Riloth 19th the 70th

I watched as Dagmar stepped into the Dahn and stood, looking around. At two on Timothy’s—or Jimothy’s?—countdown, he stepped out and the warning halted.

“Get your butt off the ground and over here,” he shouted to me.

I obliged, dusting off my pants, and went to join him.

“Here is the plan,” he said, turning to face me. “We will step in and spread out. I will go towards the spatial anchor golem on the left, and you will go to the other one on the right. When the countdown begins, I will guess a passphrase. When that is wrong—which it will be—they will attack. I should be able to dodge the golem long enough to get a hit or two off on it. When the other golem—”

“Jimothy,” I interjected absentmindedly.

—”Jimothy? I’m choosing to ignore that,” he said with a sigh. “When the other golem gets close to you, teleport over to the spatial anchor and take a swing. Any questions?”

“Just one. How do we get out?” I asked.

“The same way you did before. Hah!” he brought his fist down into his open palm to emphasize his point.

“Wonderful. Lead the way.”

We stood outside the door and Dagmar began a count from five. I don’t want to die again. I haven’t had a mental breakdown in a few days. Is it because I haven't died or because dealing with this short pile of crazy has kept me focused? I guess we will find out.

“One!” Dagmar shouted and I stepped in, only to hear him shout “Go!” after I was inside.

Timothy began his alert and I shouted to Dagmar, “You didn’t say anything about ‘Go!’”

“Incorrect!” came Timothy’s strange childlike voice as the lights went out.

“I’m going to flooding kill you!” came Dagmar’s voice from somewhere to the left.

I cast a Light, illuminating the foyer. As soon as the room was illuminated I saw Dagmar dodge Timothy’s first swing. He got behind the golem and made a powerful two-handed swing at the golem’s leg. The war pick made contact with a loud pink accompanied by the sound of cracking stone. I didn’t have time to watch further as Jimothy reached me. Before his swing hit me, I heard another pink from Dagmar, and then Blinked away, appearing before Timothy who was in the process of turning around to find Dagmar.

I swung at the golem with all my strength as soon as I materialized before it. My war pick struck high on the golems “thigh.” The impact sent a stinging pain shooting up my arms as the vibrations passed through the weapon’s shaft, causing me to drop the pick in pain. My attack didn’t even leave a mark. Dagmar made another attack at Timothy before the golem crushed him with its blocky fist.

Before I could recover my weapon to make another attack, the golem struck me on the head. The helmet did nothing to protect me.

Riloth 19th the 71th

“Well that was a piss poor showing,” Dagmar’s voice woke me from my hangover slumber. “You just couldn’t keep your mouth shut for five seconds, could you?”

“Who goes on ‘Go?’” I shouted as I sat up, throwing my covers across the room in frustration.

“Denizens of a civilized society,” came his deadpan response.

I ignored him and grabbed the potions he’d left sitting on the desk. I changed into my travel clothes in silence “I’m going to go get breakfast,” I said as I left.

When I got downstairs, the breakfast spread was laid out before me on a long table covered by a white cloth. I’d never seen the spread laid out in full before. It was beautiful. There were three types of breakfast meats: bacon, sausage, and ham. Silver serving platters were filled with potatoes, oatmeal, pancakes, cinnamon egg toast, eggs, bagels and toppings for them all. A man stood at the end, making omelettes to order, and a pyramid of baked goods dominated a table with puff pastries of a dozen varieties and shapes I’d never seen.

I nearly wept at the sight. I filled up my plate with a little of everything and went back for seconds. After cleaning my second plate, I was about to go back for thirds when I spotted the coffee. I’d forgotten it in my excitement over the variety. There sat five large silver pots of coffee on a table opposite the pastries. They were labeled “Dark,” “Light,” “Medium,” “Hazelnut,” and “Dragon Blend.”

Simon, you bastard. You were holding out on me!

I sampled each, and determined that the Dragon Blend was by far the best. It had hints of chocolate and a nutty aftertaste. I need to get back to the Parlor some time and get more of that. Maybe I can stock the Dahn with it. But I'd need to think of a way to keep it imbued with Will. Could I repurpose the food preservation wards to infuse the coffee with Will?

Sorry, back to the recap.

Dagmar came down as I was contemplating another cup of coffee, but I’d over eaten already and suspected I had a long day ahead of me. He sat down at my table as Simon and crew were packing up the remnants of the meal.

“So, what's the plan?” I asked him.

“We need to see how much damage we did and repeat the attack on the golem for a few days.”

“Great, it's a date, but I don’t think we should head back until later. I need to get back to training. Before, when I was alone, I’d spend the morning training before making an attempt on the Dahn. I think that would be a good use of my time.”

“That’s not a terrible idea,” he said, a glowing appraisal. “Your instincts in battle aren’t terrible, but you need to learn to think. When you realized you jumped early on the count, you should have committed and trusted me to follow your lead. I think you will learn eventually. How were you training?”

“I found a retired adventurer. The Chosen of Ten-Li, Ren Griffon’s Bane. She has a style that seems suitable for my skills.”

He let out a sigh of relief, “Perfect, I was worried you were going to ask me to do it. I’m off then. Be outside the Parlor with the wagon and supplies at four. I’ll bring the weapons”

I waved silently at his back.

I arranged for Simon to pick up the war picks, a wagon, and dinner to be ready at four, along with giving him a note for Trish.

Ren’s training went much the same as before. I showed her what I knew so far, and we performed spell augmented sword training for two brutal hours. Afterwards, I went to the baths to clean up and recover from the excursion before our assault on the Dahn. Sitting in the baths, I decided to get Dagmar to steal more clarity potions the next day. I would be okay for tonight's attack, but I’d like to be able to practice all out with Ren and be fresh for the Dahn.

I met Dagmar outside the Parlor at the appointed time. He was carrying the two war picks from before. When he got closer, I could see that they didn’t look exactly the same. They were covered in etched runes.

“Where’d you get those?” I asked, pointing to the weapons.

“These are the same ones as before. I etched the runes into them to make them more effective against the golems,” he explained, holding out one of the picks out to me to inspect.

“Hmm, what do these do?” I asked, inspecting the runes. “They look a lot like the ones I saw on all those weapons in the outpost.”

I stood there inspecting the war pick for some time before it registered that Dagmar hadn’t answered. I looked up to see him standing there, face red in anger.

When we made eye contact, he yelled, “You never told me about any flooding runic weapons you Fauell cursed fool! I spent all day making these and they hardly work.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think to describe the outpost, I just assumed you would know what it had,” I explained.

“We don’t just leave runic weapons lying around for the Waatin or Forsaken to find!” he spoke down to me as if talking to a child. “We need to go there first thing tomorrow. We might stand a chance depending on what we find.”

I described the contents of the fortress the best I could remember on the way to the Dahn.

“So, how do I use these runic weapons?” I asked after providing Dagmar with a solid fifteen minutes of silence.

“Of course you don’t know how to use these,” he said, burying his face in his hands. “Do you know how to imbue Will?”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve already told you that I do not.”

“Well, we are definitely going to need to find that fortress. These crude runes will do nothing in your hands. Can you at least detect when your Will is draining?” he asked.

“That I can do.”

“Alright," he said. "Imbuing an object with Will is simple. You hold it in your hand, and picture your Will going into the object.”

“That's it?” I asked.

He handed me a dagger from his belt. “I said it was simple. Try it.”

I held the dagger in my hand, and focused on it, picturing my Will going into the object. It’s hard to describe the presence of Will in your mind. Most people live their whole lives unaware of it, but once you know how to use it for magic, and I guess wards, you gain an awareness of it.

This is a bad analogy but bear with me. Awareness of Will is like having money in one of the halfling banks. You can’t see it or sense it when there’s plenty in the account, but you know it's there if you need it. When you need to buy something, you withdraw the amount you need and get to handle it for a time before it goes out into the pocket of a merchant, never to be seen again. On the other hand, when your account is empty, you are very, very aware. It drags you down and is a burden on your thoughts. A person unaware of Will is like a man who doesn’t know he has an account at a bank. The money is there for him to use, if only he knew to go take it.

Unlike a bank account, it replenishes every morning. Forgive me, it’s not my best analogy.

So, back to the dagger. After holding it in my hand, focusing on pushing my Will into it, I became aware that my Will was draining very slightly. About as much as if I was casting Light on repeat.

“I feel it working!” I exclaimed.

Dagmar quickly plucked the dagger from my hand and held it in his hands. He closed his eyes and focused.

“Why were you thinking about a bank?” he asked.

Dumbfounded, I asked in return, “How did you know that?”

“When you imbue your Will into an object, your thoughts go with it. We call this intent. This is useless in most situations, as the intent quickly fades. If, on the other hand, you know the proper runes to match the intent—or have a flawless gemstone— you can make the intent stick around. If you know the rune for the intent from a Font, and the channeling runes to create the right effect, you can make yourself a runic weapon, or even a ward.”

I froze taking it in. That's the secret to wards? That seems so simple. How have us “Waatin” not figured this out?

Moving past my less pressing curiosity, I asked, “That seems easy enough. Why won’t these weapons work for me?”

“Let me answer your question with a question. How long did it take for you to learn to shape your Will into the proper pattern to cast a cantrip?” He didn't wait for me to answer, continuing, “Not only do you need to know in your mind the effect you want to manifest, you must also shape that Will into the correct pattern. If the intent and pattern of the Will do not match the rune, nothing will happen—nothing good at least. This is an old skill the dwarves still learn for situations like this, but our modern equipment has reservoir gems and transmutation wards built into them. With these, you only need to imbue the weapon with Will for its runes to activate. Those are beyond my basic warding abilities to build in such a short time.”

He didn’t explain much that day; he was very reluctant to share information early on. It took a while, but eventually I got a clear understanding of runes and imbuing items with Will. Everything on Kaltis has a unique capacity to contain Will based on what it's made of—and its form to some degree. If you try to imbue an object with more Will than it can hold, the Will just goes into the surrounding environment instead. Everything also has a “stable” level of Will it can contain, this is largely based on the form of the object. If you put Will into an object—above the stable level, but within its capacity—the Will will drain down to that stable level over time. Again, the rate is dependent on the form.

The best way I can visualize this—which is better than my bank analogy—is by picturing objects as buckets with holes in the side. The capacity of an object is the size of the bucket, and the stable level is the height of the hole in its side. If you fill a bucket up with water, it will drain to the level of the hole. Different objects have different bucket sizes. Some buckets are large, with holes near the bottom. Others are small, with a hole near that top. Beyond those factors, the hole sizes can vary, affecting how quickly the water drains.

The best objects for retaining Will are cut gemstones. Not only do gemstones have the highest Will capacity of any material, when they are cut, the stable level can be brought up to that of its capacity. Gemstones—cut properly—are buckets without holes.

That brings us to runes, which break all those rules. Will imbued into a rune fades extremely slowly if it is shaped to match the rune. If you carve a rune into dirt, the Will can remain for a month if it is left undisturbed. Normally, Will imbued into the ground becomes diffuse, as it’s difficult for a person to conceptualize a small patch of dirt being a discrete object.

If the intent in the WIll also matches the rune, it will manifest an effect. For example, a rune for cutting connected to the Font of Separation can be imbued with Will shaped to fit the rune. This will allow the weapon to draw on the Font and slice through whatever it touches.

Some runes require intent as well. A sufficiently advanced cutting rune could be imbued with the intent to only cut certain materials, a fire staff requires intent to shape the effect it emits, and a light rune can change colors or intensity.

Runes are similar to the constructs wizards use to channel the power of the Fonts; when connected to a Font, and Will is channeled through them, they harness the magics of the Arcane Realm in our own. As far as I can tell, they don't match up. A rune to produce light will use the same symbol for the Font of Light as a spellform for light, but the runes and constructs that create the effect are different.

Back to the 70th.

I continued to inspect the weapon as we traveled down the road. For almost an hour, I tried shaping my Will into the shape of the rune, but I could not get the Will to stick. In that time, I did become more adept at sensing the intent in an object. When we reached the tree, I judged I still had about half my Will. I'd only used slivers of it while trying to match the rune shape.

Standing before the door, war pick in hand, Dagmar pushed the door open.

"On, three," he said, and with a sigh added, "no 'go.'"

We stepped in on "three," and spread out according to the plan. When the countdown neared "One," Dagmar shouted a passphrase in Torcish, "Pebble, coarse, roach," but it was not correct and Tim and Jim attacked.

Not to bore you with the details of our deaths, but the attempt went much the same as before: my timing blunder had little impact it seems.

My attacks were equally ineffectual as before, but Dagmar’s were noticeably improved. Where before he'd made small divots the same approximate size as my crossbow attacks had, now he was removing stone in pieces the size of a small apple.

We didn't get any extra attacks out, despite the correct timing. After getting my attack off on time, I tripped on the remains of my old corpse, and became Timothy's first victim for that day.