Upon the Edge of Folly, A Wizard's Tale

Through hard study and much alchemy, he unraveled many secrets of the world’s origins, of the All Father, the Language of Creation, the runic magic of the dwarves and Ondluche the sorcerer.  He learned too, that many creatures existed beyond the world. These creatures possessed memories of the All Father’s first acts of creation and were therefore possessed of great knowledge and some even of the whole Language itself.  He determined that he would bring one of these creatures to Aihrde and that he would bind the creature to him and learn from him the Language. Here the wizard went too far, for he failed to fully understand the power of the Language, nor did he understand the power that those who could speak it commanded.

He learned in those days of a dark god, a great horned beast, that the All Father created at the bottom of time. He only vaguely understood the creature’s nature, never realizing that the horned one was a figment of a nightmare, a creature so horrid that the All Father drove it from him even before the world’s making.  But the beast bore with him a piece of the All Father and he knew the Language in its entirety. It was this beast that Nulak intended to bring into the world.

So he lent himself to mastering the runes of old for with them he hoped to mimic the sorceries of Ondluche and the Dwarf Lords who had breached the Wall of Worlds, opening Aihrde to the Multiverse so many eons ago. After many years and many defeats he managed this monumental task and prepared himself to walk the path of Umbra, that is to breach the Wall of Worlds and enter the void. The runes unearthed proved to be only shadows of those used to create the Rings of Brass; but in the magi’s hand they proved true to the task.

A House of Sorcery

He stole to the wilderness, in the shadows of the Holmgrad Mountains, a land that overlooked the Gray Coast. Here no man, nor dwarf, dwelt, for it was the haunt of 

frost giants in the winter and stone giants all year round; dragons, small and white, prowled the craggy rooftops. Coming to an ancient path he had discovered in his many adventures he followed it to a small hidden vale. He brought with him 4 goblins, skilled in the use of stone and water.

There he built his house.

But it was no house that one might take notice of, it was roofless and without walls. With sorcery he threw up walls of air so that no wind, no tempest, storm or fog could bother him. Deep beneath his feet he poisoned the earth, hardening it so that no beast could crawl up from below. For a roof he cast out a net and captured the light of the moon and the warmth of the sun, and his vale knew only a temperature he cast. A dweomer he cast over it all, anchoring it to the rocky walls and made the whole reflect light so that any who might see it, from any direction, saw beyond it or around it and took no notice.

And so his House of Sorcery came to be.

He cleared a small patch of earth and cast runes into it, hardening it to stone. He rooted the stonework deep into the tooth as tooth in bone; it turned black from his sorcery. He summoned water with another rune for he knew the goblins worked best with water as their tool. More runes he lay into the earth, and at the last the rune of mirrors; the portal opened, taller than intended and wider still. He commanded it then to open upon the words: Heiga ish Ea Tumna. He stepped through  and cast another, so that he could see into other realms. With his sight he saw many things and he set to casting to runes to cross into other realms.

For years he labored, inscribing the mirrored rune time and again, opening paths into other worlds. He opened over a hundred portals, some to places on the material plane (most notable to the Mirrored Throne of Al Liosh) but others to realms foul and faire, the Wretched Plains, the Stone Fields, the Hall of Horns and so on.

For each mirrored portal, he opened he cast a new rune and he could see chaos coming from their application. So he ordered the goblins to make him a pillar of stone, to raise it up over the nexus of the mirrors, that first mirror rune he cast.

The goblins ever great in stone work where water was concerned set to the task and made him a pillar of stone, 12 feet high it rose and 4 feet long on each side. The threaded the stone with thin lines of water and bound these in sorcery so that whenever the command word for the nexus was spoken the stone itself would fade and allow one to walk through and to the mirror.

So Nulak, when he wished to travel the planes called out the words of command; the pillar’s walls faded and he stepped through to the mirrored portal. There he looked into a great gulf of darkness, broken only by the mirrors he created. Each time he inscribed a new mirror rune he carved it into the pillar; once within he could pull that rune to him and cross over to that plane. 

The Winter Rune

All this while he was upon the horned beast and it came to his thinking that through him he might conquer all and rule the world as was his right. So ever he thought upon the Wall of Worlds, and how he might breach it and bring the creature to Aihrde as his slave.

And in the end he felt his sorcery up to the task and his knowledge of the runes infallible. He set to creating a relic, a powerful extension of himself.

First he cast the staff. To do so he traveled the planes to the elemental plane of earth and fell upon the creatures. Besting them with sorcereous might he let his goblins slaves harvest the metal of their beings, until at last he had enough of the Oracleum metal to bind the staff, unbreakable.

Returning to Aihrde he set the goblins to making the staff. He traveled into the high mountains and there found an ancient drake, a mother of many dragons, nesting in her frozen filth. He stole upon her and struck her a might blow with his sword so that she woke in rage. She hounded Nulak from her lair with blast of wing and breath so that he fell from the mountain. Unaware of her power and too confident in her own Nulak came closest to death that day than ever in his long life but for once. In a long grueling battle he smote the creature down but only after suffering many wounds and loss of many of his items, gathered in long adventures.

He left her to rot but took from her the sinewy membranes of her wings and these he bore back to his house. There he cast them into a shape, molding them into a head for the staff with three prongs. And into this wing he inscribed many runes; those runes he thought would carry him over to the Void.

As is now known, a rune master makes such relics and casts himself into it. He must bleed his own self into the item; when he does, so long as he holds it, it amplifies his power, making him greater than ever he was. But this is so long as he holds; failing that, with its loss he is weakened greatly and it takes many long years to rebuild his power and replace what he lost if ever he can.

He placed the Winter Rune upon the Oracleum staff and the two melded into one.

Nulak thought upon what next he must do. For many years he sat in the wilderness in the House of Sorcery and pondered. At times he ventured forth, exploring planes both desolate and prosperous to seek ever greater knowledge and power for in his wisdom he feared the creatures of the Void, and the one for which he dreamed he feared most of all.

Turning then to the pillar he inscribed mirrors once more into the pillar, creating a portal to the Void. With the Winter Rune in hand he passed into the pillar, onto the nexus of his mirrored portals and he breached the Wall of Worlds crossing over to the Void and he walked the Paths of Umbra.

The Coming of Darkness

With all this knowledge and power, Nulak thought to himself that he could at last bring the dark creature to Aihrde and it would rival any of the gods of men. And he thought that it would be his to control. So came to the world another tragedy. With the power commanded by the runes, Nulak cast himself into the Void questing for a host to bring home. He searched for many years until at last he found that dark sliver of the All Father’s nightmare; deep in the Void, if such a thing can be, the creature dwelt, living in the timeless Void awash in the filth of his own evil. Nulak opened his mind to it and revealed himself to the creature.

Nulak failed to understand that the creature he found was not a simple dark dream. Rather, it was the All Father’s greatest terror. It was a nightmare, a horrid thought conjured in the All Father’s youth, and one that so shook him that he cast it aside as soon as it rose to the surface. This nightmare passed from the All Father as a disjointed thought, an evil remembrance, god’s nightmare. But it took shape, as all thoughts of the All Father are want to do. It took shape and dwelt in a pool of its own evil for time without meaning. In truth it never dreamed of Aihrde, never knew of anything other than its own existence. Only when Nulak came to it, by walking the Paths of Umbra, did it learn of the world at large. It pretended to be amazed and enthralled, and so secretly it bound the sorcerer to him. The beast knew the Language of Creation before even the All Father fully vocalized it; indeed the beast spoke it as its only tongue.

When Nulak returned to Aihrde he brought the beginnings of an indescribable plague.  He set to building great temples to garner the power of the world’s people so that he could add the weight of it to the magic he needed to bind the creature to him. These temples became, in time, instrumental to the summoning of the Horned God for through them people worshiped Nulak as a god and their prayers gave him ever greater strength.

The tales that follow are told elsewhere, the magi Patrice discovered Nulak’s sorcery and rune magic and sought to stop him and triggered a long bloody conflict between the magi of the world. Beyond the pages of history the magi fought and died, often horrible, sorcerous deaths. Nulak called his comrades form the White Order to him and Council of Patrice summoned magi great and small. In the shadows they fought and so weakened the masters of the arcane that when the time came for them to hold the world against Unklar there were too few.

And into this came a boy who sought his rightful crown, the Cunae Mundus Usquam. And that boy, cast aside by his mentors sought the aid of Nulak Kiz Din and the wizard complied. With the Winter Rune in hand he served the boy until after many tribulations he was crowned Emperor of Aenoch, an empire that had long fallen to ruin. And the war now spilled into the light and spread across all of Aihrde.

Long and hard and bitter were those deaths. Filled with deeds of heroism, betrayal, never ending war and death; men called them the Easterling Wars for ever the evil came from Aenoch in the east and ever the Lords of the west rose against them. At the last, after great loss and sorrow, a King’s son rose, Robert Luther and as is told in other tales, none could stand against his might and his men pushed all before them; light followed him and it drove back the Easterlings and all seemed well with the war.

But Nulak would not be set aside and he called on the Emperor and told him of the Winter Rune and its power; without word he used the Winter Rune to recall himself to his House of Sorcery in the wilderness and he traveled the Paths of Umbra even to the Void and summoned the beast to come and do his bidding.

Nulak’s Regret

The Winter Rune returned Nulak to the House of Sorcery and the pillar of his gates. With incantation muttered he passed into the pillar and through the nexus to begin his greatest task. He cast the rune; with voice alone he cut it into the pillar. Using the Winter Rune he bridged the gulf with ice-bound road that burned at the touch. This road breached the Wall of Worlds.

 He stepped through then to the other side and called the beast to bay.

Upon his lips were the incantations to bind him so when the horned one arrived he cast him in chains and brought him through the door. Upon the bridge he froze for the creature stepped through and where his cloven hoof set the ice broke away.

Tis said that two things of great moment happened then; Nulak realized his sorcery paled in the face of the beast and the beast, for his part felt the cold stab of winter in the ice upon the bridge.

In a moment Nulak knew his folly and turning struck the beast with a great bolt of power; it froze the air and charged the yearning gulf with an energy that shook the tethered doors to the other worlds. But the beast shrugged it off and fell upon the mage with whips of darkness. For long they fought there in the gulf, with rune and sorcery and darkness and fear. Nulak’s power knew no match in the worlds and he brought this to bear upon the horned beast that towered over him. But the beast was darkness incarnate, and greater portion of the All Father than ever had been and he held himself at bay, not yet sure of what he could do.

In a moment of doubt Nulak sprang backward through the portal and shouted the words of command and the gate shut and the pillar closed. But in that moment, the most dire the world had ever known, the beast saw Aihrde, saw the green grass and blue skies; he saw the rock and smelt the air and knew then that the world was greater than he ever imagined.

The wizard handed the Winter Rune to the goblin slaves and told them to take it into the mountains and hide it; he fled then to the halls of far away Al Liosh and came even before the Emperor, battered, bruised and torn. In his fear he had no plan, nor thought of deed, but his mind raced. The Emperor knew in a moment that all had gone awry and he pulled forth his sword to slay the wizard.

But in the abyss, the gulf, the beast stood. He looked about him at the many mirrors and in his mind’s eye could see through each one and he saw the Mirrored Throne and he saw Nulak Kiz Din, the Emperor and the Priests of that place. He rose to the mirror, the portal and stepped through.

And Nulak saw him, his great cloven hoof passing through the mirror and his horns and the bulk of him that followed. The High Priest stood behind the throne even before he knew what occurred the beast grasped his skull and crushed it to pulp.

The Emperor Sebastion turned, blade in hand commanding the beast “Foul Dark of Darkness!* Down!  Kneel down upon your knees and call me god! Yield to the might of Mirrored Throne or suffer death and damnation.”

The beast, named now, turned to the Emperor and lashed him with his whips and where they struck the body of the boy fell away like dust and he died there at the foot of the Mirrored Throne.

And Nulak knew the battle was done and lost. He fell to his knees “I who summoned you am yours dread Unklar. Bid me as you would and I will become the arm of Darkness.”

End Tales

The tale of what followed that dread god’s descent into Aihrde is told elsewhere, but know only that he was named, fell Unklar, and that he overwhelmed Nulak and all his allies, and enslaved much of the world.  He used his great power to remake the world of Aihrde, bind it too him and further to destroy the gods, imprison Inzae in an inner world and unmake much of what had come before. He blanketed the world in ice, for the cold was the first sensation he had ever felt. So the Winter Dark came to be. The Paths of Umbra, now known only as the Winter Runes were lost to the world, scattered in the many wars and struggles of the Winter Dark era.  Eventually Nulak rose to power once more and served Unklar as his right arm.  He reconstituted the White Order, renaming it the Paths of Umbra.  He took a new name as well, Mongroul, though many called him the Troll Lord for he commanded a vast army of Trolls in the northern wastes where he built his tower, the Graugusse. The guild quested long for the Runes, sometimes meeting with success but more often than not failure.

Time passed and the Winter Dark Wars saw the order of the Horned God overthrown and it too, with Nulak, passed into history. So it came to be that the Winter Runes were scattered across the world.  With Nulak’s the Paths of Umbra lost much of its evil way and became a secretive guild of knowledge and powerful magi. Though many of their ranks long for the order of Unklar’s reign, many more devout themselves to the study of the sorcerous arts.  Knowledge of the quests that the wizards of the Path undertook became common to many other guilds, wizards and sorcerers.  So it was that many undertook to find these magical Rune Stones and gain for themselves the powers that only a few ever dreamed of.

* Sebastion spoke in the old tongue of Dwarves, naming the beast “Unk ot Unklar” which translates to Dark and Darkness, and thus was the beast named.