Tattoo Scrolls: Exile

The Exile Scroll is the fourth of the five Tattoo Scrolls, written by Grandmaster Zhang the Burdened during the events of the War of Shadows. In it, teachings of self-sufficiency and inner reflection are distilled that are available only to the initiated disciple.

Like the other Scrolls, the Exile Scroll has several properties that mean only great training and preparation allow one to safely read it directly. Its teachings are of a depth inherently beyond the limits of the mortal mind, as they were imparted from the unfathomable wisdom of Xhu Luin, a mighty bronze dragon that guarded the House of the Golden Dragon. If this wisdom is pondered too deeply, the reader's mind may be warped beyond repair.

Provided below is a mere transcription of the Scroll, which is understood to not possibly convey the nature of the Scroll in its entirety.

Transcription
The student, with Power but not Self, ventures out from his village. His people watch him leave, shouting and jeering.

He is not wanted. He is not welcome.

He wanders for many miles. Through forests, mountains and deserts. Much is seen, but nothing is found.

He reaches an impasse - the shore of an ocean. Without direction or energy, he falls into the dream-waters.

Murky waters are clouded with the student's filth of exile. Below, a fish stares upwards. Sands waft and wave with the currents of fate. Bubbles flow from the gills, pumping Life up and splitting in the exile-filth into smaller bubbles of Life, splitting again unto themselves, ad infinitum, until an infinity of nothings fills the student's nostrils.

Is the student the fish, looking up to the vile murk of Exile wafting off the drifting body? Is he the infinity of bubbles, their endless final state being the vast complexity of his many teachings? Or perhaps he is the act of the bubbles splitting itself?

The student finds profound questions in wondering where the fish looks.

Why does the fish look upwards? The bubbles float from its mighty gills; does it follow these, as they are the student, floating upwards towards Enlightenment from the depths of Unknowing? Does the fish simply look to where the Sands below are not, ignoring the limits of how deep it may swim? What is swimming for the fish, an act which it currently fails to perform? It is of course the murkiness of the exile-filth; the student simply wonders to what end.

Perhaps it is the waft and wave that is the teaching, ebbing through both fish and student. Yet the fish-student duality is not so binary as the naive may assume. What separates the fish from the student?

One may argue the water separates the two. What if the student touched the fish, closing this gap? Or would the bubbly wafting exile-murk halt this event? Does the student even have hands to touch? Indeed he does not; however, his eyes are enough. Why this is goes beyond the capacity of the mortal mind.

Upon seeing what the Fish truly sees, the student is enlightened.

He emerges from the water, gasping at the bubbling airs above his murk.

And he howls the Substance of Self into the ignorant skies.

---

The student looks into his campfire. Over it hangs meat on a spit, roasting with wafts of a rich smoky scent.

The student cares not for this distraction.

Instead, he stares deep into the smoky plumes above.

His greatest failures stare back.

The student ponders at the face of his failures. Their eyes seem darker than the shadows nervously flickering about the campfire. What do they see when they look at the student?

The student understands this message, and eats the roasted meat. His most agonizing failures, defeats and mistakes enrich the decadent taste of the meal. What taste would this be for the student? How may one truly perceive failure in taste alone? If not the student eating this supper, would another taste their own shortcomings, or those of the student?

The student understands this is the wrong question to pose. Instead, he spits the meat onto the floor and casts it into the fire. Then, he steps in with his feet bare.

A thousand tongues of light lick at the student's soles. Smoke clogs his every sense. Sweat rushes down his back to fight the agony in which he stands.

The student knows he must wait.

He looks out, through the eyes of his failures.

Slowly, the fire turns to embers. The cruel light gnawing at the student's feet dims. Silhouettes of what the fearful would call monsters inch closer and closer to the dying flames, suffocating the forest with a deafening silence.

Darkness.

Seeing through the eyes of his failures, the student is blind.

The student is not who he was. His old identity, forged by those about him, is cast aside in his exile. His pain, his faults, his trauma - these are the fires in which he has been reborn.

He looks to the sky, blind-but-still-seeing. He shrieks his new name.

And the Exile learns the Story of the Scars.

---

The Exile wanders deep into the mountains.

He carries but one desire. Only the mountains may listen.

Atop a great slope, the Exile sits down. His eyes close, and his mind opens.

It is unimportant for how many years he waits.

A great wind sweeps down upon the Exile. Brilliant streaks of light shine onto his face; his blind eyes see it not. A deep grumble shakes the earth below.

The mighty Bronze Dragon stands before the Exile. He guards this land, and those within shall be his subjects.

The Exile ponders on the Dragon's meaning. Is the Dragon what he desires, or is it what the Dragon brings? Is it the brilliant light of his scales, which the Exile cannot see? The Exile understands why this is not the case.

"Dragon, I have come to these mountains with but one desire. I ask you, what might it be?"

The Dragon looks into his blind-but-seeing eyes.

The Exile has come here for Nothing.

He smiles, for this is the answer he sought.

"I am but the Exile. I have stepped beyond the coil of society and opinion. I must require only Nothing, so I have come to find it."

The Dragon nods solemnly. If it is Nothing that is sought, then the mountains shall provide.

A single claw taps the Exile's forehead. Magic radiates forth, enveloping the Exile's mind with a mighty vision.

The vision subsides. The Dragon is gone.

The Exile still sees the mighty stone temple in his mind.

He smiles, for this was the answer he sought.

"If one is to find Nothing, one must create from it first."

For this mighty teaching, the Exile spends a lifetime building the temple in his vision.

And the Exile is enlightened with the Source of Nothing.

---

A great stone temple stands atop the mountainside, the Dragon flying above it.

It is named the House of a Thousand Whispers.

The Exile looks deep within its empty halls. Self, Scars and Nothing grant him sight where he is blind.

The Dragon lands atop its precipice. The Exile is ready for his final teachings.

He nods, smiling. For behind his blind eyes radiates the Way of the Exile.

These lessons were received from the mighty Xhu Luin, Great Dragon of the Sacred Mountains.