Codex of Halimath Wasanthi

Synopsis
The Codex of Halimath Wasanthi is a magical device that was created by an elf of the same name in the early years of the Age of Rest, after the Severance. It serves a twofold purpose: first, it contains a holographic accounting of the life of Halimath Wasanthi and the work of Avara Wasanthi; second, it serves as a cipher for Halimath Wasanthi's coded journal.

Physical Description
The Codex is a handheld rectangular device, chrome in color, about the size of a baseball card. Arcane glyphs for illusion, divination, and abjuration magic are etched into its surface. On one face of the device is a small indentation, about the size of a fingerprint. Above this indentation, a small blueish crystal is embedded in the device. On the opposite side of the device is a larger, yellow-white crystal.

Properties
The device requires the blood of Halimath Wasanthi, or one of his descendants, to activate. Touching the indentation with the blood of Halimath Wasanthi or any of his descendants activates the device for 24 hours. When the device is activated, the blue crystal on its face projects an illusory recording that was programmed by the device’s creator. After the playback of this recording finishes, it can be repeated by touching the blue crystal.

While the device is active, it can be used to magically generate a cipher for your spoken words. Touching the yellow crystal on the reverse face of the device causes it to emit a small cone of yellow light. When you speak aloud while the light is active, the light projects your spoken words, translated into a complex cipher composed by layers of algorithmic code and written in dozens of different languages, nearly impossible to decipher by mundane means. When the light is shined on text that is written in this cipher, it instead projects the translation of that text in common.

Uses
Though Halimath's work on Rune Magic never reached fruition, his notes could still prove tremendously valuable to an aspiring rune scribe. By using the methods detailed in the book, a rune scribe can work to develop new runes. Once per day, provided that the rune scribe spends at least 2 hours working, they can make an Intelligence (Arcana) check, and add their Rune Knight level to the roll. The result of this check is tracked cumulatively over repeated sessions of work. Once the total reaches 1,000, a new rune is scribed.

Recording
When activated, the device plays the following recording: My name is Halimath Wasanthi. This recording will serve as my last will and testament. I have nothing to leave behind. No treasure, no property. Only knoweldge. Knowledge that, now, in my dying days, no one cares to hear. Nobody cares.

And so I leave this recording, the codex which contains it, and the journal which it deciphers, to no person in particular. I only pray that some day, someone will care to hear what I have to say. Someone will wish to know. I must believe that day will come, or else everything... all of it was for nothing.

And so to whoever hears this message. If you wish to know. Here is my story.

I was born in the year 596 of the Age of Arcana, in the flying city of Volus, capitol of the Holy Elvish Kingdom of Ayn Sitael. My birth was illegitimate - the product of an affair between a married man and an unmarried woman, both of whom held stations of great power on the High Council of the kingdom. As such, my existence was kept secret. For if the sins of my parents had been discovered, they would have been excommunicated, removed from the High Council, perhaps even executed under holy law. So my mother raised me in secret until I was old enough to survive alone, and then I was abandoned. An illegitimate bastard child with no name, no family, no home. No future.

I remained in Volus, lived out my young life there. Had a child of my own, out of wedlock. My son, Hastios. A bastard child born to a bastard child. His mother left him with me. She wanted no part in him. He would have ruined her prospects of a a normal life. But I had no normal life to lose.

Hastios was only a child when the war came. When Ayn Sitael fell, and the Arch Heart was exiled, many warned that Volus would surely fall into the sea. The religious leaders of the kingdom decried these warnings as heresy. But I had seen firsthand the extent of their blindness and ignorance. The gods had abandoned us, and they were too stubborn to see it.

So I fled, taking Hastios with me. Traveled the continent. I did not know where I would go, only that I wanted to be as far from Ayn Sitael as my feet would carry me. And they carried me to the desert. To Karaad. Where I have lived out my last decades and where soon I will perish.

It wasn't until months later that I learned that Volus had indeed fallen into the sea, killing all who remained there. I have no doubt that they were singing the gods' praises as they plunged to their deaths. And now there is a new elvish kingdom, with new lands, and a new council, and the same gods - the very gods who sentenced Ayn Sitael to ruin. People never change.

Now you know my story. But my story does not matter. Orphaned, bastard refugee who will die alone in the desert having never accomplished a thing. I have done nothing for which I deserve to be remembered. But my mother's story. Her life's work. She must be remembered. And if all that I can leave behind is my memory of her, then so be it.

My mother's name was Avara Wasanthi. She was a sage - an advisor on matters of magic. Her life's work was the development of a new form of magic, which she called rune magic. She did not believe in the inherent conflict between arcane and divine. She believed the two could coexist peacefully, even cooperatively. So she developed runes - a form of magic that used arcane methods to draw upon divine magic. She envisioned rune magic as a way to make magic accessible to the common man, a tool to demonstrate that there could be peace in this world.

For these beliefs, for her heresy, she was assassinated. As the Gods' War raged, the High Council believed that my mother's sins had brought the gods' wrath down upon them. So they had her killed, and her life's work destroyed. All record of it erased.

I resented my mother for many years, for abandoning me. But in my waning years, I have grown to appreciate the gravity of her decision. She wished for the greater good. For peace. Her station was necessary. What is one bastard orphan against a world in harmony?

I have spent the last decades of my life attempting to reproduce her work. A useless effort. I was never as intelligent or cunning as her, or as wise in the ways of magic. And even if I were, it has been years since the last Zenith. Decades since the last Prime. Magic is dead. And with it, everything that my mother lived and died for - everything she sacrificed. The life I never had.

I have recorded my efforts at reproducing rune magic in a journal, written in a nigh-unintelligible magically-generated cipher. This device serves as its codex, and will make its contents clear. Perhaps someday a better person will be able to resume my work. To bring my mother's legacy back into the light, and make her vision a reality.

The journal itself, I have bequeathed to my son, Hastios. Though I have tried to explain to him its significance, he has no desire to understand. He would sooner leave the past behind. To him, the journal is the ravings of an old man who cannot embrace the new world. To him, my tireless work on preserving my mother's legacy is neglect for him in the present. Perhaps he is right.

And so, within this codex, and within the journal, lies all that I leave behind in my death. A token of knowledge that no living soul cares to hear. My last and dying prayer is that someday my mother's memory will rise again from the ashes of our folly.

There is one more piece to my story, which you may wonder. The identity of my father. Strange to even call him that; I never once met him in person. Perhaps by the time this message is heard, the world will be different. I suspect not. But in my age, if the leaders of the Holy Kingdom knew that my father had sired an illegitimate child in an act of infidelity, outside of the holy tradition of the kingdom, it would destroy his legacy. Ruin the lives of his children, who now sit on the High Council of the new kingdom.

I bear no ill will against my father or his name. Not any more. And I will not be the reason that another illegitimate child suffers for the ignorance of others. I am my father's darkest secret, and his secret dies with me.