This is the character journal of my character Aeona Tycheweaver. I’m attempting to maintain a journal of play for our games in Rise of the Runelords. We haven’t started yet, so this is backstory.

It’s funny I find myself here at a loose end and a new beginning. A dead end and new life. It’s been… let’s say “some time” since Mother and Father took their entropic turn. It seems like it was yesterday, although these days that’s more literal than most people give it. It also feels like next moon, ancient history or down the road.

I’m not making much sense. I need to make sense. Cian-nar, as it is said in It’s celestial tongue - draw a line through. If not for anyone else, but myself, Aeona.

Okay.

Mother and Father will be great explorers of the mystic arts. They will push the frontiers beyond the simplistic realms of enchantments, conjurations, abjurations… Threnodic, theurgic, and thanoptic metamagics will be mere subequations in their experiments. They will share pride and eagerness - a form of romance most will not experience. They will attempt to capture the mind of a God like a spiderweb in a branch and pull the pull it apart. They will do this in their own home - where else? - and they will do this when their daughter is rebellious and curious and - as will be characteristic - in the wrong place and time. They will be undone (redone? unredone?) as their daughter sees… well…

But that’s history. I think. I am trying to get that thread amongst so many threads. From the god-witnessing to… travel? No, the vision. No, some travel, then the vision, then more travel. Then a lot of violence, but I don’t think that’s actually happened yet.

Okay the travel. It’s hard to keep track how long I’ve been travelling. I should keep a journal. With the house in ruins and myself… a-frayed in time… I went walking. There was nothing to be done about Mother and Father. It was done, is doing, will always be done. Too many nosy, noisy, second-rate, confusing mages for me to get any goddamn peace of mind, so I walked. I’m not very good at it. I am very good at being persuasive. Not like that. You just show them the best timeline for their thread and they stop trying to rob you. Or if they have worse ideas, you show them the worst. One broken-toothed scoundrel ran all the way off a cliff once instead of harassing me. I’m wary that these might not be common options for people to use in everyday life - not everyone has god-shrapnel in their existence - so I’ve tried to learn how to defend myself the old fashioned way with big sticks and daggers. As if my existence wasn’t damn weird enough.

Again, where on the thread this happens I don’t know, but big sister V has been an enormous help. We’re sisters in freakdom. Bubbles in fate stuck together. Me with my space-time thing. Her with her family curse. I guess we both have a family curse. Hers ancient, mine instantaneous. We collided a few weeks back - again, I don’t know where or when or why or if really - but have had each other’s backs. Hers is particularly monstrous at times, but you forgive a little sister for that. Big sister, I mean.

I am planning to tell her about the vision. Or have I already? This brain messes with my fray. Er, fray, brain. The vision. Focus. Draw the line. As I started to collect clarity after Mother and Father’s undoing, I saw a thread I did not recognize. Kinda my thread, but not. Wrapped loosely around it like a braid undone. Or about to be done.

Don’t ask me later what the order was, but it was like:

• A shadow
• A sign called Sandpoint
• A dwarf smiting a giant
• A burning house, maybe a temple. Ugly people.
• Little sister V, no wait, big sister. Which was she and I?
• Clockwork.
• An arrow whistling through the air and diving into a goblin’s chest
• A grotesquerie whispering the word “SKINSAW”

Also don’t ask what it means. I don’t know yet. But I will. Or have. I have images of talking to myself, face to face. Like a memory but not. And she hums in that angelic tone that I speak but don’t understand.

It’s all rather confusing. I think the best thing for me to do is go travelling. Perhaps write a notebook. Or a journal! El ae cian-nar! I mean, that’d draw the line. Keep me straight. Straight on the path to Sandpoint and to some answers.