Hadrian's Training: For your consideration

[exile]

“Do you know why you are here boy?” A tiny empyreal flame leapt into being atop an ancient gnarled finger, casting back the consuming shadows by mere inches. As Hadrian watched the ghost-fire danced through the stagnant air, settling after a moment upon the generously stuffed bowl of a long stemmed pipe. From somewhere in the darkness, a raspy breath pulled at the sweet smoke.

“No.” It was true. Hadrian had somehow known it was time to pay a visit on the long forgotten Madman in the cellar, but how or for what reason he couldn’t say.

“Good.” There was a sound of another long and wracking drag. “Then I will ask the questions, and you will provide the answers. What do you know of Purpose?”

“What matter of Purpose? The Grand Purpose? Or a more personal sort?”

“Explain for me both.”

The aasimar hesitated for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “The Grand Purpose is a lie we invent to explain ourselves, for the naked mind recoils at its own insignificance. It is a veil of false hope. Only those who can see it for what it truly is will ever find real peace, but such peace carries a great cost. Even the strongest of wills can falter in the face of such abject meaninglessness. Isolation is thus the price of wisdom.”

“If there is no Purpose, can there still be Truth?” The gravelly voice betrayed no sense of what the speaker thought of Hadrian’s words.

“Of course,” Hadrian replied. “The planes are riddled with Truths. Belief defines existence. Unity is manifest in rings. Trinity is sublime. To deny as much is folly.”

“Well spoken, boy.” The Madman imagined that he could feel a toothless and above all satisfied smile in the gloom. “Now tell me of this other purpose.”

“Personal purpose is what we construct for ourselves. It is the sum of our experience and our ambitions; it is what we make of our lives.”

“Do you believe this personal purpose has the strength to alter the planes?”

Hadrian felt that he was on stronger ground now and was prepared for the question. “No,” he said. “The planes are infinite and cannot be altered by any force. Any mark we leave in our time is fleeting at best. But we can alter the lives we interact with, for they are finite.”

Both men were silent for a time, vague and insubstantial presences gathered about a cosmic ember. The smoke was strong now, Hadrian could all but taste it.

“I have been listening to what you have said, boy,” the voice offered at last. “And what you speak of is not purpose after all. All purpose no matter how base stems from that false idol, Grand Purpose; it connotes our place in the multiverse, and we know there to be none. What you speak of is Choice.”

“Very well, I will not dispute the appellation.” Call it what may, the aasimar could still glimpse the core of it. A heavy silence followed, and Hadrian felt as though he were being set upon some metaphysical scale, scrutinized beneath an impossibly stringent auspex. And suddenly and without warning the scale tipped, a verdict evidently reached.

“I think that you are ready now to find yourself, boy.” The voice held a note of pride, or so it seemed to Hadrian. “I can guide you if you wish.”

Somewhere in his unconscious being, a previously unnoticed door opened. Where he had felt complacent in his beliefs before, now there was a frightening new expanse. “I do,” he offered simply.

“There is something you must do first. I smell an odor of gold about you, boy. Is it your choice to bear a fatted purse?”

“No.”

“Then release your hold on such material things. Go to the house of Allesha when light breaks. Hand her fifty golden coins and say only that they arrive at the behest of a donor who desires anonymity. When you have done this deed, you may return to me. Now be off with you and let an old man rest.”

The fire in the pipe-bowl sputtered lamely and died out as if on cue. Hadrian rose wordlessly and headed for his cell. There was much to consider.

[exile]

Hey Stix, I just wanted to get your clearance before posting this due to the heavy NPC interaction in it.

Exile

[Stix]

It's a good post; just remember that the Mad Bleaker Wing is still an insane asylum, and only those faction members in the worst shape end up incarcerated there. In the case of spellcasters, they'd be stripped of their notes -- otherwise, the Gatehouse would long ago have been emptied of barmies and burned to cinders.

That's not to say Hadrian can't learn something from inmates (dealing with the insane is a fine reason for increasing social skills), but the full complement of what comes with a new level is probably best served with more formalized training.

[exile]

Fair enough, I will have to give it some thought. I hadn’t fully established the identity of this NPC in my mind yet, although I have a number of competing ideas at the moment. He won’t be a typical bleaker barmy though, as he is neither in the throes of the Grim Retreat (although he may have returned from it once before), nor actually incarcerated (there is no door to his ‘cell’). Whatever he might be, he is there voluntarily so I’d imagine he has more access to his notes than a truly imprisoned faction member.

I had thought it best for Hadrian’s training to be conducted in house, rather than jaunting over to the Great Gymnasium or the training facilities in the Civic Festhall. Crossing the floor so to speak seemed a little contrived in a setting where allegiance to a belief is more important than life. And since the Faction as a whole doesn’t seem particularly invested in training its members, I had to find an individual with an interest in Hadrian.

All the same, I think I will still post this as the beginning of Hadrian’s training and if it becomes necessary to find another tutor I will expand from there. At least it serves as a good starting point.

Exile

[Stix]

Okay, sounds good. Know, though, that the factions aren't the only source of knowledge; there are dozens of guildhalls, private training facilities, tutors, and schools of magecraft throughout the Cage, so it's not as though he'll be hurting for places to learn.