Approach, traveler. Or don't. I don't care.
— BreakerWildGreeting |
If you have a name, do not speak it aloud. Names have power in this place. Not even I can protect you, if you foolishly give out your name here. Call things by what they are, and people by what they do. Unfortunately for me, that means I'm best described as an oathbreaker... take it or leave it. I'm not sure what to call you, though. How strange that the Sacred Wisps dance around you...
— Introduction |
Ah, you wish to walk the path of a Warlock of the Mists. I am not averse to filling the role of master, especially for an apprentice graced by Sacred Wisps. We shall see if you have the stomach for our unsavoury work.
— Teaching |
You will be the shadow the darkness fears.
— BreakerBecomeWarlockFromNone |
The Maji are fools. You've made a wise choice.
— BreakerBecomeWarlockFromWarden |
Glad to see you've finally picked a side.
— BreakerBecomeWarlockFromPrimal |
Pleasure doing... business.
— BreakerPurchased1 |
Pleasure doing... business.
— BreakerPurchased2 |
Pleasure doing... business.
— BreakerPurchased3 |
Don't ask where I got it.
— BreakerPurchased4 |
Don't ask where I got it.
— BreakerPurchased6 |
Enjoy that one.
— BreakerPurchased7 |
Enjoy that one.
— BreakerPurchased8 |
Enjoy that one.
— BreakerPurchased9 |
That one will serve you well.
— BreakerPurchased10 |
That one will serve you well.
— BreakerPurchased11 |
That one will serve you well.
— BreakerPurchased12 |
You are not ready for the darker secrets of our craft. Go, learn what you can, and return to me when you are ready. Only then will I teach you further.
— Return Later |
Your first task shall be a simple culling. The King in the Mists has created a religion to ensnare travelers through the Wildwood. These unwitting travelers have become his fanatical followers, and their faith fuels his plans. Diminish that fuel by eliminating his cultists. Return to me when the bloody work is done, and we shall see about your schooling.
— Culling the Cultists |
Ah, I see you have attuned yourself with Wild energies by trafficking in death, exactly as I intended. You are ready to learn more.
— Culling the Cultists Complete |
It is time to expand our campaign against the King in the Mists. Key to his plans are countless ritualistic altars that he has built throughout the forest. These altars are nails hammered through three layers of meaning: your world, the Wildwood, and the void of the Nameless. It is time we bent one of those nails.
I task you with finding the King in the Mists during one of his rituals. Cause as much havoc as you can. A ritual disrupted may cause far more damage than meets the eye... return to me after you enact mayhem, and I will teach you further.
— Become the Darkness |
Just as I predicted: when you disrupted that ritual, the energies involved burned back onto existing altars, severing his connection to several of them, and leaving them free for a new master. Yes, yes... this is a fruitful tactic... it is time I taught you darker secrets...
— Become the Darkness Complete |
You are ready, my apprentice. We must make our greatest move yet. Find the King in the Mists himself, and engage him directly. You must defeat his physical form in combat, however you see fit. It will not slay him utterly, but it will banish him for a time... and that will give me an opportunity to begin tapping into the flow of devotion from his altars. Go, complete this final task, and then I will make you a full Warlock.
— War for the Wildwood |
The nectar of victory is utterly sweet, and so is the drink of devotion I am now sapping from his altars. Together, we have taken the first steps toward harnessing the Wildwood's curse for our own ends. There are no more lessons, just a sip of raw faith... yes, drink it down, savour the taste... that is the lifeblood of living souls, Sacred humors made manifest, given willingly by fools... delicious, yes? Now, you have truly become a Warlock of the Mists.
— War for the Wildwood Complete |
My order spent untold centuries doing battle with the King in the Mists. Whole generations of Maji dedicated their entire lives to eroding his mysterious power. It was an impressive effort for otherwise unremarkable mortal men and women, but I have no desire to join them in futile toil. There must always be evil opposite goodness. That is inherent in the balance of this Wildwood, and perhaps of the world itself. That balance means we can never truly rid ourselves of evil. Thus, I know what I must do. I will not destroy the King in the Mists... I will replace him.
— Oathbreaker |
When {I} am the dark power at the heart of this forest, I will impose my own ethics on the evil within. Travelers will be granted safe passage, so long as they do not tarry. Children, especially, will have nothing to fear. The dark affliction that plagues us will remain within the borders of the Wildwood. I believe I can enforce those rules, at least. The best answer, all along, was not to aspire to heroism... but to become more ethical masters of darkness ourselves.
— Replacing the King |
Allow me to describe the situation thus: a man comes upon an altar in the wild. He knows not who the altar serves, but he pays tribute to it nonetheless. It grants him a paltry gift, a trinket, nothing more. He imagines all the possibilities. He imagines wealth. Ever after, he seeks out more of these altars, and continually pays tribute to his unknown benefactor, in the vain hope that his life will change. Thus it is with all religions. The man is a devout follower, though he knows it not. His faith fuels his own gradual doom.
— Ritual Altars |
Ach, your ilk are my blessing, and my bane. I have none of my own kind with which to converse, so you keep me sane, but the vast lot of you end up as cultists for the King in the Mists. I know I should poison any travelers I meet, but then who would I have tea with?
— Travelers |
He is clever. I'll give him that. He's very motivated, too, and quite ruthless. I find fault with his ethics, however. He has visited general misery upon the entire Wildwood, and thus made unnecessary enemies. I do not know his ultimate goal, only how he goes about it... and I intend to subvert his altars to my own ends.
— The King in the Mists |
The Nameless prowl about in the curse of darkness brought by the King in the Mists. They crawled out of the endless void of nothingness from whence he came, though not necessarily alongside him. There have been others, like the Porcelain Queen, who I gather was no ally to the King in the Mists. I was raised with the fable that the Nameless served {her}, but she is gone, and now they seem quite mad with eternal grief.
— The Nameless |
Consider this realm my laboratory. Here, I am able to investigate deeper mysteries, from within. I am aware of the Old World, and have undertaken two journeys there. I find your people strange and literal, and your land cold, exhausting, and miserable. I quite liked snow, however. We have frost and rime during our winter, but the Wildwood hardly transforms the way your realm does under a heavy snow. Perhaps, when I replace the King in the Mists, I will bring the first real snow to this forest. That beauty may sway my people to see the pragmatism of my path.
— The Wildwood |
The border between the Wildwood and the realm of the Nameless does not exist. That is not to say, however, that it cannot be reached. It is {there}, if you stretch the definition of the word {there}. You cannot walk a path to find it. To enter it, is to cease to be. Even gazing upon it scalds mortal eyes, for we do not have the faculties to perceive that which is not. Everything you can possibly experience, be it good, evil, light, dark, birth, death, or anything else in the Draíocht—all of it is part of our web of meaning.
The realm of the Nameless is not the web. It cannot be, yet it is. This all sounds like nonsense, I'm sure, but it's the only way we can refer to things we cannot comprehend. In fact, the moment you do comprehend something from the realm of the Nameless—the moment you imagine it, understand it, Name it—it takes on meaning and becomes part of life's web. It ceases to {not be}. Quite literally, we can never truly understand nothingness, for if we did, it would no longer be nothing.
— The Realm of the Nameless |
I am no beast. I miss my people, and the communion with my fellow Maji. For my views, I have been outcast for many seasons, enough that I barely remember them. I hold out hope that they continue to survive deeper in the Wildwood, but neither hide nor hair of their presence has presented itself in a very long time. Here on the border 'twixt our worlds, I have only travelers for company. My long toil has cost me dearly, but I know that my way is right, and I will accomplish what the Maji never could.
— The Maji |
There exists a sliver of power in all living things, by definition. We walk upon a web of meaning spun with the silk of perception. That web shivers with every little shift in thought or idea. Beings like the King in the Mists and the Porcelain Queen are spiders that crawl the strands, seeking to ensnare us and drain us. The Draíocht, however, mystify me. The Sisters Three, or the original Goddess, whatever one might believe her to have been... she was selfless. Humble. She gave her essence back to the living beings from whence it came, and then some. This act may have come with profound consequences that we still do not yet understand. There is a reason I study corpses—especially ancient ones. The oldest bones are fundamentally different, and I am determined to decipher their mysteries.
— The Draíocht |
Primal, Vivid, Wild... Sacred. There are four humors that underlie the web of life. Each comprises a precious substance our natural world requires to function. Each is also produced by the natural world, and by living beings. The cycle is self-sustaining, so long as balance is maintained.
— The Four Humors |
A Warlock such as myself primarily works with that which we call Wild, for it is unpredictable, but strong. A keen mind can harness Wild humors, either despite their volatility, or because of it. The most difficult lesson for an apprentice is usually the most basic: life and death ooze from the same sap. A corpse becomes a haven for budding life, which grows, then is eaten, nurturing more life, which dies... a cycle beautiful in its simplicity, unpredictability, and reliability. You might equate Wild humors with the blood of the body of nature.
— Wild Humors |
Primal humors flow from life's struggle for supremacy and change. When a creature's continuing line of progeny grows more suited to its habitat, or when the strong battle for dominance, you will find Primal energies present.
— Primal Humors |
Vivid humors flow from the cooperation of living beings. Whereas Primal humors are derived from competition and change, Vivid humors arise when disparate creatures achieve harmony. Consider the argoleth, a small reptilian creature that rides the fur of an ape. It feeds from castoffs and enjoys greater mobility, and in return, picks off parasites and cleans the ape's fur. There it is. Vivid humors arise. Civilisation itself is a rather heavy source of Vivid energies... but we don't have much of {that} around here.
— Vivid Humors |
I have yet to understand the full import of Sacred humors. They are intimately connected, somehow, with the mind and the heart. What you think, what you believe, what you long for... at some level, it is a fluid, and it flows from you in measure equal to your passions. I have come to believe that, in some sense, the Draíocht is the flow of Sacred secretions, or contains its will. The King in the Mists harvests it with his deceitful altars. I dare say the secrets of the Wildwood itself are synonymous with the true nature of Sacred humors. We will uncover all in due time.
— Sacred Humors |
Have you guessed what they are yet, apprentice? Few think upon their presence, upon their meaning. They are far more than pretty lights dancing in the darkness. The Sacred Wisps chose you. They aid you. That alone should tell you something.
— The Wisps |
I do not resent {her}. She holds a grudge against {me} for my betrayal of the ways of the Maji, but I am doing what I must to finally win this ancient war. When I have wrested control of the Wildwood's darkness, she will see that I am no enemy.
— The Warden of Eaves |
There is no room for bystanders in my philosophy. A pox on those who sit idly by and do nothing!
— The Primal Huntress |
So, you have seen someone's attempt to harvest the four Humors directly. I have seen plots of strange and twisted plants myself. We could achieve mastery over nature {if} we learned proper control, but my science is in its infancy. We would need vast and complex machines, and the risk would be great, but the ambition is a worthy one...
— Strange Harvests |
You have seen our intrusive demon interlopers, I take it. From whence they hail, I know not, though I am certain the Wildwood is not their goal. For travelers, it never is, and those demons are travelers like any other. The Draíocht diverts them here for reasons beyond my ken.
They do try to eat everything they see—and I do mean {everything}—but careless consumption in the Wildwood is a mistake that none live to repeat.
— The Scourge |
You have impressed me beyond measure, and, perhaps, surpassed me in some ways. I think I can trust you with my True Name. I am called Dromion Ley, and it has been a pleasure teaching you.
— Formal Greeting |
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