[IC] Swords and Sorcery and Starships

[Penny]

The void ship coasted in towards the black tower, the darkness of space and the brightness of the stars clinging to the bubble of shimmering atmosphere which surrounded it. While it lacked the majesty of the vast palace ships which carried the great and good of the Celestial Empire or the star galleons of the Feudal States, even a modest void ship was an impressive sight. It's star keel was made of polished timbers fashioned around the three massive arcanula, magical crystals which lined the keel and from attachment points for the masts and glittering solar sails. A golden figurehead glinted at the bow and an intricate series of armorcrystal windows and gilt finish shone in the light of the distant star.

On the deck of the prison ship, the Charon, as she was grandly named, a young woman sat cross legged. Her features were sharp and angular with the high cheekbones and wide eyes of gallic ancestry. She was swathed in a simple black robe which made her curly red hair shine like fire. Three other woman, dressed in the white and gold robes of The Assembly, stood around her, six feet away and in a perfect equilateral triangle. Armsmen flanked them on both sides in neat files. Burnished armor half concealed beneath tabards which had been hung artfully to leave their rune blades free. There were even a few ray pistols in bejewled holsters, although such things were frowned upon in the exalted company of the Assembly.

The surface of the moon rose below them, the tower of black metal grew larger and larger even as the void ship slowed, there was a shimmer as the atmosphere bubble which surrounded the ship merged with the atmosphere that surrounded the tower. Below them blackened trees of no variety which ever pierced the earth of Holy Terra scrabbled towards the sky. The tower had no obvious entry at ground level, but a long air dock stretched out from a point three quarters of the way towards its pointed bulbus top. The solar sails furled as the ship coasted in to the dock, settling into place with expert skill. Sailors rushed forth, throwing ropes to tie off against the bollards that snugged the ship to the tower.

"Andromeda Clarissa Black," one of the white robes declared, lifting her palm upwards in a commanding guesture. The black robed woman stood jerkily, the immobilization charm lifting after hours of confinment.

"For the crime of delving into forbidden lore, you have been sentenced by a Quartet of the Senior Assembly to be imprisoned in the Ebony Tower. Have you anything to say before your sentence is carried out?" the pinchy faced white robe demanded. Andromeda flexed her arms, settling her black robe around her body. She cleared her throat portentously, back straight with regal pride.

"The service on this flight has been terrible, and I would like to speak with a manager," she declared in a thick gallic accent. The white robes pinched face grew white with rage and she snapped her fingers. A pair of burly armsmen stepped forward grabbing her by both arms and dragging her towards the Tower.

"Seriously!" she yelled over her shoulder, "One star! Would not recommend!"

@POOHEAD189

[POOHEAD189]

Alqa Hacamak was a dead world. Not a world that brought death, but a world devoid of life. The wind moved constantly, bringing a foul smell of poison stained soil and blighted memories under the ever-twilight of the sky. Making a pilgrimage here was dangerous, for even the temperamental weather had a taint to it. It stung the knight's sensibilities, though he did his best to keep his mind free of thought and feeling. He stood within the mouth of a shallow cave, barely deep enough to shield him from the elements.

Embedded in the blackened stone was a statue of unknown sigaldry, said to contain visions for those who sought them by the god Hyperion. The statue was a maiden, arms widespread and solemn in expression. The barest hint of a crack showed upon her left shoulder, and though the sculpture did not seem aware of his presence, somehow he still felt eyes upon him in this place of desolation.

Calian Dwimmerblade felt this wasn't entirely fair.

Two years he had waited to be allowed on this planet, for this exact purpose of guidance. For two years he had waited patiently as hundreds of thousands of pilgrims before him took their turns on this blasted ground to face their fears and learn of where their life was going. And now he felt he had wasted a trip in this backwater, and it was likely his own fault. Calian had always had a weakness for fast women and strong drink, and even in his knightly duties, he always looked for an edge in getting more bounty than he was owed. The last few years, he had worked as a patron duelist, or a 'champion' as the popular term. While not a dishonorable profession like a mercenary hedgeknight or a brigand, it wasn't looked upon fondly by the vast majority of the gentry. Legal work was legal work, necessary but without valor and more often than not, aiding and abetting in men who were guilty of some crime they couldn't buy their way out of.

Letting out a sigh, Calian stirred and got to his feet, his boots scratching the surface of the cave audibly as he drew himself up. He pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking himself a fool for even coming here. The debonair fellow gave a bow fit for a queen, making his voice as delectable as ever just in case some maiden of Hyperion truly was watching. "It was lovely to make your acquaintance, mistress. I now take my leave so you may aid someone more receptive to your charms."

With a soldier's discipline, he about faced and walked out of the cavern errantry-style, his head held high, shoulders squared, and hand on his sword hilt. Stepping out into the bleakness of the dead world, he squinted his eyes and held his hand up to ward off the wind when his foot kicked something solid. Something immovable to his casual tread. Looking down, he found a piece of what looked to be abyssal-stone with a small carving within it. He froze, thinking he was dreaming for a moment. He looked around, knowing it was impossible for anyone else to be here, but also knowing this hadn't been here when he had walked in. Had the wind shifted the dust of Alqa Hacamak?

Gingerly, he bent down and picked up the heavy slab. Calian wasn't as powerful as some of the bigger knights, preferring to rely on his lean body for speed and precision. But his body was honed from martial training, and he held the weighty block one handed as he turned it over, measuring it with his keen gaze. Was this a sign? He didn't know, but hadn't anything better to do, he realized. Sir Dwimmerblade knew of this material, even of this design. There were only thirteen towers in existence that used plates like this in their construction, and none had ever been on this planet if his history was not mistaken. And the closest place would be-

"The Ebony Tower," he whispered.

[Penny]

As prisons went the Tower was, at least, a large one. The Twelve Towers had been built in a time before recorded history. Each of them stood on the seventh moon of the seventh world in a binary system. Quite what they had been built for was a subject of futile if spirited academic debate, but as they existed in, or created, pockets in which magic did not function, they made ideal goals for recalcitrant mages. Kendus Priori, the infamous Butcher of Blenin, had languished in one for over to centuries before finally passing on, penning his famous Gallicus Ultimus in his gilded cage. Prisons were useful because by Assembly Law no wizard could kill another save in a properly constituted duel on pain of death, and the took the command, like most of their petty rules, very seriously indeed. Several wizards had challenged Andromeda to such duels after she had been arrested, young fire eaters looking to make a name for themselves by bringing down a famous, or more accurately infamous wizard. Unfortunately for them, Andromeda, like all the Black family, had been trained to duel from a young age at her family estate on Calperni, a fact that her would be opponents hadn't learned before their smoking corpses littered the dueling square.

Unfortunately the Tower now prevented her from anything more complicated than a card trick. It had taken her several days to explore the tower. There were twelve accessible floors, with rooms ranging from bed rooms to libraries, but they only reached down to something like a quarter of the towers height. The remaining three quarters was inaccessible, stranding an inmate at the top unless a void ship should arrive. Andromeda had of course tried to find material to fashion a rope or other means to scale the side of the tower, but nothing from inside the tower seemed to be able to survive in the rest of the universe. The sheets she had tied together in an improvised rope had flown to dust when she threw them out the window of one of the lower chambers. Even more annoyingly, they appeared to have returned to their proper places afterwards. Even the libraries themselves were of limited use, those books she could read, perhaps a third of the total volumes, seemed to concern themselves with philosophy, natural history and other subject of interest to absolutely nobody that Andromeda wanted to meet.

"There has got to be a way out of here," she muttered, trying not to think of how many mages had spent the entire remendairs of their lives thinking that exact thought.

Food, at least, was no problem. Three times a day a chime would sound and foods in no pattern that Andromeda could discover, appeared on the table of the main hall. Frustratingly she wasn't able to witness this as the chime only sounded when she looked away and seemed to wait till she left the hall if she tried to out wait it. Sometimes at night she though she heard things moving in the lower level of the tower but she was never able to be too sure. The only other way she could thing to escape the tower was to leap from the window and hope that she could travel far enough to escape the anti-magic effect and then hope to cast a spell that would prevent her from being dashed to pieces on the ground below. As with most plans which began with 'first throw yourself from a thirty story tower' she was not much inclined to try it.

[POOHEAD189]

Calian had heard of this world, but he had never thought to see it. Corvus had a way of surprising him in ways he never had imagined, but truth be told, he didn't even know if where he was going was meant for him. Perhaps it was providence or serendipity that was leading him here, or he could very well be flying to his doom for little more than finding a legendary place to lay his corpse. As he approached, the planet looked to be an orb of indigo purple, the dunes and imperfections of the rocks upon the surface made it have the look of a very expensive cake.

The Stallion-Class battle transport cut through the atmosphere with the ferocity of a comet. To any soul looking into the deep night sky, it would look like a falling star slicing into the horizon. Calian watched with a hawkish gaze, catching sight of the Ebony Tower. It was sleek in form and robust in style, smaller baroque sectional towers connected via walkways and supports formed a seven pointed star around the greater keep. A road of stone snaked from some unseen origin towards the tower, where it halted just before a precipice that looked bottomless. There was a grim cruelty to its depths, and somehow Calian felt there was more evil than the fall if one were to drop within. Luckily, the road fed into a bridge, though made of wood, stone, or some form of steel he couldn't guess. The structure ended at the 'island' of rock and soil that held the Ebony Tower.

Calian Dwimmerblade landed in a small, broken alcove out of sight. His ship, as some called it, let out a hiss as it slowly landed on the bleak sand and rock. His transport was small. Barely enough for three people, including the pilot. It accommodated him well enough, he would claim, though truly it was also conveniently all he could afford. The glass of the cockpit lifted up, his body pinioned like the vehicles wings, steel plates sliding into nubs along the main body of the Stallion.

The Knight smelled the air, his eyes twinkling like stars when he opened them. The air was rank with magic, and yet somehow to his left he felt a void like a bore in the fabric of reality. The gleam of his gaze faded slightly, but it was ever present. Unfortunately, his tricks and galdorcraft would be of no use within the tower, so he could not utilize the majority of his arsenal. Rather, he pressed his hand against the panel just above the wing of his transport, the panel lighting up and opening a compartment for his weapons. He reached for his blade, Galdurkling. It was of Fey origin, one of the Erdenswords of their system, Vanahiem. Even without the runes or glyphs on the blade, it was as keen edged as the day it was forged. Donning his breastplate and powering down his transport, he began his long hike back to the Ebony Tower.

Calian now walked into full view of the tower, wandering over the stonework, closer and closer. He must seem some minuscule thing in the distance, only visible from the rising glow of the dying sun. His cloak suddenly whipped from a gust, and to him he felt it was the blast of an angered deity daring him to move closer. He clutched the cloak closer, and soon he was at the foot of the bridge. Finally, he dared look up at the Ebony Tower, the structure living up to its name with its foreboding darkstone base and obsidian crystal parapets. Should he announced his presence? Perhaps he needed to say a word of passage or summoning to keep the bridge aloft as he walked? He didn't recall any myths of such a thing, but many knights had fallen for a lack of patience and thought.

"Ware!" He cried, though he felt his voice die in the wind. Perhaps someone could hear him, but only if they had already been watching, likely. "Hearken to me! Be ye Dark Wizard, Maiden in distress, Dragon, Daemon, or a foul creature of the abyss! Hyperion has called me forth to come here and prove my mettle! Who resides here!?"

[Penny]

For a long moment there was silence, punctuated only by the soft whisper of wind. It seemed to rise up from the chasm, carrying with it a soft vaguely volcanic grit the scraped the exposed skin. After a few moments the grit began to swirl, growing darker and more dense by the moment. With a suddenness which belied the slow build up the dust seemed to congeal into a tall menacing figure. By slow degrees, as though a painter were adding details to a figure, the outlines of armor began to appear, rough and then with increasing definition until a black armored knight stood on the narrow bridge which separated the tower from the mainland. Though the figure was clearly visible, the face of the strange knight was concealed in deep shadows, save for the faint greenish blue glow that came from deep within its helmet.

"Sir Knight..." the figure spoke in a sepulchral voice, carrying with it a faint charnel house reek, like distant graves or a day old battlefield.

"The prisoner in this tower has been remainded here by the word of the Assembly of Wizards. She is to be held here until the suns fade," the eldritch knight explained, drawing a blade from his scabbard. Rather than steel the blade was shimmering darkness.

"Turn back, Sir Knight," the dark warrior declared, settling into a relaxed if archaic fighting stance.

"Turn back, lest ye die," the knight warned.

[POOHEAD189]

What happened in that fight has been speculated in the Lexicons for centuries. No one bore witness save Calian himself, and as his old master-at-arms would say, he has a 'bloody wild way of embellishing the truth.' Only the gods truly saw how it ended, or the felling stroke. But in Calian's drunkest nights, and once or twice in his sleep, he would mumble to himself. One might ascertain that his life was saved by a single rock, though how that came to be was a topic of speculation. However it happened, an outcropping of the bridge was sundered, and the left statue of the two gargoyles at the front gate that framed the entrance was caved in and shattered.

The silent watchers within bore witness to the great gateway's shackled lock being lifted, and the heavy doors slowly grinding open. In the gloom of the eternal twilight, they would see the gleam of his glimmering eyes, and the glint of his sword as he unsheathed it. Within the wide chamber were shambling figures, rotted skin and boney framed, with gaping maws and fingers sharpened to points.

Calian stepped in, but in the light saw the multitudes of draugr-like creatures, many human-like, but some had multiple arms and elongated, xenos faces. A few had hooves and what abominations that still had skin were colored in strange fashions. He couldn't guess how long the Ebony Tower had been here, but many had apparently tried and failed, and had been arisen by those that looked. Calian slashed at one with his blade, cutting through whispy cartiladge and ligaments, but the blow sent a jarring vibration up his arm and he had to swing again to fell the closest ghoul. The knight backed up to the wall, realizing he wasn't entirely suited for this sort of fighting, at least until his head bumped into an iron rod that frightened him for a moment. Glancing up, he saw a baroque, black iron torch instrument. Calian grabbed at it and lifted it out of the rivets that kept it on the wall, and his next swing sundered the next skeleton with the ease of a battlehammer. The cracking of bones echoed through the endless halls, but it still took much doing and exhausted the knight, as did the stairs that led up to the third quarter of the tower.

When he stepped into the lacquered room, he noticed how comfortable and how unlike it was to the horrorible and gothic terrors he had just cut his way through. The air smelled of lavender and pine oils, and yet somehow, the bore that had devoured any and all magic was strongest here. Something here was undeniably sobering, as if one had just gotten home from a fun night out and found out their mother had died from a vehicle accident. Calian had never felt such a juxtaposition, but he swiftly got used to it. He would much rather be here than downstairs with the teeming masses of undead that wanted him to join their ranks, but either way, he was in a cage, albeit a gilded one. What manner of criminal resided here?

A snore broke him from his trail of thought, and he stepped into the next room to see what he didn't expect...a red head in a bed, sleeping the day away. She snored again, a bit more loudly this time.

"Oh." Was all he said, and with his armored ruined, a pauldron having been torn off and numerous cuts marring his otherwise striking visage, he looked more annoyed than anything. He walked up to her and shook her awake, gingerly but with impatience.

[Penny]

Dark dreams lay heavy in Andromeda's mind. It had been that way since her curiosity had caused her to open the Tome of Blinding shadows. It had seemed an innocent enough curiosity at the time, a crime to be sure, the Forbidden Tomes were, by definition, forbidden, but where was the harm. The content of the book itself had seemed innocuous at the time, dense and turgid perhaps but not evil per se. It was only now, in her dreams, that her mind seemed to be able to unpack the layers of metaphor and allegory. In her dream she walked amidst towering pages that stretched up to the heavens. The sky above crackled with purplish flashes, like distant heat lightning, the letters on the pages, each four feet tall, seemed to glisten as though the ink had just been laid down, shimmering slightly with the odd wyrd light. She tried to make sense of the words, but although some part of her felt understanding, the full implications of the words seemed to twist elusively away. Andromeda trudged between the immense pages, dressed in a formal black robe marked out with all the sigils of a Librarian Extrodinarii, the heavy hood billowing in the arcane wind. She wasn't sure where she was going, though she had the disquieting sense, that whichever way she turned, she was headed deeper into the book, deeper into its secrets. Suddenly the world seemed to shudder, like a grav quake. The pages ripped free of the ground, like trees being uprooted by some vast storm, she flew into the air, in the midst of a storm of paper and swirling letters.

With a scream she tumbled out of her bed, hitting the floor hard and rolling into a nightstand. The impact of her body knocked its contents down on her in a shower of brickerbrack. She gasped for air, her sleep addled mind registering the presence of another figure, a big grim figure in torn and battered armor. Fear surged in her and she reached for her magic, intent on blasting her attacker into pieces only to come away empty, stymied by the effects of the Towers ancient enchantments. She made a decidedly unwizardly shriek of panic and then grabbed a heavy candle stick, brandishing it infront of her like a club.

"Who in the Hells are you!?" she demanded.