The Magician: May you never miss your goals

[Cards of Fate]

Tarot Hierarchy Base, Vincent's chamber...
The young scholar collapsed onto his bed, weary, muscles aching. Several days ago an angel by the name of Ioder had approached him during his studies with a notice that Leona, their mutual boss, had assigned them on a mission. Together they traveled to a town in the Outlands looking for an artifact that the archaeologist guild "Ruins Undiscovered" had unearthed in an excavation. It was supposed to be somewhat easy, or at least that's what Vincent had thought. Instead a group of bandits had tortured and massacred the guild in order to obtain this item, forcing the duo to retrieve it. While his partner Ioder, and a mysterious man by the name of Tobias did most of the work, Vincent had the misfortune of taking his first life. In the end they had found what they were looking for, a pendant of all things really. So many dead bodies piled up, all over a simple trinket empowered with the mysterious magic of the Tap.

Vincent rolled over off his stomach slightly queasy. While the mission had been labled a success, he could not shake the dying gasps of the young man whom he had stabbed or the pile of partially decayed bodies he had discovered. He couldn't remember the last time he had slept soundly, not a single night went by without him waking in a cold sweat. This world that he had been brought to was changing him, and he couldn’t rightly tell if it was for the better. Before his mission he had entered a manic state of research. While the information he had learned during it was seared into his brain, the time spent pouring over the books and making his notes seemed a hazy blur. Three months... he mused to himself. I studied day and night for three months... The thought was not a pleasant one exactly, but a slightly impressive one none the less. He closed his eyes and tried to force his mind to calm itself so he could go to sleep. With no such luck he sighed and sat up rubbing his eyes and waited to adjust to the darkness of his room. When he was ready he strode across the pitch darkness to his desk, blindly stumbling over piles of books he had left stacked up on the ground grasping blindly at the darkness. Finally when he reached his desk he fumbled for a nightstick and a striker. After what felt like forever he eventually managed to light the wick of his candle, illuminating the room in a dull glow. Setting it down on his desk, Vincent took a seat and sighed. Notebook after notebook full of hastily written notes laid strewn across his desk, each numbered neatly on the spine. "What number was I on..." he mused aloud to himself as he sifted through the books in the dim light. "Aha! The notes from the ruins!" he exclaimed pulling out a simple leather bound book with the number 27 on it. Opening it the young scholar flipped through several pages worth of mission notes until he arrived at the section where he had begun scrawling every minute detail of the ruins.

With sleep off the table Vincent began to screen his notes for useful information. His job was to find out everything there was to know about the Tap, and help his fellow Tarot Hierarchy members find artifacts of the Tap. Thus if this particular ruin was housing one of said artifacts, it was likely that similar ruins would as well. He quickly began to compile a rudimentary list of stylistic features he had noticed. Anything from the stone the temple had been made of to the style of murals on the wall could be a key factor in placing this temple in a group and sending more agents to scour these ruins. After he felt satisfied with his work he sat up and glanced at his deck, noticing his small leather card case.

"That's right...I haven't drawn my card after finishing The Fool." He sighed and pondered what he was going to do. When he had first opened the box it had brought him from Dallas Texas to…wherever this world was leaving him only with a cryptic set of visions and some baubles that made no inherent sense. After talking to Leona he realized that he would end up facing twenty two various tasks each based off of a Tarot card. Now it seemed it was time to draw a card once more. He gritted his teeth and opened the box. It was empty save for one card. Bracing himself he reached in and gingerly pinched it between his thumb and pointer finger. Suddenly a surge of images flooded through his head, books, a map, a schematic, and...playing cards? A chorus of voices sang through his mind The Magician: May you never miss your goals... Vincent snapped out of the visions violently, muscles spasming as he resisted the urge to vomit. His mind dazzled the young man slumped forward landing face first on his notes out cold.

[Cards of Fate]

Vincent woke up the next "morning" with a sore neck and very stiff back. With no way to tell the time aside from his burnt out candle the young scholar swore and fished out a new candle from the drawer of his desk. Lighting it he gathered up his notes from the night before and left the room, snuffing his candle as he left. Once in the dim hall of the base he began the short walk from his room to the library. The floor was still slightly uneven and warped and the only source of light was the occasional torch. For an underground base one could tell it was deep underground. Marks from where tools had carved out the hallway were still visible, and the occasional drop of water would drip onto Vincent's head. Finally he arrived at the library, a large chamber filled to the brim with books. All sorts of tomes were gathered there, ranging a wide variety of topics. It would take an average man years to read up on everything it had to offer, and simply being in the room brought a slight grin to his lips.

Several months ago Leona had found Vincent in a bookstore and told him that he was her Hierophant. At first he didn't understand, but soon the answer had become all too clear to him. He was to be her brain trust and thus was tasked with the tall order of researching everything he could about the Tap and artifacts related to it. He would often spend days if not weeks on a time studying in here, and when he had first arrived he had spent three months in a manic trance reading and taking notes until he would pass out. Going to great lengths to spend as much time as he could to study he had set up a "nest" of sorts in the center of the library. As he navigated the complicated maze that was the library to reach the center Vincent found himself humming to himself, giddy to return to his work.

As he found his nest he quickly examined it to make sure everything was in order from when he last left it. The area was a square clearing with a bedroll in one corner and a latrine in the corner across from the bedroll. One of the free corners had three large desks lined up in a vague U shape with a large high backed chair, while the last corner was simply piled with books and tomes of all shapes and sizes. Satisfied that no one had disturbed his work the scholar sat at his desk and began to look over his notes, several sites with similar features came to mind, and he would need to give Leona a list to look at.

Frowning he stood up and crossed the clearing to his pile of books and spent several moments picking out a couple texts and returned to his desk and began scanning each of them for sites he may have missed. After several hours of craning his neck and straining his eyes on the old texts and finding nothing Vincent leaned back in his chair and stretched yawning slightly. "You're working rather hard" he heard someone behind him say. Vincent flinched and turned to see a very familiar blond woman standing at the entrance to his nest. "Leona!" Vincent exclaimed flustered as he stood up. The leader of the Tarot hierarchy is holding a tray with several rolls, a wheel of cheese, and some flasks of water. "Ioder just finished reporting to me, I knew you would be here and studying so I brought you some food." She says striding towards him carefully, as if she might set off a landmine with each step. Grinning Vincent eagerly accepts the tray from her and sets it down on one of his desks. "Thanks boss!" he says rather enthusiastically. Of the few members of the Hierarchy that he had met, Vincent felt the most comfortable around Leona, although he couldn’t rightly tell why. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that she never made eye contact, or that she seemed to be particularly careful about her actions. Or it was simply because he had spent a decent amount of time traveling with her when she had first recruited him.

"If I hadn't brought you food you wouldn't have ended up eating today" She said rather bluntly as she turned to leave. "Also, keep up the good work, you'll make a proper Hierophant soon enough..." she called out behind her as she walked away. Vincent grinned ear to ear from what he understood to be a compliment. Sitting back down he took a bite of a roll and cut a slice of cheese to nibble on as he transitioned to reading over lost languages. He made a note to write a letter of request to several archaeological guilds nearby to see if they had found any other sites of a similar style and their findings.

[Cards of Fate]

Vincent spent several hours compiling some of his notes on the Tap. According to most of his research it was a source of immense magical power, and may in fact be the source of all magic save a few exceptions. Legends stated it to be the source of old Raiaera’s power long ago, before a war broke out and caused something to happen to it. It was here the details got blurry. Something about five sorcerers was often mentioned in cryptic texts, but it felt like something was interfering with the knowledge itself, almost as if the texts themselves had forgotten them.

Flustered at a dead end Vincent halted his work on the Tap and turned to a stack of books set on the desk to his left. Sliding his index finger across spines he scanned titles. He had begun to make a hobby out of researching random topics for fun, becoming somewhat of an expert on each. This time he chose the various creatures and such of the Concordia Forest. Cracking open a tome he began to read it with amazing speed, one hand scrawling down notes while the other propped up his head and turned the page when needed. His blue eyes stared so intently at the page he barely noticed when people came to check in on him. At points he would stop to eat and use the latrine in the corner of his nest, but other than that he kept reading until he was exhausted both physically and mentally. When he had achieved this point he would rise from his chair and stumble over to his bedroll and collapse unconscious. While it was impossible for Vincent to tell time he could assume he was spending absurd amounts of time at his desk, and absurd amounts of time sleeping. Evidence that he had been visited in his sleep was made clear by trays of food and an empty latrine.

After a while he had managed to compile the highlights of twenty texts on the Concordia Forest into about three smaller notebooks that he would later send in to a prestigious university to have published under his pen name "Dr. Calvin Cain." With that done he turned back to his knowledge of the Tap with fresh eyes and resumed research. This time his info was solely focused on the five "Forgotten" sorcerers of old Raiaera. He managed to find info on three of them. Pode was a powerful sorceress who used the Tap to tamper with nature. Many druids despised her, and her crowning glory was making the very abomination of a forest that the House of Cards was located under. While details about the forest pre-red era where scarce Vincent imagined there were less shape shifting wolves and man eating trees.

Xem'Zund had shown his face recently in an event called the Corpse War, although due to the massive amounts of damage that Raiaera sustained it seemed like there were few reliable pieces of information to actually go on. The necromancer would periodically appear in a tower of obsidian in southern Raiaera and lead an assault on the land with hordes of undead. However it appeared that ten years or so ago when he had reappeared he not only destroyed most of Raiaera’s main cities, but was felled for good, his hordes disappearing with the tower. This had also destroyed a great deal of knowledge centers that may have been of more help to Vincent.

The last of the three he had found had been Denebriel, or as many followers of the Etherial Sway new her, Saint Denebriel. The saint seemed to be one of the most revered figures in the history of the church, and was often observed disappearing for centuries at a time and showing up when the faithful needed her most. The church seemed to be one of the main powers in Salvar for the longest time, uncontested except by the king. However the two powers had fallen into civil war and both were recovering. Vincent didn't get the same vibe about Denebriel as he did the other two of her cohorts, and resolved himself to conduct further investigation.

All of these notes had been compiled into a large gold trimmed leather notebook, and once Vincent was done making edits he set the book aside and made a note on a piece of parchment to investigate further into "Saint" Denebriel. Having completed most of his heavy studying Vincent rose from his chair, legs stiff, and left the nest for a bit. As he walked about stretching his legs he thought about the mysterious set of Tarot cards he had been given, and the gift he had received for completing the first one. The fool had been an interesting card signifying the start of his journey, starting when he had been mysteriously transported to this world, and ending when Leona had found him in a book store in the middle of nowhere. His reward? Razor sharp playing cards. Of all the weird and unnecessary things for fate to give him, it was playing cards.
He had hoped the cards would home in on a target, but no, they did not. In fact it had taken him hours upon hours of flinging cards in just the right manner to perfect not slicing his fingers as they left his hand.

[Cards of Fate]

As Vincent navigated the dark stone halls of "The House of Cards" or so Leona had named it, he couldn't help but feel strangely conflicted about the four or so months he had been in this world. He had made friends, like Halgrom the dwarf who had helped when he had first arrived on Althanas. He had met Leona and Ioder, and had even gone on a mission for the Tarot Hierarchy. He had drank mead in a tavern, been accosted by a drunk woman in a bar, killed a man, and learned more in his studies than he possibly could ever have done at home. Yet something made him feel sick. How could life possibly be going along at home? Did anyone miss him? Was his mother worried?

These questions swam through his mind as he walked the damp hallways. The deeper and deeper he went, the less and less seemed to have been reclaimed. Drips of water occasionally dropped from the uneven roof as Vincent began to pay more attention. He knew that he would find it soon, a large cavern he had discovered while wandering once. Since then it had more or less become an unofficial training room for the few members he had met. After a couple moments of looking as he walked Vincent found what was slightly more than a hole in the wall that he could pass through easily. The entrance was deceiving however, the room it fed directly into was massive, about 100 yards deep, and 60 yards wide. The walls at the edges stood only about 8 feet tall, but grew higher and higher as it reached the center. The floor was a rough uneven stone, but the roof was lined with a bio-luminescent moss, leaving the room bathed in an eerie green glow.

Vincent sighed and searched the edges of the room for some of the objects he had left behind. "Aha" he exclaimed as he pulled out a small barrel that he he had brought down earlier. Grunting he lifts it up and carries it about 20 feet out and sets it down. Popping the top he pulls out a large ale glass and set it down on the now replaced top. Sighing he trudges back to the wall and turns to face the flagon, pulling out a leather deck-box from his pocket. Sighing he pops the top and reaches in and pulls out a playing card, the two of clubs to be exact. Carefully he pinches the card between his pointer and index finger, and takes a sideways stance, legs shoulder width apart. He took a deep breath, brought up his card holding hand, brought it across his body, exhaled. He had read up a bit about proper form for throwing a knife or a shuriken, but nothing seemed to truly match up to throwing a damn playing card. He takes a deep breath, holds it, and flings the card. As his fingers release the sharp edge catches his fingers nicking them drawing a slight amount of blood. The card gained a bit of spin and flew with slight purpose, but veered way off of course clattering against the ground.

Hissing Vincent drew his finger to his mouth and sucked on it, the coppery taste of blood filling his mouth bringing back unpleasant memories. Hands around his throat Vincent cant breathe, panic is setting in. 'I Don't want to die' he thinks to himself as he grasps for his lost dagger in the dirt. Suddenly his hand finds purchase on the hilt, grasping it he stabs in fear. He watches blood blossom from his attackers throat. The young man on top of him chokes on blood as the light fades from his eyes, Vincent dagger buried to the hilt in his windpipe. His hands loosen, he hacks up blood on the now murderer, and then falls aside. The memory floods Vincent's mind as he staggers back. Growling he grasps another card and takes his stance, heart thumping from the adrenaline his memory had poured into his system. He quickly readies a toss, takes a deep breath, and lets it fly. The card flies and barely misses the cup.

Furious Vincent grabs a card and blindly flings the card, missing completely. He grabs another and lets it fly, this time keeping his composure. The card whistles by the cup once more. Vincent keeps this up for about twenty more times before hissing. His fingers were bleeding quite a bit, the cards becoming harder to hold. Reaching for one more he takes a deep breath, readies his throw, and lets it fly. The card leaves his fingers gracefully, taking drips of blood with it as it spins through the air with purpose. A crimson streaked card clangs noisily against the tin mug knocking it off the barrel. Vincent could smell his own blood in the air, his fingers burned like they were on fire, but the Victory felt amazing. His whole body shivered with a sense of accomplishment. He would be useful in a fight soon, he just needed a bit more practice. Wrapping his fingers in the bottom end oh his shirt Vincent put pressure on them as he walked out the cavern. He would need to combine accuracy with the ability to throw without hurting himself, but that would come with time. Currently an idea was burning a hole in the back of his head, it would be the ace up his sleeve so to speak.

[Philomel]

Name of Thread: The Magician: May You Never Miss Your Goals (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?28367-The-Magician-May-you-never-miss-your-goals)
Judgement Type: No Judgement
Participants: Cards of Fate

This is an incomplete thread, that falls beneath the standard limit for an accepted completed thread. However, this thread is suggested to be award 100 EXP and 25 GP for work involved.

Cards of Fate (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?17720-Cards-of-Fate) receives:
100 EXP
25 GP

[Lye]

EXP & GP Added.