medya helped me understand at least a little more about why bell and zer' put so much effort into toying with those peeping reidrans yesterday
the reidrans represent rigid state power attempting to intimidate us
actively confusing them wastes their resources and slows their progress down
i'm not much good at acting or deception or bluffing or even telling a misleading half-truth so it's probably best i let the others handle such tactics
fortunately today was slightly less confusing though also less fun
we met "va'beorn of aless" – writer of yesterday's newspaper article about the sewer reclamation project – and chatted about the sewer issues
va'beorn wants to report on it
since bell has a gift for steering conversations toward crucible's run for council she convinced va'beorn to promise to write about the campaign if we could help him see for himself what was going on in the sewer
a worthy exchange!
boots and goggles and headlamps
another reminder to avoid feverdance fungus or suffer salty bile
the familiar will-sapping odor that only a maze of poorly ventilated waste channels can offer
i considered using my gravity shoes to stay above the muck but instead i waded alongside medya because i haven't made a set for her yet
so that's on my to-do list now
sometime before our next trip into sharn's sewers because it's starting to feel inevitable that we end up down there
last time we talked with the quiet folk we said we'd try to look into the dream-eaters in precarious and the little black cubes in the wounded dragon apothecary
but right after that we met cinnabar and morran then faced cazha then harmonization then fairhaven then arcanix then the winterwolf then ...
they ended up stuck nearer the bottom of my task list than they deserve
i feel extra terrible because "stuck at the bottom" sums up a lot of their tragedy
a proverb from home: "one shivers – all freeze"
if anybody is doing poorly it's on everybody to help them or find someone who can
i never turned away from anyone who needed help ... but back home that was possible and even practical
there are so many constant problems here that there's no way to fix it all even with the help of all my friends so i've had to turn away from an awful lot and i've still managed to over-commit
but i'll accomplish what i can
the quiet folk had set up chimes to make a constant stream of small noises to serve as early warning – they said that "when the sounds stop the hollow comes"
so we bought a couple chimes from them for safety's sake
as we trudged through the sewers relic explained his own history in relation to hollow
so we were all thinking about this when we came across a fungus-overrun cistern and our chimes went silent
and a huge wrought-iron forged stepped up out of the pool
hollow had been shivering for so long that we all felt frozen while they spoke
they were created as an experiment ... which left them alive but without a complete soul?
i can't imagine what that's like – living without feeling connected with the world – but i could see and hear how much it hurt them
it also opened them up to be possessed just the same as cinnabar and codex were so we had to fight them while they struggled against the evil spirit controlling them
we did our best but relic had to remove hollow's core to give them peace
it's a bitter sort of success
on the way back to the h&h i felt like i walked in a fog that numbed emotion and muddled thought
only a little of that was from the lingering scent of sewage
when we got in morran was waiting to talk with me but we decided to wait until dinner so i could clean up and clear my head with the help of a gentle puff of glitterreed and a short nap
morran spoke of veora's project to start an artificing school independent of house cannith – "3 primes academy" is nearly ready for their first class!
i'm certain some of the forged in my magecraft class will be interested
they're willing to put the effort into learning my way of magic with its unusual terminology spoken in what i'm told is a very unique accent
they'll definitely want to learn more from local experts!
still no word on getting to whitehearth because that would require merrix 2 and zorlan to speak to one another
morran explained that zorlan isn't in the cannith family by heredity but because he has a strong dragonmark which he feels earns him a place there
merrix 1 disagreed
merrix 2 never got to know zorlan so relations between them are cold at best
so i'm still waiting but at least i know what i'm waiting for
... house cannith is such a mess