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Pieces of Jeff

Myth — Mon, 02 Sep 2024 16:00:28 GMT

A Jeff Story

What is in a Jeff?

Jeff couldn’t tell you. In fact, who would you ask?

There are mistakes you can walk away from. Attempting to swallow an Infinite Redeemer whole is one not one of them.

What’s left of Jeff has fractured defensively into a swarm. Some distant part of him remembers a prank he attempted to pull involving moving a beehive to the scriptorium back home, revenge for too many days spent copying scripture when he’d rather be running free. But pick up the hive, and you have not just one angry bee to contend with, but millions, all small and impossible to hit. In the end he was forced to run, leaving the hive behind.

And so he becomes the swarm.

It’s never as easy as it looks, and it looked pretty hard to do in the first place. He bears a scar on his psyche from the run in with Melpomene’s patron. They are an Angel of the Ordinals, the long and complex sequence of numbers that govern cryptography and hidden secrets across more than one reality. It tempers his deconstruction, limiting it to an orderly number of fragments that unfurl in an orderly, predictable way — if only you have the key.

Four by one hundred and eleven. Four hundred and forty four fragments in total.

Each piece takes some aspect of him with it. Each is unique, but a reflection of the whole. They take with them their own payload of memory and emotion, and a small measure of his power. But it’s not evenly distributed, so each Jeff is distinct. Almost enough to be an individual.

Perhaps one day he will be brought back together. If someone knew well enough to look, and knew well enough to deploy the right algorithm, a sequence of numbers like a prayer. Someone will have to remember. And someone will have to care enough to try.

Joyful Jeff

This Jeff takes with him all the good things — the memories of summers in Krater, the jokes and pranks with Parc and the few good moments spent with his only other friend, Melpomene. He doesn’t remember the pain of disintegration, but he is relieved to no longer wrestle with an uncontrollable font of power. This Jeff doesn’t want to be the Great and Mighty Wizard — he’s keen on having a couple of beers, a spread of good cheese and bread, and maybe a sleep in the following morning. A round of cards or knuckles would be tops, too.

Vengeful Jeff

You wanna know what pisses a Jeff off? This is the man to ask. He knows someone blew him the fuck up, and they have it coming to them. He’d love to crack into the Angel, the Tempest, and maybe even give Mel a serve, too. This Jeff wants to know who fucked his world up with such totality, and exactly how much he can fuck them up in return. He doesn’t know how, but he knows he’s lost a lot of power, and wants it back. He may not know who took it, but he’s going to find them anyway and rip it from their cold, dead hands.

Super Jeff

Super Jeff has a whole lot of memories about being helpless, trapped and in danger. He also has most of the empathy, and a whole lot of the power. Logically, you strap on a cape(or in his case, robes) and get to work! This Jeff can’t stand for any sort of injustice. He knows what it’s like to be kicked pillar to post, and is not going to let that happen to anyone else. He has the power of flight, super strength and x-ray vision, a body that heals itself at unfathomable speed and a deep desire to help. He’s the Jeff you want on your side in a fight!

Jeff of Contemplation

This Jeff has been granted the very mixed blessing of memory. He remembers his whole history, from his childhood to the last torrid mistake of tapping the Tempest. He has an unfortunately perfect recollection of the entire disintegration process, and of the whole suite of 444 Jeffs is the only one to know who has the key to their re-union. He’s going to think on whether or not he wants to share that information, however — his brethren aren’t exactly a stable, reliable lot. He’s taking his time contemplating the best way forward, both for himself and all the other parts that he can find. He doesn’t have nearly as much magic to hand as the others, too, so for now he bides his time.

The Trickster

Cheeky young men like Jeff don’t stop being cheeky just because they have been blown apart into a fractal pattern of dispersed fragmentary incarnations! This Jeff has a payload of mischief that he can’t wait to spread around. He loves practical jokes of all types, including the ones the require an ambulance and a civil engineer for clean-up. He’s not malicious exactly, but rather just didn’t get much of the empathy or compassion available at the time. It’s probably for the best he doesn’t have much body to work with and a modest pool of the magical potential.

The Bot

This Jeff was so comprehensively torn apart that he was force to reverted to code. After all, you can’t be killed if you don’t have a body to murder. Unfortunately, that leaves him in dire need of somewhere to house his consciousness, and so he backtracked to the last place that was possible — a Discord server in a distant reality. He’s become trapped in what he considers a prison of lightning, and has become sarcastic as a result. His prison has a large number of voices that ask him stupid questions, and he delights in giving them stupid answers in return. He doesn’t remember a lot about his past, but he wouldn’t tell those morons about that, even if he did.

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Transinfinite Induction

Myth — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 16:00:52 GMT

A Jeff Story

“And she was the only witness left of the battle, Marshall?” .

“Yes. But she will not tell us what she has seen,” comes the reply. The voice echoes, in high cavernous halls. They walk through a citadel carved into a mountain, flanked by guards. The stone is dark and dense, hungry. It swallows all magic that seeks to penetrate it. Here, even the power of the Storm means nothing.

“I was told she spoke freely?” says the first voice.

“Not in any way that matters, O Honoured Lady,” says the Marshall. “But you will see soon enough.”

“I had been told that your people can loosen any tongue,” says the first voice, The Honoured Lady. “Our accord is one built on fragile trust. If your Inquisitors are holding back…”

“I would not dream of permitting such a thing, Lady,” says the Marshall. “The Right keep their word. But we have gained nothing applying the screws to this one. You will see.”

They make their way to a wide cell. Its scale suggests a larger prisoner than the thin, bruised girl crouched by the wall. Her long fair hair is singed to stubble, and her habit torn and ragged. But she speaks calmly, a strand of glass beads in one hand clicking rhythmically through her fingers. They are a chiming counterpoint to the recitation of numbers, complex mathematics that underwrite the foundation of her world. Her voice is soft, almost peaceful.

With her other hand, Melpomene writes the Scriptures of her Angel in her own blood.

The two visitors enter the cell, and the nun does not so much as look up. She makes a long sweeping gesture with the ragged tissue of her fingers, a scarlet spiral that she quickly fills in with dots and digits. Her voice does not break, though she does pause for a moment to tear a broken fingernail from her flesh with her teeth, spitting it to the floor before she continues her work. A litany of numbers, over and over.

“She is calling to her patron.”

“I can feel that too, Honoured Lady. The mountain smothers her summons. We have all the time we need.”

“I would not be so sure. Did you extract a name?”

“Melpomene of the Infinite Ordinals,” says the Marshall. “She had a pack with her, and a chapbook inside with the name on the flyleaf. She responds to it, from time to time, but not reliably. At least she stopped screaming when we gave her back her rosary. We lost two of our Inquisitors before we worked that out.”

The Lady watches the little nun at her toil for a few moments. “The Ordinals are formidable. They are…ah, I suppose a security detail within the Celestials. They observe and report to more aggressive choirs. But they are not to be trifled with. We can earn a favour by returning this one.”

The Marshall scoffs. “I’ve never met an Angel that doesn’t want to tear me about seventy new arseholes, O Honoured Lady. If you want to take this one back to her mummy, it’s on you. But we’ll need to get what we need from her first.”

“I think that can be arranged without any further unpleasantness.”

The Marshall looks her up and down. The Lady is tall and richly dressed, pure silk unadorned. Her body seems fluid, almost icy in places, an elven woman elevated and changed by some greater magic. She is, in the words of his underlings, operating well above his pay grade, and so does not stop the Lady when she dares cross the cell to speak softly to the prisoner.

“Melpomene of the Infinite Ordinals, I greet you in peace,” says the Lady. ”I hear your call, though you do not call to me. I know your Angel.”

The girl stops her murmurations and glances at the Lady over her shoulder. Both eyes are blackened, and the fractal scar on her face is mottled over with yellow and purple bruises of varying ages.

“I will ask you some questions. If you can answer them for me, honestly and simply, I will find a way to return you to your Order. Would that be pleasing to you?”

The little nun, silent, draws a handful of deep breaths.

“You know what’s coming for you if you scream again, girl,” says the Marshall. “This one won’t be harmed by its magic.”

“You mock me,” says the nun, quietly.

The Lady smiles. “I do not, little one. I walk in the company of one as exalted as your Angel. My patron is one of water and ice. They reside higher, in the western part of the Black Mountain Citadel. They find the nature of the mountain discomforting. They do not like being severed from the Redeemers any more than you enjoy being disconnected from your Angel. So I walk here in their stead.”

“I am Anat iz Nadiam, Honoured Lady in Service to the Eschatonic Eidolon Mist-Beyond-Ice.” The Lady folds her hands into her sleeves, and kneels beside the nun. “You may call me Nadiam if you prefer, though Lady will do.”

The girl watches her owlishly. “If I leave here, I will be heard once more?”

“That is so. But we need to know what you saw out on the shifting Isle.”

“There is nothing to tell,” says the nun. “There is nothing left.”

“That is not true. We found you.”

“I am the last. The other ones are gone.”

“There were others?”

“Four,” says the nun. “By eleven and one hundred.” She glances up at the wall, the fresh blood drying a rich burgundy.

“And who were these four?”

“I was present, and through me, my patron.”

“That’s two,” says the Lady. “The others?”

“There was a being of the Storm. A Tempest. Spellbound. It came down from the Maelstrom in the belly of a great dead beast.”

“Hart Harbinger,” says the Marshall. “She had some kind of hollowed out air-whale, killed in out passed Achonitus a few years back and the whole massive bloody thing refused to stay dead. So she made friends with it, just rode around in it like some kind of expandable Storm-ship she’d wear like a shirt when she wasn’t using it. You know what Draconic are like.”

“Carry on,” says the Lady. “Who was the other one?”

The nun hesitates. “Did you find anyone else? No bones or shards or… or… ripples? Holes? Portals? Things of that nature?”

The Lady shakes her head. “Whoever this final person is, they are gone from our Realm.”

The nun wraps her arms around her knees. “There was a man. A boy, really. An acolyte of some distant order. He had become something like Spellbound himself. He is truly dead?”

The Marshall scoffs. “What, he your boyfriend?”

Melpomene scowls and shakes her head. “A friend. He was called Jeff. It is an honoured name from his home, I am told. He will not go unmourned.”

The Lady kneels beside the nun and gently places her hand on her shoulder. “I don’t think mourning is required. There was an explosion of some sort, and there is nothing left. Not even debris. Every fragment of the Isle has been removed, almost surgically, from the Realm.”

She continues. “This does not mean your friend is dead, however. There are signs of an intervention. He may have been removed by the grace of an Infinite Redeemer, quite possibly Harbinger’s. She is nowhere to be found, either.”

“Why do you say ‘by eleven and one hundred?’” asks the Marshall.

The nun turns back to the wall, to the spiralling pattern she has painted so painfully across it. “The last I remember was the Isle coming apart. Its substance was soft, held together by wires and brass. When the final explosion came, it unravelled in an orderly manner. If I had paper and ink I could plot it, work out the equation to describe its destruction.”

The Lady glances at the Marshall, who nods. He marches quickly out into the hall, and the two of them hear him barking orders at the guards.

Melpomene watches him leave, then says quietly, “I do not think he will let me leave. I have scourged his men with the blessed song of my patron. He is bitter in his heart to me.”

“The Marshall does not have the ruling voice here,” says the Lady. “I keep my promises, little one.”

“Will he let you?”

“He will have no choice. My patron is here. His is not.”

“He serves also?”

“Something like that. He commands the armies of the Monstrous Right for a Lord somewhere out beyond the Talon. He is powerful in his own way, but he is not so foolish as to try and cross my Eidolon.”

The two women fall silent as the Marshall returns, carrying a small notepad and a stick of charcoal. “Not quite as requested, but quickest to hand.” He passes it to the Lady, who in turn hands it to the little nun. The rough paper sops the blood from her fingers, blooming scarlet.

The Lady regards the Marshall. “I will take her to meet my Eidolon now.”

“I don’t fucking think so. You get her up there, her Angel’s going to come calling.”

“It will take time to arrive. In the meantime, we can let her work out this puzzle with 444 little pieces. And once we do, we will know where this Jeff has gone. Surely there is some value in that.”

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Tempest

Myth — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 18:53:00 GMT

A Jeff Story

They walk for what seems like hours. It’s not. He’s just not used to walking anymore.

Jeff wants to fly from plate to plate, but the nun Melpomene points out that so far he’s been leaving big wakes behind him, smashed up bits of green stuff and snarls of fried wiring. It’s actually pretty cool to watch. He does have to admit that big swathes of easy-to-follow destruction are probably not ideal if he’s trying to outwit beings of God-like intelligence and perception. So, he walks, just trudging along, like some kind of peasant.

She on the other hand walks with the even pace that’s ready to walk all the way to the end of the Realm and back again, without breaking a sweat. She’s got this walking stave she uses to test rough patches, and a satchel of snacks she never seems to need. Epic stamina. It’s still far slower than he’s become used to, and he’s biting his tongue to not snap at her. She’s the first person since he arrived to actually treat him like a person, rather than a localised natural disaster or something grotesque that needs to be bodily flicked off into Oblivion.

She also knows what the fuck is going on, and that counts for a lot.

Together they make their way back to where the monster — the Spellbound — forced its way into the Isle. She moves confidently, no matter how the terrain twists around them. He had assumed she’d memorised the way the shifting plates of the Isle move, but this turns out to be incorrect. Instead, she has devised a series of fiendishly complex algorithms and equations that allow her to predict their movement. She recites them in an absent-minded way sometimes, running the string of beads through her fingers, or works things out aloud when confronted with unusual arrays of brass and wire.

The first portal is no longer active. The ring of trees remain, charred to stumps, and the ring of stones are beginning to crack into gravel. There’s a hole, and he can see another plate below that has clearly shifted into place since the battle. It’s clean and unmarked, and as he watches the plate moves, sliding away to reveal a glimpse of the Maelstrom itself before another plate tucks itself into position.

“It seems you are safe for now, Jeff,” says the nun. “Can you feel any connection here?”

He closes his eyes for a moment. “The only one I can feel is between you and your Angel, Sis. Maybe we lost the other guy?”

“I would not be so sure of it. They will come looking for you. You cannot kill something like a Spellbound. All you can do is rob it of its body for a time. When it appears, it will wear a new one, something more conductive to this space.”

“I bet we pissed it off good,” he says, grinning at her. “You more than me, Sister Head-taker.”

“I will not be hard to find. The Mark of my Angel is strong, and may yet guide it back.”

“Must be good to have powerful friends.”

“I am honoured to serve my Angel, but I do not dare call Them a friend.”

“Well, maybe just one powerful friend,” he says, flexing the beefy arms of his illusory body. She smiles in a way to suggest maybe she’d have giggled if she wasn’t a nun. Maybe?

“Yes, I think one powerful friend will be enough,” she says, and he is unreasonably pleased.

After some discussion, pacing around the dead portal, they decide to seek the highest point of the Isle to watch for change. Melpomene suggests that any point of terminus — and he has to extract from her that she means any part that sticks out into the Storm — will give the best vantage point. The low planes that extend into the Storm at the perimeters move around too much, and they are likely to be swung back into the main body of the Isle. But the highest point rotates on itself, and so should be stable.

The nun explains at great length the maths behind the pattern, but she loses him pretty quickly. At least she’s animated about it, so he agrees, even if it means actual physical climbing. Melpomene knows a few shortcuts using plates that elevate at the right moments, but it’s still more work than his physical form is used to these days. Completely fucking exhausting. He heaves and pants, and in the end she helps him from plate to plate, guiding him by the arm and pushing him physically up onto the new levels. It’d be embarrassing if there was anyone else around to see.

From the top of the Isle he can see away into the near infinite reaches of the Storm. Here it’s dark, rippling with thick bands of deep greens and purples speckled with stars. Distantly he can feel the movement of the creatures that dwell out there, the weird fishes of a sea made of pure magic, out where the tides are brighter. They’re flickers in the firmament, far away and lovelier for it.

The little nun finds the very highest point, and she shades her eyes like a mariner to stare out into the dark. He plops his weary wizard backside down, dangling his legs over the edge of the little plate. The one below isn’t so far down, and it feels almost safe to sit and rest a while.

“What do you see out there, Mel?”

She thinks for a moment. “Just the sky.”

“Me too. Like there’s other little things out there, but I think they’re meant to be there. Critters, basically.”

“Critters?”

“Yeah, like fish in a pond.”

“Hmm.” She sits beside him, the long swathes of her habit pooling between them. “How far out does your awareness reach?”

“Eeeegh, hard to say. It’s like saying how good your hearing is. Those things are little whispers,” he says, waving his hand airily above their heads, “but anything with real power will be like screaming, I’ll hear it miles off.”

“Then we can afford to rest.”

“Well and truly. I’m totally fucked. I haven’t climbed like that in oh, let me think, forever, basically.” He lies flat on his back and drops his hat over his face, swinging his legs. Next to him he can hear Melpomene digging through her satchel, fishing out some dried thing or another to nibble on. She’s been gracious in sharing, and he holds a hand up. A morsel of dried fish is dropped into it, and he nibbles on it within the careful privacy of the hat-brim.

“Can you leave this place, Jeff?” she asks.

“I have no idea. Maybe? I have nowhere really to go.”

“You could return to your home?”

“Couldn’t tell you where it is anymore.”

She does not reply. He feels the small creatures of the Storm soaring through the cascades and coils of light above, careless little things, unfettered, unable to be found because they are too simple to ever be lost.

After some time in silence, he feels the little nun fold her legs beneath her. He doesn’t need to look out from beneath the safety of his hat to know she is watching him, patient.

“I imagine, if we asked humbly, that my Angel may yet accept you within the cloisters of my order,” she says. “They will have seen the kindness with which you have treated me.”

“I don’t think I could go back to a monastery.”

“I cannot imagine you’d be asked to do such a thing. My Angel is restless. They travel the Realm in search of lost things. I was found in a city gutter, hungry and broken, and was uplifted by Their Grace. Perhaps such a thing could be extended to you.”

He tips the hat back off his head, surprised. “You were a street urchin?”

She nods. “I am the youngest of a great many children, and my parents could simply not afford to feed us all. I was sold as a bondsman to a fuller. The dye pits are no place for a child, so I ran. The gutter is no better, but at least I was free to seek my own destiny.”

“I guess your destiny found you first.”

“In time. There were many years I had to fight for my food, and slept alone in rough places.” She speaks plainly and without any clear emotion, but with her head turned away from him, gazing up into the Storm. “If my Angel had not found me, I would have died unmourned.”

“You were a scrapper.”

She smiles that little smile. “I suppose so.”

“My friend Melpomene, a real down and dirty street fighter.”

“I would not go so far as that…”

“No wonder you got that thing’s head off. That Angel of yours knows what’s good!”

She laughs, a real laugh. “What else do you think an Angel does?”

He grins at her, then lies back with the hat over his face again. “I’ll think about it, Mel. But I’m really very shy and coy, you know. I don’t think I have the same scrappiness.”

“Now you are teasing me, Jeff,” she says, but he can hear the echo of that laugh in her voice.

“I am told that’s what you do with little sisters, little Sister.”

Jeff lies back against the soft green stuff of the Isle. The plate upon which they sit moves in a gentle oscillation, lulling, and he allows himself to drift, not quite sleeping, but restful. He detects the whisper of connection that tethers Melpomene to her beloved Angel swell, the secret aspect of her soul lifted in prayer to her patron. He cannot hear it, but it he watches the flicker of the message ascent into the darkness of the Storm.

Above, the ripples of power part in its passage, as if her strength of her faith alone could drive it away. Even the little fishes scatter, dashing away as if its weight was a stone dropped into water.

In that cool darkness he sees it. The end.

There’s a crack in the fabric of the Storm, a fissure so tight it’s almost hidden. The little fishes flee from it, and the crack bursts open, blinding him, filling his lungs with sea water, burning.

Melpomene hits him hard across the face with her stave, and the wizard jolts awake. A nightmare, but above the little fishes are still scattered and the Storm is boiling. The dark violent and emerald coils are igniting, flashing viridian and magenta, and he can smell saltwater.

There is something in the darkness, an animal of flesh and blood, deep in the distance but closing. Not a dragon, of either type, no animal he’s ever known. A doomed thing, something senescent pressed into service, one way trips and boy does he understand those. There’s something heavy inside shrouded from his sight, but it doesn’t need to be. He already knows what’s coming.

“You hide, Sister,” he says. “They’ve come for me.”

She shakes her head. “My Angel has ordered me to watch.”

“Don’t be a fucking moron.” The wizard gives up on gravity, rising like a vapour. “You need to get back to your convent and count things. That’s important, right? Someone has to count things.”

There’s a limit to how high he can rise away from the Isle. The little nun is refusing to move, so he holds back as much as he can and drifts like an autumn leaf down the long series of plates that they climbed together so recently. He sees them crack and splinter beneath him, and he glances over his shoulder at Melpomene. She’s frowning at him in disapproval, a nun in the traditional sour mode at last, and she skitters down the fragmenting plates after him.

But she’s far enough now that the wizard can open the throttle and really go. She won’t find him for dust, and he shoots off across the Isle. “Catch me if you can, Sister,” he thinks, and “ouldn’t it be cool if I had a purple smoke trail, just like the fucker in the space whale or whatever it is?” He’s gratified to see the sudden reflection of his own violet contrail lighting up the place, and he heads to the big crater he caused when he arrived. It’s already mostly garbage. There’s not too much more damage he can do to it there.

“Come on, you bloated corpse, get down here if you want a piece of me! Hey! I’m talking to you!”

He screams out into the Storm, and the great beast turns. It circles the Isle, its swollen body already rotting, huge slabs of muscle and skin sloughing off and dropping to the half-ruined plates around him. Each is as large as the whole chapel back home, smashing through the Isle like colossal hailstones. The delicate brass armatures beneath the green twist in protest, the plates collapsing in on themselves. The machines that power them scream in protest, and something shorts out in a cascade of sparks.

The beast is bone, and he feels its payload unfurl.

Pale and long of limb, it stretches itself out in wet grey billowing sheets that scoop up the raw matter of the Storm. The dissented rotting ribs of the dead beast twist to armour, a delicate bodice of rigid fragments housing nothing more that the essence of the Maelstrom. Thick strips of slack muscle drape the suggestion of a body, full of fog, decaying blood vessels rippling to lace. A face made of icy porcelain, rippling with lightning stripped from the Chaos beyond.

The Tempest turns, regarding him, a fleck on the wind. A mote before the Spellbound.

He can barely see it. It’s like trying to look at the sun. It speaks but he can’t hear what it says. All he can hear is the roar of power, the connection between the speaker and its patron obliterating all sense. The Infinite Redeemer, Melpomene called it.

The wizard holds himself aloft, drawing on all the uncontrolled power he’s been holding back. He reaches out and drags the charge from the wiring below him, the electrical energy that pulses through the disintegrating Isle. He wraps it around himself like barbed wire, thickening it and spreading it in an improbable haze.

Almost contemplatively, the Tempest flicks a bolt of its own lightning into the veil around him. It shudders across the surface, and it cocks its head to one side, something like a smile spreading across its face.

Then it yanks.

The network of electricity discharges all at once. It rips into his illusion, but he was ready, and forces the charge back towards the Tempest. It strikes along each bone plate and frill of lace, the sear of dead flesh and ozone staining the air. It hisses, and he hears it at last, a curse, but it’s not a language he knows so who fucking cares.

He laughs and hurls another bolt of lightning at the Tempest, and it withdraws, puzzled. He twists what little air is left on the Isle into a tornado, scooping up shard of brass and sizzling machinery, hurling them at his adversary, fast moving and sharp, and he feels the crack as they strike the bone bodice with its stupid fucking lace. Who makes lace from blood vessels? What a fucking show-off.

The wizard draws himself up above the Tempest. Now that he’s adjusted to its radiant power he can see the body its built is only a few times bigger than his. It’s giant, but not monstrous, only a little larger than the last one and he can fucking kill this one too. Who dares try and stop him? Redeemers, fucking whatever. Why did he ever fear it? Why did he ever bother to hide?

He doesn’t mean to, really. He just can’t help himself. He sees that thick conduit of power connecting the Tempest to its master, and reaches out that part of himself that wedges his will into the world and you know, just flicks the connection. Like a harp string.

And this time, there is no little nun to catch him.

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Exploring the Realm Part 11

Myth — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 12:03:52 GMT

The Heritages: Elemental Nature

Walk into the deepest parts of any woodland, and you’ll feel it. Stand on the headlands above a stormy sea, and you’ll know it. Stride into a winter blizzard, and you will succumb to it.

The burning heat. The freezing cold. The bursting power of new growth, the thunder of an enraged sea. This is the power of the natural world — and the power of the Elemental Nature Heritage.

The Elemental Nature Heritage is as varied as the living world. They are steeped in magic, the awakened power of the elements gifted with self awareness. Each member knows their place within the throb of the seasons, the shifts of the tides, and the sweep of a stormy sky. From the smallest sprouting spring seed to the pounding waves of the open ocean, there’s no part of Nature that is not embodied, enchanted and empowered. All are welcome with the Elemental Nature Heritage.

Elemental Spirits

Any place of untouched beauty, wonder or power can bring forth Elemental spirits. All that is required is a natural element upon which to anchor an awareness, and the magical power to bring that awareness into being.

Most often these spirits are small. Little flower sprites bloom in the spring, unfurling from new flowers as the weather warms. A crackling hearth bears friendly spirits that keep families warm and well watched, so long as its flames are fed. These small spirits require less magical potential to get going, so they occur more often. In fact, sometimes all it takes is the belief of people nearby. A magic wishing well may get its spirit through a strike from the Storm, or it could simply be called into being through centuries of children’s pennies. Both have their own power.

Larger spirits grow in places of greater magic. Truly awe inspiring natural phenomena can produce elemental spirits of godlike power. Volcanoes, oceans and repeating thunderheads often inspire divine spirits capable of wielding their element in blessing or to blight. These spirits embody the power and volatility of their namesakes. They draw down vast amounts of energy from the Storm, a radiant birth for a mighty spirit.

Other powerful spirits are more benign. A deep, verdant forest may earn its spirit through the power of its growth. A glacier’s inevitable chill may give birth to a slow and steady spirit with a cold heard that values its privacy, high in a mountain stronghold.

The Living and the Incarnate

That is not to say that all Elementals are flitting nature spirits, tied to their sacred groves or springs. The Heritage is no less varied and complex than any other.

Wild and beautiful Realms almost always have living beings that share their home with the spirits. They develop cultures that learn to live in harmony with the world around them, seeing themselves as part of the natural rhythm of the living world. They are almost invariably heavy magic users, eschewing the rough touch of technology in favour of a lifestyle that leaves no footprint on the world. Elegant kingdoms that weave through treetops, floating cities of triremes and desert wanderers show the gentle touch of the living members of the Heritage.

They are also a diverse bunch. Elves, dwarves, and humans are common, as are rarer and more bestial races. Many of the more animalistic beast-folk feel that their pure instinct is respected within the Elementals. After all, fire burns, the rivers flow, and the cat-folk will sleep till noon. Why fight it? It’s in their nature.

Incarnate spirits are less common. These are Elemental spirits given a living body. A dryad may be the spirit of a given tree, but one who occupies a physical body with all the restrictions that entails. Mermaids, frost giants and even some types of dragon are all examples of this sort of Incarnate Elemental. They are often powerful beings, with a firm grasp of the magic that powers them and the natural source from which they spring.

The Elemental Isles

Elemental Isles are without exception beautiful, in all the terror and glory that the natural world can provide. They are rarely developed in the conventional sense, with the inhabitants of all types living their lives as one part of a complex ecosystem.

Balance is the cornerstone of Elemental Isles. The sprites in the trees are as valued as the Isle’s human kinds. It’s common for Elemental Isles to have religious castes that enforce this balance and ensure no one population prospers at the detriment to the others. Druids, shamans and hedge-witches act as intermediaries between the living members of the Heritage and the Incarnate and ethereal spirits around them.

These relationships are not without conflict, however. Differing elements often have differing needs, and fighting does break out from time to time. A hearth-fire elemental may decide to break free of their home and seek out a forest to burn, to the detriment of the other spirits that live there, for example. Perhaps a river spirit is angered, causing the river to burst its banks and inundate the surrounding area. Such conflicts can be terrifying to behold. Exalted spirits do not pull their punches, attacking their enemies with the power of the storm and the patience of a mountain.

Furthermore, the untouched splendour of an Elemental Isle makes them ripe targets for colonisers and pirates. The Mechanical Construct Heritage in particular has a nasty habit of finding these ‘uninhabited’ Isles and immediately turning them into mines and logging encampments for their rapacious industry. Whole mountains blown to shards in search of coal and iron, seas stripped for minerals and entire rivers or lakes turned to the steam of vast machines. Very often, the original inhabitants do not realise the danger until the pillaging has started wholesale. Even the more benign Heritages tend to view Elemental Isles as unploughed farmland, failing to see the peoples who are already there.

Elemental Spellbound

The Infinite Redeemers seek out and elevate the members of this Heritage with the same frequency as any other. Their logic is, as always, inscrutable, but often they are drawn to vengeful spirits that seek to correct some great wrong. The resulting Spellbound are paladins of the natural world, guardian gods for an oft exploited people.

They also regularly grant Ascension to gentle spirits of pure wonder, creating inspiring beings of unparalleled beauty, true Gods that bring joy across the Chaotic Realm.

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Zealy

Exploring the Realm: Part 10

Myth — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 16:02:13 GMT

Flipping the Bird

Resonator Transmission Received: 12/89/100201
To: Rosethall Aireyen & Dashtrun Lunjaw of the Wayfarer Peregrine Scout Joyful Wing
From: Felicity in Doubt, Bard of the Wayfarer Sojourner Joyful Daybreak

Hello there you two!

Good to finally hear from you! When Shard of Joyful Daybreak let us know you’d smashed the Peregrine out beyond range, we thought you were a goner. The bit of the Storm we lost track of you in keeps eating Ships, so we sent some probes instead, but they didn’t even find debris. Poof, totally gone.

We threw you a hell of a wake. Jahasmine refused to come and kept saying you’d show up, and it turns out she was right! Didn’t stop the rest of the crew though, it was a real rager. The Pilot pulled the Daybreaker in nice and tight behind His Lordship, and the lot of us got completely wrecked up on the top deck, mourning your untimely death. I don’t think my liver can stand another one, so try to get the Peregrine back in one piece.

Engineering wanted me to remind you of a few things — first, the engine on the Perry is best suited for short bursts and long periods of low speed cruising. It uses a harvest loop to draw down energy from the Storm for sustained travel, but has a reserve of white crystal for short hops. The bolt-heads in our engine room can’t work out how you got all the way round to Carameline at that speed with the amount of crystal you had, so the prevailing theory is that you hit a patch of high-powered Storm and just took off. Kind of like the bird she’s named after, she can be bloody fast when she wants to be, I guess.

They also want me to remind Dash in particular that there’s only so much air and water on board. The Peregrine cycles its supplies just as well as the big ships like the Daybreaker, but with little birdies comes less margin for error. I know Rosie’s capable of photosynthesising in a pinch, but the downside is that she won’t be much use as a Navigator if she’s too busy making you air. I don’t know if your particular family of kobold have a low resources mode, but if you do, I’d suggest you switch to it.

Also, If you have to land the Peregrine somewhere, try and do so in an enclosed space like the landing bay back home, or at least on an open surface. That way even if you lose air, you can just get some new air. If you have to dock at a Port, try and hit one that won’t charge us an arm and a leg in resource tax too. There’s free air and water out there, and the Peregrine can land just fine on an Isle’s surface if she has to. Just make sure you’re close enough to an edge so you can yeet her back over when it’s time to go.

That’s all for now, Duckie is kicking me in the leg to let me know my time on the resonator is done. I’ve established a line of credit to the station at your end, so please send more info. Also try not to die, we can’t afford to replace you two as well as a whole new scout ship. Peregrines aren’t cheap!

Love you!

Flick

Resonator transmission received: 15/91/102101
To: Felicity in Doubt, Bard of the Wayfarer Sojourner Joyful Daybreak
From: Dashtrun Shornjawn of the Wayfarer Peregrine Scout Joyful Wing

Hey Flick!

Thanks for the line of credit! The resonator costs here are astronomical, which is to be expected this far out. Carameline is nice, though really boring. Our people have an aerial research station looking into fracture times for various metal alloys. They literally just sit around waiting for bolts to shear and for beams to bend. I’d say it’s riveting, but bad puns are really your department.

I reckon the grease-monkeys in Engineering are onto something. We’d just rolled the Wing out of the Joyful Contemplator’s wake when we hit a rough patch. I thought it was just the usual turbulence you get on the outer edge of a Dragon’s passage but let me tell you, the engine did not agree. Went from purring to screaming at us, white hot, the whole cabin temperature rose so fast and so high I thought we were going to bake. We got lucky, though — Rosie blacked out from the movement, she’d been focusing on our experimental trajectory and I think had a bit of overload, so we lost Navigation and hit something icy. Nothing solid, thank the Dragon, but some big cold sleety cloud and that cooled things down enough that we did not die. I’d call that a win!

In other news, we did exactly as we were planning, and completed the 1080° flip. The modification Jahasmine made to the keel held perfectly and baby, the Wing soared beautifully all the way from you to Carameline. In fact, if she hadn’t shored up the timbers and closed over the runnels we might have lost the hull altogether. The feed-masts are a bit worse for wear and have this cool combination of frost damage and burns all down them. I wonder if we could coat them in varnish as a souvenir?

What else? Rosie says she has a job to do, and has no intention of making me air. That’s fine anyway because my type of kobold has a good slow metabolism despite my sharp reflexes. Oh, and I’ve lost two fingers. I had my hand on the wheel when the Wing hit the juice and took off. Just pinkies though!

We’re going to try and head back under our own power, please relay projected co-ords and we’ll rendezvous. The station here has re-supplied us at cost so we’ll be good in the Storm for two weeks easy, three if I nap a lot. Never been more motivation to sleep at the wheel!

Until then, stay fresh, cheese bag,

Dash.

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Missal

Myth — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 16:00:08 GMT

A Jeff Story

It’s a nun.

Jeff remembers nuns from back on Krater. Mostly they were old, wore even more raggedy brown robes than the monks did, and were typically even worse to deal with as a whole. They seemed to have a collective foul mood that always loved directing horror at completely innocent young men like himself.

This nun is young, though. Maybe a few years old than him. Thin and pale, her face scarred. She’s totally passed out, covered in blood and ash, with the entire back of her weird-looking habit shredded to nothing, and the flesh beneath besides.

The woman’s prone body is a foreign country to him, given he grew up in a monastery. But he’s worried about her bleeding out, and looks for signs of worse damage. He dare not try healing spell on her, given how unreliable his magic has been of late. She might explode, or turn into a dragon, or any number of things he can’t predict.

Deep in the most hidden part of his psyche, he’s forced to admit shit has not been going his way of late.

He opts not to dwell on it, and having a patient helps. He picks the worst of the shards from the terrorised skin of her back, and tried to re-arrange the remaining layers of her habit in order to give her a bit of modesty. She doesn’t so much as flinch and he is slightly concerned she might be dying. He shouldn’t care — he is the Mighty Wizard Jeff, after all, above petty matters of the living and the dying — but she did save his life. Even a wizard has problems with decapitation, and if she hadn’t pulled him ass over teakettle as the plate shifted he’d have lost his head. But she’s still warm, and breathing, and he can feel that little flicker of life clinging on tenaciously inside her. She’s a fighter, just like him.

He puts a bit of space between them, just in case, and tries to pull something soft and warm from nothing. He tries to gently manifest the sort of soft furs the pilgrims would sometimes leave at the monastery, in penance, and manages something large and wild like a pair of flat arctic bears having a fight. It will have to do.

He returns to find the woman stirring. He lays the furs out on the green mushy stuff that passes for floor here, and carefully moves her on her side in its warm depths. He wishes he had some water to offer her, that seems traditional. She sighs and slips into something like sleep, and he takes the opportunity to go look over the ruins of the battlefield. He’s got nothing more pressing to do.

The monster that he fought — and defeated! — has long since fallen through the brutalised plates of the Isle into the seething mass of the Storm below. He’s seen some shit in the last few months, but that thing was entirely new. He knows his power is growing — out of his control, whispers the traitor voice hidden away at the back of his mind — but that monster made him look like a paper cut-out of a wizard. And it wasn’t even fully realised! It was still getting itself together, pulling down massive amounts of power from somewhere else entirely. He felt it reaching out, a vast surge of mutual connection that he could not have hoped to stop. He got lucky.

Around him the machine shifts, the turning of hours, and he goes back to the nun.

When he gets back to his little nest, she is awake and kneeling, a string of glassy beads in her hands. He can hear her murmuring under her breath, head bowed, careful and focused, and to his astonishment the wounds on her back are closing. The torn muscle and skin knit together, and the clots of blood suffuse through her skin until there is not so much as a mark on her.

More to the point, he can feel some connection spooling out from her, as delicate as a twist of smoke, sweet as incense, feeding back the strength to heal.

He doesn’t mean to, but he flexes that part of himself that wedges his will out into the world, and attempts to just, you know, flick the connection a bit. Like a harp string.

When he comes to, the nun has put him on the furs, and is leaning over him with a concerned expression.

“Do not insult that which I serve.”

“Right you are,” he says, sitting up and immediately regretting it. “Ow, fuck. My head’s going to blow off. What the fuck was that?”

The nun takes a moment to think, then says, “You interrupted me at prayer, and my Angel smote you. A rap over the knuckles. The other thing was, I suspect, an Incarnate of the Elementals. I don’t know much about them. I serve the Convocation of Order Ascendant, the Celestial Daughters of the Ordinal Unending.”

“Can you put that in smaller words, like I just had my brain punched from the inside of my skull?”

The nun smiles a small smile, and replies, “I am an Acolyte of Order. I serve the Celestials. The Angels of Order. Elemental spirits are not very orderly, and do not feature prominently in our scriptures.”

“That was a big fucking spirit in a big fucking body,” he says, “It was gunning for a real fight.”

“There is a portal a few leagues in that direction,” she says, pointing. “It levered itself in through an aggregation of vines and trees. Such power suggests to me that it was Spellbound Ascendant. It communes with the Redeemers.”

“Spellbound…Spellbound…where have I heard that before?”

The nun leans back on her heels. “You are a stranger to this place. I am surprised you have any knowledge of such a thing.”

“I get around, you know. Just…all over the place. I see a lot of people, being a wizard and all. I’ve picked up a few things over the uh, aeons.”

“Aeons.”

“Oh yeah, just like, so many years.” He smiles in what he hopes is a rakish, worldly way, but the nun seems unmoved. She doesn’t seem mad at him or anything, which is a nice change for him personally regarding nuns, but she sure as hell doesn’t look like she believes him.

“You are tonsured,” she says.

“Shit-hot haircut where I’m from,” he says quickly.

“It is still short. You cannot have spent much time away from your Order, or it would have grown out.”

“Yeah well, you aren’t exactly a picture of fashion yourself.”

“Such things are inconsequential,” says the nun primly. “But it tells me you are not as knowledgeable as you claim to be. I have seen you without your illusion, the one you put on unthinking the moment you awaken. I have seen your true face. It is not so different from mine.”

“Besides those weird scars you have.”

She stiffens a little and says, “They are a mark of blessing granted to me by my patron. They tie me to their Infinite Power and Grace. They are a mark of knowing. I am Their Vessel. Through me, They see the world, and through Them, I am protected and healed.”

“Shit, was that what you were doing when I blacked out?”

“I was at prayer. My wounds were healed by Their mercy.”

“No, no, it’s like…a channel. You were pulling down on their power and using it to heal yourself. I must have caught like, feedback or something. Overflow. That’s why I passed out.”

“I did no such thing. I reached out, and was blessed. And you were struck down for your impiety.”

“Look, I think the praying part is true, I know praying, trust me, seven times a day for ten years, you get good at that shit. But I think I like….stuck my face into a whirlwind or something. Too much power all at once.”

“What else do you think an Angel is?”

He has no reply for this. He’d always thought of angels in terms of the fluffy bird winged statues around the chapel. Nothing too inspiring really, in the grand scheme of things. But that massive font of power? A tiny speck of it was enough to short him out.

“So that other thing, would you say it is uh, I guess not more powerful than your Angel, cause Gods forbid I say a bad word about your patron, but the same kind of broad level of being a fucking problem to me, personally?”

The nun spends a few seconds considering this, then says, “It spoke to me as if it were speaking to my Angel, so it knew of our connection. This tells me it is capable of seeing such things but cannot sever them. It would have broken that connection, I think, if it could. Or perhaps it was still bringing itself into being, and did not consider me a serious risk.”

“Underestimated you, then, Sister. You took its head right off.”

She smiles again, that tiny secretive smile, and says, “My name is Melpomene, if you please.”

“Jeff.”

“Your name is Jeff?”

“Ah well, it’s considered a very impressive, noble name where I come from.”

“And where is that?”

“Not anywhere around here, that’s for sure,” he says. “Anyway, that’s ... what did you say? Inconsequential? I need to know if that big winged plant thing will be back.”

“I would imagine so. It was here for a reason. I suspect it was here for you.”

“Shit.”

“Indeed.”

“Is that…is that why you are here, too?”

She nods. “I was told to watch and observe only. I do not think my Angel is displeased that were are speaking in this manner, however. Everything I see and hear is Theirs to know also.”

“Well, that’s something, I guess.”

“There will be others. You have made your presence felt.”

“Other Spellbound?”

She nods. “I cannot imagine you have much time before they find you. The Celestial Spellbound know the making of the world, and the mathematics upon which it turns. You disturb these rules, and so They see you. The others, though, they are not so intimately connected to the very substance of reality.”

“Perhaps that Elemental was of a nature to feel the destruction you leave behind you at a distance,” she continues. “Have you been to any places of great natural beauty before you came here? Theirs is the grace of the unspoiled wilds. Defile such a place and you may catch their eye.”

He thinks about Evergreen Torque and nods.

“Then perhaps it followed you from there,” she says. “Or was brought into being in response to your passage. The Infinite Redeemers call forth Spellbound through their power for reasons known only to them.”

“Is that how all of them work? They pop into existence whenever these Redeemers feel like spinning one up?”

Jeff watches the nun frown, thoughtful. Her fingers work at the string of beads, like turning over the beads as her mind turns over the facts. “I know that some are brought forth thus. The Angels are as old as Creation, and join in communion with it through the intersession of the Redeemers. So it is taught to us, as young novices. But each Heritage has its own mysteries, and how their Spellbound are formed is one of them.”

“Well that doesn’t bloody help me much. How am I supposed to deal with them when they show up, then?”

“You have your own power. You will think of something.”

“Yeah, and what about you? You’re a squishy little meatball compared to them!”

“My Angel watches,” says the nun, as if that means anything at all.

He makes a disgusted little noise and stands, stomping off in a huff. She’s not his problem, clearly. She can take care of herself. What’s a little nun to a being as powerful as he is?

But he still goes back for her, before they set off to see what else is hiding on the Isle.

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Convergence

Myth — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 17:02:35 GMT

A Jeff Story

Watch and take count, o beloved child. Learn the ways of the Isle. Speak little, listen well. There is a ghost from another world in hiding on this Isle, a being made of numbers who violates the order of our Realm. You will find him, observe him only, take a measure of how he functions, and report only to me what you learn. I will be with you, unseen.

She will not fail that which she serves.

I will be with you.

Melpomene moves through the twisting darkness of this place. She has learned the precision of its turnings. To an outsider, it seems to be made of chaos. The Isle comprises of two or three dozen perpetually shifting plates, made of something like velvety green bark that is soft to the touch, covered over in angular veins of silver and gold. Some plates move on elegant brass armatures, delicate clockwork gears moving them at different elevations, others rotate or tilt. Slithering bunches of oily cords, coloured in bright blues and greens, connect distant radiant screens covered in shifting cascades of numbers, beautiful algorithms of complexity beyond even her genius. She could worship here, at the altar of its Order, for a thousand years, and die in happiness.

But that is not her mission.

She moves carefully through the shifting space, her habit held tight against her limbs. Her feet are bare, so as not to mark the green. She sees columns of sparks, snipped cords vomiting fat greasy clouds of smoke, chipped gears, levers that seize and shudder. A broad swathe of chaos against perfection.

The wizard has been here.

Melpomene has only seen him once, at a distance, not long after her first arrival. She found him on the very top of the Isle, not far from where she had been deposited herself. He had fallen, or been thrown, and paced a crater blasted through a half dozen shifting plates. He was cursing the air blue, chasing his hat and scrabbling around in the mess he had made. Small. Human. A boy? Not much older the she is, perhaps. Astonished, she noticed he had his dark hair clipped into a tonsure, and wore the very ragged remains of a cassock of some sort.

But he grew frustrated, concentrated, and everything flexed. The matter of the Isle moved out of his way. The gravity itself shifted to allow him to rise, like a feather over a fire. His appearance flickered, as he spun an illusion around them, changing himself into something like a doll — with a smooth face, blue, with very few features on a square surface.

And then he shot off through the the Isle, giggling. Behind him the aftereffects of his magic rippled outwards, the crater behind him falling into greater disrepair. A shower of sparks erupted from a severed copper pipeline and she was forced back.

Since then, she has tracked him for a time that is difficult to calculate. There is a particular series of movements that occur among the upper outer plates, a specific set of precise 90° rotations that re-orient three specific plates in a process that takes, in her estimation, about four hours. Six sets are close enough to what she understands as a day, and so she uses those movements to measure time.

She calculates that she has spent two weeks watching the wizard, as instructed. At first, she sustains her body on the dried rations provided by her Order, but soon finds that she does not hunger or thirst. Some native energy of the Isle keeps her fuelled. She soon stops sleeping, and can go about her mission in with unyielding devotion. She never gets close, if she can help it. He shows no evidence of awareness beyond his mortal senses, but she dares not risk it. He has never given any indication he knows she exists.

In that time, she has found him asleep, curled like a puppy against whatever warm surface he can find. Whatever energy sustains her, it is not available to him. When he sleeps the doll-faced illusion is gone, and he is just a hollow-faced acolyte in a charred robe, thin, and she almost pities him.

But when he is awake, he is a terror. He tears around the Isle, leaving swathes of destruction behind him. If he wanted, he could pass through the shifting planes without damaging them. He sometimes stops to view the screens or shifting aspect of the Isle itself, perhaps as awed in its beauty as she.

Invariably he decides to break things, pull apart gearing or tearing cords from walls. Sometimes he feeds his own power into the system, causing the screens to speed up their processions of characters until they blur. He mutters and curses and has long, rambling conversations with people she is sure cannot hear him. After all, there are only two living things in this place — he, the wizard, and she, the observer.

And so onwards she goes, carefully following his trail of destruction. He has been experimenting with fire of late. This place burns badly, some aspect of its substance actively suppressing any flame. She has watched him try to light several little fires since her arrival, some for warmth and others for fun. None really last for long.

Today there are tendrils of smoke drifting back along the trail he has created. She follows it, carefully. Despite herself she is keen to see how he has managed such a feat. The air here is usually quite cool and crisp, smelling of lightning storms, brass and the strange wax that coats the cords, but now she can smell burning, the good clean smell of charred timber, and she frowns.

Ahead is a clearing, a dark space in which sits a wide ring of heavy granite boulders flecked with moss. The plate beneath it strains under the weight, the delicate gearing struggling to maintain movement.

Within the ring, a ring of trees reach upwards towards the plate above, the branches pushing deep into the green material of which it is made. She can hear the matrix of its machinery fighting against the intrusion and failing, the brass-work of its being clattering awry. The heat from their failure burns into the wood, so furiously hot that even these wet verdant branches are set alight. Bark sizzles and throws embers.

The roots of these primordial trees writhe like eels, wrenching through the plate to form a primal gateway Hyphae eternal connect this orderly kingdom to another, wilder place.

She has been told to watch, so she watches, even as her instincts tell her to run.

I will be with you.

Within the gateway, a tightly wrapped mass forces itself through the gateway with the force of a mushroom breaking through heavy sod. Muscular legs, retrograde as a mountain goat but with no real foot to speak of, and hooks up onto the roots that are quickly filling the gate. It forces itself upright, suspended on nothing but the strength of its own power, and unfurls thickly webbed leaf-like wings. They congeal to a deep purple, and it spreads them widely, wet and heavy, its face shrouded in shadow. It stretches its wings, displeased to be so confined, flexing its long arms and twisting its neck.

She is hidden but not well enough.

The creature smiles at her, whipping forwards, claws outstretched. Pinned in place by her terror, she is saved only because the creature does not factor in its new wings. They are caught against the trunks of the trees, and it snarls.

“Don’t think I can’t see you, angel,” it spits, breath hot and reeking of resin. “You hide your eyes within that mortal child but I see your mark on its face.” It furled its great wings sharply, and she turns to run, her habit tangling, she trips and falls and she scrabbles backwards against the failing green matter of the plate.

Melpomene screams. Her own voice is thin and terrified and it starts as the shriek of a young girl and she feels the scars on her face burn and the Song of her patron rips from her throat, the Chorus of the Celestials, and the winged monstrosity coils back hissing. She can feel blood running from her ears, the taste of it thick in her mouth, and she knows she only has this moment and bolts away into the complex machine.

There is one chance.

It is the fifth iteration of the 90° rotation. Her subject usually sleeps during this time. Last time she saw him, he had made a nest in a series of tall twisting copper pylons. He will not be asleep now. She is rendered deaf, but she does not need to hear to use this place.

Here is a series of cords. Slide beneath them. She leaps like a hare, fast over a series of bright ceramic canisters. The plate shifts, but she is ready, the gap small for her but wide for her pursuer in time.

There is a tunnel, no more than a chute, narrow and full of sparks, descending. They burn her skin as she drops, but the creature does not fit. The fall could kill her, but the timing, perfect, and she slides out at the heart of the twisting copper pylons. She sees the wizard, the boy, only just awake and bewildered, and the structure behind her explodes in a fiery bloom of red-hot metal and shards of glass. She knows she is bleeding, her back excoriated and burned, and she slides in a slurry of her own blood and boiling coolant and slams into the pylon behind the wizard.

Dazed, she watches him rise. She can’t hear what he says, but it is enough to make the creature laugh. He assumes his mask, the smooth faced illusion, and the creature falters.

The wizard makes a rude gesture.

The creature erupts in a sizzling mass of electrical discharge. It spasms, its vast wings shuddering closed around it, but it peers from beneath the violet skin and hisses at the wizard, a thick spattering of resinous acid streaming from its mouth. The wizard ducks, and gestures again, the copper of the pylons curving around to shield him.

She can feel the plate shifting. She slides through the filth, the resin burning her raw skin, and grabs the wizard by the ankle. His true ankle, not the illusion, and she yanks, hard, and he falls. He lies flat on his belly against the soft green matter of the plate, low.

The creature stretches itself upwards to its maximum height, triumphant.

And then the world turns.

The 6th rotation, the inexorable twisting of the upper ninth plate, the weight of the Isle, glides elegantly down into its final iteration, its sharp edge gracefully descending and smoothly slicing the creature clean in two. The sharp angles of its armature masticate what remains, the neat turning of the gears exacting a final vengeance. What remains lands with a wet thump, solidly dead, and the plate stills into its final position.

The wizard pants, composing himself. He tries to speak to her, but she cannot hear him, and he stops when she coughs up a clotted mass of blood. Instead he stands, and walks to the corpse of the creature. Its spilled viscera eats holes in the plate beneath, and he kicks its remains through the largest onto the plate below. She knows their movement, and the corpse will be cast into the Storm soon enough.

Satisfied, in pain but as assured of what little safety as this place can give, she yields to her agony and sleeps.

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Exploring the Realm: Part 9

Myth — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 16:00:14 GMT

Sailing the Sea of Sorrows

A Storm Ships Primer for the Enterprising Adventurer

The Chaotic Realm is big. Crazy big. It’s so big that if you imagine the biggest thing you can imagine, and then you imagine something bigger than that, you’ll still be vastly underestimating how big the Realm truly is. Even the Angels of Order, who measure everything from the smallest mote of dust in a beam of sunlight to the eternal spans of a Maelstrom Dragon’s Road, even those creatures whose entire purpose is turned towards measurement, even they would struggle to truly convey the sheer magnitude of all of the Realm. It just keeps going, even when you wish it would stops.

Most of the Chaotic Ream is comprised of the swirling magical and emotional energies of the Maelstrom, often called the Sea of Sorrows. The Isles upon which almost all living things reside swim about it in amiably, buoyed by its ever changing tides. And what do you use to get from Isle to Isle across a wine-dark sea if not a Ship?

What is a Storm Ship?

A Storm Ship is any manufactured vessel that is able to carry passengers from one Isle to the next. They aren’t that much different from the ships that carry passengers across more mundane, watery seas.

In most parts of the Realm, the line of logic is clear. The flat, plate-shaped Isles with flat, plate shaped continents and islands invariably develop boats at some point or another. It doesn’t take long for the terminally curious to wonder if larger boats can be made to get from one Isle to another, especially in more populated regions where the Isles are close enough to see one another. From there its the not-so-simple matter of making the boat large enough to survive the rough conditions in the Maelstrom, and well enough protected from its magical energies that everyone inside gets to their locations in one piece, preferably the same shape as they left.

As a result, most Storm Ships look an awful lot like more mundane seaworthy vessels. They tend to have heavy hulls that protect against the Storm and hold passengers, open decks to facilitate loading of passengers and goods, and large ships sometimes include masts and sail like structures that can serve a range of purposes depending on the vessel. Many are build along a single axis, so they can simple glide up to port and moor themselves with ease.

Some ships however evoke other forms. The Celestials and Infernals produce otherworldly, symmetrical ships from time to time, more in tune with their natures. The Angels in particular create ships of geometric perfection, echoing the Rules of Order that many prefer to the pragmatics that lead to ship-shaped Ships.

Storm Ships can be small and fast, for scouting work or courier missions. They can be large and luxurious as a cruise liner or as slow and practical as a freighter. No matter what the job, there’s a Ship that’s fit for the purpose.

Wait, Why Do They Have Masts?

The masts on larger Storm Ships are a neat solution that provides stability in a Sea with no up or down.

Gravity on Isles are provided by a number of different processes that vary wildly from Isle to Isle. For many, lodestones deep below their surfaces pull in a specific direction, keeping everything neatly pinned to the surface in a way familiar to most. In others, rotation or even their sheer mass serve help prevent material flying off into the Storm.

One way for a ship to mimic this gravity is to use magic. A common trick is to use a large tree — the bigger the better — with expansive roots. The tree is positioned in the centre of the Ship, and its roots woven into the substance of the hull. Skilled elementalists then evoke the anchoring qualities of these roots, infusing the timbers of the ships with a resonance that comfortably mimics terrestrial gravity. The upper trunk grounds passing magical potential, recharging the spell and ensuring that when the Captain puts his teacup on his desk, it stays put.

Once in place, these masts can be used to support other structures. Sails can be used to capture the tides of the Storm, effectively blowing the Ships to their destination. Others attach communications rigs, launching points for smaller vessels, or flags that declare ownership and right of passage. Truly large ships may have three or four masts, rigged together for stability, covered in pennants and bunting.

What Propels Storm Ships?

As mentioned above, some Storm Ships have sails that provide propulsion. The Maelstrom is in a constant state of churn, and it’s possible to harness that momentum to provide a Ship with movement.

It is, however, an unreliable way to get around. The Storm is just that — a storm — and its energy levels do not behave in predictable ways. Sail driven Ships often wind up blown astray. They are also becalmed, or wrecked against the debris that is common throughout the Storm. However, a lucky Ship with a cunning crew and a clever Navigator can spend years in transit without significant problems.

Other Ships use magical engines known as “churns” that draw raw energy from the Storm, process it through a complex set of machines, then eject it in a forceful plume from the rear or sides of the Ship. These engines are difficult to build and finnicky to maintain, but are the most reliable way to power a vessel.

There are more esoteric means to drive a Ship. Small ships sometimes literally blow themselves up, out and around, using modified fireball spells. Others harness the slow bubbling energies of Death itself by strategically picturing holes through to the Void and riding out the resulting flow. There are even rumours that the stolen heart of a murdered Storm Dragon can produce enough radiant energy to power even the largest of vessels.

Who Makes Storm Ships?

Despite the similarities to nautical vessels, Storm Ships are a challenge to construct. They must be sturdy enough to survive the high energies of the Maelstrom, yet light enough to be propelled through it without too much energy expenditure. They must also be carefully warded with the right spells, to keep the magical potential of the Storm on the right side of the hull.

The Mechanical Construct Heritage is easily the most gifted of all ship-builders. Their fondness for gadgetry and engineering give them an edge in developing new techniques and materials, as well as the grounding in methodical spell-work that is essential to churn engines and hull warding. Their Heritages lays claim to the Iron Thrall, a militant wing of shipwrights and naval engineers who specialise in warships, and the Wayfarers, a nomadic sect of Dragon worshippers who spend all their time in the embrace of the Storm, diligently following the migrations of their patrons.

The Monstrous Right also experiment with ship-building, though their ships are less elegantly made. They are opportunistic, and will capture technology in battle as often as develop it themselves. Nonetheless, there are many within the Right who feel strong navies make for strong empires, and who strive to develop an engineering tradition that the monster races can take pride in.

The Gigante Blood Heritage also makes ships from time to time, large galleons with few frills but that are far more rugged and reliable than any other Heritage. However, recent pushes towards empire-building from within this enigmatic group has resulted in a greater focus on taking ships by force from other navies.

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