The Great Tome of Shapeshifting

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Beernerd81
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The Great Tome of Shapeshifting

Post by Beernerd81 » Thu Oct 12, 2017 2:23 pm

First Entry: A Personal Letter

To Aston Khan or whomever may be reading this,

If you are Aston Khan and you are reading this, it means that you wish to remember something. If you are not Aston and you are reading this, it means you wish to learn something new. I am not an author. I am someone who is walking a difficult path and believes that the information contained within this journal may be of use some day. Whether to me or someone else I cannot say, but I hope the words to follow may contribute to the advancement of knowledge for whomever is reading them.

I would like to briefly acknowledge Tanalia Ravencroft, a person I barely knew. Though our interactions were brief, she taught me that it was possible to become more than I thought someone could. She started me on this path and left before I ever took my first new shape. When I went to her home to search for her, I found it unlocked and empty with this very journal inside. I opened “The Great Tome of Shapeshifting,” and found only empty pages. I took it not as a sign nor as some kind of message, but simply as an opportunity. I have the opportunity to chronicle my own journey so that I may reflect on what I have learned and never forget who I am.

Be advised that the information contained within this journal is not restricted to verifiable fact. I’m not a researcher nor a historian nor a scientist. Expect to find plenty of unanswered questions, questionable conclusions, contradictory information, and personal beliefs. I will attempt to remain factual and without moralistic judgment, but I am writing about a subject which I am learning first hand. I make no claims to being an expert. I am merely giving an account based on personal experiences and observations.

That being said, this is a journal, my journal, so you should view it as such. I am writing it in the form of a reference guide because I honestly do not know If I will remember all of this in the future and I have no desire to go rooting through some poorly written collection of emotions and fluff if I need to remember something about shapeshifting. Also, if someone else is trying to learn something, I would rather not bore them with accounts of romantic drivel and thoughts on the quality of my supper. Therefore, unless it is relevant, I will attempt to keep those types of things to a minimum.

Aston, if it is indeed you reading this and you have forgotten who you truly are, then remember this: Remember the pond and the notes in the tree. Remember the Bramblewood and the nights in the shelter. Remember her voice and the feel of her skin. Remember the passion, the pain, the joy, the fear. Remember the beating of your human heart. Remember why she loves you and know that in some way, somehow, she always will.

If this is NOT Aston, do not bother looking for an explanation of the previous statement within. There will be none.

-Aston Khan
Last edited by Beernerd81 on Mon Oct 16, 2017 4:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Beernerd81
Posts: 83
Joined: Thu Oct 02, 2014 8:03 pm
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Re: The Great Tome of Shapeshifting

Post by Beernerd81 » Mon Oct 16, 2017 4:49 pm

Second Entry: Learning Shapes

Though I am not pleased to admit it, a significant portion of my understanding of shapeshifting has been brought about through what one might call leaps of faith. In consulting with scholars of the arcane tower, I have found that my methods are at least loosely rooted in what they call “scientific method.” I simply have no control subject and use myself to test my hypotheses. The main difference is that I am operating exclusively on beliefs based on correlation in most cases. It is hard to find existing evidence when I do not know anyone else who can do what I am doing.

My first transformations were fairly typical for one of a druidic path: bear, wolf, boar, panther, and badger. As druids do, I was able to learn these forms by feeling out and understanding the natural energies of these beings. First it was empathy, but to take their forms required true sympathy at a physical and mental level. I had to gain at least a basic understanding of what it feels like to be one of those creatures before I could become one. Once in the new form, my understanding of them became deeper and more primal. I could feel their urges and instincts. I could see, hear, smell, taste, and touch as they do. I still retained my own mind, but there was a pull to follow those urges and instincts. I found that the more time I spent in those animal forms, the less those urges affected me, a trait I continue to experience in new forms. As a general rule of thumb, the more self-aware and more strongly inclined a creature is, the more difficult I find it to overcome its inherent urges.

I began to surmise that natural transformation without external magical involvement may be possible for more than just animals. After all, the only real difference between animals and most sentient beings of this plane is the inherent sense of self. I also surmised that even magical creatures should be attainable, especially considering that their arcane abilities are innate and therefore arguably natural. Fortunately, I had a chance run-in with Tanalia Ravencroft. I saw her shift effortlessly into the shape of a lizard person, weapon and all. After she confirmed that she was not using arcane spells and she was not an outsider of some kind, I asked if she would be willing to teach me. She told me that she would first need to determine whether I had the ability, but she would try. A point to note here is that she believed that her abilities were likely linked to the intermingling of a shapeshifting outsider ancestor into her family bloodline, though she could not say for certain. I still have no clear answer to this.

On Tanalia’s advice, my first non-animal transformation was to be one of a wyrmling red dragon. She taught me about its biology through a very thorough dissection wherein each part and each organ was removed and studied in very careful detail, thereby allowing me to understand its function. That dissection was the last communication I ever had with her so I applied the same technique towards learning the forms of harpy and gargoyle. I found the method to be inelegant, time consuming, and incomplete. (ex: the first time I took red wyrmling form, I incorrectly reproduced the organ which allows them to breathe fire and was unable to control it.) Dissection was effective, however I reasoned that there must be a better way. When I first took the form of a minotaur, my hypothesis was confirmed as I did so without dissection. I was in battle, covered in minotaur blood and was able to take the form when put under extreme duress. The next step was to understand how.

Although I had skinned and butchered all of the animals whose forms I could take at some point or another, I never dissected them with the level of detail I did with these other creatures. Shifting into their forms was mostly about understanding the energies of those creatures and making my own body energies sympathetic to theirs. When learning the form of the drider, I did so by studying its corpse externally and then reading the energies contained within its body through focus and meditation techniques that I learned at Soulhaven Monastery. I found that just as most druids can feel the energies of the land and even the living beings in the wilds, so could I begin to feel the energy patterns that make up a creature. Just as a creature knows essentially how to build itself within its egg or its mother’s womb, that information remains contained within its body and, with proper focus and meditation, can be determined from any organic material left by the creature. (ex: I learned the form of manticore through a single spike and basilisk from a bit of scat.) My next goal is to learn if it is possible to take a new shape without coming into contact with a part of the creature at all.

A strong warning to anyone reading this, especially myself: as previously stated, the stronger a creature’s natural urges coupled with the stronger its mind, the more difficult it will be to retain one’s own thoughts and feelings and overcome its instincts and general inclinations, at least until becoming acclimated to the form. I sincerely suggest a lot of meditation and preparation of mind before taking the forms of intelligent creatures as I can see how it may be possible to lose one’s self, at least temporarily and perhaps even permanently.

Some relevant notes:

Certain forms come easier than others. I have still found no proper explanation for this, however all of the non-animal forms I have learned so far are either very similar to animals, or tend to be very malicious in nature.

One curious thing I have noticed is that if what I call my “template creature” (the original owner of the organic material used to learn the shape) was in prolonged possession of a particularly enchanted item such as a weapon, I find myself unable to separate it from the biological pattern. As such, when in minotaur, drider, lizardfolk, kobold, or drow form, I find myself in possession of enchanted weapons which I am literally unable to put down as they are essentially a part of me.

When first taking new shapes, I find that my ability to do so is limited and I will need to rest and focus after a certain number of transformations before taking them again. As I become more comfortable with those shapes, I find that it becomes less and less taxing to do so. When I have completely overcome the urges of a creature and changing forms no longer affects my mind, I find that the form becomes so comfortable that I can take it at will without any effort of will or body without taxing myself in the least. I can take such forms whenever I like without limitation and they indeed feel just as natural to me as my original human form. I call this “Shape Harmony.” Currently, the forms which have become harmonious are five varieties of chromatic wyrmling, minotaur, harpy, and gargoyle.

*The rest of the pages remain blank for now*

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