From the time I first heard from him until the time I left Cabotton, I saw Jeo Brock as an inspiration, a source of motivation for my success. However, I had never felt romantically drawn to him like I did to Peter.
When Ceri Mains broke the news to me, on the mid-morning of 3 November 1319, of Peter's disappearance, I was absolutely distraught. I had felt somewhat assured at first that Marius would call us back with news of Peter spotted. But as time went by, the dread began to sink in. At the end of two weeks, Marius had said, "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid Peter may be lost to us."
That had me crying non-stop. It was as if a piece of me was gone. But Jeo came to me and offered me comfort, assuring me that there was hope because there was no certain evidence of Peter having actually died. It was only a shred of hope but I clung to it nonetheless.
I was surprised to learn that Jeo was with the mainstream Alconist faith and was, in fact, a regular churchgoer. He invited me at that time to go to church with him. At first I hesitated a bit. Though I still believed in the Alconist faith as well, I had not been active in attending services. In the end, I decided to go with him, finding comfort as Peter Quora's name was included in their prayer circles.
During that time, I was looking back on the OCEA tab conversations I had with Peter in the past. He spoke a lot about his experience with his dymensional plane assignment on Mount Carris, where he had supposedly had his "vision" of the other worlds. Mount Carris was where my curiosity began leading me. Around May 1320, I convinced Jeo to go with me.
It was actually during that trip to Mount Carris and the Lake Maern Reserve when I heard about the religious doctrine of the Great Author and even brief mentions of the Pagewriter and Pageturner Guilds. However, most followers of the Great Author in the Lake Maern Reserve were neutral to that rivalry, and did not believe what was perceived to be an Anomaly destroying the Multi-verse. So I only focused on the doctrine of the Great Author, itself.
We traveled to the summit of Mount Carris and met with special darkfire spellcasters to engage us in the darkfire treatments to help us see the same kind of "visions" of the other supposed dimensions of the Multi-verse. After a few sessions, both Jeo and I sensed the soul of Peter Quora, supposedly alive somewhere in this world.
I found a great deal of comfort in Jeo during this trip. The night after we sensed Peter, we returned to a hotel across Lake Maern located in former-Tekon, where we both shared a room that night. It was here that Jeo expressed romantic interest in me. At first I was confused, but then Jeo reminded me of his relationship with Rose Anne being polyamorous, and that all partners were consenting of Jeo having a second partner, me. And I felt that perhaps the feelings of comfort and assurance with Jeo were romantic as well. So I consented.
It was a happy romance, and a healthy one. Jeo and I spent a great deal of quality time with one another over the months that followed. But this was interrupted in November 1321 when the message from Marius arrived of his report of Peter. As it turned out, it was all a ploy to land me in the hands of the Dam People, who interrogated me until I admitted to myself and everyone else around me my feelings of romance to Peter. That was when I realized how my romantic feelings were for Peter, and that I did not feel the same way to Jeo. When I returned to North Kempton, I confided this to Jeo, who voiced understanding but has been wanting space for awhile.
I know Jeo is a man of good intent. And I hope things turn out well with him either way.
When I first met Peter Quora, I felt very much attracted to him. He was handsome, tall, broad-shouldered, and had his signature jet-black hair. He was extra-confident and excited in his ability to build dymensional planes of other worlds. Other people did think he was cocky at times, but he did respect those he wronged when the occasion arose. And contrary to what some may think, he was not obsessed with his craft. He had a life. He was a holistic person, having his share of pastimes like bicycling, water-boating, and observing birds from his little airship.
I was attracted to Peter, though I never showed it at first. He was more than ten years younger than me, so I feared risking publicity. We were, nonetheless, good friends with common interests. We formed such a tight bond of friendship, in fact, that when we started going long periods of time without seeing each other, going about our lives, we would miss each other and then reunite so easily. One of those moments was in the summer of 1316, when I met with Peter for a ride down a bicycle path nearby to Cabotton University. It was for an article I wanted to write on him, and he obliged to take part. It was very informal though.
Peter then invited me to join his Quora Chapter agenda, to come and begin staying with him at the Galleston Farmhouse in North Kempton, starting September 1318. It was a good reunion and a comfort to all of us as we were still coping with the recent death of former Cabotton Headmaster Thomas Snow. Ivella was with us too, but then she passed that November. She was a role model to me, so I was sad. But then I realized how close Peter felt to her as well. Peter and I spent a lot of time with each other then, providing each other company and comfort. And I felt that was when our bond grew the strongest.
I was excited to travel with Peter to South Masonia. But I noticed that as the time drew nearer, his zesty confidence became increasingly accompanied by agitation over logistical issues like funding, logistics, and communication with the Chapter Leaders. It was a high-stakes situation for him, for sure, but I also grew concerned that he was overlooking something even more important: Combrian nationalism, which even then had begun growing dangerous. It seemed that his confidence and frustrations were beginning to cloud his judgement in that regard, and the Finzi Administration was not helping. Nonetheless, I went with Peter and everyone else.
Peter talked about his "vision" aboard the Airship Steadfast en route to South Masonia, and he talked about it in great detail. Rose Anne and Ceri Mains, as well as everyone else, thought that Peter's conversation was a bit questionable but accepted it for his quirks, alongside with his insistence to board a traditional airship instead of a gyroplane. I, meanwhile, was very frightened, not of Peter but of the possibility of him drawing unwanted and dangerous attention. This, of course, was made worse by the attempt made on his life by the assassin that evening.
So I left, not because my feelings for Peter changed, but because of my own safety, combined with knowing that I had no chance whatsoever of talking Peter into coming with me. In fact, I found myself longing for him even more when I returned to North Kempton.
I had to reflect on all of this because Peter was brought up in conversation between Colin and the rest of us in the dining room of the Galleston Farmhouse earlier today. We finally had that long-overdue conversation on that letter from two-hundred years ago. "Was Peter Quora the prodigy foreseen in the Rickard Stevenson letter?" everyone around here seemed to be asking.
Colin had cast a firespell to cremate the body of the assassin who tried to get Peter by the lakeside cabin on our first night in Combria. It was done immediately and quickly before we could identify him, but not before Colin was able to determine that he was an insider from the Combria Chapter of the Pageturner Guild, located in Northmoor and headed by a figure known in this room by many: Kara Martins. So that was where Colin went, where he disguised himself as a wannabe recruit and secured a job assisting their Curator for Artifacts. It was during this spy game that Colin came across the very letter and stole it. And here it sat today, in the middle of the Dining Room Table.
There were some things predicted by the letter that have come to to pass. First was the notion of the drive to improve the quality and technology of planecrafting. Indeed, we are much further along than we were, even seventy years ago. It also predicted that we would one day have the ability to immerse ourselves into these dymensional planes, a feat achieved by Ceri Mains. And it also prophesied that a second Great Tree "standing in a courtyard of academic excellence" would be struck down by a bolt of lightning, an event that happened at Cabotton University back in 1281.
Then came the Letter's prediction of the dymensional planecrafter prodigy. Kara Martins and the Pageturner Guild were convinced that Peter Quora was that prodigy. And Colin found out that it was Kara Martins who ordered the still-unnamed assassin after Peter.
Colin knew, of course, that things would only get worse if Peter was assassinated. Even if the Letter was right, Peter would be only but an instrument, with his death failing to stop the supposed Anomaly. Peter's death would also reignite conflict between both the Pageturners and the Pagewriters. Colin also voiced concern that Stevenson's Letter may even have oathcrafting attached to it, thus the reason he stole it. He emphasized, though, that in this case, the letter should not be destroyed because it is not that simple with oathcrafting scripts, and that doing so could actually make things worse. Colin ventured to Mount Carris to see if he would be able to observe what Rickard Stevenson observed, or even to get clues. He also wanted to observe Peter to see how he compared to the supposed prodigy in the letter, thus the reason he returned but seemed distant.
It was only after the incident in front of Marius' house, after Peter failed to show up at the abandoned house afterward, that Colin discovered that he was being followed by yet another masked assassin sent by the Pageturner Guild. Colin lured him, traveling all the way to the South region of Ancondria, thousands of miles away even from the Retunian Ancondrian Territories, where they ended up at the top of a large cliff, and the assassin inexplicably leapt off though appeared to have mechanical wings of a sort to fly away.
Colin's time in Ancondria lasted two years. Colin returned to Remikra afterward, where he discovered at the Galleston Farmhouse what happened with us and the Dam People, relayed to them by Susan Parans who was at Cabotton University. Colin went to Susan and got details from her on our whereabouts; thus was how he found out about Marius and carried out his plan to rescue us.
So the Dining Room conference dealt with two matters. First was what to do with the Letter; it has been determined that we hold it here in the Galleston Farmhouse in a secret location for the time being. Then there is the second matter: How true is the Letter with regard to the Anomaly?
Tension had been building up in Combria for some time. Things finally came to a head on the day of Peter's disappearance. They overtook the army bases, the Cantons of South Masonia, and, later that day, the Governor House and Legislature in Jestopole. They effectively forced opposition party members to flee while having their conservative counterparts convene in that chamber twelve days later to vote for Combria's independence. Finzi and the Commonwealth government refused to recognize this because the independence vote was not done democratically as a popular referendum as required by Commonwealth law; so the Prime Minister declared the move an illegal coup sent a joint combination of National Guard and Retunian Civil Guard units in order to put an end to the uprising. Combrian nationalists resisted this; and thus civil conflict broke out.
This past September 16, nationalist-conservatives sympathetic to the Combrians overthrew Gymia Provincial Legislature in Ligam. Two days later, they ousted the opposition and had their representatives vote independence for Gymia. Finzi responded the same and deployed the same kind of joint forces on 21 September. The next day, independent Gymia tried to join as a member of the Remikran Union, a request that was promptly rejected. So the next day after that, 23 September, they agreed to be annexed by Combria, thus the Combrian Confederation formed.
When I traveled through last November, I saw their flags everywhere, posted at every streetlight, every store corner, as if their leader was obsessed with letting us know that this particular nation was an independent nation. The Confederation as virtually a police state too, with certain demographics like those of the Darkfire Community having no rights at all. Also was in place a mandate for all young and able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 22 to enlist in the military, as the Confederation had an agenda to overtake the Basin District.
At the heart of all this was a hatred toward Holz Finzi. But the spark was Finzi's response to the neurovirus outbreak in South Masonia in 1319.
It was called Benjamin Arnold Syndrome, named after the doctor a few years ago who studied some of the first cases. However, the first reports of the disease actually go all the way back to 1281, by a missionary named John Carol. Carol was visiting the far-away Canticulan nation of Rellihan that summer, helping a remote village in the Chokian Mountain region in the nation's Southern part. That village stopped sending him messages and was not responding to Carol's repeated outreaches. He went back and saw that everyone in the village was either dead or incapacitated mentally, having been stricken by the mysterious disease.
Then there were reports from invading Lykian forces as they attempted to overtake Northern Canticula in the late 1280s, reporting the same symptoms of psychosis. In fact, that may have played a huge role in the downfall of the Lykian Republic.
But in both instances, as well as the outbreak in South Masonia, the symptoms were the same. First came two days of intense fever, nausea, and vomiting followed by five to eight days of optimal health. Then, over the week that followed, victims would start becoming confused about things, mostly in the form of forgetfulness. Then they start recalling false memories. Then came the hallucinations followed by the inability to perceive any form of reality around them as well as the loss of basic skills like speaking and eating. Then came coma and death.
Moreover, when it emerged in South Masonia, it was very contagious, thus the reason for the Finzi Administration's harsh quarantine measures.
So came a question at our Dining Room meeting: Was Peter Quora infected?
I can see why one would speculate. I remember when Peter talked about his "vision" on that airship flight. It was really vivid to him, and it seemed as if he was perceiving a reality that did not exist in our world. And then he had his "stomach flu." But the "visions" happened before his stomach sickness, not after. Also, he seemed normal otherwise after the "vision" moment. So it's inconclusive whether or not he was infected. I feel that he was not.
And from this came another important question: Was Benjamin Arnold Syndrome a manifest of the Anomaly?
The South Masonia outbreak was seemingly unstoppable, claiming 637 lives before it stopped. But stopped it did, contrary to what the Letter predicted. And furthermore, Finzi's quarantine measures kept it effectively within the limits of South Masonia.
There is also the origin of the Doctrine of the Great Author and the Anomaly. I have come to believe that our reality is a conception of a Great Author but I do question the story of the Anomaly.
The story was conceived, apparently, in the 1050s by a man named Ron Forester, who fell out with the Edoran Church after a shift in his beliefs against the Alconist faith. In the fall of 1054, he had a dream in which he was told by a mysterious divine being to travel to Mount Carris to inhale the vapors of burning bark of a certain pine tree in order to receive a vision and an important message. Forester obliged and arrived at the Mount Carris summit in Summer 1055, where he received his "vision" of the Great Author, the Thread of the Greater Human Conscience, and the Multi-verse. He then returned to his home in the city of Edora proper and met with friends to write down the Great Author Doctrine. The surrounding community shunned Forester and his friends on the grounds of "moral corruption." But nonetheless, in 1055, the Council of the Great Author was founded. And upon his death bed, Forester made a revelation to the Council of the prophecy of the Master Pagewriter, the Master Pageturner, and the Anomaly, but never clarified whether it was the Master Pagewriter or the Master Pageturner who was correct in their method to slow down and vanquish the Anomaly. This led to a schism in the Council which, in 1071, split into the Pageturner and Pagewriter Guilds. They have been rivaling each other through fights and assassinations since.
The most significant incident was, of course, Rickard Alexander Stevenson's attempt in 1086 to apparently hit James Lawrence Kontacet I with a special spellfire discharge with an activation key to send him through a portal to a certain Netherworld.
While there were some components that seemed convincing, Stevenson's Letter was counterweighted by another piece of paper: Ivella Ogden's will, which contained a letter of her own.
Ivella Ogden's letter discussed her time with her granduncle: Merlin Kent Ogden, who built a dymensional plane both for her and himself. He warned Ivella to keep a low profile with this and enjoy it as a hobby, however. And no matter how hard she tried, Ivella could not get him to open up about why.
Then came Thomas Snow, Martin Cross, and John Fleming, who found out through close friends about Ogden's dymensional plane and asked to use it for the development of a Project for the students of the Westerhill Institute. Though that Project was a success, it had been shut down by new school administration, sparking the student uprising that led to the establishment of Cabotton University.
It was after all of this that Merlin Kent Ogden finally opened up about his earlier experiences. He had served as a Dungeonmaster over a TableQuest session back in the 1140s, but was receiving bad publicity started by a member of the Pageturner Guild, condemning his agenda as sacrilege. Wanting to put an end to this, Merlin infiltrated the Pageturner Guild and found out about the Stevenson Letter. Though he never saw it, he learned enough about it to know about Rickard Stevenson's failed agenda and decision to flee.
Merlin, no matter how hard he tried, could not find any evidence as to what happened to Stevenson since.
Merlin made public the details of the Stevenson Letter in a publication of his TableQuestor Journal, which he distributed to his questing members on a monthly basis. Two weeks later, a masked figure tried to attack Merlin, himself, which emotionally shook him to the point of him deciding to end the TableQuest session and move away to seek a new life. Thus, he found his way into the ebony mining industry.
Ivella felt that Merlin was living too much in fear, however. And after his passing, Ivella and her cousin, Glenda Browen, decided to build a dymensional plane and start a TableQuest session out of their Cabotton residence at 124 West Mason Street. This, of course, led to the Darius Weller incident. However, instead of fleeing in fear like her granduncle, Ivella decided to found the Third Level Society, with democratic checks and balances to ensure the issues with TableQuest sessions at the time were not possible in her organization.
She wrote about the future of the Third Level Society. She wanted it to be a dynamic version of the original Project devised by Snow, Cross, and Fleming, with the world of Arturia and its questing, obstacles, politics, and challenges serving to strengthen humanity in achieving the original Project's Three Principles, which, whether the Pagewriters were right about the Great Author and the Anomaly or not, she held in high regard.
The first of those Three Principles were to have a consistently running dymensional plane, a goal we have long since achieved. The Second Principle was to expand universal access to as many people as possible, in other words, giving as many people as possible the chance to build avatars and engage. The Third Principle was to enhance world and humanity preservation by building a dymensional plane on neighboring Planet Nephina.
We know that Planet Nephina is a safe world upon which humans can set foot. The question is when we will have the technology to cross the airless void to get there. I presume it will not be for a few more decades.
Regardless, in the two years having elapsed since Peter's disappearance, we have reconstructed what we believe to be the world created in Merlin Kent Ogden's dymensional plane that once stood at 124 West Mason Street. And it is a basic world, consisting of open ocean in the midst of which stands the Isle Mains. The exception here is that, with 90 years of dymensional plane technological progress, we have enhanced the weather and small geographic details while maintaining the world's integrity. Like the original, there stands a Lake in the middle of the Isle. There are also three villages inhabited by perpetual avatars and daemons, as well as some variety of flora and fauna. I immersed as an avatar in my own form and name, and walked around the Isle before settling in a hammock on the deck of one of the Lakehouses.
My younger self would have found this dymensional plane to be incredibly boring as there were no quests or political dynamics to be had. But today, I appreciate the respite, a break from the chaos out in the real world.
And this place certainly does not feel like the real world.
***END OF STORY ELEVEN***