| At first Rayage would find the tome difficult to open, until he turned it to see a protective band wrapped around the pages to keep the dust out, forming a small seal of sorts when in conjunction with the old leather. It was lucky it was noted, for with the extremely weakened shields left; the entire edifice might have been long crumbled into dust. The paper of the tome was delicate in his fingers, a single wrong turning of the page could destroy so much work; but that did not deter the nuit. No... he continued to open the article up and began to read... carefully measuring time as nonexistant as his thoughts began to be stirred by the ancient mysteries , and somewhat dismiss the glimpse into some of the horrors once inflicted upon the populace of a pre-valterrian mining town. |
| Summer, Day 21 Work never seems to end. No, never, but it is a good busy. Something to keep me occupied, but oh so repetitive. The golems today were nothing special, common workers, but all in all were in need for repair. I swear! They wait too long to send them to the workshop, trying to get the maximum efficiency out of each and every worker created here. I call it stupidity. There are warning signs of malfunctions, but they are ignored in the name of progress. The overseers... Incompetent fools who couldn’t lead a horse to water. Fools all of them. I feel like I’m wasting my time and talents here. I should be in the capital, but no, I was sent here. My skills are wasted here. Any buffoon could do the work I do. It is not complicated. I just want the chance to really use my knowledge and it seems this place is holding me back. I cannot stand these fools, humans, and most definitely the overseers. How can they accurately 'over see' my work when they don’t know Animation from Alchemy? Its all the same to them. Magic is magic, but it gets results. Soon though, the project will be complete. It has been in the works for a while now, but having gathered scraps from the worthless golems Ive constructed one of my own. Perhaps with the unveiling of this creation I will finally get some respect around here. I grow so weary of being commanded by these fools who are only good for digging holes. I guess we will see in time. Summer Day 30 My golem has drawn more attention than I ever could have garnered, the overseer of this mining town for the Alahean Empire has heard of it; and came down personally to talk with me. It was strange... the creature was a nuit as well; one far older then I could think of. "Leywellin'' was its name and his questions were far more astute then I ever could have guessed some mere upstart troglodyte could have perceived in a million years. He took down my complaints of the golem situation here; and devised a treatise to procure me ten new units. Who knows if they will survive or not to actually make it here? This creature though tested my knowledge to its limits, and I was left feeling slightly befuddled when things diverged into theories I had not considered before, including several interesting possibilities which were raised upon the idea of magical interactions. Glyphing for instance, suffused with animation and alchemic circles to better direct and perhaps combine them in more functions then originally possible, perhaps creating a cypher or catalyst to help encode homunculi or vice versa with skills passed on from any miner in the place. Or perhaps its uses in malediction, or spiritism's Dust to be used in an alchemical process to transfer behaviors of the dead. This Leywellin said that with magic; almost anything was possible so long as the price was met... and here in this city where thousands die in the mines each year to fuel the empire, what's a thousand more here and there? Yes... perhaps there is some truth that the Alahean Empire chooses its top Overseers based on Merit and merit alone. This Leywellin seems to be odd for a nuit though; I hear he cares still for the children he sired out of his first body. But geniuses are forgiven their foibles, are they not? Just like I was forgiven my uses of playing with the golems here... and promised some better facilities to test these theories... Yes; yes things are looking up if this man delivers. |
| Rayage’s gaze would be fascinated by the journal and he would endeavor to continue reading things very carefully. |
Fall 30th, It has been some time since I’ve got the new facility and my tests have been more than promising. New developments have been made. I have devised a way to take effects of other magical disciplines and add them to the alchemical equation, which in turn ties into my animation. I will create the perfect golem, but why stop with golems I thought one day. Why not start making the perfect being, immortal like the gods. Yes, golems were only the beginning, and depending on how well they go decides where I will go next. Though the results Im getting are more than promising. The worker golems are better now, and I now some other nuits under my chain of commnad. Granted they all took a grand oath not to record or even share any information we learn here. I will decide what is important. I run this lab. So much to do, so little time...though I have the feeling the Overseer knows all of this; no matter what I do. At every step when I come up with a new theory, he takes it and expounds it in several directions I had never considered. Routing through several of my proposed projects, he dismisses and forbids me on some tangents of research... as if he knew they would lead to dead ends before they were completed. I ventured down a few paths and met with failures. How did he know? Winter Day 58 Blood, what a horrible catalyst for magecrafting, but necessary. There was a cave in, and about five hundred miners were injured beyond hope of healing. At least not unless a marked healer of Rak'keli intervened. But I had a better use for them. They bled out their lives for me today all at once, I think have enough now for my first magecrafted item. I've made a knife, all the better to carve my circles with; and a new spool of D-Wire has arrived. Fall Day 18 My first Daek- Nuit Today I did it, I did my first Daek-nuit with this idiot dead guy: It was a crude sort of thing, only something a master animator could accomplish, and its working fills my heart with joy; or what I think surpasses for joy. A miner, a rather interesting sort seemed to die today... no not by failures in the mines but by my hands. I actually pitied this fools undeathly existance and sought to educate him in the glories of being a nuit. His body was so frail, and fragile, I had chosen a new one for him and begun to set up the animation circles just as if I was making myself a golem or a doll. Only this time, I laid the live old man in the one circle next to the newly suffocated corpse and began by beginning the process anew. With one small exception; at the time where it would only take a copy: I slew the man and poured far more energy into the circle then before; taking the real soul and stuffing it into the body. At last; A real nuit had been born. But instead of thanking me; the fool tried to attack me for his removal from the pains of the flesh and he attacked me with his new corpse body. So alas... my golem intervened and crushed him... I think I'll use his parts in my next experiment. But this makes me wonder; how did pycons become ensouled? Was perhaps their formation a result of a soul transfer like the daek nuit yet combined into an alchemically prepared body? Were they a failure… who knows? Maybe one day I shall experiment. |
| Rayage’s eyes would widen imperceptibly… could a daek-nuit procedure using animation be that simple? But why could only a master do it? Was it because only a master could design a circle that could rip apart a soul from the body just before it entered Dira’s embrace? If so; it was potentially only one way to make a nuit… but the idea of the pycon’s creation was fascinating as well. What could he do to test such theories? Should he even try? |
| Summer, Day 45 There is nothing more irritating than something, some unseen factor, suddenly making its way into the experiment. Nothing is perfect, that I understand, but this I cannot stand for. Lately my projects have been gaining the unseenly personalities of the people whom I used in my experiments. This simply will not do. So, I got to thinking and today I’ve made a breakthrough of sorts. I thought, how can one control, manipulate, and utterly remove thought and the 'mind' from an alchemical equation. The answer was simple, or perhaps more elementary than I believed it to be. I had to capture the essence of thought, the ideas and everything in between. Using a device crafted from Animation to represent thought I can utterly remove the annoying 'substance' by putting my creation in the filter of the alchemical equation. Thought, idea, instinct, all of it can be removed from the subjected, omitted from the entire equation just like that. Although the device has to be remade for each individual reaction, I have found it to be more than sufficient in removing what I wanted it to. Sometimes genius is simplicity. Summer Day 12, Today I have successfully hacked a golem in a manner of which I had not been able to do so before, but now I considered that my first homunculus, the flesh golem of a miner group who irked me is impossible to duplicate without hypnotism. His six arms are barely able to hold my books as I go forth from workstation to workstation, but no matter. No matter at all. Today it is finished: my magecrafted catalyst. I found by incorporating various metals such as zinc, steel, tungsten and ---unreadable--- I was able to perfect my catalyst to a point where I could then magecraft it for my final purpose: I've begun building my dream. My dream of wishing for immortality is at hand, though I must keep it quiet. Yes... the Overseer knows I think. I think he knows everything. I've found out something interesting, the nuits, the ones I had thought grand oathed are all relatives of his; every single one of them ; each learned in something similar to my work... and worse they all said that he had trained them. He... in all these arts... truly the overseer is something fierce indeed. I would be wise not to underestimate him, nor any other overseer great or small. For if this one is this intelligent then they all must be. I did receive a strange conversation with him though; he told me there was an place being built out in the wilderness for study, that perhaps I was beginning to achieve the requisite skills I'd need to begin practicing there. That daunted me... especially when I heard the nuits helping me speaking to him about my projects. I dont' know how they could speak! I grand oathed them... didn't I? The only way it could have been overwritten was if a stronger oath was taken... but is that possible? Am I perhaps the only sane nuit left in these parts? The prospect is a frightening one; still the tale of a place for experiments solely for experiments is interesting... and if they have better facilities then here it is something I should consider. This place, this amazing place, was better than I could have dreamed it to be. Not only am I serving the empire, but my magic will actually be recognized and I am actually respected. For once in my undeath I believe that I am truely where I belong. The vast amount of resources and the free pass when it comes to research was more than I could have hoped for. A dream, though at high costs. I know my experiments are property of this place, of Sahova, and so to prevent the unworthy here of stealing my secrets I have encoded my notes with vague references of people, places and things, all representative of the inverse. I am farily confident in my encryption and although these wizards are intimidating and perhaps, if I may admit, brighter than myself anyone, human or otherwise, who reads my notes will think me a raving lunitic. Exactly what I want. So far everything is going as planned. Ive begun working myself up the ladder and chain of command here for my work, which others would kill to know to do. For my work is something no one can replicate. It has taken years and years to get to the point where I am today but... |
| -there would be some pages torn from the diary making the rest of the entry unreadable for who can read what is not there. His eyes would dance in rage, but his scientific firmament would take hold of his actions so he would not damage this precious receptacle of the past further. His vision would look at the hole in the pages, burrowing into it for a sign of what might explain this ; this desecration! After a bit of searching, in scrawled pen on the back cover he would only to see a single handwritten passage of explanation. |
By my hand research worker #2281 was executed during overgiving and for offenses against the Empire and his work placed under restrictions. I leave this notebook here as a testament to his drive and desires with many of the words edited at my choosing... His skeleton and his homunculis' bones rests with him within his first golem's berth. I had to destroy it as well. Though I have taken everything I could which was undamaged from the worker’s progress including all but his earliest prototype. That lies within the first bones of his flesh homunculi; melted beyond disrepair. I have no need to remove them as together they shall prove a fitting visual warning to the rest to not disobey my words, as such the same is this note. Signed. Leywellin. Baron of Ƞశफĺʒŕ |
| What would Rayage’s thoughts be upon this measured snippet o f data? Was the half destroyed golem in the decrepit workshop bay the same? Had the prizes he may have garnered from within this text still be there? Perhaps… with a bit of searching he might find out if there was anything left to scavenge? |
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