(RP) More Questions Then Answers

[Aedon Durreah]

Aedon’s Journal -- Open Ends

We are missing something. I am convinced of this. I cannot shake the feeling that there lies something unseen of yet to make greater sense of the recent events in Trinsic.

A disease is not a curse is not an ooze is not a plague. I cannot blame the officials for failing to provide a consistent story when they do not even seem to have a grasp on it themselves. Everyone is throwing around answers when the only thing we have are questions; some things are bound to become confused along the line.

First the riots, then the Mayor turning away the royal guard, and now we find that he has been delving into the sod of the Isle of the Paladins. The Paladins are the very heart and soul of Trinsic. Always has it been so. That isle was their most sacred of grounds. What manner of mayor could conceive any project of excavation to the upset of such old tradition?

Whatever his motivations, he has found something for his troubles.

What tomb was this? Whose bones did he disturb, and for what reason were they interred beneath the sacramental halls of the holy knights? Perhaps the founder of the order, I suppose. It would make sense. But then, why would the unearthing of his remains lead to such a calamity?

I must know more about this tomb. The fortifications are underway, and it may soon be too late. We cannot rely upon the word of the authorities when they have provided so few answers so far. I need to have someone on the inside before the doors slam shut.

We are missing something, some piece of this puzzle.

I only hope that, when it lands in place, we find ourselves with a complete picture.

 

[Aedon Durreah]

Aedon’s Journal -- Chink in the Wall

Aherne is a resourceful fellow. Through his connections with the guard, he has managed to have two of his personal staff stationed on detail at the inner fortifications on the Isle of the Paladins. He has tasked them with finding out what they can of the nature of the tomb into which the Mayor’s miners have broken.

He has assured me, as well, that he himself shall be involved in the officers’ reviews and rounds throughout the investigation.

I have my man on the inside, and soon, I shall have some answers. So, why do I feel so uneasy?

Since Lord British abandoned these lands, I have had little use for the manner of syndicated rule by those left in charge. Executives come and go at unfixed intervals and their effect on these lands is negligible at best. They complicate, obfuscate, and demonstrate, but they been little more to the people of Sosaria than the spinster headmistress to the orphanage. Why should I feel any remorse or trepidation in these spy games?

Then again, why should I feel so compelled to take part in them in the first place? I have my questions, to which I desire fair answers, but who am I to demand my fair share of intelligence to which I have no claim? What more could an innkeeper do with the information than a lumberjack or a weaver?

Perhaps it is simply a part of who I am.

As tavern-master, people come to me for the news of the day as often as they do for advice or confession. They will have need to know soon enough, I should expect, and they will expect me to have something to offer.

So, where they build a wall, I must find a crannied hole through which to spy. I may not like what I see, but someone must know what is going on. I suppose it might as well be me.


 

[Aedon Durreah]

Aedon’s Journal -- The Naked Truth

Never ask a question the answer to which you are not prepared to hear.

Aherne’s detail has had little luck making their way into the excavation proper, but fortune has befallen them nonetheless. A team of scholars and miners has been assigned to examine the site for any information they can glean and to clear out the tombs in the process. A foolish measure by any means, and certainly far from the plan Captain Passer had proposed at our meeting. However, in their error lay my hope, for my men have had a chance to sort through the materials dragged from the womb of the island.

Most of it appears to be nondescript bits of dirt and stone rubble, but there were a few pieces which appeared to have been very deliberately worked by skilled craftsmen. The entire piece was either not present or sundered into too many pieces to be laid together, but the general shape appears to be a broad, thick slab, flat on both sides, with a curve to the edges. Perhaps a tombstone or a round plate of some kind; they could not say for certain.

Upon the slab remnants they found were words in a foreign script. The men did not know the language, but made effort to obtain scratchings so that I may examine them further. I recognize the letters. I know that I have not encountered this language myself, but I do recall seeing these figures somewhere only recently. I shall try to remember.

All of this is indeed most fascinating, but the most troubling accounts come to me from Aherne himself. During one of the officers’ tour details of Trinsic today, his coterie was accosted by members of the ‘undead’ of which Captain Passer had reported. However, the encounter did not go as he had been told to expect.

Children. There were children, he said. Men and women as well, from vigorous to elderly. They did not shamble or wander as the undead often tend. Their bodies, while grotesque and misshapen, showed no sign of violent trauma nor of decomposition. They were many, and they were cohesive, determined, almost regimented.

To his estimation, these people were very much alive. Broken, malignant, deformed, corrupted, but very, very much alive. And aware. And intelligent.

The other officers took arms and engaged with--as they are so fond of phrasing it--extreme prejudice. Aherne could not stomach the thought. To him, these were civilians, neither beasts nor damned. He ordered his men to fall back, and was compelled to flee Trinsic proper lest he face censure from his commanding officer.

On one hand, this means the end of any likely access to information from within the walls until this matter is resolved. On the other, I am not certain I wish to know any more than I do. Whatever the Mayor has done, he has unleashed something which is turning living innocents against their own wills. And according to Aherne, the Mayor is nowhere to be found. No sign of him has yet been found in Trinsic, and it is believed that he managed to flee the grounds even before we adjourned our meeting on Sunday. Of course, the official stance is expected to be that he has been apprehended and detained in some jail off-coast. They cannot possibly allow the public to know that they let him slip away, along with whatever cursed bones he carries.

So, I have my answers... but new questions now arise. This puzzle is growing well beyond the bounds any of us had forseen, and we are still looking for the edges. For the time, though, we seem to have found a cold trail to follow. It may be that we will simply have to wait for the next incident to find another clue.

But, what if the next incident seals all of our fates?

----------------

As I lay down to rest, I suddenly remembered where I had seen the script from the slab. During my evenings peering through the contents of the crate of tomes, I once came across a rather large book which was a rather hefty and unwieldy treatise on the various languages which had been used throughout Sosaria before the common tongue was officially established. It appears to be related to--though, in ways, distinct from--the Ophidian tongue. I have compared the scratchings to the translations within and, while many symbols do not seem to coincide, I have patched together rough translations of a few sections. They seem disconnected in many ways to my eyes, but perhaps something can come of this. I will include my translations here for future reference.

Two or more references to a “veil” of some sort.
Something about the place “...where guardians stand”
A reference to things “brought together”
There is one word which appears in a place of great prominence, but does not have any translation anywhere in my book. Complicating matters, the end of the word appears to be on a different fragment. When transcribed into the Common by way of alphabet, the very structure of the word seems to lack the natural, flowing cadence of Ophidian words. I have not heard the word before myself, but it may have significance. If my work is correct, the visible portion of the word is “garam.” The next letter is broken, but the remaining portion narrows the possibilities to C, D, K, O, P, or W.

A name? Perhaps this is a marital tomb for a family?

 

[Aedon Durreah]

Aedon's Journal -- Invisible Ties

The more I think about it, the less comfortable I become.

I wish that I could simply wave away the string of recent events as a random collection of happenings, but I cannot help seeing a loose thread between them. The difficulty lies in determining which is the cause and which are the effects.

Though Aherne has abandoned the guard, his plants have managed to provide me with one more rubbing, which I found slid under my door this morning. This one bears a piece of what I believe to be the same curved writing from before, but this larger shard also includes the centerpiece: the ankh-and-circle design traditionally engraved on the lids of coffins and tombs. That would imply to me that these are pieces of the lid of a stone interment vessel... However, if that is correct, then the shape and size of the rubbings indicate a vessel far too small for even a single body. Perhaps a toddler at the very most. Yet, the bones Passer described appeared to be those of a full-grown man.

I no longer feel comfortable maintaining this as a personal curiosity or a mind game. I will attend the meeting tonight, see what develops, but should the Captain prove insensible to what I have uncovered, it will be time to seek guidance and assistance elsewhere.

There is more to this. I am certain. And I do not believe we have seen the last of the mayor nor his findings.

 

[Aedon Durreah]

Aedon’s Journal -- Nightmind

Unsettling dreams just now. I am not entirely sure what to make of them. Perhaps I have just been thinking too much about the oddities of late.

I remember it began on a mountain trail. The horizon held only stars on a dark blanket of night. I sat on the ground with a few people I knew to be friends, though I cannot place a single face. I was tending a fire, and we all sat around it. The fire slowly grew from a small campfire into a tall, roaring blaze.

I stood before the fire, but now my friends and the mountain trail were gone. I was in front of my home, standing at the edge of the pond. The base of the fire sat in the middle of the water and its tongues blazed well above my head. The colours of the flames shifted through reds, oranges, and greens, as well as a few colours I could not readily describe. I stared into the heart of it for a few moments. I felt compelled to step into the blaze.

I walked right through the heart of the fire and out the other side. I now stood on the edge of a vast desert, bound on three sides by mountains. The landscape was dotted by deep holes. As I stepped through the desert, a new sinkhole formed where my feet left the sand.

I wandered the desert. No... no, I was not wandering. I walked straight, my eyes constantly fixed at a distant point on the mountains. I remember the moon setting in my right eye.

My foot became stuck in the sand. I was sinking into the ground, but I was not panicked.

As my head went beneath the sand, light flooded my eyes and I heard a great door slam shut. When my vision returned, I found myself alone in a small room, the walls almost too brilliantly white to behold, yet I could swear that I could discern the shadows of letters, shifting, on the searing white walls.

Aside from the white of the walls and the floor and the ceiling, there were large trails of deep-red blood on the floor. Now on the walls. Now on my hands. My hands... they were gnarled, grotesque. My fingernails had grown to talons. I threw my head back and roared in fury. I ran to the door and pounded with my fists and tore with my talons, howling all the time.

The door was solid stone, but I could see two men on the other side. Two identical men. They stared at me, expressionless.

One of the men began to bleed where he stood, large wounds opening across his flesh. He shriveled and died where he stood, vanishing at length into nothing. The other’s skin darkened to the colour of deep slate, and he shattered into three fragments. The ground consumed each piece where it fell. A rose bush bloomed where one had fallen, a lavender bush at the second, and a patch of clover at the third.

The lavender bush wilted as quickly as it had grown.

And that’s when I woke up.

Troubling. But, I can dedicate my attention only to one mystery at a time, and I must give priority to the mysteries of the waking world. Today, I begin my search for the name on the stones. Maybe Thom has found something which will give me a good place to begin. I may also put out a general post to the public. There is too little to go on for one mind alone. I am afraid that I will overlook something in the process.