cult that holds the end of this world, the world you love, as a noble thing indeed.

There are those among the Ceyla, the specialists and scholars in Hysh, who hold that the ignorant, brought up in this savage manner without knowing the truth of things, are less to blame than those who willingly march to the end. That they lack the Mens Rea, the will, to be held responsible in the same manner, even if ignorance of the law is not, in this case, a protection from the law. They are morally perturbed, where the willing participants who know and throw themselves onwards into the struggle are morally sickened.

The masters of Aqshy, on the other hand, among them a number of voices who pushed to have Aqshy studied as the first lore in the White Tower, hold the opposite as true. The willing servant, who understands and obeys, at least believes in something, at least is pushing forth in their belief, at least is following through on a matter of morality. Is fighting for their beliefs, as deranged and vile and thoughtless as they might be. The unknowing, who fight for a cause they do not believe in, that is worse, lowly even.

The masters of Ghur, you have your own answer.

Father Wolf, Mother Bear, they do not ask why the hunter stalks their pups and cubs.

They merely kill the hunter.

The forest passes you by, breaking through leaves and branches, fallen pine needles crunching under the weight of your paws as the scent gets stronger and stronger and you get closer and closer to your quarry. Your heart begins to pump and thump and beat like a drum as the adrenaline of a soon to be successful hunt fills you with a new vigor, the same vigor you scent from your lions, hearing their hearts beating quick and fast as yours as they too understand soon the time shall be upon you. The army is not hopelessly far behind, you can hear them and smell at least, but they aren't terribly close either, their thick armor and long spears in the main dividing them from you. Most of the mages have stayed behind with the rest of the army in case of something stupid happening, though Tethia herself has taken on the form of a raven and follows overhead, out of your sight and therefore, to a greater or lesser extent, out of your mind.

Finally, you approach a clearing.

And in the clearing, you see it.

His sanctum.

It is not a tower in the traditional sense. It is closer to a squat hall, as so many kings of this land stay in, indeed as many nobles throughout the north of the so-called Old World make use of to establish themselves as Ring-Givers and masters of land, with few exceptions. A sloping, shingled roof on a roughly rectangular building, squat and sturdy, with manifold entrances and exits, in most cases to allow visitors and likely the same in his case, as well as allowing air to flow through. Big, but far from the biggest according to the tales of merchants who journeyed to Sigmar's empire, where the Halls are vast and flow with ale and ring with the song of their first Emperor, the Emperor who shall one day return.

As though there is more than one emperor in the heavens.

Of course, there are signs it is markedly less innocent than those halls. Signs of its true patron. Every timber has been painted a dully-darkened shade of purple, which shimmers even though there is no light around. Not with crushed jewels or broken stone or noble enchantment, but the acrid Should Not Be shades of warpstone, crackling, sparkling, burning and shifting. It pushes against your mind, against your soul, against your body. You, with your magic, the blessings of Isha and the effort of Vaul and Asuryan, along with your experience pushing it out in the Annullii Mountains when you first returned from the White Tower, you can resist it, your soul is strong indeed, and it helps that it has been covered in that thick layer of paint. But the people he used to build it first, weakened by hunger and despair and ravaged sickness, they woud have mutated early and often.

Perhaps explaining how he got those Chaos Spawn.
For that matter, kings and chiefs and thanes and all others who entered this place would also be effected. Not mutated, necessarily, but changed, touched, mentally. More cruel, more thoughtless, more hedonistic, more a reflection of the master of this, cursed, place and its cursed shaman.

The shingles are made of gold, etched with wretched symbols that leak something, though you aren't quite sure what. Vile, to be sure, sticky and foul and unworthy to exist, worthy only to be cleansed in bright fire, white fire, holy fire, and the thunder of the heavens themselves. Asuryan's Silver Arrow, Calu and Cynhil alone the sole worthy destroyers. It is desecration, unholy, unwell, unworthy to be in this world, to exist, as surely as the daemons its masters send and its lord consorts with.

Abomination.

Abomination.

Abomination.

An insult to your field, at that. Layered with enchantments, of course. You trace them, even as you finally fade from the shade of a bear back to elf, back to man, shifting your Windsight along them.

Vile stuff.

Enchantments to produce Dhar, thick black sludge that sticks to everything. Enchantments that artlessly split a part of it away into purer Ulgu, so he can play around with better lores than whatever desecration this is. Enchantments to make it hard and strong, capable of withstanding something to the scale of a giant's blow perhaps, though broad, absolute terms are always questionable in this world. More than questionable, even, though that is a question for a different time.

And...

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

A RUNE? Haclad scratch--

Immediately you turn your windsight away from it. The Ironwills could look at the stuff in that way without recompense, earned in the War of the Beard, learned by destroying it with spells and incantations, slowly ratified into Arcane Unforging among Qhaysh--but they, they could still do it with only Chamon rather than needing the might of all the Winds for it, nevermind all the various other spells they developed along the same general theme--but you are no Ironwill.

Your might is vast, and your will is Ithilmar.

But even Ithilmar might break before the hammer of Karaz-Kazak-Rhun.

Even if they still aren't bright enough to work it.

But, if merely looking at the realm of the gods burned out Savan's eyes when he was merely existing, you have no desire to find out what too long a look at the secrets of a god of revenge might do to you.

Besides, you have perfectly good eyes.

And then there is a chill in the air, even as Tethia finally lands besides you. A harsh, keening wail, a noise like death, like steel grinding against steel, like thing breaking and burning, like winds fading, like the storm slowing, like an end, like all things have finished. A breeze, soft and cool but there, still there, fills the air, weening, wanting, warning, just high enough to be heard, just low enough to threaten. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up as you are stripped, of something important, of something necessary, of something good and proper and righteous, of your magic and of much of your strength.

And with a shudder, magic fades, even as the physical form of the Rune begins to burn with power. A dread starts to fill your bones, cold and cool, and Indrast and Indiron whine as the enchantments you placed on them--far from a proper familiar's bond, but enough to keep them pliant to your will and to ensure they are as lively as you are--strains.

Hastily checking, you confirm that Deathclaw still burns brightly with your enchantments and magic and power. It has burned brighter before but it is enough, the magic shall still seek ravaging, ending, clean, finishing cuts to ensure the enemy stays down rather than allowing that they should rise again and again and again.

And then he appears again. He is stripped of pretense now, his form--though thin--is layered with muscles, his body clad in shining scale armor of ugly pink, his form draped with metal, a golden helmet. His spear, though crude of construction, is layered with magic, thick with wickedest of Dhar until it is near to bursting, only just contained by a truly neophyte level mystical matrix that you could have surpassed within your first decade of instruction. As a scholar, you are offended.

As a warrior, your mind still reels. You could wait for reinforcemnts from the army proper, but then that would give him even more time to prepare. Many would be threatened or could die.

You could fight him, hand-to-hand, man-to-man in melee. The danger there is obvious, though there is opportunity too: few expect a mage to pull a mighty sword and come in swinging when they no longer have their magic to fall back on. And your pride, your pride wants this victory. Tethia wouldn't be able to fight, but Indrast and Indiron could join you, or you could properly duel him, consecrating it to the gods.

Tethia points at the Runes, and then makes gestures of spellwork. You could try to overpower the Rune and reinvent spellwork that even your elders have claimed is complicated; she may be an archmage now, yes, but you still require learning for that not to be dangerous. On the other hand, every option you have is dangerous.

"Come out, Ljósálfar. I had little patience before you decided to burn me; or shall I return the favor, and we shall see whether you stink as acrid as I did when you unleashed the bright rays against me? Either suits my taste."

It seems you need to pick quickly.

[] Wait for reinforcements, trying to avoid dying until then.
[] Fight him, in melee, like a warrior
- [] With Indrast and Indiron. He wants to cheat? Fine, you can cheat too.
- [] A duel of honor, a duel consecrated to the gods (Write-in which, no Khaine, I would be leery about Anath Raema)
[] Work with Tethia to try and break the Rune
--
Vote will open at Oct 6, 2024 at 9:00 PM .

Just this once I will allow you a certain amount of write in, in that if you want to tell Tethia to try something you can, otherwise I will have her doing something, possibly unsuccessful and possibly not, but either way, at least trying.

Finally, please, put on your Sherlock Hat before you get mad about the Rune thing if, in fact, you are going to get mad.

 

[Voikirium]

Death to the Shaman

Spoiler: Winning Vote

[X] Fight him, in melee, like a warrior
- [X] With Indrast and Indiron. He wants to cheat? Fine, you can cheat too.

Honor is much to you.

Tethia's life is more.

You may not be capable of speaking with Indrast and Indiron at the moment, but you do manage to share a meaningful look with the two gluttons. Their red eyes born into you as you point at him, point at yourself, then point at them. The gold and jewels worked into their fur and particularly into Indrast's mane jingle and shake as they nod, and get low, preparing to prowl. Tethia, behind you, begins weaving the scraps of magic she can, attempting something, even as you start to hear your allies approaching the sanctum. Whatever else happens, he will not survive.

You can only hope this works.

Then you rise up from the bush, drawing Deathclaw as you do. The white of the blade's steel glints in the sunlight once more, bright and resplendent in this frozen pit, purity seeming to drive away the wretched shadows of this place, even as the rubies worked into the pommel and the gold on the crossguard catch it and reflect it about as well, yet more light that forces the shadows away. The Winds are slim things, but they shift and bend under the weight of a real wizard, calling, asking you for your help and for some kind of freedom, sluggish as they are.

The shaman only nods as you approach, beginning to thud the haft into the black dirt, breaking through the snow. His muscles subtly shift, in ways unnatural: a less keen eye may miss it, but to the gaze of one who studies the Aethyr, to the gaze of one who has been hawk and wolf, bear and bat, it is unmistakable. Flexing, stretching, push and pull in odd ways his body was never meant to move.

"Your blade. It's much like my spear, isn't it?" The way he speaks is much, much, much too relaxed for somebody who's about to try and kill you, for somebody you're about to try and kill.

"Your spear exists to kill." You enter your guard, sword point forward, left leg back, right leg forward. "My sword...it's a tool of justice. A tool for the righteous. It exists to protect, from the evils you and yours serve, human. Never doubt that, creature of Chaos, creature of lies."

"Is that why you fried me like an egg? Why you killed--"

"Everyone of your people who died today was a slaver, or willing to toss away their lives for slavery. They are wolves. They have no right, none at all, to complain that shepherd has finally kept them from threatening his flock. Now save me your prattling noises, and fight me like you promised, for I should rather catch that thing to the gut than bandy about crooked words with the servants of daemons and Chaos and raw, unthinking greed."

Sweet Asuryan above, protect you from chatty slaves to darkness.

The two of you circle each other, for a brief moment. Water falls from the pine needles and lands on the dirt, making a slight drip, drip, drip as it does. The distant smell of ale and juniper berries and blood fills the air from the hall, and you can hardly tell why, and more than that you don't care. All you care about right now is winning, and you turn your considerable attention towards him.

Warrior of Asuryan: 79+20 (Primeval Fire) +15 (Deathclaw) + 15 (Swordmaster Training) + 20 (Indrast and Indiron) =149 Vs. 3????+?????=111 (My Place of My Power, My Secret)

He moves.

He moves fast, at that. His spear lashes out like a gray tongue, the steel glinting, the sound like a whip whistling through the air as it approaches you, cutting through the very winds themselves it seems. It comes right for your heart, angled towards the fire at the center of your being, Fast, resolute, a good blow; he would not be remiss as a member of the shield wall that came with you, perhaps even as a leader. You will not lie.

But.

But you are faster. You side step once, pivoting backwards on to your left foot, then again on to your right. He overcommits, as is to be expected, and so you follow through with a horizontal cut aimed at disemboweling him, right at the belly, a good place to aim against the servant of the Tempter for there's a skill valley where they don't expect the basics. It's too boring, after all, too based on building the proper foundational skills rather than showing to the glorified child they worship, the glorified child they adore, the thing they let control them.

What is considerably less basic, however? Advanced tactics. Trickery and treachery. Deceit. You are no Silver Helm: you are a mage, a wise one.

There is a place for honor, and a place for victory. And all things in their place.

Should some Dwarf Lord come calling for your head, you'd duel the braggart sword in hand, one-on-one, as the Cadai intended.

But as Asuryan, bearing Ithildrom, proved as the Smoking Bull dared threaten His People and assail His Throne in the Heavens, there is a time for dismissive, contemptuous victory. Those not worthy of honor. Mercy, perhaps, if the mood strikes. Always justice, and always wisdom.

And in other cases, two White Lions.

His eyes widen as they come snarling from the bushes, appearing from two different directions, Indrast from the left, Indiron from the right, their fangs gleaming, their claws shining, their roars loud enough even your ears hurt. He manages to deliver a kick, and not a small one, to Indrast, and disengages his spear enough to jam the butt into Indiron's side, sending the poor creature rolling in the dirt mewling more like a common pussy cat rather than a creature that could fight a minotuar by itself and probably win, bigger than a horse and twice as loyal and twice as hungry, particularly these gluttons.

He is, however, less, capable of avoiding your attempts to cut him. Deathclaw winds through the air and carves into side, grinding and slicing through the armor, better forged by a better wizard for better gods and to better ends. To his credit, it does manage to keep him alive, turning a blow that should have left him at best paralyzed into just a particularly bloody wound to his side, pouring out something pink and purple and vile that splatters on the iron.

You watch, mildly disgusted but not altogther surprised, as the pink blood slides together with the metal, making a patch where you had slashed it open with your blade. It quickly hardens, knitting together into something that reminds smells faintly of poppies, even as he gasps and grins, apparently amused. "Oh I have missed killing your kind, elf. You can only torment the Maggots for so long before all the bloviating about "Grudge this" and "Ancestors that" gets boring, you know?"

You snarl. "There is something...deeply...wrong with you. Something crooked. Something twisted. I don't know if I can help you. I don't know if I want to. All I know..."

(Tethia Vs. The False Rune: 66+40 (Master of Qhaysh, Master of Eight Winds/100 DC)

Something Wakes Up...

"Is that I don't know if I want to."

There is a sound like shattering glass. Like metal being dragged against stone, against the dirt, against glass and against all other manner of things, high pitched and yet yowly rather like a cat.

A woman's voice, but a short, compacted, dense one.

"ZHUFUL! DRENG! NAI THAGGORAKI, NAI ZHUFDURAZ! UNBARAKI, UNBARAKI, UNBARAKI!"

You tilt your head even as he curses something that makes your ears start to tingle; if you were a lesser creature, less used to magic, your ears would probably be filling with blood at this point as is.

"Seems you've got another problem, hm?"

Several lights do flare up, but they are lesser, weaker things. Like a candle against a fireplace.

Warrior of Asuryan II, Electric Boogaloo: 21+70=91 Vs. 7?????+???????=156

He screams, and that is just about the only warning you get before he goes on the offensive. Fast, brutal, stabbing, striking blows towards you, quickly pushing you back, all trying to push towards Tethia, who, having broken the Rune enough, now shines with rainbow light as she tries to snuff out the others as well, and let whatever--or whoever--he has trapped in there out to vent her displeasure towards the Shaman for trapping her in the first place. The lions manage to get back up and try and leap at him again but he grabs Indrast by the mane and tosses him into Indiron, sending the two of them sprawling, yoweling, screeching again. You hear bleak laughter from somewhere as madness and determination fill his eyes, cruelty too, and he launches into a reckless, brutally fast assault, like wind itself, like rain and lightning. Your sword dances with his spear for brief moments, flashes of white against black as you just manage to parry, to block, to keep yourself alive. In spite of everything, you do manage to stand as a wall, a tower, for a brief moment against the enemy.

A brief moment indeed.

You see an opening. A flash, where he overextends himself for a blow towards your eye.

You take the attack, of course. What else could you do? Open his throat, and Shaman or no, he will die, there's not much bred of mortals that won't. It seems, indeed, to be the one certainty in this world: take the head and it's at least a good start. Even daemon or undead, though they may in some sense survive, are no longer a problem afterwards, for at least a time, and even just buying some time can be enough: Aenarion bought time with his war, and saved the world in the doing.

And you pay for it, this attempt to kill him. His spear lashes out, you just manage a sloppy parry, but not one that's good enough: the iron tip of his spear pierces your side, opening it, opening everything, sliding through your robes, through your flesh, through your everything.

It hurts.

But you are not helpless.

You will never be helpless.

You manage to deliver a spin kick with your boot and knock him back, forcing the spear out of your side as you do. Blood pour from the wound, plastering what remains of your robe to your side, staining the beasts that decorate it, the silks and wools of Avelorn and Chrace, all ruined as you bleed out your life's blood onto it.

He howls in joy and licks his spear, laughing, joyous rhapsodies of amusement, of pride, of something worse. You expect to see him heal, to see him recover, to see his own wound start to knit back together, as he watches you suffer.

But it doesn't happen.

He is simply enjoying watching you bleed. He is enjoying watching your suffering, and enjoying the taste of your blood.

Perverse. Deranged. Wrong.

Corrupted.

Beyond even Druchii, simply warped. Broken. Did he kneel to the evils of the world? Did the Shadow, the threat, the enemy, so good at lying, whisper hopeless rhapsodies in his ear? Was he born this way? Is it the influence of magic on him, of being so close to the source of the Wound?

Not that it matters. Idle curiosity.

Pity.

Cold certainty.

Defiance.

He will not touch Tethia, not while you can still breath, not while you have a sword in your hand.

Unleashing It: 1+40=41
(Miscast Table: 3)

Energy...whines.

Hums.

Builds up.

Tethia! The Winds whip and whirl and growl and scream as she tries to wrench them from the leash this monster has put them under and force them into shape, force them into substance, force them into reality.

But force...force is not the way of Qhaysh. Force is not the way of the Asur. Force is not the way of magic. And magic does not like being reminded of that.

There is a sound like paper tearing.

Luminous, pure, pristine prisms of light fill the air, fill everything. The humming grows louder, higher, deeper, richer. Power, so much power, power everywhere. Arcane Unforging, an attempt to break

And then the next you know, the world is light and sound and color and force and you are flying through the air, blood pouring out of you like a wine decantur.

You only stop moving when you slam into a tree. Your head spins and your ears ring, and the world remains prisms and rainbows and rainbows and prisms for brief moments.

Everything hurts.

Everything more than hurts.

Looking down, you have landed on your arm...roughly. Perhaps it's broken, perhaps it's not.

That can wait.

The good news is, the Winds of Magic flow again.

The bad news is, the Shaman's still alive.

He doesn't look much better than you, at least. Admittedly, wearing armor does seem to have kept him generally in one piece in the same way supping on magic has kept you together, but from the way his arm is dangling, it's definitely broken.

Tethia...

Tethia breathes, unconcious but by the Cadai still alive, by the Cadai there is still hope for her and for all of you.

Indrast and Indiron are alive as well. They stand in front of you, snarling and growling in the direction of the damn shaman, who has grabbed his spear and threatens you...no, not you, he is holding it in a guard but he is not looking at you. He is looking at what was his Hall, though now it's been turned to so much cinder and ash, more than half of it blasted apart. His eyes are wide and his face has turned white.

And it's not hard to see why.

There's a dwarf.

She seems...oddly familiar, and it takes you a moment to realize: she's the same figure as the one from your visions as you entered the temple of Asuryan.

Armor and all.

She looks at you in shock, as though she can barely believe it, but her eyes only narrow with...disgust and contempt and hate and rage as she sees the Shaman, who steps back, a bit of fear written in his face as he realizes things have gone very wrong for him very quickly, even as your own mind races to realize what the hell is happening.

She draws her ax, and it burns with bright fire.

[] This kill is yours. The honor...is yours. And it will be a cold day in hell before you let the haclad take it.
[] She was chosen by Asuryan. Let her go about her business.
--
Asur Culture Corner:

Learn Eltharin

Ithildrom: Silver Hope, Asuryan's silver bow which fires golden arrows. With it he wounded, slew and broke many foes during the great catastrophe, either partially or wholly casting them from the tapestry of fate: The Endless Malice, the Smoking Bull, the Paradox, and things nameless aside. It would be a rare thing indeed for him to turn it on even the Cytharai in comparison to those monsters, however.

No moratorium this time, just fucking go for it.

 

[Voikirium]

First Contact

Spoiler: Winning Vote

[X] She was chosen by Asuryan. Let her go about her business

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.

 

[Voikirium]

Explanations

Spoiler: Winning Vote

[X] 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.

How to explain? A ball of failure, sadism, idiocy, thoughtlessness and violence, of people who should have known better, making the worst possible decisions at the worst possible time, again, and again, and again. Lies.

Deceit.

Dishonor.

There is a reason Hoeth turns aside from such duplicitous means. A lie, any lie, every lie, exacts a toll and the truth will always demand interest. And Asuryan, for His part? He does not eschew trickery quite so completely as the God of Wisdom, but He is the Keeper of Balance and there can be no balance that stands on a falsehood. The Creator God, and as one who teaches law and right from wrong one that must not let Creation be marred with deceit. Lord of the Gods, and a lord who lies shall not remain a Lord for long even in this world.

And the Emperor of the Heavens? What of He, the thundering voice that screams through the mountains, Asuryan who negotiated with Dragons, That Asuryan?

There are lies and misdirections.

But sparse and rare beyond rarity. For the sun shines, not lurks in shadow. If you wanted to lie, Loec, Kurnous, Ladrielle would all serve your ends much the better.

No, you will speak truth.

And nothing but the truth.

"There are things," you say at last, even as Tethia looks at you with a look you can't read (which is surprising, given how much time you've spent around her of late) and army, slowly approaching, looks at you in a way you definitely can, the way of many who would rather take the easy road than the honest one. "Things I have to tell you, Haclad, lest I be accounted derelict in my oaths; lest I be held violator of my vows. I have made promises to the gods, and so there are promises I will keep."

"Haclad?" A new insult, formed long after the Norse Dwarfs would have been lost thanks to Malekith's ineptitude.

"Long, long ago, your king Snorri Whitebeard made oaths and vows with a Prince of Ulthuan by the name of Malekith. He made trust with your people, and over decades the two grew to be friends, oath-brothers in all but name; they say, in Karaz A Karak, or did once upon a time anyway, that Malekith attended him on his deathbed. The root of alliance; the root of amity; the root of friendship, solidifed in an army of elves marching to save Karaz A Karak from a Beastmen siege, burned away in the furnace of dragon fire."

An image of the greatest of Karaks rises up from twinkling mystical light, saved by an army of Caledor, saved by an army of Elves, flickering, spirit images of abominations put to fire and sword at the edge of the greatest force this world has ever seen. Not a spell, not magecraft, not weaving, simply spirits Remembering under the auspices of a mage of worth in this land that has otherwise proven so terrible.

"This same prince, this Malekith, would one day rise up in revolt against the true Phoenix King; he would be a bane to all. He would rebel, shatter much, test himself in the Fires of Asuryan and be found wanting. This would begin the Sundering."

Karaz A Karak fades away, replaced with Ulthuan, replaced with kinstrife and brother war and bloodshed and destruction.

"And the Sundering would begin the end.

After centuries, we believed him defeated and cast out in battle, to die in the frozen wastes of Naggaroth; but we were decieved. We had been lax in maintaing contact with the Dwarfs, with your kin to the south, and so he saw an opportunity, a chance to bring suffering and to destroy that which would defeat him. Clad in our armor he would raid your trading caravans, he would attack your people, under our guise, in deceit, led by the knowledge he had gained in his amity with Whitebeard."

Raids. Betrayal. Deceit, darkness, deception, oaths broken, friendships betrayed, word made meaningless, truth buried under lies. He insults his father, he insults his people, he insults his oath-brother, insult upon insult upon insult, and worst of all he insults himself.

"So your king, Gotrek Starbreaker, had ambassadors sent to demand an explanation from the Phoenix King, an explanation that would not be forthcoming, as they were jerked about for many reasons.

His need to maintain a good appearance."

A terrible dishonor on your people. An image of the Phoenix Court, jovial, celebratory, after war, after bloodshed, after civil strife, interrupted by these stunted interrlopers from a far kingdom.

"But worse, rumors, swirling and pungent, of a Dwarf army led by Snorri Halfhand burning Kor Vernath to the ground."

A worse dishonor for the Dwarfs. Wisps of smoke arise from the image of the city, debatable.

"Until eventually confirmation arrived, and we learned it was the truth, dreadful and terrible."

Your eyes go very distant, as the magic bursting in Norsca seems to flow around you even more, taking you from the cold clearing to the city proper, the paved cobblestone roads and tall walls, mages studying new mysteries, smiths forging great wonders, adventurers and explorers and merchants and more, a heart of civilization.

All of it burning, harsh and sharp Khazalid in the distance. Distant spirits, those who fought in the war, seem to allay themselves in the clearing, summoned by your will perhaps, or by painful memory, or by a desire for vengeance, or for all of the above, though Tethia's magic and your own scraps from the Beastwalkers, such that they are, mean perturbances in Ghur keep them quiescent, for a time at least.

Either way it doesn't matter.

"Every hatchery was set alight, everyone was killed. The dragon eggs were stolen, and used as reagents by you scratchmages. There are generations of our old allies, who gave everything, who promised their youths to us, unborn because of your arrogance, your love of vengeance, your desire for treasures. The defenders, the inhabitants, innocent and guilty alike, it didn't matter. You killed the lot of them, elf and dragon. Eagles. Lions. Phoenixes. Everything was burned in the furnaces of your lust for revenge, and the bits used for your damned Runes."

The hatcheries are split open, sundered, torn apart by Runesmiths and Runelords greedy for power. Aeries have been plundered. Groves, present since the time of the Old Ones, hacked apart by ax and shattered with hammer, the spirits within killed.

The inchohate desire of the Dryads to kill every Dwarf they can get their hands on, to drench themselves in Imperial blood, it did not come from nowhere, no matter what cheap excuses those Dwarfs and their puppets in Altdorf make. The city fades away.

Your heart beat, when did it get so fast? When did the world gain that little glaze of brass around everything?

Not that it matters.

Truth. Let that be your northstar, and the wrong can only be so terrible.

"And as the Phoenix King heard what came upon his people, these ambassadors had the audacity, the nerve, to draw their weapons on the Chosen of Asuryan. So he did the most foolhardy thing he could:

He had them clapped in chains, and shaved them totally, leaving their chins bare for the world."

The Dwarf, who has been so quite, makes a grunt like someone has put their knee into her back and forced out all of the air as the images and the lights show the Phoenix King's court, show fools advancing on the bound Dwarfs with razors and scissors and more.

Cruelty against cruelty. Hate against hate. If it was foolish for the Druchii to cast themselves as nothing but killers, soldiers, and slavers, monsters and tyrants and animals, how much worse was it for the Phoenix King to do something so petty, so sadistic, so humiliating, for what? What was the purpose? What goal?

Revenge is a poison, and to let it into your heart is naught but madness. Let that, if nothing else, be the lesson of the war of the Beard: That torture, punishment, cruelty, sadism and worse things than that have no place in the heart of the excellent. A lesson learned at too high a cost: but a lesson you may at least integrate, and so a lesson you may hope to hold.

"So began the War of the Beard. With cries of Haclad and Kor Vernath and Asuryan on our lips, we marched to war in the colonies, in the Old World; with cries of Elgi and traitor and vengeance on theirs, your people marched to war. Centuries it would last. You could not assault Ulthuan, were shattered like kindling upon the fleet and upon our magic the only time you tried and so resoundingly at that that you never tried again, fearful of the Ironwill who had sworn vengeance for every dragon slain, every spirit murdered, every phoenix maimed; we could not take your Karaks, for your scratch magic, depraved as it is, wrought in blood as it may be, was strong then, bolstered by the greatest of your number to ever live, Kurgaz.

Strong enough, at his hands, that for all he died early into it, it was enough to buy you the time you needed.

For in the end, we were defeated at your hands, a victory not worth the cost. Your king killed a surrendered man in cold blood, and stole the Phoenix Crown, still locked up in Ulthuan; your people went on a murderous rampage throughout the forests of the Old World seeking to kill every spirit, on the suspicion they may have helped us and, unspoken, to use them to make yet more of your depraved craft; and even still they torment the elves of Athel Loren and then, like children, whinge that those elves fight them off. But the Grudges were considered settled in the end, as we returned to Ulthuan to recover, called back to fight the Druchii, called back to save the world."

And in the end your victory meant nothing, for in the end the grounds themselves would shake and the earth roil and shake, breaking the Underway and allowing the goblins to enter your homes. And so your people have been pressed, by the greenskins ever since."

There is silence.

Cold winds whip about the clearing as she consumes everything you've said.

Considers it.

Thinks about it.

And then she turns her back, to begin speaking with the Thane, well-armed as he is. You immediately grab your sword yourself, for it would not be the first time the Dwarfs have attacked unprovoked in your history. She tries to glare at you, but the displeasure of Cireon Whitemane is a much worse thing than any Haclad could draw up if they had a lifetime.

She's a damn sight scarier with an ax, for one.

Finally, the Runesmith turns away from the Thane and towards you. "Let it never be said that Hadra Trueheart ever turned an ax on those who didn't raise an ax against her; let it never be said that that story of madness, idiocy, arrogance and cruelty would make me lose my temper. And even if it was, you saved my life, broke his spellwork and let none ever say that I leave a debt repaid. There will be a reckoning one day, Elgi, for much, but I am at the moment much the more concerned with the slaves this oathbreaker," She gestures at the shaman's dead body, "has in Stahlheim. All else can wait for that, and I'll drag you before the Council of Ancestors then to explain and have the truth for everything you've said is monstrous and idiotic and yet, and yet, I believe you believe it if nothing else and that alone had kept your head on your shoulders."

"Now would be the time to attack." Tyrial speaks up, breaking the spell that seems to have fallen on the armies. "They are, if nothing else, still weakened from our recent battle."

"And why," she says with coldest gaze, "Would I listen to the likes of you after the story you just told me?"

The village must be taken.

[] Allow Tethia to try and negotiate
[] Try to negotiate yourself
--
Moratorium until Nov 18, 2024 at 1:00 PM .

 

[Voikirium]

Priestesses Speaking

Spoiler: Winning Vote

[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 Dec 4, 2024 at 9:00 AM .

 

[Voikirium]

Calming Down

Spoiler: Winning Vote

[X] The other rocks

You walk to the rocks touched by divine forces.

Norsca. Magic rages here, magic burns here, magic dominates here. Ulthuan may be touched by mysticism, the Annuliis piercing into heaven's side spilling the guts of magic out and allowing it to pour down--the Great Vortex at the center of the world's heart pumping Qhaysh throughout the material planes, the more scholarly part of you offers--but there is something different in the magic that dominates this far north. A smell like the beating of bells warning of raiders, the sound of rotting flesh, the sight of bile in your throat, Dhar. Rotting, festering, decaying, corrupting, making. Dhar in its most natural state. The Druchii claim they can channel it, claim they can control it, claim they can bind it and make it work for them as a weapon, a tool. They hide much of their teachings, but that they have tried to use to lure mages with more love of power than sense to their own side.

The Druchii lie. They have always lied.

To others, certainly. Perhaps even to themselves.

But they are lying, and that is only another sin to heap on your wayward kin's shoulders, another evil they have made manifest, another flaw in Morathi's teachings.

No. That pernicious seer, she is not the one you shall turn to to avoid the evils of dark magic.

So who then? Your own will?

Hah. The will to dominate is the surest path to Dhar, to corruption, to Dark Magic.

Your finely tuned senses, your hearing, catches the subtle breath of Dwarfs on the wind, the shifting of Asur spears in the distance, the shaking of trees, Stahlheim in the distance, the press of life.

But you cut yourself from that, and instead allow yourself to focus.

Allow yourself to breath, for the first time in a very long time.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

Cross-legged you meditate, and cross-legged you attempt to find your balance again, in the center of the stones.

On the rock and the stone and the divine, fading from material to immortal desires. The rocks are subtly touched by magic, but the touch is there. Echoes of Qhaysh that reflect nature, echoes of Qhaysh that reflect the gods. For the veil is thin here, and Asuryan's gaze not quite so stringent on the world--Magic is available for the gods to interfere more freely in this place so close to the poles, where the Wounds Within Reality bring magic to your reality, the more detached, more scholarly part of you that understands the inner workings offers. And perhaps that is everything.

Perhaps that explains the jittering arrogance over the past weeks. Perhaps that explains why you thought you could "allow" a Princess of Ulthuan to do anything. Perhaps that explains the anger so great that you would unleash the Pillar of Radiance upon a foe so readily. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Two magics pouring from the same font, Dhar and Divinity, and surely even the humans of the Empire know now what forces make use of Dhar?

All this time, have you pressed your hand into the lion's mouth, not noticing as it tightens around your wrist? Is that why you have been so unbalanced? It hardly require that Nurgle, Khorne, Tzeentch, Slaanesh, or the lesser Daemon Gods turn an uncomprehending gaze upon you to bring imbalance to your soul and throw the homeostasis of the mind you have worked so hard to cultivate out of balance. You should have more composure even in the face of scratchmages beating down your magic. You should be more thoughtful, not so quick to take on such oaths to students as you have to Annora, for all you will not break them.

Something is pressing against you, here.

This whole peninsula is hell, and you forget that at your own peril. For now it may just be snow and bad weather, physically, but the Enemy will not let it be so forever.

The Outer Enemy, yes. They hate the Mages with a bright passion, all of them, as heirs of Caledor, as heirs of the one who cast down the darkness, as heirs of the one who faced their wretched slave armies and turned them aside, as heirs to victors.

But even moreso, the Inner Enemy.

The theologists of Hoeth in the Shrine, the priests of the Seven Sisters, the Shadow-weavers of the Shrine of Rememberance, they speak of an Inner God lurking within the spirit of each and every Elf. An Inner Hoeth, who thirsts for knowledge and considers morality; an inner Isha, who nurtures and heals; an inner Loec, the seed of cunning: The priests of Asuryan, Vaul, and Ladrielle, on the other hand, regard the first as rather provincial.

But provincial and wrong may not always be the same thing.

They hardly need to be trying to corrupt you, for all they may be corrupting. Their mere presence is enough to incite your Inner Khorne, your Inner Slaanesh, your Inner Tzeentch, your Inner Nurgle, into making poor decisions. Into falling to the worst possible version of your self; of being a fool, an ignorant, arrogant slave to passions that you should be master of; of letting the masters of rage and despair and desire and pride lead you by the nose like a show pony into the worst of decisions.

Poor decisions like nearly starting a fight with a Runesmith or even considering trying to tell a princess of Ulthuan what to do.

Is that what all this is about? A reminder from higher, heavenly things to keep the influence of blind-gods, of bleak things, at bay? A reminder to turn your eyes away from oblivion?

Judging by the shimmering bestial spirits now lurking on the rocks within this hellpit of Norsca, that seems rather unlikely, to say the least.

A part of you wants to examine the eagle lurking on the rock of Asuryan, but you know Him, and you know what He offers, and right now He is not what you need.

Instead you look to the other stones, where the once subtle touches of magic have become distinctly less subtle.

A spirit of Hysh and Azyr and Ghur rests on a rock that vaguely resembles the constellation of Hoeth. An ibis of sorts, though twice-again larger than the usual kind, with shimmering blue and white feathers that drip potent magic from the realm of the gods itself into the mortal world, its eyes white voids with Hoeth's rune burned into them, shimmering golden fire etched onto the pale nothingness within its not-quite-skull. The Runes of Magic, those sigils that the unlucky burn into their soul in failure, are etched across its feathers in shimmering silver that faintly mists and freezes in the cold. Prismatic light shines around it, the light of Qhaysh, the light of hope, the light of balance and of retribution. Hoeth aids one who swears an oath to Him.
I promise the future.
Around a different rock, shaped like a stag's skull, a massive lion, easily thrice the size of either Indrast or Indiron, growls and waits. Its pelt is pure white light, whiter indeed than the snow of the Annuliis, of the purest of pearl or the bright skyfire above, a spirit thing born of the ascended Rahagra sent by Lord Kurnous, sent as a warning, sent as a promise, to a hunter who faced the Dark Elves once, to a hunter who shall face the Dark Elves again, to a one born of the chosen Kingdom of Kurnous. Its main is delicately braided, and the jewels of the braids all burn with the sacred sigils of Kurnous and of Isha, husband and wife, mother and father of the elves. It claws are shod in brightest gold, and its eyes are sapphires carved into the shape of Kurnous' symbol, the sclera a pristine brown amber.
I promise the now.
The last an ant the size of your torso, made of gold and silver and its shell worked with the hammer, its shell marked with the symbol of the best of makers. Vaul, Vaul who hates Khaine more, perhaps, than you do. Vaul who knows the craftsman's touch, Vaul who has seen you stop His hated tormentor, Vaul who sees the movements of the so-called "Sword of the World" and would defy them, Vaul who quite simply wants to spite the Druchii. That Vaul, He is of a mind to aid you then? Now that you are here, in this place, where the Winds of Magic buck and rage and desire freedom, here where Dhar waits, here where the walls between physical and the spiritual do not exist?
I promise the past.

Knowledge.

Always knowledge, to the Mage. Always magic, to the Mage.

But no knowledge, and no magic, ever came without cost. Ever came without sacrifice. You are no Aenarion to cast yourself into the fire, but right sure they shall want something from you, of that there is precious little doubt.

[] Attend to the spirit of Hoeth.
[] Attend to the spirit of Kurnous.
[] Attend to the spirit of Vaul.
--
Moratorium on, honestly not quite sure when vote will open; at absolute earliest when I wake up tomorrow.

 

[Voikirium]

The Father of the Elves

Kurnous, father of the elves.

There are outsiders who question. There are always outsiders who question. How can Asuryan be the Creator, and Kurnous the Father? In times past the Nehekarans had shown some grasp of it, seeing the Breath of the Gods in its own right for all so many of them abused that power; and the cold blooded of Lustria, in the most heartless way possible, but precious few others; certainly among the lacking creatures which now squat in the Old World.

Asuryan carved Ulthuan. Asuryan made oaths. Asuryan put the very sun in the sky. Everything that exists owes itself to Asuryan, from the lowliest pauper in Ind to the greatest King in Ulthuan.

Kurnous though, Kurnous raised you. Kurnous made you Elves. Kurnous taught husbands to love their wives, taught you how to hunt, how to educate children to live, how to survive in the forests, how to make friends of forest beasts, to shave to be proper. Kurnous in His Magnanimity granted right to the Elves to ride the wild beasts. Kurnous made you warriors, in the truests, barest forms: In Ellyrion, in Chrace, in the wild places, the honor duels which formed the seed of military culture flow back to him as much as they do to Eldrazor. The one who blessed your...fumblings, as a young mage, the "camaraderie" of hunters as well as he blesses the camaraderie of hunters.

And you in particular. Mage of Ghur, mage of wild beasts, you may try and clad yourself in the robes of academia, in the ways of Hoeth, in the appearance of Saphery and her mages; but they and you are not in the same. An inner Hoeth speaks in you, but the inner Kurnous sings, a light yet echoing song that is carried on the winds, the deep bass of lions and the chorus of cicada, the song of the robin and the call of the bear, they all flow from you.

From your Ghur.

You feel the Scratchsmith approaching, the taint of her "god" threatening the breath that flows from you, the blessing of Kurnous unleashed, the might of the hunter that sings in your flesh.

The stone. The stone, the stone, the stone, you must grasp the stone. You grasp it in a hand that faintly shimmers with an amber light, but the connection is weak, even here, even in Norsca, the breath of the gods tamed by the Will of Asuryan.

You are the son of Kurnous. You are all his children, but you more than most: you, whose line stretches back to Blackfangs, who in the Time of the Incursion, in the Time Before the Treachery, bore His Blessing, allied with His Beasts.

Mortals forget.

The gods do not.

The Blood Flows in Your Veins.

Your Kin have sinned against the wild places. In Naggaroth, Blackfang torments and hunts, slaughters and burns, slays and maims, destroys the wild places. They shame their ancestors; and you share that shame. Blood connects you. The Beastwalkers taught you that much as you learned the most basic of their rites.

Blood connects you.

Blood Connects You.

And so in blood you shall be redeemed.

You take a dagger and with a quite strike slide open your palm and ichor and Ghur alike flow from you like a river, the un-reality of Norsca allowing these things. You hear brutish, babbling Dwarf-Speak, and feel the rage of Kurnous at the slayers of lions and dragons and beasts, but he puts it aside as your friends interpose themselves and you...

You write, tracing Asai on your forehead in the red of blood, shared, and bleeding the dishonor with the pain that faintly radiates from your palm.

Elthrarior Kurn-Lecai Isaltin.

A grim fate for us, Light Kurnous' duty.

A-elromui Lis Lacoi.

But endless hope His Glory.

Kunmalav Odri Uthlo

And bloody vengeance, not His Son.

Your throat aches as the blood continues to pour and the words pour with it as you trace more and more of the blood onto your body, wordlessly slipping from your robes, ignoring the cold to fulfill the pact, ignoring the cold to fulfill the promise, ignoring the cold to cleanse yourself in the eyes of your father and of your forefathers in ages now long past.

Nadrstirr Lais Kurn-Lecai.

We have forgotten the Bright Kurnous.

Qusrai Lais Sarsen.

We have menaced His Wife.

Llais Skalesevir.

We have wounded his honor.

You start tracing on your belly, sea of energy, sea of life, seat of bravery, place he filled for you all in times long since passed.

Tithanyn.

We Shall Sacrifice.

You write it over your heart. And then you fall over.

And when next you awake, you are in Norsca.

And not Norsca.

A great snowy forest of golden-boughed trees extends in every direction, farther than the eyes can see. Leaves the shade of emeralds bright and shimmering cover them by inches, while flowers the shade of rubies and sapphires, pearls and amethysts, opals and garnets, layered on every inch of bark.

And then you turn about, your spirit, your soul, and you see.

Him.

They say Asuryan looks upon the Phoenix King as he steps through the Flames. That He is Judged by the Emperor of Heavens, looked upon, studied; and the same for the burdened descendants of Aenarion, the same for those descended of His Champion.

This is not that.

He is not looking upon you.

You are being allowed the dignity of looking upon him. A great chorus, a prismatic-sheen of a thousand-thousand hues of Ghur, of Ghyran, of Aqshy, Azyr--a stag headed champion, nude above the waist, armed with spear and bow--an undualating vortex of Nature, of the Wild, of the Hunter, of Survival and of all things your people tie to it--a warrior, a lord, a soveriegn and prince striding his domain, master of the Hunt--the aethyric reflection of the elven love of nature and understanding of your place in the cycle--the father, the lover, the teacher.

He is your greater, something spiritual, something grand, something terrible and awesome and wonderful in equal measure.

One betrayed, one mocked, one degraded.

The Blackfangs of Naggaroth forget themselves in their arrogance and in their cruelty and in their apathy. They take and they take from the wild places, they hunt and kill without regard for the cycle, they would make a waste and call it a kingdom, a ruin and name it wealth. They shame their ancestors, and so they shame your ancestors.

And the lord of the wild places has not forgotten his oath to those ancestors. And so he shall make you a weapon for their vengeance.

In the town of Stalheim, in the place of Norsca, there are Norscans gathered, aye. They are swathed in the symbols of the blood god, they are bathed in unrighteous blood, they are marked in the trophies of wild things taken and slaughtered and so there shall be a reckoning, there shall be a coming, there shall be a vengeance. Blood for blood.

But there is more to see for a humble mage of the White Tower as well, more to see for one who comes to wage war in a frozen hell.

Blackfangs. In the town. It seems the Druchii have arrived early, it seems the Druchii have come. Your wayward kin, servants to witches, servants to the slaves of Hekarti, servants to your rivl in the race for the staff, in your race for the Firemanes, in your race to save Tethia from a bleak fate which she has not earned.

But your eyes invariably travel further. You are shown more.

A shaman. Not a shaman. A soul of Dhar, aye. A wretched sludge, eyes and maws and fangs sometimes bubbling up from the primordial chaos of the smear that is otherwise naught but a pillar of filth that walks. Robes, plain, of gray color embroidered with some, wicked, unknown and evil script you scarcely remember but only a little like a bad dream, written onto the Warpstone the Druchii used to torment the beasts of the Annullis. A staff thrumming with the most wretched of Ghyran, the most bleak of Shyish, the most untrustable of Ulgu and the worst of Ghur. A soul of barely held together arcane marks and divine blessings that seems only ever a moment from falling apart in a blast of pure magical energy.

it is the shoddiest, most ill-put-together mysticism you have ever seen. But it is mighty; there is potency and puissance and contempt all bound into this priest of an unknown god, that chitters and bites at the walls, that longs to see death and suffering and domination.

A Beastman.

But not a Beastman as you, or any other Asur, has ever written. Ever recorded. In the long, long ages of the world.

A rat, standing many feet high, and making oaths and allegiance with the Blackfangs--with your decrepit kin--with the apostates of hell.

Immediately your heart hardens.

For a moment you are allowed to study these foes, to learn them, to know them.

And then with a gasp you are returned to your body, returned to the material, returned to elf and dwarf alike. Returned to the snow.

Returned to the cold, first and foremost.

Upon seeing you awaken, Tethia immediately starts laying your mantles and robes back upon your person even as the fire pit she set burns, returning some heat to your flesh, helped by the simple tent also arrayed around the three of you. Immediately agile, capable hands grab your jaw and look you in the eyes as she examines you for some defect, some change, and seeing nothing she finds disagreeable she turns from you and immediately starts working with some wand from when the both of you were but students, designed to ease the burden of simple spells of heat and light to keep you from dying of frostbite and hypothermia, never mind any of the other, far more serious maladies one might suffer so close to the realm of the Enemy, where Hate, Obsession, Ambition and Despair rule as gods in their little tin kingdoms.

"This...this can't keep happening."

"...Of course not, princess."

"If you two are done?" The Runelord, Hadra, speaks from her place on the opposite side of the fire pit. Tethia looks at her with a testy contempt, but diplomatic training keeps her frayed nerves from breaking, for a moment at least. "What pie in the sky, zhuf-madness has infected you now, elgi?"

Oh, there you go, her pronunciation of the word has gained that seething superiority complex only an insecure inferior faced with their better can really have. Tethia also looks curious at that, though it is also still split with her concern for you and her contempt for the Haclad.

"Kurnous...Kurnous rages. I, who have walked with the Beastwalkers, was chosen for to receive a message. The Norscans are weakened there, but they are not alone in Stalheim: Treacherous Blackfangs, wicked Blackfangs, stains upon the honor of my forefathers, not walk this land in service of your rival, my princess. And they do not walk alone. Rat-Beastmen ally with them, a shaman of potent power and terrible Dhar, a servant of some bleak god."

There is a sound of breaking wood as one of the Dwarf warriors, Hadra's guard, breaks his ax in his grip, such is his rage. For her part Hadra spits at the words. "Thaggoraki. Gray Seers. So that is why, and that is how, the Dum-Umgi have the audacity to kidnap not just me but my kin, my people, my Clan! Then we shall teach the damn ratmen and their allies the consequences of their actions! Skaven blood will turn this dirt and snow into mud and slush before the week's end, or my name is not Hadra Drakkdrengi!"

She stomps off, only just turning around to bark over her shoulder to get ready, before leaving, apparently to speak with her militia. Tethia keeps your head in her lap, not caring of the blood and not desiring that you should wander off again and get yourself killed, while you are left wondering something yourself:

There are slaves in Stalheim. There are spells you know that could turn the battle swiftly...but they tend to involve much more risk of possibly killing those who never earned such a fate, those who were merely unlucky.

But the Blackfang must die.

[] Restrain yourself.
-Will make use of less destructive spells, at the very least at the beginning of battle.
[] As mighty as possible, as quickly as possible.
-Will make use of more dangerous, more destructive spells.
[] This will be battle; and so it behooves you to cast Battle Magic.
-[] (Write In First Spell)
-As above, but also will allow you to make use of Battle Magic.
--
Moratorium until tomorrow morning.