Hunter (
pyrighteous) wrote2022-07-24 06:20 pm
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Entry tags:
[OOC] [Serpentine Horizon] Belos's Research Notes
This is also a fanfic, because why not.
CW for mentions of child abuse. We're delving into Charlie Day levels of fandom theorycrafting nonsense, just FYI.
CW for mentions of child abuse. We're delving into Charlie Day levels of fandom theorycrafting nonsense, just FYI.
1685
Finally. A breakthrough.
Just when I’d nearly given up, as well. It seemed all too plausible that this was merely another trick of this place. Countless times I’ve uncovered a text that looked promising, only to find it a mere wisp of smoke and trickery.
The key lies in the quality of the galdorstone itself. My first four attempts were with the initial set I discovered - inferior specimens, it seems. The six I’ve recovered since have a fine sky blue color to them and are reach roughly the size of a human heart. A clear contrast with the originals, which were pale, powerless things. Even the most vibrant of them cracked down the middle during the growth acceleration process; the other three shattered completely. I’ve set both the cracked stone and the fragments aside for now. They may yet prove useful someday.
For now, the specimen I’ve created is sufficient.
It is uncanny how close the resemblance is, and yet how glaring each of the differences are. Its hair color is a shade darker than its ortet, and of course there is the matter of its eyes. Unsurprising. Every text I referenced mentioned how stubborn that magenta color would be. Something to stamp out, perhaps, given enough iterations.
Most concerning is the state of the creature’s limbs. Its arms and hands are fine approximations of flesh, as the differences are invisible to all but the most invasive examinations. But its left leg is terribly atrophied. It cried from the moment it clawed its way out of the pit of muck and material I’d prepared. This is, perhaps, a failing on the part of the specific formula. Inferior palistrom wood, or an inadequate quality of selikdomus scales.
The other problem, of course, is the rounded ears. Unsurprising, given the ortet; I’ll have to try some alterations for future versions. For now, though, the plan is to cover rather than modify. A full mask to match my own, and something to cover the head as well. A cowl? Yes … we’ll both wear gold and white. The colors of our “family.”
Ugh. The wretched thing is sniveling again. What a loud thing it is; when it isn’t nattering on about some nonsense, it weeps with a vigor I find apalling. One drawback of the acceleration process: it appears to be weighted far more towards the physical side than it is the mental. I shall have to seek out the further assistance of illusionist witch to properly falsify its memories.
In the meantime, I’ll start the next batch. The work should go much faster with an extra pair of hands.
*
Despite its crippled leg, the first functional grimwalker is proving to be an able helper. When I undertook this mission, I was uncertain as to how well these creatures would be capable of using this realm’s witch magic. This one has managed a few basic construction spells to brace its malformed leg with minimal prompting from myself. And during the encounter with the selkidomus cow, it was able to form projectiles out of the surrounding rocks and fling them at the marauding beast with surprising accuracy. My brilliant work has provided life to a creature that was able to guard my own in turn.
I think the creature has earned some semblance of a name. It shall become necessary anyway, once I have finished cultivating its ramet, and it will help us pass among the witches that surround us on all sides. The question being what.
It does not deserve to share a name with its ortet. It will not. I am loathe to provide it any sort of virtuous human name either, lest it entertain inaccurate ideas about its place in the world. Something simple, yet descriptive.
I have it. I had always planned to identify the grimwalkers produced by their various stones by a letter to begin with - this first success being my A lineage, the one currently in progress being the B lineage, and so on. This also roughly corresponds to my estimation of the galdorstones’ quality levels, as well. Given this one’s capabilities with projectiles, I shall call it Archer. As for the next, well. We shall see what inclinations it shows.
For now, we wait. Archer is still a rather simplistic creature; it is safer to leave it behind when I make my visits to Bonesborough. It can watch over the B lineage’s development until I return with the illusionist I’ve convinced to assist me with the memory problems my … “nephew” is having.
*
Two successes and one failure. I shall catalogue each in turn:
Success the first: the B lineage has produced another adequate grimwalker.
As with its ramet, the likeness is close but not perfect. Its hair is nearly the exact shade as its progenitor; however, it has the same issue with the extremities having significant defects. In this case, one of the creature’s arms does not have the correct amount of skin stretched over it, resulting in a limb that is functional but distinctly vegetal in appearance. There really must be something in the palistrom wood mix that is causing it, given it seems to be a commonality between lineages.
The failure, singular: the B lineage seems to be unable or unwilling to speak. I have exhorted the creature using every method I can think of, including the corporal, but nothing works. Archerseems to prompt something, at least, but none of its excited requests for the new grimwalker to “play” or “shoot rocks at that weird tree from increasingly improbable angles” resulted in anything more verbal than a grunt. Even once it was led to said tree to participate in playful (and improbable) impalement, it never spoke so much as a single syllable.
There is a silver lining, however. When I returned with the witch illusionist in tow, I found it reading through my journal. A mistake, of course, and one it quickly regretted, but the fact that it shows such perspicacity is a welcome development. Archer has proven to be strong and chattery but rather dim-witted; if this one is silent but intelligent, then I welcome the quiet.
Booker seems a most appropriate appellation.
Finally, success the second: the illusionist I convinced was able to show me a simple method for memory manipulation. Apparently, this is such a simple spell that children often use it as an introduction to mental magic while in school. Horrifying. These monsters truly indoctrinate their children from a young age. Using their own methods against them is simply the nature of dealing with such witches.
The tool is easy to use, even for a human, and the method simple enough. With a pair of enchanted calipers, one simply delves into the ear canal of the subject and removes small illustrations that represent memories. The clearer the image, the more emotional the underlying memory. The illusionist grew increasingly alarmed when the only illustrations that Archer’s brain produced were blurry sketches of its time in the muck pit. Unsurprising, given that the acceleration process seems quite traumatic, but one that I had not been fully prepared to explain. I found myself confiscating the tool, despite her protests. It was actually quite satisfying; normally I have more trouble dealing with the locals, but with two grimwalkers at my back, she was rather more inclined to acknowledge the wisdom of my commands. In this, Booker’s unsettling silence proved especially helpful.
From here, the solution is easy enough. I shall withdraw their memories using the tool and replace the sketches with a storyline that far better serves all of us. Perhaps something about wild magic destroying our family. Yes, that seems simple and effective enough.
Once that’s done, it will be time to start on the real work. We’ll begin with the unconscious illusionist. I have some ideas on what forms the sigils should take…
1690 Spring & Summer
1690 - Spring
In the five years since its creation, Archer has only known silence when it was forced to be so. The creature prattles at any given opportunity, including during sleep; the only difference is that its words are marginally more nonsensical when it is not conscious enough to filter them. It has named ALL of the trees outside of my sanctum, and addresses them by name when on his morning patrols. The nonsense he produces concerning the romantic inclinations of said conifers borders on the ridiculous. Every day his “ship wall” grows, despite being populated entirely by trees.
Booker, in comparison, has spoken to me on exactly three occasions: once to warn me of an impending hand dragon attack, once to complain about its accommodations, and once when I specifically required verbal feedback on its new uniform. In all other cases, the creature prefers hand signals to speech. This mostly serves to make Archer even more insufferable, as it can continue its babbling even when silenced. I expected the two of them to annoy each other into some semblance of balance. Instead, the creatures are as close as…well. Archer ceased to use the term “brother” after the first time I sewed its mouth shut, but I suspect one of the hand signals these two creatures share must mean the same thing.
Fools. As if they know the first thing about the subject.
Despite their flaws, both grimwalkers have proved to be helpful, if not always capable. Archer is my primary interface with the witch village at the base of the head; he is responsible for making sure the three of us have sufficient provisions. The grimwalkers can survive on less sustenance than a human can, but all beings must eat something. Booker joins me on the trips further afield, the ones that require more intelligent research that Archer is incapable of comprehending. The difficulty then becomes interpreting what Booker has to say on such journeys; I usually require Archer’s interpretation, after, and god only knows how accurate THAT is.
It gives me pause to do this, allowing Booker such access to the manuscripts we are deciphering. I have already exercised great care in keeping the Collector’s existence hidden from them. Booker having such a conversation seems a dangerous thing indeed. Archer would be less perilous but infinitely more annoying.
*
Archer informs me that it has made a friend. Follow up questions have utterly failed to reveal whether this making is literal or metaphorical. It is too stupid to manage either, so its nonsense will be ignored.
*
Archer surprised me with its presence while journaling yesterday. It asked me what I was writing about - a question I ignored, of course - and when that line of inquiry failed, it insisted on providing additional sketches to supplement my own diagrams. Where it learned how to do such a thing, I do not know. Booker is too sensible to indulge in anything of the sort.
Its insistence was annoying, and unrelenting, so I have decided that including the drawing is the lesser of two evils:
Is it attempting to bond with me?
I have, of course, punished the thing for its hubris, but every time it catches sight of the drawing in my journal, it gives me the same slack-jawed grimace. Foolishness. Utter foolishness.
He has recommended affixing the sketch to the food cooler as an alternative to keeping the sketch in my journal, if I dislike its position there so much, but that is more abhorrent to me. I would have to stare at it every day rather than only when I open my journal.
Booker regards the entire affair with significant amusement. No smile that I can wipe from his face, alas, but his eyes betray him.
What a pair of idiots these two are. I can’t wait for the C lineage to finish maturation and restore some semblance of order.
1690 - Summer
In hindsight, making a home in the skull of a long dead monster was somewhat less than wise. If not for the extreme seclusion it provides (not to mention the way magic resonates here), I would have set up elsewhere long ago. This has resulted in some … overlooked traits that normally do not present problems.
Or, in other words: I did not realize that the skull was not fully waterproof. In the Boiling Isles, the dangers presented by rain are usually ones of temperature and exposure. It evaporates upon contact with the land (or clothing, or flesh, and especially titan bone.) Under certain rare conditions, however, the liquid can condense enough to become a blistering fog instead.
I was at the muck pit tending to the last of C’s maturation. I admit that I was distracted, but Archer was so unhelpful that I considered tossing him directly in and starting over. The only things that came out of his mouth were “when am I getting a new baby brother?” and “how adorable is he going to be?” It is, at least, an indication that the new memories I created for him are working properly, given he thinks he has a childhood. I shall have to come up with an alternate explanation for C’s appearance.
Neither of us noticed the fog beginning to fill the air until both of us were sweltering. My human flesh was the first to redden and blister. Being made of palistrom wood, Archer took longer to burn, but only by a matter of seconds.
I collapsed next to the pit as heat and pain overwhelmed me. If not for Archer swiftly pinning my cloak to the ground with his usual stone projectiles, I would have fallen in. (The pit is wildly dangerous to all organic matter, given its nature; it would have dissolved me into nutrients for C’s growth in a matter of seconds.)
But it was Booker who actually saved both of us. At some point unbeknownst to me, he acquired a copy of the teleportation glyphs that we used during our research in the Isles. Obviously I will need to determine what manner of punishment is appropriate for doing this without my permission, but for the moment I find the results acceptable enough to delay repercussions.
He cried out my name, snapping me out of my daze. Then, he utilized some small device that he’d created - a flat disk of some sort with the glyphs etched into it - and blinked across the pit to us. A second blink ushered me up to the bridge, which had not yet fogged, and a third brought Archer back to my side. From our vantage point, we were able to watch the seething hot mist thicken, and then dissipate upwards. We retreated to the main chamber until everything had cooled sufficiently once again. At a later date, we shall have to find the crack that let the mist in in the first place and thoroughly seal it.
My heart is still racing as I pen these words. I can only hope that C’s progress has not been compromised by this. Archer is badly burned, but Booker was relatively untouched. He has indicated to Archer that he is willing to take over his ramet’s duties for the time being. (Archer promptly asked him to make sure to update the ship wall daily for him. I suppose that is an indication that he is not severely damaged, or at least not more so than usual.)
We shall have to wait and heal, for now. Booker is tending to his ramet’s wounds, at least to the point that can be salvaged without magic. My texts have already indicated that standard healing magic works rather inefficiently on these grimwalkers, being made primarily of palistrom wood as they are. I do hope that Archer has not been too badly harmed. If only because he will be even more useless if that is the case.
…
When did I begin referring to these creatures as if they were people?
What a strange feeling. I knew from the beginning that they are not my brother. They cannot be - they are only dim reflections of him, and imperfect ones at that. And yet, when Booker moved to save us, I saw something of Caleb in the gesture. Archer attempting to joke with Booker as the latter binds his burns makes me remember times when Caleb did the same while I was hurting. It is as if my brother has split into multiple facets of himself.
Base sentimentality at best, and dangerous distraction at worst. I must remember why have made these two - what my ultimate goal must be.
But … is it too much to hope that after all this time, I might have my brother back? The one I remember from childhood, one yet uncorrupted by this world. Watching these two, it seems … possible.
I have hoped before. I shall not let myself hope in vain again.