📜 Entry: “Betwixt Lies and Light”

Location: Onadbyr, Upper Rooms of the Lucky Leap Tavern
Recorded: Eve of our Emporium infiltration

I am marked. But what is a mark without meaning? A birthmark, a burn, a scar? Or a calling? If I am to serve the truth, I must first decide what truth demands.

Lord Monder has revealed what he swore to bury—the King’s journey into the Feywild was no rescue. It was a masquerade. The Queen, mother to our current tyrant, was not some frightened captive returned by force. She was handed back after a feast. The Satyr lord who held her—Dasmad—dueled our King, praised his valor, and "blessed" the crown. I’m no stranger to metaphor, but there’s little poetry in curses masquerading as ceremony.

The child she bore afterward—our Queen—was not the King's daughter in spirit or soul. And I suspect, not in blood either.

And yet… Monder concealed this. He speaks of oaths and loyalty, and I do not doubt his heart aches with the cost. But now I find myself wondering: if truth is my compass, must I expose every lie, even those told in good faith? Is it righteous to denounce a deception if it damns the innocent in the process? What is justice, if it demands cruelty? And if I am to arbitrate between silence and exposure—who appointed me?

I have begun to believe that it was the Wise One.

I have begun to believe… that I am meant for this.

Not to lead. Not to judge. But to illuminate. A lantern held in an age of shadows. A quill drawn not to record events, but to define them.

We ventured into the tomb of Master Arlen to recover a master key—an artifact that can unlock anything. The path was warded with puzzles, machines, phantasms, and secrets buried in clay. The tomb contained knowledge so vast it defies curation. Rooms filled with endless tablets dictated by a ghost to a construct—a machine built not for war, but for transcription. It was beautiful. And it was broken.

Why hide such wisdom? Why guard it behind fire, steel, and venomous machinery? Was Arlen trying to preserve his genius, or protect the world from it? Or perhaps he simply feared being misunderstood by the unworthy. In that… I almost understand him.

The tomb’s final guardian wounded me—tore at my chest with mechanical fury—but I lived. We retrieved the key. We fled. And though I bled, I did not break. I have begun to suspect that perhaps I cannot. Not yet. Not until this task is done.

Tomorrow, we infiltrate the Emporium. The plan is madness. A vault. A cursed relic. A chest that drinks the soul from magic. And somehow, we mean to swap the jade horror within for the Queen’s corrupted crown.

It sounds absurd. But I no longer scoff at the absurd. Not after what I’ve seen. Not after what I’ve felt.

Our fellowship tightens. Slick watches my back without asking. Purr grins in the face of impossible odds. Clyde breaks the world open when it resists. Telly burns like a living theorem. Ted is the fury behind us, and Craig… well, Craig purrs where words fail. We are mismatched, scarred, unpredictable—and perhaps that is what gives me hope. For all our faults, we see what others refuse to: that truth has teeth.

I will walk into the Emporium tomorrow not as a thief, but as a surgeon. I do not seek to rob, but to excise. If that means entering the shadow, so be it. The light I carry will not come from the sun or spell—but from knowing why I move, and what I serve.

May the lock yield. May the vault open. May the lie meet the lantern.

May clarity walk with me.

— A.J.