For a mont, I was torn between my curiosity and a faint sense of responsibility, one pushing to go report to the chief and get his buy-in to attack the central structure, while the other was tugging towards the newly established shrine and the idols carved in my image. I wanted to know if those idols were depicting or if it was rely a case of Lady Hecate using my image, as She was wont to do, though I was still ignorant of Her reasons for that usage. She had Her own face, I had seen it a few tis, and there were a few instances in which the shrines we set up used said face, so it was possible for Her to use it. She just didn’t want to, for so reason or another. Or She might just want to ss with , push in an unexpected direction or the reason might be sothing entirely unrelated to , as weird as that might be.
I could just imagine Lady Hecate gambling alongside a few others, maybe with so divinely strong drinks involved, and a bet being made involving the use of a different face. After all, I doubted that deities had an exchangeable currency, unless it involved the faith of mortals, sothing that couldn’t be changed on a whim. Though they might have so sort of territorial agreent, so it was only a single deity, or maybe an entire Pantheon, controlling a specific area, essentially giving that Pantheon a monopoly on mortal worship. Such monopolies could then be traded for so ti or gambled away.
Shaking my head, I forced my head back into the ga, pushing away the amusing theories about divine comrce and the trading of franchise areas. If such agreents existed, I was confident that no mortal would ever be included in the discussion. So, these theories were utterly useless and would remain so for a long ti. Hel, they might even be dangerous. I could easily imagine that divine marketing and franchise agreents were protected by so fairly vigorous protections from the various deities, just as everything about their actual divine operations would be. Divine worship needed a layer of mystery and disconnect between the worshipper and the worshipped, or things could easily co apart.
“Lia, could you go and report to the Chief?” I asked my daughter, deciding that delegating the responsibility of explaining dungeons and the local problem to the chief would work, allowing to investigate the idols in their shrine.
“Sure, Mother, I can do that,” Lia nodded, her expression quite serious, “What do you want to focus on? The local circumstances and the theories you shared regarding the burned land, its inception and possible thods to contain it or would you want to focus on dungeons in general and try to make their exploration sound as palatable as possible?”
“The forr,” I decided after a mont of consideration, “Otherwise, there’s always the risk that the locals decide having a dungeon of such potential in their backyard is worth the trouble. I doubt it’s going to happen, not with the destruction caused by this dungeon, but it’s possible. Humans have done a lot of foolish things in the past. It would be troubleso if this becos the latest example of that trait.”
“Certainly,” Lia nodded once again, now an amused grin on her face, “I’ll make sure to include so of our experiences in the scorched lands, even if those were a lot less troubleso than the burned lands here are,” she paused for a mont, the amusent on her face turning wry and sowhat contemplative, “What’s with all that fire anyway? Scorched land, burned land, why not candy land or idyllic land?”
“Would we even notice the ‘idyllic land’?” Luna asked, putting her own two cents into the discussion, “We might have walked past the idyllic land and never realised that it’s there because part of the idyll is to be sheltered from outsiders or sothing like that.”
“And fires are generally easy to see and perceive,” I nodded in agreent, even if I thought a majority of places like this were aligned to fire due to the elent’s volatility. While Water and Wind could be quite energetic and volatile, Fire was one of the most explosive elents, with only Lightning coming close amongst those I could control. Though Fire could sustain itself, despite its explosive nature, while Lightning was a singular flash before it was gone, so I doubted areas drowned in Lightning would create such elentally devastated lands, at least nothing that could sustain itself.
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“Rember that area of giant plants we encountered a while back? It might have been sothing similar, only that instead of a dungeon, the core of that area was the World Tree or maybe sothing beneath the tree,” Luna paused, glancing at , “You said there was sothing weird beneath the tree, right?”
“Yes, a Darkness, for lack of a better word,” I nodded in agreent, rembering the odd sensations I had felt near the tree, the strange hunger and desire, “It would be interesting to explore once our current objective is t, there might be other areas like these out there.”
“You want to see if there are other beings out there we can talk to, right? Finding the Sasquatch was interesting, but they need quite a bit more ti to form an actual culture. The proto-elves near the World Tree have already beco sothing other than human, so you want to investigate if there are more, right?” Lia asked, her voice sowhat quiet as she tried working out my ntal processes.
A small noise from Catherine caused our discussion to pause. Glancing over to her, mainly due to the interruption, made realise she had an odd expression on her face. Given our discussion, there were quite a few possible reasons for said expression, and I wasn’t about to try interrogating her. Most likely, it was due to the casual nature and the comparisons we had made regarding the burned land, though it might be due to another reason, too.
“Catherine, could you guide Luna and to the shrine?” I asked, knowing that Lia could find her own way, even if the bit of sunlight that managed to make its way through the thick clouds was enough to weaken her a little.
Nods were exchanged all around, and soon, Luna and I followed after Catherine while Lia was off to report.
“Can you tell how you made those idols?” I asked, my focus now completely on Catherine and the shrine here.
“Certainly,” Catherine nodded, glancing at Luna as she did, “Miss Luna taught us a technique to commune with a deity to receive their guidance, though usually it only works if you already know what deity you are interested in,” she explained.
“Here, we only had a vague idea of whom we would want to pray to, who could give us the protection and guidance we wanted, so it was suggested we should simply give our prayers to an unknown God. Lacy, who had the idea, told us that in ancient tis, the Greeks had a shrine to the unknown God, allowing them to do essentially that. If you didn’t know which deity your prayer was supposed to reach, you could pray there and it would be akin to a prayer addressed ‘to whom it may concern’.”
Now, neither Luna nor I could keep from snickering at the idea; it was just a little too funny. Interesting, too, though I wasn’t sure I would ever want to make use of the idea. Who knew how exactly the technique would work, especially if the user was sobody like , with multiple deities already interested in them?
“What happened then? You can hardly start to commune with a God if you don’t know which God you are communing with.” Luna prodded, getting another nod in return
“True, it didn’t work like you explained, but we had expected that,” she paused, “Instead of communing with the deity, we tried to focus the sensations, that longing, into so clay we had prepared, trying to shape our desire into the correct form.”
“And you ended up with a figurine in my shape?” I asked to clarify and, again, I received a nod in response.
“Fascinating,” I admitted, wondering once more if Lady Hecate had intervened, using the fact that Luna had taught these people the specific technique to contact the divine.
Soon, we reached the shrine and Catherine easily opened the door. It wasn’t a monunt or anything imposing, it was just a simple building, both inside and out, made of wood, clay and so stone.
After entering, we could see a few Idols sitting on small shelves, and on one of them, the majority of Idols had my face, while others were of Luna or the Grandmother.
Deciding to start with the simplest test, I used the Identify skill on one of the individual Idols, only to stare at the ssage in disbelief. I had not expected that.
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