3. Eyrhaan the Mystic: self-annihilation in the divine

Eyrhaan the Mystic: self-annihilation in the divine


  • Character name: Eyrhaan the Mystic
    Login: Kaveh Hemmat

    To some people, devotion means forsaking your own needs to serve a god or a cause. If you are a mystic, devotion means giving up your entire being.

    Since his mother died when he was young, Eyrhaan had always taken an interest in the stories the elders told about gods and spirits. He wasn't the best at memorizing long chants or stories or explaining the hidden meanings of the tales to the shamans, which made it all the more troubling to the elders that the other children would follow him around, completely captivated by his make-believe quests to find the garden of Chauntea, or the healing fountain of Ilmater. The time when he led them all off into the woods to find Kelemvor was the last straw. After that he wasn't allowed to play around the other children anymore, and from then on, he followed his father and the other grown-ups on dangerous hunting trips and helped the women of the tribe prepare food and tend the crops back at the camp. But these things, even the hunting, held no interest for him, and whenever he could get away, he would go off by himself and sit in the woods, in silence, for hours upon hours, until his father would come and bring him back. He missed dinner more than a few times that way.

    When he reached the age of thirteen, it was time for him to take the obligatory spirit quest, where he would be sent out into the woods by himself without any provisions, forced to live by his wits alone, until he had a vision where his true name was revealed to him. He set out into the woods by himself and sat in meditation for many days, drinking from a stream and catching tiny fish with his hands. Soon he stopped eating fish altogether and began to fast. He prayed to Ilmater. He chanted day and night until his voice became hoarse. At first he wanted to find his true name, then he wanted the favor of Ilmater. The true name was merely an illusion, a distraction. The desire for the goddess's pleasure was selfish. Then he saw, true devotion was to give up all of these things, so that every impurity of body, mind and soul would vanish, leaving only his devotion. He stopped drinking water from the stream. As he grew delirious from thirst, a vision came to him of his goddess. He saw her, radiant, commanding him to drink. Even his desire to sacrifice himself was a desire, and selfish. He must abandon his pride, all desires, all wants, all needs. But how could he do that when he was a living, thinking being that needed, at the very least, food, shelter and companionship?

    He drank from the stream and dug up some roots and picked some berries to eat. Perhaps in his emaciated state he was un-appetizing to the dangerous wild animals. He would wander the world doing whatever he could to give up his desires, to become truly nothing.


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