Dradnats Lausu - Hooked On A Feeling

[Nehetsrev]

Mar 25, 1445

It's time I wrote down what I know, or suspect of the events surrounding my five year abduction and subsequent return to my beloved Ayana.  Doing so is proving a little more difficult with the loss of my left hand, but at least I have my writing hand still.  So, it isn't too difficult.

Starting at the beginning, I had returned to the temple of my goddess in Katherian to make an offering.  I also wanted to let my mother know of my betrothal to Ayana and to invite her to attend our wedding.  However, I never made it as far as either the temple or my mother's small apartment in the dock districts.  Caught unaware by my assailents, I found myself quickly subdued into unconsciousness with a blow to my head, and later awoke in what I could only describe as a make-shift holding cell in a rather musty basement.  The smell of mold and mildew was giving me quite a headache on top of the soreness of the wound I'd sustained from being clubbed.  There were a few rats scurrying about just out of sight, but I could hear them as they moved about and occasionally chittered or squeaked to eachother.  At least they never bothered to nibble on me.

After a day or two without food my captors returned behind masks to hide their identities to begin their attempts to dissuade me from preaching the messages of Xeen the way I see them.  I'd known there were elements within Xeen's following that tended to more selfish dogmas that didn't appreciate the messages I brought, but I didn't think they'd go so far as this.  In any case, when starvation and persuasion and coercion failed, my captors turned to torturing me, and seemed to take pleasure in doing so.  There were at least five of them in the group, as that was the most I heard or saw in the basement at one time.  The one they called Fellicia especially seemed to delight in the torture. She wore a mask that resembled a tiger's head.  I could tell from my pain at her hands that she was very skilled with whips of all sorts, and other implements of torture and pain as well.  Silently I thanked Xeen for each moment of suffering, knowing that these things meant I still lived, and that going through them would give me a greater appreciation for life and pleasure.  I was steadfast in my resolve to keep to the truth Xeen had laid on my own heart throughout my lifetime and they eventually gave up trying to convert me.  My image of Ayana's loving face also served to sustain me through, though at times I worried that they might know of my betrothal to her, and thus try to use her against me.

When they realized I couldn't be dissuaded from my own beliefs of Xeen, they argued for a time about how best to silence me in one of their final meetings in that dank basement.  Fellicia wanted to kill my slowly and enjoy torturing me to death.  At least one of the others, a man they called Mouse who wore a decidedly rodent-like mask, was appalled at the idea of killing a priest such as myself.  For a time he and Fellicia debated over my fate while the other three wavered in middle.  In the end though, Badger and Goat tipped the scales in favor of my continued living, as they saw profit in selling me away as a slave.  So, after a few weeks or maybe a couple months (I had lost my sense of the passage of time down in the dark for so long), I was finally blindfolded and sold off into slavery.

The details of my tasks as a slave are rather inconsequential, and ammounted mostly to hard labor at my first master's mine.  I never learned my masters name, though I became terribly familiar with my handler, Tsu Erhz.  Though his name suggested, assuming he was a native of the area, I might be in Tilmar or Corsain.  I never gained an opportunity to find out though as I was kept in the mine at all times and not once saw daylight in the years I was there.  When the mine played out, and the veins of ore began to dwindle, it was decided by my unseen master that it wasn't worth the cost of upkeep to retain his slaves.  We were then each sold off one or two at a time.

My next home was a sailing vessel.  I had been brought aboard hooded and bound, set into a cage with several others.  We talked quietly at night, when we could hear none of the crew nearby, but none of us knew where we had sailed from, though one who'd been captive on the ship the longest said that the ship had stopped by at least five seperate ports since he'd been taken on.  Other slaves had been shuffled on and off during that time as well.  It seemed reasonable to me then that the ship was likely one dedicated to the slave trade, and that I would eventually be sold again to a new master.

It turned out, however, that I'd never be sold again.  A terrible storm overtook us in our second week at sea.  I thank Mist fervently for it, indeed.  For during the storm the ship was torn apart, as well as my cage.  During the ensuing chaos I was able to snatch a set of keys from a fallen deckhand (bowled over by one of the mighty, crashing waves, his weight and momentum enough to smash the wooden framework that held the iron bars of our cage), and became elated that one miraculously fit the lock of my own shackles.  After freeing myself I freed the other men who'd been kept in the cage with me.  Our captors realized too late our escape, and split their attentions from handling the storm to re-securing us.  While I made my way across the deck to the other cage which held the women slaves, my mind set to free them as well, another of the enormous waves crashed over the ship, splitting the hull and washing me overboard.  I swam with all my strength to stay afloat in the raging seas, and only dimly recall the storm subsiding and my luck of finding a piece of the ship's flotsam to cling to.

My left hand had sustained terrible injury sometime during the struggle to survive that hellish blessing of a night.  When I woke in the rays of a hot sun, I could feel my hand throbbing with each pounding of my pulse.  I was too exhuasted to do anything but lay there on my piece of the ship for the first few hours.  I have no idea even if any of the others survived, though I saw no others.  As fortune had it, once I regained enough strength and sense to move about, I was able to recover a wooden bucket from the drifting debris.  It rained again the next night, and the bucket filled with the water that would sustain me a few days longer.  Two or three more days passed, and my water had run out.  I prayed for more rain, but none fell.  With my last thoughts before I passed out I thought I could see land on the horizon.

The next I knew a vision of Ayana bent down over me.  I was sure she was a dream, or that I'd died and she was an angel of the heavens sent to retrieve me, mimicking Ayana's form to ease my alarm.  What divine providence that my suppositions proved untrue.  I had washed up near Fort Vehl, of all places, and she had been the first to stumble upon me by some incalculable miracle of chance.  It seemed, however, that in my battered and emaciated state, I wasn't so immediately recognizable to her as she was to me.  Still, she sought aid for me, and nursed me herself as best she could.  I felt healing magic flow into me at one point and slowly my body began to recover.  Most of it.  My left hand was lost beyond healing, smashed and gangrenous with infection.  It had to go.  I count it a small price to be paid for my return to my own worldly angel, Ayana, and my renewed freedom.

Several people, friends if you will, were pressent for the actual removal of the dead hand.  Ben Poetr produced a flaming blade to sever it off.  Hedessa hit it with healing prayers to our goddess Xeen imediately after.  Finn gave me a bit of leather strip to bite down on for the pain during the event, and helped hold me steady.  Vrebel bought me some new clothes.  Khalith offered to stitch up the stump, though 'Essa's prayers and Ben'd firey blade made that unescessary.  Keppli adorned the stump with bandages decorated with green smiley-faces, which helped lighten my mood a bit more, considering the sacrifice of the hand.  There were a few others there as well to see it done.  My angel, Ayana of course, was ever pressent at my side.

Since then, I've been nursed back to a more reasonable semblence of health by my sweet-heart.  I've also made a trip to Leringard to make a thanks-offering to Mist for her storm and currents that brought me home.  A gift of 1000 Trues and truly thankful prayer I laid on her alter, nearly all that I had left to give.

After giving thanks to Mist, I've decided to travel along the coast for a week or two with Ayana, and enjoy the scenary and more importantly her company while I continue to recover from my five or so years of absence and all they entailed.

Thank Xeen for every sensation in every moment of living.  Pain, to bring us greater appreciation for life and pleasure.  Pleasure, to fuel the fires of our hearts to do the great things we need to do in this world.  May we all take hold of the courage to do rightly by eachother, so that all can be brought to the full pleasure of living.  I will always contend that the greatest personal pleasure for one's self can only be attained by unselfishly bringing pleasure into the lives of others.  Let Her will be done, and may the cups of our souls all run over with the wine and spirits of joy and happiness.

[Nehetsrev]

Apreal 27, 1445

Alright, so Ayana and I went for a trip down the coast and ended up in a smallish fishing village south of Leringard by name of Karst.  Coincidently, 'Uncle' Storold was there too, and 'Daddy' Rain seemed to be tagging along to play chaperone a bit.  Aside from them there were a lot of other folks.  Some of them I knew from previous encounters, and others I met for the first time.  Let's see if I can remember all their names...  There was:  Jaelle, Tod, Caerwyn, Razeriem, Jennara, Amanda, Lance, Daniella, Emry, Gunther and Iridril..   And a really huge man named Gunther who must be in dire need of foot massaging almost constantly, the poor fellow.  If I run into him again I'll have to see if I can help him with that a bit for Xeen's greater glory.

In any event, we'd all stayed overnight at the town's only inn.  There'd been some small, fairly quiet cellebration going on there that night, but I didn't sense that getting involved to liven it up would've been right as the locals seemed to being acting as though the event was something somewhat intimate, and err... local.  In other words, outsiders like myself weren't made to feel specificly welcomed.  That was fine with me since I had plenty of catching up to do with Ayana, despite her father's somewhat disruptive and err... limitting pressence.  I can say, once we gave 'daddy' the slip, we found the moonlight that night to be quite beatiful as it shown off the gentle waves caressing the shoreline, making the sea glimmer in a sparkling radiance of the mixed hues of both Orn and Aussir.

But, I've digressed again... so back to went happened during our visit to Karth.  The day after, as we were all enjoying a walk around the outskirts of the village, a sudden chaotic commotion broke out amongst the townsfolk.  A man and woman ran past our group with looks of utmost terror, and disappeared into the surrounding woods.  Some of the group of outsiders made their way to the heart of the commotion to try to find out what was going on, though Ayana, Tod, and myself stayed behind a bit and talked to the guardsman, who himself seemed stunned and bewildered by events.  He did eventually have the pressence of mind to draw up a pair of rather crude maps for Ayana and I after we offered to help search for the pair who'd run into the woods.  He pointed us off in the direction of a landmark he called Mark's Hill, saying that was the direction the two people had looked to be running off toward.

So, Ayana and I went out into the woods where we discovered that some of our outsider comrades had stumbled onto the woman who'd run already.  In fact, she'd holed up in a hollow tree, and had bashed 'Daddy' rain on the head hard enough to knock him out cold.  His big dog, err... dire-wolf, Arwen had become quite agitated by the event and was fiercely preventing anyone from getting close enough to Rain to tend his wounds, out of her own sense of protectiveness I suppose.  Ayana calmed Arwen, and about that same tiem rain himself woke up.  I prayed a bit of healing into the wound of his hand, but he didn't seem to appreciate it, his Follianite sensibilities getting in the way apparently.  So, then, while the others worked to calm the frightened woman holed up in the hollow tree, Ayana and I decided to press on in our search for the missing man.

Sadly, we found him dead in the bottom of a deep ravine, his body broken over the jagged rocks that lined it's lowest depths.  Having only one hand, and still not being fully recovered from my ordeal at sea, we decided between us that it should be Ayana who climed down to retrieve the body.  We didn't know for sure at that point the fellow was dead.  It was our hope that he might still live.  However, as Ayana reached the body, tethered to the rope she'd had along, the smell and the man's twisted form made it plain he truly was deceased.  We decided we ought to haul him up and make sure his body was burried properly by any family he might've had back at the village of Karst.

It was grueling work, but after Ayana climbed back up, we put our combined strength to it and raised the corpse out of the ravine, and then dragged it back to town.  About half way back, the woman named Jaelle found us, and not far behind her came Rain.  Jaelle asked us some questions about how we found the man, and then, though we were obviously exhuasted from carrying the body so far already, she left and headed back to town.  Rain stayed and had offered to help carry the fellow too, but kept saying, "If you'll wait a moment I'll change into something that can carry him all on it's own."  He never did change forms, and I'm thinking maybe that blow on the head had made him a little slow-witted for the time being, or something.  Anyhow, Ayana and I got our second winds and finished dragging the body back to the edge of town where we collapsed together for a while to rest.

I really felt I didn't want to be around when the fellow's family came to identify him and began mourning...  Talk about a mood killer, but, sometimes we just have to do the right thing and endure any pain that might result from it.  I've always had trouble comforting folks after the death of a loved one.  I just don't ever know what to say to them.  Nothing can undo a death once a spirit's left this world, and there's no way to truly fill that space in the lives of those who were close.  I guess the only good thing to do when someone's died is to remember all the good things about them, and the good times shared, but that brings a pain all it's own in that they're gone and we miss them.

After resting a bit there at the edge of town, Ayana and I got up and went back to the inn to rejoin the others.  There, Jaelle gave a speech.  She enlightened us, as well as the locals that had been re-gathered there, that the previous nights cellebrations had included a poison, most likely in the food or drink, that had induced the frightening illusions or vissions that had caused them all to panic.  The fellow we found in the ravine, thankfully, seemed to have been the only fatality.

In the end, the poison was traced back to a man named Sam Welsh, who had played matchmaker to the various newly-wed couples.  The poison wasn't meant to be poison at all, but rather an attempt at a love potion.  It was a mistaken ingredient that turned it to posion.  The man had somehow mistaken the dried mandibles of a venomous giant spider of some kind, with the dove feathers that the potion's recipe called for.  So, Sam Welsh was carted off to be confined until trial, I guess.  I truly hope enough evidence and testimony will turn up in court to convict the fellow of manslaughter.  He shouldn't be allowed to continue in freedom where he might endanger more lives by his carelessness.  Sadly though, no matter the outcome of any trial, it won't bring back the poor fellow who died that day.

After all this, Ayana and I didn't feel like continuing our trip down the coast.  We traveled back to Fort Wayfare with most of the others, our collective mood a somber one.  I don't know if I'll ever return to Karst again.  Despite it's beautiful shores, and decent, fairly friendly folk, I'll always remember the fellow who'd fallen into the ravine.