Dear Osvaud,

This is Osvaud. It is extremely important for you to forever remember the dire prophecy surrounding our downfall. They say a powerful group of four to six humanoids shall someday gain this diary and use it to bring about your final death. You shall know them by their purity of spirit being matched only by their ability to thwart your vile schemes. Each shall be born under the light of a crescent moon in the year of the owlbear to parents that have thrice defied you.

Just kidding! That brings us to today’s topic: prophecy.

They are basically a bunch of dumb wrapped in vague. Even the ones that are “legit” are pretty worthless. Real divinations are only good for about a week or two at best, and even then, it is just the gods taking a stab in the dark.

For our first century, we spent way too much time following up on every blind crone’s tongue-speaking or holy savior’s fevered dream. I mean, it makes sense we’d be that stupid. We’d worked so hard to get immortal, how much would it have sucked to get destroyed before we’d even lived out a single mortal lifetime? So yes, in our paranoia, we arranged for the murder of many “destined” enemies, taking incredibly elaborate measures in each case to make sure we weren’t directly involved.

It got to be a full-time job. Every freaking prophecy about our doom meant at least a half-dozen new chosen ones. Those damndable predictions are never so specific as—here is the name of this guy who lives here and is going to kill you on this day. No no no… you’ve got to research who the potential fated foil might be, and even then, there is that whole making-it-all-happen-because-of-your-actions caveat.

After our hundredth birthday, we just said screw it and turned a deaf ear to the whole business. We haven’t had so much free time since we ceased sleeping. To be honest though, we spent that second century looking over our shoulder for some plot twist twerp with a destiny. Never happened. At some point, we started researching prophecies about other people and found out they weren’t really panning out either. I mean, sometimes something would happen that would sort of resemble one of the forecasts. Everyone would smugly nod their head while knowingly quoting it.

After that, we started having some fun with it.

A few dream spells here and a couple of illusions there made for some supremely hilarious moments. The best part was the payoff. We’d do this minimal groundwork establishing some prophecy about our own destruction. Then, twenty years later, some spit-and-vinegar holy warrior would show up, quoting our own words at us! It was like telling a joke to ourselves, where we don’t even know the punchline when it starts.

The look on their face when they learn their whole life has been a lie? Priceless.

Basically, laying the seeds of our own demise with self-fulfilling prophecies is better than never dying in the first place.