Jessa puts a sorrowful hand to her mouth at the sight. "Lathander, right this wrong."
11. Temple of Lathander
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The dragonborn looks on the lifeless face of his son and sighs. Without looking up, he holds out a hand to Jessa, who gives him a large diamond. "I know I said I'd do whatever you needed once you brought Arty back, but I'm going to need another hour. You understand." And then he begins spellcasting, calling on the Morninglord to renew his son's life.
...
Stella follows the group to the temple and back, mostly silent. She's disturbed by the Umberlee priestess's attitude and irked by Awie's attitude in return, but bows gratefully as they depart and return to Duke Belt.
...
Nearly two hours after separating from Skie, she attempts to summon her spider familiar back to her and ask what it saw while keeping an eye on Skie. While summoning it, she hoped it wasn't crushed somewhere along the way...
"Of course," Stella smiles weakly, leaving the Duke to perform the powerful magic, trying to call the boy's soul back to the body.
The tenderness of the moment doesn't last long. "What were you THINKING?!" Belt belts. "What would I have told your mother? You, sir, are GROUNDED!"
Arty rubs at a scuff on the floor with one of his toe-claws. "Aw, Dad...
A small blur crosses the floor as Riril darts out from behind a pew. The boy tackles his friend in a hug. "Arty! I thought you were gone for good!"
Belt looks at the young boys and shakes his head. "You're BOTH grounded. I'm telling your mother, Riril."
The boys look up at that, wide-eyed... and then they burst out laughing. A moment later, even Belt joins in. Their voices echo through the temple, bringing smiles to the faces of the few other priests and supplicants in the large hall.
"I have a personal request, I seem to have a curse or a block on my memories. My friends tried to remove it but it proved… dangerous. Do you think you could help me?" Dieter asks.
He leads Dieter to the privacy of a small room connected to the main hall and asks specific questions about what Dieter remembers, how long ago it was, when it was he first met Tulfgar. As Dieter answers, the dragonborn murmurs divinatory spells, seeking aid from Lathander.
Dieter's hardly an expert at reading the facial expressions of dragonborn, but from the lowered brow ridges it seems that Belt isn't coming to happy conclusions.
After a half hour of questioning, the Duke leans back in his seat, causing it to creak ominously under his weight. "Son, you've got a condition. You've been touched by a great evil, or more likely, a handful of them. I won't speak their names, for none know them. Suffice it to call them the Dark Powers, ancient beings that have been locked away in another realm for untold millennia." He taps Dieter on the chest with a thick claw. "That dread realm... is where you seem to be from."
Belt shakes his head gravely. "Your mind has been sundered. Perhaps by them, or perhaps you did it yourself as a means of survival. I can, with Lathander's light, restore your memories. However..." His gaze pierces Dieter's. "...you will certainly not find yourself any happier. 'Ignorance is bliss', as some say."
He gestures and creates a small, heavenly light above his palm. His golden scales glitter in its radiance. "Lathander is the Morninglord. Whatever your dark past, He can make you anew. Today you can turn back to the shadow in search of answers, or you can be spiritually reborn and move forward with the life you want to live."
The horned head tilts as he regards Dieter. "He grants you this choice: your memories, or your salvation."
He pulls back with a grave expression. "But remember, boy, where you come from. One day, when you're ready, you'll have to return and face what's happening there."
I can’t turn my back on them, I have to do whatever it takes." Dieter cries
How could Lythander ask this of him. His emotions a storm of anger and confusion saturated with grief. The storm
Breaks and Dieter makes peace with his destiny
"Restore my memories, and pray for me"
Dieter asks.
The dragonborn closes his eyes and speaks a sacred prayer, then lightly touches Dieter's forehead with a single claw...
And Dieter remembers… He is from Darkon, a mist-shrouded Domain of Dread in the Shadowfell. A shattered land, one on the brink of a supernatural calamity.
Even as this realization comes to him, the unfamiliar words develop into clear memories. His home, the city of Il Aluk. His family, nobility. A crown…
A sudden pain pierces his temples, and Dieter instinctively lifts his hands expecting to find holes bored into his skull. Instead he touches… blood-slicked wood, twisted branches growing out of his temples and wrapping around to meet at the back of his head, like some kind of circlet. A crown…
For he is the son of Darkon’s wizard-tyrant king, Darcalus Rex.
Memories flood Dieter’s mind… a realm of night, a plagued populace, undead horrors in the streets and in his home. Darcalus Rex’s bloody sacrifices to empower himself, to break free of his cursed prison. His mother pushing Ada into his arms and telling him to run. Into the Forest of Shadows, through the monsters that await in the mist…
…and losing Ada. His little sister’s cries of fear, her calls for help.
Dieter feels the icy hand of shame grip his heart as he remembers calling on his magic to flee the mists and the terror, to leave it all behind. To leave her behind. His chest hurts so much he can hardly breathe. He can barely move.
Blind to all around him, not even knowing which way is up, Dieter fights to move his arms, his legs. He’s surrounded by heavy, cold dirt. Claustrophobia seizes him, and in his terror-induced clawing, fingers raw, he finally breaks through to warm air. The light of a sun he has never before seen sears his vision.
Coughing up dirt and gasping for air, Dieter hears screams of alarm. Horrified faces directed at him. Still trying to pull himself free of his hole in the ground, the boy throws his head back and hits something hard. The last thing he sees as his vision fades is a tombstone with his own blood smeared across it…
The next memory is the oldest Dieter’s had up until today. He wakes up in a comfortable, warm bed. The kindly dwarf’s smile is the first thing he sees. "Well now, look who’s awake? Easy now, boy, you’ve had quite the ordeal. But you’re safe now. Why don’t we start with your name? I’m Tulfgar…"
And just like that, Dieter’s two lives come together, his memories link, and he’s aware of several important facts:
The land he came from is a cursed place, and he should never have been able to leave it. The shadow druid he met in the Cloakwood is indeed his sister. His mother, if she’s alive, must still be in Darkon, along with whatever other of his father’s tormented subjects might have survived the arcane calamity wrought by Darcalus Rex's ambition.
And, he knows some magic.
He recoils at his actions, he abandoned his sister and worse attacked her. He remembered each blow he landed against her and felt each cut of his greatsword on his flesh.
He wished the ground would open up and swallow him. He wished to curse the gods of this land and die but he could only blame himself.
"Is this it then?" Dieter cries aloud. His whole life was a lie. Some fantasy he had conjured to protect himself.
He looks down at his hands and body. Seeing his vibrant clothing with its crisscrossing patterns he grabs two handfuls and rips his tunic from the collar to the middle of his chest revealing scarred tissue.
Dieter regains some composure "T-thank you, It seems you were correct though I did not doubt you."
Goodbye Puppet master, till we meet again
Lythander was real, Dieter knew, and he was a cunning god.
Regaining his strength Dieter stands tall with power and purpose, holding his head high. The prince had returned and blood would be shed, spears will be shaken, it was a dark day.
Time to find my friends. Dieter thinks to himself as he steps out the temple.
"The courageous fear what must be feared—and often act contrary," Grandpa Arannis' words echo again in her mind again.
Her smile fades. "That's actually when I started having visions—after I noticed my strange scribings in my tome and started studying them. A gift and a curse, apparently. I've never felt such...terror, as I had that night I wandered into the Cloakwood and into the Shadowfell...Viconia offered to teach me more about the magic of the Shadowfell. It was...soothing. I haven't quite been able to get it out of my head. Every night I read the stars because it's helped us stay alive here and there, but I do it fearing I'll hurt myself, scrawl something in blood again and feel the stars like baleful eyes. Like I'm...some kind of monster. Or some kind of tool."
She shakes her head and looks at Aiwë, then shrugs, exasperated. "I know it doesn't make sense. I'm not afraid of being assassinated anymore. But this just keeps getting bigger and...it's tiring to keep going. I want to keep going. Especially since the rescue at the mines, I know more of who I am now! But," she turns forward and looks down and sighs, almost longingly. "The Quiet. The Nothing. It's...very appealing lately. But perhaps knowing more about why I'm having these visions. Maybe that'd make them less scary. Less overwhelming?"
Alone
The word made Stella squirm, her eye-stars flickering indigo. Yes, that seemed to be part of it, if not the crux of it. Was that why she had been so flustered and protective of everyone since the start of this journey? Deep down, was she just worried about being alone?
If so, then why did the idea of others being with her while she studied the stars bother her so much?
She wanted to be with Aldous, but despite Aiwë's diplomacy with Lord Silvershield, her station in Kuldahar hardly seemed relevant to the man. It seemed ridiculous that he had so much influence on whom his son would marry...but that was the way they did things here, and she would respect that. There would be other men, certainly. But she would still spend as much time as she could with him until they inevitably had to part ways.
She now had a better idea of who she was, but where did she belong? And with whom?
Aiwë was still here. And Dieter too. But what would happen when this was all over? Their interests, their paths. They would go separate ways.
In her mind's eye, she imagined herself in Candlekeep, with an observatory and all the books she could want to keep her company. Yet still cooped up and alone.
After an uncomfortably long time, her eyes shifting between a dull indigo and a sickly green, Stella shakes her head.
Visions. That's what they were talking about here.
"Yes, someone to watch while I...do whatever it was I do when seeing the stars would at least provide us some information and security," she nods and forces a smile at Aiwë before continuing to walk towards the temple. "Thanks."
As she speaks with the priests and listens to what they have to say, Stella gets the feeling that what she's seen may not be tied to Ilmater at all. The pure sense of understanding she experienced seemed to be... well, more than what she's expected of Ilmater's teachings.
There is something in the priests' words that catches her attention, however. "Candlekeep is known to have the writings of many visionaries and oracles. Perhaps what you've shared with us would make more sense to the scholars there who have studied such things."
Also, one of the priests, an older elf, seemed to grow mesmerized while looking at the strange script in her journal. "Excuse me, my attention must have wandered. Something about this seems so familiar... but I can't place it. It certainly isn't Elvish, and it doesn't seem to be Sylvan... Something... older...?"
The Silvershield girl went into the Lower City and into a tavern there and changed her clothes in a back room. After waiting in the establishment for an hour or two, a man came to meet her, and together they made their way to the Docks and boarded a ship. The ship was just heading out when Stella summoned the spider back to her.
One of the other priests pipes in. "Grand Duke Jannath might be able to tell you more. She is very well-studied."
"I feel like you two know more about Skie then you’re letting on"
The talk of manuscripts and academics has clearly lifted her mood. Perhaps the fact the priests didn't seem to think the visions were related to Ilmater also comforted her.
"The only thing I know that you don't is that her tavern songs are low class and she was definitely kissing on a boy before she came home last, and neither of those are actually news given what Stella said." She puts her hands on her hips. "Besides, Dieter, if I were going to help someone elope, I wouldn't tell you anything." She waves a hand.
"Getting on that ship was planned and meditated, and we are not entitled to the business of a duke's daughter. Nor are we required to give anyone in her household updates on everything we notice." She raises an eyebrow at him.
"That would be weird Dieter."
...
"Getting on that ship was planned and meditated, and we are not entitled to the business of a duke's daughter. Nor are we required to give anyone in her household updates on everything we notice."
Stella frowns and squints slightly, eyes shifting to a calculating green. "Huh. I...suppose that's all true." She shakes her head. "But, if I'm asked, I'm going to tell the facts. Either way, we need to be wary—if Skie returns, her identity needs to be checked, in case of doppelgangers. If Lord Silvershield is being targeted, getting to him through his eager daughter seems like a pretty solid strategy."
Rolls
Performance - (1D20+0)
(13) = 13