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.
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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.