A thought occurred to me today. A Leonar related thought.
Being that Azeroth doesn’t have anything like the internet, research into things isn’t readily accessible - especially not for the illiterate. Canine anatomy isn’t something Leonar would have been familiar with to any real level.
The first he busted a nut as a worgen, which would have been after jorking it, he panicked when it swelled up and didn’t go down for a while. He thought it was broken or something and that he was about to loose it.
Lorian stood in his basement, staring at the metallic gateway that he had been slaving over for months. It was a marvel of engineering - something typically beyond his ken - but with some tampering and spell work he'd made it work to serve his needs.
The walls of the basement, usually bare or covered with tools and shelves, had since been completely covered with star charts, constellations, divining notes, and complex mathematical equations. The outside of the house, too, had been drastically altered. Pipes pumped water from the nearby river down into the basement, through a series of funnelling tubes that fed into the gateway, as well as wires from the ground that provided a source of arcane from a leyline that ran under the foundation. Whatever Lorian had been up to, it definitely involved the new gate, and it required a lot of power.
Reaching out a hand, Lorian channelled a bit of arcane into the portal's entryway. At first nothing happened, and he felt his heart begin to sink in disappointment. Then, with a gentle hum, the centre of the gateway began to swirl and churn until a portal had been opened. It was ready. Eyes still locked on the portal, he called out, hoping Leonar was around.
"HEY, LEO! YOU IN?!"
Leonar's ears perked as he heard his name being shouted from some distant corner of the house. The voice was familiar and, if the past months were anything to go by, he knew exactly where the voice would be emanating from. He set the book that he had been reading down onto the bed of the guest room before making his way to the doorway of the basement. He stood hesitantly at the top of the stairs, not exactly eager to go down. The last, and only, time he had ventured down there he had seen things that put him on edge, to say the least.
"Y-yeah? Everything alright?"
"Yeah, all good. Can you come down here for a minute?"
"Do I have to?"
It wasn't spoken maliciously but, again, he was just very cautious of the basement and, if anything, seemed a tad frightened to go down there - even if asked. Lorian frowned, hesitating a bit. He spoke again, a bit softer this time.
"Nah. Not if you don't wanna. I'll just stay down here. And be lonely. Maybe fall asleep here on the cold, hard ground."
"N-no. I'll come down just . . . tell me that weird hand thing is gone?Please?"
"Hand thing?"
Lorian glanced over at the hand in the cube that was very much not gone.
"I, uh…I mean, if ya want me to specifically say those words, then I can. They won't be the truth, but I can say 'em."
Leonar let out a small groan of discomfort with the situation before, very reluctantly, heading down into the basement. Upon entering the room he did his best to avoid any eye contact with the disembodied hand. This wasn't a very difficult task to achieve as his gaze very quickly settled onto the structure Lorian had been working on. The mess of the room, and everything that went along with it, went almost entirely unnoticed as he tried to work out what exactly he was looking at. He canted his head as he glanced between his uncle and the structure, not uttering a word.
Lorian smiled at the young elf, looking actually pleased for the first time in a while. Perhaps the first time in Leonar's adult life.
"Heya buddy. Thanks for humoring me. A question first: do you know much about divination?"
Leonar gave a slight shake of his head, still very curious as to what was going on.
"No. Why?"
"Lemme explain. Divination is the school of magic dedicated to obtaining knowledge through non-physical means. Some divinators can see the past, the future, across the world. Sometimes even into other universes."
Lorian pointed to his missing eye, which he had thankfully covered with a small length of cloth.
"When I needed to see if you and Gael were still alive back when you were a kid, I sacrificed my eye for a vision. Ever since then, my visions have been stronger. Well a few months ago I had a doozy of a vision. I saw myself…gone. Not dead, or missing or anything. Just not there any more. And not just me, but you too. Like we'd been removed from existence."
"Huh. . ."
Leonar glanced at the metallic structure briefly and, in all honesty, wasn't able to tell if Lorian was just joking around or not so he raised a brow as he turned back towards his uncle. As he did, he not so subtly scanned the rest of the basement, looking for bottles of alcohol. The man had been drunk for almost the entire duration of them knowing one another so, in Leonar's mind, Lorian being drunk and coming up with ridiculous antics wasn't entirely out of the question.
". . . and? We just stop existing?"
Lorian nodded, turning back to the gateway.
"Yuh huh. Dunno how or why, but I'd rather not wait around for the future to come find me."
He gestured to the gateway.
"I once used this gateway- err, I mean one just like this one. Not this one exactly. I didn't steal it. Anyway- used a gateway like this to find your mom in another universe. I kinda went blind, and it was a big risk. Not this time though."
He turned again, gesturing to the multitude of notes, star charts, and equipment scattered about.
"I've tracked precisely where and when whatever this thing is will arrive, and can tune the gateway to it. We can cut it off before it finds us. Of course, there's a catch."
He walked over to the gateway, gesturing to multiple indentations around the edge of the gate.
"See these? They're fuel cells, and we need condensed arcane to fuel them to go where and when we need. And that's not an easy thing to find. It takes thousands of years for this shit to harden and coalesce into crystals. I dunno why this coming event is so hard to reach, but that's not my concern. Concern is getting these thingies filled. But I have a solution for that too!"
Lorian began to gesture around excitedly at the star charts, but his voice drowned out until it was barely a whisper. His arms slowed until they stopped. Then, everything else stopped. Everything, except Leonar, froze as time ceased to move.
Something in the stillness moved. From the portal stepped a robed figure, its face obscured by a black hood. The hood slowly turned to stare in Leo's direction.
Up until that moment, Leonar's gaze had followed Lorian's gestures and movements all about the room. Though he couldn't understand much of it, if anything at all, it still made him think that perhaps this wasn't just drunken nonsense. He knew his uncle to drink, but he wasn't crazy. It was a mess but it seemed to, at the very least, be an organized mess. He nodded as he tried to take in what information he could, only pausing his movements as Lorian's seemed to.
"Uncle Lorian? Lorian?"
He seemed concerned, to say the very least, and his concern only grew as the figure made itself known. Leonar chuckled nervously and very quickly remembered why he did not like coming down into the basement. First the disembodied hand, now this. He took a few steps backwards, headed in the direction of the staircase, all the while trying to seem as non-threatening as possible.
"H-heeey there."
"Leonar."
The figure spoke, a deep, cold, vibrating baritone that rebounded noisily off the basement walls. It continued to face Leo, its visage black as night, as it gestured a pale, white hand to Lorian.
"Do you care for this man?"
As the question was asked, Leonar stopped his backwards movements towards the stairs. His ears pinned back, both from a slight fear and from the deep voice seemingly hurting his ears. He halted and glanced at Lorian, giving a small nod of his head.
"Yeah?"
"Then know this: Lorian will die without you. Should he fail this task, he will cease to be. Should YOU fail, you will both cease to be."
He gestured to the stairs behind Leo.
"Leave if you want. I won't try and stop you. And I'll keep him still long enough for you to get away. You can leave. Be free of this burden, and live your own life. Lorian will die, but you will most certainly live. Knowing this…will you stay and help him?”
The information he had been presented with was alarming, to say the least. His uncle would cease to be? This only brought more concern to the young mage as he recalled but mere moments ago of Lorian saying something along the same lines. To him, it seemed as though he would fail. There was no which way about it, but he had to do something. All his family by any blood relation were gone. He couldn't just sit idly by
and let the same happen to one of the few people he had left in his life.
To the figure, he gave another small nod of his head, but dared not utter a word nor move at all. He was staying put. Though it was not spoken aloud, the robed man bowed his head in acknowledgement of Leonar's decision.
"Of course you would agree. Because Lorian existed before now, and after now. And he will continue for as long as you want."
He let out a soft chuckle at a joke only he seemed to understand. Slowly raising a hand, he pointed at the gateway behind him with a thumb over his shoulder.
"You will endure much. Suffer. Nearly perish, or worse. And in the end, you will stand before this fully powered gate without fully knowing why. But you'll have the answer regardless."
With that the robed man turned and walked back through the portal.
Lorian waved a hand towards Leonar, whistling a bit as he did.
"Yoo hoo! Leo! You still with me? And did ya happen to hear anything I just said?"
Leonar's gaze followed the man as he went through the portal, lingering there for a long while. He was pale and just a tad terrified and whatever that was that had just occurred. Only when Lorian whistled did his attention go back to the older mage.
"Huh? That just-… you didn't-…?"
Perhaps he was going mad. Perhaps that didn't even happen. Lorian seemed to be none the wiser so, fearful of looking foolish, he simply nodded his head.
"Oh. Uhm, yep. Heard it. Got it."
Lorian blinked, following Leo's gaze towards the portal, then back at him.
"Uh…okay then. Guess I won't question it. So what d'you think? It won't be easy tracking down the crystallized arcane, but the gate can get us to them. And I think it's better to confront whatever's coming than let it find us. Whaddaya think? You in?"
As his mind drifted back to the others' prior words Leonar, once again, nodded. This time when he did it was a small series of nervous and rather fast paced nods.
"Y-yeah. Of course."
"Right! Great! Well then, you can head on upstairs and be nervous if Handsy over there is makin' ya nervous. I'll let you know once the portal's been calibrated and we can go get the first one."
He turned back to the portal and began pulsing arcane into it from his palm, turning his hand this way and that to alter the composition of the portal, a content expression on his face. Leonar shook his head and shuffled on over to be nearer to Lorian. The disembodied hand was now the least of his concerns.
"No, uhm, it's okay. Can I watch?"
Lorian smiled at him and nodded.
"Sure thing. Lesson number one: channelling elegant magical energy into clunky, terrible, ridiculous gnomish technology."
While Lorian isn't my OC - he belongs to an amazing friend of mine who I used to write with - I would like to share this art of him to help you guys get more of a visual for who he is.
This little comic was drawn by my other very good friend, Claudelin the Bard over on WrA and MG.
Lorian stood in his basement, staring at the metallic gateway that he had been slaving over for months. It was a marvel of engineering - something typically beyond his ken - but with some tampering and spell work he'd made it work to serve his needs.
The walls of the basement, usually bare or covered with tools and shelves, had since been completely covered with star charts, constellations, divining notes, and complex mathematical equations. The outside of the house, too, had been drastically altered. Pipes pumped water from the nearby river down into the basement, through a series of funnelling tubes that fed into the gateway, as well as wires from the ground that provided a source of arcane from a leyline that ran under the foundation. Whatever Lorian had been up to, it definitely involved the new gate, and it required a lot of power.
Reaching out a hand, Lorian channelled a bit of arcane into the portal's entryway. At first nothing happened, and he felt his heart begin to sink in disappointment. Then, with a gentle hum, the centre of the gateway began to swirl and churn until a portal had been opened. It was ready. Eyes still locked on the portal, he called out, hoping Leonar was around.
"HEY, LEO! YOU IN?!"
Leonar's ears perked as he heard his name being shouted from some distant corner of the house. The voice was familiar and, if the past months were anything to go by, he knew exactly where the voice would be emanating from. He set the book that he had been reading down onto the bed of the guest room before making his way to the doorway of the basement. He stood hesitantly at the top of the stairs, not exactly eager to go down. The last, and only, time he had ventured down there he had seen things that put him on edge, to say the least.
"Y-yeah? Everything alright?"
"Yeah, all good. Can you come down here for a minute?"
"Do I have to?"
It wasn't spoken maliciously but, again, he was just very cautious of the basement and, if anything, seemed a tad frightened to go down there - even if asked. Lorian frowned, hesitating a bit. He spoke again, a bit softer this time.
"Nah. Not if you don't wanna. I'll just stay down here. And be lonely. Maybe fall asleep here on the cold, hard ground."
"N-no. I'll come down just . . . tell me that weird hand thing is gone?Please?"
"Hand thing?"
Lorian glanced over at the hand in the cube that was very much not gone.
"I, uh…I mean, if ya want me to specifically say those words, then I can. They won't be the truth, but I can say 'em."
Leonar let out a small groan of discomfort with the situation before, very reluctantly, heading down into the basement. Upon entering the room he did his best to avoid any eye contact with the disembodied hand. This wasn't a very difficult task to achieve as his gaze very quickly settled onto the structure Lorian had been working on. The mess of the room, and everything that went along with it, went almost entirely unnoticed as he tried to work out what exactly he was looking at. He canted his head as he glanced between his uncle and the structure, not uttering a word.
Lorian smiled at the young elf, looking actually pleased for the first time in a while. Perhaps the first time in Leonar's adult life.
"Heya buddy. Thanks for humoring me. A question first: do you know much about divination?"
Leonar gave a slight shake of his head, still very curious as to what was going on.
"No. Why?"
"Lemme explain. Divination is the school of magic dedicated to obtaining knowledge through non-physical means. Some divinators can see the past, the future, across the world. Sometimes even into other universes."
Lorian pointed to his missing eye, which he had thankfully covered with a small length of cloth.
"When I needed to see if you and Gael were still alive back when you were a kid, I sacrificed my eye for a vision. Ever since then, my visions have been stronger. Well a few months ago I had a doozy of a vision. I saw myself…gone. Not dead, or missing or anything. Just not there any more. And not just me, but you too. Like we'd been removed from existence."
"Huh. . ."
Leonar glanced at the metallic structure briefly and, in all honesty, wasn't able to tell if Lorian was just joking around or not so he raised a brow as he turned back towards his uncle. As he did, he not so subtly scanned the rest of the basement, looking for bottles of alcohol. The man had been drunk for almost the entire duration of them knowing one another so, in Leonar's mind, Lorian being drunk and coming up with ridiculous antics wasn't entirely out of the question.
". . . and? We just stop existing?"
Lorian nodded, turning back to the gateway.
"Yuh huh. Dunno how or why, but I'd rather not wait around for the future to come find me."
He gestured to the gateway.
"I once used this gateway- err, I mean one just like this one. Not this one exactly. I didn't steal it. Anyway- used a gateway like this to find your mom in another universe. I kinda went blind, and it was a big risk. Not this time though."
He turned again, gesturing to the multitude of notes, star charts, and equipment scattered about.
"I've tracked precisely where and when whatever this thing is will arrive, and can tune the gateway to it. We can cut it off before it finds us. Of course, there's a catch."
He walked over to the gateway, gesturing to multiple indentations around the edge of the gate.
"See these? They're fuel cells, and we need condensed arcane to fuel them to go where and when we need. And that's not an easy thing to find. It takes thousands of years for this shit to harden and coalesce into crystals. I dunno why this coming event is so hard to reach, but that's not my concern. Concern is getting these thingies filled. But I have a solution for that too!"
Lorian began to gesture around excitedly at the star charts, but his voice drowned out until it was barely a whisper. His arms slowed until they stopped. Then, everything else stopped. Everything, except Leonar, froze as time ceased to move.
Something in the stillness moved. From the portal stepped a robed figure, its face obscured by a black hood. The hood slowly turned to stare in Leo's direction.
Up until that moment, Leonar's gaze had followed Lorian's gestures and movements all about the room. Though he couldn't understand much of it, if anything at all, it still made him think that perhaps this wasn't just drunken nonsense. He knew his uncle to drink, but he wasn't crazy. It was a mess but it seemed to, at the very least, be an organized mess. He nodded as he tried to take in what information he could, only pausing his movements as Lorian's seemed to.
"Uncle Lorian? Lorian?"
He seemed concerned, to say the very least, and his concern only grew as the figure made itself known. Leonar chuckled nervously and very quickly remembered why he did not like coming down into the basement. First the disembodied hand, now this. He took a few steps backwards, headed in the direction of the staircase, all the while trying to seem as non-threatening as possible.
"H-heeey there."
"Leonar."
The figure spoke, a deep, cold, vibrating baritone that rebounded noisily off the basement walls. It continued to face Leo, its visage black as night, as it gestured a pale, white hand to Lorian.
"Do you care for this man?"
As the question was asked, Leonar stopped his backwards movements towards the stairs. His ears pinned back, both from a slight fear and from the deep voice seemingly hurting his ears. He halted and glanced at Lorian, giving a small nod of his head.
"Yeah?"
"Then know this: Lorian will die without you. Should he fail this task, he will cease to be. Should YOU fail, you will both cease to be."
He gestured to the stairs behind Leo.
"Leave if you want. I won't try and stop you. And I'll keep him still long enough for you to get away. You can leave. Be free of this burden, and live your own life. Lorian will die, but you will most certainly live. Knowing this…will you stay and help him?”
The information he had been presented with was alarming, to say the least. His uncle would cease to be? This only brought more concern to the young mage as he recalled but mere moments ago of Lorian saying something along the same lines. To him, it seemed as though he would fail. There was no which way about it, but he had to do something. All his family by any blood relation were gone. He couldn't just sit idly by
and let the same happen to one of the few people he had left in his life.
To the figure, he gave another small nod of his head, but dared not utter a word nor move at all. He was staying put. Though it was not spoken aloud, the robed man bowed his head in acknowledgement of Leonar's decision.
"Of course you would agree. Because Lorian existed before now, and after now. And he will continue for as long as you want."
He let out a soft chuckle at a joke only he seemed to understand. Slowly raising a hand, he pointed at the gateway behind him with a thumb over his shoulder.
"You will endure much. Suffer. Nearly perish, or worse. And in the end, you will stand before this fully powered gate without fully knowing why. But you'll have the answer regardless."
With that the robed man turned and walked back through the portal.
Lorian waved a hand towards Leonar, whistling a bit as he did.
"Yoo hoo! Leo! You still with me? And did ya happen to hear anything I just said?"
Leonar's gaze followed the man as he went through the portal, lingering there for a long while. He was pale and just a tad terrified and whatever that was that had just occurred. Only when Lorian whistled did his attention go back to the older mage.
"Huh? That just-… you didn't-…?"
Perhaps he was going mad. Perhaps that didn't even happen. Lorian seemed to be none the wiser so, fearful of looking foolish, he simply nodded his head.
"Oh. Uhm, yep. Heard it. Got it."
Lorian blinked, following Leo's gaze towards the portal, then back at him.
"Uh…okay then. Guess I won't question it. So what d'you think? It won't be easy tracking down the crystallized arcane, but the gate can get us to them. And I think it's better to confront whatever's coming than let it find us. Whaddaya think? You in?"
As his mind drifted back to the others' prior words Leonar, once again, nodded. This time when he did it was a small series of nervous and rather fast paced nods.
"Y-yeah. Of course."
"Right! Great! Well then, you can head on upstairs and be nervous if Handsy over there is makin' ya nervous. I'll let you know once the portal's been calibrated and we can go get the first one."
He turned back to the portal and began pulsing arcane into it from his palm, turning his hand this way and that to alter the composition of the portal, a content expression on his face. Leonar shook his head and shuffled on over to be nearer to Lorian. The disembodied hand was now the least of his concerns.
"No, uhm, it's okay. Can I watch?"
Lorian smiled at him and nodded.
"Sure thing. Lesson number one: channelling elegant magical energy into clunky, terrible, ridiculous gnomish technology."
Okay so since this entire blog is dedicated to Leonar Lore TM, and I do want to upload the entire 300 page book somehow, I've worked out a solution that fits within the character limit.
I'm going to upload 1 chapter per week (approx) and tag them so that they can be found via my page. Like, though the links on the side under my profile. I think it's a PC only feature since it's part of the theme but the tag will be "MagicalAdventureStory" if you need or want to search it on mobile.
Some of the larger chapters may need to be split into multiple posts but, if that does happen, I'll label them accordingly and do one part of the chapter per week so that it doesn't end up being way too much reading.
When it's all done, I'll do one final master post with links to each chapter in order for even easier navigation. It deserves to live somewhere other than my PC and private bookshelf.
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
tangentwithtanner
dededos
titsay
origamiaround
gummygunk
