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Re: Fragments of the Salt Sower
Posted: 16 Aug 2007 12:38 PM |
Salt lifted the tarp off the lump of demonflesh that spoiled the air in his habitation. It wasn't so far gone as one might have expected. The smell of the thing wasn't the sickly sweetness of rot. It was unique, the way a dead demon smells. At the rate that this corpse was deteriorating, it would be on his doorstep for a hundred years. In the time it had been there under this tarp, the thing had decayed only a little.
Salt had tried burning the thing with magical fire, and dissolving it with clouds of acid. Failing at that, he kept it chilled with ice-floes concentrated out of water in the air, but for three months the seer had been sequestered in Port Royale, where Jessup's protection extended to him. The demon on Salt's doorstep got pretty hot this summer.
Having witnessed the conclusion to the life-and-death struggle between the Guyvers and Hezekiah's Breath - and being much relieved to see it end - Salt immediately packed his things at the Guyver Shop and on the very same night moved back into his subterranean dwelling outside Brandibuck Vale. Tristian helped by carrying his heavy trunk from shop to wagon, wagon to horse, tying it up and then unloading it off of Shira's horse at the Vale, and finally lowering it down the ladder and into Salt's dwelling. Salt sent him away with something long owed to him. After delivering dozens of Malar hides to the old man's doorstep, Tristian finally saw some reward. Confinement in Port Royale had allowed Salt to perfect his pattern and actually produce a purse from this panther's leather. This went to Tristian for his friendship and industry, with a limp handshake and a vigorous farewell.
Salt shut the iron gate closing himself inside of the cave. He shot his sleeves and like it was a sideshow magic act, a cat-sized creature appeared perched on his thumb, fluttered its membranous wings and coiled a slender draconian tail around the bones of his wrist. It turned to look up at him and said in a scratchy whisper, "Home again, hey fellow?" Then it slapped its wings together and lifted across to land on Salt's alchemical table, the place of its creation and its truest home. As it nested amidst the dusty apparatus Salt set about unpacking his things.
When he was finished he went to the bars of the iron gate and gripped them, looking out at the dead lump under canvas. He was glad now that the thing was still there.
He conceived during his time in Port Royale of a use for the thing, the best possible use for the thing. It was fiendish. It was completely out of character for the old man, to do such a thing as this. And yet... his skill in tailoring and working with exotic hides had progressed a great deal, almost matching his knowledge of alchemy. He knew precisely what materials he needed to do this thing, and tomorrow he would set about acquiring them. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fragments of the Salt Sower
Posted: 16 Aug 2007 01:20 PM |
| ((oh? I cannot wait to see how this turns out)) |
Purpose in life: finding better ways of allowing players to kill themselves. Repeatedly.
--
"...Cause he mixes it with love
And makes the world taste good."
--
<@James42> Lawful good isn't in your vocabulary, it's on your menu.
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Letters Passed Between Mages
Posted: 24 Aug 2007 07:05 PM |
Back to the rhythm of work at Swiftfoot Glade. Salt meets with Porter regularly to handle correspondence. A letter of introduction sent here. A research request sent there.
The following is dictated hastily, and since the recipient is familiar Salt sends it with corrections in the margins.
Elder Shamn, Magus Ka'azim
Ka'azim Isle
Esteemed Magus Shamn~
THIS DAY I write regarding two matters of disproportional
Significance. I shall save the least significant for the last.
Know first that your servant has been requested to attend
A Convocation at the Black Tower of Naillamne Province,
Which matter he does not take Lightly. I am not invited as
A representative of Ka'azim but as an Independent Practi-
tioner. Under even these Circumstances, I ask that you
Grant an Audiance with yourself so that my response to
The Articles that Naillamne will present does not conflict
With that issuing from Ka'azim Tower.
Further, representatives of Naillamne have hinted at the
Matters to be raised at this Convocation. I believe that I
Know the nature of the Articles that the Black Tower will
Present for discovery and discussion.
If Ka'azim is excluded from this Convocation by design,
I will submit to you everything that I know of it. If on the
Other hand you have formed opinions about this gather-
ing, then I humbly welcome your advice and council.
A Second Matter~ The unfortunate losses resulting from
The attack of a fabled Black Orb at Ka'azim. To hear that
Ka'azim had Drawn such a violent and calculated attack ~
With so horrid and destructive an outcome ~ pained me
Greatly. As you know I retired my membership in the
Tower owing to the threat of further Reprisals, issued from
the guild of assassins that I will not name here, nor any
Other place, ever.
The contract upon my life has been lifted, owing to the
Actions of myself and a group that I WILL name, they
Being known as THE GUYVERS.
FURTHER It is known to me that the Black Orb which
Obliterated Ka'azim's wizards is free from its keeper
And sender, and is now at large.
To Conclude~ I ask that my membership in Ka'azim
Tower be reinstated with full purchasing and research
Privileges, and that I be granted permission to speak
With those Mages and Students who witnessed the
Attack of this Black Orb, for the purposes of compiling
Data necessary for its Capture and Confinement.
I will again Visit Ka'azim Tower in the next few days to
Discuss these items with you in detail, and to hear of
Your decision.
Until then, I remain~
Your Servant~
Salt Sower
A second item of correspondence requires Salt and Porter's shared attention. This one is addressed to a Manor deep in the forest, where a library secreted out of the White City is being returned to order.
Salt often wonders what was worth saving in this library. He found little of worth on its shelves and among its scrolls. But then again, Salt's profession is forbidden in the White City, where seers and scryers are treated like Elves. His research interests regard Midor's deeply buried history.
Xaranthir knows the library better than Salt does. Has Xaranthir given up on the project, and the scholars that toil to dust and arrange the books and scrolls on their shelves? Salt was not certain how to address this letter. Fair enough to get it down first, and address it later.
He begins, "Esteemed scholars and keepers of the Sapienza's lore..."
Porter writes.
Salt continues, "I write this day regarding the application for access to the library's collection made by one smith and swordsman, and by inheritance and his own desire to learn the craft, a practiced wizard, who is known as Talion Deraith..." |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fragments of the Salt Sower
Posted: 17 Sep 2007 11:06 AM |
He conceived during his time in Port Royale of a use for the thing, the best possible use for the thing. It was fiendish. It was completely out of character for the old man, to do such a thing as this. And yet...
Every tanner is at some point called upon to undertake the work of taxidermy. The word means literally to "arrange the skin", and this art is carried out wherever men have come to live across Vives, with greater or lesser success. A very fine taxidermist once dwelled in Icy Vale, perhaps an itinerant tanner who paid his rent by mounting and preserving hunters' trophies. The most celebrated work in Miggins' collection is a full grizzly bear mount, posed with lifelike ferocity in the inn's great room.
A taxidermist typically uses only the hide of the animal that is to be mounted. For that reason, the skills of tanning leather and sewing after a pattern are the same skills as taxidermy. Nothing but the skin of the animal is incorporated into the taxidermic mount. The tanned pelt is stuffed with straw, rags, clay or plaster and posed for display. In the finest works, the taxidermist flays the animal himself and then observes the underlying skeletal and muscular structure, modeling the same in clay. The skin is stretched over the resulting mannequin, and sewn into place while wet. The skin shrinks as it dries and conforms to the mannequin underneath. This is the method most frequently used for mounting the heads of animals as trophies.
* * * * *
Salt has acquired a book of notes on taxidermic preparation - they are rare documents of this folk craft - from which he reads aloud to the demon stretched out beyond the iron grate that closes his domicile.
"'The Workshop'," he begins. "'Unless you are an inspired genius, do not select a gloomy, out-of-the-way room in the cellar or garret, for such environments are seldom congenial to the best kind of work. The alchemists and taxidermists of old made this mistake, but I would advise you not to follow their example, unless circumstances absolutely compel you to do so.'"
Salt chuckles to himself. He has read this passage several times, as he assembled his own instruments and materials to undertake this task.
"'An ideal workshop, the capacity of which will answer any purpose required for work in taxidermy, may be described as follows: A room, not less than eighteen by twenty feet, and one story in height, with a door at the side, made large enough for the egress of your mounted beasts and basilisks, etc.; a dark closet must be made for the drying of freshly mounted specimens, and another for the storage of materials, such as pitch, soap, and straw by the bale, lime plaster, salt, and ground alum by the barrel or hundred weight, and potter's clay by the ton.'"
"Check and check," says Salt. Much of this material he had on hand for tanning and tailoring leather. Among other things he has acquired a hundred pounds of clay, which waits for use in pails covered over with water to keep the stuff from drying. He continues reading.
"'Make a work table seven feet long, three and one half feet wide', blah blah... 'the top out of one and one half inch oak plank, dressed, sanded and so on. At one end of the table fix a heavy iron vise. A chopping block, made of a section of a sycamore, is an excellent thing for many purposes.'"
Salt smiles. "Oh yes, quite an excellent thing. For many purposes."
"'A case with drawers, to contain the necessary tools, should be placed close by. Various sizes of stone, glass and earthen jars should be provided in which to pickle the skins of the smaller mammals. Make a large box-like tank or vat, constructed of oak and lined with sheet lead, to hold the skins of the large subjects. Over this tank, in the ceiling, should be fixed a rope and pulley to facilitate the handling and turning of heavy skins.'"
"Are you listening?" Salt asks the demon's carcass. "We're talking about you here."
"'In taking the skins of mammals out of the tanning bath to place or fit them on the mannequin, or when the skins in this position are wrapped in wet blankets to keep them moist during the process of sewing, the liquid is constantly dripping from them. It is quite necessary, therefore, to provide a water-tight platform, properly drained, on which to stand the mannequin.'"
"'I have here described an ideal workshop," Salt finishes reading, "and it is not, by any means, expected that the beginner will prepare so elaborately. Do not be repelled from beginning operations on the dining or kitchen table, and work there, at least, until you have been ejected, specimens and all, by the lady of the house.'"
Another chuckle. "Lady of the house?! Why that's me after all."
"'Do not let a scanty supply of tools stop your progress. I have seen wonderful pieces of taxidermy done with a sharp penknife, some wire, flax or hempen straw, needle and thread, and some arsenic. The qualities which go to make a good 'jack-of-all trades' are brought into requisition in taxidermic art.'"
"Well," Salt says finally, "I think we are ready to begin." |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fragments of the Salt Sower
Posted: 24 Oct 2007 02:26 PM |
The Grotto underneath Swiftfoot Glade has seen a considerable accumulation of dust. Months ago the seer's assistant and secretary, Porter, was sent to Asashi Monestary to receive an education as a scribe. Apparently accepted into that order, he has not returned.
None in Brandibuck Vale can say where the seer of Swiftfoot Glade has gone. He himself has not been seen in the village for a month or more. There is no sound from the entrance to his home, and the hin are loath to enter and investigate due to the subtle foul odor emanating from it, the stench of yesterday's news decaying under a canvas tarpaulin.
Aside from the dust, there are a few things that would be learned from a visit to Salt's laboratory and workshops. Peering through the bars of the iron grate that secure the place, it would seem that the seer left suddenly, or left intending to return soon. The place is not as it was when he moved to Port Royale earlier in the year. The alchemical table is a sooty mess of spoiled reagents, looking very much like a basin full of month old dishes. The bed is unmade and the large round table at the center of the room is a shambles. It is strewn with an odd assortment of materials: straw in heaps, and a tray full of what appear to be jumbled surgical instruments... fat needles like those used for sewing sailcloth, plunged into a piece of cork... iron wire wound onto wooden dowels... formless lumps of dried clay... a hammer with a bulbous flat-faced head like a gilder uses for burnishing gold leaf, and a stone-walled vessel that appears to contain fine flakes of bronze metal ground into a powder.
Amidst all of this, positioned to one side of the table is a draped, irregular form, large as a prize-winning pumpkin but with projections suggestive of horns, with a clean linen cloth thrown over it and draping onto the floor. Mysterious as this might be, an even stranger object rests on the tabletop next to it, brilliantly colored and staring. It is a single glass eye, hand-made and fire-polished. The eyeball is as big as a plum, tinted yellow like saffron with a black slit pupil and a red iris.
Lifting the tarpaulin that long has covered the carcass on Salt's doorstep reveals that the thing's head has been somehow severed. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fragments of the Salt Sower
Posted: 29 May 2008 10:02 AM |
For nearly nine months now, the seer has exiled himself from familiar places. Swiftfoot Glade has seen him not five times in all those months, and many in Brandibuck Vale speculate that he has moved on, perhaps lost his wizardly mind or been called back to whatever tower turned him out in the first place.
His secretary, Porter, is gone from Brandibuck Vale as well. A few know the truth, that the seer's hin assistant had gone to receive an education in the far west of the country. Many speculate that wherever Salt Sower has gone, the strange dour hin has gone with him.
The truth is that Salt has spent the many months alone. His hermitage has been the cavern where titans lamented their fall at the western end of the Great River; his only company has been the ugly winged homunculus that is his familiar, and that is just like talking to himself. From the entrance to the cave, Salt can sight the spires of Naillamne. There is no home for him in any tower of wizardry however, nor in any place where decent beings dwell.
Nine months past and a few days more, a little bit of shadow, a void eager to be free from Syn's dominance took up residence within Salt's body. More recently the seer has come to grasp the reason why. Still, he is unwilling to bring this void into the places where decent beings dwell: Ferein, Buckshire, least of all Brandibuck Vale...
* * * * *
The seer's camp lies high above the floor of the cavern, on a ledge reached by a secret route. Here he has gathered a ring of stones for a hearth, a flat pan and a small cast-iron cauldron for cooking and divining, and a mattress made from woven grasses. His other possessions are few: a staff for walking and a rapier for defense, a traveling set of alchemical instruments and a dwindling assortment of glassware, an ax for splitting wood, and a small hoard of books. The books are printed on pulp, cheap pamphlets with lurid tales printed in crooked, hasty type. He devours them by firelight.
He spends most of his days meditating, which is to say traveling through inner spaces that contain his real library, his museum, his spell books.
The membrane that separates his interior from the turbid currents of future and past events is thin and permeable, like gauze or dampened paper. His inner space is palatial; what he sees beyond it is limitless, and he has never crossed over into the vast. Fear of death stops him from taking the first steps.
These periods of meditation and dormancy can last for days, and they replace his sleep like the reverie of the elves.
* * * * *
It was from one of these moments that he was awakened. The sensation was of a being drawing intimately close, though he could find no sign or impression anywhere in his environment. In his meditation he had contacted something and viewed it remotely.
He snapped into his physical present, body broken out into gooseflesh, unsure at first what it is he had actually seen. Or perhaps more accurately heard.
Voices, female, both familiar yet hovering just beyond recognition. Words were unclear, the subject less so, yet the emotions were clear enough.
One was angry, extermely angry, reluctant, accusatory.
The other soft, reasoning, logical, warm.... and at the last, almost pleading.
These voices... they must have been memories, impressions left from beings who had passed from this world. That was the only explanation for their familiarity.
...But they dwelled with him and threatened to drive him out of his isolation once more. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fragments of the Salt Sower
Posted: 01 Jun 2008 10:45 PM |
Honored Monks of Asashi~
It pleases me Greatly to visit your habitations.
I hope that I do not presume to much as I Request your help in a matter concerning one who claims to be Of Your Order. It is most humbly that I submit this Request ~ trusting in Your Wisdom to measure its merits.
This day I ask your advice on the qualities of the person of one Avestan Ahriman. This man has revealed himself to me as a man of Asashi, and from his movements I take him to be a Monk of some great discipline and training.
As Master Ahriman has asked to walk with me and learn about my practice of divination, I now ask you to help me judge his purpose.
If he is sent by your order I pray you will describe your reasons for sending him, understanding that there are many things that you cannot reveal to an outsider such as myself. If he acts on his own, I will be hard pressed to reveal much to him without a strong endorsement from yourselves ~ one that indicates the alignment of his purposes with my own.
~ Signed
~ Your Servant:
Salt Sower
Salt folded the letter and sealed it carefully. He did not know the workings of Asashi Monestary and doubted that it resembled much the towers of wizardry that he was familiar with. Further, he could not discount the possibility that there was within the Order, yet to be discovered, an enemy of his every good purpose.
Long ago he had been made familiar with the philosophies that an Asashi lived by. He found little that agreed with him. To Salt, the Asashi were too much turned inwards and too little concerned with the world around them. They seemed to discount political action, and their search for enlightenment ran very much counter to the experimental philosophies that he held close. In brief, for the seer everything vital was outside of himself. He was an empty vessel, a conduit, where the Asashi looked inside themselves for fulfillment.
For all this, the monks had amassed an impressive library and Salt had need of its wisdom. He would deliver this letter himself, see to his satisfaction that it reached the proper authorities within the monastery, and then remain to consult the great library of Asashi. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fragments of the Salt Sower
Posted: 16 Jul 2008 08:59 PM |
An notice is posted in Brandibuck Vale wherever halflings laze about, which is nearly everywhere, but especially in the Hole in the Ground Inn, on lamp-posts nearby to gardens and fence-rows where halflings gather to chat, and even in Swiftfoot Hall, where a too-tall human with wispy white hair and a dour expression braved the party for at least three minutes to tack up the following announcement.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
H E L P * W A N T E D
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~Cleaners! Washers!
~Scrubbers! Polishers!
~Upholsterers! Glazers!
~Joiners and Carpenters!
The Wizard of Swiftfoot Glade seeks swift assistance
in TOP-TO-BOTTOM Cleaning and Refurbishment of His Residence!
~100 gold coins paid PER PERSON upon completion!
~BRING YOUR OWN brushes, mops, pails, pans, buckets,
brooms, rags, aprons, scrubbers, sponges, and protective
eyewear.
~FAIR PRICE Paid for Materials: Especially WOOD & GLASS
~Lunch Provided
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A scattered train of halflings arrive to find Salt's grotto utterly ruined. The ladder and the bars are still intact, but the smell is worse than when rumors of dead demons were being passed around at Swiftfoot Hall. Broken glass and furniture litter the place. A large dressing mirror - of the sort necessary to arranging robes for courtly occasions and convocations - has been shattered, its oaken frame splintered. Chairs are scattered about or flattened. Books are blasted apart, pages scattered around the grotto. Salt's alchemical table is upright, but his glassware and his experiments paint the nearby walls.
Far, far worse are the noxious substances that lay about in heaps. A trail of slime crawls over the floor and onto Salt's bed, as though a snail ten feet wide made the rounds tasting everything that looked edible. The workbench is worst-hit, with greenish, spreading slime standing six inches deep around its legs.
And then there are the feces... My gods, its like a cesspool! ...the feces must have really hit the fan! Its simply everywhere, in equal quantities to the slippery snot-like jelly!
"Heh-heh..." Salt laughs nervously, "There, you see? Now get to it, top-to-bottom..."
"Whot in the name of all holy things ha' happened down heres?!!"
"Ya don' need hin," complains another, "Ya need a Otyugh!!"
Salt will say nothing of the vandals who besmirched his residence, nor of the source of the putrid offal that has ruined it. He will however concede that he needs the hin more than they need his gold. He gives vouchers for healing potions and other such items as he can brew or manufacture, redeemable as soon as the place is returned to order. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fragments of the Salt Sower
Posted: 22 Jul 2008 01:44 PM |
Where was he going?
It started with a visitor to his grotto. The visitor called to him. "Salt Sower!"
The premonitions were familiar - a vile creeping thing, eyes upon him, eyes that glowed red from within the shadows, above a row of pointed wolfish teeth - and so was Salt's visitor. Familiar, that is.
The seer turned away from the visitor and quickly donned his formal robes. This was a lucky formality, as it would help to keep the two seers from being confused with one another.
There staring at him through the gated entrance to his grotto was his very self. He was dressed as Salt had been dressed only moments before, with wooden clogs on his feet, comfortable yellow robes as the seer had been wearing, and the orange cloak that was proof against acid and slime.
"What is this?!" Salt inquired.
"Come!" replied his double, "We must hurry!"
"Where to, fellow?"
An absurd question; the seer should have known better. But, he had recently been to the island of Frobozz, wandered his labyrinth and confronted the mad wizard himself. Once, Salt thought that Frobozz had manufactured simulacra of himself. This had inspired the seer to make his own homonculus to keep as a companion. But eventually he learned that Frobozz had learned the secret of shaping time. In defiance of time one Frobozz frequently crossed paths with another. Could this now be happening to Salt Sower?
Could this double have some message of vital importance?
"Where to, fellow," Salt replied again. "Or should I say, when?"
"It's not far," said his double. "No time to explain. Time is short." And with that, Salt fell in behind himself, and followed himself at a fast clip out of Brandibuck Vale.
"I'm coming, I'm coming..." said the seer, perspiring to keep up with the other. "Frobozz always makes this seem so easy..."
"We knew it would come to this," the double said as the two hustled into the Mirghul Foothills. "Hurry. No delays fellow. The time is near."
"Now listen fellow, I'm not yet traveling the timeways, so please be patient with me. You're the first me I've seen!"
"You travel time always."
"Touché, seer," came Salt's reply.
* * * * *
When they reached the worn pathway that cuts through the Mirghul Forest, Salt's double stopped. "We're here. Finally."
"This is a very important moment for me," the double said.
"Funny, I don't remember it," Salt said. "I am certain I would remember."
Salt frowned. "...Remember..." A recollection... a feeling, of being watched. It came over him just as this other appeared on his doorstep.
The double was suddenly standing too close. It whispered something in Salt's ear, but he couldn't make it out. It was like a secret, too secret to express despite the best intentions.
"It is time." The double stood straight up and arranged his robes and cloak. "Do you recognize it?" He asked the seer.
When Salt did not reply, he asked, "Do you know where you are?"
The seer looked south.
"Inevitability," his double said.
His double had turned into the inevitable. For Salt, for everyone living in the country today, this was death.
He saw his own body deflate in the strange relaxation that is death in its first few moments. A breath rattled out of its mouth and before it was finished the face had fallen in, eyes shriveled beneath their hollow lids, flesh collapsing over the bird bones like a crypt-thing. Where the robes opened, a rack of ribs meeting at the keel of his chest. Its skin grew leathery and stiffened, turned yellow like his robes, then brown, then waxy coal-black.
Salt could sense that this thing he had become would not fall in a lifeless heap at his feet. Beneath the sunken lids, the eyes still watched him. The thing was filled with power, his own powers extended beyond death. His inevitable future? No. His nightmare. A riot of black tendrils exploded around the Salt-Lich, growing up from the soil that was the vehicle of shadow. The vine-like tendrils became its legs, lashing out to drag the thing along the ground.
All this came in three breaths, just so many heart beats. Salt was winded from the journey to this site, but he retained his calm in the face of his own decay.
Then this creature moved forward. Salt backed away until he reached the side of the trail, becoming tangled in the bramble that reached out of the Mirghul Forest, and then this dead double figuratively stepped into his shoes. He and his twin collided without friction. And then, Salt was alone.
He called to himself. "Seer?"
Silence.
Then the eruption from about his feet, the telltale sign of the Void's corruption. Tendrils of black smoke slapped the ground insistently and snaked into his legs like cables twisted from cold iron.
"Ohhhhh NO!" the seer shouted defiantly. "Never again!"
He first attempted to raise a sanctuary, and from that envelope evade the shadow that had become one with him. In that state of protection he stepped out of the shadow that enveloped him, but where his feet met the ground again the ropy tendrils sprang up to meet him.
He cursed the shadows and crossed himself with further wardings in the same breath. These had no effect and he grew more panicked, and furious.
Salt could no longer think clearly. He raised his arms and brought down the most powerful disjunction upon his body, to dispel the evil that now befell him.
The black now wrapped him up to his hips. His magic offered no defense at all. Salt staggered southwards.
He stepped out of the forest and into a completely dark, infinite space. It was alien. The sensations were alien. It was like seeing into another plane of existence, if such a thing existed. Every organ could feel the cold emptiness of the Void, every fiber. It was the future, and it was inevitable.
In that moment, Rosen came into his thoughts. I am seeing into the thing that Rosen saw. This is the source of her conviction.
Vives was a distant speck, a memory. And yet, even as he fell through chill empty space Salt could still feel the pull of warmth, a place flowing with life, a place that had been a refuge all along. Elbereth's Tears was a there on his horizon. It was relief. All around it was the Black.
Salt took one stagger-step forward.
He crossed the marshes that drained the Mirghul Forest, leaving no wake in the inky water.
He was conscious of two things: the warm light that grew to the southeast, and another presence at his side, which was himself. His double was acting as his guide, walking by his side, whispering in his ear in the same incomprehensible way as before.
Don't go... he said to himself. Salt suspected his attraction to Elbereth's Tears immediately. He would rather endure alone, than take this evil into that sacred place. Don't go fellow... Not there....
His double took his hand gently and lead him towards the comforting warmth.
Salt shook his head and pulled back his insensate hand.
"It is the only way," said his double in a hoarse voice... There is no cold, there..."
"It is life. Warmth. We know this place..."
Salt wheezed in reply, "Then... let it be... the last warm place!"
"Go..." his double insisted. "You must. The cold will consume you." It pulled on Salt's sleeve.
Salt resisted, holding his ground. The ropy strands of shadow sprang up anew and tried to draw the seer along, pulling at the grasses and scrub.
"It does not go there," his double said. "The Mother's Tears. We are so close to escape! We can still reach it!"
Salt did not recognize his own voice. "It wantsss... that place... The lasssst place of... Warmmmthhhh..."
"It will banish the darkness. It will give you life," his double argued. "Life... Sweet life! Go! Hurry! Or it will grow too strong and force you there!"
"Or stay," said his double, " and become its vessel... for all eternity..."
"Know you... better than you... thinnnnk..." Salt hissed defiantly, even as the cold burned in his bones.
"GO! RUN! IT COMES!"
And then the double was gone. Vanished. Salt was alone on the Nihilan Moor. He had crossed the marshland and now walked over solid turf. Still further ahead, warm light promised sweet salvation. But Salt had ideas of his own. He was thinking of a different light.
The Black crept slowly behind him as he crossed the Moor. Was it pursuing him? Or following him?
Salt trod ahead zombie-like, shuffling, feeling nothing. He went straight as the crow flies to the gates of the Midoran encampment on the Great Plains. As he beat against the gate the Black swarmed toward him like a sea of darkness. He felt a terrible pain in his shoulder and screamed at those within, "LET ME THROUGH!!"
The wave broke upon Midor's pallisade. It burst open the gates and Salt was washed in, swimming, falling out of consciousness.
Why did he go there? To set this monstrous power upon the grandest army that was then known to Vives? To warn the Midorans of the threat that was lurking just beyond its borders, threatening to envelop the ghost town of Paws, its stockade, its White City? Or to seek salvation from the Light of the Just Hand? Midor took advantage of the way magic was confounded upon the Great Plains. Perhaps Salt sought out that zone in which magic and reality unraveled...
* * * * *
He awoke at the crossroads. The Plains were still in darkness, without a single source of light save for the smoldering fires that faded around him.
Salt had no sense how much time had passed. It could have been an eternity. The unfortunate truth was that he had missed only moments. Moments of time, stolen from him. Missing time. The Plains were nearly silent. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fragments of the Salt Sower
Posted: 01 Nov 2008 12:55 PM |
Not since Aros took his followers out of Ferein has Salt worked on so sacred a document. He sets out to record the words precisely as they were communicated to him, so that the lore and lessons of the journey are preserved for as long as there are towers of magery in Vives.
Salt does not draft and build this text, as he has with others. In part, it is because this is a holy text. The words are not his words; he is merely the vessel. In this spirit, he gathers the finest materials of great permanence, packs them carefully, and removes himself to Ladriel Tower, where he is welcomed. There he grinds his inks, weights down a scroll of sheepskin parchment, and prepares this illuminated chronicle.
The originary text will remain in Ladriel's library. Salt prepares copies for Asashi Monastery, the mage tower of Ka'azim, Tel'Elena Tower, and for Alton Highhill and Saana al-Risani, whom he knows to be devoted followers of Vilyave.
* * * * *
THE CHRONICLE OF THE WINDS
There is a legend of a man who sought the Four to learn of the Lady, only to realize he had known her all along.
I. PRELUDE
Thus spoke the Seer to the Hippogryph~
“I would put these words and riddles to paper. Does this displease the Lady, that these things be learned from texts?”
Said the Hippogryph to the Seer~
The people of the Lady value the journey and the story of such journeys. They tell stories as old as your kind.
Write the story, if you please, but do not let the words shroud the true spirit of the story.
II. THE CULT WITHIN NAILLAMNE
Did you know that the desert was once a sprawling jungle, stretching from the Mazadhi?
I have done extensive research on its history. They called it the Aeolus Jungle, and it was inhabited by cousins to the Mazadhi. Followers of Vilyave.
They were not violent like the Mazadhi, who wished to conquer them. They were preserved by great, extinct creatures. Gryphons.
When Vilyave’s people sinned, she took the guardians away from them. She split them in two.
One, the great roc. Symbolizing the eagle, the greatest hunters of Vilyave.
Second, the Manticore. The Lion. The Devil. The sinner who has wings and may yet fly again.
But this was an intervention. When Vilyave tore the Gryphons into these two halves, it was her first appearance ever to mortal kind.
The people of the Aeolus worshiped the winds long before they came upon Vilyave.
The winds were free at that time.
III. PYTHAGORAS, THE MESSENGER
Find the Seer, for within him a power lies. Sent by Vilyave, oh Lady of Wind. To find the Seer, and offer him a blessing!
The Seer must awaken it, with wandering and need. Wander the riddles from each of the four winds!
Pythagoras tells one, the Winds tell the others. Must think, must work, must fight, must overcome challenge and fear, to awaken a power already within!
Hear the first riddle, listen very close. Pythagoras will tell you where the South Wind blows.
IV. THE FREE SOUTH ~ THE STORM ~ THE TEMPEST
In a place trapped by water, where magic is a mess;
Where light and darkness intersect there is only madness;
Deep within does the Southern Wind dwell;
Where oh where the wizard across time will surely tell!
There is a legend of a man who sought the Four to learn of the Lady, only to realize he had known her all along.
I am the South Wind.
What is the South?
Chaos. Energy. The storm and the tempest.
Many millennia ago, the people of Vilyave betrayed the wind. They went to war with the Mazadhi, and much blood would be shed.
She sent the Hippogryph, the greatest of all creatures of the air, to warn the warring races of their actions. Instead of repenting they raised arms against it.
So the great being, enraged by their arrogance, rode the storm of the South and drove his spear into what was to become the battleground of two great people.
That day, thousands from both sides were buried under earth and rock, as the very ground crumbled beneath them.
Between the jungles of the two, the Lady and the Mazadhi, was created a deep chasm, and never would the two people meet again.
Yet the Lady was not pleased, for her people had betrayed the spirit of the Wind. She took their heaven, their paradise and home, and tore it off the earth.
That paradise became Aerialle.
Never again did the people of the Lady know peace as they had before.
This is the nature of the South Wind, one of the Four Winds.
Energy. Chaos. The storm and the tempest.
Your path will take you to other places where you will learn the nature of the Four Winds. Should your ears and mind be open to their lessons, so they will open up to you.
This knowledge shared with you is your own, and a secret prized by those who follow the path of the Wind. It is their hope, and ours, that you will respect such privacy.
V. THE GUARDIAN WEST ~ THE DRAGON ~ THE SHIELD
Where waters rage, beneath the Tower’s eye;
Where long-lost giants reach to the sky;
Exists a cave where mushrooms spring;
‘Tis there you will find the Mushroom King.
Though only half of your journey is complete, and you still have the way to return home, I am pleased to say that you found that which you sought.
For it has always been the duty of the Blue Kin to guard that which is loved and cherished by the Lady.
When she struck down the Mazadhi devils who waged war that threatened all people, she did not forget her love to her followers nor her regret at the carnage caused by her hand.
Thus, she had sent the first one, Vaast’liax, to guard the site where war would be waged with the Mazadhi, so that he and his children that followed him will forever keep the memory of those tortured souls.
She built Arielle to house the blue kin, so that they will protect the birds of the sky realms.
This is the nature of the west, to guard and protect.
You have found two of the Winds, Seer, one of the Storm and one of the Shield.
Two more remain.
VI. THE BEAUTIFUL EAST ~ THE MANTICORE ~ THE PROMISE OF LIGHT
The third is not a rhyme, nor a riddle,
Yet it will test your knowledge and resolve.
You will find it in that place that looks upon
The true of the Lady’s realms.
I am the Eastern Wind.
I am the Beautiful East.
Long ago, when the people of the Four Winds made war with the Mazadhi, the Lady revealed herself before the two people. To mark the schism of her followers, she took their protectors – the mighty griffins – and divided them in two.
One half she sent to the sky, to become the great and kingly Rocs.
The other, she cast down upon the ground, to become the monstrous and vicious Manticores.
She did not forget the mighty creature of which we were once part. Though she cast the manticores upon the ground, the Lady gave us wings.
Though we had fallen and she cast us unto the ground, the Lady gave us wings, to remind us that even though we have grown ugly, there is the promise of beauty in all things.
And even we may yet spread our own wings and join her favored in the sky.
Thus I am the Beautiful East, for only in the greatest darkness does the candle light glow brightest.
VII. THE PROUD NORTH ~ THE HIPPOGRYPH ~ THE SPEAR OF VILYAVE
You have found three of Four Winds, and only one remains.
You stand upon one end of the divide where two brothers were to murder one another.
The last of the Four Winds awaits you on the other side of this divide.
I am the North Wind.
It is their pride that sent the huntsmen, the warriors, the windwalkers to battle the Mazadhi. It is their pride that caused the Lady to shatter the land between the two people, and break the Griffin into two halves.
It is their pride that caused them to bear arms against the greatest of the Lady’s: the Hippogryph.
And it is the Lady’s pride that caused her to deliver such harsh punishment to her people, and this gives her sorrow.
This we must remember: to temper our pride with wisdom.
Also remember, that though you have learned a story, and gained wisdom from this journey after the Winds, you must also remember this.
The journey is for the journey’s sake.
VII. EPILOGUE: THE BOON FROM VILYAVE
You have completed this journey, seer.
You walked the four corners of vives, and there encountered the Winds.
Tell me seer, what do think was the purpose of this journey?
There was the story and the lesson. The fall of the Aeolus from grace. It is a story cherish greatly, and now you, in your own, have come to know it.
The nature of the Winds, it is close to the nature of a seer.
They see and hear, as they travel from place to place, and none stop their passage.
What is the nature of a seer, if not to see, and hear?
A seer can be many things, and his powers turned to any purpose. You have turned your senses to aid the Lady, and in return, she grants you a boon.
You have traveled around the land, to see and to hear the world as a wind would in its perpetual passage.
What do you see over the edge of a mountain?
You see so little from so high.
By traveling the land, you have seen far more. You have witnessed the rapids of the great river, felt the dry kobai winds, wandered through dangerous jungles, came face to face with magic and madness, this and more.
You have seen the world as the Winds do. There is power in such clairvoyance. That power will shrowd and protects you. The more you experience, the greater your power of sight, the stronger your clairvoyance, the further that power grows.
That is the gift of the Lady.
fin.
((Text by The Jester; journey completed with help from many!)) |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fragments of the Salt Sower
Posted: 10 Sep 2009 10:32 AM |
It started with unusual dreams. A seer's dreams are never ordinary, and an accomplished seer is a connoisseur of dreams, a maestro, a navigator. Salt can extend his dreams over weeks, relocating his place and picking up the journey again wherever he left it for wakefulness.
The wall of sleep is the same structure that separates the minds of nearly all waking persons, and keeps their desires a secret, or so they hope.
For Salt the barrier is like muslin cloth, the barest membrane enclosing his consciousness, his museum, his library, his palace.
Suddenly there were new rooms in his palace, connected into impossible configurations that were not his own inspiration. A harmless mold spread through his library, causing his books to swell and wrinkle. There were sinkholes that opened into great dark caverns lined with fungus. He happened upon musty chambers that reeked of composting matter, and he had no idea what they were doing there. At other times he found himself in some unknown oubliette, wriggling his toes in a carpet of black loam, losing untold hours to a queer vegetal pleasure.
Soon after these odd, unsettling dreams began, Salt began to notice a strange reddish-brown pollen or spore occurring from time to time in different parts of his grotto. The spores trailed around his home. Sometimes when he was away for a time, he would return to discover a very clear trail marking the perambulation of some thing, which seemed to move at random about his quarters as if seeking to exercise its limbs. Where the trail crossed back upon itself the spore was disturbed by small shuffling feet with neither toes, nor heels, nor arches.
Salt tried to question his homunculus about the unknown visitor, but the creature would not speak on it, seeming to enjoy its maker's puzzlement.
The spore itself yielded to analysis, however. Comparison with a sample collected from a cavern in the north of Vives revealed the strange powder to be myconid spores!
Who knew the myconids were such tricksters? Salt thought them merely industrious - this is why he worked to transplant them to his grotto. But lo... this one, this first success, little Oggie was trouble! |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fragments of the Salt Sower
Posted: 01 Oct 2009 10:20 AM |
Salt awoke from strange threatening dreams, with a throbbing headache.
His first thought was to inspect his bed for signs of the spores from that trickster of a myconid. Salt had at first taken credit for the quickening of that little toadstool himself. He had after all tried for a very, very long time to transplant the myconids to his little grotto in Swiftfoot Glade. He learned however that the creature was a gift, from the wizard named Oswin the Ooze.
The little creature had gunked up Salt's dreams, considerable bad news for a seer. Its enthusiasm for decay and the psychoactive effects of its spores filled Salt's memory palace with foetid cul-de-sacs, fungus-lined oubliette of vegetal pleasures, regions of damp, soporific darkness.
Salt wondered if he wasn't turning into a mushroom. Perhaps that was Oswin's real gift. Oswin, who had arcane oozes living in his armpits!
Salt noticed something else happening in his little grotto, however. There had always been a certain amount of fungus activity down there, but now there were mushrooms everywhere, in every variety. There were amusing little red, upturned cups... black shelf fungus with velvety gills... woody spotted mushrooms that smelled like sourdough bread... wide, low purple caps soft as down pillows... red ones and yellow ones and white ones too.
Oggie (as the little myconid was called) was cultivating every one of the mushroom varieties that those myconids once did in the Blackstone Caverns, underneath that marsh way up north. And some of them were delicious!
This did not help Salt's headache however, or the doomed feeling that someone, somewhere, was planning to jack him with a sock full of pennies. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Re: Fragments of the Salt Sower
Posted: 12 Oct 2009 09:11 AM |
Imagine, a tree that thrives on shadow instead of water.
Salt remembers Alistair's words, more than a year ago, as he and others searched frantically for an antidote to the shade-blight that spread outwards from Midor's forests.
It would grow twisted, its dryad maniacal. The dryads are the result of Zacch's work. He corrupted many of them long ago, and then they were set loose.
The corruption of Syn spreads. That was how Alistaire De La Garde explained what was happening all along the southeast of Vives, a year ago, and threatened to spread its fear and poison throughout the vast Mirghul Forest.
With time, Salt's memories corrected his misconceptions about Alistaire. He had not created the blighted dryads, he had explained them. It had been another... A warlock who dwelled in the Paws Woods, named Zacch. It was Zacch who created the blight that spread from the Paws Woods into the forests surrounding Midor.
Zacch had at one time been Alistaire De La Garde's apprentice, perhaps when he was still one of the Naillamne warlocks.
But something else was itching at the seer, something relevant to his quest with Ulalume, Talion, Ruby and others, to find the book belonging to Orny Adams.
The corruption of Syn spreads, Alistaire De La Garde had said, to Salt, to the Novus Aristi named Markus Motriety, and to the elf named Turandir Melhdiw, these three having sought him out in the old Midoran fortification called Onyx, deep in Midor's forest. Where once a single dryad and her tree could feed it, it would have become many, and then, possibly, the entire forest of Midor.
With dozens of miserable dryads locked in their eternal nightmares, feeding that creature of nightmare growing under a tree...
And then, Alistaire said, pointing an accusing finger directly at Salt, It makes its move.
The protectors of Mirghul may be reluctant to lose their precious forest. But it has already spread there.
It has spread the seeds of nightmare to an entire army, an entire city!
Salt remembered Markus Motriety's question. An entire city?
Alistaire answered Midor, Herald. An entire city, confident in the strength of its army and the grace of their god, all struck down in an instant by an unknown, heretic darkness.
Salt and Markus could not believe it. All of it? they asked, Even within its walls? Salt knew well enough that the army encamped upon the Great Plains was subjected to annihilation.
In Midor, he is blamed. But surely the wave of nightmare broke upon the walls of the White City!
The Great Plains are flooded with terror, like a giant, ugly scar. In a way, it was a cause of concern for all of them, though I doubt it infests their walls directly.
Salt does not leave the palace of his memory suddenly, by opening his eyes. He meanders away from its mouldy library, strolls along its corridors until the light grows dim behind his eyes and he has shifted into something more like a dream. Then he exits into wakeful consciousness.
Who had been to Midor? Who had witnessed conditions within the White City in the past year, since the fear overtook their grand encampment and shattered the city's military might?
What would they find there, when they went looking for Orny Adams book of all magics? |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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