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IEF Observer Report, "Drill Edge", Uroda Rift

Summary:

• Subject "Drill Edge" exhibits sustained mass summoning, a fair grasp of battlefield command, and tier-4 magic. 

• Great Spirit Uroda was observed leaving the mountain.

• Observation post was detected but not approached. 

• After Drill Edge's departure, scouts penetrated the mountain. No corruption detected, but the core is inaccessible. 

• Auxiliary mage was summoned. Report attached. 

• Aprox 4k cu ft of mana crystal was staged outside the mountain, addressed to "His Imperial Majesty"

Adendum:

The kid has locked up the mountain's heart behind a barrier of spatial distortion, warding, and alarms. I could break it, but he'd know. He's got plans for this place, and might even be thinking of setting up a new circle. I say you let him. By the way, I know it's convenient because it starts with DE, but Drill Edge is a dumb code name. — Reginar

Silas - A Slave Mine

Silas had a letter, the kind that opened doors without prompting questions. From the outer gate guard to the compound guard, from there to the barracks guard, through the building's hard gray halls and into an interview room, not a single person asked him why he was there. The signature on his letter was enough reason to do as he said.

People called him the Smiling Man, but not because they thought he was nice. Outside of Avimore, he was the apex predator almost everywhere he went, even in a slave mine full of dangerous criminals. The Lampshire iron mines were not his usual haunt. He much preferred the city, where the worst human wrecks were the ones he made himself. 

The man in front of him now was a good example of the type who ended up here. A former IEF colonel who, for his crimes, had been stripped of class, position, and name. He was known only by a number; one Silas did not bother himself to memorize, as he didn't care and wouldn't be around long enough to use. The prisoner sat across from him, head shaved, dressed in a tattered gray tunic. The meeting room was a small stone chamber with a high window and a table and chairs fastened to the floor. The prisoner wasn't shackled, but there was no need for him to be: if he tried anything, Silas could kill him without consequences. 

For his part, the prisoner had enough sense to know at a glance the kind of person he was dealing with. They were men of similar minds, really. The main difference between them was that Silas was stronger, and he knew what he was. It was amusing that the man across from him thought of himself as a good person. He had read the brief trial transcripts, and the prisoner was a very bad person who had worked hard to end up here.

The prisoner waited, sure that Silas would have to speak first. The mine was in a remote place, and traveling there took time. Nobody came without a good reason.

"Tell me about your son. The one that put you in here."

"He's not my son." The prisoner looked to one side, bored by the conversation. "What do I get?"

"Nothing. But, if what you tell me is useful enough, I'll make him suffer."

Now he had the prisoner's attention.

"Tell me everything about him. Start with the things he cares about."

Taylor - Meridian

Taylor was glad to get home to the boarding house. He'd been gone for weeks, much of it spent sleeping on hard lava flows and eating preserved foods. The few days they spent in Cazenac were nice, but he was still recovering from making Gelexia's statue. Pulling two people and a large horse through the Other Place was difficult when he was already tired.

They arrived near dinner time, ready for one of Cook's excellent meals and a little comfort. What he wasn't ready for was the sight of Domine Rasmusen at the table. Another of the house's boarders had suddenly decided to move on to other accommodations, to be replaced by the priest. Stranger still, Rasmusen was wearing civilian clothes. He looked like a curator's assistant, with his ink-stained fingers and mid-quality clothes. He looked more like a writer than the man posing as a writer.

On impulse, Taylor pretended he didn't notice the man. Whatever the priest's reason was for moving into Taylor's house, he didn't want to know about it until after a meal and a long rest. He enjoyed his food, ignored the other boarders, and looked forward to a night in his own bed. Meanwhile, Kasper talked nonstop about their adventure in Cazenac. He recounted the battle holiday in such great detail and with such enthusiasm that Chambers had to tell him twice to let someone else speak. But the other boarders didn't mind, and urged him to continue. All but one or two of them were spies at that point, and no doubt hoped the wolf pup would let something slip.

On his way to bed, Father Rasmusen tried to intercept Taylor at the stairs, but Taylor wasn't in the mood.

"Is this life-or-death urgent, Father? Or can it wait until tomorrow?"

Reluctance oozed from the man. "It can wait until tomorrow."

The last thing Taylor did before going to sleep was set his summoning timer for Saria and the Army of Lightness for thirty-six hours. Taylor had multiple groups of summons he had to organize, so he convinced the Knexenk system to let him set up a timer next to names on his roster. The spirits could change the times from their side. It was a crude channel of communication, but the arrangement let them negotiate schedules.

As soon as Taylor taught Knexenk the trick, a global notification went out to every summoner about the new feature. Naturally, everyone credited the church with the latest development.

Taylor woke early the next morning, but didn't say his usual prayer to the gods. He always brought his personal figures with him when he traveled, so he unpacked them and set up their little diorama on his shelf. But he didn't feel like getting pulled into their realm.

He wasn't sulking. He wasn't mad. What would the point of such a tantrum even be? But he didn't feel like hanging out with greater beings to whom mortal lives were disposable assets. There was also the small matter of him enjoying his life in Tenobre, while the prepared vessels in Aarden had suffered and died. That was the gods' doing, not his own, but it was an uncomfortable fact. He didn't like it.

Instead of brooding, he laid out the completed Alchemy pages and his binding tools. He'd just managed to finish the pages before he had to gather troops at Mount Uroda, and the system was fully functional, but he hadn't had time to bind them into a book. Or should he call it a codex? The pages were made of monster skin, and the entire thing was drawn and written by hand. "Codex" sounded more fitting than "book". 

"The Alchemical Codex?" he asked out loud, "or Codex of Alchemy?"

He could decide later. For the moment, he aligned the pages in their sections and triple-checked that the pages were in order. The edges weren't perfectly trimmed, but that wasn't a surprise. Ink took up space. He had tried to compensate for that when he pre-trimmed the sections, but he hadn't gotten it perfect. There would be a slight ripple along the edges of the finished work, and Taylor decided he didn't mind. Attempting to trim them now, after the pages had taken on metaphysical significance, would be a hassle.

Using mana wire of his own special composition, Taylor started sewing up the pages, one section at a time.

"Come in!" he shouted at the door, while reaching for his mask. Rasmusen was standing on the other side. Taylor could feel his class system buzzing through the door. If he focused, he could probably tell what the priest's class was without activating any skills of his own.

When he entered, Rasumsen didn't try to hide his curiosity and took a good look around. The room felt empty, but that was due to most of Taylor's possessions being in his satchel. He noted the personal shrine and which gods Taylor prayed to.

"May I?" he gestured at an unbound section and, with Taylor's permission, paged through them. He noted the supernatural inertia of each leaf and peered closely at the diagrams.

"What is it?"

"The Alchemical Codex. Or maybe Alchemy, comma, A Codex. I haven't decided. But it's a new system of magic. The magic circles we have are lacking for my purposes."

"So, you made a new one? In addition to the other one you already made?"

"Making one's own magic system is a natural step on the way to mastery."

"Really."

Taylor grinned behind his mask. He knew that tone of voice so well. It was the one that said, "your sense of what's natural is way out of proportion". Today, he was in the mood to enjoy it.

"Really. It's not even that difficult if you keep the system small. But don't get your hopes up about mastering Alchemy any time soon. It depends on concepts that most people would have a hard time understanding. It'll catch on eventually, but for now, I'm the only user."

The priest continued to turn pages, eyes wandering over the strange symbols, tables, and graphs. "You're right. I don't understand any of this. Even the parts written in Orlut don't make any sense. Where do these symbols come from? Is it an ancient language?"

"I made them up."

"You made them up." There it was again, that tone, and Taylor felt a perverse enjoyment from it.

"Why not? It's a language, and all languages are made up. If you're going to make a new magic system, there's no particular reason to stick to a pre-existing one. You could use signal drums if you wanted to. Or knotted string. The words are not the important bit, anyway."

The priest sat heavily in the offered chair and rubbed his palms over his face. "Why would you use knotted string?"

"I wouldn't, and neither would you. It would be a very inconvenient medium for us. But imagine a race of people who didn't have voices and lived in a place where long fibers were abundant. Their earliest writing systems would use what they had, so it isn't outlandish that they would use knotted string. Or maybe weaving or crochet. If we found one of their artifacts, we wouldn't recognize it as writing. But macrame might carry significant textual meaning to them."

"You have some strange thoughts. I don't mean that as an insult," he hastened to add. "Oracles are just as strange, in a different way."

"You can't do anything new by thinking like everyone before you. Speaking of, did you come here for the attribute system?"

"I did. The church would like full access to your system and exclusive rights to use it. Except yourself, of course."

"I'm afraid it isn't that simple." Taylor finished off the section he was working on and put the tools aside before facing the priest. "That system came from research. Research that I had a lot of help with. My partners invested time and money into it, and they deserve to be compensated for their discoveries and the tools they've designed. Not to mention, the system has major implications for how we understand mana. If it disappears behind priory doors, a ton of potential will be lost."

"Unfortunately, your system presents a problem for us. There is concern about the idea that any mana can be converted to the Divine attribute. It cheapens the notion of divinity."

This was far from the first time Taylor had stepped into a religious quagmire. "Rename it."

"Excuse me?"

"What we have here is a failure of nomenclature. You call it divine because it's rare, it counters mana corruption, it can reach the gods, and it's absurdly expensive to handle in devices. But what you call the divine attribute is actually a range on the mana continuum that should be split into a few parts. The mana that purifies isn't the same as mana that reaches the gods. It's useful to classify it all together because orichalcum is reactive to all of it, but actual divine mana is at the far, far end of the scale."

"I don't think most believers will agree that changing the name of something makes it okay. This may come as a surprise to you, but the pontiff is not all-powerful, not even in the church. If he declares new truths that people refuse to believe, he will have to apply his political power, and there will be consequences."

"I'm well aware of that, and I'm willing to work with you on a solution. But first, why don't you learn the system, so we both know what we're talking about?" Taylor handed him one of only five existing books on the new system. "This contains the underlying theory and a full explanation of the system. I offer you this quest: read the book and learn the new system. Do you accept?"

Rasmusen took a minute to read the quest in his class interface before he accepted. Taylor's own interface had a quest giver's tab, and Rasmusen's Join The Mana Revolution quest was added to Taylor's list of granted quests in progress.

The priest weighed the book in his hands. It was the size and heft of a common prayer book, tiny compared to the codex. "This isn't the book, is it?"

"It's a copy. Plus examples," he added helpfully. "To get you started. If you're sticking around, I can set aside a small amount of time to answer questions."

The priest opened the small book. "Why is there a lawyer's business card inside?"

"Because after you and I decide on the general terms of a deal, I'm handing the details over to my lawyers. I've already had one skirmish with your litigious fanatics. This time, I came prepared."

"That wasn't authorized," Rasmusen grumbled. "You know that."

"Nevertheless, it happened. And I'm a fast learner. Now, if you don't mind, I have a major work I'd like to finish."

As he was leaving, Rasmusen turned. "Codex Alchemica," he said, "has a more esoteric ring to it."