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[✓] [Misc. Feat] Arcane Displacement - Ancient Art of the Planeswalker


Callistus
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((This non-combat addition is one of mere flavour, the past and present iterations of which were written for the sole purpose of driving distinct and newer initiatives into roleplay.

I had hoped to write more – although as we are nearing the Lore Games deadline, and it being in a period of finals, I had only several free days to work with. May this suffice.))


 

Arcane Displacement - The Ancient Art of the Planeswalker

 

“Revel in its machinery, peer into its depth. 

For just as blood wilts and the sands of age wane, space too does erode.”

 


 

Recovery of the Dictate

c. 1742

It is said that beyond the greater reaches of the Arcasian mainland, burrowed within a higher mountain, there nestled – in the heart of a valley – a God-fearing folk who found warmth and fidelity in seclusion, and whose appellation in the common tongue, present culture and history has been lately reduced to naught; churned to the sweltering curse of time. These people were handed down by ancient heredity many of the olden mementoes, many ethics and traditions to which they held safely over millennia with exemplary devotion. Heritage and items of antiquity – among which were tomes of unseen volume – they had come to take as gospels, the profound integrity of which they guarded with all that was then vested in their people. And yet such prideful perseverance was wont, as is the nature of all things, to come with a timeless scourge, a grave price bounden to be paid. Such was it that most children birthed there seldom were free of disease and ignoble malady, as if some curse had tethered to them by their sacred relics. In their ordinance, the destiny to which they were shackled, such children and offspring were fated a harsh death by either inevitable starvation, ill-gotten disease or – with their scarce grasps on the simplest ways of medicine – some common fever. The few who had managed to survive and thence outlived the throes of poverty, able-bodied and stout, did bolster the hamlets’ welfare and presided over as its ancient backbone; an unbroken spine by which the province lastingly abided. Always, until the fateful moon once foreordinated upon them had risen amongst the distant stars. It is in their midst that the Outvoker buried his book, and it was of his will that the illegible remnants of the Planar Dictate were to fall among their declining relics. 

 

At the beckon of that moonlit night, the unborn derelict came to reap what they had carefully sown. And not long thereafter, they (being referred as such for having no discernible gender) took to strewing the fabric written in parchments of altered knowledge into the eye and mind of the unwary; rooting chaos in the realm of the mundane and laying the borders of the veil blurred, arbitrary and of no true definition. The Outvoker had since torn all traces of the original and complete Dictate, for there now remain only several fragments from which one can tease the art of Shunting. 

 


 

The Inner Workings; Modus Operandi

 

The cryptic, inexplicable arts of shunting are those long since forgotten, barred from the planes of living Man, buried in ancient pages of torn books, and laid beneath crumbling sand. Only, in a few unrecorded instances, it was said to also be hid in the demented minds of dying men. Rank, despicable men, whose very shadows yearn to be torn from their souls by the elder spirits of death, yet whose times have not yet been fated to end. What few reports were written on this ‘magick’,  if it could even be called that, told of scholars who had attained insight of its etchings, turnt wretched of the thought, cursed of the bodies. After all, such knowledge was not meant for any living man to set eyes on. But man’s foul curiosity often tramps far beyond the mundane. And often again, it tends to their own demise. 

 

  “Why, you rotten witch! Have you no thought for the well-being of others?”

-Emreis, an old man made raving by the devilry’s taint.

 

The art of Arcane Displacement, otherwise termed shunting by those who do not think it fit to assort among the arcanes for its absence of voidal conjunction, is one sodden in deep and unfound mystery – those once etched within the volumes of cryptic grimoires and formulae. Through convolutions and methods unversed by only the most learnt of scholars, it accords the patient man, unattuned to the void but who has laid eyes upon its writings from “The Dictate”, or otherwise taught its exercise by an old practitioner, the knowledge with which to transcend the median binds of physicality and into the spheres of other stars and unearthed cosmos, afar the realms of normalcy. Men who dabble in the aforesaid can be left scarred, or lost beyond the reach of sanctuary; were they so unfortunate as to have fallen into the grasps of those who nest the sky. 

 

The mere process of shunting is one thought to be of such cosmical order that it can, without a modicum of doubt, upset the natural course of things, and awaken the psyche of many appalling aberrations; such entities that would thus be drawn to the perpetrator, the mere presence of whom they are wont to treat with greater resentment. It is therefore rightly postulated that these hordes of untold cosmic forces toil madly in the unseen horizon to impede the trials of a planeswalker.
 

One who inscribes the dictate’s eldritch knowledge upon his mind peers beyond the law of the material, wherein revelations once lost unfold with a gale of broken matter. For verily, in one’s acquiring of such lost knowledge, the physics construed within the cosmos are prone to a degree of breakage; as is the veil once wound around the observable realm prone to severance. It's very fabric rent, the flesh from which logic is forged thus unforged. And yet such ruin brought unto the veil’s contiguity comes not without its many deterrents. Those who so foolishly burrow their hands into the forbidden fabrics of the world can become bent of the mind, lost within the cinders of madness; whence they lay crazed, forgotten, burning. Others, sound of the mind, may descend yet to graves much unlike those known to Man. A barrow of the cosmos, where the souls of the enlightened rest, unmarked, forevermore; a fate so harsh some may deem it worse than death. Damned, too, are the beasts that lurk therein; born of the abnormal, feasting on the remnants of the fallen, tearing at the marrow, at the memoir on which one’s soul eternally resides. Arrogant, rueful, convicted are those who prowl the heavens – for they may know only fear and starvation.

 Such is the curse of the stars.

 

  • One is always subject to death and harm without the confines of Earth. Conclusively, death out in the cosmos, far from the faculties of any monk, entails an irrefutable PK.

  • Depending on the level of hostility in each realm (the order of which is detailed in a confidential document), each Saint’s Day spent in a realm may further aggravate the beasts within the cosmos and thus threaten the survival of a Planeswalker. Some realms are host only to docile creatures, others may severely endanger a player in as little as an hour – the character itself may never know.

 


 

The process lays still among the most treacherous of its kind, it being a provenience for greater energy; an immaterial source of ethereal power to which the worst of spirits, wraiths and gravens hearken and flock. As thus, it had become proud tradition amongst generations of planeswalkers, the which they would pass unto their younger heritors, to exercise a row of precautions. Having recited the proper chants as learnt within the Planar Dictate, enacting its patterns with expertise, the Planeswalker enwreathes himself in an occultic circle of salt and unspoken symbolics; wherein he may then contain himself of all approaching evil and malice throughout the prolonged spell.

 

  • Shunting requires six emotes to perform and to be touched, so much as a poke, interrupts the enigmatic magic wherein it is nullified and must be attempted again.

    • Shunting requires complete and total concentration and thus cannot be performed in combat or to evade combat.

  • Solo shunting must be performed through RP posts on the forums of the character traversing the plane they have landed in.

  • LT must be consulted on the general ideas behind the planes being traveled to but otherwise the player has complete creative freedom in its design so long as it offers their character no inherent power, change, or advantage that does not require an application or lore besides an MART.

  • Returning from a shunt with an object of any value more than mundane, useless, and inert must be approved through an MART.

  • The speech and engraved symbolics enacted in one’s circle of ritual are left nigh-entirely to the creativity of the participants, likely consisting of flexion speech and indicative occult imagery (The abuse or memery thereof however is subject to severe punishment).

  • A shunter may bring a single individual, even non-shunters, on their voyage.

 

An uncommon practice, although one not at all unheard of is that of coupling; in which a covenant of three shunters, led by their most knowledgeable, may bring forth a gate within thin air – of which the frames measure at least four by five meters (blocks), never exceeding seven in either dimensions. The rite, however, enforced by the powerful unison of several shunters, must be done in perfected proportions, with a most precise execution; such that if a word had been misspoken, or a hexagram unwritten, the process would be entirely set aback and undone. The gate may then serve a shared - albeit arbitrary - destination for the drove, and another shall form wheresoever they landed. Be it known, yet, that the excursion may be abruptly ended were the gate to be botched by even the lightest of matter; debris be it or a grain of dust.

 

  • Requires one to have shunted to and from the realm intended and the material plane to map a portal to another realm for a portal alongside two additional shunters to create it.

  • A portal may only be used to transport five individuals, even non-shunters, before deactivating. The frames remain intact.

 

In the wake of a shunter’s traversion, a line of grit and scatter (which in actuality is there only in concept) serves to anchor one’s presence upon earth, marking them an inseverable path back at the journey’s end. Unseen to the naked eye, only another shunter may pursue this proverbial trail by reenacting the shunting trial in its close proximity; whereupon they arrive to the same initial destination as the first shunter, whilst a mark of their own originates besides the first. An art known only to the eldest of shunters is that of retraction, in which the immaterial line is desecrated and its owner returned forcibly to their spot of shunting - regardless of consent. The power wrought by such initiative tends often to incapacitate the traveller.

 

”You speak boldly, for one in crucifying distance.”

-Wieslaw Marrow, threatening an ill-marked planeswalker

 

  • Only two charms may touch another charm which is being tracked, creating a triangle of circles, likely two shunters chasing another. Any attempts to add to the charms results in failed castings.

 

Over the ages, historic texts on which the art’s methodology had been preserved became obscure, there being no more than several fragments to endure the trial of time. As such, the knowledge rests only in the minds of few; a remnant breed of this dying art, and also within the strewn pages of the Planar Dictate for those so dauntless to confront its darkness head-on – knowing very well they might risk losing the very light of their sanity.

 

The burden of passing down – or prevailing upon – such knowledge comes with many tribulations and greater anguish, and to bestow forth such an art more than once draws a cruel death upon the mentor. Only those taught the art directly from the Grimoire may ever teach it, and only after having mastered it thoroughly over a period of no less than three months. Thus is it that the survival of the art is of highest difficulty, thus is it that its effects are seldom come upon.

 

  • Should a piece of the Dictate not be read from and hoarded for more than three months, it will be removed by the Outvoker and redistributed.

  • To learn Arcane Displacement, one must have read it directly from the Planar Dictate and held it for at least 1 month or been taught by a shunter with a valid TA for 1 month.

  • To teach Arcane Displacement, one must have read it directly from the Planar Dictate and held it for at least 3 months, at which point they can submit a TA. Moreover, a teacher may have only one student throughout his lifetime; they may teach a second, but the teacher will perish when the lessons are complete, resulting in a PK. 



 

General Redlines

 

  • Locating lore characters / deities or their domains requires express consent from the LT.

  • Shunting to new realms will transport the caster at random unless they are visiting a realm to and from which they have already shunted. For example one aiming to find Ebrietas could spend a lifetime shunting between an infinity of realms and have no luck.

  • A player-made realm, if approved, could be visited without a roll – provided it is in keeping with the rules, is not a means to gaining boons or powergaming, and is not tied to any of the approved server lore as to avoid any complications. Pre-existent realms however require a roll under LT-oversight.

  • The LT must be consulted for approval of realms to ensure that more popular ones are well fleshed out.

  • Dying on a plane other than the material plane a shunter is from will leave their soul outside the ropes of the monks and thus a death in another plane is a permanent death.

  • Although time passes differently between in each plane as per Gap Theory, the time differentials between the material plane and the other worlds does not allow individuals to learn magic faster or develop in any way, including age (should the player choose) and does not offer any advantage to the character in the way of advancement.

  • Shunting may never be used in combat evasion (or in the midst of any conflict).



 

Below, as written by Zarsies and Mordu, are three examples of the approved planes within the multiverse. Note that each of these worlds may be as simple as a deity’s plane – singular in theme – or as complex and old as the material plane. Your own imagination is the limit here. More realms exist outside those listed below that aren’t included for confidentiality’s sake. Ping either Zarsies, Mordu or I if you have any inquiries.

 

Note: To travel into any of the existent, lore-tied planes such as Ebrietaes requires a roll under LT supervision, unless that realm has been visited prior by the same player in a previous roll.

 

  • Parum | Land of the Unfulfilled | Lies and Scandal

A plane of unfulfilled promises: soldiers who didn’t return from war, adulterers, broken friendships, children who did not get the toy they wanted, and so on. Full of belligerent spirits and their land.

 

  • Louj | The Looking Glass | Glass, Mirrors, Reflections, and Uncertainty

A plane of churning, mental enigmas wherein the physical body is but a reflection and the world is a labyrinthian maze of glass, crystal, and roughly hewn quartz. Here, mental willpower outweighs strength and powerful minds traverse the maze with much greater ease than one who views the world in more physical perceptions. At all times, creatures which enter this world have a doppelganger hidden in the glass manifest whose image distorts and twists the closer it gets to the original, pursuing them at all times. Should they touch this grotesque image will become physical and emerge from the mirrors and glass, attempting to devour the creature. Adjacent to itself.

 

  • Anulon | Asulon’s Grandmother | Untamed Wilderness

A plane of vast, sprawling forests and jungles, perilous mountain ranges, arid deserts, grassy plains, and all other sorts of natural landscapes densely populated by predators and their prey of all kinds. No established civilizations reign in                    order here.

 

  • Mechina | Cog Of The Machine | Mathematics, Machinery, and Technology

A plane of metal and fuel, this mechanical world is blanketed in a sky of smog with roaring engines of steam and blistering hot forges speckling its angular, rigid landscapes. Touched by Garumdir, the plane of Mechina is populated by reevers and polyites, mechanical automatons of gears and cogs whistling with steam and pipes of liquid which calculate, measure, and document all possible information which keeps the reevers and polyites busy. Adjacent to Fabul and Liber.

 

 


 

Referenced Lore:

https://www.lordofthecraft.net/forums/topic/172276-arcane-displacement/

https://www.lordofthecraft.net/forums/topic/139713-the-planes-of-existence-world-lore

https://www.lordofthecraft.net/forums/topic/165638-%E2%9C%93-space-from-within-the-void



Credits to Zarsies for writing the previous iterations and Pundimonium for offering suggestions



 

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