I can’t see the original message @SabineBean posted anymore - it was originally on this thread, right? So maybe something will happen after all.
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Oh! So it has disappeared! Thanks for letting me know, that means it’s likely gone through! I think someone hypothesized before that the posts would only disappear when Eaves came online, so that might be what happened there.
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Whoa! It does look like it works both ways!
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Well, we did have an open message from Eaves’ from almost two weeks ago. The one he initially sent with their thoughts on the spell mashup. It’s gone now, so it looks like @SabineBean’s post “closed that circuit.”
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Glad to see you posting and a little more… um… coherent, Sabes. I was worried about you there after the Cataclysm.
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Much appreciated. Not going to lie though, @Catherine has been proofing my posts because I’m having weird leftover issues like mixing up tenses, etc.
But thanks for the concern. 
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Well, that was not quite what I expected when I got into work. Plus side, it looks like the spell is starting to do something.
I’ve been trying to keep my journal in the same building as me since we cast the spell (and keeping the medal wrapped around no less), you know, just in case things happened.
…really should’ve done my put-book-in-plastic-bag-to-protect-from-rain.
Not that it got rained on, oh no. That would be too mundane.
Nope, my bag was wet from the inside out. The journal itself was dripping.
I’m not sure what I was expecting when I opened the journal, or if I’d even tried to guess what it might contain, but…
I had to transcribe it, naturally, and I had to try drawing the design that was just dark enough for me to make out behind it, almost like a watermark (and yes, soggy book with a visible watermark is not lost on me even as I type this).
No one knows that after I left the Mountaineers to lead themselves, I myself looked for guidance from the Oracular Eye.
When I found it, I chose Despair and Illumination.
The Eye told me that if the Mountaineers were successful, the new age would only dawn with an unseen event that would catalyze the story, an event that would be decades in the making. An event that would stretch across time, tome, and affiliation, ringing in a hard-fought and hard-won age. The Book of Briars.
But it also told me that in that new age, there would be three opposing forces, forces representing the Eye’s three sights — Hope, Illumination, and Despair.
One new and wholly formed from belief in something better. One ancient and all-seeing. The source of this world’s shadows. And a third only beginning to coalesce, made from adumbral factions, but striving for light and learning.
So the Silver is not beaten, only bruised it would seem, and we’ll be fighting them into the new age. So be it.
Monarch’s Manor, as we’ve come to call it, was the home of Monarch’s Mountain. An apartment building which had become their headquarters, in the heart of Philadelphia’s Old City. Living together, working together, but lost in ritual and rites. They were unsure what they were doing, bested at every turn by the Silver, and the stone that hid them had finally been rolled back. They barely fought us on The Day of Change. No one was hurt beyond a few bruises, temporary transfigurations, and a fair amount of spell sickness. Knatz described their demeanor as “exhausted from holding on to old ways too long.” Some ran off with whatever they could carry, but we have most everything they’d collected over the years (except the actual Collector), which was both immense and a lot less than we had hoped for. We have a small group led by Endri and Bash who are sorting through it all, who spend every waking moment trying to unravel enchantments, decipher secret codes, and attempting to make sense of what we fought to free. A handful of the Mountain has even come back, offering what help they can, tired of running and tired of being slaves to what was.
We are safe here, hidden, but have no idea what will come now, and what hidden catalyst will finally end this fetid age.
And I’ll add my rendering once I post this. Pretend it’s much more even than I managed to draw it.
So, uh, reading that beginning…
It sounds like Ascender.
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I hope the other journals start talking because I am in SUSPENSE now 
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Okay… I’m very conused now. Is this coming from the veil spell? Did Ascender cast this?! Or was someone casting it to stop us communicating with the in particular and it got out of hand? I hope the other journals come up with something soon… Definately keeping mine beside me next few days.
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Okay, I’ll just put down a couple of notes I have about this entry.
-So we sort of guessed that Peering Arts used on spell splinters might yield some…unusual results. Looks like Ash got some Tide shards out of the Grounding Hex. Wonder if that will be the case for everyone? (Whoever did the Balimoran piece, I’m real interested to see what happens there.)
-Ascender may or may not have been involved with casting the spell. This is clearly a powerful and complex bit of magiq, and we don’t know precisely how he might have been involved. He talks about a catalyst being needed to usher in the Book - could that have been or caused the walls? Did the crew at Monarch’s Manor set something off that contributed to the spell by accident?
-The bit about the opposing forces in the new age is interesting. I like to think we’re the in the “Hope” part of that equation, maybe coalescing with other groups [like the Sanctuary?], and the Silver are the “Despair” part, but who is the “Illumination?” He talks about “adumbral” factions, like the Latin ad umbra, “toward shade/shadow”. So groups that were pointed towards darkness but searching out light? Is this the remains of the Low? Of old Monarch’s Mountain? Other groups the Silver might have been propping up? What does this mean?
-What’s up with the “watermark” design that came with this journal entry? Does it do anything, or mean anything? Why is it there? Does that bit in the center look like a moon to anyone else?
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It looks like a stripped-down chronocompass to me.
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Oo, now you mention it, it does.
@Viviane I didn’t realise the connection between water and Tides until you mentioned it, and now I am very curious what happens to everyone. I was Wilds…
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Which one are we?
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Thought: Hope = Us, the Mounties. We certainly believe in better things to come.
Illunimation = the Low? “Ancient and all seeing” seems like a way to describe them, and they definately lurk.
That could mean that Dispair is the Sancturary. They’re beginning to come together, “striving for light and learning”.
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I thought Despair = Silver = Ancient and All-Seeing?
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I mean, that could make sense. I took them to be in order mentioned just before. Which way around would you put the others? (is very curious)
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I think the Sanctuary may be connected to the Illumination and to the monarchs manor. We are Probably the hope, because we are opposing despair, but maybe it’s the other way around. The manor and sanctuary are hope, and we are illumination.
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I’m leaning away from us being Illumination, because despite our sometimes miraculous ability to get things done, we have NO IDEA what we’re doing most of the time.We are definitely not “ancient and all-seeing,” but I was presuming that to be the “Despair” part of the equation, so instead of the Oracular eye order, the faction explanation goes Light > Dark > Something In-Between (i.e. the act of passing from dark to light, hence illumination).
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I do believe that the Silver is Despair. Wherever they are there’s usually something ominous happening.
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The watermark does look a bit like the chronocompass, but if that’s what it is it almost seems like the configuration has been changed. A new compass for a new age? Maybe the other journals will get more detail.
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