《A warlocks grimoire》


 The academy

    A Warlocks grimoire


    The other side of darkness


    Prologue


    Two armies face each other on a black field of a burned forest. Some persons might call this a clash of good and evil.


    On the oneside stood an army of knights in shining armor, elven archers and dwarven axemen and all the other human footsoldiers overhead griffins filled the air with their agitated screeches. Lead by paladins of the gods of light this army surely has a righteous cause, does it not.


    The other army was filled with all kinds of monsters, from small goblins to big orcs and huge ogres. With massive dragons, and wyverns flying overhead eager to feed on the opposite force. Commanded by figure clad in robes so dark that they appeared to be made of shadows, this surely was a evil force destined to be destroyed, was it not? 135


    Behind each of these armies their respective spell casters were gathering their power for grand battle magics which could annihilate their enemy armies with would they not be fighting each other. At last the time came for goblins and orcs to charge into the orderly ranks of spearmen, arrows to rain down and cavalries to charge. Griffins and their knights fought against dragons and other scaly beasts. Paladins hewed down scores of orcs and often even ogres, but these dark forces were to immense to be bested by the skill of a few.


    This was also seen in the arcane side of the battle as more and more academy trained mages and wizards fell to shamans of the dark, as there were ten for every one of them. Even the elves who were surely the best archers in the world, as they had centuries to train with their bows fell to the onslaught of sky darkening arrow swarms.


    In the end the forces of light did not end the battle victorious and had to flee the battlefield, which was now occupied by a looting horde and one lonely figure clad in shadow, that wondered how things had escalated so far.


    Chapter 1


    It all started pretty harmless. I had been studying in the library as any normal academy student who was in his last year does. On my search for new research material I stumbled over a bundle of scrolls that had been peaking out of their shelf in a particularly dark corner of the library that I had never seen before. Curious about their content I opened the top scroll, the scripture on the outside read in high Dar ''Histories on the shamans of the northern steppes''. The scrolls that had me curious before now had my full attention, because before this I had only heard of the eastern goblins and their kin practicing shamanistic rituals. Until then I had only heard rumors of shamanistic rituals using blood magic, to strengthen their warriors, which was forbidden to practice in the empires'' mystic community.


    At the time I thought I had found the way to recognition and fame in mage society.


    Oh but I was wrong. I had just made the first on the path to becoming one of the most feared warlocks in history.


    But at the time I was completely consumed by the drive to search and study any knowledge on the topic of blood magic and shaman rituals or topics that interlocked with these one. This way I also started learning more about the so called ''dark races'' most populous among them the small greenish brown skinned goblins that often had eastern wilderness of the mountain foothills and the green skinned orcs living east of the eastern mountain range in the vast plains and savannas that are located there. As I worked my way deeper into what I now call the black library I started finding actual blood magic practices, like a ritual that was performed by steppe shamans in which they sacrificed the elders to give the young warriors more strength in the upcoming battle. I also found practices that summoned entities of other planes of existence. These summonings are often part of rituals, which require more than a dozen deaths to even begin. But when an entity answers it often ends with hundreds of dead enemies. These rituals are often used by goblin shamans as they have cheap life in abundance at hand as a goblin shaman sees his tribe only as an increase in his own power.


    Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.In the months I spent learning about these practices, I began to finally see the error of the archmages as they just let enough power, to return the empire to the glory of Dar, go by without doing anything about it. Because of my naive nature at the time I did not consider it an option, that the archmages did not want this power known because it would threaten their own.


    As a result of this I wrote my thesis on shamanistic rituals and their use of bloodmagic. My only thought during the whole process was, that this power could make the empire sovereign over  all its rival nations. Oh I had no idea of the scope of my naiveness.


    I would soon become aware of the corruption of the archmages, but sadly to late. As the months went by and I neared the finalization of my thesis I learned evermore dark magics and rituals, even though I didn''t think of the as dark at the time just  as different way to gather and use power. In the month before I would leave, even though I did not know it at the time, I found a book on a subject I had thought a myth, necromancy. This book was one of the most practical grimoires I had found so far in this corner of the library. It was rather like one of the chant books a wizard uses, in which all the needed ingredients and phrases are noted down.


    The book ''necromantic initium'' consisted mostly of a wide array of rituals and curses and precise information. With this book I learned that necromancy was not some kind of foul sorcery used to violate souls by tearing them out of the afterlife and enslaving them in this world, like I had heard in horror stories used by my parents to scare me. No, as I learned more about this arcane art, I had to laugh at those stories, as one would have to overpower the god of the dead Anum to even try to touch the soul of a deceased. To those that don''t know it, necromancy just uses the body and its former abilities. Battlefields are a very good place to find bodies for fighters but are not a good place to find undead workers. The body of a former farmer is never going to good at swinging a weapon effectively.


    One week before the end of my stay at the academy I finally submitted my masterpiece of a thesis to the archmage at the academy, which would hange my ''life'' forever but not in the way I had expected. The day I left the academy I woke up with a good feeling for the day as it would be the last, that I would have to spent sleeping in a chamber so small that only my bed and a desk fitted in it. The day was the day of graduation, a day of a few hours in class and then an acknowledgment made by the academy that I was no more an apprentice but a journeyman. I packed my rune staff, my books and my meager materials into my enchanted bag, together with my few private robes of a blackish blue journeyman color. On my way to my last class I began contemplating what I would do after my graduation as I knew that I couldn''t life of research and learning alone, as I had done during time at the academy. When I arrived at my classroom I still hadn''t found a solution, so I surrendered myself to the unknown and readied myself for my last class in advanced pyromancy.


    During class one of the students brought up a question that that opened my eyes to the mistake I had made. ¡°Master Jorgis, what should we do if ever met a necromancer?¡± And he answered as if it was the most natural thing in the world. ¡° Burn him down the moment you see him.¡±  At that moment a magical messenger sphere came into the room and asked for me. And then I knew that I would not graduate at that, but become an outcast from the society that I had lived in for the last fifteen years. Because that sphere also said that I was to follow it to master Morningers'' chambers, the chambers of the inquisitor. As soon as the sphere and I rounded a corner I dispelled the sphere and started fleeing the academy. When I left the main tower I went east to the wild forest which stretched from the academy until the World-Ridge-mountains. This probably saved my life buy at the time It was just the nearest exit out of academy grounds.

 The forest

    I spent that day and night running for my life. Every bird call seemed to come from a griffin with a knight on its back and every bush seemed to contain an ambush. But no attack came from the sky or the ground so eventually I stopped late on the second day for the first time, with the exception of short rests, and thought about my situation.


    As it was I had no idea where exactly I was, only that I had moved closer to the mountains, but neither did the inquisition as they probably thought no one would be stupid enough to venture into the wild alone. Even a group of experienced adventurers could meet opponents in this vast forest that would have no trouble with making them into its afternoon snack.


    But I in my headlong flight had only thought about the dangers behind me and not the ones that I was running into. As it was, I decided that I would continue on this way as it had proven save so far and it was too late to turn back now anyway. This decision sparked another question in my mind. What would I do, now that I was a wanted by the inquisition. I could not expect help from other humans as the Inquisition stretched through all of the human kingdoms and had agents in some of the more open non-human cities.


    As I had no answer to this question at hand I started making a fire by collecting dry wood and igniting it with a quick cantrip. Food was found quickly in the form of an unsuspecting quail killed by an overload of its lifeforce capacity. The later of the magics was something that was normally used by mages in group rituals to share power, but it could equally kill something with low mental resistance. While eating the nearly burned bird I started thinking about what lay and awaited me in the east and I started to form an idea that would sound ludicrous to most people, but they had not been exiled by their own ignorant race.


    I fell asleep for the first time in days with thoughts of ruling.


    Chapter 2


    The next days were filled with me reading books on the great wild forest and its known and suspected inhabitants. As such the seemingly empty first two days now became two days filled with luck that I didn''t know I had. I now realized that I had passed the hunting ranges of multiple wild beast, including that of a basilisk.


    Stone pillars that looked strange before now looked like half eaten corpses of surprised victims. With the comprehension of this horror another came, a small part of myself didn''t see a horror. Still shuddering I promise to myself to never again travel without information on the region that I travel in.


    With that insight I started to review what I knew about this region of forest and mountains. I knew that goblins came through here to raid on human frontier villages, but as far as I knew the only settlements of any sentients are housed in the mountains. The flight of dragons are the most impressive but far from the only with an old under-city of gray dwarves and countless goblin clans being far more numerous.


    As I remembered these these things a smile started to grow on my face, one many would have found disconcerting. I had found my destination, the under-city Karash. I only needed some kind of gift for the gray dwarves or they would not open their stone gates for me.


    I spent the rest of the week in contemplation and travel. It proved to be a far harder thing than I originally thought. To find a fitting gift for a dwarven king is hard, as the things a dwarf likes most are his gold and jewels and a king has both of those en masse. Near the end of the week some thing finally happened that through me out of the monotony of reading books, eating badly cooked game meat and wreaking my brain on what to gift a king.


    It was near midday that I stumbled into a clearing having fallen over a hidden root.


    As I looked up I saw a group of goblins. A group of goblins pointing makeshift spears and bows at me. A group of goblins that were on the verge of sticking me with a lot of pointy things.


    My first reaction was a rather dumb ¡°huh¡± but after that I remembered two things about goblins, their clan leaders are the most cruel and strong of the tribe or they are magic users who are feared by the rest of the tribe. As a result of those inclusions I attacked a few of them with rather flashy magic including a ball of fire and a spear of ice, with the former being quite a bit more destructive as its explosion not only killed the archer I aimed at but also the two goblins in front of him, ice spear only pierced on goblin then fell to the ground. After that the goblins still pointed their weapons, if you can call them that, at me but now they were shaking like leaves.


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    In my rather crude understanding of goblin I told them that they should lay down their weapons or they would and up in a similar position as their former brethren who now where nothing more than ash. After this they immediately dropped their weapons and took a good-sized step away from them as if they were going to eat them. With the disaster averted I finally had the time to stand up and inspect my surroundings. I find myself in what I would later come to recognize as a fairly shabby but common goblin raider camp, but at the moment it looks to me like an assortment of tattered rags held up by sticks and a couple of campfires between them. As I saw all this I started to see this as an opportunity and not a calamity. These goblins could be influenced easily as long as I showed them that I was the boss and any that said differently would end up in the goblins stew pot.


    After a few harsh words in broken goblin and the demonstration of another goblin death I had a dozen goblins call me boss-man and master. When we were through those technicalities I finally learned that the state of their camp was the result of a failed raid on human settlement from which they had only escaped with a third of their number. But now that they had no loot or slaves they could not return to their clan without being turned into stew. I ask their leader, whose name I learned is Garbash, where their clan is at the time and how many goblins it had.


    It turns out that the clan lives in a big cave the foot of the mountains and that their clan numbered around forty goblin hands, which turns out into a hundred and sixty goblins for those who are civilized. After that I asked him if he would like to be chieftain and left him alone with dreams of goblins bowing to him. After I laid a spread of nasty wards around my sleeping area outside of the goblin camp as their smell of drowned dog didn''t agree with me.


    When I woke up the next morning I found a dead goblin which had with the problem of having his heart displaced out of his chest. I had expected this as one of the most common traits of goblins is treachery. As they didn''t say anything about their dead comrade I did not mention that either.


    As everything was calmer this morning I had the opportunity to inspect the gear of my goblin underlings and I was shocked. Their spears where littlte more than shanks of crude iron bound to a stick with rope and their bows little more than a elastic branch tied with its end tied together by animal sinew and arrows with fletchings of different bird feathers and scrap metal as points. I thought to myself that they must have gotten the worst of the clans equipment and said so to Garbash but he assured me that they had gotten the best the clan had, most other would be lucky to own a small knife.


    With this information in hand we started moving further east. I spent the follownig days learning about the finer points of goblin society and hierarchy. Their society is first split into those that are capable of magic, with those that are taken from the rest and being raised as shamans, similar to those among the common people in the empire whose children get taken away at the age of three. Those among the goblins that are not capable of magic get taken care of in a communal nursery until the age of seven in which they start their adolescence. For the next three years they are introduced to goblin society, which mainly evolves into a lot of treachery and a third of their generation dieing by a swift stone smashed into their head or a myriad of different poisons.


    When they are adults they either become badly skilled craftsmen or badly skilled soldiers and the most cruel among them becomes a badly skilled chieftain. But the reason why goblins are a problem for the eastern part of the empire is that there are so many of these badly skilled goblins.


    With this in mind I began to think about the possibilities I would have if I had thousands goblins calling me master. Finally after two weeks of travel we reached the foothills of the World-Ridge-mountains. And I had a plan, for if a the king didn''t open his gates freely I would make him.