The Osage
30-06-2006, 06:32
To chronicle the mental history, the innumerable influences that tossed the distorted nightmare clumsily welded together that the human named Sikal called his soul, might take volumes. What follows is a sketch of the most important factors that drove the troubled tempests in the eternal night of his psyche past the blurred theshold of insanity.
The child's father, the decidedly infamous wizard Irul Kasaros, a dark mage of considerable ability and intellect, famous for a cherished interest in the forbidden necromancy of past Osage eons and a calculating, sadistic mind, undoubtedly influenced his son's mental collage, through the direct avenue of genetics and the more indirect influence of his considerable volumes of grimoires and private papers on his acquired knowledge and extrapolations on the necromantic art, which his son would sponge up and expand on with a frightening ingenuity.
The child's mother, a wily concubine of illustrious ancestry fallen on hard times, contributed through her own skewed psyche an array of influences of which the most important would be a hedonistic lifestyle which the young Sikal, in his philosophical and religious delvings, would in vain attempt to exctricate himself over, failing time and time again to master his impulses before finally surrending wholesale to his samsaric ensnarement.
Lastly, the boy's adolescent ability to absorb prodigious quantities of information, wedded with an incredible intelligence, would contribute to his earthly might in the form of wizardry, as well eventual disillusionment with the proffered wisdom of Osage and Solar sages, philosophers, gods, and messiahs.
All of these, melded with an eccentric personality, would, if given enough time, perhaps produced mental aberrations of a dark sort if left to incubate long enough. As it was, the story of the young Sikal Kasaros' rise through the ranks of the hunted remnants of the Osage necromantic cult, his recruitment by the unwitting Monhin Dapa, not yet an emperor, as a leader of untold legions of undead, his subversion of almost the entire necromantic army of the then-tenth fleet-general through superior spellcraft, and his defeat of the Sage-Emperor by necromancy which was then negated by Solar technology is well known. The consequences of this brief narrative were that the Sage-Emperor, in a controversial and ultimately decisive (for the necromancer's mental fortitude) move, entered the youth's mind and erected psychic structures designed to ensure his loyalty, in the process destabilizing his entire psyche...
---
The almost-cliche'd, pale skin of Sikal Kasaros, gaunt, thin yet possessed of cordlike muscles apparent in his snapping movements, was concealed by robes whose blackness was the clear product of purposeful spellwork, making staring at them for too long an experience comparable to few things in heaven or earth.
His skin, looking almost bleached, seemed to glow with barely contained moonlight, as if the light of a distant star was being reflected through the mortal coil of this sinewy young man.
An unidentified, unexplained white sphere marked the robes otherwise devoid of markings or insignia, and when asked by the Sage-Emperor or what passed as 'friends' what it meant, his only response was, rather enigmatically, that it came from a dream out of 'splitting Time'. Futher questioning yielded no results, and as such he was permitted the eccentricity.
At such times his speech and movements were that of naive fantasy and dreamlike musings, and it was at such times that he was furthest removed from the Necromancer who led the Coordinators, his brainchild, an organization of sneering, black-uniformed enforcers incorporated into the immensely powerful institution of Osage Law Enforcement.
The current scene, an assembly of the Coordinator-Generals of the organization he now led, was an exemplar of the opposite pole of his rapidly scattering personality. Calm, regally held, arrogant and in control, those who experienced this side of Sikal often remarked upon its virtual identity to the persona of his late father, and at these points he was regarded by associates as his most sane.
"And the Master...?" The youth spoke. Delicate wisps of moonlight wheeled away from his open mouth, fading away as they distanced themselves from his starlike presence. At points during the conversation he would stir the air with his silvery staff, sinking into a reverie before snapping back into cold, regal control.
"Showed reticence, admittedly, lord Kasaros, but I could read the fear of our power within his disgusted features. The current balance of power, my lord, suggests that the military organizations..."
The Necromancer cut him off. "The key word, o ingenious one, is current. Current! Current! The very word is a herald of defeat. For current is just that, current, and its stranglehold lasts only for today. What of tomorrow?"
The Coordinator-General appeared to digest this for a few seconds, modulating his inborn arrogance and instinctual backlash in view of the immense power the being in front of him commanded. "We might stretch our hold as long as we can. Beyond this I cannot now extrapolate."
The young man laughed hollowly, his eyes flashing dangerously, though obviously the chuckles were directed at some inward musing rather than at the Coordinator's response. "Yes. Though your methods of elongation are, to me, rather pathetic, though not disappointing in view of your personal circumstances. I am thinking of making us more tensile."
The eyes paused and looked concerned, a flash of fantasy moving behind them, but in a moment a thin sneer had returned before gradually moving into a dark frown.
"You have, I hoped, introduced the new methods I developed into the Ancestral Legions?"
The previous Coordinator bowed and receded, and another in the circled stepped forward.
"They were immensely succesful, milord. In particular immense collections of lekythoi have been strategically..."
I know. The voice was mirrored by a telepathic explosion from Kasaros' mind, making the Coordinators wince and mentally reel. Kasaros appeared to consider, for a moment, a brief apology, before cold sadism overrode this momentary courtesy and replaced his facial features with sneering indifference.
"My soul now ranges in so many and so far places that only one man may journey farther while he stands still. Though sometimes I lose track..." At this the moonlight in his eyes metamorphosed into a blood-red gleam that held for some time, forging twin rubies out of the pale face until at last that scarlet light ceased to go forth.
"And sometimes we tangle."
Sikal breathed a dark sigh before dismissing the Coordinator-Generals, who with puzzled expressions left his chambers of black stone to complain to each other of their master's growing incoherence, though if they knew he could feel every word of their discontent they might have held their tongues.
Withdrawing into the geometric center of his immense ebony spire, the lord-necromancer twisted himself into a lotus position and sent leeching tendrils of his black soul into the blasted heath around his seat of power, where all life had long since had its energy funneled into the human star residing within.
He struggled within his mind, attempting to birth some evil intent against the Sage-Emperor, but ultimately pouring out his frustrations in immense screams amplified by soul energy that vibrated the dark walls of his yawning tower. He wept, and collapsed bodily onto the smooth, black floor, where he faded into sleep.
Consciousness, however, refused to dissipate, and in dream his mental struggles found visual expression. Seething waves of black liquid crashed up against immense, monolithic dams, probing them for weaknesses, twisting but never penetrating. The dream grew more intense, what had formally been one, uniform, smooth wave of attack gradually had begun to show signs of fragmenting, though the consciousness of Sikal in this strangely lucid dream sought to fight this breaking up of the assaulting wave.
And then, in one horrid glimpse of terrifying lucidity, as the wave or waves launched a final, furious assault, a residue of black liquid soaked into the monolith. The dams then grew grotesque faces and protruding limbs of their own, and in that instant of disgusting fear Sikal's psyche mercifully blacked out into dreamless sleep.
The child's father, the decidedly infamous wizard Irul Kasaros, a dark mage of considerable ability and intellect, famous for a cherished interest in the forbidden necromancy of past Osage eons and a calculating, sadistic mind, undoubtedly influenced his son's mental collage, through the direct avenue of genetics and the more indirect influence of his considerable volumes of grimoires and private papers on his acquired knowledge and extrapolations on the necromantic art, which his son would sponge up and expand on with a frightening ingenuity.
The child's mother, a wily concubine of illustrious ancestry fallen on hard times, contributed through her own skewed psyche an array of influences of which the most important would be a hedonistic lifestyle which the young Sikal, in his philosophical and religious delvings, would in vain attempt to exctricate himself over, failing time and time again to master his impulses before finally surrending wholesale to his samsaric ensnarement.
Lastly, the boy's adolescent ability to absorb prodigious quantities of information, wedded with an incredible intelligence, would contribute to his earthly might in the form of wizardry, as well eventual disillusionment with the proffered wisdom of Osage and Solar sages, philosophers, gods, and messiahs.
All of these, melded with an eccentric personality, would, if given enough time, perhaps produced mental aberrations of a dark sort if left to incubate long enough. As it was, the story of the young Sikal Kasaros' rise through the ranks of the hunted remnants of the Osage necromantic cult, his recruitment by the unwitting Monhin Dapa, not yet an emperor, as a leader of untold legions of undead, his subversion of almost the entire necromantic army of the then-tenth fleet-general through superior spellcraft, and his defeat of the Sage-Emperor by necromancy which was then negated by Solar technology is well known. The consequences of this brief narrative were that the Sage-Emperor, in a controversial and ultimately decisive (for the necromancer's mental fortitude) move, entered the youth's mind and erected psychic structures designed to ensure his loyalty, in the process destabilizing his entire psyche...
---
The almost-cliche'd, pale skin of Sikal Kasaros, gaunt, thin yet possessed of cordlike muscles apparent in his snapping movements, was concealed by robes whose blackness was the clear product of purposeful spellwork, making staring at them for too long an experience comparable to few things in heaven or earth.
His skin, looking almost bleached, seemed to glow with barely contained moonlight, as if the light of a distant star was being reflected through the mortal coil of this sinewy young man.
An unidentified, unexplained white sphere marked the robes otherwise devoid of markings or insignia, and when asked by the Sage-Emperor or what passed as 'friends' what it meant, his only response was, rather enigmatically, that it came from a dream out of 'splitting Time'. Futher questioning yielded no results, and as such he was permitted the eccentricity.
At such times his speech and movements were that of naive fantasy and dreamlike musings, and it was at such times that he was furthest removed from the Necromancer who led the Coordinators, his brainchild, an organization of sneering, black-uniformed enforcers incorporated into the immensely powerful institution of Osage Law Enforcement.
The current scene, an assembly of the Coordinator-Generals of the organization he now led, was an exemplar of the opposite pole of his rapidly scattering personality. Calm, regally held, arrogant and in control, those who experienced this side of Sikal often remarked upon its virtual identity to the persona of his late father, and at these points he was regarded by associates as his most sane.
"And the Master...?" The youth spoke. Delicate wisps of moonlight wheeled away from his open mouth, fading away as they distanced themselves from his starlike presence. At points during the conversation he would stir the air with his silvery staff, sinking into a reverie before snapping back into cold, regal control.
"Showed reticence, admittedly, lord Kasaros, but I could read the fear of our power within his disgusted features. The current balance of power, my lord, suggests that the military organizations..."
The Necromancer cut him off. "The key word, o ingenious one, is current. Current! Current! The very word is a herald of defeat. For current is just that, current, and its stranglehold lasts only for today. What of tomorrow?"
The Coordinator-General appeared to digest this for a few seconds, modulating his inborn arrogance and instinctual backlash in view of the immense power the being in front of him commanded. "We might stretch our hold as long as we can. Beyond this I cannot now extrapolate."
The young man laughed hollowly, his eyes flashing dangerously, though obviously the chuckles were directed at some inward musing rather than at the Coordinator's response. "Yes. Though your methods of elongation are, to me, rather pathetic, though not disappointing in view of your personal circumstances. I am thinking of making us more tensile."
The eyes paused and looked concerned, a flash of fantasy moving behind them, but in a moment a thin sneer had returned before gradually moving into a dark frown.
"You have, I hoped, introduced the new methods I developed into the Ancestral Legions?"
The previous Coordinator bowed and receded, and another in the circled stepped forward.
"They were immensely succesful, milord. In particular immense collections of lekythoi have been strategically..."
I know. The voice was mirrored by a telepathic explosion from Kasaros' mind, making the Coordinators wince and mentally reel. Kasaros appeared to consider, for a moment, a brief apology, before cold sadism overrode this momentary courtesy and replaced his facial features with sneering indifference.
"My soul now ranges in so many and so far places that only one man may journey farther while he stands still. Though sometimes I lose track..." At this the moonlight in his eyes metamorphosed into a blood-red gleam that held for some time, forging twin rubies out of the pale face until at last that scarlet light ceased to go forth.
"And sometimes we tangle."
Sikal breathed a dark sigh before dismissing the Coordinator-Generals, who with puzzled expressions left his chambers of black stone to complain to each other of their master's growing incoherence, though if they knew he could feel every word of their discontent they might have held their tongues.
Withdrawing into the geometric center of his immense ebony spire, the lord-necromancer twisted himself into a lotus position and sent leeching tendrils of his black soul into the blasted heath around his seat of power, where all life had long since had its energy funneled into the human star residing within.
He struggled within his mind, attempting to birth some evil intent against the Sage-Emperor, but ultimately pouring out his frustrations in immense screams amplified by soul energy that vibrated the dark walls of his yawning tower. He wept, and collapsed bodily onto the smooth, black floor, where he faded into sleep.
Consciousness, however, refused to dissipate, and in dream his mental struggles found visual expression. Seething waves of black liquid crashed up against immense, monolithic dams, probing them for weaknesses, twisting but never penetrating. The dream grew more intense, what had formally been one, uniform, smooth wave of attack gradually had begun to show signs of fragmenting, though the consciousness of Sikal in this strangely lucid dream sought to fight this breaking up of the assaulting wave.
And then, in one horrid glimpse of terrifying lucidity, as the wave or waves launched a final, furious assault, a residue of black liquid soaked into the monolith. The dams then grew grotesque faces and protruding limbs of their own, and in that instant of disgusting fear Sikal's psyche mercifully blacked out into dreamless sleep.