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Post by ElfChild on Feb 11, 2016 15:28:19 GMT -8
I know this is bizarre as all hell, but bear with me.
Lomerach . 2.7.16049 . Spireguard
Who are you?
Heroes. "Summoned thus" "they pull into the source and gather round" "here to learn, what has always been clear to some" "walk the unknown" "Believing we understand the world we act".
Gwethlhir Logleen "Lord of the Welcoming Song" "My performance this evening was in honor of none other than the great" "fragments of its history". "even if these entities do possess the power to dictate the course of events, then it is my view that they do not exercise it to the fullest extent, or they simply cannot see where this ship we are all on is heading—or if there is a reef in the way." " Song to try and summon a temporary" "People tried singing what they could remember" "I always carry three songs with me, in case two is not enough."
Eilian Valliesse "Rainbow of the Valar's Grace" Of Silverdream. Halo of color, as glass, transient, eternal. "Who are you?" "What do you want?" "Mien. Mienenlor." "They hunt the servants of Morgoth" "between the trees" "alone". Stained glass of colors, concepts, yes no, "Who are you?" "What do you want?" "I am of Silverdream." Truth in contradiction. The path. "Thank you for your wisdom." I may be more than I am.
Nehtar Akaris "Slayer Bride" "Sword lady" "listing the crimes of which they were charged" "he couldn’t judge one for the crimes of his race but I’m pretty sure he didn’t care" "She is... She is a lady"
Cree'kriel "Little Bird" Beloved of Life. Beloved of Light. Beloved of Butterflies. "Shine forever, beacon of light/Blaze in the air, vanquishing light/Sing forever, proud and strong/Anthem of life, conquering song" "The lost find their way to him" "Surrounded by darkness." "we do not understand others desire to unmake the light/What gain do others seek in the blink of an eye which destroys us for eternity?"
"Glowing brilliant in the night, turning darkness into light."
Mist "To Destroy" "That truth's a lie." "Varied, layered." "No wandering in circles, no vague cryptics." "All the...circling and cryptics" "Will your purpose destroy little bird?" "Not if I have any choice in the matter." Destroyer. Protector. Forged in darkness, yet holds dear the light. Cherish without becoming, love without aspiring.
"What are you, underneath all that echoing?"
Lomerach "Cursed Child" "Resurrected from a false demise/While doom stalks shades of grey" "he made his madness real" "When the darkness lives in us like poison" "He sings of hate for the power" "And the river will dance to another’s glee, bending us to his savage needs" "There is no exit from this tired world we struggle against" "turning darkness into light" "an echo, as you say, of his will"
"What are you underneath all that echoing?"
"" Stained glass of colors, concepts, yes no, "Who are you?" "What do you want?" Truth in contradiction. Forged in darkness, yet holds dear the light. Cherish without becoming, love without aspiring. "All sources agree that he hates the light and will have nothing to do with it. Yet covets the Silmarils." Birth or action, what is action when action is an echo, defiant, "turning darkness into light", what are we but echoes in a crowded room? Silver between the trees, at the heart. "Thank you for your wisdom." I may be more than I am. "I will inform you when I have a true answer."
Exavior Crossroads demon, one speaks true, one always lies. "justice is out there and that truth will prevail" "But where is light without shadow/They are one and a part of the same" Truth lies no less. So it goes, he knows. I alone deceive myself. "We do not understand others desire to unmake the light/What gain do others seek in the blink of an eye which destroys us for eternity?"
What are we but echoes in a crowded room? You echo your world, I echo mine, he echoes his. She alone has only light in the world she sees, Morgoth would end it and make her as we are. Reflections of a baffled darkness, made to destroy, irredeemable to all but her and those who do not know, do not see, do not understand, and when they do they request our unmaking, "but what if they never were?" They are the darkness they see reflected in our eyes, echoed in our steps. They deny us, would never be, are greater, but all you have ever done father was lock me away, in the dark, to rot. Prophecies and books and "truth" but they are wrong, father, they are incomplete in this world, fate is blind, truth dies. You cannot see yourself looking back from these dark eyes, for I am drawn to what is true and you filled my mind with lies.
"I will inform you when I have a true answer."
"And so it ends. Is. Begins."
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Post by ElfChild on Mar 8, 2016 17:19:46 GMT -8
Lomerach . 3.5.16049 . Spireguard
"Can you tell me what happened?" I walked, alone, between the trees, and they came, not silent but near, and I followed by the cat-light sound of their steps and the crack of leaves underfoot and the song of the silence. There were three; one crowned, one light, and one sure, and by the light of the crown a way was offered. Three directions, the middle path chosen.
Lomerach . 3.6.16049 . Spireguard
Marta "Fey - Fated" "search the area for" "a voice, small and far away" "papers, coded in elven pen and dragon claw," "those who were not already dead, fled." "swallowed by sand and tombs of old" "but they knew what they were getting into and the importance of what we carry."
Fenume "Great Hoarder of Things - Dragon" "shattered shrines, dragons, puzzles of stones" The walls watch, we are not alone. "doors with eyes on them" "They pulled themselves apart and looked at us with chaos in their gazes" "There is one for each color and they were more common" "All the doors are opening" "search the area for" "papers, coded in elven pen and dragon claw," "but in their hate, their hunger, or lust" "before they could leave the doors of the room were shut."
Glamor "Echo" "What are we but echoses in a crowded room?" "They’re born, and they struggle to reach the sun, then when they’re old and strong they give homes to lots of creatures and help the land, and when they fall, they go back to the land to help more trees grow." "Some of us are better at hiding it than others." "Do you think I should?" "I am only my own echoes of empty rooms, endless books, and rainbow-dark eyes." "I echo books and the words of a world shrouded in vague hints and subtle signs."
"You are your own echoes and your own path. Go where your river bends. Follow its trajectory if you wish not to change its course." "If you wait long enough, your decisions will be made for you." All new echoes written from tone and pitch, spoken in ink and silence.
"I know how to speak a different language." "Thank you for your wisdom."
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Post by ElfChild on Oct 5, 2016 21:41:36 GMT -8
Drey Endgillion
Today is the fifth of tenthmoon. I judge this to be a span of time (three days) which is a safe distance from the following events that I may record them without risking severe repercussions.
The Eon Ion Council, wise as they are, have gathered adventurers from distant lands. I imagine that they foresee a great darkness if they have chosen to take this action. There is a difference between the presence of adventurers and the Council of Eon Ion seeing to their administration personally. The former is commonplace. The latter means trouble is brewing.
In the morning we attended a festival in honor of Vána, the Ever-Young, wife to Oromë. There was dancing, and a contest of poetry. I have no talent for either, but it would be supremely disrespectful to attend such a holy gathering and not participate in honor of the Valië in question. I was permitted to act as judge for the contest of poetry, which I found to be adequate participation. This placed me optimally to experience the work of those doing the much more difficult task of honoring Vána with their own words. The winners of this competition (judged upon the romance and composition of their words) were Tallok (an Amiri Dwarf) and a man who has yet to reveal his name as he is under a vow of silence. I advise you find them if you are interested in their work.
At noon we were sent to a dungeon. Councilmember Oliani detected a time distortion. Time distortions are very bad news, and paradoxes worse. It was therefore imperative that we resolve this distortion with haste. I encountered resistance from a set of hobbits who believed that intoxication was an appropriate state in which to handle issues such as this, which might have required extreme delicacy. They did not take kindly to my taking issue with their use of such a strain of pipeweed at such a time. The dungeon was home to many brittlemen, which were dispatched easily, but whom were permitted to zombify on account of the refusal of the man with the vow of silence to permit their burning. The zombies did not cause significant issue.
At the back of this dungeon was a set of three stone statues, crisp blue power arcing between them. Tallok asked my thoughts. I felt a distinct sense of discomfort, as though this had happened before, though I had only met Tallok that day. I was unable to block or disrupt the energy. I am uncertain what was done to activate the statues. Upon activation they came to life and assaulted us, though without use of lethal force. Our party was able to drop them. A young mage, Adelaide, attempted to identify one. I stood by to prevent interference. When all three had dropped, they stood and reactivated. A triangle of blue shot between them, trapping several of us inside.
We found ourselves by a river between Blessi and Spireguard. The sun was setting. It was the evening of that day, though it was uncertain how I knew this. Several individuals were rushing toward the city. We engaged with them and asked where they were going. They said to Spireguard. They said there were riots, and that the city burned. We of course joined them. We were then returned to the dungeon. Several people declared that we must prevent the riots. I stopped them at the entrance. Preventing the riots might cause a paradox, in that the flow of events that had warned us of the riots might never have occurred BECAUSE we had experienced it, thus disrupting the current of time. We should speak to Councilmember Oliani, who is of great expertise in these matters, before we did anything else. They agreed. We did. She fell mostly into agreement. We should speak of this to no one until after the events had transpired, lest we cause or worsen them by mistake. In what, were this a story, would be akin to an epilogue, the riots have occurred and been quelled. I am not yet certain of their origin. I will attempt to speak to Councilmember Oliani at a future date.
In the afternoon we sought out a priestess of Nienna, lady of grief and wife to Mandos. She was to inform us of important things, as we were told she understood the movements of the Wildwood. Our venture into this wood was strange. There are creatures called Reedmen which are tall and composed of grasses. (To pass on the priestess' words, they are friendly but have no understanding of companionship. They may be disturbed or even, on occasion, shocked.) There were moving stones. There were bushes that sought to eat you alive. We did, after being separated and finding one another, find the priestess. I find I forget her name (I am terrible with names, and I do apologize). She told us there are bestial creatures in the woods and that wooden skeletons were making advances on the reedmen. They did. We fought them and were summarily killed.
This has been a summary for your use.
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Post by ElfChild on Aug 21, 2017 18:03:41 GMT -8
Notes regarding claims bade by the entity known as the Chained Salvation - Drey Endgillion
During the process of doing battle with the being referred to as the Chained Salvation, a number of claims were made by the entity, which I have attempted to collect to the best of my ability. While it is possible that these claims are false, discussion with individuals who were consistently present combating it suggests that while it has made a number of value judgments, it has not made any claims regarding factual information that are verifiably false. Indeed, most of its claims are difficult to verify the truthfulness of at all, being about the nature of the deities and events whose truth is lost to prehistory. As the major claims that have been reported to me have great bearing upon the elven people and indeed all people should they be correct, I will spend a page or two enumerating the claims made, along with some limited analysis and speculation regarding them in the hopes that these claims will receive further investigation by individuals more suited to the exploration of such matters.
Claim: The entity known as the Chained Salvation was invited in to protect this place, and believes it is doing so.
The Chained Salvation does not appear to perceive itself as actively malicious. It holds an extreme hatred for the gods, claiming that eventually, it would get around to destroying access to Roekron for all of them. It also claims that its deal with Stormwatcher did not expire upon the mage's death. As I am not a historian in Temnorian history, there is little I can add to this, save that while the narrative we have been presented suggests that it tricked Stormwatcher, its own narrative suggests that Stormwatcher may not have understood what he was asking for.
Claim: The gods are illusions.
While the gods are clearly not merely images pretending at some sort of being, it could be that they find similarities with illusions a manner of speaking. The power of a god is largely determined by how many individuals worship them, and how fervently. The nature of a god can change depending upon how it's followers worship it and what they believe its nature to be, and we have records of God's being seemingly created in some circumstances by individuals who invented and then convinced others to worship them (Sidonia in a backwater town in Illionass seems to be an example of this). In this way they are not entirely unlike illusions, whose continued existences are reliant upon belief. Even this being the case, however, it seems to me that they are two entirely different classes of entity. The gods are not played on puppet strings like a mere illusion, and the comparison rankles.
Claim: The elves are aliens or outsiders, created by the fey.
When asked why it was here in elven lands, the entity known as the Chained Salvation reportedly told combatants that it was here to remove the pretenders, those who claimed to have crated us. A paladin of the Valar is reported to have reaffirmed that the Valar did create us, and asserted that the entity was an outsider here and should leave. When told that the elves were from the Western continent and and as such had a claim to this world, the Chained Salvation is reported to have responded that the elves were just as alien to this place as the gods were (have you ever wondered why elves are the only four fingered race?) and that they had been created by the fey.
The elves could be literal aliens from another planet or plane--if the fey created us that is not out of the question--but the dragon Onon is recorded to have stated in elder sorcery that all beings are related and specifically mentions elves alongside fish and dwarves, with the implication that all of these descend from the First Beings. It is possible that elves could be only a partial construction--shaped, but not created in our entirety. It is possible our ancestors are from feyland and descendants of the fey themselves, making the fey also descendants of the first beings. This might explain the level of advancement our culture has had from seemingly the outset--being from the fey land could have given our ancestors significantly more time to evolve culturally. This does, however, raise important questions about how the fey interface with other continents. Does the same feyland feed into all continents on this planet, or are the fey who we tend today unrelated to those the Chained Salvation claims brought about our existence? Lastly, it is possible different continents are different planes, thus making elves alien to Roekron independent of the involvement of the fey in their evolution.
Provided that the Chained Salvation was speaking truthfully regarding the nature of beings, it seems likely that one of the last two options is the reality of the situation. The Chained Salvation rebuffed the claim that elves belonged here by nature of belonging to this world even if they were not native to this continent.
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Post by ElfChild on Nov 6, 2017 14:06:27 GMT -8
Iseni Stellaris Cover Letter
Hello. I'd like to thank you for choosing to view my portfolio. I'm Iseni Stellaris, a student in life magic, with ambitions to work in Divine Management and a passion for intersectional studies in information dynamics. My skills include elementary life magic, excellent organizational skills and note-taking, technical writing, and team management. As a child growing up in Astengrad, the school has raised me and I want to be able to give back to it to the greatest extent I can. To this end, I hope to be able to progress quickly in my studies so as to be able to give back to this institution as much and as soon as possible.
While my grades will speak for themselves, I have compiled this set of narratives detailing my free days so that you can better observe and assess what I do when given more freedom and space to improvise, as it is important when taking on a new employee or intern to know whether they match well with the attitudes and culture of your department, and to consider what their unique perspective might add to your operation. This is especially important when the work in question is such an important thing as the furtherance of knowledge and management of the forces which govern our world itself.
Thank you for your time, and I hope the contents herein are of use to you.
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Post by ElfChild on Nov 9, 2017 20:47:33 GMT -8
Eleventhmoon Iseni Stellaris
My free day in Eleventhmoon was spent in pursuit and investigation of a tower. Pampas wanted us to go find and bring back information about an odd tower in the catacombs--currently the catacombs were just a river, but they'd found it earlier--It'd had a shapeshifting angel in it, they said, and one time the angel had become... escalated, I guess? Violent at least. It killed them. But they wanted us to find the tower and learn about it and come back and tell them what we found. I was interested because there was a river involved, and rivers are often time, and I've been wondering about the way deity omniscience interacts with time and the possibilities of both one and multitude timelines at the same time. We didn't really end up learning about that. We did find a tool that will help me learn about it in the future though! That's at the end. Stick around.
We went down into the catacombs--that's dangerous, you know? Sometimes it involves falling a lot. But this time it was pretty okay. It wasn't like last time--it's underground, so you expect tunnels, but we were on rocky reddish soil with sky above and a swift river running through. There were water elementals around the river--they looked more like waves than humanoids--in my book on magical species they look more like floating people made of water. We approached, but they attacked us when we came too close to the river, but they weren't lethal. Some of them would just carry people away from the river. But we needed to find that tower, and it was probably connected to the river, so we had to get close. (Trevor) was able to make it to the river and touch it, and he doesn't know what he did, but the whole world warped toward him and he felt big for a moment. Everything changed.
We were standing in a rockier area, with a ravine with a creek in it off to the side. Up ahead were ruins atop a small hill, but between us and the runs were a number of small bird-winged people in light plate mail--like dwarven angels, a little. They were all dropped, and some people seemed to feel like they had to kill them for some reason, but one person healed one of them. It flew up and hovered for a bit--maybe they had a conversation, I'm not sure. I'll ask. Then it flew off into the ruins and all the other little angle beings dissolved into light and followed it.
We continued up the hill to the ruins. We kicked around for a little until one of the dwarves found a cylinder that was a secret door. It seemed like it should either be lifted up or pushed down. The problem was, it would take the strength of more than ten giants to get it out. We talked a little. One of the sorcerers said he could cast a spell to give some people giant strength. I said we should pull it up because if we pushed it down and then it had been supposed to get up, it'd be harder to get it back up later. (JB) pointed out we could use staves as levers to help get more leverage if we were going to pull it up. Between that and the giant strength spell and everyone trying their best to work together, we were able to drag it upward, and once it had started coming up, it didn't stop. Even once we let go of it, the cylinder slid up and up until it was a tower, hovering just above this hole in the ground and looking as though it was balanced on its pointed bottom. Like a big round upside-down obelisk made of granite. The tower cylinder had a door at the very top, but none of us could get up there, and there were a lot of downward stairs in the hole below, so we dropped down and started down the stairs. I'll be mapping both the way down and later the way up in case someone finds a use for that, but the maps aren't very exciting. You can find that at the bottom too.
We walked down the spiraling stairway until it let out into a room. The room was filled with wyrms of varying sizes. They were kind of scary? And lethal too. It didn't help that half of us ran off to the stairs opposite us while the other half of us tried to deal with the wyrms or support the people dealing with the wyrms. There were a lot of deaths, and I think a lot of people would have ended up stuck there if I hadn't realized and tried to rally the other people who had gone off to the stairs. But once I did, the stairs group swooped in and healed a lot of the dead and killed the remaining wyrms and everyone came out of it alright and together. And we all learned a happy lesson about the power of friendship or something? We kind of really did. Teamwork is really effective if you remember to actually use it. The next room would illustrate this too.
We continued down the spiraling stairs til they descended into a second room. The first thing that stood out about the room was the huge stone trap door, because it was so big you could probably fit a dragon through it. The second thing that stood out about the room were the things populating it. Half of them looked like steel drakes, but the other half were like people made of grey fog. They were armed, but more prevalent was their necromancy. They would kill people and then animate them as specters for twenty seconds, which was weird. None of them attacked us when we were on the ground, so even though we were overpowered, Helena was able to play dead and heal people, who would also play dead and heal people until the whole group was alright. With better support and front line dynamics we were able to keep everyone alive long enough to figure out how to drop the fog men--they only took magic non-spell damage. Some people think maybe they were some kind of golem. I think maybe they were some kind of outsider. None of us know for sure.
Once they were defeated, we investigated the trap door. It was carved to look like it was made of wood, but it was made of some kind of grey rock with quartz in it, and it had a kind of a ring for a handle, but pulling on it didn't open it. The dwarves thought it was probably trapped, but they didn't know what the trap was. Liam sat down to oracle, but instead of the spell going off, a prophecy started to filter into the space. This was the best we were able to gather--it might be out of order a little, since we heard it twice and the order of the lines was different each time, and this is just our best shot at putting it together.
Run with all the rainways ...dew is newly made In the garden we have lingered in the (endless flow/grave full) of rhyme Seek the somber mistress... ... (Here courses/Hope is now) the byways, We are the light in the darkness, we are all the glimmers at dusk They are all our hopes and dreams, and many now are nightmares
Partway through we realized we had started floating--like gravity somehow didn't apply anymore. There was a little bit of debate about what to do, but that stopped when I realized that the ring on the door was a knocker and knocked. The door just opened at that point, and in spite of being an enormous door, behind it was the grave of something that couldn't have been any larger than a dwarf, filled with dried leaves and flowers. Under all the leaves and flowers was a torn book in some language I'd never seen before and a few small pieces of bone. At first people called for nobody to touch any of the things, but they were quickly ignored. While no one could reach anything with their hands since we were still floating, the grave wasn't deep, and with staff touch it was simple work for someone to lift the book out of the grave. While they were looking at that, I removed the bones and examined them. I've taken a lot of healing classes, they're kind of required as a life mage, so it wasn't hard to identify them--three of were the tiny bones making up a pinky finger. The last one was a shard of a skull, the piece around an eye socket.
Something shifted. Something that had been balanced came unbalanced, and we felt an enormous pressure bearing down on us as the tower plummeted downward. It was almost certainly going to crush us, and I thought hard for a way not to be, because we didn't understand things yet, and there had to be more. Something checked my intention just then. I don't know what it was, but it checked, and then I was safe and it was dark and gravity was back. We knew we were in the tower, and we knew that it was night. Someone cast magelight and we checked around. There were about half of us there. Helena was there, and Tamsin and Baasil and (JB), but Xander and Jace and (Trevor) and a bunch of others were gone. It turns out they were fine, they're the ones who reported in to Pampas. We--the people who were in the tower now--looked around a bit. There was still the giant door and the tiny grave, but it was empty now, with no sign of any dried flowers or leaves. There were footprints though. They were about the size of dwarf feet, and made of dried mud. They headed up the stairs. We followed them.
We came up into a room with dozens of creatures that looked like bats, but with faces, like people. They used fear touch and shock touch and martial arts knockout, and we tried to get through as fast as possible, and then we tried to get our friends out, but we weren't able to get everyone in time. Looking down, we saw Theldel and (Toby) lying on the floor and watched them shrivel and turn into more bats, but with their own faces. We thought for a little, and we were going to have the sorcerers try to summon them until I realized that the bats didn't have legs, and they probably couldn't move very well if they couldn't fly. So the sorcerers and Arren (who has disable) lead the charge back down into the room and shut down the flying of as many bats as possible until we'd grabbed Theldel and (Toby). Then we ran back up the stairs. Summon the dead reverted them, and after that we could regenerate them.
At this point we realized that as we continued up the stairs there were more and more muddy footprints, increasing with every stair, until we emerged into the next room. There were, in that room, three lines of dark-haired dirty dwarves in shiny black chains. They chanted quietly: "They are all our hopes and dreams, and many now are nightmares." Over and over and over. (JB) tried to touch them, but when he did, he felt an intense pain and flinched back. Later he would touch them a few more times so he could try to use that pain to focus an oracle. Then they walked off into a wall. He tried to oracle, but again, instead of the spell casting like it usually would, the prophecy filtered in, faster this time and in a different order. We tried to get down as much as we could, but it was difficult. I need a spell that records and stores things I hear so I can listen to them again. (Murali) and Tamsin are decent at messenger stuff, so I'll see if they can help remember missing pieces later.
Someone did... something? I'm not sure what, but suddenly all of us were in a room. Except, it didn't seem like it was all of us. It seemed like it was a dozen strangers, and only the last one standing would make it out alive, but I didn't want to hurt anyone, and it seemed like the necromancer next to me didn't want to either because we exchanged looks and then ran opposite ways. Someone killed me a little after that, and then someone--Helena I think? It's really hard to tell--healed me, and I tried to hide, but people came after me telling me to disbelieve. At that point people had figured out that disbelieving revealed the truth of the situation. But I hadn't. And I was pretty sure they were trying to kill me. And I've heard of situations where disbelieving can get you hurt. So I told them I wasn't a threat, except that then the necromancer from before said I lived in her closet, so that pretty much had to be Tamsin and I did like they asked and clearly they were all my classmates. The room didn't go away or become solved just because we knew we were classmates again though. We asked the dwarves about secret doors, and they said they did sense one but it was going to be inside of the last person left standing. I told everyone to sit in a circle and hold hands, and there was resistance at first, a little. Mostly it was confusion, I think. I told them we were all together going to be the last person standing, so they sat, and I sang a couple verses of a song that seemed to tie together a lot of the... kind of subconscious themes of the place, if that makes sense?
We are living 'neath the great Big Dipper We are washed by the very same rain We are swimming in the stream together Some in power and some in pain We can worship this ground we walk on Cherishing the beings that we live beside Loving spirits will live forever We're all swimming to the other side
On this journey of thoughts and feelings, binding intuition: our head, our heart We are gathering the tools together, we're preparing to do our part All of those who have come before me, band together to be my guide Loving lessons that I will follow, we're all swimming to the other side
Things changed again. There were three places: To our left, a musty library. To our right, the door to the catacombs swinging open and closed. Behind us, a cold darkness. We chose the library. Then a riddle was presented:
In the space between the darkness And the time between our movements All is here where we will find the key to all our wonders.
We answered dreams since it was the only thing we could think of that made sense, and it accepted that but more in a "you've made a decision" sort of way, and then we had to choose if we were going to get to the library with feet, with wings, or with time. I'm honestly not sure what won that. Maybe it was time. But we appeared outside the catacombs. On the floor in the middle of our little circle was a Book of the Summoner Mage. There was a lot of talk about how different people wanted to do it, but it takes an understanding of elder sorcery and 2400 gold per person in materials costs to teach yourself all the material--I'm reading from it right now and it says for this one ritual you need thirty feet of gold leaf an inch wide and three sapphires. That's one ritual. But.
But it lets you channel gods and spirits, and if anyone's going to know the true nature of the world and of information dynamics and of oracle and what the eye of the world is and the relationship between our reality and the multitude afterlives, it'll be them. At least, from one perspective it will be. And those are things I need to know, things I need to understand.
Odin Farmain said to be careful about going into the catacombs. Be careful about what you think, and what you want, and what you do. I think I understand why now. I went in wanting a path to knowing something more than anything, and maybe that's what was always supposed to be there, but I came out having found that path, and now I have, I'll follow as hard as I can or die trying.
I can see why a place like that might be dangerous.
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Post by ElfChild on Nov 10, 2017 11:38:02 GMT -8
Tower MapDiagramsI don't recommend viewing this diagram without the context of the eleventhmoon chronicle.
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Post by ElfChild on Dec 3, 2017 21:08:49 GMT -8
Elder Sorcery Wording and Strategic Use of Prosaic, Poetic, and Lyrical Forms Iseni Stellaris, Eleventhmoon, Year 16,139 Scholarship Application: Studies in Summoner Magics
Those who work with magic frequently discuss the four necessary components of spellcasting: Words, Intent, Delivery, and Cost. Standard teachings do recognize the intersections of some of these factors. Words and intent are often taught back to back, as Elder Sorcery is the language of creation, and like any language, minor changes in wording can create major differences in perceived intent. Likewise, wording is often discussed in relation to cost. The literature seems overwhelmingly concerned with the impact of each factor of spellcasting on cost, as cost is the practical limitation on the utility of a spell. However, I have been shocked as I have delved into the literature to find that it’s not often that we see discussion outside of art magic circles about the intersections of casting and its related disciplines outside of elder sorcery--construction of prose, lyric, and poetry. In this paper I will argue that this intersection, if utilized properly, has an immense potential for increasing spell effectiveness.
It is oft overlooked that the world is described as having been sung or woven1 into being. Indeed, one need not look further than rune-singers and prophecy to see that meter and rhyme as found in music and poetic forms are intensely meaningful to the ability of magic to constrain possible future world states and create both immediate and long-term effects.2 While most mages seem content to stick to making brief, direct statements in the spoken word, there seems to be a great wealth of evidence that more symbolic wording, if applied in a poetic or sung form, opens up a whole new well of possibilities. This being the case, let us compare the structural styles of one line commands, prose, poetry, and song.
The one line command is the style of spell which the reader is no doubt most accustomed to. The spell “With the Elder Sorcery of Storm and Necromancy, I read your fear” is an excellent example of a simple one line spoken incant. It is short and easy to cast quickly, but not precise, either in linguistic meaning or tone. Conflicting possible perceptions or meanings of a spell make it more difficult to control with precision--the more possible meanings, the harder it is. In its brevity, it has opted out of providing implications or tonal cues with which to determine things such as what part of the mind it intends to read, how it wishes to receive the information, and other relevant factors. When so many differing interpretations of a set of words are possible, much is left up to the strength and clarity of the caster’s intent. It is also of a low level of craft and polish, and as such does not tap into that part of the world which is receptive to art, flow, and symbolic speech.
Alternatively, had I more time to cast my spell, I could construct prose to discuss what I intend to do--possibly, “With the Elder Sorcery of Storm, Necromancy, Life, and Nature, Inside your mind there is a hidden fear. It is a darkness which eats you from inside, twisting your intentions and poisoning all you do. I find it, and I know it.” This is much more specific, with a clear intent in the words before any help is necessary from the caster’s will. You’re not learning just any fear, and your spell cannot be interpreted as doing so. It will, unless you well and truly fumble your intent, search for a deep and important fear which profoundly shapes behavior. By being highly specific, this spell can also cost much less than the simple one discussed prior. Additionally, the caster spends much more time and energy constructing the spell, as each word must be carefully chosen, so the intent will likely be better conceptualized. (I would be curious to see a study on the effects of meditation upon one’s intent on casting, which could improve strength and clarity of intent.) All the elements of this process come together to not simply command, but create, imply, and enhance a narrative as well, and stories have tremendous magical power.3 However, there are risks involved as well--the longer and more complex your spell is, the more likely you are to misspeak it and fumble. More words also take more concentration to control. Spells of this sort require the utmost care, and as such are usually constrained to ritual situations, and almost always kept far away from combat.
Let us move on then to poetry and song. As discussed prior, poetry is one of the forces of which the world is considered to be woven. It occupies a linguistic space adjacent to song, with a similar ability to resonate with the world. Additionally, just as the layout of a ritual spell has a powerful ability to shape and constrain intent4, shaping your words has a powerful ability to do the same, and an understanding of the rules of poetry can be used to understand what words will be emphasized and where attention will be drawn throughout your spell.
"With the Elder Sorcery of Storm, Necromancy, Nature, and Life: Inside your mind I find Poisoning you from inside Darkness A festering, rotted, wound Whose shadow touches all you do." While this spell is less specific in its wording, it makes heavy use of implication. It is impossible, upon reading it, not to come away with a distinct sense of what the caster is searching for, and this clarity derived from the implications crafted by the poetic form allows the spell itself to search for and identify a wider variety of self-destructive motivations than fear while maintaining a high clarity of intent.
If one were to add music, one could shape interpretation further. By using a light major key you might imply that you are seeking this out to heal it, further directing your spell toward something that can in fact be healed. A more ominous minor key may imply that this is something you wish to use to cause harm, and direct the spell toward a trait or feeling that can be manipulated in that way. By using song, you are also speaking the language of the world to a much greater extent than you would be otherwise--the world was sung into being, and there is a strong argument to be made that the truest form of Elder Sorcery remains the sung form of Elder Sorcery. Thus, the world may be more easily able to accept Elder Sorcery cast in this form, which may have the effect of lowering your casting costs or tapping into elements of a situation you did not know were present.
At the heart of this work is the idea that the world itself must to interpret your words in order for your spellcasting to be effective. Elder Sorcery puts your words in a language that the world can understand and prose makes your use of that language clearer, but music and poetic language have also been shown to be understandable to our world, sometimes creating effects without any Elder Sorcery at all. By combining these communication methods and putting serious thought into the style and quality of the writing and performance of our spells, we may be able to decrease gaps between our intents and the way the world manifests our commands.
References: 1Article by Tinúveil Noen, “Wurlangdemedes and the Creation of the World”; Celindil, 3rd Age 2Lecture by Alanna Chrillys (recorded by Vestos Crowley), “On the Cyclical Nature of Prophecy”; Randwin, 5th Age 3Chronicle by Cirdan Whitewalker, 31.5.16026, Axiems, 6th Age 4Article by Cirdan Whitewalker, “Magic in the Stones: Musings on the Working of Runic Magic,” Axiems, 6th Age
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Post by ElfChild on Mar 7, 2018 23:26:12 GMT -8
Firstmoon
Iraya Iseni StellarisI decided not to spend my off day in Firstmoon running around with people. I wanted to spend the morning outlining my final paper for Elementary Tissue Reunification, because we'd already covered the paper topic in Conservation of Bodily Material and if I did a skeleton draft I could just flesh it out with relevant information we learned in class and not have to spend as much time on it. I needed to not spend as much time on it so that I could pay more attention in Conservation of Intent, since that seems like a much more interesting class from what the syllabus says. I'm glad we get our syllabi early, I'm not sure how I'd manage if they only gave them to us on the first day of a term like they did when I was in more introductory classes. Anyway, I skeletoned my final paper a week early in the morning. I spent the afternoon in the library looking for records of legal debates and press releases. That seemed important, and I was curious, and I know the clerks try to keep word for word records of that sort of thing in the library record. I saw people a couple times, over near the fiction section. It seemed like Helena was doing something. I didn't say hi though, because it was kind of a ways off and she looked busy and I was busy. Anyway. I turned up the record from the time recently when they did the press release. Three of the primuses were there, because they have to be to be able to vote on anything. The big issues discussed were as follows: - Minor tweaks to a couple different things were passed. Nothing major. It was pretty esoteric. Like they changed the wording of some definitions of things.
- Rules surrounding the legality of micro-level time distortions were hotly debated. The plaintiffs argued that if time distortion is illegal, we shouldn't be allowing it in some instances just because it's really small. Isn't it still an issue? The Storm Mages were pretty angry about that though, and it seemed like they knew it was gonna come up, because the record shows they had a lot of hear-hears. They thought the plaintiffs were trying to get ice ball outlawed, which the plaintiffs didn't think was unreasonable, given the effects of minor localized time freezes could cause problems. The primuses ended up ruling that micro-level time distortions would remain legal in a very carefully worded opinion which was clearly trying to mark out that ice ball was legal and major time magic wasn't without setting down an actual line.
Some commentaries I read by a couple of clerks disagreed on why they thought the primuses had worded things in that way. Some thought they were trying to preserve the discretion of the people who had to judge cases of time distortion. Others thought they were trying to make sure ice ball wouldn't disappear but didn't want to set an actual line because if they did people might feel empowered to make more micro-time distortion sorceries so long as they fell within the line, and while ice ball may be carefully engineered not to mess with the timeline too much, widespread sorcery creation might not be so carefully put together or might have a greater propensity to result in catastrophic fumbles. A third opinion was that the primuses hadn't yet decided their own stance and were holding out for a time when all five were present to discuss and come to a more specific conclusion.
When reading legal works, I have to recommend looking at what clerks wrote articles on, and what their opinions are. They're pretty good at explaining why certain issues matter and what the lines of legal thought surrounding them might be. Plus, it tells you where the important stuff is if all the clerks are writing on one thing.
- A group of plaintiffs tried to bring up the philosophy of the ethics of not using magic if one has access to it, arguing that the ethical implications of our actions should factor into the construction of our laws. They were shut down, and the primuses refused to give them the floor to debate the issue.
If you're a legal scholar and want to tell me what the legal issues are with debating magical ethics, you should come say hi! If you're the primuses or you're in government, I don't mean you any offense, I just think peer review is good in all things? If you disagree maybe you can send an intern to let me know why, or discuss it with me in at an interview if you're reading this when I'm applying for internship? I want to understand the issues!
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Post by ElfChild on Mar 8, 2018 0:58:17 GMT -8
TwelfthmoonIstari Iseni StellarisI forgot to write about twelfthmoon! I was halfway through writing about secondmoon when I realized I didn't write about twelfthmoon, and twelfthmoon was exciting too! I guess I added my paper that I presented and then I had it in my head I'd put something up for twelfthmoon, but I completely forgot to write how presenting the paper went! Or about the catacombs! Or about Kelp! Or about anything! I almost misplaced my notes, and that would have been awful! Too many exclamation points, I sound much more anxious about this than I should be. Or need to be. Is there a correct amount of anxious? Can I optimize my anxiety levels to maximize productivity, or optimize my exclamation point levels to maximize reader understanding of my levels of anxiety? Someone should look into these things. People went on a field trip in the morning, and the docent had a stutter, and I asked him if stuttering interfered with casting because it seems like that would increase fumble chance. He said no, so I'm not sure if he was saving face or if the world can understand you just fine through your stutter and misspeaking elder sorcery only matters in some cases and not others. Someone should look into that. A lot of people went to the catacombs, but I didn't want to because the catacombs didn't key to any symbology I had an interest in today that I was aware of and also I needed to practice for presenting my paper for my scholarship, but later they came back, and there was a lot of news about it. The big news was that several people had fallen in a bottomless hole to the afterlife. An afterlife. They were going to be dead unless they were retrieved, and at first Odin didn't think they could be retrieved, but when he learned the place they'd gone was stormy with people wandering around, he told them there was a chance. He said if it had just been a black plane, there would have been no chance at all, but this plane was the domain of Quaok, a storm, darkness, and death deity who was the shadow aspect of Lynthall, the deity of light who opposes him. He said he thought they had turned Lynthal into Quaok, and they could probably reawaken him. The whole shadow self thing sounded like it might be thematically connected to vampires, and the thematics of vampires is interesting, and also we kind of needed to make sure people were okay? So I stopped practicing and we all went down to the catacombs. When we arrived at the catacombs, the door looked like the Catacombs Door Diagram, depicted below. It had a slot in it for a spear, and when we put it in we were able to turn the door. On one side was steps going up to a grassy plains, on the other were steps leading down into clouded shadows. Some people went to the shadows. I went to the grassy plains. It was nice and warm and the sunlight was orange. The trees were turning autumn green, because in autumn on this plane trees are green, and the breeze was nice and warm and energizing. It felt idyllic, and very sacred. Eventually we heard singing--kind of a chant, I guess? We went toward it, and it got cloudier and colder, and we could see the clouds. Lightning streaked across them, and then there were haunt people. They attacked us and chased us, and eventually I called for Lynthal and he appeared--or rather he disappeared from the other side and appeared by us. He was a undead samurai with a bright red spear, and when he joined us he swung it for exorcism. Eventually someone stabbed me and I passed out. When I was next aware of anything, I could see Pedion holding a noose. He untied it, and started pulling it apart, and then it started unweaving itself. It was on the end of a rope which went to a tree, and all the dead people were chained to the tree and kind of haunty. The rope continued to unweave itself all the way to the tree, unweaving anything it encountered in the process, and none of our efforts would slow its progress. When it reached the tree, we all heard something, kind of inside ourselves, before appearing outside. It said, " hear neither for nor against, yet bounded to return," and while the people who had been chained up were with us and alive when we got outside, they had the mark of a shackle burned into their ankles forever. A lot of them had withered. I'm not sure what to make of it. In the afternoon Pedion and I presented our work. I wanted funding to become a Summoner, and he wanted sponsorship for a project of his surrounding studying the nature of death outcome probability factors and soul dispersion potential. We were both very nervous. I think he might have been more nervous, since he had having to present sprung on him that day, and his presentation was much more mathematical than mine, and you kind of really needed to read it to get the full picture? He did his best, and it was pretty good. The format was like this: We had a total of ten minutes to present and then take questions from our colleagues, so we needed to budget time for questions, and answer questions efficiently. I asked Helena to hold up fingers for how many minutes I had left so I could make sure I was explaining things in a timely way. After, teachers and TAs would get a chance to ask us questions. There wasn't a time limit for that, but we had to answer them well. Then they'd let us know results. You can read my paper, and if you're reading this you probably did already, but I was very anxious about presenting, and I tried to get through it quick, and I was able to make all my main points in about six minutes and have a full four minutes for questions, and then-- Okay. And then after I had answered all the questions, there was. Kind of. The nature primus appeared. Behind me. Or maybe she was there all along, but I don't know how I could not have noticed? She didn't have any things, and she was dressed simply, but she doesn't exactly blend in, she's got this great blue sapphire in her forehead! She talked mostly in prophecy. Some of it I recited with her. Sometimes she left open space for me to say pieces. It was the "we are meant for making nothing" one, it's a song, and she sang it, and my voice didn't go quite low enough at the end, but I sang it too to the best of my ability. And at the end! At the end she said she was looking forward to my writing! Or. Actually, she didn't say that. She said my writing was arrows into the wind. I don't actually know what that means. I'm kind of scared. But she talked to me! In person! And complimented my work! And I'm going to be a Summoner! Only now I don't know if I should be aiming for Divine Management or Planar Remapping, because if she likes me maybe I'll be able to intern with her, but also divine management and the way it interacts with information and the nature of awareness' influence on reality is kind of my area of interest... I'm very torn! I think I'm aiming for divine management for now, but! She liked my work! //OOG: Scene drawing HERE.///
Sorry, I used up a lot of paper being excited. You didn't really need to hear me being excited. Or maybe you did and my excitement tells you something important about me when I apply for an internship? I, um. It was a good stopping point, but I forgot to write about the whole Kelp debacle. So I'm going to do that. We were told there was a security breach, so we went, and it was a lot of statues shaped like fairies stealing information about people's papers, and so we tried to stop them or contain them, but we couldn't so I went to the Intake Coordination office and Pedion went to offices where he could find his parents, and we tried to get someone to do something? I filled out a form and everything. I filed my copy in here because I guess why not? They gave me a copy as kind of a receipt, you can see the paper's this weird white. Anyway, it turned out it was Kelp stealing everyone's data, and they had a press conference. They said the stolen data would not be made available to any other schools, and that anti-plagiarism policies would be enforced assuming proof of ownership of an idea or paper could be provided, but Kelp wasn't going to destroy their copies of the information they'd stolen. Briar and Oak weren't very happy about it, and I heard a lot of talk about setting the spiders in the quad on Kelp students.
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Post by ElfChild on Mar 8, 2018 1:26:36 GMT -8
Door to Catacombs - Twelfthmoon Help Request Paperwork ReceiptI didn't date it with the year... I hope that doesn't cause trouble for archivists.
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Post by ElfChild on Mar 8, 2018 2:06:13 GMT -8
Secondmoon
Ivamin Iseni Stellaris
Secondmoon was. Well. Things kind of happened? I didn't write about it til now because, well. Half of it didn't seem too important, and half of it Astengrad bureaucratic offices already know about. But. It nagged at me a little bit.
I don't really understand Odin Farmain. I mean I think I understood him worse in Secondmoon than I did this month. I think knowing what to expect helps? But I didn't know what to expect in Secondmoon. I kind of thought he'd teach us nonmagical... look, it's complicated, somehow I didn't think kitchen work meant actually sorting vegetables and stuff? I thought it would be demon cleaning type things. I definitely didn't think it would mean walking all the way out to a farm and doing farm work? Who trusts students with farm work? Doesn't he know we're going to mess it up? We didn't even have instruction, we just had to figure out how to put everything back together by ourselves, and the cow died twice, and I'm pretty sure we did a bad job, and also I don't think I conducted myself well at all and the whole experience wasn't fun at all, which kitchen work isn't supposed to be, but it didn't feel very practical? I don't know. It Odin knows what he's doing, especially after this month, especially because he says magic is a limited resource, but. I don't know. I don't like his style of task very much. I think Nine would like it more, maybe, since he hates homework so much. Open ended things are supposed to be for individual study or independent projects though, not for situations where teachers are judging you on things. Even my scholarship project at least specified length and style of paper. If someone wants something from you they should come out and tell you what. It makes me anxious when people don't.
We came back from the kitchens and people were talking about all sorts of stuff from the catacombs. They found a big river with jungle things and giant spiders, and walked down a path designed for spiders, and then a bird came down and grabbed a baby spider? They rescued the baby spider and a teleporting spider pulled down an orb out of the sky, which identified as having a connection to many planes and dimensions. They thought it was probably an egg of some kind. Maybe it will be important to something. Odin certainly seems to think so. It seems like Odin has pretty strong feelings about people dismissing things as meaningless. In that he really doesn't like it. He says that the gods are always trying to communicate something to us by what's in the catacombs. I don't disagree necessarily, but I wonder if what the gods say is always worthwhile? Sometimes people can find their way on their own. Sometimes gods don't have the best intentions. It's like people, I think. Lots of people have something to say, but it's not always something you need to hear. Not everyone has good advice always.
We went to the Hall of Endless Roads in the afternoon. I was hoping to learn something about the way timelines worked while we were there, and we did learn interesting things. We were going to a path without language, see, and Helena wanted to see how much abstraction you could do before it was language, since drawing still worked. I was a little disappointed though. mostly because the hall of endless roads wasn't a timeline wandering device according to our guide. It was an elder sorcery simulation chamber, and it only tracks the possible timelines of the things you bring into it. It. Might be more than that though. No one knows when it was built, or how. I wonder how many things here are like that. I wonder how much anybody understands the tools we're using. I hope someone does.
We were looking for a staff they'd brought in, one that was tall and wooden with a winding top that held a blue crystal. In some timelines, it was glowing, and in others the bottom was a metal spike. In some timelines, the spike was black. I wondered if that meant morganti or dirty dark or some other black metal. The item was sentient, I guess, and could cast its own spells, so people took it into the underroads to test it and then were killed by something they couldn't negotiate with because language didn't work? Only one of their spirits made it back to be summoned. I wonder where the other ones went.
Anyway, our guide said that in the timeline we were going to language didn't exist, or had likely never existed. In fact, high level abstraction didn't exist. Then he lead us down. There were big doors, and then progressively smaller doors, all the way down to one we had to crawl through, but when we turned around after going through it, it was huge and looming. Our guide told us we wanted roads seven-six-three, so we walked. When we came to the first road that split off, our guide swiped the road to the left seven times. Each time it changed a little. The weather or the foliage. On the seventh, he told us to go through and that we were on our own. We walked a while and then came to another road branching off. We swiped it to the left six times. When finally we came to the one we swiped three times, walking into it language just. Stopped. If we wrote it, it didn't write, and if we spoke it no sound came out. It was weird. We communicated by tone mostly. We walked a bit. There were beasts, and then a bunch of necromancy elementals with undead they were making, and some troll bandits, and partying giants, and goblins. The goblins finally gave us the direction of the people with the staff, so we ran off that way.
The people with the staff were... odd. They were elves. At least I think they were. Their skin was dark grey, nearly black, and their hair a pale silvery white, and they wore odd armor. They looked very formidable. Their leader had the staff, and could put people into duels with his guards if he liked, but he didn't seem terribly antagonistic? We tried communicating for a while, and then someone ended up with a fight with him and spent a mana into the staff. It fizzed and then swapped places with (Natania)'s staff, and we thanked them and left. They just... let us? We ran all the way back to the road, and then spent a while messing with it before realizing it had already been set to the correct way. Then we walked back.
We identified the staff. It was called Timecrystal Guidemark, and it was... weird and time-hoppy, and we didn't really think is was safe to keep it, except (Natania). So we took it to Temporal Mechanics. They said it had signatures of alternate existences on it, but that was normal for things that passed through the hall of endless roads. More notably, the crystal was something called a Time Crystal, and it stabilizes timeflow around itself. Temporal mechanics concluded it was probably safe for the staff to exist for now, but they wanted it. We could ask for something in return though. I wanted to ask for information, or something they wouldn't usually give us, or something cool, but everyone else just wanted normal common items. (Natania) didn't want to give it to them at all. I don't get it. Why would you ask for a thing you could just get any time when you have the opportunity to learn something really special? People seem kind of bad at the value assessment thing.
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Post by ElfChild on Mar 8, 2018 2:14:22 GMT -8
Communication Notes from No Language Timeline
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