The First Land Herald/433-09-25

Article Number: 21

Dateline: 433-09-25

WARRIOR MAGES AND BARDS CREATE AETHERIC ANOMALY Some weeks ago, the Warrior Mages Perune and Saragos, along with myself, led an effort to experiment with the local streams of Aether, which led to shocking and fantastic results. You may recall from the Herald's 429 article that Scholar of the Grove Uryutis has explained Aether is, "the medium, the canvas upon which [the other Elements] sit." He added, "It flows and ebbs, in response to various influences and whims.  It mends when torn, eventually. When you summon an Ethereal Fissure or weapon from another Plane, you are poking a fine hole in the canvas, a bridge that leads to another Plane, and drawing a small portion of it to you, here.  These small punctures are fairly minor, and we see them repair almost the instant they are released, but the effects can be seen, even from afar." Perune initially had the idea that Aether, if strengthened, might act as a barrier against extraplanar influence. The hypothesis is that if these holes allow for bridges to other Planes, then layering or more tightly "weaving" the local Aether might have the opposite effect: closing the area to influence from other Planes. This idea is particularly important given that demons are known extraplanar entities with desires to gain footholds in our own Plane of Abiding. Perune believed that, by strengthening local Aether, we might be able to ward or shield against demonic influence, at least in the area of interest. Taking from the metaphor of the canvas, Saragos suggested that we weave the Aether similarly to how cloth is woven. Having learned from Uryutis that the senses of Bards can be invaluable in manipulating Aether streams, we decided to bring together the two guilds in force. Ultimately we collected a number of each, with Bards including myself, Emanuel, Orilu, Cailei, Rhaizu, Jorenn, Imerald, Stelling, Ahneya, and Emyrose, and Warrior Mages Perune, Saragos, Samech, Tekhelet, Zalinyar, Ayrell, Kerizon, Rahek, and Woten. Perune's idea was to array us into two rows of Warrior Mages, each wielding a ritual focus and with a Bard standing behind to act as a guide, with Aether streams held tightly between each Mage and his or her opposite in the other row. The Warrior Mages were to be something like the hands holding the streams, while the Bards would be their eyes, lending them a greater sense of the streams and their movements. The two-row configuration was meant to be something like a loom, wherein another pair, Saragos and myself, would act as the shuttle, weaving more strands across the ones held in place. Perune organized the pairs into place and cast an Ethereal Fissure in order to allow streams to be drawn from it. I instructed the Bards to place the Echoes of Aether spell upon themselves if known. Even as we were still aligning ourselves, activity began in the Aetheric landscape. I felt a pulse of energy, and the taste of copper in my mouth. Swirling with a faint wisp of blue, a sheet of space between the arrayed participants betrayed a slight perturbation that quickly dispersed. At the same time, I heard a bell ring, the sound echoing strangely before being softly muted. The pulses continued, building in intensity, my skin tingling, and the crescendoing sounds continuing to accompany them. Space contorted wildly, the distortion bulging and deflating. Suddenly the sheet held between the participants bucked wildly, forming a tight bolus, and this seemed to rotate in on itself. I heard a dull tearing in the distance. The knot performed a bizarre involution and began to vanish into nothingness. Uryutis leapt into motion, cursing! He swiftly conjured a barrier of geometric light, flinging shimmering octahedral panels around the distortion, encasing it in a spinning orb of magic. The distortion resonated, and the twisted space seemed to both collapse and intensify, snapping into coherence and roiling with blue wisps of amorphous energy. Raking lines spiked outward against the barrier. At this point it appeared vaguely spherical, roughly a foot across, encircled in blue light, and it seemed to shift and billow in unseen winds, also expanding and contracting slightly. The distortion stopped suddenly and began to glow brightly, growing in intensity to a brilliant white. The barrier began to crack, and I heard a piercing droning reverberate through the area before the immense sound of a crystal gong being struck, the note souring. Uryutis tried to hold the barrier, and I saw it thicken with his efforts, but the panes continued to fracture. A piercing ray of light broke through and struck Perune in the chest, knocking him back! Soon after, the barrier shattered entirely, and a roaring wall of magical sound erupted from it. Somehow I took the worst of it, as it blasted my eardrums, and I reeled, stunned and bleeding. I managed to collect myself enough to witness the intensity quiet, the spherical periphery of the distortion settling into a pattern of woven lines. The sphere seemed to rotate, gathering material from nothingness and slowly expanding. It pulsated once, clicking into place and gently hissing. Somehow, we had stabilized it, even without Uryutis's ward. Now the anomaly presented as a blue-tinted, amorphous sphere that hovered a few feet above the ground, ebbing and flowing with a strange rhythm. Roughly three feet across, it gave off neither heat nor cold, yet seemed to push back at its surroundings with a steady force. No matter the viewing angle, I felt as though I were observing the same side of the sphere, and it seemed almost to skitter back and forth across my vision, my perception struggling to make sense of conflicting information. Included is a light pen sketch of the anomaly, a sphere with wispy lines trailing from the surface and evaporating into nothingness. Skewed refractions in it reveal objects both behind and in front of it. When I closed my eyes to focus upon it, I heard a variety of unexpected sounds. A faint ringing surged into a resonant cacophony, winding along a range of scales before settling into a shifting, single note. The note pulsed in complex ways, the origin clearly the echoes of the area. A vague periodicity emerged in time with the anomaly's slow expansions and contractions, reminiscent of a beating heart. I could tell it was an echoing tunnel bored into our reality, with a brassy overtone and multiple bizarre accompaniments. I could sense what seemed to be a kind of call and response, as the anomaly translated the tones of each side for the other. Concentrating further, I could hear soothing fundamentals whispering in the distance, though I could not place their origin. Sibilant hissing began to build, drowning out the sounds, as the anomaly continued to pulse. Reactions from other guild members varied. Clearly my perception was a distinctly Bardic one, and the Warrior Mages saw something different, as did Sir Hebion, the Paladin present. The Warrior Mage view was a much more visual one, unsurprisingly. They could see the area illuminated by an opalescent glow, the energies of the anomaly unmasking the dendritic lattices of the bodies there, though this visual pattern also appeared to pulse like a heartbeat. They, too, saw the anomaly as a smoothly bored hole in reality, a multi-dimensional structure, knots within knots layered against it as it balanced the laws of each plane against one another. They felt the ebb and flow of something unknowable through the structure. They saw in the distance a vast landscape of jutting features melting and erupting into new forms, flowing between geometric structure and mutable orbs of transparent mist. Massive forms shifted in the distance, silhouetted. A pressure built and pushed them back. Sir Hebion had a different perspective. "You are gaining the attention of something bigger, and it is not the Immortals… I am attuned to the order of things, the rightness of them. The beings seem benevolent but that might not be the case." I did not hear more from him, but another Paladin later told me that the anomaly appeared as a perfect circle of emptiness, a violation. A profound sense of apprehension encroached on him as the glorious golden light he usually perceives struggled to reassert itself and drive back the anomaly. The massive forms shifting in the distance did appear distinctly benevolent but were clearly not of the Immortals. Of particular note, the anomaly was quite deadly to any who approached it. Dantia was the first to try, and she was quickly reduced to a violently rearranged corpse, ripped apart in a spray of blood and gore. Uryutis told us, "The pattern you've created is stabilizing the anomaly, which appears to be a conduit directly to the Plane of Aether. I wouldn't venture beyond the stabilizing pattern… [It is] almost like a particularly potent Fissure. Far more elegant and contained." The fact that it was so stable seemed to astonish him. "I find the pattern of stability to be fascinating. I'm not even sure how you all did that. It's self enforcing and stabilizing. Typically these conduits are jagged affairs that require constant upkeep." We also noticed that the anomaly was shrinking, albeit slowly. As of the date of this writing, it has faded away entirely. Uryutis said, "That it is shrinking makes me wonder where the stabilizing energy is going." Fariden suggested that it must be going either to the Plane of Aether or the Plane of Abiding, and Uryutis agreed. Naturally, we were all filled with questions, which were not easy to answer. Much debate and discussion about the potential nature of the anomaly was had, although nothing was definitively concluded. I have reached out to Uryutis, and we intend to host a public meeting at which we can discuss further, now that we have had the time to reflect. Look for the upcoming announcement. To the pious, I would assure you that I later had the anomaly examined thoroughly by Father Liurilias, a renowned elder Cleric. Although he did not have a distinct sense of the anomaly at first, for a brief moment a vision was revealed to him. The anomaly became clearly visible as a radiant gap in the backdrop of golden mana he perceived, and a swirl of sparks began to gather, a black staff marbled in silver materializing above the anomaly and beginning to spin rapidly, forming a blurring disk. After a moment, it vanished. Clearly the great god Firulf bestowed this vision upon the good father, and we may take heart from the fact that He did not show displeasure. So, aspiring researchers, Elemental and otherwise, please attend our next event as we ponder the ramifications of this explosive experiment and what to do next. In fraternity, Navesi Daerthon True Bard, History's Voice, Zoluren's Herald Editor in Chief of the First Land Herald

Real Date: Unknown Date

Subject(s): Bard Cleric Demons Echoes of Aether Elemental Planes Ethereal Fissure Firulf Immortals Navesi Paladin Perune Plane of Abiding Saragos Uryutis Warrior Mage

Author(s): Navesi