Sheaf of Veiled Sacrament Letters
Written in a cypher, but you've already cracked their code with previous intercepted messages. Some are in a feminine cursive in a dark ink (matching the remaining ink in the calligraphy kit also found in this room) and have a ragged edge across the top of the paper sheet. The others are in a thinner, more precise script and grey ink with a ragged edge on the bottom; none of the top or bottom tear lines match each other, so it must be that way for some other reason.
The letters are stacked in the following order from top to bottom, but it quickly becomes evident that the chronology is from bottom to top, with the oldest last and the most recent entry on top, creating a conversation of sorts.
I know you're probably not going to see this but if you do, send more money.
I see the clowns are still performing. Vellie, please, cancel the circus. It took years to put the restraints in place for Orcus and they won't work on some fake god from space that Ehleggi conveniently found - the gambling addict who can't find anything but the bottom of a whiskey barrel suddenly has the keys to the universe? You sound like an imbecile. Just come out here and take a break for a little while, I promise. I don't hate you, I'm not even angry with you. I left money for you with Calloway's friends under the foot of the Colossus. I didn't know who else we both knew that I could trust not to turn you in or kill you on sight other than Calloway, who's always been a trustworthy guy. Please take it and come up to his home town. Ask them if you can't remember which one. How do you forget the man that tattooed your pelvis? I'll have a message at Vole's Inn for you. Maybe the name of the bar means something to you. I can't contact you again, I'll be too far away and I'm going to make sure this driver meets his end as soon as he drops this off at the Opera House.
Who the fuck is Calloway? I'm not going anywhere, least of all to some dumpy town in the north. I'll tell you this much: Ehleggi left again to hold up his part of the deal, but the things he said to do before he left are working. An erased entity, something he said he learned from one of his wizards, an Atropal he called it that was drifting in the Astral plane. This is going to be better than anything Orcus could have done under our command anyway. You don't believe me, but it is.
You begged the angels to save you, and they didn't. So they didn't want to, or they didn't have the power to save you. I did bring you back, and together we spoiled father's plan - you remember it, don't you? Just you and me. Either way, Ythla hates you now, so I'm all you have left, like it or not. Stand down and come back to me. We can start over, all it costs us is time. Please be safe, I'm leaving the City for good and heading out to the country, Calloway finally got out of prison. His hometown is a great place to lay low for a few months. Or years. Nobody's coming here to look, or not very hard. There are a thousand grimy villages like this in Khazigur. A new patron? Vel - that's a really terrible idea. Stop being so stupid and come back to me. Of course you need me, look how fucked up everything has become since you went on your own - but you were never on your own, right? You can't hack it alone. You got mixed up with those artists, and let them fuck the whole thing from top to bottom. I'm going north with Calloway. Prove you aren't stupid, and you can find us easily. You can't do this by yourself.
You don't know shit about anything. Ehleggi came by for the first time in months and showed me a whole new patron, better than Orcus ever was going to be. He called it "The Work". I can't explain it here and the only reason I'm telling you is that I feel like I can't stop thinking about it. Also to get you to stop whining to me about how things were. How they - were - was father telling you to what to do and you jumping right in to do it, and then you and him bringing me back. You never disobeyed him, and I got myself free. I've never needed either of you for anything.
I don't know what you mean but of course you're angry. Of course I can't be trusted, but I'm not Garabil. Father's vision was so petty and small, and cost so much to gain so little. You and I had real dreams, Vellie. Big dreams, and we almost made it and it's my fault for trusting Kurotz. But come back and we can still be safe, if you can just ease down for five minutes and think this through. I've lived a life trying to save you, even if it can't make up for what Father made me do. Come back and we can be together again just like it used to be.
You'll be happy to know that the teams seem to be killing themselves without my help. I assume that's you doing it. I knew I couldn't trust you to let me be. Eventually I expect your lapdogs will be here to kill me, again. It won't be as easy as it was when I was four years old. Fuck them and fuck you.
Easy, sister. You died, but not for this; Father's plans were father's and I can only ask and beg for forgiveness a finite number of times. Don't be unfair. But you need to know that everything is worse than you think; I talked to our agent in Naratyr. Orcus has been toppled, Doresain has taken his Ghouls back to the White City to wait it out, Zariel has the Temple of No Gods, Lolth has taken the brothels and prisons, and Demogorgon is fighting the Unholy Cabinet and all takers. Graz'zt evidently kidnapped the gardener, even. It was madness before, but this is chaos behond mortal comprehension. There is no solution there. We have to drop out of sight for a while. Kill the team leaders if you haven't yet because they know too much. Sell anything you can - without drawing attention - and burn what you can't. Most of all, stay down, if no one can find you then it doesn't matter what the prisoners say to the police. Assume everyone is compromised, other than me.
I'm not stopping anything. I died for this, remember? You coward. You absolute useless fucking coward.
Now? Now we go to ground. It will take time to fully assess what happened, who knows about it, what exactly went wrong. Anything that could put him and a soulbound Orcus down is a serious contender we didn't know about. I don't think it was one of ours, but I don't know. We'll have to burn the network, dissolve and reorganize as something else, something unrecognizable. A holy order, or a team of werewolf hunters, something no one would think of. You should sell off my stuff, come back here from the Crooked Frame and we'll leave. We may need the money and we have to leave this here, I can't trust anyone here. If they knew, they'd probably try to kill us both, after the promises we had to make. It's going to get lean. Cancel whatever it is you have cooking with your artsy girlfriend, we can't afford it now, and fall back. We need to stop before this makes its way from the Caetica back to us. The Emperor has eyes and ears everywhere.
Congratulations, brother; your lapdog Kurotz has completely fucked it. I thought maybe we could salvage the binding, pull Orcus through early, even if we couldn't command it to our bidding without Kurotz. Letting it run wild would at least be something to see. But the selfish fuck literally stole him from us, and then somehow managed to still get killed. So - obviously - what now?
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