Post by Nakia on Jun 29, 2023 5:24:53 GMT
Nakia has been looking for a sense of meaning in the world since his family died, searching for a sign from The Great Prowler, but had been doing so in vain for some time.
That is until of course, he saw the girl again. The little, black furred, tabaxi kitten that reminded him so much of his sister Zahra, staring back at him across a crowded street on market day, her blue eyes looking deep into his soul.
Nakia made his way toward her, jostled by busy merchants, having to dodge heavily laden carts, waiting with frustration as a pair of dwarves hefted a long wooden beam directly in his path, and just as he was about to reach her he collided with a gnome carrying a huge pile of scrolls, sending himself, the gnome, and the scrolls clattering onto the street.
Nakia picked himself up and reached to hand a scroll that had fallen onto him back to the gnome as they struggled to their feet, apologising profusely.
“Sorry, sorry, absolutely my fault, couldn’t see over all these things. Actually, you know what? Keep that one for your inconvenience. Who knows what I’m going to do with a job lot of adventuring maps anyway.”
As cartographer Nappin Gyrowhistle scrabbled up the rest of his maps and continued on his way, Nakia looked across the street. The girl was gone.
Despondent, Nakia went to tear the scroll in half, relenting with a sigh. He absentmindedly unfurled it for a look. His eyes widened as he scanned the page – the scroll detailing the location of an abandoned temple yet to be fully explored and marked on the map with the symbol of a skeletal hand holding a pair of golden scales…
Occurring directly after
The Lost Temple
Firelight flickered from the wood of the recently repurposed chairs casting a warm glow around the cold stone walls of the entrance hall of the temple, purging away the darkness but still not strongly enough to cleanse his mind of those shambling figures. Those cursed ones wrenched back beyond the veil to live out some twisted form of a second existence on this earth.
Nakia looked around at his companions in their various states of firelight reflection and felt the need to say something. It was him after all..his quest for answers..that had brought them to this place.
“I must thank you all for coming with me, mow. I did not know what exactly we would find here, but I am sorry you had to see the sights that you did.”
Malak'yth gingerly touches the freshly healed over, but still heavily bruised side of his chest where the mummy had struck him and gasps. "You needed professionals to investigate an old temple. Old temples contain much treasure. It is known.”
Not having learned his lesson, his finger probes further down, tracing the line of his ribcage, which had just a few hours ago been cracked and battered, and hisses when the pain signals flood his nervous system.
"And don't worry about what we saw. A disturbed person, some undead. Believe me, I have seen worse. We did the right thing, putting them all out of their misery.”
“They weren’t miserable though, just… wrong?” Calla looks awkwardly at Malak’yth’s injuries, “Honestly, if it weren’t for the plague risk, and the whole ‘being a deadly puppet of a mad god’ thing I… don’t know that we should have intervened?” She takes a deep sigh, “I guess we had to though. That rot was awful. If not for Seraphina we’d all be in a lot of trouble”.
Nakia stares quietly into the fire, the flames flickering in his wide yellow eyes.
Seraphina had felt uneasy since the fight’s end. The wounds on her body ached and she felt almost dizzy.
She couldn’t help him, if only she could have helped him and lay his family to rest. To allow him to grieve and heal.
She knew she couldn’t win every fight but this one stung.
“He wasn’t a puppet, he wasn’t possessed he was just…a very sad man.”
"He was dead inside like the others. He just didn't know it yet."
Malak'yth rolls down his shirt and slowly, slowly reclines into a more comfortable position.
"There's some wounds you cant recover from. No matter how much magic you throw at it. Some things, once killed, just stay dead."
He wheezes, struggling to take a piece of jerky from his pack and then inspects the piece of shriveled meat lying there on his flat palm.
"Whatever he was before... when we found him, he was like they were already. Just going through the motions. But that spark that animated him, them, once... it was long gone. Flesh without will."
He plugs the strip up and slowly guides it to his mouth, then chewing slowly and deliberately.
"Otherwise, I dont think he would have settled into his pact as he did. Content to be entombed in this lie. He was dead already, and they are better off for us having found them and put things right. As they are meant to be.”
"Should we... I mean there's not a lot left but... should we try some final rites for him? Could we guess who his people were before..." Calla waves a tired hand "all this?"
Nakia’s eyes had continued to stare into the flames, and within them he had begun to see flashes of his past life with his tribe, his family. Their many moonlight migrations across of the desert sands below brilliant starlit skies. The preparation and enjoying of meals together.
The sharing and honing of their various crafts and skills. Their celebrations of new life entering into this world, and the honouring of those as they took their journey unto the next...It has not been a grand nor exciting existence, but it had been theirs, and they had been content, happy.
At his companions words he saw flashes of his own moments of weakness. His near faltering to a false imposer of Kelemvor, luring him promises to return his family unto him for his 'loyal service'. His untamed fury fuelled by his pain wracked being left alone in this world. His cowardice at his desire to let death come swiftly in the heat of battle, to give him release, to reunite him with his loved ones.
For a moment he once again saw that terrible visage of that man surrounded by the ghostly by the spirits of his family, except now replaced by a tall hallow figure, fur lank and bedraggled, eyes pale and devoid of colour...He saw Himself...
A black drip hits the stone floor, followed by another, as dark kohl stained tears fall from Nakia's eyes the ground.
"That..could have been me..." he breathed shakily into the quiet.
"At dawn then. I think my ceremonial notes are up to date if an extra pair of hands would be helpful?" Calla opens up her tome and starts leafing back and forth, muttering quietly as she goes, "I think we can assume that Roderick destroyed any sign of prior faith so I guess... Kelemvor and..." she steals a glance at Seraphina and Malak'yth, hoping for some visible sign of a holy symbol.
Seraphina lifts up the holy symbol she carries on her, a moon pendant upon a silver chain around her neck. It sparkled in the firelight.
“And Selune.” She said with a soft smile.
Malak'yth slowly gets up on his feet, grimazing. "I'd offer a prayer to Lolth, but my mistress does not accept converts so late in life. Or death, rather. I'm sure you have this well in hand. The dead will be grateful. And if they arent..." he grins, displaying pearly white teeth, "...they aint likely to complain. Now I'm going to see if old Rodrie left us some booze stashed away somewhere. Helps to wash the pain away. Eh, Nakia?"
He looks over to the tabaxi, the pain and regret still visible on him.
"Don't take it too hard. Maybe this could have been you, but it isnt. We all make choices along the way, some good, some bad. You made yours, he made his; you are still alive, unsullied, while he is dead, pact-bound and likely suffering in a dark pit of the Abyss for all we know. By my reckon, you did the right thing, and he did not. Take comfort in that, eh?"
He nods to Nakia, then turns to scrounge for edible loot. "Now, about that hooch…”
Calla waits for Malak'yth to leave earshot, and then leans in closer to her compatriots "No judgement at all, but if Lolth isn't in the frame, I have some familiarity with Sehanine's rites: an appropriate bridge between you both, I think. Especially if we..." she directs this at Nakia, still evidently in some kind of shock "... wanted to rededicate the temple?”
If either of the two look for it, it's apparent that Calla has no lunar imagery on her person at all. Instead a small piece of silver metalwork hangs from her belt: Three interlocked circles caught inside a triangle.
Nakia turns, his hand moving up to clutch the rough little clay figure of a cat on the cord around his neck, dark streaks from his eyes smearing the markings across his cheeks. "Mow...I will assist. Temple or no..we should honour..the dead.." he says shakily.
“I would be happy including Lady Moonbow, thank you Calla.”
Seraphina took a sip from her water-skin and fastened the stopper.
“Though I would prefer the rites to take place now, I cannot perform them until I have connected with the spell needed until morning. If it is alright with you I would like to meditate upon it.”
“Of course! We’ll do what we can then”.
“Mow.” Nakia agrees with a nod, before then lifts his head. A smile breaking through the sadness on his face like morning sunrise as he looks towards the figure of the small black taxbaxi unseen by the others stood watchfully above the flickering flames of the campfire.
“Then, I have a lot of living to do…”
