Part 11: Shapeless Days

Shapeless Days



With a heavy heart, you venture into the Thorny Woods south of Pentil East. A nearby sign indicates that a place called the Tombs is further south -- the name gives you pause. Whose tombs?



The road here is mainly dirt now; the paving stones have largely vanished, perhaps claimed by the serviles for building walls and repairing buildings. A footpath leads you west, where you see something like civilization.

You meet a servile warrior alone in the middle of a vast and hostile wilderness. Though you are a Shaper, she is still justifiably worried.

Keeping her hand near her weapon, she says, "Welcome to my post, Shaper. I am Obeyer Demel. I wish you well, and I hope you extend the same to me."

You notice that there are four fyoras behind her, tamely watching you and waiting for a command from their master. It is odd that these creations would follow a servile. These must be graduates from Learned Jaffee's obedience school. "Are these fyoras under your command?"

"It is thanks to the wisdom and efforts of Learned Jaffee, in Pentil, who has struggled long and hard to bring about the true will of the Shapers. He cannot form fyoras like you can, but he has been able to tame rogues. These fyoras were once rogues. Now they are tame, and they serve us and you."

"Why is there a guard post here? What are you guarding?" Mickall told you that there should be more than one guard here. Did he actually mean the fyoras as well?

"Sad to say, Shaper, but in the woods to the west, there is an outpost of Takers. They came here to raid us, but we were able to box them up in these woods. We cannot reach them, though, for the woods are heavily trapped. So these fyoras and I keep them bottled up here, so that they can do no harm," Demel says.

"There are traps?" That doesn't sound good. If you have to deal with more spore mines, you'll really need to find a better solution than detonating them with poor berryjon.

"Yes. The Takers were able to place fungal traps. They either explode or spawn rogues. We do not know how they were able to make these things, but we know that they're dangerous." She sounds as though she has personal experience with them.

"How could I pass the traps safely?" Traps that spawn rogues are new to you. Those sound a little less difficult to handle as long as they don't create anything more vicious than the rogues you've come across so far...

"'Perhaps, being a Shaper, you could disarm them. When you get close to one, it takes a few seconds for it to activate. If you reached it in time, you might be able to do something to make it harmless." Demel shrugs. Standing watch out here alone seems to have demoralized her.

You're having a hard time imagining how you might disable spore mines. Maybe with enough time and resources, you could solve that puzzle, but neither of those things are about to fall in your lap. Instead, it's probably best to focus on the source of the mines. "What can you tell me about these Takers?"

"They are a rebellious sect from Kazg, to the east," she says. This is the same old story you've heard many times before from both the Awakened and the Obeyers. "They hate the Shapers, and want nothing more than to rebel against you. They are horrible. They deserve death. Why, they would like nothing more than if you turned on our kind, killed me, and let the rogues out of these woods."

You sigh. That wasn't the kind of information you were hoping for. You try a different angle. "Mickall has asked me to destroy the rebels. Can you assist me?"

"I wish you luck, Shaper. Doing so would make me glad. However, he has ordered me to stay here. I just obey." Demel refuses to meet your eyes and she hunches over more, crossing her arms as if to close herself off from you.

"But I am a Shaper. Could you refuse to obey me?" The Obeyers are proving neither helpful nor obedient. Thus far, they've only obeyed you when it's been convenient for them, and they've only told you the truth when it's fit the story they want to tell.

"I am sorry, Shaper, but, in this case, I must do what I am told." She is quite stubborn. She is also clearly terrified of going west.



Among the tamed fyoras is a sign that reads, "Beware! Rogues and traps!" The fyoras regard you with great curiosity, but your own creations are quite possessive of you. Before any unfortunate event can ruin these tamed rogues' conditioning, you head back to the main road.



In a clearing just east of the forest's end is another, larger ruin. This one seems abandoned. Potsherds are heaped up against the front. Perhaps this was another warehouse. You try to charm the chains open, but the aged lock is durable and finely made. You try to fix this place in your mind for later. Maybe there's a canister inside.



North of that ruin, you find the tumbledown remains of a small Shaping outpost. The essence pools have long since dried up, but you do find a thorn bush nearby. There aren't really as many brambles out here as you'd expect from a place named the Thorny Woods.



You return to the lonely guard post and pass the softly chittering fyoras. Just beyond them are bones, evidence of raids past. There you find a strange, red orb standing on a low tripod. These must be the fungus mines. The orb looks crystalline -- perhaps it's a strange rearrangement of chitin.

At your command, your creations draw back to a safe distance. This gives you space to breathe and concentrate. You approach the mine quickly. Decisive action is what the situation demands. The mine clicks and gas hisses from the orb. The gas has a pungent, solvent fragrance just at the edge of your ability to sense. The orb is actually more like a cluster of petals, all faintly quivering -- you suspect that when they pop open, you'll find out whether this is an exploding mine or a spawning mine.

You're not interested in figuring that out the hard way. Beneath the orb is a tiny bulb almost entirely concealed by the mine's own shadow. You pluck it out easily even though the heat penetrates your gauntlets. The orb pops open harmlessly. You relax a touch, just in time for a rogue fyora to appear.

Placid saviour quickly exterminates it. The bulb you're holding keeps getting hotter, so you toss it to the side, where it ignites a dry patch of grass and then dies away. It was the mine's detonator.

These box mines are probably going to prove quite troublesome.

Our mechanics score is nothing special, but we can disarm almost every mine here with a score of 5. Our unlock spell and living tools are useless on all mines! It's very sad.



You find more hissing, spitting fyora rogues in the woods. These twisting paths are studded with rubble and bones, which prove almost as dangerous in their own way as the mines. You are forced to walk very slowly to avoid fouling your footing at a bad time.





The rogue serviles have littered these woods with box mines. You have to stop and disarm them every few paces. If they're not directly underfoot, they're tucked into the brush or at blind angles behind tree trunks. You've seen two kinds so far--the brilliant red orb kind and a deep emerald kind.





Only extreme caution keeps you from being ambushed by fyoras while disarming the mines. Each time you spot a mine, your creations creep out to form a wide circle around you, all their senses focused on detecting rogues. This system keeps rogues from getting the jump on you as you approach a mine. The rogues know these woods well, but better coordination gives you the edge.



You disarm two side-by-side mines back to back, sweating away the seconds as both begin their priming sequences. It turns out to be a dead end with an equally dead servile. This is probably what remains of the other guard. No wonder Demel is terrified to come back here.



This little glade has a clear pool of water and a couple more thorn bushes. You take the opportunity to gather some thorns for your baton, only to detect the rustle of brush back the way you came. The movements don't sound like your creations made them. You've traveled together long enough to be as familiar with the sounds they make as you are with your own.





A rogue servile stands behind two smoking fyoras. As soon as he realizes you've noticed him, he tries to flee. He doesn't make it very far. Though the rogues put up a fight and manage to score some hits, you ultimately overcome them through superior firepower.







That murderous servile is not the only one you meet in the bloody gauntlet back here. Others, well-armed and armored beneath their ratty robes, ambush you from the shadows. You must be closing in on their hideout. It's harder to disarm mines without interference back here. The tight spaces and extensive tree cover prevent your creations from spotting the serviles until they've already popped up at the edges of your formation.

Berryjon easily outmatches any individual servile, but your fyoras struggle in these close quarters. The serviles' swords and javelins land vicious blows again and again, forcing you to expend essence to heal your creations during combat. GreatEvilKing staggers after a particularly brutal hit that leaves ichor spurting from a deep gash in its neck. Fortunately, it doesn't flee before you can lay hands on it.

When the skirmish ends, you're all covered in dirt and gore, and three serviles lay bleeding out in the undergrowth. You have berryjon hide their corpses out of sight among some bushes.



I should have held off on this extra point of leadership, but the point of intelligence is quite useful! You might've noticed that we have 3 points of strength. The 3rd point actually comes from the belt of strength we're wearing, which we received as a quest reward some time back and I forgot to remark on it. This belt grants an extra point of strength to all your creations as well, which makes it more useful to us than the Student's Belt most of the time.

Strength determines the power of our creations' attacks, both melee and missile, despite what the tooltips seem to suggest about the relationship between dexterity and missile attacks. That extra point of strength also gives us a little bonus utility in that it increases our carry weight capacity. We can carry more shit around without suffering AP penalties!





A pair of rogue fyoras catches you at the rear of your own formation. Placid saviour and GreatEvilKing wheel around and manage to take out one.





The second backs off when it hears berryjon coming, but it's too late. Placid saviour kills it with a single well-aimed shot.




All the stiff resistance and complex mines have not kept you from finding the serviles' base. They've holed up in a small network of caves back in these cliffs. The first servile to see you calls out a warning, drawing four others.

Three manage to bottle your forces up at the entry, but it costs them severely. You bless your creations as they spray acid and fire. Berryjon is a solid wall of flesh whose massive build intimidates the warrior serviles trying to reach you with their swords. Javelins flash; many drive home in GreatEvilKing, who cries out.



Though berryjon managed to ward off many blows, a lucky javelin throw opens its throat. Your thahd collapses before you can finish a healing spell. No matter how much power you pour out, you cannot bring berryjon back to its feet. The thahd dies even as your fyoras finish off most of the remaining servile forces.



Idhrendur incinerates the rogue servile who murdered berryjon. There's no end more fitting for a thahd than falling in battle, yet... This wasn't what you wanted for your creation.

It's just too futile.



You pull back to Pentil to let your creations lick their wounds. After some meditation, you decide to try creating a roamer. Unlike other fire creations, roamers spit acid. They're more like a tougher, more mobile version of the artila than they are an upgrade over the fyora. For all that, your creation is still fragile. You haven't forgotten how easy to kill the rogue roamers of the Thorny Fen and spiral burrow were. You will have to do a better job of protecting this creation than you have your thahds.

You name it PurpleXVI.



The roamer doesn't cost you much essence, so you also shape an additional fyora and name it. It's still a little weaker than GreatEvilKing and idhrendur, but you sense that its potential is even greater.



You return to the Thorny Woods once you've rested. The wretched serviles back here have already begun replacing the mines you disarmed before.

But, one by one,



you disarm their mines,



expose their crimes,



and hunt them down.





Your new roamer isn't as durable as berryjon was, but it's gutsy and tenacious, even when its soft hide is scored and bloody. The rogue serviles quickly fall before the combined acid sprays of PurpleXVI and placid saviour.



When you return to the rogues' den, you find another survivor.



He falls before he can even scream. As it turns out, he was guarding another servile hiding in the rear of the caves. He doesn't stand a chance against your creations. He dies silently. You'll never know what his goals were here.



He must have been important, though. You search his belongings and find a stash of coins and pods.






The rebels' key unlocks the lever here. Beyond the automatic door is a pair of very dark green orbs. You try to disarm the first as you have all the previous mines, but they don't respond to your increasingly frantic attempts. You give up and flee, but are caught at the fringe of a cloud of flame and superheated gas that blister and scorch your back.

When you've healed the worst of the burns, you examine the room the mines were set to protect. Within is your prize -- a canister that improves your fyora shaping ability. You feel a little regret that you shaped Charmander before finding this canister, because you could've made the fyora even stronger... But when you look at your team, battered though they are, you can't help but feel satisfaction and even happiness.



You return to Demel to let her know that she no longer has to fear raiders or rogues from the west.

She looks surprised and pleased. "I thank you, Shaper. Soon, my fyoras and I can return to Pentil and continue our fight against the Taker scum. I shall spread word of your kind deeds."

You rest in the guard outpost. It's not very comfortable, but it's not awful, either. Everything smells a bit like unwashed servile and fyora musk.



The lush forests around Pentil fade to dusty barrens as you walk the southeastern road. It winds through a long, narrow canyon. You're uneasy; this place would be a fine spot for an ambush. There's no way to escape if rogues or worse manage a blockade.

Little dust devils swirl along the canyon floor, occasionally kicking grit into your eyes and mouth. The dust tastes oddly sour and salty. If the soil here is too acidic, no wonder almost nothing grows out here.


Shortly after you read the obelisk, you see a brilliant magenta roamer. That hue gives you pause. The colors given to creations are generally meaningful. Bright colors, ones that obviously stick out in any terrain, indicate unusual hazards.

PurpleXVI bristles and puffs out its chest before it challenges the magenta roamer. The rogue skitters closer. In a flash of dust and ammonia stink, PurpleXVI grabs the rogue by the neck and throws it to the ground. The rogue gushes out its life's blood before it even gets a single claw into your creation.

Then the rogue explodes.

PurpleXVI whines, but the sound is odd. You realize its jaw is dislocated and the powerful muscles there are now driving the bone away from its sockets. The blood on your roamer's mouth isn't entirely its own, either. It takes you some time and work, but you manage to relocate PurpleXVI's jaw and heal most of the damage. Fortunately, the lacerations were mostly superficial and only cost your roamer a few teeth.

You don't let the next unstable roamers get anywhere near your creations. They explode at the slightest provocation, leaving behind a splash of foul-smelling guts.





If these weren't living beings, you'd almost find it funny the way you can cause an explosion cascade among them. If the unstable roamers stand too close together, killing one causes a chain reaction. It's actually quite efficient. Placid saviour quickly figures out what to do without much prompting from you.





These rogues are definitely patrolling these valleys. The place is rotten with old bones and scraps of cloth, probably victims of the roamers. Occasionally, one tries to sneak up on you from behind, but they are unable to come too close before either placid saviour or one of your fyoras blow it up.



You find two doors to the northeast, but they don't respond to your presence. There are no levers, and a cursory inspection reveals no secret buttons--not that you really expected to find any. Unable to go further, you head back south.



Along the road you find another automatic door. This one hisses open when you come near, welcoming you into another ruin. You step inside, leaving behind the distant sounds of the surf and sea birds.



This place has gone untended for a long time, but thanks to the automatic door, no rogues got in. You admire the statues sheltered inside the antechamber. The artisans who carved them were true masters. Some of the tapestries on the wall are mostly intact. The abstract designs call to mind the universal elements you were forced to memorize years ago.

You pull the lever by the next door.






The semi-transparent thahd seems to shiver and warp as it moves. Somehow it is able to skate past your defenders. Worse, a second one of these shades arrives. They seem ghost-like, which confuses your creations and horrifies you. What kind of terrible monsters are these? Why would Shapers use them as defenders?

These shades see you as an intruder. Without any way to satisfactorily identify yourself, you must kill the thahd shades or flee. The thahd shades are even more durable than the usual meaty thahds. Somehow most blows seem to just slip past, striking at some point where the thahds used to be. It takes all of your creations working together to take the shades down one at a time.

When it's over, you're drenched in sweat. You can't recall a single time you've seen a real Shaper perspire or even appear short of breath.




Hmm... Corata again. You wonder what their role was on this island.



As it turns out, the Shapers left one more thahd shade to guard the mortuary. It's a short but vicious fight to put the shade down. GreatEvilKing and idhrendur don't make it out unscathed.



This room must have belonged to the mortician. The ruined bed was once a fine piece of furniture cut from stone, with a hollow in the side for hot coals. The warmth would have emanated through the stone and into the mattress and blankets on top. No one uses these antiques anymore; it took a while, but the Shapers realized a hundred or so years ago that there was no satisfactory way to ventilate such beds, and the risks of untended fire didn't outweigh convenient heating. The same thing happened with under floor heating. It's a shame, but still, not worth choking to death on foul vapors while one sleeps...

The scrolls are barely holding together. You decide not to even try to read them. You're sure that Learned Dayna would pay dearly for such a collection, but they're too fragile to move.

[img]The garments in this cabinet disintegrated some years ago. The clothes crumble at your touch.

Underneath the rubbish, you find a small, iron amulet. It has several symbols on it, but you only recognize one. It means 'Caretaker'. You take it.[/img]



The door to the south opens for you. You're not certain if it's because of the amulet or if the door was already open. Inside, though, you find a worthy treasure -- a canister! -- and an empty sarcophagus. There's also a pile of potsherds, but you can't imagine that anyone managed to get in here and rob a grave. This is the mortuary; the tombs are elsewhere.

The effects of the canister are hard to place at first, but then you realize that you now understand the basic footwork and stances you need to battle an opponent face to face. You don't think you'll ever need to know how to sword fight, but if you do, you're a little better off than you were before.



You head south from the mortuary. The canyon opens up here, showing you a long, lifeless strand.




If only one of the canisters would let you make a drayk craft... But drayks are notoriously difficult to control. Even if you could shape one, there's no guarantee it wouldn't turn on you. You sigh, backed by the explosions of several unstable roamers.




That was the ship Pixley saw. Frustrated, you turn back; the outsiders' ship was just a false trail.



The eastern valley is pocked with doors that lead into Shaper tombs. Each one has a dark green box mine in front of it; you recognize these as the mines that release rogues. Unfortunately, these mines are far too complex for your tinkering skills.

When you set off the first mine, a shade thahd emerges, immediately ready to kill. You back off and let your creations handle it. Fortunately, now you understand the shades a little better. The war blessing grants your creations the extra edge they need to strike the shade more often than not, and just like any other creation, these shades are vulnerable to acid.


We're going to improve several skills at the Tombs. This is an awesome area for all character classes. You need at least one rank in the skill a given tomb raises, but skills from equipped items count toward this requirement. I believe, however, that you won't receive any benefit if the stat the tomb would raise is already over 4 ranks.

This long ago Shaper researched mental magic extensively and was personally responsible for many developments that you recall from your basic studies of magical theory. Unfortunately, none of those texts ever mentioned this researcher's name. Perhaps it's because she was interred in a Barred land.







Some of these tombs have been desecrated and the books destroyed. Oddly, none of the mines were set off... Maybe the mines were placed after the looting, and not by the old Shapers at all. Perhaps the original defenses were already overcome.

Anyone who would ruin the books is lower than the vilest rogue. Desecrating graves is bad enough, but destroying knowledge is rank evil. Those books were the bequest left by the deceased, gifts offered to all Shapers. They are not for outsiders and most especially not for plunderers.







Not all of the books are useful to you. Some of them are just beyond your ability to understand, at least for now. Some of them, though, you're already beyond. The combination of earlier studies plus the innate knowledge shaped into you by the canisters means those books have nothing new to offer.





Studying here proves deeply satisfying. An anxiety you didn't even realize you were enduring slowly sloughs off and you find yourself standing a little taller. Most of your strength may have been imparted by using the canisters, but your own mind is strong and flexible enough for you to learn magic and shaping through reading and contemplation. You can stand on your own two feet.



If you think you've gotten rid of all of the rogues, though, you're terribly wrong. As you make your pilgrimage among the tombs, you find still more unstable roamers. Placid saviour obliterates them before they can close ranks against you.





Some of the tombs are larger than others; these are dedicated not to individuals, but to duos and even small teams. The entries are still mined, though, and the struggle to destroy the shade thahds that spawn each time you trigger a mine is slowly but inexorably wearing your creations down.



The last tomb you visit has evidence of the outsiders that violated this place. The corpse is in awful shape, so disfigured now that you can't make out its features. This outsider must have been cornered by something -- perhaps one of the rogue roamers. You strip the body of its fine iron armor with detached efficiency and stow the goods. If the outsiders wish to loot your culture, you feel no hesitation in stealing from their dead, either.

By the time you've investigated the last of the tombs, you're utterly exhausted, and your creations aren't in much better shape. Idhrendur croons softly to itself, perhaps engaged in some form of self-comforting; it and GreatEvilKing have been with you the longest, and have had time to develop personalities and coping skills, as basic as they are. You pat their finely scaled heads and head back to the west.

Though your body aches and your eyes burn, you feel like you've finally accomplished something not tied to rogue serviles and mysterious canisters. The skills you learned here are well and truly yours, earned not by the expedient means of unknown Shaping technology, but through your own intellectual effort. You fought for that knowledge and acquired it honestly, the way you wish you could have gained all the spells and Shaping abilities you've acquired on Sucia Island.

But you are not ungrateful to those ancient Shapers. The tools they left behind have given you the strength to survive in this forgotten land. Without them, you would have surely stalled in Vakkiri, and eventually, you don't doubt, the Awakened there would have detected the depths of your weakness and ignorance and they would have disposed of you. The serviles here are nothing if not ruthless.

They have an instinct for survival that you realize far surpasses your own -- while their sects took shape amid abandonment and deprivation, you have rarely wanted for anything but knowledge until you landed here. You have been prepared all your life to take your place among the Shapers. Everything you needed to succeed at the tests set before you was handed to you. All you had to do to prove your worth was pass. You didn't have to fight. Your struggles were entirely of the mind and of morale. They were not life-and-death battles.

Next time: Which Bridge to Cross and Which to Burn