What is the Sanctum?

Move closer and you shall know.

This is a marvelous tapestry to weave, and you shall be the bearer of its history and also of its burden. An inheritor in the legacy.

Some have come before, and they did waste away in the peat or lose their minds or lives in the Burrow. They too, held the banner and torch, the tome, the other instruments of passage.

And still they were lost.

They looked upon the eyes of the Espers, and toiled until their deaths.

Come close, and I shall reveal this truth.

I step forward carefully. This voice in my mind. It is the same voice that urged me beyond the bleak, steered me, and allowed me to arrive here in this solace. I am sure of that now.

I am in the dark still, this unrelenting blindness. My hands outstretched, I scrape my fingernails against the rough and pause.

A wall.

As rocky as the floor where I lay.

A flash, and I am in agony.

I cry out, yet no words or noise escape. My tongue is a shriveled worm inside the hovel of the desert of my mouth.

My eyes burn, and I crumple, begging myself to cry so that my eyes might have relief. I shield my brow with the dried-blood hand I’m attached to and wait.

I can hear the soft flutter of flame and wick.

Fire. In all of its manifestations, in every manner of the old stories it is premiere among men. As Urush came down from the Radn Precipice, he was delighted by fire. It danced for him, licked the bones of his enemies and children clean, and he took domain over it, bending it to his whim.

When Matsum battled the Chattering Brood among the rocks of Dwindling Children, she too sought the company of fire, and it obeyed her, more fully than it had Urush.

Kish was the last of the Cycle of Three to bear flames, and he wielded it to the last, as his breath left him, and he invoked the Dendrohedron, he was slain by fire.

Fire brings to us the purification of this place, and secures our life force.

Slowly, carefully, I allow my eyes to open again.

Light.

It is a small candle, and has been lit. Stronger than my matches but still dim. It still takes all of my strength to face the source, and finally, tears do well, and hot rivulets pour down my face. It is the last of the remaining liquid in my body, I am sure.

Drink, says the voice in my mind, and I close my eyes tightly again and hold my hands forward. I find the lip of a vessel and urgently pull it forward. It’s a heavy clay pot, but despite my exhaustion, I am able to wrench it to my clutches. Still unable to do more than squint, I feel for the other side of the vessel.

A drinking gourd.

I spoon liquid into the ladle and drink deeply. Such a sensation is a miracle, and my stomach clenches as I fill it too much, choking, and purging some of the fluid back up and onto the rock floor with a spatter.

Crashing back, I rest.

Water, the companion of Fikam, mighty in strength of mind, but a failure at the altar of body. Though brittle of bone, he rescued Alui with his gifts and was rewarded with the Great Shattering, and the water flowed through him. It was he who was flayed on the stones at Gheris and stopped the moon.

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Dzech, called Farspun by man and Esper alike, was born of water, and all who knew him saw his beauty and his resolve. When Yhgra cracked the Olma Tree, Dzech was the famed Slaughterer in the Fir Grove, his hands with weaver’s speed the ones that formed the six seals.

I allow my eyes to adjust. After a lifetime of darkness, this light is a blessing.

A face.

I am wreathed in despair on viewing it.

Pressed into the stone wall just ahead, it sits, yellowed flesh melting with the surface, an open mouth, loose and hanging as though broken repeatedly, two large, ominous eyes, small pupils that face separate directions.

And all the countless hordes of the Shadow and Fog dwelt on the Moonsthrow, in Vikia, where they were cast and named to toil in the pits below the great abandoned city of Pel. Theirs was not a crime, but the old stories speak that they were misdirected, to their great folly.

The mouth does not move, though I am certain this face is the master of that voice.

I will speak to you, the voice says inside my mind, and the pupils wheel onto me, and I know true terror.

You will not speak. I will relay all that you need and no more. This is the Sanctum. This is your respite and your one reprieve from that which skulks in the places surrounding.

I nod.

This is so.

In this place, you may rest. You may drink and eat your fill and be refreshed. When you leave here, you will suffer the perils and agony of the Burrow.

You are as Kish was, when he stood at the place where you now sit. He was eaten by the Burrow, and so will you be, unless you live.

I will not soften my words. This place is older than life, older than death, and will remain so. Your quality is stout, and you have lived in the Burrow enough for me to pity you. But beyond this, you must survive without my empathetic gaze.

You will be given a choice now, and with that choice, you seal your fate.

Should you wish to live, you must choose. But once you make your pact, the Espers will know, and they will pursue you, and they will kill you. Unless you survive. Unless you live. Unless you fight.

Stand, and be delivered your bounty.

I stand, knees shaking. I am a scornful beast, and what purpose would it serve to give me an option for salvation? I should die here, as I have toiled too long for perdition to end.

Think not that. Your value is to me, and me alone. You must seek retribution for that which you have been wronged, and I will allow you your choice. You must choose, or be left to the Burrow and live and eternity half-alive, in the shadow of nightmares.

I move to the face, and the pupils follow.

I nod.

Now, the voice says, view the opposite wall, and there you will choose.

I turn, and see the chamber fully for the first time. Small and dim, covered in rock. Roots and plant live in the walls and some hang down heavy around the face. On the other side, a shelf sits, ancient and destroyed, covered in web and grime and dust.

I approach it.

A tome. A candle. A bell.

Before you choose, I will return to you that which is lost. You call yourself a wretched thing. Allow yourself the full impact of those words. The Call of the Void, that which infects every cell of the Burrow, will be lifted and you will have your justice.

An ebb in my thoughts, a pinprick of light behind the gloom that has been my constant companion these many hours in the…

Burrow.

I know, now. My faculties have returned, as though I was never in the dire before this. My vitality returns to me, and I am rested. My stomach full, my wounds healed, Thriving no longer in the embrace of my destitution, I have renewed vigor. I am whole.

Observe, examine, and choose, says the voice.

I observe the tome.

Vele’s Volume

+1 Mending

I observe the candle.

Ri’s Candle

+1 Light

I observe the bell.

Fikam’s Bell

+1 Open

These are the instruments. Choose that which you believe most important to your endeavor. There is no pretense here, know this, the choice is yours and is no riddle to be resolved. All are equally valid. Decide on that which you believe will best aid you.

I am sure now that my mind is clear. I choose the candle. It is an easy thing to select. The darkness was my greatest foe in the Burrow, and I did not aspire to return to that place without a source of comfort, baying at the lap of madness. A hesitant sound in my mind in the silence, causes me pause. Did I displease the spirit of the chamber?

[ Acquired Ri’s Candle ]

Your choice is Made. You will now choose your secondary. I must remind you that there is no combination of elements that are more suited in conjunction than others. Choose that which believe to be most important to your endeavor.

Why allow me to choose if all are equal?

I turn in place and before me is a table just as shambled and decrepit as the shelf. At the edge of the tabletop is a ceramic bowl, dyed in the color of mud. There is more on the table. Here lie weapons.

A sword. A shield. A flail. A staff.

As the old stories say, choose with instinct. Kish chose with instinct and it led him well.

Kish’s Sword

+1 Rend

Dzech’s Shield

+1 Guard

Mastsum’s Flail

+1 Bash

Urush’s Staff

+1 Void

I have no instinct in this moment. I am as a newborn, uncomprehending, and without nature. I reach for the shield.

No.

I divert my hand and take, instead, the sword. I lift it in the light, and see that it is forged of copper. The color is pleasing.

[ Acquired Kish’s Sword ]

Your choice is Made. Now, I ask of you:

Which of the Eld do you seek in your path?

Urush, bearer of the Scrawl?

Matsum, keeper of the Whisper?

Kish, the dweller in the Etch?

Look into the bowl.

I peer into the ceramic dish. A thick, black, oily substance sits at the bottom. Next to the bowl, not there before, are three distinct piles of colored powder on a wooden slate. One, the color of rust. Another, the color of salt. The third the color of wet earth.

I examine the granular, white substance.

Choose that which you believe most important to your endeavor. Place the grounds into the bowl and mix. If you value the strength of the mind, as Matsum did, apply the powdered Bonechalk.

I examine the reddish mites.

If you value the strength of the body, as Urush did, apply the powdered Bloodclay.

Finally, I examine the grey-and-brown herbs.

If you value the strength of essence, as Kish did, apply the powdered Nightleaf.

I reach for the Nightleaf. Kish’s name was that of power and the face on the wall has reminded me of his name often. Kish was favored, and it is only sense that tells me to choose his brood.

But the stories do say that Kish perceived the fall of Pel, and did nothing to stop it. Either by choice or by folly, the Deep Cull happened because of that defining choice.

Where this knowledge bubbles from, I do not know. I can now recall that event.

[ Acquired Lore: Kish’s Flaw ]

No, instead, I will choose someone more appropriate to my needs. Kish’s final breaths were in this place, and I would be mad to reproduce such a hollow victory.

I feel a compulsion. I choose the Bloodclay.

I mix the ingredient in with the viscous liquid. It begins to churn and bubble, and I can hear the hiss of the alchemy. One of the roiling surface burbles bursts, and the dribble splatters the tabletop and burns into its wooden flesh. I watch, and in the dim and quiet of the chamber, await further instruction.

Now, says the voice, consume this tincture.