A Voyage to the Bleaklands, Mourne’s Account, June 13 2018

Tonight, a group of interested parties joined Malvernus in a badly-sprung wagon ride adventure to an area within an edge of the Bleaklands, far from the heart of the devastation but still quite blasted, to locate and examine the source of the musical disturbance that has been causing unrest. A cavern was found, and within it, an odd temporal anomaly that wouldn’t allow us to just blithely march in and poke around. Malvernus led the group slowly deeper into the cavern, where it eventually opened up to reveal a brilliant fireball and a lone man holding a silver harp nearly frozen within a temporal bubble.

Lengthy discussion ensued about what precisely we were looking at and what we should do about it. Ultimately, the plan enacted involved manipulating the temporal anomaly to disrupt it enough to get Wihliam out, while also defending against the fireball that appeared caught mid-hurtle toward him. Teamwork happened, the anomaly was very carefully disrupted, Wihliam was wrested from the path of fiery doom, and the fireball was deflected up to explode relatively harmlessly (if noisily and brightly) against the cavern ceiling.

After Wihliam’s initial recovery from his rescue, we gleaned from him that he’d been in this area of Talador when the destruction hit, and the cavern had been the nearest shelter he could find. He was, however, chased by a wave of fire and played his harp, hoping he could do something to save himself. The temporal bubble was the apparent result.

It didn’t take much convincing for him to join us on the wagon back to Vornavis. However, along the way, he started to have flashes of memory of the people with whom he was talking, and it became evident the appearances he’d made over the past few months were echoes of himself… and they were bouncing back to the origin. All at once. He was understandably disoriented, distressed, and pained by the sudden onset of unexpected experiences.

The wagon made it back to the Vornavis Caravansary in one piece and at speed, and the group made for the north gate of the city, but Wihliam was having trouble staying upright. He was encouraged to try playing his harp, which he’d clung to with a death grip all this time after telling us about how it was a gift. However, when he shakily moved to do so, the strings snapped one after the other, and then the whole frame broke apart and fell to the ground.

Wihliam was induced to sleep to allow him some reprieve from his ongoing fits, then taken away into Vornavis proper. One of the attending bards reluctantly agreed to loresing to the broken instrument, and received a series of impressions that stepped backwards chronologically, from the breaking to the gifting, but no further. It was said that inquiries could be made about the harp, and that the strain of Wihliam’s echoes coming home to roost so abruptly might have damaged him irreparably. But only time will tell.

—

The broken harp loresong response, in entirety:

>As you sing to the harp you feel a sense of discordance at first, and hear the sound of the strings snapping once again in your mind.

>As your song touches the harp again you find yourself pressing on past the sound of the harp breaking. You see the cavern again and Wihliam playing the harp, intensely and quickly, as a large ball of fire plummets towards him.

>You see Wihliam holding the harp, smiles all over his face. Music still hangs in the air, as if the strings had just been silenced. A grand bow is taken, and then ever so carefully the harp is placed away into a instrument case with great care.

>Everything is dark all around you, but you can hear voices speaking from nearby, but they are muffled and cannot make out the words. Finally one voice grows louder and says, “Here take a look. It is just the thing for you.” You here the click of latches being flipped, and then the world is bright, as you see Wihliam standing over you, a wondrous smile on his face.

>You are somewhere very different than before, sitting on a shelf in a mostly dark chamber. Footsteps approach and you here a voice, the same one you heard before speaking, “Ah yes this is just the thing. It will do perfectly.” Hands reach up to pull you down from the shelf, and soon you are placed snugly into a case. Then the lid is closed over you and darkness and silence is all there is.

>You also feel that this is the end of the song.

—
Walsor Gryhm says, “Hmm, a most impressive weapon of note. I’ll give you 16 silver coins for it.”
You think to yourself, “This deal is getting worse all the time.”