Amnesiac sleeper of Elm

The amnesiac sleeper of Elm is a man without a name in the campaign Zincirsiz ("Unchained"). Jonathan River and his companions found him in the small room they reached from the Hall of the five doors, sleeping on a stone bed and breathing normally. He looked to be in his early forties, with a stubbly beard and the clothes of an ordinary working man. Shadows out of the ordinary hung about the room, with the image of a beholder.¹²

Waking

Jonathan woke him with the sharp smell of an onion; as his eyes opened, the image and the strange shadows vanished. He did not remember his own name or where he came from. His last memory was of skipping stones on a lake, and he remembered no call. He was very thirsty and drank the water he was given. Shown a picture of a beholder, he said that he vaguely remembered it from a dream. He remembered doing several kinds of work, smithing among them, and his hands were somewhat callused; magic did not strike him as strange.²³⁴⁵

He read the four lines of the Four-line parchment, and texts in Elvish, Lingua Imperium and another tongue from Jonathan's notebook, all with the same ease, without noticing that the languages had changed. Jonathan knew of the gift of reading every tongue from some who make pacts, but did not think it the only answer; Max suggested that the man's dreams were making the shadows. These remained guesses.⁶⁷

Tests

There was no way out of the room but the single door. Jonathan's ritual for sensing life found insects, snakes, scorpions and fish in a pool around them, but from the man it gave no single kind: traces of human, animal and other existences, of differing strength and freshness. Jonathan pressed him against the wall, cut him with a dagger and touched the wound with silver; the blood was ordinary, and the silver drew no reaction. Jonathan kept the bloodied coin. The man swore that he remembered nothing beyond what he had told them, and Jonathan's magic found no spell or enchanted thing upon him.^8910111213

In the dark he said he could see only as much as any human; a thrown object struck his head, for he could not catch it. All he wanted, he said, was to get out of the cave, eat, and find his way in some nearby town, though he did not remember where he had meant to go. When Jonathan touched him with the relic he carried, it tightened and the being within made itself felt, and the man was afraid. The relic's voice claimed it had no part in this, and said that the man felt as though he had lately been human and before that other kinds, and might change again; that was its reading, not his story.^14151617

The dream test

Jonathan put him back to sleep, and Olaf laid him on the stone bed. About an hour later, as his sleep deepened, the edge of the light began to bend with his breaths, though the beholder image did not return. For twenty-five to thirty minutes the companions made the sound of water beside him; the sound of water drew nearer behind the walls, and drops seeped from small holes that Olaf made in the wall. Telling him a story of a sword produced nothing at once, and the thought of having him dream up gold or a way out was never tried.^18192021

Left behind

Jonathan and Max argued long over leaving him, killing him or saving him. Jonathan did not kill him, and did not take him along. He renewed the ritual that let everyone breathe water, the sleeping man included, and as he left he set a loud sound beside the man's ear and closed the door, without waiting to see whether he woke. He said that a man not shown to be guilty should be able to make his own choice and have a chance to get out.²²²³²⁴

Who or what the man is, and what became of him, is not known.²⁴