See the dance of flowers, smell the blossom of mold, hear the crawling of worms, taste the kiss of pathogenic slime.
Let Nature touch your heart, so you may never walk upon the Iron Path.
~ Refrain of the Song of Rivers
Introduction
The characteristic magical art of the
Ikona, the Shamanic Arts utilize particles harvested from the Great Rivers to cast spells corresponding with the five flavors of life. While not as fast-acting and flashy as other types of magic, the Shamanic Arts provide powerful spells with longlasting effects that can turn deserts into sprawling forests and proud cities into fields of toxic mold.
The Rivers of Life
All lifeforms within Cenorad continually emit small amounts of "
Vitae-energy" (also known as Natural Energy) as a byproduct of their metabolism. While the exact amount of energies produced varies between different lifeforms, the total number of creatures is generally far more important than the energies produced by a single member of a given species.
After leaving their producer organism these energies begin to flow together to form small streams of energy, that themselves converged into larger streams until they form world encompassing energy systems, which are commonly known as the Great Rivers of Life. While these Rivers are detectable in nearly all locations in Cenorad, the exact strength of the Rivers greatly fluctuates and is heavily influenced by the local environment and the creatures living in it. In general, the rivers tend to flow strongly in life-rich regions such as jungles, rivers, and reefs, while at the same time shrinking in regions poor in life, such as deserts, glacier fields, and irradiated wastelands.
Yelos, the Green River
Yelos is feed by the natural energies released from all forms of plant life and therefore has his greatest strength in regions covered by forests, jungles or fields.
Kyfe, the Brown River
Kyfe gains its energies from any kind of mushroom, fungus, and mold and therefore is at its most powerful in any regions in which rot and decay dominate, such as bogs, swamps or marshes.
Kiglonos, the Yellow River
Kiglonos is supplied by microbial slimes and biofilms and therefore can be called upon in nearly anywhere due to the ubiquity of its power source.
N‘kir, The Grey River
N'Kir is powered by the energies of worms, maggots, and grubs and can, therefore, be encountered in any regions that are inhabited by huge amounts of these creatures.
Galylos, The Blue River
Galylos is a synthetic river created by the Ikona for the use in their Spiritual Technology. At the hight of the Old Empire, the currents of Galylos managed surpassed the strength of the other four rivers, but since the Second Spring, only small streams of pure Galylos-energy can be found between or within the few surviving technological artifacts of the Old Empire.
The Taste of Power
While the Great River might brim with an enormous amount of energies, they are not reactive enough to be used for the casting of spells. Therefore a shaman first has to break down the larger streams into smaller energy particles, before he can cast a spell. These particles are commonly known as either Pixi or Fairy dust and possess a characteristic color and taste depending on the stream from which they were created. While each type of particle is generally associated with only one specific flavor, they in truth possess highly nuanced flavors, which can give those that able to interpret them detailed information about the composition of their environment.
Botas
Created from Yelos-streams Botas-particle are of green color and possess a sweet taste. If used in a shamanic spell these particles allow a shaman to enhance the growth of all types of plants or even the creation of completely new plants.
Fungos
Fungos-particles are brown in color and have a sourish taste. They are created from the currents of Kyfe and are often utilized to strengthen the growth of various types of fungi, mushrooms, and yeasts.
Pitus
Pitus-particles are gained from the streams of Kiglonos and possess a yellowish color and bitter taste. As they are able to modulate the growth of various types of microbial organisms, these particles are highly sought after by healers and bringers of disease alike.
Vermis
Greyish colored dust with a piquant aftertaste, Vermis-particles stem from the currents of N‘kir and allow those versed in the Shamanic Arts to modulate the growth of all kinds of worms and maggots, ranging from benevolent earthworms to malevolent marrow-leeches.
Spirius
Light blue in color and possessing a salty taste Spirius particles originate from the streams of Galylos and serve as the power source for the various Spiritual technologies utilized by the Old Ikona Empire.
Dancing in the Dust
In order to cast a spell of the Shamanic Arts (also known as a
Dan'cha) a shaman has to scatter the appropriate amounts and flavors of fairy dust in his surroundings to create a so-called
Al'lap ("Casting cloud"). After this cloud of fairy dust has been formed, the shaman has to carefully sculpture it into a spell-specific form, which is archived through a dance-like choreography that often utilizes small wands made from natural materials that correspond to the type of dust used in the specific spell (e.g. Wooden wands for Botas-based spells and dried wormskin wands for Vermis-based ones.).
If the shaman managed to shape the dust cloud into the correct form, before it dissolved, the spell will become active as soon as the particles that make up the cloud revert back into
Vitae-energy. This reversion takes place naturally and counter-intuitively happens faster the more fairy dust was used in the creation of the cloud. Due to this very powerful spells are generally broken up into multiple parts, to prevent the large dust clouds required for them from instantly reverting back into natural energies.
Should the shape of the casting cloud be incorrect upon the reversion of its particles, the released energies will generally disperse harmlessly and only produce small amounts of their corresponding materials, which makes the Shamanic Arts one of the most beginner-friendly fields of magic.
In rare cases, the cloud might, however, release all of its contained energies in a more spectacular fashion, which leads to similar "unaesthetic" results as the ones regular seen in more unforgiving types of magic.
A Game of Clouds
While even the casting of a simple
Dan'cha often requires years if not decades of practice, there exists a huge number of even more elaborated casting techniques that are used by experienced shamans, to literally leave their opponents in the dust.
Skilled shamans might, for example, be able to use the inherent instability of a dense dust cloud to their advantage, by infusing an already fully shaped cloud with large amounts of fairy dust -without disrupting the shape of the cloud- in order to hasten the reversion process of the dust particles. This technique is commonly known as "Cloudfall" and is generally used in the formation of emergency barriers to shield the shaman from attacks that are to fast to be intercepted by regularly formed barriers. Alternatively, this technique can also be used to catch an opponent off guard, by reducing the cast time of an offensive spell. Exceptional powerful and experienced shamans are furthermore able to perform a partial or delayed Cloudfall, to further modulate the casting times of their spells.
A further advanced technique used by experienced shamans is the so-called "Nested Cloud", which tries to deceive an opponent by hiding a weaker spell in the casting cloud of an allegedly more powerful spell. An even more complex version of this technique -called "Cloudsplitter"- is the targeted collapse of a large cloud into a series of smaller clouds in order to bait an opponent into performing an overhasty defensive maneuver, such as a Cloudfall barrier.
One of the most powerful, but also most difficult advanced techniques is the so-called "Cloudeater", which uses the rapid reconversion of large amounts of fairy dust in order to create a "Dust-vacuum" at its point of casting. This vacuum is then used to pull on the casting cloud of an opponent in order to distort it, causing either the cancellation of the opponent's spell or a catastrophic miscast. In at least one legendary case a shaman even managed to change the spell of his opponent into a completely different one, by using multiple, meticulously timed vacuums.
While the potential gains of this technique are massive, the risks are equally enormous, as the great amounts of fairy dust used for this technique generally leave the user unable to cast a defensive barrier to protect himself against the spell he initially aimed to counteract.
The Dust must flow
I...I have to chew....that?
~ Common reaction of novice shamans upon learning how to gather fairy dust.
While fairy dust naturally forms in regions with strong
Vitae streams, these amounts are generally far too small to be used in the casting of all but the most minuscule of spells. Therefore a shaman has to produce the fairy dust by himself which is traditionally archived through a technique called "Over-chewing".
This technique entails the repeated chewing of specific substances that naturally possess a strong connection to the currents of the Great Rivers, such as Everblossom flowers, fever mold or blood scab. If done long enough a so-called "Flavor shift" will occur, which signifies the beginning of the fairy dust formation within the shamans' mouth. As soon as this shift occurs the shaman then spits out the chewed material and collects the fairy dust emerging from his mouth in an appropriate container.
While this technique can produce considerable amounts of fairy dust, especially if the shaman is aided by other individuals, it still is a very time-intensive and potential very dangerous method as many of the materials used for this technique are either not meant for consumption or outright poisonous. Due to this, the very first spells created by the early shamans were healing and convalescence
Dan'chas.
Trinkets
The first major advancement in the production of fairy dust was the development of so-called River-trinkets. These trinkets are made from the same materials as the wands that are used in the shaping of a casting cloud but are treated with far more complex enchantments, which makes their production a daunting task that can take weeks if not months to complete.
Once a trinket has been produced it can be activated by either coating or filling it with various pulverized and triturated organic materials as well as a small amount of fairy dust. After a few hours of incubation time, the trinket then will begin to produce a specific flavor of fairy dust with a production rate similar to that of the "Over-chewing" technique.
As long as the trinket is regularly resupplied with organic materials corresponding to the nature of the desired fairy dust, it will continue to produce fairy dust at a fairly consistent rate. Should a shaman fail to resupply the trinket or use materials incompatible with its flavor, the trinket will become inoperable, though it can be reactivated later through the use of so-called reactivation
Dan'chas.
While the exact shape of a trinket is irrelevant for its function, it is common for shamans to make their trinkets into shapes resembling religious, occult or cultural important symbols. Trinkets shaped like animals or plants are also very common, to the point that a shaman might even take on the name of his trinket-animal.
Totems
The logical derivative of the trinkets, totems are essential stationary versions of river-trinkets that operate in generally the same fashion but require dozen if not hundreds of trinkets to be activated. The most notable difference between trinkets and totems besides sheer size and the total amount of fairy dust produced is that the production rate of a totem slowly increases as the totem gets older. This so-called "Totem Bloom" is caused by an interplay between the permanent cloud of fairy dust around the totem with the currents of the Great Rivers, which results in an undertow-effect that gradually pulls more and more
Vitae-energy towards the totem.
Born from Dust
While the Ikona and shamans, in general, are regarded as being the first to use the power of the Great Rivers, they are in fact merely the first ones to codify the usage of this power, for to the very first Riverwalkers the use of the Shamanic Arts was as intuitive as the act of swimming is to a fish.
These enigmatic first shamans were the so-called "Fa‘eira", which are more commonly known as either Natural Spirits or Fairies. These creatures are in essence sentient clouds of fairy dust, that are born from the streams of the Great Rivers. While they can theoretically form in all regions that possess a minimum of
Vitae-energy, there exist certain conditions that strongly increase the chance for the spawning of new fairies.
So-called "Lost Valleys" are narrow life-filled areas that are surrounded by hostile regions such as deserts or frozen plains. This special arrangement of areas focuses all nearby
Vitae streams into the cramped ravines of the valley, which in turn highly increases the density of the streams, which results in a greatly increased fairy spawn rate.
"Fairy-Crossings" are another type of location that is known to house large amounts of faires and that are relatively common in comparison to Lost Valleys. These Crossings emerge in areas, where multiple
Vitae streams of different flavors overlap, with the number of fairs born increasing the more streams overlap. The largest of these Crossing is known as the Rainbow-Crossing and consists of a total of 85 overlapping energy streams.
Totem-Spirits
Totem-Spirit is the name given to all faires that were either purposely or accidentally created by a shamanic totem. While they are in essence indistinguishable from naturally occurring faires, they often possess an appearance reminiscent of the trinkets used in the creation of the totem. Furthermore, they are very often bound to a specific shaman in order to serve them as a deposit for their fairy dust, given that fairies are able to "store" huge quantities of
Vitae-particles within their physical forms.
While natural fairies can also be used in this manner, they generally resist the sudden withdrawal of fairy dust from their "possession" in a quite violent manner and therefore first have to be tamed in order to be used in such a manner.
In the case of Djins, the fairies of the Galylos-River, the term "Totem-Spirit" is instead used to distinguish "bound" Djins that currently serve a master from so-called "wild" Djins which don't possess a master, as all Djins are artificial creations, therefore, possess no naturally occurring counterpart.
The Iron Path
Why beg for the powers of nature, if you can simply make them your own?
~ Excerpt from the Iron Codex
Based on the teaching of Ore-Queen Sunacluv, the Iron Path is a radical departure from the traditional teachings of the Shamanic Arts. Instead of trying to harmonize with the nature of one of the Four Great Rivers, the Iron Path seeks to subjugate the currents of all Four Rivers at the same time.
This subjugation or "distillation" as it is more commonly known is achieved through the usage of a mythical substance known as "Cold Iron", which was first discovered in the remains of Skyshards within the original homeland of the Ikona, though later practitioners of the Iron Path also managed to "grow" it within veins of regular iron ore that were previously treated with distilled fairy dust.
One of the major advantages of the Iron Path is that it is able to gain energy from all four natural Rivers and convert them into a synthetic fifth flavor of fairy dust (known as "Spirius"), thereby being far less reliant on the presence of specific organisms within the local environment.
As one can easily guess the Iron Path and its numerous applications formed the backbone of the Spiritual Technology utilized by the Iron Kingdom and its successor in the Old Ikona Empire (which was also known as the Iron Empire).
Notable applications of the Iron Path include Spirus-Muskets that fire bolts of spiritual energy, River Armors filled with spirit-bound Djins that enhance the physical and shamanic powers of the wearer and so-called Iron Spheres that allow for long-range communication over the currents of the Great Rivers.
Comments