|
The Wizard's Apprentice WIP; Part of my Arcane Renaissance world
|
|
Topic Started: Aug 16 2012, 01:02 PM (492 Views)
|
|
Ànraich
|
Aug 16 2012, 01:02 PM
Post #1
|
L'évolution Spéculative est moi
- Posts:
- 9,258
- Group:
- Admin
- Member
- #2
- Joined:
- May 27, 2008
|

So recently I've been developing a fantasy world. I figure that I do a lot of science fiction, but I've never done any real kind of fantasy stories. In an attempt to merge the two genres I have created the world of the Arcane Renaissance (the link explains a little background, but if you're just interested in the story then don't worry because the background isn't necessary to enjoy it). It's a blend of high fantasy and alternate history, our own world with a very different history influenced by the existence of magic. Keeping with the science fiction style though, I have opted to forgo many "traditional" fantasy elements, but I have come up with many of my own. Since this thread is about the story, and not particularly the world its set in (although I would be more than happy to answer any questions related to that topic), but I do need to make one point clear: magic is not the "do whatever you want" button it is in most fantasy. It's not limited to certain individuals, anybody can perform feats of magic if they take the time to learn how. In this world magic is the ability of people to use their consciousness to manipulate the natural laws of the cosmos, but magic cannot break them (although in some cases they may bend them nearly to the breaking point, so to speak). Performing magic requires that you have a knowledge of the forces you are attempting to manipulate, as well as the energy to do so. The knowledge comes from, of course, scientific investigation and many of the sorcerers and magicians in this world are analogous to the great thinkers of our Renaissance. The energy for magic is drawn through aether that fills this universe much like dark matter fills ours, although they are not the same thing. It is not the source of the energy, just a conduit through which it can safely be pulled by the consciousness. Different sources of energy have been and are used by people all over the world, from the camp fires that powered the earliest proto-magics to the raw power of the sun and the tectonic activity of the Earth's mantle and crust. Anyways, on to the actual story now.
Like I said it's a work in progress, so it ends somewhat abruptly. So far I think it's good, but I'm wondering if maybe I'm concentrating too much on visual description and not enough on the other senses. However the story is thus far a "day in the life" style tale, so there isn't much else to do but describe stuff, the most interesting of which is of course visual. Here's the story, tell me what you think:
EDIT: Also, the story takes place in the Kingdom of Alva, located in what we call England.
The Wizard's Apprentice (Updated 8/25/12) The arrival of dawn was marked by a faint, rising fog and a chorus of songbirds. A lone figure walked along a winding path up a dusty hill, atop which was the imposing silhouette of a large stone tower. The figure, a young boy of twelve, continued undaunted by the tower’s dark visage, for it was a familiar sight to him. He traveled to the tower daily from a small village beyond the thicket through which the road was constructed. The boy’s name was Carwyn Powell, and the tower was the home of a sorcerer by the name of Ioducus Drest. Carwyn had been an apprentice of Ioducus for nearly four years, and in that time he had seen many things far more wondrous than a sunrise and more terrifying than his master’s admittedly intimidating estate. Carwyn decided to stop and rest for a few moments, as he had started his journey two hours before and the basket he carried seemed to grow heavier with every step. Within it was his master’s usual breakfast fare: fresh bread from the village baker (his master specifically requested the third loaf of the first batch, which in part was why he awakened so early), several ripe apples, and salted fish. He did not dawdle long as he was certain that his master had already awoken, if he had slept at all. Lately he had become obsessed in his investigation into the Ashen Light and often rose from slumber in time to observe the Morning Star through a spyglass of titanic magnitude that dwelt within a dome atop his tower. Continuing on his journey, Carwyn arrived at the sorcerer’s sanctum within the hour. Normally his master was there to greet him, but on the rare occasion that he was not it meant that he was away, quite possibly in a far off land unknown to Carwyn. For a sorcerer with the skill of Ioducus travel was as simple as “apporting” between set points to which one had become “attuned.” Of course this was not in any way a simple matter, and it was well beyond Carwyn’s current intellectual grasp though he knew it involved using magic to fold space (although he was not yet entirely sure what his master meant by “space”). The young apprentice placed the basket on one of the few clear spaces found on the many counters and cabinets that lined almost every room of the sorcerer’s estate and set about his daily duties. They were simple tasks, but ones that had rapidly grown monotonous over the years. First he set about placing the mess of beakers, flasks, and jars strewn about back onto their specified shelves organized in the alphabetical fashion that Ioducus had grown accustomed to. They contained various substances that were a common sight in the homes of sorcerers and the labs of alchemists alike: quicksilver, mercury, saltpeter, rosewater, and so on. There were other vials that had labels of concern to Carwyn, several of them filled with fluids of various colors with paper tags tied to their stems: Reman fever, phthisis, bloody flux, red plague, and several more that he didn’t care to read. Whether or not these vials contained the diseases themselves or treatments for them he did not know, and frankly he did not care to know. As he placed the vials back into their cupboard of pestilence he was startled by the sudden chiming of a clock, nearly causing him to drop a vial with the particularly terrifying label “demon’s fire.” He instinctively turned to the source of the noise, by far the strangest clock Carwyn had ever seen. Rather than be numbered one through twelve, the clock was labeled one through six twice as such that each number on the clock had a matching number directly across from it. The hands too were odd, with the hour hand rotating clockwise and the minute hand rotating counter-clockwise. Although Carwyn had seen his master tell the time from this clock before, for him all it did was remind him of a parable Ioducus once told him about “wizard’s time.” It was an odd story about a farmer who made a bet with a with a wizard that he could build a better barn faster with nothing but his hands and tools than the wizard could with magic. The farmer built his barn in a week while the wizard spent thirty years researching barns and their properties, during which time the farmer died when his barn collapsed on him in a mighty tempest. The wizard then took his masterful knowledge of barns and built a house, using magic to do it in only three days. Carwyn was not quite sure what the moral of this cryptic tale was, but he found it entertaining as he did all of his master’s wizard fables. Lost in the memories evoked by the clock, he found himself wandering into his master’s study. The room smelled of dust and old books, thousands of which lined the massive shelves which covered the walls, making the room appear more like a library than a study. This was one of the few rooms that Carwyn, although he was allowed to enter, was not allowed to clean. As such books and scrolls and parchments blanketed every conceivable surface (and a few that weren’t, this was a sorcerer’s study after all) and were strewn about the floor into what his master referred to as an “organized mess.” The room appeared to have changed very little since Carwyn first became the apprentice of Ioducus, although he knew that in all likelihood his master had reorganized this mess many times since then. Carwyn, though most of them were well beyond his ability to do so, enjoyed reading random pages from the books. When he first came into this room so many years ago he had expected them all to be filled with instructions for casting spells and brewing potions, but to this day he was surprised at the lack of magical subject matter in his master’s personal library. The vast majority of the books detailed subjects such as astronomy, the natural sciences, history, and especially mathematics. One of the first things that Ioducus had taught Carwyn was that magic was not some mystical force that when harnessed allowed the magician to bend reality to his every whim, but that it was instead a method of using one’s will to manipulate the natural forces of the world. This meant then that the more a sorcerer knew about nature and its laws, the more potential he or she had to learn and utilize magic, of which anybody was capable. As his master once told him, magic was not a force to be enslaved to one’s will, but a tool as useful and versatile as a human hand, and just as much a part of every person as their hands. Beyond the study was an even larger room, one that happened to be Carwyn’s favorite and a place he spent much of his free time. This room was his master’s cabinet of curiosities, the place where he stored and displayed the collection of baubles, trinkets, curios, and artifacts he had collected in his travels and adventures over the years. Carwyn found something marvelous and new every time he entered this room, although he was unsure as to whether it was because the collection was too large to completely view in a lifetime or because it was still growing and he couldn’t notice. There was a pipe in the shape of a great serpent from the Far East which his master occasionally smoked opium from, the mummified paw of a long dead babi shaman (which would on occasion ball into a fist and slowly reopen, as if in eternal agony), a hand of glory made from the remains of a hanged warlock (who had been killed by Ioducus, though Carwyn has never gotten him to tell the story behind it), a cured cauldron from a distant landed bound with chains and covered in shrunken heads. Carwyn was content to admire the last item from afar, as his master had told him that within it was bound a powerful entity that, although it was not hostile, was very unpredictable and possibly dangerous if set free. Although he knew enough to realize that things such as demons and spirits were not real (or at least did not have direct access to Earth’s plane of existence), something about his master describing it as an “entity” troubled him, and he thought it best to avoid discovering for himself whether or not there truly was something bound within the cauldron, accidently or otherwise. Wandering from one wonder to the next, Carwyn eventually found himself standing before the one curiosity in the cabinet which he always had to stop and stare at in awe. He stood before the towering skeleton of an ancient and mighty beast, one of the few complete articulated dragon skeletons in the world. Though for most dragons were merely the subject of old myths and legends, for Carwyn they were a fascination and a mystery. His master had told him of the dragons, great lizards who once built great civilizations eons before man had ever walked upon the Earth. So long ago in fact that time had all but weathered away every trace of their existence, save for the occasional bones and artifacts found deep within caverns and washed up on the shore after particularly vicious storms. They had been the first sorcerers, the first builders, the first people of the world, and they simply vanished; the forgotten victims of some unknown cataclysm. What was it, he wondered, that could have so thoroughly destroyed such powerful beings? As he pondered, Carwyn heard a loud pop from the study, followed by the sound of paper fluttering about by an unexpected draft. Ioducus had returned from whatever errand he had been attending to all day, and his apportation had displaced a volume of air, causing the sound and gust. Carwyn turned and scurried from the curiosity cabinet, and in his reckless enthusiasm so common in youths he tripped over his own feet and knocked down one of the pedestals. The cauldron fell to the floor loudly, and Carwyn quickly returned the pedestal to its upright position and, with some strain, replaced the heavy cauldron to its place. He looked over it briefly for damage, and, finding nothing, he ran to greet his master (who had apparently somehow failed to hear the racket in the next room). In his haste he had failed to notice the small crack in the side of the cauldron, nor the small wisp of deep black smoke slowly creeping out from it.
Edited by Ànraich, Aug 25 2012, 07:53 PM.
|
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.
"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming
Tree That Owns Itself
|
| |
|
trex841
|
Aug 16 2012, 01:33 PM
Post #2
|
- Posts:
- 15,098
- Group:
- Members
- Member
- #533
- Joined:
- Mar 28, 2011
|
I like how you worked out the magic in this world.
|
F.I.N.D.R Field Incident Logs A comprehensive list of all organisms, artifacts, and alternative worlds encountered by the foundation team.
At the present time, concepts within are inconsistent and ever shifting. Protectorates of the Proan Empire- The Sundered Realms - A fantasy realm where the world is divided into different sections. (Following names subject to change)
- The Gavell Kingdom
- The Everdark Forest
- The Lunar Tundra
- The Sand Sea
- The Asteroid Cloud
- The Rotting Shard
- The Orbital River
- The Outer Shadow
- Bottle Beasts - This Universes version of Pokemon.
Worlds Impacted by the Enlightened/Visceral War- The 'Verse Whale - The Homeworld of the two forces, a planet sized organism, and the unique life that has flourished on it.
- замороженный конец - An Ice Age world populated by tripodal organisms.
- [To Be Named] - A world of creatures with an arm for a head
- [To Be Named] - The Homeworld of a species where only the males are sapient.
- [To Be Named] - The home of a race of carnivorous, trap building beings.
- [To Be Named] - A planet of organisms that can link their minds, where two forms of intelligence have arisen.
Unaffiliated Universes- [To Be Named] - A parallel earth where the Synapsids took over after the Permian Extinction, among other resulting changes.
- نيو نيو امستردام - An abandoned Dyson Cylinder containing an Ecumenopolis now catering to our former pets and pests. (A concept developed entirely separate from DroidSyber's Arcology, I swear.)
- The Bleed - A vast universe where physics are more a suggestion than a rule.
Parakosmos Minor - Known Earth Pocket Universes, Natural or Artificial.- Island of Marsupials and Armadillos off the coast of South America
- A world inhabited by Woodpecker descendants (Again, not meant to be a clone of Serina, I in no way have that much detail ready for this.)
- Katiwala - Your typical Lost World...if i decide to go that route...
(And this is just the spec related stuff)
|
| |
|
Ànraich
|
Aug 17 2012, 04:23 PM
Post #3
|
L'évolution Spéculative est moi
- Posts:
- 9,258
- Group:
- Admin
- Member
- #2
- Joined:
- May 27, 2008
|
Has anybody bothered to read the story? The one in the spoiler tag at the bottom of the first post? Because the reason I made this thread, aside from sharing it, was to get a critique of it. So far the only answer I've gotten is "magic is cool."
|
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.
"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming
Tree That Owns Itself
|
| |
|
trex841
|
Aug 17 2012, 04:43 PM
Post #4
|
- Posts:
- 15,098
- Group:
- Members
- Member
- #533
- Joined:
- Mar 28, 2011
|
I was focusing on the history yesterday. Read it now, and i love the feel of the environment.
|
F.I.N.D.R Field Incident Logs A comprehensive list of all organisms, artifacts, and alternative worlds encountered by the foundation team.
At the present time, concepts within are inconsistent and ever shifting. Protectorates of the Proan Empire- The Sundered Realms - A fantasy realm where the world is divided into different sections. (Following names subject to change)
- The Gavell Kingdom
- The Everdark Forest
- The Lunar Tundra
- The Sand Sea
- The Asteroid Cloud
- The Rotting Shard
- The Orbital River
- The Outer Shadow
- Bottle Beasts - This Universes version of Pokemon.
Worlds Impacted by the Enlightened/Visceral War- The 'Verse Whale - The Homeworld of the two forces, a planet sized organism, and the unique life that has flourished on it.
- замороженный конец - An Ice Age world populated by tripodal organisms.
- [To Be Named] - A world of creatures with an arm for a head
- [To Be Named] - The Homeworld of a species where only the males are sapient.
- [To Be Named] - The home of a race of carnivorous, trap building beings.
- [To Be Named] - A planet of organisms that can link their minds, where two forms of intelligence have arisen.
Unaffiliated Universes- [To Be Named] - A parallel earth where the Synapsids took over after the Permian Extinction, among other resulting changes.
- نيو نيو امستردام - An abandoned Dyson Cylinder containing an Ecumenopolis now catering to our former pets and pests. (A concept developed entirely separate from DroidSyber's Arcology, I swear.)
- The Bleed - A vast universe where physics are more a suggestion than a rule.
Parakosmos Minor - Known Earth Pocket Universes, Natural or Artificial.- Island of Marsupials and Armadillos off the coast of South America
- A world inhabited by Woodpecker descendants (Again, not meant to be a clone of Serina, I in no way have that much detail ready for this.)
- Katiwala - Your typical Lost World...if i decide to go that route...
(And this is just the spec related stuff)
|
| |
|
Ànraich
|
Aug 25 2012, 07:33 PM
Post #5
|
L'évolution Spéculative est moi
- Posts:
- 9,258
- Group:
- Admin
- Member
- #2
- Joined:
- May 27, 2008
|
Funny to think that somebody actually made a thread to share my writing because they liked it so much, but nobody bothers to look at the new material. Anyways, I've updated the first part of the story. I suppose I should change the thread title as well, as it would no longer be a work in progress. I am working on part two now, and I have an idea for a general overall story arc. So in a sense, I guess it still is a work in progress...
Edited by Ànraich, Aug 25 2012, 07:55 PM.
|
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.
"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming
Tree That Owns Itself
|
| |
|
seascorpion
|
Aug 26 2012, 01:13 AM
Post #6
|
Why Can't I Hold All These Mongols?
- Posts:
- 3,437
- Group:
- Away Staff
- Member
- #216
- Joined:
- Sep 8, 2009
- Gender:
- Male
- Nationality:
- Australian
- Favorite Quote:
- It's easy to avoid cognitive dissonance if you don't engage in any cognition
|
This is great so far. I can't really criticize much, because so little of it has been revealed. Post the next part soon
|
|
|
| |
|
Ànraich
|
Aug 26 2012, 03:41 PM
Post #7
|
L'évolution Spéculative est moi
- Posts:
- 9,258
- Group:
- Admin
- Member
- #2
- Joined:
- May 27, 2008
|
There's actually more to part one, I'm not sure why it didn't get added. Anyways, here is the slightly revised, complete part one.
- Quote:
-
The arrival of dawn was marked by a faint, rising fog and a chorus of songbirds. A lone figure walked along a winding path up a dusty hill, atop which was the imposing silhouette of a large stone tower. The figure, a young boy of twelve, continued undaunted by the tower's dark visage, for it was a familiar sight to him. He traveled to the tower daily from a small village beyond the thicket through which the road was constructed. The boy's name was Carwyn Powell, and the tower was the home of a sorcerer by the name of Ioducus Drest. Carwyn had been an apprentice of Ioducus for nearly four years, and in that time he had seen many things far more wondrous than a sunrise and more terrifying than his master's admittedly intimidating estate. Carwyn decided to stop and rest for a few moments, as he had started his journey two hours before and the basket he carried seemed to grow heavier with every step. Within it was his master's usual breakfast fare: fresh bread from the village baker (his master specifically requested the third loaf of the first batch, which in part was why he awakened so early), several ripe apples, and salted fish. He did not dawdle long as he was certain that his master had already awoken, if he had slept at all. Lately he had become obsessed in his investigation into the Ashen Light, and he often rose from slumber in time to observe the Morning Star through a spyglass of titanic magnitude that dwelt within a dome atop his tower. Seeing the sun now beginning to rise above this dome, Carwyn continued on his journey and arrived at the sorcerer's sanctum within the hour. Normally his master was there to greet him, but on the rare occasion that he was not it meant that he was away, quite possibly in a far off land unknown to Carwyn. For a sorcerer with the skill of Ioducus travel was as simple as "apporting" between set points to which one had become "attuned." Of course this was not in any way a simple matter, and it was well beyond Carwyn's current intellectual grasp though he knew it involved using magic to fold space (although he was not yet entirely sure what his master meant by "space"). The young apprentice placed the basket on one of the few clear spaces found on the many counters and cabinets that lined almost every room of the sorcerer's estate and set about his daily duties. They were simple tasks, but ones that had rapidly grown monotonous over the years. He set about placing the mess of beakers, flasks, and jars strewn about back onto their specified shelves organized in the alphabetical fashion that Ioducus had grown accustomed to. They contained various substances that were a common sight in the homes of sorcerers and the labs of alchemists alike: quicksilver, mercury, saltpeter, rosewater, and so on. There were other vials that had labels of concern to Carwyn, several of them filled with fluids of various colors with paper tags tied to their stems: Reman fever, phthisis, bloody flux, red plague, and several more that he didn't care to read. Whether or not these vials contained the diseases themselves or treatments for them he did not know, and frankly he did not care to know. As he placed the vials back into their cupboard of pestilence he was startled by the sudden chiming of a clock, nearly causing him to drop a vial with the particularly terrifying label "demon's fire." He instinctively turned to the source of the noise, by far the strangest clock Carwyn had ever seen. Rather than be numbered one through twelve, the clock was labeled one through six twice as such that each number on the clock had a matching number directly across from it. The hands too were odd, with the hour hand rotating clockwise and the minute hand rotating counter-clockwise. Although Carwyn had seen his master tell the time from this clock before, for him all it did was remind him of a parable Ioducus once told him about "wizard's time." It was an odd story about a farmer who made a bet with a with a wizard that he could build a better barn faster with nothing but his hands and tools than the wizard could with magic. The farmer built his barn in a week while the wizard spent thirty years researching barns and their properties, during which time the farmer died when his barn collapsed on him in a mighty tempest. The wizard then took his masterful knowledge of barns and built a house, using magic to do it in only three days. Carwyn was not quite sure what the moral of this cryptic tale was, but he found it entertaining as he did all of his master's wizard fables. Lost in the memories evoked by the clock, he found himself wandering into his master's study. The room smelled of dust and old books, thousands of which lined the massive shelves which covered the walls, making the room appear more like a library than a study. This was one of the few rooms that Carwyn, although he was allowed to enter, was not allowed to clean. Books and scrolls and parchments blanketed every conceivable surface (and a few inconceivable ones; this was a sorcerer's study after all) and were strewn about the floor into what his master referred to as an "organized mess." The room appeared to have changed very little since Carwyn first became the apprentice of Ioducus, although he knew that in all likelihood his master had reorganized this mess many times since then. Though most of them were well beyond his ability to do so, Carwyn enjoyed reading random pages from the books. When he first came into this room so many years ago he had expected them all to be filled with instructions for casting spells and brewing potions, but to this day he was surprised at the lack of magical subject matter in his master's personal library. The vast majority of the books detailed subjects such as astronomy, the natural sciences, history, and especially mathematics. One of the first things that Ioducus had taught Carwyn was that magic was not some mystical force that when harnessed allowed the magician to bend reality to his every whim, but that it was instead a method of using one's will to manipulate the natural forces of the world. This meant then that the more a sorcerer knew about nature and its laws, the more potential he or she had to learn and utilize magic, of which anybody was capable. As his master once told him, magic was not a force to be enslaved to one's will, but a tool as useful and versatile as a human hand, and just as much a part of every person as such. Beyond the study was an even larger room, one that happened to be Carwyn's favorite and a place he spent much of his free time. This room was his master's cabinet of curiosities, the place where he stored and displayed the collection of baubles, trinkets, curios, and artifacts he had collected in his travels and adventures over the years. Carwyn found something marvelous and new every time he entered this room, although he was unsure as to whether it was because the collection was too large to completely view in a single lifetime or because it was still growing and he didn't notice. There was a pipe in the shape of a great serpent from the Far East which his master occasionally smoked opium from, the mummified paw of a long dead babi shaman (which would on occasion ball into a fist and slowly reopen, as if in eternal agony), a hand of glory made from the remains of a hanged warlock (who had been killed by Ioducus, though Carwyn has never gotten him to tell the story behind it), a cauldron from a distant land bound with chains and covered in shrunken heads and runes. Carwyn was content to admire the last item from afar, as his master had told him that within it was bound a powerful entity that, although it was not hostile, was very unpredictable and possibly dangerous if set free. Although he knew enough to realize that things such as demons and spirits were not real (or at least did not have direct access to Earth's plane of existence), something about his master describing it as an "entity" troubled him, and he thought it best to avoid discovering for himself whether or not there truly was something bound within the cauldron, accidentally or otherwise. Wandering from one wonder to the next, Carwyn eventually found himself standing before the one curiosity in the cabinet which he always felt compelled to stare at in awe. He stood before the towering skeleton of an ancient and mighty beast, one of the few complete articulated dragon skeletons in the world. Though for most dragons were merely the subject of old myths and legends, for Carwyn they were a fascination and a mystery. His master had told him of the dragons, massive lizards who once built great civilizations eons before man had ever walked upon the Earth. So long ago in fact that time had all but weathered away every trace of their existence, save for the occasional bones and artifacts found deep within caverns and washed up on the shore after particularly vicious storms. They had been the first sorcerers, the first builders, the first people of the world, and they simply vanished; the forgotten victims of some unknown cataclysm. What was it, he wondered, that could have so thoroughly destroyed such powerful beings? As he pondered, Carwyn heard a loud pop from the study, followed by the sound of paper fluttering about in an unexpected draft. Ioducus had returned from whatever errand he had been attending to all day, and his apportation had displaced a volume of air, causing the sound and gust. Carwyn turned and scurried from the curiosity cabinet, and in his reckless enthusiasm so common in youths he tripped over his own feet and knocked down one of the pedestals. The cauldron fell to the floor loudly, and Carwyn's face went pale. Quickly he returned the pedestal to its upright position and, with some strain, replaced the heavy cauldron to its proper place. He looked over it briefly for damage, and, finding nothing, he ran to greet his master (who had apparently somehow failed to hear the racket in the next room), eager to leave the presence of the cauldron that terrified him so. In his haste he had failed to notice the small crack in the side of the cauldron, nor the small wisp of deep black smoke slowly creeping out from it... The disturbance stirred Him from His slumber, though He had neither a physical body nor the senses with which to feel it. For a moment He considered returning to his seemingly eternal hibernation, and then He felt it: an opening. After time immemorial, finally there was an opening into the realm beyond His prison. Long ago He had come to this plane, to this world, drawn to it by the ripples in the Seven Planes that emanate from the use of magic. His kind were all that existed in His plane, it was devoid of all but darkness. There was no matter and no energy, no space and no time; there was nothing save for the endless void of the Lower Plane. And yet it was there that His kind had come into being. They were as drops of rain from a cloudless sky, manifesting from the void as the faint remnants of the ripples at last arrived in the Lower Plane before fading entirely. His kind did not exist for long though, for with nothing in the Lower Plane to sustain them they slowly decomposed back into the nothingness from which they had spawned. In order to survive, they had to feed, and their appetites were voracious. At first they had consumed only each other as do savage beasts, unable to subsist on the weak ripples of arcane power that had created them. It was not long before some of His kind learned to harness the energy and use it to practice magic. It was only then that they had learned of the other planes, and the abundance of food they contained. One could not simply move between the planes, but with great difficulty His kind had learned that they could project their consciousness into the Physical Plane. It was then that they devised a plan: they would use their unique position to manipulate the intelligent, magic-using beings of the Physical Plane into great arcane feats. Although this often meant calamity or extinction for those they had tricked, it also meant that larger ripples would pulse through the planes and there would be more energy for His kind to feed on. He and His kind cared not for the anguish of these mortals; what did the predator care for the suffering of its prey? This solution was but a temporary one, however; in order to ensure their survival His kind would have to find direct access to the abundant magic that existed here. Without a constant food supply, their bodies continued to deteriorate into nothingness, and when the body died the mind died regardless of which plane its consciousness was in. He had come here to observe the beings of this world and their civilizations. It was His hope that in doing so He might glean some knowledge on how to bring His kind fully into this plane. He had underestimated these beings, and once His presence was known they hunted Him like a monster, eventually locking Him within the magical prison from which He was now free. The passage of time was an unfamiliar, although not altogether unknown, sensation to Him, but He knew that His imprisonment had been considerably lengthy. During that time He had meditated on His observations, and He believed He had found a method to at last enter this world in both mind as well as body. He would be ushered into this world in the only way possible, in the way that all mortals came into the world: He would have to be born. And once He had arrived, He would eat his fill. His name was Chorozon, and he would be but the first of many to follow.
Edited by Ànraich, Aug 28 2012, 08:40 PM.
|
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.
"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming
Tree That Owns Itself
|
| |
|
colddigger
|
Aug 28 2012, 07:59 PM
Post #8
|
Joke's over! Love, Parasky
- Posts:
- 9,470
- Group:
- Members
- Member
- #143
- Joined:
- Feb 28, 2009
- Nationality:
- Canadian. Just like Phasey!
- Favorite Quote:
- "If it weren't for the gutter my mind would be homeless!" - BaliTiger23
|
"great lizards who once built great civilizations "
I feel this could be worded differently so as not to use great as the adjective for both things.
I really enjoyed the little descriptions of all the stuff.
|
Oh Fine.
Oh hi you! Why don't you go check out the finery that is SGP??
v Don't click v
Spoiler: click to toggle
|
| |
|
Ànraich
|
Aug 28 2012, 08:40 PM
Post #9
|
L'évolution Spéculative est moi
- Posts:
- 9,258
- Group:
- Admin
- Member
- #2
- Joined:
- May 27, 2008
|
Ah, I hadn't caught that. Changed it to massive lizards, works just as well.
|
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.
"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming
Tree That Owns Itself
|
| |
|
Dragon
|
Aug 28 2012, 09:44 PM
Post #10
|
/r/GamingCirclejerk is the best subreddit, don't @ me
- Posts:
- 3,138
- Group:
- Members
- Member
- #592
- Joined:
- Jul 7, 2011
- Gender:
- Male
- Area of expertise:
- Xenobiology
- Nationality:
- Canadian
- Gender:
- I'm still a man, man.
|
This is pretty good. It's a little bit slow paced, but it doesn't detract from the story. Is the history of this world anything like our own? Also, it seems like the sea level is lower. Does it have anything to do with that massive sea in the middle of the sahara desert? Have you considered sending this to a publisher when this is done?
|
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life," John 3:16
A neat pixel animation of a future cowboy
- trex841
-
Hey, their right to get freaky ends when it goes up my nose.
I think this describes what dinosaurs are like now
Click for something good. Click this too.
|
| |
|
Ànraich
|
Aug 28 2012, 10:48 PM
Post #11
|
L'évolution Spéculative est moi
- Posts:
- 9,258
- Group:
- Admin
- Member
- #2
- Joined:
- May 27, 2008
|
I might if it's any good and long enough. Honestly I'm disheartened about publishing stuff. Back in the day you had to be really good to even get publish, but these days it seems like any crap can get published.
Anyways I have the history of the world also pretty well thought out, but it's pretty long. This is our Earth, our world, but on this one magic truly existed. Because of that there are a few key differences, such as the migrations of certain peoples across the world and the languages that developed. However many things are the same or somewhat parallel, such as the Roman Empire. Except in this world, it was Remus that killed Romulus and the city and empire founded were thus named Reme. Like the Romans, the Remans built a vast, highly organized ancient empire but for different reasons. Romans were known for their military might and ingenuity, the Remans are similar except that they became powerful from their mastery of arcane magic. They used this mastery of magic to help them overcome engineering problems that the Romans simply could never have done due to technological limitations. As you pointed out, yes the Remans are indeed responsible for the lower sea level of the Mediterranean. Kemet (Egypt), Persis (Persia), and Carthage (some names remained the same) had also been powerful magical empires in ancient times, but once the Remans had become powerful they were all weak enough from their own problems that they were easily conquered. Obsessed with overcoming the limitations of nature and making their empire thrive, the Remans used their engineering and arcane prowess to dam the Strait of Gibraltar and create a canal that flooded a large portion of the Sahara. The idea was that it would create more farmland both by exposing the supposedly fertile sea floor as well as changing the weather in Africa to turn the Sahara from a desert to a greenhouse.
It didn't quite work as planned. While a lot of the sea bed was indeed rich, fertile farmland, much of it was a dead, salty wasteland. The Greeks practically went extinct as the sea they relied on receded and the islands that were once their home were suddenly mountains. The Reman economy collapsed as their contingencies failed and the important port cities that were supposed to be unaffected by the change (for various reasons they had planned out ahead of time) became ghost towns far from any coast. Kemet was devastated as runoff from the new sea became rivers that turned much of the Nile that was their lifeblood into flooded marshes, and the deserts that had once defended them from either side rapidly began to be consumed by thick, sprawling jungle from the south. The plan that was to be their salvation ended up being their self-engineered fall and Reme collapsed soon after as barbarians took advantage of their confused and devastated state and invaded. In fact the sea in Africa is called the Sea of Salvation in Europe, but in Africa it is known as the Sea of Hubris. Ironically in the centuries that followed it did indeed become a sea of salvation for the Africans, as ultimately that part of the plan worked and the Sahara became the world's greenbelt.
The map is over a thousand years after the fall of Reme, so the environment has mostly settled into a balanced state again. With centuries of toil the saltflats of Europe eventually became modest, though not great, farmland and the Kemets and Carthaginian civilizations thrived like they never had before in their new lush landscapes. One key event took place about four centuries ago (the map is supposed to be in the early to mid 1600's as we would know it, just for reference). Kemet desired to reclaim its former glory, and under the leadership of a Pharaoh named Akuut they underwent a bold and frankly terrifying plan. The Kemets' magic was powered by the energy of the sun, so to ensure that they would have limitless power they began a process to slow the rotation of the Earth and tidally lock it in its orbit. Thus the sun would forever shine over Kemet, the world's most powerful (and probably only, had they succeeded) civilization; ruled by Akuut, the One True God. As the environment began to change due to this, the Europeans investigated and discovered his plan, launching the Thistle Crusade (named after the shade of purple, worn on the banners and tabards of the crusaders).
Relating to the story, it is likely that both the Remans and Akuut were influenced to undergo their devastating plans by the species of which Chorozon is a member.
|
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.
"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming
Tree That Owns Itself
|
| |
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
|