| Player Information |
| Player Name |
Jake |
Contact |
![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico) vikarmic | Vikarmic#8518 |
| AKA |
Masego at Sidereal most recently, a long list of dubious wizard boys prior, and an even longer list of monsters. |
| Character Basics |
| Character Name |
Musalodi |
Series/Canon |
Scarlet Odyssey |
| AU/PG/Canon Point |
Just before the end of Primeval Fire |
Cottage |
Moss House |
| Canon Details |
Before the final battle |
| Character Details |
| Age |
Roughly 20 |
Hair/Eyes |
Dark/faceted rainbow |
| Height/Weight |
Tall/Thin |
Notable Traits |
Always wears a pair of spectacles that are actually magitech artifacts. Eyes are obviously artificial, with faceted rainbow pupils, and don't work particularly well. Prominent tooth gap. Intricate fractal metal tattoos up both arms that sometimes glow or spark red. Probably wearing a shirt and loincloth if given the option. |
| 15 Second Summary |
Salo grew up an outsider in his village, due to "unmanly" behavior such as a fascination with magic and machines, a distaste for violence and a habit of asking inconvenient questions. Born in a magically-powerful backwater, Salo soon discovers that the world and its magic are far vaster and more dangerous than he ever could have dreamed. After an escalating series of shenanigans including his own death and resurrection, he plays a central role in saving his world and correcting wrongs that have lingered since long before mankind settled his world -- and some that predate their presence in the very galaxy. |
| Abilities & Permissions |
| Abilities |
Salo is a powerful Red mystic, wielding the six crafts of Storm, Fire, Blood, Earth, Mirror and Void. He's got a vast library of spells to draw on and he's a fair hand, at this point, at working up his own. He can also instinctively perceive and analyze magical energy, even energies that aren't part of Red magic, though if he's not familiar with the paradigm he'll have a harder time. So far he's regained his Void craft (spacetime manipulation).
Salo was resurrected as an atmech, or magitech android. While he's mostly close to human standard, he's extremely resilient, heals quickly and cleanly from even the most severe injuries and can instinctively perceive network signals and interface with electronics. He's likely to be able to hack computers and other machine with his brain, particularly if they're magitech, and probably even if they don't have a network interface. |
| Permissions |
No insect-related stuff or bathroom stuff, please and thank you. Talk to me about cannibalism beforehand. Other than that, keep in touch, especially if things get violent; Salo strongly prefers not to hurt people but he's more than capable, if needed. |
| Sensing |
Salo's senses extend into network signals and radio waves; he can probably overhear phone conversations and Internet traffic. He's got excellent magic perceptions so he can see/sense any of that that's going on too.
Anyone with a sense for machines or magic can tell fairly easily that he's a soul attached to a construct body, although one that mimics human functionality in almost all respects. There's a crystal in his brain that's his actual seat of consciousness, and there are enchanted metals all through his body. His spectacles are finely enchanted (they actually bypass his eyes and project images directly into his optic nerves). The very skilled observer may pick up that his ruby pendant is also a potent artifact of some kind. |
| Memory Registry |
| Positive Significant |
• Seventh birthday with his mother
• First time in orbit
• Casting his first spell
• Reuniting with Ilapara
• Reuniting with Tuk
• Regaining his Axiom |
| Positive Trivial |
• Stealing a library of spellcraft
• Niko dreams
• Sparring with constructs
• Messing around in Ziyo's mind construct
• Settling in on the Ataraxis
• Saving other atmechs from the Professor's experiments
• Talking arcane theory with Nimana
• Hanging out with Monti |
| Neutral Significant |
• Waking up as an atmech in a ruined city
• Facing the redhawk for the first time
• The Book of Lies
• Facing the lake: "I want to try anyway"
• The final trial, rejecting the gods
• Saving the king from underworld spirits
• Leaving on his pilgrimage
• Communing with the Lightning Bird
• "But you don't have to be." (Confronting the Maidservant)
• Agreeing to help the King |
| Neutral Trivial |
• Days of frustration trying to master enchantment
• Tour of the Academy
• Giving Tuk his blessing
• Fixing the mill, again
• Meeting Ilapara
• Nursing a wounded monitor lizard back to health
• Meeting Tuk, buying out a slave auction
• Meeting the Imperial siblings in a library |
| Negative Significant |
• His mother's first cruelty
• His mother's final cruelty
• The attack on the kraal
• Monti's funeral
• The riots
• His first death |
| Negative Trivial |
• Brothers being assholes
• Discovering what happened to the slaves he freed
• Everyone disowning him
• The Professor's "experiments"
• Running from scavengers |
| Skills |
• Atmech characteristics
• Void basics
• Mirror basics
• Storm basics
• Earth basics
• Fire basics
• Blood basics
• Library access
• Higher Red
• Ziyo
• Ancestral talent
• Archery
• Survival
|
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
axiomystic
MEMORIES
Date: 2023-11-12 02:27 pm (UTC)Waking up in a ruined city
Date: 2023-11-12 02:50 pm (UTC)He can sense something non-physical, a chaotic, unpleasant energy forcefully permeating the world around him. The voice explains that by the time he's hearing this, she'll have been dead for days or weeks. He steps out of the room into a hall full of statues of nightmarish beasts, moving quickly towards a flickering lamp at the other end. There, as the voice tells him there's not much time left, and that he is her finest work, he finds its origin -- the dead body of a woman, finely dressed and adorned with gold jewelry, horribly burned and decayed.
He finds a flight of stairs, and the voice tells him to trust his instincts and survive; that he'll know the way out. It's telling the truth, and he follows a path upward by instincts, finding more horribly burned bodies in rooms with magitech consoles, all of which he can feel tickling the edge of his mind. As he reaches the ground floor, the recorded voice gives him a final apology, though for what, he has no idea.
The world outside is a hellscape; smog has turned the air blood-red, and fires rage everywhere in the city. Chunks of debris float everywhere in the skies; apparently whatever killed the city broke natural law, too. There are strange vehicles everywhere, and dead bodies. He realizes that the vibrations he's feeling are a kind of poison in the air, killing everything it touches except, for some reason, him.
This is the land of the dead, he thinks in horror, and I walk among them.
Sparring with constructs
Date: 2023-11-23 11:16 pm (UTC)Sunny sifts through the plates, instinctively seeming to know what each one represents, then chooses one and scans it, a web of indecipherable symbols and diagrams. whatever he gets from that, it seems to satisfy him; he smiles up at the giant serpent and tells it to "begin insertion at the lowest speed".
the other plates disappear, and the environment changes, a verdant plane of grass appearing beneath his feet, stretching to granite mountains on the horizon. there's a lake of sparkling water to the east, and a distant plateau on which a drystone village is clustered. the sky, though, is wholly unnatural -- giant roses bloom near ringed planets and blazing comets against a field of violet stars, and a full red moon hangs impossibly close overhead. the serpent coils through a nebula covering a swathe of the remaining sky.
he conjures a staff, sets himself in a fighting stance, takes a deep breath, and orders the simulation to begin.
a stone, spear-wielding golem appears and rushes him, but he turns the spearpoint aside with his staff and shatters its chest with a burst of unseen force. two more appear and spread out to flank him; a sweep of his staff conjures a wider arc of telekinesis, taking one golem's head off and cutting the other in half from shoulder to hip. the tattoos in his arms are burning red now, brighter each time he casts. four more golems appear and he tries the same spell again, but all four dodge, weaving around the ripple of force to try to surround him.
he casts another spell, leaping twenty feet in a single bound, before incinerating the new golems with a fractal burst of red lightning as they charge towards him. eight more appear as his tattoos blaze furiously, and he gathers himself to leap again, before changing his mind and clenching a fist. a razor-thin ripple of shadow blasts out from him in all directions, cutting all eight opponents in half at the waist.
then sixteen more appear, and he sets himself defensively, glancing from one to the other. his tattoos are still blazing, but he doesn't cast again, and it's over in seconds; he dodges one strike, parries another, and is impaled through the back by a third.
immediately he orders the simulation to stop, and the golems -- and the wound -- vanish. sunny falls down to his hands and knees, gasping for breath, until another voice breaks in, belonging to a tall, bearded man Sunny's age, wearing a loincloth and greaves and vambraces of red-tinged steel. the new man calls Sunny's performance impressive, but says he relies too much on his magic. Sunny seems aggrieved to see him, but the man, Niko, is impervious; he admires the construct, then returns to his advice. Sunny's magic is incredible, Niko says, but he could stand to rely on it less -- get a sword, or turn the staff into a spear.
they banter back and forth a bit, Sunny sounding annoyed and claiming Niko isn't real, but clearly (from an outside perspective) unwilling to do anything to get rid of him. they end up sparring companionably with spears; Niko is incredibly good with his, Sunny barely passable, but despite that, it seems like a good time.
TAKEAWAYS:
* he's definitely different in this memory than he is now; he can't multitask, he can draw less essence through his shards, his mind is distinctly less capable. he wouldn't have had to use a low insertion speed now. was this his previous life, somehow?
* he's training because he knows there are enemies out there who are incredibly strong. he doesn't want to use his shards for war, but he won't let his friends be hurt again(?)
* all the confused feelings for Niko. all of them. especially since Salo is convinced that this version of Niko is a creation of his own subconscious yearning.
* he's aware he's in some kind of mental construct that he's in control of, and that Ziyo is hosting
Leaving on his pilgrimmage
Date: 2023-12-18 08:09 am (UTC)There's a crowd at the gate, ranging from curious to angry, and two younger men Salo recognizes as his brothers are among the latter. They murmur "witch" and "siratata" (a pretty nasty insult for a man) as he arrives, setting down his luggage, and Salo hides how much the words sting; he has no idea how he's going to win these people over. The girl offers him the staff, telling him not to mind them, and he takes it even though he doesn't believe her.
He freezes when he sees some of the clan council, including both his fathers, walking expressionlessly out of the gate, but the girl tells him it's good that he has so many witnesses; now it will be harder to reject him when the totem responds positively to him. The staff tingles in his hands, and he suppresses a surge of unwelcome memories; the girl goads him a little, telling him not to leave them in suspense, so he blocks out the rest of the world and walks over to the gates, where a metal statue of a massive leopard sits on an overhanging beam.
Suppressing more unwelcome memories, Salo claims the staff, pushing cosmic essence into it to forge a tether that settles at the back of his mind. It immediately reveals to him that it's a kind of mental lens, helping focus his mind on a single task. Then he casts his mystic Seal towards the statue, an application of his shards that he understands instinctively how to do. Patterns of light weave themselves into a spinning cube of diamond hanging under a red star; everyone who sees it instinctively understands that it belongs to a young mystic born to a house of leopards.
The star flares blinding for a moment, and when it vanishes, the statue has opened its eyes. It rises to its feet, fluidly graceful, metal transforming into spotted white fur over all but its face and legs. It flexes the ruff of metal spines around its neck, then leaps lightly to the ground, stalking around Salo in a circle. Salo is frozen, not in fear, but in shock, because the cat -- Mukuni -- has become an extension of himself, acting according to his intention without conscious thought. Salo raises a hand to pet his old friend, the fur as soft as he remembers from childhood,and Mukuni purrs as he lies down on his belly in a clear show of submission.
The crowd isn't pleased, murmuring with dissent and argument, but Salo's father, the chief of the tribe, steps forward with a raised hand. He welcomes the totem back among the clan, and quells the brewing discontent with a short speech, making clear that he won't tolerate any question of Salo's worthiness. The totem has always chosen whom to serve, and he has chosen Salo; VaSiningwe commands that the rest of the tribe respect that decision, with no room for argument.
He continues, saying that he's glad Mukuni chose this moment to reawaken; since Salo has a long journey ahead of him in service to the clan, VaSiningwe had worried that he'd have to make it alone, but now he has a powerful and formidable companion. He turns to Salo, softening, and wishes him well; every step he takes, he'll be in his father's heart and prayers. Salo kneels and thanks him, trying not to cry, and meaning it more than he's ever meant anything.
Salo saddles Mukuni, straps the staff to a harness, and is about to climb on the cat's back when an old man approaches him. He's ashamed, knowing that he hadn't managed to find the man to say goodbye, but the old man -- Aaku -- doesn't seem to mind. He knew that Salo had many other things to do and that they'd be meeting now in any case. Salo notices that Aaku seems unusually sober, haler than he can ever remember seeing him, as he explains that he wanted to give Salo something before the journey, something he acquired when he was a boy but never had the courage to wear. It's a ring, enchanted to produce light from the citrine stone adorning it, and Aaku hopes that it will brighten Salo's way in the darkness. He thanks Salo for giving an old man something to believe in, and tells him to make sure he comes back.
Salo hugs the old man, not caring about the onlookers, and then forces himself to climb into the saddle, no matter how much part of him wishes that he could just go back to how things used to be. Mukuni's gait is as smooth as a ship on water, carrying him rapidly further from home. At last, he looks back and waves -- at his father, at his friends, and at a familiar figure, armor glinting like stars, watching him from where Mukuni once stood vigil. He meets that figure's gaze for a long moment, but at last, all he can do is wave once and turn away.
Dying for the first time
Date: 2024-03-04 04:43 am (UTC)The man on the other side is old, with a tremendous spiritual presence that Salo can feel even with his shards muted, and wearing a magnificent red robe missing one sleeve. Salo thinks of him as "the Arc" and addresses him as "Your Worship". They exchange pleasantries, but Salo has been thinking about [memories he hasn't received back] and is more and more convinced that there's something off about the old man. He asks whether the Arc has figured out how to remove the collar yet, but the old man sees his growing fear and drops the pretense, asking what gave away that he was Salo's enemy.
Salo leaps from his bed and tries to run, but the Arc casts a spell that slams him against the wall and holds him there. He pleads that all he wants is to go back home, that he's not the old man's enemy, but the Arc doesn't relent; he explains that what Salo had previously seen as indifference, which had protected him from a spirit called Sorrow, was in fact resolve. The sins of the world around him -- injustice, tribalism, xenophobia, slavery, human sacrifice -- blind him with rage, and while he can't change the nature of the universe, he can refuse to accept those things and carve as large a slice of goodness into the world as he could. Salo, apparently, made a similar vow, which the Arc commends, but the old man claims that Salo hadn't understood that the first step was pursuit of power.
Salo realizes that the Arc wants to be Hegemon, but the Arc denies it; that's what Salo would become, if he allowed it, and he would have inflicted even more injustice on the world. Salo protests that the old Hegemons were misguided, and when the Arc is skeptical, claims that even if he knows better, he refused the role; he tells the old man to take the crown that marks a Hegemon from his desk drawer, and that knowing what he knows, he wants nothing to do with that power. The Arc realizes that Salo must have seen more than he did in the inner sanctum, and Salo tells him that the truth is more complicated than what he knows, but the old man replies that there's always a greater layer of mystery, and notes that even with Salo's greater insight, there are still things he clearly doesn't know.
The Arc tells Salo that he holds him in the highest regard; what he achieved with his Axiom was brilliant, and if possible he'd let him go, but as long as Salo lives, the crown will answer only to him. He reveals that Salo's entire mission was a setup, including the collar, something called the Bloody Requiem which fills Salo with horror and an impression of violence, and even Salo's selection for the mission that sent him here; he and Salo's Queen have long been in correspondence, and as soon as she learned of his Axiom, they conspired to put him on the path to this moment.
Betrayed by his home and his supposed ally, Salo begs to be allowed to leave, to go far enough away that he could never interfere with the Arc's plans, but the Arc does not relent, and stabs a dagger made of arcane lightning through Salo's heart.
The attack on the kraal
Date: 2024-05-30 02:21 am (UTC)Immediately, they both spot a writhing mass of inky darkness in the sky above the kraal -- a mystic's hypnotic Seal, presenting the image of an infinitely black sphere with a prismatic corona. The Seal imparts the knowledge of its owner -- a terrible warlord with one red-burning eye, seated on a throne of shadows, whose army has plundered far and wide. Monti asks Salo who it is, and why he's here, but Salo tells him to hurry and not think about it. They've almost reached the gravel road that winds through the kraal when dust begins to rise from the earth in front of them.
The dust forms a twisted human skeleton, with grotesquely elongated arms and talon-like fingers, seven feet tall and shrouded by dust. White flames burn in its skull and lick out its eye sockets. Salo recognizes it from stories -- a tikoloshe, summoned by black magic from one of the realms of the underworld. The tikoloshe turns to the boys, and Salo grabs Monti and runs.
They run into the heart of the kraal, pursued by the same horrible shriek that first alerted them that something was wrong. Another tikoloshe manifests itself in front of a woman on her way back from drawing water and rips her apart; Salo is overwhelmed by horror, but manages to keep running with Monti until the younger boy trips and drops his matje case. Salo picks him up bodily, despite his protests, and keeps running until they encounter three spear-wielding men in red loincloths: Ajaha rangers.
Salo asks their leader, who he calls Aba D, what's going on, and learns that a Umadi witch bypassed their defenses and is responsible for the creatures. The rangers assure the boys that they'll handle her, and Aba D orders Salo to get Monti to safety despite his questions. The boys don't run, though; they watch as the three rangers fan out, looking for their enemy.
A swarm of flies, moving with a single purpose, hovers above them, and Salo shouts a warning too late; the swarm smashes into one of the rangers, hurling him into a tree. Aba D shouts for the boys to run, which they do, but the swarm follows them, reconstituting itself into a naked woman -- tattooed on every inch of skin, cosmic shards blazing, eyes burning red and teeth filed to points. Salo switches to the Umadi language and asks why she's doing this, what they've done to her, but she doesn't respond before Aba D slams into her with his shield, the power bestowed on him by the queen of the Yerezi making him far faster and stronger than any mortal man.
It's not enough. The witch toys with him, hurling a spear of distorted space as she drifts around half-corporeal, then summoning more tikoloshe, but Aba D is undeterred. He charges his enemy as Salo and Monti finally run.
With warriors battling tikoloshe and worse everywhere around them, the two boys make it to the heavily warded chieftan's hut, which Salo seals. Safe for now, the boys listen fearfully to the sounds of carnage outside. Monti is understandably traumatized, and Salo fails to reassure him. Eventually Monti asks Salo why he isn't out there, fighting; why he isn't a ranger like his brothers. Salo's answer is weak; it's a question that hurts him, and his explanation that some people have other talents than fighting rings hollow. Monti calls him a siratata, a really nasty gendered insult, and Salo tries to reason with him; it only makes the boy more determined, and he says that he's going outside to fight.
Salo grabs his temper with both hands and tries to talk him out of it, claiming that he'd be a bad friend if he let Monti go. Monti seems to accept this, but tricks Salo into leaving him unwatched and slips out through a window. Salo runs after him, through a dozen scenes of murder, past the bodies of people he's known all his life, and just as he's nearly to Monti's hut, he hears a shriek and sees a tikoloshe disembowel a young boy.
It throws Monti's body aside, and Salo runs to him, cradling the boy's ruined body in his arms. The tikoloshe approaches, raising a talon to strike again, but he doesn't move.
Monti is dead, and it's his fault.
First time in orbit
Date: 2024-08-15 06:13 am (UTC)This causes some consternation among his companions, and Salo explains that he's going to change how the ship flies. One of his friends is in trouble, and the ship is too slow to make it in time as it is. His two companions agree to help once they hear that, and he thanks them, warning them not to touch the coils or remove any regulators but the ones he pointed out, as he heads quickly out the door down to the crystal hub.
Salo splits his mind into multiple streams of thought. One is monitoring a situation in a cave thousands of miles away, where a group of rebels stand against the forces of a tyrannical king; this memory is blurred, giving little more than the description. Another stream runs with Mukuni through dense jungles; this, too is blurred. The remaining streams are clear: one sitting at the main console of the crystal hub, fingers dancing across brass keys as he primes it to receive his new spells; one walking through his spell library, spell plates swirling around him in a vortex as he memorizes a dozen of them one after the other; and the last in a deep communion with Ziyo, running simulations and calculations using the ship's design parameters.
The fragment of himself that's in his body is interrupted by a voice that comes through a bracer on his wrist, asking him what he's doing; the thermal readings in the engine room are off the charts. He explains again that he's changing how the ship works. When the voice protests that she won't know how to fly it anymore, he explains that he'll send her the knowledge like he did before, directly between their crystalline minds. She tells him to warn her in advance, since the transfer wasn't pleasant, and he switches the tool to ask how the regulators are coming. His companion, Balam, reports that he's just finished, and Salo tells him to take Priscilla, his other companion, and get out of the engine room; there might be a dangerous surge in a moment.
Salo waits a moment for them to get clear, and then begins to make his changes. The crystal cylinders in the hub are full of spells written in Higher Red, a spell language made powerful by its precision, complexity and efficiency; excellent for normal operations, but it doesn't scale well above certain limits. The spells Salo is adapting are all Lower Red, which sacrifices precision for scalability and throughput, able to accept an unlimited amount of power without collapsing.
First, he replaces the spell which enables the ship's weapons, bolts of destructive moonfire, repurposing the enchantments to protect a shroud of that same moonfire that will hurl the ship forward at tremendous speed. Next, he replaces the ship's kinetic barriers into something much stronger and better tailored to the ship's physical shape, replacing their weaker ovoid shape; this causes a small explosion in the engine room, and his pilot's questions grow increasingly alarmed. Finally, he massively upgrades the internal acceleration compensators, causing lights to go out all over the ship with a jolting shudder. The pilot reassures the other crew of the ship that everything is under control, but she asks Salo privately what's going on; everything is stable, but the engine is putting out way too much heat. He tells her that he's finished his modifications, then sends her the updated control scheme; she pauses for a moment, then tells him that this is crazy. Nonetheless, she activates what was once the ship's weapons, and a roaring shroud of moonfire surrounds the ship, hurling it forward at ludicrous speeds.
The fire is all that Salo can see out the viewports as he walks up to the ship's bridge; the pilot, Sevan, tells him as he sets out that they're going to have to go much, much higher if they're going to maintain speed, since there's too much air resistance where they are. He's mostly paying attention to another one of his fragments as he walks, but those memories are blurred. When he reaches the bridge, Balam and Priscilla are already there, strapped in, backgrounded against the blinding inferno outside the windows. They all banter for a bit, and Balam wonders if they're in the center of the earth, which is said to be a core of liquid fire. Sevan tells them that they'll see just where they are, and shuts down the engines, letting their shroud of moonfire fade away.
Immediately, they all feel weightless, and Salo launches himself out of his seat, gliding to the window; he overestimates the force he needs, and has to catch himself on a metal strut, but the view is more than worth it. Below him his world, blue and white and green and tan, stretches out so far below that he can see its curvature. The suns, gold and white, are just beginning to rise over the horizon, and stars burn bright in the darkness above. Salo remembers, then, that once men made vessels that could sail that endless ocean of stars, but that history was taken from them and they forgot.
Sevan tells him that it's time to return to his seat; they'll be heading back down in just a moment. Wiping away a tear at the beauty of space, he tells her that he's heading for the skiff bay; his friend is in trouble and might need a quick extraction.
Talking arcane theory with Nimana
Date: 2024-12-17 05:35 am (UTC)Sunny is generally very conflicted about revealing how much he knows about magic in this memory; he feels like it's something that's forbidden to him. This doesn't stop him from loving it and learning about it but it does make him uncomfortable revealing his interest to other people, even close friends.
Nursing a wounded imbulu back to health
Date: 2024-12-17 05:36 am (UTC)Salo lets Monti feed the imbulu milk as he checks her over, first looking at her physical injuries and then using his talisman to scan the prose in her mind stone. It was badly corrupted when he found her, disabling most of her tronic abilities, and the waveforms of her mind are still a bit out of sync, but it's much improved.
Salo asks Monti, delightedly feeding the lizard milk, what he thinks of her now. Monti thinks she's beautiful, and wishes they could bring her back to the kraal. That's why they have to keep her a secret, Salo explains; the rangers at the kraal would kill her if they knew she was here.
As if on cue, a stick cracks in the distance, and Salo knows it's too late; they've been discovered.
"But you don't have to be."
Date: 2025-01-26 03:35 am (UTC)Speaking her language, Salo tells her that her quarrel is with him, and to leave his friends out of it. She starts to circle towards him, recognizing him from the attack and that he's newly awakened. Salo circles with her, defiant, but she wants information from him about his Axiom, the Elusive Cube. Salo is determined to tell her nothing, but she claims that she doesn't want to hurt him and is even willing to let him go if he tells her how he knew to derive it.
Salo tells her he'll die before he tells her anything, and she retorts that she doesn't need his consent. She ignites her shards and throws a spear of warped space at him, but he counters with a shield of Storm and Void craft; he's nowhere near as capable as he'll one day be with Ziyo helping, much less when he's an atmech himself, but his mind is accelerated by his link to his talisman and he places the ward perfectly. The Maidservant is impressed, and unleashes a hail of Void arrows, which Salo disperses with a tesselated half-dome of the same hexagonal shields.
The Maidservant claims that she's always respected Salo's people, the Yerezi, for their talent and depth of knowledge; she's giving him one more chance to give her what she wants, and if he does she'll even give his friends back. Salo is tempted, but reminds himself that expecting this witch to keep her word is folly. He won't bargain with a mass murderer, he tells her, and she responds that she now has no choice.
Salo can feel her power opening a portal to the devil's domain, drawing forth an evil spirit that manifests as a black slime. The spirit leaps for his face before he can react, crawling into his eyes, nose and ears. He tries to summon power but is blocked, and he falls to his knees, clawing at the slime seeping into his body and mind; he can feel it infiltrating his thoughts, and he can feel that there's an unseen tendril of the creature stretching out through the Maidservant and into the portal in her mind.
The Maidservant monologues for a bit about how she once thought the Yerezi's magical supremacy came from their unity, but she knows now that they're just like any other people, if not worse since they hide their differences under a pretense of amity. As he desperately tries to fight off the spirit, its corrupted ciphers multiplying faster than thought, a part of him notices that she's straining to keep it under control. He desperately tries to draw power from his shards, hoping to tip the balance against her, but the profane slime tightens around his throat, cutting off his breathing. Desperate, he redoubles his efforts, and finally something breaks: his shards flare to life, and the witch loses control of the spirit, falling backward with a cry. The spirit, free of control, tangles their minds together and pulls.
Salo and the Maidservant experience the totality of each other's lives. (Salo's life is blurred out except for the things he's already remembered, and he won't retain much more than impressions of the Maidservant's.) She sees his worst moments, the spiritual agonies that drove him to take up magic...and she sees her attack from his perspective. She realizes then that she long ago became what she once was determined to pay any price to destroy; that she is no different than the men who killed her adoptive daughter long ago; that, in fact, she is even worse. The revelation is inescapable, and it breaks her like glass.
But Salo is with her in that moment, and he, too, sees the totality of her life. He sees all her crimes, her atrocities, and the events that drove her down that path. He sees her thinking that she is evil, lost, irredemable, unworthy of her daughter's love, and he says, you don't have to be.
Still linked to her mind, Salo can feel it as she focuses every scrap of will she has left and forces the portal closed, banishing the tikoloshe back to the devil's domain. He wrenches his mind free of the meld and finds himself lying on the ground, not far from the Maidservant. All his rage and hate are gone, replaced with confusion, pity and mercy.
The Maidservant crawls away, taking the form of a swarm of flies and rushing away from the clearing. Moments later, a flock of ravens bursts from thin air and two bodies fall to the ground. It takes Salo a moment to recognize his friends, but when he does, the wave of relief he feels almost makes him pass out.
Stealing a library of spellcraft
Date: 2025-01-26 03:36 am (UTC)Salo takes a guess at the man's caste and greets him by it, explaining that he wants to purchase access to the archives. Since he has a bank vault in the city, the Akili scholar explains, this will be easy -- he just has to cast his Seal against a series of complex patterns on a nearby wall, and the fee will be automatically deducted from his account. He'll then have ten days in which he can come and go as he pleases and study any spell prototype in the Archives for as long as he wants. The restructions (referred to as "the not-so-good news" by the bubbly scholar) is that no prototype can leave the archives, and producing copies of them is forbidden; violating these rules will result in a permanent ban from the Archives and charges being pressed, and his entry fee will not be returned. Given that he is in fact here to steal from the Archives, Salo has to repress some nervousness, but agrees that the rules are clear enough. The amount on the sheet of paper the scholar hands him is too big to make sense to him, so he hands it over to his friends, who inform him that it's a fucking lot of money. Fortunately, he has access to more than enough to pay it without blinking, for some reason. He casts his Seal against the wall, a spinning cube of diamond surmounted by a red star which tells all who see it that it belongs to a mystic born of a great house of leopards.
The wall's enchantments activate, and Salo has a distinct feeling of being watched, which makes one of his companions feel uneasy. The other, the man, is delighted by Salo's Seal; apparently mystics don't get them where he comes from. Salo explains that they just kind of happen, although the form of the Seal is somewhat determined by the mystic's Axiom and how they see themselves. His other companion adds that someone called the Black Sun had a literal, horrific black sun as his Seal, and Salo shivers; if he had that kind of seal, he'd never cast it.
At that moment, the patterns on the wall glow red, and the scholar smiles, informing Salo that the transaction is complete. Unfortunately, only he can enter the archives; the fee doesn't cover his companions, who promise to entertain themselves in the city while he studies. Salo declares his magic items -- just his staff, although he's lying and has Ziyo around his neck -- and the scholar explains that he should cast his Seal on the doors to open them. The wards on them will detect any prohibited enchantments, so if that happens, he'll have to leave the item at the door and collect it when he leaves.
Salo's heart is beating fast, but he casts his Seal at the doors. There's a long moment when he thinks that Ziyo might not actually be able to evade the wards, but at last the doors grind open, admitting him to the Pattern Archives.
The Archives are massive and just as opulent as the atrium, with winged statues that hover above their plinths, a pool of water filled with ornamental lilies, and gem-encrusted murals everywhere. Salo is stunned by their scale and just wanders for a while, taking in the thousands upon thousands of shelves, each filled with metal plates containing spell prototypes. There are other people in the Archives as well, some obviously students, others clearly foreigners like him. He decides to start with the Void Archives, walking around the enormous chamber to get a feel for the organization scheme, and looking at a few spells: white-tagged simple spells like static barriers, yellow-tagged medium spells like one that dampens sound, orange-tagged spells such as one to telekinetically manipulate fluids, a red-tagged spell that conjures complex shapes of force, and black-tagged spells, the most difficult of all, like one that can shape the Void into pockets where time moves at different speeds, or one that stores items in the metadimension, or one that entangles the caster's mind with a beast's for shapeshifting. There are so, so many spells, and ten days seems an infintesimal amount of time with which to study them -- barely enough time to learn one spell, let alone even a fraction of those within this single archive.
Salo remembers, then, that he's not here for himself; he came here to do a job, and he should get started.
He finds the first spell on his list, an orange-tagged spell which produces thin force fields ideal for making surgical incisions and keeping them open while a physician works. He spends some time admiring the elegant prose, then awakens Ziyo with a thought, splitting his mind to dive into the metaform's mental construct. There, he orders Ziyo to capture an image of the spell plate, which it does in a heartbeat; the plate appears in the construct, looking and feeling completely real and tagged with orange light. He'd been expecting to have to copy spellbooks by hand, trying to look unsuspicious, and take at least five minutes per spell; instead, it's done in less than a second.
An idea comes to Salo then, and he starts testing Ziyo's capabilities. Can Ziyo scan a spell he specifies that he can't see? Yes, it can. Can it grab three at a time? Yes, it can, still effectively instantly. Can it do ten? There's a second or two of lag this time, but yes, it can.
Can it scan the entire Pattern Archives? It will take fifty-three minutes, but yes, it can.
It's a gamble that could have terrible penalties for failure, but Salo reminds himself that he's no stranger to that kind of risk. He orders Ziyo to begin.
(Notes:
* Anyone who's been in Sunny's construct will recognize the shape of the rooms of the Archives; the buildings sealed by corruption in there match them exactly.
* Based on the descriptions, it seems like Ziyo conservatively takes about 200ms to scan a spell. If that's the case, then the Archives contain -- and Ziyo has stored -- roughly 16,000 distinct spells, and if Ziyo's speed increases during the full scan, which it very well might, that number could be significantly higher.)
Facing the redhawk for the first time
Date: 2025-01-26 03:37 am (UTC)The queen tells Salo that it's a full moon that night, an auspicious time to awaken; there'll be no turning back once they begin. He briefly wonders whether she's deliberately giving him an out, but realizes his thoughts must show on his face, since one of the honor guard gives him a look of disgust. Instead, he tells the queen he's ready.
The queen gives a long and frankly fairly bigoted speech about how, while normally a man who reached for sorcery would be condemned, she's decided to test the old traditions by allowing it. While she talks, her honor guard sprinkle an alchemical liquid onto the altar, and it erupts into crimson flame. Salo knows it's alchemical false-fire, which tricks the senses but doesn't cause permanent harm. The queen explains, mostly to her audience -- Salo already knows all this -- that the first question for any mystic is whether their mind can prevail over pain. She asks him whether he's satisfied with his Axiom and whether it's an original work of his own mind, and when he affirms both, tells him to call down a redhawk by placing his arms in the fire. Salo is terrified, but he thrusts his arms into the fire with a shout.
The fire may be illusion, but it feels complately real, and Salo's shout turns into a scream. He can smell the burning meat of his flesh, see the bone of his arms exposed, but he grasps onto a fragment of conditioning: the world is immeasurably old and large, and he and his pain are insignificant before it. Just when he's reaching the limit of what he can take, he can feel something stir in his blood, a warm ecstasy that combines with the pain to overwhelm him. He knows instinctively that this is the thing that makes a mystic -- that the agony has pierced the veil of his ignorance and awakened this power within him. He can feel the altar, reaching skyward to announce his presence, and far above, he feels something respond.
The queen tells him to remove his arms from the flames as the ecstacy overwhelms his pain, and as he does, he finds them cold and tingling but whole. There's real approval in her eyes as she turns to continue her speech, talking about redhawks, tronic starbirds who nest in low orbit and by whom Salo will now be judged. She orders Ajaha into position, and Salo into the water to wait for the redhawk he's called.
It begins as a point of light on the horizon, swelling rapidly as it falls, parting the lake as it skims over the surface: a bird with a quadruple wingspan the size of a house, cruel-beaked and horned, shrouded in the flame and smoke of its burning feathers. It takes a step towards him, then another, lowering its head as he kneels before it, until their foreheads are nearly touching. Salo feels the redhawk's heat, but isn't burned; he feels a wave of calm instead, and waits for his shards to appear.
That's when some other presence uncoils from his mind like a serpent and pours into the redhawk, which screeches with fury and impales him with its talons.
All his friends disowning him
Date: 2025-01-26 03:37 am (UTC)Both of his twin brothers are there (twins to each other, not to him, although the family resemblance is clear), along with about fifty other young men, all of them carrying reeds in their hands. Salo opens with a quip about how they shouldn't have gone to all this trouble just for him, his heart sinking under the bravado, and it infuriates one of his brothers, but the other calms him. They're not there to fight, after all.
Salo asks if they're really going to do this, even with how upset they are. His calmer brother retorts that "upset" doesn't even start to describe it; that Salo has disgraced their aba (furi: father) and their clan. His other brother recounts an incident where Salo saved all three of them from a huge predator, and wonders where the boy who did that went, to be replaced by the weak, soft, pathetic shadow of a man before him now.
Salo wants to defend himself, but he's paralyzed by the fear of saying the wrong thing. His brother admits that they've been unkind to him over the past few years, but claims that he'd held out hope that the brother who saved him would return. Now that hope is gone. Salo realizes that his brother's betrayal is genuine, and that his brothers are truly hurt, but he wonders how they can be so blind. He tries to argue his point, explaining that the queen had been about to hand the clan over to their ancestral enemies, the Sibere. His brothers had shouted in defiance, but none of them had done anything. Salo had.
The argument doesn't land; it makes things worse. Salo's brother is clearly disgusted with the idea of Salo as their clan mystic, claiming it would make them a laughingstock, and all so that Salo could satisfy his sick desire to have something reserved for women.
Salo can feel that he's already lost the argument, but still he tries; he takes off his glasses, wincing as the light hits his damaged eyes, and makes one last try, explaining that he did it for the clan and all of them, not for himself. His brothers call him a liar, claiming that this is what he'd always wanted, and saying that they'll never bow to him as mystic or accept his blessing. They throw their reeds at his feet, calling him a stranger, and walk away, symbolically severing any relationship they have had or will ever have with him.
Every boy in the crowd follows, performing the same ritual -- throwing a cut reed at Salo's feet, calling him a stranger, and walking away. Salo feels each reed like a knife in the gut, but he doesn't let it show, standing in silence until every boy in the crowd has made his point. The ritual seems to last forever, but at long last, it's over, and he feels the old man's hand on his shoulder.
The old man murmurs that he's sorry for Salo, and Salo asks if he's been here before. The old man has, so Salo tells him that he should know Salo needs to be alone right now. The old man squeezes his shoulder and withdraws, saying that he'll be praying for Salo's success at his awakening tonight. Salo thanks him, and waits until he's gone to curl up in a corner of the shed and cry, hating himself for being so weak and soft, for crying so much lately, and wondering if the other boys might have been right.
"I want to try anyway."
Date: 2025-01-26 03:38 am (UTC)They cast off, and the Arc begins to explain where they are -- the Shrouded Pylon, one of the world's greatest enigmas and its best-kept secret. It's a relic of ancient civilizations, preceding the first Ascendency and even the Great Forgetting, and no one knows who built it or why. But they do know that the Pylon is a confluence of time and space, reaching deep into the past to see, or even collect and store, the lives of those who once lived.
Bright lights flare above them, and Salo understands instinctively that each one is a person of great consequence; when Salo asks about them, the Arc confirmed that they are the best of humanity, those who made their mark on history as scholars, warriors, leaders and artists. Salo can't help but voice his desire to be among them, to matter, and the Arc agrees that everyone does -- but asks him why he looks at the bright lights above and not the shadows below, which are far greater?
Salo obeys the implied suggestion and cries out in dismay; the water below him is a mist of countless nameless lives, the people who died in obscurity and were forgotten. Black mist rises from the water to envelop the boat, drowning out the brilliant souls and dandelions floating in the air, and the Arc tells Salo to prepare himself. Salo asks him what he should prepare for, but the question is quickly answered; a horrible, deformed spirit with long tangled limbs rises from the mist, and Salo knows that its name is Sorrow.
Sorrow slams Salo against the side of the boat and begins to choke him with one terrible limb, and past lives begin to plunge into his mind, one after the other: he is a child soldier who dies to an explosive mine, a young woman sold to an abusive husband, and countless, countless more. Sorrow seeps into his very being as he experiences life after life of wretched, miserable powerlessness, and though he tries to fight back and deny the visions, Sorrow continues to root itself in his being. The history of humanity contains evil beyond counting, and Sorrow forces him to experience each and every life as it whispers to him, offering peace and freedom if only he lets go of this unjust life.
Salo can see that the Arc has wrapped himself in a grey shield of physically manifest dispassion, denying the ideas of just or unjust and looking upon the countless miseries as simple facts of existence, denying them purchase on his spirit. He tries to do the same, but he can't do it, and the warmth of his life begins to fade in the spirit's horrid embrace.
But then he thinks, what if I lived my life to stop things like this from happening?
Sorrow calls him naive, claiming that no effort of his will outweigh the evils committed by humankind. But Salo has found his determination, and he says that he has to at least try, that he can't give up. He wants the chance to make a difference, and so he chooses to stay.
His resolve blossoms into a bright shield, defying the mists of Sorrow, and he pulls free of Sorrow's strangling limb. The spirit doesn't give up, probing at his shield with its dark mists and occasionally slipping a tendril through, but Salo knows now that he can win and, in the end, the mists gather into a furious vortex and dissipate, leaving dark water and bright dandelions behind.
Before much longer, the boat grounds itself on the opposite shore, and Salo and the Arc step out. Salo's legs are wobbly and he feels like a vise is crushing his chest. Once on the shore, he curls up against the side of the boat and cries as if he'll never stop, knowing as he does that no tears will ever be enough for the nameless.
Giving Tuk his blessing
Date: 2025-04-27 11:57 am (UTC)Salo gets his laughter under control; he wants to give Tuk his blessing, and has been preparing for it, but he's nervous he'll mess up somehow. Tuk distracts him by asking what he's working on; he's trying to perform his first enchantment, but he apparently picked some artifacts that are absurdly difficult to enchant, and he hasn't yet managed to transcode any useful spells without running into prose overwrite. He tries again, with Tuk's encouragement, and fails, causing an electrical backlash. He has no idea how people actually enchant the things if even his talisman isn't enough, and decides to stop for now and give Tuk his blessing.
Tuk asks if he's sure, and Salo tells him he made a promise and intends to keep it; the other man is elated and immediately runs off to get the other two menbers of their party, Alinata (the one who Tuk has a crush on) and Ilapara. They're fondly exasperated as Tuk asks Salo how it works; does he have to kneel or something?
Alinata explains that normally he'd have to do a whole ceremony, complete with dance, and Ilapara chips in that he'd have to wear hide and cover his face with clay, sacrifice a goat to Salo, sing his praises publicly and impress him with his strength. Salo immediately interrupts to say that they will be skipping all of that so as not to make an already-awkward situation even worse. Tuk offers to dance anyway, and Salo refuses. He tells Tuk to give him his arms, and starts to channel his ancestral talent.
The process should be difficult, since Tuk is a construct rather than a living human, but instead it's easy -- much too easy, and Tuk's body drinks in power much faster than Salo expects. He struggles to stop it, since too much can be very dangerous, but he can't stop the flow until it reaches the mind stone in Tuk's brain. When it does, the stone yields its secrets to him in an instant. Tuk's soul is that of a boy who died long ago, and his body is an exact replica of that boy's body, and that mind was once bound with dreadful spells designed to compel, bind and enslave him, all now broken. The stone drinks power until a surge of static shock blows them apart. Salo winds up on the floor several feet away, and Tuk is convulsing nearby.
Alinata tells Salo to take back the blessing or they'll lose him, but Tuk stops seizing and starts to laugh; he tells them all he's fine, and that it'll take more than that to kill him. Alinata still wants Salo to revoke the blessing -- she thinks Salo gave him too much power to be survivable for someone without cosmic shards -- but Tuk seems like he's all right, except that Salo can feel him very intensely in his head. Alinata explains that their psyches are now partially entangled, which is why Tuk can draw on Salo's strength. Tuk is briefly but very seriously concerned that Salo can read his mind now, but Salo explains that he can't -- they can communicate telepathically, but only deliberately, which Tuk is blatantly relieved to hear.
Salo suggests that they put some distance between themselves until the blessing settles a bit, and says he's going to go contact the Queen. He asks the others to watch him, and while Alinata refuses, claiming that the blessing could still kill him at any moment, Ilapara agrees to watch him out of amusement. Tuk tells Salo to send Her Majesty his regards, and as he leaves, Salo wonders what Tuk was like before all those spells were broken. He can't imagine it -- Tuk is brave and confident and won't let anyone cow him -- but Salo still wonders who his masters were, and how he broke free of them.
His mother's first cruelty
Date: 2025-05-20 06:22 am (UTC)SKILLS
Date: 2023-11-12 02:28 pm (UTC)Atmech characteristics
Date: 2023-11-12 03:00 pm (UTC)The most notable of his new capabilities is the ability to perceive energies and signals outside of the human range of perception. Notably, he can "hear" and "see" magical energy, electronic signals and radio waves. He can also interface directly with electronic devices and has an enormous capacity to subvert and infiltrate them, ignoring or trivially bypassing any security protocol he's ever faced with in canon. He doesn't seem to need the device to have a network interface, either, just to for it to be within his sensory range.
Voidcraft
Date: 2023-11-12 03:06 pm (UTC)Mirrorcraft
Date: 2023-11-22 09:27 pm (UTC)Mirrorcraft is used often in multidisciplinary spells and is a very common component in artifacts that have control interfaces. Voidcraft, for example, can make its illusions tangible or project images from a distance (for example, to scry using a preprepared focus).
Stormcraft
Date: 2023-12-18 07:37 am (UTC)Ziyo
Date: 2024-03-08 11:32 pm (UTC)* A sounding board for writing spells that can help him work at the speed of thought.
* The ability to scan areas around him or the crystal with total awareness; Ziyo will sort and interpret the information for him according to his priorities, and he can scan for things that normal senses can't detect (like poison or disease working in someone's body, or signs of life and/or demonic energy). He won't necessarily be able to interpret the scan data until he gets more experience with it, though.
* Access to a dreamscape space under his total control, where he can train without expending resources and bring other people; once he unlocks spell library access, those library will also be physically represented there
* Siri in his head at all times, in the form of a giant snake made of lightning
Ziyo also has the ability to use minor Storm and Mirror craft to project images, maintain or create illusions, speak aloud and otherwise do useful assistant-y things, though that ability is pretty limited. It can run devices for Salo according to his instructions if he's otherwise occupied or needs the precise timing of an AI.
Earthcraft
Date: 2024-06-02 10:28 pm (UTC)Higher Red
Date: 2024-08-16 08:21 am (UTC)The difference between Higher and Lower Red magic is similar to the difference between C and C++; Lower Red is a "lower level" language, cruder and less precise but able to accept and channel more power than its Higher counterpart. Higher Red can be used to cast spells, but is best suited to precision and complexity rather than raw power. Lower Red can incinerate a building, but Higher Red can raise the temperature by a single degree, or destroy a single cancer cell. Anyone who can use Lower Red can also use Higher Red, though the reverse doesn't necessarily apply; we don't meet anyone who casts with Higher Red directly.
In practical terms, Sunny will be able to write spells that are a lot more intricate and precise, especially if he embeds them into talismans. Higher Red can fit more prose functionality into a given substrate, so he'll be able to use his supply of pseudotronic bone and horn more efficiently, although if he wants something powerful he'll still have to use Lower Red. Higher Red will also make a lot of high-precision work, like genetic manipulation, easier, should that ever come up.
Archery
Date: 2024-12-17 05:36 am (UTC)Survival
Date: 2024-12-17 05:40 am (UTC)This also includes being a cowherd, mostly because it has no application in Tributary.
Bloodcraft
Date: 2025-02-17 06:10 am (UTC)That said, he'll be fairly limited with this skill at first, since by nature it requires a lot more specialized knowledge not just of magic, but of anatomy and physiology. He'll be reluctant to use any of the mental effects unless they're for benign purposes -- he'll be able to construct purely mental interfaces for his enchantments, for example -- and he'll be fairly limited in what he can extrapolate from his starting set of spells: some simple flesh- and bone-mending spells, a comprehensive Detect Thoughts variant and some significant improvements on his mental wards. The main thing it will unlock is being able to better help Viktor, in combination with his other disciplines.
Firecraft
Date: 2025-04-24 02:48 am (UTC)Sunny will start out with some basic destructive moonfire spells, as well as a few more general temperature-regulation spells.