<posted at the local cleric's guild. ooc replies are fine>

I'm writing from my room here in Ta'Vaalor, for the student paper, I was told it would be a good idea for me by a friend at the Cleric’s guild here. My name is Sister Aeonelas, I’m a journeyman cleric, a pilgrim too, from “the woods” or “the boonies” as some of you like to call them. No offense taken, I didn’t like it there anymore than you did. Family is great and all, and nature is beautiful, but I wanted culture, like I read about in our library. The same thing that called our cousins out of the forest thousands of years ago they say.

My family is very devout to all of the Arkati, every single one. My mother always used to say “Respect them all Aeon, they’re all here for a reason even if we cannae see it.” Despite this, I still don’t feel a pull towards any one or another, so my cleric told me I should spend some time wandering around, visiting different shrines and temples until I felt something, saw something, a sign or vision. I decided that I would scour the lands from top to bottom visiting every blessed and damned temple I came across until one of them decided to pick me up off the turnip farm.
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I’m currently residing in the beautiful and surprisingly friendly Ta’Vaalor. Different town than the landing, and although I suspect it’s because they feel sorry for me, they won’t stop feeding me interesting foods. The guards were a bit scary at first but I appreciate the safety and protection of the city.

My hunting skills have been enlisted by the local furrier who has an endless need for cheap leather, supplied by the overgrown rodent population in the catacombs. In my spare time, I chat it up at the local temple and cleric’s guild, learning all I can from the more experienced. I’ve been told that a good start for my quest to gain the favor of an Arkati is to publish true and perhaps somewhat flattering information about my experiences at each shrine, temple or with each priest.

I’ll start at the beginning, about a year and a half ago. I didn’t start on my quest straight off, I decided to have a bit of fun with some friends who had set off with me. We went to Wehnimer’s, the closest big town to my homelands.

We stayed by the beach first, as I’d not seen the ocean before, I was holed up in a shack with my then boyfriend, Tyvieriidh. We ended up having to move out because we couldn’t afford the rent. He’s got a knack for building shelters and finding us food, but he’s not much interested in the Arkati unfortunately. When the local fishermen told me about an old shrine in an ancient primitive cave dedicated to the “Death God” Onar, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to visit it. Tyvieriidh is claustrophobic so we parted ways, and after being there a few months most of my friends went back to the forest. Here’s my journal entry from that time:

Within the mysterious Mossy Caverns near the Coastal Cliffs of Wehnimer’s Landing, strange bloated gaseous beasts called “whisplings” by the locals, and properly dark vysan by bestiary tomes, float about, eagerly grasping at anything fleshy or metal that comes within range of their stubby arms. Deep within the caverns is an ancient bridge carved of stone that leads across a large underground pool to an equally ancient stone altar. No vysan dares to cross the narrow bridge.

The scene is eerie. Seven monoliths of stone are arranged into a triangle. The architecture of the monoliths is so old, no one remembers where it came from, to the locals of Wehnimer’s it’s always been there - to those who know. A natural hot springs is located within the cave, and it’s theorized that ancient humanoids lived in there, taking advantage of the natural protection of the cave and the warm springs. The evidence lies in the tool carved vent holes above the hot springs as well as the shrine itself, which is undated. It’s rumored that the cave later was reclaimed and became a haven for pirates and bootleggers until the elementals drove them out. While they’re easy enough to avoid for a seasoned traveller and a blood-born huntress like myself, the vysan pose a serious nuisance and a danger to most folk resting or to curiosity seekers. There’s also orcs in the area it’s rumored, I didn’t run into any though.

A woodcut engraving is here: <Seven monoliths form a crude triangle in this room. Thin beams of wood with glowing vines growing on them have been placed on the top of the stones. The strange canopy and silent stone guardians seem to lend the shrine a dark sense of security. You also see a hewn obsidian altar, a narrow stone bridge and a pitch black hole.>

Though you can’t tell from the picture above, the monoliths are emblazoned with a broken white skull, the brutal and sinister symbol of Onar, whose epithets include “Vengeance of the Gods”, “The Obsidian Blade”, “The Divine Patron of Assassins”, “The Dread Hand of Eorgina”, “Prince of Death”, “Hand of the Dark Lady”, “Snuffer of the Light”, and in relation to his hand in teaching Man to make instruments of death, “Gifter of Blades”

The Elves have never taken as much of a liking to Onar as humans have. Kai is the elven soldier’s god, some would say. Perhaps it’s fitting that one of their old folk tales frames him as a tremendous villain who is sent to slay some primitive folk for using fire (lent by Fash’lo’nae in some cases). The myth has varied over time, at first it was a tale about primitive people, now it’s usually a thinly veiled racist-moralistic tale about why humans are bad and shouldn’t have weapons or fire, told to children. In the tale, the folk, human or nae, are astonished as one after the other, each who uses the new gift of fire perishes by having their throats slit.

The confused and simple folk, human or elf as the tale is told, of course look upon the deaths as a sign that fire was responsible for creating the deaths, not realizing the potential of murder yet (absurdly, our history has been violent since the beginning, but it is a folktale after all). One clever woman sees the truth, and in doing so earned the right to wield the blade of Onar, the obsidian dagger.

This confusion is the hallmark of Onar, and indeed, Death itself. In some theology the amorphous shape attributed to Onar is connected to the formless confusing darkness experienced immediately after death. Those who have experienced death and lived to tell the tale through Lorminstra’s instrumentation know this place well.

But this is not only an ornate theological musing. Widely documented cases involving witnesses of an Onarian possession claim that this is exactly how he appears. I am a believer, anyone who thinks Onar doesn’t exist is a fool in my book. Sometimes the witnesses’ testimony is embellished with red eyes, sometimes not. He’s a very mysterious, very subtle fellow, almost catlike were it not for his mechanical, unfeeling intent. One has to wonder what the motivations of such a being might be. What does he want? I couldn’t find any true Onarian priests in the Landing, only theologians who took him seriously. It turns out none of them had actually seen an Onarian posession in person.


But the incidents are not uncommon. In the town of Wehnimer’s Landing for example, during the year 5100, a rash of incidents with bold killers murdering people in broad daylight at the local tavern became so prevalent it spurred a special inquiry into the phenomenon. By the month of Lumnea, the deathtoll had risen to 23 cases of murders, with multiple witnesses, and these were just the ones that were reported to the constable.


Without exception every report records the description of the murderer as a black figure, with some of them detailing the assassins as having a black mist like appearance, others described it as a figure that sucked in all the light around it. Only two of the murderers were ever identified concretely, one of them was pinned to a known criminal underworld figure known as Blades who seems to just wear a lot of black. The other turned out not to be a murder at all, a local Faendryl character, Setzier VonEvenlore, exposed his cloak to a local peasant who promptly had a heart attack and died for reasons not documented in the archives available. VonEvenlore was not charged. The other 21 cases are as of yet unsolved and bear all the markings of an Onarian assassination.


Onar has always been highly revered in a wide array of circles, from the soldier’s tents of the Turamzyrrian Empire to the halls of the rogue guilds and even in the legal courts his power of possession is acknowledged in cases of homicide. His knowledge of Death is said to be unparalleled and highly sought after by those in the martial professions.


Another aspect of Onar that often goes completely unnoticed by those who fear him is that he is not without reasonings in his slaying of mortals. This is why I wasn’t afraid to go spend the night at the shrine.The analogy that can be drawn between this unseen reasoning and the murky causality of life is obvious. There are unknown reasons we cannot hope to calculate for, mysterious churnings of the social spheres we cannot possibly comprehend until it is too late. Delving into the strange and the unknown is like the chaos learning how to use fire for the first time, a knowledge that will lead to a mysterious downfall we have no way of apprehending until it falls upon us. And in many cases, perhaps just like the folk tale, the downfall will not come from the newfound gift itself but from another interference altogether. This is society.


So it is that Onar could also be called the Master of Unconscious Ignorance, the nemesis that plagues us all. It’s a reminder to be conscious of the world around us and not to attract the wrong attention, and even to avoid any attention at all in case we have missed something dire. The primitive environs in which the shrine is housed are hauntingly beautiful, echoing the ancient times when our ancestors struggled against a hostile world, the same time period in which the old tale is set.

But here I am trying to attract the attention of one of the most dangerous beings upon Elanthia, going about it in a completely haphazard way. I suspect, even in writing this I will have called down the wrath of some unseen enemy, somewhere, who will out themselves only to strike at me.


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