This is the character journal of my character Aeona Tycheweaver, an Oracle who exists at a fraying of the fabric of space-time.

Last time we had travelled straight as an arrow towards the boss villainness and killed her (or more aptly, let death fall upon her). We felt bad that so much loot, I mean, plot had been left behind in our wake, so we returned to Thistletop to get answers and gear. Surprisingly, we levelled up again. Aeona at level 4 has a bunch of tricks up her sleeve and an Ozymandias complex.

Aeona-of-the-future, stop me if you’ve heard this one before…

This story is about a fort, a door, two sisters, a gypsy, and dwarves losing the rust from their beards. We had crossed a rickety bridge from a fort made of brambles over to a ramshackle castle. We found a curiously captured horse. We kicked in doors until we came upon the 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. We beat up some bad guys and shades pursued us, sucking the very life force out of us. The biggest, baddest evil in the room eyed the door, but some quick thinking on my behalf kept her at bay while Vik’s dogs tore her to pieces. Murder is fine if you don’t enjoy…

No. Wait. That was last week’s journal. I’m confused. My sister Viktoryah keeps bugging me about putting dates and times on my journal. Seriously. Me, sitting at a tangle of space-time and reality. What in any of the gods’ names would a date mean to me? What exactly is “last week”? Can you point it out to me? No, I need to CIAN-NAR, draw the thread. These journals will be more mnemonics for my particular take on the world. I’m a unique snowflake, caught on the breeze.

Gimme a second.

Okay, so this story is about a fort, a door, two sisters, a gypsy and dwarves losing the rust from their beards. We were going to cross this rickety bridge from a fort made of brambles over to a ramshackle castle when we came across an arrow-studded burlyman. A mercenary. A betrayed mercenary. We healed him up whilst gently interrogating him. I flashed my chest dammit Vik stop messing with my journal ARGH sisters are the worst pearly whites and tried to convince him to tell us his story. But I know men who fight for money can lie as easily as I can see tomorrow’s weather, so I grilled him. Nope, no lies. Just avarice. Actually I was glad of that - men tend to maintain only one, maybe two greeds. His was violence and coin. If he took a fancy to Sis or myself, I’m not sure we’d have an easy time throwing him from the bridge. Well… Sis might. She’s got issues.

The mercenary’s deal was that he’d run in with Nualia’s crowd. He hadn’t heard our raid last week, but knew that Nualia had gone off with the faeries. Well, demons. He’d figured that crazypants coins weren’t as good as being-alive-elsewhere coins, and tried to escape. A bugbear ranger that has been in cahoots with the goblins shot him in the back as he crossed the bridge back.

“Do you like justice?” I asked him. We offered him some cash and the ability to return the arrows in his back into the face of the bugbear, if only he’d accompany us into the castle dungeon and give us (literal) insider knowledge. Justice wasn’t working. My winning smile wasn’t working. The glint of gold was.

He had little idea about the horse, but we threw it some food with the intention of bringing it with us on the way out. Assuming we made it out.

Previously I had snipped Nualia from time to trap her in a room with shades and dogs, thus murdering her. Tangential murder, at best. Anyway we needed to get back into her tragic evil den to figure out what she was up to and take some souvenirs. The shades were still there, but we were ready this time. Durak, our dwarf paladin, had his new stone armour and oil of bless weapon. Seriously, Durak is just the connective tissue in between his armour now. If he dies, we’ll only find out when he doesn’t ask for an ale at the tavern. The gypsy Zoran had blessed his weapon too, but had eschewed the whole heavy armour thing to cover himself with hidden weapons. He’s very flashy about all his weapons[1]. If he falls over and stabs himself in the leg with a hidden dagger, I’m laughing at him before I heal him.

We kicked in the door, stepped over the corpse of Nualia and proceeded to stab the heck out of the shades. How that works, I don’t know. I’m a space/time kinda gal. The Shadow Realm is freaky. Our only casualty was Durak’s strength - the buggers had sucked the rust from his beard. Somehow he could still shuffle about in his stone armour. Dwarves, eh?

We’d claimed enough of Nualia’s gear and incriminating notes to make today’s venture quite rewarding, but in a trick of time, the others had convinced me it was a good idea to stomp through the rest of the dungeon. Not too bad when we found a secret door honouring Lamashtu. Still pretty good when we found a freaky conjoined skeleton and some surgeon’s tools. Oh and a weird gizmo with a seven-pointed star on it. A Runelord’s mark, if I remember/see correctly.

Not good at all with the door. That damn door. Aeona of the past, hear your time-sister well: the Seven-pointed star is bad juju. I swear I had checked for magic on this door with the seven-pointed star on it, but apparently I remembered wrong. But lo and behold, the door had no handle, but our gizmo fit a shallow perfectly.

  Don’t open doors that have no handles.  They don’t have handles for a reason! I know you can read this, past-Aeona. I also know that I saw this warning and ignored it, but you need to do as we say, not as we do. Um…

So anyway, let’s just say that we walked into a room with a barghest. It had eyed the door for escape, but instead clawed us all almost to death. I kept the dwarves alive for Sis to summon wave after wave of dutiful dogs, one of them finding the barghest’s jugular and chewing.

It’s okay to kill this guy.

Murder is fine if you come across a barghest arcane-locked into a room for several millennia and it sees its best chance for freedom is eating your valuable dwarves. Trust me, I didn’t enjoy that fight one bit. Letting Nualia fall on her own sword (in a manner of speaking) was fine, if horrific. This was just horrific. No humour at all.

We’re currently taking a breather before we embark on our next joke. Sis and I are no adventurers. But here we are. It’s a joke whose punchline hasn’t come yet.

Speaking of jokes… Hey, Aeona-of-the-future, stop me if you’ve heard this one before. This story is about a fort, a door, two sisters, a gypsy, and dwarves losing the rust from their beards…

[1] Zoran is now a Swashbuckler, given Paizo has released the beta Advanced Classes Guide.