The Chained Watcher

Backstory: Mysterious Shopkeep (2!)

Continuation of the whole shopkeep bit he ended up doing for a while. (It lets me make up lots of fun magic items without worrying too much about them becoming relevant later)

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Flopping back on the ground with a sigh, he looked at the intricate carvings on the new door and felt pleased. This should make things a lot easier. He's upgraded his door so he doesn't have to manually place it every time he wants to go to a new place. All he needs to do is power it, and it'll find a vacant space in a random place to link to his little shop of mysteries.

His thoughts are that he's most likely to end up near an otherworlder by doing this, since he infused that intent into it when he made it. Besides, their luck will naturally draw them to encounter the good fortune of finding his shop.

Of course, he can still manually target where he wants it to go, but for the most part he doesn't want to bother finding both an interesting city and an empty spot to stick the door.

Interestingly, when he'd tested it it didn't seem to try to put itself near the party of Heroes that had already gotten things from him. Is that because he doesn't see the need to offer them anything more? Or is it because they don't want to think about their favors? Perhaps he'll never know.

Well, better to leave them to grow and develop for now. With the level of assistance he's already given them, doing much more could end up with them relying on superior gear instead of training their skills. Talk about an easy way to get themselves killed...

Should he see if there's any other interesting existences among the mortals with the luck to find his shop? Heroes would be ideal, of course, but Heroes are not the sole possessors of otherworldly luck, simply the most common.

(I've kinda just started using "Heroes" as a general catch-all term for otherworlders summoned from a different plane. That doesn't mean they'll all fight on the side of good, but even the evil ones are still Heroes for their own side.)

Hah, a Hero would be quite affronted to hear that they are seen as 'common'. Not that they're really all that common, but for some reason many kingdoms and small factions are under the belief that summoning a Hero will solve all their problems. It's usually partially successful, dealing with the immediate threat, but then they start having long term problems as the Hero starts insisting on improvements and societal changes to match their former home.

Some of the time this results in the betterment of the kingdom or faction as a whole, but often enough it ends in the summoners assassinating their Hero before the disrest among the populace can grow out of control. Even worse is when the assassination fails, creating a Hero bent on revenge and usually more powerful than before.

Hmm, it wouldn't hurt to try his luck. If nothing interesting is around, he'll just have to wait a couple years and check again.

Making sure his disguise is fully activated and his cloak conceals his wings, he rests his hand against the center of the carvings on the door and pushes magic into the engraved channels. The randomization is more than a bit inefficient, but that's likely due to it seeking out points of interest without him having any idea where those points of interest are.

Violet light races along the intricate lines as he feeds more magic into the enchantment, waiting until he feels it settle before cutting off its supply and removing his hand. There we go, that should do it. Now all he should need to do is wait.

As a being who considers decades to be a reasonably short length of time, he has plenty of ways to keep himself busy while waiting for time to pass. That's actually how a lot of the more recently constructed living statues inhabiting his retreat's mountain ended up coming into existence. Spare time, combined with a lack of inspiration, leading him to just mold lumps of stone into the shape of animals.