00;00;00;00 - 00;00;18;29 Before we begin. This episode contains references to degenerative illnesses, forgetting memory ailments, cryptids, sUhicide, mania, gaslighting, and issues of personal agency. Listener discretion is requested. 00;00;19;01 - 00;00;42;08 This is unfortunately a story about you. About you, the great hero that you are and how you were tasked with some quest, some noble thing back in town. They asked you to go out into the wilderness and save the child, or collect the pinecones, or pull the ancient sword from the fabled rock and defeat the unrelenting monster who threatens the village and everything they know and stand for. 00;00;42;11 - 00;01;10;14 It's always a child, or a sword, or some pinecones that the villagers could easily get themselves, but they don't because this isn't their call to adventure. It's yours after all. This is a story about you. Out in the wilderness, you plod along with your adventuring companion, a sqUhire or a follower, or a familiar -- someone to exteriorize those deep inner monologues and keep the adventure high and lively. 00;01;10;16 - 00;01;33;08 Someone to witness your great deeds and recount them later. At some point we learn, don't put the hero in danger. Put their sidekick in danger. That's where the drama lives. You remember someone telling you that once you scoffed at it, then, but now you can't qUhite remember who said it. The barkeep in Lorsely? A beggar Imgrassa? 00;01;33;10 - 00;02;00;17 Someone. You creep deeper into the arid wastes and further and further from town. You swear that something is there, watching you following. You get that shiver when you can tell that there will be danger just moments before it happens. Just long enough to see a blade or a spell or. 00;02;00;20 - 00;02;25;15 But your mind is playing tricks on you. The blade is out and the spell is ready, but the moment passes as you shift your gaze into the middle distance. There's nothing there. You must have scared it off. Yes. You're strong. You're capable. And as you shake that feeling of being watched, you leave your blade unsheathed for just a moment longer. 00;02;25;18 - 00;02;51;26 Just until you're sure that whatever was there is completely gone. And moments later, you can barely recall while you reacted that way in the first place. You've gone off the trail by this point. You remember hearing about a shortcut. You've taken it before, or you think you have, but something's not right. The shortcut should have been shorter. You remember that person. 00;02;51;28 - 00;03;16;10 back home, they told you about it, and you pause for a moment, mid-stride to remember. And then suddenly a strike from behind. Not a sword, but a body. A person bumps into you, a stranger, all the way out here, turning. They look wild and confused. You watch their face freeze up with terror and then mellow into a placid, calm. 00;03;16;12 - 00;03;45;25 They keep saying a name over and over, trying to get some recognition. But that's not your name. Your name is. Different. They begin to say the name louder as they reach for your shoulders. So you reach for your blade. They've gone mad, and before they can react, your dagger finds its mark. You really can't be too careful in the wilderness, especially when traveling alone, as all great heroes do. 00;03;45;28 - 00;04;05;02 It's easier to walk downhill. You think to yourself, you say it out loud. You remember a time when you used to say things out loud, and a voice would respond, but now it's just qUhiet, which isn't so bad. They say that people walk down slopes when they get disoriented, but that's not what's happening here. It's just easier to walk downhill. 00;04;05;04 - 00;04;30;24 And so you proceed cautiously down from the edge of the arid basin to the canyon floor below, where a series of dark caves line the wall of the ravine system and the sun sinks below the cliff's edge horizon above you. And the shadow covers your face first and proceeds to consume the rest of you, which isn't so bad. 00;04;30;26 - 00;04;52;07 No one ever minded a little shade. You're having trouble making a fire. You have the wood in place. That's not the problem. But there's something else that you need. Rocks. Maybe you remember, of course, that brave adventurers could conjure fire out of nothing in days of yore. But those ages are long since passed. And now the world has forgotten such things. 00;04;52;07 - 00;05;13;22 Which is normal. It's normal to forget things you keep telling yourself, like your father, his mind at the end. But that's not going to happen to you. You're safe just where you are at the bottom of this basin. Once the slope has gone as downhill as it can possibly get. Still here. Unfortunately, we're telling a story about you. 00;05;13;24 - 00;05;32;26 It has been days at the bottom of this basin. At least you think so. Is that what it's called? Basin. There's got to be a better word for it. And why are you wearing this armor? It's a ridiculous choice for a vacation in this climate. So you take it off. Doffing. Do you doff that sort of thing. Was it a pine cone that you needed for the fire or something? 00;05;32;29 - 00;06;01;01 It's getting darker, but that's fine. This is all fine. I would love to tell you, dear adventurer, that the creature who has been stalking you for days kills you now. That would be kind, because right now you are the worst kind of wounded. You're the kind where you forget to limp. The kind where you forget what you're supposed to do when you're bleeding. 00;06;01;01 - 00;06;29;29 So you just keep bleeding. It's like the old warlocks used to say. A real amnesiac would forget that they had forgotten anything at all. Real amnesiacs die happy. Sitting by the fire, you forgot how to light. You just don't see it. The fanged shadow sitting right beside you. Just the two of you. If you did, by some miracle turn to meet its gaze, it would pluck that memory. 00;06;30;06 - 00;06;58;16 Just like so many others from your head. Like a ripe berry. Its long, thin fingers. Reaching into the things that make you, you and pluck. You would be frozen, locked in a loop of seeing this creature, making the memory of terror and panic, and having it harvested from you all in the same moment. And who are you to argue? 00;06;58;17 - 00;07;21;01 You can't even remember your own name. The creature took that from you too. Now wearing it like a bib to a feast, and it gorges itself on what people used to call you, on the memory of your first love and of your childhood home, and on the idea of the color magenta and math and how to bUhild a campfire and your poor traveling companion. 00;07;21;04 - 00;07;46;00 And last but not least, you. The creature is not interested in your body, which decays around your mind and the last few remaining thoughts. It can retain. It's not interested in bodies at all. And as your corpse bakes in the high sun of the basin, not a recollection left in you, the creature moves slowly into one of those caves which pockmarked the walls. 00;07;46;03 - 00;08;05;19 It waits there downhill for the next time it hungers. Because this beast only wants one thing --- Everything you are. After all, this is a story about you. 00;08;05;21 - 00;08;46;16 This time on Alchemy Investigations, we present a case study in an ongoing research collaboration with our colleagues in R.U.E.. The Registry of Unexplained Encounters, to highlight specific and dangerous phenomena in the realm. This preceding story of the poor adventurer is thankfully fictional. A composite made from other accounts. But this creature R.U.E. Number 2452, or the Dearmad Orm, which does go by other names in other tongues, is a particularly difficult creature to catalog, as most of the people who cross its path either don't know that they have had such a close encounter with their own demise, and don't remember it, or simply never return. 00;08;46;18 - 00;09;08;07 However, working with the Registry, we've prepared two stories which may give our intrepid investigators a leg up in recognizing the signs of the Dearmad Orm out in the wild. Because sometimes a forgotten word is just on the tip of your tongue, and sometimes you're about to lose your head. Stay tuned. Investigators. 00;09;08;09 - 00;09;31;29 Greetings, investigators. With you again is Ichabod M. Groster lead dispatch for Alchemy Investigations, the realm's foremost private investigatory body. Tonight, we depart from our standard format to offer another in a series of paranormal public service announcements. These are not our normal mysteries in the sense that they can be solved by traveling to a specific scene of a specific crime and questioning witnesses instead. 00;09;32;02 - 00;10;07;04 This episode and those like it, will serve as primers on a specific cryptid monster, rUhin, or phenomena. It is our hope that a keen and thorough investigator will take note of these audio dossiers to stay current on whatever mysteries and unexplained forces lurk in the world at large. And tonight's anomaly, we will detail to the best of our ability how to recognize the signs of a Dearmad Orm, two words Dearmad Orm, and what to do in the very small window of cognizance you have between recognition and your own slow, faltering death. 00;10;07;08 - 00;10;34;09 Note taking is strongly encouraged, investigators. With all of that in hand, how, dear investigator, can we hope to stop a creature that forces us to forget its very existence? How can we defeat the perfect camouflage, not hiding from our view, but hiding from our recollection? Well, sometimes, as was the case in our first story tonight, you just kind of get lucky. 00;10;34;12 - 00;11;00;14 But to tell that story, we need to go back a long time to a place called the Uhi Prefecture. The Uhi Blood Scouts, or an expeditionary force from the Uhi Prefecture, which came to prominence before the Great War during the First Age. At the time of this story. These fierce and unrelenting warriors were led by a woman named Grainne the Stalwart, a holy fighter turned mercenary. 00;11;00;16 - 00;11;26;21 Fun fact her exploits at the battle of the Dawn forest were recounted with only slight embellishment by the famed bard, Alistair Bastian in his epic poem Grainne Blood Battle of the Dawn. But before the Bard songs and before the Bell Dawn Grainne and her Blood Scouts were tasked by the Queen of the Uhi to pursue and destroy a group of bandits hiding in the Forsanne Depths within the lowlands of the northernmost point in the prefecture. 00;11;26;24 - 00;11;54;29 So Grainne and her forces sped north on horseback until the terrain became too rugged and steep for mounts. She and her scouts dismounted and proceeded down into the depths on foot. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of enjoying the Forsanne depths for themselves, I want to paint a picture of a fetid, mosquito filled acid swamp at the bottom of a craggy gulch that stretches for days in every direction. 00;11;55;01 - 00;12;21;03 Each branch of the canyon has been so carved by the acidic water that a traveler's almost encompassed by large stone arches above them. It's a venomous cave system with a skylight, and that's being very generous. Less generously. The Forsanne depths are poisonous, noxious, and the perfect place to hide. If you were a bandit group on a crime spree with nothing left to lose and a high tolerance for pain. 00;12;21;06 - 00;12;52;03 But Grainne wasn't deterred. She wrote in her mission log that the depths would only hearten her blood scouts, while the ones that survived. Grainne The Stalwart, had figured that she would descend into the depths, devastate the bandits therein, climb out of the putrid swamp of Victor, and be home within a few days. Headed for a warm bath. But poor Grainne did not expect that by the time she arrived at the depths, most of the bandits would already be dead, and something far worse awaited her. 00;12;52;05 - 00;13;13;12 In her mission log, she wrote. Day two. After a hard ride from Uhi. Arrived Forsanne Depths, two guards hiding in wait, both spotted and eliminated before alarms could be sound. Recommend Hurris and Osha for commendation. Osha got hers straight through the neck. We will make a camp at the top of the depths and descend after dark. 00;13;13;15 - 00;13;43;00 One of the guards even had a crude map. It depicts the way back to camp. So undisciplined. Some things you just need to commit to memory. If this is any indication, I expect a short, stupid fight. She, of course, was partially right. Day three. Okay. Borrins was right, the Depth are terrible. It’s the smell and the humidity. You’re left to choose between not breathing to save yourself from the stench, or breathing in what has to be a mug of swamp water 00;13;43;00 - 00;14;07;02 With each gasp, the air is thick. Not my most hated battleground, but close. We descended on foot and stalked until dawn. ‘Round sun up. We came upon three other guards and they were already dead. Two were clearly stabbed and one seemed to die of her injuries after limping off. Not at all surprising that there would be infighting. I don't think we're dealing with the top brass. 00;14;07;04 - 00;14;33;28 One strangeness, though. They all had their rations and gold on their person when they died. Usually when bandits turn on one another, they rob each other. But everyone had everything intact. Curious day four: note ten lashes and ten days in the stocks for Mr. Ambell -- who walked off his watch last night. Unlike him, but the swamp is making the scouts bristle, so it isn't so far out of the realm. 00;14;34;00 - 00;14;53;04 When I asked him why he left his post in the middle of a hostile watch, he said he must have misjudged the time and then began to blubber like a child. No discipline with this new group. He's lucky I didn't strike him then and there. Day five five lashes for Mirrum-- who assumed navigational duties after Brax fell ill. 00;14;53;04 - 00;15;14;14 Good with a spear, but apparently cannot read a map to save her life. My horse would do better. Still looking at the map we were given, something isn't totally right with it. I will have to take it up a Borrins when we return. His cartographer needs to get their eyes checked. Day six. It seems like the swamp did our job for us. 00;15;14;17 - 00;15;33;01 An entire bandit camp 15 and total dead. All of them. By the look of it, they died of dehydration or exposure or something similar. Maybe they drank the swamp water and it made the brain sick. Maybe they just ran out of food. I didn't find much in the way of supplies, which is not surprising. I don't find these people to be great planners. 00;15;33;03 - 00;15;58;01 It was a bit like that time in Ragrai -- but the smell is just so much worse here. Regardless, that's one box checked. We should be able to ride back shortly. Day seven compromised. Ichabod here. When Grainne returned to Uhi, there was an inqusiition because she was ten days overdue. And upon return, eight of her best soldiers had been lost. 00;15;58;04 - 00;16;23;14 When questioned about her log entry for day seven, Compromised; Grainne reported that she noted some inconsistencies in her campsite and in her belongings. She felt that perhaps someone had been tampering with her journal. In a move of caution, she created an auxiliary log, which was protocol, and she kept that on her person during the intervening ten days, she wrote in that secret journal exclusively. 00;16;23;17 - 00;16;47;07 During the inquest, Grainne asked that the Queen keep the contents of that auxiliary log classified as it might damage tactical secrecy for the Uhi Prefecture. Or at least that was what was maintained in the public record for a long time to come. But looking back now, it is very likely that there was no spy or saboteur shifting things in Grainne's tent. 00;16;47;10 - 00;17;15;16 Grainne the Stalwart was simply losing time, forgetting where she had left things. That is one of the earliest warning signs of the Dearmad Orm. The notion that something's out of place, and the very reasonable desire to blame someone else for moving or changing something. Suspicion masking, fear. But you're that someone else. You just don't remember it. When entries in her primary mission log return. 00;17;18;02 - 00;17;43;24 Day Undetermined. The bandits have been dispatched In the process, Mirram, Ambel, Oshua, Graves, Maltech, Herri, Ocks, and Oklanti bravely lost their lives defending the Uhi prefecture and her interests. They were buried on the edge of the Forsanne Depths and will be remembered in the halls of Dalketh and the sanctified heroes who have gone before them. 00;17;43;26 - 00;18;07;19 And that's where it was left for many hundreds of years. A blip on the record. Sometimes a mission, even for those as talented as the Blood Scouts, goes sideways and good people lose their lives. And while this certainly was a blemish on Grainne's record. The queen, minimized the damage, and by the end of Grainne's life, she would be remembered as a heroic leader and a paragon of military might. 00;18;07;19 - 00;18;37;23 in Uhi. She was the hero of the Dawn forest, not the abject failure at the Forsanne depths. But centuries later, when the Uhi Prefecture grew into the Uhi Empire and collapsed after the Year of Storms. A book was found in the royal vaults, Grainne's Auxiliary Field Journal from the Forsanne Depths campaign, and it paints a very, very different picture of what happened out there in the fetid wastes. 00;18;37;25 - 00;19;10;24 It wasn't a battle with bandits, saboteurs in the canyon. It was a slow, malingering hunger, waiting in ambush. It represented a truth so terrible that it had to be hidden from the citizens of Uhi. A creature so unthinkable it reduced the fiercest warriors in the prefecture to vacant stares and bodies. Grainne's second journal becomes relatively incoherent quickly and I'm not sure what reading it verbatim would accomplish. 00;19;10;24 - 00;19;32;00 Short of tarnishing the memory of a war hero who is slowly falling prey to a monster she could neither see nor remember. But I was struck by two passages. The first is early in her cognitive decline. She begins talking about the weather worsening, which, as it turns out, was pretty important to the story's outcome. But then reports on the following. 00;19;32;02 - 00;19;52;29 This early in the day, I watched a man try to scale the sides of the walls of the where we are, and he clumb to the rock above me like he was a bird. And all of a sudden he let go and screamed. He wasn't a bird. Or at least he forgot how to be one. Then. As it turns out, there were many deaths amongst the blood scouts. 00;19;53;01 - 00;20;16;19 The Dearmad Orm was hunting them, hiding just outside their understanding. And forgetting is a terrible weapon. It seemed to manifest differently for different people. Or maybe the Dearmad Orm just cannot pick and choose which memories it wishes to consume. Some forgot how to eat. Some forgot how important breathing is. Some just walked off in the middle of the night. 00;20;16;21 - 00;20;49;02 And like the bandits who came to Forsanne before them, the Blood Scouts died one by one of exposure and hunger and thirst. But really, they all just died from being empty. However, as I said at the beginning, this is a story about luck because that storm rolled in. The one that Grainne had noted and it brought with it intense rain and lightning and the Forsanne depths canyon began to fill with rain and thunder cracks deafening the blood. 00;20;49;02 - 00;21;15;28 Scouts. And as the water level rose, it's likely that many died from not having retained the ability to swim. We know this because Grainne's auxiliary journal, the private one, has a final entry, one that returns to a recognizable level of clarity, as if all of a sudden her memories and confidence and self all returned at once. In an instant. 00;21;16;01 - 00;21;40;18 Supplemental. I have woken in a cave at the bottom of the Forsanne depths, having obviously taken shelter from some great storm? I cannot see any of my scouts. I am alone and confused, and seem to have fallen sick against some dark magic that made me forget who or where I am. This place is cursed. My clothes are tattered. I am bleeding from the ear. 00;21;40;21 - 00;22;06;24 Floating down river I saw what I believed to be one of my scouts. So I ran to assist. I could see them periodically lit up by lightning crashes in the sky. But as I moved closer, I saw clearly that this is not one of mine. It was a creature, tall and wire thin, with a wide mouth and teeth. 00;22;06;27 - 00;22;34;00 Too many teeth for its face, too wide, a smile for its body. It died smiling, its spindly fingers drawn into its body like a crushed insect. I could smell its charred flesh from the lightning strike. I have seen men and women cut down in battle. I have seen people disemboweled through torture. I have killed creatures. Monsters many of whom deserved it. 00;22;34;00 - 00;22;53;13 I have done this from above and below. But this thing, this face. I will take this with me always. Before I could act further, the face was swept downstream. 00;22;53;16 - 00;23;05;08 Tomorrow I will look for my men. Tonight I return to the cave. And I hope to the gods to see the morning. 00;23;05;10 - 00;23;28;00 It would seem that the creature was felled by a lightning strike from the storm. Some maintain that this was divine intervention from the spiritual protectors of the Uhi. But others, myself included, believe that luck is a powerful guardian in its own right. Over the following day, Grainne rounded up the rest of her survivors, all of whom were on the brink of death. 00;23;28;03 - 00;23;53;09 Like Grainne, their memories had returned to them as well. This seems to indicate that destroying the Dearmad Orm returns what it has taken from you, which is a good thing. I think the Blood Scouts regrouped and returned to high. They were all disciplined severely for being so late and for losing so many of their comrades, but they never spoke publicly as to why. 00;23;53;11 - 00;24;11;29 And I don't think the creature took those memories from them. I just imagine they didn't know how to describe what happened. How do you describe forgetting? I don't think that's another word to use for it. There's something oddly chilling about a word with no synonyms. 00;24;12;02 - 00;24;36;15 Even Grainne's auxiliary journal, which she started under the false assumption that someone had compromised her official log, is curious. It does not paint Grainne in a good light, and it she speaks ill of the Queen. Notes. Secret battle tactics for the Blood Scouts. Misuses words. Confuses her syntax. Curses a blue streak, and she rode back to Uhi for two days with it in her pack. 00;24;36;17 - 00;25;05;08 She could have lied. She could have burned the book. She did not have to show it to anyone, let alone the Queen. Forsanne could have been a bad encounter with bandits and that could have been that. But something stopped her. Something compelled her to keep this incriminating text. And if I were to venture a guess, I think after this experience with the Dearmad Orm, her waking mind just wouldn't let her consciously destroy something that helped her to remember. 00;25;05;11 - 00;25;33;24 She had been on the other side of that door. She was never going back. When the Secret Journal was found, there was an archivist note on it, which was made around the time of its original accession. The note details that there was some discussion as to how to handle this text. Some of the other scholars viewed Grainne's work as profane, and others saw it as we do here, as valuable information for a creature that could still be out in the wild. 00;25;33;27 - 00;26;05;11 In the end, it was sealed away in what would become the Imperial archives within the inner sanctum, only reserved for the most sensitive of materials, and only to be found after the Empire fell. Its accession note ends with the Uhi term. “Dear mid aem at Dearmad Orm”, which translates to in death we forget ourselves. So the Dearmad Orm is a hunter of your memories, quiet and camouflaged in your own forgetfulness. 00;26;05;13 - 00;26;38;05 Incredibly difficult to detect and to destroy. Even seasoned soldiers fell apart as it stalked them in the Forsanne depths, hiding just behind their eyes. And we cannot all be so lucky as Grainne and her well timed storm. This is a creature to be feared and to be avoided. But what if a person who learned of this creature and specifically sort it out with intention, with desire, who would do such a thing? 00;26;38;07 - 00;26;50;09 That's exactly what happened to the poet. Grantham Boshun. His story and more. After a break. 00;26;50;11 - 00;27;10;11 This episode of Alchemy Investigations is brought to you by Aunt Buraki’s Dagger Exchange and Swap Meet. How many times have you found yourself returning from an adventure or dungeon, packed to the brim with old daggers and knives recovered from the errant goblin and ceremonial tombs. Sure, you have better weapons on you, but these blades aren’t worth nothing! Why leave them behind? 00;27;10;14 - 00;27;29;24 Come on down to Aunt Buraki’s Dagger Exchange and Swap Meet. We buy blades in bulk. Give us your chipped, your rusty, your old – and watch as Aunt Buraki turns dull sundries into spendable gold. That’s Aunt Buraki’s Dagger Exchange and Swap Meet just off of the Veiled Portent road before the lake Neckross exit – if you hit lake Neckross, you’ve gone too far -- and also, Gods help you. 00;27;29;24 - 00;27;44;03 Come on down to Aunt Buraki’s for a keen old time – come before the solstice and get a free throwing knife for all children under 6 (150 for dwarves and elves). And now, back to our episode. 00;27;44;05 - 00;28;08;03 Welcome back, investigators. For those who may have forgotten, today we're detailing the Dearmad Orm, a horrifying creature of legend who feeds off of memory and recollection, leaving its prey thoughtless husks on the verge of collapse, which is exactly what fabled poet Grantham Boshun was counting on when he made every effort imaginable to seek out the Dearmad Orm for himself many generations ago. 00;28;08;06 - 00;28;28;10 The fabled story of Grantham Boshun is somewhere between an art history lecture, a romance novel and a tall tale. Hailing from the Crossic It region, it's an old story, foundational to many aspects of their cultural heritage, even Spurring the name of their most prominent bardic academy, Boshun and Twihlls. But I would like to believe that even the tallest of tales had a kernel of truth. 00;28;28;13 - 00;28;52;07 The surface story is this Grantham Boshun was the only son of a devil born to a mortal woman. On the occasion of his birth, the Devil's Emissary and Proclaimer read a prophecy that this boy would have the gift of life beyond the stars. And as long as they so shone, he would so breathe. That's always the trick with every fiendish prophecy. 00;28;52;09 - 00;29;26;19 They always sound like gifts until you live them. Grantham, on the power of his prophecy, lived many lives and eventually became a poet of some renown. His particular situation left much for the writer to ponder, as he aged and aged quite slowly. At 500 he was barely a teenager. At 1000, Boshun was barely a man. His works chief among them the collected poems known as Bridge of Salt, sky of cloth, paint a picture of a poet disconnected from the moorings of time, free but also listless and yearning for things he can't have. 00;29;26;22 - 00;29;53;02 To no one's surprise, his work found great purchase in moody bardic graduate students and forlorn romantic homebodies, but unmoored as he may have been, Mr. Boshun found success in his craft, and all was well until, of course, he fell in love. His muse was a painter named Kary Hoybriar. Kary specialized in enchanted landscape oil paintings of ruins -- places where cities should be but are no longer. 00;29;53;05 - 00;30;31;17 Grantham used his considerable wealth and leverage to purchase every single Hoybriar painting that was ever made. He held galleries and salons to celebrate each new addition, each time inviting Kary to attend. But the painter always declined, always citing something about artistic mystique. Grantham even wrote an anthology of companion poems entitled Landscapes Beyond Land, dedicating it with love and attention to the most beautiful person in this place beyond description, who painted me visions of a world with a population of only two. 00;30;31;19 - 00;30;58;11 Some scholars believe that Kerry never returned his patron's affections, but his final painting, entitled “Hours for Boshun”, is the only work of his which does not feature any land. It simply describes the sky at sunset, the stars just coming into view behind two clouds so close to one another they almost touch. With Kary, Grantham lived an entire life of longing, but appeared to only age a day. 00;30;58;14 - 00;31;29;02 In the end, the painter died an old man, and the poet who buried him cried from young eyes. According to extent sources, Grantham Boshun never recovered. There are experiences, he later wrote, far more painful than death. And they all linger in memory like a sliver beneath your finger. Now, dear investigator, it is the official stance of alchemy investigations, and of me personally, to recommend that those experiencing extreme psychic pain contact someone for help. 00;31;29;05 - 00;31;52;19 Suicide is never an answer. Save perhaps for immortal poets. Do not follow in Grantham's footsteps. Help is out there. But having collected his last painting and realizing his heart would never recover, the ageless scribe decided to take his own life. But of course, this failed. I will save you the gory details, but as was the prophecy, each attempt left Grantham worse for wear. 00;31;52;26 - 00;32;12;20 But alive he could not die. Not while those stars above him still shone. But you don't live for a thousand years and not learn a thing or two about the world. After realizing he couldn't force the breath from his body, Boshun decided on a new plan. He would rid the memories from his mind. Unfortunately, a spell wouldn't do it. 00;32;12;20 - 00;32;34;04 Magic can be disenchanted. There are too many risks, too many what ifs. He needed something more to forget this pain. He needed to forget that he had forgotten anything at all. And so, as the story goes, he searched for nearly 500 years. He spent weeks in libraries and archives. He hired guides into every wilderness, on every continent in the realm. 00;32;34;07 - 00;33;09;05 Boshun was looking for something. And as time would tell, he found it. 481 years after Kary Hoybriar's death, Grantham hired a guide into the West Orkeley crevasse and set about on what would be his final journey. The guide would never return. And our poet, too, was thought lost until many, many years later. Centuries later, an intrepid member of the Crossic Historical Society named Heather Michelle Grau followed in the poet's footsteps, tracing through archival accounts. 00;33;09;05 - 00;33;29;01 Boshun’s last expedition. She wanted to write a book about what happened to her home region's bardic inspiration. And while she was unable to find his bones or a grave marker, she did end up finding a small tribe of goat herds south of the crevasse who welcomed her with open arms for several nights during her time with this itinerant group. 00;33;29;01 - 00;33;53;01 She came to learn that their leader was a man who appeared to be in his late 50s with a long white beard. Apparently, this man had come to the tribe many generations ago, and everyone referred to him by a term which loosely translates to the empty man. Because when he arrived, he did not know who he was. He was like a baby and had to relearn how to be an adult once more. 00;33;53;03 - 00;34;18;15 According to Doctor Michelle Grau, the Empty Man bears a strong resemblance to Grantham Boshun -- a little older but with the same features. She wanted to ask this man about his past, hoping to uncover some concrete link, but she was stopped by the members of the tribe. Apparently, asking the empty man to remember just causes him pain and confusion, and over generations, as had become taboo in their society. 00;34;18;17 - 00;34;44;27 In the final chapter of her dissertation, she reports the following. Whatever happened, whatever Mr. Boshun sought out in the wilderness, the cure to memory, I believe he found perhaps some creature or place can wipe our minds clean forever clearing the mess we have made. They say that the common term nostalgia comes from two roots in the original dwarven home, and pain. 00;34;44;29 - 00;35;09;27 Grantham Boshun as forsaken his home and gods protect him. I hope he has too, forsaken his pain. We hope, dear investigator, that the preceding stories can help to illuminate some of the specific complications in dealing with the Dearmad Orm to wit, the Registry of Unexplained Encounters is provided a list of shoulds and shants for a suspected encounter. They are as follows. 00;35;09;29 - 00;35;42;15 If you or your traveling companions have a difficult time recounting what you have done even hours ago, if you cannot remember the names of important people or places from your past, even the recent past. If you find an item in your pack and no longer remember what it is, what it does, or how you aquired it. If you feel you are missing time, perhaps taking a rest in one place and waking up somewhere new, your traveling companions insisting that you were there the whole time. 00;35;42;17 - 00;36;04;12 If any of the above seem familiar, then you may be in grave danger, as the Dearmad Orm begins by taking small memories from you. Things you may not notice at first. Things you won't need until you can't name them. And then it begins to take larger things, important things, memories and abilities, core to who you are as an investigator. 00;36;04;15 - 00;36;25;05 And before you can catalog all that is missing. Your mind will begin to rationalize things. It's okay that you can't remember the name of the Duke. You were only told at once. Someone else will remember. This is normal. Our minds are great at filling in the gaps and smoothing over its own vulnerabilities. The last person we ever want to make feel foolish is our self. 00;36;25;07 - 00;36;52;25 But by then, dear investigator, it is far too late. Too much has been lost and the smoothed over gaps come apart at the seams. And then what's left? And who. So how do we combat this? The R.U.E. has developed three steps for the Dearmad Orm. Step one. Declare immediately tell your adventuring party that you have forgotten something. See who else can remember it. 00;36;52;28 - 00;37;22;05 Determine if anyone else is missing a memory. Step two. Document. Begin to write down salient facts immediately. The Dearmad Orm can take your memory, but it cannot steal your notes. Start with the phrase you are in danger in all caps. Something is making you forget and that something is following you. Step three depart. The R.U.E. has no specific combat protocols for this creature. 00;37;22;07 - 00;37;40;18 How can you hope to hit a beast that forces you to forget it mid-stab? The best course of action is to write down a cardinal direction. The path that takes you back the way you came and immediately depart. You may not be able to recover the memories you have already lost, but it is better to leave without your memory than without your life. 00;37;40;20 - 00;38;14;09 Only the bravest and most cunning should press on, or someone who has lost something that they cannot possibly live without. Performing the above should give you and your fellow investigators the best chance of survival. Remember, declare, document and depart. Finally, dear investigator, I want to offer a small coda to our tale. When I was asked to do an episode about the Dearmad Orm for the Registry of Unexplained Encounters, I asked one of our archivists if they had any stories about similar occurrences on my desk. 00;38;14;10 - 00;38;45;01 A few days later, I found a small scroll with a label which read On the recovery of the Sej Kathol Interior archive. The Sej Kathol were a secretive order of zealots and arcane practitioners who acted as information brokers in the Gullai region at the turn of the last century. It was said that they held secrets so deep that when one of their acolytes deposited a scroll or tome into the interior archives, they would have to spend a certain amount of time in an antechamber before returning to the world. 00;38;45;03 - 00;39;17;28 Think of it as informatic decompression. Apparently, they would leave the antechamber having forgotten ever visiting the interior archive at all. Guards never heard any screaming from the room, but occasionally they would hear laughing. And when the Gullai region was taken from within by secular revolutionaries, that antechamber was open. And inside, the revolutionaries found two things. A seat most likely meant for the acolyte, and a reinforced iron cage. 00;39;18;01 - 00;39;56;04 Now left wide open and empty. Written on the wall in the Gullai language. Rest easy and allow your burdens to be removed. So, dear investigator, if you find yourself out in the wilds and faltering through a recollection, realize you have lost something important. Surely it might be nothing. And I truly hope that it is. But on the off chance that the Dearmad Orm is stalking you, remember to Declare, Document and Depart. 00;39;56;06 - 00;40;06;01 Remember to Declare, Document and Depart. . Remember. 00;40;06;04 - 00;40;31;07 Thank you for listening to tonight's episode of Alchemy Investigations, where we have delved into the Dearmad Orm, a monster who feeds on memory and stalks its prey from within their own minds. We have partnered with the Registry of Unexplained Encounters and developed some mechanisms for recognition, retaliation and rescue. I hope this leaves you better prepared as you would venture on for now. 00;40;31;09 - 00;40;45;23 This has been Ichabod M. Groster for Alchemy Investigations and for the Registry of Unexplained Encounters. Farewell, investigators, and beware. 00;40;45;25 - 00;41;11;12 Alchemy investigations is produced at Else Break Labs and is hosted by Ichabod M Groster. This episode and its related materials are released with absolutely no warranty nor support, and are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution noncommercial share alike 4.0 international license. If you are interested in learning more about tonight's mystery or want to explore others, please click the link in the description or visit us at our website. 00;41;11;14 - 00;41;38;11 alchemyinvestigations.com. There, Ichabod will explain the resolution of this particular scenario and offer tips on how it might be run as a tabletop role playing game, one shot, or as part of a larger campaign in your next game night. Tonight's story all names, characters, and incidents therein are works of fiction. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, structures, ideals, and or products is intended, nor should be inferred. 00;41;38;13 - 00;42;14;09 Alchemy investigations is supremely thankful to our wide network of correspondents. Correspondents like Defauwn Moria for his work on the Gullai Interior Archive and Heather Michelle Grau, as well as her publishers, for use of her research in developing today’s narrative. It was invaluable. And of course, thanks to you, dear investigators. Stay well and stay curious. This transcript may contain small inconsistencies. If you encounter one and would like to report it to be corrected in subsequent updates, please contact us at ichabodmgroster@gmail.com Alchemy Investigation and its related materials are offered with absolutely no warranty nor support and are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).