 Tales of the Woven City II |
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| Added by | Tamriel Data | ||
| ID | T_Bk_TalesWovenCityPC_V2 | ||
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200 |  |
2 |
| Skill | Alteration | ||
Once, there was a great tiger which the people of Horvalli revered. Emperor Gorieus heard of this, and was enraged, for to worship the tiger is forbidden. Know that it was Aleshut who cast the tigers down from their hidden thrones in the times when all was new.
The Emperor called to his side his most beloved and loyal battlemage, the Hierophant Tiro Coero, and said to him: "Discover the truth of this beast, and unmake it by your cunning and secret arts."
Tiro Coero disguised himself as a Horvalli man, with copper beads and mulberry silk. In a hako skiff he set off down the great river Niben, which is your blood and the blood of Nibennum and Aleshut. When she swells with rain, our fields are white, and when she retreats, great is the harvest of red rice. Her shallows are bountiful with fish and crab, and on her back she carries the flotilla of the merchantman. But beware her moods and currents, and guard yourself of the river serpents that are great devourers.
So Tiro Coero reached the ancestral lands of the Horvalli, which is west of the ancient and evil jungle known as Banadher, where the Korthingi mine their silver. The esteemed Hierophant exchanged his skiff for an old coutal, and astride on its back he made pilgrimage to the temple where the beast was said to lair, it was known as the Temple of Vapor Needles.
What he observed there was obscene and forbidden by law: every day, the people of Horvalli would come and feed the great and evil tiger, throwing the living and the dead into his gaping maw. also, they feasted him with fine wine, red rice flavored with velvet mokre, and pomegranates. And the beast devoured it all with great relish. The people of the Horvalli would then bow to the tiger, and declare it the greatest spirit, greater even than the Emperor himself.
But Tiro Coeri, who was a cunning and sagacious master of the Hierophantine arts, devised a clever plan. He set to work on the river bank, baking pitch, hair, and fat into a man, the shape of a man, which he animated with his battlemage secrets until it was indistinguishable from a mortal being of flesh and bone.
Coero then took his creation to the Temple of Vapor Needles, and approached the tiger, saying: "Here is a fine morsel for the spirit that ever hungers." The tiger, blinded by his appetites, consumed the false man whole. The pitch and the fat then congealed, blocking the beast's inner apertures, until its belly split open and exposed its excrement. So Coero spoke to the people of Horvalli who were gathered there: "Behold the filth you revere!" And the people were amazed by his wisdom.
Do not worship the beast of the jungle, that which is made of lies and rot. The spheres of Aetherius are resplendent and free of mortal constraints.