A Lesson on Spellcraft and Basket Weaving

Kalliope wasn’t sure how she had let Erchon talk her into this, teaching his friends magic. She had already broken a taboo in teaching her brother, even still teaching their family traditions to others was something only their mother had the right to decide.

It was just as well, her having been taught magic by her mother had stepped right up against taboo already… She had been grateful that her mother had been willing to accept her despite what others thought, and many of the traditions her mother still upheld seemed well… arbitrary.

Still she wasn’t sure which of her brother’s friends she was expecting and he had already gone to gather rods for his basket.

She waited, her own familiar bobbing in the dappled sunlight of the forest.

Shango stands far from Kallos, trekking throughout the forests searching for interesting and/or edible things to bring back to his cozy and small-scale abode back in Gnollview. He sighs before scribbling out something in his slightly tattered and small notebook. He says quietly to himself "Looks like there aren't any berryshrooms in this area."

Shango's head shifts up from facing the ground. Looking around, he walks up to a tree near him to then climb it. Shango tries his best to not look down because he has a fear of heights.

At the top of the tree, he grabs his spyglass from his toolbelt and observes the horizon in search of any nearby human settlements to avoid or fur towns to visit. He spots a town not far from his current position… Shango sees Kallos, the Gnoll Village.

He embarks on a trek to Kallos, enduring the unknown areas which Shango hasn't explored before.
He is sauntering through the forest, scanning for any flora Shango passes by. He does find some berries and dandelions, pocketing them in his backpack's side pocket.

A couple of meters ahead, Shango takes his spyglass out again, peering into it. He sees a brown figure in clothes, assuming it’s a gnoll, he carefully treads towards it.
Shango tries to not make a noise by accidentally stepping on a branch. He takes his spyglass out again and sees that the figure he saw is actually a gnoll. Happy to see a gnoll out here, Shango proceeds forward. A short moment later, Shango encounters Kalliope.

He stops a short distance away from Kalliope, Shango stands straight,  and says to Kalliope in a welcoming and soft voice, “Salutations. I come from Gnollview, a small town far West. I’m Shango." Shango waves to Kalliope with his right paw. "I am looking to take shelter here for now. Y’know any places in this nearby town?”.  Shango tilts his head slightly to the left, in the direction of Kallos.

Kalliope sighed, Erchon’s friends were later than expected, and her brother was still off gathering wood for their lesson today.

She flexed the hazelwood branch in her hand, feeling the twist in the grain and bending it to work apart the layers of wood. She only half worked while she waited, not wanting to get too far ahead of any students who might show up.

The only notice she had that someone approached was the chirp and rattle of her chthonic familiar, “Hmm, did someone finally show up zoom-zoom?” She asked her shade as she looked down the empty path which led toward town.

“Salutations” A voice rang out suddenly from behind her. She caught her breath as a gnoll she didn’t know introduced himself as Shango.

“Chairete,” Kalliope greeted Shango in her native Infernal tongue, before switching to Common, “Gnollview?” She thought she knew of all the gnoll clans in the region, but the existence of another town founded by gnolls escaped her.

“Powers of the Earth guide you,” she said, “You're far from home. Or you must be since I don’t know your town. I’m Kalliope, a daughter of the village witch. As for where you are, you’ve arrived in Kallos, or near by it at any rate. What brings you here?” she asked.

“Mmhm.” Shango hums and nods in agreement after Kalliope says the name of his hometown. Shango’s ears occasionally move slightly by the sounds of the beguiling noises of the forest “You’re the daughter of the village witch you say.. fascinating.” Shango’s head tilts to the right slightly, widening his eyes a little, looking at Kalliope. He is captivated by the presence of witches. He knows little to nothing about magic since There aren’t many magic-bearing furs in Gnollview.

Shango turns his head to look down at his backpack’s left side pocket, pulling out a slightly tattered map. “I am indeed far away from home. ‘Twas a 6-day journey. I wanted to reach the far edges of my map to explore the uncharted areas.” Shango faces Kalliope again and unfolds the map to show it to her. He points at the uncharted areas next to the East edge of the map.

“Here’s my map. I have heard of this distant town from two gnolls talking about a large fur town far east of Gnollview.” Shango says. “This is why I am here. I wanted to find Kallos so I can chart it onto my map. I need a place to rest for now. I plan on staying in Kallos till on the morrow at dawn.”

Kalliope looked carefully at markings on the map Shango presented her with. Near its eastern edge lay familiar rivers and mountains and some of the coast, but the western expanse of the map entirely new to her eyes.


“Hmm…” Kalliope hummed, “That might be further than the borders of the empire that controlled this region a few centuries ago. Still we’ve only just begun to reconstruct our history…” she cut short before continuing, “Most of the ancestors of the Kalloi came from further east, but the humans there are, well lets just say unwelcoming to our kind.”

“But where are my manners? It’s our custom to offer a stranger hospitality before probing with so many questions. Please, you’re a guest in our land, it would be my family's pleasure to have you for the night.”

Shango listens to Kalliope with great interest as she talks about the history and back story of Kallos. Shango’s left ear flicks. “Fascinating…” Shango says in a soft voice.

In response to Kalliope offering hospitality to Shango, he says, “How kind of you. I await Kallos with curiosity and am obliged by your offer of hospitality.” He says with a bright toothy smile. The sound of loud rustling paper can be heard as Shango folds his map back up and puts it into his left pocket.

Shango’s legs are aching from traveling. “Anyway, I’m worn out from traveling here. Mind if i sit there for now?” Shango says, pointing to the log seat across from Kalliope.

“Please do. I could use some company while I wait for my brother and his friend to return.”

She hesitated before speaking her next thoughts, Shango was from far enough away that she couldn’t be sure if his people shared the same taboos around men and magic that gnolls here did.

“M…” she paused, “My brother, and his friend will be meeting me here soon for a lesson in my people’s magic tradition.”

She wasn’t sure how her mother would respond to teaching their art to people from beyond Kallos, still at least Shango was a gnoll. She would just let her mother deal with the breach in taboo. Something she had grown accustomed to more and more in recent years.

“You’d be welcome to participate if you'd like.”

Rodrick: "Are you sure it was this way Erchon?" He asked to his gnoll friend, exhausted after a long time walking.

Rodrick is coming with Erchon to the magic lesson, so he can learn and teach about magic in his world.

He stayed with Erchon and his family for a while, they had this weird custom of offering hospitality to strangers, and Erchon had a lot of hospitality to give since he came across Rodrick a few weeks ago. His family treated him very kindly, almost like he was a member of that family.

Rodrick continues speaking.
Rodrick: "It feels like we've been walking in circles all day..."

“Magic you say?” Shango says with great interest. “I’ll be very much obliged to participate.” He says, nodding in agreement.

“In Gnollview there are not many magic bearing furs. My uncle Kamalau knew magic and would used it when he went mining. I am unsure if he has taught anyone this magic when he lived.” Shango pauses as he smells something coming from the path ahead. "hold on.. [Sniff sniff] I think this smell could be your brother and his friend." Shango turns his head to his far left to get more of the smell. he can smell the faint scent of a gnoll along with the scent of a goat-like animal coming from the path ahead.

Shango looks back, fidgeting with a tiny trinket he grabbed from his left pant pocket, he soon has a question to ask. "Say, What kind of magic will be taught? I'm curious.."

Kalliope listened eagerly as Shano described the limited magic his family had practiced. Delving in the mines may very well have been tied to the Powers of the Earth that the gnolls of Kallos observed, or perhaps it was something else. The ways of magic were diverse in tradition and form. At any rate this traveler didn’t share the taboos her people did if his uncle had been a practitioner.

She then took in a long deep draw of air through her nose, taking in the scent of the people approaching on the trail. Her brother’s familiar odor, along with the scent of goat. “Yes I believe so,” she answered after Shango drew her attention to the smell.

“As for today we will learn the magic of making, it’s more subtle than the art learned by human wizards, but perhaps more useful, but I’ll explain more once my brother arrives.”

~~~

Erchon smelled the air as they hiked the forested mountain side beyond the west end of Kallos. “Not much further,” he said. The wind was blowing the wrong way for him to smell his sister, but he knew these hills well. The site they hike to was a ways above the cave of offering. Here was another vein of the Old Powers.

Before long he could hear a conversation Kalliope was having with a stranger. They spoke common but their accent wasn’t touched by the Infernal notes that marked his own.

“Chairete,” he greeted in Infernal and waved with his free hand as they reached sight of the place.

“Good,” Kalliope responded, “You brought extra canes, we’ll need them today.” she said broadly gesturing toward the stranger. “This is Shango, a traveler from a far off land.”

Erchon grinned as he set down the hazelwood canes, “It’s good to meet kin from a distant land, It’s been years since any gnoll traveled here from so far away.” He didn’t say it was because the humans had destroyed most gnoll bands which remained in the ruins of the old Infernal Empire.

After a while, they found the meet up place for the lesson, and there they found Kalliope, Erchon's sister, and a stranger.

Kalliope: "Good, you brought extra canes, we'll need them today."

Rodrick: "Only brought what you brother insisted me to get." He chuckles.

Kalliope: She gestures toward the stranger. "This is Shango, a traveller from a far off land."

Rodrick: He looked at the person who she gestured and he saw a very cute gnoll, so cute that even Rodrick got a bit flustered. "O-Oh! A new face! Pleasure to meet you!" He extends his hand nervously to him for a handshake. "My name's Rodrick, but people tend to call me Roku. You arrived just in time!"

Erchon: "It's good to meet kin from a distant land, It's been years since any gnoll travelled here from so far away."

Rodrick: "Well, now that the presentations are finished, maybe we should start the class now. Unless Shango wants to wait for the others of course, at least he could got to meet them before this starts. What do you say, Shango?"

Shango’s ears twitch before getting up. He smiles and waves at Roku and Erchon as they arrive.

“Greetings!” He says enthusiastically before standing up. “It’s a pleasure to meet you both!” Shango states before accepting Roku’s handshake, firmly.

He listens to Erchon as he speaks about there being no distant gnoll visitors for years. “Huh, interesting.” Shango replies until his attention switches back to Roku as he speaks about the class.

Shango responds to Roku. “No, let’s wait for the others to show up. Im not in a hurry.”

“Anyhow..” Shango says before greeting Erchon. “What’s your name?” He asks Erchon as he extends his paw to him for a handshake.

“Oh right,” Erchon chuckled, accepting Shango’s paw in greeting, “I forget to introduce myself. I’m Erchon,” he said before distributing the hazel wood canes.

“Now that we’re all here,” Kalliope began, “The place we have come to is over a vein of the Old Powers of the Earth. The very ground here is wild with magic.” She put her hand on the ground and felt the power present. “Such sites aren’t required for performing magic, but to the learned great strength can be borrowed here, and for the novice such a place can ease the finding of powers needed to weave a spell.”

“Today we begin to learn the art of making.” she said, taking up one of the branches her brother had brought. “It’s common for a skilled crafter or artist to weave unfocused magic into their work without realizing that they’ve done so, but a magician skilled in craft and spell can work wonders with a made item. You will start with weaving baskets.”

“Now grip the cane of wood. Feel the bend and twist of the fresh cut green wood.”

Kalliope: "Now grip the cane of wood. Feel the bend and twist of the fresh cut green wood."

Rodrick took the cane and focused on its feeling. This reminded him of a movie he watch when he was younger, it was called.... Harry Potter, maybe?
Anyways, when he was trying to focus on the feeling, he accidentally activated his fire powers and set his arm on fire (it didn't hurt for him). And when he noticed, he dropped the cane to the ground trying not to burn it.

Rodrick: "Sorry! My bad!" He said a bit embarrassed. "The magic of this place must be affecting MY magic as well..."

He picked the cane once he put his fire out and focused again, this time trying to not burn the cane.

After Shango’s handshake with Erchon, he sits back down on the log, getting ready for the magic lesson. He focuses onto Kalliope as she explains this site and the magic that exists here. Shango occasionally and curiously looks at the hazel cane Erchon distributed to him.

(At this point, kalliope finishes explaining and is now telling us to grip our canes of wood.)

Unsure how to utilize magic, Shango moves and kneels down to the ground, feeling the grass and magic with his paws. As he does this, Rodrick’s arm starts to burn along with his hazel cane. This scares Shango. “Woah! What was that?!” Shango says as he quickly stands up. He looks at Rodrick with a somewhat scared expression.

Rodrick assures that it was just his magic. Shango feels relieved. “Fascinating. I’d love to see the magic y’all have.” He says before he gets back down, sitting on the ground this time. He feels the grass as he grips the wooden hazel cane with his left paw. He soon has a question to ask Kalliope. “How does one use magic?” Shango asks curiously.

Erchon had mentioned there was something uncanny about Rodrick when he asked her to teach his friends magic. It seemed there was indeed something untamed about him as the fire swelled and extinguished. With luck some training would prevent flare ups. Still she felt fortunate that the wood was green, and didn't burn to fare.

“How does one use magic?” Shango asked.

“There many ways magic comes to people,” Kalliope started, “The way we learn today is by rhythm and conversation. It is an art of doing.”

“But first I’ll invoke the powers that rest here, and call them to our aid.” She said before calling out, “Only from darkness, the light, and from light a shadow. O powers of the land, lend us your voice that we might work hand and wood.”

“Now our task is to prepare and split these canes of wood into strips that can be woven.” she said, then tapped out a rhythm on the log she sat on before taking up her belt knife, and hummed a melody as she worked.

“We trim the pin branch,” she sang as she cut away small branching nodes from the rod making the wood flush.

“In a place like this you can feel the hum of magic in the soil and it can help guide you through the working of magic. Such things can be learned from lore books but the earth is a much better teacher.”

“Next we need to flex and twist the wood so we can separate out its layers, and if Erchon did as I told him we should have branches which grew slowly in the shade which will provide thin rings.”

She hummed along twisting the branch in until she could feel the fibers just begin to separate beneath her hands. “Be careful not to break or cut the fibers, we need long strips of wood for weaving.” and with that she took her knife and lifted at the wood where it began to separate off a thin layer.

“Do your best to slide the knife between the rings, and the strip of wood should come away with a bit of effort.”

When Kalliope invoked the powers of this place, Rodrick could feel all the magic getting into his body, syncronizing with it and embracing it.

Rodrick: "Woah... This feels amazing! It feels like I could fight a hundred soldiers with this power!" He said amazed as he felt the magic running in his body. So, what's next?

Kalliope proceded to explain every step of the making, and Rodrick listened to the instructions very carefully, almost mimicking her movements with precision. It felt weird, he never had done something like this before, all he knew about magic was learned from other monster friends and some spare time at the library. But this, this is something that he had never heard of, which intrigued him even more... He finished very quickly, probably because of his good experience with sharp objects, and then he waited for the next instructions to see what else he would learn.

Kalliope: “There many ways magic comes to people,” Kalliope started, “The way we learn today is by rhythm and conversation. It is an art of doing.”

Shango is unsure about the rhythm part. he isn't a musical kind of gnoll and that saddens him.

Kalliope: “But first I’ll invoke the powers that rest here, and call them to our aid.”

Shango listens curiously as Kalliope invokes the powers around here. He thinks the magic has to come to him since Kalliope invoked the Powers of Earth.

Kalliope: “Now our task is to prepare and split these canes of wood into strips that can be woven.”

Shango listens carefully to Kalliope's instructions.

Shango: "Hmm."

he quietly hums as he looks down at his wood cane. Grabbing his dagger from his belt, he wedges it into the cane to split the wood cane into two. arts and craft is something Shango enjoys doing, but with magic it may be even better. He now splits the wood into four, then into eight. laying them in the grass evenly.

Kalliope: “Be careful not to break or cut the fibers, we need long strips of wood for weaving.”

Listening to this next step carefully and the one previously, Shango grabs a single piece of his wood, placing it vertically on his leg to bend the wood. this will make splitting it easier. He slides his dagger between the rings, and the wood splits slowly and easily. He does the same to the rest of the strips of wood he has. Once he finishes, he holds them with both paws, awaiting for more instructions with a subtle smile.

Kalliope smiled, bemused by Rodrick’s comment on fighting soldiers. For herself she knew stories of her ancestors calling on the Powers of the Earth to defend themselves from human attack but it had been a long time since such arts had been studied. Still as Kallos grew the world beyond would take notice.

Many people here were refugees, or the descendants of refugees past. Most furs were viewed as monsters, either hunted or enslaved. She’d worried that the peace they’d found wouldn’t last, still she’d been resistant to learning the powers to fight.
She turned to each of her students as the hum of the land pulsed through her, and each of them.

“Now,” she said, “we weave.” she said and then crossed three of her strips of wood to form six spokes. Then she cured a fifth so that a few inches ran along one of the spokes, and she held it there as began to weave the rest of the strip through the spokes.

“Feel the beat of the powers that reside in the land. Converse with them, and with them make a space protected from pests or decay. They will guide your weave and lend their powers to your goal. This is the spell we law into the weaving of the baskets”

He lets himself be carried away by the beat of his magic, going step by step throughout the lesson. All of this seemed to be something you could do without magic, but Rodrick didn't complain, he was enjoying himself with this magic in his body, it felt like he was fully complete that way.

Once he finished weaving, he left the basket on the floor and waited for the next instructions.

Rodrick: "You know, this magic here feels so much complex than the magic back in my home. All these spells, all the crafting things... It feels so weird yet fascinating to me." He added.

Kalliope: "Now, we weave."

Shango used to weave baskets as a job when he was 17. He tries to remember the methods he used on that job. the thoughts clicked in his mind as he finally remembers them well.

Shango smiles lightly, remembering fondly of the kind folk he met on the job as he grabs some thick wood strips. he plans on using the radiating spoke basket weaving technique. As he is doing this, he hums songs he remembers from Gnollview. songs about folklore and traditions.

first he cuts a split in the middle of 3 of the strips, then he threads the 3 strips through the split of the other 3 sticks. Now he uses the thin strips of wood to weave the 6 thick strips together into a slath. he carefully bends the rods in the slath to weave in between the rods. Shango continues weaving round and round until a circle is formed. It is about 9 inches in diameter.

Now he pricks up the ends of the long rods of the slath, this makes the base for the walls of the small bowl basket. he ties them together and then gets to weaving in the walls. A little bit later, he finishes the basket. He gazes at his finished bowl basket with a soft smile.

Though basket weaving was a common craft Erchon had never been allowed to learn the spellweaving that the women of his people practiced, not until Kalliope had found him with his Eluthanai lamp decided to teach him the magic of his own people.

The art she taught had been unlike calling the light of the Flame the tieflings of the north worshiped. Letting the thrum of the land guide him he wove carefully, slowly as he murmured his request of the Old Powers to make a vessel that would protect and preserve its contents.

The magic was both new and familiar to him. Having lived in the home of a witch he’d come to know its general feel and shape, still recreating it was something different.

He continued murmuring in rhythm with the land and new beats began to enter the flow of the spell. Some from him and some from the rock, and yet more from Shango and Rodrick. The Little Shade chirped and whistled, giving voice to the building song.

A sense of certainty filled him as he completed the weave. He could feel the spell set in the fibers of the wood. Not as strong as one his mother would make, yet he could recognize the form of the art in his sketch compared to her masterwork.

~~~

Kalliope demonstrated her own weaving as the others worked. She had felt each of them weaving their spells though as to their quality she wasn’t certain.

“Let's see, how are each of you doing?” She stood up and walked among her students, looking over their work.

OOC: At this point judge how well you think you did in performing the spell and have a quick chat with Kalliope.

Since there’s no nested threading in this forum both of you can just respond and then I’ll divide up my reply like I’m having a 1 on 1 conversation with each student.