Dear Commander Kedrick Reynolds,
I have recently read your poster regarding recruitment of people skilled in arcane and the machine. This letter is a formal expression of interest, laced with caveats though it is.
I am almost certainly not the person you would expect to reply to such a letter, indeed, I would not have even bothered to send this, were it not for your sixth rule. Your policy of compromise when necessary for survival may allow you to see my value, even if you see me as an enemy.
I am moderately skilled in the arcane, being a conjuror by preference and capable of casting fourth circle spells. I have a solid working knowledge of the machine. Although engineering is no love of mine, I studied it extensively to aid my application to the Spellguard. Most significantly, my area of research was Chosen. I have included a preliminary report I made based on murine conjuration studies. I was working on a collection of rodent embryos, seeking to develop them in a controlled environment, with the intention to prognosticate the future transmogrifications, perhaps unlocking clues as to the nature of the appetite. These studies have ceased with the schism, my research locked away for an extended duration.
I wish to continue this line of study. This will require assistance from your men collecting specimens and some sort of space I can make into a laboratory. I might also be of some practical use if you delve into the machine, both in terms of information and arcane assistance. The collective pooling of knowledge about the Chosen seems vitally important as the situation is so dire.
If you seek a character reference, I suggest you talk to Mars Maylun. He served both above me when I was an Aspirant, and below me as an Agent. He should be able to give you a precise character study, as he was tasked with such an assessment as part of my trial, and furthermore was a friend until his sudden departure from the Spellguard's service.
My last issue is one of the law. Currently my legal status is unclear. I have been told to surrender, with the possibility of a trial. I am not eager to put myself at the mercy of people who despise me for joining the Spellguard. Perhaps if you take my offer seriously, you can help facilitate some sort of reconciliation process.
In conclusion, I hope that you are a practical man, and that we can see eye to eye when the safety of our town is at stake. If you have any questions or wish to pen a reply, feel free to leave a letter for me at Thomas' Inn. Although I am not staying there, it seems to be where most people send me correspondence, so I check regularly.
Jacia Lyonaley.
((Attached to the letter is the following paper))
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF DUNWARREN RODENT SUMMONINGThe art of conjuration can act as an educational tool which provides information to the erudite mage which value far outstrips the actual being or material bought into this plane of existence. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the line of rodent based reagents. This study will expand some of the details of this fascinating geographically localised conjuration line.
First circle. - Large Quadrupedal Rodent. Second circle. - Large Quadrupedal Rodent, colloquially "Vomit Rat" Third circle. - Large Quadrupedal Rodent, sorcerous. Fourth circle. - Chosen.
The astute reader will of course have noted that all of these summoned rodents are local phenomena. While the circle four summon could be mistaken for a generic wererat to the untrained eye, to a local it is without a doubt a Chosen. This can be empirically tested with the application of simple magic to the summoned murine biped; as the spell resistance inherent to the svifneblin is also carried by the Chosen, making it the easiest marker for the amateur taxonomer. Of course Chosen are a Dunwarren specific fauna, but also the arcane rat and the vomit rat (the level three and two circle summons in this line respectively) are creatures not reported in literature outside the confines of the Dunwarren machine and its immediate vicinity.
This makes it an interesting summoning line of from an academic perspective. In most cases summons draw creatures from other planes for a short duration. As with the classical summons of a druid, who might call a woodland animal, it is generally accepted that these summons do not arrive from around the corner as it were, but from another plane where woodland creatures are prevalent. We have no evidence to suggest that the rodent summoning line is in any way different. This immediately tells us something about the power of the Dunwarren machine. To whit, the magical reverberations from the machine have been strong enough to influence the extra-planar areas that coexist in similar extra-dimensional space. So there is a reservoir, if you like, of Dunwarren rodents in an extra-dimensional space, assessable to the local conjurer. The nature of this Dunwarren influenced plane, or more probably, a very small area of a local plane no large than the Dunwarren itself, remains unknown at this time, but this does not mean that we cannot learn from what we are offered.
Let us look in detail at the four summons. What we have is something of an evolutionary narrative. One the one end of the spectrum we have a strong and simple large rat. Seemingly unremarkable, but as will be discussed below, playing a significant role in the greater fauna of the Dunwarren.
We then move onward to a rodent outwardly similar to the first, yet capable of a more advanced form of self defence. The defence after which they receive their charming vernacular name - the regurgitation of stomach contents. This breed shows advanced abdominal muscular control and more developed cranial build. We can deduce the latter without surgery, for there is a level of judgement required to use a vomitus based self defence and/or hunting technique. The sacrifice of the part of last meal is a significant cost in recourses, not to mention the energy expenditure of making stomach acids. A beast which cannot assess when such regurgitation is appropriate is destined to die from hunger. To prevent the disgorgement of food/acid sprays on poor targets, the rodent must be able to cognate for each explosive hyperemesis that either a) for reasons of immediate self defence it is required for the beasts continued existence, or b) it will reap the rewards of a larger, more nutritious meal from the acidic ejaculation.
We then move on to perhaps the most intriguing summon of the line, the arcane or sorcerous rat. Here we have a rat, again outwardly similar in appearance, yet vastly cognitively improved to the degree that it is capable of casting arcane spells. While these spells are only of the first and second circles, (I have seen Ghostly Visage, Gedlee's Electrical Loop and cantrips), the power required must be significantly higher than is evident, since the rodent casts these without either somatic or verbal component. This is in some ways the missing link. It shows an increased neuronal capacity without the bipedalism of the Chosen.
The fourth summon of the set is a Chosen. Obviously sentient, although possessing mental characteristics that would be classed as insane in a human, gnome or other civilised being, it is another (ultimate? Penultimate? Antepenultimate?) step along the evolutionary narrative. Here we see significant physical changes, such as the bipedalism and physical force resistant epidermis. Obviously and in all ways a more advanced being than the previous summon.
While the higher circle summons are not within the capacity of this mage of modest power, the trend is predictable. One would expect to see maybe a spellcasting Chosen, or perhaps a winged chosen in the next few circles. This would represent the increasing complexity and sophistication of the rodent line. At what point this process of evolution ends remains to be seen, but a ninth circle summon would be one of two things. Either it would be a flop, as no rodent with such power is yet available to be conjured, or possibly it would forecast some future state, an aggrandizement of the Chosen which we have not yet seen (or perhaps the seminal being from which they all degenerated, see theoretical discussion below).
For the rodent line seems to offer a slice of the Dunnwaren murine escalation (or de-escalation) in power. Here the conjuring line is a metonym for the generalised rodent transgenesis. It is taken as common knowledge that the local svifneblin were inflicted with a mass lycanthropy, from which sprang the Chosen we see below us today. But this parochial theory leaves much to be desired. For example how did this lycanthropic change come about? Why was it so widespread? How did it start? Why do we never see the svifneblin in their normal form, as one would a normal gnomic were rat? Where are the children Chosen, for if they do not breed, why are there increasing numbers of them each year? What are the winged Chosen and what do they signify?
Here I hope the reader will indulge me with a somewhat speculative hypothesis, based upon the revelations of these conjurations. Let us start with the common Dunwarren sewer rat. The local sewer rats are distinctly different in physiology to those of the more common dire rats, or even the cave rats of the general underdark. On the one hand they are weaker of bite, having an underdeveloped gape and weak set of masseters. On the other hand they are hardier of body, taking several stiff swings of a grown man's sword to vanquish. In this regard they are highly unusual, and one usually only sees such resilience in such a compact form during a process of transmutation. For example a druid transformed into a bat retains the hardiness of the druid, while a wizard polymorphed into a smaller form retains their previous sturdiness, though this latter is often hard to notice given mages propensity to less than robust natural forms. (As an aside, it is without a doubt this type of rat that the first circle rodent line summons, being smaller of muzzle yet more than twice as hardy as the dire rodent summoned by an unfocused arcane first circle summon).
The assumption that the svifneblin transformed immediately into the wererat form is without causal basis. They seem to fit too neatly between the winged Chosen (without exception reported as being a superior physical and arcane model than the wingless) and the sorcerous rats for it to be purely coincidental. It seems to the author that the common-or-garden variety Chosen is in fact just part of a greater continuum of rodents/gnomes. Thus, by extension, the key submission of this hypothesis would be the radical notion that each and every Dunwarren style sewer rat is in fact (or once was) a svifneblin.
If this hypothesis is true it raises far more questions than it answers. Why have the quadrupedal rodents lost their magical resistance? Perhaps as the creature becomes less gnomic and more murine, the attributes of the gnome - resistance to spells, intelligence etcetera, become debased to the point of non-existence.
Which way is the progression? Is the sewer rat a chrysalis from which the chosen springs? Or were all the rodents once the mighty winged Chosen (or their predecessors), but have degenerated over time, now merely a shadow of their former power? The author would suggest that the evidence leans toward a development in power, since we seem to have increasing numbers of chosen, many more than would be indicated by normal procreation alone. This would only seem possible if normal Dunwarren rats were progressing toward a Chosen state.
Sadly our hypothesis in no way gives clue as to how this most radical and powerful of transformation started. A prodigious curse? The backlash from a spell gone awry? Moral censure from the gods? Weird energies expelled by a broken or dysfunctional Dunwarren machine?
Moreover why do the Chosen show such a high population of sorcerers, an order of magnitude higher than any other recorded species? Surely they are not all the prolific progeny of some mystical rat-dragon?
A final question: could the goblin long term monopoly of the rodent soup market in Lower in fact stem from their desire to consume their ancestral enemy?
These and many other questions currently remain unanswered. It seems there is only so much conjecture that can be garnered from heuristic conjuration. However further investigation of the upper echelon summoning circles of the local rodent line will no doubt reveal more of this evolutionary narrative, and from them we will be better placed to add to this discourse of rodent speciation and apotheosis.
- Jacia Lyonaley.
