Alex
Dungeon Master 
Posts: 107
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Post by Alex on Nov 3, 2023 20:06:00 GMT
The Starless Sea Beneath our feet, hidden from the sight of even the gods, lies a sanctuary. A Harbor on the Starless Sea. Within its walls lie the stories. Stories written in books, stories etched in marble, stories laid in tile to be worn away by passing feet. Sprawling, yet intimate. It calls to the artists, the authors, the dreamers, the readers. Those who yearn to sing, and those who listen in silence. The doors are always there. Will you open them? Adapted from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern     | Sweet Sorrows
"Once, very long ago, Time fell in love with Fate." |  | Fortunes & Fables
"Once there was a man who collected keys." |  | The Ballad of Simon & Eleanor
"In the depths there is a man lost in time." |
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Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
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Post by Alex on Nov 3, 2023 20:06:20 GMT
Far beneath our feet, hidden from view by even the gods on the shores of the Starless Sea, there lies a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. It is a sanctuary. A home, for story tellers and story lovers and story keepers alike. Some stay for hours, or days; some stay longer, until the world outside is the one hidden away. And few, still, choose to devote themselves to this temple of story and song. There are three paths. This is one of them. This is the path of the acolytes. Excerpted from Sweet Sorrows
Adapted from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern |
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Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
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Post by Alex on Nov 3, 2023 20:06:36 GMT
Paper is fragile, even when bound with string in cloth or leather. The majority of the stories within the Harbor on the Starless Sea are captured this way, but there are stories that are more fragile still. For every tale chiseled into marble, there is another inscribed on fallen leaves or woven into a spider's web. There have always been those who would watch them all burn. There always have been. There always will be. There are three paths. This is one of them. This is the path of the guardians. Excerpted from Sweet Sorrows
Adapted from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern |
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Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
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Post by Alex on Nov 3, 2023 20:06:47 GMT
As long as there have been bees, there have been keepers. At the beginning, there was just one keeper. As the stories grew and multiplied, there was a need for more. The keepers were here first. Before the acolytes, before the guardians. And before the keepers, there were the bees and their stories. In fact, though oft forgotten, there were keepers before there were keys. Acolytes light their candles. Guardians move unseen and alert. And keepers keep - their bees, and their stories. There are three paths. This is one of them. This is the path of the keepers. Excerpted from Sweet Sorrows
Adapted from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern |
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Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
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Post by Alex on Nov 3, 2023 20:07:06 GMT
Stories never truly die, not in the way that mortals do. Some may be mislaid, yes: a scroll tucked into a satchel left by the side of the road, or a book fallen behind the shelf. But time is patient, and eventually the satchel is picked up, the shelf moved, and the stories live once more. Others, though, have the misfortune of being forgotten. Books lost to a tongue of flame. Scrolls written over in service to a greater good. Orators cut down too soon, their tales remembered only in fragments by the villages they walked through. They have lost much. Memories, power, influence, worth, mind, tongue, body, name. All lost to the ether - stories once told, carried high, spoken proudly, all forgotten. But what was spoken cannot be unsaid. What was written may not be unwritten. It lives, clawing and grasping under the surface. Begging to be remembered, as all stories do. Excerpted from Sweet Sorrows |
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Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
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Post by Alex on Nov 3, 2023 20:07:20 GMT
If to be shared in tales and stories across the continent is to become immortal, then none is more everlasting than the moon of Toril. There is not a bard alive who has not performed a sonnet about her ethereal glow; no painter who has not immortalized her on canvas; no romantic who has not whispered poetry in the light of her presense. But stories are just that - windows into another life, another perspective. There is no substitute for the real thing. She knows that better than anyone. She stares up at it, and it stares back, wrapping her in the calming embrace of moonlight. It's as close as she can come to feeling her touch, to truly knowing her. For the moon of the stories, the moon that reaches out with arms outstretched, she doesn't exist, right? She's only real in the stories. Excerpted from Sweet Sorrows |
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Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
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Post by Alex on Nov 3, 2023 20:07:48 GMT
Stories come in many forms. Some, as you might expect, arrive scrawled upon leaves of parchment. Others are spoken softly to trusted confidants, each word met with a careful glance over one's shoulder. And more still are song: notes and music and words to pluck at one's heartstrings and stir feelings of longing, of regret, of sorrow or joy or victory. But not all songs are sung, and no song is quieter than the song of the oppresed. The notes and music fit a minor key. The words, well - no word is enough, and any word is far too great a risk. That song has long ended for her, thankfully. There have been others, since: songs of great wealth and greater debt, songs of voyage and discovery. And maybe, someday, a song of freedom, sung at the top of her lungs. Excerpted from Sweet Sorrows |
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Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
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Post by Alex on Nov 3, 2023 20:08:04 GMT
Those that revere stories tend to forget that they would be nothing without their storytellers. Authors that commit ideas to page. Artists that paint tales onto canvas. Musicians that weave joy and sorrow with strings and notes. Her stories aren't written, or painted, or sung. They're knitted with needle and thread into scarves and sweaters. They're cooked and baked into scones and pies. They're told around a fireplace to the great delight of her children and grandchildren. And with each telling, they seed and grow in their hearts, too. They become stories to be told long after they have returned home. They become stories to be cherished, to be grown and gardened. What will they say of this story, I wonder? Excerpted from Sweet Sorrows |
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Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
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Post by Alex on Nov 3, 2023 20:08:17 GMT
Each and every being that can speak (and yes, even some that cannot) carry their own story. Every chapter, each line - victories and defeats and loves and losses all - carried proudly on their sleeve or secreted deep within their selves. It is an honoured few, then, that carry not only their own but the stories of others, too. To hoist your own torch is one matter; to hoist the torch of another, to let their light shine as bright as your own, is another thing entirely. After all, story cannot become myth by one hand alone. And it is among those few that we find them. They are amongst a rare fewer still; their own torch set aside, their own flame flickering in the dark. And it is not just one other's story they tell, though that would be burden enough. No, they shine three lights, tell three stories, of friends long past. For if their stories stay alive, if their light never dims - maybe they will too. Excerpted from Sweet Sorrows |
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Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
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Post by Alex on Nov 3, 2023 20:08:29 GMT
Once, very long ago, Time fell in love with Fate. This, as you might imagine, proved problematic. Their romance could disrupt the natural order of things, tie the strings of fortune into knots. The owls watched from above nervously, worrying what might occur. What might happen to the days and nights were Time to suffer a broken heart? What catastrophes if the same awaits Fate itself? The owls conspired and separated the two. This worked, for a while. Time passed as it always had, if maybe imperceptibly slower. Fate wove together the paths that were destined to meet, though maybe a string was missed here or there. But eventually, Time and Fate found each other again. The owls assembled the parliament, and began to discuss. They argued, and debated, and days passed, and the world spun on, and eventually a decision was made. If the problem was in the combination, so the owls decided, then one of the elements should be removed. So it was decided, and beak and claw fell upon Fate. Their screams echoed through the deepest corners and the highest heavens, but none dared intervene. None, save for a mouse, who snuck into the fray to take Fate's heart and keep it safe. When the furor died down, there was nothing left of Fate. The owl who consumed Fate's eyes gained greater sight, greater than any mortal creature who had come before. The parliament crowned him the Owl King, and breathed easier. And so Time goes on as it should, and events that were once fated to happen are left instead to chance. And Chance never falls in love with anything for long. But the world is strange, and endings are not truly endings no matter how much the owls might wish it so. Occasionally, Fate can pull itself together. And Time is always waiting. Excerpted from Sweet Sorrows
Adapted from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern |
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Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
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Post by Alex on Nov 23, 2023 0:26:27 GMT
Some tales, once read, heard, seen, can't be forgotten. A sonnet of a man's first love, the heartbreak that follows, held tightly by a widow. A song of laughter and love and loss sung quietly to one's self, at a table far too empty. A painting, of a woman staring back through a door wondering what could have been had she turned the knob.
If he wanted to, he could not forget their tales. With each attempt to forget the memories flit around his mind on papered wing with renewed effort, whispering their tales of love and loss into his ears.
Shame, the stories that he remembers and the ones he forgets.
Maybe, down belo-
The page is torn, the rest lost to time. Excerpted from Fortunes & Fables |
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Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
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Post by Alex on Nov 23, 2023 0:26:30 GMT
Fire and story do not mix, as any tired academic would tell you. Or, as some say, they mix too well: the fire too voracious a reader, hungrily consuming every word and line; the text too eager to be known, to be poured over so closely. No matter the perspective, all agree that it is a meeting that can only end in loss.
Such a paradox, then, for one of fire to love the written word. Or, rather, what the written word contains: the stories of alchemy, of the true science. The words down below contain a truth, to be sure. There is always truth in a story. But will they teach him what he wants to learn? Excerpted from Fortunes & Fables |
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Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
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Post by Alex on Nov 23, 2023 0:26:34 GMT
A story written down, the words committed by ink to page and sealed in leather, leaves nothing to Chance. Each reader to peel back the spine, to read the first words, will find themselves down the same tunnels, pulled into the same worlds. Each twist divined by Fate, each line and word and letter left to be discovered exactly the same way, every time.
He is no stranger to Fate and Chance, knows the unyielding power of a story that comes breaking in uninvited. He knows the fruitlessness of warding it off, knows the cost that comes from being unprepared to escape its grasp as its walls close in.
Troubling, then, that he ends up in the midst of another tale that has already been written.
Excerpted from Fortunes & Fables |
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Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
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Post by Alex on Nov 23, 2023 0:26:36 GMT
There is a door in a forest that was not always a forest.
There is a door, covered over by sand and wind, that slumbers in the dunes of the desert.
There is another, nested behind crates and boxes in the back of a teahouse that has long been forgotten as a locked storage closet.
One lays at the bottom of the sea in a long sunken city.
More and more, in bustling cities and remote forests and the snowiest of mountaintops. How they got there, nobody quite knows. But they all lead to the same place.
Each door will lead to a Harbor on the Starless Sea, if one would only dare to open it.
They sing, silent siren songs for those who seek what lies behind. For those that feel homesick for a place they have never been to. Those who seek even if they do not know what it is they seek for.
And eventually, those who seek will find.
Excerpted from Fortunes & Fables
Adapted from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern |
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Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
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Post by Alex on Nov 23, 2023 0:26:39 GMT
Those who wish to choose this path must spend a full cycle of the moon in isolated contemplation before they commit. Once it has ended, they are given a choice.
They may leave this path. They may choose another path, or no path at all. Many make this choice, returning to the surface to squint at the sun. Sometimes they remember a world below that they once intended to devote themselves to, but the memory is hazy, like a place from a dream.
Tonight, as the moon is new and the door is unlocked, it reveals a woman who has spent her isolation singing. She is shy, and not in the habit of such things, but it comes easy when none can hear you. The acolyte who enters bows, and gestures for her to follow.
The young woman who is to be an acolyte follows through narrow candlelit tunnels, past tables stacked with books and dotted with statues. She pets a statue of a fox as they pass, a habit that has worn its carved fur smooth. An older man leafing through a volume glances up as they pass and, recognizing the procession, places two fingers to his lips in greeting. A gesture of respect for a position she does not yet hold.
They stop at a door marked with a golden bee. It is unlocked, and they step inside.
The ceremony is secret, the details known only to those who undergo it and those who perform it. It has been performed in the same fashion always, as long as anyone can remember.
Her last taste is sweet.
Her last words already sung.
And with her voice muted, her ears awaken.
Then the stories begin to come.
Excerpted from Fortunes & Fables
Adapted from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern |
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