In a build up to redo the sticky threads on the F&S forum, I’ll be posting every story on the Tome for a vote. These stories a copied as presented in the Tome.
Except where noted, all these stories relate to an existing plane.
All stories that are accepted will be closed unless the author requests them to be open.
Because of the volume of stories, this thread (and all subsequent Salvaging threads) will be open for voting for two weeks.
And now, the stories:
The following stories are for Lorwyn/Shadowmoor:
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Exiled 
by Jab0r
Author’s Note: The following text doesn’t follow a similar style to a normal narrative. It is inspired by the Lorwyn card Exiled Boggart . Goblins in Lorwyn almost define themselves solely around sensations and feelings they experience – see Sensation Gorger for an example of this taken to an extreme. I’ve attempted to tell the story of the boggart’s exile as he would experience it – a sequence of sensations and feelings. Does it “work”? We’ll see.
A hint of sunlight over the horizon. Eyes flicker open. Smell the air – crisp and cool. Feel the dew on the grass. Hear the clan beginning to stir. Smell of food wafting from cooking pots. Eating meat – tough and chewy. Ground starts to shake. See Giant’s head over the treetops. Running, stumbling, falling. Feel scratched hands and skinned knees. Panic. Crawling backwards in haste. Ground disappears – falling now. Falling. Still falling. Blackness.
Eye cracks slowly open. Hurting all over. Lie still awhile. Sun is high, ground is hot. Hear birds twitter. Standing up, slowly. Pain. Stagger into shade of cliff. Cool, restful. See an opening, stagger inside. Fall again. Blackness.
Eyes open again. Light scatters off the ceiling. Rising to feet. Pain is gone. See large cavern. Light scatters of stones in the walls. Beautiful. Amazing. Standing still, drinking it in. Sudden twist of hunger – must rejoin clan. Turn reluctantly to leave. Walk outside, find path to top of cliff. Must return later.
Stagger into camp, hungry and weary. Eating meat – moist and succulent. Laying down to sleep. Blackness.
Rising again. Air is dark. Must return to cave. Camp is asleep. Wandering – finding path. See the cave – trepidation. Going inside. Awe, wonder. Sit still, drinking it in. Turn to leave. Clan is there. Shouting, hatred. Beating. Blackness.
Eyes crack open. Hurting all over. Despondant. Exiled. What is there left, beyond madness and death?
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Goldenglow Moth by Artvandelay
Ellie blinked. She couldn't believe this was happening. Her mother had told her that a good little kithkin needed to stay within the walls of the doun, because it wasn't safe anywhere else in this world. She knew her mother was right, but when she saw the beautiful moth floating by on the breeze, she felt drawn to it. It wasn’t like an ordinary moth. It had shimmering, translucent wings, and was so beautiful that it seemed out of place in this world. It looked lost, as if it were searching for the place it belonged. She followed it all the way to the edge of the doun, and quietly slipped over the wall when it soared over the border into the twilight on the other side. Ellie knew better, she really did, but she couldn't seem to think straight whenever she looked at those shimmering wings. It always flew ahead of her, just out of reach. She was so mesmerized by the creature that she didn't notice when she entered the bog. She only realized that something was wrong when she noticed that she couldn't move her legs anymore. She looked down and saw that she was sinking quickly into the watery mud. How far had she gone? If she screamed for help, would anyone hear her? She sank deeper and deeper into the mire, thrashing around. This only made her sink faster. She realized that her movements only made things worse, and tried to calm down. She looked up and noticed that the beautiful moth had stopped. It seemed to be watching her, waiting for something. The mud was up to her chin now. Ellie knew that she wouldn’t be getting out of this mud. She calmly watched the moth, hovering nearby. As she finally slipped under, she had the sensation that she was near those wispy wings, floating along in the moth’s glittering trail.
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The Stranger 
by Skibo the first
It was several harvests ago…
An odd magician who went by the name Tibbins, sought refuge at our Doun. Cenn Meade was all to willing to let him stay. Within months of being held up in a tiny hut on the edge of town, Tibbins had created many wondrous potions.
And soon the stranger took upon him four apprentices.
My brother was one of those chosen as the stranger’s apprentice. He would come visit home regularly, but over time he grew more haggard, a change exhibited by all members of the doun. His visits become more sparse and after a few months, he stopped comming home entirely.
If felt nothing of him through the thoughtweft and grew quite worried. He was my elder brother and we looked after each other. So one day at high dusk, I went to Tibbin’s house.
The stranger’s house was far too quiet. No one answered my knock. I knocked again, then pushed the door open. The inside of the house seemed unnaturally dark. There was a low grinding sound coming from upstairs. As I ascended the stairs, a soft glow filled the stairwell. When I reached the top of the stairs, I nearly fell back. In the center of the room were the four apprentices. They marched around a large grindstone in the room’s center. The grindstone drew blue energy from their minds and converted it into a stream of dust. I ran to my brother. His eyes were glassy and I stared through me as he continued to walk in circles.
“My, My, My. We have a visitor” a dark voice spoke.
I turned around to see Tibbins hobble towards me. His eyes were different. They were mirrored. As he walked closer, his mouth began to elongate, and his arms began to stretch. He was becoming something entirely unlike him.
“I can’t have people knowing my secrets child.”
Tibbins now had completely transformed into a beast, and snapped and growled. I grabbed the hilt of my ceremonial dagger, the only weapon I carried while in town. As I pulled it from its sheath, it reflected the blue light into the eyes of the beast. Oh what horrible thing it saw in its own reflection must have been too much to bear, because it broke through a window and ran into the woods.
I pulled my brother and the three other apprentices from the house and set fire to it.
At moonrise I set out into the world. After many days of avoiding merrow and trows, I came to the puca mountains. Only by bathing in the waters of the falls, can a puca’s curse be broken. So I filled a waterskin and returned to the Doun. I anointed the apprentices with it. They snapped out of the puca’s trance and told us of how the puca had drained their will and controlled their mind. That beast had planned to use the thoughtweft against us. If he had not been stopped, he would have drain the entire doun of its sanity.
And so that is why, traveler, I can not permit you to stay in town. Go forth to Mistmeadow, I hear they are more trusting of outsiders.
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What Dreams May Come 
by Prismetrix
Awylla had seen many horrible things in her time but nothing quite so savage as the brutal destruction of that creature. The attack of a duskdale wurm came without warning and thoroughly left the outpost Awylla was visiting in ruin. The rampage of the wurm left her stranded in an unfamiliar part of the forest as she fled to safety. This sense of unknown was a sensation Awylla had not experienced since her early years as a sagewright. The trees seemed to glare at her with distain and the whisper of malicious laughter was buzzing in her ear. She could feel the eyes of the fae on her and a sense of immediate dread began to crush her spirit.
“I know you wish me harm but leave me be! I have done nothing to offend,” she yelled to the wind.
“But you have something we want,” came back the whisper in her ear.
She turned quickly but the disembodied voice was gone. She could feel the glimmerdust starting to make her drowsy and knew she had to act quickly.
“All glamers lifted, all lies revealed, all flesh exposed.”
“Hehe, silly elf. Your magic has no effect here so close to our home. The Queen requires something you have and so we shall take it”
Awylla, struggling with consciousness, begged, “But what could I possibly have that your master needs?”
“Why, your memories of course,” came back the giggling answer.
A flash of terrors from Awylla’s past came to her mind. She tried hard to forget the horrors she had seen, but someone else had developed a keen interest in them. As her consciousness failed, Awylla fell into a fitful slumber with nightmares of demons and shapeshifters clawing through her mind. But as quickly as each monstrosity overwhelmed her dreams, it was gone with similar haste.
As the nightmares ebbed, she could feel a sense of giddy excitement coming from whatever was stealing her memories. Awylla knew that Oona must be gathering knowledge of all the threats to her and her children. If any being was capable of altering this world, Awylla knew it was Oona. Awylla understand it was naïve to believe Oona was doing this for good, but anything that rids the world of those monsters was a success in Awylla’s mind. This helped settled her mind as she drifted into a deep sleep. Awylla’s salvaged dreams would finally be put to good use.
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Revels by Tevish Szat
Talara looked up at the sky. Somehow, the dull grey of its brightest moments seemed foreign, mysterious, like something out of a mad oracle’s babble. Shadows played before her, cast from the last few trees onto the barren ground ahead. Isarne and Kelno had gone ahead into the heath, while she remained at the forest’s edge. Talara’s eyes darted back and forth across the landscape, and caught for a second the pinprick flash of a waved torch. It was time move on.
By the second week on the plains, she had begun to doubt that the place of beauty, the new safehold they were to find, did not exist. It seemed that there was nothing out in the open land but stones, yellowed grasses, and a clear view of the heavens. Sometimes, while her companions slept, she had thought she heard distant strains of music, echoing on the wind. It called to her, but never seemed important enough to mention to her companions.
On the ninth day, when shafts of light played through strangely broken clouds, Talara heard the music again. It was alien to her ears, a soothing disharmony of winds and chimes, but it was there, and stronger than before. Kelno stopped in his tracks, and Isarne cocked her head to hear it better.
“It’s… beautiful.” Kelno whispered, “Is this what the scouts sent us to find?”
“I don’t know” Isarne replied, “but it’s coming closer.”
Talara stayed silent, her heart pounding as the tune became more clear, the reedy pipes and kettle drum making her feel like a scared child too close to Raven’s Run. Voices joined in, and in a terror born of an unnamed other, she bolted for cover behind a knoll and called for her companions to follow.
“Where are you going, Talara?” Isarne called, laughing. “We’ve found it! The beauty is here!”
“Beautiful, beautiful” Kelno said, beginning to dance in small circles
That was when she saw them, coming over the top of a hill. There were four of them, hideous things. Wrinkled and bent they were, like ancient women, and hideous. One played a flute of yellow bone, another banged a kettle drum. The third one murmur-sung the tune, and the fourth kept up a noisome dance. This was no beauty to be found and guarded by the safewrights, but a troupe of Gwyllion hags!
Around Talara’s friends they circled, linking arms and joining hands. She wanted to call out, tell them to run, but she bit her tongue and dug her nails into the earth, for fear the hags would see her too.
The music grew more frenzied, the hags and elves spun faster, round and round to the whistling of the flute and the pound of the kettle drum. One hag laughed, another howled, and Kelno called out to her
“Talara! Come and see! It’s beautiful! So beautiful, I’ve never seen…”
The music stopped sometime there after, the wind grew cold, and the hour dark and late, yet until the distant light attain emerged through lead-grey clouds, Talara stayed hidden in the mound’s shadowed side, and when she looked where her friends had been, there was nothing she could find, save for trampled grasses and an imagined echo of that terrible music, upon the fetid heath .
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Fire at Will by Discworld
It had been raining that day, and the small town of Elwood still had smoke rising from the embers of burnt out buildings. Bridget hated that smell.
The town had been relatively peaceful until the Cinders under Vessifrus had come, what little flames they had to offer suddenly igniting the bits of wood in the town. The defending Kinscaer led under Bridget had barely managed to hold them off through the night.
Bridget walked carefully amongst the slightly smoking buildings, the Thoughtweft telling her all she needed to know. The Cinders would return this night to finish their work. She immediately passed her own thoughts among her people.
Gather all the people and supplies you can. We leave tonight.
Moments later she had the reply from her second in command, Cyril Teeg, son of the late Gaddock Teeg who had died when the Aurora had taken place.
Understood- I’ll gather the others.
She nodded with satisfaction at the response as she walked down the lane, turning into the small home of Dokard, the Cenn for Elwood. The wizened old kithkin sat, gloomily staring out the door. His gaze rose to met Bridget’s and he nodded to her in greeting. She sat beside him.
“What brings you here, Bridget?” said Dokard, although he already knew the answer.
“We must leave, Dokard,” she said, never turning her gaze from the smoky ruins of the home across from where they sat. “Vessifrus and his Cinders won’t be content with just this. They will be back, and in great force than ever before the night has fallen.”
Dokard nodded understandingly, sorrow clouding his face. It hadn’t always been like this. The elementals had been a proud warrior race, bright and passionate. Now they were angry, always angry, seeking to preserve what little flame they had left.
Bridget stood to leave. Dokard stood as well and put a comforting hand on the legendary kithkin archer’s shoulder. “Be careful, Bridget.” She nodded and left.
Before long night was approaching, and Cyril, at the head of dozens of kithkin, greeted Bridget on the Thoughtweft:
We must leave as soon as possible.
Bridget took the bow from her shoulder and motioned for the gates to be opened. The heavy bars of the mystical gate, heavily laden with fortifying enchantments, slid back and the door opened.
Fire poured through it, devouring the nearest kithkin. Vessifrus stepped through, a smile reminiscent of coals growing on his face.
“What have we here?” he said, stepping forward. Elementals all around surged toward the kithkin. Thoughtweft-enhanced reflexes were the only thing that saved them and they replied in kind. Bridget whirled to Dokard who was singed across his cheek from the initial volley.
“Take the children and elders and leave!” she shouted above the din before nocking an arrow and shooting an elemental coming up on Cyril. Dokard gathered the women and children and hurriedly made for the opposite gate before they got caught in the growing battle.
Already the battle was pitched and kithkin blades met. Bridget winced as the Thoughtweft shared the pain of wounds amongst the kithkin. Her hastily assembled archers lifted their bows.
“Make these shots count,” she said, lifting her own and sighting an elemental. “The more foes we drop now, the fewer we’ll have trying to kill us later.”
They let fly and elementals dropped, arrows protruding from their chests like obscene ornaments. Some were downed but not permanently, and the kithkin at the front made sure to correct that problem. Cyril, surrounded by elementals, took first one blow to the shoulder and then another, never falling.
“Again, again!” cried Bridget, nocking another arrow and firing. Still the elementals pressed on and soon they were backing up as the shot, the fight advancing closer and closer. Finally Bridget dropped her bow, as did all of her archers, and they drew their short swords.
Charge!
The command traveled over the Thoughtweft and they ran at the elementals. Cyril, covered in wounds from head to toe, turned and smiled before falling, the short sword tumbling from his hand onto the worn cobbles. Bridget caught him as he fell.
“For… Gaddock…,” he said, and then his eyes closed.” Bridget lay him down gently before picking up her own sword again and hurling herself at the Cinders.
For all of us.
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Pride 
of 
the 
hunter 
(Click on each word for a different card) by Mistform mage
It was an honor. No. It was the honor. The last thing he would ever need to strive to achieve. He had earned the respect of his peers. He had earned the respect of his king. And now, after years of loyal and unquestioning service, Phaereth had earned the respect of a god. He had been noticed. He had been chosen. He would be the proof that even a lowly hexhunter like himself could do impossible things. Not that he would be a hexhunter anymore. No, those days were behind him. He would now be the guardian of his entire clan. Even now he could feel the power surging through him. He could even see her just barely in his minds eye. She was a vision of perfection, no pun intended. Her veil flowed into what seemed to be eternity. Her shield was held out to him and he reached for it. As if it was the last thing keeping him alive.
In his actual vision he could see his peers, colleagues and friends and even spatterings of family, and even his king sat before him eyes deep and bottomless from years and years of feverish service to his people. If one emotion could be pulled out of his gaze it was pride. However there were people who were even more important. His wife stood somber and silent in the corner of the imperial hall, their young son standing next to her. He was clearly scared and wasn’t sure what to make of his father who was glowing with a mysterious light and reaching out to things that weren’t there. Laraeh, his wife, held him close to her leg to prevent him from running up and trying to help his father back from whatever was happening to him.
‘Poor Tarel,’ Phaereth thought with what little brain power he wasn’t expending on absorbing his new magic, ‘Too see his father bow at the feet at things he cannot see. Shameful really. If only he could see her as I do.’ He pondered somberly. This new connection with their god was both a blessing and a burden but he was eager and willing to bear it. It was at this moment that he heard a voice, two actually, echo through his head.
“Wish granted.” The feminine and tiny voices giggled, perfectly synchronized. Before Phaereth could even begin to process what was happening he felt all the bliss, all the power stripped violently and unexpectedly from his body. The Oversoul faded from his view and he was brought falling back to earth. He screamed a terrible and mighty scream. This sudden frailty and weakness was unbearable. He had never realized how insignificant he was until now. From the corner of his eyes he could see a familiar glow. He turned his head rapidly to see Tarel bathed in the light that had been surrounding him. He also faintly noticed a pair of small figures circling around his head and laughing uproariously. Spite overtook Phaereth and his left hand gripped tightly onto his wand. With an unbecoming roar he slammed it into the ground and the room became silent and white. Within a moment the light faded and Tarel was resting silently on the marble floor. Phaereth however was gone, his last spell exerting what little magic he had left.
“Well that was dramatic.” One of the faeries said to the other as they hovered in the room full of stunned elves. “ But it was more fun than I had expected.” She added shortly after.
“Oh I agree sister. Elves are such serious creatures. They always make for a laugh.” Her fellow replied. With that they were gone to spread the news of their victory to the great mother.
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Natural Maintenance 
by KingAlanI
Gresh of the Paperfin School
Some say change is in the air; are they wise or fools? Yet I look at Lorwyn's past, not its future. Filth must be
removed; the world should remain clean like the rushing river of the Wanderwine, not the silt at its bottom.
Water, and its conglomeration in the Merrow Lanes, is everything. We must maintain that.
Lianda of the Stonybrook school says "None appreciate sun and shallows like those who have seen the depths."
How true that is. It is a tough merrow who goes there, and a tough creature who hides there. I have rarely swam
down to to the depths, but as an integral component of my work, I converse and trade with those who do.
(The trade, though mere small items are bartered, sharpens our wits and thus energizes us to run through our tasks
again in vigor.)
Sargg, who plots and judges the Wanderwine's currents, often steers us to them; a greater mortal ally in this world
I doubt I know.
Yet, the benthicores and other such monstrosities of the deep are not the true picture - rather, they are metaphors.
Lorwyn is clean, beautiful, sunny even. But, the actions of imperfections that exist, such as the stupid boggarts
and the high-and-mighty elves, pollute the waters.
Those nasty events, isolated or habitual, are to be buried in our collective memory and theirs, so that the Schools'
memories are cleansed & freed, and so the events do not repeat themselves.
To some extent, we truly dispose of evidence, transporting it those who will entomb it in the Wanderwine, hopefully
forever. To some extent, our actions have become ritual that have taken on a purpose of their own.
The unpleasantness is removed, forgotten. And better off we are.
