Status:Journeymage Shay Masters
Physical State: Scrapped and Bruised, Hung Over
Mental State: Nervous
Magical Capacity: Brimming with Magic
Memory Storage:
x7 Fear (Brother's Safety)
x2 Pride Memories (Helped Wor-Rippa give birth)
Full Body Leather Armor (Worn, Enchanted: Flame Resistant, Enchanted: Weightless)
Bonemetal Mail Shirt (Worn)
Hooded Surgical Mage's Robes (Worn)
Bonemetal Crisis-Helm (Worn, Enchanted:
)
Utility Belt (Worn)
-Crossbow
-Pouches holding 35 Bolts
-Pouch holding 5 Bolts (Enchanted: Explosive)
-Pouch holding 5 Bolts (Enchanted: Instant Load)
-Bonemetal Brute-Blade (Enchanted: Slay Human, Enchanted: Anti-Polearm)
-Grapple Hook with 25 Feet of Sturdy Line
Surgical Mage's Bag (Slung over shoulder on stick, Enchanted: Extra Space, Enchanted: Refrigerated)
-Surgeon's Knife Set (Enchanted: Self Sharpening, Enchanted: Painless)
-Surgical Forceps
-10 Bronze Needles
-5 Thick Spools of Unicorn Hair Thread
-20 Human sized doses of Slaver's Sand (Sedative)
-Jar of Green Kracken Vennom (Hemotoxin)
-Set of Steel Lockpicks (Not trained to use)
-Steel Bone Saw (Enchanted: Self Sharpening)
-Surgeon's 'Living' Cloth Wipe (Enchanted: Cloth consumes bodily fluids it absorbs to produce more of itself)
-Journeymage's Diploma from The Lower Fenwick Academy of Surgical Magic
-Final Letter from Brother Clancy
-Dunn's faded blue Mage's Robe
-Dunn's Spellbook
General Mage Skills:
Subschool of Memory Manipulation (20)
Extract Memory - Extracts the power from a specific memory, forming it into a drop of magic the size of a poker chip that mages use to barter with. Using this spell removes the chosen memory from memory storage, but dose not actually make you forget anything.
Consume Memories - Burns the power of one or more memories to learn a new spell from a specific subschool. The spell learned will relate to the memories burnt. The amount of memories that must be burnt to cast this spell is listed in parentheses () next to the subschools' name under the magic talents spoiler, and increases each time this spell is used for a given subschool. Using this spell removes the chosen memory from memory storage, but dose not actually make you forget anything.
Read Memories - Burns the power of one or more memories to learn a new spell from a book/scroll/ect. To learn a spell this way often requires memories of a specific type, such as memories related to medical practice to learn a new surgical spell for example. You may also have to meet other requirements as well, depending on the book or scroll you are using. Using this spell removes the chosen memory from memory storage, but dose not actually make you forget anything.
The School of Surgical Magic:
Subschool of Diagnostic Magic (15)
Diagnosis Target Area - Cast with a weapon in hand and target in mind. Choose the type of injury you wish to inflict (broken arm, crushed brain, pierced heart, ect), and the spell will highlight the area you should strike, while guiding your next shot or blow towards that area for a bonus to accuracy. Can be easily cast in the heat of battle.
Family Diagnosis - Cast with a visible target in mind. The spell will look into the deaths of the target's ancestors going back ten generations, and highlight on the target any bodypart or organ whose failure was the main cause of an ancestor's death. Deaths on the target's mothers side will be highlighted in red, deaths on the target's fathers side will be highlighted in green. This spell makes no effort to differentiate between violent deaths and natural causes.
Tumor Vision - As long as you maintain focus on the spell, all growths, tumors, moles, ect belonging to anybody in your field of view are highlighted in your vision. A simple benign mole is highlighted in white, and the color darkens as the growth becomes more and more serious; Terminal cancer is highlighted in pitch black.
Subschool of Body Manipulation (10)
Replenish Blood - Cast with a visible target in mind. Target's blood supply is restored to normal levels, and minor injuries to the target's major blood vessels are healed. Draining to cast, especially if cast on self.
Set Bones - Cast with a visible target in mind. Targets bones are returned to their normal position, and small breaks are repaired. Spell is painful enough to make most targets pass out. Trying to set more than two bones at once, or repairing large breaks, is very draining, perhaps dangerously so.
Subschool of Transmutation (10)
Reconfigure Blood - Cast with a target in mind. Target's bloodtype becomes AB+. Target's immune system is completely reset, rendering the target prone to infection, but also ensuring that any organ you might have just put into the target is not rejected. Very draining.
Mutate Abnormality - Cast with a target tumor, growth, or infection in mind. This spell extracts the power of a chosen memory within your memory storage, and converts it into a powerful beam of mutagenic energy to be focused on the target. The target will mutate rapidly for weeks, often gaining interesting magical qualities related to the memory used. This spell is often a death sentence for the person carrying the target tumor, growth, or infection, but can be used as a last resort on already terminal infections or tumors. Using this spell removes the chosen memory from memory storage, but dose not actually make you forget anything.
War is coming, and you intend to play a part in it. Some say that a Surgeon Mage is more valuable to an army than a War Mage, and you have every intention of proving that adage right.
Your preparations begin down in the livestock cells, where you endow captured slavers with transplanted and enhanced tumors. While you work, you question the captives, something the ogres never thought to do, and learn a bit about Cyrus' army.
Cyrus controls about 6000 men, organized into smaller guard-forces across his territory and raider bands who operate in and around his range. Most of Cyrus' soldiers have decent weapons, but are lightly armored and possess little to no combat training. Such men, you conclude, will likely prove little or no threat to an armored ogre, so unless Toogool tries to bite off more than he can chew in one sitting, you have no doubt his colony can operate safely behind enemy lines.
The biggest problem will be dealing with Cyrus himself, who is typically held up at his headquarters, a fortified structure that his men have taken to calling Castle Despair. Inside Castle despair is a guard force of about two hundred armored pikemen, and about half that many elite centaur soldiers who can serve as archers and heavy calvary. Even if the walls could be compromised, such a defense force may prove a match for Toogool's colony.
Cyrus himself is a heretic mage, one who practices your arts and wears a robe without having earned the right to do so at an academy. None of the low-ranking soldiers in the prison know exactly what sort of magic he is capable of, but most agree that he owns a greatsword that can burst into flames on command.
Cyrus also has two noteworthy officers at his beck and call. The first answers to Highmage Tygone, wears red and grey robes, and wields magic of flame and wisdom. Based on this description, and the fact that the Tygones are an old family with deep ties to the military of Fenwick, it is safe to assume this lieutenant is a graduate of
Lord Burter's Academy, a school that exclusively trains warmages for the Fenwick army. This means that Highmage Tygone is either a deserter, or that the government of your homeland is somehow backing Cyrus.
The second lieutenant is more mysterious; A shapeshifter who answers to the name of 'Nightshade' and typically takes the form of a female elf. She serves as Cyrus' chief spymaster and slavebroker, and according to one of the captured prisoners is also envoy to the smaller Centuar Herds who pay Cyrus tribute in exchange for protection from the larger Blackhoof Herd. Another prisoner claims that she speaks with an accent very similar to yours, which to you indicates that she might be a powerful pond nymph from the lakes region of Lower Fenwick where you grew up.
In exchange for your help with the prisoners, their jailer offers you free pick of the gear they were captured with. You wind up claiming a full suit of leather armor, a pack of powerful sedative called Slaver's Sand that can be snorted or mixed into drinks, a jar of kracken toxin, and a set of lockpicks.
---
Every day you provide memories to both the smith and the enchantress, and spend the working hours toiling alongside one of them.
Your time with the enchantress largely proves a waste when it comes to learning anything new. The old ogress doesn't speak your language, and lacks the patience to try and teach you through a translator. Still, she is friendly enough, and more than willing to pay for your help by enhancing your gear:
She makes your new leather armor both weightless and flame resistant. Five of the final bolts you make with the smith are enchanted to explode on impact, and the remaining five are enchanted to instantly load into your crossbow with a verbal command. It is your Brute Sword, however, that receives the most love from the enchantress; It is made particularly deadly towards your fellow humans, and particularly effective at disarming, parrying, and destroying pole-arm weapons.
Hor-Shell suggests that such a well made and heavily enchanted weapon should have a name...Things go better with the Smith. You spend one final day making bolts (you manage to produce 10 all by yourself), before the Smith moves you to furnace duty. You are taught which bones and which pieces of scrap metal go together to make bonemetal with particular qualities, and after a few days of practice you functionally become the sole furnace operator, allowing the Smith and his assistants to work exclusively on weapon production.
Everybody is busy making large batches of ogre sized gear, but the Smith still finds time to reward you with a well made mail shirt of bonemetal.
---
Your apprentice Hor-Shell stays by your side at most times. You wind up learning more about ogres from him than he learns about mage-lore from you, but you do your best to teach him when you have the time. Eventually you take to calling him by the more human sounding name 'Hershel', in hopes that it will make him fit in better when he dose eventually make it to an academy...
"Yes Hershel... Humans are prudes. We don't like others seeing our mating bits, and us females even prefer to keep our breasts covered, but a mage's robes are more than just a mere skin covering. They are a badge of office and so much more. Each academy has their own colors, patterns, and traditions for robes. Mine are mostly gray, as I just graduated shortly before coming to these lands, but with time and surgeries they will be stained and dyed with the blood of those that I save and fail to save. When I die, the robes will be sent back to Lower Fenwick and washed by the archmages of the academy, symbolically demonstraiting my life's work to the student body and the Bloodmother alike, so that I may be considered among the honored dead.
A robe means you are a part of both the greater fraternity of mages, and the more specific family of your academy. They can mark other families and experiences as well... I wear a patch depicting a Greataxe, the symbol of the Masters Bloodline, my family. I don't wear the patch because my own name is Masters, but because a member of that family, my brother Clancy, instructed me, as I now instruct you, before I was accepted into the academy. Because you are my apprentice, someday you will wear the Greataxe patch as well." ---
It takes two full weeks, but eventually Wor-Rippa goes into labor. The massive ogre warrior gives birth without issue to a healthy pair of female twins, one of which is named after you: Wor-Shay.
+Prideful Memory x2That evening you lay in bed and struggle to sleep. Although the past two weeks have been fruitful, you have fallen into a routine, and as such have not been making new memories as fast as you have been giving them away to the enchantress and the Smith. The only memories you have energy left in are the ones you got from attending to Wor-Rippa today, and your concern for your brother's safety, which you are somewhat reluctant to give away.
Giving up on either the smith or the enchantress would allow to keep a routine and likely break even with memories. Somehow convincing the enchantress to actually teach you would likely change things up enough to keep you going at your current pace for a few more weeks. You could also take a few days off, and do something to amass new memories.
Toogool intends to send delegates to the Blackhoof Herd in the next few days, in hopes that the Centaurs might join with him in attacking Cyrus, and you see no reason why you couldn't tag along on that adventure... You doubt the horse people would try anything fishy while you are flanked by friendly ogres.
Por-Ung, one of the ogre children who you might claim to serve Toogool's life debt to you, has been offering to take you out into the woods for a few days of hunting and fishing, which you suppose could be both fun and educational.
Colony scouts have found one of Cyrus' raiding camps two days away from the Treasure Caves, and Wor-Rippa, eager to get back in the action, has called dibs on leading an attack against it. Now that she has given birth, you doubt the gung-ho ogress will actually wait long enough to properly recover, and suspect she might even drag her infants along... so perhaps you should tag along, offer your services as a field medic, and keep an eye on her safety. With your new and newly enchanted gear, the thought of actually getting involved in the skirmish yourself is also tempting.
How do you proceed?
Author
Topic: (SG) Sawbones: Adventures of a High Fantasy Surgeon Mage (Read 5559 times)