Completed The Travels of Eanos Swifthand - Suvan Sea

Eanos takes ship to Syrilas

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An inland sea created by Ivak's cataclismic fury during the Valterrian, the Suvan Sea is a major trade route and the foremost hub for piracy in Mizahar. [lore]

The Travels of Eanos Swifthand - Suvan Sea

Postby Eanos on October 17th, 2013, 10:44 am

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Eanos felt ill. There had been many dangers which held anticipated during his travels and many of his fears had revolved around this voyage across the Suvan Sea to his final destination, at least for now in any case in Syrilas. To be below the earth was the natural home of an Isur, in a place where rock formed a mighty fortress around him, holding him secure and setting out the boundaries. It had been bad in the mountains where there had been no roof but merely and endless sky. Sometimes he’d felt that he might just fall off and up into that emptiness, swallowing him like some monster.

But that had been nothing now he realised to this. Not only had the horizons disappeared now so that there was nothing above him, increasing his unease about the sky a hundredfold, now there was nothing below him either, not unless you counted this flimsy bit of wood which seemed determined to capsize with every minor wave that came under the keel. Though land had quickly passed away into the distance, now there was nothing to see, and no matter the flap of sail or the passing of birds which spoke surely of land within flying distance, it seemed that they were becalmed and would never find land again.

His maundering meanderings were interrupted by a heave of his stomach as the ship twisted its way over a wave and dropped back into the trough and he raced to the rail only for his stomach to heave dryly, his earlier meal long ago gifted to the fishes below. He sank back against the railing in misery once he’d regained control of his stomach once more. This was a danger most unexpected, though he’d heard of it and discounted it as something only the weak would suffer from. Other dangers he’d heard of, though some of them were from his childhood then they would sit around the stove in the kitchen late at night and listen to tales of ships being eaten in one bite by huge monsters which then dragged down the men one by one to a watery grave. Even now he could imagine huge tentacles lifting silently out of the water and gripping tightly across the rail before the ship was ripped apart and he would be dropped into the freezing water below.

The one thing in his favour it seemed was that the crew left him alone. Whilst he had overheard them mocking some of the other passengers who were as sick as he was, they seemed cautious of the muscles developed in working with metal and the perhaps fey reputation of the Isur. He wasn’t sure about that, though he didn’t question it, but he had noticed that the taunting was selective, mostly to the humans and not to the other races. He dropped that musing though because he lacked interest in what the others might do. He wasn’t even that worried about the opinions of the crew for they were not Isur and so were nothing and the opinions of those who were nothing counted for nothing.

The illness lasted a few days and that part of the journey remained mostly a blur in his memory, but as time passed so the ship and the way it moved began to seem more normal. With the sickness abating he was able to go back down into the cabin area, fetid though it was for the space was small and cramped with passengers and their things. It was hardly a luxury cruise for this was a merchant ship and passengers were treated just as any other cargo and with not much more respect than that. The voyage created some dilemma in the heart of the Isur, aside from the problem of spending time in the dark and secure cabin cum cargo space with the smells of spices which did precious little to hide the stink from the bilges or sit on deck where the air was fresher but the sky loomed large, but rather because he was perhaps for the first time that he could remember forced into idleness.

Once or twice since he had found his sea legs, he had helped the crew pulling a line, but that was not that frequent and even then he had felt more of a hindrance than a help to the experienced mariners. It just didn’t feel right to sit there with nothing to do. At first it was a novelty and he’d stared around him with great curiosity at the ship, the sea and his fellow passengers. But that soon paled and since he was not interested in striking up conversations with the others it wasn’t long before boredom began to raise its ugly head.

This was hardly the place to perform metal working and in any case he had no tools or equipment. He’d discovered that there were some crude facilities aboard so that the captain could make necessary repairs but there was no one who Eanos would consider evenly remotely competent and in any case the crew had no interest in having fire aboard a ship made of timber and pitch any more than was strictly necessary and after just the briefest of reflections he was forced to agree with them.

With no outlet for his smithing abilities and not having any reason to offer to do such tasks as sharpening tools which the crew in any case were competent enough at he was soon forced to consider those skills more suited to his clan. His fledgling abilities in magecraft were completely unsuited to such a place as this even had he wished to consider them which left just his Auristics and Glyphing.

He did spend some time transmuting small amounts of his personal djed so that he could do some reading of the people around him. That took some care because he did not want them to know what he was doing. Djed working was not that commonplace and he had no desire to be thrown off the ship by superstitious people sure that his presence would herald disaster, but it seemed that most were already learning to ignore his surly presence and so what little he did was not noticed as far as he could tell.

He concentrated then instead on his glyphs for this was something which required a very different sort of practice from that of the use of his personal djed. Use of world magic often felt strange or distant to him because it lacked that very intimate connection which he had with the Auristics. Fortunately though he reckoned that in practising his glyphs it was more likely that none here who saw him would realise what it was that he was doing. Those that did ask he could distract by suggesting that he was working either on an artistic piece or a private alphabet of the clan. It would be hard to prove otherwise he thought given that glyphs were nearly always unique to the artist and so long as he didn’t actually start leaving around finished complete glyphs or storing things inside pieces of parchment then like as not he would be alright. Then too the destruction of the glyphs as the piece was activated would also be likely to give him away, so that was something else to be considered.

He started then with the much safer route of simply working on the individual glyphs which would form part of a Glyph. Theses he could draw with impunity since they were just squiggles on a page and he could even arrange them in pretty patterns, perhaps in the borders of a document leaving space to write something in common in the centre. Once he’d spent some time considering the idea it was easy enough to lull his fellow passengers and even the crew into a false sense of security such that they would simply assume that he was doing more of his drawing and leave him alone. Once that was achieved, not only would his hand be back in from an artistic point of view so that he was less likely to make mistakes in the drafting but then perhaps he could experiment with some ideas which lurked in his mind.

There were other forms of arcane djed work, one of which was voiding. He’d seen it done back in the Silver Tower, but he’d not as yet been initiated into its arts. It seemed to him though that the glyphs could be used to a somewhat similar effect. He was personally sure though he’d never asked the question of his masters that with a standard storage type glyph that it must make use of the same technique as voiding since both placed things in places where they could not be seen, but could be got back later. One day he would ask, but perhaps it was somewhat of a pointless question. Knowing the answer would satisfy his curiosity but he wasn’t sure that the knowledge would actually change anything.

With little to do aboard the ship and not being quite sure how much longer he had before the voyage was over, Eanos had plenty of time to think about the possibilities of the glyphs. He had learned them largely as part of his training in magecraft since they played a key part in the control of djed for that, but of course it was a proper discipline in its own right.

During the voyage he kicked himself for his lack of foresight because of course he could quite easily have used the storage glyphs to well, store things that he could then have brought with him. Being world magic there was no drain on his djed, only of the time taken to create them and that with skill and practice ought not to take long. Creating a portal large enough to be of much use would be something of a problem, but easier indeed to carry around a large piece of parchment than an anvil. Come to that, he had struggled up and down mountains while burdened down under a heavy pack which had also cut into and bruised his shoulders. Of course as a hardy Isur he could hardly complain about that but now in reflection nearly all that he had carried could have been stored away in glyphs. Not only that but it would likely have been possible to store food, hot or cold, and to have been able to bring them back out just as they had been put in. He wasn’t entirely sure about that one, but it would certainly be worth experimenting with once he was off this boat and had some privacy.

Hind sight was a wonderful revealer of the obvious and while it was irritating to realise how much of a fool he had been, the knowledge was private and since everyone travelled as he did no one else would have noticed. He realised too that it was something of a risky endeavour because constantly drawing things out of a backpack, or so it would seem to anyone who didn’t actually see him performing magic, too small to contain it, would quickly label him as a magician. What people did not understand, they feared, and given that the Valterrian had been the result of the misuse of such power, albeit by a god, on the whole such fears were to be understood and respected. Still though, careful management of it was a worthwhile aim even if wandering through the wilderness with just a backpack stuffed full of parchment was not as practicable as he’d first assumed.

With that in mind he worked more diligently at his glyphs and where at first he had merely drawn the forms out in a disconnected way, now he started to pull them together in a form far more coherent. He stayed with the idea of an apparently decorative border around a blank centre in which he could later write but before where the patterns had been meaningless, now he started to use the glyphs more as he would to create the portal.

It was a concept that he found interesting. Would it matter if there were actually something in the space of the portal before it was activated? What would happen to it? He suspected that it wouldn’t matter and that nothing would happen to it, after all he’d never noticed such a problem before. It was one of those times when the obvious made itself known and there was a moment, of “ah yes, of course”. Knowledge which had been unconscious now became a part of his conscious decision making. He wondered how many other mages had made use of such a device. With a parchment scroll or even a book it ought to work well enough, so long that is that it was possible to trigger one spell and not the identical one on the other side of the parchment or next to it on the scroll. Of course there was an easy answer to that, which was to test it, time spent wondering was quite pointless and a waste of valuable time.

With that thought in mind he set to making the final changes and quickly drew a rough line around the area he would keep for the text, perhaps some notes in common about the journey, and then set to drawing the interlinked glyphs that he used to create the portal. This would be a simple enough glyph, there was no need for a path or anything such, just the glyph and the trigger. Once he’d made some notes in the centre he could activate the Glyph and see how it worked. Then once that was done, assuming it would work he would redraw it, for the ink would not survive the process and replicate it on the other side of the parchment. What would happen to the items that he put into the storage section did not bear thinking about but that was normal enough with this.

The first test proved uneventful, but then he would have been shocked had it not given that it was a simple Glyph that he’d done many times before and used for this purpose. The only change was the adaptation of the shape of the portal because before he’d used the circular form which was what he’d been taught. His practice however on the ship had allowed him to shape the glyphs which created the portal such that they created a squarer border. There had been a niggle of doubt in his mind as to whether the new form would work but it seemed that that doubt was without foundation.

Now he could start on the more complex testing process, but before he did, it was time to give his fingers a rest for they were feeling a little bit cramped from the careful scribing of the glyphs around the portal. He’d been doing the test in the relative privacy of the cabin area since it was clear of his fellows who were all up on deck enjoying the sun which had chosen to come out earlier that morning. As he reached the ladder though there was a shout from above and this shattered his concentration and made him forget his plans.

Syrilas!

His destination was in sight, and a new adventure awaited him. Djed manipulation could wait for a while for he was now too excited and absorbed in the plans for what happened next.
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Eanos
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Location: Syrilas
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The Travels of Eanos Swifthand - Suvan Sea

Postby Radiant on October 18th, 2013, 7:20 am

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Eanos :
Experience
Skill XP Earned
Observation +1 XP
Glyphing +2 XP
Drawing +1 XP


Lores
Lore Earned
Travel: Sea Sickness
Legend: Sea Monsters
World Magic: Glyphing And Voiding Can Be Used For Storage


Loots


Notes :
Good thread, Eanos. :) In the future, do try to split up your solos. This particular one is worth at least 3 posts. Separating them make them easier to read and can net you more XPs.


My radiance is not bright enough?
If you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade, beam me a PM and we can work it out. :)
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