Stairway to Heaven

[Savas Tigh]

The Drifter never offered him any help; not advice, not cryptic hints, not even witty banter or insults.

He just stood there against the backdrop of the screaming mutes, a pale, towering presence in a vast tan cloak and a strange red uniform. Savas watched him out of the corner of his eye as he worked. That was how he noticed the small scar on the Drifter's forehead, dead center above and between the eyebrows. It was circular. Faint enough that Savas didn't notice it at all for a long while. It struck him as the kind of scar a man might get if he could survive getting shot in the head at close range by something better than what the Alerians and Kebirans had access to.

When he was done, Savas had converted an entire fountain-courtyard to his purposes. It took him a while. He wasn't a geomancer, most of his equipment had been broken over the course of this merry adventure, and there's only so much blood in your average faceless idiot. He was still getting the hang of fire again too. Shadow and darkness; easy to get back in touch with that when you're a necromancer by trade. Fire produces light and warmth and hope. It was only because enough of Aeraul had stayed behind to reawaken his knack that Savas could do anything with it at all.

He set the blood on fire, then twisted shadows into solid letters burnt into the ground, the walls, everything. He completely painted and burned and shadow-wrote several thousand square feet without ever stopping to do more than kill someone and bleed them for paint's sake. The end result looked like a vast rambling narrative writ large on walls and floors, physically patterned into a spiral from word one to the interlocking circles and polyhedrons at the center.

Savas stood there at the center, carrying what was left and brandishing a knife as he waited. Eyes closed.

He was evolving now. The journey had changed him. The people had changed him.

Not as they would have wanted, but Savas never did care too much about what others wanted of him.

He reached out with nascent senses, hybrid senses, probing into the empty darkness of space, feeling things without words to describe them to the uninitiated. In a way, the whole thing made him regret not taking a bite out of Blueraven's corpse and tearing into his soul. Caden's ability to sense Time would have been profoundly useful right about now. There were a lot of things he had to keep track of without it. His agents on the other side, the few who remained. He had to keep up with the voice pestering him from the jawbone around his neck. He had to keep track of planetary alignments and the literal tides of nothing and darkness. He had to keep track of his own shadow.

The hole in the sky swirled shut during one of the earlier battles. The Stairway to Earth was closed.

Wormaxe was going to cheat by crashing through a window.

He opened his eyes to see the Drifter's grin.

He slit his left hand along the lifeline.

And then he slammed it into the circle and shouted a blandishment to somebody else's god.

[Savas Tigh]

The sickest joke never told is that light is subordinate to darkness. In speed, in power, in reality. No matter how fast the light races to fill a gap, it will always find darkness right there, waiting for it with open arms.

This is, of course, because darkness created light.

In the beginning was the Name. The true, ineffable name of the universe proper.

And then someone went and effed it.

The farthest confirmed unassisted teleportation spell in recorded history took place not long after the Wars of the Tap, when the last of the active Forgotten Ones -- whose name has, unironically, been lost to history -- was trying to survive the efforts of a transnational army of elves and men and dwarves and more. The Forgotten One evoked himself right out of absolutely certain death, dodging a spell that erased several nearby mountains from the face of the world. He reappeared several hundred miles away with a simple enchanted plynth dagger waiting in the space where his heart would be.

The magic, the blood, the twisted life all went out of him and he had just enough time to laugh and ask, "Et tú, mi amatrix?"

Legend has it, among those few people who actually know the legend, that the woman smiled with tears as she wrenched the dagger out. It caught fire and the flames consumed her alive and screaming in front of the bard who recorded the story. This is, in fact, the basis for a great many romantic tragedies from Raiaera to Corone, even though the source material has been buried by time. It's also a neat little bit of trivia.

And it's also a record that just got blown to Hell in a handbasket by the Dark Wizard Wormaxe, who disappeared from the moon to find himself falling up out of the shadows in the dimly lit hold of a ship. Falling so hard, in fact, that he wound up smacking up into the ceiling before reasserting himself, which involved falling right back down to the floor with a series of utterly un-hushed obscenities.

He lay there for a few seconds, listening close. Savas could hear the racket of an engine, by now familiar whether he wanted it to be or not. He stood, orienting himself and reaching out with his extra senses. It was muffled but there were still eight people -- all men -- on the ship. And they were all distracted, but one had heard all the crashing around, maybe even felt it through the soles of his feet. He was coming now and Savas would be waiting for him just out of sight. He stepped over to a stack of crates and held his dagger overhand.

A few minutes later, Pontius Grakken staggered down into the hold with a lantern and a pilfered gun.

Savas stabbed him in the back so hard the dagger broke.

[Savas Tigh]

A few days later, Savas pulled a grimoire out of the place where his journal should have been.

Just like that.

He was stunned for a few minutes, then checked to see if his old notes were still there. They were, and he knew exactly where to find them, and that was that. He didn't make a big deal of it. He just sat there near the prow of the Western Vulture, quietly inking away in the sunny skies that lurked above a sea of clouds.

I think I understand what Aeraul was babbling about, why he felt the way he did. Being back in Althanas proper, sort of, it's like I can feel a pressure so vast that I shouldn't even notice it. It's the difference between standing on water and being at the bottom of the ocean -- either you die horrifically or you just stop feeling it.

He and Rowan are still with me after a fashion. And some of my old powers, the ones I had before I sold my Name to Xem'zund, they're finally filling back in too. I still can't evoke properly, but I've tested myself out a little and I can basically copy what the two of them were capable of. I think if I develop my forms enough, I'll be able to refine my own combat thaumaturgy, similar in effect to evocation, but different in theory. It's a start. And I might be able to evoke a little bit after all. I don't know how I was jumping through shadows when I fought Blueraven but damn if it didn't feel natural. And the call to fire, I've got that three times now -- Aeraul and Rowan were both pyrokinetics, in their ways.

It's something to think about.

It's a lot to think about.

Thankfully, I've got a not-quite-skeleton crew to run this damn ship while I mull it all over. Think I'm going to port myself back down into Corone when the ship passes over it, then have the crew take it to that Beinost place. It's funny? but I'm sensing space differently than usual. It almost feels like what Blueraven had in his notes about his global positioning sense, the one he burnt out in Salvar.

I'll figure it out. For now I'm going to meditate. And stare at this piece of paper. I wonder if this thing is infinite.

Does it have a last page?

Oh dear.

And that's as good a step as any to jump off.

[Caden Law]

And that's a wrap.

Spoils/etc now for memory's sake and/or For The Public.

Caden Law: Nothing.

Aeraul Smythe and Rowan McCloud: Dead. Both. I'd like it if their combined experience was cannibalized over to Savas Tigh. Especially anything they would've gotten from this thread.

Savas Tigh: +Nascent chi manipulation, vaguely reminiscent of Aeraul and Rowan's powers, +Nascent spatial positioning sense, +Deformed empathic abilities, +Grimoire, +EXP from the Aeraul/Rowan accounts, +Resurgent magical powers over fire and shadow, +Telecom Jawbone. Details hammered out on the next character update and beyond.

Kebiras: The burgeoning Empire of Larkatz (re: Berk) has collapsed completely. There is a surge of hostile wyrmfolk activity from the North, human chaos in the South, and the orcs have already turned on each other as a whole. The Huskers are as they ever have been -- a shadowy threat under the horizon. The Treseran are anybody's guess, since they mostly blend in with the orcs and have no culture of their own. Without a unifying force of some kind, the region poses no short-term threat to Althanas proper. Probably. It's not like dying stopped Hellhand before...

Beinost: Barring an Act of Judge, the College Arcana will soon be acquiring its very own Kebiran skyship. Once they clean the decaying corpse crew off its decks. It'll likely be tethered to one of the city's numerous mage towers. While punch ugly to look at, the thing is considerably more advanced -- both magically and technologically -- than its counterparts in Alerar. It sports two magitech jet engines, an enchanted hull of Kebiran liviol, and assorted trinkets that include (but aren't limited to) superior Kebiran firearms technology (re: repeating rifles, revolvers, shotguns and the like, many of them at least crudely enchanted, with a stock of bullets and ammo to match). How this will affect the regional power balance is out of my hands.

The Moon: ...is waiting for some stupid bastard to go pay a visit to Limbo, the Faceless City that never stops screaming.

[Duffy]

Stairway to Heaven Judgement - Condensed
Featuring the Wizard that Did It and the Menagerie

It is, as ever, an immense pleasure to be given the opportunity to judge your work, Caden. I cannot stress just how wonderful it is to be there, with your characters, along for the bumpy, witty, enthralling ride. If I were to say one thing, it's that despite your story lost clarity and technical polish in the midst of it's sheer immensity, not once did your ability to display realistic interaction and brotherhood between your PC's slip. A truly commendable effort.

Plot Construction ~ 21/30
Story ~ 9/10 -
Strategy ~ 8/10 -
Setting ~ 7/10 -

Characterisation ~ 26/30
Continuity ~ 7/10 -
Interaction ~ 9/10 -
Character ~ 10/10 -

Writing Style ~ 21/30
Creativity ~ 8/10 -
Mechanics ~ 7/10 -
Clarity ~ 6/10 -

Wildcard: 10/10

Total ~ 81/100

Spoils:

Caden Law					4925xp	518
Savas Tigh					2138xp	356
Aerual					891xp	162
Rowan					891xp	162

You requested the experience from the two deceased characters to be transferred. Due to the ROG and ressurection rules, I cannot grant you the full amount from Aeraul Smythe and Leaf on the Wind. However, I have granted you the experience both those characters would have earned, had they survived the encounter. This gives Savas a grand total of 3,920 experience, and an appropriate boost in gold.

I cannot grant you any abilities requested for Savas Tigh without the appropriate conditions, and details, so you will have to link this thread to the ROG when you post your next profile.

+ Grimoire Granted
+ Telecom Jawbone Granted

Your canon altering requests have been put to the region writers, for likely inclusion into the relevant parts of the Almanac. Look out for Beinost's new artefact of wonder soon .

CLOSED, PENDING JUDGE'S CHOICE DECISION

[Letho]

EXP/GP added.