#location: nellaser's landing

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tiriel and Alion,

Tyko will have told you that I’m back on the Prime Material Plane, safe and well and taking a break before the next quest. Probably he’s told you some other things, comprehensible or not, that I’ll fully explain when I see you next. I’m planning to come for a few days or a week soon (Maliah, Niko and I have all decided that we need a break after the Astral Sea before we can even begin to think about the next stage of our plans), but since I’ve got several stops on my list before you and don’t know how long a few things will take, I’m not going to guess at dates yet.

However, I did want to write you with some nice news that I made Tyko promise not to share before I could, and I am removing temptation by writing you as soon as I’ve ended a video call with him.

When we got back to Nellaser’s Landing after our time in the Astral Sea (Gaizka ended up staying the whole time, which is a long story, they had adventures of their own while we were off meeting a star), Gaizka said that when we had time, they had something to show us. We’d had a day of pure rest and exploration at the end of our visit to the Astral Sea, so we were all more than happy to be shown whatever it was before the weight of bureaucracy landed square on their shoulders again, and they took us on transit out to a quiet neighborhood on the station outskirts.

I had, as we went into a quiet building right at the outer edge of the ring, the vague notion that we had been invited back to Gaizka’s home, where perhaps they had something to show us, since we’ve only met them at restaurants and the university and other public spaces. Up at the top of the building, though, they let us into an apartment that seemed to take up the whole floor, partially decorated and with trinkets around but with odd gaps that showed no one could be living there, even someone like Gaizka, who doesn’t tend to show much to people who don’t know them fairly well.

And as I registered that, Gaizka told us, with a flourish of paperwork that made it real, that the apartment is ours. That apparently the Kirimi delegation and various gnomish embassies on this plane decided that we merit a reward for reconnecting Kirim with the larger universe, and this is the gift they chose (with, I’m told, a matching suite in Kirim—I’m planning to go there right before I see you all, so I imagine I’ll have pictures to show you, and a place to put you when I bring you for that visit I’ve been threatening). I suspect, though Gaizka didn’t say, that they had no small hand in choosing the nature of the gift, knowing how often we come back or through and how a magical mansion that will never be permanent no matter how many times I cast it will never quite be a home. So they’ve given us one, ours in perpetuity.

I’m sending you a load of pictures with this message, I’m shamelessly enamored with the place and hardly know what to do with all the space. The living room is the one that shows both sides of the building, the space side and the city side (we’ve also got a balcony on that side, which I think Maliah already has designs on using for her collection of plants), and there’s all the amenities—a kitchen so perhaps I can eventually regain the cooking skills you two attempted to teach me, a table big enough to fit a decent sized party of family or friends, four bedrooms of very decent size, two on each side (Maliah and I shamelessly claimed beds on the star side, which Niko took with good grace), and a few of the vague unassigned rooms that any home has. I’ve already stowed my harp and the other instruments I’ve collected in a small room on the city side where I can put a desk and some recording equipment.

There are some pieces of furniture—a couch, as you see, and all the bedrooms have fairly plain beds, other things any house needs, with enough gaps for us to have fun filling them.

You’ll also see all manner of trinkets and small things—the quilt on the back of the couch is new, and there’s a lovely music box I’ve already stolen for my bedroom, and a collection of sea glass in a jar, all things passed on by the various people who had a hand in us having the place, tokens of thanks. There’s a stack of letters as well, which I haven’t had time to go through but which I smile at whenever I pass.

I want to see everyone, but I also want to stay here and decorate this place, make it properly a home! We’re going to have to find rugs and curtains and art that are to our tastes, though at least I have the Mansion as a testing ground, even if what I enjoy in there isn’t perhaps what I should use for a long-term home.

Though maybe it is! I’ve spent most of my adult life in a small bunk on a ship and since then I’ve mostly been camping or living in inns, so I’ve got very little idea what to do with a home of my own. Maybe the two of you have some advice? I’ll have to bring you to see it sometime soon.

We’re going out to explore the neighborhood soon (it’s a nice one, quiet, lots of good restaurants and easy access to transit), so I’ll leave off here! We’re going to visit our friend Bizza in a few days, I think, and from there to Honione and then Rugira Prime and then our families, with no real clue as to how long each visit will take, so I’ll let you know once I’m more aware of how things are going!

Love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Brennu,

I thought, while you think, that maybe I’d write you a letter that shouldn’t tax you at all, since I haven’t been taxed by any of the things going into it, and since starting tomorrow I’ll most likely be out of touch for some time, and I have no idea how long that time may be. A few days at the most wildly optimistic or terribly pessimistic, and with worse or better scenarios, it’s the kind of thing where I can’t possibly know how long it will be. Maybe a week, maybe a season.

When I wrote last, I think I said that we’re going to try to find a star to do us a great service. Or, rather, one of two stars—I petitioned the gnomish Lady of Stars to steer us towards one that might help, and she gave us two names, and we don’t want to decide which to approach until we reach the Astral Sea. For one thing, one might be light-years closer than another. For another, she could have given us their names for totally different reasons. Maybe one of them is a crafter who would feel sympathy for our cause and the other one is like the elementals Maliah is fond of, who often like to make one prove oneself in combat and then are friendly as can be. Or maybe one is known to be kind to mortals and the other annoyed the Lady for some obscure reason and she expects us to attack them.

(Don’t worry, I don’t think that latter is likely to be true. For whatever reason, the Lady seems to, well … like me, as much as any deity can be said to feel something as simple as liking.)

The point, though, is that this is an adventure that is taking some careful preparation! There will be even more when we actually get to the Astral Sea, but we’ve been doing what we can for the last week or two.

A good amount of that has been dealing with currency. We’re fairly certain that there won’t be any banks there that have any communication with banks here, and that if we brought gold just as its own material, there would be no helpful way to make the conversion. (And then there’s the issue that elemental metals originated in stars in the first place, and one never knows what’s going to be literal, metaphor, or metaphysics there.) So, since we’d come into a good amount of cash on our volcano adventure, we flew over to Iriossis and converted some of that wealth into gems of various sizes, including a few that could be used for spells or traded as components, depending on what’s needed.

We also did something we should have done well over a year ago and took a three-day intensive field medicine course from the Temple of Mishakal. Our reasons were in small part reasonable and practical and in large part the kind of thing that makes my brother shake his head at me, as he did when I told him about it over dinner this time. The reasonable and practical reasons are that it’s not good to put all your trust in magical healing, and while we know the very basics, we wanted more than that. The head-shaking reason is that this great favor we’re asking of a star is, well, blood. “Blood from the heart of a star,” we’re told, from the kind of source where one’s never really sure how metaphorical that is. If you have a circulatory system, your blood travels through your heart, which ought to count, but I have an awful feeling that it’s going to be a little messier than that, and for that reason, we very much wanted to learn how to transfuse—as I said in my last, water from the Deeping Wellemere is useful for a great many reasons.

Maybe we’ll strike it lucky and the Astral Sea will have hospitals equipped for that kind of thing, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

Beyond that, we’ve mostly been working out transport. Getting there is, as it turns out, the easy part, because our friend Gaizka has kindly offered to Plane Shift us there, since we have access to the proper tuning fork. However, getting home is an entirely different problem. Gaizka is planning to stay a day or two in case of immediate disaster, but as I said earlier, chances of it being that fast are very small.

Gaizka is, luckily, a font of magical wisdom. I laid a couple options out for them—a spell scroll, beautiful if it works but risky because bards generally can’t cast Plane Shift, or risking one of the numerous portals that seem to dot the Astral Sea, obviously risky for a whole lot of reasons. Gaizka eventually advised the former, and did point out that if the worst came and I couldn’t cast the spell, I could Send to them and ask for a retrieval. So that’s what we’re trying, and I very much hope that the retrieval part isn’t necessary.

They’ve spent the past week scribing the scroll while Maliah has been practicing her sleight of hand and I’ve been keeping myself occupied, mostly by tuning up and maintaining all my electronics. I did, at least, go spend two days and a night on Sestrilles visiting my family, and got to take my brother out for dinner and he and his boyfriend out for lunch.

(It’s nice being able to treat my family and friends. Our most recent adventure saddled us with an unnerving amount of money, and I mostly have no idea how to deal with that other than the vague notion that some people hire financial managers, but at least I know I can give the people I love some gifts.)

It looks like tomorrow is the day, though, or the day after at the absolute most. Since I doubt I’ll get reception in the Astral Sea, I imagine you won’t hear from me for a while, so don’t worry if you write and it takes me a bit to answer. Have I connected you to my brother yet? I’m not sure I have, but I’ve designated him a point of contact for Maliah’s mothers, and our children on Nosirion-1, Gaizka, people who have right to be worried if we’re out of touch for a long time. When I have spare magic at the end of a day, I’ll Send him a quick update, and he lets people know we’re okay. It’s quick notice, but if you’d like, I’ll send him your contact information, and if you get a message from Tyko Mara, you’ll know it’s something about me.

And otherwise and even so, I’ll tell you what it was like to visit a star when we get back, and I was serious that water or no, I do intend to come back to Rugira Prime and Mashoy sometime after that.

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Loraine,

I hope you and the kids are well! It was lovely to see Loren’s school art assignment, I showed Maliah (her IICD got broken in an unfortunate incident with some crocodiles, which we don’t seem to have very good luck with as a species, I’m sure she’ll be sending you and the kids her new address very soon) and the use of the found natural materials is wonderful.

I don’t know when we’ll be making a visit out there next, though I hope it won’t be too long. We’ve just spent a while in the Feywild, only back yesterday, and we’ll be happy to catch you all up next time we’re in town. After we’re done with our business here on Nellaser’s Landing, we’re going to be spending a week on Sestrilles seeing my family, and from there I think we’re moving on to Chusya, which is one of the main purposes of this letter, actually!

(The other being appreciating Loren’s art now that I have a minute to look at it, of course.)

When we land on a new planet, especially one none of us are familiar with, I like to ask around and see if anyone I know happens to have connections, kin, or friends-of-friends there. Would you happen to have any such on Chusya? We’re not quite sure what area we’re going to yet, unless perhaps you’ve heard anything about the legendary hoard of a druid called Avka, but any connections you have there would be wonderful, especially if any of them might have connections to local history.

Thank you whether you happen to know anyone or not! We’re still traveling with Niko, who passes on her greetings and like me hopes we’ll make it back to Nosirion-1 soon—perhaps after our visit to Chusya.

All my best,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Brennu,

Your picture made me miss being by the ocean, which I didn’t think was possible considering how wet I spent most of our most recent adventure. There is a difference, though, between a lovely sunset seaside and days spent traveling in underwater caves. (Unfortunately, that’s one I can’t tell you more about—the Deeping Wellemere is not a place you’re supposed to talk too much about once you’ve been there, the promise a condition of access to its secrets.) You’re lucky I’m going to see my family on Sestrilles in a day or three and they’re near the shore, or I would have been tempted to Teleport over.

The rest of our time in the Feywild was productive and even often pleasant, though. I did write that song, and did a very good job of it, if I do say so myself. I’ll play it for you sometime, and even give the grand disclaimer about how the Queen of Air and Darkness commissioned it, as I am required to do when I perform it. The Seelie Court continued to remind me of Mashoy, or the more stressful parts of it, but the Feywild itself is beautiful, if disorienting, and I was very glad to spend a week in one of its cities, Troihari, at the end of our stay on the plane.

Still, the way you’re missing machine hum and dry air, I was missing sensible day cycles—and some of that machine hum, come to that. Maliah grew up in the Feywild, of course, if we didn’t have things pulling us away she would have been content to stay indefinitely, but I like ships and stations and cities (which Troihari definitely counts as, but it’s very different to the city I grew up in). So, our work done and our quests complete, we’re back in the Prime Material Plane.

I did, though, get your message the last day we were there, with perfect timing to read the first few poems in the book you sent while Maliah was spending a last afternoon with her mothers. I’m so glad you sent it—it’s gorgeous, and I’m going to savor it as long as I last. (Which, in fairness, I don’t expect to be very long. My self-restraint isn’t very good around good books.) I’ll definitely pass the recommendation on to my brother, too. Tyko likes poetry less than I do, but his boyfriend loves it, so I imagine he’ll want to keep the chain going.

I hope you enjoy the romance novel, and equally, I hope you don’t push yourself past a point of frustration with it, though I’m sorry there’s so much frustration to be had. I imagine that after well over a year of recovery (we must be getting close to two now, that’s strange to think about), you must be sick to death of it, of the symptoms and of people’s sympathy and well-intentioned offers to help both. I will refrain from that, then (though if I ever do find some kind of solution that might work, rest assured I’ll be knocking on your door), and just say that I’d love to hear your thoughts as you read. It will be something fun while I am, apparently, clambering through volcanoes.

Which, it seems, we’re going to do. We’re looking for an artifact we’ve heard of that helps with navigation among the stars, and we’re—well, it seems ridiculous every time I say it, but we’re hoping to meet a star, and this will help us manage that. Or at least we hope so. But some excellent library researchers, a Legend Lore, and a bit of luck have led us to the story of a druid on Chusya who received custodianship of quite a hoard of items some time ago and stored them away behind protections in her volcano lair. And our navigational instrument is there, so off in that direction we go.

I am trying to take my own advice (and the advice of Niko) and take breaks, though. The universe may apparently need saving, but it’s slow enough that I can rest in between. So I’ll spend a week on Sestrilles before wandering into a volcano, and our friend Gaizka has offered to host our families for a meal after that, and I’ve got the children to visit on Nosirion-1. But maybe, one of these rest breaks, I could visit you? I’ve offered to help out Ekresh Veshteth with his work in the Twilight of Cinders, since I know at least a bit of planar magic now, so I’ve already got business on Rugira Prime, lest you think I’m going out of my way.

But even if I were—well, I’m making a point to visit the people I care about before I go wandering into dangerous situations, and that certainly includes you. It seems a shame that the only real time we’ve spent together in person was that party, and I owe you a jam session, now that you have a few songs under your belt! I’ll have to learn Donnavi’s Dunes so we’ll have two numbers in common by the time we visit, so thank you for sending me the recording to learn from. Both of them, in fact! I’m honored you trust me, and you’re making great strides, especially considering you’ve been a little busy with trials and whatnot in between your lessons.

Enjoy the rest of your vacation, however long it lasts, and I hope you return to Mashoy rested and renewed.

All my best,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tyko,

Unfortunately, Gaizka’s opinion dovetails with yours: it’s a large universe, and odds are that the broken planet at the planar intersection isn’t the same phenomenon that broke the Procyon, but there’s no way to disprove it either. When we went to have dinner and unburden ourselves a little, we started with talk about that particular option, since Gaizka is an expert in planar magics.

As expected, if that’s the option we choose, it’s almost certainly not going to be a pleasant place to be. Few planets, exposed to that kind of force, that kind of resonance, could survive without being pulled to pieces. Planar effects might make magic work strangely. There’s no way of knowing what the planar boundaries look like, and Gaizka used a lot of alarming words that I do not particularly understand.

It’s the kind of thing that could rip a ship apart, if it were very, very unlucky. And we know I have a way to find out if that’s the truth, or at least a possibility of knowing.

But either way, we know we have to protect ourselves very well, if that’s the path we end up taking. In some ways, it is tempting to take it, whatever the environmental danger: it’s the only path that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t involve some sort of convincing or bargaining. It’s us against nature, and Maliah is very good at that. If that many planar boundaries would influence magic, I would be far less effective, or at least less predictable, than usual, but in the end, it’s a quest that makes sense: protect ourselves and anyone helping us, go to a place that meets the conditions, and pick as much of the damn plant as we can find. (Unless, of course, whatever broke the planet in the first place is still there. Trying not to think about that.)

Still, it’s not my favorite. My favorite, of course, is the one that’s likely to be hardest, because it’s going to require a lot of obscure steps and then is going to require some very fast talking at the end of it: finding a star and convincing it to trust us enough to give us some of its heart’s blood. Gaizka was clearly a little baffled by that one, but did have some useful information about planar travel, namely the materials needed to cast Plane Shift. To do it, they need a tuning fork attuned to the specific plane we’d be visiting. Finding those for elemental planes, for the Feywild and other planes we think of as “closer” to ours, is doable. Finding them for the Astral Sea, which is one of the most likely places they think we’d find a star elemental (the others being a dedicated demiplane for each star or a celestial plane), would be another thing entirely.

I didn’t want to bring it up because it feels like bragging, but I do wonder if that’s something I could make, given the materials and the opportunity. I know my way around metal, I could bend the right shapes (and Gaizka said a material with resonance—meteor fall, maybe?). Laying the magic into it I’m less sure, but my gloves carry decent amounts of power these days. Maybe I could do it. It might be faster to find one that already exists, or ask a professional, but … I don’t know, it’s a little silly. But Mishakal said that things freely given tend to have more power. And I know finding a damn tuning fork is so far removed from the remedy that it hardly matters. But some superstitious part of me says that if we do every step of this, we give every step of it, maybe it will help more. Maybe if the blood is from the star’s veins but not its heart, maybe if there are two plants on the broken planet and we pick the wrong one, maybe if the dragon isn’t old enough or the instrument not powerful enough, if enough of our heart and effort is in it, it will work anyway.

But we’re not going to do that quite yet. We aren’t done seeking information. Gaizka didn’t have any particular insight on the multi-ingredient option, but is willing to cast Plane Shift for us with the right materials, and to share their expertise in whatever way matters. And more than that, was willing to pay for a few drinks.

(Yes, I am being careful of that, okay? But I challenge you to say you wouldn’t be drinking this much too. Therapy four times in the past two weeks can’t quite hold up to a lot of necromancy and a lot of worry about saving a fucking god. And I will bet you any money that my therapist had to go out for a drink or two after at least one of those sessions.)

Once our service week was up and we’d had plenty of talks with Gaizka, we kept our appointment with Ektarika, letting her know we were free and meeting her in the ruins of her old tower and arriving there early in the morning to find her waiting for us.

It was our first time seeing her since we’d realized she wasn’t just Daltri Bhavi, local hedgewitch, and she was just as warm and kind as she was before, but she must have some mild disguises, because she also wasn’t pretending to be anything she wasn’t, and it was easy to look at her and see someone who’s lived longer than any elvish great-grandparent either of us has ever met.

She was intrigued, and then alarmed when I told her a god is incapacitated, which has become a handy way to start a very dreadful conversation—it tends to get people’s attention and then keep it. And, in her long life, she’s certainly seen and done some interesting things, so she had some information, and some potential information for us.

For the star, she knows she’s heard an account, which sounds like it might be distinct from the legends (unless she heard a prose account of Perrik closer to when Perrik lived, which I think might kill Maliah), and will try to remember. For the broken planet, she knows a little—she’s done some research on the relevant plant, apparently, and may well have some information on that. She heard about a planet meeting the conditions some three or four hundred years ago, but that there was no sign of life on it, and she warned us that planets meeting the conditions tend to get pulled apart fairly quickly.

(Wonderful.)

She’ll look for accounts on that too, in her books, but the most useful and specific information she had was on three of the four main ingredients in the potion Mishakal gave us the recipe for. She had information on phoenixes, to start. If we want to convince one rather than fighting it, she recommended we find an older one, secure in its territory, and that we find some way to telepathically broadcast what we’re there for. (However one does that besides thinking really hard.) She’s heard rumors in several places, enough that it may in fact be true, about a particularly old phoenix in the Burning Oasis of Amiel, deep in the elemental plane of fire, so that may be a place to look for one.

(Maybe I should have asked how long ago she heard those rumors. Isn’t the nature of the bird such that when it gets old, it eventually dies and then becomes a young phoenix likely to set people on fire first and ask questions later?)

For dragons, her knowledge is more general. We’re more likely, she thinks, to find a red dragon, since they’re more likely to seek out non-dragons for entertainment or prey. They’re susceptible to flattery and bribes, so if we had a sufficiently tempting one of either, something to make it look very mighty indeed, it might work with us. A gold dragon would be harder to find, but perhaps less mercurial and dangerous to us. There are dragon crafters, but she doesn’t know about the intersection of colors with crafting, so those are questions we’ll have to ask ourselves, if we choose that route.

And as for the Deeping Wellemere—well, she’s clearly been there, and came back unscathed. When Maliah expressed her worry that everyone who’s gone seeking it that she heard of ended horribly, Ektarika pointed out that people who had been there wouldn’t be likely to say they’d succeeded, which makes sense. She said it’s a cenote, too, and that if the people seeking it weren’t careful, well—subterranean water can be dangerous. She described needing to be ready to do cave diving and swimming. (Lovely, my two favorite things: caves and being underwater.) It’s a hard journey, and she didn’t provide too many details in a way that makes me wonder if it was rather like Aluarashi’s tests and only the worthy pass, but it’s doable.

She even gave some vague directions, saying we should look for caves in a forested area, and Maliah later told me the implication is that no archfey has claimed a resource that would make anyone with it under their control very powerful, which is interesting and a little alarming. I asked what the water even does, which she clearly didn’t want to discuss, but she did eventually say it has a healing factor, and some other “unique essential properties,” so I suppose we’ll see how that goes.

We talked a little while longer, and she promised to have a look through some books for us and send them on if they seem relevant. And that means that you might be getting a package, because you’re still a safe and trusted harbor for things like that and also because it’s an excuse to come home and see you in the midst of this whole mess and also to talk to Tiriel. And Alion, it’s not as though I’m going to tell one without the other.

But we finished and came back to Nellaser’s Landing, since it’s a convenient hub for wherever we’re going next, and Maliah and Niko and I sat down to check in about our next steps, since we’re still not willing to commit to one path.

For one thing, we’re still not done seeking information: we have two more gods who might have reason to help us, and who might have useful information for us. For the Lady of Stars, we’re still deciding whether to stop in Kirim or to go to gnomish space and one of her few temples there.

As for Cernunnos, there are temples to him here, but Maliah has made up her mind that we need to go to the Feywild, that there are enough questions that have come up about it recently that it’s time to face her worries and go back. She’s still terrified that the Queen of Air and Darkness will try to take Squirt back from her, when I suspect that one doesn’t get to be a fey queen by being foolish and parting them would be very foolish indeed, but she won’t believe me, and I fear we made poor Niko very uncomfortable arguing about it. But anyway, while we ask Cernunnos about ways to track the things we seek and any other help he can give, she wants to know if he supports her keeping Squirt, so hopefully he’ll be reassuring on that front?

And while we’re there … I really hate this, but I was the one to bring the idea up, and Maliah and Niko both agree there are worse ideas: we may as well go to the Deeping Wellemere and get some water. Then we don’t have to come twice if we decide we’re seeking ingredients (and an extra flask might make a handsome dragon bribe), and if there’s a strong healing factor, it may well come in handy in our other potential tasks too. If my magic isn’t enough to heal a bleeding star, such powerful water might be, and surely it at least couldn’t hurt a planet breaking to pieces.

There are other things to work on: seeking out a ship that can take us on our travels within this plane, if we’re going to be going to places I’ve never visited and can’t Teleport us to safely. They’ll have to be a very brave crew, considering we might fly them to a dangerous and uncharted region of space or to dragon territory, but we can pay them well enough for it to be worth it, I hope.

Do you happen to know anyone who’s been in the shop looking for a long-term contract who might be up for it? I might reach out through Brathin as well, and hopefully Maliah will ask Marsa if she knows anybody. I don’t even know how much we’ll use a ship, but it’s still handy to know there’s one when we need one.

First, though, praying. Did you ever imagine, two years ago, how vital that might be for me? I certainly find it continually surprising.

Video call before I go off to parts unknown? Whether I stop by Sestrilles soon or not. I could use a live talk with you.

Love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tyko,

It’s been an exhausting time since I last wrote, which is why I haven’t, though I’ve been keeping your response close.

Before we left Ardra Rhyn, we all met to drink (tea and then alcohol) and talk about next steps. Ren and Seb mostly kept their own counsel, other than when we asked Ren to go over the Perrik legend about her meeting a star that they’d sung when we first met them.

The story goes something like this: long ago, when Perrik was journeying, there was a star that was unstable, and in danger of going nova and killing those who lived in its orbit. She did—well, a lot of things I’d love to have more detail on, but they seem to have involved talking to some wizards. And then she spoke to the star, who was apparently cursed. Perrik broke the curse, everyone was saved, the star rewarded her, and off she traveled again, to other adventures. There may be history to it, but it was a long time ago, long enough that there’s no way of knowing what star it was.

Ren knew the edges of a few other stories: a fire elemental who had met stars, and mentions of an elf or fey who may have, though they only knew references to it in other ballads. But still, nothing exactly in the historical record, nothing that would tell us how to find a star that would be able to speak to us in a way we could understand, let alone how to survive getting so close to one.

Seb, meanwhile, told me when I asked that he thought Mishakal might not mean a hundred planes exactly, that the point is to be somewhere around there, not that we have to count each and every one that intersects with the relevant place, though he’d feel more comfortable if I talk to a divine scholar about that.

But mostly, it was Maliah and Niko and I going in circles. As I told you, I’m of the opinion that getting the ingredients for the potion, dragon scales and phoenix feathers and all, gives us more chances to fail than doing one task that’s bigger and more dangerous but that, in the end, will give us everything we need to bring Reorx back. (Though I say it with regret, because I’d love an excuse to get my hands on a Bardic Instrument.) The other two aren’t quite ready to eliminate that as a possibility, though Maliah had apparently heard of the Deeping Wellemere, whose water we’d need as part of that recipe. It’s a spring of some kind in the feywild, and while she’s heard of people seeking it, they tend to go missing while doing so, which makes me nervous.

The primary attraction of the recipe is that we know where to go for it, and what to do. One can find dragons, and convince them or do them a service or, in desperation, try to fight them. Phoenixes can be found on the elemental plane of fire, and I think Niko could guide us there. The Deeping Wellemere is in the Feywild, there to be sought. There may be legends about the Bardic Instruments that would point us in the right direction.

The other two … well, you’ve already heard how stumped we are about how to speak to a star who we might convince to do something dangerous for them. The broken planet bathed in planar music … we do have a map, there. My family’s map. We have the region of space where the Procyon was lost, and where Niko traveled to our plane.

And I want you to tell me it’s a coincidence and I’m trying to make connections where there are none about what I’m thinking now, please.

Because I’ve been thinking about broken planets that might fit the conditions Mishakal gave, and what it would be like there. A planet damaged by celestial magic could be broken to pieces, with ejecta in orbit to cause damage. A planet bathed in the music of a hundred planes … it might just be the chords of creation, but with so many open portals, would the resonance be off? I work with sonic magic, I cast Shatter, and I could imagine interplanar resonance doing something similar, on a catastrophic scale.

And I think: if you go to a place like that, especially uncontrolled, falling through portals and godsfalls, if there’s a sonic scream to shake you apart, if there’s unexpected debris, what could that do to a ship, before it goes through another portal and ends up somewhere else? (And if that’s the state of things, the question becomes how we survive it, but you know that’s not why it’s on my mind.)

And I suppose there’s a way to find out for sure if that’s what happened to the Procyon, even while I wait for Damaris Nimate’s exploration to progress. When I cast Speak With Spirits, if you’ll remember, Kadan gave me the name of an engineer he thinks was on shift when the Procyon took on damage on the right side of the ship to have seen what caused it. I could try calling on her, finally, and ask. Maybe she won’t have seen, but if she did, it might be the key not just to my own mystery but to us finding a way to heal the Crafter.

Chances are small. Like I said, I may be drawing connections where there are none. But it’s on my mind.

And it’s been on my mind while we’ve been on Nellaser’s Landing doing our temple service this week.

We spent the first day getting ourselves set up and prepared, seeing our therapists and asking the librarians a whole new series of alarming questions, and then we’ve been hard at work, each of us with tasks best suited to us. Maliah and Ren have spent most of their time at the local hospital instead of at the temple, Maliah and Squirt entertaining children and Ren singing a song or telling a tale to anyone who needs one. Niko’s spent some time there and some time at the temple, and Seb and I have mostly been at the temple (though I’ve hardly seen him, I think he’s mostly been brewing potions).

I’ve been healing broken limbs and concussions and other injuries, but I’ve also been giving life. I’d never cast Raise Dead before this week, even if I knew I knew it, but now I’ve cast it five times, enough to have figured out a few tricks, that long deep drones and quiet singing work better than other loops I’ve tried. I’ve even cast Resurrection once, on a single parent who died three months ago and whose children are well-taken-care-of in foster care but still desperately miss their parent. That was a hard day for everyone, I think, but a family is reunited, and it feels right to do it for someone else, even if I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do it for myself. (And even if what I really want, to go back in time and save them and let myself be raised by them, is impossible no matter how powerful I get.)

Other than that, it’s mostly been accidental deaths: a dockworker crushed when someone overcorrected trying not to hit someone else, a train driver who had a seizure on duty, a ship’s crewmember who almost hadn’t made the ten-day window brought in right from the docks when they landed, and horribly, a child who’d fallen from a balcony.

I also saw an adventurer who’d been killed by a banshee, and whose party was absolutely terrified for them, a halfling named Azman. They were all about as new to adventuring as Maliah and Pika and I were in those first few weeks on Nosirion-1, when a spider or a weasel might have taken us out. The death had clearly shaken them all, and I tried to be as encouraging as I could and did the favor for them that Gaizka did for us and told them to seek out therapists while they’re on the station.

Maliah and I took them out for dinner and gave them some adventuring advice, which felt odd, since it feels like we’ve stumbled into everything we know, and I know I’m not good at one of the biggest questions they had, which is when to cut your losses and run from a fight instead of persisting. But still, we could tell them to spend as much on healing potions as they can afford, and advise them on what kinds of protection are the best investments we’ve managed. (I had a lot of good to say about my Amulet of Health, though I cautioned them it’s a long-term investment, since they’re expensive.) And Maliah reminded them that it’s very possible to seek out custom items for problems they keep running into, or phobias they’d like to avoid, like her own Amulet of Feather Fall.

It was a good reminder that we’re not always at sea and out of our depth, at least, before diving back into everything else.

Our temple service is wrapping up, so we went back to the library.

They had a little more information on Maliah’s historical research project on the Honorien Dominion—namely, how that empire collapsed. The planet was exploited of its resources (either it wasn’t very resource-rich in the first place, or they were consuming them at such a rate that it depleted them much faster than it should have), and this became obvious around the same time as a lot of war and corruption and social unrest. As the planet collapsed, so did the empire, and refugees left first in small groups and then in larger ones, settling here and there (quite likely splitting by pre-empire cultural lines, though that’s mostly surmise). So if Lindanas can find any records on them, I’d love that. Still nothing, though, on how their insignia ended up in the Feywild, much less how their banner ended up, in such good condition, with some hags.

The other questions, they’d had less time with. We’d asked, without much hope, about a more detailed map of the region of space Niko and the Procyon went through, but it’s not a location people are eager to map, so there doesn’t seem to be one.

On stars and talking to them, they could confirm that it’s part of enough legends that it’s almost certainly possible, and that probably we wouldn’t have to literally enter the flaming mantle of a star, but that it’s more a matter of an elemental, a personification of the star’s energy, that might be met on another plane or a pocket dimension or something similar. (Niko had mentioned, in our conversation last week, “metaphysical shenanigans” in somewhat tragic tones, and she seems to have been right.) Historical records that aren’t couched in metaphor as yet escape them, but they had a few more details about Ren’s legends of a fire elemental and a fey or elf (there are apparently versions of the story in Sylvan and in Elvish, and at their age it’s impossible to tell where they began).

The fire elemental was named Barhanakva, and seems to have interacted with one or several stars several times, returning something stolen from one, and either returning to it or finding another one who they either fought or bargained with and received help for the next stage of their quest. Translations get in the way there, and even Maliah’s knowledge of Ignan might not help too much, since it’s an archaic form of it.

The fey or elvish story is about a woman called Serianye, also called Starwalker, and it’s old and fragmented and inconsistent. She may have befriended a star, in a story cycle about stars going out or being hidden. She may have gone to the Ethereal Plane, the Astral Sea, or both. (I don’t know anything about the Astral Sea, but maybe it’s where you meet stars, and if so, I should really learn more quickly.) But there’s not much more remembered than that, unless one of the bardic colleges has it filed away in a dusty cabinet. (They’re reaching out to some of them for more stories, so maybe we’ll hear more.)

Everything feels so big we don’t know where to start—I can see why Maliah and Niko find the ingredients list more tempting, even if I still think the other two options are better plays right now. We’re going to try some research, and reaching out to a few more people and beings, and maybe an answer will come more clear that way. We’ve got an appointment with Daltri Bhavi as soon as we’ve sent Ren and Seb home, and I want to go to Kirim and talk to the Lady of Stars in one of her own temples, and Maliah has screwed up her courage and said that if Cernunnos is going to help, she thinks we’ll have to go to the Feywild for similar reasons. Daltri has outlived even elvish lifespans and might have heard some stories. The Lady of Stars is a traveler, and stars are under her domain anyway, so she may help on two fronts. Cernunnos is a tracker, and once we have a goal in mind, he may well be able to help us get there.

I suspect it’s going to be one of those situations where everything moves very slow and then so fast I hardly have time to warn you before I wander off somewhere terrifying, so consider this your warning that I may disappear without much notice any time while working on this.

We’ve also been talking to Gaizka this week, but I’m going to save that for my next letter—this one is running long, and I’m due at therapy again, so I’ll write again soon.

Love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tyko,

The last few days of my break were something approaching restful. We did find someone to cast Legend Lore about Maliah’s insignia, only to discover that it’s all so far in the past that there are hardly any legends about it. There were, though, some specific names: apparently the dragon is an emblem of the Tiriande Battalion, a fierce and famed fighting force from an elven nation called the Honorien Dominion. Not much is known about them—they were a planetary state long ago, and eventually, the society dwindled, and the last few pockets of it moved on to other elvish planets.

I don’t remember learning about it. Do you, at all? I don’t think you paid much more attention in history class than I did, but if it were taught in history class, I feel like Legend Lore might have come up with more. We forwarded the information on to the librarians working on our query, in hopes they can dig up more resources (Maliah is still very curious how insignia from an apparently abandoned planet ended up in the Feywild), but I thought—do you think Lindanas would think it was weird if I was in touch to ask him about it? Maybe some of the people settled on Sestrilles and there are non-digitized resources Nellaser’s Landing might not have access to. And if you’re not ready to trust me with him unsupervised, I’d appreciate you asking. As I told Maliah, it’s nice to have a mystery that seems firmly historical, where nobody is going to live or die over it!

We also went looking for rings of luck for Maliah, since I realized they might give her that edge against mind magics that she was looking for. The store cautioned us that too many in one place tend to start having unpredictable and dangerous consequences, but she bought two, and hopefully that will be enough for peace of mind.

And then, with all our business finished and one more dinner with Gaizka, we came here to Nosirion-1, where we put our things down at the inn and went to find Niko to ask about this crafter mystery.

She speaks about it as “alarming but not urgent,” which I grudgingly agree with, since it seems to me that not much has changed about it in a long time. The news that the phenomenon crosses planes was sobering for her, since it means it’s more widespread, but it doesn’t change the facts she’s seen, the same ones we have: some people are feeling more creative, and some less. It spreads to every facet of creativity—she’s even seen it in government workers streamlining forms and processes or coming up with coherent strategic or contingency plans, mostly on the level of villages and towns, since she doesn’t have much access to state-level governments to ask there (and even if she did, larger governments tend to involve a lot of people, where a little more or less inspiration isn’t going to make as much of a difference).

As far as she can tell, there’s no ill effect for those feeling the excess of creativity, which makes me feel a little easier about Tiriel. Maybe there’s a sleepless night here or there, but they don’t neglect themselves or anything else I might have feared. It’s been happening for about two years, just about the same amount of time I’ve been properly adventuring, and she can’t tell if everything happened at once and people are only noticing over time (since a particularly creative month or six isn’t unheard of, but at two years one might start being puzzled by it) or if this is spreading slowly, and nor can I.

Niko calls the excess something like “divine inspiration.” Not of the really drastic kind, the kind Nuli might write crafter ballads about like “The Crafter-Blessed of Siroyer,” about the creation of magical items in situations of great need, or people so inspired they come up with something wholly novel. More the kind where something sparks a song idea in me and it all flows without much struggle, or where Tiriel might get a fabric sample and know just what she wants to make with it.

It might not be bad for the people feeling the excess, but it’s still something very wrong in the universe. Niko, when we asked her about theories, shared her concern, with some background.

She describes creativity as a force in the universe, as much as gravity or the arcane. There’s a flow to it, and it’s natural for people to have periods of greater creativity and periods where there’s little inspiration. That’s all natural enough. What’s unnatural is that things seem … stuck, I suppose. Like a lot of people had the switch flicked fully on or off, and like it’s stayed that way for much longer, when naturally creativity tends to fall somewhere in the middle. She’s traveled all over the place, asked around in Mashoy with our help and introductions. She’s talked to other devotees of Reorx, who she hasn’t quite been able to explain matters to.

And then, even more worryingly, she hasn’t heard from Reorx at all. They aren’t, as she says, the chattiest of gods. She’s been regaining powers and abilities that she once lost, so she must be doing something to redeem herself from sponsoring someone who turned out to be bad news (which really seems something a temple more than a god would be angry about), so there’s that much connection between them, but when she’s given herself this investigation that has so much to do with Reorx’s domain, she was expecting some sign of approval, or help, or something. She floundered for a little, trying not to seem as though she felt entitled to interaction with her god, but she was nonetheless obviously concerned, and more than that, in some way, worried about her chosen patron.

Maliah and I, by then, were a little bit frozen with horror at the size of the situation. I knew already that it was big, that it crosses planar boundaries and is easy enough to find that you can stumble across people feeling the effects in any city you wander into. But it’s one thing to guess it, and another to have someone come to you, and tell you a whole force of the universe is out of whack, and ask for your help to fix it, since divine intervention doesn’t seem to be coming.

Or, well—that makes Niko sound like a fool, and she’s not that. She wants our help, yes, but it’s not like she’s expecting us to solve divine-level problems. Maliah may be favored by Cernunnos, but that doesn’t make either of us qualified to do anything about the force of creativity. But three people without enough power to fix something is better than one, and the first thing she’s asked is our help contacting someone with more power who may know more: Aluarashi. We’re the first people they spoke to, and we’ve had some level of interaction since. And, after all, they’re the god of tides and knowledge here, and it’s definitely knowledge we’re seeking.

She offered to let us do this on our own, but we definitely agreed that she should be involved, since she’s the one who has been doing most of the groundwork on this issue. After a little back and forth, we decided to leave an offering at their shrine and pray to them first and see where that led, and to aid us in that, I went to ask Eheba if there’s a kind of offering they seem to prefer.

It’s early days, a new shrine for a newly-worshiped god. Two years isn’t much time to properly start a tradition of worship, so Eheba’s answer was mostly a shrug and a list of some possibilities. Books (apparently a scientist tends to bind books of data), anything related to oceans, many expected things. I appealed to Maliah, since she seems to have good instincts for what Cernunnos would appreciate, but she told me firmly that she was taught in those traditions her whole life and that here, my guess is as good as hers.

(Which it patently isn’t, I know about five holiday hymns and the basic wedding attendant duties for the rituals of the Undying Court, a few awkward prayers for the Lady of Stars, and my previous attempts to talk to Aluarashi. But she, in this as in other things, insists that Aluarashi likes me better, for the time they put knowledge in my head—as though that’s more important than their attempt to comfort her for her guilt after we killed the hydra. I’d say giving a tool the knowledge to take care of a problem doesn’t show as much favor as providing reassurance when the job is done, but just try to convince Maliah of that.)

After some worrying, which Niko stayed wisely out of, we settled on a lightly enchanted game piece from the hags’ hoard and some prints of pictures Maliah has taken of maps on our journeys, as knowledge to pass on. When that was prepared, we went out to the shrine, where Maliah firmly put me in charge, again arguing that they like me better. And Niko was clear that she was hoping for something of an introduction to them at best, not for a direct appeal with us supporting her, so I stumbled through an explanation of the situation and asked if there was any help they could offer.

The response, after that, was a brief image of the waterfall we passed through to enter their domain so long ago, when we first started adventuring—an invitation more than a summons, but a clear implication that there’s a conversation that needs to happen and that the medium of a prayer isn’t going to do much about it. Eheba, when I’d spoken to him, offered to drive us out in his boat if we needed to visit the caves again, so it looks like I’ll be taking him up on it, and Niko has suggested we leave tomorrow early, especially if we’re going to need to solve the puzzles all over again to reach them.

There are still some hours left in today, though, so I’ve been writing you, and I think the kids will be home from school soon so we can spend some time with them. Then I told Eheba (and I imagine others will come along as well, since we aren’t exactly being secretive about being in town) that we’ll be at the inn’s bar tonight, so I’m expecting him and who knows what other company for conversation and drinks while we catch up.

Though not too many drinks, if we’re leaving early tomorrow.

I’ve gotten too used to solving problems, I think. It means I don’t know what to do in the face of this, where unless Aluarashi has something comforting to say, I have no idea how we’re possibly going to fix it, or if there’s a way to fix it. I would tell you to ask Lindanas about this too, but I can’t even think where he would begin to research.

And I know what you’re going to say, but—please don’t tell Tiriel. When I have a more concrete answer, I’ll do it, with all the apologies she deserves for keeping it from her so far, but like I keep saying, it’s only going to be unnecessary worry and guilt for her, and Niko confirms that she’s part of a worrying pattern, but unlikely to be in any danger herself. If Aluarashi tells us what’s happened tomorrow, I’ll write her tomorrow, but for the time being, there’s no use in it.

Last time, it took us plenty of time to get through Aluarashi’s puzzles, so I don’t know if I’ll be writing tomorrow, but I’ll tell you as soon as I know more, I promise.

Love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Thread: Two #jamcryptid busks on Nellaser’s Landing

shapednote: Okay, I cannot take credit for the first of these videos, my brother caught it on his way home from work, which is why the sound quality is awful, but he still caught twenty minutes for me before he had to go, but a friend of mine texted about a second session and I took my good mic and caught most of an hour, you are all WELCOME.

{two videos of Elyn playing on a street corner, with her PA bot looking over the collection basket}

shapednote: Notes: a few familiar ones in here! She really likes that “Spacefarer’s Daughter” one, and there’s that demiplanar lullaby again. But also just a lot of loops she seems to set up on the spot and improvise over. Still working on timestamps for everything. If anyone has IDs for some of her non-originals, I’d appreciate some help, she’s got really wide influences.

lvl20lute: Back to Nellaser’s Landing! Also bless you for getting some good sound quality at last, Shape. Any response to you showing up with a good mic?

shapednote: I stayed back, mostly, so no! I think she might have noticed me at some point, but not too much. The third song on that second recording seems like your kind of thing. Any idea what it is? She only says that we’ll have to forgive her pronunciation of the Undercommon.

station.eri: Shape! These are the longest (and in the second case, the cleanest!) recordings I’ve heard of her yet, thank you so much!!! (Also if anyone’s following my project of doing a deep analysis of one of her polyrhythmic loops, that’s going to be done in the next few weeks unless there’s another massive dump of music like this, since I expect this is going to consume me for the next three days.) She has got SO much presence, for someone who barely talks to her audience! What’s it like live?

shapednote: Just as magnetic as you would expect! I just … really do not understand why she is busking on the street. It’s a great thing for musicians of all levels to do, sure! But she is friends with Archmage Zebari! (Not even gossiping about personal lives here, listen to her introduce that Undercommon song, apparently they helped her with the pronunciation.) Even if she weren’t good enough on her own merits, the archmage could get her into any concert venue on the station, and we’ve got some good ones!

orc.arina: Please don’t tempt me with the thought of a full Elyn of Procyon headliner concert with professional video and audio. It is the only thing I want more than a studio album. HEY ARCHMAGE ZEBARI, IF YOU GO SEARCHING FOR YOUR FRIENDS, CAN YOU SPONSOR AN ALBUM.

clary-net: Oh, that sound quality! Seriously, thank you, @shapednote, this is exactly what I wanted today. Also glad that she and the archmage seem to be actual friends, not just associates in demiplanar contact. (Although speaking of friends, I don’t see her friend or the world’s largest dog! It’s rare to get one video without either of them, let alone two such long ones! I hope all is well there. This is why I don’t like enjoying adventuring bards, you get worried when they disappear for a while.)

station.eri: Update from my second listen-through of the long video: she just winked at someone, can’t tell who from the camera angle, and I might never recover.

lvl20lute: @shapednote I had to do some looking, but apparently it’s an adapted aria from an opera from Zarakib? She must have gone to the Underdark at some point, I guess. Time to go looking in the news there to see if anything’s gone to hell lately!

orc.arina: I feel a little bad for how much we all try to stalk her, but not too bad, considering she is TERRIBLE AT SELF-PROMOTION. Please, Elyn of Procyon, would you like a media manager?

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Maliah,

I hope you don’t mind me writing you—I know you and Marsa are camping by now, and you shouldn’t worry about responding to me, especially when we’re due to meet up in a week or so. I’m just here on Sestrilles, and I’m realizing that this is by far the longest we’ve spent apart since we met, and that it’s very strange that you don’t know everything I’ve been up to in the past month.

How are you, though? How was everyone at HASAI? I hope you passed my best on to Fariya and Sserit and Lian, and had fun spending time. You said you might ask about those displacer beasts and if they had anything to do with the spell. Any word on that? Are the scientists all excited to hear about your bows? You don’t need to answer all these questions in a letter, obviously—I’ll be seeing you soon, but I still want to ask them. And I hope that Marsa is well too, and that the two of you are enjoying spending some time together with no urgency or need to do anything but spend time. Stretch it out as long as you like, if she has more time between runs! The last thing I want is to pull you two apart when you’ve finally got plenty of time.

I’ve been keeping busy. I was on Nellaser’s Landing for most of three weeks, reading through a whole lot of esoteric articles and books about demiplanes and how teleportation magic works and about how to adapt wizard magic for bards, which was interesting and made me very very glad that I’m not a wizard. I also managed to drag Gaizka out of their office to watch movies or otherwise catch up on what they’ve been missing with their nose stuck in academic books for their whole life (especially since they’d never read or seen The Naming of Virtues and I could fix the latter). I can’t exactly offer much to one of the most powerful wizards living, but I can offer some relaxation and some nights watching movies, especially since these ones have Common subtitles or are in it in the first place.

When I needed a break from the reading, I’d go and find a place to busk, which netted me a few crowds, which is always fun. I tried to do a version of one of the arias from that opera on Zarakib, and it went decently well, but perhaps not my greatest crowd-pleaser. I’ll have to brush it up more.

All the time and effort on the spell worked, because I think I can cast the spell now. Or rather, my test attempt worked, but I haven’t tried it properly yet because I wanted to go to Sestrilles first. Gaizka is fairly sure I have it, though, and was saying something about writing a commentary on one of the books about interactions between wizards’ and bardic magic, so we’ll see what comes of that. Poor Gaizka needs a real vacation about as much as we do, but at least we tend to bring them new and interesting problems to solve.

They did have to get back to work, though, so once I had the spell down properly, I came here to see Sestrilles, where I’ve been keeping myself busy.

Damaris and the water elementals have been off to an amazing start, especially since between her and Gaizka speaking on Kirim’s behalf, the permits for the excavation went through very quickly. (Damaris says hello, by the way.) Mostly so far she’s been teaching them just what to look for and how to categorize it, and they’ve identified what they think are most of the large parts of the wreck, though obviously it’s hard to be sure how much burned up in orbit or wore away in the water, or whether some of the wreckage got scattered farther. It’s going to be months before there’s more than that, I’m guessing, but I know it’s in good hands.

And the elementals apparently picked up some nice rocks for her and for me, which I’ve given to various family members. Kari and Thari are the only ones who properly appreciated them, and had a lot of questions about the water elementals to the point that Alion promised to ask if maybe they can join Damaris on the surface boat of the expedition one day, as long as they promise to be well-behaved. It was a relief, at least, to have something to talk about the two of them with that won’t encourage them to go off and do adventuring themselves, especially since I took them for an evening so Alion and Tiriel could have a date.

I also got time with both of them—Tiriel is still feeling creatively fulfilled, but doesn’t seem to know anyone feeling the opposite, or at least didn’t mention it. (I still don’t quite have the courage to tell her she’s part of a larger pattern, it’s going to worry her and the rest of the family dreadfully. Tyko is already fretting about it.) Alion’s having a quieter but still pleasant time at work, and both of them are enjoying a new park that’s opened up on the edge of the city in the past few months, in the marshes to the north on the edge of the Edhest. Some really nice paths, apparently, we’ll have to go next time you’re here with me.

The biggest news, though, is that I met Tyko’s Lindanas! I convinced him that I wasn’t going to be terrible (and, I’ll add, I wasn’t), and that there’s such a lot of variation about when I can and can’t come that it was worth trying, and Lindanas agreed, though I am guessing from his attitude meeting me that it was an extended and difficult negotiation.

I do like him a lot, though, and can see why Tyko likes him so much too. He’s quiet (and Tyko assures me that he’s normally quiet, I didn’t just intimidate him), but once you get him talking, he’s very clever, and he’s got a group of friends who seem to have wholeheartedly adopted Tyko (which is good, since I feel like most of his socializing is with Alma or Tiriel and Alion), all of whom sound absolutely delightful. I’m vaguely familiar with his mother and a few members of her crew, since ships out of Sestrilles tend to hail each other when we’re at the same port, which was nice. And he’s clearly fond of Tyko, which is the most important part of all.

Tyko trusted me enough (and Lindanas did too, this only happened after a strenuous conversation held mostly through raises of the eyebrow) to leave us alone for a few minutes, even, when I continued to be friendly and welcoming, because Tyko can take care of himself and even if he couldn’t, Lindanas is plenty nice. I promised him embarrassing stories about Tyko’s adolescence the next time we spend time together, as is my right as a sister, but we’ll see if I can manage it without Tyko stuffing a pillow in front of my face.

Your plans are going to be wrapping up soon, so I think I’m going to leave tomorrow, to try out the Teleport variant and visit Kirim, where I can get to know Am’elyn and Khama’air a little better, and maybe Tidge if he can get to Sunwest (or I could always try visiting him, though if I go anywhere I am definitely taking transport, I’ve learned my lessons about hiking on Kirim). And where I can keep on catching up on the things I might have known or learned if the Procyon hadn’t crashed.

I don’t want to bother you while you’re enjoying your privacy with Marsa, so I won’t check in by Sending, but that means if you need me, you might have to ask Gaizka to pass a message on, since they’re still working on getting Kirim into any of the relays that could bring ICD messages through. Hopefully you won’t need me, though, especially since I’ll be there four or five days at most!

I’m meant to have dinner with the family in a few minutes (and possibly Lindanas, who pretended he wasn’t sure of his work schedule but might just not want to be at our whole-family dinner so soon), so I’ll leave this letter off, and I’ll see you very soon.

Love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tyko,

It's been a quiet few days here on Nellaser's Landing, though I write that and immediately think about what a quiet few days would have meant a year or two ago. Ordinary work, nothing extra or exciting, time with my colleagues or with you if I was on Sestrilles, time to fiddle around with some tech or watch a movie with Alion or explore whatever port I was in at the time.

These past few days have, in all fairness, been a lot of that last thing. Last time we were here we lingered around the university, lingered at the library a lot, ran the errands for The Longshot, and participated in the Commemoration of Grace. This time, we've been having a quieter time. We went to a space museum, which was beautiful and where we caught a great lecture by one of their scientists in residence who I had a great chat with. Maliah and I have both visited our therapists a few times, which after the mess of Rotharl I think we both desperately needed.

We had a nice dinner with Gaizka in a quiet part of town where they didn't need to be the head of the university and actually wore colors for once (I don't want to ask if they miss them, wish they could wear brighter ones, but I really don't know if we're that kind of friends yet, or the kind of friends where I could buy them brightly colored socks so they could have some color that wouldn't be visible). I get the impression they're a little lonely, being an archmage so young, in charge of the university when most people their age are still establishing themselves. I'm happy to provide companionship where I can, though, now that I'm mostly done feeling very awed about being in their presence.

I also helped them out a bit by doing an interview or two about Kirim, since I did sort of abandon that whole effort for a month to drink and read on the beach. They were quick and non-invasive, and I feel useful, so overall that was a good thing to do.

Gaizka offered to bring me back to Kirim on an upcoming visit, or on any upcoming visit. I toyed with the idea, since we don't have any technical commitments until we go see Athan and Kian, but I've all but promised you a visit, and the kids on Nosirion-1 as well, so instead I'm sending letters with Gaizka and will have to go back another time. I've also discussed learning their spell from them at some point, when I have the power to be able to cast it, so I can get back and forth to Kirim on my own if I need to.

When we first arrived, though, they and Maliah and I had a long talk about Liadon, and the situation there, because Gaizka has power the way Athan and Kian do, connections but more public and legitimate ones. If we were going to sneak in like assassins and kill the CEO of Liadon, I would have enlisted them instead, but since Shaan and Cloudleaper don't seem sure they want that, more legitimate means are the smartest way.

Gaizka agrees with the theory that their mother is a warlock, and that her patron probably provided that Geas. A scroll, an object, some other intermediary, but it came from them—if she'd been powerful enough to cast the spell herself, it would have been more likely to work, even with Shaan's natural resistance to that kind of magic. So that tells us that she's not powerful enough for that kind of magic to be easy for her, and more worryingly, it tells us that her patron was invested enough in Shaan's return to give her a piece of very powerful magic to use to make it happen. If it's an artifact, she might still have it. If it was a scroll or something like that, she doesn't necessarily, and if we surprise her, might not have the opportunity to get one.

I also asked about Resurrection, and Gaizka confirmed that only a few people on this plane can cast True Resurrection, and a few more Resurrection, and none live in that region, but might have traveled through it. So the question of how Cloudleaper's siblings managed to try to cast the spell remains open, and far less urgent than the questions about her mother.

A lot of our questions are about how to bring consequences to bear on her. For one thing, she's powerful where she's from, and her money has bought plenty of local politicians, according to Cloudleaper. Gaizka encourages us to have incontrovertible proof before we try to bring anything up publicly. They're making inquiries and thinking about how to hold her once we have her, because we learned with Drewyn on Gletta-86 how hard it is to cage a warlock.

I'm finding myself worried what happens if and when we do manage to catch her, take her down, prevent her from making a weapon that could kill planets. (And Gaizka seemed very interested to know about those plans. I am reminded that they are not a person I would want to make an enemy of.) Specifically, if she's a warlock, if her patron has tasked her with making that weapon and wants it badly enough to part with the magic for a ninth-level Geas, wants it badly enough to, if Cloudleaper is right, manipulate her very children from birth to sustain the company to build the weapon … what's it going to do if she's locked up? If she's dead? And we have no idea who or what it might be, and why it might want this weapon.

I think those are questions I'd like answered pretty early on in the planning—the last few, I mean. The earlier ones are all speculative. But who her theoretical patron is and what it wants? That seems like important information to know, and I don't know how to learn it. I still have Altas's promised Divination, but I don't think that spell will give quite the right information, though I may ask her. And Legend Lore from Gaizka is only any good if we have a name, I think. Though I may ask, now that I'm thinking of it.

In the meantime, I'm waiting to hear from Alion about talking to water elementals, but either way I'm hoping to drop by Sestrilles for a few days, maybe even a week if Maliah doesn't mind.

And I'm thinking a lot about how a few quiet days now involves chatting with an archmage about how to take down the head of an extremely powerful corporation. Or, for that matter, chatting with an archmage at all.

A lot has changed in the past year or so. Glad I still have you to write to, even if I'm sure my letters cause you just as much stress as they remove from me.

Love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Alion,

Maliah and I have left Rotharl, after only a few days there. Cloudleaper isn't with us, and—I'll explain a lot more about it the next time I'm there (which I'm hoping will be soon), but I think she needs the rest, and has some things to work out. So things feel strange and unsettled, but I'm also glad to be up and moving.

We're settling into our inn on Nellaser's Landing, where we've stopped to visit Archmage Zebari for a few reasons, so I'm writing you a quick letter before Maliah and I go out for the evening. There's a street fair not far away, and it sounds like a lot of fun.

Our next steps are—we're not sure, and some of them will depend on you. At some point, within the next month or so, we're due on Mir to help Athan and Kian out with something, and we definitely want to stop on Nosirion-1 before that. Our plan is also for a stop on Sestrilles, but I'm not sure how long a stop it's going to be.

I mean, for one thing, I'd love to sit down with you for a week and see if I can learn Prestidigitation from you, or at least make a start. We just had a particularly filthy bit of work dealing with some griffons, and it really made me feel my lack. Someday I'll spend another week or two and learn Mending from Tiriel if I can manage it, but considering how much time we spend in the wilderness, Prestidigitation is going to be very useful very often.

But mostly, I'm hoping you might have news for me about your university connections! I know it hasn't been very long, only a month, but since I've got free time and knowing that coming up I could be busy from anywhere from a week to a month or longer, with no details on our upcoming job, I thought I'd ask. You'll get a visit either way, don't worry, I'm just balancing whether I should drop Maliah somewhere so she doesn't have to sit around while I try to learn Prestidigitation, or if I might need her help treating with elementals.

Either way, all my love to you and Tiriel, and I will tell you everything about what's been going on when I actually manage a visit. Soon!

Love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

My dearest Saramei,

We've been on quite an adventure, these past few weeks, which is why I've been so slow to answer your last letter. Your latest science unit sounds fascinating, Loren, and I'm glad all three of you have been getting through the last of the winter okay, even if you must all be looking forward to spring by now. Jesson, your picture of Nalira is absolutely lovely, and I've got it saved as my ICD's home background right now.

Our adventure took us off this plane. I told you about our trip to the Twilight of Cinders, I know, and this was another demiplane, but it felt a lot more like home—the wildlife was a good deal less friendly and easy to handle than most of that on Nosirion-1, but we found ourselves on a proper planet, without the air of general eeriness of the Twilight of Cinders. And this plane felt especially like home because it's the one my parents came from.

We've been doing a lot of research, lately, finding out where they came from, where their ship had originated. Kian and Athan, up on Mir, helped a lot, and helped us find people who could help in turn, and that led us all to Nellaser's Landing and Gaizka Zebari. Devon, I hope I can introduce you to them someday. They're an amazing wizard, and when they couldn't get us to Kirim, the plane I'm talking about, it took them a week to invent a spell that could do thejob. They're amazing with spell invention, and with wizardry in general—very young, for an Archmage, but friendly and more than willing to help us out when we've needed help, and easily convinced to watch silly movies in our hotel suite on Kirim when we all needed a rest.

All four of us (and Squirt, of course) have been on Kirim for a few weeks now, and came back because Archmage Zebari needed to get back to their life as head of the university and start the balls of politics rolling for recontacting Kirim, and because much as I loved getting to know my family there, we were all missing our families here too, you three very much included. I got to know some of my birth family—a grandmother, an aunt, and a cousin. I told them all about all of you, of course, and I hope someday, when travel between the planes is easier, at least some combination of you can meet.

There were some hard parts of the trip aside from learning about my past, and I'm hesitant to mention them to you, but I know we're going to be talking to the press about our trip (we've been back for a few days, and I know we have a party that's mostly a fancy press conference coming up where we'll be of interest to the people attending) at least a little, and it may come up, and I'd hate for you to have to hear anything upsetting from the news. So, I'll tell you that on a hike to the coast to meet a co-worker of one of my parents and an elemental (which you all would have loved, I think), we had an unfortunate meeting with a roc. We're all unharmed, but it was dangerous at the time, and I think you'd all rather know than not.

But now we're back home, and as I said, dealing with the logistics and publicity of having re-contacted a plane that has been out of contact for more than a thousand years. And in between that, we're all taking some time and quiet for ourselves. As wonderful as it was for me to meet family I'd never met, it was a lot to think about as well—all of you may understand that better than anyone else I know, all of you with your new siblings in the past year, and Devon and Loren, you with a mother you never knew. You can be happy to know them and sad you didn't have them before, with a whole complex tangle of emotions about the circumstances that kept you from knowing them. But like all of you have been, I'm doing my best to honor and deal with those emotions, and I'll come out the stronger for them in the end.

The suddenness of our departure and return made me realize that I need to connect the people I love at least a little better. I've given my brother, who I've told you lots about, your contact information, so he can tell you I'm safe if I'm gone for a while, and I'm attaching his information to this letter so you know who's sending you messages and so you can be proactive and ask him, if you're worried about me. And I'm sending your mother a short note to let her know I'm doing all this as well, never fear, so she knows who has your information. Hopefully we'll have more warning next time, but it can't hurt for you all to know where we are.

I hope you'll all keep telling me about your studies and what you're up to. I don't know when we'll next make it for a visit, but I hope it won't be too long. Our next visit is going to be to Kaliz-Beta, to see Maliah's mothers, and then who knows what will come? We don't have any concrete plans. All we've been doing, aside from all this business with Kirim, is do research and work on our magic (Maliah is learning Message, and I'm learning a variant on Speak With Dead, spell formulation is fascinating and I really do think you should talk with Archmage Zebari about it if I can introduce you, Devon).

Which is just exactly what I need, after all that excitement! I'll write to you again soon, and hopefully I'll be hearing about all your recent adventures and art projects.

And, so you know to be looking out, there's a package coming your way, and hopefully it will arrive within a week or two with some presents from Kirim. I hope you all like them!

All my love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Brennu,

I managed my asynchronous toast at dinner with an archmage the other night, what do you think of that? I didn't tell the table what I was drinking to, and we were all a little tipsy by then, but I take toasts seriously, and I hope you had something suitably delicious for yours. I'm not totally sure what mine was—some kind of local liqueur from here on Nellaser's Landing, where I'll be for a few days yet.

I've been thinking a lot, and having several visits with my new therapist, since your last letter. I've been busy too: learning spells from wizard scrolls isn't as easy for a bard as I'd like, and I'm tempted to write a treatise on converting scrolls into sheet music from sheer spite, only then I'd have to sit down for a year or five and actually do it, and I've never been very good on concentrating on academics for that long. But I've learned the spell now, the one good impact of the balhannoth.

I'm not going to cast it quite yet. You gave me some things to think about, and my therapist gave me more, when I explained the whole mess of it, and urged me not to cast the spell until I know what questions I can ask, told me it might be easier to remind myself that I'm not really speaking to my parents in whatever form they exist now but to their … memories, I suppose, if I have a clinical list of questions and stick to it. So I'm making a list, and in a week or three, I'll start casting the spell.

Unless I learn something shocking, right now I think I'm leaving it at this: True Resurrection isn't in my grasp, and if it were left up to me, without questions of my past and selfishness and family, resurrection magic that deep isn't what I want to be learning. But Resurrection … there's a chance I'll be able to explore the wreck of my ship, or have it explored. If there are remains, and they're enough to cast Resurrection, I may do that. But only if there are enough remains from all three. I won't call one or two of them away from the afterlife when they would all want to stay together.

That's the answer I'm choosing for now, even when I waver on it sometimes. If there's new information, or new changes, it may change in turn, but it seems like a reasonable and wise place to start from.

We're settling back into the Prime Material Plane pretty well. The therapy is helping, and we've all been working on various projects: research to do, spells to learn. Last night we went to a party at the university about contacting Kirim, the demiplane my family comes from. Archmage Zebari was in charge of that, but as the adventuring party who sparked the discovery, we were the object of interest to the press and some of the other people attending too.

I can't say I like talking to the press very much, trying to figure out what to say and what not to say, but the party was still a lot less stressful than the last one I went to, even if the last one gave me a good friend in the bargain. Anyway, if you look me up in the coming days, I might be in the news in a few places, stumbling my way through talking about Kirim.

To you, instead of to the press, I can be a little more honest: it was wonderful and it was awful and sometimes it was both. The awful parts mostly happened away from my family—a fight with a roc that went very badly, and the resulting fallout, have Cloudleaper and Maliah both a little tender still. But there were hard parts with them, too: it's bittersweet, learning things about people you might never meet but who you should know as well as you know yourself.

The best parts were getting to know my family as themselves, and just exploring the city and the landscape. My grandmother was one of the first people I met, and she's a little intimidating at first but very wonderful. My aunt is quieter, with a lot of grief on her shoulders, but she had good memories to share, and helped me know my parents most deeply by letting me access the family album that was stored on my earring. And my cousin wasn't around as much, but he's the one I had such a valuable conversation with about resurrection, and I'm looking forward to knowing him better.

I wandered in and out of shops all over the city where we landed and where my parents lived before they set sail, Sunwest. I have books to read, mostly classics that everyone my age on Kirim would have read, and music to listen to and learn, and presents for my family, mementos of my time away. I saw the ocean, and the views from the mountains, and met elementals, and if it weren't for the roc, it would have been almost too amazing to leave, even if Maliah and Cloudleaper were both bored out of their minds. As it is, I'll be glad when there's more than one person who knows how to cast the spell to get there, so I can go back for visits—maybe on my own this time, though.

And speaking of visits, I don't think Rugira Prime is going to happen quite yet. Cloudleaper doesn't seem to feel the need, so we're ceding to Maliah's need to see her mothers, after the distress of the roc, and going to meet them on Kaliz-Beta. My intention is to let them have their family time and find a beach to sit on, possibly for a week straight.

After that, I don't know what's coming, but if you're picking up an instrument, I'll have to be sure to stop by wherever you are, whether that's Mashoy or somewhere completely different, and have a jam session. Even if you're still at the point of playing “Ten Little Dragons,” playing music with other people is still one of the best things a person can do with their time.

All my very best,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tyko,

It was nice to see your face earlier, even if it was only so you could yell at me with the appropriate amount of emotion. I'm hoping that once you've had a chance to assimilate the worse parts of my trip to Kirim, we can have a longer and better talk about what it was all like, and what my family was like, because until you can meet in person I want you to know them in what ways you can. I'd love to come back to Sestrilles and tell you (and Tiriel and Alion) about all of it in person, but I've dragged Maliah and Cloudleaper around on my errands enough recently, and both of them have needs that supercede that, at least for now. We'll have to stick to video chats for a while, but I do know Teleport now, so it should be even easier for me to see you when I have the chance.

Speaking of spells I know or am learning—I think I'm almost there on Speak With Spirits. I need to have a talk with Gaizka or some necromancer colleagues of theirs to make sure I fully understand the differences between it and Speak With Dead, but I don't feel too bad about needing all their help since it's a spell that no one living knows right now, that I know of. Unless Ektarika is still alive out there in the mountains of Hangi Syr, which seems unlikely. Once I know the spell, of course, the question becomes what I ask them. I think I'm going to try to talk to Kadan first, since as a navigator, I think he'd be the most likely of the three of them to know what happened to the Procyon and what went wrong, since that's still my biggest lingering question.

(We'll save your strong feelings about Resurrection and True Resurrection and exploring shipwrecks to break my own heart for later, shall we?)

In the meantime, though, I think we're staying on Nellaser's Landing for a few weeks, to rest and recover and take care of some business. We've already taken Cloudleaper to a neurologist, who at least ruled out some of the worse medical problems I've been fearing and told her to rest from her concussion but didn't think the concussion was the actual trouble. They said they might be able to refer us to people who know about spell effects and side effects, but also encouraged us to ask at the library, since they have experts in a lot of fields and especially arcane ones. Mostly that's up to Cloudleaper, but if she doesn't seem to be reaching out, I'm going to. I'm our medic, and I need to take that duty seriously and know how to help her if this happens again.

And then we had quite a conversation, the three of us. Maliah talked to her mothers around the same time I talked to you, and I don't know all of what they talked about (though I have my suspicions, considering how rightfully shaken she was in the wake of the fight with the roc and in light of a magical item she's commissioning, more on that in a moment), but she came to me afterwards and asked me to hug her and held on for a long time and said they told her to ask me for that. At that point we'd talked about meeting them on Kaliz Beta, since they all want to see each other and Maliah doesn't want to go to the Feywild right now (and more on that in a moment too).

With Cloudleaper, I asked if going to Rugira Prime and the monastery would help her, but she said we should go to Kaliz Beta when I offered that as an alternative, and Maliah mentioned her mothers being mad at Cloudleaper. Cloudleaper, gracefully, said that they had every right to be angry, and then said she'd be fine if they shouted at her, punched her, whatever they felt right, that it was good to see someone was being cared about by their families.

And she talked about hers. A little more than she'd done before, and I knew the basics of who she was, who her family is, but she went through a list of their names, showed how they'd all been named related to the jobs they now hold, how they show aptitude for those jobs. She described all of them, bitterly, as a business investment. When I pointed out that she set her family's building on fire and faked her own death to get away from that life and that her brother disappeared and maybe that said that they weren't actually—she has some idea that her mother picked the personalities and skills of her children before they were born, and I said that wasn't the case if two of them left their roles so spectacularly. She didn't seem to believe me, and still seems intent on dragging her brother back, and I said something stupid about her projecting on him, but she deflected and I let her because, well, the other thing we've all been doing in the past day is finding therapists.

Gaizka had a list for us, trauma specialists, some of whom have specifically done work with adventurers, and as the only one of us who's actually had therapy, I did some research and gave us each a list of people to contact, and we all have some initial appointments set up, and hopefully that will help take some pressure off of you and the rest of our friends, knowing that if we vent to you, we have someone else to vent to who can help us find ways to solve our problems and has official training and payment to do just that. The money is a little hair-raising, for a specialized private therapist rather than a state one, but it's worth the cost.

And so is the insurance Maliah is buying herself that there won't be a repeat of the roc incident. She went off shopping without us and came back and asked if she could spend some party funds to commission a Ring of Feather Fall (though she doesn't have a suitable ring, it turns out, so she's using her prize broach from the Commemoration of Grace, of the leaping cat, which feels right). I said yes, of course, whatever she needed and she shouldn't touch her own funds for it, since like the therapy it's a cost of adventuring. It's a lot more than the therapy, but she's so scared, and so upset, and if it helps in some measure, I'm not going to object.

Especially because Drewyn, the warlock from Gletta-86, has escaped from prison, sometime while we were on Kirim. His spellbook was ashes in the evidence lockup, and he was just gone, no fanfare or violence or anything. Probably his patron came to fetch him. I'm not surprised—I honestly don't think any of us are surprised. Maybe only surprised that it took this long on my part.

I don't think he's going to come after us on any kind of mission of vengeance, but Maliah is terrified that he's going to try to curry favor with the Queen of Air and Darkness by telling her how powerful Squirt is and saying that she should take him back. We don't know who his patron is, though, because of course he wouldn't tell us that information. Maybe they're a friend of Maliah's Queen, or wants to be, and will pass on Drewyn's information, and she'll do whatever she thinks is right about it. Maybe they're an enemy, and then I don't know what use the information is to them then but I'm sure there is one. Or maybe they have nothing to do with her at all, but might be very interested in the idea of a sacred hound out in the world easy for the taking (not that I'm telling Maliah that possible theory). Regardless, Maliah is terrified, and the worry, not just about Drewyn but about what might happen with Squirt, is keeping her away from her home.

Because what she really wants isn't to meet her mothers in Kaliz Beta, I think, but to go to the Feywild and have her old life back, for at least a little while. Honestly right now, after the roc, I'm a little worried that she wants to go back to that life forever, that if she thought she could keep Squirt she would be back there in a heartbeat and never come back to the Prime Material Plane again. But I wish I could take her back there, where she so clearly loves it. Kaliz Beta will just have to do in the meantime, and maybe it will be a place where Cloudleaper and I can rest too.

There's one thing I think I can do to help Maliah, and some other people, and it's a favor I have to ask you. I'm attaching contact information for Maliah's mothers and for the kids on Nosirion-1, and I'll make sure they have your contact too, and then if I end up out of contact again I can Send to you and you can let them know we're safe, or whatever other information we need to relay. I know I alarm you with Sendings out of nowhere and I'm sure you can understand me not wanting to scare the kids that way, with everything Devon and Loren have been through. And I just don't know Maliah's mothers yet, even if I will soon, and if we're in danger, Sending to one person rather than however many groups of them is going to be smarter in the long run.

Like I said, we're around Nellaser's Landing for about two more weeks. I'll have some days to fill—therapy and visits to the library and talks with necromancers won't take all my time, probably. We've got two evenings we plan to book up, one for a thank you dinner for Gaizka and one at an event about the … we can't really call it the discovery of Kirim, can we? The contact of Kirim, anyway. It's going to be a fancy party with hopefully fewer assassination plots than the last one I was at, which is good, since I suspect I'm going to be the focus of some attention. Maliah very kindly agreed to go (maybe parties are less intimidating now that she's not pretending to be someone else), and I think Cloudleaper is still deciding, since there won't be much press but there may be some. (And, it occurs to me, large corporations are exactly the kinds of people who might sponsor inter-planar relations. Not that I think someone from Liadon will actually be there, but still, maybe someone who would recognize a family resemblance.) Anyway, the point is that whenever you want to talk again, whether to yell some more or to tell me what you've been up to over the past couple weeks, just let me know, and I'll set aside some time.

And I'll tell you when we head to Kaliz Beta, where I hope Maliah can find some rest and healing. And where maybe I can find a beach to sit on. In the meantime, I think a night at a bar couldn't hurt, and maybe some pleasant company. (Not that Maliah will take advantage of that unless Captain Lerwun happens to dock here. Honestly, I'm tempted to send her a message.) And therapy, of course.

See? I do have some self-preservation instincts.

Love you, even when you're ready to murder me.

As ever,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tyko,

I'm named after my grandmother. There's so much in that sentence that I can't wrap my head around, enough that I could barely type it at all, but it's true, apparently. She told me so.

By now, you're probably figuring that since I didn't call you from the middle of the ocean again, or from Nellaser's Landing crying and feeling defeated, Zebari's spell succeeded. So you're not expecting to hear from me for a while, and I don't think you will unless Cernunnos or Bahamut intercedes again, but I still need to write you because I'm nearly shaking and it's been a very long and almost unbelievable few hours and Maliah and Cloudleaper have very kindly let me shut myself in a room at our lodgings and scream into a pillow and write you a letter.

We tried again almost as soon as we made it back to Nellaser's Landing. This time, with the paneling from the Procyon, the spell succeeded. We showed up to a mild day, with a little breeze, and the sounds of people talking not far away. When we looked around, we'd appeared on the edge of a quiet city street, and the city was built for gnomes, everything short and narrow enough not to feel overwhelming and enough that Cloudleaper and Zebari stood out as much as—well, as much as you and I always stood out on Sestrilles.

When we stood there for a moment, all of us shocked and amazed and, on my part at least, realizing that we had no idea what to do, a man named Adiz approached us, wide-eyed and more than a little nervous, and asked if we needed help, in gnomish. In my gnomish, without Pika's grammar lessons or the accents from Alion's movies. I said yes, we'd like to talk to someone who could answer some questions if he didn't mind, and he was very relieved to take us to a nearby guard station, which is a lot friendlier and less structured-seeming than most of the ones I've seen on our plane.

The guard he approached introduced herself as Youllan ni Cyrnus ken-Siyavi, and after a moment, her partner as Sana ni Maika far-Sarva. When she looked expectantly at me, waiting for an introduction, I decided I wasn't exactly here to be subtle, so I told her that I'm Elyn of the Wrath of Procyon and watched Youllan's eyes get very wide, which answered a few questions that had occurred to me about whether anyone would have heard of the ship. Well, she had, and so have a lot of other people, apparently, so they found us a transport to the city hall and they bustled us off pretty quickly, as subtly as they could, to meet the mayor.

The subtlety meant that Cloudleaper and Zebari's knees were practically on their chests, in the vehicle, but they don't seem to be much worse off for the experience.

The mayor, who introduced himself as Miroya ni Khedi far-Sarva (a relation of Sana's, I suppose, however distant), seemed overwhelmed but trying very hard to deal with a situation he never expected he would find himself in. He showed us to a conference room with tea and (in Common, thankfully for everyone), started asking a few gentle questions—I told him about the crash, the timeline as far as I know it, and he said that we're in Sunwest, the capitol city of the planet of Kirim, on a plane unnamed as far as they know. The planet was colonized by the people on the Blaze of Shadai, and once they lost contact with the Prime Material Plane, it took them until a little more than fifty years ago to reestablish a spacefaring program—and the Procyon, crewed with volunteers, was their first attempt.

Archmage Zebari also made a very nice speech saying that they're in a position to (and more than happy to), establish contacts with the Prime Material Plane to the extent that they want to establish contacts with them, which I hadn't even begun to think of, so thank goodness for traveling with important people, I suppose.

The mayor was very gracious and eventually excused himself to get someone to start putting information together and to deal with the large mess we suddenly dumped in his lap, telling us to look around city hall if we wanted to.

I did want to, once I'd fortified myself with a little more tea, and found a map to show Maliah (though she couldn't understand the labels) and read signs and carvings about people and histories I've never heard of, which was more than a little surreal. At one point, drawn by the sound of conversation, I poked my head into a larger space, and promptly saw a murmuring, anxious-seeming crowd. And since the mayor had told me that it would be hard keeping the news of my arrival quiet, it seemed likely to me that they were there because of me, because the Procyon meant that much to so many people.

I wasn't ready to face a whole crowd, so I ducked out and not long after the mayor found me, apologizing for the breach in privacy, and ushered me back to the conference room when I admitted I'm not ready for a whole crowd. He offered to bring a few sensible people to meet me, and after a moment I said that seemed like a good idea, so off he went, and not long after that, he arrived with about a half dozen people, all of them looking eager and nervous. One man, middle-aged, asked me straight out what news I could give them of the Procyon, and was silenced with an elbow from an older woman with silver hair.

I introduced myself as Elyn of the Wrath of Procyon, and said that's all of my name I know, which told them more than anything but the full horrible story could. The older woman, though, said that between my hair and my name, no one could, as she put it, “doubt her claim.” She sent the others away, the mayor off with them to soothe their hurt feelings, and there we were left staring at each other, looking for something familiar, though she had more luck than me.

First, she introduced herself as Am'Elyn'nar ni Hiulin far-Ehsan, and said I could call her Am'Elyn, which was enough of a shock. And then she said that one of my fathers is her son. You remember the picture I sent? All three of them were my parents, and she's the grandmother who's not, as far as I can tell, biologically related to me.

And she told me my name. She knew I would want to know it, so she gave it to me as soon as she could, and so I'm giving it to you, even if it seems like a lot of name to inhabit right now: Elyn'vir Sidu Cheani ni Huilin far-Ehsan. She said that I could add bi'Procyon or bi'Kirim if I like, and I'll add bi'Procyon, because I can't imagine my name without that in it somewhere. And if some days I feel more like a Elyn bint Tiriel kin-Mara, well. Nobody should object too much.

It was … it's hard to think of how to say any of it. She told me my parents' names, and a little bit about them.

Her son was named Kadan'riv ni Huilin far-Ehsan, and his spouses called him Dana, so someday maybe I'll manage to tell her that I named myself after him, for a little while. She describes him as a magpie who liked shiny things.

My other father, whose hair I have inherited, was Ezenki'maah ni Huilin ken-Asisan, often called Ezeh, and I don't know much else about him yet.

And my third parent, whose hair is a lot longer in the pictures Am'Elyn showed me than I assumed from the one I saw, was Hanai'fe ni Huilin sul-Saani, called Ha'fe, who Am'Elyn says was a very straight-faced person, though two of the three pictures I've seen of them show them smiling. The one I have from my earring was a picture of when the three of them started to have a more serious relationship. She showed me another, the last transmission they received, of the three of them holding me.

I told her about my family in return—about you, about Alion and Tiriel—and she was glad to hear about all of you and says she'd love to meet you all someday. I think you'd like her, you really would. She doesn't take anyone's shit, and she's kind, and—well, I think you'll like her. If I can convince you to leave Sestrilles or if she's wiling to come to the Prime Material Plane.

Tomorrow, I'm going to her house for lunch. I have an aunt, Ha'fe's sister, who also lives in Sunwest, and there may be a cousin of Ezeh's too, which will be an overwhelming party, but I want to know them so badly, so I'll pluck up my courage and go. And I'll pluck up my courage and say I can't stay, because Maliah asked me and I've known since I found out they might be from another plane that I can't leave my home plane behind forever. I'd love to stay a little while, and visit often, once that's opened up a little more, but families are families, and too much of mine lives on the Prime Material Plane for me not to go back.

Not sure Maliah believes me yet, and Cloudleaper made mentions of them maybe kidnapping me (I have no reason to fear this, but Cloudleaper's views on family are what you might call inconsistent. I don't think I even told you when I stopped by about her talk with Rihaila and Ekaitz from the tournament over brunch, but this letter is already too long), but that's a problem for later.

I also need to think about what to tell them about that scroll from Hangi Syr. If I can learn the spell and talk to them, now that I have their names, they deserve to know, and to give me their own questions to ask them. And I can ask them about resurrection, too—I owe them that, I really do. I don't know how to do it, but I do owe them that, the knowledge that I've at least thought of it. Maybe they'll know what my parents would have thought of the subject. It's a horrible topic, but it won't be less horrible the longer I put it off.

The mayor showed up again after she left, both of us admitting we need time to think, and said that rooms have been reserved for us, a diplomatic suite at The Sage's Blade, a place with a lot of privacy. Unnervingly, I'm going to be something of a celebrity here, since the Procyon meant a lot to a lot of people here, and I'm going to have to grapple with that. At least Archmage Zebari has offered to draw some attention and has more than enough experience and skill to do it.

Youllan and Sana brought us here to the Blade, arranged food (and milkshakes) for us, and left us alone, after Youllan gave me her number and an offer of advice and friendship, which I was glad to accept. It's nice to have someone here who doesn't have a lot of expectations, however kind, of who I am.

Maliah and Cloudleaper both checked on me, Zebari excused themselves to read their own dossier on Kirim and Sunwest (I got one too and will look at it as soon as I can manage to), and as soon as I could, I escaped to scream into a pillow and write to you. I think our food is going to be delivered soon, though, and much as I'd like to hide in here for a while and scream about everything to you, wonder about the implications for who I am and what I should do next, I need to keep moving.

Dinner is a reasonable start.

I'll write again soon. I'll have to, reading over my own letters is a good way to remind myself that all of this is real.

Love,

Elyn('vir, apparently)

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tyko,

I did get your note last night! I was out drinking with some of our competitors so I didn't answer, but I'm glad you're happy I'm doing something where not being killed is explicitly in the rules. (So am I, frankly.) I'm sorry nowhere on Sestrilles is broadcasting it, though. I didn't think to have it filmed, and anyway, probably there will be videos posted somewhere at some point. I'll set PA on finding them for you. Poor thing is probably a little bored, with the tournament I haven't taken it out to explore very much.

Anyway, the tournament is over now, and I may as well spoil the ending and say that we won! It was a little rough for a while in the last two tasks, but that felt a little better to me, and also I think to Maliah, than if we'd won easily the way we did in the first round.

Yesterday, we showed up ready for our third task, which we knew would be another skill test rather than combat. I think it was Cloudleaper's favorite because she didn't have to fight anyone and got to go fast, and Maliah's favorite because she did incredibly well—it was a three-dimensional maze. We went in with three other teams: Blackbreaker, the team who almost beat us in the obstacle course, Honest Defeat, with two dwarves and two gnomes who were quite friendly, and Iron Fox Artifice, three half-elves and an elf, all of whom can hold their own to say the least.

We were ahead pretty much the whole time, with Iron Fox Artifice breathing down our necks and Honest Defeat doing pretty well too. Maliah seemed to know what turns to take before we even got there, I decided that it was more important to go fast than to sabotage anyone else, and we had almost a full minute left on our five minutes of time (it was a speed challenge as well as a navigation one) when we came tumbling out the gate into a tube, nothing to grapple onto but the walls, and I could hear static that meant those were electrified. I grabbed a rope and told Cloudleaper to throw me, which she did, and then Squirt blinked up and Cloudleaper and Maliah climbed up, and the four of us made it out of the gate with seconds to spare before Iron Fox Artifice came through too.

Nish, one of the gnomes from the Honest Defeat, came up to say hello to me in the space between tasks, and to win it for the gnomes, which I thought was sweet when she must have been disappointed. I told her I owe her a drink, because I may be enjoying the competition, but I still feel bad defeating perfectly nice people, so I'm going to be spending a lot of money on drinks, probably. (Not least for Cloudleaper. I know she technically can't get drunk, but maybe if we stuff her full enough of drinks? And I know nothing that's technically poison can work on her, but there must be some kind of non-dangerous recreational substance based on healing or something? If nothing else, I'll buy her a lot of milkshakes. More on that in a minute, though.)

After a little rest, Myali Mosha collected those of us who were still in the competition and gave us the rules for the four task—a battle royale, the four teams pitted against each other, able to make alliances or not as we chose. It was us, Iron Fox Artifice, Mercurial Decay (a group of two Cloudleaper befriended before the task, bonding over our somewhat scientific names), and The Thorn Lamp, a group of five, including two bards, a tiefling and a half-orc, as well as a few others.

We only had a few seconds. Maliah and I decided that we'd go after the bigger groups first, and Cloudleaper seemed amenable if dubious, and then we were off, in a big room full of cover, coming through the center and spreading out as soon as we could, after I landed a Shatter right in the middle of Thorn Lamp. After that, I ducked behind cover and everything happened very fast and behind all sorts of barriers, so I can't really tell you much. Maliah was terrified of something at one point—Thorn Lamp had a gnomish illusionist in their mix, and apparently she decided to make Maliah see her worst fear, which was of course the Queen of Air and Darkness there to take Squirt, so that was extremely distracting for her, to say the least.

Cloudleaper was off elsewhere, fighting one of the monks from Iron Fox Artifice mostly, Squirt got in a fight with a man from Thorn Lamp who turned out to be a weretiger and the two of them were bouncing off walls for the whole fight, and it was generally chaos. At one point I went out in the middle to see what I could see and there was a fire elemental, and I'm still not totally sure who summoned that. I took out the half-orc bard not once but twice, and the monk Cloudleaper wasn't fighting was about to take a few shots at me when their team leader called out a surrender, much to their disappointment. Apparently half their team was down and they looked rough, and they'd agreed beforehand that if half of them were down and the others weren't doing too well, they would surrender, so off they went.

I concentrated on Thorn Lamp, and cast a Shatter at the illusionist who kept focusing her attention on Maliah (and blinded her at one point, no less), and still found myself shocked when the weretiger regained his human form and surrendered, the last member of his team standing and with no healing potions (though he seemed very sad to surrender and not go down fighting. He also immediately started telling Squirt how good at fighting he is and what a good boy he is, thereby winning Maliah's eternal friendship). That left us and Mercurial Decay, and we congratulated them and commiserated with the others and mingled some while Myali Mosha told us when we needed to be there for the final today.

Once we were all back in gravity, we went out for some drinks—medics on the scene had healed us all up, but we were still all feeling more than a little rough, so the drinks were much appreciated, and we all had enough to Lesser Restoration ourselves sober again at the end of the night so we wouldn't be hungover for the final.

This morning, we reported to the arena, and we were given a minute to strategize before we went in. The rules: a fight, to unconsciousness or surrender from one of the teams, with a few seconds to find positions before the fighting began. Maliah and I decided that she and Cloudleaper should concentrate on the mage and I should see if I could occupy the drow with Irresistible Dance (we knew it wouldn't last long, him being an elf, but we thought it might give us a little head start). Cloudleaper was busy fretting since she'd befriended Rihaila Onsimos, the mage, and still hates mismatched fights, but she agreed.

I figured after the obstacle course she was happier with the competition, but I really should have checked in, because she found the whole fight so distressing. It was a bit of a mess for all of us—they were both having an easy time of making my saves, the mage was a conjurer and a master of obscuring effects we all had trouble avoiding and seeing through, and Maliah saved us with some incredible shots, including getting the drop on them incredibly well. I need to ask her if she's learned something new, I've never seen her shoot that hard.

Cloudleaper ended up taking out Rihaila—twice in quick succession no less, and crying the whole time and saying that they'd signed a waiver. Maliah shot Ekaitz, the drow, and knocked him out to end the fight. Cloudleaper was sobbing in distress, Maliah was confused, and once I'd confirmed we won, I cast Mass Cure Wounds to get the two of them awake again. Rihaila seemed confused and a little alarmed about Cloudleaper clutching her and wailing, and Ekaitz mostly seemed very amused, but he seems like an easily amused person in general.

Myali Mosha and several of her cats came down to congratulate us, seeming very concerned about Cloudleaper (and sending a cat or two over to her to keep her occupied), and everything was pretty confusing for a few moments. In the end, Maliah and Squirt and I accepted the award in public while Cloudleaper recovered a little with the cats, and we arranged to have brunch tomorrow with Mercurial Decay to catch up and get to know each other when we're out of competition.

I feel awful about Cloudleaper's distress about the whole situation, and I wish I'd known before how much she would hate it (though in all fairness, I don't think she knew how much she would hate it). We'll have to avoid tournaments in the future, I suppose, at least ones where we think we outmatch the competition. It's a bit of a pity, because I like them, it turns out—a way to hone my skills and get the thrill of a potential win in (as well as some very nice prize money) without anyone having to worry that I'm going to die. I'm glad you enjoyed hearing about it vicariously, anyway! And hopefully you'll enjoy this one just as much. I'll have PA keep an eye out for video clips that I can send you of any particularly impressive moments.

Now that the competition is over, I'm expecting to hear from Archmage Zebari any time. This time, hopefully I'll be able to give you a little more warning. At least, unlike with the Twilight of Cinders, I should be able to send you at least the occasional ICD message.

I'm hoping they delay a day or two more, because I would like to talk to the astronomer at the library, and maybe the one at the university, to learn what I can about the region of space with all the anomalies—we may be bypassing it, but it still really can't hurt to know more, and about things like how stars behave around anomalies, if there are any signs to look out for, all the non-arcane things we didn't get a chance to ask the head librarian.

Glad to hear that you're well, and yes, feel free to tell Alion and Tiriel about the tournament! I haven't had time to write them lately but I'm sure they'd like to hear about it.

Love,

Elyn