TREASURE MAP AS DISTRESS BEACON ACROSS TIME AND WORLDS
TREASURE MAP AS DISTRESS BEACON ACROSS TIME AND WORLDS—CONFER A BEACON THROUGH FOOTNOTES OR INVOCATIONS.
The hierophants, autophagii, and other factions inside the coiled world beneath Warwick New Jersey are physically trapped—the molded space-time of the labyrinth's hull offers but one-way routes from outer to interior spaces. With the knowledge of the labyrinth's operation lost, its sojourn through the planets of the Consophontry halted, what can the magi within attempt but dreamwork and summonings? Surely some of the tool-using chordates currently lumbering about its crust will respond, will seek the buried horde of jewels and power. The appetites of those who would delve are the very traits that make any sophonts valuable as a servitor race. But they may yet be simply too primitive even to drill down to the hull of the labyrinth, to say nothing of the astromantic expertise need to unlock the surface portals. Though the attacks of the ophiuchans, burrowers, woodworks, etc., through the ages have been costly, the entry of these contestants into the coiled world must have left surface tunnels and catacombs the still-manipulable mammals may crawl into.
And so the magi send dreamings and seemings and glamours out in the pellucid waters of this planet's sophontry. Aurel Stein hears and aligns himself with the Britons, but spends his energies half a world away. George Elliot hears and peppers her works with acrostics and gematria encoding maps of routes through the labyrinth and materials required --quite useful, were anyone at all aware of the code, starting with Elliot. A lesser Murcian disciple of Ibn Sab'ayn hears and rises without waking to pen diagrams of entry which, upon waking with a start, he mistakes for a planetary model sadly poorer than the elegance of Ptolemy.
Scattered traces, brambles of marginalia, and who can piece them together? Who indeed?
Components, correct ritual, and perhaps raw materials are required. Some subset of these are in the hands of each faction seeking access to the coiled world. But all the contestants in the long war are less or more mad, less or more forgetful of all that has been tried, abandoned, mined out and annihilated, so they would always be retreading their own ruts and mistaking them for fresh paths. Ophids and chthonics have persisted the longest, the very picture of howling mad sorcerers and soldiers hurling themselves against the walls of futile expenditure.
The hierophants, autophagii, and other factions inside the coiled world beneath Warwick New Jersey are physically trapped—the molded space-time of the labyrinth's hull offers but one-way routes from outer to interior spaces. With the knowledge of the labyrinth's operation lost, its sojourn through the planets of the Consophontry halted, what can the magi within attempt but dreamwork and summonings? Surely some of the tool-using chordates currently lumbering about its crust will respond, will seek the buried horde of jewels and power. The appetites of those who would delve are the very traits that make any sophonts valuable as a servitor race. But they may yet be simply too primitive even to drill down to the hull of the labyrinth, to say nothing of the astromantic expertise need to unlock the surface portals. Though the attacks of the ophiuchans, burrowers, woodworks, etc., through the ages have been costly, the entry of these contestants into the coiled world must have left surface tunnels and catacombs the still-manipulable mammals may crawl into.
And so the magi send dreamings and seemings and glamours out in the pellucid waters of this planet's sophontry. Aurel Stein hears and aligns himself with the Britons, but spends his energies half a world away. George Elliot hears and peppers her works with acrostics and gematria encoding maps of routes through the labyrinth and materials required --quite useful, were anyone at all aware of the code, starting with Elliot. A lesser Murcian disciple of Ibn Sab'ayn hears and rises without waking to pen diagrams of entry which, upon waking with a start, he mistakes for a planetary model sadly poorer than the elegance of Ptolemy.
Scattered traces, brambles of marginalia, and who can piece them together? Who indeed?
Components, correct ritual, and perhaps raw materials are required. Some subset of these are in the hands of each faction seeking access to the coiled world. But all the contestants in the long war are less or more mad, less or more forgetful of all that has been tried, abandoned, mined out and annihilated, so they would always be retreading their own ruts and mistaking them for fresh paths. Ophids and chthonics have persisted the longest, the very picture of howling mad sorcerers and soldiers hurling themselves against the walls of futile expenditure.
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