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.