Stories of Lore 11

Okay turned around Mikael and had him and the rest of the team help Hillevi with her architectural research. Might be a little bit though, its a big city and a lot of rubble to sift through. Good thing we sent a cart with them.

As for the artifact we acquired from the orcs, we’re awaiting delivery. Might take a bit longer then expected as Ankathi had to go back to Sybaris for some meeting of the Coven. Also to add to that, one of the local barkeeps needs therapy now. So does your secretary probably.

As a suggestion on the front of portable and handheld weaponry, the badlands have those gun things that are somewhat decent at that. Though they do have a hard time piercing enchanted armor, I suppose we can look into ways to transfer more explosions into a crossbow or something perhaps.

We’ve actually managed to get a good amount of so called sacred texts from the Vaslochar by way of House Eilsath stealing shit from them. This may have also accelerated the looming conflict between them as now small skirmishes seem to break out quite a bit more frequently. Okay so in order to understand demonology in greater detail I’ll cover the primordial forces one oh one here.

There are five of them that we can prove exist, and there is a sixth that is a popular theory – especially with Hillevi I’ve noticed. Here is the quick summary. The primordial forces are a bunch of things thought to play a heavy role in the creation of the world and are otherwise semi dormant or at the very least extremely slow in doing anything. They have exhibited a sort of agency and ability to act on the world though not that much interest in it. The primordial forces are basically the closest thing we have to true deities. Demon Kings might pose as godlike figures but they’re just spawn of one of the primordial forces for example.

The Light is the origin of angels, the sun, and well…light. Cayetano like this particular thing and worship it, it also gives them their cleric abilities they hold in such high regard. It is the direct opposite of the Abyss, we’ll get to that one in a moment. Basically they come in pairs.

The Wilds is the one our druid friends to the south utilize, you could consider it the origin of most things. Earth, trees, wind, this one is kind of everywhere. It could be considered finnicky though.

Its direct counterpart is The Fire, considered to be the origin of magic, invention, and possibly mankind (this one is under debate, consult your local theologian). It’s not an actual blazing fire or anything that’s just what our ancestors called it and so that is what we call it. It is the laziest of all the primordial forces and is said to have given us the gift of magic and invention then fucked off to do its own thing and hasn’t really been heard from since.

There is also the primordial Chaos, the origin of the dark entities, all randomness, undead, and the unfairness of life in general. Though similarly to the other forces it doesn’t act on much, it created a concept and just let it run wild. So when Katara summons a dark horror to unleash the apocalypse, its that particular entities fault not really the primordial chaos. Its hard to tell if it acts on us of its own will because of its nature as chaos. Its either a massive dick or everything that came from it is and its asleep.

So the light is the opposite of the abyss, the fire is opposite of the wilds. This brings us to the mathematically logical sixth force, the primordial fate. We have no evidence of its existence other then pattern recognition. Some believe in it, others don’t, most don’t care because all these forces are barely worth thinking about on the day to day basis. It is theorized that the Fate is the origin of mankind instead of the Fire, but for that theory to hold true it has to actually…y’know…exist. It’s name is self explanatory, you can blame the entire concept of coincidences on it if it exists.

Okay so the important one here is the Abyss. Origin of demons – basically there exists a…thing of darkness and despair that produced demons though it is not a dimension or anything. It is just a force of nature that happens to exist, it is theorized that in the creation of the world the Abyss is responsible for shadows in particular. Communion with demons is not the same as communion with the Abyss. If someone is a high prophet of some demon king, okay we can handle that. If they’re a direct conduit of the Abyss itself, start running. Though that is unlikely, there has only been one conduit of the Abyss in all of recorded history, and all they did was sit in a dark cave and mutter to themselves while drawing on the walls. I mean they obliterated a few bandits that bothered them but as long as you just left the cave alone he didn’t hurt anybody.

Warlocks, clerics, druids, witches, blackguards, and so forth draw their power from different sources. Warlocks, witches and clerics get their abilities from entities spawned of the primordial forces. Demons, angels, dark spirits, so on and so forth. However, druids notably get their power straight from the primordial Wilds. On the totem pole of divinity they’re the highest ranked, though they have to deal with a lot of weird stuff for it I’m told. Ask the druids. Anyways, so in terms of demonology this is a very popular one because demons are always skulking around offering working relationships. Just as Nina received her powers for consorting with Orias and doing whatever he asks of her and so on. Demons have a unique talent for sharing their powers with others, rivaled only by dragons. hence when both start crossbreeding there are consistent themes and we name the hybrids tiefling or dragonborn. Both species can imbue others with their own brand of magic, scientifically speaking these forms of magic are based on corrupted mana sources. Infernal magic is demon mana, dragon magic is draconic mana.

As a bit of a sidenote, arcane magic is mana in its purest form, also why its so hard to utilize sometimes – gotta refine the stuff sometimes. If we go with the whole primordial thing, arcane magic is sharing a position with druids on the totem pole as it is the purified form of what the Fire gave to us. Though none of these mana sources are inherently more powerful then one another, just the beings they come from can have different levels of mana storage. Even though everyone considers draconic magic completely nuts, it helps to remember just how much mana a fucking dragon can produce on its own.

Segway aside, so the warlocks of Vaslochar draw from a demon lord named Galiviel, who is in turn a servant to a demon king named Melias. Sooo it turns out Nina outranks their archpriest. I thought that was funny. Though what is most peculiar about this information, is that both of those demons should be pretty acquainted with the larger world, yet they knew nothing of us until now nor how to escape the underdark and live on the surface.

Aside from that, the warlock priests of Vaslochar are baaasically delusional fuck puppets for demons. I mean, their high priestess is considered of highest regard for being permitted to regularly mate with demons. I don’t think they’ve fully done the math that their chosen priestess just so happens to be very young and the best looking. I have to wonder what qualifications she has to practice demonology other then demons wanting to bang her. According to all these ‘research’ books we got from Vaslochar by way of the Eilsath, they seem to really believe their own hype as a demon cult. I’m better at demonology then these fifth grade level notes they call sacred tomes, and I don’t even talk to demons.

So that is the long winded version of why these notes proved not at all helpful in what can be done for Nina. I already knew everything in here and am not as delusional as they are. This war between houses might be over a lot quicker then I anticipated in my initial assertions at the council of wise men. Hanlon’s razor eh?

Greetings Keeper! It is a glorious day for the Oda people. In regards to the island with the demonic door, yes Cayetano considers that a bad idea. The demon is powerful enough that they had to seal it on an island far away from their main fortress because no matter what they try to contain it in, there seems to be some leaking of infernal magic now and then. So that is part of why there are no guardians as well, the last six all had some incidents.

Iwanagi is sailing along to the south to check things out as requested before he starts on his return trip.

As for settling the abandoned village, logistically it isn’t too hard. While a lot of the infrastructure is falling apart thanks to both the Nalkas and the Katara raiding the place, it is still a suitably good location with a lot of raw supplies available. Especially since our allies really seemed more interested in taking slaves then things, with the exception of the artifact we have on our ship now as it was. I estimate we could save about 125 gold on the effort by scavenging the available supplies there.

The small village near Serizawa’s location seems to be a bit more passive then the last one he ran into but notably quite peculiar. It is filled with tieflings and the like, apparently outcasts of other places who all gathered there on the farthest tip of the world they could find. They’re very hardy folk though to have migrated there in the first place and survived out there for so long, Serizawa notes that while they are doing okay for themselves they aren’t particularly well armed or defended.

Also speaking of his adventures, he has passed by another city hidden in a valley between mountains along the coast…very similar to Okushiri actually. It is quite a large city though that’s all he has been able to report from this distance.

Our navy has engaged with the horde of monsters near the bay by Sarkisa and managed to successfully defeat them, losing only one warship in the process. A very fortunate turn of events all things considering. We’ve claimed the bounty reward for the one leading it as well, 4500 gold and 1500 mana.

The place we’re building the druid Haven is doing nicely, though it’ll have about two more cycles to go before we’re ready to move people into it.

KouKou is doing fine now, she seems mostly recovered and ready to head back out again if you need her for anything. Lately she’s been spending her time around the Coven Temple doing various forms of study on her witchcraft under my supervision.

Nyssa reports figuring out what they’re building there. It appears to be a weapon, a very large one. It is the size of some of our mansions. Basically its an enchanted super-cannon that could wipe out half an army in one shot. Though they’re still constructing it at least, it does seem to be a very serious structure. She also couldn’t help but notice its pointed at the forest…so us. I’m not sure if its in response to the raids on the isolationists and our construction of Marilens, or if its in preparation for the orc threat. It seems immobile and a bit overkill just for our raiding parties so I lean towards the latter but doesn’t hurt to consider the angles here.

As for the council of witches, we didn’t really have any ideas for lost technology. After the dying night we kind of just lingered around the ruins of our empire, the survivors preserved what technology we had pretty well. The coven itself used to be more of a publicity stunt, a general warning about messing with us. Since the mass extinction it has become somewhat of a necessity instead. Also here is a list of potentially useful things in our archives that you might like to know we have access to.

Also given the events surrounding Marilens we figured we should hire that governor for it you wanted. More aptly put, the events around it have made it clear what kind of governor we are going to need.

Thyra’s voyage continues and she reports coming across a city in the north along the coast she is currently passing by, it appears to be quite large.

A former conqueror, definitely a rather strict and intense individual. She will be well suited to handling the abundance of the newly enslaved population, I expect she is the best fit for keeping things under control once Vanessa leaves and isn’t there to keep any intent of rebellion in check. Cybele is descended from the same prince as Petrina at least, so perhaps the family name will build into something at this rate. She is also an apt guardian for our outpost closest to the badlands all things considered.

Also apparently we’re saving 25g on the construction payments now since we don’t really have to pay prisoners.

Now on to other matters. During the council I brought to the attention of the coven some other things going on around our kingdom to be wary of. They’ve impressed upon me the importance of bringing the matters to you hastily as to be dealt with. Though first, a bit of a history lesson. About two decades before you were born there was a prince named Sotirios Damaia within our city. He was fairly cooperative, though we learned all too late the reason why. His offspring was an infection, the more of them there were the more we lost touch with the coven’s spirits. Their own offspring shared this same problem, the more and more of them showed up the weaker our people became.The curse we currently suffer under is one thing, combining that with losing our touch to the spirits caused us to become sitting targets. Suddenly the women lost their strength, our warriors grew sick, and we couldn’t figure out why for the longest time because we had apparently angered the spirits too much for them to tell us. By the time we found out there were already hundreds of these infected spawn. Ankathi was appointed to carry out the cleansing, killing Sotirios and his offspring to stop the spread. Not the most glorious days in our history when we put hundreds of what we thought were our own people to the blade, but if we hadn’t we’d have gone extinct by the end of the century most likely.

This brings up two problems. The first of which is the infection might have lived on in the badlands. We aren’t sure if Faelyn Damaia is a cousin, sister, mother, or if we missed one and she is one of his daughters. Either way, if she does carry the infection then we may need to kill her before it spreads anew. Also check the slaves Thyra is bringing from the badlands to make sure they do not have the same affliction as Sotirios had to offer.

The second of which is Nina has returned to the temple in Sarkisa for healing. She has been stabilized and is walking about with some assistance now. However, Layla reports they have started behaving strangely. As if they’ve suddenly become very protective of Layla in her injured state, more then should be normal. They’ve also stopped talking to her about the day to day affairs of the temple and stopped allowing visitors. Layla figured out why, that same infection is now present in Nina. When she manifested the power of Orias it suddenly occurred in her as well. Normally we could contain this by simply ensuring she never breeds, as the infection does not spread by most other means. Also maybe make sure the blackguards understand the price that comes with utilizing that power, though instead they’ve opted to try and shut us out from their temple while they do…who knows what.

Vasi and Ankathi have begun preparations to mobilize the coven to carry out a second one if you declare that it need be done.

Stories of Lore 10

Well the immediate problem with recreating the gatestones is we’ve never seen the material they’re made from. It would feasible to replicate the enchantment for us with a bit of study but the enchantment has a side effect of putting a lot of pressure on the object in question. We need a material that can withstand massive compression without breaking yet still capable of holding and channeling enough mana. Typically the best mana retaining materials are a bit soft for our purposes. Rocks suck, tree amber is really good at it. We’re currently working on figuring out what the hell this stone is made out of. So updates on that if we make any progress.

Okay I want you to think about this. We’re sending a hundred drow armed with swords, spears, and crossbows to fight a swarm of sea monsters off the coast who are in -now I need you to stay with me on this one- the ocean. Anyways they’re at Sarkisa now.

The fantastic five over there are moving towards the coast as ordered, though they hit a mountain pretty quickly so they’re working their way around that now.

The villages have been sent garrisons to protect the workers, what a truely wise and forward thinking decision. I must commend whoever came up with that plan.

The nalkas we sent to team up with the mercenaries outside Maji to tackle the badlands monster will be there next week so expect updates on that one.

Greetings Keeper! It is a glorious day for the Oda people. Iwanagi has slipped away from the port and begun to sail back towards the west along the southern coast. Noting that in avoiding the newcomers, going further on his journey around the world is going to lead into more of the strangers.

Funny you should mention a horrific crisis. According to Cayetano that cave is sealing a demon they captured some while ago after it destroyed one of their villages. So yes, they say don’t touch it. They apparently lost an army trying to capture the thing, so it would be a significant problem if it were to get loose.

We’ve sent some design work up to Nalkas to work further on the artillery at Uudistar where they have apparently prepped a firing range for experimentation purposes. In the meantime Chinami’s fleet has retreated up the river in hopes of reaching the open ocean once again since the next battleground won’t really have river access for them. Though one of these days we should probably finish sailing down that river to see where it goes.

However, the exit of the river runs south of Sarkisa. We have reason to believe the Katara report of sea monsters gathering near the place might be related to us sailing up the river with a fleet of mana heavy ships given that the artifact is with the fleet outside of Okushiri. So that’s going to be…a peculiar engagement.

Serizawa is heading north along the coast to continue his scouting efforts, along with our other scout boats also continuing along their journeys.

We’ve sent some troops to help with the road construction. Though with Vanessa leaving Marilens to attack the isolationists now that construction team is dead, same problem as the roads.

Vanessa managed to assault the remains of the isolationist village, though poorly defended they were quite resistant to her invasion. Many of them fled into the badlands. Though Vanessa lost about thirty units of her army, she did manage to capture roughly two thousand of the natives and begin escorting them to Marilens, where they will likely replace the construction team.

Nyssa is now hanging out near the badlands outpost as requested, she’s set up a camp in some rocky areas to keep laying low. She reports that on her way there she noticed there were long lines of mobilized forces moving in that direction. Upon arriving, the outpost seems to have significantly more soldiers then the last time we passed through the area. By significantly, I mean there is a siege army near it including weapons of war we’ve never seen before. They are building some sort of new structure there that is quite large. Nyssa noted that pieces that look like they would match it were in the caravan she shadowed on the way here.  Something is going on.

One of our warriors has volunteered to lead the team headed up to Maji for the games. Irini is well accomplished in handling the monsters out there and leads a team who are normally a part of the city guard responsible for patrolling just a bit outside the gates to make sure nothing horrible happens to Sybaris because we didn’t think to check.

So on to the orc business. Nina managed to capture Bagrak as requested while the orc was still lower on troops due to the battle up north and being unable to reconvene with the warchief to replenish them. However, Nina is dying. Areti has remained behind with the remaining 400 civilian soldiers to help them in retreating to Sanctuary after loading Nina onto the Oda ships to bring to Sarkisa.

The retreat from Leylat has begun, and as usual we expect the orcs to settle in and hold it as they reinforce their numbers and regroup to prepare for their next push.

Stories of lore 9

Alright we found another two working on the whole manifester thing.

Eero is a former evocation specialist. You could say he had a bit of a mean streak. Early in his life he was considered very talented particularly for having as much mana control as he did. He was a natural choice for the new program, just look past the bar fights. He’s taken to the art fairly well. Despite his rough behavior he is at least a soldier so he’s not too hard to control. Just don’t ask him to talk to people, I can say he’s as charismatic as the manhunter. At the very least he is used to roughing it out in the wild.

Varpu is more of a well mannered intellectual, actually she might one day be a governor as she displays traits we tend to look for in our leaders. I don’t know how she puts up with people asking her dumb questions all the time but hey, I guess she’s good with people in her own way. She’s a bit more soft spoken and tends to be very passive, often observing before taking action. We recruited her simply because the third option for people who have taken to learning manifestation is not that good at it. So the military might be an odd job for her but its a nice salary and she’s not quite nobility. I think she actually used to be a bartender.

With the university going public basically the entire slave population has enrolled as according to that old bill and so production is down a bit as a result. There is a chance we see the labor shortage problem pop back up again sooner or later as a result.

In regards to the safety chamber, I saved us some time and effort and just used the incomplete tunnel we were building to Uudistar. That is pretty effectively sealed off due to our concerns about the drow – who still have not figured out their tunnel network goes right under Jamsa. Though we’re out of manifesters to send to help assist the fabulous five, however they’re heading down to activate it.

Aato is on the way and so is the katara ship.

Gideon has suddenly disappeared. I have pretty good reason to assume he’s dead or at the very least captured. His last report was at some village he found far to the east, saying he was about to start continuing his journey.

So in an amusing twist, the Manhunter was actually captured by Iraeka and dragged back here since she has nowhere else to go. As it turned out he failed every attempt at diplomacy with her possible and she just took him prisoner instead to bring back here for interrogation. It also turns out she’s a lot sneakier then he is. I guess she just works for us now since she has nowhere else to go. I’ll go over her profile real quick I suppose.

She is a member of the Eilsath house’s ruling family and also Sakki’s former traveling companion. You could more or less consider her a sort of ranger, has a crossbow, swords, daggers, doesn’t use magic, and is -as evidenced- borderline impossible to outmaneuver in the wild. Might need a tree hugger just to keep track of her in the forest. She has survived conflict with the orcs at the battle they had with katara.

Despite her heritage she has distanced herself from her home and family in search of as she calls it “literally anything else”. Escaping the underdark to explore the surface world in all of its vastness. To be noted, she still doesn’t know where Jamsa is. We only ever showed her Uudistar. So might want to figure out what to do with her. We haven’t hired her officially yet, she just kind of wandered back to us. As your advisor I suggest we hire her officially, we have enough wizards as it is. We don’t have many people with her skillset. May want to send her to catch up with Aato actually.

Also we expanded the influence of our district again.

Greetings keeper! It is a glorious day for the Oda people. On the scouting front, Iwanagi found another coastal village. Also our scouts have ventured into the docks and determined the place is definitely abandoned. Serizawa is making his way to the northern village to check it out. Unfortunately, Ocunnohaka has met an unfortunate end on his journey along the border between the badlands and the north. I have reason to suspect he fell victim to the monsters.

In regards to the village location that Yamoaka scouted, it appears the katara have already started building something there. Though for all intents and purposes we can just move construction a bit to the west along the river I imagine.

The fishing village, along with the help of its new town guard, have managed to expand their operations.

One of the dawnbreakers was lost in the war with the orcs. One of their shamans managed to destroy Chinami’s flagship. Chinami herself survived at least. As a similar naval note, the artifact has been delivered from the nalkas and has been loaded onto the new constructed dawnbreaker outside Okushiri.

Also Yuzuki has managed to create the Sohei soldier concept. Its basically the same thing but instead of kicking people out for not being up to her standards they just get shoved out to fight. Though it should be noted, the soldier monks cannot really upgrade their gear as it would disrupt their ki flow.

Oh before the show starts, Thyra found a new village along the northern coast in her trip.

Now back to the war, it remains raging as it was last time we checked. Our citizen army managed to reach the fighting lines but there are still simply too many of the orcs. Though Nina did manage to find and kill one of their commanders at least. Though the citizen army is down 25% so far.

We’ve been coordinating with Amare as she goes between us, the elves, and the Oda. Though for the most part it doesn’t seem that we’ll be able to hold the city for long, the plan might still wind up in a retreat to sanctuary. Also Ankathi can apparently exist in the form of smoke now. And take others with her.

((Ankathi feat: Can move self and up to 100 soldiers at speed 10 across the map, though she has to know where she is going. This ability does not suffer or benefit from speed affecting hexes such as roads or snow. It can however be affected by windy days.))

Also this is Magia, one of the coven witches. I’ve sent her north to investigate the manifestation magic at Jamsa. She’s a friendlier sort then most of those within the coven so I figured she would be a good choice. Not quite as talented as the likes of Ankathi, but significantly less wicked and less likely to start a diplomatic incident. That and she wanted to visit the north anyways to see how it was. I hope she heeded my warning about taking some layers though.