Vignette - Western Wizard

“What path have you imagined, Candidate?”

“I was brought up on DnD and the legendary stories that went with it. Of mighty spell casters that could command the elements and bind demons. I will create those spells. A spell for any and all situations, bound up in grimoires and augmented by reagents. I will inscribe my intent into the magic field and any who follow me may speak my chants and channel my magics. It will be my name in the title of every spell. My name that they will remember each time they cast.”

Chapter 21

It was obvious after the fact. We watched it happen in the theater night after night. We saw but did not understand.

Multiple passels moving about eating even the magically accelerated grass down faster than it could regrow. Despite this happening the population of giant feral hogs continued to grow. The boars, sows and piglets lost to predators were quickly replaced and then some. The populations grew until they were too many for the land to support. Then like lemmings they self corrected.

The only ones surprised were us humans. Studying it after the fact revealed the targeting selection for this correction. The giant boars formed the bottom of the animal food chain for many species. They grew up obscenely fast and had an enormous amount of meat on them. Any and everything was their diet. From grains and grasses to mushrooms and rotting fruit. Even other animals. Hogs don’t care. They will clean it up.

But when, despite constant predation, the passels grow too large for the land to support an instinct in their little pig brains lit up and they charged towards the largest disturbance to the magic field in the area.

Most new world animals draw at least partially on the magic field. Timothy theorized that the higher tier predators would draw far more, many of which they probably still haven't seen yet. Most of the boars and older sows would leave the pregnant or nursing sows and piglets behind and attempt to wave under that predator. If they succeed, their population would still be reduced and they would have more territory to eat from, if they fail then their population would be massively reduced. The predators would also have so much food available that they won’t go looking for the piglets and young sows left behind.

That was after the fact, during the event Runehold was the largest magic disturbance in the area.

THRUMM...SQUEEEEL,THRUMM,THRUMM...

Timothy jerked upright at the familiar battle cry overlapped with the alarm drum. Abandoning the half made Human Rune, yes he finally nailed it down, he grabbed his ELR and ran for the north bunker.

“Hsss...crpt, zzcrk, crpt, crpt”

Essence light explosions interspaced with the crack of thunder rippled out like the finale on the 4rth of July. The deep throbbing of the alarm drum switched from ‘danger to the north’ to ‘hide in your homes’. A dun dun dadadun beat reminded Timothy a bit too much of the imperial march.

He shoved that pointless thought away as he reached the bunker, A quick nock and an exchange of passwords gained him entrance. Slipping forward to his assigned position he could finally see. He almost wished he couldn’t.

The Drawbridge was still down, representing hope rather than expectation. The hunting party was barely visible in the field to the north. Not because of distance, they were already out of the forest, but rather due to the twister that kept them in its eye.

Had to be Regi with how regular it was.

A regular cornucopia of critters were smashing themselves into that defense. Boars rammed forward, some deflected away, others tearing through and smashing into a motion ward. Their large bulk meant that far more managed to get through then not. It was not just boars, multiple packs of jaraptors were present as well. Thankfully most seemed content to feast on the steaming carcasses left in the hunting parties' wake. Still a few leaped forward to test their luck. Bad luck it seemed.

Timothy winced as the raging winds grabbed a raptor at the top of its thirty foot jump and flung it into a tree. The sound of the impact temporarily drowned out the alarm drum. They just did not have the mass or momentum to make their way through.

While the jaraptors were not terribly worrisome the boars were an entirely different matter. Each beast that penetrated the winds had to be contained with a combination of motion wards, ELR rounds and the occasional lightning bolt. A hard task to do while retreating.

It was a measured retreat, but still a retreat. One of the hardest things for any group to do under pressure. It was a bitterly hard thing for men already backing up not to simply break and run for it. A temptation that would see them dead in no time flat. No man could outrun a boar.

Regi held them together, falling back in jogging waves, rather than sprints to save energy. A group of eight or so men would stop, levy their weapon of choice and fire backwards while the rank behind them ducked down and jogged past. Then they would stand and do the same for the first group. They leapfrogged back in good order while every dozen steps someone would fall out to place a motion ward behind them while Lightning bolts picked off psychic buzzards and any other birds that got too close.

This must have been going on for a while and the much diminished numbers of their party told a tale that was not sheer success. Even as Timothy watched, a boar managed to slip around from the side, avoiding the motion wards to slam past a defender at nearly full speed. Even the glancing blow from that much weight in motion shattered the thin cloaked form. His armored cloak was not able to save him from that.

Timothy’s ears suddenly rang again as a deployed motion ward, overloaded by multiple impacts, released its charge. The explosion was loud but not what Timothy had expected. The first boar above the improvised bomb absorbed most of the charge before its own storage capacity was met. Then it detonated as well. It chained through several more animals until enough boars could split the charge between them to safely damp it.

Clearly expecting the scene before him, Regi’s plans were already in place. As the explosion rang out the winds ceased their swirl and flung themselves backwards into the teeth of the pursuers. The remaining porters, having clearly long since dumped their loads of resources, sprinted for the gates. At as much of a sprint as a man can run when carrying several wounded members between them.

They may have dropped the food, the wood, but they did not drop their own.

The remaining guardians also sprinted backwards with them, they traded the chaos behind them for distance. The chaos did not last for long, and the boars and jaraptors were ready to finally catch the tasty morsels that were running in front of them.

Unfortunately for them, the all out sprint had been for a reason. They were at last inside the range of the bunkers.

Arthurs iron lunged commands rang out “Prepare to fire, FIRE!”

Lined up shoulder to shoulder in the firing slits of 3 bunkers, nearly 60 guardians (and one dumb pathfinding Wizard) fired in a ragged volley.

The world exploded. Most of the defenders were using the now more common hunting rifles. Trading power for ammo capacity, but by no means all of them. Ten still held the old style cannons, distinguishable from the red stained barrels. The result of that volley detonated multiple boars in a gruesome and cataclysmic display. It was energetic and eye catching to the extreme but it hid what might have been the deadlier threat. Another thirty odd boars collapsed with a thin hole burned through their lowered heads.

Explosions were pretty, but boars could absorb the resulting force. As long as they were not overloaded, and a few were, then it was not a problem. The burning fingers of death that hid underneath that wave of blood flesh and flame they had no such defenses against.

There was a short pause, more felt than seen as a shock went through the beasts at the number of casualties, all at once. But it didn’t last, that little switch had been thrown and the boars were truly berserk. They were not capable of fear anymore. It was just a momentary shock.

It was enough, the hunting party made the drawbridge and sprinted across in good order. Repeated volleys and a few motion wards held back the tide long enough for them to escape without more casualties, but it was damn close. They could not even pull up the drawbridge as the corpses of a few boars were piled up on top of it.

Arthur, cool as a cucumber, adapted and overcame. He was waiting with a shovel for the last man to cross, then he turned the center of the drawbridge to sawdust. Taking a step back he ordered the gates to be closed but stood at the ready with the shovel until they did and the locking bars slammed down.

It was amazing how seeing him so calm and unconcerned could spread like a virus to the rest of the men. Timothy took a deep breath and his hands ceased to shake, greatly improving his aim. Arthur had it under control. It would be all right. He was not the only one to feel that way. Up and down the line the firing order tightened up, what was once ragged pop offs that tried to stay within seconds of each other became the trained, timed volleys they were supposed to be.

Despite the improved performance of the defenders the boars were not done, more and more streamed from the forest to reinforce them. In droves they activated their own motion storage to fling their bodies across the river. They slammed into motion wards like raindrops. Deadly raindrops. Raindrops that stopped brutally quick and slowly descended into the river. The first few dropped, then the wards had to be replaced. No five minute timers on these models. That was far too dangerous. One exploding ward inside the bunker would kill dozens of men. Even using them at all was a danger. To mitigate it each of these wall wards was a single small section, to prevent multiple impacts. Forty wards in patches covered the wall. Each one had to be kept manually activated for a time, then replaced before it could get overfilled. All this while firing.

As was inevitable a few boars slipped through in these small windows of opportunity. Slamming into the spikes fronting the bunker in multi ton motion augmented impacts. The fortress rang like a bell, shaking on its very foundations as defenders struggled to pick off the porcine missiles before they could launch.

Then the gap would close as the next ward was activated. The next ward and the next round of bacon went to the piranha’s. Very well fed piranha’s today.

It went on and on. More and more hogs flinging themselves at Runeholds defenses. More and more slipped through when defenders became tired and were in danger of overdrafting their wills. ELR began to fire much less often as the motion wards took up the available effort. The bunkers slowly accumulated damage, cracks began to form, then spread like spiderwebs, as pig riddled spikes broke off under the weight.

Arthur, still calm and steady, gave a loud call, The reserves rushed into the bunkers, held back as a reaction force in case of breakthroughs, they now relieved the defenders. Motion wards sprang back to life and rifles spoke with authority.

The first shift of defenders filled out of the bunkers to rest and drink the ever present ginger tea, much better than eating it raw at least. They might be needed again before this madness stopped.

This process repeated itself again over the next couple hours. They were damaged, but still holding and the number of beasts that assaulted the walls at any given time had been decreasing somewhat steadily since the first hour. It was coming to a close, and they had survived!

Then Himself appeared.

A moment in time Timothy would never be able to forget. A cloak of palatable fear heralded the descending shadow, small yet growing larger as an enormous winged serpentine shape descended upon the field of carrion. Red tinted black scales the size of shields and four betaloned legs like tree trunks with their roots above the ground. The emperor had arrived, looking for his dinner.

Minds flinched away from the spectacle, assuring their frozen owners that, no, the apocalypse wasn’t standing in front of them. It was all a bad dream.

“I think we need a bigger box…” someone muttered, attempting, and failing, to lighten the all encompassing fear with levity.

Arthur’s voice, quivering but still audible, “Quiet, rifles down. Nobody pisses off godzilla and maybe we live through this!”

They waited, quiet like mice before a cat. Hoping ‘He’ had plenty to eat from the hog carcasses. The rest of the predators did the same. No one wanted to disturb the Dragon’s meal, that would likely result in becoming his next meal.

The dragon, like the king he was, gorged himself on the bacon bounty, completely unconcerned with the watchers. When a being had such size and power, it wasn’t arrogance. It was inevitable confidence.

At last, most of the field cleared and it’s meal finished, the dragon gathered itself and lunged back into the sky. Circling for height before disappearing into a cloud.

The silence remained for a time, then scavengers descended on the scraps as humans started in consternation. No longer assured of their apex position on the food chain.

Timothy, in particular, was lost in his thoughts. He had thought his Essence Light Rifles were overkill… he underestimated just how nasty this world could be. Nothing they had was likely to do more than annoy that behemoth… But perhaps someday, that would no longer be the case.

“We got lucky,”Regi said with considerable bitterness “the noise tipped us off about a mile away from the fortress.” He stared blankly at his open hands, “Lucky yet six men died. Six damn good men!”

The ‘war council’ sat at a round wooden table. Regi and Arthur to Timothy’s left, Papa Joe and Jenney to his right with Gareth directly across.

“You saved 25 people Regi” Papa Joe rumbled. “Without you, none would have made it back. Focus on that.”

“I know that! But believing it... I held Malcolm’s little girl Sandra in my arms. I told her, her father would not be coming home.” He searched for non-existent answers in his empty hands.

No answer was to be found, not in empty hands, not from loving siblings nor from wise advisors.

Such is life,

Such is death.

Time passed, perhaps it healed wounds, perhaps it just made them hurt a little less.

Either way it passed.

The deaths and the dragon shocked the hold out of its hubris. The world was not so accommodating as to allow them to sit quietly, safe in their castle. The wave taught them a lesson. That many deaths would attract things better left alone. They would need to prevent the beast waves whenever they could.

Hunts were scheduled weekly to slow down the inevitable. No longer preserving the piglets and sows. Anything they could catch they killed. Predators as well as hogs.

The benefit was in a large amount of smoked and otherwise preserved pork. Ja-raptors did indeed taste like chicken… a good thing as a large mutated rooster was not available for meat. Shadow snake was rank. After one attempt it was relegated to the compost piles while chameleon cats were hotly debated. Some claimed it was the best meat of them all while many others couldn't stand it.

Still food was plentiful and the skies Dragon free. Now if only he could fix the lack of nearmatoes for a proper BBQ sauce and marinade. Sure the improvised vinegar sauce was pretty decent (he had enjoyed a proper dinner early that month!). But sometimes he couldn’t kick the desire for some Texas style instead.

Such humble desires accelerated his work on species runes. If they couldn’t find the tomatoes then maybe somebody else already had! He had a way to find out as well. He completed the Human species rune right before the beast wave. Now it was time to test it out.

It was a very interesting exercise trying to pick out what made humans unique. What made them stand out from the mammalian beasts they often resembled. What finally worked was a hodgepodge of things. A kludge of disparate facts like an and or statement. Is it bipedal? Is it furless? Is it capable of higher thoughts? That last was a doozy. What makes thought ‘higher’? Was it just the arrogance of the thinker? Rather than the positive he managed quite well with the negative aspects of this idea, looking for insecurities and pointless guilt. Out of all creatures only humans could get so stuck in our heads.

It unfortunately resonated quite well and what did that say about their species? Still, it worked and that was useful. It did have some loopholes. It did not seem to pick up on young children and he would assume that it might miss those with extreme cognitive disorders. They were probably missing out on higher order thoughts. Still that was good enough for now. The concept worked. In time, he would need to study the beasts and plants enough to identify resonating traits.

In the meantime, to test the species rune he set it up with his alarm rune. When it detected anything it would return a noise. A variable noise specified by small sound related symbols. A chicken head, for instance, would cockadoodle doo. He used a crow for the first demo unit. This was important if he wanted to run multiple detection runes at once. A hiss for snakes, a meow for cats and an oink for hogs most likely. Somewhat cartoonish to distinguish it from the actual animal sounds.

The same tool could fit lots of different needs just based on the direction rune. A cylinder around the tool would be nice for the hunting party but that would be less useful for his present plans. He wanted to search for more humans. Creating a giant cylinder around himself would be incredibly expensive, and fairly foolish. Like a pie, he could search the entire pie at once, or he could take a very thin slice and spin slowly in a circle. Also for an alarm in the jungle the field needed to be constantly maintained. When searching he only needed it up for an instant.

His first model was a small constant use detector that he used to verify the runes effectiveness inside the fortress. The second attempt was a direction rune set for a very thin rectangle with a generous height tolerance (30ft up, 30 down) and for a distance from 200ft to 50,000ft. Enough of a starting range to not key on the insides of the fortress and enough range to push the limits of the enchantment.

He proudly installed the Human rune into the detection disk. A foot diameter disk an inch thick, it spun on a central peg like a top. Adjusting the arrow on the disk to point towards the west, he already had plans for getting more accuracy out of it. Sure it would caw on the hunting party, but it currently gave no information on how far out they were. If he added a dial for maximum range he could adjust it until it no longer detected them. Maybee max and min range together so he was only searching a ribbon of space at a time.

Sure enough, a bit of fiddling and it was cawing. Much more cawing than a 30 man group should give. Timothy, stopped and double checked his directions. It was in the general area downstream (west) of Runehold that the hunting party should be. He absentmindedly rotated the disk away from the previous heading to attempt to reset the enchantment. Before he started back it cawed at him, this time the density of caws was about what he expected from a thirty man party. He checked the heading, it was slightly to the north of the previous detected direction.

If this value was the hunting party… What was the first response? With that volume of a response it was hundreds of humans! It could only be another settlement. With billions of people (around eight actually) it would make sense that the settlements were placed relatively close together. He had just not thought about it before this. A willful blinder that each group was on their own, vastly separated by dangerous fauna.

Blinders that had just been ripped away.

But how should he deal with this information? A trade mission? He really wanted those tomatoes, but he didn't think it would be this easy to find. What did they have to offer, and what other than tomatoes did they want?

He was not selfless enough to offer his tools to complete strangers with or without recompense. It was hard enough to hand them off to his own settlement and hope they were not misused. Even if he had been willing, the problem he found in the tutorial was still an issue. His tools charged off the magic field wherever he made them. Move them any great distance and they would no longer charge. Maybe they could sell the use of their tools to make a fortification…

They did have other tradeables. From cloth to excess boar meat. What would they want in return? Other plants for Jenney to play with? Some cooking spices would be wonderful. They were definitely salt poor at the moment. That sort of thing was unhealthy in the long run.

He was getting ahead of himself. Confirmation first! He picked up the detector and climbed to the scrying room.

It would take a bit of work. The current dial maxed out at around five miles. He needed eleven to safely include the detection range. A quick bit of stone joining, a bit of trimming and he had a new disk. Quickly carved numbers infused by his will with the meaning of the distances indicated. A tricky bit of merging the new dial with the old rune and it was ready.

He started at about five miles out and a couple hundred feet of height. A large settlement would likely be visible from some distance. From that altitude he could see a very large circle of land and should be quicker to narrow in on his target. With excruciatingly slow speeds he began to turn the dial. Moving the point of view farther and farther out, until at last he hit paydirt.

A community situated on natural bluffs overlooking the river. A deep trench turned the natural bluffs into an unnatural Mesa. Round sod roofed huts dotted the mesa top interspaced with massive gardens and fields. Even the tops of the sod looked to have been planted.

It was raw in a way, the trench was freshly turned and just starting to show weeds popping up and the rooftop gardens were just sprouting. He noticed it easily due to those features, but if he gave it a bit of time, the growing plants would let the whole settlement fade into the landscape.

Timothy considered, if they took the boat down to the base of the bluffs it would be much safer than having to hike overland. He adjusted the scrying pool to show the river side of the community. They need to get water somehow after all. He quickly spotted it. A small staircase had been cut into the side of the bluffs and small figures scaled up and down it.

It could be done with very little risk, he figured. The question was did they want to? A question he could not decide on his own. This was going to get messy.