Shadows & Sorcery #28
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Today’s tales tell of an array of strange and terrible forces, from primal life currents, to the power of the ocean deeps, the power of the cults of serpent-men, and just what lurks, waiting, in the cosmos far above…
In this issue:
Sorcerer’s Deep
Tomb of the Drowned
Serpent Saints
Cathedral Nightmare
Dungeon of Ash
Sorcerer's Deep
A confused growth of wooden dwellings, few were stone, lay spread out around muddy town squares, with tangles of alleys and winding streets of bare earth between them, all contained within weathered city walls. It was rough, but it was progress, the first true city since the collapse several centuries earlier. The old cultures had fallen within decades of each other, all for their own reasons, some connected, some not. So cataclysmic had it been, so integral to the lands' stability were they, that none could really tell for how long the survivors were lost within barbarism.
Communities of all sizes huddled around their meagre fires while bandits, killers, witches and warlocks all roamed the brutal wilds. That long and terrible span had been ruled by tyrants of all types, warlords and their roving armies flattened villages in their wake, and sicknesses crept about the air. It was a dark, isolated, grim age that had hardened the folk.
During the dark age, superstition flourished, but so did the things which the superstitious feared. Namely, magical arts became almost commonplace, though secret, amongst noble remnants or wealthy lords. Grimoires were passed from wizard to magister, a black market network dealt in things precious to the artful practitioners who needed spices, powders, metals, little statues and other curios for their works. There was no castle or manor that did not have some hidden shrine or chamber where black-robed figures met at odd hours, from which odd sounds reverberated through the stone.
But these magicians were not just locked away in their dwellings, mired in sorcery, no, they were looking forward again. Over many years, individuals came into contact with each other, formed trusts, and together these cabals picked apart the beast-haunted ruins of the old civilizations for secrets of the enlightened past. Every scrap of scroll or transcribed carving could potentially be the key to revitalizing humanity once again. And deep under the ruins of an old, now nameless temple, they found it.
The structures, mist-shrouded and lightless, could not have been built by human hands. The small parties that delved into their extensive passages guessed it was the hand of the magus at work, the labour of spirits and higher hidden forces. Their intuitions were right, for within the vastness of a cold cavern which likely had never seen the light of day, there flowed a current. Something in the air moved, but in their torches, they could see naught. That was, until the flames were introduced to the movement, and suddenly sprang, and this was the only word that could possibly describe it, to life.
Years passed and word was spread. Magicians became prominent figures in local communities, they caught the attentions of rulers, and they began to spread an at least general awareness and maybe even trust of their occult studies. The wizard soon came to own the role of priest and scholar alike, the lands never having had a strong, driving faith in the wake of the collapse. They advanced medicine by making healing rites public knowledge, and they counselled rulers who could no longer deny their power on tempered actions. It was slow, but people began to be heaved from their darkness. And at the base of it all, was the source, the current, the power found far beneath the earth.
It was not any power in particular, but it seemed to be power. Raw power, vigor, thrumming life-force which enriched and bolstered all it touched in vast yet subtle ways. A massive ritual complex had been excavated throughout the underground, and sorcerers dwelt there, empowering their spellwork and learning a hundredfold. It was here, they knew, they would build the new city, a place of power atop this primeval current, where the lives and works of the people would be infused with this secret force.
What it did was bring things to life. Only a flash, only what some wizards called a "glimpse". Stone and metal expunged impurities of their own accord, fire leapt beyond the bounds of its fuel to warm and lighten whole areas, its careful applications brought life back from the brink. But the power did not discriminate, and the sorcerers who lived about it for so long soon got their first lessons in its abuse. For one thing, just as medicines gained potency, so did sicknesses. A common miasma became wildly infectious and lingering, growths on the body positively erupted, and the corpses of accident victim twitched in an unspeakably horrible manner.
But this was kept secret, for the city above still lived rough, but its people were hard, and they laboured for a better life under the guidance of the magisters.
What the new sorcerous leaders of the city didn't know, was that the glimpse of life did not merely impart animation of some kind, it imparted true life. The staggering reality of what it was they had found, a well of souls, a torrent of existence, hadn't hit a single one of them. To the sorcerers, it was the power of the old culture, the source of greatness, lost in a foolish, unforeseen collapse. But the new wizards had learned from history, and believed that the sacrifices of yesteryear held them aloft.
They had no idea that the city about them was starving for life. An entire aching superstructure that had gained a soul but now lay as inert as a corpse, an imprisoned, inhuman consciousness dwelt in every single brick and plank and person, and it was going mad. They didn't know it, but at certain times, it shifted, and could reach out. And some individuals, though they couldn't explain it, were feeling the pull. It is only a matter of time before it finds the life it seeks.
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