Leilani (Margaret)

29th of Tenthmoon - All Hallows Okay I don’t know how to write about this. I guess I’ll just word vomit all over this page. This was the third full day of adventuring, we’re now in a new location. I’m really tired. I don’t know how to format this, I guess I’ll just go through the day as it happened. I’m sorry if I can’t do it, and them, justice. I wish them blessed rest, world willing. I don’t like it when people die, I feel all empty and twisty on the inside at the same time. Mission board today: ● Investigate humming around camp ● >> Skeletons roam the swamp in large numbers ● >> Mysterious veil of mist hangs over the swamp ● >>> Red swamp shard - cleanup ● >>> Blue swamp shard - cleanup ● >>> White swamp shard - cleanup ● >>> Green swamp shard - cleanup ● Other! First inn was with Xitli, her positivity never fails to make me happy. She told us about what’s new in this new area, as we only just arrived yesterday. The first mission about the humming we found intriguing, though we mostly couldn’t hear it, she said it was very bothersome to those with more sensitive hearing. Joy the rat agreed. Apparently Gouda has dwarven ears, not rat ears. Weird. I thought it might be a good idea to investigate the mist first, as it could be obscuring things or it could clear up (no pun intended) some of the other things going on. After a rather lengthy discussion we decided to investigate the humming, which I think was a great idea, definitely after what we learned from it, but also because nobody likes to have ringing ears, I would know. The mission itself was extremely interesting, I had so much fun with it! The medic and alchemist tents were humming, the inside of the tents at a much lower pitch, and just around the outside at a higher pitch. Crystalline was also humming, spell stones and uncharged alike, at a sort of medium pitch. And, you guessed it, after a bit we realized that I was humming too. I could be a pitch pipe! The lanterns were also humming cause they have crystalline in them. Zet set up a ritual (I think?) and put Ptolomae to sleep with his dream sorcery word. May he rest peacefully forever, he will not be forgotten. I only learned about this later on, but Ptolomae had a vision during the dream. I’ll try to recount it as best I can… I believe there was thunder, thunder, thunder, then a rainbow that cracked like a whip and left a clear spot in the middle… something like that. We later interpreted it as the leyline being about to snap, which is pretty much correct. We eventually figured out that the tents were enchanted, and enchanted things were humming at a different pitch than the crystalline things, and skill shared spells didn’t hum, because they aren’t tied to a spell stone, so no crystalline. I wanted to cut myself down to a bone to see what it looked like and read magic on it, Zet was going to help me. People were really shocked by my willingness to get cut, but I don’t understand, we can heal it instantly anyway so I might as well learn something. Didn’t end up happening, people were doing other things. Anyways Joy put some crystalline dust on a shield and the humming changed strength and volume when the dust was in different shapes or patterns. I seem to remember that the triangle was strongest. I think square was weak. Star was interesting in some way, I can’t remember. My brain’s a little fuzzy… Anyway we read magic on the air and found a lot of red mana, moderate green and black (I think black was a little more because swamp), and a deficit of blue. We couldn’t check the white mana because we hadn’t done white mana unweaving, but we later found out that it was also average levels. While we were doing other things the crystalline dust formed into a weird shape by itself from the vibrations, the best short description I can think of is like an onion…? The cross section. A line down the middle, four concentric half circles on either side of the line, and the second outermost half ring has a line that follows the middle line on the end… confusing. I’ll draw it. That’s pretty much what it looked like. I think by that point we felt like we knew what was happening, so we decided to move on. No time to waste. Second inn I can’t remember… my head hurts… It was probably Zarai. The upshot is that we decided to go to the white shard. We thought it would be useful to have people able to manipulate white mana, especially since that is the only one we didn’t have. It was a pretty straightforward shard, similar to the others, we ran into some skeletons, white elementals, and the coolest part… a ritual circle. It was a pretty normal ritual except for a few things which I’ll mention in a minute. There were marks of one person making and performing the ritual, and one person in the middle of the ritual circle who didn’t enter it, but left it. We figured out that it was summons, or rebirth, or one of those necromancer-y things. The mana was black, as you’d expect, but the ritual also had a lot of red mana in it. Not good. It felt like it was sucking everything into itself. Harlow is an idiot. I’m a hypocrite. She stepped into the circle and got essentially spirit reaped (?) I say she’s an idiot but I was right about to put my hand into it when she stepped inside. Can’t blame me for curiosity! So she collapsed in the circle, and we left her there for a minute and the ritual started doing a backwards ritual, it started undoing what it had done… We didn’t want to leave the ritual around for too long so we pulled Harlow out and just fixed her ourselves, then we destroyed the circle, I wish I could remember how. Beau tried to absorb a bunch of the mana when the ring broke. It kinda just went shzoomph in on itself and was gone. We got to the unweaving finally, and oh my gods I feel like I’m getting tired too quickly. Mom and dad really know how to screw up a kid’s life. I was taking fatigue what seems like every 40 seconds or so, but Beau helped me out by taking the extra mana I think? Anyways we attuned to some white things and went on with the unweaving, I participated, and this was record time! 12 seconds! So that worked out. Third inn was with Zarai, she’s the same old spook, but I like her. We told her what we had learned from the humming, and about the ritual, and she found it very interesting and time sensitive. She did some kind of really cool spell or something where she drew her hands out into the air in front of her and back towards herself like waves, and she apparently learned from that that the air was charged with red mana. I asked her after we were done discussing to see if she could give me any insight about my bones. She did a similar thing and said that my bones were charged with red mana, and also black and white. We decided to discuss what to do over lunch and try to figure out what was going on. I ate some bread, wasn’t very hungry. Fixed Beau’s bracelet. We started talking, people relayed Ptolomae’s vision, after a while somebody did an oracle… I don’t remember to whom. I wish I could remember better, I just feel kinda sick. Ugh. The oracle gave us a lot of insight, the question was “what’s going to happen” I think. It showed waves of blue and red mana that alternated, red rushing out and blue rushing back. About this time we also started having surges of mana, mana adding to us and being taken from us. This kept happening all day until the actual thing happened… it was spread out every hour or 30 minutes or so I think, maybe a little faster. it started with one of each, then increased to two, then four, then eight. The oracle showed more, maybe an explosion or crack, or something like that, I can’t think of the right word and I can’t remember too well. The oracle helped us out. (Zarai said this part too) we had a choice between trying to stop this event from happening or trying to defend against it. We all went back and forth a lot, but a lot of the time it felt like whatever this thing was is so big that we couldn’t really do either. We started looking at the map, and realized the shards were all in a line, with red at one end going away from the Shimmerglass sea, and blue on the other end. Makes sense. I then thought that maybe the sea or something in/from the sea was sucking in all the blue mana (hence the deficit) and red mana was rushing in to fill that space. And then the blue would all come rushing back out and overflow in a big mana tsunami! For a while we were talking about the leyline like a fault line, and the event like a mana quake, but that’s not quite right. The leyline is like a fault, but this wasn’t an earthquake. That would line up with the oracle too. Lots of talking… discussion… people are bad at listening sometimes. That’s a little mean though, people are really good at listening too! At some point we switched gear from trying to figure out what was going on, to trying to figure out what to do about it. We all threw a lot of knowledge at the problem, everyone here is so smart and talented. We all tried our tradecrafts on the problem, mathematics, priest, forester, doctor, metaphysics, etc etc… got a lot of information, I don’t feel like writing it all down though. Xitli came back and helped us. Around this point I realized that Beau and I were royally screwed and would probably vaporize into dust when the leyline snapped and die forever, so that was fun. Clearly we’re not dead though. We proposed sending people or a group of people from the outpost to the green mana shard, as we needed protection from red and blue mana, and green and black are opposite, so we would be protected a little from red and blue in that shard. There was also talk of getting rid of all our magic items, and things with crystalline, cause we thought they’d explode with the mana surge. Didn’t end up happening though. We ended up deciding that we should try to direct the surge when the snap happened, as we couldn’t stop it, or defend from it. Threw out a lot of options of where to send it; a random patch of grass? It would go in both directions, a line, so that doesn’t work. The Shimmerglass sea? Full of crystalline! Boom! But also people live out there, can’t risk sending it through that way. The best options we could think of were either sending it up, to the mana scape, or down, to the prime. The mana scape might have taken it, but it still would’ve been a problem, just up there. Adding mana to more mana probably wouldn’t do much. The prime though we thought could neutralize it, just like the items, the teleporting sword couldn’t just be held down, but could be directed. So, prime it is. Not many things are prime in a useful way to us. Morganti, or just sending it down. The problem with down is that this whole area is built on top of crystalline mines! Yippee!! Let’s send a ton of mana down there and blow them up! Obviously not. We had no morganti, so that was our only option, but we had to do it carefully so we avoided the mines. There are a few caves that aren’t crystalline mines, opal mines and caves and things, and Xitli helped point some out on the map. We picked one, and opal mine I think, and headed out. Some of us stayed behind to help out in town as best as they could. I turned out to be helpful, I was still humming, but the deeper underground we got the quieter I became, very marginally though. I’m like a mana sensor. We went down… and down… and down… and hit a wall. Sky has threshold sense, which helped us know that the wall is a threshold, we think to the prime. Joy and Ik’nali(?)(I still don’t know how to spell his name) had been making a wave rotating ritual plan, super super interesting, but we also wanted to get closer to the prime. Their thought was that the mana was in a wave, and if you rotate half of a wave halfway it would cancel out. We wanted to get closer to the prime though, and I thought we should just try to get through it metaphysically, not physically, but we mostly all agreed that when the next surge of mana happens, (this time it would be 8 mana we thought, exponential) we would all pay all our mana into Beau and he would cast fireball on the wall to try to blow through it. Knowing what we know now, we are idiots. I’m sorry that we’re so stupid, it didn’t have to happen this way. We were so close to fixing it. Joy, Ik’nali, and some others were trying to set up a ritual, and Zet and Huilotl did unweaving…? On the wall?? I think? I can’t remember. They wanted us all to sing to the wall, they started with “I Sit Beside the Fire and Think”, but we didn’t know it and were all out of tune, it didn’t work. Some other suggestions were thrown out, and then I said the Itsy Bitsy Spider, which I think is a great one and would have worked… Just as we were starting to sing that the mana surge came, Beau ran over and we all paid all our mana and he cast the spell, there was no time to think. Gods I can’t even write it, it's so awful. The mine caved in. I don’t know how we thought it could’ve worked, it was so stupid. We all died thousands of feet underground, buried by miles of rock. And we didn’t even do anything to help the arc. That’s what it was by the way, a second, smaller, arc, about 25% of the size of the first I think. We figured that out for sure afterwards. We all stayed in our bodies, we’d learned beforehand that if you were alive, there was a higher chance of being affected but with less bad effects, and if you were dead, there was a lower chance of being affected, but with worse effects. And if you were a wisp… goodbye. One person must’ve wisped, I’m sorry he didn’t know. He will not be forgotten. The outpost was hit pretty hard, but luckily Ptolomae did something that probably helped. She found morganti, I think it belongs to Penelope?? I don’t know how or why she has it; or had it I guess. Ptolomae used the morganti like a lightning rod and channeled the mana storm through it and into the ground I think. She has really neat scars now. She’s got like gold lightning scars from her right hand all the way up her right arm, and then that turns into a purple spiral on her chest, and then into black lightning scars all the way down her left arm to her hand. She’s being kind of an ass about it though. “Ohh, I fixed whole thing by myself, meh meh meh”. We did our best, it’s not like this is the kind of thing we do every day, and just because her thing happened to work and not kill everyone doesn’t mean that we caused this whole problem. Beau certainly doesn’t deserve the blame for it, but I know he’s feeling super guilty. We all participated, we mostly agreed on the plan beforehand, and most importantly we all paid our mana for the spell. Beau was just the one who could cast it. It was a group mistake, and just that, a mistake. All of the innkeepers survived, and so did most people in camp, but almost everyone has severe manarash of all five types. Lucky Ptolemae doesn’t though. And Zarai. They’re both fine. We had sent a group to take shelter in the Green Swamp Shard, and they mostly survived, but about two thirds of them came back with mutations. Some of them are helpful, like regeneration, but some are… not so good. Some people can’t use their hands, I heard. Most of them have Greenrash and Blackrash. Out of all three groups, a little more than a dozen people pd’d, but none of them received Divine Interventions. That seems a little weird to me. This little second arc got alllll the way out to the Sea, and luckily Teakiri was mostly spared, but Karakiri and Gemglass were hit hard. The range and strength of the impact was smaller than the first arc, which is good. Karakiri got slammed in a similar way to Zari-Kiri, and Gemglass mostly got Bluerash. One other person pd’d, Lily, who was pretty new to the party. I’m sorry that we put her in this danger. And of course, Zet. Oh I’m so sorry Zet, I’m so so sorry. This should never have happened. You had so much you were working on, your patients, the book, and your bones are buried and I won’t be able to get them to your library. I’ll do everything I can to get your body out, I promise. I just don’t know if it will be enough… I wish I could do more. Oh and guess what. Oh joy! CHAINS IS OUT. Oh, and guess what again!! Mom and dad are GONE and so are all the littles with them!!! WITH NO TRACE!!! Oh yeah, perfect planning, just leave your two oldest children without telling them and disappear off of the face of Falnorian right before a giant gods damned disaster and don’t even bother to consider anyone else, let alone your children, they wouldn’t care RIGHT?!? They don’t ever need support, or guidance, or for you to tell the truth!! RIGHT MOM AND DAD?!?!? That sounds perfectly normal to me! Dammit my hands are shaking. I need a minute. So, no more chains. Beau is going to have to readjust to it. He’ll probably be super hyper now. Or maybe the opposite. I don’t know… At least we don’t have to worry about it killing him anymore! To be honest it is a load of my shoulders, even if it does mean that it might destroy Lakeshore, whatever it is. Now it’s time for Leilani to write about herself in her literal own journal. I sure do talk a lot. But yeah about me, I’m not feeling so great after the arc. I thought Beau and I would just permanently die when it happened, I’m literally made of crystalline at this point so I thought I would just explode forever, but luckily that didn’t happen! I’m honestly a little dumbfounded by it still, to be honest. I think the second arc reacted with me in the same way the first one did. I can feel everything (magic and mana I mean) so much more now. It’s a little much to be honest, but I’ll have to get used to it, I don’t think it’s going to go away any time soon, if at all. I just feel so tired all the time. I feel almost… fragile I guess, like I might get bumped and just shatter right there. Everytime I stay around the shards too long I start to get so tired, my limbs get heavy, I feel like I’m being weighed down with magic. I don’t know exactly what changed, but something definitely did. It’s not all bad though! I feel much more in tune with mana now, I didn’t know that was even possible but it is. I feel… connected to it, like it’s flowing through me more, like I’m a reed in a river. The mana flowing all around me and I bend with it, dragged around by the rushing water, but it also flows through me, I feel porous, hollow, waiting to be hydrated with magic. I don’t know if that makes sense at all. But that’s what it feels like. I feel like I can see(?) it better now? Mana I mean. It’s not like I can actually see it, maybe it’s more of a sense kinda thing. I’m sure it’ll come in handy, it’s perfect for the kind of work we’re doing. I’m just worried about the fatigue, just existing is making me tired. I’ll have to get over it, toughen up. I can do it. The more experience I get the stronger I get, and the less tired I feel. I’ll just have to push through it! Pain is temporary! I’m writing this outside the tents, because the medic’s tent is a blue shard right now and the inn tent is a red one, and I have red blue and white mana rash right now. Everyone is taking fatigue from their mana rash and being in the shards of those colors, really quickly too. My mana rash is not as bad as it was last month, it’s more moderate, and only having three colors instead of all five is definitely nice. Everyone else who was in the cave also got red and blue mana rash, also moderate, and some of us had white left over from the white shard. But yeah, I’m sitting outside, and it is miserable. It’s a black shard. It stinks like hell and death, the ground is mud and I keep sinking down into it every couple of minutes, the benches and tables and whatever else out here keeps getting swallowed by the swamp and I keep having to pull them out, and it feels… heavy. The ground is dark, and sticky, it’s like tar. And oh my gods the smell. It’s worst in the mornings and evenings, but there’s not really anywhere else for me to be at the moment, so I just have to deal with it. Everything - the air, the ground, sounds, all of it - feels heavy, and there’s like a faint, cold, prickling feeling everywhere. It’s almost like a wisp. I’ve been avoiding the other two tents, I’m not used to the normal amount of tiredness I have now, and I need to deal with that before I add on any more from being in those shards. I won’t lie, things are rough right now. I don’t like losing people, and it was only a few, what’s going to happen the next time we have an arc, are there going to be more arcs? And who dies then? Our innkeepers? Sis? Beau? What’s going to happen to me, are parts of my body just going to keep being replaced by crystalline forever, until I’m not me anymore? What am I going to do when I end up all alone… And I have no more family now, I guess. I’ll try to find them, but what if they’re just… gone? What if they’re dead? And the little ones… Camila, she was just learning how to paint and she loved it so much, and Luna and Reed, and Maru and Riga just started school… What if I never see them again? What if it’s all mom and dad’s fault? I just can’t trust them anymore, I feel like everything is crashing down around my ears. And I’m just so tired. So. so. tired. But y’know at least Chains is gone! I have to stay positive, there’s no room for despair right now. Beau is going to be better now, he’s not… yeah. Everything will be good, it’ll be alright! No worries here! I’ll journal more soon, XOXOXO Leilani P.S. Teeth aren’t bones. Weird.