Mellsday, 1st of Dusk 212 EoL
Dear Diary,
I was so right at the beginning of my last entry... You never know when you get another quiet moment to write, or better
if you get another moment
at all.
After his meditation and me writing to you,
Trip suddenly decided that he wanted to talk to me after all. I was so annoyed and furious at that moment that I didn´t want to talk to him anymore. Now I´m looking at his head that I put next to me while I´m writing to you and wonder if I just should have had that conversation back when we still could have had it?
Soon after the meditation sessions the others joined us one by one on the beach and we tried, for what felt like hours, to come up with a plan about how to handle the sultan. Trip and
Yelena wanted to kill him,
Drake and I didn´t and
Shirel wanted to play theater. The biggest issue was that we did not know what exactely we were looking for. We kind of knew that it was some sort of stone and since Drake saw a red stone on a pendant around his neck, we supposed that that was the stone we should steal. Nobody was fond of my idea to just ask him what his most valuable treasure was and Trip kept suggesting that I should ask the Raven Queen about the stone. I finally gave in, since our discussion was leading nowhere, and I hate when he is right. The Raven Queen told me to look for a stone that looked like an uncut red ruby, which was exactely what Drake had seen. So we decided that we would steal his pendant. To do so we split up: Shirel and I would put on a show for the fishpeople in the hamlet while the others would plan an ambush for the sultan on his way from the cave to the hamlet. Trip would lay down for the sultan to step on him (so that he would not step into mud) and then let his rivven explode.
I feld honored and happy that Shirel had asked me to do the theater with him. He acknowledged my talent to do costumes out of scratch. We had to come up with something that would please the fish people and that we could present without talking, as we don´t know their language. The fish people, however, cannot know that, because then they would know that we didn´t eat whatever Alto offered us... It was complicated, but we managed to come up with something amazing: Shirel disguised himself into the sultan, I build some kind of island to put on Lucian´s back so that he would play Shrokis (the giant turtle that carries the island we are currently on) and I disguised myself into a fish woman. We used our magic to make fighting sounds and some kind of suspencefull backround music. The story consisted of a loooooooooooooong fight between the sultan and Shrokis, then some kind of rodeo, which led to the sultan dominating Shrokis. In the final scene, the sultan and the fish woman would chill on the island.
The execution went well for most of the play. At one moment one fish man started heckling us. Shirel acted quickly and threw his trident at his feet. Luckily, I had prepared a second one so that we could continue without a pause. When we heard Trip´s explosion we reacted exceptionally well and let our audience think that it was part of our play. But then we heard a second explosion and we knew that something must have gone wrong. We decided to immediately fly over on Lucian´s back and to stall the fish people with a wall of stone that I strategically placed on the stairs out of the village.
We found the others in a fight, where the sultan´s magician was frozen and Trip was wrapped into the sultan´s watery body and already looked very tired.
Gwenelle was nowhere to be seen, since she was hiding like a pro. At one point I knelt down next to my brother, who was nearly down. Yelena tried to get him out of that situation and healed him but was also tangeled into the sultan´s body. Finally the sultan dissolved into a pool of water and Trip managed to suck that into a magical bag. When Trip was down I felt devastated... I just love him so much, even if he does the stupidest of things and is arrogant and mean at some times. Drake had managed to steel the necklace of the sultan and Trip took some minutes to investigate it. We now know that it is very powerful and we should never ever touch it with our bare hands.
After some discussions we decided to go back to the hamlet to get Aldo whom we promised to take with us from that island. When we got there everybody and everything was like... paralyzed... or frozen in time. Even Poe was paralyzed in the air. In one of the market stands, that was set up as the banquet table for the evening, sat a woman with a white dress and white hair who had an aura around her like I never experienced before. This is probably how people feel, when they first meet me. Trip, Yelena and Drake decided at first to not enter the magic dome of paralyzation. To our surprise, none of us were paralyzed, we could act freely and talk to the woman. She introduced herself as
The Empress and offered to help us in serveral situations.
- She could get rid of Votluh out of Trip´s soul but would not be able to repair the soul. This is why, I decided to go and get Trip so he could talk to her. He was experimenting with his Rivven. He wanted to create some kind of portal into his Rivven from where we could go to wherever we'd like. He was only able to keep that portal open for a few seconds... not very impressive nor usefull... He finally agreed to join us (Drake and Yelena had long gone to see the Empress at that point) and was impressed by the Empress.
- She thinks that we are able to get rid of the Lady of Pain because she represents order and maintains it with her Gatekeepers and we, on the other hand, represent chaos and thus we are the chosen ones to balance The Multiverse, or somthing like that. I´m really not happy about that part. It has been months since Trip talked to me about the Lady of Pain and I was quite sure that that was off the table, but noooo... here we go again...
- Since the cult we are fighting is worshipping Votluh, and he resides within the Far Realm, which is not part of the Multiverse but is connected to it like a disease, or parasite. It needs to be either closed or annexed to the multiverse and we are, apparently, able to do that if we gain some more power.
I was not happy at that point because I knew that Trip and probably Shirel would be more than tempted to solve all these problems, but it got worse: To gain that much power we would need more of the stone fragments like the one we just stole from the sultan. The more, the better. She does not know how many there are out there, but she gave us a second fragment and told us of two more fragments, one is owned by the red Dragon Arshardon. He lives in the Empire and has made some shady deals with the Empress. (I really don´t know why I remember anything about him... he probably came up in Mr. Fog's lectures. Mr. Fog was such a fox... I actually paid attention in his class hoping that would impress him and lead to a date and maybe more... I was so right) The other one is in the hands of some guy named Caius (apparently a minion of one of the Lords of Infernalis. Shirel knows him, he´ll be in charge of that one.).
Once we have the stone fragments, we need to go to the most powerful place in the multiverse which would be the
Anun'Deion, the prison of
Sigil (where else... !?), and do some kind of ritual where we could offer somebody to make it even more powerfull. Oh by the way, our best chances are given if we offer somebody who has the blood of a god (e.g. Yelena) or somebody who is connected to a Rivven (e.g. Trip). And last, but not least the Empress offered Trip a date if he would make it out of all of this alive. So many reasons for Trip to go on this crazy mission... I just can´t... I really wanted to leave Sigil and the Gatekeepers behind us for the rest of my live, but NO! I couldn´t cope with all of that started crying in front of the Empress. I´m pretty sure Trip will get killed during all of this, because he´ll be just too invested.
So we decided to fist pay a visit to the dragon since he lives in the Empire and is thus on the same plane as we are. Our next stop would be Infernalis to meet Caius. And, if we don´t get any more information about other stolen fragments, our final destination would be Sigil.
Once we decided on that order the Empress warned us that we had a stowaway on our ship while coming from
Zathess to this island, namely Gwenelle´s darkelf "friend", who had given our location to Redmane and Gwenelle´s mother. This meant, that we did not have much advance on them. During the next few minutes the Empress disappeared, time became unfrozen, we told the fishmen to get ready for a fight and a pirateship with tentacles entered the city. This would be the beginning of an epic fight.
From the ship came Cpt Redmane, Gwenelle´s mother Eldira and a lot of pirates. Eldira tried to talk to Gwenelle, as I had hoped. I wanted them to bond so bad. She tried to explain to Gwenelle, that she had done what she did to protect Gwenelle and her family. Being a half-drow Gwenelle brought the whole family in danger, only by existing. Eldira hoped to have a new start with her daughter, to get to know her. Gwnenelle, on the other hand, didn´t want to know anything of her mother. She did not give her a chance. I wonder how I would react if my mother would do the same? I would want to get to know her differently... I´m losing track here. Eldira wanted for Gwenelle to come with her, to join the cult, to worship Votluh as well and to give the treasure we had found to her. Here I could fully understand that Gwenelle was not fond of the idea. And then, all of a suddon, out of the other entrance to the hamlet came a lot of undead skeletons and the reason I came to this part of the Empire in the first place: Sazex! I knew now that at least this fight was my fight too. The Raven Queen would be watching me. Finally a fight with lots of undead, so that the full strenght invested to me by the Raven Queen would show. I was ready! We were all ready! Well not as ready as we could have been if we would have been able to rest after our last fight, but we did not really have a choice now, did we?
We had a very good start into the fight, we quickly got rid of the skeletons and the pirates, so there were the six of us against the three of them. The odds were in our favours! But the strange thing about odds is that they don´t always work out the way they are most likely to. They were strong, much stronger than we had expected. Sazex poisened me, I felt terrible, so very exhausted. I tried to, but wasn´t able to fight it. Luckily Yelena was there to cure me! Thank you Yelena! I love you! They kept asking us to give them the stone (it was clear that they did not know that there were more stone fragments to gather) and to join their cult, Votluh´s cult. I knew that alliance of Trip would turn out to be a bad idea... I was already badly wounded, when all of a sudden Redmane beheaded Trip with his long sword. I did not want to save myself at that moment, I needed to keep my brother in that state of an early death so that Shirel or Yelena would be able to bring him back. And then Sazex attacked me once more, he was so aggressive that... I... died!
Once I was dead, I found myself again under the tree full of ravens. The only appearance I know so far of the Raven Queen. She talked to me through her ravens. I apologized for having failed her mission and to have disapointed her. But she... she wasn´t diappointed. It was so weird. I never had a talk like that in my entire live. My parents, my brother, Hel-Sir, my teachers, the Gatekeepers... all of them have been disappointed by me whenever I did not succeed. Some of them even when I succeeded. This was new to me. The Raven Queen comforted me like... a mother. She told me that the mission was not over yet. That I had agreed to be her herald only if it meant that I did not have to leave my group. And she had agreed, this meant that the mission was not over yet and as long as my group would be able to kill Sazex, in the end I would have fulfilled her test.
She then asked me if would accept her second test, which would be even harder, I would need to kill a certain Lich called Czyrkal, who lives on a flying island (Akruzeth Nekropolis) and who has been fleeing death for far too long. I was intrigued, and I think I want to accept that mission. But since I was not able to finish the first test without my group I don´t think I can kill that guy by my own. I´ll ask the others if they want to help me, once our current mission is done.
Then she offered me a permanent position. She told me what I would gain, but also what the catch was... I´m not sure what to do. Right now I lean towards declining that position but I know that this is a decision I want to discuss with the group. No more deals without informing the others.
Then I was brought back to life! It felt so weird. I cannot describe that feeling. Like the first breath one takes, except that we don´t remember that feeling obviously. I learned that it was Shirel who had brought me back to life. Thank you! I love you (in some kind of way I guess)! Maybe the two of us should really found a wandering theater group. It could be fun after all. I then was told, that they had won the fight, but could not bring back another person today. This is why Trip remains headless and I have his head here right next to me. I can only imagine what deals he´s been offered right now and hope from the bottom of my heart that he won´t take any without consulting us this time. Finally they told me that Gwenelle was gone, that her mother just vanished with her. I don´t know what to say. I kind of miss her. I hope she´s doing ok (not only because she has the money from our previous loot). First Saldri, now Gwenelle... I hope we won´t lose any more members of our group. It scares me.
Drake is here with me. I didn´t want to be alone tonight. I´m still in shock. He´s been a gentleman so far and sleeps on the other side of the room. He´s afraid too. I told him that I saw the Raven Queen, but not what she was offering, that is something to discuss once my brother is back. I can see now, that I belong with this group. They are my destiny. I love them (even Shirel).
Love, BB <3
