Agnostic enchanters don’t normally seek favor with the gods of Norrath. There is kind of an unwritten rule: you don’t show disrespect for them, and they don’t drop your illusion in the middle of Oggok (or worse). A quid pro quo that keeps everyone happy.
Who knows why I decided to get involved in the affairs of the gods. I guess I was flattered. I fancy myself a master fisherman, and I was at my favorite vacation spot in all of Norrath, the Isle in Erud’s Crossing. The wisps there paid (unwillingly) for most of my early adventuring gear. But I digress. There was an avatar on the island, A Primate of Prexus. Never seeing him there before, I decided to greet him, and before I knew what had happened, I was asked to collect some blessed fish for Prexus’s favor. Since I was fishing anyway, I thought, “Why not?”
Of course, if you’re helping one god, pretty soon they all want to get in on the action. Prexus’s fish were spread across creation, and as I was crossing the Feerott to my next fishing hole, an avatar of Cazic-Thule beckoned me. Now I was wondering what kind of can of worms I had opened by accepting Prexus’s task. There is a reason “pride” is on Jabober’s List of Deadly Transgressions.
Cazic-Thule seemed to ramble a bit about the role fear has in keeping people in check. I did not want a philosophical treatise, though. I was anxious for him to get to the point. The point was, in fact intriguing. In fact, the fear I was asked to spread was not for intimidation’s sake, not a power-grab for the gods. It encouraged people to make moderate, pragmatic choices. Who’s more pragmatic than an agnostic enchanter?
I got a few enchanted wands from Cazic-Thule’s agent in Cabilis, which was one of my fishing stops anyway. After discouraging a Human from starting his own business in the face of very stiff competition, encouraging two High Elves who were going to marry for the wrong reason to wait and think it over, and conselling an Erudite to not throw her fortune away trying to set up apprenticeships for her lazy, gadabout sons, I was starting to feel … guilty? No, it was a valuable service I was providing. Nonetheless, I decided to take a short leave of absence in the Plane of Tranquility to organize my thoughts.
Rallos Zek was there to greet me. Or his avatar, anyway. So much for Tranquility. Before I could get the word, “no” out, he made the most intriguing offer. A kind of a logical puzzle. Could I beat myself in battle? I couldn’t get that question out of my mind. How profound! Defeat myself? How many of my losses were just that? Of course, Rallos Zek was quite literal, but I reckoned this exercise might teach me something, and shed a few demons in the process.
As you can see in the included illustration, I had some trickery of my own. I created my own doppleganger to fight the one Rallos Zek sent me up against. What does that tell you about my psyche?
Fishing completed, I was just a time-travel away from pleasing three gods in one evening. Once I adjusted Antonius Bayle’s extreme idealism, I visited each god in turn in order to collect my rewards. “We are now even,” I said, “and we owe each other nothing. No more favors.”
I didn’t get a response to that from any of them.
Recent Comments