All Level, No Experience (Worm/Pathfinder Amnesia Quest)

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There is an odd moment, in this instant, as something ever so subtly slides into place, the moment so utterly underlying that you yourself are uncertain if it is even real or merely imagined. Yet, it must be real, as this odd sense of something almost retroactively being fixed causes some impossibly small chain reaction that you never become aware of, as suddenly, memories return.

Why are you here? Here, on Earth Bet, in particular?

Your previous memories help it all make more sense, as knowledge begets understanding, here. The explanation begins with the end of your people, wiped out to the last by something where the minutia still elude you, bar that it must have been some act of fate still lingering from before the death of Aroden. The presence of norns in the distance of the whole affair, those fae who are enforcers of the impossible whims of fate, and when five such norns had fought you, aiming to end you after merely observing the then-recent battle where Iluchtewhar had died, served as proof enough.

However, you had survived that battle. Then the next and next, as the norns attempted to force what fate could not. It seemed as though every favor the norns could call was used to send more and more agents against you. To finally secure the will of fate. That when a tower of emerald was uprooted, when he who built the key and roads returned home, only to be destroyed by the invaders he sought to remove, and when they would cast off the shackles of both master and maker, then, the Xiomorns would be made history, and history alone, none to inhabit the same world as Golarion again.

So, even though a part of you longed to spite them, you elected that, fine, you would allow fate this one, for now. With nothing left in Golarion or its cosmology that you had grown attached to- nothing left of what you had, rather- you had decided that if you had done so once, on accident, while evading the sight of the horrendously restrictive Mystra, you could flee a cosmology once again, deliberately, with the far more preferable Nethys as the chief deity of magic- and even then, Nethys did not hold the audacity to claim himself as the source, or caretaker, or some other tripe, of Magic unlike Mystra- but you have digressed.

It had even been, in the end, the aid of Nethys that had enabled you to leave.

Once, while you had been horridly stumped, the Arcanotheign, Herald of Nethys she was, in the form of a humanoid grey woman, had arrived to you, in a dress of countless colors, carrying a book bag. Knowing the lore of the Arcanotheign, you offered her a trade- the tastes of your last vials of Faerunian poisons, which you had kept out of a mixture of sentimentality and inability to effectively use to that point, in exchange for the sights of the inside of the books in her bag. She agreed, and eagerly sampled the poisons as you read the books- ones that just barely pointed you in the right directions to track down not only an even rarer book, but more importantly what you would only learn later would be required, Perfection's Key.

It had been the work of years, to figure it all out, and quite the execution. Still, you had evaded one last set of adventurers, discreetly and indirectly informed the Sarkorian authorities of the activities of one Areelu Vorlesh on the advice of a possibly rogue, almost certainly recursive Aeon Oracle, and made your way to the Maelstrom, to wait. To steadily, constantly drift and keep your heart at the exact middle point between Ahkanefti, Jandelay, and the Labyrinth of Light and Loss.

Then, in a moment between moments, you felt the planes lurch, and off that breach you rode your own plans; a Time Stop, two contradictory Wishes, to surrender everything you had but did not carry to both the Maelstrom and Axis the instant the Time Stop ended, that moment where your Chaos Cutter being split between your feet in two directions, numerous confluences of chaos and law linked together in that moment. You took Perfection's Key, now adorned with a long ribbon made from 109 Wells of Many Worlds threaded together like rope, and let fell while moving it in tightening circles in front of yourself, thrusting it forward when the black spiral was complete, and the Key and Gate were linked.

In that instant, you stepped forwards into a place where metaphor was far more real than matter (and so the act of transcribing it would become particularly difficult), beyond the reach of anything you had invoked, where before you lay an endless hallway of countless doors, each with their own unique doorman, doorwoman, doorperson, or doorthing, who's appreances you could neither remember nor were permitted to attempt to imagine, all standing in front of their charges.

You took one step forward with but a few goals in mind. To rebuild a new coming of your people, in another cosmology where they were and would forever remain uncondemned by fate. To build an empire that will well and truly last forever, one that should you do things well, you could rule forever, lead them where you had shied away before. A place that perhaps, at least some part of it, would be better, for you ruling it.

The doors, while reduced, remained infinite. The doorpeople did not budge. You took a second step.

To make a suitable home, as a personal recompense for your previous failure. To once day, eventually, build yourself and your people up, and come back to Golarion, and to declare war upon the very cosmology itself, to fight until you had your people back. To fight and struggle against reality, on the side of what seemed fundamentally impossible, until eventually, eventually, reality flinched.

There were only finite doors left, at that point. The doorpeople adjusted themselves, and no longer blocked their doors. You took a third step.

You had hoped that, perhaps, you might find a people who also knew- who understood what it was, to fight for the impossible and still try to win. That perhaps, there might be some minuscule way to get them to join you. That perhaps understood what it meant, to lose who you expected to share forever with. Maybe a people who were somewhat similar, in some ways, to the Xiomorn; explorers and scientists and experimenters and, please, please, you had called to the world, immortal.

There had been a door in front of you, held open. You'd paid the doorman with some of the order in your mind, that you knew you would recover from eventually, stepped through, and woke up in a small clearing, suddenly conscious and unusually aware of that fact.

Finally and in summation, you know why you came to Earth Bet in particular. You're here, because it is where you could rule forever. Because it, in part, would be better if you ruled. Because here, you can build yourself up endlessly, in preparation to return to the cosmology of Golarion one day, and take back your people.

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AN: Right, I hope y'all enjoyed that, basically impromptu pseudo-chapter. If it were most any other question I would've just answered normally, but for this? I felt it deserved at least something more, and so, before I knew it, was at 800 words and kept going.