📜 Entry: Storm's Eve

Location: Onadbyr, Tower of Mordenkainen (base)
Recorded: Night before palace infiltration

Tomorrow we attempt to enter the palace. The word storm has been used, but I find it ill-fitting. Storms are forces of nature. We are six tired, overextended individuals with improvised gear and conflicting talents—hardly a tempest. And yet, the metaphor lingers. Perhaps because what we face is not simply danger, but upheaval. To enter that place is to declare the current order false. And we are not yet certain what we mean to install in its place.

I do not write these words as a commander or prophet. I write them as a scholar. And the more I learn, the more uncertain I become. That may sound like cowardice to some—but to me, it is the essence of discipline. The difference between belief and truth is humility.

Our time above ground has been a latticework of conversations—Father Lester, the Golden Masks, Maisie, the guards, our own ragged council of six. We have spoken at length, but rarely with certainty. And I have found myself retreating into familiar patterns: analysis, dialectic, deference. These are the tools I have always used to survive—first as a student, then as a teacher. But they falter in a world where truth is not prized, only outcomes.

I wish I could say I find this demoralizing. Instead, I find it intellectually offensive. How is one to serve truth in a society that regards it as optional? How does one engage in good faith with factions who assume misdirection is the default? I have spent much of my life defending the idea that knowledge is power—but here, power is the ability to appear unknowable.

I find myself reflecting often on Monder. On how easily even his closest allies were deceived. On how effectively the Golden Masks manipulated face and form. On how we—idealists, fugitives, truth-seekers—must now consider employing similar tactics to unseat a false queen. There is something galling in that symmetry. And yet… perhaps there is wisdom in it as well.

I spoke with Father Lester, or rather, cast my voice into the Feywild and received the echo of his convictions. He believes justice, like light, arrives when the time is right. I fear time has grown impatient. The city corrodes. The people whisper of Aphena the Cruel. The rain does not cleanse—it clings. The longer we wait, the more permanent this reality becomes. Truth has never been passive. It must be spoken, shown, defended. Sometimes, regrettably, disguised.

My mind returns again and again to this contradiction: honesty is not always helpful. In a library, candor is a virtue. In the alleys of Onadbyr, it is an invitation to be stabbed. This distinction troubles me. But I cannot deny it. We are past the point of moral clarity. I begin to understand that truth, too, must survive in shadow before it can return to the sun.

I am not a leader. But I am being looked to. Not explicitly—not with votes or vows—but in the quiet way decisions drift toward me when all others are too bruised or baffled to claim them. Slick sees it too, though he plays it cooler. I admire him for it. I envy him for it. I trust him more than I trust myself in these moments.

I still hesitate to give commands. But I have begun to offer direction. That is something. Perhaps all this is simply a trial in which I must learn what many leaders before me have faced: that clarity is not always consensus, and that the burden of knowledge is often decision.

Maisie’s warning lingers: those caught in the palace are to be killed on sight. There will be no second chances. No arguments. No mercy. We know this. And we go anyway.

I cannot decide if that is bravery or delusion. I only know that it is necessary. If this is my final entry, let it be known: I sought truth. I served knowledge. I tried, at every turn, to choose the light—no matter how faint it became.

May Monder’s plan hold. May truth find its way in. And may the scholars who come after me forgive what I do not yet know.

May clarity walk with me.

— A.J.