[Toherro's] A Darkening of Dark Rites (Amber, Private)

[Amber Brightwing]

As she landed on the desk, her eyes were fixed on the hovering gem, wondering what kind of spell had been cast. She turned towards Aribeal when he started speaking though. Once he had finished she pondered for a moment about his words. An attack? Who would be crazy enough to piss off an Undead Dragon Lich and two masters?

“I’m still alive, but only thanks to the sacrifice of three of you promising Apprentices who delayed the Deamon we were attacked by just long enough that I could cast twice. The fact they used a Deamon means the number of possible opponents could be narrowed down rather fast though as they can only have access to one if there’s a Master of Necromancy amongst their ranks. Even though Vortex has a lot of those compared to the most other place in the Empire that’s still no more then a handful of possibilities.”

She wasn’t trying to tell him how things were as he was no doubt more knowledgeable about what had happened in the academy, but rather thinking our loud about the possibilities. That and she had no idea if the Mer know if he had been informed on what had transpired in the library yet.

[Straylor Leonard]

Well, to start with there weren't a lot of people aware of the Dragon Lich in the basement. But that's where the mystery starts. Aribeal was equally as frustrated for loosing his top three apprentices to the attack. Perhaps that's what the attack's purpose was? How did they know the intriquate hallways that led into the heart of their facility, the library? These were some thoughts that swam behind the Mer's tired eyes as he regarded Amber when she spoke. "We will take care of it", he said simply when the fae was done talking. "But I wish for you to remain inside our walls until this .... problem is settled, understand? We do not wish to loose another disciple."

If Aribeal said that with any kind of compassion or care for Amber, the fae necromancer did not sense it. And without another word, the Master Necromacer bid his student a good darkening and told her to rest. "My servant boy will be here shortly. He will prepare your room and any meal you wish to have before retiring. And", he gestured at the floating black gem near the door, "I will have my Sentinal watch over you for the time being. Don't mind it. Think of him as me, but smaller and darker." He attempted to smile but failed as the lines of his countenance only deepened. "Until I return, please continue to practice on your own. I hope that you have more success perfecting your techniques. Serale."

[Amber Brightwing]

There weren’t many that knew that there was a Dragon Lich residing in the basement, but the rumours of a necromantic cult were easily picked up, occasionally even with added speculations about a powerful leader. Why anyone wanted to get rid of them was beyond her though. Especially since another necromancer had been involved, so an attack because of the Necromancy was unlikely to be the reason. Unless they were perhaps Jalatines, but then they summoned a Deamon which was rather contradicting with their anti-undead-summoning policies.

“Then hopefully this problem will be settled soon, because I have a job.” That and she didn’t want to be caged into some underground lair. She preferred the open air and the sky above being indoors, preferably with trees and other plant life around. Not to mention the room was going to be unbearably boring given practice only lasted as long as her Vis reserves, only a fraction of a whole brightening. What was she going to do with the rest of her time? Write a book?

Compassion nor care were things she expected from the master. Instead she saw their relation much more as a mutual beneficial one, so he had every reason to try and keep her alive. Training in exchange for services. In her opinion, it was a great deal for both. She looked at the sentinel for a moment, even more curious what it was now.

***

With her Vis drained, a meal and some rest was pretty much all there had been left she could do the previous brightening. After a night of rest, she was back to full strength though and eager to try out further things. She started with requesting some books on Necromancy from Aribeal’s servant boy though, not wanting to run dry on spell casting juice too early. It didn’t help much though as it was only a matter of candlemarks before she took out her chalk and drew a circle on the floor.

There were some imparted spells left to try out, but screw those. Not that they weren’t useful, but she had managed to destroy a freaking Deamon. She could do so much better then just following predetermined steps. It wasn’t bad as far as practice went, but creating something new from scratch would do a lot better. She’d start out with something rather familiar though, in many ways a redo of the Summon Undead spell.

Spirit Puppet was nice, but wieldy to control and requiring far more power then it should. All in all it was a rather shoddy first attempt to do something useful with Reshape Mana. She could try and rebuild in from scratch, trying to make something less straining to cast from it, but instead she opted to make a new spell to replace it. Nothing too fancy, but just something that required less control of the caster once it was summoned. The circle of magic would keep her from being harmed if things went wrong again.

Spirit Minion

As with Summon Undead, the caster calls forth a spirit from the Plane of Death through Divination to serve as a mind. Instead of summoning the body of a zombie or skeleton however, the Necromancers Conjures even more spirits to serve as the body through which it can interact with the Material plane, as if he would do for a Spirit Armour. The result is much like a Spirit Puppet, but requiring less control from the mage to have it change form or even move. Instead of actively shaping the form the mage now can send a mental image of what he wants or even a basic command and have the spirit serving as a ‘mind’ handle the rest.

[Straylor Leonard]

Amber could write a book ... but then she'd have to get someone to write it for her. It was rather difficult to write human-sized, or have human-sized people publish fae-sized writing. C'est la vie. But the time was more or less useful for the fae. She did have a human boy to boss around. He brought her meals, edible ones, and anything specific she asked for. When Amber asked for books, the servant boy explained that the library was 'under renovation' and that all the younger students were told not to go near it.

Producing a Circle was a simple enough task. And when Amber instilled it with her native essence, she would find that all it needed was a mere activation before it served as her protective barrier against any unwanted experimental effects. Once more she dove into Clara. She found the familiar Ara teeming around her, which was mingled with her Vis to make Mana. Now she channeled enough Death essence which she used to conjure the spirits she needed from the Plane of Death along with the 'mind' she divined into the now-semi-intelligent Spirit Minion.

The result was something of a blend between two spells that Amber was proficient with. The principles behind Spirit Puppet produced the 'shell' of the Minion while the mechanics behind Summon Undead in general 'powered' the congregation of spirits that were sealed in place by way of the spell. And with a secondary divination to link her will with her newly forged Spirit Minionthe creature was ready to assume any form while performing some basic tasks that didn't require a lot of detail. The Minion stood some five feet from the ground, though it hovered and didn't really touch the classroom floor. It was a mesh of swirling souls until Amber produced a single mental picture, causing the mess to organize and reform into a general form. It would also be wise to assume that the size and scope of the Minion largely depended on the amount of spirits that formed it.

[Amber Brightwing]

Fae-Human conversion was the least of her problems. It was nothing a wannabe Initiate with a looking glass couldn’t solve. The unavailability of books wasn’t entirely unexpected, though she had hoped that some general material would be available elsewhere then just the library.

It only meant she would be moving on to spell casting even faster. She gave her newest creation two hands and after getting rid of the Circle of Magic she made it grab a chair and move it back and forth to test it out. Satisfied with the result she turned it into a ball, made it roll under her and transform into a chandelier-like thing, but then without the pike to put the candle on, and seated herself on it. Nothing her Spirit Puppet hadn’t been capable off, but now it went oh so much easier.

Now, for another something to try out. She went through the spell ideas that had gotten stored into her head over time and saw if she could find a useful one to try out and where she could actually observe whether the spell worked. That immediately scrapped all those needing ‘volunteers’ to test them. One that she had thought of during travel came to mind. A Sentinel spell to alert her and wake her up when something approached her.

She’d start with a simplified version of it though, something useful for travelling through the darkness. Shadow Vision was intended to connect her with the shadows through Divination and have them inform her of how the world around her looked.

Shadow Vision (initiate)
Through Divination, the Necromancer connects his mind with the shadows around them. The information gained gives him the ability to recognize shapes and forms even when blinded, especially in complete darkness.

[Amber Brightwing]

The dual view of the spell confused her for a moment, but most of it disappeared when she closed her eyes and got a much better idea of the effects of her spell. Things weren’t as detailed as the regular vision, only giving shapes and forms and lacking things like colour, but now she had peripheral vision that worked better as her regular vision became blurred by the darkness instead. She took a moment to get used to the new vision and then dispelled it again to move on to the intended Sentinel spell.

Sentinel would be the exact same thing as Shadow Vision, but with some extra usefulness added on top of it. A spirit would be called upon through Divination, much as with the Undead spells or her more recent Spirit Minion. This time it would only have one task though, inform her if anything in her immediate environment changed. A fairly pointless task right now as she could see for herself when that happened, but then the spell was intended for when she was asleep.

Instead of sleeping she’d just practice her meditation though. The boy would return eventually to check if she needed anything and if her mind was occupied enough it would be similar enough to being asleep to see if it worked. And once the boy was back she could try out something more offensive maybe, something that needed a target…

Sentinel (apprentice)
Through Divination, the Necromancer connects his mind with the shadows around them, just as with Shadow Vision. Through a second Divination, the Necromancer also calls forth a spirit and connects it to both the shadows and himself. When something in the surrounding environment changes, such as a person coming near, the spirit gives a warning to the mage.

[Amber Brightwing]

She had been meditating for a while, just maintaining Clara or dropping out of it and regaining it as practice. Not that she had that much need for it anymore, but it kept her mind occupied. Suddenly she was thrown out of Clara and the shadowy image of the door behind her opening was projected into her mind. She turned around and faced the boy with a grin.

“Good that you have arrived, I wanted to try something out. Stand over there.”

Somewhat reluctant the boy moved over to the place she had indicated. He didn’t seem to be that comfortable with the situation, even though she had no intention to harm him. She dropped a piece of chalk into on her Spirit Minion and had it transformed into a ball again. It rolled towards the boy fast as the look on his face showed increasing alarm of what was to come. The ball simply rolled around him before returning to its master though, leaving a neat chalk circle around him. After a moment of thought she drew a circle around herself as well before turning the spirits back into their chandelier form.

“Now, stay in the circle and no harm should come to you. This will take a moment so don’t leave it until I say so.” Knowing some basics on Arcana, the boy visually relaxed at her statement.

She would simply Conjure forth a blob of Acid, one of the most basic things there were. She would add direction to it though, Abjuration to guide it to its target. The first creation was shot in the general direction of the boy, but a little to the left. It flew straight for a while, but then bend to the boy and crashed into the Circle of Magic. Without pausing she quickly made a second one, throwing it further off target. It made a wide arc and eventually came crashing upon the boy’s Circle of Magic again. To finish, a last Guided Acid Sphere was created and thrown directly at the boy. This time it wasn’t much of a throw, but more of a push though. Before even getting halfway, the sphere halted and returned the way it had come, crashing into her own Circle of Magic.

“All done. Thanks for the help.”

Guided Acid Sphere (apprentice)
The necromancer Conjures forth a blob of Acid as with the regular Acid Sphere. Through Abjuration the spell is guided in its flight, bending its path towards the nearest source of life.

[Straylor Leonard]

Several brightenings passed and the Fae Necromancer's work was a success. Her spells came to life, their mechanisms sound, tried, and true. It was expected, of course, that the aspiring pupil found it a little wary to be part of Amber's experiements again. But he did serve his purpose in the end, and was allowed to walk (or skitter) out of the classroom after the Journeywoman's Guided Acid Sphere proved successful. At this time, her Spirit Minion was bobbling about in its ball form, idly wandering about the extent of the classroom. The hovering black gem spun effortlessly in mid-air, as if suddenly aroused by an unknown force.

Within moments, Aribeal arrived looking a little more tired and spent than usual. He motioned lazily at the gem and it spun again in mid-air before vanishing completely. "Serale", he inclined his head toward Amber before silently moving toward his desk. Then slumping his form over his heavy arm chair he let loose a sigh before shaking his head. "You will be glad to learn that whatever threatened us has been neutralized." He smiled weakly before he straightened up and his dark eyes narrowed at the bobbing figure of Amber's Spirit Minion. Chuckling lightly he said, "you come up with the strangest creations, Adept. But useful for you, I think. Well concieved."

"As per the rest of your instruction, I believe that only one thing stands in the way of its completion. You must return here within two cycles with three more unique spells and an essay pertaining to theories or mechanisms that you wish to use in your Masterpiece. I will have some colleagues join us for your presentation on that darkening. Any questions? If not, you are dismissed for the time being."

[Amber Brightwing]

Amber turned towards the Master as he entered. She followed him towards his desk, commanding her Spirit Minion to follow her and shaped it in an arm chair for her to sit on, with a pillar under it that reached up to the floor for support and almost no back to leave room for wings.

She grinned momentarily as she heard the words of praise, but quickly became serious again as she heard her next assignment. Three more unique spells shouldn’t be that much of a problem, but she’d have to think about something suitable enough to serve as a Masterpiece. Not much thought had gone to that as of yet, thinking it to be more something you needed to finally advance to the level of Master rather then something that a starting Journeyman needed to bother himself about.

***

With no more questions left to be answered she had taken her leave and returned to her home. The next two weeks would be spend for a large part rummaging through various tomes to get an idea of something sizably large she could use for a Masterpiece, even going through some other spell lists checking for ideas she could use.

The other required spells were quickly drawn up on the side. Only one of the three had been properly tested out though – thanks to the dead pigeon she had found on a rooftop – as they needed living targets for proper practice.

So two weeks later she returned, a Spirit Minion by her side to carry the piece of paper she had wrote her Essay on. The writing on it was not among the prettiest. She had done her best to write as large as she could and the quality of the handwriting had suffered of it. Even so, the letters were still small, though they should be readable to anyone who still had a decent eyesight.

Originally Posted by New spells

OOC: This thread almost halved my ‘possible spells’ list and used up the most useful ones ^^

Berserk (Initiate)
Through Divination, thoughts of death, hatred and destruction are instilled in the target, filling his mind completely. The victim is urged into a blind rage, attacking all that stand near him, friend or foe. Pain and fatigue are ignored and nothing short of death (and the end of the spell) will stop the murderous frenzy.

Preserve Corpse (Initiate)
Evoking Death into a corpse to make it truly death for the duration of the spell (stopping the rotting by stopping the circle of life and death since rotting things only lead to the creation of new life). Only useful once you hit apprentice or maybe even journeyman and your corpses start walking around for longer durations though.

Living Dead (Apprentice)
Raise Corpse taken further with even more contempt for other’s lives. Through Divination the Necromancer calls forth a spirits from the Plane of Death and links it with a body as if he would cast Raise Corpse. The only difference is that now the target is a living being rather then dead remains. The target’s mind is repressed and the control over is body is taken over by the spirit momentarily. For the duration of the spell the victim’s body is under the Necromancer’s control as if he were an Undead and in fact, if it were to receive a mortal wound before the spell was over it would become a normally raised Undead. If the spell were to disappear either through dispelling or simply wearing out over time, the target would return to its normal self with full memory of what has transpired.

Originally Posted by Essay

Masterpiece: Shadow Walk

To travel across the empire swift and easy, teleportation is the number one choice. The only problem is that it is mostly a thing for Sorcerers and to try and do something similar with other spheres – such as Necromancy in this case – is complicated and perhaps not even possible to create something practical at until Master or Archmage levels.

Even if there is a way around most of the obstacles to create such a spell I would like to attempt to move around the problem with a more easy and elegant solution that, while not teleportation, comes close enough to it to serve the same purpose. Travel from one place to another in the Empire takes days if not weeks, so if one could succeed to reduce the travel time to hours even then travelling would already benefit significantly.

Moving the goal from teleportation to fast travel does not solve the problem of course and merely poses a different one. I think it’s one that might have an easier solution though. Necromancy does not contain any elements that relate to teleporting, but it does have something that can be present in huge locations simultaneously: shadows. Shadows can be in many places at once and if one could become part of that shadow and break free from it elsewhere that would give a solution for the earlier posed problem. For long distance travel it would further impose the limit of travel after dark, but even so the spell itself would still remain useful enough.

Druids can turn into Animals and Mystics can turn themselves incorporeal. Necromancers too have the Grim Shift spell where they can turn themselves incorporeal, though that is one at Master level. It would no doubt require careful use of Alteration and elaborate testing on non-living and living subjects before completion, but there seems to be nothing indicating that turning into shadow and back unharmed is not possible.

What still remains to be found out is if this will indeed lead to faster travel, but that is something only testing will be able to answer.

Originally Posted by Eventual spell

I actually ran this past Kalinda already as I intended to use it as soon as my training was finished to go after some enchanted wood without having to leave my Thane post for an extended period of time ^^

Shadow Walk (Journeyman spell)
The mage Alters himself to take the form of a shadow. He becomes incorporeal and capable of moving at great speed. Regular weapons no longer damage the mage, but he is also rendered unable to cast, aside from dispelling this form. His movement is limited during the day as he has to stay within connected patches of darkness and shining light on him is potentially dangerous. The Necromancer can’t pass through solid objects either, though he can squeeze himself through small holes.

[Straylor Leonard]

OOC: This thread almost halved my ‘possible spells’ list and used up the most useful ones ^^

OoC: is that good ...?

The dark hallways of Toherro's sanctum made way for the aspiring Journeywoman when she returned. Beside her, a mesh of spirits, muted in anguished and pain, swirled and merged together to form the ever-changing form of the Spirit Minion. The walk to her former classroom wasn't long, though the fae did feel an itch to test out her Shadow Walk spell.

Upon arrival, she was greeted by Aribeal. The Mer Necromancer was in his humanoid form and adorned himself in a dark yellow robes complete with his black-diamond jewelry. A single, midnight-colored gem hung beside his left shoulder, levitating in the air. With him, his promised colleagues, was a dark elf and an old human. The pair looked at the fae when she arrived, nodding solemly in greeting. The dark elf wore shimmering silver robes while the human wore a set of emerald garments that was adorned with gold and silver trimmings near his sleeves.

"Welcome back", the Master Necromancer said with a tilt of his head. He recieved the parchment containing Amber then, then passed his eyes on its contents for a few moments. Raising his attention once again to Amber, he smiled before passing the essay to the dark elf. "A very cunning, yet simple spell", he added, "I am once again impressed by you, Adept. You may still rise to the Right Hand of the Archmagus himself one brightening." The huamn wizard cleared his throat and his dark elf counterpart's gaze continued to linger on the essay.

"My only advise for you is to avoid using this Shadow-based spell near sources of light", he continued, "I've had many students who managed the difficult task of shapeshifting ... their shadow-forms were shattered by any form of light, you see. And they were never able to transform back into existence." He smiled grimly before extending his hand toward Amber. The black gem hovered lightly toward it and landed on his palm.

"Look into the gem, Adept", he said, "this is your final Test."

[Amber Brightwing]

OOC: I would have just created them at the opportune moment otherwise, so it matter little actually ^^

The little Fae licked her lips in anticipation as the three men studied the document. While she briefly wondered about the other two were, not remembering having them seen before, she was mostly curious about their judgement on her proposed Masterpiece. When her Master smiled, a grin crept to her face, widening even further when she heard the words of praise. While she wasn’t aiming to take the Mer’s position she certainly wouldn’t mind surpassing him skill some day. She still had quite a bit of work ahead of her before she’d manage that though.

“I had thought about it, but considering pretty most sources of light are fairly static, moving around with people at best I doubt this would be a problem. I’m not even sure one could pass the borders of shadow if they were foolish enough to try such a thing as shadows can’t move into the light. In any case, I think the most dangerous thing would be someone casting a light spell or perhaps opening the curtains in a dark room during daylight. It’s primarily meant to be a travelling spell though, so chances on encountering difficulties like that would be nearly non-existent I think.

With that being said she flew over to the gem and peered into it without hesitation. Whatever he had in store for her, she was ready.