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Message: <blockquote data-quote="simmo" data-source="post: 1437735" data-attributes="member: 9744">We Interrupt This Adventure to bring you the following scholarly excerpt by the noted sage Littleby Cakebeard[Note: this chapter was written by Crater, who plays Littleby Cakebeard]Chapter 4 - DarkvisionA great compliment to pay a Dwarf of Brule Narn is to say that his heart has become hardened. The miners of Red Beard Mountain, as it is known in the common tongue, live and die within its labyrinth of great halls and seemingly bottomless shafts, and two centuries of labour as is allotted to us by Moridan Moradin will surely harden the heart against weal and woe, and strengthen the soul against draught and drought. I am at midpoint in my allotment, but I was young by half a century when I gave up my wife and children to the forge elements, as it was forbidden for the dead of the kingdom to be returned to the womb of the mountain. The arrival of Lutshift Broadvein in Brule Narn was like the touch of boiling water to frozen hands; a danger wrapped in a blessing, perceived but unfelt. He brought with him the three surviving members of his outcast clan, none of whom had ever set foot in the halls. Of their work remain two things: The Rite of The Forge; that the dead were henceforth to be destroyed by fire so as not to be corrupted as they lay in the earth, and the Darkseers; a small group of arcanists trained to a high craft by the renegades themselves. I had been offered the post of Junior Mineshaft Safety Inspector for the Jonstown Company, a fine offer indeed, but instead volunteered to the tutelage of Broadvein's Darkseers when I lost that which I desired to protect most of all. I was the fourth student, there were I believe four more after me. It was by the gloom of lamplight, for the outcast had long since forgotten his darkvision, that my new master revealed his secrets to us: "It is not darkness that we fear, it is shadow. The world of shadow of which we hear in legend, that which is wicked and untrue, is this one. We are the vague reflection of the two truths, a byproduct of the ancient struggle between light and dark. As such we are an imperfect mixture, as impure and unrefined as the ore we drag from the mountain. "The darkness that has come upon this great Kingdom is the first truth. We have been offered a glimpse into the world from which all shadows are cast. It is pure, and perfect, and terrible, but we are sons of Moridan Moradin and we should not fear the darkness. As the earth yields its hidden treasures so does the darkness reveal itself before our deep eyes, because Earth was once long ago the twin of Darkness. Understand that the death, the horror, the suffering that you have all witnessed are but shadows cast through our imperfection, it is we that are corrupt, the truth is pure. "We are Arcanists. To those above it is The Art, but to us it is The Craft, and we use it to refine ourselves, to purify ourselves in Vulcan fire, to temper ourselves in Glacial water. My soul is hardened beyond that which two centuries of labour could achieve and as such I cast no shadow, but you are not ready to see in the darkness as I do. Your people experience the truth thusly: "The first stage is the emotions. The most primal negative drive is fear. This is why your people have been fighting themselves for some years. Your deepest shafts tapped its subtle power at first and it made you jealous and greedy, so you dug deeper, and faster, only to accelerate its pervasion. The darkness has come upon you slowly and turned you upon each other, so it has been very difficult for you to organise effective countermeasures. "The second stage is corporeal death. When in strength, It sucks the lifeforce from you by its very touch. This is the 'plague' that has befallen you of late, no disease, no sickness, just darkness. Your people, already consumed with fear and hatred, are bled slowly of their very being, and thus the graveyards are filled. "The third stage is the corruption of your lifeless corpse. As you bury your dead in the mountain they are consumed with unlife. Thus your graveyards become palaces for the undead, and generation after generation of Dwarves buried layer upon layer throughout the mountain are returned upon the living in undeath. The survival of your civilisation so far is due to the strength of the seals on your tombs. "The aperture through which came the darkness has now been closed and will be held so by the continued vigilance of you few who will come to understand this energy, for energy it truly is. Some call it the Blackweave, implying structure, form and organisation. Some call it Negation, implying complimentary and fatal opposition. Your word for it is Nil, meaning unseen. It is all these things and you must become its master, you must develop a sense for it, perhaps even a taste for it, because to know it is to love it. "Many years hence, when your craft is mature, you will set forth from the mountain and seek out sources of knowledge in places you have only seen in dreams and nightmares. You will learn well because the aperture has a strong will, and it wants to reopen. When it has gathered sufficient strength to attempt such an act, a power greater than I possess now, or that any single one of you alone may possibly possess will be required to meet that terrible hour with any hope of survival. Learn well brave sons of Moridan Moradin because I shall not remain amongst you for long." For his services Lutshift was granted full reinstatement for his people and an unconditional pardon for his late father, but when they had completed their task, Clan Broadvein left and was never seen again. It was as if they had walked into the heart of Nil itself.</blockquote>

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