Shadows & Sorcery #128
Well
Well
Well
If it isn’t the one hundred and twenty-eighth edition of Shadows & Sorcery!
What’s on the agenda this week? Militant gnostic theocracies, global-scale necromancy and uh *checks notes* pawnbrokers. You really never can tell what’s gonna happen here, can you?
Now, last week a new chapter of The Path of Poison came out! Sepp saw something kinda weird in that old forest! Find out what it was HERE
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This week, we get the low down on the impressive Sword of Winter, we witness the divine might of Iron Sorcery, and we plunge into a dead wilderness in search of a Tomb of Magic…
Sword of Winter
"No, I am not going to sell this to you," said the pawnbroker, "I am not going to sell anything here to you. This is a loan, the price upfront covers the interest. Oh don't give me that look, I know you'd sell it back to me in a month's time anyway! How do I know? They all do, friend. The luster don't last forever. This whole shop is a testament to that." The man was short, rake thin in every aspect, but walked with a languorous gait as he came out from behind the desk upon which he'd been propped up by his bony elbows as he talked.
"You see all these, kids?" he motioned around to the three young adventurers who had strode into his shop this lazy afternoon. "The refuse of fifty years, even longer because some of this stock is from the guy before me. I got swords that flash with a pretty nasty blaze when you swing 'em—whole rack over here. Folk like those. I got, uh, let's see," he played his hands over the musty, poorly lit room, mentally searching. "Yeah, I got hammers that make a limb numb for about a minute when they hit you—gave me a reputation with the local gangs they did—I got lightning arrows that supposedly fly faster than normal or something, that's a fun one, they sell out pretty quick. There's a bunch of roaring axes over here. These...are not popular. I find them quite frightening myself, but I think that's the idea. That thing there is a bending spear, it can sort of, well, uh, bend around a shield or chase a dodge, but not by much. You got the training though, supposed to be very useful!"
"I have a shop of wonders, yeah," the pawnbroker smiled, trying not to laugh at the young woman's comment. "These ‘aint nothing. Nothing. This is all first year equipment. No one keeps this stuff. You move onto bigger stuff as soon as you can, and that refuse? All comes down to me," he emphasized the final three words with a prod to his own chest. "Or at least it comes to me first. I'm a good friend of some of the council masters, you see. Hey, look, I shouldn't be telling you this but you can find things just like these sitting around in tombs and ruins and so on. You lot, you'll come across some treasure and the juice of it'll get you so buzzed you'll throw that sword or bow you spent a solid week enchanting aside like it was nothing. Oh you'll know soon enough, my friends, which is why I am loaning these to you. I want my stock back, I'm not going out to retrieve some first year's starter sword. We can't all just trot off to the frontier!"
"Eh, I sell the real junk off to other pawnbrokers, keep the decent stuff for myself. You should see some of the stuff that comes through here sometimes—might make a good lesson, huh? Raise the standard a little, you know what I'm saying."
"Yeah anyway, over here is the newer stuff. Not so popular. See these days they got all these doo-dads and goo-gaws hanging off 'em and people don't like having to manage all these little enchantments. Don't blame them, in the a real battle, when you have an orc bearing down on you, nasty wicked cleaver going right for your face, you don't want to have to stop and focus on some little trinket and try to pull out its powers. I get a lot of sad eyes in here selling me these. Don't bother."
"A good one? Oh I got a bunch, I showed you my good—actually, wait a minute. Wait just a minute..." The pawnbroker trailed off as he ran his hands over a rack of weapons and pointed his finger at nothing in particular as he thought. "Ah! Yes, yes c'mere, over here, this is a good one. I'm very fond of this one." He moved aside some crates, "Sorry, been doing some re-arranging here," and revealed a stand bearing a single, one-handed sword of fairly simple make, but it wasn't the smithing detail the pawnbroker cared about. "You see that? Yeah...perpetual enchantment. It's called—get this—the sword of winter. Oh all these things have names. They have to have names, but don't ask me why. And they each have some grand title that, were this five hundred years ago, may have been warranted, but now it's a joke. At least to everyone else it is. But this one holds up a little better. See even I can tell its special, that its good work, because it ‘aint like anything else in here. It has no condition, I believe is what you call it. Hey, I'm giving you an education here! You wanted to go in armed, impress your captains, well maybe if you listen to me you'll do that."
"Yeah, no condition. You don't need to swing it or loose or it or babble some mummery—oh don't even get me started on the word ones. Listen, kids, don't make one of those. I feel my skin crawl every time I gotta tell a customer they need to say," and he stood up, puffing his chest out for it, "By the Winds of Eldrador before their sabre will do whatever it is it does. Divines save me, it's embarrassing. Anyone else you know makes one, don't send them to me. Anyway, uh, yeah, this one's the sword of winter. Go ahead, pick it up."
One of the young men did so enthusiastically, and after a mere few seconds, passed it to his other hand with a hiss, and looked to the pawnbroker.
"That thing will burn cold until the Final Battle. If it's broken up, the bits will freeze whatever they touch. Can't burn the blade down unless the fire is magical, and real good. Had a council master tell me that, he found out it was here. Let it remain here, too, so I could tell prospective students passing through about it. But, uh, I'll still loan it to you. Same price, too. Just don't blame me if you get frostbite, okay?"
Iron Sorcery
Across a world of grey they trod in blind, listless hordes. Nameless, withered wretches with thin, dry skin of the same slate pallor as the rest of their world, featureless save for thin-lipped mouths which trembled, awaiting when next they could muster enough strength to force a monolith to the ground where it would cracked open, and they might satisfy themselves on the meagre helpings of hot, steaming flesh within. While they would sometimes devour each other if fallen, there was no respite in their desperate cannibalism. The monoliths stood in great, sinister forests upon the endless leagues of smooth, pitted stone that formed the shell of the whole world, under which the wordless dreams told the wretches was a vastness that shook as it laughed at their bondage to its sustenance.
It was by bloodshed did the wretches experience more than their parched throats. It was by great acts of violence did they draw forth the blood needed to see and hear, and to feel more than the numb cold of the world. The wretches wandered, caked in gore, leaving congealed trails across the sombre stone, doing anything just to experience sense once again, no matter how harsh the sights and how harrowing the sounds.
And then, a star fell to earth.
The wretches saw it but dimly, and countless were slain so that the sight may not be lost, and eventually a host descended upon a plain of sundered stone, wherefrom the stench of flesh rose high into the air, beckoning. But the call of the oblong form spied in its center was stronger, for it was of a deep, rich black, and shone with an illumination not unlike that of the stars so far above, so far away. And when the first wretches lay their hands upon it, they saw and felt and heard, and were ailing no longer—in a crippling flash came the weight and gift of knowledge.
They had living visages that spoke of themselves, of what they were, of whence they came innumerable aeons ago, of their dread imprisonment, and of the gaoler below. They took the iron from the star, and learned how to begin expressing their power over the world which bound them by hunger and desire. And it was through their long and violent bonding with the sky's iron did they gain those first pulses of deeper memory, with which they sensed from afar—from beyond stone, flesh, and star—the lost seat in heaven they spoke of in hoarse whispers.
...
Grey dust hung heavy around their feet, almost sloshing like some vile liquid. It was kicked up in feeble, clinging tendrils with every step, but their burnished breastplates shone through, as did did the great metal plated hoods which veiled their features. They shone as beacons and heralds for the iron sorcerer which towered behind them, like the shadow of a holy black spire come to life. And their light fell then upon a scene which made tears fall from behind their veils: ten wretches squatted upon a mound of cracked stone, pulling from within handfuls of steaming flesh. Their emaciated forms were stained with the gore they had daubed themselves in.
Above them was another, but this one stood, however stooped it was. Beside it was a large, hollowed lump of stone, and from it the wretch pulled a handful of thick blood and smeared it upon its face, and croaked: "Blood!"
The wretches before it shot up, and rushed the three gnostics.
The berserkers of the death cult flew forth, brandishing long, broad iron daggers. Their blades tore through the ragged forms with ease, spilling from their stomachs the monolith flesh. "Be free!" they screamed with each swift slaying—an earnest benediction. As the final two fell to their knees, a screeching streak of red fell onto one of the berserkers. It bit into the metal armour and then to the skin beneath, and the berserker fell, writhing like the red sparks did upon the pitted stone ground. It took only a second for the other berserker to plunge its dagger through its burnished veil, killing it instantly in a white hot flash of power.
The iron sorcerer smiled under its black veil, and strode forth, voicing a deep resonant chant, which one might swear had an almost metallic rattle to it. Iron bands and caps were upon on every finger, and it held its hands in a curious formation, before it scraped them apart and thrust them outward into the oncoming wretch king's bloodfire. The vile, pathetic spell merely sputtered and smoked in the air around the iron sorcerer. Then, from the side, a wretch leapt to the attack—but an arcing bolt of pale gold thrown out impaled it to the ground, yet the corpse seemed not wracked with pain, but ecstasy.
The great black shape seemed to glide rather than step up. The wretch king only twitched a hand towards its cauldron of blood before the iron sorcerer grasped it by its face. A great band of dull iron wrapped across its head, and its limbs went limp. There was a good chance the others slain here would rise once more from the world-flesh, the berserkers well-meaning benedictions aside. But this one, this soul could be saved the indignation of rebirth.
The solemn drone of the chant thrummed into the far distance. The thunderous peal of iron bells sometimes broke through. Black iron towers vanished into the upper air, grasping at the cold, star-lit heavens. There would come a day when the souls of the world would return to take their place in the stars, and by hunger and by iron would it be done.
Tomb of Magic
The hillside was barren, the soil dry and crunching underfoot, littered with loose, jagged rock. The sun was going down, and the entire span took on a shadowy, unsure aspect. All was still upon it, save for two darkish blots which trod furtively through the growing murk.
"Know, O Prince, there are two kinds of life in this world," said the bent-backed master, little more than a shapeless mass of brown hangings and tatters out of which a mouth protruded and hissed words. "There is clay...and there is fire." Behind him, draped in a flowing black cloak, a figure whose deep, dark-ringed eyes offset any delicacy the face might have, rendering the slender features more gaunt than elfin. The prince looked down and removed a sliver of yellowed bone fastened to a neckchain. "Do not think," continued the master with the merest hint of mockery, "that the shard you safekeep makes you of fire, O Prince. This, however..." the master looked up to the lumpen hilltop, "this will make you fire."
"Yes, master," came the hollow-voiced reply.
"I bear the skull of my master, Glasemius, he who bore a skull of the true race of old."
"What happened to your master?"
"Murdered by thieves in the pay of a rival who sought the skull. I dare say the true treasure was mine in the end. Glasemius was deeply marked by his time with the skull."
"And the thieves?"
"No one will never find them."
"And...the skull?"
"Its loss was the price for their deaths. I loved my master dearly. And besides, what is a skull, true fire or no, compared to a tomb?"
"Know, O Prince, that most of the world is clay. Things to be shaped, to be impressed upon, to die and become inert with decay. But some are of fire. We all were once of fire, in an age reduced now to myth. Those with the power to melt down, burn away, enlighten...a race of wizards in whose hearts was the capacity or the knowledge or the blessing to mold the clay."
"If they were so powerful, master, what became of them?" There was a question under that question, the master knew.
"They burned too bright, and no more does the world shine gold with their touch." There was a tinge of sorrow to the master's words. "Now it is smeared and smudged with clay, and those who remain covet their embers," he sneered.
"You said...your master had a skull of true fire. He was of fire, also. You are of fire, too?"
"I am of fire. It is more than raw power what makes you of fire. Vision and will are the kindling and bellows. I believe you have them, O Prince. But not the ember. Not yet."
"Then what is this sliver of bone my family holds?"
"Most like, O Prince, a second or third generation bone of a wizard of respectable ability. We are reduced, most of us, to passing down the stains of old power—the smoke, and not the fire."
"Our family legend," said the prince somewhat intemperately, "says this was part of the ribs of Saint Vlasim."
The master heard the prince's tone.
"These lesser wizards have been wizards as much as they have saints—this imposition of will is all the world has in the way of divine power, the wizards of old as good as gods. No matter what they say in the south, do you hear?"
A cold, dry wind whipped about in the dull light of the hilltop summit. In the midst of the broad, undulating, bare earth, there was a jumble of dark, weathered megaliths, tightly packed and crumbling. Streaked with the stains of storms and old blood, they sat half-sunken in the long dead soil.
"Here...is your fire, O Prince..." said the master. A dusky hand emerged from the tatters, and reached out, trembling, the fingertips brushing the stone with unfathomable reverence. For leagues around, the rolling landscape was enshrouded in growing darkness, but the hilltop still clung to the twilight. "The full and complete corpse of a wizard, perhaps several, it sets one almost salivating, does not it not?" The master's mouth—all that was visible from under the veil, grinned. The other hand emerged then, and with it, the skull of Glasemius, two fingers hooked into a gaping eye socket. The prince approached the ancient tomb of magic. Suddenly there was a crack, and a gout of dust flew into the air as the old stones were wrenched aside. The prince spun around—the master's eyes could almost be felt to glare at the stone from under the veil as the hand tensed upon the bared skull.
"What...what do I need from this place?" said the prince, stepping into the shadowy opening the parted stones made. Was that hesitation the master detected?
"The bones still yearn to fire the world...and through us they can, O Prince."
The prince turned and looked to the master.
"Go, sit with them. Vision and will, O Prince."
The stones slammed shut.