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Post by ElfChild on Mar 1, 2017 1:22:52 GMT -8
Records taken by Aria Sneath - Certified Witch, Scribe, and Herbalist for the Mandel adventurers (122-123.3.2) and Magical Consultant (138.3.2) Disclaimer: At no point did the city of Mandel hire the notetaker for anything illegal. The city of Mandel followed the law to the letter in situations involving the notetaker, and the actions of the notetaker should not reflect on them in any way.
The following are notes and accounts of events. Some are general and overarching. Others are specific and highly personal accounts. They are organized somewhat, but are otherwise a disjointed set of stories recorded from a number of the notetaker’s compatriots by the notetaker and coworker Sena Easayr. The goal is that by the time this file is complete, the reader should have a strong understanding of the important issues at play in the year 122 of the third age of the second era. Contents: - Falnorian Politics- Locations (a) (b) (c)- The Dark Council- The Courts (white) (black) (grey) (Links will be added as articles are posted.)
(I wanted to make this its own thing, because it's gonna be a ton of material and work best if published in segments. So apologies for the deviation from standard chronicle format.)
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Post by ElfChild on Mar 1, 2017 2:06:08 GMT -8
Falnorian Politics
There will be some talk of Courts. This does not refer to the political variety. For more on Courts, see the Black, White, and Twilight/Grey Courts. At the beginning of year 122.3.2, the state of Falnorian’s politics in the context of this work stood as follows: Falnin had stabilized politics amongst the nobility somewhat by arranging a series of political marriages and wardships. It had successfully consolidated both military and magical power and resources in the city of Falnin under Councilmembers Lenn and Shieldbreaker. It is unclear whether the council was under any variety of direct mind or spirit control at the time, but it is likely. Falnin was black aligned under the Court system, and likely under direct control of the Dark Council. See the section on the Dark Council. It is worthy of note that for unknown reasons, Falnin was at this time secretly performing very evil experiments upon inmates in the Mandel High Security Prisons to reprogram the minds of prisoners. Syenon was doing very well, having successfully negotiated between Illionor and Falnin and having gained a great deal of territory from the diminished Ardel. Syenon continued to skirmish and take territory on the Ardellian borders. Syenon was white/unaligned within the Court system. Eldspel was doing poorly, having stagnated after becoming embroiled in a series of mage battles with a mage school to the South. These battles left Eldspel’s own mage school crippled, and the situation was not helped by the fierce border war that began shortly after between Eldspel and Gildmar. Eldspel was white/unaligned within the Court system. Gildmar had experienced a great deal of gain in territory, after having successfully waged an expansionist military campaign against Eldspel, Ardel, and Syenon. It was, however, dealing with the massive resource drain that came from both pursuing this expansionist war and an internal war against the Wildlands. Gildmar was white aligned within the Court system, or at least anti-black court. The Wildlands are black aligned under the Court system. Oldmin was doing well, having easily weathered an attack from Torkord in the North. Oldmin had a particularly strong relationship with Syenon, relating to a shared goal -- the bringing to heel of a great evil in the East, what was later revealed to be a blue ram. Oldmin was solidly white aligned within the Court system. Ardel was in a state of disarray, having lost a great deal of land and prestige in the process of a ethics scandal and several failed rebellions. It was able to maintain its thin claim of nationhood through Illionor interference, as Falnin did not dare to incur the wrath of its powerful neighbor to the North. His lordship Alexis Arendel was ward in Mandel, and her ladyship Emerald Arendel was married in Illionor. Ardel was unaligned within the Court system. Ardel, as it turned out, would have a remarkably important part to play in the ensuing political shifts which followed. This was able to be the case for several important reasons: Ardel was a contested territory. As Ardel debatably belonged to Falnin, Illionor, and itself, while simultaneously bleeding territory to Syenon, Ardel was set to become a warzone, and a political quagmire of one at that, as several groups with competing interests argued over its status and degree of self-governance. Ardel was located directly between Syenon and the Eastern sea. With Syenon and Oldmin angling to defeat an ancient evil associated with the Black Court in that very sea, Ardel found itself directly in their path. Additionally, Ardel possessed important resources necessary to the handling of the blue ram; if I understand correctly the most notable of these was weather mages, who could combat the terrifying storms this creature would whip up. Ardel was unaligned within the Courts. Because Ardel did not have a prior Court affiliation, it was a space which could still be claimed by either the Black or White Court, depending on the will of its inhabitants and the winners of the more overt political power struggle. Early within the year, an Ardel inhabitant requested of the Black King that he protect the nation (province) of Ardel. This catalyst shifted the alignment of Ardel within the Court system to black. This shift signalled to Oldmin that Ardel would oppose Oldmin and Syenon in their fight against the blue ram. For this reason, Oldmin and Syenon raised armies and marched on Ardel. Ardel’s black alignment provided good reason for Falnin to flood it with troops to protect it from Oldmin and Syenon, a behavior which would otherwise have appeared strange on account of Ardel’s several past attempts at rebellion. Regardless, Ardel and Falnin formed an uneasy alliance, attempting to keep Oldmin and Syenon out, and Oldmin and Syenon were declared treasonous. At the same time, an army of mutants, raised by the Black King at the heart of the Wildlands, marched North to assist Ardel. Ardel, not understanding their source, gladly accepted the assistance, while Gildmar waged war against these strange mutant forces on account of knowing where they came from. It was about this time when the young lordship Alexis Arendel realized that Oldmin and Syenon were waging war against Ardel because it was black aligned. He escaped his wardship in Mandel and fled East, into Syenon territory. He infiltrated the Oldmin and Syenon armies basecamp and requested an audience with Queen Rachel of Oldmin. Queen Rachel explained the reason for the attack, and his lordship Alexis told her that Ardel would, in fact, support her campaign against the blue ram in the East, conditional upon Syenon returning Ardel’s lands to it after. She agreed and released him to his own people to explain the situation. Within a single night, alliances had shifted, and Ardel turned on its black aligned allies, shifting its Court alignment to white or unaligned. Ardel, with the assistance of new Syenon and Oldmin allies, beat Falnin out of its streets and pushed back the army of mutants that the Black King had sent to assist it, resulting in a very successful military campaign. Prince Alexis Arendel returned to his wardship in Falnin. Falnin responded to this new Northern Alliance by declaring martial law. It deployed troops to patrol its own territory heavily and to seize control of the Eldspel mage school, much to Eldspel’s displeasure. It was around this time when Mandel began to encounter clear signs that the Falnin High Council was no in fact under its own control, but the control of a powerful, ancient, and evil coven of witches known as the Dark Council, the very group that took power during the Fall, and whose name any historian worth their salt should shudder at. At the end of this year, the Northern Alliance was successful in its capture and binding of the blue ram, but still waged a war against Falnin. Falnin had eroded any goodwill it had with any of the provinces. Eldspel was in rebellion, wresting its mage school back from Falnin control. Martial law continued, and under mismanagement by Falnin military, Mandel’s high security prison, home to the most dangerous criminals in Falnorian, found many of its prisoners released and spirited away by a suspected member of the Dark Council, into the tunnels beneath the plateau. Return to Top.
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Post by ElfChild on Mar 2, 2017 1:54:01 GMT -8
Locations
This will be perhaps the most disjointed segment of this collection, as it compiles together information about a number of significant locations encountered and interacted with by the Mandel adventuring party. Many of these narratives are written from the notes of those who are not the notetaker and made more narrative for digestibility, clarity, and the providing of context. For length, this section has been cut into separate subsections. - The Tunnels- Mandel City and Prisons- The Wildlands and HaliminReturn to Top.
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Post by ElfChild on Mar 2, 2017 1:58:09 GMT -8
Locations a. The Tunnels
The city of Mandel is connected to a great swath of tunnels which honeycomb the Falnin Plateau. Mandel itself is largely underground, and the tunnels make up both streets and myriad secret ways in and out of the city, provided one can handle their occupants. While some tunnels are well-mapped and well-trodden, the majority of the tunnels are not. Even the best kept tunnels share intersections with those unexplored ones, and occasionally experience invasions from the beings which occupy the greater network. The tunnels have long been known to be teeming with undead, and while many simply accept that undead are a fact of life in the tunnels, necromancers understand that, with the exception of haunts, undead usually have a source. The evidence available to us at this time suggests that in the Falnin tunnel network, this source is the Dark Council, an ancient coven of evil witches which the notetaker must once again apologize for discussing ahead of the chapter which discusses them explicitly. What will be discussed here will be the varieties of entity which they have created or cooperated with in these tunnels and the activities we are able to trace within them. Undead of all levels, from zombie to demon, make their homes in the tunnels, but pehaps most notable amongst these undead are vampires and spirits. There is an entire society of vampires in the tunnels, accounts of which we have from his Lordship Alexis Arendel, who spent a time trapped in the tunnels in the company of several. Additionally, there is a great variety of spirits within the tunnels. I note the ubiquitous presence of spirits due to the association between the spirit as a form of undead and the Witch as a spellcaster. Necromancers rarely raise spirits, and examination by witches such as myself makes it abundantly clear that these spirits are the variety that witches routinely learn to summon and raise. (I will take a moment to explain that spirits are to witches much as zombies are to necromancers, and that any witch of sufficient level can raise a consenting spirit. It takes a more powerful witch to bind a spirit which does not consent. The most common bindings serve to protect the witch, rather than to enslave or control the spirit. The latter variety of binding is often neither ethical nor advisable.) The heavy presence of spirits of this kind serves to confirm the presence of a powerful coven in the tunnels beyond dispute, and even if the reader would like to debate the notetaker’s claims regarding the presence of the Dark Council, the reader must acknowledge that so many raised spirits means a serious threat in the form of an evil and influential coven. The second variety of entity which occupies the tunnels is known, we believe, as Lifedead. The notetaker would like to cite the work of investigative journalist Elodie Starsong 1 for this title. Starsong in her piece describes the traits and presence of only one variety of Lifedead, the “Wither Horse.” As lifedead are not as commonly understood as traditional undead, the notetaker will devote considerably more time to elucidating the nature and abilities of the known varieties of Lifedead for the reader. Lifedead, as Starsong discusses, are a class of constructed creature which are neither living nor dead. As a classification, they share the trait of being immune to Holy damage and Healer and Necromantic magics, but will take magic and silver damage, as well as mana drain. She explains that wither horses are susceptible to poison, but there are no recorded incidents of poison usage being attempted against any other variety. The lifedead Mandel adventurers encountered also had respawns, much as undead do. I would expect them to have mana drain as well, though I have no evidence of this. Lifedead are stitched together from pieces of both the bodies and spirits of a variety of different creatures, ranging from horses to giants to wyverns. They appear very dim in the Spiritscape, and seem to attempt to suck in light. They are the sort of entity that only an extraordinarily skilled witch could create, as spirit stitching is something of a lost art, and while spirit stitching has its uses in healing, it can also be used for this particular brand of evil. Known Lifedead varieties are as follows: Wither Horses HP: ? AV:4 Size: ? Intelligence: ? Appearance: Horses with green wyvern scales, bone manes, and giant hands for feet. Abilities: Withering Aura (Passive, rate unrecorded), Martial Arts, Bite Poison (Paralysis), Dragonscale? Mind Flayer HP: ? AV: 0? Size: 3 Intelligence: High? Very High? Appearance: A person, usually cloaked, with tentacles akin to those of an octopus around its mouth. Its skin is dark, shiny, and slightly wet. Its eyes are as those of a goat, but with wavy pupils. Abilities: Intelligence Drain (lasts the encounter), ? Woman in Rags HP: ? AV: 2? Size: 3 Intelligence: Average? High? Appearance: A gaunt woman wrapped in pale rags, possibly with clawed hands. Abilities: Battle Roar, Martial Arts, Binding Death Some kind of vampire offshoot, details unknown. Black Wraithy Thing HP: ? AV: 0 Size: 3 Intelligence: ? Appearance: Black cloaked figure with only deeper black under the hood. Abilities: Necromancy Sorcery, other necromancy?, martial arts? The third variety of entity in the tunnels is the strange living. This includes the Dark Council, but it also includes questionable entities and “Scarlet Imps.” Scarlet imps are strange red-haired impish creatures which have a society within the tunnels. They seem to ally themselves with the undead, but mostly they act as cruel pranksters, using their natural invisibility to mock people who cannot see them. Questionable entities is what the notetaker will call people we cannot place in any category. His lordship Alexis Arendel recounts meeting a male Illion Elf mage, just over three hundred years old and with short wavy blonde hair, an innate staff, and pure white eyes lacking pupil or iris. He was clearly affiliated with the vampires, but was not one and did not command them, and lived a considerable distance from Mandel. This raises the possibility of a class of mortals which traverse the tunnels and serve the council, but it also raises the possibility that there are councilmembers we are unaware of. I will address this further in the segment on the Dark Council. Our last note on the tunnels is that they are home to a great deal of ancient architecture, largely dwarven. There have been found shrines to the Cunning Flame, the dwarven creator god, though the undead destroyed them shortly thereafter. There have also been found vast networks of stone hallways, including living quarters. For a time, a memory of a pre-fall dwarven mining operation, one which ran as pyromancy and haunts were first occurring and being discovered, was brought up from beneath the center of the plateau, suggesting that dwarven occupation of the tunnels beneath the plateau was very widespread. It is possible that the ancient dwarves even created the vast tunnel network, but speculation of that sort is better left to geologists and miners, who will be able to make clearer, more accurate theories regarding the matter. Addendum: The notetaker is unsure of how she could possibly have forgotten to include the tiers of defense that have been set to keep people from wandering too deep into important parts of the tunnels! We would be remiss in our duties if we did not point out the two clear boundaries within the tunnels. The first is sanctification. Once you venture deep enough into the tunnels, you will discover that the space is sanctified such that divinity cannot act beyond that point. This ability to suppress divinity was also a trademark of the Dark Council in their day. The second manner of threshold is marked by lines of what are likely flesh golems guarding certain tunnels, or sometimes by heavily guarded doorways. Beyond this point, one may find all manner of more significant chambers, including a torture room and what may be a feeding room for new Lifedead, as well as Dark Council members themselves. I would hazard an educated guess that rooms built for construction of items, spells, and Lifedead exist beyond this point as well. Return to TopReturn to Locations
1) Essay by Elodie Starsong, Ardel; Compiled Notes - The Dark Council, their Crafts, and their Influence, 123.3.2.
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Post by ElfChild on Mar 13, 2017 22:56:29 GMT -8
Locations b. Mandel and High Security Prison
Mandel is a prison city, carved into the plateau. It is built upon an extensive tunnel system, which it makes effective use of as a base upon which it can build it’s own roads and buildings. Many buildings in the city of Mandel are simply constructed inside the endings of existing tunnels, which may be outfitted with a layer of (often robust and permanent) wood, clay, or stone dividers to create separate rooms. As a result, it’s position in the tunnels provides a great number of largely secure and stable buildings which only need minimal construction efforts to be made habitable and serviceable. The security of this sort of wall structure makes Mandel an ideal location to house some of the nastiest criminals in all of Falnorian, and we will be going into how this is done later in this section. Mandel was, at the time of our presence, white aligned within the Court system, though this may have changed after Falnin’s takeover. The downside of being built in the tunnels is, of course, frequent exposure to their inhabitants and the presence of a number of back ways in and out of the city. Because of it’s exposure to the inhabitants of the tunnels, Mandel is heavily fortified. The Cleric’s guild exhibits a particularly strong presence, along with Necromancers and Healers. Attempted invasions by undead during the year are not at all uncommon, but the most pronounced invasions all year may be expected on All Hallows Eve, when all the inhabitants of the city work together to board up or fortify any tunnel entrances they can find, and most able-bodied citizens pick up a weapon. The city guard marshals nearly all capable citizens in a battle against a heavy onslaught of undead (and sometimes demons) that lasts all day and night. Those who cannot fight often serve as medics or carry food and water to those who can, and it is traditional for young children to carry sweets to places where there are lulls in the fighting to thank the combatants for their work. Due to this occupation of the citizenry, this is a time when Mandel expects attempted prison breaks, and the high security prisons are staffed as heavily as can be managed throughout the duration. The city is run by two individuals. The first is, to my awareness, a sort of diplomat, in charge of affairs involving Falnin, other provinces, and general city management. This role is occupied by the Mandel family, and it is the notetaker’s understanding that during our tenure as adventurers in his city, the lord Mandel was a charismatic but intimidating individual with strong ties to Falnin proper. The second is the Keeper of the Keys, who manages the guards in Mandel. During our tenure as adventurers, this man was Gregor Mandol, a curt and orderly but understanding man who carried morganti on his person. The Keeper of the Keys manages the four major branches of the city’s internal enforcement structure: city guard, low security prison, high security prison, and special operations. The city guard manages broad law enforcement needs within the city. They do so efficiently and usually quietly--they are a powerful presence within the city, and are felt, but are not disruptive. In order to become a member of the city guard, an applicant must be rank two in a class and have some experience working as an enforcer. They will then undergo training in how to handle a variety of legal issues, as well as how to kindly and properly handle the insane, who are such a consistent presence in Mandel due to the prevalence of undead and death by mana drain that the city has built up an entire body of local law pertaining to procedures surrounding it. Once a person is a member of the city guard, they may apply to transfer to one of the specialized law enforcement branches. Low security prison guards manage the low security prisons, which handle offenders for normal crimes within the city. The low security prisons are unlikely to see much in the way of prison breaks or major emergencies, though a pair of individuals acting as agents of chaos during Falnin’s declaration of martial law once incited riots and a break at that location. Special operations is the branch of law enforcement specifically dedicated to hunting down prisoners who escape confinement. Due to Mandel’s position as the keeper of the most dangerous criminals in the country, a special class of law enforcement is necessary to deal with when particularly skilled and dangerous individuals manage to escape. It is likely that there are specific requirements for entering this branch of law enforcement, but the notetaker has not received such information. Lastly, we come to the high security prison guards. High security prison guards manage the high security prisons, which means they handle the individuals in them on a daily basis. They are also responsible for dealing with any attempts to break into or out of the high security prisons. When Falnin implemented martial law, Kida Shieldbreaker’s lieutenant Lady Janet took over control of the high security prisons. The high security prisons themselves are built into the tunnels, in a space thought to have been built prior by the dwarves in the first era. They are in one of the deeper locations in the city, deep enough to be in an area sanctified against divine influence. The fact that it was built in such a location raises questions about how long the Dark Council has controlled these tunnels and if their infrastructure in fact predates the creation of Mandel the city. Mandel has added a number of its own magical protections as well, and may have chosen this location because it augmented them. The most standard protection the Mandel prisons exhibit is a bury field. Anyone who dies within the prison can not leave their body of their own accord. Additionally, while within a cell, a person can make use of no skills or spells, and even loses a great deal of knowledge regarding their trades. They are consistently tired and down on mana, and it seems that the prison pulls energy from the inmates to power itself. The locks on the doors are magical as well. Shaped in the image of a mouth, they are enchanted to destroy lockpicks and resist shattering or unforge. At the end of the tunnel in which the prison is built is a room containing all the cell keys. The door to this room is magically protected, and there are alarms set off if the wrong key is used to open it. Opening it may also set off a swift sleep aura. The high security prisons use a number of procedures to maintain their security as well. The prisoners are moved around daily, and do not occupy the same cell multiple days in a row. The keys in the key room are all set on individual rings, and unlabelled. They too are shuffled each day. Only the keeper of the keys has access to the key to the key room, and prison guards are on duty at all times. In spite of all these procedural and magical defenses, the prison was subject to several major security breaches during our tenure there, all magical. The first occurred on All Hallows Eve using diviner magic and Necromancy magic. A member of the Dark Council, the Fox (based on descriptions in Starsong's work) was able to enter during this time. This breach left a small mark in the spiritscape, or ethereal realm. It could be claimed that this breach functioned as a continued breach, as the Fox proceeded to take the form of a man working in the High Security Prisons, morganti killed him, and impersonated him for the majority of the year. The Fox appears to be a very adept illusionist, and intelligent enough to know when she is found out and send an illusion in her stead. The second breach occurred in the early summer of the following year, when a major prison break occurred. It is unclear how this breach was orchestrated, but it left behind a hole to the dreamscape through which an unknown entity in that location was able to observe the high security prisons, and sometimes talk to people there. The third breach occurred at the end of that summer, when a boy with a spectral lynx familiar who was able to phase through walls and turn others into copies of itself entered the prison and casually broke out a number of inmates. He then lead them deep into the tunnels, past numerous undead and a line of undead creatures lined up and blocking a tunnel. This boy, likely the one called “bow boy” by Elodie Starsong 2, has been termed Lynx, and is a member of the Dark Council. There was one last incident in the prison that we must address before we move on. For a good deal of time, Falnin was sending mages, evil aligned, into the prisons to experiment on inmates. What these mages were doing, on its face, was attempting to change the alignments of the inmates to good, to realign their priorities and rehabilitate. Questions have been raised, due to the evil aligned nature of these mages, whether the experiments involved programming other things into the inmates, or what other plans Falnin had if they were able to reprogram a person’s mind. When inquiries were made with Lord Mandel, the guard making the inquiry, Karis Apenton, received no information and was subtly threatened with losing her job. We should find these experiments and the secrecy around them deeply worrying if we value the integrity of our own minds. We will now move on from the prisons to discuss two further issues before concluding this section. The first of these two is the Necromancer. The Necromancer is a title bestowed upon a woman whose job it was to create wards around all the entrances to the city where undead and other entities might seep in. She was blind, though highly functioning, and her eyes exhibited an odd anomaly where they had neither iris nor pupil. Those of you who have read til now may recall that the blonde man in the tunnels exhibited a similar trait, and it is unknown whether it is because of a similar cause. Regardless, the Necromancer exhibited what seemed almost like a true sight, and was a seer who would on occasion recite prophecy and collapse. Her brand of necromancy dealt primarily with wards and the destruction of undead, and she was witnessed strategically placing and breaking wards which exorcised undead rather than engaging in combat. When Falnin declared martial law, she left the city to destroy undead on the surface of the plateau, and was seen standing over a trap door in the top of the plateau. Falnin for its part sought her capture consistently during this period. The last point I would like to cover harkens back to the unusually high density of insane in Mandel. The cause of this, as addressed earlier, is mana drain by frequent undead attacks, but this population seems to be particularly vulnerable to certain types of control. There have been times when what is likely the Dark Council took control of all of them, or when items the Council created have drawn them in. While it is unclear what the Dark Council is doing, it is clear there is something about insanity which is useful to them or which provides them with an in. It is very possible as well that the aforementioned experiments in changing the ways the minds of high security inmates were intended to create a similarly exploitable weakness. This is a topic which warrants further investigation. Return to TopReturn to Locations
2) Essay by Elodie Starsong, Ardel; Compiled Notes - The Dark Council, their Crafts, and their Influence, 123.3.2.
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Post by ElfChild on Mar 14, 2017 1:21:33 GMT -8
Location c. The Wildlands and Halimin
While our knowledge of the wildlands is much less extensive than our knowledge of the tunnels, I would be remiss in my duties as notetaker if I did not discuss them. This piece will be a work of summary, but if I might, I strongly recommend Sena Easayr’s piece on our journey to the ancient city of Halimin, if you are inclined to seek narratively focused material. The Wildlands lies in the center of Gildmar, and is an expansive desert which reaches all the way to the swamps and forests along the Southern border. It is home to a number of dangerous and magical creatures which do not respond as animals to the spells commonly built to handle animals. Indeed, they do not seem to comprehend bardic speech, animal tamers can get no reaction from them, they do not fear fire, and can not be charmed by a wild mage’s charm animal spell. In addition, they all seem to have adrenaline, many have magical abilities, and most are vicious and aggressive, built to kill. It is unclear what has caused them to evolve these traits, but they are not shared by local Gildmar wildlife outside of the Wildlands. Creatures observed include smoking gazelles who spit flame and become ethereal, enormous hyenas, huge fiery ants, flaming butterflies, teleporting meerkats, and huge vicious vultures. The Wildlands are also home to tribes of mutant people. It is unknown where or how specifically they live, but they appear to have been human once. Now, they have all manner of strange mutations which make them more suitable for combat, and it is likely that they gathered these traits as their end of a bargain with the Black King. They speak fluent common with a great deal of eloquence, though it is unclear that they have ever been in contact with modern Falnorian society prior to their deployment in Ardel, and they kill mercilessly in battle. It is these tribes who were marshalled when the Black King sent aid to Ardel against Oldmin and Syenon, and they bear his mark. Magic becomes strange in the Wildlands as well. Scapes merge freely, and divinity often becomes strained and strange. Gildmar scouts have reported encountering entrances to multiple elemental realms, 3 though it is unclear if what they are really observing are entrances to different scapes. Several described rifts or entrances have matched the descriptions of dream and mind scapes, and it is possible others were simply entryways to the manascape. As Sena Easayr describes in her paper entitled Scapes, scapes are layers of reality, usually positioned in a hierarchical fashion such that each entity has aspects on its own native scape and all above it. 4 It has been theorized that scapes exist below our own, but if entryways to or inhabitants of these are present in the Wildlands, it is unknown to us. Such speculation notwithstanding, it can be observed that this merging of the scapes intensifies as one becomes closer to the city of Halimin. Halimin is an old city. Halimin is built in the shape of the season or race mandala, which is a circle divided into four equal parts by a cross down the center. It dates back to the first era, and was a meeting place of all four of what we would consider the prominent races of Falnorian. Though it is unclear how these four races came to be the most prominent in Falnorian, the layout of Halimin suggests that they have occupied this position for a very long time. Upon reaching Halimin, it feels as though the scapes have been compressed in their entirety into one traversable space. At the time of our visit, Halimin was home to a number of things I have not observed anywhere else. These include a living ghoul-like creature, a humanoid with multitude rows of shark teeth and composed of many frogs with a human as prisoner, and a tumbleweed-like creature composed of octopus tentacles. At the center of Halimin is a colosseum courthouse. It is from here that the kings of post-fall Halimin ruled, and it is here where presently rests the throne of the Black King. He keeps his court in this building, but we will go into that later in our section on the Black Court. It is only important here to note that both Mandel’s Necromancer and a number of visions have suggested the the Black King is gathering his forces in Halimin, though what that entails is unclear. It is noteworthy however that the Dark Council seems to have sent Lifedead out to kill the forces Gildmar was employing to fight the desert and the black tribes, and possibly to continue on to the city itself. The Black King’s being situated in Halimin is the reason why the king of Gildmar, Harkin Gilead, was so intent upon his war against the desert, though I don’t know that he knew this was the reason. When the notetaker spoke to him, he simply said that his gods had informed him that there was a great evil in the Wildlands that must be defeated, and the fact that Gildmar has not renewed this war in force now that mining has provided it the resources to do so is something I find deeply troubling. Return to TopReturn to Locations
3) Field Notes by Garett Reget and Abram Dendrich, Gildmar; untitled, 122.3.2 4) Essay by Sena Easayr, Falnin; Scapes, 123.3.2.
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Post by ElfChild on Mar 17, 2017 16:54:59 GMT -8
The Dark Council
We come now to the Dark Council, an organization which dates all the way back to 4.1. The Dark Council was also referred to early on simply as “the Coven,” and may have been the first coven of witches, though certainly it is not representative of the broader witch community today. They are highly skilled at binding, taking apart, and stitching together spirits, and are highly capable in a number of other ways as well. At the end of this summary, I will include two narrative portions, which describe the personal experiences of two individuals with Dark Council members--specifically Fox and Lynx. The Dark Council resides deep in the tunnels, though as the year wore on they grew bolder and moved in the shallower regions as well. What they do there is not entirely known, but we are aware of four of the major activities that occupy them: Manufacture of Lifedead, spirit item production, sanctification upkeep, and undead production and control. It is important to understand that these are not the only things they set themselves to. These probably do not even make up the majority of their activities. They are only the things this notetaker can discuss in any great detail, and so they are what will be discussed, but we have limited ability to observe their actions on the upper scapes or their political maneuvering. It is important to recognize that there is great difficulty in tracking the activity of creatures with exceptional information gathering and infiltration abilities. This being said, we will proceed to discuss the four issues enumerated above. Manufacture of lifedead was discussed in the segment on the Tunnels to a much greater extent than it will be discussed here, and if you do not recall or have not yet read that section, I recommend referring back to that section. To summarize briefly, lifedead are constructs created from stitched together spirits. The council seems to seek out specific types of creatures to build them from, and remove from those creatures (which include wyverns, giants, humans, horses, and all manner of other usually large creatures) both the physical components they require and the sections of the spirit associated with those portions. Though we have never seen the construction process itself (the tunnels leading back to the spaces where it occurs are heavily guarded), there are numerous accounts of dark trolls being seen dumping the unused portions of bodies outside of certain tunnels. As the year wore on, encountering such dumping grounds became more and more frequent, implying that the council was ramping up production. While in theory they must acquire their component creatures from somewhere, to our knowledge we have yet to witness anything sent to hunt for them. Early during the year, there were numerous kidnappings of children from the Mandel orphanage by an entity which visions suggested was taking them to the Spider, leading me to wonder if perhaps young children are a component in some varieties of lifedead, seeing as we have encountered no child undead during our tenure as adventurers. The production of spirit items perhaps requires some explanation. All mages of sufficient rank have the opportunity to learn to produce magical items and to weave enchantments of their type into metal and wood. Witches are no different in this regard, but the varieties of items they craft differ significantly from those crafted by an ordinary mage. Where any other mage class would produce objects imbued with enchantment, witches create an object as a vessel for the spirit of a dead person or creature. This person or creature then maintains a form of awareness, agreeing to lend the wielders of these items certain abilities and sometimes advise or converse with their wielder. Most witch covens, including the one which trained this notetaker, have certain spoken and unspoken rules surrounding this practice, the most important of which is only binding consenting spirits to such objects. I would like to take a break for a moment to apologize for a readily emerging pattern in which I harp on consent and ethical witchcraft rules when speaking about the Dark Council, but it is important that the reader understands that the Dark Council, while possibly the first coven, does not represent the discipline of witchcraft as a whole. As a teacher of ethics and a member of the witch community, it is important to me that we establish with the world that witchcraft is not an evil discipline but rather that there are numerous ethical norms and conventions within this field that the Dark Council transgresses as a matter of course. Returning to the Dark Council’s particular relationship with spirit items, there are a few things that must be said. First, that it is unclear whether Morganti is in fact some form of horrifically twisted spirit item or a separate sort of construct altogether, but its creation certainly falls within the council’s purview. Secondly, they are adept at manufacturing items which look too good to be true, and are. I have seen items that allow one to steal skills, ones that allow the user to infect others with diseases, do massive oracles, use dragon breaths, and even exile people to other planes. They are coupled with flaws which, while not debilitating, allow a highly malevolent spirit access to you and sometimes allow it to to communicate information about you to the makers of the items. I bring this up not only to warn the reader away from such objects, but also to note that if they can create such things to hand to others, they likely have created even more powerful objects for themselves. It is difficult to know what to expect in terms of the limits of the power of items they could produce, because thirdly, the Dark Council has access to spirits the likes of which I am… uncertain have ever been seen within the nation of Falnorian. Contained inside one object they created was the spirit of a shadow dragon, a very evil creature which I was unaware existed until identifying the object in question. Another contained a Nothing Child, an entity theorized to be from a lower scape which is able to seep into our own through the holes left when haunts are killed with morganti. Little is known about these creatures, but that the Dark Council could make use of one implies that they may have access to lower scapes than we are presently aware of. It is also possible that they could manufacture spirits to meet their own specifications in much the same way Lifedead are stitched together. If you intend to interact with an object created by the Dark Council, please do so with extreme caution, as it is difficult to know what the limits and hidden traps in such an object are without access to skilled witches of your own. The third major activity we are aware of is, too, something which was discussed briefly in the section on the tunnels, and this is the upkeep of anti-divinity sanctifications. Unlike standard sanctifications, the sanctifications the Dark Council maintains within the tunnels do not prevent spirits from entering and exiting a space, but rather prevent any interference from divinities. In locations where these sanctifications are present, shrines, blessings, and cleric abilities fail, making it difficult to fight the undead in these regions of the tunnels. As stated in the Tunnels section, the blocking of divinity is a trademark of the Dark Council, but in theory such sanctifications could have other sources. We know the council is the group maintaining and making use of these because one of their members (Hyena) came to put a stop to the attempted destruction of them. It is clear that the council does not want clerics disrupting their work, nor deities spying on it. As one gets deeper into their spaces, additional sanctifications, created with witchcraft, appear as well, some of which resemble bindings more than anything else. And lastly, the maintenance of undead. The Dark Council is able to control vast numbers of undead, and is in fact responsible for all the ones in the tunnels. The undead in the tunnels grow nastier as one gets closer to locations where they do their work. The undead under their control )or at the very least allied with them) include an entire society of vampires and a variety of other types, ranging from hordes of zombies and gravediggers to not uncommon crypt sentinels, wraiths, and spirits (the variety of dead in this mix which is created using witchcraft rather than necromancy). While it is not known for certain, it has been theorized due to the prevalence of spiders in oracles 5 that there is a prior unknown member, named Spider, who maintains this network. If Spider does indeed exist, he or she is likely not only a powerful Necromancer and Witch, but some sort of mind controller as well, as the insane of Mandel have been witnessed through magic sight to have threads attached to them under some circumstances. And with this we come to the council’s declaration of their control of Falnin. During the late summer of 123.3.2, shortly after Falnin had declared martial law, there was a night when in the city of Mandel, all of the insane took to the streets. At first they were very quiet, but they quickly became agitated. Once their agitation had reached a fever pitch, it stopped, and all of their eyes began to glow. Valdimar Roriksson, a sorcerer with the ability to see magic, could see at this time that all of them were connected to threads leading back into the tunnels, and they all said the following: The center crumbles in Our reign again begins Your highest ruling seat Has tumbled to our feet You belong to usUnnerved, Valdimar Roriksson, Sena Easayr, and others followed the threads into the tunnels. A short way in, they were confronted by Pixie, a member of the Dark Council, who dispelled their spells and attacked them using dragon breaths. They were forced to retreat back to the city or else likely be killed, and only barely made it out. I believe this event speaks for itself. Having described their work within the tunnels, I will proceed to describe individual members to the best of my knowledge, expanding upon the work of Elodie Starsong. It is worth noting that in addition to anything else stated, it seems that all members of the Dark Council are able to dispel most Sorcery at little to no cost. Fox: Also known as “the Teacher,” Fox is the current leader of the Dark Council. She is, at the very least, an extraordinarily skillful Witch, Illusionist, Dreamwalker, Assassin, Ranger, Martial Artist, Diviner, and Necromancer. If we are to assume both that this is a complete list and that the Fox is guildmaster in all listed classes, this places her at the level of the highest archmages in Falnorian. I would be inclined to believe she is much more powerful than that, however. She serves a number of different roles--that of infiltrator, information gatherer, and teacher being only the ones we can be completely certain of. She has the ability to read minds, to create false realities for others, to impersonate individuals without arousing suspicion for long periods, and according to Starsong, to drain skills, scape-shift, and travel long distances at will as well. 6 Her spirit is exceedingly luminous and bright in spirit guide, though it seems that the luminosity comes from somewhere not purely internal the way that it does for most spirits but from some other place. She has modified her soul with witchcraft in order to achieve this effect (and likely also her immortality), but what precisely was modified to achieve this is unclear. Fox looks like an elven woman wearing a black mask and carrying a morganti stiletto when she chooses to appear as herself, although as stated, she is an excellent impersonator and illusionist and can likely look however she wants. Serpent: We don’t know a lot about Serpent, and as none of our members have seen her, but we will take Starsong at her word when she says that Serpent is alive and carries a morganti bladed bow. By virtue of being in the original coven, Serpent is almost certainly a witch, and is likely to match our present day archmages in terms of ability. Hyena: We don’t know a lot about Hyena either. While our party has seen him and can confirm that he is present, they did not recall a lot about him, and did not in fact engage him in combat for very long. Hyena is a dwarven male, and the same things can be assumed about his class affiliations as can be done with Serpent, but we do not know much more than that. Pixie: When Elodie Starsong wrote her paper, she commented that Pixie was in the process of being reassembled after surviving having been cut into several different pieces with morganti and spread across Falnorian. It can be confirmed now that he has been fully reassembled and is once again active, though one of his legs has been replaced with that of some kind of animal, possibly through soul-stitching. According to Starsong, he has compressed his presence in all scapes into only one, the effects of which are unknown but presumably contribute to his ability to survive morganti dismemberment. Pixie is a powerful Witch, Wild Mage, and Necromancer at the very least, and seems to specialize in body modification and adopting the abilities of other creatures. He can use multiple varieties of wyvern or dragon breath, and sports a scorpion tail with which he can inflict poison. He carries a morganti dagger on his person as well, and walks with a slight forward hunch. Lynx: Lynx seems to be a newer member of the council, and is likely the same person as Starsong’s “bow boy.” He says his name is Liam, though that could well be a false name. He is a Witch, a Wild Mage, and likely some form of semi-martial--my guess would be ranger or assassin. He carries a bow and is accompanied by a spectral lynx, which can phase through walls and turn others into a copy of itself that can do the same--we have assumed his name from his familiar, but it is possible this is not accurate. Lynx is an elven boy of darkish skin with an accent which is difficult to identify, and it seems very possible that he is a Ku Elf. He claims to be an orphan, and claims that Fox, who he refers to a “the Teacher,” took him in after his township was destroyed in an earthquake. It is possible that he dates back to the last fall. Lynx is the only member of the council any of us have spoken with, and at the end of this segment I will include the conversation recounted to Sena Easayr by Karis Apenton. Spider (Theorized): As stated prior, there is no proof that Spider is a member of the council, but it seems increasingly likely. If Spider does exist, he or she is a Witch, Necromancer, and likely a Dreamwalker, possibly with litch-like traits or capabilities. Return to Top.
5) Notes by Sena Easayr, Falnin; Compiled Oracles, 138.3.2. 6) Essay by Elodie Starsong, Ardel; Compiled Notes - The Dark Council, their Crafts, and their Influence, 123.3.2.
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