Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Carnifex" data-source="post: 1348581" data-attributes="member: 227">"A war tower..." Mel mouthed quietly, staring across the valley at the tower. It reminded her immediately of the machine-people, these Ironjacks, in that it grew in organic twists and bulges from the stone, but had apparently been added to in mechanical ways, like the man with the clockwork eye she'd seen at the monastery. It wasn't quite right. And it wasn't typically Carthagian, she thought, to tamper with things in this precise way: the Manipulators took things which lived and forced them to grow and metamorphose into more useful forms, while this tower had been added to incongruously with tacked-on bits here and there, such as the shining crown of copper spikes it now wore. "Looks like a serious lightning hazard," she commented dreamily, more to herself than anyone else, even while her mind wandered around the subject of why the Carthagian arcanist had left his homeland in the first place. He did not seem to have quite the same mentality as his comrades, if his residence was any clue.Her mare shifted and snorted with fatigue. She had tried to weave close to Jarvis on the ride toward the tower with the intention of asking him a couple dozen questions, and had only now managed to draw up close by the wizard as they paused before their first view of the tower. He'd been too busy consulting with his companions until now. Her mind snapped back to his last comment suddenly."A war tower! Will we find traps and pitfalls on the perimeter, do you think? Whom were they fighting? I'm very curious to find out more about this thaumineer. He was not a typical Carthagian, I get the impression. But it does look empty, except for those ducts and clouds at the base. I wonder what those are. It's almost like the tower itself is alive!" This was obviously silly, so she stopped talking abruptly, with a sheepish smile at Jarvis.Johan gave Melisande an odd look. "I don't know what defences we might meet, but if this Carthagian survived for long enough tp modify the tower with those additions, then he probably found a way to circumnavigate or deactivate any traps. The tower looks pretty dead anyway, though some residual systems might still be active..." There was some discussion from the other sages, including a muttered "will be active"."But to be honest I think we have at least as much to fear from whatever defences the Carthagian might have put up to ward off unwelcome visitors. And then there's the rather worrying possibility he might still be alive. It's a pretty big structure though, so I really can't predict what we'll find in there."And it was a big structure when looked at in the scale of the surrounding trees. The magnitude of the rolling vallies made it look less imposing, but the truth was that it was massive, a behemoth of a building."From the vents it looks like something inside is still active, but it's hard to tell what. It might just be basic systems ticking over, or it could be whatever the thaumineer did within. For a practitioner of thaumineering I can imagine such a tower would be a great thing for altering to suit his own needs." Johan's eyes suddenly gleamed eagerly, as if something had just occurred to him. "And I can only hope that it might, just might, have a still active mother spirit. If those effluents indicate still active Umbral machinery there might be one still alive. We've only recovered the engine-shells of their containers before, and clues as to their existence - they're a kind of machine spirit that the Umbral's harnessed into some of their structures." After a hasty debate with another scholar, he amended, "May have done, anyway. We still can't be sure. But this could be a real treasure trove of Umbral artefacts. I don't think I've ever seen such a complete structure before, it's just a shame that some Carthagian came along and tampered with it. I hope he hasn't done too much damage to the innards.""Oh yes, Carthagians are terrible for doing damage to innards," Melisande sympathized. Then she went on in a tone not unlike that of an eager six-year-old: "But whom would they have been fighting in their war tower? Does this date back to the wars of the Elder Gods? Who were the enemies of the Umbral people? And what were the Umbral people, anyway? Human, or something else?" A feeling of unease had overcome Wyshira as the party topped the rise and she saw the Tower for the first time. She directed her horse closer to where Johan and Melisande rode together, and listened to their conversation about Umbral traps and Carthagian defences. She didn't like what she was hearing, and she didn't like what she could see of the structure either. Vaporous emissions from rusted and bent pipes coiled in lazy tendrils around the base of the Tower. Wyshira eyed these false, ground-hugging 'clouds' with distaste.Then something Johan said caught her attention."Mother Spirit?" she repeated after him. "I don't understand. You mean, the Umbral people made living machines?"* * *As Sebastion had crested the hill, all the questions in his mind about the arcane abilities of the scholars they now travelled with had disappeared like so much mist in the morning sun. The tower emerged slowly as he drew over the rounded top of the crest: first the thrusting, jutting spire, then more and more of the curiously flowing, dynamic sculpture of the breastworks, and finally the billowing, expectant mists of the footings. He didn't listen, as such, to the muttered conversations behind him, but he heard the words."...This is a war tower......Umbral people made living machines..."He could see the dangers in it, see the power that spoke of conflict and struggle, the dynamic strength as it surged up from the ground, hauling itself above the rock upon which it stood. Towers had always seemed ponderous and immense, but this spoke of speed and strength as well as sheer size - and the froth of mist spurting from its base gave the impression of some vast iron bull snorting at the dust as it prepared to charge across the paddock.He wanted to see inside, to know what it was and what it could do...[size=-1]"Wow!"[/size] was all he could manage, quietly, as he gently nudged the mare into motion, and began a slow walk down towards the glen in which it sat, turning back to be sure the others were coming. * * *Johan looked somewhat uneasy in answering Melisande's question. "Well, truthfully, we don't know who they were fighting... but... well, the indications are that the Umbrals date back to before the Dawn War between the Elders and the Youngers. As to what the Umbrals were, I cannot say for sure, but some of the artefacts we have recovered indicate they were similar in form to humans, though there are certain... discrepancies. Pieces of armour that fit wrong, certain devices of odd styling for hands of human shape. Other oddities that indicate that they were alike men but not men. Their language seems to be the root form of Drakkath though, which has some rather worrying implications. Still, we can do little as yet but piece together the evidence left in their wake. We have recovered very few intact relics, located few sites in good shape, and found no writings of theirs that shed any more than a vague light on them. This tower though... I think we might really be onto something here."In response to Wyshira's question, Johan stumbled over how to explain it. "Well, no, not in an organic sense. We believe a mother spirit is not a living, breathing creature, but rather a machine spirit-overseer, an intelligence of gears and steel, that they bound into some of their creations. We've found some indications that the Umbrals were on good terms with spirits from a realm of order and law, and it was this that let them bind mother spirits.""Sounds possible to me," butted in Ansas'Turi, the Ironjack woman coming up level with Melisande. "In my homeland, the Praefectors of Grual Rig knew how to bind minor spirits to machines to safeguard and maintain them. The Lore that the Praefectors guard..." She paused, then corrected herself. "...guarded... told us that the spirits came from a realm of the gods of order, where they existed in abundance. These Umbrals must have been mechanists of great skill to have made something like this tower though, so their binding techniques would most likely be far ahead of what little we have achieved in the field."Slightly ahead, Jarvis had clambered onto a rock that punctuated the valleyside, and from a pouch drawn a delicate spyglass, peering through it at the tower ahead. He turned with a look of slight worry. "Someone's got there ahead of us," he shouted with a tone of puzzlement. "I can see tents, and horses tethered. No people in sight though."They had been beaten to the tower.But by who?</blockquote>

Verification