Monty's Hall

Chung Quel, I am just now beginning to regret having burned my last note in an alter that was probably not Taoist. I used to think that everything up there was connected. There was just some huge switchboard, and all the gods were really just emanations of the same god. Recent events are really beginning to make me question that. Everything is getting screwy in my head and I’m having a hard time keeping it all straight. Faith is easy when the truth is simple. It gets more complicated as the truth gets more complicated—not because you doubt, but because of the difficulty of keeping to object of faith straight in your mind. It’s simple to cling to the simplicity of the other version—but that is probably how my dumb old dad got stuck in the dumb old corrupt church of Constantinople. Maybe I can forgive him a little—because now that I am beginning to see the complications, I can see the appeal.

Anyway, as you can probably tell I am having some questions here—so I think I am going to have to rely on your skillful bureaucrats to filter out the information you want from the self-reflection that will be mixed in. Also, dear bureaucrat, I hope you are the same bureaucrat from the last letter (and that the last letter go to you, though now that is in doubt). Maybe as I send more of these your way we will come to know one another a little better. I would like that very much. Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. I do hope the information is valuable. I am beginning to understand a bit why CQ would not know it all already, and why he should be honored for this quest of his.

Okay—so a little back story. As you may or may not know (or care to know) I am a follower of Christ. I was raised in Constantinople and there were a number of false followers of Christ there. I got in a huge fight with my dad over opulence and poverty and I ran away to the woods. There was another prince in India who ran away to the woods and sat under a tree for a long time until he figured a few things out—and those were some good things to figure out, but he got some of them wrong. I had heard of this guy, and I thought, well—this sitting by yourself near a tree thing makes sense—but why don’t I sit closer to the top of the tree. Everyone seems to talk about more important truths as in some way higher, so I thought if I did the same thing as that guy I might get a more important or clearer picture of the truth.

So I saw in a beech tree (because I like their bark a lot) and just watched the forest for a long time. I saw all of these different animals interacting with one another. My favorite were the birds, because they spent a lot of time just yacking and singing. Sometimes one would get very self important and just sing a song by herself for hours. Occasionally I would see a traveler go by and I saw him weighed down with goods or armor and the task that required him to wear those things.

I had planted a few bean plants, and I was able to harvest them once my own beans ran out. Also, a lot of other animals came by to eat those beans along with me. OH GOODNESS! THERE WAS A WEASEL THAT CAME BY ONE TIME. I CAN’T BELIVE I AM JUST REALIZING THIS NOW. THEY HAVE HAD THEIR EYES ON ME THIS WHOLE TIME. PLOTS WITHIN PLOTS. CHUNG QUEL—SERIOUSLY, IF YOU HAVE NOT MADE CONTACT WITH THE WEASELS, AND I AM ASSUMING YOU HAVE BUT JUST IN CASE, THESE GUYS HAVE THEIR EYES AND EAR EVERYWHERE. NOTHING GETS PAST THEM!

Anyway, The travelers would always ignore this abundant food source that all of the people—I mean, animals, but I don’t know why we make this distinction--who weren’t preoccupied with nonsense would gladly share with me. After a while I realized that what was going on in my home town wasn’t that people were being intentionally cruel to the poor. Instead, they got so caught up in the pursuit of shiny nonsense or power or whatever dumb stuff that the poor who they walked by every single day were as invisible to them as this bountiful bean plant that fed so many birds, and squirrels and OF COURSE EVEN A FEW WEASELS, I CANNOT BELIEVE I AM REMEMBERING THIS ONLY NOW.

It was around the time that I noticed this that I began to receive answers to my nightly long-form prayers to Jesus. He would swing by and we would talk. We developed a very close relationship over a couple of years. One day I told him directly about how I thought I was pretty smart for having sat in the top of the tree, rather than at the bottom, and that I got a better vantage point and saw a little bit more clearly the truth than the guy of in India. Here Jesus got a little angry with me—but you know, that gentle anger that he gets. He explained to me that there were so many different forms on nonsense that blinded people to the joy of sharing and communing with others and the suffering that their own actions caused to others around them that Jesus had to take different shapes and forms in different places in order to help clear the smoke out of peoples eyeballs and pull the cotton out of their earballs. He had gone and had a nice conversation with the other guy under the tree—and that was before he talked to Diogenes in the barrel (which was low to the ground) and before he was even called himself Jesus.

I made a lot of inferences from this conversation. Basically—every deity was just some manifestation of Jesus, trying to clear up the senses of people who had driven themselves made with dumb ole’ chores that didn’t make any sense.

So, in all of my travels I would always talk to people about their myths to try to figure out other guises Jesus had taken. I met him as a lady in Russia, He was a lot of different people in not Nordic countries (though, I told a few people about him by the name I knew him and they seemed to really like it). I was just traveling around talking like this when I met the Danger Gang—you met them too, they’re all these other guys I was hanging out with when we talked to Shang-Ti and you came to visit. We traveled around a lot faster—I died once and Jesus told me that I really needed to stick with them, we were walking around a tree. I met a lot of deities that did not seem like very good guys. I figured they had to be different guises of Jesus and we were just moving so quickly that I couldn’t figure out the puzzle, and how he was helping people clear their eyes. See, evil wasn’t really a present thing—it was just people getting blind to the goodness of creation.

I think I might have been wrong about that. Anyway—that is enough of the story to explain what just happened today. So, in case that last letter didn’t get to you, we had just gotten rid of some manticorpses and were in a room in Shrenigar. There was a secret entrance in the floor, and we went down it and landed in a circular room with 10 doors and an alter. Door 1 was due west, they were evenly spaced apart, and the alter was between doors 5 and 6. I think that should be enough information for the bureaucrat to get a really nice picture to Chung Quel of the room, and its location.

There is an abjuration magic on the walls here. Deepak, one of our two theif companions, looked worried. Over each door was a sandskrit inscription. Arben was able to sound them out, and Deepak told us what the words were. Here’s a list. The One struck through are the doors we’ve opened, more explained below.

1.Shiel Putri (rides bull holds trident and lotus) gives blessings 2. Brahma Charini (holds pot and rosary 3. Chandra Gonta (has gold skin, rides tiger, 10 hands and 3 eyes) 4. Kushmanda (8 arms, lots of weapons, rides a tiger, shines like the sun) 5. Scandamatta (rides lion, has a baby, 3 eyes and 4 arms) has baby 6. Katya Yani (3 eyes 8 arms lion) 7. Kala Ratri (4 hands: clever, toarch, rides an ass) 8. Maha Gowri (4 arms rides a bull) 9. Sididatri (rides a tiger, has 4 arms) 10, Duchera (old name for a festival – The Sun Will Not Rise Festival celebrating the defeat of Ravana)

So, we opened door 7—there’s a fake alcove and Ratri in one of her manifestation rides out. She is riding an ass, and they both attack us. The thieves grovel. We take her out with some, but not much, difficulty at which point she dissolves, and Deepak’s pal rolls around in the dissolving goop.

This is the event that threw me for a loop. You see, Jesus rode a donkey—it was kind of a big deal. That story is not a hard one to find, so I’m sure you know it. I won’t bore you. This sort of parallel symbolism is usually a good clue about how a deity is Jesus. But—look, I am not sure about this—but I just really get the sense. Okay—so if Jesus’s aim is to lift the wool from people’s eyes so that they can see the bounty before them and share it with everyone around them he has to get them out of the weird system of chocobo races they’ve imposed on themselves. But—I think someone like this is just going to attack you and get you full of energy and make you feel more stuck in those very chocobo races. It might be that people don’t get themselves stuck in those blind mazes of nonsense on their own—there might acutally be evil forces luring them into those blind mazes. I mean—there might be active evil in the world, rather than just inattentive nonsense. I’m not sure what you think about this. I mean, you make it your job to know about all of these goings on, so you probably know the answer to this. Man, if I had some time, I would love to get you and Jesus on the bough of a tree for an afternoon. We could eat some beans and have a grand old time talking this one over. Whew anyway, I feel a lot better with that off of my chest. I’m going to work this over for the next few weeks.

So, just to finish things off, since you probably want to know about this secret room. Well, we found out that what we are supposed to do is open the 10th door—it’s named after a festival of the destruction of this NASTY rakshasa named Ravana. He had made some deal where he was indefeatable by the gods and by other demons—but then a human took him out. So—for some reason, we think, we can’t open that door until we open all the other doors. We are doing that one by one.

When we opened the scandamatta door, her baby asked us where the spear of vel is (we of all people should know) and that one day a man of his name would be born but fail in his goal. I’m not sure what that means.