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Like some others who have visited the Grave of the Great Mother, you had a strange and vivid dream from which you awakened to find the Gravemark upon you. Your dream was as follows:

You awaken restless in the middle of the night, quietly rolling out of your bunk to walk the halls of Headstone Keep. As you pace the lightless chambers and corridors, they seem almost lit by some dim, indiscernable radiance. You find your way into the main courtyard, the walls lightly manned at this hour, and are surprised to see a riotous swarm of fireflies filling the air over the keep. You start up the wall to comment on it to one of your brethren when you notice that the guards seem possessed of an inner glow, some light shining brightly inside them, visible now even beyond the considerable range of your darkvision. It seems that no-one else can see this phenomenon, as otherwise there would be some alert or alarm. You hasten your steps and climb a ladder up to the wall, perturbed and intent on telling the watch commander of this strange effect. Pulling yourself up to stand on the battlements, you realize that the sky above Headstone is full, not with fireflies, but rather the usual nocturnal insects and their predators, each with a tiny glow within them. In wonder you watch their chaotic dance, usually too high for you to perceive, but now traced out high above you in arcs of light. After a few moments your gaze shifts to focus beyond the hectic night air into the heavens, where you notice that the stars are shining more fiercely than you've ever seen them before, so much so that you look down in pain, their intensity momentarily blinding you.

Looking down at yourself as your vision returns, you see that while all the creatures around you, from men to mosquitoes, are possessed of a spark burning inside them, there is no light inside you. Indeed, inside yourself you see only a shadow, as of some hole that light cannot reach, and even your own eyes cannot see within. A shudder runs through you, and a strange sense of dread, and then a call of alarm goes up from the western wall. Dawn has broken, light spilling out over the eastern horizon and across the sky, but seems unable to reach the western hills. Instead, the lands there are shrouded in darkness, one that seems to grow as you watch, a shadow somehow conquering the light. As this lightless wave travels eastwards, you see that it blots out even the painfully bright stars, washing over the land and sky, seeming to conceal all.

The keep is roused into action, your Company pouring from doorways and scrambling to the walls, watching in stunned apprehension as the darkness floods towards you all. Your dread magnifies as you suddenly know, beyond a doubt, that the oncoming darkness conceals nothing. It consumes all that it covers - a vast empty shadow in which there is nothing left to be illuminated. The men and women of the Gravediggers stand stern in the face of the unknown, and then are gone, swallowed up by the darkness mere moments before yourself.

You are wracked with a degree of pain you never imagined possible as, rather than obliterating you, the enveloping nothingness funnels into the hole inside you. An emptiness expands within you into an infinite cold, dead space that sucks at your being, your feeble frame and mind eroding away to the realization that you were never anything more but a hole; a hole in the world, into which everything must fall...

And you woke in the Grave.

Edited by: 9thdm on 9/16/13

After returning from the meeting with Doram Goldsail, Kek travels to South Dockside under the cover of night, easily evading detection. Calamestes has the information as promised: the ship the party has been looking for is probably the Singing Barnacle, sailing under Captain Howard Kineworth and destined for the port of Thatcher's Bluff in the Kingdom of Astermont.

Furthermore, Calamestes offers a payment of 200 gold if Kek reliably confirms or denies the accuracy of this information. His business complete, the Gravedigger stealthily returns to the inn at Poolside to rejoin his companions.

Edited by: 9thdm on 1/9/14

The final night in Driftwood-on-the-Sea, Kek sits secluded and widely unnoticed in a shadowy corner of the Inn common room, nursing a drink and considering his recent adventures with his new companions. While Cook and his men were a peculiar and varied lot, they had certainly lived up to Shem's promise of action.

After an hour in relaxed contemplation his drink is finally empty. Just as he is about to get up for another, a full glass is pushed in front of him from across the table to his left. His eyes dart that direction to discover a dwarf - ancient, grizzled, and fully armored - sitting in the seat adjacent to him not three feet away, his left hand casually holding an unusual wide-bladed battleaxe dripping fresh blood. Hiding his alarm and surprise as best he can, Kek nods at the man and grabs the proffered drink.

"I can't remember when last I was able to enjoy a drink," the dwarf says in thickly accented common, his voice hoarse and tired. "Or anything else for that matter."

Kek, still nodding, takes a long, slow pull from the glass as he calls to mind the magics which allow him to summon lightning to his touch. His efforts, however, are frozen mid-draught as the dwarf meets his gaze with sunken, red-rimmed eyes, a startlingly intense gaze peering out from the creased face. Held motionless by that gaze, the hobgoblin continues to drain his glass in silence.

"We are alike, goblin, you and I," the dwarf rasps, his face grim. "Usually that would mean your death, if you consider this 'living'. My list of allies, however, grows thin, and I sense a... reckoning... looms within the horizon. I will not have my time spent in this hell wasted due to infirmity of age or selfish exile; no, you shall help me when the time comes. Because if you don't, I'll have your head for a hat, and you're just green enough to care."

A slurping emanates from Kek's lips as he sucks away the last of the drink, his eyes still locked with the dwarf's; awkwardly loud, it fills the silence between the two men until the dwarf releases the hobgoblin's gaze to look down at his empty, wrinkled hand, flexing it into a fist.

"I dwell beneath where monsters rule, amongst the dead, hunting ghoul. Seek me there if you wish. If not, I'll find you in shadow."

Kek feels a hand grasp his shoulder, and spins to his right. A bar wench with a sour look is there, holding a fresh drink out to him.

"Y'know, if'n yer drink is dry, ya can just ask for another. No need to be fussin' 'bout it with slurps and sups like a child ."

Kek jerks his head back to his left to look at the empty chair next to him, no sign of the crusty old dwarf from a moment before. As the wench walks away He takes a long, hard pull at his fresh drink, about to write the whole thing off as an exhausted alcoholic apparition, until he notices the small pool of blood next to the chair, beneath where the dwarf had held his axe. Looking quickly about the room, he sees no sign of the dwarf nor any commotion, and decides to finish his drink and retire to his room before any new strangeness can find him.

Edited by: 9thdm on 2/3/14

At the end of the trapped hallway within the ancient giant ruins, Kek steps onto the magical symbol... and into darkness.

Flashes of light twinkle in the distance in all directions, with a constant undulating rumble, as of distant thunder, filling his ears. He seems to be floating in emptiness - not an entirely a new experience for him - but without any motive force such as his flying magic provides. For a moment it seems that the recently re-activated giantish magic has whisked him up into the Void, amongst the stars themselves.

Quite suddenly there is an explosion of light and noise directly in front of him, an eruption of lightning and flames illuminating the collision which has caused them - two massive slabs of rock, seemingly landscape-sized, glancing off each other as they shoot through the dark. The resulting noise hits Kek like a physical blow as the two slabs ricochet off each other mostly intact, the awesome display fading back into the darkness - but not before Kek sees a cloud of debris, some pieces trailing sparks or fiery smoke, rapidly expanding in his direction. While distance seems hard to judge, he is quite sure he will be in danger within a matter of moments.

A wave of panic surges at the base of Kek's mind, threatening to drown it, when he feels something tugging him from behind. Turning, he sees a patch of mist forming some yards in the distance, a thick, glistening vapor through which the hobgoblin can just make out a large chamber with a row of mystic giantish symbols on the floor along one wall. The mercenary is inexplicably pulled towards it, and as he accelerates closer and closer the view through the cloud seems to magnify, focusing in on a single symbol. Kek shoots a glance over his shoulder just before entering the mistbank, and sees a rain of stones streaking towards him within view of his darkvision, ranging in size from pebbles to horse-sized boulders.

Then he is standing in the large chamber, his companions beside him, his feet firmly on the floor. Looking down he sees a thin sheet of heavy grey fog spill out from beneath his boots before dissipating, apparently unnoticed by anyone but him.

Born into the Gravedigger Company, your childhood was basically spent in a religious boot camp, with a lot of focus on death: how to cause it, how to avoid it, and just as important, what to do after it happens to somebody else. You didn't show any particular ability in combat training, but displayed both a natural aptitude for stealth andfor learning, as well as an uncanny way of getting what you wanted. Stealth came easily to you - it seemed obvious where best to be to avoid detection. When you told others that you instinctively knew how to move in the shadows, they scoffed at you - what are shadows but an illusion, easily pierced by those who can see in the dark? Nonetheless, youconsistently succeeded where your peers failed.

You were basically raised to be abattle-priest, schooled in the ways of arcane magic so as to better combat it on the field, and expected to take care of the deceased; it was assumed you'd be assigned to a reconnaissance unit if you survived the Grave.. However, you always focused more on the teachings ofthe arcane than the divine, though you managed to bluff your way through the religious training.

At the age of 14 you and eleven other "recruits" (hobgoblin for "child") were sent off to the island of Godfall, where you entered the Grave of the Great Mother, the rite of passage every adult Gravedigger must undergo.It is meant asa veryobviously symbolicjourney to face down death, as wellas a religious pilgrimage to pay respect to Terra and the Great Mother. Most importantly, though, it is an object lesson in one of the truths that your native Company holds most dear: everything dies.

Inside you felt the breath of Terra upon you, and received a vision which woke your sorcerous powers to their full potential. You first used your magics inside the Grave itself, evading detection by enemies after your unit was ambushed and captured by strange plant-men. With your powers (and the assistance of the magic gloves you discovered), you went aboutfreeing your comrades to fight their way out. Your fellow recruits were stunned and somewhat frightened by your new abilities, but not as frightened as they were of the perils of the Grave. In the end six of you made it back alive, the others killed by the plant-men either before your rescue or during the escape. Some thanked you, others blamed you, but all were now a bit afraid of you.

Upon your return and demonstration of your arcane powers, you were immediately downgraded to regular recon, and have taken part in a few minor actions along the coast of the Inner Sea. There was some argument of flat out discharging you, but the priests who trained you argued that your powers seemed triggered by Terra herself, and as such couldn't be completely aberrant. However, the more you developed your powers, the less other soldiers wanted to work with you, and your knack for persuasion became seen as conniving and unnatural rather than a true gift for leadership. Eventually, your superiors "suggested" that you take an indeterminate length of leave to seek outside assistance in "settling your unfortunate affliction." Shem, a soldier recently returned from his trip to the Grave, sought you out after hearing of your imminent departure, though you had never met before. He told you that if you wanted assistance in either discovering more about your magic or in discovering some action you should look for Cook, Smith, Chocobo and "Z" in Graveside. Apparently Shem's experience in the Grave and with these men has opened his mind to different ways of thinking. And so you've headed back to Godfall and Una's Inn, hoping to find a worthwhile unit to spend your leave with.