Day 76
Eschallus,
A name that I have had almost longer than my own.
After my tutelage at the “Temple of Enduring Silence”, is when I first came upon that moniker. Too many years ago, in the beginning of my travels I visited the capitol of Furondy, Chendyl. Attempting to find some work at the local mages guild and follow up on some adventuring leads, my path took me to the bazaar in the low quarter. Needing some material components for my spells, I walked past an old antique dealer. The owner of the shop was looking at me through glasses as thick as the bottom of a whisky bottle, “looking for something in particular?”
Spending about an hour with the old man and buying him a cup of tea in the process, he produced a tome of rather small shape. Almost looking like a novel, it was no bigger than my hand and about twice as thick. It reminded me of a prayer book that I have seen monks travel with. “This just came to me on a trade with a traveling merchant; I cannot read it as the writing is too small and gives me a headache. Although the dialect is tough to get through, it is written in common. For your time and your kindness in indulging an old man, I want you to have it.”
After denying the gift many times, I accepted, reluctantly. Retiring to my room that night, I opened the book. The book did appear to be penned by someone with delicate penmanship and detail. The books name was penned, “The mirror.” Interested in reading something other than arcane text I was…intrigued.
After a slow start I tried to make out if this was an autobiography, biography or fiction. It was a very difficult read, only tackling several pages at a time. Realizing after several weeks of lightly touching the book in my off time, this book was turning out to be a philosophical view of the world from the point of view from the author. Tackling difficult concepts of law and chaos, good and evil and the views of neutrality, it started off by the author giving his view of how these moral guides affect the world as we know it. Interestingly enough the author strayed away from religion and stayed true to the tenants of philosophy and the outer planes. Morality was a large topic in his writings. Questions such as, “Do we as humans have an innate universal morality regardless of geography or society or are we bound by a version of morality set forth by the society we are born and raised into?”
After reading that section, my head was aching from trying to grasp the context of what the author was discussing. Only after a month of reading this book did I finally begin to understand where the author was coming from. He changed from an unbiased teacher discussing the stance of philosophy and the outer planes to making an argument in favor of the side of law and benevolence. Looking back, he wrote the book well, in trying to convince his readers that his views were true and accurate.
In his writings, the author makes an argument by using events in history to solidify his stance. Even though I had not recalled any of the historical events he sites, the message is still conveyed.
Throughout history and most likely now, even as the reader is reading his book, evil has a foothold in your(my) world, greater than one can imagine. It eats away at the very fabric of peace and harmony. There are soldiers, mortal and immortal, that fight an unending war to gain dominance in the prime world, to sway mortal man one way or the other. In that eternal struggle troops are lost on both sides.
The author makes the argument of using a mirror in the battle against evil. By turning evil upon itself we are now causing evil to fight a two front war. By any means necessary make evil gaze upon itself and implode from within. If evils forces were somehow duped, coerced, forced or compelled to turn upon itself, which we know it does already, then why not use that advantage in goods favor. By doing this, evil now has more enemies to combat and good has less evil forces it needs to contend with. As a result the forces of good have now indirectly added to their ranks and taken away troops that were effectively, only moments before fighting good.
Turn evil upon itself, the Mirror.
The rest of the book turned out to be something of a military text, describing how to accomplish such a feat. The most prominent was the discussion of actually summoning evil creatures and forcing them to fight each other in the hopes that they would destroy themselves. The writer gave this avenger a name, the Malconvoker. A summoner and binder of evil creatures, made by definition to fight on the side of good to destroy evil, the Mirror.
A caller in darkness, is what a Malconvoker is. Always finding and studying the dark arts in the hopes of finding a way for him to gain the leading edge against evil. The book warned of prices to be paid by dabbling in things evil. The warning has been noted.
25 years ago I read that book and have done so every year since, always learning something more. This is how I gained the name Eschallus, or the Nightingale, representing a male bird that sings at night, a caller in the darkness. I was given that name by the lower planes in response to my constant summons of infernal beings to force them to fight their own kind. My legend among the lower planes grows. There have been prices to pay. I intend to use what is normally their weapons against them, fear, pain, treachery and yes, torture.
I must find the Second Son and finally destroy him for he has the potential to take over the world. even more so than the First Son of the Witch Queen.
