Sussanoss of Sooths
Prime illithid oracle [it/its] / Merkhant (sect) / N
Sussanoss is a paranoid creature, to be sure. It lairs in the Great Bazaar, in a caravan of stone carved from the Underdark of some Prime world, and rarely leaves the safety of that place. It’s usually safely barred away inside the windowless tomb during what passes for day in the Cage, and only opens up it’s soothsaying shop at night. Perhaps it fears the light, or maybe the creature’s foreseen its own death on a bright day in Sigil (not that that’s worry most cutters, the weather’s so bad).
The illithid (woe betide any Clueless who calls the barmy creature a ‘Mind Flayer’) is an accurate soothsayer. It uses it’s considerable racial psionic powers to delve into the futures of it’s visitors. It rarely charges much money for this service, however, and often waives the fee altogether. It’s a good soothsayer, too, and often predicts unforeseen troubles ahead of unexpected boons, for the client, if he takes the right actions.
This is strange, considering Sussanoss is a Merkhant, right? The Gold-Hounds don’t ever give anything away for free, do they? To understand the illithid’s uncharacteristic generosity, you’ve got to consider to what uses it puts the information it gleams from cutters and their futures.
See, Sussanoss ain’t in it for the money at the front end. It sells the darks it tells the clients (and some that it doesn’t tell them too) to enterprising bloods like Shemeshka the Marauder or Estavan of the Planar Trade Consortium. Both of these knights of the post know a good deal when they see it, and pay Sussanoss handsomely to learn things that nobody else yet knows, uncover the outcome of plots learned ‘accidentally’ by the mind flayer, and hear chants that haven’t yet surfaced. Since the illithid can only pry a limited amount of dark out of each of the cutters it scans, it tells sooths for as many sods as possible (dragging them in for free tellings if need be).
The creature works like a thing possessed, picking up bits of dark here and there, trying to understand the intentions and futures of as many bodies as possible, in order to build up a big picture of the future. Such a thing would be eminently marketable, and thus would fetch the illithid a lot of jink.
The chant also goes that the creature’s got it’s own ulterior motive. It’s foreseen that one of its own clients will be an assassin that will strike a slaying blow. The illithid assesses each potential cutter before they gets a chance to be a danger (when they’re passing by on the street, sometimes) and entices those in who might harbour malicious intent. These unlucky sods get paralysed by the mind flayer’s mental blast, then the monster eats their brains while they’re still alive. Such are the ways of self-defence in the illithid world, and indeed, in Sigil.
Fee: A silver piece, maximum, or even free!
Further Reading: More fortune tellers are described here: Fortune Sellers.
Source: Jon Winter-Holt, mimir.net
