FOOL. You wish to speak with stones? To make them move at your own will? The audacity. The sheer hubris- would you speak to eternity and if by some chance it answers keep your sanity at the response? Stone knows no master, no language, at least none that your poor transient flesh could comprehend. Abandon this endeavor.
What's that?
...
How awful. Did he at least die painlessly?
...
To shreds you say. Well, how's his wife holding up?
...
To shreds you say.
Well, if you're set on your goal there are some who know stonelore that could teach you.
This is for the Secrets of the Stones challenge for GLoGtober 2024.
Diegetic Stone Magic
I cannot teach you the ways of the earth, but there are some learned scholars and fanatics that could teach you- if you can convince them of your need.
1. The First Men
A cult of so called "First Men", they claim their mysteries and rites stretch back to before fire. To them, stone is the first god, the oldest god, and the truest. Before all else there was the earth beneath our feet, and after all that follows there will still be stone. Stone was our first mother, before the winds taught us language and deceit. The magics of the First Men are ancient blood rites that allows them to convince stone to do their bidding- for a time and a price.
By studying their mysteries, you can learn the following rituals.
Swallow: Dig a pit deep in the earth, at least ten feet. A live cow must be placed inside, this is the sacrifice and must be of quality and health. Fill the pit in and bury the sacrifice. Press your ear to the ground and listen for a day and a night after the sounds below cease. Dig the pit back open and you'll find mother left her boon, a single bone from the sacrifice. By snapping this bone you can command the earth to open up and swallow an area the size of a pit, entombing your foes.
Shatter: Kill a man with a stone, then drain his blood into a deep crevice. When you throw the stone next it will fly fast and true, exploding and fragmenting violently on impact.
Strength: At sunset, roll a bolder to the top of a hill. All night, the bolder will try to roll down a slope and you must hold it in place. If you can manage to keep the bolder on top of the hill until the sun rises then chip off a piece of the bolder. By swallowing this shard you gain the strength of a giant from sunset to sunrise.
2. The Listeners
In secret holds in the earth, deep in caves and far from the surface, you might find the Listeners. A mute order of monks and scholars, they hide the fastnesses away in the quiet places of the dark and build their oracular devices, a precise and delicate working learned from cavern spiders. Large pools of still water. Webs of hair-spun rope taut across caverns. In the dark they cast large ovals of dark glass on the ground and watch for the fractures. Listeners use these devices to listen to the whispers at the heart of the world and learn of events to come and events long past, recording them in great winding stone carvings in mazelike corridors of natural stone.
For each year spent in silence with the Listeners you can learn their craft, learn how to cast and read the dooms and portents of deep places.
Echospeak: Place an object in a stone basin and fill it with clear water. Spend a night gazing into the water in a dark place and you can learn its recent history, who has touched it, what it was crafted for, and how it earned its marks and scars.
Whisper Bell: Craft two sets of small stone bells and a hollow-bone drum with a taut lid of silk. Using the bells in a deep place you can send messages into the earth to echo eternal across the heartbeat of the world, readable only by the matching set of bells and drum.
Perfect Omen: Cast a dark glass mirror across a stone floor and fast in silence for a week listening for its cracks and fractures. Tattoo the resulting spiderweb of fortune onto your body and you can perfectly succeed at one action in your future.
3. Heralds of the Dark
Earthen heretics, they've forsaken their mother and now know her ire. Heralds can be found in great towers, preferring to keep as much distance between them and the earth as they can. When they walk on the ground they do so on high stilts of varied make to trick the earth and disguise their movements. The Heralds make auspices to the night, to the quiet stones of darkened skies, silent gods in their own rights, unknown and hungry for adoration. Their magics and rituals are profane to all earthly realms, seek their teachers only in great need or greed, as once you know their mysteries the earth will never be a home to you, now stonecursed.
Each ritual learned draws more hate from the earth. Stoneware cracks on your touch, rocks run like streams to trip you, and caverns will swallow you whole.
Recall: Forge a six foot wide disk of meteoric metals and submerge it in a basin of blood, including your own, for a month and a day. Expose the disk to the open sky in a high place. Once a month, while you can see the night sky, you can teleport back to the disk with a thought.
Dweomercraft: A delicate loom of glass and spider silk must be built and carefully maintained. When left unwatched and untended during a new moon, the loom will spin a bolt of starsilk that can be forged as a peerless metal. Its edge can cut through all but the strongest of metals and it can hold an enchantment like no other material. Exposure to sunlight negates its powers.
Meteor: The first magic, music, a secret learned from mother before language- all stones know it. Sing to the dark stones in the night from sunset to sunrise for a week past the breaking of your voice and the cracking of your soul. Great care must be taken to not give too much to the night and leave the caster a hollowed husk. Once the ritual is complete, the caster may call to a dark stone, once, and summon a meteor to strike a destination within sight.
4. Shapers of Geltia
In far Geltia, generations of peerless masons have wrought great stoneworks and palaces. It is said that they can speak to stone and shape it at their will. This is true for those who undertake their most sacred ritual. Those seeking true mastery of stone must apprentice under a Geltian mason for a year before they can attempt the ritual.
The mason first must acquire a block of perfect marble fit for a statue, and pour their heart into the shaping of a paramour of stone. Once complete and if the mason's heart is true, their creation will animate, filled with the spirit of stone that still yearns to feel time outside of the forces of erosion. Statue and craftsmen must then spend a year in courting and if the sculptor can win the heart of the earth the two are wed on the last day, after which the stone goes still once again. So long as the mason stays true to their vows they can then mold stone like clay until the day of their death.
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