SHARDSTONES #2: ATTUNEMENT AND INVOCATION
In our last series, we discussed the nature of the hyper-dimensional and the Beyond, as well as the cultural significance shardstones have attained in Akara. Today, we’ll be talking about how shardstones are used, and how the Akarans discovered these uses.
What was is now called attunement was, for those who first found shardstones, thought to be both a curse and a blessing placed upon those who found them. You see, when an Akaran, a kith, or a morg first see shardstones, a curious and powerful emotion blooms inside of them. They feel drawn to the shard, as if it were calling to them. See one and you will be hard-pressed to take your eyes off of it. This calling compels you to take the shardstone in hand and, once there, the emotion changes; the desire to ruminate becomes near-overwhelming, to dwell on the facets, the soft crimson light that glows ever brighter the longer you study.
About one turn of a sandglass, or an hour in your world, and that feeling changes again. No longer will the shardstone call to you. Instead, your heart will feel light, and a great sense of satisfaction sweeps through you — the same satisfaction felt whenever you’ve helped someone with something that to them is tremendous but to you was almost trivial. Too will you feel a connection to the shardstone. It is a part of you. It is an extension of your will, your blood, and your agency.
Do not think of this as something like a cursed ring that bends your mind to keep it. When attuned to a shardstone, your mind will not be driven headlong into madness, nor hysterical jealousy if others covet it. But there is a connection between the attuned and the shard, and it is this very connection that allows the hyper-dimensional powers of shardstones to manifest.
It was a Tarnaki jeweler by the name of Jadais the Jadecutter who first discovered what is now referred to as invocation and bloodcutting. Attuned to his shardstone, he took his tools to it. When he did so, in the same way the jewelers of the savanna did to mark their masterworks as their own, he drew his own blood, applied it to his tools, and tapped the shardstone. Doing so triggered a strange phenomena. The shardstone’s light blistered brightly, so much so that Jadais himself was warp-scarred at that very moment, dark spines blooming from his knuckles and hands. Too he felt a sensation not experienced since he was a child: the sensation of growth, of development, and of wild imagination wherein all things are possible for the world has yet to teach otherwise.
Ignored his warp-scars, Jadais, for his inspiration and passions were so greatly stoked that he took those bloody tools of his and cut away at the shardstone. As he did so, he dwelled deeply on the thing he most desired as a child — the desire to fly free as an akarok amongst the many clouds — and the more he focused on this vision of his, and the more he cut away at the shardstone, the more he felt that such a dream was coming closer to his reality.
When done, Jadais called together a great meeting of many. There he summoned the then Council of Jade & Progress, merchants, mystics, even lay people from the Dust and Dagger Districts. He unveiled to them his shardstone, cut finely, though many questioned why such a gathering was needed for something so mundane.
Then, Jadais flew.
He flew high, above Tarnak’s many towers, into the ever-widening vault where only the aurora ruled. And then he fell like a stone, the light of his gleaming shardstone dimming in as if a sun eclipsed, and in horror, all those gathered watched Jadais the Jadecutter die.
So bizarre, this series of events, that the trauma of seeing the death was somehow overshadowed by the absurdity of watching someone with just a single gemstone, no matter how alien, throw off their terrestrial shackles and become the very thing all humanity did secretly dream. The Council confiscated the shardstone, brought together Jadais’s apprentices — all of whom he had spoken to at length on his method — and that night, the beginnings of bloodcutting were born.
There were copycats, and the apprentices, bound by oath to speak not of what they knew, discreetly leaked to their fellows what they had learned. Those with great wealth purchased shardstones from the proto-scavengers going into Torn and then hired jewelers of equally great renown to work them. These first bloodcutters were the ones who refined Jadais’s process, too keenly aware of how a single mistake could kill them, too aware of the warp-scars that can so readily bloom across the flesh if one were not careful. They discovered that the cutting of a shardstone required more than just skill at hand. It required imagination and unbound creativity; it required the ability to envision what you wish the shardstone to do, and the ability to imagine the hyper-dimensional and the Beyond.
In short, bloodcutting required intelligence, wisdom, and charisma to do. And those that could do these things were able to warp reality itself to suit their needs. This act of creating the hyper-dimensional through the forces inherent to shardstones was given the name invocation, and those scavengers who one day in the future relied on these talents more than their peers were called invokers.
Invocation, though, is not a limitless power. Jadais the Jadecutter, now remembered as Jadais the Sunblind, was not aware that it was the very force of will he himself had that fueled his invocation. That force of will is spent when an invocation is worked, as if it were the stamina of a Tribal Mob hunter or a starfaller in the Pit of the Sunken Sun. Fatigue will come, and a haziness to your thoughts, and the very idea of working an invocation becomes to you impossible, as if you never had such power, as if you never might have such power again.
Only through rest and meditation will your force of will regenerate. Not all invokers have the same force of will either. Those early initiates to invocation can barely exercise their hyper-dimensional powers one or two times a day. Like a muscle must your force of will be trained; your force of will grows with every invocation, and too with experiences afield. A scavenger whose life has near been lost will find, upon resting, their force of will ever stronger, thus allowing them to invoke shardstones with greater frequency. And too, the more a bloodcutter or invoker practices their craft the sharper their minds grow, the visions seen behind closed eyes rendered in such stark detail that the hyper-dimensional powers invoked grow ever more amazing.
In modern times, invocations have been separated into five tiers. Each tier indicates not only the strength of the invocation, but too the conditions in which it must be triggered. After all, Akara is not Torn. Though many impossible things have been made possible in our world, nothing matches the heights of insanity found only in the World Torn Apart.
INVOCATION TIERS
JADE INVOCATIONS. Named as such for the wealth and power early invocations brought to Tarnak and its invokers. Equivalent to 1st and 2nd level spells.
VERMILLION INVOCATIONS. Advanced hyper-dimensional effects named as such for the brilliant shardlight released with their working. Equivalent to 3rd level spells.
AURORAL INVOCATIONS. The absolute height of invocations in Akara, possible only when an aurora blooms in the sky, perhaps hinting at shardstone’s deeper nature. Equivalent to 4th & 5th level spells.
SUNLESS INVOCATIONS. Mighty powers that stretch far beyond what should have ever been possible. These invocations can only be worked in the World Torn Apart, and their name references the color of that world’s sunless sky. Equivalent to 6th, 7th, and 8th level spells.
OPALINE INVOCATIONS. Know these as theories never before seen, reckonings that match those of the Zenith People. These invocations are the pinnacle of what Akaran shardscience may one day achieve. Equivalent to 9th level spells.
SHARDSCIENCE GLOSSARY
This glossary will expand with each blog post!
Attunement — The act of bonding to a shardstone, which calls to Akarans until one grabs it. A turn of a sandglass later and the bond is cemented.
Beyond — The realm of the stars perceived through liquid starlight, outside of time and space, where all knowledge gathers; the World Torn Apart and the various universes contained within the inert Monoliths littering Torn.
Bloodcutting — The art of drawing your own blood with tools designed for gem cutting. Requires too deep imagination and creativity, for you must perfectly picture what you wish this shardstone to invoke. Master Bloodcutters can make shards with multiple powers.
Force of Will — One’s own internal willpower, which is the fuel for invocations. When drained, you can no longer invoke until you rest and meditate.
Hyper-Dimensional — A power, effect, or quality that is outside of time and space, and thus native to the beyond; the supernatural, magical, or sublime; the powers of shardstones or other Torn-native phenomena.
Invocation — The art of drawing upon shardstones that have been bloodcut with purpose, and how hyper-dimensional effects are created with them.
Invoker — A scavenger who is too primarily a worker of invocation.
