[I should mention that the accent of Zilargo in Sami’s Eberron is a French one, hence the occasional bit of the language. I’m not just being pretentious, I swear]
From the journal of Vanivieve ir’Coralyn d’Sivis
I have little time to recount the events of the last few hours. As I put pen to page, we are waiting for Daja d’Cannith to calibrate her time machine. I am little bit irritated that this is a real sentence I must write.
I truly thought I would die in the Mournland. We fought our way through the d’Cannith estate, toward the reason Daja had brought us here. This was no mean feat, as the floorplan had completely given up the ghost as far as spatial logic was concerned.
It had also given up the ghost in that actual ghosts were everywhere.
Throughout, whatever entity it was that had caused such damage to Starrina was stalking us from room to room, quite separate from the other spectres. An eater of knowledge. An epistemophage, if I can coin a term that’s a bit of a mouthful. As we went deeper into the estate, it bore down upon us.
And it caught Daja. Despite her protection being the principle reason for our hiring (though under admittedly false pretenses), Asra, her Kalashtar companion, was the one who managed to wrest the thing from her mind… but by then the damage was done. A kind of grey sludge leaked from Daja’s head, dripping down to cover her Dragonmark and dissolving into wispy smoke before our eyes.
She grew erratic – more erratic. Her memories and knowledge were haemorrhaging from her, the tide only stemmed with psionic help from Asra. Her short-term and working memory seemed unaffected; she remembered us, she remembered we were here to retrieve a device, but she couldn’t remember exactly what said device was.
Nevertheless, we pressed on.
A side note – after almost being murdered in the estate’s now-haunted library, we came to what appeared to be a gallery of Cannith inventions. I was somehow able to intuit the exact operation of a device I’d never before encountered; a jet-propellant jump-pack. I cannot reiterate enough what I wrote in my previous entry – I am not technically minded; not by any stretch of the imagination.
But I petitioned Truth, the concept; similarly to how I’d pray to Aureon, or the Traveller, or any other god. And the nature of the device’s operation just… came to me. This is something new; an ability hitherto alien to me.
There are theological implications I haven’t the time to dwell upon now. Could what I’m addressing as ‘Truth’ be some other deity; perhaps the Traveller partaking in a bit of identity fraud? Or something new? Eberron’s gods are distant. Am I simply reaching a little further afield? Or something else?
I’m getting off topic. Eventually we found Daja’s strange device, though she was unable to remember how to set it up. I tried praying to the Truth again, but to no avail. I know not if this was due to my own lack of conviction, a limit to the deity’s power, or the arcane nature of the device. It doesn’t matter now.
Daja attempted to puzzle out the device’s function for a time, but relented under Asra’s needling that we leave and get her medical attention. ‘You’ll likely figure it out when something on the ship jogs your memory,’ Asra offered, which to me had the scent of an offer for Daja to leave with her stubborn pride intact. Asra knows her very well, it seems.
But, as we tried to leave, it seemed the estate had other plans. We made it back to the main hall and moved to descend the stairs, when the frontmost wall of the estate, the one with the exit, opened its eyes. Rising, flowing upward, it became a massive stationary wave, towering over our attempted escape like some dreadful ocean ready to crush a seaside town.
Through the hole that was the nightmare thing’s mouth, we could see that the ship we’d come in was just gone. Even if we miraculously escaped the Cannith estate, we were still stranded in the Mournland.
This is it, I thought. The best case here is a quick death. This is the end, and nobody will even find the work I leave behind.
And then Daja switched on her machine. And suddenly we stood by the ship again, hours ago.
A flash of pink hair caught my eye, and I watched our group vanish into the estate. How strange it was to see the back of my own head. It felt like we should warn them or something, but then, I don’t know the etiquette for travelling back in time. Perhaps it’s like that old saying where if you step on a butterfly, you end up killing your own grandmother?
I never quite understood that one. My grandmother was a Gnome, not a butterfly. Although, there was that time she’d fallen out of bed, and she whispered to a butterfly, which told a sparrow, which told a pigeon, which told a chain of progressively larger birds until a giant eagle came to rescue her.
(That story is not true. It isn’t a lie, though; it is a joke.
It’s just delightful to see that my neuroses apply even when writing in my personal journal, a record of events for my eyes alone. I shouldn’t have to clarify the honesty of my words to myself.)
Anyway, none of this is what I even wanted to write about. I wanted to write about my new friend Aster.
I’ve attached a drawing of her to the top of this entry. She’s got this… feral look to her. I don’t mean her Shifter heritage – I mean the look in her eyes when we’ve been in crisis. She has the eyes of one willing to do whatever is necessary to survive, and capable of it too. One who could (and would) kill a man with a whisk if it came to it.
When I first met her, I thought her aloof. She’d kept herself to one side, kept the rest of the group at arm’s length. Then, I saw her in battle, moving faster than I could track, loosing arrows as if there were a rail guiding her shots to foreheads. After that, I thought her not aloof but alert.
The scarf she wears confused me at first. It’s glamerweave, enchanted to look like a glittering night sky. And it just didn’t match her functional suit of brown leathers. Was it a memento from some slain enemy? A gift from an old friend? An affectation to seem less threatening?
But, knowing what I know now? Her clothes are not what I initially perceived. The palette of her outfit has been meticulously selected. Her boots may be a simple brown, but they’re of a craftsmanship I’d expect to see on a runway. The fit of her jacket is immaculate.
The glamerweave scarf isn’t an anomaly, it’s an accessory. One that gets you thinking about her whole look, and the intentionality of an otherwise ‘simple’ set of clothes. Like a little spoon of crème fraîche on a berry tart, balancing the sharpness.
I try not to dip into hyperbole too often, but Aster is a fashion genius.
Leaving the Mournland on the ship we commandeered from our slightly younger selves, we made a quick stop in Fairhaven to gather supplies. Daja’s plan, as was explained to us, was that we would be using her machine to go back several years and thwart a certain calamitous event.
I won’t go into details on the plan, as if this journal is taken while the work is in progress, I could compromise the whole timeline – like that business with the butterfly I mentioned before. Suffice it to say that for Aster’s and my role in the plan, we’d need disguises. And Aster knew just where in Fairhaven to get some.
We made an incredibly brief visit to her home. The very fact she’d joined Daja’s group probably meant her house wasn’t safe, so we were in and out in a matter of minutes. I won’t comment on the house, except to say it was like a dressmaker’s studio mixed with a magpie’s nest. Then cross-pollenated with an industrial laundry room.
Glamerweave was everywhere. Aster sprinted around gathering it up, leaping over furniture, our need for disguises gone from her mind like grey sludge from Daja’s head. At one point I think she slid down the banister, swatting pairs of shorts from each stair.
Disguises have been achieved. She also gave me a beret with a little rainbow toast cat on it!!! My new friend Aster is capable and dangerous, but she’s also thoughtful and generous. I never realised how good I’d look in a beret, but she knew that about me before I did.
Daja’s going through the last bits of the plan now. The machine is nearly ready. And once we
[The rest of this page is illegible. Vanivieve apparently broke a pen or spilled some ink on it, as the paper is stained completely black. The next page has only a few smudges, and is written in a different ink.]
From the journal of Vanivieve ir’Coralyn d’Sivis
Daja’s machine worked. As I write this, it’s the 16th of Sypheros, 996 YK. Two years ago. Two years after the Day of Mourning. We’re still in Fairhaven. This wasn’t a quick pitstop at all, but our actual destination – the ‘pitstop’ was the Mournland. It seems Daja can keep her motives under wraps if she puts what’s left of her mind to it.
That date is relevant, if you’re not up on your politics. Today is the day of the fire at the celebration of Jorlanna Svehla d’Cannith’s birthday; the one that led to Janek Vonet – later Janek d’Cannith – being gravely injured and requiring months of supportive care, which Jorlanna retreated from the public to provide.
Before that day, Janek had been a minor poussoir de crayon for House Orien, who’d been assigned to assist Jorlanna in an interhouse project she was overseeing. Always one for Dragonmarked Houses working together, she was.
The two ended up in a relationship, one which only deepened on the day of the fire when Janek pulled her from the flames at great personal cost to his own health, and manifested a dormant Cannith Dragonmark in the process.
It’s long been suspected that Jorlanna’s priorities shifted away from leadership of her house in no small part thanks to Janek’s presence in her life. Rumours swirled that he was the reason there was no Cannith voice at the Dragonmarked House Conference later that year, as he and Jorlanna were off eating grapes in a gondola somewhere.
House Cannith West fell into sharp decline soon after, with the new rumours being that Jorlanna and Janek are not ‘Ruler and Advisor’, but ‘Puppet and Controller’. Such a reputation must surely have been a source of consternation for someone as stubborn as Daja. I’m sure she’d seethe at the gossip at her house’s expense. Maybe enough to try and ‘fix’ it?
We confronted Daja about this plan of hers. ‘Why are you so interested in preventing the events of this night?’ I demanded. ‘Is this some 3D Dragonchess political coup you’re running? Trying to raise your house’s profile?’
‘What?’ Daja looked perplexed. Of course, she often looked a bit perplexed when someone asked her a question she thought beneath her. ‘The fortunes of Cannith West aren’t important. That’s not why I’m here.’
‘Something more personal, then?’ I asked. My mouth was working a little bit faster than my brain was. I can get like that if I smell a scoop. But that is a flaw I can admit to, which means it isn’t really a flaw at all. ‘Are you perhaps here to make a name for yourself in the fire’s aftermath? Seeking favours from Janek d’Cannith?’
Daja’s eyes had begun to bulge as I went on, and by the time I mentioned Janek they were ready to burst out from her skull and bounce off my jacket. ‘Now why would I want to help my Mother’s slimy, backstabbing boyfriend?!’
She realised what she’d said as our collective jaws hit the floor.
Daja is Jorlanna d’Cannith’s daughter.
Normally I’d jot down some thoughts on such a revelation. But I can’t right now. There’s work to be done.
Roll History 