The book was a touch over two hundred pages, slim by the standards of some of the tomes Elsa had been required to read at the Bright College. Written in accessible but somewhat dated Reikspiel, it looked to have been rather cheaply printed. Still, the pages and the binding were in good condition – a minor miracle considering the state of everything else down in the caverns.
It spoke of the Silver Tower not as a physical place – or at least not one in this world. The tower was a philosophical destination, a symbol for the collection of all human knowledge beyond the reach of ignorance and prejudice. To set out on the road to this mystic’s paradise, all you had to do was swear yourself to its keeper – Tzeentch, the Architect of Fate, the Changer of the Ways.
The early pages read as a manifesto for the movement, eloquently expressed although again out of date. From the way the author wrote of the persecution of mages, Elsa gathered they were writing in the Empire, before the establishment of the Colleges. The common people feared what they could not understand, said the book, and so those who sought the Silver Tower must do so in secret, to safeguard it from those who would rather consign its knowledge to the flames.
From there, the book took a rapid dive into more mystical matters. The author wrote on the nature of magic and reality in a way that seemed more engaging to Elsa than the dry rules and prohibitions that the College had drilled into her. The claims they made would surely have seen both their book and their body consigned to any self-respecting Sigmarite’s pyre. There was no distinction to be drawn between the gods of the north and the gods of the Empire; they were all creatures of the Realm of Chaos, which was the divine wellspring of pure creation. The eight Winds – the author knew all their true names, just as they were taught by the Colleges – were shattered facets of that single force, separated and weakened by its entry into the mortal world. A master of the Silver Tower would learn to wield all eight as one.
Words and signs were introduced to represent the author’s concepts – symbols Elsa recognised as the same primitive runes she had seen scratched into the rock of the caverns. This was the language of the gods, the author wrote, and could be used to shape reality in the same way that they did. Its secrets had been taken from the beasts of the woods, whose minds were more directly in touch with the primal forces that shaped them, but its power could be used by anyone. A tool was a tool, nothing more.
What followed were instructions on how to do exactly that – spells written in the same runes. Even sounding the simpler ones out in her mind, Elsa could feel the power locked in those strange syllables. This was real magic, not some hedge wizard’s charm for curing boils – and not the carefully circumscribed ritual of her own order. For these spells to work would require the caster to draw on all the Winds, just as the writer had said.
Her
old order, a treacherous voice in her head seemed to whisper. Her bridges to the Bright College had burned with Theo.
OOC: Spoiler
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From this book, you can learn Arcane Language (Daemonic) and Dark Lore (Tzeentch).