From Introduction:
Legend has it that in ancient times, King Geddorah pulled a strange, green stone — called only ὁ λειμωνιάτης λίθος in the sagas — from out of a mystical lake and gave the stone to his most trusted vizier. Forever after, he was knows as the wisest of all the kings who reigned in the ancient world.
But when King Geddorah died, his vizier disappeared. Did he perhaps have a premonition of the king's future line? Could he have known that the next seven generations to rule that same throne would include the only three kings in history considered more depraved than even the Monster King, and three others who would live on in slightly lesser, but still prodigious, infamy?
During the following centuries, a series of local oracles flourished in various places around the countryside. All featured an oddly-coloured man, hung from the ceiling of a cave, surrounded by phantasmagorical visions swimming in the air, prognosticating on obscure subjects (mostly news of far-away relatives) in exchange for food and small amounts of coin.
Few historians have realized that these oracles were all the same man, for that vizier still retains possession of the mystical green stone, and has never died in all these many years. But his days of wandering from place to place came to and end when he was kidnapped and put to work for others. These days, a secretive cult of insane zealots keeps the Verdigris Oracle hanging from the ceiling in a cave whose walls are plastered, pristine white. Those that wish to see the Oracle must pass through several layers of thick, black curtains full of incense and darkness before they emerge into this brilliantly-lit room.
And there is the Oracle, hanging in empty space, a sickly, rusty green colour. Phantasms of your mind hover around him, twisting and writhing, appearing and fading away. The Oracle's mind-hands reach through you, pushing into your psyche like a butcher's hands into a mass of ground meat. Your questions are answered, your fears allayed or stoked as the truth demands. Your gold is taken from your hands to feed the zealots, and the plight of the Oracle himself is forgotten.