The Great Sage
The Storyteller
Legend: The Apprentice
It’s been this way since you can remember. Your home is a series of isolations and tests. Closed boxes and lessons. You are ten years old and your name is Apprentice because that’s all you’ve ever been called.
You, however, call things by many names. If ever there were a child prodigy it would be you. You know that it’s your ability to learn and understand the master values. He makes you learn things every day.
Ad vitae gratis.
To give life. To take life. To transfer it between one thing and another. To draw heat, to impart silence.... Important things.
For the past three days you’ve been studying a ritual. The master gave you a thick tome and told you to read it and then shut you in your quarters; a half-circle section of the tower divided into three separate rooms. You are currently sitting in the middle of these rooms - a personal study. Comfy for one but cramped for any more. There are windows in this room that expose a ashen gray night sky dominated by a full moon. Some days you hoist yourself up onto the window’s ledge and peer downward into the impossible infinity below. Nothing but sky most days, but sometimes you catch glimpses of wide countryside or dense forests. Once you even saw a sea of sand reaching out to the horizon in all directions, featureless and dead.
A small lit fireplace built into the curved wall of the study pops and dances. The stone of the tower is well masoned and smooth and the warmth of the fire seems to soak into it like water into a sponge. You are on a cozy sofa with the ritual tome open before you. Thick candles that grow like flowers adorn a brass trellis that curves overhead. You’ve lit some of the candles and although they lean in on you, they drip no wax - burning clean with a faint aroma of smoldering wood.
The text is simple enough. It’s a summoning ritual. Well… a summoning and binding ritual all wrapped up in one. You’ve read the whole thing through twice and are now looking at the glyph. It’s complex. It’s vaguely circular like most are, but the circle branches off in several places and runs tangents like wisps of hair defying a knot. The sigils that adorn these wisps are not elder or draconic or infernal. They’re different in a sort of quazi-familiar way and yet nothing like you’ve ever seen. Each one a work of art with the way the lines taper and bold. Copying it all out in an appropriate size is going to suck... especially since the master is ignoring you and you’re locked in your room. Where will you write the glyph? Where will you get the ink? And perhaps most problematically you need to decide what to summon and it’s not an easy call.
If you understand the ritual correctly it’s not about summoning a physical creature, which apart from demons is supposed to be impossible. It’s more about summoning the aspect of the subject animal and merging your essence with it. No... maybe not merging. It’s more like you’re fraying a small part of your essence and using it as a leash… anyway…. It explains one thing - why the master gave you a trunk filled with dead animals.
The ritual calls for a part of the creature you intend to summon… hair, a feather, blood, skin… something like that.
What to do….
(This will be a long campaign in which you, the Apprentice, must face life-altering realizations and struggle against a superior enemy. The campaign will be puzzle-like and an ability to think around corners will serve you well. Will your time in the Master's tower resemble Harry Potter's adventures in Hogwarts? Or will you probe into the dark mysteries that await you in the hidden corners of your home and prison? Please declare your interest inside this thread and provide a link to the writing you are most proud of. I will choose the successful applicant either once a total of 10 people have applied or one week has passed. Good luck and I look forward to discovering the secrets of the tower with you.)
It’s been this way since you can remember. Your home is a series of isolations and tests. Closed boxes and lessons. You are ten years old and your name is Apprentice because that’s all you’ve ever been called.
You, however, call things by many names. If ever there were a child prodigy it would be you. You know that it’s your ability to learn and understand the master values. He makes you learn things every day.
Ad vitae gratis.
To give life. To take life. To transfer it between one thing and another. To draw heat, to impart silence.... Important things.
For the past three days you’ve been studying a ritual. The master gave you a thick tome and told you to read it and then shut you in your quarters; a half-circle section of the tower divided into three separate rooms. You are currently sitting in the middle of these rooms - a personal study. Comfy for one but cramped for any more. There are windows in this room that expose a ashen gray night sky dominated by a full moon. Some days you hoist yourself up onto the window’s ledge and peer downward into the impossible infinity below. Nothing but sky most days, but sometimes you catch glimpses of wide countryside or dense forests. Once you even saw a sea of sand reaching out to the horizon in all directions, featureless and dead.
A small lit fireplace built into the curved wall of the study pops and dances. The stone of the tower is well masoned and smooth and the warmth of the fire seems to soak into it like water into a sponge. You are on a cozy sofa with the ritual tome open before you. Thick candles that grow like flowers adorn a brass trellis that curves overhead. You’ve lit some of the candles and although they lean in on you, they drip no wax - burning clean with a faint aroma of smoldering wood.
The text is simple enough. It’s a summoning ritual. Well… a summoning and binding ritual all wrapped up in one. You’ve read the whole thing through twice and are now looking at the glyph. It’s complex. It’s vaguely circular like most are, but the circle branches off in several places and runs tangents like wisps of hair defying a knot. The sigils that adorn these wisps are not elder or draconic or infernal. They’re different in a sort of quazi-familiar way and yet nothing like you’ve ever seen. Each one a work of art with the way the lines taper and bold. Copying it all out in an appropriate size is going to suck... especially since the master is ignoring you and you’re locked in your room. Where will you write the glyph? Where will you get the ink? And perhaps most problematically you need to decide what to summon and it’s not an easy call.
If you understand the ritual correctly it’s not about summoning a physical creature, which apart from demons is supposed to be impossible. It’s more about summoning the aspect of the subject animal and merging your essence with it. No... maybe not merging. It’s more like you’re fraying a small part of your essence and using it as a leash… anyway…. It explains one thing - why the master gave you a trunk filled with dead animals.
The ritual calls for a part of the creature you intend to summon… hair, a feather, blood, skin… something like that.
What to do….
(This will be a long campaign in which you, the Apprentice, must face life-altering realizations and struggle against a superior enemy. The campaign will be puzzle-like and an ability to think around corners will serve you well. Will your time in the Master's tower resemble Harry Potter's adventures in Hogwarts? Or will you probe into the dark mysteries that await you in the hidden corners of your home and prison? Please declare your interest inside this thread and provide a link to the writing you are most proud of. I will choose the successful applicant either once a total of 10 people have applied or one week has passed. Good luck and I look forward to discovering the secrets of the tower with you.)
