PROMPT: Share an aspect of your magic system that you think is especially unique, interesting, or just cool!
Honestly, I think what I like most about my magic system are the hard limitations I've put on it. Yes, spiritbinding can make you stronger, but you can only gain so much power until it's physically impossible not to kill yourself with it. And the limits on how often and how many spirits you can bind each day keeps things at a relatively stable level. I think it makes more believable that Karatera is still a medieval society if wizards can't just crack off lightning bolts whenever they want.
I think using spirits of the dead as the basis of a magic system is fairly unique too, or at least it isn't something I see all that often. And I like how each spirit can only be used for a specific flavour of magic too. I think that adds a nice twist that forces my characters to think tactically with what magics they can and can't use in a situation.
I haven't been active on here in a while, but I thought that now that my latest short story is in the "ready for edit" stage, why not show it off here? Below is a short excerpt of the fifth story of Tales From Karatera - Makina! This thing hasn't been through the editing rounds yet, so some of what's within may be subject to change. I hope you enjoy it regardless!
Content Warnings: Slavery
~~~~~~~~~
MAKINA
By Thomas Mansfield
~~~~~~~~~
Rashan sat calmly in his cushioned seat as his slave read aloud his demands. Ali Hadid-em-Aktharkaan sat across the table from him, looking more and more incredulous with every word. Rashan held his gaze, keeping his fingers pursed and his face free from emotion. He’d chosen a grey silk robe for this occasion, tied with a grey velvet sash and topped by a short grey vest. Only the mantle that denoted his rank within the Grey Cabal held colour, that being the dark ochre yellow of a greater adept.
Silence hung in the chamber once the steward had finished. Rashan gave a glance at the slave as he rolled up his scroll, then turned back to Aktharkaan. The aging lord of Musafrah had a narrow face and a thin moustache, wrapped up in what could’ve been anywhere from a dozen to a hundred layers of fine red silk. He stared at Rashan in utter disbelief, peering at him from behind a pair of silver-rimmed eyeglasses.
“Are you mad, khorgul?” he demanded.
Rashan’s lip curled, brushing against one of his tusks. Only a quarter of him was of the indigo-skinned savages of the eastern deserts – the rest of him was human. He doubted the Hadid would appreciate the distinction, of course, so he merely replied, “I am not, hadi.”
“This is not mockery? These demands are genuine?”
“Do you take issue with my masters’ requests?”
“Take issue?” Hadid Aktharkaan spluttered furiously. “I’ve never heard such ludicrous demands in all my seventy years! Six thousand pounds of clay? Ifenswalk has seceded from Providence, the Black River’s been taken over by dragonkin … the Red Sands is soon to be invaded from the north and the south, and you’re asking me for six thousand pounds of clay?”
“The Grey Cabal is asking for six thousand pounds of clay,” Rashan corrected him with a smirk.
“Your cabal is asking me to turn sawdust into water!” Aktharkaan snapped. He pushed himself up with his cane, glaring daggers at Rashan. “How in the hells do you expect me to get that much clay from the desert? And within a month’s time no less!”
“From the river, I should think,” Rashan remarked lightly. Musafrah sat within in the Sadiy Valley, beside a dead river that once flowed from the Southern Laceration. “I’m given to understand that there are still silt deposits up there.”
“Not six thousand pounds worth!” Aktharkaan hobbled around to the other side of the room, his cane hitting the stone paves heavily with each step. Rashan watched him pace about, entertained by the old man’s agitation. “The clay is bad enough, but then there are your other ‘requests’. Mercenaries, sculptors, storehouses, enough slaves to fill a village … a house and an estate, all to yourself …”
“Don’t forget the granite block,” Rashan added pleasantly.
“Don’t get me started on your bloody granite block!” Aktharkaan screeched, pointing an accusatory finger at him. “A solid block, ten feet high, delivered within the week … the transportation cost alone is ruinous!”
Rashan would have thought that the granite would be the easiest thing for Aktharkaan to acquire, given that he owned a red granite quarry barely three miles out of Musafrah. He suspected that this indignation was rooted more in a lack of compensation rather than the effort required. With a sigh, he told Aktharkaan, “I understand that these requests may seem unusual, hadi, but we need these materials to fight the dragonkin.”
“Oh? And what will your clay do to the Bluebanes, hm? Persuade them to take up pottery?” Aktharkaan asked scornfully. “It’s nonsense, all of it. Why on earth should I entertain any of this?”
Rashan had anticipated that very question. Leaning forward, he explained patiently, “Hadi, you enlisted the Redblood Mercenary Company – and the Grey Cabal by extension – to defend your lands and your people. It was agreed by you at the time that you would provide whatever the company needed in times of crisis to provide you with that very defence.” He let that reminder hang in the air for a moment. “This is a time of crisis. You said as much only a minute ago. What we’re planning to do with these materials is of no concern to you. All that matters is that they will protect Musafrah from whatever threats may come in the next few months.” He smirked. “Of course, if you are displeased with our methods, then you are more than welcome to hire another mercenary company for your protection.”
Rashan leant back in his chair, lacing his fingers across his stomach as he waited. The lord of Musafrah glared daggers at him as the silence stretched on, no doubt knowing as well as Rashan did that there were no other mercenary companies in the Red Sands. And since Aktharkaan’s army, town militia and personal guards were all, in fact, those such mercenaries, losing the Redbloods meant leaving his town defenceless.
“… Devils take you,” Hadid Aktharkaan muttered darkly. “Fine. You’ll have your clay. And your bloody granite block.”
~~~~
The manor that Hadid Aktharkaan gave to Rashan had a chapel to the First Eye attached to it, a remnant from the days when Providence’s control on the Red Sands had been a stranglehold rather than a limp hand on the shoulder. It was a spacious, octagonal building with a wide door and narrow windows. As far as Rashan was concerned, it was perfect.
The first step was removing the furniture still in the chapel – the pews, the cylindrical altar, and so forth. He left the candelabras, reasoning that he’d need some nonmagical light for his studies, nor did he destroy the iconography carved around the room. Rashan knew too many stories of reckless mages who incurred the wrath of the gods. Their annoyance was much easier to weather.
He had his slaves move the furnishings into the stables by the side of the manor. They had come with the manor, a host of quiet, nervous servants with square faces and squat frames, the telltale signs of mountainfolk heritage. Most of them would have born into slavery, Rashan assumed, as had their mothers and fathers, simply because they weren’t purely human. Anyone with inhuman blood was prey for slavers, even those with only faint traces like Rashan. In another life, he might’ve ended up like these wretches.
Moving his equipment into his new laboratory was the most difficult part of the process. The desks were easy enough, but he had to keep careful watch on his slaves as they assembled the glassware into their proper configurations. Then came the regents he needed for his work – lead and quicksilver, powdered rubies, sandworm hairs and earth elemata cores, all contained in small lockboxes and tiny chests. Most of the regents were either absurdly delicate or absurdly rare, so he took care of transporting those himself.
The laboratory was halfway finished when Rashan heard a cough from behind him. He turned to see one of the slaves that had came with the manor, an adolescent girl with dirty black hair, bright brown eyes and a wry, lean frame. She wore a pale linen tunic and an iron collar, as did the other slaves, yet her face held bright curious eyes and a cheerful smile. It was so out of place from the dour misery of the other slaves that for a moment, Rashan thought she was some lost girl.
“There’s someone at the door, master,” she announced, with a small bow. “Calls himself Captain Hasik.”
Captain Hasik was an old acquaintance to Rashan, having worked with him during the short-lived Guildmaster’s Rebellion in Ifenswalk. He was a sallow, yet broad man, with wild hair, dark eyes and a grey beard that never seemed to be trimmed properly. In rank, Hasik was supposed to be Rashan’s equal, since the Grey Cabal was just a different branch of the Redbloods, but neither he nor Rashan entertained that pretence. Masuma led him into the room, then bowed and took her leave as Hasik asserted himself, stumbling past the slaves and the furniture, scratching himself under his brigandine vest. His black and red tabard seemed to have more stains than the last time Rashan had seen him, and he couldn’t help but notice that he was missing the black dagger earring that denoted members of the Redblood Mercenary Company. He must have lost it again.
“Captain Hasik,” Rashan greeted him politely. “It is good to see you well.”
“Is this what feeling well is like?” Hasik grumbled, trying to wipe something off the sleeves of his vest. He glanced around at the burgeoning workspace, chuckling. “Desecrating holy places now, are we?”
Rashan smirked, feeling his lip brush against one of his tusks. “The Red Sands hasn’t followed the First Eye in years. I’m simply taking advantage of an unused space.”
“As you will,” Hasik said with a shrug. A bitter, earthy smell clung to him, mixed with the sour scent of wine. “I came to tell you that your friends in grey are all set up.”
“You needn’t have come in person. A messenger would’ve sufficed.”
“Aye … but then I wouldn’t be able to tell you about the other thing.”
That was true enough. Rashan looked around the room, seeing nothing else that demanded his direct supervision, then said, “Well, let’s take a walk then, so we may discuss it privately.”
He dismissed his slaves from the workshop, then left to take Hasik to his courtyard. The building had been built in both the styles of the almuhariin people of the Red Sands, with tipped archways and geometric mosaics, and those of the eastern Coastlands, with marble columns and open-air rooms. One of those rooms included a small courtyard in the centre of the estate, with a garden of yellowing grass that gathered around an ailing black acacia tree, looming over a shallow grey pond.
“Cheerful,” Hasik remarked when he saw it. “Did Hadid Aktharkaan mention that your garden was half-dead?”
Rashan shrugged, leading the captain through the shaded walkway that enclosed the garden. “I chose this place for its solitude, not its aesthetics. You said they’ve all settled into their workshops?”
Hasik burped. “Aye. Turns out the storehouses the Aktharkaans gave them were supposed to belong to the farmers’ guild. The guildmaster complained a bit, ‘till we told him who was taking over.” Hasik chuckled. “Your friends in grey want each workshop guarded night and day, but they barely need it. Whole town is petrified of the Grey Cabal. I’ve heard people say you’ll drop stone dead if you look at a Grey Sage in the eyes.”
“Do they?” Rashan remarked, amused.
“Aye, heard it the other night at the pipe den.” Hasik gave him a side glance. “It’s nonsense, right? I mean, I’ve looked at you plenty of times, and I’m still breathing.”
“Of course. Why would I kill you?” Rashan stroked his chin. “I am familiar with the spell you’re speaking of. Murderer’s glare, it’s called. Notoriously inefficient. It requires you to hold unbroken eye contact for five to six seconds, which, as you may imagine, is rather difficult to achieve in pitched combat. And its high magic, too – the effort required to cast it may leave me blind, or worse. I’d much sooner use unerring arrow.”
“I … what kind of arrow?”
Rashan’s smirk grew a bit wider as they passed by the garden’s corner. “Unerring arrow, by the ancient spiritbinder Djedi. It conjures a dart of pure spiritual force and looses it at a target of your choosing, as an archer would do with bow and arrow. The dart never misses, never falters, winding around any obstacle in its way. So long as you can see your foe, it will always strike true. Not quite as dramatic as killing a man with a look, but far less taxing.”
“That so?” Hasik murmured, looking like he’d just smelt something foul that hadn’t come from the pond.
“It is,” Rashan said with a chuckle. “But let’s get back to the topic at hand. The other laboratory is complete, you said. What of the mason I asked you to get?”
“… Aye, we found one,” Hasik muttered, scratching his beard. “Ahir ibn … something or other, I can’t recall. The greatest mason for a hundred miles, he said he was. Poor bastard nearly shat himself when I told him that he’d been chosen by a Grey Sage.”
Rashan laughed. “Well, let’s hope he keeps hold of his bowels long enough for my block to arrive.”
“Aye … and to be clear, if your friends ask me about what you’re doing up here …”
“Then you tell them you haven’t the first clue,” Rashan finished for him. His masters in the cabal had instructed him only to work with the clay. As far as they and his subordinates were concerned, there was no granite block. Remembering, he asked, “What of the clay? Has it arrived yet?”
“No. But I’ve been told that it should be arriving in the next week or two.” Hasik gave him an expectant look. “Are you, ah … going to tell me what it’s for?”
“It’s necessary for our defence against the Bluebanes.”
“You keep saying that. But you never say how.” Hasik stopped at the other end of the garden, his silhouette framed by the stooping branches of the acacia. “I’m no wizard, Rashan, I know I’ve no right to question you, but … we’re relying on your cabal to protect us from the dragonkin, and we’ve got no idea what any of you are doing. I mean, all this about sculptors and stonemasons …” Hasik looked down at Rashan uneasily. “What’s it all for?”
Rashan laughed. “It’s for our victory, captain. It’s for the protection of our cities and the foundation of a kingdom that’ll stand for a thousand years … so long as the dragonkin do not know what they are walking into.” He patted the captain on the arm, telling him, “You will have to be patient a while longer, my old friend. Now, I insist you stay for supper. I’ve just gotten my hands on some shai-scorpion eggs …”
Prompt 9: What is this species/race's fighting or movement style?
Dragonkin favour heavy, crushing weapons like axes, greatswords and hammers, using their natural strength and size to cleave through foes. Their hard scales deflect most blades, allowing dragonkin to tank a fair few blows before falling, and this has led to a fairly reckless fighting style based around dangerous charges and wild swings.
Dragonkin don't use their dragonbreath as often as you'd think; they can only call upon it so many times before exhausting themselves, so they generally only use it when they're surrounded or to keep enemies at bay.
Prompt 8: What's a non-human species or race in your world and some of its physical traits?
Well, might as well stay consistent; this week I'll be chatting about the dragonkin of Karatera! These humanoid reptilians consider themselves kin to dragons, with vibrant scales, potent breath weapons, and a touch of innate spiritcalling prowess.
(Note: If you've played a dragonborn character from D&D, these guys are gonna sound real familiar to you)
Dragonkin are humanoid reptilian people, taller than humans by about a head or so, and covered head to toe with hard scales that are softer around the snout and palms. Their scales range in colour from bright red to deep blue to a mere brown. Dragonkin often possess spines and horns, with spiralling or jagged shapes to them. They sometimes have frills that fan out when they get anxious, or spiny "beards" along their jaw. They have short tails for balance, and their eyes often have bright, piercing colours. They do not have wings.
Most notably, dragonkin have the ability to exhale a burst of energy, known as their dragonbreath. The form their dragonbreath takes depends on the colour of their scales, with the most well-known forms being fire for red scales, poison fumes for brown, and lightning for blue.
Finally, dragonkin are innately resistant to the energy they exhale with their dragonsbreath, as one might expect. They also have a knack for spiritcalling that makes them excellent blood magicians (otherwise known as sorcerers).
Prompt 7: What are the local specialties, like food, souveniers or art?
Vehr-Hor's cuisine revolves around two things: mountain goats and dragon rice. Mountain goats are relied upon for their milk and their meat, while dragon rice (which is closer to quinoa than anything else) is the staple underpinning it all.
Like all dragonkin cuisine, Vehr-Hor's dishes are characterised by complex aromas from the unique herbs that grow along the Dragonspine. Each dish is meant to be combined with at least two others to balance out the flavours, which would be far too rich if consumed on their own. Goat is commonly stewed or roasted lightly - dragonkin prefer their meat rare, if they bother cooking it at all. Dragon rice is often boiled and served like real rice, or ground up and cooked into a nutty, dense style of flatbread. Foreigners often find it hard to chew.
A particular favourite in Vehr-Hor is the Darakhosxro - a thick green lamb stew, served with spiced red dragon rice and a sliced blue yam-like tuber boiled in scented water. Supposedly the dish represents the three kings of the fallen kingdom of Darakhosa, the dragonkin homeland.
Sculpture is the most popular art form in Vehr-Hor, though an outsider would be forgiven for thinking that the only things the dragonkin know how to sculpt are dragons. Such works dominate the art scene, and dragonkin are quick to dismiss works that don't feature a dragon of some kind.
For religious pieces, dragonkin turn instead to cave paintings. In the dens dedicated to the Archdragons, the walls are covered with intricate, hand-made paintings of myths, great heroes and ancestor dragons. Foreigners are quick to dismiss such works as primitive, but to the dragonkin, these paintings are among the most beautiful art pieces in Vehr-Hor, connecting them to their history in a way like nothing else.
Prompt 6: How is cleanliness addressed in this place?
The short answer is that it isn't. Vehr-Hor's chaotic, disjointed nature makes organising garbage collection and the like impossible. There were attempts to build sewers, but they trespassed into the tombs of the city Vehr-Hor was built on top of, so they were never finished.
Prompt 4: What is the architectural style of this place?
Vehr-Hor consists of five semicircular tiers, built on top of one another and into the side of the mountain, connected in the middle by a giant staircase leading all the way to the top (kind of like Minas Tirith from Lord of the Rings).
Each layer has its own architectural styles. The lower two layers (the Serpent Ring and the Wyvern Ring just above it) opt for lumpy, hollowed-out stone dwellings, built to evoke a cave-like dragon's den. Sort of like Kandovan village in Iran, but at a far larger scale. The upper layers (the Dragon, Wyrm and Archdragon Rings) have more sophisticated architecture, with blocky, grandiose buildings reminiscent of the Black River. You still have cave dwellings here, but they're built with multiple stories with tiled or mosaic floors and grandiose entrances.
As you might expect, draconic motifs are everywhere in Vehr-Hor. Dragon heads, paws and wings are carved atop every doorway, on the corners of rooftops, and into the walls of the city itself. Indeed, looming over the city from the Archdragon Ring is an enormous statue of the god of dragons, the Archdragon Baharhmith, protectively watching Vehr-Hor like a clutch of eggs. The motifs become more detailed and more elaborate the further you ascend the city, until you might mistake a statue around the corner for a real, literal dragon.
Prompt 4: What are the major exports and imports of this place?
Despite its grandiose architecture, Vehr-Hor is actually quite poor compared to the rest of Karatera. Its major export would be the various metals and gemstones that they mine out of the Dragonspine, except that their only neighbour, the Black River, already has more than enough quarries and mines to supply its cities, and a river to make transporting their goods easier. And the sparse climate prevents the dragonkin from exporting what little food and livestock they already have.
So, instead, Vehr-Hor's main export is its people. Dragonkin clans dedicate themselves to the pursuit of a single craft, be it smithing, armouring, tailoring, magic or, most notably, fighting. Dragonkin craftsmen are highly sought after up and down the Black River, and the strength of Vehr-Hor's warriors is nothing short of legendary. So, clansmen are often hired by people outside of Vehr-Hor to come to their city to perform their craft, typically for an exorbitant sum of silver. In fact, it happens so often that the clans often set up "cadet clans" in other cities to provide their services closer to where they're needed.
I mentioned before that Vehr-Hor struggles for arable farmland, which leads to its biggest import: Food. Vehr-Hor relies heavily on the Black River to sustain its overloaded population, a reliance that the greater clans have always resented. In fact, when the Dragonspine went through a famine some sixty or so years ago, and the Black River was forbidden by the king of Providence to provide aid, the dragonkin population plummeted. It was a bleak time in Vehr-Hor during that famine, and it took well over fifty years for the dragonkin to recover.
