Searching for a magic item

*Previously Merc's journey had him searching for a certain gem, this being found, he went to seek a portal and means to another realm...

Merc stood before an metal arch overwrought with thorns, holding a glowing gem in his hand. The constant muttering of word like sounds slowed to a still as he closed his eyes, spun about on his heels, and stepped backwards through the arch.

Cover & P1.

Box 1 (Instant access ensures...)

CELESTIAL DISPATCH #1

ISSUE 1 (PRINT RUN #1)

The High Council had adopted an 'organic' approach to their entire oeuvre. They frequently employ printed matter, wooden structures, abandoned vehicles, shingled domes, and simple printed cotton t-shirts in their natural form without attempting to impart a regular shape or organized structure. The construction of the High Wizard Landscape inspired a number of off shoots and derivations. Strange sub-plots and broadcasts regularly collected and printed in a series called "Celestial Dispatch"

DON'T SPEAK OF THIS PLACE AT ALL THE LANDSCAPE RESTS BENEATH A BLANKET OF MOSS

P2.

Box 1 (Instant access ensures...)

Instruction manuals summon the same forms into creation from potentia and simultaneity. This suppresses creative impulse and experience. Therefore proceed through this missive with only this direction. Recapitulate the moment when pencil touches paper, when lines are inked in, the phenomenal moment of freedom. Bob and weave through the glitching chapters, sauna within the semblance of structure, and bask the unfamiliar glow growing to a blinding radiance.

Mini figure-notes image captions,

HIGH WIZARD: Magic from unity of images, sounds, forms, thoughts - myths captured between slides of a hyperdimensional microscope, depicted on this page.

DO NOT EXPOSE: Trail markings are intended only for those directly engaging in game play. Be wary of surveillance from multifacted eyes high above, sousveillance from ears beneath the thin ground you tread upon.

CHARACTER & FORMS: Avoid exposure to digital algorithms with would seek to nearly organize these materials into obvious and pre-determined categories.

HEX CODES: Carefully catalog published Hex-Codes. Enter Identify Hex Code, Visit HighWizard.org, Enter Corresponding Hex Code, Follow Portals, Walk Path, Wait, Restart: Receive Mailer.

FAMILIAR MYSTICS: Shamans, wise women and medicine men, their muses and musings provide touchpoints to return back from overwhelming abstraction. Further research is being developed in this category. We will return to these grounds in Mailers to come.

WHERE: Portals across far shores. Tailing furōsha in the northwest and its unrest, candy-cane castles shaped by airfoil wings, heated by the radioactive fumes of dragonkind. Skimming along the web and falling to be buried neath muck.

FORM & CHARACTERS: Merc stood before an metal arch overwrought with thorns, holding a glowing gem in his hand. The constant muttering of word like sounds slowed to a still as he closed his eyes, spun about on his heels, and stepped backwards through the arch. His foot did not strike ground beyond the threshold.

HEX CODES: Repeat. Please not expose High Wizard characters and forms, Hex Codes, or other Mythologies within expected resting places. Pre-walked trails carry no great meaning within this place. Sprinkle seedlings and moss patterns only where they have not yet laid. Thank you for your patronage.

ScrewBox Universe

I wrote this to re-explain to myself what HIGH WIZ is aimed to accomplish, but I think it's too direct to say this to readers. The graphic is great, I'm thinking about reworking this... I specifically don't like the US and OTHERS part.

This system is not intended for all users.
Yes, anything can happen, more or less, it just so often does not.
It reflects our world only in as much as it seeks to be different. To pull us into surreality.
High Wizard is a long from cadence being written. Shaped and sculpted through forms, through sound, through myths and other means available to the High Council to be cased onto others.
The Other can choose to be shaped by the spell, with willingness, with enthusiasm, or even with resistance. They may ward themselves from the spell. {unsubscrube}

WIZCLAIMER: This system is not intended for all! Such a spellwork has only been cast once by the greatest of mages and mystics for the benefit of thinking entities (human and otherwise). While High Wizard entails a long form cadence, a canto of words shapes and sounds sculpting myths of influence and algorithmic unravelling, by no means do its purveyors claim omniscience or beneficence - only charlatans and chicaneristes of the lowest order and illest regard claim such authority. You can choose to be shaped by this spell. With willingness! With enthusiasm, or even with resistance.

You may ward yourself against further spell effects quite simply as well.

P3.

PEER BEHIND THE $SHROUD

current::
EXPOSING THE SECRET TRUTHS BEHIND THE TRANS-NATIONAL HIGH WIZARD FINANCIAL PLOT TO ESTABLISH A HOLOGRAPHIC AUTONOMOUS NETWORK STATE DE-CENTRALIZED NARRATIVES AND INCOHERENT RAMBLINGS REVEAL A SINISTER PLOT PURCHASE FAILED AMERICAN TERRITORIES AND ESTABLISH PEER BEHIND THE SHROUD! REPENT! DE-SUBSCRIBE BEFORE ITS TOO LATE!!

my screed::
a cell divides and tips the balance away from psychic ailments, shunting its psuedo self into the culling line and scurrying away to feast with molds and fungi on rich mineral wealth of other entities, other nations. Stay subservient! the rise and fall of gods is only the change of seasons, a myth of mighty sun swallowed by greedy night beasts. Accept the narratives around you, ignore the incoherent ramblings. Peer behind the shroud!

Not sure about this, I still just don't know about Merc saying anything, maybe this is the high council, or someone masquerading as such, PUTTING WORDS IN MERCS mouth.

1. MYTHS - How to do 1 Year High Wiz#^d2a20b

P4. Merch Room

P5.
2. it is with desperate speed...

POPULAR CONSUMPTION EDIT:**

Oh sagacious 'High Council',

It is with great speed that I begin this missive to you, or whoever your inheritors may be. Following what is surely a calamitous occurrence of which the causal repercussions are not yet known, or likely are known and anticipated as a sort of psychic dread afflicting the multi-world populace.

The Great Wizards are gone and the magics they maintained are abandoned.

Even more pressing, while I have suspected this for some years...It is only recently that definitive proof has been garnered by a team of obscure and formerly inconsequential researchers grifting along on scraps of funding for grandiose spell research. Their previous investigations were barely publishable drivel and so produced blindness in the eyes and numbness in the claws of what must be a resoundingly draconian system of suppressive tactics and repressive tyranny. You low quislings in high places failed to notice this revolutionary fact amidst the multi-disciplinary, cross-method, hyperbolic pursuits of the younger generation. A discovery so blatantly obvious across any number of fields and inquires it must have been bottled for ages. The fact that your publication has failed to note this in its initial issues illuminates your ineptitude.

Again, the Great wizards are gone, and not lately but early, the research estimates several decades if not centuries based on deteriorating emanations in the high bodies of magic particulate observable under specific lunar cycles. This was ancillary to the researchers method, more art than science, not artistry mind you, simply entertainment, the cross linkage of oscilloscopes measuring some or other arcane phenomena and projected into the minds of large beehives, which supposedly would dance and buzz, forming patterns of chaotic and beautiful structure, never repeating themselves - except that the bees identified lacked the energy and mindspace to do much more than roll around on the ground under such strain so the researchers switched to a breed of hornets with larger energy reserves post-feeding and you can well imagine the focus and methods were disrupted in spectacular and painful fashion after a young assistant miscalculated a lunar cycle and sent said insects into a frenzy...

I've digressed, ACK!! And with such little time. Even now the pounding at my door intensifies (metaphorically speaking of course, it is only under certain times, shadows, and projections of symbols that my door would open to any realm other than the harsh vacuum of space, much to the chagrin of you asinine fools posturing as 'High Council' with your impossible to avoid Mailers. I've unsubscribed SEVERAL TIMES now and refuse to hear of excuses like inter-dimensional rift variance delaying the receipt of my cancellation to their shipping department, I shall NOT be held in arrears by sum up-jumped, stoned shamanistic types addicted to psychedelic addled oracles that peddle heavily branded garments. I hereby DE-SUBSCRIBE. Future deliverers will be met with violence, if they even survive the path to my door.

Know this for certain. I have confirmed it by my own reliable and unequivocal methods.
The Great Wizards are gone. The magics are degrading, perhaps far beyond what can be restructured and saved.

Their seats of power are open. I do not think such fools as you will meet this occasion.

Of course, someone with genius matching my own, if interested, might step into that role.