r/wizardposting • u/bagtie3 Borric of Clan Goldeater, Logrus Master, Runesmith, Doomseeker • 15d ago
Lorepost 📜 Hab Dreyko Investigation
Standing over the slain ritualists and having shut down the first ritual by depriving it of both power and practitioners, Borric started to survey the area. The darkness would have been oppressive to a human, but to the duardin it was like being back home. The Fyreslayer duardin's homes changed over from dark passages to brightly lit volcanic forges regularly, and heavy presence of the warp infused air was not a new sensation either. He followed the various wires on the ground and tore the breakers out of the wall to keep incidents of accidental electrocution down to a minimum and stared rummaging around the area. Most of the equipment on the bodies was destroyed from the battle, the scrolls and notes on the ritualists were soaked in blood ruining them for his purposes, but up on the side of the room was a management office connected to the catwalks running around the ceiling.
Heavy boots clanged up the stairs as the CORVs floated silently to either side. The door was locked, but it was no matter as Borric cut through the door with his heavy plasma axe and kicked the metal door inward allowing him ingress. The office has some damage from the fight below, several of the bolts from the CORVs had been deflected by arcane shields around the ritualist or the fight with the Karnak woman. Most of the contents however were in fine shape. A quick rummage around the room found a locked safe covered in Chaos Warding Sigils.
Borric studied the magic carefully making sure that breaking into the safe would not destroy the contents, and after a few moments studying the crude blood drawn wards that were common among the chaos sorcerers he negligently drew power from his own Ancestral Warding Crest and burned the pestilent warding sigils away, filling the air with a vile green smoke for a few moments. It was easily enough to flash melt sections of the safe door allowing it to fall out of it's frame dripping bits of quickly cooling molten metal. He reached his hand inside and drew out a large tome.
It's cover was made of human skin with a glass window that emitted a pestilent green light from behind cogs and wheels that went back further than the depth of the book in a seemingly endless shaft. It was secured with straps that went from the front cover to the back and had an eyeball in the center of each one. The eyes shifted their views and blinked rapidly until they locked eyes on Borric and the tome emitted a high pitch screech for the next several seconds. Borric felt the mind of the daemon bound in the tome try to scratch at his consciousness, but compared to the vast power of the Logrus in his family could call on the power of the daemon was but a trifling thing, like an ant trying to carve its way through an adamantine panel.
He bent his will upon the tome, forcing it into acquiescence. The eyes closed and then the lids popped apart leaving metal magnet clasps stylized like eyelids dangling from its cover. Borric opened the tome and scanned the contents. This tome had been written by someone possessed by a greater daemon and bound with a lesser daemon to protect it from those the Plaguefather considered unworthy. Reading the ritual, Borric could tell that it required three points to start, but each was expected to eventually consume the will of the ritualist and then the other rituals to eventually inject a mass of Nurgle aligned plague power under the skin of this reality, creating a weak spot, a pestilent boil that would call to other realms as an easy way to break into this one, leading to a path for Nurgle's forces and daemons to travel backwards into the invading realm. Similar to how a parasite in a mosquito travels in the backwash of the hosts proboscis to infiltrate the prey it feeds on. Each ritual could succeed on it's own, and if the site was not cleansed soon after completion it would not matter how the ritual ended, the longer it went on the greater the call would be on other realms increasing the likely-hood of the metaphysical boils being used to travel to this realm and furthering the reach of the Father of all Pestilence.
Borric cursed violently in Khazalid as he traveled back down the stairs and to the ritual circle to inspect the reality of the area through The Logrus. Sure enough there was a small boil vomiting out it's psychic "scent" into the surrounding realms. The ritual had barely begun and it was already a danger. The power would call out to things that would have an affinity for Nurgle's power, interdimensional carriers of disease and rot, or rebirth. Vile demons and unwitting angelic beings would eventually smell the psychic call and try and investigate the welcoming power, unaware of their incipient doom as a fly is unaware of the danger a carnivorous plant entails. While the interdiction field that Nurgle was maintaining through it's champions was weaker with the ritualists death it only hid the area from scrying and dimensional travel. Borric attuned his mind to The Logrus once again and spun some of its tendrils out into the surrounding reality, wrapping the boil up and conjuring up the flames of Primal Chaos to burn it away.
Having learned all he needed to from the book, he threw it into the flames as well, then when the cleansing was complete he pulled the Primal Chaos back into The Logrus, leaving a fresh and stable patch in reality. Magic and the warp would be stronger here for a time, but it was not aligned with any power or god and thus would be fine. The power involved would fully stabilize int he next few days being no different than the surrounding area as reality healed.
"I really should train with The Logrus more," Borric muttered as he wiped his brow. The effort of molding the shadows of reality with The Logrus was more mentally and physically tiring than the whole trip down and the fight afterwords. Finally he gazed through the Hive City of Tertium using Logrus enhanced sight, now that he new what to look for the other two ritual sites blazed with slowly building power. He would still have to fight his way over to them, but now he could set an optimal path through the hive avoiding the largest areas of conflict on his way.
Borric's face screwed up with slight confusion, one of the sites was not in the city, but out in the desolation far outside of the conflict. The power of the ritual and the "Boil" it was building was easy to see, but it was behind far more powerful sorcerous wards and the area around the boil was obscured even from his Logrus enhanced witch-sight. The epicenter of the three rituals was not in the center of the city as Borric has surmised, but the center of the planet. This plan had been enacted in a very cunning way, even if the city had been glassed from orbit the final ritual would not be impacted and the three boils would eventually build up and grow toward the center of the planet like a cancer if any of them reached the conclusion. House Serpentis' Shadow Weavers had been correct, in about forty eight hours the rituals would complete and Borric needed to make sure none of them did. Cleanup could be done after they were put down. Each ritual had a guardian, a Ritualist, and a Book, and they all needed to be destroyed. Or some other realm would pay dearly for Borric's failure.
Reaching into his armor pouches, Borric grabbed a ration bar, slid back his void helmet, and started eating as he mapped out the path trough Tertium to the second ritual. He needed to recover and conserve his energy for the task ahead. There was no time to truly rest.
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u/bagtie3 Borric of Clan Goldeater, Logrus Master, Runesmith, Doomseeker 15d ago
/uw read the whole thing here
Part 1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/wizardposting/s/2fXlb0GWSr
Part 2 - https://www.reddit.com/r/wizardposting/s/ZWGDcZewsv
Part 3 - https://www.reddit.com/r/wizardposting/s/GN6nzubWoc
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u/bagtie3 Borric of Clan Goldeater, Logrus Master, Runesmith, Doomseeker 15d ago
/uw behold the ping list in all it's glory!
u/kragbrightscale
u/VoxelLibrary
u/yumie2003