In the spring of the year 479 A.F., Ashavarti Wildfang was fishing in
the rivers of Sapience when she noticed a strange lack of life in the
waters. Further study showed a dismaying conclusion: no fishes could be
found anywhere in the rivers. Zaphar, the Old Man of the River, sensed a
malignant influence tainting the waters, its source to the east of the
river Zaphar, by the sea. "Seek beneath the earth," he proclaimed
enigmatically. "Near the salt waters but not of them."

When those investigating the disturbing phenomenon came to Tasur'ke,
they found a distraught townsgirl by the name of Aurelia searching for
her father, Octavius. She had recently dreamt of her father being washed
out to sea, and she feared that her nightmare had become reality.
Indeed, they eventually discovered Octavius half-drowned upon a small
rocky outcropping within the ocean off the Tasur'ke beach.
Half-delirious, Octavius mumbled about seeing his long-dead wife
beckoning to him from the waves. His wife, Auria, had drowned in the
waters there when Aurelia was an infant.

When offered help back to shore, Octavius refused, speaking of having
seen something beneath the waves when he had been dragged under. Skye B.
Anchors, a Leath-ri of Eleusis originally hailing from Tasur'ke herself,
dove beneath the waters and freed from the kelp the remnant of a
skeletal hand, upon one finger a wedding band the twin of the one worn
by Octavius. Recognising it as the only remnant of his beloved wife,
Octavius then accepted assistance back to the beach, where his tearful
daughter awaited.

The group accompanied Octavius to the ocean cliffside by the Garden of
Whispers in Tasur'ke, where he intended to lay the skeletal fragment of
his wife to rest. While digging at the burial spot, the party unearthed
something unexpected: an old diary belonging to Niliana. Those who have
visited the Garden of Whispers in Tasur'ke will recognise that name from
the plaque there, which describes the tragic fate of Niliana and her
husband Darius, the sculptor who built that garden for his lady love and
who later followed her in death over the cliffside there.

The diary revealed that Niliana had been of the direct bloodline of the
Obeah Ecstasia, a mysterious and ancient sect of dreamseers, and that
she had already been with child when she came to Tasur'ke and wed
Darius, later giving birth to a girl she named Apollonia. It hinted also
at the peculiar origins of Apollonia, who had been begotten in the
Dreamrealm. Niliana's description of Apollonia's father was recognised
as the black-winged nightmare spirit called Dibbuk, the Angel of
Madness. The last entry in the diary descended into insane ramblings,
surely the final words Niliana penned before throwing herself off the
cliff.

Recalling their original mission, the party explained to Octavius what
they had come to seek in Tasur'ke. Recalling that when he was a child,
the sculptor Darius had built the central fountain of Tasur'ke by
digging through to a natural spring beneath that location, Octavius led
them to the fountain. Digging there, they were able to find a small
fissure beneath the fountain through which they could enter a small
underground cavern, "beneath the earth" and "near the salt waters but
not of them". Within bubbled a freshwater spring that seeped away
through the cavern walls, presumably passing through underground
channels to the rivers of Sapience. A crystal ball was found lodged at
the source of the spring, cracked and blackened. Some hazy scene could
be discerned within the ball, too distorted to make out the details.

Despite the group's best efforts, the crystal ball remained stubbornly
bound to the spring. Eventually, Gnaash Bora'k, the troll senator from
Cyrene, had a bright idea while listening to the discordant hum issuing
from the crystal orb. His House, the Ty Beirdd, had recently come across
a relic called the Concordant Triune, a steel tuning fork with a third
central prong made of crystal. Retrieving the Triune, Gnaash struck the
crystal ball with it, and a brilliantly clear tone rang out at the
moment of contact. The black clouds within the ball dissipated, and the
cracks healed, the power of the Triune's ability to bring out the true
sound of the crystal orb healing what had diseased it. And now, the
scene within its depths was fully visible.

Observers soon noticed that the exact same scene was repeating over and
over again within the crystal ball. It would first begin with a
golden-haired woman walking through the Garden of Whispers, apparently
sleepwalking. When she reached the cliff's edge, a shadowy figure would
appear; the two would struggle at the precipice until finally, the
golden-haired woman would plummet over its edge towards the cold sea
below. Octavius cried out in recognition, "Auria!" His voice was filled
with pain and horror, as was the story he then related.

Octavius had been a young boy when Niliana had appeared in their
village, a stranger, alone and with child. The kindly townsfolk had
taken her in, and she had come to catch the eye of the sculptor Darius,
who had built the Garden of Whispers as a gift of love for her. She had
eventually succumbed to madness, however, and leapt to her death from
the cliffs off the Garden of Whispers, as the plaque there related. The
lovelorn Darius had followed soon after, leaving Apollonia to be raised
by his relatives.

As she had grown, the child Apollonia had shown strange powers of
precognition through dreams, and the townsfolk had begun to fear her. As
a young woman, she had become infatuated with Octavius, but Octavius
himself only had had eyes for a lovely golden-haired townsgirl named
Auria. Octavius and Auria had been wed, and Auria had given birth to a
baby girl named Aurelia. Not long after, Auria had begun awakening at
night screaming from nightmares. One day, Octavius said, he had awakened
to find himself alone in his bed.

The townsfolk had formed a search party and combed the area, but she had
been nowhere to be found: only her golden locket, its chain torn off as
if from some struggle, and scuffle marks in the dirt at the cliffside
off the Garden of Whispers. As Octavius had knelt there and wept,
suddenly Apollonia had begun screaming, staring wild-eyed at the statues
in the Garden of Whispers her step-father had built, shrieking at them
to leave her be. As the townsfolk had turned to stare at her, she had
fled barefoot away from the Garden of Whispers, fled from Tasur'ke
itself. "We never saw her again," Octavius finished.

Penned by My hand on the 15th of Phaestian, in the year 481 AF.