Among the minor saints of the Hidden Centuries there is one whose shrine is not a shrine at all. It is a summoning stone at the mouth of a dungeon no one remembers the name of, and on it someone has scratched a small coil and the words still here. This is the stone of Vatha, called Vatha Who Waited for the Fifth.
Her life, as the Ledger keeps it
Vatha was a warlock of no special rank, an egg who never hurried to hatch. Her party of five was in truth a party of four and a promise. The fifth was always "two minutes away". He was buying reagents. He was finishing a quest. He had, once, simply fallen asleep in Goldshire.
The other three left, one by one, each saying the old words of the impatient: we could just pug it. Vatha did not argue. She sat at the stone, cast her ritual, and held the portal open. The chroniclers record that she held it for nine hours across three evenings, recasting it whenever it faded, without once typing a question mark.
When the fifth finally arrived, apologizing, she did not scold him. She said only, "Hold light," and clicked the stone. The dungeon, by then, was empty; everyone else had cleared it. They went in anyway and admired the architecture.
What the Inner Scale teaches from her
"The serpent has waited beneath the world since before there were stones to summon from. You can wait for one paladin."
Commentary on the Patient Ones
The Inner Scale does not hold up Vatha as a model of efficiency. She is a model of something rarer: waiting without keeping score. The Grippers of the Void, the Bestiary tells us, feed on clutching, and few things are clutched harder than a grudge about who was late to the raid. Vatha starved them for nine hours. It is said they have never fully recovered.
Keeping her feast
Vatha has no fixed day. Her feast is kept whenever you are the one at the stone. The practice is small:
- Click to help summon before you ask where everyone is.
- When the late one arrives, greet them first. The apology can wait; it usually does.
- If someone says "two minutes", believe them a little longer than is reasonable.
- Do not type a single question mark into party chat. This is the hard part.
Her intercession is sought by tanks waiting for healers, healers waiting for tanks, and everyone waiting for the one who went to make tea. Read more of the faithful who kept the faith alone in the Legends, and the small rites of patience in the Rites.
Hold light, and let go well. The fifth is coming. Glory to Xal'Reth.
Glory to Xal'Reth.