The Aftermath of a Severe Malpractice.
Hello all. My name is Dan Driff. I would rather if you did not laugh at me. I have been rather traumatized because people frequently laugh at my name and sprinkle small flakes unto the shoulders of my kimono… Anyway, I have come to this therapy group because my therapist thought it would be good for me, and because it is time that the people at the Ironworks Forum start realizing that some of the practices they advocate actually have severe long term psychological effects on the adventurers doing their bidding.
It all started some years ago… I was the toast and talk of Valeia. You have may have heard of me?!? A had been a member of a very succesful party who had just completed the game. For various reasons I cannot disclose the identity of the tutelary patron controlling us… Anyway I had just attained the role of zenmaster. Only the thirteenth in the history of the masters of zen. Not that I had actually read any of that drivel in the four tomes I had recovered. In fact I am illiterate.
Anyway… Where was I… Oh yes, you know we came back to Valeia and settled down again. (As much as we could of course… There were always people who wanted to meet us). And everything went really well. I got many appointments as a lecturer. My lectures were very popular and heavily attended. Everybody wanted to hear how we killed Cet. But suddenly I began waking up in the middle of the night all sweaty. I was obviously having nightmares but I could not remember what they were about.
This continued and after a few months I could hardly fall asleep at night, and with not enough sleep I grew more and more somnolent during the day time. Eventually I did not have enough energy to continue my lectures, and I stopped seeing people and grew more and more reclusive because I felt something was wrong with me. I also stopped seeing the others who were with me in the party. Obviously they could not take all the fame and success that came their way *snort* and they stooped to low, underhanded slandering and false allegations. Now, if you take the accusations I made in the tabloid – the Gael Serran examiner, thirty-fourth issue, for example – everything is true… I saw it with my own eyes. And to those of you who are still wondering: What the party samurai wrote on page fifty-five of his *sneering* so-called bestseller “From Valeia to the Pyramid of Doom” is absolutely not true. In fact it was I who saw HIM sneaking out of barn. Hrumpf.
*Calming down* Anyway, I grew more and more reclusive. Eventually I did not see anyone and I started losing weight. One night I woke up from the nightmare and remembered having dreamt seeing a solid black massive cast iron object in front of me. There was a pattern on the object and I recalled having seen it before. I just could not remember where. The object obscured my whole field of vision, and it was so agonizingly cold… and close. I wanted to move away from it but I could not. I felt trapped. It was all very claustrophobic.
The next day I went and visited Harespia. She is kind of weird, but she certainly protects people’s privacy. Her mouth is sealed, and she never tells anything to anybody about her clients. Not even celebrities like myself. First I wanted to know if I would ever stop having these nightmares so she predicted my future. (Had I payed but fifty gold pieces more then her prediction might even have been that I would stop having them…). Anyway, she agreed to take me into therapy, but after a month of her so-called pain therapy where she would hit me with the serpent wand and step on me with her hooves I was getting nowhere, and I dropped out of therapy.
Then I went to see my old benefactor Shinwiki. He offered me to take me to the toadem grounds for the great yearly feast to celebrate the transformation of the tadpoles, but to get to the toadem grounds I would have to go through the cold underground passages. I believed at the time that my nightmares were an omen warning me to stay away from claustrophobic places where the coldness goes through to the marrow. One night at a bonfire Shinwiki told me of the importance to stay at peace with the cosmos. For the next month I thought a lot about this, but the nightmares continued.
Then I joined the Serpent Cult. With the Naga and the high priestess themselves, the Serpent Master, the inquisitor, and Kreug all dead the cult is almost dissolved. And just to refute the assertions later brought forward by the ranger and the ninja from my party, it was I and not them who performed the valiant deed of slaying the naga… Anyway, with all these people (and snakes) dead the cult is reduced to a gongregation of a few old buffers who have grown up in the cult and cannot function outside the temple walls. My time with the cult was frustrating and it contributed much to my paranoia. I had to wear a mask so as not to be recognized as the one who had slain all the head figures of their cult. After two weeks I left the temple.
Desperate I then went to see the Roendalf at the magic shoppe in Valeia. He tried putting me under hypnosis. Then I suddenly remembered something else from my dreams. I was so cold. And I was so cold because, I suddenly realized, I was not wearing anything. The cold wind and the nearness of the cold cast iron was sapping my energy because I was not wearing anything. Roendalf told me that this case sounded remarkably similar to a case that Xander at the temple of Ishad N’ha had been working on recently. He urged me to go to Ishad N’ha and talk to the priest.
This I did although I nearly did not make it through the tunnel of Ishad N’ha as my claustrophobia had nearly done me in. Eventually I came through the woods surrounding Ishad N’ha and as I got to the clearing I immediately recognized the cast iron object with the pattern from my dreams. It was the gate of Ishad N’ha. It all stemmed from the time of my monk training. To prove myself worthy of being a monk I had to unequip all items and totally undress for two Gael Serran days. Not having the patience my tutelary patron had sent me into safety behind the gates of Ishad N’ha and gone to bed so that when waking up I would have completed my monk training. But what seems like a night in the Ironworks Forum is two days in the Gael Serran. And all the time I was stuck behind a sinister gate exposed to the elements developing a severe claustrophobia. Xander has had countless of monks through his office seeking therapy. So basically if any of you Ironworks Forum members hear this I implore you to stop this highly advocated practice that has ruined the lives of so many bold adventurers. Please!!!
I had wanted to write an ascencion story earlier. But better late than never. I apologize for the wait, CerebroDragon and all you others.
