Vernados' Journal - Bad Week

(game date: 8/7/2021 - 8/14/2021)

 Bad day today.  Last of five hives failed.  Lost my temper, smashed them all.  Haven't lost my temper in a long time.

Repaired one of the hives.  Might be able to fix three more.  Not all of them.  Now I need to find a swarm, or buy one.  Tomorrow I will see the village elder.  Maybe she will know where I should go.

Went to see Lanore.  There were people from the King there, trying to take her walking stick.  Orders from King, they say.  The Great Rigav feel neglected, King says, so nobody allowed to worship anybody else now?  Foolishness.  Said she would get a voucher for a new one.  Stupid.  A voucher can't help her walk all the way to King's City to get new stick.  She put up quite a fuss, drew a crowd.

I was already in a bad mood.  Didn't get any better seeing armed guardsmen push an old lady around.  I told the leader he should get her replacement before trying to take her cane.  Stupid soldier behind him attacked.  Other neighbors joined in the fight.  Ashamed to say, I lost my temper again, chased after the one who ran away.  That's two times in a week.

Now all three guardsmen are dead, and we are left with their bodies and a cart load of things marked with symbols of the gods.  This is bad.  Trouble can only come of this.  Everybody is talking at once, nobody knows what to do.

Lanore said, everybody come inside, she has things to explain.  She did, but I don't  understand all of it, or how it will help us fix things.

Lanore tells us she's Kingsblooded.  Related to the King, even.  Says she has a stronger claim than he does.  Well, maybe so.  Would explain how she behaves sometimes.

She tells us how Kingsblooded always choose one or two of the Rigav when they are four years old, and she chose Key, so she can speak to any of Key's children.  She did speak to a frog earlier.  Makes sense so far.

But her niece, the King before this one, she chose three, and maybe went a little crazy.  Heard whispers that came from nothing.  Then niece's son -- that's grand-nephew -- he chose all four.  That's the rumor, anyway.  Sounds like a lot to me.

But then Aevyn, a Merilan monk, he asked if this had anything to do with the war.  I don't know anything about any war.  Lanore Madden then starts giving a history lecture, about a long-ago war between the gods, but she makes it sound like a squabble over who is allowed to make minor deities.  I don't understand all of it, but it went on for a hundred years, and all the peoples were fighting.  When one of the gods died, the Rigav said, enough, and they all four of them made a god together.  

I'm not understanding why she's telling us this.  She says the frog told her to tell us everything.

Lanore says that Yuma wanted to make intelligent creatures, but she cheated.  She took shortcuts.  Her creatures - the Humans - she made from pieces of all the other gods' children.  This is why sometimes Humans are born between two different species.  Well.  I did not know that.  But Lanore says it is secret knowledge.  And the gods did not like it.

She tells us that it was a Human - a Kingsblooded - that found a way to trap and imprison Yuma.  And that this knowledge is shared with those who may be King.  And now, with us.  Because a frog said to.

I still don't see how it helps us decide what to do.  But we figured it out anyway.  

My neighbors want to free Yuma.  I'm not sure why.  This might start another war.  But they think it is the right thing to do.  

Aevyn thinks that the prison is probably at Kingstemple.  So that is where we will go.  On the way, we will try to return some of this property.  I suppose if we can't return it, we will use it.

I will take my one good hive along.  Maybe I will find bees.