Post
by Sharkforce » Sat Nov 07, 2020 8:16 am
From the Journal of Zivilyn, Windling Magician: A Spirit of Understanding
I had always intended to study each style of magic that our world has to offer, but I had thought that I would take more time before I would look to Nethermancy. But now I have too many questions and not enough answers, and the need is great for people who can look to undo the work of the fools calling themselves the scourge.
Unfortunately, as I work to master each discipline, it gets harder to persuade members of the next discipline that I really am serious about what I'm doing. I hadn't found a willing teacher in Throal, so I set out to meet the Troll Outcast Nethermancer in the Scythan Mountains to the north who had proved not entirely unhelpful in preventing one of the Scorched Tusk Moot's airships from being twisted into a giant horror.
I recruited some friends to come along, since I was sure that whatever he would want in exchange was not going to be easy. Naturally, I brought Haze and Howler with me, and of my Namegiver friends I brought along Norg, as well as some acquaintances of mine; Sandrin, Moe, and LaShana, each of whom I have worked with before but not so frequently. It has actually been quite some time since I last adventured with Moe, but Sandrin and LaShana had proved quite helpful recently. I had thought I might track down Thorkell as well, but I think he was busy helping Vralino through her grief, and I really didn't feel like going through that weird town again. {Sorry Verse, you lost the die roll of the two who most recently had an adventure =S }
Norg persuaded his Air Sailor club to let us hitch a ride on an airship heading out in the right direction (apparently they've gotten their hands on some newfangled "Earth Cannon" that they intend to use against some storm wraiths surrounding a flying citadel or some such thing, and were making the journey to acquire more ammunition for further "testing"... for which they also "needed" an alarming amount of alcohol). This made the trip quite a bit faster, although Howler really did not like getting off the airship (the less said about that, the better. I think I'm going to need to train him to fly some time... and I can't say I'm entirely looking forward to that).
Anyways, unsurprisingly the ship was not headed for a random decrepit tower in the middle of nowhere, so instead we stopped at the Scorched Tusk Moot (honestly, I half suspect that Norg really was just looking for an excuse to take an airship flight and drink with his friends, then get off the airship and drink with his friends... but who am I to complain when he also suplexes horrors?). After evading questions about where exactly we were going, we went further into the mountains and arrived in short order at the crumbling ruin he called home.
I think I heard Norg grumbling something about why can't I just buy things like a reasonable person rather than having to deal with someone as uncooperative as we expected my potential teacher to be... but in my experience, money is rarely sufficient to persuade Adepts to give up the secrets of their Discipline. He mentioned someone by the name of Daldorer, who I vaguely remember I might have travelled with once many months ago, but either he was not around when I looked or wasn't interested in teaching me any more than the other locals, which is why we came out to this tower in the first place.
Unsurprisingly, the Troll was not particularly helpful. We traded barbs and eventually he refused to teach me, but assured me that he would send me to someone who would. Well, I did bring along a team of powerful Adepts with me for a reason. He said "she" would need a token of some sort, and sent us to a mountain with a plateau near the top where we could find bones with inscriptions in them, and told us we would need to find a skull inscribed in that fashion. Fortunately, we had Moe's magic carpets to carry those who couldn't already fly, although Howler had to stay back at the tower since Moe's carpets may be impressive, but are not impressive enough to carry nearly a ton of wolf (seriously, I really need to teach him to handle a flying spell).
Well, we got up there and it was cold. Bone-chillingly cold. Fortunately, I came prepared (sort of)... I had learned the Weather Cloak spell early in my time as an adventurer, but had rarely had occasion to use it until now, and it certainly did wonders for keeping us from freezing to death in that place. I mean, LaShana had warm clothes, so she probably would've been fine for a good while, but I'm pretty sure she didn't mind the extra warmth either. The air was also very thin, making it difficult to catch your breath up there, but we persevered in searching the area, which was mostly frozen trees that somehow had grown up here and snow that somehow had not been blown off. Perhaps it had something to do with the Astral feeling unusually thin there.
Also, concentric rings of Troll Corpses, many of which had some markings in their bones that looked like they had been put onto the Trolls while they were still alive. Well, trust an insane Nethermancer to send you to a creepy ritual mass grave, I guess. As far as I could tell, it looked like the Trolls had been participating in a ritual designed to look into the nether realms, or to send a message there, and either it required their lives to be sacrificed or they lost their lives from the backlash. Anyways, based on my knowledge, the skull we were looking for would be in the middle, and it was. A big troll skull with the horns still on (which I suppose is what you'd normally expect) covered in geometric carvings. Which had been put on the skull while the person using the skull was alive.
Now, obviously this thing had some significance, and we've heard this song before, so before so much as laying a finger on the skull we decided to make some preparations. Sandrin delivered an inspiring speech, I gave us all the strongest Astral Shield I could handle, Haze and LaShana hid, Moe prepared a spell that would let him reach from one bag to another 40 yards away, and Norg... well, Norg mostly just waited for things that needed punching to show up and get punched, but once again who am I to complain about *how* he rips horrors in half with his bare hands so long as he does in fact rip horrors in half with his bare hands.
As expected, angry spirits popped out the moment we touched the skull and tried to kill us. One got a pretty nasty hit on me, but thankfully my Wood Skin kept me standing. It was a little rough, and I think the thin air nearly made a few of us pass out from exertion, but we got the skull, and everyone agreed that sleeping in the high altitude and freezing cold was a terrible idea so we went back down the mountain and made camp a ways off, rested up, recovered from our wounds, and headed back to the tower.
The Outcast was not particularly more helpful than usual. Complained a lot, decided we had the right skull, and sent us to a valley to the south to meet my prospective trainer. We were initially surprised that the map he gave us was accurate, but when we arrived and performed the task he had given us (placing the skull at a crossroads and reciting an incantation) nothing happened. By which I mean, nothing *useful* happened; we did get jumped by a horror and several horror constructs. Some sort of warped trolls that slithered along and looked like they had been put together wrong, a pair of constructs made of bone and stone, and a more powerful warped troll that seemed to know plenty about Nethermancy, because it tried to use it to kill us. Fortunately, we had prepared again, and had strong protections in place. That said, it was pretty unpleasant. The two strange constructs ripped spells off of people and used the energy to warp astral space and hurt my friends with the spells I had woven to protect them. The weird snake-troll things poisoned and grappled us (and just because I was somewhat prepared for that to possibly happen doesn't mean It didn't suck).
Fortunately, we prevailed, and thankfully nobody died. Also, there was still no teacher there, and as I thought about the incantation I had been given it seemed likely that the ritual was absolute balderdash. We weren't feeling particularly pleased as we returned, but I have to say I was definitely not expecting to see a pair of the same horror we had fought, and other constructs around, destroyed by the Nethermancer, some strange minions that he had created or summoned, and some help from Howler, who was looking a little rough around the edges. And here I had thought I was leaving him where he would be safe!
Turns out, the three horrors we had fought were formerly a Nethermancer and her apprentices that came from his old clan, and she had been trained alongside him. He had, in his youth, been trained alongside the other Nethermancer, and while she was gifted in spells he had the gift of prophecy. One of his dreams predicted that the other Nethermancer, who was the chief's daughter, would invite horrors in to destroy the whole clan, which the chief wasn't going to stand for and so he was made an Outcast. In an effort to escape the prophecy, she had tried to do everything she could to see threats approaching the clan, and managed to fulfill the prophecy while trying to avoid it, as well as getting her apprentices twisted into Horrors as well (I suspect that ritual site we found in the mountains was where that had happened, though it was never made explicit). The Outcast had been waiting for years since then to find an opportunity to destroy them. I guess he felt some guilt because his prophecy was self-fulfilling.
Of course, it would have been nice if he told us that in advance. Also, if he relented and actually taught me. But at least he let me study his library for as long as I want. My head hurts like you wouldn't believe, but I've got a lot of stuff stored away in my head. Maybe it'll help me learn to be a Nethermancer. More likely, I suspect that I'll be able to find a trainer who's more willing to take me on in exchange for sharing some of the writings of a mad genius. At least he gets along well with Haze.
