Regicide Scorned Wilderness

Confusing Notebook

Have you found the armour yet? Red, scarlet, crimson, glittering ruby-like metal that turns aside almost all blades? No? Yes? Hard to remember the difference. You will find them, so you have found them? Is time static to you? I am in the room again. Cushions, lace, cloth and gemstones. Shining, sparkling, pretty sights to see. People stare through the lattice, waiting for me to say something, yet I do not know what they want to hear. I am in the chamber as Rasthin offers the others a chance to become something more. To bond with elements, to transcend not to godly heights, but primordial forces in tune with the world. Lacrussa, my sister, asks me to join them, but I have already seen how this ends. I tell her I will miss her, she does not understand. Brakka and Avisk salivate over power, Rasthin sneers knowing the hold she will have over them forever. I miss them. Will miss them. I have never met them. Kuldra hatches from her egg, and I know she will kill everyone. She is innocent, she is guilty, a monster forged by fate. I see my sister dissect Kuldra’s mate, as Kuldra daintily takes a treat from my hand. A gentle beast, destined to destroy us all. I write this journal as you find this journal. You are here to kill Kuldra, have killed Kuldra, will kill her again. Ashenfall will heal. Has healed. Will be destroyed.

Rasthin’s Journal

I did not believe it possible, but Lacrussa’s genius continues to impress me. She has, to her great credit, managed to create a queen dragon of our own, a progenitor for our future army. The creature is chimeric in capability, with multiple heads, each able to absorb different aspects so that she might more easily create the required brood. Lacrussa’s sibling, Viika, seems both enamoured and terrified of the creature in equal measure, but I have long since given up trying to work out the meaning of their strange mood shifts. The queen has grown much over the last few centuries and has even taken a favoured broodmate - the two of them producing plentiful offspring for both experimentation and labour. While many are flawed, less than they could be, there are least three of note that promise a more powerful army once we iron out the kinks. I shall suggest the broodmate be dissected for study, I’m sure the weakness lies with him. The timing is most convenient, as there is growing unrest among the talking mammals that wander these lands. One faction stands on the brink of extermination, and they have a deity fighting with them. I wonder what I could do with a deity to study. Whilst they are false divinities, their powers are undeniable. I shall see if I can inspire them to our service, so that we might test our dragon army against her foes. Oh, this shall be fun.

Scorched Tome

I have underestimated the queen we created. I thought her a mindless, cowardly beast, yet she is a cunning and vengeful creature. She waited. That’s the most terrifying thing. She waited! When we were distracted. When we were not expecting it. She waited and then she turned her brood against us and forced us into hiding. She ate Brakka first. I won’t mourn him. He was an arrogant narcissist with little to offer beyond his masonry. Avisk has vanished into the aether, which isn’t a concern, but Lacrussa’s silence worries me. Of all my fellow Dragonkin, she is the only one worth my respect. It would be a genuine tragedy if the world lost her genius. The garou goddess, this Lougrim, chooses to fight beside her people, believing she can stand against a queen dragon with divine blood in her veins - Lougrim’s blood! She will learn how well we make our dragons. I will seal myself away here, within the heart of the Harmonic Resonator. I alone know the full capabilities of this device and I know how to weaponise it. If Kuldra is to kill me, then I shall take her and half of Ashenfall with me!

Flame-licked Journal

It is strange, to be one with an element - to feel it coursing through your veins, your cells, your very thoughts. Fire illuminates and strips bare. It cleanses and it scours, and it reveals parts of the universe I had never dared to gaze on before. There are gaps, cracks if you will, in the skein of the universe and, through those gaps, wonders gaze back at us. Or horrors, perhaps, if you’re more prone to fear than joy. I have seen the crawling pests of the Void skittering at the edge of reality. The Aughra’s other shells gaze back at us from the Abyss, and - further, beyond that - are beasts so colossal that thinking on them gives me a headache. Yet, of all the worlds I gaze at in wonder, this one is still the brightest of all. Gielinor, by the monkey’s tongue, is a perfect world. Not just by the measure of its creators, but in its possibilities. It is ripe with magic, filled with potential and the spark within me burns with inspiration at what it could become. I need but the right tools to turn it toward greatness. I need an army strong enough to keep the rabble in check. Lacrussa can create them. It was easy enough to inspire her to do so, the spark of creativity is so very easy to ignite. In Avisk I did the same with his obsession with the mind, for if I am to have an army of unstoppable beasts, I must be able to control them. The world can be reshaped into something wonderful. A glorious regime, burning bright as a star. Rasthin, Empress of Gielinor. Yes, I very much like the sound of that.

Hate-filled Tome

She is here: the pinnacle of dragon creation, the queen, fused with divine blood and now housing the elemental power of my kin. Kuldra stands at my gate and with each passing second she weakens the defences. She will kill me, I know this, but I will not go down without a fight. The Resonator is charged, primed with the perfect discordance. If I had more time, I could build a shockwave strong enough to rip the entire continent apart, but I will settle on taking Kuldra with me. Viika visited me earlier. How they are alive I do not know; they arrived to give me their standard cryptic prophecy and then left, just like always. “She will turn the Veil against the world,” they said, as if that means anything. If I had more time, I might try to care, but now… now I see no way out, except to end things on my terms. I shall ready a cataclysm that will fracture Ashenfall and take Kuldra and her brood with me. With any luck, the backwash of the explosion will poison the anima of this planet, killing the Roakin and their eggs. Unlikely, true, but one can dream. Curse you, Kuldra! You could have been the herald of a glorious new age for Gielinor, yet you fall to mindless vengeance like the beast you are! I will spit my last breath upon you, wishing that it will be your last breath as well.

Anima-infused Tome

The Harmonic Resonator may be my greatest work. It is poetry forged into metal and wire, driven by a divine geometry that none of my kin have dreamed of before. Even Kerapac, the self-proclaimed genius, could not conceive of such technology. The Roakin turned this place into a glorified wasteyard, venting their unwanted “tainted” anima back into the atmosphere so that the resonance might fade and it could return “pure”. They are fools, of course, for it is these resonances that allow anima to perform wonders. The green False User whom these mortals worship - he found a way to trap this resonant anima into stones and unleash them as magic tricks. With the Harmonic Resonator, we shall bind the magics into our very souls, allowing us to transcend the limitations of the Roakin’s curse. Alas, our mortal shells are too frail to absorb a range of anima, so we must focus on a single attribute to embody. I have settled on the primal elements, earth, fire, water and air, rather than the more conceptual catalytic properties, as these will allow us the greatest ability to reshape Ashenfall to a glorious new Dragonkin empire. All shall know the name of Rasthin, the first empress of the Dragonkin.

Damaged Journal

The dragonkin are real. Creatures we had heard of only in the most obscure legends, ancient beings of unfathomable power and terrible evil, and they’re here on Ashenfall. It must be they who are responsible for the madness that infects my kin. Who else would engineer a curse that reaches into your mind and twists every thought into violence and cruelty? They turn us against one another and they watch as we do so. They sneer and laugh and cackle to the night sky. Monsters. Every last one of them. Monsters. They send dragons to hunt us down. Toying with us as we flee to safety. Each raid, our numbers dwindle. Each attack leaves less of us behind. At least my brother on the mainland will be safe. Forinthry is impregnable: he’ll outlive us all.

Rasthin's Riddle of Faith

The gods breathed life into all of creation. They wept great tears at our cruel ministrations. They buried their hopes for us, deep in the ground. Then burned all the bridges that kept them around.

Aviansie Tome

This land is full of wonders. Magic flows through this place like rivers of possibility, the spirits dance around everything, with more vibrancy than I have even seen on Abbinah. Armadyl is right to be concerned with this place: if someone were to seize control of the power here, they could tear the planet apart. We are not the first to reach these deeper regions, either. There are structures, both hidden and overt, of designs that we’ve only seen previously in legends. They are not of human, mahjarrat or any other recognisable design, save for those whispered of in hidden corners of other worlds. The difference here is that these are no mere ruins. Someone lives here and they are watching us. My squadron is tired, the magic here makes our heads spin, and the higher we fly, the sicker we get. It’s as if someone has put a curse on the clouds, and each time we breathe them in, we get weaker. We’ve already lost several of our number and been forced to bury them in this strange soil. Perhaps the magic of this place will return them to us? One can dream.

Lavish Dragonkin Tome

We are not normally creatures of ceremony, we Dragonkin, yet I feel the need for it in our great endeavour. Perhaps the old priests, like that fool Kranon, have a point, for what better way to acknowledge something’s importance, than to dress it up in ritual? Candles. Music. Well-tailored robes: these are the tools that I craft for my companions and myself, so that we may give this moment the reverence it requires. Even Avisk, with his constant sarcasm and flippancy, succumbs to the gravity of the moment. We will not be gods. We will not be False Users, claiming the power of the Roakin’s artifacts. We will be something else, something more. We will be the earth, the wind, the blaze of the sun and the crashing waves of the ocean. We will be primordial forces incarnate. There is music, a song from the old world, before it was lost in the Great Revision. It speaks of the passage of time, the solemnity of the stars and the eternity of creation. Nonsense, and proved terribly wrong, yet… fitting, all the same. I wrote it. It is some of my best work. The Harmonic Resonator builds into a great orchestra of anima. Dazzling threads of colour dance and writhe according to my grand design. I watch them spiral overhead, swirling in a scintillating circle and I smile at my last moment of mundane mortality, as fire and I become one.