Medicine Lodge Vision

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Varden: As you run through light forest, screams drift over the hill in front of you. The stench of burning flesh hits you as you crest the ridge, the tents and wagons of the entire circus engulfed in flames. A man in red jade armor, flames crackling on his skin, prowls the carnage, stabbing any bodies that are still moving. A woman in black jade glows bright blue-green as she roots through a chest outside of the burning wagon of the circus owner. A third man in jade, more difficult to see, is tossing dead bodies, impaling them on a row of pikes that line the road. As you get closer, you see the face of your mother on one of the bodies, hanging in air next to the rest of your family. The jade men are joking to each other. They don't have long to live. Varden knows this is a memory from his past, when his family was killed by a group of dragon-blooded looking for him.


Something with Husk.

Adrios: The sights and smells of the Little Market in Nexus surround you as an argument breaks out several stalls to your right. This gives you a perfect opportunity to pick the pocket of the man you've been following. You take one look around before making your move, and stop dead in your tracks. You don't know who she is, but as your eyes lock, you are struck dumfounded. You must look it, because the dark skin of her face erupts into a pearly smile, and you suddenly know you were supposed to find each other. Adrios knows this is a memory from his past, the first time he saw Vravanu Koya, a mortal woman who he fell in love with. She was later kidnapped and mortally wounded during a rescue attempt.



Jorias: In darkest night, you kneel on the bare rock of a high promontory. As you upend a ceramic bottle of lamp oil over your head and coat your naked skin with its contents, you can hear the ocean crashing below, but it is too far away to see. The only light comes from a torch held by the only other man up here, the lunar Jaguan. He faces you, lifts the torch slightly and asks if you are ready. You are terrified, nearly out of your mind. You reply as instructed: "The night station is called fear." Jaguan calmly, almost casually, tosses the torch into your lap. Your screams split the night as your flesh burns.


Healing the great contagion in Autochthon.

Gutts: You watch the horses graze as you approach the tent. Anxiety and regret fill your belly, joining the strange pull southward that you've been feeling for weeks. You return the guard's salutes as you enter the tent. A young, but white-haired, man sits at a simple table, his features perfect as always. He is uncharacteristically engrossed in a book laid flat on the desk, and seems not to notice you. "Griffin?", you hear yourself say. He looks up, but even startled he seems calm as ever. He closes the white, feathered cover of the book and stands to greet you, smiling. You continue, saying something that's even harder than the battles you just won: "I'm leaving". Gutts realizes this is a memory he has largely put out of his mind.


Scratching mask of winters.

Guen: You feel eyes upon you suddenly as you walk through the jungle, the morning mist causing the pale dawn to dance. The gaze from above is curious, meaning you no harm at first, not until you slowly turn to look up at it. Once you lock eyes with the panther, you can hear its heart beating, feel the rushing of its blood as if it were in your veins. You are part of each other. Your blood must become one. It is inevitable. The panther's curiosity turns to realization that to be united, one of you will have to die. It pounces from the tree, spreading its jaws to lock around your throat. But the tusk of the mammoth you killed the night before is in your hand, and it moves too slowly. It's body still twitches reflexively as you rip loose its beating heart and drink. Guen remembers this as the day he slew, and thus became, his totem animal.


Seeing Regret give up his soul.

Stag: The most opulent throne room you have ever seen is largely dark. You sit on a throne made from the massive sculpted bodies of five dragons, carved from each of the colors of jade, their heads looking in at you in deference. The robes of your Immaculate Order are sacrilegiously open and the only light comes from the gorgeous redhead on your lap. Your reach your magic into her pleasure centers and she rides you with wild abandon, fire in her eyes, and starting to flicker on her skin. She turns her head skyward as she climaxes. For a brief second, reflected in the white jade dragon head above her, you think you see her eyes flash with a sickly green light, but then your own climax washes over you. The woman seems very familiar to you, but you can't place her. Stag, of course, remembers this as the time the Empress took him in the Imperial throne room and the first time he used the Celestial Bliss Trick on her.

You are looking down at your hands, watching three arrows appear in your hand. As quietly as possible, you take out a silk strip covered in writing and wrap in around one of the arrows. All the while, a sultry woman's voice speaks behind you, and you can feel her words trying to work into your soul. A heat, both emotional and litteral, washes over your back in waves. "Surely you can see by now, my love," she is saying, "that it is too late for me to change. I don't think I would want to, even if I could. Come, let me show you Creation through my eyes. Together we can build a perfect world." You feel her draw near and look over your shoulder at her, smiling meekly. She stands with a concerned smile, clad in a black wedding dress. Her red hair has been replaced with strands of living fire that corescate down her back. Her eyebrows also burn, flames rippling up into her flaming hair. She reaches a hand toward you. You hesitatingly reach back with one hand, drawing closer. Then, with the head of the arrow gripped in the other hand, you spin suddenly, smacking the woman dead in the face with the tail of the arrow. She looks at you, stunned, but you feel the arrow has started to drain her will. You hit her again.

A creature with the body of a horse, the tail of a dragon, and the long neck and head of a peacock cantors up a large boulder and peers over the tree tops. It looks back at you, and makes a number of unintelligible squeaking noises. After receiving no response, it almost seems to slump, then its skin begins to shine as some kind of spectral form lifts from its body. As the form begins to take shape, the creature sprints away. The wispy strands of the specter coalesce into the ghostly form of a man at least twelve feet tall with a long, prehensile tail tipped with a cluster of wicked looking quills. He hovers upward a few more feet then points over the tops of the trees, though you are still to low to see what he does. It gives a friendly smile and says in a haunting deep voice "that way".

A blizzard of multi-colored flower petals makes it difficult to see your target, barely making out her monstrous form of somehow unearthly beauty. As you get closer, and see her back, your attack seems true and lethal but, at the last second, an androgynous, bald person with pointed ears and covered in colorful paint and even more colorful silk makes an impossible leap and intercepts your blow, sacrificing itself to protect its master. You nearly take its head off, but an almost religious fervor burns in its eyes and it continues to fight you, not yet realizing that its been killed.

Human eyes growing in the bark of the trees watch you, the branches reaching down like four-fingered hands towards you, but shying away from touching you at the last second. Something like a fruit falls from one of the trees, unfolding into a cluster of bark-covered arms that scuttles around blindly. The light becomes dimmer, evidently the sun is setting. Bushes below the trees suddenly bloom into bright red flowers, a furry pod forming at the center of each bloom. As the sun sets completely, the pods leap out at you like flying, carnivorous squirrels.

You stand overlooking a room dominated by a fountain with a golden statue of a winged woman with a spear. The sides of the room are covered with intricately crafted glass birds of all breeds, sizes and colors. Two steps lead down to the fountain. As you step on the first step, the name on the statue becomes clear: Wyr'palja. You can see the fountain is filled with coins of all kinds. The glass birds begin to chirp, call and ruffle their wings.

As the huge, bloated form before you writhes, shapes of miniature men with weapons or flags form in its skin rise and fall within its skin. A strange song fills the air, like the voices of thousands of men singing in an unfamiliar language, as if in a march or protest. As you approach, full sized weapons, mostly spears sprout and retract from the otherwise shapeless body. As you watch, a portion of skin rears back, as if sucked into the beast slightly from within, then quickly expands, shooting out a small, jet-black human-like form, armed with a spear, but otherwise featureless. The tiny man lets loose a shrill scream of surprise as it spirals rapidly toward your face, limbs flailing.