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Post by ElfChild on Sept 28, 2012 7:17:50 GMT -8
REPOSTING SO. MUCH. STUFF. Oh. Wow. Some of this is a couple years old. It feels like so long ago... This first post shall be for 2010 stuff, I'll work forward in years.
Kyrin Silverwind I am far too easy to fool. Though this day there is plenty of good news, I am ashamed to say that I have only taken part in the bringing about of the bad. The good news is that the Mithril Golem is dead. This is thanks to some hunters that take it upon themselves to make sure deities do not get out of control. I took no part in this mission, and I did not see their combat, but it must have been an amazing battle. Unfortunately Embarcarius thinks that during this battle Jonas got his soul destroyed. Morgante. So that sucks. And also a barbarian archer got morgante killed. One hopes that the citizens of the city will give him a good funeral. Upon our return, we investigated the disappearance of Brim. Looking back on it, we should have left him to the spiders. To get to him, we had to get through spiders. Growing up with a members of The Animal Army, I've been taught that negotiation is the preferred method of dealing with animals. Despite this, I happen to have no power to speak to them, which makes this difficult. We got past the first spider no problem, but we had to fight the others, which included a baby spiega. (Is that how you spell it? Well, just to clarify, it's a very dangerous spider. We could only damage it with magic.) At the time I had a small doubt at the back of my mind that Brim was really not as powerful as our small group. However I ignored it and we rescued him. A couple of us also dragged the spiega corpse back to town. When he got back, he had a very secret mission for us. Ha. Secret only because had we known we would never have helped him. However, he made references to HAM, the Hobbits Abolitionist Movement, so I assumed it was a good thing. As I was saying earlier, I was fooled too easily. As was everyone else. And because of it Ebony has been banished to a different dimension to reform. Anyhow, I'll explain what happened. Brim brought us to a room with ten ritual circle-ish things on the floor and a space in the center. He chose three warriors of good alignment and gave them each a dagger that could perform exorcism. Then he picked ten mages to operate the ritual circle-ish thing. He asked us all to stand in a circle around him and donate mana. I stood in the circle, but only gave up one mana. I wish I hadn't given any. Brim stood in the center and held a strange wand. Then he summoned her. Ebony. Except in what was likely her true form. She looked like a demon, and had catlike eyes and very long hair and seemed familiar. I realized later I had previously seen her in a vision. I forget if she was doing anything in the vision though. I just remember seeing her. Anyways, the three warriors set about exorcising her. About then (name of Kate's character here) started getting worried. After about eight exorcisms, Ebony disappeared. Then we were told by (name of Kate's character here) that Hope said something like "You know her. She is your protector" and "All that wears the guise is not evil" and "she has been returned to her place" or something like that. I'm not sure if I remember correctly, but you get the idea. So now we knew we had done something that was really bad. That feeling was added to by the fact that both Melissa and Embarcarius seemed to know something was up and seemed very worried. We set about oracling and determined that the demon was Ebony. We went to look for Brim, but we couldn't find him. I swear next time I meet that mage I'm gonna hurt him. I can't win against him in a fight, but I can let him know what I think of his trickery. I wonder how adults deal with that kind of stuff normally. I wonder if they have similar reactions. Anyways, my world seems to be falling apart. Two mages gone. One running. My teacher is evil and Melissa is good. And to top it all off my mom is still gone. What do you DO in that sort of situation? Well, I'm going to Randwin with some others. And once I'm there I hope I'll find something to help the situation.
Kyrin Silverwind Hey there! Again. This time I'll try to tell you stuff in chronological order without confusing you, but I'm not really very good at that so I hope you'll understand. Okay so recently I teleported off to Celendel and walked to Odilwatch with some friends. It turns out some others from Pinical also walked there. Anyways, we got there, and the first day I mostly walked around town trying to get information on how to make my Elder Sorcery do what I want. More on that later. The second day they called in the heroes. While most people in the party went off to play police and find traitors in the guards of the town, Emryn, Aly and I discovered that green drakes had been killed recently by the local militia. The militia had also captured several Storm Panthers (lightning cats, blue kitties, whatever you want to call them), a few males and a female. We purchased the female for 60 gold, because the females are rare, and the likelihood of finding another was low. Then we went to fight the paladins of Hissi (I think I'm spelling it wong but I don't know how it's REALLY spelled so that's how I'll spell it). (Nick's warrior character) got mind controlled by one. However, the mind control got lifted after the battle. Okay, at this point I kind of forget what order stuff happened in, and Emryn is being no help there, so I'm gonna tell you stuff in the order I THINK it happened in. Because I KNOW stuff happened. Just not the order. So... I think there was a break from adventuring after that... Or maybe there was something like fighting the eastern army... I think there was. I didn't go on that, because Emryn and (Clara's character) and I were working on something. See, Aly has an elder sorcery to call and calm animals, or anything with an animal instinct. Including drakespawn. So basically, she called and calmed them, and then set up a circle of protection around them and there ya go. After that we trained them. I'm not an animal trainer, but the other two are, so it worked well. We met a dwarf named Darral who seemed interested in what we were doing. Around that point we had to go protect a Sisters shrine. Darral offered to look after the drakespawn if he could study them. Protecting the shrine was not hard. The attack was a small one. After that some people went to free giants (but not me) and gained the giants as allies to fight the paladins of Hissi. Well, to make a long story short, the giants were charmed and we had to flee the battle seeing as one had a pwerful elder sorcery--"My light damages" or something like that. And seeing as he was a high level giant flame mage he had powerful light. Nasty spell. Anyway, after that we took a break for dinner. We returned to take care of the drakespawn. Then we left for night missions. I only went on one. Patrol. And I was less then great at that. Okay, day two. We arrived late and caught up to the party just in time for fighting people with magic items. Not that I got any. Anyways, the first INTERESTING mission was going to find the grey mage. We didn't find any grey mages. We did find a Sorconian Martial Master. (I capitalize that because I believe it is a title. I dunno if I misspelled Sorconian because I couldn't find Sorconia on the map to check my spelling with.) Anyways, the guy was a powerful pacifist. Who could deal damage. Which is very strange. He took us into a forest and told us to get what we found and run. A few of us found it. A shrine. To the Buddha. One guy took the big black orb at its center. Another guy took a couple of the smaller bits. I took what was left--the base and the remaining little figures. And then we ran away. Of course I just happened to use Treeform to do so. I was also the only one who got the items I had picked up back to town. The Sorconian Martial Master picked up a small stone that was part of the shrine as well and that made it back to town too. He recognized the items I had brought back. I recognized the small stone. The small stone was part of a mana generator that, of course, required the other stone. Oh, did I tell you what happened to the guys carrying the other stuff? They were killed by ogres or trolls or something of the sort. So naturally we went back to get the remaining objects. We got everything but the big black orb. Great. Then we took a break for most of the remaining daylight. During the time we had for dinner, Emryn and I took the drakespawn for a training battle against orks and urukai. We won, but I wonder if we can train them to heal? Around dinner time there were two minstrels around singing songs. Now that I think about it, the song is much like a vision I had in Celendel when I touched the Yavanna tree! I mean, not really. Though I don't remember the exact words of the vision, I'm sure some of them were different. I will record after this chronicle the words of the song that I can remember and what Emryn and I believe they mean. At night we fought dark heroes, which might have been great except that we lost. I barely escaped. All I got out of that was a auto-rebirth scroll, which I suppose is good, but losing the battle still sucks.
SUNDAY Ara Silverwind I have returned to the living. I was saved by a couple of people and spent much of that day learning about events that had occurred in my absence.
Kyrin Silverwind We went on two missions that afternoon. First, we investigated something in the Mage School itself. A shrine to Ebony was being created. A member of the Nonas Guard was there as well, also investigating it. They refused to confirm or deny anything, which annoys me. Anyway, the shrine was a bit strange. It seemed like a magical mound of gold. I mean, who makes a shrine like that? Well, apparently unforging your money is an old hobbit custom… Whatever. Anyway, the Nonas Guard waited for this necromancer. The necromancer came carrying a body. He then proceeded to use the spell Animate Dead on the body. It was animated, but it was it was transparent and held all of its memories. It had free will too. However, it had to obey commands given it and it felt compelled to protect its creator. This is somewhat strange. Actually its very strange. It seems that whenever you use a Raise Undead spell on school grounds this occurs, as further experimentation showed. Next we visited a shipwreck. We had investigated it once before, but we came again. (Nick’s character) told me to keep lookout for a capsule and not to remove its contents as they would not withstand water. There were merpeople all over the place this time. I held onto the sentient rope and told it to fish for manmade items. While it was down some merfolk had the idea to grab it and pull on it. I got some people to help me pull it up and the rope came up with a merfolk tied to the end! We untied him and told him that we would let him go but if he could find items that did not belong in the sea to bring them to me. He returned with a skirt. Which was useless, but he gets credit for trying. Then I put the rope into the water again. The rope tried to strangle another merfolk but I made it let go. Then it found the capsule. Except it didn’t look like a capsule it looked like a dart. I saw something sticking out the end so I pulled it out and it was a bit to a map! (Reese’s character) had a piece that looked as if it connected to my piece which he had obtained a month or so earlier. Anyway, I pocketed the map bit and we pursued the merfolk, who were leaving. I actually did very little after that point, as I cannot swim. Then w went home. I showed (Nick’s character) my map bit and told him if he wanted use of it I wanted to meet the person he was finding the pieces for. He agreed. I met Elwicket. And so did (Reese’s character). Elwicket seems to believe it is a map of the land to the south where the Hurro-Malik originate.
Ara Silverwind Night missions. Figures the first mission I go on after being trapped in lava tube for a long time is a night mission. And that I get haunted. I have weird luck. Anyway, we were going to the docks. (Zane’s character) polymorphed me into a merperson. Hatred aside, he’s useful for that main reason. We went to the docks and saw lights floating over the water. They were various colors and we soon discovered that these colors were associated with mage types, and used spells on you if you touched them. Purple was death ray, green impathic ray, red flame ray, yellow light ray, and blue lightning ray. They danced strange patterns, and the true sight of Patric’s owl revealed them as something like souls or spirits , and a sadness about them. At some point all but Emryn, (Reese’s character), and myself remained. At this point, the lights began to swarm around us. I left the water and reverted from merperson form. I had eight floating around my head. It was impeding my vision. I tripped over something and got back to my feet and than suddenly the lights stopped moving. Not slowly, suddenly, as if the had hit a wall. Then very slowly they floated to the ground. I tried to catch one but it fell through my hands and sunk to the ground. And now I'm haunted by them. (Reese's character) and Emryn had similar experiences. Because of this we oracled to the sisters... Actually it was one of the last times I had contact with them... More on that later. Maybe. Anyway, we asked how we could speak with our haunts and they showed us the madwings that had been sighted nearby here. We would deal with that tomorrow.
MONDAY Ara Silverwind We investigated Nynar's mind. If she dies I die. I can communicate with her telepathically. As can several others. More on that (sometime. later. maybe.) when I have permission to post it, as it may endanger her. Also, I am not sure I am the right person to chronicle this. I may just leave it up to her to chronicle if she wishes. Now about stuff I CAN talk about. We went to speak with the Madwings the moment we got the chance. Unfortunately, they did not solve our haunts as we had hoped. Actually, the moment our conversation began (I think we mentioned that we didn’t know who it was they were looking for) they used inferno on us, wounding all of us (actually I believe there were three who avoided the blast? But they did not manage to help us until the madwings were done with us.) Then they healed and questioned us each individually, carefully knocking us out afterwards to prevent our doing anything about it. They seemed unimpressed with us for the most part. They asked about an abomination, but did not say who or what it was when asked. They only considered our words when a towns-person, a temp party member, said that the lights we saw had moved in patterns and when I offered to help them. Eventually, they gave up on us and left (I think when I accidentally insulted them y speculating that maybe the lights were the abomination). The towns-person walked along with them while the few else of us who stood healed the others and turned to pursue them. We found them again questioning him. Then I approached and told them of the lights and how they were haunting us. The Madwings seemed confused as to why they would haunt us and considered killing us to make the haunts leave us (and make us PD. That was kind of scary.) Then someone mentioned Iakona, describing her and thinking she might be the abomination. I attempted to shoot down the idea and stop the speaker from saying more. I consider Iakona my friend, and certainly a good person. I could not think of any reason why the Madwings would have anything against her, but if there was a reason I did not want her hurt. However, the Madwings were on their way to Pinnacle already, with seemingly violent intent. My link with Nynar is certainly good for some things. I telepathically told her that the Madwings were coming to Pinnacle for Iakona and to protect her if possible. Then we ran back to Pinnacle, following the Madwings. It was explained to me what the Madwings might have against Elwicket and Iakona. More information I cannot release without permission. Elwicket decided to deal with the Madwings alone. I was reluctant to let him do so, as I did not want him to get killed. However, I decided that I wasn't going to change his mind, so I told him not to get killed and went to witness Teacher Testing. I will explain teacher testing. There were four mages trying for the positions of the dead or missing teachers at Pinnacle. I have to admit, we do need new teachers. In order to become teachers, they had to successfully complete some tests to prove their worthiness. The first test was the Survival Test. We accompanied the mage from the Wizards Trade Order against a group of bandits. Survival there was easy, as all you needed was Treeform and common sense, as our enemies had only one nature mage, and he seemed to be an inexperienced one. (He acted like I did when I first became a nature mage) The enemies we fought also were, I would guess, low level, and it is likely that many of them journeymen. So, it should not surprise anyone that the mage survived. The next test was the Test of Teamwork. The mages we accompanied were a majorly Life/Storm mage (I think it was Life/Storm. Correct me if I'm wrong.) from Astengrad and a majorly death mage from Dagdeoth. I could see them as a formidable team... If they could get along. They didn't. They bickered constantly. We investigated someone's murder, and the fighting was constant. I don't know if we got anything useful done, because when the Nonas Guard showed up with odd rune-covered stones of various colors I took off to investigate what they were doing. As it was, I learned pretty much nothing. Wasted time. Oh well. I hit level 27 at least for today. The final test, the Test of Diplomacy, occurred while the rest of us were doing other things. Apparently the Astengrad and Dagdeoth mages did make a formidable team. I hear they fought and defeated three young gold dragons while the other mages ran at the sight of danger. Amazing. Where do they get that kind of power? Anyways, these two were dishonored, so a position at the mage school might have lasted only a short time. After all, it is difficult to teach when one is dead. Therefore, they withdrew their applications in favor of a safer job. It's sad, because I think they would have done a good job. The other teacher applicants were forced to withdraw from the running as they showed cowardice and ran in the face of danger. So no new teachers. I would actually support (Nick's mage) if he tried for teacher, though he is not as powerful as the other mages. That said he's a good person, and certainly a powerful mage. (He's level what, thirty-seven? Thirty-eight?) He's not likely to apply though I think. Though he does do some teaching there already... Night. And an undead investigation. I saw little of this, only two bits really. The skeletal guards, who I would have run past except that I don't feel like messing with a battlebones. And also four ghostly figures in the night after the skeletons had departed. Hobbits, though an ordinary hobbit does not look strange in the atherial realm... I hear there was a sighting of Ebony, a teacher who I met only once or twice. Kyrin tells me she was a greater demon, almost a god, and some flavor of good. Kyrin seems to have been quite attached to her. However, I did not see her, so I will leave that chronicle to those who saw more then I.
TUESDAY Ara Silverwind Yes, MORE risky stuff. In caves. With undead. Geez. One figures all that time as a spectre would have taught me to keep away from that stuff, but noooo. And yes I made it out alive this time. How else do you think I would be writing this now? Here, I'll explain what happened. I believe Kyrin told you about her experience with shipwreck investigation? Yes? Good. Then you're on the same page as I was at the beginning of that mission. Knowing to some extent what the mission entitled, I decided it would be wise to ask (Zane's Nature Mage) to polymorph me into a merfolk form. Elwicket gave me a waterbreathing potion (Thanks Elwicket!) along with providing some other party members with the useful potions. We started on our mission and immediately the form of a merperson proved useful. I entered the water while the party fought an obnoxious kraken to search the ruined ship. It was a sorry sight, desolate, falling apart, picked clean by those like ourselves who saw promise in that sunken pile of ruin. It seemed those others had been merpeople. They were still there, lurking just below the surface. The skeletal merfolk who accompanied the living seemed to be in charge and were very protective of... Something. I decided to be on the lookout for papers like the one Kyrin had found or their containers. (Kyrin had shown me the dart in which she found the paper bit and described how it had looked when she found it. I was fairly confident I could find find one if it was there.) I was very curious when I found the merfolk wouldn't let me near a certain spot. I asked one if they were guarding something, but received no good response. Soon after, they fled to deeper waters and those of us in merfolk form (Elwicket and (Nell) showed up to polymorph people.) pursued them, leaving our companions behind at the beach. (One of those companions lent me a silver Katana.) Once in deeper waters we discovered more merfolk (skeletal and normal) guarding a sea cave. Wonderful. I wasn't interested in fighting, so I hovered at the back of the group till the entrance was cleared and slipped into the cave. While most of the others engaged the enemy head on, I swam through rocky crevices around them (out of game, they're called bushes) and made it to the back with but one pursuer. There was a pathway at the back, and thinking only of escaping my pursuer I darted down into it, cutting down two merfolk guards who got in my way and then striking down my pursuer. Only then did I realize that seeing as it was guarded it might be important, so I quietly proceeded to the far end and came out into a room. I hid by the entrance while two others arrived with me. The room was occupied by four or five skeletal merfolk, heavily armed with what I would guess were magic weapons. One carried an unusual blade and another wore a cloak, and I would guess that the others carried magic items as well. They guarded a pile of stuff, atop which was a capsule of the same sort Kyrin had shown me. (Reese) had found one of these before and likely recognized the object as well. (Henry) was also there, and with the three of us we figured that after one of the skeletons left we could take the others. WRONG. It was clear early in the battle that we were losing. See, in polymorph one cannot use their skills and abilities such as magic, which you would normally have. Without these advantages, even with silver blades we were outnumbered. Together they could take twenty hits, and together we could take three. I don't even want to THINK about respawns. So I made the cowardly move. I employed an old amulet of the thief that I hadn't used in a long time and hid. I waited a bit for the skeletons to settle down, then bolted for the exit. I wasn't really sure what I was going to do, but I refused to get trapped in a cave with undead again. Fortunately, luck was with me and some more party members were in the main chamber of the cave. They had destroyed the main force of merfolk. Noticing this, I asked them for help. They agreed and we proceeded back to the chamber. With more people, the combat was more effective, though still a struggle. (Reese) managed to grab the map bit, and with a combination of treeform, waterbreathing potions, and persistance, we managed to get everyone out alive with our quarry--the map bit. We have now nearly completed the map. Later, there was a mission to investigate a wyrm near town. I had some conflict with (Reese) before we left about him bringing his death sword, which ended up causing eventual mission failure, but I'll talk about that more later. We walked there with little trouble, and besides a single run-in with less-then-entirely-friendly people, our travel was uneventful. We arrived at the wyrm's cave unharmed, and I attempted to speak with the wyrm. It was not the most intelligent creature I have ever spoken with. I am beginning to realize that wolves and wildcats are at the high end of the animal intelligence spectrum. The Wyrm, despite my patience, gave me little information as to how it had gotten there. All it said was "My spot" and "Leave" which was not particularly useful. At some point, my willingness to waste time in this manner ran dry and I turned to the other party members for help. Kyrin's friends* (Reese) and Emryn happened to be along. Emryn was an animal trainer and (Reese), predicting the need, had brought some food to use in the attempt to train the creature. I asked Emryn to feed the wyrm and do whatever else animal trainers do. Well, the Wyrm snapped up the food and then attacked Emryn! While I pulled the wounded Emryn out to heal her, (Reese) took his deadly blade and drove it into the Wyrm. The creature died instantly. I had now finished healing Emryn and turned to (Reese). The moment I realized that he had killed the wyrm I was furious. It was in the creatures nature to kill prey, and killing the wyrm in exchange for only a wound was NOT right. I yelled at him, but he did not see to take my words to heart. Well, he and Emryn seem very close... I suppose he was just being protective. That said, the wyrm PDed (We took it back to town to ressurect it, but it had passed on) and if I thought a court would listen (I've had bad experiences with courts) I would be taking this to court and trying to get him fined at the very least. As it is, I'm not sure if I should give it a funeral rite or use its bones for something or both. (or neither.)
Next we went to speak to a giant spider. That WAS a bit more informative. We encountered some hiding people on the way who we accidentally attacked, thinking “Hiding=Bandits”. (We had a ranger to spot them.) This could have turned out fine with a simple “Sorry about that, we’ll be going now” except for that SOMEONE started killing them. Great. Those that did not die ran. I expect that if I can find out who started killing them, that person will find himself in court very quickly. (Of course I’ll tell them WHY I’m taking them to court, I wouldn’t deny anyone the right to know what offense they committed, but I WOULD take them to court. Despite my dislike of courts.) ANYWAYS. About the actual mission. We continued on and found some farmers busy pestering the spider we were looking for. NOT the smartest thing they ever did. The spider’s venomous spines killed two before I could get the others to quit bugging the spider and stay treeformed. Actually, it was more like a tarantula then a spider. I spoke with it and discovered that it was guarding something, though what has not yet been determined. It was very intent on us leaving, so eventually I got the party to humor it and we left. (Yes I suck at forcing my agenda. I can weasel around with words, but if someone is insistent about something I leave it or walk around them to get at it. And the spider didn’t seem like the kind of thing you can easily walk around. Unless it’s really important I won’t force my way through it.) It should be investigated further later, perhaps with some more nature mages and fewer death and flame. Until then I would advise keeping away. When I have time I will set up some signs in that area saying “Keep out” with drawings of spiders on them. Lets hope the farmers who may or may not be able to read will understand. Okay then. Now switching to a different subject. About the objects found in the tablet some of you put together. The dragon circle ornament is true sight to see and to understand the other objects held within the tablet. The mana stone(s?) are to generate mana, the energy that powers magic as we know it. The ring is to transfer mana to the wielder so he or she may use it for their spell. The statue is to amplify the mana (maybe exponentially) and in my opinion is the most dangerous bit. The sword is to protect you from the backfiring of spells and the potential damage that may cause you. The sand will prevent withering if I can only understand how to use it. (Gods I would LOVE that. I’ve withered a total of what, thirty years? Between recent spell aging and the dark wood, I could use an anti-withering item.) I believe these objects were created for the sole purpose of creating fumble-proof elder sorcery. (I also believe that they should not under any circumstances be used for religious purposes. No, not even for my own religious purposes.) I recognize that this is dangerous, but if we repair the ring I believe there is no reason why we should not use it. We should find a mage smith who works in repairs ASAP. And I don’t really see the issue with generating mana so long so we don’t let it sit around. Which is maybe why I’m not a master mage, but still. So now we come to the part of this speech where I tell you about how I came by all this information. I am a mage. I suppose this is stating the obvious but I’ll say it anyway. I AM A MAGE. I’ll say it again just for kicks. I AM A MAGE. Now that I’ve got all that angering the readers out of my system, I’ll give you actual information. So anyways, I am a-- *whacked on the head by readers* Hey I was gonna say ‘Storm Mage’ this time. I was making an elder sorcery. When you make an elder sorcery, the more mana you put into creating it the less the cost per usewill be. So naturally, I wanted to pump as much mana as possible into creating the spell. So I went about finding mana. (In case you’re wondering, the spell was an OP1 storm spell “I study your mind”. Yes, OP1. I love the fact that you can invade people’s minds the minute you hit tier two storm. Totally makes up for the fact that I never use the tier spells. But back on topic.) I discovered that the party had found objects in a tablet. Among these were a mana stone (there was apparently a twin mana stone given to the group studying the tablet by Embarcarius to match the one found in the tablet) and a ring (It was broken, but it was still a ring) that acted like a lightning rod for mana. Seeing as I have no budget to pay for an alter of power (I have two gold) it seemed a good idea to look into these artifacts. Some others joined me in this. (Zane) was willing to test things so long as he could sacrifice the mana to Fenrir. I was focusing on elder sorcery and did not know much about Fenrir (only that he was Loki’s kid) so I said whatever and proceeded with testing. Admitted, that was really stupid, but hey. I didn’t know what the little statue would do. Anyways, we found that usually the mana reached the person, but sometimes it wounded them. Well, nobody likes an elder sorcery fumble blowing up in their face due to a malfunctioning magic item, so we looked for a protection object. This lead us to the little sword. That worked well enough that if you used it the ring's break would pose little threat to you. Anyways, things escalated from there till (Zane) sacrificed something like 20 mana to Fenrir using the amplifier. Then (Nick) and (Nell) came in and ended our experimentation and informed me that Fenrir was amazingly evil. I still haven't made my elder sorcery.
Two vampires were defeated in one day and it was EPIC.
Ara Silverwind Oh, hello. Yeah, I'm gonna give you another account of my experiences, just wait a minute while I formulate how I'm going to do it. Okay, here we go. I arrived at the inn where we meet for adventuring. I was hoping that something unusual would happen so as I could do something cool and interesting or maybe get information about something important. I was NOT hoping for what actually happened. We were immediately notified that there were some of our number missing. Looking around the inn I realized that Kyrin, Enyari, and (Nick's warrior character) were not present. I thought about the last time I had seen Kyrin and realized it could not have been after yesterday morning. Normally that kind of thing doesn't really worry me much, (Kyrin is very independent for her age... She often goes and does stuff on her own pretty much whenever she likes.) but maybe I should start paying more attention to it. Okay, so you get three guesses as to what I did. Yeah, I decided to go look for her. Some of us went to look for the missing people while some of the warriors in the group (Including Elwicket) went into the tombs that only a warrior can enter. We wandered the streets, finding snippets of information on some of the missing heroes, but nothing on Kyrin or Enyari. We heard something of a haunt taking them with it and something else of two people, one of whom was (Nick's Warrior), walking around in the dark. However, we found nothing about their location. We were then approached by... Actually I don't think I ever heard her name, but she was very helpful. We discussed information we had, and she suggested that we investigate the red rot in one area of town. (She had also been the one who had suggested earlier that people investigate the warrior only tombs.) Now, red rot is NASTY. It turns your flesh to reddish dust. We thought we were infected at one point just after we had saved Love. Wound up treeformed on a ship for a long time. It turned out we didn't have it, but I'm scared of it. That said, if Kyrin was out there I didn't want HER dying of it, (nor do I want anyone ELSE to die of it, I'd never wish that on someone.) and Iakona can cure it, so I decided it would be a good idea to go investigate it. I suggested investigating the red rot at the next meeting at the inn, but no, our party wanted to do other things. Like fight stuff. I did not participate in uselessly killing stuff (actually there was probably a use, but with people missing it was hardly my highest priority) and so waited for the time to come when I could go find people. Go find Kyrin and Enyari and (Nick's Warrior). (Finding everyone else was a second priority for me, which though its entirely true, I feel guilty about saying it.) I think there is something else I should mention, though it did not end up having any effect on the events which occurred. At some point something traveled through Elwicket to Nynar and to all of us from her and charmed us. I could have resisted this, but that did not actually occur to me until another charm had been placed on me later. Anyways, skip some time until we were able to go looking for people again. Patric and I were walking through the streets questioning people when we met these guys... I think they were selling stuff... But they told us that they had seen some o the missing people speak to a dark figure and change and follow the cloaked figure into the part of the city covered in red rot. The two of us decided it was our best lead yet, so we purchased protective equipment and moved into that part of town. (Nick), Emryn, and (Clara) (and maybe Nynar, I forget) caught up fairly fast. We walked through this part of town till we met a figure in a dark cloak. We attempted to create conversation, but it touched me and charmed me. I don't believe I was given any orders by it, but it did the same to some others in our group. We pursued it some ways and came to an area where we realized the people with red rot weren't people anymore. They were zombies. (at this point I realized that I didn't have to listen to the people charming me because I'm an ELF and elves don't get charmed. But anyways.) And we had to fight them. And then in the atherial realm we saw someone. It was an orc with a top knot. We had reason to believe it was a vampire. (Nick) got out of there really fast. The rest of us stayed in treeform for a while before leaving. Apparently before we got back some people went to destroy the Wizard Trade Order, an endeavor which I fear they will fail, but in which I support them completely. Apparently before we got back the people in the Warrior tombs found the missing people. And a vampire. And Kyrin, Enyari, and (Nick's warrior) were turned into lesser vampires. Apparently they were also exorcised by an elder sorcery that destroyed all the vampire's evil. Apparently people saw feathers. By the time Kyrin was resurrected I had returned. She went off and hid somewhere after being resurrected. I am amazed and relieved that she survived exorcism. Enyari too survived. However, (Nick's warrior) did not survive exorcism. This is sad. (Reese) also survived. Not knowing the others who were missing very well, I do not know how they fared. There was a meal at the inn, and then we went to destroy the orc vampire. Most of what I can tell you about that battle is that it was chaos. People getting charmed, people dying, people resurrected, things going in and out of the atherial realm. Chaos. Eventually we won. We went home. We all got disconnected from Nynar. There is a floor. It is made of cushions. Again, I'm going to let Nynar decide whether information on our trip through her mind gets written down or not. I want to get amulets enchanted to allow communication between wearers because it would be convenient.
Kyrin Silverwind New worst fear. Getting turned into a vampire and being forced to kill friends.
I'm going to Celindel to visit the Yavanna Tree with (Reese) and Emryn. (Reese) plans to sacrifice his whole being, including his soul, to the tree to fix it. Emryn and I are going to sacrifice mana in hopes of the tree leaving some fragment of his soul that we can preserve somehow.
Ara I'm tired. It's one of those days where only the world caving in around me could make me go do something. And frankly there are a few younger more energetic kids I know who would do that job for me if I asked them. So today will be a 'Lets go talk to the cat and see if she has anything insightful to say' day. But anyways. I have a chronicle to write. It's gonna be short. A summary more then a real chronicle. But I'm tired so deal with it. OK so to start out the day we went and decided to rescue some elves who were stuck at the bottom of the body of water separating pinnacle from the continent. They were stuck there because a hurricane destroyed their ships and left the circles of protection around them, which sank to the bottom of the water and people drowned. We hate undead barnacles. Very much. Yups. We got most of the way done but the last ship was surrounded by specters which was kind of rough. We wound up retreating. Okay... Um... What came after that? Oh yeah, there was that hobbit rebellion. We went to talk to the rebels and failed. And there was chaos. And one of the teacher applicants came in and put everyone to sleep, so that was fine. And we attempted an excursion to the darkness zone. We slaughtered undead. (Clara), (Kate), and I wound up running around using storm panthers to see and treeform to keep alive. While the rest of the party was stuck in a circle of protection we were poking fun at battlebones from about a hundred feet away. Fun. And then the big evil dark bat thing showed up and scared the living daylights out of the party and morgante wounded people. Now if Patric gets treeformed its like morgante death. Which is bad. (He needs to get a dispel magic cloak or something.) (Nick) managed to escape with an instant teleport scroll and died normally rather then morgante. Anyway we left the darkness after that. And Nynar and Connor got themselves killed, and Nynar was cremated. But lets not dwell on that. Let the dead stay buried. Everyone good? Okay. Now I'm going to go talk to my cat or maybe some birds or spiders. You people can listen to Kyrin. Ok? Bye.
Kyrin ... Okay then. There's my mom for you. Going and talking to cats and somehow managing to say everything as if she doesn't really care about any of it. I spend a lot of time in prison in Celindel. Unable to do much of anything. Because the people of Celindel are a bunch of paranoid fools. And I am going to hurt them someday. Someday in the near future. I am going to go in there and teach them a lesson about putting the wrong people in jail. Aren't there better people to go in jail then a couple of kids and a suicidal dwarf? Like, hm, maybe the heads of the WTO?! Of course they'd probably just break out anyway, but still. So we left the prison eventually and (Reese) sacrificed his soul to the tree in exchange for ONE LEAF. ONLY ONE. Hell if all our lives are worth as much as a leaf, what's the point? Screw using trees for shelter if we're only worth one LEAF we should be sheltering the trees! Anyway. I made my elder sorcery. And it works. And if you have a few mana worth of magelore I might use it for you. It mutates creatures, requires several rituals, and eats up lots of mana. But the effects last about a hundred years. It's really cool that now I have an elder sorcery and it's awesome and it works! It almost makes up for Celendel being full of idiots. But hey, I'm sure in time it will entirely make up for that and be freaking AWESOME. So yeah. Ok I'm done ranting. You can leave now.
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Post by ElfChild on Oct 1, 2012 15:23:01 GMT -8
Repost of the chronicles from 2011.
Xey Hai! Okay so today was my first day heroing and it was cool and kinda scary in one place and I met people and did stuff~! And I got four more arrows and a gold. So before the meeting of heroes and stuff I was wandering around outside the city and I met another party member who doesn't meet at the inn with us because he hates cities. He's a human, but he's a foresty human. His name's Rohan and he says he was raised by elves so I asked him if they were Celindel elves and he said no. He gave me a leaf with his signature on it. And he's my friend. So then everyone met and I said hi to Malkin and Caydis and made another friend who's a hobbit named River and she steals stuff off my kills for me and if we ever get more then a couple silver off my kills we'll split it, but today we just got one silver so she kept it. And also we got sent on a mission by this warrior guy who hates mages. I don't get him. I mean, I'd never want to be a mage, and they spend too much time studying to be able to get skills and stuff, but I get that they're necessary. I mean, most of my family is mages. And the people who defend the city are mostly mages. And Embarcarius and Melissa and them are mages. So mages are good and I don't like mister head of the warrior guilds. So anyways he sent us to fight orcs that we were allowed to steal stuff from but not kill. So we were on our way there and I told Rohan what we were doing and he came and I met (Andy) and she was nice and she and River and I kinda formed a group... I mean, we always seemed to stick together after that. So we fought orcs and all was well and good and I shot arrows at things. (If I had an image of a huge grinning smiley face it would go here.) And then afterwards we went back and actually got read missions and they were mostly basic combat missions and we voted and there were gladiator fights and crime and a null magic zone and other stuff and I suggested we investigated the null magic zone but nooooo and people voted for us to go and fight gladiators or fight crime and fighting crime is more productive so I did that. And so we went there and we met this Samurai person named Clueless (I don't know, that's what Bobo told us to call him.) and Clueless was nice and told us stuff. So then we questioned people and Clueless helped us and one of our party members was talking weird and there was some mage concerned about the null magic zone and some guy selling chicken and a little girl selling flowers and some thieves and a paladin of the fey and another little girl who was amazed at me and I gave her an arrow and she liked it and she asked me to play tag but I told her I had stuff to do and there were more thieves. And then we went back to the inn and got paid. (Another huge smiley face.) And then we went to the null magic zone and on the way we got attacked but River and (Andy) and I just ran past them and everyone else fought them but we didn't because none of us are great fighters quite yet though I will become a great fighter later once I'm in a class and it will be great and Rohan said I was being a coward but I said we had to get information on the null magic zone and what would have happened if they had lost and so it was all ok. And so we got to the null magic zone except it wasn't really a null magic zone and we met these three people with Pinnacle insignia but they didn't remember Pinnacle or magic or anything and I freaked out and thought there was something erasing memories so I tried to get them to leave but they didn't like it much and finally they agreed to leave if only (Connor) brought them and so that was ok and so I was all freaked out and wanted to get us all out of there but then some of the party was wounded and my friend Caydis was one of the wounded people and I thought maybe something about the area made people lose their memory and so I went and healed Caydis and I tried to explain stuff to him but I don't think I did a very good job but pretty much him and River and Malkin and (Andy) and I all left the area and I was all freaked out about what would happen to the rest of the party but apparently nothing did except to four of them who touched a weird shrine thing and it made them forget about magic and stuff but it was all ok because it was temporary. So heroing was fun and I kinda freaked out over nothing and I need to find a way to become a warrior without having to deal with the leader of the warriors guild because I don't like him. And Embarcarius says the leader of the Semi guild also hates magic and so I also have to avoid them.
Xey So today I went heroing again and I saw Caydis and Malkin and Malkin's elf friend and Rohan and a foresty dwarf who also hates cities and I think he and Rohan would get along well and then also Celewin came heroing and she's all quiet and serious all the time. So first we fought orcs and I shot things, but hobbits kept searching the orcs that they didn't take down and that's bad form so hobbits have bad form but not all of them but just most of them in our party. So I went and yelled about how hobbits had bad form at the orks and I don't think they got it but I yelled at them anyway even though it wasn't their fault. Then we got given stuff and so we went and fought some ogres but ogres have bad form because it takes too many hits to take them down and it's not really fair except I guess they're really stupid so I guess it balances out for them but in combat it's hard to kill them anyway so I yelled at them too until I stopped and we all ran away and we fought some urukai bandits and we made a base at some ruins where we could easily kill the urukai and people said they were dragon ruins and that they needed to kill the dragon but I don't think we should do that because if there ever was a dragon there it might have been a nice dragon and dragons are dangerous anyway and they can cast big spells on you real easily. Then we fought goblins and they were stupid and I told them that someone in their number was trying to kill them and they attacked each other. (Huge smiley.) Goblins are weak and stupid. Then we fought the ogres again but we found this like fort type place and (Clara) and Malkin and some other people and I all decided to stand on it and use it as a fort so we could be snipers. We won pretty easy. Then we went and fought zombies and we started out on a fort type area but then I left it to help out Caydis and Celewin when they got brought down by zombies which each of them did a couple times and I think I went down at least once too but we killed the zombies and I shot them. I shot more things today then I shot yesterday. (Huge grin.) Then we went home and we got more weapons. (Another huge grin.)
Ara A short word here. My cat is getting smarter. It's kind of creepy in a way, but also wonderful. I had her life extended so she could stay with me. She used to be my familiar. I didn't want to lose it even when our bond broke. I even got her consent to extend her life. So I got her life extended. A while ago she was looking at my elder sorcery books kind of funny. Almost as if it knew what they were for. I asked it, "Can you read that?" and it said, "Maybe." I think it's beginning to understand things. Things that are more... Sentient in nature. Maybe her having been my familiar once is partially to blame. Maybe she is living beyond the time she was meant and finding knowledge she was not meant to have. But it amuses me, and I like it. I'll never have a new familiar. That would betray Cat in a way that is hard to explain but is completely real. I can't do it. But maybe my cat will come closer to what she once was when I was connected with her. I may not be able to see through her eyes and share her thoughts, but maybe I will be able to talk to her on a higher level of thought. Maybe things will get closer to how they were. Okay so maybe that wasn't so short. But it's my piece of happiness today.
Xey It was morning. We were gathered in the inn, some of us at least because the rest were quarantined cause of bad shadow-killing diseases from yesterday, but we didn't meet anyone 'cause I think the mission we were to go on was predetermined. I was fine, and even though I had been in the evil passage I was feeling okay. We went off to fight some things and I shot urukai and it got wounded and I tried to carry the bodies because I wanted their stuff because I wanted to become a paladin of Artemis and the annoying warrior guy needed 32 gp worth of stuffs to let me be a paladin so I had to get that gp before I got more experienced or he'd make me do something else but the enemies were too heavy for me to carry by myself. So that failed. But the mission succeeded, because we won even if I didn't get any stuff. By the time we got back it wasn't REALLY morning anymore I mean it was but it wasn't early morning. Then we went to fight goblins riding tortoises and I wanted to free the tortoises but some people were talking about using them for soup and I didn't want them to do that so I yelled at them but they didn't listen to me. But we fought goblins and I carried some back and traded their stuff for paladin training and became a paladin so I can heal my friends now. Somebody cooked the tortoises he brought back so he's a bad person. Then we went to fight the black drake and I was thinking, "We have (Kate) and the drake hunter person and I'm in a class so this time we'll succeed!" except that on the way there (Kate) and the Drake hunter person got killed. So we went there to fight the drake and I got hit by its drake breath and then I died somehow so I had to go get summoned back at town and it sucks. And my bow got eaten. Right now I'm borrowing a flail and a big shield, but I'll get a bow again the minute I have the money for it. We can't have a paladin of Artemis using melee weapons can we? Oh and Malkin and I decided that mister Aelfwine is Sir Foreign Bad Towny Human because I was commenting on how Rohan was foresty and Aelfwine was towny (I think it had something to do with his having a person working for him too, but I forget) and he comes from far away and there was a reason he was bad too but I forget what it is and his . And apparently there's also a duke foreign bad towny human too. Anyways, so then some people went to train to be mages and some of us went to investigate missing humans. I ran around asking people if they had seen any disappearing humans but they mostly said not really and then we met a cloaked person and they were saying something about a well and they came with us. So we got to this well and there were people there and others had gotten there before us some of them were just people but some of them and somebody came and touched me and tried to charm me and I realized that those already here must have been charmed already and I didn't want to linger there so I pulled away and told them I was an elf and ran and they chased me some of them and I ran and soon running wasn't really a choice and I turned and prepared to fight and the borrowed shield was seriously useful but I couldn't take down two of them by myself not with melee weapons but then my friend Celia came up and she's a centaur but I guess nobody had tried to charm her because she helped me and defeated my pursuers and then I decided that the people with charm were maybe half vampires like one of my friends and that half vampires don't know everything so I covered my face and ears and went back so I would look human and maybe I would get info from their attempts to charm me but by that time the cloak person was uncharming people and so it was okay but I kept my hood up and kept the cloth covering my face on and then some of us investigated the well. We got a rope, and (Scott) was slowly lowered down with his torch. He found nothing until he way back up when he found a loose brick that he could slip out. We brought him back up and I pulled out a piece of paper and gave it to him so he could look for more loose bricks and map the pattern of them if there was one. Then we lowered him down again slowly. There was a pattern and he mapped it. Then he got to the water and didn't want to go under with the paper so he brought the paper up. I looked at it and the pattern looked like stairs. By this time (Zane) had started to make his way down using the empty spaces as steps. We lowered (Scott) down again and he was feeling under the water and got a ways down and they dropped something on a string down to see how far down it went and I don't think they found a bottom. And then I heard them scream and I felt my self being pulled in. Celia and another centaur held me there and then helped pull. We tried as hard as we could to pull (Scott) back up and we were suddenly thrown back and up came the rope with his arm still holding his dagger in it. I shouted his name down not really expecting a response but desperately hoping for one. There wasn't one. That was when I ran to the mage school. I didn't let go of the rope I wasn't thinking about the fact that I was holding it all I knew was that something--probably vampire related--had just pulled a friend down into a really dark creepy well that might contain a secret passage and if it did we might never find him. I arrived at the mage school and tried to get into contact with Embarcarius (and, thankfully, succeeded.) and I told him about the whole thing starting from the charming and ending with my friend's arm getting ripped off. He used healing magic on me and asked me if I was feeling pain and I wondered why but then I remembered that undead feel pain when you heal them. Then he removed charm on me which also confused me because I was an elf but he said it was a precaution and he said he would do something about it. Then a bunch of us all went to the well and I told all the elves to cover their ears and faces and some of the humans too. We were walking there and a bunch of people tried to come with us and make us take our hoods off and I was nervous and then they attacked us and I got hit and was in pain and then I was healed and I healed Celewin and another person... And then we went to the edges with a life mage and waited for the combat to end. It did and we resurrected all the dead and moved on, but I stayed close to Celewin after that. We reached the well and lots of people went down it and there were some people around and one attacked me so I was all paranoid and Celewin was cutting her hand to bits so I kept jumpstart healing her and this shadow man who was a party member kept saying that pain didn't help anything and I believed it but I don't think Celewin did. At some point we were all around the well (those of us that didn't go down there and I was really scared and there were people screaming down there and then there was a really creepy feeling in the air and I was starting to think that something really incredibly bad was gonna come out of the well when suddenly all five mage teachers appeared and at that point everything sort of seemed almost not real and Embarcarius said it was not that bad and Nellion Echos teleported everything out and we all went back to town and people got resurrected and everyone was okay. Doesn't that seem almost a little too good an ending to that mission? Anyways, if more bad half vampires show up I'm gonna MURDER THEM before they can hurt my friends. Then I think more stuff happened I don't remember but then we were talking to the Summoner mage person and he mentioned how he saw different planes and I remembered that my older sister is still waiting for these deities called the Sisters to come back and maybe they were inside a person and so I asked if the Sisters were still around on the other planes and he went into lecture mode and talked about gods and the many planes they exist on and multiverses and how every god created their own multiverse and got totally off topic so I reminded him of the original question and he told me so far as he knew the sisters weren't on any other planes of existence that he knew of so I asked if they could be inside a person and he said something but I couldn't hear it because the party got tired of it and started yelling at him to stop already which made me disappointed because now that I know a little I wanted to know more... See, that's why I'm a historian so far as tradecrafts go. I find information and I can't just have only the useful shards of it I want to know all of it. Unless there's a sense of completion I don't want to stop learning about stuff. So after he started that lecture type thing I can't just let it drop. Now I want to know all about magic even if I will never be a mage. So anyway more stuff happened and a while later we got the party to vote for a lecture from the mage on duty. That was Melissa and she told us all about vampires and stuff and it's really interesting. But really, I don't get what makes part vampires so scary so long as they're good. So what they have evil in them. I probably do too, and so does everyone else. I guess if I wasn't an elf I might have a little more caution. Still. Hmph. So anyways, now I'm gonna continue studying magic, and I got permission to sit in at like, open lectures and stuff. But I still can't take classes. I wonder if there was a way I could become a student at the school without actually becoming a mage... Maybe I could give them some kind of payment or something. So that's my goal for now. Learn everything about magic. And history. And other planes of existence. Oh yeah, and maybe I can find some way to make Artemis happy while I'm at it.
Xey Day 1 I showed up at the inn early afternoon. I saw lots of people but we all got told to fight paladins of Grummish. Grummish is an evil orc god. Apparently he has a paladin with chain lightning, and he was dangerous, so we were gonna try to avoid HIM, but we had to drive his forces away from a group they were going to join up with. So we went out to fight them and we got hurt and we lost twice and won once and I ran away the last time when it looked like we were losing because I didn't really have any chance of helping the party because I was being chased and stuff. And also I don't want to die. I need to get more powerful so I don't have to run ever. But I'm not at that point yet. I'm working on it. Most of the people there made it out alive though, even though they got left on the field. It's good they had Malkin with them because she was a life mage and could heal people once the evil Paladins left.
Then the party voted to do small things. I went to Nellion Echos who was the only mage teacher I could contact easily at the time. I asked her if I could work out some deal so I could take classes at the mage school. Like, actual classes instead of just sitting in on open lectures. She asked me what my trade was and I answered historian and she said I could work in the library at the school and in exchange for that I could go to classes when I wasn't working so I was thrilled. That not only lets me take classes sometimes but it puts me in a LIBRARY during much of my time. I love the fact that my trade gives me ready access to books. Also I got Aramissa to teach me some stuff. Aramissa knows EVERYTHING. She says she doesn't but I'm sure she does. She knows way more then I do. So she told me some stuff about elder sorcery and undeads and dragons and things. Then we tried to teach the guy who speaks in a different language to speak common. He's from somewhere way far away and he doesn't know. I wonder why he came to Pinnacle if he can't talk to anybody...?
Then we went to fight Geb. They were powerful and there were lots of them and I shot them and then I ran out of arrows and I lost my bow because I was trying to defend myself with it and the string caught on the weapon of the person attacking me so I dropped it and ran away except that I got hit by another person's weapon anyways so that sucked. Our forces regrouped and I borrowed a longsword from Malkin. I gave her a dagger I had picked up earlier in exchange for use of her sword until I could get another bow. Then we fought Geb again. I was more cautious this time but I did shoot them and that was good and I carried some of their bodies away. Rohan helped me. Then we fought one more wave of them and I got three daggers and then Rohan and helped me carry bodies of Geb people back. We got back to town and I exchanged the Geb people's stuff for 16 gold. Then I sold two of the daggers to a party member for 4 gp so then I got a fancy raven amulet and a bow. The raven amulet is so I can have my mom put her elder sorcery into it. The bow is so I can please Artemis and so I could give Malkin's sword back. Gotta say, the longsword is a pretty decent weapon, but I'm gonna stick to hunters tools.
Day 2 Last night Celewin and Caydis slept over at our house because their parents were doing something. There are lots of people living with us now. Theres my family and then there's Cat and Malkin and Celewin and Caydis. I don't know if Cat counts as part of my family or not. Cat is older then me, but she's a cat. It's weird when I actually think about it. We have Emryn too sometimes, and there's always lots of animals other then Cat because the animals are like members of Mom and Dad's guild or something. I want to be part of that guild.
This morning we went to the inn where the party meets together and we were met by Embarcarius. We went to go fight a death knight because he told us to and he said it was urgent. I went along but I didn't really fight much. So we walked and we ran into Geb and they told us they were claiming that land for themselves and I said ok can we pass and they said so long as you're ok with this being our land and I said fine because I figured it'd be better to fight on the way back then to diminish our forces by fighting on the way there. But inevitably someone in our party attacked and we fought them and we won without too much trouble. So then we walked on and we ran into more Geb forces and a Death Knight and we fought Geb and one person fought the Death knight and it got treeformed and we stayed there to guard it while Rohan's condor familiar went for help with one of the hobbits in our group. A long time passed and I talked to Celewin a little but she wasn't very talkative which isn't surprising because she's never very talkative and I talked to Malkin and some of her friends who followed deities of archery and we decided we would make a guild or something of followers of archery gods and we're planning on making a temple if we can get the money. Anyway that stuff happened and then a bunch of undead showed up. I stayed near the treeformed death knight. The undead seemed to ignore those of us guarding it and it was kinda weird standin' in the middle of a battle and just being ignored. At some point I noticed a bow on the ground and I pointed it out to Celewin and she went and got it. Then the nature mage with us, not Rohan, a different nature mage, untreeformed the death knight we were guarding. I jumped back and tried to stay out of its weapon range but it didn't try to attack me. It just went off. The nature mage says it even told them where a paper we were looking for was, and (Kate) pulled it out of thin air. Not sure how she did it, but she did. I want to be able to pull magical papers out of thin air. Anyway I think we won and then we went back.
Then we went and investigated the well. I had a rope and I took it there with us. We walked through town and met people. I asked about vampires and undeads. I hated the people. Condescending nobles and even street-sweepers assume I'm a normal kid, assume I'm too young to be out here fighting to protect Pinnacle, think I'm joking when I talk about vampires. They told me to go home and one of them said I was inventing a fantasy. I jumpstart healed them all to make sure none of them were undeads. They mocked me. They laughed. I told myself that one day when I'm incredibly powerful I can go to them again and wipe the knowing smiles off of their faces and they won't look down on me anymore because I'll be so much stronger then them. I told myself I just needed to wait and train. We reached the well and I had Celia hold one end of my rope and I started down into the well holding onto the other end. Celewin told me she was coming with me so I nodded and she came. We spiraled down into the well using the steps we had discovered last time to work our way around until we hit water level. Sir Foreign Towny Human also known as Aelfwine came down and shone light. Then (Kate) came down and looked around. She didn't find anything either. I tied rocks to my feet to make me sink, tied the rope around my arm, and dropped to the bottom a couple times. Nothing there. Nothing. Except really old bricks. Probably from the last age, but not too interesting. So anyway nothing was there and it was a false alarm and we went back.
Then people went to fight off the last of Geb but I stayed back to do elder sorcery training with the mages. We learned stuff but not that much stuff and we learned about dreams a little. It wasn't as interesting as I expected it to be. Oh well.
Then people came back from fighting Geb. A few of them got their stuff stolen. They had taken (Zane) captive. Basically we needed to save him and get other people's items back. Somebody suggested the annoying warrior guy fight them with morgante, and he actually agreed. Celewin and I went along.
Magden was carrying morgante and I felt scared of it. He said we couldn't run away and that scared me more. But I decided I was gonna do my best to live and win and make sure my friends did the same. I told Celewin not to die, and she told me not to die. Then Caydis came and grabbed Celewin by the shoulders and told her not to die. I didn't understand why really, because he seemed really really serious like he thought she might actually TRY to get killed. Anyways, mostly Celewin and I stuck together during that encounter. I went down a couple times, she went down a couple times. Then there was this one time when she was wounded and I pretended to be dead next to her and I jumpstart healed her and then she pretended to be dead too and then when nobody was near us we got up and ran and we got separated. Then I tried sticking closer to the annoying warrior guy because I couldn't see where Celewin was and it seemed safer near him because he had guards and because enemies seemed kind of afraid of him. Eventually though, that plan was doomed to fail and it did soon enough. I got stabbed and nobody healed me. So I can't really tell you how the battle ended, only I know that annoying warrior guy survived and we lost.
Ara Okay. I'm confused and very worried. Nobody tells me anything, claiming it's for my safety, which I can't really dispute given that knowledge brings danger. One of my oldest friends tells me she's going to probably get killed, and then the same night she's doing this Terisio and Enyari drop off Celewin and Caydis at my house and disappear too. Is is wrong for me to want to have some idea of what is going on that is making people I know disappear into thin air? I don't really care at this point if it puts me in danger because I'd rather try to protect my friends then live in relative safety for the rest of my life. Also, Celewin wakes up in the middle of the night screaming and my attempts to comfort her don't seem to do anything. It makes me wonder about her. If Enyari and Terisio were HERE I would ask them about it, but if they were here she wouldn't be at my house anyway. Caydis claims that the screaming is normal, which makes it more worrying, not less. Seriously not sure what I am supposed to do, but I guess I'll do my best to deal with things as they come up.
Kyrin This is weird and annoying. Terisio and Enyari dropped off their adopted children at our house, and now it's hard to get any sleep what with the little girl screaming in the middle of the night and everything. I resolved to sleep outside where I can't hear her racket, except it's cold outside. I've been sleeping during the day more then at night. At least people in my family don't tend to hang around too much during the day. Even weirder the human kid is as old as I am, and is really attractive. Which makes it really freaking awkward to try to talk to him, because he's Terisio's kid and Terisio is the same age as I am. Rrrrrrrgh. I wonder if Emryn will let me get her up at night so I have someone to spend time with besides Cat, who is really boring since I can't talk with her.
Xey Celewin has nightmares every night and bloodies herself while she's screaming. I decided to sleep in the same room as her so I can heal her if she hurts herself too badly. Caydis says it's normal for Celewin to do that, but nobody is supposed to wake up screaming in the middle of the night regularly. Maybe nightmares are why Celewin never smiles. It makes me wonder a lot about her. I hope she's ok. I don't like it when my friends are unhappy. I'm gonna pray to Artemis to help Celewin with her nightmares.
Xey Mom is dead. She left a week or so ago and then I didn't see her again. Cat disappeared too. Kyrin told me Mom is dead and isn't coming back. Anonymous showed up to take care of us. Anonymous is nice, but she isn't Mom. I miss Mom. Kyrin says she doesn't know how Mom died. So does Anonymous. Maybe if I pray to Artemis enough Mom will come back. Maybe if I'm a good paladin Artemis will bring her back. I cry a lot at night, but I have to be ok during the day so I can protect everyone.
First thing in the morning and we were all gathered to meet a... um... Foreign Dignitary or something. A whole bunch of older heroes were there too, including Kyrin and her friend Emryn. They had us all stand in a circle of protection with our stuff right outside. I was ok with that but Kyrin seemed really nervous, and so did some others. I wasn't sure why until people came in with Morganti and I realized I couldn't leave without getting past them. A null magic field came down around us and this lady came in. She was wearing a silver circlet and it was revealed that she was in fact high queen of Roekron. And for some reason she needed to negotiate with Hostor. Well, I guess I'm kinda honored that the High Queen of Roekron wants to spend time around us, but I want her to leave. I don't like the morganti her friends carry.
Then we went to kill a wraith. That was ok. Lots of people died, and I mostly healed stuff. I don't think anybody died permanently. But there were lots of undeads and they were powerful. But some of the older heroes went and killed most of the things. The things came out of the Atherial(Is that how it's spelled?) realm sometimes and they were scary. I dragged people away from them. We won, but thanks to more powerful heroes. I want to be a more powerful hero. I want to be able to kill wraiths and stuff and protect people so I don't have to run all the way across the battlefield to find someone who is powerful to protect my friends for me. We went back to investigate the cave later. There were two things of interest in there. One. Various corpses with items on them. Not touched for the most part except for one that someone recognized. Two. A corpse. In a ritual circle. It was a vampire, and it crumbled to dust when touched. It looked kind of disturbing. There was nothing else of interest there. I suppose that's it from me for today.
Kyrin Ah, it's that time again. By 'that time' I mean the time when we all gather in an inn and do missions and squabble over what's important. Sorry if my view of this offends anyone, but I find it amazing that I gather in an inn with a party over half of whom I can't really trust and a good part of that who don't share very many of my views in the first place. Thankfully, one can get enough done even with that that sometimes it's worthwhile hanging out with people who follow evil gods and still expect me to trust them just because of the power they provide. I can safely say that I could not deal with most of the things we encounter on my own. The exception likely being situations regarding particularly stupid goblins. Yeah, I'm not a proficient fighter by anyone's standards. I'm good at running away though. Anyway, it's also time when life gets interesting so I like to record things. Because gods know it's hard enough to figure out events that happened before I was born even when I DON'T discover that there's very little record of them. Yeah, I'd rather those that follow have records. So here we go.
There are things that made it a bad day before anything even happened, and they had to do with Terisio and Enyari visiting about Mom's death. I don't feel like talking about that. Maybe later, if it becomes relevant. But there's such thing as a record that's too detailed and I believe my family's personal business is not something the future needs to know about.
Morning. We were all gathered together. Anyone who deemed themselves important was there, and there was talk of a foreign dignitary or something. I didn't really care about the world thinking I was important, I was there for whatever information the foreign dignitary had. There was a festival before the actual meeting-type-thing. A lot of nobles were there, as well as adventurers. Most people were wearing nice clothing, which bugs me only because I don't see the point unless it's magical and I don't think I've ever heard of anyone dressing up fancy because their nicest shirt gave them giant strength. Nah, usually it's a 'lets conform to society's standards' thing. Personally, I don't care about society's standards, so naturally I was wearing a tunic and a muddy cloak. If you don't want a muddy cloak you don't wander around sitting down next to various trees right after it rains. Last I checked people don't let me decide when it rains. Enough said. They finally let us into a room where we would be spoken to by the foreign dignitary. They forced us to put down our items outside a circle of protection and stand in the circle. This made me nervous. If someone had wanted to bring in a few Morganti weapons or a magical aura and start a bloodbath, nobody could've done anything about it. No particular personal experiences, but I've heard of situations... Well, anyway, we all stood there murmuring among ourselves. The mage teachers were all there, minus Melissa. I wondered what was keeping her. There was some hatred in that feeling I will admit, and it was not hatred Melissa deserved. Even so, it's hard not to hold a grudge under the circumstances. (Okay, maybe my family's personal business does matter here.) Anyway, at that point the circle was activated and for better or for worse we were trapped inside it. I found myself tracing the mark on my right hand. I don't THINK I ever chronicled about how I got that mark, and I don't intend to tell it now. Only, that mark is not my friend. I doubt this particular mannerism of mine means anything to you all, it's just something I do when I'm nervous and don't have anything to hold. Then a null magic field came down over the group. Things just keep getting worse. Then people came in from the only door in the circle, and also a door in the wall. Three carried Morganti. One of those had a Morganti blade that particularly worried me, though I was not sure why. If you have never been in the presence of three Morganti blades while trapped inside a circle of protection with no equipment in a null-magic field, I wouldn't advise it. There's an overwhelming feeling of fear, both from the Morganti and the fact that you know no matter what you do you cannot escape from it. Images ran through my head, all worst case scenarios. I knew there was at least one person with martial arts in the room, not counting possibly the three who had just walked in. I know they can't kill you with Morganti if you are already dead. Death is risky for an elf, but not as risky as fighting Morganti. I could have myself killed. Worst case scenario my soul ascends to whatever the gods have for us after we die. It's better then having your soul destroyed to feed a black piece of metal. At this point the High Queen of Roekron made an entrance and saved me from further thoughts of self preservational suicide with a wonderful speech that essentially meant: "I'm here. I'm talking to your Government. I want/require your cooperation. Sorry if my precautions made you uneasy." Uneasy? No, not at all. I hate that woman. My view of her didn't improve over the couple other times I saw her. Finally she left and they let us leave. I grabbed my stuff, went home, and sat in my room for a while recovering from 'meeting a foreign dignitary' while the party went to fight undead.
I got back to the inn a while later to discover that people still weren't back yet, so I waited. They took a while. Patience is not my strong suit however, so I wandered off and came back a while later to discover that not only had they returned but they had also left again. So this time I sat down and didn't move until they got back. So I'm standing there and we're meeting for adventures and our favorite person of the day comes in. That's right. High Queen and her Morganti-wielding bodyguards. They came through into the inn, knocking out some, pushing away others. The man with the particularly bad Morganti blade WOUNDED someone with it. If that person hadn't had a horse for a blessing he would be dead and his soul would be on the way to the underworld with a gash in its side. Now, as I said before, my reaction to the first time I saw them was inner terror and minor freakout for a while afterward. My reaction this time was skepticism. Because once I got over the shock of being trapped in a circle of protection with Morganti, it occurred to me that these are the LAST people I want pushing me around. So when they asked about if we wanted unification in Roekron my question was the defiant one. "Unification under whom?" Because if they were handing Roekron to us, fine. But I wasn't about to become the High Queen's subject. I'd heard too much bad of the WTO for that. Naturally, she made the argument that her blood entitled her to rulership. Wonderful. Because I totally need to be ruled by some incompetent with pure blood. The party was, however, overwhelmingly in favor of unification despite the fact that the rulers would be the same people who had just now Morganti wounded their friend. From a recent conversation with Enyari, I am aware that I am not the only one with high dislike of the High Queen. I may deduce that I am, however, the only one who is either foolish enough or openly defiant enough to essentially alert her of that fact. Which makes me feel SO much better. The High Queen did not bother us too much longer and she and her bodyguards finally vacated the inn.
The lights in the inn went dim then. All the torches went out. A cloaked figure made an appearance. Familiar voice, told us to read the inverse. I didn't get what was being spoken of, mostly, I suppose, because I didn't try to figure it out. I, like most of the party, was too concerned with the strange figure and who she was. (It was definitely a she. I knew by her voice.)
Okay, so after all that wonderful excitement that required dealing with people, we finally went on a mission. We were going to some temple that had been discovered. We found some kobolds on the way, one of which I killed, and also some harpies, one of which I killed. The difference is that I killed the harpy with death ray which is quick and I assume painless and relieves no stress whatsoever, whereas the kobold I sliced to death with my longsword. That actually didn't make me feel any better either, and it got me a short talking to from Enyari. I told her I'd stop murdering kobolds. At that point there weren't really any kobolds LEFT. The party can do that. We arrived at the temple. Something about fire all over the place, nice stone carvings, and in pretty nice condition for old ruins. We wandered around, and somebody next to me found a door and opened it while I was in the middle of examining the stonework. There was a phoenix in there. I hopped back, but at the same time I was almost certain it would not hurt me. A gentle warmth came from it, the kind you get when you're sitting in a forest on a summer night and it's not too cold but you have a fire going anyway and it's nice and feels welcoming. I think it was the object of worship at those ruins. Someone tried to stab it. I leapt back as a jet of flame shot at the offending party member, wounding and maybe even killing them. Another tried a similar stunt and got the same treatment. I decided I liked this phoenix. Maybe it would teach the party the rules of Don't Attack Randomly. At any rate, it was just then that it moved aside to show a passage. The passage emitted the same happy warmth, and I walked into it trustingly. I figure, it's a phoenix. If it wanted to kill me it could've used inferno aura already. Others followed, and we found ourselves in a large room containing five chests and beautiful stonework. I want to revisit the place sometime if only to get down sketches of it. I pointed to the chests and asked the phoenix, "For us?" It nodded. I waited a few moments nervously before the party began to get the same idea. The truth is, I felt nervous about just taking without permission. But I suposed I had just asked and gotten permission, so I lifted the oldest of the boxes and others followed suit. We left, thanking the phoenix. That left the question of opening the boxes, which seemed to be locked. I brought those that had been able to enter the phoenix's temple to my house, shooed away younger siblings, and we set about opening them. The boxes cost a mana to open, and contained amazing magic items and more gold then I think I've ever seen in one place at one time. We divided this up, identifying the items and giving each item to the person who wanted it and felt they could use it. Those that did not receive an item got over a hundred gold, and I think everyone was pretty happy with the outcome. I got a magic item, a rapier made by the sea elves. It is a beautiful blade, and powerful as well though it drains my mana. I figure I won't be using it on the same day as my elder sorcery anyways. My elder sorcery, after all, takes all day to cast. I'm thinking of following the Phoenix, if it is a deity. It was nice to us, and I haven't found another deity to follow after the sisters, so I figure I could try to pay the Phoenix back by becoming a follower...
We met again in the inn. I had only one thing on my agenda for the day, and only two missions I really wanted to get done. I decided my agenda would be an object of voting for the party, and I suggested that we look for Cat. I was amazed when over half the party raised their hands in favor of finding my mother's ex-familiar, but I suppose that means I have more in common with some people then I knew, or at least I had friends within the party. So some of us--some friends, a mage, and a journeyman--went to look for Cat while the rest of the party went to fight Gruumsh Paladins. Anonymous came with us. We set up a system for talking to animals. Anonymous would speak to them, and a mage who was with us and could understand them would write down what they said. The rest of us unenlightened folk would stare over his shoulder and tell Anonymous if we had anything for her to say, First we talked to a bird. Funny, that. It told us it knew of a cat, it didn't like cats, and it wouldn't help us find cats. I had Anonymous tell it we would take the cat away, and after that it had no problem with helping us. It lead us to a black cat. She was willing enough to help. Anonymous asked her if she had seen Cat. She responded by saying she knew lots of cats. I showed her a drawing of Cat. Her response to this was "Why does she smell like burnt wood?" and then, "Why is she flat?" We did get something done, however, when we told her that Cat was Ara's familiar and Ara had died. The cat knew who we were talking about and lead us through the school to the life mages area, and then upwards, to a place near Embarcarius's study. And there we found Cat, trapped behind a circle of protection. Cat would not have talked to us if Anonymous had not been able to guild order her to do so. As Mom's familiar, Cat was a member of the Animal Army. This had not ceased to be the case when their bond broke, though Cat no longer went on adventures after that. Cat told us things that worried me, and things that shed light on how Mom had died. I have a full record on paper of what she said, but like other things, I will not tell you about it. Maybe later. But... Embarcarius was keeping Cat in there to PROTECT her. From the 'people with the black weapons' or something like that. (I'll go check the record later.) Because she saw Mother and Nyanar (Geez it's so weird using that name. But she was alive that whole time and I know that only because Terisio and Enyari visited me recently and... Anyways.) heal Melissa. Who do we know who have black weapons? Yup, the Queen's bodyguards. There are likely others too, but... It's worrying. But Cat obviously knows things. When she can come out again I need to talk to her... Through Anonymous maybe, but I do need to talk to her. I'll code and post the written record of what Cat said sometime. Later.
We returned to the inn and did not have to wait long before the remainder of the party returned. They had evidently been successful. What else was there to do? Being somewhat paranoid, I suggested goblin spies. Another person, a zombie follower of Hel (I can give you the talk on my views on THAT later) suggested the Prairie Goblins. Between the two, investigating the goblin spies won out and we were on our way. We got out there to discover that the goblins were not spying for anything in particular, they were simply staring at hobbits. I bored of this after a few minutes of not finding anything useful. Emryn suggested we tell them their mission was over, so we did. We told them that they had done a good job spying and they had to go back to HQ to get shiny things. They all came and asked for directions every few feet so I brought them back to Pinnacle. I then told them they were the secret spy forces of Pinnacle and they should go right out side the city and help Pinnacle. Now they claim to be spying for Pinnacle. Wonderful. We now have a bunch of goblins on our side. My work there is done.
We then decided to take out the last of the Geb forces. Though this mission did not promise to be particularly interesting outside its large potential for bloodshed, it did get rid of a possible long term threat, which was good enough for me. A zombie follower of Hel asked to borrow a storm panther from Emryn and (Clara) and I suppose me as well. I was in favor of letting him just for this one battle. Emryn said no, as she hated Hel and wanted to discourage followers. (Clara), however, after some convincing, agreed. Emryn and I agreed that we would never allow this again but for now it was sort of OK. On the way to fight Geb, we encountered four people in full plate. One spoke to Terisio, and one gave four of us coins. Silver coins. What did I know about silver coins? It had something to do with vampires. I know more now, but that's all I knew at the time. So I freaked out mentally. (Hint. I have a completely rational fear of vampires.) Then Emryn and the two paladins who had received coins as well started asking what they meant, and so the whole party started asking what they meant, so I freaked out mentally again for reasons that have more to do with not knowing what to tell them then anything else. I realized at this point that Terisio wasn't there anymore, which sucked because he was the person I would have asked about it. The actual Geb forces were really pretty easy though... When we got back I looked around the inn for Enyari or Terisio but neither of them were around.
We then went to fight Ogres. That was amazing. It was the fastest I've ever seen ogres killed. Each wave took two minutes tops...
We returned to the inn one last time and the High Queen came in again. No more Morganti casualties, thankfully, but the bodyguards were there, all three. Apparently she and the council of Pinnacle are at an "impasse". The amount that I actually cared could be measured at between none and a little bit. She and her bodyguards left. The lights dimmed again and there was an entrance by the same person as earlier, who we all had deduced at that point to be Melissa. She was carrying a Morganti dagger and a head. The head looked like that of one of the queens guards, the one who hadn't been on the WTO council. Where the neck should have been bleeding there was dripping black goo. She asked if we had read the inverse, which we couldn't say we had. She said something else which I forget, and then she said she was gonna go 'be in a coma'. Emryn and I tried to follow her since we thought maybe she'd know about the silver coins, but we heard a sound once we got to the mage school and then we lost track of her. Secret door I'm guessing.
So that was adventuring. I'll chronicle again next time or maybe if something interesting happens.
Kyrin It was morning, and I was standing in the inn listening to the wonderful sound of party members who did stupid things being threatened. We were going on a mission. Two, actually. And it was being made clear that those who went and fooled around would be killed. I played with a spellstone, rolling it across my hand. If I used its incantation it would become death ray. There were some members of the party I would not mind having an excuse to kill. That said, I would rather survive then have basis to kill them so I put the small black object in my pocket and left it be. I stopped by my house on the way out of town, and Anonymous asked Cat if she would please come with us. Cat agreed and came on her first mission in over eighteen years. I suppose, however, that eighteen years is no longer any longer to her then it is to me. A good dose of my elder sorcery can do that. I had mobile brace equipped for my elder sorcery presently, which I promptly forgot about the minute we left town. Anyway, we walked a little ways and got stampeded by Hyena/Person things. I walked off into the water, and Anonymous somehow got herself and Cat past them as well. I believe there were two others who also escaped. We came back and I let the life mages do their thing. Terisio had appeared which was weird. He's like that I guess. One minute there the next not or vice versa. I went off on a long rant about how the party has no idea how to escape properly and why do they stand and fight things when it's not necessary and worst case scenario they could have jumped in the water and I would have saved them. Enyari stopped me at that point and asked if the party KNEW that they would be gotten if they jumped in the water. I replied that no they probably didn't and went to go tell them. We walked for a while, I forget if we ran into anything and if we did it was probably something trivial. We crested a hill and saw a small group of Nonas Guard, some ghoul things, and something that I only learned about recently called a deathguard. And maybe some other nasty stuff too. I took down the deathguard twice with blinding strike, which kills them instantly. But besides that I was mostly running around the field not really accomplishing much. I turned once and saw something with morganti, maybe it was in the Etherial plane, I forget, but I saw it. I think Terisio brought it down with his multishot medicine ball arrows. It was treeformed and exorcized. Enyari told me afterward that the thing had been a vampire. Okay. Cat was fine and with Anonymous, who is very good at keeping people safe so long as they aren't being attacked by nature mages. It was around this point that I realized that the first adventure Cat had been part of in a long time had been one in which morganti had been present. I wondered what this said about our relationship with Cat. I also briefly wondered what would happen if we tried polymorphing Cat into a human. Maybe an experiment I can do sometime? (With Cat's permission of course.) Anyway, presently we were arriving at our destination. Some place that was something of a shrine for a line of hobbit protectors. We had some dwarves with us, and I was not surprised when the door they found was built for centaur sized people, as the line of protectors had been centaurs. We walked down into the passage and found ourselves in a room. It was large, and oddly had engraved upon the walls pictures of elves with blades. The Neragoth, I assumed. I had heard stories about encounters with them when I was smaller, though those had never been the stories I really wanted to hear. Why hear about trying to trade for magic items when you can hear about the quest to save Love? Still, I did hear a few of the trading magic items stories too. The Neragoth Elves tended to carry swords, not bows, in those stories, and they HATED orks. I didn't remember much else besides that they forged Neragoth Blades, which I could have figured out on my own. I turned to see one of the images peel off the wall. It was about six inches thick, and seemed to be able to move as one of us would, only not quite the same as he was flat. I remembered a line from the poem that had sent us here. Ask a question and be on your way. And so I went towards that ends. "Is this the place where we are supposed to ask a question?" I asked and inwardly laughed at myself. That WAS a question. It seemed ok with this and went back to being on the wall. Around then someone found a blue stone. It was flat and shiny and probably was a key to something. Enyari touched it. I heard in my head a word. Shadows. Enyari asked some questions to try to answer it and I realized this was a new sort of riddle. I compulsively wanted to answer this thing if there was another chance. Yeah, that comes from the mark on my hand. Riddle. Something a certain faceless jester had left me after I had not put forth an answer to a riddle of his. Fortunately I was deprived of that opportunity by a bunch of the carvings peeling off the wall and attacking us, and then by Terisio getting there first after we had defeated them. The next was River, an Terisio answered with the riddle that went to the answer, a riddle even I know. What has a mouth but never sleeps, has a bed but never eats, etc. A door swung open and we walked through it. Another room, similar to the last one. It held similar carvings, only opposite from us were carvings of orks, goblins, and something transparent looking. It was clear they were the enemies of the elves on the walls. Someone found another shiny blue stone and the zombie Hel follower touched it and the word sunshine came from it. He recited the riddle that went with it, and another door opened up. We were in a hall devoid of carvings. On the floor was a chest of gold and gems, but the hall went on and it was decided that gold and gems might be a trap to tempt us or something, so we kept walking. We came into a final room. There were footprints on the ground, as if someone had been there only moments ago, and on the floor lay two silveel blades. We picked them up and went to Melissa, who gave one to one party member and another to Anonymous to use as she liked. Anonymous gave it to Emryn as an inheritance. I have to admit I was slightly jealous of Emryn, not because she got silveel, but because she had gotten something from her mother. My parents have raised me and given me food and shelter my whole life as well as teaching me many things. When I think about it I shouldn't really feel entitled to anything else. It's just, I dunno. I wish I had something besides my mom's cloak.
Next we went to help earthquake victims. What can I say? We helped dying peasants and I was remedied of the hobbit goat fight thing. Someday when that's going on I will have to go interrupt it and hurt anyone who tries to kill the goats. Killing animals for meat is bad enough without killing them for sport too. Unlike urukai and harpies animals tend not to go out of their way to hurt people, so why do we go out of our way to hurt them?
Also I probably made an enemy of the teacher from the WTO whose name I forget and learned about what the group that went west did. I won't write it here unless (Scott) does not chronicle it in which case I will do my best to recount it from what he told me. Hearing it from him is better then going through another layer of possible (even probable) mistakes hearing it from me.
It turns out there's a character limit that I've hit. Apparently 2011 will be featured in multiple posts.
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Post by ElfChild on Oct 1, 2012 15:33:49 GMT -8
2011 reposts continued.
Xey I can't talk to Celewin and I'm worried about her. Her mom said she was with Embacarious and I wonder why. Then Embarcarious said I couldn't talk to her. I wonder what's wrong with her and if she's sick or something because she didn't show up today. Maybe Artemis will make her get better. Artemis still hasn't brought Mom back. Maybe Mom likes it better in the place she went when she died. Maybe that's why Artemis isn't bringing her back. I hope so because if Mom is happy where she is at then that's better then if she's trapped there. I wonder if she misses us though. I miss her still.
We went to fight Dark Heroes. I went because last time I fought dark heroes I got a whole suit of armor and a helmet and I figured I could pick up lots of stuff to sacrifice to Artemis to help Celewin. It's weird, at first when I started following Artemis all I wanted was a familiar, but people keep getting hurt and I keep having to pray for other stuff because I would rather have everyone be ok then have a familiar. Anyway we fought Dark Heroes and I found a body with a magic item so I dragged it away as a bear because bears are big and carry lots of stuff. Then I ran into the zombie person my sister hates. He had a body too and wanted help carrying it. I don't like undead but he's a party member so I helped him out. We didn't want the annoying warrior guy taking the stuff and we didn't want to go to the thieves because they would take some of the stuff so we went and hid in my house until Celia got there and could thief everything off them for a smaller cut of the stuff, and she would use it instead of whatever the thieves guild does with all that stuff, or at least she would use the money from it and it will be useful to her instead of strangers. A few minutes after we got home and I had reverted there was a really creepy feeling like when there's an undead and it disappears and mister zombie said that the two of them had left their bodies and all their stuff was ours now and we didn't need a thief. So we separated the magic stuff from the normal and silver stuff and mr zombie took the magic from the body he had and I took the magic shield from the guy I had brought, and we decided we would split the money from the two other weapon sets we had found, except we never wound up selling them and I think they're still there on the floor. There were two of them and one was silver. Plus some armor and a helm which was donated to the party. Somebody had discovered that the pretty blue stuff that my sister's sword is made of is a new metal and does special stuff to undead. They named it StarSteel. Then we fought more dark heroes and I didn't get anything else.
Kyrin I named a new type of metal today! Not many people can say they've done that. But there are more exciting things to talk about then that. You know what? I like fairies. Especially when they are friendly. I hope I meet that one again. I'm not making sense, am I? Here. I got a bunch of people to come to the Phoenix temple with me. I told them that we were going because I wanted to sacrifice stuff and start a cult. (Cult meaning small religion, not group of violent crazies.) That said I think they were still hoping to find priceless magical objects or something similar. Fine. If they want to think that, feel free. It lets me do as I like. We ran into a faerie on the way there. It shot fireballs at people. Then it tried to do something to (Scott)'s shield and was wounded. I caught it and someone healed it and it few up again. I told it that we were friendly and that I wished it luck in it's endeavors. It alighted on my shoulder. It stayed for a little and I told it that if it wanted it could accompany us to the phoenix temple if it liked and it sat down on my shoulder. It did accompany us to the Phoenix temple though it waited outside. I gave the phoenix my old longsword, and a few others gave it items. It took most of what we gave it but wouldn't take magic. Nothing miraculous happened, so after thanking the Phoenix for it's time and letting (Scott) take some rubbings of the carvings on the walls we decided to go join the rest of our party in some dungeons. The faerie stayed on my shoulder and emitted a faint orange glow in the darkness. We found our friends quickly, and I asked Enyari what they had encountered so far and she told me just the normal stuff: goblins, orks, etc. We entered a large room to be greeted by the stench of blood. An alter stood at the center. An enormous pile of bodies of animals stood beside it. As we watched in horror it rose, a gruesome undead golem of some sort. It was bigger then I was, more then twice or even three times my size, composed of the corpses of pigs, dogs, cats, and other such creatures. I charged at it, and it took something like ten or fifteen hits, even from StarSteel. I don't want to know how many it would have taken normally. I checked in one of the adjoining rooms while others worked on destroying the alter. I found tons of animals, alive thankfully. I let them out and they swarmed past me, trying to escape the cave. I walked back into the main area just as the alter cracked and I had a vision: An animal. For me it was a bird, but those of us who got the vision none could agree on it's form. It did not seem important. It was afraid, and then there was an urukai. He picked up the bird by it's wing, or in other people's cases the rabbit by the ears or the cat by the foot, and it seemed not to care about the comfort of the animal, only that the animal was alive. Then there was one last part. A leaf falling, an oak leaf, and a feeling it would never hit the ground.
Xey I sacrificed the magic shield I found to Artemis and asked her to help Celewin. I'm sure Celewin will be better soon because Artemis can help her.
Kyrin I was in a room. It wasn't the same room I'd been in when we had started, which was odd. But there I was, with (Ray) and all the others who had gone into his mind. And there was Embarcarious too. I didn't think we had told Embarcarious what we were doing, which also seemed odd. I remember the whole expedition which came before vividly and may do a private writing regarding its events. And then Embarcarioius said we had been gone for a while. Gone? What? Just now we had been in the room with the six doors--seven if you count the exit--answering the riddle to which the answer was Balance. How long had we been gone? Two weeks, Embarcarious answered. TWO WEEKS? No way in hell had that taken two weeks! Two weeks... Xey! I asked if father had taken Xey to see him and Embarcarious seemed confused. I swore. Somebody brought Xey and Embarcarious confirmed my fear that her avoidance of people was some kind of insanity. He cured it, but she has to be careful of undead now. If it comes back he can't cure it again. I was gone for two weeks in which the darkness zone had expanded to touch Pinnacle and my little sister's insanity had nearly become permanent. Gone out of the universe. If that had been it, Xey would have had a very big problem for her whole life. If that had been it, I would have spent the last several months of my life being the worst person I've ever been instead of the best. If that had been it the last thing I would have said to Caydis was that he was being annoying and foolish in a situation where he was right. It's funny how you're ready to die until you've just avoided it and discovered what it really means. Dying means everything is over. Dying means never getting to say "Sorry" or "I love you" or "I was wrong". Dying means never getting to hear those things either. Dying means hurting everyone close to you. Being ready to die for a cause is supposedly the most noble thing you can do. Maybe being ready to live for one is more important. From now on there will be no more regrets, no more little things I wish I had said. From now on if I die I will do it because living wasn't an option, and I will do it with a clear conscience. All of this passed through my mind as I sat there with those friends who like me had almost died. I stood and asked if we could leave, and if we would still exist outside the presence of the stone which (Ray) had used both when we had gone inside his dreams and which evidently he had used to bring us back. Nobody knew so I decided to go test it, and they agreed to watch me in case something happened. Nothing did and I walked all the way down the hall before we agreed that there wasn't going to be a problem. The mage school has very long halls. I wandered off down another one of them and sat outside Melissa's classroom, listening through the door to muffled sounds of talking. Eventually Melissa did come out. I said hello and told her I was sorry. She asked what for and I told her for blaming her for my mother's death. She was quiet for a little and then said that she also blamed herself. I wasn't really sure what to say to that, so I didn't say anything.
Xey I've been camping in front of Enyari's house for a week. Before she disappeared she said I had to stay at my house for a week or until she came back. So I did. And when a week was over I went to her house and waited there and Caydis showed up once but besides that there was nobody and that was okay except that it meant something happened to Enyari and that was bad. Somebody came and I went to Embarcarious and he did something magic and then I was okay with people being around. A little later Kyrin told me there was a mission and I should go protect (Ray). So I went and fought stuff and I forget why but I think it had to do with the evil people who had attacked the Artemis shrine a while ago. It wasn't very interesting. We won though. Malkin had come up with a big mass sacrifice thing to all the good gods, but Kyrin got wind of it and redirected it to the dragons and then a little later to the Yavanna Tree, to help it grow out of the darkness zone. She and the party geared up to go there, but she wouldn't let me go. I think everybody is always too worried about me. Really, they don't tell me anything and they try to keep me away from danger even though I'm an adventurer just like them. It's unfair. I did want to help the tree though. It isn't Artemis but it's one of the few things that are really important to Kyrin and it used to be important to Mom, and it used to make evil go away and if we help it maybe it will make evil go away again. That would be a good thing. So I gave Kyrin some stuff to take there for me. It was mostly stuff I'd found hunting dark heroes the past two times I'd done it. But it was good anyways.
Kyrin Xey's friend somehow got it into her head that it would be awesome to sacrifice a lot of stuff to all good gods. Sure. That would be awesome. Except one thing. There's a rule about equal and opposite reactions when deities interfere with our universe. Don't give Dagdemar the chance to do more bad stuff. Okay? Okay. I convinced people to give it to the Yavanna tree to help it grow up out of the darkness zone. Because the Yavanna Tree is NOT going to die. End of story. I refuse to let it. I don't even know if anyone's still protecting it at the bottom, but we can help it get to the light where it can grow. Once it can get energy to survive, maybe it can help us. Or maybe at least its survival can be assured. So we talk about this and Embarcarious tells us it might be better if we were closer to the tree, so we pull our animal army connections out, and then we ask for polymorph volunteers and Odutan has some griffin friends that agreed to help us too, so we wind up with a decent party. Embarcarious told us where to go, lots of people donated items, and Oreyn came along to deal with anything that tried to prevent us from getting there. Just a note, Oreyn is amazing. He's a guildmaster in most mage classes, was the lead founder of the Animal Army, works as a minor teacher at the mage school, and was part of the group that healed the unicorns and created the sisters. If I ever have a list of accomplishments that cool I will have lead a very productive life. Anyway. Nothing showed up most of the way there, but as we neared the place right over the tree where we intended to make our sacrifice, a large group of specters and two morganti-wielding things that were probably vampires rose from the darkness. I wondered how the vampires were doing okay up in the bright sunlight. A week ago--sorry, three weeks, It's weird having to account for time you weren't in--I would have freaked out. I still did, except I didn't turn on my heels and run for my life. We all split up. Our job was to get past this group, get to the Tree, make our sacrifice, and get out. Oreyn would handle everything else. We are all eternally grateful to Oreyn for saving our skins. Just saying. My griffin (and therefore me as well) skirted around the edge, swooping past most things, not being noticed by others. One specter did notice me and gave chase, and I wished my griffin could fly faster. It was fast enough though, barely. Meanwhile, Oreyn took on the two vampires, I think by himself. I couldn't tell, I was paying a little more attention to the fact that if the griffin carrying me slowed down I would be dead in an instant. I saw one of them try to knock him out, and it made me a lot more worried, but I couldn't make a difference in that fight, so I kept out. When we pulled away I checked for Enyari, Emryn, (Clara) and Oreyn in our group. They were all there. Thank the gods. One of my really big fears, especially now that Morganti is so common, is that as some point I'll discover someone I care about isn't there and find that they've been hit with Morganti and are never coming back. In cases where it's actually a valid possibility if I weren't so ramped up on adrenaline (not the skill, obviously) I would probably be freaking out. As it was,I was freaking out about other things and they'd all come out unhurt. We'd had only two casualties, neither morganti, and I though that was pretty good for a fight where almost nobody could actually fight. On the other hand they were in the Darkness Zone now, so gods help them there. There was one griffin who had taken three hits morganti and I think we owe it now so I'm going to talk to Anonymous and ask her to take care of it for the rest of its life. At any rate, we reached the place over the Tree and sacrificed a lot of stuff, with the intent that the tree should grow. And it did grow, at least it started. And there was the feeling that there would be a vision too, but we would need to stick around for that, and the specters and vampires were almost right on top of us. At first we wanted to hold them off, but as they got closer, we decided that no vision was worth half the party morganti dead. So we scattered. I took a very long and circuitous route to get out, I know others took more direct ones, or maybe stood and fought. We got back to town, and I checked for people. Three were missing. One of them was (Clara). I got worried. All three came back. (Clara) described her vision to our group. Oddly, it matched very well with a message that Nyanar had written (and drawn) before she died, but with one major difference. That was interesting. Very interesting. I'm not going to put it here, because multiple layers of telling tends to distort stuff and this could be important. I'll ask (Clara) to put it up maybe. But don't count on it.
Xey I finally got to do some exciting stuff. Mister Aelfwine lead a group of us on an archaeology expedition! I've never done that before but it was fun and really cool. On the way there we encountered spinemen and they poisoned lotsa people and I had to fly back to town as a hawk and get some antidotes to give them. By the time I got back there were more poisoned people, but there's this person with elder sorcery that turns people into random animals and she tried to make it a poisonous one so they became small poisonous animals with claws and then we reverted them and the poison had worn off so we kept walking until we got to the place. It looked like at some point it had been a town, but that was a really long time ago, maybe first age. Probably early first age. So really old stuff. That was cool, 'cos it meant it dated almost back to prehistory and if we could find out more about prehistory that'd be awesome because then we might be able to find out how they lived and maybe why they didn't keep history, and if there was anything special that got lost as time passed. Then we would be one step closer to knowing everything and knowing everything (or at least having it all in books) is important so that if something happens you could see if something like it happenned before and see how they dealt with it then. We all ran off to find things, splitting up. Sometimes we would find something, a paper or maybe a piece of stone or metal with some runes on it, and then the finder would call us all over and Mister Aelfwine and all the historians (like me) and the storm mages would work hard to uncover it carefully so that it wasn't damaged because it's important you don't damage the artifacts. If you damage them you won't learn as much from them and learning everything you can is really important. We would carefully dig it out and Mister Aelfwine would take some stuff out of his bag and use brushes and small metal tools and things to get at fragile bits and the rest of us would clear away dirt and dust. We got seven things, all of which were kind of cool, but two of which were really interesting. There was a bit of a shield that had a picture of a skull on the front but that seemed out of place. Then there was a paper and it had stuff on it, but it was hard to see, like my eyes kept sliding off it or maybe it just didn't make sense and that was how my mind chose to interpret it.We had an elf storm mage identify the paper. One time it read as talking about the Elder Goddess. The next time it read as talking about Dagdemar. It occurred to me that maybe the difference between timelines--the one in the darkness and the one here--was that in the Darkness the first god to enter the world was Dagdemar, wheras here is was known to have been the Elder Goddess. And the darkness was interfering with here because it was so close. Around then Celia came in and told us that the Sword of Priestess Mira was glowing. It does that in the presence of evil. And it read as magic. And something was powering it. I went home and got a sword of empathic ray that had also been an Elder Goddess item way back. It read as magic! I came back with it and someone sacrificed a mana to the Elder Goddess. I guess a test if she was actually there. It went. The Elder Goddess was back? Wow. Cool. I'd heard a lot about the Elder goddess. I think I was alive back when she existed, but it's before I can remember. Mom said I was alive back then, but I was really little. Anyway, I don't remember her but I've heard a lot about her. It'd be really cool if she was back. But maybe she was back in the darkness zone and that would be bad. We talked to various people. Odutan said he's never talked with the Elder Goddess when I asked him and he also said he wasn't going to try now. Oh well. People at a nearby shrine to the Elder Goddess were reporting that they had their own glowing sword. I wonder why they still follow a dead goddess. I wonder if they predicted she would rise again.
It was dinnertime by the time we were done so I went home and said hi to Dad and Raspberry and Kyrin and Cat, and I got dinner which was good, and then I came back because Embarcarious wanted us to do a mission for Mister Aelfwine. He said he wanted us to take a rod he was making to a bunch of places so it could absorb mana or something from the places. I decided it would be a good mission to go on because I could maybe learn how to sense mana. That would be good because it would put me one step closer to becoming a warrior mage. Because see if you can't really do it in the literal sense you can do it by getting enough of an understanding of magic to be able to use it anyway, right?
First we went to a volcano. I mean, we're already on a volcano, but we went to a particular part of the volcano. It was hot and there was a feeling of energy and mana there that I could sense when I tried to meditate. There was a crevice inside which there was a lot of lava, and Mister Aelfwine wedged his wand into the side of the crevice above the lava and we waited. I meditated for five minutes and tried to familiarize myself with the feeling. Meditating is not my strong suit, I prefer to be running around, or sitting and reading. It's hard to empty your mind. Anyway, I could sense the stuff. This was like, flame mage mana. Used for fire magic. Right? Cool. At some point that might be useful. After the five minutes fire elementals appeared and started attacking us. We fought them and won and they got harder every time we defeated all of them. Then there was a deep voice from the crevice. It said we had awakened it. Um, that was bad. Fortunately we fought off one more wave of elementals and then Aelfwine said we could leave. So we did, and we told Embarcarious about the voice. He said he hadn't known it was there and he would check it out. I wondered what kind of thing can hide right under Embarcarious' nose and not get noticed. I hope he finds it. Then we went to find other magic places. There's Tragedor (I think I spelled that right, but I could be wrong) forest, and that's the next place we went. Nature magic I assumed. We had to get past Ents which was bad because the ents were annoying and wouldn't talk and just kept throwing boulders at us. I went and retrieved my Axe which I'd let (Dylan)'s condor familiar hide because I'd rather offend ents then try to talk when they just try to kill me. Then I turned into a hawk and flew over them, to a really big tree that had a really strong feeling of energy and mana. Then I sat in the tree and reverted and I almost fell out of it because hawks are smaller then people and its hard to tell what kind of branch you'll be able to sit on normally when you can't test it very well. My branch barely held me, but it worked and I didn't fall. I watched the party come and then the elementals appeared, this time with nature magic. I closed my eyes and focused and I discovered the energy was stronger where the elementals were. I felt it and waited. Eventually the required time passed and we went on to a swamp. I stayed a bird, and stayed in the trees. Nothing notices a bird in the trees unless it's been trained to look. Again there were the elementals, though I didn't dare come out of hawk form to try to sense them. Necromancy is not something you mess with, Kyrin's told me enough times. Not unless you're a necromancer. Time passed again and we moved on again. This time to the sea. I like beaches. I stayed with Aelfwine and another man who's name I forget and meditated. I could sense his rod now too. The blue elementals, storm ones came out, and when they started escalating I got out of sight and became a bird again. They made lots of people disappear. Me and Caydis and a girl were by a tree, actually, I was in it, and we saw mister Aelfwine and people disappear. We waited a while, and I decided that the wand was probably ready so I circled a bit and then swooped down and grabbed it in my talons before flying off. A spear carrying some kind of spell went right past my wingtips and I felt the rush of air it caused. When you're a hawk, compensating for that feels natural, so I did it. Then I flew as fast as I could carrying the large heavy wand back to Embarcarious. Embarcarious told us it was up to us if we wanted to go to the last place, the life area, the plains. Because mister Aelfwine wasn't here. I said yes we did because that's what mister Aelfwine would be doing if he were still here and we had to finish what we'd started. So we went. We went there and some of us sat down around the rod and I shut my eyes and felt the energy, feeling where it was strongest. My eyes were closed, but I saw the life elementals form. They tried to heal me, and to knock me out. I don't object to healing, and have a helm to prevent knockout. At some point I opened my eyes and saw that the party had destroyed all but one. I tried to stop them from attacking the last one because they'd start getting angry next time they came, but it was too late. A new set formed. I stuck with meditation, and heard elder sorceries such as "I banish your divinity" go by. They never hurt any of us who did not tough them, and when the necessary time had passed they let us to leave without argument. As we were coming back, I was flying overhead as a hawk. A band of "tourists" appeared and started asking for me. Said they wanted to meet me. Something was wrong. People, especially adults, NEVER want to meet me. They want me to go home and be safe and play tag or hide and seek. And tourists would not have heard of me from any random passerby, and certainly not from my family or friends. Malkin tried to call me down, but by the time she'd finished saying my name I was out of earshot. A hawk can fly fast, and as I felt the Morganti that the pale warrior wielded, I flew as fast as a hawk can fly, folding my wings and going into a dive as I got out of sight of the vampires. I found Enyari and Terisio and followed them back to the fight after dropping off the rod with Kyrin. I knew she would keep it safe. As I reached the battlefield of a street again I saw Malkin duck away from a pale man trying to knock her out with his morganti sword. I let out a breath as I saw her escape. I realised the pale men were vampires. Vampires had been looking for me. The battle ended around me and Enyari came and I held on to her arm and she was warm and she said everything would be fine, and it was Enyari, so it probably was. But I was shivering. I learned later that Kyrin brought the rod to Embarcarious and that she was very upset with mister Aelfwine for putting me in danger. I wasn't. He hadn't put me in danger, I'd chosen it myself. And now I knew about some skills to learn, and I was closer to becoming a warrior mage. Kyrin says that I find the good in everything. I tell her that she should look harder. It's a familiar conversation, we've had it whenever I do something foolish ever since I was really small. This is the first time since I became an adventurer.
Kyrin Up until last year I let my hair grow because I thought it was pretty and I liked putting braids through it and stuff. It's one of those few girlish things I let myself keep after becoming an adventurer. Last year I cut it really short. Last year I started liking Caydis as more then just a friend. I guess I did it because I resented the fact that I had feelings for him. It wasn't something I wanted to have happen. It was awkward an weird. Maybe I did it because I wanted him to notice something was different, though if that was it I don't think it worked. I told myself I would never tell him and that the feelings would go away. I decided this morning that that's one regret not worth having. I'd actually been planning what I was going to do all afternoon, because I didn't want an immediate response, I just wanted him to know. After that anything was okay. It's not like I expected a yes. He's a human, I'm an elf. Terisio and Enyari pulled it off, but they're unusual. And besides, he's Caydis. He could probably have any girl he wanted, and it's unlikely that that would be me. But I wanted him to know I love him. I found him in the mage school and asked him if he would take a walk with me. I lead him away from the city into the immediate wilderness. Not far enough to run into anything, but far enough that we were surrounded by trees. I told him that I was wrong about the whole lets kill everything thing. Then I kissed him. And then I ran. I can be very hard to find if I try hard. I figure that between exploring rivers and talking to trees I could probably stay occupied and hidden for at least a week. I went home, picked up my rapier, and started walking.
Kyrin We stand between the light and the darkness, the dream and the waking world. We are not the first, nor the last, but we are the present. We are defenders of the light, shapers of the future, and watchers of the darkness. I, Kyrin Silverwind, swear that I will use all that is in my power to keep the candlelight of hope burning, even in the darkest of times. To do what is right, even when it is inconvenient, and to protect this world from the oncoming darkness. Now, and until the end.
This is the only oath I have ever taken, and the only one I ever intend to take. And I think I took steps in following it, as did the others. We travel a dark road as adventurers, but I think it got a little brighter today. Our actions will allow the tree to recover, and a new path has been added to the web. There are things undone: Dagdeoth encroaches, the Wizard Trade Order seeks to convert and disband us, and the Carakwaiths lurk in the shadows pulling strings and creating evils. But now there is a difference. Among the infinite possibilities for what might be, there is now a single golden strand woven by the fates themselves. It will, I am sure, lead us through all the dark places of the world, but this single golden strand is where I am headed. Where WE are headed.
This is but another beginning. And there will be so many more beginnings to come. I think my mother would be proud.
<THIS IS THE PLACE THE YAVANNA TREE CHRONICLE IS SUPPOSED TO GO.>
Xey Embarcarious came up to me the this afternoon and told me that he had found something I might be interested in. I do a lot of stuff at the mage school--more now that I'm trying to learn special powers. But Embarcarious said that he and some other mages had noticed that I was interested in warriors who used spells and stuff, and they had come across some old lore about someone called the Dream Knight. He was a hobbit way back in the first age who was known to wear armor but also use spells. There were theories that he had just been using special mage armor, but there were records showing that he had been in various warrior guilds. Then there were theories that he was just a warrior with magic items, but similar reasoning applied in that direction. He was the most recent person to accomplish what I was after, short of a person who I've been told was an angel who doesn't count. Anyway, if I could uncover his burial place, I might be able to find his secrets. And it just so happens that there were theories as to his burial place. Three of them that Embarcarious seemed to think were plausible. First there was the Warrior tombs, but that was a place we could go any time. And besides, Embarcarious was skeptical about it. People would say, 'He was a warrior, he must have been buried in the warrior tombs!' or 'He was a mage, he must have been buried in the entrance to the warrior tombs!' only mages are usually only buried in the entrance to the warrior tombs if they're like on the council or something, and he wasn't to our knowledge. So we turned our sights to the other two places, both close to Pinnacle. Both in Tragedor forest. One was a clearing where there was reported to be a mound that might be a grave, but it was also the lair of the Green Dragon. Guardian of Pinnacle though it may be, it was still very dangerous. The last was the place where Tragedor City used to be, an old graveyard there. Tragedor city used to be the capital of Hostor before the ents took over in the third age I think, and there might be a clue there. I decided to lead the party on an archeological expedition with me to see if I could uncover anything of use. I decided to check with the Green Dragon first: If it wasn't there, the dragon might have a clue. We took our weapons in case Dagdeoth or unfriendly creatures attacked us on the road there, and we started walking.
The first people we met were the WTO's minions. Supposedly they were preventing anyone from leaving Pinnacle. I asked them why and they said orders. I asked them if they'd stop the queen if she came out of Pinnacle. They though for a bit and said yes, but then she would order them not to. I asked them if they would walk off a cliff if ordered to and they said absolutely. COOL. Proof that there are people who are incapable of thinking for themselves. However, at the moment they were hindering our progress, so I did what anyone wishing to go around another group does: I walked back a little, turned into a hawk, and flew in the correct direction as fast as possible and across a lake so that they couldn't follow me. Many party members did similar things. The WTO minions attacked. You would THINK that with all my efforts to go around them instead of kill them, they might be willing to do the same, but no. The few who couldn't easily go around them were forced to fight back. And they did. And they won. And the WTO can think about the fact that less then half a party in Pinnacle can take out an entire unit of them without trouble if forced to do so. Have fun WTO. We kept going and fought our way through a few groups of Dagdeoth troops, and then some spiders. Finally we reached our destination. It was a clearing with what did indeed appear to be a grave in it: A dirt mound of the sort that was often used in he first age to mark such things. I forbade anyone to touch the mound, not wanting to trigger anything. Then we looked around for markers. There were a few stones with runes on them, very old runes. I've seen one of them in Kyrin's room before. Mister Ailfwine, Enyari, and I along with a couple others pieced together what some of them meant. There was "Dream" but also "Night" as in the dark kind, not the warrior kind. We speculated about this for a bit, and then out of the forest around us came spiders and the enormous green dragon. We all took a couple steps back, as nobody wants to be too close to something that could kill them in the blink of an eye. It looked around at us, beams of light shining from its eyes as it investigated us, with special interest to two members of our party: One was a wraith, and the other was (Stone). Why him was unclear to me, except I think he has the power to turn into a vampire so maybe that's it. It devoured them each in one gulp, then it looked over the rest of us. Someone offered it a sword, someone gave it a couple silver ones. It looked around and its eyes rested on those of us with magic items, with special attention to Enyari. I got the feeling that it was going to probably eat one of us when someone offered it a large number of enchanted exorcism swords. This seemed to satisfy it, and it asked why we had come. "I'm looking for the secret to being a warrior mage." "And as one who is what you speak of, why would I want to give you this power?" "Because I want to use it to defend Pinnacle, and you want to defend Pinnacle. And because I want to be able to protect all my friends and keep them safe." It looked at me and it occurred to me that dragons don't have facial expressions the same way people do, and that I had no idea if it was going to help me or kill me. Finally it said, "I will help you," and said the following:
In sleeping lies the waking dream Inner goals are revealed in the night. The Knight is always armed With twins behind his eyes.
Or something like that, I don't remember exactly. At any rate, it then said, "Anyone here in five seconds will die." We all walked backward slowly, and then as if by a shared mind, we all turned and sprinted away as fast as we could, leaping over the stream and running off into the trees. A couple people were too slow and became food for the dragon. They walked back home and god summoned. Nobody PDed. Now that I've cleared that up, on with the adventure. Those of us that survived wandered through the trees to our next location. as we were getting close, we found a haunt. It went through it's death sequence, and we didn't aggravate it. It didn't come back after it died so we kept walking. We came to a stream that I flew over as a hawk, and then arrived at what seemed to be a spirit battleground. Single-handedly, an elven woman was fighting five or six specter-looking things with a weapon that sometimes was one and sometimes two. She was winning easily, and I don't think it made any difference that the party came in and chose to help her out. Once the fight was done, she stood there, not very aware of us. We were surrounded by mounds of earth. Some had stones with runes of "Dream" by them. I stood in front of the haunt and recited what the dragon had said. She became aware of me and smiled. "Did you know him?" "I wish." "To be as he was, you must learn to be as one..." She held her weapon which I now realized was a strange bow as one weapon. "...As two..." She pulled it apart into two blades. "...And as three." She held them together as if they were a single sword and held them out to me. I waited a moment and then reached out to take them and as I did she faded to nothing.
We went back to town, and I did some asking and researching about the Dream Knight. Apparently there was someone who had studied him, back when he was around: An old storm ArchMage. He had actually wound up not being a mage at all after an incident where people used massive elder sorcery and he took credit for it to protect them when the WTO came around. His notes had gone on to an apprentice of his called Nim... Who to our knowledge is a Carakwaith. So until she's found and killed I'm going to have to find my path on my own. The weapon was an old first age war-bow sort of thing. This meant now I could carry around a bow, the symbol of Artemis, more easily without being left defenseless when I run out of arrows. It's really old and really neat. Before I went home, (Dave) approached me and gave me a gift: A dagger. He had designed it and Embarcarious had enchanted it and at any given time it would let me use either resurrect or spirit guide. At the moment it was set to spirit guide. I thanked him, and then I turned to go home and found Caydis right behind me in the etherial realm, which I hadn't expected and he managed to scare me a little. He waved hi. One person next to me said I should go to the graveyard and sleep there and it might help with training, and Caydis volunteered to make sure nothing bad happened, so I decided to go do that. And now I'm going to see what happens. Good night!
Xey So last night I did dream. It's not like a consequential dream or anything. I was walking down some stairs with another person and there was a torch and then we reached the bottom and he snuffed out the torch, and then I turned around and there were two stairways and the other person wasn't there anymore. Default dream, because normally I don't dream unless it's a scary or important or confusing one. The thing that was different was that I was aware that I was dreaming, and the dream was a little clearer, sharper. Maybe if I keep doing that something will actually happen. Anyway, I got up, gathered my things, thanked Caydis, and went to go adventuring.
First up, hunting urukai and orcs. And it really was more hunting then fighting. We just plowed through them, no problem. Dagdeoth doesn't get any extra troops today! I also practiced with my new weapon, so that I can become a warrior mage faster. Then we went to deal with a Cthulhu shrine that was being run by one of our party members. We entered a cave which was where the shrine was and met resistance almost immediately. We advanced slowly until the shrine came into view. Then the battle turned in the cultists favor. I did a little fighting but when things got really bad I retreated. There was a giant squid-faced thing and it was special charming people so I couldn't use remove charm on them. Only four of us escaped, everyone else was stuck there either wounded or charmed. I guess the lesson is fighting a combination of other party members and gods isn't really a smart idea, but there you are.
I wanted to go back and save people, but most of the party wanted to go after Terisio and Enyari who were off fighting vampire bandits. I figured I should be along in case remove charm was necessary. By the time we got there though it had already been dealt with and there was no activity in the area. So it turned out the party voted to go for a walk. Hey, what's wrong with walks?! I like walks! Walks are good, everyone should--Oh, alright. I'll stay on topic.
Then we went to explore a cave. The cave was interesting. I mean, not at first, because at first all there was was brittlemen, and those don't even put up much of a fight, much less make for an interesting investigation. But then we got to the haunts. I deflected a couple blows, spell-turned a flaming ball of something or other, and retreated out of the hall into the next room where (Kate) was barely in time to stop me being killed by a hydra head. At that point she made short work of the hydra using charm to get it to incapacitate itself and let us pass. There were two pathways leading off of that room, both secret doors. One simply lead down a dead end hallway with a painting of a guy at the end. The other way though had a portal to what we guessed was Stormshank's Realm, which a couple people entered while the rest of us decided to play it safe. We continued to explore until we came to another room. It was similar to the other portal, but obviously not activated, with broken runes on the floor. A couple people poked at the runes, trying to put them together, and I guess they succeeded because a moment later the entire room was green and fading into a natural cave. Most of us panicked, and tried to escape. Success was nonexistent on this front until somebody called Madrine Orange tried to ask the Dragons for help. And then we were ants. Like, really actually ants without awareness that we had ever been anything else. And then we were people again. And Madrine was being a shrine. So somebody sacrificed a silver sword and stuff appeared. And we got a blessing to make our hands go ethereal except then later it went away and I don't know why. Somebody said that someone tried to sacrifice the blessing to his god. Isn't that kind of a taboo, sacrificing blessings and stuff even if they're not from your deity? I guess not. But we were back and that was good.
Some people were talking about going to Stormshank's Realm and I was saying it was a bad idea cos the cave we had been in was filling itself in now, but then Kyrin came in yelling something about someone destroying the Yavanna Tree and needing to go to Celindel and then the others ran off with her and left me to go find something to do. I sent up a silent prayer for their safety to Artemis, even though I'm not sure she has any power left to help them. She doesn't have to if she doesn't want to or if she can't. I don't want her to die. And I know that gods can die.
Kyrin One. I wish Xey would TELL us when she decides to disappear into a graveyard for the night, you know? Maybe I'm being just a little protective, but Tragedor is haunt territory, and I sure as hell want to know about it if she's going to go SLEEP there. She said Caydis was watching her, so I'll have to remember to thank him for that, but seriously. Even I at least leave a note before doing dangerous things. Which brings me to two. Two. Stupid stupid stupid Madrine Orange decided to go mess with fate using Tarot Cards. And he discovered that (Scott) would be involved in the death of the Yavanna Tree and the destruction of Pinnacle. And I got scared and I made other people get scared and what do we do when we're scared? Go fuck with deities and fates, that's what. Oh yeah. Stupid stupid stupid me too. So we run off to Celindel, tell Starlight that Scott is fated to do very bad things (I think she actually listened too, she responded by saying simply "I'll deal with it" which implied she at least believed me.) and run off to the tree. Which has a battleground in front of it. Shit. Zane cast Flash Ethereal and all of us bolted. Past morganti-wielding Dagdeoth troops, past the roaring drakes, past stunned human combatants wondering how an entire party just vanished. And then we arrived at the tree, and while most of the party turned and fought, Madrine, (Clara), (Ray), Emryn, Gallion and a couple others slipped through the cracks in the circle of protection and prepared to converse with the powers that be. We arrived, and I muttered to (Ray) that he should tell the cupcake, which he still had contact with, to drain Dagdeoth's troops of their energy. He did so and I glanced back to see many of them look around, confused, and back off a little. And then I heard cracking and my eyes were drawn back to the tree. Pieces were cracking off into the lava beneath, and the tree was slipping, at risk of falling into the lava itself. I panicked, that wasn't supposed to happen. I looked about frantically for a moment before regaining my original train of thought, and I shouted my instructions to (Ray) even though he was standing next to me. "Tell the (Cupcake) to convert the energy it absorbed to life and nature mana and then channel it into the tree to help keep it alive!" He concentrated a moment and the tree seemed to stabilize, or at least stop falling apart. Its slipping slowed too a crawl. At this point Madrine started hitting it with double-proficiency rebirths one after another, casting as fast as he could. At that point Caydis appeared (I had been unaware of his presence until that point) and began to assist Madrine in his task of throwing as much life magic at the tree as was humanly possible. The tree ground to a stop. At this point Madrine took a moment away from rebirthing the tree and called upon the dragons whom he is a devout follower of, asking them to help save the tree. Moments passed, as we waited, wondering what would happen and if the prayer would have any effect. It felt silent, though there was the sound close at hand of Caydis casting rebirths and a little further off of battle raging around the tree. Then the battle shifted. Dagdeoth and Celindel troops alike drew away from the tree and we turned our gaze to the sky to see a dragon weaving its way toward us through the sky, the crimson light of sunset reflecting off its golden scales. It drifted down into the crevice just above the lava and we could see it shaping and cooling pieces of the molten stone. It brought rock up to support the tree, providing it with something of a safety net to stop it falling. Then it came up, made a sharp biting motion towards (Ray), and floated away into the sky.
At this point I realized I had no idea what I was going to do, and suddenly wished Enyari were there. She would know. She would find something, she's better at this then the rest of us. That's why the Book is hers this generation. But Enyari wasn't here. I shoved my hand into one of my pockets and ran my fingers along an object I had made only a couple weeks ago. My... Proof I guess. I could do this. I'd find something. I drew in a deep breath and placed my hand on the tree. Let's try the straightforward approach first. That's what I'm best at. "Fates, we need to talk." I waited. Nothing happened. Not that I expected it to. Alright then. Emryn whispered in my ear and I nodded, and she and (Clara) and I spoke in unison:
In the beginning, we were here - one - each the seed. We were born at the dawn and have always been since, and will always be on ahead. The elder crone looks backwards, knowing of the past. Now Mother tree is present here. In the future the Unicorn maiden gallops. Pure. Shadows walk the dreams. A darker side. When you seek it, wisdom is withheld. Jealous/Spiteful fools decide. Creation is controlled, bent to the maker, manipulated by passion of a beast, hungry for our doom.
That got a reaction, and as the tree's leaves turned orange and red, they began to fall and I didn't know if it was a good thing or a bad one. The leaves fell, but they never touched the ground, fading before they reached it. Only one did not fade, and it turned the grey-brown of paper and fell into Emryn's waiting hands. More knot code. It changed hands between Emryn and (Clara), and I stood there wondering what to do next. My fingers went again to my pocket. There were two objects there, only two. A key with a spiral at its top, and a single silver coin. I smiled, just a little. And then I improvised, because I wanted the fates to hear my words. "The world is round, a circle. She was once and so she will be again. She has taken many forms over the years and we need to make sure she can again. There is one golden strand, and that I will follow." A bit more poetic then I usually am, but then again, on occasion I am a poet, so maybe not. And one word echoed in my mind, and I got the feeling it was in all the elves in Celindel: Dawn.
That night other things happened: Gallion sacrificed himself, and Madrine blew himself up trying to get the world's strongest rebirth. (Clara) translated the paper and it was the answer I was looking for. Great things are coming. Only I think from now on maybe it's better I let them come, instead of throwing dice at them.
Xey We learned tonight that if you separate a group of Dagdeoth people from the pack they lose their special powers. Also there was an accursed sighting and Anonymous is considering sending snakes to kill the accursed. ________________________________________________________
Long overdue season finale chronicle is added to the end of this one. ____
Once again, I have Xey’s voice when I start writing for her and then it dies two sentences in.
Kyrin This is what yesterday looked like: First thing in the morning until about three: Collect objects associated with the Elder Goddess and family. Three o clock: Meditate. Six o clock: Oracle. There was a woman, probably the Elder Goddess, standing on a battlefield with weapons, but not the kind of equipment you would expect from someone going to war. A shadow fell over her, as though something enormous we could not see stood behind her. She turned to look behind her, but not at whatever is casting the shadow. And then she screamed and there was something, or there should have been something, and then she was dead. And I was looking down at her body, except... I WAS her, going to pass on to whatever death has in store for us. Except there was a choice there, I didn’t need to pass on. Strange. The there was a purple crystal in a dragon’s claw and it faded away. Then there was a ship with five masts, only there weren’t five masts, there were four. It faded as well. There was a person standing over a chasm, a wave appeared behind her, and the vision stopped. And something inside me snapped.
There is a kind of emptiness now. I was up all night last night, and will be tonight as well. You can’t die of lack of sleep, but you can go insane. I’ll have to ask Embarcarious about alternatives to sleep. Because I think sleep will not come for a long time.
Xey A while ago Terisio had Nina put a spell on my mind that will protect my mind from evil things getting in. I wondered if maybe one of those would have been good for Celewin. Then I stopped because I don’t like thinking about Celewin. Sometimes I see her at Enyari’s house except she’s not Celewin and I don’t know if that makes me happy or sad. I found the picture she drew a while ago on my desk just now, so now I’m thinking about her again. Also it’s grey out and grey is the color I think of when I think about Celewin.
Actually it’s been gray and rainy for a while now. It’s been really big rain, and tornadoes sometimes. Dagdeoth had undead hiding in the storms, so yesterday we went to flush them out. Usually I take hawk form for most of a battle, popping out when I can surprise enemies or heal friends. This time I spent considerably less time as a bird, and when I did transform the wind powerful and it took a great deal of concentration to prevent it from sweeping me away. We saw the storms begin to move and knew that Nellion Echos must have started casting spells at the storms. The great barrier of wind moved away to reveal the undead that stood beneath. We ran down the hillside at them, ignoring the wind and rain in our faces and swinging our weapons. I slashed at something I couldn’t see properly and barely avoided a stab from a skeleton. It was growing dark quickly and night was coming. It became harder and harder to discern what things were, only the size of their dark figures. The rain began to fall harder and rumbles of thunder were audible. Twice we had to retreat as the most violent parts of the storm returned, but they always retreated moments later. When the battle was almost won, a flash of lightning split the sky to reveal an enormous panther. The light disappeared as quickly as it had come and the panther with it, leaving us with the knowledge that some invisible creature had entered the battle. We retreated, we were running. Occasionally the creature appeared from the shadows and clawed at someone in our group. I began to realize that every time it did there was a large concentration of mana at that point which moved away when it disappeared again. I was glad I had been training that skill. It gave me a method of locating creatures otherwise invisible to us. Most of the time I can get a general sense of where things are (unless they’re elementals which seem to be pretty much just an intelligent concentration of mana and can be easily pinpointed) but a general sense of where this thing was was good enough. If you can predict its location you can avoid it... Or chase it down. We chose the latter and stopped our retreat, pursuing the creature. When we got close enough it revealed its presence, and Madrine lunged at it with a sword. A moment later the sword exploded and the creature disappeared. I got no sense of its presence, so it was probably dead, or else had teleported out very quickly. Since I don’t know of any sort of cat with natural instant teleport I decided to assume it was dead. We were congratulating Madrine--who did not seem as happy as one might think he would be--when the storm grew stronger. At that point we knew we had to get back to the city or the storm would likely tear us to pieces. This time we all ran as fast as we could back to the city. I have a new appreciation for warm houses and fireplaces.
Xey This morning Enyari and Terisio did not show up to adventuring. Neither did a few other people, but I didn’t notice their absences right away. Then Shunar told us they and Wombats and a Terriock person (Why was a Terriock person here? I thought they went home a long time ago.) had disappeared. So we went to go find them, because it’s bad if they disappear. So we walked and we met Sorrikonians and I walked into their camp and there was Enyari and Terisio in a circle of protection arguing and Wombats in another circle and some other Sorikonians. I remove charmed a guard and he was charmed and told me there was a trap and escorted me around saying I needed to be interrogated so I could remove charm the rest of the guards. Then some of the Sorikonians turned into creepy shifty vampires and it was all chaotic and stuff and a couple got turned into leopards, and Terisio and Enyari came out of the circle and Wombats came out of the circle and Enyari turned into a shifty vampire and I screamed at her that she was supposed to be a vampire hunter and I hated her and then I ran away and found Linder and Linder was injured morganti so I turned into a bear and carried her somewhere safe and stayed for a bit bandaging her up and stuff and hoping she didn’t die. Then someone else came with a cobben guy who was also morganti wounded and I gave them my axe so they could take Linder and the cobben back and get them better care. Then I went back to the battlefield. Melissa was there and she was fighting a shifty vampire and she won and then she fought the Terisio vampire and he killed her a couple times but she respawned, which I didn’t know Melissa could do but I didn’t think about it that much because Melissa can do lots of things I don’t know about.
When we got back Shunar told us Melissa had been in the school the whole time so far as she knew. That was weird so she told us she would do some checking. And then we talked about conspiracy theories for a while and then the real Enyari came in--or at least she said she was the real Enyari, and Shunar said she was the real Enyari after doing some weird test with morganti and blood (or maybe Shunar wasn’t the real one and we were being tricked, but I think she’s real)--and she said Terisio was a vampire and we had to go rescue him. So we did. Enyari tried to not let me come but I promised I would be careful and I promised I wouldn’t die so she let me come with.
It was a lot of fighting and a lot of undead and a lot of being a bird. Also a lot of specters that popped in and out and bothered us. And also Terisio. As a vampire. Which we expected really. Me and Enyari and Wombats had Whiteclaw Knives (which Kyrin said to keep away from her because she doesn’t like them very much, and normally that would make us think she was undead except we all know that the last couple times she’s seen them bad stuff happened or almost happened) and I was kind of being cautious and mostly defensive because if you use a Whiteclaw knife you have a chance of dying and I promised I wouldn’t die so I was not going to use it unless I really needed to. Then Enyari was fighting Terisio and she hit him with the Whiteclaw knife and he got all exorcised and stuff and then she tried to carry him away and got mobbed by specters, so I went to help her and so the specters got killed and we ran away with Terisio and he got resurrected and he was fine. Only some of the party members got captured, so the rest of the party went back to get them and Enyari and Kyrin and Celia and Emryn and I went off to go see some people Kyrin had seen in a vision.
So we went and talked to them and they didn’t know who we were but they talked to us anyway, and we figured out that a different them did something and we oracled because their ship was a temple and saw the guy who runs the Gray Isles looking at streams which people thought were time streams and then they thought they were missing a mast or something and it was all really confusing but the main point at the end was that they were sailing to Celindel to go save the Yavanna Tree’s fruit. I wanted to go too but Enyari wouldn’t let me. I wish she would stop trying to not let me do things because maybe I am still small but I’m learning and I know more then a lot of people and I’m not afraid of things. Kyrin tells me it’s not my fault, and that when I get older I can do things. She says it’s not so much me that’s afraid as Enyari, and she says she is afraid too even though she won’t stand in my way. Kyrin has never stopped me from doing anything. She has always tried to convince me but never stops me. I wonder why.
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Post by ElfChild on Oct 1, 2012 15:41:10 GMT -8
MORE 2011 reposts.
Kyrin <This is the Yavanna Tree Chronicle> Change of plans. Since Elianna Starlight seems to be telling the world that we blew up Celindel anyway, I figure I'll at least get the truth out there. Right now this knowledge is only available in Pinnacle, but this may change as I pay some visits to certain people on the mainland. Two quotes which I thought of frequently during the tree mission: "Claim victory in your heart and the universe will follow." and "Faith manages." My favorite out of game situation on these missions: Night 2, we've just made it to the back of the cave, we're sitting there, and I look up and almost scream. Because in the darkness I see Chris and he was sitting there holding a staff staring at us and I'm thinking "Oh my god has Chris been sitting here this whole time?" But no, it was just Quinn, who looked kind of like Chris in the dark. Don't ask me how you make that mistake. About a minute later the actual Chris shows up behind us with Morganti, showing that my fear of Chris sneaking up in the dark was not entirely unfounded. It was better if you were there. Trust me. Though actually that can be said of the whole mission. During this whole sequence of missions I was incredibly hyped up on adrenaline, which may account for the couple freakouts I had at night. Human faces are REALLY SCARY in the dark! _______________
I start this chronicle of events the night before they occurred. I stood in a corner of the inn. Many years ago I had lost my familiar to the disappearance of the Sisters. It had faded from existence without a trace. I was trying to connect to a new familiar now. I closed my eyes. The things that tend to matter in such rituals are what deities you follow, what you've done. I follow no deity. I will protect the Yavanna Tree with my life, but I follow no deity. I respect many, certainly. I respect Artemis, and the pantheon she belongs to. I respect Ebony, though she is not truly a deity. And I respect the elven deities. Once upon a time I followed the three sisters. These are the gods which have helped me at various times, the ones who I have considered following in years past. But no. I follow no deity. I protect the Yavanna tree, and that is my lot with the gods. Not a follower, a protector. When I need something from the gods I ask the universe. I might ask the Tree if I thought it was well enough to answer, but last time I did that I became trapped within my own mind. I do not wish to repeat the experience. There was a feeling that there was... A possibility of a familiar again. That it existed out there somewhere. But I didn't have the power to simply summon it to me as one usually does upon getting a familiar. I had to find it. I found some friends and we set about oracling. We oracled to the universe. Where could I find my familiar? There were trees, a forest of them moving beneath me. The forests that until recently had been hidden from the sun by the darkness zone. Branches gray and dead reaching up to light they could not find. I was looking out over this forest and my gaze rose. towering above it was a single massive tree, dead like the rest, and even further back, the ocean. The Yavanna Tree. The dead gray of everything made it feel like a mass grave, which I suppose it was if you have talked to trees before. The picture changed. There was mist, gray and shifting. Within it shapes of creatures moved, and one of these was my familiar. Then it cut out. Not like an oracle normally ends, more like it ran into a wall. I wondered what wall could keep deities out and resolved to look for my familiar the next day when we went to the tree.
The next morning I was, once again, in the inn, and we were about to set out for Celindel. We had borrowed the Cloak of Navanna from the Animal Army with permission from Anonymous, in the hopes that it would give Enyari a greater chance of getting near the Tree. The party was accompanying us so as they could fight for Celindel, and so that the Tree might be protected from the enemies of the elves. I tried to calm myself. We would have to talk to Elianna Starlight. From what I knew of her, it would be an unpleasant conversation. I would have to try to keep my head. Enyari would have the same problem. As would most of our group, actually. Only I tend to have the problem that I don't know when to keep my mouth shut, or I know and my temper gets the better of me. I said goodbye to my family. I wasn't sure I'd see them again although I hoped I would. You never know though. What must be done must be done. If it takes my life, then I am but another casualty. If not, well, I live a little longer. Every moment counts. Life is too unpredictable to waste anything. I could die at any moment. What matters is what I have done up until that moment. We boarded the ship that would take us to Celindel. I do not love ships, but I certainly have no objection to them. A mode of transport. Mother referred to the quest to save Love as the Boat Mission. I wonder about circles and repetitions and if the world uses them to tell us the nature of what we are doing. There was no feeling of destiny here. Urgency, yes. Destiny, no. I fiddled with my cloak, traced the Riddle marking upon my hand. Nervous habits. The boat was moving. Caydis was somewhere, as was Enyari. Annabeth and Emryn were not so hard to locate. There was Ray moving along the side of the boat. And Gallion, the man who wields my weapon's twin standing among the party. That man wants to come on adventures with us, I think. Wants to see what we really do. I am not so sure it is something he should wish for, in truth. But he seems willing enough to help us, and that is a good thing. I might be dead in an hours time. I closed my eyes and hoped that my morbid thoughts would not be what the universe consulted when it decided on my fate.
Some giants approached us, seemingly deciding that we looked like a challenge. We dealt with them through... Diplomacy. (I'll put it that way.) They did not cause such an enormous problem. Second, a kraken appeared. It was turned into an octupus, and swam away before someone tried to hit it with a boulder. Overkill, I think. You don't need to kill something that is no longer a threat. Death is an end to all things. To wish it upon something that has done nothing to you... Well, as I've stated before, I've done a lot of being wrong recently and a lot of learning what I should have known all along. When things happen we learn. I guess I'll keep learning and hope that one day the others can do the same. When I quit the party as the tradition seems to be after one has served with them twice, I think I'll take an apprentice maybe. Assuming I live that long. Or maybe I'll write a book. I don't know. But this isn't the time for those plans, there's too much happening now. Caydis was some kind of light being. Enyari said it was elder sorcery. I wondered what crazy thing he'd done. As we were nearing the shore, some things appeared in the etherial realm. Undead, one holding Morganti. Why did this not surprise me? I don't know, maybe because we seem to get that kind of reception a lot. We stood inside a circle of Protection Gallion had raised and waited. Partway through the battle, I was just about ready to flee entirely. While things weren't looking horrible, it didn't really look like we were winning, and I get skittish around morganti. Actually, I'm a coward just about anywhere, but Morganti makes it worse. I determined that the following things were true: 1. We needed to save the Yavanna Tree. 2. If we were killed morganti, this would become very difficult. And, 3. Gallion and I had in our possession swords that would allow us to essentially jump off the boat, fall to the bottom of the sea, and run to land. It seemed logical that we should do this, and then if the party lived we'd meet them in Celindel and if they died we would still be able to save the tree. This is where we get to the point where I don't know whether my main motivation is saving the world or surviving the encounter. Whichever it is, I plan on acting on it. Gallion and Emryn swapped swords for the time being so that Gallion could man his circle of protection and Emryn and I jumped off the side of the boat. I like underwater-ness. The way light comes down and all the fish makes it really beautiful. I also like the fact that I can wander around in it and come out completely dry. As I've said before, I like my sword. So Emryn and I ran for a while and when we arrived at Celindel we discovered that the party was fine and had in fact beaten us there and were talking to Elianna Starlight. I came up and said Hi to Enyari and Annabeth, to alert them that I was there.
The party decided to go help protect Celindel. We stayed behind. I stopped Caydis before they left and hugged him. I kind of feel like I shouldn't have, but I did anyway. I was going to do something that might kill me, might erase me from existence if I failed. I didn't want to have failed to say goodbye if I was going to die. I let go of him and turned to go back to the group with whom I would either die or save the world. I fixate too much on death now. Remind me to work on that. We went to talk to Elianna Starlight. About getting in to see the tree. She told us she couldn't let us past the circle of protection, and she couldn't let the humans within a mile of the circle. We told her that really, we had to get in and we were going to save the tree, and she told us that what we were doing might kill it and she couldn't take that risk. Things went downhill from there. We got into arguments over... Just about everything relevant. At some point she has to leave so she places us under arrest. Awesome. Fortunately, out of the seven of us, two were high level diplomats. And they managed to convince our guards, some of whom I think were not entirely loyal to our friend Starlight, to let us closer to the tree. We got to about a mile from the tree, and attempted to invoke the riddle that would save the tree. I felt my energy drained a bit, and then there was a feeling... We needed to be closer to the tree. We needed to be at the tree. Annabeth and (Quinn) managed to convince our guards to let us right up next to the circle of protection. Again we tried the ritual, and I felt my mind going weird. Negatives in mana. But there wasn't really time to go sleep. Again there was the pulling. We needed to be there, in front of the tree. We pressed our guards for permission to enter, but they witheld it. Then Starlight appeared once again. Furious that we had been allowed so close to the circle she ordered us sent off to prison. Immediately. We love you too, bitch. We were escorted to jail and shown to our cells. At this point (Ray) made use of the cupcake. I felt a draining and I died. I was awoken a little later. The first thing I noticed was that the tree loomed above me, huge and dead. It's oak branches outstretched, a lifeless gray. I sat up and saw Celindel in ruins.The buildings crumbled and ashen, and bodies. So many bodies. Around us were people I'd never met, convicts I guess. But outside there were bodies, lots of them. The people who had been guarding the circle, random elves off the street, the entire population of Celindel. All dead. And Dagdeoth advancing. I wondered whether Elianna Starlight was dead or not. Part of me though she deserved it. Another part of me knew she might be the only hope Celindel had for survival at this point. The latter won over and I decided I wanted her to be alive. But I wouldn't object if she were hurt somehow. (Quinn) was rebirthing party members, at least two of whom had not been present when we were first arrested. But the important bit was that we were standing in front of the tree. I moved to one of the buttresses. Annabeth and Emryn who had been resurrected by Quinn, moved to the others. In unison we chanted:
A tower in the morning A honeycomb drawn wide A triangle for shining dawn A breath that all must ride Known to all And others lack Name them now Or the stream flows back
Three others appeared: (Stone), (Nial), and Cilia. The three who had stayed to see the vision back when we had made our mass sacrifice to the tree. The three of us directed the three of them to places around the tree and told them what they had to do. And then they chanted those lines, along with their answers. And then they recited:
A tower in the morning: The Elder Goddess A honeycomb drawn wide: Love, Truth, Justice, Sorrowveil, Crucept, Dagdemeon. A triangle for shining dawn: Passion, Law, Perspective A breath that all must ride: Life Known to all And others lack Name them now Or the stream flows back: Hope, Change, Balance
And each spoke a different word at the end. Only it was wrong. And we were being pulled in, and there was a sense of having used up a guess. For a moment, I was very very scared. I didn't want to disappear. I didn't want the tree to die. I hoped to the gods that we hadn't killed the tree. And then we were standing among ruins. The land was grey, and what color there was was faded, like an old painting left out in the sun too long. Grey. There was a sort of twilight over everything, and the half-light was the kind that tends to accompany rainy days. The kind that gets you depressed and clings to everything like a dense fog. And then Enyari identified the place. The Dream Realm. The Vanish Zone. Kveldland. Nyanar had been here before. There was a sense that we had to search for the last guess to the Tree's riddle. That it was somewhere hidden amongst the gray hills of this landscape. I then recalled my vision the previous day. The familiar in the greyness. Maybe that was why the oracle had ended, deities seemed to have a hard time interfering here. I checked and there was indeed a sense of my familiar being there, and it did go in a certain direction. Annabeth checked and could feel Hope about in the same direction. We had no other leads, so we followed the feelings of our familiars, hoping that they would hold a clue to the puzzle that had been set before us: Where is the final guess, and what are the true answers? We went a little ways before encountering a very strange battle scene: There seemed to be three sides. They were composed of different kinds of... Things. I've never seen anything like them. They were bug-like in appearance, and though they were grayish like everything else, each type was tinted a different color. One group gold, one red, and one green. They could be considered vaguely humanoid, and certainly seemed sentient, but with a kind of strange alien intelligence. The leader of each of the three groups carried a Morganti weapon, and I realized with a start that I couldn't feel the aura of unease which usually accompanied the blades. That meant that if anything were to attack us with such weapons, we would have no warning. This was yet another scary thought to add to my list. We filed past them, and received a couple of what I perceived to be curious glances, though aside from these they ignored us. I remembered that here, we were the aliens, and they must be as confused about us as we were about them. We continued down a path, plants rising up on either side of us until we reached a fork in the road. There were more of the gold bug people here, and these ones seemed to start out simply curious and end up outright hostile. They killed (Ray) who was rebirthed soon after by (Quinn), and used some sort of elder sorcery at Enyari, which seemed to destroy her physical body, but not kill her. We picked up her things and ran. A short while later, hidden from view by more bushes, now arcing overhead as well as defining the path, I used a Necromancy rotation spell to go Ethereal and give Enyari her things. The path continued a ways, weaving back and forth through the bushes and undergrowth of the forest which surrounded us. Eventually it came out into a clearing with a long dead log spanning its width. There was a bug creature whose gender we were unsure of standing before us with a staff. It was not quite like the others, though of the same gold color as the others we had met. It did not seem hostile, and began to speak: "Hoof and claw have drawn apart And only isles remain..." Celia finished, "Grey and true." "Sorrow and Love..." "Struggle again," Enyari finished, as the rest of us watched and I began to get a feel for this game. It was a test. Seeing if we knew the prophecies of the Sisters and the Elder Goddess. This continued a good long while, and we were finally nearing the end of it when it said, "And should one perish..." The correct answer was 'so shall the other', I believe, but (Quinn) got to it first. And incorrectly. He answered "The others shall die." He became, for a moment, locked in a trance, and then he emerged from this state and put his head down and we were where we had started. Known to all and others lack, name them now or the stream flows back. The stream flows back. It was not only a piece of a riddle, it was also a warning. The being said, "And the others shall die" and time began to move again. Only this time the creatures noticed us. We tore up the slope knowing that if they killed us, it very well might be Morganti. We entered the path outlined by foliage and didn't stop running until we had finally reached the place we had been only moments before, breathing hard and half panicked. The being was still there, though it appeared more male this time. And it began a different prophecy: "For they have heard..." "The whispers." "Oracles speak and they seek..." "The words." On and on until it was finished. This time nobody screwed up, and the creature, our guide, asked, "Where do you come from?" and someone answered "Pinnacle." It asked, "Where are you going?" and someone said, "Home." A door appeared in the air before us. It opened, and right through it was Pinnacle. It seemed to be the same day we had left, and I could see party members wandering the streets, running errands. We saw (Zane) and one of our group called through that (Zane) still owed him money, but it seemed that the inhabitants of Pinnacle could not see or hear us. Part of me wanted to walk through that door, tell everyone I was OK. But we needed to find our last guess. We needed to find answers to the riddle. We couldn't leave yet. Our guide started walking, and I followed, as the door closed and disappeared to nothingness once more. Not one of us chose the easy walk back to Pinnacle. We followed our guide for a while, and it changed between being female and male, humanoid and beastlike. As we came to the next open area, we saw three things: A cloud of mist, with a feeling of Morganti in it. A demon with a Morganti cleaver. A woman with black eyes and light hair holding Morganti. The three demons. Deceit, Prejudice, and Sorrow. We have a problem.We followed our guide, who upon entering their battlefield broke into a run, and we with it. Running as fast as we could possibly go, because if the Demons caught us, they would kill us. Or maybe there would be something worse then death. I don't know, I didn't really want to find out. At one point, one of them came very close to hitting our guide, but it looked at the offending demon and the blade directed at it swerved away. We only though about this once danger had passed. What could make an enormous demon flinch, or whatever had happened back there? I asked Annabeth to tell me whether the sense of Hope's presence happened to be whatever direction our guide was in, even when our guide moved. It was. Our guide was likely as not, Hope. I then checked the direction of my familiar, and discover that its movement, though connected to our guide's, was not in whatever direction our guide was in all the time. I don't know what that confirmed, but it confirmed something. We discovered that we had left (Nial) behind, and he had been captured by the Demons, but we couldn't fight the demons, and if we went back, the only result we were likely to achieve was more dead. So we moved on. I'm not sure how that decision might have been different had the captured person been, say, Enyari or Ray. We might have chosen to go back then. But it was what it was and the past doesn't change.
We walked for a long time then. It felt like days, and maybe in that realm it was days. We walked and grew tired, and my feet began to hurt. We saw nothing else of note, only hints of ruins, sometimes hills and trees. But nothing else that moved or spoke. For the most part we walked in silence, one foot after the other. On and on and on. Though it seemed we walked for ever, the sky did not darken until much later, and then it went quickly from grey to black. The darkness might have drowned us and driven us to sleep, only sleeps scared us, and the darkness scared us as well. We came to a bowl in the earth. My familiar was down there, I could feel it. At this point our guide stopped before the trail leading down. It said to us, "You have done nothing." I wondered if we should have done something. It said, once again, "The others shall die," and it got that much scarier in one sentence. "The dead remember. Tread lightly." We stopped right there and discussed some things. "What does it mean, 'You have done nothing'?" asked Gallion. "I think we failed to do something before." Enyari echoed my own thoughts. "It could mean we're innocent." Suggested Annabeth. "I sure hope so," I responded. "I agree with Enyari. I think we failed to do something." said Emryn. "It could be both," That was Enyari again. It went on like this, eventually everyone had said their piece, and we decided there was only one way to find out. Enyari told us not to attack unless necessary, only defend. We noted this and descended into the bowl. A figure appeared, lighter then the dark background. A ghost. The dead remember... The dead remember what? It attacked, though it dealt no damage, and tried to knock it out. We greeted it when attacked with the words, "We have done nothing." A minute later it melted back into the night. Repeat the process three or four times, ghosts of every race, both genders, using a variety of different weapons. A while later I turned and saw something... a hooded undead with blue eyes. I assumed it was like the others. It reached out its hand and touched me. Darkness.
I was in a cave. What? I was in a cave? And I wasn't tired. And the group was there, and a statue, and a pedestal and a bone hourglass, minus the hourglass piece. Everyone except Enyari and Gallion. I suppose I should describe the place. It was a cave, very dark but with a feeling of safety. There was a statue of a woman wearing a cowl, who was young, middle aged, and old all at once. Her hands were cupped, and she appeared to be part of a ritual. She was sitting atop a funeral shroud, which was white and had flowers upon it. It's texture was not unlike that of feathers. There were two other objects in the ritual. One I have already described, a bone hourglass, minus the hourglass inside. Finally there was a pedestal, much like the one from the darkness zone, with an orb atop it. The pedestal had three women on it, one young, one middle aged, and one old. They had leaves at their feet. And then there were lights, of colors corresponding to the mage types, three of each color. They moved, we assume, according to the Elder Goddess' will. They looked to me like paths, choices. But the others didn't share my thought. The other possibility, the one that they all agreed on, was that the lights were pointing to things. There was a lamp which Emryn held in her hands which was not part of the ritual. We talked for a while. At some point (Ray) muttered, "Time is running out" and for a while time seemed to speed up. (Ray) determined that something was supposed to go in her hands, and as it was the only thing that made sense, he placed the cupcake there. The cupcake fit perfectly. Time got closer to being normal. Time passed, we discussed various aspects of the ritual until we began to fade away and there was a sense that we had another guess, and this was the place to make it. I believe this occurred just after we listed all the mage types. The cave faded away and was replaced by mist. There was a sense that it wasn't like we were apart from the rest of the group, but we couldn't see them, and couldn't communicate. It continued for a long time, and eventually I just sat down and waited.
I don't know how much later it was that ruins appeared out of the grayness, and we walked to them. We discovered we were transparent, passed through things, and things passed through us.It was kind of like being Ethereal, but different. We were standing among the ruins together when a wind came, the floor turned to sand, and we found a paper. We sat down to decode it. It was in a strange knot-type code with complex symbols, and it didn't seem to read like a normal paper. After a little while I rose and began to pace, and then I drew things in the sand. I am no good as a codebreaker, and while at the beginning I tried to be some help, I soon grew impatient. Several words in the ground later, blue wraiths like the one that had killed me before. One carried a stardust rapier. Gallion. they moved around us, and most of the party treeformed themselves, but I ran up the path they had come down, looking for a wraith with Enyari's equipment. I found one at the beginning of the path that was just as I had been looking for, but instead of trying to mana drain or attack me, it sheathed it's weapon. Enyari seemed to be within her own power. The two of us descended back to where the party was still treeformed, and Enyari fended off the other wraiths. She then did something to make Gallion put down his weapon and spells, after which she stabbed him to death until he was most definitely dead and reverted to the corpse of our friend. She then handed me her sword and seemed to want me to do the same to her. I did, with some amount of reluctance. Quinn rebirthed Gallion and then Enyari. Enyari had a physical body again. We hugged each other, and then a wind and leaves blew by and another scrap of paper was lying on the ground. She and Celia went to work decoding them, with somewhat more success now that they had more code. Maybe it would be a hint. I discovered that it felt like my familiar was all around me. (Stone) somehow got knocked out and we discovered he had an alternate personality. I spent the next ten to twenty minutes being a messenger between the two personalities so they could come to an agreement on who got to be active when.
Once again, darkness fell quickly. We became solid once more, and there was a feeling that it was no longer safe out here. The bowl was right there so once again, we prepared to head down into it. But this time we made a system. Enyari figured out the most efficient order to put ourselves in, splitting up the people with the papers and having the warriors guard them, having a necromancer at the back and near the front, having pacifists at either end. We numbered off. I was number two. The order was (Quinn), me, (Christopher), Gallion, Annabeth, (Ray), Emryn, Enyari, Celia, (Stone). We would count off when we were worried someone might have been wounded. As we crept single-file into the bowl, we got the sense we were being tested. That's when the goblin appeared. It poked at us, but didn't seem to want to actually hurt us. Remembering that goblins like shiny things, I fished out my silver coin and handed it to the goblin, asking it to guide us to the cave. Yes the coin was a symbol, but I'd rather get out of here alive then have even the nicest symbol. It wanted another, and we got it to agree to be our guide if we gave it another. This time I believe it was Enyari who gave it the silver. It was very happy and lead us onward. I had not yet had to draw my sword that day. I had decided to keep it that way as long as I could, to avoid having to spend mana. I didn't know how long we would be here, and the more mana I could conserve the better.And then other things came along. Orcs, Ogres, even a giant I think, all came out of the darkness and attacked. We tried to avoid hurting them, as maybe that was the test, and inched along using treeform. Inch by inch by inch. And we were doing pretty well, until we got the sense that the test had to do with time. And we had taken too long. And the danger from outside was coming here now. As if by some great unspoken command, we all broke into a sprint at the same instant. Shapes streaked past the edge of my vision. A fireball skimmed my arm and I was very thankful for Mobile Brace. I heard other spells go off behind me and fizzle out on the ground, incantations shouted, the footsteps of my friends, and my own heart beating hard in my chest. I reached the cave and kept running until I smacked into the back of it. Only then did I permit myself to stop and catch my breath, slumping against the wall. The others arrived at about the same time, some a little ahead, some a little behind. We counted off. "One." "Two." "Three." "Four." "Five." "Six." "Seven." "Eight." "Nine." "Ten." We all shouted triumphantly. No casualties. We sat in the darkness for a while, listening to naught but our own deep breaths and a little quiet talk. And then I spotted something just a little further out in the cave. It held in its hand a blade, though I wasn't sure whether the weapon was morganti or if it was just the darkness of the cave. However, some intuition told me it was more likely Morganti then not. I rose to my feet, as did the others. "We have to all attack at once," Enyari told us in a hushed voice. We all drew our weapons, and I felt the familiar energy drain. It happens most mornings. And then in a wave of steel and magic, we swept forward, crashing down upon the creature. A closer look revealed that its weapon was indeed Morganti. The being evaporated.
The cave widened out and we could see the familiar ritual. We gathered around it. There was a feeling of safety back here, at least for now. Behind the ritual was blackness. (Christopher) stuck his little finger into the blackness and it disappeared, gone entirely when he removed his hand. I shivered. A wall of Morganti. Or maybe a wall of nonexistence. We looked at things and watched the lights move. We picked up the lantern and looked at things closer. Someone knocked over the bone. For a moment there was complete silence. We kept doing things. Someone accidentally touched the orb. It rotated a bit. There was the same silence once again. After almost saying the Elder Goddess' name and someone actually saying the Riddler's name, we decided to come up with other names for everything. That was when Annabeth and Enyari decided it was time to go over how the universe began. "So there was once a big lizard that went 'BLEAH' and it made the world. Then into the world came the five Breakfasts, and the most powerful of them was Fruitcake. Fruitcake was the white breakfast." If we hadn't been so incredibly deadly serious and scared, I might have laughed. It went on that way for a little while, you can go do your own research on the topic if you like, but anyway, at some point, the Riddler showed up. He came in from behind us, wearing two masks. The one that was most easily visible looked like a stork sort of. He came in silently, taking the lantern from my hands and picking up the orb, and then the bone. We saw that the orb seemed to have shapes on it, one of them Roekron. Land masses. The world. He placed it back on the pedestal carefully. Looking around at us, he traced the "Riddle" mark on his hand. Then he moved back to the entrance to the ritual space and put down the lantern before disappearing into the darkness. I realized then that we had been very quiet ever since he had appeared. Enyari told us all not to touch the lantern. It might be our way home. We were all very scared. The Riddler tends to have that effect on people. We discussed what we had just seen, and Enyari proposed that the answers were "Creation" "World" and "Time". The Riddler showed up once again a little later, I forget what we did that might have summoned him this time. He wasn't wearing the stork mask this time. He was wearing one mask which covered his entire face. Almost half of it was red, and there was what looked like a crack down the center. He held out his hand, offering us a riddle, and Emryn and I took it.
We were in a different place, the Riddler in front of us. He spoke carefully as he spoke the riddle: "The light one breaks, but never falls, his brother falls but never breaks." Emryn and I answered at the same instant. "Day and night." The Riddler stared at us through the holes in his mask. "Correct." There was a pause, deathly silence. "You remember. I also remembered." The only answer I could give was a quiet "Yes." "Your turn," said the masked figure, staring first at me, and then slowly looking at Emryn. I nodded. I knew what I had to ask. "A tower in the morning..." I started. After I finished, the Riddler spoke, "That cannot be answered here. Your riddle requires three answers, yet I must only give one." I felt a sinking feeling. Had I done the wrong thing? But the single word came from the masked being. "Time."
I was back in the cave with the others, Emryn too. The two of us, misinterpreting what the Riddler had said, confirmed Time as one one of the three things. So we answered the riddle. (Ray) placed his hand upon the muffin and said "Creation." Enyari placed hers upon the orb and said, "World." There was a rumbling, and I couldn't help but feel that it had been wrong. Enyari, however, did not seem perturbed. Finally, I placed my hand on the bone and said, as clearly as I could, "Time." There was something missing, and we realized that we hadn't invoked the riddle. So we did that, and then repeated our answers. Only there was something odd about time. Things started moving back into the darkness. First the yellow lights. Then the orange and purple. The green ones showed an image of a tree--the Yavanna Tree, we realized--growing, and then those too, faded backward into the darkness. The Blue ones lined themselves up pointing to the bone, then straightened out. The answers. Other things were sucked away. The orb, its pedestal, the shroud began to move back, but we held that down. I was gripping the bone in my hand at this point, and started shouting out possible answers suggested by the others. "Life, Death, Rebirth!" The lantern was pulled away, but Gallion and Emryn held it there. "Birth, Life, Death!" The Elder Goddess statue began to be sucked back and the others held it in place. "Past, Present, Future!" Enyari told me and I repeated her words. A pause. The force pulling things into the darkness stopped. The statue came to a rest on the shroud. I was gripping the bone hourglass so hard I didn't think I would ever be able to let it go. Things began to appear again. The orb and pedestal. The lights. Everything returned, but it looked somehow older. More worn. I realized I was blinking back tears, I had been that scared. We began to fade away.
We were in a place. Three women stood before us. A young one, a middle aged one, and an older one. They looked like the same woman at different stages of life. At each of their feet there was a cup, each with different features. In the center was an ornate pitcher, half full of something like water. We were asked if we knew the three women, and I named them Past, Present, Future. They nodded, agreeing with us, and then presented their own riddle. Something something, Gods fear us, we create some of them. First I tried Time. One cup is overturned. Not time? What then? One answer occurred to me though it was unlikely. Nobody else volunteered anything, so I almost whispered Hope. The middle aged woman smiled. "I like that answer. But it is not correct." Another cup overturned. Only one guess left. Our group huddled together to discuss. Only one idea that made any sense was put forth, and that was by (Stone). He implied it to us without naming it, and none of us could think of anything better so he stepped forth and said, "Fates." The young woman smiled, then gestured at the pitcher. "This life is yours to pour," I believe she said. And then, "What would drink?" We huddled together, and decided upon the Tree, for that was what we had come to save. (Stone) stepped forth once again, carefully pouring the clear liquid into the wine glass (I think it was a wine glass.) at the young woman's feet. He then placed the pitcher back in the center and lifted the glass, placing it in the woman's hands. "For me?" she asked. "For the Yavanna Tree," he replied. She smiled once more. "Correct, for I am the Tree." She sipped the water, and we were in front of the Tree in our own world once more.
The tree had a single flower atop its enormous branches. The feeling of destiny took over. I let it. I moved to one buttress, and Gallion and Annabeth moved to the other two. We chanted in unison our riddle, which I will write again, if only because it is a central piece in these events.
A tower in the morning: The Elder Goddess A honeycomb drawn wide: Love, Truth, Justice, Sorrowveil, Crucept, Dagdemeon. A triangle for shining dawn: Passion, Law, Perspective A breath that all must ride: Life Known to all And others lack Name them now Or the stream flows back:
Annabeth said "Past", I said "Present", and Gallion said "Future" at the same moment, each concentrating on why the word fit us, and why it was us who spoke that word. I saw five people in my minds eye. My mother, standing to one side. Past. Gone. Something that once was, but that would never be again. In the center, Caydis and Emryn, two friends. Maybe more then that, both of them. Emryn is almost a sister, and Caydis is... well, Caydis. People alive now. People who were essential to my now. The present. And then Xey and Raspberry, my younger siblings. They would grow to become the future, after I had gone. But I was in the present. And I live in and for the present. There was something missing. Another word that had to be spoken. "Time," we guessed, the tree wobbled, I almost panicked. And then (Stone) said from behind us, "Fate!" and we were finished. The tree stabilized. The sky turned gray, and the rains of life came pouring down on our heads. It washed away dirt and we pulled people out of the dirt, people who came to life as the rain touched their faces. People who had become lost in the dream realm. Among them was (Nial), who we had lost to the demons. The old dead bark of the tree peeled away, revealing new, fresh bark. I discovered that the rain on my face hid the tears that were now flowing. Tears of relief, happiness, fear, everything I had held back over the course of our journey through the dream realm. I allowed myself to collapse against the tree and laugh. We were alive. We were free. We had succeeded.
The rain continued for a while, and as we couldn't escape the circle of protection, we took the time to rest and recover. Emryn fell asleep almost immediately. I couldn't keep a grin off my face the whole time. Eventually Elianna Starlight stowed up and let us out of the circle. I studied her face. There was no look of approval, anger, thankfulness, or any of the things I would have expected. She looked completely normal. As I left the circle, I looked up at her and smiled. "Thank you for letting us into the circle of protection," I told her, enjoying the feeling of shoving her failure in her face. And then I saw that the part was there, and among them Raspberry and Xey. I ran to meet them and hug them tightly, to ask if they were okay. Somehow I didn't feel the need to know how long we had been gone and what had happened in our absence. I was back. I was alive. We were all alive. And that was good enough.
Today was born of our actions a new possibility: A new hope for a better future. A golden strand of fate. It will lead, and where it goes, I will follow. We are the dreamers. We are the heroes. We are the now.
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Post by ElfChild on Oct 1, 2012 15:57:00 GMT -8
2012 Chronicle Reposts. Ignoring the first chronicle because it's stupid. Onwards.
Amara "Hallo. This time I guess you actually get adventuring stories, gods know I've been terrible about such things up till now. Out of fear mostly. Don't want to offend anyone, don't want to put black marks on my record, don't want to put black marks on anybody's record. Fear isn't a good enough reason to shut up anymore. Turns out I've got a cause now, see. So you are gonna get an adventuring story. And then you're gonna get a lecture. Oh, and before I even start, have a flower. Why? Because it's a symbol. You'll understand, give it a bit.
"I assume you've heard of the Clanless Sensei? Nonono I'm not insulting you, that was a rhetorical question. I know you know about the Clanless Sensei, okay? It's just the way I'm choosing to start my story. So you know about the Clanless Sensei, and how he's active right now. A lot of people go up there to fight him for honor. We were amongst those people, Iraya and (Scott) and Lalena and the rest of us. As we approached the hill upon which the Sensei's tomb lies, we saw ghostly figures fighting those who approached the tomb, testing them before they could see the Sensei. They appeared to shift and change in order to become the bane of whatever weapon type they were fighting. It looked like the haunts were angry and aggressive, and we saw the body of a bloody and barely alive challenger being dragged away by thoroughly beaten companions for healing. The tomb of the Clanless Sensei, for all its honor and symbolism, did not seem a happy place.
"Our small group talked amongst ourselves, and I voiced a request that Iraya, Lalena, and myself be allowed to challenge separately. The three of us are poets of a sort, we have a shared history, and we tend to act as a group. It was significant to me that we approach as our group, for symbolic reasons. (Scott) and (Miranda) joined us, being poets themselves, and we let them honor us with their support. As for the rest, they were perfectly happy to approach as exactly what they were, which at the time was the Heroes of Li. As we stood at the foot of the hill waiting for the next set of challengers to finish their duel, I noticed that Iraya was carrying a bouquet of flowers. This was not uncommon Iraya behavior, but it sparked within my mind an idea. I picked six of the prettiest wildflowers I could find, and by the time I had finished it was our turn.
"We approached the haunts who were to test us slowly. As it became clear that we were their next opponents, they shifted to weapon and armor sets which were strategically good against the weapons we had brought. I stepped ahead of the group and placed before each of the five of them a flower, then stepped back. They bowed, as is honorable to do at the beginning of a duel, and we bowed back. Something about them had grown calmer now. As they advanced, carefully stepping around the row of flowers, ready to fight, but looking to be in no hurry to do so. It was like a fight between friends, where it is known that both sides do not really mean each other any serious harm. We were victorious. Iraya and Lalena were the exceptional fighters on our side, but all contributed to our success. Once all the haunts had been defeated, we bowed to the locations where they would have been standing had they not faded away before turning our sights toward the place further up the hill where the Clanless Sensei was to be found.
"The Sensei limped toward us, looking old and worn. One of his legs was hurt and at moments seemed not even to be present, but he walked out to us proudly as though his handicaps would not matter. He paused as he came to us and for a moment simply looked at us. I held out a flower to him and he took it and placed it upon his blade, then showed it to us. He seemed maybe a little confused by the gesture. At this point Iraya stepped forth and placed the bouquet of flowers she had been gathering in his unoccupied hand. He took them and held them in his right hand and the sword with the single flower resting on the blade in his left. He looked at us, and while he did not speak, he asked a question. Why are you here? 'We wish be tested,' I answered. He seemed to be waiting, so I clarified, 'But we wish to be tested as friends.'
"He seemed to consider for a moment, then held out the flowers and the blade. We all hesitated, and then Iraya stepped forth and chose the flowers. The Clanless Sensei stepped back and to the side to reveal an entrance to the tomb. Hesitantly, Iraya placed her weapons upon the ground and entered. The rest of us entered as well, leaving our varying instruments of violence on the ground outside, as they could not be taken into this sacred place. The Sensei returned Iraya's bouquet to her, and we descended into the tomb.
"I will make it clear right now that I would not be telling you this if I thought it was intended to remain a secret. If you do not wish to know what went on down there I will cease my story here and move straight on to the lecture afterwards. If you think I am lying, you may feel free to peacekeeper me. If you think I hallucinated the whole thing, that is your own right. But a man who suggested I do nothing taught me that I have to do something, and people like that man have proved to me that unless I tell the world nothing will change, and the injury the Clanless Sensei carries with him will get worse and the fighting will go on, and the hate will never stop. I truly believe that the Sensei would wish for me to do what I do. I will visit him again soon, and if my speech is not his wish he may strike me down then. But silence is synonymous with agreeing with the way things are, and right now the silence of those who know that the present is wrong is deafening. By this I do not mean to insult any clan or anybody, but fate has been unkind to this place and the problems it has caused cannot be remedied simply by continuing to stand still.
[If you think I'm being disrespectful talking about the inside of the Sensei's tomb, feel free to skip to the next point where brackets are present and go from there.]
"We walked for what felt like quite a while, and while there was no real light source, the tunnel did not seem particularly dark. Eventually a man appeared, a haunt sharing many similarities with the Sensei. Perhaps they were family, but that is only speculation. The man stood in the path, waiting for us, holding in his hands a Minimoto board. We approached him and bowed, and he held out the board to us. I examined the position briefly. It was not a starting position, and I am sure there would have been a strategy for solving that particular position, but Iraya placed a flower upon the board and any strategy involved was no longer necessary. The robed haunt smiled at us, held out the board to one side, and turned it sideways, allowing all the pieces to fall to the floor. The board itself was dropped to the floor moments later and he hugged Iraya before indicating for us to follow him deeper in. Evidently, we had passed his test.
"He lead us into a large chamber. A yin-yang sign hung upon the wall. Beneath it was a coffin, or perhaps a shrine. The two are in some cases synonymous here, so it may have been both. Atop it were offerings of silver and gold. Iraya placed her bouquet with the other offerings. The place felt very lawful, very neutral, and there was an inherent goodness that came out of that. (Scott) moved around the room, examining things in the way that he does. He is blind, but in some ways he sees more than those with sight. He called us over to a shrine-like spot where there was a mural of sorts showing symbols of all the clans, all together and creating a picture of harmony. That was what Sorikonia was once. Not the elements tearing each other apart with hatred but bound by a common law, a common set of ideals, a bond of friendship. That inner peace gave this place strength. I decided then in no uncertain terms that that was what I wanted to do for this place. I wanted to help them remember what they once had, and remember that they could have it again if they would put down their swords and speak with words. Debate is a tradition here, and yet nobody speaks of the important things.
"Our eyes returned to the robed haunt, who was, it looked like, trying to open the coffin, but could not pass through it. He continued to try, and then his legs faded for a moment and he stumbled and we tried to help him but we passed through him. He righted himself and returned to attempting to get through, and failing. We started to panic. (Scott) was searching the room, though what for I wasn't quite sure. He gave mana to something, and the haunt turned to us, and there was the feeling of the words 'this is the enemy' and the brief image of a dark cloaked figure in the night chasing people I knew well--other members of our party. He was still trying to get through the coffin, but he was fading and there was a feeling of snakes in the pillow and some kind of energy went from him to us and we found ourselves standing outside the tomb on the hillside.
"We have learned now that the energy was the gift of pacifism, and with it, though this may not be the doing of the haunt, came a sense of responsibility that most of us shared.
[start reading again at this point if you skipped the tomb part.] "I believe that we received entrance to the tomb for a reason. I believe that it was the Sensei's wordless way of telling us that we have what Sorikonia needs. Not fighting, not war, not hatred, and not grudges, but love and friendship and an openness to other people. This place was great once--and don't get me wrong, it still is--but the fighting and feuds and constant battles over ever changing honor, these have weakened it. Sorikonia stands for many things. Honor, balance, law... But when honor comes only from fighting and hatred, where is the honor of peace that we know the martial masters for? When the cycle of leadership ceases to turn, where is the balance if only the strong may rule? What is the purpose of the law of the land when it serves to suppress the law of the conscience? Make no mistake, this place is not what it once was, and I am sure even you humans with your shorter lives can see the truth in my words.
"Vampires were here until recently. Perhaps they still are. The laws of honor while good so long as all is running smoothly become mangled and distorted by the presence of such evil and manipulative beings if they are present long enough. Now that some--if not all--of these beings are gone, this place can begin to rebuild itself, but it will be difficult to do this unless the clans can put aside their blades and seek honor not through battle but through peace. If backing down after a lost fight is not honorable, then the fighting will go on forever. Generations fighting over the same honor their parents and theirs before them fought for, while gaining nothing. If it is honorable to fight, it should be honorable as well to back down when fighting is unnecessary. Too much is placed on results and not enough on the reasons for them. Feuds may go on for generations for the same honor, killing many who could have had long successful lives otherwise. What is to stop the fighting if there is only honor to be lost from ending a war? There should be no honor lost in losing if the fight was fair in the aftermath no grudges are held. There should be no honor lost in rising to the challenge and failing if the attempt was made with all one's might. If Sorikonia does not learn this, then I cannot see how the clans are ever to come together again as they once did. There will be too much hate.
"I cannot force you to listen to me. I cannot make you care if you do not wish to. But I am asking you to care, I am asking you to take action and to help this place rebuild, because unless we stand up and make something happen, it never will. This is what the flower stands for. The Way of the Flower is the way of peace, the way of friendship, and the way of healing. Thank you for listening."
Amara (Sunday) Well, telling a story about yourself isn’t nearly as fun as telling it about someone else. It’s a bit hard to frame yourself as an epic hero when all anyone has to do is look at you to be able to tell you could never be one. I mean, I’m sure they couldn’t tell that I’m no good at swords and fighting without pacifism and the like at first glance, but they’d be able to tell that I’m a little bit too odd to be any sort of conventional hero anyway. Plus when you frame yourself as an epic hero it sounds a lot like bragging, so… Yeah, not happening. Plus, I’m really not a hero. There are a bunch of things I used to run away from because it made things easier, that I’m just now learning how to deal with. One of the big ones is the truth. And because there are people who don’t want to see me calling myself a failure either in my mind or to the world, I’ll put it this way: I make mistakes. I make a lot of them. And I suppose that’s part of being a person but it’s certainly not one of the parts that make me smile when I wake up in the morning. And covering up mistakes is easy but dealing with them is hard, and telling the world, or even really this piece of paper, that they happened is hard. Especially in a place where honor and appearances are everything. At any rate, that whole ramble there was to inform you that the things I write are the truth as I perceived it, nothing more. Which may not even matter considering that after the next few paragraphs you might not even realize that there are words on the page.
There are things you never want to realize, and one of them is that you probably blew up something you really cared about by accident and out of ignorance. Another is that the process of coming back to fix the problem you caused might make it worse. However, this was our fault. It was our responsibility. And when you think you somehow hurt the Clanless Sensei you don’t just stand back and pretend it never happened. See, there are these boxes with silver and morganti and all sorts of nasty traps that set off if you do things like spend mana or interact with the spirit plane. Which we did last time we were here because we had no idea it was an issue back then, and there started being problems when we did but we didn’t know why. We could have dealt with things right then had we known, but we didn’t, and so we couldn’t, but I still feel like we should have. Especially since he gave us the pacifism that has kept me alive for the past several months. We screwed up and he gave us a gift and I feel terrible about it because though we had no idea, the damage was done regardless. Oh look I just summarized this entire paragraph in one sentence. I should have just done that in the first place.
So because it was—and continues to be—our responsibility to deal with the problems we created, the five of us that visited his tomb the first time set out once again. Several others followed us, though I suspect only one or two of them truly understood what was happening. They wanted to help, that small number, and the others I suspect went along in hopes of uncovering some of the oddities that seem to crop up wherever we go, which makes me angry in a way. But the rant about how magic items aren’t the point can come some other time, and maybe I can avoid getting sidetracked for at bit. We trekked across the countryside toward the tomb, and while we encountered a couple ogres and a few orcs on the way, it was nothing we could not deal with and we reached our destination with little trouble.
The area where before we might have seen transparent figures testing young samurai was empty, and despite the warmth of the sun I felt a chill run up my spine. I have ‘spoken’ to the Clanless Sensei a few times, and though I knew he was not always awake, I had never seen his residence so empty. It scared me. When I am worried about something I have done, everything related becomes something that might have been my fault and all the negative energy of the worry and the doubt mixes together and becomes one big ball of fear. I don’t like being afraid, but in this case—as so many others—I attempted to shove down all the fear in favor of something similar to rational behavior, which I expected I would need to fix the mess we made. We reached the top of the hill where we had met the Sensei so many times before and the wall of rock in which once there had been a pathway. We approached the solid mass of stone, and the others gathered around, perhaps wondering what was to come.
Iraya stepped forward first with an offering of flowers, as Iraya always does. When I say Iraya is the best of us, I mean that she is the most straightforward, the least hesitant. She is not as afraid of failure as I am, and thus is the first to make decisions, the first to place flowers, and it seems that if she were not adverse as she is to adapting to the culture here, she might be more inclined to be a leader within our group of pacifists. She probably will be the leader of the Keychain one day, once she has learned to compromise a little bit more. (Apparently I am incapable of avoiding getting sidetracked. I will once again return to the actual topic.) At any rate Iraya placed a basket of flowers before the place where there had once been an entrance into the tomb, and I placed my hand on the wall and talked and hoped to the gods that the Sensei could hear me saying sorry, could hear me saying I wanted to help and to fix things. And something happened. Iraya says she saw it clearly, though for me it was more a feeling then a vision, a sense of something's being instead of a real visual, but the idea was there nonetheless. The Clanless Sensei, in what might be his fifties (he seemed middle aged for a human, but I haven't known enough humans for enough of their lives to be an entirely accurate judge). He walked oddly, one leg stiff as a board and the other bent oddly. His left arm seemed as though it had been taken off entirely, not just faded out. Was he injured because of the damage to the clans or because of our missteps? I had no idea. We sat and relaxed and I tried to somehow connect with the haunt that we had labeled the Sensei's Brother, the one we had been with the time we came into the tomb, the one who had shown us the problem whether by accident or on purpose.
And then I was standing in a room in nothing but my normal clothing. One leg was stiff, the other bent oddly and my left arm was gone, yet somehow it did not bother me. Normally it would have scared the living daylights out of me because in many ways being crippled beyond the ability to function would be worse for me than being dead. And yet I wasn't scared. I wasn't worried. I wasn't even surprised. It was as a dream, where anything that happens is ordinary and expected, and so my arm was gone and my legs weren't working right and I didn't care. We weren't in the same room as before, but that didn't matter either. What mattered was what stood before us: A shrine. A katana, a helmet, and a box. The others moved from behind us, and we ordered them to stop, and they actually listened oddly enough. We stood, we thought, and we came to a conclusion. I held my hand up and imagined flowers, and they were there, the same basket Iraya had brought forth at first. I held them out to her and she took them, and Taka and I slowly, carefully, lifted the box. We moved it half a foot, and Iraya placed the flowers where it had been, and then ever so slowly we began to carry it away from the shrine. We were about a foot away, and it looked like things were going to be alright, and then something rolled, and something exploded.
It wasn't a real explosion. It was contained, and it never reached the shrine, but the box was gone and instead was a writhing orb of morganti spirits twisting and pulling themselves apart into individual beings. I tried the first thing that came to mind, because Kyrin had taught me some about minds and dreams and things, and I tried to stop them by asserting that they couldn't do anything. This had no effect whatsoever and they proceeded to attempt to rip apart the shrine, specifically the flowers. Instantly every person in the room was in motion. Iraya grabbed the basket of flowers away to protect it, I tried to pull them back away from the shrine, Taka was wearing the helmet and I couldn't see exactly what he was doing, and Scarab had taken up the sword and was attempting to destroy the beings that were filling up the room. Most people were trying to drag the wraiths away or get away from them as fast as possible. Many of us were shouting though I don't remember what I was saying.
And then there was a wall. The same wall as before. I blinked, coming back into myself. My limbs were all fine, there were no wraiths visible, and around me I could see the others adjusting to being suddenly stationary and sitting. The feeling of Morganti was still overpowering, but there was something else as well. There was a feeling that was almost at ease in a way, and a feeling of a little bit more freedom.
If you are a noble in Sorikonia, either the problem has been solved or you aren't reading this anymore, and if you aren't then you might have noticed that they're acting oddly. They walk with a stiff leg and a slightly bent one, and they don't use their left arm. Those that don't exhibit these signs carry flowers. When we entered the inn and saw Chen Panjue exhibiting these behaviors, we started freaking out. He did not seem to notice he was doing so, and when we attempted to explain he lost focus and didn't seem to realize that we were talking to him. At that point I walked over to him and lifted his left arm up in an attempt to make him see what was going on. Iraya brought over a flower and handed it to him, and while he still could not be told what was going on, the physical behaviors that mimicked the Clanless Sensei's condition faded away.
We had quite obviously messed up (again), and so it should be unsurprising that our course of action was to turn right back around and see if we could fix it. We returned once again with more flowers, as well as a sword and a helm. We placed them in the same formation they had been placed in on the shrine, and we all sat down and meditated.
This time we were unsurprised when we appeared in a room full of morganti wraiths, though slightly more surprised to find we had use of all our limbs and had a chance to wish for one thing. Many of us chose flowers. Some chose armor. It was there, and then the wraiths turned to attack us. It was rather surreal the calmness with which most of our group evaded the morganti beings. Not that it was particularly calm, people were rushing about and difficult to keep track of and many of them were shouting and we were surrounded by constantly moving morganti, but nobody panicked outright the way you would expect. However, it was seemingly inevitable under such circumstances that nothing would go wrong, and it finally did. A newly trained martial artist failed to block an attack and got stabbed in the arm. To our surprise, instead of a nasty black gash appearing there, the flower he had been carrying disappeared, and he kept moving as though he had not been touched. Needless to say those of us who were pacifists wasted no time after that in giving our flowers to our friends. Scarab managed to take down one of the wraiths, and the same martial artist from before received a blow to the leg, and besides that there was general chaos. This went on for a short amount of time before we returned to our, how shall I put it... physical selves.
It was at this point that Lalena realized that due to the rule of three, we probably only got one more try. Oh, and we had to get rid of all thirty-nine of the remaining morganti wraiths in one go. And we didn't get any of our items. So at this point the strategy is to go find out how we're going to do that before we try again. And I'm sorry, even though you're probably not reading any more, I'm sorry to all the clan nobles and royalty for causing your current condition, and I hope to the gods it's not permanent. And we're going to fix this for real. We will. And I'm sorry.
Amara (Monday) Well, no luck finding a solution to the Clanless Sensei issue. (Spencer) asked us about it over dinner at the inn and it seems like all Sorikonians can't acknowledge what happened, even the ones that exhibit none of the Sensei's injuries. Because of this, we had a magic item salesman talking over us rather loudly the entire time, which wasn't particularly helpful. Either way, the story got told, if not as nicely as I would have hoped. Eventually Ishmael, Iraya, and myself escaped the noise of the inn and went for a walk, during which fairly morbid topics were discussed. At any rate, the topic of tonight's writing is not the Clanless Sensei, it's a shrine surrounded by lights and a couple hundred traumatized soldiers. We gathered on the docks well past the fall of dusk. The sky was an inky black, dotted by the occasional speck of light, and the air was cool and salty. I was carrying a blade that my mentor had lent me if a getaway became necessary, but the knowledge that it made the water harmless did not make it any less uncomfortable to stand on that boat looking down at it. When you spend your whole life expecting certain death from a thing, having even the most reliable of safeguards against it will not teach you to love it in only a couple of hours. Needless to say the ship ride was nerve-wracking, and I was very happy when we reached land. We trekked inland a ways, most of the party on the ground and a few of us in the trees, and I ended up giving the sword to Fang. I would much rather try to make it back in the dark over land, and I was far more capable of doing so then he would be. When we got close enough to hear the panicked and angry shouts filtering through the trees, the party melted into the darkness.
I made my way through the trees and down to a flatter area. I could see them now, shouting about attacks by merfolk and ogres and all manner of creatures that weren't there. I slipped past them and flattened myself against a tree as a group of four patrolled by. One of them looked right at me but didn't seem to quite register my presence. After that I stayed off the main path, hoping to avoid any more close calls. I ended up sitting with (Quinn) in the branches of a tree squinting down at circling flickering lights. There was a large bowl dug out of the earth and in the center a relatively major Earth Shrine. Not a tomb or anything, but a fairly large shrine. There were a few offerings; some weapons, foods that were at least a couple weeks old and rotting, a little gold. We watched the soldiers come and go, speaking in low voices that we were sure would not be heard over the shouting below us. I noticed that a large number of the soldiers moving below possessed features characteristic of Earth Clan, and he pointed out that several looked to be members of Fire too. There were no other clans obviously present, though there were many soldiers who did not have any particularly distinctive identifying features. Perhaps the lights, green and an orange gold, were signifying clans? But then what of the blue lights that were present in equal numbers to those gold and green?
I am amazed how long it took me to make the connection to the demons, because it seems obvious in hindsight. But it was when (Quinn) remarked on not seeing anyone of Water, Lake, or Thunder Clans that I realized what the colors meant, and that it had nothing to do with the Clans from whom the men at arms had been drawn. I grabbed his shoulder and spoke in a harsh whisper. "We are getting out of here. NOW." And we did, leaping through the trees with a haste which nearly betrayed our positions. I didn't know if the demons could tell we were there, and if they could, now when we were unprepared was not the time to be fighting them. We had seen what we had come to see, and perhaps I might have considered the dishonor in a retreat if we had come to fight, but we had come to see and to learn and we had done that well enough. Information does dead men no good.
The boat was exactly where we had left it, and I waited in silence for our friends' safe returns. Thankfully, they did not keep us waiting long, and soon the ship was on its way back and we were allowed to go back to the inn and sit in chairs where the floor didn't move under us and for the first minute or so of it that in itself was great. And then conversation began. There were the basic things first, the ones that were easily noticeable, like the fact that they were talking to nothing and fighting nonexistant threats and that they couldn't even agree on the enemy. Then came things that were slightly less noticeable. Like that they believed they were defending Sashi Iten, and that they were treating the lights as commanders. Iraya had even heard the lights putting out quiet noise. Quinn and I put forth our information as well. Mong came forward and told us he had captured one of them. Someone produced a book of super-identify, and we learned a little bit while he was still unconscious.
He was of Earth Clan, though not of any status. He'd fought in mainland wars and had what would normally be minor mental disorder that might cause him to go berserk under a great deal of stress if a battle was going badly. However, it seemed like something had been tapping into the worst of his memories, and had done so very recently. Hoping we could get more information through conversing with him, Mong set up a small circle of protection so he might have a little space, and somehow I ended up in there with him and the soldier. The man seemed confused when he awoke, and we attempted to calm him down, which only worked to a limited extent. We then tried to question him from various different angles, but turned up nothing of use. By the time people started yelling inane questions like "what's your favorite color", he seemed to be wearing thin and we sent him home to get some sleep, which it seemed he desperately needed.
There then followed some discussion of Earth Clan and the information surrounding their circumstances, and I came upon the idea that perhaps bloodlines had something to do with the survivors. Sure enough, we checked with Chen Panjue and he realized that the three survivors were rather unique in that manner. Each was only a quarter Earth (save one who had no Earth Clan blood at all) and their other family came from all different clans. Believing we may have struck upon something, Chen Panjue went off to check the records and the rest of us talked amongst ourselves for a time. Slowly people have drifted away to their places of sleep, and I am one of a small few who still sit in the inn now. I think I will be heading off soon enough, but there are a couple matters to attend to first. Either way, my inkwell is running low, and I shall write no more this night.
Amara (Tuesday) Early Afternoon There were tales of crops and people being pulled down into the earth, and since as things stood we couldn't exactly go into any tombs to take care of such things, we ended up trekking across the countryside to help those who could not help themselves. While this doesn't sound particularly glorious or exciting in comparison to saving all of Sorikonia by clearing out tombs, it's not like all the other problems go away just because there are bigger things out there. So we were on our way to go deal with whatever it was that was harassing farmers.
We encountered nothing we could not handle on the way, though there was one encounter which yielded a magical sword. Needless to say the party wasted no time arguing over it and eventually it was decided that it went to one of the few members of our group that did not already posses magical weaponry. The blade itself seemed rather useless at the time so far as magic items went. It glowed in the presence of 'good' and was passively magic, but as almost our entire party was 'good' it was just glowing all the time.
We came to the site of the disappearances to find farmers planting new seeds, which was odd because it's not really planting season. They told us that the old crops had just been sucked into the ground, gone without a trace, and requested we leave them to their work. Because that just seems to be how the world works, the instant I turned my back there was a shout and I turned to see one of my companions being dragged into the ground by an enormous set of teeth. I tried to help him but the owner of the teeth filled in its tunnel behind it, and he disappeared under the earth. At that point Lalena came bounding up to me with a little bit more enthusiasm then I would usually expect from anyone at that particular moment, and said one word that pretty much explained the entire situation, including her mildly unnerving happiness: "Mole-sharks!" Lalena comes from a family of animal trainers who to some extent specialize in drakespawn. Apparently her mom had a run-in with molesharks a long time ago and ever since had wanted to train them so this was some kind of big thing for Lalena. I was a little bit more put off at the whole giant-things-with-teeth-are-eating-my-friends thing. At any rate, Lalena wanted as many as possible captured alive for training, which I certainly didn't object to. As it turned out, 'as many as possible' ended up being two. One moleshark ate another one when we failed to supervise them, and a couple of the others had eaten party members who needed to be dug out and rebirthed. Not to mention we happened to have a hunter within our group who really wanted drakespawn parts. So to Lalena's dismay and my agitation (I don't get squeamish about blood anymore, but there's something that feels very wrong about allowing an unconscious creature to be butchered, however necessary) Viper killed and cut open two of the four remaining sharks while the two of us examined the tunnels.
Climbing down was not difficult, but it made me nervous regardless. It was soil we were climbing, not stone, and as such it might be prone to collapse. Lalena felt the instability even more so then I, being a centaur. And beyond that, there was another problem. Namely, the fact that it was really dark underground. At this point an idea occurred to me, and I scrambled back up to the surface and over to the man who had been given the magic sword I spoke of earlier. My approach was pretty much 'Hey can I use your sword as a torch?' and he agreed after making sure I would return it afterward. (I'm not a theif, but in this party it wasn't a bad thing to verify.) So back down into the darkness I went, armed this time with an eerie red light to guide us. Our next problem was encountered when we came to the first crossroads and realized there was really no effective way to make sure we could find our way out. Once again, the solution was on the surface and by now surely Viper had retrieved the bodies of our fallen party members from inside the dead molesharks, and one of those people was Fang who I knew for a fact was a guildmaster ranger. So once again it was back to the surface. All fallen party members were made alive again, and Viper and another man whose name I don't recall wished to accompany us into the tunnels. Lalena decided not to go back down though. Things felt a little too unsteady to her. Perhaps we should have listened.
Fang had an amulet of the Assassin and therefore ferried down Viper, and I took the other guy down. It's not like carrying people while climbing is an entirely new thing for me. I mean, it's unpleasant and I don't do it often, but I've done it. But it was enough that I didn't realize the soil was crumbling under my hands 'till I was already falling. At that point I had two choices, let go of my passenger so that I could break my own fall properly, or end up in a crumpled heap twenty feet down with probably a broken limb. I'm a pacifist, but all the pacifism in the world won't save you from getting hurt in a fall. I'm not proud of it, but I let go of the guy and let him fall, rolling away from the falling earth and trying to ignore the crash that he made when he hit... the tree. Viper had treeformed, and even with the collapse of our entrance that tree was providing enough support to prevent that entire area from caving in. Fang and I pulled the man I'd been carrying out of the dirt and healed him and he was alright if somewhat shaken. I turned back to Viper's tree and apologized to him and promised we would come back for him once we'd found another exit. Then we turned and made our way into the darkness.
The dark wasn't as scary as before with Fang there to get us out of anyplace we managed to get ourselves lost, but the small signs of instability were terrifying. I didn't want to suffocate and die alone in the dark, and I knew that down here the pacifism I relied on so heavily would be of no more help then my normal clothes. It is in situations like these that the feeling of invincibility and detachment disappear entirely and I am reminded of what it's like to be just another person. I have changed in many ways since I came here, and it is amazing how quickly I have forgotten how to be what I once was.
When we came to the same fork in the tunnels we had been in before, we picked a direction arbitrarily and despite my confidence in Fang's skills, I placed a coin in our wake to mark the path we had taken. I didn't want to get lost and go in circles. We continued on guided by a faint red glow, until we reached a cavern. It had several paths leading into it and two bodies, both obviously dead. The three of us picked our way carefully across the chamber to the bodies, and then I cast rebirth on the both of them. They awoke with confused looks, and I have to admit my explanation of what was going on, while effective, was shameful for a storyteller. Fang was doing considerably better at his task of trying to figure out which path would lead us out. He found three promising tunnels, we picked the left one, and soon enough we could see daylight. Fang and I carried the farmers up and out, and then returned for Viper. The hunter was rather annoyed at us for leaving him, but grateful to be able to get out of his treeform. The dirt he'd been holding up shifted a bit, but no further collapse occurred and we all headed back to our exit and left the tunnels for good.
Another issue, one of supposed Urukai murderer bandits, was nearby, and we decided to head over to check it out before returning to Sashi Iten. It was a simpler matter to take care of, as it only involved us realizing that the 'Urukai' were not Urukai at all, and after that it was a short battle and then done with. After that it was back to town where I disappeared into the mental poet world.
I returned from the woods just in time for the ceremony to begin, poem in hand. Representatives of every clan were present, dressed formally and carrying with them a weight that could be felt within the air. This was not an occasion for smiles. This was an occasion for grief and memories to be shared and for each of us to honor those that we had once known, who had been lost to us forever. So when we were told of Earth, of the happiness and cleverness and laughter that we had only seen hinted at, the air became only heavier, as each person in attendance slowly began to feel the importance and weight of what had been lost, and all of it together felt so heavy and so sorrowful I thought it might crush all in attendance until naught was left of our congregation but unshed tears and unspoken words. By the time it was our turn to speak, I am not entirely sure anyone entirely felt like doing so. (Quinn) came forth first with the two simple quiet words: "Thank you." Next Taka approached the altar and spoke of how the dead would, though gone, be with us in our memories. I stepped forward with my poem, so inadequate in light of all that had been said, but there nonetheless, with a hopeful message and a promise. Lastly there was Ishmael, managing to tie everything together into a string of words sad and hopeful and beautiful all at once. Finally, the main part of the ceremony concluded, we were told to eat and enjoy ourselves in honor of Earth Clan, but that throughout the hours offerings could be made at the altar.
I will assemble my group to sing now, for that is our offering, and I hope that the ancestors will hear our words.
Evening (The paper is covered in marks, the lines are far too thick, there are words spelled incorrectly and crossed off all over the place.) The world seems to have decided it's a f*cking great time to throw me into a pit full of everything I hate and fear and I can't... My world feels like it ended. I don't like the feeling. I thought I could stop running but everything is here and standing still is painful and the rocks in the water sink and drown and I'm sinking and drowning and I need to run.
Amara (Wednesday)
Night Which Is Technically Morning At This Point I've been reading a bunch of old chronicles by Kyrin and people and realizing they write publicly about a lot of things I would consider too private. Like, Kyrin wrote this whole thing about liking a guy and some stuff about her mom dying and a whole ton of stuff I'd never NEVER make public knowledge in what might later be treated as a historical document. Life is not a happy story with a happy ending and I don't expect many people to care when it's over about all the little things. Nobody looking at documents ever does, they care about the events and the actions but nobody cares about the people behind them. Nobody cares about the person who loses a mentor because that person was killed during the events. Nobody cares about the farmer whose child starved or about the little girl who will spend the rest of her life jumping at shadows. Nobody cares about you. They want your teachings, your work, your visions, your inspirations, but they don't want you. They'll never want you. Why should they? They're the present and you're just an old rotting memory of the past. So why give them your soul when they will never see the value in it?
Because we're fools. And because we care. And because sometimes its nice to believe that someone can hear you scream and maybe, just maybe, one of them will care enough to find out who you really were all those years ago screaming for help where nobody else could hear.
Noonish Why am I awake? Why am I awake and why is the sun in the middle of the damn sky instead of somewhere nearer the horizon? Wait. It's noon. The inn is serving lunch. Well then. That would tend to explain the odd position of the sun and the fact that I feel like I've slept forever and at the same time not nearly enough. I s'pose they did tell us it was pretty damn late last night before we started talking about the Clanless Sensei and he just kinda walked off. Ah yes. Important sh*t happened last night. With the muffin man and a skull and all sorts of stuff and I sound like a raving lunatic right now so why don't I start telling the story before somebody decides to call someone about the crazy pacifist sitting in the damn inn looking like she just crawled outta bed. So... Lessee, can I say Riddler on paper without summoning him? Alright he's not here yet I'm assuming it's safe. Alrighty, story time.
When you're in the middle of having an emotional breakdown and you're told by people you trust that you should take the night off, you should probably take the night off. Unless you're me. If you're me you walk through the darkness and avoid breaking into a terrified sprint just to prove you can, and you occupy yourself with the most goddamn important thing you can find because that way you can work on solving problems on the outside and pretend the ones on the inside don't exist. Long story short, I do all sorts of stuff so I can survive and maybe in a hundred years I'll sit down and try to untangle the knot of negative energy that I'm ignoring right now so that I can NOT die. At any rate, I blatantly ignored Mong's requests that I stay home and followed a tracker out to look for traces of Riddle. I noticed that Fang was absent, and was at once relieved and anxious. Damn him. Then the tracker shouted that he'd found something, and I attempted to drop that train of thought and followed his voice into the dark.
The route was circuitous and long with unnecessary winds and bends. We wove in and out of trees, through bushes, over streams, and generally everywhere except the road. I was beginning to think we were being lead on a wild goose chase and our tracker had no idea where we were going. It was at this point that the earth began to take a familiar shape, and I realized that through the most indirect paths humanly possible we had come to the tomb of the Clanless Sensei. Frowning, I began to climb the slope along with the others, and we were a little ways up when they began to appear. The mimics came first, translucent blue glows that shaped themselves into our twins and copied our movements as would a mirror. They had no substance, only images, silent faces in the darkness. We continued to trudge up the slope, and more figures began to appear. I was unsurprised to see ghostly green and gold shapes in the darkness, though slightly more surprised when a green charged me with warded blade in hand. I defended to the best of my ability, but another green appeared and I was on the ground soon after.
I awoke to liquid shadow and a quiet voice and turned to see a man from our party standing over me. I thanked him for his healing and he disappeared into the night, as though he'd never been there. I for my part sprinted toward the top of the hill.
I seem to have a knack for stepping into old stories, and not the pleasant ones. One in particular seems to have decided to stalk me recently. First the shadow bat, and now, surrounded by people both glowing and solid, were the Riddler. All three of him, though the one with the plague mask was the one upon which all present focused. Will there next be a tree I wonder? But I was not considering the parallels then, I simply knew they were the Riddler and I knelt by Taka to examine his new morbid setup and to listen to the words he and Iraya exchanged. I couldn't tell exactly what things were in the darkness, but there were keys, a skull, and a snakelike statue surrounded by smaller figures whose details I could not quite make out. His trademark knives and hourglass were oddly absent as he spoke to Iraya in rhyme and questions. The point at which I began to devote my full focus to the masked man came a few moments later, with an odd poem-like question: "In Battle there is Honor, In War there is Glory, in Peace there is Hope, now what is your story?" Iraya responded with a solemnity and calmness at odd with the general setting, speaking of being alone and coming here and finding purpose. The glowing figures began to gather around us, but they had ceased whatever activities they had engaged in before, opting only to gather and stare. Words went between them, Taka and I began to contribute words as well, and somehow we managed to get into a philosophical conversation with the Riddler about the nature of knowledge and truth. Through a good deal of finishing each other's sentences the three of us managed to express the idea that there might not be any truth, there was only perception, which varied from person to person. The Riddler asked us further questions, and we ended up with something along the lines of (and keep in mind that this was multiple people speaking) "Everyone sees things their own way, but by learning more ways of seeing things we come closer to a Balance." Suddenly the skull in the Riddler's hand glowed brightly and he boomed, "THEN YOU ARE BLIND!" Iraya alone did not shrink back away from his anger. It is the first time I have ever heard of the Riddler raising his voice, and it was the most intimidating thing I have ever seen. We all sat in stunned silence for a moment before he shrank back down. And then one of us, I forget who, did the equivalent of asking him to teach us to see, and then he challenged us to a game, and Iraya, Taka, and myself accepted his challenge.
His hourglass appeared, and he spoke the riddle in a hissing twisting voice. "What has no tail but is a tail, knows but has no nose, as black as pitch, as white as hail, and feels wherever it goes?" We sat in silence for a few moments, and after puzzling over the words I used my guess to hear it again. I had misheard the end of it and it seemed to fit a little better after I heard it again. We puzzled a little longer and then Iraya answered, "A snake." "Correct." And suddenly the skull left his hands and Iraya caught it.
I remember nothing for a long time after that. We arrived back in the inn having no recollection of how we'd gotten there, and were met by Panjue, who kindly informed us that we'd been gone for six hours and it was now the small hours of the morning. Then Iraya began talking about her vision and he drifted off. She told us that the Riddler had given her one answer as a prize for winning his game, and while she had many questions, there was one that was the most important of all. She had asked how to fix the tomb of the Clanless Sensei. The answer had been a vision of a person walking through the room full of morganti wraiths, ignoring them entirely. This person then walked through the opposite wall as if it wasn't there. Then there was the room that was the real inside of the tomb of the Clanless Sensei, with its mural and its yin-yang circle, and the box sitting amongst it all. All three colors of glowing figure were there as well, trying with all their might to lift and steady the box. The discussion went a small while longer then that, but I was tired and don't precisely recall it. At any rate, I'm awake, written, eaten, and now the Order of the Flower readies itself for what we suspect may be our final journey into his tomb, though I hope that it is not, for I wish to see him again when this is done. But we will remove the evil box. That much is certain.
Afternoon WE DID IT! We've won! The box is safely in (Spencer)'s hands, we're all very much alive, and we did it we did it we DID IT! And I'm on the top of the world, throw me something anything I can deal with it I can take it I need to keep going because I can do ANYTHING right now, just send it here! I'm sure you all want the story of course you do that's why you read this stuff you want to know what's turned the girl who wrote last night's rather morbid affair into lady sunshine queen of confidence who's writing now and so I'll write it for ya and then I'll go and find something else needs doing and be off.
So we made the usual walk up to the tomb of the Clanless Sensei, paths so familiar I could probably walk it blindfolded by now 'cept I probably couldn't but hey, exaggeration. And so we headed up all solemn and serious and Iraya and I suggested all the others not pacifists didn't come in because this was our task and we couldn't defend them so they all stood back and we meditated, and then we were there again. The wraiths attacked and this time we were empty handed and we walked calmly through the storm of wraiths. They threw charms, mana drains, damage, and some knockout attempts our way, but we walked through untouched. We came to the far wall and kept going, all but Taka who was for some reason unable to enter. Our task took on a new sense of urgency. We knew the wraiths couldn't harm him physically or mentally, but being buffeted by that much morganti--or even being in its presence--wasn't a good thing.
The four of us remaining walked quickly down a long familiar hall, past a fallen game of Minimoto with scattered pieces and into the room I have described many times before. The chest was where I remembered it, covered in a black cloak that felt like snakes. Slowly, carefully, we approached it and I knelt by it. It was sitting at an angle and as I examined it I could see a small orb adorned with a phoenix that I knew should not be disturbed. Carefully I placed a hand on the box and something rang, and one of the folds in the cloak that I had assumed were just folds collapsed. I felt something heavy on my soul, but I ignored it. If dying meant there would be serious issues, I would just have to evade death. Iraya knelt on the other side of the box, spotting the phoenix orb and another one I hadn't seen. Slowly I removed the cloak from the box, and she held both orbs in place as I lifted the box (careful to keep It at its slant) and took a few steps back. Iraya let go of the two orbs and they thankfully stayed silent, and we made our journey back out in silence. When we returned to the wraith room Taka was curled up in a ball surrounded by wraiths, who drew away from him and focused on us as we marched through. Taka rose and all five of us hastily left through the wall in front of which we had first appeared.
We returned to our physical bodies and before us was the box, physical and certainly not a dream projection now. We examined it on the spot a bit while (Miranda) and Taka moved away to get Taka identified with minimal risk of exploding something.
The box was of Desnorian style and was locked with a lock that had an odd symbol for a keyhole. We'd seen the symbol around before, and it had something to do with structure, though honestly I hadn't paid it much attention till now. I sort of wish I had. We poked at it a bit, finally deciding to move it a safer distance from the tomb, and proceeded to poke some more. When we thought we had learned all we could, we were faced with the problem of how to return to Sashi Iten without getting attacked and blowing up or losing the box by accident. We asked some birds and trees about things using Taka's cloak, and finally settled on just trying to track around anything that might want to intercept us. After all, standing still did no one any good but our enemies. So we made our way back using an odd winding course, and supposedly we evaded several things before our luck ran out.
It was undead, and I was carrying the box and trying not to let it tilt the wrong direction. I didn't stick around long, I scampered off down a side trail to avoid combat and therefore the possibility of exploding morganti all over the place. I could hear the battle nearby, and a couple times undead of some sort came dangerously close to my location, but I managed to make it to town with no major mishaps and make sure the box got safely into (Spencer)'s hands. The others returned not long after, and Lalena told me Kaminari had shown up with his shield of epicness and dealt with the undead.
And that's pretty much where we're at right now. Feeling lage amounts of satisfaction and pride at our successful completion of our task. I suspect soon enough we will end up returning to deal with the morganti wraiths or to extract the cloak and orbs if possible. Until then though, I'm a happy person.
Night Trust me to get my mood ruined by the scariest thing I've ever seen happen to a friend. Thankfully he's okay now I think, though I'm not sure I am. Then again me being entirely okay seems to be a rare thing these days.
Anyway, we investigated Temnorian assassin activity, they've got some pretty nasty new swords. Neat though. It probably says something about me that the whole Temnorian assassin issue, while it needed dealing with, wasn't particularly exciting or even vaguely interesting, while checking trade records, hearing history lectures, and navigating moleshark tunnels are completely noteworthy. Speaking of which, the WTO has been discovered to have been paying for Sashi Sabres in pure silver for some time while being totally oblivious to the fact that they were helping out Whispers in the whole destroy Sorikonia from the inside using boxes of silver and morganti plot. Funny that. Anyway, I think that's it from me for a while. Amara out.
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Post by ElfChild on Oct 1, 2012 15:57:20 GMT -8
This is the last repost.
Xey Okay, so I went and adventured and stuff again because even though Mist and I have been telling stories and I seemed to be getting close I still hadn't found my mentor and we were hoping that maybe asking Embarcarious for a direction to go in would be useful. Embarcarious knows lots of stuffs and even though he can't tell me the answers, he's still allowed to point me in the right general direction. The only problem was that everybody is always busy. And I mean, of course everyone's busy, we have dwarves attacking us and we have to be making sure the WTO doesn't kill the queen and all the teachers are doing that, and plus they have all the normal problems too. I guess that's what happens when war happens. I mean, it's not like fighting is a new thing or anything, it's always been happening, but when it's a war that puts the entire continent in some kind of hard place everything gets bigger and you have new big problems and all the little ones just kinda get pushed to the background. Maybe we should go out and fight more, so the teachers can have more time and stuff, 'cos I can't be the only one who needs them for smaller things. I'm not changing the fate of the continent or anything, not yet, but my smaller thing is plenty important to me and I'm sure the same is true of almost everyone else for some issue or another... Maybe we should go out sometime and help out normal people with normal stuff which is probably as important to any one of them as my quest is to me. And maybe we can be the lower down equivalent of an Embarcarious or a Katie or a Starlock or a Melissa for them. We can teach them things they want to learn. Not everybody gets a chance to study in the Pinnacle library and take mage classes, not everybody learns to track things and know the way the woods work, not everyone learns how to hunt. How many people would be better off if after we finished our own adventures we came out and taught people skills that might let them have coin for their families or start their own adventuring or fix their tools of trade? Maybe the world would be better if everybody was a teacher to somebody.
Anyways, all the teachers were busy and doing things and they had various things that they might have a little bit more time to talk to us if those things were done, and there were lots of things we could do but none of them really seemed to be the right answer, plus some of them were super dangerous. So I decided we should ask Embarcarious to send us on a mission since that tends to be a fairly reliable method of going the right direction and still having no idea what I'm doing. But Embarcarious was busy. But if we could get the dwarves to go away he wouldn't have to and he could talk to us. Besides, the dwarves were trying to enslave hobbits and slavery is bad and evil so they needed to be stopped anyway. So I declared I was going on that mission and a bunch of old adventurers who usually don't adventure much anymore decided to come. So it was me and Mist and Malkin and a bunch of really a lot older people, mostly dwarves and elves. They'd adventured a super long time ago, most of them, or at least they adventured before I was born, which is only really sixty years or so, but it's long enough that there weren't many humans among us, and only one centaur. Humans live faster, but centaurs live a lot faster. I wish they didn't, because Celia's not a kid anymore and she does grown-up things now. I do grown up things too, but I'm still allowed to do kid things if I want because I am one. Grown-ups have some really stupid rules, and not doing kid stuff is one of them. There were lots of interesting people there. For a while I was taking to Malkin and this elemental lady named Eva who lived in this rock person. Eva's really pretty and really strong and her rock person, he's pretty neat too. Creepy guy was there too, Drakion, and I told him to go away but he didn't because he's creepy. So I went and talked to people and then Celia's mom came up to me and told me that I might want to go deal with Mist and Drakion and so I tried to knock Drakion over to make him leave Mist alone because he's crazy and he attacked me before and he's obsessed with death, but he's taller then me and knocking tall people over is hard, so I ran into him and stood between him and Mist and told him to leave her alone and not to hurt anybody, and he threatened me, and I threatened him back. Then Mist said that he was like the littler kids and if we ignored him he'd leave us alone and I said okay because she was right and he got mad and followed us but we ignored him. I introduced Mist to Eva and Eva apparently scared Drakion which was good and by the time everybody was ready to go we'd scared him off.
The actual fighting of dwarves didn't last long. We walked out, shot some arrows, they ignored the arrows, we stabbed them, and they kindly agreed not to bother the hobbits of Pinnacle anymore. We walked back to Pinnacle, Drakion proceeded to be creepy and talk about the dwarves being death idols, I wished he would go harass people somewhere where I never had to hear from him again, and I walked with Mist and Eva and Malkin and mister Orange. Mister Orange gave me a really shiny hat that makes people like me, and it's super pretty. I told him thank you.
We got back to the inn and Embarcarious walked in and said hi and we went over the stuff I'd done on my quest and I guess he was hoping I'd figure something out by going over all the puzzle pieces I had because I think he knew the answer all along because he's Embarcarious. But I didn't put things together like maybe he wanted me to. I'd done mind stuff, been told weird things by a dragon, learned to sense mana, told stories with Mist, and put myself and my other self back together. He told me I was probably very close and I told him I had lots of pieces but couldn't figure out how they fit together. He told me he couldn't give me the answer and I told him he could point me in the right direction and he didn't say it but I think he was a little frustrated or maybe nervous about that because there was only really one thing left to do and if I'd realized Katie and Starlock were my mentor when he told me to go ask her about it, he would have told me the answer and maybe it wouldn't have worked anymore. But he told me maybe Katie knew about being two people and I didn't make the connection so I ran off to do a mission for her and get more advice for finding my mentor. There were a few things to do, and I considered two of them for the most part. There was hunting down somebody who killed a fey and there was making a bunch of trolls leave a group of trees that a bunch of nature mages used. I would have done the first, only fey like magic things and I didn't want them to take anybody's magic things since last time I brought people on a Dream Knight mission a bunch of magic things got eaten and I felt bad about it and I'm pretty sure some people still didn't like me because of it. So we went to go take care of the trolls.
Once again, fighting was the easy part, burning trolls before they regenerated was slightly harder, but still manageable fairly easily. Most things are easier to fight then vampires, and having had plenty of experience with that, this wasn't really any trouble for us.
Back to the inn, Katie was waiting for us. I guess Embarcarious had told her we'd be there, because he'd told us he could cover for her a bit, and she was there before we'd got halfway through the inn to our normal meeting space. She handed out soul cookies to those who wanted them, and the two of us talked about baking as a metaphor. She talked about how the cookies she was holding contained cranberries but weren't themselves cranberries, but they were cranberries and other stuff as well. And she talked about cooking and how if you overcook things they turn to ash and if you undercook them they make people sick, and she talked about how when you make a cake you don't start out already having a cake. I went through the metaphors in regards to my journey, and how before I'd been insane and that's when I hadn't done it long enough, and how if I kept on going too long bad things were going to happen, and a couple things clicked a little and I went into my bow's metaphor, and Mist and I went to the last piece of the story. Xey walked down the hall and there was the mirror with Warrior Xey on one side and Mage Xey on the other. And then Starlock was there, and she had me do a funny hand thing where I was holding the two swords as one in one hand and the other was pressed against the side of my head and at that point it seemed like pretty much everybody had figured out what was going on but me, and then Mist repeated the line, "The knight is always armed with twins behind his eyes" and stuff kinda just clicked. Actually, once it did it was sort of surprising it hadn't done so a long time ago, it was that kind of 'oh wait this has been obvious all along hasn't it' type click. But all the stuff made sense and I made my right eye the warrior and my left eye the mage, and Starlock did an almost smile type thing, I'm not sure Starlock ever actually smiles but it was close, and she took my hand and lead me through the school up to her room and there was a circle of protection and there was her room, and Mist tried following us but Starlock hissed at her, and so now I'm up here. Starlock and Katie are teaching me things, and stuff is good.
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Post by ElfChild on Nov 8, 2012 21:51:57 GMT -8
Season finale chronicle, part one. I have no idea if there will be a part two, or if there will be but it will be private, or if Amara is emotionally shot now that she's had time to sit down and think. I can promise I will TRY to write a part two and edit it into this if/when I finish it. For now, this is what you're getting.
Amara Oh. Geez. This day. I swear to god this day. What the hell. So it was hardly unexpected, but still. Geez. Demons. Death. Morganti. All sorts of incredibly bloody morbid nasty crud, not to mention undead that escalated like haunts. Dear gods. Mother of all bad days. Well. It wasn't all bad. After all, we did WIN every one of these encounters with death. We did come out, if not entirely okay, mostly alive and breathing. We have defeated that which threatened to destroy this island.
We'll start with the easy stuff. And by easy I mean we were fighting Shemdalla Nightwhip ang her band of nasties which was all well and good up till the point when they pulled out morganti. Two swords, an axe, and a dagger.
If you've ever fought morganti, you know it sucks tremendously. It feels like a predator, just the feeling of the perfect hunter all around you and the knowledge that it wants to destroy you utterly. Being inches from that thing, that predator, that was nothing new. I have been surrounded entirely by that feeling before, several dozen hunters of that nature have swarmed me all at once, and I have never been better prepared to deal with them then I am now. It is a different thing entirely to hold that thing in your hand, to feel it hungering for the souls of others, wanting the death and destruction that you know so well it can cause. Wanting you to be its vessel, its wielder. It is a power I never want to give into. Holding that in your hands is unnerving enough. Having others ask you for that power, intending fully to use it? It is the most terrifying thing in the world. There is no reason to want that power unless you want to bring the ultimate horror on others. No reason to want that power unless you are evil, unless you have a shard of the darkest darkness at your core. Morganti is the fate that no one--no matter how terrible their crimes--deserves, for while it is not the worst punishment a person can have, it is the one which denies them a future. No one should want that power. Why do they want that power?
There was only one still standing, and it was her, Shemdalla Nightwhip, and she was surrounded, the party swarming around her, myself included. A flurry of strikes, disarms, knockouts, torches, fireballs. All of it ripping into her, and her shrugging like it was nothing. Taka stepped in, calling duel thrice and unforging another item each time. First her shield, then her armor, then her helm. The party swarmed once again, like sharks when there's blood in the water. Nobody realized she had the knife there, or if we did, we certainly didn't think about it. But then it was there. It was there, it was out, and there were enormous gashes in several people and she was running and the party came in from all directions, swarming like sharks but it was too late, the black blood spewing from the gashes, death and blood and permanence, bleeding, falling, darkness. She was over but so were they, and they weren't coming back.
There's a piece in everyone that wants vengeance. There's a piece in everyone that's a shard of the darkest darkness and maybe it wants power, maybe it wants love, maybe it wants attention. Maybe, maybe like me it wants justice. And seeing the innocent die morganti, it makes me feel if only a little bit like the one who inflicted that death, that end, deserves the same fate. She deserves it. But she won't get what she deserves. Because we're better then that. Because revenge dishonors the sacrifice of the dead.
Second. The harder stuff. And by harder stuff I mean walking up to a path into the shadowlands or lands of darkness or wherever the hell demons come from, standing in a circle, summoning the prince, summoning the storm, and somehow managing to keep a horde of bloody nasty undead from murdering Lalena during an exorcism ritual.
We could see the gate from a distance and it was mesmerizing even from there, shifting, moving, hundreds of tiny bones meshed together to create a great doorway from which mist and undead flowed toward us and the undead danced with blades and the party moved forward toward the land of demons and the eight of us veered to the left and stood, six of us in a circle, one warding off party members, and one waiting patiently with weapons built to house the combatants. I looked across from me at Mong, Aurora to his right and Taka to hers. To his left was Lalena, and Scarab to her left. Then the Prince appeared.
This is when I get to really hope that nobody reads this stuff aloud and that you can't invoke names purely through writing, at last not in any significant way. Even if Prince and Storm aren't their true names, those are the names they have responded to in the past and thus still have power. The Prince appeared with spells and claws and teeth in all the incredible ferocious glory one expects from a dragon and all the corrupt heart-wrenching power one expects of a demon. It threw spells left and right, batting at us with its huge claws and snapping with its enormous teeth, and then more casting. There was a Shadowlands breath that bathed Aurora in the dark gold and shadows as she moved to strike at it, then a moment later one directed at Mong that barely missed me. Aurora and Shemdira struck at it, Taka dueled it briefly, Mong dueled it in what was probably some kind of special power removing duel, and the two of them went back and forth with Mong swinging at it with his staff and blows glancing off its scales. The rest of us shadowed one side or the other, waiting for a slip up to be made so we could attack or heal. There was an exchange between the two of them, sometime during this battle, that struck me as interesting and remained within my memory. Mong said to the Prince that he was not afraid of it, and the Prince replied that this was a mistake. Mong then admitted that be was afraid, terrified even, but that it meant he was human. The Prince told him that it was his weakness, and Mong replied that it was his weakness and his strength as well. And the fight continued.
I don't actually remember precisely how the Prince fell, though it seems a rather important moment to forget. Perhaps the memory of that moment has been swallowed up by the memory of the confusion that followed it, or perhaps I simply did not see the finishing blow. Either way, what I recall was the two of them fighting, and then both dead. One side of the stone doorway was crumbling. The Prince was regenerating, but Lalena stepped in and began to exorcize it.
However, this would not be any simple task, for it seems that as the Prince fell, some kind of silent call resounded, and all the undead, who until now had been content to play with the rest of the party, seemed solely bent on removing the threat to the fallen demon's presence on this plane. A wave of undead suddenly redirected their focus and flowed toward us. Most were weaponless by now, but they fought with their hands and they were dangerous all the same. I believe that the ritual Lalena was performing would not have lasted long under such an onslaught but for two factors: Pacifism and Ishmael's shield of awesome powers. Namely, immunity to mana drain. Many things attempted to interrupt her ritual, but she shrugged them all off as mere annoyances. I for my part was occupied trying to drive off some manner of undead that carried a variety of obnoxious spells. It was at first using fear aura, which was actually the reason I felt the need to chase it off in the first place. It first tried a simple "I kill you" spell, which failed to cut through pacifism. It attempted a charm and a mana drain, both of which did nothing. Then it kicked a large bright spell at me and I couldn't see. If you've ever been hit with blinding strike, it was pretty much like that. There were shadows in my vision, the kinds of odd moving colors you see when your eyes are closed. However, there are other things that can be used regardless to tell you where an enemy is. The shadows on the insides of your eyes tell you where the light and dark is, the sound of a person's footsteps gives you a direction... When the goal is to get in the way, there is no need for effective combat. Slowly my vision blinked back to normal, the moving colors changing to dark colored blotches which disappeared as the spell's influence faded. I held my opponent there for a while longer before realizing the possibility of bad things occurring in my absence, at which point I ran off to check up on Lalena.
It was also around then that I spied the Storm, moving toward Lalena and the Prince. It looked like just that, a storm, and while there was sort of a center, I would not have known where to hit it. Fortunately, there was somebody riding a platinum drake nearby. I called him over and he drake breathed the Storm. Twice. It appeared to weaken a little, but apart from that, there was almost no measurable effect. It moved toward Lalena once again, and I ran toward it. Proximity to it should have been devouring my pacifism, but Ishmael's shield of awesome powers was working and the damned thing had little it could use to hurt me. So I got between it and Lalena and did what little I could to prevent it from getting too close. Unfortunately, I hadn't bet on ice ball, though I probably should have. I was not much of a problem for it because of that one major thing. Ice ball. Damn. Apparently that was a problem for Lalena too, because pretty soon it was moving toward the gate somehow carrying the regenerating Prince with it. Someone called duel, managed to make it drop the Prince, and then dueled it again. Lalena started the exorcism ritual again, only to be stopped by Scarab running up and stabbing her with a warded blade. Which of course meant charm. Lalena was healed, I yelled into the chaos trying to find another paladin, and somebody showed up to make all three legendary items present. I was handed two of them by two different people, I have no idea why. Scarab was remove charmed, I handed him the staff and used the sword to try to keep undead away from Lalena but ended up handing that to someone too since it made it difficult for me to use some of my abilities. The storm came out of a duel with I didn't even know who at that point and started moving away from the center of the chaos pretty quickly. Just then, Scarab flung the end of the Staff of the Platinum Magus out toward the storm and hit he dead center of it. It exploded and faded away, probably being drawn back to its home plane.
Lalena was finally allowed to actually finish exorcizing the Prince, and both sides of the bone gate crumbled away, leaving only the top piece suspended above us. The bones on it shifted and clicked and moved, the pathway itself seemed broken in some important way, as nothing was moving in or out. However, as we pulled our dead back to town, there was a dark edge to this victory. A third section of the gate. A third demon. Given that I Knew the third demon, this fact was absolutely terrifying. And on top of the horrible feeling that it invoked, there was more tragedy to come.
Everyone has someone who matters to them, someone they sure as hell don't want to lose. I have a knack for tying myself to people that way. Already one person had lost is son to morganti, and while this wasn't morganti, it was still me losing someone this time. I have bad news for you. For anyone wanting to be an adventurer. Losing people hurts like bloody hell. And maybe Fang is happy now, as a haunt. Maybe he remembers things, maybe he just doesn't care, I don't know. I never will know, because he doesn't say anything either way. He's not like Ellaria, who I can go to and spend a day with and pretend that it's several months ago before I knew what I do now and before my commitment to action was what it is. He's quiet. He doesn't notice, he doesn't speak. I don't know if it's even him or if it's the other guy who he spent his entire time here trying to become. Even if it is him, even if he could hear me, I don't know what I'd say. There are bonds you form and bonds you burn and bonds you try to burn but can't. There are times you win, times you lose, times you do nothing more than survive. There are times you burn the strings that tie you to a person because it hurts like a knife, but at least knife wounds can heal. I tried to do that, I tried, and the injury I gave him never got a chance to heal, and now it's too late to say sorry. So I write it here because hell, what difference does it make? Fang, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that things didn't work. I'm sorry I caused you pain. I'm sorry I ran away. I'm sorry the last thing you heard me say was something about helping with an exorcism instead of all the things that really needed to be said. I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I'm a LIFE MAGE, what the hell's the point if you can't save the people who matter?
Shut up, Amara. Everybody matters. You lost one person, one incredibly important person, but there are still lives to save. You can still save others. You can still make a difference. Everybody matters to someone. But I'm losing the people that matter to me. Amara. You just fought despair. You just beat it back. Don't give in to it now. I didn't do that. You didn't do it alone. There's a difference between that and not doing it at all. I ran away! I couldn't touch them, I couldn't fight them... YOU'RE A PACIFIST. That should be a source of pride! Choosing not to hurt something and not being able to are different. Not for you. No. Not for me.
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Post by ElfChild on Nov 13, 2012 20:52:10 GMT -8
No part 2. Sorry. I tried and it didn't work. Instead, Amara has this poem dedicated to the next crop of adventurers, and also as something that feels more like a conclusion.
What if it's your turn... (Asks a question, to be answered by the next generation I suppose)
What would you say if I told you this all was a lie? What would you say if I took you down to its seams And showed you the place where the end of the land meets the sky? What would you do if I told you it all was a dream?
What would you say if I took you down to the rivers? And told you they flowed with the blood of all those come and gone? I'd show you the way to the doors leading down into sunlight What would you say if I showed you this world was a song?
What if all of these terrors, all these deceptions All the futures fallen and fading away What would you say if I told you it all could be better? What if I told you that your voice might change everything?
Would you believe me? Would you destroy me? Would you go back to your hole in the ground? I know it's not safe. I know it's not easy. I know it's simpler when lost than when found.
What would you say if I told you this song is yours now? What would you say if I told you I was passing it on And told you it'd hurt, and told you one day it would kill you? What would you do if I told you this song had killed me?
What would you say if I took you down to the ocean And told you the seas were the blood of all those who had sung? I'd show you the way to the doors leading down into darkness What would you say if I told you that all of us hung?
What would you say if you were the new light to guide us To keep all our futures from falling and fading away? What would you say if I told you for them it'd be better? What if I told you for singing that you too would hang?
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Post by ElfChild on Feb 15, 2013 23:54:06 GMT -8
I am being a lousy chronicler because homework. Do not expect this to change until summer. ----
What harshly colored words might leave these pens To taint both the future and the past with color? What if the ink we spill runs a field red And turns one friend against another? Or what if our ink leaves marks of white And flowers grown on some great step, Where past enemies shall greet another And in friendship let the peace be kept?
Shailar Seraphim
This is, I suppose, what I signed up for. If I wanted to see the best and the worst of the world in which we live, I see no better way than adventuring, and this is part of what I was promised when I found my teacher. That said, the way she described it, I would have thought the others who pursue this life to be... well, let us say that I am impressed with neither Sorikonia nor the adventurers who gather there thus far. After all, in coming to the seat of the judges and the land spoken of in the same sentences as "peace" and "wisdom", I would expect better than wanton destruction and needless violence every second step. But then, let me tell you my story and do not allow my rather strongly opinionated preface to be the entirety of your sight of these events. The frustration of a woman schooled in the ways of peace is hardly the most telling indicator of a problem.
We started out the day by sitting in the main area of the inn where Tsumio and I had been staying for the past week. (We arrived early and Amara insisted we stay close to the events that were to occur. I trust there's a good reason for that.) The most obvious sign of an adventuring party was the number of non-humans about and the level to which they armed themselves, not to mention how they didn't seem to be there for food or drink. Another sign of adventuring was the presence of Chen Panjue, a man who I had heard spoken of with great respect and occasionally humor by my teacher. The man seemed somewhat more calm than the description had claimed, though whether this was due to age or inaccuracy I am not sure. He delegated to us the mission of hunting a group of goblins that were disrupting the activities of farmers, and so we set out to do so.
We made the short journey to the site where we were to meet the farmer, and he greeted us in gruff tones with an axe and a fallen goblin. While I did not find this particularly alarming, it was perhaps the first sign that something was amiss. Regardless, the man directed us to his fields and the party demolished the goblin hoard with surprising speed and efficiency. I came along behind them, as I and a woman in blue tried to stabilize the fallen goblins to avoid unnecessary death.
When all the goblins had fallen, we came upon a creature the likes of which not one of us had ever seen. It was similar in size to a human, though perhaps a bit smaller, and somewhat doglike in appearance. It's skin was a ruddy shade of red, and despite the attempts of certain rather aggressive party members, it was never unconscious for long. It seemed to regenerate with twice the speed of any troll. It carried a fireball and seemed to enjoy using flaming attacks on injured goblins for whatever reason. Though it seemed it might be intelligent enough for speech, it spoke no language we could understand. Eventually it tired of us and of the man who seemed to insist upon stabbing it repeatedly and it disappeared down into the dirt.
We met with more farmers who were being terrorized by a group of orcs, and the orcs were dealt with similarly. I stabilized those I could, and then the Blue Woman and I followed the party, soon falling into step with the man wearing the black butterfly mask.
We returned to the inn and were greeted once again by Chen Panjue, who explained to us that with the presence of Serpenton et necronef had caused many Sorikonians to take up arms. Indeed, it was possible even that the vampire city was intentionally hurting those who kept their vows of pacifism. Such actions would not surprise me much, they are as good a way as any to weaken a nation, especially one based in peace and impartiality. We decided to go convince the militia to leave people alone and hopefully decrease the level of needless violence.
While I went into it fairly optimistic, I did not stay that way for long. We encountered a group of orcs who seemed to be easily convinced of our lack of hostility until members of our party decided it would be a good idea to stab them. Chaos ensued and I spent much of it trying to get people to stop attacking one another. Our party seems to have a tendency to attack first and ask questions later, even when the answers to the questions are nonviolent and already had. Which is... Obnoxious, but sadly not unexpected for adventurers. I would teach them to do things peacefully and it would take time but it would happen. At least, that was what I'd hoped. After the party insisted on dealing damage to the other side after the battle had stopped, my optimism on that point started to dwindle. May the Goddess save them from themselves. And if she has the time, save the rest of us from them too.
Some of the orcs had been damaged in ways that could only be dealt with by magical healing by the time the party calmed down, but they told us there were some urukai friends of theirs nearby, one of whom was a paladin. We set off in the indicated direction at a fast walk.
I would have run had I known that we were going to get there just before a clash between urukai and militia. It seemed they had fought all too recently, and there were only two urukai left standing when we saw a large group of militia charge them. I attempted to get in the way, as did some others, but it wasn't a whole lot of use. We were stabbed by both sides and it didn't work at all well. We got members of both sides alone and tried to get them to leave, but each time they just pushed past us and kept fighting. At some point I lost what patience I started out with and ended up calling everybody idiots, which was probably not the greatest way to win their faith and trust, but I was frustrated with them and their constant attempts to not only fight but outright kill one another.
Eventually we got them to separate, and the urukai agreed to go deal with their own so long as we kept the militia away from them and let them hunt bandits like they were trying to do.
The militia on the other hand was a little bit more work. They insisted on the ill intentions of all orcs and urukai, regardless of evidence to the contrary, insisting that they all wanted to kill them. Somebody, in an attempt to get the intended effects without actually having to convince them of anything, said that the orcs and urukai didn't know they wanted to kill people yet. The militia seemed to give this pause, so I latched onto it and spun it into a full argument. I told them that the orcs and urukai didn't know they wanted to kill people yet, and they were only made aware of it when they were attacked. So, I reasoned, we could keep them in the dark about their intent to kill people by not attacking. The leader of this group of militia seemed to think this quite a devious plan, and with some more convincing from the others, he agreed to stand down for a little while to see if we could do a better job handling things.
I was amazed at both the senseless violence of a "peaceful, honorable people" and the fact that they were convinced by my... Well, let us say that I would not have called my logic sound and yet they bought it completely. As already stated, I was not impressed.
We were heading back from the rather frustrating job when we came upon a haunt. It was a transparent man, a dwarf, in fairly recent low class sorikonian clothing. He walked along a bit, and then abruptly he pulled out an axe and started to run, swinging at one unseen thing and then turning and running toward another. He stumbled, apparently experiencing some great pain in his leg, and slowly collapsed. Then he faded out, only to repeat the cycle. We observed and attempted to discern the cause of the haunt's death, as it did not seem to be in possession of any urgent message or important charge. The first avenue we explored was that perhaps he was using final fury, but it didn't quite fit since his attack time was only ten seconds or so by fast counting. Someone suggested death ray, but the death did not seem abrupt enough for this kind of magical death. It was theorized that he was ambushed, and indeed there was evidence to this effect in the manner of his walking prior to the fighting and in the fact that when it was mentioned to him, he broke pattern to look at the speaker before resuming his cycle of deaths.
We returned to town, and as the party wandered off into town to go check out small problems, Mask, Blue, and I made a beeline for the libraries to research the haunt. We did not find as much as we would have liked, and I am... reluctant to admit that what we did find was thanks to the militia. We queried ambushes of commoners in that area in the past ten years, and found many such accounts by militia trying to increase awareness to help their cause. However, there were no names and, more annoyingly, no dwarves. Most ambushes were by humans, orcs, and urukai. There was not much distinctive at all about most of them. My frustration continued and we discovered pretty much nothing of use.
I returned to the inn to find Shu Hui Stormwing addressing the party with a good deal of talk about how the adventurers of this generation were okay, but those of my teacher's generation were bad and caused much that was bad. I decided it was probably one of two things: One, people seem to tend toward remembering either all the good of an event and no bad or all bad of an event and no good, and this was one of the latter. That or my teacher and her friends had perceived the need for their actions to be greater than it actually was. Given that the stories I've heard of the last round of adventurers all involve multiple demons roaming the countryside and being defeated by adventurers--sometimes at great personal cost--I would guess that the honorable Shu Hui Stormwing is remembering events rather one-sidedly. Apparently she had also insulted somebody's relatives. One man lunged at her in anger, stabbing uselessly until he was brought down and dragged off the scene to be healed and calmed down. Voting commenced, and it was decided that we would attempt to provide relief to hurricane victims on the northeast end of the island.
We had just left town when we encountered an odd man with an even odder object. It was some kind of magic orb, and anything that came near it was hit by a burst of flame. The man standing just out of range of the fire told us he was trying to get the orb to stop, and suggested that perhaps we should find a way to get it into the nearby river. Thus began a game of running at it fast enough to hit it anyway once one was rendered unconscious by the flames. Surprisingly enough, this was a highly successful method of doing things, and soon the orb was at the bottom of the river. I know not what became of it after, because at this point we hurried off to the hurricane area.
The weather started getting bad pretty quickly at that point. There were icy sheets of rain and wind that tore at us sometimes hard enough to knock us off our feet. We had been pushing through the strong winds for a few minutes when we came upon a band of humans standing about by the road. We bid them good day, they bid us good day, and we began to pass by them. As we did though, they unsheathed their weapons and began to attack us. These were the bandits the urukai had been hunting, I supposed. One stabbed me in the back and I was unconscious too soon to think much of anything else. I was revived what did not seem too long after to discover that the limbs on my right side had been injured to the point where magical healing would be necessary to fix the damage. I cursed under my breath and strapped my shield to my injured arm so that I might still fight with my uninjured one. Then I limped into battle. Turns out you can do this funny hopping thing to move quickly with only one functional leg. Said hopping is tiring and inefficient, but it was really the only way I could move with any agility, so it would have to do. Soon after, the bandits were defeated and we hurried on to the zone most effected by the hurricane.
As it turns out, navigating what must've been fifty mile per hour winds with only one leg was no fun. However, I think I can safely say that being trapped under a fallen tree wouldn't be much fun either. This was exactly the condition of the first man we rescued when we arrived. We pulled away the branches and trunk with a massive collaborative effort and patched up the man as best we could before telling him to get to safety. Several others were injured or buried under rubble, and we did our best to dig them all out.
There was a small group of civilians present, and one of these approached me and asked what he could help with. I told him to get out of there so we didn't have to rescue him too. He told me that these were his friends and family and his village, and he wanted to help. I argued with him a little longer and then decided that it was his choice if he wanted to get himself killed and turned to find somebody else to help. At this point I felt a touch on my shoulder, the word "charm", and a magical force attempting to invade my mind. I staggered away, confused, and then stopped.
Vampires. Sunuvabitch.
I turned back toward him and lunged, slashing at him and shouting a short string of curses. He was surprised for a moment, and then he and two friends of his turned to retaliate. I couldn't fight all three, so I retreated, leaping at the river in hopes I could escape them that way. My left foot hit the bank solidly with my injured one dragging in the icy water. I made my way as quickly as I could to an ally on that side of the river and shouted something about vampires at them. Apparently, they'd figured that bit out already. Thank the Goddess for elven immunity to mind control.
There was another small group on a hill further up the riverbank, so the two of us stumbled over to them. They informed us there were vampires about. We informed them that we'd already gotten that news. Among them was a rescued hurricane victim, and among us adventurers there seemed to be an unspoken decision that we didn't want him anywhere near this fight. We also knew the city should be informed of vampires, and that it was our job to stay here and help, but it wasn't his. We asked him to run to town as fast as he could and tell them there were vampires out there, and he nodded and dashed away.
We turned back to the battlefield--for a battlefield it had become--in time to see one of the vampires fall. We carried him over the river and back to town so that the town's law enforcement might interrogate him. Soon after, the battle was ended and our friends joined us.
When we arrived, we were greeted by a highly enthusiastic Tui Perry. He was incredibly excited that we had found vampires and proceeded to tell us such in a bubbly happy manner. He then told us his thoughts on the other 'innkeepers' and on power and on how he intended to actually use the power he'd been given. He did it all with great enthusiasm and never stopped moving. Then he sent us to go look at sea monsters. I decided I liked him.
The sea monsters were... Weird, I guess, though it seems there should be some better descriptive words. They were great looming fish monsters with webbed hands and feet and held weapons which had somehow been forged at a size large enough to be of use to them, though how one forges anything underwater I am not sure. They flung boulders at us and the people they stabbed died outright. I was glad for my shield, which protected me from the worst of their heavy blows. We discovered that the easiest way to deal with them was to have someone in front getting their attention and someone coming behind and knocking them out. When we had dealt with them all, I glanced around to see (Reese) and Tsumio killing them. Mask and I, accompanied by a couple others, tried to pull them away from the body, but both were persistent. While (Reese) made lame attempts to justify killing the creatures, Tsumio just kept stabbing without a word. She seemed completely oblivious to anything we said, and did not stop until eventually we slipped and she succeeded in causing the creature's death. (Reese) shrugged indifferently and walked away. Tsumio stared at the corpse for a few moments and then drifted off. The group dispersed. (Patric) scuttled over and began cutting slices of meat from the corpse.
There was another casualty on the side of the fish creatures, and it was dragged by a large number of adventurers as we trudged back to the inn. On the way there, we encountered a group of militia who were looking for urukai to harass. I gave them my talk about how we could trick the urukai into thinking they didn't want to fight if we didn't attack them. They seemed to buy it. Then (Dev) told them that vampires were the real threat. They got all excited and asked where they could find vampires. Without really thinking, I told them, and they dashed off to fight them. I don't think that particular group has been seen since, and I have received a few angry remarks from people who thought I should not have told them. Maybe I should not have. But part of me asks what they would have done had I not, and part of me believes they would have found the same fate by days end all the same.
Tui Perry greeted us again brightly. He was very much excited by the fish creatures and their oddness, and examined the specimen the party had dragged back with a cheerful curiosity. He told us he would study the creature and informed (Patrick) that he would probably be dead soon from having eaten the meat of one of these creatures. Then he departed to do... Whatever it is he does, and we went off to assist in the summoning of elemental guardians.
We had started out and were making good time when we encountered a group of orcs. They mistook us for the militia and attacked us on sight. The woman walking next to me, Kioriel, grabbed my arm and the two of us skirted around the edge of the battle, hoping the party would join us soon. About half of them did. The other half was dead on the field. There was a short debate over whether or not a rescue should happen given the probably dead state of most of the party, followed by a rescue attempt headed by Kioriel. Several more party members were killed over the course of it, and we barely had enough people to carry all the bodies. However, they did manage to retrieve everyone, and we dragged them further uphill to the location of the ritual, where there might hopefully be martial masters with a rebirth spell.
We arrived at the top of the mountain where the martial master present, the head of Fire Clan, rebirthed our people and began the ritual. A few small fiery doglike creatures were present, and we attempted briefly to socialize with them before the undead descended upon us. There was a fight against undead at which we fared alright, though I am not sure how many deaths were incurred. Eventually the onslaught ceased, the ritual completed, and the party drifted back to town.
The sky was beginning to grow dark, and we marked the mission to come as our last of the day. Blue shifted into gray, and the party headed off to look at a dig site where people had found rather interesting objects of late.
On the way we encountered yet another band of urukai who, believing we were the militia, were attempting to kill us all. This time we got through them, but my right leg was hacked again and I had to go back to hopping. This put me in a rather foul mood by the time we came to the site of the dig.
The muddy dirt looked near black in the fading light, but around torches its more reddish color was visible along with the objects being pulled from it by eager hands. They looked like they were mastercrafted when they were first made, and covered up and down in worn unreadable runes. The weapons were very old, though I am not a historian and so my knowledge of such is limited. However, they were quite obviously valuable and thus ensued a mad scramble for them, some party members trying to dig them up and others trying to buy them off of those who had discovered them first.
It was at this point that the haunts appeared, gray spectral beings materializing in the air about us. Some of us tried to run, some tried to defend ourselves, and a few tried to fight back. But mostly people ran. I was stabbed into unconsciousness early on and died shortly after, and I awoke finally in the life mages guild having been summoned and resurrected, apparently without issue.
So that wad my first day of adventuring. I am frustrated with the party and the militia, though less so now that I have written. I am tempted to go back and rewrite this whole thing now that I have cooled down, but I think if I did it might never be published, and this paper is late enough already.
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Post by ElfChild on Apr 5, 2013 19:54:45 GMT -8
The blue of water and sunlit sky The black of stormclouds rising to swallow the sun We will stand We will stand together
The clouds will come, swallow the sun But we will stand as the rain falls and we shall rise to meet it The black storm The black storm brings us together
The rain pours down on our waiting faces But we shall not flinch, it is only rain We have seen rain before And we will see rain again before this world draws to a close
Shailar Seraphim
I will note that my assessment of Sorikonia last I wrote was incorrect. As it turns out, getting a group of people in a room and listening to them allows for much greater understanding than wandering around and trying to speak to them in chaos. The militia are reasonable people, and despite their disagreement with our party's ideals, their points make sense. Thankfully, they were willing to say the same of ours, and so a deal has been made. The Maimed have revealed themselves as our first real enemies, destructive people who have experienced pain and wish to inflict it upon others. They are a band of violent fanatics, and our second test. A test of diplomacy. A test of courage. The two almost demand a third. Of course, I have no doubt the number will soar far above three by the time this year is ended, but for now let me enjoy the neatness of it. Perhaps the number of tests will rest at three before the entry of the older adventurers into the story. Or, to be realistic, perhaps the number of tests will vary depending on what I count as a test. But as I said last time I wrote, let not my first words tell the whole story. There is more than that and you must make judgements of your own.
The party gathered, voted, acted. Or they started, anyway. There are other things that needed to be done as well. Speakers to be chosen, setup to be done. The first had to be done once the voting was done and the martial masters cleared from the inn, and I was preparing to explain and get the voting done as quickly as possible so that the process did not take all the morning. The masters seemed happy to assist in the rest of the meeting. Earth Clan provided a meeting space, and Thunder Clan prevented disruption of the talks. The first offer came to us first thing in the morning from K'un Showseeden himself. The man acts as though he has all the best intentions, and it would not surprise me if indeed he does. I think I would have liked him more, but at the time we were all too concerned with the implications for the meeting and how things might be misinterpreted. It seems now that these worries were for nothing, I do not believe we came off as pawns of the martial masters, but at the time we were very much concerned about the possibility.
The party began to run out of the inn, and I approached the door as they did and informed them that if they wished to have a voice in the voting that was about to ensue, they needed to stay in the inn a few minutes longer. Most of them stayed, a few went off to see what might be around near the meeting place anyway. We gathered in the inn by the fire, in the place usually occupied by bantering or quietly reading adventurers in the evening. First I listed off the present nominees. Kioriel, (Reese), Leyla, Attano, Itami, Dedoric--wait no, people said Dedoric had withdrawn. Okay. I explained, in brief, the meeting and the purpose of the meeting, and how we were attempting to vote for three people who could represent our interests and come to a peaceful understanding with the other involved groups. I asked if there were any last minute nominations, keeping in mind that nominating one's self had been declared to be against the rules. (Ray) raised his hand and nominated (Zane). This was met with some level of incredulity, but the name was added to the list. There were no more nominations. I asked the nominees to stand in a line against the wall where all could be easily seen by the rest of the group. Then I wend down the line, collecting and recording votes. In the end, there were three very clear winners. Kioriel, Attano, and Itami were chosen, and then the party began to move away. Throughout the event there was a man in strange armor watching us. I do not know why, but it was certainly no secret and he did not bother us.
I went off into town, figuring that the great number who had left to take care of some bandits would be able to handle it themselves, but upon returning I heard otherwise from several of the people hanging around the inn. The party had appeared back in the inn defeated and then run back off to save captured comrades while I had been off worrying about certain political pieces of the meeting. I do not know the details of this venture, but I do know that when the party returned, they were all there but definitely not all in tact.
Tui Perry greeted us now, bouncing and excited, and took several suggestions, none of which got significant numbers of votes. Finally it was proposed that we take the initiative regarding our meeting and get there before somebody had to come in and summon us there. There was a vote and it was agreed upon, but this fellow--not part of our party, some other strange person in the inn--voted for it as well and he almost said no until it was reasoned that this person would not be coming and was not part of our party. Then he agreed, but sent half the party off on a more stabby sort of mission. This individual attempted to follow us to the meeting, but was stopped by several Thunder Clan guards despite the fact that the meeting was open to anyone who wished to watch but not interfere. I have heard some things about this individual since involving the disruption of very important Sorikonian rituals and I think if he is as people say he is, the Thunder Clan was doing very well to keep him away.
We settled into our seats, my companions and I around the meeting area, and the three representatives in their designated space. I pulled out my notebook and readied myself to take notes that we might later have a record of the things discussed and the deals made. The Sorikonians who had kept their vows arrived next and sat with a courteous greeting, and the militia arrived in a similar fashion followed by those who had broken their vows but not joined the militia. What follows is based closely on my transcript of the meeting with my own commentary added in.
Kioriel spoke first, stating the purpose of the meeting. To discuss the problems of Sorikonia, so see what problems each group faces, and to work together to fix them all. The militia was the first to voice concerns. Namely, it was their belief that they were doing a fine job defending the people of Sorikonia, and that they were doing it as Sorikonians. The adventurers were coming in and bringing in strange ways and general chaos.
They also brought up me. I can't say this was entirely unexpected. I had intended to just give them the trial they wanted and plead guilty, I've had the issue figured out for a long time now. But this was not my preferred place to have it brought up, somewhere where I--by my own design--had no voice. They let their anger be known, and I did what I could to convey apology through the way I presented myself, and Kioriel presented them with the facts and a promise that I couldn't voice, letting them know that there would be no repeats of the situation and that I would pay whatever price they determined necessary. They accepted it and moved on, and I felt a tension that had been hanging on me lift ever so slightly. And then the words moved on from my mistake and into other issues that the militia wanted adressed.
Then they explained to us that what they intended was to break their vows of pacifism as something of a sacrifice so that others might keep their own and live in safety. Itami nodded, but then reminded the man of the three demons that had come to the island back when the older adventurers were first here. He pointed out that the demons hadn't been able to come before because of the pacifism and the power it granted Sorikonian society before it had fallen apart. The mafia speaker was skeptical of the validity of this, putting forth the idea that the story Itami had told was just one pacifists put out to promote their own goals. Pacifism, he said, was certainly not protecting Sorikonia now. It was, I think, a difficult point to argue, though it was argued all the same. Unfortunately, with all the urgency surrounding us, it is still true that all things take time and healing especially takes time. The issue, of course, is that if you postpone the healing till there is time for it, it will never happen. The people who had kept their vows spoke up now, in disagreement with the militia. They maintained that the vows were there for a reason, though they conceded that there were issues. Despite the issues, it mattered very much to them that the vows of pacifism would be kept, but something did need to be done. Those who had broken their vows but kept out of the militia spoke up for the first time now, with a statement that the vows were inadequate, that vows and pacifism could not keep them safe, and the pacifists turned and asked in return what could keep them safe if the vows could not.
I believe it was Kioriel who voiced the thought that I'd wondered about for a time. Did breaking the vows not cease a person's citizenship in Sorikonia? The militia scoffed at this, but did not react as violently as I might have expected. They had been born into citizenship, they pointed out, and had never taken the vows by choice. This did not make them any less Sorikonian, they argued. A couple expressed an interest in retaking the vows once the Dark City was no longer a threat, but maintained that pacifism was not what defined them as Sorikonian.
It was just about then when one of our representatives, though I don't remember who, brought up an idea. What if the populous of Sorikonia were to be taught non-violent means of self defense? Snare, disarm, knockback. All of these are useful, and none cause damage to those hit. Older adventurers had such skills and could likely teach such means of defense. This was given a good deal of thought and discussion. Everyone agreed it was a good idea, but not everyone agreed on its effectiveness. The militia, for example, thought that despite the usefulness of the skills, it would not be good enough. It could not, they argued, protect against or maybe even successfully deter the forces that the Dark City would send against them. Itami tried to address this by delving a bit into what he had learned from his own history. He spoke of how he had once been under the vow of pacifism and broken it to avenge his family. However, he had discovered that this deviation did nothing to help him hurt the undead that the people of Sorikonia were so worried about. He proposed that the adventurers deal with such threats for the Sorikonian people so that others would not have to follow that path. I did not think that this was a particularly compelling way of putting things, given that he was using his own deviation from the code as a reason why they should not do the same thing, but it seemed to bother no one else and so I put the associated worries out of mind. The militia continued to maintain that it was not enough, and their continued involvement was necessary, but the pacifist commoners stepped in here. If the adventurers were helping, they argued, they wouldn't need to sacrifice anyone's vow of pacifism nor the culture to which the vows belonged. However, they did worry that the resources to train as many people as would need to be trained might not be findable. Itami pointed out that peole could be taught to teach others the same skills, but as the pacifists pointed out, that was an awful lot of armed people to have running around. You could, Itami pointed out, only teach certain groups and they could be in charge of defense. This was met with some level of resistance. This was the letter of the law, not the spirit, and what value did the traditions have if those following them were trying to find loopholes? This provoked an angry outburst from the non-militia non-pacifists. Tradition would help nothing, they argued, and besides, these skills we were offering couldn't deal with everything. This was met with a calm statement that dealing with everything was impossible, even with damage, and the offered skills were here to help deal with what could be dealt with. The militia suggested that there could maybe be guards on the roads, trained units, but that still would involve breaking vows. Someone pointed out that if the guards were to defend rather than attack, knockback and snare would be plenty sufficient. The pacifists approved, as did the militia, saying that perhaps if the training worked the militia could retake their vows. Everyone agreed with that, and so the setting of terms began.
The militia made it very clear that nobody would be retaking any vows today. They said they would learn, and if the techniques proved reliable over time, they would retake their vows then, but not until it was clear that they would not have to break them again. The pacifists agreed, but stated that if the techniques were learned, the feeling of the vows should still be kept. Essentially it was a statement that those in possession of skills were not to go seek out fights, only counter them if they appeared. And thus all was looking good until the final concern was raised by those who had broken their vows. What if the bandits adapted, learned to deal with the new techniques? What then? I could almost feel the exasperation from everyone else in the room, while none of it was voiced. It was then calmly explained that these techniques had been around for hundreds of years, and the bandits would not adapt so fast or else they would already have done it. This did not satisfy them though. They argued that they were thinking long term, that it could happen, and that they wanted their childrens' generation to be safe as well. Once again it was explained that in hundreds of years none had adapted to tese techniques, and once again it was stated that their descendants might not be able to deal with it, until finally the pacifists put forth a request along the lines of "trust your descendants as you do your ancestors", and that seemed to end it.
With decisions made, Kioriel made a final statement, in a way the one we had arranged this meeting to give. She spoke of our vision, of how the Dark City was attempting to wear away at pacifism and destroy it. The Dark city wants to break the Sorikonian spirit, for without that spirit Sorikonia is far easier to kill. She finished the statement with a request that each group ask their own ancestors, for there was no reason that they had to take our word for it.
Everyone bowed, everyone exited the room, and I ran to catch up with one of the delegates from the militia. I bowed deeply to him, apologized, and explained that I understood that what I had done was wrong, and that I would accept any punishment they saw fit or make any reparations they needed. To my surprise, the man looked at me carefully and asked whether I would ever commit such an action against the people he represented again. I answered no, and he gave me the ghost of a smile. He had no intention of exacting punishment, he said, he only wanted the crime acknowledged, the apology given, and the guarantee that it would not be repeated. I thanked him multiple times and gave him another deep bow. He gave a polite bow in return, and then we parted.
As I moved back toward my group, I could not help but smile. Things had gone so much better than we had planned, there had been no yelling, no combat, no vicious politicking. Everyone had been reasonable. Everyone had been peaceful and diplomatic. Everyone had made me rethink my opinions, and I was glad for it, because now I think I had some understanding of why these people were worth defending. Despite all past wrongs, four completely different groups had gathered to adress a common goal and come to a decision that would benefit all involved. It is not everywhere that such factions can come together with such peace and good intentions, and where it does happen, it is well worth defending.
Kioriel and I took a quick lunch together before going to be honor tested. Chen Panjue was present in the inn, and willing to test us, so I stepped up and was asked the two questions which I knew would be asked, and I presented my answer--for the one answer belongs to both questions. Panjue stated that there was no reason I should not be able to train, after clarifying the meaning of my words, and asked what class I intended to enter. However, when I told him that Kioriel and I hoped to seek out and find training as a geisha, he quickly informed us that he could not test our honor for that. We would have to seek out the courtesans guild. We did so, with a couple of curious companions at our heels. Honor testing, after all, is a public affair, as answers must be given before any who wish to hear, and so they had heard the exchange with Panjue. Not having heard of the group which we sought training from, they wished to know what exactly we were up to. When we arrived at the guild hall, we were told that we had a rather different honor test. We must find six people to vouch for our honor, each of a different social class, before we could become geishas. We were hardly out the door when (Reese) said he would back us both as a member of close royalty, and I was approached by others wishing to vouch for me as a freeholder. I spent the rest of the lunch period looking for people who fit the requirements of the test, and eventually found all six without much trouble.
The final round of the Tournament of the Steps was taking place in the early afternoon, and most of the party began the walk to the place where it was being held. We were just outside when a band of Crab Clan, who had arrived from the mainland to challenge people for honor, appeared and attempted to challenge us and several others present to such duels. Rather unexpectedly, Kioriel showed them a wrath that none of us would have guessed she had in her, shouting that they should not be here and how dare they come and attempt to sully Sorikonia and its culture in such a way. The Crab Clan did not seem to care, but the party was rather taken aback by the sight of the ever composed and thoughtful Kioriel raising her voice. There was another man wearing full armor who had somewhat more success, though I am not sure I approve of his methods. He appeared and dueled them. At first he just took them down in duels, but when they persisted his violence escalated until many of the Crab Clan were dead. As the situation progressed, the party filtered into the place designated for us to sit. I sat a couple seats away from Kioriel with Blue and Torald among others. The seats filled, mixing the area we had been told to sit with equal measures of adventurers and strangers.
Attano and (Richard) stood in their places, preparing to do battle, and Li Tiesha gave a speech. It was not actually the kind of speech I expected. She was not particularly inclined to the long formal speeches that I have come to expect. However, she did talk about the nature of the Fire Clan, about the nature of the tournament, and about passion and honor, and she did it very well regardless of the unorthodox tone. Her speech was coming to an end when suddenly Kioriel stood. "Shailar, we're leaving." Many eyes went to her, I half stood, confused. Things began to stir around us. "Wait, why--" "We're going, NOW!" There was enough alarm in her voice that I dared not question it. She was Kioriel, she thought that the situation merited running for our lives, so it did. Otherwise she would not disrupt an event of this magnitude. She ran, and I followed, pulling Blue along with me. Some followed us, and behind us the crowd sprang into chaos, and I could feel morganti behind me. We ran till the feeling was but a lingering sense at the edge of my mind before we stopped. "What was that?" "The Maimed were there!" "Well--We're the adventurers, shouldn't we be back there saving everyone?" And then we ran back in the other direction.
As it turned out, nobody needed saving. The disruption Kioriel caused had allowed people a moment to process the situation before the maimed were up and attacking, and as such nobody was hurt seriously, and I do not believe anyone in our area sustained morganti injuries. The Maimed had been put down fast enough that by the time we got back there were only one or two and they were down an instant later. Similar events had occurred in other parts of the crowd, but they too had been resolved with minimal damage. Kioriel was besieged by people expressing gratitude, and those not surrounding Kioriel formed groups who spoke with surprise and shock as they recovered from the unexpected battle. Soon Li Tiesha called us back to our seats. Grimly, she asked if we should allow the events that had just transpired to disrupt the Tournament of the Steps, or if we should go on with it regardless. There was a unanimous vote to go on with the tournament in spite of the cult's attack. To stop now would be to give them victory and weaken the Sorikonian spirit, and we could allow neither to pass. Thus began the final round of the Tournament of the Steps. It was a long and intense fight, and very close. They exchanged blows, and then tied, at which point the duel became a 'sudden death' style fight where the first strike wins. Finally, (Richard) landed a final strike and the match was finished. He was given a favor from the Masters as a reward for his skill. He took a moment, and then stated that he should like the martial masters to train a group for the defense of Sorikonia. Kioriel and I exchanged grins, and the party seemed equally thrilled. Progress was underway, and maybe things were going to go very well given the way things looked to be going.
We returned to the inn, where a large group of the party decided they wanted to make a strike against the Maimed as retribution for their actions at theTournament of the Steps, and so they did, running excitedly off to the countryside in search of the cult. I did not go with them. I had not had need to land a blow the entire day, and it seemed a poor record to break. So as they went their way, we went ours.
Crab Clan was still wandering, and it was discussed that Kioriel might have a great deal of success talking them down and getting them to leave, given the fact that her yelling prior was... rather scary, to be honest. Kioriel agreed to attempt it, and some of us went as essentially a team of escorts. Some people went because seeing Kioriel yell seemed something of a spectacle. And so we were off. We encountered on the way a man who was a skilled diplomat and courtesan, and Kioriel and I talked with him a bit. He did not seem keen on the presence of Crab Clan and agreed to accompany us. We talked with him as we walked, and as we reached Crab Clan, he and Kioriel laid down their weapons and moved forward and the rest of us hung back. It seemed unwise to bring a large group, as we did not want them to think we were challenging them to their own game. They taked for a while, and I could not hear them but it was evident that both parties were rather displeased by one another. At one point I heard something along the lines of "we only fight people who are willing", at which point they shouted a question as to our willingness. I shouted back that no, we were uninterested, and they seemed mildly disappointed. The arguing continued, and I still could not hear the precise words, but eventually the Crab Clan moved off and our friends returned to us. They stated that they thought they had been understood, and then we headed back to town, continuing our conversations from before.
When we returned, the inn was empty of adventurers, so we talked amongst ourselves for a bit, wondering how the others' endeavors were going. We soon found out. The rest of the party began to filter in, and it was clear they were not at all well. While some had escaped relatively unscathed, most were in some way injured. A limb would be missing its end, or be missing entirely. The feeling was dark, worried, angry. Most of all angry. Words of hate bounced back and forth between them. What they wanted to do to the maimed ranged from arrest to morganti damage, and I cringed not only at the gruesome injuries but also at some of the suggestions I heard.
It is important, I think, that we do not let anger define us. That we do not punish those who do not understand what they are doing. That we give second chances. Because I have needed a second chance before, and I think they deserve the same courtesy I was given, no matter their crime. I believe they need to understand the gravity of the damage they have done. And I believe if they do, if they regret it, if they promise it will not happen again, they need not be subject to the same hurts they have caused. They are angry. They are in pain. So are the adventurers. I fear for them. I fear for them all, for the decisions they might make driven by rage and hate, for their spirits. Because committing such crimes as they speak of will hurt their victims, yes, but it hurts so much more to have commit a crime which is permanent, unerasable, unsolvable. I have done this more times than I care to say. I have made mistakes. And I would not wish for others to make the same mistakes, out of anger, out of spite, out of fear. So I will say this:
Do not become Shailar. Do not become the Maimed. Do not become the object of your hate through revenge, do not make my mistakes, do not make them on the scale you are about to make them on. I have killed with spite. I have abandoned with fear. I have destroyed with hate. The Maimed have done the same. You are about to be given a choice, and it is more important than I can ever put into words that you choose the right path, because if you choose the wrong one, you destroy yourself and everything good you stand for. I stand for nothing good except redemption, and maybe the beginnings of hope. I have not the right to stand for anything else yet. I have not earned it back. You can stand for so much more. Do not destroy that.
Understanding is the key. Take your emotions and use them to empathize with the Maimed. This is what they feel adventurers have done to them. And once you understand, perhaps it will be easier to forgive. Perhaps it will be easier to speak to them, to seek a resolution for them. We attempted to understand the militia and the oath breakers today, and a possible future peace began to grow. Perhaps with understanding the Maimed you can sow further seeds. The day you strike a blow with a morganti weapon is the day you become the darkness. Do not become the darkness.
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Post by ElfChild on Apr 23, 2013 18:57:32 GMT -8
Cracks inside this spinning ball Find the pieces, watch them fall You can't see what's within at all
What center might these mists hide When these cracked teeth open wide Then do I mend or jump inside?
Amara D'ni
In which my return to adventuring from a life of wandering and boats is punctuated by a return to wandering and boats. Not that I object to wandering and boats. Wandering and boats are awesome. Also arguing, which is not nearly as awesome. But I'll get to that later.
The party--mostly younger adventurers who I did not know--voted to attempt a salvage operation on a ship that was stranded southeast of the island, and so I accompanied them, flowers in hand. There were a few I recognized. Shailar has introduced me to a couple of her friends, and I have a good memory for faces if not names. Mostly, though, I was standing with Gideon and a few other older adventurers within a sea of new faces and names. Red and white in a sea of color. Well, that was fine.
We walked a ways to the ship we were to borrow, and I picked flowers as we did. Flowers have been a symbol of peace and pacifism before, and they would continue to be. It is in general a rule of mine that to offer a peaceful alternative is a requirement before one engages in violent methods, and death is not acceptable even in violent conflict excepting conflict with undead, who cannot be defeated any other way. This is a philosophy which we have named the Way of the Flower. I would be louder about convincing the party to adopt such views (being in Sorikonia as they are) if not for the fact that we are here to deal with violent problems, thus requiring to a greater extent than I would like some subscription to the Way of the Sword. That said, I will not leave the Way of the Flower either by choice or apparent necessity. There is almost always a way through peace. It is often more difficult, but it exists, so I will find it.
We were lent a ship, a proud three-masted vessel, and a young amazon was hired to sail it as none of our party called themselves amazons until we were already halfway out. The fellow kept to himself, which is, I suppose, what any sane person would do when surrounded by a rowdy band of heavily armed men and women.
Iraya, Gideon, and myself moved among the party, attempting to learn better with whom we were to work. I didn't really learn any names, but faces I did learn a little bit, which was good.
On the way out we encountered a band of Temnorian pirates, who were glad to leave us alone just so long as we didn't mind them plundering Sorikonia. I was not actually okay with this and thus we attacked. Nobody died, but I discovered to some extent just how long it has actually been since I last participated in any kind of combat. My skills were rusty and I kept forgetting some of the basic things I'd do to defend against being knocked out. At any rate eventually we defeated them all, and a Temnorian royal from our party told them in more words to go home. They hastily agreed, and sailed off. We later learned that they had gone on to Sorikonia anyway. I should go deal with them at some point, though we didn't get to it today.
We next encountered a couple of roaming sea serpents who attempted to smash our boat as sea serpents are like to do. We did our best to defend our boat, though we did lose the door to the hold, but by the time they were ready to move off Iraya and I were more having to defend the serpents than the boat. They are living creatures, and they have as much right as any of the sentient races to inhabit this world. Making the sentient races understand that, however, is a task with which I had much difficulty. It seems that to them anything foolish enough to come into conflict with them deserves to be stabbed and brutalized and even killed. As much as I cannot speak against the Way of the Sword, nowhere is there a rule that non-pacifists must savagely abandon all compassion for other creatures.
Our final encounter prior to the wreckage was with a ship of Blackspire giants... who claimed we might be Wizard Trade Order. Which was. Well. The WTO is dead. Let us keep it that way, yes? At any rate, eventually they attacked us on the grounds that we "might be Wizard Trade Order" and we defeated them. Blackspire troops are a ittle more dangerous to leave floating around than non-magical pirates, so we took their ship and used it to tow our own. It was large and unwieldy, and the rest of us had to help out the Amazon to get it to work, but eventually it did. It was kind of obvious that it was meant for giants though. A couple hobbits looked through the hold and found some bodies, one of a member of the extinct Serpinton Guard and a couple adventurer corpses which were stripped to the bones and missing their associated spirits, but still held a couple magic items. Iraya identified them and then she and the hobbits distributed them over the clamor of the party.
We arrived near the ship and it was rather clear from the moment I set foot there that something was wrong. Milling about were members of the Serpinton guard, claiming that we might be WTO as the giants had and declaring they were on official business. Mixed in were haunts, fighting and pulling at the rigging and the like. A storm buffeted us with gusts of strong wind, and we argued with the guard over the wind as they pushed us into a corner of their boat. Finally we got them to calm down a bit through diplomacy and shows of trust and we moved around their boat, arguing with them. They seemed to believe they had a right to requisition our boat, which they didn't, but they wanted to get to Sorikonia and only we could get them there. This meant they were more cooperative than they probably would have been otherwise. Gideon came up to me and spoke quietly that one of them had told him the date, and it was fifteen years ago. This was alarming, but we didn't know what to make of it, so we continued with our business. Eventually we ferried them all over to our boat, and they insisted on sinking their ship to protect whatever was in it.
Once we were on our boat and started sailing back, two things happened. A hobbit who I recognized as one of Shailar's friends, Dedoric, came over and told me he'd found some papers in the captains quarters, and (Rai) came over and patted me on the shoulder, calling me over to the ship we had started on. I followed him to the hold of the other ship where were gathered Iraya and a few others around two boxes. One was of a design similar to the one I retrieved from the tomb of the Clanless Sensei last time I adventured here. Where had the ships been coming from? Iraya and I determined that we should take this ship, have our rat friend sail it, and follow the way the ship came. This is the point at which I made my mistake.
As Dedoric had been in possession of the captain's papers, I thought that perhaps we might see if they made any mention of the chests. (As it happens, they were mostly old military orders and plans, but I didn't know that at the time.) He entirely misinterpreted our plans as plans to steal government property (even though said government no longer existed) and sail toward the Dark City with it. Apparently some people don't spend enough time on boats to realize that we were going the opposite direction, and he didn't understand that we were going to do it to investigate a possible time rift and boxes that were probably illegal and possibly related to the problems Sorikonia had experienced when we first adventured here. By the time these things had been explained, he had already destroyed any possibility we had of doing things quietly. Frustrated and angry, we all decided to just go back to Sorikonia and deal with the time rift issue later.
At this point a wave of energy passed through all of us, the Serpinton Guard withered and died, and the boxes became more old and worn. Those on deck later told me that there had been three spaces and the blue energy had connected them. It seems to me that it was healing whatever rift had been created and bringing things forward to their proper time.
(Ray) and some familiars took the boxes so that they did not fall under improper investigation by the party and possibly explode on us, and they were taken to a secure location from there to be looked at and decided what to do with. Once again, Dedoric interpreted this as theft, and once again I had to pull him away and explain things to him, and all in all he managed to cause me to have an incredibly anxiety filled morning until we explained the situation to him, at which point he decided he didn't want to be involved, at which point it was too late for him to not be.
It is mornings like these that make me wish I only had to deal with my apprentices and friends, as none of them tend toward making me angry. I do not enjoy being angry, and I have a very hard time coming down from it. Congratulations Dedoric, you have managed to probably be a great person but also have royally screwed up any chance I had of entirely rational thought for the next hour.
Fortunately, the next hour was the period allotted for us to rest and eat, and so I was not in any way obligated to think entirely rationally.
Shailar Seraphim
Today was. Productive, I guess. No startling revelations with which to impress you all, which means no rant at the beginning of the chronicle.
I actually started the day by performing the rather meditative art of wirework. As it turns out, there are Geishas who are skilled in all manner of things, and if you want to be taught a rather specific art form, they can do that for you. So when the mission decided was not one in which I had a large deal of interest, I made small trinkets and pieces of wire jewelry. Nothing any good, just little unimportant things. I then went out to lunch with Kioriel and we had a delightful conversation about various philosophical ideals. So that was my morning, very exciting, I know.
At any rate, come the afternoon, a group of us decided that the curse should be solved, and so I departed from Kioriel's company to search for a method of not getting mana drained to death again. Because that wasn't particularly pleasant the first time around and I'm lucky not to be some exciting version of insane. We researched the reasons an area might be sanctified and discovered that sanctification was meant to prevent deities who were not wanted from interfering with the spirits of the dead, but they were also meant to prevent spirits who were expected to become haunts from doing so. A sanctification could keep a spirit in the ground and at peace, at least so long as living folk like ourselves and the excavation team didn't blunder in and remove pieces of it. As it was, it seemed that if we put things back and made some kind of reparations, things should be okay. Just how to go about doing that, though, was unclear.
In an attempt to find out, we asked if a member of the Fire Clan might help us learn about the sword and its origins through their superior expertise. As it turned out, Li Tiesha was the one who showed up. We thanked her very much for spending her time on our projects, and then we went to find one of the weapons that had been retrieved from the excavation site. It was easy to find, a small rune-covered wakasashi untouched since the discovery of the curse. Li Tiesha began to tell us about what she could tell looking at it. She confirmed that the runes were sanctification-related, and told us they had been added after the sword was made. She pointed out that from the make and wear of the weapon it looked to have had one wielder, probably of the Heaven Clan judging by how the handle was crafted. She also informed us that to redo the sanctifications we would have to have one member of the Council, which she volunteered to be, and a high level priest or priestess, which Iraya was. However, we'd need all the weapons and all the cursed people in one place in order to fix things, and we might need those of us who were cursed to die as part of the ritual. This meant we needed to find the involved people and objects, and so off we went.
It didn't take much time asking questions around the inn before we found someone who knew where the workers involved with the excavation were, so we sought them out and spoke with them. At first they were reluctant to say anything. It was understandable, seeing as usually adventurers don't come after you unless you are in some manner of trouble. Their apparent leader told us that he had not taken any such objects, and we told him that if he and his group found anyone who had, we would ask that they tell us. We made sure to note that those who had were not in any trouble, but their lives might be in danger since those involved with the excavation were under a dangerous curse. Then Dedoric took them aside and spoke with them, and once he was done they spoke amongst themselves for a few moments before deciding that this sounded dangerous and maybe some of them had found some things. They gave us the cursed objects and I wrapped them in a cloak, careful not to touch them. We then told them that they should come to the excavation site when we asked so that the ritual could be done and the curse properly removed. They agreed and thanked us and we thanked them as well.
We gathered our party and were just about to go to the excavation site when somebody pointed out that (Max) was missing. He needed to be present too, and he was in possession of a cursed item. He was captured, they said. Taken by whatever strange creature--Brownie? Vampire?--that had made so much trouble already. I had actually been hoping to avoid dealing with the creature, but it seemed there was little choice now. I pointed out to the party that it would probably be best if only the elves and those who were otherwise capable of fending off invasions of our minds went. After all, I keep hearing stories about people going and being mind-controlled, and I had no desire to look after a band of people who might at any time turn on me. Vampires and politics provide enough stress and uncertainty as it is, thank you very much. But no. The elves set off to do useful things, and Dedoric appeared, explaining his presence with herbs that he had prepared to protect against mental attacks. Torald appeared next to him, saying that he was coming too because he felt responsibility for the situation, and refusing to be dissuaded by the point that he would end up making everything worse if he came and was mind controlled. Two or three others did the same, and so by the end the entire party was following us while I resisted the urge to scream.
I'm going to take a moment to lose the formality and be completely blunt. For future reference. Doing what I just described the party doing? It's stupid. That would be like me trying to do blacksmithing or Amara trying to commit a murder. No offense to Amara, but pacifists generally shouldn't be doing assassination jobs. It makes a lot more sense to send someone capable of killing. That's what sending a bunch of easily compromised people to negotiate with something known for its mind control abilities is like. You can do it, it's just stupid.
Fortunately, our friend the brownie doesn't seem to have any malicious intent toward us. If it did, we'd all be dead. As it was, it used the easily mind-controlled people to carry out a conversation with us, over the course of which we gave it magic items and it gave us (Max), who it was pretty obvious had been drugged for quite a while. I am loathe to believe that it was any sort of vampire at this point, though admittedly, it's apparent goodwill could be a mistake in interpretation. I believe, rather, that it is some manner of fey which believes--understandably--that should it reveal itself to us, we would kill it or remove it from the home it has created for itself along that road. I would suggest that travelers find an alternate route, as the likelihood of it being uprooted at this point is low.
With (Max) rescued, we gathered our party, the excavators, and Li Tiesha, and together the group of us walked toward the Excavation. On the way, we encountered a couple of men whose village was being attacked by the Grim Patrol. Honor dictates that one must help those of lesser power who are in need, and our party was long due for a fight with the undead evils we had promised to defend the island against, so we asked the excavators to stay put and rushed off to fight the undead. The fight was as most fights are. Bloody, dangerous, and hard. The undead were intelligent and persistent, fully lacking in any sort of mercy. They killed and raised our dead to fight against us, but eventually we defeated them. We stayed only long enough to be sure they were all dead before returning to our task, for it had been delayed long enough.
We finally arrived at the excavation site, where the items were carefully laid out upon the ground where they had been found. Li Tiesha performed a rite, asking the spirits to understand that we fought for the same cause as they, and then asking Iraya to verify our good intentions as a priestess and asking a samurai in our group to verify our good intentions as a member of that order. The area was resanctified, and identify revealed that the curse had gone. It was decided that a sign would be put up and maps would be marked to show that this was a resting place of ancient warriors and should not be disturbed. With the matter resolved, we thanked Tiesha and returned to the inn just in time to send the older adventurers off to fight the maimed.
This, obviously, has been a productive day.
Amara D'ni
Before I start, I feel that I should tell you that in one of the boxes we found illegal enchanted morganti and what we suspect was dirty dark dust. For the record, when we don't give things to the party, we've got a reason. Usually it has to do with the fact that once you know enough to be scared of our job description, you're doing our job too. Also for the record, the result of my job is a royally messed up soul, a fifty-fifty chance of going into a permanent coma every time I die assuming I don't just become a haunt in the first place, and extreme paranoia. Also Sorikonia hasn't sunk into the ocean yet. While I didn't do this single-handedly, you still probably don't want my job. Moving on.
This is one of those situations where we did lots of things that should have been scary only when you've been surrounded by forty to fifty morganti wraiths or helped fight demons that can send you to horribly nasty places if they kill you, a bunch of misguided fanatics and some filaments aren't as scary as they should be, even when you're out of practice. At least, not in the way they're scary to most people. They're scary in the way that Sorikonia seems to be threatening to implode if the Dark City doesn't kill it first, but not in any sort of combat-related way. It was just another fight in a long line of fights brought on by a group of people who weren't willing to listen and a fool on our side who threw the first stone, so to speak. So yes, we won. And yes, we did it with minimal casualties. But it carried no sense of satisfaction.
People hate us for what we did. People hate us for what we didn't do too, and even for what we did to save their lives and their parents' lives. People hate us because they're hurting, and because they can, and because while we were busy fixing something one place, we neglected to clean up the mess, and so it escalated. It does not help that the Dark City has placed itself on the border. It does not help that Sorikonia stands on a rift of the kind that we don't know how to properly mend.
It does not help that the heart is poisoned, and yet I do not know how to drain the poison from the wound, especially when it stands upon other deeper wounds.
I am afraid we will spend more time than anyone would like dealing with the things we neglected to mend while they were small. I hope that we can do it without too many more mistakes.
Shailar Seraphim
That was. Well, no denying it, the difference between our attempts to deal with the Maimed and those of our older friends was impressive. Victory and only three morganti injuries. Geez. We celebrated their return before following Kusari off on the last mission of the day--a quest to clear out tunnels of goblins, kobolds, and ogres.
On the way we encountered a group of journeymen training so that they might be samurai. They challenged us to duels for honor. Crab Clan all over again. Wonderful. While many of the party engaged them, I calmly explained to those who challenged me that we were in Sorikonia. Being a land of pacifism, attempting to gain honor through fighting here seemed not very true to the spirit of the place. However, I would be perfectly happy to take the challenge to an arena of poetry or some other peaceful activity of their choosing. Most of them called me very wise and then proceeded to ignore what I had just said and move on to someone else. The party continued to humor them. Finally we left that situation and I attempted to explain to the party that engaging them in combat was to encourage their non-pacifist actions, something we couldn't afford to do when we were trying to rebuild Sorikonia's pacifist spirit. Some listened and agreed, others cried that I was overreacting and that it was all good sport.
Soon after, we reached the entrance to the tunnels and set about travelling through them. This went about how one would expect. There would be a fight, the party would win convincingly, and I would spend the next several minutes trying to prevent my party members from killing our fallen enemies. There are many things the party fails to understand. Pacifist leanings appear to be one of them.
As we were getting near to the other end of the cave, we were approached by three people in very nice attire who looked to be very honorable individuals. They approached and spoke with Kusari, revealing that they were her family and very concerned for her well-being. They thought that such an honorable young lady as her should hardly be wandering through grimy dungeons with a questionable band such as ourselves. Kusari assured them that we were very trustworthy individuals, and maintained that yes, she should absolutely be spending her time fighting through dungeons and caves. Why, they asked, should royalty be down here in the muck killing things instead of safe at home? Well, Kusari replied, It is the responsibility of royalty to look out for the people they govern. Her relatives agreed there was some wisdom in this and lead us outside of the caves to give us bread in order to test if we were undead. It was good bread, but it had no undead-detection powers. Finally, the human leading the other two handed a bundle to the elf at her side, and the elf gifted the bundle to Kusari, saying that if she were to be wandering about in the muck she should at least not be doing it defenseless, and then the three of them bid her farewell and left us.
Kusari discovered on the way back that it was a very powerful set of elven swords, and seemed very much pleased by them, and everyone else present agreed that they were very impressive. We congratulated her and then headed back to town, where the day of adventuring ended.
I still have no enlightening comments to bestow upon the reader, and so I will put away my pen and take my leave. Fare thee well.
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Post by ElfChild on May 17, 2013 18:15:00 GMT -8
My line is cast into the sea Fishes, fishes, come to me Rise from time-swept oceans green But when you come, bring the dead time's key
Amara D'ni The first thing I awoke to was the sky. It took me a moment to register this. The roof of my room isn't that shade of blue, I remembered going to bed last night... And then I saw Iraya, sitting over me, dripping, and realized that I myself was laying a couple inches deep in water. I pulled myself up. She smiled slightly, but it was a tired, almost but not quite relieved smile. "What happened?" I asked her. "Tsunami," she replied. "Be glad I survived it, the life mages guild is flooded." I nodded quickly. "The others?" "The tsunami was too strong, I couldn't save anybody. They were all dead by the time I found them." "So how are they?" "So far everyone's okay, but I haven't gotten to everyone yet. I can only hope for the best." "I'll help you find them." "Find them and take them to the guild, we don't have time. There are boats landing on the south shore and we've been called out immediately." "Who attacks in the middle of the night after a tsunami?" "I'll let you think about that for a minute. Now I saw Gideon's body over there, and I know Aurora's a little ways back. Taka and Masamoto are fine. Now you get your husband and I'll get Aurora and let's GO!" And we did.
The life mages guild was full, just as Iraya had said. The adventurers, the new generation at least, had mostly been found in the rubble that was the inn, and were being given priority for resurrection due to whatever was happening on the south shore. The necromancers guild were busy summoning the rest.
After that we were hurried off to the shore to deal with the ships approaching through the early morning mist. At first I thought it was possible that the issue might potentially be connected to the time rift--the tsunami had certainly come from the right direction--but as the smell of death surrounded us and figures began to march up onto the misty shore, it became clear that what we were dealing with was not any sort of time effect. This was a grim patrol. I carry a helmet with me always for situations where I might run into morganti, and the feeling of morganti was permeating the air. The sense of gnawing fear to which I have become accustomed came strongly from the beach, and I found the cause after a brief scan of the opposing forces. l shoved the helmet down over my head. I usually am walking around with two skill sources--my own abilities and the knowledge provided by a variety of amulets and rings. When I am wearing armor, even just a helm, the latter takes over. Even so, I can fight as I am accustomed with the backup provided by the spirits hiding within the magical amulets and rings. Tossing my staff to the side and letting the sleeping spellstones slip from my fingers, I moved out amongst the fighters on the field doing my customary dance of disarm and run, take the sword to the midsection and then apply pressure to the inside of the arm holding it, leaving a weaponless opponent staring at me with confusion and anger. Suddenly a pale cloaked figure appeared amongst the undead, swinging a staff at me. His hand seemed to reach out through the staff, clawed and bloody, and I raised my arm to deflect it to the side. I could feel the energy coming off of it and pulled back as the warded staff swung at me again. Ahahaha--no. Not getting near that thing. I ran back to the space where the concentration of the party was greater than the concentration of the undead and paused for a moment. It was around then that the second vampire hit a man next to me with a spell which arced out and hit a number of us before fizzling out into nothing. Nothing happened to me, but the weapons wielded by those around me disappeared entirely. Some pulled out alternative weapons, others hid or moved off somewhere a little safer to perform a different job. I ran off to go disarm some more of our enemies and toss the weaponry back to disarmed friends. There were, however, a finite number of weapons the other side could wield, and by the time another band of undead started moving up onto the beach, my usefulness in this location was nearing an end. I saw more allies coming down onto the shore and moved off to join them.
I saw with relief that Gideon was alive and well, and shouted a hello before returning to performing the same function as before. This battle went similarly to the first one but with two--sorry, three--major events. The first was an elder sorcery I heard thrown. One of the vampiric bastards cast an "I abolish your hope" spell at one of our fighters. I froze a moment, in horror at the thought of the spell's effect and also in surprise. I would swear I have heard that spell before, I am just not sure where, and the uncertainty is somewhat frightening, even if not nearly as much as the spell. The second was a series of low level undead that ran into a group of the party and exploded into a great blast of flame. The last was Gideon stealing morganti from a vampire who looked like he would rather have been killed from his facial expression after. After that, the sun rose and the undead retreated back to their ships, and we returned to our inn.
Chen Panjue was there to talk to us, and he listened to descriptions of the situation on the beach and told us that the vampires we had encountered were the wizard trade order apprentices who'd been seen on boats in the Dark City's bay. Falconcry was the one with the claw staff, Asheyes the one with the exploding minions, Deathwish the hope slayer, and a fourth whose name I do not recall.
After they returned from training the militia, the party declared that they were going to go to fight the vampires sitting just offshore, and I went with them. Honestly, I know I'm supposed to describe the battle in great detail, but... It was a battle. The only major difference between it and what I've described further up this page was that it took place on a boat up 'til the point where Ishmael showed up. The storyteller in me wants to describe it all in great deal and build up tension until Ishmael appears and half the undead on the field explode, but there's also the part of me that is tired of describing fight scenes and would rather describe issues, and I think that's the piece that's going to win right now. So Ishmael appeared and the vampires were exorcized, and everyone went home exalting she who won the battle for us. And, feeling confident from the win, they marched off to the next fight, the next ship, forgetting that without Ishmael we might not have won the last battle at all. And so they fell, and so they were captured, and so what started well ended in defeat. I guess my deal here is that I'm more interested in the moral than the story, whether I should be or not. There are weapons you can't use twice, and as much as you might try, you aren't as strong without them. There are fights that aren't worth it. If you have a dragon on the run, you don't try to catch up and aggravate it. Of course, hindsight is perfect, and I know better choices could have been made now that they weren't. It just... I lost a friend to that and I don't know how to save him in the short term and I'm terrified for him. Okay? There you are. I'm just a person, and I'm allowed to be scared, because despite all the bowing and honor and pacifism and despite the fact that I've fought worse, I'm still weak and terrified and so is everyone somewhere in their hearts, even if they try to convince you otherwise. I'm scared of failing, and I lost a friend, and so I failed, even if I didn't choose the mission. And I'm scared of failing him by not being able to get him back, because even if morganti dragons are bigger and scarier looking, THIS is what's scary. Failing. Losing people. Losing yourself. And knowing your friends could lose themselves and you can't do a damn thing to stop it.
I need to stop writing.
Shailar Seraphim I don't really fight vampires so much, I guess. It's not so much my thing. I like solving puzzles and talking with people and helping out at the inn. You know, reasoning games. So the whole 'let's go out and kill the scourges of the earth' battle cry? Not really so much a part of that. It's not the job I'm trained to do. It IS apparently the thing Ishmael does, which explains why Amara took us to meet her, but not why she knows every damn thing. Ishmael is SCARY, I swear. So I kind of spent my time not being near the vampire killing and she didn't talk to me and that was okay.
I was, however, around training the militia, because that's my job. I'm a member of the new party, so it's my responsibility, especially if I'm not specializing in the killing of the vampes. So I went out with them to deal with the pirates and then later to deal with the fire dogs. We walked up and down the beaches looking for the drenched bodies of elemental guardians as a variety of local agressors attempted to kill us. The militia--now wielding wooden swords and tower shields--were practicing disarm and knockback to good effect. So we would walk into an area, clear it, drag the ashy, dead-looking elementals out of the sea, and have them resurrected. Then we would move on. It is somewhat interesting to see men learn a skill and a style to which they are unaccustomed. Their expressions when we first suggested they use wooden blades that dealt no damage were those of confusion and annoyance, but soon all anger was lost in the excitement of learning. I am beginning to think that learning is the process which makes better people of us, not only stronger ones. If we walked back only a few moons to the time before I became a Geisha, I was much less careful, much more prone to spite. But learning, and perhaps this is due to the power of the teacher even more than the learning itself, has brought me to a place where I am more ready to work with people on positive terms, even if it is more difficult. You could see the change in these people too. Perhaps fighting without damage was more difficult, but they could do it now, and they were excited by the challenge it presented. Learning, understanding the nature of what one is doing, brings with it a certain embracing of challenge. I can accomplish difficult things, friends. Watch me do them. I think I will enjoy watching the people around me learn and begin to embrace all the implications and powers their newfound understanding brings. There is but a single remaining note which I must make with regards to this mission, and it is this: On the way back, we encountered a spirit wich appeared to be some manner of fire elemental. It flowed and twisted and hovered, and I came and spoke to it and pulled one of the misdirection tricks I have learned to garner the temporary alliance of someone I do not wish to fight, if only long enough to change a situation a little, and it collapsed, a paper falling into its remains as they faded into nothing at all. The words on the paper were written in a green tilting script which elongated the 's' into what almost looked to be an 'l' and simplified the 'a' to a slash and the 'e' to an arrow. I couldn't read it well while walking, but it was something like:
"press against this life with longing And it will not hold long Our light will turn to twilight"
When we returned, Kioriel showed me other pieces that had been found and we spent a little time trying to decipher the script as the party went out to fight the vampiric menace yet again. We came up with a vague impression of what it said, but decided that this would be better put aside for a time when there was real time to work on it. Just then the party returned, and their spirits reminded me of the way they had been when first the Maimed had first been fought and the party had come back all hacked up with Morganti. They recounted in dark spirits the way they had been defeated and lost several of their number to the retreating dark city. Everyone in the room knew that those captured would soon be vampires, but we also knew we did not have the resources to face the threat with those who remained.
A few of us had been planning to go to the temple of the Elder Goddess to ask about the purple stone, which hadn't turned up yet and seemed kind of important, and according to Amara was potentially very powerful and not to be used by anyone not particularly pure of intention, at least not until we found out for sure it wasn't what she thought it was. Of course, she didn't tell us what she thought it was, she still hasn't, so we just knew it was potentially incredibly dangerous. And thus we went to ask the priestesses. We were allowed in, and the priestess there immediately asked about the boxes we'd found, particularly the one we couldn't open. So Iraya described it in detail, and the woman nodded and told us it was probably in there. We asked what it was, and she asked if any of us had seen these stones that, when touched by the right person, turned into items. They were, she said, very common during the War of Heaven. And all of us said no except Scarab, who said yes, he'd been in possession of a few for a while. She told us that this one seemed to be left over from the War of Heaven, which implied that it still had a purpose. Kioriel asked about any further visions, and the priestess told us that there had been, always of the stone floating near a person, though who it was seemed unimportant. There was a great deal of philosophical talk then about whether the person didn't matter and if the person didn't matter, was the key to the chest really a physical key, which implied other things if it was true, and also whether the object actually imprinted on people as I had assumed from Amara's statements. Finally, the priestess told us that the key to the box was most likely on the ship where the box had been, and that it was likely connected to one of the haunts. We need not go to the bottom of the sea, she told us. The haunt connected to the key would simply have it if we did the right thing, regardless of where it had been prior. We thanked her, and then we set off to do preparation and research for sailing off to the haunts.
Amara D'ni I am putting in a short word to say that anyone who touched the Shadowlands gate should get identified with a very high level identify and refrain from touching anybody until they do. Preferably they should be put under some kind of quarantine, but since I don't have the authorization to force it, I'm going to strongly recommend that they do not wander around with a possibly infectious set of pure-evil-induced issues. We do not know how the Shadowlands work. Please do not test how destructive they can be without sending us demons.
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Post by ElfChild on Jul 5, 2013 17:00:34 GMT -8
Campout Chronicles which are really just characters being traumatized by the Shadowlands.
Sunday
Amara D'ni Last night was one of interest for two reasons. The first was a bard by the name of Marion Sparrowsong, who came into town with songs written by a minstrel from Amir. This minstrel was said to have had visions which he made into songs, and thus the songs are... interesting. As one who puts a great deal of faith in dreams and visions, I think they are definitely worth hearing if ever you are given the chance. She sat and waited, tuning her guitar and speaking with adventurers, and then in a short silence. Then she started with a song which, while being one I had heard before, seemed odd. It speaks of belief in magic, and perhaps magic is a metaphor, for it is near impossible not to believe in it when it is all around us. I joined in with her, and as the last verse came about something strange happened. The world began to feel... other than it is. As though in some way we were displaced from it, and it twisted slightly. At first I thought it was just my eyes, but Marion later confirmed that she as well had seen it, and she as well had heard the odd harmony that sounded at the end. She seemed unsuprised by the effect it had on the world, though she did find it interesting. I wonder what that song was. Either way, she moved on to the minstrel's songs then. I can write a couple here, as she taught one to me later and the other I picked up in listening. The others spoke of morganti, of the Dark Lady, and of a knight who, through the help of a historian, I now think is Ebonafter. The two songs which I have learned are as follows:
This is the song she taught me.
A lady she was, traveling through the trees Long she walked and watched upon me Till at the point when the sun fades away She raised her voice in a song of the ley “I am the the now, and the past cries out As I have become so she must be now It is the beginning to the start of the end She has died and her I must defend Before she is born to other then my daughters In this I will watch, and in this I cast others But the shadow moves as well, it I cannot hold Keep it from the future, Keep from growing old The mind will betray you, be careful of thee The dream is yours, my fair young ladee" Then she turned to the trees and she bade me farewell I shall never forget that lass at the well
And this is the song I picked up.
A merry lad who walked alone Stood long upon the quay And soon there came a murmering Of another time of day When all the fish and all the birds Were singing in the night And all the beasts and all the men Were still within our sight He skipped a stone across the lake Not knowing where it would land And when it skipped across the lake The lad was not at hand
While she was singing, an old historian came and requested a couple of songs from her. One was a rather dark song about Morganti and its use, as well as the end it threatened. He was quite angry that those who made it and used it did not see or understand this threat, a sentiment I can agree with. He also commented on a song about a knight in black, bathed in flame with a wolf at his side. He noted that it had been theorized that the wolf may have represented Lord Fenrir Nonas. I responded that in this case the knight sounded a great deal like Ebonafter, and he told the group how Fenrir had died from having Ebonafter spellturned back at him. Then he frowned and told us that the dragon who had taken over the area of Menonass was angry and very much active. The third song was the same song she taught me later that night, and he commented that most people thought it was strange that it would refer to the "beginning of the start of the end", but in fact that was three specifics that seemed to cover past, present, and future. Finally he bid us goodnight and walked away.
Marion played a couple more of the minstrel's songs, after which she returned to songs more commonly known. I sung with her for a while before suiting up and heading outside of the city to make sure the watches were doing okay. After disarming a vampire, taking a few mana drains, and taking its morganti to law enforcement, I hung about a little longer to see if it might be killed, but after that I went to sleep. So. There's that. I'll write more tonight.
Monday
Shailar Seraphim It seems that the core of Sorikonia, one of the brighter lights I have seen, does indeed cast a shadow. It seems that said shadow is entirely unpleasant and it scares me more than anything I've yet seen. I'm frightened. It is probably arrogant to assume that I was ever able to protect people. After all, I seem to damage everything I touch in some way or another. I just. I want to protect people, and I'm not sure I can really protect anyone from the Shadowlands. I'm going to write now. I'm going to write with all my might because I can remember and because maybe the only way I can protect anyone is to make them aware of the signs.
We were sent to go find Li Tiesha. We owe her this debt, I think. Or I do, at least, whether she's aware of it or not, because she's helped us time after time even though I'm sure she's got plenty of conflicting obligations. And so honor bound us to go seek out the shrines (once torn and broken, for there answers you will find) and the paths they opened into the Shadowlands. We walked, and every time something came into our path I wrote the color of the sky on my arm. White. White. White. And so we came upon the shrine, and I sat beside Kioriel and helped place the incense. Then it was lit, and we meditated. The sky was white, with a hint of blue through the trees. When we opened our eyes, the trees were barren, twisted things, as were the ferns and grasses. I looked up. The sky was gray. I stood, as did the others, and cast about for some hint of Li Tiesha, but of course, it had been weeks and it was not so easy. The humans seemed unaware that anything had happened, replying that of course Li Tiesha would not be there, she had certainly not been before. We hissed back that we were in the Shadowlands now, and they glanced around and then listened up. I asked if any among us were trackers and one man raised his hand and took a look around. He did find human tracks eventually, hidden under all sorts of skittery little tracks. They pointed a direction and we followed him as he picked out imprints of shoes in the earth and the angles they made that were just a little too perfect or curved the right way. Soon we heard voices, high and scratchy. "Kill the goblins, kill the goblins!" The party entered the area and engaged the goblins and a few larger creatures who delighted in the removal of heads from bodies. I hung back with Kioriel, who insisted on scrawling notes on a little pad of paper despite the immediate presence of zombies and angry goblins. I watched (Ray) as he tracked and pointed the way and did my best to make sure Kioriel moved when enemies got close enough to be a threat to her. (Ray) pointed down the way the tracks were leading and we moved that way once the zombies took too much interest in us to be avoidable. We skirted the edges of the battlefield and ran down into the ravine that he had pointed to, ducking behind a couple of large rocks near the bottom. Others joined us one by one: Kusari, (Katia), (Ray), and others appeared next to us. Attano appeared as well, despite not having come in the way the rest of us did. Eventually the entire party caught up, and we moved on. Soon the dead branches and gnarled roots began to grow more thickly about us and we had to duck our heads to avoid hitting the branches above. Kioriel had stopped writing now, placing her pen and notebook back in the pouch she carried at her side. We carefully moved down through a tunnel in the arching, twisted branches. The ground evened for a few steps and was just beginning to slope up again when somewhere up ahead someone shouted. And then there was another shout. "You can't get them off!" "Stop stabbing them, you're hurting yourself!" "The vines are trying to eat them!" And suddenly I was aware that amongst the twisted branches were vines, everywhere. Moving. And my foot brushed against one as I tried to step back and they grabbed my leg and started trying to force their way through my armor. Well shit. No more usable leg for me.
I'm going to take a brief break from the narrative wherein I am going to discuss something I have observed about my party members and myself instead of discussing the blood and nastiness occurring during this point in the story while we are figuring out that the vines will try to murder us if we touch anything that looks like a plant and the fact that treeform and fire will make the vines get away from us. People are interesting. To some of you this is old news, others of you have yet to discover it, but it's true. People are complicated, unpredictable, jealous, spiteful, arrogant, competitive, and self-serving. But even with all that riding on their heads, they're strong. They cope. They adapt. You don't see it every day, because it's not every day that they need to do these things. Adapting is scary. But there's that moment at the edge of despair when a person is staring into the jaws of death and fear becomes irrelevant. I'm going to sound like a terrible person for saying it, but that moment is when I like people best, because that's the moment when they are the most brilliant. That's the moment when all of those terrible negative things no longer matter, because if they don't come up with something amazing in that moment there won't even be a tomorrow. And so they do. They say "screw survival, let's go out with a bang", and then there's a bang and then suddenly there's a tomorrow again too. And that's what the party did.
We emerged from the tunnel of twisted foliage barely alive. My right leg was screwed up beyond any repair we could do in the Shadowlands, and several other party members were unconscious and would not wake. But we were alive. We were so very alive, and that was good enough for now. That was better than good enough. We carefully maneuvered around more vines and came up to a sort of hill. There were zombies there mixed in with a few screaming goblins, and we did our best to fight them off. (Ray) looked around and pointed up the hill, and we moved as fast as we could in that direction. Kioriel and Attano both attempted to help me along at points, but I didn't let them, opting instead to hop on my one usable leg until the direness of the situation forced me to accept the hand Kioriel offered. I don't know why I disliked the idea of letting them help me, but even there in the Shadowlands--maybe especially there in the Shadowlands--It seemed dangerous to give anyone else power over me. This is a foolish sentiment. Both already have power over me, my emotions, my survival. But I didn't want them to. I kind of still don't. You give people the power to destroy you and they probably will. At least. In my case they always have. It's just a matter of time. Enormous horned creatures began to pursue us as we climbed after (Ray). They wielded long roughly made blades that crushed metal as though it were no more than paper. Two were chasing Kioriel and myself as we neared the top. It looked as though we were going to outrun them when suddenly Kioriel stopped, her leg entangled in a mass of twisting vines. During the first scene with the vines, someone had handed me an amulet of treeform touch, and I gave it to Kioriel then. She treeformed and the vines pulled away, but by the time she reverted our pursuers were nearly on top of us. We quickly stumbled backward trying to escape them, but we couldn't move as quickly as we would have liked. And then suddenly Kioriel was shoving paper scraps into my hands and someone else placed what I recognized as Li Tiesha's robes and Kioriel pushed me forward, toward our party, and screamed "Shailar I sacrifice myself so you can live!" The moments after she said those words seemed to stretch into eternity as I processed what had just been said. I was too shocked to do anything more but follow her movement. And I waited for something to happen, for her to falter, for her to fall, for something somewhere in me to break. But none of these things happened. The moment was over and Kioriel was still rushing me up toward Attano and (Ray) and a shrine I could see around the next bend and she pulled me through a pathway between the dead trees and then something hit me, and I don't remember what it was. I just remember the pain and blackness and something that was almost but not quite panic. And then I was staring up at a white sky and dashes of blue, fabric and paper still clutched in my shaking hands.
My leg hurt the whole walk back. The Shadowlands injuries couldn't be healed properly, but I could kind of walk again. We returned her corpse and her things to Sun Fone when we returned, because she was in the inn and maybe she would know what to do. She took the robe and wands carefully, and she and a couple of aides took the Fire Master's body away to be exorcized and healed as well as they could manage. I followed Attano and Kioriel to the inn, and then we sat and patched together the papers into what was almost a whole. There was food and conversation and I took the paper and read over it a couple of times when nobody else could figure out what to make of it. It was about healing the Shadowlands taint, I told them, and they nodded and said they knew, but we seemed to be missing the piece that detailed how. And I read over it again, and then my eyes stopped on the word "jade". It was an unassuming word, no more special than "taint" or "Chi", certainly, but it was at the end of a line, and it echoed in my head oddly. Like it fit somehow. And then it did. I don't actually remember what the general reaction was when I ran over to Amara and Aurora shouting "JADE IS THE CURE", but the two of them looked at each other and took the paper and told me we were going to find Sun Fone now, and so we did. And she wanted our logic, and I couldn't give her much besides the paper which was incomplete at best, but Amara and Aurora had handed in morganti swords earlier that day and been promised a boon, so she went along with it.
We're standing in the inn now, and we're about to go on a mission to the south end of the island, and Sun Fone just came in and placed a bag of jade in front of us. "This is all of the loose Jade in Sorikonia," she said. "It's supposed to cure the taint, but how do you plan on administering it?" And we looked at each other and suggested seeing if it worked on Li Tiesha, only that wouldn't answer the how to administer it issue. And then Attano picked up a piece and rolled up his sleeve to reveal a nasty scar, and he stabbed the jade into his flesh and drew it up his arm leaving a bloody gash that knit itself back together as he did, and the jade dissolved into the wound. By the time he'd addressed all his injuries it was gone. The scars were still there, but lighter. Less permanent. The normal white of scar tissue instead of the odd yellowy-grayish color of the Shadowlands scars. It's been decided that those of us who are already in the danger zones so far as infection are going to use Jade now, Li Tiesha will be given Jade, and the store of jade will be in the custody of the martial masters so that it cannot be stolen. I'm going to check out whatever's going on down south now. More writing when I get back.
I'm tacking this on to the end of this chronicle because I can. We're being invaded from the South. We mostly encountered zombies, but there was also a vampire. The situation is under control for now though.
Tuesday
Amara D'ni Am I awake? It's dark out. Very dark. Am I alive? I have to be, right? I'm writing. I'm writing.
Is Gideon-- Is he-- Where-- Oh. Thank the gods. He's alive. He's breathing. Thank the gods. Gods...
It was night. I remember it was night, and the patrol was back... Gideon wasn't though. Gideon was... where? They said out. After a glowing light. Green. And Sparrowsong, because she was Sparrowsong in the dream, she knew where and I cast pacifism (why did I CAST pacifism?) and she handed me a torch and I went and there was a light and the dream changed, except... Oh gods. That wasn't a dream. Ohgodsohgodsohgods that wasn't a dream that's where we're all going, all of us, it's going to kill us and we're going to fall and I can't fly I can't fly and none of them will remember falling. Nobody will remember falling. Not even me. Because I'm going to die. And then there will be nobody to remember to make wings.
Magic is the sun that makes a rainbow out of rain And magic keeps the dream alive to try and try again Magic is the love that stays when good friends have to leave I do believe in magic, I believe...
It was night, and I was trying to prevent people from trying to kill or arrest children, because somebody thought it'd be a great idea to stab children. In Sorikonia. I don't even know. Some asshole called Paco and a guy whose face I don't remember well enough to describe it. Anyway, the guards came in from the patrol station and there's Marion too, and I ask what's up and what happened on the patrol and where's Gideon, wasn't he with you guys? And then the guard says, "There was this glowing green light and he disappeared." And it's GREEN. Because the green bastard is around, I guess he would be, and he's taken Gideon damnit. So I cast pacifism because I don't trust my blessing to work a hundred percent in the Shadowlands and Marion hands me a torch and says "I'll show you where" and we go, and I walk forward until there's this little flashing green light and Marion tells me I'm just in front of where he disappeared and I look at the flashing light and tell it "Give me my husband back you son of a bitch." And it floats up and down infuriatingly for a moment and then the landscape changes.
There's a twisting inside of me and I feel my pacifism draining my energy to stay present, but then it stabilizes. There's this guy behind me, but at this point I don't care, and there's this goddamn torch bobbing off in the distance and I can see the edge of a sillouette by it. So I walk towards it and this thing, big and with hippo-like traits and scales and horns charges at me from the darkness and I twist around and there's another one now and behind them there's this thing wielding a long wicked-looking spear. I back myself against some rocks and deflect the blows raining down on me from the hippo things, and when I'm far enough I turn and sprint towards the torchlight in the distance. I don't know what the other man did. He's probably dead. I run, and I can tell it's Gideon now, and I can tell he hears the footfalls because he starts moving faster and then I shout his name and he turns and says "hello" as if there was not a damn thing wrong with this situation. The hippo things are behind me, we don't have a lot of time, so I grab his hand and say "I can't explain now, you've gotta trust me, COME ON!" and we run back toward them. He reflects their blows back at them and I just let them bounce off my pacifism and we're at the point where I came in and we run through-- The hippo things are still there. The skyline is still way too jagged to be the normal trees. The doorway's closed, the doorway wasn't supposed to close. I swear, and he asks what's wrong, and I tell him we're in the f*cking Shadowlands, that's what, but the creatures are right on top of us again and I tell him to go back the other direction so we move that way. One of them knocks me to the ground and attempts to hit me in the head, but I block its strikes and Gideon comes back in and he buys me the time I need to get back on my feet and then the two of us run off into the night. I see if I can get any sense of where a shrine might be, and there's kind of a hint of a thought, only I don't know if it's just my intuition or if it's something that really exists. Either way, we have nothing else to go off of, so that's the way we go.
After about ten minutes of hissing profanities at Gideon, I shut up and both of us focused on the task at hand. We moved through the darkness in quiet when we could, at a run when something dangerous reared its ugly head. Sometimes I didn't hear his footsteps and I'd have to look back at him to reassure myself he was still there. It was an hour before we encountered the next threat. I don't know what the things are, but they're big and undead looking from what I can tell--Or at least, they didn't look alive. We ran until we could no longer hear their heavy footsteps and then we returned to walking quietly. We encountered similar beings at least once before the night was over, and smaller skittery ones a few more times. Eventually the sun appeared on the horizon, producing a strange white-gray light instead of the ordinary oranges and yellows. We didn't see any more undead after that. Both of us felt our pacifism eating away at our energy again, and once again it stabilized, but I was getting tired, and I could tell so was he. I didn't know what sleeping here would do, and I didn't want to test it, but there was no end in sight and if we didn't find our way out soon, we might have to. Now that it was light out it was much easier to track properly, and so that's what I did. Nothing was as scary as it had been in the darkness except for the plants that Shailar told me about. They hadn't moved during the night, but I didn't want to test them in daylight. There were goblins. Strange little goblins that talked about killing all the goblins but who mostly seemed interested in killing us. Gideon commented after the second time we met them in daylight that he liked the goblins here. I asked why, and he told me they were too weak to be potentially dangerous. You never want 'not capable of killing you' to be the most likable characteristic in something. Ever. I hated that place. I wanted to be home where likable meant friendly and supportive and reliable instead of not as murderous as everything else. Gods I wanted to be home. Everything else in that place seemed to prey on the goblins to some extent. Once we slipped past some large ogre-like creatures with horns that ripped the heads off of the tiny creatures. Another time we passed a giant turtle with a spine covered shell and rows and rows of what looked like teeth until you realized that they were all beaks lining its mouth. It devoured the goblins without much thought. We didn't see any goblins wander into the dead twigs and bunches of vines. Maybe they knew better.
Finally we ducked under the dead branches of another tree past long draping vines that hung down from the taller trees and the landscape changed, suddenly and without warning. Instead of gnarled roots and vines, there was grass stretching out under clear blue. I breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank the gods." Gideon stepped out beside me. "What?" "We're out!" I hugged him. He hugged me back. "Out?" I stepped back and grinned at him. "Out of the Shadowlands. See? Blue sky!" "We were in the Shadowlands?" A pacifist punching another pacifist doesn't do a whole lot of damage, but I did it anyway.
Now that the adrenaline was gone, I could feel weariness hanging off of every step, but we had to get back to Sashi Iten as fast as possible. Something you are NOT supposed to do is stand up the leader or past leader of a clan, even if you don't do it on purpose. I just hoped I hadn't done so yet. We encountered small things on the way back. A group of travelling cobbens, a cult to Odin, a Sorikonian guard patrol. Along the way I filled Gideon in on what had happened last night, accompanied with ways he could use to tell if something was up even if it didn't feel like anything was, gray sky being the biggest indicator. When finally we returned to town, I stumbled into the inn where stood Aurora and Mong and asked if the man I'd contacted had come looking for me. They told me yes, and I cursed and sent in an apology.
And then I died in my husband's arms. No, I went home and went to sleep. But the way this started out, didn't you expect an ending like that? No? Okay, nevermind.
Here. I guess I owe you something of an explanation for the start of this thing before I'd calmed down enough to be coherent. Actually really I should just cut the start of this thing. But I won't, I'll explain it. I'm something of a coward. But the thing I'm most afraid of above everything else is forgetting and being forgotten. And so the Shadowlands... The Shadowlands is terrifying. Because the Shadowlands makes you forget. And if I wasn't an elf, or if Gideon hadn't had someone like me, we never would have gotten out. We'd just... forget our world. It'd be gone like any passing memory, and it would never come back. A person is too much to forget. An experience is livable, but frightening. A world is everything. Because your world defines you and you define it, and without your world, anything that happened in it doesn't count. And so if the world faded away, if people faded away... All you'd be would be a spirit. Empty, drifting, dead. And I can't protect my friends from that. I can remind them, and I can describe it to them, but I can't return the memories the Shadowlands will steal. I can't give them back their truth, even if I can tell them mine. And so I make light of it, but the moment when Gideon didn't remember was the most frightening moment of this entire story. Because I can't fix that. I can never fix that.
I need to stop writing. Badly. Before I drown myself with words. I think it's like nine at night or something, which is still early enough to find a good conversation. I'm going out.
Wednesday
Amara It was morning, barely, and we moved out into the streets in search of Lion Clan, or maybe Heron Clan, because people had found more papers when they went after Chen Panjue and apparently even the first set of papers suggested that the two Dsesnorian Clans knew about Jade from the get-go. How? Well that was what we were trying to find out. Heading into town, I was almost immediately approached by a kid who I met last night and the night before. The boy was the youngest of three children, one of whom was adopted. He had also been one of the stab victims whom I had healed the night of my Shadowlands adventure. Over the course of my three encounters with him, he had said some things that sounded somewhat disturbing about his family life. I'm not sure if it's an actual issue with his parents or if he's exaggerating things, but every time I run into him I become more convinced that I should look into that and make sure there isn't some kind of abuse situation going on. This time there was no imminent issue with him or either of his brothers, so we exchanged greetings and words for a little before he ran back to his games. Moving on, we were approached by a low ranking member of the Lion Clan. He asked what we needed and when we told him we were here asking after stories of shadow and jade, he apologized and told us unfortunately he did not possess the information wd needed. We continued asking around. We continued asking. At some point I discovered a man laying dead on the street and I took my attention away from the party to attend to his resurrection. When I had finished, Gideon appeared and told me they'd heard there might be a member of Heron Clan defending the temple of the elder goddess, and the party was going to go find him.
The two of us caught up with the party as it was leaving town. The group didn't seem to have noticed our absence, so we blended back in without incident. It is funny how much easier that is when the brief time spent away is not used in secrets. It seems like adventurers can smell secrets. Like it's some special sense we get when we begin the occupation. We were heading up the hill to the temple when we were attacked by a group of goblins. Nothing worth worrying about, save the fact that these creatures were of the Shadowlands variety. Still, we dealt with them without issue until the end, and even then the source of the issue was not actually our enemies. It was the end of the fight and we were picking our ways over the injured bodies of goblins when I saw Torald standing over the corpses killing them and hacking them into little bits. Kioriel was telling him to stop, but he showed no sign of doing anything other than brush her off. I came over and knocked his blade out of his hand. "Stop," I told him. "Give it back," he replied. "No. Not until you've proven you can be responsible with it." He spent the rest of the walk glaring at me and trying to grab the sword back. Here's my deal at this point: I acknowledge that not everyone is going to want to follow the Way of the Flower. I get that more of me are not necessarily what Sorikonia needs. But that doesn't make it okay to kill something that was never any real danger to you in the first place and can no longer fight back. Having a bad day or being angry is no excuse. Those you kill take the same risks you do when they die, and to inflict that upon a person who had no intention of inflicting it on you should be some form of criminal offense if it is not already.
We arrived at the temple and stood with the Heron Clan man as he guarded the temple, and he told us about how he kept dreaming about this place he thought might have been the Shadowlands. In fact, he was pretty sure that the dreams were retelling what had really happened because his memory didn't find it but it seemed very vivid in the dreams. He told us about how one time he had been in there, and normally he fights with two swords, a longer one and a shorter one, but he had lost the shorter blade somewhere, and he was holding onto an amulet that represented Amaterasu in that hand. He told us it was Jade, but he hadn't been thinking about that at the time. Really he'd just been cornered by a big creature with horns. His reaction had been instinctive, he'd raised the one weapon to block and stabbed with his other hand, forgetting that it no longer contained a sword. But when the jade came close to the monster, the creature pulled back as if the piece of jade was a burning coal. It did not attack him after that. Then he told us about stories of the Shadowlands and how it had been sealed away historically. Dsesnor and Sorikonia had similar stories, involving a hero dueling some sort of demon lord of the Shadowlands and winning, but even though he had been defeated and couldn't open more rifts between the Shadow and normal realms, the old ones were still there. This was when the stories began to differ from one another. In the Dsesnorian version the hero had then proceeded to duel and defeat the rift itself. In the Sorikonian version, however, the hero had defeated the rift and sealed it shut by killing himself. The Sorikonian version worried this Heron Clan warrior, for this did not seem to him a very good end. I told him this: It can be done. It does not mean what it seems to say. And so long as we look, there is hope that the solution can be found. He seemed somewhat reassured, and said that at least if there was hope, we might be alright.
We proceeded to make a sacrifice to the Goddess, and we received a prophecy-like poem which we were unfortunately unable to fully transcribe which pertained to some form of twisting or bending. I gave my notes to Kioriel, you may ask her about it. A group of people also received a vision, and that you may ask Kioriel about as well. I was not one of them.
Torald spent most of the way back acting like a petulant child and trying to steal back his weapon from me, an endeavor at which he was entirely unsuccessful. When the party went out to kick the Grim off our island for good, he came to me and asked if he might have his sword back to fight the Grim if he gave a promise that he would return it when he got back. I reluctantly agreed. Upon his return he gave me a mundane blade instead of his own. He has chosen to be dismissive of my points, which might be alright if he would do so with his own set of well thought out counterpoints like a reasonable adult. As it is, he is proving himself to be worthy neither of weapons nor of trust, and so I will give him neither until he proves otherwise.
Shailar Seraphim I don't even know what to say. Which is why I'm here writing instead of screaming my lungs out at them right now. There are so many things, but none of them will do a lick of good, and I'm scared for the two of them, but more than that I'm scared for the world. Only that's a lie. I'm scared for them. And I'm scared of what the world will do to them if I can't find some way to... My god. It was so much easier not caring. So much easier. I expected better of you two jerks, you hear me? I expected better. I'm disappointed in you. Why would you do that? Why DO you do that? I hate you both. I love you both. Please stop.
You give someone power over you, any kind of power, and they'll find some way to screw you with it, intentional or not. Love is a bitch. What would I have done if Kioriel had really managed to sacrifice her life for me? What do I do when my friends are tearing each other to bits? What do I do EVER? If it had used words it could have killed me in ten seconds flat. Six words would have been all it would have taken. "Your death will save your friends." I'm not sure I even would have come back into my body. But it didn't, and my friends aren't saved, and something's wrong. Something's incredibly wrong, even more so than it ever was, because Attano said he's trying and yet I've never seen him use outright violence until today, and Torald is reacting with the same violence he's been so ready to use of late, and to top it all off it's the goddamn shadowlands and they're going to get themselves killed this way. Ugh. I need answers because this needs to stop. I don't care whose goddamn fault it is anymore or who's done worse things over the course of this argument. It's a lot of crap and my feelings aside, it's got the potential to put everyone in danger if we end up having to rescue the assholes from the Shadowlands.
Speaking of the Shadowlands. I was supposed to be documenting our adventures there instead of talking myself in circles. So let's do that.
We were there to rescue our companions from the Shadowlands. Same place, same path. It wasn't exactly supposed to be easy, but we knew what we were doing now and we already knew the terrain. Everyone was wearing armor now, and it was strange seeing the mages of our party dressed as a warrior would. At almost everyone's belt was a long thin crystal of Jade, and many of us carried torches. I imagine we must have looked a strange procession marching out the gates of Sashi Iten. Attano approached me on the way up to the shrine, oddly subdued. He told me he was trying something, and hopefully it would solve things, but it would take time, and in the meantime he wanted me to ask Torald to keep his distance. I nodded and moved up to the head of the group, asking Torald to keep his distance as Attano had asked. Torald shrugged and said "okay" and I allowed myself to fall back to the end of the group. The rest of the walk was in relative quiet, save the minute or so wherein Dedoric came up and started giving me a hard time about nothing in particular. We reached the shrine and sat around it, meditating, and in a moment we opened our eyes to gray sky and twisted trees once more.
We headed down into the ravine, full of zombies and goblins, but no party members yet. None had been lost this early, though it had been close. I hovered by Attano and Iraya with a torch lit in case of vines and we continued our descent. This time we did not waste more than a few moments of collected breath by the big rock that marked the beginning of the thickly packed vines and dead trees. We moved through the passage through quickly and with careful footsteps, and now that we knew what to look for, the vines were not so difficult to evade. As we emerged on the other side of the heavily wooded area, we began to find bodies. Some were headless but bore enough Roekron-made equipment that they were easy to identify as ours. Others were wandering about as zombies still wearing their own faces. One of them was even alive still, having been trapped as a tree. The bodies piled up and we carried them up the next hill toward our exit point, the corpses of the long dead and the unconscious bodies of allies who had taken too much damage trying to get through the increasing number of zombies. We were on the final stretch when the interesting things started showing up. The enormous ogrish creatures from before plagued us, and a strange shadowy being stood on the bridge that lead to our escape point. A couple of us approached a shadow man--the shade, we realized--and attempted to speak with it. It laughed at us and mocked our purpose and that of Sorikonia. One of the men standing next to me drew a small crystal of jade from his pocket and held it out as one might hold a dagger. The shade drew away when the jade came near its flesh, but besides that did not flinch. It continued to laugh. I was the first one to pull a sword on it, but once I did my companions followed and soon the being was dissolving into a black mist at our feet. We pulled bodies up to the shrine atop the hill and then headed back down to assist our companions. Another group was fighting a second shade, and I arrived just in time to see a man stab it with jade. The shade definitely seemed to take damage and pulled back, and then that group made short work of their shade. I continued down the hill and, failing to find more bodies which required carrying, turned back the way I came. Attano and Torald were up ahead with another man, carrying more bodies and fighting off zombies as they appeared. I joined them. A couple words were exchanged and then I moved ahead. Suddenly there was the clash of steel behind me and I turned to see Torald pulling his sword out of a chink in Attano's armor. He raised his sword and began to swing it down in an arc as if to kill him. The other man raised his blade to block it and Torald turned on him with a flurry of stabs. The man blocked several strokes and I tried to assist him, for which attacks were made at me. I deflected the sword with my shield and brought my sword down into his midsection and he fell. Once the fighting had ceased I realized what had just happened. We were fighting amongst ourselves in a place where everything was infectious, everything wanted to kill us, and nobody could afford the unconsciousness or open injury fighting would cause. Attano was healing on his own, I could see the wound had almost closed, so I bid the other man help me heal Torald. When both my friends were once again standing, I hissed to Torald that we did not need this here and he would hold his goddamed temper if it killed him. He looked up in indignation, protesting that Attano had attacked him first. What? Attano had said he was going to try to solve his issue with Torald, why would he suddenly resort to violence? I turned, looking for some kind of protest, but Attano just nodded silently. I shouted that this was the Shadowlands and it was not the time for their crap before turning my back and trudging up the hill. Finally we arrived at the shrine. All the dead had been collected. All of us were present. A moment of meditating and the sky was blue once more.
And then afterward Attano tried to give Torald his jade, and the man seemed miserable about the whole situation, and Torald stood there staring at the piece of crystal for thirty solid seconds before saying he couldn't take it, and neither of them seemed to have a damned clue about the other and I don't have a damned clue about anything and this whole situation is just kind of shitty. But I will get answers. Because they're my friends, and because I can't even try to mediate whatever's going on otherwise, and because even if it's not my place to interfere I'm going to do so anyway, because people interfering where it wasn't their place is pretty much how I learned to be a decent person at all.
Sorry for my chronicle and its focus on things that are probably of little use to the reader. I hope that at least you have been able to take something of use from it. Good night.
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Post by ElfChild on Jan 5, 2014 21:35:40 GMT -8
As it turns out, I am not going to even try to do a graphic novel style chronicle because I discovered very fast that it did not make sense in terms of time efficiency. I did a character intro in that format when I first decided this was going to be a character who I actually played a few months back. You can see that if you want. Otherwise, here are normal chronicles. Sorry.__________________ Isanna SilverwindHullo. I'm Isa. I'm here because I think I'm supposed to be. I mean, my family did all these things. They're all adventurers, or they were. And they've done big historical stuff and are all really strong and I guess that's how we're supposed to be? I'm not sure I really want to be, but I think I want to do good things. And I guess the way you do good things and help the world is adventuring. So I guess I'm trying. Today we started. All the people are loud. Except Lady Sentris. And also not Stariln and not Talia most of the time either. But a lot of the people were loud. We were supposed to go fight little bits of Dagdeoth. I went. It was cold. Svodlun is always cold, I guess. Or at least up here. Even though it was still winter, it was a lot warmer in Randwin, and even warmer in Pinnacle. I miss Pinnacle and Tragedor Forest. It didn't snow there. At least, not very much. And it was much more green and less grey. But I don't get to go home for a long time now that I decided to come up here. I don't know how. Even if I had a map I wouldn't be able to walk home, and if I tried, something would probably eat me. So I'm up here. And we were supposed to fight little bits of Dagdeoth. We went to them. People stabbed them a lot, and then Talia healed them and told them to go home. I healed people, because seeing them injured hurts. Not a lot of hurt, just like when you cut your hand while cooking and it just kind of sits there and bleeds and you wonder if it's a big enough thing to call in Dad with his life mage spells or if you should just go bandage it and keep cooking. Usually Dad is busy so I did the second one a lot. I'm not very good at knives or cooking. But it hurts like that. Only instead of being on your hand it's in your heart or whatever they call the piece of you that cares about the people around you. It went like that for a while and it was really cold and it hurt, although getting shot hurts more. But getting shot is physical hurt and it's much easier to fix. I wished Eryss was with me because Eryss is always ready for battle even though I never let it happen to him. I think he would be reassuring. But we're not close enough like the actual spell would make us. I think if I took him out and got stressed or something we might get separated or broken or something. I don't want that to happen. There was a fat dwarf who was smoking something that smelled bad. It burned at the end and it wasn't hobbit smokeweed like they have in Pinnacle. He said it was some kind of "gateway narcotic". He was kind of whimsy and giggly while he said it. I told him he was slowly killing himself, because that kind of drug is bad for you. He said if he was going to die it would be from adventuring, not drugs. I guess maybe there's some truth there. I still wish he would stop smoking whatever it is. Eventually all the Dagdeoth people went home. We went home too. The inn is less cold. The inn has a big fire and it's all warm and I like it. Then we saw Lady Sentris again and she had some people go find caribou. I would have gone, because I like animals, but it was too cold outside. The fire was warm. So I stayed there. Talia doesn't seem bothered by cold. I think she's from somewhere North. I think she's from maybe Dagdeoth. But I also think she's here to teach and record history, and I don't think she's going to work for Dagdeoth while that's happening. I'm just not sure she'll be with us really either. Talia scares me a little bit. The party came back after a while. The Baron who I think it actually Mozenrath convinced the giants that they would be fed caribou. That wasn't what Lady Sentris wanted to hear. I think Lady Sentris is mafia. She refers to everybody as family, but it's a weird way of being family. I think she's actually talking about mafia. I think maybe we're going to end up involved in it too because she is. I don't know what I think about that. She said she was going to talk to the Baron. She said he was doing useful work for her but his methods weren't good. Then the party went into town. Some of us stayed in the inn because there was a book of coded papers and we wanted to know what they said. I was decoding an elvish one with Stariln and a girl who I didn't know but who was kind of pretty and pretty smart. But then I realized I had heard the thing the paper said before once we had finished the first couple lines. It was somewhere in the papers Enyari had. So I stopped because I didn't want to ruin it for Stariln and the girl. Decoding things is fun though. I should go find more codes. Ones I don't know the answer to. The party came back from town for lunch. The innkeeper had food, but the inn got loud because of all the people. I got food and went upstairs and shared some food with Eryss. I made sure some of it was meat, because Slomps mostly eat meat. He liked his food and I liked my food and we sat together in my room. My room is quiet. Quiet is good. I stayed there for a long time and gave Eryss attention because I like him better than I like most of the people. He's less scary and loud. Also he's adorable and I love him. I guess the party left while I was up there. When I came back down people said they had wandered off to a forest for magic item ingredients. When they came back there was a happy dwarf who was hugging people. His name was Abil. He was Lady Sentris' son. I can kind of see the resemblance, I guess. He was very excited about ent sap and crushed bones. He gave the party two magic items. Also he hugged lots of them. In the afternoon I went on a patrol. We met more Dagdeoth. They stabbed us and tried to kill us and I tried to keep people alive, but it was hard. It hurt. Both having injured people and getting stabbed. Talia came too, but she didn't do anything the whole battle. Then we retreated because we lost. I asked her why she didn't take a side. She said I wouldn't like the side she took. I asked why she would side with Dagdeoth. She asked why I would side with Svodlun. I said they had ethics that were good. She asked if Dagdeoth didn't. I said no, because Dagdeoth wanted to kill and enslave people and destroy and sacrifice the world. I asked her if she agreed with those ethics. I don't remember if she actually said yes, but she implied it. That made me frustrated. But I think she's just here to teach and record. I'm going to watch her teach and make sure everything is true, at least so far as I know. But so long as it is, I'm not going to do anything. If she's neutral, she can act like that. I just don't want her making the party die. But I don't think she will. We went back to the inn and there was Lady Sentris again. She told us that the ogres who were capturing humans weren't eating them. They were putting them on a big stone slab. That sounded like human sacrifice, so we went to stop it. There was a happy dwarf along the way who told us how many there were. There were a lot. The party hurt or killed most of them. I just healed people. Then we got to the big stone slab and there were thirty ogres or more, and people tied to the altar. The altar had a big black clawed hand on it. It was for an ogre god of some sort. They were killing people and taking them back to the altar. The party killed a lot of them too. Once people are dead they don't hurt as much. Because they're not in pain, and I don't have to imagine being in their pain. It's worse while they're dying though. I almost attacked one of the ogres, even though that would have hurt more like being shot but in the heart ethics empathy guilt place, and it would have been my fault. I almost did it because maybe if I stabbed one we would win and all the dead people would be saved. But there were still fifteen ogres and me doing it wouldn't have done anything. There were only eight of us left, and lots of them. We retreated because we didn't want to die. Then at night the party attacked goblins. There were a lot of goblins. There was also a cave troll and turuk orcs. There was one man who chained up all the goblins and I hated him for it. Then Abil showed up and took the chained up goblins from him. He walked into a forest and walked in lots of circles and squares and lines and squiggles. Then he let them all go. Then he walked back in lots of circles and squares and lines and squiggles. When he got back he gave the man who chained up the goblins a pretty shield with a dragon on it. He said the man needed to sort out his issues. He also said that once the chain man sorted out his issues, he would enchant the shield. Then we all went home. I hope adventuring gets better. Hurting is bad, and loudness is bad. Maybe I will get used to them. I'm not sure if I want to get used to them though. Okay, goodnight. ______ Drawings associated of things in this month's chronicle thus far are: Talia talking to orcs
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Post by ElfChild on Jan 22, 2014 17:08:16 GMT -8
Now that it's become clear that the last few chronicles for last season will never be posted, here are my outlines for them as a lousy replacement. Day 1. Shailar - Let's go to the shadowlands! - Haunts... Fire (papers?), Heaven (yeah, papers), Mountain (Attano is a moron) - Research animal counterparts - Night Town (Gah.)
Day 2. Shailar - Meet with council to discuss swords (Sun Fone, Chen Borisan, Li Tiesha, Tui Ripentot) - Council hasn't heard of this before. Seem suprised we do know about this. Promise to discuss. - Meet with Sun Fone and Li Tiesha to talk about finding swords. Shailar - Caves wooooo - Okay. Awesome. We're walking in circles, guys. Let's go home. - Apparently they found a secret place after we left. Shrine setup. Hmmmmm Shailar - Some people think paper is right, some think we decoded it wrong, some think we are misinterpreting it. - Don't know where to look, but want to help find Amara - Night Shadowlands! That sounds smart. - Floating candles and lights. Trail of lights once in. - All the damn monsters. And mana drain. - Red face thing trailing lights Shailar - Tea.
Day 3. Shailar - Ramble on f*cking memory loss and pieces of what she's put together - She and Attano and (Ray) disappeared after the first encounter, showed up at the end just in time to die of lava - Bells. The adventurers were out of phase and there was some kind of skull with a fear field? - (Ray), Iraya, Torald, Itami get too close to it, dissolve into nothing including spirits, don't return - F*ck you Attano Shailar - Meet with Urun + Kioriel, decide to do our stuff together (Chen Borisan, Li Tiesha<berserk?>, Tui Ripentot. Other masters tired.) --> CONSULT NOTEBOOK Shailar - Tomb of the Clanless Sensei Shailar - Trying to copy down code bits (Damnit Virva) Shailar - Confrontation with Amara
Day 4. Shailar - Decoding~ - Holy f*ck. This is depressing. - Write a letter to the martial masters, gather council, gather party, read - TO THE TOMBS - F*cking Oliver.
Event. Shailar - I get to be the innkeeper and do impressions of people who I would not have even considered potentially pissing off a couple months ago Shailar - Investigate ancestral weirdness - Warded spirits are creative spirits, sacrifice selves to stop Morganti - Warded spirits = Ancestors? Used interchangeably a couple times. - Kuan Yin and disapoofing dogbeasts - Merrin runs in, met with skepticism, have fun guys Shailar - Fight the rifts! Team: Aurora, Attano, (Reese) - Where the hell did they go? Are they dead? Did they ditch me? Oh god. - Rebirth other me, rebirth other Attano, fail at rebirthing other Reese, get killed by other Attano - Awake again, I'd question it but they're gonna kill me and there's no time. Continue throwing rebirths around like cheap candy. - Awake again and something's different and OHMYGOD THERE ARE PEOPLE THANKYOU - Throw hugs around like cheap candy I hope you have somehow received great insight from this. If not, I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
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