George Longcloak - In search of a legend

[WouldBeBard]

A door opens. A heavy creak, some grinding. A poorly fitting door in a poorly built house… well... house... a shack in the dockside of Peltarch.
The young man stepped inside and threw his worn cloak over a hook, hanging his hat over that.
A room he could have for less than the price of the common room in the Mermaid, rented off some old man whose house became too big for him as his family thinned with the passing of time.
Not that it was big, mind. Or terribly clean. At least there was a small shuttered window to let in some fresh air, but he'd rely on candles for sight. No matter. He'd seen worse, and here there was privacy.

He sets his pack down and takes out a small wooden box. Inside is a host of small figures, about two inches in height, cast in pewter. They'd seem toys to most, but he takes them out with great care, placing them in certain order on the room's table. He lights a small cone of incense before them, and prays for the well being of his family.
His duty done, he stands to remove his ornate doublet and hosen, then takes a small book from his pack, as well as his meager writing equipment. In the warm light of the candle and surrounded by the smell of incense, he sits behind his table, relaxed in his underclothes, and sets to writing.

I've made Narfell. Through all the campaigns I've been through, I never thought I would write that. I've come so near to dying so often, I did not really believe.
Yet here I am. I should thank my comrades when I see them again. Enrolling in a standing army would never have given me this oppertunity.
Mother and father would likely scold me. My cousin already has.
Fairytales and legends. Nothing happens in this back end of Faerun. There is nothing here, least of all a future. It's a hole.

Well, whosoever reads this when I'm gone, I assure you. The only hole I have seen in Narfell is the crater near where a town named Jiyyd used to be. I have heard tales of crisis after crisis striking at this land, and stalwart defenders rallying to protect what little they had, or to retake what outside forces took from them. Selflessness and villainy. Bravery and cowardice. Duty and treason. Cruel war, for precious moments of peace.
I own, I have yet to see these days for myself, but the scars are there. From that crater, to a ghost town in the south at the border of another town, to a stone that speaks of these children of Atol being slaughtered by the thousands.

Yes, this land has seen much, and will continue to see more. Even today, I heard a redhaired bard speak of an attack on Peltarch's walls by an orc as tall as those very walls and his forces. Oh, how I would have wanted to stand in that band. I do not know if I will see the grandeur that legend describes, but I intend to remain a good while. I will carve out my own spot among these legends. Reel in treasure to dwarf any mercenary's pay. Honour my family's name. And if Luck permits? Carve it into the bedrock of this fine land.

He nods, satisfied, then moves to the small bed, only to realize he doesn't even have a blanket. He smiles and shakes his head, taking his cloak from the hook and uses that instead. As he snuffs the candle's flame between index and thumb and lays his head down, he ponders the long road ahead of any of that, while he slowly drifts into sleep.

[WouldBeBard]

That is one war over.

Once it was understood that Geroldine had no answer, or didn't bother to find one to a more aggressive response, the tide turned. All played their part. Yes, all. My doubts about May Celine were unfounded.
It was not without losses and hard fighting, but with every victory and underhanded scheme, Zhentarim support for Geroldine's personal crusade faltered.
The Dreadfleet was trapped in ice out on the lake, and they were out of the fight long enough for everything to conclude with Geroldine's remaining forces and what allies his "friend" Palehand could muster.
Though their numbers were intimidating, Isolde soon brought word that most of Palehand's number were undead, and their master likely was, too. It still would not be easy, but that gave some hope. Many undead can be powerful, but undead in those masses usually are not.

The hours before the great clash were chilling. All the leaders of our allies had gathered in a clearing. Orders were repeated, though everyone knew their part. After, they all huddled in small groups, with friends and the allies that they would have to count on most. An uneasy silence settled on the gathered. A silence buzzing with hushed conversations and the awkwardness that falls over fighting men and women before their final defiant roars. That fleeting moment where you must come to terms with the reality that you might not return.
Truth is, I did not think I would, either. The Star's gaze felt heavy, even if it was obscured. The weight of that gaze and the weight of the words that came with it. Heretic. Apostate. Cursed. Doomed.
As we stood at the center of that clearing and I could see all the people of our land united, surrounded by the savage beauty of our home, I figured that would be it for me.
To leave my life on that field, given to defend all I hold dear, and never return lest I burn it all down. There are worse ways to go.

We visited each of the groups. We wished them luck, not farewell. Pretending it would not be so.
We had a few words with each of them, each of us eager to speak to our friends what might be the last time.
For my part, it was good to see Thadeus. A beacon of confidence and grace. He might have been worried, as he always is, but there and then he shone with pride. His friends, Temperance's friends, were terse, wondering out loud if it would be worth it, but seemed pleased enough to have us there.
Berlinne, handing off a package to Rey. It would make for a harsh verdict, but not undeserved. Raring to fight for her beloved city. For once, she did not warn me to be careful.
Sir Henry Cade, like a man possessed, thinking only of restoring the good name of his church. Something else finally shone through. A worry about Barton Cade. It was good to see he did not have a one track mind after all.
The two most important to me that night, however, were two women of faith.

The Lady Alicia. I had not spoken to her since the day I asked the church of Helm to stand with us against the Zhent. The rumours about me preceeded that, but they had only become more widespread. She certainly knew of them by the time we spoke again. Yet, she did not cast me out, or cast me down. "I know why you burn, Sir George. Take care not to let it consume you." And that was that. No Rite of Excommunication. No cries of monster. No abomination. Leave it to Rey to pick up on the "sir" and call me a paladin, though.

And May Celine. I don't think she and I will ever be able to walk through a door together, but if I'm being honest, two simple words from her were what steeled my nerve the most that night. "Not yet". Not yet completely doomed. Not yet forsaken. She sent me off with a warning not to reach for the flame, regardless of the consequence.

The Geese would be sent to where the worst fighting was expected. A central location that, if held, would force Palehand's troops to scatter to find less ideal paths. And hold it we did. If we'd have faced off against that same number of Geroldine's elites, we would have received a thorough thrashing. Palehand's minions were a pale imitation, however. That's not to say it was an easy fight, but burning through enough wands, potions and spells we prevailed. Then came the hard part.

Once the undead started to shamble towards other chokepoints, we started receiving word from them. Calls for aid.
Battered, bruised, and going through our magic like a hungover sailor through water, we did not have the resources to be everywhere at once, so there were choices to be made.
The Siamorphians or the Helmites. The Tuigan or D'Cameron. The King or Thadeus. And on and on.

In the end, we lost Berlinne. The elves lost a number of their own. Things that will likely hinder Rey's effort of a greater Narfell kingdom. Celine and hers saw to Thaddeus, thankfully, as we aided our King who got embroiled in a fight with the Endless in the middle of the battlefield. Who does that? Interfere with a war to have their own little fight. Rude.
Cormac split from us to help the Tuigan as we headed for D'Cameron. The right decision, if you ask me. His responsibility towards the Tuigan was far greater than that towards Norwick. He lived, and so did his riders. The rest of us ensured D'Cameron's survival.

I did not split from the group as we chose the Siamorphians. It might seem strange to think I would not join the Helmite ranks, but there and then, I could not let Henry Cade die after the promise we made Barton. And die he would have, determined as he was.
It seemed to me my brethren would be more prudent, even if they are unyielding in the face of Banites, and would be more likely to survive.

We did save Sir Henry. In a fight against some shadowed monstrosity that tried to freeze us all to death or suck the life from us. It recognized me, and I could not shake the feeling it had in fact been looking for me, assuring me that Palehand could remove my little parasite problem.
Everything about it goaded me, blasting me and everyone around me with a cold I knew I had the power to ignore. The power to stop. The power to overwhelm. As though it wanted to see me reach for the fire it knew I possessed.
Yet I did not. Thank May Celine. The smallest sliver of hope held me back. I fell back and changed one amulet for another, one that wards off the cold. It was enough. Every little trinket I had, I threw at it. It was enough.
I needed more than steel, to be sure, but what I had was enough.

One thing the day taught us was that everything comes at a cost. My perseverence there was no exception. Perhaps if I had used the fire, that fight would have ended in moments, and I would have been on time. But that would have come with a cost of its own.
The price I paid instead was a friend. When we reached May Celine and her knights gearing up for the final assault, the stragglers started showing up. Of the Helmites, there were none. Not a one. I learned later that Alicia, at least, had pulled through, along with a handful of knights. At that moment, though, when all showed up except for them? Even surrounded by my friends, I felt utterly alone.
Still, some survived. Just not Tiberius. The man that taught me the bastard sword. The man that stood by me as I knelt by Helm's altar. Helm's hand shelter you, my friend. I will see you on the other side.

Bad enough to lose him, but believing I had lost them all? That I had sent them all to their death?

Somewhere in the chaos of it all, we had thrown hands with Palehand and some of his strongest. Tired, wounded, dangerously low on magic, but still feral about driving him and his from our land. I barely recall the fight. I remember sacrificing the magic in the angel's feather. Perhaps it exposes me further to Miranda. Everything to not need to reach for the fire that day.
I remember we were winning, somehow. Not just surviving against a lich but winning. Of course, a lich is not Reyhenna Jorino.
It froze me in my tracks, at some point. Then it took hold of Rey and had her cut me down. Then he had her do it again when I was getting back on my feet.
By the time I came to, the thing was gone.

It appeared again right as we were preparing to make our final push. It wanted to make a deal. Its phylactery, held by Geroldine, in return for it standing down and letting the undead legion that stood between us and Geroldine crumble to dust. Its freedom for dozens if not hundreds of lives. Its freedom to ensure Geroldine did not find the time to escape. Given the heartache many of us already felt, is it any wonder we agreed? If my duty was to end the Zhent's hold and Geroldine's reign, can I be forgiven?
I do not even remember who agreed, if anyone. So tired was I. I just remember crossing that bridge, thinking to reach their elusive commander or join my brethren, only to find row upon row of long dead creature, unmoving as they should be.

As for the elusive commander. High emotions have surged through me in my lifetime as an adventurer. From great joy, to great rage, to unspeakable horror to disgust. Geroldine takes the crown for disappointment.
The prattling, sniveling wreck of a man, at once trying to threaten us, cajole us and bargain with us for his own safety. Not even the safety of the one lieutenant still standing by his side. It was pitiful. The Zhent's great Second Eastern Commander. Whyte at least took her own life in defiance. Rhodes near wiped Narfell from the face of Toril out of spite. Geroldine wept and begged. It was all bluster.

He died to a black steel knife, and the Zhent were cast out. Later communication would have the Zhent pretend Geroldine had been a rogue element.

Our King came to us, and removed his ancestors' crown, though not without parting wisdom. As we had suspected, the crown had been what had guided him, but it went much farther than I had expected. Young Thalaman had not just been inspired, but possessed by the first Fisher King. Caleb, too, was a silent witness. Dressed as a young squire, his face hidden in his helmet, assigned to follow the king around. And as Thalaman removed the crown and withered away into a worn out husk, alive but unresponsive, all saw the price he paid.
A noble sacrifice, though it and the ancient king's words hammered something home.

Long have I thought that the senate's days were over. That the people have failed to govern themselves, and that the rise of a new monarchy was a testament to that. The Siamorphians would agree, no doubt. But doesn't Thalaman's desperate gambit show that the crown may be too heavy for one man alone? That he is just as vulnerable? And now that we have lost the one man, what's next? Again we will be a city in turmoil, governed by nobles and commoners together, but few willing to make choices that they know the king might disapprove of if he returns, with gods only know who will come to accuse Rey of being a usurper this time.
The Cleimants seem to think Caleb could have succeeded, but could he? To lose a brother they way Thalaman did, then to see your city thrust into calamity after calamity, without that loving support? I doubt the pup is that strong, regardless of his lineage.

There is strength in noble blood, and a place for it, too. But we are all mortals, fallible and fatigueable. Perhaps we asked too much.
There are other ways. Lands where the people are governed by a senate, but still have a king. Some have two kings, even, to curtail one another. Lands where a king only rises in times of crisis and war, while the rest of the weight is borne by its citizens.
An absolute monarchy is stable, but only so long as the king lives, and the wellbeing of its people highly dependent on the king's disposition.
A republic is less likely to lose its stability, but it is slow to change and the wellbeing of its people is highly dependent on a low degree of corruption. Would a combination give us the best or the worst of both worlds?

Ah, Berlinne. What have you done to me? Maybe we will see each other on the other side as well.

[WouldBeBard]

Some fool lies in the snow. He'd fought Rey out of a loyalty well beyond duty. He paid for it with his life. Honourable, but ultimately meaningless. His body burns. Why did it burn that fast? Odd...

The half burned body of a man clinging to life sits up against a cliffside. The flames don't stop. They cannot be stopped, not even by him. Yet he plays. Blackened and blistered fingers still touch the strings and eke out a melody. He smiles and says his farewell. He knew this would be the result of his actions. A hero, willing to pay vastly more than his life. His inner fire extinguished by a dark flame. The fire is not the same, but why was it so similar?

A cavern filled with the scent of charred wood, burned clothing, heated metal, molten stone. The scent of every fire imaginable. Everyone is leaving. The burned out husk of a man remained, after all was said and done. Completely consumed. The fire is not the same, but the lingering feeling was...

The invader strikes. A false surrender. As we stand before him, he throws a spell at us. Fire. Would it not be funny to turn it back on him? Have not a lick of flame touch my friends? See his triumphant grin fade beneath the blisters of his own doing. No. Too much. Deny the impulse. Choose to let the flames wash over you alone.
It faded as it touched your skin. Odd...

An old crone sits on a park bench. She looks at you. You pretend you don't know why, wishing you're wrong. You know better. She tells her story, fanciful thing. The whispers among the multitudes. The birth of a new god. A second sun. Some final, unimaginable experience to strengthen her soul before she passes on.
He has chosen a herald. You still pretend you don't know. Still wish you're wrong. You know better.

Child of Toril. Made of Earth, Air and Water. Such a mesmerizing voice. Oftentimes so very distant, aloof and cold. Now filled with an almost motherly concern.
There is nothing worthy of worship in that fire. Now filled with a barely concealed cold hatred.

Fire. Worthy of worship. Worthy of fear. Bringing both life and death, but balance must be. A symbol of war. Of strife. Of calamity. A safe refuge in the dark of night and a bulwark against the cold of winter. Often a symbol of comfort. A symbol of healing. A symbol of civilization.
Often a symbol of inspiration. Of creation. Of art. Of invention.
Of curiosity.

The whispers of the multitude. Their gratitude towards fire in this harshest of winters. No, the fire they worship is not that of the Star on high, but they don't realize.
The old crone looks into the fire and smiles at what she sees.
You walked the streets of an unknown city. It stretched on without end. A dreamscape, or some Far Realm hellscape? You walk along the street, utterly alone. Fitting. Your only companion the sound of your boots on the cobblestones, and the crackling flame that follows. Everything burns in your footsteps. There is no smiling at what you see.
The Fire of Creation or the Devastating Fire? Balance must be.

Why do you fight? Dark eyes with a hint of metallic green in the right light. A voice almost monotone.
Why do you fight? Blue eyes framed by crystalline scales on human skin, framed by hair the blueish black of raven feathers. A strange drawl to the accent, a voice that brooks no nonsense.
Why do you fight? Blue eyes in delicate, sharp features, looking at you from beneath the rim of a hat. A warm voice speaking in lilting tones.
Why do you fight? Dark, almond shaped eyes give you a questioning look. A gaze so piercing she reads your thoughts, you're sure. A soft, careful voice, making every effort not to stand out.
Why do you fight?

You look into the fire. You finally look into the fire. You want to see, even if you already know what you will see.
You see your face, grinning at you from the flames. You see your face. But there's more than your face. You see the whispering multitudes, and they follow. They follow. As the multitudes once followed Arch Weyland. As the multitudes once followed Lain Laurent. The Fire of Inspiration. They follow. You see your face. The face they follow.
You looked. Why did you look?

Why do you fight, George Longcloak?
A young girl, maddened by grief over the loss of her brother, insulted almost that some no name soldier refused to stand aside.
Why do you fight?

The young girl destroys Norwick with a Mythallar.
A False Hydra consumes all life within Peltarch.
Demons roam unchecked across the whole of Narfell.
Holmesmead has none to share his knowledge with and Rhodes' myrkandite menhir goes undiscovered.
The blood of Kasimir goes unnoticed until it is too late.
The Hungering Star consumes your friend.
Your Queen dies in darkness at the hands of a doppleganger. Thrown into the lake, and none, not even your Captain, will ever know.

And why do you insist on playing with fire, George Longcloak?

A man dies in a cave, his remains a burned out husk.
A man dies near a cliffside, his body turns to ash.
Your friend carried its essence, and she burned for a time, even if she was rid of it
A man dies, his faith adamant, his body burns like kindling.

Even if you deny the thing, it will have a Herald, and its Herald will burn.
Who are you to let anyone burn in your stead, George Longcloak?

The man sits on the foc'sle of the Wisp, glaring at the star. Bleary eyed, he warms up his glass of rum with a touch and knocks it back, before throwing the glass towards the star and bellowing with rage.
As the sound dies and all that's left is the creaking of timber and the straining of ropes, he spares the moon a glance, more dejected than contemptuous.

"And why can't you just tell me what you want? Gonna wait until I'm dead in the Pass in a couple of days?"

He snorts, then stumbles his way below decks, to sleep off his stupor.

[WouldBeBard]

War.

I have neglected to write much these past months. Years. Ever since our grand return to the city.
As such, things might seem very confusing if you only have these words to judge our history by.
I do apologize, but since returning to this fair country, we all have been yanked from one place to the next.
Day after day, week after week. Month after month. And now here we are.

I did not think I would escape it. Quite the contrary. Rum and war shall be my share.
When I joined the Defenders, I knew full well it would happen again at some point. It's just been so long. We've just been victorious so long. We've just suffered so few casualties for so long.
I forgot how bitter a victory can be.
Now, how did we get here?

Honestly, I first thought it would be a war against Moonreach and the Pretender Caleb. Caleb, one more of King George's illegitimate children, barely more than a child, but trained by Motley and his mother to be every bit as gracious, eloquent and educated as you would expect a prince to be.
A congregation of malcontents from Peltarch and High Hold, the Cleimant Council, had lifted him up and pushed him forward, trying to rule out of Moonreach, an abandoned keep north of the city. A better alternative for the layabout Thalaman.
Layabout. Idle. Ineffectual. Wastrel. Rake.
Their excuses to attempt to overthrow their sovereign king who happened to have stepped on these people's toes.
I assume the High Holders that backed him also hoped to come out on top in their own home after flipping the table.

Still, it didn't even start there. One Bennek Sepret had threatened us that he would put our dear country in a vice until we submitted and gave him what he wanted. The annulment of his cousin Aoth's marriage to Rey. Family matters, you see. He needed her available to be married off to someone else. Naturally, Aoth refused.
You cannot control the wind. A good sailor knows you can tame it for a while, let it carry you home, but ever will it do so at its own whim.
As punishment for her audacity of choosing her own fate, it seems Bennek was the driving force behind the malcontents making their move.
We have since come to another agreement with Bennek, and he has left their ranks, but the Cleimants remained, and remained adamant.

As though all this was not enough, Bennek has a companion. A blue dragon named Villalgarviladral. She was once a captive of the Zhentarim, and Bennek freed her. The Zhent, of course, are not pleased.
Their Second Eastern Commander, Col Geroldine, had come to our doorstep to demand Bennek and his blue be turned over to him.
He made it quite clear that not doing so would cause them to invade. Of course, doing so would only make for a temporary truce. This was not spoken out loud, but their warmachine would set its sights on our lands sooner or later. You can guess how that went.
And this still somehow wasn't where it truly began.

Temperance of bloody Gulderhorn. Pardon the profanity. I respect what she represents well enough, as I respect how capable she once was. Her personality could do with some serious sanding down, but as a chosen of Siamorphe she was almost flawless. So many of our troubles are entwined with that woman, though. You'd curse, too.
She has been a thorn in Geroldine's eye for most of her time with her church, and oh, how the man seems to hold a grudge.
Delivering her to him would also have bought us a reprieve from the Zhent. Not only us, in fact, but the elves of Lethyr, too.

The Geese were quite divided. Pawning her off to the Zhent could buy us some time. I advised against it. As did Isolde. As did Cormac. Each for our own reasons. Isolde instinctively felt how wrong it would be to sacrifice anyone to these people for whichever reason. Cormac reasoned that you cannot appease a bully, you can only force him off your back. Both reasononings I agreed with. For myself, though playing for time was an option the king should consider as the head of a nation, sacrificing a broken thing like Temperance was dishonorable. Not to mention the show Geroldine would put on, defacing her inevitable corpse and parading her before all she managed to help resist the Zhent.
We left our king to consider. The last I heard was that he would try to commune with his ancestors.
I was not prepared for the change that would bring in the young man.

While Thalaman was already no longer the layabout the Cleimants accused him of being, he still was a young man when this all started. Not quite sure footed. Not quite gracious. Not quite decisive. He was learning, though. And yet, not a shadow of the man I met when the communion was passed.
From one day to the next, young Thalaman had become a hero king. Stronger. More dignified. Gracious, patient, decisive. The aura of leadership was undeniable. As though not only had he spoken to his ancestors, but his entire line of kings had awoken in him. Was this the way of all the Fisher Kings?

He was very clear on what happened next. Give them nothing. Stall, to prepare for the inevitable, but yield nothing.
And so here we are.

I cannot complain too much. Despite being outnumbered as we are, despite militias, barbarians and a haphazzard gathering of the faiths and factions in the region making up most of our forces, we are doing "well". This mostly means we made their victories costly for them. I just wish I could pretend it wasn't costly for us.
Hundreds of men and women killed, half of Norwick turned into a crater, the other half occupied. D'Cameron nearly kidnapped. A traitor allowing Zhent to teleport into City Hall and nearly turning it into slag with acid bombs. The loss of most of our intel and the need to revise all plans he'd heard. The brutal murder of the wounded in our barracks and the civilians in the building.
The death of Temperance of Gulderhorn. A strange death, too, leaving the room bathed in a gold and silver radiance, with Thadeus awake, but uncertain of what he saw. And a lone surviving Zhent, unwilling to even begin to describe it. The man openly said he feared it more than Bane. That is about the worst heresy one can commit in their faith, and he commited it knowing he will soon be executed.
Part of me worries it was something else entirely, but I hope this was Temperance finding Siamorphe again.

I suppose that is one good thing that has come of this. A pinprick of light in the darkness. That even one as far gone as she was can find grace. That and the manner in which the people have come together.
Cormac's Tuigans have been instrumental. Sir Henry Cade's Siamorphians, the ones that returned when their Cardinal fled, fight with a tenacity that borders on insanity. Had I not ordered the man directly to stand down, they would have sacrificed their entire number to prove to the world that their church still has honour.
We have yet to truly test the Cleimants' forces, but they have mostly followed orders. The Norwickians fight with the stubborness of frontiersmen that made their town legendary. Even the elves of Lethyr have come. Part of them, at least.
I suppose the Cleimants' number will be up soon. The Zhent are looking to invade through the Giantspire, and we are counting on May Celine and her Selûnites to cover all the passes in fog to disorient them.
Soon after we might find out how our navy and naval guilds hold up against the Dreadfleet. Marines, Seafarers, Wavebreakers, Black Sails and the scum of the Icelace. Heartwarming. Still, I hope our ploy to avoid a naval battle at all works.

We do have our victories. We are picking off Geroldine's lieutenants to disrupt his plans. We have retaken Norwick and Cloudhaven. We have freed prisoners. We have wittled their numbers down to the point where we outnumber them and cut them off from one another. At least until their reinforements arrive. Temperance's words that the man only understands offense ring true. Every time he strikes he has more feints and contingencies than I have scars. Yet when we strike at them, he seems to have abandoned his position before the fight even starts. Abandoned his forces. Scum.
They hold their position without any hope of relief, and without any guidance from the man that is supposed to carry them through. The most loathsome deity behind their back, a bunch of adventurers they almost fear more in front of them, fighting for a cause many of them do not even believe in, but they fight because the Zhent have a knife at their families' throats.
Their tenacity would be admirable, if the situation weren't so vile. And Geroldine hides. Absolute scum.

No, I did not think I would escape war. When I joined I just did not expect I would be in the position I am now. That I would be one of those who decides who dies where, defending one place, retaking another. Of course, once I was made a lieutenant, I realized it became inevitable.
I try not to let it show, but it weighs on me, as it would any sane individual. Ultimately, every soldier has his life in his own hands, but I am still the one who puts them to the test. I am still the one who tries to manouever them into a position that might be the death of them. I am still the one who might have missed the one thing that gets them killed.
I am still the one who cost us the lives of a over a hundred men by my direct orders, and I am still the one who did not speak out against the risk of taking on fifty between the eight of us, which ended up costing us three hundred.
I am still the one who put his own men in the thick of it, that first clash, when it would have been easier to use the Siamorphians or the Moonreachers. Cost the lives of friends out of diplomacy, to not immediately be accused of seeing our allies as expendable and sour relations when the time comes to rebuild.
There are so many undercurrents, so many watching my actions and hanging on my every word. And I hate it.
Two types of officers, right? Turns out I'm the killing kind. Here's hoping the war ends before I become the murdering kind.

If I'm sounding surly, you're right. War does that. But it isn't just the war. It does not put your personal struggles on hold, after all.
It's that Star. That bloody Star. You'd think I'd have learned, right? That after the Reachful Hands, Curiosity, Miranda, Cormac's Hungering Star and that crystal spider aberration that fell from the sky I'd be at least a little careful about meddling with outsiders. But no. No, I wasn't. Cosy hearths will never be the same again.
Sure, I can look at a flame and it might do nothing. Or it might burst and burn the ceiling above it. Or it might explode a Zhent if they have their hands on me. Or it might wash over me and be snuffed out, saving my friends from harm.

And now I can no longer feel Helm. No longer does it feel like he shelters me. No longer does it feel like he listens. I did what I felt was my duty. To take on the risk of Curiosity to learn. Yet now, I only feel a vast emptiness. And there are none that can help. The Geese are there in their way, of course. Especially Isolde and Aoth keep an eye on me, and while I it makes me far more confident in regards to my safety, it does not make me confident in regards to my soul.

"Heretic".
Thadeus, though we are friends , has not broached the topic once. Possibly because he sees me as a friend. Temperance never alluded to it. Nor do her friends. Henry Cade has not judged me for it. Motley certainly has, to hear Isolde tell it. Danson, too, I could see it in his eyes when I last saw him. My sister has sent no reply, and I worry that the rumours have reached even Chondath.
But even then, that is -their- judgement. Not Helm's.

"You are dead to the children of Helm. Now go and die to all others."
Am I? I do not know. The rite is very specific, and it has not been read out to me.
Alicia did not cast me out, but she seemed to avoid the topic entirely when we last met, and I have not seen her since the invasion started. Perhaps I am not. Perhaps it is not that I affronted Helm, but that Curiosity has managed to sever me completely from Him. Or that I have inadvertently severed myself. But who could tell me for certain?

The only ones that seem ready to judge, or speak of it at all, are Stockley and Celine, both of whom seem convinced I am doomed. That I should hope to find my doom before it claims all those around me. And I should trust them? Does not Selûne welcome all? Is she not the embodiment of the fight against despair?
Nor is their lot without rumours. The Zhent are getting more and more nightmares in our dear land, and begin to fear the land itself almost as much as its defenders. More and more do I hear that something is "very wrong" with this place. Why would that be my doing, and not that of those up in Moonreach?

So who do I speak to? Cormac spits on the gods as often as he praises them. While Aoth is devoted to Akadi in a way, heresy is just another part of worship to a god as fickle as Akadi. Isolde isn't too concerned with the gods or their opinions. Perom isn't too concerned with much of anything. Would that Asha were here.
I actually tried to speak to Celine, you know? But now I hear that right before the liberation of Norwick she took her Lunar Knights and walked.

So who do I speak to?

[WouldBeBard]

Child of Toril. Made of Earth, Air and Water. Sheltered in Helm's hand.
Words to remember. Words to live by.

I am likely in over my head. That's right. Two confessions in a row. Feel free to keep that one in your back pocket.
I've been poking the bear in regards to Curiosity. Sailing out at night to experiment with Signing, away from the city in case I go too far. Simply revelling in the act of sailing.
To feel the wind and the water's spray on my skin. Racing ahead with all the speed Akadi would grant me. To drink in the joy of its freedom, as I so often had in the past. With Meadow. Even before Meadow.
Trying to find guidance under that marvellous tapestry of stars, as I do when I sail. It seemed fitting. Willing the flames to appear, even in ways that don't make sense. Especially in ways that don't make sense.
It had started to feel like a fruitless endeavour. I felt I gained no understanding. There certainly was no great epiphany, as so many wise men and women gain from reading the stars.
Not until recently, at least. Not that I'd consider it much of an epiphany.

I pray quite regularly. That might surprise some, though I doubt it would my friends. Now, while I often speak my mind to Helm and ask for His guidance, I have only asked for His direct aid but once.
My tasks and my duties are mine to fulfill. I cannot constantly lean on His grace and intervention. He has priests and paladins enough to see to. To know that He has His eyes on me and guards my soul is enough.
The one time I asked, however, I was met with a comforting warmth that I have never felt before, nor since. The following day, I found the curious crossguard that I still carry with me.

Where defying Curiosity lead me was like it in some ways, but for the most part it could not have been more different.
There certainly was no comfort. All I felt in this instance was pure, unmitigated pain. Pain without reason, it seemed. Soon followed by laughter without reason.
I cannot explain it. It was no vengeful god's torment, but it surely was what that must feel like.
I heard nothing. Saw nothing. I simply hurt to the point where I wanted to pass out, but didn't, then it all just started to seem so funny to me.
There was no joke. Nothing to laugh at. There was only pain, but it gave way to laughter.
Then my laughing stopped, and all I was left with once more was pain.

The laughter remained, though. It just came from behind me, along with a warmth that was anything but comforting.
It's the strangest thing. I knew of it, but I did not register it. Same as I know I was being spoken to, and can still somewhat remember what was said, but it seemed to happen in an entirely different world.
Aoth's words to help me focus. Isolde's spell to guard my mind. It didn't matter. All I had was pain.

I vaguely remember a mirage of me appeared. Consisting wholly of fire, but still recognizably bearing my shape. It stood there in raucous laughter as I writhed in pain.
Fire flew from its mouth and eyes, laughing louder and louder until it exploded, burning the immediate countryside, and my friends. I was unscathed, the pain leaving me as quickly as it came on.
The memory left me breatheless a few moments more, but once it was gone, it was as if it never happened.
I know the technique. I remember it clearly from fighting Curiosity in the form of Lain. The endless, burning iterations of the swordsman that we cut down.
Well, I say I know the technique, but do I? Part of me thinks I simply haven't mastered it yet. Lain's mirages were under his full control, did not explode or spew flame, nor was he in pain for creating them.
They also weren't laughing like mad.
But what if it's an entirely different thing? What if this Sign simply creates a mad duplicate, inevitably exploding?
And how do I use that?
Or perhaps Lain had known pain. Isolde reminded me that the true Lain had burned out long before we faced Curiosity.
Is this how that started? Will I fare better? LL did not seem alarmed or insistent that I should stop. Just to be careful. Weyland didn't die from Curiosity's interest, either, even if he did end up losing so much more.
And is it even Signing? For all I know, every part of this is power is Curiosity, and I am being conned. What am I then? A warlock?

This all happened en route to the Witch and Seer. We were headed to the Cerulean Headquarters to deliver a severed leg that Isolde, Aoth and Rey had collected from an assassin trying to kill Aoth's cousin, Bennek.
Yes, I know how that sounds, try to keep an open mind.
As we walked into City Hall, however, we were waylaid by the apparition of a man whose days ended inside the Compass, soundlessly screaming at us, as though warning us of grave danger.
The same Compass where I'd once been part of the group that faced down Curiosity, and where the others have faced so much more.

After delivering the leg to be kept on ice, we immediately made our way there, aside from my minor interruption en route.
Horgrimm, who guards our Compass among so many other tasks he has clones of himself coming and going, informed us that our Compass was inactive. As Jonni had requested, he pointedly added.
Knowing we were not going to see the Compass activated without Jonni's express aproval, we left the ogre mage to his work. This is where it got weird.

Before we all went our separate ways, each of us having matters to see to far away from our dear Narfell, the other Geese had a little tour out in the desert, in a little place they now call the Desolace.
I've seen it once or twice, but I was not there for any of the occult encounters.
They tell me readily enough when I ask, but never gave much in the way of details. Much of it seems to defy description.
One thing that was certain was that it was a very powerful Signer, and it played mind games with his lessers. It was defeated, in a way, but it lingers.
As it lingers, it amuses itself with petty vengeance against the Geese by rewriting the story of our lives, those around us, and the entire city.

Isolde mentioned earlier that she believed Caleb's story of his hometown being destroyed by Miranda's demons was such a rewrite.
On the one hand, it could be. I never heard of the town being in trouble.
On the other hand, it would make sense if it truly happened. We inadvertedly released a hive of demonic wasps on the Prime for one. For another, of the places that had been scryed to hold one of Miranda's lieutenants, I gathered or joined the parties that destroyed all but one. That last one had disappeared to Gods know where when we returned from the Abyss.
It could have happened. And that's what makes it so insidious. Whatever the thing is, it knows well which lies are easy to swallow. The attack could have happened.
After last night, however, I cannot just dismiss the notion that it was a rewrite.

We walked out of the Compass room and a bunch of five star Ceruleans were faffing about.
One of them started talking about how it's no wonder how people react to us, with all of us seeming so unnatural and strange.
Our persistent youth despite our age, the things we've survived that no mortal should have, and on and on.
I was buying it, I'll admit. It came all too close to words I have written myself. The reason I've never gone home. That none of them could grasp the things I've done and seen.
Rey was buying into it, too.
We left the basement behind, and came into the tavern room. Here's where the Desolace creature made its mistake.

Its absolute disdain for the Geese made it take over the waitress, and it kept pushing. Kept up with the barbs and mockery, in a way that obviously wasn't our dear waitress.
Isolde quickly went up to the ledger and started to look for the tell-tale living letters and naturally found them.
Burning the book freed the waitress, and likely the Ceruleans too, though we did not go to check. All was well in the world, and will be until our dear narrator rears its ugly head again.

It is definitely still around. It definitely still wants to make us suffer. It is more than willing to rewrite Willowhaven's story to get at us, and Isolde believes it strong enough.

Cue my annoyance and curiosity. I never encountered this creature. Never saw what it did out in that desert. Never had the chance to gauge its strength. And it leaves me with so many questions.
The Cerulean, under the narrator's control, mentioned my control of fire. He mentioned people had seen my face. In hearths, in lighthouse flames, in candles. Laughing.
So did it happen, or was it lying? Or did it happen, and only because it wrote it so? Was my fiery duplicate out in the Pass real, or something it had written?
Does it know Curiosity? Is Curiosity's eye on me genuine, or just one more rewritten story? Do they work together, or are they adversaries? Who is the stronger?
And how do I defeat either?

Because that will always be the main question, won't it? Whenever something comes barreling down on the home I'm sworn to protect, how do I stop it?
And in trying to ward off these threats, am I becoming one myself?
Whether or not our dear narrator made it happen, more rumours have come up about my face seen in fires everywhere, of my likeness wandering the lands.
More voices are showing up, calling me possessed, calling me apostate, calling me a monster.
Telling me I need help. And I'm starting to feel they're not wrong.

I started down this path because of the arcane fire. Because I felt I needed to find a way to combat it. Is it worth it, though?
I set my friends alight. I set the world on fire. Curiosity has shown me exactly what it intends to have me do with the Devastating Fire. It all burns in my footsteps.
Yet, what other tools do I have? Learning to kill the arcane fire could save hundreds. Carrying the flame against the Giant in the Ice might save thousands.

Child of Toril. Made of Earth, Air and Water. Is there no room for Fire, there?
Perhaps not. Rey deems Signing a menace, and she would know better than any of us. Even Aoth, a follower of Akadi, reminds me to keep my feet on the ground, and she knows the danger of that Star like no other.
I should be more careful.

[WouldBeBard]

A fire burns low in an office. An office made of stone and mortar, not at all rolling on the gentle waves of the Icelace.
The fire provides most of the light in the office, all candles but the one on the desk snuffed out.

Spread out across the desk is a plethora of random seeming items. A sextant. A few gems. A pair of wands. An Angel's feather. A box of St. Sollar's Premium cigars.
One more page to be added to the book later on.

The owner is not far, standing on the balcony outside the office. Looking up at the night sky, he is very much lost in thought.
A seemingly young man, in the prime of his life, now wearing the insignia of a Defender Captain.

It kept speaking of the spark of wonder Beyond, and with each word called fire into the world. As sparks, as meteors, as living flame. I was caught face to knee with it on a narrow stretch of ground between two towering walls of flame. Protected by waning magic from the heat, faced with this unending sea of flame, and my head filled with that droning voice. For a moment, I swear I could see. I could see the spark, and I could see how it worked. And it was beautiful.
Then I rammed my halberd in its gut, because it lit me on fire

I was wrong. There, you have it in writing.
What was I wrong about, you ask? Just why Temperance fell. Why she lost her mind.
There are things out there that defy mortal explanation, my friend. Can I call you friend? You've walked with me through so many pages of my life's insanity that I feel we would be, were I still alive.
So many things that could drive you insane, if you cannot accept them. Hells, some of them will even if you can accept them. And yes. I have seen them.
I'm certain you are wondering by now why I am not mad, as I am wondering if I am.

The thing is, what might have seemed a weakness years ago, may be a strength now.
Arrabar is, to put it mildly, distrustful of magic. Priests are tolerated, but not loved. Druids are shunned. Wizards and sorcerers are specifically made to feel unwelcome, except by the Houses that do employ them.
I grew up without much schooling in the ways of magic, the fabric of reality or the properties of the Planes. I was schooled in engineering, tactics, mundane medicine. Everything else has come by exposure and hours in the city's libraries or the Witch, be necessity.
I had no preconceived notion of how the world is or must be. Not the foggiest idea of what magic can or cannot alter. No deep rooted belief that all is in the hands of the gods, with no greater powers to challenge them, even if I look to Helm for guidance in my life.
Not so for Temperance, who had her view of the world and her place in it shaken to its core, if not outright shattered.

So is it a strength? I do not know. It certainly is not limitless. I succumbed to madness under the Reachful Hands. Aboleth and illithid can still make their playground out of my mind. A vampire's blood magic can still drive me to bloodlust.
Shit, a reflection of a literal demon still lives in here with me, even if she is dormant right now.
No, it does not somehow make my mind impervious to all that would prey on it.
What it does do, however, is make me less inclined to put limits on what can or cannot be. A flying ship is not unthinkable. Jenna's inventions always make me wonder just how they work, and what else she will come up with.
Same with all my magical "gizmo's", as Rey calls them. Same with the rune covered monsters in the pass of years ago.
I have a need to explore. To try out. To find out. An urge to wonder. Curiosity.
And isn't that just why I'm wondering if I am mad.

Rey and Aoth have gotten married. It was a beautiful thing, only slightly interrupted by Harlow. I'm happy for them. Harlow attempting to steal the Ambrosia wine aside, my experience of it was marred by a conversation I had with Lain Laurent.
The man himself is charming enough, but his message has rattled me. There is a burning star up high. Unlike the other stars in the night sky, it does not move along the firmament. It simply remains where it is, waiting. Watching.
I knew it to be the firey entity that once took Aoth as a host. According to LL, its eye is now on me. As it once had its eye on Weyland. As it once had its eye on him. That star is Curiosity. The source of the one Sign I know.
LL simply urged me to be careful. To be very aware of why I would accept its help, reminding me he'd not been careful. Weyland had not been careful. It seemed imperative that I kept my reason in mind.
Avoiding it does not seem to be an option. It is drawn to those who are curious, and even now I cannot help but wonder. Wonder why it is watching me. Wonder what else it can teach. Wonder if my Signing could quell Arcane Fire.
Wonder if I already did. The flagship explosion was too large for anything to have survived. Yet I did. Had I already used a new technique that night?

This creature is not a devil, looking to make a deal that you can simply turn down. It preys on me for who I am, and short of changing all that I am, I will not be avoiding it.
Yet I am no longer that greenhorn that walked into the Compass without a clue. Let it come.

[WouldBeBard]

Heroes and villains.
Ever fascinating. From childhood to old age. Capturing the minds of mortals everywhere.
Mortals? Their exploits are recounted even among demons, devils and gods. And, as I have started to learn, all manner of Powers beyond that.
Now, reality rarely needs heroes or villains to move matters along.
Stories, though? Stories cannot do without them.
Still. Who is which gets jumbled up with the telling.

Someone once said you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
Sometimes, this is literal. Heroes become frustrated that doing things the right way bears so little fruit, and bogs them down in endless, self enforced obstacles. They end up abandoning many of their ideals to achieve their idea of what is Right.
Sometimes, it is about perception. The Geese are being subjected to a lot of this, of late.

Kasimir, of all people, wanted us to look like villains. We didn't know that at the time, of course.
We wondered if it was because our presence was a threat to someone's plans, or because taking us down a notch would lift them up. A less pleasant possibility was that it might have been revenge for our actions having harmed them unintentionally in the past.

The most poignant case so far was having charges leveled against the Golden Geese, which includes yours truly.
Harboring a criminal. Aiding and abetting. Obstruction.
The list grows long when you add the ones leveled against the alledged criminal, Lord Bravickus, all of which Harboring would have seen us guilty of.
Spearheaded by some Inquisitor trying to curry favour and make a name for himself by succesfully prosecuting the Geese. Couldn't even bother to make it personal. The twat.
Fenmeron was his name. Since he's an elf, he might still be going around doing his thing by the time someone reads these pages. If you're in his sights, be sure to remind him of the day Salin the Fifth and Aoth Sepret trounced him for going off half cocked.

Then there was this bard going around and singing slanderous songs about the Geese. I'll admit, I found the songs amusing, even the one about me. It painted quite the picture. A relentless killer, beholden to a queen that wasn't. A man that no longer even remembers why he fights in the first place.
Then there was the one about the Golden Geese as a whole. 'Pray for virtue, prepare for vice'. That one painted us with all the capriciousness of Umberlee.
Hinting that we might go out of our way to save you and, if you were lucky, we would not end up tormenting you in some other manner.
He even came out to say it was nothing personal, and only a job. Later he mentioned his patron was no longer in the picture. Again Kasimir.
A paid bard, and a cutthroat Inquisitor that attempted to have a go before even having a case. I'm surprised he didn't manage to strongarm some priest slandering us, to have us be denounced by law, by popular opinion and by faith.

It worked to an extent.
Children were frightened when they saw me. Men seemed to think they needed to size me up, or call out Martha. I got a few blushes out of the womenfolk, though, so it wasn't a total loss.
How fickle the court of public opinion can be. Or just the regular court.
And that's just one man trying to paint us as villains.

Inevitably, I will do something by my own hand that turns me into one, even if it strikes me as the right thing.
George Darkcloak? Blackcloak? Nightcloak.

Nah, who am I kidding? Nobody around here seems to believe me capable of savagery or ill intent. But there's the rub, isn't it? I wonder how many villains we've faced that considered themselves anything but righteous. Whose allies and believers considered them anything but a paragon of virtue?
Berlinne drove it home quite soundly. She did not say it with as many words, but it was clear as a bell.
I am slowly gaining a name as a hero, rather than just a soldier. "As straight an arrow as they come", even.
A lot of people see me as the Queen's pawn, though my stature may have been upgraded to her knight, of late. Several people have come to rely on me, and that number will inevitably grow. Whether I like it or not.
Right up until the point where the interests of those who see me as their hero no longer align, and I will have to make a choice.

She seemed very curious as to what I might choose. Curious if I had even considered the idea that I would be faced with such a choice.
A keen mind, Berline has, and I'll admit she has me pegged in many ways. Strange that that is the subject where she'd sell me short.
I have. Of course I have. King or Queen. General or Captain. Peltarch or a congregation of goodly paladins and priests. That last one's hardly even a choice, but Adrian put it out there.
At the end of the day, all the choices I have made stem from the same desire. Protect the Jewel. And as Rey has often said, the lifeblood of the Jewel is its people.
I will choose, and out of disappointment for not having chosen them, some people will call me a villain.

I went for a walk with Martha, the other day. I would not dare consider her a villain, but I would be negligent in my role as a protector if I did not at least entertain the idea that she might have been the cause. She has means, to be sure. And the gods know any lesser mortal would consider what she's been through motive. Hells. I would.
And so, we walked and talked, and I asked about her past. About the woman she was before she became Queen. The questions and curiosity were genuine, but ultimately I was there to see if she had somehow escaped notice as an arcanist.
Specifically an arcanist powerful enough to perform Zhengyian blood magic.
I hope I was subtle enough for her not to notice. I did not notice her noticing, but she can be so very subtle.
If she did, she did not let on. If she did, I hope she was not insulted. I'd hate to be her villain.

And now, it turns out those questions are moot. You'll notice I named Kasimir twice, and you can probably see where I'm going with that. I was not there during the doppelganger raid, but it was succesful. The Golden Geese have killed eight out of, as rumoured, nine doppelgangers. While the ninth still needs tracking, the more important turn of events is that they found out that Isolde's hunch was correct. Kasimir hired the dopplers. Kasimir ordered the black steel. Kasimir cursed his brother. Kasimir was enacting the ritual to revivify a destroyed lich in Thalaman's body.
And thus, Kasimir became the villain.

There was something that irked us about it, though. Something that each of us came to, even if we each had a different road to that conclusion. Kasimir could have let his brother fall any number of times. While the King seems to mean well, his reputation is in the gutter more often than not. It seems strange that, when I speak to him now, I find myself explaining statesmanship in a way that bored me so when my tutors lectured me. It should not be necessary, but his rule has not exactly lead the city to prosperity.
Kasimir could easily have convinced people he would make the better ruler, and ousted his brother.
Yet he did not. For years, he has protected Kasimir, even from his own actions. Stood by him dutifully, as a brother would. Out of the spotlight, as an advisor would. Even through all the disdain and mockery a too young man thrust into a position of reponsibility receives.
So why now?

For power and personal gain, the ploy seemed too elaborate. For vengeance for some unknown slight, it was too precarious.
Kasimir's actions seemed to be for the good of the lich, Thraun, and no one else. That raised the question where the Prince even learned of the creature's existence. Or what possessed him to go to the lengths of murdering his own mother to make the ritual work.
Possessed was indeed the theory, courtesy of Isolde. A theory since confirmed. Victim, then. Not villain.

Kasimir has fled, grievously burning general Gom with arcane fire in the process. He's in a worse state than I was after the doppleganger. Gom wounded Kasimir, though. Gave him the tiniest little nick, but enough to draw blood. So tiny, in fact, that none had noticed the drop of blood that flew away and hit a bookcase.
That could have been the end of it. Kasimir gone, Thalaman cursed and doomed to be taken over by some undead monstrosity.
Something out there is looking out for us, though.
It came to us in a vision. It might have come to Isolde in a dream, but she looked away. I can't blame her. We've all seen so much death and suffering through the things we do. What madman would willingly add to it and watch a friend burn?

A walk, a little mystery meant to clear our heads in Marigold. That's what we needed. Returning a moon to a land that had lost it for some yet unknown reason. One of its denizens, a living plant that shone with the moon's silver light, melded into shallow water that would have acted as the moon's mirror had it been there. The creature disappeared, but the light remained.
It felt too much like a sacrifice to not look. And when it showed me Gom's fight, it felt too much like the other visions I have been granted to look away. The general, for his part, deserves for someone to have witnessed his actions.
I saw the droplet fly. I saw where it landed.
There was no time to lose, for Thalaman's sake. Promising the creature I would some day come back to return their moon, I followed the others back to Peltarch.

We found the blood. Even if those who saw me looking for it might think me half mad, we found it.
It was dumb luck that it fell to me. Any one of us could have walked up to the moonlight and looked. Yet I can't shake the feeling it'll be one more thing they'll sing my bloody praises about.
I didn't mention the vision to the onlookers. Gom was skeptical enough when I told him the spirit of Holmesmead had shown me Rhodes' camp. Imagine his face were I to tell him that some talking, luminescent plant in a part of the land I'm still not sure isn't a fever dream given form showed me his fight in a pond of moonlight. It's inevitable they'll learn when I write my report, but there and then, we couldn't get bogged down with explanations.

We found it, that's what matters. Salin was certain it would be enough to free Thalaman from the curse, but we'd need the strongest of priests we could muster. Stronger than Jonni even, and preferably one more invested in Thalaman's well being. Who better, then, than the High Priestess of Siamorphe? The High Priestess of Siamorphe so invested in the Fisher lineage she came down from her throne to cast Thaddeus out of the church and Rey out of the family. The High Priestess of Siamorphe that was already marching on Peltarch with an army in tow.

Temperance of Gulderhorn. Objectively a force of good. By all accounts an exemplar of benign and just rule. All accounts outside of Peltarch.
With so many campaigns to her name, even her beauty fades in comparison to her glory. And her beauty alone is enough to give most men pause.
I have seen the beauty of glory and purpose in Varya. I have seen the beauty of the wild and untameable blood in Elaine. I have seen the beauty of the understatement and striving for simple perfection in Meadow.
The beauty of Temperance of Gulderhorn? That is something else. Inhuman. Otherworldly. I should note I am exceedingly proud of how I held myself under her gaze, given how difficult it was to keep myself from cheeking her.

Yet despite her glory, despite her desire for a just and benign rule, her herald came with threats to purge the city of it military leaders.
It is true that Rey executed one of her followers. Unjustly, and I would have tried to intervene had I been there. It is understandable for their church to be angered.
Still. To presume martial law was uncalled for, not even inquiring after the dangers we faced when it was instated, marching on our city and threatening every officer's life over it?
Despite everything that made her name, she was seen as a villain.
And despite that she is a force of good, despite that I agree with much of what she stands for, I would have stood against her if she had struck. In turn, Waterdeep, and plenty of history books, would think me and every leader in the city a villain.

Thankfully, she did not. She had agreed to parlay. In the mean time, spies had infiltrated the city, which was to be expected. We weren't too concerned. Learning the truth of what we'd faced would go a long way in smoothing things over. Likely, she was already placated some by Rey's gesture of returning the slain Siamorphan's body to them.
The parlay seemed to be about taking stock of who were were more than about our city's need, or about the doppelgangers and Kasimir's actions. I assume her spymaster had already informed her well enough, and she wanted to test us.
It was bizarre. There was no righteous fury. She no longer seemed bent on ousting the city's military, but reminded us firmly of our duty to instate Adrian until such time Thalaman awakens, or we find another of King George's offspring to acknowledge. She barely even seemed upset that Rey had killed one of Siamorphe's followers over words, delighting instead in pushing her buttons. Noting carefully Rey's reactions, and weighing her words as she explained her reasons.
Of the rest of us, she required our names and our occupations. Isolde, as baroness of Duskhaven, got a gentle reminder to be more thoughtful with her actions, as they influenced the well being of her barony. Mortis was grilled on his affiliations and his reasons for being there, as a monk of Kelemvor.
For myself, I'd swear I only received praise, especially when her herald dug up my late father's title. While the praise seemed genuine, she did not waste the opportunity to contrast my upbringing and patience against Rey's behaviour. The twitch of her lips made her seem very amused when I mentioned to Mortis that I didn't inherit the title.
At the end of that talk, she agreed to help, but all that seems moot, now.

I wasn't there when it happened, but Temperance of Gulderhorn fell. She, my friend, had been wrong. Not about helping us, not necessarily about how she pegged us, not just about marching an army down on our city. She had been wrong about Rey. Wrong about Elizabeth Fisher.
Whatever transpired on that day she passed her judgement, it were either not the words of her goddess she had heard, or she had gotten them wrong.
She broke. I only saw her the day after, completely deflated. The radiant beauty gone. Stripped of that otherworldly aura.

This was at the Estates, where she had collapsed and been allowed to stay the night as a guest. Her herald had come to look for her in the morning, and would not be turned away or placated.
In a fit of rage, she lashed out at poor Thaddeus. The deafening crack of lightning echoed through the court yard, the herald too fast for any of us to intervene. But not for Siamorphe.
Thaddeus cried out for help, and he received. The lightning bolt fizzled harmlessly against the magical spell that surrouned him. The herald, for her part, was still spitting venom as we tackled her to the ground, refusing to believe what just happened.

I wonder now as I wondered then if Thaddeus' case of falling was because he lost faith in himself more than his goddess did. If Temperance was wrong, surely Siamorphe was aware. Which begs the question if she always wanted Thaddeus to reach out to her again, with full faith and a conviction he was lacking, or if this was a different test for him.
And more importantly, why did she not correct Temperance? In all the time that has passed, not one whisper, not one vision. Nothing, until the realization hit her like a tidal wave. Is Temperance's current rejection the will of Siamorphe as her companions believe? She had her entire worldview shattered. Likely she, too, is lacking the conviction to truly reach out.
Oh yes. Her fellow Siamorphans have chewed her up and spat her back out. The heretic. Their hero becomes a villain. Our villain doesn't quite become a hero, but I do feel for her.

And Thaddeus, no doubt a villain to them and likely to a few within the city, has become our hero. With all the might Siamorphe provides him, Thalaman has returned to us. Not to sell anyone short. Berlinne Toews and her Ceruleans were on hand to lend their strength and expertise to the ritual, and Aoth, Rey, Isolde, Mortis and Cormac ensured there were no interruptions.
For their efforts, they were teleported against their will to the lair of an undead beholder, where they revealed another layer of plotting and scheming.

What we are dealing with now is this "Brotherhood of the Endless". A cult of undead creatures and necromancers bent on restoring undead that have been destroyed. To this end, they seem to be pilfering the remains of strong, noble bloodlines, preferably royal. Likely because such remains strengthen their rituals or the returning undead.
Through means of planar entities that enjoy watching the struggles on the Prime, we saw one of their number face off against no less than Elminster himself, in an effort to retrieve the remains of an Obarskyr.
Of course, there is no way in the Nine Hells that the church of Siamorphe doesn't know about something like that, so I circled back to Temperance.

See, I cannot shake the feeling that something has gone terribly wrong in Temperance's earlier judgement of Rey and Thaddeus. Even more than her more zealous fellows seem to realize. To her, she's either a heretic, or the breathing proof that their goddess is not infallible, and they do not seem inclined to think beyond that.
There is a chance Temperance was merely wrong, certainly. Given the extent of the meddling done by the Endless, and the fact that Siamorphe, still a goddess of just rule, did not step in however, it hardly seems possible.
As I see it, Temperance was somehow fooled into believing Rey was not a Fisher, and Siamorphe kept from revealing the truth for months on end, or Siamorphe herself was fooled into believing Rey was not a Fisher. It worries me to think how powerful a being must be to do so.

Temperance in her current state was not much help. What little I got from her was that she did face off against the Endless in Waterdeep, when they raided a crypt of the Hawkwinter line.
And one cryptic line that it was not just themselves they consider immortal and might want to bring back.
The Witch King of Vaasa? His once kingdom? There are many possibilites, and none I look forward to.
From here we will try and find Kasimir, and to free him from Thraun's influence. Then find a way to put the rest of the undead monstrosities to rest.

The only bright side? When destroying the undead, it's hard to be a villain.

[WouldBeBard]

Stuffed among the pages of the book is a series of drawings. Each depicts a young, bearded man, wearing various outfits, with a name written below them. If you didn't know any better, you would say these were advertisements.
In the corner each drawing there appears to be a seal that reads "The Longcloak, by RK. Wear the look".

[WouldBeBard]

A thick fog curls around the bow of a pilot cutter. No stars can be seen through the mist, but pinpricks of light are everywhere, candles dotting the deck and railing. The water gently laps against the hull, the sound the only visible companion to the man leaning on the aft railing, looking off at nothing, breathing in the scent of far too much lavender.

Below decks, a gaggle of geese lies sleeping on his bed, on the sitting area cushions, or in the makeshift hammocks.
Behind the curtain stands a single desk that holds the man's recent writings.

The pace of the past few weeks has been astounding.
Isolde has learned that the Dopplegangers are part of a mercenary band called the Dark Visage. An old nemesis of hers, a dread Doppleganger she refers to as the Unreal, has escaped from wherever the Smiling Monkey was holding it. A Doppleganger so powerful it can read and alter memories, even while you wake and are actively remembering them. A cruel being that will gaslight all your friends, leaving you as the only person with the real memory. Letting you become aware of what it is doing, powerless to stop it, and making sport of the anguish.
It has an artefact called the cloak of the Triloquist. I wasn't here in those days, but knowing it can keep a creature like the Unreal from being detected through magic is worrying enough.

Who the Dark Visage is working for remains a mystery for now. The alliance with the Unreal simply one of convenience. Why the need for the Dark Visage, or what anyone was going to do with the black steel is still a matter of speculation.
We have found the black steel, however. It is on board the Wisp, now. Hard to track, hard to reach, fairly easy to defend. That last part will become important before long. The Dark Visage will want it. The Unreal, too.
I find myself wanting it to try. Yes, on a personal level, I have a score to settle for the burns the Dopplers gave me. But it is far more than that. Their meddling has already driven too many good people to their deaths, and endangered tenfold that. For Gale and Janes, and all of Peltarch's fallen, there should be justice. For Martha and Renius, for my marine brothers, for all the city's sons and daughters yet living, the certainty that these Dopplers are no more will have me rest easy.
Not long now, I think. What with Rey sprucing up the place with lavender to "calm the mind".

Calming the mind. That brings me to the other issue that occupies my waking moments.
Nenufar came to us near the ruins of Jiyyd, where the fabric of reality is still frayed.
The presence in the Rawlins is growing. Unless the Unreal gets me early, it seems it will come to a head long before the time I get to say "not my problem" and keel over.
Nenufar has urged us to read the book we found down there, to learn all that happened, and why.
On the surface, it seems that at some point in time everything that went on down there was to resurrect the god of murder. Still, Nenufar has hinted that there might be even more to it, and Isolde mentioned the pair running the reformatory were at odds.

In our own time, Jenna is at the center of it all. Whether Jenna is considered a powerful vessel to pour this essence into, or whether she needs her own essence bled to add to the presence, they want her. Stalked several times by shadow given form, forms of the unfortunate souls that fell to the presence. I'm not convinced it is intelligent in the way some of the other threats we've faced are. It can learn and adapt, but it seems more animal in doing so. Simply throwing something at the wall and seeing if it sticks, rather than planning ahead. It kept sending assailants with the same look, one matching the description of a boy in the book, again and again. Always had it ask us to open a door it could not get past, even when we killed a shadow with the same appearance just moments earlier. It changed its tune slightly, but it was still the same face.

Nenufar did warn us that it would learn, so it may well become more calculated with time. It will definitely grow more powerful. It already has. Where it was once stuck beneath the hobgoblin cave when we found it, unable to reach out and increase its influence, it seems to have turned many of their kind into its servants. Part of the plan was to cull the hobgoblins and deny it more souls to feed on. I don't know if it actually does that, but I assume that's how little malevolent presences grow up big and strong.
I chanced upon Caramella, the confectionary mage, when I headed out there. She had not noticed anything in the woods south and southeast of Norwick. She tends not to notice things. Her hound archon had seemed skittish to her, though and she agreed to head farther east with me.

Farther east, the presence was undeniable. The woods were all but empty. The only thing that remained were glimpses of the hoboglins, appearing and fading again. Nothing but apparitions, as though the forest remembered something that wasn't there. The real giveaway, however, was the massive barrier or ominous red light. I could see more shadows on the other side of it, and hear the hobgoblins speak. Those weren't just apparitions, even if they weren't quite hobgoblins. Caramella was too fascinated to notice, but they were eyeing us. Studying us. I decided to pick her up and walk away before it had more time to learn. If we were going to expose ourselves, we would need to put down some ground rules to keep it from learning too much.

Going back into town, we came upon the Autumn Knight, Bertram. That provided us with some more opportunities and firepower.
We headed back, all keenly aware that we should speak as little as possible, and hide our forms. Caramella was going under invisibility, Bertram and I under leaves, branches and bark. To cull what hobgoblins were left, and to see what we could learn of our enemy.
As Caramella was trying to feel what sort of magic we were dealing with, the hobgoblin shadows came out to look at us again, trying to talk to us in their tongue. I figured I could try and muddy the waters, talking nonsense, and saying things that could get me decked or killed if brought up in polite conversation. Bertram and Caramella both picked up on it, and before long we were just having entire meaningless conversations in completely random syllables. Aoth would be proud.

Something very curious happened, then. The hobgoblins were joined by a human woman, seemingly materializing out of the ground and asking us "if we spoke human", then telling noone in particular that she did not speak our dialect as we kept on talking gibberish. I think I got a good look at her. I should compare it to the descriptions in the book.
It was time to test a few more things. Physically, nothing could pass the barrier. Caramella also detected no necromancy, and conjuration was again keenly felt. Banishment did nothing against the shadowed hobgoblins. It did break down the barrier, however.
The hobgoblins attacked once the barrier came down. They were strong, but not insurmountable. I did not notice any particular resistance to my blade. Upon their death, the forms melted down to shadows and back into the ground.
I did not notice the following while fighting, but Bertram and Caramella pointed it out after. There were never more than three hobgoblins, and apparently, always the same three. Bertram's use of the word "puppetmaster" seems spot on. They also did not pursue. Once we moved away from the barrier, they moved back, Caramella pointing out that it was to keep invaders out, rather than victims in.
The presence still feels vulnerable, then. Somewhat reassuring.

We'll need to convince Jenna to create a pocket plane for herself, both to keep her safe and provide her a place for her lab. We also really, really need to finish that book. Lastly, we'll need to go back to the Rawlins regularly. Culling the hobgoblins and other creatures to create a gap between the presence and creatures it can feed on.
The reason I don't relish the thought of killing so many is the same reason I keep worrying about calming my mind, is the same reason we were out in Jiyyd in the first place. Miranda.

Where do I begin? We were in Jiyyd because I wanted to ask Alicia about an exorcism. Miranda had started to become very present, indeed. Isolde and Six both thought this would be the best way to deal with her. Just point the interloper the door. It's on the way there that Nenufar appeared. The more pressing matter of the Rawlinswood presence aside, she had a few things to say on Miranda, too.
A long story short, I have become something akin to a phylactery. Or at least, that's the best way my layman's knowledge can put it. When she possessed me, she left something of herself behind. Possibly for giggles, possibly as a failsafe since she expected the Skull bitch to kill her or destroy the necklace that held her soul before the end.
The thing is, what she left behind is not a physical or even magical thing. It's not a part of her body, it's not a part of her soul. It is not something tangible that can be cast out. Now, how to describe this?

Accoustic resonance.
When you pluck a string on an instrument at a given key, a nearby string can start to vibrate if it shares the fundamental or overtone frequency. A strong enough wind passing through an arrow slit at the right angle can make a tower shake. Perhaps when she was in my mind, she found a part of me that she could harmonize with and sing to. The darker parts of my soul that she can be said to embody. An echo of her song, growing louder with time.

Nenufar was quite clear. "She" is not an invader, as is typical with possession. "She" is a part of me. "She" is the same soul I am. "She" just sings a different tune. Nenufar almost seemed sympathetic. Miranda being a reflection of her sister, she fully expects that Miranda will gain the upper hand, and I will fade. Clarity and Protection spells will not keep her at bay forever.
Of course, since whatever this thing is is not her sister, it is also not Nenufar's problem. I will have to deal with this myself.

Miranda's presence has since grown stronger. At first, she was blind and deaf to all but my words. Now she hears the people around me. Six and I were walking back from a failed attempt at an exorcism when we learned that. Yes, failed. There is no demonic presence in me. Yet she is there, listening now. How long until she sees with my eyes? Reads my thoughts? Controls them?
For now it's just asking me to do things. Oh, and complaints. Lots of complaints.
Complaints about how bored she is when I'm not out killing things. How she relishes my emotions when I'm clinging on for dear life in a fight or in a storm.
Complaints that I refuse to try and bed my friends. How she wishes I would just go find my "girlfriend" already.
Complaints when I have spells cast to silence her. How it's like being stuffed in a box, deprived of all senses. Darkness and silence, for what seems an eternity. Especially to a succubus, that must be terrible.
We have come to sort of an agreement on that. She will be silent when I tell her to, and I will refrain from magically shutting her out. Yes, I know. Not exactly the best idea, since trusting a bloody demon is what first got me into this mess, but the alternative is to torture her. I know if I was a prisoner that got tortured every day, I would do everything in my power to overthrow my jailor.

Six, bless him, has offered to move her to a separate body. A mortal's, a succubus, an automaton. He is not certain how, yet, but he is willing.
So far, she does not seem interested. She does not want mortality, but she does not want to be a form that ties her to the Abyss either. The only form she seemed interested in? Jenna's. Of course.
And given that this malady is neither mundane nor magical, Jenna may well be the only one that can help me. Do I risk exposing Jenna to this? Would I risk splitting my soul in half?
Or do I try to dance with this demon of my own, and see if I can lead? A terrible idea.
It would not be the first time a tower or bridge collapses through resonance.

[WouldBeBard]

A soft breeze rolls in over the Icelace, blowing blue and purple smoke from a wreckage towards the city.
The wreckage still burns. The waters around the wreckage themselves are burning. A bright blue hue glints off the water, providing a spectacle visible from the docks that few will ever have witnessed.

Inside the Defender headquarters, the wind can't be felt. The haunting light can't be seen.
In the infirmary, a man dressed down to his braies is performing stretches. Not the sort he routinely does, nor any to recover from a wound. The wounds had long since been healed. There were scars, though. Scars for which his friends' healing had come too late. Burn scars from the flames he had leapt through.
Blue flames.
He'd managed to cover his face well enough behind his shield, but his vest had caught on fire. And kept burning. All the while he'd lain in the water, until he got fished out of it and the flames were dispelled.

He stretched to keep the scarred flesh soft and flexible. It hurt like a devil, but the alternative was letting it settle and having to recover after. He would be doing this for a while still.
His lower ribs and abdomen on his left taken the worst of it, taking out his carefully crafted tattoos and replacing them with... well... With what?
It looked like scar tissue, but instead of the white and red colouring he had seen so often, it was the blue and purple of the flames he'd run through. And was that a glow, or was that just the light reflecting off the raw skin?

On the bed behind him lay his book, the writing done in between sessions of stretching and trying to forget the pain of the flames long enough to sleep.

I got lucky.
Rumours in the barracks are that I'm a gods damned hero, but I got lucky.

It's been some time since I set foot on Peltarch shore. Maybe Renius thought I'd deserved an extended vacation, sending me out to gather intelligence. Maybe Martha did.
All those years ago, I didn't think I'd grow so close to either of them, an officer and a queen. Yes, my da was an officer in his own right, with a title to his name.
Still, a title on merit that would not pass to his children. Mum is a successful merchant, but those are a dime a dozen in the Vilhoun Reach.
For all the world, I was just a wandering peasant and mercenary when Renius picked me up.
Now, after years under his tutelage, I would not hesitate to call Renius family. Would it be too forward to consider Martha the same?
Meeting them again felt like a homecoming. I could've hugged either of them.
Not in public, though. In public it's still all captain and her Majesty. The people need to see their structures hold fast, after all. Especially when chaos is brewing around them.
Chaos? It's a dog's breakfast out here.

I received a letter calling me back from Martha, saying she hated having to ask me to abandon the task Renius had given me. While I appreciate the sentiment, I do not think the letter would have reached me quite that easily if they did not agree that the task was more important than my current one.
I hated leaving it behind, though. Not because of the new task, of course. Because of Meadow. It should come as no surprise to anyone that when I was given a task to gather information, I asked her to come along. I wager Renius and Martha knew this as well. We got separated, however. Now, of the two of us, when it comes to getting out of any place alive, my money is on her. As a rule, she asks me not to come looking for her.
It just stings that she is still out there, and I cannot sail the Wisp along our rendezvous points. Despite everything, I worry. I miss her.

There's a couple of things that will need taking care of before I can sail out there again, however.

First the one where I'm most at a loss. Our time bandit is still around.
I had that pleasant little wake up call when I walked out the door of the Mermaid, felt the all too familiar stretching and shattering of the world around me, then stepped onto the streets outside the Grapevine. Luckily, I arrived near Cormac, Isolde, Verna and Aoth. Despite people shifting through time from different locations and at different points in time, they tend to end up near one another in the past. Nate ended up near us, too, at a later point.
I'm not too versed in arcane matters, but there must be something there that puts all the travelers together. Maybe the area our time bandit is messing with acts like a funnel somehow.

The most annoying part is that this time I felt truly blind. In our other jaunts, we went to the days right before the Eastlander War. Nan lived here when those were living memory. I heard enough of the stories and read up on enough of reports to somewhat navigate my way through them.
This time? I'm not even sure the Eastlanders were a thing. Sir Roland Brynmor was still a child sweeping the floor in Tyr's temple. The Hightower was not even Sir Kanen yet, let alone the legend I knew him as. He was a fresh faced boy running into trouble in the Rawlins. This may well have been before the first Defiler War
I knew nothing of these days, yet Isolde had already ferreted out we needed to find a woman named Justinia.
In the end, we found she had turned into a succubus. Opening a window into the Abyss we could communicate through without truly summoning her, Aoth managed to goad her into speaking the Defiler's name. Her death was unpleasant, but it proved the power of his reach. After this, we were set upon by the little cannibalistic halfling monstrosities we'd encountered a couple of times before when dealing with our chronomancer, sent by the Defiler. Books don't quite do their ferocity justice. I'm beginning to understand just why that war is remembered so.
After this, we returned to town to see if there was another problem to fix, but there wasn't. Everyone else's involvement seemed happenstance, and the threads we'd woven to connect them all simply paranoia. For whatever reason, the succubus is what needed to die.

That leaves the question what the chronomancer was trying to achieve there. On one hand, they might be trying to steer the country away from the war entirely, rather than having her side end up winning. On the other hand, and the more likely, it could be that the Autyarch is connected to the Defiler, especially since both seem to be involved with those damn halflings. Aoth seems to be thinking something along those lines, given the books she handed me on the subject of the ancient Nar and both Defiler Wars. That could mean the chronomancer is going after the Autyarch. I do not look forward to those titans clashing in our backyard.

A second problem that could prove an opportunity, if we're being hopeful, is Jenna Starsong's quest.
Oh yes, Jenna Starsong seems to have come out of her self imposed solitude, brimming with ideas and hopes for a better tomorrow, all of which can be achieved through her inventions.
Part of me wants to believe. Scratch that. I do believe. I believe in her ability to make these things happen. Unfortunately, I also believe in mortal avarice and mortal ability to corrupt anything we touch. So we proceed with caution, or at least I do, as we think of applications for her ideas and search for a power source strong enough to make these things happen.

That last bit has proven a bit of a challenge. While Jenna was so good as to provide us with a device whose light beam could lead us to a power source, which seems to have worked, none other than Nenufar has attempted to stop us from doing so.
If there ever was one Outsider I would have preferred never having to deal with again.
She's been perfectly nice about it, so far. She stays on her plane, as she is bound to, and sends only messengers to talk us out of it, or bribe us out of it.
Quite the bribe, too. A balor for a messenger, millions in gold, thousands in Abyssal shards, and even one Abyss bound soul of our choosing to be released.
Naturally, when what you're being offered just to look away is that good, you want to see what the fuss is about.
We did consider that this might be Nenufar's strategy to goad us into looking, but since what you don't know can actually hurt you, it is better to be aware.
She did leave us with a warning that we would not find joy where we were headed. That wasn't a lie, at least.

If this is not solved before I go to my grave, there is a map included with the location. There is a cave in the western Rawlins, where the hobgoblins reside at the time of writing. Near an underground pond in the first level of the cave, one can dig down and find an abandoned facility. Proceed with caution, and prepare for a gruesome sight.
Below you will find an excavated area filled with all manner of restraining and torture devices, a decaying library and laboratory and the bones of its residents.
In the room beyond, you will find a chamber littered with bones. Some of the skeletons will hold knives, the others will have died by those knives. The remains are those of children.
Do not be tempted to touch the knives or the bones until you are ready to fight whatever malicious spirit still dwells there.
Its presence cloaks part of the room in darkness, and you'll find only find two red lights looking at you, hungering. It appears to be unable to leave its bones far behind.
We touched only one knife, and saw only one spirit. There may well be more if you disturb more of their dead.
It will start crying. It will start pleading for help. Despite that it produces some of the most heart wrenching sounds you will ever hear, do not think this thing a wayward spirit in need of help. It is a clever thing, listening to your words and thinking on what might trigger your empathy best. It is an angler fish looking for its next meal. It is a siren trying to draw in the unwary sailor.
Once you get too close, they will take their rusty old knife and try to bleed you. Even a man such as Cormac barely managed to stumble away with his life after three flashes of that knife. A sunburst spell did not manage to light up the darkness or even slow them down.
I hope we will deal with this ourselves before long, but if we do not and you decide it is yours to fix, bring a priest. Bring several.

The third is the one I got recalled for.
A caravan that was smuggling black steel into the city has been waylaid and robbed, and now the steel is held by someone or something in the city.
To put the issue in perspective, black steel is an enchanted property that keeps its victim from being resurrected. Not as terrifying as the fire that killed Weyland, since you get to keep your soul, but the very same levels of frightening as the arrow that killed Wilkes.
Yes, the black arrow shot by Meadow. Yes, my fiancé Meadow. Rub it in, everybody else seems to settle for namedropping her.
The one part of her past, of all the things she's done, that she absolutely, adamantly refuses to talk about.
Now I am left to face a likewise threat, without so much as a pointer. Without her by my side.

The investigation so far has turned up a lot of information that implicates a lot of different people. It could have sent us on a merry little goose chase for months, had Rey not stumbled on something in a way that was so typical I do not even know where to begin.
I'm not sure what happened before I bumped into them in the temple of Lathander, but they were tending to Cedric Whitedune, a young boy from one of the city's noble families. A nurse had left food for him, which he ate but didn't finish. Rey just up and ate the rest. Barely waited two breaths after asking if he was going to finish that and gulped it down.
Nothing strange was happening and Cedric was in good care, so we left the place and headed for the Mermaid's cozy fire. Not long after arriving, though, it became clear Rey wasn't well. Aoth found it was poison, and it didn't take us long to realize the only way Rey could've been poisoned was through Cedric's meal.
So back to the temple we went.

Cedric was missing. The nurse tending to him was missing. While the others were explaining the situation to the Dawnbringer, I found some traces of the powder mixed into his food on his bedsheets and collected it for a closer examination. The bedsheets showed signs of a short struggle, as well. The woman we'd assumed was his nurse was unknown to the Lathanderites and had actually come in as a patient herself, that day. After handing the others the powder, Aoth decided to take the shape of a wolf and sniff them out. This lead us upstairs, to the orphanage.
Thankfully, the orphanage was empty, and we had but a few rooms to clear. The initial look found only an open window. It seemed unlikely for the nurse to go running across the rooftop with Cedric on her back, so they decided to have a closer look and smell in the other rooms. They found Cedric stuffed in a closet. Unconscious, but breathing.
While the others were tending to the boy, I decided to have a look outside to see if I could still spot the culprit. I saw something. I couldn't make out what it was, at first, a dark figure scaling the wall, apparently waiting for something to happen. The moment it noticed that I had noticed it, however, it bolted. My first instinct was to give chase, but Isolde's words put that idea out of my head. Survivors first.

We didn't get much time. Before Cedric had even properly regained consciousness, someone threw a smokebomb into the room. Isolde stuffed him back into the closet and told him to hide as we tried to prepare for an attack despite being effectively blind. We could hear something was in the building, but couldn't see it yet. Isolde blocked the doorway, and I stepped out in front of her as Rey drew her greatsword. She would hunt it and we would keep it from getting at Cedric. While the smokebomb might have worked if it was just the three of us, Aoth put a stop to it by clearing the air, and I found myself face to face with leering inhuman eyes inside a dark hood.
The fight was intense, despite being so short. I've rarely fought a creature that moved quite that nimbly and kept dodging the worst blows even after being cut up. Even Rey had trouble pinning the damn thing down. We managed to rough it up, but when it felt it was losing, it threw a series of stones on the floor that cast a Horrid Wilting. I hope the mage that came up with that spell is burning in one of the Hells.
As it tried to get clear of the room, I managed to pin it up against the wall with my sword, and Rey took its head off moments later. A dry thud followed, and the head that rolled out of the torn hood belonged to nothing less than a Doppleganger.
We were too late for Cedric. He died badly, shriveled into a dried out husk inside the closet we'd hid him in. I managed to spare Isolde the sight, but she took it on herself to inform the old Whitedune. I don't know if he has been returned yet.

There was little time to grieve. On a mission, Rey stomped off towards to City Hall. Say what you will about her relationship with Thalaman or Kasimir, but the first thing she wanted to make sure of was that none of the creatures had infiltrated the city's heart. Kasimir had no desire to even humour the idea that there might be such a threat to him or his brother, refusing flat out to lock the place down and have everyone tested. Her rod of True Seeing made the danger very clear, however, and I could see one of the creature's faces as I looked past Kasimir and towards his Kingsguard. Or not see his face, rather. Curious that even with True Sight they are hard to discern.
Despite still being out of armor, I rushed past the prince with only my shield, trying to keep the Kingsguard off me as Isolde tried to break through the disguise and pin him down with magic. I could not draw a weapon against a Kingsguard until I was absolutely certain, and the True Sight not revealing its face threw me.
It made the mistake of hissing at me in much the same manner as the other one did, however, and noting we should "not have returned so soon".
Rey, meanwhile, was turning to face down the rest of the guard, to whom it must all have seemed like treason.
Thankfully, the creature got held, and it had been wounded. The black ichor that passes for its blood spilled on the floor, and even Kasimir could see the truth.
I executed it on his order, and the arrangements were made to scour City Hall, as well as warn our king.
No others were found, but two more people were discovered missing.
Isolde later managed to link the creatures to the black steel, and found all the implications were by design. Every powerful group or noble could have had any number of reasons to kill another and ensure they did not return to retaliate. An intricate web put up as a smokescreen to keep us from finding the Dopplegangers until it was too late. All for naught, because Rey had to put her foot in it.

So where was I lucky again? Oh right. I went to deliver the news to Renius and Martha.
I didn't go off half cocked, of course. I realized anyone on board that ship could be a Doppleganger, even the pair of them. I thought I was clever, though, and I had a plan.
I had Renius call up all the troops on deck, and break the news while everyone was in sight of all the others. If there were no Dopplegangers, all the better. If there were some, at least we'd have all reliable swords in one place. If it turned out only Martha had been replaced, at least I'd know I'd have the whole crew at my back when facing the creature and getting some answers out of it. If they were all Dopplegangers, I'd be fucked, but hey. The Wisp could outrun them.
Only one marine was reluctant to bleed himself, but even that one was clear. I made just one tiny mistake. When Renius said all thirteen of his boys were on deck, I didn't do a headcount.
After vetting them all, Renius told them get back to their stations so he and I could talk. It's when I saw them spread out I noticed there weren't enough of them. I told everyone to stop moving and remove their helmets to see who was missing, but that's when I heard something clatter below decks.
Yelling for them to get to the queen, I charged ahead. And got my dumb ass caught.

Some trap went off, and the door behind me shut. Next, it fused all the wood in the room together, making escape impossible. Not that I was giving much thought to escaping yet. Hells, at first, I didn't even notice.
All I could see as I barged into the room was a non existent face leering over Martha, dressed in a marine's uniform. It cursed at no one in particular that it had needed just a bit more time before turning its attention on me. I gave it two choices.
Come willingly, and it would be executed in a couple of weeks, but it could live with the hope that its kin would rescue it from jail or it could escape on its own. Or, put up a fight and surely be cut down by the marines and their enraged captain.
It mocked my bravado and told me it would go for a third option. Leaving me to choose instead. Save my queen, whose wrist it had already cut when it heard me on deck and had but a few moments to spare, or kill it. It's empty, pasty face grinned triumphantly as it began to cast, certain I would choose Martha.
It wasn't wrong. Her life mattered more to me than its death. But this time, the tiny mistake was his. As I rushed to aid her, I pulled a card from Vanno's deck and threw it at the Doppleganger. I got lucky. It froze on the spot, unable to cast, unable to speak, unable to raise a hand to defend itself as I took its head off in passing.

I skidded to Martha's side and tore her dress to bind the wound. Twice lucky. I didn't fumble even once as I tied it off, buying me enough time to feed her a healing potion.
It's only then that I took the time to look around and realize the room was cast in a blue light that certainly wasn't there when I entered. As I turned to look, I saw the mage had thought of a contingency. A strange blue fire I'd never seen before slowly grew from its body, setting alight everything it touched. That's when I noticed the door had fused with the hull and could hear Renius and the others trying to hack their way into the room.
Helm's tenets are very clear, of course. Protect the weak, poor, injured and young, and do not sacrifice them for others or yourself. Still, if it had been anyone else, I might have stopped and considered if there was a safer way. As it was, I didn't hesitate. I put my Relic of Recall into her hands and activated it for her, consequences be damned.

That left me alone in a sealed off room where the air was growing thick with smoke and suffocating me, with a growing fire that would bring down the whole ship, and Renius and my brethren unable to break through. Now, I'm not quite the rube I once was. My bag of tricks consists of a great deal more than a steel pike, these days. Didn't do much, though. The fire wasn't just fire. I could not Sign it out of existence. It flickered for just a moment, but somehow refused. Neither my necklace that wards off burns nor a potion to resist the elements kept me safe. The Dragoneer's Grenade could not dispel it, and the Ice Bucket could not quench it. I might have tried the smokes of Saint Sollars or the Wychlaran gem I carried, but even if I could have staved off the fire, my ragged breath was reminding me I was quickly running out of air. And those stubborn bastards outside the cabin refused to abandon ship.
I noticed a spot where the fire was fast burning through the wood. I pulled out both my blunderbuses and just fired away at the wood, splintering it. Water started rushing in. I called out for Renius and the others to leave, as I had a way out. I didn't tell them it would require me to run through the magical flames that did not stop burning even on the surface of the fucking water, then dive into the frigid waters of the Icelace.

I don't remember anything after that until I gained consciousness back in Peltarch. Thrice lucky, Isolde saw me bobbing on the water, and with Rey's help they fished me out of the drink.
I told them what I could. The Doppleganger wizard, what the flames looked like, what all I tried to kill the flames with. I was just happy to find Renius and Martha in the barracks, and to have made it there, myself. The squeeze Martha gave my hand will stay with me for life. As will Renius' clasping his arm around my back.
The burn scars, too, of course.
But hey, at least they might be off putting to Miranda.

Oh shit, I forgot to mention that, didn't I?
Jenna has triggered something. Every time I see her, I hear Miranda. Laughing her hideous yet mesmerizing laugh. Enticing me. Telling me she hasn't forgotten. Trying to claim me as her love. The fact that she used the word "love" rather than "lover" was especially unnerving.
I heard her clear as a bell, saw her face in Aoth's and heard her voice as Aoth was explaining something to me.
I told Aoth. She noticed something was off, and I trust her with the implications. While I'd trust Isolde to scold a god for my well being, I trust Aoth to put me in the ground if it comes to it.
I explained I didn't know if it was real, or if it's just the lingering effects of the Abyss on my mind. She did not have any answers. Not yet at least. She simply warned me that demons have a habit of not letting go once they sense weakness or willingness.
Rey gave me one of the fabled Dreamcatchers. It guarded them against another type of demon in times past, she said.
Did I say Nenufar was the one Outsider I would have preferred never having to deal with again? Scratch that.
I would have tea and crumpets with Nenufar every gods damned day if it meant never having to catch a whiff of Miranda again.
Guess I'm not all that lucky.

[WouldBeBard]

The sun stands high over Narfell. A few minor clouds marring an otherwise pristine sky, but there is no wind to drive them on.

On a cliff overlooking the Icelace sits the young man, his bouts of writing interrupted by the thoughts running through his head. Unaware of his own actions, he touches an item lying next to him. He writes only when he occasionally snaps out of it.

And then you get an answer.

Reading back through my own words, I have come to realize something.
For most of my life, I did not quite trust the gods.
Certainly, I gave them praise and offerings. They rule countless aspects of my life, and I always had enough to be thankful for. They rule countless aspects of the world itself, and take their tasks seriously, even the ones whose task is to not be too serious. I respected them.

Trust, however? No. The gods are not mindless, they are not emotionless, they are not devoid of desires. They are fallible. They plan and scheme, working towards goals of their own. Any semblance of balance and stability seems to come only from as many of these plans succeeding as failing and being countered by another god's plans.
Not that different from mortal power struggles at all.
And like the struggles in my dear Peltarch, I believed staying well clear was the best choice.
To keep your head down and do what had to be done to protect those you care about. If you do not rely on greater powers, you will never have your world collapse when you find they do not answer one day.
Steel can be trusted. Your hands can be trusted. Your eyes can be trusted. Surround yourself with allies, but always be willing to do it alone.

And yet. And yet. Can I honestly say I have ever done it alone? Not counting my many capable and stalwart companions for a moment, though I would never forget them.
To face the Far Realms so early in my career, not once, not twice, but thrice over. The crisis of faith it brought. To find solace in Helm's temple, then meet Kanen Hightower when I began to wonder.
To arrive just in time to stop a hit by the Far Scouts on a girl that now proves herself most useful in finding out what N'Jast is after.
To fall trying to stop the mage who made meeting the Hightower possible, and be met with Robert Holmesmead beyond the veil to warn me of what Rhodes was truly planning.
To lay dying on the walls of Arrangar, yet have a god hear my plea and put me back on my feet.
Pivotal moments, and there are many more. Each time, something put me where I needed to be. I used to figure it was just chance. These days, however, I cannot shake the feeling that I was always part of the game.

By said chance, I started to carry the gnomish map around again. On a whim, really. Not three days later, it warned me of an adventurer falling. The curious thing was that it did not mention a name. I just had to go look, of course.
I was outside the Mermaid with Cormac and Morgan at the time. They balked, but decided going to have a look see was better than watching flowers grow, pretty though they were. We were joined by Gnarl, and Raazi after, then set out to find the mystery fallen.

I am sparse with the details, because so much of it is unknown to me still. What we found was a crater, with a large crystal lodged into the ground. We all knew the area, and that was certainly new. First, we figured the crystal had fallen on top of some poor sap. The more we looked at it, though, we started to notice the crystal's peculiar shape. Something that might be a torso. Something that might be legs. Something that could definitely be a head. Which had quite the crack in it.
As I approached the head and examined the wound, I saw several smaller crystals inside, shining more brightly than the rest of the body.

I did the dumb thing. I know, I know, I should know better by now, but I have seen, spoken to and fought so many Outsiders. I had never seen one like this before, and curiosity got the better of me.
I touched a crystal. The moment I did, the crystals inside the head slithered. Stone, my friend, should not slither.
A moment later, we all felt a searing, burning pain in our bodies. When it passed, we found we were all branded. I have something that looks like a cross between a branding and a birthmark on my left thight. Cormac has a like symbol in his neck. Gnarl has one on his tongue. Morgan has one in his eye. A strange twist of fate I shall not bring up with Elliot. Raazi has one, too, but I don't recall if she mentioned where. All star shaped.

So far, the brand only seemed to have stopped us from acting aggressive towards the crystal, sending new waves of pain when Raazi attempted to kick it.
When Morgan attempted to ressurect the creature, what we got was the spectral image of a large crystalline spider. It tried to communicate, in its way, with a series of clicks to represent numbers, and the numbers representing our alphabet.
Whatever the creature was, it is expected to return with the new vessels. Us. Return where? "They" are waiting for us among the stars. This was not a neogi, though.
What irks me most is that we are not immediately compelled to find a way back the "them". We may be the vessels that need to return, but this likely means it has more planned. I worry it will compel us to mark more vessels.
With its message done, the spectral image dissolved, leaving the curious gnomish map that lured us there.

Now it falls to us to learn what is done to us, and how to remove it. The others seem to have more options. Well, maybe not Gnarl. The map will have Legend Lore cast on it, and whatever other manner of divination spells Morgan and others can muster. Raazi could likely find gods know how many volumes on rare Outsiders over in Spellweaver. Cormac over in the College. And there I am with my bloody piece of steel in hand, right?
I could head to either of those or Little Candlekeep and ask to look through those books, but the good books are all written in Draconic. Figures.
Yes, my friends and companions can help. Yes, I asked them, and I trust them. It is just frustrating to have to wait, unable to act as long as I have no clue what I am dealing with.

And so, I trusted. Trusted that I am not alone. That all these situations I am thrust into are not just happenstance. That the path I walk is the will of Helm. Dear Aoth warned me to be careful about praying. Place enough faith in a god, and they will place their faith in you. It seems I am in for it now.
I prayed. A simple enough prayer. Asking for guidance. A sign to tell me what was needed of me. To show me what I could do against this new threat.
I have heard His followers are occasionally granted visions when they are at wit's end. I assumed that would be the extent of it.
To tell the truth, I had not expected an answer. Despite that I believe He watches over me, it seemed so insignificant.

And then? You get an answer.

The young man puts the quill down and picks up the item that lay next to him. A finely crafted steel hilt, fit for a bastard sword, oddly warm to the touch. Part of him had not believed it when he first found it. He'd even visited Helm's temple to have Alicia tell him what he already knew.
This was his sign.

His fingers run along the elegantly engraved letters on the hilt.

"Ever Vigilant."

[WouldBeBard]

Another night in the city. Selûne's light graces the docks, the clear sky allowing it to illuminate the streets even more than the lanterns. The stars above the lake combined with the soft lapping of the waves make it a pleasant, comfortable scene.
A calm wind blows in from the lake, and the soft knocking of wood joins the sound of the waves as the many ships in the harbour rock against their berths or each other.

The young man sits at his desk aboard the Wisp. The cabin is quiet and the lights are low, his black haired girl being away on duties. The gentle sway of the ship adds its hypnotic effect to his focus as he writes.

It's remarkable how much can change in the course of mere months.

I know I have not been faithfully chronicling all that happened these past times, and I do apologize. For all that I love regaling future scholars with my slanted opinions, I have had my hands full, and so the scholars must turn to the land's actual lorekeepers.
Or do you really prefer the upjumped sailor's musings?

Shall I write of the pain in Rey's heart when her brothers cast her out for not being Fisher blood and the claim she willfully lied about it? Despite all her love being true. Either side has their arguments, but my heart does go out to Rey. Write of Rosie somehow returning to normal by being her half mad self, full of absurd amounts of wisdom if you but listen? Of Perom finding a hint of courage in his heart and taking a stand in the frontline. Cormac becoming a father once more, yet kept in the dark about Rafni. Weddings planned, weddings taken place and weddings annulled. New adventurers gracing the land and coming into their own in the blink of an eye, a Sembian named Vernadetta taking the cake.
Fim has disappeared. Isolde somehow managed to make even him have a change of heart and set out to seek atonement. Does this count as her talking an enemy to death, the way we always said she would?
How sincere Fim was remains to be seen, so we remain vigilant. It is an enormous risk Isolde took. Still, I am hopeful. Perhaps he can find a way to alleviate the pain he caused across Narfell. Dead, he would have done no such thing.

Shall I write about myself? Of the nearly starved cockatrice I found, which now considers the Wisp its home. Of the dismissive slaad Zaaro, bound to my sextant? When next I see Jonni, I really must ask about undoing the binding. Of Holmesmead sending the message that I did enough. You cannot imagine the burden that took off my shoulders. Of discovering the Coraled Caldera and its strange denizes alongside Tatyana, Cray, Peredoc and, of course, Meadow. Of Meadow, and the first trip to Uthmere? I would, but I doubt any words I come up with would do it justice.
Much has changed. Myself included. Much of it is good, some of it bittersweet.

There are threats. Of course there are. That is a constant.
As is my lot, I face them head on, right along those I consider my friends. Dependable Longcloak, the Jolly Halberdier. Yet, what to do when it simply is not enough? When you suddenly cannot be depended on? Remain constant, because it is comfortable, and bow out when you are outclassed? Or change again, in an effort to become greater?
No doubt the tone of that sentence tells you of my choice. I believe dear Aoth would agree.

One threat that is already spreading its poison quite well is that of three cults. One to the Lady Red, one to the Lady Nocturnal, one to the Lady Death. From what we have gathered, it first appeared that the three cults that kept one another in check had become unbalanced, with Red defeating first Death, then waging its war against Nocturnal. Later, it seemed Red had soundly usurped Nocturnal, the second cult having no real chance to begin with. Their war was just a handful of cultists going through the motions.

I have not been party to much of it, but the one night I was there has been an eye opener. The cult of the Lady Red is a cult of blood and flesh, creating unfathomable monstrosities out of them. Both moving creatures and what appear living structures. They were the sort of thing that might have made Victor weep. For joy or jealousy, I'm not sure which would be more likely.

That night, we interrupted a ritual where they'd killed and harvested giants for their cause. Plenty of meat, you see. Their leader was quite a bit smarter than the usual megalomaniac we encounter. He did not mince words. The moment he recognized us, he set his creatures on us and walked away.
The bloodclaws. Slithering heaps of muscle that seemed to have no bones, vaguely humanoid in appearance and covered in heavy plates of metal. They ran and jumped over the battlefield as though it was light as a feather, bounding over us to get to our flanks and casters, seemingly as fast as a Haste spell could make us. And they were many.

Before long, they'd dispersed us by getting in between us, and each of us had our hands full. Hells, I had to drop my halberd and take up my shield and rapier just to keep from being torn apart.
And that's all I amounted to as I tried to keep their attention on me.
I saw Cray desperately trying to dodge the things to get enough distance to use his bow, Isolde waving her own rapier about for all she was worth, Verna somehow holding on but slowly failing. I saw Cormac being torn up by their claws, then Rey.
I saw the bloodclaws drag them away. Again, plenty of meat.
Had it not been for Isolde's magic sending them running, I would have met the same fate not terribly long after. Yes. An eyeopener.

We did free our lost friends, after a long bout of tracking the fleeing bloodclaws. They were still alive, which is about the only good thing that can be said about it, but we did free them. Not through force of arms, however.
When we reached whatever the cave they'd been taken to and saw them surrounded by countless more of the things, none of us believed that would work. I'll be honest. It was the first time in years where I truly believed there would be no way out if it came to a fight. Thankfully, between Aoth, Cray and Isolde, there was enough magic to cause a diversion that allowed us to work under invisibility.

You know, I have adored the halberd since the moment I laid my hands on it. Even if I started my mercenary days with a greatsword because I was lured in by the flair of it, I quickly came around. Considered it the master of all weapons. Shit, I still do. Unfortunately, I am no longer standing shoulder to shoulder in unwavering ranks of pikes, with crossbows and harquebuses behind us firing into enemy lines. Neither am I fighting only for myself anymore, where I can just retreat until I find good ground to fight from.
These people around me matter. I should be able to protect them. Yet the moment you take the halberd from my hands, I fight like the next fresh off the boat Cormyrean.
So there I stood. Either able to hurt the bloodclaws with the halberd, but getting torn up the same as Cormac and Rey, or holding them off behind a shield and not laying a hand on them.

Mako wondered why I would put aside a weapon I have bonded so much with that it even allows me to access my ki. I understand her confusion. Yet, there are things worth giving that up for. While the single minded focus makes me horrendously powerful when I am holding it, the halberd has become a crutch. Without it, I might as well not show up. No more.

I have adored the halberd. Oh yes. I will never master a weapon in that way again. Never wield one that comes that natural to me. And now it is time to give it up. But if I must give it up, I will give it up for the biggest bastard I can find.

The young man rises from his chair and glances towards the halberd that adorns the wall of the cabin. Normally he would lift it from its hooks and take it with him as he headed out. Not today. Today, he headed to Mako, to train with the bastard sword that still felt so awkward in his hands.
She assured him he would manage to wield it properly soon. Tiberius had said the same.

He ran his thumb along the spotless edge of the halberd's blade. Bittersweet, indeed.

[WouldBeBard]

Rain falls from an overcast sky. It pours down on slate and thatched roofs alike, and onto the muddy streets below. Dawn is still an hour away, and the only light in the city comes from torches and braziers sputtering from the downpour along the main streets, and a handful of windows.
The lingering dark hides the movement of men getting under way inside the walls. The endless rain most of the noise. Blue uniforms, green armour, tan leathers. All move with an unspoken purpose.

Some distance away from the city, nearer the Estates, an orderly camp of tents has been pitched. The camp is all but empty. In one empty tent among many stands a desk, with a page in familiar handwriting on it.

I've not written much, lately.
All seems quiet in the city. Fim has not acted up, our Eastlander mage has not reappeared, nor has the Autyarch or the vampires.
Recruiting is going well, the rosters being nearly full, and there is no reported increase of crime nor outside threats.
Yet I find myself returning home absolutely beat. Can't be getting old yet, can I? I'm probably just running around far more often than I used to. The rosters might be getting filled, but those damn greenhorns aren't good for much. You leave them their orders and you come back finding none of it has gotten done. You send for them and even the man you sent doesn't return. You go looking for them, and the rest gives you vague answers that they'd seen them somewhere at some point. None of them know any specifics, though.
If that lot thinks they can slack off because Rhodes is dead, they have another thing coming.
That Cerulean Lograss seemed to hint all branches are getting this, which is strange. Not all of them are having the same influx of raw recruits.
Ah well. It's probably nothing.

I have a hard time expressing the extent to which the paragraph above disturbs me. It is my paper. It is my ink. It is my hand. As far as I can tell, I wrote it. Yet I do not remember writing it.
Could it be a forgery? Sure, though I would wonder what anyone has to gain from a forgery that tame. And there's other reasons besides that make me think it isn't.
You see, I sat down at my desk to write those exact same thoughts today. Not word for word, perhaps, but still.
On top of that, I keep getting the feeling of déjà vu. Like an itch at the back of my mind, trying to be remembered, but not quite getting there.
How many times have I thought these thoughts? The ones in the paragraph above, and the ones I am writing now. What happens when I put this paper away? Will I forget again?
Others must be going through this. It has to be why nothing ever seems to get done. So what is causing this?
I should try to get in touch with the others about this but is there really any rush? There are plenty of other things that require my attention, and I'm not sure how I even came to the conclusion that there is something wrong. Ah well. It's probably nothing.

Oy, idiot. Stop wondering about what you read up there. There's glasses in your satchel, wear them. Don't waste your time thinking it through. Reemul made them, they'll help you see. Remember to thank him and Seb. Don’t take them off. I’m not sure why it matters, though. Maybe it doesn’t? It’s probably nothing.

Writing this quickly, sat by the well near the Mermaid. I remember everything. Need to be quick before I forget. Some dog was acting weird. Going mad, in fact. Funny how there's no more dogs left. No cats, either. Aoth spoke to it, then turned to a winter wolf and started howling as well. Something is messing with our minds. The dog and Aoth just fled. Everyone's moving, write more later.

Finally I can sit and write calmly. I have decided to not remove what I've written above in case it ever happens again.
A False Hydra has been growing beneath the city. Sebrienne was the first to tell me. She'd seen the destruction in the sewers, and seen its hideous white face. Hells, she even knew its name already. She could not stay to tell me more at the time, but she pointed out viewing things through a mirror interrupted its illusion.
Yrag and I went to buy ourselves a mirror after that. The state of the city we saw was something out of a nightmare. Like nothing had seen upkeep in months. Garbage piled up, windows were grimey. People, too. Unwashed and unshaven, but only seen through the mirror. I could pick up a stone I saw in the mirror. It felt unreal, somehow. I could not really make out the texture or the temperature, but I could tell its shape. More or less. I can best compare it to trying to hear while underwater. Then when I looked at it in my hand, I could not see it, even if I could feel the weight.

Further inspection of the city was worse. There were bloodmarks on the floor of Hemrod's. Drag marks, too. When we went outside, we could see dragmarks like those everywhere. And holes. Somewhere between seven and ten feet in diameter. In the ground, but also in the walls of several buildings. The dragmarks invariably led to the holes, with the most frequented one in the center of the Commons. Part of me wanted to go down there, but instinct told me it would be the death of me if it was just Yrag and I. The men I wanted to post by the hole never showed up. Of course they didn't.

I sent word out for other adventurers, but the only reply I got at that point was Reemul's. He insisted we meet outside the city, which I understood perfectly well. Seb did say Reemul had also seen what she'd seen.
Reemul, then, had made these glasses. Double mirrored, like the contraptions you might use to peer over the wall of a besieged city. We did not need them outside the city, however. For reasons we did not understand then, the illusion lost its hold once you traveled far enough.
Reemul no longer went to the city after learning that. Hells, even Seth avoided the place.
I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I did feel like I could breathe more easily when I left the city behind.
I am nothing if not foolhardy, however. Eventually, Reemul, Yrag and I decided we would take our chances with going back. We had to test if the glasses kept us from forgetting. We each would watch the others as we ordered something at the Ferret we would normally never drink. Complaining about the drink in front of us would let the others know we'd started to forget why we were there.
They worked, though they had a flaw. While the damn creature could not lie to our eyes anymore, it managed to snake into our minds and convince us to remove the glasses.
As expected, we forgot.

The glasses were still our best tool thus far. I remember handing them back and forth between Aoth, Rey and myself. The first time the lot of us felt the rumble of that beast as we were no longer under the illusion, we all drew our weapons, only to wonder why we were armed five minutes later. That's when we saw the dog. As it turns out, it wasn't an ordinary dog, it was a shifter. Still haven't caught her name, but she sometimes walks around as an elf. I've seen her more as various animals, though.
Anyway, at the time she was a dog, and I think this was our saving grace. The dog was losing it, running about and howling, snapping at its reflection in a puddle and disturbing the water, as though denying what it saw yhere. When Aoth tried to talk to it, it spoke to her of a song, which Aoth experienced firsthand when she turned into the winter wolf.

We all left the city when our two druids could no longer stand the sound, and with that, we lost the unnerving feeling of something trying to make us forget. A feeling we never quite noticed until it was gone. Both the shifter and Aoth had calmed down and could no longer hear whatever noise they heard before. This is what gave her and Seb the final clue.
Under the effect of Silence, Aoth went back into the city. It worked as they had hoped, and she could see the city as it was.
Most retired to the Witch and Seer to consider our options after that. I remained near the gates with Cormac. When Lograss came out, I asked the Cerulean if he had a Silence spell, but we ended up buying one off Cormac.
The three of us headed back in, and I was hoping to warn the brass, but the spell ran out by the time I got there, and it started all over again.

Luckily, H'resh has me stationed near the Estates a lot of the time. It seems your memory has no issues once you're out of range of the beast's song. Most just never learn something is wrong, so even when they leave the city, they have nothing bad to recall. I sure did by then.
I met Isolde on the road in the farmlands. She'd just returned from her trip and had picked up nothing of what was going on yet, save what I left in a letter. I just asked her for a Silence spell and told her it would be quickest if she saw for herself.
While she loathes silence, of course she does, she did have a wand that did the trick. There's something about the way she gets mad. She somehow looks as though, rather than picking a fight, she will walk up to whatever monster is threatening her and give it a piece of her mind.
She definitely got that look when we walked the streets and finally saw the beast. And what a beast.

So what is a False Hydra? Seb said it was an aberration, and it certainly fits that category of monsters. Five necks, each about the size of a purple worm, but of a white, pasty flesh rather than purple chitin. It looked like an overgrown maggot. Its face, however, is definitely humanoid. Dark sockets where eyes should be, but there aren't any. A mouth large enough to easily fit a cow with teeth bigger than my head, and a perpetual grin plastered across its face.
Like most of its ilk, it mocks the natural world by its very existence.

It seemed to sense us watching it, and peered down from over the rooftops in the city, trying to find us. While I normally dislike the walls in the Commons, they did save our hides then. When the beast could not find us, the necks retracted in search of different prey. Not knowing what we were up against, we decided not to pick a fight just yet. Who were we going to warn if we ended up dead?
As we considered our options, we saw its head thrust into a building. Even for their size, its jaws open disturbingly wide. It was chewing on something when it came out. I'm glad I was deaf at the time.
Its hunger sated, it disappeared undeground again.
We made it out of the city and parted ways. Isolde was going to warn and clear out the College first. H'resh seemed a good first choice, for me. Both because he's my commanding officer and because he was the least likely to be under the beast's spell, given that he is often at the Estates, himself.
He took me on my word, and here I am. A scant few minutes away from finding out if I planned this well enough.
While H'resh and the rest of the officers have prepared an eventual strike on the beast, he left me to oversee the evacuation.

I remember a time. Not too long ago, though it seems an eternity. I was laughing at the idea of being an officer, the paperwork and logistical nightmares that come with it. The logistical nightmare part certainly has come true.
It has kept me too busy to do much more than one more venture into the city. Isolde wanted to know if the song she once learned from a Far Realm maddened bard would have any effect on the creature's song, or even the creature itself.
While it did not go as we had hoped, we did learn three very important things.
One, just plugging your ears with wax deafened you enough.
Two, the creature had a sense of humour, mocking Isolde as her song had distracted its prey even better than it could. More than just a mindless animal, then.
Three, it could bleed. While we made our escape, we heard someone attacking the thing. Unfortunately, we were already sailing down the city walls with no way back up, or we would have helped. The way the creature turned away from us to face its attacker implied worry. By the time we reached a gate to see who was fighting it, it had fled underground again.

Once we convinced our fellows to deafen themselves, things truly got underway.
Bards, Ceruleans and Defenders started trickling out, the first two heading for the Witch, while the last gathered nearer the Estates.
I found I had my hands full not long after. The creature's tunnels span the entire city. Fighting it above ground might cause massive damage. Fighting it below ground might cause the tunnels to collapse, taking the city with it. Since the creature is intelligent, though we're not sure quite how intelligent, we have had to move carefully. Simply clearing out all its "cattle" would likely cause it to retaliate.
In these past few days, we’ve had to evacuate food stores, surplus tents and other necessities in case it levels the city, without drawing its notice. We've had to stop caravans from entering the city to avoid more victims while still ensuring their goods found their way to the markets to avoid depriving the citizens of essentials or the creature growing suspicious. Sending in our men dressed as civilians to keep up a screen of activity while we got people out piecemeal. Choosing who to save, and who to risk just a few days longer. Choosing who to inform, and who to leave under the illusion until the mass evacuation. Planning the escape routes, dealing with the Seafarers for their ships and Spellweaver for a portal. Planning contingencies for when other routes are cut off.
Deciding on the time span for the evacuation, and when to call the men back to prepare for the creature's attack. Preparing the handful of us that will keep evacuating even while the fight is going.

My friends will deal with the creature. I'm certain they will. Meanwhile, I have to get this evacuation under way at dawn. I hate that I will not be there with them. Yet, I am sworn to protect this city. At times that means cracking heads. Other times, that means making sure no innocents get caught in the middle of it.

[WouldBeBard]

We have returned victorious.

Lucy Rhodes is dead, her stronghold destroyed, her troops killed or scattered. The darkfire wand is in the hands of a fey queen so powerful we likely will not have to worry about the wand in our lifetimes. And I trust her to want to destroy it, besides.

The raid went as well as we could have hoped.
Despite everything arrayed against us, it was like clockwork. Insofar as such things can be, at least.
To be honest, you'd expect nothing less from the amount of experience come together on our part of the mission.
Isolde, Reemul, Cormac, Yrag, Amanda, Jonni, Raazi, Thau'lira, Juniper, Elliot, Ghan Seth, Meadow, Morgan, Scott Grim, Rey.
I can mention maybe a handful of others I would have wanted there.

Despite having expected to be part of the army's efforts in distracting Rhodes, Gom sent me to tag along with Rey's part of the raid. Aside from knocking heads, I was to mind Arch Weyland, whose unique skill with fire manipulation and former experience with darkfire would make him a useful addition. For this, he left me with two of my own and five other Defenders besides.
The lot of us were under Morgan's direct command, who mostly seemed to relish idea of Weyland giving him an excuse.

Everyone seemed to be on time for once. Except Raazi. It just wouldn't be right if it wasn't her. She managed to catch up easily enough as the march took a good while, though. Gom rode with us part of the way, then left us in the hands of the Far Scouts who brought us to one of the quieter approaches. Quiet being relative. It's just that there were fewer bandits there, and a great deal of them were being called away even as we advanced. Gom had been successful at kicking the hornets nest and kept most of their forces off our backs.
All we had to do was keep Rhodes from noticing us.

It worked out surprisingly well. The skirmishes throughout the forest kept their attention elsewhere. The sounds of our fights were drowned out by the sounds of battle and alarms everywhere, leaving the ones we faced to sending runners for reinforcements.
All knew their strengths, and all played to them. From Reemul and Amanda riding down messengers, Meadow creating openings for our invisible selves to run through and strike their back lines to Isolde knocking down acid vats meant for us, then Seth to causing a number of bandits to slip and fall into the stuff by way of a Grease spell.
It felt good to fight alongside the lot of them like that. Nothing stood long enough to get the word out. Whether barreling down on their mages alongside Cormac, or fighting on Reemul's flank against bandits turned myrkandite infused monstrosities.

Those last were disconcerting. Guarding Rhodes' slaves, they were covered with runes and had the red metal grafted to their bodies. Not to mention they were as tall as Reemul on horseback. The parallels with the rune infused monsters from months ago was not lost on me. Had that been Rhodes? Fim? Or had either just bought and repurposed the research?
They were not nigh untouchable like those things, thank the gods. They were vulnerable to most things, in fact. They just took an unbelievable amount of punishment. Later, Seth figured out the weaknesses with those runes were insanity and heightened aggression.
We saw that firsthand in their single-minded desire to simply hurt everything they saw. Even preferred whips over actual weapons just for a chance to inflict more pain before the kill. When Reemul and Isolde started getting Rhodes' slaves out, they even stopped fighting the adventurers whaling on them just to try and kill the slaves before they lost a chance at more death and pain.
They went down, though, like everything before them.

Now, each of those gathered impressed me that day, but especially Elliot. He's grown a lot.
After the myrkandite infused bandits, we came to a new clearing where a group of mages were working on a massive iron golem. Rhodes was going overboard with her myrkandite experiments, as we saw the entire thing had been more or less covered in the strange metal.
We tried to finish the mages before they had a chance to activate the thing, but no such luck. They saw us just a bit too soon, and we heard the golem whir and creak before we got the last of them.

The bandits had not been invulnerable, but this thing damn near was.
We would have had a serious problem if Elliot had not been levelheaded enough to destroy it through its control panel. A team effort, of course. Juniper actually found the thing that controlled the panel, with her and others playing keep away as people were escorting Elliot to the panel and the rest of us were just trying to slow the golem down.
It worked. And a good thing, too. Hitting the golem was like clanging a bell and it got so tiresome even Rey complained.

Elliot found himself a self-destruct button not long after reaching the panel. Not quick enough to keep the golem from turning Jonni's plate armor into a corset, but still. Job well done.
The self-destruct option was a bit dramatic, mind. Everyone dashed away as fast as their legs could carry themselves or others, and most huddled behind shields and rocks through such an almighty blast that it tore a hole through a wall and the floor, making a new path into the quarry we'd been looking for.
I still can't quite believe we'd been able to go around mostly undetected up until that point. The golem's explosion was impossible to ignore, of course, but I think it made little difference by then.
After that, all that was left was the myrkandite menhir. And Rhodes' elite with it.

Despite knowing full well we had just torn their defenses wide open and blown through all of Rhodes' special toys, those bastards weren't moving. Confidence, delusion, or simply banking on us being completely exhausted?
They might just have been less scared of us than they were of Rhodes and what she'd been doing.
Either way, the lot of them stood their ground, and again we would have had a serious fight on our hands if Seth had not pulled another trick out of his hat. Bless that glorious bastard. He somehow managed to teleport a warmachine from the old empire onto the battlefield and let it wreak havoc. It wasn't exactly friendly, but it did more damage to Rhodes' than to us.
Only after the warmachine exploded and the handful of remaining bandits saw the writing on the wall, did they try to dash through us and out, shouting we would get everyone around us killed.
Given all those bastards had to answer for, none of them escaped.

Then came the lull, with our smiths and arcanists getting to work. I can only imagine the furious scrambling and ranting Rhodes must have gone through in those moments of quiet.
Weyland had been on his best behaviour up until that point, not even asking for his lyre again after being rebuffed at the start, but he wasn't a fool. Rhodes was going to descend upon us with all the vindictiveness of an Erinyes and the pettiness of Geoff at any moment. The fact that he wanted his lyre is understandable. Morgan didn't need much convincing. We all knew this would be the day's do or die moment.
Once Weyland had his lyre, he went to stand guard by the menhir as those of us neither magically inclined nor good with mining tools formed a ring around them.
If the blow we struck had Rhodes reeling, it did not last long.

From the west, we could hear horns blaring, soon followed by the sound of pounding feet. The approach of hundreds. Rhodes was desperate at this point, and everything she still had was being sent our way. We saw the first of them running down the ramp of the quarry, with others simply rappelling down the cliffside to get at us.
Then we heard our casters call out that more were teleporting in as well, with the first shimmering portals opening not long after. Like mad, they all threw themselves at us.
Each of them knowing what Rhodes might do if they did not stop us. Each of them too afraid to turn against her.
There were trained warriors still among them. A sizeable group of skilled mages. A few handfuls of assassins. The overlarge part though? Street toughs. Pickpockets. Swindlers and thieves. I know they'd made their choice, but by the end it felt like fighting farmers. All terrified. All choosing death over what Rhodes had in store.

A while back, I wrote about needing to have seen some things to truly understand them. I believe this, then, is one of those things I did not understand yet. I still doubt I truly do.
Not choosing death over other fates. I fully understand that. No, the primordial fear of the darkfire.
I know what the darkfire is capable of. There's just something about things like that. Something so unimaginable that simply knowing isn't enough. I was only to learn when Rhodes appeared at the top of the cliff.
Utterly mad and thirsting for vengeance, half hidden by smoke from fires all around, she pointed her wand at the myrkandite covered menhir and fired. Not a single care that she herself would be destroyed.
I was down in the quarry, a decent bowshot away from both the menhir and the woman. Too late and too far, all I could to was watch that dreaded fire.
It seemed to suck in the light around it, becoming a more vivid black than even a spell of Darkness, yet it still had form and seemed to erupt like volcano with every foot it travelled closer to us.
As I saw the black flame seemingly crawl and seep down through the air like a living thing, I knew what would happen if it touched the menhir.
I knew. Yet it was Isolde's ear piercing cry of abject terror that truly told me how fucked we were.
If not for Arch Weyland, that is.

Mesmerized as I was by the sight of the living flame, I could only watch in awe as the man played his lyre and caused it to slow to a crawl. It did not stop. It would not stop. Weyland had explained as much before we left. Yet it hung there, pushing against a force I could not see, trying to get to any living thing near it.
All this passed in a matter of seconds. By the time I had come to my senses and strung my bow, Rhodes was pointing her wand at her next target. I am a middling archer at best, but what else was I to do? Luckily, it's not my shot that had to be relied on that day.
Aid came in the form of Silvia the fey, with vines grasping the wand and wrenching it from Rhodes' hand in a moment of distraction. Despite that black flame still dancing over the heads of our miners, the tension broke, and arrows were sent up the cliff in quick succession.
Rhodes fled. Back into her stronghold, delaying the inevitable.

Not long after her ignoble exit, our miners peeled the last of the myrkandite from the menhir. This is where we left Weyland. Rhodes needed to be stopped, but the flame needed to be kept busy. He assured us he could do it. There was something in the way he said it, though. We promised we would be back for him, but he had made things very clear. It would not stop.

The extent of Rhodes' madness became even more apparent as we made our way into her sanctum. Potions and scrolls lay discarded everywhere, much like her own lieutenants and advisors. Whether they'd displeased her or had tried to stop her was unclear, but the end result was the same. Enemies or not, I quietly prayed they'd been spared the wand.
When we found her in her war room, we saw the effect of quite that much magic running through a person's body. This time she truly did seem more vengeful spirit than human, with eyes blazing like fire and voice rumbling like thunder. She cursed us for all we'd done, but did not waste more than two breaths on talk. Instead, she chose to go for Rey's throat.
With the swing of her sword, dozens of spectral blades appeared and joined in the fray.
As much as I wanted to see her dead for the damage she's done, I realized that Rhodes was not my fight. As she clashed with Rey, a dozen more fights erupted as several of us drew the attention of the spectral blades, keeping them off the backs of those fighting the traitor.

Rhodes' fight was pure hatred. Seething at the adventurers calling her out, forgetting Rey in her anger and lashing out at us, goaded into fighting us all at once. Not that it hampered her much. Scrolls and potions having been spent, she used whatever magical trinket she had lying around to turn the battlefield to her advantage. Her stronghold was wracked by thunder and lightning, the roof and walls of her sanctum and even the canopy around it torn apart by the erupting of some magical stone. Using the distraction to call yet more creatures, wraiths and shades this time, from portals that sprung up all across the crumbling floor of a tower that was almost collapsing under the violent winds and barrage of magical energy.
A crescendo of violence and chaos that reached its peak when Rhodes called a Storm of Vengeance which several of us had to endure while being magically held. Rhodes hoped those who were fighting her would choose to protect their dying friends instead.

And just like that, it ended. I'm unsure if Rey knew what she was doing, or if she was simply too driven by beating Rhodes to stop fighting, but she dealt the killing blow to Rhodes and the storm died with her. The silence and sudden release of magical bonds so unexpected I could see some of us stumble.
As Rhodes' wounds became too grievous to go on, we could see cracks forming in her skin, her body withering from all the magic it could no longer contain.
She started to cry out in pain, but even that release was denied to her as Meadow strangled the woman's cry with a wire, then took her head when she stopped moving. Just to be sure.

Objectively, the raid went well.
Rhodes lay dead. We licked our wounds courtesy of Jonni and Savras, the spoils were ours, and the army was fast approaching.
We ended the threat. Casualties among the troops were minimal. Among our raid party, just one.

That one death, though.
Meadow assured me that it is not on me. The deed was Rhodes, and the choice was Weyland's. No buts. With Rhodes' death, justice in this life has been served. The gods will see to Rhodes' fate after this.
My rational mind understands, and agrees. And had it not been for the darkfire, I think my gut would have accepted it. Yet I gave my word. So have I done enough?

We went back for Weyland, as promised. We came too late, as he had likely expected us to.
We found him half consumed by the flame already. A smoldering husk that still had a human head, two arms and a few fingers. The fingers weren't their full length anymore, either. Yet still those fingers played.
The flame itself had faded, but the embers were slowly eating away at his flesh. The embers Holmsmead had so warned me about.
Some of his last words were for Morgan, the man he had killed. Wishing he had found a way to make it up to him. His last for Berlinne were that he did it for the Jewel.

My inkling of the scope of his choice, of the damage the darkfire does, came when he finally gave in.
The moment he stopped playing, the embers raced to consume what was left. A last flare of white light, followed by the uncanny feeling of emptiness emanating from the ashes.
The impression of a void were we could see none.
Arch Weyland was a convicted criminal. The city's records will have their things to say about him.
Here, and on one page among the endless reports at headquarters, exists at least one view that details what he did for all of us.
He chose to let his soul be destroyed, a sacrifice so all encompassing few will ever understand the full implication. To save the souls of all those present, and all of Narfell.

[WouldBeBard]

"You'll see this as a blessing soon enough."

You don't often hear that in reference to death. When you do, you expect it to hear it from a villain.
It seems I heard it from a hero. I know, I know. A lot of us would be called heroes for the things we've done and most of us can be morally flexible.
This one was the bona fide, larger than life, hear about him in bedtime stories type of hero, though.

It happened shortly after my return to the city. Rumours started circulating of issues out by the Icelace. Water had been seen flowing up into the air once more, but this time reports included the giants appearing frozen in time. It should come as no surprise to anyone that I set out to face our dear Eastlander mage again. Nothing like being thrown into the deep end right after some down time, eh?

I really should work on my response time, mind. I got out to the portals only to find I was already beaten there by Isolde, along with a guy named France Webber and a girl that goes by the name Puddle. No, no, you read that right. Far be it from me to judge a person for having a noun as their only name, but Puddle? I figure she's Eldathi.
Not that I minded Isolde being there, however. I hadn't been able to catch her since coming back, and it was a welcome moment to find her, even in those circumstances. Especially in those circumstances. I would have gone in alone if need be, but I was pleased need was not.

Introductions were had, Isolde asked me what had kept me so long, I replied Nunya and she vowed she will slap Nunya across the face some day. She should. Nunya is quick becoming the biggest pain in the ass since Quercem.
As we waited, it seemed no extra hands were coming. There was no sign of the mage, either. So we did the only responsible thing and entered the portal to gods know when with the two adventurers we barely knew.

Stepping in, our vision started turning into headache inducing fractals, stretching and replicating until we felt something snap us back into place. We were in a group of menhirs not far from the old Watchtower, and it was night. There wasn't much time to consider our next steps, however, as a trio of bandits was already barreling down on us. Their unusually dark clothing made us believe they were lying in wait for people emerging. Our Eastlander has come to expect us, then.

As Isolde and France provided us with invisibility, we walked away from the dead bandits. We still had no idea of what mess the Eastlander was making, so we needed to find civilization. It was a toss up whether that should be Peltarch or one of the other towns. Discussing our options, we were blindsided by streaks of bright light coming for us from the south. We made a dash for the nearest cover despite the invisibility, and saw the Eastlander arrive through some manner of teleportation, right in front of another of their mages.

If you were expecting our mage to treat her fellows with a little more respect than she does her adversaries, you would be mistaken. She called out the understandably surprised mage, insulting her and telling her to stop asking questions, then just shushing her like a child. I swear, she all but pressed her finger to the confused mage's lips to shut her up.
Her main concern is what year it was. When it turned out to be the Year of the Red Robin, she seemed quite pleased with herself. As I was annoying the others with a pun about Eastlanders and robbin', our mage was already ordering her subordinate to head to the south bridge and jump off it. Class act. With a last doublecheck to see where Peltarch was, she teleported away again in that streak of light, the afterimage pointing north.
We left the flabbergasted mage and followed.

By the time we'd reached the city, dawn had caught up to us, and it brought our dear Aoth with it. Despite the vastness of the fountain lined walkway into Old Peltarch, she managed to bump into my fading invisible self. She did that on purpose, I'm sure. If I wasn't me, I'd want to put my hands all over me all the time, too.
Given how little we knew about the Eastlander's plans, there was little for her to catch up on, and we made our way to the Commons.

Isolde pretty much squealed in glee when we arrived, though she kept her voice low. The bards were out in force. She went about pointing them out to me. Delvana, Demi, Clandra and Eowiel. I recognized only Eowiel, but some names did ring a bell. Clandra, which I believe is Six's grandmother. Of the non bards, Aspera Chillwind. I only heard that after already having sassed her. Thankfully, she put it down to me being a yokel. Somewhere in the midst of it all, we seemed to have lost France. He made it back, though.

The gathered had been discussing the rumours of the day. A teddybear of a man had gone missing, and a crusader was causing trouble.
It slowly dawned on me what the significance of the Year of the Red Robin was. Koreth the Crusader had been sending gifts to some of the Senators, and pointedly ignoring others. Defender General Telan, Hero of the Giant Wars, was the missing teddybear. Things were, what, days from taking a turn for the worse in the city. Weeks? Yet, all that had happened, and it was not our place to change it.

Militaria aren't Isolde's strong suit, it seems. She knew the names, but not their significance or their feats. I pointed out some of the things Telan had done, and what he had meant to the city. So far, everything seemed as it should be, so we spent a bit more time in the commons. It seemed a little late to target Telan's feats against the Eastlanders.
Isolde and I were mingling with the people of the city to the extent that Aspera walked off to find some inquisitors, visibly disturbed. I swear, our topics of conversation were no worse than any we have outside the Mermaid.
Know what? Nevermind.

Aoth was walking around and managed to start a conversation with Emma Lavindo and a Far Scout she referred to as Az. Telan's trail was mostly cold. What seemed significant, however, was one of his attachés being held hostage by a tribe of fire giants and their sorceress. Aoth seemed convinced this was who we were supposed to recover, so off to their territory we went. She did speak a hope out loud that this wasn't Chaevre or similar that we were heading out to save.

The good news was that fire giant territory was leagues closer to the city in those days. The bad news was that there seemed to be a whole lot more of them. On top of that, the area was rife with Eastlanders, we had no real idea of where we needed to be aside from going "up", and there was no way to avoid every fight, as we had been careful about doing.
Aoth, however, had a theory that everything we do while we are there, we do in a bubble. Things seemed to reset when we return, likely because the mage needs to set it in stone, so to speak. Thinking about it, she likely is correct. Taking part in the siege on Jiyyd seems to have changed nothing. Even the past Isolde had visited where Atol was already ruling Peltarch disguised as Rath Ashald seems to have left no mark on our present.
On one hand, this means Cormac and I could have roughed up that fat bastard Eastlander. But then that means it would have merely been violence for our own gratification. It does make the memory of Parnell's fate easier.

Pushing through those hills took a lot out of us. Invisibility spells and potions to still avoid as much trouble as we could. Blood and sweat when we couldn't. We knew the Eastlanders were waiting for some sort of blast from eavesdropping on them, and we had a good scare when the ground started rumbling around a group of menhirs. Thankfully it was only Thau, likely having stepped into the portal or one of the the inverted vortices. I was glad enough for the reinforcement. The skew in numbers made the Eastlanders disinclined to parlay.
We finally got a bit of clarity when we beat a group of Eastlanders into being more talkative.

Interestingly, they were reinforcing the hilltop against the giants. That threw the idea of our mage masquerading as the fire giant sorceress out the window. Our mage was poised to attack a fire giant position. He couldn't help us with the why of it, though, just that his crew was supposed to hold the area to keep the giants from moving on her. We let him go and moved on. Either we were in a bubble and it would not matter, or what we did mattered and we should kill as few as we reasonably could.

The fight up the rest of the hill was intense. A three way fight between the five of us, what Eastlanders our mage could muster and the fire giants with their sorcerous chieftain. The giants weren't what gave me trouble, however. It was the Eastlanders' bloody sneaks. Trying to take one more ridge, I lost oversight and found myself surrounded by their lot. I took a few of them with me, but a halberd is not your friend when you are within arms reach of more than a dozen daggers. Too late to reach Yuran's rapier. Hells. Too late to uncork a potion.
As I lay there bleeding out, Isolde healed me. I know she did. She was on time. Wasn't she? Perhaps the spell hadn't been strong enough.

I regained consciousness on a hill. The one our Eastlander was on. I heard Thau give thanks to Corellon for small miracles. I stumbled to my feet and drew my rapier, but it seemed she was defeated already. Isolde hurried up to me, telling me Telan was dead and our mage was saying this was meant to be, asking if I could confirm.
Still scrambled from what I'd just been through, I tried to piece my thoughts together. Yes, Telan disappeared. No, he was never found alive. Infighting among the captains in his absence allowed Koreth to rise up and become who he was. None of that was the mage's doing.

The mage had had a different plan in mind. Rescue Telan's attaché. Pull strings so his second would replace him as general in due time. Kaster Lavindo would never become general, and the great Eastlander War would not be quite as final. That had failed, however, and I assume the attaché lay dead in those hills somewhere.
As my head grew clearer, I once again tried to convince the mage of the folly of trying to change the flow of time, as did the others. She railed against the idea that time would get the best of her, but as Thau pointed out, the lord of time is Seldarine and our mage was most definitely mortal.
As she raged against reality, reality began to crack and shatter, though it felt different from the other times. More slowly, this time. More real. If time were a fabric, I would say it started to fray and tear. So did the mage. Blood was running from her mouth and nose as she was yelling about someone. A woman she held dear. A daughter? A sister? A lover? She didn't say, but our mage would turn things back.
Isolde and tried to get through to her. There were less drastic choices. Save just a handful. Save just the one. If she kept trying this, none of us might return next time. I doubt we reached her. As decades flashed before our eyes at dizzying speed, she faded from view. With another snap, a vicious one, like an overstrained tendon snapping, we were brought back to the menhirs at the Icelace with no mage in sight.

You will note that none of the above really explains my opening sentence. I felt it important to finish that part of the story first, so you would be less confused than I was. The hero I mentioned, I met when I was sent to the Fugue.

I have talked about remembering your deaths, before. Learn from them, so that they might matter. I do believe this one mattered more than any in the past, though what I learned from it goes quite a bit beyond the mistakes I made on the battlefield.
Remembering the Fugue, however, is always difficult. Like trying to hold on to a particularly nebulous dream. I remembered Nenufar's visit clearly, but that was the Abyss.
This time I remember just as clearly, but it most definitely was the Fugue.

In that place of endless gray mists, I felt disoriented for a while as I recalled my final moments.
Surrounded by nothing but an empty world without end or horizon, where the sky is no different from the ground you stand on, and the nearest soul might as well be half a world removed from yours, I was awoken from my thoughts by the slow, even grating of a whetstone running over a blade.

I did not immediately see where the sound came from. The strange plane made it seem like it came both from right beside me and from right around a corner that did not exist. As I looked all around, I spoke up to see if anyone answered.
"Done in by a bandit. Never a good way to go." A gruff voice answered. I turned around again, then I saw him. A brown haired, bearded man sitting on a stone bench, dressed in a simple tunic. I had already looked there, hadn't I?
"There are worse ways to go." He continued.

I knew the voice, or at least, the kind of voice. I knew the way he applied the whetstone. I knew the way he held the sword as he worked. There sat the spirit of a man that had seen battle. Likely even more than I have.
He got to his feet, and I could see completely silvered armor next to the bench. He put the blade down down by it. I replied few of our profession met our end in bed. Half stating, half asking, I said he knew from experience, to which he simply replied that he did.
As he stood before me, he spoke those words. "You'll see this as a blessing soon enough. This way, we get to talk".
I had assumed he was one more soul waiting to move on, or to return. Remarking on that, he said there was no moving on for him. He chose to be fateless. I heard a clear distinction. Not Faithless. Fateless. Like his companions before him. Yet, where his companions had nothing, he remained in the Fugue.
He believed I would make the same choice, were I in his shoes. I did not understand fully, but I could not shake the feeling he knew me well enough to make that judgement. Still, he was there to help me make sure such a thing would not happen.
He smiled a bit when I welcomed his help and said I'd sure rather not be stuck in the Fugue if at all possible.

He did not have time for the whole story, despite my prompting him. He had come with a warning. Don't let the darkflame touch you. All it takes is one ember. I'd never heard of the thing, so he explained. A fire so vile it burns the very soul away. Get touched by it, and there will be nothing left of you. No soul, no ghost, no spirit, nothing to send to your God. No afterlife.
I felt sick to my stomach as he told me. Regardless of what I have seen and been through, I have always held to the idea that my soul would be stronger for it when I finally move on. Yet here was a weapon that could deny a person even that. The weapon that burned away his men.

Since he called it Abyssal, I assumed more demons were coming. He was speaking of Rhodes, however. Stepping over to a bowl of water that I am certain was not there minutes before, he showed me an image reflected on its sufrace, remarking he wasn't sure if Kelemvor was merciful or cruel to him. I could see Narfell, Peltarch, the woods and Rhodes' stronghold. A final link this spirit had to the world, for him to gaze into while he denied himself his fate.

Rhodes had the darkflame. Just a scrap, but he reiterated all it took was a single ember. He then pointed to a specific spot in the stronghold. There I could see a menhir encased in a red metal, excavated by Rhodes' countless slaves. That menhir could amplify any spell cast at it, and send it wherever the leylines ran. The amount of menhirs in Narfell is astounding. Rhodes could torch the entire country if she fired the flame into that. The spirit next to me fully expected she would rather do that than let anyone else rule. He impressed on me her cruelty in Frobrook, a battle he had witnessed from his place in the Fugue, and asked me what I believed her capable of.

He lamented Smoke and the men and women he'd lost to him, then told me not to let Rhodes do the same. Slowly it began to dawn on me who I was talking to, but I could not recall his name. I asked him, but he simply said he was a man who made too many mistakes and was trying to avoid another. I noted the symbol of Torm on his silver armour, then heard him say it again. Half commanding me, half imploring me.
Don't let her. Whatever you do, don't let her.
I gave him my word.

The weight on his shoulders seemed just a tiny bit lighter as he called me a good lad and told me he hoped to never see me again.
I told him he would, at least once more. Some day when I am old and gray. "For a moment, aye, perhaps." Came the reply and he sat back down.
As I became aware of a silver to pure white light shimmering at the edge of sight, he returned to his work of sharpening the sword. He ignored it. That light was inviting me alone, though I cannot shake the feeling he had brought it there. As I turned towards it, I heard him tell me to walk the True Path.
I couldn't help but say out loud that I always try.

Meadow later urged me never to see death as a blessing. I know what she means. Still, I cannot help wonder if the spirit was right. It seemed a missing puzzle piece to Rey and Gom.

The spirit. Sir Robert Holmsmead. Isolde had reminded me once I'd gotten myself together. The leader of the Silver Host that Eve keeps so close to her heart. The once Chosen of Torm had been given the opportunity to warn me just what Lucy Rhodes was about, then tasked me with doing whatever I could to keep her from using her weapon and sent me home.
I certainly feel a great deal more blessed than when I encountered Nenufar, despite the magnitude of the task before me. Not just me, of course. My rational mind knows it could have been any of us. He would have asked Thau, he would have asked Puddle, he would have asked Isolde or Aoth. Yet it landed on me, and I have given my word.

We hurried back to the city to inform Rey, and bumped into Gom who was also looking for her in the Mermaid.
Rey had suspected something from Rhodes along those lines, but had not known how she would do it. Gom had Far Scout eyes on the stronghold, but none seemed to know there even was a menhir in there.
Pressed on my source, the general bristled, but Rey seemed to take it as truth. At least they both took it serious enough to act on it.
Beyond informing them, I have done what I could in regards to the raid on Rhodes. Repeating ad nauseum the importance of having Rhodes believe she can win, offering ways we might achieve that, providing the map of the stronghold as viewed from above and the location of the menhir, and providing those involved with planning what intel I had on her forces. The rest is on the mages, crafters and priests. All else I can give is my halberd.

Tomorrow, we go to war. I pray it will have been enough.

[WouldBeBard]

Night has come to Unapproachable East. A cold wind blows across the vast plains between Lethyr Forest and Lake Ashane
On a river created by a great cataclysm, now peaceful as though it always had been there, rests a ship. The sails struck and its anchor dropped, it gently rocks on the slow current, just behind a bend on the inner bank.
As the wind passes the mast, faint chiming can be heard. Up in the rigging is tied a colourful sash with bells, of a sort dancers might use. The rest of the ship is as grey as the mist on the plains, fading into the background with its sternlight unlit.
On the bow is a plaque, the name "Wisp" engraved in the wood, then lacquered.

The deck is empty, the ship's crew having turned in for the night. All two of them. There is still some light down below. A single candle above a desk at the back of their quarters casts its weak light across the rest of the room.
Enough coin and the sacrifice of cargo space has provided the place with some luxuries. A small, cushioned sitting area where hammocks can be added. A liquor cabinet. A galley. A real bed.
The dark haired girl lies under the covers, sleeping. Fitfully, but still.
The young man sits at the desk, watching her from his seat, his writing momentarily forgotten.

When he hears her give a start then mumble a few words, he cannot help but smile, though it is tinged with worry.
He turns back to his writing. The night won't last forever, and he will need his rest for tomorrow's sailing.

I'm traveling, right now. No duties, no objectives, no goals.
I suppose that's not uncommon in and of itself. I just never did so before. Not since the day I boarded a ship out of Hlath and set out to get away from a grief and expectations I was too young to handle.
Where would I have traveled before? Back home?

I see some of the adventurers here do it, the ones who have not been here so long that all their living relatives are nearby.
I've considered it. Back when I first set out and more recently. To what end, though? My family was angered enough by my first departure.
I am not a complete fool, I know myself well enough to realize I could not have stayed, breaking their hearts all over again.
And besides, what do you say when you have been absent for five, seven, ten years?
The great adventures I had lived at that time mostly consisted of mud, blood, rain and poor food. Father never spoke much of his duties, of what he did in his years of service. I resented him a little for it at the time, but I came to understand quite quickly once out there.
You never tell them everything. You don't want them to worry. And so, the letters home become vague. You shield them from the worst of it. The consequence is that you return a stranger, however. You never quite fit in anymore.
So no. My leave was spent among the rest of the hopeless wastrels and layabouts that made up our company.
It never had the warmth of a home, but they understood.

I briefly considered it some time ago, as I grew more grounded in these lands. Rooted. At home.
I felt I might finally have something to tell them they could relate to. Things they would whole heartedly support, even if I lived half a world away.
Of course, nothing is ever that simple.
Fate has decided otherwise. No soul alive could truly relate to the things we have seen and done, but for those who have seen the same.
Were I to go home now, I would be worse than a stranger. Even if they were to believe everything, I would become as unknowable to them as the monsters I have faced alongside my friends.

Imagine going home to a country that, at best, distrusts magic.
Decked out in equipment so enchanted it could buy their ships and warehouses, with some of their houses to boot.
Having witnessed and fought some of the greatest nightmares imaginable. Having traveled to other Planes, other worlds and other times, and somehow having survived it all. Then see them realize full well you are but a single stone, not nearly the strongest, in the wall that keeps those nightmares at bay.
Among my friends and other adventurers I know I have not seen the worst. Among them, I still feel normal.
My relatives back home might be amazed. They might be grateful. But what else? How far can you go before you are as terrifying to the common man or woman as the creatures you protect them from?

No, returning home never struck me as a good idea. As much as I stand by them, my choices have separated me from my old life. As such, I never took any time off beyond what I needed to recuperate. From one campaign to the next, back when. From one objective to the next, now.

Yet, here I am. I am writing this from my desk on board our ship. Ours. And despite my lament above, I am hopeful.
We have sailed down the Scar to the Great Dale. Then as far south and west as the rivers have let us, into Thesk. From here? Try to reach Telflamm. Why? No reason beyond wanting to go.

Here there is understanding, there is warmth. A home.
Alongside this quiet slip of a girl that is as terrifying to the commoners as any of the monsters I have faced.
Hells, she scared me when we first met.
I remember her saying she was impressed that I chose to stand against the Reachful Hands. I was at once chuffed and felt a cold shiver down my spine that she, of all people, had noticed me.
Later, with her offer that she would gladly accompany me on any of my "little expeditions" out in the wilds, I felt more nervous than heading into battle the first time. I'm not certain if I worried because I wanted to impress her, or because I thought she'd be the death of me.

All that changed.
First in the temple of Helm, where I saw something behind the cold exterior. There I learned the difference between her face and the face she puts on out there.
In the endless dark beneath Jiyyd, where her presence soothed me more than memories haunted me.
Later, as I gathered up what could best be described as boyhood courage and asked her if there was anything she ever did for fun, or just to relax.
I fell for her on a night we watched the wisps dance. Harder still watching the sunrise from inside an ice cave. And I was doomed when we ourselves danced among the fey.
I have come to know her over the course of these insane adventures, and she has come to know me.
She understands my motivations, choices and thoughts better than any other. Because she has seen.
She thanks me for the gift of hope, yet does she realize she has given it to me in turn? This breathtaking woman with a determination that puts mine to shame, that dares to try and cast off her ghosts, same as I do.

I say try. I see it in her still. There is something that plagues her, but she has not spoken it out loud. I know the look. I get that look at times, when my mind wanders back. I wonder, but I don't ask. You cannot force these things.
Still, she says I have given her hope, and these past days I have truly seen it.

I have seen her come alive more than ever out on the water, away from the city, like a bird that refused to sing until it was uncaged. Her face has lit up like the first dawn and it is just as beautiful. She struggles for dear life against the elements with inspiring joy and defiance.
She moves across the deck and up the mast as though she never did anything else, with all the grace that comes from a lifetime of honing your body. Grinning at the challenge while making a fool of my heavy steps.
I swear, she is -this- close to singing along when I'm belting out one more song.
And still she dodges compliments the way she dodges fists, always insisting she is no Isolde, or my eyesight must be failing.
I think the latter might be correct. Others never seem to notice her beauty, but even I didn't see just how deep it runs.

I would spend a lifetime at her side.

The man salts the ink, then adds the page to the leather case that already holds so many. Snuffing the candle, he makes his way through the room in the dark, knowing the layout by heart.

When he finally crawls under the covers, sleep comes easily. Filled with dreams on how many more pages will follow, and just what they might hold.

[WouldBeBard]

The sun stands in the west, sinking low and bathing the city's docks in the pleasant light of the golden hour. Some clouds are drifting in from across the lake, but if they hold rain, they are still hours away.

The voices of docksiders can still be heard in the streets, though at this hour the hawkers and fishmongers seem content with the day's earnings. Their conversations are softer and less agitated than they were at the middle of the day. Soon they will pack up what they did not sell and head for home and hearth, or tavern and common room. Then in the morning, they will do it all again.

Aside from the gentle buzz of conversation, the soft knocking of tied up boats is a constant.
The young man sits on a pair of crates, eyes closed as he drinks in the last sunlight and listens to the place he calls home.
When at last he opens his eyes, they settle on a new ship, tied up at its berth. So new, in fact, that the name plaque has yet to be revealed.

It has become everything he hoped and more, worth every crown and copper. Dishing out the extras for its finishing and furnishings had paid off. The ship could serve as a home better than his one room apartment, sail all but the most shallow waters and handle any weather on the lake. Hells, it probably could handle any natural storm out at sea, for that matter.

But not quite yet. The crates he sat on still needed loading, and the ship itself needed a blessing.
The dockhands he hired should be there soon, and after that, he could find the wayward Windcaller.
In the meantime, he sets to writing the last lines on his latest entry.

The third time we faced the Eastlander, the whole experience was disconcerting for entirely different reasons.

I was on duty when rumours started circulating throughout the ranks and the city that inverted vortices were visible out by the Icelace beach. Even our patrols did not want to go near them, so I headed for the Commons to find a group of madmen to join me and see what they were about.
I found Mira and Peredoc talking about it, so they weren't hard to snap up. Just as we were headed out, we bumped into Isolde, Cormac and Juniper who'd had the same idea.

As we reached the beach, we could see the water flowing up out on the Lake proper, a bit too far out to just step into. As with the spirit wolves, however, we found a trail of dead hill giants. Following them lead us to the menhirs in the area, and that portal was still open.
Assuming there would be no further assistance, and knowing we would have to sail out to reach the vortices if this one closed, we stepped into the portal.

We once again came to in Jiyyd. It's surprising how fast you can get used to things. The strangeness of the experience was fast fading. The gawking at old legends remained, however. I am uncertain about the when, but there was an uneasy truce with the Eastlanders. Despite this, Peltarch forces had gathered in Jiyyd. General Del'Rosa was walking around with a sergeant's chevrons. General Neverith wore a captain's pauldrons. Overhearing their conversation we learned they were under the command of General Kaster Lavindo. There's one I regret not having seen in person.
Given the timing, I would say we were closer to the Eastlander War and the fate our mage is so desperate to avoid.

The officers were discussing the disappearance of a cadet. None other than Lucy bloody Rhodes. Of all the people we could have been called upon to save, it had to be that bitch. I will admit I felt conflicted. It seemed so easy to just leave her to her fate to die, so tempting to let her death mean the survival of so many innocents.
Still, the dangers of messing with the flow of time had been impressed on us many times. Who knows what damage we would do if we were that petty? No, Isolde and I understood. Heavy as it was, we set to our duty of getting cadet Rhodes to safety. We did have a laugh about stabbing her just a little bit, though
The others didn't quite get the joke or the rancour, as they did not know the woman or what she's done. On the plus side, this meant they had no qualms about saving her.

We overheard the officers say Rhodes had been expected to meet a Far Scout out in the Pass near Sam's Hill. That being our only lead, we set out to see what we could find.
Thanks to the truce, we were not immediately shot when we approached the Hill. There were quite a few archers stationed there, however, eyeing us like they would do nothing rather. Our chances would be good enough if it came to it, so Isolde walked up to see if there was someone she could talk to.
We were approached by some filthy, portly sack of a man claiming to be an officer. With a laugh so greasy it might make even Rey's toes curl, he explained that they'd seen the lass waiting around. The poor old Far Scout never showed up for some strange reason, so they "encouraged" the girl to spend the night in the safety of an Eastlander tent.
Behind me, I heard Cormac slide up and whisper. "He's singing our song, dancing man." He must've seen the expression on my face at the slimy bastard's implication.
I even regretted making the stabbing joke at that point. For once, I could actually feel for Rhodes.
I stood, however. Hands tied yet again by not knowing the effects of charging the bastard and all his cronies on that hill. Gods, but did I want to take Cormac up on his offer. I can only hope the bandit and his lot met justice in the war that came their way.
He did reveal that the Eastlander mage had come to collect Rhodes in the morning, but he had no idea where she'd taken her. He simply sent Isolde "Jellytrunk" Garibaldi off with a vague gesture north, as they were the southernmost outpost. So north we went. Feeling uneasy about the situation, we again decided to go under invisibility.

Not all the Eastlanders were keen on respecting the truce. The next bunch we encountered heard us and wanted us to reveal ourselves and lower our weapons as we approached, giving us until the count of five. There was no count. I'm uncertain if one of the others did anything to provoke it, but barely had we thrown off the spell, or arrows came flying from the darkness. Once that happened, the Hells broke loose. Cormac and I flew at the nearest bandits that were charging us, spells were going up and arrows were flying both ways.
I honestly don't think we would have survived that particular fight, but the mage interfered.

One moment, we were fighting for dear life. The next, hours seemed to have passed and all the Eastlanders were gone. Well. All except one. There she stood, heaving for breath as though she had outrun a dire tiger.
Obviously weakened, I considered ending her there and then, both Mira and Cormac backing me up. Isolde stopped us, however. For all we knew, we might not make it back if she died, and we still knew nothing about Rhodes' whereabouts.
When the Eastlander finally caught her breath, it turned out Isolde had been correct. Rhodes was elsewhere. Kept secure by the Eastlander, to be returned if we helped her out with just one little thing.

It is frustrating to be this powerless. To always be mindful of not causing waves too great and letting things slide you otherwise never would. We have greater obligations and responsibilities than just some wounded pride or righteous anger, however, and the Eastlander held all the cards.
She explained that we had to help her in raiding a "Time Castle" and get our hands on some "Time Juice". Condescending as ever, she refused to elaborate or use technical terms, as we'd just hurt ourselves thinking about it.

She created two portals. We were to pick one, and she would take the other. Once there, we were to make our way through the castle and find said juice on our own as she kept the denizens busy. It was Isolde who first recognized it as the Mechanus, as the Eastlander had not bothered to specify. I really should find some books on the place. I would ask Serenity if I could find her. I still have no idea where exactly we went.
I'm not sure if the Eastlander did much to help, but we did see few natives to the plane. What we did see was disturbing enough. We entered through what seemed a prison system that was crawling with slaadi, whom most definitely are not native. Most were red or blue, though there was one with obsidian skin. The creatures did not take kindly to us being there, and we had to fight our way through the halls.
Slaadi are unnerving creatures at the best of times, but the environment seemed to make it so much worse. As their blood spilled to the floor, the ground immediately absorbed it all, as if it hungered. When we killed a group, other slaadi would throw themselves at their corpses to eat them, even ignoring us until the corpses were gone. The slaadi, too, seemed famished. We quickly learned to burn the corpses so we did not lure more to us.

Coming to the end of the prison system, we encountered the floating image of what seemed to be an old man, asking what the "disruption in the flow" was about. Mira, bless her, simply stated there was a routine maintenance going on.
The old man accepted the explanation as truth, admonished for taking too long to finish , and the image disappeared. A bit farther down the corridor, we found a door into the hall that held the old man, more imprisoned slaadi, and a large, cactus-like plant.
A series of tubes, red and blue, seemed to come from several places in the facility, ending in the bed that grew the cactus. As we tried to make sense of the place, we saw the slaadi being executed, their blood drained into the bed, with the ground again taking it up almost instantly.
The slaadi, then, were cattle to feed the plant, and we had disrupted the flow by killing so many of them.
The plant seemed to secrete the nectar-like juice we were looking for.

The old man noticed us and simply accepted our presence, asking if the maintenance had been done.
Curious thing about the Mechanus natives. They seem to have a hard time considering the concept of subterfuge. There were a great deal of securities in place to keep out people who did not need to be there. None of the security measures were triggered, and we did not seem strong enough to circumvent them, so I assume it seemed logical to the creature that we were allowed to be there.
Mira, thinking quickly once more, told the man maintenance was almost finished, we just needed samples of the juice to ensure that the plant had not been damaged due to the disruption.
The old man simply told us we knew how, and to get to it.

I will spare you the details of milking the plant. Suffice it to say I never imagined seeing any of us in that situation, let alone all of us. Especially Cormac's spit and slap is something I wish I could burn from my memory. Ros would have had the time of her life commenting on that scene.
We did managed to fill several vials of the stuff, at least.
Once we'd gathered the juice, I felt the air grow solid and begin to crack. I had been wondering if we were in the Mechanus of the past, or if we had already been returned to the present. I guess that answered it.

Once I could open my eyes again, we were back at the menhirs by the Icelace beach. The mage was waiting for us. She seemed troubled. Frantic. She kept glancing towards the east, as though she expected something to show up. When I asked her about it, she snapped at us and refused to elaborate. My gut tells me it is the Autyarch, but that's just conjecture at this point.
As we stalled, she gave off an erratic air that grew worse by the minute. The air around her began to crack, much like we had felt it around us, but this time we could see it. While we could not see what was on the other side of the cracks, we could hear the air rush through those cracks as though something was gasping for breath.
Fed up, she cast a spell. In the blink of an eye, the vials we had were in her hands, even the ones we had hidden. Despite that she had firmly warned us not to drink the juice, she uncorked a vial and gulped it down. It was very reminiscent of an addict. If the gasping for air was her, somehow, it seems she will die without it.

She appeared invigorated after drinking the juice. Also very disoriented. She claimed she would need some time to remember what she had been doing. Along with the hounded impression she gave, this makes me think even her vast intellect, as she implies, can't keep all the pieces straight. She may well have made so many jaunts that she is losing track of all her actions and their effects. The Autyarch had warned Isolde of something along those lines happening, and claimed it would be a mercy to kill her.
Of course, if killing her is something that plays into the Autyarch's hands, it likely pays to avoid that.
At this point, she fled as she had many times before. No word on what she did to Rhodes, but since Rhodes is still just as wanted as before, I assume she got where she needed to be.

There have been more encounters with the mage, but I was not part of those. So far, nothing seems to have changed in our reality. Would I be able to tell, though?

I try to take lessons learned from all that's come before. I suppose the most important I have yet to learn is patience. To not jump blindly into the deep. I have had plenty of chances to practice, with regards to this mage. It is difficult. Acting has gotten me where I am, has made me who I am. Reckless abandon. Yet if I had taken the time to read between the lines, could I have done something for Raazi? Would I have played into Fim's hands less? Doing so has kept me from tying myself to political factions, even if I needed some help to see it.

It feels important here. Reckless abandon will not serve anyone.

The man puts his writing utensils away and hops off the crates. He lights up the lanterns near his berth and places another on his cargo. The sun has disappeared entirely by the time the dockhands finish their job.
Still, he pays them their proper wages before looking over the ship with a smile. As the dockhands move on to their next job, he turns on his heel and heads for the Commons.

A blessing from Akadi, and all would be ready. Perhaps the docksiders would return to the order of the day tomorrow, but for once and for a short while, they would be a ship and a sergeant fewer.

[WouldBeBard]

The second time I encountered the Eastlander was entirely by chance.
I was traveling the Pass alongside Varya when we came upon another inverted vortex of water, flowing up out of Sam's Hole. Remembering that entering these can transport you to wherever and whenever the mage was messing around, we took our chances and jumped in.
We did not know if anyone else was aware of this thing, after all, and it might be gone again by the time we gathered a comfortable number of allies.

When we came to in whatever place we ended up in, we noticed we had not been the first to enter. A short ways off, I could already see some familiar faces. I counted Isolde, Aoth, Peredoc, Mira, Nero and Valisha. They were speaking to yet another vaguely familiar face, dressed in Eastlander colours. I didn't really manage to place her until Varya and I caught up with the rest. The way she spoke is what drove it home.
It was Parnell. The vampire that warned us of Lidérc's attack on Elaine's home. As I live and breathe, so did she.

When Varya and I caught up, Isolde explained the situation. More letters had been given for their group to deliver. One was for a senator named Vino Sten. The other for Parnell there. The letter told her she needed to be smuggled into the city by us, before a given date, and meet a man there. I'm not sure what it said exactly, but Parnell seemed intrigued enough to go with it.
She took us to a camp where she could prepare and we could rest up and eat some. The Eastlanders there were eyeing us, but not immediately hostile. Parnell seems to have held some sway in those days.
Of course, we would have to avoid Eastlander patrols farther up the road. They would mistake her for just one more outsider once disguised. We were all confident we could get her there, though, high spirits affecting everyone around us as we ate and talked. Isolde seemed especially chipper for having met the real Parnell, girling out with her over the dresses Parnell usually did not get to wear.

A single sentence changed that entire mood. Parnell off handedly remarked she could not eat from the stew they had going, because the letter said she should not eat any garlic.
The sudden silence that fell over Isolde, Aoth and me was leaden. Not knowing Parnell, the others didn't understand, but I could see on their faces they knew something was up.

I am uncertain what went through Aoth or Isolde's mind. Aoth seemed as aloof as always, but she knew. Any gambler would be jealous of that pokerface. Dear Isolde, normally brimming with hope and good cheer, hid the change in her expression well. It was there, though. You cannot act your way through that amount of pain.
The Eastlander mage had given Parnell orders that kept her away from the city, and we were to return her to where she needed to be; wandering the streets of Peltarch alone at night.
We were to condemn her to undeath.
I could make the argument that we did not choose this. That it had already happened and we were just putting things in their proper place. That the blame was not on us. That Parnell the vampire has been instrumental to some of our successes and sparing her her fate would play into the Eastlander's hands and surely damage our reality.
Hells, I did make those arguments. The few times I felt Isolde was wavering, due to the cruelty of what was thrust upon us, and the cruelty of what we were about.
Rhetoric. I dare any of you bastards reading this to take that on your shoulders and not feel it.

Isolde, for her part, instead seemed determined to give Parnell a great final few days of life and set out for the city with renewed hope. Parnell had not been wrong. The Eastlanders patrolled the Pass with impunity, and any who had not been with Parnell's group were hostile.
Still, thanks to a great many spells and potions of invisibility, as well as Peredoc picking out a path, we managed to reach the city's territory with only one dead Eastlander on our hands.

Peltarch. Old Peltarch. Even despite knowing what awaited Parnell, I was left amazed by the sight.
Row upon row of fully stone buildings, several storeys high, most of them with carved marble façades. All the roads were paved, some of the paving even worked into patterns. Where most open spaces now are mud and grass, they had raised flower beds, trees and waterways.
Parnell was cracking up at how much gold "these people" must have for wasting space and coin on stone arcs placed for no reason at all.
The commons were a fenced marble platform with stone benches, with four obelisks around it, and a sundial in the center that did not break.
Now, don't get me wrong. Compared to many cities, it was still all quite provincial. Compared to what we are left with, however, it was magnificent.
But how will we return to it?

I was not the only one as excited by the city, though we all seemed to have our own reasons. Parnell was having a field trip in the markets, laughing at the prices and wondering out loud who in the world had the coin to pay for those things. To be perfectly honest, the prices were something I might forget in my vest pocket and never worry about. Sparing Isolde another 70 crowns carrot moment, I noted what Parnell had been eyeing and paid for her. The girl was over the moon, bouncing off with her newly gained trinket.
Isolde's whispered thanks was haunting, however.

Isolde did appear to liven up when we came across a group of bards. They were not entertaining, but talking politics and gossiping. Some things never change, eh? The name Bromley rang a bell, but more as a senator than a bard, and here there were two of them. I did not know the others, but she was nothing short of starstruck. I simply headed over to Varya to quietly discuss the current state of the city and how it got where it was as Isolde and the others talked these bards' ears off. She did later tell me those were the founders of the Bard College.

Having gotten directions, we finally made our way to the senate where we could likely find Vino Sten. Outside the building, in another magnificent little park, we found some senators talking amicably. One Makere, one Fisher. I missed the third's name. They told us we could wait for Sten in order to deliver the letter.
I'm not certain what the exact significance was, but it had information about a woman named Linah and mentioned the Lost City. Our objective for that letter was as simple as that, though for a moment I had a feeling we were going to be called upon to head there ourselves.
Instead, we were left with a few more hours to show Parnell a good time. Off to the Grapevine we went.

As much as I sing the praises of the old city, I will say the service, selection and atmosphere at the Mermaid are far, far better. Still, the Grapevine had stiff drinks, and we all needed one. Isolde saying farewell to Parnell was a knife to the heart. For just a moment, I thought she might actually warn Parnell after all, but she waved me off when I started to speak. It was a bitter pill, but she swallowed it.

There was no time to mourn, however. Parnell had barely stepped out the door or a familiar voice spoke up. Sitting at our table was the Eastlander in disguise, once again calling out our meddling in the most condescending way imaginable. It's here that she finally admitted that all she wanted was her people back.
The inn was full of defenseless commoners just going about their day. Knowing the damage she was capable of, fighting was not an option. We tried to talk her out of the folly of upsetting reality to that extent. Easy for us to say as everyone we ever had is not buried under tonnes of debris. The way she spoke, her grief was still too deep to think of anything else. Too near, perhaps? Hells, for all we know, she only lost all her kin a month ago and has been moving back and forth through the years that have passed. Like in Jiyyd, she fled.

With her disappearance, I once more felt the air grow solid, then shatter. When the world stopped moving, we were sat by the crossroads, everyone accounted for. Finally we had a chance to explain what had just happened to those who never knew Parnell. None of us had dared to mention it while the girl was around. Isolde was bawling her eyes out. Not me. I just had something in my eye. Probably the shattered air.

There still was no time to mourn. That bastard Autyarch appeared, personally. Demanding to know who was causing the disturbances in time. I cracked wise at its horrendous appearance and scaring people popping up like that. I felt its gaze turn on me, and I swear I thought I was a dead man. I simply saw it shift, and moments later I had the uncanny experience of looking into my own eyes, seeing my own grin and hearing my own voice asking us if this was more to our liking.
Nobody told it anything about the Eastlander, of course. Varya simply demanded a duel.
Ensuring that none of us could interfere, it paralyzed the lot of us and led Varya closer to the crossroads.

Varya fought well. That has to be said. Even the Autyarch thought so. Said it was the longest duel it'd been in since fighting a rival in the days of the old empire. Still, having seen what it is capable of, I worry about our chances when we finally try to put that thing to rest. The only time Varya truly hurt it was when she laid her hand on it, as she does when she heals an ally.
Despite that, it left her alive. Once it released our paralysis, we ran up to see to Varya's wounds. Aoth tended to those right quick, but I think the blow the Autyarch struck was more than physical.
As Aoth and I helped Varya to her feet, then half carried her out of there, I heard her whisper how she threw everything at the thing. She sounded broken.

Behind us, I heard the others mincing words and putting the Autyarch on the wrong trail, ensuring it would waste its time. Damn shame that doesn't run out.

[WouldBeBard]

The midday sun stands high above the city of Peltarch. The wind is still pleasant this time of year, a light breeze that all would soon come to miss as the land shifts into autumn. And for once, it brings no rain or clouds. The clear skies above have the laborers in the shipyard below in high spirits, and among the sounds of mallets, saws, chisels and chains, a song is offered up to the skies above and anyone within earshot.

The young man sits on a pile of stacked wooden planks. The shipwright assured him they will be his deck one day. Having inspected the lot, the young man had agreed. The quality fit the price. From his seat, he watches the shipwright and his team work on the frame.
It is one of his rare free days. Between his duties in the Defenders and his venture with Ravos and Daedalus, one might wonder why he would spend yet more time working in the shipyard.
Why spend hours discussing designs with the master, why argue for the right to work in one of his teams, why rough up his own hands on the adze when he is paying full price?
He himself does not wonder, however. A good captain should know his ship from start to finish. Some day he will have to trust this ship with his life. With the life of others. Blood, sweat and time is the least he can give her.

The shift he works with is sitting around him, taking lunch. Talking freely among themselves, laughing and bragging. He's gotten to know many of them over his days working there. Their names, the names of their spouses and their children. Their hopes and desires. Their troubles and worries.
Despite the matter with the demons having been settled, there still is enough worry to go around.
Today he leaves them to talk among themselves, though they serve as a reminder.
He takes his writing utensils out of his pack, propping the writing tablet up against his thigh. He still has some time, so he makes himself comfortable and sets to it.

I have been privileged to see something wondrous in its execution, but terrifying in its implications.
An Eastlander of old is causing all manner of chaos in our world by messing with time itself.
Her goals are easy enough to understand. She wishes her people were never destroyed.
To this end, she attempts to cause ripples in the past. Make one person disappear, make another miss an appointment. Ensure that those people do not play their part in our history.

I will admit, at first glance it is not quite as frightening as some of the creatures we've faced in recent months. There are no otherworldly horrors that want to see how far they can stretch your mind before it breaks. No embodiments of mortal vices that want to tear you apart or shackle you to their desires for all eternity. No haunting specters of near forgotten empires, though those do seem interested in what is happening.
Yet the consequences could be just as dire.
On a personal level, many of us have their roots in these lands. If the Eastlander pulls the right string, moves the right stone, some of us may not even be born. Not just your life, but your very existence wiped out.
With demons and aberrations, you might have had a chance to fight, even if it ends up being futile. With the mage, you will not even be given that.
On a larger scale, it seems impossible to predict all that might change, as even the gods and these outsiders we have fought so diligently would be affected.

So how did we get involved in this mess?

By chance, I was already headed for the temple of Helm when the priestess Alicia sent for aid from adventurers. Some had beaten me there, however, and I entered to find a group already waiting. Isolde, Peredoc, Aoth, Mira. Asha was finally gracing us with her presence again.
We had to wait a while for the priestess to receive us, so we stood and bantered as we so often do.
That day, I seemed to be the butt of the jokes, with Asha implying I "went boing" only because Helm implies both a piece of armour and a part of a ship.
They will mourn the day they mocked my love of ships when they need a ship to carry them across the Icelace in style and comfort. Oh yes. Woe betide them.
Varya arrived not long after, right on time for priestess Alicia to come out and explain the situation.

Spirit wolves had been stalking closer and closer to the town, and she wished for us to investigate what caused this behaviour.
Oddly, as the priestess spoke, one of the Helmites came over to Varya and me to hand us each a seemingly unrelated letter. Supposedly, they were given to them by one Frago Tilnook and the captain and I were expected to deliver them safely. I knew no one by the sender's name, nor did Varya. We knew the supposed recipients, however. Nathander Steele and the Lady Shane Andryl. Nathander Steele is buried near Heroes' Bluff. The Lady Shane Andryl beneath the temple we stood in. I admit opening a letter meant for another always makes me uncomfortable, but given that the recipients were long since dead, it seemed justified. Neither the Helmite nor priestess Alicia remarked upon it, at least.
Imagine our surprise when the letters turned out to be empty.

We decided to put this all aside and tend to the immediate problem of the spirit wolves. With those out of the way, we could spend any amount of time we wished at unraveling the mystery of the letters.
Priestess Alicia sent us on our way with a warning to look out for anomalies in nature, as the wolves seemed drawn to them.
It did not take us long to find these wolves. Nor for them to attack us. As we came by the small pond in what was once Jiyyd, we found water flowing up into the sky, like an inverted whirlpool. Here the wolves appeared. Fighting our way through the first pack, we saw a second pack approaching. We figured they would aid the first, but they ignored us and ran past. The priestess had been correct. They were out hunting something, and it wasn't us.

Having dealt with the pack that attacked us, we set off in the direction the other pack went, only to find them already dead near the menhirs in that area. We approached what passes for their corpses carefully, at first glance seeing nothing that could've done this to them. That's when the mage appeared. Dressed in Eastlander colours, something you still hear about, but never expect to see. The air around her practically humming with magic as she manipulated the stones and opened a portal, ignoring us like so many ants.
There was little time to discuss our options. The portal would close soon and she seemed the obvious quarry of the wolves. Given what the lot of us has been through together, we decided we could handle whatever lay on the other side and went after her.
What actually lay on the other side, though. That I wasn't prepared for.

After the blinding light of the portal faded and our eyes adjusted to the world around us, we realized we were in a town. I had never seen it before. Still, it felt familiar somehow. We started speculating out loud, but were interrupted almost immediately by a militia dressed in blue, yelling for us to get away from the menhirs. They did not look like the types to mess around, so we stepped away from the stones as our resident smooth talkers smoothed things over.

The town, it turned out, was Norwick. Not our Norwick. Old Norwick. Gods know when someone gets around to reading these entries. Our Norwick will likely be Old Norwick by then. We were in the Norwick that stood against the Defiler. The Norwick that was, when Sam's Hole was Sam's Hill.
I will admit to being shocked. Curiosity quickly gained the upper hand, however, and like the others I was eager to see the town itself. And Jiyyd. We had letters to deliver, after all. Plus, Nan had always been fond of the place.
There were stern warnings to not mess with things while we were there, of course, pointing out the dangers in doing so.

In the town center, we inquired after the situation with the Eastlanders. We also paid a visit to the gnome Frago Tilnook. A curious fellow who seemed to have a market all to himself. He had no knowledge of any letters. Or pretended not to.
As the others were raising more questions with him, my eye fell on a well. Oh yes. The Well.
As I walked over to it and peered into it, I could see from the corner of my eye one of the local farmers stopping to look at me. As I looked up, I noticed him smirking. When he saw me look, he shook his head and moved on. I had all of three ticks to consider what that was about before being tackled to the ground from five directions at once.
I struggled. Of course I did. As I was about to headbutt one of them, however, I remembered Isolde's warning to leave as little a mark as possible on time. Knocking the five of them on their asses might mean different deaths during the next goblin raid.
As much as it galls me, I stopped myself and just took the beating. Old Norwick justice. Luckily I travel with quite a few skilled healers, eh?

We decided to leave town after that. They had nothing particularly useful to tell us about the Eastlanders, and the militia just about had it with our antics. We did try to get some rest within the walls before heading out to Jiyyd. Night had fallen, the fight with the spirit wolves had cost our casters, and we had no idea what might be out there.
Not in the Boarshead, though. Right by the walls.
This was the final straw, and the militia came over again to rough us up over vagrancy. What we had hoped would be an orderly march turned into a nighttime run, with Norwickians on our heels for the first leg of it.

On the outskirts of Jiyyd, just beyond what is now the Scar, we met the Eastlander for the first time. She refused to elaborate on anything she was doing of course. She simply had several very colourful pejoratives at the ready to describe us and our actions, and insisted that we stay put. See if we could manage not doing any irreparable damage to the flow of time.
Meanwhile, she had "something to fix". She'd see about getting us all home after she was done.
As neither side wanted to budge, she claimed to not have time for this and fled the scene.
As strange as the encounter was, it was not nearly as strange as walking into Jiyyd. Seeing all those buildings that you only know as ruins, standing proud. Well. Proud. As much as a hamlet can be called that. It felt cozy, though. And welcoming.

We met Nathander Steele just inside the gate. He seemed somewhat surprised that I was delivering a letter to him, but when he read it, he merely gave a conspiratorial smile and told us to meet him in the Regal Whore on the second day of the invasion. As though he understood everything it said. We did not even know what invasion.
That did not remain a mystery terribly long, mind. We soon found the Lady Andryl as well, and Varya delivered the letter left in her care. With a determined look, she called out to an elf named Karbeh, asking her to go scouting, then excused herself as she and someone named Just'ene had to prepare the town for an invasion.
The Frago we met might not have known about any letters, but the Frago that wrote them was taken on his word without hesitation. He also seems to have known the Eastlander's plans quite well. Not to mention fully expecting the captain and I to deliver.

Within the day of our arrival, the town was under siege. Orcs. There was a twist, however. They came with siege weapons provided by Eastlanders. Where a normal attempt would have been beaten back by Jiyyd and its adventurers, those things could have just turned it into a pile of rubble, decades before its time.
While we had hoped we could end this without interfering directly, we chose to join the battle. The Eastlander's "fix" clearly was her own interference, which could not be allowed to occur.
By this time, Cormac, Morgan, Call, Nero and Valisha had stumbled upon the water vortex and stepped into it. Apparently, these can be used to reach the area being meddled with, too. While Call was warning us again about the dangers of the interference, all knew that Jiyyd stood no chance if we did not act.

And so, we prepared for the battle. It felt strange. Nan had lived in the area, though it seemed we were even farther back than that. Grandfather, too. He'd been a fighting man. They would have stood on that same tower, overlooking that same field. Towers I could never reasonably have stood on, if not for the Eastlander. Defending a wall I could realistically only ever have known as a pile of weatherworn stones.
I stopped daydreaming when I spotted a man walking into view alongside the Lady Andryl, speaking courage to all those gathered, and laying down their plans.
He had an aura of grace that was undeniable. A certainty in his manner and step that could put several of our own officers to shame. You could sense his determination at protecting the town, and his willingness to fight. Yet, when he spoke, he exuded the calmth and kindness you expect from a saint, not a warrior.
It was none other than Kanen Hightower.
I permitted myself a moment to wonder. About my search for deeper meaning. My visits to Helm's temple of late. About Meadow's own search, as well. And there I was, thrust into the most unlikely of situations, face to face with His greatest knight this land has seen to date.
There was little time to waste on such thoughts, however. Duty called, and we set to executing the plan.

The fighting went well. The orcs were strong, without a doubt. Still, as interlopers, we have gone through so much more than orcs. Those gathered proved more than a match for anything they could muster, and we held off wave after wave, with a successful sortie to destroy their gifted siege engines, to boot. Despite being polar opposites, both Varya and Cormac stood knee deep with me in among their dead before sundown, while other pockets ripped them apart with spells and arrows all across the field. Not that it deterred them much. The sun had long since set when any of us got to rest.

On the second day we decided to meet Nathander as agreed upon. Learning what was in the letter I gave him was one more shock. Nathander had procured a poison that could put sir Kanen to sleep, so he could not be present in the coming battles and be killed there.
Needless to say, this caused quite an uproar. Nathander protested it had been our idea, and did not see what the problem was. Several did support it. Varya, of course, was most adamant about refusing. I, too, was starting to argue against, asking them if they'd all simultaneously decided to fall and hit their heads. This was Kanen bloody Hightower. The act of poisoning aside, it might still kill him. I admit my mind wandered to Meadow for a second, there. She would get the dose right.
Regardless, I disagreed with the action.
Before I could properly form an argument, however, Varya was already on her way out. We raced to catch up with her to see what she was planning. By the time we did, she was already telling sir Kanen the truth.

He accepted it. He accepted Varya's word as a paladin, and even seemed to believe it to be true, regardless of how utterly mad it sounded. Of course, he felt it irrelevant. The man would do his duty as was expected of him, regardless of the outcome.
There was little time to argue further. At the southern gate, a new wave was approaching. All there was left for us was to fight until the orcs gave up, and keep Kanen safe as best we could.
We separated after the first new wave of combat. A handful of us would stay with Kanen, the casters that could keep him alive and obliterate anything that came near.
The rest of us held the gate against wave after wave of approaching orc. Some balked at the arrangement, but crowding everyone around the paladin and letting the orcs walk in unopposed would only lead to having to defend him in a disadvantageous location.

As the attacks to the south abated and we regrouped by the town's well, the oddest of things happened. Sir Kanen was feeling unwell. He felt absolutely exhausted, in fact, and was in dire need of some rest. The Lady Andryl took him to the temple.
Varya was livid. I took it in stride. It was already done, and more orcs were on the horizon.
When the next wave of orcs was beaten back, Aoth shifted into a bird in order to get a better view of the battle and what the orcs might be planning.
No sooner had she done this or she began squawking to gain our attention and flew directly towards the temple. As one, we rushed up the hill to see what was happening.

We could hear the sound of steel pounding into stone well before we crested the hill. We saw the source as we climbed up the last incline, but not one of us paused. A warmachine was hammering away at the walls of the temple. The Eastlander, then, is not just powerful in her own right. She also has the influence to gather not only a good number of siege engines, but one of their fabled warmachines.
Strong as they are, however, we managed to bring it down without any losses. Much to the ire of the Eastlander mage, who showed up to put a stop to our meddling. It certainly drove home just how powerful she was. Any one of us alone would have died to her and even grouped as we were, she'd put several of us on the brink.
I'm not certain why she eventually decided to disappear. Too many stubborn bastards with too many potions to stave off? Knowing what was coming next and thinking she no longer needed to fight us directly?
In the silence left by the mage's absence we could hear the telltale whirring of the warmachine's heart. I expected it would explode, as I have seen Arcter's creations do. I think I would have preferred it. But no, this thing had been putting itself together again while we had been occupied by the mage.
As it came to and started the fight all over, it seemed even stronger somehow. I could barely scratch the damn thing. Instead I opted to blow through whatever magical trinkets I still had before finally joining the fray and hammering away at it to put any dent into it I could.

I cannot tell you how exhausted I was by the end of it. All I really remember after that is the return. It felt as if the very air around us grew solid, started cracking like glass under pressure, then shattered into countless pieces. When the world returned to us, we were back in our Jiyyd, the familiar and forlorn ruin.

There is more, but that will wait for another time.

The men around him are slowly gathering their things and getting back to their feet. The rest of their shift was starting. He did not mind the labour, but would he be glad when he finally got to sail this thing.

[WouldBeBard]

The apartment is empty. Dark, but for the last rays of light falling in through the window. The fire in the hearth completely doused, no candles lit. The room is orderly, however, awaiting the inhabitants' return.

On the desk lies one more page, written by a familiar hand and long since dried.

I have survived and made it home. Home from the Abyss. Back from doing the impossible. Freeing one soul captured there and returning a soul to a succubus.

The realm's chaos was horrifying. The desert's heat alone was enough to kill you if not protected. To say nothing of the rest of the environment. Empty eye sockets carved into stone everywhere, shooting fireballs if whatever was watching from those endless pits caught sight of you. Crystal formations that would hurl lightning endlessly at those who came too near. Jungles filled with those cursed roses that started it all.
And then there were the creatures native to the plane. The ekolids at home were an annoyance. The ekolids there were more of a handful than our Fell trolls. Half scorpion, half humanoid creatures with hides as thick as a bulette's roamed the desert by the dozens. All the demons I'd seen and fought before, in the hundreds.
None of us would have lasted an hour out there if not for these strange armours Nenufar loaned us. They protected us. To a point. They did nothing special against a blade edge, poison or disease. They could not keep all the fire from our skin, or the lightning from running through us. There was a contingency, however. If we were damaged, the armour would heal us. Not the instant relief of healing magic, but the constant itching and pain of a healing wound, sped up. If we were at death's door, it would drag us back, though it could only manage this three times.
So there we went. Burned and healed. Shocked and healed. Cut and healed. Again, and again, and again. All the wounds I've taken in my entire career, tenfold, and no choice but to press on and take the next wound while the old ones were still tender.

That realm is horror. The equipment a boon? No, a curse. In the end, I was thankful to be rid of it.
I haven't spoken about it yet. As with the Reachful Hands, I do not know where to begin. Sleep again comes difficult, as my mind wanders ever back.
Meadow noticed. She suggested a ship of our own. A quiet getaway, sailing down the Scar towards Thesk. I obliged, despite Rey's unsubtle hints one of the city's ships will be my responsibility soon. A ship to my name has always been one of my goals, and gods know I could use some respite. I still am only human.
H'resh noticed, too, I think. He might not know the finer details, but he knew the look I got when he asked me to report. His praise there was more than just professional. I think.

Still, despite what seemed an insurmountable nightmare, we made it back.
K defeated, friends returned.

You'll note I said returning a soul to "a" succubus, while the lofty goal was returning souls to both succubi. I wasn't there at the very end. As it turns out, the armour did not protect one from being knocked out and taken.
What others have told me was that Nenufar chose to remain.
Depending on who you ask, it was a tragic self sacrifice.
Where Miranda's soul could be saved because most of it had been kept sheltered, Nenufar was her soul, as most demons are, and she was as corrupted as she appeared. The image of her former self in the magic mirror was just that. An image. There was no returning for her, so better she sat on the throne as she was the more benign.
The other version is that Nenufar's words were merely an excuse, and we have all been had.
I can see where that sentiment comes from. Some things do seem very convenient.

The Abyssal roses along with the notes that were amateurishly meant to point towards Nenufar while they only grow in K's realm. This was relatively easy to figure out for the arcanists.
Nenufar being the one to deliver the location of Carly and Lucille being tortured to Six, where we found the list that made Nenufar seem targeted.
Shortly after, Nenufar being "banished" to the Prime and appearing to be powerless, right into the middle of a bunch of adventurers, including a paladin that could easily have tried to kill her. One more thing to cement the idea that someone wanted her dead
Was she powerless, though? We never truly tested. Sure, I took a swing at her once, but how badly did I really wound her?
Then her little off hand remark when we questioned her in the Defender headquarters.
We'd come to the conclusion K was implicating Nenufar in the hopes that the adventurers would do the job for her and kill Nenufar. Then Nenufar stated that it felt like a plan she herself would have come up with.
And there we were. A bunch of adventurers traipsing into the Abyss, all for our own reasons. Hope, the desire to do good, the desire to protect a home under siege.
Doing Nenufar's job in ousting the implicated ruler of the 500th so she can now rule both layers.

In truth, Nenufar ruling two layers is no skin off my back. Demons are endless and so is the Abyss. At least this one bears us no particular ill will. I agreed with that line of thought. I still do. That is not the problem.
What bothers me is how muddy the start of it all is.

To Isolde, it all comes down to Miranda. Whether Nenufar remained out of avarice or selflessness, this appears to be true. One part of Miranda's soul in life, when she was named Jenna, had been safeguarded by Lliira's magic, in a house frozen in time. The other had been kept in an amulet which Nenufar claimed K wore and managed to snatch from her in the final fight.
When it all was over, Nenufar allowed Miranda to leave and mend her soul, not even trying to convince her to stay.

That still says nothing of how it all began. Did K truly strike at Nenufar? Or did Nenufar instigate the fight? Provoking K into attacking her and whipping us into action by drawing the conflict onto the Prime.
When I mentioned this near Nate, he seemed to agree. Zero, the planeswalker, came around to deliver gifts from Nenufar. He overheard and said it was a likely conclusion. Demons will, after all, be demons.
If so, the price was steep indeed.
All the people she allowed to be killed to instill a sense of urgency and foment resistance against K. The pain, the fear, the destruction.
The friend that has made a choice to remain there forever, driven into Nenufar's waiting arms by the horror of the Hungering Star.
There will be no more lazy, weirdly philosophical conversations, late at night with a bunch of smokes in the dreary Peltarch rain.
All things Nenufar willingly sacrificed for her sister's sake. No particular ill will? She did enough damage without it.
Even so, the only alternative was to let her rampage through this land.

On the other hand, maybe Isolde is right. Maybe I am being paranoid. Why would a demon rely on mortals to fight another demon that might as well be a god to us unless she had no other options?

The young man that wrote it is leagues away. Standing on a hill that overlooks the ruins of a town. An area once ravaged by devils and demons both.
The ghosts, however, have no answers.
He turns and heads into the temple. There will be no definite answers there, either, but he does find comfort.