Ellathane Cathedral, Part 1

While Vater and Willow went about some personal business of their own, Enna, Aura, and I stayed outside the Ellathane Cathedral to see what we could learn about what was going on here. The Silver Cloaks and the town guards continued to loot and ransack the cathedral all day long. Even though there was a wide perimeter of guards preventing anyone from getting close to the building, I was able to glean a small bit of information by reading the lips of the captain in charge of this fiasco. I learned that the king would make an appearance soon to announce a proclamation about the Ellathane Cathedral. This was not much information for a days' surveillance, but it was all that could be gotten without being more suspicious. This does not bode well for the cathedral or the churches of Voltura.
 
That evening, Enna, Aura, and I were able to gain entrance to the cathedral through the rear servant’s entrance. Inside was a scene out of one of my original dream visions; Nearly everything had been taken or destroyed throughout the parts of the cathedral that we traveled through. We did manage to get to the All-Mother's quarters without encountering anyone in the process. Her room was in shambles also, just like the rest of the building. Searching around for a way into the catacombs, Enna detected a warm anomaly on the floor in the center of the room under where her bed would have been. We found a secret latch that opened a secret trap door with a set of stairs leading downward. We descended to what we determined was far below the cathedral until we came to a wide hallway lined with the sarcophaguses of the previous All-Mothers.
 
Past this area we entered into a large cavern with a beautiful fountain at its center. The fountain was ringed with four beautiful and elegantly carved statues of Voltura's daughters. The closer that we got to the fountain the more calm and serene we all felt, as if we were in the presence of the First-Mother herself. It was determined that the fountain contained holy water and was in perfect working order.
 
We also found an alcove off to one side of the cavern and inspecting this we found a pool of fresh water being fed by a small waterfall. We found a symbol behind the waterfall that we determined was a symbol of Voltura. When Enna went into the shallow pool to investigate the symbol behind the waterfall, she disappeared. I quickly followed suit and we found ourselves in a grand hall dedicated to Voltura. Aura decided to remain behind to see what else she could find in the fountain chamber.
 
The long hall was decorated in blues, silvers, and whites with the walls lined with scenes depicting various scenes of the First-Mother and her daughters. The far end of the grand hall ended with a fancy and elegant chair/throne in front of a large window. At one point during our investigation of this chamber, Enna sat on the chair and said that it was wonderfully comfortable. Just before the throne was a large floor area ringed with four muscular women riding horses and brandishing long spears. The spears all appeared to be pointing to the center of the floor. Enna approached the throne and found a book resting on it. Upon inspecting the book, she determined that this was indeed Ellamendia, the holy book of Voltura. Looking through the book, Enna found all the stories that she was familiar with that should be in the book, with one anomaly, the book was missing upwards to twenty pages. These missing pages appeared to be torn from the back of the book. We found two of these missing pages. One was in one of the spouts of the fountain in the main chamber. This page was not a golden page as the others were but looked like an old piece of parchment. It fit perfectly and blended with one of the torn remnants but did not change when attached. This one projected an image of a large field under a starry sky with a figure of the First-Mother standing cradling an infant. This image was projected in the air above the book. The image was about 3-feet wide and 2-feet tall. The other page we found in the center of the great hall on the floor where the four spears pointed to. This page was made of light and it projected an image of a large field with a sad-looking First-Mother standing at the edge of a cliff. She was crying and looked to be just a normal woman not the Goddess that we know her to be. This resembled the field that we encountered behind one of the doors in the temple in the Fey Realm.
 
When Enna and I looked out of the window the first time, we saw a huge statue of the First-Mother standing cradling what should have been an infant, instead her arms were empty. The second time we looked out of the window, we saw the same statue looking directly at us with a sad mournful expression on her face.
 
After searching the Grand Hall, the fountain chamber, and the pond/waterfall room, all we found were the two pages. We have found the Ellamendia but have not found any evidence of Amare. We decided that there might be another chamber somewhere in the sewers and we were about to enter the stench filled tunnels when Enna was inspired by Voltura and determined that the sewers were not the way to go. We even searched the sarcophagus room but came up empty.
 
We then headed back up to the All-Mother's bed chamber, but before opening the trap door I detected footsteps and voices. The voices were an argument between the captain and the high monk in charge of the men’s quarters, Ias. It was obvious that the captain was searching for the entrance to the catacombs that we now occupied. Ias insisted that he did not know of what the captain was talking about, but the captain did not believe him. The captain resorted to brutal physical means of interrogation but to no avail.
 
After waiting in silence for a while, two of the footsteps receded out of the room, but the third stayed. After a while, the one that stayed also left and we quietly lifted the trap door and once again entered the All-Mothers' chambers. I carefully and quietly looked out the door and saw a guard standing outside the door face away from us. We had already decided to go to the main hall and search the statue of the First-Mother hoping to find more pages to Ellamendia. But first we had to get past the guard. We came up with three plans. Plan A: I put the guard to sleep, Plan B: Enna would command the guard, Plan C: Aura would use a spell to hold the guard fast. I implemented Plan A and failed to put the guard to sleep. I closed the door and we prepared to enact Plan B, but when I opened the door, the guard was gone. Not believing our luck, we quickly and quietly exited the room and headed down the hallway. It was not long before we heard the guard coming back. Evidently the guard had gone for reinforcements. We luckily found a door that was unlocked and entered the room closing the door behind us.
 
We waited until the guard and his buddies passed the room that we were currently in. Looking out into the hallway, we saw the group down the hallway at the entrance to the All-Mother's room but determined that we could make out way to the stairs without being detected. We made our way to the stairs and headed down them without incident, hoping that we had a couple of more brains to help us out with our current dilemma.