Mir's Journal

The Dunes of Avarice

Author: Mir Acol

Hey, by the time this journal gets published you should already know who I am, so I will spare you the long introductions and get straight to the point. My name is Mir Acol and I plan on becoming the most important bard in the world, but that isn't what you are here for. You want to hear about a legendary adventure firsthand from one of the adventurers right? Unfortunately, I cannot guarantee that this journal will make it back to Vayr considering that I am currently sailing to the Chaos dungeon... Well regardless, I am confident in my abilities to get through this dungeon: after all the Vayr bardic college didn’t send me on this expedition just for the publicity that they turned a Tiefling into a fantastic bard (wait actually this might be part of the reason...shit) I feel like i'm forgetting something...Ah! That's right! The narration about my fellow adventurers and companions. Again, I will spare most of the details since they should all be famous by the time you are reading this, but here's a brief introduction to them: there is a quiet rogue named Sylk (pretty sure she’s going to try to steal everything from someone and that will make for a good narration later on) a Water Genasi named Drizal (he seems quite powerful but also quite drunk) a legendary Triton named Caspian (everyone seems to be freaking out over the fact that he killed a killer whale. I honestly don’t even know anymore) and an Elf named Samantha (pretty sure that she is the only sane one in the group...we’ll see how long that lasts) I don’t know a lot about their own personal reasons for wanting to go on this journey but I’m sure they have some. As for myself, I want to stop the racist perception that permeates the world that all Tiefling are wretched and terrible creatures. Additionally, I wish to gain the means to having true political power in this world. Before we reach the Chaos dungeon, our crew plans on stopping by the city of Leot to meet with an old man whose name I can’t remember off the top of my head (He lives in the observatory and is supposedly one of the most important people in Leot.) Not exactly sure why we are meeting with him but if his reputation is accurate he will most likely make good company.
Leot was unique. The old man was nice. I’m going to spare most of the details about the city for now but I will discuss the Freak Show. That abomination of an establishment should not exist. Essentially, around 30 Tiefling are kept in a system of slavery and the government of Leot does nothing about it. Most are forced to work as clerks and other shopkeeping jobs; however, if there is enough demand for them, the Tiefling eventually end up having to fight to the death in gladiatorial arenas. The government of Leot should be ashamed of allowing such an establishment inside its borders. In fact, it’s not safe for any Tiefling to be inside Leot’s borders. Not long after we arrived in Leot, a group of armed mercenaries tried to kidnap me because of the Freak Show. Honestly, the average citizen in Leot seems to be quite money driven, more so than in Vayr and much more than I expected. While I would normally say this is a good thing due to increased competition leading to increased success and standards of living, it seems to stem from the excessive economic despair in the region.
TLDR the government of Leot needs to get its shit together before I can recommend anyone travel to that city.
Needless to say we left Leot pretty quickly after picking up supplies and headed out to the chaos dungeon. On our way out, we stopped by a (relatively) deserted island and met a group of traveling bards. Honestly, they did not make for great company but they did serve as an indicator for the perils to follow. You see, one of their friends had taken off towards the chaos dungeon, likely in search of the instrument and poem held within its walls. Its safe to assume she never returned from her journey. Again, I am unsure of how the future will proceed but we have some of the most talented(?) crew in the world so I believe we may become the first expedition to clear a dungeon since the legendary Sandstar Pirates of old. Well if you see this journal and the rest of the story remains unfinished then that means we failed and it is essentially impossible to clear the remaining dungeons. Otherwise, I believe we can reverse the course of tragedy that has plagued this world for far too long.
Godspeed, Mir Acol.






Why is everyone here dumb as all hell?







Oh I suppose I should perhaps offer a bit more explanation. Ahem, so there was this abyss right and we could have levitated across but instead we had the fantastic idea of using Drizal as a grappling hook and leaping across this gap. Well at least we looked stylish while doing so. Fun Fact: if you look stylish while doing something you are by definition doing it correctly. Anyways, while we are resting I suppose I should explain a little bit of the background of the curse. Essentially, it causes hallucinations all over the place. Its excessively creepy but also pretty hilarious (Samantha thought that a river of sand was an actual river; Sylk and I decided not to inform her of this particular hallucination.) It looks like we are about to head out again, I will inform you of any later endeavours.
Mir Acol.


Guess what I found guys! Well actually you should know by now if I make it out of here alive. *sigh* this is why telling suspenseful stories never works in literature these days. In any case I found the instrument Tranquility and the riddle that accompanies it. I'm sure this poem will be studied to all hell sometime in the future. However right now I would like to draw your attention to the seventh line of the poem “Idols committed to Ideals.” This is a time now to put our reading comprehension skills to good use. Our party is currently in a room with a pedestal and two statue idol like things. One idol represents everything that is lawful in the world. The other represents everything that is chaotic. To open the pathway it seems we must place one of these idols on the pedestal. Based on my deductive reasoning, we should place the idol that best resembles our party on the pedestal. Because we are all very noble and upstanding heroes, naturally we placed the lawful idol on the pedestal. After doing so we received a blessing from God and proceeded through the door.

Hey guys I made it back to the land of the living! I still have some more things to teach you though before I chronicle our next adventure. After passing through the mystical and magical door we found ourselves in a maze. Again I need you to consult Tempest’s Requiem here for a few moments. Please refer to the tenth line of the poem “Within Tumult follow one voice.” To make it safely through this maze we needed to follow one specific voice amongst the millions of other chaotic voices. Okay, millions might be a bit of an overstatement, but you get what I mean. Fortunately, Samantha and Sylk seemed to understand Elvish so we followed that voice through the maze. Hmm...I feel like I’m forgetting something very important. Ah yes! I remember now! Music! Well I'm actually going to save this story for another time. There is one last story from the Chaos dungeon that I will share right now though. In that maze I mentioned earlier we ran into a bit of trouble in the form of tiny yet terrifyingly creepy hands. Drizal (unsurprisingly) set off a trap within the maze that released these demons. These hands somehow were animated despite clearly being severed from wherever they came from. In fact, I shudder to think of what happened to the bodies of the poor souls whose hands were removed in such a matter. Perhaps they were adventurers before us who were slain trying to conquer this dungeon. Perhaps they were prisoners of war who were taken into the dungeon centuries ago and tortured (hands chopped off) then their hands were reanimated by some all mighty magician. I honestly don’t know but the phenomena is strange indeed. In fact, why are these places called dungeons in the first place? Sure, they are giant structures reeking of evil, death, and darkness which conventional dungeons are known for but from my observations this place didn’t seem to be made to hold the most dangerous criminals of the land. If anything the Chaos dungeon seemed to be more of a keep than a dungeon. I mean, it did seem to exist for the sole purpose of defending the curse that it (who is it? I really don’t know yet but I guess I’ll find out someday) put on the world. Well that about wraps up the Chaos Dungeon. There were a few combat scenarios that I failed to mention here but now is not quite the time to discuss our battle strategies. However, I don’t plan on ending my journey here. No not at all. This simply is not good enough for what I want from and for the world. Therefore, please continue to believe in us as we (I) work towards making the world a better place for all of us.
Godspeed, Mir Acol.
Hey folks, we made it back to Leot. I still hate that city but whatever they paid us. Also please don’t hate me if you live in Leot I mostly hate your bitch of a government but then again you allow yourselves to be ruled by them so I guess it is kinda your fault. As I'm sure you’ve heard from rumors around the world by now, our crew is heading off to the Triton city of Prylt to clear out the Tainted Water dungeon. Why you may ask? After all, we are wealthy enough to live the rest of our lives in prosperity and if we return to our old lives we will likely be able to use our popularity as modern day dungeon conquerors to gain enormous amounts of power and influence in our respective quadrants of the world. So why continue our quest? Why put our necks on the line again? Im sure for much of the crew it's simply because they truly want to save the world from the curses found within these dungeons. I also want to save the world, however, I don’t believe that the curses are the biggest threat to it. No, I'm much more concerned about the lack of reasonable governments across the world. Terrible governments such as Leot’s need to be completely replaced while reasonable governments such as Vayr’s and Cyren’s need to be strengthened in order to better aid the people they govern. This is where the curses come in. Everyone sees them as a terrible blight that needs to be destroyed. Well they are, but they are also the resource that will allow me to save the world. Each curse that our crew dispels spreads our popularity throughout the world. As our popularity increases, our potential influence in the world increases as well. Lets use my life as an example for the moment. My exploits should be pretty well known in both Vayr and Leot by now. While this won’t help my standing much in Leot because I have no ties to the region, the Vayrian Bard College will undoubtedly be forced, likely by my mentor Orpheus, into giving me a seat on the Council of Vayr. This is the first step, however, it is not enough. Simply being on the Council won’t be enough for me to change the world. Sure, it will move it in the right direction and give Tieflings the much needed advance into global politics that we have needed for years now, but it isn’t enough. I need to be in charge. I must run that city to bring any real change. That is why I plan to keep conquering these dungeons. Orpheus (with good reason) will remain the head of the Council until I can pull off something drastic. He has been the head of Vayr for decades, has the best contacts in the world, and is of course known for conquering the first dungeon so many years ago. I wish to create a legacy greater than his and greater than that of any of the other bards at the college. Well I guess I've already accomplished that second goal. Specifically, I wish to conquer the Lost Souls Dungeon. This dungeon was the only one that the infamous Sandstar Pirates could never overcome. If our crew tackles this fortress then we will reach a status never before seen in the world. Orpheus already lends his support to me, but I don’t believe the other bards will do the same until I accomplish something seemingly impossible. Therefore, much of my free time will be spent attempting to find information about the Lost Souls Dungeon. In the meantime, we are sailing to Prylt in order to clear out the Tainted Water Dungeon. Unfortunately, there really is not much information out there on this dungeon either so I fear my studying right now is going to be for nothing. Oh well, I suppose I will end this little rant on politics here and proceed with my narration about the city of Prylt once we reach there.
Godspeed, Mir Acol.



WHY DO PEOPLE ALWAYS INSIST ON TRYING TO MURDER ME WHEN I'M SLEEPING?! Ok i guess it wasn’t a person but still. We had been smooth sailing all the way to Prylt when this random Plesiosaurus and a few reef sharks burst out of the water and tried to sink our ship. This prompted some very fast intervention by our crew. I suppose now would be as good a time as ever to explain how our crew functions in combat situations. Drizal and Caspian more or less serve as the major fighters in our crew. They both are incredibly strong, can take a lot of hits, and can swim way too fast for their own good. Sylk serves as our assassin. She is incredibly fast and stealthy on land. This in turn makes her incredibly deadly and likely one of the most capable rogues in the world. Samantha and I serve as support for the rest of our crew. Without us they would all pretty much be dead. There's not a whole lot rest to say about this matter just remember, my most astute reader, that the spell casters such as Samantha and myself are by far the most important people in combat scenarios. With this new knowledge in your mind, I would like for you to try to determine how we defeated this Plesiosaur. If you are a master strategist like myself you likely have already determined the answer to this by now. Take into consideration the layout of the battlefield and each of our strengths. Drizal and Caspian are both masters of close quarters combat and expert swimmers; therefore, it was only natural for them to leap into the ocean to fight the Plesiosaur. Not only was this the most effective way for them to inflict harm upon the foul beast, it also helped divide the battlefield into multiple layers, making it a much more three dimensional space. If the Plesiosaur decided to target the two fish men it would be open to attack from the rest of us on the boat (Sylk with her fast and deadly strikes, Samantha and I with powerful spells and arrows). If it decided to target those of us still on the boat the two fish men could easily slaughter it from the ocean. Naturally, I got the killing blow on the Plesiosaur. I am of course one of the best archers in the world (fun fact) so I took my crossbow in hand, aimed at the beast’s eye and sent it to the underworld. Assuming that nothing else super drastic happens this will be the last entry before Prylt. For now though, I must bid farewell to all of the future warriors, generals, scholars, and leaders reading my narrative.
Mir.

Nothing much more exciting happened on our way out to Prylt. We got attacked by a few sharks and some sahuagin but this conflict barely warrants any real recognition here. Just know that they caused us very little trouble in the grand scheme of things. Alright, back to the main story! I am currently writing this from an inn inside the legendary Triton city of Prylt. Honestly, Prylt is a fantastic city. The people here are incredibly friendly, they have amazing customs, and despite the calamities that have befallen them in the past, everyone here seems optimistic for the future. These are the types of people I believe can reshape the world into whatever they see fit. I know that I mentioned that I see the curses as resources to spread my influence in the world, however; I genuinely do want to see this specific city returned to a place of prosperity much like modern day Vayr. The curse that grips Prylt is unfortunately a pretty deadly one. While the one plaguing Leot simply caused hallucinations to spread across the city, the curse from the Tainted Water Dungeon has actually tainted the water. This type of curse would spell disaster for any city, much less a Triton city. In any case, I guess tomorrow we’ll explore the city a bit and then head out to the Tainted Water Dungeon. After tomorrow’s journeys I will update you again.
Mir Acol.
I am on a boat in the ocean in a storm heading back to Prylt after killing a killer whale. Well there goes all possible sense of logic. I guess I should explain the strange and “epic” Pryltian “customs(?)” that led us into this situation. After wandering around the city with Caspian for awhile, he informed us that the only way you can gain the permission of the Tritons to attempt to clear out a dungeon was to prove your worth by taking down a killer whale. Seeing as Caspian was the only member of the crew that had bothered to take down one of these beasts in the past (apparently in order to gain permission to join our crew in taking down the Chaos Dungeon) the rest of us still needed to smite down a killer whale in order to gain the Triton seal of approval to go after the Tainted Water Dungeon. So essentially, this is how I ended up spending my day on a boat chasing after a killer whale. Not exactly how I planned or wanted to spend my day off, but I did look pretty amazing when I got the killing crossbow shot on the killer whale. I did mention that I am undoubtedly the best archer in the world right? If you want proof challenge me sometime once I’m back in Vayr. Then you’ll see for yourself. Killer whales aside, we leave for the Tainted Water Dungeon tomorrow. Nothing else major happened in Prylt other than a fair amount of partying due to the possibility of some legendary heroes coming to save the world. Oh and everyone in the city seems to worship Caspian. This is a good thing. Once we eliminate the curses emanating from the remainder of the dungeons, the city will need a strong and charismatic leader; I believe Caspian fits this role quite nicely. We need more leaders like Caspian to help move the world towards an even greater future once the curses are gone. If you are reading this and we have succeeded in clearing out the rest of the dungeons please lend us your support in rebuilding the dunes into a wonderful place without the rampant crime, racism, and oppression that plagues it today. If you get in my way of creating this future then I’m afraid I may be forced to eliminate you. Don’t think for a second that I won’t be able to once I get what I want out of these curses.

Mir Acol.

Our journey to the dungeon was tainted with problems. Most notably, we had to dispose of a Kraken Priest. Our strategy for this fight remained relatively the same as our strategy versus the Plesiosaur. We had Caspian and Drizal take the monster head on in the ocean while the rest of us provided support/assassination help from the boat. However, this fight was much trickier than that of the Plesiosaur. You see, kraken priests have the capability to manipulate magical forces in order to call down powerful bursts of lightning as well as instill fear into their opponents. This alone made this kraken the most challenging beast we’ve faced so far. However, these additionally powers that the kraken had obtained would not be enough to stop us. We had to be much more cautious in what resources we expended and how we approached the monster, but despite the increase in difficulty the fight proceeded without any major problems. While I did mention that the fight against the kraken priest was the most notable (simply because of the difficulty of the combat) there was one other fight that I personally found much more interesting. You see, a bottle washed up on our boat (please don’t question how) so, naturally, we investigated it. The bottle turned out to be a mimic. Now my most astute readers, what would a mimic be doing randomly floating through the ocean around a random Triton city? Don’t you think that the chances that this specific event would occur are quite rare. I certainly believe so. Even if the curse somehow created this mimic, there is no reason for the mimic to find its way to our boat. No, I think someone or something sent the mimic to us, It's too much of a coincidence otherwise. Well, even after reviewing the contents of the bottle I have no definitive proof of this. In truth what I found may actually be evidence of the opposite, but that seems like such a dull and contradictory idea that I would rather that not be the case. Like I stated earlier, after slaying the mimic, we discovered a message inside of the bottle. The message, titled Yubaoc’s Gift, is a rather philosophical work primarily dealing with the topics of fear, death, and martyrdom. I will admit that I found the message interesting not so much for the content of the writing but more so because of the author and the circumstances in which we discovered it. The writing itself is pretty similar to all the pseudo-intellectual papers I had to read and grade back in Vayr. What struck me as odd with this message is, as mentioned previously, the author. Doubt. Who signs a random philosophical message under the pseudonym of Doubt? This is clearly not just a random student or would be writer using this name. It is something else entirely. Furthermore what reason would they have had to place it in a mimic bottle? I should say that this theory only has about a 20% chance of being accurate, but I believe that this Doubt may be the one orchestrating all of the curses. But if Doubt is the one behind these curses and the monsters that we have faced so far who are they and what is their goal? If my speculation is correct they would have to be a spellcaster on par with the gods. If they have this much power then what do they want? It seems unlikely that they want political power seeing as none of the city-states in the dunes have any considerable leverage over the others and the leaders of these city-states don’t appear to be under the influence of such a spellcaster. I simply cannot seem to find a reason for Doubt’s actions if he is behind all of this. No matter, I don’t need his motive to be able to stop him; however, I do need to know who he is. A spellcaster capable of throwing the world into disarray. The only known spellcaster with this much power is a man named Feon. However, i've studied enough about Feon to know that such an action would be so out of line with Feon’s character that I would say the chances of Doubt being Feon are only around two percent. Most likely, Doubt is a hidden spellcaster that has not revealed himself to the world yet. Assuming that I’m not wrong in my reasoning so far, Doubt will prove to be an issue for me eventually. Unfortunately, my top priority as far as research goes still needs to be the Lost Souls Dungeon. Somehow something in that dungeon was able to take down the Sandstar Pirates. Without the knowledge of what took them out I don’t believe we have a great shot at it either. Therefore, research into Doubt’s true nature and motivations will be left for another day. We have a few more hours left until we reach the Tainted Water Dungeon; I sincerely hope we make it out of here alive because this information I found must be reported back to Vayr as soon as possible. Well even if we are dumb as all hell, I still believe that our party is the most capable group of adventurers in the world, so if anyone is going to be able to pull this off it's going to be us.

Godspeed, Mir Acol.

This place is incredibly strange to say the least about it. The place is underwater which, granted, I should have expected considering the location and name of the place but it still surprised me a bit that someone could create such an elaborate structure under water. Like fuck, Vayr can’t even build slums correctly half the time. Well, first I should set the mood by giving you a rather cryptic message left at the entrance of the dungeon. “Fools... Your pride and bravery have lead you to treason; your treason has lead to your death.” - Vaunt, Captain of the Coin’s Edge. Right now I honestly don’t know what this message means. This was obviously left behind by a captain of a former adventuring party that probably died within the dungeon. But what of this treason he spoke of? Was this message directed at future adventurers such as ourselves? No, that possibility makes no sense in the context of this supposed treason. Perhaps he scribbled it on the wall for his crewmates that were still alive that betrayed him? But why? If they betrayed him what difference does it make whether or not he can rant at them one last time, this just doesn't seem like a logical move for someone knocking at death’s door. *sigh* I just can’t figure out all the answers to everything right now. That’s fine though, at the moment I just need to figure out how to proceed through this dungeon. Spending too much time overanalyzing the words of a likely mentally unstable and now dead captain won’t get me anywhere. I should now explain my preliminary theory about this dungeon. It is definitely connected to a cult. Whether the cult is pulling the strings here or someone is using the cultists as puppets remains to be seen, but the fact stands that a cult is responsible for something here. I can say this with certainty because I saw and fought some of these cult members. Right after the entrance, we proceeded into a room with three sea hags clutching an eyeball next to a cauldron. Also in the room were three Merfolk. But they were dead. They had been impaled and left to rot, likely as a warning to crazy adventurers such as ourselves. Now that I think about it, these three were likely members of the Coin’s Edge. I obviously have no proof of this but it seems like the only reason they would be down here right? Well they’re dead now so I guess it doesn't really matter anymore huh. You know who is also dead? The sea hags. We killed them. Only seems fair, they did take the lives of all those merfolk who were making their best effort at trying to save the world. Speaking of: I think I might need to have an ongoing Merfolk death count tally throughout this dungeon because we found a fourth one in the room as well. This poor soul had been chained onto one of the walls. His blood spells out the riddle of the dungeon: Tempest’s Requiem. Again, if I make it out of here alive, you should already be familiar with this poem, if not then I’ll just let the world do its thing and try to figure out what this poem is on its own. Besides, whoever runs these dungeons obviously wants the riddles to be found. For instance, in every dungeon the Sandstar Pirates cleared there was a corresponding riddle to go with it. Furthermore, in the Chaos Dungeon there was a very clear and obvious riddle. Perhaps that is why the Sandstar Pirates never cleared the Lost Souls Dungeon, maybe there was no riddle. No, that makes no sense. What reason would our now very very mysterious friend have for doing that. Still I can’t rule out the possibility that there is no riddle in the Lost Souls Dungeon. It's probably only around a one percent chance but thats still a chance. Additionally, I can’t rule out the possibility that different people wrote different riddles and simply investigating the riddles on their own won’t lead me to anything specific. Whatever, I can speculate about this possibility all I want later, but first I need to finish up here. After all, we’ve barely even made it out of the first room right now so I'm going to get going. I will say though that this poem confirms my theory about the cult considering that it mentions said cult in the poem.

Mir Acol.
We found a weird room stocked with potions. Only that wasn’t all that we found. We also found a shambling mound (you know those evil giant plant like creatures). I still don’t know what it was doing down there. Regardless, it's dead now. Well I don’t really know if such a being was alive in the first place. The room got slightly destroyed in the fight but we did manage to loot a few potions from the room before moving on.


As if this dungeon couldn't get any stranger, we ran into a number of Flumph in the next tunnel where we decided to take a rest. What are Flumph doing here? If the dungeons represent evil in the world, what do these Flumph represent? Traditionally, in both religious and historical texts, the Flumph have always been treated as relatively benevolent if somewhat mysterious beings. If they truly are benevolent as all the texts say, would it be possible that the Flumph are here to aid potential adventurers? Or are these beings indicating that they believe what the cultists are doing here in this dungeon is “good”? I simply cannot accept the second possibility. The innocent slaughter of merfolk and general disregard for humanoid life that these cultists have shown indicate that they are most certainly not “good.” Therefore, I must believe that the Flumph are here because of the first reason. Assuming that this is the case, what are the Flumph trying to show us? And if they are trying to show us something did they show it to the other adventurers that made their way down here decades ago. If so, the aid from the Flumph clearly didn’t work quite as intended (again making my assumption that the Coin’s Edge was the last adventuring party to come down here.) If I remember correctly from my studies back in Vayr, Flumph will periodically present visions to certain people every once in awhile. Ah I see! So that was what that was about. Just a second ago our entire party saw a vision of a gigantic lake hidden inside of a cave. Because all of us saw this, I must assume that the Flumph wanted us to see this. Still, what is the reasoning behind it? Perhaps it is a location within the dungeon. That seems like the most likely scenario but why show it to us? Why should we care about a random lake? I guess it's important but still it seems so irrelevant right now that I think I'm just going to ignore it for the time being. Still, this proves that Flumph are still present in the modern world and proves that they are actively working to stop this Doubt character or whoever is pulling the strings in this dungeon. Actually, that might not be the case at all now that I think about it. If the dungeon really is simply being used as a base of operation for some cultists, perhaps the only goal of the Flumph is to aid adventurers in removing them. After all, the Flumph are one of the few remaining entities that were associated with the pantheons of ancient Silero and they likely see the cultists as religious(?) enemies. Regardless, we seem to have new allies who will *hopefully* provide more helpful information for us later on.
Mir.
A few poison darts later and we found ourselves on the next leg of our journey within this dungeon. I would like for you to pause for a moment and try to guess what happens next in the story (C'mon guys I have to build suspense somehow and that fact that everyone not in the immediate generation of people will know about these stories already makes it very hard so pretend like you are surprised for me thanks.) If you guessed more cultists then you sir or madam are correct! However, this time we found a different cult which was somewhat surprising to me. Specifically we discovered a cult of Kuo-Toa seemingly obsessed with a random Trident in the middle of the room. I shouldn't have to say this, but the six Kuo-Toa we found are now dead. I will let your imagination determine how this occurred, but I believe it should be relatively obvious. Back to the subject of the Trident the Kuo-Toa had, upon closer inspection the Trident seems to be a Trident of Fish Command (dumb name I know but I’m not the one who comes up with them). The Trident itself is a weapon that allows the wielder to control any fishlike beast. Makes me wonder if the Kuo-Toa were planning on using the weapon or if they had been controlled by it. Speaking of the Kuo-Toa, I am now about seventy percent certain that these two cults are not connected with each other, simply because their actions seem very independent of each other. With this new information in mind, I now believe that someone is controlling the cults rather than the other way around. Assuming that my deductions so far have been correct, this is the only possibility that makes any sense. It would also explain why the Flumph have found their way in here. The next question now becomes: who is manipulating the cults. The first entity that crosses my mind is our friend Doubt but theoretically speaking, anyone or anything could be behind this. Not to sound racist or anything, but you can’t exactly tell me with a straight face that Sea Hags and Kuo-Toa are the smartest creatures on the planet. I bet any charismatic spellcaster with enough motivation could successfully manipulate both of these cults. In fact, I believe that if I wanted to I could easily pull off such a feat. This still leaves me with the problem of both who is behind all of this cultist activity and what their motivation is. I still personally believe that Doubt has some role to play here but whatever I’ll find out later (or I won’t if I die too quickly but I’m going to assume that won’t happen).
Mir Acol.

The Flumph are back yay! This time the whole party saw a vision of some very menacing looking tentacles in the previous lake. I’m not sure about you but I think we are going to have to fight that thing at some point. Now I would like to take this opportunity to describe our newfound friend Jack the Reef Shark. Jack is a reef shark. Then he became our friend. I talked with him a bit using some magical powers. He seems like a very nice creature and he has many fantastic aspirations for his future. Specifically, Jack the Reef Shark plans on becoming the head of all of the reef sharks across the Triton Seas. There is so little we know about these usually ignored creatures that I believe someone should devote a little bit more time studying them, preferably once the curses have been removed and the governments of the dunes are like decent institutions. Also we fought a Sahuagin. I really don’t know what it was doing down here, but I’ve already said that about half the things i’ve found in the dungeon so whatever. It’s also dead. Oh and Sylk threatened to cook someone (wasn’t me I’m still alive). After dealing with that we found some more gear and stuff. This time around it was a Mantaray cloak and a Lightning Javelin. Again, I really don’t know who will read this journal sometime in the future but if there are any future strategists or generals or battle planning people or whatever now might be a good time to start paying attention to what you are reading. I know most of you are probably only reading this so that you don’t fail whatever history test you are taking sometime in the future, but honestly you could learn something here. The next room we entered contained a large number of murals, specifically murals with sharks on them, as well as a decanter of endless water atop a waterfall. This entire battle that I just fought through and which I will now recount to you was more or less a giant puzzle. The decanter caused the water level to rise every few seconds. Each shark mural was placed at a separate water level. Once water from the decanter completely covered one of these murals, the mural would disappear and sorcery would do its thing and voila a shark would be ready to murder us. Therefore, it became imperative for us to find a way to deactivate the decanter. Unfortunately, as stated earlier, the decanter was located at the top of a waterfall. Fortunately, also stated earlier, we have two fishmen on our team. Unfortunately, not stated earlier, the decanter was also guarded by a Water Weird. I really had hoped to not run into evil creatures that can turn themselves invisible, but alas luck was not on my side here. Well if you guys are as smart as I hope you are you should be able to figure out how we got out of this situation. Oh but I suppose I did promise you I would recount this part of the journey right. *sigh* tactics tactics tactics secret strategy super powerful magic and stuff yay go team. Ok but actually we utilized our previous combat strategies but took them to entirely new levels of craziness. Caspian and Drizal were both sent on mission impossible to swim up the waterfall, kill the water weird, and deactivate the decanter while the rest of us stayed on the ground(?) to kill the sharks that were created. This plan worked pretty well but only after the decanter was gone. We really had no way of dealing with the water weird until this problem was dealt with. Now that we’ve had our daily dose of strategy, back to your regularly scheduled program of cults and cultists! You know how I mentioned earlier that I was going to have an ongoing Merfolk death counter for this dungeon, (which is surprisingly still at 4. I thought we would have at least doubled that number by now.) well I think I need to have an ongoing cult counter as well because we just discovered a third one. I can say this with certainty because of the next room we entered. In here we discovered three masks atop three separate pedestals. One mask represents the Sea Hag cult, another represents the Sekolah cult (the one with the weird sahuagin people and I guess the Kuo-Toa as well), and the final one had the mark of a Kraken Priest. I had honestly forgotten about the kraken priest that we fought outside the dungeon but I guess that was not just a random chance encounter after all. Well, it doesn't change much of anything accept confirm my theory that the cults are all being manipulated. I don’t really know what to do with these masks, but I suppose I should just take them so that once we get back to Vayr I can have their powers analyzed more thoroughly by one of my subordinates. Next up on my list of random magical powers I forgot to explain earlier that I should probably explain now: Music! By playing magical instruments (such as Mirage, Tranquility, and in the current case Tempest) in the correct location, a bard can open normally undiscoverable pathways. It’s something. Before I transition into the next room, I should explain that we found more Flumph. This time, they showed us an Aboleth. This my friends is not good. I never suspected that an Aboleth of all things would be behind the cult manipulations here, but I suppose that's just the way things are. If you are not aware, Aboleths are enormously powerful and intelligent fish creatures. Taking down an Aboleth will require some real strategizing, gimmicks, and heroism. I think I also know the Aboleth’s main goal here as well: self-preservation. The Aboleth must have become aware of the fact that it was alive in a world that really did not want Aboleths to exist. Therefore, it must have set up camp in the Tainted Water Dungeon with the knowledge that very few people would come in here to try to kill it. As an extra precaution, it likely used its powers to gain control over the three cults and use them as either diversions for adventurers such as ourselves or as bodyguards. You know, I kinda feel sorry for the creature. It’s simply trying to find a way it can continue to live in a world that hates it. It didn’t choose to be hunted down by half of the world’s nations simply because it was created with magical powers. It just you know exists like the rest of us. Regardless, the actions that this Aboleth has taken to preserve itself are inexcusable and we therefore must defeat it. However, I still do not believe that an Aboleth is behind this curse or any of the other curses. Even an Aboleth does not have that much power. No, my theory that some powerful spellcaster is behind this isn’t wrong. I just haven’t found him yet. Alright, I’ve rambled on for long enough here, time to go clear a maze.
Godspeed, Mir Acol.


You know, someone really needs to do something about all the severed hands in these places. This time we got ambushed by an even greater number than before. Specifically, I see twenty-four of the little bastards now dead on the ground. I still don’t know why these things even exist, but my original stance that they are creepy as all hell remains unchanged. We also had to kill off some shadows as well. If you are unaware of what I am referring to, think of shadows more or less as really dark and creepy ghosts. What I found interesting in this specific room was the warning mural. On it, someone had depicted eight soldiers impaled on spikes, similarly to the Merfolk we found dead earlier in the dungeon. The shadows that we had to fight seemed to manifest themselves from the images of the dead soldiers. I guess whoever set up this trap wanted to try to make it seem as if the hands and the shadows were part of the mural. They did a good job of doing this with the shadows as they sent eight of these guys at us. However, the last time I checked, most humanoids have two hands. If my math checks out, eight times two still equals sixteen so I really don’t know where the extra eight hands came from. Anyways...after killing the hands and shadows we proceeded to ignore the warning and go into the maze.
Mir.
The maze was much more interesting than I thought it was going to be. To find our way through the maze, we had to pick the correct murals on the walls to follow. The correct murals in this scenario depicted the “historically correct” origin story of the world. Because of my lengthy studies in Vayr, I was able to complete this maze with no difficulties, but it makes me wonder why such an obscure story would be used here. The only possible solution is that whoever created this puzzle has some relation to the origin story of the world. If we are accepting this as the best possible explanation, then the one behind this puzzle would have to be someone related to the Red Soul. After all, I highly doubt that the Blue or White souls would be behind causing all of this chaos in the world. Therefore, is Doubt the Red Soul or is he simply being used by the Red Soul for his powers? And if the Red Soul is behind the dungeons and curses, why hasn’t the Blue Soul tried to stop it? I honestly am having a hard time deciding whether or not this theory is accurate at all. To put it bluntly, scholars in Vayr are still debating whether or not the origin story of the world has any truth to it at all. There is essentially no evidence of the existence of any of the three souls anywhere in the world. There is also no evidence of the gods created by the souls. Therefore, it is plausible to believe that this particular puzzle just happens to be related to the origin story of the world simply due to the curiosities of the spellcaster who created this puzzle. However, this seems like a very boring and mundane theory so I am going to ignore it despite my own belief that the origin story is completely fabricated. After getting through the maze, we had one more fight before the Aboleth. This time around, we were forced to deal with a chuul and two sea spawn. We did so without much issue. After another fantastic discussion with the Flumph, we proceed onwards towards the final confrontation in this dungeon. Hopefully we live. It would honestly be a damn shame if we didn’t after all the effort we spent clearing out this place. So yea, see you on the other side hopefully.
Mir Acol.

Final Merfolk Death Count: 12. Final Cult Count: 3. Final Aboleth Death Count: 1. Final Crew Death Count: 0 (yay). So as you can see we slayed the evil fish monster. The fight this time around was much more challenging than I imagined it would be. Not only did we have to face off against an Aboleth that could mind control us, but we had to face sixteen merfolk that it had enslaved. Again, I am a lazy hero at the moment and don’t feel like describing this entire battle, just know that it happened and your favorite bard is not dead. Also Prylt is saved now. Yay. I'm pretty sure that our current plan now is to go sightseeing at a few random cities and then make an attempt at clearing out the Plagued Winds Dungeon. This plan should work. Hopefully we don’t get mugged on our way to the dungeon. Actually, the more likely scenario is that we will end up mugging someone, not the other way around. Regardless, there are a few matters that I personally wish to attend to during the downtime. First off, I believe I know a way to gather information both about the Lost Souls Dungeon and about this sketchy Doubt character. For this plan to work, I need to extract some information from the legendary spellcaster known as Feon. I mentioned Feon a bit earlier in this narrative as the most powerful spellcaster known to the civilized world. That was a bit of an understatement. The guy seems to be able to use magic to increase his lifespan basically to immortality. Furthermore, he has also managed to pop up in essentially every legendary story as some sort of hero or savior. Honestly, he kind of irks me a bit. Like really, he just happens to be this amaaaaazing spellcaster who has saved the world time after time yet never actually managed to make sure the governments of said world weren’t oppressing their populace and he is also unable to do anything about these curses. Whatever. It doesn't really matter. At the moment all I need him for is information. Honestly, I should be less judgemental. He probably is doing all he can to save the world. It just seems like he could be doing more. Speaking of how I plan to get the information out of him, it actually is quite simple. Every once in a while, Feon visits a major city and holds a weird contest with the only rule being that you have to surprise him. If you succeed at this (only happens about once every century or so), he will answer any question you ask of him. I plan on presenting him with Yubaoc’s Gift and seeing how he reacts. If he is surprised by the author, Doubt, that will more or less confirm my theory that Doubt is the mastermind behind the curses and monsters that have came into being recently. Furthermore, I will get to ask him a question. I plan on asking him how the members of the Sandstar Pirates died inside the Lost Souls Dungeon. Based on logical deductions, whatever killed them is likely the most difficult obstacle inside of the dungeon. Therefore, if I could have knowledge on what that is ahead of time, we would be in a much better position to clear the dungeon. If he is not surprised by Yubaoc’s gift then that means that Doubt is not behind any of this. At that point, I can adjust my strategy accordingly. In any case, I have a flawless plan set up here.
Godspeed, Mir Acol.

Before I could go back to Vayr to put my plan into effect we had to stick around in Prylt for a day to party with everyone and give some random inspirational speeches. My speech was by far the most eloquently written and spoken, yet, despite this, everyone listening seemed to think that Caspian’s speech was the work of God. I guess that is to be expected, but I still think that mine is better. I also participated in a race against Drizal. Due to my masterful strategizing done beforehand, I had the perfect plan for victory. Therefore I won the race easily. No, I did not cheat. Not at all. I won by perfectly legitimate methods involving a slight use of magic. No one said magic wasn’t allowed. Oh, and I also created a statue out of fire by making good use of a potion of fire breathing I found inside the Chaos Dungeon. So I guess that's pretty cool. The next entry should be from Vayr. Adios for now.
Mir.

Guess what guys! Shit, you already know the basic details of what happens since you are likely reading this long after I’m dead. Whatever, my master plan worked! Feon confirmed that Doubt is indeed the villain that we’ve been chasing after. Furthermore, I was able to extract some information from him regarding the Lost Souls Dungeon. Not exactly the information I was expecting, but the information I obtained is just as valuable. As it turns out, the Sandstar pirates never actually died inside the dungeon. They apparently were betrayed by their captain. This seems relatively unlikely, and therefore I’m going to chalk it up to the work of some magical force. If that's the case, then we have to expect to be forced to deal with that same obstacle. Additionally, the Sandstar pirates are still in there. Therefore, in addition to the other issues we will face, we’ll either be forced to free them or kill them. I’m not to thrilled about either alternative, but at least I have this information to put into my planning. As far as Feon goes though, I wasn’t the only one able to surprise him today. Samantha was able to use some of her magical powers to surprise him. I honestly don’t know how; for as long as Feon has existed I would have assumed that he would have seen every possible magical power in the world by now. I guess not. Additionally, Feon gave me a magical book. I was instructed to not tell the world of its existence so please ignore my previous statement. Upon closer inspection of this book and one of the stories inside of it, titled “Free Will”, I have determined the names of the three souls. Feon, not to anyone’s surprise, is the Blue Soul, a woman named Aeh is the White Soul, and a woman named Jayst is the Red Soul. This information will probably come in handy later. Mostly, it proves that there is some truth behind the world’s origin story. Lame, but fine I guess. I didn’t really think much of said origin story other than as a theoretical subject for historical study, but I guess I will admit defeat here and proceed forward with this new information. That more or less wraps up Vayr. I also dropped by the bard college and met with Orpheus. I received from him some information regarding magical properties that I can’t exactly share right now. Additionally, I was offered a seat on the Vayr Bard Council. With this in mind, the logical thing to do would be to go try to conquer more dungeons and gain even more power. Everything is going as planned. Now, I suppose we will probably be heading off to Cyren next although I’m not exactly sure. Anyways, I’ll see you guys in a few months.
Mir Acol.
Hey guys! I’m back again! And I’m on a boat, who would have guessed? We visited Cyren and met with the leader of the island, Vessal. Similarly to Orpheus, Vessal was one of the members of the original crew that conquered the Fatigue dungeon around half a century ago. After his success dungeon conquering, Vessal took his wealth and prestige back to the island of Cyren and essentially took over the place. From that point onwards, Vessal has built Cyren into one of the most prosperous civilizations in the world. He and Orpheus serve as the models for my plan to make the world an even greater place; if smart, popular, well-intentioned, and wealthy individuals can gain control then they can easily turn the world into the best possible place. I think this should be relatively obvious with both Orpheus’s influence in Vayr and Vessal’s influence in Cyren. In fact, I would go as far as to argue that Vayr and Cyren are the best cities in the dunes at this point. However, this prosperity won’t last forever. To put it bluntly, Orpheus and Vessal are both really old at this point. Once they pass away, someone just as skilled will need to replace them. While I plan on eventually taking over Vayr and I know Caspian will be able to lead Prylt into the future, I honestly have no idea who can successfully take over Cyren. The first choice would be Drizal because he is related to the current leader of Cyren and he is excessively popular around the world due to his status as a dungeon conqueror, however; he is incredibly dumb. Unfortunately, I did not find any other Water Genasi living in Cyren that would do a better job governing than Drizal so I guess we are going to be stuck with him at some point *sigh.* Regardless, it seems that our stay in reasonable cities around the dunes is coming to a close now as we are on our way to the city of Ikayla.
Mir.

Why is everyone a completely racist fuck again? In similar fashion to Leot, the second we landed in Ikayla people tried to arrest and enslave me for being a Tiefling. Apparently I looked like this Tiefling named Lector that managed to escape from the freak show that is currently camped out in Ikayla. This time though, all of us were armed and we more or less just kinda killed the racist assholes that tried to kidnap me. Serves them right. I mean, I don’t even look anything like that Lector fellow. He is incredibly ugly, at least 10 years older than me, and not nearly as intelligent as me. I on the other hand am the pinnacle of modern Tiefling beauty and charisma, and I am the most intelligent person on the planet. Speaking of Lector, we ended up having to fight him after he laid an ambush for us in an alleyway. I don’t really know why he set an ambush for us, but it didn’t exactly work. Afterwards, we took pity on the poor soul and decided to help him and let him live (I was opposed to both plans and thoroughly wanted to see how many arrows I could place in his body before killing him.) However, I agreed to help him once it became obvious that he had thought up a scheme to free the remaining Tiefling from the Freak Show. Apparently, the same group that was holding the remainder of the Tiefling captive also had somehow obtained a Ring of Invisibility. I really don’t know how they got that since those things are pretty damn expensive, and by pretty expensive I mean that purchasing one could bankrupt a small country for a few months. Fortunately, our party is randomly quite specialized for stealth missions...Sooooo operation steal magical powers for the sake of justice is a go! To go about doing this, we had Sylk and Samantha distract the guards while I used my own invisibility and teleportation powers to retrieve the ring without being found. Another flawless plan created by yours truly. Once operation steal magical ring was completed, operation free all of the prisoners was put into motion. This is where the ring of invisibility comes into play. Even with my advanced magical powers, I cannot maintain an invisibility spell over myself for a long enough period of time to sneak into the Freak Show and free everyone without being discovered. Therefore, I needed to use the ring of invisibility to sneak into the Freak Show. After freeing the remainder of the Tiefling, the guards finally caught up with us and we were forced into a close quarters combat scenario. Around a year ago if this scenario had occurred in Leot I don’t believe we could have actually pulled off this fight. However, it seems that all of us have gotten much stronger and now a few guards were no match for our powers. After taking down the Freak Show by force and killing the man who was in charge of it (I won’t give his dead spirit the satisfaction of mentioning his name or face here), our party decided it would be for the best to give Lector the ring. This way, Lector and the rest of the Tieflings would have the power to evade any other possible kidnappings or other problems in Ikayla. Furthermore, I’m kind of interested to see what Lector does with such power. Like I mentioned earlier, rings of invisibility are both incredibly powerful and incredibly rare. I’m curious to see if by giving Lector the ring we inadvertently spawned a terrorist cell in the city simply by arming the madman with such a tool. Now that our tour of the dunes’ numerous cities has come to a close, our group plans on taking down the Plagued Winds Dungeon next. Again, hopefully we don’t die. That would be really really anticlimactic if we die before even making it to the Lost Souls Dungeon.
Godspeed, Mir Acol.

Fucking needle blights destroyed all of my writing from this dungeon. Thanks. That’s just what I wanted. Now I have to rewrite everything. You know what, nope, fuck it, I’m tired and I don’t feel like rewriting everything. I’ll let you guys imagine what happened in the Plagued Winds dungeon. Spoiler Alert: we all made it out of the dungeon alive and we successfully dispelled the curse that had its grip over the Ikayla region. Next stop: the Lost Souls Dungeon. If we succeed, everything I need to put my plan into place will be complete. Therefore, serious mode activate. Ok, I know I’ve said this about fifty times by now, but this time I mean it the most, hopefully we don’t die.
Mir.

Purple Worms are scary as all hell. If you are from the future and are reading this from somewhere outside of the dunes, a purple worm is essentially on the levels of scary and dangerous that dragons would be considered to be on in most of the world. They are unpredictable, fast, powerful, and have a flair for the chaotic. Normally, a purple worm is responsible for around 25% of goods and lives lost while traversing the dunes and there is usually at least one incident each year where a purple worm decides to travel through a town or part of a city and completely destroy said town or city before anyone was even prepared to stop it. Before we got into the Lost Souls Dungeon, we encountered one of these monsters. This fight was most certainly the most challenging we had encountered at this point in our journey. In fact, Caspian was actually eaten by the purple worm during the fight. Fortunately, Caspian is Caspian and I’m pretty convinced at this point that Caspian might actually have more power than Feon, Aeh, and Jayst because this man not only managed to survive getting eaten by a purple worm, but managed to kill the purple worm by stabbing its insides after he had been eaten. After the badass display put on by Caspian, we finally entered the Lost Souls Dungeon. In the first room of the dungeon, we found an ink clock guarded by a devourer. The clock functioned similarly to the mural puzzle with the decanter of endless water inside of the Tainted Water Dungeon. Every few seconds, another portion of the clock was filled with ink and shadows would be resurrected into existence once this happened. Simply based on the similarity of these traps, I’m going to go as far as to guess that the same person placed both of these traps. I’m going to guess that Doubt is behind both of those which in and of itself is not a new development, but I and the larger community of scholars in Vayr had came to the conclusion that the Aboleth was the primary contributor to all of the problems found within the Tainted Water Dungeon. Well actually that's not quite true. We knew that Doubt had placed the curse on the Triton Seas and that she had used the dungeon as a way to safeguard that curse. However, based on the evidence we found with the cult manipulations, I had came to the conclusion that Doubt was only responsible for the curse, not for the actual obstacles found within the dungeon. Maybe I was wrong. I suppose that’s a possibility. In any case, we tried to solve this puzzle in similar fashion to the puzzle in the Tainted Water Dungeon. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite the same as we never really found a way to deactivate the ink clock, forcing us to have to just cut our losses and start slaying some shadows. After dealing with the shadows and the devourer, we climbed up a flight of stairs that led to a rather cryptic passageway. The passageway split into three separate paths, one labeled “Tomb of Vanity”, another “Tomb of Cruelty”, and the last one as “Tomb of Forbidden”. To further progress, we need to complete whatever challenges lie in these tombs. The first tomb that our party just decided to enter is the tomb of vanity. I’ll update this once we’ve cleared all of them.
Mir Acol.
Alright, those tombs were probably the closest that we’ve came to death so far. Sure, the Aboleth almost got us, but we still had more spells ready for backup, and yes, there were a lot of things in the Plagued Winds Dungeon that almost did us in, but similarly to the Aboleth, we still had more tricks up our sleeves. After solving these tombs, we truly were completely burnt out of resources, which has forced us to take about a days break before even attempting to progress any further in the dungeon. The Tomb of Vanity was by far the most troublesome for us to deal with (we were nearly all killed inside of there which was...not great considering it was the first of the three tombs that we entered.) However, the Tomb of Forbidden is what I’m going to spend my time narrating for you because, put it simply, it is by far the most interesting of the three tombs. The room itself was lined with a number of empty scrolls across the walls. As soon as we entered the room, some sort of evil power possessed me and while unconscious and possessed, I transcribed the riddle of the dungeon, Martyr’s Ode, onto one of the walls in my amazingly elegant handwriting (This proves that there are always riddles in the dungeon and the Sandstar Pirates didn’t lose because of a lack of a riddle). Any lesser being would have succumbed to the magical possession techniques that were used in this room, however; I was able to successfully regain consciousness in time to murder the remainder of the evil spirits lurking in the tomb. While this alone would have made the tomb quite interesting, from everything I can find, the spirits in this tomb manifested themselves as pieces of dark lore. For those of you who are unsure of what I am referring to, dark lore is essentially what us historians describe as stories best not told. Normally, they are stories that teachers refrain from teaching due to the insidious nature of the works, such as stories that describe heroes in a negative light or stories that show the positive side of our world’s most treacherous villains. Additionally, a lot of these stories teach us about the lives of civilizations, such as the goblins, that have been traditionally painted as “evil”. As a teacher myself, I have always been conflicted as to whether or not I should teach my students any of this so called “dark lore”. I personally would teach these stories in my history classes if I could do so without pissing off the rest of the teachers at the college. You see, I believe that these stories are essential to teach our students in order to give them the full picture of everything and let them make their own deductions about what they believe is “right” and “wrong”. However, teaching such things at the Vayr Bard College would get me branded as a heretic and would ultimately hinder my abilities to rise in political and social status in the city. Therefore, I avoided teaching any dark lore to my students. It honestly is of no major importance right now, but when I get back to Vayr I would like to try to reform the education system in the city, not only at the prestigious bard’s college, but in all of the schools across the city. Unfortunately, I personally won’t really have the time to implement any of the changes I want to see in the education system if I plan on becoming the leader of the city. Fortunately, I have plenty of contacts who are perfectly capable of accomplishing this goal. Most notably is a Tiefling named Emp. She attended the Bard’s College in Vayr a few years after I graduated and assumed my teaching position at the college. During her stay at the college, she quickly became one of the most intelligent and quick-witted students I have ever met. After we completed the Tainted Water Dungeon, we decided to hire some additional crew to manage our ship as well as to aid in dealing with the public in larger cities. Naturally, I went through the effort to hire Emp seeing as she is one of the most capable bards at the college. Once our party finishes clearing out the Lost Souls Dungeon, I believe Emp will be of extreme importance in managing the internal affairs of Vayr, including educational reforms. This random tangent aside, we seem to be progressing rather well through the dungeon. I’ll update you guys again once we get through a bit more of the dungeon.
Mir Acol.

A fight based on honor and glory? Yeah seems kind of lame I know, but it happened regardless. I guess I’ll set the scene a bit here before delving right into what happened, Once we passed into the next segment of the dungeon, we ended up walking onto a bridge over a random river that passed through the dungeon. Sitting atop his demonic horse, a death knight appeared in the center of the bridge and shouted at Caspian “You are Blinded by Glory!” before vanishing and manifesting into an elite squadron of sword wraiths. This fight was a particularly strange one because it devolved into a fight with a complete lack of honor and glory. Almost immediately as the fight began, an illusion was cast by the dungeon to make it seem like the bridge was collapsing into the rushing waters below. While this tricked some of our party members, I easily saw through this illusion and was able to continue fighting as if nothing had happened. Eventually, the rest of the party came to their senses and helped to finish off the remainder of the sword wraiths. We also found a Holy Avenger for Caspian. I guess that’s pretty neat also. I really don’t want to spend much time narrating this section of the dungeon at the moment because what happens next is simply much more interesting. With that out of the way, mirrors!


Here is where all of my research into the previous crew of the Sandstar Pirates really came in handy. Upon crossing the previous bridge, we were led by the words “Safe” to proceed further into the dungeon. Like I mentioned, this is where my knowledge and research came into play. Normally, everyone in our crew would assume that the word “Safe” was referring to a voice leading us to a safer location within the dungeon. However, I was prepared for something along these lines and instantly knew that “Safe” was actually referring to “Seyf” with the same pronunciation. For those of you who are unenlightened, Seyf was the captain of the Sandstar pirates before the whole group went missing in this dungeon. By following the voice “Seyf” we were led to a ridiculously powerful mirror. Seyf’s reflection was present within the mirror and the first words he said to us were “Listen! We don’t have time to talk right now! Shatter this mirror!” Being thoroughly prepared to deal with the consequences of untrapping the Sandstar Pirates, Drizal quickly went and smashed the mirror, freeing Seyf and the rest of the pirates. We had prepared strategies for three possible options at this point. Number one: if Seyf and the rest of the pirates were not corrupted, we could just have them join us and clear out the rest of the dungeon. This seemed like an unlikely alternative, but hey, why not have a best case scenario option. Option 2: If the pirates were all controlled, I had spent hours researching each of the weak points in the fighting styles of each pirate and shared this information with our party. Therefore, we could easily dispose of them if they were hostile towards us. Option 3: Parts of the Sandstar Pirates were hostile while others were friendly. Essentially, we could use the same strategy as option 2, but we wouldn’t have to kill everyone and we would be able to gain a few allies. After smashing the mirror, it became clear that we would need to put in place a bit of an improvised version of plan three. You see, everyone but Seyf tried to murder us and Seyf as well. It seems that the rest of the crew really did believe that Seyf had betrayed them and that he was the reason that they had been trapped inside of the mirror. Our strategy for defeating them relied on exploiting their weaknesses as a team now that they were no longer aided by their commander, Seyf. Our main strategy essentially became to try to overwhelm the larger powers of Vorax and Zellir. Without proper guidance, Vorax’s efficiency in combat dropped drastically and he became flustered easily when surrounded by many skilled opponents. Furthermore, by focusing on Zellir, any possible attempts by him to try to issue commands to the rest of the pirates were cut short because he was suddenly being forced into a battle of individual tactics rather than strategy and he simply didn’t have the time to try to rally his forces, dropping their overall power by about fifty percent. My flawless battle strategy doesn’t end here though. I had also counted on the fact that Kras, the Tabaxi rogue, was never really loyal to anyone and would take up a defensive position to save herself if things turned sour rather than prioritizing the group. This effectively allowed us to use the remainder of our energy taking our their hired hands of Xarus, Milrynk, and Nisryl. Once they were finished, we could essentially just overwhelm Kras to finish off the battle. This strategy worked perfectly, the only thing I hadn’t accounted for was the fact that Seyf was unwilling to strike down his own crew members, making him essentially useless during the fight. Actually, he was worse than useless because we had to protect him during the entire exchange which put even more strain on our already limited resources to use during the fight. I guess I should thank Feon here for providing me that small bit of information in Vayr. Not only did it allow us to avoid being swallowed by the mirror, but it also allowed us to create a proper strategy to get the furthest anyone has ever made it in the Lost Souls Dungeon and allowed us to have a new ally throughout the remainder of the dungeon. Now that we’ve gotten this far we are completely in the blind as to what obstacles will come next in the dungeon. Thanks for sticking with us this far in our journey. Hopefully we don’t let you down.
Godspeed, Mir Acol.

In the next segment of the dungeon we found a piece of Feon’s Journal. This is an interesting discovery because I had come to the conclusion that Feon had essentially no connection to the dungeons or the curses. Most likely, someone, probably Jayst or someone under her influence, had torn out a piece of his notebook. The story on the torn out notebook was what schools would most likely consider as “dark lore”, a piece of history titled The Tragedy of Shej. To summarize this story for you all, Shej was a Paladin during Stelk’s reign over the Kingdom of Silero many centuries ago. Shej randomly befriended a Pegasus named Gambit and that Pegasus became his best friend pretty soon afterwards. Throughout his life, Shej followed Stelk’s foolish sense of justice until Stelk decided it would be a great idea to torture Gambit for his own incompetence at riding flying horses. Like seriously, Stelk would have died falling off of Gambit had his wizard Anotrebbikar not saved him from the fall. That’s still no reason to take out his anger on the poor horse, after all it wasn’t Gambit’s fault that Stelk just had no actual skills in life besides being a brutal and abusive dictator. Anyways, continuing the story, after Stelk tortured Gambit, Shej got really pissed off and essentially started the revolution that would eventually overthrow the Kingdom of Silero. Afterwards, Shej fell into despair, lost his mind, and eventually became an undead monster that would forever be cursed to live withering away. I can see why schools never taught this story. After all, most of the world saw the Kingdom of Silero as a “good thing” due to its prosperity and its downfall as “bad”. I disagree with this particular sentiment due to one main reason: the kingdom was too far in the hands of the gods. To put it simply, Silero placed to much faith in the gods, and, while the kingdom was very prosperous, it lacked any true innovation of any sort because everyone just assumed “Oh, we’ve got the blessing of the gods therefore we don’t need to try to do anything! The gods will take care of everything for us.” All this mentality led to was technology stagnating, cultural norms becoming to normal and resulting in a society with a very rigid and mundane social structure, and progress in general simply coming to a halt. While such a kingdom can be deemed as “prosperous” and “good” due to the increased standards of living for everyone compared to other locations around the world, I would think such a world would be very mundane and boring. I certainly wouldn’t want to live there. Honestly, even with its major faults, I believe that the world we live in today is still better than the ancient kingdom of Silero because we are at least still making strides into the future, something that Silero never tried to accomplish. My opinions on Silero aside, guess who we get to kill. If you guessed Shej then you are correct. If you are from the future and already know some of the details about this story and wanted to seem cool and impress your friends by “guessing” Shej then fuck you. Anyways, we killed Shej and the nightmare manifestation of Gambit. Then we killed some mummies. Now we seem to have one final battle with the fate of the world riding on our shoulders. Please wish us good luck. Actually, I’m being a bit too melodramatic here; even if we fail at clearing out the Lost Souls Dungeon our adventures should inspire other adventurers to try their hand at clearing the Lost Souls Dungeon, and eventually someone will be successful. I really just want us to be successful though. Like, I’m going to be really disappointed in the afterlife if we fail here.
Mir Acol.

We did It! I’m currently writing this segment of narration from a dinner party hosted by Feon. Honestly everyone is excessively drunk at the moment, so I suppose now is as good a time as ever to finish up this story. The final fight involved us having to destroy a Lich and his minions. Remember that magical power that Orpheus taught me back in Vayr that I said I would mention later? Well, I finally got to put that to good use. If you happen to have every magical instrument in your position and you are a legendary bard such as myself, you can play all of them simultaneously and gain the power to be able to use any number of spells at the same time. This power, along with the strategies we developed throughout the battle, allowed us to successfully defeat the Lich. Admittedly, we almost died trying. Actually, Samantha and I did die trying. We were just brought back to life afterwards. You see, the musical power had the slight problem of the fact that if your focus is broken during the performance, you die. Considering that it's hard to keep focus on seven spells at once and defend myself from a Lich, I was eventually brought down. Now that she was the only spellcaster left standing, it was inevitable that Samantha would run into similar issues. After the fight, we received a Ring of Three Wishes. The first two wishes were used to revive Samantha and myself. The third wish hasn’t been used yet. With this in mind, I can now ask you guys: what do you think the third wish will be? I can finally build up suspense in my narrative because no one in the world actually knows yet what will happen. Yes! Finally! What happens next is also pretty interesting. To completely clear the dungeon we had to write down the true name of Stelk’s wizard, who happened to be the Lich king, in a random magical notebook. This would have been an issue for us, however, we knew the name of the wizard, Anotrebbikar, from the story of Shej’s Tragedy. At this point, the only obstacle left for us to overcome was to actually spell his name correctly in the notebook. You guys should be very proud of me, not only did we do that, but I also went through the effort of writing down his name not once, but twice in this journal. If I don’t get some serious applause for pulling off that feat I’m going to be very sad. Like honestly, that might have been the hardest part of the entire journey. After clearing the dungeon, Feon appeared again and laid out for us his plan for the future. It turns out that the reason Samantha was able to surprise Feon back in Vayr was because her magic was that of the Sileroan royal family, making her a descendant of Stelk and the “rightful” ruler of the dunes. It turns out that Feon is planning on trying to reinstate the ancient pantheon and reestablish the Kingdom of Silero with Samantha as the ruler of said kingdom and the rest of us as rulers of the places in the dunes we all have influence over (Myself in Vayr, Caspian in Prylt, Drizal in Cyren, and Sylk in Ikayla. Did I ever mention that Sylk actually came from a noble family living in Ikayla? I honestly had no idea until a few days ago.) If I’m being honest, I both like and hate this plan at the same time. I agree with Feon, our party should now attempt to unite the dunes into one nation. In fact, I had crafted a plan very similar to Feon’s, so i guess great minds think alike. However, I don’t agree with trying to tie it back to Silero. You already know my opinion on that kingdom. However, I will go along with his plan. Even if we reinstate the pantheon, the new “Kingdom of Silero” will only be that in name. We don’t need to fall down the same pattern of mediocrity and mundanity that the actual kingdom fell into. Additionally, the majority of the dunes see the ancient Kingdom of Silero as “good” so branding our new kingdom as the Kingdom of Silero will definitely help with advertising. Under our leadership, we should be able to create a kingdom much greater than the ancient Kingdom of Silero and the world we live in today. However, if Feon tries to reinstate Silero only for his own benefit, and in the process turns the world into a stagnant and boring place once again, then I will completely oppose his plan. I have enough contacts in Vayr to hold control over that city regardless of any possible new kingdoms sprouting up, and with my popularity amongst the Tiefling and the inevitable support I could get from Lector’s group in Ikayla, I gcould easily accomplish much more than just holding control over one city. However, I doubt that it will come to that. Hopefully Feon knows better by now. Speaking of Doubt, Jayst is still at large somewhere in the world. I wonder if she will throw a wrench into Feon’s master plan. I guess only time will tell.
Sincerely, The Most Legendary Bard in the World