Observationes - Ezekiel ser Moran

[augustaugur]

   [These pages appear bordered with unobtrusive margins of gold-leafed filigree; they contain writing that is so exact in its formation and spacing as to be borderline exhausting. Passages then are broken up three times before a new heading, assumedly correlating to dawn, midday, and dusk.]

   What manner of sorcery has come upon us?

   Midway to Porte Crescendia we became inundated with downpour and gales most terrible where moments before had been a clear, pleasant day. Inquisitors Toriel and Raphael were ahead, calling for Willem and I to brace ourselves. Brace ourselves? Nevertheless I found his hand in mine as I held my arm over my eyes—then, as abruptly and so soon it was just myself and Willem that emerged from some soporific veil of a great, dense mist. It was still raining but quieter now as we approached a camp, so to say, where music beat from drums whose timbres I could not recognize. Ushered to sit by an open fire, neither of us saw either Inquisitor anywhere. Crows squawked throughout and they, too, I did not determine to be in the cadence of a lesser Cordova corvidae. Willem, force that he is, went away to hunt and investigate. For my part I discovered that none of those around me spoke or understood High Cordovan. Conversely they did understand me when I did not exercise the effort to speak it as opposed to a common vernacular, apparently with the accent of an “Outlander”. Asking questions only provoked more than answers.

   Willem returned and the camp was at once under siege by the attacks of a bipedal, lupine creature. Dark as it was I could tell that it was larger than any man, with a cool calculation to its rampage inasmuch the bloodlust required. The locals cried ‘Wolfman!’ and I understood—but Willem spirited me away from the scene before I had any real chance to notate or approximate its patterns or processes.

   Now we are cloistered in an old temple, affronted everywhere by the unfamiliar. It is obvious that some sort of temporal-spatial anomaly is at play, indubitable casualty of a profound sorcery. We’ll have to rest here at the temple—but if I am not glad that mea amica is at my side than any Inquisitor.

   He respirates so soundly in his sleep.

Day After Temporal-Spatial Anomaly
   Willem rose before me and went fact-finding—we’re somewhere known as Vallaki, seated in the country of Barovia ruled by an enigmatic Count Strahd von Zarovich. Naturally it smacks of the Tirimisce Lands, especially the locals’ dim view of sorcery—yet they speak not a word of High Cordovan nor welcome me when I introduce myself as scion of the House Moran. Indeed, there is no Guild Alchemica in Vallaki at all—I daresay that they would equate Lawful alchemy the same as histrionic sorcery. Curious and curiouser. We must know everything possible about this place and its people. There are other (many other) Outlanders among us, some of whom so casually refer to themselves as abhuman. Abhuman! Though they are of a mind to be cut from the Age of the Divine!

   Would I the tools to put such assertions under proper scrutiny.

***

   [The writing which follows is uncharacteristically frantic. It crawls and jumps at the page.]

   died I died I died I died I was dead and now I am not

   [Then, after only the briefest of line breaks, precision returns.]

   I had lost my life yet here I write restored.

   A cult of… knights—in the least well executed mercenaries—are with us here in Barovia that worship a deity they call Bane, therefore Banites. The Banites were quick to impress upon me that they are the most competent “fellow” Outlanders Willem and I remain aware, leading me to summarily petition that they let us go with them. Their Commander and I understood each other and agreed. We went deep under the temple we know now belong to the Morninglordians, clearing through hordes of restless dead. Restless dead!—had I a mortar and pestle, I would have taken knuckles off the animate skeletons to confirm if indeed their materia contained admixture of tanzanite and sulfur.

   [The letters here begin formed as they ever are.]

   Yet the deeper we delved… the more this crypt reacted. It, as itself—lights from braziers or lanterns would periodically flicker, snuff entirely; then there were “wells of shadow” which would unspool from the temple floor beneath us, undulating audibly in a circadian rhythm; neither was this the only audible abnormality for I, I alone, discerned whispers within that darkness. Faded at first but then [And so they jump and jutter, wax and wane.] louder and louder and I was watched in my watching with that creature just ahead of me staring back that shadow (our?) Shadow and then
D
   A
      R
         K
            N   
               E
                  S
                     S

   [They are all-right now.]

   I woke up in Willem’s arms.

***

   Willem ran deliveries whilst I recuperated. Truthfully I do not remember much from the transitory period of life-unto-death-unto-life-again, beside a strange, perfidious numbness grey in shape and character. The Banites regarded me briefly and left for some other cause. Even now I am astonished how trivial the act of dying is for us “Outlanders”, to be so plucked from the strings of the Endless Infinite and returned seemingly and not at all worse for wear be in constitution or spirit, after the incantations of first resurrection then of health. Indeed, once the initial disbelief and shock for my renewed life subsided (which I would be remiss not to reiterate was frighteningly hasty), I was about and walking as though my “new self” was akin exactly to my “old self”, save for an ocular discoloration Willem described to me.

   I even made acquaintance with Lady Constarini, of whom I struck up casual conversation erstwhile to Willem’s work. We shared word about the trappings of nobility—she is from a family in this “Borca”—and was in Vallaki concerning a fortnights’ worth of “heroes’ challenges”. Obviously I found the notion absurd however I know better than to spurn absurdity outright, given our circumstances. She invited me to see her in an inn dubbed the Blue Moon that evening—it is that evening and she has insofar not shown. I do not fault her for this the same as you cannot fault the foolish for acting the part.

   I am rather just content to be sleeping somewhere that isn’t there.

Two Days After Temporal-Spatial Anomaly
   I should have known better.

   Should have, yet perhaps in my elation to be alive I myself have become exactly that foolish. I had been bathing, toweling myself after when it was there again. They were there again.

   [This time, however, these letters hold firm.]

   The whispers.

   We made for the Morninglordians immediately—still playing the fool I prayed not to Law, but the Morninglord, using diction I had learned yesterday. Idiot! Dunce! Ignoble! In my fear, my pavor I had regressed in an instant to the savage ways of my birth, begging any deity to hear my pleas as if I were in that moment the same Nymari boy suspicious of the civilized, rational world that Havon ser Moran saved! Saved from the ilk of my kin and kine! But of course I realize the depravity of my error, and I will do to correct this lapse in kind.

   The next I pray, it will be to Law—if not myself.

***

   We’ve relinked with the Banites. Fortuitous as the Shadow shows little sign of slowing in its assault on Vallaki or as I suspect all Barovia. Willem has told me that the entity is made reluctant by open flames, to say little of its ability to present itself as any sapient being it has perceived. Once I am reacquainted with this country’s—invariably inferior—tools for alchemy, I shall produce flammable resins in such excess that I will furnish a small army.

***

   Damnable insects and their mandibles!

   How am I to work artifice with materia as inarticulate as mandibles? Of course we found that hut in the woods and verily did I go with the Banites such that we were aplomb in holes extracting these “instruments” from creatures already slain by roving bands of adventurers thrice over. The Banites departed to another task and I must be grateful for that as synthesizing sanguine essence from mandibles of all possible sources has made me a temporary shame to the House Moran for I could not so much as produce a single varnish all afternoon!

   Oh, and the Shadow? What of the Shadow?

   It targeted Willem and I just opposite of the Vallaki gallows as we were returning full up on empty hands beside chitin, in the form of a woman stranger. Shortly thereafter she was confronted by her doppelganger—an “orc” watched, and Willem bid the abhuman to slay one from whence the Shadow was made manifest. There the creature bound the remaining woman with tendrils of pure darkness, demanding that she “merge” with it as she wailed and railed against it. I called into Vallaki, useless as the gesture was. The mob about only stared slackjawed at the thing while it wreaked havoc. I could not abide by it and went with Willem.

   The Shadow will not catch me flatfooted for much longer. This I swear.

***

   The Lady has proven herself also useless, to scant surprise.

   I was discussing the Shadow to Willem and Lumina—well, must I really belabor the point? Malformations of darkness and doppelgangers, and she still yet bleats on about those “challenges” of hers. Never have I understood my father’s disdain for other noble houses of Sanctum more. Surely if anyone deserves this affliction more than I…

   I won’t spare any more ink on the subject.

[augustaugur]

Three Days After Temporal-Spatial Anomaly
   Neither Inquisitor Toriel nor Raphael have appeared in this land. I cannot help but wonder—what of them? What, indeed, of Cordova? Were they slain in the anomaly? Is Father yet aware Willem and I are indisposed, assuming that our time in Barovia is parallel to time on Cordova? Should there be now a vast internetwork of Lawmen and House Moran hirelings alike searching through Stern? Nase?

   Anywhere?

   The phrase “House Moran” is meaningless to the Barovians and other Outlanders. In this way the lack of recognition is of course freeing—but I have found freedom, itself, offers challenges all its own. Traveling with the Inquisitors meant itineraries from dawn to dusk—primarily, for me—with hours upon hours neatly made up and goals aligned. Oh, it was a stifling, stubborn noose that I protested relentlessly, a child to these Inquisitors where Willem has always understood me as my own man. Why then do I think of them, of Cordova, sat here under the fronds of a coniferous arbor hawking at passerby about the mouthparts of an insect and how I might lavish them with ‘fangs’ for the privilege while raindrops drip, drip, drip onto me the same as everywhere in Barovia?

   Not that anyone’s produced a single mandible, or that I am so ignorant not to know why.

   “Better the furia you know, than the furia you don’t.”

***

   An abhuman was embarrassed to see my misery.

   A towering and pale creature urged from his perch just beyond the greathammer ire of Radu that I pack up and follow him. Wont for anything else than to continue to sit cross legged and empty-handed ahead of a notice and trade permit, I did—the abhuman was pleased, announcing himself as Jakkiro. He told me that he would show me to the “Sullen Wood”, in hunting the phantasmal shades cursed to haunt its arboretum interior endlessly. I was enchanted—by him, his stature, the impression of a difficult, mangled yet bountiful creation in him. The locals call him and others like him “Caliban”, to profound derision. Jakkiro had a phlegmatic intelligence I gathered despite the coarse and sibilant affect to his speech, presumed common to Calibans. More intriguing still was his ability to overpower the shades admixture of physical might and profaned ritual. There I obtained the shades’ dark essence from their coalesced spew when slain and realized that my frustration yesterday with the artifice of this land had to do with myself being blinded by existing precept of Cordovan artifice—if I am to once again pursue the Great Work in Barovia, I must engage it on its own terms.

   After all, I bear my father’s name, and as a ser Moran I am not some petulant schoolboy. The frustration shall run off my shoulders to let discovery stay.

***

   The socio-physiological symptoms of the Caliban warrant more thorough study once prescient emergencies are resolved. They present as a varied spectrum of individuals united by the apparently inexplicable nature of the “Caliban deformity”—most are born to parents visually untouched with all consequences therein. I inquired to Jakkiro to show me to where he slept as it could not have been out of doors or Vallaki—he took me down a well and through an admittedly vast inasmuch dank cistern beneath Vallaki to a constructed, flotsam settlement called “The Drain”. In here entire groups of Caliban and rogues alike went about their business as an entire economic iconoclasm beneath the very city that reviles them as hateful “wombfreaks” from conception till death.

   It is apparent that Willem and I require the wealth to obtain a long term, private residence as soon as feasible. I must have a proper laboratory aligned to bring about the Great Work. It simply cannot afford to wait.

Four Days After Temporal-Spatial Anomaly
   Here I begin the day summoned by the garda.

   Naturally I presented myself at the toll of dawn, following a garda whose name I do not make enough effort to recall. There I was brought to the Citadel inside the city, every much as cobbled and near-indistinguishable as the rest of Vallaki. They conversed in the vernacular and shackled—shackled!—my wrists once I had produced my research concerning the Shadow which they took most greedily. While I balk at the idea that I would be detained as a scholar much the way Inquisitors would a sorcerer for matters of neutral testimony, I do not resent my time with the garda, not per se. They are a suspicious subspecies of a species already suspicious, and for that creating a positive first impression was tantamount. I did not complain even as the binders held me in the most uncomfortable position, calmly elucidating my observationes and recommendations as asked. In this way, I have reason to be grateful.

   For the sake of everyone in Vallaki, not only mine. Betrode the scenario where we did not have a ser Moran to bring sense out of these extraordinary confluences of crisis.

   The garda took to my recommendation about open flames to combat manifestations of the Shadow well. Since I was present I made the additional recommendation to suspend that Borcan woman’s “challenges” until circumstance with the Shadow adjourn, which was not rejected inasmuch unactioned. They were, however, forthcoming that she is well aware of my suspicions.

   Good.

***

   I reconnected with Lumina, having seen her on the Old Svalich. Fascinating woman. She claims to be native to the domain Darkon yet espouses none of the aversion to Outlanders or in fact anyone exhibited by other kin and kine. Willem departed shortly to see about deliveries. We are apart more now than ever but such is his way and, beside, the capital he earns pays for the both of us. Between this and boarding with the other Misted at the Morninglordian temple or the Lady’s Rest, the Blue Moon is comparatively no small paradise.

   Would that he’d let my appreciation be shown more often, is all.

   Lumina and I made attendant to another of Jakkiro’s “warbands” to a variety of locales albeit none so affronting as that dilapidated hut askance of arboretum track. It will be days before I am able to scrub the scent of rotting restless dead out of my skin, that much is certain, but the collective shifting of fear, bodies and armor was just as pressing; there had to have been fifteen of us at least. More than I could individually attend to with my sigils which they call “wards”, if their periodic pleas regardless weren’t enough. I was much relieved to be back in Vallaki, as was she.

   Lumina departed and I once again found myself beside the Lord Commander and a subsect of his Banites, approaching the Morninglordian crypts with renewed purpose. The Shadow, still anchored at the deepest hew of its gullet, stirred only through its whispers. The door to its lair remained shut. For this in addition to my lack of the proper varnishes, we regrouped at the Lady’s Rest to strategize and discuss, retiring to the serving room downstairs. Yet this was not everything discussed. The Lord Commander indulged me just enough in my curiosity about himself and the Banite faith to have given me so much more to consider.

   I’d sensed the parallels in theology between his Bane and our Cordovan Law previously, of course. Yet now to have spoken about it privately and openly… if this Bane is indeed as he describes—and the Lord Commander has airs of no liar—then it is entirely within possibility that this Bane is an epithet of the Cordovan Law as Okanus, Himself. This necessitates further research. Could it be so that these worlds which surround the revolved Core all carry the influence, indeed the very essence of the Just Over All? Would that not be the logical conclusion, as Law is Himself the Endless Infinite come manifest? Oh, there is so much to discover! I have never been much of a theologian, but the experience today demands interest, not asks.

***

   Jakkiro is dead.

   A warband formed into the night to chase after what they called “lich”; Jakkiro and I made attendant only to be greeted by a grove of chaotic, sorcerous “fae” and “pixies”. Afterward an attack on Vallaki had the Caliban deflect right to the Lady’s Rest and myself left to the temple. Once matters outside quieted enough for I to peruse outside, Jakkiro was nowhere to be found. Curious, I went with a new warband to the mount, where they said the jaguar knight was guarding freshly stolen people to sacrifice come dawn. The warband were concerned for their detained fellows, but I Jakkiro who was said to be among them. The jaguar knight would subsequently be slain in part due to my sigils and the rest the perilous number of combatants within the warband-come-mob.

   What became after was the foregone end of a mob of that size, squabbling over what to do with the jaguar knight’s corpse erstwhile to infighting about nothing with a scintilla of importance, beside one thing—Jakkiro was an enemy now, they said, as he had allegedly abetted the jaguar knight in his aborted sacrifice. I was skeptical from the outset. Fleeing an attack on Vallaki with me to abettor within, so to say, mere hours? It was and is patently illogical. I took Blaster aside and asked if he knew anything about this treachery and he professed in his Caliban way that he did not. Realizing then that we were in the presence of an angry mob where we might well be dubbed co-conspirators by association, I had us depart. Not long after the mob returned to Vallaki announcing that Jakkiro and two other Caliban in his warband were killed. I do not know where their bodies are interred—I heavily suspect the Morninglordian cemetery, for which I said as much to Blaster. I would very much like to inquire after this “treachery” with Jakkiro himself.

   Restored, preferably.

[augustaugur]

Five Days After Temporal-Spatial Anomaly
   Mister Khorzavi beat on about the Lawgiver at dawn.

   For this he is punctual which I admire;  accordant hellfire and brimstone, less so. I do not anticipate framing the opposing faiths as little more than the domains of the craven, debauched and downright perverted as Mister Khorzavi puts it has earnt him much for all the “proselytizing”—indeed, it would not surprise me at all if the garda tolerate him not for any amnesty inasmuch keeping more Outlanders off the Old Svalich by way of sonic abhorrence.

   Hm.

   I do wonder about that boy.

   Charles, he had said, and a “Baldurian”, which I note that others recognized where I did not. He had about him little more than a ruffled, periwinkle thing of a tunic and the most threadbare of “classy” trousers I have ever yet encountered, watching Sinisma and I with eyes that urged us to rescue him from… all this. ‘Please,’ the expression said to me, ‘save me.’

   As we were still within splitting earshot of Mister Khorzavi, we obliged.

   We took him by the burned house ahead of the western wall first. Impid, small little furia dwell there constantly, and I suspected it would be about the only area to his task in Barovia. Charles was slick with pavor from his forehead to his hands regardless, of course. I suppose I cannot fault him for that too harshly, though it does beggar why the Mists of Death had such ill humor to take this boy away from his “Baldur’s Gate”. Motivation, I assume. The sniveling motivated Sinisma and I like something I have never felt before.

   Was it, so to say, to protect the weak?

   This I cannot be certain. I am my father’s son and Havon of the House Moran did not teach me kindness to the ‘infirm’ or, as the crow flies, ‘pathetic’. After all, a better kindness to the boy would be to tell him to use those blonde locks to find a woman elsewhere, enter their gates and never leave. It certainly would be the less pressing conclusion, compared to betting life and limb ‘adventuring’. But that is not the Outlander way, is it? No. Something inside all of us spurs us on to delve where the average Barovian ignores in incurious, fearful apathy. I suspect—know, really—that this is a function of the Mists that brought us. It is as if silently she has said to every Outlander, myself included, ‘Come to my Land.’

   ‘See what they have done to me.’

   So we prepared Charles for the life he would inevitably lead, not for charity but knowingness. Does that make me, Ezekiel ser Moran, an adventurer? Is it the act or the motivation? To some degree what I saw in Charles as he went his way through the caves largely by shaking I can see in myself not a few short days ago—disgust, uncertainty, pavor. Factors which do not affect me any more. Is it the loss of these traits that metamorphoses Misted to “adventurer”? Is my making attendant to the countless warbands which now pervade Barovia enough to make me one of them? Will, sooner than I dare to think, I find myself gallivanting about “loot” and “spoils” in places the native Barovian has either forgotten or ills to remember?

   Succinctly, I anticipate the answer is no.

   An observer does not become the observed by just occupying the same space. I do not fight these specimens the adventurers call “monsters”—my sigils are enough to benefit them through virtue of sacred geometry, that they do not mind my following them with a lantern and nothing more. They absorb this material wealth as another draws food or water—I have no desire, as Willem takes care of what we need. In fact if there is any “spoil” for myself in this process, it is knowledge. The specimens, their habitats, histories and, indeed, the adventurers themselves.

   Some are after all worth keeping under closer inspection. And what better way to do so than personally on a battlefield, ignorant to any watching?

***

   The Banites are being hunted.

   We were at the Lady’s Rest discussing matters of the Shadow when the abhuman dwarf I recognized as one freed from the jaguar knight spoke into the Lord Commander’s ear—then we were downstairs. Here the dwarf volunteered that they were held up by a restless dead clad in tattered bits of the Banite seal and colors, who demanded all the supplies their camp could possibly provide. Adventurers through and through, their response was refusal first and to arms second. They repelled the—I hesitate in saying “knight” by the parlance of this circumstance separate from the others… Lakovan faith provides the word “revenant” for a being they understand as a restless spirit born again in the flesh to seek revenge from the living, so revenant he shall be. In any case, the revenant was repelled but not before declaring himself as the “Black Hand”, promising death to all Banites in his way. As the dwarf relayed this tale to us I could not help but note the Lord Commander, normally a venerable pillar of a figure, became at once frozen and stiff when the adventurers confirmed that the revenant had struck with an obsidian claw. Pallor had drained completely from what little I could square for him and not armor.

   It is the first I have ever seen Auron Blackcrown rattled.

   ‘Dagor Berenil,’ he said, voice braying none of body. The Banites were all an assembly behind him after that.

   The Lord Commander explained: he and his sect had gone to the mount and after a ruinous event, Berenil was left to his devices, presumed dead. It becomes obvious to me now why the Lakovan precept of revenant is what came to mind to describe the vengeful existence Berenil now occupies in unlife. More Banites joined us downstairs and Willem too, doubtlessly carried by whispers that must have been fluttering about the Old Svalich. I knew what the Lord Commander was going to propose before it had even left his lips—a hunting party for this Berenil immediately, before he had any chance to recuperate or recover from damage done by the adventurers. I did not ask that I nor Willem follow, but offered him and his men the sigils I had prepared for the journey.

   He refused, as I figured he would. That was fine—Salmour has given me much to consider this afternoon, myself.

[A postscript.]

   It is said that dreams are a method to divination, which is not only false but patently heretical. Fate—which divination clumsily tries to provide—is a procedure belonging exclusively and solely to the Endless Infinite who is Law. For a mortal, a man, to traipse into a domain of the Just Above All is to be petulant and childish, interfering with forces beyond our ken because we believe we can. We cannot. It is for this reason sorcerers love divination the most. They seek to play Law the same as a child would seek to play their parent. Fate is not for us to know and it furthermore would serve us nothing if we did, as Law is incorrigible. He provides a fate in line with what we earn through our action or inaction; therefore, to follow Law is to put away toys and accept free will. Quod sumus, ex nobis facimus. What we are, we make of ourselves.

   I am quoting from Inquisitor Raphael, of course. He was always a better theologian. It is not the future I seek with this, but an answer to a question. I shall record it for myself as thus.

***

[The writing here is loose, light, just ghosting off the page. It loses and regains cohesion so chaotically that it reminds the penmanship of a small child.]

the dream
hypnagogic sleeping awake going going admixture essence shadow belladonna limbic system poison paralyzed down poison poison poison

a boy is at the staircase of the under house
he should not be here
the master said the under house is forbidden to everyone especially little boys
the boy is here anyway
he wants to know what happen to the people brought here in the dark

shouting shouting outside the shadow here wont move cant move legs limbic system poison down outside cant get up dreaming

because they never come back

so the boy is hiding and waiting until he is sure he can leave
he leaves real slow and real quiet hes good at this from sneaking into the masters study
thats how he gets to the under house
thinking its like the study
go go go go

he gets down here and there is something strange
a sound
the boy is scared now but he cant go back yet he needs to know so he gets closer real slow real quiet
its like gurgling

the boy is hidden and he can see the master
the master is down here too and working
someone is with them
the boy thinks why is that person so thin and red and why are they making that sound

person says please
master doesnt say anything
boy is hidden

person says please please please
master says that is enough
boy sees something spark

there is no more gurgling

squishy red thing from person master holds in his hands
boy should keep real slow real quiet but he cant
boy says what did you do

master turns around and stares stares stares right at the boy
master says are you afraid
boy says yes it is scary
master says but you want to know
boy says yes i do
master says then come here and i will show you
boy is surprised he wonders if master will do something bad to him if the thing he did to that person was bad but he nods and goes to him

master says you should not be afraid of what you understand
he gives the red squishy thing to the boy
the boy holds it he says okay i will not be scared
the master smiles asks the boy how did you learn not to speak that savage language
boy says i learned it from the other servants they teach me i learn really well and i will be good
master says i know you do and you will
boy says what should we do now i will do as you say master
master shows the boy to a table of many signs and lines
master says put it here and do not call me master
boy does as he is told
master says i am going to show you our great work
call me father
and i will call you ezekiel

[A postscript.]

   I understand.

[augustaugur]

Six Days After Temporal-Spatial Anomaly
   I was right to say the Lord Commander has been rattled.

   He came to me alone on the Old Svalich, bidding I attend him as he rifled through, of all things, weapons and armor from the Vallakian smithies. Willem found us and the both of us watched as I asked if he and his Banites repelled their revenant—he confirmed that they had and would not elaborate further.

   Why then, if your enemy is extinguished, seek so many more tools of war?

   I did not remark as much to the Lord Commander however I suspect he sensed my skepticism anyway. Willem for his part has been privately disturbed by the entire ordeal since he first heard about the revenant with I in the Lady’s Rest. He confided in me the belief that the Land which we dwell must be inherently malevolent to have turned a former sect member against his own fellows for an end the Lord Commander said was unavoidable, an inherent malevolence whose influence we must at best rebuke and at worst excise altogether. I do not agree. It speaks to Willem’s Lakovan dependence on superstition and reluctance toward any extranormal precept for which he is unfamiliar that he tells me this, framing it all as concern for my safety should I continue pursuing the Great Work the way I am. Am I to dismiss these concerns out of hand? No. But I am certain in my ability to adapt should this “great malevolence” be proven empirically.

   Until then, I proceed.

***

   Is there a creature which engenders more mourning and pity than the common lycan?

   Our excursion into the privateer nest below the Lake Zarovich with the Banites was to mixed success. We were forced into retreat before making it to the core where I am told their most misshapen leader dwells; ultimately we required more shields than only Faradis and Auron who were not enough. It’s clear to me that whatever is on the Commander’s mind regarding the revenant is foremost at his thoughts but I did not chance prying about it. We were recuperating at the fishing lodge when another party burst inside, breathlessly insisting that they had encountered a woman on the road cajoling about “a sacrifice” before attacking in the shape of a large red spider.

   I must now rephrase: are there creatures which engender more mourning and pity than the common shapechanger?

   To be a shapechanger is to live simultaneously as a human in the one and an abhuman, aberrant “horror” in the other—doubtlessly their lives then are short, tepid and demarcated by endless strife. Yet the Land provides so many shapechangers to us in Barovia and elsewhere. By what process does a shapechanger come into fashion? The lupine morphs I am told are cursed, but the Red Widow appears to seek the male of her would-be species for a most gruesome procedure indeed. I can be sure that if I expressed this line of questioning—what does a shapechanger contribute to the dialogue of Barovia and beyond—I would be met with a cross face and an answer so resoundingly left at “death” it may as well have been spoken by Him Himself. Herein lies my problem: many would agree that the Mists are alive in some fashion and therefore the Land, so which is it? Do we live in a realm of random, profound acts of senseless heartbreak or a continent whose forces are aware of us as we are them? In the latter scenario would shapechangers then not have to serve a purpose, no matter how unclear?

   More thorough interrogation and research is, as ever, needed.

***

   I made attendant for another warband this evening. Likewise to earlier, we were also told to retreat before we had much chance to chase the ancient to their ends, pavor and its poison plentiful even in these career adventurers.

   There was an undercity.

   An undercity!—Directly beneath the Morninglordian temple no less, which my reading has led me to presume that it is “Terg” in origin. Is there anywhere in Barovia not yet steeped in forgotten history? I doubt it. Nevertheless the adventurers sheepishly retreated after a mere two casualties, refusing to press any further into the maw of the undercity itself much to my dismay. I was able to at least commit the eroded statue at its head to memory, which I must adapt into the sketchbook shortly lest I begin to find any of the finer details fuzzy.

   I expect I will be returning soon, in any case.

Seven Days After Temporal-Spatial Anomaly
   And so ends the story of one Alessandra Contarini.

   Am I satisfied to be vindicated that, indeed, I have had every right to suspect and meddle with her? Absolutely—but I would be remiss if I said that I had so much as thought of her independent to seeing her sit on the Old Svalich these last few nights. I ought to regret the distraction since it prevented a sooner and more urgent call to action, such as it is. I don’t. It was inevitable that the Contarini would be waylaid and I had already notified the correct people of my suspicions. I am no garda and she despised me so thoroughly I much doubt I was ever on the menu of this Red Widow except to settle a score after what I did bother her with.

   As for the Red Widow herself, I am sure she will be hunted by a roving mob before long. It is their nature and, beside, assailing Vallaki turns a fair few heads. I can’t help but to remark:

   “Heed—there will be others.”

   Hm. I must prepare accordingly, then. I will speak to Jakkiro and see about a laboratory as soon as I am able to find the creature.

***

   Well, as far as impressions are concerned I can count myself trusted with the garda.

   I proposed to Mister Sorin after he had made the fate of the Contarini public knowledge the position of an intermediary between themselves and us Outlanders—naturally I found no-one to volunteer for such a hypothetical role but myself. It isn’t as though I must profess a love for the garda true and profound—but they are the establishment, and one culpable to be reasoned with as exemplified by Mister Sorin. Father has taught me to go through the establishment wherever possible as, if you can have all that you need from them, why bother with the pointless danger created by still going over their heads? Did Father have to consort with rogues and criminals to have sorcerers delivered under House Moran?

   No. The Inquisitors were just as glad to do it, themselves.

   Mister Sorin conceded that he would consider the offer and bring it back to the remaining garda, which is all I had a right to expect. The Red Widow attacked the Outskirts then, demanding the Contarini be released to her. Outlanders and garda alike fought and remanded her along with her brood, though not without casualties in the garda. This must have been an outcome for which they were wholly unprepared for as they have sealed Vallaki post-skirmish even as it continues to be well before dusk. Rumor is that the Red Widow took garda with her to ransom again for the Contarini’s release.

   Truthfully, I expect they both will be dead on the morrow.

***

   Holding such an uneviable position, that Sinisma.

   “Lackey”, as I recall her calling it, of the Contarini? Uneviable indeed. I informed her of the Contarini’s fate in the Outskirts as well as the charges levied against her—the woman was at once bleary eyed. I led her downstairs in the Lady’s Rest and she divested to me all but everything to do with her involvement right then. Admittedly I must have been taken off guard by being thrust into the sudden role of counselor as I fell back on paraphrasing from Inquisitor Raphael by telling her that she should seize the merits of free will and correct course on her fate rather than dwell helplessly on the past. What I find surprising is that it seemed to have helped her—in hindsight I am embarrassed at my own blathering from the standpoint of a religion she has virtually no precept of, but I am learning that distress changes others in an uncountable number of different ways.

   And what of this involvement?

   Sure, I had known the Contarini to be spinning promises far too dazzling to ever keep. She had tried it with me and failed; other Outlanders? We know that the Red Widow’s intended victims are males—sensible then for such a creature to consort women for the task of edifying these men for her to select. Misdirection to ensure that they believed these activities to be clandestine as to limit who could say what in an investigation would be but basic operational security in that regard.

   I ask again—is it the motivation or the act which makes the man? Oh, I have no doubt Sinisma is too affected to have wanted to abet the murders of those men—potentially my own murder, myself. Yet if we confirm that it is the act, then the moral of us must shun her and those like her as very vile women indeed, circumspect to the full punishment Law would allow. Do I have a complete answer at this time? I make no illusions that I do.

   For now I shall conclude as thus—‘powerful vraja’ as she wrote isn’t what I seek to command, merely accessory.

   I command understanding.

Eight Days After Temporal-Spatial Anomaly
   Apprentice!

   That is what the Caliban had called me. Willem must have read it on my face as he had some private joke at my expense while I managed to not outright balk as Jakkiro went on. Of course I must qualify that grace with only just, how could I not? The sole man a ser Moran ought to be apprentice to is his father and Barovia is one short of a Havon ser Moran! But I am not ignorant enough to ignore that this is, yes, not Cordova and therefore I am at such a disadvantage that submitting to the Caliban is needed for Willem and I’s near term future.

   Inevitably I will hear about my expression being tantamount to “priceless” in the intervening days, regardless.

   The Caliban was amenable to the points of our discussion which is enough for me to file the whole procedure as productive if nothing else. Jakkiro is concerned with the condition of his people, which I won’t disagree as a miserly affair confined mostly to the cistern under Vallaki at present. He offered his, ahem, lodgings as a laboratory shared between himself and I, which I had to decline. Beside the unconducive location of the premises, the Great Work is not going to be brought about contesting for space with a Caliban alchemist.

   Willem and I must simply remain resourceful in the meantime.

***

   Willem took me on the way to Krofsburg. I found the going nostalgic—not only to be again at Willem’s side, but that the mount, couched by a snowy winter, reminded me of the hinterlands of the Nymari. Willem asked while I was reminiscing if I was satisfied with becoming Cordovan—of letting the Nymari go. Answering this I am not the least conflicted.

   Yes.

   Why wouldn’t I be? I respect the Nymaran way of life, truly. It is a simple and uncomplicated thing, whaling in the coast or the nomadic shepherding of ymna in vast herds elsewhere. But was it not because of a plague upon those very ymna that I was sold to become a house servant, never to see my birth father or mother ever again? Must I then blame the Master Havon who would later be my own father for lifting me out of that circumstance, an existence so fragile as to be upended by one plague? I refuse to. The Nymari taught me pavor, much as the Lakoi taught Willem pavor—of change, of spirits, of adversity and indeed, the Empire itself.

   I know better. And it is my father, not my origin, of whom I have to be grateful for that.

   I wanted to communicate all this to Willem of course, but answering him just then I could not find the adequate words which I now write. Instead I told him that as a boy I learned High Cordovan from the other servants as I knew that was what the Master spoke; the same, I snuck into the study and read from there as I knew they were the Master’s books. Even as a child I was preparing myself for the fate I was owed by Law.

   Has Willem himself not done the same?

   He’s come into my life as a retainer, a sellsword “purchased” by my father as a wayfinder attending me on my tour of Cordova alongside Inquisitors Raphael and Toriel. Despite this he made no real effort to deter my flirting whenever we had a private moment away from the Inquisitors, and I must have been obviously enraptured by him as the first man I could own my love for after the arranged betrothal to that House Skymir boy dissolved. Indeed, he flinched when I stole our first kiss not to recoil but to check that neither Inquisitor had seen. Was he not, then, preparing himself for the fate he was owed by Law? To go from Lakovan retainer to at the side of the scion Moran an equal?

   I have not yet expressed this to Willem. He is harrowed by his precept of the Land, and neither does he believe in the Word of Law. I have caught him meditating upon the sea-spirits which the Lakoi still venerate frequently when he expects me to be asleep. I cannot resent this, per se—if that is what is comfortable to him then it must also be comfortable for me.

   I agree that Lake Zarovich would be a beautiful place to be betrothed, in any case.

***

   The Contarini let slip the noose of her execution.

   I doubt she will trouble the people of Vallaki or all of Barovia after this, nevertheless. My disappointment is more to do with the fact that neither Willem nor I had any opportunity to interrogate her for testimony on her nature as a shapechanger before she transformed and retreated off the walls of the Citadel, the struggle undergone beside the Banites and the garda. One must figure that we ought to be glad that she escaped routed and weak than in any shape to continue assaying her “business” from the shadows.

   Mh. Resolution it may be, but I am not glad for that.

   “Heed—there will be others.” Yes, there will.

   My discussion with the Lord Commander prior to us proceeding to the Contarini’s now-aborted execution, though… We spoke about my dealings with the garda and how such a position would serve to elevate him and his Banites just as well. This evidently must have made an impression on him, as he mentioned that nobility had a place in the church of Bane stating that, indeed, many of his “avatars” were noble, themselves. Obviously the implication is not lost on me and I admit it will take me some days to digest.

   I have seen the tenements of his religion of course—both in theory and when put to practice. But ironically, the longer I am removed from Cordova the more conviction I wield in the Word of Law. Whether I am able to reconcile from this position extolling Cordovan Law to the Bane Auron invokes, I do not yet know.

   What I do know, however, is that this will not be the last we speak on it.