Vali Neyr, Tercaelo Truth-Seeker
You've opened the book, and now it's too late. Yes, yes, horror of horrors, all of your fears have become real! You thought you'd found something really good this time, didn't you? You saw the fine, well-aged spine of an old tome and thought you'd found an artifact of a lost library or one of those displaced compendiums of secret knowledge. But, no, you found this instead, and as soon as you read the first word the curse took hold. Yes, it's true. You're dying. Right now, you're already dying. Isn't that terrible? But isn't it also a little bit funny? Yes, it is, I promise. It's funny! You picked up a book and now you're dying! Have a laugh. You might as well, for you haven't long now.Let me tell you a few things about this fool you might have heard about, this Tercaelo man named Vali Neyr. Here's the first thing: he's dying. How do I know? Because I'm watching him die, and it's a dismal sight. Humiliating, almost, though I guess he does maintain an idiotic kind of pride. Don't act like I should show more respect for a dying man. You aren't seeing what I'm seeing. This man dedicated his life to gathering secrets in his journals and tomes, with the specific goal of publishing them widely so that all these secrets may be revealed, but here he is dying alone in an abandoned ruin, and he's still got all his books with him! So it's all for nothing, see? I'm sure he imagines he and his books will be found someday, but he's seriously underestimating just how far out of the way he's ended up. Blown by a storm, you see, a potential fate for any winged being, whether sentient or not, no matter how smart or dumb they happen to be. Blown off course, into these ruins, down and down and down, until he doesn't know where he is, and now... Well, I'd say, "Just look at him!" but you're not here. Nobody ever will be here. He's freezing and starving, assured of his death, and can you guess what he's doing? He's writing about the ruins. He's transcribing ancient script and describnig all the things he sees, all written with his shivering hand in his book, most likely illegibly. He still thinks he can add an ounce or two to his legacy of knowledge, even now not imagining that these books he's hauling around on his shoulders will never be found. It hasn't even occured to him to regret that he didn't stash them somewhere. What a shame! Is it a shame? Shame on him, for sure. Well, you're dying, too, so shame on you while we're at it. Isn't that just right? It is. Now, you don't deserve all this mockery. I tell you what, I'll make it up to you. Once he's dead, I'll go down there and see what he's been writing. I'll include some of it here for you. That way you can enjoy some small amount of the upsetting amusement I'm feeling while I watch him lay down on the cold stone and slowly, slowly, oh so quietly, sing himself to sleep. Here you are...-This article is excerpted from a transcription of a cursed tome, one of Sof Sator's Fabled Compendiums. It contains knowledge that is uncommon, forbidden, or perhaps even dangerous.-
It’s been decades since I’ve set out, and I’ve not lost a single page. From the catacombs of Gray Watch to the cathedral halls of Revan, to the sunken libraries of the Golden Reef, I’ve studied the forbidden tomes of the world and transcribed their secret histories. There are still too many mysteries – what is the name of the Nameless Empire? Whence came the sanguinates? – but these questions, it seems, will not be mine to answer. Not unless the answers lie in these far-flung mountains, for the ruins of Jeimr have swallowed me, and I will never again see daylight; not sun, nor sky, nor sea, nor open land. In these halls I will be lost and die. But what will become of my tomes? Someone must find them, surely. Everything I’ve learned cannot be lost with me; like the long-lost secrets I’ve been seeking, my tomes will eventually be prised from my skeleton. Still, I’m not dead yet, and I owe it to the whatever future research finds these tomes to fill them with as many secrets as I can. I’ll will seek and I will write up until my final moment. My name is Vali Neyr. In my own language it has a beautiful meaning, but we are not in the habit of translating these into Satorian. I will keep this, and this alone, secret. I am from the tercaelo of the Hodm Glacier. There I left my family and aerie, taking my journals to travel across the lands of Sof Sator, Nor Sator, the Golden Reef, as well as the lands surrounding, forgotten isles, and lost catacombs. It was my intent, having uncovered a wealth of knowledge in these places, to return these tomes to Hodm and there make copies to disperse to the nations of the anthrals. It was on my way up the mountainside that disaster befell me. I meant to give Pharaul a wide berth, but the Thousand-Year War between the Rhyqir Valley Alliance and the Nor Sator League has entered its bitter finality, and the anthral corpses strewn across the mountainside were hot with dangerous magic. The endless snowfall blew over them, melted upon their bodies. Desiccated meat over blackened bone, they steam, as if the ghosts of the dead clung stubbornly to their mortal anchors. Maybe I was overly afraid of this haunting omen, or maybe my fear of that lingering magic was rational. Either way, it drove me to Pharaul. As a rule, tercalo do not deal with anthrals, but because we share the slope of Ydras with the city of Pharaul we do sometimes make exceptions for them. That is to say, as I made my way through the city, I was a remarkable but not irreconcilable sight. Flight in Pharaul is difficult. It is surrounded above and below by ancient gates to subterranean Jeimr, and the faltering magic of the labyrinth at all times conjures blizzards that wash down around the city. There is no warmth in the air, only bitter downdrafts that cut through my feathers, chill my skin, and push my wings hard against my body. My intention to glide from rooftop to rooftop was strictly possible but incredibly difficult. On a great hall beside the square overlooking the Rhyqir Valley, I took shelter in a belfry. A number of hawks had also had this idea, and I found myself comfortably surrounded by the habitation of my less sapient kin. Though ice encrusted the white stone, not unlike quartz I’d seen in deep places I’d written about in my journals, the inside was clear but for the eddying of snow. An anthral would’ve frozen to death in that belfry, but I found it comfortable enough, not quite as cold as the high glacier where I’d once lived. By the sound of children beneath me, I guessed this place was in use as an orphanage. In the past it had likely been a temple – the anthrals of Pharaul had once worshipped spirits of nature, of wind and stone and beast – but religion had faded from this place centuries ago. Now I heard humming engines, jittering pipes, and watched steam rise from a vent recently carved in the center of the stoney roof. This is Pharaul’s current nature, mausoleums and temples once held sacred now sealed and filled with radiators and water-boiling machines of all kinds. They defend the city with cannons that fire exploding metal shells into the valley, making the city all but unapproachable to their enemies in the Nor Sator League. There are no sorcerers among the Pharaul. Not because they hate magic. It has simply fallen out of use, replaced by mechanisms that they better understand and better trust. While I lingered in the belfry, I met the exception; the orphan matron was a mythspinner, much older than she appeared, and with knowledge of a very particular school of invocation. It has no baring on what happened to lead me here, though. I’ll write about her elsewhere. As I ate the food that the matron gave me and gathered my strength to proceed onward, the Nor Sator League brought its great secret to bare against Pharaul. It was a strange thing to see; I’d uncovered the hidden magic of Nor Sator years prior, written it into my journals, and left their capital of Gray Watch behind to seek other knowledge. Now I had to face it, this thing that I understood, knowing that no one else in Pharaul was aware of the truth of it. A brilliant golden light shone down on the city of Pharaul, and then it swept through the city to destroy both city and inhabitant, ancient structure and youthful flesh, with equal apathy. The secret sorcery of Gray Watch, the last resort I never though they’d turn to, was a weapon that turned all it touched to dust. No cannon, rifle, or armor could defend against it. The magic of the orphan matron was equally useful. In all of my tomes of knowledge, I know of only one thing that could have turned it aside, and it no longer exists in this world. I fled, burdened by my packs of journals and ink, gliding as best I could to smaller buildings, finally to the street among the fleeing anthrals, but tercaelo do not run quite so well as we glide. I was slow, and the weapon swept around me, then toward me. Facing certain death, I opened my wings to the blizzard on the edge of the city and was swept away by the magic storm blowing out of Jeimr. A blizzard so dense it can be thought of as an eternal avalanche, I was born away from the city of Pharaul faster than I’d ever flown, swept down the slope of the mountains toward the Rhyqir Valley. While above Pharaul the gates of Jeimr exhale the storm, beneath Pharaul are other great gates that endlessly inhale like gasping mouths upon the mountain. They suck the storm into the labyrinth beneath the slopes of Ydras, and so they pulled me into the darkness. With the careless violence that only unruly magic is capable of, I was thrown into these cavernous halls where once dwelled a hundred-odd generations of anthral and tercaelo who never once glimpsed the sun. And here, lost in their long-abandoned catacombs, I find myself facing the end of my journey. I will uncover their secrets, as many as I can, and then I will die. Please take this and whatever tomes you found on me to your scribes. Everything I have written is true; I have confirmed it, or stated plainly when I could not. Know that I died for this knowledge. To me, these are religious texts, books of truths. Carry it carefully. Read it cautiously. And share it, please. Share it with all that you can. -Vali NeyrCan you imagine a more foolish way to die? Besides the way in which you are dying right now, I mean. Well, that was a very inconsiderate thing for me to write, wasn't it? Oh, I feel bad. Not as bad as you're about to feel, though. You're dying. I'm not. Ah, yes. I feel better now. Back to my point, let's share a good laugh at this Vali Neyr fellow. Yes, we're laughing. We're laughing together, both of us. Oh, fun! Next we'll laugh at you. Don't stop laughing now. -Jack o'Shadows
1090 CR
Brown and white feathers
Clawed feet under-utilized
Sad expression
Very full of himself
Dead, as of this writing
Wait, I think I saw him move?
No, still dead.
Yes, he's dead.
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