Author Topic: Duty Above All:  (Read 9461 times)

Silas Rotleaf

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #50 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...
« Last Edit: August 03, 2018, 01:45:07 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #51 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.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2018, 01:52:42 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #52 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.
« Last Edit: July 17, 2018, 03:56:19 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #53 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."
« Last Edit: July 18, 2018, 02:45:36 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #54 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.*
« Last Edit: August 03, 2018, 12:46:31 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #55 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!//
« Last Edit: August 03, 2018, 01:42:51 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #56 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.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2018, 01:31:50 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

Silas Rotleaf

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #57 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.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2018, 05:56:17 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #58 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.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2018, 10:44:07 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #59 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.
« Last Edit: July 29, 2018, 03:40:50 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #60 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.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2018, 12:48:49 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #61 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.


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?
« Last Edit: August 18, 2018, 05:45:08 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #62 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!
« Last Edit: August 03, 2018, 01:18:49 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #63 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!

*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.*


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?



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...
« Last Edit: August 03, 2018, 01:16:00 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #64 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.



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.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2018, 12:40:47 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All: An Introduction to The Hazlan Papers:
« Reply #65 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!

Here we have the core and some of the islands in the Sea Of Sorrows and the Nocturnal Sea.


The Kingdom of Hazlan.


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:

Death does not care who we are. It hits everyone from all stations. Rich, poor, King, aristocrat, peasant, slave, beggar.


We must not succumb to the temptations of Mytteri!


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.
« Last Edit: August 09, 2018, 03:19:09 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #66 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.
« Last Edit: August 11, 2018, 10:20:41 AM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #67 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.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2018, 03:30:02 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #68 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.
« Last Edit: August 10, 2018, 06:24:34 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #69 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.
« Last Edit: August 11, 2018, 09:42:19 AM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #70 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.
« Last Edit: August 11, 2018, 06:01:09 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All: The Hazlan papers:
« Reply #71 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?



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.


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?
« Last Edit: August 12, 2018, 11:22:29 PM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #72 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.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2018, 11:22:43 AM by Silas Rotleaf »

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Re: Duty Above All:
« Reply #73 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...

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Re: Duty Above All: The Hazlan Papers:
« Reply #74 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.]
« Last Edit: August 21, 2018, 03:39:10 PM by Silas Rotleaf »