The Transformation

This morning I come bearing a journal entry and some artwork from Danny, the fellow who plays Oloz. The first is Oloz-as-was, and was drawn early in his career. The second is Oloz-as-is, and was drawn yesterday.

Oloz as an orc in his freeman's toga

I have seen my own corpse. I have taken this journal from his, my? body. I lifted my blades, my rings, my shield... I have taken from the dead before, these very things, even. I am no stranger to theft or to looting, and yet I am disturbed greatly!

Perhaps what disturbs me most of all is that this was no different. I scarcely recognize that brutalized, brutal face, all its lumpen features and fire-slicked scarring, those glassy little eyes. How can I look into my own eyes and not see myself? Maybe this is the only way that it could ever be? After all, what makes up a person? The body? I would say that it is not so. My body has changed, and though I have seen much that almost none alive could boast of beholding, and learned, gained from it, what was 'me' has migrated. The dead man in whose book I write was Oloz, and I am Oloz, but the shell we left behind is just that.

Oloz as a satyr with his two magic blades

Even now, I look up at my previous words, my parlance. How could I be the same as him who wrote before, and so unlike at once? I will write no more for now - I cannot stay still, I cannot concentrate - Thurayn seems to buzz and bumble around me most odiously, and her smells and her sights are ugly as I cannot recall. I will tell more when I am quit of her, when there is more to tell. When I am on the road, when I reach Silversong, when we run aground in the farthest north of the world...