March 14, 2003. The Silent Island of Crow

Well, we finally went on that hunt. Took us quite a while, eh? It was a whole lot different from what I expected. For one thing, we have a new arrival on the Island! She calls herself Yanna, and she's set herself up in the caves to the north. She's a little weird, though. Hah, and listen to me, calling the kettle black!

Bah, anyway, Yanna's weirdness. Well, it's not so much weirdness and a superiority complex. She showed up in the middle of our hunt, saying, "Hello mortals, I have arrived!" like we were supposed to know who she was! It was kinda silly, but she gave us explosives, and that was nice.

She seems to have mellowed out now, but at first, she was a little insufferable. I mean, that mortal crack was pushing it a bit. I'm pretty confident in saying that Lady Syrenna, the Emperor and I are all fairly immortal. Another thing that irked me at first was how she acted, like she was doing us a favour by being there. Heh, and I seem to remember that it was me, not her who broke us free of the Glasserol beast! Man, that was a weird thing! It looked kinda badass, what with it being a creature made of stained glass, but it tried to eat me and Yanna with its ass!

At least, it tried to eat me and a Yanna. I have no idea how, but we somehow got two Yannas for a while. The real Yanna killed the imposter though, and we were able to tell it was her because she got my question right.

That's another weird thing. It's this familiarity again. I felt it with Syrenna and the Emperor, and I definitely feel it with Yanna. It probably comes from these strange dreams I keep having. Actually, it seems that everyone's having them, Yanna too. Apparently, she was drifting asleep on the sea for a while, and that was how she ended up on the Island. She told me about how she dreamt of a place far away, and Syrenna, the Emperor and I were there, but we weren't ourselves. We looked the same, yet different, acted the same, but didn't. We were all together, trapped in an ugly building being taught by idiots, while stupid little shit kids made out all around us.

Somehow, we all seem to be dreaming about being in the Reality world.

Now that I've been there, I've been looking back in my diary for strange dreams, dreams where I was myself, but wasn't. The dreams stretch back about 12 years. And when I was in the Reality world, I found out that my doppelganger there started school exactly 12 years ago! This can't be a coincidence! For reasons unknown to me, the onset of school for my Reality counterpart triggered some connection between her and I. When I sleep, I sometimes see her world, and when she sleeps, she sometimes sees mine.

Well, it used to be only sometimes, but ever since I came to this island, my dreams of her have been fairly constant. What a wretched world she has to live in!

The very air, earth, and water are thick with pollution, and people seem bound and determined to create more and more. Some people in that place are fabulously wealthy, but the rest have to work almost endlessly just to get by. Money is the be-all and end-all of everything, and no one ever seems to be really happy. Sure, I've seen them pretending, but there's an emptiness in their eyes that betrays them.

Emptiness, that's another thing that seems to be abundant in that place. Emptiness of the head! I have never, in my many years of existence, seen such a concentrated supply of morons! I mean, I've seen people that were forgetful, or just not all that bright, but those people seem to be geniuses compared to the people in the Reality world!

I already said about the pollution, which is completely destroying their planet, but that's nothing compared to the abject stupidity that seems to be so painfully abundant! There are weapons in that world that are so powerful, they could destroy an entire planet a hundred times over! And all these idiots in power have access to them, so it's a big dick measuring contest about who has the biggest bombs or whatever, which is beyond dumb! If you launch them all, then so will your enemy, and then everyone dies! Wow! You sure showed them! Fucking morons.

And nobody cares! That's another big issue about that place. There's no sense of camaraderie, it's just one big steaming pile of "every man for himself!" And the hate! Great maker, it goes beyond reason! They're all humans, all the same species, and yet they all hate each other! And they hate each other over stupid things, like the colour of their skin, what country they come from, what god they pray to! It's just so unbelievably idiotic! Bah, I'm glad I only dream about that place and don't actually live there. I probably would have committed murder/suicide long ago if I did.

March 18, 2003, The Silent Island of Crow

YOU KNOW WHAT'S GREAT?! When random chucklefucks show up on your turf and try to take your stuff by force, and try to kill you and shit, SO YOU CAN KILL 'EM BACK!!! Hahahaha!

And then you can have a party after, cuz YOU WON! And you SLAUGHTERED THEM!!!

And that was what happened today!

This whole ship of random dudes showed up out of the blue, started saying to hand over our goods or whatever or else they would kill us.

JOKE WAS ON THEM THOUGH! The four of us were hunting some demons to cook up for dinner, because it was this celebration called Beltane that Syrenna was welling us about, so we were already fully loaded in the weapon department, and then these ding dongs thought it was a good idea to try and throw down with us?!

Let's just say that the demons put up more of a fight!

Hahaha, but then after that got sorted out, we broke out the booze for our demon barbecue and HOLY SHIT! Syrenna is the first person I have ever met who has been able to go toe to toe with me in the alcohol department! Dare I say it, but I think she can hold her liquor better than me even!

I haven't been this drunk in a long ass time! So I think I should probably go to bed! Not really looking forward to the hangover this is gonna give me!

OH OH OH!!! And we thought it would be funny if we started calling ourselves something! Like we're all magical in some way, right? And then it turns out we're all some type of royalty - Syrenna's the queen of her forest, Maris a queen of her merfolk, I got made the queen of Hell a long time ago, the Emperor is always getting us to call him by his title, and now Yanna's made herself the empress of the mountain to the north! Windy was the odd one out, so she said she was the blowjob queen, WHICH SENT US INTO A GIGGLE FIT, LET ME TELL YOU!!! We had to explain what that actually meant, cuz she just thought it meant it was her duty to move air!! She screamed when she found out the truth!

So with all that in mind, we've decided to call ourselves the Magical Royalties! Hah, it's like we're a gang or something!

March 23, 2003. The Silent Island of Crow

Well, we done got ourselves a newcomer! Well, two newcomers actually! The lady of the pair calls herself Queen Quirky, and upon arrival, she sent us all a letter:

Hello, I'm new to the island! Welcome me, Queen Quirky! Worship me, for I am Queen!
I RULE ALL!
I come from the island of Cyprus. I once ruled there all the subjects with a golden hand. Everyone loved me and my Quirks, I made them laugh with my silly mistakes. Then one day the evil ORGS came and killed them all, one of my loyal subjects whisked me away to this land I now call home. I come to ask for help to reclaim my island. Restore my throne!

Yeah. Anyway, as she said, she was rescued by one of her loyal subjects. Trouble is, we don't know anything about the guy. He's pretty quiet, and hardly says more than a word at a time. Queen Quirky simply refers to him as her lover, so that's all we have to go on for now.

But that's not all that we know about him! Or them, for that matter. Yep, those two are in the Reality world too! The funny thing is, I think I've known Quirky's Lover, in Reality at least, for many years! And I feel a strange connection to him. It's nothing sexual, it just feels as though if someone were to call his name, mine would be the name they called right after that. Weird, eh?

I don't really know if we are going to actually free Cyprus from the clutches of the orgs. We've suggested ideas of slaughter to the Queen, but she was none too fussed about it. I guess she likes living on the Island too much!

March 30, 2003. The Silent Island of Crow

Remember last week, how we got new settlers? Yeah? Well, we got some more!

Okay, so this newcomer came, and we think her name is Ravenas. We can't be too sure, because she has never spoken to us. She just showed up one day, looking out over the edge of a cliff, and never said a word. We don't really know what happened to her, or if she's still around. All I know is that the Emperor and I know her from the Reality world.

The next two settlers are a little more lively though. First off, there's this wind controlling lass who calls herself Windy McBlow. And oh, how the jokes freely flow from such a name! It turns out that she's an old friend of Syrenna's, and we think they're sisters in the Reality world. They both hate the idea of that!

And the final settler came with a bit of a surprise. Her name is Queen Maris, and she's a mermaid! She comes up on land sometimes, because she can turn her tail into legs, and vice versa. Very handy. But that's not the surprise. Nope, it turns out that she didn't come to the Island on her own! No! She brought her entire friggen' pod of merpeople!!

I'm sure it would be getting a little crowded if there was a whole bunch of merfolk living up here on the land, but they've made themselves a nice, cozy home in the ocean around the Island. We've taken to calling it the Ocean of Insanity!

April 11, 2003. The Silent Island of Crow

So I've been seeing something freaky in the Reality world dreams recently. A creepy, skeletal man who can't possibly be among the living. He looks like if a zombie were somehow bland and boring?

He's been hovering around me in the dreams, trying to see what I'm doing, and he freaks me the fuck out!

I mean, I've fought (and killed!) scarier things than him, but in the dreams, there's nothing I can do to stop him from just fucking being there and being weird?!

No idea what his name is, but I feel like he's some kind of warden. Like a prison warden? I think he somehow is able to see past the Reality realm and into where I really am?

Don't know what I can do about this guy at the moment - if I can do anything about this creep - but I sure as shit hope he fucks the hell off soon! The Reality dreams are depressing enough without him being there!

April 16, 2003. The Silent Island of Crow

WELL! It turns out I'm not the only one who is having dreams about some creepy dude in the Reality world! The Emperor is also dreaming about him!

Exact same description too - a boring living dead man who really fucking hates us!

I definitely think we need to do something about this guy!

April 17, 2003. The Silent Island of Crow

Everybody is dreaming about this guy. Me, the Emperor, Syrenna, Yanna, even our four newcomers! We're all seeing the same dude!

We've got to figure out what the deal with this guy is!

I think we're going to have to make a trip to the Reality world to find out.

And even though it's necessary, I really don't want to go back to that place! It was AWFUL!

We're going to have to figure out the how and when of when we go, but I hope it ends up being a short trip! I really don't want my time there to be drawn out in the slightest!

From what we've seen of the place in our dreams, the Reality world is going to be overloaded with enemies. The handful of us may have supernatural abilities and access to an assortment of weapons, but the numbers of this place are sure to overwhelm us. We're going to need backup if we're to make it out of there alive.

And I think I have an idea for that!

Ryle's been tracking down an art thief (who apparently nabbed the Farron original, "An Arrow Through Time"), and that chase has led him to Gaia. We ended up wrangling together an army pretty easily when we were there for that whole Vinni clusterfuck, so I'm hoping for a repeat. I'll ring him up once I finish jotting in here and hopefully he can get that going for me. And hey, with any luck, he can just come along with the army when it's ready! It's been a hot second since I've seen him!