Adventure of May 2017
Aubrey Líriel Idhranel, RunesingerNote to the reader: This mission was classified at the time it was undertaken, and I was unable to publish this chronicle at that time. It has since been declassified and I am happy to be able to present it now.
I present the chronicle in two parts. For those readers who wish to learn the fine details of the mission, there is “the long version”. For others, who only seek a broad description of what took place, I have created a “short version”. This contains my concluding paragraph; it might seem out of place, but I humbly believe it speaks something of importance to all who work to heal our world.The short version: A member of the party had a star-powered gemstone containing several haunts and a fey. The haunts needed to be solved in order to de-corrupt the gemstone so that it could be sacrificed in a Fey shrine in the Dark Wilds, which enabled the fey to return home, or something. I think. Before solving the haunts, we asked for guidance from Lorien and Nienna, and received visions full of pain and despair (like, seriously full of pain and despair). There were a lot of haunts, and solving them took half the day; then there was a final haunt that the rest of the day to solve. It was ultimately solved by Melissa Flumen, a Hobbit from Wickerdoor, when she told the haunt: This is your afterlife. The haunt then bowed graciously, and sort of disappeared or dissolved or whatever it is haunts do.
The gemstone now cleansed, we took it to the Dark Wilds in order to sacrifice it to a fey shrine, which released the Fey, and there was sort of a tunnel with stars, and the fey went into it … and I strongly felt that this meant that Fey was able to go home, somehow.
Concluding thoughts: This verse of the song has come to an end; but just as the river flows onward, so does the Song. That is our hope – but it is not a forgone conclusion. There are forces that seek to turn the River back upon its course, revert the flower back to the bud, and force our world to languish in stagnant misery. To save to save our world, the Goddess, we must look to the Fey. Each and every last one of must nurture and protect these beings in whatever way we can. No act of love is too small, or insignificant, for only through the Fey can life persist, and the dance resume, and the Song endure. |
And now, the longer version: Typical mission day. Jason Rachelkin had several missions on the board and was telling us how stupid most of them were, with the exception of the ones for which we would be paid extravagantly. We adventurers had our own suggestions (mostly stupid, according to Rachelkin). There was the usual dithering. Then Caylis Lockhart came in. She is such a badass! She interrupted Rachelkin, cut straight through all the crap, and requested assistance for a time-critical mission: a Fey was believed to be trapped in a gemstone with several haunts. The haunts needed to be solved, the fey needed to be freed. She had already sanctified a classroom for the purpose of solving the haunts and needed volunteers.
Did I mention Caylis Lockhart is
amazing? She completely took charge of the situation, intimidated Rachelkin, and shut down his half-hearted protests. And, by the gods, she had prepared for the mission ahead of time! She knew what needed to be done, had a rough idea of how to do it, and before I knew it she managed to get the group to discuss our abilities, and how best to employ them. I’m pretty sure that’s called “strategy” and I really hope we use more of it in the future.
The planning began with a “simple ogre” named Taral who had spent their life studying time and something called “space”. Time can be thought of as a river, he explained, and that the river had become blocked, dammed up, diverted, and was basically a complete mess. Every one of my visions and oracles has included the same metaphor: a river blocked and stagnant, time turned back upon itself. Perhaps this is why rest of the day was so disjunct and confusing that I can barely describe it I find myself unable to create a linear narrative, for which I must apologize, but I hope I have found a way to provide the necessary information.
Prayer and incantation to the Valar Nienna and Loríen, and to a Named Weapon, the Morning Star. I sang the prayer in Quenya after translating it to the rest of the group to ensure our intent was shared.
In the name of Nienna
who grieves for the dead
We wish to offer you aid
In the name of Loríen
Who dreams, and who wishes
We wish to offer you aid
We now invoke the Morning Star
To aid you and to free you
By the intent of those gathered here
We wish to offer you aid
Five Visions: the general theme here is pain, in addition to blood, anger, pain, loss, blood, pain, sadness, despair, and pain. Did I mention there was pain? And blood? Pain. Blood. Lots of both.
Vision 1: We are in a forest, walking through a thriving community. The trees are houses, streets are grass, a lively marketplace flows past us; but the activity slows, then stops, becoming ominously quiet. The houses now stand empty, the marketplace has ceased trading, with carts and wagons gone missing. A feeling of tremendous sadness.
Vision 2: Abrupt shift. We are an Ent spirit. We are towering over seven or eight smaller figures. Their hands are squishy. They are slime, twisted, and we are filled with rage at them, and also sadness at them, rather than for them: they are threatening children. Then we feel foolish: something has snuck up on us from behind. We are outmaneuvered, surrounded, cut off. We are alone.
Vision 3: The world shudders, shifts. There is blood on the ground, so much that blood that we slip on it, fall into it. We stand up to see the broken bodies of dead animals, dead children, each one distinct, unique, an individual, each one an innocent. I know too well how much blood one life can hold. So much blood for so many …
We are aware of immense physical anguish. For those who served witness, there was pain, pain, and more pain with each dead being we saw, until at last our hearts were saturated with pain, and we could bear no more of it, feel no more of it, only hear the maniacal laughter of the dreadful being who had spilled this pain, and was reveling in it. The sorrow overwhelms us. We surrender to a feeling of defeat.
Vision 4:We suddenly find ourselves crouched in front of a house, looking in the doorway. There has been a fight: chairs and tables and other furniture are overturned and broken. There is sadness, until we notice something that isn’t there, and experience a feeling of solace.
This was the last vision – for the time being - but the sense of solace was short-lived, for each of our third eyes was pierced with pain and despair. It would have been excruciating if we had not been protected. As it was, most of us had lingering headaches for the rest of the day.
We had no feedback from the weapon Morning Star, so another party member asked the haunt to come out, and we received
yet another vision! Yay!
Vision 5:We are running, but it feels like slow-motion because we are pursued by an enormous, disgusting, fleshy, pink, squishy opaque blobby thing. Rune spoke some words, but they died in the air, so she spoke in the Elder Sorcery: “Clarify spirit with the power of the Elder Goddess!”. Then she exploded, but she reintegrated later on, so it was OK.
The horrible blob deflates. Now there is a human, wearing pelts, carrying several bags that are seeping blood, and wielding two morganti knives. There is a badge over their heart: it is made of feathers: transparent feathers, and fear. This person is a fey poacher … and the thought resonates in all our minds:
"
Oh... I’m not what I thought."
Loríen cast “show mental illness” at the gemstone, and reported that it was shinier and “less goopy” than before. Apparently this was a good thing, because the haunt had de-escalated, which weakened the gemstone’s ties to the Dark Wilds. I guess the Dark Wilds knew where it was, but with less certainty than before. The down side was that the Dark Wilds awareness of it became stronger whenever we interacted with it.
Cayliss and Taral gave a brief explanation of the gemstone’s star-powered nature. Stars are at the headwaters of the metaphysical river, which flows as Time, and this energy flows to the Dark Wilds. I wish I knew what this meant.
From here on out, the day got weirder. The stone became transparent. If you rotated it, you could see waves or vapor radiating off people. It was blue to regular vision, green in the mirror, and to someone with “frog eyes”, it appeared to be dripping pus. Perhaps this had something to do with the next haunt, which was a stone giant in plate armor, wearing a fey hunter emblem, and carrying another set of those godsdamn morganti knives. At this point everyone who did not have resistance to death had to leave the classroom.
I don’t know how many haunts there were after that... only that the final haunt was an Elf from Sirokonia. Melissa solved the haunt by explaining that it had attained its afterlife. Fey gem in hand, Caylis strode into the Inn, demanded a Sky Ship from Rachelkin – outfitted to her specifications – and smacked him down hard when he tried to pretend he couldn’t offer anything. He was too scared of her to make eye contact! It was
awesome. He still tried to trick us, though, by delivering a fake shrine with a decoy gem in it, but we knew we had the real one already, so we just sacrificed that to the Fey later on.
We traveled to the Dark Wilds in the Sky Ship. I don’t remember this part very well; so many things happened so quickly. There was an elemental of wind, or perhaps storm, or fog, that seemed to be mildly aggressive, but turned out (I think) to be simply curious. There was a storm of deadly metal balls with razor wings. I feel sure there was something else… probably flying undead or something…
The important thing, the
glorious thing, is that
we got the Fey safely to its destination. We sacrificed what we needed to sacrifice, we cast what spells we needed to cast, Taral the “simple ogre” turned out to be a powerful elemental, and escorted the Fey back up the River of Time to the Stars. I think that’s what happened. I most fervently hope that’s what happened.
Concluding thoughts: This verse of the song has come to an end; but just as the river flows onward, so does the Song. That is our hope – but it is not a forgone conclusion. There are forces that seek to turn the River back upon its course, revert the flower back to the bud, and force our world to languish in stagnant misery. To save to save our world, the Goddess, we must look to the Fey. Each and every last one of must nurture and protect these beings in whatever way we can. No act of love is too small, or insignificant, for only through the Fey can life persist, and the dance resume, and the Song endure.