{ background: to celebrate the launch of Stygian Abyss, I challenged myself with starting up a character from scratch and getting that character across the abyss alive before allowing myself to use any of the new content with my other characters; there have been a new bumps along the way, not least of which is that I have no mysticism spells above 4th circle - oops - but having now GMed imbuing from random monster loot, I have decided it's time to make an attempt to cross the abyss }
To Be Beginning
I write this journal in the tongue of the pink-skin daemons, which seems to come easier to me than it does to my kin. Perhaps it is because of something in my origins, for unlike all the kin I know, I was not born under the rule of our most wondrous Queen.
I was born in another land, another world. I remember little of it now other than I lived amongst pink skinned daemons, in a great walled city straddling the coast between a great wood and a shallow sea. I spent my days and nights perched upon a temple, listening to the melodious songs and chants within. They were kind to me, although I never spoke to them, for some magic of that world made me sleep as still as stone for years at a time, save only for rare nights. But then came a mighty storm that tore shingles from roofs and trees from the ground. I was lifted by winds from my perch, woken by the storm's power and lifted into the sky. Through a great black portal I was sucked away from my homeworld, never to see it again.
Instead I found myself in Ter Mur, amongst those whose appearance was almost identical to my own. The mystics of the Royal City cleared away my wounds and nurtured me back to health. At first they thought my ignorance of their ways was but a result of the wounds. Then they thought perhaps I was a wingless, near-mindless worker somehow granted wings. I was a curiosity, a puzzle that they ultimately solved by retraining me in speech and etiquette, a process which took many years. They called me "Sacku Vasarb" (as I learned to slur it). It means "sugary tree", named for the maple sap and leaves in my hands when I was first found, left from my frantic attempts to hold onto a tree in the storm.
My love of music made me a useful in mystical rituals and I learned the basics of magic this way as well, achieving adept status. Along the way, I earned the friendship and loyalty of the winged feline "Kittygoyle", a longer story than I can devote to this journal, but let me just say that my first expedition to face a slith was an epic confrontation that consumed all my reagents and ended in a draw and had me dragging myself into the aquaduct to hide.
Over time, I not only earned a place amongst the people, but a place of honor and nobility for my diligence in searching down ancient pottery and scrolls from the holes of toxic slith, for my control in wearing down the more aggressive boura threatening the northern fields and for my passion in defending the edges of our land against the continued creep of the void eating away at us, driving refugees from the less-fortunate villages.
But now I come at last to our current troubles. An earthquake rocked our troubled lands and the ancient tomb of kings in the mountains by the Holy City became overrun with spirits of our dead, returned, shadowy, putrid and molevolent. Expeditions entered and reported stirrings in the deapths of the stygian abyss. Most extraordinarily were the sitings of "pink deamons", intelligent wingless creatures of great power and mystery.
The Queen has decided that contact must be made with these strange beings and the elders of the court have asked if I could be one such emmissary. The stories I once told of my homeworld, my ease of understanding their strange manner of speech, make me suitable to be an emmissary. Though I have not the power to fight the creatures of the abyss, my more peaceful skills and the virtues may provide me safe passage through danger.
Having finished my meditations at the Shrine of Singularity and imbued into the fabric of my cloths and jewels the enhancements to overcome the limitations in my skills and provide some minor defences and the rough forces I may encounter, I prepare to set forth on my quest. There is no certainty of success and little guide to who or what I might find should I manage to succeed in my crossing to the rumored land beyond the abyss.
Sacku Vasarb, Noble of the Queen's Court
To Be Beginning
I write this journal in the tongue of the pink-skin daemons, which seems to come easier to me than it does to my kin. Perhaps it is because of something in my origins, for unlike all the kin I know, I was not born under the rule of our most wondrous Queen.
I was born in another land, another world. I remember little of it now other than I lived amongst pink skinned daemons, in a great walled city straddling the coast between a great wood and a shallow sea. I spent my days and nights perched upon a temple, listening to the melodious songs and chants within. They were kind to me, although I never spoke to them, for some magic of that world made me sleep as still as stone for years at a time, save only for rare nights. But then came a mighty storm that tore shingles from roofs and trees from the ground. I was lifted by winds from my perch, woken by the storm's power and lifted into the sky. Through a great black portal I was sucked away from my homeworld, never to see it again.
Instead I found myself in Ter Mur, amongst those whose appearance was almost identical to my own. The mystics of the Royal City cleared away my wounds and nurtured me back to health. At first they thought my ignorance of their ways was but a result of the wounds. Then they thought perhaps I was a wingless, near-mindless worker somehow granted wings. I was a curiosity, a puzzle that they ultimately solved by retraining me in speech and etiquette, a process which took many years. They called me "Sacku Vasarb" (as I learned to slur it). It means "sugary tree", named for the maple sap and leaves in my hands when I was first found, left from my frantic attempts to hold onto a tree in the storm.
My love of music made me a useful in mystical rituals and I learned the basics of magic this way as well, achieving adept status. Along the way, I earned the friendship and loyalty of the winged feline "Kittygoyle", a longer story than I can devote to this journal, but let me just say that my first expedition to face a slith was an epic confrontation that consumed all my reagents and ended in a draw and had me dragging myself into the aquaduct to hide.
Over time, I not only earned a place amongst the people, but a place of honor and nobility for my diligence in searching down ancient pottery and scrolls from the holes of toxic slith, for my control in wearing down the more aggressive boura threatening the northern fields and for my passion in defending the edges of our land against the continued creep of the void eating away at us, driving refugees from the less-fortunate villages.
But now I come at last to our current troubles. An earthquake rocked our troubled lands and the ancient tomb of kings in the mountains by the Holy City became overrun with spirits of our dead, returned, shadowy, putrid and molevolent. Expeditions entered and reported stirrings in the deapths of the stygian abyss. Most extraordinarily were the sitings of "pink deamons", intelligent wingless creatures of great power and mystery.
The Queen has decided that contact must be made with these strange beings and the elders of the court have asked if I could be one such emmissary. The stories I once told of my homeworld, my ease of understanding their strange manner of speech, make me suitable to be an emmissary. Though I have not the power to fight the creatures of the abyss, my more peaceful skills and the virtues may provide me safe passage through danger.
Having finished my meditations at the Shrine of Singularity and imbued into the fabric of my cloths and jewels the enhancements to overcome the limitations in my skills and provide some minor defences and the rough forces I may encounter, I prepare to set forth on my quest. There is no certainty of success and little guide to who or what I might find should I manage to succeed in my crossing to the rumored land beyond the abyss.
Sacku Vasarb, Noble of the Queen's Court
... *finally starts playing SA* )
