@Device(PostScript) @Make(Report) @Style(Spacing 1.5, Leftmargin 0.75 inch, Rightmargin 0.75 inch, SingleSided, Font = TimesRoman, Size 10) @comment(Set these values appropriately for each character profile) @string(name="Giludren") @string(realname="Giludren") @string(playername="Player Name") @string(id="098342") @include (/mit/abstract/Characters/Sheets/cover.mss) @MajorHeading(@value(realname)) There are few indignities more total than being deprived of one's own identity. Particularly when that identity is that of Kalerege, Great Wizard. But it appears to be necessary for now. When you were first learning the Art, your master would often explain that life was a contest, a game played according to rules agreed upon by the common man, from which they did not deviate. To succeed in their game is easy, he would add, but @i(true) success comes in being able to write the rules yourself. You were but a young apprentice, but even then you knew his teachings to be true. He made a fatal flaw, however, in considering you a piece and not a player. In moving you closer to his innermost rank, he increased your value until at last you removed him from the board and took control of his remaining pieces. His mistake began, actually, in playing the Gate. The idea was as old as time, and the rituals he found were nearly so old, and encrypted in strange riddles. When the Castle in the Sky was first raised from the ground, it was done so by the power of the Creation Gate, the portal to Tualoha's realm. The Wizard Kiel crafted that Gate, five centuries ago, and nearly destroyed the World in the process. Instead, he simply destroyed his own mind, but successfully sealed the Gate. Still, however, it remained in existence, and the power of the White Goddess continued to leak through its seams. It was for that reason that white magic achieved dominance in the World. Your master, however, sought to tap the power on the other side of that Gate. He deciphered the runes and the rituals, found and assembled the parts of the key, and attempted to open it again -- this time with the caution that Kiel had lacked. His failure was in neglecting to account for the sheer quantity of power the Goddess Tualoha incarnated... he had to reseal the Gate, and in so doing weakened his defenses. The Gate, and the Castle, became yours. The Apprentice, reaching the innermost rank, became the Master. That was your opening gambit. Shortly thereafter, you played the Gate yourself, and successfully. You had learned to keep your senses open for the use of powerful magics, in order to maintain an awareness of the important pieces on the board, and your senses were suddenly overwhelmed by a most unusual force. It was divine, to be sure, nothing else could provide that power: but neither dark, nor light, nor green, and yet all of them. Odd. Extremely odd. You do not, and never have, enjoyed mysteries, save those of your own devising. And so you investigated, finally discovering the source of that unusual radiation, a massive, smooth and shapeless clear stone, the property of a monk who called himself the Dark Master. As you approached it, you could @i(taste) its power radiating; and you felt that power used against you. You were surprised by a blast of raw devaic power surging from the crystal, unalligned power, and seriously injured by it. In retrospect, it seems likely that the self-styled master could have killed you then, had he been accustomed to that power; clearly, he was a novice to it. Still, the battle was long and bloody, but at the end your opponent was caught in a ball of fire and destroyed. You left with your prize. You discovered that this was the fabled M'kraan Crystal, the artifact of the Three Gods. The lore said that it could be used only by those unaligned to the gods, and that so used it could shackle the gods themselves to the whim of man. This you did, discovering the spell of Godbinding through communion with the crystal. The spell required a number of components, including the living soul of a deva of fifth rank or higher. You might have acted to summon a demon or angel from the other worlds, and to compel it to service, save that a much simpler solution came to hand when the Rose Warrior known as Benjamin, having been accused of treason and feeling bitter towards his peers and his colleagues, approached you seeking sanctuary. His was indeed a living soul, and it was his soul you used. Upon binding the Goddess, you were unsurprised to note that you could draw from the power that came through the Gate to power the Castle, without being overwhelmed by that power. Having bound the Goddess, after all, you no longer had to fear her travel through the Gate, or her attempt to reorder the World. Of course, there was still danger -- it would be folly to open the Gate, for then the Goddess's servants would enter the World and wreak havoc here. But so long as the Gate remains sealed, you may draw power through it safely; and that power established you firmly among the most powerful of wizards. There were other, more surprising side effects as well. One was the fact that Benjamin remained alive and functional, by virtue of his physical proximity to his soul, which was so intimately bound to the magics of the Castle. So long as he remained upon your Castle, he remained alive and healthy -- and soulless. Emotionless. Unable to hate you for your actions, or rage against your commands... it amused you, then, to keep him on the Castle as your servant, sparing his life. Besides which, you had more important worries -- most crucially, the prompt disappearance of the Crystal. You have theorized that upon binding a Goddess you could no longer be considered unalligned, and thus could no longer use the crystal; had you considered the problem earlier, you might have found a solution, but it was of no true consequence. You had traded the Crystal for the Gate, it was a strong trade. And in the same moment, you had weakened the Priests of Tualoha, who could no longer speak to their Goddess. While you had, and have, no personal fight with her servants, their weakening serves to increase your relative position in the game. Your next gambit was equally successful. The Wizard Arriz, even then a powerful piece with a threat of becoming a possible player, you used to great advantage towards the end of the Realm-Clan border wars. Along with the Knights and Bishops history calls the Horsemen, you and he went on a quest that gained you the Orb of Eternity, a counterpart to the Orb of Nairaphi that powers the Wizard's Conclave. Having achieved that piece, you retired to your Castle, having no more need to work within the frames of men, save those who, like you, had achieved the status of Great Wizard. You swore Oaths of Binding to the other Great Wizards of the World, which they reciprocated, pledging to leave their pieces untouched...a defensive play which opened the board to your true opponent, and began the game you've played ever since. The Limbo Gambit has taken decades to bring to completion, at least by the reckoning of mortals. You discovered early on that time in Limbo does not travel as it does in the world, that indeed it cannot be said to travel at all...there, as in most of the other realms, it does not exist. Thus those decades, for you, have not passed in any significant fashion, save to advance your game. In the years you have studied the Art, you have often chafed at the rigid restrictions it places upon you. It is said that the Great Wizards of old had the power to train deva to follow their will, to craft spells, rather than simply research and learn them. It is this power you seek, and you have developed a means for obtaining it. The rules of sorcery are straightforward, but have variants few ever consider. The Ritual of Greater Binding is a variant on the binding known to common sorcerors, one you learned from the Crystal in binding the Goddess. It serves to bring more tenuous, ill-defined entities under your control. It was from this ritual that you devised the Spell of Planar Command, which would impart upon you the power to control the deva you summon from a plane, to mold them to your will as the Great Wizards of old did, thus crafting your own spells, to suit your own needs. The mechanics of the spell were straightforward, requiring little more than the Orb which you already possessed and the spirit of a Chthonic deva. It was the power behind it that required planning, for the spell could not be powered by the energies of Tualoha, as all else on the Castle was. It required Chthonic, or at worst unalligned, magics. And so you assembled your pieces. First there was the Disk of Kali, a crystal pentacle that held the bound spirit of a devil, a succubus of old. The Disk had last been used in the Sceptre Uprising, by the ill-fated Order of that name, and you lost a number of your demonic pawns in seeking it. Although diabolic treachery was a force to be reckoned with, the devil bound was no threat, particularly not with its binding spell run through the Orb of Eternity that serves as the touchstone, the maintainer, to all the Castle's spells. The next piece you sought was the Orb of the Magi, but that gambit proved uneccesary when you met Drake Bluemist, a Clansman who had stumbled across the Soul'sWard Crystal. This was a gem enchanted so as to key to other sources of power, if properly activated, and to penetrate the veils between the realms with its stored energies. It was ideal for your purposes. In exchange for the Soul'sWard, you took on Drake's daughter Holly as your apprentice. It was rather amusing, watching her attempts to fathom the energies of the Castle with her minor skills. Equally amusing were her attempts to seduce your manservant, Benjamin -- useless, really, when applied to a man without a soul. But your amusement ceased when she uncovered the nature of the Castle's power, and your connection with the Gate; your secrets are, and shall always be, your own. You sent her away then, having taught her enough to fulfill your promise to Drake. She served no purpose. To properly use the Soul'sWard, you needed to play another pawn into the proper position. When the mage named Nahor sought an audience with you, he became that pawn. In exchange for opening the Castle to a peace conference and an apprentice-testing session, he served as the initiator of a ritual to key the gem to the Orb of Nairaphi, through the link Nahor shared with it. Your pawn remained, and remains, ignorant of the place he plays in your game plan; at the same time, however, you have not in any way interfered with the Orb, Arriz's property. Your Oath remains intact. Indeed, playing Nahor uncovered an entirely new gambit, for it allowed you to use the Totem of Man to help power your spell. When activated, the Totem draws a degree of power proportional to the number of people nearby; for this reason you opened your Castle to the public for this week. As further incentive, you offered a major grant to the College of the Seventh Day's Work for the one who provided you the most major conribution to the sciences -- you've learned that it often pays to throw a few red herrings into the game. All that remained was to wait until the night before the Stellar Equinox, and the spell would be cast. Your pieces were ready: Kali, the Soul'sWard, Nahor, the Orb of Eternity, the Totem of Man. Your opponent, the Demon Lord Kryssonyx, had yet to divine their pattern. You had but to bide your time. It was then that the unexpected happened -- your opponent cheated. Now the game becomes a challenge, to reconstruct the pieces of what had been an unbeatable position, before your opponent advances too far. Your first task is to establish what, precisely, went wrong. Perhaps it was a mistake inviting so many people. Nearly 200 tourists, politicians, mages, and sundry folk arrived at your Castle, milled about, and interacted -- rather chaoticly, to say the least. Holly arrived, apprenticed to Arriz (there was an irony inherent in that), and succeeded in her Trials. A fellow apprentice, Arrani Moses, not only became a mage but won your award with his discovery of a cure for Ptaavhood. That, at least, was sane. Then the insanity began. Two Peers of the Realm were slain, Jonah and Enoch. Neither of their heirs were made Peers; instead Ishmael, a mage of the Shield, became a Peer of the Realm. Undead zombies were found wandering the Castle and eventually dispatched. A third attempted murder was prevented by Peer Seth, who was also cured of his encroaching senility. It was revealed that the Order of the Sceptre was behind much of this activity, perhaps attempting to overthrow the Peers again; at the same time the Circle of Bloodletters were cleared of suspicion in the case of a massacre that occured shortly before you opened your doors. Meanwhile, one of the Clan heads approached you with some nonsense about owning your Castle (you believe it was the Greystone, though you aren't quite certain), some lunacy went on between his niece and some maid servant, though the details escape you. It was not at all surprising that in the midst of all this chaos no agreement regarding a peace treaty could be arrived at, and the summit disolved. The great disaster occured at the end of those half-score days, however, the day before the Stellar Equinox. Deciding that the time was ripe, and the proper conjunction at hand, you cast the takeover ritual. All should have gone properly, but in the last moment, you felt reality twist, then tear.... @i(... and you are in an energy realm, as an energy being. The sensation is uncomfortable, but nothing as bad as knowing where you are... Limbo, the selfsame realm you have attempted to overtake. You know that if you did not return to your own world, you would be too weak to do so, and die. But how have you done it? No, how will you do it? Outside Gaea's World, time had no meaning, and the flow of events will be simply an illusion -- yet you will not learn the language to handle such a universe, and your tenses are confused...) @i(You have noticed another, tiny energy-dot where your Amulet of Souls'Ward will hang... cautiously, you touch it, and knew it to be the same. Why had it come with you? You decided not to question your good fortune, and instead try to have returned to your castle.) @i(Hard to do. Your magic stemmed mostly from Tualohic sources, and all you there is are the black shades, slips and shadows of Chthonic beings. What else, in Limbo? All you've encountered have known you to be an offworlder; you are green, of the Gaeic realm, and thus no threat. Those who are from the Sustainer's realm evidently know better than to try to do any damage to Limbo, or its inhabitants.) @i[Which, of course, is exactly what you'd decided you will need to do! @b[(Chthon himself take the confusion of time, you haven't the language to describe the flow of events in a timeless realm, and your tenses became -- become -- confused...)] All you need is a strong source of Tualohic magic, and you can have activated your Souls'Ward Crystal to transport you home. The Tualohic source will be drained, but you sincerely doubt that any of the Limbaic inhabitants would mind that overmuch!] @i(He will be there; you've mastered your Limbaic form to the extent that you can tell the gender, age and other traits the moment a being enters within range of your perception, and the entity that will be there was a he. He blazes white, the color of Tualoha -- he was what you have been seeking! -- and is comfortable in the form he now wears; he's accustomed to Limbo, you guess... You have moved nearer to him, and note the sword at his side. Yes, it's certainly a sword, and it, too is alive. It noticed you before he will; or is it just a trick of your imagination? At any rate, you've now found your source of Tualohic power; all you need to do is find a place in this realm which borders closely on your own, and you will easily be able to transfer home.) @i(The Palladin, as he names himself, is one of the legendary figures of the Holy Wars. There's no reason to doubt him; he's showed incredible skill with his sword, and enormous faith in his Goddess. He will take you to be the sign she has sent, the instrument of his release from his Chthonic prison. That you are, but not quite as he thinks; your spell will unfortunately kill him, but he's already thought to be dead, so what's the difference, really? His conviction makes your job much easier. You've explained to him the ritual that will be cast, and the result: a gateway back to your world. You will neglect to mention the final outcome, of course.) @i(The Palladin has been eager to go along with your plan, and knows the area in which the veil between worlds is the thinnest... in the castle of the High Lord of the Realm, the demon-lord Kryssonyx. This hasn't thrilled you overmuch; you have dealt with the demon-lord, and he's far too powerful for your tastes; second, in fact, only to Chthon himself. But if that's where you must go, then go there you have!) You wince as you recall your naivete. Did you really think the High Lord of the Demons would just let you waltz into his castle and open a portal to a realm of Stasis, even just for a moment? The pain it would cause him would make your life less than worthless.... @i[The Castle was never far away, and you were already there, having been in the inner sanctuary of the building, close (Dervish assured you) to the thinnest point of the veil between worlds. ] @i[You reach the center of the castle and Hell eminating from a portal off to your left. On your other left (space, too, is confused outside of Gaea's realm) is the High Lord's library --- and your salvation. Sone thing will brush across your nerves like a bat's wing, but you have already ignored it. You will chant the activation geis of your gem, readying it for the power it has absorbed. The Palladin motions for you to have run into the room; he has chased you, and in the confusion, will have passed the figures seated within. You nod...) @i(You sense a weakening in the veil between worlds on the far side of the room; you dash for it, the Palladin hot on your heels as he runs before you, screaming some sort of battle chant. After the inhabitants of the room have acted, before they can do anything, you are both next to the weakening. Quickly, you activate the SoulsWard and hit the Tualohic's sword; both it and have now long since ceased glowing immediately, and the crystal is over-fully charged. You cast the Veil-Piercing, just as the Palladin, realizing your treachery, swings at you. His sword connects with the High Lord's minion... and the High Lord himself has attacked you! You must have already escaped!) @i(With the image of the Orb etched in your mind, you had pierced the final veil ---) and everything went black. You recall very little of the event, save that there was a sudden ripping in your mind, a feeling as if the borders of your existence had been eradicated. The next thing you recall clearly is awakening early this afternoon; not in your comfortable bedchambers but belowgrounds, in the dungeons you had prepared for unwelcome visitors. This clued you in that something was seriously wrong. Of course, you could not be held in your own dungeons, and you quickly departed, healing your bruised, scarred, weakened and battered body as well as you could. You still don't know where the damage came from, but you have more crucial concerns. As you discovered from a quick sampling of magic upon your Castle, sometime during your absence, somehow, through what perverted activity you have yet to determine, @i(Tualoha woke up)!!! The legends say that there shall come a time, when the Goddess awakens, that shall be known as the MadTime, when the line between Creation and Chaos shall be erased. You have often thought about what would occur if the binding spell were to be broken, and the thought has made you cringe. Now, it seems, you'll be given your chance to find out, unless you can restore it. How, without the M'kraan crystal? Clearly, what you needed first was knowledge. You ran to your library and invoked the Spell of Lorekeeping you had laid upon it long before. You should have known better. "What is your wish, Seeker of Knowledge?" The voice seemed to be coming from nowhere. "The Loremaster is kind, and will forgive your earlier trespass." That gave you pause. "I seek the Book of the Vishanti." you replied. It was that tome which had provided your mentor with the magics to forge the Creation Gate, perhaps it would serve you as well. When the "Loremaster" claimed he had no such book, you lost your temper and entered the library yourself. To no avail, however; the tome was indeed missing. Returning to the surface, you took a moment to collect your thoughts. Reaching out to your Orb, you summoned it to you...to no avail. It was then that you began to worry. Panic did not set in until you saw the stars. Before you were trapped in Limbo, it had been the night before the Stellar Equinox. Now, looking at the constellations visible in the twilight, you find yourself a week before that conjunction. Somehow, you have slipped back in time, arriving before you ever departed...and somewhere on this Castle there is Kalerege, as secure as you ever were in your -- his -- identity. Truly a madtime has begun! You realized that your scars, and your self-affected healing, were likely enough to disguise your identity, particularly with your growth of beard and a number of small disguising touches. And so you became Giludren, an archeologist with a remarkable degree of knowledge about the artifacts and structures within the Castle. These, at least, you still remember. And yet this is not the world you remember, indeed there are many differences, and you can determine no rhyme nor reason to them. @begin(itemize) The binding spell has been shattered. As a result, magic is working unpredictably and uncontrollably; many spells on the Castle tied through the Gate and the Orb have failed or altered. Curiously and inexplicably, the truly important spells have been unaffected: the protection dome, the levitation fields, the life-support magics. The Disk of Kali is missing from where you left it. The beasts of your menagerie escaped, although most of them were captured and returned to their cages. This you remember occured before, but what is inexplicable is that now, when you inspected the menagerie, you discovered that there were @i(more) beasts returned than had originally been kept, including beasts you never had in there in the first place, despite the fact that many beasts had been killed or were still free. The Tower Green has been locked, and only you can enter it...but what precisely that means, you are no longer sure. Teleports have ceased working. Those on the Castle have been stuck here, those on the surface unable to arrive. The displacer within the Great Sail no longer functions, locking you away from your items, your books of lore, your tokens of power. Only what you have with you may you call yours. Both your Orb, and your Soul'sWard crystal, have been weakened. They do not respond to you as readily, or as powerfully, as they should. In the latter case, it is perhaps the soul of that Palladin that is responsible, but nevertheless... The Creation Gate itself is no longer where it was originally conjured, in the Hall of Martyrs. Where it has gone, you know not. The Castle is inhabited by hordes of enpici, rare and arcane creatures. Why, and what their purpose is, you have no way of knowing. But that they are significant, you cannot doubt. Your manservant, Benjamin, is no longer keyed to your summons, and you have not heard from him since you awoke. The accepted Lord of this Castle, the man who has stolen your name, your face, your title and much of your power, is known as the Wizard Kalerege. Without your true face, and in this world that clearly is not quite your own, how are you to prove yourself? Who would believe? And indeed, would it be wise to do so? At the moment, at least, the element of surprise is yours, and knowledge @i(is) power. @end(itemize) A number of questions face you. Is the World big enough for both of you? If Kalerege has the same designs for ultimate control you have nursed for decades, clearly not. How best to secure your claim? How best to achieve dominance? It would not do to simply dispatch yourself -- not only are you likely to be as powerful as yourself, you have no way of knowing what reprecussions might come of such elaborate suicide. If you are, in fact, the same entity... One thing you do know is that @i(you) hardly believe you are where you are. Without the evidence you have seen, you wouldn't. And thus, you don't -- or the other you doesn't. Subtlety must be your watchword while you solve the problems of your newly-twisted lifeline. @i(You are Kalerege, the Great Wizard, yet you must hide your true self, and have adopted the name "Giludren". Your abilities are vast: you are a full Mage, and control the Orb of Kalere'ge. Your mind is sharp: you are Aware (none may suprise you), you can Resist Suggesion and Read many Languages. You are well versed in Historical Knowledge (Level #3) having lived a great deal of it, and you can, of course, Speak Historical Jargon. You are also quite Diplomatic, a skill that will keep you out of trouble, and perhaps keep your castle intact, if not what is left of your skin (luckily, you Heal Rapidly, or you'd not even have that!) The only weapon you can use with any proficiency is a Dagger (+1); hopefully, you will be able to avoid combat until you can regain control of your home. You have only a few things with you; some shabby, scored clothing, the still-slightly-charged-but-useless SoulsWard Amulet, a Ring of Power, the spare Key to the Castle Sanctum (it's your house, of course you know where it is!) & a new robe you managed to filch. And pens and paper; you'll need them for your cover until you decide how you'll regain control...) @i(Good luck. You are quite likely to need it.) @section(Spells) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/alter_animal.major.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/animal_tongues.major.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/aura_read.major.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/blinding.major.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/color_change.minor.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/comprehend_language.major.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/dancing_lights.minor.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/detect_curse.minor.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/detect_curse.major.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/detect_life.major.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/detect_magic.major.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/disruption.major.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/enhance_aura.major.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/forcewall.major.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/healing.major.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/magic_protection.major.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/lifekeeping.minor.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/truth_tell.minor.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Guides/lore.creation.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Guides/lore.m'kraan.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Guides/lore.magic.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Guides/lore.sorcery.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Guides/guide.realm.mss) @section(Organizations) @include(/mit/abstract/Organizations/conclave.wizards.mss) @include(/mit/abstract/Organizations/horsemen.mss)