Erishti – Your eyes flutter open, crystalline in nature, and the first glimpse you have of the world is of a gaunt human speaking in strange tongues at you. He is nearly a skeleton, though how you know what a skeleton is or even that you are aware that he is casting a spell is beyond you. Your only memories are of the Living Gate, and a perfect union you had with other beings of pure thought. The gate was destroyed long long ago, or only a moment ago- your awareness of time is disjointed, you move something that you recognize to be a head, attached to a humanoid body. You have become a form, a body of shards, separated from the other thoughts now, lingering away from your duty as protectorate against the Far Realms inhabitants. How you arrived here, in this small room lit by fading candlelight is unknown to you. You open what you imagine to be a mouth-
But the man, a wizard, an undead wizard snarls at you, and commands you: “Silence, construct, you will do as you are told- golem.” You recognize instantly that this thing, this perversion of nature has created you from nothing to be a guardian, but his spell was miscast. For whatever reason, he summoned you instead. You open your mouth again, this time you speak without constraint:
“Who are you and where am I?” You ask.
He stares at you- and sputters out “B-but – but I was casting a spell to summon a crystal golem- what are you!” He quickly raises his hands and you see a crackling blue shield of magic surround him, as he points at a strange looking stone ghastly looking figurine oddly placed amongst the room of books and bizarre objects. The impish looking thing, what appears to be a gargoyle becomes fused with the same blue energy that the shield is laced with and you watch as it animates itself and comes to life. Your mind begins to charge itself with all manner of thoughts as you are slowly adjusting to a corporeal body. You know that this thing has plans to do you harm, and like its master needs to be stopped. It takes a step forward, and begins to approach you.
“Kill this- thing!” The necromancer shouts, as the winged figurine lunges at you with a pair of claws. You stumble back, barely moving out of the way as it swings past you, stumbling into a tall obelisk, that crackles with green light. As you brush up against it, the necromancer howls out “Nooo-“ And then the room around you disappears, and you find yourself standing along the edge of a cobbled road in what appears to be a wooded glade out amongst a starry night sky. You look behind you and see a tall, disfigured tree, with a crudely drawn obelisk carved into its side. You hear the slow creakingly of something approaching in the dark, and you see a caravan winding along the road. It is driven by a human, a small paunchy fellow that see you, and stops his horses in their tracks. He looks about to speak when the tree your standing next to sizzles with the blue magic- magic, that is what its called, teleports the winged thing from the room to the tree besides you. It snarls and lunges.
At some point before the grotesque thing falls, aided by a gnome who leap to your defense, the stone creature slices into you and rends you with a blue flaming flesh wound that burns into your chest, and you know that this marks you as an enemy of the Wizard and all his kind, though you don’t know what that means…yet.
After the battle, Tana explains where she is going, and in the back of your mind, Erishti, you hear the voices of your memories coalescing inside of you, explaining that your summoning was not by accident, and that you have been brought to this world, Toril for a reason. The Far Realms has infected the world, and, like the Living Gate which was destroyed so long ago by their influences they need to be stopped here as well. And you must do this, and must go west with this being. West, and first, to Waterdeep…..
