The Prophets of Minwa

The next installment of Lirael Glimmereye's journal as he progresses as a Yuan-ti 2nd Level Cleric of the Twilight Domain and 2nd Level Rogue who's starting a D&D 5e High Fantasy home brew adventure campaign created by our DM, which is based more on role playing your character than yet another hack and slash fantasy adventure. Today's session sets the stage for the adventure, how the characters come together, and are coerced into an adventure to save their world.

Lirael Glimmereye - Backstory

Ah, noble companions, gather 'round as I unfurl the tapestry of our odyssey from Silvaa to beyond the enigmatic city of Inverness, guided by the whims of fate and my enigmatic escort into the Yewwoods.

The journey, though uneventful, spanned too many days, leaving me time to dwell on the perplexing swiftness with which my Master had sanctioned my venture. The peculiar parting words of Sister Elara lingered from when she stopped me as I was departing the Silvaa, adding layers to the myriad thoughts brewing in my mind. In addition to all the other troubling thoughts that had been brewing inside my head.

I had a lot to think about needless to say.

My guide who on the journey said little other than I was destined to accompany him into that forest where I would learn of my destiny. All efforts a meaningful conversation were rebuffed and was left to my thoughts. While I enjoyed the trip north from Silvaa, and once beyond Inverness the transient beauty of the Yewwoods, embracing the changing seasons from summer to fall. The last evening of travelling, during the blackened moon that cast an eerie glow upon the sprawling city of Inverness far to our backs, did make me that much more alert to the dangers that might surround me.

This journey that night ended at a grand edifice, before which I spied two others who appeared to be adventurers being escorted by similarly garbed guides waiting for us. As I joined the group, silently we moved towards a temple-like structure. As I reluctantly went through the large double doors, I beheld a spectacle of purple candles emanating a mesmerizing blue glow going down a long corridor.

Our hosts guided us down to a large room with the large image of a woman, who we were told was Minwa. A woman - of ethereal beauty, yet subtly otherworldly. Deep violet hair with emerald strands, with eyes akin to a nebula of stars, while her fingernails were oddly blackened underneath the nails, and bluish veins beneath her skin. One of the guides told us that Minwa was able to traverse between worlds and talk to the gods directly.

There were two diverging hallways beckoning us further into the temple at the end of this room. At that point two of the guides left us and my guide told me that he would answer our questions to the best of his ability. I asked his name and with some reluctance revealed it to be - Gilderay. 

Gilderay pulled back his hooded revealed himself as a Vedalken. With his face now revealed, he was tall and slender, standing almost a head taller than most of us but weighing about the same. His hairless head was a strange shade of blue and his eyes brilliant violet. But Gilderay had no external ears, his noses was broad and flat, and on his neck, I thought I saw gills. I could no longer say that I was a strange looking one, Gilderay's non-human appearance was several degrees beyond even my own.

He told us that he was a member of the Prophets of Minwa - the woman in the image before us. One who is a mysterious being akin to one of the Tuatha Da Nanan that we were more familiar with. 

It was she that had visions our images and locations of potential heroes to challenge the Shadowed One and sent her Prophets out to find the three of us and to bring us back to hear her prophesy and need for our assistance in thwarting the Shadowed One's plans. To change our reality into his reality, where he would manipulate our perceptions, turning dreams into nightmares and merging those nightmares into reality that will sow chaos, death, and destruction. 

Gilderay went on to unravel the final part of the malevolent plot by the Shadowed One, seeking to reunite the two planes of Crannog, which would unleash unparalleled devastation - something that many prophets were calling a total extinction event of all living creatures on our world.

A dire task awaited us, and thus, our fellowship began. A path fraught with peril and more awaited us. I thought for a moment, me a hero, that really isn't who I am. I'm just an orphan who has had some adventures, but certainly I'm no hero in waiting.

Even so, we introduced ourselves to one another and I got my first glimpses of Varrin who appeared to be a bard of some sort, but I couldn't quite place what race he was. The other was Landriss a Paladin, who I believed was an Eladrin Elf from my experiences in the Feywild, and he definitely looked the part. 

All of us were wondering why we were here in such strange circumstances and why in Landriss and my case why our master or superiors had been so quickly persuaded for us to go with our guides. Varrin just told us his guide had shown up and suddenly he was willing to go with him without a lot of questions. Strange magic indeed or so I thought.

He led us to the divergent hallways and we took the one not taken by the departed guides, which quickly led to a door. Which Gilderay touched and it easily opened.

We looked down a long corridor with mirrors on each side. As we ventured down a mirrored hallway, I had all too accurate glimpses of my past, a dark haired human giving birth to a child and her crying as she passed the child to Sister Elara in the orphanage's main corridor, my running away, laughing and sharing food with the other urchins, taking my vows as a cleric, me talking before the Fey Lord, and finally asking my Master to train me. 

I had tears streaming down my face. Some hero I was, giving in to strange emotions from a few visions in a mirror. Though the first vision was the one that seemed to effect me the most, I had glimpsed my mother's face and it seemed that giving me up had cause her grief and the image of that time I had in my mind was not how it happened. I wondered again, if she ever thought about the child that she had given up. Then I got a hold of myself and stopped that fantastical thinking, that would only distract me from the moment at hand.

Just before we reached the door at the end of the corridor, I saw a haunting image which caused me to stop and to look directly at the reflection of myself with a red right eye, adorned in blackened thorn armor with a rose crest and a starry cloak, marked by a long scar on my left cheek, foretelling a destiny intertwined with mysteries. It is not a vision that I will soon forget.

Lirael looking at his future self in the Hall of Mirrors in Minwa's Temple  
Created using Bing AI

All three of us experienced similar visions, and as we discussed what we had seen, it seemed that the pasts that the visions of our past were accurate for us all and the visions of our future selves were powerful indeed. Though I said nothing of the visions of my mother.

When we entered through the door at the end of the hall of mirrors and I noticed that it had much the same design as the armor that I was shown wearing in the vision of my future self with the thorns and rose emblem. I asked Gilderay about it. He simply stated that it was one possible future of many. Though it might be the one most likely to be with some small variations dependent upon the choices I might make going forward.

This vision and Gilderay's explanation concerned me, for I had stopped wearing heavy armor that the vision depicted me in when I apprenticed to my Master and I thought back to Sister Elara's words as I had left Silvaa "You'll know when to return to the armor".  

Which made me wonder even more about the choices I had made upon returning from the Feywild. Had this been how, the Fey Lord had taken her revenge, by twisting my thoughts and wants to something different than the direction I was supposed to have taken? It was a possibility, she was definitely powerful enough to have done so.

We went through the door, though I went last, lost in thought about what the visions had revealed.

Beyond the door lay a large garden, nay almost a forest, being tended by nymphs and other strange and wonderful beings. Through Gilderay we were introduced to a woman matching the depiction of Minwa in the outer room. As we discussed what visions she had seen and what the gods expected from us, I deemed this person to actually be Minwa. 

A weighty conversation it was and towards the end she bade us to draw a card from a deck that she suddenly held in her hand.

• I drew the card with Treants in a swamp emerged from the card—a vision of the what Minwa said was the Salamander Bog, where it seemed the Treants were being tortured and dying - it was a place of both renewal and decay.
• Varrin, in turn, witnessed a crystal dragon looking at a group akin to ours, with many Kobolds, and one crowned, in the Mountains of Nackknock according to Minwa. 
• Landriss' card showed him faced off against a werewolf in the Midas Forest again according to Minwa. He was caught off guard, but Varrin and I rallied to the rescue, though his fate was uncertain as the werewolf was attacking.

We were told to keep the cards, they had their part to play in our futures.

A final card picked by Minwa, revealed a cryptic figure, a man with a broken changeling mask, spindly legs resembling a spider's, shrouded in darkness. It was an ally of the Shadowed One. The broken mask made me think that perhaps this person would also be a Changeling, after learning the Varrin was one, which in turn would make our choices much more difficult. 

Minwa claimed that the face that Varrin currently possessed was also the face of the person who we needed to stop - The Shadowed One. I looked long and hard into Varrin's face to memorize the face that he currently wore. I don't believe that he appreciated my intense staring, but withheld the comment I'm sure that he ready to quip at me. One thing I've already noticed about my new ally is that he is very quick with a comment or to become outrageous at inopportune times. Perhaps it is simply his personality, performance mentality, and experiences as a Bard that motivates him so.

The cards Minwa had shown us seemed to unveil our destinies or at least possible destinations with cryptic warnings of the dangers that lay ahead. Pieces of the journey we might need to undertake to find and then foil this being's malevolent intention to destroy our world.

With newfound knowledge and purpose, we were given a chest with 1,500 gp with, a boon from Minwa to aid us in our preparations for our journey. Yet, a warning echoed—the Shadowed One and the man with the broken mask had allies, and they would strive to thwart our path. Some of that path the cards had shown us, but it was up to us to determine the order in which we would chase our destiny.

Before leaving her "gardens" Minwa gave us each a stamp to identify us as being her messengers and champions.

She then suggested that our next course of action probably should be to rest in the temple for the night, then journey to Inverness. Where we should present the stamps, and engage in discourse with the Dean of the Inverness College of Magic. She said that a carriage would be provided for us to travel to Inverness in the morning. I thought to myself, it would have been nice for them to have provided a carriage for the trip here, instead of that long walk, but said nothing.

Dismissed, Gilderay guided us back through the hall of mirrors, but no visions were given to us on the walk out. We were provided a small meal, during which we got to know one another better and discussed different possibilities of staying beyond only the college. In the end decided that staying at the college would present many more opportunities for us to find items and knowledge we would need to be successful and possibly find other allies to join our little band. 

We also decided to all sleep in the same room since it was the night of the black moon on Crannog and all sorts of malevolent creatures walked on this night, though the temple seemed safe enough. I know that I was tired and that it would be another early morning.

The mysterious city of Inverness awaits, its college of magic, a bastion of intrigue and an enigma to be explored in the pages of this adventurer's log. 

You humble servant,

Lirael