This is the character journal of my character Aeona Tycheweaver, an Oracle who exists at a fraying of the fabric of space-time.
Our games have been sporadic recently with people away for various reasons. Last time we battled our way through the front of a fort made of brambles and almost were eviscerated by a cougar. While maybe half a day of adventuring in-game, this episode was split over a month of gaming and non-gaming. We also levelled up halfway, so I’m beginning to get powerful.
To be totally honest, I figured this journal would help me “draw the line” and figure out a consistent account of my life since that flirting gaze from Nethys, God of everything that matters. It hasn’t helped. My previous entry finished with some finality but that wasn’t the case at all. And really, I didn’t write that in the middle of our raid, so when did it happen? It’s my handwriting, so Nethys knows what’s going on. (Hmm, maybe I should ask him. (Although remember, Aeona, what happened last time you saw him (Gawd))) So I’m not entirely sure if this is my journal from another timeline. Or if I’m another Aeona from another timeline. Same excellent handwriting though, so at least there’s that.
Some of the party are upset at my casual use of the word “murder”. The paladin especially! It’s okay. I’ve seen across the threads and it’s okay. Murder is fine so long as you don’t enjoy it. Well, enjoy it too much. See below.
Okay, enough about penmanship. Goblins! After murdering the goblin druid with the tricksy cougar, we murdered all their rabid dogs. We didn’t get to burn the brambles fort to the ground (yet). It might have made quicker our crossing of the bridge from the fort to the island! The castle on the island was really just ramshackles. Like it had been outsourced to bored teens. Or, I guess as was the case, goblins. Again, we weren’t allowed to just burn that to the ground, so we did the “honorable” thing and waltzed through murdering everyone.
Had I mentioned Nethys had taught me a nice sleight-of-hand with time? So it’s always hard to remember if this was the first tower we cleared out or the second, but we pounced on two of the little goblin buggers playing cards. They decided they wanted to skewer poor ol’ Zoran. In a beautiful flick of my hand, I linked that moment to every previous moment that green goblin had betrayed grey goblin, including five minutes ago when he cheated grey out a bet. While a gypsy man in your tower focusses your mind, a primal reminder of betrayal does wonders to focus your rage. Grey shook with rage and shivved green with all his might. The goblin blood on his hands and a general confusion over what had happened brought both goblins’ weapons back to us. At least now one had a punctured kidney.
Green tried to escape down the ladder and warn his friends. He hadn’t counted on Durak the Slow but ~~Crazy~~ Courageous leaping from a set of stairs on top of him. I rested in a pause in time to enjoy that moment. When I came to we were jumping on goblin beds, battering their skulls in with morningstars. Oh no, don’t burn down the fort, just smoosh them in their beds. We’re the best at heroism.
Then it got weird.
Look, sometimes time ebbs for me like waves on a beach, overlapping, churning, receding. Here’s what I remember next and how I remember it:
- The goblin lord screaming to attack and leaping from his throne onto a huge gecko.
- The goblin lord inviting me into the middle of the room to discuss politics, for I was the fairest. It was fine that I left the beefy guys behind.
- Bahlek burying a handaxe into the guts of a goblin ninja.
- Goblin ninjas coming from the darkness. Although this memory is bleeding into another thread… Hmmm…
- Watching the pulse of my heart through the spurt of blood from my wrists.
- A goblin bard desperately singing before having his song cut short by Durak’s warhammer.
- Aeona of the Future shaking her head at me, beckoning me aside, bringing serenity and healing. My vision of time clarifying into…
- Surrounding the goblin lord. Despite having his jugular opened by a deft swipe by the gypsy, he wanted to fight on.
- We danced around him, dodging blows, waiting for him to drain out.
- I got a bent crown!
I distinctly remember trying my second trick (see later) on the goblin lord’s gecko, but there was some tangle in the threads. I have no idea how I survived that fight, but I did. Our trusty wand of cure light did wonders for my headache. And dying-ness, I suppose. Dying is such a complicated affair - I’m not sure I can be bothered with that yet.
I know what next happens because I’m looking at the result right now. We found a small child’s weight in coinage and magical gear. The gear was rather practical, but rather not practical enough for me. I’ve gotten some tips from Alternate Aeona #736 on crafting something a bit more useful. I’ll try my hand this week while Durak gets some colour back in his beard. Or why the draining of colour? Well!
I heard some whispers from an Alternate Sis (I don’t know which one, they aren’t as friendly as mine, and significantly more emotional). She suggested we hole up in the towers and recover before pressing on. This whole joke had a punchline about a girl and a demon, but we weren’t ready for that yet. Did I mention the horse we saw from above? In a cupboard, apropos of nothing, next to a pack of hungry dogs, surrounded by goblins who couldn’t ride it, across the rickety rope bridge, across the brambles fort that we humans had to duck through and miles from town? Yeah, that goddamn tricksy horse. Vik reckons it wasn’t a dream, but I reckon it was. No-one would be that weird to have a horse there.
By the way, the previous journal wasn’t written then. I’m sure of it. Such a mystery!
In the morning we stomped back downstairs and found plans to the goblin raids on Sandpoint. Dastardly! I told Zoran that I had seen those plans before, maybe in a dream. Then I told him my eyes were up here. No time (ha) to argue, we barged into the next room and found a not-nice-looking woman there. Zoran circled around to knife her. I tried another new trick of mine (no not that one). This one requires me opening up the Realm of Thoughts and slicing through the latest thread of consciousness for this woman. Not her CIAN-NAR, no I’m not that powerful. Yet. Basically, force a memory lapse. She forgot about ol Zoran until he shanked her. As I was closing the portal to the Realm of Thoughts I could see her adrenaline jack up and she turned invisible and ran.
We gave hot pursuit, with Zoran the hottest. (No Sis, I don’t think he’s attractive, pay attention!) Somehow this cleric had taken non-literal flight down a secret corridor and into a temple. Zoran tried to follow and avoided a trap by the longest of his goatee hairs. An elaborate trap, to be honest: portcullises, sweeping blades and a pit drop. Lucky for Zoran, though! (I tell him that, but across the nearby threads, all Zorans made it. It’s a local invariant to the universe. Well, this universe)
No time to waste, we pursued invisi-chick through a door she conveniently left open. She and her bestie were holed up in a tragically decorated evil lair. Skull torches, hands in jars on overstuffed shelves, the works. Oh and don’t forget the literal blood bath in the middle of the room.
This was make-or-break time-and-space, so I gave the evil chicks a demonstration of my expertise. Invisi-chick got a reminder of all the betrayal her friend had dumped upon her (including some elaborate argument about the pony we had found in my dreams). I gave Boss chick a preview of her death. Oh that one was brutal. And very familiar in a jamais-vu way. The boys and Vik’s champion (if fiendish) dogs laid into the both of them, while I kept spooking boss chick away from escaping out the only door to the place.
Invisi-chick hadn’t died yet when two shadows had risen from the blood bath. When she did, another rose with her. It was horrifying. Shadows warp and corrupt all the threads near them, on most planes. Poor ol’ Durak was on his last little legs and shuffled for the door. I gave him the sanctuary of zen calm to help him on his quest out the door as he grumbled about the room being airtight or something. Boss chick had heard this and had steeled herself against my trick of prescience. I could see in her eyes both determination and a sinking, familiar fear.
Everyone was out of the room except the shadows, boss chiquita and I. They had intended to close the door to block the shadows. Boss chick intended to be on the other side of the door too. I saw it on the tapestry. I saw what I had to do to complete the weave.
I strode up behind her with my bent crown. Vik’s dogs were trying to nip her heels and keep her away from our side of the door. I shouted “I am Ozymandias, king of kings! Look upon my works, ye mighty boss chick, and despair!” That got her attention so I booped her on the nose; actually grabbing a thread from the tapestry and yanking her entire patch out for a moment.
From her perspective I shouted like a crazy lady, booped her on the nose, then time skipped, the door was shut tight, her escape gone and the shadows advancing on her as dogs tore at her legs. I was still giggling at my trick until her screams. Then I stopped. Half-demonic boss chick might have tried to corrupt us with evil darkness and kill us with magic missiles, but her screams and scrabbling at the door was too much.
I had at one second been king of kings, and the next, after a time skip, been two trunkless legs of stone.
We had come to stop her evil plans to become a vessel for some demon, but we had planned something more honorable. Like caving in her skull. I have to admit, my trick was fun. Might have to think about the morality about that some time.
Or not. That works too. And if you’ve seen the landscape of time like me, there’s worse to come. Skinsaw, for example.
After an encounter with a rabid, evil dog that I’m too embarrassed of my dwarven friends to recount, we zipped back home. The shadows are stuck in the room of evilness, as with a bunch of useful weapons and clues, so we’ll have to research how to best deal with them.
Durak is recovering from his near-death. Zoran is romancing the town. Bahlek is restringing his bow and sis is sneaking scraps to other-planar dogs. Meanwhile, today my hair is purple and I’m making clocks…