[i][color=778899]“Go you among the fleeting, and make it that the name of the One God is given due veneration.”[/color][/i]

[hr]

Wandering away from the river-side encampment, Raul walked upstream to be alone. His mind was plagued by thoughts of the intruders, and how he wished he had the strength to kill every last one. What he had lacked in talent and finesse, he had compensated with rage and brutality. 

Holding tightly to his scythe, he had demanded that his essence return to his core. Instead of invoking the names of the ancestors, he repeated one name over and over again, “Aritz, Aritz, Aritz.” 

This time, focus did not come so easily. An odd feeling of tension, honed by a life amid danger, clenched the nape of his neck, distracting from the recitation. It was not long until certainty crept over him - he was being watched.


Raul stood up and made a quick motion with his scythe to extend the blade outwards, however what tried to accomplish in one clean swing required several awkward attempts. He franatically cast his gaze left then right, before finally turning around. 

Behind him was a strange spirit unlike anything that he had known. He immediately started taking several steps back as if by raw instinct, using the point of the spear to prevent it from reclosing the gap. He stammered out, "What is your nature, spirit?"

The shifting cloud of smoke that was the being’s body did not approach further. A single red eye looked at him with placid amusement from its folds.

“I come from the house of Father Death, in whom all things end,” she intoned in the rush of a flame, “It pleases him how gladly you send many to meet him across the shroud.”

While trying to maintain a brave face, he stammered out a response, "The River flows with or without us. In that regard, I am not worth notice." 

“Only he knows for sure where it will carry us,” the wraith recited in monotone, as if it were a formula she had committed to memory, “Tell me, young one, would you like to live a great destiny, the greatest among the slayers of dusk?”

His hands wavered, and the inner mechanisms of the god-forged scythe struck against like barely audible bells, "The ancestors have already bestowed me with greater purpose than I deserve."

“You deserve what you aspire to, that is the way of things,” the eye swayed, “Honour the spirits, and they will give unto you. There is no end to what the determined can become.”

The scythe-glaive grew heavier in his hands and began to lower, and he muttered, "Honour the spirits.. Pleased by." His hands regained their right grasp and the point of the blade ascended to meet the strange spirit, "Is Father Death pleased when the intruders kill my people. Was he pleased when they killed him." 

“The [i]intruders[/i] are selfish beasts,” the spectre’s voice crackled with scorn, “They know neither balance nor ritual. The lives they take are not returned to the River, but swallowed in their gullets. The world becomes less for their predations, and our Father favours those who cut them down.”

"So. So. He is." He rose his scythe-glaive into the air, but could not find the strength to let it descend upon the spirit, "Everyone is taken by the River. He can't be… You must be lying."

“The River takes all, but does not leave the same. Some reach the mouth, others are dropped to rot in the shallows. Watch, I will show you.”

Her eye blazed bright, and together with its reflection on the blade, it was blinding. The biting red light swallowed Raul’s senses, and he saw-

[i]Between two steep grassy banks there flowed a wide river, dark and deep, smooth and even. Its course was lost in the distance, which it pierced like a spear, not wavering in a single bend or turn. On one bank, a large band of eidolon was tending to a score that lay motionless on the ground, some struck down by age, others by hunger, others still by large ragged gashes on their chests and throats. The living dutifully swaddled them in furs, after the northern fashion, and gently laid them onto the water’s surface, where the current carried them downstream without letting them sink. The other bank was teeming with hideous monsters, bats and leeches and gnats of horrid size, who gnawed and drained on bodies mangled beyond recognition. Those they reduced to pitiful wrinkled husks they tossed into the waves, and likewise did the river carrying them away, bobbing and twirling as they went.

On and on the river flowed, and with it the bodies, until they came upon a wall of grey fog, swirling here and there with hidden winds. The shrouded corpses, borne ahead by their confident weight, did not stray from course, and passed unscathed through to the other end, where he could dimly glimpse an incredible expanse of still black water. Their tormented brothers were not so fortunate, for, light and loose as they were, shifting currents pulled them apart and dashed them against rough banks and sunken stones, until they were broken to even more sorry pieces. Some made it through the mist and were lost beyond, but the heads were all caught in rocks and whirlpools, and they wailed in sorrow for their fate, forever trapped neither in one place nor quite in another, but in the uncertainty between.[/i]

The lamentous wail jolted him from the vision, and once more he was standing by the stream, the spirit before him.

“Ritual honours the living and the dead alike,” she said, “Those lost to it are taken, but never borne anywhere. That is an unworthy fate.”

The Eidolon's hands and voice began to waver, "No. You must.." His words trailing off without him, "Why? Why did you intervene sooner? Why did no one intervene sooner?"

“Death is our domain,” the spirit answered, “Our reach among the living is short. Only now that your Order has been brought together can we act alongside you.”

Raul remained silent, though something began to change right behind his eyes. His grip on his scythe changed, becoming neither too tight or too loose.

“Take it or leave it, the choice is yours,” the smoky mass rolled, giving the impression that she would have shrugged had she but had shoulders. A tongue of pale fire licked the ground between them, and when it withdrew a large, faceted bead of glinting black stone lay there in a circle of charred grass. “Bear this into battle and offer those you slay to the Father, and as long as you have no fear, death will not find you there. Else throw it into the water, and the River will take it back.”

With those words, she spread her coils and roiled away on a rising breeze, soon fading into a wisp on the horizon.

Raul glanced between the bead and scythe uncertainty. The words of the spirits haunted him even after they had left. His eyes eventually landed upon the river, flowing ever onwards. 


[hider=Summary]

Raul, a member of the Autumnal Order, is brooding away from his fellows. Suddenly, an Eschatli appears! She's on a mission, and tempts the eidolon to embrace a fate ordained for him by a certain divine spirit, showing him an allegorical glimpse of the afterlife in the process. Raul, however, is hesitant to sign up for anything. She doesn't push too hard and soon makes herself scarce, leaving him a strange bead and a choice of what to do with it.

[/hider][hider=Vigor]

Iqelis starts with 4 vigor.

-1, discounted to 0 by the Doom aspect, spent on an enchanted bead which wards the bearer from meeting their end in battle, as long as they go into it without fear of dying.

He ends with the same.

[/hider][hider=Prestige]

The Eschatli start with 4 prestige.

1 gained from their role in the post, bringing them to 5.

The Autumnal Order started with 5 prestige. 

1 gained from their role in the post, bringing them to 6. 

The Guardian Reapers started with 2 prestige 

1 gained from their role in the post, bringing them to 3. 

[/hider]