CRYSTAL | THIS IS CRIMINAL

[illithidnapped]

FORM: sending crystals, sometime around week four, during the dragon tracking assignment's first foray into fortress scans
SENDER: Astarion
RECIPIENT: every last one of you, as usual
NOTES: Corypheus is his own content warning

Gods. It's a travesty. A nightmare. Unthinkable.

[He sounds almost shaken. Thoroughly run through by something leaving freshly witnessed tracks through his mind. Harrowing. World-shattering. The horrors of warfare come to a head, or perhaps some new tragedy played out before him, wherever he is now.

His voice is noticeably pained, he soldiers on:]

Villainy I can understand. Inhumane cruelty— fine. Yes. But do you want to know the worst part about all of this?

I thought for certain Corypheus would at least have the decency to be handsome— but no.

[No flowing hair framing unspeakably beautiful features, all gracefully arcing downwards into gleaming armor or finely stitched robes. Not even a half-measure between an enticing magesterial figurehead and some average, mealy-faced man possessed of charisma. No. No!!] The misshapen creature looks about as beguiling as a troll’s festering tit: no glamor, no allure, no illusions, for hells' sake.

It’s an utter wonder anyone follows him at all. I can't make sense of it.