Life In Oorah Thrassen: Research into Locador Demons [22 Lage 4385]

[sythyry]

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Nangbang and I stopped in Oorah Thrassen overnight on our way to Srineia. (Nangbang was — dare I say it? — only slightly sickened by the long teleporting session.) Saza showed me things that I cared about.

Saza: “I have learned certain facts about Locador demons. Indeed, I have learned more about Locador demons than ever before. Strange beasts!”

Me: “Tell me of this matter!”

Saza: “People have become Locador demons altogether, at least temporarily. There is a pattern spell for doing so, or there was; nobody I have asked admits to having a copy. I have asked spell-sellers, so I don’t think they’re lying about it; they would be glad of making a high-priced sale, I should think.”

Me: “A notable fact! I was not sure it could be done at all. Is it relevant to Feralan though?”

Saza: “It might be. Four hundred and some years ago, a Rassimel noble — Icispachi — spent some weeks in the form, and wrote a book about it. I am trying to get a copy of the book. We might get some insight therefrom.”

Me: “That is, at least, more than I knew before.”

Saza: “Don’t look so disappointed, coz!” Zie gave me a flickery licking kiss on the cheek, which rather startled me. “We’ve gone from ‘This is unheard-of!’ to ‘Similar and related things have occurred!’”

Me: “Truly, an important conceptual evolution.”

Saza: “Now, I haven’t tracked down anyone else merged with a Locador demon. But there are cases of merging with the demons of seven or eight other elements — including Magiador, which is tantalizingly similar in various ways.”

Me: “I didn’t know that!”

Saza: “You are clever and inventive, but a bit unaware of things that happened centuries before you hatched.” Zie grinned. “One part naïve and seven parts nubile, coz!”

I blinked at zir a bit.

Saza: “Anyhow, I am prevailing on scribes in various cities to give me records of these various prior spiritual entanglings, and what was done about them. I promise nothing — but I expect everything!”

Me: “I expect no less of you!”

Saza: “And, of course, I am tracking down the locations and qualifications of various experts in disorders and maladies of the spirit. If we need to take Feralan somewhere — Green or Inihithre perhaps — shall we wait until you can come along?”

Me: “Probably so, at least if it is a matter of a few days. We’d need to travel by airship in any case; perhaps mine, which I hope will be repaired by then.”

And so on. No actual answers, but various forms of hope, and many places where further research is possible and might yield answers. It is much easier to do this sort of thing from Ketheria. It is also much easier to do it if one has a thousand-year-long reputation as an ingenious and honorable magus than merely a hundred-year-long one as a nendrai-wrangler and pervert. Hiring Saza was absolutely the right approach.

Comments

[xolo.livejournal.com]

“One part naïve and seven parts nubile, coz!”

Well, that's blatant enough.

[brynndragon.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the rumors of Sythyry *not* sleeping with "the Orren" (Nangbang) have reached Saza. . .

[rowyn]

Saza is definitely flirting now! Even Sythyry can tell. I wonder if Saza was flirting on the last visit but was subtle enough that Sythyry missed it completely and didn't even write it in? Last century, Sythyry wasn't very good at picking up on even blatant hints. I'm not sure zie's gotten much more clueful in the last 124 years ....

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

Isn't Saza the one who told Sythyry, a century or so ago, to come back in a century or so? Doesn't sound so bad... In fact, Sythyry's "perversion" seems to have started when zie got rebuffed for being a child by Zi Ri standards. *puffs on a cigar*

It'd be interesting to see what Inihithre is like, thousands of years after its founding. What sort of memorial would you build to acknowledge a place as the divine birthplace of all prime important and worthy life in the universe?

[terrana.livejournal.com]

If Primes are anything at all like us humans - and all evidence suggests that, in this respect at least, they are - they would likely memorialise this by spending the entire four thousand years arguing about what sort of memorial is appropriate.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

You know.. back before my day... they didn't spend years arguing about memorials. Someone decided they were going to have a memorial, and then they got an artist, and they built one. They didn't consult. They didn't share ideas. They just went "BOOM! Here is a memorial to (Insert fabulous idea here)". All this consulting thing is because nowdays, people can whine at a person much easier then before.

[alex-muridae.livejournal.com]

It suddenly occurs to me that I have heard no mention of primes discovering smoking of any sort. No doubt they have some rather interesting incense, but I don't recall pipes or cigars or such.

Of course, that may simply be evolutionary; after all, smoking is the cause of many fires terrestrially, and on a world made of wood...

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

We know the gods designed the Tree's species as part of whatever game they're playing. So the ability to get drunk or otherwise intoxicated seems like it'd be either a feature the gods designed on purpose, or a surprising side effect of divinely created biology. Which is it though? Alcohol or something like it exists, and I think our sources say a god taught brewing to the Khytsoyis. It seems like the gods were able and willing to mostly leave disease out of the world's design (for primes!), but chose to put poison, intoxication and addiction in. Scary as nendrai, in their own way!

Isn't there a flower called wenennza or something, that when inhaled causes a boost to fire magic plus mild addiction? Oh, and kathia (coffee).

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Wenezza is rather different; it's an aphrodesiac. You are probably thinking of axacanthus blossoms. I have one (1) axacanthus blossom, preserved in a jar, in case I need that extra power once.

[yotogi.livejournal.com]

And how many wenezza?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I do not use that stuff!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Our world is not so easily flammible as all that! Nor are our homes, if properly made.

There are recreational incenses, but they are generally burnt in small pots on a table for several people to share, rather than used in a pipe or cigar. I'm not much fond of them myself, but I am a very small person. Most are relatively mild drugs -- comparable to a dose of kathia or brandy -- and compounded with pleasant aromatics to provide an aesthetic experience. It really is rather like sharing a bottle of brandy or pot of kathia, only not so fattening.

Bard claims not to understand smoking very well itself, but thinks that part of the fundamental point of smoking is that it delivers a dose of a drug to the participant very quickly. Those who are in such a hurry here (and wish to use botanicals rather than spells, say) tend to use tinctures, taken under the tongue.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Saza had just gotten defeated by my very dangerous embroiderer! Zie was not feeling particularly cheerful.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

That's progress, at least. I'm intrigued by the idea of the other entanglements.

Re: Well...

[mmsword.livejournal.com]

I imagine having your spirit tangled with a spiridor elemental would be REALLY confusing.

Re: Well...

[dracosphynx.livejournal.com]

I wonder what a corpador elemental looks like.

Getting tangled up with a Tempador elemental might be relatively straight forward -- the Tempador elemental may be aware of how long the situation would last, exactly.

Re: Well...

[alex-muridae.livejournal.com]

Luckily enough, that's quite easy; a corpador elemental is made of flesh and bone and sinew and scales and feathers and claws and teeth and fur and bile and all that other good stuff the rest of us make good use out of. Actually, they're somewhat hard to spot, because they're rather close to beasts and monsters and such, and there are very few of them; it's one of the reasons that Kavarse usually acts through her knights instead of her elementals.

Re: Well...

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

It could kind of be the other way around! Kvarse might prefer to work through people, and thus didn't bring many elementals with her.

A Corpador elemental might be made of fleshy things, but it might not have them put together in a way that makes biological sense. Some of them might resemble things that might be labelled in this world as "eldritch abomination"...

But then, given some of the monsters on the World Tree, that doesn't help much either!

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Ooh, is there a pattern spell to become a god?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

More or less.

More: It is a spell that I can manage (and Vae can do without effort or even thought) to transform my body into pure fire, or water, or air. In this respect, I become, physically, the same as Flokin, or Merklundum, or Hressh-Huu -- in some close approximation.

Less: The essence of divinity (for those gods) seems to be that they have been used as the fundamental materials for constructing a universe. The other elementals of those substances are, as far as we know, roughly identical in nature to those gods; but they are not gods, because they are not used as such.


The creator gods and their kindred are quite otherwise. I do not believe that any spell of World Tree magic could transform one of us to one of them; I do not think they fall under any Noun.

I think that "Here" is closer to the elemental gods than the creator gods, but performing direct experiments seems troublesome.


Someday I shall have to interest Vae in a cruel little research project, to transform a dozen eggs into a dozen elementals, and make a small world, and use the eggs as the basis for the elements in it. See if Vae, at least, can play the part of a creator god, on a small scale. I don't think it will work -- I think it will be as a horse stepping on a clod of soil and making a rough bowl-shape, and a god doing the same would be like a potter taking the finest porcelain and throwing a beautiful bowl. There is some crude similarity of action and even function, but the one is obviously superior to the other.

In any case, one could presumably work out the ritual spells to become the creator god of one's own private universe: more like a child's first pinch-pot, in the pottery analogy. One should be aware that, although that would make one technically a creator god, it would not in any way change one's powers or capabilities -- at least outside of the constructed world.

So goes my best unresearched guess about the theory. Let me know what happens when you try it!

[mmsword.livejournal.com]

I'm sure the atheists of your world would have some very keen interest in those experiments.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Ah, you have to pick an existing element, because the magic system is elemental. Maybe... could you subdivide the elements? Hybridize them?

And for the creator god thing, of course you can't just use your verbs as nouns. It probably doesn't even seem like a sensible thing to do if you don't speak English.

If your translator and I both live long enough to make the attempt, I'll let you know how it works out.

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

The plot of "Morrowind" centers around a group of people who found it, and how things went horribly wrong. I also just discovered "Exalted", a ridiculously over-the-top game which involves demigods discovering it, having things go awesome horribly wrong, then getting addicted to a cosmic video game system.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

There's a pattern spell for becoming a Locador demon? Oooooh I wanna try!

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

A hundred years of successful nendrai wrangling is worth a lot!