Bankor

His tattoo had been completed a while ago but Oddyn was not moving on from it. He remained in solemn meditation facing the wall of rain, rediscovering - or was it retrieving? - his various bodily functions, channeling new vitality into them. He had no idea how it was working, but it was, and the burn of shriek-hawk tattoo on his back had a part in it. He was mystified and curious, and by that also more alive than anytime over the last month, perhaps longer. He was smiling, genuinely so, finding strange serenity in remaining still while knowing that he could break into rapid movement any time.

The monks were doing meditations and some were eating but as he seemed in the midst of his own self-discovery none bothered him.

"I want to speak with someone who'll explain this to me." He rolled his shoulders as he said it aloud, to no-one in particular.

"It's a tattoo," one of them said.

"I've had tattoos before. They have never felt like this one." He turned his head around.

“Poison ink, distilled in a secret process, it cuts to the soul. Burns out the unclean,” one of them said.

“Pain is important. The truest lessons are painful. Scars are a text of knowledge.”

"Looks like we're on the same page on pain and scars." Oddyn looked down his torso, a dense gossamer of scars old and new. "Wonder what is the impure thing the ink has been burning out."

“Whatever you have brought with you, it is different for all of us,” the man responded.

He grunted, unsated in the answers he was getting.

"So, is there a next step on that path, or that's one-off?"

“You are walking a path now, unless you wish to walk a new one, or retread an old one. There are no destinations, it is simply one long journey,” he responded.

"Do you use some guidance on your, umm, journeys? Creed? Codex?" For all his good intentions, Odd was a man of straightforward spirituality. War + Vengeance + Resol'nare --> Manda.

“We are all guides and we are all followers,” the man responded.

“It depends on the moment which you need and which you need to be.”

"I'd like to know... Hmmm." He needed to think about it. "I guess I want to know when letting go of things is the better course."

The man pointed to a branch some six meters up and said, “Climb up to that branch.”

Odd simply nodded and started climbing. He liked such straightforward lessons via physical exertion.

EE7. Climbing.: 1eP+3eA 2 successes, 3 advantage

Once he reached the branch the man said, “Let go.”

OOC: This would be a fall from Short, just FYI.

Oddyn did just that, without hesitation.

The man said, “Do you feel better now having let go?”

OOC: Suffer 10 wounds and 10 strain from the fall.

The sharp cut of pain blinded him for a moment, the limbs protested as they strained on hard contact. "Not at all." He gasped, suddenly feeling all his wounds as he rolled along the floor.

[Are those mitigated by Soak?]

“Then why do you assume letting go will make you feel better? You are the sum of your experiences, your scars and injuries… your successes and failures. Does a tu’kata worry that it must leave behind it’s past?”

OOC: Only Wounds.

"Tu'kata don't call off the hunt." Odd sat up to look at the man, rubbing pain off his joints. "I don't mind my scars or failures, I have no regrets. I am thinking more of what is futile in a pursuit."

“Every predator calls off the hunt, not every prey dies, many more escape than are killed. Is that letting go or simply knowing it is beyond reach? If you are done, then let it be so,” he responded chuckling.

Odd rubbed his neck and grunted.

"I guess the thing is I don't have the wisdom to know whether things are or are not beyond reach."

“Men that offer you wisdom are no wiser than you are. They can only tell you what they believe to be wise for them, not for you. Of course perhaps you die, then you have gained infinite wisdom, so not all bad I say,” he replied happily.

That made Oddyn chuckle.

"You sound like a Mandalorian."