There's a thing called a Starstone, on this plane he picked at near-random because he wanted to be really, properly unknown for a while. Apparently, if you touch it, you become a god. There's a whole temple devoted to it, giant pit around it that must be crossed, death defying trials to prove oneself worthy, so on, so on. The usual for these sorts of things.

Franky, he'd really rather ignore the whole thing, it seems like a a massive pain in the arse. Unfortunately for him, though... he's seen the face(s) of Evil, obnoxious and pretentious capital letter and all. He's fought it, with all that he can do and all that he is. He's long since lost the ability to be small and out of the way and live a quiet life of good. So if he sees a lever by which he can make Evil cut its shit out, he can't not go pull it. It's not who he is, who he possibly ever was, but definitely not now. He faced down Mephistopheles and told him to fuck off back to Hell, and before that grabbed a piece of the Plane of Shadow and taught it how to be kind, and a million other things he doesn't keep track of anymore. There is a way he can make things better, and so he must cross this stupid damnable pit and go take these stupid fucking tests and if he is angry at needing to do this, it's angry that anyone, ever, needs to do this. It shouldn't be anyone, but since this is needed, it might as well be him.

He can't even put it off, his Plane Shift landed him in Absalom. The stupid rock of stupid divinity is right there. If he'd landed somewhere else on this plane he could have wandered around the world a bit before he gave up and went into that place, had some time to not-think about it, maybe. But he's a rogue, and he knows how to take advantage of openings like he knows how to breathe, and. It's right there. So he must. Simple as that.

He's pretty sure that there's usually some kind of spectacle, when someone attempts the Test of the Starstone. There's kind of a lot of open space around the pit, so people can see if anyone walks up to it and tries to cross. Likely there's a lot of preparation and getting one's affairs in order, well wishes and leaving no things undone and maybe paying for a resurrection if someone fails. Obviously, he will not be doing that. Veron Chandler, shadowdancer and epic (or, as they call it on this plane, mythic) rogue thinks anyone knowing he's doing this is dumb. If anyone knows he's even here, he's screwed up. There will be no careful and long preparations, no searching of historical tests to figure out how the successful ascensions went. If what he's learned from being an ordinary traveler in Absalom for a couple of days is all he needs, great. If he's prepared with what he has with him, and he has a lot of random adventurer crap crammed into his portable hole and bag of holding, fantastic. If he's not, darn. If he dies, he dies. He is not in this profession for its fabled longevity, and he doesn't particularly want to advertise to his peers if he's about to ascend. Some of them probably know, some of them probably helped set this up, but he knows what he is, and he would be wasted if he lingered to beg reassurances from gods that have better things to do than help him sort out his insecurities. The opportunity would be wasted.

No one sees him cross the pit. The other particulars of how he does it don't really matter, a giant pit is really not much of an obstacle to someone of his power. It's mostly to keep out the riff-raff, stop dumb kids from doing dumb things that would get them killed, that sort of thing.

The interior of the cathedral (oh, fine, Cathedral) itself was going to be another matter. At least, that's what he was expecting. What he gets is... underwhelming. Oh, sure, he can see how it catches and tests people. He can see the way this place is built to build and orient itself from those who enter. He understands that it draws on them to find their weaknesses, and then exploit them. It's beautifully clever and even more beautifully designed, and he'd be tempted to be distracted by it, if he wasn't here for a reason greater than this place. But he's a man of cloak and dagger, of shadow and silence, and by now his mind is only apparent to people when he wants it to be. Why would he give anything in here anything to go off of in the first place? He declines.

And so what he gets is an empty cathedral, and a rock. The rock is, to its credit, glowing. The only light in this whole place. His footsteps would be the only sound in this expanse of empty space and darkness if he were of a mind to make sounds, but he's not. He keeps expecting something to happen, something he missed, something in here that's supposed to try to stop him, but. ... There's nothing at all. He walks silently towards the glowing rock, and absolutely nothing makes any attempt whatsoever to test him. He's immediately suspicious of this, of course. It seems like a trap. But he looks, really looks, with his years of skills and his understanding of things that can be traps, and. There's just nothing. Nothing except this rock, that sort of hurts his eyes to keep squinting at.

After another dozen perception checks, he gives up and decides that whatever it is isn't going to get him until he touches it. (He already tried touching it with the standard issue 10 foot pole. That didn't do anything either.) So, fine. He'll poke the fucking thing, and see what the hell all of this fuss is about.