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Sage Advice
Originally posted on Tales of the Parodyverse by Manga Shoggoth.
(c) 2008 A. C. Leeson. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works.
These characters are not for general use. Please do not use them in your stories.
What has gone before:
Orion Stargazer, a knight of the Order of Fania, was sent on a quest to recover the Relics of Fania (consisting of the Misericorde of Fania, the Robe of Fania and the Tabard of Fania). He was supported in this quest by a Shadowfire (a mage), Saroc the Disemboweler (a taciturn fighter) and Lynx (a disreputable thief).
A sage requires the Belt of Thevros the Undying (scored with unwritten sigils graven in the blood of virgins) as payment for information on the location of the Misericorde. The party travel to the Tomb of Thevros in the northern town of Terosa, and discover that - far from being a horror-filled dungeon - it is in fact the mortuary for the local town, set in a rather peaceful garden. They befriend the gardener, who warns them not to take anything from the tomb. They search the tomb but fail to find the belt, although Shadowfire does have an interesting discussion about Knights with a revenant calling herself Aunt Lavinia. In the bottom of the tomb Lynx is attacked and taken by the unquiet dead guarding the tomb when he attempts to rob one of the bodies, and Saroc is seriously injured trying to rescue him.
With the aid of the gardener (who Shadowfire manages to identify as Thevros himself) the remaining party make a belt that fulfils the requirements of the quest. Thevros notes that it he lost the original - and completely unenchanted - belt in a game of chance against a priestess. He also gives Shadowfire a small diamond ring as a reward for being the only person to actually ask for the belt rather than trying to steal it.
After they leave, The Caretaker is seen talking to a hooded minstrel.
This is, roughly speaking the first bit of Part 2: The Apostate Knight.
The previously posted fragments of this story are as follows:
Shadowfire looked around the room with some interest. On their first visit to the Sage they had been relegated to the vestibule, just long enough for a clerk to ask their question and get their marching orders from the Sage. On their return they were shown in to the study to see the man himself.
"Mess" was, she thought, a good way of describing it.
The first thing she saw was the desk. A huge oaken construction that squatted near the window, making the best use of the light. The desk was piled with scrolls, heavily bound books, quills in various states of repair, the occasional plate, odd trinkets and small models, and finally a small inkwell peeking out from underneath a pyramid of blank scrolls. Behind the table was an ornate chair, covered in cushions. In front were three stools, mismatched and Spartan.
The walls were covered in shelves, crammed to overflowing with more scrolls and books. One scroll had in fact slipped from the shelf, forming a kind of vertical banner. Here and there on the shelves were more trinkets, pressed into service as bookends and paperweights. In the darkest corner of the room the shelves gave way to a tray of soil, in which grew a number of tall, large-leafed plants, some of which were showing white and purple flowers. Evidently the Sage also practiced divination, or perhaps just had a taste for very bad jokes.
The floor was littered with all the items that would not fit on a shelf: A few mounted animals, in one corner a human skeleton, attended by the bony remains of an unfortunate cat, and several more models, some of which bearing the unmistakeable evidence of having been trodden on. The carpet - where visible - was threadbare and stained with the faint evidence of long-ago alchemical experiments.
Above all this, the stuffed body of an alligator hung from a single mounting point on the ceiling, describing a slow circle as it was buffeted in the drafts.
"Well,", said the Sage, indicating the stools, then sitting back in his seat, "Let us see what you have brought."
Shadowfire took the box from Orion, and then looked meaningfully at the cluttered desk. The Sage chuckled to himself, then swept a section of the middle of the desk clear. This had the knock-on effect of tipping the items piled at one end of the desk on to the floor, including an unregarded inkwell, which proceeded to add a fresh contribution to the carpet stains.
She placed the box on the table. "The Belt of Thevros the Undying, scored with unwritten sigils graven in the blood of virgins", she declared. Her statement was, of course, strictly true.
The Sage opened it and looked at the belt coiled inside. He hummed to himself, and then poked at it with a wooden spatula, looking at the dull red markings etched into the leather. Eventually, he lifted it from the box and unrolled it, an expression of almost-reverence on his face. She noticed that his hands were shaking slightly.
"Wonderful!" he breathed. "Perfect!"
Orion shifted uneasily in his seat, a slightly guilty expression on his face. The Knights of Fania were sworn to honesty, and he was a little uncomfortable with the idea of sophistry.
"You have a problem, Sir Knight?" asked the Sage, coming out of his reverie.
"Well..." started Orion, "It's just that..."
The Sage chuckled again. He laid the belt on the desk in front of the knight. "You seem unsure of the provenance of the item. Why?"
Shadowfire tried not to roll her eyes.
"Well, the belt doesn't appear to be at all magical... or even old." offered Orion hesitantly. "The buckle doesn't match the drawing you gave us, and the engravings are different as well.". The knight placed the parchment the Sage had supplied them with on the table.
"He's a nice honest lad, isn't he?" the Sage asked, smiling at Shadowfire.
"Yes, he is." she replied with a sigh. Too honest by half, she thought.
"Perhaps a few lessons are in order." smiled the Sage.
"First of all, the magic. You've seen minor magical devices before, I take it?" - they nodded - "Pick them up and they tingle. Some of them glow in the dark. All of them are unmistakably magic. Easy to spot a mile off."
He indicated the belt. "This is an artefact: rare, powerful and built to last. Powerful magic like that needs to be shielded. Otherwise you might just as well stick up a sign inviting everybody to come and steal it. At least half of the magic in an artefact or relic goes into hiding the magic and preserving the item. That's why artefacts are hard to find and hard to destroy. It's also why this belt still looks like a well used, but sturdy belt." He looked at the belt for a moment and sighed. "You aren't the first people I have sent after this belt. And you wouldn't believe what some adventurers have tried to palm off on me. As long as it reeked with magic they thought I wouldn't notice..."
He tapped the buckle. "Now, the Belt of Thevros the Undying has been lost for millennia. The sigils have been handed down by various means, but none of the mages that wrote about it have seen it, so they drew a belt with the sigils for 'Through the joy of life, through the pain of death, you shall yet be mine'. They didn't know what the buckle looked like, so they drew whatever was fashionable - or old-fashioned, I suppose - at the time."
He looked up at the trip. Saroc looked as impassive as always, Shadowfire had adopted the glazed look of the lectured student, and Orion's brow was even more furrowed.
"Finally, the sigils themselves...". Here, he wandered over to one of the shelves, carefully extracting an ancient scroll case. He rolled out the scroll and placed it alongside the belt and the parchment. "This is the oldest reference to the Belt of Thevros the Undying in my possession. The author didn't sketch the belt, but simply recorded the sigils. You see?"
Orion looked. "They all look different." he said at last. "The parchment is more cursive, the belt is more angular, and the scroll looks to be part-way between the two."
"Exactly!" exclaimed the Sage. "Over time the way sigils are written has changed. In Thevros' day, runes were still carved on stone and wood, and as a result were - as you say - angular. This" - here he tapped the parchment - "was written fairly recently, when quill pens are common and inscription on stone is rare. The scroll was written some time during the transitional between stone and parchment. As you can see, it is a mix of angular and cursive forms."
The Sage looked Orion in the eye. "Make no mistake. The lack of magic and the difference in inscription are the strongest proofs of the artefact's veracity."
He sat back in his chair. "Lady mage, if you would take the leather scroll case to your right?"
Shadowfire carefully teased the scroll case out of the jumble on the desk.
"You asked for the location of the Misericord of Fania. According to the sources in my possessions, and to those divinations I have been able to make, it is part of the hoard of Kivaxoranus Draconicus, who lairs in the frozen wastes in the far south. It is..." he smiled "...something of a walk. I have provided you with a map to the southern lands, with some notes on the extant trade routes. Alas, I cannot help you with the wastes themselves. The fishermen on the south coast may be able to ferry you to the wastes, but they are a notoriously treacherous."
"The wastes or the fishermen?" queried Shadowfire.
"Since the traders to the south tend to come back, while the adventurers don't, I would suspect the wastes. However, I wouldn't drop your guard." - Here, he glanced at Orion - "The southern lands are second only to the western jungle when it comes to the Cult of the Ancients."
The Sage rose. "Now, pleasant though this meeting has been, I must ask you to leave. I have much to do, and I suspect that you will have a long journey to prepare for."
Shadowfire and Orion thanked the Sage, Saroc simply nodded his head. Then they took their leave.
The Sage coiled up the belt and replaced it in the box. All this, he mused, and I still haven't found out why the Order of Fania want this thing.
Footnotes:
This is another fragment of The Apostate Knight, served up for your amusement. Some day I may even finish it...
Those who wonder what the joke might be are directed here.
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Fun stuff... I enjoyed the examination of the belt and the reasoning behind it not needing to match all existing evidence. Definitely odd reading this in random order, but I look forward to more.
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