Antairia's vision + Bone....Creature? Structure?...at Belassi Marsh

[Ash]

Okay so myself, Gloamfeather, Juniper, Linnea, and Ma'at got grabbed by some tendrils of darkness and whisked away. We all woke up inside of a bone structure. Sorry for the bad drawing I'm not an artist but I've done my best to recreate it as I saw it in the dark at 2am.

• Altar made of bone.
• Torches. The pair of + and the pair of = respectively.
• A maw that was shut when we woke up.
• A bone outcropping of some kind on the wall, not an altar.
• A pit with some precarious stones and some flying thigh height sized insects with 8 legs.

Inside we were beset by the flying insects, and trapped behind the maw. The + pair of torches seemed to draw the ichor from the insects into it as they died, and when Juniper touched the torch it wounded her arm and came to light, also lighting the other torch next to the bone altar. The = pair of torches took some charges to activate in the room with the bone outcropping which caused the second torch to light. The maw then opened and we left.

Volus Linnea and I investigated it after the group of us got out, realized where we were, and walked back to Beacon.

Volus can confirm it is not a tomb. The whole thing was bone, we were definitely inside of....something.

I can confirm that it is not a creature from the Vale, though the tendrils ARE related to my vision but they are also not from the Vale.

Iseurei had a similar vision to mine when she opened her mind to the Garden, but it has nothing to do with the snake lady we fought and killed, just that this Antairia vision is particularly potent. The vision is transcribed below:

I dance among the trees of a forest, using my powerful magic to make plants grow and flowers bloom. The very power of Creation seems to be mine, and I feel joy when you see the beautiful things I have made.

A dark shadow rises above me. I cannot see its true form, but it fills me with terror. I must destroy this Darkness!

I am standing before the Darkness, clutching my magical staff. I stand among allies who are dying around you, spending their lives to give me a chance to work this powerful sorcery. I begin the final part of the incantation, “By my Will…!”

…and then the Darkness lashes out at me. Tendrils of blackness grab me, wrap around me, and choke the life out of me. My staff clatters to the ground, and the Darkness swallows me…

The phrase "By My Will" appears throughout the Nine Forces of Nature quite often, it is something of a powerful mantra. It is likely that Antairia was casting a Grand Sorcery.

Opening my mind to this topic again, I was able to have a smaller vision in that whatever she was doing with her Grand Sorcery partially worked, but not fully as intended.

I wondered for a moment if I could find the place from the vision granted to me, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that the vision and the bone structure were at the same place: Belassi Marsh, located near to Beacon and not to be confused with Otterslick Bog.

The "Darkness" from the vision is not a literal darkness but a metaphor, likely for an unknown or unknowable enemy.

The bone altar from inside the creature was part of it, it is likely and possible that it is not the only one inside of it.

Volus can confirm that this is not a god or god adjacent entity, but a Research line would be needed to learn more of it's nature.

The tendrils seemed to pull mostly Sylph that were around, and some random others near them.

The + torch in the room with the pit seemed to want/value life essence, which is why it pulled in the ichor and hurt Juniper. This did not occur in the other room.

Was this a liminal/conceptual space or literally a giant bone thing? It was huge and subterranean, and while there is definitely a physical body, there may not just be a body we are dealing with.

Linnea was able to surmise as a Transmuter that it was as if the bone had merged with the land. There was a further mystery here that we were too tapped out to solve.