Ester is an Idiot: The Saga

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Ester is an Idiot: The Saga

Post by Paint » Sun Aug 29, 2021 6:52 pm

I think this book is in enough places IG that it's worth throwing up here for easier reading for anyone that wants to not have to shift through something like twenty individual notes crammed into a notebook. A bit of preamble before I get into this though:

Esterhaven's been a blast to play. Honestly, just one of the best roleplay experiences I've had anywhere. I've tried to give back wherever I could, and I hope I can keep making Ester the kind of character that people want to play with, and who can give others a reason for RP, no matter how big or small.

After the first real leg of RP on arelith with Ester, the poor girl was sent through a whirlwind of stress and anxiety, death, loss, and coping with her own inadequacy. As a ranger, Ester was somewhat nonchalant, a bit of a chest-beater -- though she'd openly admit how big of a coward she is when it comes to big scary things like dragons -- and far too overconfident. If she thought she could sink an arrow into something, by the gods above she would.

I shelved her for about... a month? I want to say? Both because I was getting exhausted with playing her, and because I wanted to do some other roleplay with another character who was a very fun experiment! I had plans for Ester to come back as a Shaman, because I thought going from Ranger to Shaman would be a pretty natural development for her specifically. I wanted a reason to sink my teeth into that roleplay, rather than just wear the class as a skin. This short book I belted out in a single afternoon and wrote from the perspective of someone who is -definitely- not a writer is a culmination of months of RP with friends and foes alike. I had to push myself out of my comfort zone to seek people out, trust Ester's 'story' to others, and intentionally, tried to roleplay with people I hadn't before. Sometimes it went somewhere, sometimes it didn't, but overall, I think it was very fun. So thanks to everyone involved in Ester's dumb life.

As I've said elsewhere, I'm planning on giving the poor girl a break from drama, so while she'll be around, and while this book -does- have several plothooks in it, I'm not going to be pushing anything forward myself for now. Uh. And now with all of that rambling aside, enjoy?

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Ester is an Idiot: The Saga

Prelude -- Ester's Vacation Leads To Inadequacy Issues:

A couple of years ago Kithara's mayorship was crumbling, the Dale was in disarray, and honestly, now that I think on it, it was probably -not- the best time for me to take a vacation, but I went on one anyway. I went to the Chondalwood, met with some Ghostwise kin who thought I was mocking them and nearly killed me before we managed to break bread, then traveled to Luiren to explore a heritage I've long since been separated from, became instantly enamored with the skill of the slingers there, and decided to end my journey by going up to Taan, by way of a passage through Mulhorand. The caravan I was travelling with was waylaid by bandits in a narrow canyon pass. Though we fended off the bandits, a rockslide was triggered from the fighting. It nearly killed me, and I was caught in the rocks for -some time- before I was finally rescued. Though the healers did their best to mend my wounds, it left me with permanent damage.

I had left a contingency with Nathaniel Brightburst in the event that something happened to me on my trip, and I had hoped not to use it. Still, I contacted him, and he managed to pluck me from halfway across Toril back to a secret location we had agreed upon where I recovered until I was well enough to return to Arelith. I feel like maybe, I should've taken more time to recover.

Instead of taking it slow and trying my best to work with my loss of strength and agility, I pushed the ritualistic magics I relied upon so consistently when I was a tracker and a ranger to their absolute limits -- then past those limits. I need you, the reader, to understand that I was a hin superstitious of magics that were more powerful or flashy than what I considered to be casual tricks. So when I suddenly start flinging lightning bolts and summoning primal elementals from beyond the material plane, I need you to know that it was unsettling for me, and yet -despite- being in this territory, I kept pushing for more power so that I could, in my mind, defend Bendir Dale.

Part 1 -- Ester Learns Divining the Hard Way:
I remember the first time I realized I could 'see' people's auras, I was sitting on a bench in the middle of Bendir Dale as usual when Jacob Kannelwind -- I think that's his name -- shows up. A nimbus of blue light is coiled up atop his head, and nobody can see it besides me. I rub my eyes a few times, then eventually work up the courage to ask anyone else if they were seeing it. To which, Jacob finally smiled and replied, 'Oh that thing? I don't know what it's about, but it looks like you're a diviner.' Me. A diviner. Ester, town drunk, massive whinger, constant grump. No, no, no. That can't be right.

BUT IT WAS VERY RIGHT.

I learned how right it was, because over the next few weeks, whenever I went to any location where there was a lot of trauma -- like Benwick -- I could feel it, see it, experience it, and hate every second of it. I've tried to put into words exactly what it's like, and I still don't know if I can, but it's a constant, unending stream of overloaded emotional information that has degraded over time -- echoes of echoes of echoes of trapped grief, anxiety, and impotent rage. I had constant migraines, drank clarity potions regularly just to shut out the noise, and eventually, struggled to think straight at all. It made me irritable, less willing to compromise, and more importantly, more quick to violence.

I sought out professional help at least, and that help came in the form of a diviner named Caenfyddel. He was stiff, a bit cold, and a little unrelenting. He imparted to me one specific rule about magic and insisted that I internalize it before he would teach me how to control my divining properly: Any time we use magic for anything, it changes us too. Unfortunately, I didn't internalize it enough; I kept backsliding by going places filled with negativity that I really shouldn't. Those places included, but were not limited to: The Shadow Plane, Benwick, The Eternal Battlefield, and perhaps worst of all, Cordor.

Part 2 -- The First Time Ester Briefly Becomes a Dangerous Lunatic:
This came to a head one night after an Andunorian attack. I went to the cave of the mound to cool off atop the cave itself. Later, Biam and Adora showed up to see how I was doing. I tried to keep myself together so they wouldn't have to deal with my nonsense, but eventually I snapped. Biam must've seen something in my eyes, because before I could strike her, she cast a lesser mind blank at me from a scroll. I calmed down enough after that to tell her to go and get help if she could, because I wasn't myself. I also sent a wisp to Bash to tell him that he might have to drag me off the hill that night with a few Hawk'in.

It never came to that because Nathaniel, Myzzrin, and Tove all showed up, saw me losing my mind on top of this cave, and after I made it clear that I was going to hurt anyone that came close to me, they did the logical thing and came close to me. It's a good thing it was Nate that approached me because I love him and he's one of my favorite people. After diagnosing me using the usual metrics, they decided that I had ghostbrains and that my divination powers were wildly out of control and needed a stop-gap measure until I could properly handle them.

The plan had two parts: Firstly, Nate was to 'blind' my 'third eye' for a while with a powerful illusion ward that would essentially render it impossible for me to read my own divinings. Secondly, Myzzrin and Tove were to lead a ritual that would allow Myzzrin to guide me through my own mind, in which we could carve out a space where I could 'place' future sensory information from my divination -- a sort of compartment that would allow me to remain more objective about what I was experiencing. Everything seemed to work smoothly on the surface, but nothing worked smoothly at all, there were serious consequences, and in hindsight, it probably would've been best if I had been knocked unconscious and observed more carefully.

Part 3 -- Everything is Fine:
Merry finds out about what's been going on, and I'm pretty sure it caused her blood pressure to rise briefly, because as I had explained what had transpired, she told me everyone was -insane-, the stopgap in my head would inevitably fail and I'd be overwhelmed by a torrential flood of information -- which is true -- and that if I was going to find a way to control any of this, the stopgap had to be removed. So, with a bit of anxiousness I followed Merry down to a loud waterfall, where, after a short exchange and some magical chicanery, she removed the stopgap while guiding me through a bit of meditation involving, first, ignoring everything and listening only to the waterfall, and then secondly, ignoring the waterfall, and thinking about pie and my favorite place to be while loudly and badly screaming an old hinnish drinking song. (Afterwards, Merry put a hand on my shoulder and told me I didn't have to sing out loud, which did hurt my pride a bit.) The point of all of this was to be able to find a bit of ground in a proverbial sea of noise. It's a surprisingly effective technique, and I still use it to this day whenever I feel lost.

For a while, everything seemed to be going pretty alright. I just sort of got used to the new, raw, aching feeling in the back of my skull, did more practice with Caenfyddel, and stayed on top of my divining senses as much as I could. I still occasionally had to chug a clarity potion to stave off the effects of my out of control divining nonsense, but hey! At least nothing strange was happening anymore, and I was becoming more competent with my newfound magics.

Part 4 -- NOTHING IS FINE:
The night of one of Biam's first performances over at The Clover, I blacked out for about six hours. I went up to do some work in Guldorand by the bridge of thieves, then poof. Nothing. When I 'came to,' I was fully warded in the middle of the eternal battlefield in Minmir, flanked by skeletons, colossal bone golems, and zombies on all sides. I must've torn through a good hundred of those skeletons before I finally had a moment of respite -- I wish that was an exaggeration. I limped away, then through Minmir, back towards the Nexus Falls, came home to Bendir in bewilderment, then freshened up and got ready for Biam's performance.

I arrived early, tried to strike up a conversation with Joaquin, and found myself speaking exclusively in the Sylvan tongue -- why? I don't know. I tried to -stop- and I couldn't. I eventually contacted Caenfyddel by way of speedy to let him know that something was wrong, and he threw a mind blank at me -- at a certain point it's becoming clear that mind blanks fix a lot of problems -- and I could suddenly speak the good old common tongue once more. Until the mind blank wore off. I 'recovered' my voice eventually after a few hours.

...I think that night also involved some ancient mushroom wine and some mild hallucinogenics, but I'm not entirely sure? Actually, that one might've been Leandre's farewell performance.

Part 5 -- Alexandre:
Anyways, I come back to Bendir after a lot of nonsense that night and I return to the Hawk's Nest to have a drink. Enter Alexandre. As I'm upstairs doing a bit of small business and chores, he comes up to me, asks me about the Dale and a bit of its history, and I'm fairly happy to oblige. He says he's new to the isle and he's been trying to take it all in. So, we go downstairs, he offers me a bottle of absinthe, and we begin to natter on for a while. We talk mostly about boring government things involving Bendir Dale for a while -- and shut up, government things -are- boring. Necessary, but boring. Then however, he discusses a bit of his history as a mage from Cormyr. About how he was given a sort of magic that he never really wanted, because he'd rather have been a knight. Unfortunately, he just sort of lacked the physical prowess for it, and his sorcery demanded he learn to bring it to heel. An interesting reflection of my own problems, right?

I explain to him the problems I've been having and just what I've been trying to do about them, and we get to talking about solutions. Alexandre assures me he knows a few techniques that could allow me to fully 'embrace' that divining power of mine without getting myself killed doing it, or being overwhelmed to the point of no return. He insists that if my friends are trying to keep me from embracing that, that maybe I need to get better friends. Rude! But at the time I was very drunk, so I just shrugged it off. Maybe I shouldn't have. The conversation ends with me telling him I'd consider the options he'd presented to me, and both of us agreeing to keep quiet about it.

Part 6 -- Aesyvaari is a Snitch:
Caen was well aware that my 'blacking out' incidents couldn't just be ignored, as I had at least one other more minor blackout incident. So eventually, Caenfyddel takes me back to his apartment in a location I won't disclose because I'm half-convinced it's now haunted, and performs a ritual to summon to the surface anything that might be 'haunting' me. I don't remember this part, so I'm going to let Aesyvaari take over:

Hello. Firstly, I am indeed a snitch, and secondly, Ester deserves to be snitched on. If you have read this far, I am sure you're capable of gleaning as much. My first meeting with Caenfyddel was adversarial, but only because I was convinced that as soon as he laid eyes on me, he was going to try to kill me. After all, I was seen as an outsider and an invader. It'd only be natural for him to purge me from the adorable hin before I could do any harm to her. Instead, he was rather calm, all things considered. I awoke in a powerful binding circle, called my staff to me, and told Caenfyddel in a soft voice that if he had wished to speak to me, he could have said so. Caenfyddel was initially convinced I was indeed a spirit that had possessed Ester for my own ends -- somewhat true, I suppose. I told him truthfully that I was the part of Ester that had been mangled by her out of control divining, and that I had been protecting her, for the most part, from its negative effects. Finally, that I wished only to live, and that I would do what was necessary to continue existing.

I also warned him that there was something Esterhaven was hiding from everyone. I, however, did not know what, because despite being aware of -most- things, for some reason, I could not sense Alexandre. I suspect this is because Ester was fairly adamant about keeping it secret. The only clues I had were a left-over bottle of absinthe and a repeated phrase; 'Hypnotism.' It was enough, I had hoped, to give Caenfyddel a fair start in investigating.

Part 7 -- Aesyvaari and Ester Fight For Dominance Like Wild Animals:
I'm being a little dramatic there. I'm not sure Aes ever really wanted to fight with me at all, but for a while, I was -convinced- that's what was going on. She was stealing portions of my life, the blackouts were mounting, and I'd lose hours, sometimes days at a time with nothing to show for it. Sometimes my bank account would have -more- money in it, sometimes less. Occasionally, I'd wake up with new bruises, and other times, I'd wake up with new clothes. Look, in a similar situation, you'd be pretty terrified too, right? I told people I just wanted her out of me, wanted to go back to my own life, and wanted all of this nonsense to end. Then, I told people that she wasn't real, she was just some weird part of me that needed to be fixed, and that 'killing' her was more like waking up from a bad dream than it was hurting anything or anyone.

It turns out that not only was I wrong about that, but that the ritual that Myzzrin and Tove led and guided me through actually, thanks to the -source- of my magic, led me to alter the makeup of my own soul rather than my mind. Or to be more blunt, I ripped my soul near in half, quite by accident, and blocked the other half off from the rest of me. The half that dealt with all of my divination was subjected to constant torment. As Aesyvaari put it, consider a hand grasping a block of clay. Except the hand was myriad spirits and the clay was half of my soul. She is the relief left over from those many impacts, slowly congealing over time into something sentient and conscious.

Apparently, one night after I had told people that Aesyvaari wasn't real, she cried for a very long time against Caenfyddel. I know this, because Caenfyddel came to me and told me that I was behaving like a monster. It took some convincing for me to come around to it, but after Caen assured me that she wanted out of me just as much as I wanted her out, I decided that I could suffer her for a while.

Part 8 -- Meriam's Blood Pressure Briefly Rises Once Again:
I had a habit of telling Meriam terrible news for a while and I guess this was no exception. This was around the time she had misplaced her glasses, so she was walking around Bendir wearing a blindfold -- literally. Surprisingly, she was really canny without her sense of sight, too. I explained everything that had happened recently to her, she was convinced that Aesyvaari was to me as Sherry, her sister, was to her. And in a lot of respects, that's true? The difference is, Aes and I want to separate. Meriam's still not really happy about that. Anyways, Meriam understood the need for us to communicate sooner rather than later at exactly the same time that Caen did, and both of them rushed to help create a solution for that.

Meriam's solution was a mirror whose location I can't disclose because it is not only a beautiful thing, but also an artifact of terrifying power that should probably be destroyed soon. Caenfyddel's solution involved hallucinogenics and a pretty intense ritual. So anyways, I went with both solutions. I managed to have a brief, strange, half-chat with Aesyvaari with the mirror, and then officially 'met' her and 'saw' her when Caenfyddel led his ritual. The end result of both things was that Aesyvaari promised to keep me abreast of anything she was doing by way of notebook until we could figure out a way to allow us to speak to one another more fluidly.

Part 9 -- Dangerous Surgery Allows Us to Speak to One Another More Fluidly:
Aesyvaari here, again. The ethical and moral implications of someone worsening their own dissonance to save something that had been created as a pure accident are worth considering when reading over this. However, I implore you to read on with an open mind. I did not choose to come into existence, but I do choose to exist, and I would like to continue to. Should I be denied that choice because of the nature of my being? I do not believe so. We went to Caenfyddel one night, and I told him that I did feel myself starting to slip, lose cohesion, as it were. He seemed not only to be prepared for this, but had seen it coming for a while. While our ultimate goal remains separation, until a solution that will not significantly risk killing either of us has been discovered, we are content to remain together and work in... relative harmony.

Caen performed a surgery on us. The details of which I cannot discuss, as revealing them may put Esterhaven in danger in the future. Needless to say, after a rather long process, Caenfyddel handed us a charm and explained to us the results of the surgery: Firstly, that a measure of 'transmutative magic' had been inlaid in us which would allow us to 'shift' between one another more easily. This ended my dominance over Esterhaven, sadly, but it was a necessary step. Secondly, by using a simple divination spell such as, 'See Invisibility,' we would be able to experience what whichever one of us was in control was doing. Essentially, allowing Esterhaven to see what was happening when I was in control. No more blackouts. Mostly. Finally, Esterhaven's soul was again slightly altered, 'establishing' me, and entrenching our nature as a dualistic being. For better or for worse, it is no longer possible for our two halves to ever entirely merge. No matter how close we become, we will exist this way until we are separated entirely.

Part 10 -- Alexandre Again:
Months after I had spoken with him the first time, I received a speedy from Alexandre. To be honest, I had been eager to speak with him again both because he was very kind to me the first time we had talked, and secondly, because I was happy to let him know that I'd found a balance with myself. For some reason, I never thought it was important to bring up Aesyvaari to Alexandre during that chance meeting -- maybe I was protecting her? I don't know. But as we spoke in the hawk's nest once more, we got back on the subject of my magics and my control of them. Alexandre insisted that he had found a solution that would allow me, finally, to cut loose and explore my magic and divining senses more intuitively and fully without going berserk.

When I had told him that doing that would kill me, so I didn't want to try anymore, he told me that was a little frustrating because he had spent a long time searching for a solution and that him and his friends had traveled all the way to baator itself to slay a mighty devil who was guarding an ancient ruby, and that a few of his friends had died in the process. I didn't really know how to internalize that information at the time. And I suppose that was the point, because as he kept handing me absinthe, we continued to speak, and he described the artifact as an amulet that allowed one's mind, body, and soul, to act in perfect synchronization, the artifact became more and more appealing to me. And to be honest, the idea of cutting myself off from control entirely and allowing my divining senses to go wild to the point of overwhelming me just so I could find purchase in that incredible chaos and understand something about how it functioned was very appealing to me.

Eventually, atop the cave of the mound, where our discussion had ended, he handed the amulet off to me. I hesitated briefly... then took it from him.

Part 11 -- The Eponymous Ester is an Idiot:
The amulet broke me. In a matter of a week or two, it had managed to worm its way into my brain, suppress Aesyvaari near entirely, and give me paranoid delusions. It altered my memory in order to preserve its own existence, often leaving large, brutish, foggy gaps in my days where any information revealing its insidious nature was kept from me. It encouraged hostility towards anyone who might be able to take it away from me, and it made it harder for me to tell what was and wasn't real. Surprisingly, however, the amulet had no effect on how I felt towards Minto. Maybe Minto's just really cool. Though, in hindsight, as I explained at least partially what had happened to Minto, he did tell me that he sensed a few things were off.

At some point during all of this, Aesyvaari used her waning control to rush a message to Caenfyddel, begging him to figure out what was wrong with me -- again -- before it was too late. I'm not going to describe the result of Aesyvaari's contact with Caen, because it still hurts to think about. Caen has somehow become like a father to me, and the fact that I hurt him in any capacity has darkened me. Though to be fair, this whole... chain of events has left me feeling more cynical and a little less like I deserve the praise and status I have been given. I'll beat myself up more later, though.

Part 12 -- Alexandre Again, Again:
I didn't remember what happened. It was all hazy for me at the time. I thought I had attacked Caen in a rage, trying to get away from him, escape from him. My stomach sank and I felt like I was being betrayed by the people closest to me, so I tried to fill in the gaps in my memory. When I was unable to retrace my steps, I started to speak with people I remember having spoken to recently to see if I couldn't get them to help me remember things. One of the people I contacted was Alexandre. We went to a secluded location once more and spoke.

Alexandre convinced me of a few things, not perhaps directly, but by leading my thoughts in a way he knew the amulet would encourage. He mentioned he saw Caen speaking with an abyssalist once -- I don't know if that's true -- about summoning a demon. He insisted that Myzzrin and Tove, though their will was good, were clearly just experimenting on me, and that their 'help' was just them manipulating me towards what they considered to be good. He described it as a selfish transaction. And the more that embedded in my head, the more I was convinced that half of Bendir Dale was in on a plot to destroy me. He, of course, told me he would help in any way he could.

Part 13 -- MATHIIIILDE:
Mathilde made my paranoia worse, but she was coming from a good place. I spoke with her because she was an outsider to this drama, and we went to her house to try to recover my memories. As I explained the situation to her, she said the real expert on memories around here was probably Myzzrin Brightburst, and she let the implication hang. That implication being that Myzzrin Brightburst might've been the one to seal my memories away. She admitted her own bias, but insisted that if I had attacked Caenfyddel in defense and some of my memory was missing, it would make sense that Myzzrin Brightburst could and would cover it up if I had 'saw too much.' Mathilde's efforts to recover my memory nearly killed me as the amulet protected itself by harming me the moment Mathilde tried to glean any information. Afterwards, Mathilde pointed me to Angela, and said that she would be speaking to Angela herself about me. I suspect that Mathilde noticed what the amulet really was and what it was doing to me. Still, the meeting gave me a lot of bad things to think about. And then, I was assured that there was nobody within the community I could trust.

Caenfyddel unfortunately ran into me in Bendir Dale later that day on an unrelated incident involving ominous pillars -- a report on that should be up on the board. I erupted. I told Caen I knew what he was up to, I told him I was going to find out exactly what he did to me, and when I did, I was going to hunt him down and kill him for trying to hurt me. I demanded he leave Bendir Dale and insisted if I saw him step foot inside the town again, I'd forcibly remove him. Myzzrin heard about this, and later that day, sent me a speedy, asking me to meet her in the hawk'in barracks. So, of course, I laid a trap for her, intending to kill her before she could kill me.

Part 14 -- Myzzrin Brightburst's Secret Weapon:
I wasn't expecting a pocket Itzal. So after having loaded a gonne and inscribing an elaborate ritual circle on the floor in the middle of the hawk'in barracks, warding myself to the gills, and preparing to confront Myzzrin for the first and the last time, when she came up into the barracks with Itzal in tow, I was uh, surprised to say the least. Myzzrin tried to convince me that I needed help and that she loved me and was here for me, and I told her that I knew she was sleeping with Theodor Helbrecht. I think maybe Mathilde implied that she knew a guy that knew a guy that said that? I told her that I knew that she had altered my memory and that I was trying to uncover those memories, and once I had proof that she did what she did, I was going to kill her.

Itzal suggested that we go ahead and recover my memory and Myzzrin said that was a great idea. To which I replied I was going to blow Myzzrin's head off if she did anything funny, and Itzal asked her to give us some space. She said she'd leave the room. I told her to go sit in the warded circle I had created to trap her. I think I made some threats at Itzal too. Instead of leaping right into the memory recollection, Itzal tried to lull me into a calm state by asking me to recollect things about my past which made me happy. I remember that one time I was riding on a specific dragon's back vividly. After a while, he tried to hand me a jade amulet and said it would go better with my look than my ruby amulet. I told him if he wants it so bad I guess I'll give it to him. Maybe his magic was working. I hesitated, didn't give it to him, then freaked out, then for reasons I still don't really understand, eventually, threw the amulet at him as hard as I could, immediately collapsing soon after. Lacerations split open all across my face, and I begged for the amulet back while I was in incredible pain, writhing on the ground.

Of course, he didn't oblige. Because why would he? No, instead, Itzal did the obvious thing.

Part 15 -- Itzal Mayar Sacrifices a Portion of His Soul:
Sigh.

Part 16 -- Ester Elaborates on That:
The amulet had bonded with me by that point. Meaning that for every moment I was out of contact with the amulet, it was going to do intense physical harm to me as a sort of withdrawal from its presence. It was going to quickly kill me unless I put it back on or the curse's effects could be lessened or redirected. Itzal revealed a doll, placed the amulet around its neck, then waited for a while. When the curse didn't 'redirect' to the doll, Itzal sighed, then, using some transmutative runes, literally plucked a portion of his own soul out and placed it within the doll, so that the curse would have some 'essence' to bond with. The entire time I was writhing on the floor, Myzzrin calmly, (Quiet within the warding circle she had broken within seconds of entering and fully capable of striking at any moment if she had desired.) had been working a spell to lessen my pain -- by sharing it with herself. By the end of the ritual, in order to spare my life, she was taking two thirds of the burden of my pain and had the cuts to show for it.

As the amulet's hold on me began to wane, my memories started to return in full. I remembered exactly what I had done to Caenfyddel and why -- and I am not going to tell you that unless you come find me and ask me very nicely. And everything I had said and done recently hit me hard. I realized how easily it was for me to become a monster the moment I had convinced myself that the world was against me. That Itzal would sacrifice a portion of himself to save me despite that. Well. I haven't quite felt the same since that incident.

Epilogue -- Ester Is Okay:
After being freed from the amulet, it became clear that the withdrawals weren't going to go away any time soon, and even as I pen this report, Minto Fuzzypaw has been keeping me alive by performing a daily healing therapy on me. Despite this, I'm feeling better, stronger, and a little more sober about my actions. This entire saga is the result of my inability to cope with my inadequacies and a desire for power to defend my home. My headstrong need to protect the people I love was weaponized against me repeatedly, sometimes by myself, and other times by outsiders like Alexandre. I can't necessarily say that I'm going to stop being who I am any time soon, but this has put a sobering perspective to my life and it demands that I try to be more cautious in the future and to seek these signs in others so that they don't have to go down the path that I did.

As for Alexandre, I haven't seen him since. I don't think he knows what happened, but Myzzrin, Caenfyddel, and several other sources have confirmed that his motives and mode of operation align with Theodor Helbrecht's, so it is entirely possible that Alexandre is an alias of Theodor Helbrecht.

Appendix A -- Alexandre's Description:
Alexandre described himself as a mage from Cormyr, whose great tragedy was that his brother was a knight which he himself wished to be more like, but could not, since his sorcery demanded his attention, and his body was too frail to undertake the rigors of knighthood. I also believe their father might've passed, but I'm not 100% on recollecting that. He is a rather thin human male who wears rich reds and is seen with a red-capped staff. He is always completely covered from head to toe. I never did see his face. Aside from his curious appreciation for an assortment of absinthes, I don't know much else about him, so unfortunately, I can't tell you much more than that. However, a simple cross-reference with our information on Theodor Helbrecht suggests that Alexander is indeed Theodor. This information has not been confirmed, but even if Alexandre isn't Theodor, he did eagerly hand a cursed artifact over to me, and should he be found, he should be brought into custody and made to explain himself.

Appendix B -- Aesyvaari's Amendment:
I forced Ester to put this in. Or, at the least, insisted on it. I came from a rather dire place of fear, confusion, and rage. These were the first three emotions I experienced, and the only emotions I experienced for what seemed like forever. And in that space, it was an act of kindness and acceptance that allowed me to truly exist. Were it not for Caenfyddel's patience with me, likely, I would have become a more antagonistic force in Esterhaven's life. After all, it would have been easy to dismiss me as an aberration, and many probably would have. Though I said as much earlier, I wanted to stress -- really stress -- that kindness in its essence, can touch many souls, and save many from their darkness. And while it is easy to be burned for it, it is always worth it for the ones you can save.

Appendix C -- Esterhaven's Magic:
Something not entirely explained within the contents of the 'story' of this report is just what my 'magic' is. As most would describe me, though the name is a bit odd, I am a 'shaman.' However, shaman is a loosely described and even more loosely understood term. Though my magic is divine, it is natural, and though it is natural, I'm not strictly beholden to natural forces. I just have to keep a connection to the natural world.

But that doesn't explain the 'how.' The how is a little more disturbing, and provides a lot of insight into why my 'divination' ability spiraled so wildly out of control so quickly. In order to gain new magics and cast more powerful spells, I sought out patterns, half-truths, and natural words of power in Sylvan in an almost intuitive, subconscious way. I didn't even know I was doing it for the longest time. To me, it just seemed as though I was drawing upon a well, seeking deeper for more powerful magics. As I continued to seek more knowledges in this way, I divined more and more from the natural world around me, and the spirits that existed therein. And for everything I intuited in this way, I had to allow a spirit to touch me, in a sense. To leave a mark on me. As Caenfyddel says, magic changes us, after all. The more I divined, the more adept at divining I became. But because I didn't work to control it, it overwhelmed me.

Another shaman I spoke with regularly before he seemed to disappear, Zinjo, told me he had a similar problem with the spirits, and that he routinely drank himself to sleep every night to avoid the nightmares.

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I hope you enjoyed reading this! And if not, I hope this provides a more handy reference for any information you might need for this or that if this book becomes relevant to any going-ons.

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