This is a story of Ash, the 22 year old Monk who left his master to find his own way.
TL;DR Answered a question from a pool, which turned out to be a deal, and magically aged 20 years. He's kind of okay with the outcome.
Okay, now to the story. The group at the time was 5 people, tasked with working alongside a government to cleanse a temple full of old god shit. We walk in at first and deal with some monsters in the courtyard that had like 3-4 mouths each. Charming. We power through them surprisingly fast. The main chamber had some creatures called "Unspeakables" which were hard hitting melee monsters, and there was like 6 of them. Our Barbarian face tanks them and we clean up. In true roguish monk fashion, I kill steal the prone enemy at the end with a flying elbow. My party loves me.
We were told that there was a spawning room to the right, and a burial chamber to the left. Burial room was hinted to contain loot that was our pay; so we leave that for last. We power through the spawning room, and then head back to get the loot before going through the final chamber.
We find some weird talking creatures that weren't openly hostile, and just wanted to munch on dead bodies. The party is mostly neutral with a lone good and evil. The neutrals convince the rest that they aren't hurting anyone, and made off with the loot (Got an Amulet of Truesight myself).
Now we get to the final room. There is, of course, a bigger than normal baddie. Well, we have a vengance paladin who loves to kill things, so that thing survives two rounds before Ms. Refrigerator smites it into next year.
Then we encounter the pool. Madame walking toaster investigates it first, and the DM tells the player that a disembodied voice asks it "What would you give, to learn that which you must know?". Our ice queen washing machine never actually answers the question, and asks questions to it instead. All mentally. Our characters don't know whats going on.
Finally, she says "This pool is talking to me, lets get out of here and let the army finish their job".
Ash however, responds by saying "Talking pool of water? Bullshit". He walks up to the water and looks in it. Same question.
He thinks about it for a bit. He comes up with the answer of "Time". He'd give time to learn that which he must know. Please note that he was thinking of this as a question of how he would accomplish things. He is a monk, and would happily spend time to learn what he wants.
Then he magically ages 20 years. The voice says "What is it you wish to know"
In character, everyone sees Ash age 20 years. Questions come in from the party members asking WTF just happened. We come to the conclusion that the Old God this temple is dedicated to must have interpreted my answer as consent to a deal.
Our Mitsubishi Paladin then tries to tell Ash that we could use this opportunity to figure our where the McGuffin is, and gets a resounding "HELL NO I'M NOT SPENDING 20 YEARS OF MY LIFE FOR THAT SHIT". We also decided to take this time to figure out what exactly the magical aging did. We decided that it was treated as if I aged 20 years according to my current level of physical activity. I train and meditate daily. I had a strong body for a 42 year old man. I didn't know my parents long enough to know if I was going to still have hair at that age, so I rolled for it. 1d9 for Hair; 1-2 was majorly receeding, 3-7 was minorly receeding, 8-9 was full head of hair. I rolled a 9, so we said that I now had a full head of salt and pepper hair.
So I ask the DM for some time. He RP's with the others for a bit, and I actually sit down and think about what on earth Ash would spend 20 years of his life for. What would be worth 20 years to him.
I look back to what drives Ash. Why is he here? What is meaningful to him? His order doesn't place value in a God, his order emphasizes personal strength and will. He approached his Master with nothing but the desire to become stronger, so that he would never be a tool of someone else, and he tempered his body and mind like so.
He trained with his master for 8 years. After all of that time, he still felt like he didn't understand his Masters Wisdom. He felt like he was lacking the personal growth to appreciate it, and that was a large part of wanting to set off on his own, with his Masters blessing.
Thus, he told the voice that he wanted to know his Masters Wisdom.
My DM, being the god that he is, told me to wait for a bit. He then pulled out this quote and whispered it to me (We're on Roll20).
"For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow."
My character was thankful for this, and felt like he truly had begun to understand the order he had joined, and why his Master has molded him as such. He would have gladly spent more than 20 years coming to the revelation.
After making it back to camp, we learn that the Army had done their job and purified the temple, and learned that it was not uncommon for this God to deceive people into deals like this. However, we also learn from others that the deal was the deal, no strings attached. No corruption from the God itself.
After meditating on what I had learned that night, and that morning; My DM told me to add +2 Wisdom to my character sheet.
Ash is kind of okay with how things went down.
For those curious, the passage is from Herman Hesse; a German-Swiss poet from the 1900's.
Submitted December 22, 2016 at 07:24AM by RepliesWithAnimeGIF http://ift.tt/2ihiZnc DnD
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