Annals, Least of the House of Syldur

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Annals, Least of the House of Syldur

Post by The Cruelest Month » Wed May 01, 2019 2:30 am

Committed to parchment by the talon of the bond-creature Emissary, as dictated by Serendaie, Third and Least and of the House of Syldur.
Serendaie Syldur wrote:Ithilmor Calebraith
We have met few more divisive than he. Where he is loved; he is loved well and without question, as the dawn on a frozen night. Where he loathed he is called a beast in the skin of a Tel’Quessir, a savage who speaks only through his sword.

To us, the son of Gilvyre has been the soul of courtesy. We are welcomed, and offered comfort and conversation and, when we depart – as inevitably we must – the promise of more, if only we ask. He is an astute listener and an attentive conversationalist, in the best traditions of the blood he bears. His walk is a dancer’s walk, and when he frowns (as he often does, in the lands of men) it is the frown of a scholar presented with some particularly troubling passage.

Upon our last meeting he informed us that has written a book and invited us to read it. We have read little but the Tower’s histories of late (incomplete where they were not entirely inaccurate and possessed of such determined unhelpfulness that we began to suspect they were possessed by some cruel sapience) and were glad to accept.

This; from the same being that the Conclave does decry as murderer and brute. That is accused of shattering the peace of the Tower; a callous disregard for its rules and scriptures. That we have seen (though we wish we had not) discard the remains of slain foes as a maiden ‘pon midwinter sheds petals.

We avert our eyes, and we wonder.

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The Lower Powers

Post by The Cruelest Month » Thu May 02, 2019 10:34 pm

Serendaie Syldur wrote:On The Lower Powers.
We will speak now of the lower powers, those which die with their bearer. Know; honoured child, that this does not make them worthy of your disdain, for it is from these that all the higher forms spring. The great realm of Aryvandaar did shape its people by their arts and histories; but it was forged by the charisma of its first chieftains and the might of their armies.

The power of the orc is in the sweep of its axe. It is true that it is a crude instrument, but it is a fool that disdains its utility.

Finally; esteemed descendant, you shall find that we make no mention of command, nor of the storied art of leadership. Neither the assembly of the Houses, the glamour of kings, nor the obedience of armies. Know that these things are the shallowest trappings of power and must never be confused with the sources from which it arises. The noble child that forgets this will find herself the figurehead of an empty and gilded vessel and shortly thereafter, nothing at all.

--

Tarine Ik
The animal-power, the exertion of force to achieve one’s will. This is the power of the roaring beast, the evoker, the orc. By it, one may be mistress of all within the reach of her hand. It does die with its bearer, and by distance is rendered no more potent than the promise of next century’s storm. In the hands of the righteous-hearted, it is the soil from which the higher powers spring. In the hands of the dark; the promise of it is the instrument of tyranny.

It is obtained by the gifts of birth; a disciplined body and a willing mind, and lost through their neglect.

Men en' lussa
The whisper-power, the well from which influence springs, the fodder of rumour and reputation. It is by this power that a well-loved bard may find bed and lodgings wherever her wanderings take her. It is by this power that a Coronal may set her subjects lining the byways to greet her; or by which the blackguard does drive her serfs from the light of day to quake, shaking in their homes, at the rumour of her passage. This is the power that travels upon parchment and speech, and endures as long as there is flesh to speak of it. The shaping of it is a challenge as subtle and capricious as the High Art, and with it might a foe be unmade and unmanned without the ungainly touch of iron. ‘ware, though for it is only a shadow of the actions that spawned it and, like the lowest power, it does die a final (though oft delayed, by the roaming path of rumour) death with its creator.

The men en' lussa is obtained by the work of records and writings, and the doing of notable deeds where they may be witnessed. It is lost through silence, misplaced humility, and the encroaching march of time.

Iliamen En Ilfea
The bone-power, the strength of conviction that does foster true, lasting, and wilful obedience. It is a common misconception that the right of Coronals and Kings does spring from this source; but that is a thing true only for the best among them. The common King rules through the polite and veiled threat of force (and thus; the first and lowest of powers); though his reach is so extended by armies and nobles that he may believe the obedience he receives to flow from genuine commitment (and it is this wilful delusion that the noble child is advised to stand ever vigilant against).

The bone-power is most commonly witnessed amongst the less complex cultures of Toril; the warlords of the orcs (and their visions of violence imparted to their followers, who do then lust for the same), the dwarves (and their iron-bound loyalty to clan and kingdom, more a product of the heart than of reason), and the kobolds (who are oft bound to the will and vision of one of the great wyrms). It provides the common vision by which a band of strangers may be shaped to a single goal and held to it by strength of their own will and conviction, convinced that it is truly what they desire. The role of the noble, then, is to foster and shepherd that determination in the direction it may best serve. At its best, this power may begin to transcend the life of its bearer, and so begins the progression into the higher forms of power.

It is obtained by the strength of conviction and a sense of unfaltering purpose in the presence of subordinates. It is lost by the whispering of doubt, the apathy of negligence, and the visible neglect of the professed conviction for the noble daughter's own benefit.

--

That is where we shall finish this day child. Tend your arts and your duties and return to these Annals when next your lessons require. Then, we will speak of the higher powers. Know that I love you.
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Faelurn and the Dragon

Post by The Cruelest Month » Tue May 07, 2019 10:25 pm

Serendaie Syldur wrote:Faelurn and the Dragon.
This is the story of Faelurn, first recounted to me by my grandfather on my nineteenth winter Solstice. Faelurn was a daughter of a house whose name has been lost to the eons, but she was beautiful as the dreams of the Gods and her hair was the stuff of lesser stars (some say that she was a sorceress and wore glamour as easily as lesser beings breathed – but that is another tale).

She fell from her horse in the mad flight from the Black March of Uln’aanth and woke as a prisoner of the warlord, Grug-oth. In those days, Grug-oth lead a fractious alliance of the orc tribes, driven to fury by the ceaseless vigilance of Aryvandaar. His columns strew destruction with each mile they marched and the smoke of their cookfires stained the sky greasy-black.

Grug-oth had done battle with the dragonriders of Aryvandaar and was much vexed by them. He hungered after personal might (which, the attentive daughter will recall, is the animal and lowest form of power) and the most terrible of his lusts was to bend a great wyrm to his own black will. His shamans had told him that the greatest of wyrms valued beauty as well as they valued gold; and so he had Faelurn shaved of her wonderful hair and set her in a crow’s cage above the cookfires, in the hope that he would draw the attention of a dragon.

Faelurn wept and cursed him. But she often did, and the warlord did not heed her. Grug-oth’s shamans bound her hair into an effigy, and sunk their vile runes into its flesh, and called the great wyrms in all the names known to their brute tongues.

None came. Not that night, nor the next, nor all the nights that followed; and with each failure Grug-oth and his shamans grew more furious in their torments. Perhaps, they reasoned, elven blood would serve where the effigy had failed (for, to an orc, there is no thing more beautiful than blood spilled), and so they took their knives, and did stain the ground with Faelurn’s blood.

They were cautious that they did not kill her. Grug-oth’s shamans were not that certain of their odious magic.

For three summers did they keep Faelurn strung in the cage over their cookfires; alive but hollow, despite the best efforts of her noble sister Eynlaan (who lead her cavalry against the orcish outriders with great success but could not penetrate the brutish discipline of their lines). Faelurn called to the Seldarine for salvation, and each night heard only silence.

She had prayed little in life. In those years, she did little else. She shaped miniature altars of ash, whispered offerings into the grease-smoke of orcish fires. At the end of that time, she was a creature more of ritual than sense; a prison of flesh for murmured prayers and frantic hope.

In the hour between midnight and dawn, when the N’Tell’Quessir do close themselves to the world most completely, Selune finally took pity on her. She took Faelurn’s tears, and of them shaped wings of shining silver.

Faelurn slipped from her confinement like a shadow in the night and; though she was weary and broken, Selune’s wings carried her the long miles to safety until she collapsed before the tent of Enylaan.

Enylaan rejoiced to see her sister whole and wept to see what had been done to her. She schemed of a terrible vengeance upon the orcs, of fire and lightning, and magic that would rise from the earth and strip flesh from bone; and play a dirge with the throats of the dying.

It was not to be. For the orcs had grown weary of Grug-oth’s obsessions, and the loss of his prize drove him down the final step into madness (from which an orc is never far). His own troops murdered him at his dinner and his brother Ulgan-oth took the power he had long coveted. Ulgan-oth was a thorn in Aryvandaar’s side for the space of two summers.

Grug-oth was left for the crows. He never did behold his dragon.

---

That is the tale as it was told to us.

There is another we did not encounter until we were almost grown. In it, Selune is made jealous by Faelurn’s beauty and She slips between the trees, silent as the oncoming night, and drives a moonbeam between the legs of Faelurn’s fleeing horse. Grug-oth’s watchmen see it; and she is taken by the orcs. The tale then continues much as we have recounted it, until Selune grows content that Faelurn’s beauty has been maimed and might never again rival hers. Only then does Selune release her grip upon Faelurn’s magic and permit her to shape her escape. So changed was she by her time in orcish hands that her family do not recognise her, and she is shunned, mistaken for beast, and driven into the forests where she becomes a font of things dark and hateful.

We prefer the first story.
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The Arborist

Post by The Cruelest Month » Wed May 08, 2019 1:35 am

Serendaie Syldur wrote:On the Arborist.
There is a willow at the heart of the isle of Sareth Nur. It is dying, limbs made pale as bone by the salt swell. The hunger of the waves has devoured much of the isle beneath it, and its roots dangle over the blue-green sea like a crone’s fingers.

It has been dying for eighteen thousand years.

Sareth Nur is a sister to the Emerald Isle; and it is an island so small that it is overshadowed by the ships that dash themselves upon the rocks of its shore. This happens often, for there is no safe harbour upon Sareth Nur; though all those who pass it swear they have seen one (they also claim to have seen loved ones, taverns, and their beckoning gods). It is home to a creature that Annalist Calen titled the Arborist.

Annalist Calen had a sense of humour. Nothing else lives on Sareth Nur, save for the husk of the willow and stranded sailors (none of whom survive particularly long). The willow is the Arborist, and the Arborist is the willow. Some sailors suppose the Arborist is a type of siren. They are incorrect. The Arborist began, we suppose, as a fragment of a grove-spirit torn from its traditional home by the violence of the First Sundering. Annalists since have speculated that the rites and rituals of that ancient circle might spare a landing party the Arborist's ire.

It is strictly an academic exercise. The druids disdained the use of parchment and their rituals, if rituals there were, have been ground to dust in the millennia since. If they still exist it is in no place known to these annals.

While it begun as a grove-spirit, what the Arborist has become since is impossible to say. It is unknowable as a thunderstorm and has devoted its energies to the preservation of its crumbling domain. If it notices that Sareth Nur crumbles into the sea with each passing year, it gives no sign.

We wonder what it will do when Sareth Nur finally slips beneath the waves.

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On Splinters

Post by The Cruelest Month » Wed May 08, 2019 10:22 pm

Serendaie Syldur wrote:A ritual for the removal of splinters.
The mage is to take a slither of wood (elm or willow is preferable) and inscribe upon it a lesser rune of drawing. A variation of Ulthana’s work for the binding of water is acceptable. Use nothing stronger, or risk drawing timber from elsewhere in the room. The mage is advised to avoid impalement by means of a wayward wand.

Soak the slither in wine for no more than an hour (this will soften the wood and permit the rune sufficient time to calm). The mage is advised to fetch a cloth for the cleaning of wounds whilst she waits.

When the slither is appropriately softened rest it atop the affected part, with the embedded splinter closest to the slither. Ensure no crucial anatomy lies between the splinter and the slither, for Ulthana’s working is heedless of direction, and shall draw the splinter directly to the slither.

If the splinter is in the mage’s hand it is advisable to have a familiar activate the rune. Else, she may initiate it as usual. The refinement of Ulthana’s work to permit a piecewise path (and thus, the avoidance of muscle, bone, and unsightly spots) is left as an exercise for the reader.

Alternately, the reader is advised to never again pursue her own carpentry.

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On Tyne

Post by The Cruelest Month » Mon May 13, 2019 11:36 pm

Serendaie Syldur wrote:On Tyne.
A denizen of the Courts has taken an interest. It is too soon. We are unready and unwarded, and we do suspect that there is naught to offer to salve it that we are content to part with.

We are told that the stone sign; taken from our stand, has returned. It sits in a ring of gallows in the graveyard of the walled city. It is an unsubtle token and one we dare not investigate ourselves, lest we blunder into some trap written and warded.

Yet; we do not doubt that it is truth. The fey are whimsical and flighty; but only rarely do They forget.

We had only hoped They would be negligent a while longer.

We do not desire conflict with the Courts. We are not prepared for it. We are not equipped for it, in will or in materials; and even now, we chafe at the notion of doing to them harm. No good shall come of it.

But when the thunderstorm does gather in the sky, what fool does not dive for shelter?

A strange breed of Yarrow has begun to sprout in Arelith forest. It prompts inattention, a daze, rest. Often it sits, silent and biddable, noteworthy only be the ring of dozing insects that circles it. We suspect that it is of our making, the beginnings of some small and petty vengeance.

Already; some wild cousin has taken to it with fire and iron-shod bootheel. It was all we could do to restore the plants ‘fore they withered and invited a vengeance more terrible still.

We must speak with Ms Ainsworth; who we did hire to contain this creature, before matters grow still more unwieldy. We pray that an accommodation may yet be reached. But hope is a flimsy foundation on which to build a home; and so we busy ourselves with wind-chimes, wardings, and runes by which we might unstitch illusion.

The creature calls itself Tyne (though it is certain that this is not a true name), and we are told it is well-liked amongst the denizens of the Fair City. It defies belief.

Have they not heard the tales?

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Where the Moths Go

Post by The Cruelest Month » Wed May 15, 2019 3:09 am

Translated from the work of Annalist Ruean by the wit of Serendaie, Third and Least of the House of Syldur (assisted by the bond-creature Emissary.)
Ruean Syldur wrote:Where the moths go.
Scholars scoff at the notion of a black moth.

It is often supposed that this is because they do not exist. This is a reasonable view (for Sehanine shaped the moth as a mirror to moonlight, and so made them in all the greys and whites of the lunar phases) but it is a false one.

There is nothing Sehannie makes that the Midnight Maiden does not envy. It was so with the moths; that she took them and passed them through the deeper night, and the colour dripped from them like paint from a brush.

The truth is that they do exist. That they have existed for almost as long as there has been light and; when the last of their moon-seeking siblings wither and fade, they will burst from the mantle of the cooling earth like birds from an egg; and chart the endless black that stretches between the stars. They will happily tell you this if you meet them. They are looking forward to it.

I know this because I have seen them.

There is a cavern deep beneath the earth, beyond the reach of even the fell dhaerrow (north of the source of the river Styx and three days of blindfolded treks beyond). It is not so hard to find; if you speak the correct words, at the correct places, and promise the correct things to the correct people (some of them are not people at all, but it is wise not to remind them). They will take your coin and test your will and, if you are very careful, will guide you on, until at last you slip through a crack in the stones like a baby fresh-born, and enchanted light and mundane torch both fail like the false-sighted tools they are.

It is the most complete darkness in the circle of the world. That is why the moths gather there.

You will sit for eons (as I did); in the dark and the stillness, swallowed by the earth, until at last the realisation comes upon you that it is not wind you hear, but the rustling of countless wings; like parchment in a library fit to swallow the world.

A secret is written upon each delicate wing. You will be welcome to take a handful of moths, and stumble from that place – indeed, they will cling to you, as they did to me, closer than your own heartbeat. Bottle them and carry them far from those lightless depths (the moths do not care. They will find their way back. They always do).

Take as many as you wish. But you shall never read them. For, as you emerge from that wound in the earth, you will find that your guides did not speak the whole truth when they told you that the burden lay in reaching the Mourning Moths.

They have told you that the moths feed upon secrets. They have seduced you with the promise that all secrets are alike to them, and that they know not the difference between a pauper’s promise and a Coronal’s plot. They have told you, and so you went prepared to forget the name of your childhood love in exchange for the truth of immortality, to trade those most private desires for the workings of the old magic. What they have not told you is that the moths are creatures of flesh and blood as much as magic, and that they must feed; as all flesh must.

They are particularly fond of eyes.

You will not notice. Not until you leave that chamber. The moths are delicate in their work, and light as a child’s dreams. You will wrap yourself in triumph, until you crawl forth, and realise the truth of things.

It is then that your hands will find the boots of your waiting guides (who, you will recall, are not quite people). They will laugh and remind you that they have not been contracted to carry a blind man back to the embrace of the sun. They will express their heartfelt regrets.

And they will offer you a new bargain.

Translator’s Note: The Book of Ruean is, at the time of writing, one of the lost annals. The scrap above is one of the few samples of Ruean’s writings to survive; recovered by Annalist Ialantha from the vault of the Red Wizard Jalen.

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A Prayer Against Fear

Post by The Cruelest Month » Sat May 25, 2019 4:13 am

Serandaie Syldur wrote:Against Fear.
O, noble father!
_See the shaking of your daughter.
___Circled by the storm-cloud beasts of woe.
______And doubt.

Ward her waking mind and
_ Soothe her trembling heart.
___Show to her again the song in the winter wind
______As you did sing the ways of the world.

Soothe her trembling heart
_Steady her hand and

Make her your instrument anew.

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On Love

Post by The Cruelest Month » Fri May 31, 2019 10:03 am

Serandaie Syldur wrote:On Love.
The noble daughter is advised to avoid it.

It complicates the simple and muddies the certain; and does scatter the obligations of House and Home like a scythe 'midst wheat. If allowed to root it creeps into the heart like a worm in timber, and is the death of purpose and the dearth of care. The noble daughter is reminded of duties to her House and, if she must love, she ought love it. She is urged to set other cares aside.

She will not.

The whispers of the heart are sweeter than the rumblings of the head (and all she has read and recited), and she will know it when she first supposes that she understands and is understood as she has never been understood before. When she finds her quill jumping upon letters; 'fore those she last penned have dried, and when her heart sings in her breast at the thought of reply. She will urge the caution she is taught; but she will imagine a hundred shining futures all the same.

Then she does make the fatal mistake of speaking of it, and they may be revealed to be naught but the pretty lies she has whispered to herself, for herself. Like mirages in the sands, things real only from a distance.

She will hurt as she has not hurt before.

If she is fortunate, she will gather what remains of her dignity, and hold her head high until she at last retreats into her chambers. She will weep with her familiar, who knows too much of her to console her any more than she does console herself. She will imagine how she might have thought differently, and wonder at how she could have permitted herself to be so very wrong.

When she is done she will bathe, and break her fast, and watch the sun rise.

And she will remind herself that hearts too, can heal.
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On Immortality

Post by The Cruelest Month » Sat Jun 29, 2019 4:22 am

Serendaie Syldur wrote:On Immortality.
She who seeks immortality seeks with it her end.

There is no method, no history, no salve, in all our studies that does undo this tragic necessity. The mortal form was not shaped to endure the aeons; and the hands of Gods have long worked to ensure it does not. The present self might, at the best, be regarded as the caterpillar whose sole labour is to spin the chrysalis from which the immortal arises. The transformation is in no case less extensive, the destruction of the self no less complete.

It scarce needs to be written that this transformation, whatever its form, stands against the will of all the Gods in the heavens and all the fiends in the Hells; for it does deny to them their dues and their duties both. She who steps upon that path shall make enemies of all that lives, and much that does not.

The daughter must understand and embrace the foundational truth of her journey.

To achieve her apotheosis will mean the death of her present self and much of what she might have become and, when her end does come (as it shall, for immortality is not invincibility, and the path brings with it more foes than friends) she shall forever be denied the warmth of Arvandor. To seek immortality is no gift and carries with it much sacrifice. To do so without cause is worthless; for the cause shall be all that remains of her.

We do turn now to that most common and most vile of paths, that of undeath. The preservation it offers is a hollow thing and of all paths, it is this that is the most abhorrent to creation and the most sickening to the soul.

To follow the monstrous road that ends in lichdom is to squander the beauty and song the Gods have gifted her, and to condemn what shall remain of her mind to madness as great as her brilliance. It is to strip from her own mind that flexibility that a mage does require and remake it in the likeness of a monolith of stone; unchanging and eternal, but no more capable of change or refinement. She shall be preserved, but no more immortal than an insect locked in amber.

As so; the path of the vampirism, which does make of her a beast, and a slave to her hungers. To suppose that anything of the daughter that was shall remain is no more than a pretty dream. A monster shall emerge that wears her face and wields her tongue and uses them as the hunter does a trap. They are predators and beasts; and all likeness of awareness does serve only to bring unto them prey. Intellect without warmth, and power driven by no motive above the self.

These things are not immortality but contagion, a plague upon the world and a bane for fools gifted with more ambition than sense. They carry in their rotted hearts only destruction of the self and the world. By the appetites and the limitations of these forms is the daughter bent into a horror.

There lie open other paths, each burdened with a toll. We turn now, briefly, to the paths of service. By these paths might one ensure a brief respite from the advance of the aeons; though it shall cost her much, and bring in its end only misery, betrayal, and transformation beyond her desire or control.

Service to the demon or devil lords is a foul and cruel thing, it need hardly be written, and must surely end in betrayal – for the cruel lords of Baator do lust for the souls of their servants as surely as their enemies and shall shape their demise as inevitably as the coming of night.

Even if the daughter does elude this fate she shall become an instrument of forces vile, her own wants and ambitions subsumed by those of her patrons; until she does become a demon in the truest of senses. She may have immortality, but it shall be her own for only the briefest of times. It is the oldest and greatest folly of the mage, to suppose that she might outwit these monsters of the aeons, and that her power shall be shield enough against cruelty that was old when the world was young.

It shall not be, and never has. The devils did snare the souls of life when the High Art stood open to us, and in the Low Art of the present day they shall find no opposition. The scales tilt but one way, and the noble daughter that supposes otherwise is an instrument of her own damnation.

The Ladies and Lords of the Courts have their own wants and needs; and are as fickle as the weather. There is less intention to their cruelty; mayhaps, and in that they are like a summer storm, heedless of pain and suffering. She who serves them long enough shall become as they are; and forget all but the hollowest truth of her nature. She shall receive exactly what she desired and find that the taste of it is but bones and ash. In the end, she shall be transformed, and she shall not care.

These paths are hateful things, and extract as their eventual price all that the Seeker is. To walk them is to deny death; but to accept in its place a more complete destruction of the soul and the end of the true immortality that waits amongst her ancestors in Arvandor.

Shame upon she who thinks to tread them lightly.

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