* Restricted Information: Readers of the Pattern only
The Readers of the Pattern ("Kulon-Kazra" in Zashat) study and gain instress from the infinite variety of patterns of ice and snow crystals. Naturally-occurring ice crystals and snowflakes have a sixfold symmetry. No two snowflakes are ever alike. This is because the Water Elementals are subject to Lawful rules that require the sixfold symmetry, but are free to give expression to Their Chaotic side in the design of the patterns.
However, the Icelands straddle the Wall in the far North of the World, and so are at the edge of Chaos. The influence of Chaos (or maybe just Their contrary nature) can result in the Water Elementals sometimes producing ice and snow with a threefold or twelvefold symmetry, or even very rarely a twenty-fourfold symmetry. The Readers of the Pattern search for such crystals, prizing them for their higher instress values. A few more obsessive individuals search for fourty-eightfold or greater symmetry. Many look for two identical snowflakes, and there are stories that these have occasionally been found.
Ice can be magically created with different symmetry. This has some aesthetic value, which is appreciated by the Readers, but, being artificial, does not give the same instress as if it had occurred naturally. Well-known examples of such ice are the ice structures of the Sacred Sites and the Ice Palace.
Where the ice cap covers the Wall the icicles at its tip bleed off into Chaos. Here all sorts of colours, irregular symmetries and strange formations can be found, but these are considered unnatural and so give little instress.
The Icelanders are a Lawful people who are conscious that their lands are close to Chaos. The Readers' appreciation of the symmetry of six and its multiples is part of a greater concern to maintain an order which will keep entropy at bay.
Plants do not grow on the icecap. A few may be found in the mountains where bare rock emerges from the ice, and more are to be found in the tundra, which is still beyond the treeline. The Readers will not normally venture into forests of trees. They are therefore to an extent a Beastmaster Cult, but with a specialist Ranian Cycle concerned with ice. Their mystical nature together with their interest in animals results in many of them being Shamen. Their favoured Totem Animals are aurochs, polar bears, sabre-toothed tigers, snow leopards, woolly mammoths, reindeer, snowy owls, wolves or dire wolves - but others are possible. These animals mostly live in and around the mountains and out in the tundra and the Ice Bay of Kerāk. The only creatures of Nature to be found in any sugnificant numbers on and under the icecap are organisms, principally lichens.
The fabled Zoklava, hunted by the Ice Men, is a name given to any creature of Chaos which falls to Earth or comes down from the Wall.
All Readers of the Pattern are Delegated the Power of Reading the Pattern during Iniitial Basic Training. This enables them to see the patterns and symmetry in ice and snow. Thus they are able to gain Instress from ice crystals, as well as from the Creatures of Nature.
Roll d100 for any given instress of naturally-occurring ice:
(NB these results do not reflect the probabilities of a given ice crystal having such attributes. They allow for the skill of Readers in seeking out such attributes and include an element of playability.)
The Inscape of inaturally-occurring ce crystals is normally equal to their symmetry, though this may vary for particularly beautiful patterns on the one hand) or broken crystals (on the other). Instressing normal snowflakes with 6 fold symmetry will therefore normally give an Ic for the subject of 6. 3 fold crystals will have an Ic of 3, and 12 fold crystals an Ic of 12, etc.
Unnatural ice crystals (magically or Chaotically created) will normally have an Ic of 1, subject to variation for beauty. The crystals of the Sacred Sites have an Ic of 3, and those of the Ice Palace an Ic of 6 (note the Is gained will be further modified by their high Circs. Mods.).
Druids without the Power of Reading the Pattern will normally only be able to appreciate ice and snow as having an Ic of 1.
Shamen must choose a Totem Animal as their Spirit Guide (or more accurately, allow it to choose them) and are then able to access the Dream Kingdom of their Spirit Guidel, which they refer to in Zashat as the "Zakar" of that Animal. They also gain an additional Shamanic Cycle of Spells related to their Spirit Guide, which is a sub-Cycle of the Yribt Cycle.
The Readers are a particularly mystical Cult, and the highest-level Adepts are said to be able to achieve some amazing things simply by contemplating ice crystals in their minds.
Sacred Heart: The Ice Palace
Overworld / Light Sites:
Underworld / Dark Sites:
There are six Light Sites and six Dark Sites which are their converse (as indicated by their numbers; e.g. Light Site 5 has Dark Site 5 as its converse). Each site is a crystalline structure of ice with a twelvefold symmetry, with the Links being from each facet of every crystal of ice comprised in it. The Ice Palace is both a Light and Dark Site, and has a twenty-fourfold symmetry.
The Readers of the Pattern are dedicated to preserving the fragile natural beauty of the Icelands. This involves protecting them from Chaos as much as from the impact of men. One way this is done is by maintaining the Sacred Sites and their circular pattern of a twelvefold symmetrical snowflake. Another is by participating in the hunting of Zoklava.
The Media used by the Readers are as follows:
| Druidic Cycle | Medium (roll on d6 for ice crystal type) | Date to harvest for maximum bonus |
| Sered Cycle | Liverwort (1) | Mid-Spring Caeriad (13 Varech) |
| Yribt Cycle | Reindeer Lichen (2) | Midwinter Caeriad (26 Yarom, or 25 Yarom in a leap year) |
| Shamanic Cycle of the Icelands | Cream Cup Lichen (3) | Midwinter Caeriad (26 Yarom, or 25 Yarom in a leap year) |
| Ranian Cycle | Hair Grass (4) | Mid-Autumn Caeriad (12 Garrack) |
| Ranian Cycle of the Icelands | Icicles of Ic > 6 | Midwinter Caeriad (26 Yarom, or 25 Yarom in a leap year) |
| Druid Cycle | Pearlwort (5,6) | Midsummer Caeriad (26 Oscow) |
The Readers may substitute for a plant an ice crystal that resembles it, found as above. This gives its Plus (irrespective of method, but not date, of collection): roll d6 for the plant it resembles as per the 2nd column above. The Plus represents how much like the plant it looks (or how much imagination the Reader is having to use).
Ice crystals resembling plants and icicles may be harvested by drawing pictures of them rather than by physically collecting them (though this may alternativety be done). Each specimen gives only one Medium, which may only be used once. Instead of a golden sickle and bowl, parchment and a quill pen fashioned from Animals must be used for additional Pluses.
Harvesting on thedate for maximum bonus still gives +5 in addition to the Plus for ice crystals, icicles or drawing. It is therefore possible to achieve a maimum Plus of +14 where 99 is rolled for instressing on the date to harvest for maximum bonus.
Pearlwort has half effect as a Medium for the other Spell Cycles, as per Mistletoe.
Instead of harvesting a specimen from a plant to be used as a Medium, Shamen may touch the totem of their chosen Animal (a small portable one is recommended) to the plant, incanting in Old Speech to the effect that he foregoes taking the specimen, and expending SP equal to the plus on Spells the specimen would have given (depending on the means the Shaman had available to harvest it, and which he demonstrates and refers to in the incantation: e.g "I forego taking a specimen from you with this golden sickle, into this golden bowl, on this Mid-Autumn Day"). The plus is then stored in the totem, to be expended later. No more specimens may be foregone during any Caeriad than could properly have been harvested from the plant.
The total pluses that may be stored in a totem (aggregating their values) equal the maximum number of instress points the Shaman has instressed from the totem animal whilst also meditating upon the totem during a single Caeriad in the past period of one year. It is therefore necessary periodically to spend a day instressing from the totem animal and meditating upon the totem.
Pluses must be expended in amounts equal to the pluses that would have been given by the specimens that were used to store them. Each stored plus decreases in value by one on each New Moon, in the usual way. Already harvested specimens may be stored in totems for half effect (FRD), but at full SP cost. Pluses expended from totems are not cumulative with any other media plus.
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© P.R. Wild, 20 January 2010, last updated 18 December 2024