ENTRY 16
Brac’ar enters Hlint through the west gate, a slight limp in his walk. Looking at the familiar town he hasn’t spent any significant amount of time in the last few months he sighs contently and proceeds to the inn. When arriving in his room, he sits down at the desk and takes out his journal. “Time to get this updated.”
Nearly two months ago, I was chatting leisurely with Athus, Rev and Ozy near Ilsare’s temple in Hlint, when all of a sudden a discordant melody carried on the wind. It pierced the tranquility of the moment, and affected people in a strange way. They started to shout at eachoter, get into hefty fights and even kill eachother. Even Ameni, the priestess, lost it. She attacked and when we fled she followed into the outskirts north of Hlint. We finally managed to subdue her (by an effective whack in the head from my staff), however, when we tried to get a conversation going, he eyes fell out of her sockets. Luckily, Athus was near to heal her, else things would probably have gone really bad. When she had somewhat recovered, she was able to tell us of what exactly the discordant melody was. Something had happened to the Harper of Ilsare. She explained that the Harper travels the lands, playing the tune of Ilsare on his harp, some say he is a servant, others say a portion of the goddess bringing love to those in need. He looks like a vagabond or a scoundrel, yet somehow he always brings joy to those he meets.
The tune he plays is a part of life's harmony that would be ours, the part of the song we would call love. Yet the song then sounded wrong, perverted somehow, so Ameni thought that dire circumstance had come upon the Harper.
“Dire circumstance was one way of putting it…” he mutters.
Who would be able to catch the Harper was beyond her, but if they did, they might eventually gain possession of the song. If they did, the madness which possessed everyone earlier will infect all places, the song will fill the air permanently and bring suffering, chaos and hate and love would be gone from the world. So we, Rev, Athus, Plenarius and myself, set out, the discordant melody in our ears, it was the same everywhere, husbands fighting wives, children killing their pets, chaos everywhere.
When we came upon Fort Llast, we met a few adventurers who were oblivious to what was happening apart from the melody on the wind.
Then, Mage Dalton went berserk…. Summoning balors and other hellspawn, the tranquility of Fort Llast was ripped asunder. We ran, advising the others to do so as well and avoid the towns at all cost. I hope they listened… We went south, as the discord seemed to be coming from there, only to arrive in a Port Hampshire which was filled with riots. We tried to avoid the rioting citizens, and managed to find a somewhat sane ship captain to take us across.
I say somewhat sane, as he demanded my staff as payment for passage… My staff!
I agreed, albeit reluctantly, it was my staff, no matter how much that captain thought it looked like an oar... We aided fixing his ship, together with another somewhat sane sailor, when it was ready to sail, the sailor murdered the captain and took ownership of the vessel. With another mob of rioting citizens approaching, we jumped on the ship and set out towards Rilara. Luckily, the man did know what he was doing and we made it to Rilara safely. At our request, he dropped us off near Point Harbor, as we didn’t want to run into another rioting mob. Then when we near the Wolfswood, Plenarius succumbed to the disruptive discordants. He became distrusting, even hostile, to the three of us.
Luckily, talking to him of past memories and experiences, he managed to get a grip on his senses again, and we could continue. We finally ended up in the Belgaer Hills, where we were beset by fiendish creatures, like abishai, but also by half-fiend sorcerors and fighters. Plenarius and Athus fell, but luckily could be restored by Reventage. The discordant harmany was very strong here, and many bursts of sound erupted, throwing most of us to the ground every time it sounded. It seemed to come from a cave so we entered.
Inside, we were beset by more fiends and half-fiends, as well as some the largest and strongest giants I have ever set eyes on. Fierce battle ensued, and one of the giant mages managed to single handedly rip the life out of Plenarius, Athus and myself.
I still don’t know how she did it, but suddenly after a period of utter blackness, I was looking at Rev’s face again, back amongst the living. Deeper into the cave we went, the volume of the sound becoming almost tangible, throwing us against the ground if we had moments of weakness.
Eventually, we came upon another fiend, a female one. Glowing with tattoos of power and wielding two blades she charged. After a long battle, she was defeated, and when taking a closer look at the tattoos, they reminded me of Milara.
The sound continued to throws itself against us and on we pressed into the cave, where the vibrations of the disrupted music echoed stronger and stronger, and then we came upon a man.
He was wielding a blade, which was the source of the sound, and started mocking us. It was clear that he wasn’t a person to be argued with so we attacked. Already being spent from the previous battle with the female fiend, this one was possibly even worse, however, in the end, we got the better of him. He also had some of the tattoos the fiend had had.
His blade continued to send out the discordan harmony and vibrated with power.
The indentations on the blade seemed designed to modify sound and turn it to a new form, as well as amplify that same sound. However, something was strange about the hilt, silver wires were wrapped around it.
Reventage, using my sewing kit, managed to detach them from the blade, they were very fine silver wires and looked very much like strings, which they were.
Having removed them did lessen the strength of the discord, but by no means was the Harmony of Life back to normal. So we then returned to Hlint and Ameni as soon as we could, hoping that she could put a use to the strings. When we got there, the people had recovered somewhat but everyone was still on edge. We also met Ozymandias and Arestes at the temple. Ameni went to get a harp frame and strung the strings to the harp and Rev played a note. That was a bad idea. Immediately, the discordant melody picked up in strength and the populace of Hlint went berserk. Garent attacked us and quartermaster Talon stormed towards Ameni with that nasty weapon of his.
Luckily, Garent hadn’t put his helmet on and a nice whack in the head with my staff knocked him out. Had to turn Talon to stone though, I hope both don’t mind too much…. Apparently, something was still wrong with the strings, then Ameni recalled an ancient text: "When strings unstrung sing discords song, the winds will need to cleanse them. Strung to land, heart and soul the frame reborn, the breeze to seek. Holy winds of Ilsare come to a place where winds do not blow." Of course, I like a nice old riddle and obviously, a place where winds do not blow is somewhere below ground. Ozymandias then mentioned a cave of Winds, somewhere on the Kingdom of Roldem, where winds had come below ground, so that fit the riddle quite well.
We decided to use Reventage’s teleporter in her home to transport to Pranzis and go from there. When I was about to enter her house, a terrified shriek came from the temple.
Reventage and I ran back and there it was… A statue of a scorpion. Now, I had heard about these before, but never actually seen one. It is a message from Milara that a god is under attack, and if it wasn’t clear from the tattoos on the fiends earlier, it was now. Ilsare was Milara’s next target.
I tried to sense in what way the statues actually was magic and cautiously extended my senses. It was a good thing I was so careful, because I immediately felt my life being drained from me when I did. Fascinating, no doubt, but not fascinating enough to get killed. Reventage was in total shock, and Ameni was on the verge of hysteria (which is not that surprising). I had to nearly whack sense back into Reventage, that the only way we could counter the attack is get the strings fixed and find the Harper so that the Harmony would be restored.
We ran into the house and jumped into the portal. When arriving in Pranzis, we set out as fast as we could to take ship to Tibum and then onwards to Silden. Near Silden, however, we were beset by drow as well as giants, much like the giants we encountered in the cave. All probably in service of Milara.
I have never seen archers that were that accurate as those drow were, they slaughtered us, except for Reventage. The last thing I recall was the foul water of the swamp entering my mouth as I collapsed with several arrows in my back… Then, suddenly a bright light and the face of a female drow. I was in shock, and thought she’d raised me just to kill me again, but it turned out she followed Az’atta and was fighting the other drow. When I rejoined my companions, we hurried after her, but we were too late.
At the entrance to the cave of winds, we came upon her, crucified with a cruel note at her feet. "Nobody fools with Milara and gets away with it"
We got her body down, and were about to try to raise her, when I noticed something off. Apparently, she wasn’t really dead, I determined that Milara had locked her soul into some twisted magical trap, which would go off when somebody would try to cast a raise dead spell on her. It would then capture the magical energy of the spell and kill everything in the area.
Unfortunately, I could not find a way to remove this trap... With the life of Ilsare depending on us, we could not afford to lose any time, so we left her, in a shallow grave. May she forgive us. Brac’ar stares out of the window, thinking of how the Az’attan priestess had sacrificed herself. We entered the cave. Winds and gusts of air tore at our clothes, and we had trouble standing up straight. Air elementals could be seen, as well as giants and some kind of twisted ‘thing’ for lack of a better word. The elementals did not seem hostile at first, so maybe they would have ignored us had we not bothered them. Unfortunately, before I had voiced this, my companions had already attacked them.
The winds in the cave turned very angry at this, and the anger was directed at us… We slowly pressed on through the cave, unsure of what we were looking for. Reventage prayed to Ilsare for guidance, and got the sense that she needed to find two things; one that has something to do with earth, a stable thing, the other something to do with fluidness, an intangible thing. So, fighting giants, half-fiends, twisted things, and air elementals, we plowed on through the cave, further down.
We eventually came upon a kind of room, a large glowing thing in the center of it, with paintings on the walls.
The thing itself was cleary magical and radiated a blue light. In the glow, an inscription could be read from its base. “Speak to me of release, speak of the common in all and the rarely true in life" I guessed it had to do with the commonality in the paintings. There was one of a man in golden armor leading an army, one of a man with slit wrists, one of a woman with a child on her arm, one of a Halfling woman baking a pie, another of a man, touching the ground, also one of a human in sky blue robes wielding magic. The last painting was one which depicted all, with a red ribbon around it. Obviously, the answer was “true love”. The paintings depicted the gods, with love for battle, death, family, nature, and magic. When I said those words, the blue glowing things opened, a golden harp frame inside it. It was a golden frame with no strings. Beautiful elven runes of musical notes and beautiful pictures flowed around it. The magic within was so powerful it hummed as Rev picked it up. She read the runes, which were mostly prayers to Ilsare, which have been known and told for ages, which are beautiful elven songs. Now, with frame and strings in our possession, all we needed was to cleanse the strings and string the harp. That turned out to be easier said then done. We had to continue to fight our way further into the cave, and eventually came upon the largest demons I have ever seen. I also distinctly hope that I will never see their kind again… But we had no choice, we had to fight them, so we did.
And we won. Then we came upon the deepest section of the cave, where twelve air elemental like creatures waited, radiating power. After fighting the demons, we were in no shape to fight these, and resting with the raging winds around us wasn’t an option either.
So Plenarius went closer to them, and thankfully, they did not attack.
We all went close, very carefully, and then one of them approached: “Now to the place where all songs are sung, notes played and tunes undone. From high to low first I fall, then ascend on wings divine.” Then the creature was silent. Clearly, another riddle, indicating how to play them; start with high notes, then with low notes and then upwards again. Near them, a large rock, which, with a bit of imagination, could be seen as a big stone harp, was standing. It had twelve holes at the top and twelve at the bottom, exactly the same amount of strings we had.
Reventage then proceeded to string this stone harp. I must admit have never seen somebody as nervous as her at that time, but with characteristic Reventage determination, she started the tedious task, fully knowing, that breaking one of those twelve strings was not an option. While she was doing that, I studied the creatures further. As Plen had already said, they were not air elementals at all, they were creatures of pure sound, each representing a different note. Quite fascinating, to see creatures of pure sound. Meanwhile, Rev had taken a break, about halfway there with the strings, all of them still whole. With a few mutters she then continued with the remaining ones. We tried to not be too obvious watching her, but we were… so much depended on it.
Finally, she was done, all strings still whole, and all of them in the stone harp. The creatures, however, remained motionless. Reventage then proceeded to play the first string, with the highest note. When she did, no sound was heard and nothing happened. She continued to the lower notes, one by one. All this without any reaction from the creatures. Then she went upwards again, waited a bit before playing the last highest note. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then, one of the creatures moved towards the stone harp, and when it touched it, a single pure note filled the cavern. Then the second creature moved, and when it hit the harp, a second note joined the first in harmony.
The third deepened the timbre of the melody, the fourth turns the cavern into a maze of sound, entrancing and enrapturing.
The fifth added depth and tone, the music seems to span time effortlessly.
The sixth remarked on beauty, each see different things but all to the eye are beautiful.
The seventh added the haunting lilt of truth, so often needed and sometimes painful.
The eighth added a baritone of joy, joy in the moment and of the now, the satisfaction of living.
The ninth brought the midtones, not as delicate as the highs or as moving as the lows, it is the tune of everyday existence spanning more than a moment.
The tenth brought peace and the assurance of affection, the care of others for who you truly are.
The eleventh brought self, the acceptance of your own being beyond flaws and faults, and accepting those faults as part of perfection.
The last brought eternity, the love of ages and the complete harmony found in emotion that relates to all people and all things. Then, the cavern resonated briefly with this glorious hymn, straight from the great song itself before falling into a deadening silence. There wasn’t a word to describe what we felt during the cleansing of the strings, it was… sublime. When the deadening silence fell, the strings were lying on top of the stone harp, glowing softly.
Rev then hesitantly took the strings and strung them to the golden frame we found earlier. And then it was done, the Harper’s Harp was whole again. However, all was not well.
A discolorant spot appeared on the shiny gold harp.
It was decaying, probably because something was wrong with the Harper. Rev felt the urge to go southwest, towards Rilara so we ran to the nearest port as fast as we could.
Bribing a shipcaptain to take us directly to Karthy, we made good time, but once in Karthy we were somewhat lost. Something linked Karthy to the Harper and it wasn’t until we came close to a tree that we found out what it was. The tree remembered the song the Harper played underneath it, so he’d been there!
According to some locals he had left, but when Arestes tried to commune with other trees outside town to determine where he went, there was no trace of him.
Last thing people knew was that he had played at a Xeenite festival in Karthy. We confronted the rather drugged Priestess of Xeen and, after she got somewhat high of some red root, she started talking about them imprisoning the Harper because he played so well at their festival.
They’d taken the Harp from him and sent it to a mage in the Swamp of Lost Souls to learn its secrets. However, her envoys didn’t return, demons did and they took the Harper.
We set out to the swamp, the harp continuing to corrode and its runes fading. We did not have much time.
We fought our way through half-fiends and demons again, as well as through golems made of demon flesh inside the mage’s tower. When we finally subdued him, he wanted a bargain. He’d tell us what he knew, if the Harper, who’s a “useless appendage to a dysfunctional deity”, would write him a Sonnet of Chaos.
He would geas the harp compelling the user to write the Sonnet for him. And the mage will then use the Sonnet as he sees fit. The mage told us he was contacted by a priestess of Xeen a few months ago. She had a harp she wanted studied ad agreed to pay the mage for doing so.
He demanded more than she was comfortable with but that in the end, it was a price she was willing to pay. She dispatched a small number of her clergy to bring the harp to him.
It got sidetracked. A group of black mages waylaid the priestesses. They took the harp and delivered it to their master. Hearing of this the master decided that half was not good, he always wants all. He attacked the temple of Xeen and spirited the Harper away.
The wizards then made a blade, which defiled the harp. Strings wrapped around its hilt. By this time in his story, he had moved into a pentagram. I tried to break it by making a gap in on of its lines, but touching it with my staff made me turn to stone. I still can’t believe he did that to me! "We'll see who's the better mage next time..." Later, when we left and I was released from being a dwarven statue, I heard that Rev had made the decision to accept his condition of the Sonnet of Chaos. Not that she had had any choice; it was either accepting, or running of in no specific direction looking for the Harper, which would take time we didn’t have.
The Harper was being held in a cave in the Wolfswood, and we had no time to waste.
The last bit of gold on the harp’s frame corroded and none of the runes were visible anymore
We ran. Harried from all sides by fiends, twisted creatures and maraliths we arrived at the edge of the wood. We fought our way into the cave, confronted again by the same huge demons we also met in the Cave of Winds. And then a vast barrier of blades prevented us from continuing.
Cracks were starting to appear in the Harp.
The blades were not magical, yet they were very strong. They tore up one of the demon corpses we tried to push into them, and turned a large boulder into smalle pieces of rock when we rolled it into the blades.
The cracks in the frame started to widen and a moaning sound came from it. It looked like it was about to fall apart.
Kobal, who had joined us in Karthy, said a fervent prayer to Rofirein and then stepped into the blades. A yellowish bridge of light appeared beneath his feet, which extended with every step, allowing him to cross the barrier! Rev quickly prayed to Ilsare for one last bit of strength even though She might need it in fending off Milara and also stepped into the blades, only to have a red bridge of light appear.
Muttering a prayer to Dorand I followed on a brownish bridge of light, the others did the same. Plen and Arestes on bridges of green light. We crawled through a narrow passage and there he was, somebody you'd wish you'd never meet in person: Milara. Standing next to a large pentagram, he looked unfussed by our intrusion. He looked at the man lying in the centre of a smoke-filled pentagram. He then looked at Reventage who was storming towards him, and casually slit the Harpers throat. Chaos erupted in the world and Milara disappeared.
A few strings broke.
Clouds gathered, thunder roared and lightning struck. Red rain was starting to come down upon the surface, corrupting everything it touched. Life’s Harmony was in mortal peril, friend turned against friend, husband turned against wife, and the air was filled with discord. We pulled the Harper from the pentagram, trying to keep him alive. Athus asking for the help of Aeridin, Reventage praying for Ilsare to help her, and Plen pleading Katia for aid. Yet the bleeding didn’t stop, the Harper was dying.
Rev started to hum the Melody as it was supposed to be, the way we heard it when we cleansed the strings, but that only seemed to hurt him more, he shook his head, a sad look in his eyes. We told the Harper of friendship, trust and love, yet the wound kept on bleeding.
With a cracking sound the frame nearly split apart, only a few strings remaining whole.
Then, Rev kissed him on the forehead, and he smiled. The discordant chaos seemed to lessen for a moment, only to kick in stronger a few seconds later. She then kissed him on the heart, followed by a kiss on the mouth. The Harper sighed at the kiss, a final exhalation that seems to hang in the air, a benediction to a life lived full and shared.
An explosion of epic proportions rocked the cave and the harp burst into frantic song.
The cave reverberated for a moment before the joyfull sound spilled forth across the lands.
Before our eyes, the corrosion fell away, the harp sat gleaming and complete, mystic runes made anew and silver strings shining like a new dawn.
The land was shaken under a majestic roar of sound, a soft red hue fills the air... suddenly old loves forgotten were remembered, new ties were strengthened and for a moment it seems to be the only emotion in the world that matters. The sound and color then faded for short time but did not vanish, the melody was taking its place with the rest of the great harmony of life. Playing constantly in the background in tune with the heartbeat of the world. As the harp played sound appears visible around Kobal, speaking in its own way of his loyalty and steadfastness to order and justice. He stood taller and looked renewed.
Walls of green vines rise around Plenarius, sound given form in his love of nature and the wild. A faint echo of the true song of the land is heard in the breathtaking melody. Plenarius stood taller, and seemed renewed. Sheets of metal and magic formed around me, making gentle waves of blue light upon the cavern floors. The notes form a singular word: "Fascinating". I felt myself grow taller for a moment, and felt renewed. A tree appeared around Arestes, growing wildly and constantly changing its form. It stays still for no time at all, the tune of evolution in motion. Arestes also stood taller and seemed renewed. Waves of chaotic sound rose around Reggub, blue and violent flashes of red sound clang around him in a discordant symphony. They speak of passion for life and his everlasting love of the female form. Reggub also stood taller and looked renewed. Then, the sounds from all gathered shattered asunder and rush to surround Reventage and the harp. The songs intertwine and mix until a singular great melody is heard. A melody that tells the tale of the quest for the Harper of Ilsare. The harp plays the final strains of sorrow at the death of the old, but rejoices at the new before falling silent once more. We must have stood there for minutes, enjoying the echoes of the Harmony that we just heard, and totally speechless by what we had just accomplished. I must admit that Reventage looked a bit lost with that Harp but I guess it needs to grow on you.
All in all, it was a fascinating experience.
Laughing he closes the journal for the night.