Hobbs’ Diary, no snooping Kooplings!
Dear Diary:
Today I hiked the border of Bright Rock cave and went down into Shadytown to visit my cousins. Everyone is graying. They seem to be forgetting more. I cooked a big pot of shroom stew and did a light show. The shady Koops orange'd up and began to sing! While they sang I patrolled the outskirts. Dark creep is spreading over the fading crystals. I re-charged what I could, but I don’t have enough sparkle. I’ll ask the review board for another allocation of sparkle shine, but they are so busy with production, I doubt they can spare any.
Oh, and on my way back to Brightville a curious thing occurred; some shady Koops were glowsticking a dark creep tendril, but it didn’t behave like a normal umbral pest, so I dispelled darkness and a white rabbit appeared! The rabbit looked at me and I heard words of thanks in my mind before it scurried away!
Dear Diary,
Sad news, I didn’t get the part. My audition for “handsome elf number 7” was rejected by central casting because “your handsome elf illusion was neither handsome nor recognizably an Elf”. I guess that’s fair. My disguises are pretty random and usually cross eyed. Welp, I guess I’ll keep practicing and working with the stage crew.
Dear Diary,
The Brightville shiny stones seem a bit dimmer. I waited in line to see the council today about the increased dark creep in Shadytown. I asked if the central crystal chandelier was dimming too. They got very angry at me. I was surprised. I asked if we could maybe share some of the stage light shiny stones to help the Shadies push back dark creep, but the masked council just had me removed. Now I’m told I shouldn’t show up to work tomorrow? What’s happening?
Dear Diary,
That white rabbit came to see me. His name is Number One. He speaks without moving his mouth. He says he’s a messenger from the Shining Mount, the Temple of the Sacred Flame has been damaged. He says he told the council that the sorcerers need help, but they refused to listen. Maybe this is why they got so mad at me? They need so much of the imported sacred light to work the scrying stages and keep the operas going. Tele-magic shows make all the money and the council is so rich now! Oh what am I feeling, is this anger? Ooooohh I don’t like this, diary!
The Rabbit asked if I could help him. He asked if I know any powerful mages who could fight an evil corruption. Well, I know how to keep the dark creep away and light a stage, but I don’t know about all this!
Dear Diary,
I went to Shadytown and asked my cousins for help. They seem scared. I noticed a masked watcher watching us. My cousins seemed unwilling to talk openly, and hurried back to work glowsticking the creep.
When I got home there were more Masked councilmen at my hole house. They gave me my belongings and told me I live in Shadytown now. They escorted me out of Brightville, my neighbors looking away, my shiny cousins nowhere to be seen! They took me to the outskirts, where the deep dark creep borders Rock Cave. They pushed me into the creep! I couldn’t believe what was happening. My vision darkened, I felt my color draining. I tried to cry out but the creep muffled me. I tried to spark a magic light but my sparkle juice was drained away. I was dying, looking out from the dark as the masked ones walked away.
Then I saw the rabbit, leading my Shadytown cousins to me. They batted back the creep with glowsticks and pulled me out, just in time…
They told me the council had declared me anathema, that I was not welcome in the bright light. I told them my theory, that they were hoarding all the Shining Mount imported Sacred Light for the tele-magick stage production so they could keep scry-casting and getting paid. This angered them, but what could they do? They were shady, gray and weaker every day.
The Rabbit told us there was a chance, if we help restore the Sacred Flame, they would personally vouch for Shadytown and make sure our allotment of Sacred Light was sufficient.
I had no home, my cousins were fading, my auditions a disaster, my illusion magics were a mess. What did I have to lose?
“Lets do an adventure, Number One,” I said. We gathered glowsticks and myco-loaf and snuck into the mirror stone tunnels, reflections of the Sacred Light bouncing between facets all around us.
Dear Diary,
It’s been a week in the crystal pipe. The shine is disorienting at times. There is definitely something off about the Sacred Flame, some wisp of darkness in it. I can’t look away because it’s reflected a thousand times all around me.
I was pulled out of reverie to find Number One looking at me like I had food on my face, so I checked my reflection. My illusions are flowing and I didn’t even know it! I still can’t control the exact appearance, but I was conjuring a bubbling façade of images from... from I don’t know where. I looked like an old human with weary eyes, then a squid face, then a spirit of magic incarnate! If only I could control what image comes from my imagination. I don’t even know what I’m imagining half the time!
Number One leapt back. “How do you know the Silent One?” they asked me. I told him I don’t know what they mean. I rushed to check my reflection and caught a wisp before it transitioned, some sort of gray blur of swirling lines with eyes like deep portals and... teeth.
Number One told me I should turn back, that this adventure is not going to succeed. They wouldn’t say anymore.
Dear Diary,
We reached the Temple complex. Number One took me through an access tunnel to avoid entering via the infested Labyrinth. They told me more about the situation, that some of the sorcerer priests had tried to corrupt the Sacred Flame during the stoking ritual. They say a few uncorrupted sorcerers were able to interrupt the coup and save the flame with defensive wards. High priest Amir [Wizard #5137] locked the twisted souls of his fallen brothers in the Labyrinth.
Amir is a stern man, saying very little. He seemed unimpressed with me and asked where the powerful Masked Kooplings were. The halls of the cloister were eerie and empty as he took me to my chambers. There are blank-faced statue Golems tending to the daily chores. Amir says the few surviving priests have been sent as emissaries to petition support.
I met a young icewalker named Oberon [Wizard #2473]. He isn’t much of a talker, but seems nice enough. He’s constantly practicing his lightning bolt in his room-- the thunder clap makes it hard to sleep.
Number One scurried away on other business. It’s cold and creepy here, only a few braziers lit in the dusty main hall, golems scuffling around, Emir in his chambers writing letters day and night.
Oberon asked what I can do. I showed him my dazzle lights and he laughed. “Not gonna stop a ghoul from biting your orange face, innit?”
I don’t know. Will it?
Dear Diary,
Phew, that put the bright orange back in my cheeks! Amir led a squad of armor golems, Oberon and myself into the Labyrinth. My heart pounded as the clockwork seals of that massive stone door unlatched! There was mad laughing and taunting on the other side of the door, but when it opened, nothing…
I put a rainbow fairy glamour on the lead golem. We progressed through the chambers seemingly at random, Amir locking and sealing all the doors we did not use. We were securing a path to the Inner Sanctum. In the silence I began to hear whispers, small voices in my head; “Do you trust this traitor? Will you be his fleshy sacrifice?” The voices intensified, I looked around at the rest of my party and they all seemed distracted. Amir was grabbing his ears and shaking his head, not minding control of the golems as they wandered too far ahead.
The lead golem turned a corner and the light went out. All was still for a moment, until Amir shouted “They’re upon us!”
I flared a bright crystal glamour, a stage trick we use to distract the audience while changing the stage illusions. In the strobing flash I saw their crooked, grinning faces-- pustulent corpses in bloody priest robes, twitching as they lunged at us with knives of sharpened bone.
The glamour dazzled the ghouls long enough for me to step back and leave a mirror image in my stead. A ghoul with a gaping head wound hissed “You’ll never take the flame!” as he stabbed through my illusory self and stumbled to the ground. I slammed my heel on his scabby arm and heard a crack.
The hair on my neck stood up a split second before a crack and a boom and a bright fork of blue electricity. Oberon screeched “Reeeeeeeeee!!” as he channeled an impressive chain of lightning. A string of undead priests crackled and convulsed. In the melee I saw Amir raise his scepter, the jewel glowing with a red, vacuous hunger, and fell a ghoul with one stroke, repeatedly bashing him once down. The golems returned and formed a shield wall around us. Oberon passed out from exertion. We withdrew in haste.
Of course I’d rehearsed silly battle scenes before, but this was something else! If the fight was an audition, would I get the part?
Dear Diary,
With Oberon’s help I’ve learned to focus my magic light into a sort of shiny ray. I can light a candle with it!
We’ve settled into a strange routine, clearing the labyrinth chamber by chamber. The ghouls flit around and try to intimidate us. When we return to old battle scenes, the bodies we’d laid low are all gone.
The ghoul priests make strange statements, as if we are the aggressors and they the protectors of the flame! When I ask Amir about this he tells me to stay strong against the raving of the mad, that they seek to undermine our confidence.
I wonder where Number One has gone.
I saw something strange the other night. I was sleeping poorly with ghoul ramblings rolling in my thoughts and went to Amir for encouragement. His chamber door was askew and I saw him standing in a ritual circle, his scepter held high above his head, and it seemed like a blood red energy was flowing from the scepter’s jewel, into his mouth! I snuck away.
I told Oberon what I’d seen. He thinks we need to find out what Amir is up to.
Dear Diary,
We’re close to the warded Inner Sanctum of the Sacred Flame. Amir has sent instructions to the Fireside Tribes to open their receiving portals wide and reverse polarity to pour in extra energy for the Stoking. This has to happen when we enter on the night of the first moon.
Another wizard has arrived, Alatar [Wizard #2071], the Grandmaster of the Rod and Rabbit adventuring crew. He has another white rabbit with him that looks just like Number One, but he won’t talk to me? Alatar is going to help with the stoking ritual and final cleansing of the temple.
During one of our skirmishes Oberon’s lightning blasted the face off a Golem. Amir was mad, but Oberon promised he could repair the construct.
Later that evening he told me the plan. He told me to use an illusion to look like a Golem! He knows my disguise spell is slightly out of my control, but he says it doesn’t matter, he can just say he’d done a bad job repairing the golem and it looks funny now! Clever guy!
I disguised myself as an automaton, my skin turning gray like a shady Koop, and my face contouring into a statue with crossed, googly eyes!
“What is this mockery?” Amir asked Oberon.
“The googly eye enhancement will confuse the ghouls!”
Amir ordered me to bring him his dinner. I stood behind him as he ate and wrote furiously, obsessively checking that his scepter was by his side. Alatar’s silent white rabbit lay in the corner of Amir’s room on a bed of hay, watching me. At one point I think it may have winked.
“Achh! All wrong!” Amir crumpled the letter he was writing. “Toss this in the fire you defective machine!”
Moving robotically I took the crumpled letter to the fireplace, quietly unfolding it. I scanned it quickly using the speed reading techniques I’d learned when studying scripts.
By my calculations the harvesting is complete, the rod is brimming with souls. On the first night of the 70th moon, the Fireside Tribes have been commanded to open their portals and add mana to the stoking ritual. Per the rabbit’s suggestion, I’ve hired the brute Alatar to defend the ritual chamber with my foolish lackies as I trigger the final cascade.
Master, the time is nigh! Our paths will be joined in the harmony of silence, to drown out all the noise of this irrelevant world! All of the ignorant souls of my weak brothers and the spoiled tribes will hear the truth of eternal silence!
I threw the letter in the fire and returned to my station. The rabbit stared at me all night as Amir wrote feverishly then slept in his chair, cradling the scepter.
When Amir ordered me to bring him breakfast I swapped with another Golem and told Oberon everything. We had a pow-wow and made a tricky plan.
Wish me luck Diary.
Dear Diary,
I’m still alive, I think. I guess I’m not sure, I feel different after what I’ve seen.
The fancy wizard Alatar led the golems before us through the winding Labyrinth. He whistled a cheerful tune and the ghouls exploded in clouds of gore when he looked at them. It was truly frightening.
We guarded Amir as he dispelled the wards in the Inner Sanctum. He holstered the scepter while unlocking the door. I saw my opening, Oberon released a little thunder from his bum in a boom fart to distract as I made the swap.
The vault opened and I saw it in person for the first time! The light and heat of the Sacred Flame, even slightly diminished, was intense. The chamber was ornately scrawled with the records of the flame, the names of all the sorcerers and tribespeople that had stoked it for centuries. In a ring around the room stood the Fireside Portals that transmitted the flame’s energy to the far flung nations that pay tithe to the Sacred mMunt.
I started sweating like I was in an audition. I saw Oberon palming the scepter behind his back. A screech went out and a horde appeared at the chamber door, the golems braced in a phalanx barely containing the seething mass as Alatar deftly sliced the madmen with lasers.
“Guard me as I prepare!” Amir ordered.
“You are false, betrayer!” A large ghoul hissed. “Betrayer!” A chorus of growls reverberated in the vaulted room.
This was the moment I had been waiting for. I remembered my training, my time in Shadytown, my journey with Number One through the crystal conduit, all the auditions I’d failed. This was for my cousins and all the tribes!
“Look, Amir, the moon is risen!” I pointed up to the aperture in the apex of the vaulted ceiling. An image of the moon was perfectly framed.
“What? It can’t be time already!”
“And the tribes are widening the portals!”
“I must hurry!”
Oberon blasted a shock of lightning at the ghouls. “We can’t keep them back much longer, Amir, get a move on sir!”
“Don’t be silly young wiz–” Alatar began.
“Tribes, lend me your strength!”
Wisps of energy flowed from the portals around the room. Amir was too focused on his incantation to notice how tightly I’d clenched my buttocks, or that all the tribespeople in the portals had googly eyes.
“Something seems off, Amir.” Alatar offered.
“Silence! The summoning is nearly complete. Quelqueth dominarus Shibboleth omni illuminatus Gorgoth! Take these souls, eat this flame, and bring the silence to our speck of dust!”
Amir raised the scepter above his head, the power from the portals all coalescing around him. He pointed the scepter towards the Sacred Flame. “Great black heart, devour these fools!”
The scepter cracked, but nothing happened. My cheeks unclenched and the moon disappeared, the portals shrank to a neutral size.
“That was a curious incantation, Amir.” Alatar quipped.
“This isn’t my scepter, this is a spoon! What trickery is this?!”
“Looking for this?” Oberon whipped the scepter from behind his back and smacked Amir across the face.
“Let us have him! Let us restore the flame.” the bloody sorcerer corpses said in unison. Oberon pointed the scepter at the golems and they broke ranks to let the ghouls pass.
A large undead priest with a charred skull and regal composure held out his hand and the scepter flew into it. The priests stood around the flame and began chanting.
“You betrayed the brotherhood. You sullied the flame with dark desire. May the flame burn away your doubt before we meet again at the last bonfire.” The undead priest picked Amir up by the neck and held the scepter high. Screaming souls streamed out from the rod and swirled around the chamber, tearing at Amir.
The moon was high and Fireside Tribes opened their portals in time to see Amir drained of all energy, his soul chased and grappled by the souls he had harvested. They forced his mote of life into the flame. The priest then kicked his emptied body into the inferno as the screeching reached crescendo. All the undead sorcerers leapt up and followed Amir into the fire. The Sacred Flame flared to white hot intensity.
My eyes would not shut. Though I saw Amir's soul dragged to the center of the flame, some knot of him struggled and kicked. I swear I saw some strange puff of black smoke escape. I saw a face in the smoke as it flew up through the ceiling. It was a hateful skull, chewing silently.
The chamber was still. The flame burned without a care, sturdy, impassive to the trials of our hearts. I hugged Oberon. He was shaking.
“Pretty magical, eh lads?” Alatar said. He picked the scepter up off the ground. “Guess I’ll take this for safekeeping. Lots of cleaning up to do, no time to waste!”
Dear Diary,
Some sorcerer priests have returned from abroad. They all experienced something similar, waking up from a spell of confusion, unsure of why they’d been wandering so far from the Mount.
These priests are repairing the temple, with the assistance of Alatar and his a few of his Rod and Rabbit mercenaries. Alatar’s warriors are a gruff crew. He says he’s sent squads to visit the Fireside Tribes and assess if any ambient corruption leaked through the portals. He asked Oberon and I if we would like to join the Rod and Rabbit. Me, a sellsword, in real life?! Seems ridiculous, but he was very impressed by my illusions. I could tell Oberon was giddy at the offer, but he composed himself and spoke of duty to his tribe, and a longing for the ice (I think he misses his girlfriend, Pashmina).
Number One returned, or at least started talking to me again, I’m not sure. He doesn’t remember anything after our journey in the tunnel.
Oh boy, am I tired. Can’t wait to show Oberon the Bright Rock Caves and central Koopville. He says I’ve gotta see the snowglobe his hometown is in. Sounds dope to be honest. Can’t wait to tell my cousins about all this. I think I have enough material for a script now and just my luck, all the characters in it will have googly eyes!
Entered by: 0xf3Db…33fA and preserved on chain (see transaction)
