Shadows & Sorcery #74
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This week, we gaze upon the Sorcerer’s Spires, we learn of the phenomenon of the Prophets’ Graves, we uncover a dark truth about the Mountain of the Undead, the red wizard Carloman muses on the world and his mission before the Cavern Shadows, and we get a lesson on the dangers of the Enchanter’s Abyss…
Sorcerer's Spires
The spires absolutely dwarf the towns they sit in the midst of. The way things are, you wouldn't even know their towns came first, for everything seems to crowd about these great black spikes as if huddling for warmth. Smooth but dull, like tapering pillars of shadow reaching into the firmament above, taller and vaster than most minds can comprehend.
The spires allow magicians--the antiquated terminology has persisted down the years--unprecedented access to cosmic forces which they once blindly grasped at. Magicians, as they really were back in the day, worked solar wonders. Suns were a source of power and worship, they bathed the world in their divine radiance, raining down life and order in their golden shafts. The secrets of creation were, the magicians knew, in the very light itself, in each shimmer was a mystery only the deeply enlightened could be initiated into. And they took that light, and the powers encoded in it, and directed these forces as they saw fit.
But suns do not last. At the dawn of every day, a new sun emerges into the world from the realm of light beyond, a fresh source of life-giving and order-defining power that utterly floods the world with its cosmic energies, and, over the course of its time here, it eventually dissipates, its power spent. Thus does night fall, the lightless time, in which the magicians of old could look up and see the pinholes in the curtain of night, the far spaces from which suns emerge each and every new day.
As mankind is so wont to do, it became greedy. So much of burgeoning civilization looked to the solar sorcerers with awe, wonder, terror, they were the undisputed masters of those old ages, high priests and high lords leading processions of bloody and esoteric sun cults whose echoes still reach down to this day. The wizards gathered in the first great convocations and began to draw more and more from the suns to fuel their spells. There came a time when a new sun would emerge, only to be bled dry by sky-sundering magics, and the world looked upon its pantheon of god-kings, and fear crept in as the threat of an age of darkness loomed upon in them in the face of the wizards' greed.
Mercifully, this greed begat innovation. The suns were fast ceasing to be enough for the magicians and their great works which built cities across the world. They looked into the night, to the infinity of power which had lain just out of their grasp for so long. Why not? Why wait for the universe to give us what we need, when we have shown we can take it? And so one more sun was taken in its entirety, and in the midst of an ailing city, a vast black spire suddenly shot from the earth and into the sky, past the thin clouds, and into the stars themselves.
The next morning, the pale dawn continued to grow into a rich, golden midday, and for the the first time in far too long did the earth taste the warmth of the heavens. With the influx of raw celestial energy now at their fingertips, the wizards went and erected new spires in other cities, manifesting networks of new power. Soon half the world was awash with the invigorating and empowering flood of energy from the sorcerer's spires.
As they grew in number, the magician's arts left their esoteric beginnings behind and became embraced by many people of the new age. The convocations evolved into the Guild, but while the world was experiencing a surge of self-empowerment, it became abundantly clear that this explosion of new magicians would need heavy regulation, for about the spires in the night, things were beginning to be seen.
Once the sun had exhausted itself for that that day and a new one awaited to emerge, the Guild continued to supply the world with celestial energy. They worked tirelessly to bring down new energy and channel it as it needed to be. There was never a moment now without this power. The first reports came from night time revellers returning to their homes late in the dark. First sounds, like trilling music, and then trilling voices. And then shapes. Things far too large, and far too silent, moving between buildings with grace and frightful speed. The magicians didn't put any of it down to fancy. They knew better. And they had known better for longer than they would ever admit to.
So, from that point onwards, the Guild utterly controlled every last scrap of energy that came down from the spires, outcries of tyranny and secrecy be damned. Neophytes were screened and made make solemn oaths in front of the High Artificer, and bound magically to their fellows. Only a few ever learned why such dire precautions were necessary.
It wasn't so much that the light brought life, more it was that the light was life. And that which dwelt in the light was not formless.
Had they really thought they could trespass in heaven, and not expect something in return?
Prophets' Graves
Fortune, divination, prophecy--these arts and forces rule the land. The soothesayer, the oracle, and of course, the prophet, these are the pre-eminent powers in every village, every town, every city. They are the very open power behind all thrones, great and small, for the great curse of the seer is to live a life in a fog, assailed by knowledge from beyond at all times. So it falls to shrewd, wise, ruthless, or otherwise powerful people to apply what clairvoyants may reveal of Fate and Destiny.
Of all the seers in the lands, though, it is the prophets who rise above the rest. Anyone can be a fortune teller, anyone can pick up the card or bone or cast runes, and all believe it to be of immense importance. Though relatively less in number, oracles are a fixture in most settlements, speaking of things as they are revealed in vision, dream, and ecstasy. But still less are the prophets. They speak mighty words not just of the warp and weft of the currents of causality, but of the intelligences which dwell within them, giving unto humanity the very motions of the shapers of reality itself.
And unlike other seers, when prophets are finally retired to their graves, they do not stop speaking.
There are graves centuries old from which there still emanate the whispers of prophets foretelling the grand and mysterious turnings of history yet-to-be. But these are prophecies of a kind almost unfathomable to all but the most learned, for as the corpse of the seer decays, the words they speak become strange. Some would even call them alien. They begin talking of things unknown, in ways that must be grappled with. Most prophet graves have small orders of interpreters who live in its vicinity, be it in the middle of a city or a wild, barren hilltop, transcribing the sometimes incomprehensible sounds uttered by the newly rotten flesh or dust a thousand years gone.
Prophets never really die. They have been touched by something which exists beyond the limited conceptions of humanity. Many secretly believe that the things long dead prophets speak of are the unfiltered truths of the cosmos. Soothesayers and oracles, their glimpses into the current of life are pale and shaped by human minds and concepts. But the dead prophets are unbound by the vagaries of flesh, and they can speak in perfect and terrible fullness of just what is out there. Try as we might, no big picture has been assembled, and the lore of the prophets grows by the year. Perhaps one day, enough will have came through to be assembled, and we will finally see the universe for what it really is.
Mountain of the Undead
Each and every one of them cursed, unable to find rest, tormented, and desperately converging upon the mountain.
The presence of the undead has been a fixture in daily life for as long as folk can remember. The stories surrounding them are innumerable. There isn't a village or inn across the realm which doesn't host a handful of tales about the time a flock of ghosts passed over the town, and of the unspeakable nightmares they brought. Or the time a strange wanderer stopped by, and of the bizarre illness left in their wake. Or the march of the silent revenants through the streets. Pale, airy spirits and the mischief, fright, and trouble they cause in their blind wanderings.
Then of course, countless tales of the farmhands who shepherds the ghosts out into the fields, or the priest who courageously leads the vampire through the dark woods and into foothills from which he returns with the right flower or stem for medicine, or the young woman whose music rounds up the wandering revenants and shows them the way into the sight of the mountain.
Most undead end up on the mountain. This is partly comforting, and partly, it has to be said, somewhat dreadful for those live within sight of it. Knowing that such an absolute concentration of ill omens are within sight. You may come to understand the reputation of the lone peak due to how absolutely infested those already foreboding slopes are. The undead seem called to the mountain for reasons known only to them. Most people believe salvation of a sort await them there. But if that's the case, why do so many still haunt its slopes?
The scrawls of a lone wanderer, hidden away in the vast archives of an old monastery, hint at the baleful truth. The worm-eaten volume is a small diary, little bigger than one's hand, bound in thin leather, with stained, water-damaged leaves. The wanderer was, apparently, a vampire. Bereft of memory and driven with singular, vile purpose, soon the call of the mountain overtook their mind, and they went to it over the span of several years, drifted about its crags and slopes, and came, at last, to the summit...and descended from it as a human.
So, the wide belief in undead salvation was true. But this was only the start of the journal. At length it describes the trials and perils of the mountain of the undead, of the feral corpse walkers in endless cannibal warfare, lurking vampires sucking dry their lesser kin, and hordes of ravenous wraiths which wail and crash through the unquiet air. The truth of it all was that most undead don't make it. They get to the mountain, and no further. Few make it to the summit, but even of this small number, few ever leave. The suspicion which set its claws firmly in the mind of the nameless writer of the journal was that many of the undead which lurked about the lifeless mountainsides had been reborn humans unable to escape the grasp of the undead, and had rejoined their ranks.
As for why this knowledge was never spread amongst the public, it can be put down to two things: one, the monks of that monastery are for the most part simply unaware of its existence, and two, those who are aware, are of a type more content to admire the divine with a certain distanced awe. And so it is the mountain gains new inhabitants every year, every month, every day. By the time its contents spill forth into the world, the monks pray, the end of time will have already come.
Cavern Shadows
The day was wearing on a little longer than Carloman preferred it would. The night, he readily admitted, had its charms of quiet and coolness. For all the world was blanketed in dark and gazed upon by strange moons, the spread of stars across the black veil was a constant reminder of the vigilance of beings whose existence went unknown and unguessed by most of the known world. As for the yet unknown world of the continental interior, well, he liked to think kindred spirits dwelt there, looking up at the same constellations as he and feeling the same kind of curious, fragile comfort.
The land he now passed through was quite uncharacteristic of Silverden, which was usually a wide, rolling pastoral land of shallow valleys, tall hills, deep glades, and many streams and rivers which split from and joined into the great Asoliad River, upon which the divine capital rests. But the land here was a little more sparse, rock-strewn, blustery and more like the country up in Voerlund, which by repute was rather more rugged. Not that Silverden was always easy country, for it was wilder and more luxurious in its nature. But something about this stood out.
The hilltop was extremely uneven, strewn with great slabs of dull stone in some places, scatterings of boulders in others, but overshadowing all else was the very crest of the knoll which opened into a massive cavern mouth. It was two openings, actually, of somewhat similar size, perhaps one was a little wider, the other a little taller. This had the effect of creating what looked like two great hoods of stone, watching stoically from the summit. The way it revealed itself as one attained the summit took away the breath of the wizard who'd been witness to scores of sights more fantastic and terrible than most could imagine.
The world was never short of wonders for Carloman. He sat upon a low slab of rock and studied the cavern maws. The sun was beginning to head outwards and the light was going golden, though not by much. The shadows upon it had a soft tinge and the rock looked warm in the early evening. He allowed his mind to wander. So much of this world was shaped, in its primordial ages, by the wanderings of mighty spirits and newly risen elementals exploring their new home. This was something many cultures dimly recalled in their myths even now. The beings which humans came to call their gods passed over all the world, and settled in places with their charges, places marked by their movements and powers.
Carloman wondered what great being had wrought this feature, and for what purpose? The World Serpent most likely, considering this was Silverden, but one never knew. Was it still here? A spirit who slumbered in the safety of creation, or an elemental who had long since passed back into the world? The wizard sighed deeply as he pondered, toying with these fancies of ages greater than man, and of the immensity of time, space, and power all about him. Things only a wizard can think and feel.
And then, in a short shift of the light, he noticed something staring from within the cavern.
Of course, his mind flashed. A cavern. A deep place. In the serenity of the hilltop, he'd almost--almost--forgotten. The being who had walked here and shaped this little corner of creation didn't know that what it had made would one day become a foothold for that which it had escaped. In an age undreamed of, one of those eternal vigilants who dwelt just beyond had cowered under the fear of its heresy, and desired to beg at the feet of its old masters for mercy. It had been cast from the star-lit heavens by its brethren into an icy wasteland where it might never betray creation...but it dreamed the dark is longed for into the world. Into every untouched corner and crevice did it creep, into every deep place, into life itself, and as a blanket across the world, so that a wandering star was let loose to scour that baleful shadow from the face of the world each and every day.
And yet, he stopped himself from jumping up, for sometimes doubts came to him. The wizard knew that the Outer Dark and its agents were, at every moment, eager to invade this world and drag it off into some nameless corner of the cosmos, for some nameless purpose. And yet...his own soul, the souls of mankind, the spirits of the beasts and birds, the great beings humanity called its gods, the secret vigilant Archons, and the very Demiurge creator itself, were they not all originally of the Dark? What looked out from that cavern was ultimately no different than he. Did it deserve to be driven back into the infinite night? Did it deserve his ire? Was it something looking in, desperate to join its kindred of old and escape the slavery for which it had been made?
Or was it something else? Something that desired to do harm, that was being sent to mock him, to make him doubt? Something that would do anything for scraps from its masters' tables, something which was an evil beyond mortal evils. Nothing that was acting on survival or instinct, on petty purposes or because it was ill or mad. Something that had gladly chosen the path of doom and domination, a wilful, intelligent, and aware malevolence. In all his years pushing back these incursions wherever he found them, not once had pity come to his heart, and never had the chance arisen. Only revulsion. Vampires born of gluttony and lust, dragons born of cruelty and bloodshed, demons drawn from dark stars that made empty promises to the weak and foolish, and unspeakable Aeons who were as the Tyrant Godhead itself and desired above else to have in their grasp this sanctuary of traitors who had defied the cosmos itself.
Carloman sighed. He was not a risk-taker, and the balance of this world was so fragile the truth of it had driven countless others to madness. He would enjoy the day for just a little longer, he thought, and then get to work.
Enchanter's Abyss
Many things in the world have secret powers, secret aspects, or functions. Even the most mundane of objects may harbour hidden forces deep within their structures, and this is likely why certain things in the world--such as different stones, crystals, flowers, or the rabbit's foot or gryphon's feather--have traditionally been held to act as talismans or charms. But there's only one way to really draw out this power and apply it: enchantment.
Enchanting is an art now many centuries old, begun first in the dank cellars and cold barns of a few untrained, solitary practitioners, working with scraps of old lore and theory on the concept. But their first, faltering creations set in motion something that could never be stopped. All of a sudden, people looked around themselves and saw a treasure trove of countless opportunities for new powers to be unlocked.
Enchanting, though harbouring the potential for revolutionary developments, stayed mostly on the fringes. Its existence became common knowledge to an extent, but so much of its workings and ideas remained a mystery to the masses. As, perhaps, it should be, until they are ready. It remained in high and hidden places, amongst hidden court chambers, isolated keeps, city cellars, and the backrooms of rural houses. But for all this, it was now everywhere.
Enchanters encoded their knowledge in symbol and metaphor, almost a secret language only other enchanters with the right learning can decipher and perform. Beyond lists and descriptions of objects and their higher aspects, much enchantment literature is given over to explaining processes and philosophies surrounding the art.
The general idea is that there is a "ladder" of existence, or sometimes it's explained in the diagram of a human form. At the bottom of the ladder, or at the tip of the middle finger, that's stone, crystal, water--inert, inorganic matter. But begin to move up the rungs, or move down the hand and arm, and you find life. First you find plants, you find flowers, and you find fungi, but as you travel further, you then find thinking life, birds, beasts, fish. Yet curiously, you don't find human beings at the center, at the heart. You find something else.
It must be noted that enchanting as an idea is prone to all sorts of superstition and falsity. Most people don't know how it works and would mostly likely be happier not knowing. The truth of it is thus: enchantment is most definitively not the "transference of essence" by some spiritual act. It is reduction and assimilation, the dissolution and coagulation of two different objects, that is, the object to be enchanted, and the object used to enchant, be it anything from a lump of stone to a living animal. Enchanters employ devices known as "cauldrons" to break things down and reassemble them. It's a process of fusion. Say, a sword fused with the speed and might of a gryphon. A beast was, quite literally, dissolved and fused into the malleable steel of the blade inside the enchanter's cauldron. Perhaps it is merciful that the beasts need not be alive for fusion.
But it is abhorrent in the absolute extreme to enchant with human beings, regardless of the undeniable benefits, and those who own enchanted items sourced from a human are hated exiles. However, there is something else, only one other thing which holds such horror, but it is of a rather different kind. The grimoires and tracts refer to it as an "enchanter's abyss".
Precious few folk in the world are aware of what the lakes their homes dwell on the shores of really are. And it ought to remain so, most enchanters believe. Not only would the truth lead to madness, but it would deprive them of their most potent sources of power. A lake, or even an inland sea, is nothing less than a deep well into the earth, fed from uttermost depths, where there dwell nameless horrors which emerge if drawn from their fathoms. Lakes are the source of every great monster this world has ever seen. These are things which live at the top of the ladder, or at the heart of it all.
The fact that certain highly occult and extremely rare texts refer to them as the ultimate source of life is both troubling and intriguing. That mankind's ancestors may have sloughed off the back of a lumbering nightmare would make the priest's heart tremble, but not the enchanter's heart.
The name "enchanter's abyss" is not some chance or fanciful appellation. The enchanters are, among other things, philosophers. They have an insight into life others don't, and much of their thought is couched in curious metaphor. The abyss neither the deep well nor what dwells within it. There are things in this world which have changed the course of history, the fruits of an enchanter's great work. But the price paid for these things is the release of something which ought not to be, not anymore. History is written not by victors, but by the horrors we are willing to let walk.
There is a depth to which one must not delve, but to know that is to be there already, and it is already too late.