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Salt the Convocant
Posted: 25 Aug 2006 11:40 AM |
Finding a large table was his purpose in visiting Ka’azim. Bereil had also suggested the roof of the tower as the site for this meeting of mages.
The hedge maze stood between he and the tower that loomed at its center. For Salt the hedge maze was an old enemy. Baffling to some for its complexity, to others merely inconvenient to navigate, this strange structure had defied his will for years. It was only by another gardener’s will that it grew to be full and lush, a literal and even more potent metaphorical defense for the tower. Woven into its labyrinth were powerful glyphs of protection. At Salt’s touch, this had withered. He was a failure in the garden and could not keep even so sturdy a plant alive. Over several years the hedge grew patchy and sparse under his care and the protections became frail. He had simply been assigned to learn it and tend it in the days before he manifested any ability to work magic. And so he was called the Salt Sower long before he was touched with the gifts of prophecy.
Staff in hand Salt paced into the maze. Old enemy, he thought stroking its short fragrant leaves on stiff branches of boxwood. The branches parted, and he slipped through allowing the way to close up behind him, healthy. You still remember me.
Reaching the tower he entered and visited for a time with Shamn. You still know service Salt Sower, said the Archmage. It is your purpose, he said, and it is your strength. It is a good that wizards shall gather and Ka’azim supports it.
On the level above, a table with ten seats. This was surrounded by more work-a-day furniture, the alchemical tables, desks where Ka’azim’s library had been copied and recopied by scribes at training, young mages learning the special script in which a spell might live for one casting. Would more than ten gather? Bereil Yadashem and Shihaya’zad had supported a meeting of mages and Salt tasked himself to find the meeting ground.
For the gathering to accomplish anything, more than ten seats would be required.
Bereil had suggested also the roof of the tower. It was an impressive location with suitable dramatic qualities, Salt allowed upon visiting it. Not overly large was that space, perhaps not room for cushions upon which to seat the gathering, but it was a good space for dignified standing if the mages gathering did not wear their most voluminous robes, bear elaborate headdresses and carry cumbersome and showy staves.
Salt believed that all spellcasters, whether students of the tower or those with magic in their blood, would have access to this meeting ground. That was really its chief attraction.
Descending again to the audience chamber of Shamn the Elder, the seer penned two messages hastily. One was to be delivered to Shihaya’zad at Tel’Elena in Ferein, the other meant for Bereil.
There needed to be an agenda. The situation of Tel’Elena and the flight of Camthalion needed to be on it. So too, the crisis that burned in the Kobai. Salt was not traveled enough to create the full agenda, and so items would have to be solicited from those planning to attend.
There needed to be invitations. This, this would require some care. None would be barred, but some mages of the land merited the honor and dignity of invitation. For this too, Salt would require the help of Vives’ social set, its traveling mages. Thanking Shamn, the seer reentered the hedge maze of Ka’azim and navigated it in a manner that few could recreate. |
"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: Salt the Convocant
Posted: 07 Sep 2006 08:35 AM |
Salt received the letter from a courier who knew where to find the mage away from home. He lingered in the elven High Quarter, studied on his notes from the trial and conducted petty alchemical experiments. The letter from Holace jolted him out of this strange drifting existence. He penned and sent off a somewhat hasty reply:
Ferein ~
Friend Holace~
Thank you for this note and its accompanying explanation. I understood that your conflict with Friend Lucius had boiled over owing to the tension of recent times. Without naming anyone individually I am witness to several comrades who have simply fallen to pieces over what has happened.
Have you heard that Dana was executed? I am sorry to deliver this news in so crass a medium as my written words seem to be. I did not attend the remaining portion of the trial, having gathered everything necessary to comprehend it completely. I gather Our Friend Lucius was also seen outside of the Deciding Place rather than within it. Perhaps he too foresaw the outcome.
~Regardless, please let go of your concerns for my opinion of you. Be free of these concerns. I might suggest that you follow my example, and that perhaps the opinions you harbor matter for little.
In Haste, I remain~
Your Servant~
~S
Afterwards he continued to complete several items of correspondence, recopying the same letter over and over and addressing each as best he could, according to the list that he had derived during his conversations with the mages Shihaya’zad and Bereil Yadeshem.
The idea for a meeting of mages had taken root in his heart. He desired to see it take place. |
"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: Salt the Convocant
Posted: 18 Oct 2006 02:03 PM |
A bitter argument between Lucius Edmonds and Holace Nemworth, is now bubbling over. Lucius has three drinks in front of him, strong smoky spirits in clear, thick-walled firing glasses with amusing green-glass feet shaped like ferns. They have just come from the first portion of the trial, the only such trial either of them has ever witnessed in Ferein. His lover Dana has been examined by the woman who would replace Camthalion Tasratir as the Archmage over Tel’Elena Tower. Lucius is prepared to dispatch Holace before starting on his drink.
Shihaya’zad and Bereil are opening up dimension doors all around them at the Falling Stars in Ferein, seemingly for amusement. Bereil enjoys his life. So does Shihaya’zad. They have balance to their lives and find such pleasure in magery, and it seems to favor them. Salt admires them but resents the distraction.
Salt is forced to strain over the flashes and flourishes of magic to follow the dispute that seems to have been growing between Holace and Lucius for some time. A wedge driven between them over women, or pride, or shame. “It is not that far to walk!” Salt calls to Shihaya’zad after a sequence of doors moved her across the room in ten-foot leaps.
“No, but most entertaining Salt.” With a flash she leaps back to Bereil’s side.
“Go talk to someone who cares to hear your sniveling,” Lucius says to Holace.
“Salt!” Bereil cries excitedly, “Would I have ye believe that Shihaya’zad has just found that spell? Look at her mastery!”
“Perhaps you will drown in your vomit one day,” is how Holace responds to Lucius.
“Eh?” says Salt as he peers over to the proud-looking Elven magess at Bereil’s side. “Just learned it?”
Shihaya’zad nods. “And you know what? This is the perfect solution to avoid all drama.” A proposition. Does Salt know the spell?
“Aside from simply casting invisibility and sneaking away?” Asks Bereil. Shihaya’zad and Bereil Yadashem were accomplished mages when Salt quit his service to the mages at Ka’azim. And here they are, in the Falling Stars inviting Salt to play…
“If you’re leaving, no need for a soliloquy first,” Lucius announces to Holace. “That’s the exit.”
“I’m glad you can make out that much Lucius,” says Holace. “You seem to have trouble with everything else.”
“Found it!” Salt shouts apropos of nothing. He produces a stub of rolled paper from his sleeve. It contains just a few ounces of toasted hemp that someone, either Karlina Goodfellow or her friend Wil, had given him before the trial had started. He fetches a hot coal from the hearth where he and Lucius are seated alone.
These are antics, and Lucius knows it. “Stop trying to defuse the tension, Salt.”
“It’s my tension too, fellow…” he replies to Lucius, holding the hot coal with short helper tongs and touching it to the roll of hemp. The stub produces very little for him.
Shihaya’zad and Bereil are now discussing the difference between using the door to reach a position within one’s line of site, and the truer application of this magic to reach a location imagined in the mind. “As Camthalion and Malakhi were capable of,” she adds.
“Are they?” asked Bereil.
“The first, for sure,” she replies. “Remember when I vanished in front of your eyes in Omiga’s? That was Camthalion’s work. Or when Malakhi sent us to the plains…”
“Aye, I do recall that,” Bereil replies, “A method of teleportation that goes beyond the boundaries of eyesight…”
Lucius drinks one of his smoky elven whiskies. “Sadly, there are times to call a spade a spade…”
A dwarven priest, Father Whitebeard enters the Falling Stars, and so do others. The right-sized called Fennigan, who is fond of assuming the shape of an abominable demon in unseemly places, and Marrya Swift, and her presumed domitor Jessup.
Jessup and Marrya depart for an upstairs room, “something private” as was her stated desire, and Fennigan, Lucius and Salt discuss the trial and it’s likely development. Will Lucius be called to testify? And if so, should he testify? Lucius finishes his drinks and grows dissatisfied with his present company. Fennigan and Salt remain behind, and soon they have engaged Shihaya’zad and Bereil in a discussion of conjuration.
What is the likelihood that the precise elemental entity, which had been compelled by Dana to murder the elves, could be brought forth to testify as a first-hand witness to the crime?
How are these entities commanded, and to what degree are they subject to the will of their conjurers?
“It takes time and experience to master the ritual of summoning perfectly,” says Shihaya’zad in her pleasant voice, “but in the end, if the procedure was successful, a bondage is being established.”
“Bondage, Shiha?” returns Salt for certainty, “Literally you say, bondage?”
“Literally,” comes her reply.
Amid this banter, Bereil asks suddenly, “How is Blanche? I have not seen her in some ages…”
“Can’t say I’ve seen her, Bereil. No one has, that I know it. She’s perhaps even missing…” Salt suggests.
“What a shame,” Bereil answers.
Salt sees an opportunity. “Shiha, Bereil… the idea we had to gather the mages of Vives. Who would you want to see at that gathering?”
“A spell-tosser convention?” Fen asks, to which Salt smiles and nods at the hin.
“Hrm…” Bereil ponders it. “Ye are probably more aware of who is of renown in this day and age. Names that leap to my mind would be Solitaire, Balthor, Horace, Yggsdrazil, and…”
“Balthor has not gone completely mad yet?” asks Shihaya’zad.
“Committed himself to the construction of golems, it seems.”
Bereil scratches aggrevatedly at his beard. “What was his name? …an old man, he taught a friend of mine. His home is in Buckshire. And there are probably some Elven mages that Shihaya’zad is more acquainted with than I.”
“No party is complete until you have Lucifer trying to teleport you to Ferein,” says Fennigan.
Bereil asks a one-letter question: “X?”
“Not around lately, I think he has been planning some big experiment,” says Fen.
“Nay, my question was meant to be, what is his full name?”
“Xaranthir,” Fennigan answers.
“Ye may as well add Xaranthir, and this Lucifer, ye have mentioned,” says Bereil with finality. “And Romulus! We certainly haven’t forgotten him, have we?”
“Well,” Salt says, “You’ve given me a few good leads. For a conclave, that is. Tell me, all the persons you have named, they are true wizards, not sorcerers of the blood?”
“They are, unless they have some hidden talent they are not aware of,” says Bereil.
Shihaya’zad nods and says somewhat cuttingly, “All of them possess the intelligence to understand what they are able to do.”
The comment was striking to Salt, in that it seemed to preclude those who worked magic from their blood from joining in the conclave that had been proposed.
**********
From this discussion, and from a survey of his own memories, Salt was able to conjure a list of individuals who would receive invitations. The conclave would be open to any mages, but decorum and courtesy mandated that some receive written notice that it would take place.
An agenda for the conclave would be drawn up. Agenda items would be solicited from those who would gather, and all would be given attention. They would include affairs pertinent enough to merit the attention of all mages of Vives. Perhaps what would be realized in this agenda would be the responsibilities of the assembled mages, the purposes to which their magics could find their best use.
In his dwelling and laboratory in Swiftfoot Glade, Salt sat with pen in hand, and a bowl before him containing amusing curly noodles in hin-sauce (no it isn’t made from hin). Slurping as he worked, he drew up his list:
Lady Djinn who walks with Cats
Lucius Edmonds if he can be found
Bereil Yadashem and the Lady Shihaya’zad
Yggsdrazil E’lan as representative of Tel’Elena
Lady Solitaire
Balthor Mountainhand of Askwith Manor
Xaranthir *if he can be found*
Lucifer McIath
The Gnome, Gnimini
Holace
Oragastus
Romulus Who is also called Solus...
There were no doubt far more who ought to be included. Yggsdrazil for instance would be consulted for more names from the tower of Tel’Elena. Salt hoped simply that the word would get around, momentum would build, and as many of these as possible would gather.
He set about drafting a letter, and then copied the letter to each person named on the list.
((OOC: watch for another thread that will be an open call for agenda items, made available at Ka'azim for those who frequent it. This is not an organization like the Magistry, it is simply a gathering for the purposes of exchange and discovery, a social/RP event in the coming weeks if folks get on board.)) |
"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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