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| F O R E W O R D |
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This is a tale to be told, read aloud, shouted, whispered, completed with
motions and gestures. It is a work of fiction: a creation myth of the guardians
based on the Nekotai's Wyrden Idols. We know not where the guardians come from,
or why they were raised at all.

But we know this. The guardians watch over Glomdoring with the mercilessness
that they have known since their creation. They embody the values of endurance
and creativity, patience and preparedness, silence and stealth, as well as
swiftness and precision.

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| I N T R O D U C T I O N |
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Our story begins in the Gloriana.

Project Cosmic Hope had yielded a result no one expected, and now, a massive,
twisting cloud of Taint hovered over the city of Magnagora, crawling its way
westwards into the rest of the Basin. Mother Night saw this great cloud and did
what she had always done. Thought about it.

The Night Coven and the Raven Circle were in meditation for they were going to
attempt to protect the Gloriana through a great cone of power. Practically no
one roamed the forest now, for there was no more work to be done above-ground.
All they focused on was building their power such that their cone would repel
the Taint, should the situation ever require such a feat of strength.

And finally, Mother Night unearthed a plan from the depths of her mind. She
needed to prepare the forest for what was to come next, for she knew this wood's
fate all along.

Mother Night blessed four creatures of the forest and bade them to find
guardians for her forest. The future guardians could not be of the Night Coven
or the Raven Circle, for a willing sacrifice would not fulfill her plan. What
she wanted was to instill within these creatures a hunger for survival and the
will to do whatever it took for the preservation of the forest in the coming
time of turmoil. Even she was worried what sort of methods would result from her
blessing of the creatures. But change was imminent and something needed to be
done.

And so Bat, Beetle, Spider, and Wasp began their quest with Night's watchful
eyes at their backs.

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| B A T |
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| Hidden and stealthy, |
| His silence is his weapon. |
| One never sees death. |
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The pair walked along the road, joking and laughing as they approached their
destination. They were identical twins, one male and one female, though they
both looked a bit androgynous. Cut in nearly the same style, their hair was a
light sandy colour and they were blessed with the strange trait of having two
different coloured eyes: one green and one brown. Yes, they even took the same
path in life; they were both warriors.

The ways of the warrior suited them. Driven and focused, they rose to be the
two most talented in the Wilde the time they were 18. Indeed, their prowess
proved prodigious as they continued to hone their skills against their elders
and each other. Then came the Taint.

They, nor anyone else, had ever seen anything like it. Such a corrupting force,
mutating anything it contacted, turning once-beautiful mortals into hideous
caricatures of their former selves. Like everyone else, the twins were horrified
at what the Taint had done to the city of Magnagora.

Eager to prove their worth, the twins quickly volunteered themselves to assist
the Gloriana with preparations against the encroaching cloud. They journeyed
southwards for days, and we rejoin them as they enter the wood.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

It was daytime when they arrived, but their senses were instantly dulled upon
walking into the Gloriana. While this wood was not markedly different from their
home in the Serenwilde, the Tainted cloud that kept roiling towards the trees
preoccupied their minds with thoughts of darkness and oppression. Regardless,
the two pressed onward to find some familiar faces.

Soon enough, the pair spotted a small contingent of centaurs making their way
northwards, attempting to exit the forest. They kept moving towards the herd,
somewhat noisily, catching the attention of one female centaur. She turned her
wizened head towards them, her charms jingling upon her head and neck. Her coat
was still a beautiful chestnut colour, but her long hair was tinged with the
grey of age. Closing her eyes and breathing deeply, she nodded slowly towards
them, beckoning them to come closer.

As the pair approached, the elderly centaur whispered softly to them, "You must
leave, young ones. There is nothing to do here."

"But we must try, musn't we?" the boy replied.

The old centaur just shook her head. "There is no more trying to be done. It is
the end. Do not stay."

And with that, the centaur slowly trotted off to rejoin her companions, leaving
the twins to contemplate her apocalyptic words.

It may have been wise for them to leave at that point, but their idealism got
the best of them. They must try, for if they did not, they wouldn't be worthy of
their very names. As Father Sun sank below the horizon, they found a peaceful
copse of hemlock trees and agreed to rest for the night there. There was no
question this wood was powerful, but was it powerful enough to withstand the
Taint? They didn't know, and the frightening prospects of failure haunted their
thoughts. Coming to rest beneath a young sapling, they fell asleep.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Bat waited. He smelled the fresh scent of foreign ferns and wildflowers in the
air and sensed the powerful auras of the twins. Most of all, he hungered for
their spirit.

He went to work. They would not escape.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The boy's eyes fluttered open. Further in the wood, he heard a gentle whisper,
as if something stirred awake and was moving. The whispering evolved into a
light whistling noise as it moved closer and closer to their location. Fearing
it to be a predator, the boy woke his sister and they quietly stole away to find
a place further away from the noises. Moving swiftly and silently, they came
upon a dense copse of fragrant ravenwoods, their branches overhanging a massive
chasm. The shadows enveloped the area in a heavy embrace, allowing barely any
visibility. The twins chose to rest here, relying on the deep shadows and the
perfume of the trees to conceal their position.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Like a stormcloud of black leather, hundreds of bats flew out of the chasm on
their nightly hunt. The soft sound of rippling fabric tore through the air as
the bats frantically flapped their wings to gain altitude. Ear-piercing
screeches emerged from the bats' fanged maws, chilling the blood of any prey who
heard the cry. With a start, the twins rose, abandoning all of their things, and
began to flee away from the chasm, away from the sudden uproar.

But among the horde of bats moved another being, larger than the rest of the
bats and appearing as a pure black shadow. This shadow did not fly or make any
noise at all. Rather, the shadow swooped over the running figures and spiralled
downwards to glide right in front of the twins. Inverting itself and changing
directions, it rammed into the boy at full speed, tackling him and driving him
backwards down into the gaping chasm.

"No!" cried the girl, running after her counterpart.

She came to the edge of the chasm, batting away the bats that impeded her path
and calling her brother's name in desperation. As the last of the bats flew out
of the chasm, the whole forest became silent again.

"Help me, please," a weak voice cried from the bottom of the chasm.
"Plea--"

A raucous, resonant howl interrupted his words. There was nothing more to be
heard, other than the harsh sound of flesh ripping against bone.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Inhaling deeply, Bat drank of the fallen warrior's spirit. Upon taking in the
last ethereal bit, he began to undergo a shocking transformation. His short,
clawed limbs began elongate and bulge as his massive wings receded into his
body. The fur that covered his body was absorbed into his trunk, which was
rapidly growing and bulging. Teeth and claws that were once sharp and deadly
shrunk and became flat and dulled. The incredible pain of transformation was not
unexpected to Bat, but it was to a degree he had never imagined. But he fought
hard and fought silently, as this was what Mother Night had blessed him to do.

And at long last, a dun-skinned elfen man rose from the shadows of the chasm,
his black hair and eyes like shadows cast across his form. Quietly, he left the
dead knight's empty corpse in his chasm and made his way to the Master Ravenwood
tree. He took a seat beneath its boughs and waited.

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| W A S P |
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| Run fast, tread lightly. |
| Wasp will be deadly, precise. |
| Hail! Long live the Queen! |
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She ran and ran and ran and ran away.

All she heard in her head was his hoarse voice, "Help me, please." She heard
his pain. She heard how he suffered.

She ran to the north, she hoped. Towards the road and salvation.

She ran without thinking. Her feet began to tread on some sticky substance.
It was squishy and a green liquid squirted out of it when it broke.

She didn't notice. All she heard in her head was his dying whisper,
accompanied by the mad flapping of a million leathery wings. She didn't hear
the soft buzzing that emerged from all around her.

Things began to get dark, but she ran still. She ran until she could no longer
run.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Wasp's children had been trodden on. They were dead, and the girl would not
bring her back. Hovering and flitting behind the girl, Wasp positioned her
stinger to strike.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

It was then that the girl noticed the rather loud buzzing around her. Her
revelation was accompanied by a light 'swish' noise.

The girl looked down and found a wasp stinger sticking through her chest, a
shimmering green poison seeping from the end.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Smiling as she approached the Ravenwood, a red-haired elfen woman with the most
striking emerald eyes waved to the dun-skinned man sitting silently under the
Master's branches. She straightened her robes and joined him.

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| S P I D E R |
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| She bears this knowledge: |
| Great patience reaps great rewards. |
| Watch her slay her prey. |
======================================================================

It had been barely a day since her little siblings left for the Gloriana. The
maiden knew there was no reason to worry, for her siblings were well-trained and
as powerful as they come. But she was their older sister, she couldn't help it.
A million reasons why they could be in danger ran through her head. They were
young, inexperienced, untested. What if they had split up? What would happen
then? And what of the black cloud? What if they had been taken into the horrible
Taint, just as the city of Magnagora?

That night, the maiden prayed to Mother Moon, a delicate silver chain entwined
in her fingers, with a heavy jade pendant weighing down the end of the torc.
Many things were on her mind. She prayed for clarity and guidance to move
forward. Her gut feeling versus her mind's logic. As the full moon rose high
in the night, the silver beams spilling through her cottage window, she began to
see her path. Rising from her position, she called upon the power of the Moon
once again to summon her athame. It was a lovely weapon, its two edges bright
and sharp, with veins of light jade perfusing throughout the weapon and encasing
the handle. It was a weapon unique to the maiden, a testament to her
extraordinary skill in the arts of the Moondancer.

Wispy, ethereal robes flowing behind her, she took a lantern from her kitchen
table and left her cottage. Turning southward, she whispered a few words of
benediction for her siblings and stepped silently into the night.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Spider sat in her lair, surrounded by the dead bodies of small mammals that
littered the floor. For months, she had been perfecting her ultimate venom.
Odourless and colourless, it was designed to kill without the victim noticing at
all by altering the body and the mind along with it. No, she wasn't like hasty
Wasp or Bat, who took young knights as their prey. Neither Bat nor Wasp even
preserved the lovely body! How would the Great Spirits be pleased with bodies
that were so ravaged? Yes, Spider was determined to kill her prey in the most
elegant way she could. And to gain as much power as she could. She wanted
more power than the knights had to offer.

Manipulating her many venom sacs with exquisite control, Spider squeezed out
streams of various poisons into a crude clay bowl positioned under her fangs.
She smirked with satisfaction.

It was done.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

As she entered the wood, the maiden could sense a certain power within the
forest: a power that her siblings could not comprehend. The full moon was out
and shone brightly in the sky. The maiden twirled slightly and gracefully
swooped her arms up to meet Mother Moon, a gentle dance in her honour. A soft
light suffused her body and she felt a bit more resilient. Wrapping her robes
closer to her body, the maiden continued deeper into the woods, unsure of her
fate.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Upon seeing the maiden and sensing the pure power she wielded, Spider went to
work immediately. This was something far greater than anything that had entered
the forest before, save for the might of the Great Spirits. She injected the
poison into the venom sacs of her children and bade them to find the maiden,
follow her, and kill.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Wandering the woods, the maiden was amazed at the difference between this place
and her home forest. It felt more dangerous here, but she wasn't exactly sure
whether that was because she did not know the forest at all or whether the
danger was real.

A small stinging on her calf snapped her out of her musings. She slapped at
her leg, revealing a small spider, which quickly scuttled away into the
underbrush. The bite mark left behind by the little arachnid was coloured a
deep violet and looked quite painful even th ough it wasn't at all. Seating
herself and opening her knapsack, the maiden removed a bottle of ointment and a
spool of cloth. She applied the ointment to her leg and bandaged it up
carefully. Sighing heavily, the maiden looked up and saw the sun was setting.
She pulled a small portion of food from her pack and ate, in order to keep her
strength up. Sooner or later, she was to run into the twins and she certainly
wanted to be strong enough to make it back home with them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

A small cadre of tiny spiders scrambled out of her pack after the maiden fell
asleep. Spider's plan was already in motion; she and her children would ensure
that everything the young maiden touched or ate was full of poison.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The maiden woke the next morning a bit dizzy. She thought nothing of it and
began to walk in the woods again. She would walk around for weeks like that.
Eventually, she forgot why she was walking around. The skin around the spider
bite fell off, exposing the muscles and blood vessels underneath. The maiden
noticed after awhile and tried to patch it back on. Of course, the piece of
skin fell off again. This time, she didn't care, so she kept walking, a bit
aimlessly.

Dawn broke on her 6th day in the Gloriana. By now, most of the skin had melted
off of her lower leg, her hands, and her abdomen. The poison had numbed her
nerves, so she felt nothing. If anything, she felt a sense of satisfaction in
being able to trace the muscles to their joints and feel the pulsing blood flow
through her arteries. She walked her way to a small stream to refill her bottle
of water.

Looking into the small stream for the first time since she entered the wood,
she saw the reflection she had always seen in the mirror. But somehow, she
found her visage horribly repulsive! It didn't match her decaying hands and
legs! Her face was too white and pale, and without the sleek striations of
muscle that she found rather fetching. Retrieving her athame from her campsite,
the maiden began to make shallow slices into her skin, removing the epidermis
piece by piece from her temple down to her chin. She couldn't feel a single
thing.

Blood flowed and gushed from the multitude of veins and arteries, yet she still
cut away deeper and deeper into the dermis of her skin. How could she be so
ugly? She never remembered being like this, ever. How would her love ever stay
with her as long as she looked the way she did? There was no option but to fix
it.

Finally, she peeled away enough skin to reach the underlying layer fat and
fascia. But even this was not enough for the young maiden, who had been driven
to madness. She shaved at the thin film of fat until it fell off of her face,
then severed the fascia underneath, finally revealing delicate bands of her
zygomatic muscles over her cheekbone. Clapping her hands happily, she smiled,
contracting the exposed muscles.

Unfortunately, her hand was not skilled enough to avoid slicing the
vasculature, unlike the poison, which did not destroy blood vessels. Thus,
shortly afterwards, she passed out due to blood loss, athame still clutched in
hand.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Spider waited until the maiden's skin had completely deteriorated before taking
her spirit. The poison had exceeded all of her expectations. Not only did it
cause the physical effects she'd so desired, it had also driven the girl
completely out of her mind. She carved her face up! Spider wanted to play with
the idea of beauty and the vanity of her victim, but it was unbelievable even to
the creator of the venom that such as beautiful, strong elfen woman would be
fooled. Surely, Mother Night would be pleased with her work! Clacking her
limbs together in delight, Spider inhaled deeply.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Her eyes a deep crimson, a statuesque woman with straight, severe black hair
walked stoically into the Master Ravenwood's grove. With a welcoming smile, the
Queen of Wasps beckoned towards Lady Widow to join her and the Lord of Bats in
their conversation.

======================================================================|
B E E T L E |
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| He endures, creates. |
| But his actions? So mundane! |
| What is he making? |
======================================================================

The druid sat despondently in his den, twirling a resplendently-jewelled
engagement ring between his fingers. It had been nearly a week since his
fiancee had disappeared towards the southern wood, looking for her younger
brother. He hadn't yet proposed to the fair maiden, for her departure had been
so abrupt. As he considered his cowardice in the matter of love, his thoughts
reached a critical juncture.

Ever since he was a young boy, he'd been trained to be a druid of the
Serenwilde: courageous, loyal, powerful. Now, at the age of 31, he was at the
peak of his physical, spiritual, and mental prowess. Eyeing his cudgel and
steeling his resolve, he rose to retrieve his pack and gathered his belongings,
enough for a long journey. With his wits and strength about him, the druid
closed the door behind him and set off to the south, hurrying towards his lost
love.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Beetle waited in the southern wood. He had not yet found a guardian for
himself. He knew that his brute strength was nothing compared to the others.
Even patient Spider had captured her prey. Perhaps it was no surprise, as he
was known to always be moving dirt around, digging, or building some odd device.
This day, he sat in his underground tunnel, legs tapping the ground with a
regular, echoing rhythm. Even as Beetle rested, his legs had to be doing
something: this was the nature of the beast. He needed another plan.

Night fell, grew longer, midnight came. It was rainy that night, but Beetle
had no worries for his home was underground and he had plugged up the entryway
with a multitude of mossy rocks. In the middle of his restful slumber, he
suddenly felt an odd, light pressure upon his side, accompanied by a heavy sigh
and the sound of soft, swooshing fabric. A bit startled and taken aback, Beetle
moved his massive bulk away and turned towards the disturbance.

"OI!" shouted the druid, as Beetle shifted and backed away. With one sweeping
stroke, the druid swiftly removed his cudgel from the folds of his robes and
pointed it menacingly at Beetle.

The druid's deep green eyes met Beetle's insectoid, ink-black ones. Beetle
cocked his massive head sideways, as if curious about the stranger. The druid
blinked.

Beetle took this opportunity to turn about and trundle away, somewhat
comically.

The druid blinked again, then shook his head abruptly. Laying down upon the
cold ground, he slept peacefully the entire night.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Days passed and by the next week, the druid had still not succeeded in his
mission. The more time passed, the more his rage powered his actions, rather
than his logic. This forest was a terror to him, something to be felled,
destroyed, and made anew by his own hands. The damned Taint! It must have taken
his beautiful maiden, his one love! Rather than have this forest fall to that
polluted force, he resolved to destroy it.

Hemlock and blackthorn trees fell at his leisure. The deep shadows fled before
his ever-growing demesne. He ruthlessly hunted the fauna of the wood for his
meals and consumed them ravenously, blinded by his emotion. His resolve was
strong and his strength overwhelming. It seemed now that he glowed with a power
unseen in the forest before: the fire of a man agonized in love.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Like the druid, the forest was boiling with turmoil. There was no stopping his
madness, it seemed. The druid completely lost his mind and had begun to ravage
the forest in his rage.

Spider, Bat, and Wasp consulted each other under the boughs of the Master
Ravenwood. They knew this powerful druid would be a perfect guardian for the
forest, but how to defeat him? His spirit needed to be consumed by the
guardian-less Beetle, who, as far as the three could tell, spent the majority of
his days digging holes and rolling dirt about. Beetle was well-known for his
strange machinations and sometimes, he even helped them. But this was an
emergency and they had no time to wait. Any more waiting could jeopardize the
essence of their forest. The trio decided that the druid must be slain and
concocted a plan utilizing all of their talents to defeat him.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

That night, Beetle left his den and waddled about the woods. He went to visit
Spider, Wasp, and Bat in their lairs and asked each of them for a single favour.
They all obliged.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The next night, the druid found himself in the underground tunnel he had come
upon the first night of his journey. Eyes tired and swollen and his mind
clouded, he wandered through the tunnel system, which was slightly more
labyrinthine than it looked to him the first night.

Dragging himself through the maze, he began to see hints of moonlight on his
path. A sign from Mother Moon, it seemed to him, so he did what any ardent
follower would do: he walked along with them. The beams became brighter and
brighter as the druid neared the end of the tunnel.

A dead end.

His journey brought him to a dead end. A large rectangular chamber to be
exact. Beams of moonlight streamed through the cracks in the roof, snaking
around the roots and the webs and down to the ground. They seemed to spotlight
one form on the ground on the far end of the room. The druid approached
cautiously.

His toe prodded something soft and he looked down. A body. The face was
nearly bisected, with the nasal septum exposed and an eye rolling out from the
orbit. The cheeks were torn out, bits of fascia and nerve fibre hanging out of
the gaping hole. Dried blood from numerous gashes in the neck caked the
unrecognizable face and matted down the brown hair. Deep gouges and scratched
marred the rest of the body, leaving the white clothes tattered and dirty.

It was a dream, he thought. A nightmare. He walked, trying to wake himself
up. Drunkenly, he nearly tripped over the next corpse. A woman, with light
sand-coloured hair and a massive hole through her chest.

Retching, he stumbled forward and fell down, coughing and hacking at the feet
of the moon-bathed form of the final sight he was to ever see.

It was a rare sight. The skin had been completely removed from the final body,
leaving the underlying muscle and vasculature exposed. Gently hugging the body,
the striated muscle traced the form of the trunk, limbs, and face, their
tendinous connections shimmering a bright white in the available light. Webs of
arteries and veins ran up and down the body, as if a large net had been placed
over everything; the only space void of blood vessels was a patch of muscles on
the right side of the face. The eyes were closed, and the facial muscles were
relaxed.

A jade pendant lay over the body, perfectly centered over the sternum.

He screamed. The most agonizing, guttural noise emanated from his abdomen and
through his traumatized vocal cords outwards, resonating through the trees of
the forest. It shook the leaves and boughs. Birds' nests were vacated, the
spiders shuddered.

But he was never to finish the scream. The sound was cut short.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

At long last, a slender, somewhat unkempt elfen man joined his colleagues at
the Master Ravenwood. His bright sapphire eyes shone with confidence, even as
he approached the circle with a sheepish smile. The Lord of Bats, Lady Widow,
and the Queen of Wasps welcomed Lord Beetle unto the Shadow Council, guardians
of the great Gloriana.

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| A F T E R M A T H |
======================================================================

Though he experienced the ultimate success, he kept working, as Beetle is wont
to do. He dug four holes in a grove before the Ravenwood and gently laid the
corpses of the druid, the maiden, and the twin warriors into them. After
retrieving a few long feathers from the Master Ravenwood, Beetle began to weave
them into black burial shrouds. It wasn't before long that Lady Widow found him
as he fumbled with the delicate feathers.

"What exactly are you doing, Lord Beetle?" she asked, her curiosity piqued.

"Ah..." Beetle gestured to the graves. "Making something for them."

"Oh? And why would you do that?" Widow's voiced was barbed with contempt.

"I think I should," Beetle replied, his tone a bit uneasy. Widow tended to
make people uneasy.

"Do you respect them, Lord Beetle?" Bat whispered into Beetle's ear. He had a
knack for showing up like that.

Beetle nodded cautiously at Bat. "I needed them. The forest needed them."
His eyes followed Wasp as she entered the grove.

"...now I must know," Wasp said, with a small laugh, "What is going on?"

Widow's carnelian eyes sparkled as a slow, broad smirk spread across her face.
She took a few of the feathers and swiftly wove them together into a rather
intricate web of spines and tufts. Walking to the maiden's grave, she laid the
sheet of feathers down over the body.

"May I help you, Lord Beetle?" Widow said, as she laughed heartily at Beetle's
somewhat messy-looking shroud.

Beetle heaved a sigh and handed Widow a few bunches of feathers, smiling
weakly.

"Let us bury them together."

======================================================================
| E P I L O G U E |
======================================================================
| She is Perfection. |
| No mortal has ever seen |
| Her glorious form. |
======================================================================

You may ask then, what of the final Nekotai Idol, Scorpion?

Not much is known about Great Spirit Scorpion, known as Grandmother Scorpion to
her Cult. What is known is that she has always been hidden from mortals. We
only know Her through the writings of her Old Ones, and writings of the Elder
Gods.

In the Cult's tradition, it has been said that the traits of the four Wyrden
Idols embody Grandmother Scorpion. Perhaps then, Scorpion is always with us,
just as long as the guardians gather before the Master Ravenwood. They could
not be blessed before they all gathered, and their great power only manifests
when they act as one. Perhaps then, Mother Night and Brother Raven's greatest
gift to the Cult were these guardians: a reminder that Grandmother Scorpion
always walks with us and watches over us in spirit.