Gray Owls - Snap-Shot #2 - The Strain of Daniel Miller

  Magic is a funny thing.  Beautiful, but funny.  The static between dreams and possibility; the time between a common man and a god.  You could pluck it from the ether, a strand of a grander weave, tie it around your finger, and call it yours.  Like a friend you've always known, it would stick with you, grant you insight into the world beyond, and protect you from those with ill wills.  It is also volatile; like an open flame, if left untended, will raze the world.  It became the great equalizer for the intellect, and a tool of the disciplined and dedicated.

But these days are gone.

Magic is a force of the rich, held behind a fortress of letters and laws.  The weave diminishes, its threads severed and pulled back behind these walls.  And with the Spirals looming, those of us born with gifts carry the curse of Io, forever poisoned by its chaotic fate.

You can spin magic too, boys, for a slice of your soul and a life of servitude.  You might even enjoy yourself, as a bit of you slips away with every invocation.  ...And you wonder why so many of them Shiver in the dark...

But I do not hold to these truths, my brothers.  I am but a man of intellect.   
I refuse this world order.
The Weave belongs to us all.

And Lo There Do I See the path is broken; my light, my fire, my blood, my vine - I see it still in my dreams.  I dream of herbs, petals, the natural line.  It goes back and back into antiquity.  Bound by earth and stone, deep within the cracks, beyond the Edge; ashes of the Elderburn, hearts of fire and ice, dust and bone, a pound of flesh, and the ancient eyes of the beings before.  

I see them all, my brothers.  They do call to me.  The six wings in their stead, we find them in need of our Will.  A banner to wield in our hearts and minds - a rallying cry of a people unwilling to bow down to the Drowned God, who refuse those of Blood and Fire, and who laugh in the face of the Stormlord - for we, men of intellect, harness our own destinies; we are not bound by history - we make our own.  
  Those who deny intellect have forgotten the face of their Father, and as we know, I, like my brothers before me, was born of the Weave itself.

The old world beckons you, my family.  It calls for its soldiers in the coming war of our redemption.  Step forward, champion, and claim your Strain...

The last word and testament of Daniel Miller, Loremaster - Firma 117
Respectfully submitted to the Vertighast Division, Evidence Locker 341 - Stormwrack.