The Log of the Ilal
The Cabin of a Strange Vessel [Room 23041]
The cabin walls are fairly intact, having been spared from the fire that burned portions of the deck. There is low window that rings the cabin, and still holds a few shards of scum-covered glass. Towards the front of the cabin, a short wooden pedestal stands.
The sinuous, winding form of an unwholesome spiral is scrawled here in blood.
[Exits: none]
The top half of a human skeleton lies here.
<900hp 800m 700mv> look skeleton
The top half of a human skeleton holds:
the rusted remains of an elegant longsword
the log of the Ilal
<900hp 800m 700mv> get log skeleton
You get the log of the Ilal from the top half of a human skeleton.
<900hp 800m 700mv> examine log
This journal is clearly the log of the ship's captain. Large portions of it have been ripped out, burnt, or simply rendered illegible by the exposure to water. What remains is available if you wish to read the logbook.
Page One of the Log of the Ilal
Nimansday, the Twelfth of Kyanamir
...Borandus is the name of the scholar who wants to try the experiment. He claims that he has perfected a new version of the 'Meld with Water' spell that can move far more than just a handful of people -- he claims it can move an entire ship and its contents!
Most captains would scoff at the notion, but I own the Ilal today because I was willing to take risks. And, unlike many of the other daft sea dogs who ply the Uthlin, I don't have any superstitions about Iandir-knows-what dragging my ship under the waves for trafficking with scholars.
The fellow seems to have ties to the Tower, or at least, is independently wealthy as well. When I expressed concern about ending up in mid-air, or even parts unknown, Borandus provided gold to hire air scholars (I once had to transport the ship overland this way -- expensive, but effective) and a contingent of warriors from the Thrantian school. For myself, I made sure we had extra supplies, and got a half dozen more sailing men to replace the ones who'd left after the last long voyage. The test is scheduled two days from now, and Borandus wants to sail from Uthlin to the Lidraeu, some distance off the shore of Gaald. It's a long shot, but I've taken a cargo of fine silks and Lithling wine on board. Even if we don't make it to Gaald, there's always a demand for the finer things eastward along the Uthlin.
Thethelsday, the Thirteenth of Kyanamir
We departed Earendam today, leaving the city's docks on the Dantaron. Thanks to the presence of the air scholars, we made on our northeasterly course with all speed. Borandus tells us that we must be sufficiently far from land for the spell to work, and I intend to oblige him.
Nothing else of note, except that we have reached our destination by nightfall. I had an excellent dinner in my quarters with Borandus and Hajja, the head of the warriors from the Thrantian school. Hajja is a keen hand with his blade, and Borandus knows the ocean currents as well as any captain I've known. If his magic is as good as his gold and his sea lore, I expect to be sipping Gaald ale by sunset tomorrow.
(Here, the captain's hand undergoes a notable change -- straightforward, clean lines are replaced by a hand that is obviously trembling, as if from excitement.)
Evenday, the Thirteenth of Kyanamir
I... Words cannot begin to describe what has befallen the fate of my ship and my crew, but I must record it, if only that I might not believe it ourselves if I did not take a written record.
The day dawned, and Borandus made preparations for casting the spell. He bid the air scholars to cease their magics, concerned that their be no other form of magical interference. He stood on the foredeck, and cast his spell. His voice rose and fell as part of some high chant, and a living warmth swept through the ship.
The mighty spell took hold, and I could feel the entire ship beginning to flow into the ocean.... And then there was a horrible, deadly wrenching. Every part of me cried out in agony. Like a thousand nettles, all jabbed into the soft parts of your body.
Most all of us collapsed, some for hours, others, for a few moment. Borandus lay slumped on the foredeck, blood trickling from his ears.
Darkness
As I write this now, we still have no idea where the ship is, I can still make no reckoning that will locate us. The sky is utterly dark, save for a single red star far in the north. There is not a trace of wind, and the air is stale and foul.
I had the men light torches on the deck, and that is when we made our most disturbing discovery. We float on a sea of some black liquid, slightly thicker than water and with none of its wholesome properties. It is probably the source of the foulness of the air, and it reeks of putrefaction. We tried sounding the depths with our anchor, but could find no bottom.
Lacking any sign of land, I instructed the air scholars to generate wind for the sails, and set course in the direction of the red star. Borandus is comatose, so I have set him up in my own bed, as it is all we can do.
There is no rising or setting of the sun here, and even the red star is listless and unchanging in the sky. I end this log entry by candle as I prepare to sleep, all frame of reference lost.
Darkness, Second Entry
I awoke in the night to a scream of absolute horror. I rushed out of my cabin, sword in hand. A goodly number of the crew were gathered around a storage hold. We opened the door, and
(Here, the ink is blotted as if the captain stopped for too long with pen to page)
and one of the new men I'd taken on board in Earendam was there, eviscerated. A ghastly caricature of the man had part of his face and skull, and was busy implanting the grisly totem into a blob of blackish goo. The crewman's body dangled upside down in the room, its blood drained into a brackish pool in an obsidian bowl placed below it.
The thing.. The doppelganger screeched at us, and leaped at me. I slashed at it, in a futile effort to drive it back. It grew claws, and sliced at my throat. I stepped back, just as one of the air scholars arrived, and blasted the thing with lightning. It hit one of the torches on the wall, and caught fire almost immediately. It yelled and screeched with its eerie keening, and within just a few minutes was consumed.
After we had moved aside what little remained of its body, we were free to examine the room. The crewman, a human of the name of Kantru, had obviously been using this room as some sort of crude magical laboratory. A few scrolls and notes were open on crates near the center of the room, where an odd spiral shape had been painted in his own blood on the floor. His body, or what was left of it, had been dead for some hours.
It was the air scholar who set me onto this line of thought, and I can't put it out of my head now.
"What if," he said, in that pedantic tone scholars use, "This wretch were trying to conjure a demon while Borandus was casting his spell? Could that have set us awry?"
I took several scrolls from Kantru's tunic, and ordered the men to throw the body overboard. He doesn't deserve a grave in the sea, as the gods alone know what he was really doing in my ship.
After posting guards, I went back to my cabin to sleep and to write this, if only to organize my thoughts.
Darkness, Third Entry
The first thing I did when I awoke was to puzzle through the parchments I found on the recently departed "crewman". Some of the scrolls were obviously spells -- meaningless mystical scribblings to me, but I could see that Kantru was no true sailor -- he was at least a journeyman scholar. More troubling, I found a scrap of a letter, from Kantru to a merchant in Earendam of the name of Bahand.
Kantru promised in the letter that, "the captain will meet his doppelganger and be dealt with before we next meet. I expect payment in the usual location." Bahand is the leader of a small consortium of merchants in Earendam I refused to trade with because I felt their prices were exorbitant.
I can only suppose that the creature Kantru summoned was this doppelganger, only his spell had gone drastically wrong. If it was his summoning which disrupted Borandus' spell, then perhaps it cuts both ways, and he met a horrible end at the hands of the demon he sought to bind with his own blood.
The rest of the day was relatively uneventful. As far as I could tell, we made no real progress in any direction, but it's hard to tell, owing to the lack of landmarks and the fact that the accursed red star never moves a degree.
As I write this, there is little more to report than Borandus still lies sleeping. We poured water down his throat, but there was little more that could be done.
(At this point in the log, several pages have been ripped, and the next entry is fragmentary)
..Morale is lower than ever. This is my tenth entry since the darkness, and there seems to be no change. Rather than let fear seize the crew, I let one of the air scholars spread his theory that we are in some deep underground sea, and the red light is a clump of fungus. I told them to keep watch for signs of shuddeni, thinking an enemy the men were familiar with might steel them.
Borandus still lies unconscious, but his breathing is lighter now. If he awakens, perhaps his magic can ... No, it is best not to garner false hopes.
I have a suspicion about our fate, but I will not voice it.
(several pages have been burned from the tome)
Darkness, Fifteenth entry
They attacked while most of us were sleeping. It was against reason, but I have kept burning our scant supply of torches each time the men were on guard. Call it luck, divine favor, or just cussedness on my part, but my men saw the things when they emerged from the murk, and started clamber up onto the ship.
Some of them were lumps of goo, with mortal faces. They cursed at us, spitting a viscous poison at my men. There were skeletons, covered with the black waters of the sea, who clutched and clawed at the side of the ship, dragging men down beneath the waters. Finally, and most frighteningly, there were doppelgangers, each of which took the form and abilities of one of the defenders.
It was not the hardest fight that I have ever faced, but I certainly have never seen one more chilling. I watched Hajja slash through the blobs with his blades, and tripping an opponent who looked exactly like him off the aft of the ship. Then, as I was locked in combat with a half dozen skeletons, I was forced to watch as two of my best men were dissolved and devoured by the cursing lumps of goo.
The creatures seemed to flee from fire, or at least, displayed some small aversion to the light it shed, and that helped us in finally putting paid to them. The fight ended, and most of us returned to our quarters, but I kept a double watch.
I think that it helped the men to have something to do other than fret and bellyache, but... I have already seen the cold fear in some of the eyes of the younger seamen. The things we fought tonight were not like anything I'd ever seen.
I cannot voice my true suspicion yet. It is too horrible, and it would kill all hope in the men.
Darkness, Sixteenth Entry
Borandus has awakened! It is a miracle if I have ever seen one. He is still almost too tired, but he spoke of
(The page here has been blotted with ink, possibly due to water stains.)
Visible on the rest of the page are the words "Dreams", "queen", "spiral", dead, and "sleep".
Darkness, Seventeenth Entry
Borandus is awake and about on his feet now, although, in my heart, I almost rue his return now that I know the Truth.
Borandus progressed rapidly in healing himself yesterday, using his magic to help himself recover quickly. He complained of the magic seeming sluggish, almost weaker than it ought to be, but at first ascribed this as being a result of the psychic trauma.
When I took him out of my cabin, and showed him the place we were in, he very nearly collapsed again. He staggered, and the look on his face... It showed more pain than at any time when he had lain comatose.
He motioned me back into the cabin, and told me ... Something I can barely put words to... (here, the pen of the captain obviously trembles, and there is another large inkblot.)
I will forever remember the cold dread in Borandus' voice.
"Captain, we are not underground, in some great moat of the shuddeni. If that were so... If only that were so."
"Captain, where we are is barely a place at all."
"For we are in the Void."
"This ship, your crew, we all.. We are sailing across the Dead Sea, the Sea that is Not. We sail across the ichors of death and decay, in which no living thing can grow."
"Overhead, that star in the sky. It is no star. It is the Eye of Bahhaoth, queen of this place. It gazes down, uncaring, on the unlife and abominations of the Sea."
"You could sail for ten eternities, and not reach the edge of this place."
"I .. I did not anticipate an acolyte of the void to attempt a potent spell just as I cast. The touch of the Void upon my magic twisted it. Rather than melding to another spot on the ocean, it took us to the closest thing to an ocean... Here in the Void."
There were some moments of pregnant silence, as the news wormed its way into my head.
When at last I spoke, my voice was a desperate croak.
"Can you not simply meld us into this sea, and take us home that way?"
"I have already tried. What we are on is not water. And even if we could, we are on the wrong the side of the Veil. I do not have the magics required to open it."
"Captain, I can only offer my humblest apologies for damning both you and your crew. I can see no way out of this dark place. Tell your men what you will, and I will aid you against however I can, but I recommend you make your peace with the gods now."
Before we slept that night, I called the men together, and told them what Borandus had revealed. Frankly, I felt that if we were to die, they deserved the truth. And, all told, they took it fairly well. I think some of them suspected that we were no longer in Avendar, and we had fought demons in this place. A few paled, and one of the youngest fainted, but on the whole there was grim silence.
Really, I could see no possibility of mutiny here, in this place. What would they do with the ship? Where would they go, or do that we weren't not already trying? No, my deepest fear was the despair it might cause in my shipmates.
(More entries follow, in which not much of note happens)
Darkness, Twenty-third Entry
Another attack by the denizens of this place. Only one casualty this time, but I can see the light in the men's eyes die a little more each day. They wonder why they are fighting this fight, when a cleaner death would come at the hands of their own blades.
Darkness, Twenty-fifth Entry
They found my first mate, swinging from the yard arm where he had hung himself. I cut him down myself, as I had too much respect for the man to see anyone else do it.
I wondered what to do with the body -- I didn't have the heart to toss it into the foul darkness over the edge of the boat. Borandus offered to dry the body out by draining the water, so we could store it in a makeshift coffin (a crate, really) without the smell.
As we were getting a crate from the store room where that accursed void scholar had cast his spell, Borandus saw the remaining trappings of the ritual and cried out,
"Of course! I have it!"
And with that, he and three of the air scholars locked themselves in my cabin, excitedly discussing something.
Disgruntled, I wrote this, and rested in my mate's cabin. A little morbid, but I'm not fool enough to sleep on deck in this place.
Darkness, Tweny-Sixth Entry
Today, there is hope. Borandus and the scholars invited me into my cabin, and laid out what they think could be a plan.
Borandus assumed his lecturing tone, which I have become all too familiar with in recent days.
"As you may or may not be aware, Avendar and the Void are separated by a border region, what demonologists refer to as 'The Silver Veil'. This thing, this structure, prevents free travel from the Void to our own world."
"It can be bypassed, of course, if sufficient magical energy is used to travel to another plane (very difficult in the negative energy well that is the void), or to open a hole in the Veil."
"It's something of a mystery how the Veil was constructed -- some say the gods placed it there, to save the world from ruin. Others maintain it's a natural phenomena, a natural membrane between worlds. Yet others believe that it was created by the alatharya, who wanted more control over demonkind, and created a planar artifact of ancient magic. And the scholar Akkarlis writes that..."
"Get to the point!", shouted one of the air scholars.
"Yes, as I was saying. We do not possess the resources or the wherewithal to open our own gate through the Veil. However, any scholar of the void opens a weakness, or a tear in the Veil whenever he or she conjures a demon. I am certain that this place is home to some of the demons that those dark sorcerers draw from -- your experience with the doppelganger in the hold proves that."
"That means that, periodically, gates from Avendar to this place, the Dead Sea, must open. It is theoretically possible that we could use these holes, or gates, or bridges, or what have you to escape from here."
"There are several problems with this plan, however."
"Firstly, there is the matter of finding the gate when it opens. We have discussed mechanisms for finding this, and I believe the air scholars and I have found a way. Our magic (as, indeed, all elemental magic other than negation) is slightly less strong here, on the Void."
"As the boundary between our two planes softens, we should detect our magic becoming imperceptibly stronger. We need only follow the path of greatest strength."
"The second problem is the fly in our ointment. These portals, when they open, are designed to call forth a demon. But here, in this dark place, all the demons dwell below the surface of this foul sea."
"In retrospect, your insistence on air scholars may be our salvation."
"When we find a gate, the air scholars will blast the sea with air, making a whirlpool. We must sail the Ilal into the maw of the maelstrom, and I will call forth to the seas as we reach the gate. The oceans will touch the veil, and I will cast my spell a second time. If the gods smile, we will be transported from this prison."
"If we fail, we will end our lives buried in the Dead Sea, but I can see no other fate for us than slow starvation as we sail mindlessly under that maddening red Eye."
I agreed immediately. Could it be any other way?
Borandus grinned, "I thought you might see it that way. There is one more potential.. Ah.. Pitfall."
"If we expend this much magical energy in one place, it will almost certainly draw the attention of the denizens of the plane. If we have escaped the Queen's notice so far, she will certainly know we are here as we make our escape. When we are ready, you must prepare the men for combat. We may have to fight our way out."
I put my hand on my sword, nodded, and left them to finalize their plans.
(Another few pages are missing before the journal resumes.)
Darkness, Twenty-ninth entry
(Large ink blotch) We have found a gate which is opening. We are heading there with all speed. Borandus says we will make it in time. The stench from the sea is thicker now, and the air is expectant. I cannot sleep as (incomprehensible) waits for me in my sleep. I will be ready.
Darkness, Thirtieth Entry
(This last entry is in a awkward, crabbed hand, as if written in an enormous hurry.)
This will likely be my last entry. We have found the gate, and now, the Ilal heads directly into the maw of the largest whirlpool I have seen in my waking life.
As soon as the scholars began the incantation to make it, the seas began to boil with activity. Wave after wave of demon and undead emerged, their sickly slurping a dark chorus to our work.
The Thrandian warriors pushed them back again and again, while my men and I backed them up. I had them light the last of our torches -- if this does not work, we will have no need of them. The doppelgangers came next, and were almost successful -- one took my place, and was directing the crew to attack themselves.
The first part of the casting was done, and a dark eye opened in the water.
Now, I am at the wheel of the ship, in the wheelhouse near the middle of the deck. I write this as we turn and move toward the whirlpool. Skeletons are thick about the structure, but I have used old rune I bought several trips ago to seal the door, at least for the moment.
They clatter outside. My men and the last of the Thrandians are now on the foredeck, and they have set fire to the main deck to keep the demons off. Desperate, but it was my emergency strategy.
Now, in the light of the fire, I see reflected in the maelstrom, the Gate. A shuddeni is near a lake, his spiral drawn in river mud. I wonder if gazes out into the darkness, to see ... Us?
Borandus calls out words of power, and they are the sweetest words anyone has ever spoken. The demons jeer and cackle, slightly diminished by the spell.
But then, I see my crew cry out. SHE arises from the depths. Bahhaoth, Borandus names her, blackest ooze shaped into an impossibly horrible female form. Queen of this Dead Sea. She reaches for the ship, and I know she reaches out to pull it back.
Now, I take my sword, and will open the door. We are already whirling about the outer edge of the vortex. The gate is near, but I must buy them time. My sword is in my hand, and her tendrils are at the door.
I will see my crew safe.
I swear it.
Kheliran, Captain of the Ilal
