Shaman's Records
Tenth of October, Seven Hundred and Sixty Ninth year since the Seminal War
Shaman Koroc the Singer of Clan Glacierheart recording
Gods above and ancestors below, I have heard the Old Tongue spoken once more. More than simply spoken, I have heard it sung, and it is a sound to move the spirit.
I should start back at the beginning. As I wrote on the eighth of October, I was disquieted by the changes to the hill where Shaman Initiate Mul the Feisty stares at the stars. I decided to show her and Aris Cretu my translation work on the Records of Innoch as a means to satiate their curiosity and distract myself. Shaman Initiate Mul was utterly fascinated, while Aris Cretu recognized the lyrics. More than that, he knew the songs.
That a clan-song from at least seven hundred and seventy years ago was still sung aloud in its original form and tongue was astounding to me. We Shamans still sing some of the old Clan-songs, the ones that speak of battles of legend and warriors of myth, but none are more than four or five hundred years old, and they are all from events or orc that were so much larger than life as to spread beyond clan boundaries.
I had to ask where Aris Cretu learned the song and how to sing it, and his answer shook me. "From Lady SiDabolo, when I worked aboard her fishing boat." The SiDabolos still live, and Aris Cretu has no fear of them. Almost certainly because he has no Idea of who they are. Of the old Clan-songs, the darkest ones, the ones we sing to keep the danger close, speak of the SiDabolos, of the Sadist, the High Lord of the Shadows, and of the Priest of the Hourglass. We sing them only in the softest of voices on the darkest of nights, that our voices will not call their attention to us from beyond the grave. Should I survive this war, I will make a pilgrimage to see this Lady SiDabolo to learn to speak the Old Tongue more fully. My knees shake and my mouth goes dry at the very thought, but duty calls and I must answer.
Shaman Initiate Mul was far more interested in the other sections in the Old Tongue, the ones that looked like ritual. She stared at them for the longest time, as if listening to a voice no other could hear, and then began to babble incoherently. She is sleeping now, but I have decided against translating those sections of the Records of Innoch. Something is wrong about those sections. Wrong isn't quite the word. Reading them gives the sense of smallness, of just how vast the world and the planes are, of the infinite void of colors that envelops the entirety of them and stretches out further than any orc could travel in a thousand times a thousand lifetimes.
Perhaps something of that sense has broken a piece of Mul's mind away. When she wakes, I will find out. In the meantime, Aris Cretu and I will search through the usable portions of the Records of Innoch, searching for Clan-songs related to Clan Ironbark. They may not be exactly what we need, but perhaps there is something that can be adapted to rally Clans Ironbark, Glacierheart, and Westmarch on the eve of this war.
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Aris Cretu's Journal
Tenth of October, Seven Hundred and Sixty Ninth year since the Seminal War
I think I broke Shaman Initiate Mul. Shaman Koroc the Singer was dumbfounded when he learned that I knew how to speak and sing in the Old Tongue, but Mul got this other look on her face. It looked like she could hear something that we couldn't, and it was bothering her. Shortly afterwards, when we were working through one of the stranger sections of the Logs of Innoch, she started rambling in the Old Tongue. I could make out about two words in three, and I still have no idea what she was talking about. Something about a Broken Veil, a Sundered Shroud, and a full moon on an empty night? The capitalizations are intentional, for anyone who may someday read this: Mul was using words with formal ending, like ranks or titles, So I have written them down as such. Something strange is definitely going on in her mind.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
She is asleep now, but I can still see her lips moving in her sleep. I just hope that she wakes up sane again.
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Shaman's Records
Twelfth of October, Seven Hundred and Sixty Ninth year since the Seminal War
Shaman Koroc the Singer of Clan Glacierheart recording
Shaman Initiate Mul finally woke up today. Much of her old spirit has left her, along with the muscle and fat that has fallen off her frame. She looks like a sketch of her old self, and she still has a haunted look to her eyes. She has yet to speak more than six words, and those were only to ask for water, food, and her journal. I fear that wherever her spirit went, not all of it came back. Or perhaps worse, it returned to her flesh changed, shaped by whatever she saw in her dreams.
Aris Cretu is almost pathetically relieved that Mul woke up at all. He blames himself for 'breaking' her, but it is not his fault. We Shamans are more in tune with the world then others, and so are exposed to more of the things that can alter it. Magic is one of those things, and the Old Tongue is often called the language of magic in the old Clan-songs and Records. Mul should be fine, and make a full recovery with some help and support, but perhaps her name will change. She was called the Feisty for her fiery temperament and love of life. All of that has vanished, buried alive by an unspoken dream.
The Record of Innoch lie all but forgotten. Aris still reads through them, learning how to write in the Old Tongue. But I will not touch them again. Perhaps some things are meant to be forgotten. Perhaps there are some things that we mortals are better off not knowing.
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Shaman Initiate Mul the Silent's Journal
Nineteenth of October, Seven Hundred and Sixty Ninth year since the Seminal War
Tonight is the night. The full moon will shine through the Shroud Across the Stars, Illuminating the fragments of my mind. And in the scattered reflections, truth will be revealed onto me. It is not a Truth that Mortals are meant to know. It is a Truth from Beyond the Shroud, from beyond this existence we call reality.
Aris Cretu, bless his innocent Fighter's soul, still blames himself for my madness. In truth, I was always slightly mad. When I read the Record of Innoch in the original Old Tongue, the cracks grew onto fissures. While I slept and Dreamed the Impossible Dreams, the Fissures ruptured all into rubble, spilling down and casting tidal waves across the still pool of my insanity. I opened the gates to the Twisted Kingdom and walk willingly into its enthorned embrace.
By the time the sun rises, I will have re-built the Illusion of sanity by going onto the farthest reaches of the Twisted Kingdom, my path illuminated from beyond the Shroud by the light of the moon. I will open those furthest gates and stride out onto reality, bearing my poisoned gift of Truth within my mind.
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Lord Ochen Shagari’s War Journal
Twentieth of October, Seven Hundred and Sixty Ninth year since the Seminal War.
Something changed last night. My minions staff officers are reporting that morale has fallen. The pack animals are skittish without reason. The Soldiers are reporting spoiled rations and water that tastes of Sulphur. The Gunners are reporting excessive rust, and the other siege engineers are reporting timbers that have rotted overnight.
It will take even more time to bring the Army up to strength after these setbacks. We will not be dissuaded. Morale will be rebuilt. The pack animals will settle or be replaced. New rations and fresh drink will be brought forward. Rust will be scoured away and new lumber cut. The weakest men will have deserted, fleeing right into the waiting arms of the discipline masters.
We have been forced to give the Westmarchers more time to dig in, but this works in our favor as well. They will still have to deal with orc raiders, with the knowing fear that our righteous fury is coming to crush them back into the mud like the helots they are. We can make good our losses, they cannot. Winter moves ever closer, but that will play no favorites. I intend to be barracked down in Fort Westmarch with plenty of time to throw up whatever additional housing my soldiers need. Come the spring, we will resume our march into the Glacierhearts. We will slaughter the orc clans, claim their mountain homes for our own, and make way for the miners to claw their wealth from the stone.
Yet for all of my fiery proclamations in public, there are new shadows at the corners of my vision. Something fundamental has shifted out in Westmarch or the Glacierhearts beyond. In my dreams, everything is ever so slightly tainted by the color of madness.