The Rider

The runes are cast, and as they clatter across the old stones, the witch kneels to better read them. They clatter still, spinning on their edges. It is the sound of hooves. The woman is alone, but she has been visited. Her eyes brighten and she sees something in the runes. Who gave her that sight is not something she thinks about. The Rider, unseen, takes the prophecy and puts it to memory. It carries on. There is an old man on a distant isle who has tossed carved wands and even now kneels to better see them. The Rider will aid him. The Rider will benefit. The Rider will continue for however long it needs to.

There is no room in the Mansus for the Rider. There are doors, and halls, and places to ride through, paths to follow, secrets carved on the walls in places. Its eyes are vacancies in its face that devour knowledge. What it shall take from it when they are digested, not even the Rider knows. It rides a horse, a camel, a llama, a carriage and even a runaway cart.

Their aspects are Knock and Secret Histories.

History

They were to be the sacrifice. Male, female, the performers of the ritual didn't care, those people simply wanted what was within them. The key to the secrets of the tears in reality. The ones who would sacrifice them planned to summon something. A Name, a spirit of the House, it didn't matter. They were going to die. They had been fine when the leader had said it, so gentle, so caring, so false. Now they didn't want to die. Nameless, faceless, they were bound to a slab of stone and an old piece of knowledge crawled from the lips of the ritual's performer, that leader whose words had pushed her here. What were those words? They knew of its kind. A History. Though bound, they remembered it. As all other things faded from mind, that one secret remained. It hurt to hold, but that was better than feeling nothing. They planned to do the work itself with a knife, its sharpness shining with the Edge power thrumming through it. In a single moment, the History grew in her mind, grew and grew and grew, seeking secrets, seeking lore, seeking something, anything, that would prove an answer to the History's questions. For a brief moment, they understood. They took Edge into themselves and broke the binds. Shattered the knife (other history, other world, no.) They ran. Everyone else in the room fell. To them. Who else? More secrets, more lore. It drank of them, sought answers. They would have been a gate, but one of cold flesh and colder blood. They would live as a gate. Outside. Desert, city, forest, no matter. They found a mount. They saddled it, though it might not have a saddle then. The History knew mounts and it became the mount it needed to be in that moment. The Rider's hands were filled with entrails, brimming with futures. Later. First, they ride, and seek out more Histories. More secrets. More...everything.

Nowadays there are three aspects of the Rider that have shown their faces. The Lady Seeker, she who is master of Binky, she who travels through history. Second to her is the Lord interpreter, he of the glass eyes. Beware coming to him with a secret. The Sassanian. Oh how glorious they. Oh how sharp their wit, how cutting their words, they who wear the garb of a fallen empire, they with ever listening ears, they with a taste for rumor and a tongue made for talking.

Instruments of the Rider

The Carriage Bedecked: Made of a great many rectangular wooden panes, each painted with a symbolic, prophetic image, the Carriage is that which may take a group united by a search of Answers through History.

The Reins: They are the twisted intestines which guide the Rider. Those who would take the hot, red insides of a tribute and look upon them are in that moment looking upon the Reins, and they too are guided by them.