[Author's Note:  This story has been quite difficult for me to compose due to the simple fact that information on the mysterious Prophets of G'nar-Peth is so difficult to come across.  Though this sub-guild of the Moon Mages has been with our proud organization for many centuries, they have the least amount of information written about them in the guild libraries.  Finding any of the prophets within any of the guilds is next to impossible and the G'nar-Peth representative to the High Council has not been seen in the Imperial City for close to a decade now.  The one thing that I will not dare to do in my quest for knowledge is to go to the Wastelands home of the Prophets.  In the story below you will find reference to one researcher who went to study the Prophets in their home and went completely insane, last 'seen' running into the fathomless expanses of the wastes.  I have confirmed this part of the story through guild records and other research, including systems of scrying that are so ancient and unwieldy as to be near indescribable in my frustration to use in verification.

There have been a number of things that I have been able to confirm as fact and the basis of this story was taken from some of the few written records and 'histories' of the Prophets.  Deciphering both their cryptic fontic writing and the even more cryptic words and grammatical structures has left me with both a throbbing head and watery eyes on many a night.  I have had sessions of deciphering these texts during which I could swear I saw the letters swim and move; other times the parchment and ink have taken on a strange quality of depth that seemed to draw me into the paper.  I have felt my mind slipping away from my mortal bounds and into strangeness.  During one session the drawing sensation became so overpowering that I cried out in primal fear and cast the parchment into the flames of my reading candles and watched it catch alight and burn into ash...

Only to reappear amongst my notes again the next day...]

I still remember the day that our blessed master, G'nar-Peth, first spoke to me.  I was but still a child coming into my first majority and I worked the gardens of our prophets, those who have heard the voice of Master G'nar-Peth and given their lives over to him, tending to the plants and brightly petaled flowers of the Garden that the Prophets have shaped and formed over the millennia.  At the time when I worked the gardens as one of the caretakers, just as my parents did, I knew that it was the Prophets who instructed the placement of the individual plants of the Garden and who sometimes even planted the seedlings themselves.  I had also seen some of the Prophets pruning and shaping some of the trees with their bare hands, their faces eternally lost in the shadowy darkness of their hoods.

Sometimes the Garden was expanded by the whims of the Prophets in a way that made no sense to me at the time.  Since my induction into the sight granted me by Master G'nar-Peth I can now understand the reasoning of the Garden and its strange ways.  A stranger to the Prophets, including those who serve the Prophets, would not know the delicate symmetry and meaning of the plantings and pruning of the Garden.  And make no mistake, living plants are not the only things that compose the Garden.  The Garden and its inhabitants sits upon a great shelf of limestone in the desert wastelands.  The lips of the shelf have been carved by the wind driven sands into a semblance of smooth, bulbous curves that, with the living eye, looks much like some organic matter or streaming water.

Water here in the Garden is a precious thing that fills a limestone cistern from a cool, underground spring every day.  When the spring flows strong it crests over the smooth walls of the cistern and flows freely across the ground and we must struggle to capture every precious drop of the water.  I have seen rain only twice in my life and both times it has been an astonishing sight and experience to me.  In the few brief bursts of rain from the thin clouds that gather above I have felt the harsh impact of the water droplets against my skin and on the second occurrence of this miracle of G'nar-Peth I drew my face upwards towards the sky, closing my eyes and opening my mouth, feeling the cool wetness fall into my mouth.  It was both a sweet and dusty taste and is an experience that I shall always treasure.  It was also an experience that brings back the fondest memories of my innocent childhood.  A childhood of simple work and obedience to the Garden and Prophets who instruct us in the formation of the Garden according to the Will of G'nar-Peth.

The day that I heard the Voice of G'nar-Peth I was carrying a jug of water in my arms, my destination being the work area of my parents, to deliver the precious water to the plants of the Garden.  As the Voice touched me I froze in my steps and the jug fell from my arms, shattering against the stone.  Though the water splashed across my sandaled feet and bare legs, I was unaware of it.  In fact, I was unaware of anything about me in the way that normal mortals are aware of anything that is the truth about the world and cosmos.  I was lost, amidst a sea of things that defied my knowledge and my imagination.  I saw everything, but not in the way that I had before the Voice touched me.  I saw the weave and woof of reality in the way that it truly exists.  I saw depth, brightness and colors that I had never experienced before in my life.  Then, as my feeble mind began to comprehend some small fraction of what it was seeing, a great expanse opened before me and I saw the Garden stretch not simply across the limestone shelf of my home, but across the entire expanse of the wastelands and the world.  The Garden, shaped and grown by the Voice of G'nar-Peth, according to his Will, covered all and the peoples of the lands lived amongst it in quiet harmony.

My family heard the crash of the jug and its shattering and came to me.  At first they thought to berate me for the loss of the precious water and pottery jug, but then they saw my face and wide-mouthed wonder that showed so clearly on my countenance and my mother gave a cry of both joy and despair.  We in the Garden know when Master G'nar-Peth shares his Will with a new chosen and it is a cause to both rejoice at the coming of a new Prophet, and to mourn for the loss of a family member to the Will of G'nar-Peth.

My father placed a hand upon my shoulder and I recoiled slightly as touch registered upon me and my changed sight beheld his being.  No longer did I see the sun-tanned flesh, the calloused hands, the strong arms or warm eyes.  I saw instead a mesh of string woven together to create the frame that resembled my father's body.  Most of this mesh, which made up my father, was pleasing to my changed sight, being right and proper in the Will of G'nar-Peth.  But there were areas within his being that were knotted, snared, incorrect.  I reached forward, meaning to correct these imperfections when I felt another hand upon my other shoulder and a firm strength that beckoned me away from the task.

"No, little brother, do not do that," came the voice from seemingly so far away and near at the same time.  "If all is perfect and right, then there is no room for change.  With no room for change, there is no room for growth.  Without growth, the Garden withers and dies."

And I understood the meaning of those words.  For all my life the words of the Prophets had been cryptic and unfathomable to me but now they made sense.  If I gave my father the gift of Master G'nar-Peth's perfection he would never grow again in any way.  He would no longer be the man who had held me in his hands the moment I first breathed in the air of the world when I left my mother's womb.  The Will of G'nar-Peth was both a marvel and horror that I feared would overwhelm me completely and irreparably there and then, and I shuddered with my fear.

The firmness of the touch of the touch of the Prophet upon my shoulder became comforting and seemed to ease me away from the madness of understanding.  Gently, the Prophet pulled me away from my father and mother and steered me away from them.  They were no longer my family, this I knew.  They had conceived me, brought me into the world of the Garden.  But I was no longer their child.  I was the receptacle of G'nar-Peth to be filled with his Word and Will to continue, not in the work of tending the Garden, but of shaping it.

The Prophet who took me away from my father and mother and everything that I had known as a child took me to his round stone hut and sat me upon the cool floor.  He poured water into an earthenware cup from out of an earthen jug and into he crushed herbs that had been gathered from the Garden.  This he gave me and bade me to drink. I did so, marveling at the touch and sensation of the cup and taste of the water upon my tongue.  Its slipperiness and wetness and the sensation of it sliding down my throat and into my stomach.  Seeing the glazed distance of my eyes the Prophet snapped his fingers sharply and drew me back to the now.

He nodded and began to talk in a low, soothing voice.  Though the marvels of my new sight beckoned me away, his voice was a firm grounding for my consciousness and I found that no matter how much I wished to stare at the things of the world around me I was, at the same time, drawn back into the existence and perception of my life as it had always been.  A plain, simple thing of inadequate sight and awareness that paled in comparison to the sight given me by Master G'nar-Peth.

"To lose oneself in the gifts of G'nar-Peth, without the discipline to control the wanderings of your mind, is to squander the gift of G'nar-Peth.  No change can be wrought without forethought.  To do so without thought to the ramifications of your actions will cause great distress and damage to all about us and make the task of bringing G'nar-Peth's desires to the world a harder task.  To lose yourself in His gift is a waste of His gift.  Do you understand?"

Regretfully, I nodded my head and tried to bring my senses under control and refocus on the world as I had always known it until this day.  It was a painful thing to do and I felt a great loss at giving it up.

The Prophet nodded slowly at me when he realized that his words had been heard and heeded.  "In time," he said, "you will be able to control the gifts given to you and to work the Will of G'nar-Peth upon the Garden and the world.  But you will have to work hard to acquire the understanding and control needed to be the Master's tool in the world.  If you are unwilling to attain this understanding and control then go back to your family now and either lose the gifts of Master G'nar-Peth in time or be lost to them and spend the rest of your days in madness."

I was too caught up in the wonders of the day to think of returning to my family, though I knew, deep within me, that I would in time come to miss them terribly.  For now, all I could do was dumbly nod my agreement to the Prophet who would become my mentor and instructor in the Will of G'nar-Peth as I gave up my life to the Master and became, myself, a Prophet of G'nar-Peth.

And then there was the teaching given to me.  Many years passed by on the river of time.  I barely noticed the changes around me, for it is not the place of a Prophet, or an initiate for that matter, to worry upon matter of the Now.  Instead, we must look upon what has been and then upon the future that unfolds before us.  We must strain to hear the Voice of G'nar-Peth and to interpret his Will as to his designs upon the future.  The only thing that concerns us with the Now, is what we can do in the Now to affect the future.

There are things concerned with the Now that force themselves upon one's awareness.  The steady shortening of my britches were one such thing.  The hem of my simple robes rising higher and higher above the ground.  The tightening of the laces of my sandals, the growth of my hair.  The coming of my beard.  All these at one time or another came slowly to my attention.  The problems were dealt with and then I moved on with my studies, for they were all-consuming.  And the Voice of G'nar-Peth was all-consuming as well.

One of the simplest, and most important, exercises performed during our studies is to sit, either in the sun with the protection of my hood, or in the coolness of a stone hut, and to close my eyes.  While my eyes are closed I push away the thoughts inside my mind slowly and gently until all is clear within me.  As clearness comes to me a new awareness seeps in to take its place.  Thought my eyes are closed I see my surroundings.  I see Garden stretched out around me and the people who move amongst the plants and sculptures.  I see my family and from time to time I pause a moment or two to observe them and reminisce, but then I move on.

With time my awareness has gone beyond the realms of the Garden across the Wastelands itself.  I see the scorpion and the sand spiders.  I see the simple plants of the barrenness, nothing like the bright petals or green leaves of the Garden, but pretty in their own simple way.  Few other people survive here in the Wastelands, surely not in any way that we do.

Then, beyond the Garden and beyond the Wastelands are the lands of other cultures.  I have seen villages and farmsteads, cities and towns.  I have witnessed the coming and going of lives into the world.  I have seen the peoples, humans, elves, elothians, s'kra mur, gor'tog, dwarves, halflings and others engage in all the things that they do.  Many of their customs are strange to me.  I understand their words clearly, no matter what language it is that they speak.  But they do not live with the Voice of G'nar-Peth.  They do not follow his Will.  The gardens that they build are not the true Garden, but simple creations of aestheticism and survival.  There seems to be no higher purpose to these people.  The gods that they pray to are strange to me and I wonder upon the need for so many deities.  For myself and the others who reside in the Garden, there is simply G'nar-Peth and he is all that we need.

Well into my training I was finally given to the studies of magic.  We Prophets do not have much need for magics.  But there are times when magics become useful to the Prophet in working the Will of G'nar-Peth.  Our rituals and ceremonies are meant and used for the shaping of the Garden, and through the Garden, the world.  At times, in our trances and through the expansion of our awareness through our rituals we are able to hear divinations great and small.  G'nar-Peth whispers to us and we hear.  We act upon his words.  Sometimes we plant a seed or prune a plant to make an affect upon the world.  From time to time we may have to move beyond the Garden to the world that those other peoples live in.  There may come a need to interact with these others, but such instances are very rare.

Many of we Prophets were silently at work in the Garden one day, tending to the plants, when creature of bone and death came into our midst.  Its chants were strange and it snickered at us often.  This thing of strangeness, like nothing that I have never observed before in any of my wanderings, drew our attention and we looked at it collectively.  Its being was a mass of tangles and snares and sickness.  We thought to help it, reaching our meager will to it to cure the ills that plagued it.  Distantly there was what seemed like a high-pitched racket.  Higher and higher it rose as we continued in our work to fix the illness. With the untangling of a knot the whole thing suddenly unraveled, falling apart.  Dust was the only thing that we had left after that and the dust was carried away on the breeze.  For a moment we pondered upon the events that transpired, then went back with our work.

I was taught the crafting of my own sandstone bowl and I worked it with my hands and the tools of shaping.  I saw within the plain stone the shape that waited to be freed.  For a passing of time that I did not record I worked the sandstone and freed the bowl from its prison.  The other Prophets instructed me in its preparation for its use and ceremonies of its attunement to reveal the deeper mysteries of G'nar-Peth.  I followed their counsel and made it ready.  My teacher sat with me and together we poured the water into it and invoked one of our few magics upon it.  Beneath the glimmer of one of the moons I looked into it.

At first I gasped at what I saw there and clutched the bowl tighter in my hands.  The things that moved within the waters--frightened me.  I struggled for control of my senses and my emotions and fought to keep myself in check.  But I lost my control and with a scream I cast the bowl from my hands and the precious water spilled upon the ground.  For a long time after that I refused to touch the bowl.  To sleep with it in my hut frightened me, but there was nothing for it.  To cast out the bowl would be to cast out the Will of G'nar-Peth and there is nothing that would make me do that.

It came as something of a surprise to me that we are considered a "sect" of group that called itself a "guild".  A guild of Moon Mages and mystics as it were.  This news was a bit of a novelty for myself and a number of the others in the Garden.  A man of this guild came amongst us, for the purpose of study as he put it.  He called us brothers and wished to know everything about us and our Master as we could tell him.

We were more than happy to share our knowledge with him.  We were happy, as well, to tell him everything about G'nar-Peth that he was capable of listening to.  Long through day and night we shared our Garden with him.  But with each passing hour he seemed less and less willing to be amongst us, which we found sad.  Repeatedly we asked if there was anything we could do to make him more at ease.  But he assured us there was nothing we could do...

More and more his behavior seemed erratic and strange.  At one point he called my teacher by a strange name and asked questions of him that my teacher had no way of answering for they were meant for another.  After a time the Moon Mage went quiet and looked around him.  With apologies he excused himself and went to lie down, complaining about affects of the sun and heat upon him.  Two days later as he sat with us as we shared knowledge he screamed, clutching at his hair and fell to his side.  We rushed to him and tried all we could to help him but he pushed us away, screaming at us as if mad.  He ranted, asking why we were "ghosts" of his past.  How could we wear the faces of family and friends long dead?  What manner of "demons" were we?  We could do nothing but stand in shock and exasperation.

I looked upon him and with the sight of G'nar-Peth sought to find anything wrong with his symmetry.  There was much that was ill in him and most of it affected his mind.  I reached to help him, correct the illness and restore calmness to him.  But he thrust me away again and scampered to his feet.  Spittle spilled from his mouth as he looked at us with the crazed eyes of a desert dog that has gone too long without water.  The he ran from us and went to the Wastelands.  Soon he was lost to us and we have never heard from him again or from any others of his "guild".  It was certainly a disquieting incident.

A time comes when we pass beyond the constraints of mortal senses and we have to give up a part of ourselves to the Will of G'nar-Peth.  With the sight gifted to us we have no need for the eyes that we are born with and sooner or later we all offer them up to our Master.  I felt that the time was right to make my sacrifice and I discussed it with my teacher.  He agreed and together we prepared the herbs that would place me into a deep sleep free from all pains.

For three days I slept and when I awoke a sash covered my eyes.  But I did not notice this.  Still I saw with the gifts of G'nar-Peth and still I heard his Voice and I was pleased to do his will.

My teacher came to me and sat before me.  In one hand he held my bowl, which I had carved and gazed into.  The same bowl that had sent me into a fit of screaming.  In his other hand he held a jug of water drawn from the cistern that gave us the water with which we supported the Garden.  My teacher reminded me that I was a Prophet and a man.  I needed to learn to overcome all my fears and to be sure in the Will of G'nar-Peth.

With my sight I looked upon my hands and saw that they were not the hands of a child any longer.  They were the strong hands of a man.  The rest of my body was the body of a man.  I had grown in the Will of G'nar-Peth and in his way.  I must accept all of his gifts or none of them.

Gingerly I took the bowl into my hands and felt the smooth coolness of the stone upon my fingers.  I saw its shape and patterns.  I could already feel its presence filling me.  My teacher poured water into the bowl and I focused upon it, seeing deep into the water and its depths.  Soon I began to see as the gift of G'nar-Peth filled me and I saw all that was this world.  I saw deep into the world and the creature that slept there and I saw beyond to worlds and planes beyond the reckoning of those who are not blessed by G'nar-Peth.  I saw...