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Challenge At the Chancery
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Oswald Fordwyne! Oswald Fordwyne! Oswald Fordwyne! Damn his ears, where is he?
Rising from your bench with an unhurried dignity, you fix your gaze on an exasperated royal clerk seated behind a precariously high wall of papers stacked around his desk at the far end of the Chancery's long reception hall. You calmly stride forward, and as you pass by other petitioners, they make murmurs or gasps to draw the scowling clerk's attention to you.
Your tall but gaunt frame is easy to spot even in a vaulted hall like this, which is also well-lit by several of its long, narrow gothic arched windows being flung open to admit beams of warm golden light. This illumination falls upon your old battle wounds, now an angry network of bright-red scars. Overall the sight of you speaks of a man who had already begun to leave this world, but then got caught up in a blood-soaked spiderweb spun in the gap between this realm and the next. Yet there is life enough in your deep-set gray eyes, peering out amid the ruin of your flesh with glittering intensity, never wavering from their object, once acquired.
As a small child, the other kids had mocked you for being shy and awkward. They called you Toesward, because you dared to lay eyes on nothing but people's toes. Then the visions came to you, the Holy Dames and their messages on the wing. The swan, and the crow; the eagle, and the dove. They brought the true word, and from then on, you never looked downward or turned aside your unnerving gaze.
Now, as you approach the young clerk, your eyes never leave him but regard him intently. He'll give you trouble. Church men always do, but this one is different. There is a heavy burden of sin that weighs down his soul, that tears him from the peace of the righteous who know of salvation, that sets him as an obstacle in the way of those doing the bidding of the LORD.
His face is fine-boned and comes to a triangle at his sharp chin, not the sturdy square-jawed lumpishness common in men of the Kingdom. Blond hair curled into carefully placed locks. A brown wool robe coarse and humble to outward appearances. Yet it has an expensive velvet lining hidden inside. Here is a foppish young third or fourth son of a wealthy nobleman, who enjoys pleasure and idleness too well to serve his house in the rough and tumble of worldly matters. Shunted into the church, to learn his letters and figures, to serve his family in less physical ways. Judging by his youth, this must be his first post out of seminary, and he is anxious to rise to a fitting station.
"
You are Oswald Fordwyne? A raggedy scratching post has kept me waiting?" The distance had vanished, and you tower above the seated clerk, but his tone was still adversarial. He examines your paper cursorily. "Your writ carries the signature of the King himself. Why would such a shabbily-dressed peasant have such a thing?"
A. "Yes, I am Oswald Fordwyne. And you are a clerk. You are here to process the Writs, not question the King's decisions."
B. "Call me Brother Oswald," You intone. "Since I am also a man of the robe and staff and of the four-pointed star, my holy Brother."
C. "Even the lowly can serve their God and their King in ways that the high cannot, your great Excellency."
D. "If my rags offend you, that is easy to remedy." You take off your clothes in the crowded hall.
E. Stare at the clerk until he submits to the will of the LORD.
F. A shadow passes over the clerk's face, and a crow flies into the hall from an open arched window near his desk. It transforms into Mordacei, the keeper of secrets and recorder of sin. Today, her secret knowledge cackles out a surprise in your ear.
G. Suggest a different response.
Note: Having delusions about avian friends will degrade your mental state.