Jhaldrin Helviir
Height: 5' 6"
Weight: 124#
Age: 509
Jhaldrin is a tall and wirily thin figure of an Elven build. He has a somewhat feral appearance, his features weathered by the centuries, he is ever dressed in a patchwork of old skins. This clothing is threaded with tendons and pierced by occasional bones, some of which pass through the skin of his torso or limbs.
His face and neck are similarly adorned. A curved bone pierces his septum, another from his lower lip that curves down over his chin, two more threaded through a pair of holes in each of his sunken cheeks, a brace of five bones that pierce the front of his neck, clasping like a bony gorget.
The hue of his skin is lost by an accumulation of tattoos, symbols in ashen and indigo blue common to the minerals of the eastern depths. His accent aligns with this too, inflected and scattered with terms more at home around the cities and wilds of Earthroot.
His walking staff though would be foreign to that home. Made of enchanted obsidian, but with subtle violet to its core as if a smoky amethyst. An effect of irradiation and iron, associated with the volcanic shore of the Lapal Undersea in the Serpent Depths. The rest of his belongings are bound up in skins upon his back, books marked with symbols of the primordial language, many flasks and bone tubes, leafy bundles and well worn tools.
Jhaldrin
-
Gorirah
- Posts: 58
- Joined: Fri Sep 09, 2016 11:20 am
Re: Jhaldrin
Journal 15, Schamath.
----------------------------
I am not yet sure why I have come to this western realm, I just hope it is for more than avoiding the clear alternative. It has been nearly a century since I last left my home, so it is inevitable that much feels foreign again. That said, it is the familiar which is more uncomfortable here in Sshamath. The same facade and lofty spires, and blithely over uncommon truths they look across the maggot farm. City savages, those there for the ride, high on hot air and brought up on lies. Faith in the Juvenile and the next bloody fad, they pare it all down to the size of their mind.
Of course that most evident truth only hides the deeper ones, those which are rarely sought. Maybe this tendency to banality is an inherited survival mechanism, true wisdom being such a dangerously tasty morsel to the likes of the Blue Man. Indeed here I am, scouting to pay my debt to him.
I have meditated much on his existence and the enigmas thus posed. My debt must be paid first, but what happens after that depends on whether there are others like him. There maybe relevant material in the Sshamath libraries among the folklore and ancient history, though such works are likely to be adulterated in a city like this.
The fungal forest here will serve as a good place to stay. It is quiet and has much to offer, food, water, places to safely cache samples, even some amanita growing in the frass under luminescent caps. There is income available too, both from beetle body parts and the bodies of those who die trying to harvest them. Petty necromancers with city egos pretending it to be more than adolescent fetish. Well its easy coin and I will most likely need it to access the libraries. I will need find a local that I can work with too, I cannot be found too ignorant to the fashionable culture. Someone with an understanding, yet estranged from that common herd.
----------------------------
I am not yet sure why I have come to this western realm, I just hope it is for more than avoiding the clear alternative. It has been nearly a century since I last left my home, so it is inevitable that much feels foreign again. That said, it is the familiar which is more uncomfortable here in Sshamath. The same facade and lofty spires, and blithely over uncommon truths they look across the maggot farm. City savages, those there for the ride, high on hot air and brought up on lies. Faith in the Juvenile and the next bloody fad, they pare it all down to the size of their mind.
Of course that most evident truth only hides the deeper ones, those which are rarely sought. Maybe this tendency to banality is an inherited survival mechanism, true wisdom being such a dangerously tasty morsel to the likes of the Blue Man. Indeed here I am, scouting to pay my debt to him.
I have meditated much on his existence and the enigmas thus posed. My debt must be paid first, but what happens after that depends on whether there are others like him. There maybe relevant material in the Sshamath libraries among the folklore and ancient history, though such works are likely to be adulterated in a city like this.
The fungal forest here will serve as a good place to stay. It is quiet and has much to offer, food, water, places to safely cache samples, even some amanita growing in the frass under luminescent caps. There is income available too, both from beetle body parts and the bodies of those who die trying to harvest them. Petty necromancers with city egos pretending it to be more than adolescent fetish. Well its easy coin and I will most likely need it to access the libraries. I will need find a local that I can work with too, I cannot be found too ignorant to the fashionable culture. Someone with an understanding, yet estranged from that common herd.
-
Gorirah
- Posts: 58
- Joined: Fri Sep 09, 2016 11:20 am
Re: Jhaldrin
Journal 15, Schamath.
----------------------------
The folly of Sshamath may disappoint, but it is a poor joke compared to Rockrun. It is a mystery how any natural process gave rise to such abortive minds as those rattling around the skulls of Svirfneblin. Even goblins have a thousand times their worth. Vacuous drooling cross-eyed freaks only good for serving up a warm resentment. If opportunity arises to place Rockrun back in the hands of the Duergar, then I will lend my aid without clause or reservation. Maybe, maybe, in clearing my debt I could have the Blue Man feed upon their brains, polluting his mind with their insidious retardation.
The flavor of hate is so delectable, I feel it strengthen my kin. They flow, weave through my flesh like chill ribbons, soaking it up and leaving trails of whispered recollection. It is the most exothermic of emotions, it gives so generously.
I will visit them regularly, keep an eye out and dissolve into their accepted background.
The cycle has been blessed with omens. In the ash of the Quaggoth spoor was a meeting yet to come. Whomever it is, she crosses our past and future alike and what is more, the ash gave a bitter taste. Then, as the ibogaine waned and I took the last ember of my fire in hand, it popped at the flight of what was more than a mote. It bore life without doubt but it did not commune, perhaps it merely sought the next camp fire, maybe the sense it had spied was just in the tail of the leaves.
My meditations were once again shadowed by the Blue Man, or so he called himself to me. Acknhanqalus my kin had called him, or it. When I give my mind up to the flow, the creature is there amid my kin. But they do not see its midnight blue, gnarled and thorny old skin, the black orbs of its lidless eyes, its yellowed teeth, and the black mist that is both tongue and breath. It may watch, until my debt is paid.
----------------------------
The folly of Sshamath may disappoint, but it is a poor joke compared to Rockrun. It is a mystery how any natural process gave rise to such abortive minds as those rattling around the skulls of Svirfneblin. Even goblins have a thousand times their worth. Vacuous drooling cross-eyed freaks only good for serving up a warm resentment. If opportunity arises to place Rockrun back in the hands of the Duergar, then I will lend my aid without clause or reservation. Maybe, maybe, in clearing my debt I could have the Blue Man feed upon their brains, polluting his mind with their insidious retardation.
The flavor of hate is so delectable, I feel it strengthen my kin. They flow, weave through my flesh like chill ribbons, soaking it up and leaving trails of whispered recollection. It is the most exothermic of emotions, it gives so generously.
I will visit them regularly, keep an eye out and dissolve into their accepted background.
The cycle has been blessed with omens. In the ash of the Quaggoth spoor was a meeting yet to come. Whomever it is, she crosses our past and future alike and what is more, the ash gave a bitter taste. Then, as the ibogaine waned and I took the last ember of my fire in hand, it popped at the flight of what was more than a mote. It bore life without doubt but it did not commune, perhaps it merely sought the next camp fire, maybe the sense it had spied was just in the tail of the leaves.
My meditations were once again shadowed by the Blue Man, or so he called himself to me. Acknhanqalus my kin had called him, or it. When I give my mind up to the flow, the creature is there amid my kin. But they do not see its midnight blue, gnarled and thorny old skin, the black orbs of its lidless eyes, its yellowed teeth, and the black mist that is both tongue and breath. It may watch, until my debt is paid.
-
Gorirah
- Posts: 58
- Joined: Fri Sep 09, 2016 11:20 am
Re: Jhaldrin
Journal 15, Schamath.
----------------------------
We met at the Gloura's Wings. Her face was one of those the Blue Man had impressed upon me, the servant of one I sought. But there was more to her than that, she has been touched by something that draws curiosity of the athiyk d'le'i.
I will not demand of her, though I easily could with the lowliness of her blood. To compel is to join in fate, an act that is taken so unwittingly here. By their ignorance, they offer their fate to be read by those so entwined, they sleep with their throats exposed. Indeed, her mistress died because she wove their fate by such means, and this city will fall the same way rather than to the petty overthrow that they imagine looms.
No, she will work to my ends without compulsion, she will find it to be her own fate. She will find that freedom offers a more refined fear than any oppression does.
The body of her mistress may be hard to find as it is eaten already, but by what I do not know. I trust it was no Aboleth, and hope its digestion is very slow or is at least hampered by her magic. Yet even if it is beyond my reach there are two subjects left that may pay my debt. We will leave soon, I trust, to seek what swallowed her. As to why the Blue Man wants her, the answer to that is more important to me and her servant may well hold the key.
There is something afoot at home too, portents in the worm cast are of a death among the talar d'le'i. As Ilharn d'feithin, I will need be present when it comes to the rites, regardless of my plans, my vengeance or even my debt. I have marked out three great mushrooms for such travel, my sigil among the gills at the top of the trunk where I have hollowed small sleeping ledges.
//Translations
// athiyk d'le'i = The spirits of a Shaman's direct and bonded ancestors.
// talar d'le'i = The living who are bonded as kin through the tribal bonding ritual.
// Ilharn d'feithin = A tribal regent, the child of the tribal leader who assumes the leading role during incapacitation of the leader.
----------------------------
We met at the Gloura's Wings. Her face was one of those the Blue Man had impressed upon me, the servant of one I sought. But there was more to her than that, she has been touched by something that draws curiosity of the athiyk d'le'i.
I will not demand of her, though I easily could with the lowliness of her blood. To compel is to join in fate, an act that is taken so unwittingly here. By their ignorance, they offer their fate to be read by those so entwined, they sleep with their throats exposed. Indeed, her mistress died because she wove their fate by such means, and this city will fall the same way rather than to the petty overthrow that they imagine looms.
No, she will work to my ends without compulsion, she will find it to be her own fate. She will find that freedom offers a more refined fear than any oppression does.
The body of her mistress may be hard to find as it is eaten already, but by what I do not know. I trust it was no Aboleth, and hope its digestion is very slow or is at least hampered by her magic. Yet even if it is beyond my reach there are two subjects left that may pay my debt. We will leave soon, I trust, to seek what swallowed her. As to why the Blue Man wants her, the answer to that is more important to me and her servant may well hold the key.
There is something afoot at home too, portents in the worm cast are of a death among the talar d'le'i. As Ilharn d'feithin, I will need be present when it comes to the rites, regardless of my plans, my vengeance or even my debt. I have marked out three great mushrooms for such travel, my sigil among the gills at the top of the trunk where I have hollowed small sleeping ledges.
//Translations
// athiyk d'le'i = The spirits of a Shaman's direct and bonded ancestors.
// talar d'le'i = The living who are bonded as kin through the tribal bonding ritual.
// Ilharn d'feithin = A tribal regent, the child of the tribal leader who assumes the leading role during incapacitation of the leader.
-
Gorirah
- Posts: 58
- Joined: Fri Sep 09, 2016 11:20 am
Re: Jhaldrin
Diary of the Dun Panther Cap
-----------------------------
The air is chill and damp, thick with the scents of blooming algae. The rock runs slick and verdantly, veined by slime molds with a phasing glow. I move upstream on a bed so smooth, it feels like skin instead of stone. The passage is tight but falsely so, pressuring, unnerving, as if closing in.
I cannot recall the last thirty feet... nor the fifty before I was there. Is it the blackness, or is it the glow, or is it my memory that phases so? How long have I been here and why did I come? I must move on or be swallowed up now.
The cracks in time widen and jar, sickening, confusing, giving no pause. The void becomes respite, awareness just fear, yet I cling on still but not by my hand. The grip's of the parasite that snares the mind, life is exposed and separating.
I stumble forth into a space, the eternity of that passage now fleeting away. I feel hollow in skull and stomach alike, my soul still tethered but eerily numb.
My eyes adjust to the cavern around, in a dim yellow of calcite worm tubes. They hang from the ceiling as thousands of straws, a murky halo to a mesa in bones. Millions of skulls with crowns drilled out, in dunes some twenty feet high. From a fossilized floor melding bone to stone, those lain for aeons unmoved, to glistening peaks, boiled of flesh, from a more recent feeding. An ossified sea a mile around, surrounds a central isle. That mesa holds high a round building, of stalagmite columns and a black doorway.
-----------------------------
The air is chill and damp, thick with the scents of blooming algae. The rock runs slick and verdantly, veined by slime molds with a phasing glow. I move upstream on a bed so smooth, it feels like skin instead of stone. The passage is tight but falsely so, pressuring, unnerving, as if closing in.
I cannot recall the last thirty feet... nor the fifty before I was there. Is it the blackness, or is it the glow, or is it my memory that phases so? How long have I been here and why did I come? I must move on or be swallowed up now.
The cracks in time widen and jar, sickening, confusing, giving no pause. The void becomes respite, awareness just fear, yet I cling on still but not by my hand. The grip's of the parasite that snares the mind, life is exposed and separating.
I stumble forth into a space, the eternity of that passage now fleeting away. I feel hollow in skull and stomach alike, my soul still tethered but eerily numb.
My eyes adjust to the cavern around, in a dim yellow of calcite worm tubes. They hang from the ceiling as thousands of straws, a murky halo to a mesa in bones. Millions of skulls with crowns drilled out, in dunes some twenty feet high. From a fossilized floor melding bone to stone, those lain for aeons unmoved, to glistening peaks, boiled of flesh, from a more recent feeding. An ossified sea a mile around, surrounds a central isle. That mesa holds high a round building, of stalagmite columns and a black doorway.
-
Gorirah
- Posts: 58
- Joined: Fri Sep 09, 2016 11:20 am
Re: Jhaldrin
Journal 15, Schamath.
----------------------------
Swollen with insecurity dressed as pride, they posture their juvenile religions. So aggressively misled, it would be amusing were it not now so tiresome to see. It is a measure of a race, how many fall to this disease that the Elders permit, and endemic to cities, what chance do they have? All sheep in wolf's clothing, competing for the tailor that makes the biggest teeth.
Power has no need to proclaim itself and truth cannot be force fed, they are in the passage, not the temple.
There is a parallel therein which I have meditated upon. The immortal that begets, then watches as its children cannibalise. It waits until the strongest remains and then it eats the last child itself. Then spawning again, it is and ever more powerful than its new progeny. Just as the Elders spawn false gods, so the Blue Man I believe seeks to eat its own children. To have unassailable dominion would never be complete, but to draw ever nearer that goal can be done by no other means.
If this is the case, then the three I seek may well know of other Blue Men. Their brains a trail of juicy breadcrumbs leading to those mature morsels. It is still an assumption that others exist, I have found no relevant reference in the library so far and the slave girl had no recollection of such things.
She has provided me with detailed directions to where her mistress was swallowed. It is a long journey and I will leave today, travelling there alone as I prefer.
----------------------------
Swollen with insecurity dressed as pride, they posture their juvenile religions. So aggressively misled, it would be amusing were it not now so tiresome to see. It is a measure of a race, how many fall to this disease that the Elders permit, and endemic to cities, what chance do they have? All sheep in wolf's clothing, competing for the tailor that makes the biggest teeth.
Power has no need to proclaim itself and truth cannot be force fed, they are in the passage, not the temple.
There is a parallel therein which I have meditated upon. The immortal that begets, then watches as its children cannibalise. It waits until the strongest remains and then it eats the last child itself. Then spawning again, it is and ever more powerful than its new progeny. Just as the Elders spawn false gods, so the Blue Man I believe seeks to eat its own children. To have unassailable dominion would never be complete, but to draw ever nearer that goal can be done by no other means.
If this is the case, then the three I seek may well know of other Blue Men. Their brains a trail of juicy breadcrumbs leading to those mature morsels. It is still an assumption that others exist, I have found no relevant reference in the library so far and the slave girl had no recollection of such things.
She has provided me with detailed directions to where her mistress was swallowed. It is a long journey and I will leave today, travelling there alone as I prefer.
-
Gorirah
- Posts: 58
- Joined: Fri Sep 09, 2016 11:20 am
Re: Jhaldrin
Journal 15, Schamath.
----------------------------
Of all the paths through the northern Gauth Grottoes, the slave's mistress had followed an unfortunate one. The athiyk d'su'aco that obliged the call of my censer told me of the great worms, the aben'ortath as it called them. They opened and cleared new tunnels, giving life to the winds from the depths of the Buried Realms. Consuming fallen rock, gradually widening their passages as they grew, then lying dormant for months until prey came by. I was bargained with not harming these purple worms, an agreeable term, and so becoming one with the air in gaseous form, I flowed with the spirit to learn.
Fleet in the currents it led the way, a good few miles quite effortlessly. Two worms lay waiting with their mouths agape, their teeth like burgeoning limestone forms. Sixty feet long and eight feet wide, filling the aperture of their lairs. Yet a current still flowed from mouth through to tail, their breathing by internal pressures. The spirit flowed in and through the beast, but that gave me pause as it could have been acting capriciously. While being a curious thought that one could flow right through a worm, it could equally be a trap that I'd not care to find.
Knowing where the worms lay, I was able to then make camp. I lit censers in their air currents to keep them subdued with a slow stream of opiate smoke, unfortunately taking my whole supply. I explored for signs and communed though half a cycle, reaching out widely until my censers burned out.
I can be sure enough that one worm took her, as its movements coincide rightly. There was no echo of her soul to be found, most likely eaten in the demonweb and not long after her body dissolved. Nothing physical would remain, it has been too long and almost nothing survives the stomach of a purple worm. She will be in the smooth silt it cast, nothing but an eye-watering mess of ammonia and lye.
Curiously, those tunnels were also home to unexpected Fey creatures. A steep worm-shaft was flooded, clear and deep, and for a moment its surface shimmered with song. Communing, I felt the presence of many, fluid in motion but not in form, no wierds or any so elemental. They could sense my presence just as well and shyly they huddled to one who shone out. Her power is like the Glimmersea tide, such strength there hidden in subtlety.
She would be the reason why such creatures managed to endure down here. Given how closely they coexist with the worms, it is possible that she has a degree of control. Maybe she even had a hand in luring that mistress to travel this way. I will question the slave girl again and leave the Fey to their reticence, for now.
//Translations
// athiyk d'su'aco = The non-corporeal spirits of elemental air.
// aben'ortath = A term in primordial, used among underdark air spirits to refer to purple worms.
----------------------------
Of all the paths through the northern Gauth Grottoes, the slave's mistress had followed an unfortunate one. The athiyk d'su'aco that obliged the call of my censer told me of the great worms, the aben'ortath as it called them. They opened and cleared new tunnels, giving life to the winds from the depths of the Buried Realms. Consuming fallen rock, gradually widening their passages as they grew, then lying dormant for months until prey came by. I was bargained with not harming these purple worms, an agreeable term, and so becoming one with the air in gaseous form, I flowed with the spirit to learn.
Fleet in the currents it led the way, a good few miles quite effortlessly. Two worms lay waiting with their mouths agape, their teeth like burgeoning limestone forms. Sixty feet long and eight feet wide, filling the aperture of their lairs. Yet a current still flowed from mouth through to tail, their breathing by internal pressures. The spirit flowed in and through the beast, but that gave me pause as it could have been acting capriciously. While being a curious thought that one could flow right through a worm, it could equally be a trap that I'd not care to find.
Knowing where the worms lay, I was able to then make camp. I lit censers in their air currents to keep them subdued with a slow stream of opiate smoke, unfortunately taking my whole supply. I explored for signs and communed though half a cycle, reaching out widely until my censers burned out.
I can be sure enough that one worm took her, as its movements coincide rightly. There was no echo of her soul to be found, most likely eaten in the demonweb and not long after her body dissolved. Nothing physical would remain, it has been too long and almost nothing survives the stomach of a purple worm. She will be in the smooth silt it cast, nothing but an eye-watering mess of ammonia and lye.
Curiously, those tunnels were also home to unexpected Fey creatures. A steep worm-shaft was flooded, clear and deep, and for a moment its surface shimmered with song. Communing, I felt the presence of many, fluid in motion but not in form, no wierds or any so elemental. They could sense my presence just as well and shyly they huddled to one who shone out. Her power is like the Glimmersea tide, such strength there hidden in subtlety.
She would be the reason why such creatures managed to endure down here. Given how closely they coexist with the worms, it is possible that she has a degree of control. Maybe she even had a hand in luring that mistress to travel this way. I will question the slave girl again and leave the Fey to their reticence, for now.
//Translations
// athiyk d'su'aco = The non-corporeal spirits of elemental air.
// aben'ortath = A term in primordial, used among underdark air spirits to refer to purple worms.
-
Gorirah
- Posts: 58
- Joined: Fri Sep 09, 2016 11:20 am
Re: Jhaldrin
Diary of the Dun Panther Cap
-----------------------------
Adrift of the body upon the coast, it led me there so I may see. Upon the rocks, its voice in the spray, it would wash my will completely away.
You would hold back these tides that erode your shores? Yet the heat of your labours are taken in air, then given in feeding to the very same sea.
A shriveling bubble of borrowed time, and ever in debt, so precious you are. You make others pay for the nothing you get, and so soon after you only forget.
And those moments therein you would scheme for escape? Testing asymmetries, permuting them blind, the pressure of ignorance, a blob in a bind.
Call it faith and lazily wait, call it research and pamper ego. Your intelligence is illusion, contrived over time.
Cast off the lie, that parasite life. Open your veins to the truth of the tides, the peace, the unity, the entropy.
-----------------------------
Adrift of the body upon the coast, it led me there so I may see. Upon the rocks, its voice in the spray, it would wash my will completely away.
You would hold back these tides that erode your shores? Yet the heat of your labours are taken in air, then given in feeding to the very same sea.
A shriveling bubble of borrowed time, and ever in debt, so precious you are. You make others pay for the nothing you get, and so soon after you only forget.
And those moments therein you would scheme for escape? Testing asymmetries, permuting them blind, the pressure of ignorance, a blob in a bind.
Call it faith and lazily wait, call it research and pamper ego. Your intelligence is illusion, contrived over time.
Cast off the lie, that parasite life. Open your veins to the truth of the tides, the peace, the unity, the entropy.
-
Gorirah
- Posts: 58
- Joined: Fri Sep 09, 2016 11:20 am
Re: Jhaldrin
Journal 15, Schamath.
----------------------------
No sign yet of the two that I still seek.
One is a Duergar with a long braided beard kept short on the chin. His fingers were adorned with heavily set rings and he wore dark leather with sections of scale. A trader of some kind was the impression I got, stood by a stall of enchanted gemstones. I know he had dealings with a certain filthy Svirf, and feel that may be why he's wanted.
The other is the preferred pay that the Blue Man seeks and a prize that may earn me a secondary favor. An Illithid with a pocked and sullen face, it has thin tentacles, an aged appearance and it is a collector of brains. It is not its head that is the primary need, but one it recently put in a jar. I saw a glimpse of the home it kept and of the trophies there in dozens of jars. The one in question was long with three lobes, possibly that of an Aboleth. I need confirm that yet, as if it is the case then by weaving my fate with that Illithid, I may weave it with those creatures of the deep.
I still recall a vision I once had of them, in the days before I kept my diary of the Panther Cap.
I fell into the void, on and on for a mile or more, until I moved down weightlessly.
I was then afloat, not in air but on strange waters. So dark and silent, no scent or motion, only the tricks such deprivation plays on the mind. The air was dense and burdened the lungs, its sickly warmth a weight on the will. The waters were pressured, feeling like silken oil, it drew me in relievingly. This fluid embrace was the only way, however eerie that thought had felt.
That doubt then swelled, yet its roots were unclear. Was there something moving there? Had I slipped into dream or just woken up? I gagged as I realised I breathed water.
With senses reclaimed the tentacles came and their minds were prying vulturously. Feeding on thoughts in the wake of deception, they picked away the surface ego. Theirs was this fluid, not water but a living mucous. It seeped and breathed unto itself, yet was an extension of their mind.
It supplants the waters of the skin, rendering all transparently. It soothes, it burns as freshly flayed, for they conduct its chemistry. They impose their sense of art as wrack and respite tear my mind. Bared of body, bared of mind, a tool to be worked, a lute to be played, and never allowed to rest in peace.
They have always been and do not die, they wait with concealed ways. They make such pools and in time great lakes, maybe remake the Glimmersea. So when we all must drink, and of their mind, our world will ebb away.
----------------------------
No sign yet of the two that I still seek.
One is a Duergar with a long braided beard kept short on the chin. His fingers were adorned with heavily set rings and he wore dark leather with sections of scale. A trader of some kind was the impression I got, stood by a stall of enchanted gemstones. I know he had dealings with a certain filthy Svirf, and feel that may be why he's wanted.
The other is the preferred pay that the Blue Man seeks and a prize that may earn me a secondary favor. An Illithid with a pocked and sullen face, it has thin tentacles, an aged appearance and it is a collector of brains. It is not its head that is the primary need, but one it recently put in a jar. I saw a glimpse of the home it kept and of the trophies there in dozens of jars. The one in question was long with three lobes, possibly that of an Aboleth. I need confirm that yet, as if it is the case then by weaving my fate with that Illithid, I may weave it with those creatures of the deep.
I still recall a vision I once had of them, in the days before I kept my diary of the Panther Cap.
I fell into the void, on and on for a mile or more, until I moved down weightlessly.
I was then afloat, not in air but on strange waters. So dark and silent, no scent or motion, only the tricks such deprivation plays on the mind. The air was dense and burdened the lungs, its sickly warmth a weight on the will. The waters were pressured, feeling like silken oil, it drew me in relievingly. This fluid embrace was the only way, however eerie that thought had felt.
That doubt then swelled, yet its roots were unclear. Was there something moving there? Had I slipped into dream or just woken up? I gagged as I realised I breathed water.
With senses reclaimed the tentacles came and their minds were prying vulturously. Feeding on thoughts in the wake of deception, they picked away the surface ego. Theirs was this fluid, not water but a living mucous. It seeped and breathed unto itself, yet was an extension of their mind.
It supplants the waters of the skin, rendering all transparently. It soothes, it burns as freshly flayed, for they conduct its chemistry. They impose their sense of art as wrack and respite tear my mind. Bared of body, bared of mind, a tool to be worked, a lute to be played, and never allowed to rest in peace.
They have always been and do not die, they wait with concealed ways. They make such pools and in time great lakes, maybe remake the Glimmersea. So when we all must drink, and of their mind, our world will ebb away.