Charles’ Bio – Foundry Campaign Compendium

Ifrit Human – Cleric / Plant Whisperer

I am a priest of Sarenrae, the Dawnflower, She Who Brings Redemption Through Light.

That should be enough. In most places, in most circumstances, that single sentence would tell you everything you need to know about who I am, what I stand for, and why I do what I do. I serve the light. I heal the wounded. I burn the undead. I offer mercy where mercy is warranted and fire where it is not. I do not question my calling. I do not waver in my faith.

That should be enough. And yet lately, I find myself reaching for those words more often than I used to, as if saying them will make the ground beneath me feel more solid.

It does not.

I will be honest. My memory before the priesthood is not what it should be.

There are gaps. Not the ordinary kind, where a person forgets the name of a childhood friend or the color of a house they lived in twenty years ago. These are structural gaps. Places where a memory should be and simply is not. Like missing teeth in a jaw that still tries to chew. I remember my training. I remember the prayers, the rituals, the hours of devotion. I remember the warmth of Sarenrae’s light the first time I channeled it through my hands and felt the wounds close beneath my fingers.

But before that? The edges blur. There are shapes where people should be. There is a fire where a home should be. Something burned. I cannot say whether I started it.

I do not speak of this. A priest who cannot account for his own past does not inspire confidence, and confidence is half of what keeps the wounded alive when I lay hands on them. The other half is faith. I have that in abundance. At least, I tell myself I do.

I was brought into the service of Dr. Ritalsin and Professor Sabine von Wriedt as a Gatewalker. That is what they call those of us who walked through the light on the Night of the Missing Moment and came back changed. Tattoos on our skin that were not there before. Abilities we cannot explain. Memories of the event itself that simply do not exist, as though someone took a blade to the hours and cut them cleanly out.

The Professor is… extraordinary. She speaks of time as though she stands outside of it, looking in through smudged glass. Her words tumble over one another. Past, present, and future all tangled together like yarn a cat has gotten to. She touched each of us when we met her. Leather gloves with silver and gold thread in rune patterns, fingertips exposed. When she touched me, she said, “Not his fault he burned it down.” I have been trying not to think about that ever since.

Dr. Ritalsin seemed competent. Organized. Focused. He was assembling a team of Gatewalkers to investigate strange phenomena and, presumably, the gates themselves. Room and board covered. Payment of ten gold. Burial expenses included, which is either admirably practical or deeply concerning.

I said yes. I needed the work. More than that, I needed the purpose. A priest without a congregation is just a man who talks to the sun.

My companions are an unusual lot. I suppose any group brought together by a cosmic event that none of them can remember would be.

Mutu is an automaton. A man of metal and purpose who serves Sarenrae with a sincerity that puts most flesh-and-blood worshippers to shame. He is polite. He is protective. He once watched over me while I slept, which I found both touching and mildly unsettling. He cannot lie. This makes him either the most trustworthy companion I have ever had or the most dangerous, depending on what truth he happens to speak next. He heals. He fights. He dances, though I hesitate to call it that. We share a goddess. I trust him more than anyone else in this group, and I think he trusts me too, though with Mutu it can be difficult to tell the difference between trust and programming.

Kiren is going to get us all killed.

That is unfair. Kiren is skilled, cunning, and capable of extraordinary things when she chooses to apply herself. The problem is that she chooses to apply herself to picking pockets, skulking in shadows, and making deals with contacts in establishments where a servant of the Dawnflower is manifestly unwelcome. She worships Grandmother Spider, a deity whose tenets include “humiliate the powerful” and “always get paid,” which tells you everything you need to know about her moral framework. And yet. She has saved my life more times than I care to admit. She pulled Diana from the jaws of death when I could not reach her. She threw herself between harm and our companions with a ferocity that no amount of cynicism can quite disguise. There is something in Kiren that she does not wish anyone to see. I suspect it is kindness. I am learning not to mention it.

She is also searching for her twin sister, and on this subject all her sharpness falls away and what remains is a grief so raw that even I, who have counseled the bereaved, find it difficult to witness. I pray she finds her. I pray what she finds is what she hopes for.

Diana arrived later, sent by the Professor with blank paper and a potion and very little explanation. She travels with an eidolon she calls HIM, a psychopomp of the Boneyard who ferries the souls of the dead to their rest. She is quiet. She is odd. She speaks in fragments that remind me of the Professor, though with less warmth and more bone. I did not know what to make of her at first. I still do not, entirely. But she is devoted to the natural order of death, which means she despises the undead with a purity of purpose that I can respect. She is useful. She is strange. She once offered to “deposit a tribute” to a sewer monster in a way that shocked everyone present. I have decided not to ask for clarification.

Thulnir was a dwarf who traveled with us in the early days. He was competent with an axe, passionate about stonework, and left due to family troubles involving a treasonous uncle. I hope he is well. I hope the uncle is not.

My sigil glows in the presence of the undead.

This is Sarenrae’s gift to me, and it has been invaluable. In a city riddled with animated corpses, cursed dolls, corrupted constructs, and the restless dead of half a dozen noble families, the ability to know when something nearby has defied the natural order of death is not merely useful. It is essential.

The sigil appeared along with the tattoos from the Missing Moment. I did not ask for it. I did not earn it through any act I can remember. It simply appeared, and I have accepted it the way I accept all of Sarenrae’s gifts: with gratitude, and with the quiet suspicion that gifts from the divine always come with expectations I have not yet been informed of.

The tattoos themselves trouble me more. They are black. They are sandy to the touch. They change. New marks appear after significant events, as though something is writing on my skin from the inside. A tattoo artist I consulted said they are sigils, carved into skin. A message not yet complete. The techniques used demand a level of skill that would require more than a normal lifespan to learn.

I do not know who is writing on me. I do not know what the message says. I know only that each new mark coincides with another step deeper into a world I was not prepared for, and that the message, whatever it is, is not finished.

The nightmares are the worst part.

I have counseled people through night terrors. I have sat at bedsides and spoken of the Dawnflower’s light and the protection of faith and the knowledge that the darkness behind our eyelids is temporary. I believed what I said. I still believe it, in the daylight, when the prayers come easily and the warmth of Sarenrae is a felt thing rather than a remembered one.

But at night, something finds me.

A white-furred figure with horns and four eyes watches from the edges of the dream. Not attacking. Not speaking. Just watching, the way a predator watches something it has already decided to eat but is in no hurry about. The black sand fills the space around me, rising from the ground, pouring from the walls, and I cannot breathe and I cannot move and I cannot pray because the words dissolve before they leave my mouth.

I wake drenched. Nauseous. With the fading impression of a city on a black lake and the certainty that I have been there before, though I cannot remember when.

Kiren and Mutu have similar dreams. The same white-furred figure. The same sand. This is not coincidence. This is a message, or a threat, or an invitation. I do not know which, and the not-knowing is worse than any of the alternatives.

There is something else. Something I have noticed and cannot explain and have not spoken of to anyone.

In Gregor Pendergrast’s dreamscape, when that twisted madman described us, he called me “a shadow masquerading as light.”

I have been telling myself that this was Gregor’s insanity speaking. A corrupt mind seeing corruption everywhere, even in a faithful priest of the Dawnflower. I have been telling myself that Gregor, who murdered innocents and made deals with the King in Yellow and trapped souls in music boxes, was not a reliable judge of character.

I have been telling myself this for weeks.

I have not entirely convinced myself.

There are moments. Small ones. A flicker in my peripheral vision where my reflection does not quite match my movement. A hesitation in my memory where I reach for the name of my teacher, my mentor, the person who first placed the symbol of Sarenrae in my hands, and find… nothing. Not a forgotten name. An absence. As though the person who should be there was never there at all, and the memory is a room with no furniture in it, waiting for someone to move in.

Sarenrae’s warmth is real. Her light is real. My faith is real. I know this the way I know the sun rises. But sometimes, in the very early morning, before the prayers begin and the light steadies me, I wonder: if my faith is the only thing I am certain of, and everything else is gaps and missing pieces and a fire I cannot account for…

What am I, without it?

I do not ask this question aloud. A priest who questions his own foundation does not inspire confidence. And my companions need me confident. They need me steady. They need the light of Sarenrae burning in my hands when the dead rise and the darkness closes in and someone has to be the one who says, with absolute conviction, “Stand behind me.”

So I say it. And I mean it. And the light comes when I call.

But the question lingers, quiet as a shadow, in the space behind my certainty. And I suspect, though I cannot say why, that the answer, when it comes, will change everything.

By Sarenrae’s grace, I will be ready for it.

I have to be.

Tagged: Gatewalkers, Player Character