The Crown Prince is missing, and you've been tasked with retrieving him from foreign lands. Your abilities are great, but has life in the monastery prepared you to face the Contemptus Mundi?
Contemptus Mundi
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User Total Diomedea 2
A journey of a thousand miles
Diomedea
A piece of the continent
- Location
- The interblag
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You feel the cold wind coming down from the mountains buffet you, providing a contrast to the burning in your legs from having perched on this outcropping for so long. You'd call it nice, if you were allowed to appreciate the feeling, but instead you breathe deeply and both the chill of the air and the fire of fatigue fade from your body.
You are not even permitted to wonder how you ended up in this situation, but that has less to do with the strictures of your Order, and more to do with the fact that you know exactly what circumstances led you here.
To begin, it is because you are a failure.
Of course, neither your elders, nor your peers have said it so clearly. It would be a sin to gloat of their superiority, and a greater sin to serve as a stumbling block to a peer on the road to enlightenment.
Not that a stumbling block was needed to bar your path from further advancement, but it was the principle of the thing. You were a member of the Order of the High Tower, and "inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me." The least usually was understood to be metaphorical, but even in your case where it was quite literal it still applied.
Now, merely being a failure would not have brought you here. You had been expected to spend the rest of your days continuing in your meditations and prayers in an effort to cultivate forwards towards enlightenment, and perhaps try and teach one of the less promising young applicants to the Order. You likely wouldn't succeed, but on the off chance the teachings had survived despite being held in such an imperfect vessel, it was worth the hope that they'd pass on to a student.
The second reason you are here is due to what being a failure means to the Order.
The Monastery, as humble and self-sufficient as it was, still was beholden to the world despite the best efforts of your Order. "Render to Caesar" and all that, and the Order's Caesar was the King. The fealty owed was 5 monk's service over a 100 year span, a serious but ultimately not too costly burden. Often it only cost a handful of years to complete the service, usually winning a war or something, though once the service had been to find a virtuous match for their kid among the royals of the continent which had taken nearly a decade. However, the last time monks had been called upon had been ruinous. Four had left for war, and only one had returned from the battlefield, broken in spirit if not in body. Four promising monks fallen, unable to pass on the teachings in a single generation had been a grave wound on all the order.
So when the call came again from the Crown, it was counted as providence that there was someone who had passed the trials by the meanest margins who could be sent. Thus the duty fell to you, and you were sent.
In this way, you were more valuable as a failure, for no one expected you to pass on the teachings in the first place. Duty paid at no real loss to the Order.
So you had been sent.
You had climbed down the mountain to find not war camps and musters of troops preparing for war, but townsfolk idly wasting the day away with the business of daily living. You proceeded to the castle, and after a bit of confusion spoke with someone who said they had the authority of the crown, some sort of bureaucratic Minister. After demanding your utmost secrecy, you had been told the Crown Prince had gone missing. Apparently he had been seen going over the border into the neighboring kingdom, and you needed to retrieve him safely from whomever had absconded with him.
And so you find yourself here. Perched on a rock overlooking a bridge across a ravine that led to the kingdom you were supposed to look in. How you were supposed to find him when you were supposed to keep it secret that he was missing was a challenge, but one for after you crossed the bridge in front of you. The trouble was the other end seemed to have guards. Well, your end had guards as well, but they should know better than to impede you. Probably. The guards didn't seem to be armored, and mainly wielded what looked like a crossbow missing the bow part. So a bit confusing, but they didn't seem too threatening. Still, it looked like you needed to get past them.
[] (Too Pure for This World) Simply clasp your hands together in prayer and cross the bridge. Your faith will make you unstoppable. Literally.
[] (Flow Like Water) Other people are crossing the bridge. Follow behind a group and simply do what they do. You can totally blend in, even though you've never left the monastery before a few days ago. I mean, how hard can it be?
[] (Deus Vult) You are fulfilling the duties as charged by your Order, and cannot let mere mortal concerns impede you. Cut them down. This has the added benefit of preserving secrecy. No one can describe you if they've all been sent to their judgement.
[] (Cutting the Knot) You don't really need the bridge to cross. You're not to show off your abilities too much lest vainglory befall you, but if you just head away from the bridge a bit, no one should see you jump across, right?
You are not even permitted to wonder how you ended up in this situation, but that has less to do with the strictures of your Order, and more to do with the fact that you know exactly what circumstances led you here.
To begin, it is because you are a failure.
Of course, neither your elders, nor your peers have said it so clearly. It would be a sin to gloat of their superiority, and a greater sin to serve as a stumbling block to a peer on the road to enlightenment.
Not that a stumbling block was needed to bar your path from further advancement, but it was the principle of the thing. You were a member of the Order of the High Tower, and "inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me." The least usually was understood to be metaphorical, but even in your case where it was quite literal it still applied.
Now, merely being a failure would not have brought you here. You had been expected to spend the rest of your days continuing in your meditations and prayers in an effort to cultivate forwards towards enlightenment, and perhaps try and teach one of the less promising young applicants to the Order. You likely wouldn't succeed, but on the off chance the teachings had survived despite being held in such an imperfect vessel, it was worth the hope that they'd pass on to a student.
The second reason you are here is due to what being a failure means to the Order.
The Monastery, as humble and self-sufficient as it was, still was beholden to the world despite the best efforts of your Order. "Render to Caesar" and all that, and the Order's Caesar was the King. The fealty owed was 5 monk's service over a 100 year span, a serious but ultimately not too costly burden. Often it only cost a handful of years to complete the service, usually winning a war or something, though once the service had been to find a virtuous match for their kid among the royals of the continent which had taken nearly a decade. However, the last time monks had been called upon had been ruinous. Four had left for war, and only one had returned from the battlefield, broken in spirit if not in body. Four promising monks fallen, unable to pass on the teachings in a single generation had been a grave wound on all the order.
So when the call came again from the Crown, it was counted as providence that there was someone who had passed the trials by the meanest margins who could be sent. Thus the duty fell to you, and you were sent.
In this way, you were more valuable as a failure, for no one expected you to pass on the teachings in the first place. Duty paid at no real loss to the Order.
So you had been sent.
You had climbed down the mountain to find not war camps and musters of troops preparing for war, but townsfolk idly wasting the day away with the business of daily living. You proceeded to the castle, and after a bit of confusion spoke with someone who said they had the authority of the crown, some sort of bureaucratic Minister. After demanding your utmost secrecy, you had been told the Crown Prince had gone missing. Apparently he had been seen going over the border into the neighboring kingdom, and you needed to retrieve him safely from whomever had absconded with him.
And so you find yourself here. Perched on a rock overlooking a bridge across a ravine that led to the kingdom you were supposed to look in. How you were supposed to find him when you were supposed to keep it secret that he was missing was a challenge, but one for after you crossed the bridge in front of you. The trouble was the other end seemed to have guards. Well, your end had guards as well, but they should know better than to impede you. Probably. The guards didn't seem to be armored, and mainly wielded what looked like a crossbow missing the bow part. So a bit confusing, but they didn't seem too threatening. Still, it looked like you needed to get past them.
[] (Too Pure for This World) Simply clasp your hands together in prayer and cross the bridge. Your faith will make you unstoppable. Literally.
[] (Flow Like Water) Other people are crossing the bridge. Follow behind a group and simply do what they do. You can totally blend in, even though you've never left the monastery before a few days ago. I mean, how hard can it be?
[] (Deus Vult) You are fulfilling the duties as charged by your Order, and cannot let mere mortal concerns impede you. Cut them down. This has the added benefit of preserving secrecy. No one can describe you if they've all been sent to their judgement.
[] (Cutting the Knot) You don't really need the bridge to cross. You're not to show off your abilities too much lest vainglory befall you, but if you just head away from the bridge a bit, no one should see you jump across, right?
Last edited:
- Location
- St. Petersburg
"Order"
[x] (Too Pure for This World) Simply clasp your hands together in prayer and cross the bridge. Your faith will make you unstoppable. Literally.
Confidence will see us through. If it doesn't, obstinence will.
[x] (Cutting the Knot) You don't really need the bridge to cross. You're not to show off your abilities too much lest vainglory befall you, but if you just head away from the bridge a bit, no one should see you jump across, right?
Eternal_0bserver
(Unverified Bookworm)
- Location
- Earth, Northern Europe
[X] (Too Pure for This World) Simply clasp your hands together in prayer and cross the bridge. Your faith will make you unstoppable. Literally.
WanderingTwix
Posting something good once in a full moon
- Location
- United Kingdom
[X] (Too Pure for This World) Simply clasp your hands together in prayer and cross the bridge. Your faith will make you unstoppable. Literally.
- Location
- Singapore
[x] (Cutting the Knot) You don't really need the bridge to cross. You're not to show off your abilities too much lest vainglory befall you, but if you just head away from the bridge a bit, no one should see you jump across, right?
All Monks know Kung-Fu. Nothing can possibly go wrong.
All Monks know Kung-Fu. Nothing can possibly go wrong.
Begins with a Single Step
Diomedea
A piece of the continent
- Location
- The interblag
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[] (Too Pure for This World) Simply clasp your hands together in prayer and cross the bridge. Your faith will make you unstoppable. Literally.
You're probably just thinking about it too much. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world, and this isn't the world. It's three or four people.
So you hop down from your perch, landing lightly in front of the guards from your kingdom. Not that they're from your kingdom, because your kingdom is the Kingdom of God, but it is the kingdom you live in and your order does owe fealty to the king, so it's not wrong to say that they're from your kingdom...
Distracted by your thoughts, you only now notice the guards had taken several steps back after you landed, clearing the way for you to cross the bridge. You start to make your way across, giving a wave in gratitude, when you notice the poor guards are sweating heavily. You had thought it chilly, but maybe their uniforms are much warmer than your robes? It's not like you've worn anything similar, having worn variations of the robes of your order as long as you can remember, but-
No, you're getting distracted. Like always. You need to focus.
You clasp your hands together, and you begin to pray. "I keep my eyes always on the LORD...."
And your thoughts fall away.
And you breathe.
And you step.
And you pray.
A guard steps in your way, holding up a hand for you to stop, and sharply demands papers.
And you breathe.
He puts his hand on your shoulder, trying to force you to stop.
And you step.
He shouts for his fellows, but they were already moving to help.
And you pray.
A mere three men shout at you, push at you, do all within their power to make you stop.
And you breathe.
Two of them grip you from behind, trying to drag you backwards. The first guard still stands before you, braced against you with his weapon trying to shove you back.
And you step.
Instead, you drag along the two behind you effortlessly, and the guard before you stumbles and slides, his boots finding no traction in the hard packed dirt of the road. You're overtaking him, and suddenly he is falling away from you, having tripped on the treacherous earth beneath him.
And you-
You shrug off the hands still trying to pull you back, and grab the falling man by his uniform lapel a moment before the back of his head impacted the ground. You stand there, utterly still, as he looks at you with a strange mix of befuddlement, fear, and gratitude. What must it be like, to look at the world through a glass even darker than yours? You gently lower him to the ground, and he lets out a shaky breath of his own. You suppose you must pity him, but is that compassion or insidious pride creeping in; thinking yourself above him?
A click draws your attention, and a fourth guard has leveled his funny looking weapon at you. Now that you're closer, you can see it's a tube of metal with a hole in the end, attached to a wooden stock that indeed is similar to a crossbow's. The only weapon you know of that has a metal tube is a cannon, but that's supposed to be a big, cumbersome siege weapon. Some sort of small cannon that can be held in the hands then? A hand cannon? That seems like a good name for it, but-
Oh, he's shouting at you. Well, you're across the bridge and the way to the road is clear, so you shrug and start walking down the road, resuming your prayer.
The last you hear of the guards behind you is one shouting to get the lieutenant.
Your journey returns to being uneventful, as you make your way down the road. You pick the pace up once you're out of sight of the guards, though you do slow down when you come across other travelers.
Still, it isn't long at all before you reach a village. You start your search immediately, comparing every resident with the extremely accurate portrait in a locket you had been given, but after hours of searching you had determined the Prince was not in this village.
Originally, your plan was just to check village by village like this, but it had taken you the better part of a day to travel to and search one village, and there were probably dozen of villages in this country, not to mention the capital. Just walking around and looking might take weeks, or even a whole month!
So you decided to ask an older women who you had seen talking to quite a few people as she made her way through the village if she had seen anyone unusual come through. After having you help take her laundry in, she agreed. In fact, she had started talking about all the recent goings-on in the village as soon as you had started helping her.
"Nothing is probably more unusual than you, dearie, but a military sort did come to the mayor's house earlier today, and rode off with a horse to the Northwest, towards the capital. Was in a really hurry, that one. And a few nights ago some riders rode through in the middle of the night headed West. Likely up to no good if you ask me. And of course," she adds with a laugh "the circus came through and left last week. I think they were headed Southwest?"
Which lead do you follow up on?
[] The man riding Northwest, towards the Capital.
[] Night riders headed West.
[] The circus, headed Southwest.
You're probably just thinking about it too much. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world, and this isn't the world. It's three or four people.
So you hop down from your perch, landing lightly in front of the guards from your kingdom. Not that they're from your kingdom, because your kingdom is the Kingdom of God, but it is the kingdom you live in and your order does owe fealty to the king, so it's not wrong to say that they're from your kingdom...
Distracted by your thoughts, you only now notice the guards had taken several steps back after you landed, clearing the way for you to cross the bridge. You start to make your way across, giving a wave in gratitude, when you notice the poor guards are sweating heavily. You had thought it chilly, but maybe their uniforms are much warmer than your robes? It's not like you've worn anything similar, having worn variations of the robes of your order as long as you can remember, but-
No, you're getting distracted. Like always. You need to focus.
You clasp your hands together, and you begin to pray. "I keep my eyes always on the LORD...."
And your thoughts fall away.
And you breathe.
And you step.
And you pray.
A guard steps in your way, holding up a hand for you to stop, and sharply demands papers.
And you breathe.
He puts his hand on your shoulder, trying to force you to stop.
And you step.
He shouts for his fellows, but they were already moving to help.
And you pray.
A mere three men shout at you, push at you, do all within their power to make you stop.
And you breathe.
Two of them grip you from behind, trying to drag you backwards. The first guard still stands before you, braced against you with his weapon trying to shove you back.
And you step.
Instead, you drag along the two behind you effortlessly, and the guard before you stumbles and slides, his boots finding no traction in the hard packed dirt of the road. You're overtaking him, and suddenly he is falling away from you, having tripped on the treacherous earth beneath him.
And you-
You shrug off the hands still trying to pull you back, and grab the falling man by his uniform lapel a moment before the back of his head impacted the ground. You stand there, utterly still, as he looks at you with a strange mix of befuddlement, fear, and gratitude. What must it be like, to look at the world through a glass even darker than yours? You gently lower him to the ground, and he lets out a shaky breath of his own. You suppose you must pity him, but is that compassion or insidious pride creeping in; thinking yourself above him?
A click draws your attention, and a fourth guard has leveled his funny looking weapon at you. Now that you're closer, you can see it's a tube of metal with a hole in the end, attached to a wooden stock that indeed is similar to a crossbow's. The only weapon you know of that has a metal tube is a cannon, but that's supposed to be a big, cumbersome siege weapon. Some sort of small cannon that can be held in the hands then? A hand cannon? That seems like a good name for it, but-
Oh, he's shouting at you. Well, you're across the bridge and the way to the road is clear, so you shrug and start walking down the road, resuming your prayer.
The last you hear of the guards behind you is one shouting to get the lieutenant.
Your journey returns to being uneventful, as you make your way down the road. You pick the pace up once you're out of sight of the guards, though you do slow down when you come across other travelers.
Still, it isn't long at all before you reach a village. You start your search immediately, comparing every resident with the extremely accurate portrait in a locket you had been given, but after hours of searching you had determined the Prince was not in this village.
Originally, your plan was just to check village by village like this, but it had taken you the better part of a day to travel to and search one village, and there were probably dozen of villages in this country, not to mention the capital. Just walking around and looking might take weeks, or even a whole month!
So you decided to ask an older women who you had seen talking to quite a few people as she made her way through the village if she had seen anyone unusual come through. After having you help take her laundry in, she agreed. In fact, she had started talking about all the recent goings-on in the village as soon as you had started helping her.
"Nothing is probably more unusual than you, dearie, but a military sort did come to the mayor's house earlier today, and rode off with a horse to the Northwest, towards the capital. Was in a really hurry, that one. And a few nights ago some riders rode through in the middle of the night headed West. Likely up to no good if you ask me. And of course," she adds with a laugh "the circus came through and left last week. I think they were headed Southwest?"
Which lead do you follow up on?
[] The man riding Northwest, towards the Capital.
[] Night riders headed West.
[] The circus, headed Southwest.
Diomedea
A piece of the continent
- Location
- The interblag
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The crown prince is in his late teens/early twenties, judging by his portrait.
Eternal_0bserver
(Unverified Bookworm)
- Location
- Earth, Northern Europe
[X] The man riding Northwest, towards the Capital.