Mysticism/Forbidden Journal

The Forbidden Journal of the Demon Prince

The travelling journal of the Demon Prince from D’Hara to Balance’s Retreat

Entering the Desert of Silhouettes

Having become a rogue shunned from my long time island home and outcast from my only dream I wander. For so long I sought to find sanctuary in the city of Sallowtown away from the intersections of noble society. It was there that I always believed I would find strength and comfort.

The desert beside the city attracted me greatly from its isolation and remoteness. No one desires the empty sand; no one except me. Many wrote it off as an unproductive weight where only fools would gather. I am no fool and they are incorrect. There is an old saying that applies to my frame of mind, modified of course, and it is this: “it is better to reign in the desert than to serve in the garden.”

Finally, now, after being tossed out again I experience the full depth of the desert. The last time I had visited this great majestic canvas I dared not venture too far in. Presently I have no choice but to thrust directly across to the mountains. The danger is paramount and the will depleting rapidly, but with no other direction the Black Army and I have no other course.

Somewhere Deep in the Desert

It has come to me in the night! Perhaps a dream, perhaps not, but the visit was profound! Whether by innate awareness or by transcendent gift I have realized an ultimate truth and it was unimaginable. The desert is inhabited by a divinity. One ancient and powerful, patient and observant, it, like the Great Dragon before, has visited me. It has no form, only a voice. This was an animistic god I was dealing with. With no introduction it spoke to me as clear as you would if we had met in person and it said this,

“Demon, once again you are cast out of nobility. My peer Sallow chose you to be the deliverer of his Sallowsians and you have failed. Now that you are in my hands what should be done to you? Justice or remission?”

Terrified I replied,

“I confess to you whoever you are that I have abused my ordained duty and failed the Great Dragon Sallow. If you wish to capture me and deliver me to Sallow I will not resist. The Mandate of Sallowtown was stolen from me by the worst vermin, a betrayer and a –“

It interrupted.

“Forget Sallow, he does not leave his Mandate in the city. You have entered my domain. You are now in my desert. Now that you are here you will learn that no one may leave without permission. My desert is unforgiving and perilous. So how should I receive you, as one who is incapable of fulfilling another deity’s wish, or, as one who has the potential to improve and succeed?”

“What are you asking of me?”

“There are very few who choose to visit this land. After the terrible wars that plagued the Principate caused its collapse my realm has been empty. I require worshippers to maintain strength and dominance. Without followers my enemies are likely to overtake me. The ancient tribes of this land have dwindled and weakened. They are no longer desirables. But the newcomers from the other lands, immigrants like yourself and your peers, they are fertile! Reveal me to them, bring them to my fold and you shall be granted your greatest wish, sanctuary.”

“How can I do that? I am no prophet, nor do I have the prominence with these people to even earn an audience.”

“Are you not a scholar? Use your powers of intellect to educate. They will listen if you teach them properly.”

“I cannot, I have already failed Great Sallow. I am useless to you.”

“Then you shall never leave my desert!”

There and then the sands of the desert rose up around me drowning me inside my tent. My eyes were stung and my mouth was filled and I could not make any call for help. The incredible rush consumed me to near death and just before I suffocated the deity released. It had shown me its power, flexed its muscles, and convinced me to fulfill its demands. It required believers.

Departing the Desert

After that night I was confounded by this unusual experience. This was the second time in my cursed life I had interacted with living gods. The God of the Desert met with me and told me its wishes. It had given me instructions and its commandments and said that to follow it would be to practice these tenets. I realized fast that this god was very competitive and vain. Apparently it is desperate to defeat its opposing divinities, whatever they may be. Before it left me it said to quote what it was to say next to the nobility of Dwilight. It then spoke the Divine Speech.

The Divine Speech of the God of the Desert:

You shall worship no other god but me.

You shall live for my glory.

You shall die for my entertainment.

You shall obey my will and my designs.

Rulers who worship me will gain my Impenetrable Shield of Sand to protect their realm, but the source of the shield will only come from building temples. The more built the stronger the shield will be.

Praying to me will grant you a place in my desert after you die. This place is made of riches and pleasure and you will be treated exquisitely.

I am the God of the Desert and I have powers unmatchable. What you desire shall be yours through me.

After accepting the Divine Speech from the God of the Desert the Black Army and I finally reached the Divide Mountains. We had come up to the base of the West Divide. Tired and weak, we pushed on.

The Summit of the West Divide

Reaching the top brought the worst cold we felt yet. The journey up was difficult and very demanding on our bodies. We had thought to rest when we reached the top to regain a little strength but the extremity of the weather decided for us that we must descend as fast as possible. Otherwise we would likely die of frostbite or worse.

Before we began our descent, unexpectedly and most shockingly, I was visited by another deity. This one was the God of the Mountains. It was another incorporeal voice. I am beginning to question my sanity. Either I have completely succumbed to the control of the demon and this is its way of tormenting me or I have an extraordinary destiny.

This time, I was not so terrified or supplicant.

The god spoke,

“Demon! Entering my domain will lead to your doom! I know of your failure to Sallow and your visit with the Desert God, but I shall not be so hospitable or commercial.”

I had no patience for pomp so I spoke with resentment.

“Go ahead and smite me if you wish, you know I cannot stop you. Why must all of you gods be so proud of yourselves?!”

“Silence! How dare you snip with me! Beware my anger!”

“What can you do worse than what has already happened to me?”

The voice spoke nil for a short period, then rose up again.

“So you have found emptiness? I know such a feeling.”

A god with feelings, I thought? The demon had for sure overtaken my entire soul. But the voice continued.

“Demon, do you know what it is to be divine? To have unlimited power and unending days? Some would do anything to possess our traits, yet many of us feel trapped. Though we are not bound to the laws and codes of the natural world and are completely free from your unfortunate condition, the supernatural realm comes with its own rules and regulations. ”

“Would you like to switch?”

“You are in the presence of a god! How dare you jest with me you irreverent futile creature! You petty mimic!”

While the God of the Desert was self-absorbed to the point of vanity, this one was pent up with suppressed emotions. Since the night was meeting its mid point and the cold was growing ever penetrating, I decided to cease my charisma and let the god have its words. Then maybe I could finally leave the mountain and feel the warm sun. The god continued, what I heard at first made me roll my eyes thinking ‘Not another one, the gods of this part of the continent must be very lonely.’ But then, the Divine Tragedy almost convinced me in this gods favour. The God of the Mountains spoke.

“It has been so long since I have expressed myself to worshippers. I am a passionate being who requires fanatical followers. Only they have the emotion to satisfy my craving for sympathy. They are the ripest and therefore the best to bring me strength. I know all about your quest for the God of the Desert and I want you to renege on it. Instead of accomplishing its task I want you to complete mine. You are to reveal my existence to your noble peers and make them worship me with devotion. They must sympathize for my lonely plight and build many temples devoted to me.”

The God of the Mountains then explained its Divine Tragedy.

“I was once a greater god worshipped in many domains, but my brothers became jealous and ganged up on me. I told them that there were enough people to share between all of us, but they had already decided to defeat me. With all my power I fought against my three brothers, killing two and eternally crippling the other. He sunk into the sea. My heart was broken in half at the conclusion of that epic war and I wept as no god had ever done before. An ocean of time passed and my crippled brother plotted against me. When his day had come he rose up with an army of lesser gods and demons and attacked the people of my realms. Destroying them left me powerless to defend myself against his onslaught. My heaven was besieged and I was overthrown. I lost my form then and with what little power I had left I secured this small domain and became the God of the Mountains. After my brother took power his underlings rebelled against him and murdered him, scattering his parts all over Dwilight. They were insufficiently divine to run the realms I united, and their territories separated. Many of them collapsed back into oblivion, but the few who had strength remained gods of certain domains, always competing with each other and always looking to finally end me. How sad and tragic. I am a god of the old times trapped to rule over these meager mountains until I regain enough worshippers to overpower those imitations. The God of the Desert is one of them and that is why you must not obey him.”

Intriguing, but unlikely. It must be that this god was so bored with these mountains that it convinced itself that it was once mighty and powerful and now sunk because of the other gods. I asked what I must do for it and it told me to bring the nobles its story and this tenet.

The Tenet of the God of the Mountians:

“Worship me with devotion, passion and commitment, build my temples all over your realms and I shall reward you with divinity after your human life ends by means of a recommendation. This recommendation will place you in the Hierarchy of the Gods, a gift unlike anything ever offered to your kind before.”

I had heard of gods giving humans fire, medicine, or even immortality but never had one offered divinity. The God of the Mountains must be more desperate than the God of the Desert. I accepted its Divine Tragedy and Tenet and told it that I would do all I could. It thanked me and the voice ceased.

Balance’s Retreat

The journey down the mountain was as trying as going up and all the while my mind was heavy with the commands of those gods. Who was I to be their messengers? I am the Demon of Dwilight, an outcast and a rogue. I was already tasked with one god’s demands and I failed miserably. It must only be that these two gods have no other to approach for their goals except me, how pathetic for them. Now against my wishes, I have been forced to become the Herald of the Old Gods. How am I to explain to the nobles that the lands about them are divine? If the desert and the mountains are gods, what else? For my sake I beg that the rest leave me alone. It is bad enough to have three gods visit me and demand I participate in their agendas I would very much wish to never have another. Like weights on my shoulders they are! Has this demon brought a curse on me? Is it a curse that enables me to visibly witness the gods? I am certain the Black Army heard none of my conversations with those gods so the voices can only be audible to my soul. Maybe since the demon ruined my life in Fissoa it thought to repay me somehow with this unnatural ability. I wish I was able to communicate with it to find out its true intent for me. For now, I am merely at the mercy of its grasp.

Thankfully, here in this wonderfully quiet castle I find the time to write all of this down. This place suits me very well, perhaps even better than Sallowtown? It is far more remote and isolated and the strength of its fortification is impressive. Though I am still broken over being banished from D’Hara, perhaps there is hope for my dream yet. Perhaps this castle can become my sanctuary. In time, I shall take this retreat for my own. This I pledge to myself.

Update

While I was filling in this journal in this very tent, all the unusual things that happened to me during this journey became second nature as I was once again visited by a god! A fourth one in my life! This time was the strangest of all. This god claimed to be the castle itself. It told me that it was a very powerful god that had reign over the emotion discovery. I shook my head, since my journey had desensitized me to all the bogus claims of the supernatural. But, as I wished to continue through the mountains, I decided to let the deity speak.

What was said next was more than I expected. Instead of demanding from me a task or quest, instead of requiring me to find worshippers for it, it revealed to me the order of the universe.

After it finished speaking I was stunned. Absolutely paralyzed by what I learned. All of this I immediately began recording. The entire universe was ordered similarly to our own. Rather, our society mimicked the order of the Gods. The Castle told me that the gods I already spoke with were competitors in the Hierarchy of Gods and wished for me to do their dirty work so they could challenge the hierarchy and climb higher. It told me that the God of the Mountains was a Formless Dominion God and the God of the Desert was a Formless Mandate God. It itself was a Formed Transcendent God. Of course none of this makes much sense to you, but when you read the appendix of this journal you will understand the profundity of what I have been given. Whereas the gods I met earlier have given me tasks that serve them, this castle has given me an entire religion to share.

I asked why it was telling me all of this, since it was revealing incredible truths that no ordinary human should learn, especially one as fractured and cursed as I, and it replied thusly.

“I am the God of Discovery, and since I am formed I have a name. It is Bamaluu. You have met me on your travels and I have shared truth with you. Did you know these things yesterday? No? So through me you have discovered them today. There is no reason for me to restrict truth from you. I am merely living as I am supposed to. I am simply being what I am.”

My demon has either completely knocked my sanity over the cliff, or I have “discovered” the absolute religion. What I will do with it I have yet to determine. I can only hope my noble peers are as open minded and willing as I was forced to be, otherwise all of this will seem like nonsense to them.

Appendix of the Forbidden Journal

Bowie Ironsides,

Summer of 8 YD