This Journal was written in by
Gilacia , detailing her history and experiences. Though detailed when written in it is seemingly quiet unkempt and not used consistently for journal purposes, having sections torn out or frequently allowing plays, sonnets, and even musical sheeting to interrupt sections of more normal recording. Dates also skip forward in large bounds, as if the journal was forgotten about or lost and then perhaps rediscovered, and the earliest times recorded name months, days, and timescales that are unfamiliar to the party, seemingly from a different age. Valuable information that can be gleaned from the reading is below, along with a varied, strange, and sometimes uncomfortable, exploration of the arts in almost every form.
- Gilacia was here when this world was created, as detailed in the excerpt below:
I was to be banished with the Martyr Deity for knowing that First Word; that First Name. I was to protect it in the nothingness with everything else that was to be banished here for creation’s safety. But the martyred god lost hope, lost faith, fell to madness in the void, and pushed us away. We had failed him, failed ourselves, and failed creation. Then he, in his madness, acted with sacrilege. He spoke a wish to the Great Key, applied a definition to the world, his definition, and *remade it*. And with that remaking, my charge was shattered. The WORD Shattered.
- She hunted for pieces of the First Word for ages, finding some in the elements that made up powerful spells, others in powerful weapons, and she was unsuprised to discover the most stable place the fragments appeared in to be art. She started collecting those pieces, trying to recover the word, but after the Green Rains realized that people were being born intermeshed with the Word and that it was becoming hard to find all its permutations:
The WORD were so big that, even when shattered, barely seemed to shrink in size. It can break forever, a kaleidoscope of new ideas born with each fracture and blended with the Truenames of the world. The new intersections sometimes seeming to create new permutations of the WORD, growing it beyond its original shape, even. I have been trying to stop a vast and overburdened dam from breaking, using only my fingers. And watching as all of existence slips away. No more. I must find a less futile path.
This section also contains several pages that were evenly and precisely torn out. The remaining pages reference the organic art-piece seemingly eaten by the large insectoid the party had encountered:
These fragments of the WORD, when in material objects, cannot be easily transferred. They seem to bind as much to the concept of the piece as to the actual object and resist most damage. Even if strong enough to destroy them the WORDS remain in the largest remaining fragments. The rare souls and essences that have been joined with the WORD are similar, and if anything harder to destroy. But when the fragment becomes couched in blood and flesh? The transfer becomes frighteningly easy. It only requires destruction of the vessel or its symbolic consumption. The act of rejoining two fragments via consumption appears exhilarating, and enlightening. More terrifyingly the words appear to carry along their legacy, each new carrier having some memory of the former host. One such being I have contained in my sanctum. Warped as it had become I can still make out fragments to read [A strange alien script is here but you subconsciously interpret it as ‘Progenitor-Ruling-Parent’]. This has thankfully been the only hostile case I have encountered thus far, with others willingly sacrificing the WORD for the terrible effects it had wrought upon their lives. The other being, however, sought to access even my rituals of WORD transference. I destroyed that book and copied them to a more private location here in this journal, but I have since realized the being itself, though immobile and unliving, still may transfer some knowledge to the WORDS. These rites are too dangerous to ever be written down, even if necessary to instructing future generations. I should have known that. There are other ways to share information.
- Gilacia began using her own power to name champions with the goal of recovering things powerful in the WORDs. She had another goal, however, in trying to stop the mistake of the martyr deity's wish from being repeated anymore, as each wish seemed to accelerate the fractures:
I will give myself, and my chosen stewards an all important command: No wish should be made upon the Ophidion Egg. It is the key to HIS EGO, HIS self-preservation. And to open that lock is to free our unmaking. As the WORDS shatter infinitely, beyond my ability to collect them, so did HE shatter when he spoke it. But the EGO would unmake everything in its all too familiar quest. To collect us back to HIM. IT sees no art in us, no desire to preserve anything as I have. It will shatter us, and shatter its foe, the WORD. It would leave behind the bleeding fragments of our lives and the dust of the NAME. IT sees no reason for growth, no value in it, for IT was perfect when it was HE, and wished to return. ITS bonds must never break. My stewards, if you ever read these words I implore you, continue my quest to collect the WORD, and safeguard them together. Rejoin them back toward one, in purest art to hold them safely, when that is possible. But never cease to value them. Do not become like the EGO, or you may listen to ITS words when you must safeguard the pieces of the KEY .
- The last entry in the book contains a possible lead to where Gilacia may have been traveling when she met Cedric Eastroot and where she may have returned to:
How foolhardy, my mission is, yet I must move eastward. There lay more fragments to collect. Silvered words for [More of the jumbled writing you instinctively translate to "Walking-Dream-Path"] set in the Steps of Tir-na-nogth. The dread Acorn there, too, residing, in the land of dark, mist-filled forests. I move slowly now, with caution. My powers dim with each failed steward I entrust, and though I know these lands better than any living I have two impossible tasks that none carry with me. I must take the steps into safekeeping, a capital offense in that land of walking dreams made royalty. And if the Acorn I may find, I will cast it into the dark places as my celestial kin have before me. Hidden among the stars or in the mausoleums of heroes. Somewhere, anywhere. I would say that is impossible, the shards being what they are, but I believe I have a place. My old foe, IT has tendrils everywhere, but the Heart-Well in islands may be confusing enough to contain the Acorn.
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