16th Auril. Feel as if my insides are still thawing out. I don’t remember ever being so cold, not even at the deepest depths of the ocean. Tilia and Ari did an excellent job of melting our icy prisons—I shudder to think what would’ve happened if Ari hadn’t dodged the icy blast that froze the rest of us in place!
So that’s how it feels like to be a living statue. I wonder if Jarrod and Aliisza could hear us debating whether to un-petrify them this morning. After my dream about Jarrod/Caedmon last night, I was of course biased in favor of restoring Jarrod; Val argued passionately that we habitually judge by appearances when making such decisions. So strongly did she feel about restoring Aliisza that she revealed an important aspect of herself to us: she is of Tiefling descent!
It all makes sense now: Wynlynn’s overprotectiveness towards Val, Val’s occasional dark moods and reticence about her past. I was moved that Val would risk sharing this aspect of herself to make her point. Had I myself not been mercilessly teased on Talpin for my—um—amphibious appearance? While I had initially argued against restoring the serpentine woman, I now added my voice to Val’s, urging the party to use the other bottle of restoration elixir on the second statue.
It turned out that Aliisza was not petrified but had only assumed a stony appearance to see how we would act. Having ascertained our intent to restore her, she left Val a single scale, asking us to throw it down if we ever wanted a favor from her.
Jarrod we restored using the petrification antidote—it was quite a sight to behold, the noble sculpted stone rapidly receding to reveal warm, elven flesh! Val offered him some ale, which he gulped then gagged, so I offered him some plain ole’ H2O, at the same time giving him the robes I borrowed from the air cultists. I couldn’t help blushing as I remembered the role in which Jarrod was cast in the theater of my dreams last night. Although he seemed evasive at first, we won Jarrod over and he gave us some details that might help us unravel the mystery surrounding Pantaghion’s father—in particular, his involvement with the Clasp back in Dranseri.
We freed a number of other survivors from the Earth cult—a priestess named Erione, a former cultist, and an aged firbolg whom Tilia recognized from her childhood. After giving Jarrod, Orna, and Jidra some weapons and money to help them make their escape, we descended through a watery passage I discovered to the part of Tyer-Besil where we are now resting. Our attempt to open an iron chest near the lake where we surfaced triggered some kind of magical icy blast—the chill from which we are still recovering.
17th Auril. A sense of awe, gratitude, and humility fills my soul. I met a dragon for the first time—and one both wise and benevolent! Azurea is the name of this beautiful, sapphire-colored being—I immediately felt a kinship with this fellow denizen of the deep!
[By the by, I must content myself with briefer entries for now: the enchanted paper that Caedmon gave me for journaling—it stains permanently from my watery pen—is running low.]
We’ve had quite a few encounters in the Water Temple though we’ve been here only a day: we fought an icy being and his mephits and dispatched some cultists led by a fishy Arch-Priest. I united Dagon’s Reach with what appears to be one of its missing parts, and the staff seems to have become more alive than ever. I can feel its enhanced vigor pulsing in my hands! A part of me has grown fond of it—sometimes I tickle its tentacles and it responds like a fateful pet. Yet I also feel a sense of revulsion to see its tentacles writhing almost sensuously. And I am troubled by the imagery of tentacles and endless whispering in my dreams. My sleep is not disturbed, and I wake feeling rested, yet I feel as if I am repeating the same lurid dream every night.
Speaking of dreams, Ari recounted a haunting dream sequence that she experienced to retrieve this peculiar dagger called Oblivion’s Point. The boundaries between dreams and reality are truly wearing thin!
19th Auril. We have, thank Corellon, survived our most difficult battle to date—with some foul, ancient being known as an aboleth. Apparently, the others have been having terrible nightmares as well—since the creature seems to have had telepathic powers—and a love of insinuating itself into others’ most private thoughts and desires—perhaps I was mistaken in blaming Dagon’s Reach for my bad dreams. In any case, my newly augmented staff is serving us well: today I discovered I could use it to manifest giant, shadowy tentacles that proceed to pummel our foes! Can’t complain about its offensive capabilities—even if the staff does insist on featuring in a dream or two, maybe it’s worth it?
Val was badly injured, having sustained some kind of peculiar wasting disease from the aboleth—fortunately Azurea and her allies, grateful for our help in ridding the Water Temple of the aboleth, are able to treat Val’s condition.
I visited the plane of water through the node that the aboleth and its followers had been monopolizing. It felt at once immediately familiar and yet somehow polluted—degraded—there was no life at all, just a gigantic skeleton of what may have been a kraken.
Though she seems kindly disposed towards me, Azurea was not able to tell me more about the whereabouts of my mother. In truth, I had come up with the story of searching for my mother mainly to explain our presence in the temple—before I knew that Azurea and her followers were on the side of good. But as I talked about wanting to seek out the origins of my elemental nature, this desire assumed a more urgent reality. Who was my mother? Was she really a powerful water genie? Was my father still with her, somewhere in the endless seas?
All these questions had occurred to me many, many time as a child but had receded far into the past as I journeyed through a stormy adolescence to adulthood. Up till now, it had seemed enough just to be able to find acceptance for who I had become—to be able to control the abilities that, for better or for worse, I had been gifted with. But the open-ended nature of the Aramenté—coupled with recent developments in my relationship with Caedmon—have made me, well, want more. Perhaps finding my place in this realm requires revisiting the past as well.
UNOMAHA D&D 