Alric's Journal (Session 11)

Following the Expedition to the Southeastern Mountain, Wildermarch Frontier

This entry is not submitted to N.O.D.E. command.

I did not expect this entry to begin with silence.

After the mountain fell in on itself and the smoke rose where stone had once reached for the sky, the others spoke little. We carried fragments of the shattered crystal, the weight of them wrong in the hand - not heavy, but insistent. As if they wanted to be remembered.

I have chosen to write now because sleep will not come, and prayer alone feels insufficient. This expedition did not merely test my blade or my resolve.

It tested my identity.

The Pattern Revealed

Madam Helena was right to press us forward. The amulet she recovered - the so-called Whispering Stars - was no singular curiosity. When it was brought together with Thalen’s star-mapped cloak, the truth revealed itself not through magic alone, but through care. Under his guidance, the stars shifted, rearranged, and locked into place against our maps of the Wildermarch.

The result was undeniable.

Every major cult encounter. Every crystal. Every eye.

They form a shape.

And like all deliberate shapes, it has a center.

An empty field.

I have stood in too many courtrooms to believe in coincidence. Power does not scatter itself so neatly without purpose.

The Abyss Beneath the Mountain

The mountain itself was wrong.

Cracked open like a wound, hollowed by something that never should have passed through it. Inside, the abyss stretched impossibly deep - open to the sky above, yet refusing all sense of scale below.

Jorath sent his owl down into the darkness.

It never found a bottom.

That unsettled me more than the cultists. Stone erodes. Lava flows. But depth without end speaks of intervention, not nature.

The rope bridge swayed under our weight as if testing our intent. We crossed anyway - because we always do.

The Crystal and the Chant

The chamber beyond confirmed our fears.

Another crystal. Larger. Fed not by blood alone, but by lava itself - red lines dripping downward like veins turned inside out. Cultists stood in marked positions around it, chanting words that were barely language. Sound without meaning. Devotion without understanding.

When they moved, the crystal dimmed.

When they returned, it brightened.

A mechanism. A focus. A lie dressed up as worship.

We approached under Madam Helena’s magic, unseen - and for a moment, I thought we might end this cleanly.

Then the Intellect Devourers dropped from above.

Failure of the Shield

I remember striking one of them. Brine Justice connected true. The creature bled.

I remember the second one reaching for my mind.

What I remember after that is… fractured.

Pressure. Absence. Thought dissolving before it could finish forming.

I have trained my entire life to be the wall others stand behind. Protection is not a tactic to me - it is instinct. It is how I exist in a group. How I justify my presence.

And in that moment, all of it meant nothing.

I could not raise my shield.

I could not interpose myself.

I could not even choose not to act.

My body became a weapon pointed inward.

I struck Jorath.

I felt the blows land without the ability to stop them.

That knowledge burns worse than any wound.

Jorath did the only merciful thing available. He put me to sleep.

THE JUDGMENT OF TYR

Sleep took me somewhere else.

Not the mountain. Not the abyss.

The court.

I was on my knees before Lord Bryleth Valleren - the man whose crime I refused to sanctify with my blade. The man whose lies cost me my station, my home, and my place in the Kingdom I loved.

He laughed at me.

He always does.

He spoke the words that still find me in my quiet moments - commoner, nothing, wasted potential. He told me my god had no power there.

And for a moment - a terrifying, honest moment - I wanted to kill him.

I had my hands around his throat before I realized what I was doing.

I felt the same loss of control I had felt in the cavern. The same terrifying certainty that violence would be easy.

That is when I stopped.

Not because he deserved mercy.

But because I remembered who I am.

And then the courtroom vanished.

Judgment

The presence that replaced it did not need to announce itself.

ALDRIC VAUN. THE OATH OF VENGEANCE IS A SOLEMN VOW HELD SACRED BY MY FOLLOWERS. TELL ME - IS PUNISHMENT DESERVED EVEN WHEN THE SIN COMMITTED IS DONE BY ONE’S OWN HAND?

I saw Jorath’s blood again.

I felt the anchor rise and fall.

I understood the weight of what I had almost done.

And I answered.

“Yes.”

Not quickly. Not easily.

But truthfully.

I expect justice of others. I cannot exempt myself.

SWEAR YOUR OATH TO ME, ALDRIC VAUN. DISTRIBUTE RIGHTEOUS JUSTICE ACROSS THE LAND. FOLLOW THE OATH OF VENGEANCE AND RENDER PUNISHMENT ON THE WICKED OF THIS WORLD.

I knelt.

I swore.

I did not hesitate.

VERY WELL. NO MERCY FOR THE WICKED.

Those words did not crush me. They sharpened me.

Return

When I woke, the Intellect Devourer lay exposed.

I ended it without ceremony.

The cultists followed soon after.

There was no rage in my strikes - only certainty. Each blow was a conclusion already reached.

When the crystal shattered, the cavern screamed. Lava surged. Reality buckled.

And then we all saw it.

The pentagram. The abyss. The field. The fortress draped in star-cloth. The eyes.

The thing beneath the water looked at us and spoke with confidence born of inevitability.

It believes it is coming.

Good.

Closing

I will speak with Jorath when he is ready.

I will atone - not with words, but with consistency.

I do not yet know how Tyr will measure my failures. Only that He will not look away.

The cult. The psionic beasts. The necromancers in the Shadowfell. The lords who rot kingdoms from their thrones.

They all share one belief: That the world is something to be used.

I believed that once too - when I thought restraint was virtue enough.

I was wrong.

The chwingas deserve better.

Coralia deserves better.

My companions deserve better.

So does the Kingdom I intend to return to.

I was cast out for refusing to kill the innocent. I will return as the one who destroys the guilty.

By Tyr’s scales,

NO MERCY FOR THE WICKED.

I will not let my certainty make me cruel. I will not raise my hand unless I am willing to answer for it. I will strive to be what He believes I can be.