Worldbuilding Prompt #733 - The Tower of Maligar Magus
This post was inspired by a writing prompt in the Worldbuilding Community - "Construction Materials".
Enjoy !
Image crated by AI in NightCafe Studio
It was snowing in the mountains south of the Vrasiyjamelt Sea. But that was normal in such a northerly location, three hundred-odd miles even further north than the city of Magoran.
The Sea itself was clogged with slushy ice and small bergs. It wasn't much of a sea, really, just a lake some two hundred miles long fed by meltwater from the northern ice cap, frozen in winter and freezing cold in summer.
But Maligar Magus liked it here for the simple fact that it was so isolated. It is true that there were monsters in the mountains, both tribes and individual horrors. But they didn't bother him, they feared his powers and rightly so, and left his tower in peace.
Brave adventurers on the other hand were something he deeply despised. They'd show up at the most inconvenient times, and were rarely polite enough to sit down with a cup of tea while he finished up whatever experiment or research he was currently working on.
Maligar had one such in the dungeon of his tower right now. A young dwarven ranger calling himself Bruno the Bold, son of Borin the Brave, grandson of Boris the Incomparable. Such arrogant pride from one so young !
He descended the white steps to the cell where this Bruno was clasped to the wall by a spell. Maligar considered himself to be a wizardly intellectual, on the leading edge of thaumaturgical research.
"So, my intruding dwarven friend," he asked his restrained guest, "I expect you are wondering how I keep you here. It is simple. Unlike the lazy hedge wizards you are no doubt familiar with, I am a true mage. An inventor and improver of spells, not content with just riding on the back of the work of others. In this case, I have modified the famous Bigby's Grasping Hand spell. You are the lucky first trial subject of what I call Bigby's Shackling Hand."
Maligar watched with amusement as his captive writhed and squirmed, unable to free himself from the fingers emerging from the walls to pin each of his limbs. He grinned evilly as he decided to inflict some proper anguish on this uninvited intruder.
"I do believe you came to burgle my tower, thinking that it was inhabited by just a foolish old hermit. You saw it's splendid white form and thought there would be riches here for the taking."
As Bruno shook his head to deny the accusation, Maligar continued.
"But have you noticed how lovely and warm it is in here, despite the wintry weather outside ? The reason is simple. I've built my home over the decades from bone, one of the best insulators against the cold that nature has given us. There's no magic in that."
He hesitated for a moment and went on.
"The magic is in another spell. This one of my own devising. False modesty is for fools, so I named this spell after myself. Maligar's Marvellous Bonesculpting."
Beaming with pride, Maligar told the dwarf, "Every bone here has been shaped by my own magic to fit perfectly, making my tower a work of art as well as a practical dwelling place."
Then his smile widened further, and took on a cruel twist.
"Bone, of course, is something that each creature only has a limited supply of. So I have to use every scrap I can find. Which brings us to another spell I devised. You will remain conscious to enjoy every moment. I have named this spell after it's function. I call it Maligar's Fillet. "
This is a fantastic building material, a wonderful scene, and a very cool way to modify Bigsby's Hand. I love the Bonesculpting (which is something my own setting has a similar spell to), but I definitely don't have a Maligar's Fillet - lol that's brilliant! What a wonderful evil character!
Thank you ! I've always liked modifying spells, especially as a DM (we've got a player with a virtually photographic memory in our group - he tries to play fair, but it's hard for him when the page appears in his head...). Themed spells like the Bigby's ones really lend themselves to modification, although it's best not to talk about what happens when you change Bigby's Slapping Hand into Bigby's Fapping Hand 😁
As for Maligar, he was totally inspired by the prompt 😀 He's utterly evil in the way that research scientists can be, so focused on his work that he just won't tolerate any kind of interruption. I can see him being someone I develop further....
Super story and the created picture makes it even better new saw a building like that!
Thank you ! I love playing with AI art generators - quite often I'll put the prompt in, see what the image that comes out is like, and then write the story based around what I'm seeing 😀
The AI generator you use is better than bing...I'll give it a try again.
NightCafe Studio is pretty good. But like all of them, it can occasionally produce totally unexpected results from the prompt you enter. Plus of course none of them seem to be able to work out how many fingers and toes human have, or how many legs should be added to horses and cows 😁
Or the legs pop out of a head, a tree tries not next but on the roof and the wolf has the face of a raven, they have spelling issues as well 🤣
I wait for the most ridiculous pic to write about.
Thanks for the help. I'm getting better although I have to spell each detail out. Too many details it can't deal with either.
I think I might have to do that... set up a competition with a prize for the craziest AI misinterpretation of a prompt. But we'd have to get people to include the prompt as well, just to prevent cheating 😁