Spell
The Last Oracular Eye was a magical scroll and oracle that gave the Mountaineers knowledge of the future in Fragment Eleven.
Description
The Last Oracular Eye is a living scroll of fortune whose purpose is to offer the reader a glimpse into the future. One who finds the scroll is given the opportunity to choose between three future outcomes: a hopeful outcome, an outcome of despair, and an outcome of illumination.
The scroll that once held the Oracular Eye is now tattered and blank. However, the Eye still exists in some corners of the internet, waiting for a seeker who knows how to open it.
Lost Atheneaum Entry
The Last Oracular Eye – A Living Scroll of Fortune
An ancient scroll of unknown origin, once prized by the mundane Freemasons as an oracle, capable of granting insight into the future.
It was purported to offer the reader of the scroll the one-time opportunity to be granted a strange gift: the choice between two of three emotional states: Illumination, Hope, and Despair.
The scroll was stolen in the late 19th century, but it’s believed that the Grand Secretary was told a terrible future that he was responsible for and he promptly disposed of the scroll so other Freemasons couldn’t learn the truth.
Copies of it were discovered in the early part of the 21st century, being used as private invitations for a magician’s performance. The printer was paid for the original (he was unaware of its true power.) In an effort to protect the deteriorating parchment, the scroll was scanned into a database. But the file immediately vanished.
The original scroll, in terrible shape, is now blank, and the scan has never been recovered. It is rumored that some have seen the Oracular Eye hiding in secret places on the Internet, waiting to offer its strange promise to anyone who knows how to open it.
Usage
Aether sent several emails to recruits, in Fragment Eleven, telling them that he had sent the Oracular Eye to their website.
Have found the oracular. Driven the eye of the sun to you. Find the closed eye. It’s close to home. At the moment the sun sets over the 18 Gates. Its power comes from the veil. Sullivan knew the center. Wait for it to open with last rays of light. Choose well. Another piece inside. More soon.
A recruit soon noticed a new page available on The Lost Athenaeum, containing the spell for the Last Oracular Eye, and realized that this was the same “eye of the sun” of which Aether had spoken. Piecing together the rest of the hints, they realized that Central Park holds 18 gates, and that the sun sets there at 7:59pm. By adding /759pm to the end of the Basecamp homepage, recruits were able to find the closed Oracular Eye.
After finding the closed Eye, Endri set up a poll, allowing recruits to choose which of the two futures they wanted to hear, out of the three categories, hope, illumination, and despair. Illumination and hope won out, thus guiding the Oracle’s predictions. Recruits then waited until the sun set over Central Park, at 7:59pm, visiting the page and seeing that the Oracular Eye was finally open. The Eye then conversed with recruits through text, giving them the history of the Book of Briars, and also lending them hope, though it could not see through the coming storm. It gave one final piece of wisdom in the form of a memory fragment of Portencia’s. Afterward, the Eye disappeared from the site.
The Oracle’s Conversation
I sense fates intertwined.
I sense many.
Illumination, Hope, and Despair. You may choose two, though all three will still come to pass in time. Choose.
You have chosen…
Illumination.
And
Hope.
I will now peer into your collective future.
ILLUMINATION.
The Council of The 18 Gates moves to help you from beyond the veil.
They are who brought the book to this time.
The Rabbit.
The Traveler.
Both have aided or served The Council.
The Council works to reveal what little is left of magiq here, hidden in the darkest wells, not yet collected.
It is how you can perform it in a world which is profanely without wonder.
But that power is finite.
It will fade and vanish forever unless you, in league with The Council, can change what is unknown, and undo what has undone.
Only then will you know the truth of our world. The secret beyond the veil.
HOPE.
You are more resourceful, more keen, more bonded than any who have come before you.
Your potential is great.
I cannot see through the coming storm.
It is inevitable.
But the light of hope, however faint, lies somewhere beyond the wall of darkness.
Your time together will change all of time.
I have seen all of you that I may, that I wish. Leave me to peer into the darkness once again.
Wait.
I am compelled to tell you something else.
The future’s yet to pass.
The Search for Magiq
In the first of Ascender’s thoughts to be revealed by the Peering Arts spell, the Mountaineers learned that he had also sought the Last Oracular Eye after leaving Basecamp 33, and had chosen Despair and Illumination:
The Eye told me that if the Mountaineers were successful, the new age would only dawn with an unseen event that would catalyze the story, an event that would be decades in the making. An event that would stretch across time, tome, and affiliation, ringing in a hard-fought and hard-won age. The Book of Briars.
But it also told me that in that new age, there would be three opposing forces, forces representing the Eye’s three sights — Hope, Illumination, and Despair.
One new and wholly formed from belief in something better. One ancient and all-seeing. The source of this world’s shadows. And a third only beginning to coalesce, made from adumbral factions, but striving for light and learning.
Ascender believed the “ancient and all-seeing” force to be a reference to the Silver, persisting into the new age.