Drunken carousing and the search for grog drove a crew of merry
swashbucklers into the city of New Celest, drawn to their seafaring
kindred. After much consternation to the citizenry, unable to decide how
to react to such visitors and guests in their fair city, the Lord
Yadothune Nerale, a descendant of an Imperial Great House, was found at
the docks with Helstren, the Harbourmaster. Just previously, a fight had
broken out between Munsia D'cente and one of the crew members, the
former believing the swashbuckler having been unseemly towards a
companion of hers. In hopes of settling the dispute peaceably, Sevz
La'Saet of the Celestines offered to make amends in providing the
commodities to build a new ship for the crew, who were strangely without
one of their own.

After a sizable donation of wood for the ship and cloth for the sails,
Yadothune and Helstren set to work - and within half a day the basic
skeleton of the hull was complete. Unfortunately, Helstren had
announced, it would be slow going - many of his shipwrights were unable
to work. Yadothune Nerale, not to be left at a loss, announced that it
was time for his crew's vacation to be at an end - an experienced sort,
they knew the basics of repairing ships and ship construction and, under
the masterful eye of the Harbourmaster and Yadothune, the work would be
finished in no time. Not to anyone's shock, however, the swashbucklers
were enjoying themselves, and were loathe to surrender so easily - and
so the citizenry of New Celest set about flirting and beguiling the crew
with promises of 'grog and wenches', as they so proclaimed the object of
their search to be, only to lead them to the no-nonsense Lord Nerale.

Many days of work went into the affair, but before too long the Kelpie
Maiden was finished. A beautiful ship of Helstren's design, she was
designed for both speed and comfort, hoping allowing her to slide easily
over the water. With the help of his crew, Yadothune bent what
aquamantic energy they could to summoning a surge of water to pull the
Maiden from the dry docks and into the harbour, where they unfurled her
sails and headed out to the Inner Sea.

It was Ione of the Aquamancers and Meir of the Cantors to first
hunt down and board the Kelpie Maiden as she circled the large,
land-locked body of water. After a series of brief inquiries, they
discovered the true intention of Yadothune and his merry crew - they
were searching for an artifact lost during the Vernal Wars, and had
sailed the oceans and seas of Lusternia looking for any sign of it and
what he called 'the Flock of Miracles'.

And so New Celest set to work, agreeing to help the increasingly
mysterious captain, who was seen to often stroke and hold an ancient
journal. With the help of Syridean, Dynami, Meir, Telperion, Munsia and
many more of the sea-shore city, Yadothune Nerale managed to create a
potion from a variety of previously unnoticed sea life, so that he
himself may lift the remnants of the artifact from the sea floor, that
which he called the Sculpture of Tamthys. Yet, as it was brought aboard
the Maiden and cleaned, Yadothune cried out in dismay - parts of it were
missing, he had said, five crystal doves lost to the waters. And so,
with the help of his crew, these same Celestians faced many horrors of
the deep - matching their muscle against giant squids, anglerfish,
dangerous sea snakes and many more beasts of the sea to reclaim the
doves.

As Meir returned the last of the crystal doves to the sculpture,
something miraculous happened - an elegant and rhapsodic song, quickly
recognized as bearing the purity and light of the Voice of Rhapsody,
sang out across the ship and, for the briefest of moments, the doves
came to life. Though many of the doves returned to crystal, one
remained, fluttering about the deck. To Talya of the Aquamancers, the
only merian amongst them, Yadothune gave what he called perhaps his
greatest treasure, the journal itself.

Meir, at the urging of Yadothune, played a melody of the Cantors, one
taught to them by Rhapsody's Voice - and soon discovered the dove itself
came to him. With dove in hand and city in tow, Meir returned the dove
to the Voice that had taught his guild Starhymn, who met the dove with
both joy and sadness - for with it came her admission of truth, as to
what she had done during the Vernal Wars. A flock of one thousand white
doves, she proclaimed, was what became of her when the Goddess plucked
Her Voice and hid it from the Soulless. Indeed, she spoke of the
bitter-sweet joy of the Flock of Miracles, and the many blessings she
rained down upon mortal cities during the Vernal Wars.

Hoping to leave Rhapsody to find good cheer in her hour of sadness, New
Celest turned its attention to the journal itself. Only those who
befriend the Lord Yadothune Nerale may yet know what lies written upon
those pages, scripted and scribed by an ancient hand - for the book
itself, it was quickly discovered, dated from the early years of the
Vernal Wars.

Penned by My hand on the 23rd of Shanthin, in the year 248 CE.