Richard woke up to find he was already in ceremony.

This is weird. He thought.

Before the dreams had fully faded from his mind, Richard’s tiny wooden pipe was in his massive paw.

He sat up, opened a warded glass jar of Great Tobacco, and began to shred it in the silence and perfect darkness of his cave. He knew where each and every item here was, and with over a century of meditation and practice, Richard could smoke a pipe in his sleep. It seems like he had done just that (judging by how empty his jar had become).

“Now… where’s my lighter?” He grumbled.

It wasn’t in “place number one.”

Richard was supremely skilled at keeping track of his numerous tools; always putting them away in the correct spot, even while “sleep smoking.” Yet, he still lost his concentration sometimes during a particularly long hibernation.

This had been a long one, hadn’t it?

He groggily reached for “place number two” and his arm bumped into a fourteen-foot long flute made of cedar, which fell over like a domino, knocking into many other flutes and sending thirty-seven out of all forty-nine of them tumbling to the ground in an avalanche of hollow wooden noise.

A colossal didgeridoo tipped over last, dislodging a two-foot frame drum from the wall, which rolled over and hit Richard’s tea-table. The jade statue of Quan-Yin upon the table was knocked over by the sudden jolt, and fell head first into the glass teapot that Master Shen had made for him–shattering it.

The frame drum rolled back from the table and did not fall flat, but stopped in the middle of the floor and wobbled back and forth on its edge instead. It rocked slowly at first, decreasing in amplitude and increasing in frequency, faster and faster until the drum finally came to a stop and it was silent in Richard’s chamber once more.

A long moment passed.

“It just kept getting worse and worse.” Richard said, locating his lighter at last (he was sitting on it).

He knew he heard the teapot break, but rushing over there wasn’t going to put it back together.

Instead, Richard began his prayers and invocations–whispering them into the sacred leaf with reverence. There was a loud click, and Richard’s torch lighter flared to life as he ignited the Great Tobacco in his pipe. He blew smoke down his front, did the same over his left and right shoulders, then over his head. Richard finished the prayer with a big cloud of smoke that rolled like a fog through his whole chamber, cleansing and purifying the stagnant Chi that had built up there.

He put the pipe to rest in his mouth and lumbered a couple paces towards his mesa (altar) and sat down behind it. There he directed his torch towards a wafer of charcoal that had waited in an Abalone shell for twelve years to be burned. When the charcoal was lit, he sprinkled Kopal, Sandalwood, and Paolo Santo shavings upon it. The sweet incense began to draw fresh Chi into the space.

Richard found his beads on the mesa in spot number one (where they should be), and dangled them over the smoke of the smouldering Abalone before placing them around his neck. He stood up on two legs, and began his daily practice of Chi-Gong. His stiff body loosened up as he went through the forms.

As Richard moved, the entire Mountain stirred to life. Suddenly–every living being within thirty li was awake, alert, and brimming with vitality. The world’s Chi began moving and whirling in a great spiral that extended high into the sky and deep beneath the Earth.

Crystals grew a few millimeters, stubborn flower buds opened, and a bird that would have died in its egg found the strength to break free.

For miles around; Spirit Plants, Spirit Beasts, Spirit Guides, Power Animals, Faeries, Gnomes, Dryads, Elementals, Devas, Kachinas, etc… all snapped to attention.

“It’s Richard!”

“Richard is awake.”

“Let us ask how he slept.”

“Richard!”

The Spirits descended on his mountain, clamoring.

Richard did not let them in.

With his morning Chi-Gong routine done, he exhaled and sat down with a satisfying thump that made blips on every seismograph in the area. Richard then reached inside a cloth bag and pulled out a pawfull of thick beeswax candles. These special candles burned with a deep red flame, which was easier on the eyes, and perfect for ceremony.

A third and final click of the torch, and there was light in Richard’s chamber.

He lit twenty more of the candles as he surveyed the damage.

In the far corner to the left side of the room, Richard’s teapot was shattered upon his ornate wooden tea table. His flute collection looked like a disorganized woodpile. None of his instruments would become damaged from such a fall (as they all possessed high durability and were of exceptional quality), but it was annoying just the same.

I should have put the teapot back in its box before I fell asleep, but Gaba Oolong makes me so tired that I must have dozed off…

Then, his nose caught something. The smell of decomposition and rot. If it were still inside the teapot, Richard might have overlooked it until later–but breaking the pot had released the musty smell into the air.

Did I leave tea in the pot to mould in there while I hibernated? Richard wondered with a frown.

In some ways, doing that was worse than breaking a teapot. If Kaekatouzen ever found out he let a teapot get mouldy, Richard would never hear the end of it.

The First Rule of Tea was “Cleaning” after all.

Richard inhaled deeply and did a thorough scent index of everything he could detect in his den. It didn’t smell right. Even beneath the benign mould, Richard could tell the tea inside the broken pot was not Gaba Oolong. It was Pu’erh.

Pu’erh would go in a Yixing clay pot. The teapot Touzen had given him was made of Dragon Blown glass. The wrong tea in the wrong pot in the wrong place could only mean one thing:

Someone drank my tea while I was hibernating.

His anger rose, and the throng of Spirits crowding his home winced and moved back before Richard mastered his emotions and calmed his Chi once again.

He entered meditation, and directed his Aura towards his powerful wards and defensive fetishes, finding them intact. Still, the boundary of his sacred space was not fully closed. A small trickle of outside intent was able to flow in and out. This feeling is what must have woken him up.

That, or the strange ceremony he was in.

It had been a very long time since Richard had been caught up in a Shamanic Journey that was not led by himself. But he could feel this ones pull.

This couldn’t be a wild one, either. Those were far less powerful, usually drawing chosen people to a location in order to adjust the flow of the Earth’s meridians or some other form of energetic housekeeping.

These naturally occuring Journeys were called a Vortex, and the Earth made them just like any other weather event. They were often part of the fate of the people involved, and were sometimes used as ways for Souls who had chosen to meet during this incarnation to find one another.

Humans, Spirit Beasts, or both would just feel inexplicably pulled somewhere. Often they would encounter others on their way, and then spontaneously meditate or perform some action in a spot they had never been before. Perhaps they would sing a song, or leave an offering in that place. Then they would go on their way, never knowing what exactly they had done.

That was a simple example of a Vortex. They were an eddy of Chi bound to the egoless will of an area, born from chaos to fulfill the ineffable desires of the Dao.

This… was not a Vortex. Richard created a minor vortex just by staying in one place for too long.

This was a powerful ceremony he had woken up in, and it was being led by someone. Whoever they were, they must be important to call upon Richard like a dog. Richard was happy to help (but he would really appreciate some coffee first).

This must be a big deal.

Richard reached into a small red bag on his mesa, removed three ancient Ban Liang coins, and tossed them six times:

Yin, Yang, Yang, Yin, Yin, Yang ䷑

Mountain over Wind; Gu - Decay, Poison, Corruption, Work on What Has Been Spoiled

Transforming into…

Yin, Yang, Yin, Yang, Yin, Yang ䷿

Fire over Water; Wei Ji - Before Completion

Richard nodded, and put the coins back in their red silk bag.

He took three rings from his mesa, and affixed them snugly in their places on one of the strings of beads about his neck.

The first was an exquisite bronze signet ring, set with a smooth disc of Moldevite. The inscrutable calligraphy on the gems green surface was carved by a Daoist Sage, and was in fact a fulu that signified the authority granted to him by Heaven as one of the [Supreme Guardian] Beasts of Middle World.

The second was a storage ring of braided mithril and gold, made long ago by the Elves still holding on to survival deep within the Lower World.

The third ring was the size of a large belt buckle to a human. It might have even been a belt buckle at one point, going by the Southwestern design. It was a silver storage ring decorated with large pieces of turquoise.

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That was one of Richard’s favorite treasures. It was a special storage ring that kept food and medicine cold. There were other enchantments the artisan added that Richard didn’t fully understand, but the end result was that things stayed fresh (and not frozen) inside of the ring for a very long time.

Richard’s stomach rumbled.

Not yet.

He stood up from behind the mesa, and approached the tea table as he considered how many of his sacred tools had thrown themselves to the floor.

There is a whole lot of medicine behind this, He mused.

With a flash of light, an oversized broom and dustpan appeared in Richards paws.

I wonder what Nolentarion would think about me using Emuril’s storage ring to hold my cleaning supplies. Richard thought with an amused smile.

He returned the jade Quan-Yin statue to her crystal dais, and swept the broken teapot and mouldy tea into a jar to deal with later. Richard thought that perhaps the supernatural glass could be melted down and made into something new one day.

He sniffed around the area carefully for evidence of who the trespasser might be.

Smells like a Coyote to me. They would be the kind to pull a trick like this… The question was, did this one do it as a challenge for a dare? Some stupid bet? Or was this meant as a threat? I will have to check my things very carefully to see if anything was stolen.

Richard picked up a small spray bottle from atop the tea table and sent a fine mist over the space as a powerful tincture made from natural treasures purified the miasma left behind by the rotten tea, and the energetic trauma of a broken sentimental artifact.

Once the tea table was in order, Richard set about picking up his flutes and returning them to their rightful places. Eight, however, disappeared inside "Emuril’s storage ring," as well as the didgeridoo that had fallen over. He swept a paw over his mesa, and small flashes of light danced upon the surface of his sacred cloth before the cloth itself was taken into the ring as well.

His great paw hovered over the frame drum in the center of the room for a moment, but he did not put it in the ring just yet. He picked it up by the strap and took it with him.

Next, Richard began to investigate the source of the breach in his sacred space. He unlatched the door, and lumbered on four legs out of his personal quarters and down a straight path that eventually ended in the sealed entrance to his den.

Intermittent hallways broke off from the main tunnel before it opened into a large cavern that housed a beautiful underground lake. There, the path of the tunnel became a bridge that continued straight out over the lake all the way to stairs on the opposite shore that lead up and into the darkness beyond.

Richard's home was much like a sealed terrarium. When he pushed the stone slabs into place and closed the door to his cave for hibernation, the ecosystem within the cave became closed as well. Richard was a master gardener, and crafted such a stable environment here, that creatures as large as a spider monkey could live safe underground for over a decade. Heaven and Earth in harmony. If only the outside world were the same

Thankfully, it wasn’t dark outside Richard’s personal chambers. Many of the natural caverns that bore no dwarven craftsmanship were full of all manner of bioluminescent insects, flowers, butterflies, lizards, frogs, glowing silkworms (that made glowing thread), and of course, mushrooms. There were glowing mushrooms of every color, and some that pulsed and changed like stationary jellyfish.

Richard followed the flat stone bridge out into the center of the lake. He smiled as he noticed small lanterns dotting the surface of the waters on either side of him. Tiny boats made of expertly woven reeds were gliding around the lake, piloted by white furred, wide eyed spider monkeys. In each boat, one monkey held an oar, and the other stood on the prow wielding a long bamboo spear.

They fished for the glowing eels, graceful Koi, and fat, bulldog-sized goldfish that teemed within the lake.

He passed a line of monkeys sitting along the edge of the bridge. They wore simple robes woven from blueish green glowing silk, and bowed to Richard before crawling upon his back and chittering with excitement. The little boats had all started following Richard as well, and they trailed him like baby ducks on either side of the bridge as the great Grizzly bear completed his journey across the lake.

Other monkeys had already gathered on the far shore. They held food and other offerings. Some begged for his attention, but Richard gave them only a brief greeting before he asked them to wait, and ascended the staircase alone. Once at the top, Richard reached a pair of heavy, wooden, (monkey-proof) doors.

He directed his nose all around the door and detected the faint scent of a Coyote again.

The intruder must have come through this way. Richard thought, and pushed the doors open to access his semi-secure entryway.

At the opposite end of this room were the warded granite slabs that served as Richard’s front doors in the side of the mountain. Beside the great doorway, in a small alcove on the left, there was a ceramic pot holding a five-foot tall Bonsai Oak Tree. In a similar alcove on the right, hung one of Master Shen's infamous dreamcatchers. It gave Richard the creeps, but it was only there so one of Shen's disciples could stop by from time to time in order to care for the Bonsai while Richard slept.

Richard had hung a rope affixed with magic iron bells in a fence-like fashion around the small Oak Tree, but the rope had been untied and the boundary was open.

…Faeries? He wondered.

Richard hoped no pixies had gotten in here. They could be a lot like flies, but even more annoying.

He tied the string of bells closed and felt the boundary of sacred space around his cave become intact once again.

I will have to consecrate bells made from other metals to add to that rope.

Apparently, stopping Faeries sneaking in from the Faerie realm was not enough. Richard would have to ward the small Oak Node against fellow Middle Worlders, too.

So, a Coyote went through the Faerie Realm just to get in my den? Risky move.

Richard sighed. He would have to abandon this den soon. Too many people knew about it, and he had too large of a target on his back. He really enjoyed the Lake and Dwarven architecture too.

Richard was already pushing the limits of power for a Spirit Beast in Middle World. His position as a [Supreme Guardian] granted him the protection of Heaven, but that mattered little to human Cultivators that were already at war with Heaven anyway. Now Richard had to watch his front and his back, because a putrid rot was seemingly seeping up from Lower World as well.

Decomposition was to be expected when Heaven and Earth became separated.

Richard descended the staircase like Moses from Mt. Sinai, who, instead of stone tablets, shouldered a frame drum instead. Once at the bottom, all of his people (the white spider monkeys) surrounded him. Half of these creatures had not been born when Richard last went to sleep, and despite their incredible intelligence, only one of them was a Spirit Beast. His name was Zehuda, and he looked like he had something urgent to say:

“This Zehuda greets the Supreme Guardian. I hope that your rest was beneficial for your cultivation” said the largest robed monkey.

“I hope you didn’t get bored down here.” said Richard.

“It was good to have the peace and quiet. Thank you again for providing us with refuge.” said Zehuda.

“You will have to wait a bit longer to go outside, I’m afriad. A Coyote broke in through the Bonsai tree.”

“Through the Faerie Realm?” Zehuda said with an incredulous expression.

“I know. They even got into my private quarters and drank my tea! I believe it was a threat. They wanted me to know they could kill me if they pleased, but chose not to.”

“None of us saw anyone! What should we do?”

“I want you to gather everyone at the top of the stairs. If it’s dangerous here I will let you out. I need to scour the whole den for anything unusual.”

“That’s just the thing I wanted to mention, Supreme Guardian. My niece, Tintavil is missing. We have looked for three days, checking the shores of the lake for a body. We have found nothing. Please find her, Richard!” said Zehuda with desperation in his eyes.

“Shit!” Richard cursed.

“What’s wrong?” asked Zehuda.

“You just gave me a quest! I havn’t received one in maybe, thirty-four years. Things are worse than I thought if the System is taking an interest. Everyone get up the stairs, NOW!” Richard commanded.

The monkeys did as Richard asked of them, and the great bear began a slow patrol through every corner of his den. He used his supernatural nose to lead him to the body of Tintavil in due time.

Richard was trying to figure out what had eaten her when he was struck by the first attack.