Dragons and Magic

"Alright Bloodhawke," I smiled at my son, "You see that bitch drake down there. You are going to poke her with a stick and when you dodge her attack I want you to shout 'She'z angry!'"

My son, Azgrom, a gray skinned Uruk who shaved the sides of his auburn hair to become 'the Bloodhawke' looked at me like I had lost my mind, "And why would I do that?"

"Because you are going to circle around poking her until her back is turned to us," I pointed to myself and the rest of my boys who sat around divesting themselves of climbing gear in our cunning location, "we are will jump on her and wrestle her down. Now you got this, Bloodhawke."

"No I don't. Narka is the stealthy one." he pointed his meaty finger at another gray skinned Uruk, Narka the Night Blade.

"I choose you." I said as I chucked Azgrom into the Drake nest and tossed him a big pokey stick.

"She'z angry! She'z angry!" he started yelling as the bitch Drake started breathing fire at him before he even poked her.

Azgrom circled around her just like I told him too, and the rest of us piled onto the bitch and wrestled her down. I clamped her long jaws shut in the iron vice of the fleshy tree trunks that grow out of my shoulders, while two sons each took both her legs and both her wings and five wrestled down her tail. The rest just piled on more weight.

"Ha. Tricked by the Bloodhawke. In your face, bitch!" Azgrom yelled right into the snout of the Drake who shot a gout of flame out her nostril.

"Ah fuck!" Azgrom cried as he slapped the fire out on his burning eyebrows.

We got in a good chuckle as we tied the bitch up and secured her eggs for the long trip back to my breeding enclosure. The boys and I would capture all the Drakes in Nurn for my experiments. I hoped to use magic to assist in the hybridization of future Drake clutches with the goal of creating real Dragons. In the meantime I already worked out sacrificial rituals that would increase the size and strength of the Drakes developing in their eggs, so even if I fail to make Dragons I will at least breed Wyverns great enough to carry me around.

The Enlightened Tribe spent the fall divesting ourselves fully from our Feral Tribe roots. I organized great hunts to be led by my sons to either domesticate or slay all the beasts of Nurn. The work would take far longer than a single season due to the tenacity, veracity, and density of the brutal wildlife in the region, but each foot of ground we gained was prime farming and ranching material.

The increased productivity from my widespread Best Agricultural Practices campaign resulted in a bumper crop and and an increased supply of pork. All that extra food greatly increased the carrying capacity of my holdings. We needed that extra capacity as I spent the fall and the winter delving deeply into magic.

Gravity magic was a pipe dream, but rituals, curses, and dark alchemy provided little resistance to me taking their secrets. Though not entirely limited to just these applications I found my best success in rituals of Evocation, Consecration, and Divination.

Evocation was paydirt plain and simple. The summoning of the spirits of the dead allowed me to quickly track down the ghosts sorcerers trained by Sauron and gain their tutelage. Many of them were quite bitter at their fate, having learned that the Deceiver's words had in the end been… deceptions. Who would have thought? They gladly shared Sauron's secrets with me to slight the Dark Lord.

Consecration, the act of magically dedicating something to a single purpose such as when Bard dedicated the Black Arrow to slaying Smaug. His ritual was in haste and performed by a complete neophyte, but that arrow still slew Smaug in a one and a million shot. A real practitioner could be quite creative with his Consecrations such as when I forged one dagger and Consecrated it to the death of Talion and another to the death of the Witch King. The magic on them would break should I use them for anything besides seeking the deaths of their intended, but in their very specific tasks they are both of incredible lethality. Not infallible obviously, but hyper lethal nonetheless.

Divination was a subject easy to access but not one I cared to pursue. Foresight was rarely helpful in Middle Earth, and I am pretty sure it is just a tool Iluvitar uses to subtly influence things. Plus Foresight just opens you right up to prophecy and fate. Fuck that noise.

Curses consist of both verbal influencing of fate such as Morgoth's curse on the line of Hurin or Frodo's curse on Gollum, but also the manipulation of the fell curse energy for matters of enfeeblement and terror. As I mastered curses I became both an amplifier and a ward of the magic. My very presence reduced the effectiveness of curses on those loyal to me, and I also amplified their curses as well. I had the talent for wielding curses through words like Grima, who could make Theodin feel weak, old, and worthless, but like all other Uruks applied my best work through a cursed weapon.

Dark alchemy consisted of the creation of poisons, stimulants, hallucinogens, mutagens, monstrosities, and pestilence. It synergized with curses and rituals to create truly incredible effects. I achieved similar passive amplification and warding as I had through curses in this field, a truly frightening thing considering the potency of the cursed poisons I produced. I genuinely frightened even myself with some of the combinations I came up with and I'm usually not afraid of anything.

I was genuinely afraid to create Consecrated Cursed Pain Poison. AKA God Killer. You see, the Ainur both Valar and Maiar are absolutely immortal. Even when possessing physical bodies they cannot die. They do not bleed when wounded, instead the pain of the wounds slowly drives away their connection to the body and thus their connection to the material world.

Do this well enough and they won't be back until the End Times like what happened when they executed Morgoth.

The Consecrated Cursed Pain Poison should theoretically attack even the soul, meaning that the Ainur would not be saved from it by the destruction of the physical incarnation. The pain would continue until the dose ran its course.

The idea of that happening to me is what stayed my hands in its creation. The last thing I needed was to invoke some cosmic irony and get subjected to that shit myself. I'm tough, but I'm not Xianxia novel protagonist tough. I don't have an author subjecting me to unthinkable torment to prove my iron will and that whatever bullshit power up I am getting feels like I earned it. You know, cause earning things the normal way through study and hard work is stupid.

Anyway, dark alchemy was definitely the path to making a dragon for me to fly around on, so it is #BestMagic.