Mkoll
Junior Member
Posts: 67
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Post by Mkoll on Dec 13, 2014 1:01:45 GMT 12
"Honestly? I've no idea" Murtan shrugged. "There's been plenty found around here by us so far, and we're not the only excavators. Trouble is, when it's another group that finds something what we get is rumour after rumour and what they've actually found is so far from what we're being told that it's tough to know what to believe."
Truth be told, he had heard the rumours China mentioned, but was reluctant to confirm it to someone he had little reason to trust. After all, it was the eye of a god, an incredibly rare item and potentially just as powerful.
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Narric
Junior Member
Posts: 97
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Post by Narric on Dec 17, 2014 6:48:30 GMT 12
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TD
Junior Member
Talon Draid
Posts: 60
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Post by TD on Dec 17, 2014 17:10:29 GMT 12
Talon turned around at the crash just in time for his friend to fall flat on his face. He got up and walked over, "You ok Jason? here let me help you up." Talon extended an arm and helped his friend stand. He looked at the mess before saying, "Come on, lets go get new drinks."
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Narric
Junior Member
Posts: 97
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Post by Narric on Jan 5, 2015 9:30:55 GMT 12
Jason and Talon returned to the table with the ale safely. As they sat down, Jason finally realised a question he wanted to ask. "Talon, how does that strange flying contraption of yours work?" Jason asked the Clocksmith. "I've only studied Rai-Tane, and in my travels I've never seen such a device or similar."
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TD
Junior Member
Talon Draid
Posts: 60
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Post by TD on Jan 5, 2015 21:37:26 GMT 12
Talon took a drink of his ale, "Well..." Talon paused and thought for a moment. "Well it's something I haven't had to explain before. I make toys that are like Eyes for the rich of Hygar. They are simple wind up toys. They crawl about, some of the really high end ones can fly in a circle. Then there are the constructs like Eyes. They have no wind up mechanism, they are infused with a small amount of essence. It gives them a mind." He paused for another drink, "It gives them motive power, allows them to do simple things."
"My magic let's me do that. It also lets me take control of Eyes and other constructs like him. I can see what he sees, hear what he hears. I can also make and control golems."
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Post by Ravager Zero on Jan 11, 2015 13:18:48 GMT 12
Aliss stepped carefully closer to the edge of the abyss. She placed a hand firmly against the wall as she looked down into it. Black. Deep. Then again, no light underground, but even magelights had nothing to show, so it was at least a hundred feet deep. Probably more. It might even have been big enough to hold an airship stood on end. The chamber was most definitely wide enough for it.
Aliss took a deep breath, stepping back from the edge. Arms at her sides, she raised them in front of her slowly, drawing on the skeins beneath the ground and in the walls. Balling her hands into fists she splintered the seams around the rocks, cutting rough platforms to shape. Her fingers suddenly splayed, and her arms thrust forward. With a deep, booming rumble the rock of the walls began to move into the chamber.
A lot faster than she had actually meant for it to go.
The rock platforms sheared from the walls with a dull crump, hitting something on their way down. From the atrocious ringing it was something large, metallic, and hollow. Aliss sighed, turning to the Dwarven overseer, trying to apologise by talking with her hands. Murtan was quick to translate for her, spending several tense moments in conversation with the Dwarf.
“He said to let one of the other geomancers temper your work. They want it good and solid, not fast and messy.”
Aliss sighed, grabbing one of the other goemancers and dragging him to the edge of the abyss. “Alright Aaron, you’re with me now. Let’s do it right this time.”
“Okay Aliss, but only if it’s not going to blow up in our faces. Again.”
“One time.”
Aaron rolled his eyes. “You know damn well it’s been far more than once. Were it not for your sheer Talent—and the inviolability of Dwarven contracts—I doubt they’d let you keep working discoveries.”
Aliss sighed, rolling her eyes, but she chafed inside knowing that he was probably right. Probably. But there were plenty of other reasons the Dwarves had kept her around too. She worked hard, she did extra, and she was always eager if something new came up. Not something that could be said of everyone else on this particular team.
“Ready?” Aliss asked, drawing the skeins around herself with ritualistic gesture.
“Let’s go.” Aaron tempered the skeins, reducing their shifting, chaotic movement to something far easier to track and control.
Aliss forced the skeins through the rock beneath them, around the edge of the room. Arms crossed, palms flat to the ground she sent both hands out wide, cracking the upper layer of rock into a single slab. She dropped her hands, parting off the sides, making a more manageable chunk to move. Then she drew her hands back linking the Essence through her and Aaron to the inner edge of the slab, and pushed.
With a terrific grinding noise the slab began moving, slowly, pushing out from the wall, forming a proper platform. Aliss could hear Aaron grunting with effort next to her; could feel his control slipping and the slab beginning to accelerate. Now she had to time it right—as Aaron’s control fell apart she dropped her hands and stamped her foot, rock slamming down onto the slab, fusing with it inside the wall, locking it in place. She walked over to it. Only a couple of feet wide, but it would do. It was child’s play to create a stone railing for safety.
Murtan followed her out onto the slab, keeping one hand against the wall.
“Nice work, Aliss,” He squinted into the distant darkness. “This doesn’t seem to go far.”
“It goes far enough that the others can extend it safely now.”
Aliss looked over the edge of the railing, trying to make out what lay below. All she could see was the central structure, the great pillar, and she wasn’t sure if it tapered off or was simply being swallowed by the darkness.
Gunnar drained his tankard, slamming it down and looking around. “Guess it’s my turn t’ buy you all a round.” This was met with several nods. “Right then.”
The massive bodyguard returned momentarily from the bar, carrying a tray of beers and ales. He had no idea how the young hunter had managed to trip on a simple planked floor. Until his foot caught the edge of the loose plank. He rocked back, holding the tray with both hands, slamming his foot down on the loose end of the board. He yelled over his shoulder at the tavern staff that they should fix it.
“Maybe I shouldn’t’ve laughed so hard when you tripped, master Drakoon, but you did make an impressive mess. You deserve this,” Gunnar set a drink down in front of Jason before passing everyone else’s around. Jason took a swig, then downed half the glass. Sitting across from Bethany flicked stray hairs from her face before draining her tankard.
“I hope Aliss gets back in time to see us perform tonight,” the wardancer smiled, looking at the snowfall out the window. “Snow shouldn’t be too heavy, even with that storm rolling in.”
“It’s hitting before tonight,” Jason disagreed. “Blowing in from the plains. Wherever Aliss is, I have a strong feeling she’s going to be stuck there for a while.”
“Maybe yer right, laddie,” Gunnar spoke up, and everyone stopped to listen. “But then maybe ye haven’t seen an ice barge cut through a blizzard before. Take more’n a little snow to stop one of those.”
“I’d say that storm is the definition of more than a little snow, Gunnar,” Talon fixed his old friend with a hard stare. “We’ve been outpacing for a little while, but the wind has since picked up.”
“Don’t matter none. Saw the barge this mornin’ comin’ in to town. Saw them Dwarves on the deck. It ain’t stopping unless it hits a proper fall maelstrom.”
China and Darius stood on the rock platform past the end of the corridor. Whatever it was in the centre was metallic, large, and most certainly draining Essence from the surrounding area. Darius reached out, feeling the warp and weft, ebb and flow of the skeins. It was definitely a drain rune—not silence, but something actively siphoning the skeins away, probably to fuel some other process. He just could not identify which drain rune.
There was not Ananta, as he had first suspected. No, this effect was far too powerful. Someone, somehow, had managed to carve and invoke Ananatasamma, the true rune of Eternity. Thus, whatever it was in this chamber, it was clearly designed to last forever. Then there were two more runes, simpler, more purposeful. First of those was Kiisari, the set rune, which meant that this chamber, or the structure at its heart, had some partner, somewhere else in the world. He tried tracing it, but all he felt was a faint indication of a distance so vast as to be completely unfathomable to his or any other mind.
The fourth rune was unfamiliar in the extreme, something he had come across only a handful of times in the past. It took him ten minutes of searching through his book, China waiting patiently nearby, before he could identify the rune in question.
Nazara.
The Rune of Sight. It was so rare as to be unseen by all but the most powerful runesmiths, because the sight it offered was not just of the eye—and had nothing to do with scrying—but was sight of everything, visible and not, mundane and magical. A rune regarded as so difficult to forge properly that the result of wearing an improper version was almost always a temporary madness followed by a sensation of total blindness, despite being able to see perfectly.
“Madness,” he mumbled, snapping his tome shut. “China, they have used four runes. A drain rune which I cannot yet identify—it is not, as we first thought, a rune of silence. A rune of creation—the rune of eternity; I so wish to see how they have forged and invoked it without destroying themselves. Kiisari, the set rune, such that this place is linked with another, so very distant that the link may even have been broken by now. The last is Nazara—a rune I have not seen nor heard of in over fifteen years, such is its rarity.”
“What do you think it does?”
“I would hazard a guess—and it is of course only a very rough guess—that this runic phrase allows whoever stands in the right place to see something very, very far away. Something on the order of a magickal telescope, but orders of magnitude more powerful.”
China cursed, realizing something about the mission the former Lady Cyven had given her. What information they knew came from the source, and that source had copied it from the Dwarves, verbatim. The Dwarves, of course, were literal minded. She had to take a risk, showing Darius the scrap of paper that mentioned the Eye of God.
“Idiots. Whoever translated this from Karuhn has no idea how abstraction works vs determinism in that language. I know the Dwarves have the opposite problem trying to translate the runes around here, but this… whoever you got this from should be shot. What the Dwarves have found here is not God’s Eye, or the eye of a god, or anything like that. What they found was called the ‘vision from above the heavens’… oh.”
“What? What is it?” China pressed Darius for more information—it sound like he had just figured something out.
“That’s what this place is. It’s why they used Nazara, and Kiisari. Huh… I’ll speak with a foreman, but I’m fairly sure that’s correct.”
And before China could respond, the professor had rushed off, sketching a runic phrase in his notebook.
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Post by The Man They Call Jayne on Jan 11, 2015 13:38:11 GMT 12
Looking down over the abyss, Aliss was desperate to find out what was down there. Her mind ticked away on working out what could be done about it. Certainly, they had found no way down, and even she wasn't as care free as to think about just making a route herself. Still, whatever was draining the essence, couldn't be draining all the essence, or the runes that powered it wouldn't work, right? This made a degree of sense to her, and she made a, undoubtedly soon forgotten, mental note to ask Darius more about how runes actually worked at some point, if she remembered. Maybe a rune based light would be affected less.
"So." She said, turning to Murtan. "What would our employers like us to do next?"
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Post by Mabbz on Jan 12, 2015 10:35:20 GMT 12
China quite liked Darius. His focus on his work was to be applauded, and the fact he seemed unaffected by - or possibly unaware of - her magelines meant he was much easier to be around than most people. She had in the past considered trying to get the tatoos removed so that she could live a more normal life, and being around Darius brought those thoughts back to the surface. It was irritating, as she knew she would never actually do it and yet couldn't stop herself thinking about what it might be like.
Still, any fondness she felt for Darius didn't change the fact that she was here for information, and he had some. Catching up with him, she followed him to the foreman.
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Mkoll
Junior Member
Posts: 67
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Post by Mkoll on Jan 13, 2015 6:16:45 GMT 12
"Well, I'm guessing they'll want more work doing on the platform eventually" Murtan replied. "No doubt they'll want to see what other information they can get from the platform so far. You know ho cautious the dwarfs are."
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Post by The Man They Call Jayne on Jan 16, 2015 12:01:02 GMT 12
"Yes, but I wanna do something now. I wanna know what's down there." She said, leaning precariously over the edge of the abyss. In truth she was also looking forward to meeting up with Bethany again, and whoever it was that was supposed to have caught up with them at the inn last night.
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Post by Ravager Zero on Jan 24, 2015 16:40:57 GMT 12
“Thank you,” Darius bowed, turning from the foreman. “I take it you’ve confirmed your hunch?” China asked the professor. “To some degree, miss Sorrows. It remains for us to reach that central platform, but when we do, I’ll know for sure—and so will everyone else. And to think, all of it was done with runes.” “All of what, professor?” “This,” Ivarsen spread his hands wide, taking in the entire complex. “This, I think, was not a temple—despite the inscriptions I’ve been translating. I do believe it may actually have been a research facility, much like the faculty of engineering at our own University of Cyven. Clearly more advanced, of course, and incorporating runes—but I’m not sure about regular magick—or even if enmeshing was known of back then.” China frowned slightly, pursing her lips, falling into step beside the professor. So, this place was, according to him, not a temple. The eye of the gods was not a magickal artefact, but perhaps some kind of construct, which better translated as sight of heaven. They had been studying something, of course, but the question was what? Had they found it? And on a darker note, was what they found the cause of the facility’s current disrepair?
After talking briefly with the overseer, Murtan knew Aliss would likely be disappointed. Typical Dwarvish caution, but when exploring the unknown, it made a lot of sense. It was also growing late in the afternoon, and soon it would be time to return, assuming the storm had not yet broken over the camp. “Nothing more today, Aliss. The Dwarves want to make a full inspection themselves before advancing further.” The young magess groaned, but was otherwise silent. It was just like every other time, and complaining hadn’t helped then either. “We can also head up, we should make it back to Dalton just after nightfall.” Nothing else of import happened during the afternoon, and Aliss and Murtan found themselves on the ice barge once more, the mammoths ahead unconcernedly chewing on the sparse grasses beneath the snow, frozen flakes piling up against their flanks and slowly turning them white. One shook itself briefly, the snow falling in a minor cascade to form a pile of slush on the ground. The other stamped its feet, ready to start moving. Deep within the barge’s hull, China found herself next to Darius once again, through some accident of fate. “So what is it you believe this artefact is?” Darius frowned, considering his answer. She wasn’t pushy, and she wasn’t trying to pry. She actually seemed genuinely curious to him, but the way other people flocked to her gave him pause—as did the way she carefully guarded herself around such crowds. Not that he had seen much of the behaviour, but it was enough to draw some conclusions. She’d also been looking for the eye of a god, something that the Dwarves had spoken little of—something that maybe she should not have known about. But what could it hurt, to tell her his observations thus far? “I believe to be similar to an airship,” the professor’s voice was hushed, trying not to be overheard. “Only, of course, this one would somehow fly much higher than is normal. The runes, if my translation is correct—and I think strongly that it is—allow a person to see what lies beneath the airship. The view a bird might have, or a dragon. To what end the people that built this complex did this, I cannot say. I may still be wrong. It may in fact be something that looks upwards—outwards—from Firma, rather than down towards it. To know, we must first find a way to that platform the other magess spoke of.” “How then might we do that?” “I do not know, Miss Sorrows, but the builders will have left a way, even if it is not obvious to us yet.”
Bethany sat loosely in her chair, in a small room behind the stage. So did half the troupe. The fact it was the mayor’s office held no import, as the man had gladly vacated it—taking with him anything important—in return for a ringside seat to their performance and the ability to talk one on one later. Her fingers danced through her fiery hair, and crackling energy surrounded her fingertips. She knew how much Aliss would enjoy seeing the display of her powers. Probably Talon and Jason too—but most men were easily entranced. Even Gunnar had made comments about her grace. Bethany hoped the ice barge would return before dark—they had been working on a new routine to surprise everyone, and most of the itinerant population corralled by the Dwarves would appreciate the distraction. The new routine was based on the epic story, the legend, the heroes of Vidan, and their defeat of the necromancer Caitlyn Rose.
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Mkoll
Junior Member
Posts: 67
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Post by Mkoll on Jan 26, 2015 1:44:50 GMT 12
"Just a thought" Murtan mused "maybe we're going about this the wrong way."
"What do you mean?" Aliss asked
"Well, we're trying to get to the platform through geomancy, and I'm guessing other magical means have been tried too, and we're struggling. It's a slow process. But has anyone thought to try mundane ways yet? Rope, ladders etc? It's a long way, sure, but it could work and getting there could give us more information on easier ways to get others there."
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Post by The Man They Call Jayne on Jan 26, 2015 2:58:01 GMT 12
"I would have thought that the Dwarves of all people would have considered non magickal means first. But even then you need to get your rope over there and attached, and it's a long way to throw something that heavy."
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Mkoll
Junior Member
Posts: 67
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Post by Mkoll on Jan 26, 2015 7:57:42 GMT 12
"So maybe we don't throw it. Fire it from a crossbow perhaps? The dwarfs may have thought of it, maybe tried it even, but it couldn't hurt to ask." Murtan replied
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Narric
Junior Member
Posts: 97
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Post by Narric on Jan 26, 2015 8:33:05 GMT 12
Jason sat slumped in his seat, awaiting the performance to begin. He had stolen himself a seat to the far side, as he didn't want to be trapped amongst a crowd of sweaty or mud covered workers. Travelling the lands alone had had an affect on how much he wanted to be around people, but hadn't dulled his taste to see something new.
He wondered where Talon had gotten to.
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Post by Mabbz on Jan 26, 2015 9:59:56 GMT 12
An airship that would fly higher than normal, with runes that allowed people to see what lay below it? China couldn't really be called an expert on such things, but the only reason she could see to build such a complicated device rather than using more common airships and mundane telescopes was as a means of spying; to fly so high that the enemy wouldn't notice and wouldn't be able to do anything about it even if they did, and use the magically enhanced sight of the 'vision from above the heavens' to see exactly what was going on on the ground. The idea seemed unnecessarily complex to her though.
There had to be more to it, and the only way to find out would be to reach the platform. But how to do so? Magic wouldn't work, it was too far and too deep to easily bridge, a rope arrow would probably just glance off the metal and anything more powerful might damage it. China was dubious at Darius' assertion that they would find the builders' way across, as time would probably have destroyed it by now.
Come to think of it, what had Darius mentioned earlier? A translation from the entrance. 'Only those who walk the sacrificial path can complete the ritual.' What did this ritual have to do with the construct? If they were linked, then perhaps the sacrificial path was the way across. A thought occurred to her, so she turned to Darius.
"The chasm between us and the construct. Do you know how deep it is? And what's at the bottom?"
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TD
Junior Member
Talon Draid
Posts: 60
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Post by TD on Jan 26, 2015 11:47:28 GMT 12
Talon wandered into the hall, Eyes darting into the air above the crowd. He wanted to suit with Jason if he could though with Eyes with him, he want too worried if he had to suit by himself up the back. Eyes darted around the room and Talon quickly found Jason sitting to one side of the room. He started moving through the crowd to his friend.
"Evening Jason. Looking forward to the performance?" He asked. He was lucky enough to five the seat next to Jason free, "mind if I sit there?" He asked before Jason could reply to the first question.
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Post by The Man They Call Jayne on Jan 30, 2015 13:00:55 GMT 12
Aliss was really wishing the ice barge was going faster. She wasn't cold, but she was a little hungry and she wanted to see if Bethany was back. It would be good to see her old friends again, and, hopefully, see one of her dances. It would be a nice treat for Murtan too, he deserved something nice for putting up with her.
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Narric
Junior Member
Posts: 97
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Post by Narric on Feb 9, 2015 7:36:25 GMT 12
Jason looked up to see his new found friend striding towards him, and sit down to his side. "Sorry for losing you earlier." Jason sincerely remarked. "I didn't like the idea of being stuck in the middle of the crowd. Its some sort of mentallity that I've fallen into whilst traveling and working alone. So many people in one place feels like the prelude to some sort of mob lynching, which I've seen a fair number of times in the past." Jason noticed he had become slumped in his chair. Not wanting to seem uncivilised or uncultured, he imediately straightened himself up. "But don't worry about that" He tried to brush off his earlier tangent. "Lets just enjoy the show."
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Post by Railgun Convention on Feb 10, 2015 4:10:26 GMT 12
Darius paused in the middle of his scribbling.
"To be honest, I was so caught up in the runes I didn't ever consider there could be something at the bottom. Perhaps there might be some bridge or something... bridge... bridge, bridge, bridge... Could it be...?"
Returning to his notebook, the professor became quiet as he considered the implications of his thoughts. It took China prodding him a couple of minutes later to bring him out of his stupor and explain.
"I have only ever encountered such a thing once before, but there was once an ancient temple where there was a gap between us and our prize. Davio found the route over the gap by falling on it - it was a transparent beam, invisible from above, that spanned the gap and allowed those who were paying close attention to cross. Perhaps some magical alternative might come into play here; either that, or the right incantation or password must be used to create the bridge. Or even summon it from the bottom of the chasm. Who knows?" And with that, he returned to his scribblings.
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