The first of Elyon's great desert visions, written by his own hand.


I was somewhere around Moghedu on the outskirts of the Mhojave when the substances began to take hold. My veins ran thick with what felt like tar, the pitch-dark essence within becoming a particularly unsettling sight under the sickly glow of the dying sun. There I stood, a naked madman in the desert. I could die I could never see sanity again but given the relative abundance of fruit-bearing plants in the area and the longevity of those who had taken this path before me, neither of these outcomes seemed particularly likely.

Eventually, the wandering paid off. In the distance, a fifteen-foot sentinel stood next to a comparatively diminutive statue of a deformed-looking Tsol'aa. Recognising the significance of this immediately, I greeted the animal (if it could indeed still be called that) with a nod of recognition as the open wounds that marred the thing's skin continued to bake in the sweltering heat, its nauseating stench filling the air with the cloying aroma of something precariously on the precipice between life and death.

Despite my condition and the abhorrent scene that lay before me, I briefly thought to pluck out the amethyst eyes of the statue, thinking better of it given the beast that was present, instead choosing to inspect the carvings at the base of the statue for answers. My suspicions that this could well be a monument to the author of my tome were confirmed and I hastily scrawled down a couple of notes in a journal. Unsurprisingly, they are completely illegible.

As I walked away, the sound of ruptured organs emanating from the great monstrosity interlaced with familiar voices that spoke my name. My heart began to beat heavily as I trudged ever onward, my hands frantically grasping for things that were not there. Night had long since fallen and I was accompanied solely by myriad varieties of flowers that blossomed yellow and white amongst the dunes, turning to sand that ran through my fingers whenever I stopped to pluck them, the air now thick with the unmistakable fragrance of jasmine, a welcome relief from formerly omnipresent essence of rotting elephant .

It could have been days before I found a series of paths in the sand. Sets of curiously meandering tracks, dancing a twisted helix throughout the vast expanse. Perhaps this was a vision, a metaphor for something big, but this seemed unlikely given the presence of a nearby jarbo of the appropriate size to have left them. I despatched it cleanly, tearing into its flesh with my now sun-scorched hands, consuming a good deal of the unfortunate critter before deeply regretting this decision and spewing forth jets of regurgitated fur and a considerable amount of liquor. Truly starvation is preferable to having to eat one of these accursed things and exhaustion consumed me shortly after.

When I awoke, my mind had gone blank, even my survival instinct had been washed away in the desert heat. I believe now that I was functioning totally with the reptilian stem of my brain. The rest is vague, but I must have dipped my hands in the jarbo's blood and drawn symbols on myself. The next thing I remember is standing before the Pachacacha, some incomprehensible squiggles painted in blood across my chest. Written beneath, across my stomach, in handwriting alien to me was one word. "Duality." It was then followed by several sentences that read: "is often deliberately misinterpreted by those who follow Chaos and focus solely on its destructive capacity, ignoring its role as that which empowers Creation to form. This misinterpretation seems to stem from the illiteracy of a great number of Chaos-worshippers who have declined to read or comprehend religious texts or even the visions of their Prophet, and are being played for fools by an autocratic God, excusing their behaviour by shrugging that all is meaningless."



Penned by my hand on the 4th of Sarapin, in the year 917 AF.