Grim the Good, Sapient Mead-Horn

'He'll have his great drinking horn brought into the hall, called Grim the Good, a magnificent treasure, ornamented with gold, and with magical powers. There's a man's head on the narrow point, with flesh and a mouth, and it can talk to people and tell them what the future holds for them and warn them when there's trouble ahead. It will be the death of us all if the king finds out that we've a Christian with us. We'll have to be very generous to Grim.'

- Thorstein Mansion-Might, (Anon., 14th century AD)

Grim the Good is an enormous drinking horn, taller than a man, owned by the giant king Geirrod. It has a face that speaks and predicts the future, making it a potent tool for Geirrod to ensure his safety and power. However, Grim is somewhat capricious and open to being flattered by others. Some men give gifts to Grim in order to gain his allegiance, but the greatest honour one can do to Grim is to empty him of mead in one draft. So far, none but King Geirrod have managed to do this.

From the Classics: The Cave of the Sibyl

The mad prophetic Sibyl you shall find,
Dark in a cave, and on a rock reclin'd.
She sings the fates, and, in her frantic fits,
The notes and names, inscrib'd, to leafs commits.
What she commits to leafs, in order laid,
Before the cavern's entrance are display'd:
Unmov'd they lie; but, if a blast of wind
Without, or vapors issue from behind,
The leafs are borne aloft in liquid air,
And she resumes no more her museful care,
Nor gathers from the rocks her scatter'd verse,
Nor sets in order what the winds disperse.

- Virgil, Aeneid

The mad prophetess who lives in this cave does not admit visitors. If any person tries to force her to tell their future, they will earn the wrath of the Furies. Instead, this Sibyl writes down her visions on leaves of paper and posts them outside the entrance to her cave. She uses tree sap to affix the paper to the rocks and trees, like a prophetic bulletin board. However, the sap is not very strong and whenever the winds blow roughly, the papers are carried away.

Many men have come here to pore over the loose pages, searching for their fate amongst hundreds of others. A certain village which lies downwind of the cave has become noted for its prescient inhabitants, who often know what is going to befall them before it actually happens. A little further afield, there is a sage who has spent most of his adult life compiling the pages of the Sibyl into a single tome. The specific prophecies he sells on to those who seek them; what interests him are the more esoteric pages which seem to tell not of the future but of the past - perhaps of the very genesis of the world.

Rumour has it that this sage was once betrothed to the woman who is now the Sibyl, before she was struck down with her holy madness.