Vardigas Asmos, an ancient half-elf seer and wise man, gives his advice to all who would seek his wisdom. He helps with birthings and tends to the sick. He putters about the village and to the nearer farmsteads when he feels up to it. When people far from town need his services he will take a ride with Jadestar or some other who will take him. He has lived a long time among the people of Berador and his time with them may soon run out.
Study the Stars
Vardigas looks from his seeing glass to the ancient journal and back to his seeing glass. He stares long and hard through the tube at the brilliant white stars in the night sky. He pans the telescope to the moon and again consults the journal. A quick calculation in his head and he draws the glass lens back to the right. He mumbles unintelligibly to himself and squints in the near darkness as he scribbles a note in the margin of the journal.
He closes the book and puts it into the top drawer of his workbench. He takes the lens caps from the clutter on the bench and carefully places them on each end of the telescope which he then folds closed. Standing, he totters across his laboratory towards the stairs and the lone torch that provides a dim light far from his work area. He always works better in the dark. He sees the stars better in the dark.
He takes the torch in his wrinkled and age-spotted hand and begins the arduous trek down the twenty seven steps of his tower. He calls it a tower. Everyone else sees a prominent and unconventional steeple on one end of his home, but Vardigas calls it a tower. A proper seer needs a tower. All the ancient books say so.
The town folk love the gray-eyed, gray-haired old man, but they pity him as well. His delusions of grandeur grow with his ears and nose as the years pass. His robe falls to ruin until someone brings him a new one. His long gray hair hangs in knots, but he never stops his studies or his research except to tend to the needs of the people. A true wise man tends to the needs of his people. All the ancient books say so.
The Omen
Many years ago, when Vardigas felt his age less and moved about more, he tended to a birth far out from the village. In the dead of winter, under the brightest full moon he had ever seen, a child came squalling defiance into the world. As the child drew its first breath the moon began to grow dark. As the child screamed its fear and frustration the shadow of the world took a great bite out of the moon. As the minutes passed the child shrieked its power and glory, the moon vanished from the sky, and the world grew truly dark. In that darkness the child stilled and softened and grew quiet and slept.
Since that dark night Vardigas has spent every spare moment and copper coin he could scrounge buying and reading books on astronomy and omens and signs. Every spring and fall he buys all he can find from the Traveling Carnivals. Every season he watches the sky for new signs. He spends sleepless nights studying the movements of the planets and the stars.
Over the years he has learned a bit about the dark moon child. The child is nothing special, only a sign of times to come. The times will be light or dark and the child will reflect those times. Vardigas watches the child closely and keeps his secrets to himself. He wouldn't have any harm done to the child. Who knows how the less educated and less wise would take these signs and omens? A true seer reads the signs and prepares, but does not interfere. All the ancient books say so.
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