THE MONSTROUS TALE OF CALIFA Y'BOLGARI
Foreward: 
Transcribed in these pages is the story of Califa y'Bolgari, which was found buried in the rubble of the Arthar'rt Observatory. For ease of reading, it has been condensed and neatly organised from its original version, which was written on barely legible vellum of an aged and worn quality.
 
What follows is a tale that can be taken as historically accurate, or the fictional writings of a Magnagoran noble as inspired by the lore of the Arthar'rt Observatory. The enigmatic nature of the source makes it an intriguing character study, though ultimately as a narrative, it has been shelved as literary for its storytelling value.

Chapter One:
It began with the strange crystal man in the Blasted Lands.

I was a child, then - what did I know of the ways of foreigners, the way they mocked us viscanti with their cruel smiles and false sympathy? My younger brother Azriel and I were not even orphans, but of noble viscanti birth, taught to disdain those who were not like us. We didn't understand our disdain was a protective shield against that of the rest of the Basin, though surely our parents tried to explain it to us. There is no excuse our for ignorance, but oh, we paid for it dearly.
 
We were children of House y'Bolgari. I shudder to think of what the House thinks of us now, but that is what we were called in those days. We had been given a great task to serve our house, and were told to gather fruits for the final preparations of the Oil of ur'Lai. In our spoiled laziness, we did not understand that our task was one of the simpler ones in this complex ritual, and simply bemoaned that we were expected to take part in it at all.
 
So we dawdled on our way back to the Presidio, seeing how clever we could be at avoiding the gravediggers that roamed the Blasted Lands. We shrieked with delight at the dangers. We thought ourselves invincible, undead and beautiful. Such was the y'Bolgari way.
 
What was the price of our freedom? A child's vanity.
 
Azriel and I had never seen a lucidian until one approached us in the Blasted Lands, his skin gleaming like ice even in the arid heat. I was mesmerised by it. In those days, Hallifax had yet to exist - lucidian and trill still roamed the Basin like lost, exotic creatures, yearning for a homeland lost to time. I found the lucidian's strangeness beautiful, then - but now, the very sight of crystal fills all of my being with loathing.
 
"Aren't you children a little young to roam the Blasted Lands by yourself?" he asked us. His voice had a curious crystalline echo to its monotone.
 
"I'm eleven," I said proudly, straightening my shoulders. Azriel hid behind me. I foolishly believed I was able to protect him from any harm that might befall us.
 
"Ah, but there are gravediggers here," the lucidian said. "Someone could get hurt, and then what would you do?"
 
"We can handle ourselves," I said. "My brother and I are viscanti. We are strong enough."
 
"I meant no offense, of course. Just the concern of an old man." His body pulsed with colours, bright and shimmering in the heat. I couldn't interpret their meaning at all. "It only seems to me that it is growing late, and you ought to be going home soon. Gravediggers feast just as well in the dark, you know."
 
I hadn't been watching Azriel as he backed away, so when he screamed, I was startled. I turned to see my brother sucked into a gravedigger's pit, the monster tearing into his flesh hungrily. I shrieked in alarm - we had usually been so careful, so quick to look before running across the Blasted Lands! For all our bravado, we knew we were no match for a gravedigger, especially alone.
 
Without a moment's thought, the lucidian stranger dove in after Azriel, wielding a curious metal instrument in his hands. I saw the spark of energy rise up from the gravedigger's pit, and when the lucidian emerged with Azriel alive and safe in his arms, I let out a cry of joy.
 
"As you can see, this is no place for children," the lucidian said calmly. "Your brother's health is in poor condition, but it is your good fortune that I am a doctor and was here to help you. Come with me, and I'll tend to his wounds in my lab. Afterwards, of course, you will both be free to go."
 
I truly believed he was our savior that day. I didn't realize it would be the last day I would walk the Basin as Califa y'Bolgari.

Chapter Two:
The lucidian called himself Etil'ck Arthar'rt. He had a sister, Rak'ia, that seemed far less approachable than her brother had been to us. In the dark light of their Observatory tower, the two crystal siblings were imposing and intimidating figures, and they laid out Azriel on an operating table with a host of complicated instruments on a tray nearby.
 
"Can I go in with him?" I asked. Azriel was easily frightened, I knew, but I didn't want to humiliate him in front of the lucidians by saying so.
 
"I am afraid that would be unwise," Rak'ia said dismissively. "Surgical procedures are unpleasant enough for even those in the medical field to witness."
 
"What if you stay here and enjoy a small treat as you wait? This must be difficult for you," said Etil'ck, kindly I had thought.

I took the cookie gratefully and nibbled on it to calm my nerves as they closed the door behind them.
 
The Observatory was unfamiliar and far from home, and I was beginning to wonder if Mother might be worried about us. Had the Oil of ur'Lai ritual gone on without the fruit required? Was the family going to be cross with us for running off? Surely they'd understand once I explained what happened to Azriel. Maybe they'd even compensate the Arthar'rt lucidians for their kindness in saving a noble viscanti child.
 
I had no concept of the danger we were in. By the time I began to notice the drug's effects, they had completely dulled my senses. I can only hope Azriel's were just as numbed.
 
The last thing I remember is a single moment of clarity - briefly waking into consciousness to see two lucidians glaring down at my exposed body, probing it with metal and electricity that shocked me back into the terror of plunging darkness. I think I screamed. I hope I screamed. I hope my body, in some way, tried to cry out against what was happening to it.
 
When I awakened, the world I knew had transformed into something unrecognizable, and so had I.

Chapter Three:
 "The experiment is a failure," Rak'ia Arthar'rt said.
 
These words were what roused me from my dark slumber, rising up to find myself no longer seated in the Observatory proper, but caged like an animal deep underground. A splitting headache ravaged my mind, and though I felt too tired to stand, I could still make out the indistinct silhouettes of the Arthar'rt siblings. They stood beyond the bars of my prison, examining me with scientific scrutiny.
 
Etil'ck wrote methodically on a pad of paper, not even glancing up while speaking. "We have attempted to eradicate the Taint's effect on the viscanti race, and instead we have simply created a new race entirely. Not a failure so much as a miscalculation, I would say."
 
"They're hideous freaks," Rak'ia said, sneering down at me. "Like a mangled facsimile of the lucidian race."

Hideous? No one had ever dared to call me that before. I bristled, finally gaining the energy to rise to my feet.
 
"I am Califa of House y'Bolgari, and you dare mock my beauty?" I hissed. "My ancestors perfected the art of it, while yours foolishly lost themselves in time and space!"
 
Neither of them had to laugh to show how thoroughly amusing they found me. This time when their bodies flickered with colour, I understood their intent.
 
"House y'Bolgari. Trill lineage, isn't it? Didn't someone trace them to a branch of the Cloudwalkers some time ago?" Etil'ck asked Rak'ia, completely ignoring my outburst. "Perhaps we would have more luck with viscanti specimens that evolved out of a lucidian shard."
 
"Are you vermin so blind that you equate our undead beauty with the feathery squawking of trills!" I snarled. "Where is my brother? You will pay in blood for holding the children of noble houses hostage!"
 
"Calm yourself, freak," Rak'ia said, inclining her head towards the darker side of the prison. "Your brother lies beside you. Look upon him, and see the beauty of House y'Bolgari you defend oh so vehemently."
 
When I turned, the creature I saw shared no resemblance to my brother at all. Where he had been a healthy red-skinned viscanti with silken black hair, the monster that looked up at me was a crystalline freak just as Rak'ia had said, his sad face marked by red bloodshot eyes. Only the small size of the creature betrayed that it was a child, and meeting my gaze, Azriel's eyes filled with tears.
 
"What did they do to us, Califa?" he whispered, and the chilling reality that my body had shifted, too, finally reached my comprehension. I examined my own limbs - now hideous, twisted, and eerily translucent in their deformed crystalline appearance - and let out an agonized scream of despair.
 
There would be no saving us, no acknowledgement of us ever again as the beloved children of House y'Bolgari. Not in this abhorrent state, at least - to our family, we were surely now better off dead. We were to forever be now like one of Rheimos's animals in the city Zoo, simply a grotesque form of entertainment for the masses.
 
"We're going to die here," Azriel said, breaking into full on sobs."They're going to kill us, and we'll die here."
 
"Nonsense. It would be a waste to dispose of you," Rak'ia said, and Etil'ck considered this with a thoughtful nod. "After all, you are subjects worthy of examination, and useful for understanding what caused our failures. You may sustain yourselves on the knowledge that your existence is leading to a better future for all viscanti-kind - and perhaps a future where the Taint is of no longer of any consequence."
 
"I'd rather die!" I shouted at them, lunging at the bars of my cell.
 
"Fortunately for us," Etil'ck said coolly, "you are not the one who makes that choice for us. Your life, child, is now ours. But don't fret. You won't be lonely for long. There will be more of you, very, very soon."
 
And there were, more of us than I ever could have imagined.

Chapter Four:
 Even now, the story repeats itself over and over, the same each time. A child wandering the Blasted Lands far away from home bumps into a seemingly kind stranger who offers them some small gesture of goodwill, leading them to be the next in a long line of victims held captive to the cruel machinations of the Arthar'rt Observatory.
 
"Another failure," the hateful lucidians say with dispassionate cruelty, tossing another crystalline freak into the hidden depths of the Observatory. Another viscanti life, wasted.
 
One thing, however, gives me hope - it appears that the tale of the disappearing viscanti children is beginning to make its rounds among the Magnagoran citizenry. Perhaps friends have seen us vanish in the company of these strange lucidians, for caution seems to be becoming the rule for those children who venture from the comforts of home.
 
If you are reading this - if this diary has reached my former family, or any of those I have left behind me in Magnagora - perhaps it may already be too late for us. It is entirely likely that we have gone insane these past few years, trapped like rats, desperate for a single ray of sunlight on our hideous, mottled crystal skin. If you have read our story and take pity on us, then I humbly beseech the following of you.
 
I once dreamed of escape for me and my brother. Escape, however, would only be the beginning. What world could be left for once-viscantis twisted into a mockery of their former glory? I was once an y'Bolgari, and no life save for the beauty I have lost bears any joy for me. I suspect it is such for most of us once-viscanti who have been stripped of their racial pride.
 
Thus what we must now ask of you is far more urgent than such a temporary salvation as "escape."
 
You must demolish all of the Arthar'rt Observatory. Upturn every last stone, set fire to its very foundation so that no scrap of its research remains. Let the toppling tower crush every last man and woman who resides within its walls, including myself. Only then can we purge its evils from this world, and rid the viscanti race of its horrors forevermore.
 
If you are reading this, do this and save us. Save us all.

Epilogue:
 As of this book's publication, the Arthar'rt Observatory has been long lost to the Basin of Life. Its demise was cited as a direct effect of Father Sun's solar assault on the Basin of Life in the 12th of Vestian, the year 445 CoE, which threatened several other structures, including the Presidio of the Damned, the Tosha Monastery, the Scorpion Caverns, and others. Notably, the only place that Father Sun succeeded in striking with full force was the Arthar'rt Observatory, which is now a forgotten, melted pile of crystal and stone.
 
Is it possible that this short diary might have been found by one of those intrepid adventurers who worked so tirelessly to protect the other places of the Basin? Are the lucidians mentioned in this tale no more, as well as the brave victims they kept locked away for their cruel research?

These are questions that currently possess no answer. Time, however, may yet tell us.
 
~Lisuette