Shadows & Sorcery #72
Hello everybody, everybody hello, it is Shadows & Sorcery, edition seventy-second!
What’s going on here? We have a nice, quiet, regular five-story week, only not really because this week got kind of weird and I just let it happen, consequences be damned. But there’s still plenty for all down there! Including two regularly recurring characters who may or may not be part of future plans for this newsletter…but you’ll have to wait and see about that.
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This week, we join the wizard Alzared in his hunt for the owner of the Armour of the Forsaken, we go on a mind-bending journey of esoteric occultism through the Passage Fires, the red wizard Carloman gives us a quick lesson in magic as well as a warning of The Dark, we learn about some rather odd developments with the Pilgrims’ Shadows, and we descend far, far below into the mysteries of the Astral Deep…
Armour of the Forsaken
Alzared stared across the steely vastness. Grey skies, grey winds, grey land. Not a noble, stately hue, this was a dim, tired land that had some years ago been devastated by a dragon from the underworld. And as such, it had become the final refuge for the vile traitor the magician now sought.
His heavy robes were of a dark slate colour, his wide girdle was dark leather, as were the bracers which secured his sleeves. At his side, though, there hung a brilliant silver sceptre with a dark red jewel at its head--a globe of dragonblood. Alzared was privileged, for other mages must make do with rings and amulets of the blood of lesser dragonspawn, but in turn they have far, far less to fear from their magical sources than Alzared did, he who carried upon his person the dark life essence of the ancient enemy of all the overworld.
Piercing blue eyes of icy aspect scanned the rugged land through a mane of black hair. Pits and hillocks aplenty for cover, but nowhere to run. The wizard drew forth his sceptre momentarily and let loose a mighty gust of wind which stampeded across the land. The wizard did not revel in battle, but neither was killing a last ditch solution for him. Especially when it concerned one such as he had been pursuing. And in this case, he savoured the desperation that must be brewing in the heart of the traitor, and of the ironic fate which awaited him: slain by a human wielding the power of the dark masters.
From his vantage he descended and stalked through the still landscape. With his hand on his dragonblood sceptre he threw his senses around and about him, honing and magnifying for a moment his sight, at other time his hearing. Naught lived here anymore, and no bird would fly over these skies for years to come. It was just him, and the traitor.
Alzared didn't anticipate a chase at this point, and he knew his quarry sought to turn himself into the hunter. And indeed, he was not helpless, for he not only carried a blade of serpent steel, a sword dripping with a potent and vile toxin, he was the owner of a full arm of King's Armour, the spectral plate awarded to those the world would call heroes. But not all answer the call the gift implicitly makes, and so countless examples of quiet, retired soldiers exist, living out their days with what even the greyfolk call one of the finest examples of the Arts ever made upon their persons. To shy from legend is one thing, but to steal and profane it in the name of the Dragons was unforgivable.
The wizard didn't even need to use his dragonmagick to sense his enemy. The sharp cut off of a hushed whisper in the still air nearby gave him away. And told Alzared that his prey wasn't alone. So be it. The wizard unhooked his sceptre and held it at the ready, knowing by instinct now the motions and mnemonic devices by which he focused his will against the formless will of the dragon that resided in the blood he carried.
"Give up the chase, magician," came a weary, but grim voice from the weedy grass to Alzared's left. The traitor held his wicked, curved blade before him, ready to strike. His eyes darted from the wizard's, to the sceptre, and back. "And drop the blood. Leave alive while you can."
"I'm sure it would make a fine prize to grovel before your masters with, you blasted traitor, you must take me for a fool," growled the wizard. Already he was twisting the powers within it to end this poor bastard's life. The traitor inched forward, and that movement was met with the advancement of his conspirators on either side of Alzared. He meant to only glance swiftly but what he saw arrested him--he had expected other lowlifes, or folk of fallen grace, perhaps even serpent-men, but not draconians.
In an age long past, when mankind still dwelt in the thralldom of the Dragons, their masters had introduced into unborn humans trickles of draconic blood, producing the first of the half-human abominations which held in their hearts an immense hatred of lowly humanity, and likewise, humanity held in its hearts an unspeakable loathing for this perversion of their natural form. Alzared turned slowly to the traitor. The traitor summoned his King's Armour, now a lustreless, crumbling ghost of its former glory, sections of it replaced with what seemed, to the wizard's disgust, to be scales. This was the armour of the forsaken they had likely been trying to create. A false rallying cry to any lost and wandering humanity.
Alzared's eyes blazed with blue fire as the enemy flung himself forward with the serpent steel sword, but the wizard thrust forth his sceptre to meet it, and caught the blade in the air, held by the monstrous force of the dragon within, bent to the will of Alzared. Dragons seek to dominate, to control, to enslave. And freed from its physical form and channelled through a device of Art such as the wizard's sceptre, much of its power was unbound. He now displayed this power for all to see. He knew the blood wanted it, but it was he who guided it.
The serpent steel blade was, with a flick of the magician's wrist, ripped from its owner's hand and thrown aside, and it was followed by a thunderous roar that sent the traitor back, ears ringing, onto the earth. The draconians moved in, they had their own weapons, cruel hammers no human hand could hold, but he was ready for them. Short, blunt snouts with scaled lips pulled back to reveal rows of wicked fangs, eyes too uncomfortably human, darkish, sallow scales, heads bereft of horns, but they were adorned in heavy chainmail and cloth. The head of one's hammer met Alzared's sceptre with a fantastic blast of sparks, shattering the attacker's weapon, but sending a resounding shudder through the wizard's arm. The other barely missed his head, he wheeled around and swung his sceptre, sending a psychic claw raking through the chainmail shirt. Alzared jumped back.
He took quick stock of what he saw: three enemies before him, two were armed, the traitor having recovered his blade. The other was unarmed...save for talons and the dark arts of dragonblood, so really, thought Alzared, not unarmed. He had maybe seconds, at best, to make a decision. No sense trying to reason, not with these devils. And no sense dragging this out. Alzared's black beard bristled. Alright, he thought to his sceptre. I'll give you what you want, but you'll do it in my name!
The red jewelled head of Alzared's sceptre belched forth a torrent of thick smoke followed immediately by a great jet of searing flame of such force that the wizard was forced to hold the sceptre level with both hands as his enemies were burnt to charred bone mid-lunge. He wrenched the sceptre back, and the fire ceased. From a black streak on the earth there rose wisps of smoke, nothing more. It was bare and black, and three ashen forms lay crumpled upon it. Alzared stowed his sceptre back on his wide belt, turned, and left. This poor land had already known the ravages of dragonsflame, and his heart mourned the loss of a human life, for all that it had been forefeit. But that was the price of treachery so deep.
Passage Fires
At some point, the world of flesh had given way to something else. The elixir had made Her body permeable, and so it had been soaked in spoken chants. Before Her there roared into the air a great pillar of brilliant flame. The element of change, the most gross representation of pure motive force in all the universe, but it had its charms. Amidst a black, crystalline gulf of distant rising monoliths that never got any closer did She study this flame, and then did scraps of the words in the Book of Ammerad come back to Her:
"The fires will show the way...the fires are the way..."
She felt the blistering heat of the blazing pillar, and it was only through the channelling of power through the six pools of the body was be able to withstand it. But She must be careful not to channel it too much. She must control the flow, match the rising of the power with Her ascent through the worlds, lest She be destroyed by its awesome force shattering this fragile astral equilibrium She held himself in. And yet, neither could She pass into the flames without its power...pass into the next world.
Two worlds had She traversed, and here in the Third World of Perfect Emptiness did She naturally stop to meditate. She had left Her First World of matter and expression, and passed through a Second World of Death, of wind, ghosts, and deep fog. Now She was at the halfway point, which the dead fear, but which the living can approach.
What would dwell beyond, She could barely guess, but She had the idea that the black crystal infinity around Her was more than a simple buffer between the lower and upper as She had expected, for here did She feel the cosmic breath, the power of the universe, seek to flow through Her. In a flash of lapsed concentration, it rushed through Her feet and She barely stopped it in Her stomach by placing four fingers upon Her abdomen in a precise manner and reciting three syllables of the 72 letter Word from the graven tablet of Mayudshai.
She let it rise slowly then into Her heart, felt a rush of renewing force, and immediately jumped into the passage fire before Her.
If the Third World was nothing, then the Fourth World was everything. An indescribable immensity of absolute existence. Infinities are co-existent, and they bleed into each other for all infinities are really one, but for singular forms such as She, passage fires were necessary, and they too must be here, for this was a realm of All. She wondered idly, as She pooled power into Her heart against the onslaught of absolutes, if a passage fire to the utmost Sixth World might be attained. But She didn't relish the possibility of drawing and suddenly infusing Her lungs, spine, and cranial crown with such force, especially here, where the entirety of all power dwelt.
Instead, She sought the passage fire to the Fifth World by sifting through all fire in all places, in all forms, in all times. Passage fires were eternal, as they were only aspects of far greater liminalities. They dwelt amidst other eternal flames, some of which were the birth of every star, at once, forever, others were the still-hidden first flames of Her First World, which had propelled humanity from beast to magician in the blink of millennia. She paid them reverence before She singled out Her passage fire. She saw the one to the sixth world just beside Her, but denied the billions of temptations the Fourth World placed upon Her.
If such things can be construed as visual imagery, as She emerged from the passage fire into the Fifth World, She saw countless colossal beings entwined and melded with infinites below like primsatic oceans, and as the beings moved, so did their infinities. These She knew to be gods, and She laughed that they were far grosser primal titans of cosmic clay than the refined pantheons of the First World, who saw but their faintest echoes. The flow of power was strong and direct here, as it must needs be, and She let it pass over Her mind to lay a hand into an infinity, and see what might be wrought. But these were the crude fancies of a still singular being. Her quest was pure.
As She did this, something else made itself known to Her. The space which might be termed the sky, or a void, was filled with the shapes of the titans, but between them now were constellations, not of stars, rather they were configurations of living creatures--human beings, who now descended to Her. There were ancient humans amongst them, fire-people, the gold race, obsidian ones, darkmen, and even a number of Her own epoch, the lowly but aspirational blade people. She was in the presence of magicians and sages from the beginning of time, ascended and secret masters whose whispers had trickled down through the ages into the scrolls and tomes, onto the cave walls and minds of mankind.
They dwelt in the realm of the gods, they said, for it was the highest point and closest point they could guide, nudge, descend and wander, and rise again. There was a Sixth World, they told Her, but it wasn't what She thought. Indeed, what could it be, considering what She'd already seen? This world was the Fifth World of Motion. The All below was nothing without something to move it. The Emptiness below that was a recepticle. From there was Life and Death in equal measure. There was nothing beyond motion. But there was a Sixth World.
Would She be content to finish Her quest at the apex of all things? To dwell amidst wonder forever as a student of all wisdom, to bask in revelation after revelation for all time? No, She said. And with that, the passage fire flickered into perception. She drew power through Her feet again, up past Her stomach and held it in Her heart, before flooding it through Her lungs and up Her spine with several longer syllables of the 72 letter Word of the graven tablet of Mayudshai. With it, She sent the power through Her cranial crown and passed with thanks through the revealed passage fire.
Naturally, the Sixth World was rather like the First. In fact, it was the First. It was no illusion, no veil, this was the First World. But nothing about it was the same. Power flowed serenly through Her whole being as She walked familiar gardens and woods and mountainsides. She saw in the lives of people, in births and deaths, the raining down from above, through a cool dark expanse, the prismatic totality as given channel and shape by the motions of primal titans whose limbs were in all things at all times. The Sixth World was the cosmos complete, the vision absolute, knowledge in fullness. It now had one more hand, one more master to guide with worldly experience the arms of gods as they saw fit. That was magic.
The Dark
Some thirty years ago, the red wizard Carloman sat in a chamber in the venerable central Voerlund keep of Castle Zagrest. His face was lean, his short, thick beard and mane of hair a brazen gold, his eyes blazing amber.
"I want you to tell me, Master Kobyla, in your own words, in your own time, the three truths I taught you. I'm testing you for a reason, don't worry." bid the wizard.
The lad, son of Sir Kobyla, Knight of Zagrest, and who looked to have about sixteen summers behind him, sat back in his chair and thought for a second. He spoke with great care.
"Okay...first, everything has a tangible existence, from physical objects to thoughts and feelings and other things. Second, everything is a symbol, made up of many meanings, and we must look at the world as made of these symbols. And lastly, there was, um, the power of everything. Or the potency, you said. Some meanings are more potent than others, and that can change from person to place to time, and such."
"A wonderful summation, Master Kobyla. Now give me an example of all that."
The young man looked about him for something easy. He noticed the doorway to the kitchen they sat in, which often was quite peaceful in the late evenings.
"That doorway--it's not just a wooden frame, from a local forest, it's a..." he winced, "I can't recall the word," he said with an apologetic grin, "it's a space we pass through, like all doorways, gates, uh, caves and more."
"And?"
"And it--this one--passes through into a kitchen. Rest, comfort, sustenance."
The wizard nodded with something like a sense of pride.
"You're a good student, Master Kobyla. Mind you," Carloman said as he got up, "I haven't had any students before, but you're a good one." He passed with a smile to a small window. The sun had set for far shores, deep dark lay over central Voerlund and the rest of the known world. "You're going to be count of this keep some day, or knight, if your father has his way. And you've been learning at an exceptionally fast rate. You've a good aptitude for this, a natural understanding. You've grasped things that took me years to comprehend." Kobyla didn't say anything, but was a little surprised and rather pleased.
"That's why we're here this evening. There is..." the wizard gave a slightly nervous sigh, and his voice took on a grave tone, "something you need to be aware of. It's something I can't tell you about, but something I cannot engender curiosity of either. Do you understand me?"
"I'm not sure I do, Carloman. Sounds pretty...well, sinister."
"That's because it is, my lad. But I think you're at the point where you're ready for a warning."
The lad's brow was furrowed, and worry had risen and suddenly taken control of his heart.
"Is this magic?"
The wizard spoke slowly, thoughtfully.
"Of a kind, yes. Please understand I have to be very careful here, and I'm sorry if this is a lot to take in. Even giving you this warning is...well, let's just say it's better for you to be in this position than suddenly stumbling over the whole thing yourself. God guard you that it never happens."
Carloman was quiet for a moment. He was still gazing out of the small kitchen window.
"Master Kobyla, tell me the first things that come to mind when you think of...the dark."
The young man looked to his mentor uneasily, but answered.
"Hidden away...alone...vast...and this is silly, but...being watched."
"I'm going to tell you one thing, and nothing else. You must not ask me about it afterwards. Okay?" Carloman turned from the window.
"Okay."
"Dark isn't the lack of light. It's the opposite of light. It's a thing unto itself. In other words, it too exists. You've been developing a sensitivity to potencies, I reckon, or likely you will soon. So, all those things you feel about the dark? If there is one thing in life anyone can guarantee you, Kobyla, it's that everything you think and feel about the dark is real. Trust those feelings. Do not trust the dark. Ever."
"Why are you telling me this, Carloman?"
"Because I know it first hand. I've seen things and I know things that no one ever should."
The young Kobyla blinked without comprehension. Carloman knew exactly what he'd done, but frankly, there was no other way to do it. Sometimes a shock all at once was the best, especially about this. He walked over and laid a hand on his student's shoulder.
"But, my lad, I also know that I've taught you everything for a reason, and that counts for more than you can possibly imagine. This is all we shall speak of it, but do not forget this, no matter how brief it is."
"You know," the wizard said as he went about and inspected the room, "I was about your age when I first encountered all this--magic, I mean. You've gotten a pretty good head start. Time, knowledge, and practice, they equal potency. In the case of wizards, it's development of ones-self as a symbol of learning and power. But it must be tempered. It must. Now, how about we work on that third thing, eh? How would you like to learn how to build a fire without flint or kindling? Kitchen's the perfect place for it, and I'll be up for a while yet, could do with something to eat."
Pilgrims' Shadows
The facts are thus, contrary to the anaemic proclamations of the legacy cults across the lands: the gods are gone, and they have cursed us, whether it be of their own making, or something that has surfaced in man, with vampirism. Every human life, from the moment of birth, is a single little step away from eternal damnation, or oblivion. This is no test, for the old communal rites elicit no responses as they once did. And if the gods watch, they do not intervene, and never will.
Now, you are likely aware of the curious document uncovered some several decades ago, that was itself no less than a century in age, which detailed a thoroughly unique strain of a vampire redemptorist cult. It concerned a second hand account of a scholar meeting with an old vampire who recounted his time spent as a fearsome warrior, his damnation, his subsequent descent into a half-feral state, and then his fascinating time with a nomadic band of faithful vampires who followed what they called the pilgrim's shadow.
Regular redemptorist cults come in a few different colours: pious and stoic zealots who suffer their dark thirst, wailing and orgiastic penitents seeking oblivion, or those who have sworn to use their burden for the benefit of humanity, for lest we forget, the power of darkness is rather formidable. It's the latter kind who often veer off into dangerous and heretical vampiric supremacy cults, but this is beside the point. The pilgrim's shadow redemptorists are a different breed. I say are, for they're still around, though they have undergone something of a change.
The old pilgrim's shadow lot tend towards the pious ascetic ideal, but instead of being cell-bound, hermit-like anchorites, they wander in groups with a genuine, open kinship, following the movements of a lone, dark figure they believe to be an ancient vampire close to finding true redemption. Some vampires cease to see the shadow, and be it a roadside, mountaintop, or in the middle of a city, they'll generally leave the group and live wherever they lost sight. It's mournful, but meaningful, apparently, some taking to the idea that maybe they no longer need to follow the shadow, and that redemption is close at hand.
But nowadays, of course, we know there's more than one shadow. And the cult surrounding them knows too, each one having its throng of faithful. Now, the usual fate of the vast majority of vampires is either destruction due to their monstrous natures taking over, or falling into a death-like sleep from which almost none ever emerge. No one had even considered a third option until the shadows--save for redemption of course. It would seem that, over long spans of time, likely centuries, potentially longer, vampires simply...fade away. That is, if they don't give in to their thirsts.
To be close to a vampire who has forsaken blood for hundreds if not thousands of years is to be in the presence of a paragon of willpower, say the faithful. The original pilgrim was on a holy quest for freedom from the corrupted form, and the general belief among vampires who cling to this is that they found it--it just takes time. Instead of sharing in the eventual discovery of salvation, shadows are now icons and silent teachers to be emulated in their strict tirelessness. Some vampires still keep to the "traditional" mode and believe shadows are vampires on the cusp of some enlightenment, but this is becoming rare by the year. Some human beings have even taken to their reverence, but only when the shadows pass through their streets. Few humans would willingly walk amongst a throng of vampires for long, but they can admire them from afar at least.
No one knows if the original shadow is still wandering. Although I'm sure we'd all know by now if something happened to it.
Astral Deep
In the midst of a rainforest, whose deepest reaches are often as black as night all year round, there lies the yawning mouth a cave. A coolness wafts from within. Small streams tumble over the edge, creating lightly splashing waterfalls. Vegetation of all kinds spills over the edge. The sides are so steep as to be almost vertical, but natural footholds and ridges exist for the traveller to find their way down to the bottom, where mounds of dark stone, and deep, cold pools of water sit. Droplets from above provide a curious ambiance which only enhances the absolute stillness of all else around.
The cave continues as a slanted, wavering crevice, quite tall, through which a wide, shallow stream slowly trickles. Moisture drops from the ceiling, and the closeness of the air above has been replaced by the heavy silence of the deep earth. There is an earthiness and scent of rock and clay here which bites the lungs of those who breathe it with its cold. The light, which was already low, becomes dim and finally nothing more than a sliver in the distance until it is eclipsed entirely by dark.
For many hours must the explorer rely on lantern and torch to avoid the low hanging rocks, pits and depressions, as well as the many further descents one must take. This lightless regression to what feels like some primal state takes profound strength, for there is a sense of unfathomable smallness in this gulf of elder dark. The experience of being in these space is nearly indescribable. There comes a jumble of vague, creeping notions which simply can't be shaken off. It almost feels as if bereft of the embrace of living earth, and left to wander, to take certain steps. Like the explorer is being entrusted and tested by the world with something of immense and primordial depth. This is a passage. This is a threshold.
And then, the light begins to return, only this time, facing the traveller. A paleness which lends not light, as it were, but definition, until it grows in luminosity, lending the damp stone a kind of curious sheen or glow. The misty air becomes suffused with whitish illumination, and finally, the explorer comes upon an opening which frames a sight that has blasted the sanity of many who have beheld it.
For as far as the eye can see, and far can it see here, there spans a firmament of rugged, stony darkness studded with shining white stone and silver, below it there stretches great lengths of slate-coloured cloud, and through it all there silently drifts a great pale moon. This is the Astral Deep, the highest and furthest point of the mystery-shrouded hollow earth, an interior vastness known to more than half the world as nothing more than scraps of lore and rumour, and known to even less as an incontrovertible fact.
The explorer then enters onto a sheer cliff-side from which the wide stream they've followed falls. It appears to be a jutting piece of the firmament wall, for the star-stones and astral silver can be not just seen, but touched. Far in the mist of dark below, one can see the peaks of black mountains, and it is to these peaks that the traveller must go. They descend, after a perilous climb down the interior sky itself, from the underheavens and onto the summit of the highest mountain of the hollow earth.
The way is long, fraught with maze-like crags, that are, like so much else of the descent, utterly silent. The stone of the mountain is so black that one might mistake it for the shadow of the mountain itself, and its uniform darkness hides many things. But at a point, the ominous walls open up and there is revealed to the traveller quite possibly the last thing they would expect to see here: a village.
Built of the same black stone as the mountain, but it sits in the open where the moon's sallow beams and the shimmer of star-stones give it all form. Squat buildings with pools of darkness between them and harsh shadows upon them, empty save for sealed urns and slab-like surfaces. There are impressions gained from this place which creep upon the traveller's mind one after the other, things with no specific source, but which seem to come from confluences of layout, empty space, the aspect of the structures, but in particular, from the various unmarked, free standing, battered monoliths, which every building is turned away from. In short, of all the dim sensations gathered here, none are comforting, and none speak to anything of human sensibilities.
Perhaps it is no wonder why the hollow earth remains rumor and speculation. Many who have dwelt in the astral deep would see it remain that way, lest someone uncover what the crags hide, or what the urns contain, or what lurks in the heavy murk of the lower hollow earth, or learn why the village was abandoned.