The Panther in the moon:

[Silas Rotleaf]

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!

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.}

[Silas Rotleaf]

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

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.

Go on. Wound me.

I mistwalk. Sometimes I fall... but always I learn something.

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.

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.

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.

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

There are only 9 circles of divine or arcane magic a mortal can attain...

I can do up to  the eighth in divine magic.

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

Cult of the panther...

We are neither quite man nor beast...[1]

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

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

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.

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.

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.



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.

... 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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

You don’t understand what it’s like.

You can’t understand what it’s like.

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

I will start drafting this letter I am going to send to a more senior priest back home.

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.}

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

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?

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.

[Silas Rotleaf]

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.