Ravenloft: Prisoners of the Mist

Within the swirling Mist (IC) => Biographies => Topic started by: Silas Rotleaf on August 24, 2018, 04:06:22 AM

Title: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 24, 2018, 04:06:22 AM
This is far from Ungrad.
I am 35 winters old, though I do not look it.
That is a benefit of my people. Especially the yellow eyed ones.
We Valachani are a bit like the Barovians but darker skinned and more spiritual.

I am an acolyte moarnekone. I have not yet earned my scars as our hunters and trappers do but I make up for it in voluntary facial piercings.


Today the Lord of Beasts granted me the ability to conjure an enormous snake. I was hoping for a panther but this will do nicely in the meantime. A kind metalsmith named Jack fashioned me with chainmaille and an excellent shield, also.

We Valachani are not known for being men of letters. The priestly caste is literate but book learning is looked down upon.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 24, 2018, 06:03:22 PM
I still am not sure what name to give my moon snake. Hmm!

Orm! That works. I will call this moon viper Orm.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 28, 2018, 11:24:53 PM
Well, I was on a vision quest when the mists took me from Valachan to Barovia.
Hopefully there will be some signs or omens, some sort of portents soon!

When I turn monstrous beetles and giant spiders, sometimes they explode.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on August 29, 2018, 06:33:08 PM
I derive some measure of joy and satisfaction in using the power of my prayer to turn undead and heal my allies while at the same time harming our foes.
It would seem that properly destroying the undead does bring them some measure of peace. A final rest as it were.

The Dustman outlander I sometimes talk to agrees that the final or "true" death is important for souls to achieve to be able to move on.
Perhaps the inability of such things to move on when they cannot is what results in monsters happening.

It is a sign of the world being too clogged up with tormented agonized souls?
Maybe it is somewhat as that Cthulhu cultist hints at when I speak to him.

I don't think the whole world itself necessarily is in increasingly dire need of cleansing but I do think the cursed parts need being purified where possible.

As a lone fighter of undead things which would choose to prey on the living I am as an infinitesimal dew drop or single leaf in the jungle. One might also note that some trees repel the infestation of ants and beetles with poison in their sap.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 01, 2018, 02:48:57 AM
Lonely and tired, also lacking in purpose.
Hmm, I am a priest.
I wonder... Well, I didn't swear celibacy.
I wonder if anybody could like me.

There are some people whom I fight well with.
That bardess Olivia for example and Desh. Moonbrooke too.

I fixed my corroded weapon on my own. Desh said he'd help me but something must have came up. I waited all day until nightfall for him in the Vallaki crafting hall but no Desh.
So I went to Krofburg the next day and got a smithing apron and got to work on fixing things myself.

Looking sharp there Cristan! Your pure black tabard with the metallic blue and gray bits depicting a feline face is very snappy. The gray fur cape goes nicely with it.
You have moons and a star as the emblem on your shield now too. It is appropriate.
My new boots are steel plated and of dire bear fur.

The Garda have been making many arrests lately but I guess they are really just detainments? I thought those taken in would be dead for sure.
Leomont and Vine.
Glad they were alright but it is still concerning.

Empty like a mote of grain pollen or a speck of dust.
I drift... Without much interacting.
It feels... Disgusting to an extent.
What is there to interact with people in this valley about though?

They often talk amongst themselves of a "mist camp"; I don't feel ready to go there yet though.
When I was finished with repairing my damaged weapon I left the smithing apron, smithing hammer and a light mining pick in a magic pouch at the side of the Vallaki Morninglord temple in the outskirts where people sometimes leave food and clothes. Then I aided in crypt delving with some people.
When I got back the bag was no longer there. I can feel good I gave someone the tools for a trade. Perhaps some former vagrant is using it to make a purpose for himself.

Would that I could too. Maybe it will come in time.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 02, 2018, 04:24:15 PM
On the subject of women,
Eve and Lyndsay seem being nice to me.
I am not sure what to make of that.

I like being friends with Dawnfather Heilyn and told him as much.
We may come from two rather different faiths but we both share no love for the undead and are big on charity.

I got a little stronger and can call forth more advanced blessings but am still a bit disappointed.
I know I could be more powerful than I am if I just tried harder and was more intensive in my devotions perhaps...

I also attended a lecture held by Professor Cornell in the sage tower.
He was talking about Sithicus which I know Valachan shares a border with. Attending this lecture has cleared up some of my sense of the geography of the southern part of the core.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 08, 2018, 09:32:46 AM
Lyndsay Arcanix...
A complex woman.
She is a warrior and I take it an offworlder and doesn't seem afraid of anything.
She's also unabashedly a mage which complicates things.
She... Flirted with me a little unless that was just my imagination and has said on a few occasions she "likes" me.
People make up bad things about her that aren't really reflective of her actions.

She loves battle.
She used to wear red armor but is definitely not a Hazlani or red wizard... Judging by her long blonde hair and lack of tattoos (Obviously!). Now she wears black armor.
People are calling her a man eater (or man stealer? Whichever is the more shocking of the two and when neither of those gives pause or raises eyebrows even go so far as suggest she is into elven women, tsk tsk that seems a tired cliche if I've ever heard one!), they are claiming she has murderously "dueled" lots of people, that she has sworn allegiance to the vampires and other things designed to make her out to be much more terrible than she is.
It's very childish of them...

I learned that her master she studies under is an elven scholar. The elf seems most reasonable. He is not a vampire.

She told me one of the people propagating this foul gossip is the elf Tinu who it seems she has crossed. Are people truly so dumb they assume since Lyndsay wears dark colored armor that in of itself needs necessarily make her an evil person?

Wow, people are quite dumb here in Vallaki.
I miss Ungrad and Valachan's steamy jungle heartland, the Forest of Beasts, with its never ending strange bird songs and animal calls...
Barovia has more bats than birds... They chirp too but it is not the same thing.

Judith and Leomont... Two Ezrite Purehearts, one an anchorite and the other a Templar... I have held vigil at night outside the Lady's Rest Inn and Morninglord temple in Vallaki's Western Outskirts a time or two with the former and explored the ruins next to Raduta Keep with the latter.
I hope they don't mean to try to convert me.  Any effort by people to convince me Yutow does not in fact reside his days and nights since The Pacification (his sacrifice and ascension that the dark skinned Valachani aborigines and invading light-skinned Vaasi were merged into one people so as to no longer be at war) up on the moon watching over us all is wasting his or her time; I am an acolyte Moarnekone. Someday soon I hope to be a full fledged priest of Yutow.

Mighty is The Peacebringer.  So long as there is moonlight you need not *fear* the night... It is not absolute darkness.  He watches over us all. He and the animal spirits he uses as messengers.

I am not a fan of Lyndsay's wizardry. Or any wizardry. It seems a necessary evil for many outsiders though so asking them to forgo or forsake their arcane practices would not be reasonable when it is I who find myself in the minority.
I will thus begrudgingly tolerate it when it is useful and in situations where the majority of other people in a group are into such blasphemies, Yutow preserve me.

Strong women remind me of home. Again I am homesick.
Hmm Eve, Tattiene, and Lyndsay... Though they are of foreign heritage... I feel they would perhaps with some more years experience not be out of place as clanheads of family compounds were they Valachani women. They are not though.

Elves. Elves and other fey (or the fey? Are elves not fey? I thought they all get lumped together) are intermediaries to the spirit world. They are much longer living than us humans although being a yellow eyed Valachani and of the priestly caste I am myself longer living than an average person otherwise would be.  Elves are a step closer to the gods than we who are shorter lived and this is common knowledge amongst my people.

Rilonwae... A nice but curiously strange little female elf, she wears scant clothing and doesn't seem to catch cold but also does not know where she is from. I guess when the mists took her it affected her memory.  Perhaps she came from some place with a tropical clime? She does not look or act like a Sithican. No, she isn't as dour as they tend to be and her hair is not their typical black, white or gray.  I wish I could help her recover her missing memories but honestly I have no idea how one would go about doing that.

It is okay for humans and elves to be friends or work together but unions between the two races are bad luck. I understand that half elves are a thing which do exist but wonder how those children of such often ill-fated romantic liasons are treated by the societies of each parent.  Perhaps it makes for a stressful upbringing...
This feels a bit hypocritical for me to think considering the origin of my own people.  In our cosmology we Valachani are ourselves a hybrid product of two forebearer races... Made into an entire civilization of one. A newer race combining the sturdiness and woodsmanship of the original Valachani aborigines with the cleverness and head for strategy of the Vaasi would be conquerors.

I do quite loathe when people with little better to do deign it upon themselves to attempt tearing other people down. Is life not already hard enough as is?
However, a priest of Yutow is expected to endure hardship. Yutow Himself made the ultimate sacrifice with the aide of Panther's counsel... Look upon the green skinned, golden eyed martyr how he cries and bleeds, with outstretched palm and broken legs asking the original Valachani and invading Vaasi to set aside their differences and come together as one.

Akin to the tallest great redwood trees, we endure.
As years go by through famine, times of plenty, plagues, white fever, attack by beast and monster the people rely on us Moarnekone to grant the undead and angry spirits rest, tame creatures and act as mediators in disputes between the peasants and The Baron and Lady Adeline's militia, the Black Leopards. So we endure.

Each scar (up to a point) and every harrowing thing survived is a badge of pride. It is a roadmap of your lifeline leading up to the present and going through your past. The physical map on one's skin is testament to every triumph of man over wild.

Be not mistaken though... You can never truly tame the wilderness. It will lure you with a sense of false peace then when your guard is lowered or you are too old, sick or injured to fend for yourself a predator will sneakily and swiftly pick you off.  That is the law of the jungle.  Nature, she can be very unforgiving. Merciless even.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 09, 2018, 03:58:25 PM
There isn't much to do for me yet doesn't seem to be much anyone to do it with.
Not yet...
There has to be something though lying there beneath the surface.

At times I wonder what and feel it could maybe, hopefully be very interesting.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 10, 2018, 06:40:28 PM
I saw a flyer saying a circus was looking to hire unique individuals and those with interesting talents.  Do I join it? It is not dignified to be a freak and spectacle on display but I am a rarity even among my own people. Hmm!

I could use it as a vehicle to pursue other interests of my own and perhaps meet some women.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 12, 2018, 03:52:20 PM
Those circles of standing stones... Suggest there were at one point orders tending the land.  They look long untended though.  Also some of the creatures around the site are warped. Some foul magic appears responsible.
A barbarian "plague bearer" of some sort who is a champion of decay and a voluptuous elf who we have chosen to be the aspect of Life and I have tried to purify the area. Naturally I am Night.

Our ritual I think worked but weakly.  Some of the native fauna returned if only briefly when we had completed our rites.
We didn't really know what we were doing making offerings on the altar and each had to guess.  If we could meet say an archdruid... He or she could probably show us how to do it better.

I know we aren't really the traditional "circle" of nature guardians.  Would a bunch of forest, plain, tundra, desert or swamp protectors even acknowledge amateur Night, Rot and Life/fertility?

We don't really know that much about what we are doing but we do know the lands are tainted in an unnatural way and undead on cursed grounds outnumber the living an average of three to one at the very minimum.  It is not balanced.

Our idea is that by getting together people who each embody a distinct aspect of nature our "circle" gets closer to complete. We have noticed that there is something about restoring this balance that weakens the taint.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 13, 2018, 08:33:02 PM
Eve has someone.
Maybe some day I will too. Hmm.

So I got my new armor and I dyed it light blue. Ugh...
Not used to how much brighter it is than my old tabard's colors, etc. I think I will try and find some black or deeper gray cloth dye for it or see what colors I can get the leather parts to be.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 15, 2018, 03:07:14 AM
Apparently I had frozen to death up on Mt. Baratak summit between the Ice tomb and Jezra Wagner's ice palace.

I am not positive how many days it had been elapsed, but eventually a kind hunter thawed me out.
I'd lost my sickle and shield in an avalanche. He gave me a writ claim to one of his spare shields which was very nice but it's to be collected in some "City of Lights" I have never really heard much about or been to before.

I am from a jungle country. We don't know what snow even is!

Mister Borval says he can have a new gilded sickle ready for me if I bring him 1500 gold coins. I'm about 2/3 of the way to the price now.

A young Voodan priestess from Souragne gave me a doll she blessed. That was nice. She was a lot younger than me as it turns out but I gave her a hug and explained my people think spirits are all around all the time too.

For now I am brandishing my censer in one hand and a silver spear I picked up in the other. It doesn't feel as good, I extensively trained in use of the sickle but it is better than nothing... Although I did learn that claws of the savage and darkfire or flame weapon can be used both at the same time on your gloves to fabulous effect when you are punching things.

I also managed to teach little Revka some about fate. In the end she wanted the good luck doll the Souragnean Voodan girl gave me and felt it looked like her. The priestess and I each blessed it and there was a slight resemblance so who am I to argue with fate?

Fate is predestined but we do not get to see all of it unraveled and sorted neatly in front of us. Nono you snatch glimpses and base predictions off patterns. General patterns.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 16, 2018, 03:22:31 AM
We do not get to see all of our fate at once. Only a god can do that perhaps...
And yet...
At most a human sage may only catch small glimpses of it at particular odd moments.

What to do with myself?
I need to make more money.
I need to get a replacement weapon and figure out where Port A Lucine is to pick up that shield claim.

I also need to continue exploring what it means to be a good priest.
At some point I want a cat's eye pendant because it is an important symbol of my faith.

Tattienne seems pretty nice but it hit me that I hardly know anything about her. She spoke of fighting styles... She is a martial woman? I guess that makes sense.
Okay so everybody is so very well... beautiful I guess.

Is it wrong to want to be interested in the people around you?
I don't believe so.
I think it is up to a priest to be interested in the people of whatever community he finds himself inserted into.

That man who was going off to war and asked me to read his fortune. I guessed mostly but I tried to give him some reassuring attempts at answers as best I could that he would probably make it through more than one battle and that since it was against the Falkovnians... Well they've not got a good track record for winning. Isn't there that treaty of the four towers designed to deal with that angry nation?

I am a priest of Yutow. It is a faith not many are particularly familiar with outside my native Valachan. Being the only Valachani doesn't feel great either as we are a sociable people.

So, predestiny... It doesn't mean you are necessarily doomed but you have to keep an eye open for patterns to be taken as omens. Usually very mundane ones.
The enlisted soldier for example... He told me of gambling patterns and how when he was on a losing streak he felt the third time would not go better and chose to fold that game. How he had a hunting accident that morning too and yes, 3 and 4 are quite important numbers.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 17, 2018, 04:39:25 PM
I reflect on omens, symbols, patterns and what it means to be a good priest.
We are... The mediators of conflicts between the classes in a community. Not instigators of strife in it.

That is one of the Peacebringer's lessons. I think it is possibly one of His more powerful and wise ones.  I try to keep it close to my heart. It was why I went into the clergy. It explains the function of our role as priests.
Appease, defend, validate, embrace.

Try to support the disenfranchised. Supporting community is a good thing, you should praise and encourage that, not mock and ridicule it.  It's how you survive against the unforgiving wilds and forces a lone person can very vaguely just barely comprehend.

Bridge differences where you can. We may not care about each other yet even the most taboo outsider is usually at least partially concerned with his or her own individual survival.
We may as people not have anything personally invested in someone else.
We may have our own selfish motivations behind helping someone in the hopes they will in turn later give back.
As for that, some do and some don't. Give back that is.

The Pacification was the ultimate divine expression of bridging hostile differences. Yutow sacrificed Himself on the advice of His best friend Panther, that the Vaasi and original aboriginal Valachani would become one people. He sped up what would have happened over the course of a much longer period of miserable conquest and He fused the two warring peoples with perfect cultural assimilation before one race had a chance to annihilate the other.

In changing the equation, He forever altered the environment.
Though it was a remarkably clever solution which benefited many that is violating a natural law so to punish Himself, He chose to no longer directly intervene and continued to observe us, His blended from a self-imposed exile on the moon.
Yutow could no longer be Yutow the Protector. This marked His transformation into Yutow the Peacebringer. The form of the old God is dead. His newer reincarnation is in many ways similar though more powerful than its antecedent. We do not kid ourselves that He will go back to His old worldly Protector form; It was cast aside like a snake sheds his old skin when it no longer fits in order to make room for the new.

He still protects us though, as part of His burden and responsibility. As a people we would likely not exist if not for His interference in our ancestors' hostilities.

I am... grateful.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 18, 2018, 10:32:42 AM
I was kissed by an elf?!
Hmm, the ancestors would not like this.
I am... Somewhat alright with it.

Ril...
I guess she likes me. Huh.
So it would seem.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 19, 2018, 04:42:38 PM
Another day, another set of duties.
I am trying to help some of the newly misted who arrive through the Outlander's Gate get their bearings.

Won a game with Karis. The prize... Was worth it.
I asked for a kiss and a hug.
Oh but it was best two out of three and we did lose to Alphonse so we have to eventually get him a gold gilt steel rapier.

Also there was this woman who was afraid of heights and made me carry her across the rope bridges...
I've gotten a little more powerful in my devotions and have been rewarded by Yutow. I can call on the strength of Bull and divine favor for extra strength. If I time it just right I could reasonably carry two people across the bridge at once.
I didn't mind that she clung to me but hope that did something to reduce her fear of the things since the village Karis, Alphonse and I escorted the brother and his two sisters to has many bridges to get to and from it.

Karis says she wants to replenish her stash of whiskey; I will keep an eye out for a supply for her.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 22, 2018, 03:12:16 AM
I finally found the right dyes.
Borrowed a shield from Mordo, a Barovian ragpicker who was grateful to me for prying a helmet off that was stuck to his head. I guess he had found it while sorting through trash? He was getting hungry so I slid some cheese in the slit of the visor (can't well drink soup in a helmet). We had to get some bear grease in the morning and slather it around the neck of the thing, then I made two strength prayers and gave it a good pull. Off it popped and boy was he glad to be able to wash his face finally I think; I am not sure how many days it had been stuck on his head for.

Fought some skeleton knights with Ril and Murky. Yelled "Leave my elf alone!" And battered the lot of the things with positive energy volleys.

I owe one Zaren a sum of 250 gold pieces.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 23, 2018, 10:01:04 AM
I got to Port A Lucine...
Unfortunately it seems the shield the hunter gave me the claim for once cashed in was not steel reinforced afterall; Oh well, now I have two thick chitin tower shields and it is always good to have a spare.  Also the roaring lion-head design it features grows on me.

Orm grew too.

I can't help but notice spring seems to be in the air and lots of people around me are coupling up. I don't know if anyone out there would want to do so with me; I know I am a fairly attractive and exotic specimen on the outside but who knows.

Marcus and I interceded in a dispute between a Darkonian (I think?) and some newly misted person who couldn't speak or understand any common. The latter had a finely crafted scimitar and shield both in a quite alien style I have never seen before.
None of us could comprehend what he was saying and a fight seemed inevitable but once everybody was calmed down and having food and drink, tension seemed to slide a bit.

Somebody is going to have to teach that unusual foreigner some common.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 25, 2018, 05:00:42 AM
Alaethe and Karis are nice to me.
Hmm. I got a silver gilded steel helmet and finally the shield I had been yearning for... Now I can defend and protect people properly against werecreatures!

Gah Edwina and Romeo are very interesting too.
I enjoy women who I have good fighting chemistry with; If we can support each other well protecting each other in battle, who is to say what other things we might not also be effective teammates at?
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 27, 2018, 06:05:10 AM
I bought a belt of grounding, met many more strange characters, earned more money painstakingly, was robbed of every coin I had (I had saved up 5,500 some odd gold bits) point blank by a blame shifter who tried to throw our halfling under a proverbial cart... And so, some one had planted that figurine behind the little miss as a red herring and I think I know who.

I also know Monroe and Liddy are to be trusted. Although Liddyon is a wizard and you know how my culture feels about studied arcanists. She was nice to me and gave me some money when the unrepentant one tried causing further strife then left. Now I have enough to travel a bit and get back on my feet which was very nice.

Oh and Urk and I were to go fishing in Ghastria using a carrion crawler as bait for a giant sea serpent but ended up rescuing Shira, Rhonda and Th'rar instead from a cave of horrible things and gold.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 28, 2018, 07:46:48 PM
Apparently... It may have not been Mathel.
Th'rar made a generous donation to my church too.
Arianwen gave me a suggestion: More people would know of Yutow outside Valachan if I made some shrines dedicated to my God. Other churches have choirs and some even dancing. Hmm.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on September 30, 2018, 10:04:22 AM
What does my God want from me?
I do feel just slightly tainted... I started feeling that way shortly after back when Desh and I fought with the red vine in that cave at that one vampire's odd request and apparently blackened, shriveled heartfelt behest.

I struggle with it within.
Some sort of a psychic wound perhaps?
I do not in any way feel cut off from Yutow.
I am still an effective priest, and yet...

This is frustrating.
The call of the wild is something I can communicate, an idea my barbarian friend Th'rar understands maybe better than anyone else could.

I am also growing exceedingly tired of the druid Hewitt doing little mean things to me.*

It was quite a surprise to me to find out that apparently Ihsana is some sort of cannibal, for real actually and that this is what it was she had gotten in trouble with the Garda for.

People told me how could you not have known and to be honest well, I was out of town when it is said to have happened.
I don't keep an eye on every Vallaki decree but now that I know and Boris has told me of how he saw her eating a corpse while he was exploring the sewer system I will need to decide what if anything to do about Ihsana and her ghoulish habit.

Is this even my place to decide?
Are people simply overreacting the way they almost always do?

I was among those who witnessed Fade's public flogging. The way the crowd's reaction was out of proportion you would think they had witnessed the mute elf being flayed alive instead of just beaten and humiliated. Her crime, as explained to us by the Garda woman was apparently defiance towards the Garda.

*Of course, if I tell this to him I am certain he will tell me something to the effect of: If you don't like how I treat you then that is your problem, not mine Valachani, and you know I could just simply end you as a solution.
Why is that? Because many people are brutes.
There is no justice, there is no vengeance for this sort of bullying garbage.

Because they can, because they are stronger or more popular than you, because people are apathetically jaded and simply do not care... There is a reason life is terrible for so many.

Priests are supposed to be a voice of clarity, one of moral guidance. They are someone whom the people in a community can look up to and trust.  I fulfill my acolyte duties and yet... Hmm.

I loathe this attitude by your tormentors and their supporters you should and ought to thank them for giving you unnecessary extra hardship and adversity.
If someone were to give you a sandwich which they had defecated in, then be offended when you didn't want another from them, since they had made it, for you? Yes, that would be similar.

When people scowl at you or they stare disapprovingly and gawp idiotically as so many fish... It is disgusting.  You who would do this in a crowd think you are beyond reproach and there are no consequences for the ways in which you treat the other people around you.
Sometimes, such as when one is foreign, that is often the case. Unfortunately or fortunately.

Yutow bore the beatings of two armies without complaint. So too must I learn not to voice my being upset about personal mistreatment, except perhaps here in my personal journal, and even then... I do hope no one finds it.

What is incredibly stupid is the smug attitude people will oft voice that any misfortune which befalls an individual has to be entirely, completely deserved for the sufferer's own failings and flaws as a person.

Things are fated to happen in certain ways and to certain people. I of all people am well aware of that but to those who are not priests, who said it was up to them to interpret the supposed mandates of the gods? That is a high blasphemy.

If he was just simply giving me a hard time I could let that go but the bald one was also less than kind towards Annabelle.

I was born special and due to my yellow eyes, my being a cat eyes Valachani, I was put in the priestly caste by our wise women.  How long has it been since the last potlach I attended?

I remember attending shaman lessons outside Ungrad and the advice of my uncle in Rotwald. Also the brutally effective training regimen I was put through as a child designed to bring out my spiritual gifts.
How many of those who would chastise and put me down can say they were trained as a young brave in the way we cat eyes are?
I'd like to see them live through such things stoically as our rites of passage demand.

Could they withstand walking through a bed of burning coals to get the fetische of the medicine men and wise women? How about being tied up and left next to a mound, a bivouac of army ants in order to hone your divinely given ability to repel insects??  Over and over. You either learn to channel the turning pests ability granted to you by Yutow and such jungle spirits as his chief friend and servant Panther or you get bitten repeatedly until you give up, pass out, die or master calling on the spirit gift.  This is a blessing, you see.

Believe me, I do well know that suffering builds character. You would not if you in fact knew anything about the tribes and clans of Valachan be trying to lecture any of us about the virtue of bearing suffering considering our ancestral origin or indeed any significant part of our way of life.
Of course these outsiders do not! To expect them to speak through anything but the comfortably sheltered lens of ignorance to our ways would be a mistake.

You know who else thinks of violence and bullying as a grand solution toward solving even the most minor and inconsequential of disputes? The more corrupt and especially hidden actually monstrous members of the black leopard militia.  Those whom we the priests of He who is The Peacebringer are dutied to intervene on behalf of for the peasants.  Bratty nobles with a violent streak and actual werecreatures... The latter are the reason all priests are strongly encouraged to have a silver weapon in hand at all times in case of even if it is something so minor as a dagger.

An outsider asked me why the people do not simply rise up over our Baron and  the oftentimes wicked militia.  He suggested we deserved our ill-treatment for not doing so but without suggesting any sort of alternative regime style to replace the old and current, espousing any sort of revolution is... Untenable and not realistic.  He does not understand the full scope of the power Ulrik II has. In many ways our Baron is comparable to Barovia's Count.

There is also one very good and important task the black leopards perform.
That is patrolling of the roads, keeping monsters, would-be invaders and hostile wildlife from overrunning things.  Valachan is few cities and settlements surrounded on all sides by a brutally savage jungle, river rapids and dotted in unforgiving forests.

For more than 420 years the tribes and clans have had their medicine men and wise women use the nature magic granted to them by our God Yutow and his fey and animal spirit messengers. We do know something about what we are doing even those of us who are clerics and not "proper" druids.  I may not understand so much what is needed to maintain the hallowed status of a grove as it marked by a circle of standing stones, this is true.
However what my people do is not deserving of extermination based on what any outside deity may have told you about the way your nature magic and blessings are supposed to work (from while you were in a different land!), I do not think.

Do people not understand there is a reason for why things in this... Plane or realm as you may call it are done as they are?  To continue to assume it needs be the same fundamentally as your Krynn, Oerth, Earth, Sigil, Faerun, Athas and so on... Well, there is a reason not many outsiders tend to last so very long in our world.  We natives who have survived for generations in the harsh landscape this world offers, those who have eked out a living in whatever way they could, who have survived enough to have families who also continue to persist, those with legacy... May know at least a thing or two more about the horrors this world generates than a freshly misted does.
Conversely, not every outsider is a blithering idiot who deems it their imperative to tell entire peoples that their way of life is wrong.

One of Yutow's greatest strengths is his ability to bridge peoples' differences. He is compassion and survival.  All peoples, even ones not from the same worlds have at least some universal commonalities. I must strive to understand these outsiders better. Yes, think like the priest that you are and do not have these imaginary arguments with people not here such as Hewitt and the dwarf.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 01, 2018, 04:36:00 PM
Life is complex.
I stand over the what can only be referred to as bodies of unnatural abominations I have slain. Formerly undead things which I hate.
The man I call Crazy Coat is a necromancer and he has saved my life.

I still detest this blackest of arcane arts (and all its proponents as any goodly or perhaps even but a neutral cleric ought) but why did he save me?
Could it be that perhaps not all... NO, that has to be a trick.
However, he doesn't really seem that evil, just a bit insane if anything. Hmm.

Maybe morality is not so cut and dry.  This is a dangerous thought which I may not be able to hope to ever be able to safely communicate to anyone.

I focus my fury on undead creatures and lycanthropes, the latter is the name more academically inclined city peoples use to categorize shapeshifting monsters that inflict their power, their curse and condition upon others.

The practitioners of such magics as would create and manipulate undead are foul, no? Well most are.
What if there was a smaller subset who were not absolutely evil but were instead unwell in the mind and conflicted? Again, this is a dangerous thought to have.

Such wrong thin kings shall not be tolerated.  Those who express such feelings and beliefs shall necessarily be purged.  I fight this slight taint in my soul.
In Yutow there is strength and love.
This is... It must be a test.
The Peacebringer has chosen to stress the limits of my capabilities in a test of tolerance vs intolerance.

The great Bridger of Differences died and ascended for us. For our ancestors, for those Valachani yet to be born and really for all of us.

Even simultaneously both great and terrible men such as the Baron.

Also remember that evil seduces. It worms its way into our hearts and souls.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 02, 2018, 11:40:18 AM
I find my destiny for now inexplicably tied to the Cade family. Annabelle and her father.

Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 03, 2018, 05:28:40 AM
I'm glad Saffron and Fade didn't rob me. I like them.
Okay so...
I managed to rescue both Karis and Arkhaan with help from Zaryn...
Also Private Miklos is alive again and I found out... He does not have faith in religions. Not many Barovians do and he didn't say exactly quite outright he thought gods didn't exist (I guess? He kind of did)... Just more that they were stupid and silly? But I pray for his soul anyway because he is a good man who does what he does to try and help his community Yutow!

Also, paid off my debt to Zaren.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 04, 2018, 03:46:45 PM
As an acolyte I love and proudly serve my deity. I wish to spread Yutow's message of compassion and survival to all even the non believers and best do so through providing powerful healing to the party in a dungeon. I put out wave after wave of savagely unrelenting blasts of positive and divine energy against the undead hordes we face and cut swathes into the bands of lycanthropes we come across with my weapon of silver.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 07, 2018, 06:59:39 AM
I have performed some successful raisings now!
Two.
Also consecrated oil (protection from evil) may help with when performing one on cursed ground.

The heart seeks what the heart wants and though I can befriend many... Still, a mate seems as elusive as the amulet I have been questing after.  Evidently none of the merchants around have seen one in some time.

As Yutow suffered to protect His charges, so too must we uncomplainingly undergo life's trials and hardships... To prove ourselves worthy of His devotion!

However, I am not sure who I can trust. This is a very different "jungle" to navigate and yet...
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 08, 2018, 07:24:55 PM
My first failed raising had Egil zombified and we had to find a full fledged priest to rectify it using resurrection.
That was very embarrassing!

On the other hand I did learn how to invoke a planar ally.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 09, 2018, 03:31:12 AM
Good priests get a hound archon.
Evil priests get a succubus.
I get... A giant toad.  Apparently that's what you get when you aren't particularly good or evil.

I call him Battletoad.
Sonny the expert slinger halfling calls him Slaadimir.
That nice Halan lady who I think might like me called him Slaahd Von Zarovich.

(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_zgfkCtuYc4E/TM1ETtrHG6I/AAAAAAAAADo/QTtsB_eAi9U/s1600/greenslaad.png)
He's a green one. Apparently they are what you get when a Slaad tadpole bursts out of a wizard.  Good, I don't really like wizards much.

So what does he do?
He can do hammer of gods like a priest and vampiric touch but also flame arrow and fireball. He likes goofing around with self buffing wards too... Stuff like stoneskin and ethereal visage. He's very strong and not the smartest or most charismatic but he radiates an awesome amount of power. Also even if he gets chopped up into little pieces he can still reincarnate and get called on again after I pray and have a long rest. He doesn't like it much though and it is understandably painful for him; I will try not to send him on too many suicide missions.

Picture credit: Martinez and Sparrow 2010: Dungeons & Drawings Green Slaad (http://www.dungeonsanddrawings.com/2010/10/green-slaad.html)
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 10, 2018, 06:50:20 PM
In the dirty sewers of Port A Lucine I found a vendor woman who happened to have a pile of "exotic trinkets". Among them was the holy icon I had so long been searching for. The symbol of our faith.

I must write to the senior Moarnekone in the Ungrad Church of Yutow about this and about my planar ally. I am assuming that since ours is faith that is neither wholly good nor wholly evil these "slaads" as magical beasts we call upon when beseeching Yutow's divine aide in times of crisis are not likely to be something new and unprecedented that I am the first acolyte to summon.  There must be some record of these green slaads showing up when earlier priests in our holy order have done planar ally.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 11, 2018, 12:56:30 PM
I have also devoted much of the physical combat portion of my training toward fighting defensively. So much so that I have reached a new level of blocking blows and leaning into my shield which seems about twice as effective as the earlier form...

Teram Monroe the Forfarian has told me he will try to get me a book about Slaads which are what my planar ally's species are called. He is familiar with them and says they can be powerful in combat and support.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 12, 2018, 11:09:57 AM
(https://www.shareicon.net/download/128x128//2016/06/11/779108_shapes_512x512.png)

The church of Yutow is a monotheistic one.
We believe that though there are many spirits only Yutow is deserving of the title of "God" because He is much more powerful than the rest. The others don't hold domain over all plants and beasts, men, life and death to the extent which He does.

The traditional orthodox liturgical canon is that other faiths are the result of bastardized, corrupt misinterpretations of Yutow caused by misunderstanding. Still others are false gods which are actual demons and malevolent fey who pretend to be deities.

This presents a problem when you are outside Valachan.
The staggering number of other faiths in other lands... Means diplomacy is required.
We know this. Even back in Valachan Moarnekone are spread thinly and often work in conjunction with the odd Ezrite enclave or Halan coven here and there to caretake after villages when cooperation is possible.

I don't want to be a heretic or blaspheme but how am I to explain my faith to others without putting it in terms of something else they already understand?

Yutow and His sacrifice makes  sense to me. It teaches us the values of compassion and survival. I pray to the Lunar Peacebringer for some answers.

Gods are not alike to men... our old medicine men and wise women will say.
That is a cryptic answer. It does not really explain the how of that they are different. It is a thing one must take on faith.

I am far closer now to being a Moarnekone than when I began this journey as a mere acolyte but there is still much to being a priest and mysteries of our God's wisdom to puzzle over and discern out.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 14, 2018, 12:12:10 PM
(http://www.hamsterleyvillage.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Forest-GS-1W-e1280483128517.jpg)
Battletoad is much quieter now. I think he prefers not to be so talkative.
Though he understands common and when the urge strikes him can speak simple sentences and phrases in it or answer direct questions he also has a different language which I do not understand. It is a guttural and croaking one that I think only makes sense to his fellow toadfolk.

There are times where he stares at me, not blinking terribly much and interrupts it by doing a very toad like behavior such as croaking or licking his own eyeball.
People say he is what is called a green Slaad. When I asked my planar ally where he came from I was told "Chaos place".  This is the being that my God Yutow saw fit to grace me with. Not an angel. Not a demon. A hulking toadman that walks upright, punches hard and expels blasts of energies from its mouth.

It is appropriate since Yutow holds sway over plant and beast as well as life and death. Valachan is a mystical jungle and very much a living and breathing thing with its own living pulse.

Great and Mighty Yutow is its soul. He who gave of Himself sacrificing His very body to end a most profound conflict that the forests He loved and peoples in them could endure. It is He who has seen fit to grant me use of this magical creature, one of His messengers.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 16, 2018, 02:33:08 AM
I ran into Annabelle again. Port seems to have changed her for the worse.
I miss the swamp girl; I am not sure that the society debutante she has become is really my cup of tea.

I have also penned a Yutow Bible.

Veronika is very nice. I like her and she likes me.  There is a sadness beneath the generous heart though. I shall try to soothe it as best I can.

A wildman, halfling and I barely survived an encounter with a terrible ghost in the basement of the Vallaki temple.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 17, 2018, 03:22:19 PM
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2a/Black_Panther_-_India.jpg/640px-Black_Panther_-_India.jpg)
Large cats are admired and the panther is revered by my people above all other animals.

Brother Panther was the wisest animal spirit in Yutow's court and is who helped The Provider figure out how to end the great Pacification conflict to unify the two warring peoples saving our forests in the process. He and Yutow worked out a ritual wherein Yutow gave of Himself and ascended to Peacebringer and balance was restored in ancient Valachan.

There are noble and virtuous aspects in panthers. The great cat is a clever hunter and mother panthers care for their young cubs.

It is also little surprise then that our Baron's noble house uses an emblem of the panther as their heraldic crest.
Castle Pantara too evokes imagery of the jungle's greatest feline hunter.  It a marvel of clever architecture. Each gatehouse is a paw and the body of the cat which is the castle proper so appears poised to pounce on the road below it.
The Panther's tail is itself another road.

Today in the mist camp with some help from Arianwen I taught Th'rar about meditation.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 18, 2018, 05:46:27 PM
I could be doing so much more.
I bring part of Valachan, of a piece of my home city of Ugrad with me. This is the first exposure many outsiders have had to any of my people and to Yutow's lessons and virtues.

It is a lonely existence most of the time being the only Valachani around.
When the "noble" gentry in Dementlieu amusedly mocked my joy at procuring the holy icon of my order... I am a calm and peaceful man normally but the beast aspect... My cat spirit in my heritage... Briefly I entertained for a quick moment in my mind and our shared soul the image of ripping their throats out with my barehands as they flapped their condescending gums in their High Mordentish; Hmm, does the Third Revelation of Ezra say be a prick towards other peoples?

You who would look at me as only slightly elevated above a savage... You who would find my totemic shaman powers quaint at best. I am not some specimen to be placed into an anthropological zoo for your leisurely amusement. Pfah!
How can one make note of the life around when your nose is constantly looking down on everyone else and in so doing this action leaves your head forever in the clouds? That is a mystery.

No no,
I wish to spread a message of compassion, one of love and strength to promote survival.  This indignant umbrage is not of His moonlight. It is something not helpful... It is slightly troubling.

Some calming exercises later I allowed the anger to wash away and dissipate.
I apologized to my friend Annabelle in a heartfelt way. I realized I was frustrated not at the people of Dementlieu as a whole but at those of their nobles/upper crust in the terraces public parque for being A-holes; You see, to them it passes as an attempt at wit.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 19, 2018, 10:27:31 AM
People commonly misunderstand and conflate the monastic and clerical "vow of poverty" philosophy with a free bartering mentality as of some nomads and simple Stone Age tribesmen wherein value of currency itself is not recognized or accepted.  This is not true. It is not so.
A religious vow of poverty means you beg and humbly do work.

Goods and services in a community are not produced or rendered without an exchange of labor. This is a flawed line of thinking used by people to justify ripping off one another. A people come to an agreement about the value of things when trading.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 20, 2018, 07:45:43 AM
You can count on that nearly every terrible person in history has said moments before their demise: I regret nothing.
It's pretty much their go to to justify actions to themselves moments before the chopping block. Their ancestors watching from beyond and The Peacebringer know the truth though; You cannot lie to these spirits.

There are also wicked folk who spread the sort of rumors designed to get a person killed simply for not liking that individual rather than anything which may have truly actually been said or done by their target. Those folk get away with it.
Nobody seems to punish anyone for killing the wrong person even after the fact comes out. It is disgusting as much as disillusioning that mob violence is the "order" of the day in some places.

I wonder how much current Vallaki in Barovia is such a place.
You must always keep your head down because violent, misguided idiots are more dangerous a lot of the time than any monsters.

There are madmen (and women) whom feign normalcy well enough to rise to positions of abusable authority. What so ever shall ever be done about that?
It is not my place; This is merely a sadly hopeless observation.

Such injustices are not tolerable but neither is vigilantism tenable.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 21, 2018, 10:10:19 AM
It feels strange.
I am again experiencing a lack of direction.
I met a mysterious elven woman in green who taught me a little about Faerun and of tensions and conflict between her world's surface elves and their underground dwelling cousins called drow. This racial/ethnic conflict is so great that it even gets mentioned in their mythos.  The Faerunian elves are polytheistic and they extend their surface - drow conflict to their pantheons too. I wonder how much of that is real and how much is symbolic allegory.

She also told me of a deep cavern system networked by wild tunnels that many Faerunians call "the Underdark."  Her name is Alean.

I know a tiny bit of how legend has it that in the center of the Core there once was a country of dark skinned fey called the Arak and that during the Great Upheaval their nation sank. Now if it does remain in some form even ruined then it would be many kilometers down in the Shadow Rift.
I don't think the Arak and drow are the same.

In regards to the lack of direction I have been feeling lately, I think back to the sort of advice my Rotwaldi uncle or the Moarnekone who mentored me in Ungrad would give me in my youth.
What would Yutow want of me? What else more can I do to help the Barovians and to help myself?
Obviously there is the mundane but necessary pursuit of coin.
I fear I have stalled in the progress of my training. Perhaps I should go hunting with Dextan and Enora again...
I think I should soon.
That may help; Hopefully all that is holding me back from currently advancing is a lack of adventuring.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 22, 2018, 03:57:03 PM
What even is my life?
What would the wise women and medicine men say to me?

I know my purpose is to advise people, mediate potential conflicts before they erupt worse into full scale fights, to provide tactical healing and to slay abominations.

The Sithican-Valachani Incursion of three years ago is not so very fresh in everybody's minds but I feel like the official record of events made by the rest of the core is biased at best.

I wish to get out there three assertions:
Fact 1: I did not participate in my country's attempted invasion since I am not a part of the state militia.

Fact 2: Lady Adeline and the Valachani warriors at our border with Sithicus regularly engage in skirmishes to the point people are aware militarily The Baron and his elven Lieutenant have their eye on annexing the Sorrow of Sithicus's troubled kingdom either partially or in whole.

Fact 3: In spite of this overall we do engage in regular river trade with the peoples from our border neighbors Sithicus and Mordent.

Mordent has been and remains our most reliable trading partner. It distresses me that chroniclers and historians have slanted record of this conflict into some sort of terror tale that we aggressed against our own ally.
Most reasonable and intelligent people know Azreal Dak is a liar and not to be trusted... So I worry not so much about what propaganda he put out regarding my people back then but misguided fools may think we attacked Mordent. I have trouble believing it.

What I think happened was that Mordent decided to aide Sithicus and wound up among the forces fighting against my people's army during the Incursion and somebody with anti-Valachan bias took that and used it to paint an image of us as entirely blood thirsty savages.

Such a stereotype is not wholly accurate. We Valachani are a highly social people.  Our hospitality is as if not more well known than our warfare. To say this though when few know much about us at all in the central and eastern parts of the core... Feels off.

I have not murdered Verbrekers. I have killed werewolves. If some of those happened to be from Verbrek then my apologies for that unfortunate coincidence or happenstance.
I am a priest, not a soldier.

Our swordsmen and archers are feared somewhat? That is all fine and good for them (going against an army is a prospective that should cause trepidation) but to assume this extends also to civilians and priests is misguided at best and a combination of hostile and misanthropic at worst.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 23, 2018, 03:47:34 PM
We are a noble people.
We are not merely savages.

You who would judge us... Without having to know what we put up with, are wrong.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 24, 2018, 03:20:05 AM
Veronika liked my presents.
She likes me and I am rather fond of her as well.
At present I am without any money, my weapon and shield due to a bad series of unfortunate circumstances.
Using my gauntlets with blessing I can punch things when I have to but this is much less than ideal.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 27, 2018, 03:59:31 AM
I love Veronika and she loves me.
We are to be married.
A Barovian Halan Healing witch and a Valachani Yutow priest...
It's an odd pairing to be sure but like peanut butter and tuna fish it just works.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 27, 2018, 05:18:10 PM
She says she wants children.
One of the things Yutow is a God of is fertility.
I can accommodate her request.

Some background about the God of my ancestors and the cult of Panther:
The favored weapon of our priesthood is the humble sickle.
Yutow's portfolio includes nature, compassion, survival, fertility and cats.
He "died" and ascended to end the Pacification War.  We Valachani exist today solely because of his active divine intervention back then. Yutow the Provider is dead. Yutow the Peacebringer presides over a spectral lunar kingdom over a spirit court.

Loyal worshippers escape the reincarnation cycle of these accursed mists and get to join it [Yutow's spirit court].  Those who are disloyal or unbelievers are doomed to live it [the cycle] over again and again until they learn the lesson He intends for their spirits to know.
Of them, the ones who refuse even after being presented the truth, the ones who absolutely deny Him, their souls are consumed by the fog.

We of the priesthood hate wizardry, corporeal undead and lycanthropes.
Panther is the most loyal and clever animal spirit friend and servant of Yutow.
Likewise panthers are the most noble and cunning of large feline hunters.

The Von Kharkov family's crest is a panther... Reinforcing that they rule Valachan by divine right. Castle Pantara is shaped to resemble a cat ready to pounce. Large cats are thusly revered in my people's culture.
The panther is a noble shadow stalking creature; Mother panthers care for their cubs.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on October 28, 2018, 09:26:51 AM
The Swarm.
It's coming.

I have had visions.
This moment will be soon.

I think I know what I must do.
For Yutow. For my people. For my bride. For her people. For our friends and for myself.
I must unlock the secret.

Nature hums, crawls, flaps, buzzes... It creeps. Most importantly it swarms, gnawing.
Bees, ants and flies quickly take down an animal many times larger than themselves by working together.

I am not quite strong enough to take down ancient mummy lords, cursts or desert trolls reliably just yet. It is something to aspire towards but I know once I tap into the power of swarms that wielding the creeping, crawling doom will be a potent tool that helps, Yutow be praised.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 01, 2018, 05:20:21 PM
The fall equinox has passed.
Hmm... I have not seen Veronika in some time.
I do think she still wants to marry me but when it is your own wedding you do need to be present for it to take place.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 03, 2018, 03:09:44 PM
The power over swarms is mine to control.
I have obtained the power of a full priest. No longer am I a mere acolyte.
I have developed the abilities of a proper Moarnekone.

With such new power though and to be a full priest, it also carries a grave responsibility.
In trying to test one of the new prayers granted to me an innocent was accidentally slain. This is awful.
====
As Yutow suffered to protect His charges, so too are His worshippers to uncomplainingly undergo trials and hardships in this life, to prove themselves worthy of His devotions in the next.
===
As I took my lashes and received my flogging, there were those in the crowd of spectators who jeered that they thought I was not receiving a more in their minds fittingly brutal punishment.
There are also outsiders who do not understand the relationship I have with my God and believe I ought to be stripped of my powers or otherwise cut off from Him for not being perfect (or indeed, more perfect).
They do not understand that life is about mistakes and progress and it is in thinking you are perfect that one cannot grow. Yutow knows we are not perfect. He made our ancestors better by fusing two warring peoples on an imminent path determined to exterminate each other and take the forests with them into one, superior hybrid race. That was to force us to get along.
I am not overly concerned with what these outsiders think, however their irrational and vicarious bloodlust is unsettling.
=====
Veronika was most displeased I had put a tentative missing persons poster looking for her up in the mist camp. She had said she would be away helping the village for a few days. A week had passed. I guess we have different ideas of how many is a few days. I probably should have waited two weeks instead of one before doing that. Ugh.
===
Faith in the Peacebringer and Panther is about compassion, endurance and survival.
We are not to question fate for it is mandated from above.
If Veronika and I do have a future together or if we do not, what is - is and what could have been but did not - is not.
That vistaña being absorbed too quickly to even have a chance to scream... His last moments though quick still haunt me. It was solely my fault he died. I accepted full responsibility.  However, his [figurative] blood is always and forever on my conscience. It [figuratively] stains my hands. Though I did not personally kill him, it was a creature I'd conjured which went awry. It ate him. I could not control it. I was not intending to summon a dread elemental. I just wanted to see if I could invoke a normal one. Nothing can bring him back. He was completely innocent and undeserving of so terrible a demise.

When your actions or inactions cause someone's death, when it is accidental, the correct thing to do is go to his next of kin, seek them out, you apologize and you offer them restitution. That is the honorable thing which proper men should always do.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 04, 2018, 05:58:46 AM
Now I think I understand, having been on the other side of the stocks or whipping post, why spectators jeer and attempt to egg guards on toward further violence and crueler sadism; it is to magnify what you have done in order to draw attention away from their own sins.
The victim of my carelessness was a vistaña. His Vistani clan had ideas for reparations.
I withstood by Tarr's count a thousand lashes.
We Valachani culturally are pain stoics but it did hurt a lot and was quite difficult to walk. Once I was in private I cried out.
Even though I can call upon the power of regeneration I think I will have a limp for some time.

Also as I had noted earlier Veronika was extremely cross and I am not sure she wishes to marry me any longer.*

Even fighting monsters feels somewhat devoid of meaning. Nothing will undo that the innocent man died through my own carelessness. Even if I spend the rest of my life giving every Vistani free healing... It still won't bring him back. He got eaten by a monster. I had foolishly tried summoning an elemental to see if I could and it went rogue. I got a dread elemental instead which immediately consumed the caravan master. I could not control it and even though those of us at the camp immediately set to slaying it... Its touch paralyzed and there was quickly little left of the captain of the caravan but his shoes by the time we got to him. It was pretty terrible.

Two mantras helped me through the flogging.
One was repeating the first few lines of the Peacebringer dogma several times.
The other was this: In enduring, grow strong. In being strong, grow wise. In gaining wisdom, learn and in learning, know.

*I am having to consider what a future without her and without having a family with her will be like. Also what one alone might be like.

The Ruanie agreed with me that what is our fate is fated to happen and there is no use questioning it.  You see, we can only try to figure out what it means.

Arlee says Veronika still loves me. Hmm.**

Also, I have killed two "vassaliches." These are a type of lesser lich. This victory rings hollow though: Fighting monsters means more when it is to protect people you care about. Riches are meaningless without people to share it with or spend on.

I suspect that it is not about how many unnatural things you destroy or the wealth you amass and that it is family that is what is really the true adventure.
Progress forward. Be a better man today than the one you were the day before. This is what one must do.

The blood of an innocent is [figuratively] on my hands. It is my burden to share alone. I reiterate and emphasize again that it is nobody else's fault.
He did not even get time to scream... The things I thought were important were not and those I had thought weren't, were.
**I had started to worry a bit she (Veronika) had forgotten about me or perhaps been killed when she had been gone twice as long as it had sounded like she would be back when we had last talked at her departure.  I need to calm down. A letter would have been nice or something just to let me know she was doing okay.
I did offer to come by later to help some with those chores she said she was doing to help Barovia village.  Later in that week when I did find myself journeying through it on business I couldn't find her. In hindsight, panicking after a week is stupid.
When it turned out she was also making preparations for their winter her mission taking longer made sense.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 06, 2018, 02:33:24 PM
There have been some developments.
I have fantastic powers of regeneration, Arlee cannot talk for some reason and Veronika may still be interested in our relationship.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 07, 2018, 04:18:06 PM
If she is [interested in pursuit], the ball is in her court.
As for our relationship? I feel I could take it or leave it.
I am lonely and want or need to have someone but have no one.
I am feeling she is not so very reliable.

Why did she pretend to like me? Does she like me? Did she at any point, truly?
She has a strange way of choosing to show it these days.
When we last spoke she threw a tantrum at me and did not wish to any longer speak to me.

Arlee said she [Veronika] did still love me but I do not have time for these childish mind games. It is up to Veronika now to demonstrate her true feelings in her actions.
If the second something seriously bad happens to me she wishes to no longer be together then that is very telling and what it says is not good.

I give and I give in this and other relationships. Why do it? Do I enjoy being taken for granted? Ugh.

This line of thinking is poisonous.

In sickness and in health, in good times and in bad. It is not in health and health and only in good times. Harrumph.

Saffron said Veronika is having her help make wedding dresses and she (Veronika) is trying such things on. I do not know. I am uncertain.

Is it the right path? Good relationships are based on communication, not upon the lack of it.  A relationship is as a garden. You must each put in effort to cultivate things.
You mustn't salt the earth or let the plot become choked with weeds.

During the time in which I am wounded and in need of a partner the most I find myself cut off and more alone than ever.
It is... Not really her fault.

Why pretend to your lover's face you do not love them? Dishonesty does not sew a good crop.

People say stupid things they do not mean when they are angry.
This seed of distrust is not... Healthy.
I do not feel loved or cared about at present. Hmm!

I fight so hard for what? For people to still be shitty anyway?
I am not sure who I can trust anymore.
I hate the uncertainty.

I am not in a terribly great place mentally. Companionship... Isolation. Hmm.
Have faith. Peacebringer, I am your servant. I trust that you will provide in one way or the other, somehow. You always do.

I do not know what will happen ahead of time. I must... Swallow down these negative feelings, these doubts and hope for the best.
In Peacebringer philosophy there is certainty.

Just because one is stoic about things does not mean they have no feelings or experience no hurting. It just means they are discerning in where and when to express it.

In a relationship both partners have needs. Of course are her needs being met.
Gah... You know, the idea isn't be an immortal and unchanging rock. Sometimes you have a bad day at work or are in a terrible accident. If you are going to make a family there needs to be trust.
If you cannot occasionally be open with and vulnerable around the one who says he or she would like to be your spouse... Then it is all so very stupid and meaningless. I have needs too! How dare I. Really.

I am not a fool. I would like to feel that I have some respect and to me it seems obvious that if you are willing to understand we are men and not gods that one should accept we are flawed and imperfect, that mistakes can happen at times.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 08, 2018, 03:42:22 PM
Jayden is not my friend.
Very quickly he turned on me. He said my gifts I gave him were trash, called me a fool and a jester (and still does). He could not take my teasing response to his excessive moodiness and lashed out verbally.

I think he uses people then when he feels they are no longer useful he discards them. I see him for what he is. His charming charade to get into womens' pants and have men give him equipment and supplies.
He had talked a good game before of understanding the value of bonds, vows and friendship but to him it is meaningless.

I feel... Strangely towards Veronika.
I am not infallible. Maybe it is in the realizing I am not without flaw she has lost some trust in me? The lack of communication hurts.
Perhaps this is all a test by Yutow.  Family and camaraderie are not something I have experienced so the offer of these things is a temptation and having it cruelly ripped away is but a test of endurance?

These are childish and stupid mind games designed to wear down an opponent and break them into being nothing more than your mere plaything.
I want no part in such chicanery. Boundaries must be set.

She thinks of me as an idiot instead of the powerful priest I am becoming. Perhaps it was foolish of me to be alright with her offer to be my wife. It sounded good, perhaps too good. Mayhap she is one of those who is only interested in the chase and then once you catch someone all interest is lost. I hope I am wrong.

I want a mature relationship. What I thought I had and what I actually have... are featuring a growing divide I am increasingly more and more able to discern.

I have the power to regenerate, to regrow lost limbs and reattach severed body parts. I can return the dead back to life.

I cannot mend a broken heart though. Only time may do that.
I want someone I can occasionally hold in my arms and we can talk about things, with whom we can share intimacy. This is not that.

I wish she would talk to me. I wish I could confide in her.
I fear she would not understand.

I go into the mists and crusade alone against the greater mist horrors, bombarding them with positive energy and divine wrath... in spite of my life feeling empty.

Relentlessly attacking unnatural things does not fill this hole in any sort of a lasting way.

I hate that feeling of being entirely alone with no one else to understand in the core or who can tell me, "Cristan, I have been through a similar thing."
I must be strong for the both of us. It is evident she cannot handle or take bad things happening to me well.

Give Veronika time. Ignore Jayden's rudeness and treatment of people as things that may be of fleeting benefit to him but not as people.
Tough things out, reward or no... Difficult though it may be.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d8/Yaxchilan_Lintel_15.jpg/398px-Yaxchilan_Lintel_15.jpg)
Forgive them Lord and Protector, oh Peacebringer... For they know not what they do when they hurt one another.

Jayden is not what he presents himself as. He is no chivalric knight. He only cares for himself. The second something or one shinier comes along you are treated as yesterday's refuse.

People who tell me they feel I am undeserving of Yutow's blessings for not being perfect, they don't understand. Yutow is not a paragon of perfection. He was an imperfect God in an imperfect world who in desperation used imperfect methods to solve a far from perfect situation. He gave of Himself to the benefit of all others around Him. It was the ultimate act of self-sacrifice on His part which ended the Pacification war and forever changed our jungle.

I miss the sensations and experience of Veronika sitting in my lap straddling to face me, whispering in my ear I was the king of her jungle, with her cute Barovian accent. That feels almost a lifetime ago. There was a time when we would cuddle, and joke; When I suppose were made a bunch of promises that seemingly ring empty right now at this point.

I hate to think it was all an act and she wanted something, an idealized invincible male protector rather than a very human and loving partner, but there is a part of me that has lingering doubts as to that she truly cares. If she cannot be at my side and does not wish to converse... This is not giving it time though.

Does she care about me and about us? There is some indirect evidence she may. Yutow give me patience with this girl!
I cannot feel, touch or interact with her in any sort of way and it is as though we are not in any relationship at all.
What a very strange way to purportedly treat someone you claim to love; To punish him for missing you and to scold, scold, scold.
Does she not understand I am (of course) not proud of the death my folly had caused but am proud that I did the right and honorable thing in seeking his next of kin to offer making reparations?
His lesson of compassion and survival is sadly rather lost on these outsiders. I can put my faith and trust in the God of my ancestors but not even in one who said she wanted marry me and bear my children?  Nor can I place it in one who lied and said we would be as brothers for sharing battle in "the good fight."
Thank you Peacebringer for presenting me this lesson in man's frailty.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 09, 2018, 03:42:02 AM
Yutow's blessings...
I wonder whether to work on fighting while blinded or on desperation attacks next.

It felt good to interact with people again after so many runs through the mistways alone, blasting greater most horrors with positive energy.  I have a decent amount of divine magic at my disposal... but my personal life is in shambles.*

There are holes that you simply can't fill by slaying monsters.
I am hurting.
I am... Lonelier than one might think.

Before being told to get over it you have to understand the role I was raised to take on since birth.
Moarnekone in Valachani society are counsellors, advisors, mediators and arbitrators of community disputes. We are very much instruments of community and enforce social cohesion.

To be so very cut off without loved ones or any to care about is... Causing of a grave psychological wound.  We need networks of friends and families to function properly. A clergy does not exist in the way it was meant to without companions.

Community is vibrant. It is community that makes social hegemony.  There is no society without people working together.  Stripped of that we are as animals lashing out at one another.
I was very isolated as a child from the other children for having the abilities that I did. We are a very rigid society with distinct castes of peasant farmer and hunter or fisherman, soldier, priest and noble.  The clergy however is the one class allowed to interact with the others to an unregulated extent unheard of and taboo in the others.  Never quite belonging but very much a part of our system... This is what it means to be a Moarnekone.

Unlike the others in Valachani society priests are not as rugged individualists as the outdoorsmen.  We are a literate caste and spend time poring over documents, solving people's problems, conferring with each other and pondering the wisdom of our Word and the ancients.

I do not wish to be selfish or appear needy. I am hurting inside. The extreme isolation of being the only of your kind is very palpable. Having a differing values system from most of those around you can lead to strife, misunderstandings and unnecessary extra conflicts.  It does not mean one should never bother trying to understand others. Far from it!

What it means is often we are alone and that the only person you can really rely on, he or she whom you must come to understand very well both their strengths and weaknesses is yourself.
You will most often be in company of yourself. By yourself. With yourself.
The sporadic interactions with others bring a splash of color into this bleakness.

It feels wrong somehow that as you gain in power, wealth and strength this tends to alienate those around you. Those same people who get frustrated at your needing assistance from being too weak when you started out on your path.
Know who your true friends are.  They are there for you in both the good and the bad times.

The priesthood's duties are threefold; we give guidance mediating disputes between the classes, perform rites and rituals of bonding, blessing and curse removal and we combat the unnatural hazards presented by lycanthropes and the undead.

The bottom line is it is we who commune with spirits reliably and interpret Yutow's will. We are given power over plants and animals above and beyond that of the average man.

*I would like the relationship between Veronika and me to work, but if she will not spend time with me then how can it? I want us to get to know each other better. How can I communicate this to her though when she is only bare minimally present in my life and seems to resent being contacted?  These things make it feel like our relationship is a bad joke.
Am I to be a good times only friend or barely an acquaintance? I do not know what to think about us anymore but I miss how things were.
However, there were some earlier warning signs: There were those few other times she got cross with me and expected me to know things automatically without any learning curve.
When is the right time to advance? To retreat? This is frustrating and I do not like it.
Arlee and Elric explained to me Veronika wants me to be more assertive in our relationship, but to me it would seem I am not rewarded for doing so. Perhaps what she is saying she wants and what she actually wants have some overlap but are not quite identical in nature?
We cannot explore intimacy so long as she is not present in my life! This is a conundrum!
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 10, 2018, 06:13:49 AM
Jao.
Arlee, Elric and Th'rar are my friends.

I have helped Th'rar find happiness with Chloe. He was worried all would fear him for his strange power and that all female elves only liked female elves (this is not in fact a part of elven culture but a strange myth propagated by some in Degannwy) but I found an elf girl for him who is not afraid of strange things and they make a nice couple. He is her brave hero sword elf and it helps him feel welcomed for his talent instead of reviled. He has this ability to channel his anger and fight with the speed and power of several people or one that is many times larger than his size for brief moments. His volley of slashing and slicing keeps the monsters back away from her long enough for her to cast all sorts of energies.

I am becoming a more powerful priest and this is alienating to some. They know I am a man from a strange land actually within the core, that my people have a peculiar relationship with the Vistani they themselves do not have any hope to control* and that I can do such things as return the dead back to life with aide of diamonds as soul foci and remove many types of curses.

A wizard's magic is from the mind. A sorcerer's is from something they feel.
I think for priests and paladins we cast with our hearts.
*Honestly, we Valachani like them. These nomadic gypsies place emphasis on their communities and self sufficiency.

Arlee and Elric helped remind me I do have value and that if one is too stupid to realize this and I am pushed away for it they are perhaps undeserving of my company... During a moment when I was filled with self doubt. Not of the power in my deity and in my faith but somewhat in my ability to function properly as a human socially.

Not everything at every turn is to always have disastrous unforgivable social consequences. People are overly dramatic at much more minimal things than accidentally taking a man's life. I see there are people in Port-A-Lucine and parts of Borca who engender blood duels for something as simple as another attending the same party gala may have chosen to wear the same outfit as they did and oh no, there is a chance that other person may have worn it better.

There are people killing one another on purpose over perceived verbal slights... And they think we are the savages.
Violent narcissism is. Very dark rumor mongering designed to purposely get other people killed to remove them from your list of minor inconveniences getting between you and a personal, usually material goal. People who engage in such have no moral compass of concept of hegemony or altruism. They feel that consequences are for other people who are not them to have to deal with.

Every man... For himself? That is not enlightened self-interest and it is not eusocial.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 11, 2018, 08:14:10 AM
I am less broken than I was but still not whole.
Being around friendly people has helped lessen the sting and impact of her prolonged absence. Her withdrawal from my life. The empty promises, the lack of presence and the neglect.

Also, Arlee got her voice back.
The Garda Private Sarbù has pointed out to me some safe places out of the way I can keep fiend and witch touched from getting into trouble during the day with the Vallaki township, people who are like my friend Geist who was born with goat-like horns on his head. There are wilds outside the edge of the city where it is alright for wildmen to camp, for example.

In some ways, Sarbù reminds me of a Moarnekone in that respect. He is trying to mediate disputes and dissipate conflicts between various factions in his city before they happen.

When I do finally get back to Ungrad I will have much wisdoms like these I have collected from others from various walks of life during my travels that will be of help in my job as an arbitrator. We Moarnekone apply the laws of our land and of our peoples' tradition and customs to mediate disputes, but that does not mean the outside world does not have anything useful to offer. I am gleaning so much knowledge and skill during this journey.
Takk Peacebringer.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 12, 2018, 02:41:52 PM
If there is one thing I could tell upcoming new young acolytes it is that the loneliness can get to you.  When possible surround yourself in community.
Solve people's problems for them.  That howling isolation can be painful.
You have powers that few others are granted and a social mobility unheard of for the other social castes... Use them.

You don't have to traverse the "Demi-plane of Dread" entirely alone.
Make friends. Outsiders and outlanders can be worth getting to know. Well, some of them. At least sometimes.

We are a very social people, the Valachani. Lack of community stabs you in the heart and causes intense psychological pain. Do not... Be too isolated.
We lack the birth clan and grown up around family structure our mundane brethren are raised upon and are looked on in settlements as the entire village's older brother. The settlement becomes like your extended family.

Relationships are important. A great tree is not borne and supported without extensive branching roots at its base. Reach out to the folket.
You would not be able to support yourself alone. Churches are maintained by and we eke out a living based on donated tithes, or tiende to boost our meager subsistence. This is where humility comes in. Our chosen weapon is the humble sickle. More commonly it is looked on as a farming implement.

We defend the traditions and help guide our people through this new somewhat less-isolated age. The Kharkov family entrusts us with guiding the rest of their subjects through hard times of uncertainty and in their day to day difficulties in ways which soldiers and nobles are less likely to. We are counsellors, advocates, arbiters. We perform the roles of providing these mundane their spiritual guidance and act as rural magistrates.

Each Moarnekone's jurisdiction is a single town or village. We confer with our neighbors though when it is needed to do so.
There is folk wisdom that the best way to survive and to thrive in a harsh and unforgiving environment which will not hesitate to swallow you up then spit out your bones picked thoroughly clean is in working together.
===
In this time alone I have been thinking about things and I was happiest during that moment in time when Veronika told me she loved me, wanted to marry me and to bear my children.
I... Feel like we had a fairly nice thing going.
I drove her away. I could not stop bad things from happening to me and when she saw me at my most vulnerable state during my recovery she was repulsed.
Maybe she did mean it back then but it certainly doesn't feel like we still have a relationship when she does not want to spend time with me.  This is stupid.

I have to move on, go forward and let go... If it truly mattered to her she would find a way for us to be together. She does not and so:
What is, is and what is not, is not.
How can she know and how can I convey this to her when there is no communication? Ugh.
She did care. That was why she was so cross and also why she paid my resurrection fee that time she had found me dead.
This absence... Hurts somewhat and there is a hole I am not sure how to fill in the heart.
Whenever somebody asks me when our wedding is to be and how my fiancée is it hurts worse. I have to tell them I do not know. We do not spend time together. I have not seen her in some long time now and I am not sure if she is any longer interested in our relationship.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 13, 2018, 12:32:10 PM
My friend Chloe and I went to the desert. We looked at the weird monsters in the tainted oasis of Apep.
She is a very cheerful and inquisitive person and as such is often excited to learn new things.
I am thinking probably Veronika is not going to come back.
Elric got arrested in Port-A-Lucine for being a lookalike to a robber the gendarmes are seeking! Arlee is understandably upset about this.


What does my heart desire? Companionship.
Power by itself is... Not all it is cracked up to be.
Likewise, wealth without people to share it with or to spend on is boring.

Wanting and yearning for, that is focusing on the one thing which you cannot have is a recipe for misery; It is a great way to make a personal hell for yourself.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 14, 2018, 01:06:48 PM
I am lonely.
I do not understand how it is that outland outsiders cope with such isolation and estrangement from one another. Being so cut off from people is painful.
We Valachani are a communal society. Much is shared. We help each other in our villages.

Other couples enjoying each other's company around the fire in the mist camp and going on about love *is* causing my heart some pangs of grief for I do not have one whom I may cuddle with. I am not saying nor feeling other people should not have the happiness which I have been denied but I wonder... When will I get to have a piece of such things to be able to take part in?
When is my turn?

Fiends and trouble making spirits lure people with promises of greater power or things which they desire.  I am thinking if one were to seek tricking me into giving into it a clear cut way of doing so would be the empty/hollow promise of a wife. She would probably turn out to be a changeling monster and steal my skin perhaps.  Or even an ugly hag would be some company. Would this be better than no company? Well no, hags eat babies and I think kill their husbands.
Really having no relationship is much better than having a bad one. I should remind myself this.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 15, 2018, 11:18:47 PM
It hurts inside.
I am more powerful in my divine magics now but inside me howls with an intense loneliness.
I thought Arlee was my friend. She like many others seems to overwhelmingly prefer the company and companionship of Jayden. I do not understand this. He is not nice to people. Why do people fawn over him?

I wish someone would like me. That would be nice. Instead I was getting mocked for being lonely and miserable and people acted as though I was hideous for being honest. It's not right. No, it is not.

He is cruel and manipulative. Does no one else notice?
The way he kept putting me down in front of everybody at the camp fire was not... No. This is not how an honorable person behaves.
Come on Arlee, see through it, please.

I want to move on but with nothing new happening and everything continuing to stay the same it is hard.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 16, 2018, 07:16:01 PM
I feel I am on the verge of achieving something.
Not something interpersonal no but perhaps something intrapersonal.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 18, 2018, 01:11:19 AM
Emptiness.
I have spent much time alone in the mists, as I have since Veronika dumped me.
I am still hurting and have had much time to think.
There is no salvaging the relationship. We are happier apart than we were together.
...Well, she appears to be. I am not.

I wish someone would you know, help me out of this mired bog of isolation and estrangement. I am trying to feel around in the dark and hazard my way through out of it.
Let's go through life, life goes on, go one day at a time.
How can I be the best Moarnekone I can be when there is not happiness in my life.  We are meant to be connected to the community around us. It is not a solitary position.
I am the only one of my people around for a great many kilometers in any direction.  And others, they cannot understand what that is like.

People don't understand. I come from a very social race of people.  Being so isolated is bad for us. Mentally we aren't equipped to handle such things. We are survivalists but we are a communal people and very big on sharing as well as helping each other.
This is emotionally quite painful.

In Valachan a man or woman has his or her village and family and extended family as well as their neighbors; Not so in other countries in the core and clusters!
There are no village elders, there is no clergy with which to train under or discuss tenets of our scripture with and I have had to make due and adjust. I have trained myself as best I can considering the circumstances.

Who do I turn to Yutow Peacebringer? Whether I want to or not I am likely the first and only Valachani most of these outsiders will experience interacting with in their lives and thus I represent my people always; It is a large responsibility.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 19, 2018, 05:37:26 PM
I wander lonely. I do not think I would want Veronika back even if she offered herself up to me in a straightforward manner. The best way to get over her dumping me would be to get a new relationship but most people do not want to get to know me. My customs are too different from theirs.

I tire of the lies of the palefaces and how they do not mean what they say.
Yutow, You emphasize compassion even toward our enemies but when it comes to matters of the heart... Hmmn.
Well, we are meant to bear our suffering without complaint as You did and had.
I did not think this was meant to include emotional pain in addition to physical.
I was wrong. It does include psychological pain.

There was a point when Veronika said she felt she was my soulmate. The abrupt change in her demeanor and subsequent avoiding me would suggest otherwise. I cannot forget, I can only forgive.
They don't understand and don't want to understand my culture. If they would just give things a chance though...

These people do not. They get angry over generosity and second chances. The paleface can be very vindictive and petty.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 20, 2018, 02:00:54 PM
...My name is Cristan Keldan. I am a Moarnekone of Yutow.

My God is the Peacebringer. I grew up in Ungrad, smallest of the three cities in Valachan. Valachan is the westernmost country in the Core. The core is the largest collection of clusters in the "Demiplane of Dread." The Demiplane of Dread is a dimensional sinkhole, a sort of purgatory nexus according to sages.
In addition to the nightmares I have of the last moments the man I killed by accident experienced, another episode haunts me.

I found a skull while wandering the mists alone... Wandering the mists as I have been want to do since Veronika dumped me. It seemed vaguely familiar so I raised it. It was a woman from my past and her memories were fragmented. As she regained her identity she told me she wanted to be with me, but then the mists swallowed her back up. Many small white hands pulled her away and I was by myself again.  Perhaps in spite of all my shaman powers the curse of having an animal soul means I will never have a good relationship with the opposite sex.

Why do all my girlfriends always turn out to be either insane, cannibals or highly death prone? Despite my powers I cannot hold a stable relationship. It is frustrating.

I found a lightning spark "double axe" as used by our wild tribesman cousins. I cannot use it but being a collector of Valachani crafts I had to have it. I will put it in storage, perhaps to claim later for use as a prize I can give to some deserving young champion.

She who could break my curse must still be out there somewhere, I just have not met her yet.

I have honed my training fighting the specters of wayward blasphemer souls. These fragments of people in the mist are terrible but I am learning of the secrets of this universe and bit by bit the puzzling arrangement begins to make sense; You see, the mist horrors and their trickery are no match for spiritual power and strength of heart.

... I accept your challenge accursed fog. I hope you continue to test me!
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 21, 2018, 03:53:10 PM
I gained a new skill but despite being much better able to fight things hidden and also which are only semi-tangible than I could before I still lack direction and companionship.

This broken life is unsatisfactory to me.

My powers as a shaman continue to increase, and yet...
People who do not know me but hear of my early mistakes (I have died a handful of times, once I killed a man by accident, I lost a relationship, and so on and so forth, etc.) declare me a fool and insist not really knowing but feeling in their jealous heartstrings, nae their black and yellow bile overfilled guts I am undeserving of these divine gifts and ought be stripped of them?! Such vindictiveness!
They do not understand the relationship I have with my deity and could not start to try to comprehend Him in His full splendor; His true nature is ineffable.

In Vallaki some insist I cannot possibly be a powerful shaman then try very hard to sweep under the rug when I use my power(s) to help them. It does not fit their mind map; They live in a very rigidly defined artificial world disconnected from nature and the realm of spirits which abound all around us at all times.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 22, 2018, 06:09:39 AM
Had a very fun time with Arlee. I know she is Elric's girl but we get along well and I wonder sometimes*... Well I like them both but he is under house arrest of a sort for the indeterminate future. She and I found an entire second half to an old dungeon in Barovia village neither of us knew existed really... And I used my command over swarms of insects to make locusts gobble down devils. They crawled under the shut door and gnawed on the fiends until there wasn't anything left.

Spent time with Argali too. Also Edwina.
The mists ate my books but then spat them back out in pieces later and I have reassembled my scripture. My robes were destroyed too but providence smiled on me and I procured an even better set for quite cheap at Djiordi's.

*She's a half elf and such unions are frowned upon in the more traditionalist bent parts of my society but she's so nice and helpful and cute and stuff. It's not her fault she was born that way. Argh... What I really like is teaming up with her and Argali. We joke that Argali is Arlee with a G and Arlee is Argali without a G. I like my friends.
I call Argali little Miss Skogsra because she is filled with spirit.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 25, 2018, 04:59:32 AM
I think I like Edwina and Caoimhe.
Hmm, there is much hostility and aggression erupting in the outskirts and Vallaki over tiny insignificant things which should not matter.
Chloe wanted to kill somebody over a stupid amulet of the Soukk and Kadar attempted to curse me using baleful polymorph and kept attacking in animal form but I do not feel that I did anything to invite such. It was claimed baselessly I was some sort of liability somehow despite being more powerful than him. The curse kept bouncing off me harmlessly which may have frustrated him further. Brock, Koltn and one other asked me and Edwina to help them and Kadar with the scrags. I do not understand why Kadar concentrated all his resentment on me and actually attacked his teammates. He postured at me earlier too and if I was a petty man, as so many are he would be put in the ground right now for it. I am not.

I am not sure what exactly is so wrong with people but I suspect it has something to do with not having any sort of healthy way of expressing and dealing with their emotions.

On the other hand I went to Luca's Fifth Day service to show support to my fellow priest friend. I am not an Ezrite but this did not preclude me from attending. I know that when you have to address a big congregation and are leading a mass for the first time it can be nerve wracking.

Victor who was rude to me before presented me with his sister who was suffering from a bizarre affliction the priestess in the Morninglord temple and some others had been unable to cure her of. I cast greater restoration and it left her body. Apparently the ghost spiders of the haunted monastery had both poisoned and drained her; The physical symptoms of the poisoning had been treated for but the underlying metaphysical soul drain had not.
They were both thankful.

So much ambient hostility is floating though.
Hunter thinks maybe Hadush and I aren't off in our guess a monster or curse may be responsible and told me there are certain types of fog that can affect moods, also supernatural creatures, psionic ones like the alhoon or an Aboleth can mess with people's minds and alter their behavior.
Sam thinks it is that these younger people may just be drunk on power.

I am a powerful shaman and yet... I never really saw that power as a reason to be a jerk to people. I don't consider myself better than the mundanes. I work with fighters and wildmen a lot. They are the muscle. I always tell people when they say they think my magic is strong, no - I am simply bringing out what you already have to make you stronger... and then people get angry, petty and vindictive over it.
I will not pretend to understand the full irrational reasoning but I suspect it has to do with the young wanting to assert themselves over the old in order to usurp their place. I'm not even that old but I am perceived as such?

I am fairly indisputably a powerful shaman and good at breaking curses people have put on them, but I do not pretend to know everything there is to know. I can do abjurations up to the seventh circle and command a vicious swarm of biting, stinging insects to attack my enemies.
All this shunning is quite idiotic.

I cure people of the horrible draining effects of undead touch and poison and this is how they choose to say thank you for it?
These morons accuse me of being selfish or greedy when I give to them endlessly. I turn aside their angry outbursts, and yet...
... Love and doom are around the corner, I just know it.
I have signed up for a position in a play being put on by the Broken Bell Theater, too.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 26, 2018, 03:19:41 AM
I don't think these people understand.
They misrepresent me grossly with their own biases and are prone towards violence, obviously.

This however is not to be defended as simply the way of things.
It is not every man for himself. Cooperation *IS* important.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 29, 2018, 12:38:45 AM
My heart pangs in a way I do not think others would be able to understand.
I am scolded for performing the function which it IS my ordained role to perform even for my close friends by idiot outsiders who have no idea of that which they speak.

Then there are still others, sweet others like Avana...
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on November 30, 2018, 01:41:29 AM
Oh woe is me, she is essentially loin girded in an adamantine chastity belt.
Still less insane than the exes though... And the hugs are nice.
Did not mean to frighten the Tormtar by revealing what I knew about the true dire severity of curses, vampirism and lycanthropy in this world. I just thought she should know the seriousness of what we are dealing with around here.

She did appreciate it and I told her we'd train to get stronger and she seemed to like that. I told her my motives transparently are because I like her and don't really want to see her become a monster or any of the other nasty things that can happen to people in this world. She thanked me and gave me a hug.

Then I staggered out of the inn at around midnight and was set upon by a pack of greater wererats. They got me good. I lay there face down on the ground in a pool of my own blood for I don't know how many hours. Didn't have my weapon out or armor on. Lucky I managed to come to without bleeding out. Gathered my wits, stumbled over, leaned against a wall and casted regenerate. The bones resetting themselves and torn sinews mending are as painful as they are unsettling.
However, time and time again, this spell has saved both my life and the lives of other people, giving them a second chance from grave injury or near death.
It is a very potent healing spell.

The spells I use to protect others and to break curses are called abjuration, I am told. I knew that.

I wonder how Marcus is doing. It has been some time since I last heard from him. Maybe the old wizard found his way out of the mists? No, knowing him he is doing ethnography and probably some sort of magical experiments or other. He helped teach me how to cast defensively during a magic duel; the art of counterspelling.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 02, 2018, 12:22:00 AM
I had a double date with Avana and Anaralia (by which I mean I took both of them out at once). We made it a quest to sample every type of sweet there was in Port and I write this entry snuggling in the room of the hotel with them. I also helped gird one and arm the other with superior equipment to what each had been using up to that point. Two happy women, with two full tummies knowing they are safe and being provided for.

I enjoyed pampering them lavishly. One problem now though... I am very low on money.
They want to live in Port. I hope this won't derail anybody's training and it probably won't. Neither of them know Mordentish though. I do and I can translate for them... And some people have offered to teach them, including myself.
I like these two women. And they seem to like me, and to like each other... So that's good. You know, I feel really relaxed and like aside from the low bank account that life is pretty good.

I promise because I love them, that I'm not going to let anything really bad happen to either of them. Yutow's ever watchful eye help this paladin and elf.

I know unions between humans and elves are bad luck. I don't want to produce half elves with her I just like both these women. They are from Faerun. Ana is from Evermeet and... I'm not sure exactly which part Avana is from.

I think one of the Moarnekone back in Valachan is a half elf... I just need to remember which city or thorpp it was.

Avana says she doesn't want marriage and Aranalia I think I am not sure but she is one of those outlanders who is determined to escape the mists. This is fine. I show them my love and I help guide them. If anybody might happen to change their mind later... I will not object. And for what it's worth, it feels really good to be less alone. I enjoy their companionship. And the hugs and kisses are a bonus on top of that.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 02, 2018, 08:18:36 AM
Team building!
I am a Moarnekone!
Must devise training regimen for the girls to help them become stronger and more powerful.  Feast day and potlach was great fun, but we need a plan and to stick to our group pact. I am to look after them and care for the two as I said I would.
I am the one who is native to this world. They are... Very vulnerable being that neither of them are terribly familiar with all the dangers of this plane.

Avana and Anaralia trust me. It is imperative that they remain safe and nurtured in order to thrive. They have been dealt a bad cosmic hand to be sent here but we shall make the best of it.

So, the task in front of me, Yutow willing and broken down into tangible sections is two-fold: 1. Financing this whole operation and the three of us,
and,
2. Helping my little darlings get those skills they need to survive in this incredibly harsh environment so different from the homeworld they are from.
On the latter, I'm not out of the woods yet but the paladin of Torm and the sorceress show promise. It definitely seems I made the right choice investing in those two.
Strategy playbook:
Avana is front line. Prioritize boosting her defense so she can last longer in battle.
Anaralia is the caster. Ideally she needs a clear shot while she is in a protected position to take the most advantage of her powers.
As the healer, I should be in the middle so that I can be in range to heal them both at the same time when and if the enemies do break our defense-line all the better I can keep them both standing so that the girls can keep going.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 05, 2018, 03:02:47 PM
I feel like maybe the girls take me for granted.
Does my friendship matter to them?
Do they understand how dangerous this realm is?
Are they going to just take my kindness as a steady given?

Okay I'm not a paladin. That doesn't mean I'm going to corrupt Avana and Naraldur from being holy fighters. Sheesh.
How come I am good enough to be a guide, translator and quartermaster for Avana, Anaralia and Naraldur but not to socialize with? That hurts...

You can't protect the people as a champion of them if you are afraid to have any relationships. You are of the people and with the people!; That's not a weakness, it is a strength.
For me divine power is to do with caring about the people around me.
It is because I love them I am able to put out so much positive energy to heal injuries and harm the undead.
I do not feel... Much appreciated by these three Faerunians.
They need to understand that this world is not their Faerun. Also, mistaken assumptions can be quite deadly.
Ana for instance did not understand why it costs money for the diamonds used as spell components in the ritual to raise a dead person and for resurrection.

Most of these outlanders and foreign interlopers do not understand what true community is! I, as a Moarnekone shall teach it to you! For why you should care for one another! However, at times this act of teaching can be very painful to me.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 06, 2018, 10:09:05 AM
Lovely Avana.
So it turns out she does have some feelings towards me.
I told her I knew it wouldn't be right for me to keep her since she isn't of this world and still has lots of crusading to do back on her own one and we shared a kiss.

I've never met a girl like her before. It must be the paladin thing. She's very righteous but without being overly self-righteous. She's had a darker past she told me but you know, to me that doesn't make me like her any less. She's been through and seen evil's pull before, ultimately resisting or turning away from it.
Me, I walk a decidedly middle line between the two extremes.

I am thinking of more intermediate and advanced places I can show Avana, Anaralia and Naraldur and getting a feel for their strengths and weaknesses. These are all things to keep in mind when guiding these young heroes.

My own shortcomings are three: 1. My direction sense when it comes to specific geography of certain regions is not great. I get lost in the amber wastes and should make markers like my tracker friends do. Those seem to make navigating easier. I also forget to bring water and end up being parched. Note to self: Remember to bring water when setting out for desert treks.

2. Womanizing: Perhaps as a result of being taken from my parents at a very young age and the strict at times brutally abusive upbringing I was subsequently raised with in order to awaken my shamanic abilities I take solace in more carnal pleasures. I have a panther soul. That's kind of normal for us to have strong appetites of the nonliteral sort.

3. Vanity: I do not pretend I am without flaw but I know that I ooze sensuality while being physically easy on the eyes. My more unusual features of having numerous facial piercings and bile yellow eyes don't seem to detract from this very much.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 07, 2018, 02:50:59 PM
Once I killed a man by accident.
I sought out his family to offer reparations.
They forgave me.
Some people continue to hold that against me though and I get that.
Oh, you aren't perfect; Let's shun you for that to draw attention away from our own flaws and sins.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 08, 2018, 11:04:23 PM
People are stupid. They assume much and condemn based on false evidence often through their own clouded judgment.
I feel the blood of so many mis-tried people pulsing as though by an insane alien heartbeat. This is entirely unnatural. I try to turn it from my head.
In my heart I know it is a cancer that spreads across peoples in societies.
This lying to screw over the other person for temporary gain is most disgusting.
Drawn to its most extreme outcome this pattern rends entire civilizations.
Who am I to judge? Well, I seek neutrality and camaraderie. I am sex positive, arcane magic negative and pledged to destroy undead and lycanthropes.
I have honed my abilities to turn incorporeal undead now. I am gifted at channeling positive energy.
People do not understand that what makes me a powerful healer and conduit for this... It is specifically because I care about people.
I love them and that in its fundamentally basic form is empowering.

When I ward and boost someone, I am merely bringing out their more advanced potential temporarily ahead of time. They already possessed the skill. I am just helping them tap into it better. That is how I like to look at blessing someone.

I am strongly criticized for being prideful, accused of arrogance or even a lack of compassion but the thing is, I do have my honor and traditions. I as a reform priest try to take the best of the old ways and adapt them successfully to new times and situations. You could not begin to hope to understand what that entails or is like.

Don't you begin to understand now brother, sister, mother, father - child, neighbor, stranger and friend? Working man, poor man, rich man, all but not dead man...
Yutow the Provider is dead; Long live Yutow the Peacebringer.
It is His will that we attempt things harmoniously and to help defend against unrestrained nature in all its unmerciful horribleness, its terrible greatness.

This does not mean bow down to any threat. This does not mean kow to your enemies meekly. Let your faith be a mighty war cry against chaos and imbalance. It boosts morale. It tethers the soul in our many reincarnation cycles.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 10, 2018, 05:54:08 AM
When Avana and I chugged Vistani love potions... Okay that was silly.
We do like each other though.

I feel on the verge soon of reaching the next circle too.
I think one of the things I like most about her is how she is not a damsel in distress; there is definitely something very appealing to me about a woman-at-arms.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 11, 2018, 08:03:54 PM
I need to delve deep both inwards and externally to tap into this next gift.
It's hard being the only Yutow cleric around without any others around and the entire cult of panther branch is outside my reach so I can't even ask them for help or lending some experience on the process.
Well, we Valachani value self-sufficiency and perhaps that I cut my teeth out here without much in the way of guidance will speak well of me when I do return home to Ungrad.

Thought: If Avana and Naraldur cannot find a way out of the mists, offer to let them live with you in Valachan maybe? She likes cats, that's *almost* always a plus!
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 13, 2018, 05:44:55 AM
Still not quite there. I need to get stronger. Avana showed me where some of my weaknesses still laid and I know what wards to work on practicing harder and in talking to a Mage about it... The dispelling mummy priests...
Well ideally I would have a way to counter their dispelling but perhaps if I layered the wards I gave out differently... And did the mass spell resistance and negative energy protection first...
Poor Avana tanked a lot of it and took negative energy on the chin once the shielding got stripped away and wards began fading.
As I hold her in my arms rubbing her to try and promote circulation to prevent shock... We're both kind of too stunned at the onslaught and ordeal. Me because I thought I would be stronger than those shriveled priests but the Mage has a point too. He thinks maybe their pyramid tomb makes these undead casters more powerful than they ordinarily would be.
Her because that was a lot of negative energy for one person to absorb, and it just... it feels really bad.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 14, 2018, 02:55:17 PM
I love her and I had personally failed her back there...
Help me Yutow... No, I understand. You help out those who can help themselves. As Peacebringer You don't hand every solution to Your faithful... Instead You prefer giving us signs and portents as a subtler form of guidance.

Avana is the type of woman who does not want to need rely on a man to support her. Her knightly pride would suffer a defeat were she to admit to being so weak she require my aide. I have to help her carefully so as not to hurt her confidence in her ability to fend for herself and survive. She has much to learn and I don't know everything either.
She's been distant since the accident, not unkind and not unwarm but distant, probably caught up in thoughts about her past and the life she has left behind which let's face it was not by her own choice since that isn't how the mists operate.

I cannot recreate for her the life of a courtly noble. I am a rural priest and not a knight.
Damnit...
We care for each other though, never-the-less.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 15, 2018, 07:13:02 AM
They aren't of this world and cannot stay in it.
Am I just a distraction from the end goal? I guess it is unrequited afterall.
Hmmn.
That's not surprising. We cat eyes are cursed to misery in all our interpersonal relationships. That's what common folk wisdom in Valachan tells everyone from an early age.
We are also said to be prone toward cruelty and narcissism.
I am vain.
If I can help her on her quest for part of it... That shows my love. Perhaps this is stupid. She would rather spend time with the ghosts of her past than deal in the present or future.

She told me she felt alone and cut off but then she also pushed away when I reached out to her. You are confused and hurting, yes I understand that. Maybe she is worried that were we to have a relationship... It would preposterously cut off her access to divine power. I wish I could help you with what you may be struggling with, dear one... But I get the impression you do not want me to. You don't like that we may have been forming some form of attachment.

She is alone by her own choice. Putting walls up... I think I get it. We were starting to grow close. That she fears would distract her from her mission which is apparently just get out of the dread realm and back to Faerun as quickly as possible to try and find out what happened to the people she already had become attached to. Her and Naraldur's unit, their barracks, their commander.

So it is back to having no one. I see Yutow, now these things for what they are. There is likely no room in these outlanders' hearts for people of this world when they do not allow themselves to view us as people. A wedge is driven.
Was I mistaken?



Is it wrong that I feel hurt by this? All along it was there in the background. Maybe it is because I have a better idea of how difficult escape is and these two knights do not. Or perhaps I am still just a lovesick fool.
Nobody said this would be easy.
Rather it is more likely there was a part of me lying to myself because I wanted things to work. Though they cannot.

I have my own wants and needs. I need someone too. I don't have a bunch of memory ghosts to play with in lieu of current relationships. I despise the undead so then why would I give time from my mortal life to entertaining shades?
Maybe such ruminating comforts her but it is not healthy for me.

I don't have much happy memories. I just have mainly memories of trauma, of loss, of much being denied basic things by others. Of hard work and of sacrifice which others could not hope to understand. I should not even expect them to want to try to understand it. Memories of strings of broken promises too.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 16, 2018, 04:35:49 AM
I like Arlee when she plays with me.
I think maybe Avana is a lost one. Or she courts it. What a dangerous path...

I asked Arlee if she'd like to marry me and got a maybe. I was thinking 50 years from now.
That's fine. I do think she will still be around though.
Cat eyes like me and half elves like her are both regarded as jinxes in Valachani society.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps there is nothing there. I would like to think there is something though.
You don't understand. In relationships there is strength. It is called social currency.
You can't brave the land of mists alone. That's a great way to die. I'm tired of ticking off names where's it's just another statistic.
I won't be burying more dead friends if I have any say in it.
That's what I tell myself, at least. I know, one solution I refuse to accept is to simply have no friends, and nurture no relationships. I get my power from caring about other people though so that is not a viable option for me.

I shouldn't resent Avana and Naraldur so for being so afraid of opening up, for pushing away from me. What is, is and what is not, is not.  Alien as it is, maybe they truly can't have any relationships with anybody outside their knightly order. Even nonsexual ones. Boy am I glad not to be a Tormtar*. I feel sorry for them though; Life is so much richer when there is room for other people and new experiences in it.
It's bad enough being the only cult of panther cleric, sole priest of Yutow for countless miles and miles around.  I barely ever encounter other Valachani either.
Things are not so bad though.
I have a hard time bearing the isolation and sheer phenomenal alienation at times.
I train most of the time by myself.  There aren't other priests of my faith to consult with.  To stay true to it I wrote a copy of our Word, my people's scripture that I review and meditate on the meaning behind every night.

*Honestly, I don't think I'd be a good one. Likewise these two knights probably would have a very hard time of trying to be a Moarnekone.  Putting it kindly, the skills and talents our vocations and callings require are very starkly different.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 17, 2018, 11:55:20 AM

You don't understand... the trick is to stay alive.

(http://petsimpact.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Jaguar-Lord-Of-The-Underworld-Or-Jaguar-God-Of-The-Night_2-1024x538.jpg)

I would make a good mate. I'm devoted, I provide, and there is status for the female to be gained in choosing a powerful male. So why then? Hmmmn... Who knows.
I am chosen among my people but not yet so among others.
(https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1657/9861/products/jaggo6-a_800x.jpg?v=1534874767)
(http://b02.deliver.odai.yale.edu/88/0b/880b3d99-bc9d-49d6-a49c-f4301efa02af/236866_left-sm.jpg)
Go on. Wound me.
(https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/snake-icon-simple-illustration-web-260nw-1089007652.jpg)

I mistwalk. Sometimes I fall... but always I learn something.
(https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55c4ebcbe4b010d26279d688/5a14cddd71c10b644beec672/5aaec69a0e2e725448eee594/1521403553035/3094b+H18xW6xD6.jpg?format=300w)
I don't think these other people understand me Yutow.  Well, they hardly understand you so why would they understand me? That's a bit of a dilemma.
I get my power from caring about other people. This is something most outlanders don't understand.

Could not understand.

Or choose not to.
(http://galaxytype123.weebly.com/uploads/3/0/3/8/30387229/8fcb336994f5748b386b3a56a4ef28b4_orig.jpg)

The panther soul inside me knows that though much of life is solitary prowling that bonds are important to have and make.  Without these there is nothing. You have no purpose and life has no meaning.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 19, 2018, 04:00:01 PM

Uncle Akkris may be dead.

Yeah, "love yourself before anyone else may be able to care about you" say those who don't and could not hope to try to understand. They have their friends, lovers and family.  What a useless and trite saying.
I was an orphan. One raised harshly by priests and elder shamen.

(http://www.mayankids.com/images/jaguargoddraw.gif)

It's easy for them to say.  They know not of what they speak.
You know what I'd give to have a family of my own?
You know what it's like having nobody to ever turn to?
I don't think so.

I put out as much positive force as I can... but my life still feels empty much of the time.
I can feel it inside me. This power... my divine connection to Yutow is strong enough that it cuts through beyond Valachan's borders.  People say He has no power outside the confines of my country and yet here I am healing and resurrecting people as would any other sufficiently strong priest.

Maybe they are wrong.
Many people think they know things but mix together facts with opinions.
You have to start out with the base assumption you do not already know everything in order to be able to have room in your head and heart to learn new things.
You have to open your mind up to there being new possibilities.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 20, 2018, 02:33:58 PM
To be fair, there are many types of relationships.
It is not all of the romantic variety. There are also work relationships, familial (for most people), rivalries of varying intensity and much, much more.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 25, 2018, 03:42:11 AM
I feel alone utterly and massively disliked. Oftentimes by strangers who don't even know me that well but have their hostility brimming over, spilling and exude it in their hateful scorning tones.
People tantrum at me for not conforming to their particular expectations both said and unsaid as usual...

And in the midst of that and the rotten disconnected alienation some bonds still manage to form anyway.

I like Arlee. Maybe in time we can be more than friends... perhaps some day.
I don't think Elric will return but if he does I would try to explain it to him. Somehow.

My power increased too.

(https://cache-graphicslib.viator.com/graphicslib/thumbs674x446/5363/SITours/30-minute-flight-over-nazca-lines-from-nazca-in-nazca-365760.jpg)
The "idea" that every priest needs to be celibate and chaste is a stupid and wrongheaded offworld outlander assumption.
Anyone can tell you not all gods are the same and that the particular vows vary by the religious order as well as deity.
Yutow is a god of nature and fertility.

...and you all like bountiful harvests and having families so shut up.
(https://www.machutravelperu.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/how-were-nazca-lines-made.jpg)

The loneliness still howls within me. Friends, a mate, others of my own kind, even other believers of my true faith. These things seem to remain despairingly elusive.  Also I was an orphan you know.  They don't know and they don't care.

I give the love and acceptance which I do not nearly as often receive. It is the way.

Arlee and I talked of the nature of self-absorption in others then she said she herself felt she was self-absorbed and I said "How so? You are one of the nicest little ladies in the entirety of the core."  And she explained a reluctance to open up to others I guess?  But our friendship blossoms so maybe she gets a little out of her comfort zone. And I out of mine.

So it is that the eighth circle of divine magic is at my command now.
I'm much closer now to being able to apply for the position of high priest when I get back home to Valachan.
It's a shame I can't convince others of the validity of my god... though the power I wield in His name speaks volumes.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 26, 2018, 01:00:21 AM
There are only 9 circles of divine or arcane magic a mortal can attain...
(https://d2jmvrsizmvf4x.cloudfront.net/RCj1HEHtQGKqdIbSxTYw_nonagon.jpg)
I can do up to  the eighth in divine magic.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 28, 2018, 07:13:59 PM
(https://neverwintervault.org/sites/neverwintervault.org/files/project/20148/images/1114986187fullres.jpg)
(https://www.worldanvil.com/uploads/images/69fd0ab1710c4cf5c6f6e268f7e78a9e.PNG)

I met a half vistani who was of Naiat heritage. Arlee and I helped him weather out the full moon.
It makes Giomorgios ill.

To thank us he gave me a tarokka reading... he also asked me some things about why I chose to be a reform priest and how I was raised by the orthodoxy. Something few people ever ask me.

I am a reform priest because unlike some of the hardliners in the orthodoxy I believe that scripture needs to be reinterpreted to allow a religion to remain relevant in new times.  It must adapt because life will continue to change around us.  Mind you, I was raised in the tradition of the hardline orthodox priests of Yutow.

The idea that there is a splinter sect of corrupted and brainwashed painlovers/bearers who claim to worship the Lawgiver as superior to Yutow (And Yutow as some sort of minor deity serving under Bane) fills me with disgust. Should I encounter any I will purge these heretics in an act of more mercy than they deserve because they do a disservice to both religions.

Yutow is great. He died for you that others might live... and you thank Him by twisting the teachings into something terrible and self-destructive?

I am sick of people telling me I am not good enough for their organizations and they can take their supposed and definitely subjective sense of superiority with their impossibly "high standards" and shove it all deep down in the dark where the sun never shines.
I have nothing to need to prove to them. They say jump higher, I say I am not out to impress you.
This makes some of them very angry. They feel overly self-entitled.

There are three things which would make me happy: If people got along better, if I get to become a high priest and if I get to marry somebody nice like Arlee.

I was an orphan, she told me she could be my family. That touched me strongly. I have to move slowly. She says I am too fast.  Not physically but emotionally.  We both have considerably longer than average lifespans so yes, there is no real hurry or pressure to rush.
Also as a wielder of up to the eighth divine circle I am not so vulnerable as I was when I was a mere acolyte.  The maximum height of magic any mortal may achieve is up to the 9th circle. Tenth and beyond is the realm of gods and the most powerful of archfiends.

Yes, why so ever should an orphan want to make friends and find a wife? Like that is so very alien, aberrant and perverse that I am deserving to be lectured at that this is fundamentally wrong somehow... by fools who cannot understand.
I did not have friends growing up.  As they did.
I did not have family growing up.  As they do.
I did not get to have loved ones.  As they do.  And they tell me... that it is wrong to yearn for these things when it is a very natural part of being a person.

Do they not understand it is a social priesthood? They fundamentally fail to grasp the basics of the tenets of my order. They do not care to know a thing about me.  The Church of Yutow is a very community minded institution.

You could not make it all alone.  In fact to be so selfish as to not care about anyone else but yourself? You would lose your divinely given powers in a heartbeat.  You have to care about others to draw from it.  As Yutow cared for our ancestors so greatly He was willing to ultimately self-sacrifice that we might all be able to live.

I have a zest for life.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 30, 2018, 12:07:15 AM
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/90/Tepeyollotl_1.jpg/200px-Tepeyollotl_1.jpg)
Cult of the panther...
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Tepey%C3%B3llotl_1.jpg/220px-Tepey%C3%B3llotl_1.jpg)
We are neither quite man nor beast...[1]
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Chantico.jpg)

...A panther is a black leopard or jaguar.

(https://2012profeciasmayasfindelmundo.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/quetzalcc3b3atl-y-tezcatlipoca.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1)

Those who would tell me how I ought to live my life, but do not have the answers for theirs...

(https://listverse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/10-aztec-flower-war.jpg)
ARE WRONG.
======================
Dear Arlee and I found out today that she apparently has a twin-sister she never knew about.
I was a little suspicious.  I have heard stories of in places like Paridon about creatures called dopplegangers impersonating friends, relatives and loved ones to infiltrate into your life.  We had her hold some silver to apparently no ill-effect though so I guess "Arleena" is not a doppleganger.

In retrospect: Those who would criticize me for having the feelings and experiences which I do within the pages of my own journal and whom have nothing better to do than attack it for being dissimilar to their own should get a grip; ...For I can already anticipate their complaints.

My God, Yutow the Peacebringer, known as One who is dead yet still holds power... He who holds dominion over man, plant, spirit and beast...
He grants me this power. I am found a worthy vessel to be one of His chosen.  I was born a cat eyes and raised in our shamanic traditions. Strictly.
My childhood was a rather joyless affair. Our training methods devised by the wise-women and medicine men are brutal yet effective.

Why would the priest to a God whose portfolio chiefly contains nature and fertility be necessarily chaste and completely ascetic?  I believe you have confused clergy with monks.
The important thing for a moarnekone is to have a commmunity focus and loyalty to the crown of the barony (The Kharkov family).  He or she shall be well-versed in the tales of Yutow's sacrifice during the Pacification War of our ancestors.

A moarnekone is not slave to the whims of the typical black leopard militia thug or bratty noble. Nor are we above them; rather, our place is to act as rural magistrates.  We are all tools of the State used by our society to maintain order. In a civic sense.  For our ruler is said to be divinely appointed.  The number of assassination attempts the baron has survived over the years stands as evidence of his being favored by providence.

Still... something is quite likely amiss with Castle Pantara, though it is not my place to attempt discerning what.  I will let some other adventurers make their names or seal their fates going after that particular quest.

I am content to qualify being a high priest in the Church and to have to me offered the family which I have long been denied.
Moarnekone means "married to the moon" and it is a derogatory term since we renew our prayer at moonrise.  It does not literally mean we are a ceibate order.  You have to learn to read between the lines oh thou uninitiated.

I do like the relationship I have with Arlee. It is as she says though, there is no rush. We are both afforded much longer lifespans than the average human due to our particular inheritances, you might say. My sweet friend.  A relationship is as a garden, to be tended to and cultivated yes, in order to see what from the seeds might bloom.
The future is in this sense not able to be fully discerned in advance by us mere mortals.  I think though... signs indicate our future is good. The brief moments I pause to think of this fill my heart with a content feeling, difficult to put into words or explain.  It is how does one say, somewhat warm and a bit... fuzzy?
I do not feel this feeling often.  Thank you Peacebringer for always watching and listening.

Your proud and yet humble servant,
-Cristan Keldan, born of Ungrad.
 1. 
Neither are we werebeasts, which we decry as unnatural; lycanthropy is a terrible curse and a grim and nasty disease. Also as a special precaution aganst contracting it I have silver facial and body piercings.  I do not know that this may be significant enough of a preventative measure, truly, but it was part of one in a series of my rites of passage to receive these.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on December 31, 2018, 03:11:43 AM
Of course I was wrong.
I could never have anyone. Was it all just a pleasant lie you told me to get the orphan to like and help you perhaps?
That hurts.

I never really meant anything to her at all, did I? Why would I? I got suckered perhaps. Or she could have meant it at the time. She wants space [from me]. She misses Elric. It was stupid for me to think anyone could like me. At all.

...And yet we still often end up saving each other's skins.
This is so completely chaotic.

It is stupid to think I could also be liked. Or at all appreciated, perhaps.

I also found out Samearyl went and blew her brains out with a spell while by herself in the mist camp. There was always a sort of a manic quality to her perhaps to cover over a strong melancholia. Sometimes elves think just because they live much longer than the other races that this makes them immune to mental illness but it really doesn't.  Wellness is a problem not just for humans but for all the demihuman races as well.  You have to make active efforts to improve your mental hygiene.

I wish I could have some one who likes me and a place where I belong. Other people get to have this. but I do not.

That’s not so. Arlee and I have a special relationship.
It will take her time to get over loss of Elric. I like her and she is fond of me. No marriage yet. That is truly fine. Half elves live to be 200 something and I can live up to the 300s easily.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 01, 2019, 02:16:07 PM
The year 774 kicks off.

We have one year to avert disasters predicted by Heskosa’s hexiad.
Wait wasn’t he a male vistana with the sight? That means he was a dukkar.
He could have been lying to cause destruction and mayhem.
This is something dukkars are known to do.
However, he did also predict the great upheaval, which did come to pass.
We’d better make this coming last year before a sudden horrific cosmic reboot really count.

I’ve professed love to Arlee. She says not yet but is also decently receptive. That’s a good place to end on. However, I am not ready to die just yet.  I have for the first time in my life, friends and people to care about. This is the function I had always been meant to serve and nobody and nothing... is going to take that away from me without a fight.

Anything and everything including a sundering of reality are going to want to take that away from me.

I have received some advice from Arlee and my friend Arianwen of Sithicus in regards to some of my antagonists. Valuable advice from clever women both of whom I care about the opinions of.

Some people twist things around to say I need to be a pervert for enjoying people and being interested in women. Though these are both natural things for one of my order.  Yutow is a god of nature and fertility.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 02, 2019, 11:55:40 AM
Lazula found me dead on the Escetarine husk.
The last thing I remember is leading a lone charge against the coven of witches.
It started off well enough but then... time seemingly slowed down, it was as though my body was not my own... and the next thing I recall was blacking out while they all were kicking me in the ribs with me on the ground.

My shield and platinum edged sickle are gone, too.
So,... it seems it is time to start over again from square one.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 03, 2019, 02:13:01 PM
I got an Akiri masterwork large shield and had a copied variant of my Baron’s House emblem placed on it. Emblazoned.

It is as though I was a retainer of the Kharkovs sort of... which is amusing since I am not of the Black Leopard militia, am not a werepanther and Castle Pantara does not employ a cadre of knights.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/eb/PantherHeraldry.gif)

I also put a devil in a headlock and told him I would saw his horns off unless he made the Aspen twins like me more. Then I slew him and sawed his horns off anyway.

(http://www.africaandbeyond.com/media/new-products/LS158MangbetuBlade.jpg)

My life feels... off.
I am more powerful yes but also looked down upon and laughed at for being lonely. Treated as though I am physically repugnant when this is not the case.
I was an orphan. I did not have friends and family growing up. Thus there is nothing I would not do for the people in my life I consider to be such now.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Jaguar_trouv%C3%A9_%C3%A0_Oaxaca.jpg/180px-Jaguar_trouv%C3%A9_%C3%A0_Oaxaca.jpg)
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 04, 2019, 02:48:58 PM
(https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/KrIAAOSw0c9bhF6E/s-l300.jpg)

Artemis the nice dragon lady gave me a new shield and platinum sickle then we went to Perfidus with Elriad, the knight warpriest of Tempus.
While there Lance Marino told us about Oblivion, the underworld of his home plane of Tamriel.


I have meteor fragments with me that are very heavy. Hopefully from at least one of these someone will be able to extract adamantine ore.

I have not seen Arlee in awhile.

(http://www.crystalinks.com/xochipilli.jpg)

So since I could not find her, I gave the pit fiend hearts I had collected to Arianwen of Sithicus instead.

I made a convert out of Ly’in too.
We held a ritual wherein I asked Lord Yutow, Brother Panther and the other nature spirits what can be done to reopen her connection to nature and sever the seal placed on it.  I also talked to them about giving her sight. She was born blind and raised by wolves... using the spells remove curse, remove blindness and vision of the omniscient eye in series I can grant her a type of meta-physical sight for some hours at a time... three I think; The catch is everything seen with aide of such sight beyond sight is with a golden tint to it.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/38/95/ab/3895ab09fd513999c9b705c1f75ff255.png)

... What even is my life?
I should be being a high priest, raising a family, finding some sense of belongingness but acceptance is denied me.  It is always denied me.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 05, 2019, 01:19:49 AM
Thuggish people behaving badly and in a disproportionately jealous manner.  I am disappointed in Saffron and Savu.  I also feel like they probably had something to do with the death of Marcus although I cannot place my finger on it.

Mr. Hadiya says he was there during the sewer hunt for Rhea and had found a dead Marcus. Something feels fishy with those two. Why do I trust an arcanist more than them though? What sort of world is this? ...I hate wizards but I suppose it is a choice between dealing with the devil you know versus the one that you don’t.  Marcus is (or was) a white wizard but he was kind to me and at one point taught me how to do defensive casting. People are repeatedly suggesting she has had to do with a number of deaths.
Hmm, speaking of such green eyed monsters I did find myself feeling kind of jealous of Luca Dacaris the giomorgio Voodan priest for his fast closeness to Arlee. Though it was funny when he asked me to save him from the Aspen twins.
I said, save you from what you lucky guy?
Then he says to me: They are bullying me Cristan.
So I replied: That means they like you.
I guess they wanted to cat and mouse him.

Arleena is a firecracker. She does somewhat frighten me because she says things like she will shoot me in the balls or use a hot poker on me if I try anything funny or have any indecent ideas but Arlee tells me her sister is fond of me. That is... confusing. Maybe Arlee is playing a strange joke on me?

Maybe I should keep wrestling devils. I am sure I can force one to grant me wishes under the right kind of threat.

So far I have fought cornugons, a bone devil, bearded/spiny/spiked devils, an Erinyes, imps, hellhounds, gelugons, pit fiends and a few mellabranchs.

I heard to get things from a demon you have to figure out their true name.
Yes I am aware you cannot get something from nothing and a fiend prefers to be the tricking one and hates being tricked.

If there was something I could do to get the twins to love me...
But something tells me if it did not work it is likely because in some way or manner they perhaps already do.

Yeah, that would be nice if one or both... hmmmn.
Or if anybody did. Huh.

Arlee and I discovered that devil horns twist counterclockwise and demon ones go clockwise. This is another useful way to be able to tell which type of fiend you are dealing with!

What would I tell Saffron anyway? I don’t like how you keep getting people hurt and killed if this is your doing? I don’t like how your attack dog keeps not so subtly implying we can resolve our differences by him swiftly putting me into the ground (permanently)? It would be pointless. Some people can only handle hearing what it is which they would like to hear.

I am Cristan Keldan! Proud Valachani priest of Yutow the Peacebringer!  Moarnekone! Cat-eyes! Slayer of fiends and thriller of twins!

Oh and Arlee gave me a gift. She got me a Sickle of Autumn. I’m not a Druid but the golden color, chill touch it has and reference to one of my favorite times of year were very thoughtful.

Update: I was mistaken. Though Savu disdains me, he and Saffron did not likely have anything to do with Marcus’s death afterall.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 06, 2019, 03:15:56 AM
You don’t understand what it’s like.
You can’t understand what it’s like.

(https://comps.canstockphoto.ie/ancient-aztec-god-eps-vector_csp29283547.jpg)

I see what lies beyond the veil...
Past your outside interloper lies and
BEYOND.

Into a world of spirits.

Do you know what it’s like?
No, you weren’t born like me this way.
You didn’t deal with seeing ghosts since you were little the way I did. Perceiving the obnoxious endless wants of spirits...

It should come as no surprise then My acolyte, that these people falter and do not understand how best to put the restless dead down.
Worse yet, some are reverent to these blasted cursed physical shells that refuse to move on.  Things that would take from the still living to desperately cling to vestiges of their former glory and years wasted.

Things which worst of all at times pretend at being gods. Such blasphemies and heresy, my Lord.
These remnants and damning echoes interfere with the cosmic reincarnation cycle. Many of these undead abominations, the spiritual pollution... They must be purged to make way for the newer iterations.
=========
I will begin a written correspondence with the senior moarnekone of Ungrad to study for my ordainment to be a full priest of Yutow.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 07, 2019, 05:45:58 PM
I will start drafting this letter I am going to send to a more senior priest back home.
(http://www.ancient-encounters.com/AESE/Discovery_files/shapeimage_8.png)

A most heartfelt greetings to you my superior,
I was spirited away from our homeland about a year ago but continue carrying the torch of our faith even in these alien lands.  I write to you in earnest and honestly seek some guidance. My name oh venerable moarnekone is Cristan Keldan.  I was brought into the wider core while still an acolyte and I have kept the principles of our religion in my heart, even while surrounded by foreigners, blaspheming wizards and so very many misguided practitioners of other heretical faiths. Let us get to the chase, out here so far from Valachan there aren’t any other members of the clergy to confer with.
I am using our tenets and scripture to deal with situations that many Valachani in not leaving our misty jungle do not regularly experience.
For example: I helped a fallen Druid successfully appeal to the natural spirits to regain her connection to the forces of life.

Also: I wholeheartedly live by our core belief that we do not enjoy conflict but use it when necessary for self defense and survival as an appropriate tool for when other options have been exhausted or are not suitable.

I am a cat-eyes from the city of Ungrad where Doctor Despani-Hoyer is likely still the mayor. I know it is furthest south, the smallest of our three cities and mostly built upon communities of mushroom farmers. I would like to go ahead and go through the necessary testing to become formally ordained the moarnekone of Ungrad. Long live our lord Baron Kharkov II and praise be to The Peacebringer, our one true god, lunar king of plants and animal spirits whom is most wise, powerful and compassionate.


*What follows is a separate partial list highlighting Cristan’s most notable accomplishments as a divine magic practitioner such as fighting devils, breaking stubborn curses, faith healing disease afflictions and surveying corrupted places. Emphasized is Cristan’s basic understanding and fundamental grasp of communing with spirits, performing exorcisms, and baptisms.*
Note: This should likely be attached or contained on another parchment so as not to get mixed up in the main letter. The clergy are busy people with many duties. They will not like an overly florid and wordy letter of introduction to read through, I think.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 09, 2019, 07:41:02 AM
Ly’in and I need to codify some of our rituals.

I also wonder how Arlee is doing.
If I am not terribly present these days it is because trying to chew a bite in the faith hearts of people in the core when Morninglord, Ezra and Lawgiver have such a larger and more established presence is presenting as a rather unique and difficult challenge.  I mean if we have to compete with nobodies like gods from other dimensions who technically hold very little physical sway here... and other even tinier native religions like Zhakata, the Divinity of Mankind and Zarus... then we have our work cut out for us.

Theological problems and philosophical concerns consume much more of my waking hours of late.

I don’t think we have to compete very much with the cult of the Overseer or The Eternal Order since we aren’t in Darkon. Likewise the Voodan haven’t been too aggressively competitive.

Honestly, the Ezrites and Halans haven’t been too terrible.
What advising would I give my disciple then? That we wield the powers we do and understand using nature, plants and animals and forces such as the weather... how we enact these divine abilities to help others and fight unnatural things, this is probably the loudest and brightest example of our faith when I think about it.

Sister Ly’in’s spirit animal totem is the wolf.  She will need to make a prayer to it. That is her helpful guardian.
Like how I pray to invoke Snake, Cat, Insect and Toad.
She calls to Wolf and sometimes Bear.

These helpful animal spirits are our personal guides who are in service to Yutow.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 10, 2019, 10:28:37 AM
I spend these days for the most part in deep contemplation and prayer...

Though I hate isolation it too serves a purpose.

As I had hinted at in my earlier entry Sister Ly’in and I make use of invocations to call upon the service of spirit animals. When we use nature magic this is a basic core principle that all druids as well as plant and animal domain clerics employ.

You fundamentally use these invocations in three ways to produce different effects and each way serves a different purpose.

They are as follows:
1. Conjure a helper. For example, Summon creature I-VI, Sticks to snakes, and Planar Ally.
2. Boons: You grant yourself or your allies helpful blessings. For example: Bull’s strength, Bear’s endurance, Fox’s cunning, Owl’s wisdom, Eagle’s splendor.
3. In attacks. For example, my creeping doom swarm technique.

Though I am not formally versed in 100% the exact same system of ritual magic that Druidic circles use, my disciple and I are empowered through the same patron and do both use divine nature magic so there is significantly large degree of overlap... to the point we can usually each both understand where the other is coming from.

Sister Ly’in spent much of her early life as a feral wild child raised by wolves so one of the things she would like for me to do as her spiritual mentor is teach her how to read and write; She wishes to no longer remain illiterate.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 11, 2019, 09:39:02 AM
I do wonder how my dear friend is doing, and even her zany sister too.
When I finish this period of deep contemplation I will seek the Aspen sisters out and give them both a hug. ...If they will still have me. I haven’t been around of late and perhaps they will have very quickly moved on and away from cultivating a relationship... with me? Now there’s an unpleasant thought.

On an unrelated note it is of concern to me how many misted continue to assume we who are borne of the core need to conform to the ways which they expect things to be from their former lives on these other worlds.
You find it present in their mode of speech. They stubbornly continue referencing the gods of their worlds and have a hard time understanding that native religions are not in fact identical to ones from their Krynn, their Oerth, their Earth, their Azeroth, their Golarion, their Norrath, their Tamriel and their Toril.

Perhaps this is a fundamental failure to assimilate? Do these offworlders intend to earnestly reshape the core into a place more similar to their dimensions of birth? That’s rather bedeviling!

How can those of us who are trying to help the newly misted have it sink in that this is not your world and it is not going to simply bend to better accommodate you and yours? The ignorant and naive presumption being repeatedly made that it will is a deadly mistake to make!

I wish I had someone to confide in and relate to. I have to project being a font of positivity while my entire people suffer for the recent political mistakes of our forebearers, while I am unsure if anything I do is able to have any lasting impact and while feeling extremely cut off from everyone else around me.

I am gifted at channeling positive energy, yes, though my own life continues to feel rather empty... It’s a matter of time before I give into despair but I’ll hold out for as long as I can.  I have to.
We Valachani are proud of the ways we endure. We bear our hardships with minimal complaint. Stoicism is something my people strongly value.

The connection I have to my patron deity is undeniably strong but without attaching, relationships, bonds and a place in community being a presence in my life I will be a failure as a priest.

You need that social aspect. It’s core and essential to being a moarnekone.  You do not serve the community without being a part of it. This lack of integration is something fundamentally wrong.

This profound isolation and alienation is not something embodied in my religion. It isn’t how the Church of Yutow operates.

Some people would be quick to tell me this is simply the way of things and that I need to accept and like it. I do not. There is a much richer, more satisfying way. Why do people hurt themselves by personally cutting off like this... but as their primary way of life?
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 12, 2019, 01:39:48 PM
The nature of this realm is such that it feeds off everyone’s negative feelings... and not in a good way wherein that would leave behind our concentrated positive feelings but it both subliminally in a subtle unconscious manner and more directly goads and encourages each person to further and further acts of depravity.

It magnifies all bad emotions.
The weak-willed are most susceptible but it does wick away at your resolve even when you are a paragon of integrity.

It is destructive and the mists are a stew of lost souls and corruption stirred together.
…Something mystic and horrible goes on.

Things of nightmare beyond our mortal keen peer into our minds and while we sleep, in maddening whispers they prey on our insecurities. They mutter to us promising easily obtained ill-gotten gains in prosperity, influence and preternatural power but this is not how to get happiness. Not truly.
Time and time again it never shakes out that way.
Before you know it in short order you are another skull for the sacrificial pile.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 13, 2019, 08:00:21 AM
I ran into Arleena.
She seems fixated on poor Teram.
Ly’in progresses well in her lessons, also... she also gave me a big sack of gold.
Of note: we are codifying our priestly and druidic rites into a special Yutow prayer book.

The mist camp kept spawning melibranch devils which assaulted the caravan driver and his oxen... repeatedly.  Several of us continued beating the things back but the mists seemed to be toying with us. Also as that one monk noted the fog had a peculiar pink tinge to it as this was going on.
Unsure if that is enough to make a hard and fast rule of thumb that pink fog = fiends the way green fog = zombies.

I tried to help a depressed monk named Alendril on behest of Luthor but with mixed success. He is an elf so there may be several centuries of trauma for the man to work through and hence progress will be in stages and is not going to be a hundred percent all at once.

God I feel so alone. Has it really been so very long since Arlee and I last cuddled? I do miss that. When was the last time I gave and received a hug from someone?
 It hurts... this being so very cut off from everyone else around me is brutal. That is not my people’s way. I was not born some sort of unnatural caliban or mage to be reviled!; In Valachan priests are a welcomed part of the community.

Here I am yet another mere outsider to people. They do not care of my people’s plight. They think us backwoods savages and in all likelihood probably greedily assess the value of the natural resources and land we live on. ...Jao, how convenient would a country’s worth of space and raw materials at your fingertips be were it not for there being people already living on it? This overall lack of regard for lives, a civilization and an entire culture disgusts and disheartens me.

Do I really matter to anyone? I don’t think so. Whether I live or die is of no concern of theirs. They have their own loved ones and friends already and there is no room or niche for me in that predestined order of their lives and formula they have for I am an outlier.

The thing is, to brave things alone and tough it out by yourself is not how you survive in the land of mists. Essentially whenever someone tells you to do this what they are really saying is “I don’t like you. Go die.”

Such a cruel thing and often said and done with little thinking behind it.


I do not have a proper niche. They reject my differentness though it is not harmful to them. I am viewed as the other and likely too alien to be believed to have human wants and needs. In fact when I suggest otherwise the idea gets treated with revulsion.  Do these idiots not understand that priests are people too and are not divorced from the communities of people they serve? We do not exist in isolation and if this reality offends you, if it is inconvenient to your little foolish naive heads then I am not sorry one bit.

Ugh, I hate thinking in such a manner but when you continually reach out to people and consistently seem to tend more often than not to draw back a bloody stump as reward for the effort things can get frustrating!

Why do they think of us as savages though? I suspect this answer has a political and historical reason and would need to research what has happened to cause the current state of lack of diplomatic relations.

Update: She squirmed and asked for help when I gave her and Teram a hug. Not the type of response I was hoping for.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 14, 2019, 09:54:50 AM
I know I have not been very present lately. I have been in my head with contemplation and I have been splitting my time between pondering scripture and teaching my disciple Sister Ly’in Vaasi.
I worry about the state of my country and our people and I wonder if there is anyone who might be sympathetic to our plight.

However, people can be selfish monsters in human guise, always looking out solely for number one, themselves. If it does not directly and immediately personally affect them, if it does not influence chances of either getting what they desire or stand in the way of it then to these simpletons the thing in question presented in front of them is treated as though it does not exist. This is frustrating.

I yearn for such things as friendship and family which I lacked in my upbringing and other people tend to take for granted.

It was not all bad though. Being raised by the village elders gave me a taste of responsibilities and the things leaders have to deal with. For example, different tradesmen, laborer and tribal representatives would frequently come to the priests with their problems and so the moarnekone would arbitrate their disputes acting as a go between for the aggrieved parties.
 In addition to the nonsecular, providing spiritual guidance to a community every priest serves a dual secular role with their civic function as a rural magistrate.

I am made keenly aware of my own limitations and knowing these helps me to deal with things in a more careful way than blindly charging ahead to brazenly blaze my way through trials and travails.
For example, I am not the most strongest and toughest physically oftentimes in combat but I can provide powerful defensive wards and attack boosts to make warriors and defenders who are more suited to manning the front line of our team formation fight better.

Also, I can draw on the font of divine magic Yutow provides me access to in order to briefly transform myself into a more capable combatant when situations are truly dire.

I can only memorize a certain number of prayers and invocations at once and this is improved by wearing specially crafted meditation foci (amulets, special rings, and so on) but you have to plan things accordingly.  Knowing that there are more spells you could use than can be drawn in the field means it is good to learn things about a foe or conflict first before engaging. Knowing how large a group of adventurers you team up with and what each of their particular strengths are helps you custom tailor the wards and enhancements for maximum effectiveness.

You should also know when to hold a few healing chants or attack spells in reserve and how much aide to provide to how many people. It is a very ugly situation when you spread yourself and energies too thin in arming and girding up your allies but neglecting to protect yourself... when they aren’t always able to keep you adequately defended from waves of enemies.

When you aim to explore a crypt, tomb, or ruin you should find out what you can about the environment too. What kinds of monsters and beasts are endemic to this region? Talk to people who live nearby to find this out.  If there is something very strange and out of the ordinary going on at a site then peasants may be loathe to go into it but you can still pick up some perhaps minor clues from observing their furtiveness.

All this talk of duty and obligations, of work, adventuring and of teaching makes me out to sound as dull as the stodgy old orthodoxy I was raised by. I’m a reform priest not afraid to live a little! I enjoy companionship, good ale and sharing food just as much as any sectarian.

We of the clergy are not of *that* type of holy figure who is wholly divorced from the lives of the people around him or her. We fully participate in our communities and are allowed to have and maintain active relationships.  I am baffled why in some of the other religions their practitioners cloister themselves and loathe social interaction.

It must be an unhealthy corruption brought on by the decadence and excesses of other cultures having too urban and sedentary lifestyles. Our people always did warn about the dangers of such “civilization.”  People in these places get so caught up in functioning one artificially designated role to the detriment of living fully that they become degenerate. Yes, that makes sense.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 15, 2019, 12:52:53 PM

I count Ly’in and Th’rar among my friends.
When that wererat disrupted her bonding ritual with her new animal companion we chased it and I couldn’t escape the feeling it was toying with us.
I raised her slaughtered wolf; if I didn’t know any better I could swear the cheeky thing enjoyed interfering in our ceremony.

I find no welcome nor sense of belongingness and most attempts I have made to join an organization allegedly dedicated to helping people I have been oddly scrutinized and rejected for not being “perfect enough.” I get it, I march to the beat of a different drum and people do not like this. They wish for a person more servile toward them than I am, I am treated as having a bad attitude by others for not sharing the party line, and so on.

I made a promise to Madame Vadoma the way I would pay back her Zarovan clan sparing me is I will be a guardian to help protect the mist camp. She told me to keep it safe for everyone to use both Vistani and Giorgio.
Those devils the mists kept summoning a few days ago are of concern.
Note: Suggest to the Ruanie and captains the Vistani warriors guarding the camp adopt cold forged iron weapons. It seems recently that too numerous trips to Perfidus by more advanced adventurers and some of them destroying Malphor (or is that creature’s name Malphagor?) threw that hellish realm into greater chaos which spilled out past its borders.

I should also check in with the Broken Bell Theater in Vallaki to see how Chantalyn and the actors and actresses are doing.
Simply because a relationship did not pan out between myself and Anaralia and Avana does not mean I should abandon the acting troupe.
What am I talking about? People are distant but last I checked those two considered me at least a friend. Avana’s squire Naraldur and I got along okay back then too after some male bonding and coming to mutual understanding.

People don’t want connection or at least they don’t seem to... desire it with me. That is depressing and I try to shake it from my focus. It’s still there nagging me in the back of my mind though, often.

Of course I wind up wanting what is missing and that which I can never claim to have ever had!

The less time spent among other people and the more time spent alone the more your “otherness”, the awkwardness and the differences people don’t like about you get magnified. It becomes a nasty self-fulfilling prophecy. Many shun that which isn’t quite, which does not conform to their very rigid and narrow parameters of acceptability. Where do they get these particular unsaid rules from though, to begin with?
This person is okay to be around and interact with, that one is not... right. It varies and not everyone will individually all have the exact same standards even within the same society.

It would be good for me to spend more time around other people and less time by myself.
I miss the Aspen twins, too.
I miss emotional warmth.
Everything is often so cold and ugly out here.


I try to create depth and connection where there is none.

My reward for such efforts? Ever and ever more flatness.

More remoteness... and isolation.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 16, 2019, 08:29:05 AM
I have nothing and no one...

The Church of Yutow says moarnekone are a social glue.
We hold communities together.

How does one maintain that when so many people pull apart and separate on purpose, resisting the efforts to form connections with one another?  This is... presenting itself as quite challenging.

I need to keep the lie up. I can’t let my disciple realize how empty and isolated my life out here is. For her sake to be encouraging in her religious study and in her exploration of divine nature magic I need to maintain this façade.

I can’t let people see how much I am hurting.  I am trying to present as a positive role model.

Peacebringer help me. This is hard. Every day is a struggle to get out of bed and to keep going.

Our faith and values are largely thoroughly alien to other peoples in the core but this is not in itself a bad thing. It does not on its own truly make it a bad thing. I keep reminding myself this.

Times *are* trying though. No one said or promised they would not be.

My religion is not one whose institution promotes an ascetic lifestyle of secluded monk cloistering. Austere solitude is bad... Celibacy is horrible. Being divorced from the people and things around you is not right or natural to life.

A natural life attuned to the world around you and each other should not have to be seemingly at war with it, right?

I should give my disciple, Sister Ly’in some directives about charity outreach. Her ability to directly communicate two-way with animals gives her a whole different way of using nature magic than my one way commanding of animals too.

In training a druidess... I should try to incorporate her powers which differ from my own.
For instance, she has the ability to change shape. I think it is called wild shape. That means for example she could in theory change to a wolf shape to tell a pack to stop picking off a rancher’s cattle, possibly? Or she could use her great degree of animal empathy to find out from the animals themselves what is bothering them, more directly than a cleric.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 17, 2019, 09:47:33 AM
What changes the nature of a man? Better yet, what *is* the nature of a man?

Lessons for my disciple:
No one (demi)human exists in isolation.
Problems happen in a community usually as a result of the flawed thinking of individuals that we do exist in a vacuum.
Our environment is inextricably tied to us and we to it.

The relationship of a people to and with their environs is dynamic.

We effect each other!

My own observations have been as follows:
The trouble with these ragtag bands of loosely associated offworld outlanders all from different dimensions than each other is there is no sense of the struggle for survival all of us share in common.

Particularly disturbing is when you sometimes hear those from other worlds rationalizing to themselves that this world around them, the threats and peoples of the demiplane are not real and must therefore be an elaborate series of illusions and a test of their faith. They act like cutting yourself off to everyone and thing around you is anything other than ultimately maladaptive? There is something very dangerous about shutting people off and closing yourself to opportunities.

Yes, the world is hostile. The trick to surviving and adapting has to lie in learning to evaluate which of the things and situations coming at you are good and which are bad for you and this one supposes takes experience. I don’t think anyone starts out being expert at that.

Introspection:
Yes, I am an outsider. Not the way an offworld outlander or a planar outsider is but that my people’s culture so starkly contrasts that of others in the core (Barovians, the Mordentish, Hazlani) does cause me to distinctly stand out.

My inner critic is furious at me. How can I call myself a moarnekone, truly, when I am not bound to any particular community, when I have no church or temple, when I have no family and when so much alienated isolation comes up in spades? You are a failure as a member of our clergy if you do not socially integrate and function.  Sure the power I wield as a priest of Yutow is steady and does not falter but the nature of it... Yutow died for us, He gave of himself willingly in the ultimate act of sacrifice and compassion, under advice of His best friend and closest ally, Panther.

I am not wrong to strive toward making connections and relationship bonds with the people around me. That is what our order is required to do. A natural life in tune with our environment... a social environment, at that...

How could foreigners possibly understand this? They do not live in communal societies. Our way of life is undoubtedly very strange in their eyes. Perhaps even frightening.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 18, 2019, 10:35:22 AM
There are a number of dueling, dualistic aspects one has to balance and address to their psyche, way of living and mind in order to achieve harmony.

A harmonious lifestyle not always at war with your neighbors and not so very alien and at odds with your environment is to be sought. We strive for this.

Such personal forces as ferocity vs calmness would be what I am referring to.
You have to channel and focus your temper in constructive ways, when it comes into play rather than simply starting a bunch of arguments or engaging in a bunch of fights.  Destructive habits such as substance abuse, gambling or overhunting do not fill the hole. Otherwise you can never hope to escape the turmoil.

I get it, my differentness is raw and primally alien to these urban and urbane folket. They tell me I am weird and in a way, yes, they are right that I am. From where they are coming from and what they are used to this is absolutely correct.

I am not going to be able to be them and fit to all of their social norms that they are personally comfortable with and accustomed to. I am Valachani and a priest of Yutow.
I represent more than just myself as an individual.
I am trying to put forward the positive aspects of my culture which most foreigners are not going to be privy to.

I will not erase my identity for them. I do not ask them to do so for me. It is not disruptive to be a priest. This is stupid.
There is no local law of the land against my religion being practiced... the majority of the time or in most lands.

People are full of fermented hops and malt and barley stirred together when they act as busybodies attempting to overly meddle in and taking it upon themselves to police the affairs of everyone else around them. This is most usually inappropriate of them to be doing.

And yet, you can be highly shunned, even killed for not conforming to these hidden oppressors at all levels of a “civilization.” No one would bat an eye to it, either. They would say you deserved what came to you for daring to have deviated in the slightest.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 19, 2019, 02:56:41 PM

Sister Ly’in progresses well in her lessons. It will still be some time yet though before she has fully mastered Vaasi as a new language and gotten the hang of reading and writing. She makes good strides though!  By my estimate, how much longer would probably be about four more months, perhaps five.

I still miss Arlee. I wonder if she ever thinks about me?
I know I liked her much more than she liked me. I thought that maybe... I don’t know... things could work, and we had something special. Maybe we even do? Who knows. Obviously it wasn’t important enough for her to pursue it... or was it? I did enjoy the time we spent together though, regardless.

I would like to see her again some day. I don’t know if she or her sister who have both drifted apart from me though would feel the same way. Hmm.

Do I matter to anyone? Would anyone be upset if I died?
I do not think so.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 20, 2019, 08:11:25 AM
I am helping the elven monk Alendril through his opium withdrawal.
Many elves in my life of late!
Poor Anaralia. She had no way to have known the mirages in Har’akir are deadly and the group she was traveling with let her fry then left her dried carcass there. Her ghost was bobbing up and down near the caravan like a translucent banana. She got better but I couldn’t help but notice her specter while the group I was traveling with and I attempted the Anubis temple, which, by the way went pretty well.

I am thinking if you take away that they don’t really rest the way a human does outside of to recover from illness or injury and you ignore the pointed ears and extremely long lifespans, elves are not so very different than other peoples.  They make mistakes, learn, have friends and families...

People in the mist camp are relaying to me the most recent problems Vallaki has been having. I know Toret Barbarigo and I could stamp out whichever vampire or wererat is giving the people trouble there if we teamed up again like in the old days back when we were acolytes but if we solve every problem for the people that isn’t going to develop the next generation of adventurers. Sometimes you just have to step back and let somebody else deal with things.

I wish I had a ladyfriend. Life felt better when I did (even if it was only in my head some of those times). Even if most of the time in these relationships I tended to spend doting on her to the point she will always end up getting spoiled. I’m not sure why it is that I do this... maybe because I never got to know my mother?

I feel too cut off from the other people around me. I am missing a fundamental social connection and this pains me.

A thought: I want to be a helpful presence in people’s lives. Who gives a shit about good and evil? People are people and whether good or bad, they’re usually just trying to survive.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 21, 2019, 02:16:18 AM
I am not savage.
That is to say... if not helping your neighbor, if being extremely selfish and greedy and damning all others on purpose is being civilized... if not living harmoniously is what you view as being civilized...
Then pike off.

Learn to enjoy simple things... the occasional windfall of charity is always nice.  The kind look of a stranger...
That you aren’t friends with the miserable sod spreading so much foul gossip as a hippo fans itself to clean off its dung in a river. Yes, they shit where they also eat and rest; Hippos are not the most intelligent river creature.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 22, 2019, 11:49:06 AM
I guess it is time to return to the belly of the beast. I am coming Barovia and Vallaki. The theater needs a caring moarnekone’s hand.

Also if rumors are true the Garda are encouraging newly misted to suicidally volunteer themselves to an attempt at purging Hazlan? This is dumb, even for people of Vallaki.

On the other hand, it is an effective release valve to rid an excess of outlanders. I can see the practical application if I put it from the native frame of mind that offworlders and nonBarovians aren’t truly people.

On the other other hand, I would like to organize an expedition to the diabolist temple and attempt to fight Malphor.
Also, I have fought many types of devils before but not demons yet.
There is the entirety of the ancient Port sewer complex and of Sithicus remaining for me to still explore too.

No, for now I just need to help the elves who have been reaching out to me.
Had a rather enlightening eye opener of a conversation with Ruanamesylla too and I think she gets that underneath my goofiness I am not actually a thorough idiot. A lot of people forget priests have wisdom. It is wise to learn from many different peoples. We kind of agreed on a lot of stuff.

Hmm, progress is tricky and a bit difficult for me to measure. I feel stronger in terms of my divine power but I know I could be doing it faster and gaining quicker.  Tempting as it is, this slow rate of increase is the pace things will have to remain for the time being.

Training Ly’in and helping Alendril through his drug withdrawal are part of being a priest too though there are times where it is admittedly less glamorous than performing baptism, wedding, funeral and exorcism rites.

It hit me recently that I don’t really care so much about good and evil. I slightly prefer order over chaos but it might not be that a monster is wicked that makes it feel rewarding to best it. It could just be the challenge of facing down a dangerous foe in order to test my limits and then break the previous limitations.

I mean when you get down to it, if someone or thing is harming my friends then that makes it evil... but sometimes that can be as a natural result of their own bad decisions, so to help them out of it every single time would not teach them responsibility. You have to know when to help and when to hold back or step aside.

Did I do the right thing standing with Th’rar on top of the door to the opium den to prevent Alendril from relapsing? I don’t know.
We won’t always be there to force him to make the healthier choice.

If there was another moarnekone or even just a village elder I could talk with or write to for some advice, some guidance on guiding these people... but no, there isn’t. Also that’s acolyte thinking. A moarnekone does not always get his hand held in important decision making.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 23, 2019, 10:58:17 AM
I really wish I could be more present in goings on as of late. Grr...

I had an interesting dream the other night too which was deep in symbolism. I may get into describing it a bit later.

Also, Timond asked me some things about my people and religion. I was more than happy to answer as best I could. Some get annoyed when I go on about it and feel it is not relevant to them. I am a core native and as a Valachani (and as a cleric of Yutow) there are some things I know which might well be able to help an adventurer, occasionally at times. Admittedly, not terribly often, but it is there!
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 24, 2019, 09:29:13 AM
Help me Yutow!
How do I reach to people?
This lack of firm purpose and personal connection to others is deeply troubling.

I hate it but must calm myself.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 25, 2019, 09:59:06 AM
I can feel it.
What some people call the weave, I think of as a fabric. We speak of the threads of fate... it makes a sort of sense. Now, at best we are most of us dimly aware of it and only perceptive to small details of very little pieces at certain points of increased perception. Those we call seers are more perceptive than the general population.

I am trained in the shamanic arts but my meager divination skills pale in comparison to what a Vistani Ruanie can do.  The Ruanie I know, Madame Vadoma of the Zarovan told me (in spite of her much greater abilities) she too has limits to what she can do and how far into the past and future she can peer. The whole of the patterns that make a life tapestry are usually beyond our keen as mortals.  You kind of work with what portents and omens are available. Further, each individual you are presented with these things will differ for. It varies a whole lot depending on their circumstances too. Very few have identical fate-lines for example.

Fortune telling is very much an art more than a science.
Also, the spirits are fickle and themselves not all knowing. Different spirits know different things and some have reason to lie. In addition, some resent being contacted and pestered with queries.

We are mortals and none of us are truly all-seeing. At best we catch glimpses of secrets beyond the veil, so to speak and only during while we are attuned. That is to say, you have to be properly receptive for it to occur.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 27, 2019, 03:17:48 AM
(https://i.etsystatic.com/5560263/r/il/c5709a/1579749839/il_570xN.1579749839_f49m.jpg)

I am feeling more powerful. Also, briefly saw Arlee today and she did remember me and Orm too. This is good. Some people had filled up my head with these notions that she was just using me up until something better had come along but as I felt the old strong affection rising back up I tempered it down and resisted the urge to give her a hug. Needless to say I was still happy to see her again though. Furthermore, I think she knew it, too. Well, I’m there for when you want me, if you ever change your mind. I’d treat you right too. She knows that.

(http://img02.deviantart.net/2992/i/2009/299/5/1/jaguar_god_by_rivaloya_by_electric_eccentric.jpg)
//Depicted is an exaggeratedly heroic sketch of Cristan when he slew a devil to demonstrate his love towards Arlee and Arleena Aspen, two twin sisters from Cormyr he has a strong crush on and enjoys being friends with.//

Hmm, Argali and Hadush worked well together. We cleared out the cursts and took along a little mageling. She got some new scrolls and nobody died badly so that is also good.

(https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/1b053974cbc5cd81232f68358fe304d5/5CB8706C/t51.2885-15/sh0.08/e35/s750x750/43083239_1135384326613427_6639129796987257114_n.jpg?_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&ig_cache_key=MTkwMDk1NTkxMDQ1Nzc0MjI5NQ%3D%3D.2)
How do I mean more powerful? Patterns of the hidden world reveal themselves to me more often and I am both able to call up more divine glyphs than before by memory (in several circles) and able to understand the energies of these spells better... that is, the things about something being cast as it is cast, as well as generally work out what physical leftover ritual components of conjuring circles and the like mean in a very basic sense.

Orm has shed his skin and grown to a huge giant constrictor snake whereas before he was just a giant constrictor. It is impressive.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 28, 2019, 08:05:22 PM
Greater power is at my disposal, I have gotten more mature as well and yet... something in my life still feels quite empty.

Perhaps there will always be that yearning for the love and companionship I lacked during my early childhood.

I had an entertaining daydream some time ago.
In it I returned home to Valachan a national hero, was awarded the vaunted position of high priest, the Baron gave me a medal and many women in my home village fought over who would get to be my wife. Yes, not super likely to ever happen in full but it is amusing to not put limits on your inner imagination at times to see how far a fantastic dream may actually go.
Then I sigh and it is back to reality and with it yet more hum-drum rigmarole...
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 29, 2019, 03:09:05 PM
Inroads are made toward forging bonds but progress is mindnumbingly slow.  It would feel rewarding to have someone say “You matter to me” and “I care about you”. I know there are many, many other people who also seldom feel acknowledged in this way most of the time and so I give them this thing which my own life most often lacks... to “be the change I would like to see.”
It is not immediately rewarding, no but it goes beyond good and evil and order and chaos.

It is natural and goes towards all our overall well-being.

I am a moarnekone. We are meant to be connected both to the people around us as well as to the plants, animals and spirits.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 30, 2019, 10:35:47 AM
I have found purpose and yet I continue to seek a sense of belongingness...
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on January 31, 2019, 09:30:46 AM
I hate being alone.

You should be used to it, orphan.

I know.
Yet...

So you feel the living pulse of the world around you. You imagine that you sense it to an extent. Yes, I would say that is correct.

You can also feel the counteracting pulse of the unliving, or at least one with a link to positive energy can vaguely be aware of this force around them. Not in a directional sense but you are aware of the interplay between positive and negative energy forces at least once you learn of them and gain sufficient experience combatting the undead.

I have been seeing ghosts since I was a small child.
This is common for priests brought up in shamanic traditions but those of us trained in such arts are surprisingly few and far between. It is uncommon but I did not think its occurrence to be quite so rare.
This warped perspective is probably a result of growing up in a country where by policy both in government and religion practicing arcane magic is frowned upon. As such, divine magic is better known about and I dare say more accepted to the average Valachani. The insulating effects of having very few local wizards are you wind up sheltered from the sheer bulk volume of mages that dwell in the larger core.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 01, 2019, 11:34:54 PM
I pick up the rose and I crush its petals going to myself wow this is an overwrought dramatic set up to a self-involved scene. These wankers are terrible and I have an entire people I am trying to represent... all they can really think about is filling heir pockets with more gold than they can carry. You can see the greed in their faces.  ...Am I really so different? I want gold too but not for the same reasons.  You see money can be exchanged for all sorts of services and not just goods...

I am not talking about a good time.
Good times seem very far away most of the time and like they are something for someone else. Someone else with the company of those whom they associate with as being their friends but would equally likely just as soon stab you in the back when fortune turns. Some friendship that is. It is a very shallow bond.
=== many years back ===
“Why am I treated so differently from the others?” The young boy had been upset again. “The other children in the village will not play with me. They say cat eyes go away, go play in the castle courtyard.”
The priest stroked his carefully shaved chin and thought.
“Do not go playing in the castle. They do mean you harm by saying such but these other children only do so through fear. They do not understand you.”

“They don’t?”
“Well, I won’t pretend to understand you perfectly well myself either but come inside the church and return to your studies. There are things in the Word of our ancients you can.”

“I’m sick of studying moarnekone! All I ever do is chores for the older priests and read scripture.”

“And what else, my acolyte?”
“And practice the psalms... joyfully.”

“...and?”

“...and prepare the meals from the donated foodstuffs that are for the poor folk in our village.”

The priest noted his disciple’s bruises and after the yellow eyed child went inside a change came over the old man. He seemed more animated though it could have just been a trick of the moonlight and clingingly low hanging mists that particular dusk.

In the following weeks some of the children who had been bullying the cat eyes stopped coming around. There were also reports of pieces of young dismembered bodies found every few days... further away from the church in other neighborhoods and one very odd case of the brave who had been the largest of his peers in the bullying pack found in the street at dawn dead and entirely drained of blood.  Something that *had* to be coIncidental and entirely unrelated.
Elders spoke of white fever and panthers in the forest and still other creatures being testy, however this is something they always did come fall and winter and was also not so unusual.
In time the rash of grisly maulings became a dim memory much like trapped miners in a collapsed mine or hunters being injured by razorbacks and wolves. A few more scars... It builds character.

We do not complain about the trials we are put through in this life. They are tests to prove our devotion toward Him. We must be thankful to Yutow for His many gifts He bestows upon us and His great sacrifice, perhaps the greatest gift of all.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 05, 2019, 08:40:29 PM
I remember that time...
The time I spent in my youth eagerly going through our cosmology and every lesson the elders saw fit to instruct me. The punishments were brutal.
The lessons important, most if not all.
===Now:===
I hope the Aspen twins are alright. I heard the man-brute Vargas had his forced way with one of them quite recently. Maybe that is why they have been exceptionally scarce lately.
There very much are in fact vile beasts of people out there who really do try to coerce every female I have ever even remotely cared about.

Is it because the rapist forces himself on her before I get a chance to go through the time, effort and many stages to build a serious relationship (he “gets” to forgo courtship by committing this violation of self-others) that bothers me about it though? Well, maybe on some partial level but it isn’t just a selfish anger or disgusting jealousy toward these whom in a primally in-tune way want and take sex that guides our revulsion. People who do that deserve to be tarred and feathered, maybe have their genitals cursed to fall off.

I think what it is is knowing there is really nothing you can do as a man to protect one from monsters such as this. You can’t be around all the time and even if you could... you shouldn’t always help everybody a hundred percent of the time.

You actually have to step back and the really hard part is you have to just go yes, I allow some bad things to happen to some people I do care about, whether knowingly or unknowingly because if you try to control it all, then you are really no better and that is its own type of monster.

Arlee and Arleena were not innocents but they did not deserve this nor most of the scorn thrown at them subsequently during a time of need, one where they were placed in a position of exposed vulnerability and could have otherwise strongly benefited from assistance of a supportive community of which there simply is not. Both Aspen twins have or at least had such a vibrant love of life and loved living their lives.

There is a part of me that would circumstances have been different, hell, I still would be very happy if I ended up with either of them as a wife. Smart, resourceful, vivacious, charming pair...
I know, neither wanted to settle down. Hummingbird girls... enjoy flitting from flower to flower. The next shiny new thing.
Even though she never returned my love I had as strongly I still care about my friend and her sister. People say bad things about them likely out of strong jealousy.
Observation: I made a concerted effort our entire friendship to nurture Arlee’s independent streak best I could in our “dance” so she would have more confidence and stop being shy... and then this monster does things either to her or her sister... I know it was my want for something deeper that drove her away (slow down moarnekone!) from my side but even if she had stayed with me, I don’t think I’d have been able to protect her or her sister from this Vargas. He is very powerful, akin to a destructive force of nature.

I had to show her that I cared by backing off to let her make her own decisions fully, consequences be damned. I do not think holding her back from experiences which are unpleasant would... but this thing that happened is not a good one. So it is a conflicting feeling.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 06, 2019, 03:17:48 PM
Poor Chloe,
Having a bad early reputation certainly does make you have a harder time getting by around a crowd of highly judgmental sanctimonious blowhards.
I explained to her, okay, you are a mage. People are going to throw at you they think you are dangerous and a bad person for doing all types of magic including necromancy and even if you are not a necromancer they are going to try and twist it around that you are to make the shunning more encompassing and widespread. Please, just forget Vallaki. Don’t try to prove anything to the Morninglords.  They are not worth your time. There is plenty of good work to be had and fortunes to be made for a talented not-truly evil sorceress without sullying yourself trying to educate close minded people on how to be more open minded.

My own religion we loathe necromancy abhorrently. I knew it could not be true that she was an evil necromancer witch because the Chloe I know, the sorceress, is not so much malevolent as she is or was occasionally reckless.
That is easier to work with than when somebody is malevolent, and they can change by gaining more experience. You cannot learn the lessons life has to teach if you are closely under constant inappropriate scrutiny and never allowed to make any mistakes.  Self-righteous people choose not to understand this.

They forget that every inquisitor too has to go through seminary and martial training when they were mere apprentices and acolytes. They too were imperfect and in fact still are imperfect even at making judgments.  Especially at making judgments on others. Sometimes even oftenly so.

You don’t owe these people who are too malignantly stupid to try and understand where you are coming from any sort of explanation.  As soon as they react in a hostile manner I am thinking your best option is to retreat and just give up on them.  Reaching to those with inflexibly closed minds is a losing proposition. The effort you could have expended towards self improvement is wasted in seeking an audience of deaf ears.

They have already made up their minds. All you can do is move on without them.

I pledge my humble sickle, my healing abilities and my Yutow-given powers to the cause of balance. I care less about the overblown and simplistic binary view of cosmic good and evil. To me an equally fundamental but much less explored purview is the battle between order and chaos.  I do my best to be reconciler and judge. A fair one. With the best of tradition in my heart and an eye to a constant and rapidly changing world around me I set out.

In knowing the teachings I grow stronger. In enduring grow strong...
Why does that feel so familiar? Have I ever heard it before? I cannot possibly have and yet the mantra speaks of shades and echoes that are never quite a memory but maybe more of a dimly distorted recollection, the fragment of a dream.
Someone else’s perhaps? Who can say?

I make attempts to reach others through understanding. It is not always successful but then again, of course it isn’t. We are not all self-martyring gods who in ultimate compassion sacrifice ourselves to merge two civilizations which were hellbent on destroying each other and everything else around them. That cause was sustainable peace. Something far too complex for average mortals to be able to grasp except perhaps theoretically in an intellectual sense. An environment of no uncertainties, with full control, which is safely removed from the outside. Placed in an artificial vacuum’s gilded cage we construct using our own rhetoric.

We trap ourselves in cages of our own subconscious designing.

What do I want? I miss the feel of another’s warm touch. Sometimes a simple nonverbal gesture of caring can with it carry a great volume of emotion. Amassing capital is good but this is not love. Amassing power and skill may help you better your ability to help others but neither is it love, though you may in fact be doing it through a type of love as your motivation.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 06, 2019, 11:28:44 PM
There are hidden meanings within my scripture...
The things said and not said... even merely hinted at.
(https://usercontent1.hubstatic.com/12758788.png)

The Guignol museum has been reopened and several of us want to go see it.

The Vistani caravan driver evidently has a fear of snakes and never wants to see Orm out again. Whenever I try to show people my snake handling and breeding skills... there are always a few people around them who can’t get over how your pet is a giant snake. You can try explaining it is nonvenomous but if it has no legs they freak out.
===
I had a thought though... if I could find a nobleman for patronage to sponsor a menagerie... that would be a good tourist attraction perhaps? When you keep animals properly fed and contained in appropriately sturdy fenced in enclosures people can pay money to get to “see the zoo.” Most people aren’t safari game hunters, trackers or wilderness guides. It gives them a vicarious opportunity to get to see wild things up close but all within the safety of a controlled and staffed environment.  Surely some eccentric aristocrat would be interested in a venture like this, no?

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/God_L_with_the_Hero_Twins.jpg)

===
I feel very lonely. I’m supposed to pretend not to be because ever expressing this bothers some people... and evidently their “feeling good” is more important than any sort of actual “being good.” I don’t want to make people feel bad really but the idea you should never express yourself either because it does is not a good notion.
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3743/11204625064_e20dfc4a6f.jpg)
===
... I mourn a lack of connection to anyone else. No social connection... just blundering through it many alone together feels... stupid and abhorrent...
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/Mayan_priest_smoking.jpg/355px-Mayan_priest_smoking.jpg)
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 08, 2019, 11:02:09 AM
Being the only one of my kind does weigh heavily on me in this white man’s world...

My alter ego whom I daydream in my mind’s eye while bored and depressed, the “Jaguar ‘God’”, a hyper-masculine warrior whom women love throwing themselves at and monsters are terrified of... is yes, ridiculous but he is confident in ways I am not.

His great strength and unity of purpose is to maintain the balance, acting as an extreme equalizer in an unbalanced world. He would rip the spine out of someone bullying villagers, for example. He is an archetype... that is what an alienist practicing mesmerism would say.

He would go toe to toe with a wizard using his physical prowess and body sense to take on terrible arcane might, not unscathed but giving the blasphemers pause and actual terror.

Not a true god no. Only Yutow holds that distinction but I would imagine this Jaguar warrior to be at least friends with members of the spirit court, the beast lords. He would team up with Panther or maybe even solve mysteries with Baron Kharkov.
(https://cafart.r.worldssl.net/images/Category_40546/subcat_91301/JaguarGod-Fanart.jpg)
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 10, 2019, 12:23:51 AM
I saw my disciple again. She got me some magic bags at the auction.
Tantrums were had at her bare legs. It was embarrassing that Dementlieuse are so hung up about this sort of thing. What a strange cultural custom to have such ingrained personal sense of body shame!
Since when has a pair of legs bothered anyone? Two intact, well formed shapely legs. I could sort of understand if they were malformed but they are not so why the fuss?
(https://d30womf5coomej.cloudfront.net/sa/58/b846b9ba-faa8-47e7-ba0a-535bfb4a4715.png)

The hole is still there. Lexington too comes from a communal society. He did get what I was talking about. This every man for himself all the time is kind of bullshit and making yourself so very “independent” you can’t stand or do anything... when it is the ants who by agreeing to work together get very large things done as tiny bugs... is an exercise in hypocrisy and denial.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 11, 2019, 09:06:59 AM
…You don’t understand what it’s like!
I will use the oral storytelling abilities of my people to be charismatic and influential! But first, first comes the hardest part which is convincing somebody else why they should listen to me... and there is the rub!
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 15, 2019, 04:29:04 PM
I feel that I am somewhat lacking in purpose.
Rather, I know what my function is... I just don’t feel other people much want me as a presence in their lives and there are times when this feels bad!

I can’t miss what I have never had. It sounds preposterous but when it is something basic to human comfort, a sort of a social need... well, strange things, sort of mental aberrations happen as a result of unmet wants perhaps when they reach a critical mass?  Things we choose not to think about during our waking hours can occupy a weird space in the back of the mind.  Proponents of dream analysis, alienists and hypnotists in Dementlieu and other nations within the Mordent cluster have the “subconscious” as a great unknown to explore.

My faith gives me some tools to deal with matters of spiritual significance but what if there is a crossing over point between the spiritual and the psychical?  I dread going into that place of “higher learning” near Port.  ...I am expecting I would be regarded an anthropological specimen to be filed away as quaint and categorized as barely above a savage should I go there, by the upstart aristocrats and disaffected nobles that play at seeking to understand the world around them while being purposefully so removed from the daily existence of the other half which sustain their lavish lifestyles!

Maybe it is silly and likely to never get off the ground like my zoo idea.
Giving a lecture at the University de Dementlieu? Even more far-fetched.
I’d need to get in touch and build some sort of relationship with a scholar... maybe Marcus or Timond knows of a venue for people to go to exchange their mixture of modern and ancient ideas to hash out new things, where the exciting developments get to be first birthed?  But they are wizards...

We hate wizards. Arcane magic is blasphemy.  Sometimes it can be useful, and to expect everyone who is not of my people to hold to our cultural values is ludicrous but... well, I pray for those two friends of mine anyway. I don’t think Yutow will make an exception for them.
Mages are damned to eventually lose control of their manipulating the fabric of what is and is not... and in so doing meet their demise at the hands of their own “experiments.”  That’s what common folk wisdom has to say on the matter.
Other cultures don’t all always have the exact same taboos as we do though.

I don’t think we are wrong but I do think trying to convert everybody else strictly to our ways is a losing proposition since well, Valachan is a smallish country and there are way more of them outside it than there are of us inside it.  Rather, gradually exposing outsiders to some of our values would be a better vehicle, I think for reaching foreigners.

So I suppose suffering the humiliation of being categorized as a specimen by the palefaces as though I were some sort of trained monkey might be unavoidable, but if it is to be done in the name of progress to get some dialogue open... hmm.
This is quite a problem. One which I am usually the only one who cares about it.

I doubt the academics in that university would be of much use or help. I’d have to be able to make it something worth their while for them to even consider hearing an idea from me and I am a foreigner. Sure I can speak Mordentish but I don’t act, look or dress their way because I’m not.

What I really could use is a mortal guide in the form of a higher up.  There aren’t any other Moarnekone this far away from the edges of Valachan though. There’s no council of elders I can confer with.  I’m fending for myself on my own with spirit guides. Yutow is the ultimate higher up. I try to do the right thing by Him.

I don’t really have a flock or congregation. I don’t even have my own temple or church to use.  I have a makeshift shrine, tenets I have committed to memory and reproductions of our scripture.  My one disciple doesn’t have the wealth of community resources which I did when I was an acolyte.  The Druid circles are hateful and secretive things so in their snotty and exclusive way they recreate the exact same artificial hierarchy you would find in established organized religious institutions.  No wonder so much of the land seems to be in a continually decaying and dying state.

In fact that she converted to Yutow as an elf... well, that’s something too. These other circles probably cling to Faerunian nature deities from lands well beyond the misty veil.  Yutow at least is home grown!

I’m a priest though and not a druid. I wonder how the Halans manage to make it work. I am attempting to instruct a druidess who has to live her life with starkly different rules to how she does it even though there are overlaps and similarities in our divine magic.  For instance, she cannot wear or use very much metal and prefers to use weapons made mainly of wood, bone, stone and so on.

I choose not to because metal is frankly kind of heavy so my armor is made of thick chitin instead. I do though have a steel helmet and reinforced shield and gloves and this is not an issue to me.  It would be an issue for her though I think... although not the chitin armor though; I’m pretty sure most druids are alright with things crafted from monstrous beetles and their ilk.

The other druids I have met aside from Dextan and Ly’in and I guess D’ali too... had tended to be even more priggish and arrogant than some of the wizards!
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 16, 2019, 05:07:32 PM
I simply... don’t feel much sense of belongingness ever. I’m a core native too but I get treated like an outsider because my people’s culture is quite different from that of the peoples in many of the other nations in the core.

I wonder what it would be like to sign onto the crew of either a merchant trade vessel or a pirate ship and explore the Sea of Sorrows or the Nocturnal Sea.

Love and friendship seem to both evade me.  I have the respect of my adventurer peers but that can only take a man so far.  Things feel stale.

Fate is mandated from above and not to be questioned. Perhaps this lonely misery is my curse. I was taken from my parents, given away to be raised by the elder priests of my church.  When other children were learning to hunt and trap and physical pursuits like farming, fishing, being a lumberjack, smith, carpenter or tailor and how to leatherwork, I devoted my days to learning the written word, I spent my hours doing much theological study, performing our ancient aptitude tests, passing rites given to me by the elders.  The elders did it to bring out my shaman potential.

I do not blame them but it leaves a legacy of certain deficits...

I’ve picked up tailoring and will resume smithing... eventually I will start leatherworking...
Which reminds me of Arlee.  I remember happy hours fetching raw ingredients for the little minx of a person and watching her craft. I get the feeling she is gone and not coming back... That, or I drove her away and she is not coming back.
I wanted someone and had certain needs that no one is going to be willing to fulfill. I miss her friendship at times.

 I was openly mocked and attacked in hostile fashion by some for admitting these things (loneliness, longing and so on) openly.  Being the only one of your people and lacking your own tribe is pretty hard.

There are many other interesting adventurers out there and I have yet to meet one I have really been able to connect with.

I thought she and I had something and maybe we even did but this was wishful thinking leftover from my youth.  I am 35 going on 36.  If any sort of thing between myself and others had been meant to happen perhaps it would have already??

Maybe I should just concede defeat and go to the university to be a human specimen for some exhibit.

I can’t really explain these things to Th’rar or Ly’in. I don’t think the elven couple I am friends with would understand. Even if they tried.
It is... a lack of depth present in my life.  I go through the motions when we raid crypts or hunt monsters in caves.

Lexington too came from a communal society. His he told me had very grand cities and lives ona much larger sphere than this demiplane.  I... he seems well adapted to life in these cities. I struggle.

Before one says relationship with your patron deity is all one needs that trite platitude annoys the crap out of me.  I want... to function as if not a community leader then at least a valued advisor or second in command perhaps to some mercenary company or treasure hunting salvager group?

I feel very expendable. Too unique to be able to fit in with these people most of the time. Born different. I don’t think this being special makes me necessarily better than these people.  I loathe some of their selfishness, material greed and propensity to violence toward one another.

What would make me happy? Do I deserve to seek happiness? Is this an inherent thing for all people as a basic motivational drive? I am no alienist.
I’d like to talk to one though, so in order to find one I should stomach it down and head to that university, much as I loathe these northern academic types.

Something has to change. Somehow.  This sameness all the time far from bringing a comforting certainty... my status quo of things being lacking is... frustrating at best.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 17, 2019, 08:15:04 AM
There are others ripped away whom I wonder about...

And I am told very often, we do not want you.
Well... to hell with that. Who cares of your comfort you selfish shits?!
I do. I try to make things better for these people.
My snake and my toad do not judge me the way these travelers do... well, Orm cannot talk and Battletoad... has other things on his strange alien mind. I say ‘his’ but these slaad (is the plural of it slaadi?) seem to possess both male and female parts.

I wonder why I put myself through such things to go through the motions.  Some way to be more involved would be nice.
(https://66.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_meqw3hjERW1r0zz7o.png)
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 19, 2019, 02:07:41 PM
Happiness will not come to me.  I have to make it for myself...
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 20, 2019, 04:11:18 PM
Things which should be are not.

Conversely, things which should not be, are.

Where did it all go wrong?
Everyone else seems to have gotten much more powerful than I am and in relatively short time.

This lack of connectedness is really taxing me and I don’t think...,
Well, I don’t know how much further I am going to be able to continue with no bonds.

Strength in identity is diluted but also solidified when you are the only one of your kind around.

I wish I would stop being on the periphery, that there was more going on in my life.

Being so very removed from everyone else around me does not feel good.

Nothing will welcome you with open arms.  Everyone rubs in your face their clubs, guilds, factions and associations and they tell you to submit to their will as price of initiation.

They demand an abject humility, a fawning servile attitude that is disgusting.

They attack you for being “proud” and “arrogant” for not playing this game, this ritual show of obedience to their less than true authority... are their senses of worth so fragile, their positions so truly weak they need this show of piety performed regularly as though they are a king and you are their slave,... in order to assert that their framework of reality which is subjective, that it must indeed be correct?

I submit to Yutow Peacebringer, my Ghostly Lord in the sky and to Baron Kharkov, the terrestrial Lord of my people’s land.
(http://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.BPqW0nO0eltMeS6Mio2xQgHaLG&w=190&h=285&c=8&o=5&pid=1.7)
...and you, my friend, are not they.
You who are not they have no business attempting to order me around.  You are not some great chief and respect is earned. So many petty chiefs, tyrants, hiding behind their institutions, their organizations... using their titles to demand fealty. Or what?

I nor they owe each other any real explanation. This is simply the way of things.  Both the things which are natural and the things which they have set up, those things which are artificial.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/57/da/86/57da869f2fd4db05957d6af06cc5dec6.png)
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 21, 2019, 02:25:35 PM
When I was raised by our elders, I was taught our traditions and many things important to being a spiritual healer and a lore keeper.

(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQVP4V2snI0dv3MFcrx96dPQzp63Qp-BDRcMY0IY9GYMWfDxgYH)

I was taught things about our creation story, our holy lord in the sky and his mortal servant, our lord of the land.

(http://mrmoyer.pbworks.com/f/1207082703/aztec%20warrior%202.jpg)

Let me tell you of the beast lords, too. The messengers of the chief in the sky, the ghost chief, Yutow our lord in the night sky.
(https://www.warvox.com/wp-content/uploads/b019sm_tezcatlipoca_mask_tattoo.jpg)

Brother Panther, wisest of animal spirits and Yutow’s self-proclaimed best friend was whom of the beast-lords came forward with the daring plan that ended the pacification wars. Together they devised the ritual to merge the invading Vaasans and original Valachani.
(http://tattoooideas.com/wp-content/uploads/parser/Aztec-Warrior-Tattoo-Graphic-1.jpg)
We know what happened because of it: The hearty aboriginal rootstock and efficiently organized, tactically genius stems and leaves would be grafted together into a superior hybrid which thrived on the fertile soil of our land ending this dark time and bringing about a harmonious advancement.
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FmAZTrYI_Ys/UeL2XRc6n0I/AAAAAAAASz0/MI2kmw41hzA/s1600/Sin+t%C3%ADtulo-1.jpg)
We thrive together well beyond the means of what our warring ancestors could do apart.  Put another way, we understand the value of working together and not completely against the nature which is something that escaped our forebearers, locked as they were in all-encompassing conflict.
(http://tonobanquetes.com/images/warrior-jaguar-aztec-tattoo-stencil/warrior-jaguar-aztec-tattoo-stencil-25.jpg)

I am proud servant to our two lords, both the mortal one and our eternal lord.
(https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/mexico-olmec-civilization-priest-relief-picture-id89169407?k=6&m=89169407&s=612x612&w=0&h=F51sXACsRBrAm5_yclYJ3DL9d59zj9J3cgolhnP0eW0=)
Our country is small but our cities are overall comparable to others. I would say Ungrad is perhaps physically half as big as Vallaki, for example.
(http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/images-6/651_14_2.jpg)
Peoples in the Northwestern core think us savages but our architecture techniques, our basketweaving and our carpentry are good.  Nor is our masonry bad; Our structures endure well considering the harsh environment we call home.
A good many of our buildings erected prior to the Great Upheaval still stand.
(https://dynaimage.cdn.cnn.com/cnn/w_1200/http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.cnn.com%2Fcnnnext%2Fdam%2Fassets%2F131203214410-08-achaelogy-chan-chan---restricted-story-top.jpg)
Our longhouses, sweat lodges and cabins are nice. I love our redwood and I love our stone.  It has a great aesthetic: Sturdy, yet flexible. That is how we too as a people must be in order to survive, you see.
(http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/images-c/efa_103_2.jpg)

Our people are not perfect. No people are. We try our best. We carve our civilization out from an unforgiving landscape, we deal with bristling and prickly neighbors.
(https://c8.alamy.com/comp/ABC86K/temple-of-the-jaguar-warrior-of-chichen-itza-in-the-yucatan-was-a-ABC86K.jpg)
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 22, 2019, 02:08:27 PM
(http://www.mathcs.duq.edu/~tobin/maya/fig23.jpg)
I have begun work on the very important Yutow Codex.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/de/d8/dd/ded8dd523625648ec10793c103afc852.jpg)
I will set up a meeting these poofs who call themselves scholars at their cloistered university or their book club perhaps and I will translate this great work of my people into High Mordentish.  This will preserve our culture even if we ourselves as a people become wiped out; spoken word dies with a people but written word endures for long past when that people may no longer tread the earth.

I must find “college of divinities” and the ones who call themselves anthropologists.  Alternatively perhaps the Societié de Erudites might be of some help?
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/CylinderVessel-BMA.jpg)
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 23, 2019, 05:40:59 PM
I must begin my work scribing down the Yutow Codex.
I purchased a signet ring too in anticipation of inviting people to hear a talk about it.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/L%C3%A1minas_8_y_9_del_C%C3%B3dice_de_Dresden.jpg/1200px-L%C3%A1minas_8_y_9_del_C%C3%B3dice_de_Dresden.jpg)
I have not found a venue yet though so I am getting a bit ahead of myself, as usual.

Likely there is not sufficient interest in my people, our religion and culture to draw a broad enough audience to justify such.

Why do I keep struggling to talk about Yutow and Valachan to people to whom my people and country are simply not real?  What happens there does not usually day to day immediately effect outsiders in the larger core.

Our only neighbors we sometimes trade with, Mordent and Sithicus I think largely see us as wild savages not to be trusted.  Relations are strained. Somebody likes it being this way.
Mordent and Sithicus are somewhat removed too but those places at least people can have more regular contact with here in the larger core.

You don’t often run into Valachani adventurers. Most of us never stray too far out of our jungle homeland aside from a few traders and the occasional raiding party.

I wonder if my people have any way of knowing what has happened to me and if any of the Baron’s agents can relay report of me back home.  I’d like to think I am doing my nation proudly but I am just a priest and an adventurer. I am not a diplomat. I do not represent my people’s governing body outside of the village I come from.  The only reason I represent us to outsiders at all is because my people get so rarely encountered.

I try to present our virtues so I can be a “model minority.”

What are Valachani virtues you may ask?:
1. We work hard.
2. We are friendly toward strangers.
3. We treat our women well (something *some* other nations might really benefit from adopting in their domestic policy!).
4. You could also say we are not afraid of getting our hands (and boots) dirty from the elements.
5. We praise self-sufficiency but are also *highly* sociable.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 24, 2019, 08:48:21 AM
I could not cram all of our people’s history into one journal so I have compiled it into three volumes. I finished two of them getting through the mythic early era and classical period. Now I just have the modern period remaining.

The offer of a date with Arleena sounded sweet and not just because there would be cake.
Also, I briefly saw a woman from one of the Valachan villages at the mist camp. That is very heartening... maybe if more of my people are coming through the mistway has begun to open again?!

I have gotten sucked into a web of drama and danger with Avana who it seems is worried she has gotten in over her head but also has an unhealthy affinity toward the mists being quite fixated on them. She lost her squire to them and they prey on her mind. I have heard of this happening to people before.

She told me she has been catching up to being in our world again after what she figures has been two months but felt like it had been two decades within the mists.

Understandably in her coherent moments she is colder than I remember.
That was her pattern the time we lost in the harvest temple too.  She is quick to call up my past failures back when I was weaker; The shields I give are stronger now but they cannot undo the mistakes of the past.

I bought our elf mage Serina crimson dragonhide bracers and a firebrand scroll to up her defense and firepower. Like many mages she is running around in what appears to be a cloth robe and I fathom this cannot be very good physical protection.

I do not understand the way of mages because they are taboo amongst my people. She is of a different people though and therefore since she is also not a necromancer that, her being an elf, they are an inherently magical people so to expect her to follow my people’s customs to the letter is not reasonable.  It did feel strange going into a wizard shop to buy scrolls though, I will not lie.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 26, 2019, 12:23:51 AM
Still working to unlock the ninth divine circle.

The Valachani woman’s name is Andras and she is a tribeswoman from beyond the settlements. She likes climbing trees, worships Yutow as any proper Valachani should and oddly enough also tends to refer to herself in only the third person. She did express a possible interest in attending an open air night service I will hold in the mist camp. I need to find Ly’in and explain to her the duties of priest and disciple in this glorious, momentous set of ceremonies. We lack a church building but praying outdoors is encouraged so with a portable shrine I make due!

I’m getting closer, but slowly. The third volume of the Yutow Codex which covers through to the modern age is waiting for me to write it.

I met some more strange offworlders, a mage and a thief this time, both rather cute. Anyway... I have a lot of ground to cover but once I obtain the ninth circle... then it will all be worth it I think.

I use these powers I was granted to do right by the god of my ancestors and be a mediator, a judge and reconciler, the sort of councilor a Moarnekone is intended to be... as best I can when ripped away from my village and with so few others of my people around anywhere nearby most of the time.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 27, 2019, 02:51:49 AM
Not quite there yet but it’s closer. Fought devils with Hadush, Grugg’Thokk and Ayame. Fought werecrocodiles and desert trolls with Nathaniel, Morfindel, Alessandra and Nastia. Fought fishmen with Rozira.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on February 28, 2019, 01:36:09 AM
The young female wizard seems to have developed some feelings toward me!
I... am not sure how to feel about that. Obviously pleased but also a little dismayed because she is a wizard.
(https://comicbookrealm.com/cover-scan/2227c0e1e2716d5d96293497899bdd1c/xl/verotik-jaguar-god-illustrations-one-shot-issue-1.jpg)
Finances are steady. I would like to accumulate 100,000 gold pieces though for... reasons. I currently possess 15,000.

85,000 remains to be earned.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/51/72/f3/5172f333391533d20899d9dde54c6682.gif)
Spoiler: show
What reason? A sizable dowry perhaps?

Hmm! Progress toward the ninth circle is still in progress but my facility with the eighth circle divine magics mass death ward and lion’s roar seem steady.
Seventh circle mass negative energy protection, but especially mass spell resistance have saved my and my group’s lives many times.

(http://www.maya-art-books.org/copan_jaguar_god.jpeg)

I am attempting to learn a new and more powerful way of doing my invocations as well at the same time.
(https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maria_Alberta_Badini_Confalonieri/publication/258784495/figure/fig16/AS:667689789964288@1536201059012/The-Aztec-deity-Tezcatlipoca-in-his-jaguar-guise-as-Tepeyollotli-The-Heart-of-the.png)
Each glyph I scribe... each passage I think over... brings me a step closer to unlocking it.
(https://i.pinimg.com/236x/bb/37/f7/bb37f75fa606c2df85ff5c26187b70fa.jpg)
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on March 01, 2019, 10:49:50 AM
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f0/Jaguarnagual.jpg/170px-Jaguarnagual.jpg)
I seek the advice of my spirit animal guardians.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/67/0c/7c/670c7c3890cd853ee0583177c509359a.jpg)

I do hope I can unlock the vaunted ninth circle soon as I continue to pray, meditate and practice.

(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/79/f5/9e/79f59ed7bc50e67ae0ffc1348c3986bf.jpg)

I am closer but not quite there yet.
                       
(http://s3.e-monsite.com/2010/08/22/11/resize_550_550//Naguals-2.jpg)

I am not exactly sure how much longer this will take.
Rozira says she believes in me though.
(https://66.media.tumblr.com/d3239567099ade71137d000f228cfc87/tumblr_nkq1rkdv5T1rejzeso1_400.jpg)
I believe strongly in the power of the spirits and Yutow as the spirit-king.

Can I believe in myself? Well, I’ve gotten this far.

(https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*om8gUNUerWrYy4kSocOaZQ.jpeg)

All is possible through Him.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on March 02, 2019, 04:11:09 PM
It feels a tad strange being happy for a change of pace.

Not having to fake it.
(http://legendarycreaturesdn.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/5/7/48578221/107807_orig.jpg)
For the first time in a long time the longingness abates and as I suspected it was actually very simple.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/34/92/92/3492929408e92b91b4b3c880e7a5ba2f.jpg)
The desire for companionship and the reactionary “Eww, no! Learn to be satisfied being by yourself while watching others have all of their bonds!” response which caused me so much disconnect... for once is not so everpresent.
(https://sites.google.com/site/mimundomisteriosobyaa/_/rsrc/1288278051299/nahual/nahual.jpg)

Without the distraction of this particular misery I feel that I can truly grow.
(http://juanm.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/nagual.jpg)

...For now that part of my beast aspect is sated...

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Serpiente_alquimica.jpg/220px-Serpiente_alquimica.jpg)
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on March 03, 2019, 02:55:37 AM
(https://richardbalthazar.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/ocelotl-icon-e1474749743484.jpg)
She loves me. ...and I care for her.

Much as I care for any of the others I am charged with protecting, intervening and mediating for but on a perhaps more personal level because she said she cares about me. The person. Like, not just for being shaman spirit nagual, but Cristan the man.

(https://i2.wp.com/3.bp.blogspot.com/-5QGiqOkSDaA/TpXWKxyIqxI/AAAAAAAAALs/OM-Rzaw0hdo/s400/jaguarhome.jpg?w=600)

It has been a long time since I have last felt that way.
She also told me of her Lord a bit. That he is a very dangerous man with vast resources and that I should definitely show some strong respect and deference toward him. I will but not through out of supreme fear but out of how much I care for her. She serves him after all. Were our positions reversed I know she would not be rude to my Lord in Valachan.

(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/529825310422859805/551672363712905227/image0.jpg)

I am physically unable to fear anything less than a horde of pit fiends so I suppose if I have to I will pretend he is a horde of them in order to elicit an appropriate response?

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DyMw7T6WsAE9EXa.jpg)

I am told fear is a very important part of her church’s culture.

(https://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/INCAS/IMAGES/MED/231265.jpg)

I keep thinking... and I keep wondering... and I know things, but have much left to still learn...
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on March 04, 2019, 08:17:57 AM
Still not quite there yet.

(https://scontent-lax3-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/f828d41aa28a3d0df00ac39b88310a6a/5CB1FF2A/t51.2885-15/e35/c0.40.320.320/45725488_292437448054180_3612148331449337059_n.jpg)

I vaguely think I may have felt a certain presence briefly, unlike [most of] the other ones.

Go away! I am happy now.

...and yet, it was not so completely unfamiliar to me.

(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/unrealworld/images/0/02/Sickle.png/revision/latest?cb=20130414053745)

Dear Rozira and I protect ourselves and each other from users.

The lingering sweet smelling breath creeping down the back of my neck as I try to rest at times???
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on March 05, 2019, 06:08:02 AM
A new enemy appears.

One that seems furious we choose not to be afraid of it.
I am... not strong enough to defeat it yet.

The stupid thing tried preying on Native Barovian superstitions very insistently despite that neither of us are Barovians.

I tried explaining that those who worship the Nocturnal Lord, the Lunar Dead God do not fear the undead and that it is thoroughly imbecilic to expect us to be able to fear the night.

Certainly we can fear monsters, that part actually makes sense.  We are taught though from an early age not to fear our own death too much so very much of her monologue about the terrors and how we were tormenting, taunting the powers of the night to be traveling at dusk were wasted breath.

It was a hard fight and she was... more powerful than us. I got a slight brief upper hand and slew her minion but that dirge attack is brutally nasty. I cannot be forced to be afraid by her.

My mental training is such that it does not work very well. Anything short of a roaring pit fiend no longer evokes such a response in me and I have been at that stage for months now. Many of her enchantments aside from the dazing fizzled off me. Too late she adapted dispelling tactics but dawn drew buying us time.
She claims mount Baratak is her domain. What an arrogant creature.

Rozira and I saved each other and I resurrected Lance whom this vampiresse’s enforcer had cleaved to bits with a two handed sword.  We sicken and are tired of the arrogance of Vallaki monsters... even the undead in this region have become quite sanctimonious blowhards. I don’t think our foe this past night cycle was of local stock though.

 So it is that we have hit the road again and are back to training.
I had never seen an attack like that supernatural dirge before. So much blue unnatural corrupting fire.

The tactics though... why do vampires seem to always congregate around the fishing lodge? That is werewolf territory. Mt. Baratak and the Terg complex make sense as the heart of the mountain pours near constant effluent negative energy miasma. Why such proximity to the werewolves though?

This undead bardic vampire is not the beast that stalks me in my dreams and the moments between wakefulness and slumber where I am unalert, yet present.  She is not that which haunts in the Dreamtime.
Rozira witnessed our exchange as I fought the vampiress with my every last fiber of my being and was impressed by my staring death in the face and managing to spit in its haughty eye despite it handing my ass to me. I think she is the right one.

My claws twitch. Memory of the claws-of-the-savage trembles within my achingly tired fingers. We dress each other’s wounds and begin training anew in the next few days. I used greater restoration, remove curse, neutralize poison and remove disease on the area which the vampiress had bitten Rozira. The most powerful abjurative cures I can muster for curses and supernatural diseases and her health has improved. *I wish there was a way we could swap imbue our blood with the same properties as holy water...*

I am not a hero.  Excessively being preoccupied with conventional ideas about good and evil has oft struck me as idiotic.

Finally a worthy foe.

Someday soon Death Singer, you will be singing your own death song.
I look forward to getting stronger and my darling one growing more powerful so that things will be more evened in the next arena we inevitably encounter this foul overly-egotistical fiend.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on March 07, 2019, 02:57:01 PM
(https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/0A5iowbhYHg1qn5cxrQ5DKgSUX4=/768x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/Tezcatlipoca_Smoking_Mirror_Skull-596a02c73df78c57f4a4baf9.jpg)

I study and meditate........................ while I pray.

(http://thirdmonk.net/postcont/2012/08/how-to-open-chakras.png)
The turmoil of this world and having to repeatedly be the one to bury my friends of other ones because they were not adept enough at surviving our harsher one weighs heavily on me.

Let us ponder the words of the Peacebringer and our ancients.
(https://secure.img2-ag.wfcdn.com/im/51203796/compr-r85/2940/29400601/the-aztec-deity-tezcatlipoca-signed-ceramic-figurine.jpg)
This will be a mental journey for me while Roz is away on her mission.
I hope it goes well.  I will be praying for her.
In the meantime, let us look at the inner space.

Hello loneliness. I will fight to conquer the inner void-beast... once and for all. I accept your challenge.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fb/7a/ef/fb7aefb197a7a20989c5d710470ad1cc.jpg)

Thats right... you are throwing down with me now and I am a moarnekone.

An inner daemon, vile and insidious I have grappled with my entire life. Let me take you on, head on. This quest? An internal and spiritual one, not physical.

Spoiler: show
Ooc I have a month suspension to wait out. As an author and actor this felt like a good conclusion to Cris’s story right now while I wait the sentence out to have him go on another vision quest, straining through dreams and unresolved crud from his past to the present on his own terms. It is a battle of heart and mind plus soul, rather than actual combat. We can say he is wrestling with inner stuff doing this during the month player banishment.  Thanks everybody, you’ve been great and I’m glad I got the chance to finally play the long game and get a character to as high a level as I could get on my cleric.
Title: Re: The Panther in the moon:
Post by: Silas Rotleaf on April 05, 2019, 03:21:47 PM
... AND NOTHING.
The reward is nothingness?
Nothingness is the state of not existing and being empty of life. Nothing... as in lacking a thing which is wanted or desired. No one. This is the same but for people.  That is the bitter reward for a life of service.  It is not right but who am I to question fate.
We are powerless.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Cholera_art.jpg/270px-Cholera_art.jpg)

The height of my power is reliant upon other people and community bonds. My spiritual gifts are because I care about other people. They do not share or reciprocate though, so I must simply do so for its own sake.  From serious meaning to seemingly meaningless...

Perhaps this is just the strongest trial of all Yutow. Fine world and universe plane,... bring it.

(https://adeptexpeditions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Tezcatlipoca.jpg)

Hmm, fate is conspiring to return me to Barovia; There is nothing left for me in Dementlieu.