3 Wikkri, 143CZ

I'm really not sure if this is going to be more of a journal or a draft of my thesis, so I guess I should warn the future me that she's going to have to get ready for some aggressive editing before she submits this to the Doseogwan Academicians' Board - or, more than likely, I should sympathize with this being yet another failed project and congratulate her on the courage required to take this doomed, dusty manuscript off the shelf and look it over again. I know I really shouldn't start out with such negativity, but anyone who's been through the academic ringer should appreciate my cynicism. Everything I thought was impressive enough to be presented to the Board was met with either the revelation that the question had been asked and thoroughly investigated before, or nobody bothered to look at a manuscript presented by a half-elven Senan-e nobody. So yes, I'm a bit jaded at this point, and I hope you can forgive me some caution as I start this journey.

You see, this is kind of my last gasp. My name is Yunha - I come from Senan, where academia isn't really anyone's priority, but I spent a lot of my more recent life in Gyohai, the seat of Ji-laani academic knowledge. I'm really not even certain how I got into Doseogwan, much less into the highly esteemed history department, and all I can really say is I must be better at lying than I ever thought possible. Meima always said I stuttered horribly when I lied, but apparently that quirk didn't extend to fooling incredibly genius people into thinking I was smart enough to get into their institution. I didn't even have to grease any palms.

Ugh, definitely cut this part out, future me. I hope you got better at not rambling.

Anyway, during my time at Doseogwan, I specialized in history. However faulty my credentials may have been at the start, I've certainly made up for it in the hours of study I did in those lofty towers. I've gone over and over the details of the Ravening War until I was sick, and I'm fairly certain I could list each major battle of the Serpent Wars in order in my sleep. Much more than that, I've delved into the causal relationships between different factors and war, but ultimately that's not my passion. On the contrary, I'd much rather look into how wars end. In particular, I look for the patterns of hope and compassion that lead to the cessation of conflict, which is harder than simply looking at which tactical decisions put which side at an advantage in the end. Looking at numbers of casualties and assets is easy, but finding the undercurrents of mutual compassion is hard. It requires fieldwork, and honestly, I've always loved fieldwork far more than any of my peers. There's nothing quite like going out and finding your sources firsthand. Plus, it gets really boring in the towers back home. Books don't make great company when you've read most of them.

So yeah, I've taken on one hell of a project with fieldwork in spades. It's not sponsored. I don't have a grant. I have a few gold to my name and a whole continent to travel, somehow. My last thesis was supposed to be what propelled me into academic fame, but it had a different name on it by the time it made it to the Board. I'm still a nobody because someone took my work and called it their own. This time, I'll make sure I hand it to the Board myself, but there's a lot of work to do first. Which leads me to what that work is, I suppose.

During my time at Doseogwan Archives, specifically while I was going over historical firsthand accounts, something caught my eye. A figure with a specific description was recurring over and over in these often fragmented or poorly transcribed accounts of historical events. This wouldn't have been surprising, but for the fact that they appeared across impossibly large gaps in history and through several different cultures. The description was always of a humanoid male, always described as handsome and heroic with golden hair and eyes, though he otherwise seemed unremarkable in dress and manner until later in the accounts. All not unusual traits, not even when the more fantastical parts of the tales are considered. Some are more like myths than factual accounts, and heroes often find themselves gifted magical abilities when they enter the annals of history and legend. However, a human figure should feature prominently in human legends, not those of the Kali dragonfolk. But he does. A mythical human hero shouldn't recur over a period of centuries of global history, yet this one does.

I want to know why this figure seems so out of place. I want to hear his stories so I can piece together exactly what he is, and perhaps even find him. If I can prove the existence of an immortal heroic figure, it will be just the boost my academic career needs. Unfortunately, the accounts found in the Doseogwan Archives were poorly translated at best and scorched nearly to oblivion at worst. I had a word with the Archival Preservation Department, but that's not the point. The point is, they didn't have enough information for me to construct my thesis, so I've gone elsewhere.

I told the Academy I was going on sabbatical and managed to snag a cheap caravan headed north. The passes were a slog - our wagons kept losing wheels and needing repairs, and it turns out the quartermaster didn't order nearly enough food for the animals - but we made it to my destination after a few grueling months of travel that should have taken easily half the time. Enough about those idiots though.

I suppose I should mention my destination is the Mekla Sands, the one patch of hospitable terrain in the center of the Sandscar. I mean, it's still a desert, but at least it isn't filled with zombies or weather that's actively trying to kill you like the other regions around it. Despite all that, Mektara is absolutely beautiful. It's the first city founded by artificial life-forms, magical constructs called warforged created during the Serpent Wars, and while it definitely shows that they have no need for any form of sustenance, Mektaran citizens have gone out of their way to make their home welcoming to outsiders. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't shocked by their friendliness, but most of all their depth of emotion. I was expecting to be greeted by soulless golems, but everyone I've spoken to has been more than happy to chat just like another human. I will say it's incredibly lucky that I can transcribe so fast, because some of my new friends speak at a rapid pace. Their lack of traditional physiology makes for a fascinating rate of speech, in some cases.

Now I'm really getting off topic. I'm going to need some top notch editing later, I suppose. Anyway, it's time for the most exciting part of this entry. Through diligent and sometimes awkward questioning of the locals, I've finally found someone who has not only had a first-hand encounter with this mysterious hero figure, but is willing to recount it to me. His name is Chapoli and he's a mektli - a name for warforged that were created by the Coztlitl Empire. Mektli creep me out a bit, but maybe that's just because I've never liked snakes that much. At least Chapoli is more humanoid than some of them, no snake tail or anything like some of the yuan-ti. He's considered young by warforged standards, since he was made just a few years before the rebellion in New Coztlinacan that freed his people from slavery under their creators. He said the encounter happened during his escape, so I imagine there will be some heroics involved. The path from New Coztlinacan to Mektara is exceedingly dangerous, I'm told.

I'm going to limber up my hand for my meeting with him this evening. I can't wait to hear his story.

Tale of Chapoli, transcribed by Yunha Cheng-yo, 3 Wikkri, 143CZ:

Where do I even start? I guess you might want to know a little context about my life before the rebellion. You asked earlier if I had any memory of it or the wars, and I meant what I said. I'm not a warrior, not by a long-shot. Sure, I was built by a coztlicutli, but I wasn't meant to be a bodyguard, and the wars were over by the time I was made. I'm not even sure why I was constructed - my best guess is that Lord Tomican collected some extra tribute money that year and had nothing else to throw it away on. Commissioning a mektli servant wasn't exactly cheap, I'm told, so he certainly could have hired someone else to do my job for much less.

All things considered, I wasn't treated badly. I was an errand boy, so I wasn't really in the temple all that much to begin with, and mektli with a job like mine didn't look anyone else in the eye, let alone speak to them or get scolded. I didn't even see Lord Tomican regularly, since he'd apparently appointed one of his harem to be a foreman of sorts for me and the other mektli in the Temple. I mostly carried messages to the other temples and picked up specialty orders - usually my master's latest fixation that he'd forget about in a few days after spending inordinate amounts of money on it. It was a job, that's all. It really wasn't even stressful - most of the merchants ignored me, all they wanted was proof of my position as liaison for Lord Tomican and once they had it, I either delivered or retrieved whatever it was I was there for and left. I don't remember ever feeling anything more than the slight apprehension that I was going to be late and displease my master, whose temper was legendary among his harem and other subordinates. Then I remember feeling strange that I, well, felt anything at all.

I guess that's the thing about us though - warforged, I mean. At first, all we feel is the most fleeting of emotions. Apprehension was my first, from what I can recall. Maybe some satisfaction when I was praised by someone who didn't share the common belief that mektli were beneath their notice. I thought it was just me for the longest time, and when my emotions and thoughts started getting more independent and complex, I honestly thought something was wrong with me. It didn't help that my amber heart has a crack in it, and I became convinced that it was causing some terrible breakdown of the spell that had given me life.

 I think my superiors had started to notice my increasingly erratic behavior, but they didn't get much time to think about it before the rebellion happened. Yeah, I wasn't even that in the loop on the whole thing. I somehow managed to have so little contact with my own kind that I had no idea they were planning to attack our creators. One day, I was doing my job like normal and trying to figure out how I could fix whatever was going wrong with me, and the next the world turned into absolute chaos. I forget what I'd even been assigned to do that morning, but I never even got to start. By the time I reached the door, the attack had begun and there were soldiers marching through the streets as fires lit up the early morning sky across the city.

From the temple pavilion I could see everything. I remember standing there in shock as flames flickered to life and lines of torches took to the streets as the guards and Ivory Truce mobilized against the threat. I honestly thought that the insurrection was attacking, since that was the only threat I'd heard of that could worry the Empire. But it turns out it was just other disgruntled and mistreated mektli all over the Empire rising up against their masters. I learned later what kind of conditions most of my kind worked under, and I felt awful about my initial thoughts on the situation. I thought they were overreacting, but when your creators are literally dismantling you while you can still feel it for disobeying orders, well...

I somehow didn't feel fear at the time, though. Maybe I hadn't become complex enough to really understand the danger I was in, but either way I did run. I stayed so infuriatingly rational at the time, and seeing other mektli leaving the city in droves apparently informed me that I should be doing the same. I resolved to follow them, but most were either running erratically through the streets to evade the guards or actively engaged in the rebels' plans - what I later learned was largely the raid on the Steamflow Union workshops. I ended up running from guards that were convinced all of us were working together and seemed unwilling to listen to my insistence otherwise.

Thankfully my job prepared me for such an occasion more than even I realized at the time. It didn't take long for me to find my way out of the city through the back alleys and side streets I had used many a time to cut my travel time from place to place. However, once I stepped through the magical barrier surrounding the city and into the soft mud and brackish water of the marsh, my expertise ended.

That's when I felt fear for the first time.

It's an awful experience, feeling fear with no other physiological responses. It was like my thoughts started scrambling themselves all at once as my eyes darted from tree to river to brush. I had no experience or knowledge of the world beyond New Coztlinacan, the city was all I had ever known. Stone ziggurats, wooden pipework, and gilded streets were my world, not this soft, squishy, thrumming bog. Even so, I started forward into the unknown, and I think it's really just dumb luck that I didn't wander right into the mouth of a predator and die. It was definitely dumb luck that I was going west instead of east, I can't imagine what I would have done if I had walked all the way to the ocean instead of here. It's a good thing I don't need food or water like your kind do, or I would have almost certainly died because of my own ineptitude.

Don't ask me how, but I managed to avoid the natural dangers of the steam marsh until I got to the western border. I didn't even stumble into the Still Vigil, which is giant. Maybe the strange friend I met would have something to do with that, though I'm not sure how he would have. I don't remember seeing any weird signs or hearing any voices. There wasn't much to see or hear besides dull brown-green muck and the dull buzzing and hissing of the swamp around me. I definitely know mektli can't die of boredom now, I guess, because it really was boring when I wasn't feeling that awful scrambling fear in my head and chest.

I think I'd entered a sort of fugue state by the time I wandered into the Stillbog, because I don't know how else I could have missed one of those dead things stumbling toward me. Whatever the reason, one minute I was walking along and trying not to trip, and the next I was splashing furiously in the hot muck being pummeled by a thing that smelled ten times worse than a rotting corpse - and trust me, hot stagnant swamp air makes corpses smell really, really rank.

Now, sometimes humans and other fleshy people ask me and mine whether we can feel pain. My answer to that is: probably not in the way you're thinking. I can't really say for sure, but from descriptions I've heard, when I'm hit it doesn't exactly hurt. It's more like an awareness that my body has been damaged, like the limb or whatever has lost some range of motion. Being a mektli, sometimes damage causes an auditory sensation - when one of my pipes is damaged, it hisses. The closest thing I can think of to actual pain as I've heard it described is... well, it's when my amber core is damaged.

I only know this because this thing that had jumped on top of me, some mutilated, long-dead creature that was once a dragonborn, hammered me squarely in my chest and broke right through the sturdy tlitecua wood plate protecting my more delicate parts. From what I heard later during repairs, one of the larger splinters had made a new crack in my core - just a little one, but it hurt. It either hurt or it did something close enough to make me scream for the first time in my life. My limbs spasmed before I fought against it, pushing against its chest to try to heave it off of me. I'm stronger than my frame would physically permit were it not for my nature, but there's something to be said for the strength of something that isn't alive anymore and wants nothing more than to make you dead, too.

I think I would have died in that moment if it wasn't for him showing up. I remember feeling a brief flash of heat that came along with a blinding light that engulfed the creature on top of me. The pressure on top of me was suddenly gone, and instead I looked up into a face that I at first assumed was that of a male elf, though I quickly realized he was probably too clean to be any elf from the swamps. It took me far longer than I care to admit to realize he didn't have pointed ears at all.

He helped me up, though it was a slow process as my exterior had never been built for combat and it was badly damaged. He had me sit against a tree, saying little as he gently patched up what he could. He didn't really need to say anything - I knew he'd saved my life, and that's all I needed to know to let him do his work. He directed me sometimes, having me lift an arm or test my movements, but that was all. He actually asked if I was hungry or thirsty at the end, but I immediately saw a strange look on his face that I'd later learn was embarrassment. He apologized and smiled, asking me instead if I needed anything else.

It took me a long time to respond. I think I was still processing what had happened, and unscrambling my terrified thoughts. His presence was soothing, but emotions are difficult when you've only been wrestling with them for a couple of years. I finally managed to ask him if this was all there was to the world outside the city. I think I would have been crying if I had the ability. I'm sorry I didn't ask his name, it didn't occur to me to do so the whole time we traveled together.

He spoke soothingly and told me no. No, this wasn't all there was. He asked me if I wanted to hear about it, and I said yes. He sat me down with him at a campsite he'd made a few yards away, and I didn't even think to question why the dead simply walked past it the entire time we were there. It seemed perfectly right that such unclean creatures would avoid a space as soothing as what this man created around him. Instead of oppressive heat, I just felt warm and safe. Comforted. It was a fine ambience for the wondrous stories he told me.

Oh, the things he described were magical. He told me about places where water fell from the sky as cold white flakes that piled on the ground in great blankets of brilliance. He told me about places of flat, open space dried by the sun but beautiful in their simplicity. He told me about a rolling desert filled with sand that was soft and not wet. So much and more he told me about the world beyond, and I remember being filled with what I would learn was a burning desire to see it all. I asked him where I should go first, and he simply said he could take me somewhere safe - somewhere that I could be properly repaired - and then I could travel wherever I wanted.

Obviously, I agreed. It was still a long, hard journey, but such things are made easier when you have no need to rest, eat or drink. Strangely enough, I don't think I ever saw him do any of those things either. I didn't know enough to ask at that point - maybe he'd distracted me too much with his stories. It took us months, but it wasn't until the last few days that I started to feel that old apprehension creeping back in. At that point, I asked him what I would do when we got to this place. I had only ever had one job, a purpose given to me by the ones that had created me. I hadn't really thought about what I would do now, and the thought scared me. I had been literally constructed to do my master's bidding, and now I had no orders. No purpose.

He smiled in that gentle way he always did when I asked such things. He spoke much like I've heard mothers speak to their children, though I have no experience in that sort of relationship. It was appropriate, I guess - I really was nothing more than a child just figuring out how feelings and free will work. He said I could make my own purpose now. I asked him how, and he shrugged. He said I had to figure that out for myself, but I had all the time in the world to do it. First, he told me to worry about getting fixed up, and the rest would come. He paused for a second, though, and the words he said next have stuck with me.

"Don't let someone else define you. No matter who they are, they aren't you - they can't read your thoughts or feelings beyond what you show them on your face. Your will is your own and nobody should ever take that away from you. What you do with your life? It's yours."

I didn't know why he said it until later. I wanted to ask him, but I remember looking away for just a moment and he was gone. Simply gone. No noise, no light - just gone. I made it to Mektara, or really the ramshackle beginnings of it, all on my own by picking through the sands following the campfires on the horizon. The sense of belonging I felt almost instantly as I was swarmed by mektli eager to help a poor broken kin was the most amazing thing I've ever experienced. The repair process was less so, but it was necessary. If I kept moving around like I had with the damage as bad as it was... well, let's just say the medic scolded me pretty harshly for it.

Yes, Mektara is a good place - a place where I belong. Sometimes the councils disagree, especially in the beginning when one or two people kept thinking they knew what was best for all of us, but I think we've been making our way all right for a nation so young. I helped stand up to one of those people early on, the ones that started getting authoritarian. I remembered what my strange friend had said, and I knew he had been preparing me for something like that. A self-proclaimed leader was standing up and trying to tell everyone how to live their lives, and I didn't like it one bit. We have councils for a reason, and I think all of us are determined to make it stay that way. Everyone deserves a voice, and they get it under our system. Anyone's allowed on the floor. There are no kings here - no offense, of course, I'm sure your human king is nice.

Anyway, I wouldn't have made it here if it wasn't for him. I'm not sure if he realized how important his guidance was to me. I wish I could thank him, but I just comfort myself with the thought that he's probably busy helping someone else who needs it. He gave me what I needed already, and I couldn't be more grateful for this chance to live. The chance to be me.

This is an absolutely amazing first entry to my manuscript, if I must say so myself. I had questions, of course, and had a little chat with him afterwards to clarify a few things about his story. For brevity, I didn't copy our whole conversation - instead, I will provide summaries of my findings obtained through research performed over the next week.

First, I had several contextual questions that I also performed followup on. Most notably, Chapoli served a coztlicutli - a lord of one of the seven great temples of New Coztlinacan, structures that directly control their religion, government, and societal functions. Lord Tomican is the coztlicutli of wealth, an official in charge of what sounds like tax collection and banking. The man himself is known as a hot tempered, vain and somewhat stupid person that spends money possibly skimmed from taxpayers on the most frivolous of purchases. I'll file his purchase of a several hundred platinum magical servant, such as a mektli, for errand work any poor waif could do as evidence to those claims. Chapoli's very sweet, though, so I'm glad he wasted his money. I also find the mention of a harem interesting, especially since evidence from my research supports the idea that harems serve not only an entertainment function but a functional one in the clergy of New Coztlinacan. Those not in the coztlicutli's favor perform oversight for other servants in the temple, like the one that gave Chapoli his orders, which I find fascinating.

I also looked into several of the organizations Chapoli named in his account. Firstly, the Ivory Truce sounds like a sort of law enforcement and judicial religious branch that worships a god subservient to the prime god of the Empire. As such, it is unsurprising that they were joining the nation's army in the defense of the city during the events of the rebellion. On the other hand, the insurrection he mentioned is the Acani Insurrection, a disorganized collection of elves that have staged several raids on the city in the effort to end the persecution of their people. To my dismay, I found that each and every one of these rebellions was summarily and easily quashed. Needless to say, I fully understand why my father got out of Coztlac at all costs. The third organization mentioned, the Steamflow Union, is one funded by the temples of New Coztlinacan that is responsible for inventing all of their infrastructure improvements, vehicles, weaponry, and the mektli themselves. The raid performed on their workshops during the rebellion targeted those labs that were core to the production of mektli. During this event the means of their creation were seized by rebel agents who subsequently fled the city before they could be caught. All other equipment for mektli construction and enchantment was destroyed and that wing is still under reconstruction today. Considering the treatment of mektli laborers appears to have been horrific at best, I can't blame them for being so thorough. I'm purposefully leaving out my research on that matter - there are other sources better suited for that kind of information than mine, and I might be sick all over again if I include it.

On the subject of mektli, I asked some questions of Chapoli and other warforged bystanders based on my own curiosity about their construction and psychology. It seems universally known that warforged are empty husks just after creation, but over time they become more and more independent and complex in mental acuity. Within a few years of their construction, they become indistinguishable from other sapient beings. This was not the intention of their creation, of course, especially in the case of mektli. The Empire was seeking to create obedient soldiers that would not feel fear or pain in the face of their enemies, so their sapience was an unwanted consequence that was somehow completely concealed by most of the rebels before the attack, which I commend them for. Additionally, from my research under a medic in Mektara I learned that the crack Chapoli had in his amber core, the focus of his animating enchantments, was of no consequence in his emotional development. Chapoli seemed uninterested in that information when I told him, and confused as to why I had gone to such lengths to get it. What can I say, I'm too curious sometimes.

The final contextual investigations I performed were on the locations in the swamps Chapoli mentioned and one unfamiliar term he used. Tlitecua is apparently the wood that coztlitl yuan-ti treat to create their pipework and the various plates for vehicular and mektli construction. It is a wood that when properly manufactured becomes as hard as steel and highly resistant to moisture and burning, which makes it perfectly suitable for its use in Coztlitl infrastructure. The Still Vigil is a huge military installation housing thousands of imperial troops on the border of Coztlac, and it is responsible for protecting the Empire from the threats of the Stillbog beyond it - itself the easternmost region of the Sandscar, a blighted place filled with poisonous fog and undead creatures that constantly shamble into the steam marsh, threatening the small settlements at the edge of the Empire's territory. The undead creature that attacked Chapoli while he was in the Stillbog was clearly a dragonborn reanimated by the vile magic of that place, though it's impossible to tell how old the corpse may have been.

My personal curiosity sated, it's time to move on to the academic subject of my work. I asked Chapoli for a better description of the figure, and with some difficulty he could recall that the man had golden hair and eyes, though he could remember little else - not surprising when his mental faculties were still so underdeveloped at the time. In fact, due to that very limitation of his memory, I cannot be sure if the figure's soothing presence, seemingly magical power, and apparent disregard for hunger, thirst, and exhaustion are due to actual supernatural abilities on his part or simply faulty memories of a young warforged with little experience of the outside world. It's also possible that the individual was simply a powerful spellcaster of some kind, either arcane or divine, though his vanishing act would suggest faulty memory, if anything. Perhaps Chapoli fought off the creature himself and his mind created a companion for him to help cope with his trauma during his escape? I simply don't know enough about warforged psychology - which sounds highly individualistic beyond the general timeframe of their development - to truly guess.

My final question to Chapoli was regarding his final statement. I asked him how certain he was that the figure was still out there helping people, and he replied with a vehement insistence I hadn't expected. He seemed completely convinced that this person was real and still performing good works in the world abroad. Now that I think about it, it is evidence for the figure's existence outside of Chapoli's imagination that he knew so much about the outside world, since Chapoli himself had absolutely none at the time and could not possibly have known such simple things as what snow or sand are.

I think this is a strong starting point, but I want to travel to some of the other warforged settlements to find any similar accounts. I'll need to be careful - Chapoli tells me the eastern cities aren't as welcoming to outsiders.