Sunday, March 22, 2020

Weird Revisited: Scientia Potestas Est

This post originally appeared almost 8 years ago to the day...

[This relates to my previous "Apocalypse Under Ground" posts, so take a look.]

Wizardry is a curse on all mankind.

This is what the common folk say, and sages acknowledge the rise of arcane knowledge went hand in hand with the emergence of the underground--perhaps more than once in history. Wizards are aware of how they are viewed (and feared) and are unconcerned. When you’ve held the words that encapsulate the true forms of reality in your mind--when you’ve experienced true gnosis--you’re above petty concerns.

Practitioners of the arcane art have always existed. Mostly they’re solitary, exploring their art removed from the intrusion of the mundane world. The opening of the underground changed that. It's entrances glowed like an arcane beacon. Those who might have lived their whole lives without ever knowing they had the talent were transformed by what they encountered, reborn into a new world--if they survived their first delve.

The old wizards came out of seclusion to tutor these fledging sorcerers--and to use them them to grow their own power with secrets wrested from below. In time, the adventuring wizards came to surpass their masters, sometimes frighteningly so. These new grandmasters took apprentices of their own, for much the same reasons--though as wizards grow older and more steeped in the arcane, their thoughts and desires sometimes grow more alien, their whims more capricious.

One question above all concerns the grandmasters, though they seldom speak of it, even in their rare conclaves of peers: Does the arcane have a life of it’s own? Does the symbolary that is humankind’s closest approximation of the true description of the universe have its own agenda? If so, does it favor humanity--or the Monsters?


Dr. Theda said...

Nice read !

bombasticus said...

The HOXPOX style leap forward vanilla fantasy didn't know it needed, held safe here since 2012.

Trey said...

@Dr. Theda - Thanks!
@bombasticus - You know, I kind of was surprised when I wrote this series, they didn't get more attention than they did (as always, relative to the attention my blog got in any given era). There's been "D&D with it's implications made part of the setting" before and since, but I'm not aware of many (if any) places that the inherent horror of that sort of conception was considered. For all the "dying in holes" done in D&D land it's an odd blindspot I think.