TNO's telling of the Tomb of the Nameless One

General Summary

As I trod on the floor's gilded torment rune, I was instantly killed by a lightning bolt shooting from the ceiling. However, I was teleported into a side chamber and returned to life.
My whole body was numb and my movements were clumsy, but with a few minutes rest the paralysis faded and I stumbled to my feet. Circling around the rune I continued down the passage. A simple, straight forward process to get to the next Gods-damned room, so imagine my confusion when the air rippled in front of me. There was no chance to step back, no warning when reality about me seemed to tug at my being and tear me away. I cried out in shock as space itself twisted around me, and I was drawn unwillingly into a portal...
And into another side chamber. There was only one thing of interest here: the grim sarcophagus of gray stone and copper finishing. Even if each side was a foot thick it was still huge enough to fit two or three bodies within.
Barring the Silent King’s sanction against graverobbing, part of me didn’t relish the thought of cracking open the seals and exposing whatever monstrosity lay within. By now, however, I was getting over the mortal squeamishness towards pain and death. Looking around I was surrounded by bleak cobbled walls, the only path no doubt another portal.
Seek the keys and embrace death with each that you find. Only then shall you be free...
I pushed the coffin lid aside. Though thick and heavy, it was lighter than I expected. While I strained and sweated, grunting with each shove the lid steadily moved aside when I threw my weight against it. Stone scraped against stone, and by the time I was left resting at the base of the sarcophagus panting with exhaustion, there was a space wide enough for me to fit an arm through.
Biting my lip, I slid my hand into the darkness. To my surprise I reached down all the way to meet bare stone. Groping around a little I still felt only empty air. I stood up on my toes, leaning further in to explore deeper. Finally my fingers bumped against a slim bar of metal, and my fingers curled around it. Pulling it from the stone sarcophagus it looked like a key, but without door or lock in sight I couldn’t find much utility for it.
I sighed. I suppose I would have to trust the inscription. If no mortal man could escape, then my immortality must be the way out.
I stepped onto the seal. As expected, the lightning shot through my body, searing through flesh and bone so that I felt as if I were being split in half.
Yet when I twitched back to wakefulness, I found myself still sprawled over that seal... I was only half-dead from the blow, and the agony was unbearable. The smoky smell of my own burnt flesh swirled among the tendrils of smoke, savory enough to make my mouth water, acrid that it made my eyes well up with tears. The foamy bile met my lips before the wave of nausea hit a split-second later and I choked as every nerve along my body burst as if they were afire.
Almost fully paralyzed, I couldn’t crawl off the seal. Instead, I slapped the silver-gilded seal weakly, crying out in a hoarse voice. “Take-me...” I croaked, “Take me!” And mercifully, the powers above granted my plea and ended my suffering.
When I came to, I was at the entrance once again. In my hand I still gripped the key. Bits of my burnt flesh had been welded to the metal surface. I rolled it over in my hand as I shook off the residual light-headed feeling of my previous death. The key seemed vaguely familiar somehow... as I held it I suddenly knew its purpose. Like the keys of Sigil’s portals this would allow me to teleport to one of the other inner chambers of the tomb, but only if used at the entrance corridor. And the only way to return to the entrance was by the trapped seals.
I circled around the seal and stepped through the portal. Once again I was teleported into another room. The key had worked, altering the path of the portal so that I wound up in a new chamber. I got to work quick. Throwing my weight against the sarcophagus there I sweated, grunted, and urged the lid aside so that I could reach the second key.
I was thankful for the respite of my death, though tired as I was by the time I plucked the key from the lightless depths I was not too eager for another. I sighed and stepped away from the sarcophagus. Well, we all have to sleep sometime. It was a mercifully clean death, in that my eyeballs weren’t bursting with vitreous humors melting from my sockets. The ache along my spine stiffened my back, and the migraine led me to feel along my head to check if the blast had cracked my skull.
I sat up and stumbled around the seal. Each progressive death in such quick succession left me feeling drained: whether it was my body meeting its limit or the mental fatigue of the task. I passed through the portal once more, entering what I hoped would be the final room. Another bout of pushing, grunting, and the lid edged aside.
I sat next to the sarcophagus, wondering what Dak’kon and Morte were doing now. They were a mismatch if I ever saw one (and in all honesty, to my memory I hadn’t). How long had I been down here and how long had I left them waiting? Morte would be zipping around Dak’kon trying to pester him with one of his well-honed insults as the gith meditated. The sooner I got this over with, the sooner I could rescue them from each other.
I scrounged the key from the sarcophagus and trudged to the seal and into my fate. Spreading my arms like a hawk about to take flight, I embraced the spear of light as it sliced through my body. I stumbled weakly towards the entrance. Tendrils of smoke curled from my flesh, the only hint of warmth in this cold tomb. My limbs were rubbery. My muscles were weak. The strength was flowing back into my body in a sluggish trickle, and the keys clinked in my loose grip. I almost didn’t notice that I had passed the arch without being teleported once again.
Collapsing on my back I began to laugh. Victory was mine and I was too weak to fully claim it. The chuckles echoed cold and hollow against the walls, taunting me in yet another bitter twist of irony. Eventually the nausea trickled away and the weakness crumbled from my body. My stomach began to growl and I thought back to the last time I had food... a half-cooked cranium rat and a crust of bread that could’ve been used to cobble the floors. Softening the damn thing in mildewed water had improved it little. Strange how you suddenly think of the little things when you’re inches from your greatest goal.
I stood over the grand sarcophagus. The workmanship was rigid and alien, and gripped with multiple bronze fingers. There was no moisture to tarnish the metal, but mere age had begun to turn the edges green. The slab covering it was carved with a rigid, utilitarian pattern, and the pedestal the whole thing rested on was inlaid with more bronze and gray-brown stone. I strained trying to open the sarcophagus lid, but my efforts were in vain. It was locked firmly in place. With a sigh I leaned against the slab momentarily, when a thought struck me.
I leapt to my feet. The Runes of Torment. The strange feeling that I knew this place and its workings. This was my own tomb, built by my own hand. I looked around.
Hung along the walls were slabs of stone, white underneath but rust-stained as if they were ancient blood-soaked shrouds. The inscriptions were written in a style identical to my own hand, but the words were foreign. The runes inscribed were calm and determined in some places, frantically scrawled in others, like the words of a madman who knew not who he was and whose moods were as mercurial as his memories. Was this... my original journal?

I began to read:
Fear names. Names have power in identity. Others can use names as weapons. Names are a hook that can be used to track you across the planes. Remain nameless, and you shall be safe.
I am The Nameless One.
Nameless one. An appropriate name for myself.
The inscription, all the inscriptions, must have been written by an earlier incarnation. I moved to the next panel.
So they said –You have been divided. You are one of many men. You bear many names, and each has left their scars on your flesh.
LOST ONE...IMMORTAL ONE... INCARNATION'S END... MAN OF A THOUSAND DEATHS... THE ONE DOOMED TO LIFE... RESTLESS ONE... ONE OF MANY... THE ONE WHOM LIFE HOLDS PRISONER... THE BRINGER OF SHADOWS... THE WOUNDED ONE... MISERY-BRINGER... YEMETH...

I grow weary. The carvings on the next panel were crude, although it almost might have been the same hand which carved them.
There is nothing that can be done. Memories are gone, perhaps never to return. With every death I lose a part of me.
How can one be immortal and still die?
He told me that my mind is weakening with every death. I asked him how this could be, but he could not answer. He was of no use. I butchered him so that no other incarnation would ever benefit from his uselessness.

Another panel told me I had an enemy, apparently one as immortal as myself.
I have lost lifetimes because of my killer. I cannot deceive him, so I must kill him. I tried to throw him off the scent. I left false bodies, tailored in such a way to placate him. I roamed the most outer planes, hoping to use distance as a shield. I built this tomb filled with traps to try and kill the killer. I hid.
All I bought was time. The attacks inevitably begin again, with more fury than before. Deceptions are useless. Somehow, the killer always knows that I live. And no matter where on the planes I hide, he finds me... eventually.

The speculations on the next panel before me mirrored thoughts I had considered.
I suspect that we will continue to die and be Reborn until we finally get our life *right.* I do not know what we have to do to bring that about, though. And therein lies the frustration.
Is it some sort of karmic cycle? As I gather, some incarnations have committed terrible crimes but also there have been a number of incarnations where we have laboured to do nothing but good. Are these incarnations intended as punishment? I don't know. And that is the only real truth I can offer in these carvings: I do not know.
At what point does the *I* get separated from the *we?* At what point am I freed of the shackles of the actions of these other incarnations? At what point am I allowed to be *me,* without the weight of these past lives?

Moving on, the next panel commented on the importance of journals; the walls I was gazing upon represented a journal as well.
It is extremely important to record your journeys so that you might learn from them. The greater need, however, is that the sources of information you use to uncover this mystery need to be protected when they are found. If key figures, documents or oracles are somehow removed, either by death or destruction, then you will never know who or what you are or how you came to be this way.

The next panel looked like the directions on my back Morte read to me in The Mortuary.
I know you feel like you've been drinking a few kegs of Styx wash, but you need to CENTER yourself. Among your possessions is a JOURNAL that'll shed some light on the dark of the matter. Pharod can fill you in on the rest of the chant, if he's not in the dead-book already.
Don't lose the journal or we'll be up the Styx again. And whatever you do, DO NOT tell anyone WHO you are or WHAT happens to you, or they'll put you on a quick pilgrimage to the crematorium. Do what I tell you: READ the journal, then Find Pharod.
Don't trust the skull.
Morte hadn't read that last line to me.

I read the last panel in the room.
What little life there is in the world is draining out this hole in my body. The world can burn, the planes can burn, just give me life! I will destroy this life so badly, break it, smash it, and stain it in blood and faeces, so you cannot live it either! Let all creation burn for I cannot die!

Pushing the panels had unlocked the sarcophagus at the centre of the room, which contained only another key.
Having gotten four keys from the four sarcophagi I had encountered, I found myself in yet another chamber. A portal opened in one corner. Entering it, I appeared outside the tomb.

Report Date

30 Oct 2023