Velius

~9 AD

Tower of Descensus, exact location unknown.

Provide a screenshot of the in-game text with location details in the #lore-notes channel on The Compendium Discord or to Mortalitas (marot on Discord) in order to have your name listed here.

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Try as I might, I cannot find the fumigations necessary to induce a state that aligns with the energies of this place. We have been here for a fortnight, and I have tried every sort of incense we have brought with us. It is only natural that I would think of that destroyed lavra in Canteri.

Master Arte would tell me: “Set it down, Velius.” But I cannot simply cast aside the reports that were gathered from that place. The visions recounted by the surviving augurs were extraordinary.

Though the scents they referred to are…unconventional to say the least. I do not know how I would acquire the materials for such a fumigaiton, nor would I find the smell of such a thing burning pleasant.

Despite our distance from Canteri, I have noticed much of the same in this very place. Certain conditions match: A tower by the sea, strange visions, and chambers along the cliffside. Surely it cannot be that simple. There must be some other condition that I am not considering. But whichever well of prophecy those poor souls drank from?

It is here as well. It must be.

Our research could change the future of divination as we know it, our names written in history as the discoverers of something revolutionary. We are at the undeniable crossroads of circumstance and opportunity, and I intend to explore it rather than being frightened by the imagined terrors that start us from sleep.

Every augur worth their salt knows that every vision is not pure or comforting, and this place is granting them to us with no effort of our own.

Should we not apply ourselves in return?

Does the fledgling not fear its first plummet from the familiar comfort of its nest?

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Velius

~20 AD

Tower of Descensus, exact location unknown.

Provide a screenshot of the in-game text with location details in the #lore-notes channel on The Compendium Discord or to Mortalitas (marot on Discord) in order to have your name listed here.

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It is far too late that I fear the darkest depths in which we have plunged. I can hear the singing. The throaty hum accompanied by a single note. I recognize it as the sound from my dreams, though never has it been so clear. Never has it been so overwhelming.

I understand now that he is the source. The source of the song. The source of the dreams. The source of my inspirations to engage in necromancy to further our divinatory practices. All the while he has plucked our strings, guiding us like puppets to a specific purpose of his own design.

I dare not meditate, lest he wrest further control from me in my vulnerable state. That is how the others lost their minds.

And I led them here!

I promised that all answers come through the right methods of divination.

I promised that resurrecting the dead and commanding them to speak would grant us greater understanding.

I promised them that they should not fear the frightening things they see and hear.

I promised that we are so close to a discovery that would change the world.

Now they are taken by his song. I cannot say for certain what their intentions are, though the reanimated bodies of laborers dig at the walls of this place, tirelessly constructing primitive tunnels upwards.

I've tried to escape. I've torn through the woods and been stopped by eyes burning with hatred in the darkness as his song fills my ears.

Then I wake in the chamber, in front of some incomplete abomination perhaps more horrifying than the one that spawned form the mounds of discarded material due to its intentional absurdity.

I believe he is having them construct a body, though I do not know to what end.

I can feel myself growing weaker. He is taking more and more, and I shudder to think of what will become of me if I continue to fade.

There may only be one way to end this. At the very least, I will be leaving on my own terms.

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