First Letter to Nysali

Your Grace,
 
The pieces are all coming together. You don’t know what I mean by that, and that’s not gonna change right away, because I won’t be sending this letter any time soon. BUT! Some day, when it’s all done, I’ll show this to you and you’ll see how far back I had it all planned and you’ll be like, “Truly, Xylund, you are the shit.” Probably not in those exact words.
 
See, my original plan wasn’t ambitious enough. Before I met you, it was just a money-making scheme, a way to squeeze some coin out of this world-saving, uh, malarkey (no offence). Get Gayle to transcribe and eventually dramatize our epic adventures while in the background I’d be designing some kind of mechanical contraption to produce identical copies of the same written page, much faster than your traditional monk with his ink and quill. I hadn’t decided on the name… maybe the Monkinator, since it’d be rendering monks obsolete. But anyway, we’d print out thousands of copies of our adventures and, assuming they were exciting and well-written enough, overnight we’d be competing with the holiest of holy texts for the attention of the masses and becoming multimillionaires in the process.
 
It started off as these self-evidently absurd, drug-induced schemes usually do, with me throwing myself into it more as a distraction than out of a sincere belief that I’d carry it to completion. Almost as a mocking commentary on the flimsiness of plans. But then the deal with Gayle actually worked out and suddenly I was responsible for him, and then I met you and you kinda turned me around on the whole Chosen Hero thing (or at least convinced me that you believed it), and suddenly it was all very real.
 
And it occurred to me that I could do more with this idea than I’d originally thought. The thing about battling Chaos is that you’re never gonna win. For one thing, it’s everywhere, in everyone, and for another, it’s a concept, meaning that even when you’ve stamped out its obvious signs it’s still there, lurking in the hearts of men. So you can’t kill it with a sword, no matter how many necks you free from the burden of their concept-carrying brains. But maybe you can kill it with words, by attacking it where it lives, in the realm of ideas. And what better weapon in that fight is there than you, heroically shouldering the burden of the Seven Sisters no matter how much pain they cause you, wandering tormented and waif-like and alone through the haunted halls of Caeracht, blond hair trailing behind you like the tail of a silent, moonlit comet… all for the sake of preserving order, for the sake of Greyloch.
 
And also, by holding you up as an inspirational example, perhaps we could destigmatize magic, at least a little. Not just in Greyloch but all over Iyith. Show people that it’s a tool like any other. A dangerous tool, sure, but capable of great good in the right hands. Hands like yours. How many wars would be prevented if a greedy aristocrat could no longer simply point at his neighbour and accuse him of magic-usage whenever he coveted his lands? How many mage-hunting mercenary bands could we put out of work? Damn, Nysali, it’d be the tits rad.
 
Great goat-buggering Grennan, I’m starting to sound like Davynn. Where is Whitfeld anyway? Is it one of your holdings? If it is, you’re probably not taxing them enough on their thriving export of potato people.
 
So anyway, that’s what the plan morphed into. But even that wasn’t ambitious enough.
 
Because the problem is that words on a page are still just words on a page. I mean, I read about you before I met you and while I certainly admired you, the experience couldn’t even come close to that of actually standing in your aura. And we must present our counter-argument to Chaos in the strongest possible terms if it is to take root in the minds of the ignorant and unwashed.
 
I was in Camp Venelis, talking to naked Meriel and then General Meda, trying to learn as much as I could about the road ahead, when it hit me. See, the area around Dawn Lake is crazy with wild magic zones… which I’m assuming you already knew when you sent us there? So I’m not too worried about that. But in these wild magic zones live these beings known as the Glamoured. They come from the Other Side (“other side of what?” I asked; shrug said Meriel) and they take the form of super elves, fey as fuck, although in reality they could be bug people for all anyone knows because their appearance is an illusion, a projection. (The elves believe that they come from the same homeland as the Glamoured though, so does that mean that elves are half-bug? I’ll ask Annie when she gets back.) They’re loopy as loons, these Glamoured, with weird obsessive tics, and it’s generally bad news if you run into one, if only because they see all other creatures as lesser beings. But! General Meda met a nice one who was really into kitschy beer steins, so they’re not all bad.
 
In addition! As I’m sure you’re aware, the wizard you sent us to meet in the middle of Dawn Lake is a gnome named Knavac, a renowned if reclusive inventor and maker of mechanical marvels… who despises humans. Maybe Ulric can whip up a disguise to offset that disadvantage. Didn’t work out so well in Lorholt though, so maybe not. Either way, it seems significant and fortuitous that I’m about to meet someone who could potentially help me toward my goal purely by chance, doesn’t it? I mean, I have utmost faith in your prophetic visions and all, but are you sure that this plan of mine isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing? Sure, I’ll save the world too, if it’s on the way… but a stronger whiff of destiny seems to be coming from my stuff than your prophecy stuff at the moment. Just saying.
 
So get this, your Grace: how about, instead of a Monkinator, a Glamaratus!
 
Step 1) Convince Knavac to aid me in devising an apparatus that can capture and record illusions, or at least get him to set me on the path to figuring out how to make one for myself.
 
Step 2) Make contact with one of those rare, benevolent Glamoured and befriend them, perhaps with the aid of the drugs I bummed from General Meda.
 
Step 3) Save the world, or at least have exciting adventures in that general direction.
 
Step 4) Turn Gayle’s notes on our adventures into a series of epic dramas, in which you will be figured prominently, as our guiding beacon.
 
Step 5) Have the friendly Glamoured bring our dramas to life with an illusion which both exceeds the practical limitations of all other stage productions and bypasses the usual necessity of dealing with thespians and their messy proclivities.
 
Step 6) Record the illusion in the Glamaratus.
 
Step 7) Profit! After a series of showings in Greyloch, I imagine the public’s response will be such that we’ll have enough money to produce more Glamarati for anyone with the coin to buy them, and we’ll throw in our dramas free of charge. There might still be a place for our written Monkinations among the educated, but people of all classes and creeds will be clamouring to see our Glammies. Of course, the mass-produced Glamarati will have to be stripped of their ability to record illusions so that we can retain control of our message and it isn’t buried under an avalanche of amateur porn.
 
Step 8) Celebrate the first true victory over Chaos in the history of Iyith.
 
That’s how we’ll change the world.
 
One small problem: Gayle. Not only is he exceedingly fragile, his nerves just don’t seem up to the world-saving task-at-hand. Neither were mine, at first, but I’d rather he didn’t learn the same coping mechanisms I did. I feel… ugh, feelings. I’d just rather he didn’t. Ulric has the gift of gab, maybe he’d make a better dramatist anyway. Although I’d prefer it if our Glammies had at least some passing familiarity with the truth.
 
I’m risking a lot here, by bringing Gayle along. It could go very wrong. Yeah, from the outside this looks a lot like one of those hare-brained schemes that brought my dad low. But it’s not. I don’t know how I know that, but I do. It’s different. This means something. I see the path ahead, so clear, leading into the light…. One foot in front of the other. Step, swing, step, swing, as the sarge used to say. Until all your obstacles are dead.
 
Yours,
 
Xylund