The Tale of Oberon of the Ice

Lo weary wanderer, sit ye down and harken tale of young blood icy in its veins, seeking an adventure worthy of the ancestors!

Oberon was a man of the ancient way, knowing the face of his father, abiding the admonitions of the great old gods.

He was not comforted by the luxury of the new world. His tribe was soft and decadent. The once proud bastion of Snow Gate, which stood against the frost wyrms of yester yore, had melted into the tourist city Heimburgsgate. Where once there was ice and stone and hardy men, there grew lush forest around filigreed cupolas, populated with dancing, prancing children.

Some youth studied techno-magics to maintain the bubble dome of warmth around Heimburgsgate, or druidic practice to tend the gardens. Oberon shunned these contrived sciences.

Other youth learned the shiny arts of entertainment to dazzle the wealthy wizard tourists. Oberon could neither sing, nor dance, nor play the wooz-flute.

The day of blossoming arrived for Oberon and his peers to display the fruits of their learnings for the elders and gawking tourists. Oberon’s display followed that of the girl he liked, Pashmina, who had summoned a mist and magical light to form a rainbow, then leapt and danced a feather fall through the colorful arc. Oberon, wearing snailskin tunic, took to the dais.

“Behold the forgotten magics of the frozen sea Archmagi as I freeze my own blood!” He cut his hand and spoke an ancient phrase, but nothing happened, until he felt a coldness in his gut and a tightness in his pants. Some error caused his spell to freeze his urine instead, which had extended out into his genitals and caused his pants to bulge! The crowd laughed and Oberon was filled with shame and anger. In confusion he spoke a guttural syllable and the frost in his pants expanded into the air, catching the lingering moisture from Pashmina’s rainbow mist. The laughter ended as the dais and viewing stands were blasted with an arctic wind so cold froze the spit in their chuckling mouths!

After that day, Oberon was known as Archmagus of the Icyweiner, so he left the city to wander the ice. There was no place for him by the hearth. He would find the frozen remains of his worthy ancestors. He walked the path of the Great Father Dorkstaff Thundercrack.

A thousand seasons ago Dorkstaff slew the Wyrm Mother, his thunder cracking the frozen sea. He sank into the bottomless depths and found the icecube of immortality, and froze himself within it. Oberon set out to find the cube.

Life on the ice is only a thin membrane around a deep well of death, just as the world of appearances is only a veil around the infinity of Magic. Oberon slept as an animal, ate as an animal, and thought only of survival. He walked into the wind, seeking the edge of the world.

But the ice was vast and formless. The gods played tricks as he neared the world's end, making north into south, up into down, turning the sky into the ocean and the ocean into the netherworld. Ensconced in an icy cave, his supplies ran out, his fire flickered, and his magical mojo dwindled. He resigned himself to the deep freeze, and entreated his ancestors to send him one spark of warmth so he may wake up at the end of time to view the perfect crystal of universal heat death. Bleary and devoid of all feeling, he saw a stranger approach.

He awoke by a fire in a well apportioned dwelling, a gruff man and a cockatrice staring down at him. The ice hermit Homer [Wizard #726] had unfrozen his blood. The stoic hermit fed Oberon and told him tales from the age of the Wyrm Weird. He gave him a special potion of swankle lichens. Oberon saw the face of his ancestors and learned to see beyond the duality of warmth and cold, ocean and sky, life and death.

“The edge of the world isn’t a place, man. Or, like, sure it’s a place where the ocean falls into the void or whatever, but it’s also, like, a state of mind, dude!”

With Homer’s help, Oberon found the edge of the world within himself, where his borderland merged with the universe. He felt at peace with the ice, the hearth and the peoples of Heimburgsgate he’d left behind. He ran out of the cave and released all his shame and frustration, ambitions and insecurity in a mighty roar! A dark cloud emerged with a boom and a fork of lightning. The ice beneath his feet split open and he fell in.

Oberon’s conjured lightning carried him beneath the ice. He spread out, everywhere at once, sensing the depths with all the lurking creatures. He felt the beacon of Heimburgsgate on the distant shore. It called to him of unfinished business, and in a moment his fork of lightning had taken him home.

The city had changed; the dome was losing heat. The portal to the Sacred Flame that warmed their sanctuary was weakening. The sorcerer priests of the Shining Mount had failed in the Stoking and called for aid from the Fireside Tribes. Some of Oberon’s peers had already set out, though few returned.

Pashmina was not the same since her return from the Shining Mount. Her songs had turned to rambling, fearful rants about twisted souls pawing at the Sacred Flame. She was paranoid of the darkness she’d seen, afraid it was still within her. The city was paralyzed, unwilling to send more young wizards into this peril. The gardens wilted as frost entered Heimburgsgate for the first time in centuries.

Ice in his veins, thunder in his heart, Archmagus Oberon of the Icyweiner set out to restore the Sacred Flame.

Entered by: 0xf3Db…33fA and preserved on chain (see transaction)