23. July 19, 2015

Genard agrees to arrange for us to meet our two half-sisters who live in Sylarith.

He thinks that the task of finding out what to do with all the sisters should be up to us. Genard says he'll let us work on that mystery, and he or his agents will contact us if there's something they want us to do.

Jessa asks Genard about safe transportation to let us escort Vethandra home to Corosaruth. Genard says that they have a fickle way of transporting people...there's a doorway made of a specific mineral that traps magic rolling off the maelstrom, and they can send a few people or objects through. It seems to drain based on the mass of things going through (so you can't send an army and artillery).

Genard says that one of the Sylarith sisters is a temperamental artist type...she has outbursts (temper tantrums) that are fairly legendary, and they've sometimes tried to tranquilize her with magics and sedatives, and they've used drugs similar to the ones they used during the fealty ceremony to try to calm her down. Things that influence another person is easy (healing, calming), but something against the will of the person is difficult to do (nice to know).

Aezlienne (younger Sylarith duke's daughter) Meets Bel and Shock

Bel and Shock go to meet the younger Sylarith sister (the temperamental one), named Aezlienne. The room has a lot of destroyed things in the outer edges of the room...ripped up art canvases, pottery shards. When Bel enters the room and calls hello, Aezlienne is engaged in using a chisel and hammer on a rock, and calls “can I get your opinion on something?” She sounds very absorbed in what she is doing. Bel walks in, introducing herself and Shock. Aezlienne is half-elf on top, and snake on the bottom. (Fascinating.) Shock recognizes Aez as a Sister.

Bel answers wrongly with the opinion and Aez goes into a temper tantrum, going out of control. Dejected, she backs from the room. The guards outside said that since Bel is uninjured, the introduction seems to have gone well.

Nemoriana (elder Sylarith daughter) Meets Jessa

Jessa meets the older sister, Nemoriana, on the same day. She also is half-elf on top, snake on bottom. Nemoriana has books and journals and studies everything, but she is hardly ever allowed to visit in the city, let alone leave her wing of the duke's palace. She wants to know everything in depth. She wants to explore and learn, but isn't allowed out. Nemoriana knows a lot about magic. She speaks in Sylarith, so Jessa goes with it and tells her everything.

Jessa even tells her about the dagger, and the two beings have died from it. Nemoriana stops, completely silent for a while, then comes back with a book that is tattered. She asks “does it look like this?” and points to a sword version of the dagger. Jessa agrees it's the same. And says that yes, it attracts attention, and when magic is done near it (like when Elise was trying to find out about it), Jessa recalled it started to vibrate or hum. Jessa said that with BCM, she pricked her finger with it to help activate its magic before she stabbed it into the tree. Nemoriana asks if Jessa has heard the Legend of the First, and tells her when Jessa says she doesn't know. Nemoriana says the First was a multi-bodied thing...kind of like an ant hive where there are multiple drones working for an intelligence; the First was an intelligence, maybe an extra-planar creature, that came here before there was anything, any life, and the First brought bodies with it, of things it had encountered in its travels, and settled here. And early people, before the decline of the monstrous races, before the rise of the elves, recorded in drawings that there were buildings standing when there was more land than there is now—she knows of this from carvings, says that most of these have been submerged. An island west of Valkir still has the ruins of one of these buildings, but that's the only one she knows of. There are jagged spires in the sea so sailing there safely is difficult. But supposedly, the First had incredible abilities with weather, magical weather or technological weather...unknown what...but artifacts have surfaced since the First, like the Sword in particular, that similarly seem to have a mind of their own and their own aims. The Sword was found by barbarian humans and used to fight off monsters, but when time to solidify the barbarian as king, he found he was unable to use the sword against other humans. Believing it was cursed, the Chieftain threw the Sword in the ocean, and solidified his reign among the humans without it. Nemoriana thinks the Dagger might be another such artifact.

In a second meeting with Nemoriana on a different day, Jessa brings the Dagger to show her. Nemoriana says it's DEFINITELY an artifact of the First. She calls in a guard, and asks him to touch it. He brings his hand close and all the hairs on the back of his hand stand up and he pauses. Nemoriana tells him to go. She can pick it up, no problem. Says it's obviously attuned to us sisters, and won't harm us. She pricks her finger with a quill and drips her finger on the Dagger's blade. After about a minute, it absorbs the blood.

Nemoriana wonders who is the oldest of all 24 of the sisters. She thinks Jessa is the 1st and Bel would be the 24^th because if she recalls correctly, Delivery started in Kirenweld and went clockwise, and 18 mos later started in the elven lands and went counter-clockwise to Kirenweld.

Nemoriana says there was a story that all humans came here on a boat, and once here the barbarian chieftain covered the boat in a massive block of ice so he could use it again if he ever needed to return home. What if there's an ancient barbarian magical boat that is encased in perpetually renewing magical ice in the north? That chieftain is as close to the First as humans can get; and the chieftain could wield the Sword, as we Sisters can wield the Dagger. What if the boat is still in the ice up north, and the Chieftain's descendants settled first in Kirenweld? What if the boat is something that carries people not on wind and water, but is some other kind of vessel that conveyed people from another world to here

Nemoriana says that there's research several hundred years old, and pulls out a book about it, saying that the researchers asserted the actual tomb or resting place of the First is located on land in the heart of the Imperial province, under the heart of the Imperial City. She believes that during the unification, the Emperor at the time ceded as much land as he did to the duchies because all he needed was unfettered access to the tomb.

Nemoriana has no idea how the Dagger might fit into the prophecy of “with their blood your reign will be ensured.” But she says maybe Mother knew of the Second. Maybe as the First traveled and picked up consciousnesses like a comet picking up debris in its wake, it was no longer a single governing consciousness, and some of the collected consciousnesses spun off to become their own entities. Nemoriana says that the First is no longer here but the Second is still around—and it is slumbering beneath the lakes. If it wakes up, she thinks it could spread its consciousness to all of the bodies in the realms. Nemoriana thinks our Mother learned something in the First's tomb in the Imperial City (if research is right about its location) and was trying to find a way to stop it.

Nemoriana thinks that since elves eventually lose themselves to primacy, she thinks that it seems that elves are simply attuning themselves more to the land than to their fellow creatures and lose the trappings of civilization. Jessa worries this might happen to the sisters, they will go primal faster than a full elf. Nemoriana hasn't formed an opinion on this, she said there wasn't enough evidence to sway her one way or the other.

Nemoriana says that another theory, albeit by an academician was was discredited and a laughingstock, was that the Second was actually split into two pieces early on, and the second half of it is elsewhere, communing with the slumbering Second and trying to wake the body under the lake.

Jessa asks if Nemoriana wants to travel. She says no, she can't travel, though she wants to. But she corresponds with her father's informants, and one of them who acted as a tutor will send her packets of information from what is happening in the Imperial City. Nemoriana says that all of her letters are passed by her father, and she suspects that the letters are edited and have not reached her mentor intact. Nemoriana says she will give Jessa copies of all her letters, and she wants to know if there is any connection, and thinks that her mentor and agent Odette might be able to help answer questions. Jessa is astounded—realizing that Odette trained her mentor Faile. Nemoriana says that Faile tried to get a posting to Evangier (which has the last remaining population of dwarves, who mine deeply and would maybe find First ruins) and was sent to Kirenweld instead. Jessa says that Faile taught her Evangier as well as Sylareth. And that Bel knows Imperial tongue. There are a lot of fringe pieces that fall together much too conveniently.

Jessa asks what we should look for in the elven lands. Nemoriana has no books about the elven city Elvelin. The elves are the oldest race still present. Some of the monstrous races predate them, but not as an organized race. If anyone has more accurate records about the First, it would probably be the elves, in that city.

Nemoriana says, what if the Dagger and also the way the 24 sisters was made was from knowledge of the First. And the Second is trying to put itself back to consciousness. And the maelstrom is spinning out magical energies. What if...we 24 give off residual energies of the First, and the sleeping “sonar” ability of the Second is homing in on us? Are creatures of the Second tracking us, or are they simply drawn to the chaos from 2+ of us being together? Jessa wonders how to hide the Dagger's aura from creatures. Nemoriana says that she'll try to figure something out. She agrees to correspond with Jessa.

Bel Meets Nemoriana

Nemoriana wonders how Aerin obtained Mother's Dagger. And she thinks the information about having to drink a lot of blood during a ritual to locate a fellow sister sounds a little sketchy, like it wouldn't work. Bel and Nemoriana have a philosophical discussion about magic, full of speculation and wild ideas. (About how people channel magic if it is spun out of the maelstrom, and how does Bel channel it, and whether the dukes are splinter consciousnesses, but how would that explain the Emperor? And are the sisters meant to rule after their fathers seeing how the sisters seem immune to mental influences trying to take over their consciousnesses--untrue, or Bel wouldn't have succumbed to harpy song.)

Of the sixth body of the swamp witch, Nemoriana says it is a malevolent entity that lures passerbys and consumes their souls and takes over their bodies. The same witch is now inhabiting her sixth body.

Bel shows Nemoriana the remains of BCM, which detects as magic but of no alignment. It is inert of life, but retains a magical essence that causes effects with light. [It's a Gem of Brightness with 50 charges.] We guess that the Dagger cut BCM's life essence, leaving only the magical.