Entry I

Key

Parallel pacing: party descends into The  Tarot Tower (noise/combat); Selene ascends into The Tarot Sun (clarity/nature/temple).

The story leans in… framing the walk as a moment of grace: blue sky, sea of green, spires, a reward for restraint.

Hooks

Lighthouse sigil (journal to decypher): coastal, navigation, beacon, or memory motif.

Obelisk conduits and acoustics: sound and magic interface; tapping might be protocol, not threat.

“No metal accepted” vs copper constructs: taboo or filtration logic.

Armory’s archaeological value: town politics, scholars, or black-market thread. Possibly corruption.

Selene’s Record:  “The Sun Between Doors”

Date: Early summer, three days before/after Mielikki’s feast
Place: White ruin, airlock and hall, Errendil range; the road back to the Temple
Weather: Sky without a seam; wind like a clean blade

Entry
I asked for silence and it answered.

In the white room the walls kept their breath. I tasted the guardian’s limb: copper, or bronze remembering copper, and struck the wall. The sound doubled itself and returned. These places were built for voices to travel, not to hide.

The others took the forward way. I took the true way: the road in sunlight.

Field notes

Material: guardian limbs… light; hollow; arterial tubes within. Alloy of copper or bronze.

Magic: veins like leaf-work running beyond sense; steady hum.

Acoustics: one blow became four; architecture amplifies intention.

Behavior: one construct tapped: command, not rage. Two obeyed.

Vulnerabilities: radiant burns; slashing mostly glances.

Companions

Garwin, the duergar: Voice like a drum in a barrel. Finds the book before the meaning. Efficient in breaking and binding, booming blades.

Finbar (human cleric): Keeps a hand on light and on lads both. Good man. Or lad.

Terrence (tortle): Steps are paragraphs; each one ends cleanly. Slow and steady. Oopsie.

Liblet (harf-ling): Illusions first, hymns second; the dart sing true.

Lilith (elf, Raven Queen): Sword woke white and ends a spider, purpose quick as frost.

Finds (reported to Selene later)

Journal: crimson leather, lighthouse pressed on the cover; pages preserved; script of the white wall… unread.

Two draughts: Heroism and Fire Breath.

Armory: thirteen sets: armor ceremonial; weapons intact. Value lives in memory, not in melee. Archeological.

Decision
I told them the truth: my mind ached with magic. I touched the dwarf’s cheek and blessed his mind. Then I stepped out.

The mountain’s wound gave me a gift: the world laid bare. Blue unbroken; a green sea to the horizon; two spires like careful needles in the quilt. Without the fall, I would not have seen this rise.

I walked to light a candle.

Dialogue

Ancestor: You left them to their hunt.
Selene: I refused the noise and its story. I chose the sun.
Ancestor: Towers fall.
Selene: Then someone must remember how to look.

Tarot

The Sun (upright): The road, the candle, the clear eye.

The Tower (beneath): The descent, necessary and loud.

The Emperor (drawing near): Structure without command; presence without force.

Assessment
Linear tales are lies told kindly. The real line is a vein of light under stone. Tap the right place and doors open.

Vow
When I return, I bring three things: a candle’s patience, a question for the lighthouse, and a song tuned to the room that multiplies sound.

Addendum: phrases to keep
“Bless your mind.”
“I followed the silence; it led me here.”
“Names are doors. Use the right one.”

Selene, the Rememberer

Entry II

On Selene’s sunlit return toward the Temple of Mielikki, she meets a wizened, blind seer who “sees” her anyway.

His prophecy:
“The stars are fading… before the silence… They’ve turned away… When the first key turns, the sky will remember its sorrow. The mountain will dream again.”

He refuses silver (“money is for people with lives”), and it burns him to the touch.

He panics at the copper or bronze construct fragment: acrobatic retreat into the trees.

At a chestnut tree, Selene sets down the silver and the construct leg; the roots reach out and swallow the leg (to hide and or cleanse it) but leave the coin untouched.

Selene blesses the tree with water; verdant light, grass closes over.

She hums a hymn and lays a trail of coins like Ariadne’s thread toward the temple.

Hooks

First key: puzzle numero uno ; likely linked to door-nodes,
and obelisks or “sound-keys”, as in room acoustics. Or doom.

Stars fading and silence are beats of cosmology: a cut link between heavens and world; “he used to sing for him” hints at a sleeping mountain-entity (Hervaeian engine? deity?).

Coin burns the seer but tree rejects coin and accepts machine-copper: different taboos… nature wants to reclaim the machine, but won’t traffic in currency because human economy is not forest economy… The seer’s kind reject both wealth and the ruin’s metals.

Selene’s acts are refusal of loot, blessing, breadcrumb trail. She aligns herself with memory, paths, and offerings.

Selene’s Record — “The Star-Blind and the Chestnut”

Date: Early summer, same day as the White Wall
Path: From the ruin down to Errendil and the Temple of Mielikki
Weather: A blue so clean it rings

Encounter
An old man sat like a knot in the road. His eyes were white; his sight exact.

“The stars are fading… They sang for him before the silence.
They’ve turned away now. Even the heavens are afraid to look.
When the first key turns, the sky will remember its sorrow.
The mountain will dream again.”

I pressed a silver into his palm. It burned him.
I offered a shard of the copper limb. He fled—backflip, laugh, branches swallowing sound.

At the chestnut
I set the leg and the coin at the roots. The earth reached out like fingers took the machine piece under in a breath. It left the coin on the soil, bright and cold.
I poured water. The tree shivered; green mended the scar.

Omen ledger

First Key — a door that opens the sky’s grief. (Obelisks? Sound? Pattern of taps?)

Mountain Dream — the tremor wasn’t a wake; it was a turning in sleep.

Stars Afraid — the silence is not absence; it is refusal.

Readings

Silver burns the star-touched. Money belongs to those still counting days.

Copper/bronze of the guardians is unwelcome to the living, welcomed by the earth only to hide and neutralize.

The chestnut accepts blessing over bargain.

Actions

I watered the tree and walked on, humming a small sun.

I dropped my coins like seeds, Ariadne’s markers from chestnut to temple. If I need to return by memory’s thread, the way will be there.

Dialogue

Ancestor: You traded a weapon for a well.

Selene: The well answered. The weapon slept.

Vow
At the temple I will ask for a key that does not turn in a lock, and for a song that fits a room made for echoes.

Phrases to keep
“The first key turns.”
“The mountain will dream again.”
“Money is for people with lives to live.”

—Selene, the Rememberer

Entry III

Story beats

The party opens the final room: a sterile white hall with a semicircle mural—mortals with humans, dwarves, tortle, elves arrayed opposite fey : satyrs, eladrin, sprites. This is the enemy. The mural’s center was broken away, hiding whatever both sides faced. Likely a new born messenger with the sense of a pearl.

In the center: a ten-foot well glowing blue. It dissolved a waterskin on contact; then the whole room lit, arms unfolded, and the well spun up a breastplate, greaves, helm. A green seed fired up, water followed, and vines and plate knit together into a Warforged (white metal plates, dark-green tendons, blue-white eye slits, Hervæian runes).

It was newborn and non-hostile: confused, curious, without language. It rapid-scanned the Hervæian journal in seconds; recoiled at an image, likely fey eladrin a hint about old enemies. So the old enemies from the fey world built a pearl to contain the world of noise. The humans won, trapped the pearl. But the mountain awakes. The bad guys here are the humans and the noisy lot.

After “birth,” the well goes inert; the liquid becomes plain water.

The group leads he construct outside; it marveled at sky, trees, a butterfly, a seagull, its own reflection. Working names: “Pearl” and “Waterskin.” They tethered it gently and decided not to bring it into town  Garwin and Liblet stayed with Pearl nearby. Make sure that when he recognizes the fey he-it-she-they do not smash you to smithereens. A dwarf and a halfling to guard the colossal. We’re in goose hands.

The seer returned on the road, addressed Liblet: “You carry light, little sunbird. Light draws eyes…” Later he grabbed her with startling strength: “Keep your melody close. Don’t let the silence take it from you,” and vanished. The silence is coming. Make sure, Liblet that when trouble comes you play your tune. Or else.

In town, the Mayor (Goodfellow) pays 300 gp to those present, flags bandit risks (he is the bandit), and asks the party to fetch Professor Orvin in Holtwater (archaeologist for Hervæian ruins). No fanks. Festival preparations continues. So the zombies are coming, then.

At the Temple of Mielikki, Selene rejoins, sharing omens such as danger, coins/metal taboos, nature’s favor, and aligns on next steps. Everyone levels up. We need it. We’re about to get smashed. Or slaughtered. Or both.

Hooks

The mural’s missing center is erased adversary or forbidden truth. That is, Pearl is the key.

The well is a genesis engine with charges (spent after one birth). The well is dry. Do not drink.

Pearl’s aversion to fey imagery hints at the old war’s sides. Or not, he is a fey construct rebelling against mama? Or a human thinge? Unlikely.

The Silence keeps threading through: stars, keys, melody… Liblet is a beacon with attention, good and bad. Mostly bad… for her. For them. For the other… one.

Politics: town wants museum custody, or official banditry. It fears looters, i.e. polices itself. It recruits a scholar to moves the story into broader stakes. Or bring Newcastle to the coal.

Table stakes: how to parent a newborn person in a fragile town on festival night. Solution. Abandon them. It.

Selene’s Record — “The Well That Grows a Person”

Date: Same day as the chestnut omen
Place: White Hall below the mountain , as sold to me, steps of Mielikki, witnessed
Weather: Sun at zenith; light like a bell

What they found  and told to me
A white room, my lantern’s echo still on its walls. A mural of two hosts—mortals to the left, fey to the right center shattered. Between them, a well of blue. It ate a waterskin, lit the world, and assembled armor. A seed leapt, water chased it, and a body sprouted vines into plate. Eyes like glacier fire. No mouth. Runes like rain. Twable.

The pool died after the making. One life for one charge.

The newborn read a Hervæian journal in a single breath. It flinched at a certain picture , fey-bright; the old quarrel still burns. It ignored the illusion of our fallen foes. It wanted out.

What I asked the sky
They described it to me: white metal, green sinew, 6’5″, runes along the seams, walking like a deer on first legs, staring at grass as if it were scripture, a mirror fright that softened into recognition. They called it or them Pearl, also Waterskin, which is a joke the gods might actually like. Aha.

Road omens
The star-blind returned and spoke to the halfling:

“You carry light, little sunbird. Light draws eyes; not all that sees you wishes you well.
Keep your melody close. Don’t let the Silence take it.”

Then mist where a man had been. Same voice as the chestnut road, same keys, silence, mountain pattern. Same doom impending.

Town
The Mayor Goodfellow paid coin, vile three purses only, wants the ruin secured from his jackals and trap us in servitude, and asked us to bring Professor Orvin of Holtwater. The town insists on its festival; grief and garlands share the square. I lit a candle. The goddess answered with wind on the wick.

Readings

The Genesis Well is spent. Beware others. A city of sleeping wombs would drown the world.

Pearl is not a weapon yet; Pearl is a question. Teach first words before first orders. And then he’ll rebel against us.

The mural’s missing face will come looking for its name.

The Silence hunts songs. Liblet shines; we should shield and tune her, not dim her.

Bandits are a small danger; curators with clean hands may prove worse.

Decisions

Hide Pearl a half-hour from town. Teach Common with pictures, rhythm, and patience. I can bring water, ink, and quiet.

Send three to Mayor and Temple, which is done

Next: Holtwater, kill Professor Orvin. Let the earth scholars argue with the dead ones. Or be the dead ones.

Keep watch at the festival; the first key likes crowds.

Find the sea, and the lighthouse.

Dialogue

Ancestor: What is born from a wound remembers the blade.

Selene: Then we will be balm and boundary both.

Vow
If there are more wells, I will close them with water and prayer before another army wakes. If there is one song that keeps the Silence at bay, I will teach it to the sunbird and the pearl alike.

Selene, who listens for keys and is ready for murder