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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jeffwik" data-source="post: 664221" data-attributes="member: 9739">Bit of dialogue Morrow left outConversation between Krikara and Foleful, just before first watch.  Started out with Thar and Foleful asking Krikara where she'd been and what she'd been doing, and Krikara dodging the question by talking about her quest to find a shiny buckler and sacrifice it.  Which caused Thar to wander off, shaking his goblin head, while Foleful pursued this "quest" of hers.Krikara explained that hers was a holy calling: to honor the Great Darkness by sacrificing magic items.Foleful had heard Krikara's bizarre monotheism before, with its notion that Kurtulmak and Grummsh and Kaldecki and all were nothing more than masks worn by the Great Darkness.  He inquired further -- why sacrifice?Krikara explained that In The Beginning, there had been the Great Darkness.  Alone, in the dark.  Not much fun.  So the Great Darkness invented stealth.  Which was easy, since all there was, was the Great Darkness.  So then the Great Darkness created the universe, and all its peoples, so there would be people to be stealthy and something to be stealthy in.  And it was good.Was it? mused Foleful, quietly to himself.  More loudly, he agreed that someone had to create the universe.  The xvart Secular Humanoidists call the god who did so Eoer-Stepper, Xvartish for "He Who is Tall Enough to Stand on the Universe."  They don't worship Eoer-Stepper though; what would be the point?  What has he done for us lately?But then, Krikara continued as if no one had interrupted her, someone developed magic, and it was supercool.  Everybody started wandering around casting spells and making magic items.  And then someone -- some elf, probably, interjected Thar, who had heard this story before -- then someone invented the most powerful and horrible magic item of all: the sun.The sun displeased the Great Darkness, and the Great Darkness cursed all the peoples by making them small and inoffensive and helpless (like dark creepers and goblins and kobolds and xvarts and so forth) and life generally sucked.  Plus there's all the sunlight on the surface now, which makes stealth all the harder.Ever since then, dark creepers have honored the Great Darkness by chucking magic items down deep holes, at the bottom of which (according to Dark Creeper Lore) the Great Darkness consumes them.Thar recounted a few stories of Krikara throwing magic items down holes.But, asked Foleful, even accepting that the Great Darkness and Eoer-Stepper are one and the same, why honor the creator?  Why would the Great Darkness, if It is as great as you say, care?The Great Darkness is deep, Krikara responded.  It is good to honor the Great Darkness, and such action pleases It.But is it good because God is pleased, or is God pleased because it's good? pursued Foleful, little realizing he was setting his feet down the path of Socratic reasoning, which would eventually change Secular Humanoidism forever.  Sadly, no one except Foleful thought it was a question worth answering.</blockquote>

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