We stop this evening away from Thundertree and
its undead. I feel as if I have lost my way somewhat in this journey,
although at least now I have some certainty, rather than before where I
had nothing.
We spoke to the wizard, a young looking man of prime
intellect and little time for our questions, although he weathered them
well. We were clearly very much beneath his notice. People like that
tend to have little cause other than money or birthright to be like
that, and I have little time for them as a result, but in this case his
power and knowledge were clearly superior to our own, and so it was less
ego as it was merely truth. He was researching how to stop a future
cataclysm in the region, something that would wipe out potentially the
entirety of it. I can see how he would find our questions of only minor
importance or interest.
Still, he was intrigued by Zenari, and
we found out that she was host to a creature from another plane, one
whose presence might cause a war to rage if they found her. He too let
us know that Idris, the paladin who had been travelling with us, was of
angelic descent, which even he had not known. The wizard, Zacharius,
seemed abundantly curious about why we had all ended up together. I was
too, for I had assumed that it had been the usual pull to gather
stronger allies for a trip to the mountain that had caused it, but sadly
he did not know.
We were then catapulted from one strange
plane of existence to another, as a test that he had Zenari do went
awry. We ended up in some sort of nightmare of hers, and were also
confronted by the creatures that had created it. During this time, it
caused a hallucination, a walking dream, where I found myself on a
mountain of corpses and no amulet to aid me in seeing to their rest.
Only when I could see, but not feel them, did I realise it for what it
was and awoke once more.
It stayed with me, that dream, in
memory this time. The creature had pulled one of my strongest fears
from me and had it play out, much as it had for others, making their own
personal entrapment. I suppose I had not considered just how crucial
the amulet was to me until after that waking dream, so normal it is to
have it with me always. I could find some other item, I suppose, in
order to have the focus in order to cast the spells I needed to, but it
is familiar to me, and after all these years carrying it, I suppose it
has sentimental value beyond what I had considered.
It is
interesting then that Zacharius, who managed to bring us back to his
tower after we had killed one of the two nightmarish creatures,
commented on it afterwards. He had questioned, at first, if I had
noticed any behavioural changes when I had first got it, but who is to
say, when it was at that time when I was finding my path. But what he
did do was cast a spell that revealed something upon it. A symbol, like
a white infinity symbol, one that, for all my years in carrying and
holding it, I had never noticed or felt.
He told me that he did
not know what it symbolises, but that he had seen it noted down once at
Candlekeep, on items brought back from the mountains. We are far from
that place, so very far, so it seems unlikely that I shall gain answers
to it any time soon. In some ways I don't want to know. For all that
my clerical spells are useful, I prefer to avoid contemplating the
larger meaning of them.
After our conversation with the wizard
Zacharius, we found ourselves back in Thundertree, and it's teeming
dead. The feeling of wrongness about the place had not abated, nor had
my draw to try and stop it.
The group were obliging in waiting
for me, perhaps not grasping that I did not believe it to be a small
task. None of them seem to know much about clerical skills. But even
so, I made my attempt, centering myself, drawing my powers to hand, and
made a start. It was a struggle, as I knew it would be. The sheer
amount of dead was overwhelming in the place, and while, with effort and
concentration I did manage to set to rest a small patch in the
otherwise overloaded area, it was almost as if it were not individual
dead, but a liquid mass that then flowed back into the area I had
cleared.
As you can imagine, it was disconcerting. I'd never had
something like that happen, nor even heard of it. I tried again, but
got the same result no matter how hard I concentrated or poured my
powers into the task.
But through it all, I did feel
something. The pull was there, one that had been absent ever since
getting to Phandalin. In my meditative state I could feel it, but it
did not chain me to Thundertree and its likely insurmountable problem,
but back towards Icespire Peak.
It was faint, very faint in a way
that had I not been in that meditative state to use my powers I would
never have noticed it, but it was there.
Why was it so faint? Distance, or something else?
There
was little, other than my conscience over the dead in Thundertree,
keeping me there, much to my surprise. I had thought, assumed even,
that I would feel torn to leave this place with so many dead needing
better rest, but there were no impulses shackling me to it, and so,
answer to that at least in hand, I made my way back to the group, and
together we travelled away from that place.
From one place of the
dead we go to another. A place called the Dragon Barrow where the
wizard, Zacharius, wanted some dragon bones from in exchange for the
location of a sword that the paladin, Idris, wished to know, one he
thought would help against the dragon. Normally I would obviously baulk
greatly at thieving from the dead, but I felt no particular problem
with taking from a dragon, especially if it was one that predated on
other races.
We rest this night on the path to that barrow, most
of us quiet and thoughtful in our own ways after what we had all been
through in Thundertree and on that other plane. I cannot help but
wonder about the weakness of the pull. Why had I not felt it before?
Was it weaker here generally, or was it, much as I had suspected before,
because I was not yet ready and prepared enough to take on the task?
Either
way, it is clear enough that for now my place remains with this group,
and as such I follow along with them, knowing their path will eventually
lead back to the mountains.