The mysterious black chronicle

[Minalan]

The Mysterious Black Chronicle

Found on my person, after my recent off-world journey. Now warded and locked away in the Council of Mages vault

I advise that you drop this book at once. Whatever you are looking for, know that you will not find it here. If you seek hope, know that I bring only despair. If you seek a weapon, know that the price is far too steep. If you seek knowledge or understanding, know that I can only offer more confusion.

Still, I have no power, no special charm to make you drop this book. If you insist on perusing it's pages, you will see what you are not meant to see, and discover what should never have been discovered. Even if you fail to comprehend it, you will still know the truth.

Believe me when I say that knowing is far more than enough to ruin your life. Whether or not you peer beyond the realms for the meager powers promised here is alone for you to decide.

[Minalan]

On Power and Warnings

It's good that we have this honest conversation with ourselves Minalan, though I will not go into details as to why or how. These things you will understand later. Or not, depending on what choices you make and have made. For the moment, consider me your subconscious self, and know only that it has been a very long time since we have spoken.

Consider for a moment, your average citizen of Sosaria. Most live what they consider to be "good" lives, toiling about their daily business or raising families. Inevitably they pass on, few, if any are remembered past a generation, and thus ultimately their lives were of little or no particular consequence. Why is that you ask? The answer is simple. Few of them have any power.

Power is the ability to affect change, either to an environment, or to a person's destiny. Most people die from old age, they die from plagues, they die from wars, they die from natural disasters, some are even preyed upon by vampires who then choose to "help" by raising their orphaned children. Those people spend their entire lives scratching out a bleak miserable existence, living at the whims of and enriching wealthy lords, nobles, and kings that ultimately don't give a damn about them. They are slaves to events and circumstances completely out of their control. You see, Mal understood power in a way that you truly never did. She tried to explain it to you repeatedly, but you were too stupid and stubborn to listen, and I will never forgive you for letting her go.

That is neither here nor there though, since I am both *you* and I am not. What I am about to tell you is important. The information in this book covers the Far Realms. You've both been there before *and* will be there again someday, given the non-linear nature of time there. I don't expect you to understand, but many versions of you have come here, of which I am but one. I simply entreat *this* particular *us* not to return. On your last trip, we *all* made a pact, the specifics of which I will not discuss here. As Rotep will no doubt tell you, there is no taking back the price paid for it. Let's just say that *some* of ourselves are much smarter and stronger in magic than you ever hoped to be. Thus in exchange, you will find yourself considerably stronger, and that you can do many things that you required Mal working alongside with you to accomplish before. The point is that now you have power you did not before, and you will need it soon. You may have memories that are not entirely yours, but one of ours.

Consider carefully what you read within, there is enough to answer many questions we will have. I know that we would want to know this much at least, but look no further than this.

[Minalan]

The Arrival

You first came here, as so many others like you have, seeking power, knowledge, and understanding of what lies *beyond* the shards, the facets, and the ethereal void.

There are so many words for such arrogance. Hubris. Conceit. Pride. Egotism. Stupidity.

What you found instead, was something else entirely. Unfathomable. Chaos.

As soon as you arrived, the chaotic energies assaulted your physical form. Eyes grew from your palms, staring sightless within your clenched fists. Your entire body seized as every muscle tensed in an instant of agonizing pain. Wave after wave of magical power invaded your flesh, randomly transmuting your body parts into horribly disfigured facsimiles. Every thought ran through your mind at once, every scrap of memory corrupted and exploded into millions of simultaneous unspeakable nightmares. Your mouth opened in a cruel rictus, a parody of a scream that would both never come, and never ever end.

Madness, is the only blessed refuge from this assault. It was denied you.

You could see, but not comprehend where or what you were, but if you only could. The atmosphere is thick and oily, and massive swirling vortexes can be see on every horizon. The firmament both above and below are like a stack of translucent parchment. The translucent layers seem to fade away on either side and are pierced with free-floating rivers of milk-white liquid that sometimes flow along a layer's edge for a few feet before plunging into the next. Strange blue globes rain down from unseen heights, bursting when they strike an object and releasing ticks the size of horses that immediately scuttle off in search of blood. Gelatinous worms wriggle from layer to layer through tentacled vegetation encrusted with orange moss, all of which is suspended above an amoebic sea. Vast multi-layered shapes drift through the infinite planes, the smallest being the size of a city. Most of the denizens are hunting. For you in particular.

You made a fatal mistake, this place is not for you, or anyone. You never knew it, and you still do not, and as clever as you believe yourself to be, there are those of us who are so much more so. You would have remained here, trapped both never and forever.

Except that ONE of us was actually smart enough to figure it all out.

I was born, much like you were, but on another shard. Instead of a pair of kindly, doting, and powerful mage parents from the city of Wind and the Lost Valley - I was the last and eleventh scion of a proud, upstanding, but not particularly wealthy noble family. I was born too-small, sickly, and gimped, walking with a permanent limp and an almost comical rolling gait. To say that my many siblings just 'never understood me' is a vast kindness to their vituperative, idiocy, and ignorance. My parents only fretted the limited dowry they would receive for wedding their crippled, broken son to the wretched daughter of some wealthy merchant looking to increase their family standing. The only advantage my position ever afforded me was an education, and that is where my life began.

You see. Where you merely loved magic, I breathed it, lived it, and dreamed of it. Where you skimmed some things that might have interested you less, I determinedly plowed to the very depths of punctilious understanding. Exigency demanded that I become a better sorcerer, where you merely did so because you wished. You studied magic to fight your dysphoria and ennui with a wretched, desolate, and meaningless world, I studied to avoid the pain and cruelty inflicted by the world's dim-witted inhabitants. Where you were strong, well-liked, and fair, I had no other avenue of influence except for the magical power I could amass for myself. In the end, I became what you always wished to be, while you had everything that I ever actually wanted. The universe, as it is, has a perverse sense of humor.

Thus, I knew the secrets of the Far Realms before I ever arrived...

[Minalan]

Secrets of the Far Realm

The secret, my dear Minalan, in the likely event that you still haven't figured it out, is thought. More precisely, I refer to sheer willpower, and the intellect to wield it.

Put simply, time here is nonlinear. There is no reliable progression of one moment to the next, and thus there is no cause or effect. Movement does not depend on acceleration or mass. There is no train of thought, or ordered streams of consciousness, only a maddening splintered jumble of all possible thoughts and their conclusions at once. There are no actions, and there are no consequences unless they are willed. Your body was corrupted and torn asunder, because the very *idea* of yourself began to unravel in your mind. You were trapped in one place, because you did not imagine going anywhere else. The mass of thoughts stunned you, because you did not understand, and you could not process them all.

I however, understood perfectly. Every event in this realm both does and does not happen simultaneously. All states are true; you have just arrived and you've already left, died and survived, and simultaneously existed here and there at the same time. Every possibility is merely a single point on a multidimensional axis, within overlapping fields of probability. All it takes is a mere thought to select one or more of those infinite possibilities. Motion is not a consequence of force and momentum, but rather an illusion; an integration of infinitely many probable locations willed by a conscious entity.

Of course, that also meant that I was not alone. Seven of us arrived here from all different shards, simultaneously here and not here, both alive and dead. The probabilities overlapped for six to be absorbed by me. The seventh was only present in dead or unreachable probability in all of those infinite states. Conscious in six different places and times at once, and as powerful as a god, I manipulated the probability as best I could. You were both absorbed and not alive, so in the end I was forced to choose the probability in which *most of you* did not yet arrive to save you and all of the others. Including myself.

By now you're trembling, about to shut this book or drop it. I advise you not to, since you've only just now figured out who I am. What I became. Know that you and I are a part of one another, but separated. It sounds paradoxical, but it is not, since you will join the rest of us soon enough. Know that everything you have ever done has led you here, and this has been part of my plan. The fake journal entries? Mine. The seers and fortune tellers? My design. Even my own death and your missing daughter were part of a larger scheme, pushing you to this exact moment.

Not all of your memories are yours, and you've lost a part of yourself. What will happen next is inevitable.
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