Trevian - Quest Journal

[Titia]

On the library table, you find a new book.

The cover is white and looks delicate with small music notes embeded on it. While some notes are fresh, strangely other look like they are several years old. The pages inside are blank and fresh as though milled yesterday.

The book is titled "Trevian".

Trevian, this is your candidate quest journal. In it, you should record answers from other members of Saga as you ask them the question for your Candidate Quest. Through this Quest you will come to know us. Just as we shall discover you.

[Trevian]

The sun had not quite risen when Trevian set out that morning.  The air was crisp and cooler than usual this time of season.  He spotted a hummingbird flitting about a trumpet vine that was in bloom as he made his way towards the library.  The letter he received from Titia was on his mind and he was anxious to see to it.

Entering the library he spotted it right away.  He ran his hand across the cover of the book, and then traced his finger from one note to the other.  Each sang with a different song in his mind.  He sat down and began to write.

----

Yesterday, I found myself in the coalition's tavern where I met a buxom young Varanjan woman named Renei.  In fact, her presence, voice, and spirit very well filled the place.  She told us all about her travels abroad for adventure and love, and a bit about life as a young Varanjan.

She told us how she lived outdoors from the time she was weaned.  Living in caves and fields.  That's how she got in touch with the spirits.  Even as a girl she talked to about forty of them.  Some were relatives, and some were village elders.  We joked that the spirits we were all drinking might have a person hearing voices too.  These were different though.  I suppose they all gave her guidance.  It seems she was a natural choice for a shamaness. 

Somehow those spirits have told her that she has a one true love out there in the world.  Something about a past life.  I wasn't sure if she meant she had a past life, or that the spirits of past lives have told her this.  The booze and the ruckus might have me fuzzying things up a bit.

Anyway, we had a good time hearing her tell how she was out traveling the world determined to find this one true love, and how she didn't mind finding loves along the way in her search.  It's all a good part of the adventure to her.  She even said that to spend one's life in search of love, though never finding that one true love, would still be a life well spent.

We ended the night with a hearty toast to adventure, love, and friends.  It was surely a good time.

[Trevian]

A few days later he returns to the library.

----

This Quyzbek fellow is an odd one.  It seems to me he knows more than he lets on.  We spoke again recently.  He claims he only arrived at Tursh after the "incident".  By that I'm sure he meant the explosion at the academy.  Yet, I feel like he looks familiar, and he is definitely hiding something.  For all I know he might have had something to do with it.

In any case, he claims he is from a city called Landing in south east Thestra.  He told me, and the others who cared to overhear us in the pub, about how the various noble families of that city drove it to decay, and felt that it was a foreshadowing of what could happen in New Targonor if things are left unchecked.

I pressed him further, asking if he had any family still in Landing.  He claimed he did not.  I asked him if he missed the place.  Though I could have sworn a tear nearly came to his eye, he laughed that question off and claimed he did not.  He brushed off the tear by go into one of his typical complaints over the climate.

We were cut short by a call to action, but I intend to speak with him further.

[Trevian]

Some days later.

---

I couldn't stop thinking about Jezerai's reaction when Renei was carrying on in the pub not long ago.  The topic of love touched a raw nerve.  So, I spoke with her about it.

She told me how she had a hard life on the streets of Tanvu.  She obviously didn't believe her mother's story that she had an affair with a high elf diplomat.  The abuse she spoke of when attempting to join the military is something I will not write here.  It all adds up to good reason to be bitter of things.

However, that monk she talked about saw something in her soul.  I don't believe she's just the callous mercenary that she claims to be.  I have no doubt that something will cause a change in heart in her someday.

[Trevian]

Again returning to the library, Trevian sits down to scribe further stories into his journal.

----

It wasn't long ago when I thought Kojan was nothing more than some faery tale land.  I remember those wild stories grandpa would tell us kids when we were little.  Mom and my aunt's would give him hell for filling our heads with such nonsense.  No wonder I thought it all faerytales and children's stories as I grew up.  Even the mere existence of the orcs and goblins...  boy was I wrong.

Of course, as the stories went goblins were wicked, sneaky, murderous little fiends with hideous sharp teeth and claws, red eyes and leathery greenskin tough as a jerkin.  One night the story started something just like that, in the woods just like where we were then, it went.  Where those sneaky little fiends would spring out from behind the trees and GET YOU!  He threw something into fire just then and made it flare up, and the bunch of us went screaming running off in all directions.  It'd be about then that Mom would come back out and give him the whatfor.

So, it was with that in the back of my head, despite my more supposed self-assured mature understanding of the world, that I met Onichibae.  Oh sure by then I'd met a few orcs first hand, but those old stories are always back there.  So, I was puzzled to not find her wickedly sneaky with long sharp claws.  In fact, I thought she was kind of cute.  Still those old stories haunt, and her profession didn't help matters much.  Harvesting organs seems nasty affair.  Even when I turned away the sickening sound is unmistakable.

I made a conscious effort to get over my prejudice, and asked her how she got into her business.  She explained that it was her family business.  It has run in the family for a few generations.  I asked if she had any siblings, and she said she had twenty seven!  Or was it twenty nine?  Something like that.  I was astounded, but then she went on to explain that these are not all from the same parents.  Most are orphans from the war.  I said that was very kind of her parents to take in the orphans.  She countered saying they are assigned.  She then went on to explain that the war is a fight between the Gulgrethor and Martoc orc clans, and that it's been going on for generations.  I naively suggested that perhaps some negotiations could settle the differences.  Imagine the consequences of that!  She flatly told me there's too much bad blood and that it couldn't be settled. 

Perhaps it's just as well because there's always been a little bit of truth to grandpas stories.  Who knows what trouble would come about if the orcs were united?  It may just be that the rest of us are all better off that they're fighting each other.  It's hard for me to say whether Onichibae is an abberation among her kind.  However, I can say villanous she is not, but rather curt, detached and matter of fact.