Venarius Topic /4
| NPC | Name |
|---|---|
| Memory Fragment I | "...A golden machine was found broken in the ruins of Wraeclast. Believing it to contain some dark infernal secret, High Templar Venarius asked that I restore it and weaponize whatever powers it might contain..." |
| Memory Fragment XII | "...Venarius, that bastard... he marched me through the streets. His men beat me within an inch of death... I... I told him everything. He demanded that I take all of us into the dreamlands, to meet with the Elder. Using the device, we stepped through, setting foot in the Atlas of Worlds..." |
| Memory Fragment XIII | "...It wasn't long before we were met by the Shade itself. The very essence of the Elder, demanding of me in visions to tell it why I had returned. But before I could answer, Venarius stepped forward and greeted the phantom..." |
| Memory Fragment XIV | "...Before we knew it, we stood at the base of that blasphemous effigy. "Pull the sword from my chest." The Elder imposed, and Venarius didn't hesitate. The earth shook in the face of the Elder's reunion with its body. The true scope of the Elder befell the High Templar and his men, and as it began to feed, I began to run..." |
Venarius FlavourText /22
| name | flavour |
|---|---|
| Memory Fragment I BaseItemTypes | "...A golden machine was found broken in the ruins of Wraeclast. Believing it to contain some dark infernal secret, High Templar Venarius asked that I restore it and weaponize whatever powers it might contain..." |
| Memory Fragment XII BaseItemTypes | "...Venarius, that bastard... he marched me through the streets. His men beat me within an inch of death... I... I told him everything. He demanded that I take all of us into the dreamlands, to meet with the Elder. Using the device, we stepped through, setting foot in the Atlas of Worlds..." |
| Memory Fragment XIII BaseItemTypes | "...It wasn't long before we were met by the Shade itself. The very essence of the Elder, demanding of me in visions to tell it why I had returned. But before I could answer, Venarius stepped forward and greeted the phantom..." |
| Memory Fragment XIV BaseItemTypes | "...Before we knew it, we stood at the base of that blasphemous effigy. "Pull the sword from my chest." The Elder imposed, and Venarius didn't hesitate. The earth shook in the face of the Elder's reunion with its body. The true scope of the Elder befell the High Templar and his men, and as it began to feed, I began to run..." |
| Duelist143 CharacterTextAudio | Painful memories are the ones that teach us, Venarius. Remember that. |
| ShaperMemoryFragment1 NPCTextAudio | I am Valdo Caeserius, chief Arkhon of the Oriath academy in Theopolis. Servant of the High Templar Venarius. I begin these writings as a record of events transpired, in hopes that the penning of such horrors will help bring sense to the matters at present. Some time ago, I was commissioned in the repairing of a strange device delivered into my hands. A golden machine found broken in the ruins of Wraeclast. Believing it to contain some dark infernal secret, the High Templar asked that I restore it and weaponize whatever powers it might contain. Though I saw it as mostly inconsequential at the time, it is worth noting, my daughter, a quiet young thing of five, suffered nightmares and tantrums unlike any I'd seen, during those former weeks I spent working on the device. I'd assumed that she missed her mother and was going through a rough patch grieving. Now, however, I can't help but wonder if perhaps it was a sign. I'd considered refusing Venarius, though not in any serious nature. Though my personal politics remain my own, I've often struggled to follow his instructions and rule – filled with such malice and hunger. Regretfully, I accepted his orders, for I know of many families who have refused the High Templar before. They have all vanished now. |
| ShaperMemoryFragment4 NPCTextAudio | The Shade nodded thoughtfully. It knew of the device. The machine was a doorway between my world and the dreamlands, I was told. The device had been lost. Broken and torn apart by villains and thieves. The Shade was overjoyed to hear it found, and offered to help me rebuild that final missing part. It seemed too good to be true. We would open the gateway between worlds, and then, all the goodness of these lands would flow out into Oriath leading us into a new age of prosperity. I agreed wholeheartedly – for I feared, and I still do fear, what will become of my daughter under High Templar Venarius' reign. All that the Shade asked of me was to return the favour, when the time came. And as I lay down in the cool grass bathing myself in the soothing sun, I found that sleep once more took my body, only this time, when I closed my eyes there, I also opened them in the cold, empty darkness of my study... |
| ShaperMemoryFragment5 NPCTextAudio | Weeks passed. The sun set and the moon rose countless times. And every night, I found myself asleep at the foot of the strange device, awoken to the reality of another world inside my own. I would transition into the dreamlands. In my sleep, I would apprentice myself to the Shade, allowing it to teach me the ways of this strange place. I learnt how to shape and build things from my imagination, forming them in thin air as if by some great, thaumaturgical marvel. It was through this tempering of the mind that I, under its instructions began rebuilding the missing component of the device. And most exciting of all, how to transport such phantasmagorical treasures back into the world of man. When High Templar Venarius visited during Oriath hours, I'd lie to him and make excuses. Arrogantly, I didn't want him to know of the power I'd uncovered. I wanted these dreamlands to be my secret, to belong to me and me alone. Not even my daughter could know... |
| ShaperMemoryFragment9 NPCTextAudio | They called it the Elder. A creature of malignant madness, born of that oblivion from before time itself began. Once only an abstract expression, the Elder was given physical form. It entered our realm. It fashioned for itself a bauble of chaos and secret worlds to use as a kind of... hunting ground. This "bauble" is undoubtedly the dreamlands I've uncovered. The Elder came here out of hunger. Preferring victims of a younger flesh, it became the bogeyman, dragging our children off into the night, casting them into its realm of shadow and feasting upon their nightmares undisturbed, for it was imagination that truly satiated it. With such sustenance, the Elder deigned to cultivate something. To... sustain and birth forth its true goal. Its true self. The Oblivion from outside time and space. The Decay. By the gods... Even now as I write this, I feel my hand trembling, and I struggle to keep my mind on the task ahead... The Elder. It cannot be killed. The Watchers, they built the device, so as to travel to and lock tight its kingdom of torment, bringing with them the blade I saw – Starforge – it was called. A weapon capable of divorcing agency from form, to give the Elder a kind of eternal rest... There in its den, amongst the gibbering nightmares of child victims, the Elder became trapped. Starved. Unable to hunt. Held in ungodly chains. The Elder's form may be trapped in stone. But its agency roams free. I have met it. What if someone else were to enter the dreamlands and encounter the Shade? What if Venarius...? My meeting with the Elder, must have invigorated and refreshed its fervour. I must find a way to put a stop to it, before it finds a path to freedom. If not for my own sake, then for that of my daughter... |
| ShaperMemoryFragment11 NPCTextAudio | How could I have been so stupid? So caught up in this whole nightmare that I forgot my work as an Arkhon! My "supposed" lack of progress on the Map Device has given the High Templar cause for suspicion. At noon, as I neared the completion of my work, he and his guards interrupted my tinkering with a furious rage! Tossing my machine to the ground, he destroyed much of my research, demanding to know why I no longer focused on the task given to me. Clapped in irons I was led off to the Theopolis prisons for my insubordination. I write this now, due only to the kindness of a friend in the Templar guard, he knows of my partiality to journaling and so as soon as he heard of my capture, managed to sneak in a diary for me scribble upon. I don't know what Venarius plans to do with me. I've heard whispers of public shaming and lashes, but none of that is certain. What is certain, is that the Elder is coming for us. It's coming for us all. No matter whether you are High Templar or the lowest of the Karui slaves, the Elder knocks at the threshold. Bringing Decay... I must find my way from these chains at all costs. Only I can save us from this blasphemy that has fallen upon Oriath... |
| ShaperMemoryFragment12 NPCTextAudio | My daughter... My darling daughter... By the gods. So much has transpired since last I wrote. So much horror... I've not a moment to lose, but I need to... I have to... I must write down what has occurred. It's the only way I shall keep my sanity. I believe I'm safe for the moment, so I shall rest and reflect, in the hope that it will give me new insight on how to proceed in this current disaster. Venarius, that bastard... Enraged by my lack of progress on his occult weaponry, he marched me through the streets. "This man has betrayed me!" he shouted as his men stripped me of my robes and beat me with sticks. When I was but an inch from death, he took me aside once more, demanding to know why I'd failed him. In my... in my foolishness, I... I told him everything. I'd hoped to appeal to his better nature, to his higher self, that he might rally the Templar army behind me. Together we could defeat the Elder once and for all! But you should never appeal to a man's better nature. He may not have one. Venarius... he... he took Zana! Held her at knife point. Demanded... demanded that I take all of us through, into the dreamlands - to meet with the Elder! Please, whoever you are, reading this – do not think wrong of me. If it were your daughter's life at risk, would you have done this any differently? I... I did as I was asked. Using the Map Device, we stepped through a gateway and I found myself once more setting foot in this atlas of worlds... |
| ShaperMemoryFragment13 NPCTextAudio | The land was as beautiful as it'd been when last I'd visited. The breeze rippled across the meadows and the sun beat affectionately down on our necks. The High Templar and his men marvelled at such wonders. My daughter cried in fear. I felt sick to my bones. As we trampled through the wilderness, it wasn't long before we were met by the overwhelming presence of the Shade itself. The very essence of the Elder stood silently before us. I felt its eyes bore deep into my skin. Demanding of me in visions to tell it why I had returned. But before I could answer, Venarius stepped forward and greeted the phantom, offering his words up into the air: "He tells me you are King of this land," he said, "My poor, poor scholar says that you are imprisoned, that you need a key." As he spoke, the shade stayed quiet, listening and smouldering smugly. "I can be that key for you." The High Templar announced. For a moment more, the Shade did not respond. A perverse, pensive, pregnant pause lay heavily upon us all. Then finally, casting an image at once upon all of our minds, we felt it ask of Venarius: "What dost thou want?" The High Templar smiled. "Why, power, of course." He replied. |
| ShaperMemoryFragment14 NPCTextAudio | The shade spluttered into a great shimmering blaze, moving rapidly forward into trees up ahead. The High Templar gave chase, his soldiers dragging my daughter and I along behind. I recognized where we were headed. The forest was as dark as I remembered, and the cave, just as terrible. Before we knew it, we stood at the base of that blasphemous effigy seated atop its crude pagan altar. "Pull the sword from my chest." The Elder imposed and the man, in all his vanity, didn't hesitate for a second. He took the sword and yanked it forward. A great earthquake shook the land! It was as if the very ground itself was cowering in the face of the Elder's reunion with its frigid body. Bursting forth from cold stone, the Elder approached us all. The blade dropped from Venarius' quivering hand and clattered to the ground, a white light in the hilt flickered and shrank until it at last was put out by the great darkness of a tentacular void. Realizing what it meant to look upon its face, I turned and shielded my daughter's eyes, and as the true scope of the Elder befell the High Templar and his men. I could hear screaming and mad gibbering! The Elder did not speak. Visions no longer left its mind. It was free. It had no need to communicate with mankind any longer. As the richness of life fled from the quickly shrivelling bodies of the High Templar and his men, I readied myself and my daughter to flee. While the Elder began to feed, starved from millennium upon millennium of constraint, I took up the Map Device Venarius had dropped and together, we ran... |
| ShaperMemoryFragment16 NPCTextAudio | My dearest Zana, Where are you now? I hope, as a father often does, that you are happy and tucked away in the safest of places. I hope you grow up kind and strong, that you love and are loved. It is my life's greatest regret that I will not see you again, but I must do what I can to protect you from the evils of this outer dark. I have failed against the Elder. To be honest, I never had a chance. The creature was too strong, too well versed in the shaping ways. If Venarius had not damaged the weapon I built, that day he arrested me in my study, then perhaps I could've opened a void, forced it from its physical shell and out of this reality. But I no longer possess such a device and the Elder has suckled at my mind so many times now, that I fear I could not remember how to rebuild it, even if I tried. My war with the creature is far from over however. I've no upper hand. But like a cornered animal, I will bite until I am gone. I've attempted to sleep and awaken in Oriath, many times. Hoped that one night I might get to hold you in my arms once again. But instead of my study, I dream of nothing. I know this letter might never reach you, but I write it anyway – if not for you, then for the sake of my own fragile wits. I love you my darling daughter, and hope the best for you, far away from all this... cosmic darkness. You've made me very proud, and I've considered each day a blessing that I've been able to call you my daughter... I must keep moving. I must keep fighting. Perhaps one day, if the gods allow it, we shall see each other once more. I love you greatly. Your Papa, Valdo Caeserius |
| KiracEnterReliquary NPCTextAudio | The Vault of Venarius has been sealed for years. There's no telling what might be inside. |
| KiracKeyQuest NPCTextAudio | Rumour has it this was built by order of a previous High Templar, the name of Venarius. If the impossible components we need are anywhere in our mortal realm, they would be in the Vault of Venarius in the Reliquary. We're going to need to find the key to that Vault. Dominus was the next High Templar, and thus the one who declared his predecessor's pursuits heretical and had them sealed as blasphemous. A load of manure to secure the secrets for himself, no doubt. A man like him would have kept the key close. My gut tells me it's likely in his old office in the Templar Courts. Let's head there. |
| ZanaOnMapDevice NPCTextAudio | The map device Kirac assembled is very similar to the one Venarius had my father put together. My clever father managed to find a few optimisations he could make. I've taken the liberty of enhancing yours in the same way. It's nothing major, but it will help you scavenge a little more out of each map. |
| NilesOutThere NPCTextAudio | When I was younger, I served next to some very powerful men. I once caught a stray thought from the High Templar Venarius. A simple picture, nothing more, possible to perceive only because of his overwhelming fear at that moment. I have to assume he was insane, because the image he had in mind was that of a single beleaguered jewel adrift on an ocean of madness. If that was how I saw the world, it would almost be a comfort to believe in gods. At least then there would be somebody who could stand against the tide... but even then... against what I saw... Just an old man's idle fears. Pay no mind. |
| HellscapeNPCOtherWraeclasts NPCTextAudio | Countless times, I have seen the works of man reduced to nothing under a colossal tide of horror. Through countless Shifts, I only saw one Wraeclast survive. It was a world dominated by the shade of High Templar Venarius. You don't want to go there, believe me. We're on our own. |
| HelenaOnZanaCaeserius NPCTextAudio | Where do I begin? That woman has had a very uncommon life. When she was a child, her father was tasked by High Templar Venarius to work on what would end up becoming a map device. Both her father and the High Templar would eventually disappear into the portals of that device, leaving her to grow up an orphan. That experience left her very focussed on learning the secrets of the map device, as you can imagine. It was her work that enabled all of this. The Vanguard's foothold on the Atlas. The efforts against the mad Elderslayers. She even did some initial work with the exile The Maven first fancied as a plaything. But when Sirus died... she quit. She walked off into the Atlas, and we haven't seen her since. |
| HelenaOnVenarius NPCTextAudio | I don't know much about High Templar Venarius, unfortunately. The history I study is generally older than that. However, as an Oriathan, I've heard the same decades-old rumors as everyone else. It was an awful thing they did to his mother... if it's true. |
| HelenaOnTheFirstWar NPCTextAudio | While it may seem like control of the Atlas is constantly under contention, the first war of ownership was actually not too long ago. It's hard to say whether The Elder created it or simply found it in ancient times, but the realm served as a haven from which humanity could be preyed upon for thousands of years. Twenty years ago, a man named Valdo Caeserius, Zana's father, was trapped in the Atlas by the actions of High Templar Venarius. Zana's father learned some measure of power over the Atlas, and became what we call The Shaper. He waged war against The Elder for as long as he could, until his daughter led the Elderslayers to a final triumphant victory. Unfortunately, Valdo was too far gone by then. |