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grimoirevol2 · 7 years ago

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Carn.

Yes, we’re finally back. It’s us. To stay, this time. (As long as we can.)

This is Seven. We’re glad to be home, so we’re going to compile everything we learned about the figures who broke into this blog temporarily using a spell. This Grimoire entry will constitute our moratorium on Carn for now. The arc is “over”, I guess you might say.

Please, don’t forget to ask us questions if you’re curious about anything we’ve mentioned here. In addition, please consider joining our Discord if anything urgent goes down and we cannot report on it here.

It’s going to be a long post. I think its our longest yet at 2200 words or so. We’ll add a break after this introduction so that the Grimoire doesn’t get overwhelmingly long.

The backstory.

Elcarn Jin (el-cahrn jyne) was an elf who had been recorded as arriving on this plane (constituting XPA09) using the ley line ‘Iagon Maenour’, apparently in 2015, along with several other naufragé beings constituting his “troupe”. This included ‘Yikes’, a pharye with an intense love for artistry, and ‘Fold’, a female dullahan seeking penitence for sin. Carn later confessed that there were 4 other companions, but they have either left him (leaving their mention unnecessary) or were disintegrated by Carn’s own hand. He claims his time in Leyland was long, boring, and terribly droll, not worth telling.

(For the record, ‘Iagon Maenour’ is our ley line.)

As an elf, Carn’s primary motivation appeared to be to carve out his own corner of the world. Elves are known to be very possessive people, so wherever Carn could sit down and find his own food meant everything was good… until it wasn’t anymore. See, because most naufragé were formed by sentient life energy, they do have a need for fulfillment, in any form. They need “progression”. Unlike celestials, they aren’t content with a duty where they just do the job forever, until they can no longer do it. They want more.

In 2017, Carn’s troupe began hunting elsewhere. He began expanding, searching inside his dominion for more tracts of land that he could use for his hunts. He searched south, following the ley line using the rivers of the area, and eventually came upon NY 3. Here, Carn learned that he and his troupe had to blend in better.

Eventually, he said, through trial and error and hitchhiking, in January of this year, they came upon Wolf Valley, staying at Grayskull Motel using an old converted ice-cream van, which Carn says they stole from a junkyard and restored to working order using spells. They had slipped into our town right under our noses, using their natural abilities to appear more human. They had been paying for everything using the same method they used to restore the van (even though the cash was faked, it would need close inspection to uncover its falsehood).

We didn’t catch their scent because it was around this time that we had been investigating the return of a particular clan of lycanthropes to the town, and on February 2, there was a particularly brutal battle in the Hotel Wolfen, that eventually spilled out onto the street where we achieved victory easier. Evidently, Carn saw us fighting that day, and although he knew he wanted this town for himself, knew the troupe couldn’t stay around our town without us noticing.

He backed off for a while. The troupe lived out of the van, traveling up and down NY 3, hunting when they had to and passing into Canada using magic when they had to. This is probably why in March we noticed that there was a Hell of a lot of disturbances on the ley line during that time, which we had attributed to Pearl Curlew (Rebecca’s daughter) attempting to control her magic. But obviously, that was only part of it.

In May, we traveled to Canada to investigate an unrelated invasion far north along the ley line. It was at this time that they discovered how they might teleport along the ley line. After we’d returned from Canada, we were told by a state trooper through the police that a vehicle, a restored ice-cream truck, had been abandoned at the nearby convenience stop for several days, and had been relocated to an impound lot downstate. Carn confessed this was almost immediately after they realized that they could teleport in such a manner, although spells of this sort are very taxing and result in exasperation for weeks on end.

The break-in.

In August, of course, I began this Grimoire after reminiscing about the one we’d lost. It was at this point that the troupe seemed to have remembered we existed. This is an unknown. We’ve had no idea how they came back across us, but it’s not like we were trying to hide.

On Tuesday, August 28th, as we were returning home that night on foot from a monthly Town Hall meeting, we noticed that the Church’s power was out. As we walked up, we realized that Sally, the keeper of the church, was nowhere to be found. It was very peculiar to us. In the quiet night, amidst the crickets, we suddenly heard a very loud BANG sound, almost like a gunshot, come from the back of the church. We dashed in and then upstairs. Sally was holding a large knife, probably from Six’s stuff, and upon seeing us she dropped it and collapsed in exhaustion.

She explained to us, after calming down, that several beings had broken into the church’s upper floors (the Agency), breaking the ward that Rebecca had placed on our window and dashing away with something black and rectangular. One quick search later, we realized Six’s fucking phone was gone. Of all the valuable things, they took that. I would’ve thought they were a human attacker by stealing something monetarily valuable, but Sally assured us that these things weren’t from how they appeared to her.

After Yikes’ last post, we searched our records for everything on Carn. We didn’t have anything for a name like that, although his actions (using subordinates, playing arbitrary games, condemning people who do not play his games correctly) were telltale signs of an elf on the warpath.

Since we were obviously hacked, I texted Rebecca to try and log in. When she couldn’t, I panicked. There was no way I was going to lose another Grimoire, let alone Six’s phone. She texted me back after my minor panic attack that they mentioned a warding spell, and their repeated use of the word “YOU” was emblematic of a spell’s maintenance.

After searching the woods for a bit by doing some flyovers, we deduced it’d probably be best for us to continue the search the next morning. That’s when the “gift” at midnight on the 29th was released.

They were recording Six’s phone playing a old-timey tune.

I quickly recognized that they were begging us to find the phone. After some deduction we followed a foot trail into the woods.

To make a long story short, we found the phone at around 12:35 AM, and the song “The Girl in the Little Green Hat” playing on repeat. It had to be telling us something. This was a very obviously a game by an elf who was trying to be very obvious.

The search.

We regained our energy through rest after that. Our investigation into these individuals began almost as soon as Rebecca put up that post warding the Grimoire in kind.

The most boring part of any investigation is interpreting every clue as fact and trying to draw a plan of attack to an enemy you can’t find. So I’ll cut to the chase.

The song was used to lead us to a particular glen in the forest. We knew they were spellcasters. They broke the ward without making a sound, something only a celestial using their aura or a naufragé using their mind could. Considering their motives and commonality, and Sally’s eyewitness account, we were quick to recognize the threat as a naufragé rather than a celestial.

The glen had something to do with everything going on, right? We went there and realized quite quickly it rested on the leyline, and nearby we found a number of memorabilia, undoubtedly from the thief’s escapades and travels, as well as a lot of convenience-store food (and associated receipts), from various points along Route 3 and Canada beyond it.

They were living in that glen for at few weeks before making an attack. And that’s when I remembered. After I answered the question about being okay on August 14th, and knowing that they could consume our full attention, it was likely at this point that the thieves began planning their return to Wolf Valley. After all, we’re their major roadblock, so it only makes sense to make themselves known in a very public attack towards us, so they could try and get us out of the way. And they can only be very publicly known by knowing as well that our guard was down at the very end of the month.

See, we weren’t super inclined to make this a high-priority case, because by our counts they hadn’t done anyone any harm, and we’d retrieved Six’s phone, seemingly the only thing they took. Before Rebecca made that post in the morning, we dropped by the police station and learned essentially that there were no other incidents that had occured that night.

But something about them striking the Grimoire rubbed me the wrong way. They wanted the attention of everyone. And considering they were willing to leave behind their camp and use magic, they were important.

We uncovered a teleport signature that led us on their tail to Canada. From there the story gets a lot less interesting, so we’ll cut forward to how we took them down.

In New Brunswick, we cut them off as they were trying to escape to the Atlantic Ocean. After reading our post when we were back in Wolf Valley, they surely were afraid of coming after us, so they decided to flee to the ocean and get back to their homeground eventually.

Naturally, that didn’t happen. We found them hiding out in Flatlands, a small one-road town about an hour from the ports to the sea. They were probably trying to shake us off their trail by being in such a small town with proximity to an escape route, but having three naufragé in one concentrated area kind of draws you straight to them.

The troupe.

The troupe was defeated quickly after that. So, this is the part where we explained who we eliminated and how.

‘Yikes’, the creature who spoke on Carn’s behalf, is a pharye (far-yeh) - an antiquated creature once mistaken for fairies, hence the name. Standing 2 feet tall and humanoid, a pharye has a knack for leadership and guile, especially among non-magic creatures, even though they come off as overly posh or bright. When a pharye bends the knee, it is usually only to service their own goals of survival, longevity, and eventual subjugation, like an apprentice attempting to overthrow their master. Pharyes have a strong sense of justice, but not a strong sense of good or ill. One might call them the ultimate “lawful neutral”. They give themselves overly poetic names that cannot be stated in most human language. Yikes was very typical of their kind, from what we saw of her.

Yikes escaped our capture by diving into the Restigouche River, but, because of knowledge we have on pharyes, we expect she will reappear sooner rather than later. We’re keeping our collective eyes out.

‘Fold’ was a female dullahan, a vengeful spirit seeking penitence for some sin committed in life. A dullahan is an undead which was killed through beheading, escaping Purgatory by wandering aimlessly without their head. In the World of the Living, they regain their head until they achieve their goals, which are typically to discover the fate of their killer or atone for the sin that brought them to death. Like most undead, dullahans are versed in future-sight, although their fortunes tend towards whatever vision contains the most spectacle. As such, Fold was probably supposed to see us coming, hence them settling in Flatlands. However, she did not properly predict her own failure. Fold was banished in combat back to Purgatory.

‘Carn’ was an elf. We’ll tell you more on them (and their varied kind) for this month’s Monster File on September 19th. However, this post alone should tell you a great deal on who they are and their motives for doing so. Carn was bound with a spell to extract most of the information for this post, then banished to Leyland.

Finally, there was another name which came up in our investigation. The name was ‘Guardia’. Carn thoroughly denied knowing anything of them, but they appear to be leaking information on magic and the other planes to the internet through backchannels and deleted posts. We have no idea where they are or who they are, but they’re somehow responsible for whatever the Hell’s going on. They were not present anywhere in the investigation, but their name was mentioned among the troupe’s things.

We’re looking into Guardia, whoever they are, for now.

Keep safe, everyone. - ⑦

#entry #CASE CLOSED #7 #the carn case #we're back for good this time.

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roland-terrasold-blog · 8 years ago

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Journal 59

Yesterday morning Ichibod returned, in the middle of more pancake shenanigans. In another sugar high, Unae covered Linda in syrup, and Elkin and Linda had to grapple the childish elf girl, with Elkin finally dragging her off to her room to calm down. Ichibod didn’t seem to be in the mood to talk, something about wherever he’d gone seemed to have upset him.

Since there was nothing he would let me do for him, I left the ship, intending to go to the temple to pray and clear my mind. I was a bit anxious, honestly. While discussing the parade the other day, it came up that the townsfolk were expecting us to give speechs. I am not good with crowds at the best of times, and due to my new position as bishop I couldn’t decline, as much as I wanted to. I didn’t feel that someone like me should have the position I now hold, much less giving advice to the masses. But this is the path I walk for the Dawnflower. When I finally got a chance to clear my mind and pray, I came to the conclusion that regardless of whether I asked for the position or not I had a responsibility now, not just to the church and Sarenrae, but to anyone who might follow my example. I’ve made many mistakes in my life, and if there’s one thing I can do, it’s leads others that they won’t fall onto the same path I once walked.

I didn’t get the chance to come to this conclusion until today, however. On the way to the temple, I was stopped by Sheriff Hemlock. He told me that a large encampment of people had set up outside of town, wanting to ‘pledge themselves’ to myself and Linda. I returned to the ship to fetch Linda, and the two of us went to see what the commotion was.

As it turned out, a large mercenary band had camped out by town, wishing to follow the new queen of Blackwell. Their leader, a half-orc named Vindarian, met with Linda when we approached. With them an even larger congregation of pilgrims and followers of the Dawnflower’s path had arrived in Sandpoint wanting to pledge themselves to ‘Sarenrae’s chosen’.

Sarenrae help me, this is all too much.

I admit to being less than eloquent talking with their leader, a dwarven cleric named Molderoc who had broken off from Zalbrag’s congregation after everything that happened in the last week. I was stunned and honestly had no idea what to ask of an entire congregation of followers. I hardly knew what to do when Nel pledged himself to my cause. I didn’t want to shun them, I wanted to live up to their expectations, but I hardly know any official church doctrine outside of what I’ve read from the Light and Truth. And quite honestly I’m accustomed to doing whatever I need done myself, not having others do it for me.

Whatever else I might think of Zalbrag or the way he originally acted towards us, he wasn’t wrong that I was in no way prepared to have a high position in the faith.

Fortunately, Linda is much more comfortable in the role of leader than I am. She pulled me aside and we discussed what we could accomplish with such a large following. We came to the conclusion that we could have an official embassy built for Blackwell, and it could double as a temple for pilgrimages, a place of learning for Blackwellians like Ichibod who might be interested in learning more about the gods, and so forth. I could kiss her for the clever idea, if I wouldn’t mind getting my head removed from my shoulders afterwards, of course.

The two of us met with Lord Grabanath, to discuss the possibility of building an outpost as a halfway point between Magnamar and Sandpoint, which could house the embassy. Magnamar’s lord mayor agreed, with the stipulation that he wanted the rights to our group’s images and stories for his merchandising ventures. We were promised a decent cut in return, and he swore not to let something like the slander against Elkin happen again. I’d honestly rather return to obscurity myself, but seeing as that’s impossible at this point, this sounded like a good deal. Linda and I promised him an answer tomorrow, so that we’d have time to run it by the rest of the group.

Linda asked me to pass on the request to the group while she handled some business of her own. We’d learned from Lord Grabanath that Clyde would be hosting a tournament in the near future in Magnamar, and Linda had been eager to find a way in to spite the crime lord. I don’t know if her business had anything to do with that, but I wouldn’t doubt it.

I returned to the ship and discussed the proposition with the rest of the group, who readily agreed to the lord mayor’s deal. Afterwards, however, Ichibod pulled me aside. He told me a little about what happened to him while he’d been gone. I won’t write the specifics here, as much of it is Ichibod’s personal business. However the end result was that he wanted me to cast detect evil on his son, to make sure the boy wasn’t being used as a spy for Karvoug and Mary. I agreed to my friend’s request, and used the spell. As with all children, his moral code wasn’t quite set in stone yet. He had no greater draw towards good or evil, chaos or lawfulness, than any other child. I reassured Ichibod that he had nothing to fear, and that his son was simply a child caught up in all of this.

While the rest of the group went about their own business, Ichibod was excited to share an idea he had with me. He’d gotten the tablet Linda used in Blackwell and somehow modified it so that it wasn’t stuck only showing the journal as it once did. He only needed to find a way to modify it so that it would run off of an energy source we had access to, and it would be a useful tool for our group. I suggested that perhaps Anders would know of a way to modify the technology with magic, considering that the eccentric magic user had his fingers in a number of magical and alchemical experiments.

Anders, it turned out, did have an idea on how to fix the machine, and told us it would take him a day to complete.

In the meantime, Ichibod wanted to spend a night on the town. I don’t know why I trusted the witch’s judgment in tavern, but we somehow found ourselves in a shady looking bar called the “Gobblin’ Goblin”. Everyone there seemed friendly, if a bit rowdy, at least. Although they became convinced, despite my protests, that Ichibod and I were an item. It was awkward and embarrassing until the second or third drink. We played some games, of which Ichibod knew none, but he still somehow managed to have a good time and made friends with the other patrons. I think they liked that he kept losing my money to them.

When the bar closed I probably helped to carry Ichibod home. I don’t really remember how we got back. That’s twice now. I might need to cut back a little. It was a fun evening, at least, and I’m glad that Ichibod is warming up to local forms of entertainment.

This morning Ichibod and I returned to Anders to procure the tablet we’d left with him. As promised, he’d worked out a way for the tablet to be recharged via magic rather than the Blackwellian energy sources. Ichibod showed me how to take pictures with it and how to use it to keep a journal without having to carry around books, quills, and ink. This will likely be the final handwritten entry. A shame considering I just bought this journal. More impressive, however, is another modification Anders made to it, which allows it to store a number of my arcane spells in the tablet, freeing up my daily casting ability slightly. As confusing and strange as many of the Blackwellian technologies are, there are some honest wonders as well. I can see why Ichibod likes them so much.

In a more horrifying variation of technology, however, when we got back home Ichibod and Linda got together and got it into their heads that Ichibod should graft metal under Linda’s skin. I had to stand by while Nemo put Linda to sleep and cut her open for surgery. For some reason Elkin and Unae came in to watch as well. I felt sick at the sight of her chest opened up, and metal being grafted into her. I only remained in the room because they needed me around to heal Linda afterwards, and because I wanted to be close in case anything went wrong (which blessedly it didn’t).

This will likely add to my nightmares tenfold, thanks Ichibod.

After this…event…I finally found time to visit Father Zantas to thank him for helping Ichibod and Elkin the other day. I also took some time to pray, to give thanks to Sarenrae that the events of the last few days had finally passed, and that all had ended for the better.

Finally given some quiet time to think, I felt calmer about my new role, and the upcoming festival. I returned home to work on writing my upcoming speech, which I will include below.

“I am Roland Terrasold, of the church of Sarenrae. You all have heard my title by now I'm sure. The Transcendent Sinner. I don't know how much of my story has become public knowledge at this point, but I will say that while I have tried to better myself, I am a deeply flawed man with many regrets. If you had told me a year ago, when I first came to Sandpoint, that I would someday be part of a group hailed as heroes for our actions, I would have laughed at the idea. I wouldn't have believed it possible, I would have told you 'you must have the wrong person'.

“For many years I let regrets shackle me, and it made me believe I couldn't make a positive impact on this world. I had chosen to follow Sarenrae's path, but I hadn't truly embraced her teachings, as far as forgiveness for one's self. Yet here I stand, one year later, alongside my friends in a town whose fate was changed by our actions. I'm not here to preach to you, I know that this town has a diverse set of beliefs and I hope the message I want to impart can be relevant everyone, be you a follower of the Dawnflower, Desna, Caden Kalen, or no god at all. If I would want you to take anything away from my story, it's this. Don't let past mistakes and regrets be your shackles. Learn from them, so you won't repeat them. Let them motivate you to become a better person each day. But don't let them hold you back. No matter how dark of a place you find yourself in, keep moving forward. Because someday when you look around you'll find yourself surrounded not by the regrets of the past, but by those impacted by your present actions. If anyone out there is currently in a dark place, I especially hope my words reach you. The sun will rise anew, each day. There is always hope for something better. Thank you and Sarenrae bless you.”

#Journal Entry #pathfinder #Rise of the Runelords

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