Ravenloft: Prisoners of the Mist

Within the swirling Mist (IC) => Biographies => Topic started by: Silas Rotleaf on April 07, 2018, 12:23:59 PM

Title: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on April 07, 2018, 12:23:59 PM
I've been lied to.
Most of what I took for granted was a fiction designed to keep an old couple happy.
Ugh! That explains why I'd get bullied in my childhood. No, they raised me like I was their own child. Then when I reached the Hazlani rite of passage where every Mulan youth receives their first tattoo it was explained to me I was in fact of mongrel birth. The woman I thought of as my mother did not actually give birth to me. It made sense from that point on looking back for why she tended toward being distant.

My true mother was one of the plantation slaves??? My father had a mistress.

I am a Quoa but also half-Vistani.
The Vistani aren't fond of giomorgios, so for the most part aside from learning my biological mother was of the Vatraska clan they've been rather tight lipped. Trying to ask them for more information is largely useless.

I'll try to honor both heritages while at the same time being neither one entirely.

It's difficult to trust others. Everyone is pushing some sort of agenda.
This isn't a question of foreigners vs. locals. Even within your own community there is that dynamic. It's the millstone by which the Lawgiver tests our mettle. How He separates the good grain from the bad. To believe anything else would be to fall prey to the falsehoods of Mytteri, a fate for weak-kneed and simpler-minded people who are inherently unfit.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on April 08, 2018, 05:16:20 PM
I am told to join either the Wayfarer Kinship or Vanguard Initiative.
They could help me become a better adventurer and healer... I guess?

My people (on both sides) have a fearsome reputation to the point foreigners ask me how I could miss my homeland. I look at them funny. They think that Hazlan has slavery and red wizards makes it a horrible place.

Certainly if you piss off the slavers you would not have a good time of things.  They (a few of the foreigners I was traveling with) also tried some nonsense with a display of perhaps mixed genuine and mock fright in the mist camp that I have a pet worg but Mamat is typically pretty docile. He won't attack you unless he thinks you are trying to attack me. That or if I tell him to. Do not flatter yourselves.

I raised him from a pup. Assuming thorough malevolence on the part of a caster based on the creature he or she takes as a familiar is incredibly backward! Also egotistical. To think every mage is specifically out to get you when you are a stranger to us too??? Preposterous.
I have much more interesting things to study and experiment on than dirt headed Barovian peasantry. Do they all each assume such high importance they feel it warrants worrying about being the target of direct attacks? You are a princess of turnips! And you, the king of the tsuika. I laugh. Oh dear, this isn't helping.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on April 10, 2018, 07:27:03 PM
I am a Hazlani. I am of my Father's House.
Being a rural aristocrat I was star struck getting to meet real live red wizard apprentices. They offered me, a simple country boy - an apprenticeship! At least in my home country magic isn't so stupidly and backwardly persecuted simply for being.
There are legitimate channels to go about your arcane studies in Ramulai.

I spent some time in Barovia and Har'Akir. To be honest I was most fascinated by the ruins in the latter, though I dare not try to explore them alone. Perhaps the masters I am apprenticing under will see fit to take us there at some point. I told them about how I can read Akiri.

A boy? I'm a thirty year old man. Enough with being star struck.
Didn't father tell me I'd have a wife? One of the Iron Order monks it sounded like was who he had in mind...
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on April 11, 2018, 01:52:08 PM
I do have a wife.  That's right.
We didn't see each other much because she is busy with duties in the hidden monastery.

How is Shanaz doing?
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on April 12, 2018, 12:28:14 PM
Either she got my letter or the mists carried her to Barovia. Very happy to see her again. Mamat was happy to see her too.

Father and stepmother picked well.
It feels so nice knowing Shanaz and I have each other's backs.
I think a few of the Barovian men are jealous.
The look on their faces says how did a not physically rugged domn like him wind up with a devoted and extremely limber doamna like her?!
Hazlani secret! My grin tells them right back.


The plantation is fine Shanaz tells me.  Father and stepmother were doing okay. Hopefully there is a good harvest this season. We grow barley and malt that is then traded to Immol and the nearby regions make it into liquor, mostly.

Shanaz's family are brewers, mine own a farm. It was a very pragmatic match for our parents to make. Like most Mulan this was decided for us when we were children. The thing about arranged marriages is you learn to get along with one another. This odd foreigner idea of free love seems strange. I guess they like being their own matchmakers themselves? A Barovian I sometimes travel with finds it odd the Mulan men wear skirts.  Well, so too do I think that so many older Barovian men like to have mustaches is a little strange.

It's not true that we do not love one another. Rather, you work together to support each other and the family is an economic unit. Our skills and abilities complement one another meaning there was quite a bit of wisdom in our parents arranging such a match. It should be profitable as well to cut out some of the middle traders and directly supply the brewery. Prudent sense for both our families.

Now though we have to contend with a way to make our fortunes here. I've come back from my travels abroad to Har'Akir able to read their hieroglyphics. For now money is tight but my wife is clever and we make each coin we do spend count.  We plan and budget carefully to make the most of what we eke out in this barbarous land.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on April 14, 2018, 11:51:06 AM
The high priestess of the Morninglord temple and her Richemuloise? Mordentish? Perhaps Dementlieuse lover propagated a nasty rumor which caused a Garda to bash in my glasses and break my nose.
They think we are *all*,- that every Hazlani needs to be a wicked slaver and that we are out to conquer the entire core. They think we all want to recruit everybody into being lawgiver faithful.  That is stupid.
Why would any Lawgiver faithful want his or her trip to Iron Paradise made filthy and unclean by polluting it with souls of inferior stock? Their disorderliness of thought in terms of sheer entropy is abhorrent.

I myself am of mixed birth but that must remain my secret shame. I was raised Mulan on a plantation in a very rural region of Hazlan. I have the tattoos including the calligraphic scalp glyph depicting my name. I am a Quoa.
I might end up going to the hell of slaves for the tryst my father and true mother had the one fall they must have. Shanaz is a good Mulan woman. She'll go to iron paradise. There is no doubt.
If we have any children will their chance(s) also be denied for being of impure blood even though it is more dilute?
I can't go to a Biskop or Kontor to ask. For now I'll just continue to postpone that until I can feel more certain.

Lying is bad but if it is a lie to preserve order, order is good.

People don't understand... The Church of the Lawgiver IS the only State sanctioned religion Hazlani are allowed to practice. If you advocate our people to be subversive that would damage everyone and the elegant figurative machinery of our wizard-king's grand social experiment.  You are telling us when you think we ought to break away from our traditions to disobey our own laws and get ourselves and our loved ones endangered. Afterall, it's no skin off your nose judgmental foreigner.

What's another dead Hazlani if you simplistically view us all as a big monolithic "empire of evil"? What barbarous peoples.

We aren't all like that.
Not every Mulan is out to capture you in the middle of the night from the street or your home to fuel fiendish experiments or bid as items in a slave auction. Have some decency and tact. Oh wait, you can't because you don't have our class. That's right. Trashy foreigners. Many of them even wear pants and grow their hair out long. Like barbarous folk. Actual wild men are a touch more civil.
I've had fairly reasonable conversations about business and craft with dwarves!

Agios, you should have thought of augmenting dwarven teamsters years ago! Indeed, who needs stupid oxen when you can boost the stoutfolk who are already capable fighters into small juggernauts for transporting goods? Oh blast... That didn't go as well as I'd hoped.
We ended up getting lost and still suffering some setbacks due to attacks by crag cats.

Also when you use invisibility on someone for them to avoid predatory beasts... You need true seeing or a potion of revealing to go with it otherwise your haulers in the mountain caravan get lost. You can only see each other a short distance apart which hampers speed, in turn cutting into productivity.
The money we saved on pack oxes was largely spent on bandages to nurse our many scratches and bite wounds from the beasts.

The dwarves liked it though and I found it exhilarating.
Maybe my place isn't overseeing migrant agricultural laborers but directing movers? Eh... No, my sense of directions is pretty bad.
I get so caught up in maintaining my concentration to keep the workers' wards strong that I get a tad easily distracted and lose myself easily as the focus for my spells demands much of my attention.

They find my lack of beardedness odd but I explained to him the tattooed glyphs on our heads are a bit like their runes and that I think made sense to the two haulers. Hurdik and B-something? What was the older one's name? It'll come back to me when I see him again.*
He was a dwarven monk and I practiced using my newest helpful spells on him to temporarily enchant his clothing and punching mitts. We worked out which ones work well together which will be great; Now I know ahead of time which things to prepare to help my Shanaz thanks to the old dwarf allowing me to test it all out on him, rather graciously.

Why are we here and not back in Hazlan?
Is it so entirely inconceivable to you narrow-minded heathens that perhaps not that unlike yourselves my wife and I are simply adventurers and may actually enjoy exploring the core?
Or that the mists grab everyone equally both offworlder and outlander alike? Ask the mists why. See what they say (or don't).

Did we both come here to cause strife and unpleasantness for your idyllic vapid and thoroughly insipid little lives to experience like a rash one tries to wash away but gets worse due to being irritated?
No!

I seek to practice medicine and study and have already learned Akiri.
If my wife and I seek to do business and interact with you foreigners at all, it does not have to be some evil trap you egomaniacal simpletons!
We are people!

Oh but it is not right for us to verbally defend ourselves from such things because your brute like sensitive feelings are easily bruised.
Your misguided sense of right and wrong lead you to think destroying an entire people or toppling an economy must be the right thing.  This I see as symptomatic of not having unification under a strong leader who takes charge. Such dissent is likely a sign of weakness.

And yet...
I do enjoy a spirited ethical debate or philosophical meandering a little with these nonHazlani at times.  Even though they aren't Hazlani.

*Barradin. His name is Barradin.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on April 19, 2018, 04:21:56 PM
To me a slaver is someone who kidnaps people to sell at an auction.
To assume everyone in a cruel empire as citizens of it needs be responsible for the actions of their government is the most idiotic of notions. Do the Barovians hold themselves responsible for every atrocity committed by their count? I think not!

You don't elect an absolute ruler.
We are not simply all wicked fiends. We are a people.

I am a doctor of medicine.
Disease strikes both freeman and slave alike indiscriminately.
I had decided long ago at my family's plantation that it (disease) was my enemy.
I do not deny someone healthcare based on their status. As much as I am able I treat Mulan, Rashemi and demihuman alike, regardless of their social standing.

The full moon makes me ill.
I don't turn into anything but it puts me ill at ease during those three nights of the month and I'm always glad when that cycle of the lunar phase is behind us in retrograde. Typically I'm more irritable. I'm not sure why that is but I try to keep a handle on it.

I am Doctor Agios Quoa. My wife and I are adventurers from Hazlan.
Every nation has some adventurers.

Does every bad thing the Dukkar does mean people hate all Invidians? I think not.
Is every brutality committed by the Boritsis and their condiotteri thugs make it reason to dislike all Borcans? This is unlikely.
Har'Akir is a theocracy with endemic slavery in it. I don't see people up at arms about that nearly so much.

Why single out Hazlan and traveling Hazlani?
You fuss about abolition like it was something which could happen overnight. How very naive.

The King of Hazlan and the Iron Church are very powerful entities. Telling us to stand against them like sacrificial lambs to the slaughter is no skin off your nose foreigner, so continue advising us how to run our affairs better when unsolicited for advice. Tell people to oppose their ruler which for a Barovian and anybody in Barovia is considered high treason and the punishment is execution. You'd think they'd understand that both kingdoms have stern and severe punishments for criminal offenses as something in common.

I, Doctor Agios Quoa, do not myself own any slaves. Nor does my wife.
We travel too much. There is simply nowhere which we would be able to put them!

Obviously you must hate us for why else deliberately urge actions that would get one killed, stricken from imperial record as ever having been and deliberately forgotten about on purpose? Erasure of all Hazlani from ever existing simply because you find some of our empire's practices to be abhorrent? Hmm, who is the genocidal madman now you well-meaning fools!?

I will not apologize for being a Mulan.  If you have complaints about Hazlan please do take them up with our Wizard King or the Church of the Lawgiver and be sure to do so directly. See where that gets you.

I have been implored by a handful of these goodly "hero" types from the "free world" to give up or free any slaves my wife and I have. Repeatedly I have explained we do not own any. This circular debate is getting tiresome.

Oh but our parents have some and their parents did so we should go back and demand they lose them? The old are most stubborn in their ways and are not giving that up any time soon. The loss in status and productivity would hurt many. Not your problem though is it outsider?

As a country physician I have seen plague ravage people from all walks of life. Injury and illness happens to the free and to the indentured. Disease does not care how wealthy and well connected you are nor whom you are related to.  Whether you are a census taker, migrant laborer or overseer little does this matter to contagion.

I am sorry Sir Lexington. I cannot renounce being one of King Hazlik's subjects. To ask this of my wife and I knowing full well the Barovians will continue to mistrust us anyway would mean everything to be lost and very little to be gained.
So I will do what I can to indirectly help your hospice or if you find yourself short on physicians I will offer to step in during an emergency.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on April 21, 2018, 09:32:44 AM
Opium is illegal in Vallaki. You can purchase/use it in Dementlieu but right now they are locked in yet another civil war.

I usually would use it to treat my lunar sickness. That isn't going to be an option here in Barovia so I will just have to tough things out.

Do it for yourself and do it for your wife. Don't give in to the wild feelings. Just hang in there for the next three nights. Try to...

Keep it together! Get a hold of yourself man! You are a doctor of medicine!

I'm getting very tired of the constant prejudice the Vallaki people tend to throw my way just because I am a Hazlani. I am not in charge of what the Iron Church or Red Academy do. I'm just a citizen in an empire. If you don't like what they are doing please take it up with a biskop or the local vraylock. The zulkirs are quite busy but you might talk to their receptionists.

I am not in charge of any of these institutions you dislike sir/madam.
How incredibly annoying.

Perhaps I should amass food donations to support the Dementleuse war effort/refugee relief, even though I personally do loathe those people...
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on April 22, 2018, 05:04:58 PM
There is much to think about as of recent. I will detail some of it later and in subsequent entries.


Our anniversary!
Got Shanaz gloves of the Yellow Rose and she got me a staff of the apprentice conjurer. How nice!
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on April 24, 2018, 07:18:12 PM
Medical supplies aren't cheap.
Funds run low.
Need to do more deliveries and expeditions.
Expeditions aren't cheap but the rewards can cover the cost... Except for when people are stingy in the payout. Hmm.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on April 26, 2018, 11:57:24 AM
Strange bedfellows:

I never imagined I'd be working with the high priestess of the Morninglord temple to save a life. That did turn out unexpected.

The Vallaki temple basement was especially overrun and skeletons were choking the entranceway. A fighter fell. We retrieved him and cleared out the skeletons.

====
Lest people forget,
Hazlan and Nova Vaasa are the bread basket of the core. Our grain and other agriculture feeds much of the other nations and is our primary export.  For generations people have traded between Hazlan and the northern Barovian village of Immol at our southern border.
===
Some people I thought might have been my friends are possibly not. When I am at my most vulnerable they hold it against me. This is what it means to be a giomorgio.  There is no cure for lunatio. You can treat it with narcotics some of which are illegal in Barovia or you can have a trusted friend heal your injuries. There won't be much sleep gotten during the three nights of the full moon's station. Things begin to get more normal again once that lunar phase has passed its waxing zenith and is in a waning retrograde.
===
I'm not a red wizard, I'm an orange doctor!
These are two quite different things, yes? Yes!
===
Shanaz is proud of me.
Eventually I will be both a great physician and a great wizard.
Of course, not as powerful a wizard as King Hazlik, but a respectable mage nonetheless.
==
I hate that feeling. The one where everybody acts like you *cannot* say certain things or you end up dead. Like there are things you have to pretend *aren't* just to keep people happy or else they turn into very human monsters. They will descend upon you like a pack of meenocks.

Not the things a ruler says but when unwashed filthy peasants think they are in charge of what everyone else is supposed to do and think. When they pass judgement on you for being a foreigner.
===
Don't tell me how you think I ought to feel and what I ought to do. I do know my place very well. The question is do you? Is my unity of purpose something you find bothersome?
==
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on April 27, 2018, 01:30:46 PM
I suspect Miss Kismet is a Rashemi freewoman due to her coloring, long hair and fluency in Vaasi. She's a clever girl and I have begun mentoring her in herbalism and the healing arts.
===
I am an imperial citizen, yes.
King Hazlik is our ruler.
He is an archmage and probably the most powerful wizard in the core.
I am *PROUD* of being a Hazlani.
People act like we are all monsters because the empire practices slavery but we aren't uncivilized kidnapping murderers. That is very offensive.
We have actors, tradesmen, crafters, artisans, artists, teachers and doctors... We appreciate the arts and theater. We have philosophy and mathematics and all sorts of cultural achievements. To paint this big monolithic picture of it being a nation of savages is just... Stupid and wrong.
==
The Iron Lord: A harsh God in harsh lands and a faith practiced by harsh people. Yes, I am aware of this. Culturally I use statements referring to the Lawgiver on occasion. It's something we grew up around.
I am not a religious missionary. It is not my goal to spread this faith throughout the core so if everybody could just *relax* maybe a little bit...
===
I am *NOT* a red wizard. I *AM* an orange doctor.
I'm a physician of Eastern medicine.
==
Often it is insinuated to me by people (some well-meaning and others not) that my differentness and distinct foreignness will lead to fearful folk killing me. I certainly hope not. I will not apologize for being what I am, however.

I have made a few concessions.
I already keep my head markings to myself under a bandana or headscarf most of the time. I have adopted these barbaric pants over my more traditional kaftan. I will not give up my pointy toed shoes though.
====
Missed the deadline for submissions in Practical Necromancy at the Red Academy.
That's okay, I'm a transmuter and not a necromancer.
If I did become a red apprentice that's considered very honorable back home. I have to keep reassuring these rustic backwoods Barovians I am not one though because they hold much fear and loathing towards our arcane academy graduates.
===
It's annoying having to always be vague about magic and act like it doesn't exist in order to appease the locals but I do like my head remaining attached to my shoulders.

I'm just kindly Doctor Quoa, the Hazlani physician, treating diseases and injuries for everybody both freeman and slave alike! My wife and I travel the core healing the sick.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on April 30, 2018, 03:41:27 AM
I really don't much care for the Dementliuese.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on May 02, 2018, 05:02:30 PM
You don't have to like me.
Or my people.
I'm just here to help.
-Doctor Agios Quoa.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on May 03, 2018, 04:12:46 PM
The Garda are lying.
They are saying because I am a Hazlani and was looking into alternatives to opium I could prescribe to it for my patients since this drug is illegal here that I must therefore have been giving/using/advising people to do so illegally.
I have also been advised to leave Barovia, go back to Hazlan, etc.

It seems rather quite unfair.
Every time I have told them I do not and thrust my medical bag at them to allow them to see for themselves I don't have any contraband they refuse to search me and then say they will write it up as I am an opium fiend, for being a Hazlani.

It seems a blasted shame.
I just started learning Balok and my wife has made some friends here.
Oh well though.
I severely doubt the Garda will be willing to admit they made a mistake.
Afterall, what's another dead outlander to throw on the pile?

I was raised to respect authority figures so being attacked by them and told outright I will be punished for crimes which they themselves they actually directly have told me they know I did not commit, for "allowing" it to happen or simply seeming suspicious for being a foreigner is not right nor just. I feel. I told some of this to the corporal.
He laughed. He reminded me how very early on he did say I could leave. In fact he again recommended it. I wonder if I leave and don't come back if I will be pursued. Perhaps people will make up the same sorts of terrible stories they often do in order to justify this?

So Vallaki,... Feh!

The silver lining? I now have a fundamental grasp of basic alchemy.

A few of the younger privates seemed genuinely sympathetic but I know there is nothing they could do without risking the ire of their superiors and it would not be right of me to ask them that so I should just leave. I will not have these promising young lawmen potentially jeopardize their livelihoods.

I came to Vallaki to study medicine under Sir Lexington. They don't care. Told me so.
I'm not indignant anymore in fact. I'm just... Very disappointed. You'd think people were a little more advanced in our neighboring country.

Father and in-laws, step mother and wife I have failed you.
I have brought shame to our house in a foreign land by raising the hackles of misunderstanding and mistrustful lawmen trying to convict me of things I did not actually do. The stain is indelible.

If I have helped people, the locals resent it. I feel though it was important for me to do so.
Those people definitely benefitted from having medical care and support during their fights against the terrors of the old night.

I will not be a martyr. I do not want to die senselessly and not here.
It isn't worth it. This is not a point worth dying over.
Let the stupidly stubborn and ignorant keep to their traditions just as they judge us harshly for ours.
Try to rise above that.
You are a civilized Hazlani. You were raised in the Mulan way!
You keep your promises. You respect rulers and agents of their authority... To the extent such is possible. The law is important.
==
When Shula of Sigil asked you cannot possibly be attacked or judged badly in Vallaki by people just for looking and being a tad different, yes? I have an answer to that now: Well no. YOU VERY MUCH CAN.
===
This was very upsetting to me but when I voiced some concern I was deeply ridiculed and told I worry too much, complain too much about things and to simply stop worrying because it invites this sort of unwanted negative attention... Yet the people who adivse such I don't think have been in a situation this potentially dire.
====
If there is a lesson to be had here it is essentially that when you are an outsider you are subject to a land's laws but are not protected by them. This is perhaps quite the important cautionary tale for other travelers and I hope someone else may teach it to them.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on May 04, 2018, 10:50:42 AM
Gods bless Sir Lexington.
I don't know what he did or said to get the Garda to relent but the Lance Corporal very approachably and in a quite civil manner addressed to me some of his concerns. I was more than happy to respond to them and comply with his requests.
I am glad my wife and I will not have to move away. My patients in Vallaki are also glad.
I hope Sir Lexington gets to go to iron heaven.
====
Ugh, Lenny is a mess. That young warrior is so undisciplined, and he needs someone to teach him tactics. Getting the entire party killed and making off with their gold and weapons is not alright. When the tactician, the leader, even the ranged support and your medics and healers in a team say don't run ahead and open the door because there are shadow demons we want to deal with one at a time...
I really cannot fathom what other than Mytteri itself convinced him opening that gateway would turn out in any other way than the mission going badly.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on May 05, 2018, 10:30:43 AM
I'm not so sure that Sir Lexington talking to Lance Corporal Mircea did anything afterall. I've been informed I have been summoned to appear at his behest at the citadel.

Before he said if I couldn't apprehend Romeo I'd be punished in her place. Now there is a wanted poster with a substantial bounty out on her.
I don't want to die or get maimed. She ran away when he disrupted my physical examination in the basement of the Lady's rest. It was a check up and she was describing chronic pain symptoms to me. It really doesn't help she wielded a spell to run away from him.

I'm scared but I have to. I can't really run away.
It's not the Mulan way. It's not my family way. Shanaz would be extremely disappointed in me if I voluntarily went into self-imposed exile. Father's advice was respect the laws of the place you are whether traveling or at home. Nobody ever really went over what you should do when an official is mad at you for something somebody else did while you were there.

I have exactly no coins now. If they want me to pay some giant fine... I heard typically Barovians put you to work in mines as community service when you cannot afford to pay a violations fee. I'm not strong enough to wield a pickaxe or chop wood. Maybe I could scrub his floors, stitch the gashes of an injured hunter, help deliver a baby?
I can make potions and simple varnishes but those all cost money to produce.

Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on May 08, 2018, 05:39:39 PM
Varnishes!
I have dived into the interesting world of alchemy.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on May 10, 2018, 01:34:03 PM
I love my wife.

Our good friend the hunter named Jack brought us some gifts.
It's wolf and worg season and he and I see fur trading is going to be a good way to make some extra money.

I am a law abiding person.
Ignorant imbeciles still give me grief about how I need to be a terrible person because the empire of my homeland practices slavery; It is much easier to attack a civilian than take your grievances to the actual leader of a country whose government you do not like, isn't it?
They insist I cannot possibly be a physician and pretend my assistant must be some sort of slave or have been otherwise coerced and act fearful and full of loathing I have actual friends because apparently they have been fed many demonizing tales about us Hazlani.
Can you name one empire which is not bloodstained though? I think not.

This is dangerous foolishness. So much Mytteri.
I *AM* a doctor you fools, not some kidnapping murderer.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on May 12, 2018, 10:00:40 AM
I am angry. Angry about people telling me I should not be even allowed to have an opinion on the things around me when they volunteer theirs often unsolicited while in my presence.
Annoyed at those who judge my people without having met any first.
Irritated that the ignorant fools presume to lecture me on the evils of slavery without realizing that the way their own societies use prisoners for forced labor is itself also a form of slavery, and so on...

Also that people in Vallaki seem to think all Hazlani are chaotic rabble rousers seeking to destabilize their very way of life.
If they knew anything about us at all they would know all proper Hazlani abhor chaos, are respectful toward laws and traditions and do their best to obey authorities in whichever land they set foot in.
Our very religion, that of the Lawgiver says law and order are sacred and not to be questioned. Our version of hell is a concept that the supreme authority of all existence will be displeased with you for sewing seeds of dissent and confine you to a unique unpleasantness of endless drudgery and torture, a state of perpetual torment.

I am not a savage, fools.
I am a physician. I study and practice chirurgery and alchemy.
People do love spouting their nonsense.
Meanwhile, there are injuries and illnesses to tend to in the populace.
These people *urgently* need better healthcare than they are being offered.

My existence makes those who are my detractors upset. It challenges their preconceived notions.
I do not think though that killing me for being an outlier will be them "truly" winning but like anyone would stop to consider that; It's a morbid amusement as I help these ungrateful, backwards and fearful primitives.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on May 15, 2018, 08:21:25 PM
Floki lied and made up ludicrous things to me about my wife while also admitting he held feelings towards her...

I had a feeling he was making it up but checked with Shanaz just to make sure.
She hadn't left for Port yet so she could not possibly have been cheating on me with men there and sure as heck didn't sleep with Floki.
I was incensed. Just seethingly angry, mostly with him for a few days after he told me that.

I had restraint though and didn't change him into a pig.
Shanaz and I have been together for 17 years. We raised Mamat together from a pup and always help each other in our business decisions. As a team.

I am getting better at alchemy. People want to get lessons in alchemy from me and lessons in herbalism from Mrs. Quoa.

We are thinking soon it will be the right time to open our apothecary.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on May 17, 2018, 01:06:11 PM
It somewhat bothers me when people in Vallaki demonize us Hazlani.
Much fuss gets made about how the kingdom has slavery and people (in Vallaki) oft give their unsolicited opinions on our government. They throw it at us very gratuitously as though this is supposed to do something about it?
Them: You are Hazlani?
Me: ... Yes.
Them: I don't like your country's politics. You must be evil because your king and church don't ban slavery!
Me:... Well, that's slightly irritating.

They ignorantly accuse us of all being slavemongers and have mock fright, quite melodramatically and insultingly insisting we will kidnap them in the middle of the night.

This is very annoying.
I am a doctor, *not* an uncivilized brute!

Them: You must be with the iron church! I hate the Lawgiver! Bane is a wicked religion and you must repent your ways and adopt *mine* instead!
Me: Sir or madam, please let go of the scruff of my shirt... Stop holding me at sword point. That is *not* very civilized.

Not like anybody asked but I'm not an especially religious person.
Also, what is with this fussing about some supposed black gate?
Shady types ask me if I have seen or been to it.
It finally occurred to me while with one of my Barovian friends that what these tigans were likely referring to was the great iron cathedral in Nordenfall Vale. No, I haven't been to it.
I spent most of my time in Hazlan in the countryside and the city capital of Ramulai. I am a traveling physician. I make house calls.
I have a little black bag full of medicine, my chirurgery tools and alchemical kit.

A particularly ditzy elf has it in her mind that I cannot be a physician and need to be a "thrall keeper." When she sees me she makes rude gestures or hurls insults in Sylvan and common.

Now a few people are insisting they think I will get people killed.
I am a good physician though. I save lives. This is all clearly nonsense and gawking, gawping at the curiously exotic foreigner.
===
Unfortunately there is no cure for ignorance.

Shanaz hasn't been to Port yet.
Our friend Miss Darcey suggested I come with them.
I don't much care for the Dementlieuse but they do have access to certain more advanced materials than can be readily obtained in Barovia; I could get more updated and modern medical equipment, for instance!

My wife and I are quite civilized. These imbecilic fools... Don't seem to want to understand that. Oh well, there is no curing stupidity.

Or perhaps they are attempting to goad me into a violent or otherwise illegal response so they can feel rationally justified in killing "the 'evil' Hazlani man".
Must resist the urge to respond back in kind to the verbal barbs and aggressions of these pissants. Be the more civilized one Agios.
===
My alchemy apprentice, an elf named Lomir progresses well.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on May 19, 2018, 11:14:05 AM
People complain to me about the elf, Tinu, often!
She is bossy, pushy and sometimes just plain rude. Apparently due to some sort of earlier pain or trauma one might surmise; I don't think that's a reason to treat other people around you in such a manner though.

I hate ignorance and I hate when people deliberately make up harmful lies to hurt one another. Idiots like to spread this garbage around. They obviously don't have enough going on in their miserably insipid, vacuous little lives. They need a hobby.
Except their hobby is causing trouble. Ugh, so much Mytteri!

Zephyr, Iridni and Timond all told me I should join the Wayfarers but there's one problem: Jean Renaud.
He has flat out told me in no uncertain terms that he hates me, hates my people and will forever, that there is nothing I could do to change his opinion BECAUSE I am a Hazlani and he hates them. Iridni wants me to try and win his vote over somehow? ...I don't even...

I got to know Miss Domi a little better recently. She sells turnips to make a little extra coin and I knew she toiled away at the hospice as one of the nurses but did not know she was interested in other cultures and liked saving up to travel the core.  It was refreshing.
Very unusual for a Barovian, too.

I must try not to give into despair and rage. It is all, this is all, just tests of my mettle. Metal. The Iron Lord. Lawgiver, please deliver me from having to deal with malicious idiots all the time.

My wife's shop thrives. Thank you. Finally we are not hurting so much for money.

Now if I could just find a competent crew to raid with...
The search continues.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on May 21, 2018, 04:04:46 PM
I have lost my heavy crossbow and placed an order for a new one.
Being without it feels rather limiting.

People whom I travel with have been noting I seem stronger though. Not physically no, but mentally. Huh.

A lying sack of manure in Vallaki is going around claiming untruths I'm a necromancer to try and cause me trouble for no other reason than they have little better to do.

Evidently this is the new strategy since claiming my wife and I have to be slavers for being Hazlani no longer upsets and causes the Garda alarm.

I am a doctor and alchemist, you imbeciles!

On the bright side, people like my wife's shop quite a bit!
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on May 22, 2018, 06:27:26 PM
Took my Barovian friend Gutter on a trip to Hazlan to show him that yes, we are quite civilized so he could see how skewed the silly, stupid Vallaki propaganda is. Hopefully.

We have a mall! Hazlan and Nova Vaasa largely provide a lot of food for most of the rest of the core! I showed him the acres and acres of farmland.
It's really not so terrible here. The Vallaki-folk would have you believe we're all just devils walking around in human guise and barely considered a people. It is disgusting.

Unlike Har'Akir at least we tend to give our slaves their own housing and there are opportunities for them to earn their freedom and become citizens... Provided they demonstrate aptitude in tradecraft or art.

The Rashemi rebels aren't freedom fighters. They are terrorists who have succumbed to Mytteri. They won't hesitate to cut you down and take your things. They oppose our enlightened ruler and the church and hurt all the honest and hardworking citizens, both Mulan and Rashemi, and for what? What good can possibly come of that?

In the jungle we encountered the abandoned lab of some mad mage who had altered the trees themselves and some people into wicked treeant-like things (I suspect much like the abandoned fishing station in Barovia's experimenter, the ultimate fate of this mage was to be ripped limb from limb). We fought several of them and collected their sap.
I took Gutter on a hunting safari and we also bagged several krenshar. Unfortunately it seems the owlbears were still hibernating. We will need to plan another hunting trip a different season. I could tell he was a bit disappointed we did not encounter one as they are so very unlike the beasts one is likely to encounter in Barovia.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on May 23, 2018, 06:09:29 PM
More business to conduct, people to help and things to learn about today!
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on May 24, 2018, 03:53:20 PM
I am becoming a more accomplished alchemist.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on May 25, 2018, 01:55:49 PM
Frustratingly, I feel the potential is there for me to be an even greater physician, alchemist and mage but progress goes not as quickly as it could.

I can't sit comfortably. The next circle of magic is staring me down, taunting me, so tantalizingly remaining just a little outside my grasp.  I am almost there but when?
I am a disciplined arcane and traditional scholar but lack of a proper mystic tutor might be the issue holding me back. One can only get so far with intense self-directed study.

I have to do my wife, my family, my country, King and god proudly.
Be the best Doctor, mentor, mage and boss/master I can be.
Also Give Mytteri no quarter.

I wish to dispel some of the negative misconceptions people have of my people and our land and show these ignorant savages that yes, there are positive attributes of Hazlani culture and the Mulan people.
Some fundamentally idiotic and maliciously barbarous stories of us have been propagated in Vallaki by troublemakers and those who are infected by Mytteri. Those who allow themselves to succumb to its temptations allow their mouths to flap spreading harmful seeds of discord.  Don't they understand that in an orderly system there is elegance and that every member in a community is meant to make the whole greater in their own way? Laws, rules and behavioral protocols are by design made to help keep people from straying too far off the deep end.

Let chaos not seduce you. It will promise much but in the end always destroys those it speaks to. It does so without mercy, without hesitation.

We all have our roles and functions to serve in the social machine. Each of us is as a component and when all is meshed properly, the gears' teeth not misaligned, everything is well-oiled then much greatness is possible.

Everybody has a job to keep the community running smoothly, from the lowest slave to the mighty governors.
There has to be a sense of unity in purpose and an understanding that you affect more than just your selfIsh direct own limited sphere.  Otherwise how do you expect to achieve hegemony?

 Power, greatness, fortune? These are worked towards. Systematically progress moves forward.

I fully believe this is a recipe for success.
I think these people all cosmic detritus from various realms spat from the mists and deposited into an apparent planar nexus centered around Barovia's Vallaki oft lack this sense of purpose.
If they believe it to be every man and each group for themselves, then no wonder there is much strife.

This isn't the fault of the Garda. They try their best.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on May 27, 2018, 05:48:35 PM
I have to be great.
For the sake of those who have invested in me.
There is my wife Shanaz, always so emotionally supportive, financially prudent and clever.
My hunting friends Gutter, Arc, Kilinus and Jack and Slyuin. Arc and Kilinus are wanted men now though and it is their fault for being stupid about their dueling in the outskirts and letting their tempers get the better of them. However, the memories of that pair as they were before their fall from grace... they were good, though arguably simple men.
My alchemy apprentice Lomir and my medical apprentice Kismet both often looking up to me as their mentor.

I worry to myself that I am? Might be? Cannot be! Unworthy but for their sakes and my people's sake, I need to swallow down those insecurities and get done what needs doing!

I feel like there is a part of my destiny which still lies in the sands of the amber wastes clusters and another part which lies in Barovia.
Obviously part of it is in my home country of Hazlan too.

For my country and king, I have to become the best doctor, alchemist and mage I can be.
For my friends, my loved ones and even just my patients and associates.

A simple quest for greatness... but nothing is simple though on the surface it may appear that way.
What we do now and have done has wrought into motion many different trickling down effects, some subtle and others not so subtle.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on May 29, 2018, 03:27:13 PM
It definitely feels as though I'm not as powerful as I could be.
This bothers me. The next arcane circle continues to remain ever so slightly outside my reach.

If I ever want to be a court wizard or have recognition by the Red Academy and my King... They place a very high emphasis on continual improvement so such... Stagnation... Is unacceptable. I need to accelerate my learning more.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 02, 2018, 10:35:58 AM
Still not there yet, which is frustrating.

I did get some nice crimson dragonhide bracers though.  Then an offworlder explained to me what a dragon actually was. So, giant smart lizards who have sorcerous spell-like powers they can shoot from their mouths.
Also, my alchemy has improved notably.

Ugh, I told the man I was traveling with that the Port sewers were very dangerous and not to try to do them alone. Then he expects me to save him... He was there when I almost died nearly 6 times during our most recent latest prior attempt and that was with a group.
So I'm guessing he's probably mad at me that as I'd predicted, it would go badly.

I wish I hadn't come back there. Now I'm in trouble too. I knew that it would be getting in over our heads. Why wouldn't he listen? Why didn't I be more firm in my refusal?

I had very good reasons for not wanting to go down there again and really not wanting to at night. That makes it even worse.

What is my father, Satrap Quoa going to think? I don't want to die in a foreign sewer wading through Dementlieuse refuse.
My poor wife. I don't want her to be widowed.
That was a selfish, foolish and very Mytteri thing to do!
I lost all my money too. I don't know how I'm going to get home, let alone to the mist camp.

Oh right, huge surprise that a scholar isn't physically sturdy (in melee combat) and that a caster is no good while exhausted. I feel useless, frustrated and am tired of being considered a burden. This is stupid.

Well there's a bank of mist at the edge of Baie De Parnault near the Vistani wagon and boat that sometimes takes a person through the mistways... I guess if worst comes to worst I can traverse it on foot. Typically if you travel the mistways long enough you get spat out of one of the Har'Akir desert mirages. From Har'Akir I can pick through sand for coins in a tedious and agonizing manner and once I have enough make my way to Muhar village. This is not good.

Of course, being able to hitchhike my way through the mists is going to require being alive... So try not to die alone in the incredibly dangerous alleyways and snaking maze-like sewer complex filled with overgrown monsters and beasts of tremendous size and terrible disposition!

Why would anybody heed the advice of a doctor who can speak five languages and has been to many countries?
I'm crying and shaking with rage. I don't think I can continue this entry.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 03, 2018, 05:04:56 PM
Of all the insulting...

It seems the storyteller and bardess Zafirah has been the victim of an attack by some deranged ex-physician who likes messing up the faces of attractive women.*
I was told of this by my friend Sir Arroway.  Despite my having been abroad the entirety of this incident the same sorts of malicious fools who made up the horrible things about me before attempted to implicate me as a suspect but the Vallaki Garda whom know me as well as Zafirah herself have thankfully cleared my name; It would seem I have been thus acquitted of such ludicrous accusations.

Oh but here is the twist... I have specifically been asked to NOT offer my surgical skill in reconstructing her face. Mustn't acknowledge the Hazlani, afterall.

I'm the son of a satrap... In my own country one would be beaten for such insolence... Yet nasty gossip runs rampant in Vallaki. Also to acknowledge my medical competence wouldn't fit their "Black Hazlan" narrative.

Well at least in Dementlieu of all places I was offered a job in the grand biblioteque by the head librarian. He took one look at me and upon my completing a simple quiz was rather pleased saying I could be one of their archivists. I think knowing five languages helps as does being a very fast reader.

I hope whoever the citadel does end up choosing for the operation is at least competent enough to know that you use a thin diameter suturing thread to leave the most minimal amount of scarring.
Women and children's bodies are especially delicate.
Quacks will use the thicker thread because it is easier for their clumsy hands to manipulate despite leaving larger much more noticeable scars.

As usual Jean Renaud and Morvayn are the culturally, socially accepted heroes to deal with the case.
How unsurprising.

I am not so much irritated about that as I am that after so much apparent progress with the people of Vallaki and direct work toward improving my reputation there are still people very eager to see my blood spilled. Two-faced... Well, I mustn't overly dwell on that.

*Correction, June 10th: Morvayn, Zafirah and Noram have clarified to me who the deranged barber chirurgeon is after as victims seems to be women having red hair. The mutilation he does to them is principally he scalps them.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 05, 2018, 07:47:48 PM
I enjoy doing business in Port with Mssr. Swiftfoot.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 06, 2018, 04:21:03 PM
Father has declared me his heir. I now wear the neckband of command.
Hmm!

Though we are of the least nobility, being of the rural aristocracy still carries an awesome responsibility. I am his only son. The wellbeing of the serfs on our land will fall to me and my wife, Shanaz when Satrap Jan Quoa, my venerable father, decides to retire.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 09, 2018, 09:32:36 AM
It would seem the misty border has closed off Vallaki from the other clusters and the rest of the core. Iron Lord help those poor souls trapped inside; We can only guess what horrible things they may be being subjected to.

Note: Very low traffic in the mist camp today. I hope the others are alright. Silly and foolish really. I wonder how many of them would wish the same well-wishes were it me who was the one lost in the accursed fog. Eh, this idle speculation is pointless. I have been to Har'Akir, Hazlan and Port back and forth several times.

The mistways are chocked full of terrifyingly powerful creatures even more so than usual.
So far I have catalogued:

Countless mist horrors, greater.
A vassilich (these are said to always be thrall to a true lich somewhere but despite being a bit less powerful than their creator are still incredibly dangerous in their own right!).
Some more advanced form of invisible stalker.
Juju Zombie champions.
Morhgs (A particularly vile form of cadaverous undead that is skeletal yet still retains much of its innards and some of its musculature).
Bodaks.
A vampire matriarch* and her coven of twisted undead adventurers seeking out live prey.
Ancient walking trees.
A night walker.
Many types of pudding slimes more ancient, large and terrible than even the ones in Port-A-Lucine's sewer system.

*What was particularly awful about my encounter with her is she could still kind of see through my improved invisibility, hasted herself and chased me yelling how I didn't need to keep my skin and the coven would feed well tonight. How I managed to escape just barely by the skin of my teeth is anybody's guess.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 12, 2018, 02:52:25 PM
I have done it and achieved the next arcane spell circle, finally!

Ugh, Noram and Morvayn are contemptuous of me.
It bothers me the way people demonize my homeland.

My ongoing goals remain become an excellent wizard, exceptional physician and attain great wealth.

Even here in my private journal where I record my thoughts I feel a pressure bearing down on me of would be readers, spies or eavesdroppers judging me negatively for not having what they would consider acceptable views to fit within their proscribed subjective collective narrative.

Expressing such opinions as I love our country and like our king, for instance.
Also that I feel no need to apologize for being Hazlani.

This makes those who would portray our lands as belonging to the single most oppressive savages in the core upset because it flies in the face of their "Black Hazlan" popular tale they quite like to spread.

You are an outlier. You do not fit. You will be made to fit... Or else you will unhesitatingly be destroyed. We are soulless, merciless and will brutally force everyone around us to conform to our beliefs. How dare you be different. We can use threat of physical violence, actual force and social intimidation to mold reality of those around us, Agios.

I do not like it. Ikkes, I do not.
Mutterings of Mytteri emanate off so many people and things. Am I the only one to realize it? That can't be. Surely others notice but choose not to talk about it.

How quaint. You think you see the bigger picture. In the end it will likely not matter. This is a war of ideas hedge mage. It started a long time ago before you were a twinkle in your father's eye. It will continue long after your body is dust. To attempt to resist is laughable, really. It is also sad.

Things had already been set into motion long before I stepped onto stage. The question is who is benefitting from these lies? It's obvious who likes to obscure the truth.  There is a power in falsehood.  You use it to dispatch of those you dislike in grisly ways when one lacks honor.

It is probably not my place to attempt to get to the bottom of this dark rot infesting so many societies in the lands of mists. I suspect pursuing that mystery too deeply will inevitably lead to my destruction.
Best to put a pin in it for now.

Someday I would like to meet our king. Not today and not tomorrow but after I have done many great things for our people or perhaps contributed to an advance he could use in his own mighty arcane research and experimentation? Who knows. The future is something not clear to us mortals and perhaps even gods deem not to reveal their full hands for all to see.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 14, 2018, 04:23:12 PM
Eureka! I've unlocked the secret of greater scorching varnish!
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 16, 2018, 10:44:32 AM
The next chapter: Maddening Isolation:

Noram's dead. We think it's the same person who scalped Zafirah who had bumped him off. I worried that it seems this frustrated would be killer is going to keep stalking her and picking off her friends and allies one by one.. But is it for the ultimate goal of having a second shot at killing her? I strongly felt staying at the Blood O' The Vine Inn (Noram was gutted on the front steps like a fish) was a bad idea. I got her out of there. I wonder... Undoubtedly it was intended a grisly message for her that she is never going to be safe.
Her tormentor has a very macabre sense of 'humor' if it can be called that.

She has been difficult company, temperamental, fussy. I can't say I blame her.
Such a wild untamed bird having her wings clipped and being caged in such a fashion... It must be unbearable for Zaf.

Seeking clarity I mistwalked. The mists spat me out a few different places. Once to Barovia, a few times to Perfidus and then to Hazlan.
I sought answers in the Tusmørke Skoven Forest.  I hunted owlbears and meenlocks. I conjured shades of owlbears and krenshar cats to serve as hunting companions.
Earlier I'd hunted mist creatures with Dextan and Constantine.
Ugh, now I am very alone. I have heard tales of a creature called Gorgon in the East.
It is said to resemble a bull with metal skin and is exceptionally deadly.

What do I seek? Some sort of omen, boon or symbol of reassurance perhaps from the Lawgiver or King Hazlik... I know, it sounds silly.
I need to continue pursuing my goals.

Please, do not let it end here.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 18, 2018, 10:21:45 AM
I don't know how many days it has been. Apparently the mists saw fit to thaw me out since evidently my safari of the gorgon turned out rather badly.
I am going to have trouble wrapping my head around that one for some time yet.
I came back to Vallaki and plied my varnishes since my permit was still good. Another merchant was furious I was underselling him. He charges way too much though which is his own fault for being greedy.
Also Jean is right back to demonizing me again and poor Caelia had many fearful questions about my needing to necessarily own slaves, be some sort of runaway slave catcher and other unsavory things.. Directly from listening to that old Richemuloise snotball's constant venom and vitriol.
I think I did get her to laugh a little though. Perhaps? Maybe.
Ugh so it's the lying game again, is it? Sometimes I feel like if he wasn't so very constantly down on me there wouldn't be this ridiculous at times absurd push to the opposite extreme to be extra good towards people.  By my own nature I am helpful though.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 20, 2018, 02:35:05 PM
I met a gudkaede from Sly-Varr named Ossur Fezim.
We had a long delightful chat in Vaasi and he was fascinated with how much experience I have had in cultures different from our own back in Hazlan. Then we went for a safari.

It is angering to him too the way people exaggerate us in Vallaki to be extreme slavers and therefore despicable human beings. Here I thought maybe I was the only one who felt that way about it!

We Mulan are really quite civilized; It's just a shame that other people who have never been to Nordenvall or Ramulai come up with such extremely negative and in general at least partly misinformed preconceived notions.

Unlike the Akiri and Pharazians in our society slaves and the indentured have opportunity to earn their freedom through producing goods and services of worth.
In those more savage lands the only escape is death and you are enslaved for life. I've seen Akiri slaves penned up in fenced areas like so much farm livestock. They treat their laborers as chattel.

Though some Mulan taskmasters are cruel you will find it not uncommon that lords provide serfs with their own housing on farms and estates. Slaves are allowed to have families. A skilled artisan or craftsperson can live quite comfortably.

We're not all out to clap everybody in irons and commit them to being in press gangs, nonono. That's entirely too uncivilized and barbaric.
I resent the term slaver. That implies you are a vulgar auctioneer who traffics in people as property.

Also, the idea every Hazlani must necessarily be seeking to wipe out any nonlawgiver religion is equally stupid and grotesquely misinformed.  So long as the other religion understands the iron lord is the king of the universe and other gods bow down to him we'll have little problem with things.

I do understand how that can be something of a bitter pill to swallow.
That our lord of iron has the moniker of Lawgiver should tell you something about us Hazlani. Namely, we are a deeply rules and order oriented people. A codified system is the cornerstone in any civilization, jao?

We loathe chaos. Vaasi has one word for both chaos and evil: Mytteri.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 21, 2018, 05:48:14 AM
That feeling of people being filled with hatred at not who you are but what they think you will be fills me with waves of revulsion when I encounter it.
I'd like to proudly declare to many of these interlopers how completely full of dung they are but it is neither my place nor inclination to do so.
Besides, the imbecilic passions driven morons would just use that as an excuse to slake their bloodlust and kill off the person upsetting their preconceptions.

I remember as a young brat on the plantations at times loathing my gnomework. Jao, we Mulan often hire gnomes as in-house tutors for our youths.

Anyway the bulbous gnosed grey eyed little man who was my teacher would adjust his spectacles, sigh and ask why I spent so much focus on mastery of my crossbow.

Young master, don't you want to be a great Mage, like the wizard King? He would ask.

But tutor, why can a wizard not also be a bit less helpless in combat? I could imbue the ammunition, jao?

Ikkes, he'd say, first things first son of Quoa, you need to get the hang of your basic cantrips before you can move on to a first circle spell, let alone that.

I enjoy the crossbow. Back then it seemed so far away but here I am able to cast from the sixth circle.

The younger me was impatient. I wanted results NOW, not later.
The practice of my archery with my father's head guard was more immediately rewarding.

Perhaps that is my crutch.  Sometimes I feel more comfortable casting magic on the weapons and ammunition of my allies than in personally getting my hands dirty.
I'm not much of an up close fighter, either.

I think my tutor did not actively discourage my pursuit of the crossbow for hunting out of fear I would complain to my father the satrap and he would be whipped or worse.

On the contrary, the house tutor worked in physics lessons. He showed me there are maths which can be used to guess the trajectory of a quarrel bolt as it is launched from a crossbow. We talked of physical science and a little of anatomy. Lessons about directional forces and lots of chalk drawings on slates of arrows he called "vectors". As a child this oft flew straight over my head but I think back to it now and then as an adult.

Also introduced along with these lessons in physical and life science were cleverly worked in principles of arcane casting. Alongside those exercises and models about applied directional forces were concepts of mana lay lines.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 22, 2018, 01:58:17 PM
Work hard. Bring glory to your family and kingdom.
You might be just a dirty halfblood but you have two great talents; your skills as a doctor and your prowess as an arcanist.

Jean Renaud when you confronted him for being a dehumanizing bitter old man told you if you did it again he would kill you and scatter your remains where nobody would ever be able to find them. Pleasant.

(http://i.imgur.com/UdHuyHz.jpg)
You want to be thought of as a hero Agios? Simply traveling the core in a crusade against disease is not good enough.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 23, 2018, 11:51:19 AM
I don't feel well mentally.
There has to be more to life than just seeking greater knowledge, wealth and power.
So too does helping people begin to feel a tad monotonous and meaningless.
So absentminded was I that I accidentally sold my favorite pair of dragonhide bracers to Petre then when I realized what had happened had to scramble to quickly buy them back. That little mess ended up costing me 5k.

I have run out of food.
Finances are lower than I would like at 9.7k but the cycle of repeatedly doing deliveries, selling goods and raiding dungeons too has also gotten rather monotonous.

I have not seen Shanaz since before the mists sealed off Vallaki.
Now that the way is open again I have started looking for her. I know she has to be around. She just has to.

A morose malaise has come over me and I find myself even not really wanting to talk to nor interact much with anyone.

I've noticed this persistent melancholy affecting my thought processes.  Is it loneliness? Ikkes, nothing so simple. Despair? Jao, that seems a part of it.

Well, there are concrete steps I need to take even if it is just to go through the motions of living life.
Do the maintenance and upkeep tasks.
That Krofburg sack of letters has been sitting undelivered in my bag for who knows how long. I can get food provisions through hunting deer.

You are the son of Satrap Jan Quoa.
He has declared you his successor.
You have a faithful hound and loyal, clever, beautiful wife.
You are an excellent chirurgeon and decent alchemist.
So why does all this self-doubt continue to bother me?

The things I used to derive meaning from... They are still meaningful, intellectually I understand their importance but I feel... Burnt out, overtaxed emotionally and mentally somewhat overburdened.

These idiots tell me I need to be evil because they are opposed to how our kingdom practices slavery and I as a citizen in it, am not.
Why should I throw away every comfort just so they can continue to hate and distrust me anyway?
Hateful ignorance to advise a path to guaranteed self-destruction. Such naivety and willfully simplistic binary moral views can at times strike me as disgusting.

I do not myself personally own any slaves.
I work to better slave living conditions when and where possible.
I help both the indentured and free even handedly when providing to them healthcare, thereby running my medical practice at a loss.

I feel that gradual changes made working through the system rather than directly opposing it are a better way to go about altering things for the better. Abolition via violent insurrection simply does not work. Historically it has never worked in Hazlan. Those outsiders do not understand our history. They are mindnumbingly ignorant moralists and impractical in their unsolicited instruction.

I do not tell other people how to philosophically live out their lives.
If you are going to do that but knowingly not provide a safety net of fallbacks or support for those you would incite Mytteri into... Please do shut up and get out of my way.

I am not opposed to it? No, more I am less so opposed to it than they are.

I am opposed to masters being excessively cruel toward their serfs. That bothers me. We are supposed to be the more civilized ones.

People can be incredibly hatefilled and spiteful, petty creatures.
I can't keep doing this. Not going it alone. The gloom hangs over everything, an almost palpable miasma.

I do not tell other people how they MUST live according to my particular "morality" so why do they continually force their views upon me so?

Is my personal crusade across the lands of mists against disease through the core and all its clusters a misapplication of my efforts and time? If there is a greater cause and purpose, I wish it would present itself. I've been doing this for years.

Must it always be go it alone and be self directed? That last safari I went on with Ossur and Dextan feels like it was so long ago.
Some honest and nonmalevolent guidance to assist me in seeking greater clarity would be good for me, I believe, but who to turn to?
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 24, 2018, 03:08:01 PM
I fear drudgery and isolation more than any monster or insidious plot.

Some drudgery is a necessity but it is not all there is to life.

It is in our human condition to experience loneliness. I understand that through it, grief and loss people are tested to their limits and that some do lose their minds.

What if the mists don't really speak to us and it is all but a twisted reflection of our own dark impulses which we externalize?
There is something deeply psychological that is both at the same time it is alien also hauntingly familiar to  them. They are profoundly alien and chaotic yet at the same time speak to all those of us who walk among them. I don't know why that is but I and others have described it as troubling.

This bears further reflecting upon.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 27, 2018, 04:11:45 PM
Pursuit of commerce always helps me feel better. I have hired on more hunters and day laborers. Ossur says industriousness is a virtue.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 28, 2018, 03:08:09 AM
Two people were incredibly rude toward me. I felt the rage boil up inside me but swallowed it down. I would like to see them pay but these are both strangers who hardly know me and act as though they think they own and run the entire place pulling other people along on strings. In hindsight I would not want such sycophantic imbeciles in my company or around my presence anyway.

I don't even need revenge. The universe has played a cruel joke on them by allowing them to go through life as themselves.

Some day they will irritate a force of devastation much stronger and more unforgiving... Now there's a pleasant thought; I cheerily clean my surgical tools and alchemy glassware while humming over their imagined torture screams!
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 28, 2018, 11:28:55 AM
Woke up aching and sore and angry again.
Just keep being friendly.
It'll piss your foes off more.


It's always ever so amusing when you get attacked and rebuked for having an opinion that isn't liked and then people try to invalidate your experience! By which I mean it isn't.

I'm so *beyond* tired of this.
Do offworlders have any idea how obnoxious they are when they get all judgmental of us core natives and prance around all high and mighty like they feel they are so much better than we are?
I do believe I am starting to understand why Barovians hold such disdain for outlanders.

Where to them an outlander is anybody who isn't a Barovian or Gundarakite an offworlder I consider to be anybody who isn't from this plane.

The last thing anybody wants is a non-native of this realm getting preachy at them the way in which we live is wrong and blah, blah, blah; You're just grumpy you got caught in this cosmic sinkhole and cant figure out how to get home!

If I really wanted to be some sort of invalidating jerkface I'd yell at them to get over it. Yeah, no, that doesn't work.
Do I blame these offworlders for feeling this way? No, I do not.

The supposedly evil Hazlani physician who DOES NOT own or take any slaves is sick of your bullsh*t, people.

Lately I have been experiencing a nigh overwhelming urge to tell these folk to pike off. My more religious friends of varying faiths have told me it is best to let these feelings go, however.

Look you, this is a dark dimension and if you are wanting to survive you are not going to last very long trying to lecture us about how we need to be more cheerful and happy. You would do well to heed our advice since we are natives of this realm and have eked out livings in it for family generations while you have not.

Simply put some people are just imbecilic self-righteous gits who have no business telling others how to live; they all tend to congregate in Vallaki's western outskirts.

I wonder how the Barovian Vallaki Garda stand these guys...

Don't get me wrong some offworlders are nice but man oh man these other ones... It leaves one to idly speculate how come the monsters eating them do not die from a case of terminal indigestion.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on June 30, 2018, 06:17:14 PM
Funds increase but I need to keep working hard. I don't want to hit a skill wall plateau again. That was a feeling I do not wish to repeat.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on July 07, 2018, 09:35:42 AM
I have taken on a new apprentice.

I also have a snappy retort for when imbecilic offworlders and others call me "slaver": I am not here to fulfill your sick bondage fetish, cretin.
===
I've definitely made gains in my arcane power of late. Instead of being directly to do with my chosen school of magic though it seems to have manifested in an ability to summon augmented illusory shadow creatures. This has definitely something to do with all the time I spent contemplating light and darkness while mistwalking and apparently I have myself been transmuted in a subtle manner... It seems I share an increased tie to the plane of shadow!
The other change has been I seem slightly more resilient to negative energy compared to before and the difference is notable.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on July 12, 2018, 03:29:07 PM
Disgusting lies which take advantage of fear and ignorance to cause increased misery on purpose and sew anarchy...? These are bad things and yet so many people do it with great abandon.

I am attempting to get the hang of casting empowered spells. One thing holding me back as a wizard is that I only do standard ones aside from my augmented illusions.

So much frustration! The wait to achieve the next stage of arcane prowess can be maddening. I do feel myself getting more familiar with some of the stranger things this dimension has to offer though.
In particular knowing which spell to cast at what time is becoming easier for me. This is an essential skill for almost any mage. That's what the great arcane scholar Zacchary Sorrill said in his books.

The rigamarole of doing deliveries, the occasional raiding of a monster lair or two and plundering dungeons in groups does have a certain rhythm. I used to enjoy it more.  Either something is wrong with me or I am becoming depressed and disillusioned.

I would love to expand my casting repertoire by being able to memorize and prepare more spells at a time. I've a decent variety I can already access at my disposal both those useful for general purpose and ones ideal for specific scenarios but that maximum number is a pesky limitation some times.

Of course, this is something supercilious to complain about since I do have just enough capacity to cast the right amount of spells most of the time; Perhaps it is my greed for greater power and knowledge that balks at this restriction then.

The seventh circle of arcane magic will be at my disposal soon but by my estimation probably not soon enough.
Sure my other colleagues who are arcanists tell me I am diligent but this is not good enough for me because I want to bring honor and glory to my family, the kingdom and my king!
You have to stand out by being truly exceptional at things to be deemed worthy. This also paints a big smite me sign target on your back so one should do so very carefully. Ever so carefully.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on July 14, 2018, 08:08:37 AM
I've done it! Eureka! I've finally achieved the 7th arcane circle! I've worked out how to produce empowered spells! And... A mage in mist camp demonstrated to me the ninth circle arcane spell shapechange, showing me I still have a whole lot to learn.

I am Hazlani. That is what makes me strong.
I don't need a stupid adventuring guild which is fickle about allowing me in or not nor a country's military and infrastructure on my side to get things done. My own mettle and the help of a few friends has been enough to get me this far.

In seeking to prove myself worthy I have overshot and outstripped some of those who have had much larger support. Hmm...
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on July 15, 2018, 02:32:42 PM
Mamat has grown more intelligent as I have gotten more powerful.
He still asks people the typical questions of if they have had good hunts lately but seems more keenly interested in the answers. He tells me about interesting smells too.

A worg, also known as a goblinized wolf is smarter than an average wolf. Wolves are already more intelligent than their domesticated cousins, dogs. Mamat is a domesticated worg so he has lost a few things compared to his feral cousins. He is spoiled and because he has spent most of his life raised among humans he knows common but not goblin.  Since I am a Hazlani Mamat also knows a few Vaasi command words I have taught him.
Ex: sit, guard, attack.

The deceptive part of this classification is that though a worg definitely externally appears related to canis lupus morphologically it is in truth a magical creature and not really a wolf or dog at all.
(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/creepypasta/images/9/97/Wolf.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140209183856&path-prefix=de)
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on July 17, 2018, 03:07:26 PM
I am an outlier.
I get it.
The slightest bit of difference is something people and certain strong terrible forces seek to annihilate.
Really how droll!
====
I suppose this honor and glory seeking behavior of mine is a veneer to mask over a quest for greater power. So be it!
===
The same mysterious woman in the black jackal or fox mask (I have a bit of a hard time discerning which) who had told me of there being either an obscure and forbidden tomes or magic bookshop hidden in the village of Barovia had flashed me a Van Richten's Guide to the Created among the other infamous guides when showing me she had the full set of the famous monster hunter's books.

Timond and I are both interested in the topic of golemcraft if for no other reason than coming up with more effective ways to combat out of control or hostile ones running amok.
===
Why do some scientists, artists, crafters and mages obsess about imbuing constructed forms with artificial life?
I find the concept and what minor details of the process I have been able to discern quite fascinating.
Perhaps it is my own morbid curiosity which continues to bubble this subject up to the forefront of my thoughts of late during when my mind grows idle?

Despite the layers of sophistication a skilled illusionist may draw or work into his or her illusory constructs at the end of the day they are for the most part still soulless puppets. You can sort of instruct them to carry out commands for you or act out preset routines...

A sending is more sophisticated and can among other things repeat back a message you tell it. The mad drow lich's tower is a perfect example of this. I suppose other applications of a sending are you can also use it as an extension of your consciousness to scout things out ahead of you though it cannot truly have any form of physical interaction with objects in the environment around it while you are doing so... A bit like a spirit.

A simulacrum on the other hand is a full physical replica of another person. It may physically interact with objects in its environment to a varying degree depending on how skillfully it has been made but the simulacrum too is limited in that they are I speculate almost inevitably less skilled than the mage who creates one.

Neither sendings nor simulacrums are really capable of true free will the way a complex golem could at least theoretically be.

I suppose if I laid the various artificial creatures I had detailed above in order of increasing independence it would go: illusory constructs > mage sending > simulacrum.

A simple golem is only capable of following orders but we have almost all heard stories of complex ones being capable of some independent thought.
In one particularly striking example of this which comes to mind for me an offworlder woman from Eberron told me on her world there is an entire construct race of sophisticated golems who have their own personalities and opinions.

One of my dwarf friends tells me he thinks a golem would make an excellent miner. This potential industrial application seems obvious to me as well since a golem worker is both less repugnant than an undead one and also is still able to withstand toiling in conditions far too hazardous for a living natural creature.

A consideration of the pitfalls in golemcraft (at a glance in summary):
1. Expense of procuring and complexity of shaping the more durable construct materials.  Assembling a functioning creature capable of some independence and autonomy from real physical materials so that it has a truly solid and persisting form itself looks like a difficult series of tasks.
2. Dread/rogue potential: The golem creators who seek to bring back a lost loved one, create themselves a lover or child all seem to meet horrible ends at the hands of their creations once they do "succeed."  These creators whom have met gruesome fates at the hands of their creations fail to take into account the ramifications and responsibilities tied to producing a life; The thinking is that if you bring something into the world which you do not fully control you either have to nurture it or destroy it... Which is in some ways laughable as I sincerely doubt most people take either of those necessities into consideration.
3. How the Mytteri do you attach a soul to the core of such a thing once the suitable artificial body has been assembled? Imbuing a golem with life sounds also like it is no easy task. Example: Some folk say you can trap an elemental spirit inside a golem's core to power it but I doubt the elemental is going to be terribly happy about being harnessed in such a way without having given consent!
===
As entertaining as this tangent of fancy has been I should get back to the main task at hand!

My goals remain continue my crusade against disease in the demiplane, bring honor and glory to my family, the kingdom and my king and to grow in both knowledge and power in order to better facilitate and further these two ends.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on July 18, 2018, 01:15:12 PM
*The next several pages depict operative notes taken on medical procedures.*

Of note are the surgical excision of a tumor, several varying suture techniques to close a wound, and in the margins a few posed questions regardIng the suitable and appropriate place of use of the arcane in this field.

*Diagrams of humanoid organs, body parts and tissues along with the doctor's cribbed and scripted shorthand cipher he uses to record spells with comingle along the pages equally but the overall takeaway impression one gets is oddly enough, not of anything particularly sinister to it. These are simply the thoughts and theories of a mage and physician who is proud of his work and profoundly fascinated with the world around him. He is deeply curious about what is possible.*

*The text when decoded and translated does however convey a notable undercurrent of intense loathing towards those who express overly-simplistic binary morality and are prone to making snap judgments. His condescension and patronizing demeanor towards these unspecified, not listed simpleton "citizen jackasses" whom create more mayhem in a misguided sense of duty by doing their very best to violently suppress advancement is really quite biting. It is evident Agios finds this personality type frankly disturbing as much as it seems frighteningly all too common.*

Excerpt: "...Do these imbecilic cretins truly feel it is for the greater good [of all] they attempt to hold everybody else back to what they themselves personally and individually feel most comfortable with? Are all our fellow people from the cosmos truly so lazy and disgusting?! I should hope not yet I fear the answer is to be an emphatic yes."
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on July 19, 2018, 09:18:33 AM
I fled Vallaki. I was forced to. People kept pushing and insisting I needed to be an "Evil red wizard" and I was to be arrested for what I looked like. I know what happens in Barovian jails. I did not want to end up destroyed to fit numbers of some sort of witch hunting quota placed by their burgomaster.

I deliver babies and sew up the gashes of wounded hunters, primarily.
Yes I am a transmuter and alchemist but I use what I know of magic and science to help people and not to hurt them. It is all so very fundamentally idiotic.

I escaped through force of luck, crawling and bleeding while some of my friends harangued the Garda as they tried to manhunt me.

I come from a nation of about 270,000 people. One slew a Morninglordian priest once and these idiots are out for blood against the other 269,999?! This is sheer insanity.
They tell me I deserve death for being of my nationality. One arrogant prigheaded city of mud farming, mostly illiterate heathens thinks it is on a holy crusade to destroy all Mulan, "liberate" the Rashemi and have everyone bend over and eagerly take one up the rear for Mytteri.
*The rest of the entry devolves into strings of even more colorfully obscene alliterative strings of invective than this which really don't bear being repeated.*
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on July 21, 2018, 08:26:45 AM
The Sin of Wrath:
How dare they!
I would *NEVER* assume the title of my king.
Who is the imbecilic clod who convinced people we are to be *all* Red Wizards?!

My friend Constantine, Private Lupeiovich... He was ordered to fire on me and shot me in the leg. Many times. I had to crawl across the border limping in a pool of my own blood that day. The day of my exile.
I know he had to. I feel perhaps Lance Corporal Mircea was probably facing some pressure from above him to get rid of the Hazlani chirurgeon giving free healthcare in Vallaki. I was angry at them for it at the time too, jao.

In contrast, when I got home... Though I was initially taken to task for not complying and dying (since authority figures, even when they are misguided in their directives are not to be questioned...), afterwards I was forgiven by my brothers in the iron cathedral. I was rebaptized by Biskop Taico and... It feels really good to be home again.

Who needs Vallaki? If that is the thanks I receive for giving them about a year of free healthcare to every last sniveling, rat-out-their-neighbor pig and mud-farmer without asking for so much as a used and worn clipped copper bit piece coin in return... Then they can well enjoy their higher infant mortality and rotten teeth without me.

Brother Ossur is right. I have a passionate disposition and my temper is my weakness. I have to steel myself to keep Mytteri from my heart. In my weakness I let my umbrage have me speak out of line and out of turn in anger to those two Garda. It is... Through their own generosity and grace I was afterward allowed exile from their burgomaster's land instead of being summarily executed for such heinous... Disobedience.

This is because the Lawgiver is truly great and only allows those who are competent at ruling to maintain their power and influence. It is... His temporal reward to them for practicing a most enlightened rule, afterall.
=====
My... Friends in Port A Lucine crafted me a suit so that I might mingle easier in their society than when I am wearing my Mulani Zarong. I... Am coming to rather enjoy Port though it will be some time before I will be fluent enough in Mordentish to converse in it with the Dementlieuse locals.
===
I have been encouraged to attend both the Dementlieu University college of medicine and the Red Academy.
I must say, this... Recognition for my gifted knowledge & talents is a reception more befitting of one of my station than being shot at and treated like criminal scum. It is... Both simultaneously a welcome relief and somewhat humbling.
I am a renowned Hazlani explorer. I speak five different languages. I know chirurgery and alchemy.  I am no bloody evil wizard slavemonger.

//Music credit goes to Jajnov Music. Composed and produced by Jorge Mejía in November 2014!//
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on July 23, 2018, 02:25:55 AM
Note: Idiots don't think, they just feel.

Also there's something appealing to the way street magicians practice their stagecraft in Port.  Now there's an amusing thought: What if Halvor and I played up our foreignness for an act in the Club L'artiste's club de legerdemaine as "The Exotique Brothers Hazlani"? That Thayan and I love being showy and have been working on our illusion work each both considerably.

Took Dante to The Dancing Crane with Halvor. We showed this well known adventurer firsthand that there is more to the country than just all this slaver evil wizard Mytteri powered propaganda coming out of the Vallaki-folks' vile mouths all the time as so much refuse from a backed up Dementlieuse toilette!

I purchased the rest of the cutting edge Lamordian surgical tools required to deliver an easy birth minus the powerful sedative but when I showed him and explained he forwarded me another stipend.
I am a gifted physician; The right tools certainly help make the job easier though!
=====
More abstract bad things than isolation can prey on the mind.
Anger, that hearth stoked by mistreatment is an avenue to which Mytteri can seduce a person.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on July 24, 2018, 05:54:09 PM
I try to be at peace but I am still angry about what happened.
People say it is my fault for being of the race I am, from the country I am and for wearing red but I do not think that makes it right nor just.*

I know there is nothing I can do to change that it happened.
I do not need Vallaki and to be fair am treated much better outside of it than I ever was while within it.

*They argue that because most of a people seem wicked therefore all the people in or from a place must be evil. Though this is a thoroughly idiotic notion I suppose since it is repeated so often they mistake this frequency in a self reaffirming feedback chamber (of their own devising) for veracity.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on July 26, 2018, 12:53:19 PM
On my most recent treasure hunting party:
> The Orc doesn't like me. He has made this clear abundantly in common and though I can't make out his own language directly would hazard a guess that I feel like given the chance the second I am no longer useful he will want to eat me. However, his great physical strength and natural ability to intimidate others serves its uses in our group.
> The elves... Are okay with me. I solemnly promised them that since my father is a Satrap that while in Hazlan around me at least I will claim they are already my servants so that they do not end up enslaved (by other Mulan). The logic behind this is that you cannot take another person's property without there being some repercussions.
> The Thayan has a deliciously well developed sense of humor. I do not think I will tire of his company anytime soon.

On my arcane studies: I must decide whether to focus my spells more around evocation or around transmutation. Lately we have been going up against a great many fire and lightning proofed things so while powerful and good for striking many foes simultaneously firebrand has not been the most ideal spell. Lightning is rather imprecise and unpredictable... I do not like how it has a tendency to hit both friend and foe alike at all who are in my proximity. Acid and sound on the other hand seem generally much more useful against these otherwise highly resistant and resilient monsters... With the exception of golems who tend to be oftentimes resistant to most magical attacks in general.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on July 28, 2018, 08:15:02 AM
Don't tempt me Vallaki township... When I am a powerful archmage I may want to carve a butt on the Barovian side of the Balinoks so it looks like Hazlan is mooning them. Then I will claim it is but a natural formation and coincidental.
===
Could it be I am getting bored or seem lacking in direction again?
I carry out a little business from time to time in Port A Lucine and keep trying to get back in touch with my fellow Hazlani. I also team up with groups of adventurers arriving in the mist camp who say they are in need a skilled mage.
===
My friend and colleague Mister Timond of the Wayfarer Kinship and I have been having much correspondence on the subject of golemcrafting and I was lucky enough to find a censer of commanding elementals. This specific one was a brazier for fire elementals. Delightedly I gave it to him in the mist camp and we were both quite excited by this find since in studying the magic used to bind and summon these flame creatures we may begin direct steps toward achieving a more practical understanding of golemcraft.
We had to lie though to the goodly priest present at the time that it was an inquiry into summoning magic to see at an attempt to make a portal that offworlders would perhaps be able to use to return to their realms of origin. In truth we can research into both ends/aims (obviously, as a core native, I do not really care much about portals going into other realms or escaping the demiplane but offworlders are obsessed so by playing off this I can pique their interest and gain some solid support).

The Cormyrean (Or was he a Waterdhavian?) conjurer and I seem on the verge of a major breakthrough discovery, though it is very early into just the conceptual stage of our project. I feel optimistic about this experiment though.

Alternatively, we could use the golem as an explorer and send it out into whatever portal is activated ahead of a person... To test if what lies at the other end is safe!
==
Notes: Golemcrafting falls squarely into the school of transmutation.
Inducing a portal or summoning a creature servant (extraplanar or otherwise) is classic conjuration.
I am a specialist transmuter and cannot do true conjuration. The closest I can myself do is approximate it via shadow-casting creatures of shadowstuff and negative energy from the plane of shadow but that counts as an application of the school of illusion.

The absolute last thing I want is some naive and misguided "heroic" fool smashing our devices or burning our notes because he or she personally feels creating an artificial life is inherently "wrong."  Indeed, if the construct runs amok of course Timond and I will have taken steps to put down our own creation well before it has had much opportunity to wreak havoc or injure people.
We aren't... unprincipled arcanists though folk "common knowledge" that all mages are insane and dangerous is a depressingly typical attitude encountered all too often in less culturally advanced countries.  Hmm, there is one exception to this though. In the truly primitive places simple tribefolk fear and marvel at magic thinking you are equivalent to some sort of God or need to be a quite powerful shaman, which is quaintly adorable.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on July 29, 2018, 02:43:20 PM
Again, progress seems stalled.
I am led to believe I have finally obtained proper sponsorship but so far I haven't been taught anything by the master wizard assigned to me.  Maybe he requires some gifts for encouragement to teach me. I have some higher end more advanced scrolls I know he will enjoy.
Who knows... Thus far I have gotten as far as I have along my path through traversing the demiplane and mistwalking. I did not have the benefit of an academy or university's nurturing environs to aide my advancement.  If it is to be the game of politics and currying favor to be granted access to arcane libraries and repositories of other useful though esoteric knowledges then so be it.  A necessary step along the path. The proper civilized channel through which to go about it.

I do not begrudge this.

Some bestow upon me the title of red wizard but in truth having as to yet never been enrolled in the red academy I can never accept it as valid.
Even were I a graduate then I would be but a red apprentice. The true red wizard is our king, the archmage Lord Hazlik.
However, this title is both an honorific and a thing bestowing much fear throughout other parts of the core.
Call me stubborn and old fashioned but I have a hard time calling anyone other than my lord and King a Red Wizard. The instructors at the Royal academy I will call them master, "The learned" and so on in order to show deference.

The Iron church of the Lawgiver in Nordenvall Fane acknowledges the status of my being my father's son and so it is I am a nobleman of House Quoa. My father shall in the meantime continue being the Satrap of his estate until he chooses to retire. However, I don't want to be thought of as a bratty prince incapable of doing an honest day's hard work nor of taking care of myself; I have seen other members of the gentry grown fat and lazy from being overly reliant upon their servants to attend them in their day to day living.

Hazlani social hierarchy is rigid and the only ways of even partially "raising one's station" are as follows: Obtain great wealth or gain prestige through exhibiting excellence in our arcane institution.

Satraps are liege lords of plantation estates. The Vrayloks are governors who oversee these little lords. Of the tithes collected from the satraps by the Vrayloks and their representatives some go to the church's biskops and others to the lord king. House Quoa's plantation acreage falls in the extreme northern reaches of Hazlan. That means it is Vraylok Kyrillian whom we pay our tributes to.

The elder shown deference to in a Mulan extended family is called a rishad.  Not every rishad gets to be a Vraylok but most are at least of the Satrap ranking. Only the most powerful and influential aristocrats get to be governors.
Freedom is relative. While I do enjoy through privilege of birth more rights than a serf or a commoner I do still need yield to the higher authority of the Vrayloks, biskops and King Hazlik.
Thus being a prince of an estate in my homeland is of less meaning than an outsider might think.
===
This contrasts with my people's early history:
Back in the days of old between the fifth and sixth Mulan dynasties of Hazlan there were wars for dominance between many different small warring city states (each noble family with its own petty arcane warlord as the head, their private soldiers as the limbs and estate serfs as a circulatory system). Mighty Hazlik emerged at the top putting each of the old noble houses in their place (I am referring to the Years of Tattered Banners). A unified Hazlan was achieved through his efforts and those of the iron church missionaries though details of the modern grand State establishing itself are oftentimes sketchy and vague. As far as I know Hazlan has always been a manorial magocracy going so long back as to the period of the Nameless King. I don't think it was always called Hazlan though. Probably in the earlier Mulan dynasties the country was named after each of their kings as is the custom. It is called Hazlan now in the modern period after our Lord King!

The Satrap estates are as tissues, the Vraylok administrations as organs, churches as an organ system (perhaps?) and Hazlik as the brain. Things work better when a body is not overtly having every of its pieces beating itself up. We are thus as a great giant where before smaller pools of absolute power were keeping us weaker and holding things back.  Mayhap that is a more accurate measure of why outsiders would rightly fear us than the idiocy spread of us all being terribly oppressive savages akin to the Falkovnians and the Pharazian and Akiri primitives from the Amber Wastes.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on July 30, 2018, 04:31:45 AM
For consideration:
A brass golem body with the spirit of a fire elemental for its core.
Pros: sturdy and if engineered correctly, flexible enough. I am fairly sure this is a compatible combination as well.
Cons: Expensive. Will likely take a long time to fashion properly.

Clay golem.
Pros: Clay is relatively abundant along the shores of the river Staniset and along the banks. It is easier to shape into a humanoid body and less overall attention to detail is likely required.
Cons: Unsure what would be required to power such a contrivance.

Bone golem.
Pros: I can work with anatomists and necromancers as sort of an interdisciplinary endeavor.
Cons: You need to use bones harvested from I think only undead creatures which presents with a unique hazard compared to other more "inert" materials. Also... Tends to be be viewed as rather evil by laypeople.

Flesh golem.
Pros: Readily available materials to harvest from cadavers.
Cons: Preservation of delicate tissues in a hot and/or wet environment is complicated. Also, tends to be regarded by laypeople as very evil.

Stone golem.
Pros: Rock quarries on the Hazlani Balinoks are already available. It's locally sourced materials and labor! I can work with sculptors and stonemasons. Also, it's somewhat less expensive one may presuppose than constructing a metal golem body.
Cons: Very heavy.

Straw golem.
Pros: Very cheap (probably the cheapest material one can make such a thing from) and relatively easy to fashion into a body.
Cons: Rather lightweight and not terribly sturdy.

Wax golem.
Pros: Perhaps even cheaper materials than straw to work with. Can be sculpted much quicker than metal or stone.
Cons: Wax is not terribly resistant to heat or acid. Perhaps it is safe to assume a golem made of this material would not be as strong as one made of one of the sturdier physical substances.

Mechanical golem.
Pros: High amounts of articulation and flexibility can be achieved if the design is elegant and these can be mass produced.
Cons: The more intricate the mechanisms the more time it will take to shape the assemblies properly. This could too become very costly if limits are not set.

Glass golem?
Pros: A golem made from silicates would have intense cutting power and possibly also be rather heat resistant.
Cons: Glass is still fragile. Blunt weapon attacks would quite likely make short work of such a creation.

Wood golem?
Pros: Wood would be very easy to fashion a body from and is relatively inexpensive being perhaps second only to straw.
Cons: Wood is also very flammable.
(http://i.imgur.com/1Y3QNBq.jpg)

I feel very lonely and I miss my wife.

Some of my acquaintances and I have debated about the sort of quasi sentience seemingly possessed by the mist. The way it can affect life and death, holds effects over time and location... Hmm... I do wonder if a pressurized contained volume of it might be able to be used as a suitable medium for the core of a golem.

Zafirah obnoxiously suggests to me being banished from Vallaki is my own fault for being a Hazlani and that the undue harassment I had received during my stay there was in fact warnings by supposedly well-meaning locals. She also relayed to me that Lady Verinne is being put under a witch trial by the people in Krofburg. Ugh, the Barovians are so barbaric. I hope they do not kill her, they are supposed to be a bit less mud-brained and blinkered in their paranoia than Tepest. My friend Caporal Schrotter and I were both rather upsetted by this news. He liked the enchanted plateboots I found for him though. Poor Verinne to be suffering at the hands of those pigheaded savages. All this cracking down severely on spellcraft is really painting the Barovians in a negative light to other more enlightened or perhaps the correct turn of phrase might be illuminated parts of the core.

Barovia has never been at *war* with Hazlan and Hazlan would honestly prefer to be quite left alone.  We aren't that politically interested in other countries other than if there can be a brisk bit of commercial trade between them and us so I reaffirm that much of these overblown fears of evil wizards enslaving your mind and body are quite... Exaggerated. We aren't going to be conquering any of our neighbors but are more than adequate at defending ourselves should the need arise. The location of Ramulai is entirely strategic, for instance. That you have to go through a narrow canyon and the hostile jungle to get to it is itself something of a built-in defense.

I ought to share this list from my journal with my master.
Doubtless he is too wrapped up in his own arcane projects to much be troubled with getting to know a new apprentice though. I should search for the opportune time to present it to him. He could probably have some insights to offer when it comes to working with bone and flesh.

The elderly elf mage Morfindel told me he feels the number of evil wizards in Hazlan is close to around 70%. This is far more generous and heartwarming than the typical Vallakian's assumption of 100% and not as conservative as my 80-90% guess. I guess I am a part of that 30%? Thanks old elf!

I wonder... He couldn't be an even thousand and I have a hard time guessing the ages of elves and dwarves but if I had to place a guess... He can't be 900 but is likely more than 700. 850 perhaps?
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on July 31, 2018, 04:06:08 PM
The following entry is divided in three parts on three different topics.
Topic 1:
The "Lumpy Oatmeal" model of our demiplane.
A miniature treatise
by Dr. Agios Quoa of Hazlan.

I have spent much time traversing this realm. Many of my fellow mist walkers both those who have come before me, those of this current generation and those would be explorers who have yet to attempt it recognize that the structure of this dimension is one in which bits of "habitable" land intersperse a soupy thick ocean of confounding and mysterious fog.

I like to think of the lands as lumps in a thick oatmeal and the mistways as the runnier portions. You can think of the islands, clusters and core as reality and the mists as a sort of unreality or space between spaces holding it all together in a way.
In the same way the runny parts of a porridge flow more readily than the more solid, lumpier portions so too do the mistways compared to habitated land fragments.  However, some entities and creatures are themselves native only to the mists! That will be something to explore into greater detail either another time or by someone else.
Below the text of this section is a rough drawing of of the core (in brown) punctuated by streams of mist (in green and purple) and intermittent in the misty portion are some clusters (in yellow) and littler islands (in red). This map is by no means complete, properly to scale or in any way comprehensive it is simply a visual to go with Agios' analogy. There is also a footnote about oubliettes since he has been to the snake house a few times.

Footnote in detail: Perhaps the smallest bits of contained reality with the mists frothing around them are what Dextan explained to me are called oubliettes. To date I have only ever experienced one but it would make sense there could in fact be several of them!
=====
Topic two:
Compression of mist? A speculative piece.
I have found and used, seen used and according to witnesses traveling with me at the time in certain perilous situations had mist orbs used on me.  These contain a small amount of blessed mist that has been purified some mysterious way by Ezrites and can return a person from recent death to the land of the living provided their body is mostly intact and the decay is not too advanced.
Using Hazlani ingenuity I speculate that the mists have an effect on the vital life (and unlife) energy of bodies exposed to and put in contact with the stuff.  Though I am not fully certain of the cause behind this property the mechanism of action appears to work on the lungs of the fallen having met their unfortunate demise.
Questions for research: 1. Could the mists perhaps be used to imbue a golem with life? 2. The fog made of these mists is a vapor. As alchemy teaches us vapor or atomized liquid is a gas. All gasses can be put into containers. They (gases) follow pressure and volume relationships. Perhaps in addition to putting purified mist encased in glass one might also compress it into a cylinder. Using this compressed mist gas for particular alchemical and thaumaturgical machinery would be of interest. It wouldn't just be for the pneuma (pneumatic motive force), but also to study the peculiar effects such controlled application of the mist has on various materials, subjects and so on. I am not even sure that the results would be repeatable but this is something of an attempt to empirically study it using laboratory procedures so that observations may be made and measurements taken at the very least.
3. The mists are mutable. This is known. They can morph into forms living, unliving and inanimate but nobody is all too sure of why and of which at a given time.  That's still unknowable but if an attempt is to be made to see how mists are controlled or what conditions induce particular transformation of the mist into these three categories an apparatus involving a mist cylinder would make a vital piece of equipment for such exploratory experimentation.
===
Topic three:
Topic three is an analysis of shadowstuff and compares how instances of shadowcasting (use of  shadow conjuration, shadow binding, greater shadow conjuration, shadow shield and summon shades) count as being of a particular school of magic but effectively mimic the others.

Of key importance is the following highlight: /...That these spells all involve shaping of shadowstuff and manipulation of it but produce such a range of varying effects to be of very high versatility may suggest perhaps the plane of shadow where shadow creatures and this dark energy comes from is quite primal. Most things have a shadowy counterpart.../

*Several examples are then detailed in a vertical list as follows:*
Shadow conjuration: Illusion capable of mimicking abjuration, conjuring, and evocation.
Shadow binding: illusion and evocation... I think?
Greater shadow conjuration: Illusion capable of mimicking abjuration, conjuring and evocation.
Shadow shield: An abjuration that behaves like an illusion.
Summon shades: Outside my range for the moment but I will assume it to be an illusion that mimics conjuring.

Excerpt: ... There is also a negative energy component to shades, shadowcasting and shadow creatures as they all seem resistant to it (negative energy) and the natural (or unnatural depending on your perspective on it) state for some of these things is to drain life?  It follows then that there must be some relationship between the plane of shadow and the realm of death... Otherwise why would there be such things as grim reapers which look undead but are in fact shadow creatures? I would posit that somehow cosmologically these two dimensions overlap to an extent or are close neighbors.  I have already pondered before how our native demiplane seems to butt up against those two dimensions I have described above.  Does that make the demiplane of dread a sort of a purgatory? It would explain the oftentimes transient and weak relationship beings have with death, the great inhuman vitality of the undead in these countries and perhaps much, much more! I dare not to reflect too long upon such lines of reasoning though because where they go further from this is quite troubling.

Author notes and comments on my writing:
Would any of these topics be enriching enough to bring up to such audiences as the Society of the Erudites, Dementlieu University or the Red Academy?  They all need work to become presentation ready and are in quite an unfinished state as they sit on this page currently.  I wish I had some trustworthy people I could talk about it to or whom could help perhaps to peer review or edit it. A second set of eyes going over things would be nice! Mamat doesn't count because Worgs don't read written language and only understand spoken!
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 01, 2018, 03:20:26 AM
Entry 1: Morning:
The night terrors continue but I fight them in my own dreamscape.

Being told how you are supposed to feel is idiotic.
Being told other people have right to trample all over you based on made up things is... Infuriating.

I wonder how my friends Verinne and Jaochim and Lt. Trelliard are doing.

Saw the gossip rag. Was highly amused. The author really seems to get off on her own hyperbole. Reminds me of some other people I had known.
Red peril? Oh please. Jaochim a womanizer? Pfah... This Op Ed person certainly likes coming across as strongly opinionated. I wonder what the second edition will be about. I also wonder who the handsome fellow on the front page headline describing us as invading monsters was too. A fine model! Ohoho.
What an amusing diversion. It's a comedy but to the ill-educated who take opinion as fact may prove deadly. Such is often the case.
It has to be a comedy. They can't... Seriously think all those things, can they? Well, sensationalism does sell papers and I do need something for Mamat to occasionally relieve himself on when I am confined indoors during long caravan rides or intense studies!

Nightmares... Hmm, a court? There was a book in Dementlieu University talking about an alienist who spent years battling a supposed nightmare court in some bizarre shifting land even more awful than our own regular dimension. I thought it was purely symbolic at the time but symbols can hold power, afterall... Are alienism and mesmerism the tools used in an actual battle for the ordered souls and minds of people to rescue away from the clutches of chaotic insanity? I doubt for most hypnotherapists it gets that literal but it could be there is a part of this demiplane where mental internal constructs (schema) externally manifest.  I should ask some far-travelers as soon as I get a chance. Perhaps one or two has encountered a "Nightmare land".

I would like to learn about this as well but it is a topic for another day.
Perhaps our souls are not as strongly anchored in place to our bodies when we dream as during our waking hours? Hmm!
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Egyptian_-_Gnostic_Gem_with_Scarab_-_Walters_42872.jpg)
*There are drawings in the margins and along the paragraphs of mummies from Har'Akir, some smudgy thing meant to represent a mist horror and the giant night stalker (not to scale). Also snakes coiled around to make lines for the text to run along in a few places. The latter might well be an attempt at calligraph or an alchemical joke having the illuminated bits make reference in their design to the Ouroboros.*
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Chrysopoea_of_Cleopatra_1.png)

Entry two: Mid-afternoon:
It is... Irritating to me how people tend not  to view us Hazlani as individuals. We are proud and arrogant for being smarter than the rest, yes. You can easily enough morph that into horrible things regardless of whether the Hazlani in question actually does something truly reprehensible and inhumane or not. Let the unenlightened fear us as the defiant OTHER. They are the ones who are savages for wanting us put to death over it.
No civilization is pure. All have histories that  are bloodstained.
It is lies and Mytteri to pretend otherwise and you delude yourself with an us = good them = evil one-dimensional narrative. You insects. Vile and pathetic vermin wrapped in human skin! ...With strong apologies to the true worms, maggots and beetles of the world who perform their vital niche of environmentally dealing with rot and refuse, and even more admirably do so tirelessly without complaint.
I can't force them to see what they don't want to. There is no spell of true seeing to strip away the mental wards and illusions cast by human ignorance.

The idea we wish to conquer any other of our neighbors?... Patently absurd. Why would we want to lord it over uncooperative arcane fearing idiots who are largely for the most part inconsequential?
Does an ant worry about human cities toppling its hive?

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Ancientlibraryalex.jpg)

Hazlan politically has always had a stance of extreme isolationism.
A worker ant is wiser in her simplicity for she knows her role and does not concern herself with matters outside her station. She dedicates her all to the good of the colony and obeying her queen by striving to always do the best she can at her designated job she has been assigned.

True experts at a craft or in a field will tell you it is far wiser to start out with the base assumption that you do not already know everything for this makes there room to pursue alternate solutions to arrive at your conclusions. You can't have room for new information if you have crowded it out with too much repeated emphasis on the same flawed models and too conventional modes of thinking.
Room for improvement is the name of the game! The truly great thinkers are flexible, yes? They have their theories built upon and when no longer useful scrap them to assemble something more in line with current needs, no?

What does an arcanist fear if not magic (obviously)? That's simple, reactionary imbeciles marching into your magical laboratory and smashing your equipment or torturing you because they feel pursuit of the art is immoral. The thirst for violence among the illiterates is appalling. The dissonance between the us vs them and the foundation shattering concept that there are people out there who are not afraid of the same things as you or who further even enjoy striving to understand the unknown unhinges them.

Entry Three: Evening:
Yes confronting this dissonance requires a certain slightly advanced stage of distinction between self and nonself. Mytteri delights in conflict over misunderstanding such as during the sheer insanity of some rebellions.
Most of the peasantry in our neighboring nations are hopeless in this regard. Even many of our own serf workforce are a lost cause.
Those who are talented throughout the core regardless of their birth station fear being outed as heretics and witches by an oppressive "idiot majority" when an enlightened ruler such as The Rex in Darkon or my Sovereign Lord Hazlik, King of all Hazlan these men know that inventive minds can be used to the benefit of the State and to make the lives of all subjects better throughout their kingdoms, when handled appropriately, nurtured and guided in a proper way.

How can a person be both great and terrible simultaneously?
You limit yourself with the preconceived notion these two conditions need be mutually exclusive.

When the Lawgiver spoke to those early leaders and rulers on high... He taught them the secrets of effective leadership, running the vehicle of state with an iron hand. Optimally efficient. How to crush insurrections and keep a people unified under their yoke.

The reason human laws may change through the ages is we as mortals are not nearly so perfect as gods. Scientific and arcane progress forges through our early mistakes to elevate us above our primitive bestial lower brethren we as civilizations are wardens of. It transmutes our base forms into something approaching more godlike. Don't you see it? Of course they can't.

Of course, some never achieve this ultimate form of the highest self as black vassal to the Lord of Iron.  Lesser minds see madness as a limitation without realizing how to overcome it and are devoured by Mytteri.

Dare I to suggest even nobles aren't immune to Mytteri's seduction? Look at the recent civil war in Dementlieu as evidence.

Look you peon, even insects when working in unison of purpose are capable of rending meat from the carcass of a great behemoth.
To me ignorance, illiteracy and disease are that behemoth.
Are you getting all this down on the vellum scribe? Don't write the parts that are my comments to you! Gah, give me that...
If you want something done right you often have to do it yourself.

Philosophically dear reader, the only hope against the Mytteri of ignorance, disease and illiteracy then is for the literati to combat it in the most ordered way possible.
The same way an alchemist seeks to elevate base metals to gold, so too does the academic hope to elevate base people to more sophisticated thinkers. Or at least... as much as one is capable of.

I can't sleep. Not well. It's like the full moon all over again.  Rather than a traveling wanderlust though this seems a mental one. I yearn for exposure to new ideas and the tools necessary to develop my thoughts yet further.

That they might be used to help people and improve quality of life is my aim in pursuing this.

How could we be a way you do not like? Simple, you are not in charge of us, you are not our sovereign and you are not our God. Worry about controlling yourself first before telling other people how it is you feel they ought to live! Pretty shocking, right?
Having reasonable boundaries upon oneself instead of speaking out of turn about an entire nation proving yourself to be a fool when you haven't gotten to know any of us let alone spent time amongst our people? No, for some reason nobody goes for this approach.

Why do I tend to dislike the Barovians? They are violence prone and would typically be the last person you would want to ever invite to a wizard tower or alchemy lab.  The only exceptions are a rare minority of an intellectual bent who try very hard to hide it for fear of being persecuted by their own families and neighbors, decried as witches then tarred and feathered, mutilated or worse. For the supposed crime of having gifted minds.

Why do I tend to dislike offworlders from Faerun?
The imbeciles tend to stick to a Toril-centric way of viewing the world around them in a most stubborn fashion and try refusing to accept things are not identical to in their dimension despite a rapidly mounting agglomerated body of evidence that points to otherwise.
Also they most annoyingly spout a claim we Hazlani are completely the same as their Thayans, 100% evil and 100% necromancers. This is not true and a huge oversimplification.
I don't go into your dimension Toril expecting things behave the exact same as they do here in the Demiplane of Dread. Why do you cling to these notions like it was a safety net when false assumptions are in truth much less safe than being receptive to the journey and experiences far travel exposes one to?

False security blinds a person to true danger.
Now, having penned all this down in writing I can get some sleep.
Imbecilic clods making things intentionally worse for themselves and others around them...
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 02, 2018, 10:52:06 AM
False security blinds people to true danger...
Oh and there is always the threat of physical violence. So predictable!
Stranger vistas loom and all these people care about is their semblance of the routine, mundane normalcy they think is so comforting! Pfah!
Repetition of the same lie over and over again makes people lulled into a sense of veracity because they are too lazy to think for themselves...
Confirmation bias satisfies the mob but is intellectual laziness and as such very disquieting.
=====
I am a physician and alchemist. I am a transmutation specialist wizard. Transmutation and alchemy work together very well.

Lead. Copper. Arsenic. Silver. Mercury. Iron. Gold.

I am an alchemist.
Phosphorus. Sulfur. Potassium.

When you do things to these you make distillate, dilution, amalgams... Solutions and mixtures.
You apply fundamental energy types too... There are fire, air, water and dirt.
I am a transmuter.
The same way a base metal seeks to become elevated to something better (gold for example), so too men as their baser forms seek to become more godlike.

The mists are an animating life force. Is negative energy its opposite?
Well... Yes and no.

(http://i.imgur.com/3Stf9UF.jpg)

That is to say, the mists can be an animating life force but also are capable of draining life out of things... Which would suggest they carry properties of both positive and negative energy simultaneously... Which should be impossible and yet it is true.
Title: Re: Duty Above All: An Introduction to The Hazlan Papers:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 03, 2018, 11:02:57 AM
Take comfort in the unknowable and that the unknown may rip you apart impartially.
Overcoming insanity is the trick (Sometimes preparations of narcotic may aide in this but other times they exacerbate it!).
Disease is Mytteri.
Medicine is a tool of order. Mankind's civilizing dominion over chaos.
Triumph over tragedy!
(http://i.imgur.com/hsRaItN.jpg)
Here we have the core and some of the islands in the Sea Of Sorrows and the Nocturnal Sea.

(http://i.imgur.com/IXgK8oU.jpg)
The Kingdom of Hazlan.

(http://i.imgur.com/ue5qANb.jpg)
Idyllic plantation scene of Mulan plantation owners enjoying tea and conversation and Rashemi laborers picking fruit, grain and cotton.

I have traveled the core quite extensively.

Danse Macabre:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Holbein_Danse_Macabre_15.jpg)
Death does not care who we are. It hits everyone from all stations. Rich, poor, King, aristocrat, peasant, slave, beggar.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Danse_macabre_by_Michael_Wolgemut.png)

We must not succumb to the temptations of Mytteri!

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Holbein_Danse_Macabre_37.jpg)
You cannot chide those without much in the way of minds to use their brains; they are already doing so to the best of their woefully inadequate ability.

That being said, what comes to mind when you hear the term "red wizard"?
No doubt some tattooed fiend cackling maniacally and torturing people to relieve boredom because he was finished assaulting little old ladies and stomping on puppies, right? You are an idiot.
I don't argue we aren't brutal but I do argue that to cast us all within one paint color of being savage oppressors is... A vast oversimplification.  You've probably never even met a Hazlani. Also, we aren't Thayans. Our Lord King calls himself The Red Wozard.  We like to wear red because it is our Sovereign's favorite color. For us red and gold are the colors or nobility much as how you would assign such hues as purple and blue to the upper classes in other countries.

Am I a wizard? Yes. I've no longer any reason to hide it.
You are a damned fool if you mistake transmutation for necromancy though. I don't know what wanting to kill off all mages is supposed to achieve for these Luddites. It isn't going to make things better. The weave repairs itself regardless of how many witches and wizards you murder, no matter how many sorcerers you mutilate.

Also all killing them does is make there be more evil ones. Even if it didn't spur people toward revenge you are mostly just killing the not evil ones so the amount of evil casters is staying the same while the number of good casters is intentionally winnowed.

Once you call somebody evil it strips away having to see them as a person or their civilization as a people.

We Hazlani have many cultural achievements. We pass being civilized on most levels used by scholars as benchmarks when assessing complexity of a civilization.

We have alchemy, astronomy, advanced agriculture, math, theater, all these things. We are less afraid of magic than primitive fools elsewhere and can boast having many powerful mages amongst our populace.

Who am I trying to argue these points to?
They fall on deaf ears. People love the "Black Hazlan" propaganda narrative. The way they would act so surprised when I'd take them to Zragrev and find out that we have inns, theaters, bars, and that most of the serfs have their own housing...
I should find this all very much more infuriating.

These foolish twits truly think we are all barbarically oppressive savages. They have us confused with the desert peoples, Barovians and Falkovnians.
Oh why don't we just wear hair and not have tattoos? I don't tell you to erase your ethnic heritage! Would an elf clip his ears or a dwarf lose his beard? I think not!

Infuriating... It should be so yet you have to forgive simple minds for being uncritical and unwilling to do that which makes them uncomfortable. The siren song of Mytteri says be ignorant, don't seek to understand... It seduces as it damns.
Knowledge IS POWER. He who wields it most effectively becomes influential.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 04, 2018, 10:22:29 AM
Morning rant and a thought exercise:
It's easier for people to lazily see each other as these simplified models lacking rational impulses and reasoning because then you don't have to feel bad about killing them.
That's the kind of people we core natives and the offworlders are. Not a pleasant truth.

We will use religions to rationalize and justify this. Bloody violent and terrible witch hunts happen because simpleminded villagers most of whom can't even read are terrified of that magic exists around them and even the inkling that some of their neighbors or family members might have preternatural gifts, talents above and beyond the five basic physical senses is something they cannot handle.

Oh. Well! I hear the other side arguing... Some mages are evil. Therefore killing them all just to be on the safe side is the only sane approach. Hmm, and I wonder then if you (these very same people) wouldn't find it inhumane to experience the opposite, a situation of the opposite where those lacking skill in the Art are treated as lessers to those who are versed in it, as is the case in my country?
The hypocrisy sickens me.

They are so egocentric!
If you're worried about terrible curses and magically induced misfortune then wouldn't it make more sense to go out of your way NOT to antagonize arcanists or any of those whom you suspect of having awesome and terrible abilities?
You really think we're mostly all concerned with such minor goals as souring the milk, killing off your crops, inducing miscarriages and generating Caliban? How quaint.

It's very easy to start the downward spiral using the tool of gossip to lay low somebody educated in mysterious things a layperson finds esoteric. All a peon peasant has to do is howl to an authority figure they think somebody is an evil witch or wizard, whinge about alleged necromancy or they'll claim your pet is a fiendish familiar. Ooh! Scary!
What the bloody Mytteri...

It's the same story and tactic over and over. The peasant claims an elderly sage or exotic foreigner's guide animal or clever pet did something to them in a dream, has "witched" or entranced a neighbor's child, they saw it eat a soul (though isn't admitting you witnessed such tantamount to admitting you can see supernatural things in the first place which can also be called witchery since it is a supernatural gift, hmm!?). There's holes in this oft endlessly prattled and pathetic narrative which would become apparent to any with a modicum of sufficient formal education in their upbringing.

In an earlier entry I admitted to being a wizard. Know that I have never used my magics to cause anyone harm and have never attacked a lawman. It is against my nature even when they are attacking me. If it is considered wrong to even defend yourself or evade capture then that is quite the stacked deck, isn't it? Always being right, not needing to think about your actions at all. It must be comforting to these Mytteri loving idiots...

... A simple view for simple people. Oh how I despise them.
I tried to be their friend and a good member of their community.
I gave free healthcare and consultations to allay their fears of curses. I was the friendly physician and wise man you could turn to if you had worries a witch was after you.
They repaid me by hunting me like I was some sort of animal and insistently claiming all the harder how all of my race needed to be wicked. It was not right for them to do.

I had taken precautions to never be overly conspicuous in my use of the Art during the day and was hesitant, tentative and would ask a local if they were alright with magics first before using it to help in a manhunt of a criminal or when defending against monster attack whether at night or in some crypt, generally as my rule. If other people casted their wards first I worked from the assumption that fellow casters and priests would not tell on one another simply for having a gift they used to help people (such a mistaken assumption im retrospect!).

For a long time though things were tense the Vallakians and I more or less got along decently.
I thought they understood that not every single Hazlani is an evil wizard.  I was mistaken in my assumptions.
I wore the red and stopped covering my head because I was proud of my heritage and inherited a title of some importance. I wanted to show these people some of the ways of my culture but not in a hostile way nor to force them to adopt our lifestyle.
I never was a proponent of telling a free city what it really needed was a slave labor workforce. I also never told anybody to join the church of the Lawgiver.  I was a good neighbor.
They jumped to the worst possible conclusions time and time again, for the most part.  It didn't matter what I did for them.
Such is the ingrained prejudice of most people in that rotten city near the "Outlander's Gate" one way mist portal.

One may surmise this is pushback against the endless stream of offworlders who are transported into their backyard... An attempt by the native Barovians to preserve their culture through harshness as a buffer.

I am supposing were the Outlander's Gate in a different country...
Probably the Dementlieuse would try and quarantine the mouth of it, strongly encouraging these extradimensional foreigners to wear more formal attire and at least acquire some rudimentary working Mordentish that they might assimilate more readily into Dementlieuse society.
If it were in Darkon, no doubt their King Azalin's government would come up with some sort of program to deal with the newly misted.  Maybe find them low paying government jobs in an on the surface gesture of goodwill but with the added benefit of it being the perfect vehicle to spy on these outsiders during while they are trying to integrate.
Falkovnia would joyfully conscript the offworlders into front line infantry suicide missions.
Hazlan we would probably try to study the gate to find a way to close it... And this would likely involve vivisection of some unfortunate newly misted and dissection of their dead. Perhaps many of them. Who can say?
If it was on an island nation...
Blaustein would likely find any of a number reasons to hang as many of these strange outsiders as possible in a woefully inadequate attempt to stem the flow of cosmic immigration.
Ghastria there would be pickpockets riffling through each offworlder's belongings in the hopes there was even a crumb of flavorful foodstuffs.
Lamordia would likely attribute the portal to something not supernatural or claim the newly misted were delusional since there would be little for the standard observer to go off of definitively proving the existence of other worlds beyond our own... Sending the majority of them who could not be properly "re-educated" into increasingly overcrowded sanitariums, I think.

Such speculations are darkly humorous, yes?
If you make any mistakes at all, people will not hesitate to use it as a potent weapon in their quest to undo and undermine you.
Do not despair future apprentice or gentle reader.
Worrying all the time you might make a mistake and jeopardize your standing in such primitive societies is the best way to increase your guaranteed chances of making such mistakes. You want to come across as natural and not artificial. This is difficult but I maintain belief that it is doable.

My critics would tell me I am in no position to feel bitter or complain.
They would tell you lots of things to invalidate me and to discredit my statements. This is what impassioned opponents do.
Unlike them I am not so certain I must be right but do think that my experiences are valid or at least of enough import to bear being penned in this journal.

Yes, how dare I think in a way that they do not tacitly approve of, which does not fit their subjective world narrative view they tell everyone to have. Repeat the same lie enough, have enough people say it and the idea of it being falsehood... There isn't room for the people to consider that. It's all taken up by repetition for emphasis.

No, I am not a victim. I am Hazlani and an explorer and it makes me strong.

Afternoon: Gratitude:
I am grateful to my friends William Blackwood, Sir Lexington and Caporal Schrotter.
They are... Not your typical priests and holy knights. The former two worship "overgods" I am unfamiliar with and come from worlds I have not heard of before but are staunch humanitarians, while the latter is a model citizen in Port A Lucine. Originally he was a Falkovnian defector but he worked his way up serving the Dementliuese government and is an example to all that your country of origin doesn't entirely sum up who you are (forever). To write him off as being still a slave to Vlad Dracov is profound idiocy. He serves his beloved Republique to his utmost ability and hearing any ill-bred, low born social climbing fool claim he might be a spy is something I will not stand for. Such disgusting and obvious attempts to jealously tear down another's success are... Evidence of being the product of a weak mind.

To the best of my knowledge these three paragon exemplars don't resort to the lowly game of backstabbing and disseminating foul rumors to gain unfair advantage over others. They are honest and arguably good men whom you could trust with your life.

Note to the reader: Your feelings can be wrong and lead to the wrong people getting killed as collateral. Never forget that.

Evening penance:
Lawgiver, I am imperfect. You give us each day we live as the opportunity to work at serving you better. Our hearts and minds are to be forged in iron though our bodies are of softer stuff like clay.

We must temper our temperament.
We will be punished accordingly for our shortcomings under your watchful judgment.

Looking back on it I find the red peril sensationalism on the front page of the first issue of L'Jaseur again amusing more than infuriating and have put a copy of it in a frame. I am incensed that all people see when they look at a Hazlani is oh, probably a despicable tyrant though... Just because some of us do things which aren't nice doesn't make us all bad eggs. You don't see Falkovnians getting handed this drivel nearly as much despite the personal hands on approach to torture their kings and standing armies are well known for; Singling mages out is a low blow. I have discussed this ad nauseum however.

I will keep it so I may show other young Hazlani the way we are thought of as monsters under the bed by overly easily frightened yokels abroad. The second edition was much better than the first. Perhaps I will start subscribing to it to see what is on the mind of the rabble and "man on the street" in Port A Lucine. It is quite the amusing read at times.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 05, 2018, 02:58:07 PM
Lawgiver be praised. Long live our Lord King Hazlik the Red Wizard.
I am not ashamed to be a Hazlani, In fact far from that, I am proud of it and what my people achieve.

Outsiders don't understand.
They think they are in some privileged position to judge us without trying to understand us or to get to know us.

They idiotically assume we want to control them.
No, for the most part we just want to be left alone.

They confound the action of the Banites from the Black Hand with the whole church of the Lawgiver, too.

The Iron Lord states we all have our designated roles to serve, our functions and jobs within society. It is part of the glorious whole to honor our black tyrant in his wisdom.

The Nova Vaasan orthodoxy has an aversion to arcane magic and finds our practice of tattooing distasteful but honestly, this is why I am glad the Hazlan branch does not.

It is my greatest dream to make something useful for my king, for my people and for other arcanists throughout the core.

This is too alien a goal to have any hope of explaining to the intensely magic loathing rabble. Those who feel any magic at all is a terrible thing would not be the correct audience to attempt conveying this idea to in the least.

I explore, practice medicine and pursue my arcane talents to glorify our kingdom.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 09, 2018, 06:02:25 AM
False security blinds us to true danger...

False security blinds us to true danger...

False security blinds us to true danger...

I thought Dante was my friend. I thought I could trust certain people it turns out I cannot.
More people than ever before are buying into some stupid lie I need to be some sort of an evil "necrosurgeon" and the thing is I don't even *like* undead. I like setting them on fire. I help priests get rid of them.
This is awful. I have sewn up injuries of fallen comrades, brought people back from the brink preventing them from bleeding out and helped Akiri and Pharazians birth babies. I have fought back plagues and it doesn't matter what I really did.

False security blinds us to true danger...

I was not trained in medicine at the Red Academy and that is a bold faced stupid lie.
I've been practicing medicine much longer than anything their necromancy department may or may not have recently cooked up.
Throughout the core and beyond it.
Legitimate medicine.
To help people.
And it's feeling like Vallaki over again...
People are twisting my helping them into something terrible. To what aim though?
Toward what end?

False security blinds us to true danger...

So many people still call me doctor yet many also insist because I am a Hazlani I cannot possibly give them decent care. It's so mindnumbingly, blitheringly, such Mytteri-filled stupidity.

Frontier medicine you cretins. So much Mytteri...

These lies. Why do these people insist I need to be held responsible for every little foul thing they hear of that any Hazlani has ever done? I am not some amalgamated conglomerate. I am an individual.

False security blinds us to true danger.
These lies. These horrible lies. They are designed to damage the reputation of a foe. What is to be gained though other than the satisfaction at destroying an outlier? I suppose in the worldview of the people who insist there are only ever evil necromancers from Hazlan that a less bent transmuter is...

...I am their Mytteri?!
False security blinds us to true danger...

Why am I nice to slaves? When I was a child I didn't have any friends and the people working on the plantation, their children were some of the only playmates I had.

Aside note: On some nights I wear a disguise and set criminals on fire. I am the Hazlan Shadow Man... It is quite the amusing diversion.
Thoughts: Why is it so satisfying setting monsters and crooks ablaze? Sometimes it is the simpler things in life you have to take joy in. Before it is snatched away from you. By people who cannot and willfully will not understand.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 10, 2018, 04:27:21 PM
I am being blamed by certain outsiders for things the department of necromancy is believed to have done despite my not being in charge of any of that. I did not participate in any of it. I was not aware of it. I am not the right person to be mad at.
This is distressing.

Every time any Hazlani is said to have done something bad people hurl things, insults and angry accusations at me simply because I am Hazlani.
They are angry and think I should not be allowed to be proud of the contributions our civilization has given this world since the negatives can be very negative... Without taking into account a more balanced view that there are also some positives. How simple-minded of them!

I have completely mastered the seventh arcane circle of transmutation. I feel I will begin to be ready for the eighth fairly soon.

When will I be considered a master wizard? Hmm, difficult to say.
At around the time I reach being able to cast from the ninth circle, create enchanted objects of power and pick up a few more languages perhaps?

I have explored this world quite thoroughly and it still manages to hold many surprises for me.
I will write these up and make books about it perhaps. With accreditation of other academics and arcanists I could give lecture talks, possibly.

I want to make contributions to alchemy and to science and medicine.

A very clever elf girl asked me what I thought about slavery... Waited until I gave a response first and then told me she was not a fan of it. I think she will go places. These ones who immediately (nae almost reflexively) scream at me they feel it is wrong and I need to be evil for not being strongly opposed to it the way they are... Not so much.

How do I feel about this subject? Here is what I told her:
Obviously in countries like Hazlan and Har'Akir where it is entrenched slavery is not going to go away any time soon.
Something radical like complete abolition is unrealistic and would cause too much... Chaotic trouble.
What you can do while still functioning in society without attempting to have it be torn at the roots (and you subsequently being simply ground down and obliterated against much more overwhelming odds) is this: You can work to improve the living conditions of slaves.

There are some satraps (not many, but likely at least a few!) who dislike extremely harsh treatment of their serfs. A brutish master is an oaf, you know.  Hard to argue you are of the superior race and a nobler class when you are behaving like an animal, isn't it?

Note: This is what my wise father taught me when I was young: The serfs live on your land. They tend to it. They maintain and harvest the crops. You want them healthy. They cannot do a good job if they are starving or beaten to within an inch of their lives; That should seem fairly obvious, one would think!
If they are killed you have to buy more. It's a hassle.
Human and demihuman capital is a heavy investment.
You have to feed, lodge and clothe them. They need tools to do their work for you.  What overhead you may save at the beginning on not having to pay wages is offset in granting of allowance stipends, replacing equipment and administering to the healthcare of serfs.
These are very necessary expenditures though.

A good lord at least tries to acommodate the needs of those under him.  They are under your auspices. Their welfare and wellbeing is directly tied to your estate. If you run it to the ground you don't just doom yourself and your family but all the families of your workers on that land, all your vassals and tenant farmers.

One should strive to be a good lord.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 11, 2018, 05:10:10 AM
I must work hard on my mist container and power orb.
I am becoming a more potent spellcaster.
I wonder what type of master wizard I will be.

There is definite anger there in my psyche for the prejudice and mistreatment I face from many professed and supposed "good people", but to give into it would be letting these Mytteri-loving idiots win.
They want me reduced to something unthinking and violently vile so they feel well-justified in killing me as retaliation.
It seems insane and full of Mytteri but these outsiders, when you are an outlier, they try to force you to conform to their negative impressions of your people.*

They even attempt to police my thoughts (don't call them mean and idiots when they try to kill me or ruin my reputation? I'm a wizard, not a saint! Ugh, challenging!). It's laughable but for that they are deadly serious about attempting to control all others around them through mob violence and threat of it.
Hmm...

Arcane artifacts and lore.
Immol cries out to Timond and to me.
What secrets might lie in that sealed off remote township?

I took Miss Morgan with me to a party my friend Verinne was throwing in the theatre and we had waffles afterward.

Father wrote to me to tell me he lost a few servants to the mists. That is unfortunate. It means he will have to recruit and train more to replace those claimed by the accursed fog.

*I do good things and am attacked as a bad person for things other people have done (and even sometimes things they may not have done that are made up!) who aren't me while there are others who do bad things and get a free pass. It seems to me like a ton of hypocrisy.

I don't think these judgmental ones understand what we go through.
It is very easy for them to assume a simplistic narrative of the big bad Mulan and oh poor (but turn on a switch to murderous) Rashemi berserkers.

Rude foreign "hero" types keep telling me they insist I need to, that Father and I beat our slaves to death (since all Mulan need to be 100% evil and our servants 100% good... Such doggerel! Romanticized propaganda! Mytteri... Mytteri everywhere), but this is a malignant exaggeration. Honestly if you are regularly beating many of them to death you are not a very good master.
The most effective overseers can oftentimes correct behavior with but a look and a word while not even having to draw a whip but on rare occasions.

I myself own no slaves. I am an explorer and a traveling scholar, a good physician and some would even say a talented wizard.
My aged father does. And you who would try in such primitive naive manner to judge us think you are so pure and your own lands are without rotten taint to them? Every civilization is blood forged.  Don't be in denial of that all are dual natured.

It is all a mixture of good and bad, you... Mytteri loving! Mewling and unthinking vermin!
They speak of peace and freedom while being slaves to their own whims. The Lord of Iron teaches us that discipline and devotion are more important than such disgustingly selfish and destructive impulses.  You have to consider how your actions will affect the whole.  A community does not exist in a vacuum! How dare you tell other people how you feel they ought to live "more virtuously" according to your own foreign nasty "deity's" mind pollution.

I have been way too tolerant of others and how am I repaid?
With such rebukes and threats of violence for not fitting your chaotic paradigms. Such uncivilized worms!

Now now Agios. Not everyone is like that.
Verinne isn't like that. Timond isn't like that. Morgan isn't like that. Patham isn't like that. Halvor is not like that.  Daagard is not like that.
Lydia is not like that. I do not think Jaochim is like that.

How I have come to hate the rabble. I can feel my pulse increase and anger clouds the edges of my consciousness. Nono Agios, don't now picture each of the people who attacked you and tried hurting your reputation dying by disintegration or being made to eat themselves.

Even if it does beget a certain disturbingly calming effect.
I don't forgive them but I come to understand they are flawed. Part of me wishes to pity them and in a way I suppose I do.

Maybe vaporization and self-ingestion are far too good for them.
I just wanted to help, and I still do but Lawgiver, it is so frustrating at times! It would take the patience of a saint to deal with such malignant stupidity that passes as "liberal" views in those circles.

This is not me. Not who I wish to be. I am a philanthropist and healer.

My projects should be grand and humanitarian in scope to improve the lives of many throughout the core. I just... Hope I can pull it off.
Title: Re: Duty Above All: The Hazlan papers:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 12, 2018, 03:06:35 PM
Arcane Energy Storage:
A proposed apparatus
By Agios Quoa of Hazlan
Having a sourcewell of elemental power to call upon later would be useful for casters, would it not?

(http://i.imgur.com/EsFUEIE.jpg)

I have a hypothesis that such materials as the meteoric metal called Adamantium and the brain juice of psionic illithids either alone or in some combination may prove an ideal medium for this.

Observations: 1. Adamantium striking the ground in Perfidus retains great heat on the way down from the sky, requiring casting of ice magic on it before handling and harvesting.

2. Mindflayers subsist on a diet of other sentient creatures' brains and the act of consuming brains seems to increase their psychic energy as well as other abilities.

3. The Lamordians and Dementlieuese (alienists for the former and stage magicians, the latter) play with a newly discovered process called mesmerism wherein electrical charges and signals in metal (both the ambient produced and that which are stored?) can entrance a person. It follows then there must be some sort of either magical or psychical phenomenon as the underlying mechanism driving the property.

Materials required:
1. Adamantium samples.
2. Extracted cerebrospinal fluid from an illithid, recently slain.
3. Copper wire or filligree, pounded thin and capable of being bent and wrapped around an object.
4. An iron chunk for the core.
Procedure: Mold the Adamantium into a smooth round hollow orb.
Fill this spherical container with illithid brain juice.
Now take the iron core and wrap the thin wire or filligree around it many times. Place the copper cable wrapped iron core in the suspension of illithid cerebrospinal fluid. Cap the Adamantium container and forge it into a fused piece.

Now we can test the capabilities of the power orb.
Firing evocation spells at it should prove an adequate charging process. Then we can observe what happens to the excited object as the energies inside it increase. How much energy is retained by these actions will require further observations and possible field testing.

Author's notes: Have gotten a supplier and procurer I know (Kairon) lined up to seek some of the more conventional materials I require for the project and a friend who is a treasure hunter (Crow) to potentially agree to testing my device once it is assembled. I have not told them why I am making it nor whom it is for. I told them it is merely putting into practice a theory I have. They seemed alright with that; After all, mages and scholars often have ideas about ways mysterious things might work which we ask other more nimble or sturdier comrades to attempt to try or use for us.
(http://i.imgur.com/syM186h.jpg)

This is a nice project which hopefully the instructors afterward could use to show the larger world we aren't all always necessarily horrible, should they so desire to.

Restrictions: I am not going to show anybody how the device assembly is going to need to be and will have each crafter work on a separate part independently or if it is to be all sourced by one crafter then at separate times. Only I and the instructor will have any idea of how to properly assemble the completed apparatus. I can show my tester the finished device and describe to them some suggested ways to use it, then will observe their using it. At no point will I teach other people how to make one of their own until the instructor says I can. This is a prototype and as of yet completely untested.

//Will require DM help to make the object and the manufacturing process can be RP'd out. The item doesn't have to have any functional in-game properties if we use Theater Of The Mind & suspended disbelief. When we are testing it IC perhaps the DM can describe what response the object has to for example: Being heated up or held in front of something?
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 13, 2018, 08:20:33 PM
Rage:
I try my damnedest to do right by my people and by other people.
Still the ignorant imbecilic twits insist I need to be evil, that nothing good ever comes out of my country and well gee, when you only pay attention to what the evil wizards are doing it doesn't really leave room to pay attention to what any of the neutral or good ones are about, now does it?

Oh and if you are too dumb to understand that there are things which are neither good nor evil you confuse such things with also being evil.
Maybe the choice which gets a lot of people killed is the action that is more evil?
Maybe causing direct suffering on purpose is evil?

Mytteri...
My people have one word for both evil and chaos.

We like things to be neat and orderly, controlled.
It would be nice if people understood everyone has a role, a job, their  function in a community and that everyone is tasked with their duties but in the larger world it seems there is no sense of collective. It is all individual and largely chaotic. Frighteningly so. Many small groups beat each other up, gnash their teeth and rip at their own skin, frothing and trying to claw up a perceived ladder.
I think it keeps the vaster entity of the State weak when people get mired so in such partisan minuscule concerns... Perhaps this is why our sovereign typically absolves himself of such plebeian concerns and has his advisors and the church handle most of the more mindnumbing administration of things?

I am no statesman, though I am the son of a Satrap. We are Northern Hazlani and as such Vraylock Kyrillian is our governor.  The governors more typically talk to the king on our behalf... I do not envy their position. Lord Hazlik's foul temper is legendary.

I am a physician. I am an alchemist. ...and I am a mage.
A wizard to be more specific.
My specialty? Transmutation.
My mood has been erratically anxious and aggressive lately but it is not unusual. It is the most natural response to such pressures. There also seem to be more frequent full moons although this *has* to have been just my imagination.

I hope the instructors like my proposal.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 14, 2018, 11:17:54 AM
Hmm, but how does the power stone or resonance and detection orb have to do with transmutation?

Well, I am taking things which already are and combining them in an unusual way to change their properties? My next steps will be steeped in alchemy. Hmm...
Title: Re: Duty Above All: The Hazlan Papers:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 14, 2018, 11:19:53 AM
Improvements to a flesh or zombie golem:

Copper wiring run alongside the nerve bundles? Nervous response and muscular action is guided by electrical charges... This presents a problem however when attempting to augment it though... One doesn't wish to fry the construct's body.
Insulators will be required.... How to insulate organic tissue to resist excessive heat though?
The answer comes to us from alchemy!
Extracted distillate of gelugon hearts (those of ice devils) imparts a chill touch property to material it is applied to. Bathing the golem's flesh in gelugon heart extract or perhaps marinating the tissue in such a solution provides a novel solution!
Fatty tissue has low melting point and that is a problem... However... Alchemically treated fatty tissue would withstand much greater environmental stresses than the regular unaltered form. So... It follows then one may wish to pack that around the more sensitive parts of the construct (and a layer of it over the body as a whole) as a type of both insulation and "cushioning."
Other considerations: Such a creature might also benefit from such modifications as having a chitinous shell or we could graft metal plates to its outer skin. Either way...

*Several drawings of mechanical heart-like core devices with rudimentary valves and associated systems of connective tubing line this page of the notes.*
[It becomes apparent that this is a system of direct energy injectors and siphons to amplify power in the augmented golem.]
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 16, 2018, 03:50:54 PM
Lead, iron, tin, arsenic, copper, silver, gold...

I am an alchemist.

Sulfur, phosphorus, zinc, potassium...

I am also a physician and transmuter.

Poultice, tincture, ointment, cream, incision, excision, suture...

Extracts are distilled and then you prepare them into varnishes by combining it with resin.

Distillate, emoluent, solvent, mixtures, colloid, fluid suspension, alloy, amalgamate...

... Base metal. Conversion. Elevated forms. Oricalcum. Noble metal. A more Godly state of a material. Imbuing. Catalyst. Vital force. Element. The Great Work...

Ouroboros, Circle of Life, Danse Macabre, Equivalent exchange, allegory.
Title: Re: Duty Above All: The Hazlan Papers:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 17, 2018, 12:20:34 PM
A report on every type of corporeal undead?!
Alright then, he'll get his damned comprehensive survey and then some!

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a2/Eye_of_Fear_and_Flame.JPG)
Skeletons: These are made when a collection of bones is reanimated through use of negative energy.
There are some variants such as the mohrg (a skeleton with guts) which are made through cursed life decisions if one is an exceptionally vile individual. Skeleton lords, huecuvas and skeleton priests (the middle one is what happens if you are an especially wicked or hypocritical cleric in life) are more intelligent than your average skeleton and retain some degree of the skills they had in life. Rank and file skeletal warriors and archers are fast but not terribly intelligent.

Zombies: These are most commonly made through necromancy spells, voodoo and the like. Not the most intelligent of undead but they can relentlessly pursue a target since they do not need to eat, breathe or rest. Some zombies will spontaneously arise from corpses raised improperly or which are interred on unhallowed ground too.
Zombie lord: This is a more intelligent form of zombie capable of flinging some spells and commanding lesser zombies. As in life, so in death (this last bit is intended somewhat as a joke by the author).
Juju zombies: A more powerful form of zombie created through voodan rituals.

Ghouls: Scavenging undead. Can be created through necromancy or beget more of themselves through an infectious bite. If the quarry dies of wounds gained during combat with a ghoul they can rise up as one. As is well known a ghoul can also arise from the result of a curse which befalls humans and demihumans which resort to the vile act of carrion eating in graveyards.  Ghouls are driven by an insatiable psychological hunger.
The agarat is a variant of the ghoul which has most of the stock standard same abilities as its regular cousin but looks a little bit different and has hair. Also some share the stink attack ability of a ghast. Agarats are opportunistic scavenging  predators. They primarily feed on dead bodies but do enjoy live prey when it is available.
Ghoul lords and feral ghouls are more intelligent than regular ghouls.

Ghast: More aggressive relative of the ghoul. It can do its own version of stinking cloud from releasing clouds of its bodily funk at will.

Vampires: These can arise from curse but also from other vampires via the exchange of blood. There are two types of note: Vampire spawn are people who have had their blood fully drained by a proper vampire and are his or her thrall. Full vampires oddly enough only become a thing when the victim has consumed a certain amount of the vampire's blood on near death. One is exactly not sure how the dhampir or half vampire comes into being since though it obviously has one vampire parent and one living parent most of the time vampires do not reproduce sexually (we think!).  Try not to confuse a vampire with its living analogous "cousin" the vampyre.
Note: The older a vampire is, the more powerful but also more insane it can be.

Wights: Tomb guardians and magic flinging undead. They are infamous for their draining touch which weakens foes. Believed to not need to eat. A staple feature of ancient burial grounds. Wights hate the living with an irrational burning passion. Barrow wights at least serve a function as guardians. The way they propagate is via physical contact; Anyone who dies from wounds inflicted on them by a wight may too themselves become a wight.

Mummies: Smarter undead these, like the vampire, upon reaching a certain more experienced advanced stage (the mummy lord, ancient mummy, etc.) are capable of commanding lesser undead. Often they are created through complex holy and unholy rites. Steeling your will against fear is recommended when facing these as mummies can be especially terrifying. They can also spread disease via their touch. Most but not all mummies are swaddled in strips of linen. Their hallmark physical feature is having leathery skin.

Cursts: A special type of intelligent and agile undead which retains and furthers all the fighting skills with weapons it had in life, is fireproof and highly dangerous. They are as the name indicates created by people being caught in a stray killing curse. Note their dark, pupiless eyes.

Blasphemes: Nobody knows exactly how these composite undead are made anymore since the techniques used by the ancient necromancy masters have been lost to the ages. We do know that they are assembled and not made in the organic sense of the word and from observing those that have survived they were originally intended as guardians of catacomb complexes. Again, these are big unnatural creatures which have been expertly corpse crafted.

Hulking corpse: This one can be an ogre zombie but doesn't need to be. It's very strong like an ogre, and can bull rush at you with a monstrous tackle. Its fists are capable of cracking stone too.

Revenant: If the desire for revenge is great enough and transcends death, a revenant is born. This particularly angry form of corporeal undead is obsessed with getting even to the point it will try to slay descendents of the original people who wronged them during original life many generations later. This is also why holding on to grudges too much is an inherently bad thing.

Eye of Fear and Flame: A particularly powerful type of corporeal undead along the same lines as a huecuva but created through old rites by ancient gods or so people say. It has mismatched gems in the eye sockets and delights in wickedness.

Liches and vassaliches are created through complex arcane ritual.
A vassalich is a form of lesser lich that a lich creates through a variant of the ritual which created it in the first place because it desires an equally immortal servant. Both are required to fill their phylacteries with souls. It is the phylactery which allows a lich or vassalich to come back from "death" time and time again... So destroy the phylactery and you truly destroy a lich.

Liches and vassaliches can be made from any arcane caster subject; wizard, sorcerer or bard.

Crawling claws: The severed limb of a soon to die or already dead convict (this detail doesn't actually matter too much) can be animated via a bizarre rite to produce these "handy" little assistants one at a time.
They don't need to eat and they don't beget more of themselves.

Alhoon: Also known sometimes as an illithilich, this is an undead mindflayer. They are fairly rare and from what we can tell regarded as horribly insane even among other mindflayers. This explains why aside from their creations and minions an alhoon generally tends to "live" alone.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 18, 2018, 10:59:53 AM
It is disturbing to me that in Ghastria a slaughter wight managed to pierce through my seventh arcane circle spell shadow shield; I'm still trying to wrap my head around how that was even possible!

It's never happened to me before and I know during it my spell wasn't disrupted or dispelled... I have no idea how it bypassed my potent defensive ward.

I will need to find both some priests and necromancers to confer with that they may analyze such a freakish and bizarre phenomenon. It is my hope that these experts on both combating and creating undead might have some insights as to why the slaughter wight on that particular night achieved penetrating my shadow shield as though it were almost nothing.
===
In spite of this I have a strong feeling I am well on my way to achieving the eighth circle of arcane magic though I am not quite there yet.
===
What does being a wizard who is growing in power mean? Some would say it is evil because they dislike arcane magic and decry it as an unnatural abomination but among my people the truly great (and truly terrible) have always all been wizards.

Some people will fear you and you will grow distant from them since they perceive your growing "differentness" as something unsettling.  This is probably normal in the course of an arcanist's life and is to be expected.

The supposed ethics of wizardry? There are many at the Royal Academy who would laugh at such a quaint and naive notion.

Well, to that (at least to myself) I maintain my general (and practical) belief that you can determine a "good" wizard from an "evil" one by if they are using their magic overall to help people around them or not. If they are delighting in bringing misfortune to people then I suppose that an evil mage makes.

I mean... I'd tend to think that but I do on occasion enjoy a little blowing off steam and venting my frustrations with such activities as petrifying rebel commandos and setting bandits on fire. On the other hand, so too is devising the right combination of support spells to maximally optimize a warrior or rogue tailored to his or her particular fighting style also very enjoyable.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 19, 2018, 03:30:50 PM
(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/6/62/Ghoul_-_David_Griffith.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090519093324)
I wonder... Why does a ghoul hunger?
They don't *need* to consume flesh to "live" the way a living opportunistic predator (can scavenge but also seek out live prey) does and most are already their "adult" size from the start.
Many are intelligent enough to speak but conversation with one tends to seldom ever yield anything useful toward figuring out the why of it.
Indeed, the creatures themselves don't seem to have any better understanding of their own psychology behind this all consuming hunger drive than any of our alienists and monster hunters do!
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 20, 2018, 04:31:50 PM
I have to do something to impress the masters, but what?

Come on Agios, think!
You are already a somewhat renown explorer among your people.
Your status as the son of a nobleman commands respect from Hazlani commoners and serfs.

The arcane experiment is good and will give them something no one has ever seen before, at least of this much I am convinced.

I fear that I am unworthy despite my prowesses.
I have mastered the seventh circle yet remain on the verge of unlocking the eighth. Hmm!

This is frustrating. Knowing I could be better than I am and should be there yet it remains just outside my grasp is... irritating.
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 21, 2018, 03:13:17 AM
Let me out damn it!

I don't know why Lady Eleni of Toyalis locked the Ramulai gates, forbade anyone from entering or leaving Red City without her permission, removed the blockades letting people traffic in and out a few hours then put them up again but I do not like it.  Is Lord Hazlik's Right Hand completely insane (how could such a petulant and childish bully wield so much power? Perhaps I am not understanding my ruler and his hand correctly)?!

I have explored every inch of the place (Ramulai) and checked every area my academy keys will let me access (sans the main divination hall over again since I have already previously explored it). I have walked Mamat up and down the courtyard too and things are so boring. I can't even get into Nordenvall to pray at the Fane or the Itu Skoven to petrify bandits.

I have run out of paper for research and Attaryl doesn't sell it. No idea where to get more. None of the merchants in Ramulai seem to have paper!

Master said I can request materials from the administrator to work on the project for his son and he wants it done much more quickly now than I fear may be even possible. I drafted what I could on my spare paper until I ran out. This is so much Mytteri...

I am angered and ill-at-ease.
I love and respect my ruler but this is so very irritating. I hope his Hand finishes whatever thing it is she has required quarantining the entire city for soon and quickly! I swear to the Iron Lord if this is all just some sort of a sick prank...

...and if it is there's really nothing I can do about it. Nothing. What Lord Hazlik's Right Hand does carries the same weight as his own decrees.

I'm just the son of a provincial lord. Satraps have less power than Vrayloks who in turn wield less than the king.

It can't be just as a mean spirited prank on Lady Eleni's part, can it?;  Perhaps she is trying to root out some spies or hidden rebel sympathizers?

Nazara has gotten so bossy as of late. I don't like it.
Lady Eleni said she liked my drawings! She also said she thinks I am stupid and with a terrible sense of direction though. Ugh.

Something terrible happened, when we were transferring the creature to the cart... I asked a servant to check that the restraints were tight enough because my eyes are not good. She let the beast free, or it slipped out or something... Anyway it broke out and Nazara immediately blames me. The city is still under lockdown and I wish I could crawl under a rock and die.

This is probably the worst day ever.  I'm going to die. I reunited Caelia (the servant revealed herself to be in disguise to me) with her mother (Powell and Powell should have seemed more obvious before) and am going to be put to death for it.
Unless... I could find a way to blame someone else.

When Matilda was flailing around it seems her snake arms broke my glasses. I'm having to squint really hard and close to my journal to see.

I need to write to Mumed and Mentalos to explain what happened.
If I hide it will look like guilt.
Be put to death or be presumed guilty... Gee neither of those outcomes sounds desirable.

First I brooded in the underground arena where the match a week ago was held between the Shambling Mauler and Matilda Powell. Then I heard a huge clatter and fighting noises and came out from the House Za'am basement to see the gate had been torn from its hinges. Amid the pile of bodies was Matty. I can try to drag her body back to the Academy and be a hero again... Maybe. Broke my glasses during the chaos. It's pretty hard to see.
Then I went over to the abandoned lab out by Daeming lake.

I gained Caelia's confidence. Master Mentalos asked me to pay attention to the foreigners for him. I can use this...

Perhaps it is for the better my colleagues may be so easily swayed and simple-minded they think I have defected as a foreign sympathizer? Ugh. I hope someone will try to clear my name. I was spying on the foreigners *for* the senior instructor. Now that the Halan witch thinks I am on her side she could reveal some plans even! It's risky but with no risk there is also very little worthwhile reward.

I am sick of being treated as a menial servitor by bossy upstarts who always assume I am less competent and capable than I can be.
This was a unique opportunity I took where I can expose some foreign interlopers... Maybe there is prestige in that?

I do feel a little bad about sacrificing Caelia and about that serf I had taken the tongue from but those are necessary sacrifices! You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs! Hazlan was hungry and it needed an appetizer?

I had turned on my old foreign friend because she is working in opposition to the academy. The red wizards and even the other apprentices don't think much of me but hopefully this can impress them where my innovations, field experience and mind did not...? Oh who am I kidding... Everybody is too vainglorious to see anything much further than a few inches from their own long-thin noses.

I turned on her but the important part that she doesn't think I did remains intact. That my own people responded in a hostile fashion might be usable to lend a seeming legitimacy to my cover in this spy role.

The easiest way to "deal with" someone and laziest way is to kill them. My mind does not matter. These peers do not care what things I may invent or what help I may give them if they think an immediate advantage to be made in scapegoating their classmate.* Do I have a chance? Things seem pretty hopeless.

Why have I put everything on the line for these hapless lackwits & charlatans who pay such poor attention they let their institution be infiltrated by foreign spies so easily?

I agreed to spy on the foreigners and other students for Master Mentalos Za'am. The senior instructor thus far has been the only faculty member in the academy who has taken a bit of interest and been encouraging to me so when he asked me to do it for him I leapt at the chance and took it wholeheartedly.

*Of course they don't. The reptilian primal oafs would take it as one less mageling to have to compete with and a beneficial winnowing of the pool; My doom is most decidedly advantageous to them!
Title: Re: Duty Above All:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 25, 2018, 06:33:19 AM
Clarity (epilogue & what if?):

I don't need the Red Academy.
They never taught me anything except that the other wizards in my country are mostly pricks.
I have never needed them to do my magic.
I learned it on my own and abroad.

The other magelings hated me and crucified me for it.
They don't understand at all why I did what I did and didn't want to believe it when I explained it to them because it was to their selfish and unexamined way of things advantageous not to.

There is a part of the Iron Faith where if The Lawgiver has turned His back on a ruler (He has lost His faith in them &therefore withdrawn His divine support of them) then it is not a crime for people to defy him and supplant him with a stronger one. It is the natural way of things that those who are stronger, smarter and more powerful claw their way to the top.

Instructor "Fennox" the foreigner and his concubine Nazara the orphan are pretender upstarts. They must pay for what they did to me... Someday. Somehow.
I was (am?) on the verge of achieving the eighth circle. I need to get that last bit of strength and power so I can be where I could give them their comeuppance.

I now have a motivation to spur me towards greatness which if the academy truly was the institute they like to tout themselves as... No.
I will never get to wear a red ring.
Not unless I end up murdering one of my rivals to take theirs.

Do I really want to be that kind of a mage?

I should be the one teaching them! They have a whole lot to learn about the weave and cooperation and progress which they may never hope to understand except through working together!

I will have to adopt some of my rivals' techniques of deception, underhanded sneak attacks and screwing people over to get ahead... Like poor Caelia. Well, if I have to save up to get the Bhaal Verzi themselves even to remove those two perhaps? ...So be it.

Note to self: Perhaps make more friends with assassins. A drop of poison in the ear while sleeping is a relatively pain free death and far better than most of these insipid twits deserve.

I would like it to be through my own arcane might but the thing is... I am terrible at combat and likely always will be. Money, hired thugs and experts are the solution but these will take time to produce and secure. The Mytteri seduced blowhards took it all. My every last bloodcopper.

They need to pay for what they have done Lawgiver. Make them go through the same type of unnecessary suffering they have put me through! That is the only language which it seems their undeveloped minds can come to appreciate through what they have shown me!
There is no forgiveness. Only judgment and they think they are the favored. They are arrogant and stupid blithering fools who feel so secure in their unearned positions.

Mine was too hard fought to be stripped away by some idiot in a robe with a ring and a wand in his hand or his sycophantic miserable waif either! They did not rob me of my (arcane) power and of my wits not permanently.

My plan was far too genius for either of those two *idiots* to understand: Matilda Powell has reason to want to return to life since she knows Caelia lives. They were reunited. I staged it that way on purpose. I got her out of her catatonia too which is something those vapid invertebrates also failed to take into account. Fennox and Nazara are really too stupid to understand this; They said my bringing the body back dead is useless and assume she does not wish to live any longer. Deliberately they are ignoring how I changed the equation. They are only looking at the little picture; It is truly pitiable that these worms consider themselves to be the elite.

I did everything I could for Masters Mentalos and Mumed, me! Not those two lackwits. I was an exemplary student so of course they smashed me down. That has to be it.

They were jealous and felt threatened I, the folkhero, the Hazlani who went abroad to learn a great deal about other cultures might have supplanted being object to the affections of their dear blasted and blighted Za'am family. Aha! That has to be it.

...Oh, how I do HATE THEM ALL.


... My plans have been ruined by them for the very last time...
Ideally they would beg beneath my feet, prostrate for me to show them the self-same mercy which they had themselves denied me.