Lineage Orb

The Lineage Orb is a special magical artifact owned by the Harpers and kept in the top floor of Moongleam Tower in Everlund. Its power is used to secure access to the Harper Teleportation Network.

## Power

The Lineage Orb, as described by Krowen Valharrow, taps deep into the bloodlines of anyone who touches it, and can access memories up to 100 years old of someone of the grasper's direct lineage. Theoretically, anyone claiming a bloodline or identity that is knowingly false or not their own would be incinerated by the psychic force of attempting to witness another bloodline's memories. When used properly, the user is propelled into a particularly powerful memory from one of their ancestors and experiences it as if it is their own. Overcoming this (often traumatic) ordeal grants the user an arcane brand that allows them to use the Harper Teleportation Network without succumbing to intense psychic and necrotic damage.

The Heroes of Happenstance have passed the Orb's trial and have access to the Harper's teleportation network.

## Memories

### Impression

*Massive blue banners hang from the towering stone walls of the hallway, matching the thick, plush and carefully dyed runners under your feet, muffling the sound of your heavily armored form marching purposefully ahead, blood boiling and seething with rage. You feel her behind you; luckily for her, she kept enough of a distance that you could not turn to strike her. But you’d considered it. As you stride forward, you shove open the heavy wooden doors at the end of the hall, and they slam against the walls of the room inside with the force of your blow. Inside, two guards jump, startled; they look at one another apprehensively as they bow to you, and you wave them aside without a word. They nod and exit the room at once, carefully sidestepping the woman who entered behind you and closing the door, allowing you your privacy. You turn to behold the woman as she glares at you, furiously.*

*The hall that surrounds you is a place she has been more times than you can count. Not that anyone would believe that. Not that anyone knew. She was a favourite of yours for a reason, after all: she kept her mouth shut. Well, that, and the fact that she truly was aptly named; there could be no more fitting a moniker for her than Desire. Even as she stands there with the audacity to oppose you, she radiates a dangerous beauty not of her class, with deep navy skin, long black hair that falls in carefully crafted waves down to her waist, and eyes like glittering rubies. To behold her- as you often did- was a test of your composure: she had a seductive nature that would drive any man or woman wild… as she had done to you countless times. And yet, your overwhelming desire is tempered with a hint of disgust; her devilish kind was an exotic pleasure, to enjoy in secret and keep under wraps, and yet here she stood, growing another of her spawn within her.*

*“I won’t. You can’t make me. I don’t care who you are, there is nothing you can do to change my mind.” Her voice is like ice, piercing and cold. Your blood grows hotter, your rage threatening to overcome you.*

*“You will obey me! Your disgusting whelp is not welcome here-”*

*“It’s your disgusting whelp too!”*

*“It is no such thing!” You hiss the words out through bared teeth and watch Desire flinch, but not back down. She dares to speak to you that way? To disobey your orders, to stand against you as if you were equals? You curl your lip and spit at her, disgusted by her presence. “You leave me with no choice then.” You raise your hand, and feel the sting of the blow before the crack echoes through the room as Desire collapses onto the stone in front of the door, clutching her cheek with a yelp. Unwavering and uncaring, you shove her aside with your foot and open the doors once more.*

*To the guards, you say, “Take her out to the streets. Her kind is not welcome in these halls and never should have been in the first place.” Your vision is red with anger as you stride forward, without another word. You hear Desire’s struggle as the guards restrain her to escort her outside into the slums of the city, where she belonged.*

*“I’ll tell everyone! Your dirty little secret won’t stay secret if you do this!” You hear her desperate, furious cries, and do not dignify it with a response. She could tell anyone she pleased.*

*After all, who would believe her?*

### Bean

*You stand under the harsh, unforgiving sun, in the heart of a dark and unfamiliar forest whose trees have lost many of their leaves and whose plants are wilted and blackened with unbridled thirst. Before you stands the mouth of an enormous cave, lined with stalactites and stalagmites that look like pointed teeth, and inside which the darkness seems to know no end. Surrounding you, the plants that still remain are shriveled and hard, the woods themselves thirsting desperately and crumbling into dust after countless months of drought. Your own mouth is as dry and your lips as cracked as the dusty, hard earth beneath you. You feel the strange dichotomy of your lightweight frame, gaunt and underfed, and the feeling of heaviness of your body as your emaciated muscles strain to keep you upright. You’ve been travelling for days, in a body which still holds the fresh wounds of a trauma more natural than any other.*

*You look down to the bundle strapped to your chest with a makeshift sling patched together with old fabrics. The infant within is heavily bundled; you told yourself it was to keep the child secure on your travels, but the guilt in your heart betrays another intention. As you untie the sling from your body, the dark skin of your thin hands shaking, you keep the child carefully tucked and turned away. You cannot bear to look at her, not knowing what it is that you’re going to do. What you’ve already done. Not knowing the relief you secretly harbored at the prospect of your secret never coming to light, despite the pain and the guilt and the heartbreak at the very thought of that relief. .*

*You lower the bundle to the ground at the mouth of the cave. The baby does not cry or fuss; she instead lays patiently and quietly just as she was placed. You want to turn and go, to end this painful moment before it becomes too much, but your feet feel anchored to the ground. The bundle shuffles, and the powerful instinct within you becomes too much to withstand- you have to see her, one last time. As you kneel to the ground and lean to behold her face, however, the tears in your eyes overcome you, blurring what last memory you could have of the child. Those tears spill over, and you hunch over the dry earth and sob. The ground hungrily drinks up the offering of your heartache, and the sky rumbles. You don’t know how long it is before the rain begins, but when it does, it erupts from the sky, quickly pelting from the clouds above and soaking your body in a hot, humid downpour.*

*‘It begins’, you think to yourself. ‘We are saved’. You remember yourself, and why you are here. You remember what this sacrifice is for, and how you must bear it in order to survive. Despite your resolve thickening, empowering you to stand, your tears do not stop. You turn your back to the cave and your only child and start the long journey home, accompanied only by the powerful scent of the falling rain.*

### Silix

*You pause and strain your ears as you sit at the desk of a room that is elaborately, yet tastefully, bedecked, with bookshelves full to the brim spanning the height of one wall, velvet furnishings, a skylight in the ceiling revealing the frigid, storming night sky above, as well as countless charts and maps in golden frames and a tapestry riddled with stars adorning the walls. You hear it again, like a high-pitched whistle, almost... like a wind so fast and so strong that it nearly blows its own sound away. You’ve been hearing it more and more recently, that hellish and powerful relic calling to you. You can feel its eyes staring into you and your soul; you feel the echo of its master beholding you despite the powerful object being locked and imprisoned so as never to see the world again. You know things can only stay tucked away for so long, though. Nothing remains hidden forever. Your very father taught you that.*

*The relic’s wordless voice calls again, taunting you. You thought you could lock it away, just as you did him. Perhaps you weren’t as judicious as you claimed. After all, your mother’s protection kept you from eyes that pried too much, even long after she died, so no one took the chance to look into your motives. No one took the time to investigate, and no one found the secret you worked so hard to bury in the mountains that fateful day. You were lauded as a hero, and spent your days after the war on an island at the edge of the world, slowly discovering and building a power that would grow unmatched. You would never again rely on Giants to complete the work that you couldn’t finish. You are your own master now.*

*A wave of defiance washes over you at that thought. ‘I am my own master’. The unease that simmers beneath your calm facade is now awash with indignation. You are no child. You have seen ages and watched a civilization of your own creation grow the power you so desperately pursue. You feel the watchful gaze of the relic burn into you and find yourself tearing away the tapestry at the back wall of the room, revealing a small alcove within which a glowing blue crystal resides. Your hand curls into a fist as you feel your fingers slowly elongate, sharp claws now puncturing the fleshy palm of your hand. You extend your hand into the alcove, the blood dripping onto the crystal, and see it seep into the stone itself, illuminating a network of veins within it that glow once before fading. The wall retracts, and the chamber full of countless priceless artifacts reveals itself to you. At the very center lies an innocuous chestnut box, rather plain when compared to the glitter and gold of its surroundings. You carefully open it and gaze down into its contents, the stolen heirloom that haunts your waking hours.*

*Eyes glowing eerily, the white dragon mask stares back.*

### Scrap

*You awaken again in a haze, feeling the sinking dread as you behold your surroundings. Every time you wake, you wish to find that it was all just a horrible dream. That you would wake up anywhere but here. So much time has passed that you’ve stopped trying to measure it. Has it been years? Weeks? Days? What even is a day, really, when you can’t see the sun or the sky to tell you. Do they even exist anymore? You feel like you’ve forgotten just what the sky looks like, at this point.*

*Your body hangs limply, held aloft by two iron manacles bolted into the wall, the cold metal always squeezing your wrists just a little too tightly, the dripping stone behind your back seeping into your body so as to curse it with an everlasting chill. Your wrist is impaled by a string or tube of some kind that snakes along the wall and through a crack in the stone. The room around you has no windows- instead, it is lit by tiny, green flames in hanging lanterns and in metal sconces on the wall, the glow of mysterious vials dotting messy and overcrowded shelves, and the eerie green light of glowing runes carved into the stone floor. They illuminate the room in a sickening, flickering light that casts shadows that look like beasts made of darkness crawling across the floor. You can see how stained the stone is beneath you, and although you can’t see just what those markings are made of, you have a sneaking suspicion that they’re stained with blood. Sometimes, you imagine you can feel the weight of the earth above you, crushing you in this place.*

*Suddenly you let out a scream of pain as you feel a tingle in your wrist that soon grows into a smoldering burn, as if your very veins were on fire. It spreads down your arm and along your side, until it festers deep in your chest as your heart pumps desperately to rid itself of its own blood. Your body is nearly immediately covered in sweat as you feel like acid is corroding from the inside, searing your insides and threatening to boil over and out of your skin. You scream until you’re hoarse, and then continue to try even long after your lungs have given out. You’ve lived through this countless times now, and it never gets easier to bear.*

*In the throes of endless pain you realize now that you don’t wish to wake up and find that this was all a dream. As a matter of fact, you don’t wish to wake up at all. Every day it feels like you’re dying the most painful death, and see now that it would be so much easier if you just did. But you’ve never had a say in that.*

*After blacking out from the pain and awakening an indiscriminate amount of time later, you see a pair of strange glass lenses reflecting the sickening green firelight in the darkest, unlit corner of the room. There he is again, watching, waiting, writing. You see him scribble frantically on a piece of parchment, nodding and muttering to himself. When he looks up at you, he offers a cold, mechanical smile, revealing a mouth full of sharp, black teeth. “Worry not, little one,” he says, in a voice that sounds like three people speaking at once. He isn’t speaking a language you’ve ever heard, and yet you understand him anyway.*

*“You’ll be one with the Great Mother soon.”*

### Aoife

*Through the gap in the aged and warped wood of the basement wall, you can see through a sliver of the world above, where the setting sun taints the sky amber and crimson. Before you lies a jagged, stony cliffside with sparse grass and a large, looming battle-axe with its blade sunk deep into the ground, cleaving the earth itself. Beyond the edge of the cliffside, far below, lies the sweeping streets of the town you were warned never to walk through. While you cannot see them, you can hear the distant drone of voices in a crowd, gathered at the foot of the cliff in witness.*

*It’s not long before you hear the approach of the old man, his heavy steps muffled by the sound of something being dragged across the rocky path. When he finally enters your view- ancient but massive, hulking and powerful- you are overcome with a wave of terror that grips your heart as if with icy, clawed hands. Not for his imposing figure- like that of an enormous tyrant god- but instead because of the prisoner he drags along the ground behind him, pulled by long, braided hair. The prisoner yelps with every vicious pull, and she kicks her tied arms and legs desperately to free herself, but it is in vain. Even beyond how dwarfed her small frame is next to her captor, the fullness of her cheeks and her large, round copper eyes betray her youth; she is but a child, younger even than you. You would know, of course.*

*She is your sister.*

*The setting sun casts its dying light over the clusters of amber agate that trail from the young girl’s cheek all the way up to her scalp: the very markings that betrayed her as one of your kind. Draunn-child, you hear the people far below begin to chant viciously as the man pulls his prisoner to her feet, one hand still tightly gripping her hair. With the other, he clasps the handle of the enormous battle-axe; you watch his muscles strain as he firmly pulls the handle, tearing the axe free from the ground and letting soil spill from the freshly opened wound in the earth. The crowd’s chants become more frenzied at this, growing into feral screams. Draunn-child, Draunn-child, Draunn-child! Their shouted words drip with hatred. Your mind is overwhelmed by their shrieks, their malice so cacophonous it feels deafening. You press your hands against your ears, trying to block them out as their violent cries are hurled before you, towards the child on the cliffside.*

*“Draunn-child”, the man bellows, and the hordes below grow quiet again. His voice is ragged and rough, like the sound of heavy stone dragged across gravel. The silence he commands from the masses below is thick with anticipation, which is somehow even more deafening than the vile shrieks. His ancient, heavy voice continues, his bellow fallen now to a hateful growl. “Borne of the accursed mountain, and to the wretched mountain’s feet you shall be returned.” The ancient, colossal man heaves his axe high in the air, catching the final ray of the sinking, blood-red sun; for a brief, merciful moment, it blinds you entirely- but it doesn’t deafen you to the terrible scream in your ears as she plummets over the edge of the jagged mountain cliff, a sound so terrible and ended only by the horrific and sudden crack of bone as her body shatters against the stone below.*

### Blimey

*A nearby squirrel peeks its head over the grass and stands curiously on its hind legs, its nose twitching, no doubt smelling the small acorn in the middle of the roll of linen canvas you hold in your freckled hand. You feel the warmth of the sun, bright and high above you, as it casts its glow across the glade. It’s a beautiful place- a spacious clearing in the woods, surrounded by trees whose leaves dance gently and whose branches sway with every passing breeze. You feel the tickle of the grass against your bare feet, still damp with the last of the morning’s dew. White and purple wildflowers dot the landscape, and the sound of birdsong rings from all around you, from within the woods surrounding you. It is, by all accounts, the most beautiful day.*

*The perfect day for a funeral.*

*You hear the rustle of grass behind you and recognize it as your wife and son’s footsteps even before you see them appear quietly at your side. Your wife’s steps are slow and uncertain- a product of her age- but your son supports her gently and patiently as they enter the grove and approach you. Without a word, you feel her hand wrap around yours, the two of you now clutching the canvas and the precious seed together, both of you trembling as much from grief as from age. Hand-in-hand, the two of you walk together towards the center of the glade as a few more sets of gentle footsteps follow behind you, but you do not turn to look. In fact, you barely hear them. You barely hear or see anything. Everything around you feels imaginary, unreal. If it weren’t for your wife’s hand, anchoring you to your body, you feel as if your soul would escape from it entirely, watching from afar as an elderly couple mourn the loss of their child.*

*You held onto hope, for a while. That your son may come back, with a rakish grin and a jaunty tune, parading through the front door with tales of a wild adventure that just went a little longer than expected. But as the days passed silently, your heart sank steadily deeper in your chest. As days drew on into weeks, your sleep remained restless, and as the weeks drew on into months, your very bones grew heavier with the weight of loss. Today, the months have dragged into a year, and as the pain in your chest only grows, you dread the way in which your body will fail you next.*

*As you fall to your knees in the center of the clearing, placing the canvas roll beside you, you begin to dig into the soft earth. Your breathing is laboured as you do so, growing only more heavy with each wheeze, but you cannot make yourself stop until a firm hand- your son’s- places itself on your shoulder, pulling you back. You hear his voice as if through the end of a tunnel, so far away that you can’t make out the words. You don’t care. You have to finish. Your eyesight grows darker now with sorrow as you reach out and struggle to unravel the canvas next to you. When you do so, the painting of your son’s beaming face- Blimey- smiles up at you, and the tiny acorn falls out and collapses into the small hole, just as you do.*

*The sun warms your back and the shouts of your loved ones around you are drowned out by the sweet music of birdsong. Their frantic hands are not unlike the feeling of the long grass and the purple and white flowers gently caressing you as you lay in the grass, still damp with the last of the morning’s dew. Surrounded on all sides by trees whose leaves dance gently and branches sway with every passing breeze, you notice that, even as your vision fades, it is by all accounts the most beautiful day.*

*The perfect day for another funeral.*

## Trivia

* Blimey nearly died when subjected to the Orb's trial due to his memory and brain's severely damaged state; his brain attempted to latch onto the memory as a true personal memory, and could not comprehend the memory of death, and in trying to understand it, ended up attempting to recreate it