Written By Aelgar
Jan. 20, 2024, 2:20 p.m.(8/4/1021 AR)
Written By Amari
Jan. 20, 2024, 1 p.m.(8/4/1021 AR)
Finally, to everyone I've spiked over the years: I'm sorry, even if you at least half deserved it.
Written By Pasquale
Jan. 20, 2024, 12:30 p.m.(8/4/1021 AR)
Relationship Note on Lisebet
Written By Gwenna
Jan. 20, 2024, 8:18 a.m.(8/4/1021 AR)
We made our stand at Farhaven. We did not yield.
Written By Duarte
Jan. 20, 2024, 4:01 a.m.(8/4/1021 AR)
Halfway down the stairs. The dream always began halfway down the stairs - a transition between up and down. Halfway down and I'm stuck. All of us are stuck: Tessa, Olivia, Violet, and me. It's so close I feel we are dreaming the same dream together. Am I really interacting with them? Or is it just fevered imagination?
Somewhere, a song wafts on a light breeze. It presents itself in an eerie fashion like a funereal march. It makes us shiver, but also yearn. It makes us want to give up. All we have to do is reach the bottom of this descent and the hunger will stop. We will be at peace.
The Halfway House called to us. It called to us in our dreams. Even in waking moments, Tessa would talk about it with a glaze in her eyes. And I felt it too. It could all be so simple. To return. To embrace corruption. To dine on the feast that waits for us in the garden.
The compulsion was powerful. An undeniable tug upon my wits urged me to return.
It had been a year - a year, at least. This new dream was just a dream - or so I thought. One of the many I had and was having. But it was persistent. Very persistent. Encouraging, even.
One day I awoke to itching. My shoulders and arms - they itched. I sat up and when I went to scratch...oh, I can't bring myself to write it.
I must write it.
Tearing through my skin, sprouting forth like wildflowers find a way in the gravel road, were black, corrupted vines. They had broken through my flesh and were embedded in my arms and shoulders. They were alive, growing, and threatened to wrap me entire. If only I could describe how the world swirled around me in a sense of motionless panic...if for no other reason than so it wouldn't come across as blase. I must've stayed in bed three days, terror-stricken, before I was able to muster enough sense to get out of bed. I found I could hide them in my clothes, somewhat, but for how long?
It was these corrupted tendrils twining around my flesh that drove me to my first long bout of solitude - for no other reason than I had become a sort of a shard, or - I imagine - the beginnings of one. But they were merely a cosmetic nuisance - frightening as they were. The real terror? It was knowing that this corruption would spread. That it would encase my body in full and once done, would compel me to march back to the Halfway House and give myself to the Corrupted Mother.
Time was running out.
Written By Fortunato
Jan. 19, 2024, 10:48 p.m.(8/3/1021 AR)
Relationship Note on Lianne
Written By Lucita
Jan. 19, 2024, 9:18 p.m.(8/3/1021 AR)
Written By Titus
Jan. 19, 2024, 6:27 p.m.(8/3/1021 AR)
Relationship Note on Khanne
Be everything you can be, do all you can. While you're heading to the battle, remember those you grew up with. Remember those you've lost along the way. Remember that those who are behind you are there needing your protection. Those who are alongside you fight against a thing that would burn the whole world just to rule over the ashes. And those in front of you? They are your enemy, meet them with unyielding honour.
To the Last, my love.
Written By Ainsley
Jan. 19, 2024, 3:45 p.m.(8/3/1021 AR)
I amend:
Before I die I’ll make sure to cut Azazel into tiny chunks since he doesn’t have a head for me to take.
Written By Titus
Jan. 19, 2024, 3:36 p.m.(8/3/1021 AR)
To the Last.
Written By Fatima
Jan. 19, 2024, 3:07 p.m.(8/2/1021 AR)
The Dune Kindom of Jay'alaz, the city without song, is no more. Its royal family and nobles killed themselves in despair. The people starved under the siege of the Dune Emperor. Eventually they opened the gates and surrendered, but it was too late. Those who managed to escape, mostly children, tell the tale of the Warrior of the Dawn and the Adept of the Rose, and their rebellion. A fledgling hope, in a city without hope.
The so-called Dune Emperor is Alaric Grayson III. Some said he is a Herald. Some said he is just a tyrant, the Fist of the Prophet, a vengeful puppet dancing on Obsidian strings. We set sail for Eurus tomorrow. I suppose we will see.
Glass is made of frozen water, and ice is made from the sands of the dunes.
Written By Fortunato
Jan. 19, 2024, 11:13 a.m.(8/2/1021 AR)
Relationship Note on Aleksei
Written By Rosalind
Jan. 19, 2024, 10 a.m.(8/2/1021 AR)
Written By Lisebet
Jan. 19, 2024, 8:45 a.m.(8/2/1021 AR)
I suppose that is because they have the freedom to choose.
And even still, in the midst of all this chaos, there is still room for moments of awe and wonder.
Written By Viviana
Jan. 19, 2024, 6:24 a.m.(8/2/1021 AR)
Written By Filshiar
Jan. 19, 2024, 5:42 a.m.(8/2/1021 AR)
Relationship Note on Dacian
Written By Duarte
Jan. 19, 2024, 5:03 a.m.(8/2/1021 AR)
Defeated and dismayed, we left the Halfway House for Arx without a single thing to show for it. The loss of appetite made sense for the humiliation of it all - though months of planning preceded our venture, we found ourselves entirely unprepared.
I would say it took some days, perhaps a week, before the realization stuck. I had not been eating. I was not only not hungry, I was full and sated. And then, the hunger came, sharp and painful, I was starved. And yet, I could not bring myself to eat. It took everything I had to will myself to a meal. Every scent of food and every bite made me feel like retching. It was as if I were stuffing down a fifth course of entree, and yet I starved. It was a pain so twisting I almost envied Sir Jordan Ober being spared the brunt of it when he fell defending Duke Harlan Ashford not but soon after returning to the city.
I was able to find some minor relief - very minor - in concoctions of nutrient-steeped tea prepared by Lady Ray Laveer. For some months it would be the only thing I 'ate'.
But then the nightmares began. Always the same. Hungry - so hungry - I found myself back in that beautifully crafted garden surrounded by rich, plump berries. I found myself eating them but my hunger would not slake. Frantic, as if soon to die of starvation, I find myself feasting on bread and meats, an assortment of cheese, fruits and vegetables. Yet, still, I am unfulfilled. I only grow more hungry.
And I can feel it in my belly. Something evil stirring in the pit of my stomach. A parasitic thing growing and embedding itself through my gut and into my brain. I found myself in these dreams yearning for the Halfway House. Wishing myself to return to the garden and lay in it. To stay there at rest until the berries I'm sure have taken root in my stomach sprout and grow out of me and feast on my flesh to give them life and strengthen their growth. I wished to join the rest of the vines in the garden, and to give the last of my life to feed that corruption growing within me. Every time I closed my eyes I would see it.
Through these days of endless torment of unsatisfiable hunger and wretched dream, I yet fought to keep up appearances. I grew gaunt and weary, yet somehow was capable. I took on Rinel Tern - a scholar I had met at the Ambassador - as my protege. I had never been much of a religious mind beyond accepting at its word the little dogma I had been fed. But Rinel was a wealth of information and I enjoyed her lessons - even if we disagreed quite vehemently about what those lessons /meant/. The conclusions she would draw left me perplexed, but for the knowledge itself, I was grateful.
For the better part of a year I managed a life in this way. The hunger with its paradoxical absence of appetite, the dreams - all the same - became ultimately regarded as permanent handicaps. I found myself attending the shrines more and more as I kept up my study in the Faith. I took up philanthropy and did what I could to balance this constant aching for corruption with defiance in acts of piety. I was certain things would stay this way until my last breath, and I made peace with it.
But as usual, I was wrong.
Written By Denica
Jan. 19, 2024, 3:10 a.m.(8/1/1021 AR)
Relationship Note on Victus
Written By Fatima
Jan. 19, 2024, 2:35 a.m.(8/1/1021 AR)
If my entries are making you feel something, then they are doing their job.
On the thirteenth day, I will share my most damning secret in my Two Truths and a Lie.
Or maybe I already did.
Written By Mirari
Jan. 19, 2024, 2:09 a.m.(8/1/1021 AR)
Please note that the scholars may take some time preparing your journal for others to read.