Memoirs of a Fallen God

Intercession

You may wonder that you are able to read these words; that a soul as taciturn and bitter as Telth has become would, even having written them, deem to share his work with the world. You are not wrong in your musings. He did not decide share his tale. We stole it.

We are the last Priests of Patience, the remnant of a sect of worship dedicated to waiting and watching. Yet there comes a time to act, lest patience become mere pretense for cowardice. That time is now.

The priesthood of He Who Waits has ever been a small sect. Few can tolerate our ways. Patience is a peaceful thing, yet few men have true peace in their hearts.

Strange, that our god should be one such, a soul unable to simply watch. Our holy texts tell of other ascendants, other wielders of the mantle Endist. Gods content to let the world pass around them, to while away the long years of their divinity watching, waiting. Endlessly waiting.

Telth has never been much for waiting. Perhaps that is why we love him so. For many years now, as the atrocities around us mount ever higher, our outward calm has belied a seething, brooding anger. In Telth we found an outlet; a warrior, a champion. A god of Patience not content to wait.

And so it has come to this. He has fought for us, he has fallen. His mantle of godhood lies shattered. His nose has been bloodied. He thinks himself beaten. We do not.

So we have sinned. Manipulated our god. Lied to him. Even stolen from him. All sacrilege without precedent, and, though we be damned for it, we repent nothing.

He does not know what we intend. He must not. He would fight us tooth and nail, so sure is he of his own wretchedness.  Further, If he knew his pages were being read without his sanction, his rage would be a terrible thing. Worse still: he might refuse to write another word. We cannot allow that. His story must be heard. It is our great hope. He may come to hate us in the days ahead; if such is our penance, we will pay it, though it wound us to the core.

Yet he truly has given us cause for hope, though it is far from the tale we expected. We knew his origins were meager, that his divinity was not a thing to which he was born, yet we had no idea his rise began so low. No inkling of the trials he has been through. Almost we thought he was having sport with us. Such things are in his nature. Yet brother Raric took the time to reference in the archives. There was indeed a Count Delokay in northern Calador in the 18th Year of Artoc, and he did indeed possess and purchase a great many slaves. There is even record of one such, a youth on the cusp of manhood, accused of foul murder and never caught.

And yet what a tale! We expected his legendary temper, his almost mythical stubbornness, and surely we have seen ample evidence of both. Yet we did not expect to find the roots of divinity buried so deeply within the belly of oppression. We did not expect to laugh. We did not expect to weep.

We did not expect to find the bittersweet tale of a child who could have been our own.

Never have we been more sure of the path we have chosen.

We are the supplicants of He Who Waits, the last few followers of the Path of Patience. And we have waited long enough.

--Bertram Sedonas, High Priest of Telth