Song of the Spheres

This now appears to be a steganographic device to conceal the following warning from someone signing themselves as 'E'.

***If you can read this, then I believe that the Great Spell has been sundered or is at least unravelling. My warning to you dear reader is to beware of the Wild, for they retreated but were not vanquished. We may never return, but they undoubtedly will.***

***The casting of the Great Spell is taking far more mana than expected, we will succeed but there will be a cost, I can see now why Soratan was so hesitant. As the unravelling begins, I can see side effects – if you are a keeper of knowledge please document everything. Perhaps at a future time we can meet. E***

These sections were revealed by Garaf (a mage of high intelligence and Clearsight) casting Comprehend Languages on the 'untranslatable' parts of the Song. This also revealed that these parts were written in a Primitive Language of simple runes designed for etching/carving. It was covered by an ‘obscure language’ spell, or similar. This was carried over to all copies of the Song of the Spheres – however, no copy shows up as magical under Detect Magic.

The only Elf that we currently know of whose name starts with 'E' is Elsiurs

**The Song Of The Spheres (All 5 verses – plus defacement)**

The “garbled” sections are now legible – someone appears to have overwritten parts of the poem for their own purpose and to send ?you? a message.

The stars wheel.

I wake in awed delight to a thousand thousand points of light, dancing in the infinite beauty of the darkness that is without end. Watch as they spin, kaleidoscopic, yellows, golds, silvers, reds, and greens. Some dance alone, majestic, stately, others whirl in frenzied cartwheels about one another. Some remain almost motionless, disdaining joyous abandon to more seriously consider their place in the firmament, whilst others still flit past with breathtaking speed, come and gone in but an instant. Yet all glitter with the ecstasy of being, and all reach out with their cold light to welcome me, to bid me join in the dance.

The stars wheel.

For a time I am content to watch, dazzled, awed, entranced, and all is light and movement. Then, somehow, I am aware that I can also hear. For each point of light, for each bright star, for each gleaming, glistening sphere and for every spinning bright bauble, there is a voice. A hundred, a thousand, a million strands of sound, each with their own song, their own timbre, their own exaltation of life and glory, yet all coming together in fantastical harmony, each unique yet each a part of a single shimmering tapestry of sound, now stately chorus, now breathtaking counterpoint. Song without end, music of the spheres. And within that composition, a space, a voice yet unvoiced. The music shifts, beckoning, enticing, and instinctively I answer, weaving my own voice into the tapestry, buoyed, lifted, uplifted and upheld by those around me. And so the song is again complete, and so together we sing.

The stars wheel.

Then suddenly there comes a new light, that moves not with but through the eternal dance, upsetting rhythm and balance, destroying the ever-shifting ever-felt symmetry. And with it too a new voice, harsh, grating, dissonant, a shrill severing of the woven threads of song, a voice that comes closer, nearer, louder, harsher. And then, where before there was no feeling, suddenly there is pain. Burning, shifting, twisting, lancing, searing. My song wavers, falters. I try to sing only the joyous beauty of the dance that first gave me my voice, yet the pain within me twists my song, intruding so that I voice not the beauty of the dance but the burning agony of a thousand pin-pricks of white heat moving on, through, in me. I try to sing, but there comes only noise, reflected pain where once there was reflected joy. I try to sing, but can only scream.

The stars wheel.

The light shatters into rainbows of colours known and unknown, each star now seeks to eclipse the others with ever more gaudy displays accompanied by a cacophony of sound which has no balance or pattern. I feel my mind shattering into the chaos, even as my voice gives out, and I have a hundred no a million perspectives on the chaos which somehow further fragments into even more incoherence.

***If you can read this, then I believe that the Great Spell has been sundered or is at least unravelling. My warning to you dear reader is to beware of the Wild, for they retreated but were not vanquished. We may never return, but they undoubtedly will.***

The stars wheel

And in their wheeling ever shifting movement and light a pattern begins to emerge, within the tumultuous chaos of the million voices a rhythm begins to make itself heard. Even as my sight dims and my mind collapses towards blessed oblivion the pattern grows stronger and begins to dominate, the rhythm takes precedence and drives the other sounds into the background. I cannot see, I cannot hear and yet imprinted on my final memory is a fixed pattern of bright light accompanied by a deep simple dominating rhythm.

***The casting of the Great Spell is taking far more mana than expected, we will succeed but there will be a cost, I can see now why Soratan was so hesitant. As the unravelling begins, I can see side effects – if you are a keeper of knowledge please document everything. Perhaps at a future time we can meet. E***

I am nothing, I am everything.

The stars are unmoving

Sparrowsight: “The biggest problem we face is that although we can translate their writing, we cannot necessarily make sense of it, for instance the Song of the Spheres – features a number of times in important documents – although we have never been able to sensibly translate the last two verses. It is obviously important – but why?”

**The Song Of The Spheres (First 3 verses)**

The stars wheel.

I wake in awed delight to a thousand thousand points of light, dancing in the infinite beauty of the darkness that is without end. Watch as they spin, kaleidoscopic, yellows, golds, silvers, reds, and greens. Some dance alone, majestic, stately, others whirl in frenzied cartwheels about one another. Some remain almost motionless, disdaining joyous abandon to more seriously consider their place in the firmament, whilst others still flit past with breathtaking speed, come and gone in but an instant. Yet all glitter with the ecstasy of being, and all reach out with their cold light to welcome me, to bid me join in the dance.

The stars wheel.

For a time I am content to watch, dazzled, awed, entranced, and all is light and movement. Then, somehow, I am aware that I can also hear. For each point of light, for each bright star, for each gleaming, glistening sphere and for every spinning bright bauble, there is a voice. A hundred, a thousand, a million strands of sound, each with their own song, their own timbre, their own exaltation of life and glory, yet all coming together in fantastical harmony, each unique yet each a part of a single shimmering tapestry of sound, now stately chorus, now breathtaking counterpoint. Song without end, music of the spheres. And within that composition, a space, a voice yet unvoiced. The music shifts, beckoning, enticing, and instinctively I answer, weaving my own voice into the tapestry, buoyed, lifted, uplifted and upheld by those around me. And so the song is again complete, and so together we sing.

The stars wheel.

Then suddenly there comes a new light, that moves not with but through the eternal dance, upsetting rhythm and balance, destroying the ever-shifting ever-felt symmetry. And with it too a new voice, harsh, grating, dissonant, a shrill severing of the woven threads of song, a voice that comes closer, nearer, louder, harsher. And then, where before there was no feeling, suddenly there is pain. Burning, shifting, twisting, lancing, searing. My song wavers, falters. I try to sing only the joyous beauty of the dance that first gave me my voice, yet the pain within me twists my song, intruding so that I voice not the beauty of the dance but the burning agony of a thousand pin-pricks of white heat moving on, through, in me. I try to sing, but there comes only noise, reflected pain where once there was reflected joy. I try to sing, but can only scream.

The stars wheel.

The light shatters into rainbows of colours known and unknown, each star now seeks to eclipse the others with ever more gaudy displays accompanied by a cacophony of sound which has no balance or pattern. I feel my mind shattering into the chaos, even as my voice gives out, and I have a hundred no a million perspectives on the chaos which somehow further fragments into even more incoherence.

<untranslateable section, believed to be unknown language>

The stars wheel

And in their wheeling ever shifting movement and light a pattern begins to emerge, within the tumultuous chaos of the million voices a rhythm begins to make itself heard. Even as my sight dims and my mind collapses towards blessed oblivion the pattern grows stronger and begins to dominate, the rhythm takes precedence and drives the other sounds into the background. I cannot see, I cannot hear and yet imprinted on my final memory is a fixed pattern of bright light accompanied by a deep simple dominating rhythm.

<untranslateable section, believed to be unknown language>

I am nothing, I am everything.

The stars are unmoving

1. ↑ Zoom 2020-11-19 21:00
2. ↑ Email2020-11-19 21:15