[Bronze Woods] Getting His Rocks Off [Kelpie]

[Hadrian]

37th Spring, 511 A.V. At first, Hadrian had considered asking people -- friends? -- to accompany him on this experiment. Kendall, Cathan, Sondra, they might have helped him fend off anything that came looking for a quick meal, but things were relatively safe near Syliras, and he didn't like failure. Worse yet, people witnessing his failure. So he ended up walking out the gates at the crack of dawn, walking past the Sacred Arch Hotsprings and deeper into the Bronze Woods, yet not so far as he had gone with Cathan when they went 'hunting'. Still, he was close enough to regular knightly patrols that he was unlikely to be in too much danger. When he found a clearing he remembered from his childhood, or perhaps from his journey out with Cathan, he found the flattest space and began by sketching as perfect a circle as he could into the turf with his heel. That greater circle was about fifteen feet in diameter, and he soon began to etch glyphs into the turf with his heel as well, the which took quite a while, tracing that circle with such glyphs as he had used to protect the horse and supplies when he and Cathan had been hunting. Kneeling in front of the focus glyph, he held his hands over it and Fluxed djed from the rest of his body toward his palms, pouring liquid res into that one glyph. The undifferentiated res filled the hollows he had etched in his fashion, and when the glyph was full, the gentle glow of it spread around the circular sigil like wildfire. There was a flash of blue, and then it dimmed down to a pale reflection of that flash. Smiling to himself, Hadrian knew that anyone attempting to cross the barrier would regret that decision. Without moving, he brought his breathing under control with careful, measured breaths. Murmuring a litany in the Ancient Tongue, he opened himself to the djed around him. Time passed, but he was only nominally aware of it. A bird landed near his hand, apparently aware that he would not move to hurt it, and pecked at the ground for seeds or worms or some such. He noted that his defenses weren't much good against airborne threats, but he already had plans for that. The bird flew away. As soon as he had risen from the depths of his awareness, or so deep as he could travel with ease, he stood and began etching another circular sigil within the first. But while the first circle protected against outside intrusion, the second would be more important yet. When he came to the end, this time, the focal glyph opposite the circle from the first one, he knelt and Fluxed his djed toward his hands again, but this time they poured forth that proto-Shield energy, and when the glyph was filled with it, there was another flash and to his Auristic vision, he could see the dome of energy rising above him and his new workspace. This Shield, supported by glyphs, would prevent magical tampering from without, but also anything untoward escaping from within. He, as the author of the sigils, could safely cross them, but no other. Again, he paused to meditate, taking conscious control of his breathing in order to reach a state where he noted each sensation but did not hold onto it. Most of the morning whiled away while he observed the gentle trickle of djed back into his body, as it created more merely due to his being alive, and then he came to and dug into his satchel for his lunch, a sandwich wrapped in wax paper, a bit of cheese, some fruit. He ate little, saving most for later, but he did drink from his water supply, wanting to keep his body strong enough to support the magics he planned. He shuffled over to the middle of his space, staring at the strata of magical energy around him through his Auristic vision, nodding at how it all seemed. He was by no means an expert in some of these disciplines, but with the use of glyphs, he was able to strengthen things, stabilize them, and do better work than he could do on his own. There was always a clever way around things, he thought. He took a grease pen and carefully drew an augmentative glyph on his left hand, then carefully attempted the same on his right hand. Each was then elaborated upon with glyphs specific to his purpose. He needed all the help he could get. Kneeling there, he held his hands at chest level, palms facing each other, and began to concentrate on the idea of nothingness. This was something he had done in meditation, but with an active consciousness and the litany of old, old words he had dug up in the library of Alvadas, he felt the energies around him quicken somehow. As he watched, his concentration ever bent on pulling the stuff of this world away from that center, creating a spot that was empty of everything, his hands held just so to direct the djed, his mouth forming ancient incantations, until a miracle appeared. Nothing appeared. The blackness he saw in his Vision was not a color, but a lack of color, a lack of anything, in fact. It was a pinprick of nothing, then a line, and then a coin-sized circle that seemed to tug at everything ever so slightly. He had done it! He counted to sixty, just focusing on maintaining his little portal to the Void. When he reached sixty, rather than letting it collapse naturally, he folded it in on itself again, from circle to line, from line to point, and from point to a lack of nothing, or, rather, the world filled that space again. He sat back on his elbows, letting deep breaths clear his mind. No meditation now, but merely a break. But he was eager to discover these things that he had only read about in Alvadas and planned since then. He took four sheets of paper out of his bag and set them equidistant from a center point, marking off the cardinal points with glyphs, but more than that: the coordinates for the low world, Swalden. He had discovered this bit of lore while buried in books in the strange Sunken Conundrum, and now it was time to put that to use. Then, he took a small sack of cornmeal out of his satchel and poured a thin circle of it that included these paper glyphs and coordinates. That done, he knelt down outside this smallest circle, the simplest circle in Summoning, and crossed his arms at the wrist, palms facing left and right from him. Once again, he Fluxed his djed out toward his palms, res exiting his right hand, Shield energy the left. Subject to his will, each type of energy formed a line that corkscrewed around the cornmeal in each direction, twining with each other as they met on the other side of the circle and continuing until the circle was a braid of cornmeal and two types of his energy. Those energies contracted around the physical base, glowing gently in the afternoon light. It was a good thing there were no breezes. Finally, he took out a needle and pricked his finger. Squeezing the tip over the circle, a drop fell, and magic began to stir...

[Kelpie]

The second the drop of blood hit the summoning circle, the still air swirled like a maelstrom, accompanied by a spectacle of lights and a low hum. In the center of the circle emerged what appeared to be a small stone, as if it rose from rippling waves of water, and resonated with a hymn not yet heard. It would be several seconds before the glow of the circle dimmed and everything was still yet again. The gemstone sat idly, a victory for a young novice summoner and sheer luck that something else had not been attracted by the prospect of an open portal. Hadrian could pick up the stone and look it over, but nothing in particular would catch his attention other than the otherworldly quality of it’s surface. It was up to him to figure out just what he was supposed to do with the Memosite that was now in his care.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian watched with his eyes and with his Auristic vision opened wide, his abilities now to understand what he saw having reached a level of expertise that would have surprised and delighted his doubting old professors, Palmyra Oslie and Azilis Theroulde's father, too. The simple circle had a minimal of interfering or complicating features. Swalden was supposed to be a relatively safe place from which to summon, and the stone itself, surely a fabled Memosite, looked eerie and new to his Sight. He smiled, and waited for the circle to calm itself. There remained a low hum of energy there, but it would require another bit of blood to re-open the gateway, just in case the Memosite wanted to return. One never knew with Memosites, he supposed. When he didn't see anything obviously dangerous, he decided that it was safe to pick it up, but with one further precaution. He held out his left hand, Fluxed energy from his core down along his arm to produce Shield energy, which covered his hand like a glove, protecting it from any harmful djed transfer. With that, he picked up the Memosite, but the Shield blocked any transfer. There was nothing to be done. Fortune favored the bold. "Eyris protect me," he whispered fervently, and then touched the Memosite with his bare right hand.

[Kelpie]

Precaution was always the best course of action against the unknown, but for a stone that held no sentience all Hadrian had to worry about was whatever organisms might be crawling over it’s surface. Touching the Memosite was the first step to approaching his goal, but what the stone revealed was far from what he wanted to see. A burst of images crossed Hadrian’s thoughts, as vivid as if he stood watching in the very same room. It was an elderly wizard from Alahea, in an expansive room furnished with the utmost luxurious items. The man was writing something on the desk, numbers, perhaps, or simply a letter. The sounds of the quill scratching against the parchment a familiar sound to Hadrian. The elder wizard seemed to pause, then began rolling up his parchment and secured it with a red string, he then hiked up his robes and placed the scroll in his undergarment and allowed the garment to fall heavily down to his feet. Pushing back the ornate chair the wizard stood and exited the room. The flash of the memory ended, and the Memosite remained still, awaiting a demand from its wielder.

[Hadrian]

His breath quickened as the memory surged into his thoughts, crossing the barrier of his skin and shooting like neural lightning into his brain, but it ended all too quickly. A pre-Valterrian magus if the clothing was any clue, and a secret in his underpants. He hoped it was something magical rather than mundane, but he had no way of knowing what these stones considered worthy memories to trade for what they kept. "What did the scroll say?" he asked it, his inexpert Hypnotism attempting to work upon whatever will or pseudo-will might reside within the extraterrestrial stone. "Tell me what the scroll said," he demanded. If that was all he got, he was going to share his morning privy experience with the thrice damned stone. There had been too many beans in last night's supper. Let the stone hold his bloating and his embarrassingly flatulent release. "Come on," he whispered, no hint of Hypnotism in his desperate begging. Some men had no shame.

[Kelpie]

There was a resonating hum as Hadrian voiced his question to the idle memosite. It tapped into the young wizard’s subconscious once again, sending a steady stream of images into his mind’s eye. Instead of an elderly man there was now a woman, seated in a well-furnished lounge and caked with far too much cosmetics. She was holding a scroll with the same red string Hadrian noticed from the earlier one, and as she unraveled it, the lettering on the parchment seemed incomprehensible. It was no language Hadrian knew, but was most likely a code, one that the woman clearly understood, as if the elder wizard and herself were old acquaintances. There was a smile on her lips as she read: Hdrd xrd ghd cllrdtkxgds ylj xskdd flr, Pdgrtcd. T dl hlpd tg wtll clqd in hxndy flr yljr dxpdrtqdngs tk ghd fjgjrd. Dl gtvd qy clkdlldkcds gl yljr pjptl, llstng xk xrq ltkd ghxg mjsg bd qjtgd drdxdful, bjg xg ldxsg hd mtghg ldxrk klg gl sgtck hts hxkd tk x vltd kdxg gtmd! Ghd cllrdtkxtds dkd tk ghd kuqbdrs 85630 sgxrg wtgh ghd kuqbdrs 00129 Xkd clkgxtk ghd kuqbdrs 266721 tk-bdgwddk. P.S. T hlpd ylj dlk’g qtkd ghd tdqpxgjrd ghxg ghts scrlll hxs xrrtvdd tk. Tg hxs bddk stggtkg skjg tk xk xrdx ylj hxvd dxpllrdd xll tll wdll. The memory would remain for a total of 5 chimes. Hadrian had until then to decode the message before the memosite would relinquish him of it.

[Hadrian]

"What the...?" He began to mumble curses as he pulled a largish scrap of paper and a pencil out of his coat, the sort of things he always kept handy to work out an idea or take a note or decipher a coded message relayed from the past through a memory stone from the planet Swalden. Cryptography was not his forte, but rather something he always thought he should learn. All the same, he had played word, letter, and number games as a child that would likely come in handy here. He could only hope the code was not too complex, but rather something that two friends might have come up with in their childhood and kept alive for nostalgic purposes. Finally, he had the message jotted down in front of him rather than just burning in his memory. "The markers look like Common," he murmured to himself. Most notably: alphabet; punctuation; a word mid-sentence beginning with a capital P, most likely a name or place name; the letter T capitalized, most likely the first person pronoun; and the P.S untranslated for Post Script at the end. Working from there, he just stared at the script, allowing his intuition to flash and his innate sense of order to pick up the clues and put them together. He noted repeated words and doubled letters, marking them and hoping the numbers, at least, were not encoded. That would be a whole other headache. "So T is I. Hm... All these Ds right away. Vowel substitution like the T, perhaps. E is the most common vowel. Here are the..." He grinned, little bits of the puzzle falling into place. "So D for E. X for A. G for T, though, so it isn't only vowels." He marked these down for his cipher. "Coordinates?" he guessed at the double L. He grinned, even more excited by this turn of events. Apparently the Memosite was sentient enough to understand his desires. "So L for O, K for N. Yo... you. You asked for? J for U. "What is your name? Petrice? Pegrice? I'll come back to this... I do hope it will... come! Q for M. I do hope it will come in handy for your... All right, they aren't always substituted. Great. For your... whoa, something... in the future? Do give my... condolences...?" It took him several minutes to work it out, but eventually he read it back to himself. Then read it aloud: "Here are the coordinates you asked for, Petrice. I do hope it will come in handy for your experiments in the future. Do give my condolences to your pupil, losing an arm like that must be quite dreadful, but at least he might learn not to stick his hand in a void next time! "The coordinates end in the number 85630 start with the numbers 00129 And contain the numbers 266721 in-between. "P.S. I hope you don’t take the tempature that this scroll has arrived in. It has been sitting snug in an area you have explored all too well. "He misspelled temperature," he noted, perhaps speaking to the dormant Memosite, which he was touching with his bare hand again. The Shield around his left hand was holding up well, and he was pleasantly surprised that he was able to work through a cryptological problem without losing the Shield glove. "Thankfully you only gave me the memory and not the crotch scroll. Now can you tell me, Memosite, where these coordinates lead? I have to know how to prepare myself for what might come through."

[Kelpie]

The Memosite rumbled in Hadrian’s hand, surging the visions of his last request in his mind, There was a building in the fog, tall and fortified, and textured as if built from rock. A woman in swirling robes of black approached the bastion; Petrice, Hadrian would notice, who was granted entrance within chimes. The heavy door closed behind her and the vision melted through the heavy stone walls into a secluded room with an elder gentleman sporting a coiling black beard and the lady Petrice. They were speaking to each other, with snippets of their conversation barely audible. The main words Hadrian would be able to discern ranged from “creatures”, “war”, and “research.” Then the images receded, vanishing from Hadrian’s mind. The Memosite sat idly in his palm, and should Hadrian ask something else of the gemstone it would remain dormant. He would be reminded of the need to store something of value into the Memosite and return it to it’s world of origin, lest he forever be banned from retrieving information from them again.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian realized finally that this particular source had been plumbed of its depths, and would give him no more. Sighing, he could not be entirely upset. This first summoning had been a success, after all. He had opened a portal and safely fetched a Memosite from Swalden, learned a good deal from it, including the coordinates for another world that he would research before attempting to open a gateway, of course. But he had done his research on Swalden, on the Memosites, and he figured it was about time he paid the piper. The stones required memories shared with them, too, though he was still wondering whose memories these were, someone not close enough to hear what was being said between Petrice and her lover. It was strange, but he would likely never know unless he stumbled upon a Memosite with more pieces of the puzzle and that would be a difficult endeavor unless he managed to become adept at plucking the proper Memosite out of its homeworld. After considering a moment, he held the stone to his temple and relived his memories, as best and as clearly as he was able, from when he stepped foot on the docks at Sahova to the death of Master Rela. If all went poorly for Mizahar and the Supevisor Dranira took control, then someone out there might learn about what had happened, or be given these tidbits of knowledge from which to construct a battle plan. That done, he gave the rock a squeeze and said, "Thank you," unsure if it would understand, if it could understand, and set it back in the circle. Pointing with his pricked finger at a smaller sigil circle beside the summoning circle, he drew a combination of glyphs with blood and res that would pull the Memosite back to where it belonged. He sat back on his heels to wait it out, make sure that the glyphs were blasted out of existence once their work was complete. Sometimes it was only partial, and he liked to cover his tracks. Teaching was one thing, but having some unknown person rifle through one's work without one's knowledge or permission was a different matter entirely.

[Kelpie]

Mimicking the same action, the summoning circle surged with activity. The air kicked up in a whirl and the lights returned with just as much enthusiasm. The Memosite sunk into the ground as if dunked in water, and disappeared from sight, leaving the flickering lights to dim and the glyphs evaporating chimes later.

"Ten points to Hadrian!" Character: Hadrian Glyphing +5 Summoning +3 Auristics +3 Shielding + 3 Flux + 3 Voiding +1 Lore: Memosites, Contemplating Nothing, Astral Coordinates: 0012985630266721, Summoning with precaution Moderator note: Fun thread, sorry that I took so long.