Log of the Echo

(Author Note: Consider the information in this article to be spoilers or GM knowledge (Dawnbringer content) and read accordingly! The contents of this article will be made secret after SummerCamp.)

How might our language have changed so much in the centuries past, that this book cannot be read by even our most esteemed scholars? None have made progress beyond our Echo. We listen for it, but no sense has yet come of the whispers.

— Echoan scholar

The Log of the Echo is an ancient journal kept in the archives of Echo, an underground city beneath the Earthen Kingdom.

Relic of the First Days

Leather-bound in a rich red-brown cover, lightly battered both through extensive use during its time, and through the passage of the centuries, this journal is believed to have been kept in the earliest days of Echo's settlement, before it became the city it was in the modern day.
Its contents are laid out and organized as one would a travel log, with brief hand-written entries. Many of the pages within have faded with time, though a complete lack of exposure to sunlight have slowed the deterioration of the journal tremendously, leaving many pages legible, if only one had the knowledge required to read them. Dates above each entry span a period of over one hundred years, with only one notable change in handwriting towards the end of the journal, from which point its final ~30 years of entries appear to be penned by another's hand.

Distant Call of the Gods

The journal is preserved and transcribed several times over by the city's archivists, though none have been able to translate it fully. From the contents of the journal which could be translated by Echo's scholars, many phrases referenced the "Echo" and a need to follow it, to listen for it.
There is little additional context to work from, though due to the frequency of the mentions, they are considered to be deeply significant. It is thought that this Echo was a source of salvation, perhaps even of divine origin, and some have considered seeing the journal's contents as a holy text, inspiring many to worship this mysterious echo as a divine phenomenon, the distant call of the gods.

An ancient travel log of those who settled Echo, unreadable by its modern people

by Strixxline via Midjourney

Related Locations

The Earthen Kingdoms
Echo

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No Shared Tongue

The language in which the journal is penned does not appear to share a root with the one most commonly spoken in Echo today, save for a few key phrases. It is thought that the phrases which appear familiar are likely borrowed from the language within the journal, and it is from these phrases that the settlement of Echo was first named.

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