High Priestess

## Introduction

The High Priestess is the healing powerhouse of every party. She set out from her homeland on a mission to help, and heal, those around Eternity and your enemies are more than happy to put her abilities to the test! Her abilities focus on healing, regeneration, buffs, and resurrection of fallen team members. Though she does not deal damage she will use her peoples ancient power to keep your party alive.

## Backstory

Read the story in beautiful .pdf format here, or plain text below:

In the ancient past before time was recorded Eternity was a fresh, young, and fertile planet. Its people were nomads, following food and finding shelter where they could.

One day, a ball of fire descended from the sky. It burned so bright it drowned out the sun and the world was cast in a strange, ethereal night. Pieces of the fireball broke away as it pierced Eternity's virgin atmosphere. It smashed into the crust of the plant and burrowed deep into its core. The impact was felt by all of the inhabitants of Eternity. The aftermath resulted in massive clouds of dust thrown into the air that plunged the entire world into a weeks-long twilight. Tidal waves that flooded the coasts of every continent. A wall of fire vaporized the mountain range where the object struck the earth.

As the storm of elements steadily cleared, it left behind strange crystals with an eerie, shifting blue glow. It became clear that the new darkness that scarred the sky was not just from containments in the air. The darkness fell and stained the land like ink, consuming the life of whatever it touched. The surviving nomads and wildlife alike carefully avoided the patches of death from which no one ever returned.

What was not avoided was the allure of the blue crystals. The nomadic people collected them for use them as tools for hunting or shaping new tools. Despite their attractive glow, the crystals were fragile, shattering against rock. Some tried to use them for weapons instead. Despite their seeming sharpness, the crystals could not harm any man or beast, as if an invisible force stayed their hand. Most of the nomads discarded them or kept only a few as curiosities or trinkets. When they passed back the same way, though, they found the crystals gone, seemingly absorbed into the world.

Only one tribe of nomads actively collected the crystals, believing them to be a gift from a greater being. They wore them as totems of protection, exchanged them as keepsakes, or held them nearby for good luck keeping. Their culture developed with the crystals as the center of their society, and eventually religion. The effects of the crystals were not immediately apparent, but over time this tribe began to live longer, suffer less disease, and stayed strong deep into old age.

As older members of their tribe passed away they noticed the blue crystals glowed brighter as if absorbing their essence as it left their body. From that point forward, the crystal seemed to speak to them, guide them, and impart knowledge from those who essence it encapsulated. Knowledge that had formerly been only attainable from oral tradition became stored over generations inside the crystals. This gave them the ability to develop much faster than the other tribes, and their society quickly abandoned their nomadic ways in favor of a more stable agricultural society.

With their growing generational knowledge they noticed the darkness that had covered half of Eternity was no longer stagnant. The ink-like blotch on the lands spread slowly, grasping, searching for more life to consume. Not long after the tribe felt the blue crystals pulsing, sending signals of distress to everyone in the tribe could feel. It was a warning: stop the darkness or it would consume everything.

The leader of the tribe, the High Priest, sent a party of young and strong warriors to investigate the darkness. The war party, armed only with crude spears and their blue crystals, approached a particularly vital river that had recently been tainted. As they approached the darkness it moved and shifted as if it knew they were there. Something bubbled in the watery depths, hungry and desperate as a starving wolf that smelled raw meat. The warriors backed away in terror.

But the darkness wasn't the only thing that changed. The blue crystals glowed brighter as if rising to the challenge of the darkness. The spirits within the were no longer sent a warning; they glowed fierce as torches and encouraged the warriors forward.

Emboldened, the warriors bunched together and approached the edge of the darkness. The darkness withdrew from its shine, slinking around in the shadows cast by the warriors, attempting to stay away from the new power of the crystals. Bewildered by these events, the warriors did not push further and returned to the village to report what they saw.

When he heard about the events the High Priest knew what his people must do. The darkness had tainted the lands of Eternity long enough. The crystals had granted them much, and now it was their duty to seek out the source of the darkness and extinguish it.

The High Priest gathered every warrior and able-bodied person in the tribe. They built large sleds to transport the stores of crystals they amassed over the years. The warriors would encircle the sleds and those unable to fight would pull them. The High Priest did not know what dangers lay ahead but he and his people worked with stern conviction.

Laden with as many crystals and supplies as they could carry, the caravan of warriors and supporters approached the darkness again. The light of the crystals burned away the darkness. The dark itself writhed, and they could hear it – not aloud, but in their hearts, in the same place the crystals spoke. The creature of darkness shrieked and withdrew, leaving behind a dry, cracked earth. The river was pale and sickly, the life drained from its waters, but it was cleansed.

They traveled further, only stopping when absolutely necessary for rest and sustenance. The crystals burned a path into the dark. The land they traversed was dull, barren and silent. Even the path they cleansed returned only to infertile grey sand, drained for so long that hardly anything was left.

As the party moved deeper, the darkness seethed in visible frustration. No sunlight pierced the thick and oily death that surrounded them. They lost all sense of time and distance.

At their fifth stop, the shadow snatched the first warrior. The darkness grabbed the warrior through a large shadow cast by his broad shoulders, pulling him into its swirling mass. As he faded from sight his once large and muscular figure turned wiry and frail. In moments, he was nothing but bones, and then the bones turned to grey sand and blew away.

After this sight the party decided to slow their pace. They learned the hard way to lean low against the sleds and place crystals underneath them when they rested. The warriors in front stood in a circle with several crystals slung between them to ensure as little shadow as possible.

The party moved like this without incident for another ten stops. The deeper they traveled, the more the dark voices grew, whispering and hinting of terrible things, sometimes even drowning out the encouraging flickers of their ancestral crystals. The journey took a steady toll on their supplies and their confidence.

What started as barely audible whispers grew in volume until they could all clearly hear the voices, a vile chorus speaking in some unknown and insane tongue. The voice seeped into their minds and sowed unnatural thoughts. After the twentieth stop the first member broke. They tore their necklace of blue crystals off, threw it at the person next to them, and ran screaming into the darkness. He was devoured as swiftly as the first, and his voice seemed added to the chorus.

The next stop they found another person trying to steal the crystals from others while they slept, robbing them of vital protection. A particularly vigilant warrior saw him sneaking around and grabbed him. When he spun the culprit around he saw the deepest black in his eyes, all vestige of light and sanity stolen. He started screaming in the same insane tongues, spittle flying, hands beating on the warrior’s chest. Unable to abandon hope and cast him in the dark, they tied the thief to the side of one of the sleds and dragged him along with the crystals. He screamed until his voice was raw and he was reduced to heaving gasps.

All of these events shook the party members to the core. The world they had known was far behind and they were unsure they would ever see it again. They had no idea if they were making significant progress, or even if they were going in the right direction. Some began to question the crystals; others began to argue back, declaring them newly-turned servants of the darkness. The High Priest shouted both groups down, but it was clear they were at their limit. The priest was regained control by asking for one more day, one last push, before turning back. With their current supplies and harsh rationing, it should be enough to see them home. Both sides grudgingly agreed.

In that final push, they found a steep incline. The crystals resonated; a chime sounded, like a greeting, and for a brief moment, the voices died away. And then they came back in a storm of sound, shrieking and screeching higher than before. The would-be thief wriggled in his bonds, working an arm bloody against the ropes in an attempt to pull free. They added another length of rope and redid the knots. The High Priest did his best to encourage his people, speaking words of comfort and building them up for the next challenge. The crystals had spoken: they were close.

The party members climbed an ever increasingly steep incline, dragging the sleds up against the increasingly screams of the oily death that swirled around them on all sides. But as the darkness increased in volume, the crystals shined brighter, and they could hear those voices too, calm, reassuring, confident.

They crested the ridge and saw below them huge fields of blue crystal. They were larger and more prominent than any they had ever seen, jutting from the ground like glowing collections of stalagmites. Thick channels of darkness wound through the gaps between the crystal patches. This was the source of it all.

The dressed their warriors in as many blue crystals as they could carry. They continued towards the center through one of the gaps, stemming the flow of darkness down the channel. So thick was it that the darkness seemed to be a physical being, and the blue glow became a barrier. They dug their feet into the earth and pushed it forward with their hands.

The crystal fields ended in a wide arc that formed part of a giant circle centered around and ancient crater. They stepped past the line of the circle. A massive figure shifted in its center, expanding and groaning as if it had been still for millennia. They made out a giant hand swooping down at them. Most of them leapt out of the way, but a few that weren't fast enough were snatched by the massive hand and thrown until the blue crystal glow was nothing more than lights traveling over the ridge in the distance. Despite the attack, the thing withdrew its hand and let out a massive roar of pain; it couldn’t touch their crystals without harm.

The warriors charged into the depths of the circle and fanned out. The crystals seemed to react to their bravery and their light lanced through the dark. The monster though, was unknowable; no light could reach it directly. The only real shape they made out were the grasping tentacles and enormous black eyes that consumed any light that came near.

The crystals clustered on the outside of the crater chimed. Rays of blue light struck the warriors. The crystals they wore burned like fire, but they stood unharmed. The creature roared in surprise and pain as the light bombarded it from all sides. Without any route of escape, it began to dig, churning the earth hard enough to knock the warriors from their feet and prevent them from closing in.

A massive rush of air soared towards the hole the creature was digging. The darkness that emanated from the creature was withdrawn, pulled in like a cloak to protect itself as it retreated from the light. The rock beneath the crater was pierced and the creature gave one last terrible howl as it fell into the depths. Several brave warriors were caught in the tide of earth and fell along with it, the light of their crystals still burning before they were buried.

After weeks of near-constant noise, there was silence.

The crystals returned to their normal shine. Over the edge of the crater, the sun rose, pale and cold, but there. The darkness in the sky was gone.

The warriors met with the others. They worked together to pull more crystals into the pit, cutting and dragging great chunks from the outer portion of the fields into the center to permanently seal the dark god in the crust of Eternity. The High Priest arranged them as best he could, hoping that it was enough to enclose the pit and forever silence the creature’s insane voices.

As soon as the creature retreated the spell on the mad thief was broken, and he returned to sanity – or so they thought.

After their long ordeal into the eye of death, the assault on their insanity, and their final confrontation with the ancient being of death and darkness, the party prayed together atop the filled-in pit. They thanked their ancestors for their guidance and the blue crystals for protection. They then gathered up their remaining supplies and began the journey back home. With light restored and the black veil lifted from their path, the trip home was nearly twice as fast.

Upon returning home they had a great feast and a full week of celebration in honor of their triumph. On the final night, the High Priest stood to tell the story once more of the great victory. As he reached his description of the final battle, a shadowy figure darted behind him and impaled him through the chest with a spear.

The warriors around the chief sprang into action to restrain the attacker – the mad thief that had seemingly recovered. His eyes were once again black as the darkness. As the High Priest breathed his last, the darkness drained from the thief's eyes along with the life, his task complete. The High Priest’s essence passed into the crystal he wore around his neck.

Millennia later, a young high priestess reached maturity and solemnly received the crystal of her ancestor. A direct descendant of the ancient High Priest, now simply known as The Ancient One, she knew the events of history as if he himself had spoken them to her: the bravery of the warriors, the blessing of the crystals, and the terrible, slumbering darkness. It was now time for her to take up the ancient ways, go out into the world as her ancestors once did, and use her gifts to vanquish darkness and protect all life on Eternity.