>>5345400>>5345402>>5345404>>5345422>>5345444>>5345446>>5345461>>5345479>>5345486You set aside your companions, your ambitions, even your <appetite>, to commit to solitude and to meditations. As you have on several previous occasions before torpor, you light a candle, and speak the words:
“Oh Lords and Ladies of Eternity and Infinity, oh Lords of the Endless Black, oh Ladies of the Deep Flame. It is I, your prince! It is I, your servant! Your first among sons and daughters beseeches you, and I offer up this great tribute, in hopes you will hear me, and guide me, and make me a part of your Grand Design.”
For a time there is a deep quietude. Then, the candle flares, and sputters, and belches for a faintly-bluish smoke I plausible buffets that cascade out and spiral up into a latticework of tendrils and tenacles. The remaining fire of the candle’s wick becomes a single unblinking, all-seeing eye.
“You bring me a tribute of dwerrow—of dwarven-folk.”
It is the whispering voice of the Master of eh Insightful Eye, God of Secret Knowledge, also called The Baleful Beholder. It is a voice from within and without, appropriate for a gaze that so pierces and transfixes you, and tentacles of smoke which so invade your every sense.
“You gave me a great boon,” you reply, recalling the self-knowledge which the Dark God of Dark Truth granted you—the realization that you desire admiration, respect, and the recognition and love of a community above all else. Maybe THIS is why you spared the dwarf-spawn and their mothers. “I return the favour.”
“Your own mother could never bring herself to harm a child,” the Beholder muses. “Instead, she shaped them—yourself include—into something she could be proud of. You really are quite like her.”
Your mother… A creature unknown to you, a half-human Degenerate. It is not the first time the Dark Gods have brought her up in your interactions.
“You seek guidance, and you do not come empty-handed,” the God of Wisdom acknowledges. “I shall grant it. What do you seek?”
You hesitate. A part of you has been considering, ever since this particular Dark God gave you the gift of understanding, becoming a champion to him. On your last occasion, however, he laughed, and rejected you—he felt you were already a part of his plan, without such formalities or commitments. Will he accept you now? Is this deity truly the one to which you would pledge your everlasting self—your dragon-soul? You cannot help but reflect that you do not actually know what Grand Design he works towards…
What do you ask? Choose one:
>Ask what the Grand Design of the Baleful Beholder entails>Ask what one could do, to become the Antipaladin of the God of Knowledge>Ask about your mother, the children she spared, and the man who killed her>Ask about the magic of the dwarves, and how to make it your own>Ask where Paeris’ soul now resides>Ask something else [write-in] 