Shadows & Sorcery #115
Here it is, folks. Shadows & Sorcery. One hundred and FIFTEEN.
As sometimes happens, I’ll generate* a title that inadvertently happens to relate in some way to a previous entry, so hey, guess we’re developing this world as the gods of Shadows & Sorcery see fit!
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This week, we get a letter from our friend who is off to learn Northern Sorcery, we take a trip into a Shrine Cemetery, and we uncover the origin of the Ash of Magic…
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Northern Sorcery
My friend,
As I write this, I am sitting within the soft, pale blue light of a yurt, half carved into an ice bank inside of which is a bright paper lantern. The illumination is quite calming. We are waiting for a scout's report on whether or not a storm is heading our way. And by "our way" I mean the shaman, the shaman's cohort, and myself, for I am a guest here in the ice field. The shaman is in a trance at the moment, so I am taking the time to write.
The shaman, how do I describe such a figure?
You know well--or I should hope you do!--our homeland's ancient shamanistic practices. Our oldest invocations are sourced in the trance-mantras inscribed on primal stones. The shamans of old never died out, it seems, they just moved north into seclusion.
I was met in the cold green taiga by a figure enwreathed entirely in the skins of beasts and thick white garments with colourful striped patterns. From a head dress, like a great drooping beast-head with thick curling horns and black eye holes, there issued a voice which addressed me as the "strange man" from the letter. I had went to some trouble, you are aware, of having a message ferried from village to village, courier to courier, to reach these most northern of folk. In truth I had expected to meet some aide or servant who take me into the snows to meet their master, but no, here was the master in the flesh, alone.
We came to terms rather quickly, though the shaman thought our system of solemn rite and ceremony a little foolish. "All you need," I was told with a grin (not visible, but in the voice), "is one of these," and the shaman held up a freshly plucked specimen of an deathly poisonous mushroom. We gathered about a dozen more of these before we came to the ice fields themselves.
My time spent in the east helped me a great deal here. If it hadn't been for the master of Gurchun, I believe I might have frozen to death had I not been able to spur my limbs into motion amidst the cold. The shaman was quite interested, though only because it seemed they achieved similar results in a very different fashion.
The far northern land is bleak, desolate, and beautiful beyond description. There is a vastness to it that neither the wild dark hills and sprawling plains of Enverion nor the sky-scraping mountains of Khorlo can hope to achieve. For leagues beyond count in every direction is unbroken shining ice and snow, of an absolutely pure white in most places, marked only with spans of pale silver in the great blocks of ice. Small knolls and ridges sometimes undulate for a short distance, but nothing covers the horizon, which one feels may stretch into infinity. The sky is an eternal pallid grey, sometimes high and bright, sometimes low and bulbous. And yet, this monochrome expanse holds no associations of grimness or death, but of a deep, dark tranquility I have never before experienced.
Into a minor depression was I led, where a cream-coloured yurt, a sort of large tent, was built into a face of ice, where I write to you from--this is our camp. It was here the shaman began to guide me as I helped prepare some sort of concoction. I must admit, communication proved difficult at times, for they speak here an antiquated form of a dialect spoken in one region further south. But we made do in the end. First thing I learned was that these mushrooms result in painful death if consumed whole, but remove the innards under the cap, and you have yourself a powerful psychedelic.
Well, long story short, the preparation of the vapors was itself part of the ritual I was to perform and experience immediately. No initiation, no instruction, the shaman said it was best I understand by doing. I had my magicks, my spirit enchantments and inner disciplines, and yet I was nervous. The shaman picked up on this, and told me slowly that it would "not be good to meet it like this". After an hour of steadily inhaling the growing admixture's heady scent, the shaman had a helper, of which there were three others, light a small fire under the pot we had been filling up with herbs, moss, mushrooms, and wine-dark liquids from hollow gourds and skins.
The rising smoke enveloped me almost, and I saw through a growing haze, two of the shaman's helpers bring in the large, bleached skull and uneven skin of a beast whose like I have never seen. The skin was draped about me as the skull was placed over my head--I let this happen, keeping my hands as ready as I could to focus the spirits within them to action should I have to. But the second the skull-helmet was lowered, well, words fail me.
I tell you now, though that stretch of time is still dim to me, I am not convinced I was completely myself during it. I was the beast, too. And so was the shaman. I believe I saw the shaman in truth, and the figure which hunched over opposite me, was not human--not fully human. Not anymore. What I took to be clothing I think was far less than that.
The shaman spoke to me as I came in and out of it. Was I not warmer now? More comfortable? Not struggling with foreign sorceries as I had been? I had done something, the shaman said, a word I find it difficult to accurately translate. Something not quite pact or bond or fusion. Not becoming one, but two sharing. A loose intermixing. And neither was it possession, a lethal art you and I both know all too well. My apologies if this all seems vague but the experience itself did not exactly clear things up either.
The shaman began to bring me out of the trance, or whatever it was, but not completely. If I did, I was told the bones would fall off my head and the skin would shrivel. It was only mildly surprising I found that I understood the shaman's words perfectly now.
Then several days passed, weaving through drugged trances that felt like the best night's sleep I'd ever had, each rise above the waves, as it were, was refreshing and invigorating, and I was ready to delve back into this becoming-of-two, which grew into three, five, and more. The shaman was my guide throughout this, and I came to understand wordlessly, as we ranged through the black ice fields and benighted tundra for bones, leaves like fingers, and snaking fungal growths, that the magick of the north was here preserved in its most raw expression.
The goal of this lifelong pursuit is a blurring of the self with the landscape--in this sense landscape meaning the earth, the greenery, the beasts. To meld the bones, the moss, the roots, the skin, the vines, the feathers, with yourself, to the extent that life is embodied through you, and you may go out into the world as what the shaman called a "Great Animal". Just what exactly a "Great Animal" was, or looked like, the shaman only said I might know in the fullness of time, but I might go see the bones of those who had nearly become them. I understand such graves are the holiest of shrines here. I think I have an idea why.
The scout has returned. There is no storm, and so I am to accompany the shaman to a camp in the south, where I shall entrust this letter to a hunter from the town. It may take some time for my return, but rest assured, once back in Enverion, we shall attain the rank of Magnus.
Shrine Cemetery
Why one should worship the small gods? They are easily appeased, and not prone to sending doom and famine. The great gods of the world may command epic histories, have voluminous texts written about them, enjoy the worship of entire armies of monks and priests and emperors, but to be frank, they are too distant. A bit too cold. With them it's all mysteries and prophecies. Their powers, mighty as they may be, are vast yet subtle, and so elicit little wonder or devotion from the common masses unversed in the esoteric intricacies of cosmic religion. No, to those common folk go the small gods.
They are not gods of the harvest, but gods of this field and that field. Gods of the woods, of a stream or a river. Of this cave, and not the mountain. Gods of streets, and most certainly of a house--no hearth is without its attendant deity.
Be they stewards of the great gods, mediators, emanations, aspects adding up to a whole, or simply spirits of a kind that found their niche, it doesn't matter for most people. Whence they come isn't much of a bother either. They're here, beside them, not somewhere beyond. This is solidified in the numberless shrines, dwelling places for the respected and honoured small gods. Whole networks of them that live alongside humanity, sharing in meals, festivals, and other little personal occasions. Every member of a household might have their own relationship with their small god, which may be as contentious as it is amicable, as befitting a neighbour.
For whatever reason, these small gods do not persist down the epochs like their grand cosmic kindred. Small gods die, just like the humans they dwell beside. Perhaps closeness to mankind has dulled their divinity, or perhaps they took on mortality to be around us. Or maybe they were mortal all along, which is what most folk like to think, for they are very fond of their small gods. However, they do live for a long time, at least in comparison to the bare century a person might reach. About seven generations is common for a small god's lifespan. Most folk don't even keep records that far back, but the small gods remember.
Every house deals with the passing of a close one in their own way, outside of cultural customs of course, and small gods are no different. Some are solemn, some are festive but sorrowful, and some are functional. And for them all, a cemetery. A broad, flat, or as flat as possible, plain is chosen, encircled by a low wall, and into are carried and set the small, square shrines with their peaked roofs. The cemeteries are calm, quiet places, though there is almost always someone there among the rows, attending to one last matter: the final promise.
Small gods are not just attached to their houses, they're part of the family, wherever that family may go. And so, when they die, they leave their families two things: one is a dream, a recommendation from the small god for a replacement to initiate into the household, and the other is a single blessing that the family may call upon at any time, all they need do is visit the small god's grave and invoke it. This gift is the furthest extent of the small god's power, it bears no restrictions, but is expected to be used tastefully.
That lack of restrictions has led to an unfortunate practice down the ages of a kind of criminal divine necromancy, whereby the small god's final promise is coerced by unscrupulous characters who see Shrine Cemeteries as little more than storehouses of power. Abominable it is held to be, worthy of outlaw, exile, and in most people's personal opinions, death. And no doubt when it happens, a dozen final promises are invoked to find those responsible. The power of small gods is not grand and vast and of cosmic proportions, but it is immediate, and it is overt, and it is known for miles around whenever a group of dead gods has been called upon to destroy a blasphemer.
Ash of Magic
How it can be obtained, that is a secret every wizard is bound to keep, be it on pain of destruction, or because it is a secret the magic world would rather not let escape. But you will see it upon every spellcaster, as an advertisement to the commoners around them to beware, and to any potential enemy wizard they are not to be trifled with. Slips of wood, plaster, sometimes metal, or thick layers of paper, hanging from belts, chains, hoops, around necks, around shoulders. They are the source of a wizard's powers, powerful amulets engraved with strange and, to most eyes, unpleasant runes and glyphs.
If rumour is to be believed, then such a reaction is perfectly natural, for that eldritch tongue is most certainly not of this world.
Magician's duels aren't an uncommon sight. If the bared spells of either sorcerer do not warn each other off, then flashes of power might--one wizard may take an amulet in hand and throw it into the air, or upon the ground, or into a nearby pool or other body of water. Sometimes into a fire if they can. Upon impact, or within a mere few seconds, the amulet splits and a terrifying effect is produced. Blasts of flame, black vortices, creeping shadows, soaring blurs on black wings, spiking tendrils of ice, arcs of thunderbolts, sundered stone or earth, as well as countless invisible forces that assail the opponent--the list goes on, and there is seemingly no end to the frightful powers a magician can conjure.
And after every display, no matter how swiftly it resolves, there may be found in the area, a broad smattering of pale, flaking ash.
Apart from any expected burns or stains or what have you, there is always the ash. Light, airy, clinging, it lifts at the slightest provocation. The belief among most people, come down from the musings of sages which has escaped its confines in the world of magic that wizards inhabit, is that this ash is the remains of destroyed creation. Simply put, spells are things which shouldn't exist. The idea is the world is forced to do something, and cannot handle it.
Magic has not always been here. It did not grow with mankind. It just arrived one day, from somewhere else. That much, at least, is certain. The belief of magic as a kind of alien, perhaps even invasive force, is bolstered by two things. The first being numerous, scattered accounts throughout history, of enclaves of wizards and how the world around them ceases to, as if often said, "work right". Nature and its cycles begin to warp and grow unstable, days are prolonged, nights do not end, time passes in spurts, things seem to grow or rot out of season. Stars no one has ever seen shine down. People simply vanish. And all around is a skin of pallid ash that grows into sickly mounds.
The second is that magicians are a folk ever on the move. The wandering wizard lives in infamy in the popular mind, the image of a dark-robed wayfarer, clacking with spell plates to announce their presence they know will go uncontested. In their wake there is inevitable ash, but never much. They know not to stick around too long, lest their spellwork begin to cause problems for them. Powerful as they may be, their spells are limited, and townsfolk can be many.
And yet, from time to time even now, travellers pass through lonely places where banks of ash creep across the earth. Outlaw wizards driven from their orders, or cabals of a master and dutiful students, almost always on the barren outskirts of small towns. These bands are almost always rooted out and driven apart. But sometimes someone happens upon them before they're found out. Some of these people attempt to join them, some attempt to spy. Some of those who have survived perpetuate the more credible rumours. The rest have gone on to be the source of them.