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(Scars do not appear to be cause of death –shock ... - Bad Request

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"It is my duty <strong>to</strong> preserve and protect, but never <strong>to</strong> partake, for a forgotten<br />

memory remem<strong>be</strong>red vanishes from my collection, and is lost forever in the<br />

minds <strong>of</strong> men."<br />

"But why <strong>not</strong> share your collection?" Epetrius asks, shocked, "All that<br />

knowledge at your fingertips... what use is it moldering in some library?"<br />

Keeper-<strong>of</strong>-Forgotten-Thoughts shakes his head, "The minds <strong>of</strong> men are<br />

imperfect. A memory in a mind is battered with time. With age the thought<br />

warps and rots like old wood: weathered and <strong>be</strong>nt from without, chewed<br />

and moldering from within. Oh many have tried <strong>to</strong> preserve such things...<br />

but the written word decays, errors are introduced when what remains is<br />

transcri<strong>be</strong>d or translated. Even your sensory s<strong>to</strong>nes can only preserve the<br />

essence <strong>of</strong> the memory, never the soul.<br />

"No, it is <strong>be</strong>tter for such things <strong>to</strong> remain lost. Once a memory is forgotten,<br />

it can<strong>not</strong> <strong>be</strong> assailed by the edges <strong>of</strong> time. Only then is it forever pristine."<br />

"But you said you'd share the last <strong>of</strong> the telling," Oudilin murmurs.<br />

The Keeper nods, "In the past months I have watched, as little by little parts<br />

<strong>of</strong> my collection fled from me with each journal <strong>of</strong> The Nameless One<br />

collected and their knowledge revived. Scraps <strong>of</strong> thought that were once<br />

gone now vanished. True my collection <strong>of</strong> the tale had always <strong>be</strong>en<br />

incomplete, for there are a few select scholars that know alternate details <strong>of</strong><br />

The Nameless One's journey, perhaps passed <strong>do</strong>wn secondhand or third, or<br />

through a long string <strong>of</strong> lips and quills. Yet much <strong>of</strong> the tale once lay in<br />

relative opacity, those details housed safely in my cupboards."<br />

He pulls a vial from his ro<strong>be</strong>s, a long glass phylactery spiraled with a metal<br />

serpent whose jaws clutch the lid. White-green smoke swirls throughout it,<br />

and in the pale light cast by the glow you think you can see movement. Yes...<br />

smoky shapes that writhe in the air.<br />

"These final memories <strong>of</strong> the journal are all that remain. It was once a thing<br />

<strong>of</strong> desperate making, that final journal... a diary scri<strong>be</strong>d from sha<strong>do</strong>wstuff<br />

and lamentations, written in tears and bound with sorrow. A thing terrible<br />

and <strong>be</strong>autiful, and the only sage who read it had <strong>be</strong>en so struck by its<br />

horrors that he destroyed the thing. This <strong>be</strong>fore gouging out his eyes and<br />

casting himself in<strong>to</strong> the sea, where the knowledge drowned and made its<br />

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