My Path Revealed 1 of 5: Selune's Vessel

Everyone who knew me growing up said I was my mother’s daughter, and it’s true. Not only did I follow her footsteps in the Temple of Selune, but I also took on her curiosity about the Dryworld. That alien world far beyond our domain, where most of our tidal wildlife can’t even exist. A place where the customs are alien and destructive, and the denizens live close to the Gods.
 
Close to the Gods. That was the catalyst that sparked this journey. The temple never would have blessed, let alone funded, my expedition beyond the silver surface of the sea were it not for that one fact.
 
I remember talking late into the night to Tydas as we lay together. His work brings all manner of alien writings to him on the tides, and so he knew far more about the Dryworld than I did. He spoke of beings and contraptions and environments he couldn’t possibly even conceptualize from his seabedden life, and yet he spoke with passion. I felt the swell of water moving around as he waved his arms, not because he understood a thing he was recounting, but because it was new information.
 
That delighted curiosity is one of the reasons I love him. He set the spirit of discovery aglow in my own heart, like the neon-colored jellyfish swarms of the tideless dark. I wanted to discover this bizarre semi-divine world for myself, and to share its mysteries with my peers. Perhaps, through knowledge, even my father, even *Sirene*, could come to appreciate their culture a little.
 
Tydas even helped me to convince the temple. He knew that, far from being the goddess of the tides, Selune had a magnificent presence in the Dryworld. While the Drylanders mayn’t benefit from her watery caress as we do, they feel - and see - her presence in a way more distant, and yet closer.
 
Selune’s domain is a great celestial body that circles the Dryworld endlessly. From this heavenward plane, she pulls the tides and directs the currents, and moves the very oceans themselves. She gazes down upon the mortals in a vessel that appears dull and distant by day, but glorious and luminescent by night.
 
There is a reason I am journaling this. I must emphasise the importance of Selune and her manifestations, because nothing could prepare me for the lurking dread I felt when I pierced through the silver sea-veil and stood heavily, land-bound, and gazing up at the endless, massless void called Sky.
 
Selune is not alone.
 
A sibling vessel, Hecate, sails ominously through those empty upper-waters. This may be semi-common knowledge to the more educated Anurians, but to know her name and to feel her deathly gaze are not the same.
 
But alas, it gets worse.
 
A third vessel haunts the blue void. A blood-red bastard sibling from an origin dubiously unknown. An enormous vessel that dominates the night and sometimes the day, its eerie glow giving it a look of a creature most venomous.
 
It is called Heol, and it is a plane of madness.
 
I feel as though simply by observing this burning omen, the cold fingers of madness have touched my own mind.
 
A part of me wishes I had never learned of its existence, but I owe it to the temple - to Selune - to learn the origins of this interloper.