#odithis posting

[voldarens-bane]

Consequences VII

Teeth sinking into flesh. A cry of pain. Blood trailing from claw marks. Fresh bruises. Blood for blood, the lesser sacrificing for the better; these were the two true rules during training. The vampire was weaker, so he was forced to give more.

The hyenafolk growled as he woke from slumber. Another dream focused on their old coworker, the one who managed to get away. The one that he wanted back. He reminded himself to be patient, shook himself out, and rolled off of the table that had served as his medical cot. New membranes stretched across the bone wing frames. The stingers protruding from his lower back were sharper now, just like his claws and his teeth. At least the resurrection magic had brought him back to full fighting fitness despite who he and his spark were now bound to.

Arkuan’s footsteps were audible as he prowled through the new base that he and Flair had set up. Wooden floor, wooden walls, wooden roof and ceiling. Suspended in the air through the same magic and architecture that Eldraine’s storm giants used. Hidden from sight with misdirection enchantments stolen from the Obscura and Court of Omission alike. Isolated from the ground so that their quarry wouldn’t be able to use his own abilities to escape.

It also wasn’t hard to get a handful of mooks and minions. There were always people willing to do anything you ask for the right price. Others could be “convinced” through Flair’s practice. The humans – of course they were all human, there were so many of them that it was easier to send them to various planes to handle things themselves – worked in the base on the various dipshit duties that Arkuan couldn’t be bothered to keep track of.

Arkuan knocked on the open door to Flair’s new lab. It was quite similar to her old one in the Realm of Judgment and looked like a Simic doctor’s wet dream. Every operation table had straps to restrain someone that were enchanted to completely block any magic, internal or external. Arkuan had gotten them during the duo’s recent trip to restock as a “gift” for the doctor. Flair herself had gotten him a new machete to make up for the sword that had been left behind when they left the Realm of Judgment.

Flair looked up from her notepad. She grinned too widely. Her scorpion tail flicked around behind her. “Arkuan! Here I was thinking you might actually sleep in today.”

“Not when there are more things to plan.” Arkuan invited himself in and leaned against the wall. “Any clue where the little bastard ran off to yet?”

Flair didn’t have to ask who Arkuan meant. “Can’t get anyone to slip to Torrezon without being immediately pounced on by those bat demons. It’s a shame, I’d love to capture one and study it. Slowly take it apart and all, you know how it is.” She continued writing something that Arkuan didn’t bother trying to read. “He didn’t run off to Towashi or Innistrad again. Good chance he’s hiding somewhere in New Capenna though, that seems like somewhere he’d be.”

Arkuan snorted. “So close to the Realm? I doubt it. He’s a coward at heart.”

“Could always lure him out though.” Flair tapped her pen against the paper a few times. “Not with the younger brother, he’s a bigger threat than our idiot employees can handle. Gotta look out for the old man too. And that wiggly Omenpath guy.”

“Too many people to look out for,” Arkuan snorted. “Though if we worked together on a grab...”

Flair flashed him a grin. Her teeth were as bloodstained as his own. “Aww, so you do like me.” She flipped around her notepad to show him what she had been writing.

Arkuan leaned down and squinted at the paper to make out her horrid handwriting. “...Drugging and paralysis venom that can affect both holy beings and the undead? I’m so glad we’re on the same side. The little bastard won’t know what hit him.”

She snorted. “I mean, he will. It’ll probably be your fist.” She turned the notepad back around to keep writing. “You want first dibs on the stepdad? If not, I’m gonna test a few things on him so we don’t have the bias of everything we’ve already done to Swift.”

“As far as I care, you can make him dance and rearrange his rib cage to play as an instrument while he’s forced to watch. My claim is on Swift.” Arkuan suddenly became aware of how possessive he sounded.

Flair also noticed. “Touchy touchy touchy. You can keep him, you’re just responsible if he breaks out. I’m not making a leash for you to put him on.”

Arkuan snorted, though his thoughts lingered on that for a moment. Maybe not a leash, but something else that would make it clear to Swift that Arkuan was in charge again...the multiverse was full of objects that could keep a mage contained, after all... He shook his head. “Something to pick up next time we restock supplies, then. We need to put someone in the capital to watch the stepdad, see if we can come up with a good time to grab him.”

“I’ll put out a word to our more stealthy mooks,” Flair promised. “Maybe I can remove the blood from one and reanimate them to send... That’ll keep everyone from pouncing on them just for having a pulse.”

Arkuan took that as his cue to leave. As he stalked down the wooden hallway, he slowly grinned.

It was only a matter of time before he and Swift could pick up their “training” once more.

Pain. Searing pain. He couldn’t get free, he couldn’t run. All he felt was pain. Metal and bone and claw and tooth digging into skin. Arkuan towered over him with a sadistic grin, claws dug into his sides, and-

They woke up on the floor. They took a moment to realize that the scream they had heard was their own. They grimaced in pain as they grabbed the old couch and hauled themself back up onto it. The blanket they had been using was kicked down to the arm near where their feet had been.

Their body ached. Especially the stumps where their arm and leg had been. They disconnected their prosthetics and removed the anchors so they could rub the spots and work some healing magic in to try desperately to soothe the pain. Their hunger curled in the pit of their stomach and whimpered. It could smell the Halo-free vampires nearby and it was hungry.

“Swift?”

They flinched at the woman’s voice saying one of their names. It took them a moment to remember who they were around. “Hey Umi.”

The other vampire kept a firm grip on her cane as she pushed off from the wall to approach them. “I heard your scream. Are you okay?”

I’m fine- They caught themself before they lied. Umi deserved honesty. “I was...stuck in a memory,” they admitted slowly. “Woke up on the floor. But I’m not harmed and I wasn’t attacked.” They reattached the anchors for their prosthetics and sunk their magic into it. The pieces of their right arm and left leg returned to their normal positions. Their magic took the place of the joints and granted them more mobility than a flesh-and-blood arm or leg. “Sorry for waking you up.”

Umi snorted quietly. “As if I wasn’t already awake from my own stress. I’ve been working on restoring Maestros records and trying to keep it from vanishing from fae bullshit so much” – she yawned for a moment and then kept speaking – “that I think I might be going mad.”

Swift wondered if they could convince Lazaro to adopt Umi. The two were very similar, and Umi could do with a paternal figure. Swift couldn’t be that figure themself. They also yawned before they responded. “Well, that makes two of us.” They rubbed their face. They weren’t likely to get back to sleep, not with their hunger still whimpering. “How about we make some tea?”

Umi nodded and got up to head over to the small kitchen area. She retrieved her kettle and filled it with water, then put it on to heat it up. She began quietly digging through the cupboards to get clean cups, sugar, and tea leaves.

Swift took a few more minutes to calm themself down so they weren’t reflexively breathing again. Then they stood up and joined Umi in the kitchen. They reached up to get the cups down since they were taller than Umi even without wearing heels.

The actual process of making tea was simple and required a bit of waiting, but the two vampires returned to the couch and sat down so they could both drink it. It wasn’t enough to silence Swift’s hunger since it wasn’t blood, but they tried to ignore that. They tried to soothe themself as they slowly drank the tea.

They were safe. They were free. They were away from the Honorable Judge. They weren’t under Her control. Arkuan and Flair were gone for good.

Right?

[tales-of-thyrsus]

Yearning

The Dea Pronoia frowned at the results of her test. Not out of disappointment – it was full, perfect marks, after all – but rather because she didn’t feel anything. She had done perfectly, as was expected for a young goddess of knowledge and information. But that didn’t feel like enough. How was she supposed to care about tests and homework when it became an eternal cycle of complete and utter bullshit? Study, write, edit, present, cast, answer questions, rinse and repeat.

She crammed the results into her bag, not caring about any creases – not that it mattered, she knew spells that would get creases out of paper and parchment – and shouldered her bag. She quietly exited the classroom before the professor could find her and crow for five minutes about her being a model student.

Because it ultimately didn’t matter.

It was only once she made it back to her dorm room that Lily of Thyrsus finally exhaled the breath that she had been holding. It sounded exhausted, even though she wasn’t yet tired. She set her bag down on her bed and then sat down beside it.

Something she had learned from spending time among mortals was that exhaustion often had more than one source that compounded upon each other. She wasn’t tired just because of homework and studies and tests, she was also tired because it felt pointless. Regardless of how many classes she took on various subjects, they all felt like they kept drifting back towards simple, basic information.

Because that’s what it all was: information. Processed, stored, and transmitted data completely detached from what it arose from. It was only half of her assigned duties. The other half, knowledge – familiarity, awareness, and understanding gained through experience or study – was woefully underrepresented here. Quandrix differed from Witherbloom greatly in that way – there was no intertwining of its themes of theory and substance, not in the way that life and death were innately intertwined. There was no getting one’s hands dirty in Quandrix College.

Lily sighed and flopped down on her back. “Mother’s wilds, what I would give to be an adventurer again.” She had picked up adventuring in Odithis between years at Witherbloom as a teenager, which was how she had met her favorite mortals in all of the planes – Beatrice, Tabitha, Gideon, Lohiarm, and Koda – and began working alongside them. They were all newer back then, and Lily had learned much about how mortals worked from their shared adventures and quests.

Odithis had been very good for that sort of thing because, outside of the established centers of “civilization”, the plane changed randomly and brought in new “ancient” ruins and dungeons with prophecies and quests to match. Lily’s current hypothesis was that the plane was created by a planeswalker with an undiagnosed attention deficit disorder.

Something in the Dea Pronoia’s chest ached. Her divine duty of gathering information and knowledge from other planes to bring home to Thyrsus was the reason why she used the family spark the most, but it also meant that, when she pursued such things through formal channels like schooling, she wound up stuck on planes for far longer than she wanted to be.

Lily retrieved a pen from her bag to chew thoughtfully on. She had used the communications system to speak to one Sussana Libertaria, a fleet commander of the Brazen Coalition on the plane of Ixalan (or was the plane called Torrezon? It was named after one of its landmasses or the other, Lily just called it Ixalan-Torrezon when speaking to Koda) near the beginning of the month. They had spoken about just this sort of thing and how Lily craved adventure and the wilds again. She had even gone to the village of Sweettooth on Eldraine to pick fights with the giant man-eating desserts there and had a good time after Sussana tipped her off about it. But that had only been a temporary patch, because Lily still had to return to Arcavios to get back to her studies.

Arguably, she could get adventure in Arcavios if she went on an archaeological trip with the Lorehold College’s students, but since she was studying in Quandrix this year, she doubted they would let her tag along. Even then, it wasn’t like she could apply for that college – in the color system of magic categorization, it was firmly in the “colors” of mana that she could not access. She was created from life, death, and water – she was not created from fire like her brother or light like her sister. How frustrating, then, that she craved to work with the college that was beyond her reach because of how she had been crafted.

Perhaps, she mused as she chewed thoughtfully on her pen, beings crafted from pure magic sought out the very thing that they lacked? But that wouldn’t explain manaforms like angels who typically stuck heavily to their single “color”. Maybe the answer was beyond what the color system of magic categorization could reasonably cover. Despite its flaws, the color system was very popular in Arcavios and on the communications network. Lily personally found the entire thing foolish, as she found every categorization of magic to be foolish.

She sighed and finally tossed her chewed-on pen back into her bag, then went back to staring at the ceiling. She needed a change.

She chewed on her lip for a moment, then sat up and seized her communicator. It wouldn’t hurt, she imagined, to send a message to the Strixhaven student group chat and see if any of them could give her a lead.

[captain-lannery-storm]

Training

Steel met steel in a loud clash. The longsword tested the strength of the two cutlasses, but they held strong.

Captain Lannery Storm wasn’t religious as a person. But when you had a war god testing your swinging arm, it was hard not to believe in the power of the divine.

Hei disengaged and stepped back. His golden armor gleamed in the neon lights of the city above them, outside of this training yard hidden away in the Cherry Blossom Orphanage. He was the very picture of a paladin – handsome, muscular, armored. He was a god of justice, valor, chivalry, war, and wrath. He was also, Storm had found out, the partner of a fellow god and the father of two demigods. Despite the fact that he would fit in perfectly among the Legion of Dusk, Hei was nothing but gentle smiles and encouragement as they trained. “You’re quick,” he noted as he adjusted his stance to one that was easier to defend from. “That’s good. It works well with your overall fighting style.”

“Thank you,” Storm said, beginning her own offense. She relied primarily on her left cutlass and used the right one to jab or support it.

Oli watched from the sidelines, sipping a glass of wine. He was a god that the Coalition’s more high-energy members would have loved – the god of thieves, rogues, parties, wine, and music. As it was, he reminded Storm greatly of her own uncle before his death – a regular drunk with commentary about how others picked and handled fights. Luckily, the comments were aimed at the war god rather than Storm herself. “Careful with the sword, Hei, remember that she’s mortal and not one of your paladins!”

Hei rolled his eyes as he blocked Storm’s cutlasses. “Did I really have to fall in love with this guy?” he muttered under his breath.

Storm laughed. “You two certainly are a pair.” She struck again, stabbing at Heironeous with her cutlass to try and get through his armor.

He blocked it again, of course. “We’ve been together for a century, and he’s certainly made it a notable one. But enough about us. Tell me more about this...Sophrosyne. So I can train you properly to deal with her.”

Her stomach churned, but she kept moving, darting around to strike and test Hei’s defenses. “She’s a planeswalker from Theros. The high priestess or champion or whatever of a sun god who died during the Phyrexian invasion.”

“Heliod’s chosen, then,” Heironeous identified, keeping up with her strikes as though it were nothing at all. He wasn’t even winded.

“Yeah. She attacked my ship under the cover of a storm – yes, haha, very funny, I can hear you over there Oli – with a small army of griffins, hit me with a divine spear, and kidnapped me. Her griffins broke my ship and stranded my crew.” It made Storm’s blood boil. She jabbed again with her left cutlass, only for it to be blocked. “When she kidnapped me, she did some weird mind magic that made a...part of myself that I’ve been ignoring into...I guess the dominant personality?”

“...That’s fucked up,” Oli said, the humor in his voice replaced by concern. “How are you feeling after all of that?”

“It took a bit of help, but I feel...okay now,” Storm settled on, blocking a retaliatory swipe of Hei’s longsword. “Acknowledging that part of myself has helped. But I’m terrified of her coming after me again, considering she tracked Tony down to his apartment to attack them.”

“Which explains why you sought us out to train,” Hei noted, using the back of his gauntlet to smack one of Storm’s cutlasses aside. “Her weapon is her patron’s spear? Or the spear of some other god?”

“Her patron’s,” Storm clarified, swinging around to kick Hei in the back of the knee. The war god humored her and followed through the motion to stumble forward, but blocked her cutlasses again. “She’s better at fighting with a spear than Tony is, and Tony hasn’t been able to get the drop on her for some reason.”

“A god’s power does not wane just because they are gone.” Hei blocked and retaliated once more. Storm avoided the blade, not even being grazed by it. “They are still gods. They still represent their domain, even when someone new takes it from them. It is why-” He paused for a moment, as if worried about sharing something he shouldn’t. “...Well. Much to do with our home involves gods that die and return.”

“So how do I deal with a mad priest?” Storm’s cutlass bounced off of Hei’s invulnerable skin, but it was still a scored strike. “One who is still getting favoritism from her dead patron?”

“There are a few routes,” Hei answered, ducking under Storm’s next swing. He was surprisingly mobile in full plate. The benefits of spending several millennia wearing it, Storm assumed. “The first is to gain the favor of another god. But then you become a conduit for a larger theological slapfight.”

“Especially on a plane like Theros,” Oli added. “Mind your right foot.”

Storm pivoted so she didn’t trip over the rock behind her. “Thanks, Oli!”

“Divine aid is often the best route for these things, even if you do not become a priest or cleric of another god, but you could also go in the opposite direction – denying the power of gods to an extent where their power fizzles out against you. I believe my half-brother referred to it as ‘weaponized atheism’?”

As hilarious as that would be, Storm knew that it wasn’t realistic. It wasn’t that she denied the power of the gods; she was fascinated by various religions, even with the Church of Dusk having run her mother’s family out of Torrezon when the Free Cities finally fell. The atrocities commit by religious institutions did not shake her fascination with how religion impacted people’s lives.

“What are the other options?” she asked as she dodged out of the way of Hei’s sword as he went back on the offensive.

Oli spoke next. “She’s mortal, right?”

“As far as we know, yeah. Human.”

The rogue god pondered this. “Then use an antimagic field of some sort, make sure she doesn’t stab you with her spear, and run her through.”

“A what field?” Storm faltered for a moment from confusion and had to quickly dodge Hei’s longsword.

“Are those...not common elsewhere?”

“No! I’ve never heard of that! You mean there are fields of grass that stop magic?”

“Not a field as in plains,” Hei clarified, dropping back into defense as Storm took her turn lashing out with her blades. “Field as in area. An antimagic field creates an orb where no magic can happen inside nor enter, and obviously not exit.”

“Then you just have to worry about the fact that she has a spear and obviously has no qualms about hurting you,” Oli added. “But it’s less stress than trying to prepare for that sort of fight plus any potential magic.”

Storm thought about that as she tried to land more hits on Hei. “How do I get one?”

“There are objects from our home plane that can activate temporary ones,” Hei revealed as he caught her cutlasses with his longsword again. He brought up his knee to catch Storm in the stomach.

She took the blow and wheezed as she stumbled back to get space. It took her a moment to catch her breath again. Once she did, she slid out of the way of a longsword strike and caught Hei in the back on her way past, her cutlass bouncing off of his armor but still counting. “What will I owe ya for one?” she asked, her mind already racing with what she could possibly offer two gods in return.

Hei lowered his blade and glanced at Oli. Oli just raised his glass, still somehow full of wine. He probably had some divine magic that made sure it would never run out. “Once she’s dead, raise a drink in our honor. That’s it.”

Storm blinked a few times. It sounded too easy. “Are you sure?”

“You have a distaste for senseless violence and you have been wronged. It is only right that we assist in righting this injustice,” Hei said, sheathing his longsword to signal the end of their training. “While it’s often a lot more complicated than ‘just murder the problem’, this is a refreshingly straightforward case.”

She took a deep breath and sheathed her own cutlasses. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Both of you.”

Hei offered her a smile. “It isn’t a problem at all, Captain Storm. We’ll provide what support we can, but ultimately, this is your fight.”

Her fight. Storm could work with that.

[living-historian]

[Compiler’s note: this entry is from the same recollections of a former planeswalker who has been working with the Living Historian to record information about many planes now that the Omenpaths are open. The following is also from an entry on the plane of Odithis.]

I was invited to the lair of my friend Lohiarm’s mom. She’s a frost dragon, they’re very different from the ryuu. They look more like lizards with bat wings, kind of like...ah, here we go, I’ve got a picture. Like this. Anyway, his mom is named Reeka the Victorious because she’s apparently never lost a one-on-one battle with anyone. Her lair at the time was very, very south, but frost dragons migrate from the north pole to the south pole and back again according to which one has winter at any given point. Malaar – one of the cities I mentioned – is apparently one of her favorite spots to pause during migration. Because of this migration pattern, frost dragons don’t have hoards and generally have thicker hides and scales than other Odithian dragons. They’re also smaller than other dragons, but Reeka is an outlier because her grandfather is a copper dragon instead of a frost. Most frost dragons are twenty feet tall, but Reeka’s roughly at thirty instead.

Anyway, that’s to explain why I was surprised to see a settlement of various peoples not too far from her cave. Lohiarm told me that his mom liked helping people, so the ones around her lair usually hung around to help her in turn, considering how many fights she gets into. Even if she usually wins, that doesn’t mean she gets away unscathed, you know? It’s apparently an independent settlement from the nearby kingdoms because no one really wants to get into an argument with a big frost dragon. Other parts of the plane have deals with individual dragons and people to have “dragonriders” but that’s pretty uncommon around the south pole. I spent most of my time in the village with Lohiarm. Everyone in the village recognized him, and he told me that it’s because he usually migrates alongside his mom when he’s not adventuring with our party.

Apparently Reeka had a new clutch of eggs, which Lohiarm took well despite...well, it’s not my business to talk about that. But he seemed excited to be an older brother. Odithian dragon eggs apparently take three whole years to hatch, and frost dragon eggs must be kept well below freezing the entire time. There was a healer in the village, Doctor Sears, who dealt with care for the various species of peoples along with helping Reeka monitor the eggs who was more than happy to tell me more. They’re incredibly knowledgeable about frost dragons.

Once I finished talking to the people in the village, Lohiarm led me through more snow and ice to get to the cave so he could talk to his mom. The cave was smaller than you’d think for a dragon of Reeka’s size and easily defended from the inside. People from the village only got to make it to the first chamber after a lot of intense climbing through and over rocks and ice. I’m not too proud to admit that I almost ate shit during that. I’m definitely going to bring some actual rock climbing equipment next time, that’s for sure. I don’t know if this was a cave that was always like this, if Reeka dug it, or if she found it and bolstered it. But we made it to the first chamber and Lohiarm chirped to get his mom’s attention.

She was just as terrifying as the tales said, considering I didn’t even hear her move – and that’s coming from me – but she also looked... I guess the best way to express it is to compare it to us. She really did look like an exhausted mother. She took on a human guise to talk to us, like some kami do. Talking to her was pretty eye-opening. She’s over nine hundred years old and remembers those years with insane clarity. Her paternal grandparents were some of the first dragons on the plane, and her father taught ice magic to the first mortals of Odithis. It was like standing before a kodama in a way.

I didn’t bother her for too long, since she had a clutch of eggs to get back to. Lohiarm went with her to meet his siblings before they hatched. Even with freshly-laid dragon eggs, Odithian dragons can make noises like chirps. They develop quickly and are nearly self-sufficient upon hatching, they just need to learn flight and hunting at that point. They even pick their own names before they even get out. Usually these are names from draconic mythology and history, stories told by the parent dragons to the eggs during that three-year pre-hatching period.

Thankfully, the rest of our weeklong stay in the village was just as uneventful, and Lohiarm and I headed back north towards Malaar without issue. I think I’ll be going back at some point, maybe when the eggs are closer to hatching if Lohiarm invites me. I’ve got a few other records from that trip laying around, I’ll get those to you guys to compile and store.

[Game used: In The Dragon’s Lair by tybarbary.itch.io]

[tales-of-thyrsus]

Lerandor's Locksmithery

Location: Malaar, Eromoore, Odithis

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

Ah, I missed adventuring so much. And I also missed coming to Lerandor's. In addition to offering locksmithing services in the city of Malaar, he also sells lockpicking tools for adventurers, rogues, thieves, ne'er-do-wells, and people who repeatedly lock themselves out of their homes on accident.

I first came across this place eight years ago, when I first arrived in Odithis during winter break at Strixhaven. Inquiring within about getting the aid of an adventurer who could pick locks is how I met Lohiarm Valkea, who is now one of my dear mortal friends.

Upon returning to Malaar recently, I was delighted to find that Lerandor's is still open! This time, I inquired about learning the tricks of picking locks myself, and Lerandor as more than happy to train me in all of the most common adventuring locks.

If you are ever in the area and in need of a locksmith or lockpicking tools, please stop by. Lerandor is a master of his trade.

[tales-of-thyrsus]

There are divine realms on some planes but not others. Regardless of its presence, however, I've noticed that unless you are welcomed, you cannot just make your way to it even if you have access to another plane's divine realm. From my own experiences, despite being of Thyrsus's divine realm and being welcome in Theros's, I cannot access the divine realm connected to Odithis, nor can I enter the spirit realm of Kamigawa.

[living-historian]

[Compiler’s note: this entry is from the journal of Mr. V, the owner for a diner that has opened up near my workplace in Kamigawa. He was polite enough to donate an entire book about his experiences in establishing a diner on the plane of Odithis to add to our information on that plane. He’s also shared his thoughts about opening a branch in Towashi to share an outsider’s perspective on our home later in the same work.]

Lain and I decided to open a diner together with the funds we’ve gotten from centuries upon centuries of adventuring. Not like we need the money for much else, considering I’ve achieved lichdom and he’s a demon himself. Everything we’ve set out to accomplish, up to and including our preferred kinds of pseudo-immortality, has been done. So we bought out an existing tavern and began to renovate it. We wound up making it more open and keeping the cooking stations visible for the patrons, so they wouldn’t be as worried about what was going on with their food. And then we had to get a food inspector in! I tell you, it’s a good thing I’ve enchanted all of my shirts to prevent me from decaying more, or else we’d be out of business from that alone. We also figured out that various parts of the building shifted and moved randomly. They never disappeared, but it makes it a little difficult to navigate when it’s late and you’re tired.

Now it is just the two of us working. I handle the grilling and cooking, Lain handles the baking, everything is made in-house. Ingredients are stored in secure boxes and fridges to prevent pests, and we use magic to... Okay, it probably would be easier to just use magic to keep the temperature right and prevent decay, but unfortunately I forgot most of the simple magic I know so instead I just freeze time on the ingredients and then let it resume when it’s time to make it into a meal. Lain and I will spend time before opening working on prep and sharing quiet moments before we get busy, like we do after closing. I am such a lucky man to have him in my life.

Some of our most notable customers have been the quiet, stranger things of Odithis. Entities that enter the building as one body and leave as several, other undead who miss the tastes of life (coming up with a good recipe for blood smoothies for our vampiric customers was one of the highlights of my early career), and the occasional very lost adventurer. Most customers like to talk to someone with experience in the odder parts of life. Others want to have a quiet place to escape for a little while. And some are trying to change themselves.

I also moved my entire library into the back. Some patrons know it’s there and ask about it. Some of them need the information from within it. For example, say that there’s an adventurer wanting to know about otherworldly battles like the ones that the demons rage against each other. They can even ask for the information in a particular form, and I probably have it. Like...a screenplay or theatrical work. And while I’m looking for examples of that, I will also find other works that might help, like information on destroying or banishing otherworldly beings or how they can alter the fortunes of mortals.

Not a lot of people asked about that. And my personal library obviously isn’t limitless. But it also does not always let a seeker in. Sometimes I think the collective knowledge is wiser than I am.

[Games used: The Diner Out of Time by mystic-mushroom-press.itch.io & The Athenaeum by raelina.itch.io]

[living-historian]

[Compiler’s note: this entry is from the recollections of a former planeswalker who has been working with the Living Historian to record information about many planes now that the Omenpaths are open. The following is from an entry on the plane of Odithis.]

Odithis is a plane that never stays the same – quite literally. Outside of the few cities, the terrain shifts and changes, generating new things that were always there. One of the things I often did before losing my spark was head to its biggest city, Malaar, and pick up odd jobs for adventuring. Being in mortal danger in a ruin you could possibly never escape from is great stress relief compared to everything here in Kamigawa. Don’t give me that look.

Point is, I’m familiar with the place. During my most recent visit last autumn – its seasonal patterns follow ours but are more intense, it’s pretty interesting – there had been a nasty drought through the summer, so everything was still very dry and crunchy. I exited the planeswalk next to my favorite quest board near the edge of the city. It’s basically right there against the wall protecting the outer farms from whatever chaotic magic. Sometimes the people leaving requests also leave other gifts for adventurers – that’s what we’re called when we take on quests and head into the wilder spaces. I found a book in the little magically-waterproof box next to the board and decided to take on the quest attached to it. It was a new-old book about some ruins with some strange magical murals in it, and the requester wanted records of the murals themselves. It seemed like it was pretty easy, so I didn’t contact my usual adventuring party and just headed out.

It took a bit to confirm where the hell I was supposed to go. The ruins were absolutely overgrown with plants. It looked like it was just more forest before I stubbed my toe on a foundational brick. I wasn’t really sure what to expect in there, since plenty of people and monsters and animals move into ruins that seem more...space-time stable. It smelled like mildew and I could hear running water, which was strange given the whole drought thing, but also confirmed that someone or something had moved in, because shelter and running water in one is great when you’re roughing it beyond the cities.

I’ll skip the boring bits where I just snuck around empty rooms and copied carvings and drawings on the walls. Here, I still have a copy, you guys can store this in the Odithis section when you get done with it. But I did find a group of mages who were casting spells on each other to practice in one of the bigger rooms. I still have no idea why they decided to do it in a ruin in the middle of nowhere instead of in Malaar, given that they have training yards for these things that everyone can use, but that’s their business and not mine.

I also studied enough of the carvings to figure out that it was originally a building of dwarven make. Based on the fact that I couldn’t find anything that resembled historical Odithis dwarven living quarters, I’m pretty sure it was a building for political figures to work in rather than for anyone to live in. If I had looked around the area more, I’m pretty sure I would have found some residential ruins. But that’s a job for somebody else, not for me.

...That is the weirdest part of how Odithis works outside of cities. The constant generation of new ancient history, I mean. Like, did those people actually exist chronologically? Or did they only exist retroactively to fill out the ruins that would have been empty otherwise? I have no fucking clue. I think trying to be an archaeologist on that plane is a fucking nightmare.

[Game used: Transported by heatherblack.itch.io]