02 March 1086
To the Brothers and Sisters of the Guild of Pagewriters, Chapter of Combria:
By the time you see this letter, I will be far away.
I am the shadow who emerged to send James Lawrence Kontacet I to the Netherworld Dimensional Plane.
I was your Protector. James was my best friend.
But on the evening of October 1, I had a dream in which I was approached by a divine being who was neither a man nor a woman, who commanded me by mandate of the Great Author of our Multi-verse to venture to the summit of Mount Carris. Stricken by fear, I obliged and stole into the night to cross the border into Wannonia undetected. I traveled by foot, which took many days. But finally I arrived to the Mount in the middle of winter and climbed my way to the Great Pine where there was rumored a Divine Oracle giving visions of the future.
I came to the foot of the Pine and called to summon the Oracle, to which the divine spirits of the Mount responded with a sudden storm and a great crash of lightning which smote down the Great Pine that stood since the dawn of time. Out of the Stricken Pine emerged the very same divine spirit of my dream, who cast upon me a cloak that gave me vision of the world in which lived the Author, not the Great Author, but the Author who wrote our page of the world of Circlaria, its being and history.
I saw the Plain Truth, more real than the reality, itself, in which we live, the future for the world we call Circlaria. And it is grim.
James Lawrence Kontacet I, Dungeonmaster and Supreme Protector of the Guild of Pagewriters, Chapter of Combria, is, himself, the Master Pagewriter.
It was initially a cause for relief and joy on my part. For years I have been made to believe, and for decades we have all been made to believe, that his rival, the Master Pageturner, was going to hasten the Anomaly and destroy all of humanity. Not just bringing about the end for humanity in Circlaria, but the end for the very Thread of the Conscience of Humanity of the Multi-verse, the Great Book of the Multi-verse and its Pages upon one of which our world of Circlaria resides, as well as their Books and Pages.
The very end, in fact, of the Great Author, himself.
We all know, of course, that neither the Master Pagewriter nor the Master Pageturner was morally corrupt or evil. We know there is no Great Evil One, like a perceived Great Evil One falsely believed and feared by the Alconist Church of the Edoran Kingdom. But nonetheless, we have been made to believe that the Master Pageturner, though acting upon good intent, was catastrophically misled in such intent, and has been leading his following Pageturners into doing acts that hasten the Anomaly rather than save us from it. And we, the numerous Chapters of the Pagewriter Guild, have sought to find and follow the man embodying the Master Pagewriter and to help him find and defeat the man embodying the Master Pageturner by banishing him to the Netherworld, thus slowing down the destructive Anomaly and saving us all.
But then I saw the Plain Truth as conveyed by the Oracle of the Great Pine.
I saw the future of Circlaria, in which Kontacet, the Master Pagewriter, had influenced us as Follower Pagewriters, into creating and crafting dymensional planes. And of course this is true, for the Dungeonmaster has been influential for all of us, and we all enjoy meeting with him for our TableQuest sessions. But Kontacet has been inspiring us to evaluate ourselves and our dymensional plane world-building methods, and to move to further perfect them. I then saw that we builders inspired a future generation of dymensional plane builders, who further perfected the craft of dymensional plane building and inspired a generation of their own to do the same. And so two centuries passed with such progress in our technology and perfection in our beloved crafted being made, at the end of which the dymensional planes created were that of worlds, or versions of our world, no different from the original written by our Author. And furthermore, these were dymensional planes in which we could immerse our bodies and consciences, and actually live and interact.
It was at that point, two centuries in the future, that the Anomaly began to manifest itself in full.
Such doom would start with a prodigy world-builder, a man of modest origin but with a genius ability in academics, who believed, and began preaching to his fellow dymensional-plane builders, that the worlds they created were, in fact, as real as the world in which they lived from birth. Then people began to lose the ability to discern which world they lived in, as their consciences began drifting between worlds, unable to hold onto one in terms of which one to perceive. To others around them, these afflicted individuals would be seen as having a disease, suffering from some form of viral epidemic that rendered a victim unable to function in terms of basic behaviors like eating, or even breathing. These people would die as the apparent Pandemic would spread. Sadly, there would be no cure found because in truth, this was the Anomaly in full force and unstoppable. Before long, all of humanity in the world of Circlaria would fall, leaving the world barren and devoid of life as the Anomaly claimed its first Page of the Multi-verse. After this point, the Anomaly would gain speed as it consumed Page after Page until, finally, it disintegrated the last of the Thread of Consciousness at which point the Great Author, having created the Multi-verse, would, himself, cease to exist.
There would, of course, be warning signs of this impending calamity. Most notably, another Great Tree, this one standing in a courtyard of academic excellence, will be smitten down by a great bolt of lightning.
But all of this is in the future, and therefore has not yet come to pass. Nor would it ever, according to the nameless divine being, if the Master Pagewriter were to be banished. In other words, the Pageturner Guild was right all along.
In the weeks that followed, after a great deal of effort, I managed to build a portal to the Netherworld, and established a key to it in my talisman, to be activated at the simple discharge of Stun Spell. Thus, as I had hoped, using said talisman and striking James Lawrence Kontacet I would open said portal in his place and banish him instantly.
As all of you probably now know, I tossed a stone through the window of the South face of the House of Mason and stole into the hallways late last night. Fellow Protector John Kearney tried to stop me. I dared not strike him with a Stun Spell for the Portal Key was a one-time use and would therefore be spent. I used a Shield Spell which deflected his spell toward him. Then I barged into the main room where Master Pagewriter Kontacet stood on his Dungeonmaster Podium facilitating our TableQuest session, pulled out my talisman, and made my attempt.
And yes. I know that I missed.
The discharge grazed his left ear. He fell to the floor, still in this dimension of reality. I knew then that I missed my target, my chance spell, all for nothing. And now that there is news of the incident, I know that the Leon family, the Second Pillar of the House of Masons, will step up police forces to protect all of you, the House of Masons, and the Kontacet family. I will never get my opportunity again.
So now I realize that I had attempted to serve my purpose: to protect all of you. But I failed.
Your Dungeonmaster is the Master Pagewriter. He will be the reason for the destruction of our world, our Multi-verse, and the Great Author, himself. But I am no longer able to protect you after what happened, because I know that all of you are far too influenced by the very threat under your noses to believe the Truth that I am relaying to you. In fact, I doubt this letter will last long before it gets burned, and I get labeled as a madman, ultimately forgotten after my inevitable departure.
My only hope is that someone in the future will realize what is happening and rise up to put a stop to Kontacet, or at least to stop his influence if it so persists after his eventual death from old age many years from now.
Regardless, everything has become clear. And I, now a Pageturner, hope to hide in some unknown corner of the Circlarian Realm until I devise an inter-dimensional portal for my escape. For now I dread what is to come, and wish to at least give my part of the Thread of Consciousness some more time to exist and carry on before my eventual destruction from the Anomaly.
To anyone reading this letter who may still love me, this is goodbye, for I wish to leave no trail and will therefore travel alone.
Sincerely from your Friend and Protector,
Rickard Alexander Stevenson
(Originally Published: 09 December 2024)