Written By Fortunato
Jan. 19, 2024, 10:48 p.m.(8/3/1021 AR)
Relationship Note on Lianne
I'm sorry. I still don't know what to write about my ever-artful and surprising collaborator. Poet, curator, artist, dear friend. Her gallery, the Eidolon, is its own kind of metaphor. You hope that when the city is filled with terrors that the Eidolon and its works remains standing, but I know it's fallen before. Lianne has rebuilt it, and if all her collections went to ash, she'd replicate, renovate, and begin again. Malespero is its people, not its land and buildings, and art, memory, rhyme, and strength are concepts that persist even when forms you can hold are gone away. Even when hope is gone, we adapt, we survive, we remember.
Written By Fortunato
Jan. 19, 2024, 11:13 a.m.(8/2/1021 AR)
Relationship Note on Aleksei
Was our friendship extremely strange? Are all my friendships extremely strange? All I know for sure is that when the days are dire, when it is time to go, when it is time to act, you will always be right there. Attempting some fool, big-hearted thing, caring of how much it will hurt. We have fought, we do not see eye to eye on many things, for all we have been in the cause of freedom together, but at this last, I am with you. Til every chain is broken. Until spring comes and the fields are sown for renewal.
Written By Fortunato
Jan. 17, 2024, 10:55 p.m.(7/27/1021 AR)
Relationship Note on Aureth
I love you, brother. I want to say you became real, but you were always real. If you'd stayed reading cards for nobles, you would have still been real, gods, I miss those days, is it so strange? But look how you've flown. Remember all you've seen. What wonders we've experienced together. Stay alive, if you can. Help ensure Arx rebuilds, Arvum rebuilds, and that there's a place for rapscallions to read cards. That there's a place for rapscallions to grow into their wild dreams and past them. And if I make it back, if we both make it, let's just -- look into still pools of water in bowls again. For the old times.
Written By Fortunato
Jan. 15, 2024, 7:49 p.m.(7/23/1021 AR)
Non omnis moriar.
I shall not wholly die.
As the next Reckoning approaches, I will tell the story of Gold. A slightly different story than that which you may have heard.
On the final day of the final stand, Gold's armor was spotless. Gleaming. It was made so with magic. The gleaming of golden armor served no purpose save to gleam. As the king at the time said, "It gives heart to our defenders to see the strongest among us as untouchable." In memorials, statues, stories, the Metallic Order (at least those who died defending Arx) still gleam, untouchably. But as it becomes time for we ourselves to give every bit of ourselves in the world's defense, it is also time to talk about who Gold was.
He was a slave. A slave of the Rex'alfar, as many humans were. He had nothing but a name, and as all chains are broken now, for good and catastrophe both, I will share it. He was Firavan. And he guarded this name as a last, desperate secret, taking it out only in the Eclipse of Mirrors to hold in his mind. He had enough facility with magic, with fire, that his masters would have killed him for it had they taken notice. They did not take notice. Not in time. Anger, bile, you might say, hate, you might say, simmered in him for years before Platinum drew him out and made him Gold. He did not trust elves, he did not trust anyone, save, perhaps, one, who I can no longer remember, for my folly is to sacrifice things I should not. But he took the mantle. He became the mantle. For a better world. For change. Platinum was gleaming, then.
"Fire is the test of gold, and make no mistake, the world is unkind and will test you. Once broken, but never again." And did not Firavan's years-ago taskmaster say, "Gold can be built into anything at all." Mutable. Changeable. He would be Gold, bright and strong of purpose and heart. And he would see every chain broken.
He was militant. He planted the seed of Brass's arming of Cardian slaves years after his death, for these chains could not be tolerated at any cost. The fight would never end, there were so many chains, and there was Ruin that had to be bound, and Zircon making deals with villages that they'd end up breaking (and getting stuck forever in one terrible day), and dragon princesses to rescue (also from Zircon). And, of course, Platinum's brother went and let the Tyrant into the world.
But he also had a family with that one I can no longer remember. He had children. A stupid apron, stupid time with friends, a familiar relationship with Aurumadin, who he loved dearly. And when Steel died defending Arx, and Iron died defending Arx, and Silver died defending Arx, and it was only him remaining, he had plenty to lose that had nothing to do with militant purpose or embodying ideals.
He wanted to be someone else. Somewhere else. Not an option. Gold Guard goes out! They have to. Keep civilians alive. Man the walls. They all die. He knew they would. He's flying out on Aurumadin, facing the Beast of Midnight, reminiscing about how sometimes we have centuries to plan and agonize sometimes there is no /time/. There is only the clash, the flaming sword, the flame and -- then you're in a blackened pit and Aurumadin is crawling out with you, and you're both a wounded mess, but over in what-will-be-Pyre, they're winning. A moment of hope . . .
And then Onyx kills Aurumadin, and you can't prevent it, you watch your friend explode into dust. You didn't expect Onyx. He says he won't insult you by asking you to surrender, but you consider it! Just to see what he'll do. And you have nothing left. You're exhausted. But at least Onyx is the sort of polite fellow to respect dueling etiquette. It's almost a breath of time, making that circle of runes, enough time that you see the children watching and have your last moment of certainty. You can't win this duel, but Onyx can't reach the Thinnest Point.
So you fight until you burn away. I think. I don't have any details here. You go back to the Wheel.
It's not exactly a happy story. I don't know that I help in these dire days, taking the bright monument and talking about the /inside/, but when else can I tell it? Fire is the test of gold and we are immersed in flames. It will be hotter yet and yet. But in the heat is change. I am full of doubts and grief. Was I shaped into who I needed to be this time? I was never any good at the mantle. The mantle is in its way an /appearance/, a gleaming we give ourselves to give others hope while we rattle in terror inside. But mantled or no, we will fight for the Wheel.
We shall not wholly die.
I shall not wholly die.
As the next Reckoning approaches, I will tell the story of Gold. A slightly different story than that which you may have heard.
On the final day of the final stand, Gold's armor was spotless. Gleaming. It was made so with magic. The gleaming of golden armor served no purpose save to gleam. As the king at the time said, "It gives heart to our defenders to see the strongest among us as untouchable." In memorials, statues, stories, the Metallic Order (at least those who died defending Arx) still gleam, untouchably. But as it becomes time for we ourselves to give every bit of ourselves in the world's defense, it is also time to talk about who Gold was.
He was a slave. A slave of the Rex'alfar, as many humans were. He had nothing but a name, and as all chains are broken now, for good and catastrophe both, I will share it. He was Firavan. And he guarded this name as a last, desperate secret, taking it out only in the Eclipse of Mirrors to hold in his mind. He had enough facility with magic, with fire, that his masters would have killed him for it had they taken notice. They did not take notice. Not in time. Anger, bile, you might say, hate, you might say, simmered in him for years before Platinum drew him out and made him Gold. He did not trust elves, he did not trust anyone, save, perhaps, one, who I can no longer remember, for my folly is to sacrifice things I should not. But he took the mantle. He became the mantle. For a better world. For change. Platinum was gleaming, then.
"Fire is the test of gold, and make no mistake, the world is unkind and will test you. Once broken, but never again." And did not Firavan's years-ago taskmaster say, "Gold can be built into anything at all." Mutable. Changeable. He would be Gold, bright and strong of purpose and heart. And he would see every chain broken.
He was militant. He planted the seed of Brass's arming of Cardian slaves years after his death, for these chains could not be tolerated at any cost. The fight would never end, there were so many chains, and there was Ruin that had to be bound, and Zircon making deals with villages that they'd end up breaking (and getting stuck forever in one terrible day), and dragon princesses to rescue (also from Zircon). And, of course, Platinum's brother went and let the Tyrant into the world.
But he also had a family with that one I can no longer remember. He had children. A stupid apron, stupid time with friends, a familiar relationship with Aurumadin, who he loved dearly. And when Steel died defending Arx, and Iron died defending Arx, and Silver died defending Arx, and it was only him remaining, he had plenty to lose that had nothing to do with militant purpose or embodying ideals.
He wanted to be someone else. Somewhere else. Not an option. Gold Guard goes out! They have to. Keep civilians alive. Man the walls. They all die. He knew they would. He's flying out on Aurumadin, facing the Beast of Midnight, reminiscing about how sometimes we have centuries to plan and agonize sometimes there is no /time/. There is only the clash, the flaming sword, the flame and -- then you're in a blackened pit and Aurumadin is crawling out with you, and you're both a wounded mess, but over in what-will-be-Pyre, they're winning. A moment of hope . . .
And then Onyx kills Aurumadin, and you can't prevent it, you watch your friend explode into dust. You didn't expect Onyx. He says he won't insult you by asking you to surrender, but you consider it! Just to see what he'll do. And you have nothing left. You're exhausted. But at least Onyx is the sort of polite fellow to respect dueling etiquette. It's almost a breath of time, making that circle of runes, enough time that you see the children watching and have your last moment of certainty. You can't win this duel, but Onyx can't reach the Thinnest Point.
So you fight until you burn away. I think. I don't have any details here. You go back to the Wheel.
It's not exactly a happy story. I don't know that I help in these dire days, taking the bright monument and talking about the /inside/, but when else can I tell it? Fire is the test of gold and we are immersed in flames. It will be hotter yet and yet. But in the heat is change. I am full of doubts and grief. Was I shaped into who I needed to be this time? I was never any good at the mantle. The mantle is in its way an /appearance/, a gleaming we give ourselves to give others hope while we rattle in terror inside. But mantled or no, we will fight for the Wheel.
We shall not wholly die.
Written By Fortunato
Jan. 10, 2024, 8:57 p.m.(7/13/1021 AR)
I think that we will make it. I hope we will make it. I would like the Dream to persist. I would not like the Eater to end it. What a miserable end that would be.
I must grieve, though. I must grieve, and grieve, and grieve at so many lost. Countless lost. Peoples and settlements and nations. Gone. I think we will make it. I think we will preserve the seed of Arvum to regrow in another season. I think, perhaps, the world will not utterly end.
But the loss is incalculable. All I wanted, all I have wanted, was to prevent this. Do you remember the empty pages raining on Arx? Do you remember the terrible visions of his depredations? I wanted it to stop. I wanted the common folk, the every day folk, the people that perhaps have little weight on either the Dream or on society, I wanted them to live. I'm just from the Lowers myself.
I think we will preserve a seed to regrow in another season. I think we will come together with unlikely allies. I think perhaps we will be able to perform a great working with help. Or we will have a way or another way. I have this hope. But the loss is incalculable. The world will not be the same world and for a long time Arvum will be barren. Arx a faint shoot in a land of desolation. Spring will come. But I have not prevented this winter. Should I survive this end, I do not think I can stay. I will walk the ruined roads and remember the loss.
I must grieve, though. I must grieve, and grieve, and grieve at so many lost. Countless lost. Peoples and settlements and nations. Gone. I think we will make it. I think we will preserve the seed of Arvum to regrow in another season. I think, perhaps, the world will not utterly end.
But the loss is incalculable. All I wanted, all I have wanted, was to prevent this. Do you remember the empty pages raining on Arx? Do you remember the terrible visions of his depredations? I wanted it to stop. I wanted the common folk, the every day folk, the people that perhaps have little weight on either the Dream or on society, I wanted them to live. I'm just from the Lowers myself.
I think we will preserve a seed to regrow in another season. I think we will come together with unlikely allies. I think perhaps we will be able to perform a great working with help. Or we will have a way or another way. I have this hope. But the loss is incalculable. The world will not be the same world and for a long time Arvum will be barren. Arx a faint shoot in a land of desolation. Spring will come. But I have not prevented this winter. Should I survive this end, I do not think I can stay. I will walk the ruined roads and remember the loss.
Written By Fortunato
Nov. 9, 2023, 8:04 p.m.(3/1/1021 AR)
What does it mean to be free?
I don't know that I know. Triscali, I do know, is grieving. Perhaps at the core of my question, what does it mean to be free, is this.
Once our chains are broken, what then? Once we begin to remember, what then? Who will we be? And will we also remember how to help each other?
I don't know that I know. Triscali, I do know, is grieving. Perhaps at the core of my question, what does it mean to be free, is this.
Once our chains are broken, what then? Once we begin to remember, what then? Who will we be? And will we also remember how to help each other?
Written By Fortunato
Aug. 12, 2022, 10:37 p.m.(3/9/1018 AR)
Let us try Limerance again.
Vows, love, these are strange topics for me. Or seem like they should be. I am a Whisper. I have a responsibility to the Whispers, certainly, but I am not the most public of Whispers (of anything) - I am quickly lost, no, drowned in large gatherings, I have no graces, my dancing is notoriously poor.
And yet, while my public vows are few, and I have -- not ever been wed nor shall be wed, still. I suppose I do know more than I thought about responsibilities, ties, love.
They're terrifying forces, aren't they? Terrifying drives. What heights and depths can we reach in our desire to fulfill duties to friends, families, organizations, ideals, lovers, spouses, children? Who do we become when we ponder how much we have yet to fulfill oaths said and unsaid? Is love and loyalty their own form of desperation?
Perhaps this is not a helpful series of journals.
Vows, love, these are strange topics for me. Or seem like they should be. I am a Whisper. I have a responsibility to the Whispers, certainly, but I am not the most public of Whispers (of anything) - I am quickly lost, no, drowned in large gatherings, I have no graces, my dancing is notoriously poor.
And yet, while my public vows are few, and I have -- not ever been wed nor shall be wed, still. I suppose I do know more than I thought about responsibilities, ties, love.
They're terrifying forces, aren't they? Terrifying drives. What heights and depths can we reach in our desire to fulfill duties to friends, families, organizations, ideals, lovers, spouses, children? Who do we become when we ponder how much we have yet to fulfill oaths said and unsaid? Is love and loyalty their own form of desperation?
Perhaps this is not a helpful series of journals.
Written By Fortunato
July 31, 2022, 8:18 p.m.(2/13/1018 AR)
Still thinking around Limerance. I who largely avoid vows, not truly out of a lack of loyalty, but out of terribly broad loyalties. I fear I will have to percolate a couple more days.
Written By Fortunato
July 24, 2022, 5:16 p.m.(1/24/1018 AR)
I meant to begin my writings on the gods with Limerance, but with the appearance of the web bound to the belltower, I must begin with something about Jayus.
Inspiration can come from many sources. I am inspired by that which I cannot comprehend perfectly. As this is nearly everything, when I leave myself open to inspiration, I can exist in a state of partial wonder. I can always be struck and struck again at the immensity of the world and that my smallness within it does not render it any less wonderful. I feel that when I set out to create a work, I do not truly set out to capture a feeling, an image, a memory. What I put down in canvas is never what I experience, and never quite what passes through my mind, or stays in my mind like a haunting. It may be an interpretation of an experience, or many experiences, or what I put down may be something inspired in more oblique ways. What I hope, when I create, is perhaps to create some catharsis for myself, and perhaps act as some small part of wonder, inspiration, 'spark' for others.
The web over the cathedral is a wonderful piece of art and also a wonderful metaphor for the complex process of inspiration that spurs art. The web is complex, light-catching, and light-changing, it begs study and understanding, but you will never fully 'encompass' everything it is, any more than a single painting can encompass every sunrise and sunset. Inspiration exists in the world. It is self-renewing. And in creating art, we aid in and add to the world's breadth of inspiration.
Inspiration can come from many sources. I am inspired by that which I cannot comprehend perfectly. As this is nearly everything, when I leave myself open to inspiration, I can exist in a state of partial wonder. I can always be struck and struck again at the immensity of the world and that my smallness within it does not render it any less wonderful. I feel that when I set out to create a work, I do not truly set out to capture a feeling, an image, a memory. What I put down in canvas is never what I experience, and never quite what passes through my mind, or stays in my mind like a haunting. It may be an interpretation of an experience, or many experiences, or what I put down may be something inspired in more oblique ways. What I hope, when I create, is perhaps to create some catharsis for myself, and perhaps act as some small part of wonder, inspiration, 'spark' for others.
The web over the cathedral is a wonderful piece of art and also a wonderful metaphor for the complex process of inspiration that spurs art. The web is complex, light-catching, and light-changing, it begs study and understanding, but you will never fully 'encompass' everything it is, any more than a single painting can encompass every sunrise and sunset. Inspiration exists in the world. It is self-renewing. And in creating art, we aid in and add to the world's breadth of inspiration.
Written By Fortunato
June 8, 2020, 10:42 a.m.(6/10/1013 AR)
Relationship Note on Tescelina
Yours seemed a gentle soul. I wish I knew you better. I hope you allowed yourself forgiveness.
Written By Fortunato
June 8, 2020, 10:41 a.m.(6/9/1013 AR)
Relationship Note on Rymarr
We all return to the Wheel. But I hope you never forgot how valuable living was.
Written By Fortunato
March 21, 2020, 3:03 p.m.(12/20/1012 AR)
Relationship Note on Juniper
I'm still angry at you. Know it's unfair. Know you had that grand, blazing heroic purpose that you meant to spend, even if it spent you. I'm still angry at you. Angry at everyone going off on their grand, heroic purposes and leaving me. What kind of example does that give? Gonna have a bunch of impressionable young Lowers folk finding the best ways to glory themselves to death, that's what.
I'm still angry at you. And I'm angry at so many like you. For putting your goodness so painfully to the fore like you do. And I'm sorry for being angry. I just don't know how not to be.
I'm still angry at you. And I'm angry at so many like you. For putting your goodness so painfully to the fore like you do. And I'm sorry for being angry. I just don't know how not to be.
Written By Fortunato
Jan. 12, 2020, 10:05 p.m.(7/19/1012 AR)
Made a promise to try to honor Vellichor more often with public words, although I struggle to think of what to say, most of the time. I continue as a Whisper and as a disciple of Lagoma. Occasionally, I paint. Often, I look into the fire. I have recently received a gift of very stunning paints and it would be a shame not to spin a new masterpiece that people can actually see, rather than a masterpiece that is made, then left in my backroom forever. Ah, ah, what so to paint? Joscelin would be most disappointed with my lack of output.
Written By Fortunato
Dec. 27, 2019, 11:02 a.m.(6/14/1012 AR)
The gods desire to be desired.
It is both an active and a passive thing, desire. The yearning may seem innate, if you have it, but it must be nurtured. You must rise in the morning and retire under the stars celebrating the world and your place in it, striving for the ideals of air and rain and justice and mercy because of love or duty but in any case desire.
We must strive to be honest with ourselves about what we desire.
It is both an active and a passive thing, desire. The yearning may seem innate, if you have it, but it must be nurtured. You must rise in the morning and retire under the stars celebrating the world and your place in it, striving for the ideals of air and rain and justice and mercy because of love or duty but in any case desire.
We must strive to be honest with ourselves about what we desire.
Written By Fortunato
Dec. 19, 2019, 3:03 p.m.(5/26/1012 AR)
Relationship Note on Reigna
No, my lady. It is never a failure in and of itself to change irrevocably. To be transformed. Gold is the metal associated with Lagoma and change, and its strength is in being reshaped. And reshaped. But still gold, ah? Still gleaming. Still precious. Even wounds need not make us less.
Written By Fortunato
Dec. 16, 2019, 11:07 p.m.(5/21/1012 AR)
Thousand ways to burn yourself.
Some ways are more productive than others.
Come and see me.
Some ways are more productive than others.
Come and see me.
Written By Fortunato
Nov. 22, 2019, 11:23 a.m.(3/28/1012 AR)
Gods.
Sometimes I feel so very alone.
Sometimes I feel so very alone.
Written By Fortunato
Nov. 12, 2019, 1:53 p.m.(3/8/1012 AR)
Guess there ain’t no dragons crying any more.
Written By Fortunato
Nov. 11, 2019, 8:23 p.m.(3/7/1012 AR)
The artist who believed his paintings to be the only truth withdrew from the world. How could he not? He would paint a picture of himself on the mountain top, with the sun in his arms. When this did not occur, he could only believe what he had painted. In the reality he had created, he had embraced the sun. He challenged a man of great prowess of arms to a duel and lost, terribly wounded. He painted his victory with his blood. He painted himself a man wronged, and yet superior, magnanimous, even. As he lay and as he healed, he looked at his paintings, which were indeed beautiful, and felt suddenly very sad. For his room felt cramped and the world he had made was suddenly insufficient. He realized he had not been painting the world, but his feelings. But his heart. His heart and his feelings were not any less important, but once he was well enough to move, he gathered up his paints and his canvas and sought out something new to paint; his relationship with the birds and the sky and the cobblestones. He sought to widen his subject.
Written By Fortunato
Nov. 8, 2019, 8:48 p.m.(3/1/1012 AR)
Relationship Note on Peri
Art is not meant to last forever. Paintings gain from their weathering. Even if it remained 'til the end of days, I will never prefer stone to the expressiveness of the brush, faded as the strokes may become.
Please note that the scholars may take some time preparing your journal for others to read.