Alex
Dungeon Master 
Posts: 107
|
Post by Alex on Nov 23, 2023 0:26:41 GMT
Once there was a man who collected keys. Old keys and new keys and broken keys. Lost keys and stolen keys and skeleton keys. He carried them in his pockets and worn them on chains that clattered as he walked around the town.
Everyone in town knew the key collector. Some thought his habit strange, but if someone lost a key or broke a key he would usually have a replacement that would suit their needs. It was often faster than having a new key made.
Eventually, the key collector had too many keys to carry began displaying them around his house. He hung them in the windows on ribbons and framed them on walls. He strung them on branches and draped them from the eaves.
One day there was a knock upon his door. The woman, in a long cloak embroidered with star-shaped flowers in gold thread on dark cloth, asked if he collected keys.
"I do."
"I am looking for something that has been locked away. I wonder if one of your keys might unlock it."
"You are welcome to look."
And look she did. Every room, every cabinet, every bookshelf. When the house had been searched, the collector mentioned she check the back garden, and gestured for her to follow.
The woman continued to search, through keys held by statues and keys resting at the bottom of a bubbling fountain, until stopping with hand outstretched before a key hanging from a red ribbon.
"Will that key suit your lock?"
"More than that. This is my key. I lost it a very long time ago. I'm glad it found its way to you."
The collector unties the key, handing it to her in two hands, outstretched. "It is my pleasure to help reunite you with your locked-away thing."
"Oh, it is not a thing. It is a place."
Excerpted from Fortunes & Fables
Adapted from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern |
|
Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
|
Post by Alex on Jan 5, 2024 21:32:19 GMT
It is a tragedy to not know one's tale. To stumble through the dark looking for word and phrase, to reach out and command the lungs to breathe, the heart to beat. To stare through blinking eyes at the words on the page and to see nothing but the sigils of an unknown tongue. To read them and see them addressed to oneself but not oneself all the same. At least they have a name to go by. A name can be an anchor, securing one's vessel in the churning seas. A name can be a guide, a torch in the night, a title of this tale. It isn't their own, but it is close enough. The next page of their story lies, waiting to be read. The book is there, the spine ready to be cracked, the words ready to be bathed in, the body ready to be reborn. Excerpted from Sweet Sorrows |
|
Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
|
Post by Alex on Jan 5, 2024 21:32:24 GMT
Dawn breaks, and the first words appear on the page. They tell of murder and loss, of torture and anguish, of cold, frigid cold, and frozen wastes. The sun reaches its zenith, and the next chapter begins. It tells this time of anger and opportunity, of revenge and retribution and sheer, utter joy. The tool of oppression becoming the tool of freedom. The shackles of captivity remain but changed, now the shackles of longing for what was finally achieved and cannot be obtained again. And the sun begins to set, and the denouement begins. Or is this just another dawn, in the quiet twilight of the day? As one story closes another begins, so they say. He sees the glint of moonlight, hears the thunk of iron on stone. There is no moonlight below where the stars do not shine, little reptile, but the cities of honey and bone wait in the shadows all the same. Excerpted from Fortunes & Fables |
|
Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
|
Post by Alex on Jan 26, 2024 0:55:17 GMT
Stories bind us together. Or, maybe, stories are the record of the ties that bind us - the invisible threads that tie friends and family together, made real in print and story and song. Stories can also tear us apart. The next generation hearing the story of the battles fought by their predecessors. Those same stories being repeated before their eyes. Fire & ice shouldn't mix - but thankfully, their story is of found family, not conflict and strife. They find themselves in a much larger tale, though; a tale of families, of rivalries, of revenge and loss and power and greed. They will need to keep each other close in the trials ahead. This story isn't that one. This story is different, but still the same. All stories are alike, after all: something was, and something changed. Change is what a story is, after all. Many changes lie ahead for them. Many choices, and many more stories. Are they prepared? Excerpted from Fortunes & Fables |
|
Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
|
Post by Alex on Jan 26, 2024 0:55:19 GMT
The smith had made exquisite swords, yes, but none surpassed this. It had not the finest materials, nor did it demand hours of his time, and yet it was a weapon of a caliber that exceeded his expectations. What fate, the smith asked, would befall such a fine blade, were it to be sold? After all, such things are instruments of both victory & defeat; of both tyranny and freedom. Unsure, the smith turned to the local seer, who he would often turn to in moments such as these. This was not the first sword he would tell the future of to ease the smith's mind, though none had a future like this. "To Seeking," the seer said, lifting his cup of wine, the two sat at a secluded table at the back of the tavern. "To Finding," the sword smith replied, lifting his drink in return. The seer looked at the sword for a long time. He asked the smith for another drink and the smith obliged. The seer finished his second drink and then handed the sword back. "This sword will kill the king," the seer told the smith. "What does that mean?" the smith asked. The seer shrugged. "It will kill the king," he repeated. He said no more about it. The next day the sword smith tried to decide what to do with the sword, knowing that the seer was rarely wrong. Being responsible for the weapon that killed the king did not sit well with the sword smith, though his many swords had been made to kill many people. He thought to destroy it, but he could not bring himself to destroy so fine a sword. And so the smith made two additional swords, each as fine as the first. Not even he could tell them apart. He received many offers for them, from customers eager to purchase, but he refused. Instead the sword smith gave one sword to each of his three children, not knowing who would receive the one that would kill the king, and he gave it no more thought because none of his children would do such a thing, and if any of the swords fell into other hands the matter was left to fate and time and Fate and Time can kill as many kings as they please, and will eventually kill them all. The sword smith told no one what the seer had said, lived all his days and kept his secret until his days were gone. Excerpted from Fortunes & Fables
Adapted from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern |
|
Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
|
Post by Alex on Jan 26, 2024 0:55:22 GMT
The inn lay at a particularly inhospitable crossroads. There was a village up the mountain some ways away, and cities in other directions. Most had better routes for traveling between them, particularly in winter, but the innkeeper kept his lantern lit throughout the year. In summers, the inn would be close to bursting, but the winters were long. The innkeeper spent most of his time in the inn alone, long a widow and childless. Once, he would venture to the village for supplies or a drink, but as time passed he did so less frequently because every time he would visit someone well-meaning would suggest this available woman or that available man and the innkeeper would finish his drink and thank his friends and head back down the mountain to his inn alone. Then came a winter with storms stronger than any seen in years. No travellers braved the roads. The innkeeper tried to keep his lanterns lit though the wind extinguished them often and he made certain there was always a fire burning in the main hearth so the smoke would be visible if the wind did not steal that away as well. The nights were long and the storms were fierce. The innkeeper kept the rooms prepared for travellers who did not come. After time and storms passed and stayed he kept only a few of the rooms readied, the ones closest to the fire. He sometimes slept in a chair by the fire himself instead of retreating to his room, something he would never dream of doing when there were guests. But there were no guests. Just the wind and the cold. Until, one night when the innkeeper had fallen asleep in his chair by the fire, a cup of wine beside him and a book open on his lap, there came a knock at the door. Excerpted from Fortunes & Fables
Adapted from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern |
|
Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
|
Post by Alex on Jan 26, 2024 0:55:25 GMT
As the Harbor grew, more rooms were necessary. Rooms with shelves and tables and chairs and candles and for each, a door and a key. The same key for every door, in the beginning, but more doors led to more keys. Once, a keeper could identify every door, every room, every book. No longer. How one becomes a keeper changed along with it. In the beginning, they were chosen and raised. Taught from an early age about the books and the bees and given wooden toy keys to play with. After a time, it was decided the path, like the one of the acolytes, should be voluntary. Unlike the acolytes, the volunteers are trained. If they wish to continue after the first training period, they enter a second. After the second, they enter a third. The third round demands they pick a story. A fairy tale, a myth, an anecdote about a late night and too many bottles of wine. So long as it is not their own. And when they have learned it, memorized it, internalized it, they are brought to a room. Two plain wooden chairs wait in the center, facing each other. Candles dot the curved wall like stars, glowing from wherever room can be found, for the wall is covered in keys. They stretch from the floor unseen into the shadows above where candlelight cannot reach. Long brass keys, short silver keys, complicated keys and simple keys. Many are ancient, tarnished, but here in the candlelight they shimmer and sparkle. There is a copy here of every key in the Harbor. The potential keeper sits, and they are joined, and they tell their story. When the story is completed, the audience departs. Some will be thanked for their service, and dismissed. Others will be asked to choose a key from the wall. Excerpted from Sweet Sorrows
Adapted from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern |
|
Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
|
Post by Alex on Jan 26, 2024 0:55:27 GMT
To be a guardian is to be trusted. To be trusted, all must be tested. One cannot volunteer to be a guardian. Guardians are chosen. Potential guardians are identified, watched, scrutinized, judged. The judges do nothing but observe for months, sometimes years, before they issue their first tests. The rhythms of the first test are always the same, whether it occurs within a Harbor or without. A child, asked by a judge to watch a book. Approached by another, come to take it away, for this is a library and the books belong to everyone. It would be easiest to let the book go. But the child persists, hugging the book tightly to their chest. The child will not be tested for another seven years. Many of the initial tests are similar, watching for care and respect and attention to detail. Watching how they react to stress or emergency. Weighing how they respond to disappointment or loss. Some are asked to burn or destroy a book. To do so is to fail immediately. A single failure results in dismissal. Most candidates are dismissed before the sixth test. Many do not make it past the twelfth. But, for those who succeed, the Harbor awaits. They are shown rooms never seen by any but the guardians themselves. They go deeper than any resident, any acolyte. They light their own candles. They see what no others have. They see what has come before. They may ask no questions. They may only observe. And when the tour is over, they are asked for an answer. "Would you give your life for this?" Excerpted from Sweet Sorrows
Adapted from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern |
|
Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
|
Post by Alex on Jan 26, 2024 0:55:30 GMT
In the depths there is a man lost in time. He has opened the wrong doors. Chosen the wrong paths. Wandered farther than he should have. He is looking for someone. Something. Someone. He does not remember who the someone is. He only knows he has not reached it yet. Reached her yet. Who? He looks toward the sky that is hidden from him by rock and earth and stories. No one answers his question. There is a dripping he mistakes for water, but no other sound. Then the question is forgotten again. He walks down crumbling stairs and trips over tangled roots. He has long since passed by the last of the rooms with their doors and their locks, the places where the stories are content to remain on their shelves. He passes over broken bridges and under crumbling towers. He walks over bones he mistakes for dust and nothingness he mistakes for bones. His once-fine shoes are worn. He abandoned his coat some time ago. He does not remember the coat with its multitude of buttons. The coat, if coats could remember such things, would remember him but by the time they are reunited the coat will belong to someone else. Sometimes he feels he has lost his own story. Fallen out of its pages and landed here, in between, but he remains in his story. He cannot leave it no matter how he tries. The man lost in time walks along the shore of the sea and does not look up to see the lack of stars. He wanders through empty cities of honey and bone, down streets that once rang with music and laughter. At first the bees watched him. Followed him while he walked and hovered while he slept. They thought he might be someone else. Now the bees ignore him. They go about their own business. They decided that one man out of his depth is no cause for alarm but even the bees are wrong from time to time. Excerpted from The Ballad of Simon & Eleanor
Adapted from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern |
|
Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
|
Post by Alex on Feb 11, 2024 14:58:07 GMT
There is a door in a forest that was not always a forest. The wood that composed it has rotted. Its hinges have rusted. Someone took its doorknob away. The girl comes as a surprise. The door remembers when there was a house with a roof and walls and other doors and people inside. There are leaves and birds and trees now but no people. Not for years and years. This girl in the woods is too small to be wandering the woods alone, but she is not lost. She is exploring. The girl has been told many times not to wander too far into these woods, but today she has gone so far that she wonders if she has started going out of them again toward the other side. It is getting dark, though enough of the now golden sun remains to light her way home if she starts back and retraces her steps, but she does not. She is distracted by something on the ground. A line of stones, set in an almost-circle. A fallen archway that might once have contained a door. The girl picks up a stick and uses it to dig around the leaves in the middle of the arch of stones. The leaves crumble and break and reveal something round and metal. She has always wanted to use a door knocker to knock upon a door and this one is on the ground and this one she can reach. She wraps her fingers around it, not caring how dirty they become in the process, and lifts it up. It is heavy. She lets the knocker drop. The result is a satisfying clang of metal on metal that echoes through the trees. The door is delighted to be knocked upon after so long. And the door—though it is mere pieces of what it once was—remembers where it used to lead. It remembers how to open. So now, when a small explorer knocks, the remains of this door to the Starless Sea let her in. Excerpted from The Ballad of Simon & Eleanor
Adapted from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern |
|
Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
|
Post by Alex on Feb 11, 2024 14:58:11 GMT
"Does she have a name yet?" the Keeper asks, not looking up from his desk, his pen continuing to move across the page. "They've taken to calling her Eleanor," the painter informs him. The Keeper puts down his pen and sighs. "Eleanor," he repeats, putting the emphasis on the latter syllables, turning the name into another sigh. He picks up his pen and resumes his writing, all without so much as a glance at the painter. The painter does not pry. She thinks perhaps the name has a particular meaning to him. She has only known him a short amount of time. She decides to stay uninvolved in the matter, herself. This Harbor upon the Starless Sea absorbs the girl who fell through the remains of a door the way the forest floor consumed the door: She becomes part of the scenery. Sometimes noticed. Mostly ignored. Left to her own devices. No one takes responsibility. Everyone assumes someone else will do it, and so no one does. They are all preoccupied with their own work, their own intimate dramas. They observe and question and even participate but not for long. Not for more than moments, here and there, scattered through a childhood like fallen leaves. On that first day, while being fussed over and examined and questioned, Eleanor answers only a single question aloud when asked what she was doing out on her own. "Exploring," she says. She thinks she is doing a very good job of it. Excerpted from The Ballad of Simon & Eleanor
Adapted from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern |
|
Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
|
Post by Alex on Feb 11, 2024 14:58:16 GMT
There is a door in a cottage that rests quietly in a forest. The wood that composes it is laquered smoothed. Its hinges are polished. Someone replaced its doorknob once, though that someone has long departed. The man comes as a surprise, only in that the door expected him earlier. The door remembers the man's mother, remembers when there was life within these walls. There are leaves and birds and mice now but not people. Not for years and years. This man in the woods is old enough to be wandering the woods alone, but he is very lost. The letter contained directions, the steps to take this far into the woods, but he has gone so far that he wonders if he has started going out of them again toward the other side. It is getting dark, though enough of the now golden sun remains to light his way out if he starts back and retraces his steps, but he does not. Finally, something catches his eye. An ivy-covered stone wall, hidden amongst the trees. An entrance, and a door. The man pushes on the door, softly and then harder until with an echoing creak it gives away, revealing the room. A cottage. His cottage, or so the letter said. He had always wanted a home of his own, ever since his mother passed. And this one is here, and it is his. The man wraps his fingers around a book, one of the many strewn about the cottage, not caring how dusty his hands become in the process. It is heavy. He opens the cover, finding his mother's name inscribed within. Jocelyn Simone Keating. He never knew her middle name. He understands now where his name originates. The man sets to tidying, grabbing a broom and sweeping the accumulated years off the floor. It would be easier if he swept out the back door, so he unlatches it and opens it and the door is more than happy to oblige. Excerpted from The Ballad of Simon & Eleanor
Adapted from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern |
|
Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
|
Post by Alex on Mar 5, 2024 0:58:24 GMT
Which arrived first - Time, or Fate? The winding road, or the traveller upon its stones? The story, or the author? The song, or the singer? Or, maybe more accurately, they arrived at the same time, as neither can exist without the other. The road long overgrown without the steady thrum of boots to clear its pass. The page left blank and missing without those to take up a quill. The song long forgotten without the singer to remember it, to keep it close. Which road arrived first, then? For one had to be first, for there to be a second. Or the first story, or the first author. Does it lie down here, uncovered by the sea? And which song? What were the first notes that blessed the world? And who sang it? Did the singer write the song? Or did the song write the singer? Excerpted from Sweet Sorrows |
|
Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
|
Post by Alex on Mar 5, 2024 0:58:28 GMT
What is Fate, without Time? Is it just a promise? A pact, sworn to be upheld, but betrayed by the one sworn to? An oath, made in a silent forest, with none but a liar around to hear it? Is such a thing even truly bound to its speaker? And what of Time without Fate? Is it the aimless wandering hand of a old soldier reaching for new orders only to find none? Searching, grasping in the dark for something to belong to. Something to devote oneself to. She is lost in Time, but her Fate remains. It changes, flits as fortune is want to do, either by her own hand or another. Given and found and cherished only to be taken and lost and mourned once more. Though she knows her Fate to be written, still her Devotion remains strong. Until that Time comes, there are souls left to save. He has searched for his Fate, in his own Time, both in the love of his company and the company of his love. Searched, and searched, each time only to be pushed away, to start the search anew. The Starless Sea is no stranger to those lost in Time, or yearning for their Fate. Excerpted from Sweet Sorrows |
|
Alex
Dungeon Master
Posts: 107
|
Post by Alex on Mar 5, 2024 1:19:28 GMT
Hello haunted one and his flock there are three things lost in time sword book man find sword find man
Adapted from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern |
|
