The nights are rough for Ryparin. He spent twenty years infected by the Nevermind. Now that it is gone, he feels a special kind of madness from the ending of its previously ceaseless chatter. He feels an emptiness where before he was full. He feels free where before he was not. Still, the nights are rough.
When things were at their worst in The Cathedral of Shadows deep beneath Bale Keep, in The Keep on the Shadowfell, Ryparin did his best to fight back but he was utterly powerless for long stretches of time. Mentally pinned down and unable to act. Forced to watch his friends face dangerous beasts controlled by the Nevermind who was feeding off him. Feelings of guilt remain. Broken memories of trying to resist and not being able to.
Still, in those long stretches of powerlessness, when the Nevermind was occupied with forming shadow creatures out of the stuff from the rift in the Shadowfell, Ryparin had brief moments when he was not powerless. Brief periods when he tried to sabotage the Nevermind’s plans.
In one such moment, Ryparin did an incredible thing. Where once Alandra de Winter took small pieces of her essence to create the Lanterns of Light, Ryparin took a small piece of himself and hid it in the Nevermind. For it to be hidden in such a primeval beast, Ryparin took the angriest, most hateful piece of himself. But it worked.
Perhaps Ryparin did it as a hedge against his own destruction. If the Nevermind had killed him (as it surely would have if his friends had not rescued him), at least some small part of himself would have survived. But as it was, he did survive, and now a piece of himself got left behind.
The Nevermind was not truly killed when it was defeated in the Cathedral of Shadows. Instead it was banished whence it came. And a small piece of Ryparin went with it.
Now that piece boils and roils inside the Nevermind who, sometimes at night, Ryparin connects with. He overhears snippets. He sees broken pieces. All fragments. It drives him crazy.
Some night he wakes up screaming. The rest of the crew has shown tremendous patience with this. Just like Henry Marshall – the head of the Church of St. Cuthbert in Saltmarsh – who could heal the wounded but walked with a pronounced limp from a damaged hip, Ryparin too now is a wounded healer.
He likes to rise with the morning sun and feel its warmth on his skin. He is, afterall, a creature of light.
Sometimes he sits with Valaria and describes the images that plague him in the night. She is an excellent artist. These are things Ryparin has described.
GENERAL AMYGDALA – Leader of the invading force
SOMETHING IMPORTANT
A MAGICALLY LOCKED DOOR
[Hey guys, please welcome Adam Layman to this email. He was part of the original board game group but moved to Windsor. He is back now and will play Kildrak on June 22 with Murph’s permission.]