Gemstones store the souls of the race?
My mind boggled as I read that, explaining why I saw almost no gemstones about. Polished normal stones and precious metal were evident here and there, but gemstones were relatively uncommon for what I expected of a Deepearth culture, and the unique ones the priests wore nobody else dared use.
Except… there were no damn souls in any of those gemstones, although there was definitely something in those soul gems the priests wore. It just wasn’t souls. More like gathered energy…
I couldn’t understand why the elves in general believed gems had souls. Did they not trust the truth of their own magic to sense and detect life? It was just… weird. Simply Upcasting Know Alignment or any kind of Aura-sensing magic could easily determine if there were any kinds of souls or spirits in a gemstone, pre or post birth or whatnot.
So, there were no damn souls in the gems, so the elves were being lied to. Given the reverence attached to the soul gems, I assumed it was all part of the Big Lie, and knew I had to get to the bottom of it… when I was more capable of taking care of myself.
The fact it was an outright lie disguised within a religion made me extremely cool towards the whole nature of Gaebrel’s religion.
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The Code of The Shadenelf Patron
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Naturally, as a religion there were endless discussions about the philosophy and pragmatic applications of the ‘word of god’ exemplified by these sayings. The original verses were carved into the stone among the stalactites that formed the foundation of the great Temple of Gaebrel that rose above the city, somehow managing to intersect the gravity line that warped through the cavern and so wasbuilt with opposing floors and structures hanging from one another to offset their weight from the carved stalactites.
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Verse of Birth: If any child be born among you that is not whole, let them be brought before me, and I, Gaebrel, will guide their path.
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Mutated children.
There was one born every month or so in a city of this size. Twisted faces, bestial features and bodies, clearly regressed and afflicted by fell energies. They vaguely pinged elven, but there was no resemblance to elves among them. Heavier and cruder builds, body hair of dark hues and bristling nature, scales, skin colors anything but pale…
They were a VERSE. Gaebrel had known that those children were coming when he set down the Verses. Such children were not natural to elves. This was the Verse that my mother had been obeying when she called for the priestess to judge me and see if my eyes meant mutation and I needed to be abandoned.
Yes, abandoned. The priests of Gaebrel took the child out into the wild tunnels, miles and miles away from the caverns themselves, Teleporting home after reaching a location where they laid the infant down, and left them there for whatever fate was to befall them.
Likewise, this commandment:
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Verse of the Wanderers: Keep the strength of the shaden elves, and let none who is weak remain among you or follow after you. Turn these to me, and I, Gaebrel, will guide their path.
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This had been interpreted as when an elder reached eight hundred years of age, they would leave their people behind, go out into the tunnels, and find their fate, never retracing their steps. Thus, the old going frail were removed from society, making way for the young and ensuring that they could not hold onto power until death. Given elves could live over a thousand years, it was the equivalent of getting rid of any human over sixty years old.
The elders walked out into the tunnels, and were never seen again.
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No other beings were allowed to be worshiped. The shaden Elves were very monotheistic, and the Church enforced that. As a natural result, change, if any, was slow and glacial, as the Church actively discouraged anything that might upset the current status quo and its own preeminent position.
There was a distinctive martial air to the culture, however, because of this Verse:
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Verse of the Army: I will send fire against you, to strengthen you in my own forge. Let every man and woman among you see battle and I, Gaebrel, will guide you.
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As a result, every single elf served in the military, and they expected their god to test them with attackers. The natural resolve, brotherhood, and esprit de corps involved in combat against external foes also meant that ideas of peaceful resolution and mutual benefits were far down the list of potential resolutions, as martial power and enforced monotheism meant the views of other powers and forces were not respected and were even derided.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
The religious obedience and fanaticism involved meant the elves served without complaint for little to no compensation, power remained concentrated in the hands of the priests, and cleaving together had given them a collective strength that, given the combined martial and magical potential of the average elf, had translated to a powerful and aggressive society that had managed to withstand the far more prolific humanoid races and assorted monsters repeatedly over thousand of years. They had survived, and even managed to thrive, demonstrating the superiority of their system of beliefs.
They expected to be attacked, by the word of their Patron Immortal, NOT to be approached diplomatically, and that colored all their interactions with other forces.
This was the sort of indoctrination that I was going to be facing as I grew older. Even my mother, who had been to the surface world and visibly was less reverent and orthodox than other shaden elves, did her daily observances and recitation of the Verses, drawing strength and focus from her belief in them.
I was going to have an interesting time when I was expected to go along with things I didn’t believe in.
I was also going to discover that ‘secret of the crystals’.
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Verse of the Crystals: In the fullness of time, I, Gaebrel, will show my shamans the secrets of the crystals that have the power of life and death and life everlasting. Guard these crystals carefully, and I, Gaebrel, will guide you.
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Power of life and death and life everlasting.
Immortality, paraphrased.
I read that and grit my teeth, as that Verse had been perverted into meaning the crystals held the souls of the deceased and the pre-born alike. The reverence of the elves for jewels was another searing reason to distrust other races, as mining gemstones was mining the souls of their people! Sacrilege! Heresy! Murder! Unclean savages who deserved only death!
I was a soul who lived in Truth, and so lying was simply not possible for me. However, knowing the truth was a reason to be derided or exiled at best, and outright killed before I spread uncomfortable realities to the people that the all-wise Gaebrel didn’t want them to know.
Religious zealots, especially Blues, were pretty predictable that way.
Well, there was a definite reason that I had to be able to sustain myself alone. The fact I was growing and maturing faster than a normal elf was throwing mother off a little bit, but given all the other weird stuff going on around me, it was a minor thing.
My main problem right now was covering for myself so I could work on extended projects without drawing suspicion. My problem was that clerical magic wasn’t optimized for that kind of thing, and my arcane magic had stopped at around IV’s once Ur-Priest sucked up all my Karma.
I was at Seven, and needed to get to Twelve, which meant I needed to gain a bunch of Karma on my Halvyr Levels and their dual purpose.
I needed to adventure. Conversely, it was really hard for me to adventure without already having those Levels, which was kind of annoying.
That said, a high Level Caster did have SOME workarounds and alternate methods. As it turned out, for example, gaining goldweight was also Karmic gain under the system here, and Commune with Nature and/or the City were both incredible ways of finding goldweight.
It looked like I’d be killing two birds with one stone, and not even killing them, just rounding them up for use...
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First item of interest was needing a magical Ring. It had to be magical because it had to change size for me. It had to be a Ring because I had memories of being a Ringlord, Rings were the very best jewelry items to be powerful items, and I had a lot of upgrading to be about. The sooner I got with it, the better.
Having Wizardry at Eleven meant I could use up to Arcane VI’s. Which was cool, except I needed a spellbook, or I could use exactly one spell with an Upcast Exemplar Surge.
That spell was Simulacrum.
Oddly enough, being small meant it was pretty cheap to make the body, and Shape Ice + Fabricate was simple enough to do. My double also had a tithe of my ability, and so could Alter Self to appear as a perfect fleshy double of me. The first tithe of goldweight I pulled out of a cavern wall with the help of a Conjure Earth Elemental, gaining me a handful of raw gemstones that Ur Shape Stone Upcast to VII+1 could cut into viable gemstones to be Energized and Burned away, was used to pay for the animation of my infant double. I also worked in an addendum that could add to their body mass to always be the same size as me.
Body double there for the nights, my explorations in Alter Self brownie form commenced with speed and energy. The diminutive and friendly fey were smaller than even hyn at only two feet tall, yet I could appear as an adult of the species, which was very helpful for getting around… especially with a superior Constitution and Dexterity score!
A vein of tungsten a thousand feet inside the stone of a cavern wall, recovered by a helpful Elemental, gave me the raw material for a Ring. Heat Metal and Shape Stone VII from Ur Valences made me the Ring, accented with Blood Rubies which proved to be necessary to harmonize it with my Aura. I could make it Invisible on my finger, and once Energized at VII to adamantine, I had a black Ring with tiny blood-red crystals upon it ready to be improved upon in many ways.
Ring in place, I began to wander the underground Sternvult in earnest, as well as the cavern environs around and beneath it. The Witchbonded nature of Funf began to accumulate my repertoire of spells, one spell a day, one day at a time, as I Exemplar Surged for Extra Spell Known, housed it in my Wizard Engrams like a proper Mystic Theurge, and began to extend my versatility and my range.
Commune with Nature via the genius loci of the area informed me of where all the natural resources were, including those far beyond the ability of normal Detects to discover. This was especially true of gemstones, which were by far the most economical in terms of using Energize to increase their Burn value.
Commune with City was much more personal, especially when Upcast. There were always lots of secrets and hidden things in cities, and this elven one was no different… especially since I was looking for them.
I was not pleased to discover that I could only gain a limited amount of Karma per day with my burgeoning wealth, at least not without combat to accentuate it. In other words, just extracting wealth laying around, regardless of the amount of care, power, time, and effort it took me to do so, just didn’t apply as quickly as wealth guarded by hostile and evil creatures, and combat Karma accrued much, much more quickly than non-monetary Karma.
In other words, I could make relatively 1000 Karma a day without combat or skulduggery involved, each day, until I was caught up. So, mining a million gold would give me 1000 Karma a day for three years. The elves here could Level up over centuries that way, even if they saw little combat.
If I actually fought stuff, I would make a lot more Karma faster, so naturally I was going to do so. The problem was what to fight!
Unsurprisingly, there weren’t a whole lot of adventuring opportunities against random monsters in the middle of a tightly-run kingdom full of warrior-mages serving in a very active military.
That’s not to say there weren’t threats. There were indeed quite a few of those, but the military handled the marauding humanoid threat constantly spreading down from above, random wandering monsters were chased out or cleared out regularly, and I had to start going further and further afield to locate said monstrous creatures… but they were definitely there, I just had to reach them and if the Land didn’t mind, pop them.
Which meant I had to go a fair distance, exploring out in areas where other elves weren’t patrolling, and in doing so expanding my map of the Underdark here to a level and breadth nobody else likely had.
Terribly dangerous, sure. Terribly exciting, and Dauntless and energized by all the possibilities of what I might find out there, I was all-for some classic adventuring!