Pookie

I awoke in a golden field. No wounds. No memories. Just sunlight, the hush of wind, and a sword nestled among the wheat stalks beside me. Gleaming, perfect, as if it was waiting for me.

The armor I wore was white and gold, pristine apart from some dust of the earth I lied on. I did not recognize it. And yet, without thinking, I brushed it clean.

When I rose, I took the sword with me. My hand found its ivory white grip as though it belonged there. Not from memory, but from instinct. It moved with grace I had never learned, yet could not forget.

A village was nearby. When I entered, people stared. Not in fear, nor awe. Something gentler. They welcomed me without question, drawn in ways they could not explain. They said I smell like vanilla and walnut. Always. It calms them.

I spoke little. I still do. But when I do, people listen.

I help while I am there. Tending wounds. Lifting carts. Guiding quarrels toward peace with only a couple of words. Not with fear. But with mutual respect. It feels natural. Expected.

Trouble has found the village more than once. Bandits, armed and desperate. I did not hesitate. I stood between the evil-doers and those who could not fight. The sword moved on its own. Or maybe it moved as I wished, before I even knew I wished it. I don’t want to kill, and don't do more damage than I have to. I never do.

I don’t know who I am. Or why the world feels so loud now.

But I know what’s right when I see it. I feel it in my chest. Something warm. Heavy. Pulling me always toward what must be done. Toward people in need. Toward kindness. Toward good.

Aeri’el knows more than I do. A sulfur-crested cockatoo with a boastful streak. He speaks the words of a bard, with his screeching voice. He casts flickers of light and sings songs that draw eyes I would rather avoid. But I let him. He may know more than he lets on. After all, he was there when I woke up in that golden field. And he never left me. And he feels familiar.

He’s not the only thing that feels familiar. So does the sword. So does the armor. And so does this path, though I cannot see where it leads.

I don't know who I am, or why I am. But you can call me Pookie.

Ananka'el

In the vast bureaucracy of the Illuminated Heaven, Ananka’el was a clerical error: an angel created not by divine intent, but by misfiled documentation and unchecked authority. No choir claimed him. No army enrolled him. No purpose was assigned. Yet there he stood: forged of light and grace, functionally perfect, but existentially unbelonging.

With no station to fulfill, Ananka’el wandered the marble halls and silver battlements of Chronias. There, with nothing to do, he trained. Swordplay became his meditation. He learned by watching. By mimicking. By doing. He never sought battle, only quiet perfection. Until, after undefinable eternities, someone finally asked who he was supposed to be.

He was brought before unseen powers. There was no judgment. No fanfare. Only silence… and then absence. He was unmade from the records and quietly cast down, because there was simply no category for him.

He awoke in a golden field. No name. No memory. Just instinct, armor, and sword, once borrowed from the Vault of Weaponry above. In the mortal world, he walks as Pookie. Kind, noble, and aimless, but pulled by something deeper. A quiet gravity toward good, like sunlight drawn to the earth.

He is followed by a sulfur-crested cockatoo named Aeri’el, who shares the same faint echo of a life once lived in the skies above. Aeri’el may have been cast out too. Perhaps for a joke made too loudly in the wrong corridor. He remembers little, just that he and Pookie feel like notes from the same forgotten hymn. He suspects they are both from the Upper Planes, even if he can’t recall how or why.

Together, they wander. One silent, one loud. No longer where they were made. Yet somehow always where they are needed.

2026-01-27

Preface

The people of the town are worried. They have noticed triangular creatures coming from this cave, and I cannot but conclude that these creatures are evil. The townsfolk as well as Aeri'el seem to agree. I have to investigate and find the source of this evil, in order to restore peace in the minds and hearts of the people, as well as settle the unrest in the town itself. I must do what is good.

New friends

Once I followed the path of the creatures to the cave, there were two others waiting for me there. Lumi, an overly cheerful Harengon, and Norrik, a Dwarf adventurer. We soon became friends, but mostly because Lumi kept insisting.

Not long after, another Dwarf appeared, from inside the cave. Br⌀dinn told us about his friends, who got killed inside. He kept blaming a group of Drow, who, so he said, sent his group into a room with very strong enemies (amongst which an egg sack), under false pretenses. Also, apparently we are at Calhundert, the Temple of Dumathoin.

After a night's rest, where Br⌀dinn could rest and tend his wounds, we went into the cave, in order to talk with the Drow. As soon as they opened their door, Br⌀dinn attacked (while he said he didn't want to kill them) and a fight ensued. Before I understood what was going on, Lumi was furious, yet seemed really happy about it. While I tried to stop the fight, she killed two of the Drow. Enthusiastically.

I will need some time to think about this new friendship.

After three of the Drow died without a good reason, I tried to persuade the elves that we want to do no harm. They said we should put down our weapons first, but that had little effect. Eventually Br⌀dinn threatened two of them into stopping the fight. They did and told us that they'd join us on our quest to rescue their father, who is apparently brainwashed by cultists.

After a short rest and planning session, we went into the layer of the egg sack in order to get the elves' father out. After shortly exploring the battleground of lost lives, we decide to attack the egg sack, rather than exploring a door which seemed magical. The magic is of the school of Transmutation, so the door is probably trapped.

The elves ran away as soon as the battle began, but we managed to kill the egg sack and its children. I could not fail to notice that Br⌀dinn is a very impressive fighter. As we killed the egg sack, some corpses fell out of the egg sack. A small number of magic items belonging to the corpses survived whatever the egg sack did to them. We distributed the items among the group, and I am now the questionable owner of a Dread Helm, which makes my eyes glow red. When I wear it, Norrik amusingly calls me Spookie.

2026-03-10

We got introduced to Azar, an elf wizard, who poofed into existence. He is companions with Brødinn.

After opening the magic door, which just turned out to be a puzzle, we went down a stairwell. We arrived in a crypt, which Brødinn says where priests of Dumathoin are laid to rest. He expects the gods have forsaken this place, so we proceeded carefully.

On the bottom of the stairs, we found ghosts. They would not let us continue further into the crypt, until Brødinn started singing the hymn of Dumathoin. They let us pass then.

There's water deep underground, in a caved in portion of the crypt. A Hydra lives there, but we managed to escape it without fighting, thanks to the hallway being too small for the huge monster.

In a room on the hallway past the Hydra, we found a friendly creature named Rivibiddel, studying Dumathoin. While exploring the crypt himself, his life forces drained, making him age fast. In the room where we found him, there is a lot of text on the walls. There's a grave tomb in the middle of the room, which seems to be of Thorgran Ironquill. Rivibiddel has been stuck in the halls for about five days. He doesn't dare to leave the way he came, due to the Hydra. He took an alternative entrance than we did, and swam here. The other entrance (or exit?) we can reach by diving next to the hydra, and swimming underwater into another cave system.

The next room we explored had a ghost. Lumi ran in, desecrated a grave and ripped apart the remnants of the inhabitant of the grave, which made the ghost disappear. A very shocked Brødinn mentioned this was probably the dwarf who started building the crypt, before he took some time to himself, to reflect on the respectless desecration of his dwarf sisters' resting place.

In the next room Lumi sees an illusion of herself, with her skull cracked open and her brain removed. Skeletons tried to flood the room, but Lumi prevented it by toppling over an ancient dwarf statue, and shoving it in front of the door. When Brødinn asked the skeletons to leave us alone in Dwarvish, they did, and the hallucination of a dead Lumi disappeared. Once again, Brødinn needed some time to reflect and process Lumi's pure disrespect and demolition of sacred places.

With magic, Brødinn created a door in a suspicious wall. In that room we saw fourteen sarcophagi, and six skeletons. The sarcophagi were radiating a faint light, and the skeletons started moving towards us. We closed the door and explored another room.

That room also contained some ghosts and skeletons. Lumi was prevented to attack, and the creatures were laid to rest by Brødinn speaking Dumathoin's name.

With nowhere else to go, we went back to the previous room with fourteen sarcophagi, and six skeletons. A fight ensued, but ended quickly. Once again by Brødinn calling the name of Dumathoin (while casting a huge blizzard). The name of Dumathoin seems to ease the ghosts and skeletons of this haunted place.

2026-03-31

After resting in Rivibiddel's room, we explored the hallway beyond the last room of the previous day.

There were beautiful carvings on the wall, of great mountains, with underneath the mountains large gemstones. On the end of the hallway was a double door, with above it the text (in Dwarven) "The Digging Dead". Just before those doors, there was another door on the left side, with the superscription "The Blessed Dead".

The Blessed Dead

The room of The Blessed Dead had a statue of an intently staring dwarf and a sarcophagus. The latter turned out to contain a mummy. We fought the mummy, and this undead seemed pretty unphased by the name of Dumathoin, but Brødinn still managed to put it back to rest. The mummy was not dressed in cloth, but in architectual blueprints. Upon further investigation, it seemed to be the plans for this tomb. The walls of this room also have carvings, also with the design of this tomb.

The designs showed us there is supposedly a circular room, behind a hidden door on the right side of the corridor. So that's where we went.

The circular room

In the middle of the circular room, there was a huge emerald, emiting green light, on a pedestal. Norrik scouted the room, deemed it safe, and ran in. Only to be greeted by three wraiths, who instantly attacked him.

I managed to scare them off momentarily, which caused Brødinn and Lumi to greedily chip away at the emerald. Before long the wraiths returned. After a close fight, we managed to defeat them, which once again made Brødinn and Lumi carve away at the gem. They could never get the entirety of the gem out of here, but it gave me and Norrik some time to heal up.

The Digging Dead

We walked to the last room in the corridor, and Lumi and Brødinn walked straight in, and closed and locked the door. Norrik and I were locked out. When we heard the sounds of a fight coming through the door, the door unlocked and we opened the doors. Specters had spawned and were fighting with Lumi and Brødinn. Norrik and I joined the fight and together we made short work of the enemies.

It turned out that this final room contained the black stone Brødinn and Azar had been searching for. After the fight with the specters, the three of us saw a vision of Dumathoin, who thanked us and gave us his blessing. The three of us, since Lumi was not deemed worthy, after the grave robbing and desecration she had displayed.

Despite Brødinn's protests (he wanted to leave this place ASAP) we took another rest in Rivibiddel's room before travelling back through Talhundereth, to the surface. We desided to visit the Drow who had abandoned us while fighting the egg sack, but nobody was home. It seemed they had fled the temple, but left behind a couple of bed rolls. Brødinn pissed in them, and then we went outside, into the fresh air.

We travelled through a foggy land to the town of Phandalin. The town felt quiet. Lumi and Brødinn went to the Miner's Exchange, to return the black stone, like Brødinn had wished. I am not sure how Azar would have felt about this deed,

Having defeated the evil which endangered my town, I said goodbye to the party, and went back home.