The Eyesight Expedition

Akasuki Ellethra by DMFW with Art Breeder

The Eyesight Expedition was a mission into the deep Discontinuum sent by Queen Akasuki Ellethra to find the source of some disturbing visions and prophecies which were troubling many seers at the time. Whilst they were collectively unable to define the exact nature of the problem, a worrying agreement had arisen amongst the varieties of mystic prophets that the Fey Court used to probe the future, that a serious threat to the entire realm of the Fey Court had been identified. This was mediated through matching dreams, synchronous scrying and various other arcane techniques, but the answers to any specific questions were always vague and contradictory.
Finally, the queen quipped that since foresight and second sight weren't good enough, what was needed was good old fashioned eyesight. An expedition should be sent to gather direct intellegence and it would be named, rather whimsically, as the Eyesight Expedition.

Aeronwen Gweledydd by DMFW with Art Breeder

The queen's chief seer at the time was Aeronwen Gweledydd and after fasting for a full day and conducting special rituals, she announced that she could work out a route through the Discontinuum to the source of all the trouble, a realm they christened the Black Web.
The queen appointed Aeronwen Gweledydd to lead the expedition, since she was the only one able to navigate to the Black Web. Four other fey with a variety of skills were added to the roster. Only one of them ever returned, and that not until well into the reign of queen Bronwyn Glathkind, many, many years later.

Sinrhyme Maddon by DMFW with Art Breeder

Sinrhyme Maddon, came back to the Fey Court more than half mad and was never able to give a straightforward account of what had happened to the other members of the Eyesight expedition before the day he committed suicide.
He did, however, bring back two items of interest. The first was Aeronwen Gweledydd's journal, unfortunately torn and incomplete, but it did contain a partial record of the mission. The second was an artefact he insisted was important, and which he called the Primal Axion. The fateful story of that artefact would run down the years, all the way to the Second Rift War.
The following extracts come from the parts of Aeronwen Gweledydd's journal that made it back to the Fey Court.

Day 1

I will be dating these entries in days measured by our wake and sleep cycle, which is the custom for travels away from the Fey Court. It is futile to try to corrolate this with time in our own realm since the flow rates and types of time that we may encounter on this journey are unknown and likely to be complex and hard for us to evaluate. Even when we return, it may not be possible to map our time to the time passing at home, so any reader of this journal should consider these dates simply as a measure of subjective time experienced by our party since we embarked on this mission. Today we crossed into Lower Cattic, an unremarkable evolution currently in the middle of a nasty little war. It lies on a direct geometric course to the realm of the Black Web. We shall need to stay here for at least ten days before we have the energy to make the next realm crossing. This will be the pattern after every transfer where a portal does not exist, of course, as any wanderer knows, but we have a very long way to go and must practice more patience than most along the way.
I have found an inn here where our coin is good and we can eat and drink in relative comfort. We need to make the most of such opportunites for civilised living, since they will be rare in future. I have warned everyone to stay strictly neutral on the topic of the war and we must hope that the fighting does not come this way. We are not here to get involved in local politics. We wish to travel in and out of this realm as quickly as we can.

Day 296

Today for the first time, we crossed over into a realm which, to the best of my knowledge, has not been visited by any fey. Of course I cannot be sure about this. Ancient records are sketchy, I have not read them all and modern fey are hardly scrupulous about reporting the details of their travels back to the Fey Court, but still, as far as I am concerned this is a new world.

Eyesight Expedition 01 by DMFW with Art Breeder

I have named the realm, Golden Grass, for the nature of its wide rolling green hillsides and the long soft sunsets that wash over them. It is a beautiful world and seems to be largely empty, although some stone walls and a little marshalling of the vegetation tells me that some peoples live here. Or lived here once at any rate. I have decided that we will rest here for longer than usual so that Petra can fully recover from the injury she sustained when we were crossing the river below the Kelltown Ford.

Day 558

Eyesight Expedition 02 by DMFW with Art Breeder

We are staying at the harbour in Clanzach Reach, a small town in a realm I am calling Blue Flight, inspired by the beautiful azure wings of the local inhabitants. It is an evolution, I feel sure, and has a moderately sophisticated technology. The people are friendly and surprisingly we had enough of their language to make ourselves understood and to trade. We have been able to replenish our supplies, which is good since I think we may be reaching the limits of the safer realms. Ahead, I sense that the malign influence of the Black Web has spread like a stain into the Discontinuum and soon we will encounter it.

Day 715

Eyesight Expedition 03 by DMFW with Art Breeder

This amazing feature lies directly on our route to the Black Web. Someone, somewhen has punched a portal directly into the cliff face of the massif opposite. It is far and away the largest I have ever seen and unless it is partially natural (which is not impossible) I cannot conceive of the energies it must have taken to make it.
It is a great stroke of luck because I can sense that it is oriented in exactly the way we wish to travel and will jump us over many intermediate locations we would otherwise have had to spend much time and energy traversing. It does not seem to be guarded, on this side at least but I do not like the look of the sights we can see on the other side. There is a burning city. The realms we are now passing through are increasingly troubled. We must be careful.

Day 1016

Morale is innevitably low since we lost Petra. I blame myself. I should never have suggested that we cross the mountains in that torrential rain. Had we held back at the mouth of the pass, the rock fall would not have caught us out in the open. Sinrhyme tries to comfort me, saying that we could not have waited forever in those exposed conditions but I cannot help my feelings of guilt. We go on. Today we have crossed into a realm which, like many we have encountered recently, seems to be in perpetual twilight.

Eyesight Expedition 04 by DMFW with Art Breeder

I see ahead something that looks like it might be a sacred tower or a dwelling of some kind. Perhaps there will be supplies there? Although we live off the land, if there is an opportunity for something better I am inclined to look for it. But we must be wary of hostiles. These are dangerous realms.

Day 1361

We have arrived! So this is the Black Web?

Eyesight Expedition 05 by DMFW with Art Breeder

It is a gloomy realm to be sure. The world seems sunk in dark trees with only a few glimpses of sunlight and it looks like night is falling. The vegetation is spikey everywhere and covered with sticky dark threads which match the visions I had at the Fey Court. This is a land of spiders. Many, many spiders and I believe that some of them are the thinking kind and they do not think well of us. We must see what we can find out about them.

That is the end of the readable contents that were returned to the Fey Court. The rest of the journal consists only of ripped pages and old blood stains.