Shadows & Sorcery #86

The eighty-sixth edition of Shadows & Sorcery is manifesting in your inbox physically!

And boy, what a manifestation: five glimpses of places you almost certainly would never want to actually visit but are very cool to read about.

Last week the 400th story of this thing came out, if you haven’t done so, take a look! And just before that, the 11th and very sorcerous chapter of The Path of Poison came out, too! Big things going on here, folks.

But hey, we’re nice and quiet this week, so l shan’t keep you all any longer.

Of course, as always, if you liked what you read here, give that little heart icon a tap, and tell the stories you like them!

This week, we ponder upon the mystery of The Great Crucible, we glimpse the frightful Northern Ruins, we learn how to construct an Ash Knight, and in a two-part tale, we uncover the secret of the Submerged Moon, and lastly we are bid seek out Moon Witches so that we may glimpse it…

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The Great Crucible

Fire is the force of change.

All things arise from it, and pass through it, and return to it.

In the beginning there was Fire, and the First Flesh. It cast the first light and the first shadow, it burned the First Flesh, the steam made the oceans and the air, while the rest was dissolved and fused into life and the world as we know it.

It was fire that brought early humanity together, from squabbling tribes living in darkness into an ascendant civilization. And it was fire that cast man down again into the abysms of chaos and ruin. It will be fire that lifts man up once more, but it will be the pyrosophists of the future who determine whence we go.

Fire is reckoned in two aspects, two natures. The first is destructive, in the sense that it breaks down, deconstructs, reduces to component parts. This what made humankind strong. Fire's second nature is, however, generative. The force to fuse, the warmth to grow, the power to release. This is what keeps humankind strong.

So many of the great relics of history were formed from fiery arts. The enchanted sword, wielded by many a hero, was made through heady ritual by superstitious but nonetheless skilled sages of old, whereby a blade was broken down just enough, its components held apart for some property to added in, and then the object coagulated. Such things slumber in tombs, and some sages pay handsome prices for them.

Fire alone can be but crudely applied. In order to take advantage of the transmutative power of this ultimate force, it becomes necessary to apply substances close to but more subtle than raw fire, which aid in the complex manipulation of the power's dual natures. Down through the ages have scholars sought those chemycals and powders sympathetic to fire, substances which by great skill and wisdom reduce a thing into nothing less than the primordial First Flesh, and then, to build it back up into something new. This is not merely to destroy something or make it grow, but to change it utterly.

It is the great work of sages to discover and catalogue for the benefit of humanity the methods by and degrees to which a thing can be unmade and reformed, be changed, and what may aid in the operation. But the goal of the serious adherent is the search for the Great Crucible.

A crucible is, of course, both a container or chamber in which fire is controlled, and also a term referring to fire and chemycal together. There is a belief, or rather a theory of a perfect crucible. A universal solvent, a reagent of countless applications, a bonding agent for any kind of transmutation, which has its precedents in exceedingly rare and precious transformative substances. A chemycal of such exquisite subtlety that its uses are beyond number. Perhaps it is a finely tuned mixture, perhaps it a chemycal born from change, or maybe something as yet undiscovered.

Others claim the Great Crucible is, quite literally, a crucible chamber. Sage's chambers often become stained and ashen from long use, creating unique signatures in their workings, but these can also become problems, leading to unpredictable changes as residue creeps into fresh works. Some sages lament the possibility that the Great Crucible has already come into being and has been cast away, though others are more optimistic.

Or perhaps there is the more mystical approach to consider. The Great Crucible is itself the search for knowledge and perfection. The world is a crucible, mankind is a crucible, the struggle of the sages is a process of refinement on a macrocosmic scale. We are being changed, and we are changing, very slowly, in vast motions. A comforting belief. One day our knowledge shall be complete.

We all began as worshippers quivering under the might of Fire, from which it is believed we and all else were distinct. Even in these latter days, Fire Faithful gather midst the pillars and inhale holy burning fumes. Fire was never a gift from on high, but an immanent key of creation of which we are a vital part. Perhaps the Great Crucible is the point in the future in which sages needn't hide away in back rooms and isolated cabins, when distrust and ignorance and burned away by Fire. The ultimate change of mankind itself.

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Northern Ruins

A mile beyond the furthest stretch of the Grand Highway, the craggy hillsides open up and the land descends into a region of singular loneliness. A tireless expanse of dull grasses and low, grey skies meld together on the horizon, consisting of long spans of uneven earth hiding perilous ditches and depressions, stinging plants, and overgrown, stagnant ponds. In places, there are growths of scraggly bushes and circles of low, badly twisted trees, in the midst of which are odd mounds.

The further one travels across this landscape, bereft of anything even resembling a track, the more a weight seems pressed upon them. It isn't physical, but rather something upon the spirit which makes the traveller in these parts less and less inclined to keep putting one foot in front of another. It feels almost as if, some say, you were slowly inching towards a closed off chamber in which you knew something awful lay.

There is nothing apart from the unhealthy vegetation alive in that land, no lone birds soar overheard, nothing rustles in the grass, not even a single insect buzzes past. But there are bones. It's around this point that the ruins begin to appear, and the traveller knows they have passed into the north.

The desolation of half-empty townships and abandoned villages are not an uncommon sight. The shells of old homes, crumbling and rotting barns caving in by degrees, gaping flooded cellars, sunken stone, these make up the surroundings of most lives these days as we struggle to lift ourselves from the mire. But what's out there is different. After most disasters, nature returns, it bounces back, albeit sometimes frail at first, but here, it came back wrong. It must be concluded that none would dare set foot in this place for any reasons other than madness, crushing desperation, or just maybe, with a mind to seek out some truth and break the conspiracy of silence upon it.

You wouldn't know it looking at any map, but there's half a continent beyond that dour landscape. And for those aware of it, it's all like that. Foul wilderness, dotted with malevolent ruins. Those who've glimpsed them say, with a shudder, they can't believe human beings ever inhabited such places, whatever they may have been. Let alone the idea that human beings constructed them. Crumbling, greyed, stained, and more than half-collapsed they might be, but no amount of rational thought can put these things into any coherent shape.

No one who has been to the north will say it, but all have thought the same once they returned to their own lands. There is silence on it for a reason. In secret journals and accounts, never to be seen by living eyes, did those who ventured out scratch down the same thing: human beings did not build those things. Maybe, some have said, they weren't built at all. Even fewer have intimated that perhaps they were grown. Or landed there, from some far star.

The people have nothing to dream of but an end to their toil. This new nobility, generations later, still lick their wounds and nurse their pride. So much has been lost, and yet those with even a hint of the dim memory of their elders despair that it should never be found again. Something was halted at a great and terrible cost. Leave the north to slumber and rot.

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Ash Knight

First, the interior of each layer of the armour must be lined with an unbroken skin of the oil. Leave no space of it clear. Allow it to streak and pool after application.

Next, test the cavities and general motion with a dummy ash such as Simple Salt, as coarse as you can make it for easy removal, then apply a low charge. Allow it to wander.

Remove most of the Salt, but leave a trace behind, it often helps with attunement.

Ensure that the resonators in the head and chest are receptive but not too sensitive. This will require much intricate working but it is absolutely essential.

Fine tune this until satisfied that the knight-to-be has a good range of and fluid movement, as far as dummy ash will allow. Do not under any circumstances use any other ashes, whole or not.

Then comes the most laborious step: choosing a body to render into ash. Your patrons will require a body with some degree of martial skill. Arena fights are a prime source of bodies, but not all come whole. The more fresh and complete a specimen, the finer the knight shall be. Ideally, your chosen body will have died a sudden death mid-battle, not in a healer's ward, and certainly not peacefully. Final memory is of utmost importance. Death in battle but not traumatic death is preferable.

Once invigorated, the knight is to be referred to and treated as such. Their first few awakenings are an impressionable time, use this to help mould them to your patron's specifications. This will also help mitigate echoes of the ash's past life from resurfacing in violent outbursts.

If the knight-to-be awakens violently and this continues, subdue it with cold and dispose of the ashes, committing to a thorough cleaning of the interior. Not a speck must remain.

Fully fledged knights are generally of an agreeable temperament. Expect to be called upon for some years afterwards for repairs and consultation. This is the sign of a successful knight, and will ingratiate you to your patron's house.

The knight will need a fresh intake of oil every few weeks, depending on activity. Acquire this from an agreeable deacon. Your peers will know a source. Simply feed it to the knight, the ash will see to its application. If you can, make this a ritualized activity for the knight and your patron's sakes.

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Submerged Moon

The luster of silver constellations and azure nebulae had grown dim, their mystery having been laid bare, and the dull life of the professional oracle and rite master loomed upon them. Make no mistake, this trio were ministers to lords, primaries, high elects, elders, and more. But there was little allure in statecraft, no matter the power they could wield, or friends they could make. These heights were not enough for them who had scraped the heavens of its lore. They knew of much higher places than a king's throne.

The College is ancient, centuries of wisdom heaped upon itself, and filled with corners and hidden places where the stars cannot see. No scholar dares commit to a comprehensive cataloging and archiving of the forests' worth of scrolls and manuscripts piled in every room, or sometimes in hallways which have become annexes of adjoining chambers. And so, despite the College Council's best efforts, references to the submerged moon are still stumbled upon by enterprising researchers delving into depths gone unplumbed in decades. Mostly they are met with the horror appropriate to those who have been surreptitiously taught to fear far-off skies, and these things are burned deep underground. But not always. As was the case with the trio who now made their way through the black forest.

It had not been their discovery, but they had been entrusted and inducted into the society. There are those who believed knowledge, even the darkest and most frightful scraps of lore, ought to be remembered and cherished as truth. This cabal had by necessity become the guardians and seekers of lunar knowledge, and took great pains to vet those in whom there dwelt a passion and reverence for secret learnings, as well as those who have grown tired with the smallness of their world.

Just as they kept the rites, and had learned from mentors, were they bid go out and seek those who could impart new rites, those who knew the moon that had been cast beneath the waves, the stars refusing to admit the invader a place in their intricate order.

Upon its lateral path, the moon left its place under the ocean's waves, where sailors veered into storms just so as to not pass over it, and peered forth from inland waters. The moon upon a vast lake was an alien and beautiful sight, but foremost among initiates into the moon's secrets were those small, secluded spots referred with shivering awe as moon pools, deep but very narrow wells whose faces were taken up entirely by the moon for a short period in the deep night, before it passed through to shine elsewhere. At no other point in the path would it be so close.

Within a primeval forest would they find it, in an untouched depth known to a bare few souls. Places that knew lunar light before it was exiled to the deep.

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Moon Witches

Outside the College, and the minor academies which dot the old manor houses and townships, knowledge of the moon had thrived in secret places, passed down from master to student, and amongst those acolytes of primal celestial rites and the darkness which dwelt beyond them.

There were two of them amidst the clearing. So covered were they in heavy robes that no part of their form could be discerned. And yet by the way they moved, the trio was not entirely sure that what brought them now to the moon pool was entirely human.

It looked almost as if it had been built, or that the growth of the place had been deliberately and intricately managed so as to form a tall circular chamber of black trunks, domed with dark green leaves. There was a faint illumination coming from within the grove, a soft opalescent haze none of them had ever seen before. It was moonlight, said one of the witches. The moon was laden with and reflected light from other stars, in other skies. A wanderer from a distant cosmos.

The astrological rites of mankind are predicated on the traditional belief that certain types of wood, metal, and precious stones are connected to, or react to the influence of stars. By their usage can celestial powers be channelled and more actively used for the good of the people and the land, or the highest bidder. The moon was similar, as were the stars it had passed through, but their influences and powers were of another kind altogether, and so required reactive materials of their own special sort.

The things the witches brought out then looked as if they had once been alive. When the moon came, they said, it brought with it forms and materials from its native spaces. Before the stars here imprisoned it, these things fell to the earth and were found by the first witches, and were passed down in an unbroken lines. Maybe one day, one of the witches whispered quite closely, you will hold them, too.

But there was a difference, they said. What separates the true aspirant from the dreamer. These reactive materials cannot draw down the power of the moon, but they will allow one to reach out and touch it if but for an instant. To not merely wear that power, but take it within, was the mark of ambition.

Oh yes, they said, every one of your colleagues have a little of that outside in them. There are more of them than you can imagine, at every level. There will come a day when they too will have enough in them to become witches. A day when all the witches in the world may come together as scions of the great beyond, and draw out from the deep the moon of old, and cast into the sky where its power will mingle and consume the pallid power of these small heavens.

But for now, the moon is drawn here to the pool, reach out if you have the will, the witches said.

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