W<\/span><\/p>\n e met Emperor Shigure today. What remains of him, that is, which is mostly an angry, impotent spirit raging at the living world. Thrust into a role he never expected to take, manipulated by the woman he thought he loved, then betrayed and murdered by his childhood friend. His reign was short and tragic, exactly as engineered by Anamurumon, and this half-mad ghost was the result.<\/span><\/p>\n He was barely rational when he appeared before us, verbally abusing everyone and accusing us of various crimes. Conspiring with his killers. Usurping the throne. Taking what was rightfully his. And on and on. I tuned it out because I just couldn\u2019t even. His portrait was painted in fury and self-pity. We let Dasi do most of the talking since he\u2019s good at that sort of thing, and because we were dealing with a petulant child.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI will not give my blessing while my body remains dishonored!\u201d he bellowed, acknowledging Ameiko\u2019s status as heir but denying her the means to act on it. He demanded that we descend into the Well of Demons and bring it back, cremate it, and lay it to rest. <\/span>Are you for real? This is what\u2019s important right now? <\/span><\/i>Yes, his anger was justified. But he was willing to sink the entire empire out of spite. Such a small, petty man.<\/span><\/p>\n Still, we agreed because\u2014wait for it\u2014we have no choice. Because nothing is ever simple or easy.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s not really his fault at any rate. Takahiro\u2019s crime corrupted this place completely: as Shigure\u2019s body rots, so does the Shrine. This is almost certainly why the entire island is trying to kill us, but that is the smaller of our concerns. Until the Shrine is cleansed, the conduit between here and the spirits of the past is closed. No spirits; no blessing. Which means Ameiko\u2019s path to the throne is blocked until we sort it out.<\/span><\/p>\n Why in the name of the gods is there something called The Well of Demons in the Imperial Shrine? I thought it was a pretty good question, so I asked Shigure during one of his moments of lucidity, but what I got was a nigh-incomprehensible tirade that boiled down to: \u201csome name I made up\u201d. Whatever purpose the well <\/span>originally<\/span><\/i> served is a mystery, but it clearly wasn\u2019t intended to be a dumping ground for the decaying bodies of former emperors, murdered in cold blood. Hence, the current state of affairs.<\/span><\/p>\n Shigure says he can <\/span>feel<\/span><\/i> the influence of whatever is down there, and more importantly, he can feel it spreading. It\u2019s only a matter of time before it reaches the material world and infests Minkai.<\/span><\/p>\n That fool Takahiro has no idea what he\u2019s done.<\/span><\/p>\n W<\/span><\/p>\n hen I left Magnimar over a year ago, I never imagined I\u2019d be spending my nights studying the finer points of childbirth and prenatal care. Then again, I couldn’t have imagined most of what has happened since. Sometimes I feel like I don’t know the person I’ve become. I want to know what she’s like. Where she calls home.<\/span><\/p>\n Meida\u2019s pregnancy is both an opportunity and a complication.<\/span><\/p>\n The complication, of course, is that <\/span>she\u2019s pregnant<\/span><\/i>. Taking the Jade Throne from Takahiro and Anamurumon is almost certainly going to mean taking it by force, and using lethal force against a pregnant woman is just not a thing that\u2019s going to happen. That is a hard stop. I will not take part in any such plan. And that immediately puts us at a disadvantage, because they certainly won\u2019t be holding back.<\/span><\/p>\n Since we don\u2019t have a good solution to that problem at the moment, I\u2019m focusing on the opportunity instead. The Emerald Branch says she is secretly looking for a midwife, so why not give her one?<\/span><\/p>\n This is not as ridiculous as it sounds. When you study the arcane, you end up learning a little about everything, and humanoid physiology kind of comes with the territory. As you continue your studies, you end up gravitating to things that interest you. Apparently this was one of them. In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by how seeing Sefa again and holding her baby affected me. (You also can\u2019t spend any amount of time around an acolyte of Pharasma without learning a thing or two about obstetrics. Even when that acolyte was Qatana.) To the others, this seemed like it came from out of the blue, but in reality? I just never talked about it. I mean, it\u2019s not like the subject ever came up before now. When, exactly, would it have been relevant conversation?<\/span><\/p>\n I am being realistic about this gambit. I don\u2019t even think I\u2019ll get invited into the palace, much less hired by Meida, but I am pretty sure I can get an interview with the handmaiden that was tasked with the search, and that\u2019s good enough. To date, we know almost nothing about Meida and even less about the inner workings of the palace. A conversation with her handmaiden may be the closest thing we\u2019ll get to insider information, and it could prove fruitful. I just need to be credible enough not to raise any suspicions. And I\u2019m also not above a little cheating if necessary.<\/span><\/p>\n All of that is moot, though, if we don\u2019t succeed here at the Shrine first.<\/span><\/p>\n We descend into the Well tomorrow. We have no idea what we\u2019ll find there, what we\u2019re up against, how extensive this growing corruption is, or even what the nature of it is, and that makes it hard to prepare. Normally one would assume that something called a \u201cWell of Demons\u201d contains, well, <\/span>demons<\/span><\/i>, but given that this is just some name Shigure made up? Gods only know. I took some time yesterday to extend magical sight down to the bottom, but what I saw wasn\u2019t particularly helpful: a dark hole in the ground, filled with water. Pretty much what you would expect from a well, only larger in scale.<\/span><\/p>\n Obviously there\u2019s more to it than that, but there\u2019s only so much divination magic can do in one sitting. If we did this again tomorrow I\u2019d be cutting into spells we might actually need, and with no guarantee of getting better answers at that. And, really, at some point we\u2019re just going to have to go in, anyway. So, as Ivan would say, save the spell.<\/span><\/p>\n Gods, it\u2019s going to be a long day.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sarenith 22 (Imperial Shrine, Evening) W e met Emperor Shigure today. What remains of him, that is, which is mostly an angry, impotent spirit raging at the living world. Thrust into a role he never expected to take, manipulated by the woman he thought he loved, then betrayed and murdered by his childhood friend. His […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-4276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-kali"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4276"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5735,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4276\/revisions\/5735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Sarenith 23 (Imperial Shrine, Small Hours)<\/h3>\n