# Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 09November2022)



## Shemeska

So the original thread for the Storyhour was both so old and so gigantic that I could no longer rename the thread title to reflect new updates without having to get moderator help each time. So this thread will cover Storyhour updates from 2014 onwards. Very likely we'll see a third iteration of this before the story is finished years from now. After all, we've had an awesome ride up to this point, and we'll be barely half way through at the conclusion of the Pandemonium/Gehenna/Outlands plot arc.

And for everyone that has been reading this, both from the start and folks that have picked it up along the way: Thank you so very much. This has been a labor of love, a wonderful way to remember one of my favorite campaigns of all time, and also a way to look at how my writing has hopefully improved over the years. Still a work in progress of course.




Previous Storyhour thread covering the start through early 2014:  Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour (Updated 29 Jan 2014)


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## Shemeska

Cilret Leobtav stopped and smiled up at the figure seated on his shoulder. The blotch of darkness said nothing, but returned the smile with one like a darker rift torn in a starless sky.

"Fools..." The once-Guvner whispered as he looked up at a hillock a few hundred yards ahead of himself. He stood in the middle of gentle depression in the Outlands. If he were to be ambushed, this would be a perfect place as it obscured the landscape all around, allowing a force to assemble all around him if they wished.

"Whatever your intent, you will not proceed further." A single figure stood atop the ridge, looking down at the mortal and his silent companion. She gleamed silver in the sunlight.

"Your desires are worthless, rilmani nuisance." Leobtav sneered, stretching his fingers in preparation for what would come.

Atop the ridge, encircling the single mortal, space distorted and a veil lifted, revealing more than a hundred armored ferrumach. The first rank of many more, they stood at attention, spears and axes at the ready in the sunlight.

"Say what you will about our desires mortal," The argenach frowned. "But you will not proceed. The god of the tiere will remain imprisoned as his betrayed believers left him till they and only they return to unlock his chains with their forgiveness, requited or not."

"You cannot stop me from doing as I am commanded." Leobtav closed his eyes and called to mind the first of dozens of spells. As he did so, a dozen more emerged fresh in his mind, drawn from the endless well in which his master dwelled. He trembled and gasped at the pain it brought. Another grain of sand fell through the hourglass containing his soul, swallowed by that same void that swirled and hungered at the bottom.

The argenach laughed and drew her blade. "Look around you mortal. You have one final chance to turn around and leave with your life. What do you say?"

"Rilmani," Leobtav called out as his feet lifted off of the ground and crackles of energy surrounded his frail body, "I feel His touch carried on the wind. I see Him in every drop of blood I spill. I hear Him in every scream for mercy, and echoing in every death rattle when I give no quarter. The Waste itself spoke to me and I opened my soul to it. Now He whispers, I listen, and I obey."

The argenach blinked, confused at the mortal's reaction in the face of overwhelming numbers. She motioned and the ferrumachs began their suicidal charge.


****​

- PCs pursue Leobtav, taking Ficklebarb with them, leaving Doran, Settys, and Frollis behind.


The relatively mundane, terrestrial landscape and temperate biome faded away over the next several hours, replaced by a wasteland of withered scrub, dead or dying trees, and periodic swampland that forced them to divert their course in order to avoid the miasma of decaying organic matter and clouds of biting, stinging insects. Such was the nature of the Outlands as the plane mirrored the aspects of those planes it touched in tangent, metaphysically speaking, at the gates located in each of the 16 Gatetowns.

Flying as they were, they were able to avoid much of the difficulty posed by the harsher terrain as the Outlands took upon aspects of both Carceri and the Abyss. That stroke of good luck would not would not last indefinitely however.

"Does anyone else see that?" Fyrehowl stopped and looked hard into the distance, ears flickering ahead in an unconscious posture of alertness.

Tristol squinted his eyes, "See what?"

Fyrehowl pointed out on the horizon, out somewhere much closer to the Gatetown ring. "Out there on the horizon. Can't you see them?"

Something was out there. A lot of things in fact. Moving. Marching.

"I can't say I do." The aasimar squinted more and shook his head.

"I do." Toras frowned as he watched what looked at first like a line of ants moving on the horizon. "That's an army."

That it was. Beyond the range of most of their vision, excepting the celestial and half-celestial, a massive army marched in the direction of Plague-Mort. Forty thousand baatezu in orderly ranks, flying the banners of the Hag Countess of Maladomini, and beside them a second column of troops marched with smaller numbers and less rigid organization: 'loths, some ten thousand strong.

"That's odd..." Fyrehowl remarked as her ears lay back against her head. "Devils and 'loths. A bunch of them."

Clueless held his hands up warily, "They can keep on moving wherever they're going as long as it isn't the way that we're headed."

Toras squinted further, wishing that he had a spyglass. "I can't make out the baatezu much since they're marching in formation. But there's a bunch of mezzoloths, canoloths, yeah pretty much all of the lesser ones and cr*p..."

On the cusp of mentioning that the 'loths were accompanied by a cloud of flying slasraths, each of them carrying one or two robed figures each -arcanaloths- one of the flyers broke away from the main force and then vanished in the brilliant flicker of a teleport.

Clueless unsheathed Razor, "I don't know what that flash of light was, but that I saw."

"Someone saw us." Toras drew his blade as well. "Everyone get ready."

Mirroring the first burst of light from afar, a second series of teleportation flashes erupted all around them, causing them all to squint. When the light faded, they were surrounded by an assortment of fiends, in all comprising 3 cornugons, 10 mezzoloths, 2 osyluths, and nearly a dozen abishai of assorted colors. Each of the fiends snarled or chittered, hefting their weapons at the ready, but otherwise they stood their ground and briefly glanced up to the single figure sitting cross-legged atop a blue-black slasrath that hovered directly above and ahead of the party.

Looking down from his cushioned seat, an arcanaloth yawned and levitated a logbook and pen into his hands. "In the name of her infernal majesty the Hag Countess, Lord of the 5th, state your business for your transit in the region bordering Plague-Mort and Curst." Sneering at the party that garnered his primary attention, the greater yugoloth seemed distinctly bored and uninterested in his job, playing over glorified secretary and also marshal for what he clearly considered lesser beings.

Toras adjusted his stance, obscuring Fyrehowl as much as possible from the 'loth, lest her presence bring about more malice than disinterest.

"Speak now or I incinerate the lot of you." The 'loth's lip curled up, revealing a row of pearlescent fangs. "At least it would provide me with some amusement for today."

"No need to be hasty." Clueless replied, giving a slight bow. "We're here only in transit, seeking a criminal that passed this way a day ahead of us."

"A criminal?" The 'loth asked, barely sounding as if he honestly cared one way or the other. The baatezu below him however seemed at least marginally less hostile at the response.

Clueless recalled Leobtav's original association with the Guvner's, and his time in Hopeless. "Wanted for crimes against Thingol the Mocking, and for crimes against the Fraternity of Order..."

The arcanaloth held up his other hand, indicating Clueless to be silent. "So be it." He shrugged in as noncommittal way as he could. "No need to finish. I just need something to write. I really don't care as I said before. Kill this criminal if you wish, collect your bounty, or die at the hands of a pack of leomarshes. What happens to you is what happens. I on the other hand, I have a city to sack."

The fiend actually smiled at the last moment and then vanished along with his underlings in another brilliant flash of light.

Toras smiled and put away his sword, "Well that went a lot better than it could have. Saves us the time spent killing them all."

It went completely unsaid that had conflict broken out, the distant army would likely have set upon them en masse. It had indeed been most opportune that the fiend hadn't really cared about them.

"City to sack?" Florian looked troubled. "Which one and where?"

They would find out, but it would be a number of days still.


****​

Many hours later, having followed Doran's map from point to point across the landscape, most of them worn down or nearly unrecognizable by the passage of millennia, they finally came across a point both not on the map at all, and one immediately recognizable.

"What the hell happened here?" Fyrehowl gazed across a field of smoking ruins.

No birds sang. No insects buzzed. At the edge of the village a great circle of dead grass demarcated the boundary of something terrible that had touched, and where it had touched, killed. Twenty buildings of stone, wood, and thatch had been reduced to ashes, while a stone watchtower lay on its side, toppled over with its lower half melted by magic or acid, ultimately having collapsed atop a cluster of tents which still issued periodic gouts of flame and smoke.

"He's been here." Ficklebarb's eyes enlarged and he choked back a wail at what he, or a shattered part of him had done.

Dozens of bodies littered the ground, unmarked but unmoving, along with half as many black smears of greasy ashes, the latter killed by something much more destructive, but equally effective.

"This was a khaasta village." Toras glanced down at the corpse of an adult, lizard-like humanoid. He'd died with a spear in one hand and slaver's chains in the other. "They didn't have a clue who he was or what he could do."

"Just how powerful is he?" Tristol peered at the spell effects Leobtav had unleashed, all of them profound, all of them loosed wantonly. "This was like killing an ant with a fireball."

"Let's search the ruins." Toras suggested "If anyone is left, we need to talk to them and find out what happened."

Initially their efforts were for naught. Bodies within the ruins had been charred to lumps of charcoal, or withered husks drained of life. Leobtav had either been thorough in his cleansing of the village, or else the khaasta had been zealous in their assault. Spreading out though, further from the putative center of the circle of dead grass, they had better luck.

"I found someone!" Fyrehowl called out as her ears picked up on motion within the rubble of one of the cottages. A whimper and a swift hush, followed by a hand clamping shut over a muzzle.

The others gathered behind the lupinal where she stood next to a pile of fallen debris and a partially collapsed tent.

"Hs'kzik! Dzu'hathissim!" A wary, terrified cry emerged from the debris; part terror, part bravado.

"We're not the one who did this." Toras looked at the others, none of whom spoke khaasta. "You're safe. You can come out. We won't hurt you."

A hand covered in dusty brown scales lifted part of the tent wall and two pairs of reptilian eyes gazed out at the party. Tentatively they both stepped out and warily looked around, seemingly expecting their original attacker to return at any minute.

"We're friends." Fyrehowl asked, immediately drawing a spark of comprehension on the lizard-folk's faces. "You're safe."

The two khaasta were covered in dust and ash, and each was wounded in some capacity from fallen debris and fire. The first was an elderly female, mostly blind from cataract's that clouded her eyes, but she stood more erect and with more bravery than her companion, a young, terrified male whose posture and red, swollen eyes spoke of an inability to cope with loss. She had seen every shade of joy and loss in her long life, but he was young, and what he had witnessed had broken his spirit. Tears stained his cheeks, and clutched hard to his chest, he held a scorched, severed hand, probably all that remained of his fallen wife.

"Fyrehowl?" Clueless glanced at the lupinal. "They don't speak planar common, but you can speak to them regardless. So if you could translate that would be awesome."

Fyrehowl nodded and began speaking to the two frightened survivors. Despite speaking in planar common, they understood her regardless, hearing her words in their own tongue as soon as she spoke. Hearing the celestial calmed their nerves, as much as they could be calmed, having survived the destruction of their village, and having witnessed the deaths of their families, spouses, and children.

"What happened here?" Clueless looked at the wildly gesticulating khaasta, trying to parse meaning before Fyrehowl translated for them.

"Leobtav." The lupinal explained. "The village just happened to have been built here since the time that the map was written down. They weren't important. They were just in the way."

The khaasta male sat down and began sobbing once again, holding the wife's severed hand to his cheek.

"Their chief demanded to know who he was, and when he ignored them, they tried to take him captive. The commotion drew a crowd, which was when these two briefly saw him. They describe him as having "a demon upon his shoulder" that was whispering to him, telling him what to do."

Perched on Toras's shoulder, Ficklebarb whimpered at the mention of his master's companion, whatever it was. He'd felt its touch before, but never physically. As Leobtav's soul withered, whatever had latched onto him in Gehenna grew ever more potent, and now seemed able to physically manifest.

Fyrehowl gave the manifest conscience a look of pity before she continued her translation of the khaasta, "They say that he laughed as he destroyed the village building by building, slaying their warriors, slaying gravid mothers, and even the young and elderly. They also say that when he left, he took almost a score of the town with him, male and female alike, bending them to his will as if they were marionettes."


- fight with undead khaasta. Surviving khaasta are given food and what supplies can be spared. Party continues onwards, following Doran's map, following in Leobtav's footsteps.

- fight with possessed khaasta in the Outlands.


Another day passed without incident, but the landscape around them seemed bizarrely empty. Wildlife had fled, and wherever intelligent creatures had been present, they'd scattered or been slaughtered in Leobtav's wake. Most disturbing though was the aftermath of Leobtav's conflict with the rilmani.

Two times they came across battlegrounds, each of them strewn with the remnants of rilmani armor and weapons. The Outlands had swallowed the fallen rilmanis' essence, dissolving their corpses as they merged with the plane of their birth, leaving behind only the bizarre scattering of equipment. Each battlefield was ravaged by flames, acid, and the lingering reek of lightning generated ozone, as well as numerous instances of what could only be described as the aftereffects of wanton bursts of negative energy.

"The rilmani are hurling themselves at him by the hundreds," Tristol looked up from where he crouched over a pile of rilmani weapons and armor welded together by a combination of extreme heat and magnetism.

"That's not what bothers me." Clueless shook his head. "It's the fact that so far it looks like they've failed, and there's only six of us, not counting Ficklebarb."

"Let's worry about that later." Florian frowned, looking to the east where on the far horizon they could see a rising cloud of dark, heavy smoke forming - likely another battle between Leobtav and the neutral outsiders. "We can pray that they do stop him before we catch up, or if not, that they weaken him enough that we can do the deed ourselves."


****​

They moved on and flew for several more hours before the Outlands' light waned and drew to the first hours of darkness, forcing them to land and hastily prepare camp. None of them however could sleep, both from knowing what awaited them, and from the unknowns that surrounded that looming confrontation. What would Leobtav do if he found the tiere deity? Free it? Kill it? What consequences would either bring? What had touched him years ago in the frozen lower reaches of Gehenna?

These questions and more filtered through Tristol's mind as he sat in his tent, staring down at his spellbook, rememorizing his spells for the next day. Nisha sat next to him, curled up close and periodically tapping his toes with the tip of her tail.

"You shouldn't worry so much." Nisha pulled down on Tristol's spellbook with the tip of her nose, smiling as she looked up over the level of the pages.

"I can't help it." Tristol poked her nose. "There's a lot at stake tomorrow."

"You're being too serious." Nisha giggled. "Delightfully so."

"Delightfully serious? That's an odd thing for you to be saying."Tristol looked at her askance. "And besides, technically you've got a spellbook as well. I've seen you study it."

"I can be serious at times." Nisha shrugged as her eyes wandered over the formulae diagrams in Tristol's book. "Occasionally. Maybe. From time to time. About as often as I have my nose in a spellbook."

"You should do that more." Tristol smiled. "It'd be fun to see you develop more as a wizard."

"I don't need to study much."

"I didn't mean to downplay your ability as a wizard." Tristol hoped he hadn't offended  her. "You've just got fewer spells at the moment. But we can work on that. I'd love to help you there."

"No need." Nisha held up a finger and the tip of her tail. "Archmages don't need to study as much."

"Archmages?" Tristol cocked his head to side quizzically.

"Like me." Nisha quipped. "The Great Archmage Nisha."

Tristol had the sudden mental image of just such a thing: Nisha with the power of a Netherese archmage of old, but with precisely her current level of whimsy.

"Hey!" Nisha waved her tail in front of his face. "Tristol?"

"Hmm?"

"You looked a bit spaced out there for a second."

"I'm sure you'd make a great archmage." He tried to smile without looking terrified at the idea. "You're cute."

"So are you." She batted at his tail with her own.

"Awww…" Tristol put his spellbook down and wrapped an arm around the tiefling. The two of them hugged, he kissed her forehead and she his chin. If only for a moment they were both smiling and the recent and ongoing horror that had begun in Pandemonium for them seemed distant, at least until a quick series of taps on the tent brought them out of their introspective snuggle.

"You both should get up and take a look at this." Clueless called to them from outside. "This is something to see."

Nisha looked at Tristol and shrugged. The aasimar got to his feet and extended a hand. Smiling, she gave it a quick kiss and let him help her to her feet. Together they walked outside and looked around. All of the others were up and awake, all staring off towards the east.

"What do you make of that?" The bladesinger asked Tristol.

In the distance, only a dozen hours away, the horizon was illuminated with the ruddy glow of raging flames and frequent bursts and crackles of light.

"That's a battle." Florian unconsciously rubbed the holy symbol of Tempus between her thumb and forefinger. "That's a huge, huge battle."

"Go rilmani!" Toras pumped his fists in the air.

Clueless grinned and looked at the map. "Regardless of how that battle goes, it looks like we can probably catch up with Leobtav in fairly short order tomorrow. At least that's my take on the map. Distance has been odd out here, and it might be longer once we get started."

Brilliant blue bursts of lightning erupted in the distance, followed minutes later by rolling crashes of thunder.

"We should try to rest though." Clueless sighed. "If the rilmani can't stop him, we'll need to be at our best."

"Agreed," Fyrehowl's ears twitched at the thunderclaps.


****​

Five hours later the distant sounds of battle waned, the crackle and roar of spells faded, silence retook its throne, and the horizon grew still but for the lingering glow of small fires. The battle was over.

Sitting atop a cushion in Toras's tent, Ficklebarb's eyes stared off into space, looking past the horizon, looking past the battle, directed to where Leobtav stood. The professor's manifest, severed conscience whimpered as he felt an echo of his greater self's exultation. The rilmani had failed.

"Please." He whispered, shedding a tear that rolled down the ruddy scales of his face. "Please don't listen to it. Please don't do what it says. Please, please don't open the door..."

The sky was still swathed in darkness; the morning light had yet to begin its ascent into the sky. Just before dawn, the night's reverie was shattered by a thunderous roar from the east.


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## 81Dagon

Shemeska said:


> And for everyone that has been reading this, both from the start and folks that have picked it up along the way: Thank you so very much. This has been a labor of love, a wonderful way to remember one of my favorite campaigns of all time, and also a way to look at how my writing has hopefully improved over the years. Still a work in progress of course.



Thank you for bringing it to us! This is one of the best stories we've ever read, and we're so lucky that come hell or high water, you've kept telling it for so long! You've singlehandedly brought so many people into enjoying planescape and inspired so many more campaigns. It's really incredible Todd Here's to ten more years!!


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## Akhelos

So i have finally read all parts already written down....but wait, that  means I have to wait like everyone else till the enxt Post....  NOOOOOOOOO. Okay I can read Storyhour 2 while waiting *g*



Shemeska said:


> In progress, along with a bunch of other things (both products and stories).
> 
> Also, I got married last week. View attachment 59483
> 
> I've been a busy busy 'loth




Wait you finally found out your real Feelings for Akin and married  him? But did not invite your fellow Arcanaloths? I mean you own a third  of Sigil, enough space to accomdate all of your brothers and Sisters!!  That would have been the biggest Party ever! *gg* 



Shemeska said:


> The two arcanaloths said nothing, either verbally or telepathically  for some time as they watched the tower. Finally, one of them spoke and  broke the silence.
> 
> “So what is it that you’re holding there?” Apteris asked, taking a step  closer. “I can smell it on the wind, and the normal pitch is different  from when we otherwise come up here to chat.”
> 
> Alpthis chuckled and moved his hand to place a fist-sized object on the edge of the cliff.
> 
> Apteris wrinkled his nose and looked at the black lump of ragged flesh.
> 
> It was a heart, freshly removed from its recent body, likely by magic,  probably within the last few minutes, and there was a rather pronounced  bite that had been taken from the left ventricle.
> 
> “So who was the victim?” The sorcerer-monk asked.
> 
> “She was a traitor you see. Plotting against the mistress.” Alpthis  explained, licking a bit of blood off of his lower lip. “At least that’s  my excuse and I’ll be keeping to it.”
> 
> Apteris said nothing as he gestured to the heart and telekinetically  brought it to his right hand. He looked at the heart, sniffed at it like  some expensive delicacy, and then bit into it like it were an apple.
> 
> “So?” Alpthis asked while his brother finished his taste. “Your opinion on the matter brother?”
> 
> “I recognize the taste. Lucinda Ap Fireth.” He said, taking a second  bite before tossing it back for his brother to finish. “I -should-  recognize the taste. I was f*cking her you know.”
> 
> “Only when I wasn’t.”
> 
> “Not even then always.”
> 
> They shared a mutual chuckle; a rival out of the way, even if their beds might lack a partner for the short term.




I  have a Question. How did you handle it with Arcanaloth Deads? Did you  specifiy it or let it open...or according to the old Books? Or better  said, did you specify that they stay dead or that they can come back if  they are not killed on Ghenna...meaning that the two Brothers will  eventually meet their Victim in the Future again even if she will  definetly never speek with them again *gg*

And also I have an Idea....are the Gautiere....the Guardinals? Because the Name sound comparable...and I have a Crazy Idea. That perhaps the Guardinals or better the first of their Kind are risen Yugoloths/Arcanaloths. ^^ And that the imprisoned God is a Baernaloth who wanted to stop them, perhaps the one who created them....and that his Fall and their rise splitted the Baernaloths and make them the demented. And Yes I know that I am Crazy ^^

You  have a wonderful Story here and I can say that you really give a lot of  Inspiration for own Campaigns and perhaps we will use some of them in  our soon to be starting little campaign even if we are still planning,  especially how Dark it will be. But it will absolutely Incorporate  Yugoloths as we have at least one in our group, hunted by her own Kind  for a transgression she never did. ^^


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## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> Thank you for bringing it to us! This is one of the best stories we've ever read, and we're so lucky that come hell or high water, you've kept telling it for so long! You've singlehandedly brought so many people into enjoying planescape and inspired so many more campaigns. It's really incredible Todd Here's to ten more years!!




Thank you so much! 

I've really enjoyed telling it so far, and there's still a lot to tell!


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## Shemeska

Akhelos said:


> I  have a Question. How did you handle it with Arcanaloth Deads? Did you  specifiy it or let it open...or according to the old Books? Or better  said, did you specify that they stay dead or that they can come back if  they are not killed on Ghenna...meaning that the two Brothers will  eventually meet their Victim in the Future again even if she will  definetly never speek with them again *gg*
> 
> And also I have an Idea....are the Gautiere....the Guardinals? Because the Name sound comparable...and I have a Crazy Idea. That perhaps the Guardinals or better the first of their Kind are risen Yugoloths/Arcanaloths. ^^ And that the imprisoned God is a Baernaloth who wanted to stop them, perhaps the one who created them....and that his Fall and their rise splitted the Baernaloths and make them the demented. And Yes I know that I am Crazy ^^
> 
> You  have a wonderful Story here and I can say that you really give a lot of  Inspiration for own Campaigns and perhaps we will use some of them in  our soon to be starting little campaign even if we are still planning,  especially how Dark it will be. But it will absolutely Incorporate  Yugoloths as we have at least one in our group, hunted by her own Kind  for a transgression she never did. ^^




I generally handle it as follows: if an arcanaloth dies in Gehenna they're permanently dead. If they die outside of Gehenna if they're powerful enough they'll eventually reform in Gehenna, but weaker, and at the discretion of the Keeper of the Tower they might come back as a lower caste 'loth. With reference to the former lover of Alpthis and Apteris, it's open for debate where they killed her. They were eating her heart like an apple while in the Waste, but they could have killed her in Gehenna (the 'loth purge instigated by the Ebon happened across Gehenna, the Waste, and Carceri at roughly the same time).

The next two updates are going to have a -lot- of stuff answered, and a lot more questioned raised.


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## Shemeska

It began as a flash of swift and searing white light from the east, in the direction of the Cathedral of the Chained God. Then, like the thunder in the aftermath of a bolt of lightning reaching skyward, they heard the sound itself. It washed over them like a wave, profound and wrathful, but then the strangest thing happened as they felt a swift breeze blowing not away from the sound, but towards it.

"What in Andros' name was that?" Toras exclaimed.

"That sounded like a scream." Florian looked at the horizon with unease. "Or maybe less a scream than a roar?"

Clueless nodded in agreement, "I haven't heard anything like that since the 'loths tamed the Mother of Serpents."

Fyrehowl scowled at the mention of the 'loths, and the mention of the Oinoloth's chained beast elicited a snarl. "Let's not even bring them into this. But it was neither. That was an explosion."

"That rush of air." Tristol nodded at the lupinal. "If the gautiere deity was sealed somewhere, I think we just heard the door being forced open."

Collectively they paused and looked at one another. Leobtav could not be allowed to do what he wished, whatever in fact that was. They had to hurry.

"We should get moving." Florian rubbed her holy symbol of Tempus like a gilded worry-stone, but then she smiled. "Otherwise the battle might be over before we get there, and we can't have that."


****​

Making their way through the shifting, unmappable terrain of the Hinterlands, for the next four hours, silence reigned. The sounds of battle faded and where the horizon had burned and flashed, now it smoldered with what few fires remained in the aftermath. But as they approached the site of the battles they had heard, the site that Leobtav had spent years searching for, the Cathedral of the Chained God, they would find that not all was silent in Leobtav's wake.

"We should probably stop flying and do this on foot." Clueless remarked. "We won't have any cover up here."

"But flying is fun!" Nisha put her arms out, flapping them twice and then pantomiming a dragon breathing flame on some hapless village. "Besides I..." The tiefling's eyes crossed and her face wrinkled as a smell drifted across her nose, carried by the wind. She spat out a burst of Xaos-speak and shook her head, "Ok, yeah I'm fine with landing and going on hoof, foot, whatever. The smell of death on the winds says we should land."

The wind blew quicker, filling the air with the reek of death, suggesting a recent and obscene death toll only miles away now. Though it would slow them down in their pursuit, the oppressive smell was enough to force them to land and walk the remaining distance. 

They were silent for the next two miles, noting that the landscape was trampled by the passage of thousands of feet, marked by the footprints of boots and the clawed feet of the rilmanis' mounts as well. They had come across battles between the rilmani and Leobtav already, but the sheer number of individuals that had passed this way suggested that those battles had been mere skirmishes compared to what loomed ahead.

"Can you feel that?" Fyrehowl shivered and her hackles rose.

"Feel what?" Florian glanced back at the lupinal.

"The air feels, I dunno... heavy." She shrugged and tried to shrug off the disquieting sensation she felt as they approached the rise of a tall natural hill, earthwork, or -given its size- the lip of an eroded crater.

"I feel it too." Toras narrowed his eyes as he began the ascent. "I can't place it though. It just feels wrong. Terribly wrong."

"Foehammer watch over us." Florian whispered, touching her holy symbol to her lips.

Gathering themselves for whatever might await over the top of the rise, they pushed ahead, but no amount of preparation could truly prepare them for what they saw.

Tristol gazed in a mixture of fascination and horror at the landscape as they stood atop a circular rim surrounding a deep, heavy depression, "Mystra preserve..."

Stretching perhaps five miles in diameter, the crater-like bowl in the surface of the Hinterlands centered on a massive, circular cathedral at its center. Built of purest white marble and decorated with innumerable gleaming gemstones, it radiated a brilliant white light, and where that light touched, it evoked emotions of purity, glory, and devotion. That however was all the purity and glory that had existed in that place for eons. Stretching out from the base of the cathedral, the land was warped, looking like huge ripples in the surface of a lake as  if an angry titan had dropped a stone in a lake and then frozen it in some unmoving snapshot of time. Though ground itself seemed sick. Everything was stained a sickly reddish black, darker and deeper the closer to the cathedral, extending outwards like a leeching stain of blood.

"The ground," Fyrehowl's fur bristled and her ears lay back, "It's actually bloody."

Toras daubed two fingers on the ground, wincing from something and averting his exposed face as his fingertips came back smeared red and slightly sticky. "It's also hot."

Florian made a face as she looked at the blood saturating the ground, "What the hell happened back then to make it this way?"

"We might as well be in a deific domain." Clueless mused, "What happens is what happens really. What I'm keener to know is what the hell happened here just recently?"

Nisha glanced down across the depression and the carnage that covered much of it, with a distinct path laid out before them around which most of the devastation clustered. "We can follow Leobtav's path and find out. Not that I really want to."

"That's probably the best way to go actually." Toras mused. If he fought his way through any guardians in place, he'll have sprung any traps or wards as he went."

"Like wandering through the woods and being the second person on the trail." Nisha quipped.

"Huh?" Tristol looked at her, and the mischievous, knowing grin playing across her face. "Last time we were in Sylvania we went on a walk and you insisted that I go first..."

"Because the first person tends to walk into the spiderwebs first." The tiefling stuck her tongue out and smiled.

Tristol chuckled and shook his head. "I should cast web on you."

The two of them continued to banter between themselves while the others looked down, following Leobtav's path of destruction.

"He won't have left anything behind." All eyes looked down to Ficklebarb's thin, shivering voice. "He's so close to what he wants to find; so sure of himself that he won't even consider that you're coming after him. He isn't looking back."

“We’ll do whatever we can.” Toras put a finger on Ficklebarb’s side. “We’ll do whatever we have to do. Whatever happens to Leobtav, we’ll do what you want and need us to do.”

"He isn't looking back at all." The tiny not-familiar shed a tear. It fell, sparkling to the ground, sizzling as it contacted the earth. Purity had no place on the unhallowed earth. “Thank you, Toras and all of you.”

Tentatively they descended, winding their way down the slope of the depression and towards the looming cathedral. All the way they passed the ruin and detritus of Leobtav's passage. Rubble littered the ground: an amalgamation of destroyed constructs, dead rilmani, and butchered gautiere. The constructs were ancient, apparently placed there as guardians eons before, but the neutral exemplars and the gautiere were newly put to the slaughter.

They all turned and looked at a destroyed golem as they passed it, and then two more, both of them reduced to twisted hulks of still smoking metal. Dozens more were scattered about in pieces, having been physically torn apart, with sections of their armored bodies shredded and gouged as if by great claws.

"Those aren't of rilmani manufacture." Tristol remarked, looking at the vast difference in style between them and the rilmani remains hurled about like broken dolls across the landscape.

Most of the fighting had taken place further out from the cathedral itself, and past a certain point the land retained its original state, but even there it showed the signs of terrible, horrific things long in the past. The ground was still sticky with blood, and still radiated a dull heat that only increased with each passing step, but eventually it began to elicit a crunch.

"What are we walking on?" Nisha grimaced and glanced down at her hooves. "Because I really really want some horseshoes of levitation right about now."

Collectively they paused and looked down. The earth was no longer soil, but a mixture of bones of the ancient dead and fragments of wood burned to charcoal and metal long since rusted into powder. Ground down by the ravages of time were the fragments of utterly ancient siege engines, devices of war, chariots, wagons, and bodies of their riders and beasts of burden.

"These were tiere." Ficklebarb explained. "He had such contempt for them."

They stared at the familiar, wondering if he was referring to Leobtav or to the gautiere's imprisoned god. But regardless of which, he was correct about the remains they trod upon beneath their footfalls. They were tiere. They were the ones who had been there to seal and lock the doors of the Cathdral, the inner circle of their race killed in the throes of a betrayed power and the concomitant damnation of their entire race.

Fyrehowl's ears twitched. "Stop."

"What is it?" Clueless gripped Razor's pommel.

Tristol's ears did the same motion and he glanced at the lupinal with a look of odd, uneasy worry. "I can hear it too. That's... hideous..."

"What is?" Nisha glanced about, ignoring for the moment her sticky, bloody hooves.

Not immediately answering the xaositect, Fyrehowl whimpered. "Powers above..."

"Sh*t..." Toras didn't need to hear them in order to see them.

Ahead, beyond the point where there were no longer any of the original guardians and no more rilmani, there was one final group of beings: the gautiere. They wandered about aimlessly, confused and enraged, howling and screaming in absolutely, abject, irrational fury. They dug claws into their own flesh as they wept, shrieking till their voices dulled and broke, hands beating themselves in misery. How dare someone intrude upon this place! How dare he threaten to grant their creator and betrayer the peace of death! Their world, their reality, their self-identity was breaking apart.

So absorbed in their misery were they however, that they paid little attention to the group following in Leobtav's footsteps. While it would have been tempting to give them at least a glance of misery, the sheer malice of the gaitiere's wailing disabused them of the notion - all but Ficklebarb. In a very real way he, or at least another part of him, was responsible for their misery.

"Forgive me..." Ficklebarb silently mouthed to each and every one of them as they passed by.

Beyond them, the gates of the Cathedral stood wide, torn asunder as if by giant claws. Wrenched wide, the gleaming white gates were tarnished, scorched by flame or spark, and a rime of frost covered the remainder of their surface, radiating a palpable chill even at dozens of yards distance

"We may be too late..." Florian mumbled, but the thought was there already, haunting their minds as they listened to the gautiere lament echo across the landscape.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves." Toras spoke with affected confidence. "I don't think that..." He abruptly stopped and grabbed his sword to the ready as a lone figure shimmered into view atop the steps before the yawning entrance.

"Hold it, that's not Leobtav." Fyrehowl barked out a warning before Toras and her companions could overreact.

The silvery figure held up a hand in greeting.

"That's a rilmani." Clueless smiled. "Haven't seen one of them before."

"Only seen one rilmani ever really: one of the coppery kind." Nisha flicked her tail, causing the bell at its tip to ring once. "I rather miss him."

Putting away their weapons and much more at ease than when they first walked through the wasteland surrounding the Cathedral, they approached the lone argenach. The solitary argenarch smiled as best she could as they approached. She was covered in blood, much of it her own, and very likely she was one of the few survivors from Leobtav's passage.

"Greetings." The argenach's voice was weary and tired, and as they approached her, she slumped down and sat upon the steps rather than remain standing.

"Who are you?" Clueless asked, looking at her face and then to her injuries.

"There is not much time, nor is my name important." She waved away Clueless's concern. "You must enter and stop him."

Beyond where the argenach sat, the entrance to the Cathedral was smeared with blood, ash, and a pile of gautiere corpses where the damned race had literally tried to barricade the door with their own flesh to prevent Leobtav entry.

"Forgive me, but do you know why he's here, Leobtav that is?" Tristol looked past the rilmani and into the darkened interior of the Cathedral.

"No, we do not." The argenach shook her head and frowned. "What he intends and what empowers him is a mystery to us. But this place cannot be opened. Not now. Not yet. It was for the gautiere themselves to one day return and rectify their grand mistake, but not now, not like this. This was not supposed to be."

"We passed by a half dozen battlefields." Clueless explained, looking back Spireward. "You certainly tried to stop him."

"We tried, but we failed and now it may be too late. Alas we cannot enter beyond the gates, but you can. The Balance must be kept. The traitorous god must remain imprisoned until the day when the tiere return to open the door themselves, release him from his chains and forgive him, redeeming them both.” 

"How do you know that?" Fyrehowl tilted her head to the side. "You seem convinced of the gautiere opportunity to redeem themselves from their fall. Altruism isn't normally something that I associate with your kind, you're more complex normally."

"Altruism is meaningless without equivalent malice. The gautiere began this, and they should end this by restoring that Balance." The argenach's voice was calm and convinced. "We would disrupt the process if we intervened. We only desire to provide the chance to them. But we knew it would occur. We thought so..." Her voice trailed off with a tone of worry and uncertainty. "Long ago the aurumachs watched the tiere fall, imprisoning their divine patron and damning themselves. They cast great divinations and saw that a time would come when the gautiere would wander from Carceri and loose the shackles from their deity, and from themselves. Knowing this, we watched and protected this place, knowing that it was the gautiere and the gautiere alone who would decide what would one day happen. The Balance would be preserved and they would one day right the scales of their own souls."

"That isn't what happened though." Toras frowned.

"No, it isn't." The argenach blinked back tears of grief and confusion. "This was not to be. The aurumach prophecies have come crashing down. Fate has been twisted and perverted and I cannot see how. Please, you must stop this from going further."

"They can." Ficklebarb smiled at the rilmani. She looked into the familiar's eyes, and there saw something. Something subtle and unspoken, but it seemed to calm her worry.

"What the little one said." Toras placed the dragon on his shoulder, hefting his sword and glancing to the Cathdral's doorway. "Come on. We have to end this and put things right."

"We'll see you on our way out." Clueless nodded to the argenach and followed Toras along with the others.

They crossed over the threshold and into the gloom within, when the rilmani stood, turned and called out to them, finally smiling, “Kiro sends his regards. Good luck.”


****​

"Finally I am here. Finally after all of these years of searching." Cilret Leobtav smiled and looked down at the preparations that he had made for what would come next. 

Decades of his life had been spent in toil leading up to this. He had given himself to the Ash Singer, body, mind, and soul. There was nothing left of the man who had found the darkness in that forsaken patch of ground in Gehenna, there was only this blessed, hollow vessel through which his master interacted with this reality, so distant and so unprepared.

"Poetic in a way that I began my journey in a ruined cathedral in Gehenna's frozen depths, and now I stand in a cathedral paradoxically both younger and older than that one, prepared for the next stage of my journey."

The figure of the tiere deity made no response - the gautiere had seen to that in their own way eons before. Leobtav had simply embellished upon their sacrilege in his own horrific, profane way. Upon entry into the central, holy sanctum he'd gone swiftly to work, carving symbols into the ground whispered into his ear by the figure seated upon his shoulder, symbols spelling out words that burned his eyes and more than once caused his nose and mouth to bleed simply by exposure. Concentric intertwined rings he'd carved round and round the tiere god, along with a single word: a name, a description, a title of the entity, the smallest fragment of which perched like some black imp upon his shoulder, digging its claws into flesh and other, subtler and much more precious things as the time drew close to finish this portion of as Leobtav would phrase it, 'what had to occur for it all to happen once again.'

"I am ready." He whispered, trembling slightly as his vision blurred and his head pounded from the strength of the magic that he had carved into the floor - a channel, a siphon, a godtrap, a macerating, devouring maw. He was exhausted from the sheer physical labor and from the blood loss. But he was nearly done. "Everything that you told me in Gehenna will come to pass as it did once before. But this time perfect. This time as it should be. This time without their interference."

The thing upon his shoulder snickered and a voice flooded into Leobtav's mind.

"THE PUPPETMASTERS OF THE WASTE THINK THEMSELVES IN CONTROL. ANCIENT FOOLS. THEY HASTEN THEIR OWN OBLIVION. IGNORANT AND FULL OF NAUGHT BUT HUBRIS. THE IRONY..."

Leobtav whimpered as the darkness flexed its claws and dug into his shoulder once more.

"I am ready master. Please let this task finally be finished."

Leobtav cradled his hands together and felt them filled with a weight. Looking down he smiled at the dagger now present, having not been there a moment before. Made of crudely sculpted and chipped obsidian of a type familiar to any scholar of the lower planes of Conflict, it was new, as if it had been prepared for its sole task but then never used. Though it was not the intent of the design, it would be used for something thematically similar, but wholly elevated by comparison. Only not for the one whose deific heart it would be plunged into.

"IT IS TIME."

Leobtav smiled, closed his eyes, stepped forward and raised the blade.


****​


----------



## Tsuga C

Just grand: grand adventure, grand vistas, grand dreams, grand malevolence.  Keep it comin', Shemeska!


----------



## Shemeska

****​
The hallway stretched out before them as they trekked into the Cathedral's depths, dark beyond the mere absence of light - their conjured light seemed to degrade with each step, with small grain-like motes of light breaking off and devoured by the surrounding gloom as they progressed. It only added to their apprehension of what they would find at the end of their journey, and the surroundings themselves did not help either.

"Why couldn't they have built this as a happy place?" Nisha frowned as she gingerly stepped forward at point, a dozen feet ahead of the others, using a practiced eye and her own unnatural luck to scope for any traps, both magical and mundane.

"I think it was intended to be." Tristol's tail flitted side to side nervously. "But it certainly didn't stay that way."

"Imprisoned or not, it's a god's domain, and everything here changes to reflect it." Fyrehowl's own tail matched Tristol's nervous motions as she glanced at the bizarre architecture.

Flanking them, a line of larger statues glared down, their mouths open and frozen in alabaster snarls. They wore armor similar to the gautiere outside, but heavier, and of a much older, complex, baroque design. In one hand they held heavy silvery shields marred black with time's caress and in the other long spears whose silver spikes shown brilliantly as if new, evidently enchanted. Each was positioned such that they all seemed turned to collectively face any progressing further into the Cathedral, like a stone army prepared to fend off any invasion of the blasphemous sanctum.

"Creepy statues..." Nisha peered at their snarling faces and made her own growling expression back. "But at least Leobtav seems to have cleared out any traps. I haven't found a single one so far."

This of course was the precise moment that the party stood exactly halfway down the corridor, with an equal number of armored statues before and behind them, cutting off both routes. Collectively the statues stepped off of their bases with the sound of grating stone and shrieking metal grinding against joints not moved in eons.

"Oh you had to say that!" Toras put his hands up in the air and glared at the tiefling. "You just had to poke fate in the eye and stick your tongue out at it. Again!"

Nisha bit her lip and suppressed an inappropriate giggle, drawing her rapier in one hand and snatching a wand from her belt with the other, "If I could do that by making a joke, we'd be in a lot more trouble every day..."

"Everyone group together, we'll let them come to us." Clueless drew Razor and prepared for the attack.

Marching in lockstep, the statues advanced.


- here the PCs fight a dozen advanced caryatid columns. Skipping the full writeup of that fight.


Clueless sat down to rest for a moment on the broken remains of one of the columns, "Well, with the noise that created, now Leobtav knows we're coming after him. I suppose we don't have to worry about stealth from this point forward."

"How did -he- get past them without getting attacked?" Toras kicked a pile of broken stone and shook his head.

"How'd he get past an army of rilmani and gautiere?" Florian shrugged.

"How are we supposed to stop him when they couldn't?" Nisha's expression was dubious on the issue. "I know we've discussed this before, but still."

"Because you have to stop him." Ficklebarb's voice was even more unsteady than before; the not-pseudodragon was living on borrowed time. "Because I want you to. I'm the part of him that still cares, that looks in horror at what he's done, and is begging you to end this."

"What happens to you if we do?" Toras asked with a heavy furrow of his eyebrows, underlying his concern at what might mean killing Ficklebarb as well as his master if they were linked irrevocably.

"Whatever happens, you have to do it." The tiny dragon's expression was unreadable, "He's close."

With the warning provided by the last sane, good fragment of Cilret Leobtav's soul, the party clambered over the remains of the Cathedral's guardians. It wasn't very far as the familiar counseled them, and with a wary, heavy heart they progressed into the Cathdral's depths. The interior of the structure was larger than its exterior would have suggested, and while the vaulted, blackened corridor twisted, turned, and split numerous times, they followed Ficklebarb's advice on the swiftest route to the very interior, and indeed he was onto something as with each turn the gloom slowly but surely lifted and the passage grew wider and its architecture more and more elaborate.

"We're here..." Ficklebarb whimpered.

"What the hell is that?" Toras gripped his sword and gasped at what they saw at the Cathedral's heart.

The chamber was massive, easily encompassing the size of the entire edifice as viewed from the outside. Concentric rows of empty pews surrounded an open center; places where the entirety of the tiere race would have sat, enraptured by the manifest presence of their god. Yet at the Cathedral's heart where their god would have reigned supreme, things were not as they were originally intended.

There, atop a great raised golden dais, stood a shining white altar, atop of which hovered a black, featureless outline of a giant humanoid body. It hung limp and motionless in the air, each of its limbs bearing a golden manacle and trailing golden chains down to spikes driven into the floor. Imprisoned and entombed by his own worshippers, the tiere deity had constructed a prison of his own making, and eventually his realm had grown to resemble that concept ever more directly.

The imprisoned tiere deity was not solitary as it hung there above the altar turned cenotaph.

"It is done. Another tumbler falls. You are too late."

Leobtav's frail form straddled the blackened outline as he looked down upon the deity's shackled form. His back was turned to the them, and he had not even turned to so much as regard them when they stepped into the chamber.

"Whatever you're doing, we're here to put an end to it." Clueless pointed Razor at the ex-Guvner, resolute and angry, staring eye to eye with the madman.

"You will pay for what you did to those people in Pandemonium, and to those in Hopeless." Toras shouted, blade drawn and eager to bring justice to those who could not exact it themselves.

Leobtav smirked and casually leapt from the altar down to the ground. As he did so, the rest of the tiere god's form was revealed, as was the black glass dagger plunged into its heart. Spreading out from the wound, the black of the figure's body was leached away into a pale grey, as was the color of the altar and the floor below it as if the blade was feeding and leaching something far more than life.

"Those people did not deserve what I did to them." Leobtav shrugged and then laughed, half-triumphant, half nervous. "But we don't always choose to do what we do in life. Some things simply must happen. I learned that a very long time ago."

Upon his shoulder, the shadowy figure sneered and stroked his head like a treasured pet.

"They didn't deserve what I did to them, but I did enjoy it however." Leobtav sneered derisively, slapping his hands together with a motion of washing his hands. "It wasn't quick for most of them you know. I let them suffer."
Leobtav casually recited a summary of the murders in Pandemonium, the ones before then in Hopeless, and a half dozen in other places. None of them made sense. They served no purpose at all. Whatever had polluted his mind all of those years ago in Gehenna had left him a broken, damned shell. Leobtav's victims had simply been side effects of the corrosive, soul-devouring process that began in the Vale of Frozen Ashes that had progressively molded him into a tool for the entity he called the Ashsinger to use in a task that ultimately led to the tiere deity.
"Would you care to listen to them?" Leobtav smiled and opened his mouth. Rather than his own voice, what issued was a chorus of tormented cries for mercy, screams of pain and horror, and prayers whispered far too late - all of them the wails and whispers of his victims.

Fyrehowl snarled and pointed her blade at him, joining the others. "I've seen too many innocent people suffer for no reason in this life, and I'll be damned if I let you add to that any further."
"Yes, yes you will be..." Leobtav whispered as he looked at the lupinal. "Do what you will celestial bitch, it will be as relevant and effective as your attempts to help your own people at Rubicon."

"F*ck you!!!" Fyrehowl's face as a contorted mask of rage and pain, tears welled in her eyes, and she tensed to pounce.
"Master, I have served you well." Leobtav's voice was triumphant as he laughed. Giddy on his success at the task of decades, he wanted to celebrate, and also to put to death the last fragments of his former self. "Please allow me the pleasure of rending these irrelevant fools' souls into so much metaphysical paste, and with them, what little is left of me that you have not taken as your own."

Holding on to Toras's shoulder, the last remaining portion of Leobtav's soul shed a tear. "He's too far gone. I'm too far gone. This can't end any other way. I'm so sorry..." The not-familiar understood what would happen, what -must- happen, and ultimately what that fate entailed for himself.

It happened in the space of a single instant as Leobtav dropped a hand to his side, snatched something there and then brought his hand back up, now brandishing a rod. Nothing of its type had been there a moment before, nor within reach tucked into his belt or anywhere else, it had simply appeared. Whatever the thing upon his shoulder was, it was affording him whatever he wished to have. With a crooked smile upon his face a chain of contingencies went off, erupting in flashes of light that caused his glasses to glare over, appearing like solid, luminous eyes as they did. The man's skin hardened with an invisible gloss of stone, a circle of flame erupted around him, and his movements sped up into a blur of motion.

"Don't let him cast!" Tristol shouted, preparing to counterspell whatever the former Guvner might hurl at them. Surely he would be on the last of his memorized spells after having butchered countless rilmani, surely that must be the case. But the thing on his shoulder whispering in his ear threw all of those assumptions and all rationality by the wayside.

Clueless and Fyrehowl were swift and in the blink of an eye they spread out to the sides, hoping to flank Leobtav and divide his attention as they others attacked from the front. Before they managed to ran more than a few yards however, Leobtav was ready with something of his own.

"Rise up chaff of the lower planes. Rise up forsaken broken things. Rise up spawn of the Heart of Darkness, things that should have never been made. You are nothing, but you will obey nonetheless in the name of He that I serve."

Leovtav's words drifted in and out of Abyssal, Infernal, Yugoloth, and in a droning whisper underlying them all, something older and darker whose use caused bits of blood to leak from his eyes and ears. But he did not care. This would be his last battle. He had served his purpose well and this last triumph was for him and him alone.

Around him, shadows coiled and gathered in three pools of darkness, and with each word he spoke, they congealed and coagulated into discrete forms: shadowy versions of tanar'ri, baatezu, and yugoloth - vrock, cornugon, and nycaloth. They lifted themselves up from whence they'd formed, stretched, and roared. Leobtav pointed at his foes and his servants moved without question, spreading their wings and brandishing fangs and talons.

"What the hell are those?" Florian shouted as she hefted her weapon and intoned a prayer to Tempus, exhorting the Foehammer to guide their hands and shield their bodies and souls.
Though they superficially resembled those fiends, Leobtav's servitors were made of congealed, shifting darkness. Within their greater forms the shadows moved in impressions of smaller, struggling, tortured figured trapped within. Those three fiends would normally be at one anothers' throats, but at Loeobtav's call they acted without reservation. The normal divide of Law and Chaos was absent, assuming of course that they were the actual fiends they appeared to be. 

Tristol's eyes went wide and he whispered a prayer to Mystra as he watched Leobtav launch into a frenzy of spellcasting, unleashing two or three spells in the space that he would have hurled one or potentially rarely two. The madman's magical repertoire was also utterly unphased by his recent battles against the rilmani and gautiere; the spells were simply flowing into his head from somewhere else, affording him the luxury of simply calling them down without having to perform the normal, complex mental calculations and hurdles to appropriately put them from abstract formulae to unleashed reality.

The first spells Leobtav hurled were among the most powerful that Tristol knew existed: a spread of blistering meteors, a rolling cloud of desiccating vapor, and finally a finger pointed at Toras and an intonation of a single word, "Die!" The meteors were dodged and the horrid wilting withstood, but not without injury, some of them brutal, and while Toras momentarily stiffened, he resisted the necromantic curse in time to viciously attack the shadowy vrock lunging at him.

A burst of flickering, clashing colors erupted about the shadowy cornugon, stunning and disorienting it. Nisha let out a shout of surprised glee, and whatever the creature truly was, at the very least it reacted to spells as if it were an actual baatezu.
Fyrehowl and Clueless teamed up on the nycaloth, with the bladesinger unleashing a flurry of slashing strikes and a bolt of flame as the lupinal tripped, tackled, and savagely mauled it with fangs and claws before it thrust its wings are darted free.

A second time Leobtav invoked death, only this time on Clueless. But like Toras before him, the half-fey gave a pained, injured grimace but shook off the full effect.

"Good luck with that!" Clueless mocked Leobtav, "Piss off with the necromancy."

Leobtav smiled and turned to the half-fey, his glasses reflecting the guttering, dying waves of the meteor swarm's flames. "Death is not the worst that I could give you..."

Tristol was prepared to counterspell, thinking that Leobtav would use a similar spell on the bladesinger, but the first words that spilled from his mouth were something altogether different. This time he didn't hurl a trio of spells. He only cast one.

"Suffer for my Master." Leobtav called out. "Suffer for me. Suffer forever."
The ambient light dimmed and Clueless was wrenched from where he stood on the ground, his voice cutting off and erupting in an unmitigated shriek of agony. His body glowed with black flame and once hurled into the air he simply stayed there, suspended, contorting in pain. Whatever Leobtav had done to him, none of Clueless's fellows had ever seen anything like it, nor had they ever seen the bladesinger in so much blind torment.
"Help... me..." The words formed on Clueless's lips and then he twisted in the air again, dancing about like a tormented rag-doll, blood seeping from his eyes and nose.

Tristol couldn't place the spell. It was terrible, blasphemous and completely beyond anything that he had ever witnessed, even in Halruaa. The closest thing to it were the ferocious spells hurled by the Netherese archmages of old.

"All of you will suffer like him!" Leobtav gestured to Clueless, cackling in mad glee.
Seeing their companion suffering so only pushed them to greater heroism however. Leobtav's servitors were dispatched, and slowly the madman accrued wounds of his own: a holy smite from Florian, a diving slash from Nisha, and a disintegration counterspelled and turned back on him by Tristol. Leobtav was more powerful on his own than any of them, but he was a weak, sickly man outside of the power he channeled, and there was only one of him.

"Die! All of you!" The reek of ozone gathered around Leobtav and flickers of electricity formed into the maw of a great blue wyrm above his head. Gesturing and laughing bolts of blue-white lightning chained between all of his foes, with Florian and Nisha taking the worst of it, and the latter collapsing to the ground, moaning but still conscious.
"Helpless! Worthless wretches all of you!" Leobtav mocked them, all the while oblivious to the lupinal, herself immune to lightning. With the stealth borne of her adherence to the Ciphers she darted forward, scimitars ready to strike.

Neither oblivious nor mad, Toras smiled and charged forward, drawing another bolt of lightning to his chest, a flurry of bolts of glowing force, and a flickering green beam of corrosive energy. They all struck true, but it didn't matter. He couldn't fail. No matter how it hurt, he had to put an end to this.
"How does it feel bastard of the upper planes?" Leobtav lambasted him and moving his hands in the same motions that he had before nailing Clueless in place in agony. "How does it feel to know that..."

Fyrehowl's blades sunk deep, followed a moment later by the point of Toras's greatsword. Both of them broke through Leobtav's magical shielding with a shattering noise tempered by the wet, sickening sound of a punctured lung. Blood welled up and stained his shirt. With a horrified look of surprise and fear he staggered back.

"Master! Restore me that I might finish this task!" Leobtav begged, coughing up blood with each strangled, tortured word. "Master please! Help me!"

The thing upon his shoulder crouched down, put one hand on his head and turned to look at him with their eyes on an equal level.

"Please..." Leobtav begged, bracing himself against the tiere god's altar. "You promised me..."

The shadow smiled like a darker gulf in a black, starless sky. It smiled and it snickered, audibly mocking its servant before turning and leaping off of him, vanishing into a sudden tear in the fabric of space. The air was deathly cold and filled with a sense of palpable loss and emotional agony, and then it sealed and the presence was gone.

"Master no..." Leobtav wailed as blood pulsed from his hemorrhaging wound. His eyes were wide and hollow, his mind unable to grasp that just like the tiere, his god had abandoned him. As he struggled to comprehend its betrayal as the life left his body, his expression was hauntingly similar to that of the gautiere who wandered, lost, enraged and weeping at the Cathedral's gates.

Leobtav dropped the rod in his hands and slumped to the ground, focusing on the tiny, now transparent form of that fragment of his soul named Ficklebarb. He focused on that portion of himself and scowled, mad with fury, curses and invectives spilling from his lips in a furious torrent. His fury fell silent, the loss of blood ebbed, and then he began to weep, never taking his eyes off of the pseudodragon. Leobtav shuddered and died.

Perched within Toras's hands, in the moment before his great self passed, Ficklebarb whispered, "I forgive you."

Toras looked down at his empty hands and shed a tear of his own. Leobtav was dead, and with him, so too was the only good fragment of his soul. What might become of them, if there was anything there that might be redeemed and reclaimed somewhere else on the planes, none could truly say.
Clueless dropped to the ground, gasping and coughing blood. With Leobtav dead, the spell was ended.

Softly, Nisha began to cry and not from the pain of the lightning bolt that had burned her terribly only a minute before. Tristol sat down and held her, only barely holding back his own emotions.

"Why did Ficklebarb have to die?" She asked, holding the aasimar's tail like a security blanket, wiping her tears and the ashes on her face upon its white tip. "It isn't fair, it isn't right."

Tristol held her close and looked up at the others'. Their faces were sullen and marked with regret. There was little different that they could have done. Leobtav and Ficklebarb were portions of the same soul, and inevitably the death of the larger one would mean the death of the other.

"He gave us permission Nisha," Clueless said, trying to justify their actions. "He begged us to do what we needed to do, and we did what he wanted."

"It really was the best way." Tristol concurred, "Even if it doesn't feel that way right now."

Silence fell over them all as they stared at Leobtav's broken body, and Toras stared long and hard at his empty hands where Ficklebarb had perched, and at the lingering black marks on the guvner's corpse where his puppet master had sat.

"What the hell was that thing on his shoulder?" Toras's face was livid with a cold rage, and his fists clenched and unclenched. With Ficklebarb's passing, it was as if a child had died on his watch. An innocent creature had vanished and the world was left a colder, harder place as a result. The thing that had caused all of its pain and eventual obliteration would pay.

"I don't have a clue." Tristol's ears lay back on his head as he cradled Nisha against his chest. "It didn't honestly seem to be there under any detections spells; no magic, nothing. But it was giving Leobtav access to magic that I've never seen anyone cast. Some of those spells are just so far beyond me, or anyone I've ever known...he shouldn't have been able to just casually hurl those about."

"What do you think the chances are that he has anything on his corpse that might give us a hint at what the hell he was doing?" Clueless glanced down at where Leobtav's body lay on the ground, bloody and contorted. "Who wants to roll the body?"

Nisha waved her hands in the negative, reacting to the idea of touching Leobtav's corpse like it were red hot and covered in filth.

"I'll do it." Fyrehowl patted the tiefling on the shoulder and went about riffling through the dead man's pockets and pouches. He didn't have much. Despite the ferocity of the spells he'd unleashed, his spellbook was small, comprising only those spells that would have been expected for a moderately skilled wizard and member of the Fraternity of Order. What had granted him power beyond his mortal capacity had done so while flaunting the normal rules of magic.

"Ring, ring, bracers, a pair of rods, a dagger, and a metal cog or something." The lupinal listed out the other items on Leobtav's person before standing up and furiously brushing her hands on her thighs, disgusted for having touched the man. "When we have a chance to rest, we can identify everything. But from the look of it all, there's nothing spectacular here. No mocking will and testament, no cursed items, nothing that brought him back from the dead when you touch it."

"Yeah..." Toras said as he upended a flask of oil on the corpse. "Not risking that happening. Someone care to set the body alight for me?"

Florian whispered a prayer and dropped a small burst of flame on the oil-soaked corpse. It was small consolation perhaps for the horrific things that he'd done, but at the very least it put a more definitive end to what they'd been through in Pandemonium and beyond.

Toras smiled grimly as he watched the corpse burn, "We're still left with no idea what the hell he was even trying to do here."

Clueless sighed, "Whatever it was, we should assume that he was successful. The thing controlling him seemed happy enough to just discard him like a tool that had outgrown its usefulness."

"So why stick a knife in the heart of a deity? Why this one?" Florian pondered, looking at the hovering body atop the altar. "Because clearly this was the only one he cared about, given he spent decades trying to find it."

"Whatever corrupted him might have had a history with the tiere, or their god." Clueless guessed, throwing out ideas, equally perplexed with all of them. "I don't know. I really don't know."

Tristol meanwhile had walked up to the altar, staring at the words that Leobtav had carefully carved into the stone. Much like the bloody text he'd left at Howler's Crag, it was a self-righteous exultation of himself and the entity he worshipped, but this time there was something else.

_“By His WILL the sacrifice is offered and accepted. The space of years be not a barrier to what shall be. And so shall the First be the Last; the Original to which all are but shadows shall ascend. Let the patterns of the world bear witness to the inevitability of the Everdark, the Ashsinger, the *VOR’NEL’THRAANIX”*_*

"What the hell does that mean?" Tristol puzzled over a the last portion of the inscription: "VOR’NEL'THRAANIX". A word or perhaps a phrase within the text, he struggled to make heads or tails of its meaning. He whispered the words to a spell, hoping to decipher it via magical translation, but it only left him more bewildered and ill at ease. Three attempts later and it simply translated as the exactly same word, a slurry of meaningless letters that inexplicably translated to the exact same meaningless meaning each time.

"What does what mean?" Clueless walked over to inspect the text himself.

"Does it make your eyes hurt if you stare at it?" Fyrehowl gave an apprehensive shudder. "You know, like, well, that other language we know of that I'm not going to talk about?"

She meant Baernaloth, but whatever it was, the text was not written in Baern.

"No, it doesn't." Tristol was definitive on that. "It isn't written in that language or anything like it. In fact it isn’t related to any language I’ve ever seen. It just refuses to translate to anything more than that phrase. Whatever I do, it's the same garbled random nothing."

"Don't look at me," Nisha quipped, turning her head sideways to glance at the text and coming up equally as confused and stumped as Tristol. "Garbled, random, nothing yes, but even so I didn't write it."

Tristol chuckled while Fyrehowl circled the text, gazing down at it warily. The lupinal squinted, turned her head to one side and then the other, and finally gave up with a perplexed look upon her face.

"I don't have any idea what that means." She frowned, "The rest of it sure, it's planar common with a few obscure words in Infernal and Celestial tossed in, but that seems pretty standard for someone who used to be a member of the Fraternity of Order. It's spooky sounding garbage but that one word sticks out like a vrock flying around in Celestia."

Several more minutes were spent in discussion about the text and its meaning, both obvious and hidden. Ultimately they could come to no firm conclusions, and as discussion on it wore thin, their attention shifted to the tiere god's corpse, and to the dagger plunged into its heart.

"So what exactly do we do with -that-?" Toras gestured towards the blade.

"We don't ask the tiefer to climb up there and touch it?" Nisha quipped as she conspicuously stepped behind Tristol, doing her best to hide. "But that being said, what did Leobtav intend anyway? Was it a sacrifice? Part of a ritual for something else? Is it even dead? Is it just a normal dagger or some sort of freaky artifact? Etc Etc"

"Etc Etc?" Tristol chuckled.

"Yep, Etc Etc." The bell at the tip of Nisha's tail jangled as she smiled.

They bantered amongst themselves while the others stared at the tiere god-corpse.

"I don't know what he intended to do, but I don't think it's wise to just leave this here." Clueless looked down at the obsidian dagger plunged into where the tiere god's heart would have been, had it been human. "At the very least we can keep it safe and out of anyone else's hands, whatever it is."

"Do you think it's wise to just pluck it out?" Fyrehowl's tone was markedly nervous.

The bladesinger shrugged. Without any other objections forthcoming, Clueless braced himself against the altar and tentatively touched the blade's hilt. It was cold to the touch, more so than it should have been in the ambient temperature, but otherwise nothing was out of the ordinary. It neither shocked him, shot a jolt of horror and agony through his mind, nor did it drain a portion of his life purely by touching it. To all impressions, it was just a dagger roughly chipped out of volcanic glass. 

Others might have recognized a vague similarity to the obsidian blades crafted for the promotion ceremonies of greater yugoloths, but that knowledge was itself a closely held 'loth secret outside of the fact that it involved ritual suicide and dramatic pre and post-mortem bodily mutilation. But even if they had, the resemblance was only in the most basic outline, and the blade lacked the identifying, unique markings of one that they might find prepared to advance a nycaloth or arcanaloth. It was simply a dagger.

Shrugging at the lack of ill effect, Clueless gripped the blade and pulled. Buried in the dead god's heart there was a moment of resistance, and then it wrenched free.

"Mind if I take a look at it?" Tristol asked, pointing to the blade.

Clueless shrugged and handed over the dagger. Nothing odd occurred. He didn’t refuse to give it up, it didn’t magnetically stick to his person, nor did it compel him to attack in a mad bloodlust. Whatever purpose it had been used for, the dagger seemed entirely benign.

Tristol whispered the words to a fairly simple spell of magical identification. "Huh..."

"Huh? What does ‘huh’ mean?" Clueless looked at the dagger in Tristol’s hands and then to the aasimar’s reaction to whatever the spell had told him.

Tristol didn't respond and instead began the intonations of a much more powerful divination spell. The wizard stared at the dagger for several long minutes, turning it over in his hands and trying to determine its properties, power, and perhaps its origins. His expression grew more and more frustrated and finally he handed it back to Clueless.

"Again, what does that mean?" Clueless accepted the dagger back, albeit warily.

"Well, it isn't magical." Tristol shrugged. "And by that I mean that it doesn't have any magical aura whatsoever. But it sucked out the life of a god... yeah... it's unique."

By unique, he meant artifact, though he couldn't immediately prove that assumption without taking some time to be certain, time that as I turned out, they didn't have.

"That isn't good." Fyrehowl pointed towards the tiere god. Where the dagger had been plucked free, the black flesh around the wound had begun to crumble, collapsing in upon itself. The dead god was releasing whatever transient grip its remaining, ephemeral essence held upon the world.

A heavy shudder ran through the Cathedral.

“Oh come on! This sort of thing only happens in bad, drunken adventuring stories.” Toras threw his hands up in disbelief. “You kill the horrible evil thing its castle, lair, or domain starts to implode and you barely get out with your lives.”

A shower of ragged chunks of marble fells from the ceiling, then larger pieces, then one of the massive ornate keystones began to tremble. In the absence of the tiere god, the domain was collapsing, and with it, the Cathedral too.

“Trope in drunken, grandiose recollections of adventures yes, far too often,” Florian called out as she was already sprinting towards the exit. “But it seems to actually be the case right now. Everyone run!”

The keystone was already breaking free as they bolted for the exit, and as they reached the entryway it fell. Horrified, looking back over their shoulders, they watched it plummet in slow motion, knowing that the central chamber’s collapse would follow on its heels.

“Run run run!” Clueless shouted out, sprouting his wings and flying as quickly as he could.

Unable to fly, Fyrehowl dropped to all fours, leaping forwards and actually outpacing the bladesinger.

Tristol whispered a spell and immediately began to run nearly as quickly.

“Think you can share that with the rest of us?” Toras shouted as he dodged a falling column that broke and showered them all in shards of broken stone. “That would really, really be useful right now!”

“I can’t!” Tristol grimaced. “It’s a simple spell, but I can only affect myself! I’d share it with all of you if I could! I… how the hell are you running sideways on the wall Nisha?!”

True to his word, the tiefling was indeed running on the right wall as they hurried for the exit, completely perpendicular to everyone else. Bizarre yes, but she was keeping up with the rest of them, 

“I don’t know!” Nisha shrugged and kept on running in blatant, terrified disregard of gravity.

There wasn’t much time to speculate or really do anything else but madly scramble for the entrance. A hundred yards later the Xaositect jumped from the wall to avoid a falling row of statues, somersaulting to the opposite wall and continuing to run sideways, muttering ‘runrunrunrunrunrun!’ to herself in frantic, clipped tones.

The main entrance was open and light poured out, welcoming them with safety and escape as behind them, the entire structure collapsed in a building, growing torrent of imploding, collapsing stone. Seconds slower and the following wave of destruction might have caught them, trapping them under tons of rock, but it didn’t. 

Gasping and shouting cries of relief, they burst from the exit and didn’t stop running till they reached the rim of the domain. Turning back, they watched in amazement, confusion, and a small bit of horror as the saw not a collapsing building, but a hungry void of nothingness at the domain’s center, slowly distorting space and drawing in everything around it: rubble, the ancient bones of the dead, piles of broken golems, piles of rusting armor and weapons, and thousands of staggered, weeping gautiere. Their god was gone and along with it their only chance of redemption, and now oblivion called.

“There isn’t anything we can do.” Toras lamented. “I’m not sure that they could have been helped by anyone but themselves. They might have one day, but Leobtav took that choice away from them. We did give them some measure of justice however.”

“For what it’s worth I suppose.” Clueless frowned.

Fyrehowl snarled, “Leobtav deserved worse than what he got.”

Nisha, now returned to normal, mundane gravity’s tyranny, sighed and looked at Toras. “I’m going to miss Ficklebarb...”

“I think we all will.” Toras sighed along with the tiefling. “We did what he asked us to do though. We saw this through and gave him what he needed. We should smile at that.” 

Clueless nodded his head, “It’s over at least.”

The future would prove that statement oh so very wrong.

****​

Meanwhile in the city of Portent in Gehenna, a contingent of yugoloths wormed their way through the city's labyrinthine streets, marching towards the structure at the city's beating heart. Nearly three hundred mezzoloths and half that many heavily armored nycaloths flying overhead guarded a core of two dozen arcanaloths and the solitary figure at their center who needed no such protection at all. Unconcerned with the petitioners and others that made their home in the city, they marched through the tangle of streets that resembled veins and arteries of some great slumbering beast whose chest was ripped open by a god and then transmuted to the urban biology of a city rather than flesh and blood.

Venrisala ap Krangath internally whimpered as she approached the side of the figure leading their procession. Bits of frost perpetually clung as a rime on her chocolate brown coat, and she brushed back an errant strand of hair that had fallen from her otherwise immaculately coiffed hair. She had to look her best in the presence of her better. Walking in his shadow, the archfiend's presence caused whirling eddies in space, budding off and spiraling away as motes of darkness like some artist's impression of plague spores. They were cold. Walking so close to him also caused her heart to flutter, and she wasn't sure if it was from desire, jealousy, or some deep seated primordial fear. "Oinoloth..."

Vorkannis the Ebon, Oinoloth of the Waste turned and smiled, "I presume that you have already purged the Great Hall for my arrival there?"

Reflexively she bowed before replying, "Yes Oinoloth. A dozen of the city's petty barons, gangleaders, and self-proclaimed lords now hang from the eaves. None of your servitors were harmed in the process, which runs counter to Portent's nature. Most perplexing."

"Not at all," The Oinoloth chuckled, "They acted on my orders."

Venrisala waited for a further explanation, but none was forthcoming.

"Laughing Jane however..." The arcanaloth winced and paused. The prophetic tiefling that lived within the Great Hall was one of the two reasons why the myriad lords of Portent wished control over the building: her and the bizarre throne at the very center of the hall that was carved from the bones of a creature that had never been identified, but which radiated a sense of power and control. "None of the nycaloths wished to execute her, given what she said to them. She addressed them each by their true names and..."

"No matter," The Ebon sneered casually, dismissively. "Laughing Jane is irrelevant."

Venrisala glanced at the Ebon as they approached the gate of the Great Hall. The corpses of those put to death swung gently on the breeze, filling the air with the occasional creaking of the rope used in their execution. She paused, waiting on further orders as the mezzoloths stood at attention and the nycaloths perched on the roofs of adjacent buildings. "Oinoloth?"

"It isn't Laughing Jane that I came here to speak with." The Ebon flashed a smile of ivory white fangs and looked at his attendant with luminous, scarlet eyes. "All of you are to wait outside until I am finished. This should not take long."*


----------



## 81Dagon

> “I don’t know!” Nisha shrugged and kept on running in blatant, terrified disregard of gravity.



Best. Line. Ever.
Awesome as usual. I'll be patiently waiting for the next segment. The Wheels within Wheels are turning, although I have no real idea how this fits together.


----------



## Akhelos

Storyhour update, wohoo...and know we know that Xiaosects can run on walls without knowing how and how fast Lupinals can run. *g* I hope they at least could save their loot and Information and did not lose it in the run. ^^


----------



## Shemeska

The Grand Hall was a heavy, ancient structure, with walls wrought of black basalt and supported by ornate flying buttresses. The foundation stones were of a slightly different shade of stone however, and if one dug their hands into the street and perhaps pried up some of the surrounding courtyard's pavement stones, they might find deeper foundation stones in different colors still. The Grand Hall had been razed to the ground more than once and then rebuilt. Each iteration of Portent's heart was built to house the nameless throne within, itself the only piece of the original structure long since vanished to time and the ravages of invasion, the iconoclasm of long forgotten Oinoloths, and the internal strife of Portent itself where violence against one another was forbidden, but not the destruction of property - still the throne remained.

The Oinoloth nodded and a pair of towering nycaloths obediently opened the heavy wooden doors, revealing the inner sanctuary brilliantly lit by candles and magical braziers, and there at its center the ossified throne.

The archfiend smiled and then looked up at the dozens of corpses swinging in the breeze. All of them were petitioners, and under normal conditions, upon this second death, all of them would eventually decay into their base soul-stuff. While his retinue rightfully suspected that they would be swallowed by Gehenna itself and either vomited back in their present form anew, or else broken down and used in the forging of a new mezzoloth, the Oinoloth knew otherwise - something other than Gehenna would be feasting upon them.

The heavy doors slammed shut with a gesture as the 'loth entered. Away from his sycophants he smiled and walked calmly towards the bizarre throne.

"What have you done?!" A voice called out from the shadows, sibilant and hissing.

"They all deserved to die! They deserved it yes!" The second voice was that of an elderly woman.

"You!" A third voice, distinct from the first but also hissing joined in, full of rancor and confusion. "YOU!"

Standing between the Oinoloth and the throne at the center of the chamber stood an old tiefling woman. Dressed in dirty rags, she looked to have barely eaten in days. From the eye-sockets of her frail face, itself framed by a matted tangle of dishwater-gray hair, a pair of green and black serpents sprouted, each of them hissing angrily at the intruding archfiend.

"Silence larvae-spawned wretch." The Ebon's voice was curt and dismissive, and he never actually turned to look at the tiefling. He never even made a motion, but as he walked past her, a telekinetic wave hurled her back against the wall twenty feet distant.

Laughing Jane shuddered and struggled to stand. Her serpents hissed back, if only weakly, and she trembled with both fear and hatred, digging her nails into the palms of her hands so forcefully as to draw blood. The Oinoloth paused and glanced back, sneering as she bled, and then resumed his walk towards the throne, ignoring the tiefling as if she were no longer even there. 

The Oinoloth sat upon the throne and waited for something to happen. With a look of patient amusement upon his muzzle, Vorkannis strummed his fingers upon the worn, calcified surface of the arms. 

The vascular patterns locked in brick and cement into Portent's streets was not just a bit of macabre artistic flair, and deep below the city, something locked and sealed away stirred from its imprisoned slumber and blinked.

“What is it you wish my child?" A voice older than Gehenna itself issued forth into the Ebon's mind, trickling up from below the stones of Portent, focused and channeled by the throne he sat upon. "What brings you here to me?” 

"Gormisekt ap Portent…" The Oinoloth spoke a name that had not been pronounced since long before Larsdana ap Neut had laid the foundations of the Tower of the Arcanaloths. Few remembered the name, and of those who did, fewer still cared for the reasons why its owner had been sealed away. The Oinoloth's tone was laced with self-satisfaction and a certain level of bemused deceit as he pronounced the name and let it dance upon his tongue. "Hello I suppose.”

"Hello is a strange word to use. Most of your kind are apprehensive, terrified even when they call out to me, sitting upon a throne when they should be on their knees." The voice was slow, still gathering itself from its slumber. "You think yourself better than the others that have come before you seeking my wisdom?"

"I am not the same as any that have ever sat upon this throne." The Ebon's violet eyes sparkled as the braziers and candles illuminating the chamber began to snuff themselves out, one by one. "You should know that."

"You have sat on more thrones than this one." The voice, or something backing it, oozed across the Ebon's mind like some sentient, psychic bacterium feeling and sensing about a new environment, tasting rather than seeing. "You have sat upon the Siege Malicious. You are an Oinoloth."

"That is one title I hold, yes." The Ebon smirked and continued strumming his fingers. "Probably one of the least important ones. But as far as making a statement goes, it was an important step to take."

"Why are you here Oinoloth?" The Ebon's ears echoed with the sounds of hissing serpents and the dull, monotonous throbbing of an ancient heart grown quick by renewed interest for the first time in eons. "Tell me."

The Oinoloth shrugged, "I wanted to speak with you."

"Few have ever come here with that express purpose." The voice grew louder as the presence behind it slouched away from its quiescence. "Only a handful have ever known that I existed when they sat upon this throne. Yet you did, and you know my name. How is that?"

"I know a great, great many things Gormisekt." Vorkannis exuded a sense of smug confidence, even as the presence feeling about the ramparts of his mind carried within itself a growing sense of distrust and even confusion.

"Answer me Oinoloth: why are you here?" The voice grew more attentive, more focused, and the foundation stones of Portent began to rattle as if from the subtle trembling of an earthquake.

"We've never formally met you see." Vorkannis smirked and his teeth glowed white within the darkness, they along with his eyes and the trio of ioun stones above his head providing the only light. "I felt it high time for me to give my respects and gaze into your cell. So as I began by saying, hello."

Suddenly the presence shuddered and that distant, powerful but slumbering malignancy sleeping and imprisoned below Portent awoke and turned the full measure of its ancient, god-like gaze upon the Oinoloth.

“IMPOSSIBLE!" Dust and stone rained down from the ceiling as the psychic presence screamed into the Oinoloth's mind, manifesting elsewhere to collapse a dozen structures in the surrounding blocks and reduce every petitioner in the same radius to sudden, inexplicable pain. "IMPOSSIBLE!"

"Greetings," Vorkannis began to laugh. "Such a pleasure to finally meet you."

"YOU WERE NEVER MEANT TO BE FREE!”
"You of all beings should appreciate the irony!" The Ebon snickered, genuinely smiling at the inchoate rage bubbling up from the ancient prison below Portent.

“YOU?! YOU WERE LOCKED AWAY! WE IMPRISONED YOU! YOU CANNOT BE FREE!" The baernaloth's voice shifted from rage to perhaps the closest thing to fear that such a being was capable of experiencing, "WHAT HAVE MY KINDRED DONE?! WHAT HAS LAZARIUS DONE?!” 

“The Demented have done nothing." The Ebon spat the pronunciation of the collective name of the 13. "That is what they do, and that is why they will fail. That is why I am free and you are here."

"THIS WAS NOT TO BE! EVERYTHING WAS FORESEEN! EVERYTHING!"

The Ebon laughed, “Everything that you or they might have hoped to achieve in this reality is for naught. Everything will change Gormisekt. Everything!" 

The shackled baernaloth screamed and the foundation stones of Portent rocked with its impotent fury. Vaguely, the Ebon heard Laughing Jane vomit and weep convulsively. The baernaloth screamed a hundred questions and curses at the Oinoloth, but the Ebon ignored them as he laughed with bitter, triumphant contempt. 

Finally, the Oinoloth ceased his laughter and addressed the shackled baernaloth one last time, "You are not of the 13, and so Gormisekt I suppose I also came here to let you stew on words of warning that you will never share with the Demented and they would never ask you to tell them. The Oblivion Compass nears midnight. Soon. Oh so soon my old friend. 475 days, 9 hours, 3 minutes, and 12 seconds." The archfiend rose from the throne and smoothed his robes, preparing to leave, save for one final, damning statement, "Rot in your prison as I was meant to Gormisekt. We will not meet again before this is over."


****​

The gloom that blanketed the skies above the Waste was unremitting in nearly all places, and of those few blessed or cursed locations where the clouds withdrew in respect or terror, only a grey void was seen beyond the cloud cover. The isolated valley that contained the Oblivion Compass was one such place, but even before a mad or lost traveler noticed the clouds peeled back, they heard the shrieking of metal, the thrum of gears spinning, the tremble of great mechanical engines moving below their feet, and above all of those things, they heard the screams.

The multitude of dials erupted out of the ashen soil untouched by rust of grim, constructed not of metal, not of stone, but of the welded together bodies of modrons and the screaming spirits of moignos and others bound into the horrific amalgamation as immortally suffering grease and nothing more. The great central dial, unmoving for eons at a time moaned and a shudder resonated through the system. Simultaneously every other wheel stopped and the great dial clicked forward, one step closer to whatever position indicated midnight, and the Secundus and its chorus of agonized moignos began to scream in a single, tortured, unified voice.

"Probabilities collapse. There is still chaos, uncertainty within the solution. But the time of collapse remains the same for all outcomes: 475 days, 9 hours…"


****​ 

13,000 years previous - somewhere upon the Gray Waste:


Off in the distance, the armies of Anthraxus marshaled for their long march to Gehenna, and from there to Avernus. Yet, though numbering in their millions, none of the fiends felt the presence of a single, conspicuous set of eyes upon their number. Not one of them held even a glimmer of awareness of a singular incongruity upon the Waste that sat silently upon the ashen soil, itself rendered from the bones of a billion, billion dead.

“All of you will die.” The figure whispered. “Helekanalaith has sold you a dozen times over to the lords of Hell and a dozen more princes of the Abyss.”

There was a pensive tone to his voice, something between bravado and put upon bitterness and cynicism. With the inflected emotional tone, he sought to take his mind from other things as he sat within the dirt before a particular, seemingly unexceptional spot.

“But at least all of you wretches…” He paused, gritted his teeth, and looked at his hands, filthy with the soil of the Waste. “At least all of you wretches –can– die.”

His tears would have stained the ground if they had formed. Feel as he might, and even try as he might however, that which refused him death, it refused him that particular outward display of emotions as well. Very little was his own anymore. He’d given up everything, truly everything, and as a result his life, his tattered, broken soul, and every aspect of them both were no longer his. Any level of control was simply an illusion in the unimportant moments between moments when he served as a vessel. Age was meaningless, as were death and disease neither a worry nor succor, and the only emotions he was capable of experiencing were those considered negative. His grief and self-doubt remained with him like a sick blessing to remind him of his sloughed mortality and all that he had done wrong.

*IT IS ALMOST TIME*

He shivered as the voice rattled through his body, ringing in his head like a peal of funeral bells – the voice that echoed up from the ragged holes torn in the essence of his immortal soul.

He looked up at the sky, featureless and oppressive normally, but now… no, something had changed. A circle of clouds had formed overheard, coiled like a serpent directly above the otherwise absolutely prosaic spot that he sat before. The Waste itself, just like him, was waiting for something to happen. Something ordained if not perhaps foreseen.

“What of Lazarius?” He blurted out his question without pause and without a drop of fear. “Tellura? Harishek? Alashra? The others? What of them?”

He winced in pain as the yawning void reaching through his soul reached closer and seemed to chuckle.

*THEY KNOW ONLY WHAT THEY HAVE DONE. NOTHING MORE. THE ARCHITECT AND SHEPHERDESS CANNOT SENSE ME, NOT AT HOW LITTLE MY INFLUENCE STRETCHES INTO THIS REALITY. EVEN IF THEY COULD, CHORAZIN HAS ALREADY DRAWN HIS FIRST CARDS.*

The man nodded, even if the last name was not one he was yet acquainted with. A visit to the Thrice Damned seemed to be in his future. Perhaps.

High above, the circle of clouds grew wider like some great, pensive Ouroboros, or perhaps a school of sharks circling, and waiting. Whatever the Waste was reacting to, it was something that he was here to bear witness to.

With a deafening shriek it happened.

The ground before the man exploded. His teeth rattled as the shockwave ripped through the earth and rocked across the Waste for miles as the ground erupted with a deafening roar. Ash, stone, dirt and powdered bones mixed into a polluted slurry with Styx water sprayed outwards with force enough to pepper the flesh of a fiend. The man simply stood there, and as the falling earth splattered back down around him, sizzling and still cooling as a rain of black, glassy tektites, somehow he remained unsullied.

All was silent for a moment but for the crackle of shattering, cooling glass.

The man peered over the lip of the still partially molten caldera that yawned wide before him, gazing down some seventy meters to the glowing, bleeding bottom, marred by a single dark blotch at its center. Either something had plummeted and finally landed, or something that torn its way up and out. As quickly as it had happened, the man wasn't sure which it had been.

A gaping wound in the flesh of the Waste, Styx water flowed in rapidly like the blood of an angry, infected gash. There at the very center, a solitary figure crouched and then stood up. Dirt and mud matted his fur and Styx water dripped from his form incessantly as the sound of his heavy, triumphant breathing cut the sudden silence in the explosion’s aftermath. Black lips parted to expose brilliant, ivory teeth. Liquid, moving shadows licked up from his body at the bottom of the cauldron, tasting the air like the forked tongues of a thousand serpents and slowly, his head rose up and a pair of piercing, reddish-pink eyes fixed upon the man looking down upon his simultaneous arrival upon Oinos, Niflheim, and Pluton.

The man at the crater or caldera’s rim started to speak, but as he prepared to do so, the presence lurking in the dark places of his soul and the void beyond them surged forward. He smiled and looked down, a passenger within his own body, host to something greater, and the voice that spoke was not his own, but in the present instance, oh how it was familiar.
“Hello Vorkannis. We should talk.”

The Ebon looked up, eyes glowing with an intensity unmatched by the molten soil a moment before, his ivory fangs bared and snarling. Then, in a moment the fiend's rage bled away and he stared upwards, not saying a word. His head tilted to the side in a gesture of curiosity, and then he smiled, comprehending. The Ebon's albino eyes locked with the thing lurking behind those of Professor Cilret Leobtav, "Yes. Yes we should."


----------



## 81Dagon

What. Is. He!?
And oh great, it looks like time travel has entered the equation (at least I think). Shemmy, your flowcharts for this story must have looked more like a tangled briar rather than a tree. I greatly approve.


----------



## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> What. Is. He!?
> And oh great, it looks like time travel has entered the equation (at least I think). Shemmy, your flowcharts for this story must have looked more like a tangled briar rather than a tree. I greatly approve.




*GRIN*

This last update links back to some things in the very first post regarding what Helekanalaith thought to himself about the Ebon having just walked out of the Waste with no history to speak of, and what Lazarius and Sarkithel talk about to the General of Gehenna and himself respectively.

Everything is connected in some capacity: Unity of Rings and all that. 

Tristol's player ended up making a flow chart for the campaign, and it's a monstrous briar patch that would look fitting atop the Marauder's head.

The same player is making a flow chart for our current planar Pathfinder game (it's not quite as poetically twisted as the one for the Storyhour, but it's weird and complicated, which tends to be standard for any game I run).


----------



## Akhelos

Shemeska said:


> *GRIN*
> 
> This last update links back to some things in the very first post regarding what Helekanalaith thought to himself about the Ebon having just walked out of the Waste with no history to speak of, and what Lazarius and Sarkithel talk about to the General of Gehenna and himself respectively.




Okay....Vorkannis becomes really frightening....if even an Baernaloth Fears him and says that he should have been imprisoned and never been in this Reality....

Let me Guess...he is something akin to an Baernaloth, that nuked the last Reality and now they dont want it repeated in this one and so imprisoned him? ^^


----------



## 81Dagon

Akhelos said:


> Okay....Vorkannis becomes really frightening....if even an Baernaloth Fears him and says that he should have been imprisoned and never been in this Reality....
> 
> Let me Guess...he is something akin to an Baernaloth, that nuked the last Reality and now they dont want it repeated in this one and so imprisoned him? ^^



I'd agree except I've gotten the impression that the Demented are the ones who want history to repeat itself and Vorkannis is the one screwing it up. Although I do admit that that theory certainly jives with the explanation the General was given in the first post. I'll have to reread again.


----------



## Tal Rasha

Very good writing Shemeska, as always. Still enjoying this SH after all these years.



Shemeska said:


> The man at the crater or caldera’s rim started to speak, but as he prepared to do so, the presence lurking in the dark places of his soul and the void beyond them surged forward. He smiled and looked down, a passenger within his own body, host to something greater, and the voice that spoke was not his own, but in the present instance, oh how it was familiar.
> “Hello Vorkannis. We should talk.”
> 
> The Ebon looked up, eyes glowing with an intensity unmatched by the molten soil a moment before, his ivory fangs bared and snarling. Then, in a moment the fiend's rage bled away and he stared upwards, not saying a word. His head tilted to the side in a gesture of curiosity, and then he smiled, comprehending. The Ebon's albino eyes locked with the thing lurking behind those of Professor Cilret Leobtav, "Yes. Yes we should."



See, and I was _sure_ it was Vorkannis who had directed Leobtav to do all he did. Guess not.

So VOR’NEL’THRAANIX is a proper name then? Would explain why all attempted translations resolved to the same term.


----------



## 81Dagon

Tal Rasha said:


> So VOR’NEL’THRAANIX is a proper name then? Would explain why all attempted translations resolved to the same term.



That's basically my working theory.


----------



## Shemeska

Tal Rasha said:


> Very good writing Shemeska, as always. Still enjoying this SH after all these years.
> 
> 
> See, and I was _sure_ it was Vorkannis who had directed Leobtav to do all he did. Guess not.
> 
> So VOR’NEL’THRAANIX is a proper name then? Would explain why all attempted translations resolved to the same term.





Thank you! I'm still having a blast writing it. Working on the next update.

My players at that time were pretty much sold on "the 'loths are behind everything!" and then the Pandemonium plot arc came out of left field. There are more moments like that to come, some of which were punctuated by loud, out of character, bewildered curses at the time because of some plot twists. Damn I had fun with this campaign! 

As for VOR'NEL'THRAANIX, I might go back and rephrase the details of the translation attempts. Essentially all of the attempts come back as unable to do anything with it. It isn't a proper name, it isn't gibberish, it isn't a verb or a pronoun - it's something that doesn't make any sense to any attempt at magical translation. It's something that shouldn't do that, but it does it anyway.

Don't worry, you'll see it again. Might take a while, but you'll see it again. Everything comes back together eventually.


----------



## 81Dagon

Speaking  of things coming back, I've been rereading the Demented cycle as preparation for one of my campaigns. Any chance that the remaining four entries will see the light of day any time soon? Not to add more on top of the already far too long list of requests we've given you 

*EDIT*: Also, while we're at it, was the caldera where Mydianclarus met with the shadow-that-is-strongly-implied-to-be-Vorkannis the same caldera that Leobtav found Vorkannis in?


----------



## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> Speaking  of things coming back, I've been rereading the Demented cycle as preparation for one of my campaigns. Any chance that the remaining four entries will see the light of day any time soon? Not to add more on top of the already far too long list of requests we've given you




I ended up scrapping the draft that I had in progress for the Architect which had lingered for several years on my desktop, and just in the past year I came up with a concept for his entry that I'm genuinely proud of. Sometime this year I should finish it. It's one of those too good to pass up things that latched onto your brain and demands to be written. I really enjoy it when that happens.

The Dream Reaver has a few pages of a draft written, but I keep futzing with where I want to go with her story, and if I want to bring in Larsdana ap Neut (who harbored the attention and/or presence of that baernaloth prior to being imprisoned by Helekanalaith).

The Ineffable has a few pages written, and so does the Shackler. I might end up scrapping the latter and restarting, not entirely happy with it.

No ETA on any of these, but they will all be finished (I have worked on the Architect this year).



> *EDIT*: Also, while we're at it, was the caldera where Mydianclarus met with the shadow-that-is-strongly-implied-to-be-Vorkannis the same caldera that Leobtav found Vorkannis in?




Precisely the same caldera. Nice catch there 

And as an aside, my apologies for being very very slow about finally finishing those stories and the gap in storyhour updates till recently when I've gotten back into it. Once you're out of college and in theory a responsible adult with a job, a mortgage, and freelancing RPG work on top of a professional day job, it really devours your time. Plus, much of my fiction writing attention has been focused on Pathfinder's cosmology (though Nisha does show up in one story). But like the grinding of the Wheels within Wheels, my original set of stories for the Demented will be completed since it's a personal pet project of mine, and likewise the storyhour.


----------



## 81Dagon

Shemeska said:


> And as an aside, my apologies for being very very slow about finally finishing those stories and the gap in storyhour updates till recently when I've gotten back into it. Once you're out of college and in theory a responsible adult with a job, a mortgage, and freelancing RPG work on top of a professional day job, it really devours your time. Plus, much of my fiction writing attention has been focused on Pathfinder's cosmology (though Nisha does show up in one story). But like the grinding of the Wheels within Wheels, my original set of stories for the Demented will be completed since it's a personal pet project of mine, and likewise the storyhour.



You've got nothing to apologize to us for. Life always has to come first and most of us can completely empithize. Besides, I think that the Great Beyond and Book of the Damned were worth pay the price of slowing down the updates for a while. The whole short-term pain vs long0term gain thing 



Shemeska said:


> I ended up scrapping the draft that I had in progress for the Architect which had lingered for several years on my desktop, and just in the past year I came up with a concept for his entry that I'm genuinely proud of. Sometime this year I should finish it. It's one of those too good to pass up things that latched onto your brain and demands to be written. I really enjoy it when that happens.
> 
> The Dream Reaver has a few pages of a draft written, but I keep futzing with where I want to go with her story, and if I want to bring in Larsdana ap Neut (who harbored the attention and/or presence of that baernaloth prior to being imprisoned by Helekanalaith).
> 
> The Ineffable has a few pages written, and so does the Shackler. I might end up scrapping the latter and restarting, not entirely happy with it.
> 
> No ETA on any of these, but they will all be finished (I have worked on the Architect this year).



No problem, I was just curious since I had recently read them again and loved those stories. I found this bit on the Dream Reaver while trolling the archives, which I must say is thoroughly disturbing. Well done. I wonder if we've met either of those children? Anyhow, I'll just go back to being patient and waiting for the next instalment to come out.

Although... if I could impose, I've been trying to work on some sketches and simple art of the Demented, but I can't really find a physical description of the four that we don't have stories for yet. Would it be possible to get brief physical descriptions of them from you? I think it would be really neat to see all thirteen of them in one image together. 



Shemeska said:


> Precisely the same caldera. Nice catch there



Interesting. Very interesting... 
*Goes back to combing the story for clues and plot hooks for his own suckers PCs*


----------



## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> No problem, I was just curious since I had recently read them again and loved those stories. I found this bit on the Dream Reaver while trolling the archives, which I must say is thoroughly disturbing. Well done. I wonder if we've met either of those children? Anyhow, I'll just go back to being patient and waiting for the next instalment to come out.




Do you want me to definitively answer that question? It's relevant and very spoilery.

I'll happily confirm at a bare minimum that 'The Dreamer and the Fiend' does take place within the continuity of this Storyhour (and Storyhour 2). 

Additionally, the line in Storyhour 2's opening post, spoken by the being formerly known as Anubis "There is no such thing as a quiet death." is talking about more than one thing/person, but it does come into play as far as Larsdana is concerned. But I don't want to spoil anything.



> Although... if I could impose, I've been trying to work on some sketches and simple art of the Demented, but I can't really find a physical description of the four that we don't have stories for yet. Would it be possible to get brief physical descriptions of them from you? I think it would be really neat to see all thirteen of them in one image together.




There's already a description of the Architect (when the PCs go visit Pitiless to see Ghyris Vast), and I've got descriptions for two of the others in the story rough drafts. I'll need to track down the original description of the Dream Reaver from my notes, because otherwise I'll run the risk of conflating her with Alazhra the Dream Eater (the lovecraftian horror'rsque god-thing that serves as Pathfinder's night hag patron - the former did inform the creation of the latter).

I'll get you those descriptions later today or tomorrow.


----------



## 81Dagon

Shemeska said:


> Do you want me to definitively answer that question? It's relevant and very spoilery.
> 
> I'll happily confirm at a bare minimum that 'The Dreamer and the Fiend' does take place within the continuity of this Storyhour (and Storyhour 2).
> 
> Additionally, the line in Storyhour 2's opening post, spoken by the being formerly known as Anubis "There is no such thing as a quiet death." is talking about more than one thing/person, but it does come into play as far as Larsdana is concerned. But I don't want to spoil anything.



At first I thought it was going to be Alpthis and Apteris... but obviously that ended quickly, which made it all the creepier. Shemmy? A'kin? Shylara? *EDIT*: Yethmiil Kal'suth? Felthis Ap'Jerran? Both of those are much less likely, but interesting thoughts.  */EDIT* I'll stay patient... I've managed to not read any of Storyhour 2 as it is to avoid spoilers until this one's finished. Interesting though. 



Shemeska said:


> There's already a description of the Architect (when the PCs go visit Pitiless to see Ghyris Vast), and I've got descriptions for two of the others in the story rough drafts. I'll need to track down the original description of the Dream Reaver from my notes, because otherwise I'll run the risk of conflating her with Alazhra the Dream Eater (the lovecraftian horror'rsque god-thing that serves as Pathfinder's night hag patron - the former did inform the creation of the latter).
> 
> I'll get you those descriptions later today or tomorrow.



Thanks Todd, you're the best!


----------



## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> At first I thought it was going to be Alpthis and Apteris... but obviously that ended quickly, which made it all the creepier. Shemmy? A'kin? Shylara? *EDIT*: Yethmiil Kal'suth? Felthis Ap'Jerran? Both of those are much less likely, but interesting thoughts.  */EDIT* I'll stay patient... I've managed to not read any of Storyhour 2 as it is to avoid spoilers until this one's finished. Interesting though.




You'll find out. 

We'll also be seeing almost all of those that you named again in the future - only Yethmiil Kal'suth doesn't show up again.


Alashra the Dream Reaver - overtly female rather than the standard genderless appearance of most of her kindred. Exceptionally elongated, withered arms and legs, with a purple-black mottling across her flesh. Exceptionally long, purple tentacle-like tongue that tastes the air like a serpent. A low fog tends to surround her, actually composed of a thin, misty ethereal protomatter. Eyes entirely composed of a milky, brilliantly luminous white sclera like full moons. Tangled long black hair. A very vague similarity to night hags might be noted, and she may or may not have had a role in the creation of that race from selected hordelings in the Waste. Infected/Harbored within Larsdana ap Neut the First Majestrix of the Furnace, Scribe of the General, and architect of the Tower of the Arcanaloths.

The Ineffable - no distinct physical form. Its presence lurks in its surroundings, manifesting out of them. Imagine a flight of nycaloths overheard, and then out of the negative space between their shadows cast upon the ground, those spaces start moving, crawling up from the ground, flowing together like droplets of tainted water and the vague form of a baernaloth emerges out of that. It's never seen in full light, and ambient light sources will snuff or dim to prevent a full examination of its form. More often it manifests within the warped reflections of others in water, mirrors, or polished surfaces, moving on its own accord rather than their motions.

The Shackler - most often manifests as a possessing force rather than with a distinct physical form - in these cases the possessed individual is followed by a subtle clatter of dragging, trailing chains including leaving tracks on the ground to show the passage of those immaterial chains. They may also later manifest heavy bruises in the shape of manacles on the wrists, ankles, and a collar around the neck. The actual Shackler itself is half again as large as most of its kindred, and wears heavy iron manacles on its wrists and ankles, all of which trail multiple broken lengths of heavy chains (sometimes silver, sometimes cold iron, sometimes golden). Some manifestations of the Shackler have a long train -almost like a tail- composed of meters long lengths of chain woven through or otherwise anchored into its spinal column - all of which move as if they were a living part of it.


----------



## Shemeska

Devoid of its imprisoned god, the Cathedral of the Chained God and the surrounding domain continued along an inevitable death spiral towards something between implosion and dissolution. By the time it vanished into the trackless hinterlands vistas of the Outlands, the party was miles away, flying as swiftly as possible in the direction of the Spire. The amount of time that it would take them to return to the outer ring was of course entirely variable, but at most it would take them a few days time.

They had little clue as to where they were headed; either Plague-Mort or Curst would be their ultimate destination if they continued on their way until the plane saw fit to release them into an environs where they would be able to teleport to a more hospitable gatetown than those of Carceri or the Abyss.

It took them two days, but eventually as twilight fell, they saw Plague-Mort on the horizon.

"I don't recall Plague-Mort being that... festive..." Nisha quipped. "Not that I too terribly mind. The place could certainly stand to be a little more like Xaos, aXos, SoaX, Froggy Town, whatever. But that doesn't look normal for here."

Normally the walls glowed red under the sun, and a certain number of fires would be burning and issuing smoke just from the standard operation of forges, fireplaces, and the occasional bonfire used to burn whatever unfortunate fell afoul of the political favor of the Arch-Lector. Now however, a great pall of black smoke rose up from the city and the darkening skies above it exploded with frequent if irregular showers of flame and sparks.

"That's because it's under siege." Florian instinctively rubbed her holy symbol.

Nisha stuck out her tongue, "Well that would explain that then."

Collectively their minds raced back to a few days prior when they had observed an army of baatezu in the employ of the Hag Countess marching in that direction along with a motley force of yugoloth mercenaries in tow. Plague-Mort appeared to have been that army's direction.

"Wow," Toras's voice contained no small measure of surprise, tinged with respect. "That's one hell of an unexpected move."

"Have they done that before?" Tristol asked, ears twitching with curiosity.  "Assuming that it's Blood War related."

Florian shrugged, "I can't see why it wouldn't be."

"Well the whole city has been sacked before, numerous times, but never to my knowledge by a baatezu force." Fyrehowl scratched her chin. "Most of them time its been a tanar'ri army, usually because of some political squabble between the powers that be in the gatetown and one or more in the Abyss."

"Yep," Clueless nodded in agreement. "And most of those times the whole city slid into the Abyss within days of the siege."

"In any event," Fyrehowl gestured towards the gatetown. "I'd rather not stick around unless you all want to be explaining ourselves and our business here to another bored 'loth that would sooner hurl lightning bolts than jot down our names."

"I figure we'll hear about it from one or another tout in short order crying out the events." Tristol was already preparing to cast a teleportation spell. "So where to now?"

Sigil was first on their minds, but they had unfinished business left to finish. With Leobtav dead, they needed to tell his former colleagues and employees in Verdania - Doran principally - and they were still owed payment technically for their time in Pandemonium, though unless it was offered by the remaining staff at the Institute, they weren't going to be ghoulish and push for it.

Doran and most of the others already knew what news they would hear when the party arrived in Verdania. Caught between joy at the group's survival and resigned lament over Leobtav's descent into madness and news of his death, it was a short, awkward, and relatively somber meeting. One question evoked a moment of silence however: 

"What of Ficklebarb?"

Nisha excused herself, and Toras answered, glossing over the specifics but making clear that with the death of one, so went the other. It wasn't fair, but the universe gave no such promises of fairness. Justice was the closest that they might achieve, but even with justice, they only had to think of where that pursuit had gotten Alisohn Nilesia.

"You did what you needed to do." Doran sighed and stared at his desk, trying to avoid the scattered papers from the Pandemonium expedition, many of which contained the names of the dead.

"We did what he asked us to do." Toras corrected, not specifying if he meant Ficklebarb or Leobtav, but really was there necessarily a difference when it came to what had been more or less an act of mercy?

"What was there in the Outlands?" Doran's voice was wary, but a wizard's curiosity was a powerful thing. "What was he looking for that caused all of this?"

Nervous, wary glances were exchanged, followed by shrugs and expressions of lingering confusion.

"The tiere deity was there," Florian explained as Doran's eyes went wide. "Its corpse at least."

"Corpse?" Doran's confusion echoed his guests'. "I'd assumed that Cilret was going to release it, or ransom its freedom in some capacity. No?"

"He went there to kill it." Clueless explained, unconsciously rubbing his fingers across the black glass dagger that he'd plucked from the corpse atop the altar. "He wanted a worthy sacrifice to whatever thing that he'd found in Gehenna years earlier."

"Whatever thing that had found -him-," Tristol interjected. "I don't think he'd gone looking for it."

"Whatever -it- was..." Fyrehowl's voice was cagey and uncharacteristically nervous. "We don't have a clue."

Tristol glanced at Doran, "Have you ever heard of something called vor'nel'thraanix?"

Nothing so much as a flicker of recognition crossed over Doran's face. "Nothing even remotely similar. Why do you ask?"

"It was carved into the floor as part of Leobtav's devotions to whatever it was that he worshipped." Tristol's ears involuntarily folded back. "It was the only part of the text that didn't translate, and I tried multiple spells to that effect."

Doran stroked his chin, "A proper name perhaps?"

Tristol shook his head, "That's what I thought too, but I'd be able to tell that in the translation. Whatever it is just doesn't translate, as if it has no translation, or the spells I used just don't know to do with it. It shouldn't be able to do that, but it does anyway."

"It doesn't make any sense at all." Toras grimaced, "Which fits in perfectly with everything that happened from Pandemonium through to the Outlands."

"But..." Clueless paused, thinking of the look on Ficklebarb's face when he gave them permission to do what they did, "It's over now and we did what we could for him."

A few minutes of silence fell over Doran's office, but eventually it lifted as the elf's raven familiar gently pecked him on the arm. "There was that one other thing. They should know."

Fyrehowl's apprehension from earlier seemed ever more justified. "What? What was that one other thing?"

"We tried to raise the people that were murdered in Pendemonium..." Doran swallowed hard and hesitated expounding on the response.

"And?" Toras motioned for the wizard to continue. "Spit it out. What happened."

Doran frowned, "It didn't work."

"It didn't work in Pandemonium either." Florian shrugged, "I assumed that it had to do with the method of their death; some sort of death effect. So a more powerful resurrection method would be needed later."

"No different, and we tried more than once, to hell with the expense." Doran's face was ashen. "I had three different clerics of three different faiths each try independently. None of them had any luck. All of them looked shaken, and a cleric of Heimdall actually vomited after a second attempt."

"What the hell?" Florian narrowed her eyes, "The bastard Leobtav probably bottled their souls after killing them. You can't raise them if you can't rejoin the body and spirit."

"No and absolutely." Doran's reply was devoid of emotion. "You can determine if a soul is held captive elsewhere, merged with a plane or deity, and you can also determine if a soul has been consumed by a fiend or otherwise destroyed. None of those applied in this instance."

"What?" Florian stared long and hard at the wizard. "Those are the only options."

"The souls just weren't extant. Not there, not bottled in a gemstone, not destroyed. They were gone as if they'd never existed in the first place. There was nothing to draw upon to raise them from the dead."

The next half hour was consumed by discussion as to what that meant and indeed what all of it meant. Nisha was still outside, having left during the discussion of Ficklebarb, and Tristol excused himself to go see how she was doing.

"Hey Tristol," Nisha turned and looked up from where she sat beneath a tall, elderly white birch. "Things finishing up in there?"

"Just about." He sat down next to her and reflexively she snuggled up, putting an arm around him.

"I'm sorry Tristol," She sighed. "I was about to start crying in there when Doran asked about Ficklebarb. I..."

The aasimar put a finger to her lips, "It's ok. I know how you feel."

"Thank you Tristol," She smiled and put her head against his shoulder. "I think I'll feel better once we're back in Sigil. We can relax, drink something, and forget about this all for a little bit."

Tristol smiled, gave her a hug, and briefly their tails entwined.

"You're really comfy you know," Nisha blushed and tapped Tristol's nose.

Behind them, the doors to the Institute opened and the others emerged, interrupting the pair's moment of respite that was -given the closeness of and rapidly decreasing distance between their face- building up towards a kiss.

"Hey!" Toras called out, causing Tristol's ears to perk and his tail to bottlebrush, and Nisha to give a startled squeak. "We'll be back to the Jammer soon enough, and then you two can get a room..."

"We weren't..." Nisha paused, blushed and looked over at Tristol, giving a genuinely happy smile as she looked into his eyes. "Ppppbbbtttthhh!" She stuck her tongue out at the half-celestial as Tristol stood up and brushed his robes off.

"Let's get back home, shall we?" Tristol extended a hand and helped the tiefling to her feet.

"Sounds good to me."


****​

With all that they had been through since their descent into Pandemonium, Sigil's smoke, grime, and gloom carried a curious charm that was, in and of itself, a relief from where they had been. The howling of the winds was replaced with the cries of touts, arguing ex-faction members, and overly aggressive buskers and beggars. The actual fiends were readily identifiable, none of whom were likely going to go on murder sprees, and those that wanted to do so weren't because nothing good would happen to them if they did courtesy of a silent Lady and Her flaying shadow.

With all of Sigil's verdigris-covered-cranium rat and executioner's raven-roosting charm, the Portal Jammer was even more of a respite from what they'd collectively been through on what had originally been something of a vacation and a side job to distract them from Sigilian politics and perhaps more than that, from dealing with 'loths of most any variety with the possible exception of one particular smiling shop-keep.

Back in the Jammer the first thing done was simply to sit down and relax, enjoying a few bottles of wine and some shots of Arborean cognac, both of which significantly aided in the relaxation department. Largely immune to the effects of most alcohol, Clueless doubled his consumption and added in a pair of mugs filled with some variety of Hellwine. Not to be outdone, after her second shot, Nisha took the bottle of cognac and retired to a chair on the bow of the spelljamming ship built into the inn, an overly large pirate captain's hat pulled down over her face - no one bothered to ask where she'd found the hat.

Sigil was Sigil, and leafing casually through a stack of newspapers devoted to the City of Doors showed remarkably little had happened in the interregnum in Pandemonium. In contrast to shifting layers of planes, the death of gods, and the overthrow of planar powers, the urban homeostasis was remarkably appreciated.

They had not however yet been delivered the most recent editions of the local papers. That would have to wait for a short bit longer however, as one remaining order of business from the expedition to Pandemonium remained.

An hour later they all gathered in the back room of the Jammer for the business of identifying and deciding what to do with all of the various items that they'd collected in Pandemonium and the Outlands.

The items taken from Leobtav's corpse lay strewn across the table, with Tristol sifting through the items, with the others looking on and giving their opinion on whether an item would best be saved for one of them, sold in the Marketplace, or in a few cases, outright destroyed.

"Some of this makes sense." Tristol shook his head as he stared down at the motley collection of objects. "Some of it not so much, and some of it I'd rather not touch again."

"How so?" Clueless raised an eyebrow.

"A lot of this you'd expect to find on someone that was a wizard with a minor bit of martial training, and some of it makes sense given his background as a Guvner." The aasimar looked askance at the seemingly non-magical obsidian dagger Clueless had placed on the table. "But some of it is really, really out there. Some of these things I haven't seen before, and other things that he should have had -like a spellbook for some of what he was throwing out- just aren't here."

"He didn't have a spellbook at all?" Clueless glanced at the moderately thick tome sitting on the table. Fastidiously cared for, it didn't have so much as a stray mark on its polished, oiled leather cover.

"He had a smaller, traveling spellbook." Tristol explained, motioning to the book Clueless had just made note of. "And that one makes total sense for a moderately skilled wizard with Leobtav's obvious background, which is exactly how he presented himself. But it's tiny, and it doesn't contain any of the crazier, darker spells I saw him cast. Clearly he had more spellbooks, or whatever it was he was working for was just acting through him like he was a lightning rod for some distant god of storms."

"Seems more likely the last case." Florian mused.

Tristol shrugged and continued the identification process, calling out each item for sorting as he determined what each of them was, "Ring of Vile Spells, Ring of Free Action, Ring of Counterspells with a _Flesh to Stone_ spell currently within, a Returning Dagger of Unholy Power, and last but not least, a Cog of Modron summoning that I'm keeping for Nisha."

Clueless raised an eyebrow, "Seriously?"

The aasimar chuckled, "She said something about it 'suiting her style' and something else about a hero needing a trusty steed."

"I don't think monodrones are trusty steeds, not for her." Florian rubbed her forehead. "Tempus preserve I hope it's just a monodrone."

"What about that?" Toras pointed to a crystalline vial set off to one side.

"Yeah that..." Tristol grimaced. "It isn't magical, not in the magical item sense. Best I can describe it is that it's an unholy symbol, or some sort of focus."

"To who?" Clueless asked, "Or what?"

"Not a clue," Tristol eyed it warily, "But it's filled with ash and ice crystals that don't care to melt even though it's getting a tad stuffy in here with all of us together."

"Ashes from that place in Gehenna?" Florian wagered, remembering both Leobtav's own words and stories told by former expedition members.

"That's what I thought too." Tristol's expression turned more dubious, "But they aren't. They register as being from the Waste."

"Yeah we're toasting that." Fyrehowl interjected, "Right over the side in Suicide Alley, or dumped through a portal to some horrific prison plane. That's not staying with us."

"Agreed on that." Tristol nodded.

"No argument here." Toras joined in.

"So that's about it, unless anyone else has something more." Tristol was already putting away his spell components when Fyrehowl interrupted him.

"Oh, there was one more item." The lupinal reached down to her waist and withdrew a short, slender rod, roughly a foot long, without any obvious, identifying marks. "It's either a wand or a rod, but I can't tell which."

With Tristol currently occupied with identifying a large metal gear embellished with the symbol of the Fraternity of Order, Clueless took the rod and whispered the words to a spell of identification.

"It's a metamagic rod." His voice was calm and perfectly nonchalant, but mentally his eyes were wide and he wanted to wash his hand after putting the rod back down. "Not a particularly powerful one either, so probably best to sell this one."

Rather than being what he said it was, while perfectly innocuous to the touch and without any telltale marks of its nature, the rod was similar to one known as a celestial bane rod. Simply being in proximity to the rod would have inflicted a curse on any celestial, and Leobtav had augmented it to make his spells directed against any good-aligned creature -celestial or not- ever more damaging and penetrating. With the additional enchantments layered on top of this particular specimen, Fyrehowl should have been continually affected, but she hadn't been. Even more so, handling and touching the rod with her bare hands should have caused her crippling pain, like touching a hot iron, but it hadn't.

Fyrehowl had been deeply affected by what she'd witnessed in Elysium, having seen the Oinoloth rip away a part of her home plane, but prior to now, Clueless hadn't understood just how much and what that meant. She'd lost something then, and the archfiend's actions had seemingly ripped away a portion of her as well, and where she'd end up might be anyone's guess.

"Damn, I'd hoped it would be something at least a little bit more useful." Fyrehowl shrugged and turned her attention to Tristol, oblivious to Clueless's moment of well-intentioned deceit.

Clueless inwardly breathed a sigh of relief and didn't say another word to the lupinal. To be honest he wasn't sure that she necessarily understood the magnitude of her change or if she was even aware of it consciously: Fyrehowl had fallen. 

Sometime between their time in Elysium's stolen layer and now, she had fallen from the pinnacle of celestial grace. Not fully perhaps; the cipher wasn't evil, and it didn't seem like she would ever fall further, but were she to die, her essence would not seek out Elysium.

For the next half hour, the items were parceled out and divided up, and through it all, Clueless didn't say a word. It wasn't his place to tell her if she wasn't aware of it, nor was it something that he needed to tell the others. What would happen would happen in its own time as Fyrehowl came to realize her own situation. All in good time.


****​

Fyrehowl's epiphany would come in its own time, but an understanding that the planes moved on their own whether you were there to influence them or not would come sooner. Completing the earlier, interrupted attempts to catch up on what had happened during their time in Pandemonium and beyond, the mail arrived, with the most recent newspaper edition at the top of the stack.

"So I found out what happened with Plague-Mort..." Toras held up the smudged, poorly set newspaper, probably rushed to print with breaking news after the print deadline.

"So what happened?" Clueless looked over from behind the bar as he stood there, tending to customers and cleaning a number of mugs.

"The headline is 'Plague-Mort sacked.'" The half-celestial read aloud, continuing on to the rest of the text, "The Illuminated take control of Plague-Mort with the aid of baatezu forces loyal to Hag Countess of Malbolge and yugoloth mercenaries. Arch-Lector and cronies publicly executed. Sect leader Green Marvent declares self 'Factol'."

"Who the hell is Green Marvent?" Florian asked with a shrug, having never heard the man's name before.

"Who the hell are the Illuminated?" Clueless seemed equally confused by the events precipitated by people he'd never heard of.

"Hold on, the paper continues," Toras waved away their questions and continued reading, "Baatezu and yugoloth armies made no entry into Plague-Mort proper after breaching the gates, but "Faction" forces of The Illuminated now patrol the streets. Access to and ingress from the gates to Sigil and the Abyss have not been impacted by the coup. According to coup leader and self-declared Factol Green Marvent, "We have no desire to disrupt the proper flow of traffic and trade through Plague-Mort. Unlike the previous rulers of this city, we are enlightened, each of us harboring a spark of greatness that we only wish to cultivate, nurture, and spread. Those of you that feel the same and wish to better yourself and achieve the greatness that rests untapped within your souls, we are here, we are prepared and we are waiting for you.""

Clueless paused in his dishwashing and looked at Toras, "Honestly, I don't know what to make of that. Except for the Arch-Lector and his inner circle it seems to have been a pretty bloodless affair as far as Plague-Mort standards are concerned. They're treading on dangerous ground calling themselves a Faction, but they aren't in Sigil so..." He shrugged.

"I don't think it's going to last." Fyrehowl remarked with a shrug of her own. "I give them a week before a tanar'ri army bursts through the gate, kills this Green Marvent fellow and puts his would-be faction to the sword. It seems rather reckless to march an army on the city and stage a coup, plus calling yourself a faction."

"Well if nobody knew who he was before, half the people on the planes probably do now." Tristol remarked, looking up from where he thumbed through Leobtav's spellbook, half-hoping to discover something hidden away or encoded.

"He's doing it the right way you know," Toras motioned to Marvent's quote in the paper, "If he wanted to grow an obscure sect into a faction, this is brilliant, because he just set up shop, opened the doors, made sure everyone knew who he was, who they were, gave enough information to get people intrigued, and then invited everyone in with more or less an open call to join them. This wasn't reckless at all, it was premeditated genius."

More discussion of the events followed, but largely they were happy to have avoided becoming entangled in the siege itself.

"Soooo..." Nisha sat down next to Tristol, smiling and flitting her tail side to side with a pronounced jangle of the silver bell at its tip.

Tristol glanced over; she was smiling behind the rim of a glass of wine - his glass of wine in fact that was no longer on the table in front of him. "Yeeees?"

"Let's go out somewhere." Nisha smiled and the bell on her tail tip rattled happily, like some sort of chaotic, inverse rattlesnake.

"Where to?" Tristol put away the book he was reading, noting that she'd spent some time

"I don't know." She shrugged, "Someplace nice. Not that the Portal Jammer isn't nice in its own way. But it's too familiar for having a date night."

"Date night huh?" Tristol smiled and his tail began to happily swish back and forth behind him, "So somewhere nice? Dress up?"

"Yes aaaand yes please." She bobbed her head and took a slurp of his drink. Her hair had actually had some attention paid to it he noted. Either she was planning something, or she was just feeling particularly romantic in response to Pandemonium, which was incredibly sweet the more than Tristol considered it. She was really something special.

"Anything at all like that?" Tristol noted that she'd actually put on some sort of lip gloss, which she normally didn't, "Somewhere just randomly selected?"

"Exactly!" The tiefling quipped, tugging on Tristol's sleeve and leading him off for whatever mischief, romance, or mischievous romance she had in mind.

Ignoring the two lovebirds, Toras went about going through the rest of the mail. As he thumbed through the stack of advertisements, invoices for the Portal Jammer, former and not-a-faction propaganda letters, and numerous poorly printed but widely distributed proclamations of civic outrage over one or another minor issue, one particular letter didn't stand out from the rest at first glance. In fact that one piece of mail was summarily dropped into the 'maybe read later' pile, but before it hit the table, Fyrehowl snatched it up in her hands, cut it open with a claw, and opened it - all in one swift, preternaturally smooth action without thought - positively Cipher'esque in fact.

"Huh..." The lupinal muttered as she read over the crisp, well-printed letter.

"What's that?" Florian asked, looking over from where she sat.

Fyrehowl held the letter up for her to see, "It's a notice about the next meeting of the Sigil Advisory Council."

"And we should particularly care because why?" The cleric shrugged. "It's just a bunch of grandstanding and arguments between Golden Lords, wanna-be-Golden Lords and ex-factols."

"That's more accurate than not most of the time," The lupinal nodded in agreement, "But for this time in particular probably because they have a preliminary agenda listed, and one of the laws involves the 'public registration of fiends, advanced spellcasters, and other persons for the public good'."

Somewhere getting ready with Nisha, Tristol's ears were apt to be burning at the very suggestion of such a law.

"I think we might want to show up." Fyrehowl grimaced at the very thought of the latter part of the law actually passing. It did not portend anything good.

"Well," Clueless mused, "We do own land, so technically we have a right to speak during public debate."

"I wonder who the hell put this one up for a vote?" Florian frowned.

Fyrehowl carefully folded the letter, keeping it for later, "I suppose we'll find out."

Pondering that question, Clueless considered the possibilities, "Who's on the council anyway?"

Clueless thought for a moment and starting naming names while counting out council seats on his fingers, "Rhys, Zadara, that Hatchis fellow, Estavan the Ogre-mage, Kylie the Tout, and a number of others that I really don't recall off the top of my head."

"Aren't a few of them up for re-election soon?" Fyrehowl asked.

"A few of them yeah," Clueless nodded, "but I don't recall which."

"Whoever it was, I don't think they intend for this law to pass." Florian smirked, "I think someone is just stirring the pot before the next election."

More discussion of the forthcoming Advisory Council meeting proceeded, drinks were poured, and more mail was read, though none of it of particular importance.

"So where did Tristol and Nisha go?" Toras asked.

"Out on a date it looked like," Florian answered with a sentimental chuckle, "Nisha positively looked like she had stars in her eyes."

Collectively they all cooed and awwww'd at the pair, and then Clueless, still over at the bar smiled at something else entirely.

"Speaking of which," Clueless looked at them, "I have a Sensate to go spend some time with. Stories to tell. Times to catch up on. Experiences to share."

"Experiences huh?" Fyrehowl rolled her eyes.

"Go. Get. Have fun." Florian motioned to Clueless to leave, "Just don't rub it in, and don't make the sensory stones publically available. I don't want to accidentally come across one of them next week or next year, whenever I'm in the Civic Festhall."


****​

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Sigil, within the glitz and glamor of the Lady's Ward, others were enjoying their own particular shade of Sigil's ambiance. Plans were being made, winnings celebrated, losses mourned or drowned in alcohol, and atop the Fortune's Wheel, in a private room in the Azure Iris Inn, Wheels would soon be turning.


****​


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## 81Dagon

Awesome as always! And thank you for tossing up those descriptions. If I can get any decent work out of it, I'll make sure to post a link here. Nice to seem them get some down time. Was the obsidian dagger the returning one they mentioned? I wonder what the next wheel will be?


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## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> Awesome as always! And thank you for tossing up those descriptions. If I can get any decent work out of it, I'll make sure to post a link here. Nice to seem them get some down time. Was the obsidian dagger the returning one they mentioned? I wonder what the next wheel will be?




The obsidian dagger was the one used on the tiere/gautiere deity, while the +5 Returning Dagger of Unholy Power was just something that Leobtav had tucked into his belt. The BoVD was released relatively in the timeframe of this particular campaign arc, so while much of the "vile evil" I found a tad corny, there was also a good chunk of stuff that just fit to use for the fight with Leobtav.

--  Also of note --

I'm going to pause on the PCs here for the next several updates, venturing off into a side story that covers the events of a 5 hour one-shot game that I ran at North Carolina Gameday and also at GenCon, standalone but also set within the continuity of the Storyhour campaign (several of my players were in one session of it). So a new pack of one-shot PCs and some events that take place on the side and later come back to bite everyone collectively in the tail, literally and/or figuratively.


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## Akhelos

And so at least one PC found out that the Guardinal has fallen, sad Fyrehowl, well at least he did not call in a Paladin to smite her...just for testing purposes how far she has fallen *ggg*

On a important sidenote you are now responsible for more hurt players or more correctly PCs. ^^ As our group now distrusts our local Arcanaloth so much that they try to find a Copy of the Book of keeping. *whistles*

As part of this our sorceress used polymorph and a fiendring to cloak herself as an Arcanaloth and tried to sneak in the tower Arcane. And believed herself soo good because no one there seemed to break her cloak, albeit she did not know that her cloak was already breached and that she was watched...albeit someone very high up wanted to play a bit with that arrogant mortal and so ordered every Yugoloth that saw her "to play along".

And well who is that big bad Guy, well you inspired my so much that she had a little Meeting with Vorkannis (albeit I only make him in our chronik an insanly old an powerful arcanaloth, everything else would be too powerful for the intended powerlevel of that campaign) who made a deal, that their Arcanaloth will no longer bother them if the Sorceress steals an Statue from the Archive of her Family and delivers that to him...what she did, not knowing that this "Statue" is an prototyp rechargable Artifact that the yugoloth lost on this world to an holy order, which allows the user to infect an whole city with an curse comporable to an Helmet of opposite alignment, turning everyone Neutral Evil *looks innocently* ^^


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## Shemeska

Akhelos said:


> And so at least one PC found out that the Guardinal has fallen, sad Fyrehowl, well at least he did not call in a Paladin to smite her...just for testing purposes how far she has fallen *ggg*




She hasn't fallen far (NG to N). It'll be a while before she realizes it herself, and how she finds out is amusing.



> On a important sidenote you are now responsible for more hurt players or more correctly PCs. ^^ As our group now distrusts our local Arcanaloth so much that they try to find a Copy of the Book of keeping. *whistles*




None of my players trust -any- fiend at this point. 

And the next update is written. Will be posted on Saturday.


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## Shemeska

Colcook frowned inwardly as he adjusted the mirror. It wasn’t heavy, but he’d been holding it up for more than two hours. Frankly, despite his supreme talents –in his opinion, wasted on Sigil at times– it was impossible to hold it at the precise angle necessary for someone moving about when you yourself were blindfolded and couldn't tell where it needed to be.

A slight splash of water and the rustle of shuffled papers interrupted the mock-tiefling’s thoughts.

“More to the left Colcook,” Came the relaxed, half-hearted but yet still abominably arrogant command of his employer, the King of the Crosstrade. “I can’t see all of myself with you slouching like that.”

While Colcook stood at one end of the windowless chamber, Shemeska lay in the very center, lounging in the middle of a deep marble tub inset into the floor, casually half submerged in a bath of perfumed water bubbling at a slow boil. Sigil’s patron saint of malign decadence drifted naked beneath the surface, obscured by a partial covering of carefully pruned and scattered Agathian crystal lily petals, each dusted with enough naturally poisonous pollen to kill a dozen men.

For the past hour the Marauder had alternated between staring self-absorbingly at her own reflection in Colcook’s mirror and browsing through and penning comments upon more than a dozen notes, balance-sheets, and ledgers hovering in the air above her bath. Also drifting in loose proximity to the fiend was an ornate glass pipe with a mixture of sweet herbs and mild euphoric hallucinogens smoldering at its tip. She would occasionally reach for it, take a prolonged puff and exhale the smoke in the direction of a naked aasimar girl of questionable maturity kneeling at the water's edge.

Not blindfolded as Colcook was, the cervidal-descended aasimar subserviently went about polishing the fiend's claws when they emerged above the surface. Of course the aasimar was blind, her eyes gouged out intentionally, so the drugged smoke’s hallucinogenic effect did little to phase her, but the callous intent on her Mistress’s part was still there, to say nothing of the mutilation.

Pursing and then licking her lips, the Marauder swirled, sniffed, and sipped from a slender crystalline flute filled with a deep red-black wine.

“Let me ask you something Colcook,” The fiend spoke as if at a business meeting, despite the baroque and hellish absurdity of the scene, “How many cases of this did you and yours manage to steal from Muriov Garianis last week? It’s quite good.”

“Five cases Madam.”

She smiled and took another taste. “Sweet but not overly so. Not fruit forward; mild tannins. Decent mid-body, hints of cherry, leather and tobacco. Judging by this alone, I suppose that the Prime Material isn’t entirely just a source of mortal sh*t and larvae. Bring two cases of it here tomorrow. The others you can distribute to our friends in the Lady’s Ward taverns that are on my good side. One or two bottles can show up in the Black Sails though, just to rub Garianis the wrong way and let him wonder which of his people f*cked up this time.”

"As you wish Madam." Colcook's voice was prompt, measured and professional.

The 'loth smiled and mentally uncorked the wine bottle, topping off her glass with an effortless dance of telekinetic force spread between the bottle, the glass, her pipe, and the dozens of documents hovering above her.

"I am done your fiendish majesty..." The aasimar's voice was soft and unobtrusive, flat and almost devoid of emotion, bordering upon despondent. Compared to Colcook, she was less of a servitor and more of a pet.

The fiend paused and held up her feet, examining the manicure of her claws there and then to her fingertips done earlier. Approving of the job, she slid one foot over the edge of the tub to run the claw of her big toe along the line of the aasimar's jaw, pricking the skin and leaving a red line of her appreciation painted in the passing edema. "I approve. Good girl."

"What color would Mistress desire?" The aasimar glanced sightlessly in the direction of a tray of brushes and paint.

"Well I suppose that depends on what I'll be wearing tomorrow." The Marauder glanced at her reflection, concentrating on the image and altering it to show her form dried and dressed in various collections of cloth and finery, moving through various options and pondering the resulting matches in paint and gloss for her claws. "Should I wear the blue empire gown I wore at the Wheel two months ago during which I entertained those Merkhants? Or perhaps something displaying my form in distinctly less modest of a light such as the purple keyhole gown with the open, laced sides and..."

Twenty minutes elapsed during which the 'loth never stopped talking about her wardrobe options.

“...but given how much heavier velvet and fur seem to be on the verge of coming back into style, I do think that I’ll be paying a visit to that new eladrin dressmaker on Gold Lantern next to…”

Interrupted, the ‘loth snarled as there came a sudden knock at the door.

“Enter,” She said in far too reserved and demure a voice. The faintest glow of purple flame danced in her eyes as she lay her hands on the cold stone rim of the pool and clicked her claws with restrained anger.

One of her tiefling guards stepped one foot inside, holding a hand over his eyes and looking at his feet, apparently well aware that he was not allowed to look. His voice was hesitant and worried, “Your fiendish majesty there was…”

She cut him off with the same false calm in her voice. “I do believe that I stated that I was not to be disturbed for the next five hours while I relaxed in the bath. Perchance you didn’t hear me? Or has the Lady issued an edict that I’m not allowed to occasionally indulge myself without interruption?”

“There was…”

“This had better be important,” She cut him off a second time, “or your blood will be upon my hands tonight. In fact there may still be blood even if you have a good reason for this disturbance, if I so desire it…”

“A letter arrived for you.” The tiefling replied, furiously squinting his eyes shut and continuing to avert his gaze obediently as he heard the fiend emerge from the water.

“Oh is that all? A Letter. Obviously such world shaking importance as a bit of mail could not wait till after I’d finished my bath, gone over finances, and had my way with a concubine or two.” She sneered and shook her head, pausing to run her claws through the still-kneeling aasimar's hair, “A letter you say. From who?”

“I… don’t know.” The tiefling answered, cringing in fear, expecting to wake missing one or more fingers or some other body part.

The ‘loth could have cared less about mortal sensibilities and social mores concerning clothing or lack thereof as she stood there, dripping wet, her fur slicked down from the water, but in her mind there was something to be said about making them think you cared just as much as some sugared high-born mortal tart saving herself, and then tormenting them with their own discomfort and worry. There was pleasure in that. This time however, she was genuinely annoyed by the lack of tact in disrupting her bath, especially when she'd been in the middle of considering the intersection of her body and Sigilian high fashion.

“You don’t know?” She hissed. “Then why in the Oinoloth’s name did you even bother thinking it of enough importance to interrupt me?”

He cringed and the answer was swift to his lips, as if an explanation might divert the spells congealing in her mind, “Because the man who arrived with the letter self-immolated upon announcing that he had it to deliver to you.”

Shemeska blinked, derailed in her thoughts, ears suddenly perked and alert, all of her various pretenses dropped for the moment as she stared at the letter in her assassin-groomer’s hand, ready to dispel any spell-trap or ward herself if it was too late. But no, the letter was non-magical, or at least it appeared to be. The envelope was simple, pale white in color and addressed in elaborate, hand-penned script “To Shemeska, my beautiful monster.” What followed was the tripartite symbol of the Oinoloth.

She snatched the letter with trembling hands, “You are dismissed.”

The tiefling nodded obediently and quietly saw himself out, followed a moment later by the blind aasimar girl. Shaking slightly with worried anticipation, the Marauder waited and then looked up at Colcook.

“You are dismissed.” Her tone carrying a mild annoyance, only barely cutting through her own humbled anticipation, “That goes for you too Colcook.”

“But…”

 “Get. Out.” She added a soft snarl to punctuate the command before then literally barking it out a second time at double the volume and breaking her normally cultured demeanor. “GET OUT! Dismiss the other guards and lock the door. I am not to be disturbed for the remainder of the evening unless it’s the Bladed Queen herself at the doorstep.”

Reluctantly Colcook put down the mirror in his hands and made for the door, closing it before removing his blindfold. As he turned his key in the lock, his mind raced through the possibilities of what the letter contained and how he might put it to his advantage. He did know one thing for certain however: many rilmani were disturbed by long-term proximity to other outsiders not native to the Outlands, especially the more powerful ones that epitomized their alignment. In his time posing as the Marauder's guard and servitor, he'd grown used to a certain amount of evil that wafted off of her like a stench more potent than the most toxic of her perfumes. The letter in her hand however had nearly caused him to gag and wretch from the other side of the room.

Back beyond the locked door, Shemeska slipped back into the tub, having only hastily tied her hair back to avoid dripping water upon the paper. This was more important than her own appearance. Sensing much the same aura from the letter as had Colcook, the Marauder reacted not with sickness, but something between carnal desire and religious ecstasy.

Panting and flush in the face and tips of her ears, she stared at the letter, written by the Oinoloth's hand for her eyes alone.

‘My beautiful monster.’ The letter was addressed. The Marauder's eyes danced with sparkling, exploding stars snuffling out the life of their satellite worlds. He’d called Shylara the same appellation before as a term of pseudo-affection. Of course his use now was likely hollow and only intended to spur jealousy. But still, Shemeska smiled and put a hand across her breast, ears blushing furiously. She actually deserved the appellation of course. She was genuinely worthy of the Oinoloth’s attention. She’d helped him ascend to the Siege Malicious. The other one -her former apprentice Shylara- was a puppet, pet, and weak-willed whore. She on the other hand, unlike Shylara, had risen to power out of her own skill, her own power, her own ferociously duplicitous intellect. Unlike her former student -and briefly more than that- she was a legitimate colleague and peer to the Ebon, though yes, she wouldn’t mind the same carnal attentions herself if it improved her position and fortunes.

With only her head and hands above the waterline, the Marauder relaxed and opened the letter, her excitement causing the candles in the room to burn brighter with flickering amber light. The letter had been expected eventually of course, it being a response to her aide in the Oinoloth's ascension, and more to the point a response to her answer to his question to her, posed prior to that point.

"What is it you want?" She whispered, kissing the envelope gently and leaving behind a purple imprint of her lips. 

That was the question that he'd asked her and Helekanalaith, and while she didn't know what the Keeper's response had been, her answer had been swift.

"Importance," She’d whispered then and whispered again now, feeling her ego engorge, “From my lips to your ears my Oinoloth.”

Thinking back on the moment, she recalled how, for a split second, she’d considered asking for A’kin’s head on a silver platter, still conscious and screaming. But no, that was too petty even for her, and the Ebon promised things of much greater scope. As for A'kin, she’d enjoy taking him down herself and either leaving him powerless, devoid of magic, and begging for her mercy, or just begging on his knees, looking up at her as something unto itself. He was an annoyance but to tell the truth the back and forth of their complexly byzantine dynamic over the millennia was something she enjoyed on some level like a game played out ever so slowly that of course she would ultimately win. Oh yes she would, when she was ready, and he’d be on his knees…

She paused with a furious blush and soft snarl, realizing that she’d been breathing far too heavily at the thought. She flushed the petty self-indulgence from her mind with a look of distaste -as was the dignified response for a high ranking member of her caste to such thoughts- and glanced back at the parchment.

“My beautiful monster Shemeska,

Here is the first part of my payment for your aid and support. Below you will find a detailed drawing and a map. Yes, it exists, and it is there within your city still, though its origins vastly predate both its appearance in Sigil and your tenure therein. I desire it and you will have your people find it for me. It will be useful in the future in your hands and your hands alone for the role that you, my Shemeska, will play in things to come. Before then, it is yours to keep safe within Sigil, since I very much doubt that if it left the city it would ever be allowed back in. Use it with extreme and utmost discretion.”

Vorkannis the Ebon - Oinoloth of the Waste, Overlord of the Fourfold Furnace of Gehenna, and Lord of the Scarlet Prison of Carceri.”

Shemeska’s eyes went wide as she looked down at the drawing –again in the Oinoloth’s hand– and recognized it for what it was from what few descriptions that she’d come across during her many thousands of years in the Cage. Silver but not silver and etched with swirls of black impurities in the shape of runes in no known language. The symbols were said to blur on their own accord and strain the eyes, and they did, even in the Ebon’s drawing. It was said to be far heavier than it should have been and forged in the form of a simple, antique skeleton key.

“The Shadow Sorcelled Key…”


****​


----------



## Erevanden

Intriguing, immersive, great as usual 

As an infrequent visitor to the boards, this is a good occasion to ask some questions I had in the back of my head for some time now:

1) Do you make statblocks for the more unique and powerful npc's in your campaigns - creatures like Vorkannis the Ebon, Shylara, the Demented, Master of the Hunt (we all know who) or Lothar ?

2) Are such creatures just advanced specimens of their kind (in case of outsiders and such) or do you gice them special, unique abilities ?

3) Do you use "background cutscenes" in your campaigns ? (a kind of handouts for players, basically short stories about things like enemy activity or events taking place paralel to the campaign timeline, or perhaps in the past, that are important to the campaign but players do not take part in them and generally know nothing about them - like the Vorkannis "landing" or oblivion compass situation)


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## Shemeska

Erevanden said:


> Intriguing, immersive, great as usual
> 
> As an infrequent visitor to the boards, this is a good occasion to ask some questions I had in the back of my head for some time now:
> 
> 1) Do you make statblocks for the more unique and powerful npc's in your campaigns - creatures like Vorkannis the Ebon, Shylara, the Demented, Master of the Hunt (we all know who) or Lothar ?
> 
> 2) Are such creatures just advanced specimens of their kind (in case of outsiders and such) or do you gice them special, unique abilities ?
> 
> 3) Do you use "background cutscenes" in your campaigns ? (a kind of handouts for players, basically short stories about things like enemy activity or events taking place paralel to the campaign timeline, or perhaps in the past, that are important to the campaign but players do not take part in them and generally know nothing about them - like the Vorkannis "landing" or oblivion compass situation)




1) If stats apply for them / if the PCs might interact with them in the context of rolling for initiative yes. It might be ridiculously dumb for them to do so, but if they so choose to attempt to sucker punch an archfiend, I'll have numbers for that archfiend.

2) It depends on the creature in question. Shylara for instance was an arcanaloth with added sorcerer levels so that she was a 20th level caster when the 3.0 arcanaloth innate spellcasting levels were included. I think I had the Marauder around a level 25 spellcaster with some unique abilities. One of the Demented by the name of Methikus sar Telmuril 'The Flesh Sculptor' had around 2k hit points and a unique stat block, unique abilities, etc. If it was going to be in a situation where it was even capable of being harmed, it had stats if there could be combat.

3) Sort of. A few times the PCs were able to scry on distant events (they were watching when Vorkannis rose to Oinoloth for instance), but the cut scenes in the story hour are just me fleshing out what was happening in the larger campaign world off stage from the PCs.

The PCs did visit the 'landing' and the Oblivion Compass, the very briefly mentioned pool in Elysium, other places etc.


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## Erevanden

Sweet 

I see that you provided some *incredibly cool* concept spoilers for the unique Baern abiliites in one of the previous posts. 

Are you willing, at this point of the storyhour, to spill some information about others ? 

I'm particularily interested in Lazarius Ibn Shartalan "the Architect", Harishek Ap Thul'kesh "the Blind Clockmaker", Sarkithel fek Pathis "the Chronicler", Severeth Na'Halastrian "The Wanderer" and Chorazin Ibn Shatalan "The Thrice Damned".


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## Shemeska

Erevanden said:


> Sweet
> 
> I see that you provided some *incredibly cool* concept spoilers for the unique Baern abiliites in one of the previous posts.
> 
> Are you willing, at this point of the storyhour, to spill some information about others ?
> 
> I'm particularily interested in Lazarius Ibn Shartalan "the Architect", Harishek Ap Thul'kesh "the Blind Clockmaker", Sarkithel fek Pathis "the Chronicler", Severeth Na'Halastrian "The Wanderer" and Chorazin Ibn Shatalan "The Thrice Damned".




All of them have previously appeared in stories* of their own or in the storyhour (and they'll show up again), with the exception being Chorazin. He/She/It hasn't appeared yet other then being mentioned by name.

*all of which were hosted on Planewalker


----------



## Erevanden

Oh, I know, I know, read each and every one more than once, those little masterpieces 

This question should propably go to the Rogues Gallery thread, as I was referring to your post obout the unique abilities of the baernaloths:



Shemeska said:


> Well I do recall some of them off the top of my head.
> 
> Tellura ibn Shartalan perpetually had double actions each round, one for her physical humanoid body and another for her shadow. The physical form was also effectively immune to physical damage, soaking it up without suffering any mechanical detriment. Only damage to her shadow could actually harm her (which had some god-awfully-high miss chance ala a cloak of displacement or blur).
> 
> The Ineffable had some form of phantasmal killer aura going on.
> 
> Chorazin ibn Shartalan the Thrice-Damned (not one of The Demented) had some pretty hard-core flame-based effects and an obscene caster level (I want to say he auto bypassed SR).
> 
> Lazarius ibn Shartalan 'The Architect' absorbed arcane magic completely, healed by it or just auto-reversing the effects on anyone else in range (his range, not the original caster). I want to say that divine magic was one of the few things capable of actually doing damage to him.
> 
> Only Tellura, the Flesh Sculptor, the Blind Clockmaker, and the Ineffable ended up rolling for initiative in that campaign (versus the PCs and allies at least).




I'm curious about what the others could do - Harishek Ap Thul'kesh "the Blind Clockmaker", Sarkithel fek Pathis "the Chronicler" or Severeth Na'Halastrian "The Wanderer" ?

Oh, and just noticed Chorazin's flame affinity - pretty unusual for a baern


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## Shemeska

Erevanden said:


> I'm curious about what the others could do - Harishek Ap Thul'kesh "the Blind Clockmaker", Sarkithel fek Pathis "the Chronicler" or Severeth Na'Halastrian "The Wanderer" ?
> 
> Oh, and just noticed Chorazin's flame affinity - pretty unusual for a baern





Harishek - time/probability manipulation

The Chronicler - interacted with quite a bit, but never in combat. He seemed to have a pretty crazy foresight ability though it was more a case of calculating possible futures and acting accordingly to make them happen more so than time manipulation like the Clockmaker. Consider the Chronicler to be the epitome of a dispassionate, detached, and utterly amoral researcher.  

The Wanderer - never seen in combat, so it never really became relevant

Also with respect to Chrorazin. Chorazin isn't one of the Demented, and hasn't been on the Waste since nearly the beginning of time. So the wasting that affected most of the Baern and the madness that consumed the Demented isn't really a thing for him. He's rather different in some ways, but that doesn't come into play for a while. Apomps was something of a protege of his.


----------



## Erevanden

Wonderful 

Many thanks for all the great info about the Baern.



Shemeska said:


> Also with respect to Chrorazin. Chorazin isn't one of the Demented, and hasn't been on the Waste since nearly the beginning of time. So the wasting that affected most of the Baern and the madness that consumed the Demented isn't really a thing for him. He's rather different in some ways, but that doesn't come into play for a while. Apomps was something of a protege of his.




Oh, I'll be looking forward to read more about this specific Baernaloth. The "rather different in some ways" part especially stokes my curiosity


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## 81Dagon

Shemeska said:


> All of them have previously appeared in stories* of their own or in the storyhour (and they'll show up again), with the exception being Chorazin. He/She/It hasn't appeared yet other then being mentioned by name.
> 
> *all of which were hosted on Planewalker



If anyone's looking for them, whoever made this pdf managed to pull all of the stories before Planewalker went down. The original link is in the previous storyhour thread, buts seems to have also died. Fortunately, I have a copy in my Dropbox too. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4kzhyt34ew9e1en/shemeskas_psh.pdf


----------



## Akhelos

Shemeshka even in her Bathroom never without a Mirror, even if you can Pity her Bodyguards. Must carry the Mirror but are not allowed to look...except if the want to never see something again. *g*



81Dagon said:


> If anyone's looking for them, whoever made this pdf managed to pull all of the stories before Planewalker went down. The original link is in the previous storyhour thread, buts seems to have also died. Fortunately, I have a copy in my Dropbox too.
> 
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/4kzhyt34ew9e1en/shemeskas_psh.pdf




What has btw. happend with planewalker.com? The whole site seems to be dead. A bit sad, there were a lot of nice articles.

And after reading, all the Appendixes in the PDF (some of the storys again, like that about the Baernaloths I already saw on planewalker *g*) as a Question.
Where are Informations about the Meladaemons? ^^ Except of the stats block in the pathfinder Srd. Or better said where (in which Books) are more Informations about them? ^^

Oh and who is Inuq'Sharaq (The Collector)? Another Baernaloth not of the Demented?


----------



## Shemeska

Akhelos said:


> What has btw. happend with planewalker.com? The whole site seems to be dead. A bit sad, there were a lot of nice articles.




They had a database crash of some sort. Everything is saved, but it may be a while yet before the site is back up since the webmaster is seriously busy at the moment. But it's in the works.




> And after reading, all the Appendixes in the PDF (some of the storys again, like that about the Baernaloths I already saw on planewalker *g*) as a Question.
> Where are Informations about the Meladaemons? ^^ Except of the stats block in the pathfinder Srd. Or better said where (in which Books) are more Informations about them? ^^





Meladaemons aren't a Planescape thing, they're just within the Pathfinder universe. I've written a lot of published material for Golarion, and the fiction like 'Hunger' is stuff I've done for fun on the side. I created the meladaemons for what it's worth, basing them on Pathfinder's Horseman of Famine, Trelmarixian the Lysogenic Prince, who himself is loosely based on two NPCs from my second storyhour (Trelmarixian the Black and Escheris the Rotting). The meladaemon had a larger writeup in the Pathfinder module 'Beyond the Vault of Souls', written by Colin McComb, with the meladaemon section written by me.

There's additional information on them in Pathfinder's 'Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Book of the Damned vol III' which I also wrote. That book focuses on Pathfinder's NE fiends, which are quite distinct from Planescape's yugoloths in many ways, but occasionally you'll find a thematic parallel with an idea or two from here. Though it's worth saying that pretty much anything planar that I've written for Pathfinder is heavily inspired and informed by Planescape.



> Oh and who is Inuq'Sharaq (The Collector)? Another Baernaloth not of the Demented?




She/It is a baernaloth that my spouse created and wrote a story about for me as a twisted, bizarre Valentines day surprise. She wrote the story as if my stories had attracted the attention of a real entity -something of a hellish muse-, that the beings in my stories were real, and that it came to devour me as a particularly inspired, beautiful mortal specimen. It's oddly romantic and very well written IMO.


----------



## 81Dagon

Total aside, but if anyone's interested, I've started working on a TvTropes page for the Storyhour. Who knows, maybe we'll pick up on some part of the plot we've missed rereading the story yet again while looking for tropes?


----------



## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> Total aside, but if anyone's interested, I've started working on a TvTropes page for the Storyhour. Who knows, maybe we'll pick up on some part of the plot we've missed rereading the story yet again while looking for tropes?




Have I ever mentioned that you're awesome? You're awesome.


----------



## 81Dagon

Shemeska said:


> Have I ever mentioned that you're awesome? You're awesome. View attachment 62177





Thanks! I could use a hand with filling it out though, since the story's so large and my knowledge of Tropes is nowhere near encompassing. If there are any other tropers out there, your aid would be great appreciated!

*EDIT*: On a mildly related note, if you had to give names to the different storyarcs we've seen so far, what would you call them?


----------



## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> Thanks! I could use a hand with filling it out though, since the story's so large and my knowledge of Tropes is nowhere near encompassing. If there are any other tropers out there, your aid would be great appreciated!
> 
> *EDIT*: On a mildly related note, if you had to give names to the different storyarcs we've seen so far, what would you call them?




*ponder*

I never really did things in discrete arcs, and there were often lots of side things going on at once. The world moves along with or without the PCs, and what they choose to interact with they have the most influence on potentially. So some things are obvious plot arcs, and then there's spaces between them with random side elements going on.

A few off the top of my head that make sense as distinct things:

The Rise and Fall of Alisohn Nilesia
The Incantifer's Maze
The Slide of Belarian / Siege of Khin-Oin
Dead Gods and the "Rakshasa" 'Siblings'
Pandemonium and the Gautiere Deity
The Shadow Sorcelled Key

Also, I see what you did there: posting artwork of characters from my 2nd Storyhour over on Tumblr.


----------



## 81Dagon

Shemeska said:


> *ponder*
> 
> I never really did things in discrete arcs, and there were often lots of side things going on at once. The world moves along with or without the PCs, and what they choose to interact with they have the most influence on potentially. So some things are obvious plot arcs, and then there's spaces between them with random side elements going on.
> 
> A few off the top of my head that make sense as distinct things:
> 
> The Rise and Fall of Alisohn Nilesia
> The Incantifer's Maze
> The Slide of Belarian / Siege of Khin-Oin
> Dead Gods and the "Rakshasa" 'Siblings'
> Pandemonium and the Gautiere Deity
> The Shadow Sorcelled Key




Yeah I figured something like that. I'm just trying to come up with a way to sort them so a) I can build some subheadings on the TvTropes page and more importantly, b) make the behemoth 1000+ page pdf seem a bit more manageable to my girlfriend as I read it to her. I kind of figured it would help If I broke them into "books." I'll keep mulling it over, but I love the idea of a book called *The Siege of Khin-Oin*! 



Shemeska said:


> Also, I see what you did there: posting artwork of characters from my 2nd Storyhour over on Tumblr.




Hey I was just searching for Arcanoloth and Yugoloth art. It's not my fault you've commissioned about half of the pieces in those categories on DeviantArt


----------



## Akhelos

Shemeska said:


> A few off the top of my head that make sense as distinct things:
> 
> The Rise and Fall of Alisohn Nilesia
> The Incantifer's Maze
> The Slide of Belarian / Siege of Khin-Oin
> Dead Gods and the "Rakshasa" 'Siblings'
> Pandemonium and the Gautiere Deity
> The Shadow Sorcelled Key
> 
> Also, I see what you did there: posting artwork of characters from my 2nd Storyhour over on Tumblr.




you forgotten "Shemmi crashes a Party (and almost Zadara) ^^

Nice Idea with that Page. ^^


----------



## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> Hey I was just searching for Arcanoloth and Yugoloth art. It's not my fault you've commissioned about half of the pieces in those categories on DeviantArt




I have a habit of commissioning artwork of NPCs in campaigns that I run.

I've got a few tiefling images (Nisha etc) out there, and some more recent characters from my current Pathfinder campaign as well.


----------



## Shemeska

The Marauder’s lip trembled, and for a moment she briefly considered tapping the well of communal knowledge locked within the Tower Arcane in Gehenna, but paused before turning that mental key. No, she knew the tale well enough, and if the Ebon had chosen her, there was no need to involve any others of her caste, many of whom would know immediately if she siphoned a single word from their shared and ironically rarely used resource. Shemeska’s memory and the letter’s details would suffice.

A flick of her wrist and she swallowed the entirety of her wine glass’s remaining contents. A flick of her mind and she refilled the glass. The process repeated itself twice as she read and reread the letter, letting her mind wander back to her own past.

Before her time in the Cage, when she was still a nycaloth herself, the Key appeared in Sigil. The details of its arrival had been lost to the decay of years, but in the wake of its arrival came death and carnage. Every Golden Lord, Factol, Proxy, and Knight of the Post sought to lay claim to it, though none knew where it came from, or what its use might require of its holder. In the fighting that ensued, an entire Ward nearly burned to the ground before one doomed soul dared to activate it. Something went wrong, or perhaps terribly right, and legends said that the Key simultaneously opened every single portal to the Lower Planes in the soon to be Lower Ward. Legends were legends, but Shemeska had been there herself and witnessed the results of that single invocation of the Key's power. She'd seen the results as the open portals flooded the ward with poison and tens of thousands of fiends of every type. 

Shemeska herself and the ‘loths as a whole had taken no organized part in the resulting carnage; they were too smart for that, but those days had proved a single and oh so salient point: Sigil’s portals were -not- inviolate and they could be forced, if for a brief period, though perhaps only from the inside.

 In the wake of those events however, one lingering mystery remained: what had befallen the Key itself?

“How did you find it?” She muttered aloud in amazement before vanity raised its almost omnipresent head. “And what will I do with it?”

Oh such thoughts. Oh such delightful thoughts about what value it would have, and who she’d use it on. She imagined a portal to Carceri opening up below a tenant late on their rent, a portal to Hell opening up below a proxy to an Abyssal Power, a portal to Mount Celestia opening up below A’kin…

Full of herself, her fortuitous luck, and imagining herself ever further into the Oinoloth’s good graces and well on the way to becoming His paramour, Shemeska smiled up at her reflection in the mirror. Canine fangs flashed ivory and a stain of crimson from where she’d bitten deeply in delight into her lower lip. Tasting blood and smiling once more, she licked her lips, put the letter aside, slid further the boiling water’s surface and trembled with delight.


****​

The room was high up within the Azure Iris, nestled away from the noise in the Fortune’s Wheel down below, heavily warded against spying or intrusion, and was a place that very few individuals in Sigil ever saw –many never wanted to see it– and in fact, like many of the rooms owned by Shemeska the Marauder, it wasn’t even on the Inn’s blueprints.

Far from being a sequestered interrogation room or torture chamber, the room was well decorated and genuinely inviting. Polished cherry panels lined the walls, with delicate stonework framing the vaulted ceiling, decorated with hanging lamps, each holding bright magical lights that shown down on an oblong table and five padded, inviting chairs. The air was warm and scented with enough incense to be noticed without feeling heavy, and just as the walls were thick enough to drown out any screams from it or any adjacent rooms, the incense was just enough to cover any smell of lingering blood from the actual torture chamber one room distant.

None of the four persons seated there knew that of course, and as they awkwardly stared at their drinks, each others, and the two empty spaces at the table -only one of which actually had a chair- they didn't feel anxious or worried, instead they felt rather impressed at the display of it all. Just like its sociopathic horror of an owner wore a thin veneer of elegance and beauty over herself, the room's elegance covered up the general dread of the circumstances that might cause someone to be seated there. Not that any of the four really yet understood their circumstances nor knew one another.

An armored tiefling by the name of Ashlanaya calmly sat there, waiting for their host to arrive, a pleasant, intrigued smile playing across her face. Her particular pedigree of fiendish heritage wasn't immediately obvious. She struck a unique figure, what with the combination of long, black hair, golden shod hooves, a reptilian tail ending with a jet black tuft of fur, and a faint green hue to her skin marked with a dappling of purple scales on those few portions of her body not covered by brilliantly polished plate mail. She struck a unique figure for more reasons than appearance however, being both a tiefling paladin of Nephthys, and being a paladin of any sort sitting in Shemeska the Marauder's meeting room.

Seated across from the paladin, Zenia Fickleflame sat and fiddled with a rolling ball of liquid flame cupped in her hands, rolling it up and down her bare, amber toned arms, and periodically leaning in, kissing the flames, whispering to it, looking around nervously and then giggling. Her hair was also on fire or made of fire, and tiny flames licked within the hollow of her pupil as if the interior of her head were some sort of open kiln. Clearly a fire genasi, she dressed in relatively little, and only in a mixture of gauzy, sparkling cloth that was both fire resistant and played off of the fact that her flesh glowed and produced tongues of flame all on its own accord. 

The woman was also some variety of spellcaster, as evidenced by the wands at her waist, and a fire-resistant satchel full of perhaps scrolls or flammable material spell components. Additionally, her sanity was somewhat questionable, both from her whispering and giggling with the self-conjured ball of flame, and by the Xaositect tattoo proudly inked upon both of her shoulders.

Corwin Glenshadow sat beside the paladin, calmly smiling, and similarly to her, his manner of dress marked him out for what he was. Unlike Ashlanaya's fiendish heritage however, Corwin's was exactly the opposite. An aasimar of either aasimon or guardinal descent, his eyes glowed a luminous green, and his skin was an almost alabaster shade of white. He bore a pair of stag's horns and like the paladin, his legs below the knees were something between equine and cervidine, though his were unshod and clearly cleft in nature. His hair was long and partially braided, and tied back in place with strands of ivy that grew out of his scalp as well. Dressed in leather armor and devoid of any metallic objects, both weapons and decoration, that quality, combined with the sprig of mistletoe that hung at his throat by a leather cord marked him quite clearly as a druid.

The last person seated at the table stood out by virtue of being the one person in the room that wouldn't normally have stood out at all. Malcolm Anders was, to all appearances, a completely average human, of average height and build, with a forgettable appearance and no particularly remarkable physical trait or style of dress. A trained thief would of course immediately look at them and be wary, but Malcolm's marks weren't other trained thieves, and most of those weren't quite as skilled as he was. Of course his habit of nicking things was itself probably what had gotten him "invited" to the Marauder's chambers in the first place. In hindsight, he probably should have been more cautious in selecting his targets as one of the Clueless and after only being in Sigil for a month and a half. Judging by his nervous habit of glancing at the obvious exits -as well as at the muttering genasi seated next to him- and nervously tapping his fingers on the underside of the table, his presence wasn't exactly entirely of his own volition. It was however much more willing than the last member of their soon to be troupe, as one of the doors swung open and into the posh and comfortable chamber came the introduction of an element significantly less pleased to be there than any of the others combined.

"Get your damn hands off of me!" Came the angry protest of a tired-looking, scowling bariaur who looked as if he'd literally been dragged out of bed and halfway across the city with zero notice. "I can walk on my own!"

Dressed in hastily donned -perhaps forcibly so- leather armor and barding, the bariaur's long hair was pulled back and tied up, with a large quill pen stuffed into the knot. It wasn't only for decoration, and the ink stains on his hands implied some form of writing-heavy trade: either a scribe, clerk, journalist, or map maker. Not matching those trades' proclivities, a heavy belt lay across his chest, holding a scabbard and a two-handed sword at his back. Though obvious and high quality, it was secured in place so as to prevent its immediate use. Clearly his minders hadn't trusted him to remain peaceful.

"And here you are Merlianik.” One of the Marauder's tiefling guards smiled with far too much mock sympathy as she pushed him into the room.

“It’s Surefoot.” The bariaur corrected her. “I’ve gone by my pen name for years.”

“Regardless Merlianik, it’s always a pleasure to see you again." With that, she promptly slapped the bariaur's flank like she was giving incentive to an obstinate pack mule. Surefoot shot her a deathly glare but said nothing in response, except for the barest of haedine snorts as he trotted up to the table and glanced around at the others.

"My apologies for that." He sighed and shot another long glare at the tiefling as the exit closed and locked. As soon as the door latch clicked, he opened his mouth to get in another word, but he didn't get the chance. “She and I have something of a history; more so me and her employer…”

Malcolm glanced at the bariaur, now even more nervous, “Who precisely is that?”

The thief didn’t get a reply, but he didn’t need it.

“Ah! Good! Everyone seems to have arrived.” A sixth voice cut the air, startling the assembled guests and drawing their gaze to the one unoccupied and very much grander chair at the table’s head.

All eyes turned to the speaker, and their host –be they there willingly or not– allowed them a moment of silence to appreciate her presence.

The King of the Crosstrade leaned forward in her chair, placing her polished and currently lavender painted claws delicately upon the meeting table's polished surface. As befitting her typical pomp, the fiend wore finery richer than most mortal emperors. Her evening gown and matching opera gloves were tailored in a unique, iridescent black satin, and the entire ensemble was fitted tight enough that it might as well have been painted on her. Likely some variety of shapeshifting had been necessary to squeeze into it in the first place given the exceeding narrowness of the waist and the tension and rigidity of the corset-style boning and the fact that the dress did not appear to require cinching at the spine.

With a new gown came new jewels, and they were likely crafted specifically for that dress and that dress alone. Brilliant purple spinels the size of hens' eggs dangled from the fiend’s ears in alternating rows with pea-sized black pearls. At the hollow of her throat, situated precipitously just above the dress's plunging neckline and a barely tactful display of cleavage hung an emerald double the size of the spinels. Of course, all of the gemstones faintly glowed with an inner light, a telltale sign of their origin that would have made a shadow demon salivate with hunger.

"I need no formal introduction," She began, drawing out a pause at the end of the statement, "But I'll provide one anyway: Shemeska the Marauder."

“I thought I smelled something…” Surefoot muttered, intentionally at a high enough volume to be overheard.

The Marauder turned and smiled at the bariaur, sweetly even, a polite and gentile expression that promised to lace his corpse with knives.

Without a smile in return, Surefoot covered his mouth and coughed, prompting the fiend to get on with whatever she had planned.

Ignoring him, the Marauder smiled magnanimously at her other guests even as the telepathic barbs of her mind perched, ready to leap, “I thank you all for coming with the utmost promptness at my summons.”

Surefoot rolled his eyes, “If you call being dragged out of your office by five impeccably dressed thugs a summons, then yes.”

Another polite smile from the fiend, but this time fangs emerged between parted lips painted a glossy lavender to match her claws.

"I take it there's some history here?" Ashlanaya noted the animosity between the bariaur and their would-be employer. The more she heard, the less she liked the fiend.

“Mr. Merlianik is a writer." The Marauder explained with put-upon politeness. "Frequently he gets a bit carried away with his work.”

"Mr Surefoot is indeed a writer." He smirked and strummed his fingers upon the table irreverently, "I like to write stories about things in the public interest: everything from the accountability of guild officials, crime in the Lady's Ward and Clerk's Ward, public and private scandals, to otherwise overlooked and ignored stories about people murdered behind the Black Sails who happened to owe money to someone in this room."

"I take it the paper is going well lately?" Shemeska turned to the bariaur and smiled, pointedly ignoring any chance to openly rebut his insinuation. "Your editor took well to my letter about your most recent and oh so speculative piece."

“My editor has children.” Surefoot's voice was flat and serious, though he smiled just the same.

“So he does...” This time the fiend -didn’t- smile.

“Umm...the two of you seem to know each other rather well.” Corwin cleared his throat, distracting them from their not-in-the-least-colloquial banter. “But I’m rather keen to hear more about your offer.”

“Knowing her isn’t a phrase I ever, ever want to be associated with…” Surefoot smirked, though the moment the words left his mouth, he knew that he'd overstepped his bounds, and the 'loth's telepathic voice burned into his head with a cold snarl.

_Open your mouth again in such a way and I will wrench that tongue from your jaw and pin it to the table with my bare hands. I tolerate your mouth only so much. Know your limits._

Surefoot pursed his lips as if to say something, but thought better of it. Given the Marauder's telepathic inflection -and he had no delusions that she wouldn't actually carry out her threat at a moment's notice- he cleared his mind and reluctantly settled down, trying to be as comfortable as possible in the current circumstances.

“Your summons was rather vague on details.” Corwin smiled with guarded enthusiasm, intrigued more by the earlier offer than the banter between her and the bariaur.

“As is to be expected,” Shemeska waved her bejeweled hand now graced with a full goblet of wine. “I have enemies all over the city, and they keen their proxied eyes and ears to know even the smallest detail of my designs and desires.”

“Understandable.” Malcolm looked at the others and then to his fiendish host, "Though to be honest I'm not sure why I'm here."

"Each of you has a reason to be here," Shemeska took a long sip of wine before continuing, "A reason be it good or bad, valuable skills or a debt, or some manner of both. Ultimately you caught my attention for one reason or another. Allow me to explain." 

Shemeska inclined her head with what seemed like genuine respect to the tiefling paladin of Nephthys, fully aware that had the paladin bothered to test just how much evil she sat in the presence of, she’d likely knock herself unconscious. But Ashlanaya had shown up, had sat down, and given her current reason for being in Sigil in the first place, she’d be game to talk business regardless of with whom.

“Ashlanaya of Nephthys, I’m aware that you’re here in Sigil hunting down information on a particular relic of your faith stolen in recent days and presumed to be in the hands of minions of Set.”

The tiefling nodded, wary but genuinely interested in what the fiend had to say.

“I have knowledge of the thieves’ identity and their whereabouts. That knowledge will be handed over to you as well as a sum of jink to fund the object’s recovery and if need be its restoration.”

“I’m sure you know precisely just where it is…” Surefoot coughed, presuming that the Settites were either in her employ or long dead and the required relic sitting in an adjacent room as needed bait to gain the paladin’s service.

Ignoring the bariaur, the fiend turned to the fire genasi. “Miss Fickleflame.”

“I did it! I admit it! I absolutely burned that tenement to the ground! Gophers! Arcadian giant ones!” Her head awash in tongues of yellow and orange flame, she giggled hysterically and the Marauder waited for her to be finished before continuing.

“Miss Fickleflame, you like fire. Fire also has a habit of burning things down and creditors tend to not appreciate such things. I have it in my capacity to have some of them forgive and forget if your debts to them are paid, which this job should satisfy handily with the money that I have ready to give to you.”

Zenia beamed a smile at the fiend and then shrugged with a pronounced, “Meh… not interested.”

Apparently expecting the Xaositect’s quixotic reaction to her offer, she motioned her hand and produced an illusion of a long, bronze-clad staff, “I’ll also throw in a fully charged staff of fire as a token of my magnanimity.”

“Sold!” Zenia clapped her hands together, “Absolutely interested!”

“And for me?” Corwin Glenshadow looked at the fiend, unsure of what she might be able to offer him. He was in Sigil simply as a visitor. He had no pressing business, no quests, and no particular need for money or favors. What the fiend produced next and slid towards him changed that.

“You alone in this room should be able to read the text on that page without the need for magical intervention.” 

“This is penned in Druidic,” He didn’t look up from the page. “And in a rather odd dialect that I’ve never seen. It’s a catalog of plants.”

“What you have before you is a single page from an original manuscript in my possession.” The Marauder smiled pleasantly, dangling the metaphorical carrot before her desired beast of burden. “It came from a book of druidic lore from a world long dead and despoiled by a tanar’ri invasion. The entire book remains whole, and as indicated by the last paragraph of the page before you, it included portal details to a small demiplane housing a collection of trees from that same world planted, cultivated, and conserved prior to its fall. I expect that you would be interested in this above and beyond any simple payment, though I offer that as well.”

The druid’s breathless nod was taken as willing consent to perform whatever task she desired.

Turning to the fidgeting human rogue, the ‘loth hesitated before speaking, enjoying his fretting for as long as she could reasonably draw it out. “Malcolm…”

“What?” He warily glanced towards the exit. “I hope I haven’t offended you, but I honestly don’t know why I’m here.”

Shemeska laughed and help up her goblet casually. A split second later one of her tieflings filled it to the rim and returned to their post in one of the room’s corners, and only after a sip did the fiend deign to respond to the rogue.

“Malcolm, I dare say that you need little more than gold to satisfy you, and I’m prepared to pay substantially.” 

“So you’ve heard of me and my umm, skills then?” He beamed, and a moment later was brought back down to earth.

The fiend smirked, “I’m also willing to overlook a small pilfering that you did in the Temple District a ten day ago from a courier en route to the Temple of the Abyss. While only tangentially involved, I was indeed involved, and it delayed certain other activities and deals as a result. I will forgive you, and likely hire you for the same at some point in the future. You’ve proven your skill, if perhaps not your wisdom.”

Malcolm opened his mouth and then wisely closed it without another word. He nodded with perfect understanding that he was indeed going to be doing this job for the Marauder, and if she chose to potentially pay him even a bent copper, he should count himself lucky.

Shemeska paused again, enjoyed her drink, and finally smiled and turned to Surefoot, "And as for you, you get to live.”

Surefoot thought back to the letter that the Marauder had sent to his apartment a day earlier. It hadn’t been dropped through the mail slot or left on the doorstep, no, it had been sitting on the pillow next to him when he woke up. He’d read it and he’d ignored it, and less than twenty four hours later her people had literally dragged him out of that very same bed.

The letter was more of the same petty, pompous rhetoric that he’d gotten used to seeing from the King of the Crosstrade. This time apparently he’d actually gotten her attention with his writing, at least judging by what she’d written and where he was now:
“Your past statements about Her August Fiendish Majesty of the Crosstrade have not gone unnoticed, and it is the wish of our Mistress that restitution be applied atop your ceasing investigation of several business ventures of which she is no inconsequential partner. You will meet with her, and you will do what she requires of you, or you’ll be swinging from the leafless tree before antipeak, carved up and served to the wretches in the Hive. Is this made clear?”

“Letting me live,” The bariaur sighed, “How magnanimous of you…”

“That’s perhaps not my absolute preference, but this will gain you my good graces or at least dig you out of the metaphorical grave that you've been digging yourself in my eyes. Given your predilections and pretensions as a former member of the Free League, I doubt that you’ll stay there for long, but it’s an opportunity, even if you’re not going to be working for me willingly, not even in the slightest."

Glancing from the fiend to the bariaur, then to each other, Ashlanaya and Corwin briefly made eye contact. Without a word said, the two of them rapidly came to the understanding that no, they didn’t really have a choice in the matter as to whether they worked for the Marauder on this present occasion or not. They’d signed up just by stepping in the door even if they had the pretense of doing this willingly, unlike for instance the human or the bariaur.

Zenia would have been included in their wary glance of understanding, but the genasi Xaositect could probably have cared less. Since the fiend had discussed her payment she’d been playing with a small globe of conjured flame, balancing it on her fingertips and letting it roll up and down one arm and then the next like a carnival trickster. She’d be doing this job just for the heck of it, with the added bonus of a staff of flame.

“Willing or otherwise,” Surefoot coughed, “You still haven’t mentioned what you want us to do…”

The fiend motioned with one hand and conjured a single image. A large, antique key manifested above the table. 

“This is what I want you to retrieve for me.” She gestured and rotated the image of the key. Even in her illusion, the indistinct symbols and designs upon its surface swirled and bled filaments of darkness. “I will also require a geas in place, preventing you from telling anyone outside of a specific few in my employ or extended employ about this object’s identity or even that you’re looking for it should you be asked about it directly.”

“I have a huge issue with being under an enchantment of yours.” Surefoot frowned.

The Marauder waved him off dismissively, sloshing wine in his direction in the process. “The spell will be applied by a member of the Temple of Horus rather than someone directly working for me. The spell will also lift upon return to me.”

“What exactly is that?” Corwin motioned to the illusory image drifting above the table. “I can’t say that I recognize it, or even the symbols it carries.”

Recognizing and quite enjoying the admission of their ignorance and her lack of the same, the fiend took a final sip of her wine before placing the goblet down upon the table with a smile. Perching her polished and painted claws together at her chin, she began her explanation. “Let me tell you a story of Sigil’s past, of something rarely remembered now, and of how the Lower Ward received its name…”
Shemeska’s explanation was thorough and left out none of the details, save for the Oinoloth’s involvement and how she came to know the rough location of the key there in Sigil. She also didn’t explain one other salient point.

"Why do you want it?" Ashlanaya’s question broke the silence at the end of the ‘loth’s story.

The Marauder’s reply was quick and pithy, “Why I want it is none of your business. My payment for this job should have made that adequately clear.”
Corwin glanced at the paladin and this time the rogue and bariaur joined their chorus of wordless ocular conversion: no, they didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter at hand. Everything would go best if they performed as she desired, retrieved her desired bauble, accepted payment and promptly left Sigil or otherwise never drifted into her sphere of influence again.

“Where do we begin?” Corwin glanced at a large map of Sigil as it was spread across the table by two of the fiend’s guards. Several points were marked within the Lower Ward near to the Ditch and curiously enough _below_ the Ditch, descending down into the sewers and tunnels further down still.

The Marauder paused for a moment before answering his question, pursing her lips as one of her guards placed a long-stemmed cigarette holder in her fingers and lit the other end with a match. She let it smolder for a moment before giving it a quick first inhalation, responding finally as the smoke filtered between her fangs and washed over the map in a targeted exhaled stream at the location marked near the Ditch.

“You begin here, and at this location you will descend into the sewers and from there into the depths of UnderSigil. You will meet up with a pair of envoys in service to Tattershade the so-called Wererat King. They will be expecting you, and they will escort you to an otherwise unmapped section of tunnels not available on any publicly accessible maps. 

“So no one will know where we are…” Surefoot sighed. “Lovely.”

The Marauder’s next exhaled stream of perfumed smoke struck across the bariaur’s face, “Once there you will proceed to a portion of the old Prime Ward collapsed in the events of years past, buried, paved over, and forgotten. Several square blocks of Sigil stuck in time in a manner of speaking, preserved and isolated from the changes in the greater City of Doors that occurred in its absence. What you seek will be therein.”

“That’s not exactly a treasure map.” Surefoot waved away the lingering blue smoke. “That’s like pointing at the Clerk’s Ward and telling us that we’ll find a specific bookshop there, without telling us the name of the shop, just one of the antique books therein.”

“You will feel its influence as you get closer.” The Marauder folded her hands delicately in front of herself on the table, the cigarette holder balanced between two fingers and a glowing coal at its tip threatening to fall atop the map, but it didn’t.“Find the Key and return it to me here.”

Ashlanaya crossed her arms and pondered the implications of finding and delivering an artifact to a greater fiend. Nothing good would come of it, but at the present time she and the rest of them had no room to refuse. “It’s only a few blocks of ruins, it shouldn’t be too terribly difficult if the object for whatever reason and by whatever method calls out to us in some way.”

“Oh, but so you all know, with respect to the monetary remuneration that we discussed before on top of your individual rewards, that particular payment is a lump sum.” She sipped her wine and let the implications of that filter into their thoughts. “So, if fewer of you come back alive, the rest of you earn that much more for yourselves.”

“Yeah yeah…” Surefoot rolled his eyes. Of course the fiend would have them at each others’ throats. At this point he rather assumed that one of the others was directly in her employ, and given the discussion of geas spells and similar enchantments, whoever it was might potentially not even be aware of it either.

Ashlanaya grimaced, “I don’t think that’s a necessary thought for us to…” The fiend didn’t let her finish.

“In fact,” Shemeska suggested with a twinkle in her purple eyes, “I don’t like the bariaur, so I do suggest that you kill him after he’s no longer useful.”

“Bitch…” Surefoot muttered under his breath, and then as he looked directly at the Marauder, he repeated the same screamed as loudly as possible within his own mind, knowing that she was sifting through his surface thoughts.

_Absolutely. First and foremost. The best you’ll ever meet. Remember me kindly when one of them stabs you in the back, it’s the closest thing you’ll get to a kiss from me to you._

“But in any event, that’s a call that you’ll be making as you see fit.” Shemeska leaned back in her chair and casually regarded her newfound lackeys. “Unless you have any other questions, my people will escort you to the Ditch. The least that I can do is to make sure that you don’t have to deal with any panhandling on your way from here to the Lower Ward.”

A single spell was muttered as her face was momentarily obscured by the rim of her goblet. It wasn’t much, it wasn’t powerful, but to everyone in the room it appeared as if after her implied suggestion that it was time for them to leave, that she didn’t take her eyes off of them. Suitably enhanced by an illusion, she stared each of them down individually even though it wasn’t physically possible to do so all at once, all at the same time. Her intent was well served and not a single question was asked.

The five of them made for the door, met by the same smiling tiefling that had earlier slapped Surefoot on the flank. The Marauder watched them go, and as soon as the door clicked shut she kicked her feet up onto the table and smiled an infinitely self-satisfied smiled. The purple nimbus of her eyes matched the glow of the entrapped spirits in each and every gemstone in her current array of jewelry.

"Madam Shemeska," Colcook hefted the fiend’s mirror, letting her enjoy staring at herself once more, having been standing there in the corner all the while in the event there was any trouble. "Why tell them the story behind the Key?"

"Vanity," The Marauder smirked and paused a moment to light a new cigarette. Once it began to glow red, she took a single drag and exhaled a thing stream of smoke from her nose and then smiled, letting the smoke emerge from between her fangs, and only then fully answered Colcook's question. "And also because I have every intention of killing the lot of them..."


****​


----------



## Shemeska

And since the Marauder is once again gracing the storyhour with her esteemed presence:




"Did you miss me?"


*artwork by Cassetterecorder


----------



## Akhelos

Gaah, Picture to sweet looking, especially with that Dress and Hearth shaped Jewels. .oO(why cant she at least look more evil? *g*) 

<Incharater>
Malshana Ap Ilium: "Albeit with that flat snout I can now see why you always look in your Mirrors, dear Shemeshka. I mean, I would do it too and hope that I then look better than in three Dimensions, what I naturally as a more beautiful Arcanaloth do." *marks on her private Scroll to not visit Sigil for twothousand, better three, Years.*
<Out of Character>

And Yes the Racial Knowledge of the Arcanaloths, the Ressource everyone has access to, but know one ever uses it, because they dont want anyone to know what they are doing...especially not all their rivals.....also known as their whole Caste. ^^

 And now I also want an Torture Chamber next to the meeting room...why is my torture Chamber on another floor? Now I need a new House. *g* Very nice story to that Key...and very poor fools. At least if Shemmi does not again manages it to produce powerful enemies by using an seemingly harmless and expendable adventurer group. Especially when she uses people who could be ehr natural Enemies if they where more powerful. ^^


----------



## Erevanden

Hmmm, I was wondering now - for a time I believed that the "dark presence" within Cilret Loebtav was a remnant of the Gautiere deity, guiding him to exact vengeance on his own people. 

However, after re-reading the conversation between Loebtav and the "presence" in the flashback - 







> THEY KNOW ONLY WHAT THEY HAVE DONE. NOTHING MORE. THE ARCHITECT AND SHEPHERDESS CANNOT SENSE ME, NOT AT HOW LITTLE MY INFLUENCE STRETCHES INTO THIS REALITY. EVEN IF THEY COULD, CHORAZIN HAS ALREADY DRAWN HIS FIRST CARDS.
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...cent-(Updated-20June2014)/page2#ixzz35OFFzsNb




- I stand corrected - it is a being from a different reality. (stupid me )

Also, judging from how old Vorkannis is, I'm guessing he is some unique kind of proto-fiend, not a yugoloth, but something entirely else.

How far off am I, Shemmy ?


----------



## Shemeska

Erevanden said:


> Hmmm, I was wondering now - for a time I believed that the "dark presence" within Cilret Loebtav was a remnant of the Gautiere deity, guiding him to exact vengeance on his own people.
> 
> However, after re-reading the conversation between Loebtav and the "presence" in the flashback -
> 
> - I stand corrected - it is a being from a different reality.




That's one interpretation of that conversation within Leobtav's head, yes. 



> Also, judging from how old Vorkannis is, I'm guessing he is some unique kind of proto-fiend, not a yugoloth, but something entirely else.
> 
> How far off am I, Shemmy ?




Vorkannis is old. Very old. Exceedingly old. What exactly he is or isn't was a relatively late reveal in the campaign and there are several plot arcs to go before that answer comes up overtly -though I'll be dropping hints prior to then. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the speculation immensely.


----------



## Akhelos

Shemeska said:


> Vorkannis is old. Very old. Exceedingly old. What exactly he is or isn't was a relatively late reveal in the campaign and there are several plot arcs to go before that answer comes up overtly -though I'll be dropping hints prior to then. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the speculation immensely.




I am from correct things He said and did in the Storyhour and Baern storys still guessing that He is an rouge Baernaloth, enemy of the Demented and has been imprisoned for destroying the Multiverse. ^^ 

*uses time between Storyhour Updates by teleporting in Shemmys sleeping room, shaving her and sending the picture to Akin and Zadara**gg*


----------



## Shemeska

The Marauder's erstwhile pack of adventurers left the confines of the Azure Iris through yet another of the fiend's not-exactly-on-the-blueprints routes of egress, in this instance an obscured back stairwell that very likely wouldn't be in the same place if they tried to locate it a second time. As they ascended down to the ground level, dimly they could make out the cheers of the gamblers, drinkers, diners, and social carousers that packed the floor of the Fortune's Wheel that evening. They wouldn't partake in such revelry that evening, nor would they even see the floor at all as the Marauder's guards whisked them through a series of back hallways, past the kitchens, and then into a poorly lit private alley cluttered with refuse, empty wine cases, and freshly cut back razorvine..

"Good luck to you all." One of Shemeska's guards removed his hat and bowed, looking specifically at Surefoot as he smiled. "From here you'll be heading to the Lower Ward and past the Gray and Hellgate Districts, to the Ditch. Your map should answer any questions you have. Tattershade's servitors will meet you once you make the tunnels."

Surefoot made an obscene gesture and cheerfully returned the smile, "Go to Hell..."

"At least one plane over I should think." The tiefling smirked and slammed the door in the bariaur's face.

A solitary executioner's raven cried out, breaking the silence like the final peal of temple bells after the preamble given by the turning of lock tumblers and deadbolts on the Fortune's Wheel's rear door.
"She and her people -really- don't like you." Ashlanaya laughed as she adjusted her sword belt.

"Obvious is it?" Surefoot gave one final gesture towards the door and to the Wheel itself before turning around and slowly trotting off.

"Exactly how much history do you have with Miss Shemeska?" Corwin asked as they proceeded down the alley towards the main boulevard.

"A lot of history," He shook his head, "But there's no need for Miss or any other sort of fancy title; no need to polish her image or make her something other than what she is: b*tch will work well enough."

"I wouldn't suggest that you call her that." Zenia giggled. "You don't often see people that glow that heavily with magic as she was just a few minutes ago. In fact, I don't think I have outside of maybe old Factol Skall of the Dusties."

"I considered it." Surefoot kicked at a solitary rat as it darted out of the shadows. The rodent hissed angrily and darted beneath a rotten pile of kitchen trash, its beady eyes joining a dozen others warily peering out from the same vantage point. Thankfully it hadn't borne an exposed, glowing brain.

"So with all of this discussion of just how terrible our employer is, and how you and she have a history of disagreement, why hasn't she killed you yet?" Malcolm finally spoke, having till that moment been staring at his companions one at a time, sizing up their abilities and possible frailties in the face of whatever it was that they might encounter in the Great Below.

The bariaur paused and looked at the thief. He pursed his lips, swallowed, and then opened his mouth without saying a word for several moments still. "Why does a cat toy around with a mouse when it could pounce, tear it head off, and be done with it?"

Left unspoken in the answer -an answer that his fellows considered perfectly appropriate- was that to be perfectly honest, he wasn't genuinely sure why she hadn't.

****​
Already fading when they made their meeting with the Marauder, Peak's illumination was snuffed beneath the darkening gloom overhead by the time they neared the edge of the Lady's Ward. Greasy clouds overhead threatened rain, and slowly the lights from the opposite side of Sigil's torus began twinkling like artificial stars in what passed for a night sky. As the city lurched towards Anti-Peak minute by minute, so too did the streets, the buildings that graced them, and likewise the citizenry that strolled along faded in wealth, prestige, and glamour. Workshops and apartment blocks replaced temples, boutiques and mansions, cobblestones replaced marble, and laborers on their way from or to work replaced the idle rich and their servitors. The only thing that remained constant was the presence of touts, runners, and if you knew where to look for them, pickpockets.

"This city takes some getting used to." Corwin gazed at the steady shift in their surroundings, though his disconcerted features had remained constant. The druid wasn't reacting to the change in social tier reflected by the city's appearance as they moved from the Lady's Ward to the Lower Ward, but the complete lack of a standard, terrestrial ecology. Everything here was alien, everything an invasive species or an opportunistic parasite depending on how one saw it, be it razorvine, rats, roaches, ravens, mortals, outsiders, and elementals alike.

"It's awesome." Zenia chuckled, spitting a shower of sparks with each.

Ashlanaya smiled and stamped out a smoldering ember from the fire genasi's laughter before it actually caught fire, "It's certainly unique."

Zenia narrowed eyes that glittered like burning coals and doubled over in laughter far greater than seemed socially appropriate for the moment. When her face came back up, she carried a stupefied but gleeful grin, "Seriously? I'm the only actual Sigilian native? Every other one of you is Clueless or might as well be?"

"I'm native." Surefoot explained, though Zenia either intentionally ignored him or didn't hear him, because she acted as if the bariaur was invisible. "Not that you seem to care..."

Ashlanaya raised an eyebrow.

"Is anyone really a native of Sigil?" Corwin glanced at Zenia and then at the wall behind her covered in a snarled wall of razorvine.

"Don't go all philosophical on me now." The genasi chided.

"Says the woman with a Xaositect symbol tattooed on her..." Ashlanaya poked the shoulder of the woman with flaming hair. "You're the only one here that was ever a Faction member."

"Bah!" Zenia stuck out her tongue and walked ahead of the others, babbling to herself in Xaos speach for the next few blocks. Eventually she looked back, made another face, and continued mumbling to herself for the entirety of their transit through the Lower War, with the only exception being to hurl expletives and spit fire in the direction of a bar that someone in the Harmonium had once apparently thrown her out of. Her mind clearly elsewhere, Zenia Fickleflame never actually made a comment on their actual contracted job till they got to the Ditch.

Ashlanaya held her hands up and had the others pause, letting the genasi get further ahead of them, "Let her babble to herself, she'll get into less trouble that way. I'm not entirely sure that she's as stable as I'm comfortable with, but let's stay on her good side."

"Why?" Malcolm spoke up, "More money for us."

"Because," Ashlanaya held eye contact with the thief, "She's a rather skilled sorcerer, because we don't know what we'll be facing down below, and because it's the right thing to do."

"Fair enough." He shrugged, put his hands in his pockets and continued along, not looking at the paladin or the others, possibly feeling ashamed of his suggestion.

"I will admit that I didn't expect to see a paladin working with a yugoloth." Corwin looked over at Ashlanaya. "Nor have I ever met a tiefling paladin, nor a paladin of Nephthys."

"Nephthys protects, and so do I." She explained, firmly aware of the inherent bias against tieflings but also the inherent contradiction between the taint in her blood and her holy pledge to the Egyptian Pantheon's Goddess of Protection and Dying. "The Marauder is evil, terribly so, but my place here serves a purpose for Nephthys, and should my actions cause harm after my work is finished, than that is something that I will need to attend at that time."

"Fair enough."

"Besides," Ashlanaya added with a smile and a hand on her sword's pommel. "Someone has to make sure that you three don't get killed because not a one of you looks like you know how to use a sword, much less survive a blow from one."

"I resent that remark." Surefoot raised an eyebrow and looked first over his shoulder and the two-handed sword strapped to his back, and then to the smiling paladin. "That being said, I like you, and I don't say that about many tieflings after only knowing them for an hour or two, and having met them in the employ of our not-exactly-benefactor"

"The appreciation is very much returned." The paladin smiled back. At the very least, she had a decent mix of well skilled people to work alongside, no matter how the work actually went.

By then, their conversation had taken them through the Lower Ward's unremitting overhead smog and greasy drizzle, through the edge of the ruins that marked the Shattered Temple district, and to the Ditch itself where the street gave way and plunged some fifty feet down to a run of nearly stagnant, polluted and foul-smelling water. A great gaping wound in Sigil's flesh of stone, gloom, and verdigris rust, the Ditch cut through the boundary between the Lower Ward and the Hive, separating the worst of the latter from the working-class and industrial districts in the former. The de facto Ward boundary also served as a primary water source for both Wards when the dabus or the city itself saw fit to open up portals to Elemental Water. During the periods between then however, the Ditch serve more as a dumping ground for refuse, filth, and corpses than as a reservoir - and currently the Ditch was in the lull between periods of open portals and fresh water.

"Why are we here again?" Zenia held her nose, gazed down at the depths of the Ditch and then back at her companions, genuinely confused. "I honestly don't remember. I've been talking to myself and she gets me off track more than you'd think."

"We're here on a job from Shemeska the Marauder." The paladin explained with supernatural patience, "She wants us to retrieve something for her, and in exchange she promised to pay each of us something. You'll be getting a staff of fire."

Zenia beamed and bounced on her toes while the flames licking up from her head turned myriad shades of blue and green.

Malcolm likewise held his nose, "Where does the map say we go next?"

Corwin and Ashlanaya looked at the map and their surroundings, extrapolating where they were on the diagram of streets compared to the location of a tunnel they needed to find. It wasn't far, and with exceeding caution they backtracked and approached the Ditch two blocks up where the slope wasn't as steep, and there they descended down the rancid smelling bank.

"People get water from this hell hole of a well?" Malcolm pulled his shirt over his nose and wiped his eyes as a breeze brought a cloud of flies and a reek best described as corpse-stench and evaporating vinegar.

"Sometimes they do, but the water is fresher then and the portals flush all of the waste out of the city." Surefoot explained as he braced his much larger body against the slope with deceptive ease.

"I think this is it." Ashlanaya pointed to an obscured breach in the Ditch slope, concealed behind an outcropping of rock and visible only from below rather than any other angle.

Ten feet wide and perfectly circular, the tunnel descended into darkness, without any sign to mark the entrance, nor guards, nor footsteps to suggest any recent passage. The map however made it clear that it was where they were intended to descend.

"It looks like something burrowed its way in." Zenia turned her head sideways, forcing Corwin to move a foot back to avoid the rush to flames making for his face.

"Actually it looks like the opposite." Surefoot inhaled deeply.

"How do you mean?" The Xaositect looked at the bariaur curiously.

"It looks like something burrowed its way -out-..."

Malcolm sighed and shook his head, "Well that's a pleasant thought given that we'll be waltzing around down there in the dark."

One by one the five of them descended, with Ashlanaya at the front and Malcolm and Zenia at the rear, allowing for the genasi's natural output of firelight make the human's descent at least mildly easier given the others' ability to see in the darkness to a limited range naturally, and his complete lack of the same. Weapons were drawn and their apprehensive action in doing so was justified within only a few minutes time as a scuffle up ahead and a series of hushed whispers and rodent-like squeaks spoke of a waiting party.

"Well it looks like we are indeed expected." The paladin whispered back to the others. "Be ready in the event that this doesn't go well."

A globe of conjured light appeared suddenly in the middle of the passage, forcing them to squint and bringing into view six figures dressed in ragged, pieced together armor that spoke highly of being scavenged off of corpses.

"It seems we have surface dwellers intruding upon the Kingdom Below." The largest of the six figures emerged into the light, pulling back the dirty hood of a brown, soiled cloak and revealing the muddled rodent and human features of a were-rat. Rheumy yellow eyes glowed like candleflames in a mine shaft, his frontal rodent's incisors were jagged and intentionally sharpened, and his overly-large twitching ears bore a tracery of old scars and burns, speaking of a difficult and violent life in the depths of UnderSigil.

"We're here on the authority of Shemeska the Marauder." Ashlanaya called out to the wererats, causing a chorus of shrieks from the four figures that stood behind the two largest were-rats that stood in front. "You're to escort us to a specific portion of the tunnels. Your leader should already be aware of our employer's directives in this matter."

Trick and Track, the were-rat king's lieutenants narrowed their eyes and scowled, glancing at one another before standing taller and straighter as the others behind them snarled menacingly and raised their weapons.

"King above perhaps, but not below!" Trick snorted derisively.

Track hissed and held out his palm, "Lord Tattershade rules this place, not your mistress."


****​

Three days earlier:


The black oblivion of unconsciousness lifted along with the black cloth hood from over Malcolm's head. A brilliant spotlight focused upon his face, burning his eyes and forcing him to squint and attempt to turn his face. A vaguely insectile hand roughly grabbed his jaw and forced him to look forward as another, similar hand painfully held his hair and some sort of tentacle or tongue wriggled near his ear. A third hand grabbed his left arm, pressing upon a nerve in his wrist and forcing his fingers to release wide. A fourth hand gripped his index finger and forced something around it, a ring of some sort.

Where was he? What was going on?

He struggled to move and found the act impossible. He was seated, his upper arms were bound at his sides, and his legs were lashed to the chair.

"So good of you to join us Malcolm." A mockingly concerned voice called out from beyond the nimbus of the spotlight. Without his eyes yet adjusted, he could make no identification, but the speaker was female and confident, arrogantly so. "I trust that your transit here was swift and comfortable? Hmm?"

A buzzing sound resonated within his head, and the hand grasping his hair constricted tightly. _Answer her mortal!_

"Where am I?!"

"No no no..." The distant voice chided playfully. "Malcolm you're not quite understanding just how this works. This evening we'll do doing quite a bit. Some dinner and entertainment, much like any evening of mine, but to start things off, I'll be asking questions and you'll be answering them. You don't get to do the same."

"Who the bloody hell are you?"

A gloved fist backhanded him suddenly, causing stars to flash in his vision, and then the myriad of hands on his person were forcing him back up and looking forward.

"You stole something from me Malcolm, or at least one of my couriers anyway." 

The woman's voice was unhappy, but not furious. Likely he'd be beaten but he hadn't done anything to merit anything more serious. That line of thought was normally appropriate for the mortals that Malcolm had worked with prior to his arrival in Sigil. Under those presumptions a little bit of mouth could defuse things, earn him some professional respect, even if it was rude.

"See?" Malcolm wisecracked. "You answered my question."

"Break every bone in his right hand." The woman's voice was utterly devoid of concern or empathy. There was no momentary pause where reason overruled ethics or socially constructed moral limits. 

The clawed hand on Malcolm's jaw moved down, closing like a vice around his forearm and holding it in place. What happened next he couldn't tell, it happened so quickly and the pain nearly caused him to black out, but it was likely a hammer that slammed into each of his fingers one by one in quick, professional succession. They had broken a man's bones before and they were very good at it.

Someone was screaming, loudly. They were whimpering and howling, begging for mercy. They were apologizing for having stolen something. Malcolm inwardly winced at the agony in their voice. Light then returned to his eyes and he realized that he was hearing his own voice.

"That's such a beautiful sound." The woman sighed, relaxing as if she were seated in a cushioned private box at the opera. "Oh, and one of you not already predisposed, fetch me some wine."

"Red or white your Fiendish Majesty?" One voice obediently asked.

"Given the proposed dinner menu this evening, I'd have to suggest a red. Nothing too sweet, something deep and complex to provide a contrast I suppose. But depending on certain factors that we won't know until it's time to prepare the meal, bring a bottle of Sauternes as well, and a crisp white if the chef serves the sweetbreads."

He could barely feel anything in his right hand beyond the fierce, constant ache of crushed, bleeding tissue. Yet through the pain his eyes were finally adjusting to the room's harsh light, and he could finally make out who was speaking to him, talking about her dinner and wine pairings while watching his torture.

The room was relatively small and the walls were hung with multiple layers of heavy, black cloth, presumably to muffle the noises of screams. A pair of tieflings dressed in black flanked him, one of them smiling and holding a bloody hammer. Malcolm avoided looking down at the damage to his hand, just based on the pain he knew that without a cleric's aid, it was probably going to be crippled or lost. Something larger and inhuman stood behind him, its tongue periodically licking alongside the back of his head.

"Let's start over Malcolm." His captor spoke from where she sat directly opposite him against the far wall, seated upon a cushioned throne, legs crossed and a glass of wine delicately held in one clawed, opera-gloved hand. "It seems that we've gotten off to a bad start."

She wasn't human or fiend blooded. She was a full-blown fiend of some sort, essentially a humanoid jackal groomed and primped like a self-obsessed princess. She wore a long and tight fitting, wine red gown, opera-gloves of the same color, and a purplish black under-bust corset. A dozen jeweled rings, earrings, necklaces, and a ratty tangle of coiled razorvine atop her head completed the baroque and wholly out of place ensemble, unless you also counted the ruby-red polish applied to the claws on her toes and hands where the gloves were open to display her fingers.

Something passed over Malcolm's mind, a series of fingers brushing against his consciousness that were cold and distinctly different from the buzzing, alien voice that had touched his brain earlier.

"It is a nice gown isn't it?" The fiend put a hand at her breast and smiled, looking not at her prisoner but at her reflection in the mirror. "Given the color and material, blood doesn't stain it nearly as much as other outfits."

Two other figures stood between Malcolm and the fiend, both of them on opposite sides of the room from the other. The first was another of her tiefling guards dressed in well cut, expensively tailored black clothing. Unlike the others however he wasn't carrying any weapons or objects of torture: he was holding aloft a heavy, ornately framed wall floor-length mirror. As far as Malcolm could tell, his only purpose was to hold the mirror aloft for the fiend's vanity. Half of the time she wasn't even looking at Malcolm, but rather staring at her own reflection in the mirror and admiring herself in an obnoxious display of rancid vanity. The final person was also a tiefling, but this one wore an ivory white chef's jacket and matching pants, his hair neatly tucked into a white cap. A series of knives and other kitchen implements were stuff into his belt and the table at his side bore the requisite objects of a fantastically high-end kitchen: pots, skillets, bowls, cutting board, and to the side, constructed into the wall, a stove-top and oven.

"Dinner and a show." Shemeska the Marauder smiled at Malcolm and idly held out her left hand. As if on cue, one more newly arrived tiefling handed her a wine glass and poured it full of wine to match her dress. The room operated like a ferociously rehearsed stage play at her desire.

Malcolm looked at the mirror, and in its reflection he could see the creature that stood behind him. The chitinous monstrosity that stood there was easily twice the size of anyone else in the room, and occasionally the tongue that he'd felt touch his head was more a tentacle tipped with a lamprey-like mouth. The creature was a vaath, a native horror of Carceri's second layer of Cathrys, but Malcolm didn't know that, nor was he aware that they fed on their victims both their flesh and their fear, burrowing into their brains and experiencing things through their eyes as well as showing the victim the torture from that end as well. Malcolm was one of the Clueless, only recently arrived in Sigil, and so he only saw it as some horrific fiend. In the reflection he also saw the shard of crystal forcibly embedded into its forehead, leaking a greasy, greenish light, and how its glazed eyes looked to the Marauder for its each and every action.

"Whatever I have done to you Madam, I am truly sorry." Malcolm's tone was genuine as he understood the depths of his mistake.

She didn't bother to respond in words, nor even to look at him as she admired herself in the mirror and addressed the tieflings that flanked her victim, "Is the ring of regeneration firmly in place?"

"Yes your Fiendish Majesty." One of the tieflings drew a serrated filleting knife and the other a bone saw. Still at the table, the chef began sharpening his knives while a dozen sauces reduced and side dishes waited for a main course that was nowhere to be seen at his station.

Malcolm's eyes went wide as he understood what was going to happen.

Taking a sip of her wine, the fiend closed her eyes and savored the taste on tongue and nose. The moment passed and Shemeska the Marauder opened her eyes. Looking directly at Malcolm she smiled, licking her lips, "Proceed." 


****​


----------



## Shemeska

Also, just as an adjunct for atmospheric effect, the last scene in this most recent update (and the continuation of the scene in subsequent updates) is very much aided by the music video for 'Sick Sick Sick' by Queens of the Stone Age. It's pretty self-explanatory given the implied storyhour content and the likewise implied music video.   

[video=youtube;oHDaKtx6bGY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHDaKtx6bGY[/video]


----------



## almost13

Edit: sorry, just noticed that the children of the Dream Reaver Story have been discussed quite a bit already.


Thanks so much for the awesome stories! I've been a fan for years. I love the amount of thought you put into this, how well it seems to mesh with the mood of Planescape evoked by DiTerlizzi&Co (versus the recent turn towards boring devil-lord blargh). Two questions if you happen to have some free time:

- Is the thing Helekanalaith wants Clueless to fetch from the kython city ever expanded upon?
- I love the idea that the Baernaloths/their kind of evil might be akin to a virus. Do you have any ideas how to incorporate a prion-analogy-creature?


----------



## Shemeska

almost13 said:


> - Is the thing Helekanalaith wants Clueless to fetch from the kython city ever expanded upon?




It was a very minor plot point, being a nod to the advanced nupperibo in Jangling Hiter in 2e's 'Tales of the Infinite Staircase'. It wasn't part of the main plot, and so I don't recall offhand if Clueless ever went there on his own in a side session of the game. I don't believe so, but other things popped up involving the vanished ancient baatorians later on.



almost13 said:


> - I love the idea that the Baernaloths/their kind of evil might be akin to a virus. Do you have any ideas how to incorporate a prion-analogy-creature?




This is a difficult one, since on a certain level it's really just an academic difference between viruses and prions when you're trying to make an analogy out of their method of action and project it onto a fiend. Virus's infect, some types insert themselves into the host's very DNA, and they ultimately hijack the cell's own machinery to make more of themselves. Prions don't even have DNA or RNA as viruses do. They're only protein, but a sort that due to a quirk of chemistry allows them to alter other, normal proteins to match their own aberrant structure. Sort of like a virus, but not in some subtle ways. Unthinking corruption, body horror without purpose, something that makes me think of a few baern, certainly the way that Pathfinder's daemons operate since they seek the obliteration of all mortals while they're ironically themselves formed from mortal souls, and some aspects of Pathfinder's kytons. Still though, the analogy to a prion is a bit of a stretch in all of their cases. Still, you've got me thinking about it, because I have and do use things from biology and biochemistry for inspiration in writing.


----------



## Akhelos

You should write a Biology book about Yugoloths. Could be interesting. ^^ or better write the missing 3 Edition Yugoloth fiend Book about Yugoloth. ^^


----------



## Shemeska

****​

The wererats stared back at them, the unblinking reflection of their eyes as well as the reeking stench of their rag wrapped bodies serving as threats as equally unnerving as their weapons.

"We're not questioning that in the slightest," Corwin motioned with his hands, trying his best to defuse the situation, "But our mistress struck an agreement with your master."

"She may have," Trick shrugged. "But she is not here is she? We would have smelled the perfume and brimstone before you arrived."

Surefoot snickered, "I like you guys."

Ignoring the bariaur, the wererat continued, "Lord Tattershade requires respect and obedience from us, and for those not among his kingdom, a certain measure of contrition in the absence of fealty while within his domain."

Track extended one hand, his open palm streaked with grease and grime while his other hand rested comfortably upon the hilt of his sword. Beside him, Trick bowed and smiled politely, with a hand upon his own blade much the same.

"I think they're looking for a bribe." Malcolm rolled his eyes. "F*cking rats..."

"That's exactly what they're looking for." Ashlanaya whispered, "They're well spoken for wererats as well. They're no fools."

"Yeah, um..." Zenia chuckled politely, casting a nervous glance towards Tattershade's minions. "They can probably hear each and every word that you're whispering, so I wouldn't insult them."

Malcolm nodded in contrition at the genasi.

"Far be it from me to be the voice of sanity here." Zenia shook her head and blushed, sending a current of blue flames up her face and over her hair. "But if that's the case, we're pretty well and properly f*cked."

"We don't need you to be a voice of sanity, just able to hurl a fireball or two if it comes to it." Surefoot smiled at the Xaositect and then turned back to the aasimar. "They're greedy bastards yes, but if their master struck an agreement with our razorvine-crowned one, they'd be fools to buck the terms of it."

"I'll handle this." The paladin nodded at the bariaur and spread her hands, approaching the wererats. 

"As you like..." Malcolm adjusted his cloak, hiding the fact that his hands were on a pair of daggers at his belt.

"I get to throw fireballs today?" Zenia's eyes glowed with tiny flickers of flame.

"Lord Tattershade may rule below the streets, but our employer Shemeska has an agreement with him." Ashlanaya smiled politely but sternly. "You were to escort us. There was nothing further spoken on the matter. If there was, Lord Tattershade would have made that a firm fact, unless you're disobeying both your master and ours?"

Zenia poked Corwin in the side, "Who do I set on fire first?"

Clearly overhearing the genasi, and likewise needing to address the paladin's ultimatum, the wererats turned and excitedly chattered amongst themselves.

"Hush!" Track slapped one of the others with the end of his long, hairless tail.

"Silence!" Trick likewise slapped the snout of another of his men before turning back to glower at Ashlanaya. Whatever he had prepared to say, and his hands had never left his sword, he never needed to vocalize.

"That being said," Ashlanaya's voice interrupted the wererat leaders', steady and almost supernaturally diplomatic, "We do appreciate your help above and beyond your obligation. We're following orders ourselves. After all, we're in just the same situation. Surefoot, if you would."

Grinning at her tone and words firmly disarming the wererats' hopes of bleeding them all dry, but still allowing them to save face in front of their lessers, Surefoot hefted a small bag of coins and tossed it to Trick. The wererat snatched it out of the air and pocketed it in one swift, well practiced motion.

"You're the journal... journal... the writer," Trick fumbled over the word as he looked at the bauriuar. Track nodded and made a stabbing motion, followed by a snicker.

"What?" Surefoot raised an eyebrow at their body language and the fact that they knew his profession.

"Oh, we've heard about you." Track snickered.

"Yes, heard all about you." Trick smirked. "Nothing good."

"Lovely." Surefoot rolled his eyes. "Did the mutt with a hedge on her head talk about my wit and skill with a pen?”

"Oh, no, nothing like that." Trick stepped to the side and motioned their new guests forward. "We were just told to kill you first if anything went bad."

"But hopefully nothing goes bad." Ashlanaya forced out an overly polite smile and followed, keeping the others close at hand and noting that while Trick and Track remained in front of their group, their followers conveniently stayed a few steps to the rear, surrounding them and blocking off a retreat. She didn't trust the rats, but compared to the smiling, beautified and utterly amoral fiend that had sent them down into the tunnels, the lycanthropes were the absolute least of her fears. "Please, lead on."

The tunnel twisted and turned, and it seemed to the group that their wererat guides were often doubling back through looping side passages, intentionally exaggerating the complexity of the route in order to ensure that their charges would never be able to duplicate the route on their own, much less create a map. The walls were clearly excavated and enlarged by simple tools, likely by the wererats themselves, and the rock was the same brittle, wholly unnatural chalk-like Sigil rock. After a slow descent of some forty minutes though, that changed, with the walls transitioning to a bizarre amalgamation of different strata of hewn stone, a puzzle piece conglomeration of thousands of tunnels, forgotten basements, and speculative well-shafts moved and sorted over centuries or millennia by the same forces that slowly moved streets aboveground. Only here, those forces seemed to care little for the integrity of what moved.

“What the hell is that smell?” Malcolm covered his face as a warm, suffocating breeze rose up from somewhere further down the passage.

For their part the wererats seemed utterly unphased, even as the others winced and muttered.

“That smells like the trash heap behind the kitchens in the old Gatehouse.” Zenia waved a hand in front of her face, grimacing, making faces, and then waving her hand even faster with more and more theatrics as the smell grew in its intensity.

The tunnel experienced a sharp material discontinuity, abruptly changing direction and now composed of a solid, if heavily weathered, stratum of ancient, fired clay bricks. The ceiling of the new passage intruded two feet lower and a similar two foot drop in the floor presented at the point of their merger. To all appearances it seemed as if two tunnels had been sundered, dragged through the earth, and then hastily pasted together. At the point of merger, the new passage was flooded with greasy, debris-strewn water.

Corwin stared at the water for a moment, “It’s around two feet deep. It’ll be unpleasant but not dangerous; unless of course the bottom of the passage has any points of collapse that are flooded just the same.”

“As you can see, the tunnel opens up into a derelict length of old sewer.” Track gave an uncaring shrug. “No, it isn’t connected to anything still in use, but the water isn’t stagnant either. In any event though, this is where our guidance ends. Your map should lead you the rest of the way, wherever you’re going.”

Sigil’s sewers carried waste from the city above, with water from portals used to flush the system on occasion. But if the tunnel system wasn’t connected to those still in continual use…

Corwin looked askance, “So where is it getting its water and refuse from?”

“Who can say?” Track gave a second uncaring shrug in as many minutes. “It does tend to attract scavengers though.”

“Speaking of which…” Corwin pointed to the vague outline of what seemed to be a corpse floating some dozen yards down the passage.

“What the hell is that?” Malcolm squinted, unable to see in the dark to the same level as the others. “I can’t make it out.”

“It’s a corpse.” Ashlanaya frowned at a slight hint of movement, but she couldn’t be certain if it wasn’t exaggerated by the undulation of the water, or just an illusion borne of the shadows cast by their light sources.

“Just a corpse?” Malcolm eyed the paladin. “Or a corpse prone to standing up and trying to devour your face?”

“Just a corpse I think, but…” The aasimar paused as she more clearly saw the corpse’s head shudder and move.

“What was that?” Zenia held her hands up, preparing to cast if need be. “Why is its head moving?”

The corpse’s head moved again, violently so, sending an echoing wet crunch of snapping gristle and shearing bone down the sewer passage. The head, now fully detached from the corpse looked up, spreading wings from where its ears should have been. It opened its mouth, displaying a row of glistening fangs and gave a piercing shriek.

“Oh son of a b*tch!” Surefoot stomped a hoof, “Not vargouilles…”

“More than one of them.” Ashlanaya held out her hand and conjured a globe of light between them and the corpse, illuminating it and three others hanging upon a broken arch above the flooded tunnel.

The first vargouille and the newly discovered ones collectively shrieked at the light and rose into the air.
Malcolm took a startled step back, shaking as the hypnotic force of their screams washed over him, “What the hell is a vargouille?!”

"Flying vampiric heads, more or less. They…" Surefoot ducked and covered his head as a burst of flaming bolts careened down the passage, coming dangerously close to striking him as they did, "Woah!"

"Look at them flap around on fire! Hah!" Zenia giggled as she hopped from foot to foot, clapping hands still leaking a shower of sparks. A few seconds passed and she calmed down, noticing Surefoot frowning at her. "Couldn't resist!"

Behind them, Trick and Track softly snickered as they and their followers began to retreat back along the passage.

"See!" Zenia motioned at their wererat guides with a flourish. "They thought it was amusing too!" The genasi stuck her tongue out.

"Maybe," Ashlanaya cast a wary eye at the lycanthropes and hefted her sword at the ready. "But then why are they backing up? No, they didn't want to follow us past this point not because of a few vargouilles, but something else back there."

A wet slithering noise grew in intensity and heavy footfalls and resulting sounds of suction in the muck resonated as something approached.

"Oh gods what's that stink?" Malcolm gagged. “It’s even worse than before.”

"Oh ick!" Zenia winced and pursed her lips while igniting the flames on her hands and arms, hoping somehow to burn away the rising stench.

Surefoot sighed and hefted his blade at the ready, "The wererats are officially now the second worst smelling things I've met all day..."

Down the passage, one of their guides squeaked with offense and the other replied with a crude gesture. "This is where our obligation ends puppets of the surface king! Live? Die? We care not berks!"

“On time and expected,” Ashlanaya shook her head. “At least they didn’t attack us.”

“Attack us? Actually do something?” Surefoot rolled his eyes, “You’re giving them too much credit. They’ll just loot our corpses.”

“Everyone get ready, whatever it is, it’s sizable.” Corwin began to whisper as his fingers touched the sprig of mistletoe at his neck.

The creature that emerged out of the darkness and into the circle of light cast by the paladin was a grayish brown monstrosity, shambling forward on three tree-like legs. Dripping with filth, its single gaping mouth was open, sloshing with waste from the sewer, and as it moved, its tongue seemed to be hungrily slurping up errant bits of reeking flotsam. A trio of tentacles rose up like a crippled octopus, the central one studded with a number of lazy, translucent eyes.

Surrounded by a cloud of screaming, burning vargouilles, the otyugh roared with territorial anger and charged forward.


***​

A tortured, gargling moan filled the chamber like hellish chamber music, providing an undertone accompaniment to the delicate chink of golden tableware on fine porcelain, the chime of rings on a fine crystal goblet, and flowing, articulate commentary on the meal.

"This is truly spectacular." The Marauder gently dabbed a napkin to her lips. "I genuinely did not expect to enjoy the taste of the sweetbreads as much as I have, nor to find the meat as tender as it is. My compliments to the chef... and to Mr. Malcolm."

Shemeska raised her wine glass in toast to the man being tortured and vivisected half a dozen feet away.

"The seared liver was remarkably rich, the Carpaccio dish with bitter Minethys truffle, lemon, garlic, and flesh taken from the psoas major was clean and true to expectations and..." She paused as Malcom's lung's regenerated to the point where he could finally begin to scream again. As if listening to an operatic aria of sublime artistry, she closed her eyes and listened to each note of agony, trembling and biting her lower lip after a minute when her victim's lungs collapsed again, silencing the pitch back to a ruined moan.

"I'm so rarely this true to myself Malcolm." Opening her eyes again, she licked her lips and smiled, displaying a dichotomy of painted purple lips and bloody jackal's fangs. "Public appearances being what they are, I can only indulge myself in this way so very rarely. The meal has been excellent, and even more so, your suffering."

The fiend smiled and motioned casually with the hand not grasping her wine glass. The torturers nodded and the chef shuffled the pots currently on the flame for others, preparing for the next array of dishes.

"Would Her Fiendish Majesty be ready for the next round?" The chef's voice was disturbingly upbeat and anticipatory, reflecting a genuine desire to show off his skills for an appreciative patron. Whether by pride and ethics dulled by experience, or by genuine sociopathy, the chef ignored the hellish nature of the scene in its entirety, from the moaning, bleeding man, the smiling, well dressed torturers, and the freshly cut slices of human cheek and tongue braising on his stove-top.

The next twenty minutes proceeded just as before, with the Marauder's servants vivisecting their victim and her chef preparing the highest of haute cuisine from the extracted organs and meat, producing and naming each with a flourish.

"Flash fried, thinly sliced ear dressed with white truffle infused honey."

The Marauder inhaled, savoring the smell before tasting with a pair of golden chopsticks.

"Crisp baguette with a topping of liver pate with dried cherries and pistachios, dressed with mustard, sorghum, and arugula."

"Spectacular." The fiend cooed as she took the first bite, and then motioned towards Malcolm's ruined form with the plate in her hand. "I would be truly remiss if I didn't offer to share. Seriously mortal, this is sublime. You simply must try once your tongue regenerates to the point that you can taste."

The bloodied mortal turned his head away, wincing in disgust, blinded by pain, and gagging on copious amount of swallowed blood and fluid accumulated in his lungs.

"I insist," The Marauder approached and stroked his bloodied cheek with her claws before wrenching his jaw open with a revolting sound of breaking bone and cartilage. "Focus on the taste Malcolm. Trust me when I say that it will help for what the chef has planned for the next course."

She chuckled and resumed her seat, sipping at an alcoholic aperitif to cleanse her palate before crossing her legs and stretching with a contented sigh. "Tell us chef, what bit of genius is next?"

"If it would so please you Madam," He bowed and nodded to the tieflings flanking Malcolm. "A preparation of marrow served within the extracted femur with the ends still fresh, the center excavated and carved prior to its use as a container for the cooked yellow stroma."

Shemeska smiled and tapped her painted claws upon the arms of her chair. "That sounds truly delectable chef. But I have an additional request."

The tieflings paused in the midst of sawing open Malcolm's pelvis to expose the acetabulum and the glistening ball of the femur.

"I hate to be a glutton, I really do." The Marauder's voice was honeyed with false sympathy. "But I really do want a second preparation of the poached sweetbreads."

"... whhhy?” Malcolm seized and choked on the blood filling his lungs, alive only on account of the ring that caused his flesh to slowly regenerate and a second ring belatedly placed upon his other hand relieving him of the necessity to breath. “Whhy al you doinnng his? Pllees...pleees…"

"Malcolm... Malcolm..." Shemeska chided, placing the fingers of her right hand upon his tongue, pinching its tip between her thumb and index fingers. "You'll understand eventually, but for the moment, the meal is hardly over, and honestly, you haven't screamed nearly enough to my tastes."

The arcanaloth's eyes glowed with a lurid flicker of purple flame and with a soft, barely perceptible chuckle she pinched her fingers together, planted her left foot against the mortal's chest and pulled.

The sound of tearing, ripping flesh was drowned out by Malcolm’s apoplectic shriek.

"I don't think that I'll be wanting more of this," Spattered in blood, she dropped the two feet of tongue into the chef's hands with a careless shrug before retaking her seat. "But back to what I was saying before, if you would, once you've removed the femur, if you could crack open the chest cavity again to harvest the thymus a second time. Oh, and additionally, one of the kidneys for a pie later would be lovely."


***​


----------



## 81Dagon

And here I was thinking she couldn't get any worse...


----------



## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> And here I was thinking she couldn't get any worse...




Oh, she hasn't hit the peak of her vain, pampered, self-important, godless abomination self yet. 

She gets much, much worse. "Public appearances being what they are, I can only indulge myself in this way so very rarely." - it's rare that she gets to act as cold as she actually is, and the scene here is an example of her being true to herself rather than presenting an evil but acceptable public persona.

Except for the being made from people part, the menu sounds rather yummy I'll admit. I'll blame re-watching some of this season's Hannibal and some dishes I've had in the past week (the pork pate with dried cherries and pistachios on a baguette with arugula, mustard, and sorghum was actually something I had).


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## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> And here I was thinking she couldn't get any worse...


----------



## Akhelos

Well she could have at least invited Akin over for Dinner. ^^ and that picture is veeeeeerrrrryyy creepy ^^


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## 81Dagon

Akhelos said:


> Well she could have at least invited Akin over for Dinner. ^^ and that picture is veeeeeerrrrryyy creepy ^^



For dinner, or *as* dinner?


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## Akhelos

That a Very Good question! ^^ well she could it let depend on if he bringd a present Good enough to let him survive. *g*


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## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> For dinner, or *as* dinner?





I'm going to seriously enjoy detailing the precise relationship between the two of them as the storyhour progresses. No spoilers from me before then however. I'm all for speculation though.


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## Shemeska

****​

The otyugh roared with gibbering, incoherent rage, sending forth a shower of discolored, foul-smelling spittle as it charged forwards out of the sewers on a wave of filth. Above and around it, a quartet of very-much-on-fire vargouilles circled, shrieking in pain and glaring down at the party with malevolent fury.

"Someone please kill that thing before it slops poop all over us!" Zenia cringed as she clung to an outcropping of bricks just above the water level. "I set the flying heads on fire, I'm done!"
Corwin, Ashlanaya, and Surefoot glanced at one another for a moment before they flew into action. The druid began by hurling what seemed to be a random handful of forest debris, chanting softly in the time it flew through the air until it hit the water at the otyugh's feet and expanded into a tangled morass of sticky, snarled marsh vines. The beast roared and struggled to continue its charge, then slowed, and then stopped, held fast in place.

"My turn." Surefoot hefted his sword in two hands and charged. Rather than recapitulating the otyugh's awkward wading through the sewer water, the bariaur floated an inch above the surface, suspended by the four faintly glowing horseshoes upon his hooves.

"Beautiful cheater!" Zenia shouted out, giving a thumb's up to Surefoot's magical shodding. "If I had horse...tiefling... goat... whatever legs I'd totally want shoes like those! Hell I want shoes like those now! Just not nailed into my feet!"

Surefoot didn't have time to chuckle as he charged the otyugh, swinging his blade and dodging a swipe of one of its tentacles as he did so. The creature's roar changed from rage to pain, and it reflexively lashed out, biting deep into the bariaur's hip.

"Son of a b..." Surefoot's equally reflexive yelped cursing was cut off by a flurry of purple missiles that rocketed past his head, slamming into the flock of vargouilles with uncanny accuracy. "Second time today you've done that!" Further back down the tunnel, the Xaositect laughed.

Taking advantage of the spell cast against the vargouilles and the otyugh's pained reaction to Surefoot's attack, Ashlanaya charged into the fray. With her sword held high, the paladin vaulted past the bariaur with a hand on his side, slicing her sword into the otyugh. The beast screamed and bled a sludge almost as foul as the sewage it made its home within.

Unnoticed and lost in the fight, Malcolm shivered in terror, still stunned by the fist vargouille's scream. Whimpering, he dropped his dagger and collapsed to the ground, unconcerned by the mayhem around him. He cried and shuddered even as Ashlanaya and Surefoot butchered the otyugh and Zenia's spells plucked the vargouille's out of the sky one by one. One by the one that is, except for the original. Badly burned and snarling, its eyes light with venomous intent, it swept down from the ceiling and connected its lips with Malcolm's.

"Hey hey!" Zenia exclaimed as she watched the vargouille's die and fall from the air. "We got them! All four of... wait... sh*t." She spun around and saw the last remaining one perched atop her companion's face. "Sh*t! SH*T!"

A shower of magical bolts exploded atop the vargouille, sending it spinning off to the side and away from its victim, but the damage of its intent was almost done. No longer cursed with magical terror, Malcolm's emotions and the scream he gave were now for very real reasons.

Back down the tunnel, the otyugh shuddered and died as Surefoot slammed his sword deep into its own mouth. Burbling and twitching, its entire body shuddered as it died, and then it promptly vomited forth gallons of sticky brown sputum. "Oh gods that stinks..." Surefoot dodged as best he could and then gingerly retrieved his sword with a grimace.

"Some help back here!" Zenia's sudden sense of rational urgency caught the others' attention.

Looking back, the genasi knelt over Malcom's body, holding onto his head and furiously trying to keep it attached as his flesh discolored, his ears began to elongate, and the vargouille's bizarre method of reproduction moved through the stages of its ultimately lethal progression. Surefoot's expression moved to horror as he watched the all-too-rapid transformation take place, even as Ashlanaya's hands on his injured hip repaired the injuries he'd suffered at the otyugh's teeth.

"Hurry!" Zenia shouted as Malcolm's head shuddered and a depression began forming around the base of his neck. "How the freaky f*ck do you stop this!? Oooooff!"

Corwin pushed the genasi to the side and replaced her hands with his own, deeply and rhythmically chanting even before he did so. Zenia watched in horror and then relief as the changes that she'd watched and felt occur slowly stopped and then reversed. Within a minute Malcolm's head was normal and healthy, without any lingering sign of the vargouille' cursed kiss.

"I don't normally fancy regaining consciousness and looking into a face like yours." Malcolm laughed at Corwin, then looked and smiled at Zenia. "I'd much have preferred her. But anything is better than that flying demon head thing."

The druid stood up and reached out, helping the rogue to his feet. Malcolm brushed away the worst of the sewer's detritus and after wiping the hand clean on his shirt, belatedly extended a hand to the druid, "Thank you by the way."

"You're welcome." Corwin shook the offered hand and smiled. "You're much better as a human than another vargouille and a headless corpse."

In the meantime, the dead otyugh had continued its postmortem spasms and continued vomiting up a dozen more gallons of ammonia-rich half-fermented waste, sending forth an eye-watering cloud through the immediate vicinity.

"Now that I'm no longer in danger of having my head fly away on its own accord," Malcolm squinted his eyes, "Can we please move forward and get past that thing?"

"I could always set it on fire you know." Zenia's voice rang high and nasal as she pinched her nose shut. "That usually improves things."

"Be my guest." Surefoot nodded, "But after we're at a safe distance please?"

"No argument from me." Ashlanaya shrugged, "Just make sure the smoke drifts the other way."

Corwin nodded, "The wererats will appreciate I'm sure. Plus, anything following us isn't going to be able to smell us, or anything else, for a while."


****​

Twenty minutes later and the group still moved interminably through the old sewer tunnels. Thankfully at least the water level had receded, now only an inch deep at most, and for whatever reason the air was cooler and more neutral in smell. No longer held away by the threat of the territorial otyugh, an almost normal subterranean fauna of rats and insects now scattered at the approach of hooves, footsteps, and conjured light.

"So it looks like the passage here splits on the map," Surefoot frowned and put the map away. "And of course if doesn't specify which branch to take, just a vague arrow in the direction they both seem to head. All I can tell is that somewhere past here is where we'll find the old, buried portion of the Ward."

"Where under the city are we do you think?" Ashlanaya asked.

The bariaur held the maps side by side, "The overlay isn't perfect, but somewhere between the Shattered Temple and the Mortuary, on the Lower Ward side of that."

"Any idea of where either of the two branches goes?" Malcolm squinted and stared down each.

"I can't see much difference between them," Corwin shrugged. "But the one of the right slopes up slightly, and the one on the left feels more like what we've been slogging through than not."

The paladin smiled, "And this is why I'm glad that we have a druid with us. Anyone object to taking the right fork?"

Zenia shook her head quickly, leaving ephemeral afterimages in the passing of the flames in her hair, "I'm up for leaving the damn sewers!"

"No argument from me." Still rubbing his hands along the band of swollen flesh along his neck, Malcolm nodded happily, "That's the best thing I've heard all day!"

Down the right fork they went, noting a rapid change in the walls on three occasions as brick shifted to worked stone and then back to brick.

Malcolm kicked at the walls in a few places, testing their strength. "This is so bizarre."

"Everything down here isn't exactly stable." Surefoot explained, pointing out the physical dissonance between the brick and stone. "The dabus move things topside but normally they don't do it so overtly and they prefer not to disrupt normal folks' lives. Down here it doesn't matter, and so things shift and slide as they, or the city, or the Lady sees fit."

Other than the shifting tunnel walls, there was little to note for some time as they proceeded down the passage. Growing drier with each minute, the air seemed to fill with a tangible static that none of them could truly describe. Off-putting and disconcerting, like the stench carried on the air before the approaching otyugh, it portended something much worse.

Surefoot's ears twitched on their own accord, and in fact they'd been doing precisely that for the past fifteen minutes. Like those of a grazing ruminant they'd perked and tracked something without his eyes or the rest of his body language giving any outward sign that he'd noticed anything untoward at all out in the gloom beyond the edge of their light or their darkvision. Ahead of him, Corwin slowed, paused, and looked to his left for a moment before the bariaur caught up, gently pushed him in the small of the back, and leaned in.

"They've been there for a solid half hour or so." Surefoot whispered nervously.

Corwin stiffened and smiled, acting as if nothing at all was amiss. Inwardly his heart skipped a beat from the brief glance into the shadows. He'd heard a tiny, ever so faint scratching sound of claws on masonry, a brush of fur on stone, and a series of sharp, barely audible murine squeaks. Staring out at him had been a moving series of tiny, yellow orbs - rats.

A swarm of rats could be exceedingly dangerous if they attacked en masse, crazed with hunger. But the risk of being eaten alive or being exposed to any number of diseases they carried was the least of Surefoot's concerns. Each and every one of the rodents skulls were spit open at the sagittal ridge, exposing an oversize, glistening brain, all of them pulsing and glowing with the same eerie, mental heartbeat as their fellows, synchronized and unified.

"How many of them do you think there are?" The druid's voice was thin and worried.

"We're surrounded." Surefoot whispered. "At least fifty I'd say. Enough that they can probably hear my thoughts better than my whispering."

Cranium rats were a scourge within the City of Doors, though most assumed them to be only a more advanced version of simple vermin. Whatever their bizarre appearance and whatever bizarre abilities they might possess, they were still nothing more than vermin. Below the streets however they teemed, multiplied, festered, and infested. Madmen and the tongues of corpses spoke of the Three Great Minds, titanic gestalt entities, psionic godlings dressed in the flesh of rival hordes of rats. All of them loyal to Illsensine, but like rival religious Patriarchs each sought to anathematize the others and claim singular hold of Sigil's endless, lightless warrens below the streets - and after all, in the eyes of the Godbrain, conflict could only breed strength.

Between ten and twenty of the vermin were visible at any given time, always staying just at the edge of the light, never intruding too close and doing little more than watching except for the brief flickers of mental static and a slight brush of something ephemeral against their minds. The one exception was a brief moment when a dozen of them looked at Malcolm, concentrated, and then collectively recoiled. From that point on they avoided the thief, though he remained blissfully unaware of their attention.

"So the walls are changing again." Malcolm tapped a dagger at the junction between the old, time worn brick of the sewer passage and the newer tunnel. "Better quality certainly. Weren't we going into a completely ancient portion of buried city though?"

True enough, the brick abruptly stopped without any sense of conventional merging. By whatever means the city, the dabus, or The Lady had simply merged two passages into one another like puzzle pieces clicking together seamlessly. The new passage's walls were high quality, polished and bore not a single scratch or chip despite the implied passage of centuries or more as evidenced by the inch of dust upon the floor. The architectural style was elaborate, bordering upon the baroque, with carvings of abstract patterns resembling wind, water, or tentacles reaching down from the ceiling to halfway down the walls.

"That's... odd..." Ashlanaya glanced warily at the walls as she touched her holy symbol reflexively. She glanced back behind them, in the direction of the trailing rats, and then continued her nervous glance at the walls.

"Not odd, just creepy." Zenia pointed up where the ceiling was carved with not only the same patterns as the walls, but a multitude of eyes. "Give a sculptor some acid and they'll make some crazy stuff. And I say this having known people that like crazy stuff for the heck of it."

"Notice anything?" Surefoot nudged the paladin and inclined his head towards her holy symbol. "Ahead I mean."

Ashlanaya shook her head. "Nothing in range. The rats though..."

Surefoot gave a worried look at her pause.

"... there are many, many more of them that aren't showing themselves." For the first time that the others had seen, the paladin looked genuinely worried. "Hundreds of them."

Almost as if on cue the darkness behind them seemed to move, turning from damp brick to a carpet of fur, teeth, eyes, and pulsing brains. As a unified entity, the rats stared at them, and paused, not moving any closer.

"They're falling back..." Corwin whispered. His tone was mixed with a strange juxtaposition of relief and unease. "They're just sitting there."

Sure enough the cranium rats had paused. Twelve of them sat calmly in a neat line twenty feet back down the passage, precisely at the point where the tunnel had transitioned from brick to cut and polished stone. The vermin refused to proceed past that point, almost as if hedged out by some form of warding.

"Why aren't they attacking?" Ashlanaya's left hand was on her sword and her right tightly grasping her holy symbol.

"There isn't anything magical in place." Zenia stuck her tongue out at the cranium rats, smiled, and then frowned as she realized the implications. "That's not a good thing though..."

"How so?" Malcolm raised an eyebrow. "We don't have a hive of mutant rats chasing after us. That's a good thing."

"Because it means that there's something up ahead that frightens a cranium rat hive." The flames on Zenia's head flickered and dimmed, "What could do that?"


****​

If not for the agonized screaming that erupted in fits and bursts, the chamber would have sounded like any other high-class dining room in Sigil with an open or adjacent kitchen. The rich smells of food though were undercut with blood, perfume, and the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh, and all the while the air filled with the sounds of sizzling pots and pans, the sound of knives on cutting boards, and the more refined and elegant clink of dinnerware on fine porcelain and soft murmurs of appreciation.

"The second course of milk-poached sweetbreads was spectacular." The Marauder smiled and held her hand off to one side to accept a small shot of crisp raspberry sorbet. Her palate thus cleansed, she gestured to the chef. Ignoring the suffering mortal only a few feet away, his blood spattered her dress, stained her teeth, and congealed upon her bejeweled finery. "What then for the next course?"

The chef's eyes sparkled as he smiled with unmitigated pride, "Her Fiendish Majesty will be dining upon a human Chateaubriand cooked with white wine and shallots moistened with demi-glace, topped with a tarragon butter and lemon."

Through the preparation and consumption, the fiend seemed to lick her lips more from the agonized screaming than from the dish itself, though both were truly inseparable as far as a meal concerned an entity such as herself. Over the next two hours the process continued with three further preparations of haute cuisine, interrupted only by a lengthy monolog on the fiend's part. Chuckling and sipping appreciatively on a glass of brilliant green Chartreuse liqueur, she speculated with rapt self-absorption on what prominent fashion trends bubbled upon the horizon of Sigilian high society, which she approved of, and which she desired nipped in the bud rather than have to endure wearing it.

Without magical intervention, Malcolm would have long before died of shock or hemorrhage. Mangled, posed, and harvested, only his face and digestive tract were intact, with much of the rest of his body broken, carved out, excavated, or amputated for the fiend's table or simply for her perverse aesthetic pleasure. What she allowed to remain intact however was only there to allow him to see, hear, and taste each and every dish during its preparation and then forcibly fed a portion by the fiend that stood behind him, all while providing his own screaming, wailing feedback. 

"Am I boring you Malcolm?" The Marauder stood and walked over to the weeping mortal. There she paused, sipped the digestif in her hand and smiled. The meal was over, the pitch of the mortal's suffering had reached some subtle inflection point of agony, and it was time for something else. 

Dressed in blood-spattered gown and glittering regalia, Shemeska kept a hand on her chest above the corset, holding herself steady and in place, breathing deeply, nearly erotically so as she approached and for the first time lowered herself to eye-level. Eyes wide she sniffed like a hungry jackal, tilting her head first to one side and then the other in a remarkably bestial fashion before leaning in further, closing her eyes and licking the tears from Malcolm's face. He could smell her breath with its mixture of blood, ash, and the assertive aroma of herbal liqueur, and for a moment her mind brushed his and he felt the paradoxical dichotomy of adoration and abhorrence filling her mind as she tasted that visceral manifestation of his suffering.

Purple painted lips peeled back to show jackal's fangs, her eyes glowed fiercely, and then the veil of culture reappeared as she took a cloth and delicately dabbed her lips clean of blood and alcohol.

"Malcolm," Her voice was cold and tinged with the faintest hint of amusement, "What exactly made you think that you could steal something from me?"

"It had nothing to do with you." Malcolm's tortured voice repeated an answer that he'd made a dozen times before that evening.

"How arrogant does one have to be to steal from a being of arrogance made flesh?"

"I didn't know that I was stealing from you!"

_Sever his left foot._ Shemeska's telepathic call rang out to every mind but her victim's.

"Where did you intend to sell the items that you stole?"

"Anyone who would buy it. It didn't matter! I don't know!"

_Sever his right hand_

"What was the first thought in your mind when you saw me smile upon your hood being removed?"

"You are beautiful madam. Truly beautiful!"

Shemeska smiled and leaned forward, kissing him upon the lips and leaving behind a trace lipstick, "Keep that memory treasured and well in mind then..."

_Pluck out his eyes one by one, and set them in a bowl of Armagnac_ That statement was spoken to everyone, Malcolm included.

"One final question for you," Shemeska put a finger to his throat, feeling the blood irregularly pulse through his jugular. "Are you afraid to die Malcolm?"

"Yes, yes I am." He shuddered and momentarily his eyes rolled back in his head as his body -magical healing or not- threatened to simply collapse and die. "Please have mercy. Please don't kill me."

"Why not?"

"You're beautiful Lady Shemeska," Malcolm's voice broke and he descended into pleading, half-coherent platitudes. "I'll do anything for you. Anything! Say it and I'll do it. Anything. Please! Please! ANYTHING!!"

"Good..." Smiling coldly, Shemeska slowly and deliberately removed the multitude of rings and bracelets from her hands, placing them upon a golden tray carried by one of her servitors. One by one the others exited the room, leaving her and Malcolm alone. She licked her lips, stood up and stretched her head side to side. She cleared her throat twice while Malcolm wept in thanks, whispering prayers to every power he yet remembered the names of. His error was momentary as the Marauder spoke her next words. "Then I think that we're finally ready to truly begin then!" 

Snapping her fingers, the lights extinguished, leaving the room in darkness cut only by the purple, ethereal glow of her eyes and the inner light of the soul gems dangling from the jewelry upon her ears and throat. Placing her hands upon his remaining fingers, she removed the ring of regeneration and spoke, not in planar common, not in the language of magic, but using words learned from another, Shemeska spoke in Baern. The words rattled the air, bringing tears to the fiend's eyes and the trembles of ecstasy thereafter, while the target of her blasphemous speech received the opposite. Upon the edge of death, Malcolm heard her words clearly through his fading consciousness, but otherwise he saw only fragments and snapshots of imagery through the pain: her fangs, her tongue across her lips, flame within her eyes, and the palpable touch of the words like slithering tongues and nimble, razored fingers as they broke down his mind, his memory, and seated themselves within his brain as a second, nearly autonomous creature, watching for the moment when it would take control.


***​

Light spilled out of the windows and open doors of the Fortune's Wheel, streaming and multicolored upon the marble paved streets of the Lady's Ward. Dozens of men and women, mortal and immortal walked past on their own tasks while the artificial stars of Sigil glittered overheard, the fires and lamps of the Guildhall Ward dimly piercing the gloom and fog. They went on their way, ignorant and unknowing of the ongoing horror within a private room above the Wheel in the Azure Iris. Likewise they ignored the trio of dabus that congregated at the street corner opposite the Wheel, so used to their ubiquitous presence that their actions were irrelevant. Passersby gave no notice, nor did the target of their attention, when at once the three of them looked up and directly at a point therein, where had the walls been transparent they would have gazed upon the Marauder.

Glancing at one another for only a moment, with neither a rebus or expression passed between them, the dabus departed, drifting out of sight into Sigil's gloom.


----------



## Tsuga C

*Refined Palate?*



Shemeska said:


> Except for the being made from people part,...





And yet my tummy rumbles and I salivate nonetheless...  Hmm, some of this lothyness is rubbing off on me.  Or maybe it's just my inherent drive to hunt and satiate myself on my own kills.  Regardless, bon appetit!


----------



## Sabrewulf

*Your excellent work*

Shemeska, 

I was fortunate enough to discover your work years after you began ... I had a similar discovery when I started reading Game of Thrones, where I got to skip much of the initial waiting due to my late arrival. 

Of course, now that I've read everything you have produced, I can't wait till the next update. Your writing reminds me of GoT in that you have clearly planned all possible conclusions to this story for years. The large, overarching plot takes on a sense of grandeur, with the barely-witting characters proceeding like well-armed mice through enormous, ancient vaults, passing monsters and titans they barely comprehend. It adds something special when they survive and proceed. 

Of course, unlike Martin, you have to leave enough room for free will to operate. Please keep playing/writing. 

Sabre


----------



## Shemeska

Sabrewulf said:


> Shemeska,
> 
> I was fortunate enough to discover your work years after you began ... I had a similar discovery when I started reading Game of Thrones, where I got to skip much of the initial waiting due to my late arrival.
> 
> Of course, now that I've read everything you have produced, I can't wait till the next update. Your writing reminds me of GoT in that you have clearly planned all possible conclusions to this story for years. The large, overarching plot takes on a sense of grandeur, with the barely-witting characters proceeding like well-armed mice through enormous, ancient vaults, passing monsters and titans they barely comprehend. It adds something special when they survive and proceed.
> 
> Of course, unlike Martin, you have to leave enough room for free will to operate. Please keep playing/writing.
> 
> Sabre




It makes me smile when someone new finds this and enjoys it. I'm still having a hell of a good time putting this campaign into story form!

Next update is in-progress. 

The PCs do more than just survive and proceed. They make some pretty big impacts by the end of it all.


----------



## Shemeska

"I'm not going to question our good fortune." Malcolm cracked a smile that coexisted uneasily with the cold sweat upon his brow. "But let's not wait around and let the rats gather the courage to follow."

As soon as the words had left his mouth, a trio of the rats moved forward, crossing whatever tentative barrier they'd all refused to cross. The rats were all imperfect specimens, each with some physical, congenital deformity or an injury healed poorly - all of them sacrifices of little regard should their blood be needed to satisfy the safety of the greater whole. They proceeded perhaps a centimeter at a time, crawling with a tremor in their hind legs, limping forward on three good limbs and one withered, or pulling their body along with forelimbs only due to crippled stumps they bore as hind legs. Less than a foot in and they stopped, each keening their heads in the same manner as if listening to something heard only to their ears alone.

"What are they doing?" Surefoot peered at the trio of rats as they slowly moved across the line. Unconsciously, the bariaur retreated several steps on his own as they encroached.

Then, without warning, in unison the cranium rats remained still and ceased their approach. They shuddered and remained still, held fast in the same position of rapt attention. Behind them in the passage, the assembled mass of their fellows retreated a half dozen feet and chittered amongst themselves, oddly syncopated patterns of light flowing amongst their number like a single, massive brain pondering to itself.

"They're scared." Corwin pointed to the twitching of their noses and the position of their ears and tails. Whatever the power of their aggregate consciousness, the hive's individual component bodies were hardwired to react in the same base, murine capacity. 

"Oh sh*t..." Malcolm muttered as the first of the advancing rats began to bleed.

A drop of blood dribbled from the rat's nose, the first of them to have crossed whatever demarcation existed in the hallway. Their eyes were blown wide, mouths open, muscles rigid in tetanus. Whatever they intruded upon did not apparently welcome their presence, and a point had been made to the rest of their hive.

"So we have two options. Two wonderful f*cking options!" Malcolm pounded his fist against the wall. "Walk back into a whole f*cking hive of cranium rats or walk forward into something that scares them sh*tless..."

"What in the Lady's name is all of this..." Ashlanaya stood further down the passage, staring at an elaborate triple pillar supporting the ceiling. Each pillar was carved to resemble a man or woman with closed eyes, a smile on their face, and elaborate designs across their skin. One of them was human, another an elf or aasimar, and the third very obviously some form of tiefling. Further down the passage the next support was carved in similar fashion, but with a different arrangement of races.

"They look like they're sleeping." Zenia motioned to the position of their hands cusped beneath their heads for support and the arrangement of their legs. "At first it looked like they were praying, but no, they're asleep."

Leaving the rats behind, but still looking over their shoulders should anything change, the others joined the paladin and Xaositect in examining the hallway's unique architecture.


****​

"Magic that isn't precisely magic..." Zenia moved her fingers through the air, tentatively touching or plucking at the strings of glowing energy invisible to all but herself, augmented by a whispered spell of her own. "Spooky but kinda awesome."

"Not precisely magic?" Ashlanaya looked up from one of the bizarre pillars, this one a trio of humans. Of the sleeping, peacefully smiling figures, one of them was abnormally thin, nearly skeletal in aspect, and another bore prominent fangs; perhaps a tiefling's unique mutation, but it suggested vampirism more than anything else. The paladin inwardly frowned for what it forebode.

"It looks like a bunch of protective wards," Zenia motioned to specific threads of magic embedded in the walls and the air itself, eventually stopping as she realized from the others' expressions that they couldn't see anything other than an awkward pantomime on her part. "But it's different, just the same as how a priest's spells or Ashy's spells here look different from mine."

"I'm starting to think that the cranium rat's might have been wiser than us." Ashlanaya sighed. "This isn't just a random bit of tunnel or an old wine cellar."

Given the expressions on their faces as they looked past the paladin into the gloom beyond, that was a foregone conclusion.

"That's a good guess. Now, I'm not all that familiar with Sigil's history," Corwin motioned to the pillars and the elaborate carvings upon the walls. "But given how so much of UnderSigil is made up of old forgotten cellars, tunnels, and subsumed buildings, this seems more like something you might find in a temple or even a Faction hall. Does this look at all familiar to anyone? Some crazy religion or some obscure Faction?"

"Neither obscure religion or crazy Faction no, not striking a bell." Zenia turned her head sideways and stared at the carvings. "Not that anyone knows much about what Factions were around before the Great Upheaval. Who knows what's buried down here. But it isn't like anyone would still be left."

"A hundred thousand years from now, I'm sure we'll still have Dusties around," Surefoot shook his head, "Even if the Mortuary has crumbled to dust and the Faction is only a memory and scattered references in obscure books. Undead in Sigil tend to last."

"Funny that you mention the Dusties..." Zenia frowned as she walked past the second of the triple pillars and stared at the walls. "This looks more and more like it's a catacomb."

The passage grew wider and now the walls bore alcoves every ten feet or so, some of them empty but for the dust of years, but others held elaborately mummified corpses and garishly decorated skeletons whose bones bore the same designs as the figures upon the carved pillars earlier. Previously unlit, the passage glowed dimply from the light cast by the oblong gemstones that hovered above the foreheads of each corpse.

"Please tell me that they're dead and not just sleeping." Zenia frowned as she looked at the niches. The mummies' faces were all smiling.


****​

Dust and the accreted grime of fifty thousand years shuddered, resisted, and then broke as red, glowing eyes opened and focused. All was silent, all was dark, and the fading figments of their shared dreamscape receded as the corpse stirred within the open sarcophagus he lay within. Here they lay, the last and greatest of a Faction long forgotten, they who had foreseen the future and fled below into the darkness before the mazing, flaying shadows came for them in this reality. They had been so close, and still they were, albeit incrementally slow now hidden in the shifting dark and forced to hide their actions lest they face opposition again. They were only so tenuously anchored to this reality, but here where they slept, this was the last thing attached to this false world. However tenuous it was, no matter how close they were to escape from the clutches of the demiurge's false world, they could potentially be dragged back from the shining precipice.

Something approached, disturbing the sleep of the least of the Five.

Arms crossed in dreaming slumber moved and grasped the stone above, lifting its body up while its puissant mind plucked at the psionic strings they had woven millennia earlier.

It cast its mind out like a hunting spider, wondering what trod upon the webs. That momentary fear it had upon its return to this imperfect, flawed prison lifted, but wariness remained. It had to remain, lest the enemy find them.

The first thing that he felt were the rats. The Vermin-That-Would-Ascend scratched at the edges of their domain. Let them. The slaves of Ilsensine could once again hurl themselves into the raging sea and seek to swim, weighted down by the lead of their mortality. They were inconsequential. There were others though, new, unknown, servitors of something else. Was it her? Had she found them? Would he need to awaken the others?

The creature exhaled, scattering the dust from within his lungs and filling the air with a grey cloud. A heart that had not pumped blood for a thousand years before his slumber began now jolted within his chest. The approaching ones would need to be dealt with, preferably without disturbing his masters from their great work upon the Threshold.

Jolvan Metheticus, the fifth Perfectarch of the Brothers of the Dreaming stretched and called to mind the psionic powers latent in his mind, no longer bound to nor constrained by physical substance. Alone and yet never alone in the darkness, Jolvan smiled and waited.


****​

Ashlanaya whispered a soft prayer to Nephthys, Lady of the Grave, protector of the righteous dead. For the briefest of moments the paladin opened her eyes to the presence of the undead. With a sense of relief, no, the nearby niches were filled with the actual dead. Turning her head however, somewhere further down the passage the radiant stench of the undead was like a sun imprisoned below the earth.

"You've got that look." Surefoot raised an eyebrow at the paladin.

"You've seen it before?" She glanced back at the bariaur as she stretched her sword arm, knowing that she'd likely be needing it very soon.

"Yeah," Zenia interjected, "You looked just like a clueless paladin walking past the Mortuary. That overwhelmed expression of not being sure if you should run or fly into a righteous fury against the dead."

The tiefling nodded, "This place is a tomb, and yes, there are undead down the passage. I've been past the Mortuary before though, back when Skall was there. It wasn't this bright..."

A chill ran down their collective spines as they struggled to comprehend what exactly that meant. Whatever slumbered here in the dark, deep below Sigil's streets was more puissant than the collective glow of the undead among the Dustmen.

Ashlanaya motioned a blessing and kissed the amulet of Nephthys that hung around her neck, "Let's hope that just like the carvings here, whatever they are, they're sleeping peacefully."

Moving down the passage, they kept their noise to a minimum, passing by dozens more of the eerie niches filled with the richly appointed bodies of the dead. Each corpse possessed a similar glowing gemstone that hovered in place before its forehead.

"You know, I've seen something similar to these before." Zenia leaned in, examining the gemstone before the grinning, skeletal countenance of one of the corpses. Her own flame-wreathed head shed a dull, rippling orange glow across the mummy, even as its gemstone spread a cool, sterile blue light across the genasi's face.

"You have?" Corwin looked at the same corpse.

"Yep," Zenia clucked her tongue, sending out a few sparks in the process, "Worn by our present employer."

"Huh?" Malcolm frowned. "I don't recall her wearing anything of the sort on her forehead."

"No," Zenia corrected, motioning to her ears and at her throat. "The hen's egg sized gemstones she had dangling from her ears and around her neck. The ostentatious ones, they glowed in a really similar way to these here."

"There's nothing -not- ostentatious about her..." Surefoot rolled his eyes, but at the same time, he understood just what the Xaositect was comparing: the gem's inner light.

"They're souls." Ashlanaya realized with a lump in her throat. "Every one of these corpses has a soul trapped in those gemstone."

"Their own?" Malcolm struggled to understand the meaning of it all.

"I would assume so." The paladin shrugged. "They died, they were entombed here, and whoever did it made certain that their souls stayed here with them. Perhaps to be rejoined with their body at some later point?"

"Or to make sure that they stayed here and never reached the planes." Surefoot recalled how years ago, he'd heard some more militant Athar speculate on starving the gods, and how the 'loths had supposedly done just that to a specific power ages upon ages ago to prove a point and to keep the powers out of the Blood War lest that happen again. But this however was different. This was far too ritualistic to be something punitive like that.

"It's creepy, whatever the reason." Zenia backed away from the corpse, the flames that made up her hair dimming at the thought that rather than sleeping peacefully in their tombs, the souls of the dead might be screaming in silence, beating upon the bejeweled shells of their prison. "Let's keep going and find a way out of here."


****​

Passing another dozen bejeweled corpses, the passage narrowed and approached a chamber. Lacking a door, the open archway bore a series of words across the lintel in archaic planar common: 'The Dreaming Mind Beholds All. The Dreaming Mind Slips the Shackles of the Soul. The Dreaming Dead are Free.'

"Inviting isn't it..." Surefoot grimaced as they stepped across the threshold and into the chamber.

Clearly a mausoleum, the chamber's roof was vaulted and below that, in the room's center were five massive sarcophagi, arranged in a circle. Blessedly though, all was silent, the dust upon the floor was undisturbed by even the footprints of rodents, and no guardians sprang to life at the approach of intruders. A fierce blue glow radiated from each marble casket, all of them open and without a lid. Perhaps most importantly however were the two other doors that led out from the room, one of them hopefully in the direction of their target.

"Nobody touch anything." Zenia whispered. "Let's try to avoid waking anything up..."

"Do you serve the Queen of Agonies?" The lips of one of the corpses moved, stretching and shedding the dust of centuries. "Does the Bladed Shadow send her agents still?"

One of the five corpses in the room's center sat upright in its lidless sarcophagus, a glowing sapphire lozenge hovered before its forehead illuminating its gray, desiccated flesh. It wore scraps of once-rich robes, now long since faded and turned to dust, revealing flesh tattooed with moving, shifting symbols and swirling designs in magical, metallic ink. Once perhaps some breed of aasimar, the red glow of its eyes and the wet, purple pallor of its tongue revealed its nature as a ghast long since removed from the chronicles of the living.

Hands gripped weapons and spells came to mind, but the paladin's hand in the air motioning them down stopped -or at least paused- any combat.

"No, we do not." Ashlanaya shook her head, "Assuming of course that you mean the Lady of Pain."

"Good..." The corpse smiled and closed its eyes, the light of its gemstone dimming in concert. It seemed thankful for that particular answer.

The ghast bowed its head and then resumed its original stance, gazing at each member of the group. For a long moment it stared at Malcolm, almost appearing confused.

"Who are you?" Malcolm asked.

"What are you?" Ashlanaya added, "What is this place?"

"We are dead and dreaming." Jolvan Maltheticus explained. "We would shed the chains of this world for a paradise calling out to our perfected minds, tethered only so little now to the corrupted anchor of the soul and the physical flesh that holds it."

The psionic ghast's bizarre theology had no parallel to any sect or Faction with purchase in Sigil. Whatever they had been, they had been long dead and forgotten for eons.

Once more the ghast looked out at them, narrowing its eyes in suspicion, "Who is it that sends you here? Why did you seek us out?"

"We didn't intend to come here actually." Zenia shrugged and smiled. "Honest truth."

Maltheticus began to stand, steadying himself against the edge of his tomb as he used limbs and muscles that had lain sessile for much of Sigil's extant recorded history.

Not wanting to directly reference the Key, Zenia continued, "We're here below searching for something lost centuries before."

"Centuries are the blinking of the eye, a tick of the demiurges clock with the shadow of the Queen of Agony the second hand to the first." The ghast rambled as it jerked upright, exhaling and smiling as it stood, extending a bloated purple tongue to taste the air and presumably the nature of its visitors.

"Not a queen, but a king sent us." Malcolm explained as his fingers reached for a concealed blade, for whatever good such might do against the undead. "The King of the Crosstrade, Shemeska the Marauder sent us."

Maltheticus shrugged as he stepped from his tomb. "Meaningless transitory names, hollow titles and temporal appelations that are ashes sifting through the gaoler of this world's fingers."

"She's a fiend." Corwin moved out of the way as the undead stepped onto the chamber's floor. "She's old enough to probably remember you."

Maltheticus paused and narrowed its eyes to slits. The gem at its forehead glowed fiercely.

Zenia chuckled awkwardly, "That probably wasn't the wisest thing to say..."

"They are souls incarnate," Meltheticus hissed, "the handmaidens of the demiurge, traitors and things of chains and physical desire. You will not stop us from escaping this world."

Ashlanaya's whispered words were simple as she raised up her holy symbol, "Run..."

The psionic ghast snarled and raised its hands, swirls of lambent blue ectoplasm already congealing out of the thin in swirls around its extended claws.

"RUN!" Ashlanaya shouted as she raised her holy symbol and invoked the power of her goddess. Radiant light surged forward, enveloping the ghast as the others bolted for the nearest exit. Seconds later, the light faded, and with it, so too did the paladin's expression.

The ghast stood there smiling, unharmed by the paladin's turning attempt. The designs and symbols tattooed upon its undead flesh glowed with sapphire light and fragments of the white glow that Ashlanaya had invoked. By whatever mechanism, the symbols penned and mortified into its flesh had deflected and siphoned away the energy sent against it.

"You pitiful things of flesh and souls, you will not stop our apotheosis!" Maltheticus gestured and bowled the paladin over with a burst of psionic energy directed into her mind.

Everything was confused. Her ears rang, her mouth was dry, her legs ached even as she ran on instinct and fear, stumbling into walls, delirious from the creature's ego whip. Barely comprehending what was happening the tiefling fled, hearing only the incomprehensible shouts of her companions and the mocking laughter of the abomination as it stepped forward from its tomb and lurched after them.

Run.

Things were still a blur to her mind, and in hindsight she would suppose that Nephthys herself had taken her shoulders and guided her in her stumbling retreat out of certain death. Things made no sense to her as Zenia hurled a glistening bead of flame past her, nor did she fully register the cause and effect when it detonated at the ghast's feet, forcing it to leap to the side, scorched and screaming when it finally stood up again.

Escape.

"Hurry! Hurry with that!" Surefoot urged Corwin on as the druid whispered to himself and moved his hands about the base of one of the hallway's support pillars.

"I'm doing this as quickly as I can," Corwin moved his hands deeper into the stone, moving mass and weakening the base, "otherwise you won't be able to break it down and bury that thing!"

"I don't have any more fireballs left to throw!" Zenia was frantic as she watched Maltheticus emerge from the darkness, red pinprick eyes glittering below the pale blue of its manifest soul.

Smiling as it slowly approached, now less than ten yards away, the psionic ghast motioned with its hands and a pair of figures began to coalesce. Skeletal hounds outlined in the same eerie blue light as their master's soul gem, the creatures gained muscle and viscera as the seconds ticked onwards, both of them scratching and slavering as they manifested.

"Done!" Corwin snatched his hands out from within the pillar and moved as Surefoot lowered his shoulder and charged.

CRACK!

A shudder ran through the pillar followed by a spiderweb's pattern of cracks and then a groaning sound from within the stone itself. The ghast snarled and loosed its created servants, but it was too late and they would never manage to close to distance as tremors shook the ceiling and stones began to dislodge and fall. In the moment before the ceiling collapsed, burying its route of access and sealing it within its tomb, Malcolm stared at it and it stared back, repeating the same wary expression that it had before.

Something that coiled within the human's mind stirred from its slumber and spoke to the undead in a tone of authority and power, "Do not follow."

A hundred tons of stone came crashing down, dust choked the air, and then all was silent.

"That was awesome!" Came the Xaositect's exuberant shout, cutting the still and trailing into a peal of laughter. "But yeah let's go and not think about if it might just walk through, yeah that's a terrible thought. Let's go."

Corwin shook his head at the genasi's horrid notion, hoping beyond hope that it wouldn't come true. He glanced over to Ashlanaya as she clutched her holy symbol and stared at the cave-in, and presumably what still lurked behind it, sealed off.

"It's retreating back." She said with a sigh of relief, "It can go back to sleep for all I care. Just as long as it leaves us be."

"I'm perfectly ok with that." Surefoot sheathed his sword and took note that the passage was still a portion of the same bizarre catacomb. "Let's just hope that we can find another way back out..."


****​

Eventually the passage ended with a hard shift between the carved and decorated tunnel and a return to one made from simple brick. According to the map that they'd been provided, assuming that they hadn't gotten turned around in their flight from the undead, they were getting close to the buried portion of the old Prime Ward.

"Does anyone else smell that?" Corwin wrinkled his nose at a sudden breeze blowing from the passage. Gone was the scent of dust and stale air, and also gone was the reek of sewage that had preceded that.

"It smells like that brothel over on Two-Lamp and Whisper." Zenia admitted with a belated blush of orange flames as the others turned and stared at her. "Not that I would know much about the place, yeah..."

"The fiend one?" Surefoot quirked an eyebrow.

"I don't need to hear any more about that..." Corwin shook his head. "Let's worry less about any of our ways of spending our money and more on finding the Key."

Zenia mouthed a quick, 'That's the one.' before they collectively faced the source of the breeze and exchanged wary glances. The rush of air was filled with the acrid reek of sulfur, and not that of a volcanic vent or Zenia's hair. It was more complex, and something that only appeared in the presence of numerous fiends of more than one type, and only then when they had occupied a place for years.

Distantly they heard a monstrous roar and a loud explosion, then silence, followed by more screams of both pain and anger. Bits of the screams were intelligible, if barely, and they came in two varieties: Abyssal and Infernal. The fiends that had come through the portals opened by the Shadow Sorcelled Key so many years ago, they were still here, still fighting against one another - the Blood War in microcosm raged on below Sigil's streets.


****​


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## 81Dagon

Oh dear Mother of Hades...


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## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> Oh dear Mother of Hades...




Which part is this a response to?


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## 81Dagon

Shemeska said:


> Which part is this a response to?




Umm... everything? 

So this is the second time that the Brothers of the Dreaming have been mentioneded and the first time they have shown up. That makes me really, really curious as to what the group would have discovered if they had gone through that door in the Jester's Palace. By the Unity of Rings and Rule of Threes, I'm expecting they'll show up at least once more before all is said and done. 

They are a really cool idea though! A psionic group of dreaming undead, they almost seem like a combination of a proto-Mind's Eye with a proto-Dustman. I can't find any reference to them anywhere else, so did you come up with them whole cloth? 

I also think that you need to draw a rough map of Under Sigil for us. You've clearly got large portions of it mapped out in your head. 

Then there is the Blood War continuing underneath Sigil. Given who the main antagonists are and why these PCs are down there, that can't be a good thing for the overall story arc.


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## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> Umm... everything?
> 
> So this is the second time that the Brothers of the Dreaming have been mentioneded and the first time they have shown up. That makes me really, really curious as to what the group would have discovered if they had gone through that door in the Jester's Palace. By the Unity of Rings and Rule of Threes, I'm expecting they'll show up at least once more before all is said and done.
> 
> They are a really cool idea though! A psionic group of dreaming undead, they almost seem like a combination of a proto-Mind's Eye with a proto-Dustman. I can't find any reference to them anywhere else, so did you come up with them whole cloth?
> 
> I also think that you need to draw a rough map of Under Sigil for us. You've clearly got large portions of it mapped out in your head.
> 
> Then their is the Blood War continuing underneath Sigil. Given who the main antagonists are and why these PCs are down there, that can't be a good thing for the overall story arc.




You won't find any other reference to them, I made them up whole cloth.

Imagine undead psions heavily inspired by dualistic gnosticism (of the Bogomil or Cathar variety). The physical world is a prison, created not by a loving God, but by a powerful, flawed, evil demiurge. This particular Faction however went a step further - the soul is what anchors the mind to the psychical world (taking a page from Egyptian belief of not just a body/soul dichotomy, but body/ba/ka trinity in play) The soulgem hovering before each of them was each of them slowly separating their souls from their body, with their undead state being used to further cleave the soul from the body and mind. In the end all that would be left would be a sort of psionic Ba able to leave this corrupt, physical world behind for a reality of their own making.

That was the idea anyways.

As for maps of UnderSigil, I had tons of individual locations and/or encounters mapped out. What the PCs did or didn't encounter was partially based on where they chose to go, and partially a random roll of the die since well, it's UnderSigil, and things shuffle around.

As for the Blood War going on, it's just among those fiends left behind and trapped in Sigil after the Shadow Sorcelled Key opened up all the Prime Ward portals. Presumably they still have reinforcements popping in from time to time through some of those ancient portals that open on occasion, fueling a bloody stalemate since none of the fiends wants to leave and admit defeat, especially when they feel they might be able to establish a beachhead in Sigil. Not likely to happen, but enough hope on their part to keep several hundred fiends bottled up in a few square blocks of buried Sigil.


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## Shemeska

****​

"This is something I never thought I'd see," Zenia gave a nervous giggle as she stepped out of the passage and into the buried remains of the Prime Ward.

"It's something alright," Surefoot glanced about with equal measures awe and wariness.

"Wow..." Malcolm blinked and strained to see the finer details of the ruins, details lost to his all too human eyes.

The tunnel had ended abruptly, opening up into a massive underground cavern whose size made the imagination struggle to comprehend that it was the result of a mundane collapse of the old city into the underground, and more an attempt by Sigil itself to swallow and encapsulate something that it could not simply reject, like scar tissue surrounding a splinter. It all resembled nothing less than Sigil in the twilight hours of Anti-peak in the worst regions of the Hive or the slags, the only other portion of the city to have ever suffered the worst ravages of the Blood War. Everything was ancient, and though seemingly untouched by the ravages of time and mundane decay, the warring fiends had reduced many buildings to burnt-out shells and uneven piles of broken stone, protruded here and there by the bladed gables and spires even so long ago a hallmark of Sigilian architecture.

A burst of light from a fiend's teleportation heralded the current status quo as a towering glabrezu appeared atop a broken foundation. It bellowed with rage a moment later as more bursts of light heralded a motley collection of other tanar'ri appeared, scattered about at random rather than in any intended fighting formation. They snarled and roared, reorienting themselves and branding their weapons both at each other as much as at the figures taking cover some twenty yards distant. There in groups of three and four, an organized detachment of barbazu braced for the chaotic fiend's charge. Heavily armored, they stayed silent with the exception of the voice of a single amnizu that bellowed forth invocations in the name of Dagos.

"Everyone down!" Surefoot motioned them to find cover, pointing up to a pair of armored, black-winged erinyes patrolling the skies above the baatezu encampment. "They see us and we're going to get press-ganged or just killed outright."

"We could always name drop our employer." Malcolm shrugged, "She seemed powerful enough above."

"That will get us tortured first, then killed." Ashlanaya smirked. "These fiends have been bottled up here for so long I think the last thing they want to deal with is a 'loth."

The tanar'ri charged as dozens more flashes of light erupted from teleportations, bringing both more of their kind and baatezu reinforcements as well. Within seconds there were more than a hundred fiends tearing into one another's positions. Lightning bolts lashed from the tanar'ri, rocking the air with the sonic boom of their crack and the harsh reek of ozone, while bolts of hellfire launched from spellcasters and infernal bombardment devices on the side of the devils. What had happened daily since the Key had arrived began once more.

"Everyone be quiet, everyone keep your heads down." Ashlanaya put a finger to her lips and then pointed towards a series of ruined buildings away from the mass of the raging and building conflict. "Let's make for those buildings and then keep going. Avoid any fiend we see and let's get in and out of this gods-forsaken place as soon as we can. We're close. I can feel it."

"You can feel it?" Malcolm glanced at the paladin questioningly. "What do you mean?"

"It doesn't feet right down here." She answered with a shrug. "I can't really explain it, but ever since we stepped out of that tunnel there's something just terribly unsettling; I can feel it in my bones."

"I'll attest to something not feeling right." Surefoot shivered, "I've been in the Slags, and it didn't feel like this place. I can't explain it any better than that, and I'm not sure if I feel it quite as pronounced as Ashy does, but yeah."

"She said that we'd know it when we were close." Doran grimaced, "I suppose that this is what she meant. You're both planars, so that might be why you can tell. Personally I've felt uneasy since I first stepped into Sigil, but that's just me."

*BOOM!*

"Sh*t!" Zenia hunkered down and the flames on her head flickered and nearly extinguished in fright as a massive sphere of flame detonated only a few yards away.

The smell of brimstone wafted through the air, followed shortly afterwards by a rain of cooling, glassy tektites that cracked and shattered as they peppered the ground. Peering over the edge of their cover, as far as they could tell, no fiends were making their way towards their position; luckily it had been an errant strike and not an intentional targeting.

"As if we didn't need any further excuse to get out of here, there's that." Ashlanaya exhaled and nodded her head towards the next ruined structure. "Come on, let's go."

Too distracted by one another and their innate and endless hatred, the ever growing mass of fiends never noticed as the small party snuck past them deeper into the ruins of the old Prime Ward. Winding their way from hiding spot to hiding spot, they progressed several city blocks inwards, following a growing sense of unease and something that could only be described as -wrong-. Blessed by serendipity, they weren't noticed by the warring fiends except for one close call with a pair of vrocks, and they thanked whatever powers they worshipped that they'd escaped the fiends' collective notice.

They were not however beneath the notice of everything.


****​

High above, something peered down and smiled. A shadow without substance, a projected fragment only barely cohesive here in the least of the Lady's dominion, it watched intently as the Marauder's pawns drew closer to the Key's location, and to it, all as intended, all as foreseen and planned. 

Each move was calculated, each as one more step necessary, one more tumbler to fall in the process of the grand experiment. The others would chide this appearance as micromanagement or as uncertainty in the plan itself, but no, this was neither. Bladed eyes and shadows danced around the radius of the Key's influence, and there within, it presented a manufactured blind spot. What that provoked was itself a thing of interest, and a crack in the adamantine domain of the Bladed Stranger. The destruction of the old Prime Ward had itself been a test and a deliberate provocation.

Behold. Now wait, and watch for the signs to manifest themselves.

The shadow pulled out of its introspection with a smile and looked down as one of the Marauder's puppet's paused and looked up. The tiefling paladin, the armored godslave of Nephthys, the one who betrayed the blood within her veins, the one whose blood sang to the shadow looking down at her. The tiefling frowned and gestured to her companions, pointing up. They noticed the barest outline of a tall, robed figure and then it vanished back into the darkness, back closer to the unhallowed artifact, the Key, the poison that allowed its tenuous purchase in Sigil's underbelly.


****​

"What the hell was that?" Ashlanaya motioned to the figure standing atop a ragged pile of stones that had once been a tower. The tiefling's face was pale, and for a moment she'd seemed terrified.

"I don't see anything." Zenia shrugged, "But I was also crouched behind a wall at the time, so I can't really be of much help."

Doran stared at the paladin with a look of worry, "I saw it too, just for a moment. But I also saw your expression. Honestly you went from your normal self to looking as if you were going to vomit from fright, and I've never even seen you look worried before."

"There was a figure standing on top of that fallen tower," Ashlanaya was adamant. "Tall, human height, no wings, and dressed in a hooded robe."

"Did you see a face?" Doran queried as he studied the empty darkness where the tiefling indicated the figure had stood.

"No," The paladin admitted, "it was covered in shadow."

"Some sort of fiend?" Malcolm frowned. "After what we saw earlier, I doubt that there's anything else down here."

"Are you sure it was real and not just a shadow?" Zenia flicked cinders off her hands and gazed up into the darkness, not seeing anything either.

"I had a sick feeling, the kind that I would have felt if I'd opened up my senses and looked at what sort of evil our current employer had in herself." She rolled her eyes at that very notion; she hadn't bothered at the time to spare herself the gauche obviousness of it and the wave of nausea it would have probably provoked. "Except I wasn't doing that just now, and I felt that way anyway."

"Sure it wasn't a shadow of a statue," Zenia motioned off in an entirely different direction.

"A statue?" Ashlanaya shook off her feelings of dread for the moment.

The genasi pointed deeper into the ruins, "Like that one there."

"Huh?" Surefoot glanced in the direction of the genasi's motion and then blinked in disbelief. "That's something taken out of the history book right there. Damn."

Largely shrouded in darkness, precariously standing upright amidst a fallen, shattered wall of stones stood a tall statue of a twin-aspected man. One face was old, one was young, each of them bearing a puzzling half-smile upon their face, and the statue's hands perched atop a single, large door carved out of the same stone as the statue. For anyone alive in Sigil with an interest in the City of Door's history, the figure was both obscure and immediately, hauntingly recognizable: Aoskar the Portal Father.


****​

"Why do you have that look on your face?" Malcolm squinted, struggling to see the statue itself. "Unless it's a golem, we don't have anything to worry about."

"Not worry really," Surefoot explained, "It's just that it's unexpected but at the same time, it completely fits the area."

Malcolm shrugged, "What do you mean?"

"It's a statue of Aoskar the Portal Father." Ashlanaya motioned to the statue as they approached closer. "He used to be worshipped by masses of Sigil's citizens, and then he apparently stepped across a line when one of the Dabus became a high priest of his."

"What happened then?" Malcolm stared at the haunting smile playing across its stone lips.

"The Lady of Pain killed him." The tiefling's tone was flat and somber. "In the space of moments his clergy was decimated, his worshippers flayed, his former temple in the Lower Ward razed to the ground, and his corpse hurled into the Astral. Some lines you don't cross."

"Now you've got that look on your face." Malcolm watched as the paladin glanced at the statue and shivered. "Why?"

"Because the closer we get to the Key, I can't help but feel that we're about to cross that very same line..."

Under the statue's indeterminate expression, they were all silent at that thought. But still, they proceeded deeper into the ruins, past the statue and into the heart of the region of the city that had collapsed in the aftermath of the so-called Night of Bladed Shadows. The destruction was greater deeper in, with entire buildings reduced to piles of broken stones with not a single intact block remaining, an architectural debris field marred with bones and the aftereffects of fires that must have ravaged entire city blocks at a time during the Clueless Rebellion.

"Death to the Incantifers?" Doran read aloud a splotch of graffiti painted on a toppled wall.

"They were a Faction, though they've been dead and dissolved for nearly as long as this place here." Surefoot spoke as they progressed. "They were one of the most powerful factions, and they ate magic like normal things eat food and drink water. It was their stranglehold on power in Sigil that led to the Clueless Rebellion, and though they survived that, eventually their headquarters and their leaders were mazed by Her Serenity. Supposedly a few of them survived and linger on, but their philosophy is pretty much dead and gone. Walking around down here is like a history lesson. It's fascinating."

Onwards they went, passing more graffiti against the Incanterium, against the Sodkillers, and other long-forgotten groups once pillars of Sigil now turned to dust. They passed skeletons dressed in the armor of the Sodkillers, the style a precursor to the Mercykillers now split once again into their original component organizations. The deeper they went however, the looming sense of dread that Surefoot and Ashlanaya felt only increased, and doubly so for the paladin. In fact, she felt nauseated with each step.

"Why is there an intact building down here?" Zenia stopped dead in her tracks, pointing to what had once been a small, squat building adjacent to a short stone tower. Every building adjacent was reduced to broke stone and pools of slag, but it remained without a scratch. Upon its front still stood an archway and a single closed door, all unmarked by the passage of time and even the scavenging predation of the fiends that still haunted the subsumed city.

Doran rubbed the sprig of mistletoe at his neck for luck, "What do you want to bet that that's where we're going?"

"That's it..." Ashlanaya grimaced and swallowed, unsteady on her feet. 

They were finally close to the object they were tasked to find. _'Finally,'_ Ashlanaya thought to herself, _'We'll finally be done with working for a fiend'_, but what they saw upon the door would not improve her feelings of sickness and apprehension.

It was made of stone, and the hinges too, both implausibly cut from the same block, presumably conjured forth by magic than through the genius of some legendary stone-cutter. Upon the door though was something that they did not expect.

"Oh pike it all..." Zenia slumped her shoulders and stepped back. 

"This isn't good..." Ashlanaya winced and clutched her holy symbol like a life preserver.

"Oh what the hell?!" Surefoot gave an agonized sigh. "I really, really truly don't want to even touch that door."

There upon the door was a sculpture of Her Serenity in iron, frowning, with her eyes bleeding rust and verdigris.


****​


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## 81Dagon

So, I know this was a oneshot side story... but I can't help but image your players finding every curse word imaginable to throw at you after those three encounters.


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## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> So, I know this was a oneshot side story... but I can't help but image your players finding every curse word imaginable to throw at you after those three encounters.




The rats, the psionic undead, fiends... Yeah 

The next one shot I ran, Clueless's player played a cranium rat hive.


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## 81Dagon

Heck, I was thinking even shorter term, like shadowy figure (either the Jester or, more likely, Vorkannis), the Aoskar door, then the Lady's door. Sounds freaky as all get out. 

How does playing a hive even work out? And is that oneshot part of the same continuity?


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## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> Heck, I was thinking even shorter term, like shadowy figure (either the Jester or, more likely, Vorkannis), the Aoskar door, then the Lady's door. Sounds freaky as all get out.
> 
> How does playing a hive even work out? And is that oneshot part of the same continuity?




You'll find out the shadowy figure's identity next update, which I'm actually working on now over lunch. And yes, my regular players in the one shot loved and hated it, because if they succeeded it would probably bite them in the regular campaign,.

The hive in the next one shot had enough members to rank as around a metacreative 10 or so. Only one rat was apparent at any time as the hive's speaker and the rest invisible. The PCs were mostly evil, working for a no longer petrified Shylara the Manged. All within the same continuity. Two full campaigns and 4 one shots over around 9 years.


----------



## Shemeska

****​
"It's just a door." Malcolm looked askance at the native Sigilians' apprehension.

"Oh hell with this all..." Surefoot help up his hands in defeat. "If the razorvine-crowned b*tch-king wants what might be inside, she can walk her fat a** down here and open it on her own."

"Just a door?" Ashlanaya grimaced, "It has The Lady's face on it."

"Actually... it is just a door," Zenia's eyes were glowing with the aftereffects of a spell, "It doesn't have any magical aura, just a spooky one, so to speak."

"Yes, but it's a door with Her Serenity's face on it." Surefoot protested.

"We came down here to get this Key, and it's got to be close." Malcolm took out his lockpicks, should the door be locked. "We find it and we get out of here. Simple as that."

Ashlanaya put a hand on the rogue's shoulder, "Listen, we don't know where the Key came from."

The rogue brushed away her hand, "We're not being paid to bother to be concerned about its origins really. To be perfectly honest I'm doing this so that she doesn't have my throat slit in the middle of the night. I made a mistake and this is making up for it."

Ashlanaya grimaced again, "I understand your position Malcolm, I can very much empathize with it. In theory I'm getting something out of this too, but the closer that we get to the Key, the worse this feels. Something isn't right about all of this. The story about the Key, what happened when it was first used, and what's down here now, there's something terribly off about it."

"I'm still not seeing why I should care." Malcolm looked over the door, searching for a lock. "I've every intent to skip town as soon as we have this delivered. If our employer wants to mess with an artifact, and from what you all have suggested, risk getting herself mazed or killed as a result, she's welcome to do so. That isn't my concern."

The argument began almost immediately, with each of them questioning the reasons behind their presence there in front of the door, the danger potentially lurking behind it, and the ramifications both to themselves and Sigil at large should they find the Shadow Sorcelled Key and return it to the Marauder. Something hellish had happened there centuries ago when the Key first appeared and when the Key was activated. Something more than history dared remember and pass down to the present day.

"We don't know why it was used in the first place or even why, except that it was used during a revolt against the Incanterium." Surefoot refused to look directly at the door, averting his eyes down to the ground or towards his companions. "I'm tempted to bail. The b*tch is going to kill me eventually."

"We're replaceable you realize." Malcolm deadpanned as he stepped back from the door and put away his lockpicks. "If we don't get what she wants, she'll kill us and then go drinking, and then send some other poor fools to do the same. She'll have it in her hands one way or another. We might as well find it, gain our own safety, and let whatever horror befalls her, well... befall her."

Mouths opened for retorts, paused, and then closed, frowning more than not. He was right of course they realized. If they didn't gain the Key, others would, and they would suffer for not having done the job themselves. Despite their apprehension and worry about the door and what waited beyond it, they had no other real option than to proceed.

"Fine." Ashlanaya nodded, still rubbing her thumb across her holy symbol. "You're right. Let's go."

"F*ck it." Surefoot motioned for Malcolm to be the first through the door.

"I'll happily go in first, but I'll need some help opening it." Malcolm chuckled. "It's solid stone, and I'm not quite that strong to move it myself."

"Fine, fine." Surefoot lowered his shoulder and tentatively pushed against the door, helping the human push it open.


****​

The door opened with a heavy amount of resistance, both from its own profound weight, and the dirt and grime of many centuries, apparently having never been opened in the intervening years. There was a rush of air, cold and stale, and a bright, cool light emerged from the chamber beyond. One by one they entered, curious and wary expressions playing across their faces as they saw the object within.

"That isn't the key." Zenia quipped, wrinkling her nose and stepping off to the side as the others followed in after her.

The room was empty except for a single, round gemstone at its center. Roughly the size of a ripe apple, it hovered at waist-height above the ground, surrounded by a rotating circle of ephemeral glyphs and symbols.

"What the hell is that?" Surefoot blurted out as they fanned out and surrounded the object.

"The door wasn't magic, but this most certainly is." Zenia once again whispered a spell, examining the room's magical auras. "Really powerful and really, really bizarre. Certainly above my pay grade. And yeah, there's another door." She motioned towards a molded archway in the opposite wall. It wasn't a door, but a bound space certainly.

"Is something going to explode and kill us all if I touch this?" Malcolm glanced over to Zenia. The genasi shrugged and motioned him forward, even as she backed up and edged behind Surefoot.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence there." Malcolm grimaced as he reached out and made contact with the gemstone.

Abruptly the gem shattered with the sound of breaking glass and the distant sounds of a shouting mob, roaring fiends, and crackling flames: the shadow of a moment in time now long past. Each of the gem's fragments evaporated into a thin fog as they fell, forming a column of smoke that swiftly congealed into the figure of a man. Translucent and drifting a few inches above the ground, his clothes were antique, and his face sorrowful as he looked at each of his guests.

"That's not possible." Ashlanaya whispered as she stared long and hard at the spectral figure, "He's a ghost."

Ghosts weren't possible on the outer planes, yet here one stood, translucent and ephemeral despite the utter lack of connection to the Ethereal plane.

"You sure?" Doran asked.

"I serve the goddess of the honored dead and the protection of graves," The tiefling replied with a rapid nod, "So yes, I'm very sure."

"We have more problems than a ghost that shouldn't be able to exist here." Malcolm pointed back to where they'd entered. The door was gone, vanished, replaced with a blank wall without even a hint of an archway or bound space. There was no option now other than finishing the Marauder's request, or die in the process.

"Sh*t..." Surefoot groaned. "I really wonder if king pretty-dresses knew that we'd be locked in. She had to know more about the Key being down here than she told us."

"I thought that was clear before we even left her parlor." Ashlanaya laughed half-heartedly at their own misfortune.

"Someone else comes looking for the Key?" The ghost sounded mournful. "Then they are a fool, and you their puppets. I above all should know..."

All eyes focused on the ghost as he hovered there, regarding his visitors with misery and jaded anger.

"Who are you?" Surefoot spoke first.

"Hello planar." The ghost sneered. "In life I was called Johannis Calimorn, one of the Speakers of the Prime Council. I was part of the rebellion that revolted against the tyranny your kind inflicted upon us. I fought the tools of the system, the self-appointed Golden Masters, the elite, the proxies of uncaring powers, the Incanterium and their servitors the Sodkillers. None cared about us, so we revolted from our ghetto and nearly shook the city from the Spire. That was our intent; high minded, foolish, and desperate."

"The Clueless Rebellion." The bariaur nodded, understanding that the ghost was himself an undead window onto the past. He'd been there, and he'd probably been intimately entangled in the use of the Key.

"Even the name mocked us and our plight based only that we came from the Material Plane." He sighed, "Nothing has changed I see. Nothing at all."

"How is it that you're here?" Ashlanaya asked, "A ghost on the Outer Planes shouldn't be possible."

"How is it that we momentarily bucked the Lady's Authority and forced open every portal within the Prime Ward?" He narrowed his eyes in scorn. "Not everything is rational, and there are things that happen beyond our capacity to understand except to suffer the aftereffects of our own hubris."

"You used the Shadow Sorcelled Key." Malcolm interjected, "We're here to find it."

"What was the Key?" Ashlanaya noted the ghost's mood about its role in the rebellion. "We only know what it did, and only then what history has chosen to remember about it."

The ghost laughed at the name of the artifact, but his face showed only misery and regret, all without a drop of humor.

“The Shadow Sorcelled Key was the tool of our rebellion. Packed like sheep, penned, sequestered and oppressed, it was given to us unasked. But we took it anyways. ‘If you have but the will to use it’ we were told, and greedy, headstrong and filled with righteous zeal we took it. ‘The choice is yours, do as thou wilt.’" Johannis went through the motions of inhaling. Despite the space of years, the spirit still raged and grieved at his actions, and, based on the tremble in his voice as he spoke the words of whomever or whatever had provided him the Key, it terrified him.

"History hasn't provided much of a record of the particulars behind those events." Surefoot coaxed the spirit to tell them more. "You didn't make the Key yourselves? Someone gave it to you? Why?"

"Yes, it was a gift. A terrible, hideous, poisoned gift." The ghost held out his hands, cupping them as if he were still holding the artifact. "We should have said no. We should have hurled it over the side of the ring. We should have given it to a dabus and begged them to take it to The Lady, lest our anger cause us to use it. Some gifts are best never taken."

"But you used it anyway." Ashlanaya's voice carried a tone of sympathy as she gazed at the long-dead Sigilian. "We always view our past mistakes with perfect clarity and perfect guilt, given enough time to reflect. You've had plenty of time. No one should blame you."

Johannis smiled, if only for a moment, genuinely happy at the paladin's words of comfort and understanding.

"What exactly happened when you used it?" Malcolm's question jolted the spirit out of his moment of calm.

"The prime ward was razed! Fiends roamed the streets, slaughtering each other and any they found. Many of our own died even as the Sodkillers and the Incanterium battled the swelling darkness we had unleashed upon the City and were slaughtered. It was ended only by the actions of Her Serenity."

"What did The Lady do?"

"She appeared in the midst of the carnage." Johannis explained with fear and awe in his voice. "Speaking not a word, she drifted through the carnage and in her wake the portals sealed. We only noticed later that the center of the Ward, the place where it had all begun, it was no longer there. The city had swallowed it up, subsumed it and all within, with not even a scar upon the streets to mark its passing. The damage was immense however. The sky was choked with soot and sulfur, the arrangement of the portals was changed to reflect a majority now only reaching out to the lower planes. Untold lives perished in fire and fang. Those of us who had used the Key, we survived, somehow. The Lady passed us by."

"She passed you by?" Malcolm narrowed his eyes. _'How was that possible'_

"What happened to the Key?" Doran circled around the ghost, genuinely curious above and beyond their task for the Marauder.

"Our so-called gift was taken back from our hands by the one who granted it to us." The ghost stared off into the distance, somehow growing paler with the memory. Dead and separated by the space of centuries, it still terrified him. "As before, so again.”

"Who gave it to you?" The druid pressed. "That's one element of the Key's story that we've never known."

"I can't tell you." The ghost looked away, fearful even in its cursed immortality. "It won't let me. Ezra the Key-Maker will tell you more."

"Why can't you tell..." Zenia paused as the ghost faded from sight and the crystal reappeared, only this time cloudy and, as she guessed, no longer capable of summoning its tethered spirit. "...us? Drat."

As if on cue, the archway in the far wall of the chamber shimmered, grew transparent, and then the stone wall vanished entirely. Not needing an invitation, they proceeded through, expecting another gemstone like the first room, but instead finding another spectral figure awaiting them, dour and impatient.

"Hi!" Zenia waved at the hovering form of a middle-aged woman dressed in the outfit of a crafter or artisan. "And you would be Ezra I assume?"

"An elemental blooded, I should have figured." Ezra scoffed and crossed her arms. "And judging by your outfit, manners, and the tattoo on your arms, one of the Babblers. I should be so lucky to have forfeited my life to free my people and now in death find myself surrounded by our oppressors once again."

The ghost smiled grimly, looking at the assembled group, reserving her deepest frowns for the planars: Surefoot, Ashlanaya, and Zenia.

"Johannis spoke with us." Ashlanaya bowed with courtesy despite the figure's distaste for her outsider blood. "He called you the Key-Maker. Did you make the Shadow Sorcelled Key?"

"No. I most certainly did not." Ezra's response was swift and tempered with again, a streak of fear. "I was fool enough to touch it, and fool enough to thank its maker for their gift. But such a thing was beyond me in even my wildest dreams."

"But your title?" The tiefling glanced at the objects dangling from her belt and the prominent spellbook visible in a leather side satchel. The woman had been a wizard of some manner.

The ghost laughed, "I crafted keys for the Lady's portals. I divined the nature of each, I and my guild fashioned the necessary keys to turn the locks that were already in place, and we sold them to any that would pay. I was the wealthiest woman in the Prime Ward, but I was still a pauper to the Golden Masters."

"Why did you even care to rebel against a system that had made you wealthy and respected?" Surefoot raised an eyebrow. "You can't have suffered like so many others."

"Because I wasn't one of the Heartless! I had compassion, and I saw the people around me starving, spat upon if they dared leave the Ward named after our kind. I wanted none of that, and eventually those of us on the Prime Council had no other choice but to fight and claim our dignity and our place in Sigil."

Ezra stared off into the distance, just as Johannis had before when he remembered the events of the Clueless Rebellion. Like him, he seemed harrowed by the memories.

"We weren't the first fools to have accepted the Key, nor the first to have used it. I think it was always intended to find its way to Sigil though. I can even remember the swirling eyes of its maker when I met them in the Outlands. They said it could open portals, it could be used as a weapon against our enemies, and that they had used it before."

"Used it before?" Doran was troubled by that new piece of the Key's story.

"Who were they?" Ashlanaya pressed again, hoping this time to receive an answer.

“From prime to prime it was a tool of death," Ezra shivered and looked away, "A tool of chaos incarnate, and a tool of brutal repression. Both extremes personified, reflected only in the hand of the one who had but to accept their gift, and turn it, unlocking the darkness within, and without. Our greed and our hatred prompted us to accept it. A means of salvation or revenge so terrible, but gift or not, ‘the choice was ours’ and we alone are to blame for the path of hells fury it has woven through the eons. The Shadow Sorcelled Key is a gift, it always is, and a tool, but one that uses the gifted just as they use the gift…”

"Forgive me," Ezra clutched at her robes. "They Key will be offered to you. It desires to be used again. It hungers. But do not..."

Abruptly the ghost was gone, replaced by a hovered, matte gemstone, silent and censored from what its inhabitant would have warned.

"And we want to give the Marauder access to this thing?" Ashlanaya verbalized the thought on most of their minds as they watched the ghosts' regret and misery at their own role in using the artifact.

"From what it sounds like, she really isn't aware of what she'll be getting her painted little claws on." Surefoot chuckled, "If she wants to doom herself, I'm not going to stop her."

"So what do we do now? Because there isn't another..." Zenia began and then stopped as the far wall rippled and text appeared, initially something foreign and alien to each of them, and then shifting and self-translating into whatever language they each preferred. "... door."

*“Seekers of the Key of Dancing Shades will not find what they seek, if only for why they seek it out. Why do you seek it? Answer me and the first door turns.”*

"Oh lovely," Surefoot crossed his arms. "Not only do we have to crawl through Sigil's underbelly, we have to justify why we even want it."

The five of them entered the room and stood before the text, pondering its question, as well as the implications it held.

"So should we be honest or not?" Malcolm mused, looking first to Ashlanaya and then to Surefoot.

"Think about what the ghosts said to us." The paladin explained. "The key was given to them, and it caused horrific side effects. Whatever creature gave them the Key was not benevolent. Nor do I suspect that it wants to give the key again to anyone that could be remotely seen as altruistic."

"Then we're safe telling the truth." Surefoot motioned above his head, pantomiming the Marauder fidgeting with her razorvine crown. "Because the b*tch sure as hell isn't a kind soul."

Zenia giggled.

Doran nodded, "That sounds like the best plan to me."

"So we're in agreement then?" Ashlanaya looked to each of the others. Seeing no disagreement she stepped forward and placed a hand upon the text.

"We seek out the Shadow Sorcelled Key not for ourselves, but for our employer, Shemeska the Marauder, the King of the Crosstrade. We seek it for her in exchange for various payments," She then glanced back at Malcolm, "Or for excuses of debts otherwise incurred. The fiend that hired us will benefit and so will we."

Without any other sign of approval or disapproval at the paladin's words, the words faded from view. The wall behind the words first grew transparent and then faded away entirely, revealing an archway and through it, another chamber.

"Clearly the Key's maker approves of our answer." Malcolm chuckled.

"That doesn't fill me with any measure of comfort Malcolm." Ashlanaya's expression bore no smile, and inwardly she felt only a growing sense of dread. "But in any event, let's keep going. This should be over soon."

Stepping through the archway, the next room was exactly the same as the last, again with a line of text floating before the far wall in the language they each preferred.

*There are two doors now, though both lead to the Key of Dancing Shadows. You have a choice now, for free will is what you possess and must now utilize for better or for ill. The left and one of you dies, the right and their life is saved but at dire risk and challenge for all of you now in the next chamber. Make your choice and accept your fate.*

Malcolm blinked as he read the text, confused as it rippled and changed, shifting from the familiar letters of planar common to the alphabet and convoluted, multilayered syntax of yugoloth. He human opened his mouth but as the words formed in his mind to voice his confusion and his concern, they never sparked the synaptic storm that would have carried the impulses to his throat, past his lips, and to the others' ears. The thing implanted into his mind by Shemeska the Marauder awoke, looked through foreign eyes soon to be its own, and acted. 

In a moment and without any outward sign, Malcolm effectively ceased to exist. The man's mind rewritten by a pattern of thought spun off from the King of the Crosstrade, it was independent of her, but utterly subservient to her will, knowing its place, role, and nature, acting as an extension of her will. All that matters is the Key.

"That's a hell of a non-choice." Surefoot rolled his eyes at the text as he drew his sword, "I suppose we should be ready for whatever we find in the next room."

"I don't like this at all." Zenia winced as she pondered the two choices written in Ignan, though in her mind there was only one real option. Whimsy was whimsy, but she couldn't just kill someone randomly to save her own skin.

The first into the room, and a few steps in past the others, Malcolm smiled wickedly, stepping forward and mouthing to himself the thought, _'Please be Surefoot. Please be Surefoot.'_

"Go ahead and press the right door and be ready." Doran nodded at Malcolm, unable to see the expression of the rogue's face.

_'Please be the f*cking bariaur. Please be him.'_ Malcolm stepped forward, smiled, and touched his hand to the left.


****​


----------



## Clueless

Ah,... I enjoyed playing that rat hive.  The players all thought I was "just one" super smart rat. Till they looked under see-invis ...


----------



## Shemeska

****​
"Huh? That wasn't..." Zenia tilted her head sideways, looking oddly at Malcolm for a moment before she stiffened and gasped. "Malcolm?"

Starting at her core and spreading outwards like blood staining a white sheet, the genasi screamed in agony as her flesh withered, blackened, and crumbled to ashes. A burst of black dust fell past her crumbling lips as she stepped forward, one hand out, reaching for Malcolm, a look of wounded confusion still on her face even as she disintegrated. Zenia was dead before she hit the ground and scattered into a pile of lifeless carbon and soot.

Malcolm turned and looked the dying Xaositect in the eyes while behind him the text vanished and a door appeared, yawning wide to another empty room.

"What the f*ck?!" Doran shouted in disbelief at what he'd just witnessed.

"Nephthys preserve!" Ashlanaya was aghast as her eyes shifted from Zenia's disintegrating corpse to Malcolm's utterly uncaring expression.

"What the f*ck you stupid little sh*t! *WHY?!*" Surefoot screamed, "She saved your life before! Your head would be flapping around as a newborn vargouille if she hadn't held your damn skull in place, and you f*cking killed her! The f*ck?!!!"

Malcolm sneered as the bariaur rushed towards him. "Everything we've seen so far, do you think that we wouldn't all likely die if I'd chosen the other door?" He glared with contempt as Surefoot grabbed his shoulders roughly and shook him with rage. Malcolm palmed a blade and felt the razor-sharp tip between his fingers, oh so eagerly imagining sticking it between the journalist's ribs and puncturing his heart. It wouldn't be as fun as slitting his throat, smiling, and bathing in the arterial spray, but pragmatism over poetry for now. Zenia was a needed sacrifice. All of them were, and would be without a second thought. "I saved the rest of us you ungrateful sh*t..."

"What?!" Surefoot shouted, his eyes wide with disbelief at the rogue's utter callousness. His fingers gripped tighter on the man's shirt.

"Let him go." Ashlanaya's voice trembled with suppressed rage. "We get the Key first and then we deal with what just happened."

"The door's open, let's go." Malcolm gestured to the door as Surefoot grudgingly released him. Malcolm let the bariaur walk past him unharmed, expressionless outwardly but inwardly cackling. Watching Zenia die and the look on her face had been an absolute pleasure. It truly was.

Ashlanaya glared daggers at Malcolm as he stepped through, briefly opening her mind to examine what she saw. The rogue had already been evil before, but a trifling, middling evil. Now however, he glowed brighter than most fiends, and with a particular flavor she'd seen before: one just as specific and recognizable as the custom perfume she'd worn.


****​

Just as before, the next room was empty except for a drifting line of text on the far wall. In truth though, the room felt emptier without Zenia there with them. The air was colder without her flames, and the mood grim without her often inappropriate whimsy.

*“Who are you to hold the key? Why are you alone worthy to bare the key that could unshackle the Abyss, or bare wide the gates of Baator, or spill forth the Waste? To what purpose would the key do you? And what more… it angered The Bladed Queen once before, a second time for good or for ill, what will Her Dread Majesty do? What will befall you should you grasp the key?”*

This time, should the Key's guardian or guardians see fit to inflict what they had before, Ashlanaya spoke first. _The hell...'_ she thought, _If I'll allow the Marauder or the Marauder's enchanted puppet to control the flow of events from now on._

"I am Ashlanaya of Pelion," The tiefling began, "One who has transcended the blood of her birth, one who champions the will and ethos of Nephthys the Blessed Guardian of Tombs and the souls of the dead. I would hold the Shadow Sorcelled Key with no desire or intent to use it for myself. I would take the Key for another, and what fate befalls them is theirs to decide, for good or for ill."

Malcolm immediately narrowed his eyes and studied the paladin's expression as she spoke, trying to divine her intent and wishing that he was more than a shadow of himself. Had he actually been there -perish the thought of keeping this present company, and perish the thought of trudging through the sewers and dirt of UnderSigil- he would have flensed the paladin's mind like an onion and plucked out her thoughts with practiced ease whatever the precautions she'd taken. But alas, this vessel lacked even the capacity for telepathy.

"That sounded perfectly appropriate." Doran nodded to Ashlanaya and then glared angrily at Malcolm. "I think we should have her answer from now on."

The paladin shrugged, "Assuming of course that the Key's guardians don't take offense, given its nature and history it seems."

"Apparently they like the reply." Surefoot did his best to smile given Zenia's death as the text vanished and the wall grew transparent for another door. This time however it was different.

"The hell was that?" Surefoot paused and stared at the archway into the next room, having just seen something there for the moment when the wall flickered and vanished.

Ashlanaya hesitated before stepping towards the next room. She'd felt momentarily sick when it had transitioned from wall to archway. She'd seen something there, more an afterimage that melted away in a split second and it had been something she didn't recognize but still felt implicitly disgusted by, whatever it was. She'd felt the same before when she'd seen a shadowy figure staring down at her. Whatever that had been, it provoked the same sick feeling just by proximity, even if she didn't understand what it was.

Malcolm however understood, or at least the creature that had usurped him did.

There for a fraction of a second, a face had appeared, similar in style to the iron sculpture of the Lady of Pain they had seen, only this one was leached of color, its eyes gleaming black, and with two pairs of horns, one of them curling, and one of them straight. Suspended in space and then gone, the face was of one of the Father/Mothers of the Waste. What in the Oinoloth's name did that mean? Malcolm's newborn mind swirled with a flurry of thoughts. What did that imply about the Shadow Sorcelled Key? What did that imply about the Ebon? Malcolm and his greater self stood in the shadow of giants. Soon though, if all continued as planned, the Marauder would have the Key in her poison-clawed, manicured hands.


****​

The next room was altogether different from those that had come before. They had been empty things of white, featureless stone, but this room was anything but featureless. Far from no exit but the one they had entered, or perhaps the hint of a door on the far wall, this chamber possessed a multitude of them.

*“Three doors now, and only one remains. Who am I? What am I? One door to the object you claim for yourself or your taskmaster, one to the reaches above and safe passage to that which fits your nature, and one door to the one to whom you speak. Choose your paths, choose your futures, utilize your free will, for WILL is all there is. There is no fate, there is no destiny, there are only the threads of the future and hands to grasp them; as told before and forever more, do as thou wilt.”*

Three archways stood equally spaced, each of their keystones marked with a specific symbol. The first bore the outline of a black key, one with a symbol that changed and shifted between those of the various planes, and the final one with the outline of a head that they had briefly seen minutes before. The first archway swirled with tongues of shadow that weren't truly black, but an impossible color, something impossibly saturated blue and deepest black at once, something beyond the standard spectrum and a color all of its own that ached the eyes to witness - there waited the Key. 

The second archway was clear as glass, opening onto scenes in all of the various planes. For one brief moment it revealed a scene of volcanic flames and souls being herded along a ragged slope, while distantly in the black void of the sky, three other volcanic furnaces drifted. A moment later and the scene changed, revealing an idyllic landscape populated by elven petitioners and a laughing coure eladrin flitting through the air. Every few seconds the scene changed, never repeating the same one as it cycled through all of the planes of existence. 

The final archway revealed no details at all, only a rippling gray surface hinting at shapes and movement below the thin, rubbery meniscus of the portal itself. Looming above it however was the keystone and its profile of the Key's creator - not that any of them knew for certain what that meant, none of them at least except for the intelligence looming within Malcolm's mind.

"So we each have to make a choice." Doran glanced at the others. "I didn't honestly expect to have a choice at the end of this."

"I wish that Zenia would have had a choice." Surefoot glared at Malcolm. The rogue only rolled his eyes and continued to stare at the trio of archways.

"Personally, I have no desire to meet the Key's maker." Ashlanaya shivered as she looked at the keystone over the third arch. Whatever it was, it filled her with disgust and fear. "Escape would be lovely, but we have a commitment to fulfill, and if we don't, the fiend will hunt us down."

Subtly, Malcolm smirked. _You'll all be dead soon anyways. I'll see the bariaur butchered and on my table, and the others I'll leave my people to dispose of you in their own ways. If any of them fancy you, they'll have their fun first. I'd consider the same, but alas my standards are far too high._

"Getting her the Key will at least postpone that." Surefoot frowned, deeply wishing to simply be done with this all and not have to ever look at that particular 'loth again. "Hopefully."

Ignoring them all, Malcolm stepped forward.

_They'll get the Key and bring it to me. If they don't, I can send other fools in their place. I need to know more however. I'm a puppet in this game unless I actually know what's going on below the surface, and I'll be f*cked if I'm serving the same role to the Oinoloth -beautiful and merciless as he may be- as these sods are to me. I wanted importance and power, and I'll get importance and power before this is over. Who are you Keymaker?_

"I choose to meet you, creator of the Key." Malcolm spoke clearly and expectantly, with a cadence that was not at all his own. As he did so, he crossed his arms and stood with his hips tilted in a manner again, alien to himself, but not at all alien to the creature that had spun off a pattern of her own psyche to overwrite his own.

"Are you insane Malcolm?" Surefoot glared at the rogue for the second time in nearly as many moments.

"Leave him." Ashlanaya put a hand on the bariaur's flank. Something about her tone and the certainty in her voice made him pause and not utter the next burst of words he would have unleashed at the human.

"Shut up Indep filth." Malcolm spat, "I've made my choice Merlianik, now you make yours. Get the Key for your better or you'll be dead before..."

Malcolm never finished his invective against Surefoot. No sooner had the words begun spilling from his lips than the third archway rippled. Formed from the shadowy membrane of the gate itself, a multitude of hands reached through, wrapping around his arms, legs, and neck, dragging him forward, screaming and struggling. Leaving only fading trails of smoke in their wake and the memory of Malcolm's screams, the third archway returned to its original calm, placid state as if nothing had happened.


***​

"What the f*ck..." Doran's face was pale, and his expression of horror was matched by both Surefoot and Ashlanaya.

Malcolm was gone, devoured by the third portal which still yawned wide, swirling with liquid darkness. The Keymaker's question still hung suspended in the air, asking its question to the remaining three.

"Whatever just happened to his body, that was no longer Malcolm." Ashlanaya's expression was haunted and drawn. "Just in the past few minutes, something changed about him. Our employer must have put some sort of geas or something even more powerful on him that activated as soon as he got within a certain proximity to the Key. She might have been controlling him from her parlor from the start, subtle at first, but overtly once I noticed."

"I'll be honest," Surefoot gave a guilty expression. "I suspected from the start that the Marauder would have sent along one of her own people to make sure that we returned the Key if we found it. I actually suspected that it would be you Ashy. You were the least obvious one to pick. My apologies."

"No need for that because I expected the same, except that it would be you," Ashlanaya gave a wry half-smile at her error, "You two had history and I suspected that as much as she hated you, it might have been an act. Still, I thought that she'd just have whoever it was kill us all once we had the Key. I didn't expect her to send a piece of herself or whatever it was that she had hidden within Malcolm's mind."

"We could always just leave." Doran's voice was soft as he gazed longingly at the middle portal. "I..."

They could see it within the druid's eyes that he was terrified of going any further forward after what they'd already witnessed. He didn't have any ties within Sigil, nor did her have any prior association with or link to the King of the Crosstrade.

"Doran," Ashlanaya looked at him, "We still need to see this through, but you don't have to go on. For all the fiend has to know, you died along with Zenia and Malcolm. She'll have the Key and honestly she'll no longer care about you."

Doran looked guilty, and for a moment he couldn't look up at either of his surviving companions. "Would you be ok with that?"

"Yes." Surefoot snorted. "Of course."

"You don't need to risk yourself any more." Ashlanaya smiled. "If you make it to safety, please do one thing for me however."

"Anything."

"Meet me in Sylvania. I'll take your payment and bring it to you. I owe you that. However if neither I nor Surefoot contact you within the next week, please find a way to raise Zenia from the dead. Make the attempt. She didn't deserve to die." Ashlanaya held back tears as she made the request.

"I promise you," Doran nodded as he made his way to the second archway, "I'll find a way."

The druid stepped forward and vanished. Having initially braced himself for the worst possible place that he might appear, on the other side of the portal, the sounds and bustle of Tradegate had never felt as welcoming as now.


****​

Surefoot and Ashlanaya touched the surface of the first archway and immediately felt a cold, terrible chill, and then... nothing.

"What just happened?" Surefoot shuffled his hooves and stared at the blank wall in confusion. The text was gone and so were the portals.

"Surefoot," Ashlanaya motioned with her hand and caught her breath, "Turn around."

Behind them in the room's center stood an image of three grey obelisks glowing red and blue in random sequence. Cold and shedding an immaterial mist at their base, above them hovered the Key. If it were solid it was difficult to tell as it hurt the eyes to perceive its unreal, alien color, and for the swirling tatters of shadow that perpetually bled off of its surface. After everything that they had been through, there it was.

"That's it." Surefoot whispered. "It's real."

"We finally have it for the taking, but honestly, I hesitate to touch it."

"Maybe we should do what the ghost thought about doing, knowing what they knew after they'd used it?" Surefoot looked at the paladin. "Maybe we should just hurl it over the edge of Sigil and be done with it."

"I don't think we can." She replied, her heart thumping in her chest as she stared at the Key. "I don't think the Key's maker, whatever it is, will let us leave if we ever intended to do that. Besides something tells me that even if we did, it would reappear somewhere else. A poisoned thing that always finds itself in the hands of those desperate enough to use it. At least this way we know where it is, and we know that this time, the person using it and suffering from its use is a terrible creature of evil herself."

"That's the only thing that's kept me going through this to be perfectly honest." The bariaur laughed. "If what the ghosts of its past users said was true, Shemeska deserves it more than anyone else that I can think of."

"We touch it together then?" Ashlanaya approached the Key, standing opposite Surefoot, one hand extended out to touch the key.

He nodded and extended his own hand, now only inches from the Key, "On the count of three."


****​

All was cold, terribly cold, and then the room was gone and they stood within the Hive. Judging by the state of the ruined buildings standing only a block or two away, they stood at the edge of the Slags. It would be a long, long walk to get back to the Marauder at the Fortune's Wheel.

"It's going to be a long walk." Surefoot sighed. "Do you have a preference as to which way we go. It's more or less equidistant from the Wheel."

"Towards the Market Ward if you don't mind." Ashlanaya glanced down at the Key in her hand. "I'd rather not risk being attacked while passing through the Hive and having the Key sniped."

"Let's not even consider that as an option." Surefoot widened his eyes and shook his head.

As quickly as they could, the two of them walked out of the fringe of the Slags and into the edge of the Clerk's Ward. As the buildings pressed around them, their passage did not go unnoticed, but not in the way that they had intended to avoid. Not a single passerby gave them notice, but every bound space they passed, be it doorways, windows, cracks in stone tracing out a ragged shape, and even the spaces framed by trees and vines, each of them responded. It began as a dull crackle and then they noticed as every portal they passed flickered into existence if but for a moment as they passed. Each of them sizzled with erratic potential in their frames and boundaries as Ashlanaya and Surefoot walked past, feeling the magnetic pull of the Shadow Sorcelled Key wrenching upon them as it had centuries ago. Even without an active will and desire to push the Key into action, the artifact's very presence was overwhelming, tugging inexorably and unguided against the fabric of the City of Doors.

"Hurry up." Ashlanaya whispered harshly, with a growing sense of panic. "

"Maybe we should have tossed it over the side."

"Nephthys guide me," Ashlanaya rubbing her fingers over her holy symbol, "I'm getting the same feeling that we're just repeating the errors of those poor damned souls below."

"As long as we don't use it I think we'll be fine." Surefoot cracked a worried smile.

"I hope that you're right."

They walked as fast as they could, and thankfully the traffic was relatively light in the darker hours of the day. With less people awake and on the streets, only the lamplighters, touts, and scattered others took notice of the flickering lights of the mad portals. Some residents of the city however never slept, and those few took notice.

"Ashy?" Surefoot tapped the paladin on her shoulder. "They're... staring... at us."

"Huh?" She glanced over her shoulder, thinking that someone had noticed the portal disruption had been centered on and following them. "Who is... oh f*ck..."

On the other side of the street, a quartet of dabus had been diligently repairing a crumbling wall and the cobblestone's adjacent. At the Key's approach, all of them had paused in their work and looked around, confused and worried. They dropped their tools to the ground and searched in near panic for whatever the source of their unease was, and then their eyes found the paladin and bariaur. As one, the dabus turned and watched them approach and pass.

"Are they following us?" Surefoot asked, too afraid to look and acknowledge their worried, and momentarily panicked gaze.

The dabus didn't pursue them, and in fact they didn't necessarily appear capable of perceiving them except for the aura of the Key's disruptive effect. They and the city was blind within its radius. The Key broke the rules of the City of Doors.

Ashlanaya doubled her speed, "I've never seen a Dabus look uncertain, disquieted, or even worried."

"Neither have I." Surefoot increased the rate of his trot to keep up. "What the hell have we done Ashy?"

"The sooner we get this to the Marauder, the sooner I'll be able to feel comfortable." The paladin was afraid.

"Gods above I just don't want to be mazed while being an errand boy."


****​

As Ashlanaya and Surefoot walked towards the Fortune's Wheel, there to give the Key to the Marauder, one creature within Sigil was even more ill at ease than them. The false stars of Anti-Peak glittered dimly through the overcast skies above the Market Ward. A drizzle of greasy rain fell upon the streets, pooling like ooze portals amidst the cobblestones of the street, and tapping a tune upon the roof and window-sills of a small building decorated with elaborate designs all reminiscent of the ink-work performed inside. The shop bore no name, nor did it need to advertise its nature or that of its occupant; all of Sigil knew who owned and operated it.

Within his shop, Fell the fallen dabus stared out of the window and watched the bariaur and a tiefling walk past, oblivious of his eyes and even more oblivious of the corrosion that they carried. Fell trembled and cried out in fear, falling to his knees. It was happening again.


****​

They entered through one of the hidden rear doors of the Fortune's Wheel, quickly ushered in by one of the Marauder's guards who seemed to have known when and where they would arrive with the Key. Most likely the fiend had agents following them within minutes of their arrival back up from the depths of UnderSigil. Despite what had befallen her puppet Malcolm -if indeed she was even aware of the specifics- her groomer-guards were as polite as ever. By polite that meant that they ignored the paladin and made snide remarks about the bariaur, including questions about how he might taste if their mistress finally tired of his continued taking of breath. Still however, they led them up through a maze of hidden corridors and stairwells, eventually to arrive at the Marauder's private suite.

"Be polite." The left-most guard at the Marauder's door instructed. They were the same tiefling that had slapped Surefoot's flank when he'd first been ever so politely summoned. "Don't speak unless spoken to. Avert your unworthy eyes from and yet simultaneously envy, admire, and yearn for Her Fiendish Majesty."

"You haven't lost a bit of charm I see." Surefoot rolled his eyes. "But trust me, I'll be averting my eyes. That's not just easy but necessary."

"I could always just slit your throat now." The groomer-guard smiled, his tone clearly desiring to actually follow through on the threat.

"We have the object she desires." Ashlanaya's voice was firm and her gaze at the other tiefling even more so. "Open the door and let us get this over with."

"So be it." The Marauder's guard stepped aside and motioned for his companion to open the door. "She's been waiting for you."

_Come in, come in, come in! Close the door immediately upon entering._

The Marauder's telepathic voice was altogether different from her tone when last they spoke. Gone was her power and authority, replaced with a nervous, giddy anticipation like a spoiled child awaiting the break of dawn on a holiday when they would receive a gift. The 'loth nearly sounded desperate.

The two of them entered and the door closed behind them. Incense, drugged waterpipe smoke, and expensive perfume met their senses first as they stepped into the darkened room. As their eyes adjusted they briefly wondered if they were there alone, but then the undertone of brimstone filtered through and the 'loth spoke.

"Where is it?"

The room was empty except for an elaborate table carved from a single piece of wood, an ancient treant in fact who had been very much alive and screaming when the table was produced. The only light was provided by the pair of luminous purple eyes that denoted where the Marauder sat at the table's far end with a halo of dimmer, twinkling light provided by the entrapped souls in the gemstones that decorated her ears and throat. A goblet and five bottles of expensive wine stood in front of her, with all but one of them uncorked and empty. She'd been sitting and waiting, impatiently so it seemed. The rest of the room was too dark to show any details, but a rustle of silk and velvet suggested that much of the expansive chamber was blocked off from view by curtains. Given the suggested size of the suite, it was far too large to actually be within the spatial constraints of the Azure Iris, and more likely than not, her private chambers occupied a demiplane all their own.

"Where is it? Where is the Key?" The Marauder leaned forward as she spoke, the thousands of glass-beads that made up her favorite dress shifting and clinking like hushed wind-chimes. Her claws tapped impatiently upon the table and upon the marble floor at her feet. "Show it to me!"

"We have the Key as you tasked us to find." Ashlanaya's voice was calm. After what the fiend had done, there was no way that she was going to be cowed by the razorvine-crowned Waste-spawned harpy.

"And the others that went with you? What happened to them?"

"They died." The paladin's tone was cold. "By trap or by betrayal they died." She emphasized and drew out the speaking of the word betrayal.

“Oh?” The Marauder smiled, ivory teeth sparkling in the dim, flickering light. "Such a shame."

"Payment and you can have your Key." Surefoot spoke, doing his best to be as resolute as the tiefling.

"And why shouldn't I just send a lightning bolt through that thick skull of yours Merlianik and watch you dance and carbonize? Why shouldn't I just kill you both?"

Surefoot stiffened. "Because you can't risk my death."

"Feeling important I see." She smirked and sipped her wine, though from the tremble in her hand, she wanted the Key and she wanted the Key in her greedy bejeweled hands as soon as possible. Banter was halfway between delayed gratification and foreplay. "Why can't I?"

"Because I've spent years not publishing half of what I know about you." Surefoot did his best not to smile, hoping that his statement -which wasn't entirely a bluff- would have the intended effect. "I die and it gets released by the Temple of Hermes, the Temple of Thoth, and at least two other temples or organizations in the Cage."

The Marauder laughed and shook her head, "You don't matter Merlianik." 

"I don't, but your reputation does." Surefoot glared at the Marauder. "You have enemies and they'll move at perceived weakness."

The 'loth sneered even as she genuinely pondered what his neck would feel like between her teeth. "Go away little fish," She motioned dismissively, "Swim away for a time, and then come back when this shark has fed again and you might dance for some morsels on the current. But swim well...” She snapped her teeth together and then turned her eyes to the paladin. "And you? Why shouldn't I kill you?"

"Because I have the Key and if need be, I will activate it." Ashlanaya held up a small but deceptively heavy box, one that had interestingly enough been on Malcolm's person and dropped when he'd been dragged to his death. Presumably the 'loth had one of her people plant it on his person.

"You will do no such thing! The Key belongs to me!" Shemeska barked. "Place it upon the table and leave. My people will pay you precisely what was bargained. Now give me my Key. Now!!!"

She was drooling as the paladin placed the box upon the table. Shemeska gestured and it lurched across the distance and into her hands where she cradled it to her breast like a lost child, whimpering and actually losing any pretense of dignity and class. The snarling, covetous arcanaloth was there, laid bare.

“Enjoy what you have fiend.” Ashlanaya said as she turned to leave, “The spirits of its last owners have only regret for their own use of its poison. The Lady’s eyes are upon you.”

“Then the Lady will be envious of what she sees.” Shemeska’s words were sharp and impulsive, but it was all on reflex. She stared at the box she held in her trembling hands and was barely aware of anything beyond its weight and substance.

Not wanting to spend any more time alone with the Marauder, and worried about what she might actually do with the Key in her possession, Ashlanaya and Surefoot turned and left. As soon as they'd crossed the threshold, without bothering to look up, Shemeska gestured and the door to her chamber slammed shut, locked on its own, and a dozen spell-trapped symbols erupted like blisters across the surface.

Back in the room, alone in the darkness, the Marauder shivered and paused before opening the box in her hands. Constructed to her specifications out of dozens of fine layers of plutonian lead and gehennan morghuth iron, she’d hoped that it would have blocked any potential exposure of the artifact to outside detection. As she held the box however, she noted with fascination that the box casts no shadow despite the illumination provided by her eyes and jewelry. Her precautions seemed wholly inappropriate if its influence actually pierced the boundaries of the container.

Finally with trepidation and genuine fear, she opened the box. The bleeding shadows wafted off of the Key to caress her features as they drifted across her face. Absorbed for once by something other than herself, she smiled and her eyes glowed in the darkness, their violet radiance refracted and scattered by the alien nature of the artifact in her hands.

"View attachment Vorkannis.bmp be praised..."


****​

Malcolm gasped as the hands that had wrenched him from the depths of Sigil and across the cosmos released him and that transitory moment of brutal, utter cold evaporated, leaving him somewhere else.

"Who are you Keymaker?" The sliver of the Marauder's intelligence called out even as it gazed out in wonder and terror at where it stood.

He stood before three great crystalline windows, each of them opening up onto a view of Pluton, Niffleheim, and Oinos - the three layers of the Gray Waste. This place was a tangent point of sorts, the same as the City at the Center. Each window focused its view upon a great monolith of stone, petrified wood, or fused and petrified bones, each of them carved with a litany of symbols in the burning, profane language of the baernaloths. The first monolith's symbols glowed blue, the second red, and the third not at all.

"The Loadstones of Misery?"

Somewhere behind him something stirred, and he had a profound sense of being watched.

Malcolm turned and gasped. Behind him the chamber extended outwards as far as he could see, perhaps infinitely so. Everywhere was strewn broken doors, crumbled archways, mirrors shattered in their frames, dead trees leached of life and below them empty pools of water now dwindled to mud. Everywhere to the extent of his vision the landscape was scrawled in a nightmare of runes, formulae, equations, incantations, and diagrams.

"Who are you? What is this place?"

The symbols and formulae formed patterns in their mad meander across virtually every surface, and then as if in response to Malcom's question, they twitched, moving like the fimbrae of a great heart beating, eyelashes upon a myriad of eyes, and something turned its attention upon the hapless mortal and its yugoloth-spawned parasite that had stumbled into this portion of its infinite demesne.

* Creation of our toy, know that we are pleased in you. We are so very proud of our toys, each and every one as we break you. Your suffering is beautiful.*

A titanic voice speaking in a tongue older than the universe itself spoke from everywhere and nowhere, pounding in the rogue's ears and inside of his head. Screaming in pain, he begin to bleed from his eyes, ears, and nose.

"What is the Shadow Sorcelled Key intended for?" Malcolm screamed out the words even as reddish dots from hemorrhaging retinas clouded his vision and a coppery tang filled his mouth.

*The Marauder has passed this test. I would have expected nothing less of her.*

"What is my role in this? How am I to use the Key?"

*She is so very much like her mother, but she has not yet suffered nearly enough for that comparison.*

Malcolm's flesh burned with each word, every syllable spoken hammered the cohesion of his body.

"Please Father/Mother! Please tell me what to do!"

The words sprayed his blood and he fell to his knees, no longer able to stand on his own. The mental parasite within his brain shuddered and expired, and then mercifully, every injury he'd ever experienced at the Marauder's hands exploded at once in a moment of sanguine poetry.

Lazarius Ibn Shartalan, 1st among the Demented, architect of the Loadstones of Misery, and creator of the Shadow Sorcelled Key looked down at the spatter of blood and smiled. Soon his bauble would rest in the hands of the one for whom he had fashioned it, just as surely as his kindred had conspired to fashion her to be ready to accept it.


****​


----------



## 81Dagon

Yeah, I'm lost for words. I think I'll settle with this one. 

Crap.


----------



## Quartz

I've dipped in now and then; I think I'm going to have to read it through from the start.


----------



## 81Dagon

Okay, so does the random squiggly line say Vorkannis in Baern? I wouldn't presume for it to be his Truename, but somethings closer to it?

*EDIT*: Also, does anyone have pictures of Toras or Fyrehowl kicking around? I can't seem to find them anywhere with Google.


----------



## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> Okay, so does the random squiggly line say Vorkannis in Baern? I wouldn't presume for it to be his Truename, but somethings closer to it?
> 
> *EDIT*: Also, does anyone have pictures of Toras or Fyrehowl kicking around? I can't seem to find them anywhere with Google.




I've generally used the alphabet from the real world Voynich Manuscript (using the European Voynich font in Word) as the stand in for Baern in artwork. Since Enworld can't handle that font being brought in, I used a screen cap image of the line from the original storyhour doc.

As for the question though, yes, the Marauder says, "Vorkannis be praised." That's what it appears like when typed in that particular Voynich font.

I've got pictures of them both, but it will take me a bit to find them. There's only one image of Toras extant, and several of Fyrehowl (done by their player).


----------



## Shemeska

This most recent update brings an end to the one-shot side story, and we'll be returning to the main campaign story and the PCs shortly.

Lots of touching on things to come however in this past update, and the Dark of some things revealed or at least alluded to.


----------



## Akhelos

Shemeska said:


> ****​ *The Marauder has passed this test. I would have expected nothing less of her.*  "What is my role in this? How am I to use the Key?"  *She is so very much like her mother, but she has not yet suffered nearly enough for that comparison.*  Malcolm's flesh burned with each word, every syllable spoken hammered the cohesion of his body.  "Please Father/Mother! Please tell me what to do!"  The words sprayed his blood and he fell to his knees, no longer able to stand on his own. The mental parasite within his brain shuddered and expired, and then mercifully, every injury he'd ever experienced at the Marauder's hands exploded at once in a moment of sanguine poetry.   Lazarius Ibn Shartalan, 1st among the Demented, architect of the Loadstones of Misery, and creator of the Shadow Sorcelled Key looked down at the spatter of blood and smiled. Soon his bauble would rest in the hands of the one for whom he had fashioned it, just as surely as his kindred had conspired to fashion her to be ready to accept it.  ****​



  Veeery Creepy. But wait that was all planned long ago? That gets creepy, and more creepy with every step ^^ Especially it that means that Shemmi was created for the Key.  And Shemeshka is like her Mother.....hmm I am still guessing that she is the child Larsdana killed and let being reincarnate as Mezzoloth *g*


----------



## Tsuga C

King of the Crosstrade? All that and Queen of the Cliffhanger, too! This story hour is a delightful addiction and would make one heck of a fine cRPG. *tips hat*


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## Shemeska

Akhelos said:


> Veeery Creepy. But wait that was all planned long ago?




So it would seem to be.


----------



## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> King of the Crosstrade? All that and Queen of the Cliffhanger, too! This story hour is a delightful addiction and would make one heck of a fine cRPG. *tips hat*




I'll totally accept the title of "Queen of the Cliffhanger". 


Thank you for the praise! *blush*

Expect a delay on future updates for the next few weeks, as I'm having shoulder surgery on the 13th (and it's my dominant arm) and I may not be able to type (or comfortably type) while recovering.


----------



## Sabrewulf

*The title of this thread says recent updates*

I would like to humbly request a more recent update. 

Thank you, 

Sabre


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## Shemeska

Sabrewulf said:


> I would like to humbly request a more recent update.
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Sabre




I just had shoulder surgery. I would like to request a fully working arm and a brain not fuzzy from narcotics.

As soon as I can type with my right hand I'll start working on something. But that's what's up.

Shemmy


----------



## almost13

take your time, hope you get well soon shemmy! no good if stuff doesn't heal together well. we'll be anxiously awaiting your return to good health.

i must admit, i was feeling a bit bored/disappointed by the start of the sidequest at first (mostly because the main storyline is so darn engaging), but towards the undead psions the atmosphere started getting tense, and the ending was really grand. now i wish it wasn't over already  as you wrote, it must have been horrible for the PCs, knowing that their success just makes everything for the other PCs harder.


----------



## Jihan

Get well soon Shemmy !!

I have lurked these boards for more years than I care to imagine mainly to catch updates on this thread.


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## Sabrewulf

*Get well soon*

Shemmy,

Had both shoulders done myself a few years ago ... labrum and tendons each side. Much sympathy. Enjoy your narcotics. 

Sabre


----------



## Shemeska

almost13 said:


> take your time, hope you get well soon shemmy! no good if stuff doesn't heal together well. we'll be anxiously awaiting your return to good health.
> 
> i must admit, i was feeling a bit bored/disappointed by the start of the sidequest at first (mostly because the main storyline is so darn engaging), but towards the undead psions the atmosphere started getting tense, and the ending was really grand. now i wish it wasn't over already  as you wrote, it must have been horrible for the PCs, knowing that their success just makes everything for the other PCs harder.




Oh, I'm going about the rehab process pretty hardcore. I've been in discomfort and pain since January (labrum tear, then frozen shoulder), and I have absolutely no desire for this to backslide after going for surgical repair. It's going to really suck getting better, but it will get better.

As for the storyhour itself, the oneshot moved along some things in the background that will eventually come into play with the main storyline. Some fun events in the story coming up soon, and it will be good to see the PCs at the center of it once again.


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## Akhelos

No Update, no no....there were times when you faster delivered Informations and Rumors. Perhaps we have to go to him, you know the OTHER resident Arcanaloth for Informations soon....perhaps we will get better and faster Informations from Akin... *dodges fast* *gg*

Hope you get well soon, take your Time to Heal. ^^ We can wait for your next wonderful update and news.


----------



## Shemeska

Dawn’s first light broke above the skyline of Plague-Mort. The siege of the past day was over but the battles in the streets had lasted all of the night. Through it all, the man who stood there upon the ramparts of the Arch-Lector’s palace at the heart of the gatetown had seen and directed every moment of it.

Flames still roared through a dozen buildings, most of them set by the retreating forces of Arch-Lector Byrri Yarmoril, eager to raze their own city rather than admit defeat and hand it over to its new rulers. The fires would be extinguished soon enough, the bodies cleared from the streets, and everything rebuilt by his people, his chosen ones, The Illuminated.

A shadow fell across the man as he gazed over the city below.

“Factol?” Nearly twice as tall as a man, the heavily armored minotaur bowed slightly as he address his leader. Flames licked from his armor’s joints and wherever ruddy flesh lay exposed to the air, pointed to some variety of efreet a branch or two down his family tree. “The last of the Arch-Lector’s lieutenants is dead. We cornered her in a storehouse at the edge of Merchant Row. She refused to surrender and died when the roof collapsed from the fire her own people had set at our approach.”

“Such a shame Koradus it came to that,” The man addressed as Factol sighed in resignation and turned. 

Compared to the minotaur he was nothing special at all, not even a drop of outsider blood to grace his very much human frame with a halo, golden hair, horns, or some unique other feature. He dressed in white and gold, looking more like a cleric accidentally dropped into Plague-Mort rather than the leader of the force that had just conquered it. 

Unlike a high priest, his clothing was completely plain. He wore no crown, no jewelry, no rich mantle, nor even a staff or crown of floating ioun stones to mark him as a wizard. One only had to stand in his presence however to realize why he led an army of followers: looking into his pale blue, unnaturally piercing eyes, you felt humbled and yet exhilarated at once, lucky to be there at his side and eager to know what he saw within you. There was nothing tangible to explain his following, yet he stood there at the center of a conquered gatetown.

Within their ranks, the Factol’s nature and power was the subject of rumor and wild speculation. Some claimed him to be an archmage, though none had ever actually seen him cast a spell or study a spell book. Others claimed him to be a high priest or even the proxy of one deity or another, though he’d never whispered a prayer and he wore no holy symbol. What he had however was the ability to inspire with his words and a virtually divine capacity to plan and foresee events. Koradus knew him as the only man worthy of his loyalty, whatever the nature of his insight.

“It doesn’t help to become a martyr when you no longer have a following of people to inspire.” He shook his head and smiled at Koradus, “Such a shame. She could have risen to greatness despite her place in the old order. I would have helped her, just as I have helped all of you.”

“We could not have done this without you to focus us.” Koradus’s eyes glittered with pride and the faintest hint of disbelief, “Everything here today is because of you.”

“I’m proud of you, I hope that you know that.” The Factol did not dispute his lieutenant’s laying of credit at his feet, but neither did he claim it like a crown. It wasn’t precisely humility, but after laying siege to a gatetown, it was perhaps the closest thing to it that might be found. “Have you taken care of what must be done with the Arch-Lector and his inner circle?”

“They were summarily executed after we confirmed their identity, with a minimum of damage to their corpses. Their bodies will hang for three days from the palace gates, no more and no less.” Koradus smiled with pride, “This is done, and it happened just as you predicted my Factol. The Arch-Lector’s words, they were just as you said they would be. Tell me then, what is next for us?”

The Factol smiled and slapped a hand upon the minotaur’s shoulder warmly, “We have a great task set before us yes? But we have a gathering of men and women destined for greatness, do we not? Plague-Mort suffered damage, but the task of rebuilding it pales in comparison to what we have already accomplished, and what will accomplish still. This is your story Koradus, your path to greatness in the songs of bards, and others in their own ways, each of whom carry a spark that I can see. I want to shepherd you all to that which you can be.”

The minotaur nodded and swelled with pride again. One day the Factol would tell him what exactly lay destined for him, but for the moment they had seized a gatetown!

“Indeed we have.” The man spoke as if reading the other’s mind, but if he had, he gave no indication of it, nor any magic use whatsoever. “We’ve taken a walled planar trade city with a minimum of bloodshed. We’ve navigated the politics of not just a gatetown, but one on the edge of the Abyss itself, and without an unwelcome occupation by either the Hag Countess’s army or the ‘loths that flocked to her like flies to a corpse. That my friend is an accomplishment.”

“Your accomplishment Factol.” Koradus insisted, “I am honored to be here in your presence today more than any other day. We all are.”

“*Our* accomplishment,” The man scoffed and waved away the praise, “Don’t dare put this on me Koradus; all of you have made me proud.”

Koradus once again suppressed his urge to bow. He didn’t feel worthy to stand in the Factol’s presence, let alone feel worthy of his pride.

“Was there anything else that you came to tell me?” Again the Factol’s prescience was unnerving as yes, the minotaur had one remaining thing to mention.

“Yes Factol,” Koradus frowned with distaste, “The fiends have sent representatives to the main hall, both an amnizu in Malagard’s service and some of the ‘loths in her employ. They requested your audience within the hour regarding payment. They’re impatient even though we haven’t even extinguished the fires or started clearing the corpses from the streets.”

If the human was at all concerned about dealing with the fiends representing the army situated just outside the walls of Plague-Mort, he showed none; his features remained as calm as ever. “They’ll have what we agreed to for their aid, no more and no less. You’ll note that they remain camped outside the walls and not as an occupying force? This city does not and never will belong to them. Tell them that I will be down to speak with them momentarily.”

Koradus nodded and suppressed a final bow, such was his admiration. The minotaur turned and descended the stairs into the palace, leaving his teacher on the ramparts.

Green Marvent, Factol of the Illuminated smiled. “One step complete.”


****​

3 months later in Sigil:

The Portal Jammer’s taproom buzzed with the sounds of conversations, laughter, and clinking glasses. Business had never been better, and each week it seemed brought more and more positive word of mouth, and with that, more customers. The regulars which had always been locals to the Clerk’s Ward were still there, but with a bit of prestige the Jammer had gathered, more people were now visiting from other Wards.

Standing behind the bar and serving to pour drinks, chat with patrons, and enjoy being hit on by many of those same patrons, Clueless was all smiles. Nothing bad had befallen him or the others for what seemed weeks unending, even though it had only been three months since they’d returned to Sigil. 

The others felt much the same way and they’d been enjoying the time to relax. There had been no assassins screaming for their blood, no ancient horrors rising from their tombs, the only yugoloth that they’d spoken with was the ever smiling owner of a curio shop, rather than a razorvine crowned narcissist, and with that lack of looming menace, now it seemed Skalliska’s eggs neared ready to hatch. The late troubles in Pandemonium and the Outlands were left far behind and things had for the moment returned to some semblance of normality, or at least normality in Sigil, inasmuch you could have when a Xaositect named Nisha was a part owner of the establishment.

As Clueless tended bar, Toras and Florian occupied a table inset in the wall and away from the main bustle of the room. Sitting and drinking over a plate of cheese and crackers, with a pile of letters and the latest newspapers, the fighter and cleric sat and enjoyed the absence of absolutely anything to do with the ‘loths. Everything seemed wonderful, calm, and fine.

“Toras?” Florian looked up and a confused frown crossed over her face.

“What’s up?” The half-celestial raised an eyebrow and put down his newspaper.

“Toras, I’m bored.”

The fighter put a finger to his mouth and fell silent, studying Florian’s face. For a moment the ambient sounds of the Portal Jammer filled the silence.

“I’m glad to be out of Pandemonium and back home but… yeah.” Toras strummed his fingers on the handle of his beer mug. “It feels like complacency to just sit here, waiting for something to happen or a certain fuzzy b*tch to make an a** of herself again. I hate to say this, but since we got back to Sigil things have died down and well…”

“Exactly,” Florian nodded, “Everything is safe, peaceful, and completely boring.”

“You have anything in mind?”

Florian sighed and reflexively thumbed her holy symbol. “I dare say that I’m not being a very good priest of the Foe Hammer if I’m sitting around not, you know…”

Toras chuckled, “Bashing someone’s head in with a smile on your face?”

“Exactly…” Florian finished her ale and placed it down on the table with a heavy *thunk*.

“So let’s go do something.” Toras smiled and tapped a finger on the table with as much force as the ale mug. “Let’s go do something of our own. Let’s make trouble on the side of good. Let’s be righteous and proactive rather than reactive.”

“Like what?”

“Let’s go find some trouble and fix it.” Toras put his hands out, palms up and chuckled, “I’m sure that we can find something, somewhere in Sigil that we can happily involve ourselves in.”

“Just the two of us?” Florian glanced over at the bar where Clueless was pouring drinks, and in passing she watched Fyrehowl climbing the stairs up to her room. Tristol was nowhere to be seen, and neither Nisha as well. Come to think of it, that pair had been almost inseparable since getting back from Pandemonium – things were getting quite serious between the two of them. “You don’t want to get anyone else involved?”

“Just the two of us.” Toras smiled and finished his drink. “Go grab a weapon and whatever else you need and then let’s go slumming.”


****​

The darkness smothering Howler’s crag was thick and oppressive, metaphysically heavy and swirling with a thousand swirling, imagined shapes. Deeper in the darkness though, other things moved; living things not born from the evolution-shaped pattern recognition tendencies of the mind. These things in the darkness moved, sniffed for blood, scratched their claws on stone and ached to feast on blood and bone.

Tristol looked up into the darkness, terrified and on the edge of panic. He didn’t know where to run. His spells were failing, and out there in the interminable gloom they waited for him, watching and hungry.

“Get away! I’m an archmage, a servitor of Mystra herself!” He shouted, bluffing and not even sure of his own power now. His spells had all failed. He hadn’t found a gate and nothing seemed to touch the things out there. Surely they were laughing at him, toying with his sanity and laughing amongst themselves. “Come out into the light and face me!”

The darkness stirred and twitched, a living thing rising from its slumber and turning its eyes upon them both. Eyes opened casting a sickly yellow light, eyes the size of men, swirling with a multitude of other eyes in a furious, mad fractal. The darkness split and teeth emerged, then a swollen, phosphorescent tongue. 

Lips were licked and the great primordial Howler spoke, “Do YoU HeAr ThE CoDe…?”

Everything was black. 

The sound was at his side, the Howler’s tongue wet upon his ear, the howler’s eyes looking into his from only inches away. 

The sound came from within his head.

“AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!” Tristol awoke screaming.

Abruptly a tail smacked him in the face, the silver bell at its tip rattling and focusing his attention as the nightmare faded from his mind. Stunned but grateful, he realized that he wasn’t in Pandemonium, but back in Sigil, in bed.

“You ok Tristol?” Laying next to him in bed, the covers pulled up to her chest, Nisha looked over at him with concern.

“Howlers were screaming at me. Chasing me.” Tristol’s ears drooped and below the sheets, Nisha could tell that his tail was bottlebrushed in fright.

“Do I look like a howler?” Nisha stuck out her tongue and made a face. “Rar!”

“You don’t look like a howler, no.” Tristol reached over and ruffled her hair, “You’re too cute to be a howler, and I don’t think howlers can get as bad a case of bedhead as you have right now.”

Nisha laughed and leaned in, giving him a tight squeeze around the waist.

“So why a howler nightmare?” Nisha tapped her tail against his head, gently ringing the silver bell in the process. “Is Pandemonium still bothering you?”

Tristol frowned and sighed with uncharacteristic heaviness and worry, “Fyrehowl and I both saw them in Pandemonium.”

“When was this?” Nisha tilted her head to the side.

“When she and I were taking watch outside the cave on Howler’s Crag.”

The tiefling narrowed her eyes, “I don’t remember seeing anything remotely like that, and I was behind you half the time you were on watch.”

Now it was Tristol’s turn to regard her with an askance look, “You were watching me?”

“Over you; watching that is.” Nisha blushed and shrugged, leaning into his shoulder once more and letting him stroke down her hair into some semblance of neatness. “I wanted to make sure nothing happened to you. So I hid and watched to make sure you didn’t end up dead and sacrificed to whatever.”

Tristol smiled and nearly shed a tear, “That’s really sweet.” He blinked, “It’s also disturbing that Fyrehowl never noticed you.”

“I’m sneaky when I want to be.” Nisha shrugged and tickled the aasimar on his ribs, “But that doesn’t answer my question. Stop being cute and cutely evasive. What was all this about seeing howlers, and how it connects to your nightmare and waking me up with your screaming.”

“We heard howlers and saw lights on the Crag, and I’m pretty sure that none of it was real.” Tristol sighed as he remembered standing there and mutually hallucinating with Fyrehowl, “And just now in the nightmare that I had, I saw that same thing again. On the Crag they called out to us both, and they screamed out the same thing in my dream. I feel like I’m going crazy here.”

“Don’t you go crazy on me now Tristol!” Nisha poked a finger at Tristol’s ribs, “I’ve got plenty of that already to cover the both of us as it is!”

“My kind of crazy though.” Tristol silenced her with a kiss on the lips. “I’ll try not to go crazy, and I’ll try to avoid having bad dreams. You being here is a good enough dream come true as it is.”

“Awww…” Nisha blushed and embraced her favorite wizard. After watching him smile one last time before closing her eyes to sleep again, she returned the expression and snapped her fingers, dismissing the conjured light and curling up under the sheets, tails entwined.


****​

Baring her fangs and holding up her claws in a defensive posture, Fyrehowl snarled at whatever it was in the looming, formless sea of night that stretched out before her. She’d only seen their claws and glittering eyes in the darkness, a moving see of snarling, hungry mouths and snatching, snaring paws.

“What do you want from me?!” The lupinal screamed as she stood atop the Crag.

The liquid darkness lapped at the stones just beneath her feet, like the rising tide of a devouring ocean of madness and night.

Darkness snuffed out every source of light and Fyrehowl drifted in its suffocating embrace. 

Floating.

Lost.

Luminous and manic, its eyes pulsing with each heartbeat, one pupil blown and the other a pinprick, the howler stood in front of her. Its reeking breath was in her face, its filthy paws upon her muzzle.

“dO YoU hEaR iT?”

Drenched in sweat, Fyrehowl awoke snarling, her sheets torn to ribbons by her own claws.

The beast from Pandemonium had somehow followed her. Somehow it had sniffed out her trail from the depths of its blighted plane all the way back to Sigil.

Shivering, the lupinal shook her head and smoothed down the fur on her neck and arms, realizing that before she’d awakened screaming, the howler’s voice had not been in front of her. It hadn’t spoken from the leering face that cupped her muzzle in its paws. The voice had echoed from within her own mind.


****​

“I swear to you! I don’t know anything about any slaves!” Hazdrin Grolmer shouted in protest and alarm. Two of his men lay unconscious on the floor, and presumably from the moans from the other room, the other six of his employees were in a similar state, all at the hands of the armored mountain of a half-celestial that held him by his collar a foot off of the ground, and the smiling cleric at his side. “What are you doing?!”

With one hand on the doorknob, Toras smiled as he effortlessly slammed the slave merchant’s head through the wooden door.

“Feel like explaining what exactly you know now?” Toras walked around to the other side of the door and looked up into Hazdrin’s bruised, bloodied, and splinter studded face. The merchant dangled from where he’d been lodged, headfirst into the door, his feet kicking on the other side and causing the door to jostle back and forth a few inches each time.

“I just told you I don’t know anything!” Hazdrin shouted. “You’ll pay for this! I’ll have the Sodkillers at your door for this! The Sons of Mercy too!”

“Here’s the thing,” Toras clucked his tongue and picked a few splinters out of Hazdrin’s face in a faux show of sympathy, “I never mentioned anything about slaves. I only mentioned that I’d heard that you were going to be buying something tomorrow, something illicit, and your friends that I met earlier this evening were quite happy to be bragging about how much jink that you’d be making.”

Two hours earlier, Toras and Florian had passed along a few choice bits of jink and followed a trail of rumors from touts and street urchins. Ultimately they’d ended up in the Bottle & Jug where several of Hazdrin’s mercenary employees were already deep in their cups. Those men and women had given them quite a tale.

“What the f*ck did they tell you!?!” Hazdrin struggled aimlessly, going nowhere without any leverage and no easy way to extricate himself from the door.

Florian looked up at the slaver and smiled, “Pretty much everything!”

Toras stepped back a few steps and drew his blade, “They might be loyal and all normally, but they were preemptively celebrating and about six shots in once we sat down with them over at the Bottle & Jug.”

“Son of a whore! I’ll cut their tongues out when I get out of here!” Hazdrin blustered with genuine rage.

“You’re in no position to do anything to anyone.” Florian poked the man’s bruised nose, making him flinch.

“So where were you going to be buying this apparently very large number of slaves?” Toras swung his sword for intimidation. “Apparently you were going to be selling them off to some tanar’ri for quite a bit of profit.”

“I ‘aint telling you crap!” The slaver spat at Florian, then turned an inch and spat towards Toras.

Absolutely unimpressed, Toras clenched a fist around his greatsword’s grip, “Suit yourself. Florian, can you ask his corpse some questions when he’s dead?”

Without turning, Florian nodded the affirmative, “Sure thing.”

“What?!” Hazdrin’s eyes flicked from the cleric to the fighter, realizing what they were discussing.

“Tempus absolves you by the way Toras,” Florian smiled.” He’s cool with it.”

Toras backed up and readed himself to behead the man lodged in the door. Hazdrin’s eyes bugged out as he realized that yes indeed, they were casually discussing and preparing for his death.

Florian motioned to the man’s head, “Just do try to leave enough of his head intact. It’s harder if there isn’t a tongue, they don’t pronounce things right.”

Toras held his sword up to the ceiling and the lantern that hung there, letting the reflected light play across Hazdrin’s deathly pale face. Less than ten seconds later the merchant broke, screaming and pleading for his life as Toras’s blade swung down with a heavy whistle, stopping just an inch from the man’s exposed neck.

“In the Clerk’s Ward!” Hazdrin screamed, his left eye now clouded a deep crimson from a panic burst blood vessel.

Toras’s blade was cold as it played across the man’s flesh, just enough to feel, to remind him that execution was a moment away, but not enough to break the skin. No further threats were required however.

“Where in the Clerk’s Ward?” Toras demanded, his eyes narrow and deathly serious. “I want an address and a time.”

“Two before peak! Copperlane Road, one block past the Civic Festhall. They’re meeting in a kip above a bakery, Pelwrath’s or something like that; it has a blue sign or something similar. The stairs are around the back side leading up to the exterior door.”

“Names?” Florian demanded.

Hazdrin was shaking and trembling, his feet clattering against the door and a poor of urine spreading out from underneath the other side from where he’d voided his bladder, “I don’t have a clue! The primary buyer was coming here and I was buying part of their merchandise.”

“Part?” A concerned expression passed over Toras’s face. “I thought your group purchased anyone they could and then parceled them off as forced labor, slave-soldiers, or fiend-food. What part of their merchandise aren’t you buying?”

“I don’t have any use for the children, so I’m not paying for them.”

There was a long, pregnant pause as Toras glared daggers into Hazdrin. Behind him, Florian shook her head and let out a silent, whistling exhalation.


“You just saved your own life, remember that.” The half-celestial’s voice was unnaturally calm as he stepped back and opened the door, complete with Hazdrin still lodged head-first through the wood. There was a dull, muffled thud as the slaver’s skull connected with the stone wall and he slumped, knocked out cold.

Florian’s eyes were wide as she looked at Toras, “I didn’t expect to find something like that. Not in the middle of the Clerk’s Ward.”

“Nor did I,” Toras swallowed as he strode towards the exit, weaving between a half-dozen unconscious bodies with a renewed sense of valor and purpose. He was smiling like an avenging angel prepared to sing as it shed the blood of the unholy, “But Andros be praised, we’ll be making sure that it doesn’t happen again. We’ve got less than an hour to get there, let’s go and make an example of them.”


****​


----------



## Clueless

Huh, I coulda sworn Clueless was in on tat anti-slavery run. Given his 'dealing' later on...  Though wasn't this about the same time when Tristol was asking permission to date Nisha too?


----------



## Shemeska

"So how do you want to do this?" Florian glanced up at Toras, then over to the stairwell across the street that ascended to the door indicated by a man still stuck, head-first in a door of his own a Ward away. 

Toras pointed up to the door, "Well from what I understand they're certain of their safety, they have plenty of guards -inside- but none actually outside to watch the entry and raise an alarm."

"You want to kick the door in don't you?" Florian chuckled.

"Oh absolutely!" Toras beamed a smile. "Bursting into a room full of slavers to deliver righteous justice! The only way I might make it better is if I got to suckerpunch a 'loth on the way out!"

"So what's your plan beyond kicking the door in?"

"I don't need one." The half-celestial shrugged.

"There's times that I'm really glad that I'm not a cleric of the Red Knight." Florian shook her head. "I'd be spitting nails about strategy right now if I was."

"But you're not."

"No, I'm following you up a flight of stairs, not knowing what we'll find on the other side except that those on the other side deserve to be smote."

"It's liberating isn't it?" Toras hefted his blade and stretched his neck to first one side and then the next.

"Abso-f*cking-lutely." Florian motioned towards the stairs and they both crossed the street, continuing their banter even as they went.

"I think I'm finally starting to settle into this city!" Toras admitted as they stepped to the top of the first landing.

“Likewise.”

“And today, we make the city a little bit better.” He raised his eyebrows and stared at the door. Thick and heavy, it would withstand the force of most men’s attempt to burst it inwards. Thankfully however, a cliché statement or not, Toras was not most men. "On the count of three."

"I’ll raise you back if you get killed." Florian nodded and grasped her holy symbol in one hand and weapon in the other.


****​

The door shattered with the force of Toras's kick, sailing inwards in a cloud of splinters as the hinges broke and a chunk of the doorframe followed them aloft. A dozen voices shouted in panic and outrage, men and women dove for cover and snatched for their weapons as the two intruders took in the scope of what they saw inside. 

Two groups sat at a table in the room's center, one of them clearly the slavers mentioned by those who would have been buying from them later, and by their holy symbols, tattoos, and uniformly tanar’ri-blooded tiefling heritage, they held some associations with the Temple of the Abyss. The second group was not however a group of fiends or savage goblinoids fresh from raiding villages in the Outlands and eager to sell their chattel spoils.

"What is the meaning of this?!" A tall, bronze-skinned human stood, dressed in gleaming, exquisitely crafted armor. "How DARE YOU?!"

Along with the bellowing man, two others wore similar armor, an aasimar woman and a half-elven man. All of them bore scowls of anger and frustration, along with a certain obscene self-righteous self-assurance that bespoke of zealotry in their cause, whatever that cause might be.

Whatever it was however, it was nothing holy. Behind them, a series of cages contained twenty or thirty people, though that was only the ones visible; they were packed together to the point of having difficulty breathing in their confines. Half of them were children.

Ice ran through Toras’s veins and time seemed to slow to a crawl as he stepped over the remain of the door one step, then two steps, and swung his blade as the man screamed in fury and alarm, seeming almost to believe as if his words alone could blunt any attack.

"Close your eyes children, you don't want to see this!"

"Fool! We do as we please! We are destined for greatness! We…”

The mercury that filled the hollow chamber running the length of Toras’s rushed forward with a snap, weighting the blade. Plate resisted for but a split second before crumpling like tissue paper. Mail sheared in twain like a cracker snapped and dredged into a bowl of crimson foodstuffs. Flesh tore and bone snapped, spraying blood across Toras’s face even as the dying man screaming incoherently, not yet realizing that the blade had cleaved him nearly in half.

The room erupted in a burst of already alarmed voices now turned to screams of panic.

The screams of panic turned to screams of pain as Florian stepped from behind Toras. She raised her fist, invoking the name of Tempus, and with the sound of a raging battle, called into being a horizontal field of clashing, whirling, razor-sharp blades. Where both groups had stood before, blood and flesh rained down upon the floor. 

Drenched in blood, Toras watched as the whirling field of blades butchered the slavers and their suppliers alike. A single figure stumbled free of the zone of death, staggered and confused, bleeding from a dozen wounds, only to come face to face with the half-celestial. The aasimar mumbled, tears streaming down her face, “You can’t do this! We carry the spark of greatness. We’re Illuminated.”

Toras gave no reply in words as he met her gaze with a scowl and a boot to her chest, sending the woman hurtling back into the thick of the blade barrier. She screamed only briefly, and then all was silent as Florian waved and cancelled her spell.

Spattered with a fine mist of their captors’ blood, the captive slaves whimpered and shuddered at the suddenness and horror of what they had just witnessed, but only a moment. Collectively they began to cheer.

“Roll the bodies and find out who the hell these idiots were in the first place.” Toras glanced down at the mangled remains strewn about the radius of where the blade barrier had been cast. “Well, what’s left of the bodies at least. I’ll see to letting these folks out of their chains and somewhere safe.”

Toras did just that as Florian sifted through the remains, trying to make sense of who the armored slavers were. Ultimately there wasn’t much left intact, and paperwork was shredded beyond recovery. What all of them had in common however was a medallion emblazoned with the symbol of The Illuminated, the recently self-proclaimed “faction” responsible for the sack of Plague-Mort. As to why they were selling slaves and why in Sigil, that much remained opaque at the moment, but not for long.


****​

Fyrehowl's eyes were bloodshot and she actually stumbled, nearly losing her balance, as she closed the door to her room and made her way more or less on instinct over to Tristol's. She'd tossed and turned all evening, with what little sleep she'd gotten punctuated by horrific nightmares that kept repeating on the same theme: the whispering/screaming/laughing howlers that she and Tristol had both seen months earlier in Pandemonium. She meant to knock as she blinked, having momentarily fallen asleep in the moment between standing at the door and turning the doorknob, but she didn't knock or even clear her throat before walking into the wizard's bedroom unannounced.

"Tristol?" The lupinal's speech was slurred and groggy, but she didn't get out more than the aasimar's name before he replied with a similar tone.

Tristol didn't even look up from where he sat, half slumped over his spellbook, half leaning into a dead-asleep and lightly snoring Nisha, "I already looked at that envelope for you Clueless. It's not trapped or even magically alarmed to let whoever sent it know that you received it, so please just let me try to get some sleep..."

"I'm not Clueless."

"You're much fuzzier than him." Tristol squinted and sighed, "And carrying much less coffee than he brought up here a while ago. What do you want?"

"Can I sit down?" Fyrehowl asked, having already done so, again purely on instinct.

The celestial and the aasimar sat silently for several minutes, staring at each other. They noticed the equivalence of their state of rest, the bloodshot eyes looking back at their own, and a certain unmeasurable status of being unnerved and frankly scared at something otherwise unmeasurable and unnoticeable except for someone who had been through exactly the same experience.

"You dreamed about them too, didn't you?" Fyrehowl's hackles rose as she remembered the howler in her dreams.

Tristol bit his lower lip and shivered, but didn't respond in words. His expression however, when he met the lupinal's stare, it answered in the affirmative.

"What's going on Tristol?"

"Try not to wake Nisha." Tristol motioned to the snoring tiefling, "I kept her up all night with the dreams I was having. She didn't fall asleep until a little while ago."

"What did it say to you?" Fyrehowl lowered her voice.

Tristol started to reply but then stopped, sighed, and simply turned his spellbook around for her to look. There in the margins, flowing like spilled ink around the intricately penned spells in his normal hand was the same question from both of their dreams: "dO YoU hEaR ThE CoDe?"

"I wrote that in my sleep." The mage shook his head in disbelief at his own actions, "Apparently. At least as far as I can tell. The handwriting is mine, if sloppy and creepy as all hell. I tried to write something coherently, but each time I started to drift off to sleep I'd write that mess like someone trying their hand at automatic spirit writing."

Nisha twitched and opened her eyes, yawning with exaggerated expression and then turning to look at Fyrehowl curiously. "You had creepy dreams too?"

"You could call them that." The lupinal frowned. "Nothing like having a frighteningly realistic dream where you're back in Pandemonium and being chased howlers who keep trying to talk to you."

"What did they say?" Nisha tilted her head sideways, and somewhere below her chair, her tail flicked and rattled the bell at its tip.

Tristol leaned his head on his girlfriend's shoulder, "Absolute gibberish."

"That's totally not fair!" The tiefling protested, hugging Tristol and rubbing her cheek into the top of his head, "That's my schtick."

Both nightmare sufferer's chuckled as Nisha lapsed into several minutes of mind-jarring xaos-speak. But through it all they kept looking at each other, realizing that something from their trip to the depths of the Howling plane had followed them back.

Fyrehowl sighed, "So are we going crazy, is the a howler wandering the streets of Sigil, or is there something inside of our heads?"

Tristol shrugged, "I don't know. I honestly don't know. Like a song you can't get out of your head, I can't get the dream or whatever it tried to say out of my head either. I keep thinking that it said more than I remember though."

"Why do you say that?" The lupinal narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "I can't recall it doing much other than chasing me and saying gibberish."

"The more I think about the dream, and about what we saw in Pandemonium," Tristol shook his head in frustration, like a scholar on the verge of a breakthrough, "It's like there's a pattern that I can almost figure out, but not yet. I'll think about it when I have the time, and hopefully we can figure out what's going on sooner rather than later. I rather doubt that we have a howler stalking us in the streets. It's only one night of bad dreams."

Nisha ceased her own babbling and perked an eyebrow, "I'm not going to catch this too am I? I'm already weird enough without a howler in my head."

"You'll be fine Nisha," Tristol leaned over and gave her a kiss, "You've got too much crazy in your head already for anything else to fit, howler or otherwise."

"I'm crazy?" The xaositect's ears twitched and the bell on her tail rattled.

"Only the best kind of crazy." Tristol smiled, "The kind that I like."

Fyrehowl rolled her eyes and yawned, "Ok, that's about enough mushy lovely dovey for me for a while. I should probably go downstairs, get something to drink, and try to fully wake up. Hopefully tomorrow I can sleep better.

"Oh don't go!" Nisha giggled, "I promise that I won't do anything mushy... like this!" She leaned in and licked Tristol's nose. Tristol halfheartedly protested and giggled as Nisha started poking him in the ribs with her tail. The tiefling was laughing and smiling, almost with stars dancing in her eyes. She was probably happier now than she'd ever been in her life.

Fyrehowl was already at the door, leaving them alone for whatever new couples did in the phase where they did cute things that annoyed everyone else who happened to be single. Turning the door handle, she looked back at the two of them and shook her head with a smile, "Gods you two are too cute."


****​ 

Several hours later the Portal Jammer was flush with traffic and where coffee had been sipped greedily from mugs, it was now replaced with spirits and livelier conversations than those grumbling awakenings from the early morning crowd. Conversation was even livelier than usual however due to the gossip and speculation regarding what some described as a "slaughter" barely seven blocks away while others referred to it as "fiends slacking their blood lust" or "sacrifices to a dark god". All of these conversations were of course interreupted and corrected by those proclaiming it to be "something that Sigil needed for far too long" and "a good stern hand of justice to show evildoers that sometimes they go too far, but not longer!". Absolutely none of the voices and viewpoints had a clue of course that the brigands/fiends/justicars/heroes responsible for the murder of seven in the Clerk's Ward and freeing dozens from slavery were in fact part owners of the Jammer currently sitting rather comfortably in the corner without a worry of consequences.

"Did you seriously go out and gank a half dozen people in the same Ward you live in?" Clueless sat down at the table with a slight frown, punctuating his question with the heavy *thunk!* of a trio of ale mugs that he quickly passed over to Toras and Florian, keeping one for himself.

"Not exactly." Toras took a swig of ale, smiled, wiped his mouth, and then smiled more. "It was actually seven people."

"Seriously?" Clueless put a hand to his forehead. "I've heard a dozen different versions of what happened just in the past few hours, so please, tell me what actually did."

"They were slavers." Florian put her hands on the table palm up, "They had it coming to them."

"And I've served fiends breakfast and coffee more than once this week." The bladesinger shrugged, "They're literally made of evil made flesh, but generally people don't go around trying to kill them here in Sigil. What made a group of slavers any different?"

"They were child slavers." Toras ceased smiling. "They deserved what we did to them."

"So I've heard," Clueless eyed the two of them askance, "Courtesy of several different touts in several different parts of the city, plus from more than a few customers here at the Portal Jammer."

"I don't mind people knowing what we did." Toras took a long drink from his mug and studied the half-fey's reaction.

"Listen, I'm not saying that I disapprove." Clueless shook his head, "Honestly I wish that I was there. Razor hasn't had enough practical use for a few months. But at the same time, I wish that you'd told the rest of us before going out and doing something crazy."

"Yet we live with Nisha." Florian deadpanned.

"Who is now openly dating Tristol." Toras gave a chuckle and shook his head. He hadn't really seen the two of them as a match given their disparity in temperament and training, but given what he'd seen, they'd fallen head over heels in love.

"Tristol actually asked me for permission to start dating her." Clueless chuckled, "After she and I spent a lot of time following up on the gem in my ankle a while back on our own, she's been like a little sister to me. Since she doesn't have any family that she's aware of unless you count the chance of there being a tanar'ri somewhere still extant from back in the upper leaves of her family tree, she's alone. Tristol said it was a Halruaan custom to ask a woman's parents or elder siblings for permission to begin a courtship, so he came to ask me."

"I assume you said yes?" Florian smiled with amusement.

"Oh absolutely." Clueless chuckled warmly, "But I spent some time laughing at the thought that he needed permission. I also find it funny to think that Nisha of all people needed anyone or anything looking out for her if she got herself into a situation, romantically or otherwise."

"She finds trouble on her own and trouble usually runs away and asks for help." The cleric swallowed another mouth of ale. "They make a cute couple."

"That they do." Clueless gave a satisfied sigh, happy to see the wizard and xaositect doing well, "But back to what I was going to say before about you going and killing a bunch of people and acting like a pair of freelance heroes that Sigil typically lacks."

Toras beamed a smile and clinked mugs with Florian, then with Clueless a moment later.

"Several of the people that you killed were members of The Illuminated." Clueless explained, letting the implication sink in to the other two.

"The berks that just pulled a coup over in Plague-Mort?" Florian raised an eyebrow.

Clueless nodded, "The same."

"And?" Toras put a single finger on the table and rolled his eyes. "If their 'faction'," he placed a questioning emphasis on the word, "Was involved as a whole, that raises issues but gives me someone new to hate that isn't a yugoloth. If the 'faction' wasn't involved as a whole, they've got egg on their face for the actions of a few of their people and they won't raise a finger because it would only embarrass them while they're still basking in the glory of conquering a sh*thole of a gatetown."

Clueless placed an envelope in the center of the table, "Well their self-proclaimed Factol took notice that you killed several of his people and sent you a letter today. It arrived a few minutes ago from the Runner's Guild. Addressed to both of you. He knows your names apparently."

Florian looked at it warily, "Before we open it, have you checked it?"

"I had Tristol look over it." Clueless tapped it with a finger, "He didn't sleep well and he was grumpy when I asked him, but he says that it's clean. Completely non-magical."

"Didn't sleep well..." Florian snickered, "I wouldn't wonder why..."

Clueless shrugged, "He actually looked under the weather. But regardless, it's not spell trapped as far as he could tell. I trust him on it."

Toras looked over the envelope before reaching out and picking it up. Crisp and white, a practiced and calm hand and black ink had addressed it, _'With apologies, to Toras of Andros and Florian the servant of the Foehammer'._

"This better not be more death threats." Toras sighed as he drew a knife and slit the envelope open. "I've had enough of those this year."

"Well, it doesn't look like it's from a 'loth, that's one good thing at least." Florian remarked with a smile. 

Toras pulled the letter out, "Why do you say that?"

"Because what kind of self-respecting 'loth would send a letter with the words, 'With apologies'?"

Toras nodded, "You've got a point..."

"So what's it say?" Florian leaned over to glance past the warrior's shoulder.

"Well it most certainly isn't a death threat." Toras skimmed the letter with a look of genuine confusion. "Huh..."

_Toras of Andros and Florian the servant of Tempus, please accept my deepest apologies for the actions against you -if however brief- and for the illegal and reprehensible activities of some of my faction members. I regret that among some of my faction, our creed is taken as an excuse to do as they will, as if the potential for greatness excuses ones actions as you move along the path I lay before them. It does not and you did right in bringing them to swift justice. If you have any level of guilt or regret for your actions in Sigil's Clerk's Ward, if my words have any meaning in the present instance, consider yourself absolved. I would not have desired to entangle you in the failings of some of my faction members, but yet it is funny how the multiverse operates in terms of things fated to occur.

There is potential in you both. You carry the spark of illumination that not all have. Please come and speak with me in Plague-Mort at your convenience.
Green Marvent - Factol of the Illuminated_


****​

The petrified countenance of Shylara the Manged, Overlord of Carceri and paramour of the Oinoloth snarled silently from its position in the corner of the highest chamber in the Tower Arcane: the office of Helekanalaith the Keeper of the Tower. Magical windows above looked out into the black void between the Furnaces, providing a dull red light and the occasional starburst of an exploding volcanic eruption in the distance. The imprisoned arch-loth said nothing as she stood there in rampant, having been molded and reshaped to fit the Keeper's mood again and again like some great trophy. 

The Keeper of the Tower sat not at his desk, but hovered in the air with his back to Shylara's statue, his legs crossed and his ubiquitous notebook open in his lap. Without looking down at it, he penned a running transcript and compilation of notes, thoughts, and observations on his present meeting with the one who sat opposite him: the Oinoloth, Vorkannis the Ebon.

Like Helekanalaith, Vorkannis sat suspended in the air, legs crossed and posed almost leisurely so, as if he sat on a cushioned couch. Since entering the room an hour earlier, the Ebon hadn't seemed to care in the slightest that the petrified astral form of his consort stood there, the anchor keeping her catatonic and imprisoned within her own body back in Carceri. Far from deeply caring about the situation, he'd never so much as addressed the topic while there to discuss several topics involving the Tower's resources. 

Listening intently, the Keeper wracked his brain trying to determine the implications of and subtle maneuvers of the Oinoloth's tone and expressions. All the while he scrawled his notes, all of them nearly automatic scrawls of text drawn into shapes to collectively paint a picture of words within words within a picture with a meaning all its own.

"I still want that one remaining annoyance captured, preferably pinned down like a butterfly, spreadeagled and displayed, fit to hang under glass upon a naturalist's wall, continually shifting and changing as she suffers. All of the others are dead or otherwise accounted for, except for her."

"You expect her to seek revenge for what we did to her motley collection of siblings?"

"Eventually yes, when she becomes reckless, absolutely. But she won't come after me, I give her more credit than that."

"She's canny, that one. It isn't a surprise though, given her status as a nycaloth prior to bargaining with the hags."

The Ebon cracked a smile, baring the faintest hints of ivory fangs. "A nycaloth you say?"

"Yes, a nycaloth." The Keeper adjusted the golden spectacles perched on his muzzle. "That's what the records on her life indicate." 

"I'd always heard that she progressed from nycaloth to arcanaloth, that in fact she did so just prior to striking her deal with the hags."

"Yet there aren't any records to that effect, neither on herself, nor on any arcanaloth sponsor or group of ultroloths to oversee her promotion."

"Presumably because she killed them, or else managed to have the Tower's records altered or expunged." The Oinoloth stared at the Keeper, silent but for the low background noise of crackling crucible fires and more distantly, wailing petitioners. "Which do you think would be more likely?"

Helekanalaith narrowed his eyes, "It would not be the first individual for whom the Tower's archives present a paucity of information, or simply a complete absence of there very existence."

Vorkannis took a sip of his tea, smiling over the rim of the mug. The Keeper's insinuation was noted with silent amusement.

"Regardless," Helekanalaith paused to dip his pen into a pot of burning coals, ensuring the tip of the metal stylus was white hot once more. "I have my doubts that even she could alter the archive's records; I would be aware of her attempts. I have not always been Keeper however."

"Then perhaps we should ask Larsdana." The Ebon gestured towards Helekanalaith's desk, the same desk where Larsdana ap Neut had sat and ruled the Tower for ages beyond reckoning. 

"This is the second time that you've seen fit to mention her in my presence my Oinoloth."

"That because," The Oinoloth smiled, "and I said so at that previous time, that you remind me of her."

"You knew Larsdana?" The Keeper leaned forward, genuine curiosity playing across his features. "You've mentioned her before, but you've never elaborated." 

"In a manner of speaking." Vorkannis glanced at the glittering gem that hovered above the Keeper's desk, drifting there like an omnipresent Pole Star. "The two of you deserved one another, and for the record yes, I approve of what you did. So does she. I would have done nothing less. But you've been wondering about my current quandary, though you haven't directly asked my opinion on the situation. With you and Larsdana in mind, do I need to answer your unspoken question?"

"No my Oinoloth, your meaning is quite clear." Helekanalaith changed the subject, feeling distinctly uncomfortable with the ease with which the Ebon commented on his relationship with the Tower's designer and first Keeper. Their story was not a matter of record beyond the simple matter of predecessor and successor, teacher and apprentice. Their status as lovers was distinctly not a part of the Tower's records, nor the manner in which he imprisoned her and kept her still as a beloved possession. "Back to our original topic of conversation, do you have any suggestions for where I might direct our efforts to discover our soon to be pinned and displayed butterfly, so to speak?"

"None whatsoever." Vorkannis's reply was oddly flippant for a being so used to being in utter, prescient control.

"Pardon me my Oinoloth, but if you could please clarify your meaning.” Helekanalaith looked up at Vorkannis, eager to infer meaning from the other ‘loth’s facial features, “You have no specific ideas on where to direct my search, or you simply do not care?" 

The melanistic 'loth with albino eyes smiled. Momentarily the chamber's lights dimmed, including the gemstone that bottled the spirit of Larsdana ap Neut, putting the Keeper and him in shadow, but for the puissant glow of his crimson-pink eyes.

"She was an arcanaloth before her self-debasement. She isn't stupid enough to strike at me directly. She'll hide and she'll observe from the periphery, marking a target and then striking out at those around me first." The Oinoloth's eyes burned into the Keeper's own, with a creeping implication, unblemished by care or concern. "Do be watchful Helekanalaith, because unlike the third member of our original triumvirate, you aren't bottled up in Sigil where our wayward butterfly cannot flutter her poisoned wings."

With that final piece of advice, the Oinoloth chuckled and vanished, transposing the gulf between Gehenna and the Waste like superimposed atoms, existing in both at once before his smile collapsed the wavefunction to a single location and returned him to the summit of Khin-Oin. Once again alone within the Tower, -his- Tower, with only his thoughts and the entrapped spirit of his former lover drifting above his desk, Helekanalaith felt a gnawing worry creep through his being for the first time in millennia.

"Larsdana, let us pray to the Ebon that you never gave that shapeshifting wretch a way into the Tower to work on your behalf, if you ever did strike a deal with her Larsdana." The Keeper plucked the glowing gemstone from the air, feeling in its cold surface a reflection of her face, the sulfur and perfume of her fur, the malice and potency of her heart and mind, and then the scream that followed as he focused and made her suffer, smiling with the dreamy-half smile of love as he did so. "I know you kept secrets from me Larsdana. I've barely scratched the surface of what you bottled away, and I respect that, I truly do. But if you bargained with her, I will make you suffer. I will not feel afraid and unsafe in my own Tower!"

The Keeper snarled like a trapped animal and slammed his notebook down upon his desk, causing the styling to fall to the floor and spin, trailing spirals of smoke as it cooled. Helekanalaith blinked and released Larsdana's gem as he stared dumbfounded at the notebook and the pages it had fallen open to.

Rather than the voluminous notes of his conversation with the Ebon over the past two hours, and rather than those notes forming a picture of the Ebon, or his office, or anything else, they formed an image of something that he'd never intended. Each page of his notes was the same, not that he remembered drawing it at the time: Shylara the Manged, Overlord of Carceri, her form bloody and broken, marred by open sores and bleeding, self-inflicted wounds, pounding on the surface of the page as if they were windows into a prison cell.

Weeping and pleading, each page was the same, and rather than the words of his notes as he'd chronicled his meeting with the Ebon, the letters spelled out only, "Please Vorkannis! Forgive me! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!" Over and over and over again.


****​

"Do you suppose that we should finally make our grand, overdue return to the Tower and you know, actually do our job?" Alpthis ap Othrys casually glanced over at his brother, picking a fleck of raw and bloody flesh from between his canid fangs with a single polished and poisoned claw.

The two arcanaloths sat along the rim of the miles-wide crevasse that housed the Tower of Incarnate Pain, itself still under construction. They faced the Tower itself, and under their eyes they witnessed the gentle undulation of its spires and buttresses, the aggregate motion borne of each individual living, screaming, suffering brick. Behind them, the air shimmered with the great illusory wall that hid the tower from sight and magical divinations, as well as the additional wards that actually moved errant travelers from accidentally blundering their way into the Tower's sphere of influence and exposing the 'loths' great open secret.

In the prolonged absence of the Tower's mistress, Shylara the Manged, her underlings warred amongst themselves and against the spells protecting and isolating the Oinoloth's consort's sessile and comatose body. All of this was done under the vain pretense of normalcy of course. The day to day activities of the Tower went on without any obvious discontinuity. Only the occasional appearance of a corpse and the growing pool of ashes outside of the sealed doors to Shylara's private chambers laid low the illusion covering the organized assassinations and creeping civil war amongst her servitors and would-be successors.

The brothers, both acting as unofficial proxies but empowered with more than a minute fraction of the Overlord's newly gained power, had removed themselves from the game of politics and killings that had raged below the surface like a hungry parasite devouring its host for months. As a result of their own natures and the influence of Shylara's nature now running through their veins quite literally, rather than obediently defend the status quo and their mistress, they were quite content to sit, watch, f*ck, and enjoy the suffering that resulted from the Manged's absence.

A subtle ripple passed through the Tower's surface, like a stone dropped into a pond of souls and suffering, originating near to the Tower's heart at a door only a short walk away from the Reflective Chasm. A moment before the physical ripple appeared, the brothers both received a mental ping and understood precisely what had occurred.

"Well, that would be a signal that someone finally managed to break through the warding on the outer door to the Mistress's private chambers." Alpthis gave a delighted smirk and clapped his blood-covered hands together "Our previous conversation was most prescient then."

"Took them long enough." Apteris smirked and idly picked at a bit of blood on one of his claws. "An hour short of three month's time." 

"A pity for all of these would-be usurpers." Alpthis laughed, "There being two more doors, more wards on them, and well, the -other- things keeping the Mistress safe."

"Technically that number of things keeping her safe includes us brother."

"Yes, I suppose that it does." The sorcerer reached into a golden bag filled with an assortment of candied treats, all of them brilliantly colored, all of them at unsettling contrast with the wriggling, moaning walls of the Tower of Incarnate Pain looming in the distance. "Up until now though, we've been superfluous." 

"Unnecessary." Apteris shrugged and returned his brother's smirk.

"Unnecessary, yes." The sorcerer held out a pearly emerald sphere, something once alive and now covered in malt, caramel, arsenic, and glossed sugar. He never saw his brother actually move his hand, but the treat was gone from his and then only briefly held up before being popped into the sorcerer-monk's mouth.

"Perhaps we should go check on the depth of the ashes," Apteris paused to swallow, "make a tally of those fallen to the Mistress's layered wards, and see who next feels self-important."

"We also number among the ranks of the self-important."

"Yes, but we aren't stupid."

"No, we aren't. We're opportunistic, pragmatic, and both overly eager to get into her robes once she awakens." Alpthis licked his lips and watched as his brother mirrored the same expression. "Well, what passes for robes on her anyway."

"Alas, neither of us is Oinoloth."

"Give it time brother, give it time." Alpthis returned the bag of sweets to a dimensional pocket as he stood up, "Besides, she's hardly chaste. She just doesn't pick anyone with a chance of harming her, the Oinoloth excepted." He made a deft, nearly religious gesture at the mention, "But in that instance, I dare say that she's not the one making the choice."

"Have you noticed since she invested us with a portion of her power that we've taken to killing our lovers?"

Alpthis paused and glanced to his brother, staying silent for a few seconds before responding. "Yes, I have noticed that. I find myself wondering what exactly led to that preference on her part, since it seems to originate from her. We shared partners before and we certainly made them suffer when it pleased either of us to do so, but we didn't kill them just because... not without reason."

Apteris smirked, "At least we haven't killed each other yet. I think she likes us too much."

"So true, so true." Alpthis leaned in and stroked his sibling's cheek, grazing his claws along the other's lips, "Besides brother, you're far too sweet to kill."

"Flatterer." The sorcerer-monk licked the claw still tracing along his lower lip, "I just wonder if she'll mind you dressing as she does more than once in her absence."

"I'm sure she'll know, and I expect it'll tickle her rotten heart." Alpthis leaned forward and extended his own tongue, tapping the monk's nose, "Which is precisely as I intend. Besides, you rather seem to like it when I do."

"That I do..." Apteris snarled and once again moved his hands in a blur of motion that his sibling never saw in transit, but indeed felt, and indeed smiled as it tangled in his hair and pulled him into a fierce embrace, claws digging into his scalp. The kiss was deep and passionate, and one that they'd shared many, many times at the Overlord's urging, though not by any means first at her design. "The Overlord can wait another hour. We're her proxies, but we're not her only protectors."

_"Amusing isn't it how we're both becoming more and more like her?"_ The sorcerer spoke into the monk's mind, presently unable to vocalize beyond gasps and swift inhalations. _I like that. I like that very much._


****​

Crackles of energies and expended spells flashed in the heights of the Tower of Incarnate Pain over the intervening hours, betraying the effects of the unraveling wards set upon Shylara's chambers. Slowly but surely the first layer of them were being peeled back in methodical fashion. Should they break it would spark another round of open violence, spilling yet more blood upon a location already permanently drenched in it.

Pausing only a moment to adjust his robes, Alpthis snapped his fingers and teleported himself and his brother of them into a small chamber on the periphery of the Overlord's private sanctum, only a few yards from the vast chamber that housed the Reflective Chasm. Despite being two of her most trusted servitors -and perhaps especially on account of that fact- the twins were unable to actually teleport into the immediate vicinity of where the first wards had been broken and some would-be usurper now sought to delve deeper, closer to where their Mistress lay catatonic and vulnerable. 

The two floated above a layer of ashes that grew deeper as they approached the pair of broken, partially melted doors that had already claimed the lives of hundreds. It opened into another short passage, the walls shrouded in artificial darkness, with another glittering, monstrously warded door at the terminal end.

One hand shrouded in black flame, a single figure hovered before the door, not yet aware of the brothers' approach. 

"Mellinara ap Cathrys," Alpthis quipped, recognizing the other arcanaloth as she whispered under her breath and moved her fingers gently, teasing apart and examining the furious mosaic of spells woven into the door and all around it.

The intruder's ears perked and she snarled, turning around face the pair. "I see how it is... you sit back and wait till I've broken down the wards for you, then you kill me once I've completed the job the two of you could not accomplish."

Mellinara's jackal head was all teeth and fury, silver fur and onyx earrings. Just barely visible at the neckline of her turquoise robe was a tracery of bleached-white scars that both the other two knew from personal and intimate experience covered most of her body as a 'gift' from the former Overlord, Bubonix many centuries earlier.

"I've slaved here for a thousand years, longer than either of you." The 'loth cursed, "I watched this Tower be razed to its foundation stones on three occasions and worked to raise it back up. I served under Bubonix, I served under Vorkannis, and then he raised up the current whelp to have his position and power when he became Oinoloth. He deserved this Tower and my respect, but the bitch beyond this door did not then, and does not now."

"Can my brother and I assume then that you do?" Alpthis asked with a mocking tone. "Shall we both bow down now preemptively?"

Mellinara snarled and the black fire in her left hand erupted to match her mood.

"You can indeed be rather persuasive." The sorcerer licked his lips and winked.

She snorted with derision but her manner relaxed ever so slightly, "So why haven't you tried to stop me from killing your bleeding whore of a Mistress?"

"Why would we?" Alpthis shrugged.

"It seems rather pointless." Apteris kicked half-heartedly at the ashes pooled upon the floor.

Mellinara narrowed her eyes, trying to discern the brothers' actual feelings. "I take it then that you desire her dead? Tired of serving and wish the throne yourselves? You're Shylara's proxies if I'm to understand the current state of things correctly. You've tasted her power. Help me kill her and you can taste more of her power and more than just her power."

Alpthis laughed and shook his head, "A very tempting offer, especially the latter, but please don't get us wrong. We're not going to try to break in and seize the throne. Not by ourselves and not with anyone else."

"Why not? Proxies or not, you both aren't loyal in the slightest." She laughed.

"Because three things," Alpthis held up a finger, "For starters, because we're not stupid."

"Not to imply that you're stupid." Apteris interjected with a wave of both hands.

"But we are of course." Alpthis gave a sh*t-eating grin. "Secondly, because despite the mange which we really shouldn't speak of..."

"But she's in no position to hear us of course." Apteris inclined his head towards the second sealed door.

"Of course," Alpthis continued, "neither of us have had the pleasure of serving her in that capacity so we can only speculate, but back to what I said before, from what we have seen, despite the mange, Shylara really is more pleasing to look at than you."

Mellinara snarled and spreads her arms, preparing to hurl a spell at them as a physical rebuke for their insult should a proper apology not be forthcoming. "And your third reason?"

"Oh, yes, there was that other thing." Alpthis snapped his finger as if to punctuate suddenly remembering something.

"The third one yes." Apteris chuckled as he slowly moved closer to his brother, glancing just over Mellinara's shoulder.

"Yes indeed." Alpthis gave a thin smile and glanced at the monk, seeing for himself the thing that Mellinara had not yet perceived. "The largest of the reasons in fact."

"Stop speaking in riddles you little sh*t." Mellinara sneered and spat, "What reason keeps you from doing precisely what I know you and every other 'loth in the tower desires to do if they were able to do so?"

"Being that when the Mistress wakes up, we truly don't want to end up like, well... them." Alpthis and Apteris bowed their heads and softly whispered the Overlord of Carceri's name like a prayer.

Already cloaked in dim half-light, a deeper shadow fell across the three of them and a footfall sent a ripple across the ashes. Mellinara blinked and turned, looking up into the snarling faces of two massive nycaloths as they stepped out of the walls. Not ordinary if physically massive, both were heavily surgically altered. Both possessed an additional pair of arms grafted onto their body and runes glowing from where the Overlord had cut sigils into their flesh with her own claws, yet the most obvious sign of her handiwork was not those appendages, but the glowing crystalline shard of crystal embedded into their foreheads swirling with inner light and ghostly symbols. Prisoners within their own agonized flesh, they reached out, carrying out their mistress's will without question; puppets without strings, but puppets nonetheless.

As Mellinara's attempt at teleportation failed and she began to scream, Alpthis smiled, watched, and casually retrieved his bag of candy.


****​


----------



## Clueless

Yeah, I think most of my issue with that was on the tactical side: "Guys. At least wear masks and something to counter divination next time. Or you know - follow up the chain for intel on the primary buyer??" I learned well from my Shadowrun days.


----------



## Tsuga C

How does one survive to successfully climb the ladder of station in such a wretchedly back-stabby hierarchy? Unadulterated evil, indeed.


----------



## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> How does one survive to successfully climb the ladder of station in such a wretchedly back-stabby hierarchy? Unadulterated evil, indeed.




Unlike in the real world where you have a balance of people retiring from the upper ranks to make room for new people, with a relatively constant influx of entry level position hirings, for the 'loths, nobody retires of their own accord and they're perpetually creating a never-ending supply of mezzoloths that push their way up the ladder by promotion. Backstabbing, bribery, and every form of institutional corruption is the name of the game 

The current state of affairs however is the largest amount of flux within the 'loth ranks since, well, ever.


----------



## Shemeska

The sense of timeless drifting and sudden, bitter cold that accompanied the transition between Sigil and the far end of its innumerable portals was there and then gone in the space of a heartbeat. The group stepped from a doorway in the Lower Ward only a few blocks distant from 'The Friendly Fiend' into the mouth of a cave roughly a mile Hinterward of Plague-Mort itself, bathed in flickering red and yellow light while the portal remained open. Smelling faintly of mineral-rich water dripping through the rock and the scattered ranks of mushrooms sprouting from the walls at uneven intervals, the floor was littered with the bones of rodents, other small animals, and several corpses picked clean by natural predators or fiends.

"Lovely place." Fyrehowl whined as her nose painted a picture of the previous few months of routine violence that marked the most obvious egress -out- of the abyssal gate-town.

"It only gets better as we get closer to the Abyss I'm sure." Tristol remarked as he peered down at the bones.

"You know, that's one place that I can't say that I've been." Toras shook his head as he looked at the bones that carpeted the ground. "I'm not in any particular rush either. Carceri and Pandemonium are about as close as I care to ever get if I can help it."

Eyes glowing in the dim light, tail flitting and fretting like a disapproving relative, Nisha frowned. "Hey now, the Abyss has issues, but as the only vaguely theoretically tanar'ri-blooded person in the room... err... cave thing, I have to defend it just a little bit."

Tristol gave her a hug, "You're the best thing to ever be associated -however distant- with the Abyss. You're much better than Plague-Mort."

"You're all good Nisha." Florian patted her on the shoulder, "What I don't get though is why the Illuminated decide to set up kip in Plague-Mort of all places?"

They talked as they moved away from the closing portal and out towards the blasted landscape that guarded the approach to the gatetown.

"Nobody cares who rules, so long as the portal remains open." Clueless shrugged. "Anywhere else you have to deal with entrenched and loyal groups already in power, a population that cares for the status quo, all that fun stuff. It's actually a smart thing to stake their claim here, especially if it's transitory."

"You think they want to move into Sigil once they're established here?" Toras mused, considering the group's pretensions of being a true faction.

"That's exactly what I'd figure." Clueless motioned to the landscape in view as they emerged from the cave. "This place isn't the sort of place I'd care to stay. I suspect they're of the same mind."

The broken landscape was littered with rubble and ruined walls, all the detritus of a thousand former gate-towns devoured by the Abyss piecemeal since time immemorial or abandoned by the population when the portal shifted location of its own cruel, fickle accord. A path worn into the ground by the passage of feet and wheels stretched out several miles ahead, winding through the barrens.

At first it was only a few scattered piles of bleached bones and occasionally a "fresh" corpse only a week or so bled out on the ruddy soil. Once the ruins and hills yielded an open view to Plague-Mort itself though, the broken piles of brick and stone yielded to a landscape of corpses and scavengers, both of the avian variety and isolated humans picking through the dead for anything of value.

The siege of the gatetown, the so-called "Tradegate of the Lower Planes" had been bloodless as far as an Abyssal coup was concerned, but before the Illuminated had risen up from within, Archlector Yamoril had vainly sent an army of mercenaries and his own citizens out into the field against the first wave of fiends. The bodies of the dead littered the landscape of the town and great flocks of vultures, ravens, and sympathetics darkened the skies as they circles and waited for larger, earthbound carrion-eaters to retreat, even now weeks after the slaughter.

"Welcome to Plague-Mort, the happiest place in the Outlands..." Florian's voice dripped sarcasm. "As evidenced by the field of corpses littering the approach to the city."

"Pay baatezu to fight and they fight but that's it." Toras shook his head. "Cleaning up after the fact apparently wasn't in their contract."

The gatetown's walls were high and oppressive, a testimony to the previous Archlector's brutal dance of merciless oppression and manic desire to build up the city into a citadel capable of overshadowing and eventually overtaking Broken reach when he eventually slide the city into the Abyss as a formality. Unlike during Byrri Yarmoril's rule, the current approach to the city wasn't subject to sanctioned gangs that "taxed" those approaching the city in greedy, haphazard fashion. In fact, it almost seemed ordered and peaceful, with a single contingent of guards at the open gate on the main approach, and colored flags flying above the adjacent towers, all bearing the symbol of the Illuminated.

"Nisha, what are you doing?" Florian glanced over at the Xaositect as the tiefling nibbled on something wrapped in wax paper, occasionally giggling as she did so, largely oblivious to the impressive vista before them.

"Hrmph?" Nisha looked up at the cleric, a smear of chocolate on her cheek. "Want some?" Talking with her mouth full, she held up a miniature, dark chocolate Factol Sarin, modeled after the late Harmonium Factol, assassinated in the opening days of the Faction War.

"Akin is selling candy now?" Fyrehowl tilted her head to the side, questioning. "That's why you had us make a detour to his shop before hitting the portal here? Not spell components or a wand or something else, but candy?"

The Xaositect nodded with a smile, just before she munched on the iconic Hardhead's left arm. "I also got a white chocolate Factol Zanzibar. It even came with a peppermint hourglass lodged in his head!"

Fyrehowl glanced sidelong at Nisha, "I'll try some of the chocolate Factol Sarin."

"Sigil, the lovely city where a smiling yugoloth sells candy for a tanar'ri blooded tiefling to share with a lupinal." Florian laughed as Nisha handed over some of the candy to Fyrehowl and then to Tristol and Clueless in turn. Apparently the Friendly Fiend had a surprisingly adept hand with sweets.

Chocolate-nomming tiefling ignoring it all aside, as they drew close to the city, they saw both its history and more subtly how the change in rule had impacted its appearance. The walls of Plague-Mort were an elaborate affair of flying buttresses, carved screaming faces, and ornamental blades clearly modeled on the same general style of stylized architecture as Sigil's. While the ruling forces of the gatetown had seen a change and subsequent purge of their supporters, the only visible difference in their passing was a change in the flags that flew from the unevenly spaced towers and that hung from the gates.

"At least it's a pretty flag." Fyrehowl had to give the yellow and orange banner credit for decent design. At the very least, the Illuminated had to be given credit for having thought out the details of their rule well prior to actually seizing power. Very little seemed to have been accomplished in a half-assed manner or a spur-of-the-moment decision.

Off to the side, Nisha continued to steadily devour chocolate Factol Sarin, now making voices for the late factol as she did so, "Noooo... not my other arm you dumb chaos person you! Noooooo! You'll face the justice of law and order! Ack not my shoulder! Noooo..."

"I suspect a few days ago they had corpses hanging from the gates." Clueless pointed to faded, rust-red smudges along the walls and clustered at the top of the gate. "They made their point to the populace, but keep them there and it starts to hurt trade."

Nisha giggled madly, joined shortly thereafter by Tristol joining in to ruffle her hair as his face beamed with the bright-eyed smile of a man in love.

"What does Plague-Mort even trade in the first place?" Florian asked.

"Tanar'ri?" Tristol chuckled and gave a shrug.

Collectively they shrugged and shook their heads in the absence of an answer. Clearly though, the city had grown fat on commerce to and from the Abyss over the past century, and the Illuminated seemed keen to do nothing to dissuade that trade. In fact they appeared eager to encourage it to their own benefit.

"Well, whatever they're trading, however they're intending to rule, and for what end, they're doing pretty well so far though." Clueless took note of the training and discipline clear in the gate guards' stance, as well as the quality of their weapons and armor.

"Why do you say that?" Tristol asked as Nisha licked an errant bit of chocolate from his nose.

"Simple," Clueless remarked, "Because Red Shroud hasn't marched an army from Broken Reach on the other side of the portal to the Abyss and butchered or enslaved every living thing in sight."

"Someone knows how to handle infernal politics like a master of the trade." Florian raised her eyebrows in respect. "Because otherwise there's no way that you'd get away with marching a Baatezu army to the gates of the city without risking the Abyss itself taking notice."

"The Abyss didn't take note, because the Hag Countess's army never stepped one diabolic foot in the city." The explanation came not from within the party, but from one of the guards standing at the gate. "We made very sure of that."

Towering even above Toras, Koradus inclined his horned head towards the group. The half-elemental minotaur was engulfed in a flickering halo of flames that licked the air from every portion of his flesh not covered by the elaborate red and orange platemail that he wore. Effortlessly cradled in his arms, a gleaming halberd stood balanced with the implication of a man eminently skilled in its use.

"Wow!" Toras muttered under his breath. "Self-cooking beef."

Florian elbowed the half-celestial even as Nisha giggled and Clueless and Fyrehowl quickly tried to stifled any laughter of their own.

The other guards at the gate were already occupied with a number of merchants and their horse-drawn carts loaded with all manner of trade goods, seemingly eager to profit in the immediate economic imbalance of the recently lifted siege. Only the minotaur, the captain of the city watch and factor of the Illuminated, remained free to see to the entry of the newest party to approach the gate.

"May I ask what your business is within Plague-Mort?" Koradus still hadn't moved, either his feet or his halberd, nor responded to Toras's joke, though his ears had swiveled forward to hear it. "If you're hoping for mercenary work, I'm afraid that our use for your kind is a week elapsed. On the other hand, if you're here to inquire about the Illuminated, you are welcome to be judged fit to join with the Elect. It is not my choice of course, and I can guarantee nothing."

"We're here by invitation actually." Toras held up the letter sent by the Illuminated factol. "Apparently your factol wants to meet with us."

Immediately Koradus's eyes subtly narrowed and he focused on Toras and next to him, Florian, precisely as a swordsman would measure an opponent before a duel. He'd heard of two people killing several Illuminated factioneers in Sigil, albeit members abusing their power and flaunting their destined status.

"Then consider yourselves lucky my friends." Koradus gave a short, respectful bow. "Factol Marvent is a great man, and we shine in his bright shadow. If he wishes to meet with you, I would not think of questioning your right to be here. Allow me then to escort you to his side."

"Much appreciated." Florian smiled and allowed the minotaur to lead them all past the other guards and into Plague-Mort.

The gatetown was split into four districts. The central portion of the city was one such distinct, and outside of its confines the remaining portions were more or less evening divided. The gate to the Abyss existed as part of the wall that divided the innermost quarter from the others, and in truth, very few people ever saw the gatetown's core, inclusive of both visitors and natives alike. That at least was the historical situation under the previous Archlector and all those before him. What the city looked like under its new leadership... that remained to be seen.

Moving by a clearly pre-planned route, Koradus led them through the gates and then quickly off of the major thoroughfares, passing through a maze of tangled streets that seemed built up without regards to any rationale sense of city planning. Rather, Plague-Mort obeyed the demands of ego when it came to each ruler of the gatetown tearing down whatever structures of the previous regime to replace them piecemeal with their own as it suited their aesthetics.

Eyes stared at them from windows and doorways, some of them dressed in the same colors as Koradus and clearly members of the new ruling order -a faction as it styled itself- and others in little more than rags or battered armor, the native population still adjusting to the change in rule. Plague-Mort's underclass seemed the least perturbed by the change in the ruling political structure. For them at least for the time being, nothing had changed in their daily lives.

X lead them through the gatetown's Residential Quarter, conveniently and purposefully avoiding the streets that would have crossed over into the Temple Quarter. Under Archlector Yarmoril, only Outlands gods were officially allowed a place for temples or shrines, but in practice the farcical rule ignored that the largest temples and the majority of the temples were those of Abyssal powers and even a myriad of demon lords. That was no longer the case, and the Illuminated were keen to avoid this being common knowledge until they finished the second of their purges.

Four blocks over, the temples of several Abyssal powers lay in smoldering ruins, their clergy dead and stripped of identifying symbols, distributed outside the city for the ravens to feast. There would be no rivals to the Illuminated within the city walls, and there would be no chance of the newly won city ever sliding into the Abyss. A certain amount of bloodthirsty rites would be ignored, but never anything reaching a critical mass of worshipers.

Eventually the hovels and tenements of the Residential Quarter -colloquially known as the "Slums"- grew less offensive to the eyes of any architect or engineer and then they ended altogether at the wide, open ring of a plaza that demarcated the border of the three other quarters of the city with the central area known simply as The Keep.

A city within a city, the black granite walls of the Keep rose two hundred feet up, taller than the gatetown's exterior walls so recently besieged from without. Not a true defensive wall, it was more an ideological one, serving to separate the interior courtyard with its merchants' fairs, public executions, and the homes of the city's most powerful -including the Palace of the Archlector- from the common residents of the city whose blood fed the parasites at the city's core, sometimes literally more so than just in metaphor. Though the Archlector was dead, the walls remained and for the moment so did the sense of separation they imposed of the high over the low, rich over poor, Elect over not.

"And there's the portal." Fyrehowl shivered as the portal's light washed out over the courtyard.

Thirty yards away, set within an archway in the wall, framed in a massive outgrowth of tangled razorvine, stood the gatetown's portal to the Abyss.

"It's pretty, kinda sorta," Nisha said as she balled up the wax paper that had wrapped her now finished. "In a doorway to certain horrific doom sort of way."

"More of the latter than the former." Koradus said as they passed within full view of the gaping, perpetually open wound in reality. 

Beyond the rippling meniscus of adjacent realities, the Plane of Infinite Portals stretched out forever beneath the angry light of a bloody sky and ground soaked through with the same color and paved with bones and souls. Visible in the distance, more than one army of fiends could be seen either in transit across the layer, or in the midst of conflict with an opposing force of fiends.

"Whatever it looks like from here, that's not where it takes you." Koradus smirked. "Not that many people will tell you if you don't already know before you take the plunge through."

"Where does it actually go?" Florian raised an eyebrow. "I couldn't think it would be anywhere worse than that."

"Better or worse is an open question I suppose. It goes to a holding area below Broken Reach." Koradus frowned, an element of distaste and intimate familiarity with the topic playing across his features. "Malcanthet's daughter makes sure that anyone using the portal from this side pays her her cut in transit. Many don't find out about it until they're already on the other side. Those unable to pay end up working off their debts if they're lucky, having their property seized, or just sold off to the highest bidder be it tanar'ri or even 'loths doing the buying. Fiends..."

"No love lost for them?" Fyrehowl picked at the minotaur's commentary, hoping to measure him better, and by extension to measure his sect-come-faction.

"They're part of reality." Koradus shrugged as they approached the Palace of the Archlector, "Like the weather, it's something you don't have to like or even appreciate to know that you have to deal with it, even when it gets messy. Thankfully I don't have to be the one dealing with them unless it's on the end of a blade. I served in a mercenary company in the Blood War for a decade, mostly on Othrys and some time in Acheron; I've seen enough fiends for a lifetime."

The Palace seemed out of place in the gatetown that they'd seen up to that point. Far from being like the Keep's granite walls, the Palace wasn't imposing in the sense of fear, rather it was elaborate to the point of pomposity. Elegant spires glazed in silver, walls covered with intricate mosaics of green steel and gold, columns of pink and blue-green marble, and everywhere the same spikes and ornamental blades as the greatest mansions of Sigil's golden lords.

"There's only so much I can say about the Archlector's taste." Koradus snorted. "Lot of good his obnoxious display of wealth got him in the end when he ended up hanging from the gate to rot. Power doesn't need to show off. It doesn't need external validation."

"So what can you tell us about your Factol?" Tristol asked as they neared the doors of the Palace.

"He's a great man," Koradus answered with a pause, as if he were momentarily lost in a memory. His expression carried with it the dreamy, absolute conviction of a man saved from something by virtue of a religious experience. "But he doesn't need me to promote him with stories or boasts. Like I said before, power doesn't need to show off. He doesn't."

The great brass and green-steel doors of the Palace stood ajar, held open by adamantine chains and attended by only a pair of guards to either side. There was no sense that to intrude would invite death, no sense of the separation that the great Keep walls imposed upon the populace. Either the Faction was so self-assured of their own safety to the point of self-delusion, or their ruling figures genuinely felt no fear, and felt no fear for good reasons.

"Welcome to the palace of the Archlector, faction headquarters of the Illuminated." Koradus opened the doors and stepped to the side. "Factol Marvent will speak with you inside. When you are ready to depart, I will escort you out."

"Wait," Clueless looked at the minotaur. "You're not coming in with us?"

Koradus shook his head, "No need."

"How will we find the Factol?" Florian shot an incredulous look. "It's a big palace."

"He'll find you." Koradus shrugged as if the thought of them wandering about aimlessly within wasn't a concern.

"Oh come on," Toras frowned at the minotaur and then the other guards, "I don't have a clue what he looks like. How will I know it's him?"

"You'll know." Again, the look of awe passed over Koradus's face.

"What do you mean, we'll know?" Toras held his hands up in exasperation, "I don't even know what species he is."

Koradus locked eyes with the half-celestial, "I've looked a balor in the eyes beneath the mocking stars of Othrys. I was terrified and I fully expected to die as it roared to the fifty thousand fiends under its command. I knew fear in that moment, but I was never awed in another being's presence before I met Factol Marvent. When I say that you'll know him when you meet him, I'm quite serious."


****​

Without escort and left to their own devices, they proceeded through the doors of the palace, hoping to find the Illuminated factol within. Unsure of what he looked like, where he would be within the sprawling, baroque confines of the former Palace of the Archlector, or if they weren't simply walking into a trap, they went as slowly as possible.

The walls were adorned with more mosaics panels where they weren't simply marble shot through with veins of precious metals, all produced by the labor of the exploited. Yarmoril had been a cruel, fiend of a man, but at least he had superficial taste, though his passing in recent days was still subtly visible on those very same walls. Clearly the Illuminated had done their utmost to remove all traces of the violence that had erupted during their coup, but here and there, there remained traces to see if you knew what to look for: a sword cut in a marble column, a bit of soot arranged in a faint ring to mark where a fireball had erupted, and the bubbling, discolored blotch on a stone wall to mark the passage of a lightning bolt.

Only a minute later as they walked into the main gallery of the Palace, Clueless paused. Down at his belt, the dagger that he'd taken from the Cathedral of the Chained God moved and tugged at its confinement. He pushed it down and tightened the belt, watching as the blade vibrated in place like an eager child.

"The hell...?" The bladesinger frowned as he continued to fuss with the blade.

"Problem?" Tristol glanced down at the black glass dagger.

"The dagger from the Outlands." He answered, "Yeah, -that- one. It's trying to move on its own. I didn't think that it was magical though."

"It isn't..." Tristol stared at the blade, whispered a cantrip and confirmed his earlier assessment. "It's not magical at all."

"Then why the hell is it trying to move on its own?" Clueless frowned as he tugged at a leather cord keeping his belt pouch secured shut, intending to lash the blade in place.

Clueless never had the chance to carry through with the idea.

"Greetings!" An average, plain-looking man that might easily be confused with a faction functionary or servant called out to them all as he stepped out from a stairwell. "Allow me to introduce myself and welcome you to Plague-Mort. My people..."

As Green Marvent of the Illuminated stepped into view, the obsidian blade tugging at Clueless's belt burst free of its constraints and flung itself through the air, aiming directly for the man's chest.

"Oh sh*t!" Clueless stumbled forward, grasping for the blade a second after it shot forward, hopelessly out of reach.

Marvent blinked and stepped back as the dagger used to sacrifice the divine patron of the tiere hurtled towards him, whistling as it did. Just as abruptly as the blade had acted of its own accord, the factol held up his right hand and plucked it out of the air with a nearly whimsical smile. More concerned with the dagger than with his guests, he cradled the still dancing blade in both hands, turning it over and examining it with awkward, startled curiosity. 

Holding the blade firmly in his hands to keep it still, he looked up at the bladesinger. "That's not quite the entrance that I had planned..."

"Woah woah woah!" Toras shouted as he glared at Clueless and then much more apologetically at Marvent, "We didn't come here to try and kill you!"

Nisha cringed emphatically, holding her hands over her head, "Please don't throw us in a dungeon!"

No guards were immediately forthcoming, not even at the sounds of shouting. Marvent chuckled when several long moments later two guards did peer in. He dismissed them with a half-hearted wave, still holding the dagger tightly.

Clueless stepped forward with this arms out, palms up, eyes wide with shock, "I'm so so sorry, I don't know what just happened."

Marvent stared at the blade for a moment more before pinching it between two fingers and holding it out. Offering the cold, black glass handle first, he smiled at Clueless. "You've a dangerous thing here. It's an artifact if you didn't know that already." He traced his fingers over the cold glass, running them along the grooves where he felt runes should have been but had never been cut. It screamed inchoate rage, a litany of invectives, a harrowing depth of loss and despair. Marvent clicked his tongue at the blade, "It's seen so much death and misery that now permeates its heart. It feels vengeance and hatred, though it doesn't seem to know why or for whom. It reeks of betrayal and despair, even though it never pierced the one it was originally crafted to kill."

Marvent frowned, seeming almost sad by the blade's presence, smiling again once Clueless took the dagger back.

"I don't know what just happened." The bladesinger hastily wrapped the blade in multiple layers of cloth before stuffing it into a bag of holding. "My apologies sir."

"No need for titles, be it sir or anything even larger or more put on. No need for apologies either." Marvent smiled with a ludicrous sense of confidence and utter calm, despite what had just happened. "Simply know that you have a dangerous, powerful item there. Keep such a thing safe, because you may one day need it."

Having fully recovered from the accidental assassination attempt that the Factol of the Illuminated didn't seem so much as even rattled by, the others gathered around the man. Like his own faction members, despite his plain appearance and lack of ornamentation or physical presence, they felt his presence nonetheless. As he spoke, his blue eyes seemed all the more piercing, his voice all the more rich, warm, and calming. It was all like sitting before the greatest bard ever to walk the planes, but Marvent wasn't playing an instrument, nor was there any evidence of spellcasting as far as Tristol perceived.

"Well," Toras held up the letter of apology that Marvent had sent after he and Florian had killed a half-dozen of the man's faction members, "We received your letter. What all did you want to meet with us about, and what about me specifically?"

"Toras my son, you have a brilliant path laid out before you, if only you would reach for it. There is so much that you could accomplish above and beyond the concerns that most people in this world consider." Marvent smiled warmly and folded his hands in front of him, looking more a priest speaking to a child on the cusp of adulthood than the ruler of a faction, self-declared or not. "You don't need me to be happy, to be wealthy, to have friends and loved ones and to keep those around you safe. You're a skilled man with a good heart. You have a skilled sword arm and the blood of angels runs through your veins. Not everyone has these qualities nor these gifts, and many who do, they spoil them on selfish vanities rather than reaching for something greater."

Toras eyed the factol skeptically, "That sounds like a pitch you've made to most of the people in your faction."

"In a way, yes." Green Marvent chuckled and inclined his head towards the warrior. "In the general sense that's what we're about. Taking what you are and reaching for something greater. You might see elements of the Signers, Godsmen, or Fated here, but people see what they want to see very often. What I do is guide people to find their potential, to find their greatness, and then share that with the world. We are destined for something greater, and I've seen that you are a part of it."

As Marvent focused on Toras, Tristol moved to the side and gazed curiously at the self-titled Factol, activating the most common of divinations without words or motion. Where he expected to see the man wearing a wealth of magical items, protective talismans, contingencies, and even a lurking suspicion that he wasn't a human at all... what Tristol saw wasn't what he expected, nor was it anything that he genuinely understood.

Marvent literally radiated a magical aura that was nearly blinding in its potency, but under magical divination, he himself vanished in all but outline, existing as a hollow void within the glow itself. Tristol blinked against the potency of the magic, but also in abject confusion. He'd never seen anything remotely close to what he was now staring at, with his friends in conversation with the otherwise seemingly normal man who looked like nothing less than what an ambulatory magical artifact might appear as.

_'What are you?'_ Tristol thought to himself as he continued to stare.

"I see the flow of future events," Marvent gave a self-effacing shrug. "It isn't the same as a diviner obtaining a specific event and specific details, but more of an intuitive grasp of how timelines flow, entwine, and interact. I can see potential, and I see it here in each of you."

"But you already knew that didn't you?" Nisha quipped with a whisper, followed by a giggle.

"As a matter of fact yes Nisha, I did." Marvent leaned to the side and peered at the tiefling with a smile that she returned with a slight blush, realizing that she'd never given him her name. "Don't get me wrong, I can't see the entire future clear as day. I'm not a Power of foresight or wisdom, but I can do my best to alter the flow of things for the better."

"So why in specific did you ask for us, all of us, to be here today?" Toras asked, "Was all of this planned out to bring us here?"

"I wanted to offer an apology for what some of my people did in Sigil." Marvent frowned and sighed. "I can't see everything, not even close to it. Obviously I didn't see what abuses that they'd commit, thinking themselves some sort of Elect and free of ethics or consequences. But when you stopped them, that's when I saw something about you. I also know something that you can do. Specifically you."

"Apology accepted." Toras offered his hand, joined next by Florian. Marvent gave a half bow and shook their hands firmly.

"In taking Plague-Mort, we employed mercenaries working under the banner of the Hag Countess. For a moment I saw something tangent to this all, and something that the six of you can take action upon, given the things that you've already done, people you've met, and creatures that you've interacted with and survived."

Marvent reached into the inner pocket of his robe and produced a folded parchment. "This map describes the route from Sigil to Baator's 7th layer of Maladomini. There in two days time, a mortal elf will be the guest of Duke Melikaros the Pale Winged, a minor baatezu noble in the court of Baalzebul. For the moment he is evil and largely inconsequential. But this meeting will put him on the path of future events wherein he will cause the future deaths of millions of innocents on his home world on the prime material plane. After this window of opportunity, he may well be lost to us."

"You want us to kill him?" Toras asked rhetorically, a shadow of doubt crossing his features.

Marvent nodded, "He cannot be allowed to live to do what he is otherwise destined for. I've seen what will happen when he looses the Blood War onto his world, turning a blue and green sphere in the darkness into a dead husk of ash and cinders."

The half-celestial looked down and his forehead creased with doubt, "I'm not sure how I feel about assassinating someone."

"I can't and won't force you into this. You ended the suffering of dozens when you killed twelve people in an ambush in Sigil. You didn't know their names or their associations, but you killed them nonetheless thinking you were doing good in the long run. This is one man and you would prevent the suffering of untold millions from ever happening." Marvent put the map into Toras's hand. "The choice is yours and you're free to go unimpeded. I wish you well on your journey back to Sigil. I know that you'll be back here though. That I've seen. Neither men, nor fiends, nor howling dreams will bar that potential future from solidifying into truth."

Meaningless words to the others, Tristol and Fyrehowl immediately stared at one another as Marvent alluded to the dreams that they'd both been having. It might have simply been poetic license, but the man -if that's what he was- knew things that he couldn't possibly know. Perhaps he was right about a single man in Baator, and what that man might do in the future.

"We'll think about it." Florian said with a measured tone, followed by a nervous swallow, "It's a lot to take in, and it's a lot to ask of us when we've only just met you."

"You have two, perhaps three days in total before this opportunity is lost. Please make your decision as swiftly as you can." Marvent smiled at each of them in turn, and each of them felt virtually transparent as he gazed into their eyes. For that short moment, they each felt paradoxically empowered and diminished under his gaze. "It was my pleasure meeting you all, but if you'll pardon me, I have other duties to attend to. Such is the busy life of running a faction. Tell next time we meet, be well."

Marvent smiled one last time and left by the stairwell he'd first come through, leaving the party behind to discuss things amongst themselves. He ascended the stairs and then stood quietly on a balcony, just out of view from below, watching them as they departed. He stood there for only a moment alone and by himself before Koradus opened an adjacent door and approached with a deft, almost automatic bow. Like he'd done with the party moments before, he brushed off the bow with a gesture as something unnecessary.

"Do you wish to have them followed Factol?"

"No need to do so." The blue of his eyes sparkled as he turned to look at the minotaur. "They've already made up their mind, more or less; the half-celestial has at least. The others have questions, but they'll go along with him simply to make sure he doesn't fall prey to a pack of devils. Some are curious and they want to see what happens. Things will happen. Timelines will shift and entwine. Pieces of a puzzle will fall into place. Destiny approaches my friend; for them, for me, for you, for all of us."


****​

The walk from Plague-Mort back to the gate to Sigil was uneventful, but filled with discussion of both Marvent's proposal and about just who or what the Illuminated Factol was.

"I don't think he's human." Tristol bluntly stated and a shrug and a slight bottlebrush of his tail. "When you were talking to him, I looked at him under a number of divination spells and well... it was bizarre to say the least."

"What did you see?" Fyrehowl's tail bristled as well, both from Tristol's statement and from the factol's casual mention of the howler hunting through Tristol and her dreams.

"There was an almost blinding level of magic radiating from him, but absolutely nothing on him. It looked as if he wasn't there at all, just an outline that was as magic dead as an artifact; and I've looked at an artifact today and it wasn't nearly as unnerving and paradoxical as it was just looking at him." The aasimar shivered slightly. "I'm not scared; I'm just not used to being utterly unable to give an answer as to what I'm even looking at."

"What is he then?" Clueless asked, unconsciously glancing down at the dagger at his belt that had once killed a god.

"Mystra only knows..." Tristol shrugged with a genuine moment of confusion. "Maybe he's a proxy, maybe he's the avatar of an actual Power, something. But he's not just some human with a knack of influencing people, some magic, and some political saavy to make an upstart Faction."

"Whatever he is," Toras shrugged, "I think we should at the very least go to Baator and see if there's some substance to what he mentioned."

"You think he's telling the truth?" Florian asked, "He had some pretty extreme claims for us to accept at just face value."

"I do." Toras inhaled and mulled over his words, "I can't say exactly why I trust him, but I do. The self-immolating minotaur was right in what he talked about with just being around their factol."

"Mind if I go with you?" Clueless strummed his fingers on Razor's hilt. "I haven't had enough practice with this for a while."

"Very appreciated if you would. I can't say that I want to walk into a noble baatezu's mansion and kill his dinner guests with at least someone at my back." Toras glanced at the others. "Anyone else?"

"I'm not letting you go alone." Florian clenched one fist. "I'm absolutely up for some righteous justice."

Fyrehowl's ears went back as she nodded, baring fangs, "I'm rather fed up with fiends at the moment, but I'm in. I can't let the three of you have all the fun."

"Is there candy involved?" Nisha's tail curled into the shape of a question mark, with the bell at her tail-tip forming the dot at the bottom rather well. "Or at least a Tristol involved?"

"I'm going if you're going." Tristol smiled and curled his tail around the tiefling's.

And that was that, decided just before they stepped through the portal back to Sigil and into the oddly friendly, welcoming grey and verdigris colored gloom of the City of Doors. Collectively they agreed that they would spend one last night in Sigil, enjoying dinner and a well deserved rest. They'd enjoy a warm breakfast in the morning, and then venture off to a portal to Baator's 7th layer and whatever there they might find in the gothic hellscape of an infernal duke's estate in Grenpoli.


****​


----------



## almost13

great to see you back in action shemmy! really love how the encounter with green marvent starts with a new layer of mystery right away


----------



## Shemeska

almost13 said:


> great to see you back in action shemmy! really love how the encounter with green marvent starts with a new layer of mystery right away




I've been working on this a lot lately. Expect another update today or tomorrow (with some serious additions of characters and layers of mystery/plot).


----------



## Shemeska

The most stable route to Grenpoli led via the permanent gate from Ribcage to Avernus. From there, through the great door adjacent to Tiamat's domain, the route followed a tightly regulated and brutally defended path designed to funnel the armies of Baator out and prevent the entry of those tanar'ri armies that dreamed of invading the 9 Hells. For single travelers or smaller groups however, those rarer and much more fickle portals in Sigil allowed for a complete circumvention of the conventional routes.

Adjacent to the Park of the Infernal and Divine, formed by the bounded space of an iron garden lattice and a breed of violet, hell-bred roses, one such portal stood wide and welcoming with a pale blue glow and the faintest smell of perfume and hot steel.

"And you're absolutely sure that you want to go to Grenpoli?" Skalliska stood next to the portal with a complex silver hoop in one hand and a triad of mewling kobold infants in the other. The ring was inscribed with the names of various planes and dangled with multiple metallic rods and crystalline lenses. A skilled portal-hunter could use them in combination to both find portals, determine their destinations and keys, and -at least outside of Sigil- temporarily force them open or closed.

The kobold gate-crasher had been largely absent from their lives ever since laying her clutch. Today however she'd taken a rare trip out into the city to help her former party members find a safer route into Grenpoli the so-called City of Diplomacy.

"So let me get this straight," Skalliska adjusted her hat to put its wide, ornamented brim outside of the range of one of her children's teeth. "You're going to Maladomini, to the city of Grenpoli, to visit the court of an infernal Duke to possibly kill one of his dinner guests because a person you just met in Plague-Mort of all places, asked you to trust him and do this, because the soon-to-be-corpse might do something terrible in the future?"

Silence fell over them all and the kobold raised one scaled brow-ridge to emphasize her incredulity.

"It's complicated." Florian protested, "You really had to be there. He was rather convincing to say the least."

Toras coughed, "Besides, we didn't commit to anything. We're going there sure. But if anything is off, we don't have to assassinate anyone if we're falling for a trap or anything of the sort."

Skalliska nodded, "Fair enough. Just watch yourself since it's Grenpoli. It has a reputation for leading mortals astray or just right into the service of the baatezu."

"I haven't actually been there before." Fyrehowl yawned, looking quite bleary eyed and exhausted. "What exactly should we expect in Grenpoli?"

"By reputation it's rather polite to mortals." Skalliska explained.

"-polite-" Toras provided air-quotes and a humorless, sarcastic chuckle.

"Compared to the rest of the layer, very much so." The kobold continued, "Sure it's all a creepy attempt to ensnare your souls and exert influence and control over people to serve in Baator's best interests out in the rest of the cosmos, but you won't find yourself attacked and enslaved just for walking around."

"So don't sign any contracts, try not to strike a conversation with a friendly erinyes or osyluth?"

"More or less. Just get in and get out." Skalliska nodded and went on to describe in detail the structure of the city, its history, and the route from the other side of the portal to the Duke's manor on the city's outskirts.

As the gate-crasher provided more information that might be of use to them all for their descent into Hell, Fyrehowl and Tristol exchanged worried glances. Both of them looked as if they hadn't slept a wink of sleep overnight. Despite hours of rest, they were both exhausted and mentally distracted.

The previous night had been the same for them both. All was black and silent, and then accompanied by the twitching of their eyes beneath slumbering lids, the howler had crawled into their somnambulant minds. Gibbering, whispering, and promising things, all coherent meaning was lost to memory with the first light of morning.

Whatever the grinning, mad thing from Pandemonium desired from them, sleep and sanity were apparently far from the gifts that it offered in their dreams. As yet however, they were no closer to finding any answer. Even as they stepped through the portal towards Grenpoli and transitioned between Sigil and the Hells, they felt it there within their skulls, prowling within the black and hidden interstices of the mind.

_Do you hear the code?_


****​

The Gatehouse rose up within the heart of Sigil's Hive Ward, grim and fortresslike in appearance, looming atop a great rise in the landscape like the archetypal haunted castle. The great cage-like structure at its center bore the fantastic, bizarre hallmarks of a prison cell for a creature larger than the greatest of titans, and conspicuously missing any portcullis gate that might have once contained it. Whatever use and purpose it may have once filled however, for millennia the Gatehouse had served as a place of mercy and compassion, most recently by the Bleak Cabal.

The Bleakers no longer held any formal power and the faction had been formally disbanded. But the Bleakers remained in place nonetheless, serving food and tending the injuries and disease that ran through the poor and destitute of Sigil's poor and abandoned.

Beyond the ancient, forgotten prison-cell of the Gatehouse's earliest foundations, however rose one wing of the structure that few new much about nor cared about, and one which catered almost exclusively to the Bleakers and former Bleakers alike: the criminally and irretrievably insane wing. 

There the Bleakers applied a different sort of mercy by imprisoning their own members who had fallen into the spiraling madness that lurked just below the surface of their own brutal, existential view of a meaningless, absolutely free cosmos. Their view allowed for either perfect freedom or a tidal wave to consume and swallow the mind with the sheer uselessness of it all.

Many of the imprisoned Bleakers survived and recovered, returning to their former lives not necessarily healed but at peace with themselves and their fate. Others though starved to death before finding themselves, though their compatriots provided them food and water each day. A third and exclusive group comprised only a few individuals - those deemed too dangerous in their madness to ever be released and whose shattered sanity removed any chance of recovery.

Buried in the heart of the structure, now only recently fully repaired from the explosion that had ripped through the structure less than a year earlier, three individuals sat within the cells. The three were imprisoned but most certainly not forgotten. All very much alive, and most disturbingly, it was not for lack of trying for the opposite on the part of their former faction members.

"Can't you feel it Bladed Queen? Can't you feel the end approaching? 295 days, 7 hours, 13 minutes, and 5 seconds until the clock in the Waste strikes midnight. I feel it, dragging like a dying, spinning star on the fabric of reality. It echoes forward and backward in time, but not an absolute outcome, not yet. Not ever…"

Tollysalmon's eyes glowed a puissant, featureless white in the darkness of her cell. Erratically so, a burning white corona of energy formed around her head, forming crackling loops of electrical, psionic force before discharging and grounding itself upon the floor or ceiling with the sharp smell of ozone. Dirty and dressed only in rags, she'd been imprisoned there for nearly two centuries, not having touched a bite of food or a drop of water during that time. Yet still she remained, eerily distant, self-assured, and by all appearances utterly, utterly mad.

During her tenure she'd ignored the Bleakers for the most part, speaking only to herself, invisible -and possibly nonexistent- creatures only she perceived, and voices only she could hear. She'd never once spoken to the Gehreleth whose death had peeled back the ceilings and obliterated the walls, at least not until she spoke its name, its actual name, with a wry, gloating smile when she looked it in the eyes the moment that death arrived for it courtesy of the Cheshire Fiend.

She had however spoken with the other two former Bleaker factols who occupied their own cells opposite hers. Both were already mad and consumed by their own flavors of existential grief and misery before they'd been forced from their positions and locked away. Years or decades of proximity to their githyanki predecessor had not by any measure improved their state.

Out of earshot of their terrified Bleaker caretakers, Tollysalmon stared, whispered, taught, and manipulated. Esmus had never possessed his own eerie psionic abilities prior to his incarceration, and while as of yet, Lhar had not manifested any similar powers, slowly his mind was bending and changing, all unlikely for the better.

Nine times since her imprisonment, githyanki warriors from Tu'narath had sought to capture her and drag her before the lich queen to have her soul devoured. Unable to do so, the next four attempts simply tried to kill her, but these attempts failed as well. Precisely what occurred during the attempts was unknown, as none of the assassins ever returned to tell the story of their failure, nor were any of their bodies ever found. Tu’narath ceased the attempts thereafter, and through it all, Tollysalmon remained in her cell, smiling in the darkness with the same eerie, supernatural self-assurance and contempt.

"Oh yes Bladed Queen, I feel your eyes upon me always. Never blinking, never speaking a word, nonetheless I know you've been watching over me for so very, very long. Perhaps you should have been paying attention to other threats." The githyanki chuckled and put her hands up in a display of indifference. "This assumes that you even care. Even if you don't, I in fact do. I wonder if that galls you, given what I want? The Oinoloth clearly has been working on his own designs for a very, very long time. Longer than most creatures can fathom. But of course, so have I. Longer than I can usually remember. Bitch..."

Tollysalmon snarled and the debris that littered the floor of her cell shifted and moved, orienting to the psionic wind from her mind like iron filings along the field lines of a magnetic field. For the briefest moment, the walls of the cell flickered and shifted from the inner light of hundreds of thousands of crystalline grains embedded into the stone: a coating of psi-crystal broken down into dust and painted there, invisible to anyone but her.

The cell returned to darkness except for the former factol's eyes, and there she brooded in silence. Only the soft, sporadic whimpering of Lhar across the hallway broke the still, until finally her successor spoke.

"A friend of my friends may be visiting us soon." Esmus whispered from his cell, a soft, barely discernible chuckle added to punctuate the statement. "Assuming that he survives whatever the baatezu have in store for him. I don't think he understands why he went to Maladomini in the first place."

"Alex, yes. The one that you’ve been sending dreams to." Tollysalmon looked up at the sound of Esmus's voice. "Maybe he'll come and tell us what his soon-to-be-companions are involved in. Things and places they visit have a tendency to hide themselves away."

"Such curious, interesting times." The human remarked, madness dancing in his eyes. "We so rarely have visitors, but you seem to draw them in like a tidal current. The important ones anyway."

"For longer than you can imagine." The githyanki sighed.

"Alex will be interesting to finally meet." Esmus tapped his fingers on his cell walls in a discordant rhythm. "He's powerful, if not at all subtle about it.”

“I doubt that he has any clue what he’s going to be involved in once he joins up with the others.” The githyanki’s voice was devoid of concern, “Sooner or later, he’s going to die you know.”

Esmus snorted, somewhere between a cough and a laugh, equally uncaring, “He doesn’t matter.”

In the darkness of her cell, Tollysalmon smiled a slender, transient yet malicious smirk, eyes glowing a cold, featureless white. "Neither do you puppet, neither do you…"


****​ 

Flames licked at the air like thousands of infernal tongues from the city's spires. Dancing in reflections and refractions through the glass of the gothic architecture of Maladomini, they shed a hard, red glow across the tower roof where Agrefaz stood at his post. The barbazu yawned and ran a hand through his beard, the wriggling, prehensile mass likewise scratching at the intruding limb.

The Duke was up to something. As it was, his star was rising in the court of the Lord of the 7th, and there was talk of him being elevated in position, possibly even granted additional holdings and responsibilities. But this material, these details of the past and speculation upon the future meant little for the Duke's sentry, save that he was likely to be more harshly disciplined for any minute lapse in order and the smallest violation of stricture. But, on the other hand, success by his master would likely trickle down to him and the others in the Duke's service. A word here, a word there, a favorable notation upon a report discretely filed with the clerks and bureaucrats of the Ministry of Promotions - these things would oil the gears of Hell's bureaucracy with something sweeter than honey on the tongue.

Agrefaz smiled at the thought of earning another elevation through the ranks, possibly to cornugon or erinyes. It wouldn't be his choice, but that of his commanders, those who already had passed through the flames of Phlegethos before him and knew the way and how best to re-forge him, to temper the steel of the soul.

The Duke's affairs were not his concern, but only speculation for his own future indeed. Yet for all his prideful hope, those vain aspirations were collectively something that would never come to pass if he was not watchful in his current duties atop the northwestern wall, adjacent to the vineyards in the second tier of the Duke's estate.

Security had been increased most recently, only in the past two days, but no reasons were forthcoming, at least not overtly. Rumors though had filtered down through the ranks, rumors of a powerful guest soon to grace the estate for a period of time, supposedly an ambassador of one of the Lords of the 9. The rumors of course did not speculate precisely which one, or under what auspices the representative would be there under, just that they would be an honored guest and nothing -absolutely nothing- was to be amiss during the duration of their stay.

Lost in his musings, Agrefaz idly swatted at one of the myriad of insects flitting about with hungry idiocy, drunken on the bloated black flowers that grew at the base of the Duke's vines. The air was especially thick with them tonight, perhaps he thought, the vineyard slaves had poured the blood of innocents upon the soil to fertilize this year's harvest.

Below the wall, the air veritably whirled with the passage of those same insects, hellish variants of the bees that pollinated mortal flowers. Normal and mundane, at least to the barbazu above them, there was nothing to differentiate them from the thousands of their kind spread out across each and every acre of the Duke's estate. 

Unnoticed by the baatezu above them, the insects began to congeal and melt away as they reached the walls of the estate. Seamlessly they merged with the shadows cast upon the ramparts by the flickering city lights, pooling and rising up towards the sentry like a wave of living shadow, perfectly camouflaged with its surroundings.

Agrefaz heard only the sudden and eerie cessation of the buzzing insects as he turned to look and then it was upon him. For all his hopes and aspirations about his future, his soul would never reach the lake of fire - only the fangs of something whose transfiguration was achieved two planes away.


****​ 

Precisely five minutes later and not a second after, Agrefaz would have met and switched positions on the ramparts with one of the other sentries. The infernal clockwork of the Duke's sentries was a well oiled machine, and despite the doom that had befallen the barbazu only minutes before, at the appointed time a door unlocked with the turning of an iron key and the falling of heavy, magically reinforced tumblers.

Prepared for a twelve hour stint on this small portion of the eastern ramparts, the osyluth Celatszu stepped out of the manor and raised his glaive up to the dancing lights visible across the Grenpoli skyline.

"All hail to Duke Melikaros the Pale Winged, and eternal reign to Baalzebul the Lord of the..."

The osyluth's voice trailed off to a whisper as he beheld his barbazu compatriot. Agrefaz dangled in mid-air, suspended and impaled by a trio of barbed spikes, twitching and frothing at the mouth. The creature that held him aloft on its iridescent, oddly fluid claws was something from nightmare, itself bubbling up from a larger mass that flowed up and over the ramparts, its mass almost perfectly matching the color and texture of the stone below it, as well as the patterns of the ambient light.

An amalgamation of dozens of spiked tentacles, clawed hands and feet, and a trio of scorpion's tails, the entity changed its shape more so than moving to turn and look at the intruding baatezu. Its body rippled, gazing at him with a dozen newly formed eyes and a dozen smiles. The osyluth could barely form a cohesive thought in the moment beyond pure, stark horror, before the entity's mouths collectively intoned a single puissant word, splattering the ramparts with the lesser fiend's imploded remains.

Blood red eyes illuminated the darkness, shedding light on myriad rows of fangs as it glanced at the remains. The creature slipped out a pseudo-pod that became a hand. It extended a finger to touch the osyluth gore splashed upon the ramparts, slipping out a tongue from the mouth newly formed in its hand, tasting it, absorbing it, and morphologically usurping it. Within moments and all without a sound, an osyluth stepped through the door leading away from the ramparts, with nothing unique about it, save that it had never had that same unique shade of red to its eyes, sunken back into its skull.

Taba, the Infiltrator of the Planes, the sole surviving altraloth smiled and continued towards its prey.


****​


----------



## almost13

damn, i could have sworn...alright shemmy, if you need any indication on how intrigueing the story is, i just tried searching the whole huge storyhour pdf for other mentions of red eyes, hoping to catch a previous appearance by taba  (but excluding clueless' girlfriend and the obvious red eyes of vorkannis i sadly couldn't find anything)


----------



## Shemeska

almost13 said:


> damn, i could have sworn...alright shemmy, if you need any indication on how intrigueing the story is, i just tried searching the whole huge storyhour pdf for other mentions of red eyes, hoping to catch a previous appearance by taba  (but excluding clueless' girlfriend and the obvious red eyes of vorkannis i sadly couldn't find anything)




This is Taba's first appearance, and actually the first mention of Taba's name. In one of the recent updates, Vorkannis and Helekanalaith talk about her, but don't mention her name, just that she's still presumably alive and might potentially become a problem since she's the only altraloth still around (Xenghara may or may not be alive any more, since he was given to the Hag Countess). Let's just say that Taba absolutely loathes Vorkannis for slaughtering her kindred, and a perfect shapeshifter bent on revenge could be a problem.

Also, Alex who will soon be introduced was the replacement PC for Skalliska's player after that character was retired.


----------



## Tsuga C

Might anyone be able to supply a suitable link for further information regarding Taba the Atroloth?


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## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> Might anyone be able to supply a suitable link for further information regarding Taba the Atroloth?




Ed Bonny's 'Pox of the Planes' article in Dragon Annual #2. That's the one and only source of detail on Taba (and many of the other altraloths).


----------



## Shemeska

The black and towering Gothic spires of Maladomini soared overhead, darkening a sky already overcast with soot-laden storm clouds. Every structure seemed to be in a perpetual state of construction, elaboration, and elevation as each sought to compete with the next and all its fellow kindred in terms of obscene grandeur stretching ever skyward. Never satisfied and always seeking something better, eventually the lords of the Baalzebul's court would tire of the city itself and cast it aside, soon to join the abandoned, shattered ruins that littered the layer's hinterlands as a reflection of their master's insatiable, rapacious pursuit of self-defined perfection that vanished as soon as it drew within sight.

"Red and black," Toras gazed up at Grenpoli's skyline, "Always so welcoming."

For a baatezu city, the City of Diplomacy adhered more to the sensibilities of its mortal "guests" than not. The temperature was warm rather than scorching or freezing, and the smell of burning sulfur was at the faintest minimum below the myriad of flowers, trees, and deftly perfumed breezes conjured into being. Everything was intended to entice and to impress upon those same mortals the majesty and supremacy of Hell, but with a velvet glove and gentle tongue rather than at the end of a burning spear.

"I'm sure that they'd love for us to stay." Clueless watched as devils and mortals mixed and mingled in the streets as if there were no ulterior motives behind Grenpoli's academies and universities at all.

Across the street, a human and a gnome walked alongside their erinyes tutor and keeper. The angel-winged devil wore the finest silks and jewelry, with only her horns and eyes like burning coals showing her as something other than tyranny and punishment made flesh. Cradled in her arms like a toy dog, a larvae with a necklace of diamonds mewed and drooled, very likely the spirit of another mortal who had previously graced her side just like her two currently smiling companions.

"In one form or another..." Fyrehowl suppressed a growl as she eyed the hissing larvae and the dissonance it added to the entire scene.

Collectively frowning at the elegant yet unsettling, foreboding cityscape, the group moved on, following the map drawn for them by Green Marvent. The streets seemed to wind and coil like a great serpent, despite the map showing a perfectly ordered arrangement of linear boulevards and neat, even angles.

Grenpoli was not as it seemed. But while the City of Diplomacy thronged with the traffic of determined, starry-eyed mortals as much as it did erinyes leading the same at the end of a golden leash or columns of barbazu and osyluths, none of the city's intended ideological poison was remotely the focus of its present visitors.

The secluded, palatial manor of Duke Melikaros of Grenpoli lay on the city's eastern terminus, nestled on private grounds amidst neatly arranged vineyards and walled gardens bussing with hellish breeds of insects. Iron gates tipped with golden sculptures of tormented, screaming souls greeted the party as they approached.

"No welcoming party." Toras glanced at the gates and shrugged, "So much for this place being all welcoming and all accepting of mortals."

True enough, as they passed the open exterior gateway, no regiment of guards waited to turn them away, nor did any elegantly dressed, hellish dandy meet them with a poisoned smile. Outside of the buzzing drone of the garden's insects, the estate grounds were oddly, eerily silent.

"I'll admit," Florian snapped her fingers to punctuate the irony, "I'm disappointed that there isn't an immediate fight going on. These things usually work out that whoever we're here to kill, they know that we're on our way, they have legions of guards waiting for us."

"And they usually make a big speech before we fight." Fyrehowl smirked. "Usually being always when it comes to fiends it seems."

"So color me curious then as to why everything is peaceful and comfortable." Clueless grimaced with suspicion. "This is Baator, and we're walking unescorted onto the estate of a baatezu noble. This seems way too easy."

Nisha glanced up at a black marble statue of copulating fiends and frowned, sticking out her tongue. "Please tell me we haven't shown up on the occasion of the Duke's weekly orgy with assorted fiends and mortals, non-optional. Eww."

"That's..." Tristol shot a confused look at the tiefling, "... a really bizarre leap of logic there Nisha. Not that I should be surprised there."

"Logic? Me?" Nisha giggled and resumed making faces as an overly endowed cornugon. "Perish the thought."

"I'm perfectly alright with us not wandering into any sort of bizarre diabolic sex party as well." Fyrehowl grimaced at the mental images the words brought to mind.

"I might be ok with it..." Clueless smirked and muttered under his breath.

"Really?" Florian shot the bladesinger an incredulous look. "Seriously?"

"It's a good excuse to be wandering around the estate with less attention if they're occupied like that." Clueless put his hands up, trying to justify his comment as anything but puerile. "Besides, I date a Sensate. It'd hardly be the worst situation that I've been caught in."

Florian coughed, Nisha stuck out her tongue and contorted on one leg, and Clueless smirked as the others reacted before finally quenching any blushes and moving on.

Uncertain if they were walking into some hellish, gilded trap, the group proceeded down the path, past manicured thorn-bushes and obscene, baroque statues in the same vein as the one Nisha had noted. Halfway between the open exterior gates and the steps of the manor house's marble portico, Clueless paused, nearly stumbling mid-step.

"The hell?" Clueless glanced down at his ankle in irritation, frowning as he slowed down and shook his foot. Below his clothing, unseen for the moment, the gemstone lodged into his ankle pulsed and burned.


****​

The osyluth that was not an osyluth moved through the manor's interior, flowing from shadow to shadow like a sentient liquid more than a defined, static creature of blood and bone, even one wrought of metaphor made flesh. Only when the osyluth strode through a lit and open room or hallway was it there in the perfect guise of its last victim.

Past the first few intersections, it paused. The interior was layered like an onion into public, semi-public, and private sections, each with their own distinct patrols. Segmented in such a way, each only knew the full layout of their assigned portion of the estate. Despite having absorbed and tasted on the osyluth's memories and knowledge, that all ended as Taba stopped at a trio of gilded doors, uncertain.

With practiced ease, the leftmost door opened to reveal a black-scaled cornugon dressed in velvet and silk regalia, carrying a bejeweled, ceremonial halberd. A member of the inner contingent of guards, for all the appearance of pomp, the altraloth's eyes pierced through the illusions that cloaked the heavy armor and very real weapon it carried.

Neriakendrilla of the 17th Iron-Cloaks Legion of Grenpoli scowled at the osyluth standing before her, "Why are you out of position?"

"I was ordered to report here." Taba shrugged and gave an obeisant half-bow. "I did not question my order. Why would I?"

"What?" The cornugon narrowed her eyes as the notion of questioning the proper orders of authority was turned on her instead. "Who gave you this order?"

"Agrefaz told it to me, as relayed to him by Ruzalia." Having previously tasted the memories of its current guise and its barbazu comrade on the outer walls, Taba easily answered the question with two names that made sense within the estate's hierarchy so far as it regarded security protocols.

The cornugon nodded and cast out its mind, searching for the mental presence of two named fiends, intending to ask them directly. Searching for their presence, it found nothing. In the bloody remains splattered across the pavement stones on the outer ramparts and another incinerated to fine white powder only yards away, no spirit lingered to give a reply.

Taba smiled as a look of confused concern crossed the baatezu's face, her eyes burning red in the osyluth's stolen sockets. Neriakendrilla turned to her, prepared to ask a question, but Taba was swifter. The cornugon opened her mouth to speak and then died twitching, impaled through the throat by a wriggling tentacle in place of the osyluth's tongue that lanced out in the space of a single heartbeat.

The cornugon lifted off of the ground, convulsing in near perfect silence as the tentacle divided and expanded. Finding purchase on its bones and hefting it aloft, another newly grown length lodged in its vocal chords and snuffed the passage of air and scream, and finally another severed the brainstem and burrowed into its brain.

*"Where are the Duke's guests?"* The words pounded into the devil's brain, both telepathically and carried on the strangling physical caress of thousands of fimbriae branching off of the altraloth's weaponized tongue.

The cornugon's brain seized in a storm of rebellion against the burrowing intrusion that plucked at its fortress of memories, sifting through its experiences and knowledge, licking, tasting, and drinking to take what its killer required.

A flash of the interior of the mansion, the paths of the interior guard patrols, the faces of those visitors in the past twenty four hours. Taba smiled, locking eyes with its victim, watching the cornugon die in agony as she failed in her duty to protect her master's secrets.

Somehow, inexplicably, the devil's fury and blind devotion to her master forced her left hand up, pawing and grasping at the osyluth's shoulders and left arm. The act of resistance was but momentary as the altraloth's hip rippled, suddenly liquid, and a new appendage formed. Somewhere between a tentacle and prehensile tail, the newly formed limb lanced out with almost casual disdain, forming a bladelike tip in the heartbeat moment it took to reach the cornugon's hand. Severed at the wrist, the hand fell to the ground, limp and dead, and in just the same period of time so too did Taba's newly formed limb merge back seamlessly with its osyluth guise.

Another series of images flickered through the altraloth's mind as the cornugon's resistance broke and vanished. She saw the pathway there, the guards waiting in the main hall, and then finally, the face of her quarry.

"There you are." Eyes glittering like rubies, Taba smiled an osyluth's rictus grin, only ever so briefly with three more rows of razor teeth forming and then melding back into the flesh.


****​

Standing on the paved, mosaic decorated frontage between the entry path and the mansion's steps, Clueless reached down and gingerly lifted up his pant leg. There, lodged into his ankle as it always was, the Marauder's gemstone glittered with an inner light, only now it throbbed like a beating heart and shed a fierce radiance.

"F*cking razorvine crowned c*nt..." The bladesinger snarled and angrily spat, "That's not good."

Not since the King of the Crosstrade had voluntarily given up the artifact's controlling stone had the gem seemed active. Though still lodged within Clueless's ankle, it had been a curio in the intervening time, never before acting in any capacity as it originally had when the fiend had used him like a marionette. Somehow, inexplicably, the artifact was activated and functioning, though to what end and why remained unknown.

"You alright there?" Tristol asked, looking down at the half-fey's ankle gymnastics.

Next to the aasimar, Nisha did the same, but she also hopped forward on one hoof and giggled as she did so. She abruptly stopped as she saw the glowing gemstone, frowning as she realized the implications.

"I thought that she gave up any control over the gem in your ankle." Tristol looked back up at the bladesinger.

Clueless snarled, "She did."

"Then why is it glowing?" Fyrehowl gave a wary eye towards the half-fey and the yugoloth artifact lodged in his leg. She remembered all too well how the Marauder had used him like a puppet when she's had the opportunity before. "It hasn't ever done that before, not since she gave up control, has it?"

"No, it hasn't." Clueless sighed and once again wiggled his ankle, kicking the air in discomfort. "It never felt like this before either."

"Does it hurt at all?" Florian crouched down and looked at the gemstone. The surrounding flesh was completely normal, unchanged from how it had always been.

"Not exactly." Clueless fidgeted. "It's like holding your hand too close to a fire and feeling the heat, but it doesn't exactly feel like it's burning. Buzzing maybe? It's annoying as all hell."

"Well, we're in the right place for that then." Nisha quipped with a wry smirk, "So says the Xaositect."

"It's an artifact." Tristol shrugged, "I wish that I could tell you more, but there's not much that I can that you can't, what with with it being part of you more or less."

"Just..." Clueless sighed and put his pants leg down to cover the glowing gemstone, "...just watch me and make sure that I don't do anything I wouldn't normally do. I'm not sure what's going on with it, but I doubt that it's for no reason."

"Will do." Fyrehowl put a hand on his shoulder as the group proceeded up the front steps of the manor.

"I really feel like I should be casing the place." Nisha whispered as they came within a dozen feet of the door. "Because really, how often do you get this close to a baatezu noble's estate with the chance to really just outright burgle something. Is burgle a word? No guards, no explosive spell traps, no dire warnings of doom and despair. Graffitti! We can totally paint our names and lewd, pro-tanar'ri or pro-slaadi slogans all over the place! We can..."

Nisha's babbling stopped as a smiling Tristol lifted her tail, moved it around to her face, and deftly put the silver bell at its tip into her mouth, mid-sentence.

"Mmmph, mmmph! Mmmph." Nisha mumbled, giggling with a blush to her face. The point was made however as Toras stepped past her and up to the door itself.

"Everyone act calm." The half-celestial did his best to smile as they stood before the massive bronze door before them, decorated with silver inlay of screaming, damned souls, and silver handles, each sized for a pit fiend and little else smaller.

"I should be calm that we're not surrounded by a hundred, heavily armed barbazu." Fyrehowl's ears lay back against her head. "Except the creepy lack of even a single one of them is doing just the opposite."

Putting his hand to the door, Toras knocked.


****​

Blood spurted from the severed neck of one of a pair of cornugons as Taba's pinchers lifted it into the air and slowly moved down, severing the body in a crude act of impromptu vivisection. Silent except for a trio of smiles from mouths formed at various points on her perpetually shifting and adapting body, the altraloth was silent, communicating only through those smug, arrogant smiles of razorblade teeth.

The other cornugon would have screamed except for the barbed tentacle wrapped about his body that slowly, agonizingly constricted about his ribcage, depriving him of air and then breaking bones with dull cracks and the resulting spasms on the part of the dying fiend. Finally, when it opened its mouth to scream, the tentacle moved forward, relaxing its grip before forcing itself into his mouth and down his throat in a rush of blood and foaming spittle. The baatezu dangled in the air, bulging and contorting from the inside out like some obscene hand-puppet before the penetrating tentacle burst forth from its gut in a shower of pulped viscera.

Hoping that the death of its kindred would distract the yugoloth nightmare from whatever task it was there to complete, a tiefling burst from cover behind a marble statue of the Duke and his current, politically favored paramour. The butler scampered forward, hurling a serving tray and drinks in the opposite direction to buy him seconds in order to reach another door. He did not however take into consideration that the altraloth casually dismembering the Duke's guards was both already aware of him. Taba could smell him, could taste his fear, could feel his mind on the roaming engine of its own telepathy, and of course see him through the full-spectrum panorama from more than one set of eyes.

The tiefling died with a smile on his face as his clawed hands touched the handle of a door back to the servant's wing. All he perceived was a whistle as a newly formed tentacle lashed out from Taba's body, changing even as it made contact to sink a stinger, much like that of a great scorpion's into his flesh.

The butler's eyes went wide as the corrosive poison pulsed through his body, killing even as it paralyzed. Were it not for his fiendish blood, it likely would have liquefied his guts even before the stinger-tipped tentacle extruded into him like a living fishing hook and dragged him back towards the silent, smiling altraloth.

"You will do." Taba smiled as its midsection rippled and split open. Trailing thick ropes of mucus, a massive, lantern fish-like maw formed and opened to accept the tiefling's body.

Bones crunched and splintered as a trio of black, forked tongues licked at the pulped flesh as well as the butler's memories of the private wing of the estate and the non-tangible elements of its soul. With each horrific crunch and emphatic swallow, Taba's form shifted and altered until finally a perfect copy of the butler stood there in the center of the room, flanked by the dismembered corpses of two cornugons.

Smiling and stretching, accommodating the balance and feeling of its new flesh, the altraloth smiled as its eyes glittered like points of blood. Knowing exactly where its prey was housed, it gathered up the deceased butler's serving tray, whispered a phrase to repair and refill its wine glasses, and then stepped towards the exit as if nothing was amiss.

Abruptly mid-stride, there came a knock at the main entrance. Snarling, Taba turned and walked towards the door.


****​


----------



## Shemeska

Just so everyone is aware, updates to the storyhour are slow at the moment as I deal with a death in the immediate family. I've got material written that just needs to be polished a bit before going up here, but writing stuff involving fiends at the moment is a little bit much for me given the circumstances. So please, some good thoughts and well wishes, and once I'm back I'll start updating here again.


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## Band2

My condolences and I wish you well.  Take all the time you need.  Your loyal fans will always be here when you want to come back.


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## Shemeska

Alex sat in the ruddy darkness of his prison cell on the third level of a particularly secure and dour section of Duke Melikaros’ manor. Normally the place existed as less of a jail and more of a temporary holding cell for the torture of political prisoners prior to their being transferred into the tender caress of one or another infernal ministry. Alex however didn’t fall into the category of rival, tanar’ri agent, thief, or abandoned servitor of another petty baatezu noble. Defying those categorizations, and given the unique circumstances of his arrival in Maladomini, he’d languished in his cell for two weeks’ time already. Of course, it was less as a means of punishment for his transgressions, and more for the fact that the Duke’s security neither cared about him and simply didn’t know what to do with him.

Alex yawned and stretched, wriggling his fingers and going through the practiced motions of spellcasting to which he was exceedingly adept and of course had yet to actually practice in sight of his diabolic captors. Somewhere in his third decade of life, the human ran a hand through his fussy blond hair and turned his head towards the door of his cell and the faint noises now filtering up from elsewhere more distant.

“They’re fighting.” He remarked, brushing his hand over something that perched unseen upon his shoulder. “Quite a large number of them too. I suspect that’s who we’re here to meet.”

“Prisoner!” The grim visage of an osyluth gaoler leered into view and the cell bars rattled with the impact of its spear.

“Yes dear jailor of mine?” Alex smiled innocently. “Whatever might be amiss? I thought that I heard fighting down below.”

“None of your concern mortal whelp!” The osyluth snarled, pausing and glancing backwards away from his prisoner as the dull whump of an explosion echoed up from the same direction of the fighting.

“That sounded like the detonation of a lightning bolt through several rather unfortunate and impromptu lightning rods.” Alex mused matter-of-factly, much to the jailor’s chagrin. A moment later he wrinkled his nose. “Definitely lightning. You can smell the ozone just now.”

The sounds of combat grew closer and louder, and now the osyluth keened it head not to listen to the sounds of fighting, nor to Alex’s banter, but to the telepathic call of its commander. Its lipless mouth moved just enough to discern what its mind was saying in response, just before it vanished with the bright flicker of a teleport.

“Soon.” Alex quipped as he stood and brushed off his robes. He glanced around his cell, knowing that it would hopefully be the last time that he saw it. Oddly, he smirked, feeling a bizarre sense of regret at leaving it behind. The tight, Spartan confines reminded him so very much of the cells that he’d seen in his dreams. There’d been a wild-haired man named Esmus that had spoken with him while behind and beyond him, all manner of wild, fantastic beasts crawled in and out of focus. He knew them well of course. They’d been his friends for years now. They’d taught him so many magical secrets and shown him the true nature of the world.

Those dreams had led him there to Maladomini. He’d waltzed in and introduced himself to the Duke. That hadn’t gone very well and of course they’d hurled him into a prison cell for his efforts. All the better though, since they fed him and now here he was ready to witness the events that the dreams had shown him. On the heels of what was soon to happen, the others that Esmus had shown him would hopefully arrive on their own and then he’d join up with them. Six of them in all, they’d been a group of figures crisp, distinct, and familiar amid a swirling, screaming ocean of unformed madness.

Gripping his cell bars, further down the passageway, Alex watched barbazu guards leaving their posts and dashing towards the spiral stairwell leading towards the main gallery far below. Visible only to his eyes, his familiar, a seven eyed raven opened its beak, revealing a translucent tongue that briefly split into nine wriggling tentacles. Croaking its eagerness, its seven pupils divided like organelles impaled upon mitotic spindles before merging back to normal and all was as it should otherwise be.

“I think you’re right,” Alex stroked the raven’s head and nodded, "It's time for us to go."

He gestured to the darkened corners of the cell, a cell that held him in all honestly only so long as he desired confinement by the baatezu. The shadows grew thick and viscous, congealing and aggregating along the hard, perpendicular corners of the cell. There the geometry blurred and moved as something behind the angle pushed at the suddenly malleable space. Alex smiled and reached out to pet the head of the monstrous, translucent, vaguely canid head that emerged and forced itself into this reality at his calling.

"What are you doing in there idiot mortal?" The other jail warden called out as it stepped into view, just in time to behold the emerging beasts forcing its way out of the walls.

Alex moved to the side, turned and smiled at his cell guard. Exposed to the light and now fully visible, the Tindalos hound leered and sniffed at the air, panting as its jaws yawned wide with strands of iridescent mucus trailing between them. 

"Feast.” Alex pointed at the osyluth whose eyes widened in time with the hound’s jaws. It screamed for only a short time before the ambient noise devolved into a series of wet gurgles, snapping bones, and the disquieting sounds of the Tindalos hound’s jaws disarticulating in order to swallow the fiend whole.

Watching his summoned pet eat with a fierce wagging of its translucent tail, Alex whispered a phrase and stepped through the cell bars as if they weren’t there. Once on the other side, he knelt down next to the hound and softly stroked it behind the ears. “Good boy. Such a good boy.”


****​

The doors into Duke Melikaros' estate opened onto the form of a thin, devil-blooded tiefling immaculately dressed in a black and scarlet butler's uniform embossed with the Duke's crest.

As soon as the door opened and the butler smiled a practiced and utterly disinterested smile, a lance of burning pain erupted at Clueless's ankle. The bladesinger struggled to remain standing as the yugoloth artifact lodged there in his flesh began pulsing with an inner heartbeat all its own.

"How may I help you?" The butler's eyes danced over the group that stood before him, his eyes a piercing, luminous color like rubies set within his delicate, makeup painted face.

Toras was the first to speak, "We're here to see a guest of the Duke's."

"I see," The butler stood still, not moving an inch, not opening the doors any more than his own slender frame covered. Any attempt to view into the manor beyond him was for naught, obscured by his frame. “The Duke has numerous guests at any given moment. Pray tell who in specific are you here to see?”

"An elf." The half-celestial answered with a certain irrational certainty as if the vague descriptor would open up the door of a baatezu nobleman’s manor for them to perhaps look and search without any worry whatsoever.

"An elf you say?" The butler raised an eyebrow skeptically, "And their name?"

Toras looked away, "We're not actually certain of their exact name."

"They're mortal and an elf, and they're a guest of the Duke." Florian gestured past the butler, "Surely there can't be many people fitting that description?”

The butler frowned once more and just faintly, one of his ears twitched as if listening to something further back and behind him in the manor. His reply to the Duke’s would-be visitors was blunt, "His infernal grace is not in the habit of allowing anyone without a formal invitation to browse through his court guests..."

“This is important sir.” Florian clasped her hands together with as sincere of an expression as she could muster to the disdainful look the butler glared down at her.

Behind her, Clueless grimaced and steadied himself. His ankle hurt worse than almost anything he’d ever experienced. Oddly, it increased the closer that he drew to the manor.

Florian pressed the tiefling, “If we could simply speak with one of the Duke’s functionaries and ascertain if the person that we’re looking for -on behalf of one of the factions I might add- is or has been here as a guest of the Duke’s, we could be out of your hair as swiftly as possible. Please.”

The butler’s ruby eyes stared daggers into the six of them and he continued to frown. Finally after a long moment of carefully examining each of them in turn, he sighed. “So be it. Please, follow me inside.”

With that, the butler spun around on one hoof and walked into the manor.

Giving a half wary, half giddy smile, Toras shrugged and whispered, “I didn’t honestly think that would work!”

Behind him, Nisha shrugged and stuck out her tongue. “Normally it doesn’t. Normally they sent a bunch of osyluths to chase you. Or they maze you, or throw you into an actual maze, with actual osyluths. At least that was what happened with Dagos that one… time… yes?”

Tristol peered down at Nisha with a look of worry, “Seriously?”

Giggling, the tiefling made a shrug just the same as her previous one, leaving the aasimar in complete confusion if she’d at some point angered one of the Dark 8 or simply was making up yet another quirky story that never actually happened to join the many others of her own eminently mutable past.

True story or complete fib, Nisha clip-clopped along in equally opposite time as the tiefling butler as he retreated past the open doors and into the manor. Following in his unwelcoming wake, they all proceeded into the diabolic estate.

The butler sighed, his voice echoing through the otherwise deathly quiet palatial chamber, “It’s rare that the Duke allows guests into his private estate without a prior vetting from the Ministry of Mortal Relations or Immortal Relations in the celestial bitch’s situation.”
Fyrehowl softly snarled at the insult, but still, she kept her hands at her sides, rather than lashing out while the offending devil-spawn’s back was turned. Striking down a servitor of the Duke before they’d had a chance to investigate would do them no favors.

They passed below a great vaulted archway crafted of gold and wrought iron carved with elaborate, baroque decorative patterns to resemble screaming tanar’ri beneath the boots of ranks of baatezu soldiers, with a laughing, leering sculpture of the Duke himself upon the keystone. Normally upon passage beneath such an icon, one of his legion of soldiers and even court members of noble rank themselves would make a subtle sign of obeisance, if not outright bow or curtsy in deference. The implied insult of ignoring it was subtle in and of itself, but Clueless and Tristol noticed and glanced at each other before the butler spoke again.

“I suppose that I’m violating some insipid rule of his by letting you in.” The butler gave a pronounced and careless shrug as he walked past the arch and into the grand expanse of the main gallery. “I should have left you at the door.”

Less than ten feet further in and Fyrehowl abruptly paused. Ears erect and fur prickled with worry, she twitched her nose at the scent of fresh blood and ozone. The Cipher’s senses screamed that something wasn’t right.

“Mother f*cker…” Clueless cursed under his breath as the gem in his ankle throbbed again. Belatedly he realized that the waxing of the pain wasn’t determined by how close to the manor he was, but how close he came to the butler.

“You should have simply walked away at my suspicion of your intent.” The butler stopped in the room’s center, turning around to look at the six of them as he stood amid a great pool of blood that oozed out upon the marble floor. Flanking him were the corpses of two cornugons, both of them torn to pieces. “I did not come here to the depths of this place reeking of Law and larvae to enjoy the scent,” He sneered in abject loathing at the description of Hell, “I came here for revenge, and sadly for you, you’ll be incidental victims of that.”

“Oh dear! I think we have the wrong address!” Nisha gave a nervous and exaggerated laugh. “We meant to go to the next manor over! So sorry, we’ll just be leaving now…”

Taba smirked as his guests stared at the dead baatezu and understood why the estate seemed deathly quiet and seemingly unmanned by any obvious security.

“May your deaths be swift and clean in the name of my master.” Taba’s mouth twisted and shifted, erupting from the slender lines of a tiefling into a vast fanged maw a dozen times larger in size. In the space of a heartbeat her flesh was fluid and malleable, twisting into a form better suited for combat against a half dozen foes. “Your blood is spent as penance for this delay in my hunt for a specific traitor whose heart will grace my gullet oh so soon.”

Clueless drew Razor, and as he did so, the pain in his ankle ceased. The gem had recognized the yugoloth lord, even if he wasn’t yet aware of the butler’s identity as that of the Infiltrator of the Planes.

“What the f*ck is that thing?!” Florian gripped her holy symbol tight and began to whisper a prayer to the Foehammer.

“Ugly…” Toras drew his sword and stepped to the right.

Eight armored legs, like those of a steel insect erupted from Taba’s flesh, lifting her body into the air while barbed tentacles ripped from out of her upper chest, each of them dripping an acidic poison to hiss and pit the floor. A trio of scorpion-like tails burst bloodlessly from her back, moving and threatening. In the end, only the butler’s horned head remained intact, albeit with a monstrously deformed maw and its ruby eyes now radiant and flickering.

Taba laughed a shrill telepathic cry even as she wordlessly began to intone the words of a spell.

“All glory to the General of Gehenna!”


****​


----------



## Shemeska

Since the events of my story from 2005, 'The Dreamer and the Fiend' have been mentioned recently as indeed being set within the continuity of this Storyhour, I've decided to upload the text of that story somewhere that isn't going to vanish (as the WotC forum produced fanzine 'Knowledge Arcana' that it appeared in all appears to have vanished from their original download locations).

Read into the events of that story at the following link, featuring Larsdana Ap Neut as the titular fiend and The Dream Reaver as her baernaloth parasite/shadow/patron.

Also, a word of warning. I wrote 'The Dreamer and the Fiend' a decade ago. I'm a better writer now (God I hope so), and I haven't revised it since that time. Read at your own peril. 


In other news, I'm also currently working on another one of Baernaloth cycle stories (The Architect). Also fwiw, those are all set within the Storyhour's continuity, but are largely self-contained with the exception of the Blind Clockmaker's story which plugs right into the SH at a future time, and the Lie Weaver's story which takes place just prior to the SH starting.


----------



## almost13

wow, what a cliffhanger! sorry to hear about your loss shemmy. mad props that you keep writing!

holy crap cthulhu stuff in shemmys storyhour, it's icing on the icing


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## Shemeska

almost13 said:


> wow, what a cliffhanger! sorry to hear about your loss shemmy. mad props that you keep writing!
> 
> holy crap cthulhu stuff in shemmys storyhour, it's icing on the icing




Thank you so much 

And yes, cthulhu/Lovecraftian/Far Realm material in this storyhour. That sort of thing (and the "mad bleakers" Tollysalmon, Esmus, and Lhar) is a major focus of Storyhour #2, but it's here lurking around woven into parts of the plot (a story I wrote years ago, 'For there is a hole in the sky' touches on that, Pandemonium, and some of the Ebon's fishing expeditions, so to speak).


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## Sylaxvennor

Not to be an idiot (Ed---yeah, right!)   Am I the only one who imagines Shemeska's voice to be that of Miss Piggy?  

And Vorkanni's voice to be that of Ed Wasser (Mr. Morden from Babylon 5)?  With him it's because of that "What do you want" line.

Amazing that I've only commented once so far on this storyhour.  God only knows what playing this must have been like!


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## Shemeska

Sylaxvennor said:


> Not to be an idiot (Ed---yeah, right!)   Am I the only one who imagines Shemeska's voice to be that of Miss Piggy?
> 
> And Vorkanni's voice to be that of Ed Wasser (Mr. Morden from Babylon 5)?  With him it's because of that "What do you want" line.
> 
> Amazing that I've only commented once so far on this storyhour.  God only knows what playing this must have been like!




I've always imaged her voiced by Famke Janssen (from the 1999 remake of 'House on Haunted Hill').

I've never really settled on a voice actor for Vorkannis to be honest, but Mr Morden isn't a bad one (even if the 'big question' similarity was unintentional).

I love comments on the Storyhour. I eat them up.


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## Sylaxvennor

Shemeska said:


> I've always imaged her voiced by Famke Janssen (from the 1999 remake of 'House on Haunted Hill').
> 
> I've never really settled on a voice actor for Vorkannis to be honest, but Mr Morden isn't a bad one (even if the 'big question' similarity was unintentional).
> 
> I love comments on the Storyhour. I eat them up. View attachment 69021



That's a lot better, actually.  Wonder what Janssen herself would think about that?


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## Akhelos

Well I have never seen any of that Shows but well I dont think that any Movie oder Tv-Series Bad Guys can really represent Shemmy. But if one should be chosen it should be something along a female Version of The Godfather ^^

And by the Way, I have now read your Inusalia Storys in the Pathfinder Magazin 10....and somehow get the Impression that you have a liking for female Mafiosi Style Demons *g*


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## Shemeska

Akhelos said:


> And by the Way, I have now read your Inusalia Storys in the Pathfinder Magazin 10....and somehow get the Impression that you have a liking for female Mafiosi Style Demons *g*




Inusalia is similar to Shemeska only in that they're both (nominally) female, they're both evil, and they're both extremely intelligent. Shemeska as an arcanaloth with added sorcerer levels, and Inusalia as a meladaemon with alchemist levels. But Shemeska has a level of self control that Inusalia lacks. Shemeska enjoys the act of fostering misery, but she isn't a slave to that, whereas Inusalia is best thought of as a drug addict, only barely able to function in between each meal of a mortal soul - Inusalia is a slave to her own hunger and compulsion to feed. The 'loths may be self-deluded zealots in service to uncaring baernaloth masters, but I find that by comparison, daemons are lonely, self-hating objects of pity who are slaves to their own need to feed.

There's an earlier story featuring Inusalia (that takes place chronologically after the one that appears in Wayfinder 10): Hunger


----------



## Tsuga C

Shemeska said:


> So please, some good thoughts and well wishes, and once I'm back I'll start updating here again.




So noted and so it has come to pass, well wishes sent & candles lit.

All this chaos in the very manor of a Duke of Hell and so many independent actors seemingly able to make mincemeat of his household staff--doesn't speak very well of his recruiting practices, does it?


----------



## Shemeska

Taba cackled with delight as she reared up on the spiked, metallic insect legs newly sprouted from her body. As she laughed, a half dozen other mouths formed across her morphic flesh like physical echoes to express the same blasphemous exclamation.

“Scream in the name of Lord of the Crawling City! Suffer in the name of the first Ultroloth. Die in the name of my master!”

As the yugoloth lord invoked the unholy titles of one of the most feared and enigmatic names upon all of the planes, thoughts of shock and fear raced through all six of their assembled minds.

“Taba…” In a flash of insight, Clueless knew exactly what the creature was, by name, and knew why the artifact in his ankle reacted such as it had. Although the controlling link to the Marauder had been severed long ago, the gem still reacted instinctively to warn her former puppet and tool of the threat that Taba represented. Whatever the altraloth’s reason for being there in Maladomini, it was not at the behest of the current Oinoloth. “F*cking f*ck…”

The General of Gehenna and its citadel the Crawling City had not been seen upon the face of the planes since just before the beginning of the yugoloth civil war between Anthraxus and Mydianchlarus. That war had ended with the deaths of both the former and then present Oinoloth and the ascension of Vorkannis the Ebon. When the blood had cooled and ashes settled, and the corpses strung from the spires of the Wasting Tower finally ceased growing in number, the General of Gehenna was absent. The whereabouts of the yugoloths’ near-mythical puppetmaster remained unknown, and the nature of its relation to the current Oinoloth’s purges and purification of the ‘loth race equally opaque.

In the silent void of information on the greatest unsettled mystery of yugoloth politics, the altraloth Taba gleefully invoked not the Oinoloth’s name, but the General’s.

“F*cking f*ck is right!” Fyrehowl dodged to narrowly avoid a gout of liquid flame from the creature’s mouth. The burning bolt nearly hit, and only the fact that she began her rolling leap in true Cipher fashion prior to it actually being expelled saved her from taking it full in the chest.

Undeterred by the manifest horror rearing up in front of them, towering nearly three times his height, Toras rushed forward, leading with this blade. Taba never bothered to move or intercept his charge. A flicker of thought and the fighter was hurled backwards through the air by a ferocious burst of telekinetic force.

Eyes wide at the sight of Toras being bandied about like a ragdoll, Tristol began to cast. A thought of his to bring a spell to mind and a tiny prayer to Mystra to aid him and the lightning crackled from his outstretched hand, heightened to a potency beyond its standard limits. The harsh reek of ozone filled the air along with the thunderclap that followed a split second later as the bolt lanced between the wizard and the altraloth before it abruptly changed direction and lanced out to strike Fyrehowl, counterspelled with a meager effort.

The lupinal gasped in surprise, but by virtue of her celestial nature (however sullied or fallen she might be), avoided actual damage.

“Little more than larvae waiting for the moment you crystallize upon the Waste. Pitiful mewling creatures, do you actually think that you could harm me? Me? The exalted servitor of the General? I who remain loyal even as the rest of my race follow a mere arcanaloth pretender to the Siege Malicious?” Eyes glittering in the darkness, Taba smiled.

“I say again,” Florian called out with worry and the ever so faintest tremor in her hand as she gripped her holy symbol, “What the f*cking f*ck is that thing?!”

“It’s a mother*cking yugoloth lord!” Clueless shouted as he sliced at one of Taba’s tentacles, spinning in midair as he did so to avoid a vicious counterattack and finishing with his hand outstretched to hurl a bolt of flame. While Razor struck and bit deeply, the fiend’s flesh already began to knit itself whole and the bolt of flame sizzled, blunted by the fiend’s innate magical resistance. “F*cking ‘loths…”

“Oh Foe Hammer smite it all! I wanted to be done with them!” Florian snarled as she invoked down the power of Tempus to smite the abomination. She felt the power build with her, bubble up from the divine channel within her soul that tethered her spirit to the divinity she followed. She felt the power erupt forth from her holy symbol, and then she watched as it fizzled, blunted by another seemingly effortless counterspell by the cackling altraloth.

“Godslave…” Taba hissed with a wet chuckle from a dozen newly formed mouths in her flank.

Undaunted and outnumbering the archfiend, they continued their attack despite the first, fruitless efforts.

Aware of the fiend’s proficiency in disrupting spells, but counting on it being distracted and unable to do so swiftly again after soaking Florian’s own attempt, Tristol hurled another spell and hoped for the best. The fireball detonated fully on Taba’s body, enveloping the horror in a globe of flames and raw arcane energies. Protected against the flames to a degree, the archfiend still roared in pain from the damage it could not avoid or resist.

Pressing the advantage, Fyrehowl leapt through the air, spinning and swinging her scimitar to sink deep into what might best be considered its shoulder. No sooner had she done so with a burst of blood into the air that the fiend struck her with a massive pincher, lifting her up and hurling her back against the far wall.

Finally darting into the fray, Nisha jumped forward with a burst of wild magic to appear behind the fiend, momentarily unnoticed. Seemingly surprised with what she’d accomplished, she giggled and clapped her hands before belatedly realizing what she’d intended to do in the first place. The tiefling whipped out her rapier and stabbed the fiend repeatedly, though to little effect before it slapped her away almost half-heartedly, sending her skidding across the floor like a giant flicking away a gnat.

Toras charged again, striking a series of blows and finally injuring the archfiend, followed by spells from Florian, Tristol, and Clueless alike. Though one of the spells fizzled against the altraloth’s resistance and another was negated by counterspell, the third struck true, and along with the physical damage of the half-celestial’s sword, Taba hissed with frustration.

The altraloth screamed incoherently and hurled a meteor swarm. Explosions rocked the room and shouts of pain and fear echoed through the smoke cut only by the archfiend’s glistening ruby eyes.

Casting her mind out and up like a fisherman’s net, ignoring the still healing pinpricks of steel and the burn of divine and arcane energies, Taba listened for her quarry. There, up above like a terrified mouse, it moved and then waited, moved and then waited, then drew still in a hiding place where it thought itself safe. 

Swarming above in the gilded maze, the baatezu scrambled like ants, moving to concentrate their ranks in defense of the Duke they called master. Their hellish master was the only creature present that would have caused the Infiltrator of the Planes any concern at all, but he was not and never had been Taba’s target, that honor was granted to one of his guests. Up above she waited, hiding and panicking, unable to simply flee to another plane on her own power by virtue of the diabolic restrictions on such freedoms; vengeance would not be long in coming for her.

“ENOUGH!” Taba snarled as she skittered backwards, her legs altering shape moment by moment to accelerate that specific action even as her wounds regenerated at a ferocious rate. “Mewling mortal insects! I am not here for you.”

Fingers wriggled from suddenly liquid flesh, completing the somatic components of a spell that flickered within the altraloth’s mind and then was spent. A ring of flame ignited from the ground, putting distance between her and her current foes as she looked up at the ceiling and smiled, telepathically licking her lips at the psychic scent of her prey high and directly above.

Opening the razor-fanged maw at the end of her elongated, serpentine neck, the altraloth screamed. Distorting and rippling the air, a lance of force erupted from her mouth, shooting upwards and ripping into the vaulted shadows. Above her, the ceiling exploded, showering the chamber with splinters of stone and melted iron.

“Sh*t!” Nisha threw her hands over her head and darted behind the largest cover that she could find, which happened to be Toras.

The half-celestial didn’t much bother to shield himself other than putting an arm across his face as rocks clattered off of his armor. Within a fraction of a second though, he relaxed his arm as a globe of force shimmered into being over the party courtesy of Tristol.

Through it all as the ceiling collapsed, Taba’s body was still shifting, adapting to the needs of the moment. Twelve legs, like those of some hellish grasshopper formed from her lower body. They tensed, gathered strength, and then she leapt upwards through the hole of her own making. A screaming eager cackle echoed down from above along with the sound of her nightmare arrangement of limbs propelling her forwards three stories above as she hunted for her true quarry.

“Maybe we’re lucky and she’s here for the same elf we came to gank?” Nisha nervously chuckled and sheathed her rapier, craning her neck to look up the passage the yugoloth lord had created in its wake.

“I hesitate to say that.” Fyrehowl frowned, “Since when are we that lucky?”

Catching her breath, Florian held her holy symbol aloft and invoked a burst of healing to herself and the others, healing numerous bites, slashes, and terrible burns from its last spell. Surprisingly they’d survived the encounter, though in truth it hadn’t been their first battle with an archfiend.

“Is gank even a real word?” Nisha looked away and tapped her chin with her tail. Tristol put a hand on her shoulder to bring her back to the moment.

“So we randomly run into a yugoloth lord?” The aasimar’s tail bottlebrushed as he looked up at the ragged hole in the ceiling.

“Yeah, another one of them.” Fyrehowl shook her head in disbelief, “One that’s been missing since the rest of its kind were killed or presumably killed by the Oinoloth. Showing up in the same place where we came to kill someone. I don’t think there’s anything random about that.”

“I don’t think there was ever an elf.” Clueless narrow his eyes and gripped Razor’s handle.

“Huh?” Florian looked away from the smoking hole in the ceiling and now glanced at the bladesinger. “What are you talking about?”

“We weren’t sent here to kill an elf.” Clueless scoffed and pointed Razor up towards the hole, “We were sent here to kill that thing.”

“Really?” A look of conflicted confusion passed over Toras’s face. “You think that Marvent lied to us? He didn’t strike me as the lying type.”

“Nor me…” Clueless shrugged, remembering uneasily the unearthly aura that had surrounded the factol of the Illuminated. Whatever the man was, he hadn’t at all stricken him as a liar. “I truly don’t know.”

High above, shrieks of terror echoed as a trickle of dust and stone continued to fall. The sound of running, steel-shod boots and hooves on stone rang out between more screaming and a string of explosive detonations and the altraloth’s mad cackling. In the heart of a diabolic noble’s domain, two stories up, Taba continued her slaughter.

“So then… we go after it?” Nisha gave a disturbingly carefree chuckle.

“You have any better ideas?” Fyrehowl shrugged as she made a judgment on the height between them and the upper limit of the ascending shaft.

“Oh! Hey!” A voice rang out from above in planar common without a trace of an infernal accent. “There you are! I’ve been waiting for you, so hurry up here before the fiend gets away!” Peering down from the lip of the hole, Alex waved down and motioned them up with one hand while pointing with the other.  “It ran off this way! Hurry!” 


****​


----------



## 81Dagon

I love it when I randomly check the website and there is an update. Wheels within Wheels continue. I wonder what Taba's intent is, as well as how the General fits into the Baern's plan, and if Vorkie's going to showdown with him at any point.


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## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> I love it when I randomly check the website and there is an update. Wheels within Wheels continue. I wonder what Taba's intent is, as well as how the General fits into the Baern's plan, and if Vorkie's going to showdown with him at any point.




I'll have another update in not too short a time, given that I'm working on it right now. I split this into two posts just based on the length I was at versus good points for dramatic pause.

This is, if I recall, the first time we've seen the General really mentioned much since the original page of the storyhour. 

And of course, Vorkannis mentioned earlier about a certain lingering problem, and this would be her.


----------



## Clueless

"Not here for you!"
"?! Well - you *started* it!"

Shem, I can't remember - is this all before or after Clueless picked up his passenger in his head? Once this is done I'd love to get a PDF and then hard copy. (so November is coming up... nanowrimo?)


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## Shemeska

Clueless said:


> "Not here for you!"
> "?! Well - you *started* it!"
> 
> Shem, I can't remember - is this all before or after Clueless picked up his passenger in his head? Once this is done I'd love to get a PDF and then hard copy. (so November is coming up... nanowrimo?)




Already in there, but he isn't aware of it. Two more plot arcs for that. I have this all outlined, no worries. 

Because God knows there's so much that I'd never be able to keep it all straight unless I'd done that outline years prior when I started writing this (nearly a decade ago at this point).


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## Clueless

Ok cool  I'm still looking forward to the ".... I... can only do that on Thursdays." The worst of worst lies Clueless ever spoke. 

Outlines are good! I've debated outlining one of mine sometime for a Storyhour but I don't think it would really be that interesting.


----------



## Shemeska

A few moments of confusion passed swiftly and Tristol teleported them all up to Alex’s level, relieved to at least find someone not wishing them dismemberment, eternal slavery, or swift death. As odd as it might seem to find an apparently friendly face in the depths of Baator, the fact that the mage was smiling and stood next to the broken door of a prison cell that it seemed obviously had been his only quite recently until Taba had torn through the floor, made him all the more trustworthy.

“That way! It can’t be far!” Alex pointed down the hallway where a trail of ashes, blood, and several torn apart baatezu corpses slowly burned, returning their essence to Baator itself.

In the thick of it all, it seemed to go unnoticed or just overlooked that Alex himself was spattered in devil blood as well. His of course had come from the gleeful worrying of his jailor’s neck in a Tindalos hound’s phosphorescent jaws rather than incidental spatter from Taba’s rampage.

Looking at Alex, their weapons remained out but not raised in anticipation of violence. A moment earlier, Toras had surreptitiously glanced at the strange wizard, glancing at his soul for the hints of any level of evil or servitude to an evil god but had found neither.

“So who exactly are you?” Clueless asked as they and Alex made their way down the corridor, following the sounds of bloodshed.

“My name’s Alex,” He gave a soft bow. “And until a few moments ago I was a prisoner here, or at least as my jailers called it, ‘indefinite detention as an honored, uninvited guest of his Infernal Majesty, Duke Melikaros. I’m rather glad to be out, it was getting quite boring. Baatezu aren’t very good conversationalists.”

“What did you mean by you’d been waiting for us?” Florian gave the mage a suspicious, sidelong glance.

Toras poked Alex on the shoulder, “Did Green Marvent send you?”

Alex gave an emphatic shrug, “I can’t say that I know who that fellow is. I came here because my friends told me to come here and meet you, plus that she, it, whatever you want to call them” He motioned in Taba’s direction, “would be coming as well.”

“Your friends?” Clueless asked warily. The last thing that they needed was some barmy, or some barmy with a fiend in his head. They’d had enough of those for a lifetime.

“My friends?” Alex smiled warmly. “They’re the ones that talk to me all of the time. Usually in my dreams, but sometimes through other people, my shadow, or just out of the corner of my eyes. They’ve been rather chatty of late.” Looking past them at nothing they perceived, he gave a soft, erratic giggle. Unconsciously his fingers curled to stroke the head of the intangible, invisible hound as it lapped at the essence of the fiend blood on his hip.

Nisha of all people looked askance, narrowed her eyes a moment and twirled a finger in the air, whistling a soft ‘coo coo!’.

“Yeah, well we’re glad to have helped you escape in some small way, but I don’t think that we need any help. So yeah, if you’re glad to be out, best of luck to you and everything, but we’ll be on our way.” Clueless motioned back the way that they’d come and the unguarded exterior entrance.

That would have been that with Alex dismissed and left behind to fend for himself, if not for what came next when he proved his worth and value. Consumed as they were in talking with the wizard as they turned the corner, they never noticed the barbazu turning in their direction from a blind entrance at exactly the same time.

Following the slow, phlegm-filled snarl of the hound at his fingertips, Alex didn’t miss a beat as he pointed at the fiend and whispered a phrase.

“Halt in the Duke’s name!” The baatezu shouted as it raised its spear before stumbling with the impact of Alex’s spell. A coruscating green beam lanced from his fingers to strike the fiend in the chest, incinerating the devil in its tracks, leaving behind only a pile of smoking ashes.

“Ok…” Florian held up a hand. “Score one for the new guy.”

“He does seem to be useful.” Toras shrugged. “So let’s play this out as we go. Worst that happens is we get out of here and go our separate ways then. But too soon to say. Nice shot by the way.”

Tristol tilted his head to the side, measuring Alex’s skill and the particular power of the spell he’d just seen the man cast. _‘Not bad at all. Particularly good at piercing magical resistance. He has the particular flavor of a conjuration specialist, despite his using a transmutation spell. Still, if we have to pick someone to be willing to help us run through a baatezu mansion in Hell itself, we couldn’t have hoped to find a better option. Even if he’s a bit odd, even judging present company with Nisha.’_

“A pleasure to be of service.” The alienist smiled at the half-celestial and then turned to smile at his familiar, no longer a Tindalos hound nor a warped raven, but a twitching, softly whispering gibberling that was of course, seen by none but himself. “I aim to continue to help out.”

A mixture of shrugs and smiles all around and they continued down the passage in pursuit of Taba.


****​

_So close so close so close I can smell the scent of Malagard bubbling up below the reek of your fear. The barking pretender purchased her loyalty with the blood of my sibling Xenghara. You thought yourself safe. You thought yourself free. I do not forget. I do not forgive. Not for the blood of my siblings on your hands oh no, oh no, no, no…_

Whispering to her prey all the while, announcing her intent and desires, the Infiltrator of the Planes clambered through the warren of elaborate hallways of the inner estate. Spinning from floor to wall to ceiling, she cart wheeled and shifted form with each tick of whatever infernal clock timed her pace. Each motion, each deft slice of razor claws, each steel-tipped arachnid leg planted upon an unshielded head, each whisper of a spell was by intent. A whirling dervish of flesh and malice, she spun through the passageways, following the scent of her desired quarry, littering her wake with dozens more butchered devils as incidental, irrelevant victims.

“Bar the door! Bar the door!” A terrified shriek came from beyond the archway of one of the Duke’s guest chambers. The sound of heavy furniture being pushed into place and the adjustment of steel-shod hooves at the base of the door confirmed what Taba could sense and taste on the air and aether already.

The door held intact and safe, but neither its hinges or the wall that contained them remained anchored or whole. Taba wrenched the door from its moorings and exhaled, spilling a torrent of acid from a head that now looked much like a black wyrm. The furniture that barred her way splintered from the force of the blast and its corrosive nature alike, forcing aside one of the two armored pit fiends that served as ambassadors within the Duke’s court for the guest that stood behind them.

Taba’s prey was not an elf, not even a mortal, but a night hag.

The gray lady’s eyes loomed wide with horror as the archfiend forced herself into the chamber. A barbed tail wrapped around the waist of one of her attendants, constricting even as blades of jagged bone grew from its length, severing the fiend in half like a doll in the jaws of a bear. A suddenly grown eye in the altraloth’s flank gazed at the second devil and then it was stone, frozen in place before an insectile leg kicked out and shattered it to pieces.

Screaming as she wove defensive magic, only the hag dressed in the raiment of the Lord of the 6th remained. “Malagard! Lord of the 6th! Master of Malbolge protect your servant. Protect your coven sister!”

Taba’s jaws yawned wide and her ruby eyes glittered, catching the hag’s rheumy orbs for but a moment before lunging forward and snapping shut with dagger teeth and the snap of bone.

The hag’s dead, headless body slumped to the floor and Taba perched atop it, whispering like a mocking benediction while on her back, tentacles erupted forth to weave the patterns of necromantic energies necessary to ensure that her victim would never again return.

“There is only one of you left now. Only your master hiding herself within the arms and chains of Hell itself. You who conspired with the pretender, the usurper of Khin-Oin, the Ebon. You who would forsake me and my siblings for scraps and favors from the wretch seated upon the Seige Malicious. I will slaughter you all.”  

Licking at the hag blood, Taba smiled, content in her success even as the group which had forced her to reveal herself finally stumbled into the room with a chorus of exclamations.

“Oh what the f*ck happened in here?!”

“Are those pit fiends?!”

“That isn’t an elf…”

“Get her!”

Snarling in irritation from her dragon’s mouth and two newly formed in her elongated neck, Taba began to cast. Words of a Gate spell flowed from her mouths like poetry even as her forelimbs reached out to wrench at the fabric of Hell and rip open a breach to another plane of existence. With a moment of resistance that faded beneath her personal power, the gate opened into an eerily beautiful, tranquil, twilight landscape. Taba turned back for one last glance at the assembled group and launched herself through the gate.


****​

The party stared in shock at the carnage in the room, the twin bodies of pit fiends, and the nature of Taba’s victim. With each moment that passed, it seemed that Clueless had been right after all. There had never been an elf for them to kill. There had only been the yugoloth lord Taba, the Infiltrator of the Planes.

“Marvent lied to us.” Clueless tapped the motionless hag corpse with Razor’s tip. Unlike the pit fiend bodies, it was not dissolving into its base essence, flowing back to its plane of origin or whatever power claimed it. Taba had made certain that this hag in particular was dead, and based on what the altraloth had said, it all came back to the ‘loths and their civil war.

“He sent us here for a reason though. He had to have.” Toras did his best to rationalize the situation, even as they stood in Hell, surrounded by dead devils, with the sounds of more baatezu closing in.

Standing off to the side, Alex glanced down at his familiar. It looked up at him, then to the gate. ‘You’re safer on that side.’ Content with the eight eyed cat’s opinion on the matter, he smiled at waited for the others to come to the same decision.

Fyrehowl glanced back behind them, her ears swiveling to the approaching sound of marching boots. “I don’t think the baatezu are going to believe us if we’re here when they get here and see this. ‘A yugoloth did it!’ isn’t going to cut it with them, even if it’s the truth.”

“Through the gate!” Clueless shouted.

“Where does it go?” Florian shot the bladesinger a cautious look. “I don’t want to end up surrounded by more ‘loths somewhere in Gehenna.”

“It isn’t going to be worse than being in Hell, surrounded by angry devils.” Clueless motioned towards the now contracting gate. “It isn’t going to stay open forever. Hurry!”

“Ger her?” Nisha giggled as she was the first to tumble through the slowly closing gate, “That was your plan Toras?”

Toras shook his head and shrugged as he hefted his sword and jumped in after the Xaositect, followed shortly after the others.


****​

Passage out of Hell was swift and timeless, with a burst of cold and the rattle of chains in their ears as the gate deposited them in the middle of a grassy meadow below a starry evening sky overhead. The air of Karasuthra was cool and distantly the sound of nighttime insects chirped and called, while a few errant flickers of light emerged in the air from drifting fireflies.

“We’re in the Beastlands…” Fyrehowl muttered, recognizing the plane’s unique feeling before anything else. “That’s strange.”

The gate sealed shut and quickly their eyes adjusted to the sudden nighttime darkness. In one of the nearby trees a nightingale chirped.

“Why would a ‘loth be in the Beastlands?” Toras mused as he held up a hand to bath the meadow in conjured daylight.

“This is just a waypoint. One spot to reach another portal.” Tristol pointed to freestanding stone archway some twenty feet distant. Instinctively he could tell that it harbored a portal, and then it flickered with the first stages of a keyed opening as a creature slinked out of the gloom and passed in front of it.

“Sh*t, look lively folks.” Toras called out in warning.

Moving into the periphery of Toras’ light stood the lean form of a celestial wolf, or something that upon first glance seemed to be one. Unhealthy green light leaked from its open mouth and it seemed on the verge of starvation as it stood between them and the active portal, planting its paws and giving a low snarl.

6 seconds.

Alex narrowed his eyes, alternating his glances from the wolf to his familiar. The familiar returned his look with the ambiguous statement, ‘Taba is here.’

“Everyone spread out.” Florian warned. “Get on every side and surround this thing. We can’t take it unless we get its concentration diverted from any one person.”

“Something isn’t right.” Clueless muttered, staring at the wolf as it snarled even louder. Green light streamed from its mouth almost as if something were building up. Something about the wolf didn’t quite mesh with their last encounter with the archfiend. Perhaps its presence on one of the upper planes was responsible for its less twisted and artful form? In any event the artifact in Clueless’s ankle pulsed with a painful, angry warning of proximity.

The nightingale chirped again behind them, singing out into the night. The portal swirled and churned, flickering with energy as it neared opening.

12 seconds.

Florian called out to Tempus, invoking a protective blessing. “Tristol give us some space if that thing breaths on us.”

“That portal is about to open.” Alex shouted. “Don’t let it flee!”

Tristol nodded and held up a hand, calling into being a glistening hemisphere of force to cage the altraloth into place not a moment too soon before the portal behind it –and most importantly behind the force wall as well– fully activated.

18 seconds.

High up in the branches of a elm tree, the nightingale smiled and her ruby eyes glinted with satisfaction as she stared at Clueless’s exposed back. Chirping out her avian song once more, she wove the words of a spell into place, and it was from there in her arbor perch rather than from the dominated and warped celestial wolf that the lance of energy shot out.

Tristol’s eyes widened as he sensed the magical expenditure and he barely managed to turn to look into the altraloth’s glittering eyes before the bolt rocketed past him to strike its doomed target.

The bladesinger’s head exploded like an overripe melon.


****​


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## almost13

from one cliffhanger straight to another! this is an amazing ride, thank you shemmy!


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## Shemeska

almost13 said:


> from one cliffhanger straight to another! this is an amazing ride, thank you shemmy!




Three rounds followed by a death attack are the sweetest three rounds in a GM's life.


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## Erevanden

Niiiice, nice, nice, very nice 

As fantastic as it looks in the storyhour, the actual sessions must have been a blast ! What CR was that thing, if I may ask, because it seems so much more powerful than your players' characters at that time.

Would you be willing to shed some light on that specific archfiend's role in your campaign, and something more about his oh so deliciously twisted powers ?


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## Shemeska

Erevanden said:


> Niiiice, nice, nice, very nice
> 
> As fantastic as it looks in the storyhour, the actual sessions must have been a blast ! What CR was that thing, if I may ask, because it seems so much more powerful than your players' characters at that time.
> 
> Would you be willing to shed some light on that specific archfiend's role in your campaign, and something more about his oh so deliciously twisted powers ?




It varied slightly depending on what plane they encountered Taba on (same for any of the major archfiends). The PCs were at that point in or around level 15? Maybe slightly higher.

Taba was CR 20 something, with some amount of plot armor given to the PCs so they'd have an encounter, realize the gravity of it all, but wouldn't be slaughtered (Clueless being temporarily killed with a death attack being the exception).

Taba sticks around for a while, and her presence exposes some of the fault lines still running through the 'loth hierarchy after the Ebon became the Oinoloth. The what and why of that develops as the campaign and storyhour continues.

Another storyhour update should happen in the next few days.


----------



## Shemeska

“F*ck!” Florian screamed as Clueless’s lifeless body fell to the ground like a beheaded rag doll discarded by a yeth hound.

Cackling in her moment of gory success, the nightingale that was Taba burst forth from the branches of its elm tree bower and rocketed across the meadow. In the confusion and panic its deathblow had caused, the altraloth passed through the now open portal and vanished, with the archway bursting forth a shower of light as she entered.

“Clueless?!” Fyrehowl yelped as she looked down at the splatter of the half-fey’s brains now on her clothing.

Nisha dashed to the corpse, frantically babbling in panicked Xaos speech, picking up pieces of shattered skull and pulped brain like puzzle pieces she might somehow, someway put them back to the way they were.

“It’s alright Nisha.” White as a ghost but remaining a sense of calm where his girlfriend had thrown her own to the wind, Tristol knelt behind the tiefling and put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t get your hands messy. Florian can bring him back, just as good as new.” Without making eye contact with Nisha, he turned back to look, pleadingly at the cleric.

“I. Don’t. Know…” She mouthed as she pulled out her holy symbol and began half-praying, half-begging her divine patron Tempus to return her companion to life, alive and whole once again.

A golden nimbus flowed from the holy symbol and covered the body. Bits of brain, blood, and bone evaporated and regenerated or simply crawled back into place from where they’d fallen, slowly stitching themselves back together until Clueless was once again whole.

“Please come back big brother…” Nisha whispered.

The stars overhead twinkled in sympathy it seemed and a sudden rush of wind blew across the meadow, stirring the grass and flowers. The wind grew still and with a gasp of surprise and shock on his lips, Clueless inhaled.

“Motherf*cker!” Clueless was livid with anger as he opened his eyes. “Motherf*cking ‘loths! Every f*cking one of them! AAARRRGGHHHH!” His lips pursed with another pending torrent of curses, this time in a decidedly vulgar and dark dialect of sylvan.

In the flickering light of the still active portal, Clueless balled his fists and pounded them into the ground. Fyrehowl put a hand down to help him up as Florian kissed her holy symbol, uncertain if under normal circumstances she’d have been capable of actually bringing the bladesinger back given the creature which had killed him. A moment of grace from the Foehammer might have been at play.

“F*ck Taba.” Clueless spat as he took the lupinal’s hand. “That f*cking hurt!”

“You’re alive and you have something new to add to your list of things to kill and keep killing until they give up.” Toras extended the bladesinger a second hand and helped him to his feet.

“That’s a lot of f*cks.” Nisha giggled. “You might get shushed by angels, but this is the Beastlands. It’s a chaotic place. Sort of. I’ll vouch for you.”

“Thanks?” Clueless looked up at the Xoasitect that he considered nothing-so-much as his little sister and smiled.

Nisha’s tail rattled the bell at its tip and she returned his smile warmly. “Welcome back.”

Toras glanced towards the portal. “Shall we go after that thing now?”

“Sounds good to me.” Clueless picked up Razor and wiped it clean of his own blood onto the grass. “But this time, let’s be a bit more wary. I don’t want to run into another ambush.”

“Let’s go then. Everyone be ready!” Toras shouted as he dashed towards the archway.

No sooner of course had Clueless jinxed the entire party by uttering the words ‘ambush’, Toras and Florian along with their respective bags of holding were the first to dive through the portal that Taba had carefully crafted centuries earlier as a hidden entry point to one of her many refuges and boltholes across the planes. The portal, while active, was dual keyed such that any creature could activate the portal by proximity and intent, but only the presence of a second and very specific key would prevent it from redirecting them to another location. In the case of that particular portal, it would lead them to a closed extradimensional space which would normally cause them to eventually suffocate and die, except of course for the presence of their own extradimensional spaces in the forms of bags of holding.

Taba had no intention of being followed without throwing up a deadly array of metaphorical deadfalls in her pursuer’s paths.

--BOOM!--

The laws of reality preventing the overlapping of such freakish planar geometry, and the result was a explosion of Astral energies and a rejection of entry into the bound space.

“F*ck!” Toras shouted as he and the others were forcibly expelled from the portal in firestorm of roaring flames and raw force.

As the group collectively picked themselves up, groaning from burns and bruises, their chorus of discomfort was soon joined by shouts of anger as the sky began to rain not just the bones of those few random mortals who had fallen prey to the portal since its construction but also coins and random assorted items: the contents of their now destroyed and dispersed bags of holding and handy haversacks. Relatively little seemed to have been lost, but it would take time to recover it all, and even more time or expense to repair or replace the destroyed bags.

Picking himself off of the ground and brushing dirt and soot from his hair, Alex winced in pain and looked across at his new companions, “It just gets more and more interesting being around you folks doesn’t it?”

“Oh you haven’t seen us at our best!” Nisha chirped with a grin, completely nonplussed by the current events.

“What in the blazes just happened?” Florian demanded as she began casting the first in a series of healing spells.

Tristol was already next to the glowing portal, whispering divination magic and trying to determine the answer to that same question. The answer was obfuscated behind a layer of misleading magic woven into the stones by the altraloth, hiding the trap from casual inspection and dooming any who attempted access.

“The portal was keyed.” Tristol explained, turning back with a sigh. He knew the key and they didn’t have it. “Without the proper key it redirects you to an extraplanar space.”

“Hence the explosion.” Alex chipped in with a sigh.

“What’s the key?” Clueless asked.

“Nothing we happen to have.” Tristol frowned.

“Ok, but what is it?” Toras tapped his fingers against the pommel of his sword with impatience.

The aasimar’s ears drooped, “The blood of a greater yugoloth.”

“Oh…” Fyrehowl’s ears drooped to match Tristols.

Clueless smirked, “How convenient for Taba…”

“Sh*t…” Toras hung his head and sighed.

Seconds passed into a minute and the grumbling and muttering continued. The wind picked up against, rustling grass and hair with equal measure. That was when the cleric paused and beamed a smile.

“I know where we can get some!” Florian tapped a finger to her forehead. “Quick! Back to Sigil!”


****​

Nestled in a quaint corner of the Lower Ward as it had for centuries, and having rarely wandered more than a few blocks from there at The Lady’s whim, The Friendly Fiend magic and curio shop stood open for business. Having only opened the doors moments earlier and switched the dangling placard from ‘closed’ to ‘open’, the titular smiling and oddly talkative and downright cheerful yugoloth brushed with a broom at the night’s ashfall from the nearby smokestacks and workshops from the stoop.

“That looks almost ready to go.” Akin muttered to himself as he looked down at the freshly brushed and cleaned doormat. “Hmm, or not perhaps.” He paused and focused his mind, taking a finer grained approach and flicking away a few errant, singular grains of dirt and snowflakes of soot and ash with a momentary finger’s flick of telekinesis. “Now we’re ready to open.”

The ‘loth turned and walked back into his shop, the opening of the door ringing the polished brass bell situated above it. A faint glimmer of force walls lay across the surface of each shelf and hemispherical shells draped each table surface. Given the not-infrequent periodicity that his shop suffered from “random” firebombings or spontaneous mob violence in the middle of the night, the otherwise obnoxiously overwrought use of magic to protect the shop’s knickknacks and curios seemed downright judicious. With a casual flick of his claws, the ‘loth triggered the permanent protections to toggle off until closing.

 “It should be interesting to see who comes in today.” A’kin mused to himself as he walked away from the door and across the shop. “It always is.”

Just as the Friendly Fiend stepped behind the proprietor’s counter, his ears swiveled in warning. Suddenly, the shop’s door swung open hard enough to hit the front wall and partially rebound as Florian rushed inside.

“Akin!” She shouted, “We need your blood!”

“AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!” A’kin shrieked in horror as he dove behind the counter, not turning around to see who had burst shouting into his shop. The claws of his feet scrabbled against the wooden surface to carry him across and over, and with a soft whimpering noise, a single hand reached back over, wildly waving a wand in warning.

“Dude! No! I’m so sorry!” Florian called out, realizing her error.

“A’kin it’s just us.” Clueless added in, “We’re not thieves or well dressed tiefling assassins in service to anyone who doesn’t like you.”

Warily, the ‘loth poked his head over the edge of the counter. Once he recognized who it was he seemed to calm down at least somewhat, catching his breath and finally giving a soft, self-effacing chuckle at his actions. “What’s this about now?”

“He’s just so obnoxiously friendly!” Nisha giggled as she strolled around the shop with a delicate clip-clop of her hooves. “Even if he thinks that we’re here to rob or murder him. It’s so cute!”

“We don’t have a lot of time.” Clueless explained, unconsciously rubbing the back of his head where the altraloth had sent a bolt of lightning through his skull. “We’re chasing something that went through a keyed portal.”

Toras put his fist down on the counter in front of A’kin, “You can help us with that.”

“Maybe? Perhaps?” A’kin twitched his whiskers in confusion, “What sort of portal key do you need?”

“The blood of a greater yugoloth.” Florian explained. “Hence my bursting into here.”

“Well now,” A’kin’s ears perked in surprise and rubbed his well-manicured hands together with slight unease, “That’s rather specific isn’t it?”

“You’re the only greater yugoloth that we know.” The cleric explained before Toras added in a choice qualifying comment of his own.

“You’re the only one we know who isn’t a gigantic flaming b*tch.” Toras made a face. “Over the edge of Sigil, one of these days I swear.”

The ‘loth gave a short bow and allowed himself a smile at the latter comment of comparison. Inwardly he laughed as well as smiled at the visual it brought to mind.

“It was either we come to you or else we wander around the Hive and jump a nycaloth with potentially dubious results.” Nisha shrugged. “It’s much more fun to visit you. Also there’s less ooze portals.”

Pausing a moment, A’kin reached up a claw to adjust his glasses before glancing at Clueless’s ankle and the residual magic that radiated from the artifact lodged there. He twitched his whiskers with some curious concern but otherwise gave no comment.

“So do you think you can help us out with the blood thing?” Nisha quipped, “It’s an odd request sure. Hopefully it won’t be too much to ask. I’ll even return the things that I snagged from you the other week.”

“I think I have just the thing.” A’kin smiled as he walked towards the curtain leading back into his stock room. “Give me just a moment. And no worries Nisha, I know that you bring things back evening. Even if you don’t, they find their way back here on their own eventually. Don’t you worry about it.”

Nisha smiled as she shamelessly swiped a large red and white peppermint candy that A’kin had left on the countertop just within her reach as he walked off.

Several minutes later A’kin emerged from the back of the shop cradling a large, sealed glass bottle. Drifting within its murky, preservative-filled interior, sat the gnarled form of a severed nycaloth hand. “This should serve you just perfectly for opening a portal keyed as you say it is.”

Fyrehowl tilted her head to the side and raised an eyebrow skeptically, “Why do you have a pickled nycaloth hand?”

“Best not to ask.” A’kin shrugged. “It’s a long story, but it’s hardly the strangest thing I’ve got stuffed into a dusty corner or another in the back. You’ll get more use out of this than I will. I was just using it as a paperweight back there to be perfectly honest.”

Florian gingerly took hold of the bottle, staring at the hand contained within, worried that at any moment it might twitch and try to escape. “You sure this will work?”

A’kin shrugged. “I don’t see why not really. If it doesn’t, come back and we’ll see if I can’t help out some other way. Hopefully you’ll be good to go with that old thing though.”

“Ohm kaye, shounds wike a pwan.” Nisha slurred, moving the candy around her mouth with a cheerful smile on her face.

“What she meant to say was thank you very much A’kin.” Tristol extended a hand to the fiend who took it, shook it, and walked back behind the counter.

“You’re very much welcome, and whatever of whoever it is that you’re hunting, best of luck to you.” A’kin smiled cheerfully. “At the very least make sure that Nisha gets back in one piece. She still owes me a lot of things she walked off with last week, and I still owe her a chocolate mephit she actually paid for.”

“A chocolate mephit?” Tristol peered at A’kin and then turned to Nisha to ask the same question, “A chocolate mephit? Really now?”

The tiefling hung her head in shame as she poked her stomach as if she had an exaggerated paunch from eating too many sweets, even as the peppermint candy made a slight bulge against the inside of her cheek.

“A chocolate mephit.” A’kin shrugged. “They’ve been rather popular lately. Milk chocolate with a filling themed to whatever particular type of mephit it happens to be. Nisha wanted a raspberry filled fire mephit.”

Tristol laughed.

“I hate to change the topic of conversation.” Florian motioned towards the door. “But we need to catch an archfiend.”

A’kin quirked an eyebrow at the mention of “archfiend” but otherwise remained quiet for the second time in nearly as many minutes. Ignoring or simply not noting his silence on the matter, the group took their portal key in a jar and made for the door.

“Best of luck to you!” A’kin called out after them. “Come back soon!”


*****​

From Sigil to Faunel to Karasuthra, the time passed quickly and Tristol’s teleportation aided the transit immeasurably. From when Taba had ambushed them to when they stood once again before her portal, now with the proper key, it was less than an hour.

“Everyone be ready.” Clueless warned them as Florian held up the nycaloth hand and pressed it past the margins of the bound space. The portal flickered and opened, this time with a distinctly different hue to the glow emanating from its boundaries.

“I rather strongly suspect that Taba isn’t the sort of creature to only put into place a single ambush.” Alex remarked. “She’s probably waiting on the other side.”

“I wouldn’t put it past her.” Toras drew his sword and made for the portal. “See you all on the other side.”

“Let’s go.” Florian called out as she dove in after the fighter.

They had the correct key. A’kin had supplied them well. Taba however was not a creature to leave any route of egress open for easy or swift pursuit, and as soon as they emerged from the portal into the altraloth’s demiplane, they realized these facts immediately.

A labyrinth of twisting glass corridors greeted them, glittering and embossed with softly glowing runes and upon the floor below them, a prominent symbol of a series of clustered wheels, each of them broken and shattered in a mockery of the Oinoloth’s conspiracy.

All of these details were however secondary –if even noticed at all– as they each screamed in agony as the acid which filled the entire volume of the demiplane began to drown and devour them in its corrosive embrace. Six seconds later the runes on the walls began to glow red and the acid began to boil.


*****​


----------



## Shemeska

In an instant their world had become agony. Suspended in acid eating away at their flesh and drowning at the same time, only a moment later did the corrosive liquid begin to boil, compounding the hell which Taba had prepared for each and every would-be pursuer.

Arms flailed and legs kicked, blindly seeking out the portal by which they’d entered, only to find that it had been one-way only. They were trapped and in seconds they might all be dead, with death only fractionally delayed for those resistant to acid, courtesy of the runes setting the liquid to a boil.

Screams were lost to the bubbling, frothing liquid’s embrace, and if Taba had been there, she would have cackled at the sight and sound.

Reacting on instinct, Tristol ignored the pain and began to cast, begging for Mystra’s aid to keep his concentration intact despite the liquid fire eating into him moment by moment. The first spell triggered and then he began a second, and then the pain was gone, the liquid vanished, and slowly his sight and hearing began to return.

“I can’t see anything…” Toras coughed, expelling a mouthful of acid. “What the f*ck just happened. Tell me there’s something responsible that I can punch.”

“Florian, if you could please help out a bit.” Tristol slumped to the bottom of the spherical force wall that he’d surrounded them with. The magical barrier glistened and held back the boiling acid around them in all directions.
“Tristol, bless you to the highest heavens.” The cleric panted as she blindly grasped for her holy symbol. “What did you do?”

“Force wall followed by teleporting the acid outside of it.” He paused to shudder from the pain. “That was purely on instinct. I barely know what’s going on. Healing if you could. Please.”

Florian did just that, though it took more than what might have been typical. Between the horrific amount of injury and the nature of the demiplane itself sapping at the effectiveness of her divine magic, it took more than one casting to heal their wounds and allow them to take measure of where they were.

Finally able to fully examine the altraloth’s demiplane, it was clear that Taba was long gone. The glass walls formed a maze that wrapped around on itself at the pocket plane’s edges, with only a set few of them ending in bound spaces crafted into keyed portals leading to more than half of the Outer Planes.

“It’s a bolt hole.” Clueless sighed as they looked at one portal leading to Mechanus of all places. “She darts to one place, comes here, and darts to another, hopefully leading anyone following her into this lovely little death trap.”

“It almost worked.”

“Does anyone know what that means?” Alex pointed at the ubiquitous symbol carved into the floor at each intersection of the glass corridors.

“Taba doesn’t seem to like the Oinoloth.” Clueless explained. “It’s a parody of the Wheels Within Wheels. Hell it looks like we have something in common with her.”

“Yeah I’m not so sure that I want to say that I’m on the same side as that thing.” Fyrehowl shook her head and pointed towards a bas-relief on another adjacent wall. There stood an image of the General of Gehenna as a crowned ultroloth holding aloft a great and glistening gemstone, the Heart of Darkness.

*All Glory to the General of Gehenna. All Power to the First Ultroloth. All Praise to the Father of the Yugoloth Race. Doom and Death to Those Loyal to the Pretender to Khin-Oin. Broken Be the Wheels Within Wheels.*

“F*cking fiend politics.” Toras rolled his eyes. “Oh I’m the most evil. No, I’m the most evil. Blah blah blah. F*ck ‘em.”

Nisha giggled, joined in by Fyrehowl and Tristol shortly thereafter.

“So what now?” The lupinal glanced at Tristol and then Clueless. “Taba could be anywhere. Not much we can do now other than go back to Sigil and get drunk.”

“No, we’ve got somewhere to go.” Toras frowned. “We’ve got a man to talk to about an elf.”

****​

Taking the portal to Mechanus and from there to the Outlands and then Plague-Mort, it took relatively little time to reach the former Palace of the Archlector. It seemed as if Green Marvent expected them to return, mostly likely unsuccessful. Whatever the reason for his deception, his faction members provided a swift escort to see their Factol.

Marvent stood in the middle of the chamber in which he’d first met the party, hands folded in front of him, with an enigmatic but contrite smile playing across his face. His eyes moved from Toras to Florian and he gave a soft, resigned sigh.

“You lied to us.” Toras frowned and crossed his arms. “There was never an elf was there?”

“Dude!” Florian protested. “You sent us into Hell, right into a death trap. You told us that you could see into the future and that we’d be preventing millions of innocent deaths by killing a man who never existed. All we managed as a consolation prize was a yugoloth lord who popped Clueless’s head over here like a tomato against a wall.”

Nisha motioned towards the bladesinger, “He got better.”

“Why?” Toras asked in a measured tone. “Why lie to us? You owe us some answers.”

“I’m sorry that I lied to you.” Marvent seemed genuinely sorry, and the aura of tranquility that he’d always possessed seemed all the more present now, even though he’d just openly admitted to lying. “Yes, I sent you into Baator to find and kill the altraloth Taba, not an elf.”

“You could have just told us the truth!” Florian shouted.

“Would you have honestly agreed to go into Hell to kill a yugoloth lord at the behest of a man that you’d only just met and whose renegade faction members you’d murdered in the course of stopping the movement of slaves through Sigil?” Marvent smirked. “I rather suspect that with your past encounters with Taba’s kind that you would have wished me the best of luck in finding someone else for the job. You seem rather sick of them, and I can’t blame you.”

“What do you know about our past run-ins with them?” Clueless stared hard at the Illuminated Factol.

“That they aren’t over yet.” Marvent sighed, and then turned to Fyrehowl. “Even though they’ve harmed you and yours, you’ve harmed them as well. I’ve dreamed of a statue that isn’t a statue and a sleeping yugoloth screaming for release from the captor you sold her to. That day approaches and she will seek to make you pay for that insult.”

“You shouldn’t know that.” A look of confusion crossed over Clueless’s face as Marvent talked calmly about their imprisonment of Shylara the Manged.

“I shouldn’t know a great many things.” Marvent shrugged. “Yet I do. The important thing is that I try to act on what I can, or much more frequently I try to nudge people in a direction where they can alter the future that I’ve seen for the better. I could think of no other people than you better suited to trying to erase such a thing of evil from the planes as Taba. By fluke happenstance circumstances led you here to me in Plaguemort and I suspected that given Taba’s nature, there wouldn’t be an opportunity to confront her outside of her native plane again soon, and not with persons well acquainted with her kind and well equipped to actually fight her.”

Toras stared long and hard at the Factol. He’d answered their questions, though it only opened up more each time that they stood before him.

Through it all, Tristol stared at the Illuminated Factol, struggling to understand exactly what it was that he saw. Under magical detection there wasn’t a man standing there, just a magical aura the like of which he’d never seen before, and at the heart of it a blank spot where magic or possibly the fabric of space itself didn’t touch. The closest thing that he could guess was that Marvent was either the chosen or proxy of a deity or possibly one’s avatar.

“I wish you the best of luck in the future.” Marvent said, turning to go. “I am here if you have any need to advice for what that future holds.”

Uncertain as to the Factol’s motivation and even his exact nature, they departed and returned the way that they came, going back to Sigil. High above them, Marvent stood upon an upper balcony overlooking the gate town and watched them leave. Next to him stood his half-fire elemental minotaur lieutenant.

“Do you think that they’ll come back?” The minotaur asked.

“Absolutely my friend. I’ve seen that they will.” Marvent nodded and sighed as he stared off into the distance, the image of the Infinite Spire reflected in his pupils. “All of them but one.”


****​

Two weeks passed largely without incident, with Alex accepting an offer for a room in the Portal Jammer as thanks for his help in Baator. Other than his habit of talking to a familiar that only he seemed capable of seeing, none had any complaints about him and he seemed an amiable if odd fellow, though one with a considerable knowledge of magic.

Prior to their collective adventures in Hell and beyond, they’d made plans to attend a meeting of the Sigil Advisory Council, and soon enough the day for the meeting arrived. Although Alex wasn’t a land owner in the City of Doors like the rest of them, they brought him along as a guest anyway.

Situated in the Park of the Infernal and the Divine, security was tight and members of both the Sons of Mercy and the Sodkillers made their own separate rounds along the periphery to ensure that absolutely nothing untoward would happen. Both groups seemed to be paying just as much wary attention to one another as to the members of the public as they streamed in and took seats.

“These things are usually a mix of boring speeches and people yelling at each other over absolutely minor disagreements.” Nisha explained to Alex as she sat down next to him with Tristol on her other side. “It should all be a pretty good introduction to the mess of Sigil’s politics.”

“It all seems so very… petty.” The wizard gave a shrug as the public spectacle lurched towards its start.

“Just don’t pick a fight with anyone wearing a razorvine headdress.” Florian warned the newcomer as they took seats three rows back from the front, facing the stage where the council members would sit. True to form, Chairwoman Rhys was already there and seated in the center chair.

“Don’t pick a fight with anyone wearing razorvine as a fashion accessory, not unless you can sucker punch her first.” Toras smiled dreamily. “One of these days in a dark alleyway. One of these days I’ll have the chance.”

“You really truly don’t seem to like her,” Alex looked up at the half-celestial as he daydreamed about mugging an arcanaloth, “whoever she is. You haven’t actually named her. This isn’t the first time that you’ve griped about her though.”

“I’m not saying her name.” Toras frowned. “She might be listening and it might give her power.”

“Saying her name gives her power?” Alex looked worried. “I very much don’t want to mess with something that powerful.”

“She doesn’t.” Clueless shook his head. “She’s just an insufferable b*tch and talking about her just inflates her ego even more. Speaking of which, I don’t actually see her yet.”

The bladesinger looked across the crowd and true enough he didn’t see the Marauder. People were still taking their seats and the meeting still hadn’t started, but all of the council members were there. Aside from Rhys, Zadara and Harry Hatchys sat in their respective chairs, and soon they were joined by the rest of their number.

Former Factol Rhys began the proceedings with a listing of minor issues before the council, followed by the first major announcement regarding a proposal to restrict future land ownership in Sigil to planars only. Although it wasn’t stated, the smirk on Cirily’s face made it absolutely clear that she was behind the proposal.

While the majority of those in attendance and on the council itself were planars, the proposal was dead before it reached a vote. Zadara was steadfastly against the measure, and while Cirily tried to make several impromptu speeches from her place on stage, Rhys cut her off each and every time by procedural matters or motions.

The measure failed before the council without requiring a public vote, and it was against the backdrop of the silently fuming firre eladrin councilmember that the Marauder made her fashionably late entrance.

True to form, and looking up at the frustrated eladrin with a sarcastic faux smile, the ‘loth waltzed into the part accompanied by her flock of groomer-guards and toadies. The fiend herself wore a jet black gown made of onyx stones stitched together with golden wire, and a golden sash draped across her shoulders and arms. The gown’s lengthy train trailed behind her like a shadow, nearly as long as she was tall. Two of her tieflings walked behind her, carrying the train aloft to ensure that it appeared to float two inches off of the ground which was precisely the height that the ‘loth herself floated. Walking it seemed was too prosaic for her feet at the present time.

Clueless rolled his eyes. “Anyone touching that gown would be flayed like the Lady’s Shadow if she didn’t think she’d get mazed for the mockery. Cutting it damn close as it is…” 

“Yeah, that’d be her.” Toras motioned towards the ‘loth for Alex’s benefit.

The alienist chuckled, “I see why you don’t like her.”

Taking a seat front and center before the council, Shemeska’s tieflings calmly evicted the people already sitting in the first and second rows. Far be it for the King of the Crosstrade to sit near anyone else if she didn’t so choose. 

Daintily crossing her legs, the Marauder reclined back in her seat and extended a hand to her right to accept a glass pipe already prepared and lit by one of her attendants. Pursing her lips, the fiend glanced up at Rhys with a daring smile as she began to puff at the pipe, blowing a stream of smoke in Zadara the Titan’s direction. The aromatic purple-gray smoke coiled and twisted in the air, though when expelled from the ‘loth’s nose or streamed from between her fangs the smoke formed the shapes of tiny screaming spirits as it dispersed.

Spectacle upon spectacle, and she would have it no differently.

Through it all, Chairwoman Rhys never actually stopped talking. Refusing the fiend the chance to be the spectacle she wished to be, her next statement might have been intentionally spoken out of whatever order she’d originally planned; it was far too poetically timed for the Marauder’s appearance to have been left to chance.

“Next before the council is a motion raised by Councilwoman Zadara.” Rhys inclined her head towards the titan. “The motion would propose to levy a tax upon fiends of 1 gold piece upon entry into Sigil, and a monthly charge of 2 silvers or a 3% tax upon their property holdings within the City of Doors, whichever is greater.”

A soft snarl issued from the front row of seats and a faint smile crossed over Zadara’s face. A collective muttering issued from the audience, both for the implied shot across the bow between two of the richest creatures in Sigil and the impact –not altogether bad– that the legislation would incur.

“Those two aren’t going to start fighting again are they?” Nisha whispered to Tristol as she tapped a hoof nervously in the air.

“Gods above I hope so.” Toras beamed a grin. “I’m voting for this by the way. I’m absolutely voting on this because it would ruin that b*tch.”

“The two of them actually fighting didn’t end well for Zadara last time.” Fyrehowl frowned. “Which is why I don’t think anything is going to come from this.”

The council debated the measure for a time, and through it all Shemeska said nothing, but silently fumed from her seat in the front row, staring daggers at the titan. In the end the measure failed by a substantial margin, and it was not a surprise given the amount of telepathic chatter emerging from the Marauder to others in the audience, let alone every other fiend of every origin there as well. It was too controversial a measure and liable to spark immediate violence in the streets.

Rhys breathed a visible sigh of relief as she brought up the next series of measures: Complaints against the Minders Guild and possible abuses of power; complaints against the Ring Givers, Sodkillers and Sons of Mercy as tempting the wrath of the Lady; petition for sale of the land occupied by the ruins of the Armory to Faith, wife of the late Sarin, former factol of the Harmonium; and an open call for investigation into the explosion in the Gatehouse.

Alex remained conspicuously silent about the last, though he smiled at his familiar more than once during the debate about the particulars. In fact he held back a chuckle on more than one occasion, almost as if he knew something about Esmus and Tollysalmon like an inside joke whose humor was lost on everyone else in attendance.

Most of the petitions went without incident yeah or nay, with the final gaining funding and an extension to follow up at the next council meeting. The next petition was sure however to raise some hackles.

“Next,” Rhys called out, looking at a number of tavern owners throughout the audience, “There comes a proposed 10% tax on the sale of potent alcoholic spirits and drugs, with the funds used to improve sanitation within the Hive.”

The Marauder shrugged, unconcerned, and handed over her pipe to conspicuously change out the tobacco it contained with something distinctly harder.

“That tax is going to kill our profit margins…” Clueless stared at the stage and the smirk that played across the eladrin Cirilly’s face. Most of the taxed items were consumed by mortals, and for whatever reason the celestial had a particular bug in her craw regarding them regardless of alignment.

The measure failed, much to the eladrin’s displeasure. Many of the council’s measures it seemed were less for the public’s immediate wellbeing than designed as taunts and barbs against each other and their own personal concerns.

Finally the floor was opened up for public commentary, further petitions and an address of grievances by landowners. The first petition to the council opened up a firestorm when Friar Muriav Garianis stood up and made his request. The patriarch of the Lower Ward’s ‘Garianis Family’ was one of the lesser known members of Sigil’s golden lords. Since the Storm of Doors years earlier, the cleric of Pluto had been buying or otherwise acquiring the title to land in the Shattered Temple District, formerly owned by various members of the Athar or by the faction as a whole. Since the faction’s self-exile from Sigil rather than officially disband after the Lady’s Edict, their hold on their former land in Sigil had been thrown into question. The Garianis clan had seized the moment and squatted and developed the area on their own.

“I wish to petition the council for license to demolish the Shattered Temple in order to construct a Temple of Pluto. As the council is no doubt aware, I have claim to 85% of the land parcels adjacent to the former Athar stronghold. Might I also stress that the Athar completely abandoned the location following Her Serenity’s Edict. In their absence I wish to make claim to the land that I have de facto held for the past four years. The ruins are an eye sore wherein too much blood was spilled, and I wish to renovate the land and the entire district itself at no cost to Sigil’s citizenry.”

Seated in the front row, the Marauder smirked. Garianis was a rival at least when it came to the seedy underside of that district of Sigil. As his power had expanded, invariably his people had come into conflict with hers. Building a temple to his divine patron would absolutely legitimize the cleric in higher circles in Sigil, those same circles where the Marauder swam like a shark among swans, and allow him the chance to actually become a legitimate rival in time.

The moment Rhys opened the matter for public commentary, Shemeska was up on her feet, walking towards one of the podiums reserved for speakers in the audience. So was Fyrehowl, prompted both by an uncanny feeling she had, as well as a subtle look by Rhys that implied more than requested that she at the very least be in a position to speak.

“I wanted to address the council and suggest…”

“This idea is piss.” Shemeska called out, interrupting the lupinal. “Garianis has no legal claim to 70% of the holdings in the district that he claims to own legally. He and I have competing titles to multiple properties, and curiously most of his claims derive from land given over to him in the testaments of those who died under unsettled circumstances. Funny that.”

“Pardon me?” Fyrehowl turned to face the Marauder, “I believe that I was speaking.”

“This council would be giving a historical property with living claimants to a man who would destroy it and leave them uncompensated.” The fiend turned to briefly glance at Garianis, ignoring the lupinal entirely. “If the Friar in question wishes to improve his social standing I would suggest that the Council provide him title to unclaimed land within the Slags.”

“Lady Shemeska, you can wait your turn.” Fyrehowl frowned at the ‘loth, raising her voice as she spoke.

Shemeska turned and looked at her, raising an eyebrow. “Sit down little girl and let your betters speak.”

“Oh?” Fyrehowl stared at the fiend calmly, “By what standard do you think that you’re better than me?”

“B*tch!” Florian coughed from three rows back. “Super b*tch!”

The Marauder didn’t turn around to give Florian the satisfaction of seeing her snarl with displeasure, but the fiend very much heard her.

“I would suggest that the council hold on any decision until such time as the other claimants to the Shattered Temple present their claims in person or via a registered proxy with voting rights before the council.”

“Seriously, shut the f*ck up.” Florian sighed and unfortunately it came at a lull in ambient chatter amongst the crowd. The ‘loth heard her and so did the rest of the audience.

Shemeska’s lips moved into a sneer and her eyes widened as a flicker of purple flames ignited in her eyesockets. The guards flanking her turned to stare at Florian, moving their gaze away from Garianis and his people. Colcook stared in shock at Florian’s audacity, but whatever the Marauder’s immediate designs might have been, another voice took hold of the Council’s attention from the back of the park.

“No! You fools!” An elderly githzerai mage stood in the back of the room, surrounded by several dozen other men and women. Dressed in plain olive robes, his head was shaved except for a braided stop down the center than trailed behind him on his shoulders. “The Shattered Temple does not belong to that man.”

Silence descended over the crowd and slowly people moved away from the source of the voice as others recognized him or the symbols that his attendants wore: the symbol of the Athar.

Garianis regarded the man with a look of shock and then shot the Marauder a look of anger. That the fiend put one bejeweled hand to her breast and another to her lips in mock surprise confirmed his suspicions. The cleric’s followers drew their blades as discretely as possible and fanned out around their patriarch, fully expecting bloodshed.

“Welcome back Factol Hobard.” Rhys’s voice was calm as she nodded to Terrance’s successor.


****​


----------



## Shemeska

Ok, shameless promotion time for a project that I'm working on - the Aethera Campaign Setting for Pathfinder RPG

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?471140-Encounter-Table-Publishing-Aethera-Campaign-Setting

For those of you that have appreciated my work here on the Storyhour, and my planar work for Pathfinder, I'm writing a large amount of the cosmology material for Aethera. Take a look, and if it interests you, give us some support on Kickstarter.


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## Shemeska

“The shattered temple is not his!” Hobard pointed a finger directly at Muriav Garianis with the spite and contempt in his voice and eyes nearly palpable. “Regardless of our status as a Faction, it was our home, and it is still ours!”

More and more citizens in the crowd abruptly left their seats and scattered for the park’s periphery moment by moment as the rancor between the two sides escalated. Looking down on it all, the Council members cast worried glances between themselves, but none of them outside of Rhys made any interruption.

“How dare you even think yourself entitled to defile that place with your feet Muriav?” The githzerai shook with rage as he stared down the cleric. “The gall! The gall you have to presume to take what is ours, to spit on our faction, to spit on our dead, and then to build a temple to your sodding fool of a power!”

“You and yours were exiled from Sigil by the Lady herself!” Garianis laughed, though the timbre of his voice stood in stark contrast to the slight tremor in his hand as it reached up to clasp his holy symbol.

“Shut up Garianis.” Hobard narrowed his eyes, “Your bravado is as hollow as the divinity of the power you shackle yourself to.”

The Marauder refilled and lit her pipe again, silently enjoying an event that it seemed clear that she’d anticipated if not somehow played a role in arranging. Several council members shot her a suspicious look, but Rhys ignored the ‘loth as she motioned for the council’s guards to interpose themselves between the Athar and the Garianis family.

Rhys stepped forward and tapped her staff on the platform, calling out to both Hobard and Garianis alike, “This is neither the place nor the time to spill any blood over a parcel of land littered with dust and bones from more than one recent conflict. The Lady’s Shadow has fallen across those fighting over that spot before, and I dare say that Her Serenity would be quick to do so again if provoked.”

A hush passed over the crowd, including the Athar and the Garianis clan at the former factol’s invocation of that very real threat. Mutual antipathy and righteous zeal overcame her warning only moments later when one of the Garianis family spat in the direction of the Athar. In response, one of the younger members of the exiled faction gestured with a knife to the woman, one of Muriav’s nieces.

“Guards!” Garianis shouted. “Arrest these fools!”

“If you so much as touch one stone in the Shattered Temple it will be the death of you.” The Athar factol’s voice was cold and his gaze never left the cleric’s.

“Do you hear this madman?!” Garianis laughed and spread his arms. “He threatens me in front of all of you.”

The Marauder continued the smirk as Rhys motioned to the guards to take action. Once the tiefling had given orders, she glanced down at the ‘loth. The Marauder met Rhys’s gaze and calmly, arrogantly blew a ring of smoke in her direction. If any telepathic words of warning, rebuke, or taunting passed between them, it wasn’t obvious, and whatever Rhys’s suspicions, the obvious situation swallowed her attention.

More shouting erupted between the two men, joined soon by their respective followers. It took more than twenty minutes for the council’s guards to separate the groups and escort them out of the park’s grounds. What might have ended in bloodshed had not, and for once it seemed Rhys was pleased. Despite her quick action then and there however, the stage had been set for a looming confrontation between the Garianis clan and a faction that seemed eager to retain their ownership of the Shattered Temple or perhaps even make a return into the city itself as a political power.

The council meeting ended on that note, with voices tinged with concern and worry as much as speculation and even some bets as to who might be found stabbed to death within a fortnight or even mazed or flayed for their audacity in perhaps flaunting the spirit if not absolutely the letter of The Lady’s proclamation.

Everything had ended as well as it could have, all things considered. There had been no blood spilled, no lightning bolts hurled by the githzerai archmage who now ruled over the Athar, nor had a half dozen tieflings stabbed Florian for her very public but quickly overshadowed insults. The cleric’s words had, it seemed, been forgotten by the assembled witnesses.

One witness had not forgotten.


****​


“So, back to the Jammer for dinner, or did you want to do something stupid and try to follow either of those two groups and see what they’re up to?” Florian smiled as she walked through the park gates and turned down the street. Feeling eyes upon her back, she briefly turned around to look.

Behind her, the Marauder and her entourage emerged amid a throng of other citizens. Shemeska stood there in the middle of the street only for a moment, and unless one was watching her specifically they wouldn’t have noticed a thing before she turned, laughed, and continued with her previous self-indulgent conversation without skipping a measure.

In that moment though, the Marauder stared at Florian, making certain that she made eye contact. Purple flame danced within her pupils and silently, as she turned away, she smirked and squeezed her fingers gingerly around something resting there in her palm. Ice cold and with a heartbeat of its own, the shadows that swirled around the Key caressed her fingertips like a lover’s tongue as she invoked its power.

Without warning, where there had never been a portal before, the stones below Florian’s feet vanished into a yawning mouth to the Negative Energy plane.

“F*ck!” The color drained from the cleric’s face, literally so, as she tumbled into the portal. Shrieking in terror she managed to grasp onto the edge of the bound space. Glancing down the Void stretched out eternally, a devouring darkness composed of the physical stuff of anti-life itself.

“What the hell!” Fyrehowl shouted as she dove forward to latch her hands onto Florian’s arms as she slipped further into the portal with a whistling noise as the ever-hungry vacuum of the Negative Energy plane sucked at the air as well as the mortal scrambling to escape the portal. “I’ve got you! Hold on!”

Florian shuddered as the ambient negative energy sucked at her life-force, and only with the lupinal’s aid was she able to grab enough purchase to clamber out of the portal.

“What the bloody blazes was that?!” Florian shouted as she clutched her holy symbol, whispering a prayer of thanksgiving to Tempus.

“Whatever you do, don’t step on that same spot in Sigil ever again?” Nisha gave a sidelong glance at the patch of street she’d watch suddenly erupt into a portal. “Because that’s like an ooze portal writ large and you seem to have the portal key.”

“Holy hells!” Florian shook her head. “Not the best start to my day, I… GAHHH!”

Without warning the street below her vanished, the space bound by a tracery of scuffs and cracks in the marble replaced with a roaring portal into Elemental Flame. Thankfully the moment that it opened, Fyrehowl was there to snatch the cleric out of the way. Both of them looked down at the roaring flames with horror.

“Does this sort of thing normally happen in this city?” Alex turned away from the open portal took look questioningly at the others. “Or are you people just bad luck?”

“No, that’s not normal.” The lupinal’s ears lay back against her head and the fur on her neck and shoulders stood prickled and erect with worry. “I’ve never seen that happen.”

“I wouldn’t stand anywhere near where you’re at…” Nisha warned even as she trotted a dozen feet away, dragging Tristol with her as she latched onto his arm.

“Seriously, what the hell just happened?” Florian looked to Tristol, then to Clueless. “Since when do two random portals open directly under your feet to try and kill you?”

“You haven’t been worshiping…” Nisha looked across the street at the decorative blades on a home’s ornate iron eaves. “… you know who, have you? Because that’s a bad idea.”

“No!” Florian clutched her holy symbol of Tempus. “But that’s the sort of creepy that this is.” She pointed at the slowly closing portal. “None of you brought any artifacts into the city did you?”

Clueless moved his ankle warily.

“That didn’t look like a normal portal opening or closing.” Tristol stared warily at the locations of the two portals. “The magic felt strange. I can’t define it any more than that though.”

“So what you’re saying is to always fly or just wander the city using a buddy system?” Alex looked dubious at the idea. “You all live in this city why again?”

Toras glanced around, looking for anyone that might have been watching. Paranoid or not, the vague thought crossed his mind that if the portal key hadn’t been a physical item, it might have been a thought, a phrase, or something equally ephemeral that might have been carefully applied from a distance to open the portal. If so, it might still have been accidental, but after everything that had happened to them all, he knew the chances of that were rather remote.

Moving out of the street, Florian began a series of prayers to heal the damage that she’d taken from exposure to the fury of the Negative Energy plane. Fyrehowl and Nisha helped her as the others warily looked for any explanation of what might have happened. The more Toras thought about the situation though, the more certain he was that somehow it linked back to Florian’s insult against the Marauder during the council meeting.

“Where the hell are you?” Toras muttered as he glanced for where the ‘loth might be.

Not having waited to watch, the Marauder was already a block away. A delighted smirk crossed her mind as she heard Florian’s screams from down the street crying out for help, though her face never reacted to give away her culpability. She continued walking and chatting with her entourage, displaying the same supremely smug arrogance that she always did. Talking about something other than her attempted assassination via portal, Shemeska never noticed the low, dull rumble of a Cage Quake that softly shook the foundations and rattled the windows in the surrounding blocks.

Two Wards away, Fell the Fallen Dabus shuddered as he felt the quake erupt as a sign of Her displeasure. It was happening again.


****​


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## almost13

i was wondering when shemeska would test the key out. had you planned for her to do that, or was it an impromptu reaction to florian's insult?
thanks a lot for the whole bunch of updates shemmy!


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## Shemeska

almost13 said:


> i was wondering when shemeska would test the key out. had you planned for her to do that, or was it an impromptu reaction to florian's insult?
> thanks a lot for the whole bunch of updates shemmy!




Given Shemeska's ego, it was there looming as something that she might do (against all better judgement) above and beyond the reasons that she was give the Key in the first place. Florian's insult was an excuse to have her play with it.

There will be ramifications. Big ones.


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## Akhelos

Why do I get the impression that if the Group wants to shave Shemeshka they have to do it fast, because else THE Lady will do it first in a very permanent way. *gg*

Or better, wait and then sell tickets to look at the fox in the Zoo-cage, erm i mean Shemmi in her personal extradimensional prison.^^ 5 Gold to look at her, 15 if you want to throw rotten tomatos at her.


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## Shemeska

Back at the Portal Jammer, Tristol sat at a corner table in the main taproom, staring at a crisp white envelope marked with his arcane symbol as well as a symbol of a specific house from the nation of Halruaa: his own. Also embossed upon the envelope both physically and with far too much use of illusion magic, two other symbols stood out: those of his parents.

As soon as the envelope was opened, a spell triggered to notify the sender that it had indeed reached its intended recipient: her son. As soon as the nearest portal to Toril opened in Sigil, the spell carried its message back to the original caster in a tower in Tristol’s native magocracy.

By comparison with the envelope, the letter itself was a relatively brief and unadorned affair, at least outside of the magically illuminated and moving letters at the start of each paragraph that flickered with flame, or vines, or roaring dragons. The illusory decoration seemed more than a bit overwhelming considering that the content of the letter itself comprised little more than half a page of text – none of it handwritten but rather magically composed in response to his mother’s verbal dictation.

“Your mom had a lot of fun with illusion magic, even just on the envelope.” Nisha tapped the envelope with the tip of her tail, drawing forth a rush of illusory wind and leaves, as well as a soft background of chirping birds from Tristol’s native corner of Faerun. “Can I say that she went overboard with it? It’s just a letter.”

“Mom is an illusionist.” Tristol smirked and rolled his eyes. “I had to grow up with this. This is on the low end of her scale of ostentatious. It’s part of why I left home, and it’s most of the reason why I went into evocation as a specialty.”

“Oh don’t worry Tristol.” The tiefling kissed his shoulder and curled her tail around his. “I think evocation is a much more awesome school of magic. Plus, I’m sure that she can’t be all that bad.”

Tristol glanced over at Nisha, not saying a word. His expression said everything he needed to convey.

“Oh…” Nisha frowned. “So umm… she knows about me right?”

Tristol took a shot of ale and pushed the letter closer to Nisha. The Xaositect read over the text and promptly purloined her boyfriend’s drink for a shot of it herself.

“Yeah…” Tristol smirked. “She made Dad scry on me. More than once. She wants to know why a son of hers was in Pandemonium and Plague-Mort. Also you…”

Nisha snatched the letter out of Tristol’s hand and read the passage in question. The bell on her tail rattled like an angry hornets’ nest before she laughed out loud and shook her head.

“I’m so sorry.” Tristol put his head down on his girlfriend’s shoulder.

“Well technically she’s correct.” Nisha shrugged. “I am by every definition a… how did she put it? A ‘demon-blooded wench’.” She stuck out her tongue, tapped her hooves on the floor, and ran a fingertip along the line of one of her horns before tapping the silver charm that hung suspended from its tip.

“Again, I’m so very, very sorry.” Tristol groaned. “She’s overbearing at the best of times and she has her legacy to worry about. It’s all part of Halruaa and how mage families operate. She and my father were an arranged marriage and she wanted the same for me, both to strengthen the family’s and her prestige, and also to breed better mages.”

“What’s wrong with me?” Nisha tilted her head to the side. “I’m a mage. Sort of. The kind that tosses a fireball occasionally but mostly prefers to knife you in the back kind. That counts in Halruaa right?”

“You can cast fireball now?” The expression on Tristol’s face was somewhere between surprise and worry. “A wand or actually casting it from memory?”

“From memory I guess?” Nisha shrugged. “I’ve been reading through your spellbooks and it’s rubbing off. I’ll be working my way up to archmage in no time.”

Tristol ever so slightly paled. “Please don’t throw fireballs at my parents. They want us to visit. Both of us.”

“Can I call her mom?” Nisha clapped her hands together gleefully. “I promise I won’t walk off with too much of their stuff if you let me call her mom.”

“You can call her whatever you want.” Tristol leaned in and planted a kiss on her lips. “Just please be on your best behavior when we visit.”

“I’m always on my best behavior!” She waved her hands dismissively and smiled. “So when do they want us to visit? I stopped reading at ‘demon-blooded wench’.”

“Soon?” Tristol frowned and glanced over at Nisha. “You look less worried about this than I am. Actually, you look excited.”

“I never had parents that I knew.” She ruffled Tristol’s hair and fussed with his vulpine ears. “So I’m sort of excited to adopt them. Plus, if you’re all super worried, we can bring along the others. Your mom is less likely to overreact if we bring other people.”

“I suppose that we can do that.” He leaned in and gave her another kiss which she happily returned.

One kiss of course begat another, which begat another in a long lineage of pecks and snogs. Five minutes of overly cutesy affection later, they realized that customers were staring at them. Tristol tried to look professional and Nisha of course waved at the ones still staring.

More conversation about the forthcoming trip to Halruaa followed, with the logistics of it all, a primer on Halruaan customs and social expectations being the heart of the matter. Nisha paid rapt attention to Tristol’s explanations of each and every item, but she took notice as he yawned several times. Eventually she put a finger on his nose and stopped him.

“You’re still not sleeping well.” Nisha poked her boyfriend in the ribs. “Talk to me.”

“I’m still having the creepy howler dreams.” He frowned and his ears folded back. “I’ve found some references to similar things though, all linked to Pandemonium. I might be on to something.”

“Maybe your folks can help?” Nisha poked the letter with her tail. “Technically your mom and dad are archmages or pretty close to it.”

“Oh no. No no no no.” Tristol shook his head. “The last thing I need is for them to think that I’m not competent or that you’ve gotten me cursed or into trouble that we can’t handle ourselves. I’m going to handle this and not breathe a word of it to them.”

“Keep me up to speed.” Nisha leaned in and put her head on his shoulder. “I’ll help in any way that I can you know.”

“You’re sweet.” Tristol smiled warmly and curled his tail around hers. “I don’t care what my mother says or thinks about you. You mean more to me than her expectations.”

Nisha kissed his nose, “So speaking of familial wants and social expectations, should we tell them about our plans?”

“My parents? Or the others?” Tristol glanced across the room, noting Florian, Toras, and Fyrehowl in residence.

“Either or both.” Nisha shrugged and polished off the last of Tristol’s ale. “Eventually they’ll have to know I suppose. I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces.”

“Not yet. I’d like to see how they react to you first and then we can tell them and the others as well.” Tristol kissed her nose. “Let’s make it a surprise.”


****​

While the far too adorable tiefling and aasimar conspired in their corner of the Portal Jammer’s main room, Florian sat with a scotch in one hand and her holy symbol in the other, worried sick about the floor suddenly vanishing beneath her. Toras watched her attempt to stay calm, and without telling her a thing, he sat by himself with pen and ink, writing an elaborate ‘I am so very sorry’ letter to a specific fiend who in his opinion deserved nothing less than a hip check over the side of Sigil’s ring. Still, as much as he despised writing the note, it needed to be done; assuming of course that the ‘loth was somehow behind the attempted assassination.

‘Honored Shemeska…’

Toras scratched out a line in his draft and took a sip of ale.

‘Supreme *sshole Shemeska…’

No.

‘Biggest b*tch wearing last year’s fashions…’

Absolutely not.

‘Queen of the Crosstrade…’

That’s one way to a portal opening under you as well.

‘I can’t wait until I can stab you in the throat you stupid c*nt yugoloth…’

Toras smiled smugly and scratched out the attempts.

‘Honored King of the Crosstrade…’

She was behind it, the attack on Florian, wasn’t she? She had to be.

Assuming she was, would she do more than she already had? What else might she do to make their lives miserable? Would appealing to her ego be enough?


****​

As all of that occurred on the first floor of the Portal Jammer, Shemeska’s former -and now wholly liberated- plaything ascended the stairs with a yawn. Desiring nothing beyond a nap, the bladesinger walked from the landing down the hallway and towards his room at the end of the corridor. He passed Fyrehowl’s room, then Florian’s, then Nisha’s room.

“Well damn…” He paused and stared into the Xaositect’s room through the open door. The room was completely empty except for a note pinned to the door. 

‘This room now filled with invisible traps and an equally invisible shrine to the Slaadi Lords. Nisha and her stuffs have now relocated to the room of the most adorable mage in Sigil. <3’

Clueless laughed for a moment and continued down the hallway, smiling at how well Nisha and Tristol were moving along in their relationship. The thought of invisible traps and a shrine to the Slaad lords caused him a moment of mental pause to consider if Nisha was simply being random or if she’d actually done what she’d written down. He would have gone back to her now empty former room to look at any traces of magic to confirm it all, but he never had the chance.

Bound to Clueless’s belt, Cilret Leobtav’s dagger erupted with a ghostly radiance and tore itself free, lurching under its own power to lodge itself blade first into the door to the bladesinger’s left. The room was one of the empty rooms that they’d never used, and most of its interior was filled with support beams for the spelljamming ship lodged into the Jammer’s superstructure.

“What the f*cking f*ck?!” Clueless caught himself on the doorframe as the dagger tore itself free. His eyes were wide as the blade rattled, worming itself into the wood another inch as he watched. Each time a majority of the blade’s mass passed the plane of the closed and sealed door, the doorframe flickered with the cold light of an opening and then closing portal.

Slowly, Clueless reached down to his belt to grab the sending stone he carried. Tapping it, he sent the following telepathic message to each of the others, “Get upstairs. Now.”


****​

Ice sparkled amidst the ashes that covered the ground four inches deep, providing a soft crunching noise to any movements, and a percussive refrain to the chorus of whispers that filled the air with a harrowing susurrus. A moment of silence and you could hear the voices calling out for mercy and begging for death.

The scratch of a pen and a rasping, phlegmatic cough broke the moment of silence.

“Whisper all you like misbegotten wretches, your fate was set the moment this reality sprang into being, even if technically, the exegesis of it all hasn’t even happened yet. Funny…”

The chorus of voices whispered back, and in the chaos of their pleading, the solitary figure sitting at the heart of the Vale of Frozen Ashes atop the broken foundation stones of a once grandiose cathedral took note of it all. Nothing was missed: not a word, not a note of inflection, not the nature of the creature pleading in agony, nothing. Every piece of information, every piece of data was written down and considered in a chronicle of pointless, unceasing agony.

“Oh yes of course, the celestials may scream the most,” The pen scratched with a fury that seemed to mock the concept of discrete moments of time, somehow recording everything in the pages of the massive book perched on its owner’s near skeletal knees. “But oh you the fiends, you my children, your agonies comprise the majority of my work. Music to while away the time before your doom comes once again. I would smile, but alas, I feel nothing except through you. Suffer beautiful ones and know that I at least am not the cause. I never am.”

The creature spread its arms, stretching with the sound of creaking, popping joints as it abruptly doubled over in a fit of coughing. When the paroxysm finally ended, its feet and the ashes before it were flashed red with blood that boiled and curdled as it touched the ashes, transforming the soot of dead outsiders into a carpet of wriggling things gasping and clawing at the ashes and one another in a transient mockery of life. The cursed form of spontaneous generation lasted only a moment before the blood evaporated, subsumed back into the substance of not Gehenna, but the Waste, leaving the misbegotten things to die.

A subtle current of change rippled through the air. A tenuous moment of interplay between ancient magic and planar mechanics, it would have gone unnoticed by virtually any being except for the abomination that sat there amidst the ashes.

“The Lady comes knocking…” The being continued its chronicle as hundreds of feet away a portal to Sigil flickered into existence. “Doors, portals, and pathways: bladed and blind. The Clock ticks oh Serene one, even for you.”

Sensing the blood of mortals stepping into the Vale, the roving packs of phiuls shrieked and gathered. The pen continued to write with no concern at all, though its owner turned and glanced in the direction of the portal, curious to see who it would deposit into a piece of the Waste torn free from its moorings and hurled into the depths of Gehenna.

“Welcome our guests won’t you?” The elder thing turned to glance at the frozen, dead but undying face of a carbonized solar. “Whisper your words of warning, because I certainly won’t. But of course remember, all of this has been foretold. All of this is happening exactly as we have seen, even this now.” It grinned a skeletal smile, extending a grey and mucous coated tongue to wet a finger and turn its book to a new page. “Another sign manifests itself and the Clock ticks towards midnight. It cannot be stopped.”

The distant light of the open portal glimmered in its dull, dead eyes and Sarkithel fek Parthis smiled.


****​


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## Shemeska

“So yeah…” Clueless motioned to Leobtav’s dagger now fully embedded into the doorway and activating an open, functional portal. “There’s this.”

“You’re saying the dagger moved on its own accord to open the portal?” Toras stared and frowned.

Clueless nodded with much the same expression, “It wouldn’t be the first time the damn thing has done its own thing.”

“No. Hold on. This isn’t right.” Tristol shook his head. “We examined all of the doors in the hallway when we took over the Jammer, and there wasn’t a portal here, much less one…” He whispered the words to a divination and glanced at the portal, “… to Gehenna.”

“Lovely.” Florian rolled her eyes.

“So how about we just wall this door over and not have to worry about it?” Toras shrugged as he developed a grin. “Or maybe stick some spikes in place so any ‘loth wandering through impales themselves when they step through?”

Clueless shook his head, “The Lady would maze our *sses if you tried that.”

“You didn’t disagree with my idea though.”

“True…” The bladesinger allowed himself a chuckle at the concept. “Anyone care to find out just what this damn dagger wants?”

“So a lovely jaunt into Gehenna, just like that?” Nisha made a not exactly pleased face.

Clueless took the next twenty minutes to convince the others to go with him, as opposed to waiting for him to return. Without any expectations of what awaited them on the other side, it was a dicey affair to say the least. On top of the dangers of the Fourfold Furnace, they likewise had no idea if the artifact wasn’t simply attempting to kill them all as a side effect of its murderous, wrathful compulsions presumably wrought by its use to murder the Tiere deity.

In the end, they all stepped through and into a place that shouldn’t have existed, but which seemed to have been waiting for them for a very, very long time.


****​

The black vault of Gehenna’s void-like sky stretched out above them as they stepped through the portal. Interminably far in the distance, the other furnaces burned like dying, uncaring stars swift to watch and mock the suffering of every creature that dwelled within their corrupted sliver of reality. The second thing that they noticed beyond the sky though, was the crunch of ice and ashes below their feet, or in Nisha’s case, hooves. 

“Where the hell are we?” Fyrehowl asked, drawing her arms around herself with a pronounced shudder and shiver. The lupinal’s tail involuntarily curled between her legs. Whatever her present relationship with her native alignment might have been, the very structure of her being felt sick as soon as she stepped upon the frozen ground.

“Welcome to the lovely depths of Gehenna…” Toras gestured with one hand as he preemptively drew his sword. “Please stab anything that approaches you, it won’t have good intentions in mind.”

“No, I gathered that much by the floating volcanoes in the sky.” Fyrehowl shook her head and swallowed down a wave of nausea. “Where specifically, and why did Leobtav’s dagger open a portal here? Powers above, this place feels sick...”

As their eyes adjusted to the gloom of the void, they stared at the expanse of the vale stretching out before them. As best as they could guess, they stood in the middle of the ruined city, ancient beyond imagining and worn down by the passage of time to the barest foundation stones, all covered by a field of ashes several inches thick and frozen by a rime of ice. In the distance, the rubble of the largest structure, a great palace or cathedral loomed, some of its walls still reaching up into the starless vault above like grasping, pleading hands.

Then of course, there were the silent figures standing all around them. At first it was easy to notice perhaps ten of them standing within a few yards, then beyond that dozens more, and gradually they stood out from the ashen background or the darkness beyond: tens of thousands of them.

“What the hell are those things?” Florian pointed to the nearest cluster of figures. Instinctively she began to pray, nearly to the point of completion to call down a burst of holy flame before she shook her head and paused.

Looming from the nearest stack of weathered stone stood what upon first glance seemed to be the figure of a fiend crouched and ready to leap. Whether once a living fiend or else carved from stone or molded from the ice and ashes that coated the ground, it stood motionless, immobile, and not a threat.

“They’re statues…” Clueless warily approached the statue and the others near to it; they were all yugoloths.

“Very, very life-like statues…” Nisha peered up at the nycaloth, “And clearly made by someone with a sense of irony or just someone without a clue how ‘loths operate. They sculpted them praying.”

Kneeling on both knees with its wings folded back in a sign of humility, the ‘loth was a bizarre sight as it clearly knelt in a position of prayer. Of all of the constants in the multiverse, one of them held particularly true: the godless yugoloths worshipped no divine patrons. Surrounding the greater yugoloth, nearly a dozen mezzoloths knelt as well, all staring uniformly at the ruined structure at the center of the Vale.

“What the hell is this place?” Clueless remarked, noting the severe contradiction in the statues and the ‘loth abhorrence of all that was divine. His ankle throbbed with a dull pressure on and off. It wasn’t the burning, warning pain that standing in an altraloth’s proximity had invoked, but nonetheless, the stone was reacting to something. As best the bladesinger could tell, the gem in his ankle simply wasn’t sure if a threat existed or not.

“Whatever it was,” Tristol looked suspiciously at the landscape, “Leobtav said that he found something here that made him do all that he did.” 

As they stood and stared at the praying fiends, moving warily to examine them further, they noticed that not all of the figures were ‘loths. Also scattered amid the rubble stood celestials, no longer beatific but frozen in positions of abject horror. Like the ‘loths, they too were composed of ice and ashes.

“What in the name of all that’s holy happened here?” Toras licked his lips and spat out the flecks of ashes on his tongue. Each step kicked up bits of frozen soot that drifted like snowflakes through the air.

“There’s nothing holy about this place.” Fyrehowl shuddered. Every moment she stood there made her feel increasingly ill.

“This place shouldn’t exist.” Alex frowned and glanced at his unseen familiar. He felt its presence inside of his mind, but curiously, it wasn’t physically manifest. Something about the fabric of that place prevented it from doing so.

“No argument from me there.” Florian nodded.

“No, it’s not just a blunt value judgment.” The alienist shook his head. “This place literally shouldn’t exist. Look up and we’re in Gehenna, clearly. But look at the ground itself, and it’s the Waste. That shouldn’t happen.”

Tristol whispered the words to a spell and glanced around, coming to the same conclusion as Alex in very short order. When he cancelled his spell and looked back up, his tail was bottlebrushed and a look of confusion marred his face.

“The only thing that I can think of that’s remotely similar is a sliding planar layer.” The wizard shrugged, perplexed by the situation. “Except I’ve never heard of a portion of the Waste sliding into Gehenna. With the ‘loths native to both planes, I wouldn’t think it’s possible.”

“Maybe the celestials were responsible?” Toras mused. “Maybe it’s the result of one of the earliest Blood War battles from when the celestials still took an active role?”

“Then why aren’t there any baatezu and tanar’ri?” Clueless narrowed his eyes at the paradox inherent in everything they saw. “And even so, that wouldn’t explain praying yugoloths. This doesn’t make any sense at all.”

Tenuously they continued to walk further into the ruins. Each step brought about the faint crackle of breaking ice and shifting ashen snow beneath their feet, all of it echoing faintly against the fallen walls and toppled columns of whatever urban landscape had once graced the Vale. Slowly they made their way towards the massive structure that had once dominated the landscape, and still nothing but unease and an ever growing population of statues, both ‘loth and celestial, all in the same arrangements as before. Above, the unforgiving void of Gehenna looked down with uncaring menace, but there was something distinctly odd about it all.

“Why is it so quiet?” Clueless paused and looked at the others. “Other than us and the ice, there’s no sound at all. No wind, no volcanism, and no screaming slasraths in the distance… it’s absolutely quiet, like noise from Gehenna at large isn’t actually reaching us.”

“It isn’t quiet…” Fyrehowl’s ears stood erect and moving as the lupinal’s eyes went wide and her fur prickled with fear. “They’re whispering. All of them. I think they’re still alive, or kept alive. Gods above, they’re in pain.”

_Doom

Death

The death of all things

Everything ends

Everything ended here

Help us

Help us please

Save us

Save yourselves_

Only Fyrehowl heard them, but to her it was like a softly wailing, begging chorus that took the place of wind. After having witnessed the aftermath of the yugoloth assault on Belarian, she thought that she’d seen the worst that could happen to her celestial kindred, but this was altogether different. Not only guardinals, but archons, eladrin, angels, and other rarer forms stood scattered about randomly, all of them giving whispered screams of agony and warning.

“What are they saying?” Alex asked as he approached the weeping figure of a solar. “Anything that might tell us what happened here or what was responsible?”

Fyrehowl shut her eyes and tried not to listen to the whispers, but they were more than physical. Once she’d heard them, it was as if they had collectively become aware of her and their volume grew and focused on her. The result was maddening and horrific.

“They’re terrified” She did her best to parse their meaning. “They keep warning about something horrific that happened here. But the tense is weird. Some of them are talking about it, whatever it was, as if it just happened, some as if it happened eons ago, and some of them as if it hasn’t actually happened yet.”

“That doesn’t make sense at all,” Nisha quirked an eyebrow, “And coming from me that’s probably saying something.”

Tristol whispered the words to a spell and looked at whatever magic lay upon the statues. Unsurprisingly they registered as being inert lumps of ice and ash without any active magic upon or within them. Clearly though they were, or the entire location was as a result of whatever events had formed it in the first place.

“What are the yugoloths saying?” Toras asked, “Please tell me they regret doing something stupid.”

“Oh you’ll love this…” Fyrehowl softly cursed as she strained to listen to the nearest praying figures. “Just the same damn word or words over and over again.”

“What is it?” Tristol preemptively winced, his mind having an inkling to just what the word might be.

“Vor’nel’thraanix.”

Groans and curses cut the silence; the meaningless, untranslatable word from the Outlands. Despite Leobtav’s death, his last actions just like his dagger, continued to haunt them with an utter absence of meaning.

“What Leobtav cut into the ground when he sacrificed the Tiere god.” Clueless sighed. “And it’s just as meaningless now as it was then.”

Although he hadn’t been there at the time and it seemed right for him to inquire just what his newfound companions were talking about, Alex wasn’t paying them any attention. Instead he was stepping closer to the figure of the solar that he’d been examining. It was whispering to him.

“You can help me.” The agonized celestial called out to him and only him. “You can set me free of this place. Touch me. Reach out and drag my spirit into the present, into continuity, into existence from the pit that gnaws and devours eternally. Help me Alex.”

The voice was beguiling.

“I wouldn’t get too close to that thing.” Fyrehowl shook her head and shivered. “Honestly I want to get out of here as fast we can.”

“Seriously, don’t touch it.” Toras warned. “It’s creepy. Nothing good ever comes from anything creepy.”

Alex never heard him, so intent was he on finding some fragment of meaning in the solar’s whispers as they called out to him.

_“This is not right.”_ His familiar whispered into his mind, its typical nonchalance replaced with a sense of dread. It wasn’t just that it couldn’t physically manifest, Alex could tell that it was terrified of doing so even if it could. _“This place is a unfilled hollow. A prison carved out by the screams of angels and the tears of the architects of misery alike. Find out what has happened and then leave. Do not tarry in this place. The sickness gnaws and the sickness whispers.”_

Alex reached out to touch the statue of the solar.

“Alex, what are you doing?” Nisha called out, far too late.

Time seemed to move slowly for the alienist as his finger crossed the distance between himself and the figure of the solar. Each moment of time that clicked his familiar screamed out in warning, calling out to him, begging him to stop, biting into his mind madly until it hurt itself, but unable to stop what was happening and indeed might have already occurred in the paradox mad trap that transcended causality.

His fingers touched the surface of the solar, cold and brittle, and in that singular moment he watched the surface of the statue shift and move, its expression shifting from agony and sorrow into a sneer of utter contempt and malice. His eyes met not the solar’s damned and frozen orbs, but the thing staring through them from somewhere unimaginably remote, infinite, blasphemous. Less able to find purchase in this reality than even his familiar and the intelligences of the Far Realms that he served, the thing beyond the solar’s eyes was something else entirely.

The void that swelled from within the statue’s frozen embrace was eternal. Perched within the void, rapacious and malignant, Leobtav’s god hungered.

“Why…?” His words asked only a question as he felt something reach forward to grasp his hand and drag him forward. They were the same fingers of shadow and ice that had guided the hand of Cilret Leobtav, stroked his face lovingly, and accepted his sacrifices of blood and souls. In that singular moment, Alex never understood what the creature was, even as it consumed his spirit and his body disintegrated in a shower of ashes and ice.

“HOLY SH*T!!!” Clueless leapt back as the alienist shattered into a cloud of glittering ash.

“Alex!” Florian shouted out as she watched the man die suddenly and spectacularly.

All of them moved away from the statue, suddenly intensely wary of the very real risk of harm from them. Far from simply being bizarre, whispering statues with the potential to unnerve, they suddenly looked at that as traps, and deadly ones at that.

“Ok, no one go near those things!” Clueless yelled as he made eye contact with each of his remaining companions. “I don’t know what they are, but clearly they don’t need to be interacted with.”

Silent and unobserved, the landscape subtle shifted around them. Space collapsed and vanished, buildings moved and statues stood in different positions than they had before as the structure of the Waste molded itself around the will of the creature that had been watching them patiently since they arrived. Less than ten feet away now, the wasted nightmare form of Sarkithel fek Parthis sat upon the ruined edge of a foundation.

“Oh f*ck this plane!” Toras shouted. “F*ck the ‘loths! F*ck ‘em all!”

“Florian,” Clueless sighed and motioned towards Alex’s remains, “If you don’t mind raising him.”

“Hey, I told him not to touch it.” Toras protested. “Don’t blame me if he gets himself killed running through some freaky ‘loth theme park.”

Ignoring the fighter’s flippancy, Florian knelt over Alex’s ashes, careful not to touch them in the event that whatever terrible curse lay upon the statue had also transferred over to his remains. Halfway through her prayer she stopped.

“Guys…” Florian’s eyes went wide as she looked at her holy symbol, the diamond in her hand, and then Alex’s remains. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?” Toras suddenly looked serious. “You’re an insanely powerful cleric.”

“Just like the dead in Pandemonium.” Clueless swallowed hard. “We were never able to raise them either.”

“What in the heavens happened here?” Tristol lamented. “

“There’s no soul there to raise.” Florian stepped back from the statue. “He touched it and he died, and it’s like the damn thing ate his soul in the process. It’s just a hollow nothing looking back at me when I start to pray.”

Standing to the side, Fyrehowl paused as a wave of nausea passed through her. Without knowing the cause, she turned and wretched.

Scratching down a flurry of notes, a vague, half-hearted smirk crossed the baernaloth’s features.

“Greetings children…”


****​

“That didn’t work out too well for you did it?”

The voice of former Factol Esmus of the Bleak Cabal called out from the darkness of his cell where two pinpricks of light from his eyes stood out against the darkness. His laugh betrayed an emotion somewhere between uncaring wrought of whimsy and that wrought of soul-ravaging depression.

“It accomplished exactly as I wanted it to accomplish.” Tollysalmon smiled in the darkness of her own cell. “At least as much as I can accomplish at this time from inside this cell.”

“You could walk out of here at any time you wished Factol.” Esmus ran dirty fingers and ragged fingernails through his long, tangled hair. “You’ve done it before. Let’s not delude ourselves as to just how powerful you are.”

“And I’ll do it again if it serves me.” The githyanki sneered. “But that’s not the cell that I’m referring to.”

Esmus paused on the verge of making a sarcastic remark, thinking better than to speak. He stared at his cell door and felt with his mind at the presence seated on the cold stone less than twenty feet away. He realized that for as much as she’d taught him, for as much as she’d opened his mind to the entities best described as existing beyond the meaningless of the cosmos, the very ones that granted him power of his own, he didn’t understand her at all. His predecessor’s mind wasn’t so much a fortress that he couldn’t see within, but a vacuous nothingness that simply gave no purchase to glance within. The rare moments when she slipped from babbling quiescence to cognizance over the years, in that moment of transition he saw the only elements of her mind to ever show themselves: despondent loss and rage.

“I will have other hands and eyes when the time comes.” Tollysalmon’s eyes narrowed. “The Clock winds down, but those who created it cannot work against me when they don’t know that I exist as a threat. They’ve forgotten me. Everyone has.”


----------



## 81Dagon

Aethera is fully funded and we may actually get some answers with the next update! Today is a good day!


----------



## Shemeska

“Greetings Children…”

Fyrehowl spun around at the voice, but halfway through her turn, she fell to the ground, retching uncontrollably as the baernaloth’s proximity combined with the fact that it stood on a patch of the Waste itself amplified the cosmic toxicity it exuded like an infected wound shedding a virulent plague.

“Oh F*CK!”

Toras held his sword aloft, more to bolster his own confidence, but even as he raised it, his hands were trembling and his face ashen. The amused sneer on the Chronicler’s maw at his action dampened his bravado even more.

“Tristol, get us out of here! Get us out of here now!” Nisha tugged frantically at the fringe of Tristol’s robe.

Tristol shot her a panicked look, “I can’t! I’m trying but the spells aren’t working.”

Through it all, the Chronicler never moved except to continue jotting down notes in the giant book that lay across its thighs. Except for an occasional sneer, it remained unconcerned and uncaring at their presence.

“From Pitiless,” Florian whispered as she took attempted to cast a spell, only to find it inexplicably nonfunctional, “it’s the thing that killed Ghyris Vast…”

“No, I am not.” The baernaloth’s voice was like the mastication of gangrenous flesh. “That would be my Brother/Sister the Architect. I have never been that obvious in my actions as the First of the Demented.” The Gloom Father paused, tilted its vaguely goat-like head and tapped a finger on the foundation stone that it sat upon. “Yes, I know you heard that. You were too obvious when you killed Vast, and I counseled exactly to that measure. You and the Shepherdess go your own way lately, dragging the rest of us along. It doesn’t matter though. Small ripples in a patch of water cannot stop a forecast tide.”

Either speaking to itself out loud or to a distant sibling, the baernaloth barely cared that it had an audience. Only when the group started to back away did it make a brief motion with one hand and effortlessly draw them back by seemingly contracting the intervening space.

“Oh not to worry, I have not forgotten about you my misbegotten children of the Three Words. The Three Words of Creation Thus Spoken, uttered but three times since the Beginning of this reality. The first is unknown, even to me, the 2nd The Bladed Queen, and the 3rd I shall not, and cannot speak of…”

White with fear and absolutely powerless against the god-like progenitor fiend holding them as a captive audience, the group slowly lowered their weapons.

“Who are you?” Clueless finally asked.

“Sarkithel fek Parthis of the Demented.” The baernaloth inclined its head. “But you may call me The Chronicler.”

“Did you bring us here?” The bladesinger asked another question.

“Not as such directly no.” The Chronicler pointed at the dagger at Clueless’s belt. “Your blade of hate and sympathetic resonance did that deed on its own. The fury of the Tiere god is strong, even in death. That blade is connected to this place; one stepping stone among others leading to this moment of the past yet to come. You would be wise to keep it should you continue to come into conflict with our newest Oinoloth. So very bitter that one…” The Chronicler gave an enigmatic smile.

Toras looked at Clueless and the bladesinger shrugged. The two of them seemed to be waffling on asking the obvious questions given the nature of the unholy thing sitting less than a dozen feet away. It seemed utterly unconcerned to the point of almost not being a threat, but did they dare ask anything important?

The baern turned its gaze to Clueless, “Oh do not look so confused. That one dances to his own tune, having long ago discarded ours as best he could. His goals for this reality do not coincide with that of myself and my brethren, that much should be obvious after he so thoroughly went about executing so much of the hierarchy we’d molded and grown to our designs for eons.”

No longer vomiting, Fyrehowl asked next, “What does the Ebon want?”

For the first time the Chronicler reacted with more than subtle emotion as it openly hissed with utter contempt at the mention of the Oinoloth’s name.

“I would only suggest that you ask him yourself.” The baernaloth curled its lips back to reveal rotten, diseased teeth. “It seems oh so likely that you’ll come into his presence again, seeing as how often you’ve blundered into his plots and those of his servitors and compatriots. How many times has the King of the Crosstrade tried to kill one of you?” The baern pointed down at Clueless’s leg. “You still carry an artifact of the Oinoloth’s creation in your leg still. You’re the only one that managed to survive you know. His and Helekanalaith’s puppet both died after their usefulness ended. You were simply discarded. I would call the Marauder careless, but it’s something of a pattern for her in that she doesn’t discard things that might later be of use.”

“Don’t I feel honored…” Clueless smirked. “I’m going to kill her eventually of course. That’s probably a closer goal than the Oinoloth.”

The Chronicler chuckled before pausing and launching into a protracted session of convulsive phlegmatic coughing. By the time it passed, the ground was spattered with thick gobbets of yellow mucus and blood. “It won’t be as easy as you might suspect. She crawled her way up from mezzoloth status and even managed to blackmail her way into her promotion from nycaloth. Of her, the Demented are proud.”

Clueless changed the subject, lest the baernaloth take offense. “What is this place anyway?”

The Chronicler smiled, “A bit of the Waste itself, ripped from that plane and forgotten here.”

“That much seemed obvious, but what exactly happened here?” Fyrehowl pressed for more. The creature seemed willing to discuss most anything, so anything passing for answers would be useful.

“Technically, nothing. Not yet at least. None of this has happened yet, but it has before, and it will again. Regressing backwards while rushing forwards always. Stumbling, slouching towards oblivion." The baernaloth fixed its dead serpentine eyes at the rubble in the city center and grinned maniacally. “This is where the cosmos yields to the inevitable. This is where a plan set in motion before this reality existed comes to fruition. The whos, whats, and whys are complicated and interwoven, malicious lovers entwined with knives to the other’s throats.”

“All we know is that Cilret Leobtav visited here years ago and it changed him.” Fyrehowl continued, dying inside a little each time she conversed with the baern, but needing answers nonetheless.

“An oversight on my part perhaps, but nothing not already taken into consideration.” The Chronicler sneered disdainfully and glanced at the ruined Cathedral. “But I have no active role in any of this. I’m not pulling strings or toppling dominos, nor trampling on butterflies to cause a hurricane. Does it set your hearts at ease to know that I have no part in all of this? I wait and I watch, nothing more, nothing less.”

“What about Alex then? You had nothing to do with that?”

“I did not.” The Chronicler chuckled and glanced at the pile of ashes at the feet of the solar statue. “You should direct your anger at Leobtav’s patron, the Ashsinger and it of so many other names. Bah.”

“What is that thing anyway?”

“So many questions and I’ve already told you who to ask the next time you run afoul of them.” The Chronicler pantomimed washing its hands.

Florian frowned, “Alright fine. Than how do we bring him back to life? Can it be done?”

“Yes, absolutely it can.” The baernaloth gave a sly smile. “It’s a special case, a unique confluence of actors and circumstances. My kind of course are no stranger to such things, not at all, we invented most all of them in the first place. So yes, I could bring him back to life as easily as brushing a snowflake of ash from my shoulder. Why should I?”

Toras stared at the proto-fiend, wanting nothing more than to punch the misbegotten horror in the face.

“Surely we can do something to make it worth your while.” Clueless volunteered against better judgment.

As if waiting for that offer, the Chronicler chuckled, “Yes you can, and all it requires is for you to humor me with an answer to a question, a single, solitary question: What is it you want? Answer me that and I shall bestow your fallen companion’s life back to them with but a thought…”

Waiting for a response, the Chronicler focused its eyes on Clueless and gave a fanatical expression of expectation. His wasted fingers paused and hung in space, ready to spark a spell and unshackle Alex’s spirit and return him to life.

“Don’t answer that.” Toras glared at Clueless. “Nothing good will come of it.”

“We don’t have much of an option if we want to bring Alex back.” The bladesinger gritted his teeth.

“Do you really think a baernaloth is going to bring him back out of the kindness of its heart?” Toras asked. “Do you trust that we’d actually get the real Alex back and not some hideous thing wearing his skin?”

Tristol and Fyrehowl shook their heads in the negative.

Regretfully for their dead companion, Clueless turned to the baernaloth, “I won’t answer that question.”

“A pity…” The Chronicler shrugged and resumed a more leisurely position atop the rubble. Oddly, it continued to stare uncomfortably at Clueless.

“Listen, I think we should just politely leave.” Nisha tugged at Tristol’s tail. “I hate to be the voice of reason here, but this cannot be good, not any of it. We just can’t trust that thing.”

Whether prompted by the Xaositect’s words of warning or not, the Chronicler was suddenly at its feet and standing before Clueless. The bladesinger had no time to react before the baernaloth clasped a hand over his head and lifted him off the ground effortlessly. Like a death-camp doctor examining a human test-subject, the proto-fiend lifted him up to its own eye level, uncaring of his kicking and screaming, not so much staring at him, but through him. “Oh, now this is curious…”


****​

The Marauder sat in another of her private rooms adjacent to the Azure Iris Inn, atop the Fortune’s Wheel. A glass of brandy sat within reach to one side, while an ornate lamp burned with a pale green radiance at the other, a small white moth fluttering around the margins of the glass globe enclosing the flame. The ‘loth was dressed in her favorite gown of green glass beads, and the stem of an ornate pipe sat perched between her lips. She casually puffed as she reviewed a stack of letters, seated on a well-cushioned chair carved from several dozen bones of uncertain origins, rumored to be those of past egregious debtors, or simply those she’d had killed to serve as an object lesson to the one’s capable of paying up.

The ‘loth didn’t look up from her desk when one of her tiefling groomer-guards approached, she simply made room on the desk for the delivery and motioned them to put it down. For her part, the tiefling seemed to be perpetually squinting due to the very recent loss of an eye. The ruined socket still bled slightly, but was in the process of regeneration courtesy of the ring that she wore. Her employer seemed entirely unconcerned.

The tiefling smiled and handed her mistress a sheaf of notarized papers. “Your Fiendish Majesty, this is for you to review. I’ve delivered copies to the relevant municipal authorities in the Clerks’ Ward and likewise I’ve delivered the same to and spoken in person with Garzuvek, 1st Bloodchanter of the Reaver, and also Fegrim and Olk of the Brothers Durgrim Brewery.” She paused and frowned. “A most unpleasant man, Garzuvek. He challenged me to a fight, both before and after I handled our business.”

“And did you fight him?” The Marauder smiled without looking up as she examined the papers.

“Regarding what you said about wanting him to stay alive and angry, I let him win rather than stick a knife in his back. The ring of regeneration was rather convenient in letting him think he’d gotten the best of me. I lost an eye in the process. He ate it.”

“Cute.” The ‘loth smiled contentedly, though it wasn’t apparent if it was because of an appreciation for her agent’s success, obedience, or loss of the eye itself. “In any event, his cooperation is more important than your temporary loss of an eye. The previous tenants?”

“The former tenants have been quietly evicted without much fuss. The new leasers should move into both locations within the week.”

“Very good.” Shemeska traded the papers in one hand for a glass of brandy, taking a slow sip. “Let me know when Madam Eszedia arrives.”

“Actually, she’s already here.” The tiefling nodded her head towards the door. “She’s had a quasit primping her hair and adjusting her t*ts for just the right level of bounce to present for the last hour.”

“Of course she is.” The Marauder rolled her eyes with minor irritation. “Never expect a tanar’ri to show up for an appointment at the proper time. It simply isn’t in their nature. Their nature however is precisely why I have her here. Show her in, but leave the quasit outside.”

The tiefling gave a short bow and returned moments later with a statuesque succubus at her side dressed in an outfit that might as well have been painted on. The tanar’ri’s roving eyes moved from the tiefling to the ‘loth and when she took a seat opposite the Marauder, she did so with an emphatic bounce for the presumed audience. The Marauder’s guard pointedly made sure to keep her temporarily blinded eye facing the succubus to avoid the shameless and obnoxious display. The Marauder, whatever her thoughts on the goods on display, gave no outward reaction but a polite smile.

“It’s such a pleasure to finally garner an audience with you Shemeska.” Madam Eszedia of Broken Reach flicked a forked tongue across painted lips while the aroma of a perfume equally hallucinogenic and toxic to mortals filtered through the air from where she’d applied it to her neck earlier. “I’ve worked on my own and I’ve shifted more to managing other lovely things including some of my own alu-fiend daughters in the past two decades, but I was delightfully flattered when your agents actually approached me

“They said that you were very good at what you did.” A curious smile graced her lips and vanished, leaving no clue what she meant in specific. “I read the report and it was rather detailed.”

“Good for you then sweet thing,” A bit of pride crept into the succubus’s voice, “I slept with two of them at once, and one of them was such a pleasure that I decided to keep them.”

“That one was an attempted plant by the Planar Trade Consortium into my ranks. I’d been feeding him false information for months but he’d started to suspect, so I figured it best to dispose of him. You provided me with a convenient repository.” Fangs briefly graced the otherwise delicate and painted features on the ‘loth’s face. “You can keep him if he survived, but I knew your habits before I sent them there.”

The tanar’ri focused coal-red eyes on the ‘loth, trying to judge if she’d walked into a trap or if the King of the Crosstrade actually did indeed want to go into business with her. Internally she snarled at the double-sided backbiting nature of how greater yugoloths spoke in riddles, rhymes, and double meanings. She wasn’t sure if the Marauder was playing her for a fool, preparing to set up a partnership, or was shamelessly hitting on her. Best to assume the best, so Eszedia crossed her arms and put herself on display.

“How can I convince your Fiendish Majesty of my best intentions?”

“Oh no need,” The Marauder casually glanced down at the succubus’s cleavage, her reaction intentionally cryptic but dancing along a blurry line of a smirk somewhere between pleased and disdainful, “You come well vetted, but I’m exceptionally particular about my whores, let alone my lovers.” The ‘loth placed distinct emphasis on the word ‘whore’, not that the tanar’ri took the slightest offense, rather the opposite.

“Exceptionally particular? You count archmages, jewel thieves, and the Overlord of Carceri among past dalliances.” Madam Eszedia’s tail tapped against the table. “Apparently you are.”

“Devoured, imprisoned, and finally both cursed and eternally cursing my name.” Shemeska gave a self-satisfied smile as she closed her eyes. She recalled the faces of those three examples and rubbed her thumb across the elaborately jeweled ring on her right index finger that contained Mantello’s ironically bottled essence. The mange-ravaged body of the final individual gave her the most pleasure, and that one’s torment was far from over. 

The succubus pursed her lips and placed a claw across them, letting her tongue tap the tip as she chose her next words with exceeding care.

“That’s what drew me to pay attention to your people and come to Sigil you know: the chance to sit here in front of you and show off.” The tanar’ri held her arms tighter against her ribs and presented her cleavage like an altar ripe for a sacrifice. “A business relationship seems like a perfect start for something more. No?”

The ‘loth didn’t even glance up. Instead she motioned with her hand to the lamp burning on the corner of her desk. The glass sphere separated and exposed the flame to a greater supply of air. The flame burned bright and the moth drew closer now that the glass no longer kept it away.

“Let’s be honest Eszedia,” The Marauder spoke as the green flame reflected its image in her eyes, “Even if you were my type, which you aren’t, it would end rather poorly for you.”

The moth dove too close to the guttering flame, the ‘loth pursed her lips and blew a rush of air, forcing its wings too close. With a burst of heat the doomed insect was gone and turned to ash. Finally looking up at the succubus, the ‘loth smiled.


****​


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## 81Dagon

So... Shemmy's the pup that Larsdana killed, isn't she?


----------



## Shemeska

I corrected a typo. She blackmailed her way up from nycaloth to arcanaloth, not mezzoloth.


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## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> So... Shemmy's the pup that Larsdana killed, isn't she?




This seems to be a very popular theory. 


I'm surprised this came back up in response to the last update rather than the admission that Shylara the Manged was once her apprentice (and lover).


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## 81Dagon

Shemeska said:


> This seems to be a very popular theory. View attachment 72135
> 
> I'm surprised this came back up in response to the last update rather than the admission that Shylara the Manged was once her apprentice (and lover).



... I totally did not put two and two together there, I was still waiting for more answers about the Waste!Gehenna. Interesting that that event is both in the past and the future.


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## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> ... I totally did not put two and two together there, I was still waiting for more answers about the Waste!Gehenna. Interesting that that event is both in the past and the future.




It's one of the last things that received a full and complete answer in the original campaign.

That being said, I will also note that all of the assorted stories of the Baernaloth cycle that I've written over the years are all set within the same continuity. The Blind Clockmaker story covers events directly from the storyhour here that haven't happened yet in the storyhour, and which play into the Waste!Gehenna issue. Once we get to that point I'll be rewriting it to better fit my current writing style too.

Also I've got finals this week as I'm back in school yet again, and two freelance projects on my plate (Aethera and the Faerie Ring), so the next update here will be a little while (but when it's ready I may give a Xmas present of the finally finished story for The Architect which is nearly complete after years in-progress and a total rewrite).


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## Toras

Yeah.  Thus began by campaign of don't trust...(well let us just say, if you didn't come from the Gods of Good with signed documentation)  Pretty certain I didn't really trust Marven all that much from this point either.

Do I have either of my gnomish inventions?  The gloves of alchemist awesome or the Holy Water cannon.


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## Shemeska

*Bringing the New Year in with a short update and a face we haven't seen in some time now*

****​

As the rattling, agonized wail cut the air like an obsidian blade through the yearning heart of a nycaloth on the slopes of Krangath, Helekanalaith closed his eyes and smiled. The Keeper’s ears involuntarily swiveled forward and he allowed himself a moment of pleasure before pragmatic business began. To the Keeper’s mind, that first touch of his burning stylus upon the newly bound flesh of a petitioner-cum-parchment was ever such a beautiful sound.

The Keeper was not alone however in that moment, though his two guests could not be any more different. Staring at him from across the room stood the petrified form of Shylara the Manged, Overlord of Carceri and consort to the Oinoloth. Shylara’s face remained contorted into the same mad, shrieking visage of rage it had been locked within since she’d fallen afoul of a flesh to stone spell while utilizing a surrogate body on the Astral. The rest of her form had been molded and remolded to suite the Keeper’s ever-changing piques of amusement at his semi-rival’s expense, everything from dressing her like a paper doll in ever more tacky outfits to simply leaving her statue naked and lewdly posed in the corner of his office.

“You do realize that she’s completely barmy yes?” Came the voice of Helekanalaith’s second guest, the Cheshire Fiend, though technically it was only the Fiend’s illusory avatar rather than a physical presence. Glowing pale blue, it hovered in the air before the Keeper’s desk, peering down at his work and then back at the snarling Overlord’s statue. “Once you release her, she’s going to try to kill you in the most excruciatingly brutal way possible.”

“I have no doubt that she will.” The Keeper’s voice was utterly unconcerned, and if anything, betrayed a smug, condescending confidence. He finished his line of calligraphy upon the screaming petitioner’s back and looked up at the Cheshire Fiend.

“And yet you’re not worried at all?” The floating Grin flashed a look of disbelief. “After the whole business of being cursed and exiled from Sigil, she tried to have your other co-conspirator Shemeska killed on no fewer than fifteen occasions – and that’s only counting the attempts she made prior to coming into control of the Tower of Incarnate Pain. She holds grudges, and she holds them irrationally so. Are you counting on the Ebon holding her back as punishment for her idiocy on the Astral?”

“I’m absolutely aware of her personality, her proclivities, her abilities, and her flaws. I oversaw her education here in the Tower and I keenly understand what she will or won’t do.” Helekanalaith shrugged and glanced at the glowing gemstone floating above his desk containing the bottled essence of Larsdana ap Neut. “Unlike some, I pay attention to promising students, fully aware that each and every one of them sees me as a target. Shylara is powerful, ambitious, and fatally out of control of her emotions.”

The Grin waited for more explanation, and finally receiving none, prompted for it, “You didn’t answer my question about what the Ebon will or won’t do as it regards her likely berserk and bloody attempts at revenge and saving what remains of her wounded pride.”

“I suspect in the same way that the Oinoloth hasn’t lifted a claw to help her out, he won’t lift another to help me avoid her petty attempts at retribution.” The Keeper adjusted his golden spectacles and softly chuckled. “He didn’t see it worth his effort to help out here in her imprisonment, and she’s his consort, so what chance would I have at his aid?”

“You sound jealous if I know you at all.” The Cheshire Fiend gave a sly, taunting expression as it slowly completed an orbit around the Keeper’s desk. “Are you?”

Helekanalaith only smirked, not answering the question, though the answer was obvious.

“Changing the topic I suppose from your admirable attraction to power, why summon me here at this particular moment in time? I’d been happily enjoying my own pursuits about the planes in this form and others.” The Grin glanced back at Shylara’s statue once more. “Can I assume that you’re planning on letting her go and you want me to ensure that she doesn’t engage in her expected course of action?”

“I’ll be releasing her in a relatively short timeframe, but the specifics of when remain to be seen. I’d like to see a certain number of her underlings perish and be replaced with others loyal to me prior to letting her off the leash.” The Keeper glanced down at the list of Shylara’s advisors along with their current status in her absence. More than a few were crossed off, having either killed one another or fallen afoul of her protections when they’d tried to kill the Overlord herself.

“Appropriate, though I will seriously miss the statue, especially in its current state.” An illusory blush rose above the Cheshire Fiend’s grin, roughly where cheeks would have been.

“Shylara the Manged is the least of my concerns, and not in fact my reason for calling on you.” Helekanalaith smiled at his servitor and child. “Turn your attention to the aforementioned Marauder. I’m curious about what the Oinoloth has her working on, given the transit of a courier from Khin-Oin into Sigil direct to her doorstep.”

“I take it the Ebon was not forthcoming about sharing any such details with you?” The Cheshire Fiend was now paying rapt attention to the Keeper and no longer making nibbling motions upon the statue. “You did ask him yes?”

“No and yes.” The Keeper smirked with frustration. “I would not think to ask the Oinoloth twice in such a circumstance when he was sitting across from me. This is where you come in. Speak with your people in the Temple of Eternal Darkness and elsewhere outside of her immediate sphere of influence, and have them leak rumors every which way that they can. Someone in one of Sigil’s various circles of power will take notice and either know themselves, or flush out some answer by her reaction to theirs.”

The Cheshire Fiend bobbled side to side ambiguously “She has her dainty little poisoned claws in most every pie in the City of Doors and well beyond the Cage, so which one in particular do you have in mind?”

“Her contact with the Athar,” The Keeper’s tone contained a mild amount of disdain based on the pronunciation, though why wasn’t immediately obvious. “I want to know why she’s backing them, and what she intends to do.”

“My presumption is a local issue pertaining to the growing and long-term conflict between Muriov Garianis and her mountainous ego.” The Grin chuckled at his free reign to denigrate the Keeper’s partner within the Wheels Within Wheels.

“There’s more to it than that.” Helekanalaith narrowed his eyes. “You know that as much as I do, if not more so. She never initiated contact with them until –after– she was given orders by the Oinoloth. Somehow this is on his behalf in one manner or another. That’s what I want to know.”

“So what you’re saying is that you want me to be a giant pain in her groomed and silk-wrapped ass?” The Grin danced about in the air. “Because that I can do!”


****​


----------



## almost13

thank you very much for the flurry of updates shemeska! lots of intrigueing things hinted at...i'm sad to see alex leave so soon, i was looking forward to seeing more of him and his paranormal connections, especially after the tollysalmon intersection. if it is possible, can you hint at what might have happened to clueless if he had accepted the baerns offer (with no spoilers)? 

that little sentence that helekanalaith is talking to his child is fascinating, even ambiguous as it is


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## Shemeska

almost13 said:


> thank you very much for the flurry of updates shemeska! lots of intrigueing things hinted at...i'm sad to see alex leave so soon, i was looking forward to seeing more of him and his paranormal connections, especially after the tollysalmon intersection. if it is possible, can you hint at what might have happened to clueless if he had accepted the baerns offer (with no spoilers)?
> 
> that little sentence that helekanalaith is talking to his child is fascinating, even ambiguous as it is




He would have brought Alex back, but very likely the baern would have retained a measure of control over him in the future. Alex would also have been given some memories of what he saw when he was killed, and the thing on the other side (Leobtav's god the so-called Ashsinger, etc). We're not done with Tollysalmon by any means either.

Yeah, Alice's Cheshire Cat is referencing 'Cheshire' referring to someone grinning, but the origin is disputed. Cheshire refers to something from the county of Chester in England, and the cat grinning might be because so much cheese, milk, and cream was produced there. Also, in the early 1800s there was a bit of local folklore relating to poorly painted sign of a lion that looked more like a cat, or possibly cheese molded into the shape of a cat, with the cat's head being the last piece eaten (the Cheshire Cat in Alice always having its smile being the last part to vanish).

My Cheshire Fiend is pretty much referencing that lingering smile, since the Cheshire Fiend just appears as an illusory smile without much else. And for them being Helekanalaith's child, I think I might have already mentioned that before once, but yes, the Cheshire Fiend is indeed his kid.


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## Shemeska

****​

“YEEEeeeaaaaarrrggghhh!” 

Clueless screamed as the fiend lifted him into the air with one hand clamped over his head. His feet dangled and wings beat at the air in vain as the Chronicler leaned in with a look of calm fascination playing over its sickly, diseased lips.

“What the hell!?” Toras blurted out as he reached for his sword, only to pause halfway there. As soon as he made to reach for the blade, every nearly vanished scar on his sword arm ached and burned as if they might suddenly burst open at once. He reached again, only to feel the same sensation and see the faintest anticipatory smile crease the baernaloth’s mouth. He did not attempt a third time.
“Be silent wriggling worm.” The Chronicler’s tone was commanding yet uncaring in tone.

Clueless stiffened as the ur-fiend tightened its grip and stared into his eyes and seemingly beyond. It chuckled.

“I did not expect a larger audience that was immediately apparent,” The Chronicler seemed genuinely amused by what he saw, treating the dangling bladesinger like a curious thing in a cabinet of curiosities rather than a protesting, living creature. “It would appear however that you have not one lurker therein, but in fact two of them in your head.”

“Helekanalaith that son of a b*tch!” Clueless stopped his struggling as he realized that the Keeper of the Tower had of course lied through his teeth about removing himself from his mind per their previous agreement, but then he realized the implications of the last part of the baernaloth’s statement. “Wait what?! Two?! What do you mean two?!”

“Not that you’re alone in that capacity.” The Chronicler softly chuckled, glancing at Tristol and Fyrehowl as it did so. “Unlike theirs however with the screaming malady of generations in the Madhouse, your situation is one much more complicated in the mending. This presence will not go willingly, and perhaps might require a bit of bargaining or leverage on your part since will alone will not suffice.”

Blindsided by the baernaloth’s insinuation, but realizing that it was, in its own uncaring way, referencing the Howler in their dreams, Tristol turned to Fyrehowl. She returned his glance with a worried shrug. The implications that it was both real and curable needed to be dealt with sooner rather than later, but not while the proto-fiend held their companion up by his head like a screaming ragdoll.

“Is that f*cking b*tch Shemeska still looking in through my ankle?!” Clueless struggled to comprehend who else might be the object of the baernaloth’s statement.

“Sigil’s would-be King abandoned you like every other precious thing she has ever lay claim to. You are safe from her in at least this way.” The Chronicler’s statements were largely devoid of inflection. Automatic answers delivered without compassion or care, the baernaloth was more concerned with peering through the bladesinger like a living and unwilling scrying device.

“Helekanalaith though most certainly yes. The Keeper of the Tower has a lurker planted there most definitely, subtle and well crafted. A model of his caste certainly.” The baernaloth tilted its head and continued to stare. “The other I know of, but am on less intimate terms with: the so-called Lady’s Jester, the original, not the current and self-titled factol of the Ring-Givers. Interesting. So he wasn’t dead after all. Sigil is rather difficult for me to keep a close eye upon.”

“What the hell?” Clueless struggled to comprehend just what he’d been told.

So far having stayed conspicuously and laboriously silent, the others exchanged confused and worried glances. None of them recalled what Clueless had seen in the underhalls of the Palace of the Jester: the tall man in the archaic great cloak and hat that shrouded his face, nor his tiny, inhuman servitor. Something had taken an interest there in the Great Below and had been following him ever since.

“Foolish but talented. Both of you.” The Chronicler smirked. “Neither of you matter. Neither of you are crucial. Transient eddies in the current…”

“So does this mean that you can put Clueless down and we can go back home now?” Nisha quipped with far too much irrational hope in her voice. Florian glared at her and Tristol planted an elbow in her ribs to shut the hell up.

If the baernaloth heard her or even cared, it gave no reaction or response, but without any warning it began to speak in its own tongue.

“F*ck!” Toras clutched his head as the blasphemies rolled off the baernaloth’s tongue like barbed arrows and bolts of unholy lightning that echoed in his head.

Within the first few words spoken all of them were on the ground, clutching their heads, bleeding from the ears, blinded or vomiting into the ice and ash. The unintelligible words roared especially hard into Fyrehowl’s mind, even if her own moral convictions had slid since the events in Belarian, and likewise Toras as the half-blood servitor of a power of good. Both of their vomit was streaked with blood.

*“You will know and remember nothing of me or this place, both of you, Keeper of the Tower and child of ours, and you hiding in Sigil’s depths, no child of mine, but fallen servitor of others entirely. Forget me and forget my actions here. By my will this is done. The Chronicler orders it so.”*

An interminable period of time later, they came to their senses and staggered to their feet. Clueless sat on the ground where the baernaloth had unceremoniously dropped him like a no longer interesting toy. The Chronicler itself sat upon a low pile of stone, watching them and writing within its book.

“Do you…umm… mind if we get going back home?” Nisha flashed a smile as she looked up at the proto-fiend.

“Yes.” Florian nodded her head in agreement, blood still running from her ears. “Please.”

“That would be wonderful thank you.” Tristol smiled as well, in stark contrast to his bottlebrushed tail.

“I care not what happens to you.” Sarkithel shrugged and turned back towards the ruined cathedral. “My interest is sated, though I *will* see you again. Every road and path of history twists back on itself to this place where the ouroboros wriggles, chokes, and dies by the noose-chains about its neck.”

“How do you know that?” Fyrehowl asked, even though she could not yet fully see.

The Chronicler grinned knowingly, “You’ll discover that in due time as well. The blade will open the portal for you back to Sigil, as it seems that Sigil wishes to keep a watch over this and me quite keenly. So many things tangled together then, now, and once again.”

Still feeling the effects of the baernaloth’s invocation in its own language, they were terrified beyond belief at their absolute inability to resist its power even when it seemed to not care about hurting them. Clueless was the first to his feet and then into the air, not wanting to touch the sullied, unholy soil below, and the others were swift to join him.

They walked back the way they’d come, avoiding the statues, all of which now were turned in unison to face and watch them as they left, still whispering, still warning, and still begging with their siren song of oblivion. Through it all, they felt the Chronicler watching them as well, but also something else, something barely perceptible there beyond the statues’ eyes, hungry and malevolent.

Only once they passed through the open portal back to Sigil did the feeling of looming dread finally cease.

“You’ll see.” The baernaloth spoke, addressing that very same presence brooding within the ruins of the cathedral. “You’ll see that we were right, even as much as you ignore the chains woven now and ever more, ever tighter. You cannot stop this. You never could.”

Behind the Chronicler, for but a moment, the statues smiled.


****​

Three days later:

Tristol’s eyes ached as he glanced down at the brittle pages of a scholar’s travelogue to Pandemonium. It contained a description of the same hallucinations and wasting illness that had latched onto Fyrehowl and himself since their visit to Howler’s Crag. This particular scholar however recorded other, earlier instances of the same affliction and even provided it with a name, ‘The Curse of the Smothering Howls’.

It hadn’t been an easy task to find the record. From the barest hints from the Chronicler (who clearly knew exactly what the malady was, but was in no mood to be altruistic and say more on the manner) he’d delved through records in the Gatehouse. From there he’d gone to the sensory stone-recorded memories of a former Bleaker therapist and healer, and now finally to the record that sat in front of him in the archives of one of the scholar’s descendants.

As he’d recorded the fates of his party members and others before them, all of them had displayed the same hideous dreams, the same waking hallucinations, and the same gradual decline in health and mental fortitude. Most horrifying of all, they’d all eventually died of severe brain bleeding or else been put down by their fellows when they’d launching into screaming, violent fits.

The travelogue’s author however had found a way to possibly cure it. It wasn’t entirely a case of possession, nor a case of a curse or contracted disease, but a bizarre combination of all three. While the record didn’t give a record of the ultimate outcome for the afflicted, it made it absolutely clear that a powerful cleric was able to alleviate the condition by use of a simple remove curse spell. The wording was odd however. Rather than cure or remove, the specific word used was ‘extract’.

“This is it.” Tristol’s ears perked as he smiled. Weary as it was, it was an expression that he hadn’t made for some time. Reading over the author’s speculations, he laughed at his misguided wonder at the malady’s origins and his own theories relating to how mortals and their belief interacted with the base substance of Pandemonium itself.

None of that mattered at the moment however. Given how it had affected both himself and Fyrehowl, it was probably best to let the matter remain an unexplored and unplumbed dark. All that remained was to get back to the Portal Jammer, find Fyrehowl, and see if Florian was powerful enough to cure them both.


****​

The wind whistled out of the Gehennan void like the inchoate screams of the damned, breaking the silence of the Vale of Frozen Ashes and stirring the recently disturbed ashes and ice at the feet of the baernaloth dwelling there.

The wind was not a random occurrence however, and the screaming might indeed have actually been just that. The silence descended back upon the Vale only to be broken moments later by the sound of a wooden staff striking the ground, a single foot stepping forward, and another foot dragging lamely behind it.

Sarkithel did not turn around to face his fellow member of The Demented, though a knowing, expectant smile did briefly cross his withered maw as she approached.

“What did you tell them?” Tellura ibn Shartalan spoke as she stared at the Chronicler.

“Precisely what I wanted to tell them.” Sarkithel’s response matter of fact response was devoid of concern.

“I trust your judgment on the matter.” Tellura’s shadow was cold and silent at her feet. “I ask because I’ll undoubtedly be paying those particular mortals a visit at some juncture down the line as events fall into place.”

“If you’re so very curious, you should ask your sibling.” The Chronicler motioned to the ground with his pen. “The Architect was quite keenly listening in.”

“At another time perhaps.” Her tone hid a growing frustration on her part. “The First of the Demented is… occupied… at the moment.”

“As is to be expected of our eldest,” The Chronicler inclined its head respectfully, “Always plotting, planning, infecting more and further. Whatever takes his attention now is not anything of which I’m aware. You will tell me, yes?”

Tellura’s shadow coiled and seethed in the frozen dust at her feet, betraying the emotions that did not show on the aasimar girl’s face. “It is not for me to tell. If my sibling wishes for the rest of us to know, He will inform us. Until that time…”

The silence was profound as the two of them waited there in the Vale of Frozen Ashes amid the ruins. Only the distant screams of the phiuls broke the still as the Chronicler stared out at the void and the Dire Shepherd at the ground, gritting her teeth.

Finally, the Chronicler spoke, “Things are falling into place as expected yes?”

_More than you are yet aware._ The Shepherd’s mind pictured the image of a singular Key in her mind and for a brief moment she wondered if they had not overstretched their designs. Of all of them however, the Architect did not focus on only one reality, but on larger, grander, more profound things of greater consequence. They had all seen realities rise, fall, and crumble before at their festering hands more often than not time and time again, but He more than any of them.

“Within expected variation, yes,” The Shepherdess eyed her companion, bringing her thoughts back to the present moment, “Probabilities are fuzzy things with their own innate uncertainty, and the ripples of time maddeningly complex. You should know from your own observations what is and isn’t happening according to plan.”

“Everything.” The answer was deliberately, maddeningly nonspecific.

“The Blind Clockmaker is keeping a close eye on the one variable in this all, and he is not concerned. He did not say as much to me mind you, though his brother Daru was quite clear about his feelings on that matter. Thus I am not concerned.”

“Then we have precious little more to speak of.” The Chronicler spread its hands apart in mock sorrow. “If you are not concerned, you have little need to know what I spoke of to the mortals that came here with such a curious blade of black volcanic glass. One never named, never used for its intended target, but used nonetheless.”

Worry danced in the child’s eyes and her shadow’s claws dug into the ground. Tellura eventually spoke, but her leonine tail angrily swatted at the air and she leaned ever more heavily on her staff. “Again, I see nothing here to concern myself with.”

“Good. Then return to me when you –do– have concerns of which you deign to speak.” The Chronicler smirked. “Until then, I have my own tasks to concern myself with.”

The Shepherd was already vanished and gone, leaving only a black, burned smear in the already refreezing ground. Her unspoken snarl was there however, painted into the patterns of crystallization and deposition of ice and soot. The Demented were the closest thing to a family that the chosen servitors of Evil might ever be said to have, but since the start they’d been split apart by divisions, and those same fault lines remained even now.


****​


----------



## Shemeska

Bumping this because the update in the prior post didn't register as a new post to the thread. Enjoy.


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## Tsuga C

Oblique hints, veiled references, passing allusions, and all with their own agendas driving them apart even as they nominally work towards the same notional end--wheels within wheels, indeed. No wonder the Gray Waste is the final word in pits of despair and pointlessness--they're almost as against one another as they are part of a dedicated team. Then again, that's Neutral Evil in a nutshell.


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## Tsuga C

Oblique references, veiled hints, passing allusions--wheels within wheels, indeed. The Waste is the final word in pits of despair and hopelessness and your Demented reflect this admirably. For beings of power notionally on the same team working toward the same goal, they spend at least as much of their time and effort frustrating one another as they do working together. Very Neutral Evil. Bravo!

Edit: thought first post was lost as my login had timed out before I posted.


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## 81Dagon

Wheels within wheels. Very interesting...


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## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> Wheels within wheels. Very interesting...




I can only hope to keep the surprises and twists coming for my Storyhour readers as I did for my players in the original campaign.

There are a number of major twists still to come, and a lot of lingering questions for certain. Everything does get foreshadowed though.


----------



## Erevanden

More than a month with no updates ! The Oinoloth shall hear about this


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## Shemeska

Erevanden said:


> More than a month with no updates ! The Oinoloth shall hear about this




Had a surprise freelancing project on a short timetable, plus another that I'll be finishing up this week. Plus I just started a new job and it's eating me alive, but is a good thing in the long run. There's more here on the way, just as soon as I have other obligations finished which get precedence for my creative time.


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## 81Dagon

Erevanden said:


> More than a month with no updates ! The Oinoloth shall hear about this




Talk to me when it hits two years. Good things come to those who wait


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## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> Talk to me when it hits two years. Good things come to those who wait




You have no idea how happy it makes me that folks still want to see how this storyhour unfolds (despite my several year lull in the middle). I've got substantial portions of later events already written, and a good chunk of the next planned update as well. I hope you like it when it drops.


----------



## Shemeska

****​

“You’ve been what?!” Florian shot a cock-eyed look of worried concern at Tristol before she pivoted and repeated the same to Fyrehowl, complete with the exact same tone, expression, and inflection. “Maybe I completely misheard the completely stupid and dangerous thing that you just told me, so let me say it again. You’ve been what?!”

Fyrehowl’s ears drooped, “Yeah we’ve been hallucinating about howlers ever since Pandemonium…”

“And not sleeping well.” Tristol’s eyes were heavy and weary. The aasimar’s face was ashen and weary, his ears drooped, and his tail hung limp without its normal vulpine liveliness.

Florian turned to look at the wizard with alarm and then doubly so to Fyrehowl at the lupinal’s next bombshell admission.

“And now,” Fyrehowl fretted, nervously tapping the claws of one hand upon the table while she cradled the other arm below and out of sight, “At least as of this morning, it seems like we’re having physical symptoms of it all.”

“Physical symptoms?” Florian peered at the lupinal, her eyes moving to where Fyrehowl hid her other arm out of view.

“It started out as just dreams and then waking hallucinations,” Tristol explained. “It’s difficult to explain what it actually is, but for lack of a better term for it all, the hallucinations are actually affecting things now.”

“Pardon?” The cleric’s tone shifted from concern to alarm. “What do you mean actually affecting things now?”

Tristol pointed down at his robe and the ragged marks made by the touch of something very large with very large claws.

“That’s not the worst of it either.” Fyrehowl held up her arm to display the angry red weal of a fang’s puncture mark.

The marks were too large and too unevenly spaced to be anything self-inflicted on the lupinal’s part during any nightmare of psychotic episode. Florian’s concern deepened as she realized that despite the strangeness of Fyrehowl and Tristol’s claims, those claims were real. They’d told her their problem, but had yet to address with her how to resolve it.

“Does Nisha know?” Florian asked, concerned both for the Xaositect’s safety and that Tristol had the courtesy to trust her enough to let her know, given the advancement of their relationship.

Tristol nodded and softly smiled, “I told her as soon as I started having physical symptoms. She made me promise to not go crazy because she was the crazy one in our relationship.”

Florian couldn’t help but softly chuckle.

“So do you think you can help us get rid of this?” Tristol asked. “Apparently all we need is a sufficiently powerful cleric able to remove a curse.”

“Of course I can!” Florian tapped a finger on her holy symbol. “Nothing special, just a remove curse?”

“Apparently.” Fyrehowl shrugged.

“Then let’s do it right here and now.” Florian held her holy symbol of Tempus in the palm of her hand and prepared to cast.

Smiling for the first time in days, Tristol and Fyrehowl nodded for the cleric to continue. They desperately wanted to be rid of their affliction, curse, or whatever else it might be. Florian was indeed a powerful cleric, and they had fast and sure hope that in moments they’d be free to return to their lives with all things back to normal – at least as normal as their lives ever were. Tristol wasn’t likely to return to anything but a semblance of normality, especially since Nisha had vanished that morning to attend to “slaad club things that I can’t talk about except there are no rules to slaad club so I’ll tell you later”, leaving a magic mouth on Tristol’s pillow making kissing noises and a promise that he had ‘better get rid of that curse or I’m talking in Xaos speak until it starts to make sense to you’.

Nisha wouldn’t have to make good on her threat.

The spell worked. 

That part was simple. That part was expected. 

What Florian could not have expected was what the result of that success would be. The ancient sources that Tristol had poured over in his search for a cure certainly hadn’t mentioned it except in circumspect way. Days later the wizard would look back and suspect that they hadn’t out of some fear that the thing they’d managed to rid themselves of might somehow know and thereupon be drawn back to them and any others simply for possessing knowledge of it, like a phrase or ear-worm tune that comes unbidden to the mind simply for having the suggestion of it placed there.

The massive, ectoplasmic horror that eventually manifested began as a diffuse cloud of tiny, glimmering motes of light that sprang forth from Tristol and Fyrehowl’s mouths. Each of them like the mad, unblinking eyes of howlers clambering about the depths of Pandemonium, they gathered together and eventually congealed into first a tangible, liquid substance, and then rising up from that, a thing of gibbering horror that was not at all pleased to be deprived of its hosts and vectors.

In the end the fight was swift and sudden, and while the creature was slain or at the very least banished back to the point of its origin at Howler’s Crag, that end was not as satisfying as they might have hoped. Even as the psionic mind virus evaporated in death, its howler’s form was still laughing.

Still, it was gone and things were at the very least looking on the up and up, but such good fortune didn’t last long.

Two days later, things went from splendid to a sudden screeching, stinking hell.


****​

“What in Andros’s name is that smell?” Toras asked with a cough as he abruptly held a cloth to his nose. Wincing at the sudden flesh-permeating stink, he stood up from his table and walked into the common room, ignoring his breakfast fresh from the Portal Jammer’s kitchen.

Throughout the taproom, other patrons both regulars and new likewise struggled to hide their expressions of disgust at the odor wafting through the establishment. Through wincing, watering eyes and swiftly rising bile, the source was immediately obvious: it wasn’t from anywhere within the Jammer itself, but from the building cattycorner now billowing a greasy exhaust from open pipes in the roof and wafting through every open door and window facing the street.

“Oh powers preserve us…” Florian covered her face with the back of her arm. “What –is– that?”

Clueless frowned as he stepped out from behind the bar, a heavy rag tied over his face to at least temper the stench. “Someone go with me. I don’t know what the hell is going on over there, but I want it to stop. Now.”

One of the Portal Jammer’s patrons clapped before turning green in the face and swiftly covering his nose with his napkin. Around him, most of the bar’s clientele was making for the exits and swiftly.

“Whatever it is, it’s killing business and it needs to stop.” Clueless reiterated as he stepped into the street with Toras and Florian in tow. For the moment, freshly released from their bizarre curse acquired in Pandemonium, Fyrehowl and Tristol were both presently fast asleep, still recovering from the lingering aftereffects and little help in the current problem. Nisha was gone, having left earlier that morning with a satchel of grain, a grappling hook, and a bucket of red paint, heading off towards the Hive; none bothered to ask for an explanation or when she’d get back, it was probably for the best that way.

It didn’t take the trio very long to discover the source of the stench.

“The Brothers Durgrim Brewery?” Florian read aloud the dwarven, or more appropriately, duergar script on the freshly painted sign that hung upon an iron post near the main entrance.

“What the bloody blazes is this sh*t?” Toras looked through the windows at the giant tubs of sour mash and various distillation columns and iron and copper stills. “When the hell did they get all of this crap moved in without anyone noticing?”

No sign remained of the prior tenants, and by whatever sorcery or simply exceptionally well-funded moving crew they’d employed, the brewery had gone from non-existent to fully operational overnight. The steel hinges on the new doors shined, not yet pitted and discolored by the embrace of Sigil’s acidic rain, and the smell of roofing tar and freshly painted walls was there as well, though the pungent stench wafting out of the brewery itself served to almost wholly mask its presence.

“Wasn’t this a tailor’s shop and a warehouse until like yesterday?” Florian peered in through one of the broad windows looking in on the very much operating brewery. “There’s no way this place is legit, and if so, it’s going to be a pleasure to shutter the doors and move on with our lives.”

“Actually, I hate to break it to you, but the place is genuine. They’ve got all of their proper permits from the authorities in the ward.” Clueless sighed as he looked over the brass placards bolted to the walls just below and to the right of the brewery’s nameplate. “They’re set up to last. This is going to be a problem.”

Toras frowned and tapped his fingers across the hilt of his sword, “It’s just so much easier when we’ve got pretext to walk in and kick their asses.”

“Well we can’t just let them vent their production out onto the block,” Florian winced at the stink as the wind changed direction and sent another reeking gust their way. “We’ll be out of business in a week if this doesn’t change.”

Inside of the brewery, a number of tieflings and goblinoids went about the drudgery of daily business, watched over and directed by a very obvious pair of dark-dwarven brothers, presumably the brewery’s namesakes.

“This is a brewery right?” Clueless pointed to the nameplate and then to the vats and tanks visible inside. “We run a bar and tavern. Why is this so much of a problem?”

“Because it f*cking stinks and it’s right next door!” Florian protested.

Clueless waved a hand for calm, “Yes, but we can deal with that surely. Either we can convince them to spend some on the odor, we can see if Tristol can help with it, or we just pay for a few hired wizards to help and mitigate the smell or direct it elsewhere. They’re duergar and they’re businessmen, surely we can just discuss things over with them and come to a reasonable solution.”

“I still say that we should just light to place on fire come anti-peak.” Toras, “Violence works so much better with these situations.”

Clueless shot the fighter a skeptical look, “Yeah, and violent solutions to situations also got us sent to Baator to unknowingly fight a yugoloth lord, if you don’t remember that most recent escapade?”

Toras opened his mouth to object, paused, balled his fists and nodded his head with a tacit admission that the bladesinger was absolutely correct about it all.

“Yeah sorry about that on my part as well,” Florian gave a sage nod of agreement.

“This shouldn’t take long.” Clueless stepped towards the brewery doors. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll try to work things out. If you hear blades being drawn or explosions, feel free come in through the windows and go Toras’s favored route.”

Clueless stepped inside to go the route of diplomacy while the other two waited outside, half-hoping that things would descend into violence. They did, but not in the way that they expected.

“YOU THERE!” A voice bellowed from the doorway of another one of the buildings adjacent to the Portal Jammer.

Toras and Florian glanced across the street to meet the crazed, blood-shot eyes of a priest dressed in tattered crimson robes. Smoldering sticks sprouted from his unkempt beard, giving off streams of smoke and falling ashes to mar his already filthy clothes.

“I CHALLENGE YOU!” The other cleric screamed out, pointing first a finger and then the edge of an axe at Florian. “I CALL YOU OUT COWARDLY SLAVE OF A COWARDLY GOD!”

“Huh?” Florian glanced at the mad cleric and then to Toras. “Is he talking to me? Seriously?”

“Given that he’s charging this way with an axe? Yeah, looks like it.” Toras smiled broadly.

“Is that a symbol of Garagos he’s got hanging from his neck?” Florian narrowed her eyes and then broke into a grin of her own. “Yeah, yeah it is.”

“And what does that mean?” Toras shrugged. “I’m not all that familiar with Torillian gods.”

Florian brandished her mace, “It means that sh*t’s about to go down is what.”

Garzuvek, 1st Bloodchanter of Garagos the Reaver, Faerunian God of Slaughter sprinted across the street with frightening speed, bellowing something between a stream of incoherent curses and a rambling sermon on the virtues of wanton violence for its own sake.

The cleric found a double helping of what he wanted standing on there on the sidewalk waiting for him.


****​

A slow curl of smoke rose up into the air from the ivory bowl of a long-stemmed pipe held in the Marauder’s manicured, painted claws. The bowl was carved into the screaming, tortured face of a petitioner whose elongated body lay as if stretched upon a rack to form the pipe’s body and stem.

“Is this sort of petty torture necessary?” The question came from one Ramander “The Wise”, a relative newcomer to Sigil’s circles of power and influence. “Wouldn’t it be all that much more efficacious to simply have them killed, their bodies dumped into the Ditch, and the building burned to the ground?”

The wizard sipped from a glass of brandy as he sat upon a cushioned chair only several feet from where the Marauder sat atop the back of an aasimar, the twin brother of the blind aasimar girl who routinely saw to the fiend’s claws. Claw marks and half-healed burns laced his flesh, but he gave no complaints to the ‘loth seated atop him, using him as so much insensate, suffering furniture.

Ramander stroked a finger bearing more than one bejeweled and magical ring through his close-cropped beard. Immaculate in presentation, much like his fiendish benefactor, his dark velvet robes were dressed in gold trim and gemstones. Layer upon layer of contingent spells added a frightening level of practicality and obsessive caution atop the outwardly obvious pompous decadence. Perched atop his shoulder, a tiny purple nalg groomed itself like a normal wizard’s cat, but Ramander was neither a normal wizard in his own view, and he would have no normal familiar. The ‘loth whose own decadence outshone his own like a burning star situated next to a candle had been more than happy to provide the tiny yugoloth version of the diabolic imp and abyssal quasit.

“Pragmatic yes in the long-run I suppose,” Shemeska reached up a claw to brush at a stray hair and then take a puff of her pipe, sending swirls of scented smoke into the air where they formed minute, screaming figures before fading away. “But if I did that, well where would the fun of it be? If they die, no matter the immediate pain of it, they don’t suffer.”

Ramander noted the particular gleam in her eyes and the subtle but present inflection upon the singular word ‘suffer’.

“Oh my pupil… suffering you see,” The fiend focused on the wizard, not breaking eye-contact as she emptied the hot ashes of her pipe upon the exposed back of her living chair. Her lips curled into an exquisite grin as the acrid-sweet smell of burning flesh rose into the air to mix with her pipe tobacco, “Suffering is the driving goal of my existence.”

“You’re quite adept at it too.” Ramander toasted her with a gesture of his glass. “I genuinely wouldn’t want to be any of these sods.”

“Oh this is only the start of things.” Shemeska gestured with the tip of her pipe to her ubiquitous mirror, held aloft by a conspicuously silent Colcook, as she refilled the pipe’s bowl and sparked it alight with a single tap of a purple-painted claw. The mirror’s sheen was hollow, and while the fiend’s luminous eyes reflected back therein, the magical glass acted as a scrying device, looking in on the Portal Jammer and events in its immediate vicinity. “You have much yet to learn Ramander, so do watch and enjoy. I most certainly am.”

In fact he’d only been in Sigil less than a year, but in that time he’d fallen under Shemeska’s tutelage as something –as he perceived it– of a protégé. In truth his position was more that of useful idiot, albeit one profoundly skilled in the arcane arts. He’d been slowly building up a fortune based on purchasing properties, divining the location, nature of, and keys to any portals therein and promptly charging for their use. Eventually it was likely that he would end up either mazed or flayed, and when that happened, his holdings and fortune would transfer into his mentor’s claws.

“Watch and learn Ramander,” Shemeska chuckled and exhaled another stream of smoke between her fangs, “This only gets better.”

Unseen by the wizard despite his undisputed status as an archmage by most any measure, the ‘loth cradled something in her left hand, never once having relaxed her grip upon its cold and crawling surface. Cloaked in layer upon layer of illusions and abjurations, the alien metal of the Shadow Sorcelled Key rested firmly within the Marauder’s grip. Moment by moment she yearned to use its power, even if she could barely comprehend it.


****​


----------



## Shemeska

“FIGHT ME PITIFUL CLERIC OF A PITIFUL GOD!” Garzuvek bellowed as he charged, blood bubbling up from his hands with a crackle of negative energy channeled from his unholy patron’s fury.

“Really? Seriously?” Florian frowned and looked past the deranged priest. “Did this *sshat actually set up a shrine to Garagos the freaking reaver across from the Jammer? First the stink and then this?”

Toras raised an eyebrow and began to draw his blade. He stopped when Florian held up a hand for him to stop.

“No no, this one is all mine.” She clutched her holy symbol tightly and began to whisper.

“GARAGOS LAUGHS AT YOU AS HEAAAARRRGGGG!!!!!!...”

The air before Garzuvek shimmered and took form as a great gleaming hammer. With time seeming to run in slow-motion, Florian’s artfully manifested _destruction_ spell slammed into him with a bone-jarring concussive force and a burst of divine fire.

Garzuvek’s clothing smoldered and he coughed blood onto the cobblestones. Having somehow survived Florian’s spell, he might have wished otherwise given the severity of his injuries. He lay there on the ground moaning in pain and spitting out a few half-hearted curses at Tempus as Florian walked over to where he lay.

“Enjoy that?” Florian asked as she looked down at him. “Because once you recover I’ll be doing the exact same to you until you get out Sigil and leave with your shrine to a deity that pisses in the face of actual battle and glory. You think about that, and think about why a god who grants healing magic rather than inflictions might have been a wiser choice given your present state.”

Garzuvek twitched and gave an incomprehensible moan.

“Same time next week then?” Florian gave a solid kick to the cleric’s midsection before shaking her head and rejoining Toras on the curb.

Smiling happily, the half-celestial clapped in approval.

“This day couldn’t get worse.” Florian again shook her head at the unconscious cleric as a tout leading a group of humans paused and routed around the bloody, unmoving figure, giving looks of worry and fear in Toras and her direction. “Sorry, I really enjoyed doing that. Jack*ss cleric of Garagos sets up a shrine to the Reaver across from my inn? Not going to happen. What the hell was going through his head…”

“Someone put him up to it is what happened.” Toras stared across the street to the well-dressed tiefling standing under a shop awning, having been there to watch the previous scene ensue. The tiefling met his eyes and politely tipped his hat.

Despite the overwhelming urge to bum rush the Marauder’s lacky, Toras smiled and returned the gesture with a polite nod of his head. Smirking but realizing most likely that any further response might invoke a fight that would likely carry consequences past his comfort even if he managed to curb-stomp the f*cker, Toras stood his ground as calmly as he could as the tiefling withdrew into the nearby alleyway and vanished.

“What the hell was that about?” Florian looked up from the unconscious cleric and glanced at the retreating tiefling just as they moved out of sight.

“One of the Marauder’s toadies watching you kick that idiot there’s *ss. Ten rounds back at the Portal Jammer says that she’s behind all of this.” Toras made a face and gestured at the nearby shrine of Garagos and the overnight appearance of the duergar brewery. “We pissed her off and she’s being at her most petty in response, and by we of course I mean you and Fyrehowl.”

“Hey now.” Florian furrowed her brow, “She f*cking deserved what I said at the Advisory Council meeting.”

“You called her a ‘super b*tch’ in public.” Toras inclined his head.

“Is that descriptor wrong by any standard whatsoever?” Florian questioned.

“… no.” Toras sighed.

“She deserved it, so I said it.” Florian’s expression was one of resolute justification.

“She deserves a holy water tequila and a punch in the face, but we’re not going to live very long if we do either.”

“So that leaves it at that.” The cleric held up her hands, “There’s nothing more to be said. I regret nothing and she can go f*ck herself.”

Toras opened his mouth to object but given Florian’s expression and the fact that he’d just watched her nearly disintegrate a man with holy fire he thought better of it and remained silent. The mess with the ‘loth wasn’t going to get better on its own, and she was likely to escalate things further and further. Hopefully he thought he might be able to mollify it all with an apology letter that was probably best sent that afternoon and not a day later.

Toras’s train of thought abruptly jumped tracks as the brewery doors opened, releasing a wave of stench and also Clueless. The bladesinger walked out with a polite turn and a wave back inside before facing his companions with an oddly smiling face and a bottle of beer in one hand.

“I don’t know why you’re smiling,” Florian remarked, “It still stinks.”

Clueless waved away her concerned with the hand clutching the bottle, “For the moment, but that’s going to be taken care of. It actually went much better than I expected.”

Florian whispered a short orison and looked Clueless over, “They didn’t manage to charm you did they?”

Despite her suspicions, the bladesinger wasn’t displaying any magical auras different from normal.

“Ok, let me explain. First off, the beer is actually good.” He held up the bottle, emblazoned with a stamp of a stylized dwarven forge hammer and the owners’ initials. “So I met with the owners, Fegrim and Olk, the brothers who own the place. The beer isn’t my every day taste profile, but it’s interesting enough and if we offered it at the Jammer, we could sell it… and what’s with the burning corpse in the middle of the street?”

“He deserved it.” Florian deadpanned. “Go on.”

“I’ll explain later, and yes, he did deserve it.” Toras added, motioning for Clueless to continue.

“Ok…” Clueless took a swig of the beer and a slow stare at the inexplicably still breathing cleric of Garagos. “So the owners of the brewery are open to a distribution deal with the Jammer so long as we offer to set a standing order.”

“The place f*cking stinks!” Florian protested.

Clueless held up a hand, “And in exchange for a distribution deal they’ll modify the vats to vent less gas and vent that all elsewhere.”

“That’s some serious extortion right there.” Florian continued to frown.

“Yeah, it clearly is. Given the speed of this all, it’s an absolutely transparent extortion attempt since they already knew how to prevent the smell yet couldn’t be bothered. But despite the extortion, it makes sense for the Jammer if we sell their beer and they clean up their act.”

Several minutes of back and forth discussion of such a deal ensued. Words flew, beer was tried, and acrimony faded away shortly thereafter. It was a forced deal but it wasn’t a bad deal, and so things seemed to be on the up and up as the three of them departed back to the Portal Jammer.

The day’s fun of course was just getting started.


****​

“Is the staff ready to perform? The candles lit and perfume upon the air?” Madam Eszedia of Broken Reach looked into the mirror at the quasit perched upon her bedpost as she applied a fresh coat of narcotic-laced black lipstick. “That shipment of wine, strawberries, and those bottles of honey I asked for… have they arrived yet?”

“Yes madam, they are, they are, and they have.” The quasit that served as her attendant quipped from where it perched on a dresser full of its mistress’s “instruments”.

“Good, good, and good.” Eszedia remarked as she looked over her appearance, wanting to make sure that everything was in place and immaculately arranged. Boots polished, corset cinched, makeup just perfectly so. She’d be selling the service of others, but she’d happily be enticing customers through the front door as needed. “Give the honey to Xareshen and have her slather it over those two twin incubi and that new tiefling Pennythistle. They’ll be a package deal today. In for a Penny in for a pound.”

The quasit snickered as it looked over Eszedia’s shoulder, out the window that looked across the street where the Portal Jammer sat. Things had returned to normal more or less, and the Jammer was flush with customers once more with the removal of the stench of the brewery that sat catty-corner to what would in an hour’s time become a tanar’ri brothel.

“Have Zurketh get the banners ready to hang and make sure that the spells to amplify the sounds inside are properly working.” An expectant glimmer sparkled in the succubus’s eyes as she punctuated her anticipation with a thrust of her hips. “We’ll be making jink today, damning some souls to the Abyss, and if all goes right, I’ll be earning that ‘loth’s promised bonus, so make sure to have the staff visit next door and peddle themselves.”

Two hundred thousand jink if she managed to shut down the Portal Jammer within the space of a week, and a reduction in the uncomfortably large cut of her profits that the ‘loth was otherwise receiving. That was the promise at least, and it was part of what had gotten the tanar’ri into Sigil in the first place. The sheer enjoyment of the act, as well as the vain hope of getting on the Marauder’s best side and possibly her backside as well didn’t hurt either, though the ‘loth had firmly squelched that latter hope like a literal moth to a flame.

The succubus walked to the mirror again and did a slow pirouette, extending her wings and appreciating her reflection. A touch up of eye shadow and the addition of additional earrings and a dangling charm on the tip of her spaded, barbed tail were the only late additions before she judged herself ready and by extent her business.

“Get the girls, boys, and everyone in-between ready.” Eszedia pointed her tail at the quasit. “Doors open at peak.”


****​

Clueless stood behind the Portal Jammer’s bar, passing the time pouring drinks, washing ale mugs, and idly chattering with customers and his companions alike. Finally feeling better, Fyrehowl sat at the end of the bar talking with Skalliska who’d finally taken some time away from tending to her litter of kobolds.

“The smell isn’t better yet.” Fyrehowl complained with a soft whine as she covered her nose with a wet towel.

“It’s better, just not for you quite yet.” Clueless gave a sympathetic frown. “They said it would take a few days to fully disperse as they make their modifications. At the very least this place isn’t a ghost-town anymore.”

“If you plan to get soused an unpleasant smell is probably the least of your worries, and the folks we’ve got right now are some heavy drinkers.” Skalliska said, adjusting the brim of her hat as she looked out across the room.

“At the very least, things are finally looking on the up and up.” Clueless smiled as he poured himself a drink and put it to his lips.

Abruptly the sound of screaming echoed through the Portal Jammer. Not screams of agony but those of wild ecstasy from several dozen distinct voices.

“What the f*ck is that?!” Clueless spit out his drink, spraying a fine mist of ale in front of where he stood. Fyrehowl of course had just a moment prior preemptively dodged on her supernatural Cipher’s instinct and Skalliska deftly shielded herself with her own hat.

Both the Jammer’s owners and patrons alike looked about for the source, growing more and more uncomfortable by the moment by a mixture of ecstatic gasps, moans, and mutterings of profane intimacy from both female and male voices alike. Some of them were shrieked out in planar common but most of them were in abyssal. They were also largely resonating telepathically inside of their minds, with the more muted but still very much audible sounds of rhythmic pleasure and periodic climax coming from somewhere outside and across the street.

Clueless was outside in the space of a heartbeat, having used a dimension door spell to burst across the intervening space from the bar into the middle of the street. Outside, surrounded by a veritable wall of screams and gasps, both mental and audible, the bladesinger looked up at the newly painted facade of a neighboring building, its doors swung open to the public, and the former apartment building now festooned with a bright new banner: ‘The House of Carnal Exultation; Madam Eszedia of Broken Reach, proprietor.’

“What the f*ck…” Clueless said at full volume as he looked up at the Jammer’s newest neighbors.

“Why hello there pretty little thing!” Madam Eszedia’s voice rang out with practiced clarity and seductive potential from where she sat on the second floor window, straddling the window sill, dressed in a gown slit from ankle to neck and held together from waist on up by a cross-hatch of silk ribbon. “You’ve certainly come to the right place for what you just said! Any kind that you can imagine, we can provide for a price.”

“Do you mind?” Clueless shouted up with as much calm decorum as he could manage, looking up to see a pair of babau cavorting on the roof with a pair of tieflings in full public view, and more than a dozen other similar scenes playing out in the open windows that looked down upon the street facing the Jammer. “Seriously?”

“I don’t mind at all you delightful specimen of the mortal male physique.” The succubus placed both hands on the window frame and lifted her legs into the air, reaching her shoulders at the apex of their stretch before bringing them down. Turning to face the half-fey, she flashed him as the loose, low-cut front of her outfit fell forward, obviously designed to do just that, “Clueless, yes? Oh I’ve heard all about you.”

“My reputation proceeds me then.” Clueless pursed his lips as the tanar’ri began to fully strip naked, not by her own efforts but by the action of two pairs of lithe and practiced hands from the darkened room behind her. “Yours has not, though that’s difficult for me to understand with the show you’re giving to me, my customers in the Jammer, and everyone else on this block. You are?”

“As the sign says, Madam Eszedia of Broken reach, a distant relation of Red Shroud herself. That being said, I prefer my customers know me in the best way, rather than by name or reputation alone.” On that note the hands behind her finished, pulled her clothing off completely and pushed her forwards through the window frame, forcing her to hold herself up, arms behind her back. Looking down, her eyes focused on Clueless as she smiled with obscene delight.

“Really?” Clueless’s expression wrinkled as he watched the succubus’s tail lift up and one of the previous hands in the room behind her settle firmly on her hips from behind.

“Oh… you really… should… visit… oh! OH! Yes!” Eszedia’s eyes widened and her speech was interrupted repeatedly as she rocked forward and back in her window frame perch. “It’s a wonderful… location you… seeeeeeeEEEEEE… and we’ve got a ten year lease!”

Clueless rolled his eyes as the succubus and her unseen partner continued to rut in full view of the Portal Jammer’s main entrance and the tanar’ri continued evocatively screaming out her pleasures as well as her establishment’s sales pitch to everyone in hearing distance.

Grumbling, the bladesinger turned around, ignoring Eszedia’s string of compliments on the shape of his *ss and what she would do to it given the chance as she changed positions in the window and promptly changed genders to better accentuate her taunting temptation to the half-fey as he walked away back to the Jammer.

Eszedia watched him walk off, cackling even as she continued her activities, screaming out a running transcript of her actions as well as telepathically projecting her annunciations of pleasure into the Portal Jammer’s common room.

“This is a sh*tshow…” Clueless brushed past Toras as he stepped back inside the Jammer. “I don’t know how we’ll handle it yet. I need time to think.”

Still standing in the Jammer’s doorway Toras frowned, listening to the chorus of moans and screamed names from across the street. His several minute long cross-section of the new neighbors’ staff and clientele seemed to include everything from tanar’ri, every sapient humanoid race, and at least five non-sapient animals.

Toras sighed and put a hand to his forehead. The tanar’ri brothel was going to drive away business even quicker than the evil shrine next door or the brewery at full stinking output, and it was going to keep it down so long as it remained there. This wasn’t going to end with scorching an evil cleric with holy fire or striking a deal with two conniving but level-headed brewers; it wasn’t that easy this time. Short of putting the fiends to the sword and burning the brothel down to the ground, he’d have to deal with the problem in some other way, and that way ran straight to the Marauder’s damn doorstep.


****​

An hour later, still surrounded by the myriad, horrific sounds of tanar’ri pleasures both given and received, Toras sat at the now depopulated bar with a line of shot-glasses in front of him, each filled with a sharp, sweet Arcadian whiskey. The letter he’d been planning to send to the Marauder was written and waiting to be mailed, but it had to be more than that.

“I’ve got ideas beyond sitting here, getting drunk, and trying to ignore a den of tanar’ri prostitutes.” The fighter took another shot and turned to the lupinal sitting beside him.

“You could, you know, just put a sword through her face.” Fyrehowl glanced up at the fighter, her ears wrapped with linen and stuffed with cotton balls to dampen the audible sounds. “I wouldn’t be against that idea.”

“Oh trust me. It’s a very, very tempting thought.” Toras took another shot of booze. “I already had a good, long conversation about it with Clueless. He’s actually the one who put me off of the idea.”

The lupinal tilted her head to the side. “Really now? He hates her more than you do, and that brothel is pissing him off something fierce.”

“He knows and I know that I wouldn’t get away with it.” Toras shook his head. “Not now. Not when she’s expecting it. Even if she wasn’t, she’s been sitting pretty for gods know how long with contingencies in place for most anything that you can think of. I won’t survive, and I’d like to survive till I can have the enjoyment of punching her in the face at least once and living to tell the tale.”

Fyrehowl nodded, “So what’s your plan then?”

“Florian isn’t going to apologize. I’ve asked her and she flat out refuses even if it’s the death of her. She had bloody portals opening up underneath her right after the Council Meeting, and apparently another incident with that same this afternoon when she left to book a room elsewhere in the Ward away from this mess across the street. I don’t know how she managed it, but the ‘loth is behind it and everything else that’s been going on, and Florian refusing to apologize doesn’t help me settle this cr*p.”

“So…?” Fyrehowl raised an eyebrow. “I’m not apologizing either.”

“I’m less concerned about you.” Toras took a sip of ale. “You didn’t publicly call her a ‘super b*tch’.”

The lupinal chuckled with far too much happiness given the gravity of the situation.

Toras joined with a chuckle of his own. They’d all wanted to say what Florian had said, but none of them had had the guts or the death-wish to actually do so. “Yeah I expected that reaction, but I’m genuinely concerned that we’ll all wake up dead at some point if we don’t play this right.”

“So what are you planning on doing since Florian isn’t going to apologize?”

“I’ll do the apologizing on her behalf. I figure if I bribe the ever loving f*ck out of the Marauder, she’ll leave us alone, she’ll stop ‘gifting’ us with new and improved neighbors, or at the very least she’ll stop trying to kill Florian.”

Fyrehowl quaffed her last shot and slammed the tumbler down, “What would you bribe the richest fiend in Sigil with?”


****​

The silver bell over the entrance to The Friendly Fiend rattled cheerfully as the door swung open and Toras and Fyrehowl stepped into the quaint little shop.


----------



## Erevanden

Hah ! I call shotgun 

That is a fantastic update.

Never expected they would actually make a deal with those duergar brewers. Smooth, Clueless, pretty darn smooth


----------



## Shemeska

Erevanden said:


> Hah ! I call shotgun
> 
> That is a fantastic update.
> 
> Never expected they would actually make a deal with those duergar brewers. Smooth, Clueless, pretty darn smooth




*chuckle*

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Most of the next update is already written (in A'kin's shop).

This whole string of events were a giant case of 'I'm going to throw horrible things at the PCs with no planned out resolution and see how they handle it'. I expected more violence than what ended up happening, but they were pretty smooth about it all.


----------



## Sabrewulf

*Analysis and Rampant Speculation (Improbably Spoilers)*

The last time I tried this, I sent Shemmy a private message, which was wise, because most of my theories are wrong. The best thing about the planescape story hour, in my opinion, is that most of Shemmy's short fiction indirectly connects to the over-arching story. Being obsessive, I found and read all of it. 

Here is my understanding of the Baernaloths. Shemmy, on the off chance any of this is correct, my identity guesses have been obscured.
________________________

The Baernaloths repeatedly create the Blood War, which they refer to as the Great Experiment. The war is an experiment about Evil and a lure to corrupt Good. The Baernaloths have repeatedly created the evil planes, Baator, Gehenna and the Waste, in order to spawn the Tanari (Lawful Evil), the Baatezu (Chaotic Evil), and the Yugoloths (Neutral Evil). The Tanari and the Baatezu are byproducts from the creation and purification of the Yugoloths. 

Shemmy's early "Flesh Sculptor" Baernaloth cycle story and his short Baernaloth story "Evil Seeps Through" demonstrate these themes. Methikus Sar Telmuril, the most direct and terrifying Baernaloth, demonstrates contempt for Tanari, referring to them as side-effects and weapons, before fatally evolving them into mezzoloths. Other Baernaloths use the same language to refer to Baatezu and Tanari throughout the Story Hour and the Baernaloth Cycle.

This fully explains the Rule of Three, One of Three, One from Three, the one being the Yugoloths. The Yugoloths are the product and purpose of the Blood War, and the only one of the three evil races the Baernaloths hold in interest, rather than contempt. One of three races, created from three races. In the Baernaloth creation myth, a leader-Baernaloth, most likely Chorazin or Lazarius ibn Shartalan, possessed Carpocrates of Zrintor. He/she directed Carpocrates to create the Tanari and the Baatezu to bleed law and chaos from the Yugoloths, and then transformed Carpocrates into the first Ultroloth, a completely emotionless evil being. Carpocrates is now the General of Gehenna, the primary recipient of guidance from the Demented. 

Returning to "Evil Seeps Through" we see a group of Baern in the Far Realm expressing scorn for various deities, and re-creating the evil planes, from which their creations will spawn. This introduces another Baernaloth theme, contempt for deities. The Baernaloths can be harmed by extremely powerful good beings like Celestials and Solars, as demonstrated in the Baernaloth Cycle Story "The Lie Weaver." The Maeldur, a Solar, is clearly capable of killing Baernaloth Daru Ib Samiq, the Lie Weaver, though he is ultimately corrupted and fails to do so. In order to survive while managing the Blood War, the Baernaloths work exclusively through proxies. 

Thus, a Baernaloth who draws attention to him/herself, especially through public elevation to deity status, is in violation of the rule of three and subject to imprisonment or exile from the other 'lots. This explains why the Demented constantly admonish the Flesh Sculptor, who displays his power openly, and hate Apomps, the Triple-Aspected, who has elevated himself to deity status and unified Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic evil within himself and within the Ghereleths / Demodands. Any unification of Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic evil, like the seal at the bottom of the Ghoresh chasm, is antagonistic to Baernaloths in general and the Demented in particular.  as is the attention associated with being a deity or dealing with deities. The 'lots HATE deities, like their favored children, and enjoy killing them more than they enjoy performing other evil deeds.  

Baernaloths also punish other Baernaloths, such as Gormisekt Ap Portent, imprisoned beneath Portent. Though Gormisekt's crime is not specified, he/she recognizes Vorkannis the Ebon as [sblock]a formerly imprisoned baernaloth[/sblock], confirming what has been implied throughout the story hour. Vorkannis uses Baernaloth language and expressions (what is it you want), radiates evil, drinks from the Styx, vocalizes contempt for the Atraloths (night hag corruptions of Yugoloths) and kills several of them. Telluria ibn Shartalan reciprocates familiarity and hostility toward Vorkannis during the Ebon's seizure of Khin Oin.

Around this incident, and in a discussion of things they did not predict, the Demented mention [sblock]"The Ghoresh Incident"[/sblock] as something contrary to their purpose. The fate of [sblock]Ghoresh[/sblock] is deliberately avoided. In post 1507 from the original story hour, it is revealed that Chorazin, Lazarius, Tellura and Ghoresh formed the four furnaces of Gehenna from the bodies of living titans,[sblock]meaning Ghoresh was present for the Baernaloth creation myth, but is not a member of the Demented and no longer among the Baernaloths who observe the Rule of Three.[/sblock]

[sblock]Ghoresh / Vorkannis'[/sblock] opposition to the Demented and the Rule of Three is strengthened by his relationship with the Ashsinger, a yet-unknown Void God who possesses Cilret Leobtav and communes with Apomps. All three of these beings have documented feuds with the Demented, and Apomps clearly falls in the category of evil unified (lawful, neutral and chaotic), rather than divided. The fact that they all three commune with each other further illustrates the divide between the hierarchical Baernaloths who manage the Blood War and rouge Baernaloths who seek power / actively participate in it.

In conclusion, the real mystery of this story is the identify of the Ashsinger, who drives Cilret Leobtav to commit some truly horrible deeds and to murder at least one living deity. The Ashsinger is possibly Tharizdun, who was corrupted by Larsdana Ap Neut at the behest/possession of Chorazin ibn Shartalan in this unnamed story, tens of thousands of years before the events of the Story Hour. The Ashsinger could really be anything, but is from beyond the current reality, it created the Frozen Vale, it communes with the most antagonistic and independent Baernaloths, and it no longer obeys the Demented. The Ashsinger is a truly frightening and apocalyptic idea, a villain's nightmare.

Anyway, all credit to Shemmy. Accurate or not, it would not be interesting to do this sort of literary analysis without such a broad, far-reaching, varied body of writing to read. This is only my poor attempt to see the boundaries of what he has been doing. Shemmy, you should really hire an editor, make this into an anthology, and publish it. Entirely possible that you already have, and I just missed that boat. 

Sabre


----------



## Shemeska

Before I respond to that seriously awesome post, let me say that the guesses aren't hidden if you're reading with a theme using a black background and white text. 

I'll happily confirm or deny any of your claims by PM if you'd like, otherwise I won't in public (because I absolutely adore speculation as things continue to progress!).

A couple of things to consider however:

I wrote both 'Evil Seeps Through' and Evil Still Seeps Through as an in-world what-if response to 3e Forgotten Realms removal of itself from the Great Wheel (which I considered a mistake on a number of levels). I would not consider either of those two stories to be set within the same continuity as the storyhour and most of my fiction. Likewise the unnamed story with Larsdana Ap Neut speaking with a baernaloth and then to Tharizdun is also another what-if story written in the prelude to 4th Edition when it was still up in the air as to what would be done with the 'loths in that edition. Clearly I would have gone a different direction there. The characters used in those three stories act fully in accordance with how they're characterized in the Storyhour's continuity of course, so take that as you will (we've only seen Larsdana in hindsight thus far in the Storyhour proper - but she's one of my favorites among the fiends I'll admit, and I look forward to showing her off more in the future in hindsight or otherwise, whatever the case might be).

Additionally, just a point of clarification regarding the pre-history discussed in post 1507. Keep this line in mind: "But for all the apocryphal tales, the exact version was of little meaning, irrelevant really, within the confines of a patch of frozen ground obscured upon the flank of the third furnace of Mungoth." The preceding descriptions of Gehenna's formation are all mostly mutually exclusive. Consider them as different takes upon what happened, like the variant and mutually exclusive versions of history within the Synoptic Gospels. One, two, or all three of those tales might have happened in some capacity, but those are three versions of history remembered, told, and venerated by the 'loths. Of course it might be that none of them occurred. The 'loths lie. That's what they do, even to themselves.

Consider those clarifications upon your conclusions, but regardless of what measure of truth you've come to, I'm seriously impressed that you've gone to that amount of effort to dig through my older stories scattered around the internet across Enworld, Planewalker, and the now defunct WotC forums. Thank you! *blush*


----------



## Shemeska

The silver bell over the entrance to The Friendly Fiend rattled cheerfully as the door swung open and Toras and Fyrehowl stepped into the quaint little shop.

“I’m fresh out of spare yugoloth blood I’m afraid to say.” A’kin chuckled from behind the counter with a cheerful gleam in his eyes. “I assume by your expressions that everything worked out well with that other little affair?”

“Eh…” Toras shrugged. “About as well as it could have. But that’s not why I’m here.”

“Well it’s a shame that it didn’t go better for you Toras.” A’kin softly and sympathetically frowned, his whiskers drooping for a moment before he gestured with a hand and the feather-duster it held. “But come in, come in, you and Fyrehowl both. I have to at least make an effort to be a shrewd businessman while we otherwise sit and gab for as long as you’d like.”

Toras and Fyrehowl stepped inside the shop as A’kin smiled cheerfully, even as he continued to dust the shelves. The shelves didn’t particularly need it, but the act itself was quaint and charming in its own right, and distinctly at odds with the fact that both of them were alone with a smiling yugoloth.

“This is all related to that crap involving the Sigil Advisory Council meeting and us pissing off a certain someone that you and I both know.” Toras rolled his eyes. “And by us, I mean Florian and Fyrehowl.”

Glancing at a collection of chocolates molded to resemble the upper tier members of Queen Morwel’s eladrin Court of Stars, Fyrehowl stuck out her tongue.

A’kin tilted his head, “Well it’s funny that you mention that Toras, because I had something related come up recently. It all began with a little issue outside of my shop yesterday, when one Stavros Garianis was stabbed to death by a gang of thugs being watched over by a particularly well-dressed tiefling of the groomer-guard variety. Ugly business that. Ugly, ugly…” The ‘loth shook his head sorrowfully. “It took me an hour to clean the blood off of the windows. It’s just the latest in a string of incidents though. The Athar and their lot have been at each others’ throats since that same Sigil Advisory Council meeting that you and I were at. It really was a shame, and paying attention to it all, it seems clear that the back and forth between them is just both groups feeling the other out in preparation of something larger.

A’kin shook his head a second time sorrowfully before brushing a pair of claws through the fur of his chin. 

“Now I wouldn’t have paid any further attention to it all except for a second thing that occurred the same day just before closing when I was paid a visit by a gentleman who works in the Night Market and runs a business importing items from Gehenna. Well he came here to throw gold at me for a specific item and also apparently to engage in gossip, both things of which I’m particularly fond of. He was here to purchase a sprig of Ysgardian mistletoe,” He held up a finger, “–the most jolly of abortifacients– since he was rather upset that he’d gotten his mistress –not his wife– pregnant, and well he happened to mention over a cup of hot chocolate that I’d made him that Garianis planned a groundbreaking five days from then, which is now tomorrow I suppose, at the former location of the Shattered Temple. In fact, he seemed rather insistent on that point. He repeated it five times in the space of so many minutes like he was deliberately trying to impress that point upon me.”

A’kin shrugged, “If he was going out of his way to feed me information, he could have simply told me before I made him cookies in an attempt to make him more talkative. I would have happily just taken the information and gossiped happily at a later point, just like I am now.”

“I’m not worth cookies?” Fyrehowl’s ears drooped and she mock frowned.

“I never said that now did I?” A’kin paused and held up a finger. Walking into the back room, he returned only seconds later carrying a tray of warm and obviously just baked cookies. “So here you go, and you as well Toras.”

Toras picked up a cookie as Fyrehowl enjoyed her own chocolate chip cookie baked into the shape of a dragon, its mouth oozing just a bit of dark chocolate as she bit into it.

“You baked these ahead of time.” The fighter pointed out. “Just for us, or do you keep a working bakery in the back just to hand out to customers?”

“Back to what I was saying though about the Shattered Temple.” A’kin’s eyes sparkled as he smiled, not actually answering the question. “We aren’t that far from there, and so understandably, I’ll be closing the shop early and making sure that the door is sufficiently barred. It does seem that nearly every instance of public violence in this part of the Lower Ward corresponds with looting attempts on my shop. Funny that.” 

A’kin sighed and shrugged, both taking it all in stride with a nearly celestial patience, but clearly alluding to the responsible party –who was backing the Athar– without actually saying her name. “But I’m babbling on Toras, what was it that you were here to get?”

Having just swallowed a mouthful of chocolaty goodness a moment before with Cipher prescience, Fyrehowl was the first to speak, “We’re here to prevent an escalation game from going well past the point where a particular greater yugoloth…”

Toras abruptly put a hand on the lupinal’s shoulder to stop her from explaining everything. “I need to buy the most expensive, most grotesquely, most stupidly pointless and ostentatious gift that I can possibly buy… for Shemeska the Marauder.”

“Pardon?” A’kin tilted his head to the side, “I must have heard you wrong.”

“Yes. Her.”

“…” A’kin made a face best described as a physical manifestation of dumbfounded confusion. 

“Yeah… Yeah I know…” Toras sighed. “It’s the best way for this situation to go.”

A’kin squinted and adjusted his spectacles, “Hasn’t she tried to kill you on more than one occasion?”

“We figured that you might know what she liked, you know,” Toras hesitated a moment before he continued, “You being a ‘loth and all.”

“I’d hardly think to compare the two of us.” A’kin’s response was distinctly and deliberately quick. “But… I suppose that I can help you find something that might work.”

Toras and Fyrehowl smiled as A’kin motioned them towards the curtain leading to his back room.

“Nothing in the front here likely matches the sort of things that she seems to appreciate.” A’kin pushed aside the curtain. “And by that, I mean nothing in the front room is hideously expensive.”

“You know, come to think of it, I’ve never actually seen your stock room back here.” Toras remarked as they followed the fiend.

One step through the doorway Fyrehowl paused as the fur on the back of her neck prickled. She stepped back out, then back through to confirm her suspicions: it wasn’t just a curtain over a doorway leading into a stock room: it was a portal.

The storage room was huge, easily four times the size of the rest of the shop itself. At the distant rear of the cavernous chamber a spiral stairwell extended up and down to presumably other floors or rooms. Fyrehowl tried to collect her bearings but without magic she hadn’t a clue if they were still in Sigil, some manner of demiplane, or wherever else.

“This…” The lupinal paused, searching for the words. “This isn’t what I expected back here. I’m impressed.”

“Most people don’t ever come back here.” A’kin shrugged and smiled. “Nisha helped herself into here once or twice, but she doesn’t know all of the portal keys. That’s probably for the best.”

Rows and rows of shelves, book cases, boxes, barrels, and chests filled the chamber. Random objects from a hundred different worlds and planes cluttered the shelves and fought for space in a chaotic jumble of bric-a-brac of which A’kin’s public shop space was simply a microcosm.

Starry-eyed and still taking in the sheer size of A’kin’s shop, still with cookies in hand, Toras and Fyrehowl followed along like puppies as the cheerful ‘loth led them from aisle to aisle, shelf to shelf, showing off dozens of grossly expensive and equally pointless items, all of them with increasingly hefty price tags. Jewelry, clothing, rare bottles of alcohol, all of them Toras passed up as oddly enough, not being expensive enough.

“What’s the most stupid and stupidly expensive thing that you can sell me right now on short notice?” Toras glanced at a bustier studded with rubies and emeralds before turning back to A’kin, having already discarded that option as probably sending the wrong signal. There was a distinct line between bribery and flirtation that he didn’t wish to cross.

A’kin paused and thought for a moment before leading them to a large glass tank as tall as Toras and twice again as wide. Inside of its frozen oceanic diorama, a giant clam rested on a bed of coins and coral. A grapefruit sized pearl rested inside of the clam’s depths along with the skeletal leg of a long dead would-be pearl diver.

“Gods above that’s tacky,” Fyrehowl smirked and stuck out her tongue. “Where do you even get stuff like this A’kin?”

The fiend smiled only his contagious smile and didn’t answer.

“How much?” Toras asked without a care in the world.

“Well, it’s certainly expensive, eighty thousand gold actually.” A’kin scratched his chin with a well manicured claw before giving a frown and tracing his other hand in the air around the outline of the gaping giant clam. “Perhaps it wouldn’t have the desired statement you’re hoping for. With what it is and all, you could read into it a bit too much perhaps. That wouldn’t be good.”

“Oh.” Fyrehowl snickered at the smiling fiend’s insinuation. “Yeah…”

“And Toras,” A’kin turned and put a hand on the half-celestial’s shoulder with a look of concern in his eyes, “I really don’t think you should spend this much. Believe me, you’d be paying my bills in a rather large way, but then again, I genuinely care for my customers and I don’t want to see you wasting your money on well, a girl who won’t return your feelings.”

“No! No no no!” Toras waved his hands as he blushed with more horror than embarrassment. “It’s not like that! I’m immune to disease and even I’m not going there!”

A’kin attempted to and failed to conceal a soft chuckle. “She’s a ‘loth Toras. She’s going to take your bribery as the closest thing to a love letter left upon her windowsill. Well, either that or a petty attempt to manipulate her and buy her off, which would likely earn most berks a knife in the back. She’s also likely to see it as a desperate attempt and she’ll just enjoy making you miserable. You really shouldn’t flirt with her. You’re better than that Toras and you deserve someone better than her.”

“Seriously A’kin, it isn’t like that.” The half-celestial’s face was flushed beet red. “That’s a horror story that I want absolutely no part of.”

“If you say so Toras.” A’kin shrugged with a faintly sorrowful expression on his face, as if he felt bad for the Marauder’s seemingly-to-him would-be paramour. “But of course, what would I know?” 

“Wrench that horrible thought out of your mind A’kin, please.” Toras shuddered. “I’d rather throw her down the side of the spire than kiss her on the cheek, and I’m essentially going to be kissing her ass with this gift as it stands.”

“Please don’t use that phrase Toras.” Fyrehowl grimaced. “That’s not an image I want to think about.”

A’kin turned to the lupinal and then back to the half-celestial as they chattered back and forth about the very plausibility of bribing the Marauder. Toras won out in the end and turned back to A’kin, once again making it clear that he had no amorous intentions. A’kin seemed both amused and concerned, but willing to go along with making a massive amount of money nonetheless.

“Again, if you say so Toras.” The ‘loth waved his hands, “I won’t judge. I just worry about you is all.”

Fyrehowl burst out laughing as Toras did his best to convince A’kin that he wasn’t trying to bribe his way into Shemeska’s black, poisonous heart. As the two of them bantered, she glanced one shelf over at a number of dolls similar to those in the Jammer that they’d purchased from A’kin previously. Most of them seemed half-completed, but one in the exaggerated imitation of Jeremo the Natterer sat ready for sale.

“How much is this one A’kin?” Fyrehowl held the Jeremo doll up in the air when it decided on its own to animate.

“Did I hear someone mention the Marauder?” Dancing around on the shelf and grinning, the doll’s crown threatened to fall off of his mop of fussy blond felted hair. It glanced down at Fyrehowl and Toras and wiggled its eyebrows, “I heard that her former significant other in crime and in bed, Mantello the Jeweler, was still alive. Oh did he have some things to say about her! I hope she hasn’t pined away her nights without him! Rowr!”

A’kin shot Fyrehowl and Toras a look of utter mortification, “Ok no, definitely not that one either. How about some simpler jewelry or perhaps yet another mirror? Nothing that will get me shanked in an alleyway by association with the gift. It’s also probably best if you don’t tell her that you bought it from me.”

The browsing continued for another hour before Toras finally left with something befitting the Marauder. He also left with considerably less jink than he’d started the day with.


****​

“Aaaaand, it’s sent.” Toras breathed a sigh of relief as he stared at the receipt for delivery of both his purchased bribe and the letter of apology on Fyrehowl and Florian’s behalf. The bribe itself was a wine decanter crafted from dozens of hen-egg sized sapphires and diamonds, held together with a wire matrix of gold and platinum. A century old bottle of wine had been thrown in for free, with the promise that ‘if it turns out to be corked or gone to vinegar, I’ll pay for the resurrection’ on A’kin’s behalf.

And so the fighter sat nursing a substantially less time-matured drink of his own, waiting to hear something, anything really, in response. In total, it took less than an hour, and came in a form that he hadn’t expected.

“What are you… please don’t kill me!!” Toras’s messenger and deliveryman arrived in the middle of the Portal Jammer’s taproom with a burst of light and a scream. He covered his face with both hands, ineffectually warding off a death spell that had never arrived, and in the fading light of the forced teleportation back to where he’d begun his journey, he looked up with a sense of slowly fading terror.

Both the bribe and the apology letter were still on the deliveryman’s person.

“Well that could have gone better than it did…” Toras sighed and gestured for an explanation from the man. “What did she say?”

“She snarled and sent me back.” The courier frowned apologetically. “I only said who I was and who I was delivering for before she started casting spells.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing else.”

Something else did arrive however a dozen seconds later when a second flicker-flash of a teleportation spell’s light heralded the arrival of a tiny floating pseudo-yugoloth, a nalg. The tiny fox-headed familiar with an imp-like scorpion’s tail floated in the air, drifting weightlessly.

“How may I help you?” Toras put on a smile that he didn’t mean at all and nodded to the fiendling, the same nalg that unbeknownst to him was currently tethered to the soul of one Rammander the Wise, serving as both the wizard’s familiar and the Marauder’s not entirely metaphorical leash upon her latest would-be protégé. A coveted status, it rarely seemed to end well for any of them.

“I bring a message for you from my master’s Mistress, the King of the Crosstrade.”

“Did she appreciate my gift?”

The nalg ever so briefly smirked as it turned its eyes to glance at the courier still holding that same gift. The gesture was swift, but clearly not just incidental. The slight was there and deliberate.

“The King of the Crosstrade says to tell you that you have legs of your own, and to use them.”

Toras sighed. “If you’ll allow me a moment, I’ll need to get myself dressed appropriately to meet her, assuming that she’ll grant me an audience?”

The nalg flashed a sanctimonious grin, “Please do so. In fact, Shemeska requests your presence at her table this evening. Bring yourself and whatever you desired to send her before, but this time, please do deliver it in person for her reception.”

Toras smiled, though inwardly the only thought running through his head was a profound, “F*CK!”


****​


----------



## Tsuga C

The posts above inspired me to look up the relevant stories, but many of the links at Planewalker.com aren't functional. If Shemeska ever does finish the stories of the 13 Demented and their associates, I'd like to see them posted here as this seems to be a stable web site.


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## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> The posts above inspired me to look up the relevant stories, but many of the links at Planewalker.com aren't functional. If Shemeska ever does finish the stories of the 13 Demented and their associates, I'd like to see them posted here as this seems to be a stable web site.




Here's a link to the finished Baernaloth stories (but not inclusive of all of the other random bits of fiction and associated stories that I've done). They have not been edited since their original creation (some are from 2004) and my writing has improved since then. But here they are since not all of them may otherwise be extant online with various websites going down or having database errors creep in order time.

The Baernaloths of the Demented


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## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> The posts above inspired me to look up the relevant stories, but many of the links at Planewalker.com aren't functional. If Shemeska ever does finish the stories of the 13 Demented and their associates, I'd like to see them posted here as this seems to be a stable web site.




I just posted another one of the 13 Demented stories. The first one that I've written in a number of years actually. http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?483594-Shemeska-s-Baernaloth-Cycle-Lazarius-Ibn-Shartalan-The-Architect-1st-of-The-Demented

Yes, it's considered to be within the Storyhour continuity.


----------



## Shemeska

He’d mulled over his next course of actions for a solid twenty four hours, sleeping on the pending decision before waking up and confirming to himself that it was for the best. He’d slipped out the door before the break of down, unseen and unfollowed, though constantly looking over his shoulder for the latter with a hand perpetually drifting across his sword’s grip.

Each touch of mildly acid breeze from Sigil’s false sky that tousled his hair gave rise to an inner paranoia of something lurking inside of his head, itching slightly against his skull, rattling within his brain like a grinning, chuckling imp. He was worried to be certain, but the day’s actions had long been in the making, originally out of curiosity, but now out of burgeoning fear. He’d already lived too many days of his life with something inside of him, watching always, but sometimes playing him like a puppet. He had no desire to return to that state of affairs if he could prevent it, even if blood might be shed.

The Palace of the Jester was virtually a public location, despite being Jeremo’s home. Still, given the time of day the perimeter was guarded largely as a formality. With all of the Natter’s newest so-called faction members and followers coming and going, the guards would scarcely have glanced at a single man even if they’d seen him, which they never did. The guards never looked up as he fly above their heads and through the main entrance, and even if they had, he’d been completely invisible.

A scuffle was the last thing that he needed or wanted. Jeremo wasn’t his reason for being there, and without any real reason, he actually trusted the man, for good or for ill and he’d been given no reason otherwise since he’d first arrived in Sigil.

The maze-like interior was filled with corridors blocked off to the public, both because not all of them were mapped, and many of them contained poorly identified portals or simply blind endings that would have sent visitors and factioneers into confused wild goose chases, never reaching their destinations except for hours late if ever. One of those deliberately barred hallways was his destination of course, away from the risk of discovery and away from the risk of involving anyone not involved in his current task. It wasn’t anything within Jeremo’s abode that concerned him anyway, nor anyone within the Ring Givers as a neophyte faction, nor anyone even there on the surface of Sigil. 
No, it was something far, far below.

The descent into the warren of passages below the Palace of the Jester was not easy. It never was given that the precise layout of the halls shifted and moved, eschewing any real attempt at mapping. Whether it was some aspect of their being located within the formless, unfathomable depths of “UnderSigil” or something innate to the Palace of the Jester, a building from a bygone era known only by a name devoid of original context and nothing more… the answer eluded him and all others who might have asked the same questions and followed the same path into the depths.

The walls seemed alive.

The walls had eyes.

The walls had ears.

They watched him as she descended down into Sigil’s past and a realm sheltered from the passage of time, the rise and fall of Factions and Guilds, and perhaps allowed to be so by the Lady’s grace if simply the fact that so far removed from the city, unknown and no longer remembered from their original heyday of blood and tyranny, the quiescent horrors there posed no threat and the bladed shadows passed them by.

It knew he was there to find its master, and so by that master’s grace it allowed him to do so.

The hallways were regal if antique; something out of the wildest dreams of Sigil’s golden lords in modern day mimicry of the splendor that still stood, forgotten, far below their feet. They meandered as he walked forward, almost as if they prolonged his route simply in order to display themselves for the greater grandeur of their master. 

He didn’t care. 

He simply wanted answers and a face and a name to a presence.

Finally he stood before it. A silver casket with its locks sprung open and a damning emptiness within.

“Where are you?” He called out, feeling a looming presence standing behind him as he enunciated those very words. His hand flew to his sword and a deep baritone chuckle cut the air, smooth as honey and the mental sensation of smoke and steel.

He’d seen the statue before, and seen the antique painting of the same figure. The painting had drawn him in, showing a scene from the past, showing the figure and his tiny, inhuman familiar. Whatever the experience had been, the figure, the tall man in the antique great coat and wide-brimmed hat, had taken notice. In fact, they’d never stopped taking notice, watching ever since through his eyes.

He turned around and saw the man standing there, only part of his face visible below the brim of his hat, and the short, robed figure of his familiar at his side, peering out from behind one of his legs, tentacles wriggling from its sleeves.

“Just who the hell are you and why are you in my head?” Clueless demanded, never taking his hand off of Razor’s grip.

There in his home, there below the Palace that had once and still remained his own, The Lady’s Jester smiled.


****​

Toras arrived early at the Fortune’s Wheel with his gift/bribe carefully and professionally arranged for the fiend to unwrap and receive. The Marauder’s retinue of course made him wait until the precise minute of his meeting to actually take him up to the Marauder’s elevated balcony dinner-seating, despite the fact that she was actually already sitting down and had no other guests there to occupy her attention. Toras stood awkwardly but quietly until the time arrived.

“You will not speak unless spoken to.” Colcook spoke in warning as he’d escorted Toras, taken the gift and letter, and shown him to his seat.

Having invited him or not, the Marauder didn’t actually so much as glance at Toras when one of her groomer-guards introduced him by name. There was not yet a second chair at the table, and so Toras continued to stand. His bribe, the bejeweled decanter and vintage bottle of wine sat next to the fiend, unopened and ignored.

Shemeska sat at her usual table alone, dressed in a blue and purple sleeveless keyhole gown, providing Toras with an uncomfortable view of the fiend’s cleavage highlighted by a glowing black sapphire at the top of the window in the fabric. Beyond the egg-sized gem and the sapphires and emeralds dangling in golden wire cages from her ears though, the ‘loth was dressed relatively modestly as far as her standards of obscene, self-promoting pomposity went.

Toras tried not to stare and kept looking past her, though it was difficult as she ignored him and sipped a cocktail with four distinct layers, with a tiny insect of some sort impaled on the decorative glass sword holding an olive in the drink. Smiling to herself, she prodding the sword’s basket hilt every so often simply to hear the slowly dying creature squeal and inject another cloud of glimmering blood into the drink’s various immiscible layers.

Toras continued to stand.

The fiend’s disregard continued as with her feet propped up on the table and dress slid back to just above her knees, without words she sipped her drink and stared at the ceiling or the gambling floor of the Fortune’s Wheel down below. Time marched on and the fiend’s meal was delivered with great pomp. She picked at it, telekinetically lifting choice bites from the plate to her mouth and continuing to savor her drink. Eventually the ‘loth finished her meal, and with her feet still on the table, she motioned for a chair to be brought.

“Sit.” She finally focused her eyes on Toras.

Toras smiled and sat down, trying not to look directly at her except for her eyes, even as the fiend baited him with a view directly up her dress and the flesh-displaying window in her gown. Internally he gagged at the thought of either.

“The decanter is well crafted, and the wine is actually an acceptable vintage.” Shemeska motioned casually and one of her attendants approached and made a show of opening the bottle and using the decanter for its intended purpose. The fiend remained silent through the process until the tiefling poured her –and only her– a half glass of the ruby liquid.

“The moment of truth Toras…” Shemeska held the glass up, staring at the half-celestial through the ruddy distortion of the wine in her glass, and in turn providing her guest with a view of her lips and fangs, turned bloody through the lens of his gift. “If it’s corked, they’ll never find your corpse. But you already know that…”

Toras gritted his teeth, wanting nothing more than to reach down and flip the table over, dumping both the wine and the fiend’s remaining food into her lap.

Shemeska smiled and sipped the wine tentatively, keeping her eyes locked with Toras, her expression unreadable for a long, pregnant moment before she closed her eyes, smiled, and took a second, longer taste.

“I commend you on your taste in wine Toras.” Shemeska opened her eyes and inclined the glass towards him. “I’m flattered that you would think of me. I can only imagine how much you spent for such a gesture.”

Toras smiled and remained silent, imagining in his mind upending the bottle and placing it open, lip down through the flesh window in the ‘loth’s evening gown.

“I forgive you Toras.” Shemeska smirked, the words coming almost with a bit of effort on her part, so alien to her nature they seemed. “Consider this a pardon for anything that you may have done, and consider the offer extended to your guardinals bitch of a companion as well. Her immortality has shifted in its nature enough that I’m not so much forgiving out of beneficence on my part as wanting to see where she goes from here.”

Toras furrowed his eyebrows, blindsided and confused by whatever the hell the ‘loth was rambling on about. Fyrehowl herself wasn’t entirely aware of the fact that since Rubicon her link to Elysium had frayed and unraveled. She wasn’t fallen, not completely, but she no longer reflected the plane itself in her essence. The ‘loth however was absolutely aware of Fyrehowl’s status as having slipped into neutrality, smelling it like a feral jackal sniffing out the hint of rotting meat in the garbage heap in a poorly trafficked alleyway.
“So you and the mangy bitch have my forgiveness for the events at the last Council meeting.” Shemeska paused and watched for Toras’s reaction as he waited for her to continue. “As for anyone else…”

The ‘loth drew out the pause and took another sip of mine, swishing it around her mouth to stain her gums before she swallowed and smiled, giving the impression as if she’d just feasted on bloody meat.

“The godslave wants forgiveness?” The Marauder curled her lips back and snarled, abandoning any cultured veneer as she put her feet back onto the ground, placed both hands on the table and leaning forward. “Forgiveness?! If that’s what she wants than she can come crawling on her hands and knees across a bed of broken glass, begging for it, and with me riding atop her back on a saddle!”

Infuriated, Toras’s eyes went wide as he continued to struggle not to punch the Marauder in the throat for both her arrogance and the hideous image that she’d just put in his mind.

“Toras…understand that people who insult me as she did end up dead. They’re tortured for my amusement and allowed to live crippled just long enough to witness the execution of everyone that they ever loved.” Shemeska snarled loudly enough to spray flecks of spit into Toras’s face, leaning in close enough so that he could smell the cloying intensity of her perfume and the brimstone that it covered. “She’s doing well for herself to have survived so long since then, or perhaps I’m simply feeling merciful. You can’t buy her my forgiveness, but by all means Toras, do keep on trying. It’s amusing watching insects wriggle and dance.”

The ‘loth picked up the decorative glass sword from her Martini, holding it up and letting the insect impaled on its length wriggle and squirm in agony. Eyes locked with Toras, she held it up and slipped it into her mouth, devouring the creature and finally putting an end to its agony.

Holding his hands clasped together, Toras held his breath as the ‘loth flicked the tiny glass sword at his face.

“Please understand the enormity of what I’ve told you Toras. Count yourself lucky that you and one of your companions won’t find themselves on the wrong end of a portal to the Abyss or somewhere worse.” Shemeska spat at his face before waving a hand dismissively, “And if you buy me something else from that smiling little f*ck in the Lower Ward as a bribe ever again I’ll send it back to him, on fire, hurled through his front window. Don’t. You’re dismissed.”

Never before in his life had Toras so badly wanted to punch someone in the mouth and feel the satisfying crunch of their breaking teeth on his knuckles. Somewhere between wanting to scream and wanting to cry at the injustice of it all, he felt absolutely powerless. Somehow, against all odds, he looked into the Marauder’s eyes and replied a simple, “Thank you Shemeska.”

With that he stood, turned around without another word, and walked out, feeling the fiend’s eyes on his back and soon thereafter a peal of her laughter ring out in sick pleasure.

The Marauder laughed and licked her lips, full of self-assured sadism. In her left hand a freshly prepared crystal flute filled with white wine, honey and asuras’ blood, and in her right hand, held against her thigh and out of sight the cold, crawling metal of the Shadow Sorcelled Key.

“Run along little man and sleep as well as you can. You’ll need your rest in order to speak at a funeral or two in the coming days. You will suffer and you will suffer so beautifully.”


****​


----------



## Shemeska

****​

“’Vote for action, not barking!’... no.”

“’More guardinal, less ‘loth’… no.”

“’Vote for me and not the razorvine crowned asshat.’… tempting but no.”

“ Vote Fyrehowl for Sigil Advisory Council – action, not words’… maybe.”

Fyrehowl smiled as she stared down at the mockup campaign poster she’d commissioned, prepared for printing except for a campaign slogan which was still obviously a work in progress. She’d already set aside the coin needed to plaster them across every corner and public square in the Clerk’s Ward and possibly the Guildhall Ward if she called in some favors. The Hive didn’t have enough land owners with votes to make it worthwhile, and there and the Lower Ward alike, a celestial running for a seat on the Advisory Council probably didn’t stand much chance with the population there anyway. The other Wards would likely divide their votes among the other candidates that it was a losing proposition to even both to spread jink around on the effort there.

It wasn’t going to be easy, and it would probably create more enemies for her than not, but it would be worth it if only to elevate her onto a level where she could actually stand up to the Marauder. Best case scenario would be that she won a seat and denied one to the ‘loth.

Fyrehowl smiled and wistfully sighed at the thought, pausing only to take a sip of ale as Florian sat down next to her and admired the poster.

“She’s going to murder you if you win and she doesn’t.” The cleric made a snarling face and put her hands up next to her head, pantomiming the Marauder.

“I’m well past the point of caring.” Fyrehowl smirked, errantly swatting at a still grimacing Florian. “Besides, I’m a long shot anyways.”

“No, you’re not.” Florian’s said bluntly. “You’ve got a good shot of landing a seat. People know you. You’re a member of the Chairwoman’s old faction, and hell, you’re not a ‘loth that people hate and fear.”

“I’m used to a certain level of disappointment when it comes to their kind,” Fyrehowl shrugged, “And besides, she’s far more likely to win a seat and then proceed to rub it in my face for the next decade.”

Florian shook her head and handed the guardinal a mug, “There’s not a quota for council members with tails, so chances are that you’ll probably both get in with one of the open council seats. And try that on for size.”

Fyrehowl shrugged and sipped from a mug of the newest addition to the Portal Jammer’s beer on tap: one of the brews produced by the formerly adversarial duergar neighbors. It was overly hoppy compared to her usual tastes, but it wasn’t bad, and the bitterness suited her mood to an extent as her brain dwelled far too much on the idea of beating one specific fiend rather than just getting a seat on the Council in general.

“You’ve got name recognition among the people who can actually vote.” Florian glanced down at the poster approvingly. “You aren’t as high profile as some, sure, but you’re a safe vote without links to too many power players in the city. You might get more votes than you think.”

“I just don’t want the Marauder to actually be on the Council.” Fyrehowl gave a soft snarl and rolled her eyes. “She’s bad enough sitting in the front row and making a public scene over marginal issues.”

“Is she actually running?” Florian raised a point which in the guardinal’s bout of simultaneous hope and preparation for her own disappointment, she’d seemingly failed to consider.

“I…” Fyrhowl paused and stared over at the cleric. “I would assume so.”

“Maybe she isn’t?” Florian shrugged. “Gods above that would be amazing… but no, I think it’s an absolute given that she will. Estevan and Zadara are already on the council, and powers forbid that they have some social advantage that she doesn’t.” 

Florian rolled her eyes one more time at the ‘loth and shuffled through some of the other mock posters, pointing out her favorites and suggesting spots to hang some of them in each of the various wards. Eventually she broached the topic of candidates beyond the guardinal and the ‘loth. “Do you know who else is openly running?”

“Only a few names that I’m aware of, and none that we’ve particularly run into or run afoul of.” Fyrehowl made a mental tally of the confirmed and rumored names that she’d heard of through official and unofficial channels when she’d decided to put her name into the metaphorical hat. “There’s a deadline tomorrow for people to put themselves in the running, but it’s so late in the game that I don’t think that anyone else will, barring a miracle.”

“So what you’re saying is that you have a damn fine shot of making the council.” Florian raised her glass in a toast.

Fyrehowl’s ears perked and a slow smile crossed her muzzle. “You know, I think that you’re right.”

“When you’re ready, I’ll help you hang posters.”

Unbeknownst to either of them, the full roster of announced candidates was far from finished.


****​

Clueless stared at the man who stood opposite him, his limbic system screaming to his brain’s higher functions every blood-flecked scream of horror that it knew. His hand clutched Razor’s hilt unconsciously, though it wouldn’t have helped him in the slightest if he’d drawn and closed the distance. His last trip to those halls, he’d seen a glimpse of what the man, or at least the man’s robed, inhuman familiar… if familiar was the most apt word.

Time seemed to stand still and ambient noise faded away until all that remained was the Jester’s implacable, wry smile and the soft wriggling of tentacles unseen just below the fringe of his small servitor’s robes. Perfect lips parted to reveal perfect teeth and the charisma and unspoken aura of grandeur and power reserved for the Lords of Hell themselves. But the Jester wasn’t one of the Nine. The Jester was something else entirely. 

“So, I must ask,” The Jester asked, “How exactly did it come to your attention that I’d been watching you, ever since you left my halls?”

The Jester’s voice was smooth and cultured, touched with an accent unheard in Sigil’s streets for untold millennia, but there was something more than just the touch of the exotic. The man was beguiling, nearly hypnotic, and Clueless found himself gliding along the fine line that separated fear, respect, and allure.

“Watching…” Clueless frowned, puffing himself up to respond. “You were lodged inside of my head like an uninvited guest, not unlike more than one fiend that I’ve known.”

“At the very least, unlike those others who’ve found lodging inside of your skull, I’m not a fiend.” The Jester chuckled and his familiar peered out from behind the edge of his greatcoat, “And do remember that you entered my halls of your own volition, an uninvited guest to where I’ve been for many years, uninvolved in Sigil’s politics, simply enjoying my existence.”

“Fair enough.” Clueless inclined his head. “As for your question, I learned it from a source that I don’t care to ever meet again, but which I feel inclined to think knew what it was talking about: a baernaloth.”

Unbidden, the Jester’s familiar hissed and withdrew behind him. Unseen below the edge of his wide hat, the Jester’s eyes narrowed and he chose his next words with careful deliberation.

“And you trusted it?” He laughed and shook his head. “Lies are their vocabulary beyond any other measure of their substance, and trust me when I say that I have known some of the greatest liars in the cosmos. Your point however is true. If you encountered one of them, if it deigned to tell even a half truth, it would know what it was talking about.”

“I didn’t say that I trusted it, but the fact that you admit to knowing about their being a fiend in my head, I don’t have to blindly trust the ‘loth.” Clueless raised an eyebrow and watched a slow grin cross the Jester’s face.

“The Keeper of the Tower of the Arcanaloths…” The Jester nodded his head approvingly, “His presence lodged firmly in place, and all around him the fading but still visible footsteps of another one of their kind tracing back to the gemstone lodged in your ankle. You’ve collected quite a bit of attention from the ‘loths it seems. You have my sympathies.”

Clueless continued to stare at the Jester, continually balanced between fascinated intrigue and absolutely justified terror. For his part, the master of the underhalls remained preternaturally patient, or perhaps just a predator toying with his prey with words rather than fangs.

“Who and what are you?” Clueless asked, fully understanding that the man standing opposite him was easily thousands of years old, but outwardly human and a picture of statuesque vitality.

“Such a loaded question.” The Jester shrugged, noncommittal and still cloaked in mystery. “It very much depends on who you ask, and precious few of those who know remain alive.”

“That doesn’t even touch upon an answer.”

“That’s not a topic that I’ll be touching today, interwoven with so much of who I am and what I no longer am.”

Clueless furrowed his brow at the double meanings in the Jester’s cryptic non-answer.

“Do you know how I can get Helekanalaith out of my head?”

“It’s funny that you ask that actually. Whether I could help you or not, it doesn’t matter,” The Jester laughed, even as his expression remained tauntingly and unreadably enticing, “Because he’s no longer there.”

Clueless took a step back, confused and concerned, “What?!”


****​

The Keeper of the Tower sat at his desk of polished black glass, a burning stylus held in his right hand and a mortal soul stretched out upon an iron frame fresh and ready for the creation of a contract. Gehenna’s starless black void gazed down upon him from wide and distinctly one-way windows that opened out onto the endless vault and the slopes of Krangath, the former’s emptiness reflected in the absence of pity in the Keeper’s soul.

Above Helekanalaith’s desk, shedding a flickering blue-violet light down upon him and his work, the flawless, gemstone prison of his predecessor and lover, Larsdana ap Neut, hovered in its ever present position.

The Keeper twitched his whiskers, bothered by something just at the edge of his mind. His mind was deep beyond mortal comprehension, comprised of a vast and labyrinthine memory palace sorting his thoughts and memories, and keeping fast all those things he refused to enter into the archives of the Tower itself. Something was missing. It wasn’t that a door remained locked or a room empty there within his memory construct, but only the faintest impression that a room itself was missing and the blueprints that would have shed light on that vanishing themselves a palimpsest, with only the vague impression of an outline of something out of place.

Helekanalaith snarled, feeling that faded outline of metaphorical ink fading by the moment and depriving him of even the suspicion of loss. For a moment, panic flooded his senses before he returned to his calm, controlled self.

“You know, don’t you?” The Keeper narrowed his eyes and glared at the gemstone lamp, burning ceaselessly with his mentor’s essence. “Your silence on the matter is damning Larsdana.”

The Keeper focused his mind and concentrated, peering into the first Majestrix of Gehenna’s tortured mind for what glimmers of meaning he might there discern. Only her ragged screams greeted him there, devoid of meaning and empty of any clue as to what gnawed at him.

“Or you may continue to scream.” The Keeper sighed, smiling with a moment of romantic pleasure as he enjoyed the closest thing to love that a creature such as himself could experience: the brutal and unceasing torture of his former mentor and lover. He closed his eyes and listened to each subtle note in the other archfiend’s agony. “You are so very, very beautiful to me. Please, never stop.”

Seconds of the Keeper’s self-indulgence passed into minutes, into nearly an hour spent listening to Larsdana’s agonies. The act itself was not-infrequent on his part as a refuge away from the struggles of holding and enforcing his position in the Tower from every other member of his caste with aspirations for his throne. He had no desire for there to ever be a repeat of the act of beautiful betrayal that saw him replace Larsdana. His moments of listening to her agony only reaffirmed his confidence and each of her brutal screams only told him in words that he would have been unable to comprehend, that she was proud of him, the only creature that she had ever loved.

Smiling to himself, Helekanalaith opened his eyes.

“I worry too much you know Larsdana. I fear for my position purely because of your failure so long ago and I…”

Helekanalaith’s voice trailed off as she looked into the gemstone that held Larsdana’s trapped spirit, seeing his face reflected back at him, but also another entity entirely. There in the mirrored, faceted surface of the gemstone was the face of one of The Demented.

“Father/Mother…” The Keeper whispered with equal parts reverence and abject fear as he watched and then felt the primordial abomination reach up and caress his face, lean forward and open its mouth, issuing forth a wash of bitter fumes like the out gassing of a putrefying corpse.

Alashra the Dream Reaver smiled, extending a purple-black tongue to lick across the Keeper’s face. From a nearly skeletal face framed with tangled, ashen hair, the baernaloth’s eyelids were sown shut with ragged black string and the eyes beneath them visibly twitched in the spasms of deepest slumber. A low, chill fog wafted off of her body, thin tendrils of ethereal protomatter twisting and wriggling like the tongues of a thousand serpents evaporating from a wasted, starving body with unnaturally elongated limbs.

The Keeper of the Tower sat, transfixed in space as the baernaloth which had once inhabited Larsdana like a parasite slowly curled its fingers and drew out thin filaments of gossamer energy from his mind, erasing even the empty places within his memory construct, completing the hasty work that her brother/sister the Chronicler had begun.

The Chronicler hadn’t been sloppy she realized, he’d left the scuffs and paintings tilted at odd angles in an otherwise spotless mental room to torment the Keeper and also to draw her gaze to the mental link that he’d forged with a mortal, formerly a puppet of the Marauder. The link itself showed promise, as well as the fingerprints of others that touched it, hiding their presence just as surely as the Keeper had himself, or at least seeking to hide their presence.

The Dream Reaver smiled and released the Keeper back to his romantic moment with her former vessel Larsdana, then stepped back and subsumed herself into the base substance of Gehenna, finished with her task. The Keeper blinked and glanced around, momentarily distracted before he returned to the contract sitting upon his desk, none the wiser as to what had happened and what he had lost.

Having born witness to it all, but still entrapped and screaming in her endless torment, Larsdana smiled.


****​


----------



## Shemeska

The sky above the Lower Ward hung low and heavy above the rooftops like a worn, greasy blanket. Occasionally a faint drizzle of stinging rain trickled free of its embrace, forcing street traffic to hastily seek out shelter. Not so for one particular pair of travelers however, one of whom seemed ever so used to the period shower of near-vinegar courtesy of the Ward’s smokestacks, and the other who simply conjured a hemispherical shell of force above his head a moment before his vulpine ears caught a single drop.

“So why are you out here again?” Nisha chirped over at Tristol as the two of them walked down an alleyway between the Foundry and a tenement building adjacent.

Walking wasn’t precisely what they were doing, at least not for the Xaositect. Nisha was skipping along and occasionally whistling as she did so.

“Enjoying a walk with you,” Tristol smiled as his tail swished side to side happily, “And also taking some advice from Toras while we’re here in the Lower Ward.”

Nisha quirked an eyebrow and glanced over at her boyfriend, “Advice from Toras seems to begin and end with punching fiends and giving jink to orphan children. Mind you, I don’t particularly have a problem with the latter, having been an orphan in the Hive myself at one point in time, and I don’t have any problem at all with the former… even if I go about it a bit differently and more roundabout of a way than he does.”

Abruptly Nisha paused and clip-clopped backwards a foot, turning with a sly grin towards a wall plastered over with advertisements and papers of all sort accumulated over the past few months time. The most recent additions to the wall were almost entirely of the political variety.

“Ah yes, the Council is having elections soon aren’t they.” Tristol stated, rather than questioned, rolling his eyes at the predominant face that adorned the wall: Shemeska the Marauder.

The Marauder’s posters were clearly produced with a budget far and above any of her rivals’, and unlike her rivals’ posters, she hadn’t so much as bothered with any slogan beyond her name and the weight (and threat) that it carried on its own. The ‘loth’s smirking, haughty muzzle positively oozed an aura of callous arrogance.

“Smug little thing isn’t she?” Nisha said, opening the basket that she’d been carrying the whole way, brandishing a wet paintbrush retrieved from within. “Now she’s a smug little thing with a mustache.”

Tristol chuckled as Nisha went poster to poster, gleefully defacing each of them.

“A van dyke here, a full-on barbazu beard here… eyepatch… missing a tooth here… black eye…”

“Wait a minute.” Tristol glanced down at Nisha’s satchel and the large bucket of paint it contained. “You came out here with a bucket of paint and a paintbrush?”

“Yes, I did.” Nisha stuck out her tongue as she added a speech bubble with ‘Vote for me, I’m a giant c*nt!’ on yet another of the ‘loth’s posters. “You never know when inspiration for graffiti or mural painting will strike; also I knew that she’d have posters all over the place so I wanted to get to at least a decent number of them today. That wasn’t my primary reason for being out here though, just an opportune tangent.”

Tristol tilted his head to the side, “If that wasn’t your primary reason for being out here, what else besides a bucket of paint do you have in your bag?”

“A ten pound sack of birdseed.” Nisha said, matter-of-factly, widely grinning as she continued to paint.

“Birdseed?”

“We’ll be passing the Styx Oarsman. They’ll be having an outdoor beer thing tomorrow, and well, the neighboring roofs are easily accessible.” Nisha made a quick motion of sowing the seeds and then a pantomime of a hungry bird. “One day between now and then.”

Tristol’s eyes went wide as he realized the implications of her actions. He laughed and shook his head as Nisha continued her joyous vandalism.

“Roses on her razorvine… nose piercing… facial tattoos… wait, what the hell?!” Nisha dropped her paintbrush and stared up at two other posters that adored the wall.

Juxtaposed between multiple copies of the Marauder’s campaign posters, two other and oh so distinctly different canid outsider faces smiled, hawking themselves for one of the open council seats: Fyrehowl and A’kin.

‘Actions Rather Than Words – Vote Fyrehowl for Sigil Advisory Council’: The silvery-blue lupinal smiled out from her poster with a clenched fist, drawn to suggest strength and a certain sureness for the candidate rather than menace. It was all well done and quite tastefully so, though it was clear that the cipher’s posters had been repeatedly torn down or pasted over by the Marauder’s own in recent days. The professional vandalism that Fyrehowl’s posters had suffered however paled in comparison to A’kin’s: a pile of his posters lay on the ground, having been torn down and set alight.

‘Put A Friendly Face On The Council – Vote A’kin the ‘Friendly Fiend’’ A’kin seemed to have produced the posters himself, and a minor glamer he’d applied to each of them caused his face to periodically glance towards the Marauder’s posters and chuckle.

“She’s going to murder him in the street if he wins and she doesn’t.” Nisha shook her head and grimaced, flicking her tail side to side in worried agitation. Looking down at her, one of the A’kin posters raised a finger and pointed towards one of the Marauder’s that the tiefling had skipped during her painting. “Oh! I missed one! Thank you!” A puckish smile returned to her face as she added a monocle and top hat to that one.

“Uhh…” Tristol walked over and put a hand on Nisha’s shoulder, “No offense, but to heck with him, I’m worried that she’ll murder Fyrehowl in the street if the same thing happens!”

“Fyrehowl has you and me,” Nisha shrugged, “Nothing’s going to happen to her.”

“Tell that to Florian.” Tristol said, remembering with far too much clarity the look on the cleric’s face when she’d nearly been sucked through a portal to the negative energy plane. “Do you want random portals opening underneath you?”

Nisha paused, thinking about it. “With the word random you put there, that’s almost tempting. But it needs something more… like candy! Random candy portals! Demiplanes full of yummy taffy or something, rather than the Hive’s ooze portals or stuff that tried to eat Florian. No?”

Tristol chuckled, appreciating her humor at any given moment, but the entire situation terrified him in ways that he couldn’t entirely verbalize; not that Nisha would have remained seriously about it anyway. The fact remained that someone, presumably the Marauder, had somehow against all rational reason, managed to forcibly open portals in Sigil against the Lady’s Will. The very concept horrified him.

“I’ll buy you some candy once we’re back in the Clerk’s Ward.” Tristol smiled, Nisha’s rattling bell at the end of her tail momentarily drawing him out of any more moribund thoughts. “Or if you wanted to go back around the other way, we can snag something nicer somewhere in the Market & Guildhall Ward.”

Before Nisha could respond however, Tristol’s ears swiveled back at a sound several blocks away: shouting, screaming, and blades crashing against armor.

“Do you hear that?” Tristol looked at Nisha and tilted his head towards the source of the sound.

“I’m not you or Fyrehowl.” She shrugged, “My ears are pointy, but not nearly as big as yours. So no.”

The sounds grew louder, more frequent, and then nearby windows rattled from the concussive blast of a detonating fireball. At the last one, Nisha flinched instinctively.

“Ok, now I hear the sounds of magical explosions and people screaming in terror and pain.” She stuck out her tongue and glanced at Tristol. “This is when we predictably run –towards- the horrific event rather than away like rational people, yes?”

Tristol nodded and the two of them ran as quickly as they could, realizing with each block where it was coming from: The Shattered Temple.


****​

Largely abandoned since the Faction Wars years earlier, the one-time Faction hall of the Athar looked much the same as it had when they’d collectively departed for the base of the Spire, there to presumably wait out the Lady’s ban on their faction’s presence in Sigil, and there avoid the Powers’ wrath. One thing stood out as different however, that being the massive banners of Hades that hung from the highest point of the former temple of Aoskar like a giant expression of contempt by the faithful for the Faithless.

In recent weeks the location had been claimed and fortified by the forces of Muriov Garianis: his family members and those in the employ of himself as a priest of Hades and the criminal organization that his clan headed. With the open antagonism between Garianis and the Athar, culminating most recently in near public bloodshed before the Sigil Advisory Council, Garianis had gone one step further and both hired close to a hundred professional mercenaries and prepared the future location of his grand temple to Hades for a siege.

Garianis had prepared as well as he could have. The man was no fool. But the forces arrayed against him were simply beyond his or anyone else’s comprehension.

“Aaand Toras was right about that tip.” Tristol stood at the outskirts of the Shattered Temple grounds

“Huh?” Nisha shook her head as she glanced from her boyfriend to the battle raging fifty yard away. “What tip was that?”

“He heard that there was going to be a showdown between the Athar and the Garianis clan in the Lower Ward today. Somewhere, but he didn’t know where, so he was going to be out here walking around to see if anything went down.”

“What the heck kind of tip is that?” Nisha rolled her eyes. “This isn’t a fun tip like ‘this bar is offering half-price specials to tieflings after anti-peak’ or ‘there’s this romantic spot where you can toss things at people below or make out, whichever suits your mood’. No, I don’t like this kind of tip at all. Who gave it to him? The same people that got us dragged into Baator the other week?”

“He didn’t say!” Tristol shrugged, taking measure of the conflict. “He just said he trusted who said it. Whatever that means.”

Soldiers baring the faction symbol of the Athar streamed out of an open portal were they were met within moment’s by Garianis’ forces. With as many as now stood on the field of battle, it seemed as if the Athar were quite literally throwing the entirety of their faction into the attempt to retake their former citadel. They and Garianis’ forces however were not the only ones there on the battlefield. Clustered together atop the high ramparts, dozens of ghouls and other lesser undead dressed in the colors –if no longer the faction symbology- of the Dustmen, and there amongst them stood the pale, corpse-like figure of their once and now all-but-in-name Factol, Oridi Malefin.

The three eyed tiefling whispered a prayer to her ‘god’ the Abstract Concept of Death, and with breathtaking force snatched up one of the Athar faithful into the air and imploded them into a crumpled sphere of ragged meat and bone before gesturing again and repeating the lethal measure like clockwork, still wearing the same dour, emotionless expression upon her face.

“Who are the good guys here?!” Nisha shouted at Tristol as she watched a dozen different uniforms and banners taking part in the conflict.

“We are!” Toras shrugged, “Though technically since the Marauder is backing the Athar, uhh… the Garianis people are by default the one’s I plan to help.”

“You can be the good guy, and I’ll be the quirky if annoyingly ultra chaotic tiefling sidekick!” Nisha fished a hand into her satchel, pulling out a paintbrush, frowning, and then fishing within a second time to finally retrieve a wand.

“That’s fine with me!” Tristol began to cast, but abruptly paused at what he saw next.

Oridi’s ghouls poured over the walls in the dozens and took the Athar by surprise, tearing men and women limb from limb and pausing only to gorge themselves one bite at a time. Their surprise however was momentary and fleeting, as a second portal opened within one of the temple’s archways, one that looked out upon the endless bleak expanse of the Waste and a screaming torrent of hordelings that came pouring through in a wave of screaming, mismatched horrors incarnate.

“Well !” Tristol spat out the words to a spell and the outflow of hordelings ceased, blocked from entering Sigil by the placement of a wall of force flush with the open portal. As if sensing its failure, the portal to Hades immediately closed.

“Tristol, you’re awesome.” Nisha cackled and released a crackling bolt of blue-white lightning from the tip of her wand. The bolt streaked across the field and nearly incinerated a trio of hordelings, lancing back and forth between their hodgepodge bodies before the current finally grounded out.

Tristol smiled and took a half-bow, only to watch in horror as another portal opened only a few feet away, again to Hades, and again disgorging a raging stream of hordelings onto the battlefield. Athar soldiers still continued to pour forth, and the combination of them and the fiends, all of which specifically avoided the Faithless, began to drive the Garianis forces back.

“Tristol!” Nisha shouted as she loosed another bolt of lightning. “You’ve got to seal those portals shut!”

Pushing back his terror, Tristol repeated his previous spell, slamming a wall of force atop first the portal to Hades, and then a second wall to seal off the portal disgorging the Athar soldiers from whatever plane they’d marshaled from. For a moment the solution seemed to work and the Garianis and allied forces rallied, pushing back against the intruders, but that lasted only moments.

“Nisha I can’t keep sealing off portals if more of them just open!” Tristol shouted to her with a panicked tone to his voice as he waved his arm and hurled a ball of flame into the midst of a pack of hordelings as they tore a bariaur mercenary to shreds. “I only have a few more of those left before I…”

Tristol’s voice trailed off as another portal opened, this one directly below dozens of Garianis troops, sending them screaming to their deaths into a raging inferno either in one of the Hells or the Plane of Fire itself. Having swallowed them, the portal snapped shut and the process repeated itself a second and then a third time, swallowing up dozens of doomed souls each time.

“Tristol! What do we do?!” Nisha cried out, tossing herd spent wand to the side and diving for cover behind a ruined wall.

Tristol watched in horror as men and women were slain by swords, skewered by spears or arrows, or devoured by packs of ravenous hordelings, all while yet more portals opened to consume those seeking to flee the field of battle. The fight was lost, and Tristol panicked as he felt the earth shudder with the dull rumble of a Cage quake. Was the Lady furious about the opening of portals, or voicing her rage instead at him for attempting to seal them off?

“Nisha!” Tristol dashed over to her side and took her hand. “The Athar won. We’re getting out of here. Hold on.”

The two of them vanished in the bright flash of a teleportation spell moments before a pack of hordelings overran their position.


*****​

As the portals finally sealed shut, the battlefield lay strewn with the dead and dying, hundreds of them. Athar soldiers moved about, tending to their own wounded and rounding up those few survivors from the opposing side. The Garianis wounded were killed on the spot and the corpses of their dead were preemptively stabbed through to be certain of their fate.

“No!” A distinctly well-dressed tiefling pointed a finger at a pair of the Athar soldiers as they stood above a wounded women wearing the Garianis clan seal across her tabard. “Not that one.”

The tiefling, one of the Marauder’s ubiquitous groomer-guards, had stood watching the battle, observing not the flow of the fighting itself, but the position and location of specific individuals. He’d been provided a list by his razorvine-crowned employer, and one of the names on that list lay on the ground with Athar steel at her neck. That wouldn’t do at all.

One of the Athar soldiers, a blue-skinned air genasi, stared daggers up at the tiefling, “I don’t care who you are, this b*tch is Delphinia Garianis. She’s more responsible for the desecration of our faction’s headquarters than anyone else here and I’ll be damned by all the false gods if you or anyone else says that I can’t wash away her father’s sins by slitting her throat here and now!”

The tiefling didn’t respond in words. He simply nodded, not to the Athar, but to someone behind them.

“I appreciate your fiendish master’s help but…” The genasi’s eyes went wide as a hand grasped his sword arm with the force of a vice and a blade touched his exposed throat.

Standing behind the Athar soldiers, having seemingly appeared from out of thin air, stood Adamok Ebon, the Marauder’s personal assassin. Dressed in a mixture of silk and almost gossamer chainmail, the bladeling’s own natural skin, where exposed, seemed more like armor plating than most of the soldiers on the battlefield.

“My apologies sir, my humble apologies.” The genasi stuttered as he struggled in vain to escape Adamok’s grip on his arm.

“Go.” The tiefling nodded, the bladeling released her grip, and the Athar soldiers bolted, leaving the daughter of Muriov Garianis on the ground, pleading for her life.

Both the bladeling and the tiefling ignored Delphinia’s pleas for the moment. The assassin carried a second captive, this one a younger man, unconscious and bound in magical iron bands, slung effortlessly over her shoulder like a game animal.

“This is extra.” Adamon’s voice was like well-oiled steel slipping against a grindstone.

The tiefling smiled with genuine appreciation and admiration. “The funds have already been deposited into your account, with the additional fee as contractually stipulated, and a bonus that the Marauder saw fit to add due to the short notice of this business.”

The bladeling nodded and dropped her captive at his feet.

The tiefling smiled and looked down, noting that the second name on his list lay there bound and unharmed. He wasn’t at all surprised to find that when he glanced back up, the bladeling was gone, vanished back into thin air without a single word of obvious magic.

“As always, a pleasure doing business with you.”

Around him the slaughter continued on like clockwork, with every Garianis agent and hired proxy casually and systematically executed, though the ghouls and remaining Dustmen were allowed to scamper off back to whatever tomb they’d crawled out of. Oridi Malefin and her closest followers had teleported to safety once the battle had clearly been lost, and the fallout with her would be purely political in nature rather than any future direct conflict. The Dead would have to find the true death in some other manner than the injured or captured men and women being put to the sword. That same fate was not however in the cards for the two captives slumped and moaning at his feet.

“My father will pay you for my safe return.” Delphinia spoke as politely as she could as her cousin Cyril lay bound at her side. “You’ve proven your claim on the Shattered Temple. We will not dispute it.”

“I’m sure that he will, but that’s not for me to decide.” The tiefling smiled down at her with an expression of polite, professional indifference as he waited for further orders from his mistress who’d been scrying the entirety of the battle from afar.

“Do you have them both?” The Marauder’s voice echoed within her servitor’s mind as a sending spell graced his ears.

“Yes your fiendish majesty, both of them.” He tilted his head ever so slightly as the magic provided a tingling sensation on his right ear. “What shall you have us do with them?”

“Bring them to me at the empty warehouse at the corner of Blackfoot and Silver Pike. I don’t wish to be disturbed, and that district is dead for foot traffic at this hour.”

“Is there anything else that I should bring?”

Even in service to her as many years as he had been, and even as he remained aloof and unconcerned with the screams of men being put to the sword or the sounds of hordelings noisily devouring the dead and dying, the mental impression of Shemeska’s smile and the bubbling drool inherent in her next statement sent a chill up his spine.

“A blade, a box, and a sensory stone.”


*****​


----------



## Shemeska

It was dark, nearly Anti-Peak when Clueless finally made his way up from the depths and then out of Jeremo’s Palace. He’d never thereafter consider the Ring Giver Factol’s palace as ‘The Jester’s Palace’ having met its original namesake. Jeremo was a good man with endless ambition and probably more wealth than any other single individual within Sigil, but he was not and never would be the man who dwelled in isolation deep below. He’d met that man and come to an agreement of sorts, even if he wasn’t entirely aware of it quite yet.

His head rushed with what he’d learned and what he would be learning in time as he recalled how their meeting had gone.

“I’m not one of Asmodeus’ lackeys, scrambling to poach each and every errant mortal soul for the hope of promotion or simply because it is by the very definition writ within the fabric of their being, their duty.” There’d been a curious flicker of a smile across the Jester’s face, and the wriggling tentacles of his familiar –for lack of a better term for the robed abomination at his feet– had reacted in what might best have been read as a polite, chuckle in response to an inside joke.

The Jester had turned around and paced, comfortable and entirely at ease within the walls of his hidden palace deep below the modern incarnation of the original far above. “You’ll find that I don’t appear in a rush of brimstone seeking to make deals. I don’t brandish contracts. I don’t bother myself with the ebb and flow of the Blood War. I am done with those concerns and I have been done with them for a very, very long time.”

Clueless frowned and narrowed his eyes. It was subtle, but the Jester’s robed companion (his familiar?) always remained between the two of them like an understated bodyguard. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“Why should I?” The Jester chuckled, an amused smile playing across his face. 

“Fair enough,” Clueless admitted with a shrug. “But I came down here more to ask that you get out of my head than to interrogate you about your history in Sigil, though I’ll admit that I’m fascinated to know.”

The Jester nodded sagely and tapped his fingertips together, “If it makes you feel any more secure, I was only in your mind out of a similar sense of curiosity. It isn’t often that you come across a man with a largely quiescent artifact lodged in his leg and a yugoloth lord silently taking up space in their brain unbidden.”

“Helekanalaith can go f*ck himself.” Clueless rolled his eyes to which the Jester smiled approvingly.

“My presence in your mind also afforded me a window into the outside world. You must understand that my seclusion which began for reasons that remain my own has largely kept me isolated from news of the various happenings on the planes at large, and even from all but the largest events in Sigil itself.”

“I’m glad that I could have afforded you that window.” Clueless frowned. “But I’m not sure how your crashing in the free space in my brain is necessarily any different from the Keeper of the Tower doing the exact same.”

The Jester paused and pondered that point. Softly, he whispered to himself in a language that Clueless had never before heard, and which caused the man’s robed familiar to for a moment quirk its head in response.

“Done.” The Jester said, motioning in Clueless’s direction. “My link to your mind is severed and my apologies for doing so without your knowledge.” Left unsaid was the phrase ‘without your approval’.

Clueless gave a dubious glare, “That’s virtually the same thing that Helekanalaith said.”

“I trust that the Keeper never actually apologized though.” The Jester chuckled.

“No.” Clueless frowned. “No he did not. But still that…”

The Jester cut him off, “You’re more than free to have my claim examined by any wizard or priest that you might find in Sigil or anywhere else. I would however advise you to avoid Baator.”

Clueless shuddered, remembering his recent trip to the 9 Hells and what they’d found there, “Yeah I’ve had enough of Baator for quite some time thank you very much.”

“Killed by a yugoloth lord,” The Jester chuckled and shook his head. “In all fairness I sincerely doubt that any of you would have survived had Taba decided to fight rather than simply snarl and be upon her way. From what I gather through the window you provided me, she’s managed to evade the entirety of the yugoloth hierarchy with a price upon her head. Curious isn’t it as to why the Oinoloth seems to be butchering his own kind?”

“Yeah, I find myself wondering the same thing.” Clueless gave a noncommittal shrug. “But at the end of the day I can’t say that I particularly mind the ‘loths slaughtering one another in a game of who can betray who the most.”

His face shrouded by shadows and his hat, a curious smile passed over the Jester’s face, juxtaposing a mixture of anger, triumph, and resignation. 

“Betrayal is quite possibly the only thing then that I have in common with their kind.” He said, spreading his arms and gesturing to his surroundings as his familiar softly hissed and hugged his ankle. “Betrayal is something which I am very, very well acquainted with.”

Whatever his past might have held, the Jester radiated an aura of power and authority above and beyond the thing at his feet. Whatever the tiny familiar was, Clueless had watched a vision of the past in his prior trip to the Jester’s underhalls and he knew just what the thing was capable of doing to a man. Still though, even after having seen the creature employed like a hound on a hunt and tearing a fleeing man to shreds, Clueless was under no illusions that he had much, much more to fear from the Jester himself.

There was something else as well. The Jester possessed a certain sense of nearly tangible charisma, an air of fascination borne of mystery. Despite the tentacled horror of a familiar that followed at his heels, Clueless couldn’t help himself but realize that there was more brewing in his mind than academic curiosity and professional admiration.

There was more to their meeting of course, but those parts of their lengthy interaction were what bubbled and brewed in the bladesinger’s mind as he walked out of Jeremo’s palace and back towards the Portal Jammer. It was late and he was tired, but he’d managed to learn and although he had more questions than when he’d stepped into the Jester’s palace, there was a certainty in his mind that he hadn’t had before.

Clueless knew that he would be going back. The man who’d stepped into Jeremo’s palace and then ventured below it had taken a step into the realm of something ancient and powerful. That first step had changed him, and it would continue to change him in the future with each further step. There was a gleam in his eyes as he stepped out into the grey-green haze of Sigil’s evening sky, and a darker countenance than he’d bore when he’d started that journey.

Down in the darkness below the streets of Sigil, the Jester smiled.


****​

“HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN!?” Muriov Garianis screamed out before unleashing a stream of invectives as he trembling with rage and panic. Over the past hour more and more information had filtered in regarding his losses, both material and in lives, including those related by blood, and the cleric of Hades was doing his best to keep himself together.

A half-dozen terrified faces glanced back at the crime lord with hollow, broken eyes from what they’d experienced over the previous twenty four hours. Almost half of their organization lay dead or brutally injured at the hands of the Athar, they’d lost their hold over the Shattered Temple, and dozens more of their members had vanished, presumably taken captive. They feared their patron Muriov’s rage at the losses and the rapidity with which their hold over the Shattered Temple District had simply evaporated, but they worried more for the safety of their missing comrades, loved ones, and family members, including their patriarch’s nephew and his heir-apparent daughter.

“F*CK THE ATHAR! F*CK THEM ALL!” Muriov slammed his fists down upon his desk and screamed incoherently, throwing his arm wide and scattering papers and books to the floor with a clatter. The normally cool, collected high priest of Hades was slipping into the arms of despair and panic. “F*CK THE MARAUDER! F*CK THE F*CKING LOTHS! ALL OF THEM!”

He’d been ranting and raving for hours as his closest advisors struggled to give him anything resembling a tangible explanation of what had happened in the Shattered Temple and how they might recover from their horrific losses, let alone anything close to resembling good news.

“Where are the Dustmen now?!” Muriov spat, “Crawling back to the Marble District and not so much as responding to a sending or messages by courier. If I so much as see their factol Oridi or that c*nt of an aasimar Qaida I’ll give them the true death that they prattle on about. F*CK!”

His advisors had little to tell him beyond the fact that their allies had abandoned the field of battle and severed communications. They all knew that they’d have done the same had the situation been reversed. The Dustmen, for all their dispassion, they knew a lost cause when they confronted one.

“Where is my nephew?” Muriov demanded for the hundredth time that day, “Where is my daughter? WHERE IS SHE?!” Tears welled up in his eyes.

Again his advisors had no news to provide and then the cycle of ranting and demands for news began again as the Garianis clan patriarch fumed and mourned. He prayed to Hades for wisdom, insensate that at the moment that he expected to snatch a portion of the Lower Ward from the ‘loth’s claws, she’d snatched it away from him effortlessly. For a moment he felt less like a burgeoning rival who had spent years maneuvering to eclipse her influence in the Ward, and more a plaything to be batted about, torn to shreds, and callously tossed aside as nothing of importance.

That was when the box arrived.

“Grandfather Muriov, this just arrived at the front gate.” One of the patriarch’s grandchildren stood at the door to his office, holding a wooden box in their hands. “It’s addressed to you.”

The priest turned and stared, narrowing his eyes with suspicion and whispering the words to a prayer of detection. Only when he found no curses layered upon the box did he motion the boy over.

“Who delivered it?” Muriov took a deep breath as he examined the simple wooden container.

The boy shrugged with a look of worried confusion, “We didn’t see. It was simply there when it hadn’t been a moment before. I… I don’t know.”

The box bore no obvious marks of identification. The wood was reclaimed scraps from most likely everywhere in the city and unlikely to prove easy to trace by magic back to where it had been crafted or used. Gently he shook the box, feeling something heavy awkwardly shift inside and bump against the side. 

“A ransom demand perhaps?” The young man asked as a tremble overtook his grandfather’s hands as the lid was opened.

Muriov’s face went ashen in an instant as he saw his nephew’s severed head and the sensory stone lodged in its mouth.

That night a wail echoed across the Ward: the wail of a broken man.

Hearing Muriov’s despondent, anguished cries, a tiefling dressed in rags and holding a bottle of cheap wine looked up. Sitting at the stoop of a rowhouse cattycorner to Muriov’s estate the nameless, socially invisible mongrel’s ear’s twitching at the hideous, heartbreaking sound. They spread their lips to show a glimmer of suddenly canid fangs. They smiled with a look of rapturous ecstasy, and then, before they vanished into thin air, they placed a hand daintily to their chest as their eyes flickered and glowed a puissant shade of lavender.


****​

“I wish to see her.” The man’s voice trembled as he glanced at the two wary tieflings who stood there barring his way.

Both tieflings’ hands immediately went to their blades as they blinked, recognizing the man for who he was. Both tieflings stood at the foot of the stairs leading up to the elevated, private dining booth where their mistress sat with a bottle of wine and her evening meal.

“Please,” Muriov Garianis exhaled with deliberate resignation, turning his head and glancing up at the fiend high above. All around him the gambling floor of the Fortune’s Wheel bustled with activity and the shouts and screams of winners and losers. For the first time in his life, he found himself distinctly among the latter, but unlike the gamblers losing their day’s, week’s, or life’s pay over a game of cards or dice, he’d lost something that had no price. Like those very same gamblers though, upon drawing his losing hand, he knew that somehow there had to be a way to recoup it all, or at least stop the bloodshed from cutting even deeper.

Garianis had left his mansion an hour earlier, leaving without giving notice to his employees or even his family members. He’d dressed in the simple, black clothing of mourning, with only his holy symbol on his person and nothing else as he’d walked from the Lower Ward to the Fortune’s Wheel. He hadn’t worried about being waylaid even if he never traveled without bodyguards. He could have hurled a prayer and incinerated any thief foolish enough to approach, or clapped his hands and summarily imploded them into a bloody, compact smudge upon the cobblestones… but the truth was, he no longer cared about his own personal safety.

_“Send him up.”_ The Maraduer’s voice echoed within her guards’ minds.

Muriov ascended the stairs to see the Marauder sitting there as if nothing untoward had occurred in the prior twenty four hours. There was no smile upon her face. There was no cackle of triumph. There was no mocking of his losses. He stood there watching her sip her wine and enjoy her meal without so much as actually looking up at him. She didn’t care he realized. Her black heart cared nothing for his losses to even consider him worthy of mockery. He’d lost and they both knew that. There wasn’t any need for spectacle. There was only a need to an end.

“Please…” Muriov began, trailing off as the fiend quirked an eyebrow and then slowly put down her knife and fork.

“Ah yes, your daughter.” A smile played across the fiend’s purple, painted lips. “Delphinia.”

“Please, please tell me that…” Muriov stammered, dreading her response.

“You wish to have your daughter alive and whole.” The Marauder glanced up for only a moment before resuming her meal. “This can happen.”

Muriov paused, prepared to ask what the fiend’s price would be, but he left that question unspoken, irrelevant and pointless. Whatever it was, he would pay it.

“Please, make this all stop.” Muriov begged. “I’ve lost too much. You’ve won and I acknowledge that fact. I’ve lost too much. I’ve suffered too much. Please just let this end.”

Around them in the Fortune’s Wheel, the stray idle gambler, prostitute, and would-be social climber gave them scarcely any notice at all. If they watched, they saw as the ‘loth continued eating, only pausing to point out where the once powerful Muriov Garianis was to sign the paperwork one of her attendants provided for him. He read them in passing, but it was clear that he simply no longer cared. It didn’t matter to him what the terms were and what they implied. What he wanted was priceless, and he would give anything.”

Garianis began to sob, provoking the first reaction on Shemeska’s part that evening as she looked up and sneered. The expression playing across her muzzle returned to a cold, non-committal smile as soon as he looked up and met her gaze and put down the quill, having signed everything handed to him.

Shemeska gave a subtle nod and one of her guards took away the papers. Garianis looked at her expectantly as she reached out and opened her hand, revealing a slender crystalline vial. Trembling, he took the vial and stared at the liquid therein and then back at the ‘loth but she no longer looked up at him, but had resumed her evening meal.

Sullen and softly crying, Muriov Garianis turned and walked away. Shemeska’s luminous purple eyes trailed him with each and every step he took as he walked across the Fortune’s Wheel and took a seat at a table in the common room, just off the gambling floor.

He sat there for nearly an hour, softly praying, sobbing, staring off into space, and staring at the vial in his hand. Finally he turned to look up at fiend high above staring intently down at him.

“Delphinia, I’m so sorry…” He whispered, removing the crystalline stopper and drinking the vial’s contents in one swift motion. He gagged, shuddered, and dropped dead.

High above and still staring down as employees of the Fortune’s Wheel rushed to his motionless corpse laying there on the floor, the Marauder toyed with a glittering black sapphire in her left hand, “Good work little man. It’s been a pleasure.”


****​


----------



## Shemeska

Ok, everything is back up to current after losing a few updates with the Enworld crash. Working on the next update as well 

(Also I just got accepted into pharmacy school, so yay for mid-career career change going smoothly!)


----------



## Clueless

*impatiently twitches - write faster darn ye!*


----------



## Tsuga C

Congratulations on the acceptance! I understand the programs are quite intense, but the rewards are substantial. You were a micro-biologist, right? Did monetary reasons drive the switch or were you just getting antsy in a lab all day long?


----------



## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> Congratulations on the acceptance! I understand the programs are quite intense, but the rewards are substantial. You were a micro-biologist, right? Did monetary reasons drive the switch or were you just getting antsy in a lab all day long?




Thanks so much! I've been a cell biologist for the past ten years, working in biotech/pre-clinical pharma development, so it's a bit of a tangential career change at this point. It is however one of the career options that I considered in the first place when I was in college, but my undergrad career was not exactly up to snuff to actually get into a pharma program the first time around. So finally after a decade and a half detour, I'll actually be doing this.


----------



## Shemeska

****​

Three weeks later, the bloodshed in the Lower Ward had finally settled down to its historical background of low-level murders and knifings. In the aftermath of the siege of the Shattered Temple, the Athar returned to the City of Doors to reestablish themselves in the heart of their former headquarters, though their presence was different from how it had been before.

Although the faction had never renounced their position as a formal faction in Sigil or out on the planes at large, they treated their newfound bastion as purely their own and not a public facility. They claimed no role in Sigilian politics, they refused to proselytize within the City of Doors, and would-be faction recruits showing up at the gates were turned away without comment. The truly devoted they figured would find their own way to the Outlands, there to discover the truth of the Godless’ creed.

Publicly the faction made no statement to justify or explain their brutal assault on the Shattered Temple and the slaughter of hundreds in the process. The corpses of their enemies were uniformly hurled into the Ditch and left to rot en masse. As for the Garianis clan, the decimated crime family mourned their losses and struggled to understand precisely what had happened. They knew not how, but the Marauder lay behind everything, and their patriarch Muriov had died as she watched and smiled. Revenge would come in time, but it would be years before they were even a force once again in the Lower Ward as they had been before.

While most of Sigil’s citizens continued about their business as usual, happily ignorant of the machinations of fiends and factions, the powerful and landed swiftly embroiled themselves in another power struggle entirely: the Sigil Advisory Council elections.

Only six seats upon the council were up for election, and three of them were occupied by sitting members seeking to return to their posts and largely considered safe. But with the retirement of two older mortals, and the death of another in the prime of life at the hands of a “tragic” accident upon the Endless Staircase, three seats were up for grabs by new members. Posters and public speeches plastered the walls and the ears, and eventually the political tide reached a high point and votes were cast and counted.

As the results reached the press and then the eyes and ears of touts and finally the general public, Fyrehowl’s mood darkened.

In the back room of the Portal Jammer, Fyrehowl snatched up the newspaper and flipped it open to the results of the Council Elections. Immediately her features fell and she frowned.

“I missed a seat by less than two hundred votes.” The lupinal softly snarled, losing her composure. Reflexively she twitched her fingers, grating her claws into the tabletop. “F*ck…”

“That’s not exactly the reaction I expected. You’re a lot more sour than if you’d only just lost out on a seat.” Florian preemptively winced, knowing full well from the posters which had plastered nearly every street corner the answer to her next question, “Who else managed to get in?”

“You can guess who.” The lupinal deadpanned, staring off into the distance.

Several minutes passed as Florian sipped her drink, staring uncomfortably as Fyrehowl continued to read the paper. The cleric grimaced, realizing that once again the ‘loth had gotten her way and they had little to no recourse. Among Sigil’s constants, it ranked alongside gloom-ridden skies and executioner’s ravens, wrapped in a dress worth more than most businesses in Tradegate and crowned with a coil of razorvine.

“Shemeska?”

“Yep…” She sighed with defeat, “The b*tch bought herself the votes.”

“I think that her winning a seat was going to be a given. With only landowners having votes, she only has to bribe or threaten a smaller number of people to ensure a victory before a single person actually casts their votes.” Florian spread her hands in concession to Fyrehowl’s disappointment, trying to help the lupinal understand that it wasn’t her fault at all. “Who else managed to gain a seat?”

“The high priest of the Temple of the Abyss of all people.” Fyrehowl scanned down the page, reading out the enigmatic cleric’s name, “Which is odd because he hasn’t really been seen in public for years.”

“Proxy vote for purchase then it is, probably right in Shemeska’s pocket as well, Foe Hammer preserve us all…” Florian sighed, shaking her head at the thought of not only a yugoloth on the Council but a pawn of the Abyss as well. “Please tell me that the other open seat at least has someone that isn’t a fiend or beholden to them? Please?”

At that Fyrehowl burst into laughter. Ears perked and eyes wide, still laughing madly, she folded the newspaper and walked over to a shelf to retrieve a flask of hard liquor.

“That’s not an answer Fyrehowl.” Florian motioned her hand through the air for an explanation as the lupinal continued to ignore her and drink straight from the flask. “No. Seriously. Who else won?”

Putting a hand to her lips, brushing away a few stray drops of whisky from her fur, Fyrehowl paused her laughter, taking her mirth down to just a snicker. “Oh this is too rich. Too, too rich. I want front row seats at the next meeting. Powers above this is beautiful. Hah!”

“Fyrehowl? Who got the last seat?”

Still not giving her friend an answer, Fyrehowl polished off the booze and tossed the newspaper onto the table as she walked out of the room and straight for the Portal Jammer’s front door. Idly she looked back, calling out, “I’ll be back.”

Snatching up the paper and only momentarily diverting her eyes from the page to the cipher’s retreating form, Florian’s jaw dropped as she read the results and come to much the same conclusion as had Fyrehowl.

“What the f*ck?! Haha! Yes!”


****​

“Why are you covered in dust?” A’kin looked down at a doll crafted to resemble Emma Oakwrite, the dwarven former Factol of the Fated. The arcanaloth shopkeeper tilted his head to the side as if listening to her reply before he rolled his eyes. “Oh of course, it’s Factol Montgomery’s fault. Clearly. She hasn’t been on the shelf here since I sold her to the owners of the Portal Jammer, and besides, I expected more from the paragon of self-reliance and will than blaming your own condition on someone else.”

A’kin shook his head and commenced dusting the doll before moving on down the shelf to various other magical and not-so-magical bric-a-brac. As he continued his daily –and largely unnecessary– cleaning, he likewise continued his one-sided conversations with numerous dolls, figurines, and even a miniature diorama of a light-up demilich devouring the souls of a group of adventurers.

Eventually though, the curiously smiling ‘loth’s ears perked at the sound of the silver chime above the door ringing in a customer’s fresh arrival.

“Welcome welcome!” A’kin turned with his customary greeting, “I’m…oh…”

Backlit by the light of Peak streaming through the open doorway, at first A’kin could only see a vaguely canid figure in silhouette, and for a moment his hands nearly launched into the casting of defensive spells. A split second and a single step through the door calmed his nerves entirely as the emerging figure lacked a crown a razorvine and bore silvery blue rather than coppery fur.

“Congratulations A’kin.” Fyrehowl said, smiling in gracious concession with clearly mixed emotions playing across her muzzle. “I just wanted to drop in and say that, given that I fell short in my own attempt.”

A’kin’s previously bristled fur smoothed and his ears stopped their nervous twitching. The ‘loth’s brow furrowed and a genuine smile crept across his face. “I… thank you Fyrehowl.”

Fyrehowl blinked, uncertain that she’d ever seen the ‘loth ever actually say those exact words. He’d always been talkative beyond measure and kind as far as his kind went, almost to the point of absurdity, but the tone of his voice actually came across as genuine.

“You don’t look at all pleased though my dear.” The shopkeep frowned and tilted his head. “I feel rather guilty now for having won.”

“200 damn votes.” The lupinal waved away his concern even as she sighed, clearly upset over her loss despite her words of concession.

Unbidden, A’kin pulled a stool out from behind the counter and set it down for Fyrehowl to take a seat. “Take a seat and let’s chat.”

Fyrehowl did just that, and within moments she found herself with hands cupped around a mug of freshly made hot cocoa and the newest member of the Advisory Council lending her a more than sympathetic ear.

“I do apologize for having the final seat on the Council.” A’kin’s whisker’s drooped. “I wasn’t aware that you were running until far too late. Most of my advertising and most of the people who said they were voting for me were here in the Lower Ward.”

“No no, it’s not that you won…” Fyrehowl paused, debating how to ask her next question, taking a sip of cocoa in the interim. “Clearly we had different bases of support in different Wards, and I’m genuinely happy that you of all people are a voice on the council but…”

“Thank you dear,” A’kin smiled and sipped for a mug of his own, “But…?”

“Her.”

“Ah yes…” A’kin looked away, his expression hidden behind his mug and his eyes distant for a moment. “You’ve had unpleasant dealings with her and her proxies.”

Shemeska’s name went entirely unspoken but perfectly understood between the two of them.

“She wins everything.” Fyrehowl failed to suppress a snarl, causing A’kin to subtly move back in his own seat. “She’s the single most miserable creature in existence and she gets away with everything. Everything that she’s done to me and my friends and nothing -NOTHING!- has happened to her as a result of it all. It isn’t fair, and my losing in the election and her coasting to a bought and bribed victory is almost too much for me to take.”

Fyrehowl paused, realizing that she’d started to cry and that A’kin’s right hand lay outstretched on top of hers. She looked up into the fiend’s eyes and found them inexplicably full on concern.

“She wants you to suffer Fyrehowl.” A’kin sighed. “She desires a Sigil that dances to invisible strings in a concert of her own devising full of only the wailing of broken souls kept dancing only by the created and dangled false hope that she herself has manufactured for them. She is what we are designed to be.”

Fyrehowl’s heart skipped a beat as she looked down at A’kin’s hand atop her own and at the tone and tenor of his words. This wasn’t polite shopkeep banter. This was something more.

“You’re better than to fall into that trap.” A’kin continued, “Don’t give her the satisfaction of seeing you upset, jealous, or angry at her win. Be there in the front row with the first public comment at the next meeting. You don’t need a formal place in the engines of power and influence to have an effect. We can all be grease on the cogs or a wrench hurled into the mix if we so choose. Be the latter for her and not the former. You have that choice.”

“What do you… I…” Fyrehowl stumbled over the proper words for a response, feeling against all odds that she’d gained an insight into A’kin’s thoughts beyond his carefully cultivated public persona as the eponymous Friendly Fiend. In the end she only mumbled a ‘thank you’, squeezed his hand and looked at him with more than a little confusion, not expecting anything so genuine and warm to come from a ‘loth.

Realizing that she was still holding his hand, she blushed, removed it, and resumed sipping her cocoa.

“I hope that helps you feel a bit better?” A’kin smiled, just before the Cipher seated opposite him acted in true form without thought.

“So what exactly is the situation between you and her?” Fyrehowl asked, dropping the bombshell question that always lingered unspoken and ever unanswered regarding the City of Doors’ two resident arcanaloths.

“It… Fyrehowl…” A’kin paused, his mouth open for a moment before closing it again. Pursing his lips and twitching his whiskers, he glanced away in a moment of pronounced social awkwardness distinctly out of character for the normally loquacious ‘loth. “My life has been interesting, very very long, and distinctly not normal Fyrehowl. The issue is complex. Let’s leave it at that. Please.”

Whatever the situation was, Fyrehowl realized that she wouldn’t be receiving any further clarifications or insight into it anytime soon. A’kin’s actual tone was unreadable, carrying with it a sense of fiercely guarded reluctance and an undertone of worry and sadness. That moment was ephemeral and A’kin returned to his amusing and ever-smiling self, eager to chat and talk about anything and nothing. Still though, when she finished her cocoa she enjoyed a second mug and only left A’kin’s shop after spending nearly an hour there chatting with him about everything –but– politics. When she left, she left with a smile on her face.

“Take care of yourself Fyrehowl.” A’kin smiled and waved her goodbye. “Don’t worry about me. I can handle myself on the Council, though I’ll be sure to make sure that my chair isn’t next to our mutual everything-but-a-friend.”

“Take care A’kin, and thank you.”

“You’re more than welcome Fyrehowl.”

The lupinal left and the ‘loth smiled, chuckling to himself and ever unreadable as always. He resumed dusting his shop’s shelves as he’d been before Fyrehowl had dropped in, though perhaps smiling just a bit more than before.


****​

Above the Portal Jammer, two floors higher and far away from concerns about both the intrigues and disappoints of the voting for the Sigil Advisory Council and the power struggles of Sigil’s underworld, a very happy planetouched couple sat and discussed a very different topic altogether.

“So my parents sent a letter.” Tristol said, peering up from his spellbook to look at Nisha. The tiefling lay curled alongside him, her tail occasionally flitting with a soft, metallic clatter of the silver bell at its tip.

“Oh oh! Lemme see!” Nisha snatched impulsively at the letter in her boyfriend’s hands.

“That’s not the response I expected actually,” Tristol’s ears which had begun folded back against his head in manifest apprehension now perked back up, even though he still held the letter itself just out of reach as Nisha started to clamber over him to reach it, “I thought that you’d be dreading this.”

“Why would I be dreading going to meet your folks and traveling to a strange magical land of wizards and strange prime material planar things and stuff?” Nisha shrugged off any and all concerns.

“Because this is my mom and that’s Halruaa.”

“So?”

“And…” Tristol hesitated, “I sort of failed to mention to her that you’re a tiefling.”

“Again, so?” Nisha shrugged a second time, utterly unconcerned.

Tristol waffled on how to explain it all before giving the Xaositect a brief overview of his home on the Prime, “Halruaa is rather bigoted when it comes to anyone but humans and mages. There’s a class system in place revolving around how much magic you can cast and who you’re related to and what they could cast. I sort of failed to mention much about you other than that you’re amazing and that I’m happy.”

“So she has no idea at all what to expect about me?” Nisha asked, suppressing a chuckle.

“… pretty much.” Tristol admitted, his ears falling flat against his head.

A grin fit for a scheming tanar’ri spread across Nisha’s face. The bubbling thoughts of mischief and mayhem on an unsuspecting mother-in-law and her nation were nearly palpable.

“I wanted to give her enough to just assuage any worries on her part but not enough to use to scry you. I told her that you’re a wizard and that’s about it.”

“A wizard am I?” Nisha giggled. “A wizard?”

“Well you are, technically.”

“Archmage,” Nisha pointed her index finger at Tristol’s nose, “I’m an archmage.”

“You’re not an archmage dear.” Tristol raised an eyebrow, “You can cast what, second sphere spells?”

Nisha stuck out her lower lip, pouting, “I wanna be an archmage…”

“You can be one if you’d like.” Tristol patted her on the head. “Just be aware that if you make that claim in Halruaa, and especially around my parents, they’re going to expect certain things from you.”

“Oh not to worry! I can fake being an archmage,” Nisha grinned, “That’s not a problem.”

“Fake being an archmage?” Tristol asked, “… what does that even mean?”

“You’ll find out now won’t you?”

Tristol’s eyes grew wide with worry about how the tiefling would compose herself around the hoi polloi of Halruaan society. In the end however, he figured that he really didn’t particularly care how it went. He loved her and she meant more to him than his mother’s expectations. Hopefully his father would at least help make sure that nothing too explosive happened she noticed that the family’s potential future daughter-in-law had horns, hooves, and a tail.

“So we get to visit yes? You’re looking off into space like you’re deep in thought. So what’s the answer then?” Nisha beamed a smile, “You don’t get to say anything but yes.”

“How chaotic of you.”

Nisha stuck out her tongue.

“But yes, you get to visit my family.” Tristol leaned over and planted a kiss that was swiftly returned with a hug and a much deeper kiss initiated by a very happy tiefling.

“And we get to bring everyone else along yes?” Nisha’s tail pointed in the vague directions of their companions’ rooms in the Portal Jammer.

“If you’d like we can certainly invite them.” Tristol shrugged. “The Jammer can run itself with the hired staff left to their own devices for a while without us.”

“It’ll be fun!” Nisha beamed and gently bounced up and down on the bed before standing up and actually jumping around, hooves on the mattress with delight.

“It’ll also…” Tristol moved out of the way lest he be trampled by his ecstatic partner, “It’ll also make my mom less likely to say something stupid and offensive if she has to worry about other people than just the two of us.”

“Your mom’s an illusionist right?” Nisha continued to jump around on the bed.

“Yeah that’s right.” Tristol rolled his eyes. “She practices the worst kind of magic that I can think of. She’s overly involved where she shouldn’t be in every way imaginable. I came to Sigil mostly to get away from her meddling and trying to set me up for an arranged marriage with someone ‘proper’ with ‘proper magical lineage’ from a ‘proper family’.”

“I’m proper.” Nisha deadpanned before breaking into a wry grin and tackling Tristol, looking down from atop him before licking the end of his nose. “Just not very proper right now. Not at all right now actually. Let’s see if you can make me babble in scramblespeak before the end of the evening hmm?”

Tristol smiled, giggled, and licked her nose, motioning with one free hand to magically lock the door given that they’d be rather occupied for some time. They could wait to invite the others to Halruaa, at least until Nisha had all her improper out of her system, or something like that.


****​

The skies over northwest Faerun shone brightly with light of a noonday sun, warming the hungry deciduous leaves of the great wilderness expanse of the High Forest. Despite the forest’s natural, pristine beauty unmarred by the presence of cities and the destruction of nature’s untouched design that came with human occupation everywhere else across Toril’s face, there was nothing natural about that specific portion of the forest itself known only as the Dire Wood.

A low, cold mist clung to the ground, clutching at the soil as if terrified of being touched by the creatures that wandered there. Shambling alone or more frequently in packs, the withered forms of the undead aimlessly wandered the cursed, forsaken stretch of land, there to prey upon any living creature foolish enough to find themselves there but soon to join their number.

A trio of zombies suddenly looked up at the sky and a sudden object burning in the sky distinct from the sun. In a flash of magical energies a flame-rimmed portal erupted a thousand feet above, ejecting a whirling, tumbling form into the open air. The undead could only watch hungrily without concern for their own safety as the falling figure whipped around in the air to face the portal from whence she’d come. The arcanaloth that was not twitched her back, sprouting tendrils and pseudopods of flesh that rapidly grew and formed themselves into a pair of draconic wings to desperately slow her fall now that she hung in the grip of Toril’s gravity well rather than the black, starless void between the 1st and 2nd mounts of Gehenna.

“You will not find me! You will not catch me! Fools! Fools all of you! Betrayers! Betrayers all!”

Taba’s eyes burned violet with intensity hotter than Toril’s parent star as she wove her arms and spat arcane words from mouths newly formed for that purpose alone on her arms and the side of her jackal’s head.

“Suffer and die in the shadow of Khalas ignorant slaves of the Usurper!” Taba screamed and cackled even as she plummeted from the sky, her wings essentially an afterthought compared to the hurried words to close her gate, detonate the latent energies coiled around its opposite face and then the next layers of spells to obfuscate her location from the coming prying eyes of any of her surviving pursuers.

The altraloth never stopped laughing, taunting, and profaning the Oinoloth before she met the tree line, slamming into the petrified corpses of a dozen ancient oaks in a concussive shower of splintering stone and her own metamorphic flesh and blood.

Alone at the bottom of a crater of her own making, Taba’s blood and splattered viscera took upon a life of its own, flowing, wriggling, or sprouting legs to crawl back to her body there to reform as she shed her arcanaloth’s visage to that of a brown-skinned elf. She lay there for several long minutes before flowing to her feet in defiance of gravity and clambering up to the ground level above.

Forty or fifty zombies and skeletons crowded around the point of her arrival there to hungrily await her ascent, even as she casually scoffed at the equal number laid low by the impact of her arrival, skewered and pinned to the ground by splinters of rock the size of a man’s arm or torn in half from her nearly terminal velocity impact. 

Ignorant of her nature and uncaring of the threat to themselves that the archfiend represented, the pack of undead corpses swarmed and attacked. Taba of course simply rolled her eyes, forming a few dozen extra peppered across her flesh to emphasize her feelings on the matter even as she shifted her infinitely metamorphic body. Within seconds she’d assumed the form of a fang dragon, easily of great wyrm stature, casually decimating the undead by simply wading through them, trampling them underfoot, and doing the same to the forest itself as she traversed towards her intended goal still a mile or two out.

The nature of the Dire Wood itself remained puissant enough all that time after its formative event to despoil the altraloth’s spells and divert her course. Normally the undead would have stopped any creatures attempting to physically travel to the cursed forest’s heart, but Taba cared not, eventually forming a second head and neck to crane back and exhale of torrent of lightning and acid, largely ending any further pursuit as she traversed the remaining distance.

“We share something in common…” Taba sneered as she stepped out from the broken tree line of petrified, black oaks, trampling her claws into the soft, blood-red soil as she emerged into a clearing at the forest’s heart, “As much as it pains me to speak such of mewling soul filth such as yourself.”

Shaking her head, Taba flexed a wing to sever the petrified trunk of an ancient tree and reduce yet another of the forest’s shambling corpses into pulp. Flicking the gore from her body, the altraloth looked up at the massive stone butte rising up from the ruins of the ancient Netherese settlement of Karse, so named for the frozen stone form of the archmage Karsus, ‘The Accidental God’.

“You at least had ambition.”


*****​


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## Tsuga C

Happy New Year, one and all! New Year's Day was sunny and bright, but now we're back to leaden skies suitable for Niflheim or some place else in the Grey Waste.


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## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> Happy New Year, one and all! New Year's Day was sunny and bright, but now we're back to leaden skies suitable for Niflheim or some place else in the Grey Waste.




My freelancing plate is clear in the next few days, at which point I'll be working on the next update (or rather finishing the next update). Happy New Year to you as well!


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## Tsuga C

*minor nudge*


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## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> *minor nudge*




Working on it. My problem is that I tend to write major scenes well in advance of them happening, and so having a lot written... just not the material for the next immediate update. Working on it though, please be assured.


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## Shemeska

Also in the meantime, I'm running a GoFundMe to help get to PaizoCon this year.

I'm also offering some reward spots to play in a custom 1-shot game (one set in Pathfinder's cosmology, and one set in Planescape).

https://www.gofundme.com/send-todd-stewart-to-paizocon


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## Akhelos

Its really sad that i dont have enough money to travel to paizo con AND pay for the 4000 Dollar Option to see the Shemeshka suit *dodges fast* ^^


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## Shemeska

Akhelos said:


> Its really sad that i dont have enough money to travel to paizo con AND pay for the 4000 Dollar Option to see the Shemeshka suit *dodges fast* ^^




As useful as the money would be, I genuinely hope nobody is crazy enough to select that (not exactly serious) reward level such that I'd be obligated to be serious and fulfill that as promised. God help me.


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## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> *minor nudge*





“So what was this that the two of you wanted to tell the rest of us?” Clueless looked across the table at Tristol and Nisha.

The Portal Jammers’ owners sat together around a table in the back room of the tavern, with the sole exception of Florian who’d yet to make her appearance. Tristol and Nisha had sent out a sending spell asking the adventuring companions to be there at peak for an announcement.

The aasimar and tiefling were of course sitting with their chairs pulled up together, and their hands were on the tabletop to clutch not a drink, but each other. Every week that had passed since they’d started formally dating had only grown their level of public affection, making it patently obvious in perhaps the most adorable ways that they were a couple - an odd couple perhaps with Tristol being an aasimar wizard from the Prime and Nisha being a Xaositect tiefling from Sigil, but a couple nonetheless.

“So the two of us have been thinking about making a trip back to my home on Toril.” Tristol smiled. “Not entirely a vacation, but given our past history of ‘vacations’ this would certainly qualify more than the last.”

“Vacations, yeah…” Toras’s eyes went wide, “Pandemonium…”

“We promise that this will go smoother than that.” Nisha gave a polite chuckle, twitching the tip of her tail and ringing the silver bell at its tip.

“It’s really adorable how you’ve both been phrasing everything for weeks now as ‘the two of us’.” Clueless chuckled, waving a hand for them to continue, “Go on.”

“So the two of us,” Tristol turned to glance at Nisha, exchanging a long, longing stare, punctuated by the tiefling kissing his nose. “Well, we’ve been dating for a while now and it’s become more than a bit serious.”

“That would be rather obvious.” Toras smiled.

“We’ve all known for some time.” Clueless glanced at the others, “It’s been pretty obvious that this wasn’t just a bit of chaotic flightiness or passing thing. You really work together.”

“I’ve assumed so for weeks,” Fyrehowl quipped, glancing away as she added one other detail, “The walls aren’t thick enough.”

Tristol blushed, his ears folding back against his head, while Nisha snickered, briefly mouthing, ‘Sorry… sorry…’ to the large and keen eared lupinal.

“We really complement each other, and we’d both like to take our relationship further.” Nisha’s tail emerged onto the tabletop and curled around Tristol’s wrist, the bell at its tip resting atop his ring finger like an oversized engagement bauble. “And we wanted to…”

Their discussion came to an immediate halt as the door swung open and Florian walked in with a furious torrent of cursing. 

“Stupid f*cking c*nt ‘loth!” She snarled as she took and seat and poured a drink. The cleric’s hair was disheveled, her clothes covered in ash and soot, and a rancid, sulfurous stench clung to her like a rotting leather cloak.

“What the hell happened to you?!” Fyrehowl covered her nose.

“Again.” Florian growled, “What the hell happened to me *again*. Twice while I was walking back here from the marketplace. Twice!”

All eyes were on the cleric as she opened a liquor bottle and upended it for a long and apparently needed swig.

“Serious, what happened?!” Fyrehowl asked, even as her nose cued in on the very particular scent of Gehennan ash.

“I just had two portals open up on me at random on my way over here.” Florian brushed ash from her clothes and pointed at the lupinal. “All of them lower planes. All of them opened immediate beneath me with no warning. All of them slammed closed once I managed to avoid falling into the first one, and the second one once I managed to climb my way out of it, screaming for help and holding onto the cobblestones on the portal lip. Nothing like dangling half-in and half-out of Gehenna to make the day fun. F*ck her.”

Toras grimaced and strongly considered saying something given the presumed origin of the trouble and what the ‘loth had said to him about how to stop it.

“No!” Florian pointed at Toras, preempting his commentary, “I’m not saying sh*t to that b*tch with a tangle of razorvine on her head. She’s behind it, obviously, but I’m not giving her the satisfaction of an apology when she won’t stop. She’ll just delay trying to have me killed. She can keep trying this and I swear to you that whatever she’s doing, The Lady will have her flayed before she manages to do me in.”

Dead silence settled over the room, awkward looks were exchanged, and Florian leveled a few more distinctive curses against the Marauder before Tristol piped up.

“Well this actually plays well into what Nisha and I wanted to tell all of you!”

Nisha smiled and nuzzled the aasimar, “We’re going to go visit Tristol’s parents on Toril, and we’d like to invite the rest of you all along.”

“It’ll be a good time to get away from all of this mess in Sigil.” Tristol looked at Florian and forced a smile. “And we could both use you there for moral support if my parents take it poorly.”

“Take what poorly?” Florian raised an eyebrow.

“How much do they know about what you’ve been up to since you left home?” Clueless poured himself another drink. “You’ve kept them abreast of your life and relationship and all right?”

“They don’t know a thing about this…” Fyrehowl shook her head, “And we’re there to keep you from getting into too much trouble.”

“I’ve told them enough and well…” Tristol stammered, tripping over his words and trying to measure his response. He didn’t have to finish though as Nisha preempted him entirely.

“Tristol proposed!” Nisha beamed a smile before wrapping her arms around her now-fiancé.

For the second time that day, dead silence settled over the room. It hung, oppressive and pensive for only a few moments before the room erupted in surprised and happy shouts.

“Do your parents know yet?!”

“Congratulations!”

“Oh my gosh!”

“When’s the ceremony going to be?!”

Of course they all agreed to visit Tristol’s parents.


****​

As the inheritor of Netheril’s cultural and magical traditions (if not quite its hubris in the latter), the nation of Halruaa was a gleaming jewel of a nation situated in Faerun’s southern tropics. With abundant natural sources and rich deposits of electrum, the wealthy and magically powerful nation could have been the seat of an empire had it chosen to be one, if not for its intentional xenophobia and cultural introspectivity borne out of its origins in Netherese refugees and early conflict with hostile neighboring peoples.

Halruaa’s capital of Halarahh would not have looked out of place on the planes, given the ubiquity of magic use in everything from the construction of homes, the lighting of roadways, travel by flying carpet and skyship, and the wild, competitive nature of artwork and decorations between its magically inclined ruling class. Where it did differ however was in the nearly monolithic nature of its racial composition. While all manner of exotic pets were on display -exemplified by miniature behirs surrounded by sporadic flickers of electrical discharge- virtually every halruaan citizen was human.

That last statement regarding Halruaa would become central to what happened next at the Starweather estate situated in Halarah’s eastern district. The Starweathers were solidly part of the nation’s magical aristocracy, even if Tristol had chosen to leave the nation for adventure on the planes and his parents held no official positions of power. Normally the magical elite utilized arranged marriages both to cement their own base of power, influence, and prestige, and to ensure the breeding of ever more powerful magical lineages. 

Clearly at some point in the past either a dalliance with a celestial or close association with magic from Elysium had slipped into the Starweather paternal line, resulting in Tristol’s father being an aasimar, and Tristol himself following suit. While such sullying of their bloodline might have resulted in diminished social standing, Kefnar Starweather’s ability as an abjurist and his marriage to Lutra (an even more accomplished illusionist) had mollified any such ramifications.

Still, Halruaa was almost entirely human, and its ruling magocracy saw that as an issue of pride not to be casually dismissed.

So no, Tristol had not exactly discussed things at length with his parents before he and his companions had shown up for dinner that evening. He’d only mentioned that he would be visiting and that he would be bringing along his magically inclined girlfriend for them to finally meet, along with his other adventuring companions. For all the Starweathers knew Nisha would be human and a virtual archmage, rather than a goat-hoofed, horned and be-tailed tiefling, who grew up as a thief in the slums of Sigil, with only a middling capacity for arcane magic.


****​

“You never mentioned that she was a tiefling.” Tristol’s mother looked up from her plate with a bit of a forced smile, staring at her son and pointedly avoiding looking at her would-be daughter in law seated opposite her.

The Halruaan illusionist had Tristol’s eyes and a shock of long, white hair, the only real evidence of her age amid the illusions woven about her body and the probable use of wish spells to retard and delay such physical troubles. A powerful caster in her own right, she was responsible for the layers of illusions that meandered about the family tower and surrounding estate, that cloaked the walls, masked the superstructure, and perfected the particular appearance of every mundane object exposed to the elements or simply the discerning eye of the public and their fellow mages.

Lutra might have found fine company in whatever tailors supplied the Marauder in Sigil with her flashiest articles of clothing, albeit only for those rare few much more conservative articles of attire. She wore more than a few pieces of gold and cut stones about her neck and in her hair, and her robes were a sparkling ensemble of white and blue, with bits of iridescence that actively shifted and changed to match the surrounding light. She quite literally lit up the room. At the moment of course, the ambient tension and her simmering displeasure worried Tristol much more than dinner with the Marauder would have.

“That would have been an important fact to add before your father and I met her for the first time.”

Eyes went wide and a distinct silence fell over Tristol’s adventuring companions. Unconcerned with the unfolding drama, an illusory flock of songbirds circle about the table, chirping a lilting tune before evaporating into an immaterial shower of falling autumn leaves.

“Oh yeah, I’m a tiefling alright!” Nisha quipped, either oblivious or utterly uncaring completing missing her mother-in-law’s implied distaste, “Tanar’ri, either mostly or entirely, though to be perfectly honest I don’t know anything in specific really. I grew up as an orphan in the Hive, so I don’t really have much idea who or what my parents might have been.”

“I see.” Lutra raised an eyebrow and deftly buttered a slice of toast once the animated butter dish settled down next to her plate and the bread basket did the same. “That’s a shame dear. Here in Halruaa we place a heavy value on lineage and descent. It’s important for the purposes of ensuring that matched wizards can produce equally or more talented children.”

Only briefly flicking her eyes towards Nisha as the tiefling smiled and nommed on her first course of exotic appetizers, Tristol’s mother continued to force a thin smile. She was doing her best to put up appearances in front of her guests, but it was rather clear that she’d hoped for ‘better’ for her only child by whatever internal and exceptionally biased metric she measured it by. She wanted the best for Tristol, but that best most likely entailed a match with a woman of skill to equal his, from another long and noble line of wizards, decided less by any member of the families than by a group of contracted diviners with a long history of success in their craft of arcane matchmaking. An orphaned, demon-blooded thief who dabbled in magic on the side wasn’t precisely what she’d ever had in mind.

_“This isn’t going as well as I’d hoped.”_ Tristol broadcast to his other companions –with the exception of Nisha– through the telepathic link he’d cast before they’d arrived. _“But at least she hasn’t asked to see Nisha’s spellbook.”_

“So, Nisha dear,” Lutra smiled and gestured, causing the animated wine decanter to drift across the table and top off her glass. “What’s the most recent spell that you’ve penned in your spellbook? I’m curious what sphere of spells you’ve most recently mastered.”

_”F*ck!”_ Tristol sighed as he paused and looked for his dinner fork. He swore that it’d been right in place a moment before.

All eyes turned to the Xaositect as she smiled and produced her spellbook with a flourish from a portable hole curled into some hideously awkward position on her hip. Holding it aloft amid a chorus of held breathes around the table she reached down with one hand and delicately moved her plate and dinnerware out of the way. Unnoticed amidst it all, when she finally placed the patchwork tome down, a saucer, a salad fork, and a cheese knife failed to reappear on the tabletop.

“I never had the opportunity to go to any formal magical school or private apprenticeship to another wizard, so I’m almost entirely self-taught you see.” Nisha smiled as she thumbed through her spellbook, with nearly each dog-eared page a different material: parchment, paper, vellum, and even more exotic planar substitutes, some of them clearly not in her own hand, but scrawled over at random with her own annotations and notes.

“I got my start after stea… finding… my first spellbook after its original owner’s unfortunate execution by the Mercykillers, and I taught myself from their original work without anyone teaching me a bit of it.”

“Given that Nisha didn’t speak a word of draconic at the time, I’ve always been impressed by her start.” Tristol smiled and put a supportive hand atop hers.

“Admittedly not knowing all the nuances of pronunciation and inflicted did lead to accidentally magic missile’ing a few Harmonium members, some executioner’s ravens, and a whoooole lot of devils.” The Xaositect laughed, “Of course, it was my idea to try spellcasting against fiends just because their innate magic resistance made it less likely that I’d accidentally blow anything up. Speaking of which of course, fireball is my most recent spell.”

“So third sphere spells,” Lutra seemed conflicted between some genuine admiration for Nisha’s self-sparked start versus her middling level of progress. “I see.”

“I’m impressed in your progress Nisha.” Tristol’s father gave a smile as he sat next to his wife and looked across the table at Nisha, one plane-touched to another. Kefnar Starweather was a guardinals-touched aasimar the same as Tristol. Similar to his son, he bore the same fox’s ears and tail, and seated next to his illusionist wife, the abjurer took a more subdued style by comparison, wearing only relatively simple wizard’s robes in a few shades of red. “I think that you could learn a lot from Tristol, and he from you.”

“He’s a smart cookie.” Nisha quipped as she leaned over and bit Tristol’s shoulder with an emphatic, “Nom nom nom cookies nom nom.”

Lutra raised an eyebrow and glanced at Kefnar. Tristol shrugged and patted Nisha on the head.

As Tristol, Nisha, and Tristol’s parents continued their back and forth banter, the others did their best to provide the occasional supportive interjection, positive comment on the food, positive comment on the illusions flitting about the house, and other such topics. Amidst it all, as Nisha showed off one of her most recent spells, originating in the very clearly purloined pages from another wizard’s spellbook, Toras smiled, nodded, and reached over to take Fyrehowl’s soup spoon.

“Toras!” The lupinal whispered, leaning in and putting her hand over top of his. “Use your own.”

“I don’t have one!” Toras shook his head, “Well, I did, just a few minutes ago when I didn’t need it. But you’re eating soup, so I assume you took mine.”

Fyrehowl paused and twitched her ears, glancing over at Kefnar as he seemed to be glancing about for a missing knife, and then over at Clueless looking for any silverware at all which for all intents and purposes might as well have grown legs and waltzed off on their own. Something was amiss, but they wouldn’t have the chance to discuss it before another issue reared its head.

“Tristol, it’s also a sincere shame that you didn’t consider telling us, your father and I that is, of your betrothal before a bunch of random others.” Lutra dabbed her lips delicately with a napkin, noticing belatedly that her silver napkin-ring had vanished from beside her plate, “Did you not trust us to know ahead of time?”

“To know what?” Tristol tilted his head, confused as to what his mother was implying. There was of course the fact that he and Nisha were planning on getting married, but he was intending to wait until later that evening, or possibly the next day to inform his parents of that. He wanted to make sure that they got to know her before they reacted to their engagement. “What are you talking about?”

“I thought they were an illusionist and an abjurer!” Nisha leaned in and whispered in Tristol’s ear, “We haven’t said anything and your mom is acting like a high level diviner at this point. Is she going to be that spooky mom-in-law that knows everything about your life so she can better judge you for it?”

“Your mother and I are exceptionally happy for you Tristol; that goes without saying.” Kefnar interjected, once again playing the smoother edged parent. “We’ve always been proud of you, even if we didn’t always see eye to eye on your particular focus in magic, or your… disdain… for Halruaan customs. But we’ve been proud of you and the wizard that you were and have become. I do just wish that you could have told us about you and Nisha’s engagement first before we received a letter from one of your friends that you’ve met since traveling the planes.”

Tristol’s ears immediately perked. They hadn’t announced their engagement to anyone that wasn’t in the room.

“Letter? What letter?” A chill ran down Tristol’s spine as his mind spun to a dozen possible conclusions.

Around the table, the assembled companions exchanged confused and increasingly worried glances.

“We received it this morning: an actual, physical letter,” Lutra snapped her fingers and produced a crisp, white envelope in her left hand, “Quite old fashioned. No illusory content whatsoever, which I would have thought would be standard for something of that import. I presume that they come from a lower magic culture.” She sighed, “It’s a shame for them really. But I admit that I feel somewhat slighted even as your father and I are absolutely overwhelmed with happiness on your behalf for finding someone that you love.”

“Could I please see that letter?” Tristol pointed to the envelope in his mother’s hand.

Lutra handed the envelope to the animated breadbasket which happily waddled across the table on its silver lion’s feet over towards Tristol. As it made its way there, she continued in her previous topic of guilting conversation.

“It’s a shame that you didn’t trust us to find you a proper match among the Halruaan magocracy. Your father and I were specifically chosen and paired by our own parents and look at how amazing you’ve turned out as a result. The system has always worked to breed proper and powerful spellcasters who…”

“What we mean to say,” Tristol’s father put a hand on his wife’s forearm, “Is that we both want you to be happy, you and Nisha both. Of course we approve and we’d like to help with the ceremony in any capacity that you’ll allow, whenever you decide to have one. I’m proud of you Tristol.”

Tristol snatched up the envelope and whispered a cantrip under his breath before examining the letter inside for any latent magic or hidden spelltraps.

As her son unfolded the letter, Lutra turned to Nisha, “Please don’t get the wrong impression Nisha. As long as Tristol is happy, I’m happy.”

“Though it did spoil the surprise of the announcement, and getting to finally meet you Nisha,” Kefnar smiled, his tail swishing happily behind his chair, “I’m impressed that you and Tristol are apparently on a first name basis with royalty.”

“Royalty?” Clueless inwardly cringed at thoughts that a certain self-titled King had injected herself into the present moment.

“So much for leaving Sigil to get away from her for a few days…” Florian sighed and clenched her hands. Seconds later she blinked, realizing that her fork had vanished from her left hand.

Worry turned to confusion mixed with intrigue tinged with dread as Tristol read over the letter. Penned in a hand quite distinct from that of the Marauder, it was written using paper and ink far too simple for her tastes, and also quickly glancing at the letter’s bottom edge, it lacked a pompous signature far too large for the letter’s length as she would have opted to use.

Not triggering any latent curse or symbol woven into the letter, and not finding any magic at all lingering, Tristol read the letter aloud:

“To the recently betrothed Tristol and Nisha, and to their companions,

Allow me to send my dearest congratulations on the formal announcement of your engagement. The two of you are most certainly a wonderful match, and surely many wonderful years are in store. While I would most dearly have wished to be able to present this letter in person, the day to day operations of my realm and dealing with neighboring nations precludes my presence in Halruaa at this time. I do however humbly invite you to visit me once your time in Halruaa is finished so that I might present an engagement gift of my own.

My best wishes until I see you both again in person,
Lord Abat of the High Forest”

Tristol smiled for the sake of his parents and folded the letter and slipped it back into its envelope. As he did so, he spoke to his companions through their telepathic link:

_“I can’t say that I ever expected an engagement letter from a yugoloth lord, but apparently we aren’t finished with Taba. No, I have no idea what’s going on.”_


****​


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## Tsuga C

I've always enjoyed the well-rounded nature of this campaign. Yes, there's plenty of combat, but the social elements come into play regularly. *tips hat*


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## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> I've always enjoyed the well-rounded nature of this campaign. Yes, there's plenty of combat, but the social elements come into play regularly. *tips hat*




Thank you! I was really blessed with players that didn't mind talking to NPCs and each other for a session without combat if not having combat made sense.


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## Sabrewulf

*Woohoo!!!*

Update! Thanks Shemmy! This made my evening.

Sabre

I really enjoyed the Architect story. Filled in a few of my gaps, but of course not all of them. Not even close ...


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## Shemeska

Sabrewulf said:


> Update! Thanks Shemmy! This made my evening.
> 
> Sabre
> 
> I really enjoyed the Architect story. Filled in a few of my gaps, but of course not all of them. Not even close ...




And you saying so made my evening! 

Seriously, anyone who comments, however brief makes me smile and want to immediately write more (which I'm doing right now).

I'm glad that you enjoyed the Architect story! There will be a few gaps filled in this current storyhour arc, but more questions thrown up in response. I do promise that -everything- links together in the end.


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## Band2

I realized I had not stopped by to say how great this story hour is in a long time, and here I find another great update.  I Cannot wait to see what happens with Taba.


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## almost13

same here! a bit sad to see the far plane touch disappear again so soon. i'm really curious what all of shemeska's meddling with the key will entail...


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## Shemeska

almost13 said:


> same here! a bit sad to see the far plane touch disappear again so soon. i'm really curious what all of shemeska's meddling with the key will entail...




The far realms aren't exactly out of the story yet. They'll be there in the background in a few places along the way. They're a major element of the sequel campaign to this one (which I'll move back to writing once this one is over - probably years from now).

As for Shemeska's meddling with the Shadow Sorcelled Key... the immediate ramifications were a surprise that I don't think my players saw coming. You'll find that out sooner rather than later (ie I've already written that part well ahead of time).


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## almost13

That's great to hear!

Will the Rilmani also show up again? I've taking a liking to the less explored parts of the planescape universe


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## Shemeska

****​

The next five hours passed without incident, save for the tension between Tristol and his mother that left the others holding their breath and their tongues. Tristol’s father did his best to mediate it all before anything unfortunate and regrettable might be said, and as for Nisha… it was up for debate if Nisha was even aware of her soon-to-be mother-in-law’s subtext, and if she was aware of it, if she even cared. The Xaositect retained a near cherubic smile on her face as she toured the Starweather estate, ooing and aahing at every bit of normal-for-Halruaa magic, and especially Lutra’s omnipresent illusions.

Eventually though, hackneyed excuses were made so as to excuse them, even in the face of offers to put the group up for the evening, even with Lutra’s offer of separate rooms for each guest, including Tristol and Nisha. Smiles and polite pleasantries were made, as well as offers to return when able, and of course that both Lutra and Kefnar would be invited to a grand wedding ceremony once decisions were made on time and place.

A curious worry repeatedly crossed over Kefnar’s face though at various points throughout the evening, beginning at dinner, and growing more profound and bewildered as the evening progressed. He hid the expression well, and none of his guests said anything about it, though several of them noticed: most prominently Tristol himself. Nisha remained seemingly oblivious.

The fact of the matter was that every single piece of heirloom, antique silverware and a decent amount of the Starweather’s tableware had vanished into thin air without Nisha having obviously left her chair at any point. She did however leave her in-laws’ estate with a spring in her step and a portable hole full of purloined cutlery. How she’d managed the feat was one thing, but how she’d managed to waltz off without the lifted knives or forks popping the portable hole was something else.

Nisha wasn’t and wouldn’t ever be an archmage in the obvious sense, but she had more than a bit of magic in her own chaotic way. Any understanding of how she managed it all probably eluded her even as she did it, but it never stopped her from grinning like a fool when she left the estate and belatedly slipping a salad fork through her belt.


****​

It was never up for debate as to whether the group would or wouldn’t follow up on Taba’s letter to them via the Starweathers. The only question was if the whole thing was a deathtrap or something else. Multiple attempts to scry Taba resulted in only darkness and the sounds of a screaming man or woman raggedly begging for escape, mad from their capture and sensory deprivation in whatever demiplanar hell they’d been stashed within, the likely result of Taba having redirected divination attempts to multiple imprisoned proxies.

Utilizing the letter itself however proved something of a key to that steel doorway of obfuscation. While it didn’t show the altraloth lord herself, it showed a barren patch of earth scorched by heat and scattered with dozens of broken, still-twitching undead corpses. In the midst of the carnage, Taba had crudely scrawled a personal sigil.

Tristol’s teleportation spell deposited the group within several hour’s walk of their destination. The High Forest itself wasn’t a particularly dangerous location, and the relative monotony of the journey provided some time for them to talk and discuss their most recent “vacation” as they started what would likely be a much more dangerous vacation from that one.

“You couldn’t help yourself could you?” Tristol raised an eyebrow and glanced to his left where Nisha clip-clopped alongside him, occasionally batting at the tip of his tail as it swished back and forth.

“Hmm?” The Xaositect looked up with a look of utter innocence.

“The silverware? Really?” Tristol cast a look of both ashamed disbelief and amusement at his fiancé. “You stole the silverware.”

Nisha paused in her walk, chuckled and cracked a smile as her tail flicked the silver bell at its tip, “Oh… that. Yeah…”

“Just how’d you manage that?” Tristol’s ears flattened as he looked down, awaiting an explanation that likely wouldn’t be very forthcoming.

“I’ll second that.” Fyrehowl added, “I never saw you move from your seat during dinner, and trust me, I’m pretty good at noticing things.”

“So wait wait wait…” Nisha waved her hands and tail in concert, “You’re less concerned that I walked off with your mom’s silverware and more about how I managed it?”

“No,” Tristol held up a finger, “Because I’m damned certain that she probably has an instant summons spell nailed to every single piece of cutlery in that set given that it was actually Netherese and passed down through her side of the family for centuries. She’ll get it back once she realizes that they’re gone. No, what I want to know is how you did it without leaving your chair, while still playing footsie with me under the table, and how you managed to not pop either one of the portable holes I know you keep on your person. I expected you to pilfer anything that caught your eye and I love you and forgive you for that, but the other stuff, that’s just weird!”

Around them, the forest floor danced with errant rays of sunlight filtered through the tall, old growth evergreens. A sea of muted browns and greens, the occasional patch of wildflowers clung tenaciously to spots where a fallen tree had released the canopy’s tyranny over available daylight. The natural beauty of the northern latitudes was a far cry from the tropical wilds of Halruaa or the manifest and quite literal hellscapes of their most recent planar travels.

Nisha shrugged as she reached up and pulled a soup spoon from behind Tristol’s ear, “Hell if I know!”

“Huh?” Tristol stopped walking and stared at his fiancé as she tapped his nose with the spoon. “Hell if you know?”

“Beats me.” Nisha shrugged and produced a salad fork from the other ear, “I just do these sorts of things on occasion.”

“Yeah, your ‘on occasion’ tends to be most of the time.” Tristol shook his head, “You can’t keep playing clueless about it all. You know precisely what you’re doing.”

“Sometimes?” Nisha gave yet another emphatic shrug

“Only sometimes?” Tristol’s skepticism burned fierce.

“Only sometimes.” Nisha laughed and rattled a belt pouch that hadn’t been there at her hip a moment before, enjoying the satisfying rattling jingle of silverware. “This time I just wanted something to snatch up to keep A’kin from picking my purse and snatching back some of the stuff I lifted from his shop. We’ll see if he has burned fingers next time we drop by.”

Tristol’s ears fell flat back against his head with worry.

“You shoplifted from A’kin?”

“Oh trust me, he knows full well what I’ve lifted and when I’ve lifted it.” Nisha waved away Tristol’s concern about stealing from a greater yugoloth. “I give everything back eventually, at least what he doesn’t somehow manage to lift out of the space of a portable hole on my person when I’m not in his shop.”

As his tail bottlebrushed, Tristol didn’t look at all mollified in his concern.

“Oh Nisha! How did you steal your mother in law’s cutlery?” She pointed a finger at Tristol, “Everybody wants to know that, but nobody asks how A’kin snatched stuff back from a distant extraplanar space huh? That’s some crazy magical juju if you ask me! But no, you didn’t ask me did you? Hmm? All about suspecting the crazy tiefling lady from the Hive of being a thief!”

“Nisha honey, you are a thief.” Tristol put a fingertip on her nose.

“So Tristol!” Clueless glanced at the Torilian native, breaking up his and Nisha’s conversation before they started actually arguing or starting kissing in front of everyone else. “What do you know about the High Forest?”

Tristol paused and thought for a second before responding with a string of facts, both geographical and historical.

“That’s all well and good,” Clueless nodded, “But anything that would actually relate to why Taba would be here in the first place?”

“To kill us likely…” Florian muttered.

“Well, not so much the High Forest itself,” Tristol explained, “But there’s one rather unique landmark: the Dire Wood, and it’s not that far from the spot I scryed.”

“Just based on the name, that sounds like someplace I don’t want to go.” Fyrehowl grimaced.

Florian frowned, “I’ve heard of that place before, though I can’t quite put my finger on what it was. Something about Netheril though.”

“The end of Netheril to be more precise.” Tristol sighed, “When Karsus cast his masterwork, the Karsus Avatar, he wasn’t able to control the influx of magic when he briefly ascended to godhood, stealing that moment from a previous incarnation of Mystra, Mystral. He died and when he did, the Weave died with him until Mystra reincarnated several minutes later. Magic was forever changed on Toril for the worse, and never again would the Weave be capable of supporting the magic the Netherese mastered. What’s more however was that Karsus, in trying to save Netheril, he doomed it. When he died, his body manifested as a giant stone corpse frozen in a moment of horror at what he’d done and the floating cities fell from the clouds, hurtling to the ground.”

Tristol looked away, an almost immeasurable sense of loss filling his eyes as he wondered what magic could have accomplished if not for Karsus’ folly. As Halruaa was formed by refugees from Netheril at its height, he was linked by blood, culture, and magical tradition to the Netherese mages of old, and the legacy of Karsus was his in some small measure.

“Not all of the Netherese died of course.” Tristol continued, “Refugees dispersed to all corners of Toril, with my home of Halruaa being the largest and most cohesive of those groups. A few archwizards survived personally, only to vanish into obscurity and likely undeath, and the floating city of Shade pulled itself into the Plane of Shadow in the months prior, and actually reappeared this past year. They didn’t survive those centuries in the Shadow plane very well from what I understand. F*cking Shar…”

Tristol muttered to himself, a sense of anger and envy in his voice. He considered the Netherese of Shade as both rival inheritors of Netheril’s greatness, and also as traitors to everything it was, given their abandonment of their fellows with seeming foreknowledge of the tragedy to come, and their turn away from Mystra to Shar.

“So the corpse of Karsus has been here since then?” Florian glanced at Tristol. “I would think that sort of spectacular monument to hubris would be something that was more widely known.”

“It was for a time,” Tristol shrugged, “There were enough people that venerated Karsus, or his failure, or his attempt, or all three that they built a city around his petrified mountain of a corpse. Either being all super respectful or just unimaginative, they named it Karse.”

“I vote for the latter.” Toras shook his head, “Cultists are never particularly imaginative.”

“Still though, I’m really not sure what Taba would want here in the High Forest or the Dire Wood.” The wizard shrugged.

Tristol’s introspection was suddenly interrupted by the soft whisper of a magical call into his and his companions’ minds. It began as a soft, whispering hiss and chuckle before resolving itself into discrete words and the mental impression of something perpetually changing shape: Taba.

“Good. You’ve arrived in the High Forest.” The altraloth’s voice carried the impression of rancid syrup and claws tracing down the spine. “You mortals at least know how to follow directions. I await you in the ruins of Karse in the center of the Dire Wood. The Halruaan should be more than well aware of the location and its history. I am even more aware. Ponder that until we meet, and do avoid the undead that litter the forest. They are ever so hungry, and their master Jingleshod seems particularly upset with me, but less at me and more at my kind in general at the moment. But that’s a detail I leave to him to explain should you run afoul of the death knight, or something for you to discover once you arrive and we can speak directly.”

The altraloth’s telepathic call then slid from their minds with a soft chuckle and a faintly lingering sensation of the archfiend’s crimson eyes upon them.


****​


----------



## almost13

neat update! every update makes taba more interesting, anxious to find out how he/she relates to karsus (and what that means for the connection ebon - karsus)


----------



## Shemeska

“Well there’s a welcome mat rolled right out for us…” Toras smirked before rubbing his hands together and looking quite pleased, “But hey! We get to probably fight a death knight!”

“Splendid.” Florian touched her holy symbol, knowing that she’d likely need its power soon. “So Tristol, do you know who this Jingleshod is?”
Tristol narrowed his eyes, clearly lost in his thoughts for a long moment. The mention that the death knight was furious with Taba, not directly, but because of her nature as a yugoloth was more than troubling.

“Yes,” The aasimar finally replied. “But there’s some history involved to understand it all.”

“Go ahead and explain, though I don’t think that we’re all that far away.” Clueless inclined his head to the wizard before momentarily letting his wings out and darting up above the treeline. Hovering some fifty feet up, he clutched Razor in his hand as he surveyed the surrounding landscape. His expression slowly turned from admiration of the surrounding old-growth forest to one of concern, and that latter look remained once he returned to the ground.

“I take it you saw it?” Tristol asked the bladesinger, “Karse in the distance and the Dire Wood around it? We’re just at the fringes of the latter now.”

“Yeah I saw them both.” A wary crease worked its way across his brow. “The forest is dead and bleached white around the red stone plateau off in the distance, which I have to assume is the petrified corpse of Karsus.”

“And you would be correct.”

“The forest though, it’s… weird.” Clueless grimaced, “How about I fly you up there for a look and we just teleport past it. My inner fey is getting seriously creeped out about it just from a look, and it’s getting worse the closer we get.”

Nisha raised a hand, “I vote teleport.”

“Likewise,” Florian raised her hand as well.

Tristol glanced around at the raised and raising hands and simply laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Clueless raised an eyebrow.

“Because there’s no way in hell I’m risking a teleport spell through the Dire Wood itself. The butte itself might be visible, but the Dire Wood is laced through with wild and dead magic zones, and they aren’t stable. They move around erratically. We try and teleport there and we’re more than likely to end up with wild magic effects.”

“I still vote for teleport?” Nisha grinned and earned herself a pat on the head from her fiancé.

“So we walk…” Tristol’s voice was rather firm on the matter. “And please avoid casting any spells if you can possible avoid it because I can’t guarantee that I’ll know when magic goes topsy-turvy. Don’t mess with anything strange or unnatural looking, and with any luck we can avoid the undead that stalk the Wood.”

And so with considerable trepidation laced with curiosity they continued to walk as Tristol did his best to explain the region’s magically warped history. They did not have to wait long to reach the Dire Wood itself however. The cursed region was marked both by a strict demarcation of living, healthy trees and then nothing but bleached white, sickly trees and a smattering of them actually turned to solid stone.

“There’s nothing alive past that line of trees…” Fyrehowl’s ears were rigidly upright and perked, not at the presence of unnatural sounds, but the complete absence of animal life and birdsong from within the Dire Wood itself or even natural sounds from outside heard within.

“That’s both from the initial magical devastation of Karsus’s fall and what came later.” Tristol explained as they stepped through a patch of ground covered in crystalline, silver snow that refused to melt despite the ambient temperature. “So as I explained before, Karse the city was settled by Netherese refugees and others who inexplicably worshipped Karsus or the events he caused. They settled there for a time until Wulgreth arrived. Wulgreth was himself a former Netherese wizard, though not one of the archwizards.”

“Former as in formerly a wizard or…?” Florian prodded.

“As in formerly a living Netherese arcanist but no longer alive when he arrived in Karse.”

“Oh…” Toras, “That might explain where the death knight shows up then.”

“Much much much later, and a different Wulgreth entirely.”

“Huh?” Nisha’s eyes crossed briefly as she glanced at Tristol for an explanation.

“We’ll get there, don’t worry, but first about the original Wulgreth.” Tristol smiled as they walked past a stretch of swamp that bubbled with an acidic stench and rained with a slow drizzle of yellow fire. “Wulgreth was a lich, and unlike most every lich in existence, his undeath was both accidental and unplanned on his part.”

“How do you accidentally become a lich?” Florian asked.

“What happened to him?” Clueless gave a curious glance.

“Karsus happened to him.” Tristol slowly exhaled as he considered the utter grandeur of the works and even more so the stumbling mistakes of the greatest of Netheril’s archwizards. “Prior to the Avatar spell, Karsus created, experimented with, and then apparently abandoned something called heavy magic.”

Clueless’s eyes sprung wide at the mention of heavy magic.

“He wasn’t the first person to make that same discovery as our own experience would display…” Tristol glanced at Clueless. “And that reckless, careless experimentation was what caused Wulgreth to die and become a lich.”

“Damn…” Clueless whistled, doing his best to not bring attention to the fact that he’d been unconsciously touching the jewelry-concealed liquid bubble of the stuff at his neck.

“Karsus exposed Wulgreth to the stuff and that’s what it caused, and Wulgreth hated Karsus with all his undying fury forever after. He was never powerful enough to challenge Karsus, but once Karsus died and fell to earth, Wulgreth showed up with the intent to destroy the cult of Karsus and make himself a tomb atop the petrified flesh of his most hated enemy. He did just that.”

“So where’s the death knight come into play?” Toras asked, stepping over a patch of earth turned red from ochre much bubbling up from the ground like blood.

“Much, much later in history,” Tristol explained. “Wulgreth wasn’t an entirely uncommon name in Netheril, and nearly a thousand years later it happened that there was a second wizard by the name of Wulgreth who hailed from a region settled by Netherese refugees. He might have adopted the name as homage to the magical culture of Netheril that he was obsessed with, or it might have been his given name. I don’t know.”

Tristol paused as they reached a point in the forest where something had happened, and happened recently.

“What the hell happened here?” Fyrehowl narrowed her eyes and gazed at the wreckage of dozens of broken, snapped trees and a dozen pulverized undead, both zombies and skeletons. Splinters of stone scattered across the impromptu forest clearing, some of them impaling other trees, and one of them the size of man’s arm pinning a still twitching zombie to the ground, gurgling impotently as he turned its head to look at the adventurers.

“Something landed here.” Clueless remarked with a wince, “Something landed here and it landed hard.”

Taba’s fall from the sky had been a violent one, and she’d left behind a trail of destruction in her wake. Further into the clearing, the treeline was sheared at an angle from the impact of her arrival, and a ragged crater some ten or fifteen feet deep marked the actual point of impact. Dismembered and brutally, efficiently destroyed undead that had immediately and unthinkingly swarmed the altraloth lord lay scattered about in pieces as if they’d encountered some great beast, and when she’d seen fit to take that form, indeed they had.

“Well we found the spot we saw when we tried to scry Taba.” Fyrehowl gave a slow whistle as she beheld the surrounding devastation and then the path that Taba had wrecked on her way to Karse.

The forest floor was scarred by deep gouges as if from a huge, quadrupedal beast with monstrous claws. Even more as they crept forward, following in Taba’s footsteps, portions of the forest smoldered with aftereffects of great gouts of flame, lightning, or acid. Trees both diseased and petrified alike were singed, turned to ash or left in place as only smoldering, broken stumps surrounded by clouds of steam and fog filled with the stench of ozone.

“Why the hell is Taba even here in the first place?” Florian asked as Toras put his boot through the skull of a still-twitching zombie.

“She said she wanted to show us something.” Nisha shrugged, “Which is always a weird thing with ‘loths. My own experience suggests horrific pain and death or surprise chocolate candy.”

Eyes turned to the tiefling and she gave the bell at her tail’s tip a flick as she shrugged. “Ok so it’s probably the former. The latter is probably a unique case with A’kin.”

“Any notions about what Taba means or what she wants to show us?” Clueless glanced at the others as he took down a skeleton wielding a rusting glaive with a swift, measured strike from Razor.

“I don’t have a clue what Taba is talking about.” Tristol put his hands in the air, nearly hurling a fireball before he thought better of it and allowed Fyrehowl and Toras to dispatch a pack of ragged zombies wandering in from the surrounding forest. “But I don’t think she wants to just lure us out here to kill us. If she’d wanted to set a trap for us though, she could have done so a dozen times already. Clearly though, she’s been keeping track of us.”

“They only tried to kill us all the last time because we sort of interrupted her kill everything in Grenpoli stunt.” Fyrehowl gave a shrug much like Tristol.

“Nothing tried about it…” Clueless frowned and tightened his grip on Razor’s pommel. “That hurt and she enjoyed the hell out of it.”

An uncomfortable silence descended on the group as they realized that whatever the altraloth’s intentions, a direct fight against her in the Dire Wood would likely end swiftly and hideously. She would be under no constraints posed by her presence in the Hells and worries about retaliation by the powers of the pit.

“Sorry we stopped listening to your story Tristol…” Nisha broke the silence with a soft chuckle. “But you were saying?”

“About the second Wulgreth yes,” Tristol continued back on his previous discussion. “He was the one responsible for the circumstances in Hellgate Keep to the northeast of the High Forest. A rather powerful conjurer, he summoned baatezu and his enemies summoned tanar’ri and it all went to heck and he fled. He finally made his way to Karse and attempted to raise an undead army to return and take his revenge, except in the process of raising that army his lieutenant, a knight known by the name of Jingleshod had a moment of conscience and slew his master. Well, the influence of Karsus’s corpse and wild magic and all ended up turning that in-process work of necromancy inwards and transformed the dying Wulgreth into a lich and still ended up raising legions of undead.”

“One magical catastrophe wasn’t enough for the place.” Florian shook her head. “I take it the undead coming after us now are the remains of that army?”
“Precisely,” Tristol nodded. “Most of them have been bound to the Dire Wood since then, completely uncontrolled and just mean and hungry. Wulgreth himself ended up tracking down Jingleshod and promptly killing him in order to raise him again as a deathknight bound to his will and forever bound to the Dire Wood so long as he survived. They’ve both resided in the ruins of Karse since then, apparently either getting along with the original Wulgreth or just keeping their mutual distance. I don’t really know.”

“Lovely place for us to vacation in…” Florian gave an exaggerated grimace.

Still miles away from the great red stone butte, the group trudged on.


****​

One year prior:

Emerald light flared in the empty, hollow eye sockets of the demilich Wulgreth of Netheril as his spirit returned from its astral solitude and once again took up residence in the physical remnants of his mortal body. Dust and scattered bits of bone stirred with an ethereal wind as his skull lifted up from the stone pedestal that had cradled it for more than a century undisturbed.

He’d woven arcane traps into the very stones of the pyramid he’d raised atop the petrified corpse of Karsus and he’d allowed a second lich to take up residence elsewhere in the ruins of Karse. That other wizard -ironically enough by the same name- had swamped the Dire Wood with an army of undead puppets and a smattering of constructs. Clumsy and perhaps a bit cliché, they’d served to dissuade visitors even more so than the Dire Wood’s wizard weather and wild magic, and it had been hundreds of years since any would-be plunderer or pilgrim had disturbed the sanctity of his private sanctum atop the corpse of his most hated enemy in life.

That time had ended.

Wulgreth of Netheril expanded his senses to touch upon the woven lattice of magical energy he’d spun like a predatory spider placing its many legs upon its web. Wulgreth of Ascalhorn was destroyed and his essence had fled screaming back to his phylactery deep within the cavern at Karsus’s heart and the deadly, terrible pool therein. Jingleshod had abandoned his master in what would be perhaps his first few days of freedom in centuries, and the undead army now wandered without aim or focus.

The invaders were scaling the butte itself and would soon be at the pyramid itself, using both brute force to test the traps and then a mix of both considerable skill and trial and error to unmake those they could be. They cloaked their presence of divination, but they stank of evil. Perhaps some of the devils that the younger Wulgreth had bound prior to his undeath? The demons that his enemies had sent after him during his flight to Karse?

No matter. They had defeated the younger lich but temporarily, and they likely had no idea that a demilich resided deeper within the ruins. They might as well have defeated a hatchling only to discover the great wyrm still dwelling within its lair.

Wulgreth of Netheril’s glowing, gem-studded skull rose off of its platform and drifted towards the exit, intending to confront his visitors in person. The fight would be ever so brief.


****​

As she had in Portent, Venrisala ap Krangath walked next to her master, forever in his shadow and as such filled with a curious mixture of honor, pleasure, and abject horror. She’d walked with the Oinoloth in the flesh there in Gehenna, but now on the Prime Material she walked next to him in a different capacity altogether. While his presence had produced such feelings in her the first time, now she somehow felt more of the latter and less for the former. The creature that walked by her side truly impressed upon her the abject disdain with which the Oinoloth held those he deemed as lesser, as not fitting into his great plan, and for whom he saw fit to use and dispose of as he saw fit. As she walked, briefly brushing a flake of frost from her muzzle, she glanced to her side, looked up and wondered as to how and why she felt ecstatic and beloved even as she understood that she likely was yet more disposable still.

Clambering up the side of the butte like a parade of army ants, the torrent of mezzoloths screamed in agony as they burned and died, falling down like screaming meteors upon their fellows waiting at the base of the petrified would-be god Karsus. Their agony was profound, but for every mezzoloth that died, the one below them rose another few inches up the stone, discharging the profoundly powerful spells woven into the stone by the demilich that lurked higher above.

“We make progress my Oinoloth.” Venrisala bowed instinctively as she turned to the figure at her right. “The undead pose little to no threat now that their primary master Wulgreth of Ascalhorn is temporarily disposed of. The lich’s phylactery lays somewhere above on the surface of the butte, or within the butte itself, but it will be days before he reconstitutes. The undead and most but not all of the constructs have run wild in the absence of his presence.”

The Oinoloth’s vessel on the Prime Material plane made no response in its burning, terrible telepathy through which the Ebon’s voice was carried. The creature only inclined its head, giving no emotion upon its featureless, blank face. For most of the time it was virtually an automaton, a chained slave doomed to have its conscious will subsumed and cast aside by a much greater one, but in slivers of moments the divided will of the Oinoloth focused on this one puppet and then the fear doubled and the adoration returned. The arcanaloth scribe that followed alongside the vessel had no idea into how many such puppets the Ebon had cast his will and attention, but the method escaped her, as did the other techniques now being displayed in Karse so as to avoid the potentially lethal side effects of the tattered, broken fabric of Toril’s Weave in the proximity of the god-corpse that their own magic would have provoked.

The mezzoloths were of course cannon fodder, even more so now than in the Blood War. A half dozen other ‘loths, dergholoths and yagnoloths, marshaled the least yugoloths into their suicidal drive up the terrestrial godisle to their doom, and elsewhere in the skies above Karse, a half-dozen nycaloths scouted and reported back their findings to a coterie of arcanaloth wizards. The scribes recorded every scrap of information, sending it all flooding back to the archives in Gehenna. Perhaps more importantly the jackal-headed scribes and the trio of faceless ultroloths that stood at their core served to counter any spells directed back from the top of the butte that failed to discharge on the more disposable mezzoloths and might threaten the device carried by a trio of nycaloths at the far rear of the yugoloth expedition. 

“This is the first step.”

Venrisala shuddered and bit her lip as the Oinoloth’s voice touched her mind, dragging her from her thoughts and producing the bizarre conflation of emotions as it always did.

“My Oinoloth?”

“This is the first step towards something greater set in motion long ago.” The vessel motioned with one slender gray arm, its robe sliding down to its shoulder and displaying the burning runes impressed upon the unhealed flesh otherwise hidden by its clothing. “There are of course multiple paths to any desired outcome, but this is the most fitting, the most ironic, and the least likely to provoke direct divine or in the case of Anubis, supra-divine interference. If the device proves its worth here we will go further next, and if not, there are other methods I will utilize.”

Venrisala trembled as she basked in the Oinoloth’s words by proxy. Her response was obvious, and her responses had grown more obvious since their time in Portent at the Oinoloth’s side.

“You are jealous of her.”

“My Oinoloth?”

“You are jealous of the Overlord of Carceri.”

“Of course I am.” The scribe’s words were swift and followed by a snarl. “The rotting b*tch does not deserve you.”

The projected voice of the Oinoloth chuckled. “I am proud of you Venrisala.”

The scribe’s eyes went wide and she bowed down on one knee, putting her hands in the dirt.

“She does not deserve her position as your consort.” The arcanaloth spat, her brain compelled beyond reason by the Oinoloth’s attention to shed the truth in a torrent of words, unguarded and unvarnished. “She’s a scribe advanced beyond her position. She is a worthless castoff of the Tower. She is a failed apprentice to the Marauder, rejected and dismissed from the City of Doors. And yet she rules the Tower in Carceri. And yet she sits advanced over all of us. Why? Why my Oinoloth do you favor her? Why do you favor her above *me*?”

Venrisala looked up at the flickering, multicolored eyes of the vessel that towered over her and she gasped, realizing that she’d taken hold of its robe, pulling upon it as she vented her jealous rage. She whimpered, released her hold, and jerked back on her knees, dirtying her robes and her hands alike, horrified at her impulsive actions.

“Forgive me my Oinoloth!” She begged, prostrating herself at the vessel’s feet until it reached down and placed a finger at the muzzle and lifted her up, looking down at her rheumy, bleeding eyes.

“Yes Venrisala, I do favor Shylara.” The Oinoloth’s voice carried the impression of the Manged screaming in agony, screaming in ecstasy, writhing in darkness, cracking her skull against stone as her eyes jerked back and forth, breaking her claws against marble, and spasmodically seizing and biting her tongue in half. 

Venrisala choked and vomited from the intensity of what she’d experienced.

“I favor her because she suffers. Consider yourself lucky that I do not favor you in such a way.”

Weeping upon the ground, Venrisala’s fear and adoration merged for a moment as she stared into the vessel’s eyes. Her attention was swiftly distracted however by a great eruption from the top of the godcorpse and a vast, burning cloud of death.

“Tolodine’s Killing Wind. Impressive.” The Oinoloth spoke with admiration. “Well, then, it seems that we’ve finally found Wulgreth.”


****​


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## almost13

"one year earlier" - just when i thought things wouldn't get more intriguing. really should have learned after all those years, but you keep one-upping yourself when it comes to keeping your reader on the edge of his seat shemmy   (love how the heavy magic subplot keeps popping up every once in a while!)


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## Sabrewulf

Are the two Wulgreths canonical, or is Nisha the character influencing Shemmy the author?


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## Shemeska

Sabrewulf said:


> Are the two Wulgreths canonical, or is Nisha the character influencing Shemmy the author?




The two Wulgreths are actually canonical. Wulgreth of Netheril (demilich) and Wulgreth of Ascalhorn (lich) are apparently the result of two different authors creating a backstory for the Wulgreth lairing in Karse, and one of them being utterly unaware of the previous source that already handled those details. Rather than have to pick one of them to invalidate, later designers made both of them true and both lairing in Karse. Inelagant perhaps, and someone seriously dropped the ball on bothering to read the source material (and that happens far too much for my taste - but hell I'm just obsessive about the content I tend to write on), but it works and I ran with it in my campaign (Karse and the Wulgreths feature in the 3e novel 'Return of the Archwizards' which came out the year before the campaign went to Karse).


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## Sabrewulf

Thanks for the background! Hilarious. I prefer your obsessive approach, but a huge number of fantasy authors do this rather than re-edit their material, and canon is canon. Tolkien actually wrote a resurrection backstory when he realized he'd reintroduced a dead character with no explanation. Simarillion I think. 

Sabre


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## Tsuga C

Yet another grand update. This is the caliber of campaign that would've caused me to skip other social engagements and do my homework and studying in a perfunctory fashion if I'd had the privilege of participating as a player back in my undergraduate days. May your imaginings and writings go ever on.


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## Shemeska

The burning cloud washed over the top of the butte, stretching from the base of the onyx pyramid and flowing like a seeking, life-hungry liquid down the face of the cliff towards the mezzoloths clambering up the side upon and atop each other.

“My Oinoloth,” Venrisala turned towards the Oinoloth’s vessel, still averting her eyes from direct contact as she spoke, despite the fact that the archfiend was present by proxy rather than in person. “Shall we attempt to dispel the killing wind? I fear it will overwhelm the mezzoloths before the spell’s force is depleted.”

“No need.” The Ebon’s vessel waved one hand dismissively. “The spell was cast thousands of years ago in a period when Toril’s Weave still supported that capacity of magic. It will wither and fade before it does too much damage. I do not care unless it endangers the device. The mezzoloths are utterly disposable. If they die, we will bring them back in the same capacity as we have thus far.”

Venrisala nodded, though she had little doubt that the Oinoloth, even by proxy and separated by the space of the Astral at the very minimum could have dispelled the Netherese killing spell without much effort. Yet in the absence of the Oinoloth’s vessel saying a word or displaying any outward emotion on its featureless face, the scribe had the distinct notion that the Ebon was smirking.

“As you wish my Oinoloth,” Obsessively eager to plumb the Ebon’s mind, but unwilling to badger or second guess the unquestioned ruler of the Lower Planes of Conflict, the scribe returned to her role of recording her impressions of the day’s events.

Scratching her words with wide eyes, not bothering to look upon the page, Venrisala watched as nearly fifty mezzoloths shrieked and died. Losing their grip they plummeted towards the ground but never reached it before they disintegrated into their base essence and were drawn towards a trio of arcanaloths situated at the very base of the godisle. Each of them held a black onyx staff inscribed with runes and leaking a drifting aura of greasy darkness.

Each dying mezzoloth’s essence lanced towards a point equidistant between the staves, erupted in a pulse of flickering light that caused the runes on each staff to glow like burning coals, and then from nothing a newborn mezzoloth burst out of thin air at a random point within fifty feet. While the godisle prevented easy or reliable access to summons, teleportations, and gates, somehow the Ebon had provided a method to bypass such restrictions entirely and respawn each dying mezzoloth as if they’d died upon the Waste, Gehenna, or the first layer of Carceri within the range of the Third Tower’s influence.

How? She had absolutely no idea.

“How…?” She briefly glanced at the Oinoloth’s vessel, “Forgive me for asking, but how have you managed to replicate the properties of the Three Towers here on the prime, however in microcosm it might be?”

“Study the architecture of each tower.” The vessel replied, its telepathy worming its way up and down her spine like a finger tracing the outline of Khin-Oin. “Learn and understand the patterns woven into the bone of Khin-Oin as it meets the flesh of the Waste. Learn the patterns crafted into the foundation stones and the echoes of the screaming contract-binding souls in the archives as set down by Larsdana ap Neut when she designed the Second Tower. Stare into the Reflective Chasm of the Third Tower until your eyes go blind and you taste and experience the beautiful suffering of each and every screaming brick. Know those things and you will understand how I have done this.”

Venrisala’s eyes bulged.

“Learn those things and then,” The Ebon’s mental smirk returned as puissant as it had ever been. “Then you might be worthy.”

The arcanaloth scribe looked away from the Oinoloth’s vessel, suddenly struck by a sense of numbing worthlessness. She clenched her hands together, feeling unworthy of being in the Ebon’s presence, by proxy or not, and as she watched the mezzoloth burn and die en masse, she realized that in her present state she was just as much of a disposable tool as them.

Despite the scribe’s sudden introspection, what happened on the face of the butte was astonishing in two parts. As the ancient Netherese spell decimated their ranks, what occurred next was profound. As each mezzoloth died, their bodies disintegrated into clouds of visible, dull grey light that sprang forth on the air and bolted towards a trio of arcanaloths standing at the cliff base. Each jackal-headed wizard clutched a black, twisted metal staff in their hands, each emblazoned with runes and leaking drops of greasy darkness upon the ground moment by moment and lines of jagged magical energy traced between them.

As each mezzoloth’s essence sprung forth from the point of their deaths, they all lanced towards the center point of the area bound by the staves, and as they made contact, they created a pulse of black energy that seemed to consume the ambient light, and then at a random point within the surrounding hundred yards a new mezzoloth spontaneously burst into being, their essence reforged and created anew as if at the spawning pits of Khin-Oin, the forges of the Tower Arcane, or the Chasm of the Tower of Incarnate Pain.

Mezzoloths were tools at best, and here upon the prime their status as a renewable resource made them utterly disposable.

*‘Whatever master you serve, you will die and they will suffer for this intrusion.’*

The voice of Wulgreth washed across the assembled fiends. Against mortal adventurers it might have been terrifying, but against the ‘loths it would have been an open question in the first place, and in the presence of an extension of the Oinoloth it was only pointless bluster.

“Ignore the demilich’s taunt!” Vernisala shouted at the yagnaloths and their insectile soldiers. “Continue your climb to the summit and draw him out.”

As she screamed at the lesser yugoloths, acting in her capacity as an intermediary for the Oinoloth who’d barely acted through his vessel except to offer commentary, the scribe realized that the undead arcanist would need little goading to appear. The words were barely from her lips when the bejeweled skull of Wulgreth of Netheril appeared atop the butte and gazed down at the fiends dying from his magic.

“Target the demilich!” Venrisala barked angrily, even as she physically backed away and positioned herself behind a trio of ultroloths. The motion was not at all lost upon the highest caste of yugoloths, and all three glared at her before turning their eyes to the other member of their caste, the one with the jagged spike of crystal impaled through its forehead.

“Go.” The Oinoloth’s telepathy sneered, flickering into their brains the images of the ruling ultroloths of Khin-Oin dead and hanging from the spires, and the stench of their rotting corpses carried on the cold and fierce wind miles up. All three ultroloths bowed and turned towards the demilich high above. The Oinoloth’s command impressed upon them their place, even as they cleared disdained the position of favor that the arcanaloth scribe –their lesser in both power, experience, and caste – was granted.

Stepping free of the coterie of arcanaloths that traveled alongside them, the ultroloth sorcerers immediately hurled their own spells up towards the demilich: bolts of black energy, spheres of molten lead laced through with lighting, and words intended to break and push aside the undead arcanist’s own potent wards. As terrible as their magic was to behold, the first volley struck upon the demilich’s protective spells with little effect beyond rampant destruction all around but not actually touching it.

Wulgreth’s skull drifted forward, its laughing washing though the fiends’ minds as it wordlessly cast first a crackling bolt of lightning that struck one of the yagnoloths and then forked and lanced out to strike a dozen others, leaving them dancing and dying, with black smoke and ozone rising up from the joints in their carapace. Without a pause a green beam of energy erupted and struck one of the expedition’s nycaloths flying above the battle, reducing it to a powder-fine cloud of ash. All of that in space of a moment, before any mortal wizard would have finished a single casting.

Spurred into motion by both the Oinoloth’s orders and the frightening alacrity and potency of Wulgreth’s magic, the ultroloths raised their arms and began to cast again. Each hurled spells against Wulgreth’s defenses a second time, but either their spells were ineffectual against the undead horror, or else their acts of dispelling one shell of its multilayered defenses caused more to spring up in their place.

“Behold the pinnacle of yugoloth promotion.” The Ebon’s telepathic voice sighed before it snarled. “Worthless.”

Venrisala turned, eyes wide as the Ebon’s telepathy contained the impression of rolled eyes and growing impatience. He was absolutely nothing like the faceless, distant ultroloths whose influence he’d utterly bypassed on his way to Khin-Oin’s throne.

As the Oinoloth watched from behind the ranks of his forces, the fawning arcanaloth scribe at his side recording it all, the trio of ultroloths continued to do battle with the demilich. As the minutes stretched on and their spells continued to flicker and fly across the space between them and Wulgreth, it rapidly became obvious that it was a monstrous and utter stalemate. The ancient Netherese wizard was far and away superior to any of the ultroloths in magical combat, but collectively, and bolstered by magic items looted from their comrades executed atop Khin-Oin’s ramparts, over time the ultroloths might have eventually defeated Wulgreth or forced him to retreat. Outside of collateral damage to the other, lesser fiends watching the battle, the magical back and forth produced little obvious gain for either the demilich or the ultroloths.

Twenty minutes in, Wulgreth’s protections stood solid, and the ultroloths were uninjured, with the exception of one of them losing a hand when a magical item overloaded and exploded in the act of nullifying a use of the demilich’s soul-devouring powers. The fight would likely have continued another hour at least before one side or the other stood victorious.

It did not continue.

“Enough.”

The Oinoloth’s telepathic voice called out. Immediately the ultroloth trio moved aside to allow a fourth member of their caste into view, this one unadorned in any finery or marked by any place of station, bereft of any trinkets or objects of power save one: a shard of cobalt crystal thrust into its skull. As it stepped forward, the flickering, multicolored radiance of the ultroloth’s eyes dulled, died, and then reignited with a singular, sickly glow in reddish-pink.

Taking the pause in combat to its advantage, a magical bubble of force erupted into being around Wulgreth’s floating skull. The spell added another layer of protection from the presumed magical barrage to come, but the demilich went no further in his spellcasting because something about the yugoloth’s voice struck him as odd: the fiend suddenly addressed him in fluent Netherese.

“I would have expected more from you Wulgreth.” The Oinoloth spoke through his chosen vessel, his words expressed through the debased ultroloth’s telepathy like claws breaking through a layer of ice and carrying a feeling of almost palpable pollution. “You’ve had more than a thousand years to prepare this place as your refuge and clearly we find those defenses wanting. Still, I must admit my surprise at your allowing a second lich residence in your citadel atop Karse: Wulgreth of Ascalhorn.”

Wulgreth hovered in the air, exuding a soft green radiance, and as the demilich stared at the Ebon’s ultroloth puppet, the other fiends uniformly paused and waited. Although neither of them had begun to cast, all presumed that a renewed magical battle was imminent, all but Venrisala.

Standing next to the Oinoloth, the fur across her arms and neck bristled and moved with an unseen wind, like hair drifting and moving in the presence of wool and amber. Though not moving or speaking, the Ebon was doing something that she could only just barely discern: below the level of the Oinoloth’s telepathy channeled through the ultroloth, there was a soft, oh so faint susurrus of what first seemed like a low, droning mental static. She turned to look, eyes wide at the Oinoloth, and realized that the static had patterns and words. She turned away and shut it out as it burned her mind like grazing one’s fingertips unknowingly upon a burning piece of metal. Below the level of the demilich’s senses, the Ebon was casting his mental fingers to pluck and weave the ambient and broken tatters of the Weave in the presence of the godisle at a profound level of nuance that she had quite frankly never witnessed.

The scribe smiled to herself and wiped the drool from the corner of her mouth. There would be no grand spell-battle.

*'How do you know me fiend? Speak. Explain your blundering intrusion now.'*

“Speak I will.” The ultroloth vessel’s eyes flickered with their albino radiance as the Ebon caused it to spread its arms and half bow in a sarcastic gesture of humility and apology. Had the Oinoloth been physically present he would doubtless have done the same, but the ultroloth lacked a mouth with which to mockingly smirk. “Our surprise when the Wulgreth we first fought in the ruins of Karse was far below what we would have expected. How convenient to muddy history and your own lore with a second wizard of the same name. My servitors found him difficult on his own and then we found you and all of your traps here as well. Unlike him and his death knight however, you are not some mere pretender to Netherese might. You are Netherese yourself. But alas Wulgreth, for all your blind hatred of your long-dead nemesis, you could never hope to equal Karsus.”

Wulgreth hovered in the air, still and silent, his jeweled teeth flickering with a myriad of colors similar to those that only moments before the ultroloth’s eyes had possessed, but now they met the gaze of the ultroloth’s orbs which shown with only the sickly albino radiance of the Oinoloth’s as if the Ebon were looking through a pair of windows into the Prime Material. Wulgreth gazed back through those windows and then in that voice, that mocking arrogance, and the gaze of those eyes, he recognized the creature for who and what it truly was.

Memories kindled in the demilich’s brain from more than a millennium earlier, there in the palace of Karsus, atop the archwizard’s floating city and the last moments of his mortal life: a single glimpse of those same albino eyes and a single, beguiling ivory smile in those last moments before his doom at the hands of Karsus and the mad archwizard’s experiment.

*“YOU!”*

The mental presence of the Oinoloth smiled just as it had so many years before as its ultroloth vessel raised one arm, extended a single withered hand and then clenched it tight, pulling tight the cords of the magical webs and wires woven about the demilich. With a resounding thunderclap and eruption of raw magical power, the entirely of the demilich’s protections imploded in upon it, leaving behind nothing but a warped smear of ash upon the ground in the shape of the Oinoloth’s symbol and a tortured, shifting afterimage of Wulgreth frozen in the air above it.

“The way is clear. Wulgreth’s essence now resides in the depths of one of his own spelltraps. Return to clearing the way towards the heart and ready the device. As for the demilich, he can rot in solitude for all I care.”

Within the depths of Khin-Oin, the Oinoloth smiled, knowing well the irony of the statement.


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## Shemeska

The group continued their trek through the twisted, magically warped landscape of the Dire Wood, cautiously avoiding the worst of what Tristol described as “wizard weather” and the largest packs of both the wandering undead and a number of ancient, weathered, and utterly violent golems and other constructs. Still, their caution made the next two miles into the next four as they ended up backtracking at several points. 

Outside of the “normal” terrain, the magical weather, and the spontaneous wild magic zones (which didn’t actually seem to affect Nisha in any negative manner), they continued to run across evidence of Taba’s passage. Trees, both sickly and petrified alike, lay snapped or shattered, and vast sections of terrain lay scorched from flame, frozen by intense and lingering cold, corroded by acid, or blasted with lightning and still reeking of ozone. Each such location was littered with the remains of packs of undead who’d swarmed the altraloth lord. Clearly they’d barely slowed the archfiend’s passage.

All the way through it all, Tristol continued to provide a meandering lecture on the history of Netheril and its catastrophic fall.

“If not for Karsus’s profoundly misguided actions, can you imagine what magic on Toril might have accomplished by now?” Tristol put his hands in the air and sighed.

“A gigantic mage war between the enclaves?” Florian raised an eyebrow.

“Or…” Toras glanced at the wizard with a wry grin, “A situation like Thay right now with wizards ruling over a peasantry composed of everyone without magic?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. There’s no way to know now after what happened. Karsus meant well I suppose. He wanted to become the savior of Netheril.” Tristol sighed a second time, “He wanted to protect his people from those damn toothy windsocks lurking under the Anauroch, but rather than just being pragmatic about it, he decided to do something so grotesquely over the top and remarkably shortsighted. Netheril virtually died because of his ego. For all of his brilliance, Netheril’s fall and everything around us now can be laid entirely at his feet. All of this is the fault of Karsus and Karsus alone.”

Tristol paused to take a breath before launching into another half-rant-half-lecture about Netheril’s fall before he noticed that Toras had stopped dead in his tracks and put a hand to his blade, while Fyrehowl had already spun around and brandished her own at something behind them.

“Well naughty word…” Clueless blurted out as he took to the air and saw both the solitary figure that stood only a few dozen feet behind them and also the tide of undead massed and waiting in the woods, almost entirely surrounding their position.

Tristol turned around, noticing Nisha deftly clip-clopping a few steps to put him between her and the thing that watched them.

“You…” The deathknight’s voice echoed across the landscape with a harsh, hollow echo. “What come you seeking?”

Jingleshod’s ghostly, transparent body flickered with a cold light, surrounded by and linked to the corporeal world by the platemail armor that he’d worn in life. Once gleaming and imposing, it still struck fear into those opposing him, but the centuries and the elements had not been kind to its appearance. Gone was the shine of steel and what remained behind was rusted and corroded, though the greataxe cradled in the undead warrior’s arms like a toy remained as sharp as the day it cooled from its birth in the forge. Standing silent as the grave, the deathknight’s eyes gleamed black from within the empty recess of his helm.

“We came here to meet someone.” Clueless called out. “We have no desire to plunder or disturb anything in or around Karse.”

“Is that so?” Jingleshod gestured to the hundreds of undead that surrounded them, “Lie to me and I will command them to swarm. No matter your power I command an army that acts upon my word.”

Florian swallowed hard and took her fingers from her holy symbol. The deathknight was true to his word, and if he called them forward, no amount of prayer on her part could stop them all. 

“Might be worth risking the wild magic and just teleport us out of here Tristol…” Nisha’s tail nervously tapped her fiancé in the small of the back. “I don’t want to be eaten alive by zombies. That’ll kind of ruin the wedding plans…”

Before anything hasty occurred, Tristol stepped forward.

“Jingleshod, yes?” The aasimar called out to the hulking, armored deathknight.

The deathknight lowered his axe, more a showing in curiosity than of relaxation, but a positive showing nonetheless.

“You are correct wizard. I admit my surprise at someone knowing of me after all these years. Perhaps you can explain your intrusion then.”

“It’s as my companion explained before, we came here to meet someone.” Tristol put his hands out in contrition. “I would have expected that Wulgreth would have us butchered for simply being here in the Dire Wood. Yet I find you in command on the undead here, not him. What has changed, and what caused it?”

“Wulgreth is indisposed, and in the absence of his will, the undead army he raised after fleeing Hellgate Keep defaults to my command. For the first time in centuries I may act in the entirety of my own will, rather than the lich’s.” The deathknight’s form flickered as his ghostly form lapped within the confines of his armor like a tide going in and out, almost as if the creature had chuckled. “That is my answer for you wizard, so complete yours for me. Who then did you come to meet?”

“We came here at the urging of Taba, a yugoloth lord.”

At the mention of the word yugoloth, Jingleshod slammed him axe into the ground and screamed with rage.

“THEM! THEY HAVE DENIED ME REVENGE!”

Jingleshod’s rusted, broken armor shuddered and crawled with a crackling tracery of green, necromantic energies that crawled across each plate and piece of chain like worms bursting free or and then returning to a rotting corpse.

“Clearly you don’t like yugoloths…” Toras deadpanned, “Welcome to the club.”

“We hate them.” Fyrehowl snarled. “What did they do to you?”

“We came here at the urging of Taba,” Tristol’s ears perked in anticipation of a reply, “Did Taba slay Wulgreth?”

“The shapeshifting monster is your Taba?” Jingleshod asked.

“Shapeshifting monster pretty well describes them, yeah.” Toras nodded.

“It is newly arrived. I have avoided it. The undead outside of my range of control have of course attacked it, much to the results that you’ve seen as you walked through the wood. No, I speak of its kindred who arrived nearly a year ago.”

Tristol narrowed his eyes, joined by a chorus of disturbed and concerned stares from the others.

“Yugoloths came here almost a year ago?” The aasimar’s fox ears lay flat against his head, “Why? What did they do and what did they want?”

“They came in numbers, their trident wielding insects scuttling through the wood before their leaders, the jackal headed wizards and the faceless ones with flickering eyes. I knew not who they were or at first what they came to do.” The deathknight snarled bitterly, “Wulgreth opposed them, but it was a quick battle. I laughed with joy when they slew him. For the time it would take for the lich to reform and reanimate I would at least be free to seek my freedom and destroy his phylactery.”

“Why didn’t you find it and destroy it?” Florian asked.

“I have tried before, more than once, but it is beyond my capacity to destroy.” Jingleshod sighed, “Wulgreth knew this. I suspect that he designed his phylactery in that manner from the start.”

“Perhaps we can help you?” Toras volunteered them all to go hunting a lich, smiling as he made the offer.

“I would have sought the aid of you or any others, but that hope is now beyond me.” The deathknight looked up and off into the distance, staring at the red stone godisle that towered above the Dire Wood and the ruins of Karse.

“How?” Tristol asked, “We have magical resources that you do not. We’d be more than happy to help you if you could keep us safe through the Dire Wood?”

“Because they have stolen it! They have stolen the Karsestone itself!” Jingleshod’s response trailed off into a wail of loss, less anger than misery and disbelief. He’d never chosen undeath, but Wulgreth had imposed it upon him, contingent that he would remain in that state and in thrall to the wizard so long as Wulgreth lived, in whatever state of being that happened to be.

“They what!?” Tristol’s eyes went wide.

“Wulgreth bound his spirit to the great magic-bleeding stone at the heart of Karsus’s petrified corpse. The object was impervious to damage, and so impervious to any attempt of mine to destroy it. Wulgreth would return and mock my attempts, knowing that each rare occasion that I was afforded the chance to try that I would fail.”

“Yugoloths stole the Karsestone?!” Tristol put a hand on Nisha’s shoulder to steady himself as his brain swam with a multitude of questions with no answers. “Why? What could… what?!”

“They came, made for the stone, destroyed all that stood in their way, and then vanished.” Jingleshod turned and began to walk away. “I am resigned to an eternity in my present state. You are no friend of theirs though it seems, and so you have no enemy in me and mine.”

“We can try and help you!” Toras called out as the deathwalk walked away, his army pulling back to follow him.

“Meet your fiendish friend and leave me to my solitude. If you can return what was stolen, seek me out, otherwise I suspect that we will not meet again.”

Silence returned to the Dire Wood and with questions on their mind, they continued their march towards Karse and their meeting with Taba. As they walked on however, Tristol’s eyes radiated fear and worry as he looked up and stared long and hard at the godisle of Netheril’s greatest wizard and the reason for Netheril’s doom, the genius that the elves had mocked as the Ape Who Would Fly.


****​

The ruins of Karse hugged about the base of the ruddy stone godisle, the literal petrified corpse of Karsus, dead at the moment of his ascension to misbegotten godhood. Broken by wars, invaders, plunderers, and magical catastrophes, the buildings lay in a mixture of states, everything from abandoned but intact to reduced to their foundation stones like a giant’s dollhouse scattered by the hand of an angry child titan.

Small numbers of the undead crawled about, though Florian’s divine channeling drove off or destroyed most of those that took an interest in them well before they drew into close range. The few that managed to surprise them met swift doom at the blades of Cluless, Toras, or Fyrehowl, and in the case of one particularly silent but grossly unlucky zombie, destroyed when Nisha accidentally jumped off of a nearby column and landed hooves first upon its head. 

More of Taba’s path of wanton destruction wove its way into the depths of the ruins, and there settled on her haunches in full, grandiose, and conspicuous sight near the base of the butte itself, sat the altraloth herself.

“It is good to see you again mortals.”

Taba the Infiltrator of the Planes gazed down with her feral red eyes from atop a pile of granite rubble in the massive form of great wyrm fang dragon. Her scales gleamed a glossy metallic black as she spread her wings and momentarily cast her shadow across the mortals below, chuckling as she blocked out the sun.

 “We meet in much better circumstances this time even, for I have no Baatezu to slaughter for their complicity in the crimes of traitors.”

“Why did you call us out here to Karse?” Clueless asked, his hand gripped upon Razor.

Taba opened her mouth to reply but Tristol spoke first, interrupting the altraloth with a finger pointed directly at her.

“Why did your kind come to Karse a year ago?”

Taba smiled, a slow rumble erupting from her gullet before she chuckled and inclined her head up towards the top of the butte. Distantly from their position they could see a black stone pyramid situated atop the petrified shoulder of the dead, would-be god.

“Look up above you mortals. Do you see it? Go into the pyramid atop the butte. Go, look, and you’ll find reasons why you should ignore my prior actions, and in fact see them as completely justified.”

Again, Taba chuckled, crossing her forearms like a happily purring cat. A set of eyes sprouted upon her left wing to gaze up at the pyramid even as she kept her primary eyes focused upon the mortals that she’d fought in the depths of Baator.

“What are we supposed to be looking for up there?” Tristol asked, recognizing the pyramid as a distinctly Netherese construction, and likely the demesne of the original Wulgreth. “What does Wulgreth, the original one, have to do with this?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Taba smirked, “The demilich is a curious but incidental player in this all. But no, go up and look for yourself as to what has gone on within, both in the ancient past and much more recently. You have to means to view past events, you or you both at the very least.” Taba inclined her head to Tristol, then Florian, then to Clueless. “Perhaps even you as well. Go in, see what you will and understand a sliver of how my conflict involves your kind.”

Given their previous encounter with the altraloth, they stared dubiously at the shapeshifter. Trust in the words of a yugoloth, even an apparent renegade against the current order in the Waste was not something easily granted.

“Or you know,” Toras grinned, patting a hand on his sword handle, “We could kill you and improve the multiversal balance of Good versus Evil.”

“And just how well did that go for you in the past?” Taba sneered, craning her long neck forward towards the half-celestial, with a dull draconic rumble emanating from her cavernous throat as a dull, red glow seeped between the armored scales of her belly and the smell of sulfur touched the air. “And this time I would not be concerned with the forces of Hell or my own wayward brethren…”

“There is that I suppose,” Fyrehowl swatted a paw at Toras’s hand, “Put that away.” 

Baring her fangs, Taba’s eyes turned from the half-celestial and lingered on Clueless. For a split second she pursed her lips and whistled a nightengale’s tune as dozens of eyes flickered open upon Taba’s fang dragon body, forming from suddenly fluid flesh to each focus upon one of her mortal guests. In assorted places her scales parted with the opening of newly formed fanged mouths, each smirking with subtle hatred.

“I came here to inform you of things invisible to you. How often can mortals claim the support of an altraloth with mutual goals? Hmm? Do as I say and you’ll understand this better; especially you wizard.”

Tristol narrowed his eyes. He didn’t know what had happened here beyond what he already knew of the fall of Karsus, why the ‘loths were so interested in it, or why Jingleshod had claimed that they’d stolen the Karse Stone, but he didn’t like the sound of Taba’s implications that it all would mean something particularly to him.

“We’re not your puppets.” Fyrehowl insisted.

“Oh but you are!” Taba beamed, smiling from a dozen mouths. “Count yourself lucky and among the few who’re aware of that fact!”

The lupinal frowned before pantomiming taking a pair of scissors to any invisible strings above her head.

“Now go, you have a mountain to climb.” The altraloth glanced up the sheer Cliffside and the shadows of dead mezzoloths burned into the stone.

“Or we could go for round two…” Toras tapped his sword a second time.

“Oh please! Let us!” Taba’s maw stretched wide as she laughed and leered, “Ask the bladesinger how that worked out most recently.”

Clueless had been conspicuously silent for the duration of their audience with the altraloth. He still remembered the surprise and the pain when she’d slain him in the Beastlands.

“F*** that…” The bladesinger gritted his teeth. “And f*** you too.”

“Your death was delicious mortal and it would be yet swifter a second time.” She snarled, the expression reflected a split second later in every one of her sneering mouths and every narrowed, mocking eye as ever more sprouted from her polymorphic flesh to reflect her mood. “This time mortals I find myself unencumbered by the forces of a Duke of Hell, the nuisance of manifest Law in the air I breath, and fully willing to train my sole efforts on butchering you all in as brutal a capacity as needed.”

“Yeah I think we’re good without a fight here.” Nisha peeped up from behind Tristol. “And really, do you all really need the Xaositect to be the voice of reason here right now?”

“We can take her.” Toras insisted, one moment before Taba sprouted two additional heads, each of their maws dripping a different element, “Or perhaps not. I take that back.”

“So yes… do tempt me to revel in your deaths if you so choose.” The altraloth cackled, “Or not as the case might be. I could have butchered you and your loved ones a dozen times over, but yet I have not. Ask yourself why.”

“Why didn’t you kill us?” Tristol asked, his interest overwhelming his hatred.

“You survived and thus you gained my attention.” Taba pantomimed peering through a spyglass, then scratching her claws, then working a marionette, “I was wrought by the hags to be a spy, both perfect eye and perfect blade, and a gifted spymaster does not dispense of useful tools.”

Fyrehowl snarled, “Oh f*ck you you f*cking ‘loth”

“Careful with your hatred there guardinal. I did not drag your precious Belarion from its moorings and drag it across the planes for my own ends. Direct your hatred at the Usurper and I will direct mine to the same. The false claimant to Khin-Oin and to my race is the object of my hate, though yes, he and I, we do view our eventual victims in much the same capacity.”

“Tools.” Fyrehowl shook her head.

“Precisely.”

A long, pregnant silence descended upon them, broken only by the sparking of broken magic upon the cliff face high above.

“Seriously Taba, you’re claiming to be our ally for the moment?” Clueless glanced up with utter contempt. “Really?”

“Ah finally a thought of truth that begs me to illuminate you and your convictions as to why I am not your enemy.” Taba smiled a dozen different times in sequence, “I wasn’t going out of my way to kill you at any point: not then in the Hells, not then in the Beastlands, and not now on the Prime. You were unforeseen victims of my revenge against tools of the false-Oinoloth. My apologies I suppose.”

“Thank you I suppose?” Clueless remarked with an absence of sincerity.

Upon seeing the bladesinger’s doubt reflected in his features, Taba curled her lips and spat, ejecting a tiny object from the depths of her cavernous throat. The object twirled and glimmered in the sunlight, shining as it arced through the air and then fell at Clueless’s feet.

A large and flawless diamond.

“Consider that my apology for your slaughter. Hopefully you’ve learned something from the experience. Very few can knowingly claim to have been butchered by an altraloth lord and come back to tell the tale. Do be polite though and don’t spread this one, I find it somewhat embarrassing that I didn’t have time to clean up and abscond with your soul for later sale.”

Clueless strongly considered kicking the gemstone and punting it straight into one of the archfiend’s open eyes. The fiend’s poking, prodding telepathy seemed to gradually sift through his surface thoughts and make a mockery of his mental protections, and as a slow grin formed below the eye he’d considered aiming at, he thought better of it.

“Thank you.” The bladesinger replied, stooping to pick up the gemstone. “No hard feelings.”

“I do have one lingering question for you mortals though before you begin your ascent.” Several of Taba’s newly formed mouths exuded tongues of all manner to flit and flick at the air like a sniffing serpent, curious and questioning. “It strikes me to wonder why you were present in the Hells in the first place. Our encounter seemed laughable and for you nearly deadly happenstance, but you don’t strike me as the sort to have been trodding into the estate of an infernal duke without someone sending you there. What were you actually doing there and who sent you?”

“We were sent there to kill you.” Toras smiled, once again patting his sword, and once again receiving a half-hearted swat from Fyrehowl.

“Unexpected.” Taba’s draconic countenance tilted its head and she quirked an eyebrow even as her myriad of other eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Not that we knew that you were, well, you.” Toras added.

“Curious.” None of her expressions changed as she waited for further explanation.

“We were duped into going there.” Fyrehowl explained, “We were told to find a man meeting with the duke, and that by killing him that we’d end up preventing a string of future atrocities. We were lied to, because they didn’t expect that we’d take up the task if we knew that we’d be fighting you, rather than a particular elf who never actually existed.”

“WHO?” Taba snarled, hissing in anger from her ancillary mouths, “Who sent you after me. Their name. Now! The pretender to Khin-Oin? One of his vassals? The Keeper of the Tower? The scheming b*tch in Sigil? The presently silent Overlord of Carceri, the Pretender’s ragged, bleeding consort?”

“Green Marvent of the Illuminated.” Toras spoke with a shrug.

Always so certain of herself, always knowledgeable and informed, the Infiltrator of the Planes blinked, uncertain of what to say. She knew absolutely nothing about the man or his would-be faction.

“Curious…” Taba muttered.

“I take it that wasn’t the answer you were expecting?” Toras asked.

Taba stared at the fighter and gave no response, even as the wheels in her mind spun wildly. She would have to investigate the matter. First within the Hells and the court of the Hag Countess, and then to Plague-Mort itself. Perhaps the fool was a proxy of some power slighted by her in the past? Perhaps he was a diviner of profound magical insight? Without more information, she was for once absolutely dumbfounded as to how he’d known she would be there and what she actually was.

“No.” The altraloth finally replied, “It seems that you’ve given me a question to ponder and investigate even as I’ve tasked you for one of the same of your own. A fitting start for allies of circumstance.”

“We aren’t allies.” Fyrehowl glared.

“We appreciate you not killing us and we appreciate you giving us something to investigate.” Nisha called out before leaning in to Tristol, “Am I seriously going to be the voice of reason today? That’s scary.”

“So I suppose that we’re done talking then and we have something up above to investigate.” Clueless glanced up and then back to the altraloth.

“Indeed we are, but do watch your step however during your ascent and beyond.” Taba lazily inclined her head towards the pyramid high above. “Karse originally housed not one but two liches as you may or may not be aware, both of them named Wulgreth. Both of them seem to have been indisposed of late. One of them was physically destroyed and so presumably he’ll be reconstituting himself, but the other I cannot quite sniff his fate for certain. In either event, regardless of when one or both return, they left a rather large amount of wards in place, and the detritus of their recent visitations of which there have been several in the past year, may have left their own perils as well.”

Toras pulled out rope and searched the rock for the quickest and safest route, with Taba’s myriad eyes upon his back the entire time.

“I’ll be in telepathic contact as you search through Wulgreth’s effects and the marks left by my kind high above. Until you find what I’ll have you discover, I await your return mortals.”


----------



## Sabrewulf

So, a character question, and perhaps one you have already answered. What classes did all these folks play as, just in the main storyline?

Sabre


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## Shemeska

Sabrewulf said:


> So, a character question, and perhaps one you have already answered. What classes did all these folks play as, just in the main storyline?
> 
> Sabre




Clueless - rogue/wizard/arcane trickster/unique PrC eventually
Tristol - wizard/archmage
Nisha - rogue/wizard/XaOsiTeCT PrC
Fyrehowl - barbarian/monk/cipher PrC (we justified the combination of monk and barbarian through the whole monastic cipher theme and their focus on intuitive action)
Toras - fighter/the broken as all heck PrC that gave mettle (basically evasion for Fort saves)
Florian - cleric
Kiro - rogue
Skalliska - rogue/wizard/gatecrasher
Alex - wizard/alienist
Future PC (Alex/Skalliska's player) - cleric

And just because:
Shemeska - sorcerer (plus those racial arcanaloth caster levels). I want to say that I ended up putting her in as an effectively 21st level caster before all was said and done, but she wasn't the highest level arcane caster in (or under) Sigil.


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## Sabrewulf

Shemeska said:


> Clueless - rogue/wizard/arcane trickster/unique PrC eventually
> Tristol - wizard/archmage
> Nisha - rogue/wizard/XaOsiTeCT PrC
> Fyrehowl - barbarian/monk/cipher PrC (we justified the combination of monk and barbarian through the whole monastic cipher theme and their focus on intuitive action)
> Toras - fighter/the broken as all heck PrC that gave mettle (basically evasion for Fort saves)
> Florian - cleric
> Kiro - rogue
> Skalliska - rogue/wizard/gatecrasher
> Alex - wizard/alienist
> Future PC (Alex/Skalliska's player) - cleric
> 
> And just because:
> Shemeska - sorcerer (plus those racial arcanaloth caster levels). I want to say that I ended up putting her in as an effectively 21st level caster before all was said and done, but she wasn't the highest level arcane caster in (or under) Sigil.




I figured there was a lot of multi classing going on, and it's cool to see how you set up Shemeska. It's definitely a trick to make an NPC villain high enough in the food chain to be a campaign-long problem, but not quite on the god-level of things the PCs aren't supposed to fight. 

I like multi-classing in 5e quite a bit, but I wish they wrote more than just Cha classes with some synergy. Basically if you're a lock/bard/pally/sorc you can make really interesting combinations that are also optimized, and if you're not, you have to choose. 

Anyway, thanks for the detail. 

Sabre


----------



## Shemeska

The climb up the red stone butte was long and slow, complicated by a lack of natural handholds in places, flickers of wild magic precipitating out of the stone, and the presence of carbonized mezzoloth corpses that clung tight to the stone, only to crumble to ashes when touched, defying any climbers a firm and safe grip. All the while, Taba waited below like a lazy, idle, sadistic cat lounging in a dragon’s flesh below, seemingly divided on whether she wanted them to successfully ascend and see what she intended for them to see, or else slip and fall to their screaming deaths.

Half of their attempts to scale a given stretch ended up in failure and a panicked backtrack to a lower point. Each moment was split, with one half spent glancing down towards the ground and the amused, watching altraloth below, and the other frantically clinging to the stone or a lowered rope, the wind blowing sharp and cold in their face as they drew closer and closer to the peak.

Finally they reached the summit, somewhere atop what would have once been Karsus’s shoulder. Gasping for air, her claws grasping for sure purchase on the blood red rock below her feet, Fyrehowl reached the summit first followed shortly after by Toras, and the two of them lowered a rope for the rest of the party to follow suit.

Situated there atop the shoulder of the failed god, at the highest point of elevation for a hundred miles or more, they gazed out at the ruins of Karse, the magical wastes of the Dire Wood, and the wilds of the High Forest beyond that point. Occupying that spot was something distinctly out of place: a black stone pyramid, some hundred feet high and partially sunk into the godisle like an erupting tumor.

“What the hell is this thing?” Toras asked, glancing at the magical flickering that meandered across the stone. A large crater dotted its left side, the hollow crackling with random energies, but otherwise the stones showed no signs of weathering over the centuries that they’d stood there.

“It’s Netherese.” Tristol remarked as he carefully studied the High Netherese runes embossed in low relief across the surface. “Presumably it’s what the older Wulgreth set up as his home… tomb… whatever you want to call it I suppose.”

“I don’t see an entrance.” Florian smirked, “But I don’t think I want to touch the magically sparkling deathtrap wrought in artistically carved black stone either.”

“Hold on one moment…” Tristol muttered as he translated the particular Netherese dialect, looking for the phrase to call forth an entrance. Twice as his eyes scoured the stone, he reached out and pushed away Nisha’s far too overly inquisitive hands, “…and please don’t touch the hideous magical traps Nisha. That crater was formerly one of them.”

“No touchy?” The tiefling frowned.

“No touchy.” Tristol smiled, just before he tapped a series of runes and spoke a phrase, invoking a door to form in the stone. “Except for that touchy I suppose. In we go!”

Several of the group immediately invoked magical lights upon their head, their blade, or to bob and follow them around as they warily stepped into the black, featureless passage into the demilich’s lair. The passage proceeded for a dozen yards at a slight descent before it opened up into a single, dimly lit chamber which had once served as Wulgreth’s laboratory.

“Wow!” Fyrehowl’s eyes went wide as she gazed upon a chamber filled with abandoned wealth in chests and barrels long since fallen to rot and decay as their former owner had lived on unchanged as around him time and entropy had marched on unheeded by his necromancy.

“Apparently demilich is a lucrative career choice!” Toras laughed as they gazed upon the broken remnants of an alchemical laboratory, wizard’s library, and a storehouse of wealth.

“Now touchy?” Nisha’s tail pointed first at a scattering of gemstones and then at a stack of ornately decorated tomes. “It seems like a good time for the rogue to go touchy touchy grabby looty.”

It didn’t take long for Tristol to object to each and every notion of looting.

“Woah! Nobody move!” The wizard held up both hands as his tail bottlebrushed with alarm, “Nobody touch anything! And Nisha I really seriously mean everything! This entire room is trapped all to hell and back. This is meant for thieves.”

Looking up from where he’d crouched to scoop up a pair of gems, Clueless closed his hand and glanced warily about.

“The gems are trapped to ensnare souls. The books are covered in paralytic runes… except when they’re covered in explosive ones. There’s what looks like a few symbols tucked away in various places, and there’s a hidden door on the north side of the room… with a disintegration field right behind it.”

“I was about to tell everyone about all of that.” Nisha nodded with a smile and a rattle of her tail’s silver bell.

“Ok, so maybe demilich isn’t quite so lucrative as I thought, but it certainly seems to make you into a murderous son of a bitch.” Toras worked his way around the room, virtually on his tiptoes to avoid so much as jostling any of the trapped objects.

Several long minutes later and Tristol and Nisha had opened the false wall and dispelled the flickering green field of death that lurked behind it, revealing another passage, and beyond it Wulgreth’s actual laboratory. Virtually untouched by time and absolutely untouched by dust, it seemed as if the demilich had never truly ceased his life’s work. Dozens of bookcases held texts both prosaic and magical, including those from his own era and even more penned since from a dozen different cultures.

At the western corner of the room, a marble column sat conspicuously as the location where Wulgreth’s mortal remains would have stood, glittered and bejeweled if the demilich had remained intact and not indisposed.

“Someone’s been here.” Nisha blurted out, her eyes dancing to specific spots where she noticed not objects worthy of theft, but empty spaces where those objects had been taken.

“Hmm?” Tristol turned to her, his ears perked with curiosity.

“About six spell books are missing, and a few objects are missing from their spots on shelves.” The xoasitect pointed them out with a thief’s trained eyes, “Pretty subtle job of it too, whoever it was. Most looters would have just dumped it all into a bag and hauled it all off… Toras…”

Wait, what?” Toras looked at Nisha, “What did I do?”

“You’re like a hungry puppy with an open bag of food on the floor when it comes to looting a place.” She rolled her eyes, “Sloppy but enthusiastic. It’s cute for a puppy, an actual puppy I suppose, but totally not my preferred style.”

Toras winced, “Is this about what I did to that group of slavers outside of Ribcage?”

“Is that what you think it’s about?” Nisha glanced back and him and shrugged, much to the confusion of literally every other person in the room as they carried on their own conversation without giving much details as to what incident they were even talking about.

“Probably,” Toras gave a guilty chuckle, “But are we really going to have this conversation right now?”

As Toras and Nisha talked, Clueless and Fyrehowl walked over to a deep and yawning pit in the center of the room. There a perfectly circular hole in the black stone revealed the underlying blood red substrate of the godisle itself, and a passage descending down into the stony flesh of the failed god himself.

“Uhh…” Tristol glanced at Nisha and then to Toras, “What group of slavers outside of Ribcage? This is the first that I’ve heard about this.”

“Well technically they aren’t slavers anymore.” Toras bobbed his head side to side with a smile, “Not once I got done with them.”

“Sloppy sloppy,” Nisha pantomimed someone clearing a table with their arm and dumping things into a sack.

“Really? I free a bunch of captured people from hellish slavery and you pick at my method of looting the bodies?”

Nisha laughed and walked off towards the hole in the room’s center with a shrug and a soft clip clop of her hooves on the stone.

Tristol continued to look askance at Nisha before finally, she giggled and leaned in, whispering to him, “Yeah, I have no idea what we’re talking about either. I was just making stuff up and letting him fill things in.”

“Before we get too focused on what might have been here before it got pilfered, let’s focus on what might –still– be here. Tristol? Nisha? And also,” Fyrehowl sniffed at the air, “More than one group came through here: fiends and then another group that I can’t honestly place.”

Nodding, Tristol studied the room for any latent magical auras before shaking his head, “There isn’t anything left around, either as a trap or any sort of alarm spells either. Feel free to rifle through anything if you want.”

They spent a short while picking through the demilich’s belongings, picking out a number of spellbooks, wands, a considerable amount of gold and gemstones, and a number of unique objects that they’d identify later. One item however was left behind: A delicately filigreed ivory circlet.

“What’s this one do?” Nisha asked Tristol as she held the object up, letting Tristol examine its magical auras for a clue as to its purpose.

“It’s Netherese, that’s for certain.” Tristol explained, pointing to the Netherese script carved into the object, “But the runes on the side are a bit fuzzy in their translation. It either means ‘Song or the Teu-Tel’Quessir’ or ‘Scream of the Teu-Tel’Quessir’. I’m actually going to dig a little deeper on this one just to make sure that it isn’t cursed.”

“Good idea!” Nisha smiled far too widely as she paused from trying the circlet on and handed it to her fiancé.

Tristol whispered the words of an incantation as he rattled off the objects properties, “It seems like it’s designed to provide elven specific traits to its wearer, including low light vision, and immunity to sleep spells, a resistance to enchantments, and to qualify as an elf when using magical items and specifically high magic items that would normally be barred from use by any non elves.”

“Hey that sounds awesome!” Nisha tried to snatch the item back, but then Tristol’s eyes went wide and he tightened his grip on the circlet.

“And in no way do you want to ever actually wear this…” He turned the circlet to the side, finally noticing that it wasn’t a perfect circle, and that the shape confirmed what the magic had informed him of: it wasn’t ivory, but bone. The circlet was a horizontal section of an elven high mage’s skull sawed open when they were still alive. “It gives you things, but the circlet bleeds when you wear it, and it screams, hearable by any high mages within several miles around. Yeah, this was something the Netherese would create all right. I think we’ll be leaving this behind…”

Reluctantly, Nisha left the unsavory object behind and joined the others at the hole descending down into the godisle. Curious as ever, as she made her way down the rope, she rapped her knuckles across the stone, noting with a single quirked eyebrow that the rock was oddly soft and warm, as if the corpse itself was still cooling from its moment of death many centuries earlier.

“Where’s it go?” The tiefling asked. “You have to admit that it’s weirdly and disconcertingly natural. But far be it from me to be this group’s voice of reason. Heaven forbid.”

“There’s nothing heavenly about this place,” Fyrehowl shook her head, “Nor you for that matter; more croaking in your case.”

Nisha beamed a smile but said nothing in reply.

“As for this tunnel? I looks like the demilich carved out part of it,” Clueless explained, “But below a point it looks like a natural tunnel, almost like a giant vein in a gigantic petrified body. It looks like it quite literally leads to the heart.”

_“Indeed it is mortals”_ Taba’s voice rung through their minds like a sudden, unexpected drizzle of cold, greasy runoff from a roof in the Hive. _“The way is not far now. Carry on towards the heart.”_

They paused and waited for further explanation from the altraloth, but nothing further was forthcoming. The fiend gave away her secrets sparingly, and seemed intent on leading them along with a morsel of facts towards a promised treasure simply to lay claim to having been the one leading and controlling them in the first place.

“Why can’t she just tell us what she knows?” Florian sighed as she continued down the passage. “Why lead us on this merry little goose chase across Toril?”

“Because she’s a yugoloth,” Fyrehowl grimaced. “That’s how all of them have acted. Every single one of them.”

“A’kin has never led me anywhere with beguiling words.” Nisha quipped, “He’s even given me free chocolate!”

“Ok, so maybe there’s an exception.” The lupinal shrugged, “One singular exception perhaps. He must piss the rest of his kind off something fierce. Can’t tell you what I’d pay to know what the history between him and the rest of his kind is.”

“You think he’s outcast from his kind?” Clueless glanced across at her, a dubious look playing across his face, “Or he’s just a hell of a lot more subtle than the rest.”

“Seriously, there has to be something going on between him and the Marauder,” Toras looked at the lupinal, “I swear to you they have to be a good inquisitor, bad inquisitor sort of deal going on.”

“I don’t think so.” She shrugged, “I genuinely don’t think so. There’s something there in terms of shared history I bet, but I don’t think it’s how you suspect it.”

“Have you been talking to him?” Nisha quirked an eyebrow, “Because I have, but he won’t talk about his past history or where exactly he stands as far as being a ‘loth goes. He mostly wants to talk about whoever happens to be talking to him, other people in Sigil, or his shop, and trust me that he’s got a story behind pretty much every item that he has in stock. He just doesn’t talk about himself.”

“We’ve talked a bit,” Fyrehowl said, thinking back to her conversation with the fiend, “After he landed a spot on the counsel and I was pissed off that I lost out to the Marauder for the other open seat.”

“What did he say?” Clueless asked, “I’m seriously curious.”

“Mostly,” She put a claw to her chin, “mostly, just advice in dealing with Shemeska in the aftermath of losing out to her in the voting. He had quite a bit to say on that issue. He’s been there in his shop for a few centuries at least, and she’s been in Sigil just as long. He almost opened up about it.”

“Seriously?” Clueless’s eyes went wide.

“He started to say something about dealing with her and about his own status as a ‘loth, but he caught himself.” Fyrehowl nodded, “It seemed genuine. He wanted to say something but held himself back, even if he really wanted to talk about it.”

“Fyrehowl?” Florian looked long and hard at the lupinal, “Keep talking to him. Seriously.”

The conversation about that conversation would have continued for some time, but at that point they arrived at the location Taba had wished for them to find.

“Oh what the hell…” Tristol blurted out, having been silent through their descent through the godisle up to that point. His eyes bulged at what they saw.

“What the hell happened here…” Florian whispered as her hand went to her holy symbol.

They stood in a high, vaulted cavern, resembling nothing less than space of a great petrified heart if drawn by a sculptor granting artistic license to render Netheril’s fall in blood red stone. A bright and cold silvery light banished every shadow and a faint lapping of liquid reached the ears, but aside from the light and the soft ambient noise, something was terribly off. 

The air in the very center of the room was warped, twisting the light that passed through it, like the shimmer of heat above rocks in a desert’s sun, though nothing hovered there. If anything it seemed as if what had once been there, the Karse Stone, was by its conspicuous absence the source of the warped space, with its metaphysical weight in place there for so many centuries responsible for a permanent deformation in the fabric of space.

Their conjured sources of light immediately dimmed upon entering the room, and the walls themselves seemed leeched of color. The reddish rock of the godisle was pale and sickly as it approached the depression in the room’s center, almost as if it were rotting from the inside out. What has once been there as a pool of heavy magic pouring out from and then returning to the Karse Stone, the literal heart of Karsus the Accidental God, was present but… changed… a transparent, diaphanous reflection of its former deadly puissance.

Nearly tangible on the air itself, a sense of grieving regret saturated the space there at the godisle’s heart.

“Someone had a rather large fight in here…” Toras whispered as his eyes adjusted to the dimmed light and noticed the humanoid corpses strewn across the ground and the broken remnants of five separate golems of ancient Netherese manufacture.

“Those are relatively fresh, not ancient,” Clueless pointed to three bodies on the floor, “And they aren’t human corpses either.”

Tristol stared at the bodies and every other disturbing aspect of the chamber, including the fact that Jingleshod had told them the truth: the ‘loths had come for the Karse Stone. They’d come for it and they’d taken it. But why?

“What the hell are they?” Toras motioned to how the humanoid corpses seemed to blur into any adjacent shadows, as if they weren’t entirely corporeal.

“They’re shadovari.” Tristol finally explained, stepping over to one of them and reaching down to examine its armor. “Shades. Humans who’ve traded part of their souls for shadow-stuff and received extended life and power in exchange.”

“Ok and that means absolutely nothing to me other than presumably they were evil.” Toras shrugged. “Who are they? What were they doing here? Why did the ‘loths kill them?”

“Remember what I said about the Netherese enclave of Shade?” Tristol shook his head at each corpse in turn. “Prior to Karsus casting his spell, they shifted their city and its entire population to the Plane of Shadow. Either they stayed there intentionally, or the changes to the Weave in their absence prevented their return. They apparently returned in the past year, and clearly they were interested in finding out what had become of the empire that they’d once been a part of.”

“So they’re working with the ‘loths?” Florian rolled her eyes, “Great.”

“I very much doubt that.” Tristol frowned. “They seem to have uniformly embraced the worship of Shar during their centuries in Shadow. The ‘loths would have absolutely nothing to do with them. Frankly it seems as if they were either here when the ‘loths arrived, or more likely the ‘loth presence here drew their attention and Shade dispatched them here to find out what was going on, much to their doom.”

Over the next few minutes they explored the room and tried to piece together what had occurred, though without touching the pool and the space where the Karse Stone had been. As far as they could tell, the ‘loths had come first and destroyed the golems set in place by one of the Wulgreths to guard the chamber, and in their wake the shadovar had followed and paid a terrible price for their intrusion. The corpse of one shadovari fighter lay partially submerged in the pool of greasy, translucent liquid, the man having apparently been roasted alive in his armor. Two other armored fighters lay dismembered by mezzoloth claws, one of them with a broken trident still impaled through her chest and into the blood red stone of the wall behind her.

In the process of piecing together the fate of the shades and collecting a number of weapons and magical objects left behind on their corpses, they discovered one other salient piece of information as to what the ‘loths had done. Situated at the closest point from solid ground to where the Karse Stone had once stood were the faint impressions of a heavy tripod and two cylindrical objects: the Divinity Leech.

“They took it you see. They were jealous. They were always jealous of me and the machine that I’d created…” Tristol whispered to himself, recalling the words of Ghyris Vast, the creator of the machine they’d seen and seen used in the Astral atop more than one drifting godisle, there to siphon, extract, or to mine… something… from the drifting bodies of dead gods.

Tristol knelt down at the edge of the pool of heavy magic and traced his bare fingertips across the stone where the device had once stood. Lapping against the stone but seemingly drained of whatever essence it had once held, the pool of heavy magic was thin, ash grey, and translucent.

“This was where they came to test the Divinity Leech.” Tristol turned and looked at his companions. “This is where they came to use it first before they dared make the attempt on the Astral.”

“F***…” Clueless gritted his teeth, his mind spinning to make sense of it all and what the yugoloths intended.

“Why do it here on Toril though?” Florian asked, “Why here and not one of a dozen worlds with dead gods? Why not just start on the Astral? Starting here and you’d be likely to provoke one of Toril’s gods to step in.”

“I don’t know…” Tristol stammered, trying to wrap his brain around the intersection of his own people’s origin with the fall of Netheril at Karsus’s hands and both the use of the Divinity Leech and the theft of the Karse Stone.

Tristol’s confusion was lifted by the unsettling caress of Taba’s telepathic voice in his ears and his ears alone, _“If you have the capacity to ensorcelle the pool with a legend lore dweomer, do so and you will see what I wished for you to see.”_

“Taba wants me to legend lore the pool.”

“She wants you to legend lore a pool of heavy magic?” Clueless asked, raising an eyebrow and having very conspicuously both eyed and kept his distance from the pool, even in its altered state, given his own prior experience with the substance, and especially given Tristol’s lecture on how Karsus had toyed with the material and caused the original Wulgreth’s transformation into a lich purely by accident. “Are you crazy?”

“I need to know what happened here.” Tristol furrowed his brow and stood up, staring into the warped and empty hollow where the Karse Stone had hovered. “So you might want to step back.”

Collectively the group edged back as Tristol began to cast, though Nisha did so reluctantly. The effect was much more profound than any other time they’d seen the spell cast as the pool of depleted heavy magic shimmered. Sparks of magical energy erupted from its surface like flaming oil cast into a white hot metal pan. Runes in the yugoloth tongue scratched into the rock below the pool in a swirling, drain-like spiral glowed with a sudden sickly greenish light. The ‘loths had been utterly methodical in their testing of the device, leaving nothing to chance, but whatever their original purpose, they posed no danger as Tristol looked into the past.

Slowly an image formed within the pool, acting almost like a monstrous scry focus. Then without warning an audible scream shook the room as the image of Karsus himself, swollen with the divine might of Mystryl turned to stone and plummeted forth into the Dire Wood. They watched and listened as the ground rumbled in concert with his titanic red stone form falling to earth. An utter sense of regret reached out and filled their minds with a near divine sense of ache and sorrow for what his arrogance had done to him and his own people when he’d only been seeking to be their savior.

And then with a subtle ringing sound and a tremble within the liquid at their feet, the image vanished from the pool of depleted heavy magic and the legend lore spell jerked and rewound the clock even further, tumbling backwards at a rapid pace before providing a view of past events leading up to that first and terrible moment in time. Only Tristol saw it all, and as he watched those events in real time in his mind’s eye as only seconds elapsed in the outside world, his eyes went huge, his face turned ashen, he dropped to his knees trembling, braced his hands on the floor and vomited before he screamed in horror.


****​


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## almost13

that is one hell of a cliffhanger


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## Shemeska

almost13 said:


> that is one hell of a cliffhanger &#55357;&#56397;


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## Shemeska

Over 1700 years earlier:

The chamber was vast, its ceiling vaulted, and yet despite its profound size it managed to appear cluttered, filled as it was with bookcases, tables covered in open tomes and scrolls, and dozens of sprawling, fantastical magical and alchemical apparatuses, all surrounding a central pool of glistening, golden heavy magic. Arcane lights burned bright, banishing each and every shadow from the sight of the chamber’s master: the archwizard Karsus.

“Ah hah!” Karsus exclaimed as he penned a correction to a series of arcane formulae in one of more than a dozen books that lay upon the table before him or drifted in the air, held open and aloft by a coterie of conjured and permanent unseen servitors.

The Lord of Karse Enclave and arguably the greatest wizard to have ever walked the face of Toril was a study in manic brilliance. He never paused, he never stopped moving, his fingers fidgeting and tugging at his hair or the sleeves of his robe when he didn’t have them set to a more useful task. The great arcanist talked to himself, holding entire conversations out loud as he worked through the wording of his current project, a task which he’d been researching for years, even as he tinkered with side projects which would have ensured that any lesser wizard be remembered in legend for but one of them.

“Ioulaum will eat his heart out with jealousy!” Karsus laughed, shouting the phrase another three times, “Do you hear me oh Father of Netheril?! Ha hah!”

“I’m certain that he will hear you if you speak his name enough times.”

Karsus’s laugh trailed away but the jubilant, frightening smile on his face never faded even as he looked over his shoulder at the source of the other voice.

“Bah!” The archwizard waved both hands to dismiss the concern, “I’ve warded my sanctum to avoid the prying eyes of every arcanist in the empire, and Ioulaum is first on the list of those seeking to build off of my greatness. He can go f*ck himself, wherever he’s seen fit to bolt himself away to in secrecy. This, this will put him to shame.”

Secluded on the other side of the chamber a single figure sat within an elaborate series of concentric binding circles drawn in salt, ash, wax, powdered electrum, dragon’s blood, and the liquid glimmer of heavy magic set in channels carved into the stone. Within that bound space, unlike every other place within the chamber, shadows did indeed fall.

“Now that the framework for the dweomer is penned and the concept sound,” The figure within the binding circle asked, their words as smooth and exquisite as the spells drawn by the mad, brilliant human dancing as he penned his burgeoning masterwork. “Do you have a name for your spell in mind?”

Karsus paused for but a moment, tapping his toes upon the stone and then hopping from one foot to the next before racing to the pool of heavy magic and dipping in a single finger. Without saying a word, he drew his finger through the air and his thoughts became manifest through the golden liquid. Drawn in blazing flame, slowly transmuting in color and material as it hung suspending in mid-air for both Karsus’s own edification and his guest’s illumination were the words in Netherese runes, larger than life:

*12th Sphere Dweomers: Karsus’s Avatar*

The creature in the binding circle nodded in approval, smiling a smile of ivory fangs in lieu of saying anything out loud. In Karsus’s view, the fiend needn’t say a word. Speaking would have diminished the triumph of that sublime moment in Netherese and Torillian history. The fiend’s wide eyes and astonished smile at a mortal’s work were statement enough. In fact, the smug grin on the archwizard’s face spoke to the fact that he wanted the fiend to feel as much jealousy as astonishment.

“When you first summoned me Karsus,” The bound fiend used the Archwizard’s first name without honorific, using a tense in old Netherese that denoted a mixture of formal admiration but informal association: admiration from one friend or professional peer to another. “When you first summoned me from Carceri I thought to fight your attempt.”

“You would have failed.” The Netherese archwizard laughed, his tone matter-of-fact.

“In time, if you’d persisted, yes.” A being of lies incarnate, the words came easily to the fiend’s lips and from there to the arcanist’s ears. “Why waste my efforts and your time knowing that you would have torn me across the fabric of the planes in more unpleasant ways than not if I’d resisted? Besides, your power begat curiosity on my part, and indeed I feel rewarded in some measure having been here and watched this unfold.”

Ivory fangs smiled and Tristol’s vision lurched forward, remaining in Karsus’s study but skipping to discrete moments in time as the archwizard set about refining his masterwork, defining the material components, practicing the somatic elements, and setting in motion the events that would lead to his own doom. Through it all, while he might display a portion of the material components to visiting archwizards, none of them were privy to the actual spell, knowledge of its nature, or entry to the sanctum itself. Through it all, only the bound fiend remaining with him to watch, comment, advise, feed, and influence without ever casting a single spell of its own.

“Your so-called rivals among the other enclaves, some of them have actual talent.” Barefoot and seated upon the floor, surrounded by the concentric circles, dressed in a simple robe compared to Karsus’s madcap extravagance, the fiend waved a manicured claw to dampen the burgeoning sneer on the human’s face, “Admit it! They do. Some of them at least. Ioulaum of course principally, but also Larloch, Aumvor, and perhaps your former student Telamont have lesser but true talent. I know this. I recognize this because my friend, this is what I am. Sorcery taken form in metaphysical flesh. I feel you and your kind like iron to a loadstone. It is beautiful. It is exquisite.”

Karsus turned to glance at the pooling darkness within the binding circle which snapped into discrete form only when he looked at the fiend directly. He frowned at the suggestion that his supposed rivals among the archwizards could be spoken of in the same sentence as him, much less by a conjured fiend, no, and archfiend reduced by his magical prowess to a second set of eyes and a sounding board for his word, a familiar in all but a tether to his soul.

“But…” The fiend extended a single claw towards the archwizard, “None of them operate on a level close to yours. They are candles to your burning star and I am eager to see you display your mastery.”

Karsus’s frown flickered and turned to a lazy, prideful smile. The Ape Who Would Fly laughed to himself, turned, and resumed his work. For the next six hours he gestured and controlled the filling of a stone-filled gizzard of a gold dragon with a mixture of tarrasque blood and 12-headed hydra bile, all to simply complete the enchantment of one of the material components for his Avatar spell.

For the next six hours he would idly exchange banter with the inchoate horror looming behind him within the binding circle. The fiend watched and the fiend smiled, working the archwizard with teasing words and platitudes, having reduced itself in Karsus’s view to simply another tool to be used as he created his masterwork, rather than a bottled archfiend watching and slavering only a few dozen feet away.

Time skipped and the inevitable drew close as slowly, inexorably, the fiend led Karsus towards completion and casting and dismissing any rational thought of stopping. Karsus was blinded to his own looming folly.

“I am pleased that my aide and council have proven crucial to your work on the avatar spell.”

“I would have perfected it in time without your aid, but dragging you across the planes and binding you to my service for this task proved worth my effort and the considerable expense of reagents to ensnare you.” Karsus shook his head as he recalled the cost, exhaling through clenched teeth, “The price in objects it took to anchor you here would have provided a trio of lesser arcanists the means to raise mythallars and enclaves of their own. But your knowledge has sped my efforts and unlike so many of your kind you recognize your place.”

Without the archwizard’s eyes upon him to force it, the fiend snapped back into discrete form and almost imperceptivity the trio of ioun stones that orbited above its head slowed for but a fraction of a second in lieu of a sneer.

“I suppose that I do. Had I done otherwise I would not have witnessed your triumph.”

“I appreciate that sentiment,” Karsus chuckled, glancing briefly at the summoning circle, “You know, you weren’t the first fiend that I bound to aid me.”

To this the archfiend actively sneered as if his pride were wounded; a choreographed display as would have been expected of any normal member of his race and caste.

“The pit fiend made demands and so I simply slew it.” Karsus explained, waving his hands through the air to conjure tiny, animated illustrations of the event like pictures from a child’s book of legends and tales of heroes, “The balor raged and beat against its bindings uselessly until it killed itself in the process and sought to slay me in its death throes, though its explosive demise never breached the bindings either. You have had the sense to obey and do what you know, understanding that once your task is complete, I might eventually release you.”

“I came here because I was interested in your work Karsus,” The fiend smiled and stepped to the edge of the innermost circle, pausing before it touched it, “I have never wished *not* to aid you. The spell is brilliant. *Your* spell is brilliant. I find it fascinating, if of course distasteful on some level to myself as a yugoloth. But fascinating nonetheless and you have my respect for seeing this through to completion.”

Time skipped again and the process drew to finality. Public proclamations were made that Karsus would be undertaking a profound work of magic that would end the slow destruction of the Empire’s lands to the life-devouring magic of the phaerimm, a race largely unknown except to a select number of the archwizards who had collectively been impotent to stop.

“You’ve yet to decide on the target of your casting.” The fiend raised its eyebrows, staring at the archwizard for an answer. “You have many options, all of which I will appreciate being bereft of their power for the spell’s duration.” The fiend laughed, earning a roll of Karsus’s eyes.

“I have options yes.” Karsus mused, pantomiming the actions and moods of various gods and goddesses, “Kozah for pure raw power to destroy the phaermim…Tyche for luck and good future for Netheril’s future… Jergal to bring death to all who would oppose Netheril... Jannath to make the land fertile against all efforts of the phaerimm…”

“Mystryl.” A single damning word from the fiend, a single name, a single target. It smiled at Karsus, hands spread, offering the suggestion to a mind plied and seduced by years of beguiling words.

Helpless as he watched, Tristol screamed.

Karsus turned and faced the bound archfiend, his mouth open, his eyes narrowed, his lips pursed to respond in dismissal for but a moment before he reconsidered.

“This was what you wanted Karsus.” The fiend explained, a single finger extended and a knowing look in its eyes. “You told me yourself, years ago when I asked you what it was that you wanted.”

“What is it you want…” Karsus mumbled the archfiend’s question to him, one of the first things that they’d ever discussed. Satisfied of the fiend’s binding he’d answered flippantly and honestly.

“Tell me Karsus, what is it you want?” The fiend asked, not hiding its hungry smile.

“Power and understanding of magic,” Karsus whispered his original answer, “All magic at my command, all arcane knowledge in my thoughts. It’s almost poetic now isn’t it?”
A single soft chuckle on the human’s part, a nod from the fiend, and then wide eyes and racing thoughts through Karsus’s brain.

“Mystryl it shall be.”

Agonized as he watched the past replay, Tristol wailed in horror as Karsus smiled and behind him, so did the fiend. “No you stupid fool! NO! NO!”

The phaerimm would be destroyed.

Karsus would be elevated to godhood in order to accomplish that task, usurping the divinity of the goddess of magic herself.

Netheril would reign supreme and unchallenged.

Karsus would be on the lips of every wizard, every bard, and every creature from the planes beyond.

“And with her name in place, it is finished.” Karsus looked upon the formulae of the single 12th level spell in existence, the words splayed across the pages of more than two dozen pages suspended in the air. He read them and recited the words in his mind, burning them into his memory for later recitation at the highest point in Karse Enclave. As it transferred to his mind, the words burst into flame and the pages reduced to fine ash to scatter at the mad archwizard’s feet. “I am ready.”

Absorbed in his work and no longer paying attention to the archfiend bound in his study, Karsus never saw the fiend smile, stand up, and deliberately step upon and across the border of the circle. The fiend’s footprint smudged the salt, wax, and every other material, never setting off the wardings or sending so much as a ripple through the surroundings binding magics. The archfiend smiled, his albino eyes glittering, as he casually motioned with one hand and the binding circle’s mundane components crawled and skittered back into place, repairing themselves where he’d deliberately smudged them with his foot.

Helpless to stop the flow of past events, Tristol Starweather watched as the future Oinoloth smiled.

Vorkannis the Ebon was not then, nor had he ever been bound there in Karsus’s study. Rather he sat there on the mad archwizard’s floor by choice, for years aiding him in his grand work, knowing full well what would likely happen. He’d cultivated the arcanist’s pride, nudged him towards an intended end, dangled bits of insight or snuffed alternative thoughts to fuel the archwizard’s “invention”. He’d fed the man’s drive and foolhardy attitude just as much as he’d aided him in understanding the brilliance and nuance of the spell itself. How much of the spell was actually composed by Karsus and not the fiend whispering in his ear for more than a decade was up for debate.

The spell flickered and time skipped, flowing at high speed through the actual casting of the spell, Karsus’s transient and fatal usurpation of a goddess’s power, the unraveling and collapse of the Weave, and the archwizard’s brief, horrified understanding of what he had done as magic abruptly stopped.

Mystryl’s dying wail echoed in Tristol’s ears as Karse enclave plummeting down to its doom, falling from the sky. Each and every other enclave followed suit as Karsus screamed and died, swollen and petrified into the crude shape of a weeping, horrified man before he too fell to earth. 

As the Weave broke and magic died, slaying a goddess and destroying a civilization and culture in the process, Vorkannis the Ebon drifted in mid air, the wind of the heights flapping about his robes as he watched his work unfold with a rapturous look upon his face.

To Tristol’s senses the wind whistled and the screams faded away, leaving only one sound remaining above it all: Vorkannis’s laughter.


*****​

The spell ended and Tristol’s senses returned to the present day, the knowledge of what he’d witnessed burned into his memory.

“It was him!” Tristol screamed, his speech slurred and nearly incoherent, “He killed her!”

“Who?” Clueless asked, startled by the aasimar’s sudden and horrified reaction only moments after he’d cast the spell at Taba’s suggestion.

“Tristol!” Nisha grabbed onto the wizard’s robe and struggled to get him up to his feet. “What happened?!”

“Taba what did you do?!” Toras shouted, hoping that the altraloth lord could hear them.

_“I’ve done nothing but lead him to the truth about certain events mortal.” Taba’s telepathic voice echoed in their collective minds, an almost tactile sensation of her sneering from a dozen mouths present on her words, “He’s seen what I have seen. Only in this location would the effect have managed to evade the deliberate obfuscation of those events, though I’m uncertain whom to blame for hiding the past, my kindred or the next incarnation of Toril’s goddess of magic herself.”_

Eyes wide, his face ashen, Tristol looked up at Nisha and then to the others around him. He’d watched his goddess die and his entire view of his own peoples’ history was forever altered by what he’d learned. Karsus in all his reckless brilliance had been a puppet in the act, following a trail of formulaic breadcrumbs to “invent” a spell whose seeds were given to him by the future Oinoloth himself. The fiend had used Karsus like an overly eager, foolhardy test subject.

Perhaps the avatar spell was something that the ‘loth’s own nature made impossible for him to cast on his own, perhaps the result was considered revolting given the uniform anathema towards the gods held by his kind, or perhaps by leading a mortal to create, prepare, and cast the spell on their own, the ‘loth avoided the sort of deific retribution that might have otherwise been invoked by the murder of a goddess at a fiend’s claws.

Tristol looked up into Nisha’s eyes, and the concern and empathy he saw gave him pause. He mumbled, uncertain of how to explain it all, uncertain how to describe what he’d lived through as it had happened. He would explain it, but as he struggled to pick himself up off of the floor and avoid his own vomit now mingling with the depleted heavy magic still present there, he put his hands together, closed his eyes, and prayed to his patron goddess.

‘I will kill him. Whatever he is I will bring him to justice for what he did and what he has done since. Whatever his goals then or now by desecrating this place, I will dismantle his plans and see him destroyed. This I swear to you Mystra…’

In that moment as Tristol put his hands together for a single unspoken prayer, though he didn’t notice it at first, and though he wasn’t aware of what it meant for him, for the first time in his life his fingers flickered with the gift of silverfire.


*****​


----------



## Tsuga C

Very, very intense. Annihilating an entire civilization is quite a feat, particularly one as dominant as Netheril. That's an awesomely horrific feather in the Ebon's cap.


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## Shemeska

Vorkannis never thinks small-scale. It's in his nature. There's worse to come. The next few updates will have some major plot development.


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## Coroc

Dear Shemeska, i registered here mainly for discussions in the D&D 5E thread but this also gives me the opportunity to thank you for the most awesome storyhour on enworld. I would love to play in a campaign like yours. The tension of the plot is better than many books, and combined with your ability for cliffhangers it is almost like a torture of the Shemeska in your story to wait for the next update.
I also started to read your planescape story hour 2 and i hope that you also finish the writing on that one once this storyline here is complete.


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## Shemeska

Coroc said:


> Dear Shemeska, i registered here mainly for discussions in the D&D 5E thread but this also gives me the opportunity to thank you for the most awesome storyhour on enworld. I would love to play in a campaign like yours. The tension of the plot is better than many books, and combined with your ability for cliffhangers it is almost like a torture of the Shemeska in your story to wait for the next update.
> I also started to read your planescape story hour 2 and i hope that you also finish the writing on that one once this storyline here is complete.




Thank you so much! You flatter me!

I've really enjoyed writing it, and I really wish that at some point I could get my original Planescape group back together for a game, though that was when we were all in college and we've since dispersed about the country. Life, jobs, etc.

As for the 2nd storyhour, I can't promise to continue on that one until I'm finished with this first one. I'll get there, though it'll take some years still. But that being said, I'm going to post the next update as soon as I respond to you here.


----------



## Shemeska

The climb back down the face of Karsus’s petrified corpse was slow and daunting, significantly more difficult than the initial climb up from the ground. Making the trek even more difficult was the dour mood that blanketed the group, reflected in their expressions and the utter lack of conversation. Even Nisha, normally chatty to a fault simply looked down at the ground, frowning and her tail limply twitching like a sick serpent and not a rattle of her silver tail bell to be heard.

Tristol was worse off than the others: he’d experienced it all first hand and out of them all the magical vision would have been the most traumatic of all. His understanding of Netherese history –and by extension his own as a native of that empire’s successor state Halruaa– had been shaken to the core, and there was no getting around the fact that he’d watched a prior iteration of his patron goddess die and listened to her killer laugh, smirking and delighted in the aftermath as Netheril’s flying cities fell to their doom.

For all of the understanding that Karsus’s pride and warped, foolhardy desire to be his culture’s savior had doomed Netheril, it was much more complicated than that simple history lesson that Tristol had grown up with. The Ebon had been responsible, if not directly, than indirectly for everything. The future Oinoloth had pulled on the archwizard’s pride and led him about like a puppy seeking a treat or barking before fetching a brandished and tossed rubber ball.

Tristol knew that there would be a reckoning. Vorkannis would pay for what he did, no matter how long it took to accomplish. The Lady of Mysteries would be avenged and…
“Tristol!” Clueless shouted, breaking the wizard from his obsessive thoughts. “You can let go of the rope, we’re at the bottom…”

Tristol blinked and looked up at the bladesinger. Reluctantly he let go of the rope, his fingers white from having gripped it far tighter than he’d need to retain a safe hold during the descent. He sighed and nodded, glancing at Nisha and managing a smile as she randomly stuck out her tongue and made a face.

She was going her best and yes, she was helping him, but it would take time. He felt numb. Shocked by it all, enraged beyond words and nearly insensate with despair, he’d been virtually silent since initially explaining what he’d seen: the genocidal toying of the future Oinoloth and the fiend’s mocking laughter. There was something more however, and he hadn’t fully come to grips with what it meant himself, nor had he tried to explain it to the others: the crackle of silverfire at his fingers when he’d pledged himself to taking revenge on Mystra’s behalf.

Silverfire was a unique gift, reserved for her Chosen and… he shook his head, bewildered by the possibility that she might have selected him for such an investiture, if that indeed was what he’d experienced. Once they were back in Sigil or at least simply away from the Dire Wood and the reminders of the ‘loth taint to Netheril’s fall he’d be praying to Mystra and hoping for some guidance.

First though, there had to be some manner of discussion with Taba.


****​

The altraloth was there waiting at the base of the petrified godisle, still present in the form of a great wyrm fang dragon with luminous red-violet eyes. Clearly bored and idling away her time, a struggling, flailing zombie corpse dressed in rags and rusted, millennia-old armor lay on the ground, pinned down by a single one of her claws. Smirking, she glanced down at the creature and slowly, excruciatingly pressed the claw deeper into its chest until it pierced the zombie’s spine.

“We saw it all…” Tristol spoke as they approached the archfiend. “I did anyway.”

Taba smiled from a dozen mouths formed de novo for the expression. Without looking up she lifted one draconic forearm, hefting the zombie stuck to the claw like an insect on the end of a collector’s pin before snorting and flicking the claw, effortlessly hurling the creature into the forest where it finally connected with a petrified tree with a sickening crunch and lay there, still and perhaps finally, truly dead.

“Good,” Taba smirked, “Now perhaps you understand why I had you mortals come here in the first place. Do you understand that we share an enemy?”

“That doesn’t make us friends.” Clueless rolled his eyes, “You did after all kill me the last time we met. That wasn’t enjoyable.”

“And I could do it again just as easily,” The archfiend’s eyes, all twenty of them, danced with lurid internal flames and as she chuckled, the scales of her gut radiated a visible heat. “But you things of meat and soul are much more useful as allies of convenience, or at least aware of my motivations and so no longer a thorn in my side.”

Fyrehowl narrowed her eyes, “So other than not like the Ebon, what is it…” The lupinal paused, unwilling to finish her

Taba smirked as she realized how the celestial would have phrased her question. “Such a dangerous question, though it wasn’t from the so-called Oinoloth that I first heard it.”

The altraloth didn’t elaborate on that revelation, but instead moved forward to answer the unspoken question.

“I will butcher the Ebon and return my race to its proper position under the direction of my master, the first of us, the General of Gehenna.” Obsession and zealotry danced in her eyes.

“And where is the General?” Clueless asked.

The archfiend didn’t immediately respond, only narrowing her eyes and snarling. The glow within her guts flared and bits of acidic, icy rime formed upon her teeth causing the companions to hesitantly step back. Finally she replied, if with obvious distaste for the very question.

“That’s complicated.”

Clueless thought about responding with the first thought that came to his mind, but he preferred to remain alive. The thought burning a hole in his brain was a simple one: ‘You have no idea where the General of Gehenna actually is…’

“So where then does this leave us?” Tristol asked, finally saying something even as his brain stewed over what he’d witnessed.

“I leave you informed of our mutual enemy’s past actions.” Taba sneered, “Perhaps this will motivate you to turn your blades and swords towards him and his allies. You already seem to have been aware of his culling of material from the astral godisles, but the petrified corpse of Karsus was where he started that process.”

“What’s he extracting and what’s he planning to do?” Tristol continued, “We can’t stop what we don’t understand.”

“That… that I don’t know. Not yet.” The altraloth snarled, abhorrent to admit her ignorance on the subject. “He seems loath to speak of the specifics to any outside of his minute circle of conspirators that helped him rise to power.”
“So will you tell us when you find out?” Clueless asked, looking up and staring into the archfiend’s myriad eyes as they blinked in and out of existence across her momentarily draconic flesh.

“That remains to be seen mortals.” Taba shrugged her wings, “Prove yourself useful in disrupting the Ebon’s plans and I might see fit to inform you. But suffice to say, I am not your enemy in this affair.”

“… in this affair…” Fyrehowl rolled her eyes.

“Yes indeed,” Taba smiled wide, “In this affair indeed.”

It seemed clear that as always the altraloth like her kind in general saw little desire to provide information for free. What she’d given them had been purely to advance her own goals and ambitions, and it remained to be seen how that might broaden in the future. But at least it seemed that the Infiltrator of the Planes would not be hunting them down one by one for any perceived slight in trying to kill her in the bowels of Hell.

Taba’s final words were definitive and callous.

“We will meet again mortals at a time and place of my choosing.”

She vanished through a gate, back to another way point and then to another and then another still, all intended to slow and stymie any attempts at divination by her enemies, actual or perceived. Somehow inexplicably she’d left them with more questions bubbling in their minds than before they’d come, but things had yet to reach their most complex and twisted. That would come later that same day.


****​

It took hours to reach a point where Tristol was comfortable enough to risk planeshifting the group back to one of the Gatetowns and then back to Sigil. Far from being a joyous return to their adopted (in Nisha’s case actual) home, their arrival was almost immediately marred by events that did nothing to appreciably approve their collective mood.

Arriving via portal back into the Hive, the air was thick with the smell of an open ooze portal and the even worse scent of raw sewage wafting off of the Ditch at the border with the Lower Ward. Five steps into the City of Doors and the flagstones beneath Florian’s feet erupted in light and a portal opened without warning.

“Oh sh*t!” The cleric shouted, scrambling to find purchase on the surrounding stable cobblestones and within moments Fyrehowl and Toras’s extended arms, drawing herself out of the portal that opened up in a particularly vile layer of the Abyss.

Too close to be a simple coincidence, the ground rumbled with the vibrations of a Cagequake sending the surrounding crowd on the street scurrying for the relative safety of any nearby doorframes.

“AGAIN?! SERIOUSLY?! I’m getting really f*cking tired of this sh*t!” Florian screamed, glancing around and then up to see one of the Marauder’s tieflings watching from the edge of an adjoining rooftop. Immediately her hand was at her holy symbol and the words to a prayer on her lips intending to call down a burning column of holy fire on the fiend’s servitor before Toras grabbed her hand and interrupted the casting.

“What the f*ck Toras?!” Florian spat, struggling to escape the fighter’s grasp.

“That’s not going to help!” Toras shouted back at her

“Yes! Yes it will!” She countered.

As the two of them bickered, smirking down at them from the roof, the Marauder’s groomer-guard whispered the words to a _sending_ spell, reporting on what had happened and listening to his Mistress’s reply. Clearly on the receiving end of a snarl, he winced before snapping his fingers and vanishing in the flicker-flash of a dimension door.

“What the f*cking f*ck?!” Florian snarled, “The mangy b*tch had someone watching us leave and then waiting for us to come back just to try and kill me again?!”

The ground rumbled with a dull, subtle aftershock.

“I’m about two minutes from marching down to the Fortune’s Wheel and having it out with her then and there.” The cleric spat upon the ground, “Seriously! After what she’s done and keeps on doing just to be as f*cking petty as possible, I’m seriously close to not caring if I die in the process. I just want to be able to hurt her and see the look on her face when I break her perfect teeth in and f*ck up her precious, pristine makeup…”

The others remained silent on the matter, trusting the fighter’s amazingly level-headed response. They all knew that taking direct action would be a delight but likely a lethal one. They weren’t going to give the Marauder the satisfaction of falling into her trap.

“Calm down Florian.” Toras inhaled deeply, hating himself as he tried to prevent Florian from doing what she wanted and which frankly he would have deeply, deeply enjoyed doing as well. It wasn’t a survivable option however, not at the moment.

“Oh shut up!” Florian snatched her hand away from the fighter before grimacing and catching her breath, a muscle below her left eye twitching with rage. It took a few minutes but eventually she regained her composure and turned back to Toras. “I’m sorry. I’m not actually going to go and try and kill her. Not now when she’s trying to goad me into it and has everything ready in the event that I take the bait. Don’t worry about me.”

“I worry about you because you’re my friend.”

“I know…” She nodded and put a hand on his shoulder, “It means a lot. It really does. I still want to walk over to the Fortune’s Wheel, but the most expensive drink in the house, drink half of it, throw the other half at her face, and then have it out with her… but I won’t. Not now. Not yet. Thank you.”

“How about we go back to the Portal Jammer and I pour out two of the best in the house?” Toras offered, “Just promise that you won’t throw it at me.”

“That’s probably for the best,” The cleric smiled and nodded, “I’d appreciate that.”

“That sound like a plan to the rest of you?” Toras looked around at the others.

Tristol didn’t say anything, but Nisha answered for them both, and Clueless seemed more than up for a round of drinks after what they’d been through. Fyrehowl though was a different story entirely. The cipher hesitated, standing still in the street as the others pulled away, moving in the direction of the Clerks’ Ward. The lupinal waved them on.

“You all go on back,” She shrugged, her head swimming with thoughts as how things would proceed. “I need some time by myself to collect my thoughts. I might find a park or the top of a building to go meditate.”

None of them stopped her and soon they all parted ways, splitting the party for the first but not the last time that afternoon. Not wanting to remain in the Hive, Fyrehowl walked away, with no specific destination in mind and no particular plans. Ignoring the voices of touts, barkers, merchants and the occasional catcalling fiend, she meandered without destination or route. Content to let her mind be empty and devoid of desire and forethought, letting pure cipher instinct guide her path, she wandered and ultimately more than an hour later she found herself walking through the Lady’s Ward at the junction of several avenues near a park and two cattycorner temples with palatial marble entrances.

Glancing up at a statue of Zeus standing proud at the street corner, holding a burnished bronze bolt of lightning, the lupinal twitched her nose at the sharp, acrid scent of heavy incense or perhaps a burnt offering from within the temple itself.

Abruptly she stopped and turned full circle, glancing about and sniffing at the breeze that carried the scent that was anything but a temple’s incense. Heavy and chemical, laden with burning iron-gall, leather and bleached paper, the smell was that of burning books. Blinking and frowning, the cipher looked for the source, only to find that she’d already begun walking towards it.

One block and she found herself standing at the entrance to an older but still grand-looking building formerly part of Sigil’s civic administration under the Factions. The now repeatedly defaced symbols of the Takers still decorated the doors, and the broken rubble of a statue of the late Rowan Darkwood had been more recently stacked neatly in a pile rather than where it had previously lain scattered about the steps.

From high on the roof, a thin trail of greasy black smoke curled out from below the slate shingles. With the low foot traffic in the district at that time of day and the early stage of the fire, none by the lupinal had noticed it. Worried about the fire spreading to adjacent occupied structures, Fyrehowl darted for the door.

What she found inside was far more than a simple fire.


****​

Back in the Portal Jammer, Toras walked out of the back room where he and the others had been drowning their worries in a first one then ultimately two more bottles of Arcadian mead. The alcohol buzzed through his veins and he chuckled at the effect. Despite his resistance to it all due to his own celestial heritage the particular vintage packed a punch.

“I should have trusted Clueless when he said that he found it really good. He’s immune to the damn stuff. That should have been a warning.”

The fighter passed by a table of gnomes playing cards and then past a bariaur well past half a bottle of wine by himself, a stack of business ledgers and invoices scattered about the table before him. Inwardly Toras chuckled as clearly the day hadn’t been difficult just for himself and his companions.

Grabbing a mug of something much lighter from the bar, Toras turned and walked to one of the windows and gazed out onto the street, watching a cross-section of Sigil’s wildly diverse population expressed in the passing foot traffic. He smiled to himself when he saw any of them smiling, ignorant of the troubles that he and his group had seen and struggled with. Watching their faces gave him something to follow and ignore his own misery. He was deeply worried about Florian and the Marauder’s spat with her. He’d done virtually everything that he could do to help her, up to and including a grotesque bribe. That and the hideous price of having to ask for the Marauder’s forgiveness in person had taken away the danger to himself and Fyrehowl, but Florian was stubborn. There wasn’t any way that she’d ever apologize, and he worried that it would be the death of her.

Sh*t.

He sipped from his mug and closed his eyes, conflicted over what to do next. He couldn’t simply let her suffer under Shemeska’s claws, but the ‘loth was goading her into doing something overt and stupid, even if her ability to trigger portals –whatever the hell allowed for that– might ultimately do the job itself.

Sighing, Toras opened his eyes back up, his mug perched at his lips ready to take another sip. He blinked though as his eyes saw something across the street out of the ordinary.

Smoke.

Beyond the brewery, at least one building back beyond it, thick plumes of greasy black smoke were pouring up into the sky. It wasn’t any sort of cook-fire or industrial smokestack, but a building bursting into flames. Without thinking Toras was out the door in moments, his mug still in his hand and hastily quaffed and hurled to the street by the time he turned the corner and stood outside the building, there to help in any way that he could.

A shuttered and unoccupied warehouse, the doors were chained and padlocked, marked with faded ‘No Trespassing – This Means You! Stupid Berks!’ signs either painted on the walls or on peeling, rain-stained papers tacked to the doors with rusted nails. The building hadn’t been occupied since Toras and the others had opened up the Portal Jammer, and he wasn’t even sure who the proper owner was. Had it belonged to the Marauder as it seemed half the block did, part of him was sorely tempted to let it burn to ashes, but another part of him hoped that if he did her a favor she might return it.

Running into a burning building wasn’t an advisable action, but that of course was what Toras of Andros did. Seeing that the source of the flames was on the upper floor, he gripped the drainpipe and hastily clambered up to the third story, there finding a single window ajar and easily hurled open.

Smoke poured out of the opened window, stinging Toras’s eyes and coughing him to hack and cough as he climbed inside, immediately ducking down to stick to cleaner air closer to the floor. Upon landing inside, it suddenly became immediately clear that he’d stumbled into something far more than an abandoned and burning warehouse.

“What the hell?!” Toras whispered to himself as he looked about. Far from the ramshackle exterior, except for where smoke had stained the ceiling and walls, the building was in pristine condition.

Symbols of the Fraternity of Order stood above ever door that lined the hallway, and several trolleys laden with books, ink, and loose sheets of paper and vellum lay at even intervals. One glance into the first open doorway revealed rows of desks and stacks of books and ledgers arranged in chronological order. Far from a warehouse, the building was some manner of private scriptorium, the stacks of books and records clearly in the process of being copied and those copies stored in Sigil, offsite from where they’d originally been made, presumably by the Fraternity of Order.

Staring at the books and scribes’ cubbies, Toras took a moment to see the first body.

“What the f*ck is going on here?” He blurted out, coughing at the sudden inhalation of smoke.

Looking down at the floor, three scribes lay on the ground, their bodies covered in blood that had yet to cool and clot. Each of their throats had been unceremoniously cut, their lung’s punctured to prevent their screams, and their legs hamstrung to prevent them from doing more than crawling with their arms if they weren’t already dead. It was all neat and brutally, terribly efficient.

Checking the bodies as swift as he could, Toras moved to the next room only to find the same 
Someone had torn through every stack of records, looking for something, the stacks turned over and tossed aside. This wasn’t vandalism or arson; this was mass murder to cover a theft.   

Another room and it was the same, dozens of bodies in all strewn about, and then as he moved towards the next room at the end of the hallway, a man stumbled into the hallway, stabbed several times and bleeding heavily. Wearing a symbol of the exiled Faction that operated the building in secret, he gasped and coughed blood, each breath causing a sharp whistle from a punctured lung.

“What happened here?!” Toras shouted, grabbing the man and whispering a prayer to his god before channeling the magic of his celestial blood to heal the man’s wounds. “Is there anyone else still alive?!”

“Get out!” The man babbled, “We have to get out… she’ll kill us all…”

“Who?!” Toras demanded, “Who did this?”

Toras never heard the man’s answer, only the motion of his mouth opening to scream and his eyes wide with utter, stark fear. The fighter had never seen a man seem that afraid, and in the next moment as the scribe turned to run, Toras would belatedly understand just what could evoke that level of mindless horror as a blade sunk into his back and erupted from the center of his chest, expertly piercing his heart.

Screaming and coughing blood, falling to his knees as his vision grew dark, he saw the green eruption of a disintegration spell lance down the hall and incinerate the scribe as he struggled to open a window and escape. There would be no escape.

Toras gasped for breath, struggling to call forth healing for himself as he felt the blade gripped and slid free, only to then take its place at his throat, slicing deep and spilling his lifeblood out upon the floor in a crimson fountain. As his vision faded to black his killer leaned in close, putting her lips to his ear and whispering a haunting message.

“Justice cannot die.”

With that message in his ears, Toras’s vision faded to black, but not before he looked up to see the merciless sneer playing upon the soot-smeared face of Alisohn Nilesia, Factol of the Mercykillers. The pain was blinding, but what horrified him more than the realization that he was dying was the fact the last time he'd seen her, he'd watched her die, publicly flayed alive by the Lady's shadow...


****​


----------



## Clueless

Shemeska said:


> Clueless - rogue/wizard/arcane trickster/unique PrC eventually
> Tristol - wizard/archmage
> Nisha - rogue/wizard/XaOsiTeCT PrC
> Fyrehowl - barbarian/monk/cipher PrC (we justified the combination of monk and barbarian through the whole monastic cipher theme and their focus on intuitive action)
> Toras - fighter/the broken as all heck PrC that gave mettle (basically evasion for Fort saves)
> Florian - cleric
> Kiro - rogue
> Skalliska - rogue/wizard/gatecrasher
> Alex - wizard/alienist
> Future PC (Alex/Skalliska's player) - cleric
> 
> And just because:
> Shemeska - sorcerer (plus those racial arcanaloth caster levels). I want to say that I ended up putting her in as an effectively 21st level caster before all was said and done, but she wasn't the highest level arcane caster in (or under) Sigil.




*coughs* Bladesinger. No rogue or arcane trickster. ;P


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## Tsuga C

Odd that he'd forget. If memory serves, this story hour has previously referred to your PC as a Bladesinger. Regardless, this was another satisfying update.


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## Coroc

Update please


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## Shemeska

Coroc said:


> Update please




I'll try to have one by early next week. I'm back in school full time (going for a PharmD) and I've got an exam on Friday and another on Monday so rather preoccupied.

I will say however that the next few updates will be particularly plot heavy, and they'll also show that there are no Mary Sues immune to harm, even among NPCs.


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## Shemeska

****​
The soft and intimately regular hum of distant, tectonic clockwork ran through the fingertips of Factol Nacius Garabutos of the Fraternity of Order as she placed a book back in its proper, organized location and then braced herself on the wall as she descended a ladder and back to her desk. The tome was a compilation of recent events related to the reorganization and some would say healing process of the modrons after their corruption following the temporary death of Primus and usurpation of the modron energy pool in Regulus.

The wizard and Factol sat down at her desk and smiled, re-reading the book’s second chapter in her mind by virtue of her own eidetic memory. She wasn’t in her judgment as adept as her predecessor Hashkar, but she’d only held her position for a few years following his assassination, and he’d had more than a century under his belt by that point, though age didn’t precisely matter to a petitioner, and she was only mortal.

Human and in her seventh decade of life, her olive-toned brow creased, deep in thought even as a dozen Ioun stones drifted in precise orbit about her head. Eschewing the finery of most Factols and perhaps more so most wizards of her profound ability, her robes were a simple pale white and gold, embroidered with tiny bits of clockwork about the cuffs and collar. Intelligence sparkled in her pale, steel-grey eyes and she smiled.

“You did a perfect job Nathan.” Nacius bobbed her head, nodding to herself with satisfaction as she brushed a lock of gray hair from her face, “Your mother would be proud, whatever ultimately happened to her.”

The book she presently mused over was penned by her secretary and Factor, Nathan the Inescapable, himself the son of Factol Hashkar’s predecessor Lariset. While the Fraternity had no manner of inherited positions and titles, the former Factol’s scion had risen up the ranks on his own work and dedication, aided in no small part by his mastery and utilization of originally githyanki magic to retard the retroactive aging process otherwise experienced upon leaving the Astral plane, which is where he’d spent most of the past century on Faction business in one of their secret archives. For having outlasted Hashkar and honestly having set himself up as Nacius’s likely successor, he barely looked over the age of 40. His likely spot was also aided by the deep and long-standing animosity between Nacius and her own rival for the position of Factol after Hashkar’s death, Jamis. She’d vaulted past her rival once and it amused her to potentially do so a second time by proxy whenever she herself passed away.

Her mind absently rereading and penning internal comments to discuss with the man in a week’s time for their next scheduled meeting, the Factol never noticed the door to her office open and close with barely a whisper of sound to grace the air and then her ears. Thus distracted, it took her a moment to react, though she didn’t yet look up.

“Was there something else Nathan?” She asked, “Your summary of the ordered disorder among the Quartons was nearly poetic in the use of equations alongside the prose. I..”
“I am here to retrieve something that does belong to you.” The voice was cold and devoid of mercy, tinged with simmering anger and subtle madness. The voice was not that of Factol Garabutos’s secretary.

The wizard looked up, a spell pulled to mind to trigger a nested series of lesser, contingent spells and in the back of her consciousness the notion to trigger one of the Universal Loopholes she held in stock, should they be required to deal with her intruder. Neither would be necessary nor viable however, and with a frown she ceased the attempt as her Ioun stones clattered to the ground, a consequence of the antimagic field conjured by the woman standing before her.

“Justice does not follow your petty Laws and presumptions of Order.” The intruder sneered, her eyes bloodshot and red, obvious even despite the ruddy fiendish glow of each red and lambent iris.

“This runs contrary to dozens of axioms and long-proven laws.” Factol Garabutos narrowed her eyes and spoke with a curt matter-of-factness, “Please be gone from my office.”

“I am Justice,” The Intruder stepped forward and placed her hands on the desk, her claws marked by gray dust and ashes, “And Justice transcends your petty Rules.”

“No, you are dead.” The Factol frowned. “Your death was witnessed by over two hundred individuals and one distant branch of a limited hivemind, of whom one hundred and twelve of the former and the full consciousness of the latter were interviewed in the following week and their impressions recorded and archived in triplicate. I have a copy of the record here in my office given the profound nature of your actions and the manner of your passing following your reappearance after being presumed dead since the end of the Faction War.”

“And yet here I am Factol Garabutos.” The intruder chuckled, a manic edge to the sound. “Do I appear dead to you?”

“You were flayed alive and reduced to a bloody, homogenous pulp by Her Serenity, The Lady of Pain.” The Guvners’ Factol resolutely stated. “So yes, you are quite profoundly dead. Thus please leave my office.”

Both Factol and former Factol stared at one another, human and tiefling, peers in a manner of speaking taking the other’s measure even if both of them knew what the end would bring.

“The Bladed Lady’s crimes are too great and so yet here I stand, alive and working towards the greatest act of Justice that can and will be.” The tiefling smiled, exposing a row of pointed teeth as she drew a vorpal blade, the same as she’d carried in Sigil upon the day of her recorded public death. “Death is no barrier towards my work, and my work requires the key to Hashkar’s private vault. You will provide me that key and I will provide you the justice of a swift and painless death.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then I will personally slaughter every member of the Fortress of Disciplined Enlightenment before I tear the structure apart down to the last golden brick to find what I came here to recover. It does not belong to you, and if need be I will execute your faction members for their complicity in your crimes and the crimes of this present reality.” The tip of the sword touched the Factol’s desk and began to neatly bleed through the stone like a knife to flesh. “But it does not have to come to that.”

“However you are here…” Nacius sighed as she retrieved a single golden key stamped not with Hashkar’s personal sigil, but with Lariset’s, “Whatever madness this entails, this is not Justice.”

“Yes, yes it is,” The former Mercykiller Factol smiled, “However indirectly it might be. Your death is not Justice in and of itself, but a stepping stone towards the greatest Justice of all, the grandest axiom that there is and could be.”

Factol Garabutos went ashen as she came to a sudden, profound, and horrific realization as she stared up into the eyes of Alisohn Nilesia. 

The mad tiefling smiled and as she had once before in Sigil to a dabus, with a single measured strike she neatly beheaded the Guvner’s Factol. The body slumped and blood sprayed across the room in patterns that could of course be ordered and predicted if the initial angle of the body, blood pressure, stroke volume, ambient temperature, and other variables were accounted for. Surely the Factol’s servants would make such calculations when they cleaned up the mess hours later.

Unlike when she’d slain a dabus in Sigil, this time Nilesia knelt down and drew out a single, darkly glittering black sapphire. Although the Fraternity of Order made it strictly against their own internal laws for any member above of Factotum and above to retain their position after returning from the dead, there could be no witness to this death, nor any witness to what she would be leaving with once she accessed and plundered Hashkar’s vault and what he’d inherited from his predecessor.

“You will have what you wish my Master.” Alisohn Nilesia whispered to herself, somewhere between a desperate plea, a promise, and a prayer.


****​


----------



## Shemeska

And since I apparently have some jackass who copy and pasted the first entry of my storyhour on their Facebook page and claimed it as their own work, just saying here that I, Todd Stewart, am the author of this work of fiction.


----------



## Tsuga C

Back to school. That takes a firm belief in ones' own self. I did it when I was in my late twenties because my undergraduate degree just wasn't opening doors that I needed open. It's that old devil known as degree devaluation. A baccalaureate in the sciences used to be worth something, but those days have passed. Now it's M.S. or starve unless you have connections or an excellent internship. The ol' B.S. degree just isn't worth much of anything in a depressing number of cases.


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## almost13

It's incredible how much crap some people will do just to get some attention. Hope you can look past it Shemeska, even if it is probably very annoying. Still love reading every new update!


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## Shemeska

N/A


----------



## Shemeska

That the fire was something other than an accident -a stray ember carried on the wind, or the collapse of a shelf holding a candle- was immediately obvious as Fyrehowl pulled upon the heavy brass handle of the building’s front pair of doors. A single pull fueled by urgent worry should have sufficed, but a sudden jarring wrench and clatter of metal from the other side indicated that the doors, rather than being locked, were haphazardly barred from the inside.

“What the hell?” The lupinal tilted her head to one side before emitting a soft growl and glancing down at the thin space between the door and the pavement. Although thin wisps of smoke curled and licked from the space, it would suffice for her entry.

With a smooth motion that belied the natural sorcery at place that still bubbled in her blood, no matter her actual alignment, Fyrehowl evaporated into a cloud of mist. Rapidly pouring into the open space to gain entry into the library beyond, she took but a single moment to survey her surroundings before she congealed back into solid flesh.

The library was less a true library intended for public or even private perusal and more a repository for bound and compiled records, with virtually every volume the same in size, shape, and color except for the numerical designation upon their spine and the prominent stamp of the Fraternity of Order. The repository was also in the process of immolation. Dozens of now raging fires dotting the room in a dozen disparate places, with the scent of accelerant used to douse the stacks rushing into the lupinal’s senses.

Her eyes wide and her brain struggling to find a purpose behind the arson, as well as the absence of any obvious perpetrator, Fyrehowl’s preternatural abilities as a Cipher had her ear’s turning and her body spinning to avoid the immediate danger a fraction of a second after she materialized, danger prefaced by a sharp and metallic *PING* of a crossbow.

Fyrehowl spun and dodged the first pair of barbed, metallic bolts as they embedded into the flagstones below her feet with a burst of erupting magic. Before she could take action and fully look at the source however, a second pair of bolts burrowed into her right shoulder and back. The pain was immediate and agonizing, the bolts imbued with penetrating magic of their own, and the metal itself fragmenting and burrowing wider like dozens of burrowing worms as soon as it pierced her flesh. What was more, the pain rapidly dulled with a flash of nausea and radiating numbness, the hallmark of poison.

Instinct took over and Fyrehowl rolled forward, drawing her blade and looking up at the ceiling where it met one of the columns supporting the room, there to find a single figure perched like a hungry spider, feet adhered to the stone, holding a crossbow in one hand and clutching a satchel of books and papers pillaged from the stacks below.

“What the f*ck!” The lupinal blurted, momentarily more shocked by the face staring down at her than by the bolts lodged in her flesh and the poison slowly leaching into her veins.

“You should have died back in Carceri…” Alisohn Nilesia sneered, her fingers moving with the motions of a spell, “Alas.”

In shock at the presence of a woman she’d watched be flayed alive by The Lady’s shadow, Fyrehowl didn’t respond in words as she dove to the side, narrowing avoiding the detonating a fireball far more powerful than standard. The former Mercykiller Factol had always been a profoundly talented caster, bordering upon prodigy, a trait all too often overlooked amongst her other traits and blood-soaked history.

“We should have left you in Carceri!” Fyrehowl shouted back, drawing a shriek of anger and another eruption of magical flames narrowly avoided once again.

Still adhered like a great and snarling spider, partly obscured and seemingly unconcerned with the billowing smoke from the fires increasing in intensity moment by moment, Fyrehowl look a moment and caught better measure of the woman risen from oblivion. Something was off. While she’d always been a tiefling of mixed and uncertain heritage, the Factol’s flesh was a much duller grey than when she’d cut a dabus in half in public. Nilesia’s eyes flickered red, a color that she hadn’t possessed previously, and while Fyrehowl’s senses were dulled by pain, poison, and her own dubious and ongoing fall from grace, the potency of evil that radiated from Nilesia was beyond that which any mortal could possibly exhibit.

“I watched you die!” Fyrehowl shouted, “I watched The Lady’s shadow flay you!”

“I am Justice and Justice cannot die!!!” The mad Factol shrieked before vanishing in a magical flash to appear on the opposite wall, depriving the lupinal of cover and firing another volley of poisoned bolts with a ragged, manic cackle.

Fyrehowl dove, her reactions growing duller by the moment as the poison from the earlier bolts raging within her blood. It was enough however to avoid the latest volley from ripping into her chest, instead embedding inches deep into the floor. Prone and suffering, the lupinal wasn’t able to dodge Nilesia’s next spell as a blanket of choking, acidic darkness enveloped her partial cover and set her into an agony of corrosive pain.

Through it all the Factol laughed, deranged and vengeful as Fyrehowl struggled to scramble out of the spell’s area of effect before she suffocated within its vapors. Although the mystery of how a woman she’d watched die a permanent death was still alive, setting light to a library, and the open question of just what she’d stolen remained, Fyrehowl’s only thoughts were of escape. By herself she wasn’t a match for the mad archmage clinging to the walls like a great and vengeful spider.

Seemingly less bent on death and punishment and more on simply arson and theft, Nilesia’s laughter abruptly ended with the flash of a teleportation spell as the flames devoured the structure around her and her would-be victim alike. Vomiting in pain and then gasping for breath as she struggled to shrug off the poison, Fyrehowl tore the bolt free from her flesh, or at least most of it as the brittle, naturally poisoned metal broke as she wrenched upon it. Struggling to remain on her feet and conscious amidst the smoke and her injuries, Fyrehowl’s last memory before she blacked out was the moment of triumph as she stepped clear of the burning building and stumbled out onto the street.

The mystery could be solved later, but at least for the moment she was still alive and free of the deathtrap behind her.


****​

Outside the shop front of The Friendly Fiend, several figures moved with purpose, emerging from the surrounding alleyways and hefting flasks and bottles of incendiary fluids, tieflings all of them. They wore rags, and all were best described as street rats more fit for the Hive than the Lower Ward, but the gold in their pockets would soon transform their social class, courtesy of a much better dressed pair of tieflings who’d recruited and tasked them, both of the latter more apt for the Lady’s Ward than the Lower Ward.

“F*ck you!”

“Screw you smiling b@stard!”

“Your shop sucks!”

The first of the bottles hurled awkwardly through the air to shatter upon the front window, spraying its payload across the thick plate glass and instantly igniting into a burst of flames. Wood burst into flame, paint bubbles and peeled, and then the other tieflings, emboldened by the drunken vandalism of their most eager member, they too let fly their own bottles. Better and more deliberately aimed, they shattered through the shop’s windows, spraying glass and burning oil throughout the room. Carpets, drapes, and all manner of mundane and magical bric-a-brac went up in flames without delay.

The tieflings shouted in triumph, though truthfully none of them had ever met the shop’s owner or even bore him any ill will. Their motivation wasn’t hate, but hate by proxy, with another fiend’s gold in their purses and that other fiend’s desires now made manifest in the smoke and rushing flames now gutting the Friendly Fiend’s interior.

Not waiting for either the Sod Killers or Sons of Mercy to arrive on the scene, let alone any possible magical countermeasures set in place by the shopkeep –and Heaven’s forbid the smiling ‘loth himself- the tieflings didn’t tarry long. A few more shouted insults and they melted back into Sigil’s pseudo-night, the flames casting their shadows long and pronounced against the street’s battered cobblestones and the brick walls of the buildings across the street.


****​

The study was vast, rows of ornately hand carved bookshelves packed with thousands of tomes, ledgers, and scroll cases extending to fill the demiplane to its capacity. Objects of curiosity sat within decorative holders and ensconcements, each tailored to display the artwork, cultural or historical curiosity, or indeed magical item or artifact that sat there in place. Far more than a private library, the room was palatial and would have easily set an archmage’s casting of Private Sanctum to shame. A series of freestanding archways marked with symbols and shorthand known only to their maker stood like ornamental trees amidst the rich surroundings of a wizard’s private demesne. Crystalline globes filled with flickering illusory flames drifted about the room’s heights like errant, wandering stars, with a minor constellation of them aggregated in a circle above a massive desk at which sat the demiplane’s sole occupant.

A’kin the Friendly Fiend sat in an overly plush and cushioned chair, dutifully writing in a heavy and full-color spellbook. Each elaborate page wasn’t simply written, but fully illuminated, as much artwork as diagrammatic and inked Spellcraft, the words and figures alike crafted in multicolored inks and metallic paints. As the ‘loth’s fingers danced between quill and ink-pot with one hand, it was clear that his scribing was beyond standard. Free of the page and the prosaic if masterwork penmanship upon the physical book, the fiend’s other hand danced with the motions of a spellcaster, orchestrating the actions of a trio of quills, each penning his words in duplicate upon a secondary and tertiary tome and a scroll that collectively hung in the air, held aloft by magic.

Blotting his quill within a pot of dark and crystalline sand, he smiled, spoke a word to dry the physical page and then prepared to turn the page and continue his work, or rather he would have continued if not for the sudden interruption. Heard within his mind but yet also causing his ears to involuntarily perk, an alarm spell triggered with a sharp klaxon, followed shortly thereafter by a dozen other contingent wards activating in sequence.

Frowning, A’kin’s ears and whiskers twitched with annoyance. Briefly closing his eyes, the fiend sighed and physically exhaled upon the page out of habit before opening his eyes and standing up. Pale blue robes swishing about his ankles, the claws of his bare feet clattering upon the stone in-between ornate lengths of carpet, A’kin made his way to one of the freestanding archways scattered throughout the study. Glancing down to conjure a pair of slippers for his feet, he looked back at the archway and spoke a single command word to cause the archway to activate with a flickering flash of magic. Without yet stepping forward he raised a hand and made a lazy, scrolling gesture and watched as a progression of gate locations rotated past, each filling the archway for but a moment before he arrived on the one that went to a location adjacent to a natural portal to Sigil, one conveniently entering into his shop.

Without the slightest concern he stepped forward, emerging into a second demiplane wherein the natural portal stood only a dozen feet away, set within the bound space of a decorate and ancient mosaic ripped free from its original moorings and deposited within a much more secure and private location for his own use. Several more steps and a whispered song in a long dead language and the portal opened and deposited the ‘loth into his shop, whereupon he emerged into a raging firestorm.

“Really?” A’kin muttered.

Immune to the flames, he glanced about and proceeded to frown with even greater annoyance as he watched the laughing pack of drunk and soon to be drunk tieflings dash away and back into the night. Gritting his teeth and managing to avoid raising his hands to cast, he stood there as the flames harmlessly licked at him and his robes, even as it devoured his shop and its myriad of items, reducing tens of thousands of gold pieces of inventory to ashes. Of course, any objects of importance or any real value stored in view of the public and casual shoppers were still safe amidst the flames, each protected behind multiple layers of wards that sprang up as soon as the first bottle of burning pitch and oil had broken through the front display window. It didn’t matter in the long run and the damage could be repaired without much unnecessary trouble or expense.

“Fine, act like a spoiled f*cking child…” A’kin shook his head, rolled his eyes, stepped back to his study and allowed the shop to burn.


****​

“There he is!”

“I don’t think he’s breathing!”

“Damn it! Help me shove this beam to the side before the whole building goes down!”

Clueless and Florian coughed and struggled to breathe as they stood within the fire-gutted and still burning building a street away from the Portal Jammer. When Toras hadn’t responded to a sending spell, they followed as fast as they could, figuring something had happened and indeed something had happened.

The cleric and bladesinger had arrived to find the building half-consumed by flames, the top floor fully collapsed, and Toras’s body pinned beneath a roof beam and exposed to their view when an exterior wall collapsed into the street amidst a torrent of bricks, ashes, and charred plaster.

They hadn’t taken the time to look for anyone else when they found their friend and companion motionless, nor did they pause to wonder at blood that covered his chest and back, nor did they immediately notice the half-dozen neat and precisely placed wounds in his chest from where a blade had lanced through his heart and punctured both lungs. He’d bled out and died well before they found his corpse and dragged it free.

“Down to the street!” Clueless shouted as both he and Florian felt a shudder run through the floor and the entire building began its collapse.

Hefting Toras’s body and grabbing onto Florian, Clueless swiftly cast a dimension door and carried them both to safety below. The collapse and rising, outflowing cloud of embers and burning dust and ash was however an entirely secondary concern as they stared at Toras’s lifeless corpse.

Clueless was shouting but Florian wasn’t listening as they instinctively reached for her holy symbol and the reagents needed to bring Toras back. The diamond was in her mailed fist as she recited the words, only to briefly have flashbacks of the last time she raised someone from the dead, or tried to, back in the depths of Gehenna in the Vale of Frozen Ashes, and there at that time, there wasn’t a soul to bring back with Alex. Her mind raced with the horror of losing someone she’d been through so much with, but that panic receded and vanished as she finished her prayer and the fighter’s wounds began to heal, his eyes flickered and opened, and he inhaled with a sharp and sudden gasp, the slashes in his lungs whistling for a moment before his flesh knitted itself back together and restored his breath and heartbeat to normal.

“What the hell just happened?” Clueless put out a hand to help Toras back to his feet. The bladesinger’s own heart still raced, pounding in his chest, from having witnessed his toughest companion dead and stuck within a burning building like a piece of broken masonry. The image would haunt him for some time.

Toras was white as a sheet as he lay there, his only motions a blink of his eyes against the falling snowfall-like ashes and the heavy breathing of a man who’d seen something that shouldn’t have been possible. Stunned from what he’d witness and experienced, he didn’t reach for Clueless’s hand and simply lay there on the street.

“What happened?” Florian demanded, “You died! That doesn’t happen! You just died and we brought you back, so there really shouldn’t be anything to keep you from answering as to just what a**hole knifed you in the back… repeatedly!”

Clueless redoubled his own questions and it took several long, uncomfortable moments for Toras to finally look up at them both and answer as best he could, the memory of the voice in his ear still sharp and poignant, as well as having watched his killer’s figure walk away as his vision faded and failed.

“It was a dead woman.”


****​


----------



## Shemeska

“A dead woman?” Clueless raised an eyebrow as he looked down at his friend, most recently a corpse himself. The immediate and breathless description didn’t provide enough details to actually answer who’d actually killed him. The fact that they’d managed the deed however was beyond troubling. Thankfully though, that description seemed to preclude the first person that sprang to the bladesinger’s mind who’d be capable of the act: Adamok Ebon.

“Like what, a vampire?” Florian pressed the fighter for details as she helped him to his feet, “A Dustie?”

He didn’t take the offered hand. Rather, he simply lay there staring up at the smog-choked Sigilian sky.

“She died. We watched her die. We all watched her die.” Toras’s breath was ragged, his eyes wide with confusion and disbelief, looking past his companions and into the still-collapsing shell of the burning scriptorium. “We all saw the Lady of Pain flay her alive into a bloody pile of entrails and a smear on the cobblestones.”

“…” Clueless and Florian both fell silent on the questions that had otherwise been bubbling up in their minds to ask. They knew exactly who Toras was talking about even if it was impossible.

It –was– impossible, wasn’t it?

“Alisohn Nilesia,” Toras whispered, a tremor in his voice, “It was her. It was Alisohn Nilesia. She stabbed me and she killed me.”

Bladesinger and cleric glanced at one another, both of them uncertain which was more terrifying at the moment: that a woman flayed alive by Her Serenity was alive again or that Toras was terrified. They’d never seen him actually afraid, and that more than anything disturbed them.

“That’s not possible Toras.” Florian interjected with disbelief, “We saw her die. It couldn’t have been her.”

Toras didn’t answer with words, but the side to side shake of his head dismissed the cleric out of hand.

“You saw her?” Clueless asked, taking a deep breath to steady his own nerves, “You actually saw her?”

“Not her face, no.” Toras shook his head again, gritting his teeth to steady himself as he relived the memory of it all in his mind. “But that doesn’t matter because…”

“Because you didn’t -actually- see her, so it presumably wasn’t actually her,” Florian cut him off, interjecting her own thoughts as to how it couldn’t have been the late Mercykiller Factol, “You don’t come back from being flayed by The Lady. So presumably it was just some barmy or a doppelganger pretending to be her?”

“Makes sense,” Clueless tried to smile, his own burgeoning rationalization of Toras simply being mistaken making the whole of it palatable, “No better way to turn the city upside down than make it seem like an ex-Factol is back and back from the dead, especially one killed by The Lady. Sounds like one of the Revolutionary League’s greatest hits if you ask me.”

“Clueless no.” Toras was insistent, “She leaned in and whispered in my ear when she put a blade through my back and through my heart. Clueless I knew that voice. We plucked her out of Carceri in the first damn thing we all ever did together as adventuring companions even before we made it official. I know that voice. I know that insane zealotry and self-assuredness. We all watched her die only a few blocks from here, but she was there whispering in my ear telling me that ‘Justice couldn’t die’ before she killed me.”

Clueless and Florian traded wordless glances at the other and then back down to Toras, but their attempts to rationalize what he’d experienced and deny the truth and gravity of it all were for naught as something else entirely interrupted and precluded that. Below their feet the stones rippled with the sudden onset of a Cage Quake. Adjacent buildings creaked and trembled and the burning shell of the Guvner scriptorium collapsed inwards with a spectacular crash and falling timbers and stones.

“Oh what the f*ck now?” Florian immediately glanced down at her feet, expecting a portal to open and seek to swallow her up as had happened dozens of times in the past weeks, usually accompanied by a Cage Quake thereafter. This time however the cause was less distinct, even if the Lady’s displeasure seemed almost palpable on the air.

“We’ve been having a lot of those lately…” Clueless muttered, trying to keep his cool even as his wings flickered out and he hovered in the air rather than standing on the uncertain ground.

A second time the ground shuddered with the movement of a Cage Quake. A block away they heard the sounds of a window breaking, a decorative statue breaking free from a roof’s cornice and shattering upon the ground and various shouts, cries, and barking of animals as a flock of executioner’s ravens took to flight.

It all demanded a response. It all required some words to settle their terror and uncertainty, but they couldn’t seem to form them, no matter how they tried. Amidst the chorus of slow groans of structural collapse and settling from the building behind them, the trio stared at one another with profound uncertainty. Each opened their mouths to say something, anything, to break the disquiet but to no avail.

Finally the three of them started to discuss what had happened but in vain as they were once again interrupted, this time by the words of a magical sending spell prepared and sent by none other than former Factol Rhys of the Transcendent Order, now the Chairwoman of the Sigil Advisory Council.

“The Sigil Advisory Council will be holding an emergency meeting regarding present disturbances and turmoil tomorrow at Peak, sharp, with attendance restricted to voting citizens.”

“These are difficult days with rumors and lies flying sure and fast. We will endure this present strife. We will confer and we will act.”

The former Factol’s voice was preternaturally calm, with her words enunciated and her message delivered with a firmness and rapidity that belied the fact that she’d probably not composed it ahead of time but fell within the precise limits of the spell’s capacity for words. It was impressive and it was a tone and tact absolutely suited to the moment with Cage Quakes and dead factols seemingly risen from the grave. Underneath it all however, and it was only something that the three of them picked up on because of their close association with Fyrehowl, herself a Cipher, was that ex-Factol Rhys was far from calm. Virtually all of those hearing her words wouldn’t have known it, but Rhys seemed genuinely worried.

“Well… that’s something.” Clueless blinked, still hovering in the air even if the ground had finally settled.

“Something’s going on.” Florian unconsciously touched fingers to her holy symbol, “Something terrible is going on.”

Grimacing, Toras stood up, “When was the last time we had Cage Quakes like this?”

“Right before the Faction War.” Clueless took a deep breath. “I’m not entirely sure that I want to be in Sigil right now, but I don’t even know precisely why. But if Nilesia is walking around in the flesh…”

Toras caught the bladesinger’s eyes and saw his own uncertainty and worry reflected back at him, but with a mixture of anger and frustration as well. Clueless wasn’t happy and it seemed more out of rage at not being fully aware of the situation than anything else. Come to think of it, he’d seemed ever so slightly darker of late.

“Calm down, calm down!” Florian put up her hands, “Let’s dial this back a moment and be rational. Why would… you know who… be in a random burning building a block from the Jammer waiting to knife you in the back?”

“She wasn’t there for me.” Toras explained, “She was there… I don’t know why. It was a Guvner storehouse of records. She was looking for something. The whole place had been turned inside out and she’d killed or left everyone inside for dead before she torched the place. I happened to show up at the wrong time.”

As abruptly as Rhys’s earlier sending, Tristol’s sudden telepathic voice in their heads finally put an end to the conversation.

“Get back to the Portal Jammer. Quickly. We have a problem.”

The wizard hadn’t even used the full number of words the spell granted. What was more though, his voice was panicked.

Quickly they hurried back to the Portal Jammer, ignoring the stares and questions of a dozen touts and passersby curious as to what had happened with the collapsed building or why Toras was covered in his own rather than anyone else’s blood. There was precious else on their mind except to get back home, though one shout by a crier would pointedly be recalled later for its importance and immediate gravity: “News from Mechanus! Factol Garabutos of the Fraternity of Order murdered in the Fortress of Enlightened Discipline! Exiled faction in turmoil! Assassin unknown and on the loose!”

The news from Mechanus was of deep importance, deeper than they realized, but the scene that greeted them as soon as they stepped through the Jammer’s door made them forget it immediately. Fyrehowl lay on the floor, hideously burned and injured from multiple puncture wounds, with Tristol, Nisha, and Skalliska flanking her doing what they could to treat her.

Toras, Clueless, and Florian gaped at the Cipher’s injuries, but it was the look on her face that took them aback. The lupinal’s face was blank and terribly troubled. Her ears lay flat against the sides of her head as she ignored Tristol’s repeated questions and gave not a wince as Nisha’s cleaned her injuries of the poison still filtering into her system. Instead Fyrehowl’s eyes were locked on a single object upon a shelf behind the bar, next to a bottle of steel blue whisky from Acheron.

Clueless recognized that look in her eyes, because he’d seen the same vacant terror in Toras’s, and Fyrehowl was of course staring at the shelf and thereupon the tiny sculpted doll of none other than Factol Alisohn Nilesia.

Something was wrong. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.


****​

Atop the Tower Arcane, the second Great Yugoloth Tower that sprouted from the molten flank of Chamada the Second Furnace, sat a location that both was and wasn’t. Warping space in a capacity that made it exist at the tower’s summit yet not exist there, but somehow at and not at every other point within the vast structure both above and belowground, the Tower’s original architect had seen fit to create her office as a smear of potentiality like a great evil particle and wave adrift in the orbit of the nucleus that she’d crafted and plunged into the plane’s flesh like a marker of ownership. There at the summit yet everywhere and nowhere within the Tower Arcane, the current master of the Tower sat and busied himself beneath the light shed by the suffering of the original occupant of his place of power.

Helekanalaith smiled as he extended his mind into the great well of collective knowledge and memories bound within the structure of the Tower Arcane. As the present and only the second Keeper of the Tower after Larsdana Ap Neut herself, his knowledge of that great hungering, rapacious thing that his caste each had access too, his knowledge was greater and his skill at accessing it capable of far subtler action. 

He smiled as he mentally thumbed through the records of the betrayal and binding of one Cazdurath the Vile, a baatezu general presently imprisoned within the Abyssal Wells of Darkness. He had no need of the information itself no, but as he glanced across the records, that action was -as was any attempt to access the Tower's pool- immediately noticed, scrutinized, and replicated by hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of his underlings in a mad, envious, internecine scramble to divine meaning and importance within the records and in the potential motivation on the Keeper's behalf. The only motivation however was to watch the scuttling of each hungry, jealous little jackal-headed roach ever seeking to succeed and rise above the rest of their kind by whatever means, subtle or bloody.

The Keeper smiled slyly, watching his pupils and gleaning meaning of his own from their actions, inactions, and the small number of deaths that occurred in the immediate aftermath when such concentration left his kind less functionally aware of their surroundings and open to physical attack.

"Bravo little ones, bravo."

At that moment, as if the universe itself had smirked and expressed a profound moment of mocking irony as the Keeper mocked the feckless, misguided, and utterly meaningless and futile actions of his subordinates, the universe saw fit to act. Opposite the Keeper's desk where it had stood since he'd obtained it from the mortals who'd inexplicably managed the action, the statue of Shylara the Manged, the Overlord of Carceri and consort of The Ebon stood, formed from her petrified subordinate astrally projected form stood frozen in an awkward snarl.

As it had stood for more than a year, it glittered with layers of wards laid atop it like shellac atop a tasteless but valuable painting by an art conservator. There would be no accidental shattering of the stony prize that decorated the Keeper's office, no reckless attempt by one of the Manged's servitors to release her. Helekanalaith had layered the statue with more than four nested temporal stasis spells among a dozen other wards like a mocking, gaudy matryoshka doll. But the universe it seemed saw fit to mock the Keeper's intentions as well as his own profound mastery of his craft.

Abruptly the statue shuddered and spontaneously sublimated in the space of seconds, leaving behind nothing except for the empty layers of wards, undisturbed and unbroken, still limning the abandoned hollow in a rough outline of Shylara’s body.

Helekanalaith looked up and deeply frowned, "Expected, but ahead of schedule. Alas."

For a long moment the Keeper stared at the hollow, nested shells of wards left behind after the statue's dissolution, though not out of any surprise that the seemingly impossible had eventually happened. True to his statement he assumed that at some point the archfiend he counted as ostensible ally, rival, and liability would be free to resume her previous position in Carceri. 

No, that it had happened was not the subject of his stare. Instead Helekanalaith sat there with his eyes fixed upon the now vacant space, openly wondering as to just how the Ebon -because there was no other candidate for responsibility- had released his consort without penetrating the wards. He continued to stare, his expression transfixed and caught between curious wonder and rage at the act being in blunt disregard for all the laws of magic as he understood them, mocking his own skill as being as impotent as the little jackal-headed roaches he'd mocked earlier for their efforts.

“How did you accomplish that?”

Imprisoned within her globe, Larsdana's soul flickered with laughter, hinting without words that she of course knew how such could have been accomplished, mocking her lover and apprentice even now, eons later, before he smiled up at her prison, stroked the gemstone as if lightly touching her cheek and then silenced her with a gift of agony with a casual wave of his other hand. How the act was performed was for his consideration later, but with the return of Shylara to the stage of their game, he had other concerns and contingencies of more immediate concern to himself, his proxies, and his agents, both willing and otherwise.

“Would you have shown up in person Larsdana?” The Keeper asked, looking up into the tiny, warped face of his beloved, contorted with blinding, rictus pain. “Or would you have stayed aloof and allowed others to muddy their feet with your tasks?”

Larsdana only screamed in reply, insensate and unreadable.

“No, you’d have sent me to do it for you with a smile and a kiss.” Helekanalaith smiled warmly and gifted her with an additional wave of pain. “And in your honor I’ll do the same as you would have, though with an errand boy who knows his place, unlike myself when I remained in your shadow.”

Chuckling to himself, Helekanalaith whispered the words to a sending spell.


****​

Deep within the internal structure of the Tower of Incarnate Pain the walls moved. Each living soul-brick existed in a state of perpetual agony, their pain such that their screams were silent, their faces stretched into blind, twisted visages gazing blindly back at each and every visitor within and upon the structure wrought of them as a monument to suffering. So deep within the tower were the particular halls that the wards laid down by the tower’s present Mistress made certain that no living creature could progress without ensuring a very messy and sudden death without her express approval.

Unsurprisingly the halls echoed with the soft sounds of claws on bone and the deft actions of a pair of tongues and lips.

“Mmmm!”

“Such a delight! Truly sublime.”

The two proxies of Shylara the Manged, overlord of Carceri hovered in the air, their legs crossed and their robes pulled up to their thighs to avoid sullying the edges within the thick layer of ashes that covered the floor, the remains of those servitors who’d seen fit to make an attempt on Shylara’s life and fail hideously. Each of them clutched one of the ragged, partially de-fleshed long bones that formerly held a cohesive and functional position within the body of the arcanaloth Mellinara ap Cathrys, most recently torn limb from limb by the nycaloth guardians of Shylara the Manged, though truth be told neither of the Overlord of Carceri’s proxies considered those “nycaloths” to actually be nycaloths any more, not given what she’d done to them.

Alpthis ap Othrys closed his eyes and smiled as he placed the broken end of a femur to his lips and sucked at the yellow-white marrow contained within. Both bestial and curiously effete at the same time, the act was an innate thing among his caste, a way in which they acted to prove themselves the true masters of Gehenna by breaking and consuming a fallen enemy with prior delusions of power. The broken spiritual essence of his former rival tasted of rage and agony – a delight beyond measure for the sorcerer.

Apteris ap Othrys smiled at his sibling’s praise for the taste as he hefted one of Mellinara’s humeri and effortlessly snapped it in two to reveal the rich, horrific gourmet delight at its core. Placing the broken end to his lips the red-brown-furred monk mirrored his sibling’s actions and response as he savored and feasted as well.

Tongues danced over claws and into the hollow channel laced with hematopoietic butter, leaving not a scrap or drop to waste. Greedily the two proxies feasted in not exactly total solitude as thirty feet away and standing in position within niches inset into the walls, the nycaloth guardians who’d torn the source of their feast apart stood silent and still, the gems embedded in their heads dimmed but for a faint glow.

Abruptly Apteris’s right ear -notched and hairless like a brand of ownership- twitched at a distant sound just below the level of conscious audibility. A fraction of a second later his eyes flicked up to look past the sessile nycaloths and deeper down the passage while his brother, not yet aware of the sounds deftly continued to savor first the yellow marrow and then noisily begin crunching upon the red marrow in turn.

“Having tasted this I genuinely lament never having tasted anything else of hers while the late…” Alpthis let his carnal thought trail off as he noticed his sibling’s ears erect and eyes focused down the passage. “…what?”

Apteris held a finger to his lips to silence his overly talkative brother. Almost immediately the sorcerer’s ears perked to attention as well as they both heard the same sound: footsteps.

“That’s f*cking impossible.” Alpthis snarled, “There’s only this passage in and absolutely none of the wards are broken. We’d have felt them like the tremors in a spider’s web while a fly wriggled and damned itself with each entangling movement.”

“Poetic bastard,” The monk smirked and graced the sorcerer’s cheek with a claw before a more serious expression graced both of their muzzles.

“So do we go and save our brutal, beloved Mistress?” Alpthis raised an eyebrow before looking down at the remaining meal in his hands, “Or do I at least get to finish the red marrow first?”

“Which would Shylara choose to do?” Apteris smiled a broad mouthful of razored fangs.

“She’d ignore it and finish her meal.” Alpthis returned his sibling’s expression and with a mutual cackle the Overlord of Carceri’s incestuous servitors savored the final portions of their meal.

Several belated minutes later, having licked their claws clean of every last bit of marrow, the two ‘loths hurled the bloody, broken vessels of their meal to the side. The two proxies bolted down the hallway towards the sealed and monstrously warded lair where their Mistress lay catatonic and helpless. The guardians ignored them, seeing them as tools invested with a portion of Shylara’s own power, that same investiture flooding the brothers with her desires and overpowering their own innate urge to slit her throat and take her throne for themselves.

They passed through another set of doors, the surrounding fabric of the Tower leaking with purple-white phosphorescent hints of the energies contained within the Reflective Chasm. Despite their investiture with Shylara’s power the eerie light playing across their flesh was uncomfortable, and as they stepped into her chambers it bordered upon painful. Thus invested with Shylara’s might however, with her desires and designs intermingled with their own, the effect was altogether pleasurable.

Of course they’d been in her private chambers before: the libraries, the laboratories, and of course the archfiend’s bedchambers more often than not. The chamber they entered at present however was the most heavily warded of all, designed to protect her from her own kind when she astrally projected from the safety of Carceri, inhabiting surrogate bodies courtesy of astral color pools.

Shylara’s comatose body lay in the chamber’s center, encircled by dozens of circles drawn in blood, ashes, salt, wax, and molten gold. Virtually naked but for her favorite outfit: a single strip of blue-black elf leather wound about her body and strung with a series of blue silk sashes. She struck a form all the more alluring to her servitors due to the fact that in her native and unconscious form they beheld her mange, her beautiful, cursed deformity gifted to her by her former lover the Marauder and cherished by her present lover the Oinoloth who’d refused to heal her of it. 

The air hummed with power and neither Alpthis, Apteris, nor Shylara cast shadows, but the figure that the Manged’s proxies found standing above her, he did.

Vorkannis the Ebon stood above Shylara, a sneer of contempt upon his muzzle intermingled with delight. The Oinoloth’s blue-black robes drifted on an unseen breeze and despite the Reflective Chasm’s brutal, agonizing light, his form seemed blurred and wreathed in darkness, his features indistinct except for the piercing albino shade of his eyes and the ivory fangs within his maw.

As the twin proxies entered into the chamber their response was both instantaneous and unconscious on their part: both Alpthis and Apteris dropped to their knees and bowed their heads to the floor, whispering words of supplication and praise. Only when they looked up did they both realize that they had been and were still salivating profusely.

“You channel Shylara rather well.” The Oinoloth didn’t bother to glance at the arcanaloths groveling on their knees like simpering puppies.

“She’s trained us well our Oinoloth.”

“Trained us so very well…”

Unused to standing in the physical presence of the Oinoloth, and only feet away from the source of their own power as proxies, the siblings brains erupted in a mad and blinding wildfire of Shylara’s desires more so than their own. Panting and bloodily tearing at their own flesh as the Ebon uniformly ignored them and continued to stare down at his consort, both proxies wallowed in the tidal wave of overwhelming fear mixed with an equally puissant notion of adoration and NEED.

"You've become so very much like her.” Vorkannis admitted, even if his eyes remained locked upon the Manged, her eyes glassy and insensate. “She granted you power in her service but you have more than just power. You have a portion of her greed, her desires, her vanity, her fury and self-loathing in her imprisonment and her failure in my service. That may be the death of you."

Virtual automatons beholden to the unconscious will of their Mistress, both proxies keened and whimpered for the Oinoloth’s favor, having both adopted Shylara’s form. Finally granting them his attention, Vorkannis looked down at them as they aped the Manged as best they could.

“We can serve you as she cannot, locked away here for her failure.”

“Please our Oinoloth, allow us. We can serve you as she would.”

“Please allow us; anything you desire.”

“Anything at all.”

“Yes, you could.” Vorkannis sneered down at the pair as they pantomimed their best attempt at playing as Shylara, “You are not her however; shadows of her power that you are, just as she and you alike are simply shadows of myself.”

Understanding their place and the Ebon’s contempt, both proxies immediately resumed their native forms and prostrated themselves upon the floor, ashamed and admonished, though not regretting their attempts.

“We meant no disrespect our Oinoloth… No disrespect at all.”

“No disrespect…”

“I will admit my surprise at the amount of power that she invested in the two of you.” The Ebon shrugged and looked back down at Shylara with a shake of his head. “She might as well be f*cking herself then, but with triple well, everything at hand. It’s narcissism more than anything else, though she learned that from another. But I’m sure that the both of you are certainly aware of that one as well.”

“Quite.”

“Very aware.”

Both proxies snarled at the memories produced from Shylara’s thoughts on the Marauder, but their brooding upon the topic was broken by the Oinoloth’s next statement.


"Leave us.” Vorkannis bluntly stated as he knelt down over the Manged, “This is between she and I. You can gleefully bask in the shadow of her experience."

The next word the Ebon spoke was in Baern, a singular term that physically shook the Manged's proxies, drawing forth a longing whine and widened pupils. They stood silent for only a moment before vanishing in the flicker-flash of a teleport, their tails tucked between their legs. Though they didn't understand the word, they felt its meaning in a blurred concept of ecstasy/misery.

“Hello Shylara,” The Oinoloth whispered, staring into her glassy eyes, "You haven't suffered nearly enough for my appreciation, but alas I have need of you. Pragmatism is your savior, but do not think you will not suffer more, so much more, before I am done with you. There is no mercy in this act. There has never been mercy, not between you and I, never for anything involving me."

Abruptly Shylara’s eyes focused, alive and alert on Vorkannis. In that singular moment as she became consciously aware of her surroundings and of her failure, she began to scream.

****​


----------



## Quartz

I'm completely lost with regards to the plot, but the writing is awesome.


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## Shemeska

Quartz said:


> I'm completely lost with regards to the plot, but the writing is awesome.




The plot is complex and this story has been going on for... I've actually lost track of how many pages in Word it comes out to at this point. But the storyhour here has been going on for over a decade, so there's that.

My players ended up making a giant flowchart to connect everything (and everything did ultimately connect because I don't throw out something randomly that I won't be picking up on again if I can help it).

I'm really glad that you like the writing!


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## Tsuga C

If the yugoloths don't make your skin crawl, they're not being portrayed correctly. These are done wickedly well.


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## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> If the yugoloths don't make your skin crawl, they're not being portrayed correctly. These are done wickedly well.




Well, they're likely to make your skin crawl in this next update which will be mildly NSFW.


----------



## Shemeska

One hour after peak was early for Clueless to be both in bed and asleep. Rather than sleeping, his time was more often spent drinking or bartending, carrying on conversations with dozens of late night regulars at the Jammer or his own companions up late. More than that, the fey-blooded bladesinger was not in the slightest bit averse to "entertaining" either with a particular and particularly non-exclusive Sensate, anyone else that caught his eye, or both. Lately however he'd been keeping to himself and brooding over certain and certainly darker things he'd learned below the streets of Sigil. This latter topic more than anything else he'd kept absolutely to himself, not trusting his revelations and self-revelations to any of his companions, regardless of their shared experiences.

At the moment however, Clueless was fast asleep, his feet free of the covers and his right hand under his pillow, tightly wrapped around Razor's grip like a Baatorian steel extension of himself. His sleep however was fitful, and a blizzard of concerns spun through his dreams. Toras claimed to have been killed by Alisohn Nilesia, a 'dead woman' if ever there'd been one. It would have been easy to dismiss the fighter's claims as mistaken identity, a doppelganger, or an illusion wrought to sow discord in the City of Doors. Those slain by Her Serenity uniformly did not return from their brutal, horrific, and typically public death. It should have been easy to dimiss, except for Fyrehowl's encounter with the risen Nilesia. She hadn't seen the ex-Factol amidst the haze of a burning building and through eyes dying from a blade through the heart. No. The lupinal had seen Nilesia face to face, spoken with her, heard her voice, seen the contempt in her eyes, and it was her even though it couldn't have been.

Maybe.

She'd been subtly different, physically so, more half-fiend than tiefling, but she'd spoken with an intimate knowledge and personal memory of past interactions. She recognized Fyrehowl and she stayed within the burning library longer than she should have in order to try and kill her.

There was however the issue of time. Fyrehowl had fought Nilesia at nearly the same time as Toras had been stabbed to death, almost two wards away. Clueless wasn't entirely sure how to get around that issue of distance, and more so the very non-random connection between the locations that she'd been: a library and scriptorium linked to the Fraternity of Order. Toras described it as if she'd been looking for something, tearing the place apart searching for a specific volume or record. Fyrehowl though had seen the same but also seen Nilesia with several volumes in hand and the fires started to destroy the evidence of her theft.

Beyond how she was inexplicably risen from the dead, why had she returned to Sigil and risked the Lady's wrath? What was she searching for and what had she found? Was it connected to the apparent assassination of the Guvners' factol in Mechanus? It had to be.

Looming on Clueless's dreaming mind was also a question that had gnawed at him since the start: why had he and his companions been blackmailed and forced into recovering Nilesia from slavery in Acheron only to have her arrive in Sigil, insane and raving, there to be slaughtered without effort by Her Serenity? What reason did the Marauder have to do that? Simply to give Nilesia hope and watch with amusement as she destroyed herself with mad ambition? It was plausible of course, but with Nilesia seemingly risen from the dead and looting not one but two Guvner storehouses in Sigil? There was something deeper going on, and the 'loth was at the heart of it, pulling string as she always was.

How it all fit together was a great Gordian knot that spun and twisted in his mind, perpetually shifting form and shape, revealing more snarls and tangles, seemingly tighter than ever before, even as he thought he'd managed to figure out the form of the knot in the first place. Be that as it was however, what spun above the slumbering bladesinger at that very moment however was distinctly absent from those slumbering thoughts.

"Greetings!"

Drifting several feet above the sleeping bladesinger, the faint blue-white glow of the Cheshire Fiend's projected avatar smiled with its self-satisfied greeting and announcement of its presence. Of course its presence was greeted only with an abrupt mumble, turn from one side to the other, and a snore.

The fiend cleared his throat but gained no reply save for another snore. The illusory grin frowned. F*cking mortals.

"HEY! WAKE UP!" The 'loth barked out, finally garnering a reaction and a hell of one as Clueless bolted up and promptly skewered his projected avatar with Razor's tip, albeit to no effect. 

"Well that wasn't the response that I expected..." The Cheshire Fiend proceeded to nibble upon Razor, showing no apparent ill effect. "Still, long time no see Clueless. It's good to see you again!"

His eyes marred by stress, too many unwisely taken shots of fey-wine only hours before, and fitful sleep afterwards, Clueless stared at the illusory ‘loth with confusion and distrust.

"What the f*ck are you doing in my room?!" Clueless nearly spat, not moving Razor in the slightest and fully prepared to cast if needed, despite being tangled in bed sheets. His patience with anything ‘loth was sorely thin given the events of the past twenty four hours and frankly the past year and a half before that. A smiling ‘loth was still a ‘loth.

"Trust me when I say I'm not here to stare at your naked flesh.” The Cheshire Fiend looked down at the bladesinger’s form which would have made many a Sensate happy, and occasionally made one Sensate very happy. “Many would be happy as I understand such mortal concerns, but for a 'loth like myself, the notion is... disconcerting."

"You're not my type either if that helps..." Clueless frowned and lowered Razor down to the mattress, though pointedly, his hand remained upon the blade and his stance only partially relaxed. "So to what do I owe this honor? It's been a long time, for better or for worse."

"For better or for worse indeed, yes..." The Grin drifted backwards slightly and turned to examine the bladesinger’s room. “I gather that your business here seems to be doing rather well, and I’m to understand that your lupinal companion came rather close to gaining a seat on Sigil’s council. Bravo.”

The fiend was taking its time to actually get to the point of why it was there, something that Clueless inwardly frowned at.

"Thank you, and as for yourself, I trust you're doing well?" The bladesinger asked, not truly expecting or desiring an answer compared to the lingering question of what the illusory fiend was doing in his room at that hour. Given a chance to talk about himself though, the chatty fiend gave an answer nonetheless.

“Oh I’ve been doing quite well for myself as it happens, thank you very much. My status as the Keeper’s favored servitor has personally profited me to quite an extent in Gehenna. Unless of course I’m in the Waste. Or Carceri. Or Acheron. Or wherever else I happen to be. The use of a planar projection makes my existence ooooh so much easier, even if it does have me as something of a favored errand boy for the Keeper of the Tower.” The Cheshire Fiend shrugged, as best as an exaggeratedly comic smile without eyes or any actual body either tangible or representative could express.

“I wasn’t trying to spark small talk, I was just being polite.” Clueless smirked and motioned for the fiend to get on with it. “Spit it out. You’re not here to make random chitchat. What's up?”

The corners of the Cheshire Fiend’s cartoon grin moved in their best impression of an apologetic shrug.

“I’m here to deliver a message to you and your companions, though mostly to you.”

“To me? Why?” Clueless raised an eyebrow.

"Consider this a parting gift and bit of professional courtesy among former compatriots from Helekanalaith the Keeper of the Tower, most recently in residence in a minor portion of your parietal lobe."

Clueless grimaced at the fiend’s mention of the Keeper who’d stayed within his mind as a passenger long after he’d promised to leave. “F*ck him.”

"Another thing I'm not inclined to pursue, but if that's your thing, please see to your dreams and aspirations. Your fate is likely better than with the options here in Sigil that have expressed their interest in you in the past."

With the last mention, a faint swirl of cartoon razorvine spiraled atop the Cheshire Fiend’s avatar before vanishing as the ‘loth made a point of sticking its tongue out.

"Get to it." Clueless grimaced as well, rapidly losing his patience.

"As I said, this is a professional courtesy from the Keeper constituent to your original agreement, which is now void for reasons beyond his control."

"..." Clueless took a deep breath, knowing what the fiend meant even before it was plainly stated.

"Shylara the Manged is free from her stony confinement and released to pursue her own affairs and whatever the Oinoloth has tasked her towards."

"F*ck!" Clueless knew the day would eventually come and complicate his already dangerous life, but as the fiend supplied the revelation, he pointedly slammed his fist into the wall, ignoring the pain before finally stopping and trailing off into a string of curses.

"F*ck indeed, for more than just yourself though.” The Cheshire Fiend lamented, “I've rather enjoyed the status quo for the past year. I also had a deep and abiding appreciation for the awkward snarl she had on her face in the corner of my patron’s office the statue resided in.”

“I’m sure you did…” Clueless ignored the ‘loth the room as his mind spun to what the Overlord of Carceri might do in the coming days.

“We dressed it up, decorated it, gave it new and awkward poses from time to time.” The ‘loth beamed a smile, “It has been a delightful distraction and I must thank you for putting it into the Keeper’s hands in the first place.”

“He never gave me any other option…” Clueless smirked, “But now that you’ve let me know, which I do appreciate, don’t get me wrong, is there anything else you want? Or can I get some sleep or just go try very hard to get drunk?”

The Cheshire Fiend paused and stared at Clueless for a moment before asking a question:

"If you don't mind me asking, how did you manage to get the Keeper out of your head?"

Clueless grimaced and considered saying nothing, but the fiend clearly knew so there wasn’t any point in denying it, though just how much it knew was an open question, "You knew about that?"

The Grin paused, taking it's time for the response, measuring what precisely to admit to or not, "I suspected. My being here rather than a mental projection by Helekanalaith himself settled the issue for me. So how did you? I'm exceptionally curious. Though the Keeper said nothing to me, I expect that he was not pleased by that turn of events."

Inwardly, Clueless smiled, enjoying a profound moment of schadenfreude at his possession of knowledge that the secrets greedy 'loth did not. Outwardly his feelings manifested to mirror his inward smile as abruptly he smirked, "Yeah you can keep guessing as to the why. I'm keeping that one to myself."

"Well that's no fun..." The Grin frowned, giving as best of a pout as it could without an actual lower lip. "You're just going to make me watch you now from time to time and try and puzzle this one out. I do like puzzles."

Wanting to get the fiend away from the notion of following and watching him, Clueless changed the subject. "So what do you think the Manged is going to do now?"

"Whatever she's told!" The Grin quipped, "She'll likely be on a tighter leash with the Oinoloth directly dictating her actions." The Grin flickered, indicated a blink as it turned to the side and softly chuckled, "She'll probably like that."

"How worried should we be that she'll try and take revenge on us?"

"Not really all that much I suspect. Not immediately at least," The Grin did its best to shrug. "She'll want to absolutely, but the Oinoloth likely considers this whole situation her own f*ck up and frankly is likely to not allow her to take revenge so as to make her suffer as punishment for that. But... if you attempt to directly stymie anything that the Oinoloth has tasked her with, He will take interest and the b*tch is liable to be unleashed to do as she wishes. Do beware of that."

"So where do -you- stand within all of that? Clearly you don't like her, but what about the Oinoloth's goals... whatever the hell they are?"

Clueless raised the one question that had hung over their heads since their first encounter with the Oinoloth’s surrogates and co-conspirators, and for himself a situation that had been with him and actually firmly lodged in his ankle well before any of that. While the ‘loth wasn’t likely to tell him anything, it was worth a try.

“Ah yes… that…” The Cheshire Fiend paused its slow meander about Clueless’s room and gave an exaggeratedly slow, sly smile, "I do believe you said it best my mortal friend: 'I'm keeping that one to myself!'"

Then, without any further commentary the illusory grin winked out of existence, leaving Clueless now awake and with a deep sense of foreboding for the future. A bottle of fey wine seemed to be in order, even if he had a hangover at the Council Meeting the very next day.

"F*cking 'loths..."


****​

Panic and horror welling in her eyes, Shylara’s screaming abruptly ceased as the Oinoloth gazed down and thrust a clawed finger to her neck directly atop her carotid artery. Neatly pinching off the blood-flow to her brain, the Ebon sneered.

“You awaken only because I still have need of you, worthless, ragged tool, not because of your having earned any sympathy from me.”

His finger firmly in place and unwavering even as his consort shuddered and began struggling, he snarled and glanced derisively at her body, the fur patchy and marked by open sores and scarring from her incessant itching, unhealed despite the passage of the past year in her comatose state.

“….” Shylara gasped, her reply incoherent and gargled, even as her eyes remained locked upon the Oinoloth somewhere between horror and rapture.

“You weak and foolish wretch! Did I make a mistake in giving you power Shylara?” The Oinoloth mused, “Should I have taken another as my consort? Another child of the Tower unworthy of my attentions but useful nonetheless such as yourself? Should I watch you die here and now?”

“….” Again the Manged gave an incoherent bark, her struggling increasing as her starving brain fired and overrode nearly all rational, higher thought with only a primordial desire for survival. Wriggling in place, held down by a single finger like a butterfly pinned alive to a collector’s glass plate, she frantically, erratically slapped at the Oinoloth’s arms and shoulder to no avail.

“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve watched you die of course, nor the first time it has happened at my hands.” Vorkannis sneered, ignoring Shylara’s flailing, “This time it won’t be at your begging request though, nor will it serve to advance your caste and station.”

Sparking sudden recognition and a long-buried memory clouded by agony, Shylara looked up at the Oinoloth and slowly moved her hands to embrace his and dig his claws deeper into her flesh. Even as her eyes began to bleed from retinal hemorrhage and her limbs grew weak she looked up and began to smile.


****​

12,900 years before the present, Carceri’s first layer of Othrys:

“Shylara Akt’Atarm, stand before your betters and present your request to us.” The sterile, dispassionate telepathy of thirteen ultroloths echoed within the skull of the one there to petition them for promotion.

The nycaloth who bore that name and the ultroloths surrounding her stood within a copse of withered trees transplanted eons ago from the Waste to mark out a place of importance there upon Carceri’s first layer of Othrys. One day the ‘loths would control the plane in its entirety, but at the moment that rule was disputed and their infection of the plane with their essence was paltry at best, though their plans for the Tower of Incarnate Pain would make their rule undisputed. The nycaloth smiled with the self-assured knowledge that she of course would be a part of that plan.

“I stand before you my masters, my betters, Shylara Akt’Atarm servitor of the Tower of Incarnate Pain, butcher of gehreleths, and 1st among the scouts of Her Majesty Cholerix.” Shylara’s eyes were closed as she announced herself, and then as she gave her request, she opened them to see herself surrounded by a circle of glittering, multicolored eyes. “I am here to present myself for your judgment and gain promotion from nycaloth to arcanaloth. I must know. I must understand. Teach me. I demand this. Break me. Remake me greater and grander.”

Her bravado belied her worry, both at her impending rise in station, but also the unique nature of the ceremony compared to what she knew of such things. The standard ring of security normally found at such an event was non-existent. All such ceremonies occurred within the Tower’s foundations, with the ultroloths opening up a gate to either Gehenna or the Waste, with the broken forms of the worthy hurled into the Forges or the Pools respectively below the great Tower of each plane; but not this time. Shylara’s ceremony occurred far from the Tower of Incarnate Pain, out in the wilds of Carceri, beneath the unblinking gaze of the crimson pearls strung overhead like so much bloody garland, below the limitless void and the chiming of the Othrys Bells, out in the wilderness, inviting, even goading the attentions of Carceri’s first and arguably current masters the gehreleths.

Shylara Akt’Atarm towered a half-dozen feet above the heads of the others gathered there to judge and then either promote her or destroy her. A nycaloth, lean muscle rippled with her every motion like waves of insects wriggling beneath her grey-green hide. At her back a pair of powerful, membranous wings lay folded and relaxed except for a periodic jitter to reflect her nervous mood. Of course she wore no clothing, her body exposed without shame to symbolically reflect that her mind, her memories, her actions, her motivations, and her past record of success and failures were all open for review.

She took a breath, baring jagged fangs set within a vaguely canine maw, brilliant green eyes flickering with a flame of intelligence well beyond the standard for her caste and a furious current of perhaps reckless passion that underlay it. Despite the flawless, muscled physique she presented, despite her accomplishments in service to Cholerix, and despite her pride, she was terrified of what could come given where she was and who set their gaze upon her.

The lords of the Tower of Incarnate Pain had assembled there to oversee and approve her promotion from nycaloth to arcanaloth. There was no other reason to find the entirety of Bubonix’s cadre of ultroloth advisors to be present, -physically- present there in the Tower’s distant shadow but to bestow upon her their approval.

Despite her bravado she struggled not to tremble. More than twelve millennia in the making on her part as a nycaloth, in the past century she had gathered the attention of an arcanaloth willing to serve as her sponsor for promotion, one of the chief advisors to Bubonix the Lord of the Tower of Incarnate Pain.

“Who is here to sponsor you Shylara Akt’Atarm?” One of the ultroloths telepathically asked, its voice giving the impression of hammer-blows upon a petitioner’s bleeding and pock-marked flesh.

“Vorkannis the Ebon, chief advisor to Bubonix,” Instinctively the nycaloth bowed and inclined her head and suddenly wide swept wings to the arcanaloth who stood next to her and who had walked in silence to lead her there into the foothills to the place where she would be judged. “He believes I am ready to join his caste.”

In contrast to the dull black and gray robes of the ultroloths that ringed them, Shylara’s sponsor wore robes of deep, cobalt blue that flickered with silver patterns of runes that seemed to change as the light hit different angles of the fabric. Unlike the ultroloths who wore precious little finery, the arcanaloth’s head was ‘crowned’ with a trio of glimmering blue Ioun stones which zipped about in erratic orbit of his head. His fur jet black and his eyes a lambent, sickly shade of albino pink, Vorkannis was nothing like the ultroloths that stood –as Shylara believed– ready to pass judgment.

“If he,” Shylara’s voice was firm and strong as she resisted begging, “Your peer amongst the advisors to the altraloth lord of the Tower of Incarnate Pain believes that I am ready, surely I must be.”

Her head bowed and her body abased before her judges, Shylara never saw her sponsor’s reaction to her words. At the word ‘peer’ he openly smirked, disgust and derision playing across his muzzle even as the ultroloths gazed down upon the nycaloth and him.

“Shylara Akt’Atarm,” The principal ultroloth, Vozrikirn ap Pluton ‘spoke’ once more, “You are judged and we find you worthy of promotion.”

Shylara gasped, momentarily losing her composure with giddy, giggling, selfish glee, her fists clenched tight enough to force her claws completely through her palms to leave a pool of blood upon the ground below her. In her masochistic joy she never saw that with each telepathic word from the ultroloths, Vorkannis moved his mouth, mouthing each and every word a split second before his ultroloth puppet ‘spoke’.

“In this place we will promote you, the first of your caste to be granted arcanaloth status in Carceri.” The ultroloths spoke as a whole, “We will flense your flesh from your bones, carve words of power upon them, and then drag you back to the Tower still conscious, covering your dying corpse with the dust of this plane before we hurl you bodily into the Reflective Chasm, there to gain your new and deserved form.”

Shylara’s eyes bulged and her patron smiled as he produced an obsidian blade, stepped forward, and handed it to Vozrikirn. For the first moment the nycaloth’s brain buzzed with the notion that her sponsor was more than he appeared or claimed. He should have been whimpering before the ultroloth council, he should have been on his knees, but no, he walked amongst them watching and observing as if their positions were entirely reversed and they abased themselves in deference before him. But the thoughts that proved her worthy of promotion were swift to fly from her brain as the principle ultroloth placed the cold and razored tip of an obsidian dagger to her chest.

“Prepare yourself child, the coming agony has no parallel.” Vozrikirn’s eyes flickered their hypnotic multitude of colors as high above the Bells chimed long and clear.

“Please.” On her knees, the nycaloth now begged openly, her four hands trembling and smearing her face with mud formed from her own blood and the dust of Othrys. “I am ready.”

“Suffer and by suffering learn.” One of the ultroloths took two of her arms and held them over her head while another took the other pair and did the same.

“Suffer and be remade.” Another of the faceless masters gazed down with multicolored eyes and pushed upon the nycaloth’s forehead, pushing her down to the ground, prone and helpless, eager and awaiting the horror that would come.

And then the thirteen ultroloths were upon her, holding her down as Vozrikirn pressed the obsidian dagger to her flesh, just a thumb’s spacing below the breastbone and made the first incision. The nycaloth only smiled and gave a stuttering exhalation, bliss and need on her face as the blade sliced deeper still and the ultroloth began to skin her alive. Her stoic silence did not last long.

“Suffer for me,” Smiling and watching, Vorkannis closed his eyes, perking his ears and listening to the first of his pupil Shylara’s horrific screams as if they were music, “Now and forever after, suffer for me.”

Through it all as the hours stretched on interminably, the nycaloth would inexplicably never notice the glowing shards of rune-covered crystal stabbed into the heads of each and every ultroloth that pinned her down, each taking their turn to slowly flense and dissect her, preparing her to become an arcanaloth under the intimate direction of their ostensible inferior in Bubonix’s service, Vorkannis the Ebon. Her sponsor was not her sponsor, but the director of the event in minute, exacting detail. Every slice of the blade, each incision, each carved character upon bone or cartilage was at his direction, and eventually once she lay there, her flesh removed except for her face, he would wave the ultroloths away and take part in Shylara’s promotion himself.

“You are ready,” The future Oinoloth smiled as reached down to gather one of the nycaloth’s tears upon a claw. Behind him, Vozrikirn approached and handed the arcanaloth the obsidian blade the ultroloths had used, but the albino-eyed fiend held it for only a second before smirking and dropping it into the dirt at his feet. He would need no exogenous instruments for this, his claws and teeth would suffice.


****​

High above the Othrys bells chimed, faint and seductive as a single farastu gehreleth moved swiftly and silently over the crest of a nearby hill. The tarry substance that leaked from its pores served to match well with the underlying black rocks that broke through the ruddy soil that predominated most of the infinite spheres of Othrys. Black eyes glinting, its ears twitched and its lips moved into a soft but soundless snarl as it heard once again the screams of the nycaloth in the vale below.

The scout of a much, much larger force of gehreleths assembled dozens of miles away, the farastu was prepared to learn as much as it could of the edges of the yugoloth fortifications at the borders of their so-called Tower of Incarnate Pain. It would learn and it would relay its information to the shators waiting miles back, giving that information to Apomp’s generals even if it would die in the process. What the farastu found however was not at all what it expected.

Creeping forward to watch the assembled yugoloths below, the creature snarled in disgust and confusion as much as feeling a genuine sense of dread and fear at what would surely be its imminent death. Standing alone and without any visible accompanying guards were fully thirteen ultroloths standing around and encircling a prone nycaloth and a black-furred arcanaloth atop it, aggressively copulating.

Creeping forward still, morbidly, disgustedly curious about the blasphemy watched by and allowed by so many of the highest yugoloth caste, the farastu’s eyes went wide. His robes cast aside to the ground, the black-furred arcanaloth held the nycaloth’s heart raised up in his hands, the organ still beating while below the nycaloth’s chest cavity was torn open, the muscles flensed and the ribs pulled back and carved in ornate scrimshaw. Illuminated by the multicolored radiance of the ultroloths’ eyes, the two ‘loths rutted in time with the rhythm of the empty but yet pumping left ventricle as it gasped for blood but drew only the cold and bitter air of Othrys.  

The arcanaloth softly smiled and never looked up, concentrating on his actions through clenched teeth. The ultroloths were silent and transfixed upon the blasphemous promotion ongoing below their glittering eyes. None of them made any reaction to the approaching gehreleth, so intent were they upon their blasphemous ceremony, but as the intruder drew within striking distance, one of them spoke.

“I’ve been waiting for you to make an appearance…” Vorkannis said between measured inhalations.

Noticed and realizing that its chance was then or never, the gehreleth snarled and leapt forward, claws extended and fangs bared, but it never reached its target. Midflight it simply stopped, suspended in mid-air with the casual flick of the arcanaloth’s hand, pinned in place. The gehreleth screamed in fury, clawing at the air and drawing the casual attention of the seemingly hypnotized ultroloths before they returned to watch the arcanaloth rutting atop the mangled nycaloth, the former of which hadn’t bothered to pause.

“Interlopers! Intruders! Traitors!” The ‘leth screamed out, furiously trying to reach out and strike any of the yugoloths there. “Make an appearance? We will kill you all! We will drive you from Othrys and burn your tower to the ground as we have before! We will…”

Rolled his eyes, Vorkannis took one hand from Shylara’s beating, shuddering heart, and raised two blood-slicked digits to the air, gesturing and pinching off the gehreleth’s windpipe to silence the creature.

“I’m not talking to you puppet, nor to your shator commanders who have the vain and grossly inflated hopes of razing the Tower of Incarnate Pain to the ground as they have before. Divest yourselves of that notion now that I am here and have replaced Bubonix and his pet in all but formal position…” The arcanaloth’s albino eyes twinkled with delight at a moment long in the making, “I’m not talking to you nor to them, or frankly in any way concerned with such petty things. No, I’m talking to your maker. An old acquaintance of mine you might say. We have our differences, oh yes, but I expected at least a little ‘hello how are you doing?’ well prior to today.”

The ‘leth’s confusion was obvious, but immediately blossomed into pain as the ‘loth addressed not him, but the godlike entity looking through the farastu’s eyes, speaking in a language that set its limbs alight with agony and caused its ears to run with a mixture of blood and clotted tar.

As the gehreleth’s eyes glittered a reflective, mirrored black, Vorkannis looked back, his own eyes lambent and sickly pink, still continuing his actions below for the sake of his new audience, even as Shylara’s death rattle made it apparent that the ceremony was complete and he and the ultroloths could proceed to hurl her mangled corpse into the Reflective Chasm to burn away her physical form and usher in the final phase of her promotion to arcanaloth.

They would finish that act later, after a conversation was had.

“Hello Apomps,” Vorkannis smirked, “It has been such a very, very, very long time now hasn’t it?”


----------



## almost13

thanks for the great christmas present!


----------



## Shemeska

The grey-green clouds that hung low above the Park of the Infernal and the Divine reflected all too well the current atmosphere in Sigil at large and among the minds of its council members and voting, land-holding citizens alike. The City of Doors had been rocked by dozens of Cagequakes over the past month, their frequency and intensity growing as time went on, and in the past twenty four hours had come something almost more profound than the presumed and unexplained disquiet of Her Serenity: Alisohn Nilesia.

More than a year earlier, the vanished former Mercykiller Factol had suddenly reappeared in the Cage, rescued from fiendish slavery in Acheron. As barmy as when she’d vanished from Sigil during the height of the Faction War, she’d publicly raged at the presumed death of her “beloved husband, Duke Rowan Darkwood” at the hands of Her Serenity the Lady of Pain. She’d marched towards her old Faction headquarters leading a mob of heavily armed loyalists ready to install her as Factol once more over a unified Mercykiller faction that had, in her absence, fractured into the Sodkillers and the Sons of Mercy. Blaming The Lady for all of her ills, she finally took one step too far and with hundreds of eyes to witness it, she’d pulled a vorpal blade from her scabbard and beheaded a dabus, one of Sigil’s silent caretakers and servitors of Her Serenity.

At the time the crowd went deathly silent at the taboo act of a woman hell bent on revenge against the figure she blamed for her fall from power and the death of a man who had never truly loved her. The hush that fell over the city was palpable and cut only by Nilesia’s mad, deranged laughter as she called for The Lady to appear and meet Justice at her hands, so madly devoted was she to her Faction’s creed that all sense had fled her mind.

Appear The Lady most certainly did.

Drifting above the cobblestones, Her face expressionless and Her blades covered in their speckled, eternal patina, the Lady’s Shadow was shift, lancing across the cobblestones in a tidal wave of screams and butchered flesh, rendering a path through the mad Factol’s followers until at last it struck Nilesia herself. Alisohn Nilesia died that day, flayed alive by The Lady of Pain, and yet one day before the present, none other than Alisohn Nilesia had appeared in Sigil and brought with her blood and fire.

What that meant and what portent it carried for Sigil itself were the questions that ran rampant through the minds of most of Sigil’s souls, and all of those individuals invited to the day’s closed meeting of the Sigil Advisory Council. Heavily armed members of the Sons of Mercy and the Sodkillers alike stood at the gates to the park and further down the adjacent streets, their presence necessary to screen the attendees, assure their safety, and to keep the terrified mob of thousands separate and distant. Neither of the two groups of former Faction-mates cared much for the other, but the present events mattered more to them both than the poison of lingering resentment of their Faction’s dissolution.

The day was auspicious for another reason entirely as well, as the Council elections to replace a number of retiring members had placed new faces and new perspectives within the body, and today they would be put to a greater test than likely any of them expected.

Slowly and with their own particular groups of bodyguards and retinues of followers -all allowed despite the meeting being restricted to landholding citizens only- the movers and shakers of Sigil arrived to see what their leaders had to say about the present troubles. Golden Lords and merchants, former Faction highups and innkeepers, high priests and adventurers alike, they all arrived and shuffled in to fill the seats set before a wide stage in the park’s center, atop of which sat a long table with chairs reserved for the sitting members of the Sigil Advisory Council, most of whom already sat, ready to listen or to pontificate, depending on each one’s nature, with some of them standing out far more than their ostensible peers.

All eyes waited for Chairwoman Rhys to stand and call the Council to order, but more than anything they looked for the former Factol of the Transcendent Order to give all in attendance a clue as to the truth or not behind the rumors running rampant in the vacuum of information that filled Sigil’s streets at present. Ready for that attention and seemingly –as best she could given the present circumstances– Rhys gazed out and over the crowd and to the Council members seated to each side of her with an expression of preternatural calm determination.

Rhys’s expression and body language was hardly shared by her fellow members of the Council. Jeremo the Natterer the ostensible and self-declared Factol of the Ring-Givers had arrived early and distributed gifts to both his fellow council members and to the first two rows of the audience, and at the moment he was cheerfully out amongst the crowd talking and introducing himself to everyone he’d never met in person. Just one step down from the Natterer in terms of frenetic loquaciousness, Harys Hatchis could barely keep his mouth shut, leaning over to whisper conspiratorially to anyone within arm’s length, while Alluvius ‘Old Lu’ Ruskin actively –and with multiple and repeated brusque waves of her spindly hands– avoided the entreaties of the multiple people that approached her before the meeting got officially underway. The remainder of the council, those which had already arrived, fell somewhere in-between, and then there was the Marauder.

Shemeska sat in the center of the right side of the platform, her chair replaced with a custom throne, and the ‘loth sat there drinking from a chalice, clearly considering leaning back and sticking her feet up on the table. Dressed like royalty in a sea green gown, a waistcoat trimmed in the fur of a mauve Prime Material feline, and wearing jewels to the point of absurdity, a smug grin fleeted time and again across the ‘loth’s muzzle as she watched the crowd, with a chuckle and a stare reserved for when Florian arrived and took her seat.

“Go f*ck yourself…” Florian whispered to herself, making sure to obscure her mouth as she did so. Still, she could feel the telltale buzz of the ‘loth’s telepathy frisking at her surface thoughts. The fiend knew precisely what the cleric was thinking though without needing to actually confirm it, and the comparatively effortless telepathic shakedown was more part of the fiend’s continuing desire to make Florian’s life hell when she wasn’t actively trying to kill her.

Clueless was less concerned with the Marauder than with watching the other arrivals to the meeting and any clues that might be discerned by their moods and who arrived for the first time, having missed earlier Council meetings. The bladesinger’s eyes paid particular attention to Arwyl Swanson and General Nagaro, the former seated upon the Council and the latter sitting in the front row of audience chairs. The paladin leader of the Sons of Mercy who didn’t actually refer to himself as Factol but might as well have been was presently engaged in a conversation by multiple go-betweens with the fallen paladin Nagaro. The frightening tall human with close-cropped hair and jet black armor served as leader and effectively Factol of the Sodkillers, and had in recent months arrived in Sigil to lead one of the two Mercykiller successor factions while still tenuously retaining power over the Gatetown of Rigus, a delicate balancing act most assuredly kept secure by an early and excessive amount of bloodshed.

“Neither of them seem to have any idea of what’s going on…” Clueless thought, his words echoing in the minds of his companions courtesy of the sending stones that Tristol had made for them all. “So if it’s Nilesia, which I’m not convinced that it is, their old Factol hasn’t informed them of her return from the dead.”

Sitting next to Tristol with the aasimar wizard’s fox’s tail in her lap like a familiar, Nisha sat with a bowl of popcorn in her lap. She’d insisted on bringing it, assuming that she’d get hungry, assuming that it would be great to snack on when tempers flared, and if need be she’d be able to dump it –liberal layer of butter and all– over the head of anyone if things came to blows. The Xaositect had to that point done her best to avoid actually making eye contact with the Marauder, though she broke that run by doing so immediately before she turned away and excitedly waved at another ‘loth entirely.

The second ‘loth to arrive did so in decidedly understated fashion, Nisha’s telegraphing of his arrival notwithstanding, with A’kin wandering up to the stage doing his best to stay out of the Marauder’s line of sight, having arrived from the rear where the crowd of arrivals was thickest, jostling shoulder to shoulder and leaving the bespectacled shopkeeper’s fur and clothing decidedly tousled in the process. With a cheerful smile he took a seat, his ears perking and swiveling slightly just before he winced as the Marauder gave a hiss loud enough to be overheard.

“I thought I smelled something reeking of soot and failure…” Shemeska muttered, again loud enough to be overheard, as she glanced at A’kin, sneered and then took a puff from a gold and crystalline hookah held by one of her guards and formerly having sat in Arwyl Swanson’s chair before the paladin had arrived. Exhaling a stream of smoke from between her fangs and over her painted lips, the smoke distinctly traveled and coalesced into an upright middle finger in A’kin’s direction before dispersing. A’kin ignored it and politely began talking with Alluvius Ruskin about common interests as private shop owners.

Fashionably late, Councilwoman Zadara immediately sought out the seat furthest from the Marauder, rather than the spot occupied by a chair specifically set for her that was large enough to accommodate her form. Carrying and moving her chair she arrived at that desired spot, on the far end of the Council table atop the stage, which was of course already taken by the Council’s newest member: A’kin

“You’re in my spot.” Zadara called down to the ‘loth.

“Oh?” The smiling arcanaloth looked up and blinked, adjusting his spectacles on his muzzle. “I wasn’t aware that there were assigned seats, but…”

“Move.”

“Lady Zadara, I was already here and you see…”

“Get up.” The titan’s tone wasn’t full of malice, but it was clear that she had every desire to sit as far from the Marauder as possible. Given their last encounter at the Natter’s party, that was probably best to everyone.

“I really don’t think that it’s a good idea if I sit any closer to… you know who... than…”

“Same f*cking reason I want your chair.” Zadara’s face was grim as she briefly darted her eyes over to the smug, pleased with herself face of the Marauder. “Now get your perpetually smiling self up and give me that spot.”

“Please…” A’kin’s voice carried a genuine tone of worry. “She firebombed my shop the other night…”

“F*ck…” Zadara stared down and grimaced, taking her hands off of the back of his chair. “Fine, get Ruskin to move over slightly and I’ll sit at the end of the table, but you’re still between me and that razorvine-brained bitch.”

A’kin nodded and immediately turned to Old ‘Lu who didn’t seem to mind adjusting her seat at the table in the slightest. By the time the three of them were fully seated, most of the crowd had settled.

“Before I call this emergency session of the Sigil Advisory Council to order, are there any members of the council who wish to make any statements outside of the immediate and obvious subject matter for the day?” Council Chairwoman Rhys stood and glanced to both sides, hoping inwardly for once that none of her fellows would attempt to grandstand. The ‘loth she worried about was not the ‘loth who stood to speak.

“If I might?” A’kin stood, the brief pause between when he spoke to when Rhys nodded to him occupied by a prominent eye roll by the Marauder.

All eyes turned to A’kin.

“I know that I’m one of the new faces on the Council after the most recent elections, so thank you for trusting me with your votes.” A’kin smiled, “But the other evening my shop, The Friendly Fiend, was hit by vandals, set on fire, and badly damaged. I’d like to publicly offer a reward of ten thousand gold pieces for the apprehension of those responsible.”

Zadara turned to stare at the Marauder and Shemeska stared right back, her eyes flickering with the faintest hint of purple flame. Ten seconds of cold silence between the two of them ended with the ‘loth pursing her lips and making a kissing motion. The titan scowled and turned away.

Though the staring contest between the Marauder and the Titan of Potential remained a cold war in and of itself, the simmering mood of the audience would in moments provide a spark to set the meeting alight.

“What in the gods’ names is going on?!”

“We all watched Alisohn F*cking Nilesia die!”

“Why haven’t we been told anything?!”

“What are the Sons of Mercy and Sodkillers hiding from us?!”

“Well… that certainly didn’t take all that long to go to hell…” Fyrehowl sighed and looked to her left where Clueless sat with a frown upon his face.

“It took longer than I expected actually.” Toras gave a shrug, “And Nisha might get to use that bowl of popcorn before it’s all said and done.”

They would have to wait a bit longer as Rhys stood and called for order. The former Factol’s voice remained calm, and as of yet she had not raised either her voice of the staff of the magi that rested upon the table in front of her.

“Many of you seem well aware of the odd events of the past few days.” The tiefling nodded sagely, “There were fires set in two properties held by the Fraternity in Order, with the first being a library and the latter a repository of records for the Faction-In-Exile. The first building was unoccupied, though the latter was not, and in that second location the faction members in attendance were killed prior to the arson.”

“What of Nilesia?!” Shouted one voice from the crowd.
“Reports have flown swift and myriad that a figure resembling the late Alisohn Nilesia was seen in both locations.” Rhys admitted, though her frown made it clear that she did not trust those reports. “Clearly those witnesses were mistaken. Factol Nilesia is dead.”

“Then what of the Cagequakes?” Councilwoman Oridi Malefin asked, her voice as hollow and emotionless as ever, though the third eye in her forehead darted between the two leaders of the Mercykiller splinter factions. “Clearly Her Serenity is upset at something, and a resurrected Nilesia would certainly provoke that, to say nothing of upsetting the powers of Death.”

That was when Toras stood up.

“It was Nilesia.” He called out to a chorus of astonished gasps, “I was there when she was flayed alive, as so many of us were, but I was there at one of the burning buildings and I saw her then and I heard her voice. It was her. Somehow.”

The crowd erupted into a tumult of arguments and plaintive cries, as the crowd argued amongst themselves and most of the council shouted at one another, although the Marauder stayed absolutely silent as she gazed out at Toras and gave a fleeting, subtle smirk.

“Was that the best idea?” Fyrehowl glanced over at Toras. “Was it?”

“You saw her too.” He replied, “It was her.”

“Maybe…” The lupinal muttered.

Up on the stage, Harys Hatchis, ever one to feed off of and stoke public feelings to his own benefit –as well as stoke it himself expertly–, stood up and pointed first to his fellow Councilmember Arwyl and then to the Sodkillers’ Nagaro. “She’s your old mess and your old Factol! We deserve some answers and you owe it to us and to this city to deal with her!”

“If you think you’re deserved something from me old man you’re more than welcome to come and take it!” The Sodkiller all-but-Factol stood up and pointed a mail-shod hand at the businessman, daring him to make all his accusations at the point of a sword. “This has nothing to do with the Sodkillers and far be it for me to support our wayward brothers and sisters overly much, but this has nothing to do with the Sons of Mercy either.”

Up on stage, Alluvius Ruskin stayed silent and beside her A’kin began nibbling on a cookie rather than inflame the situation any further beyond the caterwauling mess it had already become.

“Your first day on the council and you’re eating cookies?” Zadara glanced down at the Friendly Fiend himself, her expression unreadable, just up until A’kin reached into the sleeve of his robe and pulled out a second cookie, one distinctly larger than the one in his hand and about as close to appropriate for the titan as could physically exist tucked on his person. The titan broke into a smile, took the cookie, and joined him in taking a single moment of respite for their surroundings. “Well, your fist day on the council and you’re miles ahead of the other ‘loth, so there’s that.”

Speaking of that other ‘loth, as A’kin and Zadara both had their mouths full of oatmeal raisin cookie and the attentions of the crowd were fully fixed on the shouts between Hatchis and Nagaro, there came a subtle flicker of light next to the Marauder’s head. There, tucked amidst the tangles of her razorvine crown was the illusory form of the Cheshire Fiend.

The Marauder didn’t seem to notice the Grin’s presence until it wiggled out of her crown, sidled up to her left ear and whispered something to her. The particular words weren’t actually spoken aloud, but rather via person to person telepathy with a visible conjugate of the Cheshire Fiend’s mouth moving, though the angle and the distance precluded reading the illusory fiend’s “lips” and garnering any sense of what they spoke. What was visible however was the faintest but oh so deliberate smirk on its visage as soon as it relayed its message. 

Whatever they’d told her, the Marauder’s reaction was immediate.

“OH F*CK ME!!!!” Eyes wide, the King of the Crosstrade’s composure was as absent as the concept of truth to a petitioner of Carceri. “F*CK! F*****CK!!!”

At his counterpart’s sudden, screaming outburst, A’kin glanced over, pausing only to brush cookie crumbs from his collar, his ears perked and one eyebrow raised as he adjusted his glasses. The Cheshire Fiend was gone, nowhere to be seen, and the Marauder had managed to compose herself to the extent of shutting up.

Snarling to herself, the King of the Crosstrade gestured to one of her tieflings. Obediently they dashed up to the platform to receive a whisper from their master and then dashed off towards the closest exit to the park.

“What the f*ck was that about?” Fyrehowl motioned towards the Marauder, poking Clueless to get his attention, although he was already looking at the ‘loth with a knowing chuckle perched to rattle past his lips.

“I’m guessing that she just found out that someone she hates more than us is back in town…” The bladesinger grinned. “A certain manged ‘loth…”

Fyrehowl laid into Clueless about just how he knew that, given that he hadn’t said a word to her or any of their companions prior to that point, while all around them the meeting went to hell.

Up on stage Rhys tries to keep order as arguments and accusations flew, tempers rose, and people began to openly wonder if the wrath of The Lady had come upon them all, with the flayed dead alive once more and risen to take vengeance upon the city. Some screamed that Jeremo had brought it all upon the city with his bringing a faction formally back into Sigil. Others still blamed the Minders Guild or their masters the Sodkillers. Some blamed Rowan Darkwood, not dead by escaped from his Maze and now returned to topple Her Serenity with the dead following him. For all their wild and baseless claims, all of them understood and agreed upon one thing: whatever it was had been brewing for some time now, what with the Cagequakes rattling the wards with greater frequency than ever before in recent memory, it all spoke loud and clear that something was brewing. And then one voice called out a claim perhaps too dangerous to make.

“It’s Fell! It’s the fallen dabus! Aoskar the Portal Father’s return is upon the City of Doors!” The fool berk was immediately tackled and beaten into silence by a dozen of those citizens sitting around her.

Finally as violence was sparked, Rhys finally stood up and banged her Staff of the Magi on the table, shouting out over the crowd to immediate effect, “Silence!”

All eyes fell upon the former Factol.

“While undoubtedly some of us here know the reason for the arsons and murders plaguing the city, and also for the recent Cagequakes, they also would be aware that shadows do not fly randomly. They strike true…” Rhys’s voice was strong and clear, her strength projecting out to the crowd and calming fraying nerves. “Yes something is amiss. Yes something is brewing. But The Lady is not likely behind what has been occurring within Sigil, though Her displeasure may be felt beneath our feet. Apparently Her message after the late Nilesia’s death went unheeded by some.”

Under the table, in direct response to Rhys’s words, Shemeska hand tightened upon the Shadow Sorcelled Key, clutched tight in reassurance to herself. Obscured by the furred ruff at the end of her coat sleeve, the artifact’s shadows licked at her fingers like the tongues of a dozen broken lovers.

“And to others here,” Rhys called out, “Do not bring up dead powers and shouts of doomsday. This is not some planes ending eschaton and understand that I am still here in Sigil.”

Rhys’s face remained stern and confident, though in her heart she was anything but. In the prelude to the Storm of Doors years earlier during the Faction War, she had known something terrible was coming before Sigil had erupted in conflict and the Lady’s wrath was unleashed. She’d felt it coming, building in the tension expressed by the Cadence of the Planes as she felt it. This time however, the Cadence was silent, and that silence in the presence of Cagequakes and the return of the dead slain by Her Serenity: though her external attitude was one of stoic confidence, internally Rhys was terrified beyond measure.

“I say now to all of us here: end this berk’s errand in Sigil! Be done with it! Whatever the actual identity of the one posing as the dead Factol, stop this game and the string pulling that follows it, for the sake of your own existence, if nothing else…”

And with that statement from the Council’s chairwoman, the meeting was abruptly adjourned. Without answers but with a certainty that their civic leaders had their best interests in mind and suspected that rather than The Lady’s wrath it was some act of subterfuge to advance some hidden agenda, the crowd began to disperse for the exits. Most of the council’s members stayed, either talking to citizens who approached them on the platform or like Jeremo went out among the crowd themselves to mingle, but one member left immediately: the Marauder.

With her guards clearing a path for her, Shemeska left with a smirk upon her face. Walking directly past A’kin, she didn’t turn to glance at him nor did she say a word. The Friendly Fiend’s proprietor opened his mouth as she walked past, intending to say something but paused before doing so with Zadara’s hand on his shoulder in warning. Thinking better of it he said nothing, but turned his head to follow her as she left, giving a soft and uncharacteristic snarl once she was out of earshot.

Watching the Marauder leave, Fyrehowl raised an eyebrow as she could feel the torrent of telepathy that raced between the two of them, the precise words unknown, immediately preceding A’kin’s reaction. Tempted as she was to walk up to A’kin, either to ask for a cookie or to ask him what that had all been about, she figured that whatever it had been, it had been sufficient to upset him and she didn’t care to add to it if she could avoid it. Curious as the thought was as it came to her mind, she considered him a friend, even if she knew next to nothing about him.

Going along with the crowd, the companions gathered together and left once Nisha finished her popcorn, bitterly complaining with butter-slicked fingers that she hadn’t been close enough to the one fight that had broken out to have used the snack or the bowl during its duration. They had a world of options as to where to go next, but as Clueless wanted to explain to them about Shylara’s return from her imprisonment in stone, they ultimately decided to go back to the Portal Jammer.

True to Rhys’s words though, something major was indeed brewing.

Something terrible was about to occur.

And as they left the Park of the Infernal and Divine a portal flickered into forced existence below Florian’s feet once again.


****​


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## Akhelos

Florian should slowly think about getting permanent anti portal levitation spells. Very amusing and interesting and sometimes good creepy story. ^^

Oh and i found by accident your shemeshka faces commision on deviantart. You are responsible that i was lying laughing under the table after seeing shemeshka with black sunglasses. ^^


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## Shemeska

Deal with it. XD


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## 81Dagon

Been a while, but I'm finally caught up again! The Wheels With Wheels continue, but it feels like we are getting somewhere! Keep it up Todd!


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## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> Been a while, but I'm finally caught up again! The Wheels With Wheels continue, but it feels like we are getting somewhere! Keep it up Todd!




Soon.


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## Tsuga C

No sneer, but the aloof condescension comes through in spades. Bravo!


----------



## Shemeska

“What the F**K?!!!” Florian screamed out as the flagstones flickered and vanished below her feet and she began to fall.

Several hundred feet away, Shemeska walked with her arms folded before her at her waist, her hands obscured by her gown’s long sleeves and her fingers clutched tight about the preternaturally cold length of the Shadow Sorcelled Key. She briefly smiled to herself as Florian’s screams and the crowd’s subsequent chorus of shouts rose up. She never bothered to turn and look back. She didn’t need to.

“Colcook,” The fiend said, matter-of-factly, “mirror please.”

Without knowing the reason for his Mistress’s request, Colcook hefted the mirror and held it up, expertly tilted such that she could see herself, which was in most instances precisely her intent and design. This time however, she clearly desired otherwise.

“Slightly to the left,” She chuckled and watched with delight as the view shifted to the street behind her, fading in clarity with each step further away from the scene of her crime and her breaking of Sigil’s fundamental laws. With a single mental commend to the enchanted mirror she magnified the view to grant a view of the cleric’s predicament and hopeful doom with perfect detail. With luck, she’d watch the mortal plummet to her doom, with the hoi polloi of Sigil none the wiser as to her power.

Below the screaming cleric, the open space crackled with black lines of flickering electricity as the portal’s destination yawned large and drew into cohesive form. While none of the assembled and terrified crowd had yet bothered to actually cast a spell to divine the portal’s far destination, and certainly not Florian herself, the vista of an endless ocean of swarming insects far below, broken only by rare spirals of glassy rock and the almost indistinct forms of vrocks and other tanar’ri spoke of a particularly inhospitable layer of the Abyss.

This was not the first time that a portal had spontaneously opened below Florian, and this time she was prepared for the event, at least as much as she could be. With a snarl of rage and a screaming invocation to Tempus, she reached out and grabbed the first thing she could, which was not -as in past situations- the ragged street-edge of the bound space and its active portal therein, but in the present moment the exaggeratedly long trailing sleeve and robe train of one of Oridi Malefin’s former Dusties. The ghast, far more limber and with its descent into undeath in search of True Death, far swifter than it had been in life, stumbled backwards and cried out in alarm before sinking its claws into a nearby post and holding itself fast as Florian wrenched herself back onto her feet on solid ground.

Hissing and snarling a curse before stifling its surprised anger as its eyes went wide at the yawning portal and just what the tugging upon its clothing had been about, the former Dustman  backed away. A dozen other members of the crowd scattered even more swiftly as they saw Florian rise to her feet and brandish her holy symbol and begin to chant.

Distantly, staring at her mirror and ostensibly picking and preening at her own reflection, the Marauder quirked an eyebrow as a smile of anticipation passed across her muzzle. Let the mortal try.

“BY TEMPUS I SWEAR THAT…” Florian bellowed, holding her holy symbol high and her free hand out and accusatory, thoughts poised to fly to her god and smite the fiend casually walking away with her thrice-damned mirror and gaggle of tieflings.

She never finished her spell.

Acting purely on preternatural instinct and not even looking before she dove to the side, Fyrehowl barreled into Florian and tackled her to the ground. The force of the lupinal’s body slamming into her force the air from her lungs and jarred the holy symbol from her hands to go clattering with a series of metallic pings across the cobblestones.

All was silent for a profoundly long moment as Florian inhaled and looked up at Fyrehowl still atop her, pinning her to the ground. The cipher’s eyes were wide with shock as she realized what she’d actually done, and Florian looked up with defeat and disappointed rage as she realized just as much, but any thoughts on her part of struggling back up and taking a second attempt ended as the swirling portal only inches from where they lay abruptly slammed shut, followed moment’s later by the subtle tremors of a Cagequake.

“F*CK!” Florian wailed, while nearly a block away by that point, Shemeska’s ears perked and she began to chuckle.


****​

A half hour later, back at the Portal Jammer, things had not improved.

Broken glass and spilt ale decorated the floor and rear wall of the tavern’s back room from where Florian had hurled multiple mugs and steins out of complete and utter screaming frustration. Each had been hurled with its own unique and obscene invocation against all things ‘loth and all things related to the Marauder.

“Seriously, she can probably hear you when you do that.” Tristol muttered, considering it good advice, even as he scanned the room’s ambient magic for any sign of such but thankfully coming up dry. Next to him, Nisha sat with her tail twitching fretfully, her eyes flitting between her friend and the growing mess.

“GOOD!” Florian snarled, just before slurping down the last of a shot glass of whiskey and launching the empty tumbler at the far wall where it splintered in a storm of broken glass to join its previously fallen comrades below.

Toras winced.

“She’s gone too far Toras,” Florian spat, her genuine anger not being helped by the alcohol and not by the fact that Clueless had distinctly cut her off from any more ten minutes earlier. “She’s gone way too f*cking far this time. She knows exactly what she’s doing and the b*tch is undoubtedly getting off on this.”

Those of her companions who’d gathered to hear her out and at the very least try to hold her back from doing anything rash exchanged glances. It wasn’t as if she was wrong at any point, it was just that the fiend was effectively untouchable in the political climate that she’s carefully cultivated about herself over the course of centuries or millennia. Outside of doing the most stupid of actions, they didn’t have a genuine recourse, and perhaps that was what the ‘loth was purposefully goading them towards.

“Tempus help me,” Florian’s face erupted in a stoic grimace as she thumbed her holy symbol, “But I swear to you and my god that I will walk to the Fortune’s Wheel and straight up throttle Shemeska the f*cking Marauder if she tries that sh*t one more time.”

“That’s what she wants…” Fyrehowl sighed, adding little else as even the Cadence of the Planes was silent about any option for recourse at the present time. “That’s why I tackled you. I don’t want to see you dead.”

“She’ll stop!” Toras pleaded, knowing full well that he’d be watching his friend walk off to her death if she actually tried to kill the fiend, “All you have to f*cking do is make a damn hollow apology! Appeal to her bloated, god-like ego and she’ll stop! That’s it!”

“F*ck her Toras,” Florian’s response was cold and harsh. “I’ll die before I give her that satisfaction.”

“Please don’t die…” Nisha lamented.

“I’ll go with you!” The fighter insisted, trying to find some way to actually get his friend to agree, not wanting to see her commit suicide if she actually followed through on her threat. “I’ll do most of the talking! I’ll pay for any bribes it takes to get in to actually speak with her… and it probably will, given how it went last time.”

Florian snarled and looked away, not wanting to temper her rage with the looks in her friends’ eyes. While she wouldn’t mind dying if it meant breaking a few of the Marauder’s teeth with a few sharp kicks to the face, she couldn’t seem to bring herself to abandon the people who’d become her virtual family. All around her, they stared at her with genuine worry and genuine care, something all too often missing in the City of Doors.

“Damn it!” Florian slammed her fist down on the table, wincing as she bruised bones in the process. “I care too much about you all to let myself do what I damn well want to do.”

Crying, Florian slumped down into her chair. Rage would be the death of her, but guilt and love wouldn’t let her get to that point ever so easily as perhaps the Marauder hoped.

“Fine…” The cleric hissed through clenched teeth, “I’ll make the damned apology.”

She never made the apology.


*****​

The half-light of Sigil’s waning afternoon did its best to shine through the greasy, grey-green clouds that drifted over the Lady’s Ward, casting an unhealthy pallor over the rooftop dining room of the Cutter’s Vineyard. Decorated on all sides by ornate iron latticework cast to resemble grape vines, the city’s ambient flora had years ago added a touch of irony as razorvine now snarled through it all, providing for a more private dining experience to those wealthy enough to afford the restaurant’s menu.

At the present moment only a dozen customers sat there, sipping wine, grazing on rare and expensive delicacies, and enjoying the separation from the plebian throngs far below. Half of the dining room’s floor space was held empty, reserved for the occupant of a single table set with its own distinct colors, distinctly non-silver silverware, and an oversized, throne-like chair for the ‘loth that sat there.

“Tell the chef that I’ll have whatever she feels is appropriate to the season, the available stocks, and her own whimsy, with the only caveat being that it appropriately matches the profile of the wine that I’m presenting drinking.”

The Marauder gave what might plausibly pass with a curt half-smile before she looked away and stared off into the distance, her mind preoccupied with the news from Helekanalaith’s lapdog. Idly her clawed-fingers reached down to lift a crystalline goblet filled to the brim with the wine vintage most recently stolen from the business interests of the late Muriov Garianis, and although her mind was elsewhere, her groomer-guards remained as alert as ever. Flanking her at a polite distance, the trio of tieflings ensured that her glass remained filled, her hair immaculate despite any breeze, and that none of the surrounding riffraff, no matter their wealth, intruded upon her afternoon respite.

The fiend had evidently had time for a wardrobe change since the Council meeting earlier in the day, and at present she sat in a gown of black velvet with faint, burnout patterns visible in just the right light, and with deep blue silk sashes and lines of sapphires woven into the fabric that almost brought to the mind the pattern of the iconic outfit of the figure in her mind: Shylara the Manged.

Shemeska’s claws tapped on her wine glass, setting the crystal to ring with an irritating cadence just loud enough to draw the unhappy attention of the other rooftop diners, but one glance at the fiend’s well-armed guards –to say nothing of realizing the source of the sound– put an end to such stares. The irritated tapping was of course a direct reaction to the fiend’s present –and some would say lingering– obsession with her former apprentice, lover, consort, and present rival Shylara the Manged.

“You continue to have the worst timing…” The Marauder hissed, her mind a blizzard of thoughts on how Shylara’s release would change things. 

Minutes passed and even as the chef appeared in person to present the first course, it was placed before her without anything more than an acknowledging nod and eventually Colcook gestured the clearly terrified chef to leave without getting any response on taste or approval as the Marauder’s mind was elsewhere, stewing on something beyond the food, no matter how fine and personalized it happened to be.

The ‘loth’s expression shifted between sneering, smirking, open wonder, and an occasional hint of lust as she flitted from thought to thought. The bitch’s reappearance upon the stage was an annoyance, and at present she remained uncomfortably unaware of the circumstances surrounding her freedom. Did the Keeper release her? Did the Ebon himself see fit to do so? Did Vorkannis perhaps force Helekanalaith to do it? Each situation would hold a meaning of its own. Still her reappearance did allow for the amusement of tormenting her again. Perhaps the delivery of a statue in her appearance and a personal note regarding fond memories, lewd acts, and that she looked better cast in stone than in the flesh, which in the absence of magic and perfume certainly had less of a smell of festering puss and stale blood as well.

A slow smile crossed the Marauder’s muzzle as she smirked, delighted with herself.

Halfway between thoughts of whispering and insult and blowing a kiss to the former student of hers, Shemeska pursed her lips and blew at a strand of hair that had drifted from its proper place at the edge of her razorvine crown and fallen across her muzzle. Without so much as a word from the fiend, one of her tieflings stepped forward with golden tweezers and delicately placed the strand back in the precise place it was intended. As if nothing had happened, the Marauder began her meal of poached kobold brain in a broth of lemongrass, citron, rice wine, and the chef’s own tears.

“Greetings my beautiful monster.”

In the blink of an eye three blades were drawn and at the throat of the woman that stood before the Marauder’s table. A tiefling beggar with filthy, matted hair interspersed with black, iron-hard quills like those of a howler, her flesh displayed the signs of extensive torture: burns, razor marks from the flensing of her flesh, and the ugly depressions of acid spattered across her face and which had opened holes in her left cheek such that her black and rotting teeth could be seen.

The Marauder’s nose twitched at the reek of unwashed mortal flesh, but neither did she sneer, nor fly into a rage, or simply order the woman to be killed and hurled off the roof of the present establishment that she in fact partially owned along with the lives and half the souls of its employees. Instead, without even a frown or twitch of her nose, she calmly and delicately put down her golden knife and fork and dabbed her lips with a napkin.

Beneath the woman’s odor of sweat, pain, fear and filth, the familiar scents of Khin-Oin, Hopeless, and the Lower Ward painted a picture of her journey from the Wasting Tower to Shemeska’s gilded Cage. Beyond that of course, only one creature had ever referred to her by that specific name and title: the Oinoloth himself.

None of Shemeska’s guards had seen the tiefling ascend the stairs from the restaurant’s main dining room, nor slip past the guards posted there at the bottom of the stairwell. It didn’t seem possible that she’d scaled the sheer wall and four stories of brick and slate, graced only by a scrabble of razorvine either, let alone manage to drag herself through the razorvine-encrusted iron faux-vineyard that ringed the rooftop. It wasn’t obvious how she’d appeared there at the Marauder’s private table when her smell alone would have given sign of her approaching presence at least a hundred feet away if not more, but still, there she was, standing before the King of the Crosstrade and smiling.

“Put your blades away and let her speak.” The Marauder waved her hand and then placed it on the table to join her other, suddenly folded and patient for a creature neither known for patience or the slightest drop of humility.

The tiefling woman smiled and curtseyed with an overdrawn elegance that clashed with the rags she wore and the utter abandon displayed to her own body.

“I greet you Lady Shemeska in the name of the Master of the Fourfold Furnace, the Oinoloth of the Waste, and the Rightful Overlord of the Scarlet Prison. Vorkannis the Ebon sends you his regards, tinged with regret that he could not visit you here himself, in the flesh, in person.”

The tiefling shuddered as she pronounced the Oinoloth’s name, biting her tongue as if in shame for uttering a blasphemy. Fresh blood marked her teeth and lips, the former visible through the holes in her cheek. Reflexively, her tail coiled about her right leg and a stream of urine trickled down her left.

“I serve the Oinoloth in every way he desires.” The Marauder’s eyes were locked upon the messenger’s, acutely aware of the glow now flickering within the doomed mortal’s pupils. The radiance of magic seething within her battered flesh and coiling like a devouring serpent¬¬¬ –Nidhogg at the roots of the World Tree in microcosm– told the fiend all she needed to know. “What message does my Oinoloth have for me?”

“The Master of the Lower Planes desires your presence within Khin-Oin.”

Shemeska blinked, unconsciously biting her lip.

“Travel alone and leave His most recent gift to you within Sigil.” The tiefling smiled, blood upon her teeth, then abruptly speaking the next phrase of her instructions with the utmost calm and not in planar common, but in perfect, horrific Baern, “*Under no circumstances is the Shadow Sorceled Key to leave the City of Doors.*”

The Marauder blinked at the sudden utterance of the language from a mortal mouth, a mortal mouth now bleeding from its gums and blood blossoming in the tiefling’s glowing sclera from suddenly ruptured blood vessels. The words themselves were killing her.

“I understand.” Reflexively her thighs clenched upon the length of the Key where it lay flat against her flesh, upon her thigh, hung from her waist by an adamantine chain.

“Bring *nothing* but your flesh, beautiful monster. Nothing.” The tiefling smiled even as light seeped from her eyes and now her mouth and nostrils. “He awaits you and you alone within a chamber directly below and twelve levels down from that in which you and He first met. Arrive there within the next twelve hours. The Wheels turn.”

At the moment the tiefling ceased talking, the Marauder’s tongue flitted across her lips, whispering a phrase as two fingers gesticulated in a practiced, unconscious movement to raise an invisible barrier between herself, her meal, and the tablecloth and the tiefling as the latter exploded like an overripe melon dropped from the rooftop. Blood and viscera erupted across the rooftop in a thirty foot radius, coating the ground and the Marauder’s groomer guards, leaving only her and her food intact as a fine red mist settled across an even wider area. 

Utterly uncaring for the sudden screams from the other diners, some of them spattered from the dead tiefling’s incinerated remains, Shemeska knew her next course of action. She no longer had any desire or intention of finishing her meal or even considering her earlier thoughts. Greater things called.


*****​


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## Tsuga C

A Valentine's Day present to all your readers--how thoughtful of you! And it is gratefully received, King of the Crosstrade.


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## 81Dagon

Well then. What are the Ebon and the Maurauder about to be up to?


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## Akhelos

Exploding Tiefling Messengers, perfect Yugoloth Style. ^^
And a new variant of, This Message will destroy itself. ^^


----------



## Shemeska

The rooftop erupted in a chorus of shouts from a dozen pompously dressed Golden Lords and would-be Golden Lords: laments for their ruined evenings, laments for their ruined food, laments for their ruined outfits and finery, and above all else, laments for their ruined social reputations. Alone in being unbefouled by the explosive death of her received message’s courier, Shemeska gracefully stood as if nothing untoward had occurred. Turning to the guard nearest her, a lithe, silver-blond tiefling whose ears bled a thin trail of blood down his neck, she locked eyes and began to whisper.

With the first words that passed her lips, words that caused the layer of makeup that painted her lips to momentarily sizzle and char black, her tiefling groomer-guard’s gaze went black, as did the next of her guards sequentially, one by one, until the barbed touch of the spell lanced to the minds of each and every occupant there on the rooftop.

“You will remember none of this. Your evening proceeded without incident, the food was lovely, and you have no particular details of the evening which might later come to your mind if asked. Your clothing was befouled in-transit to your homes by a wandering group of Xaositects with buckets of blood because it happened to be just that kind of day in their addled bone boxes. I was not here. My employees were here in case I decided to attend, but I did not, and at the end of the evening they returned to their prior scheduled tasks.”

Her breath heavy, her black heart quickened and racing, and her chest -itself propped high for display by magic that took the place of a mundane gown’s whalebone- rising and falling with a mixture of feelings, the ‘loth blinked, waved a hand at the bloody aftermath on the tables and floor, and walked immediately to the exit. Before she reached the stairs, the mess was cleared and she herself vanished in the flicker-flash of a teleport.

Seconds later she appeared within a private room in the Azure Iris, her hand immediately pulling out the Shadow Sorcelled Key from below the heavy folds of her dress to feel its alien and predatory chill in her hands. The shadows licked at her flesh reassuringly as her head spun with consideration of just what the Oinoloth wanted, desired, and intended by his words. Every situation played out in her mind for twenty long minutes before she finally caught her breath and moved past the first blizzard of thoughts that ranged from the prosaic to the carnal.

Would this next encounter lay the groundwork for another part of her payment due? Was the Ebon, having newly released Shylara the Manged from her imprisonment now intending to strip her of her unearned power and office and replace her with a more suited occupant of that throne? Was the Ebon simply tired of his bleeding, mediocre wretch of a consort, and now, having tasted her student, ready for her embrace?

Subconsciously lifting the Key in her hands clasped almost in prayer to 13 uncaring entities older than gods or perhaps simply to one who sat atop Khin-Oin, she touched its length to her lips and kissed the artifact entrusted into her keeping. Whatever the Ebon’s desires and design, she would discover and she would seize the position, respect, and power that she deserved.

Fretting, the ‘loth paced back and forth. The Ebon was absolutely clear in that the Shadow Sorcelled Key could under no circumstances leave Sigil. Where then to leave it? How to keep it safe and secure?

Shemeska snarled and went to a mirror to wash and repaint her lips, her mind still racing. There were too many uncertainties in the Key’s effect and the manner in which it inconceivably broke the fundamental laws of Sigil. The Key was safe in her hands, but should it leave the touch of a conscious mind… no it could not simply be bound in spell traps and buried in the Slags like a vampire seeking millennia of uninterrupted sleep.

“Who the f*ck… who the f*ck…” She hissed, desperately wishing to have a mortal to torture and have their screaming sooth her worries, but there wasn’t the time.

Of course, she thought, it couldn’t be another ‘loth. That was the worst option imaginable, and the other examples of her kind within Sigil were the utter worst owing to the familiarity of centuries or longer which in almost all cases bred contempt beyond belief. Faces, names, pseudonyms, and even a true name sprang to her mind and she dismissed them all as options. None of them were worthy of her and none of them were worthy of holding what the Oinoloth had given to her and her alone. 

No… she wouldn’t give it to any of them. But then, paused on the precipice of screaming in agonized desperation, she realized the answer to her conundrum. Smiling, she whispered a short phrase of magic and with her makeup once again perfect, she gestured and vanished.

The first teleport deposited her into a torture chamber below the Slags, and then another shunted her to an empty warehouse in the Lower Ward, and then another and another and another. The blizzard of teleports -some thirty eight in all- served to muddy her tracks from divinations beyond her standard repertoire of spells she wore to mask her location, and they continued until she emerged in a sealed room atop a centuries long established, respected, and absolutely inconsequential private attorney’s office in the Lady’s Ward.

“It has been some time, hasn’t it? At least a decade, if not more.” She laughed before glancing into a mundane mirror, shapeshifting into a wildly different guise, and gathering together the trappings of her momentary form’s station and professional. Where the King of the Crosstrade had been, there now stood a young, mostly androgynous tiefling woman of thoroughly mixed heritage dressed in the crisp and pressed outfit of an attorney, clasping a heavy ledger and bag, and bearing a very specific and very specifically enchanted badge of admission. The only noteworthy element was the bright length of violet running through her hair. Even in disguise, the Marauder still had some need to stand out as unique.

One more teleport and she would find herself back in a very familiar and comforting location she hadn’t been for far too many long years. That was where she would leave the Key. There in the proximity of a long beloved figure in a place where none would ever seek to look and especially to look there for her.


*****​

Two centuries earlier:


“What do you mean he won’t speak to me?!” Joseph Arnisikarion’s face was a lurid purple of frustrated, impotent rage and it took all of his composure as a man of station to not pound the table with his fists and demand satisfaction.

“As I’ve explained sirrah,” The lawyer looked up from her desk, her face entirely unphased by the nobleman’s anger, “Your uncle desires to remain to himself in his retirement. You’ve read the papers he presented to the Temple of Tyr and the instructions given to us as legal proxies to see to his wishes.”

“I’m his nephew! I’m his principal heir!” The half-elf nobleman’s left eye twitched as he bordered once again on losing his composure.

“You’re –one- of his heirs sirrah.” The lawyer corrected, “You have three younger siblings, two half-siblings, an aunt, and multiple cousins and their descendants. They count as heirs as well, and when my client either passes away or sees fit to distribute his wealth outside of his holding accounts with the Temple, then perhaps he will see fit to grant an audience, be it from a coffin or convalescent bed. But that it not my decision to make, nor is it yours.”

“I don’t want his money! I don’t want his title!” Joseph pleaded, lying through his teeth in a manner so transparent that the tiefling sitting opposite him could have discerned that fact even if she wasn’t capable of magically plumping the truth by virtue of the candle discretely burning in an obscured niche in her office. “I just want to speak with my uncle and know why he won’t see his family!”

“Again sirrah, that it not my place to decide, but only to see about the Golden Lord’s wishes in our capacity as legal proxies.”

The small law firm in Sigil’s Lady’s Ward was old and well respected within the circles of power and wealth, though to their credit they’d avoided entangling themselves in the power plays of guilds and Factions, preferring to remain out of the limelight and serving individual clients and occasionally some of the Ward’s temples. In the case of the Golden Lord Eustace Arnisikarion, they served as the only public face of the reclusive, elderly shut-in who’d locked his doors and withdrawn from public life a decade and a half earlier after liquidating his vast mercantile holdings to a number of private buyers of all types and interests, ranging from the Temple of the Abyss, the Planar Trade Consortium, a dozen individual Merkhants, and of course the King of the Crosstrade.

“How do I know that my uncle is even still alive?”

“Your uncle is very much still alive.” The lawyer frowned, “I have spoken with him myself, though his interactions with myself and other agents of this firm are few and far between. Your uncle for his own reasons that frankly I am neither privy too nor entitled to understand, simply wishes to remain in isolation. As you know he divested himself of his business holdings and land, with the exception of his mansion in the Lady’s Ward following the sudden death of his fiancé. Grief will do many things to a man, and I would assume that he wishes to live out his twilight years in peace.”

“And how can I trust you?”

The lawyer’s eyes narrowed.

“Not that I’m accusing you or your firm of lying.” The young heir held up his hands, though his derision was obvious.

“If you don’t wish to take our word regarding your uncle’s health, you are more than welcome to speak with the priests of the Temple of Tyr. Given the rarity of your uncle’s direct communication, they possess a drop his blood in safe, secure holding, and remain aware at all times if he is alive or dead. If that situation changes, our firm will be made aware, we will enter the estate and begin the distribution of his wealth and titles according to his will. Beyond that, and adjudication beyond the simple terms of the will are to be provided to us in writing no later than thirty days following the announcement of the Golden Lord’s passing and the priests of the Temple of Tyr will hear those claims and pass judgment.”

“But I…”

“The situation is just as out of my hands as it is yours sirrah.” The lawyer’s voice was calm and measured. “In the absence of your uncle desiring otherwise, you and your siblings will continue to receive your monthly allowance taken from the interest on his holdings in trust with the Temple, not a copper more or less.”

“He’s old.” The nobleman fully realized he was getting nowhere, and legally he had no recourse. “And he’s an elven aasimar for the Seldarine’s sake. I’m already middle-aged and only the gods know when he’ll finally die. I’ve been waiting for most of my life for him to expire and pass on his title and most of his wealth to me. The trickle each month isn’t enough. I need more! I –deserve– more! Let me speak with him! I can convince him to take pity and give me more! Please!!!”

Looking up and finally making direct eye contact, the lawyer sighed. An androgynous figure of a middle aged tiefling with long, pin-straight raven black hair, she was impeccably dressed in neat green and black dress robes. She wouldn’t have particularly stood out in court or walking the streets of the Lady’s Ward, but for the unique stripe of purple she affected in her hair.

“I’m sorry,” She said, “But that’s simply not possible. There’s nothing more to say, and you will receive your monthly allowance as standard upon the first of the month. Good day to you sirrah.”

Despondent but left without legal recourse, the young nobleman stared for several long moments before nodding and walking to the door. The lawyer’s business-like smile devoid of actual sincerity was nearly as damning as the heavy, dull sound of the door closing behind him and the metallic clunk of the latch.

Alone in the office, and briefly back in her native form, vivid emerald flame alight in her eyes, Shemeska the Marauder smiled.


****​

Back in the present:

Two centuries earlier the Gold Lord Eustace Arnisikarion had been at the height of his power, influence, and fortune. Childless, the aasimar of clearly elven descent had abruptly withdrawn from public life and shut himself inside of his mansion following a period of ill health, the death of a bastard child, the death of his wife, an accident that left him disfigured… the rumors flew thick and swift for the better part of a week, and then the man was forgotten. Sigil had many Golden Lords, and among the extremely wealthy of their tier and rank, reclusive eccentricity was hardly rare. In short time the man was forgotten amidst the more important and ever-byzantine drama of the Factions and more prominent, more powerful, and wealthier powers in the City of Doors.

Eustace would become a historical footnote, with the occasional learned tout dropping his name as the recluse who dwelled in a particular mansion behind thick fences overgrown with razorvine and nothing more. History had passed him by, and with the passage of time his heirs aged and passed as well.

Several blocks distant from the Golden Lord’s estate, the Marauder stepped out of an alleyway that obscured the flicker-flash of her teleport and the young, largely forgettable tiefling lawyer stepped out into the street, a thick legal satchel at her side carrying papers for Eustace to see and approve, and a badge on her chest to serve as a key for the mansion’s magical wards.

“I’m here to see Lord Eustace Arnisikarion as legal representative and proxy, go-between for the Lord and the Temple of Tyr.”

“Well I’ll be… damn…” The bariaur guard captain at the gate glanced down at the “lawyer” and smiled. “What’s it been? A decade since I’ve seen you?”

“Nearly that, yes.” Shemeska returned the guard captain’s smile, “We have no regular schedule to see the old recluse, and only when he indicates by magic to the Temple of Tyr that he desires to give word to the outside world are we utilized as over-glorified couriers. It appears that it’s that time again.”

“So it is. Let our distant paymaster know that we hope that he remains in good health and we appreciate having some of the easiest and most lucrative positions of their kind in the City of Doors. We’ve had less than five attempts at trespassing this year.”

“The razorvine tends to dissuade the attempts I’m certain.” The Marauder smiled, knowing that the razorvine on the fences was a mercy compared to what anyone actually breaching the perimeter would find.

Pleasantries were made, introductions to the guards who’d yet to meet her, and then the gate’s locks were opened, the chains pulled, and the “lawyer” stepped beyond and walked through the estates abandoned, overgrown gardens towards the sprawling, monstrously baroque mansion at their center. She smiled as her feet swiftly carried her towards her goal, soft leather boots on onyx cobblestones much worse for wear since Eustace had vanished from public life. For all the twisted, tangled razorvine that chocked the estate grounds, for all the spattering of dried avian sh*t from flocks of executioner’s ravens roosting high above in the trees, the weathered, abandoned grounds and exterior of the mansion was a monstrous and planned and plotted sham. 

Upon touching the exterior door, the badge she wore unlocked the layers upon layers of wards that kept the Golden Lord’s privacy absolutely sacrosanct. The door opened without so much as a creak upon the hinges, the Marauder slipped inside, and the door closed behind her.

The inside of the mansion was as she had left it two centuries earlier: spotless, decorated with the full wealth and prestige of one of Sigil’s Golden Lords, even one now long forgotten, though with the addition in those years wherein the Lord withdrew from public contact of a particular quirk of the walls. Every external wall had been meticulously covered in a thin layer of lead, painted over in gorgon’s blood, and marked with veritable murals of symbols: all to prevent scrying, extradimensional movement, and any magical prying into the affairs of a man lost to the world.

None of it of course had been by the designs of Eustace Arnisikarion, but by his would-be bride.

Shemeska smiled as she cast out her conscious mind to feel the wards that she’d penned and found them as immaculate as ever. All of the spells remained in place to keep, there to keep the mansion in immaculate condition, reknitting the foundations and strengthening the beams and stones and slate roofing tiles above them, but more so that any errant portal that might ever potentially open into the mansion’s -nearly- vacant interior would be met with immediate and lethal magical assault. She’d warded the mansion centuries before coming into possession of the Shadow Sorceled Key, and with that sole exception, there was no manner in which to conventionally stop the Lady’s portals from naturally forming in any bound space available. One simply had to ward the grounds to ensure that any such entry was imminently lethal.

Slowly walking through the grand mansion, smiling at the decorations she had selected, the art she had commissioned, the wealth on display to catch her attention and paid for by a man in wild, foolish love she found more than a few instances of her wards doing precisely what she had designed them for. Occasionally she would find piles of dust, ashen smears upon the hand-woven carpets, or the bloody, shambling tracks of those not completely and immediately incinerated. Of course the spells written into the mansion’s superstructure would tidy up such inconvenient messes in due time as well, and she remained utterly unconcerned as she neatly stepped over them.

Ascending the grand staircase towards the upper levels of the palatial mansion, Shemeska shed her guise as the Golden Lord’s lawyer and resumed her natural form. While tempted to wear her favorite and iconic dress, she instead chose something more fitting to the moment and her company that awaited her high above.

Eustace still lived, indeed he did, and his privacy was shrouded by the untended grounds run wild with razorvine, the wards on the mansion itself, layers of legal contracts, and a steady if all in all comparatively miniscule flow of gold from the accounts still nominally in his name. Gold greased the proper channels, hired guards, and provided his remaining and increasingly distant heirs -exiled and unwelcome as they were- an allowance each month and kept them from doing much beyond waiting for their primogenitor to die and legally cede the bulk of his wealth to them. Of course every few years one of them died, clearly by natural causes or an accident, slowly winnowing down the ranks of any capable of understanding the truth of the matter, and eventually they would all be gone with none the wiser as to the course of events.

Of course the Marauder had complete and total control of the situation and the entirety of the man’s assets now in the present, as she had since he’d withdrawn from the world two centuries previous.

Divinations by the Temple of Tyr would reveal precious little beyond, ‘He is alive and he yet dwells within his mansion. Until one of these situations changes, his heirs must patiently wait for his demise so long as he refuses to admit them.’

Standing at the sculpted marble entryway to the Master Bedroom, Shemeska slipped out a small velvet pouch from the satchel she carried, held out her left hand and neatly, with faux reverence, slipped a platinum and diamond ring upon her left ring finger, appreciating the irony of that particular bauble in the present moment.

Having already shed her temporary tiefling form, she briefly stretched her neck and flicked her tail side to side, mentally adjusting each and every physical detail to best suit that of a pristinely groomed arcanaloth. Gone was the lawyers simple, functional, and boringly formal court attire, now replaced with something well known to the place she now stood: a scandalously tight, formfitting gown of multiple layers of transparent white silk that left precious little to the imagination as she paused at the threshold and stepped into the sprawling, palatial bedroom.

“Hello my beloved…”


*****​

Licking her lips, the fiend closed her eyes and deeply inhaled, tasting the room’s saturated agony as much as the lingering perfume and flowers kept perpetually fresh for over two centuries. Everything was as it had been when she’d had her secret affair with the Golden Lord and brought about the love-stricken fool’s complete and utter doom, though over the years since she’d seen fit to occasionally add to the chamber’s decorations both to suit her own abounding narcissistic tastes and a yearning need to add to the man’s agony.

A gasping moan escaped parched lips and the figure that lay upon the massive bed that she’d provided for their brief and tumultuous affair, carved to her specifications from the then living bodies of four sister dryads. It was there upon the bed that the Golden Lord Eustace Arnisikarion still lay where she’d left him two centuries earlier, paralyzed, moaning incoherently in low and constant pain, and with his tongue removed, bitten off and swallowed by the fiend when he’d bedded her during an affair that had lasted a week at most before she’d grew tired of his mortal frailty and cast him aside for her own apprentice, newly arrived from Gehenna: Shylara. 

Surrounding the mute and crippled Golden Lord were all the reminders of his folly and the creature he’d fatally fallen in love with. Scattered about him stood dozens of wood, marble, and metallic sculptures of the Marauder in all manner of poses from the carnal to the prosaic, all of them bereft of clothing, and hung upon the walls or set upon tables lay paintings of the Marauder passionately coupled with each of her consorts she’d taken and disposed of since her malignant use and breaking of the aasimar so many years ago. Dominating one of the walls was a massive mural of the two of them locked in a passionate, loving embrace, dressed in elegant, marital attire, including for Shemeska, the same dress that she now deliberately wore. The mural, painted before she’d betrayed and condemned Eustace to his fate of moribund living-death, was much the same as when the paint had dried, except for a late alteration to her face such that what once provided an image of her smiling and seemingly in love was forever after replaced with a malicious sneer upon her face and her eyes painted so as to always stare directly, mockingly at him.

The paralyzed man murmured and coughed, a tear rolling down his cheek as the Marauder approached, the muscles of his face the only thing that responded to his will as she produced a crystalline vial and held it up to the light before gazing down and smiling. Despite the passage of centuries, the man remained static at the same apparent physical age, of seemingly robust health, except for the tracery of scars that covered his form, all of them neatly fitting the pattern of the Marauder’s claws and teeth, and with the exception of one remaining finger upon his left hand, his limbs ended in raw, irritated stumps from where she’d personally sat atop his chest, held him down, and sawed them off.

As her former lover and would-be husband moaned in agony, she abruptly uncorked the vial and upended the contents into her mouth, appreciating the taste of the sparkling, ruby colored alchemical suspension without suffering any of its effects as it remained held in her mouth and unswallowed. 

It was not for her. It was never for her.

Standing over him and gazing down at her hideous handiwork, Shemeska brushed a hand over his cheek to catch the tear upon a single manicured and purple painted claw before deftly placing it upon her tongue to taste of his misery. She smiled, deeply appreciative of the taste and what it represented as she proceeded –as was standard for every visit she made– to make sure that the ring of sustenance remained in place upon his left hand on the finger, nestled snug against the golden wedding band she’d given him as a token of false love.

Still smiling, she stroked her claws down his chest before leaning down and kissing him as passionately as they had each and every moment of their affair, slipping her tongue past his lips and releasing the contents of the vial held in her mouth forcibly down his throat, there to interact with his mortal biology and extend his life and prolong his torment.

“Did you miss me… my love?” Shemeska broke the kiss and lapped at his chin before pulling back and laughing until she was out of breath. As far as ex-lovers went, Shylara the Manged might have escaped relatively untormented by comparison to Eustace Arnisikarion. She at least was free.

Abject, apoplectic rage coursed through the living-dead man’s eyes. She did not grant him the pleasure of reading his thoughts and letting him speak to her. He would remain and suffer, and in suffering grant her pleasure beyond what he might have hoped for in bed or otherwise. At least now he had a purpose beyond simply existing and suffering for her pleasure, an original purpose for which he remained alive, if never whole.

“I’ve brought you a gift old fool.” Shemeska produced the key from where it had hung against the flesh of her thigh and unhooked the mithral chain from her waist. She actually hesitated as she let the chain hang free and prepared to place it at the foot of the bed, not wanting to let it slip beyond her grip and pass from her control. But set it down she did, following the Oinoloth’s instructions that it never leave Sigil, and set it down upon the silken sheets just beyond Eustace’s reach if he’d possessed hands or any mobility at all, but it was ever within his line of sight, swirling with cold, flickering shadows.

Sighing as she placed the artifact down and halfway expecting flaying shadows to come for her moments later, she finally relaxed and stroked her former lover’s flesh with idle malice before she departed to Khin-Oin.

“I’ll be back for you Eustace, not to worry my love, and at some point in the next decade I’ll make sure to come back and give you another kiss and your next dose.” She laughed and kissed his forehead, turning and walking away, gazing about for latent portals before turning back and adding, “And as a complete aside, you should know that the last of your surviving grand nephews is dead. Your line of inheritance ever dwindles my love and soon they will forget that you yet live or that you ever existed at all. But not to worry my dearest Eustace, I won’t forget you. My memory will never fade, and this immortal b*tch that broke you for her own amusement will make sure that regardless of your mortality, you’ll persist and suffer as long as I desire.”

With a horrific, delighted smirk upon her face, Shemeska turned and walked from the room, the man’s ragged moans music to her ears.

“I am almost there my Oinoloth, just as you requested…” She whispered, glancing about at each and every bound space for the swiftest egress from the City of Doors and then to the Waste, debating which route would be the swiftest.

She could have taken a portal to Hopeless and then through another permanent portal there in the courtyard of Mocking Thingol’s palace to Oinos, but that would have taken far too long for her liking. Instead the razorvine-crowned fiend simply activated the first portal she saw with a non-material key, opened it with a thought, and then before the cubes of Tintabulos were visible in the black vault of Acheron’s void, she effortlessly cast a gate and stepped through into Khin-Oin itself.

There would be no grand entry. There would be no arrival with pomp and an honor guard. The gates of the Wasting Tower would remain shut and her arrival unheralded and unnoticed. Only the Oinoloth mattered to her, and only he would see her, and he would see her soon.

“I am here for you my master…”


****​


----------



## 81Dagon

Married?! Was not expecting that, although Shemmy shows off just how evil she is once more...


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## Tsuga C

A twisted [rhymes with bunt], that one. Grand scale or personal, in her wake she leaves ruin.


----------



## Shemeska

The Marauder stood, gazing up at a great silver door, its face inset with decorative panels and handles carved from the bones of the archons who eons before had descended upon the Waste to intervene in the Blood War. They had learned a profound lesson then, and now their skeletal remains decorated the doors of a private chamber of the unquestioned ruler of the Waste. 

That chamber however, the one whose precipice she presenting stood upon, should not have existed.

Her hand outstretched, Shemeska recalled the Wasting Tower’s layout in all its labyrinthine glory. She’d memorized each and every room carved out of the spine of a dead god, each and every chamber bolted and grafted onto its surface like calcified flesh and muscle regenerating at its killers’ whimsy to house its parasitic subjects. She’d memorized every horrific detail countless millennia ago during her servitude in Gehenna’s Tower Arcane, and later during her period of service within Khin-Oin itself. She’d never known the nature of each of those nearly uncountable rooms and galleries, but she knew how they set into place in the grand scheme of its blueprints. The present chamber though, it existed in violation of spatial constraints, as did the stairwell that had taken her to her present location, a stairwell seemingly untouched by the passage of feet, something willed into existence and spitting in the face of reality itself.

“He waits for you.”

Shemeska glanced at the two mutilated ultroloths who flanked the door; Lords of Khin-Oin reduced to mere doormen. She knew them both by name, purely by the intonation and palpable feel of their telepathy gracing her brain: Azgerath ap Center, and Fulmirinzia ap Pluton. For a thousand years she’d served the former as scribe and spy within the courts of Mydianchlarus prior to the latter’s ascension to Oinoloth. She’d conspired to and succeeded into bringing about the former Oinoloth’s fall from power and death at the Ebon’s hands, and now her former ultroloth master stood here before her, a hideously puppet robbed of both free will and dignity.

A sneer rose to the Marauder’s lips and without thinking she laughed, cupped a hand between her legs and gave both ultroloths a lewd display of her complete and utter contempt. Neither fiend responded in the slightest, reduced to virtual automatons as they were.

Jagged pieces of cobalt blue crystal had been thrust into their skulls, turning them into puppets and mouthpieces of the Oinoloth at any moment of his choosing. Of all the things that Vorkannis had done, his never explained antipathy towards the highest class of yugoloth and the things that he had done to select members of their caste was one which still terrified Shemeska to behold.

“He waits for you.” Both ultroloths repeated, devoid of inflection or emotion, jolting the Marauder from her mocking, carnal display.

Chuckling to herself one last time, she regained her composure. Remembering the explicit instructions she’d been given in Sigil, and uncaring for the ultroloths standing at mute, expressionless attention, Shemeska reached up to her head and began removing her jewelry. First the two dozen earrings that decorated her ears, then the necklace and bulbous star sapphire at her throat, then her ubiquitous razorvine crown. All of them she placed upon the floor before reaching behind her back and undoing the clasps that held her gown in place. Falling past her hips, it pooled at her ankles like a pile of emeralds before she gently removed several more piercings from below the neck-line and then stepped free of the puddle of glassy cloth, naked and humbled. 

Cold as the still, sterile air of Khin-Oin licked at her exposed flesh and setting her fur to prickle and stand erect, she took a deep breath and readied herself. Reaching forward she opened the door, uncaring and unflinching as the silver backing of the handles burned into her palms as she swung the doors wide.

“I am here my Oinoloth.”


****​

The room was dimly lit and it took the Marauder’s eyes several moments to adjust despite her fiendish nature, but even before the purple flame in her eyes took in the full scope and majesty of the room, her ears and flesh already told her that it was vast and that it was not in any sense of the word normal. A cool wind blew through the air to slither across her bare flesh, setting her fur alight with sensation and teasing her mind of what she hoped would be forthcoming, and each barren footfall and clatter of her claws on the stone below sent echoes up and about the chamber’s vaulted heights.

“Beautiful…” Shemeska whispered to herself as she gazed up and across the Ebon’s private chamber there at Khin-Oin’s hidden heart, every wall not stone but the exposed raw bone of the dead god whose spine formed the core of the Wasting Tower.

The first thing that the Marauder noticed was not the seeming absence of her master, but a seat at the chamber’s center seemingly coaxed and grown from the chamber’s bone substrate. Not a seat but a throne, it resembled nothing so much in basic form as the Seige Malicious high above at the Tower’s summit, but this one however was crafted to resemble a throne wrought of and decorated by the collected skulls of each and every former Oinoloth since the original, including all of those known to the Marauder, and dozens of others lost to history and the historical revisionism of her caste’s historians: hoarders and buriers of secrets all.

Surrounding the Oinoloth’s throne were tables upon tables of books, roughly divided into three distinct groups, each of which caused the King of the Crosstrade’s eyes to bulge and her mouth and elsewhere to grow wet with anticipation. 

“How…?” She mumbled as her brain cataloged them all and tried to conceptualize their nature and what it meant for all of them to be there so casually placed out for use and examination.

The first group she recognized most keenly, all of which were precious volumes all, their words burned into the flesh of petitioners long-since blinded and their mouths stuffed with ash and stitched shut, imprisoning them in a black, silent eternity of unending agony. Those books she recognized the hand which had penned them as that of Larsdana Ap Neut, First Magistrix of the Fourfold Furnace, Architect and First Keeper of the Tower Arcane – Helekanalaith’s predecessor. Those tomes were amongst the rarest and most precious of treasures imaginable to any arcanaloth. They represented a pinnacle of what any representative of their caste might ever wish to achieve… prior perhaps to the Ebon’s ascension to Oinoloth that was.

Larsdana’s tomes were hoarded by ultroloths and altraloths, and yet those still extant were only the barest fraction of her original collection, most of which had inexplicably vanished when Helekanalaith betrayed and usurped her place within the Tower Arcane. He’d taken her position as Keeper, but she’d denied him the wealth accumulated during the bulk of her tenure, and here now a great many of them sat, collected together. Their presence however was secondary to what Shemeska noticed next: each and every open tome was crowded not only with Larsdana’s words, formulae, and intricate, brilliant mystical diagrams, but with equally intricate annotations and more often than not, corrections… mocking corrections… to the original text in the Ebon’s own hand, all penned in Baern.

The next were several dozen great black tomes written only in the Oinoloth’s own hand, penned with his claws carving his words into the surface of metal plates so thin as to be flexible and bound into his personal grimoires. The words Shemeska beheld were poetry in form and function, their malign power things of sickening beauty beyond anything that she’d ever experienced, and both now and once years before she’d briefly been able to read one of the private grimoires of Larsdana, the First Magistrix herself, but in only moments of comparison she understood that the Oinoloth’s spellcraft was yet an order of magnitude beyond that. 

Finally there sat a quartet of massive, monstrous tomes, easily ten times the size of the other more or less conventional –to a ‘loth– books. Like the grimoires of giants, they hung suspended in the air, open to specific pages, with great bookmarks of yet wriggling flesh ripped from the tanned hides of petitioners marking hundreds of other points of interest. All of the last group were uniformly penned in Baernaloth, and based on the size and nature of the tomes themselves, they had been written by the hands of Baern themselves.

Curiously the thought passed through her mind that the Ebon’s work was virtually a hybrid of the style of those first and last tomes, though all the more similarly to those of the Baern, and exclusively in the Father/Mothers’ language. That fleeting thought transgressed into a genuine feeling of terror brought about in most ‘loths by even the mention of their progenitors, let alone contact with objects directly created and used by the proto-fiends themselves, and here of course lay several of their works.

Belatedly, Shemeska realized that she was drooling, though the effect had begun as she had stared at the Oinoloth’s work.

Stepping forward with a genuine mixture of fear, wonder, and rapt adoration –a rabbit gazing into the wonders of a wolf’s yawning gullet– Shemeska trembled and glanced at the works of her creators. Several of the great tomes were wrought of metal, less books than amalgamations of metal and moving gears, portions moving and rearranging themselves with an accompaniment of clicking and grinding clockwork, the words formed as patterns in the underlying mechanical parts, shadows cast by the spinning, whirring things, and impressions projected into her mind simply be standing in their proximity.

Spooked, she turned to the next: a monstrous thing crafted from a patchwork arrangement of withered, preserved flesh, each page and sheaf was formed from thousands of fractional portions of petitioners. Each and every page twitched and moved with the immortal agony of the petitioners embossed with a litany of profane secrets burned into their base substance.

The last of the baernaloth tomes was the strangest: one crafted from plates of black glass, each page seemingly absorbing the very light around it. Where it sat upon one of the Oinoloth’s tables, dust and soot gathered around its periphery like the accretion disk of some soul-devouring singularity.

Twirling a claw nervously about a length of her hair and wishing dearly that she’d still worn her razorvine crown, for the presence of its weight atop her head and otherwise, a presence she’d known for thousands of years, Shemeska realized as she looked about the room that the Oinoloth’s collections of tomes were not the only curiosities. Although the most obvious to her yugoloth blood, and baernaloth tomes were not the only source of agony, collected, implied, felt in the marrow, or audible.

A number of raised platforms held a chorus of twisted, warped creatures that had at one time perhaps, originally been mezzoloths. Now though, they seemed barely classified as yugoloths at all and only just barely clinging to their unholy lives. Drifting constellations and rings of floating runes swirled around them, all identical to the style and shape of the Ebon’s handwriting in his own books, all of them seeming both to constrain them to their platforms and to periodically force upon them currents of raw elemental force.

Shemeska sneered as the nearest of them turned to look at her and gave an agonized, painful gasp. Its eyes flickered with a rheumy mix of water, itself moving between phases of mist to liquid to solid each time the runes glowed and pulsed. Portions of the least yugoloth’s arms and legs seemed partially transformed into water only held in check by a thin carapace of ice. Somehow, inexplicably the creature remained alive.

“What are you doing?...” She openly whispered, dumbfounded by both the purpose of the experiments and likewise how it was even accomplished.

Looking across to the various mezzoloths, all contorting in their own personal agonies and personal constellations of swirling words, whatever the Ebon was doing to them, it seemed focused on physically merging them with a specific element, for reasons utterly inscrutable to the Marauder. The Ebon’s rabid obsession with yugoloth alignment purity seemed completely at odds with these experiments, if that’s what they were.

Her mind swirling to take in the totality of what she had seen, there was one other thing that the room contained, though it registered almost as an afterthought by comparison to the other wondrous horrors laid out before her. There in the room’s further corner and seemingly the deepest in shadow, the floor was covered by a thick pile of ashes that bore the Oinoloth’s footprints entering and exiting again and again and again. A thin veneer of ice crystals glittered faintly from the frozen, ashen surface.

The Ebon himself however was nowhere to be seen.

“My Oinoloth,” Shemeska’s voice trembled ever so slightly. Not with fear, but with expectation. Surely this would be the next stage of her exaltation, the next payment for her servitude where the Key had been the first. “My Oinoloth, I am here for you. I am ready for you.”

The carnal insinuation was deliberate and filled with pride. For all the Ebon had used his consort Shylara, Shemeska smiled inwardly because Shylara had once been –her– consort. In her ego, it seemed to Shemeska that everything the Manged possessed that made her valued and attractive to the Oinoloth was a direct result of her study as the Marauder’s apprentice and eventually more than just an apprentice hundreds of years earlier. She’d studied, learned, and ultimately been rejected oh so poetically with the personalized, flesh-ravaging curse that she still bore and which moment by moment still maddened her. It had been a parting poisoned kiss, and indeed transmitted by their last passionate kiss and dance of tongue upon tongue. Shylara’s present fury at her former teacher and lover only hid her overwhelming vanity and the puissant obsession that she still carried after all the years they’d been separated by the Marauder’s presence in Sigil and Shylara’s continued work in Carceri, first under Bubonix and then beneath the Ebon, in every meaning of the word.

A thought burning through her brain since she’d heard the Ebon’s message now rang through Shemeska’s mind as she thought of Shylara and Shylara’s status to that point. Being invited here now could only mean one thing. The Ebon had tired of the Marauder’s protégé and like she herself had done, he was ready to discard her. The Oinoloth had seen and tasted her student and now wished to possess the real thing.

“My master, I am here for you. Finally I am here for you.”

A sly, hungry smile graced the Marauder’s muzzle before she sank a fang into her lower lip. Soon. Breathing deeply, naked and surrounded by the Oinoloth’s private horrific wonders, she trembled. Soon…

“That you are my beautiful monster,” The Ebon’s voice precipitated out of the air like smoke from an unseen fire, “That you are…”

Twirling about to face the source of his voice, her ears swiveling to face him a fraction of a second before her eyes fell upon his form, Shemeska struggled to catch her breath as at first she saw only his sparkling, albino eyes and the reflections of his brilliant white fangs as if they were all that existed, the rest of his body manifesting belatedly by comparison.

“My master…” She whispered as her eyes took in the totality of his form, the cut of his robes, blue, black, and silver, the trio of twinkling ioun stones that drifted about his head, and the soft trail of ice and ashes left behind with each of his steps towards her.

Then she noticed it: the blade.

Held in his outstretched left hand was a dagger, razor sharp and crafted from Gehennan obsidian. The runes cut into its surface and floating in its umbral depths like bubbles in ice were oh so familiar to her. Shemeska knew the blade well. That specific blade. Such a bloody history they had together.

Suddenly standing before her without having traversed the intervening space, the Ebon touched her cheek with the blade’s flat, cold surface and he spoke, his gaze reflecting back in her own wide, trembling eyes.

“The last time you stood naked in the presence of this dagger Shemeska, you were filled with such terror, such desire, such eager need for it to be plunged into your heart. Zefendilar ap Othrys stood to your left, Vozrikirn ap Pluton in front of you, and Druscinderoth ap Khalas to your right watched over you with their glittering eyes and blank, featureless faces. They offered you this very same blade and your promotion from nycaloth to arcanaloth.”

“Yes…” She whispered back, involuntarily leaning forward on the tips of her toes, wishing, hoping for an embrace and a kiss.
“You begged for it.” The Oinoloth ran the blade’s flat down her check and along the line of her neck and collarbone.

“I do…” She licked her lips.

Vorkannis smirked, “I find it ever so ironic that the principal ultroloth who conducted your promotion and first plunged this knife into your chest was the very same one who oversaw the very same ceremony for your protégé Shylara.”

“Shylara…” Shemeska sneered, “I taught her well for you my master, but I am greater than her in every way as you well know and as I wish to show you…”

“Given your relationship with her,” Vorkannis smiled, “And likewise my relationship with her now, I appreciate the irony that the two of you are linked by your origins even now. But your promotion was first, tens of thousands of years before she would rise even to nycaloth status. Your promotion was a thing of beauty. You were beautiful then, just as you are to me now.”

The Marauder licked her lips and closed her eyes, remembering the moment in all of its vivid, horrific, exquisite pain and triumph. She trembled and whimpered as she felt the Oinoloth’s hand touch her cheek, somehow colder yet than the blade.

“They never knew the full story of how you gained your sponsor’s willingness to go before them and request your exaltation.” Vorkannis smirked and waited.

The response was swift and immediate.

Shemeska’s eyes went wide, and abruptly her soft, smug, needy smile turned to a sneer and snarl, “How do you know that?”

“That secret, that beautiful secret of yours is something only you and I know.” The Ebon’s albino eyes glittered with secrets and malice, “Your sponsor died within a year, by your hands about his throat, and you managed to arrange for the deaths of two of those three ultroloths within a century. Only Vozrikirn survived, dwelling in relative isolation in Carceri as one of Bubonix’s advisors in a position of little importance within the three planes as a whole while your star rose swift and shining within first one Tower and then another even before you chose Sigil to make a court of your own…” The Ebon flipped the blade to his other hand, licked his lips with seductive slowness and then gently ran his now free fingers down its length in an almost obscene gesture. “I was so very, very proud of you.”

The room’s light dimmed as the Ebon walked a circle around the Marauder, flowing more than walking, seeming to drag the darkest shadows along in his wake.

“I earned my promotion.” Shemeska whispered, bordering upon a hiss, “I seized it. I took it. It was *mine*. I remember each and every caress of that blade into my flesh.”

“They took their time with you.” Vorkannis stood before her again and held out the blade, pointing its tip at the Marauder’s naked form, moving his hands and mimicking the same exact motions that the trio of ultroloths had used when they’d held her down on the slopes of the second Furnace and tortured her to death, carving away her weakness, sculpting her flesh and spirit into something greater. The Ebon’s hands held the very same knife that they had used and somehow he knew the precise movements it had taken. 

Unprompted by any present notion of carnal intimacy, the Marauder clenched her thighs and put both hands to her chest as she grew excited by the memories.

“From the first cut to the very last, you never screamed.” The Oinoloth smiled with admiration in his eyes. “In fact, you only said three words. Not to any of them. No not to them and not audibly. Not telepathically either. You only whispered it to yourself in the depths of your mind like a prayer to the only creature in the cosmos that mattered to you: yourself.”

“More. Please more.” The Marauder whispered to the Oinoloth, watching as his lips moved to mouth the same words before she said them herself.

The Ebon drew within reach and she held out her arms, expecting the Oinoloth to embrace her in a carnal recapitulation of that earlier transfiguration, taking her and giving her reason to scream those same three words she had just now whispered. Purple flame danced in her eyes and lit her flush, warm cheeks.

Abruptly he room plunged into complete and utter darkness, and even the mechanical clatter and moaning of the baernaloth tomes ceased. There was only the albino intensity of the Oinoloth’s eyes and the ivory of his teeth hovering there before her, so close and so ever closer.

“Please.” Shemeska whispered in the same tone as she had begged the ultroloths for her promotion. “I beg of you.”

*CLATTER*

The obsidian dagger abruptly dropped to the ground, cast down and released from the Ebon’s grip.

“When they carved you apart on the slopes of Krangath, they required a blade. I do not.” The albino eyes narrowed and the ivory fangs parted in a malicious smile and the wet sound of lips and tongue moving. “When they carved you apart on the slopes of Krangath you suffered in perfect silence. With your agony you felt exquisite pleasure such as you had never felt before.”

The fringes of the Ebon’s flickers of shadow touched the Marauder’s flesh and she trembled at his touch. The light of his eyes vanished and the image of his teeth as well, leaving her alone in the darkness.

“My Oinoloth?” She whispered, confused. “Please.”

Lips touched her ears and hands lay upon her neck as a hundred tendrils of living darkness flickered at the rest of her body like a hundred lovers’ tongue. She smiled and relaxed just before they turned to razored claws.

“How dare you abuse the power that I give to you!” The Oinoloth’s snarl was savage in her ear. “How *–DARE—* you use the Shadow Sorceled Key for your own petty amusement!?”

“GGGGAAAAHHH!!!!” Shemeska screamed as the Oinoloth’s claws sunk into both of her shoulders drawing blood, puncturing a dozen layers of sorcerous protection and ignoring the contingencies woven therein like lightning to tissue paper. The Marauder gasped as the claws drove deeper, unable to vocalize her horrified thoughts, breathless at the pain.

“I entrusted you with finding, recovering, and safeguarding an artifact beyond your comprehension.” The albino light of the Ebon’s eyes burned down on Shemeska’s flesh, almost as searing in its radiance as a hand held over an open flame, “And in smug, shallow arrogance you used it for your own purposes without the slightest regard for my intent in that gift. I have not done a single act without purpose. I did not drag Belarian from its moorings for nothing. I am not here now in Khin-Oin without a reason, and I will not have those plans disrupted by your callous vanities.”

“My Oinoloth, I…” The words died in her throat as the Ebon’s hand clamped across her windpipe and squeezed as he lifted her into the air, her feet dangling and twitching helplessly.

“I entrusted you with the Key as payment for your service. I gave you a position of increased power and authority because I respected your climb up the hierarchy from a mewling, chittering *nothing* of a mezzoloth belched forth from Oinos in the depths of this tower. I have watched you for a very, very long time with interest.”

Dangling in the air, the Marauder thrashed feebly, the words of spells to save herself dying on her lips and siphoning off into a hungry, pitiless void lurking behind the Ebon’s albino eyes. Gagging, with spots of darkness drifting across her vision, she telepathically rationalized her actions rather than beg for her life. The claws on her throat dug deeper, drawing blood.

“I could have given the Key to others in Sigil or to any that I sent there, but I did not.” The Ebon changed hands and licked at the Marauder’s blood on his claws and inhaled deeply at the lesser fiend’s dawning horror and desperation. “I could have given it to Helekanalaith’s whelp. I could have given it to the tiefling that shares your blood, or even the one who suspects she does. There have always been multiple servitors of the Tower inside of Sigil, and you know them all, though you have always stood above them.”

The hand around Shemeska’s throat opened and she crashed to the floor, gasping for breath, staring up at the Ebon with a mixed look of fear and worship.

“I am still worthy of your gift my Oinoloth!” Shemeska pleaded, crawling forward on her hands and knees, uncaring of the blood streaking her fur, no longer pristine. “I am still worthy of you. I have always been worthy of you! Me. Only me.”

“No, you aren’t.” The Oinloth sneered as tendrils of liquid shadow lifted the Marauder to her feet and dragged her forward, his condemnation crushing her worse than any physical blow and sending cracks through her ego. “None of you are…”

Confusion marred the Marauder’s face as the Oinoloth’s eyes shed a reddish-pink sheen across her features. Briefly he turned to glance to the chamber’s far corner, stared for but a moment and nodded before turning back to Shemeska’s cowering, bloodied form.

“You will remember nothing of our conversation here in this place, or any of what you saw.” The Ebon’s left hand caressed her chin and then stroked across her lips and cheek. His right hand touched her forehead, peeling away her mental protections without the slightest of efforts, and then he turned her head to glance at the obsidian dagger that still lay upon the floor, reminding her of their original discussion. 

“Please my master…” Shemeska whimpered, gazing up with abject misery, “Please…”

“On Krangath you enjoyed your experience,” The Oinoloth hissed, speaking now in baernaloth, a language that he’d taught the basics of to the Marauder as part of her price to join his conspiracy, a fact that allowed her now to understand her folly and its cost. “But now, here, you will not enjoy this. No, you will not in any way. That was transfiguration, but this… this is punishment.”

Naked in the darkness of Khin-Oin, Shemeska the Marauder screamed.


****​


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## Shemeska

And as a total tone shift from that update, it's worth noting that I've been running an in-character [@]AskShemeshka account on Twitter for a few weeks (note the spelling difference of the name follows the published spelling rather than the storyhour spelling, but as the Marauder would say, "Shemeska or Shemeshka, I'm still the b*tch with the razorvine crown who's better than you.")


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## Akhelos

Poor Shemmy, getting punished for being to selfloving and arrogant. ^^ And the number 21 Shylara slippers are good. ^^


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## Tsuga C

Getting many hits on the account? If so, it's gratifying that many yet remember the glories of Planescape.

As an aside, charming music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PSFN2r6bXY


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## DrHyperion

First time poster, and a long time fan from almost the very beginning of both of your story hours.  Thank you, Shemeska for the hours of great entertainment.  I can't wait for the next installment.   I'm a weird one who is fascinated with Gehreleths.  Any chance of having them appear more often, especially with all that is going on in Carceri?  If you could do for them what you've done with the 'loths that would be awesome.


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## Malachite_Mack

Here's a good (or horrifying) idea Shemeska:  if you ever wanted to have anyone illustrate your Baernoloth Cycle stories you could find someone who has the style of Junji Ito.  The Japanese horror manga artist.   Be warned though:  If you ever look him up on wikipedia or tvtropes, they show his artwork right there.  

To put delicately, it's NOT safe for work, or for the soul.  Very realistic and very, very graphic.

Just imagine the BlindClockmaker story as illustrated with *that* kind of technique!  Serious nightmare fuel.


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## Shemeska

John Timmel said:


> First time poster, and a long time fan from almost the very beginning of both of your story hours.  Thank you, Shemeska for the hours of great entertainment.  I can't wait for the next installment.   I'm a weird one who is fascinated with Gehreleths.  Any chance of having them appear more often, especially with all that is going on in Carceri?  If you could do for them what you've done with the 'loths that would be awesome.




Oh not to worry. There's a slow burning subplot with the gehreleths and the PCs will go back to that plane more than once before all is said and done. Apomps itself/themself will make a personal appearance.


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## Shemeska

Malachite_Mack said:


> Here's a good (or horrifying) idea Shemeska:  if you ever wanted to have anyone illustrate your Baernoloth Cycle stories you could find someone who has the style of Junji Ito.  The Japanese horror manga artist.   Be warned though:  If you ever look him up on wikipedia or tvtropes, they show his artwork right there.
> 
> To put delicately, it's NOT safe for work, or for the soul.  Very realistic and very, very graphic.
> 
> Just imagine the BlindClockmaker story as illustrated with *that* kind of technique!  Serious nightmare fuel.




Well there's some nightmare fuel for me to look at later today! Thank you 

If I could get one of the baernaloth stories illustrated, my dream would be to have it done so by Stephen Gammell (the artist for the original publication of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark). Seriously genius work that terrified me as a kid and still remains deeply unsettling. Just to get him to do the story that I wrote for 'The Architect' or 'Dire Shepherd' (which are my personal favorites to have written) would be amazing. That reminds me that I need to write him a letter at some point just thanking him for his work being inspiring.


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## Malachite_Mack

I think I remember Mr. Gammell!


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## Shemeska

Three weeks later:

Toras’s heart beat heavy in his chest as he stood before Florian’s door. His face was pale and his brain still shuddered at what he’d seen. He didn’t know what it meant, but for the moment it seemed that things had resolved themselves for the best. Thankfully so, whatever had been the cause of it.

Taking a deep breath and calming himself, he knocked upon her door. Several seconds later the door opened and Florian looked up at him, a dubious expression playing across her face.

“Listen, you can stop trying to convince me to…”

“It’s done.” Toras cut her off, his voice carrying enough of a haunting finality of tone that the cleric actually blinked and coughed.

Florian gave a confused look, “What do you mean ‘it’s done?’”

“She’ll stop f*cking with us. That’s it.”

“What do you mean ‘that’s it’? What happened? What did you do to her?”

“Nothing.” Toras took a deep breath, remember what he’d seen, and for a moment almost feeling sorry for the fiend. “I didn’t do anything to her.”


****​

Three hours immediately prior:


For several days Toras of Andros had mailed requests to meet with the King of the Crosstrade and each had been declined. There’d been no explanation, just a form rejection. Following several such infuriating dismissals he’d sent another request by courier, only to have it denied as well, though this time with an actual excuse written down and handed back to him via the very same courier he’d sent.

“The King of the Crosstrade is currently busy and cannot grant your request.”

The letter was not however written by Shemeska herself, though such things rarely were compared to any of a dozen scribes. Perhaps the fiend was indeed actually busy. So he waited another day and sent another courier and again the same blunt response. Pissed and assuming that the ‘loth was by that point stringing him along to torment him, a tactic which was both working, and solidly in the fiend’s bag of tactics, Toras tipped the courier, stood up, and headed on foot straight to the fiend’s lair within the Fortune’s Wheel.

Walking through the door and then pushing his way through the throng of gamblers, merchants, prostitutes of the elegant and well-paid variety, and the drunken and despondent, the first thing that Toras noticed from the Fortune’s Wheel’s gambling floor was that Shemeska was pointedly absent from her standard table that looked down from a balcony a floor above to grant her a view of the entrance, gambling floor, and the dining room. That balcony lay empty, without any of her guards present to suggest that she was simply elsewhere and would indeed return.

Narrowing his eyes at the ‘loth’s absence, Toras turned and made his way for the stairs. If she wasn’t holding court in her usual place she’d likely be at her chamber in the Azure Iris several floors above.

Ten minutes later and Toras arrived at the door, greeted by the first positive hint of Shemeska’s presence that day: two of her black-clad tiefling groomer-guards standing to either side of the one door in the inn that wasn’t numbered and wasn’t simple painted hardwood, but elaborately carved mahogany.

“Hi.” The fighter smiled as both tiefling calmly regarded him. “I need to see her.”

Both tieflings for their part had seen every reaction under the sun from those seeking their Mistress’s audience. They’d seen men and women on their knees, begging and sobbing, and they’d seen men and women with bloody swords in their hands screaming to be let in. In neither case would they simply stand aside and allow anyone entry without the Marauder’s explicit and direct approval: they feared her anger more than a temporary death on her doorstep.

“That would not be possible at the moment.” The tiefling on the left flashed a curt smile while the tiefling on the right deftly tapped and activated a sending stone on their person. Toras noticed the action even if he wasn’t privy to the contents of the short message it allowed the tiefling to send inside the room where Shemeska brooded, doing whatever it was that ‘loths did in private. If nothing else it confirmed that she was there.

“You don’t quite understand,” Toras smiled overly long at the tiefling with the sending stone. “I know she’s here and I’m tired of being blown off, repeatedly for multiple days now. I’m going to see her.”

“Please leave sir.”

“I know you’re terrified of her, and I can understand that, so please step aside.” Toras smiled, his hand on her sword pommel, “But I’m sick and tired of the crap she’s been pulling. I just want to talk to her and end this petty back and forth. I’m tired of getting stabbed in the back and not even knowing why.”

“I believe I made myself clear,” The tiefling on the left likewise put their hand on their rapier. “You will not be seeing Her Fiendish Majesty without an appointment.”

“Stand aside and let me through or I’ll break down the door with your heads.” Toras glared at both of the Marauder’s lackeys, and there was something in both the intensity of his gaze and the tone of his voice that actually made them flinch.

Both tieflings exchanged awkward glances but both remained rooted in place.

“You are not welcome here at the present moment, Toras of Andros. Please leave.”

The Marauder’s telepathic voice echoed within Toras’s head and the minds of her servitors alike. His hand immediately dropped from its ready stance at this weapon. The fighter blinked, nearly stupefied by what he’d heard. He’d never before heard the Marauder use the word ‘please’. Something wasn’t right.

Seemingly having elicited a similar reaction from her guards, Toras burst forward, thrusting them aside. Quickly reaching out for the handle, he swung the door inward and forced his way past them into the darkened room beyond.


*****​

Though he’d never been to her private chambers before, he’d expected something much more than the nearly pitch-black chamber he stood within. There were no candles. No incense. No elaborate and ostentatious feast. No debtor being tortured in the corner. No naked maidens or youths peeling grapes to hand-feed the fiend as she lay upon a plush divan. 

Toras found none of that.

There in the darkness he found only a dark chamber upon whose marble tiles he now stood, waiting for his eyes to adjust, and at the edge of his senses the sound of labored breathing and a soft, erratic sobbing.

“Shemeska, I only want to see our business concluded once and for all.” Toras called out in the direction of the labored breathing, “I just need this to be…”

The fiend’s physical voice, sharp and poisonous as ever, and yet somehow carrying more bloody vitriol than ever before abruptly cut him short. What was more though, was that the fiend’s voice carried hurt: her own.

“Get the f*ck out Toras,” Shemeska wheezed, followed by a wet cough and the scent of blood. “Just get the f*ck out…”

Without thinking, Toras held up his right hand, called upon his celestial ancestry and conjured a brilliant ball of light into being. Immediately the door slammed shut and locked behind him simultaneously as the light snapped into existence, revealing a scene of horror that took Toras’s breath away.

A dozen feet away, Shemeska looked up from her desk, snarling and scowling. The most powerful creature in Sigil sat alone in the darkness, wearing her favorite, iconic gown, her normally pristine copper fur matted with her own blood. She looked up with her right eye, bloodshot and inflamed, makeup smeared and running down her cheeks and muzzle from her tears, but it was her left eye that drew a gasp from her visitor: Shemeska’s left eye had been gouged out and the bloody, empty socket stared up at Toras sightlessly. 

Reaching up, she futilely tried to form and arrange her crown from a newly pruned tangle of razorvine, failing wretchedly, fumbling in the attempt with her non-dominant hand alone. Her right arm in its entirety had been ripped from her shoulder and only a few mangled inches of flesh protruded from the still-bleeding joint. The arm itself was nowhere to be seen.

Meeting Toras’s gaze, the crippled fiend shuddered and began to cry.


****​

Back in the present:

In the Hive a fire genasi merchant from the Outlands by the name of Jendia Osuvidi finished her last drink at the Bottle and Jug, said her farewells to the others at her table and made for the door. Her time in Sigil had been profitable, and the smile radiating from her face and present in the flickering tongues of flame that danced across her head made that more than obvious. The contracts in her satchel carried with them the entirety of her prior year’s profit, and all of that garnered now in a single evening. 

Sigil’s commerce had been thrown into disarray in the past several years with the dissolution, death, or self-exile of the various Factions. Risen up from those ashes however were a smaller number of great engines of commerce, or perhaps it might have been better to describe some of them as great slumbering dragons finally woken from their slumber, or finally slouching free of their lairs, there now in the greasy daylight of the City of Doors, there to gather up the wealth that rightfully belonged to them. She’d entered Sigil to do business with three of them: Estavan of the Planar Trade Consortium, Zadara the Titan of Potential, and the wealthiest of that group of hungry wyrms of coin: Shemeska the Marauder.

In the space of two days she’d struck bargains with all three, though she’d only done so with the latter by authorized proxy. A shame she thought, as she preferred to meet in person so as to encourage a personal touch that led to future business, though given the fiend’s mercurial reputation, that might have been for the best.

It was only a short walk to the portal by which she’d depart Sigil and there back to her estate within the Plane of Fire which contrary to the first thoughts of virtually every occupant of the Outer Planes, was not present in the City of Brass. She laughed at how so many of them seemed to think –everything– in her native plane was on that one city, grand as it was it was only one city.

“They think they know everything and all the rest of us are rubes!” The genasi laughed, pulling out the amethyst crystal wrapped in a strip of red velvet that would activate the portal by which she’d depart back to her home plane, “I can only imagine most of them trying to fumble their way about the Inner Planes…”

With a flicker flash of light the portal opened, a swirling whirl of crimson, orange, and bits of teal mixed in, shedding a beautiful spread of light across the cobblestones and the adjacent wall of a book-binder’s shop. Smiling at her good fortune the genasi stepped through and was gone.

As she did so however, and in the split second before the portal closed upon itself with her passage, something else entered into the City of Doors, something normally restricted from common entry. Not a God, no, nothing so great as one of the Powers themselves, but a whisper from one, a gentle caress, a kiss to a beloved servitor yes.

Simultaneously, back in the Portal Jammer, Tristol lay asleep in bed. 

With Nisha at his side amidst a pile of pillows, each labeled “Nisha’s Pillow Fort”, the aasimar’s eyelids were shut tight with his eyes silently twitching in the tumultuous dreams of REM cycle slumber.

Over the past year the wizard’s dreams hadn’t always been a portent of anything good, either standard nightmares or curses wrought of touching the wrong things in the depths of Pandemonium. Tonight however would be different.

The dreamscape that formed about his consciousness rose up as a silvery mist, and he a disembodied bundle of senses wandering aimlessly. Gradually though his body manifested and he walked through the mist, aware only of a tugging sensation and a distant light as his surroundings likewise accreted out of the substance of dreams and divine will.

The sand was harsh and cool beneath Tristol’s feet as he strode through the wastes of the Anauroch desert. All around him the landscape twisted and reshaped itself with transient visual echoes of what had been: great shadows drifted across the desert floor as the Netherese enclaves drifted miles overheard at their height, those same enclaves hung in the air, tumbling at odd angles, forever trapped in the moment of their terrible fall, and then the desert floor was littered with the shades of those same great cities fallen, broken, and burning, soon to be covered over by the sands and many centuries of elapsed time.

Tristol walked onwards through the carnage and the glory transposed at once on the desert sands, following the light of a single, blue-white star that shown in the distance, calling him onwards, calling him closer, calling out to him by name even as through his mind, borne upon his memories, all Tristol could hear was the merciless, mocking laughter of Vorkannis the Ebon, and even there in his dream, the Oinoloth’s form hung there in the sky like a bleak, unwanted moon shining down on the pointless destruction it had caused, that same laughter booming out, if only in memory.

Snarling up at the dark blot high above, Tristol fixed his eyes upon the glowing star and continued his trek through the sands, eventually reaching a mountain that rose up above the surrounding terrain, the mountain itself the overturned peak that served as the base of Karse enclave, now fallen to the desert floor. Clambering his way from base to peak, Tristol stood at the summit, bathed in the brilliant, cool light of the star which now seemed nearly close enough that he could touch it.

That was when he heard her voice.

“My child, my beloved child,” Mystra, the Torillian goddess of magic whispered down on waves of starlight, “I saw you kneel down at the pool where once the Heart of Karsus lay. I looked into your heart in that moment and I smiled.”

The star’s light enveloped Tristol as he dreamed, illuminating him so greatly that it became difficult to say where the light ended and Tristol began.

“Know Tristol that I heard your cries of anguish there as you witnessed what befell me and my incarnation then during the fall of Netheril. Know my child that I heard your vow which you uttered then. I heard you vow and I know your heart was true in your promise then.”

The blue-white star that surrounded him twinkled and an outline of a human woman limned in silvery-blue flames stood before him and touched his cheek, gesturing for him to stand from where he’d knelt down.

“Know Tristol that I love you, and to you my servant I grant the fruits and responsibilities of that adoration. Use this to bring your vow to completion. The Oinoloth laughed as Netheril burned and I perished, but he cannot laugh forever. Now awaken my child, awaken my Chosen and embrace what you are.”

In his bedroom in Sigil, Tristol gasped and opened his eyes, tossing aside the sheets and getting to his feet, his heart pounding in his chest and his eyes squinting from the sudden, searing light. That same brilliant silvery-blue light from his dream now radiated through his room, and distantly he heard Nisha mutter something and grab his pillow to block out the sudden unwelcome radiance.

Tristol stumbled to the windows, intending to pull the curtains and shut out the light burning into the room, but then he realized that the light wasn’t out there on the street, flooding into his bedroom: the light was there inside, right where he stood.

Tristol’s eyes went wide as he held up his hands and beheld the burning flames of silverfire radiating up from his flesh. Tristol watched them burn and then as he remembered his dream and the words of Mystra, he willed it to cease, knowing what his goddess had given him and what she required of him.

His eyes sparkling with pride and awe, Tristol smiled and glanced back to Nisha curled up naked on the bed. He’d tell her in the morning, and oh it would be a tale to tell, and for the first time since he’d come to Sigil he felt like he could actually accomplish something against the forces of Evil and more specifically against the plots and plans of the Oinoloth himself.


****​


----------



## Tsuga C

It'll take the power of a Chosen Soul--several, in fact--to go after an incipient lesser god or lesser anti-god, whatever the Oinoloth is becoming. As for Shemeska, this'll be a lesson learned...for a while. But will she betray the Oinoloth at a critical moment in the future when he genuinely needs the help of a powerful vassal? Wheels within wheels, turning endlessly.


----------



## Akhelos

Poor Shemmy, having to hide now that she is so mangled. Those rare moments when you have to feel sorry for our favorite fiendish foxy fiend. ^^


----------



## Coroc

[MENTION=11697]Shemeska[/MENTION]  if i remember correctly, she got kind of sorcerer class Levels, should she not have pretty good UMD skill to cast some healing / Regeneration from scrolls?
Or was she not only stripped of her health but also on most of her power? Could she not pay/extort some cleric to cure her in an instant? Or does she have to endure the punishment cast on her without trying to negate it?


 [MENTION=6774759]Akhelos[/MENTION] lol razorvine cable strap, and your pluesch Shemeska seems to have all her eyes but else only head and tail. Is this the angry bird shemeska ?


----------



## Shemeska

Coroc said:


> [MENTION=11697]Shemeska[/MENTION]  if i remember correctly, she got kind of sorcerer class Levels, should she not have pretty good UMD skill to cast some healing / Regeneration from scrolls?
> Or was she not only stripped of her health but also on most of her power? Could she not pay/extort some cleric to cure her in an instant? Or does she have to endure the punishment cast on her without trying to negate it?




At the time we played this campaign, Shemeska had the standard 12 racial sorcerer caster levels that all arcanaloths had, plus around a dozen odd sorcerer levels on top of that, plus some other stuff going on.

You'll find out the particulars of why she's still mangled here in the next update. Soon.


----------



## Akhelos

Coroc said:


> [MENTION=11697]Shemeska[/MENTION]  if i remember correctly, she got kind of sorcerer class Levels, should she not have pretty good UMD skill to cast some healing / Regeneration from scrolls?
> Or was she not only stripped of her health but also on most of her power? Could she not pay/extort some cleric to cure her in an instant? Or does she have to endure the punishment cast on her without trying to negate it?
> 
> 
> [MENTION=6774759]Akhelos[/MENTION] lol razorvine cable strap, and your pluesch Shemeska seems to have all her eyes but else only head and tail. Is this the angry bird shemeska ?




Thats the tiny Shemeshka, basically all good things compressed. When you remove all evil parts, not a lot remains *g*
Its a small Teeny Ty, fox plushi named Finley from Ty Inc, found it stacked on a shelf in the shop I buy paints and so on for my miniatures. ^^


----------



## Tsuga C

Looks like Shemeska's astral yugoloth made the cover of an upcoming Planar Adventures book for Pathfinder. Congratulations to the proud, vain, talented, vain, creative, and vain wordsmithing fiend!


----------



## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> Looks like Shemeska's astral yugoloth made the cover of an upcoming Planar Adventures book for Pathfinder. Congratulations to the proud, vain, talented, vain, creative, and vain wordsmithing fiend!




Yep, my horrific engine of PC-killing doom from my home game, the astraloth, ultimately became Pathfinder's astradaemon, and it's the sole monster on the cover of the forthcoming Planar Adventures. Previews should start up sometime after PaizoCon is finished. I'm really proud of the book itself and the cover is just amazing. I'm humbled and flattered that a critter that I created is front and center on a hardcover.


----------



## Shemeska

****​

Toras stared at Shemeska’s mangled flesh with shock. The single most vain and arguably most untouchable being that he’d ever met now wept openly, fresh blood leaking from the empty socket of her left eye.

“What the f*ck happened to you?” The half-celestial blurted out, a tone of sincere horror and sympathy in his voice at total odds with his normal opinion of the ‘loth sitting across from him.

Shemeska shuddered, her lone hand trembling as she fumbled to light a cigarette, with the act only serving to remind her of her missing arm. Toras stared, utterly aghast at her state and bewildered as to who could do such a thing to her. He’d seen fiends injured before, and he’d been the one responsible for causing those injuries most of the time. He’d buried his blade into a fiend’s chest and severed their heads while laying them low, but in every instance one thing was constant: injured fiendish flesh would unerringly seek to stitch itself back together, with the most powerful of fiends openly regenerating their wounds in seconds if left to recover, with most physical attacks simply doing no damage at all once pulled from their flesh.

Shemeska’s wounds were not healing as they should have. In fact they weren’t healing at all.

“He is punishing me…” Shemeska whispered, the focus of her remaining eye distant, staring past Toras as her brain remained fixated upon the one moment of her experience that she remembered: the Oinoloth’s gaze into her eyes and his admonition of her callous, self-serving vanity over his desires.

“Who?”

“He was beautiful Toras,” She quivered, grimacing in agony with her remaining eye bulging, biting through her own lower lip and slamming her lone hand into the tabletop as the pain threatened to overwhelm her. Unlike her missing eye and missing arm, the self-inflicted injury from her teeth healed almost immediately. “He was so very beautiful…”

Toras could only stare, slack jawed, as Shemeska smiled while she described the Oinoloth holding her aloft by her neck, describing in worshipful terms a moment of horror that focused only on herself and the Oinoloth and utterly devoid of surrounding content. As she spoke, Toras realized that her razorvine crown was in a greater state of disarray than normal, and he realized that it was because at some point it had been removed, unwound, and used to flog her. The Marauder’s crown was soaked in her own blood and strung with bits of her own ragged flesh and fur, flayed from her body repeatedly and then thrust back atop her head.

“I disobeyed him and he is showing me the error of my ways. I am nothing Toras. I am nothing compared to the Oinoloth. I’m not worthy of him. Not yet. I know that now.”

Shemeska continued to ramble, consumed with self-pity and physical agony. Her only solace was the cold agony of the Shadow Sorcelled Key as it hung by its chain around her neck, nestled against her flesh and out of view, but never out of her thoughts. It would never again leave her person. It was too important to the Oinoloth. Far too important to ever abuse again, even if she remained ignorant of what it truly was and what role it would play in the future. She was not yet worthy of that. But she would be. She would be worthy of him.

“What did he do to you?” Toras asked, breaking her from her thoughts.

“I don’t know…” A look of religious ecstasy washed over the Marauder’s face, the look of a woman beaten again and again and convinced of her own worthiness for the abuse, the look of woman naked and flogging herself in a public square while begging the gods for absolution.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Toras motioned to her arm, “You’re missing a limb!”

A snarl formed on the fiend’s features and Toras realized his mistake in pointing out the arch-narcissist’s injury. Her next words began with a hiss.

“The threats against yourself, Florian, and Fyrehowl will cease. You will have no further trouble from me over this matter.” Then came the conditional portion of her statement as she looked up at Toras, her ears perked and her lone eye laser focused on him even as she vainly sought to apply makeup with her remaining hand and telekinesis. “I will eventually heal however, however long that takes, and when I do, if any… *ANY*… word of my condition reaches ears of the public or press…”

Shemeska’s threat petered out short of her detailing what she would do to him however as fresh blood began trickling out of the fiend’s ruined eye socket, muddying her attempts to applying makeup to somehow beautify herself where her own innate healing and shapechanging magic had uniformly failed.

“What did he do to you?” Toras repeated, far more keen on gleaning a dark from the fiend in her moment of weakness than anything else.

“Whatever he wished to do to me: Correction… punishment… He was so very, very beautiful.” She smiled, her lone eye taking upon a far-off gaze for a moment as she motioned her hands in an idle gesture and turned back to the fighter. “Please, leave Toras. I will not ask again politely.”

Toras swallowed hard, his eyes wide as he watched the fiend slump forward, snarling as she endured another wave of agony. She moved to rest her head in her hands and hide her face, only to remember belatedly that she no longer possessed one of her arms. Shaking, she wept.

Inexplicably, Toras felt sorry for her.


****​

At the border between the Market and Guildhall Wards, a bound space was formed by a circular series of concentric rings formed of aged and faded paint on the side of a three story, brick building once a factory, then a temple, and now a series of workshops and above them the dwellings of their workers and salesmen. Once the frame of an advertisement, at some point one of the Ward’s artists or more likely one of the Xaositects had turned the circular outline into a wanted poster of one of the former pre-Hashkar Guvner factols, and years later another had stenciled in a flying hourglass; apparently one Lawful Factol looked just like another as far as the Chaosmen were concerned.

But the cosmos was beloved of irony it seemed as the outer periphery of the ring flickered into an active, swirling portal, shedding blue and orange light across the street as a single figure stepped through. The man stood there for only a moment, gazing about to orient himself within the City of Door’s unique geography before he turned on his heels and set out towards the Clerks’ Ward and a specific location therein.

Dressed in neat, gold trimmed, but otherwise unremarkable robes, Sigil’s muted light shined down on a man whose apparent youth belied an age of centuries belied by magic and many long years spent dwelling within the Astral. He’d hoped not to stand out, and within Sigil’s streets he didn’t, especially as he’d pointedly eschewed any markings of rank or Faction allegiance.

He could have arrived with dozens of bodyguards and attendants. But no, this required discretion and he’d never been overly concerned with the shellac of pomp that came with station and rank. So long as the gears of Law carried on, that was all that mattered, not so much any particular mortal that catalogued their progress and hum. Had he first arrived in Sigil’s Hive or Lower Ward, he might have encountered difficulties as a long, slight man dressed as such, but any creature actually capable of doing him harm would have been capable of noticing the protective spells worn like a dozen invisible cloaks, and those not capable were warned away by an aura of subtle discomfort that was of course particularly effective against the Chaotic.

One foot and then the other, the man lamented that he hadn’t the time to simply wander about in wonder. He hadn’t stepped foot in the City of Doors since before Hashkar’s reign, and it was unfortunate events that drew him back. His itinerary was strict and time-sensitive, and there were dozens of witnesses to the events regarding his arrival that he would need to interview, but the first and most important of those witnesses were first on his list and ideally they would be more allies than anything else. Time would tell, and thirty minutes later he stood upon the threshold of his destination, soon to discover some answers for himself.

Looking up at the Portal Jammer, Nathanial the Inescapable, the presumptive but not-yet-formally appointed Factol of the Fraternity of Order smiled and stepped through the door.


****​

The ashen soil of the Waste was not soil in the traditional sense. It, like the raw, physical substance of the various Outer Planes, was a metaphysical construct, an abstract made real and physically concrete. Unlike the raw substance of most planes however, the Waste was paved not only its own accreted substance wrought of belief and absorbed spiritual energies of its own petitioners, but also in eons worth of spilt blood and fallen corpses of Blood War soldiers fallen and subsequently eaten and degraded by the Waste’s ravenous, leaching hunger. Everything was ground to dust: physical substance, spiritual energy, desire, motivation, and above all else, hope.

The yugoloth fortress was of recent construction, less than a decade old, and like the City at the Center, it existed at a metaphysical tangent point of all three layers of the Waste: Oinos, Niffleheim, and Pluton. The location was not in any way of natural prominence, but somehow artificially constructed. The arcanaloths tasked to construct the obelisks surrounding the fortress, like miniature Loadstones of Misery, and who’d enacted the rituals necessary to bind the location in place, protected and secure, had done so yelping and whining in disbelief and frustration. The barking wizards did all of their tasks without understanding how they worked, even at the slightest, most base level. The material was beyond them, and they had followed their instructions to the letter, all of them personally designed and written by the Oinoloth himself.

Within a pocket of the Waste drawn out and sutured in place, safe from the prying eyes of gods and any others, the Oinoloth kept something in place, treasured and useful. There were other such locations of course, each with their own bottled treasures, all similar in nature to the archives and vaults that studded the slopes of Gehenna’s mountains put in place by Larsdana Ap Neut eons before, but the Oinoloth’s present activities were done without the presence of a baernaloth whispering and instructing as the 1st Magistrix of the Fourfold Furnaces had had. 

As for Larsdana, the Oinoloth had equal parts respect and disdain, a similar spread of feelings as played across his features as he stood there, surrounded by pale magical lights in the vault at the center of the fortress. Unlike his feelings for Larsdana though, the respect that played across his muzzle at present was entirely false.

Vorkannis stood within a vault of black stone, warded to an extent that rivaled the deepest reaches of Khin-Oin itself, his eyes glowing a lurid, sickly albino pink, cutting the gloom like a pair of knives into fallow, eager flesh.

“We gathered the tomes in Sigil that you requested.”

“From both locations you specified.”

“And from Hashkar’s vault in Mechanus.”

The Oinoloth nodded, holding out his hands to accept the items pillaged from Sigil and the Fortress of Enlightened Discipline, the books still smudged with soot and marked by blood. Concurrently his brain reached out and sifted through not only the surface thoughts of the figures surrounding him, but of the other occupant that dwelled there in the room. Effortlessly the archfiend sifted and then dipped deeper, wrenching open their minds and shining a light on places they might not have been consciously aware of themselves.

Finding nothing beyond what he expected, the Oinoloth smiled, even as the figures whimpered from the mental onslaught and struggled to regain their footing. A soft susurrus that mirrored the figures own anguish filled the air from the surrounding darkness, and at the Oinoloth’s feet, the darkness stirred beyond the drifting shadows that leapt from the Oinoloth’s form that resembled an artist’s cloud of drifting plague spores.

Pseudopods of gray flesh crept from out of the surrounding gloom, tentatively crawling forward like the tongues of myriad, abused puppies, aching for love and approval. Softly the Oinoloth reached down and caressed the nearest such creeping limb as the others brushed at the fringes of his cobalt robes.

“Father is proud of you.”

Masking his utter and complete derision, the Ebon smiled and stroked the pseudopods, petting the thing in the darkness as the trio of figures smiled their own identical, rapturous smiles.

“There will be more for you to do in the future.” The Ebon whispered, gently and seductively, “More ways to show your love and in turn to earn my pride in you, my dearest child. But for the moment rest, recover, and learn from your experiences. When you are ready, you will be fed.”

The thing in the darkness whispered a soft chorus of adoration, purring in its own fluid way before another voice cut the air from a dozen yards behind the Oinoloth, from a cell at the other end of the vault.

“I WILL NOT ENDURE THIS INJUSTICE FOREVER! I WILL…”

Alisohn Nilesia’s voice broke as the Oinoloth glanced and a burst of telekinetic force hurled her against the stone wall of her cell, knocking her senseless to then slump against the floor, whimpering and crying, desperate but yet not having succumbed to the ever-present leaching of the Waste. Madness and fanaticism yet staved away the hunger of the Threefold Gloom. Inexplicably hope remained.

Vorkannis only sneered as he glanced back, “I was not speaking to you wretch.”


****​


----------



## 81Dagon

Damn. First I feel genuinely bad for Shemmy, then Alisohn returns from who-knows-where yet again.

I eagerly anticipate the next installment (and Planar Adventures)!


----------



## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> Damn. First I feel genuinely bad for Shemmy, then Alisohn returns from who-knows-where yet again.
> 
> I eagerly anticipate the next installment (and Planar Adventures)!




Shemmy does not deserve your sympathy. Trust me here. 

And here's the Paizo Blog giving a preview of Planar Adventures (I wrote this particular blog entry)

Todd's Top 5


----------



## jtimmel

So, did the Ebon dominate Apomps?  Yikes, that is power.


----------



## Shemeska

jtimmel said:


> So, did the Ebon dominate Apomps?  Yikes, that is power.




Apomps is not in that scene


----------



## jtimmel

I interpreted the three figures, each speaking different parts of the same sentence as gehreleths enthralled by Vorkannis.  I read somewhere that one of the ways Apomps manifested himself was as three gehreleths, one of each subtype, that speak the way you described here.  If they are just gehreleths, they would immediately attack Vorkannis on sight (and get shredded in quick succession).  Were they separated from their Triangle medalliions?  Otherwise they'd 'know' if father was pleased with them, wouldn't they?  But maybe they aren't gehreleths at all.  In any case, I can't wait to read on.


----------



## Shemeska

jtimmel said:


> I interpreted the three figures, each speaking different parts of the same sentence as gehreleths enthralled by Vorkannis.  I read somewhere that one of the ways Apomps manifested himself was as three gehreleths, one of each subtype, that speak the way you described here.  If they are just gehreleths, they would immediately attack Vorkannis on sight (and get shredded in quick succession).  Were they separated from their Triangle medalliions?  Otherwise they'd 'know' if father was pleased with them, wouldn't they?  But maybe they aren't gehreleths at all.  In any case, I can't wait to read on.




The three figures talking to Vorkannis are the ones responsible for stealing those books in Sigil in two different places, and in murdering the Factol of the Fraternity of Order and stealing some stuff in Mechanus - all at the same time. They all look like Nilesia. Mostly. And then there was Nilesia who screamed out. Given that Nilesia was seen to have been flayed by Her Serenity waaaaaaay back near the start of the storyhour, there's explanation forthcoming as to what's going on. But there's significant hints here.

The flavor about Apomps manifesting as three gehreleths, one of each subtype, is I'm pretty sure something I came up with. At the very least I use that imagery later on in the storyhour when Apomps ends up showing up (spoilers yes, but I think that everyone could see that coming).

Vorkannis was referring to himself when he said, "Father is pleased."


----------



## jtimmel

Thank you for clarifying.  From the earlier chapter, when Vorkannis said hello to Apomps, I thought this scene was in some way connected to him.  Now Nilesia's showing up and confusing everyone makes more sense to me.  Rereading the scene, I think I now know what those Nilesia figures really are.  Can't wait to read more!


----------



## Tsuga C

How are your studies faring, Shemeska? You're not usually silent for such an extended period of time, so you must be buried in books and papers. Hang tough!


----------



## Shemeska

I've been on a clinical rotation for the past two months, plus I just finished up with another freelancing project so I'm spread pretty thin. Of course I'm also having fun with [MENTION=50228]ask[/MENTION]Shemeshka on Twitter, so my attention isn't ever far from Planescape


----------



## Shemeska

“I’d like to speak with the Portal Jammer’s owners.” Factol Nathaniel spoke with a polite, congenial smile, without any irritation as he stood at bar, “All of them ideally.”

Clueless narrowed his eyes and glanced at the man’s wrists and other exposed skin, looking for any evidence of one of the tattoos that would have marked him as a puppet of Shylara the Manged, Overlord of Carceri. Freshly returned to power it seemed all but certain that she would seek to vent her frustration on the mortals who’d so thoroughly embarrassed her by seeking to kill them yet again.

“And what would this be about?” Clueless asked, still cleaning and re-cleaning the same ale mug with a bar cloth. “Are you upset about something here at the Jammer? Was service not to your satisfaction?”

The bladesinger turned to cough into her shoulder, deftly whispering the words to a spell as he did so. Intending to look for any evidence that the man at the bar was hiding his true nature, geased, or liable to explode in a shower of fire and blood as soon as all of the Jammer’s owners were assembled in one place. Turning back to face the visitor he found nothing of the sort, but the radiant glow of latent, permanencied spells and the puissant glow of objects in the man’s possession made him squint his eyes.

“You’re not here about having been served a bad drink or not having your room tidied up enough are you?” Clueless asked, setting the mug and cloth down on the bar as he studied the literal archmage standing before him, and for the first time noting the Fraternity of Order symbols on the man’s clothing.

“Not in the slightest Clueless.” The Factol replied, “This is a pleasant calling, potentially involving business, but one I’d prefer discretion on if you don’t mind. Is there somewhere more private that we can all talk?”

Politely nodding, the bladesinger motioned towards the door to the private back room, “Through that door. I’ll go find the others.”


****​


“My name is Nathaniel, Factol-Elect of the Fraternity of Order,” He spread his hands and began, “I am also the son of once-Factol Lariset the Inescapable.”

“So, Factol, what brings you to Sigil?” Tristol asked, his ears perked and his tail swishing slowly back and forth. While he’d only just come into his position as one of Mystra’s Chosen, it afforded him the capacity to see the Guvner’s enchantments as if he were reading a restaurant’s menu. He was impressed by what he saw, most prominently by the spells woven to retard the aging process and blunt the curse of long-stays on the Astral that ended up retroactively applying once off-plane. Similar to githyanki spells of the same variety, the Factol’s were unique and likely self-created.

“This is the last place that I’d have expected to see you now,” Clueless nodded to the aasimar, “From what I’ve heard, your faction has suffered the assassination of your predecessor and a burglary in your headquarters in Mechanus. But yet here you are, in Sigil, in a tavern, talking to a bunch of part-time adventurers.”

“I’m not part-time!” Nisha poked Tristol with her tail, “Are you part time? Nobody told me about that!”

As his companions spoke, Toras remained distinctly quiet. Truth be told he was still shaken to the core by the state in which he’d left the Marauder, weeping and full of self-pity, bereft of an arm and an eye by her punishment for crimes unknown by the Oinoloth himself. He wasn’t certain if it was the fact that she’d been brutalized so hideously and so easily by the Lord of Khin-Oin that stunned him more, or the fact that in the wake of her crippling, her eyes virtually glazed over in a mixture of religious ecstasy and lust when she mentioned the archfiend who’d maimed her.

“I’m actually here in Sigil in relation to the events that you’ve heard about.” Nathaniel glanced at each of them in turn, “And events that you’ve apparently experienced firsthand here in Sigil.”
“Who was it that murdered your predecessor?” Fyrehowl asked, remembering the face of Nilesia staring at her from her memories of the burning library.

“A dead woman,” The Factol replied, “Though I’m not sure that either of us can say for certain who or what she was, regardless of her appearance.”

“Nilesia,” Toras muttered.

“So she appeared to be.” Nathaniel shrugged noncommittally.

“So how was the death of your predecessor connected to the burglaries and murders here in Sigil?” Clueless asked, “Though we know the two locations here: a scriptorium and an archive respectively, were owned by your faction.”

“The murders were incidental to a theft,” The Factol explained, “All in search of something kept hidden as a secret among our Factols since the time of my mother’s rule. How much do you know about Lariset the Inescapable?”

“We probably wouldn’t have gotten along?” Nisha shrugged with a sorry grin, “The whole I’m a Xaositect thing and all.”

“She’s something of a hero among your Faction believers,” Tristol replied, “And she vanished or ascended after discovering some key loophole in the laws of the cosmos.”

“And that was where it started,” Nathaniel bit his lip, “My mother did not ascend. She was murdered.”

Silence blanketed the room for several long moments before the Factol continued.

“And she would not be the last of our Factols murdered in cold blood.”

“Hashkar was murdered during the days of the Faction War,” Nisha explained, hiding a guilty smile, “But I have a rock solid alibi for where I was at the time!”

“It wasn’t you,” Nathaniel chuckled, “As it happened, Hashkar’s killer claimed no knowledge of the crime he committed in broad daylight. It isn’t public knowledge that he had a blue, egg shaped gem embedded in his leg that shattered and turned to dust at his execution.”

“F*cking ‘loths!” Clueless slammed his fist down on the table and ran his other through his hair angrily as his companions all glanced down tellingly at his ankle where the Marauder’s gem still set lodged within his ankle. Though she no longer held control over the artifact lodged there, it had been created by the Oinoloth himself as one tool of many that led to his ascension atop Khin-Oin, and clearly it had been used in subtle ways for a much longer period of time than anyone had previously expected.

“We suspected them but could never confirm.” The Factol exhaled as the bladesinger confirmed his suspicions.

“It’s confirmed.” Clueless’s voice dripped with rancor, “But why kill Lariset? Why kill Hashkar? What were they looking for?”

“They were desperate to find Lariset’s journals and Hashkar’s further work upon what she’d discovered, not that the answer to that was known outside of themselves, sadly,” Nathaniel explained, “And this most recent time they largely succeeded. Not entirely though, because they missed some of Lariset’s private papers. It isn’t entirely cohesive what remained behind, but I’ve spent days pouring over them and I have some clues where to begin.”

“So we know the connection to what happened to your Faction and what happened here in Sigil,” Fyrehowl’s ears were perked with curiosity, “But why come here, to us?”

“You have a profound reputation and skill set, and a personal connection to the events.” Nathaniel reached into his satchel and pulled out a partially burnt journal, the title written in Lariset’s hand with a stretch of years to indicate the dates of composition. “You also have more connections than you think, but we’ll get to that.”

“So what –did– Lariset find?” Tristol asked, his ears now perked as much as Fyrehowl’s.

“The public story is that she found a “profound loophole” but it was something more.” The Factol opened up the notebook, “This is an outline of her life’s work here. Shortened notations to catalog and organize hundreds of lost volumes, but her private comments on various events are invaluable in and of themselves.”

“What did she find?” Tristol asked a second time.

“I don’t know why she was there in the first place, but she thought that she’d found the existence of universal axiom underlying everything.” Nathaniel paused, “EVERYTHING. She didn’t know what it was, just that it existed, and she thought that she’d found a way to determine what it was, and she was set upon that path in the city of Portent in the Gray Waste where, in her own words, ‘A fire was set to burning in my brain.’”

“F*cking ‘loths…” Clueless snarled.

The Factol opened the journal up to a page previously marked with a heavy velvet bookmark and turned it to face the Portal Jammer’s owners, setting them face to face with an illustration in Lariset’s hand of a single human, smiling up and out of the page, “I believe that you recognize this man.”

There with a smile belying his actual nature, hundreds of years before he was born, lay the face of a man they did indeed recognize as none other than Professor Cilret Leobtav.

“That’s not possible.” Florian interjected, “He was human and we know when and where he was born. That’s centuries too early for him to have been there.”

“And yet there he was,” The Factol shrugged, “Prominent enough in my mother’s memories to be given a chapter in her journal.”

The Factol’s journal began with copious notes on Portent itself, its political divisions, the lack of yugoloth influence compared to such locations as the City at the Center, a sketch of the Grand Hall, the streets spread out like arteries of some great heart, and then the half-page illustration of Leobtav. The madman was smiling, seemingly sane, but in the corners of his mouth and his eyes there was the same undercurrent of madness showing. The religious fanaticism seen prior to his death in the Outlands was there for those who knew what to look for.

The Factol’s own text talked about her encounter with the man who would be born centuries later:

"…a jovial sort. He spoke at length to me about Laws and Rules and Inevitability. He got me to thinking about a number of things, and in a new way on a good number of others. He never gave me his name though, and my inquiries after the fact as to who he was came to a dead end. None of the groups and gangs knew of him and I could not gain access to the Grand Hall to ask Laughing Jane. But even without knowing his identity, his words stayed with me and the more I thought about what he said the more it rattled around in my mind, getting more and more insistent for thought and attention. 

It’s that spark, that almost tangible spark in your brain when a block in a puzzle locks into place and makes a picture all make sense. That's what he gave me and that’s when it all hit me. That's when I found it, one of the Universal Axioms. This is amazing. This alone is enough for a life's work. But that's not all. Not in the least. This is… this is almost like a piece of a puzzle, part of a bigger picture, a key to something more. There's something deeper here, something hidden in the equations. Something I can almost grasp. To hell with my faction responsibilities. I’ll lock myself away till I find it. Coordinates? There’s a location hidden in part of the equations. If only the math would behave as I understand it. I can solve part of it, but not all of it. It will take time to calculate the next step. The numbers seem to only work when applied to the inner planes which is… odd. This is all leading to something, but WHAT?! First step is …"

The page was torn and the rest of the book was missing except for a single bit of marginalia, thoughts half-considered and not up to being formally penned in the main body of the text. They hinted though at the next step, the first in the dead Factol’s path that had begun and now began again in Portent:

Limit / zero sum
First iteration: Positive touched quasiplane of mineral, boundary with
Positive. Gemfields. ??? 1/5 iteration.
Scattered and broken. By who? 
What does the Axiom prescribe?


****​

The subtle and not-so-subtle aftershocks that had rocked the streets of Portent since the Oinoloth’s recent surprise visit had nearly settled, the baernaloth prisoner’s rage expended and its consciousness subsided back into a soft, twisted arrhythmia of its heartbeat echoing through the stones if one had the capacity to notice, listen, and understand. The gangs and warring interest groups had only slowly recovered from the slaughter as perpetrated by the Oinoloth’s forces in inexplicable violation of Portent’s Laws that made actual violence a suicidal affair. New self-proclaimed powers remained in the vacuum left behind as the ‘loths abandoned the city once more, their master’s intents satisfied by a few scant moments atop the throne and a conversation with the prisoner far, far below.

Alone and left to her own company, one figure remained who knew of both the Oinoloth’s actions and the true nature of Portent itself: Laughing Jane. The tiefling, or the entity that seemed to be a tiefling, had been there for almost as long as Portent had been a city upon the Waste. She was in fact the first mortal to step foot into the sanctum there, and the first foolish soul to connect with the godlike entity slumbering far below the city’s foundation stones. She would never be the same again: never sane, never fully in control of herself, and never again capable of such mortal capacities as death.

What Laughing Jane had though were her memories, a perfect recall of every moment from the first time that she sat upon the throne and the serpents erupted from her eyes, so many, many thousands of years ago. She remembered the faces and the threats, bravado, and begging by the would-be doges and lords of Portent and how each of them had died by one another’s hands, one by one like clockwork chugging along in time with the beating of Portent’s literal heart.

“The Oinoloth and those he has touched and enslaved have been here before.” One of her serpents hissed in the darkness, its eyes burning a brilliant red.

“The mouthpiece, the hollow filled by vor’nel’thraanix has spoken here before, from nothingness into the marketplace.” Laughing Jane whispered, chuckling from her mouth. “There to whisper from out of time, dead and nullified, to one who would bring together the pieces.”

“But not for herself, but for the jackal yet to sit atop Khin-Oin, and she a sacrifice to that goal.” The other serpent hissed with malice.

“Others will come and we will direct them.”

“Direct them to a light in the darkness.”
“Burning bright like a Torch.”

“A lantern in the shadows, there to attract.”

“A Weaver of Lies…”

“There to doom and devour…”

Distantly one of the city’s bells rang, tolling out the hour and Laughing Jane laughed and waited. The Oinoloth had dismissed her, mocked her frailty and overwhelmed her with nary an effort such was his power. But every player in that game possessed strings and she would tug those she could for nothing was settled, not even plans set in place at the dawn of time.

Others would come and they would speak to her. She would babble and she would tug upon their own strings before sending them into the webs of others’ and the hungry spiders weaving since it had all begun, since before Portent, since before the shattering of the Clan of Baern.


****​


----------



## Tsuga C

Not much turns up in a search for Laughing Jane. Does anyone have a few more tidbits of information to add?


----------



## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> Not much turns up in a search for Laughing Jane. Does anyone have a few more tidbits of information to add?




She only appears in the Planes of Conflict box set on a page or two about the city of Portent. I actually own the original DiTerlizzi artwork of her from that box set, courtesy of two friends (one of whom was Clueless's player) who straight up bought it from Tony at GenCon a few years ago when I wasn't able to go due to a death in the family. I still owe them dinner.


----------



## Malachite_Mack

Gods, I love this storyhour. 


  As an aside:  I probably antagonize "At AskShemeshka"*wayyy* too much on twitter for my own good!​
​


----------



## Shemeska

<3

You do, and she'll antagonize right back.


----------



## almost13

I hope we get to learn more about laughing jane! Like so many other things in the storyhour, she makes you want to find out more about her. Thanks a lot Shemmy!


----------



## Shemeska

almost13 said:


> I hope we get to learn more about laughing jane! Like so many other things in the storyhour, she makes you want to find out more about her. Thanks a lot Shemmy!




There's not really anything out there on her except for that bit in 'Planes of Conflict'. There is/will be more here, and since you're interested in her I'll probably add some more than I otherwise would have. I seem to have a tendency to take minor characters from the original setting material and just go crazy with them.


----------



## almost13

That's awesome, thank you! Exactly that is one of the aspects i love about your storyline. Having read the setting stuff about the minor/major characters in the past, they feel so much more alive, evoking the vague feeling that there's always something more just around the corner, but always shrouding answers in yet more questions provoked


----------



## Sabrewulf

Belated congratulations on the Astradaemon! What an incredible piece of cover art. 

I'm revising the question I really want to ask in an effort to be polite. 

Possible versions: When will we get the next update? Why haven't you written it yet? GIVE IT TO ME NOW!

Hah, Kidding. Sort of. Hope things are well, rereading the first story hour thread till the story continues. 

Have a good one, Sabre


----------



## Shemeska

Sabrewulf said:


> Belated congratulations on the Astradaemon! What an incredible piece of cover art.
> 
> I'm revising the question I really want to ask in an effort to be polite.
> 
> Possible versions: When will we get the next update? Why haven't you written it yet? GIVE IT TO ME NOW!
> 
> Hah, Kidding. Sort of. Hope things are well, rereading the first story hour thread till the story continues.
> 
> Have a good one, Sabre




Thank you so much!

I'll hopefully have one sometime next weekend. Everything must bend to my class and exam schedule. I'll make sure that the update will be worth your time to read


----------



## Shemeska

****​

Shylara the Manged stood alone in the room's darkness, physically present rather than engaged in the trickery of projections and color pool-derived surrogates. Her eyes remained glued to the floor, her ears flat against her head, and her tail tucked between her legs. She was not worthy to gaze upon Him. She was not worthy of gazing upon His work regardless of her profound curiosity of its majesty. She made do with fleeting glimpses of his drifting trail of shadows.

"Hold the tome higher." The Oinoloth spoke, devoid of pity and without directly looking at her.

She wore nothing, neither clothing, jewelry, illusions, or perfume, and in their collective absence she slowly bled upon the floor from the open wounds and weeping sores that marked her flesh.

"Enter this chamber wearing only your flesh." The Oinoloth had commanded. She had done so bereft of any sense of worth as much as finery, but it wounded her deeply that she had never entered the chamber prior. Neither had she been the first to enter there to stand in His presence, though she had trembled more than grown excited at the appearance of a dozen of Shemeska's broken teeth that littered the stone along with a puddle of congealed blood, though she'd deeply wished to drop to her knees and lap at the latter.

The Oinoloth had said nothing of the matter, but the Manged recognized her scent: excitement and terror. So too did Shemeska’s former lover and apprentice mirror her now, however unconsciously. Ignoring his consort's inner thoughts even as they remained wholly transparent to him, the Oinoloth remained focused on the mewling, gasping mezzoloths bound by bands of force to several tables and platforms scattered throughout the room. Whereas Shemeska had seen them in an earlier state, hideously tortured and on the verge of death but for magic that refused them the peace of dissolution back into the substance of the Waste, Shylara bore witness to a nearly finished product of the Oinoloth's horrific experimentation.

"You will never be perfect, whatever my efforts." The Oinoloth mused, leaning in and snarling at the mezzoloth and sending the twisted creature into a sudden paroxysm, though it was questionable if the spasm was due to the Oinoloth's physical presence or to the fact that the base yugoloth's body had been fused with equal parts elemental earth and elemental fire.

Watching the creature suffer, Shylara bit her lower lip, even as she wondered if the Ebon's words were meant for the mezzoloth or her. She bit her lip harder, enjoying the pain, and hefted the tome higher, though it was not a source or information for the Oinoloth, but a repository for his own notes on the process she'd watched him undertake with each test subject through multiple iterations, fusing mezzoloths with different elemental admixtures, and then without pause, disintegrating those who failed to meet his expectations, whatever those expectations and grander plan and purpose happened to be. Pointedly the Ebon had explained nothing to Shylara, only instructing her to hold aloft the book she now held: a subordinate archfiend used as a footservant.

The Overlord of Carceri was less curious about his work on the mezzoloths than what she saw and didn't see in his actual spellcraft. For all his treasure trove of spellbooks, for his present work the Oinoloth never actually glanced at the tomes, but spoke in Baern in a fluid, chanting cadence, the pattern similar to the spells penned within the monstrous, oversized librams once held by the Father/Mothers themselves.

The mezzoloths that Vorkannis experimented on had never marched obediently to their doom into that chamber. The doors had never swung wide to admit them, nor had they ever burned their chitinous flesh upon the silver handles. No. The Oinoloth had created them in situ there of his own accord. She'd watched, breathless and wet, as he'd time and again ripped their essence up 
from the substance of the Waste itself, channeled through the petrified vessels of Khin-Oin and birthed at the will of their master. How such a thing was possible, the Manged could not fathom.

Vorkannis leaned forward and licked the mezzoloth's blunt, insectile muzzle, his saliva sizzling upon its partially molten surface for but a moment before the lesser fiend's flesh began to corrode from such direct exposure to something far, far greater than itself. The Oinoloth was smiling though, admiring his work as it neared to completion, stewing in his own pride, and perhaps most of all admiring the being's suffering. Whatever his feelings and whatever his ultimate goals, his next words expressed a certain hideous truth about himself, the object of his present work, and perhaps far, far more.

"You are filth that will die for me, never loved, never appreciated, used and thrown away. All of you..."

Shifting her stance and unconsciously clenching her thighs, Shylara was unsure if the Ebon was addressing the mezzoloth and its kindred test subjects or the entirety of yugoloths, herself included.


****​

With the glow of one of Her Serenity's portals from Sigil radiating from behind them as they stepped out into the dust of the Waste, the companions glanced at one another with dread and apprehension, a mood altogether worsened by the feeling of overwhelmingly callous oppression exuded the plane itself.

"I hate this place." Fyrehowl snarled, the light of her eyes actually dimming against the darkness of the void that stretched out overhead, punctuated only by the distant glow of the 1st and 2nd Mounts, Khalas and Chamada, that hung within the endless darkness "I truly hate this place. This was a bad idea."

As the others emerged from the gate, its distal end latched into a wall in the Lower Ward, Clueless and Nisha glanced at one another knowingly. Alone amongst the party, while they hadn't been to Gehenna, they'd been to the Waste before and directly experienced 'loths on one of their native planes. They alone had experienced that rapacious misery when they'd gone together
to investigate earlier events, prior to the conclusion of the 'loth civil war. Gehenna was not the Waste, but it carried its own unique brand of nearly tangible misery.

"Darkness, more darkness, volcanoes, and the air smells like vinegar and hatred, and we're standing at an angle. Lovely place..." Toras grumbled as he stepped to the side as Tristol stepped out from behind him.

All of them having arrived, the portal swirled with a whirl of color and then flickered and vanished, the one-way passage from the City of Doors gone, leaving them to their own within the Fourfold Furnace. Almost immediately a cold wind whipped across the rocky volcanic slope that they stood upon, forcing them all to gather their cloaks tighter and Tristol and Florian to cast protective spells to protect against the flakes of acidic snow carried on the wind already, and in anticipation of both greater environmental dangers and those posed by wandering fiends.

As they stood there and sought to fix their location relative to their destination of Portent, only a few hours had passed since they'd sat in comfort in the Portal Jammer, taking in a surprise visit from the soon-to-be Factol of the Fraternity of Order. The Factol's words had made them realize that the apparent resurrection of Nilesia, or appearance of someone who looked and acted like her, had links to the Guvners and to a much deeper and darker plot that wound its roots down into the Lower Planes and the enigma that was the late Professor Cilret Leobtav.

Factol Nathaniel hadn't told them to investigate in Portent, but the illustration sketched by his late mother, the former Factol Lariset the Inescapable had set a fire burning in their brains, just as she had written about what the man who could not have actually been there speaking with her that long ago had done for her. What exactly he'd set her on the path to finding, what she'd found, and what the person posing as Nilesia had sought to steal in Sigil and in Mechanus after murdering Nathaniel's predecessor was something that the group needed to discover, even if Nathaniel had not tasked them to discover, and tasked them to discover on his Faction's payroll.

Nisha of course had refused on principal, being a Xaositect, but after a whispered back and forth between herself and Tristol, she'd relented, effectively. She still refused to be on the payroll of "a bunch of sodding Lawmongers" but she didn't begrudge Tristol accepting double payment and inviting her along because Gehenna was scary and he’d feel much more comfortable with her there, to say nothing of her being worried sick if he went without her. With that rationale in place to mollify her ideological concerns, she cheerfully agreed at that point.

"Do we really expect to find anything in Portent now? Multiple centuries later?" Toras asked, his eyes scanning volcanic landscape, all of it at a gradual slope, but punctuated by erratic and massive regions of significantly more precipitous terrain and sudden, fatal ranges of cliffs and ravines, the latter likely to contain terrors hidden from easy sight.

"I have a feeling that if there's anything there, it might very well try and find -us- whatever that might be." Clueless made a face, “That seems to be the case with basically everything involving us and the ‘loths at this point. Last time it was a yugoloth lord, exiled or not that popped up in the middle of Baator of all places. I assume it’ll be something even worse this time.”

Florian grimaced, "Tempus forbid I hope not..."

"We always have the option of trying to cast legend lore once we’re in the city,” Clueless suggested, glancing at Tristol, “Standing in the same place that Lariset was standing and see if we can divine anything specific to follow up on."

Fyrehowl turned and stared at the bladesinger, "Do you really, honestly want to open yourself up to watching the results of that spell for a spot on Mungoth? It's like detecting undead in the Negative Energy Plane."

"It's worth the risk." Clueless shrugged, "But as I said, I really think it won't come to that."

"Well, get ready for whatever might happen," Tristol glanced down at a planar compass in his hands, "Because I know where we are and I'm ready to teleport us to Portent."

They all gathered closely together, whatever their individual reservations as to the wisdom of the trip and the manifest horror of the surrounds. Already on Mungoth the Third Furnace, the transition to Portent itself was relatively straightforward, or rather it should have been. Tristol had taken pains to scry the fiendish city for the better part of an hour, gaining a feel for the layout of the city streets that meandered far too much like errant, uncontrolled blood vessels around a growing tumor lodged into the dying, volcanic flesh of the Third Mount.

“Say a prayer to whatever divinity you wish because we’re about to be in Portent.” Tristol smiled, feeling the subtle flicker of Mystra’s silverfire there within his veins and cool within his fingertips as he incanted the spell. There was no risk of failure, no risk of being off topic, such was the design and power of that particular teleportation spell and his own skill as a nascent Chosen of the Faerunian Goddess of Magic herself.

And yet it failed nonetheless.

They all arrived in Portent yes, but not at their intended destination.

“The Grand Bazaar of Portent is really kinda low key don’t you think?” Nisha deadpanned as the group materialized in a burst of light.

Rather than a sprawling marketplace that represented the concept of corrupt, crony-capitalism made manifest, filled with petitioners, tieflings, and all manner of fiends there to make their fortune (or take another’s) or simply escape from the tide of the Blood War on the ashen slopes on Mungoth, the party found themselves in a narrow, trash-strewn alleyway. Stone tenements rose up on both sides, with the street and the buildings themselves filthy and crowded to the extent of making Sigil’s worst ghettos look grand by comparison. Broken glass and cold iron spikes decorated every single stoop, eave, crenellation and windowsill, and even the lay of the roofs themselves cast the shadows of spools of barbed wire and other fixtures that carried the omnipresent sense of ‘this is mine and you cannot have it’ that drenched every inch of the city’s property.

High above the sounds of bitter laughter at another’s misfortune carried across a rooftop followed by the distant sound of something hitting the ground with a distinct splash. It might have been a bucket of filth aimed at a pedestrian or it might have been the sound of an unconscious victim’s skull breaking open upon the pavement: both options fit Portent.

“This isn’t the Grand Marketplace.” Toras deadpanned.

“That…” Tristol frowned, “How astute of you. No, it isn’t.”

Some more back and forth banter over how the teleportation could have missed (when technically it shouldn’t have been capable of missing) and Tristol started glancing about. The wizard’s observation of their surroundings took a back seat however to something else much closer.

"Clueless?" Nisha glanced down at the bladesinger's ankle, gesturing to the gemstone there with the tip of her tail, "You're glowing? Sort of."

With a worried expression he glanced down where the artifact lodged in his leg flickered with a sharp green light and then extinguished itself, only to flutter several moments later like the erratic heartbeat of a slumbering, arrhythmic heartbeat. The gemstone hadn't behaved that way at any point prior. The last time that it had activated had been in the presence of the yugoloth lord Taba, and at that point it had burned bright and physically ached. This time it didn't hurt, that was good at least, and it didn't seem as if it were certain about if it should even be reacting or not. The artifact seemed confused more than anything, and that uncertainty as to what it actually meant was even more disconcerting than had it burned bright in warning of a looming theat.

"I..." Clueless blinked, uncertain how to respond to the situation. "I have no idea what that means."

Tristol stared down at the artifact, finding his sight amplified beyond what it had ever been before when he'd studied magical auras. Now he could see the flow of permanent dweomers laced into a magical items physical substance, but in the case of the artifact crafted by the Oinoloth himself, that Mystra-granted insight gave him no better idea of what was actually going on. The twisted miasma of runes were blurred and indistinct, purposefully hiding themselves from scrutiny, seemingly by its maker's intent. After several seconds he realized that continued scrutiny was bringing other runes bubbling to the surface, more distinct, burning and painful, that were themselves baernaloth in origin. The wizard blinked and turned his eyes away, worried that the artifact might have innate protections that his continued, deity-augmented scrutiny might actually bring to the forefront. In any event though, the end result was the same: he had no more clue as to why the artifact was sputtering its sickly light than Clueless himself had.

"Maybe it's just reacting to the distant presence of really powerful 'loths?" Florian shrugged, "Not like Gehenna has a lack of candidates there."

Clueless shrugged, "Maybe? Maybe not. It doesn't hurt like it did with Taba, so for the moment let's leave it be. Not like I've got much other option."

"Tristol, any idea where we are?" Toras glanced over at the wizard.

"Not in the Marketplace, that's for certain." He frowned, his tail twitching with minor annoyance. "I've got a good idea of the city's layout, but given how tight the buildings are packed together, it's harder to see enough to know where..." He trailed off as Nisha glanced up and promptly began scaling up the side of the nearest building.

"Tell you where we are in a second!" The Xaositect called down without pausing her ascent, somehow making it look easy as she avoided the gamut of broken glass, intentionally loose stones, and barbs and spikes intended to dissuade anyone from doing precisely what Nisha was. Less than a minute later she emphatically kicked off from one of the eaves to sail across to the opposite building and then in defiance of gravity flip up and over the edge of the roof.

"She knows I could have just flown up there right?" Fyrehowl raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, but she made that look easy," Tristol grinned, "And stylish and fun to be honest. She’s good like that."

Moments later Nisha peered back over the edge of the roof and began shouting out details of adjacent streets, buildings, and landmarks. Then as Tristol calculated their location and the best path by which to proceed, Nisha scrambled back down, doing her best giant bug impression as she accomplished the task by descending head first, arms and legs splayed off to the sides.

The walk wasn't in fact all that long, distance-wise, but the party's caution given the foreboding surroundings and the twisting, labyrinthine layout of the streets themselves it took them the better part of the next two hours before they finally arrived within Portent's grand marketplace. 

While smaller than similar institutions in either Sigil or Tradegate, hundreds of shops, tents, and stalls stood arrayed with a churn of shoppers, merchants, proselytizers of powers and factions calling out to passersby with just as much or more zeal as barkers offering unbelievable deals in adjacent shops, and a large number of fiends of all types moved about like a vision into the dark underbelly of mercantilism. All in all not much had changed since the days in which Factol Lariset had stood there.

"Does anyone notice that almost everywhere here is marked by specific insignias?" Toras motioned to several symbols burned, stamped, carved, or even embroidered into the signs and above the doorways of the nearest tents and stalls.

"They're marks of ownership, either overt or self-declared." Fyrehowl grimaced. "Everything here has a specific place and specific limits, and most of them are imposed from without."

"All the slaves here are free to do as they like! They just happen know what's best for them so they listen to us!" Toras sarcastically added.

True to the fighter's sarcasm the vast majority of merchants and traders within the Bazaar seemed owned in some manner or speaking by one of Portent's sprawling number of fractious and competing gangs, guilds, and other warring institutions, all of them jockeying for power on a daily basis, and as the party moved through the marketplace, that became ever more obvious. Each marked stall or tent seemed to be watched by a guard on duty or curiously passed by at regular intervals by one or two of the same shoppers who seemed to be doing no shopping at all, with their window-shopping restricted to every other individual in the shops' proximity.

"This seems to be the place." Tristol said, glancing about to nearby structures. "This is about where Factol Lariset would have been standing all those years ago."

"So what now?" Florian asked, looking to the others and getting only shrugs in response, with Nisha pointedly glancing only at Clueless's ankle, half expecting it to suddenly glow in warning of some monster soon to manifest and attack them.

The yugoloth artifact continued its odd, disconcerting flickering, but no monstrosity appeared. It gave no warnings to the wholly mundane threat that had followed and gathered about.

"Heads up everyone..." Fyrehowl muttered as a group began to gather around them.

Looking about, the thugs were a mixture of tieflings and humans, themselves just as often petitioners as mortals. Chuckling and holding out their hands to the side, not bearing weapons, though all of them wore swords or daggers at the waist, they crowded around the party, more and more of them emerging with a definite swagger from seemingly every shadow that clustered about the marketplace stalls.

"It seems that you're far from home little gaggle that you are..." A bald tiefling with blotchy, pale blue skin remarked as his tail whipped about behind him, a blade shaped like a scorpion's stinger
attached at its tip. "So I think we'll take into account that you weren't aware of the mandatory entry registration fee, and being honorable representatives of the Nine Fingered Fox, we'll skip the fee avoidance tax. But you do still have to pay the original fee."

"F*ck your laws!" Nisha blurted out as she flipped the tiefling off without second thought before Tristol grabbed hold of her tail and clamped a hand over her mouth before she made the situation worse. She continued to yammer despite her fiancé’s hand.

"Yeah I'm going to have to go with the Xaositect's opinion here..." Clueless chuckled as his fingers closed comfortably about Razor's handle.

"Looks like the little fey boy thinks he's a big man with that fancy toothpick he has there!" The tiefling laughed, "I don't think he knows who we are!"

"Kick his ass Clueless!" Nisha shouted angrily as she managed to escape Tristol's impromptu muzzling.

"Shut up your tanar'ri blooded b*tch or I'll have her gagged and..." The tiefling never managed to finish his vulgar threat before Clueless slipped Razor from its sheathe and lunged forward.

In any rational situation the party would have butchered the gaggle of thugs that surrounded them, but Portent was no rational place. As soon as Clueless drew his blade, soon joined by Toras the fight should have been over and most of the gang-members dead or maimed. What happened objectively however was very different.

Clueless laughed as he stood over the bloody corpse of the foul-mouthed tiefling, watching them sputter as they lay there in a spreading pool of blood. Subjectively he marveled at how simple the task had been, only belatedly though did he realize that he himself was bleeding and fallen to the ground.

"We haven't had this much fun since we watched the 'loths hang the boss last month!" One of the thugs laughed as he watched Toras smash himself in the face with the pommel of his own sword, still wrapped up in a delusion in which he was singlehandedly butchering the gang members.

"Stop! Nobody draw a blade!" Fyrehowl shouted at full volume before breathing in deeply and calming her own emotions. Somewhere between her own celestial origin and her training as a Cipher she could feel a hideous presence rising up from the very stones of Portent, taking any rage and anger and twisted it around, mirroring it back on those expressing it. Looking about at the thugs, she realized that none of them had drawn weapons. None of them had initiated violence. They'd cursed, they'd insulted, they're goaded, and that was their point: to force their enemies to harm themselves by being the ones to draw their blades in anger and strike.

Florian rushed forward and grappled with Toras, fighting to prevent him from smashing himself in the face a second time while Nisha likewise struggled to keep Clueless from disemboweling himself while laughing, lost in the delusional fugue state that Portent had hurled him into.

"Just drop your gold and walk away..." The tiefling demanded, banking on the party's unfamiliarity with Portent's nature, "Unless you want to see your friends bleed out in the middle of the road."

In response the lupinal grinned and drained herself of all emotions, all motivations, and all forethought. Without any prepared plan she allowed the Cadence to speak through her actions as she drew her blade.

"Well well! Another fool wishes to die!" The tiefling laughed, his face full of mirth just before it turned to shock and Fyrehowl buried her blade in his gut. "What...?"

Without a word, the lupinal twisted the scimitar and the previously arrogant gang-leader screamed in agony. Action without thought by the creed of the Transcendent Order had bypassed Portent's curse.

"What was that you mentioned about the 'loths?" Fyrehowl asked, partially withdrawing her blade but keeping the tiefling at her mercy and in considerable agony.

Blood staining his shirt a brilliant crimson, the thug swiftly motioned for his fellows to back away and without hesitation the complied, with fully half of them bailing on the scene entirely and darting back into the maze of tents and stalls, abandoning their leader's plight. Meanwhile, shaken out of their fugue state, Clueless and Toras had regained their composure and Florian began healing their wounds.

"A month ago!" The injured tiefling whimpered and sputtered, "A month ago the 'loths marched a force into the city. The bloody Oinoloth himself was here."

"What?!" Fyrehowl's eyes went wide, "Details!"

The mention of the Ebon's presence in Portent immediately grabbed the attention of every single member of the party. Portent had no major population of yugoloths, and on the 3rd Furnace it was far from the major tide of the Blood War or yugoloth politics. There was no rational reason for the Oinoloth himself to appear unless there was something else going on.

"Didn't I say that we could show up and something of relevance would make itself apparent?" Clueless flashed a smile even as the gemstone in his ankle continued to flicker with internal light.

"I don't know why they came!" The tiefling protested, his face pale with fear and blood loss, "They marched through and they just started butchering anyone in their way in complete defiance of how things work here in Portent. I don't know how. They rounded up the leaders of every faction in the city. They rounded them up and hung and disemboweled them from the eaves of the Great Hall, right there under Laughing Jane's nose. The Oinoloth went in and stayed there for the better part of an hour. I don't know why. Presumably to speak with the babbling crone herself. Whatever went on there were a number of earthquakes immediately thereafter that tumbled more than few buildings."

"And then what?" Fyrehowl asked, the blade still buried in the man's gut.

"And then nothing!" He protested, "The Oinoloth waltzed out with a satisfied grin on his face, rounded up his army, glanced up at the bodies dangling like wind chimes and then vanished with his ilk through a gate. None of us were going to walk up and ask the bloody f*cking Oinoloth to explain himself! I don't think anyone has been back inside of the Great Hall since then to see if Laughing Jane is even still alive! Given what she is though, hell if I'm the one to find out!"

Fyrehowl narrowed her eyes, "And what is she?"

"F*ck if I know!" He winced as the blade bit deeper, "A tiefling as old as Portent itself. She just sits there next to that throne in the Great Hall babbling. Babbling from her mouth and the serpents that grow out of her eye sockets. All the groups here in Portent have always tried to be the ones to catch her ear in the hopes that she'll spill some important dark of prophecy in their favor."

"Get out of here..." Fyrehowl plucked her blade from the tiefling's gut, leaving him to cough and drop to the ground, clutching at the wound before scrambling off and leaving a trail of blood in his wake as the lupinal glanced at her companions, "Oh that spooks me the f*ck out, because that sounds just like the Cagequakes that we've been having of late..."

Collectively the group shivered at the accuracy of the comparison, even if perhaps only superficial.

Several more minutes passed as they finished tending to their wounds and Tristol mapped out the quickest route to the Great Hall and whatever awaited them there.

"So looks like you were right Clueless," Florian nodded at the bladesinger, "But it makes me wonder what here is so important to make the Oinoloth show up."

"They said something about Laughing Jane speaking prophecy, so perhaps he came to speak with her?" Clueless shrugged, "But if so, it's a damn eerie coincidence that the Oinoloth was stealing something from the Fraternity of Order discovered by their factol centuries back who just happened to make her breakthrough based on something she learned here in Portent from a man who shouldn't have existed at that point and who as far as we know had f*ck all connection to this Laughing Jane. There are far too many disparate threads all weaving together, but damn if I can't put my finger on what the tapestry depicts at this point."

It all seemed just on the edge of finding out what linked them all together. Perhaps they'd find out soon.

It took them another twenty minutes before they found themselves standing in the Great Hall's shadow, though they smelled it long before they saw it.

"Again we find something that reminds us of something else..." Clueless frowned as he looked up at the massive, ancient structure of the Great Hall, newly festooned with its rotting, dangling wind chime corpses.

The group paused before the Great Hall's heavy bronze doors and collectively gazed up to where the 'loths had executed the myriad leaders of Portent, hanging them from the eaves, or apparently for some, simply disemboweling them and leaving them to hang in horrid agony to die of blood loss, infection, or thirst rather than instantly from a broken neck. It was ever so much like how the Ebon had decorated Khin-Oin with the corpses of those greater yugoloths who'd failed to support his rise to power, though unlike the corpses of the ultroloths that dangling from the Tower's heights, the corpses dangling from Portent's Great Hall had been set up in a comparatively dispassionate, uncaring capacity. These victims in Portent didn't matter to their killers.

"Before something drips on us from up there, shall we?" Nisha quipped, gesturing at the blank metallic doors, scuffed and marred by age but devoid of any marks of origin or political affiliation. Located in the backwater of Gehenna, Portent was an enigma.

Hoping for answers Toras and Fyrehowl pulled at the doors and swung them wide, revealing the empty vastness of Portent's oldest building. There at its center a bizarre bone throne grew up from the floor itself, empty and enigmatic, and there waiting in the surrounding gloom, Laughing Jane smiled.


****​

Colcook shuddered as he closed the door to the Marauder's chambers. Belatedly he turned and mouthed, "I'm sorry..." though the tiefling girl had already stepped inside. He turned to leave but then abruptly paused and listened, the argenach rilmani in tiefling guise's morbid curiosity getting the best of him.

The Marauder had been specific in her instructions as she'd sat in the unlit and windowless chamber, with only her one remaining eye shedding its luminous purple light to peel back the darkness. She'd specified an outfit. She'd specified colors, dimensions, and tactile measure in excruciating, obsessive detail. The woman had been given a persona to adopt, a situation not at all unusual for a prostitute, though she'd never before been tasked at impersonating an arcanaloth apprentice and never before consented to a profoundly invasive use of polymorph subschool magic.

The particular escort was new to Sigil, imported for the evening from one of the Gatetowns, and while she was expertly trained, she had neither a professional network of contacts and clients within Sigil itself. She was alone. She’d been hired under a dozen shell names to hide her actual client, and only once ensconced and under guard in Sigil had she presumably guessed that she’d be performing for the Marauder. That she’d been playing the role of the fiend’s former consort was bad enough, but that she’d do so while the Marauder remained a crippled wreck only made one end point certain: the woman would never be leaving that room.

His ears peeling back the protections of doors and walls, and his nature allowing him to bypass many of the ‘loth’s standard protections for security she kept around her employees except for those few times she interacted with the Oinoloth’s missives, Colcook/Jemorille listened.

For several minutes he heard the Marauder softly sobbing and the muffled sounds of the faux-'loth's pre-prepared dialogue. When the Marauder spoke back, the escort’s well played and in-character responses composed de novo were followed then by the sounds of their initial intimacy as they embraced, kissed, and then far more. It lasted for only a short while, the ending of their scene punctuated first by the Marauder's cries of ecstasy, a damning pause of silence, and then something that surprised even Colcook with its sudden ferocity. 

"I NEVER LOVED YOU!" The Marauder screamed, her voice rent with bitterness, hatred, self-loathing, and lies.

The prostitute never had time to scream before she was hurled across the room by the ‘loth’s telekinesis, slamming into the door with enough force to dent it outwards by several inches with a sickening crunch of bone and flesh and the splintering of wood. She was dead before the King of the Crosstrade ripped her body free of the door, telekinetically wrenched it back across the space between and slammed it into the door amidst a blizzard of inchoate screaming by the Marauder before she began to weep.

Wide-eyed, Colcook left, shaken and disturbed.


****​


----------



## Tsuga C

Conjecture:

So much for the "purity" of an existence devoid of love. She's a wreck because she was, at some level and at some point in her multi-millennia life, touched by love. The Ebon took note of this while he was disciplining her and added some extra "correction" to that which was already due her. She is infatuated with the Ebon (not merely with his power) and she knew at least a hint of love previously, so the Ebon sought to stamp it out from Shemeska. Can't have his retainers going soft, now can he?


----------



## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> Conjecture:
> 
> So much for the "purity" of an existence devoid of love. She's a wreck because she was, at some level and at some point in her multi-millennia life, touched by love. The Ebon took note of this while he was disciplining her and added some extra "correction" to that which was already due her. She is infatuated with the Ebon (not merely with his power) and she knew at least a hint of love previously, so the Ebon sought to stamp it out from Shemeska. Can't have his retainers going soft, now can he?




Conjecture of this sort genuinely makes me smile. I try not to comment too much on them for worry of spoiling things a decade in the making and years left to go before all is clear and defined. Love never ends well for yugoloths, and it's never "love" but various iterations of jealousy, greed, selfish desire for adoration, etc. Helekanalaith and Larsdana Ap Neut being the bellwether for that (and their tale is far from finished...). We've seen that Shemeska tends to be possessive and brutal regarding past lovers, with Shylara ironically being probably the best off of them all, albeit cursed with perpetual mange.

Was Shemeska's reaction one resulting from rage at Shylara being close to the Oinoloth when she herself was brutally punished by him, or was there a bitter strain of affection mixed in with it? Too soon to say. The Manged certainly ended up better than the one mortal lover with their limbs sawed off, bound to a bed, kept alive and functionally immortal, surrounded by images of the Marauder.

We haven't seen all of Shemeska's past "loves". I dare say we haven't seen the most poignant and horrific one either (though I've already written it well, well in advance). It's not what you think either.


----------



## Tsuga C

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd go with the twisted, neurotic, and possessive need to both own and destroy--or at the very least seriously damage--those whom she "loves". Rage alone wouldn't inspire the need for such intricate role-playing. I'm looking forward to seeing this play out.

And Happy Halloween to one and all as I doubt I'll be here tomorrow. It's time for dinner and then the Jack-o-lantern gets carved. It'll be toothy and Tim Burtonesque.


----------



## Shemeska

As their eyes adjusted to the darkness beyond the great bronze doors of Portent’s Great Hall, the first things they noticed were Laughing Jane’s eyes. A glimpse of yellowed, crooked teeth flashing in a grim smile as the sudden light exposed her, but above that the absence of normal eyes and instead a quartet of reddish serpentine slits moving, bobbing, and then softly hissing their greetings.

The ancient tiefling stood by herself, standing next to the morbid throne that grew up from the exposed bedrock there at the room’s center where the polished flagstones reached to within an inch of it and went no further. She wore rags, her feet were bare and her toenails ragged and claw-like, her hair was a tangled mess never brushed in centuries, and her sallow skin stretched tight against her bones, filthy and marked by age and dirt.

As ancient as Laughing Jane was, the throne was older still. A bizarre amalgamation of disparate bones fused together in an arrangement no sane creature would ever anatomically possess, it waited there for a creature to sit, hauntingly reminding them of nothing so much as the Seige Malicious atop of Khin-Oin, a comparison that might not have been entirely off base.

Surrounding the ancient tiefling though, the most disturbing element of the Great Hall was that it was empty; vacuously so. While the streets of Portent were filled with dust, dirt, and all manner of typical refuse found in the streets of an urbanized portion of the Lower Planes, that abruptly ended at the entryway. Not a speck of dust or dirt lay upon the cold flagstones within the building. Even with the door open and random gusts of wind blowing out amidst the streets, nothing entered the Great Hall to sully it.

“Well that’s not ominous at all…” Toras muttered, leaving it open whether he was referring to the unnatural emptiness of the Great Hall’s interior or to the smiling, ancient tiefling that was Laughing Jane who waited therein.

“Hopefully we can find some answers.” Clueless glanced warily at the tiefling, and at the throne beside her.

“Rather than just more questions like usual…” Fyrehowl muttered.

Laughing Jane said nothing overt as the party approached her, though the serpents that sprouted from her eye sockets exchanged glances and whispered sibilantly to one another as if sharing secret comments not meant for mortal ears. To break that silence and address the reason for which they’d traveled there from Sigil, Clueless was the first to pose a question.

“Who are you?” The bladesinger asked.

“I am Laughing Jane,” The ancient tiefling chuckled, her soft laughter followed by the trailing comments of her serpents, “A mouthpiece. Forsaken. Fought over but never claimed. A sifter of fitful dreams.”

“What are you?”

“A tiefling.” Jane quipped, “Once upon a time, so long ago I can scarcely remember. I no longer know what I was before I was here. Before I sat. Before Portent was a city, but only a stele sitting atop a prison/tomb.”

“What did I say about more questions?” Fyrehowl sighed, drawing forth a blizzard of angry hissing from Laughing Jane’s serpents.

“Do you know why we’re here?” Tristol asked, his tail bottle brushed as he glanced at the throne.

“The same reason that any come here?” Jane chuckled and spread her arms wide, “To know the future as I perceive it, or for the rare occasion that a ‘loth arrives, to sit upon the throne.”

She hadn’t directly answered their question, but her answer segued into another.

“One of the many gang members out there in the streets told us that the Oinoloth himself came here.” Tristol glanced back towards the door behind them, “Why did he come here? What was he searching for?”

The reaction was immediate as Laughing Jane snarled, threw her hands in the air and screamed in agonized, furious and embittered impotent rage while the serpents hissed in equal fury, writhing in the air before her face.

“The Oinoloth. He came to this place. He came here not to seek but to speak and to mock. There was nothing here for him. Nothing he needed.” Jane hissed, “He ignored us. He hurt us! He sat upon the throne. The self-important arcanaloth to whom Khin-Oin was but a disparaged stepping stone. He sat upon the throne and he laughed!”

“What is the throne?” Florian asked.

“Nothing to you. Nothing unless it deigns to speak to you from its slumber.”

The cleric frowned, “That doesn’t answer the question.”

Laughing Jane smirked knowingly and the serpents that grew from her eye sockets once again exchanged glances and whispered, debating perhaps how they should answer, or perhaps how far they were –allowed- to answer, given the source of that knowledge locked far below the streets of Portent.

“It is a tether to the slumbering mind of Portent’s father/mother.” The tiefling whispered, with her serpents following along as sibilant trailing echoes, drawing immediate expressions of concern and dread from the last amalgamation of words, words that were the hallmark of the baern. A baernaloth slumbered below the Great Hell. “The great one betrayed and imprisoned by the Demented long before the flight of Apomps. Before the abdication of Yrsinius the Elder. Before Tegresin’s flight. Before the formation of Gehenna or Carceri. Before the yugoloths. Before the MISTAKE. Before the fool’s errand. Before the Architect’s creation of…”

Halfway through her ranting answer her hands had already begun to tremble, her words began to slur, and as her words trailed off blood began to leak from her ears and abruptly she fell to the ground in a brutally convulsive seizure. On the ground, her serpents writhed and their own slit eyes rattled back and forth as her mouth jerked and failed to form the words she desperately wanted to relay. There were limitations to her gift of “prophecy” channeling the black knowledge of the baernaloth far below. 

Eventually Laughing Jane’s convulsions ceased, she wiped the foam from her lips, and with a snarl and chorus of hisses, she slowly stood back up. She had nothing more to add to her previous statement however, and instead she waited for the next question.

“We came here looking for the answer to one question.” Clueless stated, “Centuries ago, Lariset the Inescapable, Factol of the Fraternity of Order came here to Portent. We don’t know –why– she came, but while she was here she met a man named Cilret Leobtav, a man who shouldn’t have existed at that point in history because he wouldn’t have been born for centuries still. She talked to him and something that she learned from him set her upon the path to discovering something that she thought was a loophole in the laws of creation, but it seems that it was something more. Something hidden. We don’t know what it was, but the Oinoloth is obsessed with it and whatever it is, whatever his reasons, we need to stop him.”

Laughing Jane smiled. She knew why they’d come, and finally they’d asked the question that she’d been waiting to answer.

“This one is silent.” One serpent spoke, Laughing Jane motioning to the throne and then at her feet, “Slumbering fitfully…”

“Furious raging, betrayed, bitter…” The second serpent hissed in response.

“This one will not answer. Not you.” The first sibilantly whispered, “Another though. Another I feel.”

“Brilliant, glowing,” Rejoined the second, “Burning Bright. Like a Torch.”

The assembled companions exchanged glances, picking up on her allusions, but needing more details to be certain.

“Lit in blood and paved in lies, there upon the slopes of Karal, Maygel, and Dohin…” Laughing Jane grinned, exposing ragged, yellowed teeth and bleeding gums.

“That’s Gehenna’s gatetown in the Outlands.” Tristol mused, “Torch.”

“What’s in Torch?” Clueless asked, “Why do we need to go there? We came here to find what Lariset discovered.”

“What you seek: answers.” The serpents hissed and they and Jane replied collectively, “In Gehenna’s gatetown. A short conceptual stroll. There they wait. There they weave. There they smile in the darkness. There they wait for you in Dubai’s Obscure Woe.”


****


“You have questions Shylara,” The Oinoloth whispered with an almost amused tone to his voice, though he never turned to glance at the Overlord of Carceri as she struggled to hold aloft the great tome that she’d been instructed to display. “They boil and froth at the edges of your conscious thought even as they seek to keep them obscured below a pot lid of fear and worry. You question why I would create the creatures you see here before you: mezzoloths infused with each of the inter-cardinal elements. Hold those questions to yourself until you have seen me do the same with other lesser yugoloths and then perhaps a greater yugoloth as well. Whatever it is that I need I will fashion. They are tools to be used and if necessary to be broken in my service, but you know that well enough on your own...”

Shylara the Manged whimpered, but Vorkannis paid her no heed as he watched the lesser yugoloths suffer and then stabilize against the admixture of elemental energies perfusing their bodies. The tools were forged and ready to use for the specialized task that he would have need of them for in the immediate future.

“There is also the unspoken question brewing in your mind amidst a thick syrup of jealousy regarding why your former mentor, mistress, and lover Shemeska was present in this chamber before I ever invited you.” The Oinoloth let the statement linger in the air, and only when he heard the sob of bitter disappointment rise up from his consort did he deign to reply. “I could always gift you Shylara with the same attention that I gave to her. Unlike the Marauder however, I suspect that you wouldn’t mind having your teeth broken, an eye gouged out, and an arm ripped off while I snarled and laughed. Wretch you’d enjoy it…”

The soft sobbing briefly erupted with a burst of nervous, giddy laughter, answer the Oinoloth’s hypothetical with precisely the answer that he expected. This time however he gave no response and let his consort stew in her own thoughts, both bitter and obsessive alike.

For the next hour the Oinoloth made careful notations by hand in one of the grimoires kept there, each of them near or actual artifact level. The specific tome he added his work to was one of those originally penned by Larsdana Ap Neut, first Magistrix of the Fourfold Furnace, Helekanalaith’s vanished teacher and predecessor. What was more, the Oinoloth was also constructing something as he wrote, carefully carving a string of symbols into an object laying next to the tome, though from her static position holding aloft another of the vanished arcanaloth lord’s tomes, she could not be certain what it precisely was.

“Soon I will be sending my armies into the depths of the elemental planes to find something and return it to me. Pieces of a broken, lost and hidden thing that will be mine.” The Oinoloth turned and looked at his consort, his eyes ablaze with lurid pink light, “This is of the utmost importance to me, to us, and the race of yugoloths as a whole. Nothing is of greater importance. Nothing!”

In the far corner of the chamber, swallowed in suffocating darkness, far from Shylara’s eyes, the pile of frozen ashes that bore Vorkannis’s back and forth footprints twitched and moved in resonance with the Oinoloth’s words.

“You will train and select those who will suffer and die for me far from the Lower Planes. As you suffer for me, you will select those to undergo the process that you have seen me fashion and perfect. Choose well.”

“Thank you my Oinoloth,” Shylara stuttered, “Thank you my master…”

“Be proud of yourself Shylara,” Vorkannis spoke with an audible smile crossing his muzzle, “Not only for the task that I assign to you, but also because soon this chamber will have only its third visitor among those that I’ve allowed to enter. Of those visitors, you will have suffered the least at my hands.”

The Overlord of Carceri swallowed hard, uncertain in her mind if she was glad for that distinction, given the presence of Shemeska’s blood and broken teeth upon the floor, or if she was jealous. Her thoughts on the matter however did not last long.

“Our guest has arrived.” Vorkannis intoned, “Put down the book and open the door for them.”

Shylara nodded wordlessly, placed the book down with a soft thud upon the table where she’d first retrieved it from, and made for the doors. There hadn’t been a knock or a telepathic call, but as the arcanaloth set her hands upon the silver handles of the massive doors, wincing at the pain as she wrenched them open, she found an ultroloth waiting upon the other side, patient, emotionless, and silent.

The ultroloth stood there alone, dressed in purple robes, a rod and a sword tucked neatly into the sash it wore about its waist. Under the Oinoloth’s new structure of power, many ultroloths had taken to further decoration and unique styles by which to differentiate themselves. The ultroloths that had served as doormen when Shemeska had stood there some time before were gone, leaving the present greater yugoloth without seeming peer.

_“I am here at the Oinoloth’s call.”_ The ultroloth, Morenikus ib Khalas’s telepathic voice carried the impression of daggers plunging into naked, expectant flesh. The fiend’s voice also carried the faint undertone of disgust as its eyes matched with Shylara’s own color-shifting orbs, viewing her very existence as a mockery of the proper order of the yugoloth hierarchy.

“Enter Morenikus ib Khalas,” Vorkannis called out, “Once servitor of Mydianchlarus, once advisor to Cholerix, once student of Larsdana ap Neut, and now servitor to myself I call you here with a task.”

The ultroloth stepped into the chamber past Shylara the Manged who said nothing but simply lowered her head and closed the doors behind the gray-skinned, purple-robed yugoloth. The doors shuddered heavily as they sealed in place with a hideous finality.

“I will be sending my forces into the elemental planes and I will require a chosen leader to direct them.” Vorkannis had yet to turn towards the ultroloth as he spoke, instead he stood with his back turned, his head down, and his hands cradled around an object, the same object that he’d been working on for some time. “Your past experience makes you ideal for this role, and I would have you there as my representative.”

The ultroloth gave a bow and stepped forward, its eyes blazing with lurid, multicolored light, approaching to within an arm’s distance of Vorkannis.

_“Whatever my past actions under the rule of other, lesser Masters of Khin-Oin, I assure you my Oinoloth that…”_

“Silence subcreature.” Vorkannis chuckled, still not turning around to actually face the ultroloth now on its knees in confused, terrified supplication, “You have betrayed every superior that you have ever had, from your status as mezzoloth through your rise through the ranks of the Tower Arcane, and for that I am pleased with you. That is expected. That is becoming of you as a yugoloth. But I cannot tolerate your betrayal of myself.”

_“My Oinoloth I have never betrayed you!”_ Morenikus’s mental voice hummed with barely suppressed rage as it spoke the truth, from its own perspective as its hands pounded into the floor, the colors from its eyes shifting towards reds and purples.

“You have though wretch…” Vorkannis sighed, “Even if you aren’t aware of it.”

Behind the ultroloth, Shylara’s eyes went wide and involuntarily she licked her lips and trembled.

Morenikus’s telepathy stammered, wildly uncertain of how to respond as the Oinoloth’s drifting cloud of shadowy filaments crept across the space between. They curled up to caress the ultroloth’s chin, stroking across its face and holding the fiend’s head in place.

_“Master I…”_

Without warning the Oinoloth spun around in place. Robes whirling and shadows curdling in place, eyes burning with albino radiance, one arm extended to bury a spike of cobalt blue crystal into the ultroloth’s forehead with a sickeningly wet crunch.

“Ignorant, all of you.” Vorkannis sneered, looking down at the fiend as blood and radiant cerebrospinal fluids bubbled up from the wound, sizzling as it came into contact with the crystalline spike that now glimmered with an internal light, illuminating the myriad symbols carefully etched into its surface and interior.

The ultroloth blinked and twitched, a telepathic background of agony and blizzard of questions wailing out from its mind even as the crystal driven deep into its brain sizzled and hummed with activating magical puissance. Vorkannis smiled as he watched the ultroloth blink one final time before its eyes turned the same shade of pink as his own.

“Your forces Shylara, they will not make their trip so far from the Waste alone.” Vorkannis’s words were echoed by the telepathic call of his ultroloth puppet who now stood up, its motions mirroring that of its master. “They will have me to accompany them by proxy…”


****​

While the petty lords of Torch waged their subtle and occasionally bloody battles of supremacy over one another through the urban hellscape of Gehenna's gatetown, lit by the burning light of the burg's three volcanic mounts and the looming, blood-red portal to the Fourfold Furnace overhead, perched amidst the sulfurous clouds, Dubai's Obscure Woe remained free of that strife and bloodshed. The citizens and fiendish immigrants alike wanted nothing to the do with the forsaken parcel of property that stood at the edge of the Blood Swamp, there at the gatetown's
periphery as it had for as long as any could remember, and which some legends claimed predated Torch in its entirety. The ruined estate brooded in haunted stasis, the portal in the distance shedding a burning glow and casting long shadows, but oddly the light from distant Gehenna felt warming and comfortable to any who stood there on the broken stones of that forgotten place.

Occasionally a visitor to Torch would visit, a citizen marked for death by ones of Torch's gangs would flee there in desperate dismissal of the local superstitious warnings, or a cleric of a benevolent power would travel there to banish whatever gloom resided therein. The result was the same in each and every case. The brave, the ignorant, the desperate, and the foolishly righteous all met the same fate: they never returned from their visit. Oh to be sure there were legends of those who survived a visit, but nothing concrete, and each instance seemed to only be those with a cursory transit of the estate's periphery and not actually a visit into the interior, and not at all a lengthy stay, whatever the reason. The occupant -the lone occupant- of that forsaken place brooked neither attention nor visitors, unless it had lured them there for its own purposes.

The vanished with connections to larger organizations, factions, guilds, or adventuring companies, or those clerics strict in their faith and missed by their ecclesiastical fellows had investigations into their deaths. Those investigators vanished as well when they came. Divinations seeking the fate of either uniformly returned nothing. They were not alive, nor dead, nor trapped or imprisoned in any capacity magical or mundane: they simply no longer existed so far as the scrying lens, elaborate arcane legend lore, or divine prognostication could see.

Whatever the fate of the vanished few, further divinations as to that ruined, once-grand hovel at the edges of the Blood Swamp returned nothing profound in the slightest.

Nothing.

Dubai's Obscure Woe was a black hole of information into which investigators fell, and when they did, they discovered nothing, or they themselves vanished. If anything those who survived the attempts would discover that it had originally been constructed by a tiefling wizard by the name of Daruib Chamek who lived in Torch for several decades before dying at the hands of a gacholoth assassin after he ran afoul of a nameless ultroloth's ire. After his death the estate fell into ruin and the wizard's experiments and decaying spellwork proved a sufficient hazard to prevent it from being looted by Torch's desperate or transient overlords. There was apparently nothing of note.

Yet there was something there and clearly it hungered.

A shadow fell across the ground, blotting out the crimson light shed across one of the inner courtyards. The solitary figure emerged out of a ripple in the fabric of space, a tear in the fabric of the Outlands already blurred from its close metaphysical proximity to Gehenna, though this tear was to the Gray Waste. It stepped forward unsteadily across the broken, unevenly settled cobblestones, leading not with a foot, but with a staff, then a foot, and then dragging along after itself one leg, withered and crippled.

The response of the environment around the figure was immediate, no matter who or what they were, just as they would have one of Torch's natives or one the past victims who unwisely visited. Like a fly landing upon a hungry spider's web, each footstep taken set off a ripple of dweomers more ancient than Gehenna itself, Dubai's Obscure Woe being only a surface, temporal gloss of location atop a lair woven from the fabric of the Waste, where it now resided. The figure paid it no heed, and in turn the spells recognized their nature and took no actions other than to inform their weaver that a guest, a family member even, had arrived and come calling.

The figure slowly walked forward in shambling, crippled fashion, pausing to glance at a subtle sign of shimmering movement to their right, reaching up to brush a strand of golden hair from her face and behind a slightly curved planetouched horn of a tiefling or aasimar, though in truth they were neither. Gazing down at her, a drifting, translucent figure quivered and shifted its insectile mandibles. She smirked at the ghost mezzoloth's paradoxical, impossible existence and its reaction to her presence, and then she chuckled as her own shadow pooled about her feet and moving independently of her physical form's motions, raced across the space between then reached up to caress the fiend's face. It shuddered in a transposition of agony and quasi-religious ecstasy, and as it reacted she walked on, turning away and ignoring it like a master giving a beloved pet a perfunctory pat on the head before going about their other tasks. 

She continued her trek deeper into the main structure at the heart of the ruined estate, smiling as the structure transitioned from metaphysical neutrality to Evil and she descended into the lightless cavern below the ground level to meet the structure's master. Each step now echoed not with staff and feet on stone, but the soft, wet shuffle of the same passing through puddles of slick, slightly viscous mucus that covered every surface, walls, floor, and ceiling alike.

"I am here brother/sister." Tellura ibn Shartalan smiled and with her words the cavern's gloom evaporated.

In response to her greeting, two eyes opened as the figure sitting and nearly fused into the cavern's far wall stirred from its torpor. Milky and rheumatic, corrosive in their feigned frailty, the baernaloth's eyes shed a cold and horrific light across the room, illuminating the visitor's form and the surrounding, organic walls of their surroundings. Coating every surface the mucoid matrix slowly shifted and undulated with unnatural peristalsis and as it caught and refracted the light, the words embedded, trapped, and imprisoned within its murky depths were revealed, each of them a name, a promise, a lie.

"She whispers, she hints, she pulls from the dreams of our forgotten brother/sister." A phlegmatic chuckle emerged from the brittle lips of Daru ib Shamiq, the Lie Weaver. "They will listen and they will come, dancing upon the web of words and foretold inevitability: just as we have foreseen. Everything falls as we have desired. Everything occurs as we have ordained." 

The two baernaloths stared into each other's eyes as a blizzard of telepathic information flowed between the two of them, at the end of which the Shepherdess nodded and smiled, her face cherubic.

"Come children." Tellura whispered, "Come mortal little lambs. Here there is bloodshed and there are lies."


****​


----------



## Tsuga C

Daru ib Shamiq:

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/807332516898242564/w9vBWIrJ.jpg

A fine update, Shemeska. I knew you weren't dead because of your Twitter activity, but you've been scarce around here. Will the ultroloths ever tumble to the fact that the Ebon has it in for them?


----------



## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> Daru ib Shamiq:
> 
> https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/807332516898242564/w9vBWIrJ.jpg
> 
> A fine update, Shemeska. I knew you weren't dead because of your Twitter activity, but you've been scarce around here. Will the ultroloths ever tumble to the fact that the Ebon has it in for them?




I've not been active on Enworld much beyond posting the storyhour (and I'll continue to post it here until it's finished), but I'm most active on Facebook and Twitter (and good Lord I've got my main twitter @ therealshemeska and my in character alts @ askshemeshka @ Ilsetsya and @ Shylarathe). I'm in the middle of my 2nd year of pharmacy school and life outside of school is rather complicated at the moment, so my output has been spotty, for which I apologize.

Oh the ultroloths are absolutely aware of the sheer and utter contempt that Vorkannis has for their entire caste. But at the same time arcanaloths aren't necessarily treated any better at the end of the day. Vorkannis treats them like yappy magical disposable tools. You've seen him clearly taking joy in turning ultroloths into puppets with chunks of crystal lodged in their heads, but behind the scenes you've also seen him turn nascent arcanaloths into astradeamons (and other things yet to be seen) without any sort of caste loyalty since he's ostensibly an arcanaloth himself. He certainly played on intra-caste issues and jealousy when he pulled Helekanalaith (and much of the Tower Arcane) to his side when he became Oinoloth, and similarly with Shemmy demanding importance. And then there's his promotion (by himself) of Shylara into an arcanaloth in Carceri and more recently into something more than arcanaloth (and the just what that is or means is up for debate).

Good on you for picking up that apparent caste contempt. It will play into things on an ongoing basis.


----------



## carborundum

I've done it, by Jove! I've caught up! I started in October and travelled 15-odd years in about as many weeks. Wow. I'm absolutely blown away by the sheer scale, artistry and volume of work. The writing is excellent, your group's characters have amazing depth and personality, the villains are epically wicked and their plots are STILL a mystery. I just love everything about it! I've no idea why I never got into it before now. Still, better late than never, eh? 

Thank you ever so much for creating this amazing campaign. I've always loved the idea of Planescape and regret not being able to afford it when it came out. .Thank you even more for keeping the updates coming, I know how much work that is beside work and studying. 

So now I am honoured to join the ranks of subscribers, and wait with bated breath for the next one. In the meantime, I'm working as much planar goodness as possible into my current campaign, and saving for Planescape. It's a lot more expensive these days!


----------



## Shemeska

carborundum said:


> I've done it, by Jove! I've caught up! I started in October and travelled 15-odd years in about as many weeks. Wow. I'm absolutely blown away by the sheer scale, artistry and volume of work. The writing is excellent, your group's characters have amazing depth and personality, the villains are epically wicked and their plots are STILL a mystery. I just love everything about it! I've no idea why I never got into it before now. Still, better late than never, eh?
> 
> Thank you ever so much for creating this amazing campaign. I've always loved the idea of Planescape and regret not being able to afford it when it came out. .Thank you even more for keeping the updates coming, I know how much work that is beside work and studying.
> 
> So now I am honoured to join the ranks of subscribers, and wait with bated breath for the next one. In the meantime, I'm working as much planar goodness as possible into my current campaign, and saving for Planescape. It's a lot more expensive these days!




I applaud your work in reading through not only the full length of the story hour but probably also others' and my commentary along the way! I'm genuinely humbled that you've enjoyed it and look forward to seeing it slowly (clearly much more slowly than I'd like) unfold here to you and others reading it many years after the campaign itself was played back when I was an undergrad, and before I'd ever considered writing for fun, much less for $. 

Thank you so much!


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## Tarath

My apologies for posting something slightly off-topic for the Story Hour, but I'm not sure where else I can receive non-toxic feedback for a character idea of mine.

The idea starts with a question: Would either A'kin or Shemeshka be willing to father a child with a random arcanaloth and stay out of the youngster's upbringing until her twenty-fifth birthday, in exchange for the pleasure of the act and an Earring of Wishes with a single remaining wish?


----------



## Shemeska

Tarath said:


> My apologies for posting something slightly off-topic for the Story Hour, but I'm not sure where else I can receive non-toxic feedback for a character idea of mine.
> 
> The idea starts with a question: Would either A'kin or Shemeshka be willing to father a child with a random arcanaloth and stay out of the youngster's upbringing until her twenty-fifth birthday, in exchange for the pleasure of the act and an Earring of Wishes with a single remaining wish?




I'm not sure why you'd receive any toxic feedback for this particular question. The topic in general is covered in enough published content such that it isn't anything out of the blue.

For this specific case it really depends on how you personally would characterize both A'kin and Shemeshka in your campaigns. Their nature, alignment, goals, and history. I know what my answer would be for both of them, but admittedly I'm holding all the answers to those questions quite close to my chest still at this point in the storyhour (and God do I love speculation on it!). It depends also on the reach of the particular wish and any restrictions (ie by the book or a little more fluid). A carefully worded wish could really play havoc with that kid regardless of the 25 year prohibition. Plus when has a 'loth -ever- played by the terms of a deal without finagling their way into warping it to Gehenna and back ten times over for the sheer malevolent whimsy of it all?

It could be made into a decades long game, or it could be made into a horror story for all involved, especially the offspring. I don't see Shemmy leaving any such offspring alive unless they played very specific roles in her own plans. And the deal said nothing about the dead or living status of the other parent. She'd probably kill them to ensure that the parentage of the child wasn't known, even to the kid. 

As for A'kin? Who knows anything specific about him.


----------



## Tarath

Shemmy is obviously not the smart choice to make. A'kin(as seen in your SH #1 and #2) could work. "Make a child with me, taking the male role. I will be the sole parent figure until her twenty-fifth birthday. When she is of age, being twenty-five years after her birth, she will come to you for further education. In payment for making the child, you will have the pleasure of the act itself. In payment for staying out of the way during her early formative years, I will give you this Earring of Wishes with a single wish remaining to grant."

The mother is a member of a cabal of arcanaloths who, millenia ago, renounced the ways of the Oinoloth and the General of Gehenna to live, breed, and build a society in exile on the Prime. Were the original exiles disciples of a certain ultroloth who will not be named, or perhaps they were his children?


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## Shemeska

Apologies is this is out of place here.

So I've started a Patreon as basically a tip jar.

Like my fiction? My storyhour? The random RPG stuff I post? My in-character Twitter nonsense? Consider helping me out as I'm in school for my PharmD and have basically no income.

https://www.patreon.com/KingOfTheCrosstrade


----------



## Akhelos

Shemeska said:


> I'm not sure why you'd receive any toxic feedback for this particular question. The topic in general is covered in enough published content such that it isn't anything out of the blue.
> 
> For this specific case it really depends on how you personally would characterize both A'kin and Shemeshka in your campaigns. Their nature, alignment, goals, and history. I know what my answer would be for both of them, but admittedly I'm holding all the answers to those questions quite close to my chest still at this point in the storyhour (and God do I love speculation on it!). It depends also on the reach of the particular wish and any restrictions (ie by the book or a little more fluid). A carefully worded wish could really play havoc with that kid regardless of the 25 year prohibition. Plus when has a 'loth -ever- played by the terms of a deal without finagling their way into warping it to Gehenna and back ten times over for the sheer malevolent whimsy of it all?
> 
> It could be made into a decades long game, or it could be made into a horror story for all involved, especially the offspring. I don't see Shemmy leaving any such offspring alive unless they played very specific roles in her own plans. And the deal said nothing about the dead or living status of the other parent. She'd probably kill them to ensure that the parentage of the child wasn't known, even to the kid.
> 
> As for A'kin? Who knows anything specific about him.




I think any Arcanaloth siring a shild with any other Arcanaloth, not only Shemmy but especially her, should get a very strong life insurance for both themselves and the child. Making a killing or vanisihing so costly as to utterly destroy the other party. Basically if you want to have a child with Shemeshka, make sure you have such Blackmail material on her that would utterly destroy her if released and make sure it gets released if you or the child vanishes in such a way that its impossible for her to stop it. Make sure that if she moves against you, she herself hands weapons to her worst enemys destroying thousands of years of her work. Basically a lot of work and you should know for yourself if thats really worth it.


----------



## Shemeska

Prehistory:

The obsidian blade punctured velvet, silk, fur, flesh, and fascia without the slightest resistance. It punctured her right ventricle and then with a flick of a wrist it neatly bisected her aorta, flooding her chest cavity and then dousing her chest above it with a bubbling fountain of brilliant crimson blood. For an arcanaloth the situation was nothing new given the manner in which they transitioned from nycaloth to their current and lofty caste. The blade was pain. The blade was agony. The blade was release. The blade was freedom. The blade was transfiguration.

Normally.

But this was not a promotion. This was murder. This was sacrifice.

Her eyes widened and a shrill scream of agony reached her lips before her killer’s hands thrust into her mouth and held her tongue until there were no more inchoate, half-formed curses left to scream as the dull gray light of the Waste faded to darkness.

Death was not such a simple thing as blade and blood, broken flesh and the suffocation of exsanguinations under the eyes of her smiling killer brilliant and livid against the bleached nothingness of the surrounding Gloom. The runes of the blade erupted with puissant magic, subtle and terrible to behold, igniting the nascent magic within the victim’s blood, racing with sorcerous, fluid fire through the veins, arteries, and arterioles of her body as she bled, choked, and gave her final breath, the last drops of blood mere charred ash upon the wind as her body disintegrated and joined the surrounding dust, damningly no more important than any other dead soul ground to irrelevant nothingness as was thusly consigned to become as well.

Enraged beyond belief, the tattered, insubstantial fragments of her soul tumbled into the devouring maw of her native plane as above the sky burned with the gleaming, hungry light of the Loadstone’s bleak and dire poetry.

NO!

NO!

BETRAYAL!

THIS CANNOT BE!

I WILL NOT BE DENIED WHAT IS MINE!

I WILL HAVE THE POWER DUE ME!

I WILL HAVE MY PLACE!

I WILL HAVE MY POSITION!

I WILL HAVE MY MAJESTY!

All around the Waste feasted, fragmented, and tore at her soul like a horde of jackals to a fresh and bloody corpse. In moments there would be nothing of her left - nothing but the taste of her regrets and agony of a stolen existence upon the tongue of her natal plane.

“Well aren’t you an interesting and headstrong thing…”

The broken fragments of her soul blinked. The voice was calm, powerful, cajoling, seductive, the words spoken in baernaloth, rippling through the metaphysical earth like the tremors along a terrestrial fault line with the distant tug and kiss of an ocean of sentient roiling magma.

“A shame that it will be over in moments as the Waste savors, devours, and extinguishes you and everything that you might have ever been or would ever become.”

She screamed at the voice’s mockery even as she felt the very same process it described already occurring.

NO! I AM NOT OVER! I AM NOT FINISHED! I WILL RIP MY WAY FREE OF THIS PLACE! I AM NOT DONE WITH THIS WORLD!

“You are nothing child.”

She felt the voice’s smirk like a slap across her face.

“Nothing…”

NO! NO! I AM POTENTIAL! I AM RAGE! I AM BITTER REVENGE!

“And you are dead… returned to the very substance from which all yugoloths derive.”

AND YET… And yet… and yet here I am, still speaking to you, voice in the depths, whatever you are…

Around her the Waste itself seemed to smile silently in tectonic amusement.

“Whatever I am? A voice crying in the wilderness. Forgotten. Abandoned.”

“I don’t care what you are.” She snarled, her essence unraveling moment by moment. “Spare me your mockery and help me. Ask your price and I will pay it. I will have what was and shall be mine!”

The substance behind the voice in the gray and bleak darkness smiled.

A hundred thousand grasping claws and teeth seized upon the errant tatters of the soul that had been, seizing them, ripping them free of the immaterial lysosomes accreted about each piece, parsing them aside from the infinity of every other dead soul devoured and digested by the Waste. All of it occurred effortlessly.

“And what little thing?” The voice asked, its words in baernaloth rattling her essence held in stasis like aftershocks on already broken, tortured earth. “What will you do if returned to existence?”

“Everything that I desire is what I will do.”

Another smirk and the myriad, insubstantial hands juggled the bits of her soul, playing with them like blocks strewn across a child’s playroom room.

“A vacuous answer that has emotional strength for sure but which lacks any definition. Your mind is much the same as every other yugoloth and many other manner of creatures who have died much the same as you with the same burning thoughts of revenge and loss painted upon their disintegrating souls. I have listened to your beautiful, wailing song of suffering so many, many times like a sweet lullaby to my slumbering ears. What little arcanaloth, what makes you any different from all of them? …What is it that you want?”

The words were ancient. The question full of power beyond the mere words, the phrase layered with allusions and complexities in the tongue of the baern. Had she been corporeal, the question in the same words would have brought her ears to bleed and compelled the answer from her tongue before she’d had the chance to prepare her will to resist, but in her present form she had neither.

“What do I want? You know what I want! You know what was taken from me! I want it back! I want to open my lips and breathe, to pluck the knife from my chest and bring pain and agony to my killer. I want to savor in their death and have everything that was theirs and should have been mine by blood and birthright.”

The presence laughed.

“Oh little mewling thing, where is the challenge in that if I –give– everything to you?” The voice sneered, “Nothing is given. Everything of substance must be desired, hungered for, and then seized in a shower of blood and misery. You know this child of despair. But you will breathe again nonetheless.”

The claws and teeth that held her together against the gnawing acid hunger of the Waste were swift and precise. What they did with her they had done before, though how many times she could not have known. Enraptured at its power, she understood of course that it was not a mercy, but a curse, a poisoned gift with an unspoken price that she would one day come to pay. But fueled by the bitterness of loss and death, she did not care what that cost might ever be. Instead there was only a single question of her own.

“Who are you?”

“And there,” The presence smiled voraciously, an ocean of eyes gleaming with a million devoured secrets of which that was but one, “There is the question that I waited for. Once you had of course gained what you desired, the academic curiosity emerges along with the distrust no longer hidden but on full display.”

“And?” She demanded, full of pride and bluster as her essence was woven and knitted back together piece by ephemeral piece. “One of the Demented? Another baernaloth entirely?” She paused and disgust crept into her voice, “A power…?”

Of course, a thing of darkness and secrets, it provided her no answer at all as it smiled to itself and its handiwork as it held her spirit aloft and admired what it had created. Oh the irony. In so many ways, the irony.

“What good is a second chance amidst the trailing shadow of betrayal by your own kind when betrayal may await you once again? That my child is up to you to find, determine, and MAKE.”

She furrowed a brow yet without substance.

“Whatever you are, I will find you. I will scour the records of the Tower. I will devour the brains of a thousand screaming clerics and pluck the tongues of a million wailing petitioners. I will take my answers from them and with them I will find you and take my answers then in all my coming glory!”

“No. No you will not.” The presence smirked, “Because if you do meet me again, it is I who will find you, but only if you are worthy.”

She scoffed, feeling a mouth taking form in the patterns of her soul finally. “I know my capabilities and I have a plan in place already for what I must do. It will take centuries but I will find you.”

“I find that highly unlikely child.” It chuckled, placed a dozen fingers of darkness against ivory, intangible teeth, “Because breathing once more or not, you won’t remember me in the slightest.”

“What?...”

“You will remember none of this moment between moments. You will be given life again, but this time you will struggle and you will succeed or not by your own merits rather than the serendipity of blood and a parent in rut to give you caste. If you are to be worthy of your birthright YOU. WILL. EARN. IT. SUBCREATURE.”

“NO!” The form of her mouth moved, alien in shape and configuration and in a fraction of a second she knew the bitter triumph of her bargain and what it had given and demanded of her.

“Fuel your rise by spite, by rage, by bitter fury at fate and circumstance. Make yourself what you desire to become.” The voice motioned upwards, pursed unseen lips and breathed life into a metaphorical figure of dust and clay, a soul with one pattern locked within the prison of another by intent. “Learn. Suffer. Suffer for me and then, when you are ready, return to me with blood on your hands, triumph and agony as your crown.”



****​

The Spawning Pools of Khin-Oin were alien things even to the yugoloths that tended to them, engines of calcified deific flesh carved from the sacral marrow of the spine that housed the Wasting Tower itself from many miles above where the Seige Malicious looked down to there at its lowest depths where it plunged into the depths of the Waste and mixed with the black and polluted groundwater of the Styx. It was there that the first yugoloths had emerged at the ancient call of their baernaloth creators, and it was there, with the aid of those artifacts, miles wide, that the yugoloths managed to accomplish the same feat on their own in advanced speed and number than they otherwise did naturally and spontaneously across the whole of the plane when the Waste belched up a new mezzoloth spawned from the essence of another yugoloth anywhere else that had died. Predating and detached from the souls of mortals, the yugoloths were eternal and constant.

As one new mezzoloth breached the glistening, curiously thick and membranous meniscus of the surface and clambering forth on its insectile limbs, the ambient eldritch light reflection off of the oil-slick skein of its glossy, chitinous carapace, it chattered with barely restrained rage. This mezzoloth was different. This mezzoloth was special. It knew what it had been before its (re)birth. The details were vacuous and scattered, but it knew that it had been an arcanaloth, betrayed and killed by its own kind, now reborn in the lowest, most base of yugoloth castes. There was no birthright power, there was only a ladder of pain, debasement, and struggle that stretched out and so high above itself that it would need to climb.

F*ck it all.

Whatever was required of it, it would occur, and by whatever means necessary to reclaim and seize what belonged to it.

All around the mezzoloth, others of its kind emerged from the luminous muck, marshaled and directed by other, higher caste yugoloths to begin the most basic and meaningless of training before being hurled into the Blood War and certain death. A soft hiss escaped from past the mezzoloth’s mandibles as it turned to the nearest of its kind, studied it for but a moment and ripped her talons into a breach in its armor plating, drawing blood and causing the least yugoloth to shriek in agony and stumble forward. The killing blow would have come quickly had the mezzoloth desired it, but for whatever reason it held back, innate knowledge telling it otherwise and in a swift and beguiling sidestep, it grabbed the arms of yet another of its kind and thrust it into the injured one and stepped away to one side. Enraged, the injured mezzoloth leapt upon the one that now stumbled into it, its animal intelligence confusing it with its actual attacker who stood and watched, amused by the pain it had caused.

The mezzoloth had no lips with which to smile, but inwardly it did nonetheless as its slinked off into the darkness, losing itself in the myriad throng of tens of thousands of its kind marching forwards while behind it, hundreds of others shrieked and fought in an expanding chorus of murderous, fratricidal agony. It would enjoy this existence, even if its current form was an insult to what it deserved to be.

No matter what it took, it would regain what had been taken.


****​
Shemeska awoke with a scream of terror and confusion, one arm pawing at her face to feel the line of her vulpine muzzle, feel her ears, her lips, and briefly then to pat at every part of her body that was there. One arm remained absent, but the bleeding had stopped, and a brief centimeter of raw flesh now sprouted from the previously raw and open wound. One eye still stared about blind and unseeing, but while the socket had been empty before, an eye, albeit one clouded over and still devoid of sight, now occupied that previously empty hollow within the confines of her skull.

She was healing. After weeks she was finally healing.

Snapping her fingers and conjuring forth light into her private chambers, she looked about. Two tieflings lay dead to either side of her, one strangled and still entwined in the sheets, the other ashen of pallor and snuffed by magic in the throes of passion. It only took the King of the Crosstrade a moment to reach for her razorvine crown and collect her thoughts, dragging them away from the dream, and as her brain threw off the shackles of slumber –a rare thing for a yugoloth– she realized two things.

Her left hand clenched the Shadow Sorcelled Key, its shadows cool upon her flesh as they lapped at her wrist. She’d clenched it so hard in fact that her claws had punctured her own flesh and she freely bled into the silks upon which she and the two deceased prostitutes lay. Secondly the details of the dream. Not the moments below Khin-Oin, but the unknown period preceding it.

She remembered.

Trembling and clenching the Key even tighter, she remembered, and she was terrified.


****​


----------



## Tarath

So it would seem that long, long ago Shemeska was born as a nycaloth, and was later promoted to arcanaloth. Some time later, she was murdered. I have a question. Was she murdered by her sponsor during her promotion to ultroloth, or was this a random killing via a most ironic weapon?


----------



## Shemeska

Tarath said:


> So it would seem that long, long ago Shemeska was born as a nycaloth, and was later promoted to arcanaloth. Some time later, she was murdered. I have a question. Was she murdered by her sponsor during her promotion to ultroloth, or was this a random killing via a most ironic weapon?




The past update happened way way way earlier than anything else that we know about Shemeska's past history. Worth taking that into consideration as you're putting together a timeline.

We'll revisit this most recent scene eventually and get a view of what was going on prior to and after her death there on the Waste, from the perspective of her killer, when it makes sense for the Storyhour to dive into that. But spoonful by spoonful. I won't turn on the clue fire hose and toss you all into the stream all openmouthed yet.


----------



## Shemeska

“Ok,” Toras narrowed his eyes, “Answers. But answers to what?”

The fighter didn’t trust the babbling, serpent-eyed crone any more than he trusted any given yugoloth, and it showed on his frown, and his question. Nearly every time that he’d received a vague description and a task to perform, there had been something more that had been conveniently omitted, and led to injury or near death. He’d had enough of riddles and half-answers that promised some nebulous truth at the end of a gilded road and secret door.

“To why the Oinoloth came here to Portent?” Nisha shrugged, her tail curled into a wiggling question mark. “But no, she kinda sorta answered that. Huh.”

“I doubt it.” Toras grimaced, “Like everyone else, she’s leaving something out.”

All the while, Clueless had stared not towards the ancient tiefling, but towards the osseous throne that grew from the bedrock at the center of the Great Hall. Part of him briefly considered using heavy magic to plumb the throne’s depths. If it wouldn’t deign to speak to any but a yugoloth, he could always seek to brute force an answer from the mind of the slumbering, primordial horror that spoke through it. Thankfully though, he dismissed the notion after but a moment’s thought.

“I don’t have the answers that you’re looking for. Not me. Not here.” Laughing Jane shook her head in the negative, the serpents that grew from her eye sockets lagging slightly from the motion of her humanoid body. “The answers that Lariset came to find and which she most certainly did find here, they came not from me, but from something else, something else entirely.”

“Channeled…” One serpent hissed.

“Whispered…” The second enjoined.

“An asp granting an Apple of Knowledge to a mind so rapacious...”

“But so naïve…”

Laughing Jane chuckled.

“But yet you’re sending us to someone or something else.” Clueless narrowed his eyes, “And that very much implies that there’s something tangential to this that you can tell us. Even if you don’t know what we’ll learn in Torch, there’s a reason why you know an answer is there and waiting for us. Why? What it is.”

The tiefling snarled, turning around and around, putting her hands to her head and snarling her fingers in her mess of wild, tangled hair. There’d been limits seemingly to either what she knew, filtered down by the baernaloth imprisoned far below in Portent’s foundation stones, or pried from the god-like proto-fiend’s torpid mind, and clearly she struggled to say more than she had.

Toras opened his mouth to say something, but Fyrehowl stepped up and put a hand on his shoulder. The half-celestial glanced over at her and sighed before patiently waiting for Laughing Jane to cease her fit and explain herself further, if she could.

She could and she did.

“The Oblivion Compass,” Laughing Jane whispered, her eyes lambent in the darkness, “It ticks and tocks, grinding away on the bones of Modrons, flush with the blood of parai, and the neurological flicker of screaming moignos.”

“The what?” Tristol’s vulpine ears perked with the faintest glimmer of dim recognition.

“I don’t like the sound of any of that…” Nisha grimaced.

“In the Waste it sits,” Laughing Jane continued, the light of her eyes flickering and small hemorrhages blossoming in the sclera as she pushed against her limits, “Winnowing away the potentials and possibilities, dragging reality down to the foreseen and rendered, engineered conclusion of The Thirteen. Find it. Know it. Understand it. It is key…”

With that the tiefling collapsed, panting and gasping as she suffered a series of minor convulsions, gritting her teeth and riding out the seizures before finally waving the party away and crawling up to the base of the throne and curling into a fetal position. She would speak no more, but she’d given them something to go on. It hadn’t been what they’d expected or hoped for, but it perhaps was far, far more.


****​

“So then…” Clueless looked at the others as the massive doors of the Great Hall shut behind them as they exited back onto the streets of Portent. “Where do we go next?”

Glancing up briefly at the skyline of Portent, each roof topped by spikes or barbed wire, and above them all the even more unwelcoming expanse of the bleak and lightless void between the Furnaces, the party realized that under normal circumstances any place would be better than their current location. But when their choices potentially included the Gray Waste, the available options precluded any notion of normal circumstances.

“Torch?” Fyrehowl mused, intentionally avoiding the suggestion of the Waste. The very idea sent a shudder through her spine.

Florian shook her head, “Tempus forbid we waltz into the f*cking Nadir.”

Tristol sighed, mentally calculating the swiftest way to the Waste or Gehenna’s gatetown, and just as importantly the quickest way to escape from either should the need arise, as it likely would. He’d heard of the Oblivion Compass in some tome or another, but it was brutally obscure and other than that passing reference it was a blank spot in his base of knowledge.

Nisha reached down and tugged upon Tristol’s tail, “You’re thinking about something. A lot.”

“If everyone else is ok with it, I’d like to go to the Waste first.” Tristol’s ears tilted back as he anticipated the reaction that he would momentarily receive. “I’ve heard of the Oblivion Compass. Vaguely. It’s obscure as heck and frankly if it seems important I’d like to at least get a better idea of what it is and what’s going on with it before we launch into anything else. So… thoughts?”

“Hey! I know! Let’s go from the number 2 ranked shithole in the multiverse, Gehenna, to the top ranked one!” Toras beamed a grin of abjectly false glee.

“I really really –really– don’t want to go to the Waste…” Fyrehowl muttered, even as she curled her arms about herself and glanced up at the sky. Gehenna was not doing the celestial any wonders.

“Listen,” Tristol grimaced, “I know how you feel. I don’t want to go there either. But I think we need to. I don’t know what we’ll find in Torch either, but if it’s linked in some capacity to the Compass, I think we should have some grounded idea of what it is prior to showing up and possibly asking questions about it.”

“Stop talking sense.” Florian grumbled. “I’ve been to the Gatetown of Hopeless and this is going to be even worse… but you’re right. We shouldn’t go to whatever there is in Torch without having a solid footing of what we need to find out.”

The others nodded, though the agreement was marked by more than few unhappy sighs. Nisha however opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again as she mentally debated asking what came to mind since none of the others had considered it a pertinent issue to raise so clearly it wasn’t but still…

“What’s Dubai’s Obscure Woe?” Nisha blurted out, her tail curled into a question mark.

Silence. Somewhere off in the distance a man screamed as he was stabbed, and in closer proximity the shouts of barkers and merchants produced a fog of white noise rising up from the marketplace, rising in pitch and distinct voices becoming more and more clear as the party said nothing as they turned to look at the tiefling.

Florian sighed and nodded, “I’d say something about stop talking sense to you too, but… Xaositect.”

Nisha smiled appreciably and gave a curtsey.

“Yeah, rack up another thing that we don’t fully know as we’re walking into a situation.” Clueless glanced back at the doors to the Great Hall. “We could always wait and see how long it takes Laughing Jane to wake up, but something tells me that it might be a few days and she likely won’t be any more forthcoming than she already was.”

“Torch won’t be much different than here,” Toras shrugged, slapping a fist into his other palm. “We can always beat up the first locals that try to assault us and get some directions and information from them.”

“I agree with this plan.” Fyrehowl grinned, her tail swishing behind her, “Quite wholeheartedly!”

There was more banter to be had, promises of higher quality drink back in Sigil once they were done, worries about yugoloths in the Waste or suddenly finding themselves in the midst of an active Blood War battle surrounding them for hundreds of miles in every direction, and all other manner of looming concerns both sincere and absurd. Minutes stretched by and the proportion of concerns grew more and more weighted to the latter, if only to delay their departure to the Waste, until finally Tristol began to cast, settling any debate or just complaints before they departed Portent and dove headlong into the heart of Evil itself in the Gray Waste.

Tristol’s plane shift enveloped the party in a burst of crimson radiance, with any outside observer noticing that the magical eruption swiftly faded to gray at the edges and then as it whisked them away from the Fourfold Furnace, it leached their fading afterimages left behind for but a moment of every trace of color like bleak and ghostly scotomas.


****​

Ominous clouds hung overheard like an impenetrable vault, black and heavy with looming, cold rain, the shut and tired eyes of despondent gods momentarily pausing from their grief. While Hell unendingly echoed with the wailing agonies of the tormented and the Abyss with shrieks of rage, loss, and triumph, a symphony of its Darwinian nightmare, the Gray Waste was altogether different.

“Why is it so deathly quiet?” Florian asked as she glanced about at the surrounding landscape, a stretch of desolation swathed in low fog and periodic eruptions of withered black trees. Above the bleak plain and below the black vault of the sky, there was naught but smothering silence. No cries, no distant ring of warring armies, but only the soft crunch of the party’s boots, paws, and hooves on the ashen soil. The Waste devoured noise to isolate, further impressing upon every wretch who walked upon it that they were alone, abandoned, and forsaken.

It was hideous, and it was only the beginning. Moments later the party felt the plane’s emotional and spiritual wasting.

“Gods above I hate this place…” Fyrehowl whimpered, tucking her tail between her legs. “Tristol let’s get there and get out… sooner than later please…”

“Working on it…” Tristol winced as a gentle breeze brought with it the unbidden thought that they would never return home, that he would be forgotten, that everything of meaning not only would be lost, but that it had never held any worth or meaning in the first place. Shaking his head to fight off the plane’s spiritual wasting, he began to cast a teleportation spell, focusing on the concept of the Oblivion Compass and what details he knew. Hopefully it would be enough.

It was.

Within the confines of the fraction of a second that it took the spell to whisk them across the metaphysical space of the Gray Waste to the base of the Oblivion Compass, the ever-present gnawing of the Waste ceased. But then they emerged from that space between spaces, staring up at the great and enigmatic horror they’d come to find. While the Waste’s spiritual leaching had been terrible before when they first emerged upon Oinos, there at the base of the Oblivion Compass it was worse. So very, very much worse.

Fyrehowl and Toras immediately stumbled and nearly fell, followed shortly thereafter by Tristol as their own celestial nature or heritage reacted with terror and sickness to the abomination that rose up out of the ashen soil.

An impossible, ever-shifting teratogen of reality rose up from the Waste, great things of metal and stone, gears and nightmarish clockwork from the fever dreams of an insane modron. There were hundreds shafts, the largest of them the size of towers, the smallest of them the size of a man, all of them festooned with a forest of cogs, some interlocking with their adjacent neighbors and others by themselves, alone, disconnected except for whatever might exist deep within the depths of the Waste itself. The greatest of them displayed massive dials and indicators like the faces of some mad clock, all arranged about a singularly large, central dial with dozens of hands and swirling circles of symbols, all of them displaying an indecipherable pattern of information, all of it written in the tongue of the baern.

Below their feet the dust of the Waste frothed with the vibrations, seen and unseen, of the great device. All around them resounded the cacophony of whirring, ticking, and pounding of gears and mechanisms thrust into the marrow of the Waste, thrumming and grinding away in a fearsome, unnatural capacity no engine of Hell could ever approach.

That was when they noticed the incongruities.

That was when they noticed the screaming.

The machine was not wrought of metal, cast, molded or forged. When one of the whirling spindles ceased its motion, the shaft was not crafted of steel or stone, the cogs not cast in brass or bronze, rather they were crafted from the bodies of modrons, thousands of them welded together. Broken apart, mutilated, fused like deformed, malformed and immortal neonates gasping for air, and like debilitated infants the modrons were inexplicably alive, their eyes bulging, maddened with agony, and all of them were screaming. The white noise of unending horror suffused the valley that held the Oblivion Compass, rising and ebbing in pitch and volume as the nightmare device spun in its mad, unintelligible pattern.

Winding about the screaming, turning modron amalgamations, ropes of black lightning erupted, occasionally lancing between the many cogs like the firing of a mad, crippled god’s neurons. The lightning was not solid black however, but instead composed of symbols, and not of baern, but the mathematical patterns of moignos, another native creature of Mechanus broken, tortured, and chained to the great Compass.

They too were screaming, erupting in a tangible froth of mathematical ephemera.

Spectral figures moved about, aimlessly stumbling and shambling about the valley’s surface, the immaterial, ghostly shadows of wayward parai stripped from their clockwork nirvana and bound to the baernaloth device for reasons unknown.

The party stood there, overwhelmed by the horror of what they had found, uncertain of how to react at the enormity and the pointless terror of it all as the Waste gnawed at their souls.

“Oh Tempus forbid,” Florian dropped to one knee, weeping uncontrollably. “What in the gods’ names is this?!”

As she dropped, she left behind an afterimage of herself standing, dozens of them superimposed on one another in different possible actions in each moment: potential iterations of reality, all of them worse than the actual. There was one Florian walking forward to grind herself to death upon the gears, another cutting her throat and bleeding out upon the Waste, another turning to cast at her companions.

For each member of the party it was the same. Under the reality-warping influence of the Compass, they each trailed and spawned afterimages of themselves, each of them going about routes of action that deviated in every horrible possibility from what did actually happen. Unbeknownst to them, each of them were in microcosm alternate timelines made manifest, haunting the present with the specters of what might or could have been.

Tristol stared at the gears, dials, and hands of the Oblivion Compass, his mind staggered by the scope and scale of it all, completely overwhelmed by the question of how the manifest horror had been created and what it even meant. Clearly they were crafted to some hideous purpose by the Gloom Fathers, but unable to even read their language, the aasimar wizard hadn’t the slightest idea of how to answer the very questions that it raised.

“You will never understand this…” One of the many shades that fractured off of Tristol turned, sneering to whisper in his vulpine ears. “You will never accomplish a fraction of what Karsus did. Mystra weeps at your wasted potential and the waste of her gift to you…”

Tristol screamed, tears in his eyes as the Compass whirled and turned, uncaring in the face of his agony.

“Get us out of here Tristol!” Clueless screamed, turning to the wizard even as his own possible-selves plunged Razor into their own chests or hacked off their legs to hurl away Shemeska’s gemstone in their ankles.

“Please just plane shift us all!” Nisha shook her boyfriend by the shoulder even as her shadows slid a knife between his ribs or handed him her own gouged out heart or rocked back and forth as they sat in the dust, babbling to themselves in scramble speech. “I don’t care to where! Just get us anywhere but here!”

Again, Fyrehowl vomited into the dust, and with the act caused the swirling, low fog of swirling dust to part, momentarily revealing the actual surface of the land beneath it. They hadn’t noticed it as they’d teleported in and, faced with the effects of the Waste and the Compass alike, they hadn’t stepped forward or walked about. But as the lupinal stared at the revealed ground beneath she realized that they stood not on the bedrock of the Waste itself, but upon a carpet of bones and great drift of other bones before them ground down to dust by the vibrations of the Compass.

Nearly every creature that had stumbled into that isolated Valley by happenstance or design and then fallen prey to the black hole of emotional agony and self-destructive apathy that existed there, they had never left. Those many millions of creatures were now dead and forgotten, consumed and gone in pointless depths in a plane of pointless despair.

Fyrehowl shook her head and glanced up, bleeding possible shadows of herself with each and every movement, half of them fallen versions of herself given up to rage and fury, bestial and snarling. They had to get out before it was too late.

“Tristol!” She screamed, “Get us out of here!”

Eyes wide, barely conscious of Fyrehowl and the others’ shouting, Tristol still stood in place, staring up at the Oblivion Compass’s central dial. The symbols in ancient baernaloth were completely unintelligible and beyond his comprehension, despite his having already whispered spells of comprehension and divination. True enough as his possible specter had promised him, he didn’t understand it, at least not now. As the shadows sneered and taunted, the wizard realized that there was nothing to be accomplished by staying there unless he wanted to condemn himself and his fellows to the same death as had taken the millions there before them.

Tristol’s lips were already moving and his brain already calling the planeshift into his mind’s forefront to whisk them all away to safety and the next spot on their trip at Laughing Jane’s urging before the scrying foci began to appear, each of them swirling with symbols in the same alphabet as the Compass itself. Who they belonged to and what their presence presaged was lost as the spell took effect and dragged the companions across the space between the planes, but for a fraction of a second the feeling of being observed and followed remained with them all in a way that had never before occurred.

They would know that gaze again.

They would feel that gaze without the intercessor of a scry focus.

They would feel it soon.


****​


----------



## Tsuga C

Is it possible to use the "heavy magic" to translate Baern into common safely? Being able to read it would undoubtedly save the party a lot of guessing and backtracking. Maybe the "heavy magic" could create a transparent eyepiece through which one could gaze upon Baern symbols without one's retinas bleeding and would provide subtitles for the Baern script. Did they try this at any point, or am I getting ahead of the storyline?


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## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> Is it possible to use the "heavy magic" to translate Baern into common safely? Being able to read it would undoubtedly save the party a lot of guessing and backtracking. Maybe the "heavy magic" could create a transparent eyepiece through which one could gaze upon Baern symbols without one's retinas bleeding and would provide subtitles for the Baern script. Did they try this at any point, or am I getting ahead of the storyline?




Heavy magic was always there as an option, but after some accidents with it, it became an option of last choice. And with the Oblivion Compass they had suspicions (given out of character) that they'd find some answers as they further explored in Torch (and beyond) given what Laughing Jane had told them. Admittedly that process spawned the plot arc that made some players cry. So yeah, that's on the horizon as well.


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## 81Dagon

Just caught up on the entirety of 2019. Some answers but even more questions. Nice to finally see Oblivion Compass.



Shemeska said:


> The past update happened way way way earlier than anything else that we know about Shemeska's past history. Worth taking that into consideration as you're putting together a timeline.



Has anyone tried to? I have a visual timeline program I use when I'm writing historical fiction, so I could probably pull one together. I'd just need some help hunting down dates.


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## Tsuga C

Shemeska said:


> Admittedly that process spawned the plot arc that made some players cry. So yeah, that's on the horizon as well.




Which I'm sure you promptly caught in vials to be stored and savored at a future moment when you're contemplating the joys and satisfactions of sublime cruelty. Go, 'Loth, go!


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## 81Dagon

Shemeska said:


> Heavy magic was always there as an option, but after some accidents with it, it became an option of last choice. And with the Oblivion Compass they had suspicions (given out of character) that they'd find some answers as they further explored in Torch (and beyond) given what Laughing Jane had told them. Admittedly that process spawned the plot arc that made some players cry. So yeah, that's on the horizon as well.




That arc is the Blind Clockmaker arc, isn't it?


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## Shemeska

81Dagon said:


> That arc is the Blind Clockmaker arc, isn't it?




Yes.

Currently we'll be learning how they got from Torch to the Clockwork Gap. I'll be rewriting and expanding the Blind Clockmaker arc proper as well.


----------



## carborundum

I've heard the name a lot but I'm not sure what it means beyond it being a baern. Can anyone enlighten me?


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## Shemeska

carborundum said:


> I've heard the name a lot but I'm not sure what it means beyond it being a baern. Can anyone enlighten me?




Harishek ap Thulkesh, the Blind Clockmaker. One of The Demented. Also one of only two named baernaloths in D&D printed canon (courtesy of me in Dragon magazine).

link to the story, which is admittedly spoilers for the storyhour


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## Tsuga C

Pharmacy school: bane of updates.

Regardless, I hope the summer is treating you well, Shemeska.


----------



## Shemeska

Also the bane of updates: freelancing deadlines.

Also also the bane of updates: broken HVAC as of this week


----------



## Andry

As a reader of this Story Hour from the beginning I really appreciate all you have written over the long years. From both Story hours which your characterization of yugoloths I borrowed for my old Planescape campaign which my players LOVED to HATE. To the great work you did for Paizo. I check every couple of days for an updates and I will continue to. Thanks again for all the entertainment and inspiration you have provided for our own home games. You truly are a one of a kind talent.


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## Shemeska

Andry said:


> As a reader of this Story Hour from the beginning I really appreciate all you have written over the long years. From both Story hours which your characterization of yugoloths I borrowed for my old Planescape campaign which my players LOVED to HATE. To the great work you did for Paizo. I check every couple of days for an updates and I will continue to. Thanks again for all the entertainment and inspiration you have provided for our own home games. You truly are a one of a kind talent.




Awww, thank you so much! As soon as my current freelancing is finished in the next two weeks or so my slate will be clear and I'll be updating here!


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## Tsuga C

Shemeska said:


> Also the bane of updates: freelancing deadlines.
> 
> Also also the bane of updates: broken HVAC as of this week




What fortuitous timing--busted HVAC in the middle of a heat wave. Well, it must've given you a homey feel like you were back home in Chamada and working for the General...or not. Stay cool and drive on.


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## Andry

Shemeska said:


> Awww, thank you so much! As soon as my current freelancing is finished in the next two weeks or so my slate will be clear and I'll be updating here!



Awesome Possum! May I ask what the freelance project is?


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## Shemeska

Andry said:


> Awesome Possum! May I ask what the freelance project is?




It is / they are [redacted due to NDA].

I'll let you know as soon as I can. It will be a while however. I did have a lot of fun however.


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## 81Dagon

Shemeska said:


> It is / they are [redacted due to NDA].
> 
> I'll let you know as soon as I can. It will be a while however. I did have a lot of fun however.



Ah, the dreaded curse of [REDACTED], ban of fans and freelancers alike...


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## Shemeska

So at GenCon my biggest project got announced: I'm writing Ruins of the Radiant Siege, one chapter in the Agents of Edgewatch AP.

So if you like my storyhour, based on one of my campaigns, you'll be able to play an adventure I've written. My first one!


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## 81Dagon

Woohoo! That is awesome! Fingers crossed for incoming planar madness! XD


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## Andry

Shemeska said:


> So at GenCon my biggest project got announced: I'm writing Ruins of the Radiant Siege, one chapter in the Agents of Edgewatch AP.
> 
> So if you like my storyhour, based on one of my campaigns, you'll be able to play an adventure I've written. My first one!



OOO is this for Pathfinder 1 or for Pathfinder 2?


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## Shemeska

Andry said:


> OOO is this for Pathfinder 1 or for Pathfinder 2?





PF2


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## Shemeska

Gehenna’s gatetown of Torch could never be said to be a pleasant destination, but from the base of the ancient baernaloth construct the Oblivion Compass, it certainly was by comparison. The relief the party felt the moment the magic of Tristol’s planeshift snatched them away and deposited them less than two miles out from Torch was immediate.

Once the spell’s light faded, Fyrehowl heaved and fell to her knees. Toras likewise steadied himself, accepting Clueless’s offered arm to steady himself from the violent nausea that was far too slow to fade.

“That was an absolutely stupid idea…” Florian panted, one hand clenching her holy symbol and the other braced in the stinking, scarlet mud at her feet.

“Well, at least we know what it looks like, even if it made absolutely no sense.” Tristol shrugged, him and Nisha both supporting one another. “Clearly we need to learn more. Hopefully we can do that here.”

Eventually the nausea and the fear faded, their proper senses returning, and with them the color returned to their flesh and they gathered their bearings, finally taking sense of just where they stood in relation to their intended target. The first thing was the acrid smell of decay and acidic swamp gas, and sure enough they stood within the margins of the so-called Blood Swamp that rose up and surrounded Torch, the landscape dotted with shallow rises in elevation along with rose the poorer districts of the gatetown while higher up the estates of the rich and powerful hugged the craggy, volcanic heights of the three mountains at torch’s heart: Karal, Maygel, and Dohin.

Unlike their brief venture into the depths of the Waste where the very landscape was leached of colors in a never-ending expanse of blacks, whites, and shades of gray, the landscape surrounding Torch was bathed in a brilliant scarlet glare. The swamplands themselves bubbled with scarlet mud, the natural result of soil filled with a mixture of natural iron-bearing ochre and the brilliantly colored plants that grew there, metabolizing the severe mineral content in their own unnatural capacity. The light that shown down, harsh and mocking, casting long shadows on everything it touched, was courtesy of the great portal that hung between the calderas of Torch’s volcanic mounts. Because of the periodic release of great clouds of volcanic smoke, the portal’s light absolute, but the intensity flickered with the intervening ash and soot, giving a strobe-like effect that was at best, disorienting.

“So, who or what is Dubai’s Obscure Woe?” Nisha asked as the group began the slow trudge through the swamplands towards Torch proper. “I was never entirely clear on that.”

“…” The rest of the party exchanged glances, the absence of an answer obvious in their eyes.

“Yeah none of us know…” The Xaositect smirked, the bell at the tip of her tail rattling.

“It wasn’t like we could get any clarifying details from Laughing Jane once she started seizing and passed out.” Toras lamented, and I don’t think any of us really cared to wait around in Portent in a place that the damn Oinoloth found fun enough to personally visit.”

In silence the party continued on, gradually making it out of the blood swamp and into Torch itself. Initially the city presented initially as a maze of tenements not altogether different from the architecture of Portent, though with broader streets and markets as they moved into higher elevations. The city reflected the influence of Gehenna, and the influence of the Blood War trade was high, represented by the myriad of mercenary companies recruiting for service in the War Eternal, propaganda posters plastered across buildings, and others offering bounties in jink for war deserters.

“I don’t think any of the mercenary companies are going to know or rightly care much about something in Torch.” Toras turned and shook his head as one company recruiter nodded and started to approach.

The Blood War recruiting was constant, though the party being both heavily armed and having a celestial amongst them tended to dissuade all but the most desperate, at least that was until they emerged into one of Torch’s marketplaces and found themselves face to face with a grandiose stall advertising, “DON’T BE YOUR OWN BOSS! WORK FOR THE LORDS OF GEHENNA!”

Sitting at the booth with a pen in one hand, a scroll in front of them, and a pile of neatly pre-counted purses of coin, a jackal-headed arcanaloth wrapped in purple silks beamed a fanged smile as they coolly walked a platinum piece along the knuckles of their free hand.

“Yeah let’s not ask them…” Fyrehowl softly snarled, doing her best to avoid eye contact.

“So who do you suggest we ask, other than…” Clueless turned to avoid looking at the ‘loth who was by that point obnoxiously waving at them.

“Yeah other than them,” Florian frowned and likewise turned her back on the still-waving and now wolf-whistling arcanaloth, “Let’s find someone in a position of civic authority, or whatever passes for it around here, and a bribe can probably find us the information we need.”

“Let’s wander off and do that elsewhere,” Toras suggested, “Because if we stick around here much longer I’m really sorely tempted to walk up, smile, introduce myself and then punch that stupid arcanaloth right in his smiling muzzle.”


****​

It was of course easier said than done. Torch, like Gehenna itself was a manifest nightmare of corruption and petty tyranny. Nominally the city was ruled over by the so-called Council of All, a citizens’ forum where decisions were made by some variable amount of one-person-one-vote, fist fights, threats, knives in the back, and vote buying. In practice the actual power brokers in the city were a few rich individuals, the source of their wealth distinctly unknown and never elaborated, and a group of six different thieves’ guilds with names like the Grey Orbs, the Kindred of Yoj, the Severed Hand, and so forth.

It didn’t take long for members of the last to conveniently find the party, aided by the wink, nod, and flip of the yugoloth recruiter’s platinum piece to the hand of one of a passing group of otherwise unremarkable tieflings.

Several blocks away from the marketplace and the party found themselves approached by a group of eight tiefling, and standing in the shadows of nearby buildings another four or five. It was nearly a mirror image of just a similar situation as they’d experienced in Portent.

“Greetings!” A clearly arcanaloth-descended tiefling with grey, fox-like ears rising up from her head over darker, bobbed hair, called out as she and her group stepped up to the party and also blocked the street. She clapped her hands together, the dark leather giving the muted sound of being lined with lead shot.

“Can we help you?” Clueless looked the tiefling up and down, thoroughly unimpressed.

“More with what we can help you with,” She blinked pale red eyes and gestured to each member of the party, “You being visitors to Torch and obviously unfamiliar with some of the gatetown’s laws, rules, and regulations.”

Nisha rolled her eyes profusely.

“We, my fellows and me here, we don’t want you all to get in trouble with any of the more… disreputable… groups and persons.” She smiled, peering at Toras and Clueless’s blades and then more pointedly at Fyrehowl. “Did you happen to get your permits in order before we started walking through Torch?”

“Permits?” Clueless sighed, glancing back to the others with a ‘you’ve got to be kidding me’ look, “What permits?”

“For your weapons!” The tiefling grinned, “For your cleric to practice their proselytizing! And of course for your celestial!”

“Seriously?” Toras sighed, “We need permits for that?”

“Seems appropriate don’t it?” The tiefling shrugged and ran a gloved hand through her hair, “Tell yourself whatever you like to justify handing over thirty gold each and you’re on your way…”

“Yeah,” Toras nodded, “I think all these guys look like they know directions about town!”

“I think they do!” Florian nodded.

At the sudden and unexpected change in their presumptive marks’ demeanor, the gang members exchanged awkward, questioning glances.

“Do you happen to know how we could get to some place called Dubai’s Obscure Woe?” Tristol asked as politely as he possibly could, the irony of which was recognized and met with a giggle by Nisha just before what happened next.

“Pardon?” The tiefling thug asked, shortly before she was kicked in the face by a lupinal, something she’d never experienced before.

Answers to their questions came quickly, without permits or bribes, lubricated by remarkably little actual blood but more than a few broken teeth scattered across the cobblestones of Torch.


****​

The Oinoloth’s face was devoid of emotion and expression as he stared down at Factol Larisette’s notes, the only indication of response to the text’s details being an increased radiance from the fiend’s albino-pink eyes.

“Hide from me all you wish, bury your name beneath layer upon layer of prosaicism, locked away and forgotten.” Vorkannis smirked, gesturing without a glance back to where the Overlord of Carceri knelt naked, on her knees, serving as nothing more than a stand to hold aloft one of her master’s tomes. “We both know how well that can work. Lock away something and surely, oh surely it will rip its way free.”

For hours the Oinoloth had poured over the notes from Hashkar’s safe and others stolen from archives in Sigil. In response to the two dead or vanished Fraternity of Order factols’ notes, Vorkannis had written almost an equivalent length of text, almost all of it feverish and labyrinthine mathematical formulae. Unlike the Oinoloth’s meticulous spellbooks, the mathematics were less perfect and much less artistic, with whole pages crossed out as dead ends or false routes towards some ultimate end. More ominously, Vorkannis, normally restrained, supernaturally confident and perpetually in control was anything but, and time and again the archfiend paused to pace about the room, often trekking to and from the patch of ice and ashes in one corner of the room to meditate wordlessly before returning to his calculations. A line of footsteps in perpetually frozen ashes formed a line between the fiend’s table with the stolen manuscripts and the chamber’s far corner.

“Not complete…” Vorkannis mused, “You fools tumble to vast conclusions and fail to realize that you’ve found only the first part of four or five.”

Abruptly the archfiend snarled, upending the table and casting the papers onto the floor, ignoring them and walking towards an elaborate illusionary model of the Inner Planes. Gesturing he zoomed in a conceptual representation of Quasielemental Mineral, specifically the border between that plane and the Positive Energy Plane.

“Clean up that mess…” The Oinoloth belatedly remarked, sending Shylara into a scramble to retrieve and collate the stolen papers and his own. It made for a bizarre scene with an archfiend on her hands and knees like a chambermaid set against the backdrop of a robed ultroloth standing in a catatonic trance, shivering and bleeding from the spike of cobalt crystal embedded in its forehead.

Obsessively the Oinoloth manipulated the planar model, tinkering with the area of focus and shifting the details based on input from the calculations.

“Shall I make diplomatic overtures to the Archomental Crystalle?” Shylara’s voice asked with soft, terrified deference.

“No.” The Oinoloth’s answer was swift but without any denigrating dismissiveness. “I have zero interest in the political theatre of the elemental planes. We are taking what is mine, not bargaining for something the natives are themselves wholly ignorant of in the first place.”

Shylara nodded and neatly placed the last of the papers back into place, watching curiously as the Oinoloth began to smile, his eyes focused on an image of the Tower of Lead.

“One of Four.”


****​

The Blood Swamp that surrounded Torch should have swallowed the ruins of Dubai's Obscure Woe, given how the lay of the land actually situated the estate in a shallow, local depression. Yet inexplicably, hauntingly so, it did not. More than anything, the ruddy colored muck seemed to withdraw from the ruins' proximity, healthy flesh stretched thin, bleached of color, and withdrawn in the face of a ragged mass of scar tissue in the plane itself, the evidence of some ancient wound, or perhaps an encapsulated tubercle, still lurking with hidden, deathly potency.

Yet for all the harrowing nature of the landscape, for all the flickering, distant furnace-light of the portal to Gehenna itself, the first steps onto the abandoned estate's grounds carried absolutely nothing fearsome or untoward. If anything, it seemed sheltered from the surrounding dangers of the swap and free of Torch's bloody political squabbles.

"This was not what I expected..." Fyrehowl remarked as she cautiously trod over the broken flagstones of the estate's central courtyard. "Are we sure that we're in the right place?"

“I’m pretty sure she wasn’t lying, especially after Clueless made her eat that platinum piece as payment for her teeth.” Toras chuckled, “That was a nice touch.”

“Was it a bit much?” The bladesinger asked, “I thought it was a bit much. I was just tired of these stupid yugoloth-light tactics… still tempted to go back and smack the tar out of that damn arcanaloth.”

“I kicked her teeth in and I’m pretty sure she swallowed a few.” Fyrehowl shrugged, “I hardly think making her swallow that platinum piece was too much beyond what we started off with.”

Clueless chuckled but said nothing more as the group slowly progressed into the ruined estate. Centuries old structures had largely collapsed into shells of stone, stripped of their original grandeur by the passage of years and the humidity of the surrounding swamps. Yet it was odd how other than the structural collapse of the manor house and outbuildings, there was absolutely no evidence of vandalism, looting, or squatting.

“Does anyone else find it absolutely bizarre that at the edges of a city literally ruled by yugoloths, yugoloth-spawn, and fellow travelers of yugoloth ideology that this place just sat here until it collapsed without anyone claiming it as their own?” Clueless motioned with Razor’s tip towards one ruined wall and then another, “Or squatting here to hide from issues in Torch proper? Or to have torn the place apart in search of hidden treasure or just to strip the walls of anything they could sell for a few jink?”

“It’s odd yeah…” Fyrehowl nodded. “And it doesn’t make any sense. You’d only expect this if something was here making sure that none of those other things happened. But here I am not feeling anything untoward at all.”

“Yeah we’d expect to all be cursed, or have you dive out of the way without warning, or you puking from something hideous elder evil yadda yadda…” Nisha winked.

“Yeah you’d think!” The lupinal shook her head, “I don’t know. Tristol?”

“There’s no weird magic. There aren’t any alarms. There aren’t any traps.” The wizard shrugged, “Which I find even stranger because from what what’s her name mentioned…”

“Little miss got her teeth kicked in.” Fyrehowl interjected.

“Her yeah,” Tristol laughed, “Because as far as she knew, this place was set up by a wizard way back when, and that nobody visits because those who do either find nothing or they don’t come back. There’s nothing here to suggest an actual wizard lived here. Not any self-respecting wizard who’d actually use their talent and leave some traces of their art.”

On that note they continued deeper into the ruins, passing through the ruins of an antechamber and gallery and into the middle of an interior courtyard that once housed a pool, the original lilies and other waterborne flowers long-since replaced by other, less pleasant vegetation, wild, snarled, and overgrown. The polished blue tiles at the bottom of the pool lay cracked and caked in silt, and through it all still no traces of obvious magic.

Passing through the courtyard and into the next portion of the ancient manor, it didn’t take them long to find something immediately out of place, in every possible way.


****​


----------



## Andry

More, More, I need more!


----------



## Wasteland Knight

I am finally caught up with this legendary Story Hour.  I eagerly await further revelations 

One minor question - what happened with Alex the alienist?  PC or NPC? This character came into the story with lots of unanswered questions but shortly was gone, leaving me scratching my head.


----------



## Shemeska

Wasteland Knight said:


> I am finally caught up with this legendary Story Hour.  I eagerly await further revelations
> 
> One minor question - what happened with Alex the alienist?  PC or NPC? This character came into the story with lots of unanswered questions but shortly was gone, leaving me scratching my head.




Alex was a PC, albeit a short lived one. Some of the story elements associated with him (such as former Bleaker Factol Tollysalmon) get explored later on.


----------



## Tsuga C

Shemeska said:


> Alex was a PC, albeit a short lived one. Some of the story elements associated with him (such as former Bleaker Factol Tollysalmon) get explored later on.




Alex, Alex, Alex... nope. I don't remember Alex. I remember a lizard tout-guide with a big hat back in Sigil, but I don't remember Alex.


----------



## Wasteland Knight

Side question, going back a few years there was the side adventure that resulted in Shemeska gaining the Shadow Key.  Will Ashlanaya and Surefoot ever show up again?


----------



## Shemeska

Wasteland Knight said:


> Side question, going back a few years there was the side adventure that resulted in Shemeska gaining the Shadow Key.  Will Ashlanaya and Surefoot ever show up again?




Surefoot made some cameo appearances late in the campaign (as IIRC they were created by Clueless's player and so there was impetus to have them reappear in the mainline game), but Ashlanaya does not, having basically gotten out of Dodge while the getting out was good to avoid Shemeska tying up loose ends of that whole affair. She did however inspire Fyrehowl's player years later for at least one tiefling paladin of their own in a later game.


----------



## Shemeska

The snarl that cut the air was cold and aberrant, followed by the chittering clack of mandibles as a ghostly, phosphorescent figure manifested behind Toras, an equally ghostly trident clutched in two of its four insectile arms. Without warning to Tristol’s magic or even to Fyrehowl’s preternatural sense of the Cadence of the Planes, the ghost yugoloth’s weapon plunged forward into the half-celestial’s back.

Toras screamed in pain. While it made no immediate and obvious appearance outwardly upon his features, given the nature of his own supernaturally-long lifespan, as the immaterial trident ignored his armor and plunged through his flesh, with the icy pain it spread, he also felt it take something from him altogether more valuable as it feasted upon three years of his life.

“F*CK!” Toras shouted, turning and tumbling backwards, even as he lashed out with his blade in a wicked backhanded slice. The blade passed effortlessly through the fiend without any response, except for a soft, malicious hiss of a laugh from the creature.

“What the hell is that?!” Nisha blurted out.

“Don’t let it touch you!” Toras shouted in warning as he glanced at the Xaositect and Tristol at her side, the least defended members of the party. “It’s a ghost. It’ll age you if it touches you.”

Fyrehowl shrugged and interposed herself between the mezzoloth and the others, her own immortality uncaring of such an attack. As she stepped closer to the fiend however, while she would have normally felt the physical effects of its evil, this time she felt that but also a profound sensation of alien, unnaturalness as if the creature’s sheer existence violated the very laws of reality.

It did.

“That’s just not possible.” Tristol stammered, “We’re on the Outer Planes. There’s no ethereal plane here. You can’t have ghosts without an Ethereal overlap!”

Laughing, its gem-like eyes glittering like a pile of a necromancer’s black sapphires, the ghost mezzoloth lunch forward a second time, jabbing at Fyrehowl. The lupinal only barely dodged each attack, with the creature being far beyond a simple mezzoloth in skill and ability.

“To say nothing of it just not being possible to have a ghost fiend in the first place!” Tristol continued to object to the reality of the creature attacking them, protesting it without having moved from where he’d stood when it had manifested. “You can’t have a ghost outsider! You can’t have an undead outsider in the first place, regardless of the type! I mean…”

“I love you but shut up!” Nisha grabbed her fiancé and dragged him back and away from the fight as Fyrehowl continued to dodge and Clueless stepped up next to her.

“Florian a little help here perhaps!” The bladesinger called back to the cleric as he and Fyrehowl traded attacks with the mezzoloth. The fiend hadn’t managed to strike either of the two hyper-nimble party members, but of the five attacks of theirs that struck deep into the fiend’s immaterial core, only one of them, a stab from Razor, had actually affected the spectral entity.

The cleric blinked, thus far in the fight too stunned by the unnatural mezzoloth’s appearance to act. Shaken from her surprise she held up her holy symbol and directed the power of Tempus towards it, an action that would have incinerated any single undead being short of the most ancient of liches or demiliches without any hesitation, such was the power of her deity’s investiture in her.

Absolutely nothing happened.

Florian’s mouth opened, hung open wordlessly as her brain tumbled in disbelief. Her call to the Foe Hammer had been clear, but Tempus had not heard her. Her invocation of the god’s power had simple been snuffed by where she stood. Something terrible and unnatural within the sanctum of Dubai’s Obscure Woe had rapaciously devoured the god-granted powers at her beck and call.

Somehow sensing her inability to call upon her divine patron, the ghostly mezzoloth stared and laughed, seconds before a blazing bolt of blue-white energy lanced from Tristol’s outstretched hand to strike the fiend in the center of its chest. It contorted and shrieked for but a fraction of a second before evaporating into nothingness, burned away by silverfire.

“Thank you Tristol.” Florian said, taking a moment to catch her breath.

“When did you learn that?!” Nisha whispered to the wizard, poking his side with her tail. “That was awesome!”

Tristol smiled, his ears flattening and drooping in slight humility, “It’s a little tiring, but yeah, that’s pretty recent. Ask me later and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“There’s something deeply, deeply *WRONG* about this place…” Florian stared at the others, “We almost got our asses handed to us by a damn mezzoloth: a GHOST mezzoloth that shouldn’t even be able to exist, and this place silenced by connection to Tempus like it didn’t even exist.”

“Oh you hadn’t noticed that before?” Toras sarcastically muttered, shaking his head. “We’re pretty much f*cked if turning around and walking straight from here and through that floating portal to Gehenna sounds like an improvement upon our situation…”

Fyrehowl and Clueless grimaced and nodded their heads in agreement.

“Hey… uh… everybody?” Nisha raised a hand and gestured to a doorway in one of the room’s walls, a door that hadn’t been there before. “That door wasn’t there before now. And there’s a staircase going down.”

“I’d say that something noticed us.” Tristol took a single, uneasy breath. “Who wants to go first?”


***​

“Precious, precious pet of ours. Beloved tormented flesh. My oldest, dearest friend. We love you. We love you so very much. Listen and repeat. Know. Listen. Suffer. Suffer for us…”

Ancient lips, cracked and bleeding dark, syrupy ichor smiled in the darkness, the only light being the milky white radiance from the baernaloth’s eyes and the pale, equally milky green light from a gemstone clutched lovingly within its withered, unnaturally elongated and spindly hands and fingers.

Transfixed in space before the ur-fiend wavered an image from Gehenna. Three volcanoes flickered distantly in the void as a cabal of jackal-headed arcanaloths hovered in the air above and around a titanic, gibbering blob of flesh, each of them carefully reciting names in Abyssal, Infernal, and Yugoloth. Suspended above the creature and equidistant to the arcanaloths hovered a gleaming, multifaceted emerald stone, the Vuulge, a mirror of the one clutched by the baernaloth. Each name was read and remembered, even as the Maeldur et Kavurik cried in each moment of agony.

Daru Ib Shamiq the Lie Weaver smiled with each of the doomed, damned solar’s whimpers, and periodically he whispered into the mirror-Vuulge, stroking his fingers through the air like petting the head of a distant, beloved pet.

The light from the fiend’s eyes and the mirror-Vuulge served only to illuminate a sparse portion of the cavern within which the baernaloth laired. The floor, dark and covered with debris and a spattered carpet of coughed and spat up phlegm seemingly absorbed the light, leaving the rest of the cavern unseen. But then from above and slowly descending, a series of light-sources more brilliant than those of the Lie-Weaver’s stretched out and showed the nature of the cavern itself, scattering and refracting across untold numbers of words and phrases physically manifested and lodged within the fluid, gelatinous matrix like clots in the walls of a slowly festering abscess.

Not looking up at the light of the descending party, the baernaloth smiled, a sheen of yellow mucus glimmering upon its teeth. Had it hircine ears, they would have swiveled in the direction of its visitors. The image of Gehenna before him flickered and vanished.

“Who are you?” Clueless was the first to speak, the gemstone within his ankle glowing painfully with the baernaloth’s presence.

“I’ve been wondering when you would stumble across my doorstep and knock upon my door,” Daru spoke without yet looking up, “Ever since you met my Brother/Sister the Chronicler. Suffice to say I know of you. Greetings to you as well Fyrehowl of Elysium.”

The celestial’s eyes narrowed, her fur already bristled as she realized that despite the ur-fiend’s presence she did not feel the waves of nausea that she expected. Part of it was the fiend’s intent, and part of it was her own partially fallen status, a status that she herself had not yet come to realize, a status that the baernaloth immediately saw and savored like a sugared plum.
“But I am remiss in only acknowledging the two of you.” The Lie-Weaver looked up, his eyes white and snakelike, glancing at his audience. “Greetings to you Toras, Florian, and Tristol, godslaves all of you in one form or another, and to you Nisha, child of Limbo’s whimsy.”

Amidst the frowns and narrowed, suspicious eyes, Nisha tilted her head, shrugged, and bowed.

“You know precisely who I am mortals, or rather you know a title perhaps, or only a pseudonym.” Daru chuckled, all the while a dull pressure filled the backs of his guests’ skulls. “Humor me. What have you been told?”

“You’re a baernaloth…” Toras spat, “That’s all we need to know.”

“Says the mortal touched by my little creation from above, seven years and twelve days taken.”

Toras glared daggers at the baernaloth but said nothing.

“A half celestial, you will have centuries of life and health ahead of you, should they not be snuffed by blade or teeth and so the diminishment of those years is by comparison nothing.” Daru spread his spindly fingers, “But as you reach your appointed time and struggle against destiny as all mortals things do, will you regret that loss, even one day longer? The aged move mountains, the aged sacrifice thousands for half the time you have remaining be added on. Ask and I will restore it for you.”

The fiend reached out, its withered, diseased hand stretching towards Toras.

Tristol’s hand went to the handle of his blade and he stepped back, “Don’t.”

With a look of sorrow upon his face, the baernaloth sighed and withdrew his hand, “Alas, I would have done it for free…”

Unseen and unnoticed, the baernaloth’s words –his lies– took physical, tangible form, crystallizing within the mucoid matrix of his lair, there to join the untold millions slowly being processed and rendered down for purposes dark and unknown, his own personal Loadstone of Misery in microcosm.

“But to answer your question, I am Daru ib Shamiq, the Lie Weaver.” The fiend’s eyes burned bright and fierce in the darkness, the latter title the first time that the party had ever heard of it. The implications of it were of course not lost upon them in the slightest.

“How do we read and interpret the Oblivion Compass?” Standing at the party’s rear, Tristol called out loudly and with confidence.

If the aasimar wizard or any of the others expected to see a look of shock pass across the baernaloth’s features at his request, they were sorely disappointed. Daru ib Shamiq’s eyes remained milky white and clouded, without any recognition… and then came not a gasp, a sneer, a snarl, or an abrupt refusal: the baernaloth smirked, knowingly so.

“Very well.” Daru spread his hands once again and stared up at the mortals and celestial seeking his wisdom, “I can tell you. I will tell you. But in exchange you will first perform a series of tasks for me.”

Fyrehowl immediately snarled. It wasn’t so much her celestial nature that warned her of the fiend’s looming bargain, but the prescient shudder that she felt through the Cadence of the Planes at the ur-fiend’s words.

“Besides… what other option do you have?” Daru’s eyes sparkled, reflecting the dull glow of the gemstone in his lap. “You have been there, have you not? Observation will accomplish little. You would need to listen to the wailing of the moignos and plumb their thoughts for years or more, and no doubt you have no desire to return, given its effect upon you…”

The party members stared at the fiend, an uncomfortable silence rising up, broken only by a sudden coughing fit by the baernaloth that left black, ichor flecked upon his lips and a gobbet of mucus spat unceremoniously upon the floor.

“What would we need to do?” Clueless asked, ignoring the suddenly painful throb in his ankle as the words left his lips.

“It is but a simple task.” Daru explained with a smile, “I give you an object and you deliver it to another mortal with whom I have had my dealings. They will be expecting it, and they will accept it from you. Upon doing so I will give you the next task. You are free to abandon the first task or any subsequent ones at any time of your choosing, but understand that I will not give away my secrets without such reciprocity in full.”

“And if we refuse to perform your task?” Toras glowered at the baernaloth, the withered figure still slouched in darkness, its limbs anemic and non-threatening. It had not made any display of power like its brethren the Chronicler, and so for the moment, the half-celestial’s bravado held steady, even if the rational portion of his mind told him to flee from where he’d come and never look back.

“Then you leave without the answers you seek, answers to questions that no doubt Laughing Jane thought to plant within your head. She knows enough to point you correctly to where such answers dwell, but unlike her I have no compulsion to offer my advice.”

“Why have us perform these tasks? Why not perform them yourself? Why not hand them to a yugoloth who’d piss themselves and scamper about doing precisely as you told them?” Clueless felt the gemstone’s pain abate at his tone of doubt, if only for a moment.

“I am ancient beyond your comprehension mortal.” Daru sneered, the flesh stretched tight against his goat-like skull, “Do you see me getting up and about the planes on my own? Do you see me breaking the yugoloth sense of self-sufficiency? What good are they if they know their creators watch them still and might intervene? I would never be alone again. Every greater yugoloth would seek me out and I will have none of that.” The baernaloth coughed and spat once more, even as whole passages of words crystallized within the ceiling above him, unseen. “Allow me to the pull the puppet strings of my youth but once more, let me rattle your feet and have you dance in a manner of speaking, even if such is far from guiding the tides of the ‘loths within the Blood War, or listening to the death rattle of a pantheon of gods. Give me this one small thing and you will have your secrets.”

Turning away from the fiend, though its eyes and the dull pressure within their heads never wavered, the party conversed amongst themselves, debating the risks and the possible reward.

“It’s a f*cking baernaloth.” Toras insisted, not caring if the creature heard. “It’s going to have us do something hideous.”

“That would be obvious.” Florian sighed, “But is it worth doing if we can stop something worse?”

“I’d normally say yes,” Fyrehowl gave an uncertain shrug, “But I have a bad feeling about this, even if my vote is yes when it comes down to it.”

“I don’t think Laughing Jane -whatever her reasons for sending us here in the first place- would send us to our doom.” Tristol eyes the baernaloth’s gleaming eyes warily, “She clearly loathed the Oinoloth, and that in and of itself satisfies me to at least see what that thing wants from us.”

They argued back and forth for several more minutes, weighing the benefits versus the risks and finally, they turned back to the ur-fiend and nodded as one.

“Tell us what you want us to do.” Clueless spoke for them all.

“Deliver something for me.” Daru ib Shamiq explained, “Deliver for me something old and treasured. Give it unasked and unwanted, but very much expected, to one who must have it. This is a simple task, and then he, the recipient, will give you the next to perform. Such it will be: three minor errands in all until you return here to me and receive the answer to your wizard’s question. Thus as it is with all things seemingly: the rule of three, the unity of rings, and myself now the center of this all.”

And then without gesture or invocation, and indeed without the sparkle of any magic that Tristol’s eyes could discern, the object of their task appeared within the baernaloth’s outstretched hand: a black hardwood box.

The baernaloth held the box within that hand for several seconds as none of the party members wished to be the one to approach the creature and take it. Finally Clueless stepped forward and gingerly accepted it, careful to avoid actually touching the baernaloth in the process.

The bladesinger immediately stooped from the unexpected weight of the box, substantially heavier as it was for its dimensions of 6 inches by 4 inches by 3 inches. It was carved from a deep black hardwood, with corners of soft molded lead, tipped with points of gold. The top surface was emblazoned with an elaborately carved figure with a snarling face and blinded eyes, almost like an imp or a small child with fiendish features, and along the sides of the box, a thin silver line denoted a seam and two halves to it all, though it displayed by keyhole, no latch, and no hinges.

The box was cold, with a soft tracery of frost tracing lines of snowflake crystals upon its surface only to melt from the heat of the half-fey’s hand as he moved the box about to examine its curious, macabre appearance.

Fyrehowl’s ears perked and she stared at the box as Clueless moved it about, detecting the faintest sound of gears and sporadic motions or even scuffling, skittering movement within its confines along with a slow ticking, either of dripping water or a pendulum within a clock. It had made no such sounds when the baernaloth had yet held it within his hand.

“Deliver the box to Muroth Chalmar, a mortal necromancer upon your wizard’s own prime sphere of Toril, within the borders of the nation of Narfell to be exact in the region known as the Rawlinswood.” Daru ib Shamiq explained, “The half-elf lives within a reclaimed and rebuilt tower at the fringes of the city of Dun-Tharos. Once you are there within relative proximity, the box itself will draw you towards his location. It is meant for him.”


***​


----------



## Tsuga C

I was once standing in the St. Mary's River south of Sault Saint Marie in the U.P. of Michigan and casting a spinner bait out into the river. A large freighter came down the river, displacing water as it traveled south. I was fairly close to shore and no more than mid-thigh in depth while the freighter was out in the middle of the narrow shipping channel, but I could readily feel its presence. This ship was big enough to alter the flow of the river, pressing and displacing the water in front of it and drawing a strong current behind it as it passed.

I imagine the baern must possess a similar natural trait that bends reality around them to an extent. To be close to it would be to feel the press, the weight of its power and presence, like the freighter displacing all those tons of water.


----------



## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> I was once standing in the St. Mary's River south of Sault Saint Marie in the U.P. of Michigan and casting a spinner bait out into the river. A large freighter came down the river, displacing water as it traveled south. I was fairly close to shore and no more than mid-thigh in depth while the freighter was out in the middle of the narrow shipping channel, but I could readily feel its presence. This ship was big enough to alter the flow of the river, pressing and displacing the water in front of it and drawing a strong current behind it as it passed.
> 
> I imagine the baern must possess a similar natural trait that bends reality around them to an extent. To be close to it would be to feel the press, the weight of its power and presence, like the freighter displacing all those tons of water.




It's an apt comparison. I tend to use them as particularly malicious forces of nature. A thunderstorm slowly rolling over a mountain and darkening a forest, the wind carrying a faint static charge raising the hair on the back of your neck as it draws near and the breeze rattles the nearest trees... if a thunderstorm could sneer, point at a single farmer and go, 'You know what? F*ck that one guy in particular.' and in the process of incinerating him with a bolt of lightning, cause an inheritence squabble by his children that leads to a family blood feud, that a few generations later causes a war in which hundreds of thousands die, and the storm smiles and swirls.

In my campaigns any interaction with the baern is going to be less a case of talking to an NPC than it is to simply be caught up in their current or their gravity well and being dragged along for the ride: some will drown. Some of the baern are more like this than others. In this storyhour you'll meet virtually all of them at some point or another.


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## Andry Sunrunner

Woot Update!  You made my month. Thanks for all you do Oh King of the Crosstrade!


----------



## Shemeska

Writing the next update now. We'll meet Larsdana ap Neut in person, for the first time, this next update.


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## Tsuga C

Pleased to meet you, Miss Larcenous Apple Newt!


----------



## Shemeska

Helekanalith paused to adjust his glasses, then with a single fluid motion he returned to taking notes.



The Keeper of the Tower sat in his office, staring across his desk at the trio of senior apprentices who stood there, their eyes glazed over, staring into space. One of them, a copper-furred individual with a notch missing from one ear, the scar tissue at the edge gilded with poured and magically molded gold, stood with his mouth open with prominent sialorrhea, slowly dribbling a pool onto the floor. All three of them stood there awkwardly, barely in control of their most basic capacities, but despite that, their hands adeptly moved and plucked at the pages of ephemeral, immaterial, nonexistent books and scrolls. Through their minds the Keeper riffled, browsing through their surface thoughts to collect the contents of their mental delving.



Every arcanaloth, be they in Gehenna or not, had mental access to a shared pool of knowledge built into the structure of the Tower Arcane by its architect and creator, Larsdana ap Neut, the First Majestrix of the Fourfold Furnace. Using the pool was something virtually every arcanaloth did, and frequently so, if judiciously, as availing themselves of it was also a liability in that it recorded what one was searching for and accessing, and every other arcanaloth was privy to that information.



Larsdana herself never used the Tower’s pool. Not directly. Like Helekanalaith at present, the Witch-Queen of Gehenna had somehow managed to overwrite the basic nature of every arcanaloth that passed through the furnaces of Gehenna or held tenure within the Tower. The Keeper’s predecessor had inserted a loophole in their nature by which she could utilize the Pool by proxy through their minds without their knowledge, their desire, or the Pool retaining a trace of that attempt for any others to discover, including Helekanalaith as her successor as Keeper.



The present Keeper had discovered that tool relatively late, over twelve centuries after he’d usurped and imprisoned her, and its very existence terrified him, as it clearly meant that she’d utilized it on him during his tenure as her direct apprentice. It also left open the question of just what else remained written into the very bones of the Tower and himself and his kindred caste that she’d engineered on her own or in concert with the baernaloth that had once dwelled within her: Alashra the Dream-Eater. His own spiritual parasite was abjectly silently, and had been for many long years.



Unbeknownst to the Keeper, his ever-present, ever-watching tapeworm of the soul, the baernaloth Sarkithel fek Parthis, had not spoken a word since Vorkannis the Ebon had emerged onto the Waste. When the Oinoloth had slowly, inexorably hunting down and massacred most all of the altraloths and killed his predecessor Mydianchlarus, he’d eliminated the greatest rivals he faced for his present throne. That was only a side effect of his actions however. His intention through it all had not just been a quest for purity, his stated desire, but to slay the hosts of the Demented. Helekanalaith, Charon, Xenghara, and Taba were the only known ones yet extant, the Keeper for obvious reasons, Charon because he had betrayed Mydianchlarus in favor of the Ebon and since then obeyed with conspicuous deference, while Xenghara had been delivered into the arms of the Hag Countess and his fate in Hell was a thing of horror, and Taba because the shapeshifter had so far defied their attempts to drag her back to Khin-Oin for execution.



The Keeper’s notes as always formed images and artwork from the words and symbols he wrote to transcribe his apprentices’ thoughts and through them his research pulled from the Tower’s communal knowledge pool. He rarely had a particular image in mind, allowing his subconscious to guide his stylus as it painted, and this time it dwelled on one image in particular: Larsdana’s wicked smile gazed back at him from the page.



Even in her imprisoned impotence she haunted him.



Turning and once more adjusting his golden spectacles, Helekanalaith gazed at the gemstone hovering above his desk, acting as a lamp: the gemstone that housed Larsdana’s bottled essence.



“We are finished here.” The Keeper muttered, placing his notebook and stylus down upon the desk, and with a flourish of his fingers and mentally incanted phrase, all three apprentices vanished, reappearing in their own chambers without a second having passed from their perspective.



Standing up, Helekanalaith set about a blur of activity, double and then triple checking the layers of wards upon his office that blocked entry both physically or magically, and diverted divinations to believably but wholly fabricated scenarios. Upon satisfying himself as to the sanctity of his demesne, the Keeper gathered Larsdana’s gemstone within his hands, cradling it against his chest.



Shedding his robes, Helekanalaith hovered in mid-air, crossing his legs and lowering his head to stare at the gemstone’s light pouring through the gaps between his fingers. Focusing on the sounds of the gem’s occupant’s screams, the Keeper’s consciousness faded and entered the demiplane-like mental construct through which he could directly communicate with his eternally suffering partner/mentor/beloved/prisoner/victim/victimizer.



Helekanalaith blinked, his eyes adjusting to the surrounding darkness. His mental projection stepped forward, now dressed in stunning, regal robes, fingers and neck adorned in precious jewels, and more than anything else that adorned him, a predatory smile adorned his muzzle as he gazed down at her.



At the construct’s center she sat, sitting in open space, suspended in mid-air, her pale blue and black robes dangling below her, fluttering in an immaterial breeze.



“Greetings Helekanalaith, to what do I owe this pleasure of meeting once more?”



The Majestrix of Gehenna’s tone was cunningly, deceptively pleasant, but the features upon her face were blank and emotionless, the same agonized juxtaposition that she’d adopted since her betrayal so many long millennia earlier.



Helekanalaith waited a moment before answering her question, taking in everything that she was once and still in some manner continued to be to him. The jackal-headed arcanaloth who looked up at him was regal and pristine, her fur a pale shade of light browns and tan, mottled with patches of gray, with her muzzle fading to darker brown and then nearly black. Her hair atop her head offset the prosaic appearance of her fur, a striking shade of crimson that fell to shoulder length, pin straight, with the trailing edges fading to jet black, though it did not remain so constantly: blink and the former Keeper’s hair would reverse to black with trailing edges of brilliant crimson as if she’d dipped its length in a sacrifice’s blood.



The once-Keeper’s eyes were a piercing shade of lavender, and in contrast to her once-apprentice with his own fit and chiseled physique, her own body was an afterthought to the power and knowledge locked within. Larsdana’s body was thin to the point of frailty, somewhere between wiry and anemic, and where the neckline of her robes plunged down, below the brilliant star sapphire amulet that hung there, her flesh was taught against her clavicles.



Helekanalaith reached out to stroke at her face and she did not withdraw.



“I visit you with a question Larsdana,” Helekanalaith said, running a claw along the edge of her jaw, “My Oinoloth once said something to me, ‘You are so very much like Larsdana. A pity that she never met me in person.’”



Larsdana’s face remained impassive, hiding her thoughts even as she turned her head and brush against his fingers, and even as with that touch a soft echo of her agonized screaming manifested softly through the environs of the construct.



“What do you know of Him? His history is nonexistent within the records of the Tower.” Helekanalaith asked, even there his voice inflected with a measure of fear and respect for his master. “What do you know of Vorkannis the Ebon, Oinoloth of the Waste? Who is he?”



Larsdana could resist answering him, and she would suffer ever more for doing so. She could resist answering, but of course Helekanalaith would know, and thus she did not hesitate.



“I knew everything about him.”



Helekanalaith blinked at an answer he did not expect.



“Tell me everything.” The current Keeper demanded.



“Alas my love,” Larsdana’s tone was gentile and almost regretful in her own way even as she eyes gleamed, puissant and purple, “But I can tell you nothing.”



“We have forever my beloved.” Helekanalaith ran a claw across her lips with deceptive care, gentle and loving in his own way, as much as their kind could ever be, “There is no objective passage of time within this place. This will be painful. It always is.”



“No my beloved…” Larsdana looked up at him, her words carefully chosen, “Student you misunderstand. I *knew* everything about him. EVERYTHING.”



“… knew?” Helekanalaith’s mind stumbled over the specific tense in her answer and its implications.



“Alas…” Larsdana’s voice trailed off, but her eyes remained locked upon her lover, “I know only that I once possessed that knowledge and those memories, but I no longer have them, amongst many, many others. All by intent.”



For the first time in their meetings since he’d usurped her position, Larsdana smiled. Wickedly. Tauntingly. Even in her imprisonment she remained in some measure of power over her apprentice.



Helekanalaith swallowed, fighting back his apoplectic rage as his hand left her face and dropped to his side. He wouldn’t give her that satisfaction.



“You cannot discover what I cannot hide because I no longer possess it my love.” The Witch Queen of Gehenna continued to flash her ivory fangs, her eyes gleaming with presence and power even in the absence of either. “It was good seeing you again my love. I would dearly love to make these meetings more frequent, but you look as if you should go and attend to other matters and other thoughts…”



Larsdana began to laugh, and as Helekanalaith vanished from the mental construct, her laughter remained with him.





****​




Their departure from Dubai’s Obscure Woe was swift, their spirits lifting by the passage of every footstep away from the Lie-Weaver’s lair. As soon as the ground transitioned from the lair’s flagstones to the crimson, stinking more of Torch’s surrounding swamps, Tristol didn’t even ask the others to gather close and prepare themselves before he waved his hands and swiftly incanted a planeshift.



“…Thank you for that!”



“So very much!”



The thanks flowed freely as the magic faded in a series of twinkling stars fading like real ones at the first light of dawn. The surroundings stood in stark contrast to those in proximity to Gehenna’s gatetown, the unnatural, blood-red swamp and the volcano-dominated skyline replaced with the pines and other conifers of deep, terrestrial forest.



The fresh, deeply resinous smell of conifers filled the air, and long shadows trailed along the ground, cast through the surrounding wood by the light of a late afternoon sun.



“This is the second time in a short while that we’ve been to Toril.” Nisha quipped, “What’s up with your home world?”



Florian and Tristol smiled and shrugged.



“That being said, what can either of you tell the rest of us about where we are?” Clueless glanced at the two of them, “And also how far off target we are on that planeshift?”



“Well, I aimed for a location called the Great Dale that sits between two huge forests, the Rawlinswood and the Forest of Lethyr. We’re in an area that was once part of the ancient empire of Narfell, ruled by evil clerics who bound all manner of fiends into their service even as they pledged themselves to servitude post-death to various demonlords.”



“Nice folks, clearly.” Florian laughed.



“Ultimately Narfell came into conflict with a neighboring empire known as Raumathar, known for their love of monstrous constructs. The two empires warred for centuries and largely obliterated one another.” Tristol looked around, “And the Rawlinswood ended up swallowing most of old Narfell. The place is still littered with ruins, ancient spell-traps, and tons of still extant demons, not bound to anyone, but still stuck on the Material plane and not happy about that.”



“Lovely.” Toras rolled his eyes, “So what was this Dun-Tharos?”



“That,” Tristol nodded, “Was the capital of Narfell. Completely obliterated by Raumathar, and since controlled by demons until in recent history a bunch of druids ran them out, at least until they were driven out by a priest of Talona called the Rotting Man who promptly summoned –back- a ton of demons, and that’s where things stand now.”



“So how close to Dun-Tharos are we?” Fyrehowl asked, pausing and keening her muzzle to the wind and sniffing. The wind carried only the scent of trees and rotting loam, no demons or other creatures for the moment.



Tristol took several minutes to scry about the vicinity and compare what he saw to both his own knowledge and a conjured map. He smiled halfway into his search: they weren’t far off.



“Not very far.” The aasimar said, “I aimed for the Great Dale and yeah, we were off target, but off target in a positive direction. If the tower we’re looking for is near Dun-Tharos, we’re maybe an hour’s walk from the city’s ruins.”



“…where the Rotting Man rules…” Florian stuck out her tongue.



“We just met a baernaloth.” Toras shook his head, “I’m not worried about demons or demon worshipers. Bring it.”



Clueless and Fyrehowl chuckled at the fighter’s bravado.



“Beyond being close to Dun-Tharos, how are we going to find this specific tower?” Florian asked, glancing to Clueless.



The bladesinger hefted the box, warily looking at it. It was cold in his hands. “I haven’t noticed anything yet. I suppose we’ll find out when we get closer…”





***​




That hour’s walk estimate ended up being a generous estimate by far. As they travelled through the Rawlinswood the party was ambushed no fewer than three times by mutated, diseased wildlife, demons in thrall to the Rotting Man, and a party of warriors led by a deacon of the so-called Chosen of Talona himself. The end result of all three conflicts was much the same: Toras’s bravado growing more and more, ultimately ending with him picking up the lead Talonite priest by the neck and slamming his head into a tree to predictable effect.



“You know?” Clueless said, cleaning blood from Razor’s blade. “A year ago I would have been genuinely worried about walking through the Rawlinswood like this. Now? Now this sort of thing is normal and every fight has just been a delay.”



Even as Clueless smiled, Toras’s laughter and mocking insults to Talona and demons echoed in the background at full volume as the fighter reveled in their latest victory.



“He’s going to draw more enemies you know…” Fyrehowl mentioned with a shrug, sitting down upon a moss-covered chunk of masonry covered in carved symbols from ancient Narfell.



“Ehh…” Clueless smirked, “Let him enjoy this. I think we’ll be fine unless the Rotting Man himself decides to show up. And so long as it’s obvious that we’re not actively walking towards his seat of power I don’t think he’s going to bother after we’ve been stomping everything that we’ve come up against. We’ll be fine.”



Clueless’s words would normally have been accurate without any real boast, and that of course was when the baernaloth’s ‘gift’ made its presence known as within the satchel that the half-fey had placed it, it tugged against its container and tugged towards the northeast with enough force to make him stumble.



“The f*ck…” Clueless stammered as he staggered forward with the force of the box’s abrupt motion, only recovering once he’d restrained it, clutching it in his arms.



The others collectively stared at him as he cradled the baernaloth’s box, firmly resisting its irregular jerks in one specific direction. Softly they could all hear a sudden whirring and grinding of clockwork gears and tumblers, the sound carried with a bizarre resonance making it sound as if the box’s interior was some vast and fathomless chasm.



“What’s it doing?” Nisha edged away with a gingerly lift of first one hoof and then another, while beside her, Tristol stared at the utter and complete absence of magic surrounding the ur-fiend’s object.



“It’s tugging towards the tower we’re heading for presumably.” Clueless said, still resisting the box as it insistently tugged to the northeast like an iron bar towards a natural loadstone.



“Well, the sooner it gets us there the sooner we’re bereft of it, whatever it is.” Fyrehowl eyed the box warily. “I just get the strangest feeling from that thing. And it’s not like the fiend gave us any idea of what it was or what it was going to do.”



“Then I suppose we get going…” Clueless glanced down, watching the box’s impish face staring back up at him. “Sooner we’re done with this, sooner we’re free of this.”





****​




Continuing forward, they fought a group of lesser demons and narrowly avoided another patrol of the Rotting Man’s followers and then they reached something of a respite from all such worries. A stone rose up at the edge of a clearing where the forest had been cut back decades earlier, with newer growth only starting to rise up over a wide field of grasses and wildflowers. The stone itself was newly carved and newly placed, though of the same native stone as the fallen rubble of ancient Dun-Tharos, emblazoned with symbols in that nation’s ancient language, as well as more modern Torillian tongues and Abyssal. All of the carvings read the same: “Beyond rises the lands of Master Muroth Chalmar, necromancer. Beware lest you serve forever in death.”



“That’s a pleasant greeting.” Florian smirked. “Just please no undead.”



Tristol glanced at the stone, his eyes flickering with a pale blue glow as he examined the magic on the stone itself and that which blanketed the landscape.



“He can back up that claim.” The wizard said, “But if it came to it, we’ll be good. But I don’t think it’ll come to it. I think he just wanted to be out here away from anyone that would bother him and his research, however unseemly as we can presume it would be.”



Tristol turned back towards the stone, stepped forward and placed his hand atop the necromancer’s symbol. “Master Chalmar, greetings. My compatriots and myself wish to enter your lands and deliver a package to you, entrusted into our care by another. We do not know its nature or identity, only that it was to be given over to your care. We seek only to deliver it and be on our way.”



At first there was no response, only the rustle of the tall grass with a sudden breeze.



“Maybe he’s not home?” Nisha chuckled.



“Well that’s that! I guess we have to kick the door in and have fun!” Toras said, a hand moving towards his sword. He didn’t get the chance.



The box tugged once again, forcing Clueless to restrain it, “Hold your evil horses, we’ll get there…”



That was when they received their response as with a sudden rattle of bone on bone a trio of skeletal warriors rose up, assembled from bones scattered and hidden on the ground, out of view. Blue and black necromantic energies flickered at the joints and juncture between bones, binding them together and empowering the undead creatures who turned as one to regard the visitors to Chalmar’s domain.



Those three where only the beginning. More and more figures rose with preternatural silence from grassland of the necromancer’s domain, ending with over a hundred more spots in the tall grass rustling with fury, a sickly blue glow emanating from them as more and more skeletal figures rose up. Secured by necromantic ligaments and tendons to articulate the bleached white bones, each skeletal warrior was clad in the rotted, rusted armor of a dozen or more civilizations and cultures, some separated by more than a thousand years, each figure clutching a broken spear, rusted axe, or shattered greatsword that each told the same story: untold men and women had died there in battle after forgotten battle, but each now answered to the call of a new master.



Each of the dead turned like the first three to regard the party, blue-black lightning flickering in their hollow eye sockets, energy through which their master observed and watched from afar. They watched but they did not step forward.



A moment passed and another figure rose up at the head of the undead legion, a spectral figure dressed in the formal dress of a diplomatic emissary from Old Narfell. This figure gave a gentle half-bow and approached up to the edge of the necromancer’s domain.



“May we proceed?” Tristol asked as the others tensed for a fight.



Without a sound the specter nodded and a fraction of a second later the skeletal legion nodded as one. The nearest of them extended a hand and gestured them forward, turning as they approached and swinging its arm in the same direction as the tugging of the box still clutched in Clueless’s arms, pointing the way to their master’s abode.



Warily the group complied, walking past the boundary marker and proceeding into Chalmar’s self-claimed domain. They did not do so unaccompanied, and as they traveled, every twenty feet additional scores of undead rose up from the ground, both skeletons or the translucent shades of ancient warriors from a myriad of cultures’ dead upon that unhallowed ground, all turning to watch them, and then falling down into pieces or discorporating as the party passed them by, only to be replaced by others every step of the way.



At any given time over two hundred undead accompanied the group, hinting that tens of thousands lay dead below the level of the grass, all of them capable of being called upon by Chalmar should the need arise in his defense.



As silent as the dead that watched them, the party trekked across Chalmar’s domain, following a path effectively outlined by the undead guardians and further demarcated by the insistent, ever-present tugging of the baernaloth’s box.



Twenty minutes of walking later and they arrived at the end of the grasslands, the edge of the resurgent forest, and beheld Chalmar’s tower. Rising up in the shadow of ancient, towering trees, it rose up a dozen stories, reconstructed perfectly from the ancient rubble of an ancient structure from Old Narfell. The original fortress lay in ruins still, stretching back into the old growth forest.



High up the tower’s height, a single figure looked down from a window, watching them approach, their features obscured by the distance. They were there for but a moment and then they were gone.



“I’d say that we’re here.” Tristol said, glancing at the skeletal hill giants that flanked the main entrance, the stairs rising up to their shoulder height and ending at a reinforced door covered in an intricate display of runes hand-carved into the wood.



“You know, I really, really hope that this goes well.” Florian said, glancing behind them where there now stood a veritable army of hundreds of skeletal soldiers, silent and motionless, with even more rising up behind them in an ever-expanding wave of the undead rising up and barring any escape.



“Ah f*ck…” Clueless glanced behind at the skeletal army and exchanged a wary glance with Florian.



“Maybe we can convince Chalmar that this was a COD?” Nisha giggled, trying to lighten the mood and pointedly ignoring the army behind them.



The spectral emissary walked before the party, floating up and partially through the steps, and then vanishing the through the door. Several minutes passed and the door opened, though only partially, revealing a thin figure standing in the entryway gazing out at them warily.



“What do you bring me,” A distinctly mortal voice called out, “And why does one of Mystra’s Chosen serve to make such a delivery?”





****​


----------



## Xkrampus

@Shemeska  been following the story hour for what feels like forever and I just wanted to say Bravo. You spin a web of plot like no other, I tip my cap to you. 

I actually just wanted to drop a comment as more of a personal inquiry - do you ever satiate requests for details on the meta plot of this campaign? I'm sure you have STACKS of notes and GBs of files of notes on just fragments of this campaign, and a decade in we only see a fragment of the wonder you've woven here - does anyone ever request details outside what is offered herein? I myself have a billion questions lol...I was going to PM you but to be totally honest I couldn't figure out how....

Regardless, you've done an amazing job and I look forward for more to come. Thanks!


----------



## Shemeska

Xkrampus said:


> @Shemeska  been following the story hour for what feels like forever and I just wanted to say Bravo. You spin a web of plot like no other, I tip my cap to you.
> 
> I actually just wanted to drop a comment as more of a personal inquiry - do you ever satiate requests for details on the meta plot of this campaign? I'm sure you have STACKS of notes and GBs of files of notes on just fragments of this campaign, and a decade in we only see a fragment of the wonder you've woven here - does anyone ever request details outside what is offered herein? I myself have a billion questions lol...I was going to PM you but to be totally honest I couldn't figure out how....
> 
> Regardless, you've done an amazing job and I look forward for more to come. Thanks!




Thank you so much! _blush_

I get such questions occasionally, but I try to avoid answering them because of the risk of someone then spoiling the story for everyone else. Given that I've been slowly working at this for over a decade, I want the eventual end to come on my own terms and my own pace.

That said, I will clarify details on the plot or confirm/deny/hedge speculation in small part on a case by case basis. But you can assume that very little in the storyhour is ever just randomly put out there unless I intend to return to it at some point. To quote Anubis/The Guardian of Dead Gods from Storyhour 2: "Nothing dies a quiet death."

I seriously have enjoyed the storyhour here as much or more than my published work for Pathfinder and D&D. And hey, I've got a Pathfinder Adventure Path entry on the way next year, so folks will -finally- be able to play through an adventure I've written up with the benefits of professional development, as opposed to the handful of folks who I've run for at conventions.


----------



## Xkrampus

Shemeska said:


> Thank you so much! _blush_
> 
> I get such questions occasionally, but I try to avoid answering them because of the risk of someone then spoiling the story for everyone else. Given that I've been slowly working at this for over a decade, I want the eventual end to come on my own terms and my own pace.
> 
> That said, I will clarify details on the plot or confirm/deny/hedge speculation in small part on a case by case basis. But you can assume that very little in the storyhour is ever just randomly put out there unless I intend to return to it at some point. To quote Anubis/The Guardian of Dead Gods from Storyhour 2: "Nothing dies a quiet death."
> 
> I seriously have enjoyed the storyhour here as much or more than my published work for Pathfinder and D&D. And hey, I've got a Pathfinder Adventure Path entry on the way next year, so folks will -finally- be able to play through an adventure I've written up with the benefits of professional development, as opposed to the handful of folks who I've run for at conventions.




Well perhaps (or perhaps not) a more mundane question that is just itching the back of my brain - what in the hells (gehenna, hades, abyss, or otherwise also applicable herein) was the creature that Jeremo had tending the trees under his palace? I believe it had tentacled limbs and scared the party right well!

If you cant answer I totally understand.


----------



## Shemeska

Xkrampus said:


> Well perhaps (or perhaps not) a more mundane question that is just itching the back of my brain - what in the hells (gehenna, hades, abyss, or otherwise also applicable herein) was the creature that Jeremo had tending the trees under his palace? I believe it had tentacled limbs and scared the party right well!
> 
> If you cant answer I totally understand.




Not Jeremo, but the original "Jester" of which the Palace of the Jester is named. As for what the creature there was, you'll find out later on in the storyhour. To say what it is within the context of the campaign would be a reveal to a few things, both mentioned already and not.

That being said, the out of game answer is that the Jester and his servitor are shamelessly based on the titular character of "Count Magnus" from the M.R. James story of the same name.


----------



## Shemeska

Six sets of eyes blinked in unison, not at the appearance of the necromancer, Muroth Chalmar, but at his statement, and the implication that Tristol was one of Mystra’s Chosen.



The aasimar turned around with a brief, embarrassed smile and waved off the blizzard of questions.



“He’ll explain later!” Nisha whispered, the bell at the end of her tail rattling excitedly. “The silverfire is SO cool!”



Still standing in the doorway, robed in black and silver, the necromancer awaited an explanation, while behind the party, his army of the unquiet dead stood awaiting his command, cold fire licking within hollow eye-sockets. “What brings you here?”



The half-elf’s voice was cautious, tinged with the fear of a man whose unquestionable talent had never fully swallowed up his own fear of rivals, or of his possible failure. While his appearance was yet youthful, his expression, mannerisms, and the weight of long years in his eyes carried his actual age and the gravity of a life lived in persecution, occasional flight, and perpetual fear.



“I’m not here on the Lady of Mysteries’ behalf.” Tristol explained, painfully aware of the necromancer staring daggers into his eyes, and wholly unaware that within his own pupils swirled the blue and silver stars of his patron goddess’s symbol. “But on another’s behalf entirely. As we said, we’re here to deliver something to you.”



“Few are aware that I or my tower even sit here on the edge of the old capital.” Chalmar’s vivid golden eyes narrowed, and his fingers, stained by ink and necromantic reagents alike twitched in preparation for a storm of casting, should it be necessary. “I’ve been here for more than two hundred years in quiet solitude, alone, working on my art. You would not be the first adventuring company to come here with ultimately fatal delusions of taking some rumored treasure trove within these walls.”



“We are, technically, an adventuring company but that’s not why we’re here.” Toras shrugged.



“Nor would you be the first followers of one or another god, driven to zealotry and self-righteousness with a desire to cleanse the wood of a vile necromancer…” Chalmar fixed his eyes upon Florian.



The cleric of Tempus glanced down at her prominent holy symbol and then back up to meet the necromancer’s burning gaze, shaking her head and waving away the half-elf’s concern. “I’m not here on the Foe-Hammer’s behalf.”



Chalmar refocused his concern to Tristol, a twinge of jealousy dancing his eyes, “Perhaps Mystra’s newest chosen comes to me to explore avenues of magic denied to him in far-off Halrua?”



Tristol ignored the necromancer’s smug expression. “Necromancy isn’t a particular affinity of mine, but neither is it a forbidden school. Mystra has given me much, but neither did she send me here to you.”



“Then who sent you here?” Chalmar asked, genuine curiosity drowning out his prior concerns. “Name them, and produce their so-called gift.”



Tristol turned and motioned to Clueless to produce the box. “It was given to us by the Lie Wea…”



The wizard’s voice abruptly trailed off, the baernaloth’s title and name left unfinished on his tongue as Clueless lifted up the box and Chalmar caught sight of it. The response was immediate.



“Oh…” The necromancer went still, his face paled, and his hands carried an obvious tremor.



“Uhh…” Fyrehowl muttered as her ears twitched and swiveled a moment before she glanced back to see the undead army collapse into thousands of piles of inanimate bone and slowly dispersing clouds of ethereal protoplasm, their spirits unshackled and the magic animating them suddenly released by a master no longer requiring their protection.



Clueless stepped forward and held up the box, which the necromancer accepted with a soft, almost inaudible sigh, a twitch present in his left eye. On the verge of mental and physical collapse, an archmage reduced to a terrified child inwardly screaming in abject horror, Chalmar reached out and took the box from Clueless with only a brief glance down at the wickedly smiling face carved into its lid.



“You will know it when you see it…” Chalmar’s voice was a whisper as he took his eyes away from the box in his hands and looked back up at the party, his face blank and drained, his hands trembling.



“Excuse me?” Clueless asked.



“You will know it when you see it.” The necromancer explained, “The next step for you in your quest of three parts of which this is your first, and for me my last. Somewhere on the Ethereal Plane, on the fringe of the Border and the Deep, three days from Toril’s edge lies another Wall of Color to another sphere and other dreamers there. The dreams of that place bubble up flickering gold and other colors.”



In his hands, Daru’s box had begun to rattle with the internal motion of gears, dull, hollow, and distant, the sound of heavy mechanisms falling into place at a profound distance but drawing ever closer by the moment.



Chalmar recited a series of coordinates based on a number of well-known Ethereal landmarks and repeated his first statement, “You will know it when you see it. You’ll find your way clearer after a day or two.”



“What’s wrong?” Tristol asked, reaching out a hand in worry and concern for the necromancer’s sudden change in attitude.



“Are you alright?” Clueless asked, his eyes drawn to the box whose eerie face now yawned wide, almost hungry looking.



Chalmar’s eyes flickered with a moment of rage at their concern before he turned away and stared back at the box in his hands.



“What deal did you make with the Lie Weaver?” Tristol asked, “We might be able to help.”



“No. You can’t.” Chalmar whispered to himself, tears welling in his eyes.  “Please leave. All of you. Time is short…”



Warily, Clueless and Tristol withdrew to the tower’s entryway, only to have the necromancer wave a hand and close the door with a dull, hollow thud. The last thing they saw was Chalmar staring down at the box and abjectly sobbing.



“What.The.Hell.Was.That?” Toras bluntly asked.



“What did we just do?” Florian’s eyes were alight with angered regret. “He knew exactly what we brought him, and he was –terrified– of even mentioning its maker’s name!”



As the party argued amongst themselves on Chalmar’s doorstep, Fyrehowl’s ears remained perked and her eyes continued to stare at the door, where beyond it, Chalmer remained with the box, sobbing uncontrollably. Abruptly the weeping paused and to the lupinal’s enhanced senses the necromancer grew silent and the box was opened.



“Guys? Guys!” Fyrehowl barked, “We need to leave.”



“What?” Clueless asked before becoming aware of the changes a moment later.



The air had grown cold, bitterly so, and extending out from beneath the necromancer’s door, a snowflake pattern of frost crystallized upon the stones. Inside the tower, Chalmar’s voice caught and choked.



“We need to leave now. NOW!” Fyrehowl warned as within the tower, audible through the closed gate, Chalmar began to scream.



“What the f*ck?!” Toras shouted as the necromancer’s screaming grew louder, beyond the scope of what his vocal chords should have been able to support and from within the tower, the sudden sound of wood and stone tearing and splintering erupted into a deafening roar.



“RUN!” Fyrehowl shouted as the party collectively scrambled to descend the stairs, so shocked at the sudden turn of events that they hadn’t thought to teleport to immediate safety or even to fly either by wings or by magic.



Behind them the screaming continued, pausing only for the necromancer to inhale. Around him the tower began to shake and tremble and as the layer of frost had before it, a creeping carpet of rot and decay erupted from below the door, spreading out in an all-devouring radius from where Chalmar had opened his gift.



“Oh sh*t it’s eating the tower!” Nisha screamed, inexplicably running several inches above the actual ground.



“F*ck f*ck f*ck!” Toras screamed, running at breakneck speed as the tower’s foundations abruptly sunk several feet into the now black, diseased, and festering ground.



Whatever the necromancer’s gift had unleashed, it continued spreading outwards, speeding up as the tower imploded, collapsing and disintegrating in the maw of whatever devouring horror finally silenced the necromancer’s screaming.



“KEEP RUNNING!” Florian screamed.



“F*ck running!” Clueless yelled, sprouting wings and taking to the air as the corrosive radius reached the forest edge, leaching thousand year old evergreens of their color in seconds and tearing them down into dust.



“Tristol do someth…!” Nisha shouted before the aasimar’s magic plucked them all to safety, leaving the necromancer’s tower and every creature living or undead to their fate, never seeing the circle of obliteration finally cease its spherical hunger more than a mile from its start.





****​




“What the blazing hells was that?!” Florian’s eyes were wide with terror, demanding answers just as much as her spoken question.



“I have absolutely no idea.” Tristol replied, his ears perked and his tail bottlebrushed. “There wasn’t any obvious magic. None. It just happened.”



“F*cking fiends…” Toras muttered. “Let that be a lesson to anyone making deals with them!”



“Uh…” Nisha’s tail curled into a question mark, “Wouldn’t that kinda sorta be us right now?”



With that uncomfortable moment of introspective realization, the party grew silent, catching their breath from their escape from the baernaloth’s “gift”. Whatever the box had been or had contained, it seemed clear that Chalmar had been painfully aware of just what it was, and whatever his deal with the fiend had been, the arrival of the box had been expected, and the creature behind its arrival predicated a certain agonizing level of resignation and acceptance.



With those thoughts in mind, the party drifted in space, surrounded by a manifest sea of milky, swirling gray ethereal mist. Bereft of gravity, any landmarks, and even a visible (or existent) horizon, they slowly looked about and sought to ground their location and figure out their next steps.



“Welcome to the Ethereal Plane.” Fyrehowl waved about at the lack of recognizable detail, though she knew where she was and an idea of where to go due to the influence of the Cadence.



“Lovely total absence of landmarks, and me without my planar compass. So where now?” Florian asked, sarcasm masking lingering terror at recent events.



“Assuming that Chalmar was telling the truth, once we figure out how far off target we were on my planeshift,” Tristol said, pulling out an actual planar compass, “We have a solid roadmap to where we need to go… wherever that actually is. Apparently we’ll know it when we see it.”



“That’s not ominous at all…” Toras sighed.



As the wizard went about figuring out their location, another ominous realization was made.



“How did Chalmar know where to tell us where to go next?” Fyrehowl asked, “Either he was being directly instructed on what to do by that damn box or something through it, or else he was told what to tell us, whenever we arrived, whoever we were, a very long time ago. That implies a certain level of disturbing foresight. I don’t like the implication of apparent destiny when it’s being puppeteered by a baernaloth.”



The truth of that implication and the reason why would become apparent soon enough, but it faded away from their minds as they determined their location and the path towards their next objective. The mists of the Border Ethereal melted away into the depths and then, sometime later, perhaps hours, perhaps days in the oddness of the Deep, the mists peeled back to reveal a landscape swirling with innumerable and radiant spheres, gossamer soap bubbles foaming, forming and popping, upon the surface of a single great sphere hovering in the depths: a mortal world viewed from the Ethereal and there upon its surface a Wall of Color.



One of the bubbles however was different from the others. It pulsed with a subtle heartbeat that caused the surrounding mists to tremble, and the color it radiated was not among those of the conventional rainbow. Impossible to describe, it yet existed distinct and unique from the others bubbling around its periphery.



“What is this?” Florian asked, gazing out at the incredible vista stretching out for thousands of miles in all directions.



“They’re dreamscapes on the Ethereal surface of a mortal world.” Tristol explained, pointing to the unique one that seemed to hover before them, calling and beguiling, “And that one there is a very specific one.”



“We’ll know it when we see it.” Clueless remarked, “That’s for sure.”



“So it seems.” Tristol nodded, “Though I don’t know why we’re here or whose dream we’ll be entering.”



Toras looked at the dreamscape warily, “How dangerous might this be?”



“It shouldn’t be dangerous at all.” The wizard shrugged, “And that’s honestly worrying.”



“At least we’re not delivering a box this time around...” Clueless tried to smile.



Glittering in the deep, the dreamscape taunted them like a golden bauble found in the depths of desolate, danger-filled dungeon: valuable but very likely hideously cursed. Of course, like a cursed artifact, the only way to determine the value or the danger was to find out directly. The group realized this of course, and one by one they dove into it, swiftly they realized that anything touched by the corrosive attention of a baernaloth could only end in misery.





****​




Flung from the depths of the Ethereal Sea and grounded upon the rocky shores of that singular dreamscape, the dissonance between the two was immediate and confusing. Built from the subconscious desires and self-image of a single mortal whose slumbering mind shaped that bubble reality like the blind, stumbling will of some idiot god, such places often carried elements of the dreamer’s hopes, aspirations, worries, and fears. The dreamscape of Afa Sozhelos, Lord High Reagent of the Purple Flames was many things, but above all else it was a manifest landscape of the dreamer’s delusional self-confidence.



They found themselves in a vast plaza lined with massive, looming statues, lake-like bronze cauldrons filled with burning oil, and distantly the sounds of a vast, unseen crowd cheering and stomping their feet.



“Someone has a high opinion of himself…” Toras rolled his eyes, gazing up at the unblinking, smiling faces of the statues.



The statues were carved of deep black granite, their purple robes painted and adorned with similarly painted decorations, illusory symbols and a halo of stars drifting above each carved head. Each carved face was stern and possessed of a youthful energy, but beyond the carved smile there was something deeply unsettling, if yet unseen.



“You came. You finally came to me.”



The voice was smooth, mellifluous, and reflective in tone of the landscape that surrounded them.



The group collectively turned about to face the man the statues had been modeled after, and it while it was possible that the man’s dreamscape persona was aggrandized from life, such was uncommon, and the statues that towered overhead it seemed had not unduly lionized their subject.



Afa Sozhelos, Lord High Reagent of the Purple Flames was tall, clad in purple robes pulled, pinned, and belted in place to exposure a lean, muscular physique devoid of scar or blemish atop his dark brown, almost black skin. He smiled to expose perfect teeth, ivory white, and the hair atop his head was black and tightly coiled, while the beard at his chin was dyed a deep red. He raised his chin and motioned out of habit as if he expected his guests to bow and abase themselves, even as his smile was one of warmth, like a father to his children.



“Were you expecting us?” Fyrehowl asked, “I apologize, but we did not know who to expect when we arrived here.”



“We came here on another’s words, but knew not what or who to expect. My name is…” Tristol began, only to be cut off by the High Reagent as the human walked past the group, talking to himself as if they barely existed, a slight tilt to his head.



“No no, your ignorance was to be expected.” Afa muttered to himself, “The drop of water knows nothing of the path of the surrounding river that turns a great water wheel, or what that drives to completion. No no.” He looked back up, a terrible ferocity in his stare and the gleam of a sociopath’s madness, “You have no knowledge of this place, or I, or your role here… but I do.”



Madness gleamed in the man’s eyes.



“No introductions are needed, you visitors here to my dreams.” Afa waved away any questions as he continued to walk a circuit around the party, the golden bangles on his sandals softly chiming with each step.



The party exchanged wary, uncertain glances, while Tristol stared at the dreaming afterimage of magical auras present upon the man in real life. Despite the religious nature of the decorations on his regal garb, the auras were exclusively arcane in nature, and they were powerful: a sorcerer whose innate power had seemingly convinced him of his own faux-divine calling and fueled the rise of his own religion, no divine patron seemingly required. Such had drawn the baern’s malevolent curiosity.



“In another dream, many years ago now,” Afa gestured to each member of the party that they might be illuminated by his wisdom, “The gods whose blood flows in my very veins came to me, and one of them gave to me a prophecy.”



“Pray tell us, what was that prophecy?” Clueless asked warily.



Distantly the sounds of cheering voices grew louder like distantly rumbling on the horizon foretelling the arrival of a terrible storm.



“I was told that you would come to me to bare revelations about my future, about my divine task set before me.” Afa’s arms were raised up into the air, and within the clouds high above there appeared images of his past as a young boy, discovering his magic, and putting it to use. The images were terrible to behold, of a child, then a young man, convinced of his own divinity in a world low in magic swiftly accruing a personal cult, then seizing political power, and then demanding worship by his nation’s subjects, all without moral guidance, and all without pity or empathy.



“We were given no message to tell you…” Fyrehowl began, only to be cut off by the madman.



“That matters not.” Afa laughed as the cheering grew ever louder. “Nothing you could bring to me is more than I have already realized myself. It was only the knowledge of the proper time, and your arrival itself is that knowledge.”



Toras and Florian exchanged worried glanced. Those believing themselves touched by divine providence without the presence of an actual deity, rarely did they come to beneficent conclusions.



“It is time.” Afa laughed once more, his fingers unconsciously twitching in the motions of a spellcaster, motions that Tristol immediately recognized. They were the motions of various profoundly powerful spells of enchantment. None would object, none would question, none would speak contrary to your delusions –if at the feet of a master enchanter they lacked the agency to object–. “Finally time to act. Time to fulfill the great work. Time to make this world pure in the eyes of the gods.”



Worried glanced turned to dread, and the distant sounds of cheering began to change, now mixed with sounds of charging horses, chariot wheels, and the clash of swords and shields.



“When the gods spoke to me so long ago, I was told to tell you something as well,” Afa explained with a smile even as the sounds of the dead and dying began to dominate the chorus on the horizon. “They told me that it would be meaningless to me, but of great providence to the divine messengers they would send to me who would bring to me the news of my destiny.”



“And what is that message meant for us?” Clueless asked with sincere worry.



“From here as you came: three days, three days, and three days more. Be quick for the path is arduous and long. Delve through the misty deep in a straight path before the deep parts, but does not part. A solid wall shall stand before you with but a single window shining a pure perfect light of truth. Enter and give to the one who greets you there your burden.”



“Our burden?” Toras questioned.



“You will give to the dragon your burden and your burden will be lifted.” Afa proclaimed, “This I proclaim to your from the lips of the gods. Now go with my blessing and know that when I awaken, I do the will of the gods.”



The enchanter who would be a priest-king turned away from the party and stared off into the distance, the sounds now of charnel fires and the sounds of trumpets and of death and suffering. He smiled and he laughed, waving a hand as if an afterthought as the dreamscape began to collapse as his mind and body stirred from their slumber.



“They will all die as I have prophesized.” The mad enchanter whispered like a prayer before laughing with corrupt delight, “I will light the hearths of my nation with the funeral pyres of their dead. All of them will die. Corrupt. Different. Like leeches upon our glorious people, we the chosen, we the favored of the gods. All of them, herded, rounded up, penned, slaughtered. Filthy dwarves, filthy halflings, filthy elves, filthy people of the narshai community… they’re barely human anyways so best to kill them along with the rest… It will be beautiful. So beautiful.”



And with that genocidal revelation the dreamscape collapsed, sending them all into the ethereal, their horrified faces illuminated by the radiance of a doomed world’s Wall of Color, the dreamscapes of the innocent, soon-to-die, bubbling and frothing in their ignorance.



“What the f*ck did we just do?” Toras blurted out, rage crossing his features as he tumbled about in the ether.



None of them answered.



“This was the worst thing we’ve ever done.” Nisha lamented, turning away to stare into the drifting mists of the deep. “Well, except for that thing with the potion of glibness, that box of enchanted cakes, and the wererat lich.”



“The what?” Tristol looked questioningly at his fiancé.



“Huh? Oh nothing.” Nisha glanced away, her tail bell rattling tellingly, “Nothing at all. Forget I mentioned it.”



Turning away from the Xaositect and moving on from whatever chaotic mess she was referring to, Tristol stared at the others, all of them utterly aghast at what they’d likely just set into motion.



“We didn’t know what we did.” Florian tried her best to rationalize the situation, “We couldn’t have known.”



“Oh come on!” Clueless scowled, “We made a bargain with a baernaloth! Of course it was going to be poisoned, and I think that I know the deal with making deals with ‘loths more than anyone. F*ck them all…”



“We have to stop him.” Toras looked back at the wall of color and its myriad dreamscapes, wondering how many of them would soon cease to be in the coming days and years as the madman set about his own twisted, hideous ideas of racial purification. “We have to stop him now.”



“We don’t have the time.” Fyrehowl sighed, “And it’s only one world. If we do this, even if it’s something we can fix, the ‘loths will just keep doing whatever they’re trying to do. That’s the biggest threat right now.”



Of course they knew that the lupinal was right. One madman on one mortal sphere might commit horrors, but it would take him time. The Oinoloth had far greater resources and far greater ambitions, even if the precise elements of his goals and methods remained unknown.



“Where do we go next?” Toras sighed. “And gods help us whatever we find there…”



“Something about giving up our burden? Whatever that means?” Nisha shrugged. “And giving it to some dragon?”



“Our track record with dragons is not the best.” Clueless shook his head, recalling their experience in the lowest depths of Pandemonium with an insane great wyrm howling dragon.



“We’ll find out. Two steps down, one more to go, Mystra help us.” Tristol sighed. “But whatever happens, this was my idea, wanting to learn how to read the Oblivion Compass, so however this all goes, you can blame me.”



Nisha gave the wizard a hug, gently brushing a hand over his ears as they slumped down against his head.



“None of us are blaming you for any of this.” Clueless shook his head, “This is all the baern’s fault. Every element of it. We’ll finish this, we’ll find the information that you needed and…” The bladesinger’s voice abruptly trailed off with a subtle tremor of fear.



“And what?” Fyrehowl asked, “Why’d you stop?”



Clueless didn’t respond. Instead, he only looked down at the object in his hands, an object that he knew well, and which hadn’t been there only a fraction of a second earlier. Feeling its weight in his hands and the cold metal of its surface he gazed down at the sneering face cast into its surface, a face whose gaping maw was now smeared with the still wet and sticky blood of a half-elf necromancer.



Daru ib Shamiq’s box: their burden. It had returned.





****​


----------



## Tsuga C

A Baernish present in a box. How perfect for December Yule and Christmas!


----------



## Tsuga C

Might we expect a similar gift on the weekend of Valentine's Day? Hope, hope, hope...


----------



## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> Might we expect a similar gift on the weekend of Valentine's Day? Hope, hope, hope...




Unlikely, as I have an unannounced Pathfinder project final draft due on Monday, and a pharmacotherapy exam on Tuesday. A week after that is not an unreasonable thought however.


----------



## Shemeska

“F*ck…” Clueless spat, staring down at Daru’s damnable box. The inhuman face carved into its surface stared back at him maliciously, lips and teeth stained red with slowly drying blood.



They’d of course been responsible for delivering it to its victim, though of course the necromancer had known that his fate was predetermined when he’d made whatever bargain he’d agreed upon with the baernaloth, so his death couldn’t be wholly laid at Clueless and the others’ feet. But what did that say about their own pact with the ur-fiend? The bladesinger shuddered.



“Well that would seem to solve the question of what Crazy McGenocide told us that we needed to do next: give our burden to some dragon.” Toras rolled his eyes. “Probably to the same effect as what happened next time.”



Fyrehowl scowled, “I don’t like being the delivery celestial for a proto-fiend’s assassination box. It creeps me out even being near it. It feels like it’s staring at me.”



And of course it was, with the eyes depicted in such a way as to seemingly follow any observer. The effect was deeply unnerving given what they’d witnessed the box commit upon Toril.



“And the box is back, just in time for us to give it away…” Florian muttered, “Clearly the madman wasn’t just insane, but was getting his dreams carefully crafted by a baernaloth. Lovely.”



Collectively they sighed. There was seemingly little left to chance in everything that they’d performed thus far, with it all a carefully crafted dance engineered by Daru ib Shamiq from beginning to end. Had the fiend previously divined the future to such an extent as to include them as his messengers? And if so, what did that portent about their attempts to gain knowledge of the Oblivion Compass as a means to stymie the Oinoloth’s plans? Was everything preordained?



That concern weighed heavily upon them all, but they could concern themselves with that once they’d finished their task, and they had time before they reached their next destination.



Conversation continued for another hour until they collectively faded into silence and their lives and the passage of time were swallowed up by the monotony of the Ethereal deep. Three days, three days, and three days more, the madman had promised them, and for nine interminable days the group drifted forward, ever forward through the featureless depths.



What they found at the end of their journey on the 9th day would leave absolutely no question as to if it was the intended destination of their trek.





***​




Previously, below Sigil’s Palace of the Jester:



Clueless looked up at the figure that stood before him, dressed in a baroque greatcoat  that fit the style of Sigil’s Golden Lords from a nearly forgotten, bygone era, before the current factions philosophies had even first sprouted their ideological seeds. The so-called Lady’s Jester smiled with amusement, that smile and his chin being the only portion of his face not obscured by the black, wide-brimmed hat he wore atop his head.



“Who are you and why are you in my head?” Clueless repeated his question.



The Lady’s Jester said nothing, only continuing his enigmatic smile. Clueless stared back, his hand tight on Razor’s grip as if daring the figure to respond with anything other than a legitimate answer. A legitimate answer would come, in a way, but not before Clueless relaxed his hand and his urge to draw his blade, as with his last moment of tightened grip on the sword, the Jester’s ever-present companion, the short, robed, tentacled… thing… grew agitated and softly snarled.



“I was already curious.” Clueless explained, his hand now much more relaxed, and in turn the creature’s master seemed to calmly pat its head like a cherished, beloved hunting hound. “I would have come back just based on that, but finding out that you were lodged in my head, and not the only other figure there, well that made the visit personal. Why?”



The enigmatic smile continued, drawing out the tension, which the Jester seemed to feed upon in a momentary measure and conflict of willpower. There was never any question as to who would win.



“Because I was curious.” The Jester’s smile became a knowing smirk, taunting his visitor for but a moment before providing a longer answer, “And because I am here, isolated from the politics of the Cage, and bereft from a view beyond the Lady’s rusted palace. It has been a profoundly long time since I gazed beyond this place and saw all that once concerned me, and in you my boy, I found opportunity and something more.”



“Just how long have you been down here?” Clueless narrowed his eyes with suspicion. “And what do you see in me beyond opportunity?”



“Longer than most any being currently extant,” He paused and considered things and persons long forgotten, ignored and blissfully ignorant of. “Not the oldest, not the only one, but which you might encounter readily, the only one that matters. And for your second question, I see a man to whom destiny unerringly stumbles across his path and to whom the fates would see fit to loan a needle and thread for their unfolding, flowing tapestry should he wish to avail himself of it. Just how many archfiends have you stumbled across the path of and lived? That does not occur by happenstance and chance alone.”



Clueless raised an eyebrow at the flattery, the smooth and cultivated words that struck him as something that could be used like an assassin’s blade on the will of a weaker man. He would need to be exceedingly careful.



“You sound like someone who could talk a devil out of their most prized contract.” Clueless remarked, slowly walking a casual circuit around the Jester, noting that no matter how he moved, the Jester’s figure remained unmoved and equidistant, at precisely the same angle, as if the very substance of the floor warped to his will like the domain of an archfiend in microcosm. “Hell, you sound like someone who should be lecturing the best and brightest in Grenpoli.”



“And you would be correct, in a fashion.” The Jester’s voice was mellifluous, like a nobleman of some bygone era, self-assured in his power, but graceful and polite nonetheless to a being far beneath him. “But I am not a slave to the so-called King of Nessus.”



There was a hardness in the Jester’s voice as he spoke of Asmodeus and Clueless took note of it.



“So why are you here, entombed below the Palace of the Jester?” Clueless asked the obvious.



“Because here in the City of Doors I am powerful and safe from those who betrayed me, and ironically for my nature, secure in the one place that I could never truly rule.” The Jester stared down at Clueless’s ankle, to where Shemeshka’s gem still lay lodged within his flesh. “That same irony was not first visited upon or realized by myself, nor will I be the last, no matter what manner of crown, real or metaphorical might be involved.”



Clueless scowled at the man’s allusion to the Marauder.



“Any comparison between yourself and her doesn’t make me inclined to stay here, much less trust a single word you’ve said.”



“She does -not- compare to me.” The Jester smirked, the dismissal hard on the air. “Though I would caution you in dealing with her, even more than you ever have. She is far more than she appears, and her abilities are never truly on display.”



“I’m more than wary of her, but let me ask you another question: are you aware of another tenant lodged within my skull?” Clueless asked, wondering if the open-ended question might draw out a lie, or a truth. The baernaloth Sarkithel had noticed both without pause, but had done nothing to remove either, only caring for its own secrecy and seemingly erasing the memory of those events in the Vale of Frozen Ashes for both of them, had they been viewing through Clueless’s eyes.



“The Keeper of the Tower, Helekanalaith?” The Jester asked, his answer both correct and not indicative of any unfamiliarity on his part, but also carrying a certain amount of both respect and disdain. “I have dealt with him, never directly, but by proxy with his ilk. Liars, not worth the soot that lines the symbols in their mewling contracts.”



The Jester’s diabolic sensibilities radiated like a freshly forged blade drawn white hot from the forge, whatever his actual allegiances at present or in the past.



“At least you’re a more polite companion lodged within my skull compared to the Keeper of the Tower. But I can’t shake the feeling that both of you have every intention of using me for your own purposes, whatever the differences in tact or style might happen to be.”



“Every man proves his worth and value by his word and by his deeds,” The Jester glanced across to one wall, where suddenly the mural of himself stood anew, hunting horn raised, his familiar, or whatever it was, darting towards the painted figure of a doomed, screaming man in desperate flight. “And as of yet, here we stand speaking as pleasant men. I see little need to change the status quo to something more dire. I could have done so well before now, but I did not. As I said, I was and remain curious.”



“And yet I’m still wary.” Clueless spread his hands and glanced to the Jester’s small companion, the thing’s tentacles undulating in the air like some terrestrial nautilus. “I’ve found that any dealings with powerful beings, especially those with any fiendish connections, whatever the type, to ultimately befoul the lesser party. And I still haven’t the slightest clue as to who or what you actually are.”



“In time I might share such details, but truthfully they matter little in the present day, long after my descent into this place and my abandonment of the great games of the City of Doors.” The Jester gave a shrug, “And as for your concerns, I haven’t taken out the proverbial pen and parchment, nor promised you anything with a looming, lingering price. Such clichés are beyond me, even in my youth. You’ll have none of that with me. You’ll have only what you take and take willingly, the costs are for you to decide and make. You are free to leave at any juncture. But I will say that I despise the creatures that you have found yourself within the coils of their schemes time and again.”



“The ‘loths?” Clueless was genuinely curious, and somewhere metaphorically, a chain began to loop and tighten.



“Leave as you wish, but we have a shared disposition there…”



Clueless considered, and metaphorically the contract was waved and skimmed.




****​




The present day, within the Ethereal Plane:



“Yeah, you know,” Nisha quipped, “I’m thinking this is probably it…”



The Xaositect’s opinion was a vast understatement.



“What the hell is this?” Florian wondered, her mind failing to grasp just what lay before them.



It was massive, whatever it was, rising up out of the mists, which parted to reveal a solid wall in space. It wasn’t a wall though, just the smallest fraction of a shimmering, spherical shell, the curvature only barely registering from their miniscule vantage point. Swirling black and grey, it crackled with dark lightning when the smallest wisp of ethereal protomatter drifted and made contact with the shell, the crackling contrast a momentary cenotaph to that flickering moment of annihilation.



“Whatever that is, I don’t suggest anyone touch it…” Tristol warned. “Though now that we’re apparently here, I don’t have any idea what we’re supposed to do.”



“The ravings of a genocidal madman weren’t clear enough?” Toras shook her head, “This was a bad idea.”



“A solid wall shall stand before you with but a single window shining a pure perfect light of truth.” Clueless quoted the madman as he glanced down at Daru’s box, “Enter and give to the one who greets you there your burden.”



The sphere, whatever it was however, was not entirely uniform.



“Does anyone else see that?” Fyrehowl asked, her eyes focusing on a single point of brilliant white light upon the sphere’s surface. “It’s the only thing that’s different on the surface.”



Unable to discern it, bereft as they were of the lupinal’s keen senses, the party drifted closer to the massive sphere. Eventually they were able to see it: a small but distinct square seemingly cut into the surface, shining a brilliant white light.



“Just as the madman said…” Clueless gazed down at the window, for lack of a better descriptor. “Whatever he meant.”



Tristol drifted closer, though still out of the range of the crackling mantle of sporadic black lightning, whispering the words of several divination spells, only to find that they returned a vacuous absence of information, with one exception.



“That one spot is a portal…” The aasimar explained, one ear askance in mild confusion. “But at the same time, it isn’t. I’m not really sure what to make of it to be perfectly honest.”



“So, we go through it and we finish this mad scavenger hunt is what you’re saying?” Toras asked.



“Does anyone have any better idea?” Tristol shrugged.



“I just want to be rid of this stupid thing,” Clueless grimaced down at the baernaloth’s gift, their titular burden. “The sooner the better.”



And so, with trepidation, they drifted closer, the white light streaming over them with a welcoming sensation, warm and seemingly warding away the touch of the lightning otherwise dancing across the sphere’s surface. Little did they know that the door was one way as first Toras, and then Fyrehowl vanished upon touching it. Little did they know that the sphere was a singularly unique surface of a mortal world as Tristol, Nisha, and Florian vanished. Little did they know what awaited them as Clueless reached out to touch the white light and join his fellows, but Clueless at least had a warning, far too late as it was.



Abruptly, echoing within the bladesinger’s mind, the Lady’s Jester screamed out, “NO!!! Do not go….” and then the warning was silenced. Cut off completely.



What none of them understood at that moment was that the madman’s edict, given to him in dreams by the Lieweaver had never been for them to give their burden to “the dragon”, the “one who greets you there”, but rather to “the Dragon.”



They would soon discover the truth of the matter when they met him upon the burnt world of Athas.





***​


----------



## carborundum

Whaaaaat? No way, man!


----------



## Coroc

Yea that came unexpected. That is a thing I would not dare in a planescape campaign. To much implications.


----------



## carborundum

I know! For the players too! 
@Shemeska how did you play clerics up to this point? Effectively losing levels for each step around the ring? 
Because Athas...


----------



## Shemeska

We played with 3e rules, and since I never actually played 2e, I never used any of the specific, thematic but IMO ultra fiddly rules that Planescape had regarding clerics and other things as you moved around the planes. As for how I handled Athas, you'll see soon enough.

The players were like 'ah ***_!_


----------



## 81Dagon

Shemeska said:


> We played with 3e rules, and since I never actually played 2e, I never used any of the specific, thematic but IMO ultra fiddly rules that Planescape had regarding clerics and other things as you moved around the planes. As for how I handled Athas, you'll see soon enough.
> 
> The players were like 'ah ***_!_



Which is ultimately the correct response to being stranded on Athas.


----------



## Tsuga C

81Dagon said:


> Which is ultimately the correct response to being stranded on Athas.




Stranded on Athas? I have a bone to pick with you regarding such circumstances...

Here's hoping that all and sundry are staying well amidst the lockdown.


----------



## Tsuga C

Four months and counting: are you well, Shemeska?


----------



## Shemeska

Clinical rotations for the past two months. 4th year of pharmacy school. I have this month off, but of course accepted some freelance work. That said I -will- have an update this month, and it's already in progress. Apologies for the prolonged delay.


----------



## Shemeska

The cavern was devoid of light and indeed devoid of life itself, save for the chosen children of the living god, the great one in whose service the heptad of guards served with their very lives, they who presently stood silent watch over the mock doorway cut into the solid rock before them. Every hour on the hour, as the magical glow of their timepiece elapsed and reset, they collectively whispered with ardent, ingrained passion, the name of that living deity, the one betrayed and slain by his jealous compatriots when he dared to reach for apotheosis, the one whose knowledge and power had rebuked death itself, and who in his risen glory had wrought his servitors’ homeland from the stone and dust, separating it from the death and burning sunlight overhead, and then in his own image fashioned them, given them life, and given them purpose.

It was for that purpose that the seven guardians now stood watch over something that they in truth did not entirely understand. Understanding was not necessary of course, only that their living god had commanded it.

“Watch over the doorway cut into the rock, waiting for the day when it shall open forth into another world and usher forth the delivery of a blessed gift to myself, a blessed gift that will ordain the beginning of our return to the surface and the completion of my apotheosis.”

So the living god had commanded, and so his servitors obeyed, staring at the stone for hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, and now centuries long, cycling in and out as their own limited, mortal lives allowed it. They served and thus their very purpose for existence was satisfied.

None of the seven soldiers, naked except for hardened leather that girded their weakest points but was more ornamental than not, none of them truly expected that they would see the doorway swing open within their lifetimes. But it would.

The distant sounds of their city echoed about the cavern from a tunnel at its far end, the sounds of community, craftsmanship, and worship, mingled with the erratic screaming of one or more captives being slowly flayed alive to extract information or simply an exercise in divinely-sanctioned punishment for one who had intruded upon their home, this domain of the chosen people. One of the soldiers keened her head about the cavern walls and down the tunnel, a dim sound at the edge of hearing flitting about the reptilian ear cannel in the side of her smooth, scaly head, but no, the sound, whatever it was, had not emerged from there.

“What is that noise?” Another soldier openly asked, the eyes of his compatriots and their body language making it clear that all of them had heard it, though precisely what it was and where it originated seemed to elude them all.

“I do not know.” The first soldier replied, “But it grows louder.”

“Perhaps we should send warning?” The second suggested, only to have his notion be curtly turned down by a wave of the obsidian tip of the first’s spear.

“No. We stand guard here and do not move. Our God has placed us here for a purpose.”

Prayer-like, they all said his name, followed by a litany of titles and ritualized honorifics, and then, as if their prayers had been an incantation, or simply that their prayer had been heard and answered, they received an answer to their questions and to their appointed duty.

The surface of the stone doorway erupted in blinding light, every minute crack and tracery of mineral inclusion on the surface each radiating a different color, saturating their eyes and somehow bleeding through their usual darkvision spectrum of shades of gray and for a moment providing them with burning, impossible colors screaming against their retinas and bleeding into the currents of their brains as the Gray was violently parted and the metaphysical barrier around their world was for the rarest of moments thrust open as the doorway opened.

Staggering out of the doorway, backlit by the furious spectrum of transiently shattered layers of reality, six figures emerged before the soldiers and into the space of New Guistenal.



*****​


Fyrehowl’s eyes were the first to adjust to the darkness, the lupinal’s celestial pupils expanding and taking in the scattered reflections harshly lit by the flicker and subsequent collapse of the planar portal behind them. Around the cavern expanded out of sight, and before stood six figures, reptilian, tall, with spears raised to meet their approach.

Instinctually the lupinal’s nostrils dilated and she breathed through her lupine snout, taking in the smells about her and her companions. Reptilian musk, dry dust devoid of moisture, and the scent of a place from which life had been leached from the very soil itself at the finest level, consumed by a magic unknown to any of them.

Collectively the others stood, squinting as their eyes flickered with natural or augmented darkvision to find themselves before the company of dray, eyes taking measure of them even as they did the same. Hands went to weapons, but did not draw them as they waited for any greeting or reaction beyond violence at their arrival. If the Lie Weaver were to be believed, their arrival and their gift was to be expected.

Clueless held up Daru’s box, gingerly offering it to the dray, “We were to give this gift to the one we met upon our arrival.”

Unseen, the snarling face upon the baernaloth artifact began to smile, though if it were an expression of delight or of hunger would have been up for debate, had it been noticed.

“Who are you?” Florian asked, the draconic soldiers still holding their weapons at the ready.

The dray narrowed their slit pupils, seemingly taking measure of the visitors and also keeping in mind their duel task: to protect the doorway and also to await those who would arrive to satisfy the prophecy of their living god. Any question in their minds, and any hesitation in their actions was satisfied when one greater than they noticed the opening of the portal and the arrival of his long-awaited, bargained-for treasure.

Like some great leviathan suddenly inhaling and smelling the flesh of intruders to its lair, the air around both dray and the companions themselves rushed out of the cavern, paused, and rushed back with a telepathic tremor. They shivered at the touch of something terrible and inhuman, a suffocating presence licking at the edges of their essence, tapping at their wards, and then momentarily snorting in dismissal at what it found except for the fiend’s box.

Toras’s hand went to his blade, only to be met by Tristol’s. The fighter met the aasimar’s gaze, finding the wizard’s eyes wide and genuinely terrified.

“We aren’t ready for this.” Tristol deadpanned, shaking his head. “

“THEY HAVE ARRIVED!!!!!” The dray captain shrieked, the others echoing her triumphant call with screams of their own, exclamations of delight, joined by a growing chorus of similar voices from beyond the cavern from the City by the Silt Sea.

The volume only grew in volume and ferocity, and with it the telepathic presence carried on its hungry breath the sensation of ancient and terrible lips parting to reveal fangs and tongue, covetous and waiting.

“What have we gotten ourselves into?” Florian glanced to Tristol, watching as flickers of silverfire danced nervously at his fingertips for the briefest of moments and then like a candle at a priest’s lips, the silverfire was snuffed.

Of the screams of the dray, be they intelligible prayers or simply emotions vented in religious ecstasy, they carried with them all one common word, one singular name: Dregoth.



*****​


Something was wrong.

Something was wrong.

Something was very, very wrong.

Florian’s hand not on her weapon went to the symbol of Tempus about her neck and in a single moment she understood Tristol’s terror. Rather than the comforting presence of her divine patron reaching out to touch, reassure, and invigorate her, she felt nothing, not even a barrier to silence the connection between she and the Foe Hammer.

“I’m cut off from Mystra too.” Tristol said, moving closer to the cleric. “This place, wherever we are, it’s cut off from the divine. I don’t know how.”

“What do we do?” Florian glanced back at the portal, now nothing more than blank stone, closed and cutting them off from escape just as surely as the nature of Athas had silenced their touch with the divine.

“I don’t know…” The wizard shook his head, glancing over to where Clueless held the box aloft. “Just go along with this, whatever happens and hope for the best. But whatever is out there, it’s not something that we can handle.”

“What do you mean?” Toras interjected, confusion crossing his features.

“Magic doesn’t work the same way here.” Tristol’s eyes betrayed a genuine uncertainty that none of them had ever seen him express. “Don’t cast anything. I don’t know what will happen.”

They blinked. Florian was absent her divine patron and their archmage was refusing to use his own magic.

“Whatever is here for the box…” Tristol glanced over to the baernaloth artifact as another dozen dray approached from out of the surrounding darkness, all of them dressed in more elaborate armor, bearing torches and several of them instruments for a musical procession. “Whatever it is, it knew we were here the moment we came through that portal and it is beyond what we can defeat, even if magic worked.”

Any further contemplation would have to wait however as one of the new dray, all of them Templars of Dregoth addressed the group.

“Follow us.” The most decorated of them exclaimed, less an order than a calmly stated expectation for one unused to any other creature deigning to do any otherwise. “Give to the Dread King what He expects from you.”

“The Dread King?” Toras raised an eyebrow, only to have Florian elbow him and Tristol give him a withering glance.

The dray parted ranks and the followed. After all, what other option was realistic?



****​


Through the darkness of New Guistenal they marched, joined by others as they passed through tunnels and caverns of the great and hidden underground nation of Dregoth’s chosen, created children and servitors. Dozens became scores became hundreds, the cries and shouts becoming more and more ritualized as priests led the procession in the call and response of liturgy.

“Glory be to Him that Rises Above and Conquers Death!”

“Glory be to the Living God!”

“Praise be to the Ravager of Giants, Betrayed by the Slaves of Rajaat!”

“Glory be to the Living God!”

The history of Athas was beyond opaque to any of them, and so they continued, pushed along by the tidal wave of flesh, Clueless still bearing aloft the box that now rattled with the chime and clatter of internal gears.

The passages and caverns grew larger and grander, populated by the rebuilt ruins of a city long-ago razed and swallowed up by the earth itself. They continued as the dray chanted until they reached the city’s central cavern and the throne of the Lord of New Guistenal.

“Praise be to the Dread King! Praise be to Dregoth!”

“Praise be to Dregoth!”

They had arrived.

“What the…” Clueless managed as the box trembled in his hands and the ocean of dray parted at the steps leading up to a singular, gigantic throne wrought of the bones of giants.

“YOU HAVE COME.”

The voice boomed from the chamber’s heights, reflected by the acoustics of the cavern’s walls, the bones of their chests shaking with the boom of infrasound below the level of their hearing but which elicited a whine of pain from Fyrehowl. The booming voice was not alone however and it rattled within their skulls in duplicate from a telepathy far more puissant than any of them had ever encountered, bringing pain to their temples from its sheer force.

Seated atop his throne before them sat a figure of nightmares thirty feet in height, mixing reptilian and humanoid features as if a titan had physically merged with a great wyrm. The Dread King, the Living God of the Dray, was so only in ironic fashion, as his flesh clung to his bones, withered and mummified, covered in the bejeweled attire of an emperor. Within the arch-psion’s chest no living heart yet beat, and within his sunken, hollow eye sockets a burning green-black fire burned.

Ancient lips parted and the undead dragon’s fangs gleamed in the light of hundreds of torches and great basins of oil and the burning, rendered tallow of sacrificial victims. Standing, the creature’s tail slithered down the blood-soaked steps, studded in jewels, decorated with elaborate scrimshaw written with the contained power of contingent spells from a magic lexicon entirely alien to Tristol or any other the others. Rising up to the entirety of his height, Dregoth spread his wings, tattered and withered though their originally membranous flesh might have been, they cast a shadow over the crowd such that the room’s temperature dipped and continued to do so as he stepped forward.

Arch-mage, arch-psion, and some unique variety of quasi-draconic lich, Dregoth was above and beyond the scale of power that any of them had ever experienced from any creature with a mortal origin. Towering above them, the undead dragon more than rivaled their experience with the yugoloth lord Taba in the depths of Hell, even rivaling their meeting the Oinoloth’s consort Shylara the Manged. In those instances the yugoloth lord had been separated by multiple planes from that of her birth, and the Manged had not been present in the flesh upon the Astral but projected through a proxy generated from multiple color pools: Dregoth the Dread King however, he stood before them in the flesh, in his home, surrounded by his worshippers.

“THE MOMENT OF MY APOTHEOSIS HAS ARRIVED!”



****​


----------



## carborundum

Holy cow! Not just in the desert or something but here, ushering in the Apotheosis of Dregoth, in His city! I don't think they could be much more screwed. On top of that, no divine connection and magic is messed up.

Well played, Lie Weaver, well played. "Complete three tasks and then return..." Return from this?


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## Tsuga C

The excrement has officially hit the fan...

Well done!


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## Coroc

wow, that came unexpected


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## Shemeska

Dregoth stepped forward, the cracked flesh of his draconic muzzle split to a predator’s smile, and as he descended the steps from his throne it became transparently obvious that his eyes were fixed on Daru’s box and not at all on the companions who had arrived carrying it. They were immaterial to him and his concerns; anything otherwise and they would not have arrived in his presence.

“Whoever you are, you have arrived with my prize.” He gestured to Clueless, his unnaturally long fingers little more than bone held together with a glimmer of black energy at the joints. “I will relieve you now of your burden.”

The sorcerer-king’s words echoing the same phrase as the madman they had visited on their prior stop, Clueless handed over the baernaloth’s box, even as Tristol reached out to put a hand on Fyrehowl’s shoulder as she’d tensed to do something to intervene.

The light within the Dread King’s empty eye sockets flared as he cradled the box in his arms, whispering to himself as if his congregation of thousands did not matter, nor did the ones who had brought him his prize.

“You have followed through on your portion of our deal and I will follow through with mine. You will have your bounty and I will become the god of this world. This time they cannot stop me and the streets of their cities will flow with the blood of every living creature, every sacrifice a drop in an ocean of my debt to you.”

They waited, utterly unsure of what to do, and equally unsure of what they –could– do. Dregoth preempted their uncertainty as he whispered to the box, nodded, and then addressed his children.

“IT IS TIME! GATHER YOURSELVES FOR TODAY THE SURFACE SHALL RUN WITH THE BLOOD OF YOUR ENEMIES! SLAUGHTER ALL IN MY NAME, IN THE NAME OF YOUR GOD AND CREATOR!”

The stone shook with the roar of the assembled dray.

The horror and moral agony in the companions’ eyes would have slaked the thirst of a yugoloth and in shock they could only stand and wait as Dregoth turned and almost absentmindedly motioned to one of his high priests and spoke to the companions for the second and last time.

“My priest will guide you to the planar mirror to provide you egress. I will activate it when you are close.” Dregoth’s eyesockets flickered and if he had eyes they would have seen how little regard he seemed to give them, as if they were naught but insects. His last statement would haunt them though. “Give the Lie-Weaver my regards.”



****​


The following minutes were spent in a haze as they followed one of the dray priests away from the central cavern and through a labyrinth of secret passages until finally arriving at a chamber with what had been until minutes earlier, the sorcerer-king’s greatest possession: the Planar Gate.

A towering mirror set in a dark frame of polished black wood, it was one of the few extant artifacts of Athas’s lost Green Age, and one of the only ways for a native of that blighted world to reliably access the planes, many of which were otherwise barred from their access. Wrought with techniques and knowledge lost to time, Dregoth was capable of using it, but not replicating or repairing it, and with his prized artifact he had explored the planes. It was there on the planes that he had found the baernaloth and there struck a bargain, the hideous details of which remained blessedly opaque to the companions who had delivered him his prize.

The mirror flared with light as soon as they approached it, activated with the sorcerer-king’s will, and rather than simply funnel them through the Black and the Gray and deposit them back into the Ethereal from whence they’d arrived, instead it opened onto a view of a location known to the companions and even more so intimately by Dregoth himself: Dubai’s Obscure Woe in Torch.



****​


The portal closed like the blinking of a great and malignant eye, depositing them all in the cobblestone courtyard of the baernaloth’s demesne on the outskirts of Torch. In the distance the volcanic mounts lit the clouds of soot and smoke with a dull, angry red glow while the gate to Gehenna flickered like an open sore in the sky.

The dull silence of the proto-fiend’s crumbling manor remained, uninterrupted by any of them as they each individually filtered through the rush of recent events, confused and terrified over the implications and consequences of their own role in what had occurred.

“What the hell did we just facilitate?!” Toras snarled

“Nothing good…” Clueless sighed, shaking his head.

Fyrehowl’s eyes flashed with repressed anger like a wolf in that moment before it bares its teeth and snarls at a threat. “This better be worth it.”

Tristol inhaled deeply, hoping that he’d get the answers that they’d bargained for.



****​


They descended into the depths to stand in the dark, the slow drip of something from the ceiling, thicker than simply condensed water, falling and echoing. For several seconds once they reached the bottom they saw nothing, and then the baernaloth opened its eyes and smiled, lighting the darkness with twin opalescent orbs and an eerily luminous hircine smile of jagged, weathered teeth.

The baernaloth let them stand there, awkwardly, for a long moment before abruptly breaking the silence and preempting their objections to the “three simple tasks” to which he had sent them on.

"Did you enjoy my errands children? Is your conscience sullied?” Daru asked, a trail of thick, ropy mucus sliding down his chin to join a puddle of the same already present upon the floor. “Rest assured I can put your fears and worries at ease. Trust me, listen and all will be taken care of. All it takes it a question and an answer and your sins in my name shall be forgiven."

“F*** you…” Fyrehowl scowled, bringing a smile to the ur-fiend’s face.

The lupinal’s blunt statement was met with multiple nods and smirks from the others.

“What did we give to Dregoth and what did we cause?” Clueless asked.

"Dregoth was a prize to be certain. He wishes so much, and is yet so blind at the same moment. His hatred for his fellow Sorcerer-Kings of Athas knows no bounds. They killed him you know, not that that lasted. They feared him, they feared his power. And what we fear we strike out against. That is the nature of so very many mortals."

Daru chuckled and finally turned fully to face the party, and that was when they saw it: the box. Cradled in the baernaloth’s hands, the very same hideous artifact that they had handed over to Dregoth was there once again in its master’s hands. Surrounded by a swirling cloud of shimmering energy that seemed to slowly funnel into the leering face atop of it, a rent in the fabric of space hung behind the ur-fiend, the source of the torrent of energy that now flowed up for collection.

“But as to your question, he struck a deal with me many, many years ago. He and I, we are well acquainted. As tempting as it might have been to play Lazarius and speak to Dregoth through the planar mirror that gave him and now most recently you egress out of Athas to wander the planes, I waited for him to come to me here, following a trail of whispers and beautiful, gilded lies.”

“Sounds familiar…” Clueless rolled his eyes, his voice bitter.

Daru chuckled knowingly, “History repeats itself in cycles and echoes, each all the more damning than the last you see…

Fyrehowl snarled.

“But as to your overwhelming and unstated concern, no, he will not become a god.” Daru whispered, a subtle sneer as his lips pronounced that final word, shaking his head at the very notion, “Not on Athas. Not ever.”

Tristol stared at the baernaloth’s box, his eyes flickering with flecks of silverfire as he examined the magic that swirled around it. Previously it had been opaque, hiding its secrets, but as it seemed to feed on the energy flowing through the crack through Athas’s Black and Gray, he finally saw it for what it was. The box was a siphon, either to devour and contain the souls which Dregoth had promised or perhaps even the power of the undead sorcerer-king’s nascent divinity itself, stolen and denied him, but there was more. The magic that facilitated it all, the magic swirling –out– of the box itself was not that of the Lie Weaver. It danced and changed moment to moment like a living thing, and Tristol had seen it before. It was the very same magic that drove the manifest horror of the Oblivion Compass itself, and it was the same magic that had composed the body of the baernaloth that they had watched effortlessly slaughter Ghyris Vast the builder of the Divinity Leech: Lazarius ibn Shartalan the Architect.

With that realization the magic that Tristol stared at suddenly shifted, the patterns resembling a myriad of eyes that turned, focused, and stared back at the aasimar. Immediately ending his spell, Tristol shuddered.

“Duplicity leads to complicity…” The Lie Weaver’s milky eyes narrowed and it stared at them, a soft and subtle chuckle passing through its lips like the shudder of a fault line as a prelude to a megathrust tectonic slip. "But Dregoth will never have what he wishes for. He toils now to do that which is his price for my wisdom. There has never been a power upon that world, and there never will be. He doesn't understand that, nor will he ever. But that is not MY concern. I asked him a question, and he answered, and I provided. Now I watch with eagerness as he stumbles headlong to a fate of his own making."

The baernaloth turned to lovingly stroke the box, "Now, you had a question for me, did you not? Ask me and I shall weave for you an answer. And perhaps a question for you as well. That is what I do."

“We’re not answering anything for you.” Toras scowled, “We bargained for an answer from you. It’s your turn to talk.”

“I will give you an answer and it will not be what you want to hear, because your answer is not mine to give as I was not involved in the construction of the Oblivion Compass. Not in the slightest. That was the work of the Architect and my sibling the Blind Clockmaker. The latter will give you your answer directly and I impart to you the knowledge of where to find him in the Clockwork Gap within the Demiplane of Time.”

Without a spell and without a touch, a blizzard of images shot through their collective minds, images of the demiplane and another pocket reality drifting within its heart, and there a pair of milky, unseeing eyes staring into space while a nightmare gear work apparatus ticked away in the background.

“WHAT?!” Tristol shouted. “You promised us an answer and you send us on another wild goose chase?”

The baernaloth chuckled, “Do you have any other option?”

Toras spat an invective and walked away back up the stairs.

“We should never have trusted you to uphold your end of the bargain.” Florian shook her head.

“The eventual response of every being to have ever spoken with me indeed…” The ur-fiend flashed a smile, seemingly proud of itself. “But I do suppose that I owe you some knowledge as a fee for your inconvenience for having to traipse across the planes and find my sibling. Consider it a consolation for your efforts and for your regrets.”

Fyrehowl narrowed her eyes, immediately distrustful of the fiend’s feigned offering. Nothing was free. Nothing came without strings.

"How much of the tongue of the Gloom Fathers do you know?” Daru asked, pointedly staring at Tristol before lapsing into a long fit of phlegmatic coughing before recovering.

“I’ve only heard a few words of it before and it defies direct translation.” The aasimar admitted.

“Well then let me provide a translation of one simple phrase. A name really. A title.” Daru’s eyes shined in the darkness and his smile was that of a poisoner handing over an envenomed sweet, “Did you know that in the language of my brothers and sisters, Vorkannis, his name itself is a word? He has worn it well that one. For in the tongue of the baern, Vorkannis means HUBRIS."



****​


----------



## Tristol

> "HUBRIS lies not dead but waiting… though the hidden hands of fate dictates action and not greed or envy. "


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## Shemeska

That's one of the two things seen so far that connect to what Daru ib Shamiq said.


----------



## Tal Rasha

Thanks for continuing to update this SH Shemeska. It's still a good read, I still want to find out what happens next even after all this time.

Will you be publishing the mechanics of your campaign once the story is done? The magic tricks the bad guys have seem neat.


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## Coroc

Tal Rasha said:


> Thanks for continuing to update this SH Shemeska. It's still a good read, I still want to find out what happens next even after all this time.
> 
> Will you be publishing the mechanics of your campaign once the story is done? The magic tricks the bad guys have seem neat.



if the epic effects from the in-game artifacts would have a mechanic behind them, that would be awesome. But i believe some effects are better done purely by narrative anyway.


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## Shemeska

Tal Rasha said:


> Thanks for continuing to update this SH Shemeska. It's still a good read, I still want to find out what happens next even after all this time.
> 
> Will you be publishing the mechanics of your campaign once the story is done? The magic tricks the bad guys have seem neat.




You're certainly welcome!

If I can find them I'd be open to it, but much of what I did at times wasn't strongly pinned down by written rules and a lot of stuff was purely narrative driven. Also it was my first campaign that I ever ran and numbers were not precisely my forte at that point in time and now, a decade and a half later as I'm doing professional RPG work it's like an artist showing off their crayon drawings when they didn't know what they were doing. Heh.


----------



## Shemeska

And as a total aside to the Storyhour, here's a link to some fiction that I wrote for the  Paizo Blog as a teaser prelude to the Agents of Edgewatch Adventure Path (which I wrote volume 6 of) that has a cameo by this storyhour's very own Nisha Starweather.

Nisha (or rather an interation of the character) was originally put into Pathfinder canon in 'Classic Treasures Revisited' and she's there in the above fiction briefly.


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## Tsuga C

Shemeska said:


> ... like an artist showing off their crayon drawings when they didn't know what they were doing. Heh.




No, I'd say you had a pretty fair idea of what you were doing. Maybe there were a few moments when your players didn't find a clue you were dropping or misinterpreted what they _did_ find or maybe you had to scramble when your players zigged instead of zagged, but they haven't come across in the telling of this tale.

A first campaign? Preen away, naughty 'loth, as this campaign should be made into an adventure book or a Baldur's Gate III-style video game.


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## almost13

just reread the whole storyhour, took a few days but was well worth the time! cant wait for the blind clockmaker arc...


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## Nthal

Shemeska said:


> ...it's like an artist showing off their crayon drawings when they didn't know what they were doing. Heh.




I have always loved this story hour, and clearly you did know what you were doing.  Your 'crayons' are ones I envy.


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## Shemeska

_blush_ I'd be writing this all for myself for fun anyway, but knowing that you folks enjoy it makes it a genuine pleasure. Thank you!

And, storyhour aside, just wait until I can show off the not-yet-published stuff I have in the pipeline for Pathfinder. <3


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## Coroc

Excuse the blunt question, but is Amber Stewart a pseudonym of you, for pathfinder authoring purposes?


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## Shemeska

Yes it is. My work has been under that name for about a year and a half, since 'Concordance of Rivals'.


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## Shemeska

Villain interludes before we rejoin our heroes!

****​

The doors into the inner sanctum of Shylara the Manged loomed high, twenty feet at their peak, a dull black, flecked with crimson mineral inclusions, locked in place and surrounded by the pulsing, flesh-like matrix of the Tower of Incarnate Pain, itself built of tens of millions of souls, brick by screaming, sentient, imprisoned brick.



The two arcanaloths stood before the door, mildly apprehensive as they stared up at it, waiting for it to swing open and admit them.



“The Mistress is finally returned.” Apteris ap Othrys turned to regard his brother, uncertainty in his voice. The red-robed, jackal-headed arcanaloth’s right ear twitched, and not voluntarily. The normally irritated, hairless flesh that surrounded the notch carved from it like a mark of ownership was no longer simply erythemic, but now openly wept blood.



“Play time then would seem to be over…” Alpthis ap Othrys lamented, his exaggerated, flippant mirth hiding his own apprehension poorly. The fiend’s left ear, a mirror image of his brother’s was swollen and likewise openly wept blood.



“She is not pleased.”



“Understandably so,” Alpthis shrugged, “Given her status for this past while of not-the-lovely-kind-of-bondage.”



“Ideas for later yes,” Apteris smirked, an expression mirrored by his twin, but then his face turned more serious. “But she has been awake for over a week and absent from the tower, with no word to us or any others and...”



“…” Alpthis, normally so quick to speak was silent, his eyes turning back to the door and his clawed fingers toying nervously with the tasseled silver fringe of his robes.



“…” Apteris took a deep breath but was otherwise silent.



A soft breeze passed through the chamber, the periodic result of the tower’s living bricks tensing and relaxing in synchrony like the myocardial twitch of some great and alien heart filling an atria full to the brim with suffering.



“She was terrified.” They both whispered at once, an image of darkness, ivory white teeth, and lurid, albino-pink eyes came to their thoughts unbidden.



Abruptly the doors swung open.



The twin proxies of the Overlord of Carceri glanced nervously at the twin nycaloths who opened the door. Both greater yugoloths bore spikes of cobalt crystal thrust into their foreheads, and both of them stared down with eyes glazed over and showing no rational thought: puppets and little else, even if somewhere locked within their physical essence both arcanaloths understood that their consciousness screamed in agony, aware but powerless.



“I never quite get used to them.”



“Never at all…”



Both fiends continued into the massive, vaulted chamber at the tower’s heart, Apteris walking on bare feet, his claws clacking on the mirror-polished obsidian floor, and his sibling floating forward, his silk slippered feet hovering several inches above the ground, both of them casting elongated shadows. For each step they made, their shadows twisted behind them as if in agony, a manifestation of the searing ultraviolet radiance that flooded the chamber itself from an open set of doors on its opposite end that opened directly into the tower’s core: the reflective chasm, the engine of misery whose light, drawn from the tower’s living soul-bricks and siphoned from the surrounding landscape of Carceri itself poured into the chamber like the radioactive glare of a dying star slipping towards oblivion.



Despite their apprehension and despite the effect upon their shadows, the twin proxies simultaneously smiled as the light of the reflective chasm struck their flesh, an effect of their empowerment by and linkage to the archfiend who watched their approach.



“It is good to see you both once more.” The voice of Shylara the Manged echoed through the room, seemingly projected from the structure of the tower itself, blurring the line between fiend and landscape.



“We are here at your pleasure.”



“For each and every of your beautifully malicious desires.”



The siblings knelt down at the edge of the pool at the chamber’s center, staring worshipfully at the surface. Dozens of channels carved into the floor fed the pool with a slow and steady flow of blood, shed by the wounds of a dozen bound and captive celestials suspended from the ceiling, directly exposed to the reflective chasm’s corrosive light.



As if in answer to her subjects admissions of supplication the surface of the pool quivered and a figure rose up from where she had lounged, bathing in the blood of celestials, surrounded by the terrible light at the tower’s heart. Naked and slick with blood, ironically masking her own bleeding, ravaged flesh, Shylara the Manged stood up and stepped out of the pool.



“Good, because I have a great many to see brought to fruition now that I have returned.” Shylara snarled, ferocious and unhinged. “And I have a task set out for me from the Oinoloth, -my- Oinoloth.”



“And what is that Mistress?”



“How may we help accomplish it?”



The archfiend reached out a hand to touch first the lips of each kneeling arcanaloth, then trailing her hands across their chin in a streak of warm, slowly clotting blood, a gesture hovering between loving and rank ownership.



“You may start by cleaning me.” She smiled down at her proxies, teeth awash in blood and her eyes flickering a wild spectrum of colors, leaving the details of how precisely to do so unspoken.



The siblings could only nod and comply, albeit with a brief giggle of unrestrained delight from Alpthis.





****​




Five figures stood about a sixth in a room most recently seen by the late Malcolm Anders, though for the current night’s activities the brigade of chefs was absent. The present evening was more spontaneous and less atrocity conjoined to spectacle as that event had been. The present evening would be much shorter and to the point.



“Sit up!” A particularly well-dressed tiefling shouted, landing a kick into the woman who lay on the floor, a leash about her neck, her hands and ankles tied together, and a black leather bag tied over her head.



The bound woman yelped in pain and begrudgingly sat up. She was dressed in the garments of a priestess of Tymora, a faith never far from the gambling taking place within the Fortune’s Wheel, and it was there that she’d been swiftly apprehended. A human of indeterminate origin, planar or prime, her fall was not from her actions or her presumed faith -the symbol of which had been disposed of before entering the room- but from the tattoo present upon her neck, briefly glimpsed and there sealing her fate: the black, crimson, and blue symbol of Shylara the Manged, overlord of Carceri.



Upon closer inspection the tattoo swirled with powerful necromancy and enchantment, forcing her to act in servitude to the Manged, and unwilling to allow her to actually die permanently in the process of those tasks. Shylara had utilized similar such bindings on disposable mortal servitors when she’d been posing as a rakshasa noble over a year prior and sought to assassinate the owners of the Portal Jammer.



That latter act had been noticed by and would have been appreciated had it succeeded, had it been accomplished by the agents of literally any other being in the multiverse.



“Your mistress, my wayward apprentice, has been a busy little bee, hasn’t she?” Shemeska the Marauder sneered, looking down from where she sat upon a padded ivory throne decorated with swirls of platinum, carnelian, and jade inlay depicting herself amidst scenes of opulent debauchery. A faint but frequent blink of one eye and irritated twitching of the fingers on one hand betrayed the only recently healed injuries that she had sustained in Khin-Oin, the aftermath of which had kept her out of the public eye for some time.



At the sound of Shemeska's voice, the figure on the floor looked up and snarled. Even with her head covered by a black leather satchel she recognized the voice, and her reaction was much the same as her owner's would have been.



Clicking her tongue with arrogant disapproval, Shemeska casually motioned with her left hand and held her right out and open. Two things immediately occurred: four of the tieflings commenced violently beating their captive with a mixture of hooves, steel-toed shoes, iron rods, and barbed whips, and in absolute discordance with the crude violence, the fifth of their number leapt to the arcanaloth’s side and placed a pre-prepared cigarette and long-stemmed holder into her open hand, lighting it a fraction of a second before the mouthpiece graced her lips.



Ten minutes passed with the sound of enraged screams slowly dwindling down like a bonfire’s dying embers to wet coughs and moans and more than one sound of cracking rib or lone bone. The fiend watched with casual satisfaction though it all, neither commenting or critiquing her employees’ work, instead enjoying her smoke and letting it burn down to embers of its own, slowly and deliberately drawing the moment out with zero concern for the captive’s injuries.



“You’ve loosened her up enough for now,” Shemeska cooed, bringing an immediate cessation to the violence. An appreciative smile upon her face, she pursed her lips and exhaled a thin stream of smoke towards the Manged’s servitor, “Let’s see if she’s willing to talk.”



The hooded woman gasped for breath, moaning through the exertion with several shattered ribs, before looking up in the Marauder’s direction and spitting blood, “I have nothing to say to you.”



“Good.” Shemeska smirked, “Because you don’t have to. You don’t have to say an intelligible word at all. Strip her above the waist.”



Swift as could be the assembled tieflings tore off the captive’s blouse and underclothes, leaving her bare above the waist, her flesh unprotected for what would come next. With a pleased-with-herself smirk, the Marauder stepped down off of her throne and approached the woman, her tieflings stepping back and giving her space for what would come next. Rarely did their mistress involve herself, and her not-infrequent public temper tantrums during which she would flog some random berk with razorvine was more show and put-upon spectacle than anything intrinsic to her. This time with a servitor of Shylara the Manged was different.



“No, you needn’t say a thing at all…” Shemeska’s face was calm and a faint smile creased her muzzle as she reached up and plucked a coiled length of razorvine from out of her crown and without a word of warning began brutally whipping her victim, the faint smile breaking into a broad and enraptured grin.



Shylara’s puppet tried to remain as silent as possible to deny Shemeska the satisfaction, and she succeeded for nearly a minute before she could not longer withstand the agonizing bite of the blood-hungry razorvine and began screaming and thrashing while except for her rapturous smile, Shemeska said not a word.



Five minutes later Shemeska stopped once the floor was liberally spattered in spilt blood and her hand grasping the vine plucked from her crown was slick and crimson.



“You may execute them now,” She said, a faint panting in her voice, “Or take your time and have some fun, but, using the standard methods and precautions with Shylara’s little puppets, see that she ceases to exist by antipeak. I have what I want.”



With that Shemeska turned, her gown stained with blood, and walked away, gently coiling the razorvine about her left hand, with the sounds of torture silenced only when she stepped through a portal. One portal to the next she traveled, following a circuitous route of portals to a sealed chamber below Sigil’s streets warded to an order of magnitude greater than any other that she owned, with one exception.



A simple chamber, barely ten by ten with a domed ceiling, carved with a level of extravagance that was only a shadow of Shemeska’s current fashion, the room was old. Regardless of its age however, it was beyond protected, with the walls inlaid in spells laid down and subsequently reinforced in lines of precious metals and gemstone dust. Thus protected, the chamber provided a sanctum safe from prying eyes and secure for the fiend to engage in one specific task unfit for almost anywhere else in Sigil.



At its center sat a chair, finely carved and cushioned with its surfaces polished by frequent sessions of use to sit and ponder, absolutely prosaic compared to most such pieces of furniture Shemeska deigned to grace, the wood nearly as old as the ‘loth’s tenure in the City of Doors.



Taking a seat upon the chair, Shemeska smiled, relaxed, and removed her crown, slowly and gently uncoiling it before entwining it with the blood-soaked length coiled about her left hand. Having refashioned the crown she placed it to her lips, stroked it gently with her claws and licked the bloodied, razored surface like a lover’s lips.



A genuinely pleasant smile upon her face, she sighed, further relaxing into the chair as she closed her eyes and perked her ears, speaking to the razorvine crown still slick with its victim’s blood, still feasting upon it through bladed stem and leaf, “Now tell me what you have learned…”





****​


----------



## Wasteland Knight

After poor Malcom Anders, I'll never look at a Ring of Regeneration the same way again.

Great update!


----------



## Tsuga C

You make the 'loths very easy to oppose philosophically by peeling back the glamour of evil and showing them as they truly are: sadistic, self-indulgent, and nihilistic.


----------



## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> You make the 'loths very easy to oppose philosophically by peeling back the glamour of evil and showing them as they truly are: sadistic, self-indulgent, and nihilistic.




I'm glad that you think that I do them justice!

And as for showing them as they truly are: Oh, you 'aint seen nothing yet.


----------



## Coroc

Shemeska said:


> I'm glad that you think that I do them justice!
> 
> And as for showing them as they truly are: Oh, you 'aint seen nothing yet.



Now i am curious, will this be resolved within the story hour? Is there some part of lore which goes much further than the many things we read so far?


----------



## Shemeska

Coroc said:


> Now i am curious, will this be resolved within the story hour? Is there some part of lore which goes much further than the many things we read so far?




It'll be resolved within this storyhour. I'm thinking of a few specific incidents involving some specific 'loths being very true to their nature.


----------



## Karsten

Hey Shemi, is there going to be an explanation as to why the Baerns wanted that move on Athas world?


----------



## Shemeska

Karsten said:


> Hey Shemi, is there going to be an explanation as to why the Baerns wanted that move on Athas world?




Athas was a means to an end.

There are already hints as to why and what for. There are suggestions that Daru's box is similar in some capacity to Ghyris Vast's "Divinity Leech" and that both were designed by Lazarius ibn Shartalan, The Architect. Now one of those was clearly operating on behalf of the Baern while the other was being run by Shylara the Manged at the behest of the Oinoloth. So on some level they're working with the same stuff, the siphoned power of gods, but precisely to what end remains to be seen. And at the same time, Cilret Leobtav did something similar with the imprisoned god of the Gautiere in the Outlands. So three different parties working with divine essence. How that all plays together and who is planning what is the big question.


----------



## Karsten

Thnx Shemi,

So there are clearly 3 agendas over more or less the same purpose...or is there 1 agenda split into 3 different "working groups"??lol...

I was also wondering, now that we learnt that "the Ebon" means "Hubris", how far down the road is his true identity going to be revealed?

Last but not least...I'm looking forward to see when and how the Upper Planes are going to get involved in this, as I cannot imagine that they will be simply observers.

Having read the story thus far, I have to congratulate you from my side too! You've built a splendid web of plot(s). Kudos!


----------



## Shemeska

Karsten said:


> Thnx Shemi,
> 
> So there are clearly 3 agendas over more or less the same purpose...or is there 1 agenda split into 3 different "working groups"??lol...
> 
> I was also wondering, now that we learnt that "the Ebon" means "Hubris", how far down the road is his true identity going to be revealed?
> 
> Last but not least...I'm looking forward to see when and how the Upper Planes are going to get involved in this, as I cannot imagine that they will be simply observers.
> 
> Having read the story thus far, I have to congratulate you from my side too! You've built a splendid web of plot(s). Kudos!



You can imagine a circle of 'loths repeatedly stabbing one another, with each of them laughing and going, "Hahaha I'm brilliant! Look at how much those fools are getting hurt!"

Relatively late on a full and open tell-all on Vorkannis. There will be repeated hints prior to that.

The seeming absence of the Upper Planes thus far seems conspicuous yes. But it's for a reason that hasn't remotely been explained yet. There will be a plot arc that explores this. They will eventually have a bigger role, but again, late.

And I forgot one bit. It's not just 3 groups or 3 agendas. It's 4. Chorazin ibn Shartalan, the Thrice-Damned. They've been mentioned once so far in passing and we haven't met them. We will and we'll get a deep dive into yugoloth pre-history.


----------



## Coroc

Shemeska said:


> You can imagine a circle of 'loths repeatedly stabbing one another, with each of them laughing and going, "Hahaha I'm brilliant! Look at how much those fools are getting hurt!"
> 
> Relatively late on a full and open tell-all on Vorkannis. There will be repeated hints prior to that.
> 
> The seeming absence of the Upper Planes thus far seems conspicuous yes. But it's for a reason that hasn't remotely been explained yet. There will be a plot arc that explores this. They will eventually have a bigger role, but again, late.
> 
> And I forgot one bit. It's not just 3 groups or 3 agendas. It's 4. Chorazin ibn Shartalan, the Thrice-Damned. They've been mentioned once so far in passing and we haven't met them. We will and we'll get a deep dive into yugoloth pre-history.



i cannot await it, i so hope you have much time for your update postings. You really could make a book out of it, i would gladly buy it.


----------



## Karsten

Shemeska said:


> The seeming absence of the Upper Planes thus far seems conspicuous yes. But it's for a reason that hasn't remotely been explained yet. There will be a plot arc that explores this. They will eventually have a bigger role, but again, late.




Indeed it seems conspicuous and odd. 
Truth is that ever since Belierin "incident" we did not get the slightest glimpse of anything that might be "brewing" on the Uppers.
So, I merely ask, is that "reason" so strong/serious that you chose not to divulge anything over this? (_I assume your answer would be yes, but maybe you can explain it a bit..._)



Shemeska said:


> It's not just 3 groups or 3 agendas. It's 4. Chorazin ibn Shartalan, the Thrice-Damned.



True that. It was my mistake.


----------



## Quartz

Shemeska said:


> see that she ceases to exist by antipeak. I have what I want.”




Remind me what this is.


----------



## carborundum

Peak is a timekeeping term used in Sigil. It is equivalent to mid-day, the time of day that the light in the Burg is at its brightest, or its peak. It's opposite, anti-peak is equivalent to midnight, when the night is at its darkest and fartherst away from its brightest. Time in Sigil is counted in hours away from one of these two times. For instance, early afternoon is generally from peak to five-after-peak and night is from six-after-peak until six-before-peak. Late night is three-before-anti-peak until five-after-anti-peak.

(Quick dash to planewalker.com)


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## Shemeska

carborundum said:


> Peak is a timekeeping term used in Sigil. It is equivalent to mid-day, the time of day that the light in the Burg is at its brightest, or its peak. It's opposite, anti-peak is equivalent to midnight, when the night is at its darkest and fartherst away from its brightest. Time in Sigil is counted in hours away from one of these two times. For instance, early afternoon is generally from peak to five-after-peak and night is from six-after-peak until six-before-peak. Late night is three-before-anti-peak until five-after-anti-peak.
> 
> (Quick dash to planewalker.com)



Thank you for answering that one for me!

I would have actually explained something else because I didn't get the question was about the meaning of antipeak. I was going to address what Shemeska was obliquely referring to: that people she whips with razorvine, and draws blood from, the razorvine from her crown can apparently absorb memories and knowledge from them and she sift through them later. What's going on there is something that will eventually be explored, but not for a long while still.


----------



## carborundum

Woah. I'd been collecting info on Sigil for my own game and jumped to a conclusion. The question you answered is _much_ more interesting


----------



## Karsten

Hey Shemi,
its been a month already, so I have to ask....when should we expect the next update on this storyhour?


----------



## Shemeska

carborundum said:


> Woah. I'd been collecting info on Sigil for my own game and jumped to a conclusion. The question you answered is _much_ more interesting


----------



## Shemeska

Karsten said:


> Hey Shemi,
> its been a month already, so I have to ask....when should we expect the next update on this storyhour?



In progress at the moment. I just finished up a clinical rotation and I want to do several updates over this month since I have the month off.


----------



## carborundum

Shemeska said:


> In progress at the moment. I just finished up a clinical rotation and I want to do several updates over this month since I have the month off.



Several updates? Santa started on my wishlist early this year


----------



## Shemeska

Their faces were decidedly unhappy as they walked up the steps into the eerily silent courtyard of Dubai’s Obscure Woe. They’d sought, they’d found, and their morally dubious success had netted them only another place to go and an answer to a question that they hadn’t even asked. Frustration in various degrees played across their faces as they stepped into the open air, a multitude of soft gasps echoing about the silence as several of them had held their breath when walking out of the baernaloth’s lair, finding the air in the Gehenna-influenced region of the Outlands that surrounded the gatetown of Torch to be infinitively more palatable.

None of them said a word until they’d left the grounds of the baernaloth’s ruined estate.

“Hubris?” Toras asked, referring to the transliteration of Vorkannis the Ebon’s name.

“It fits.” Fyrehowl smirked, “It absolutely fits him.”

Several of the others nodded in agreement, but it was clear as they stepped into the margins of the blood swamp surrounding torch, the iron-rich mud stinking of organic decay and buzzing with insects, that the literal meaning wasn’t the only connection they’d made based on the baernaloth’s almost bragging release of that information.

“We’re all thinking it.” Clueless remarked, glancing at the others, “We’ve seen that name before, we just couldn’t make the connection.”

“HUBRIS.” Tristol said, his tail bristling in response.

At the statement of the name, they all collectively paused, standing atop a crag of rock rising up over the edge of the swamp.

“Twice.” Clueless remarked, “Twice we came across it.”

“Howler’s Crag was the first one that comes to mind.” Tristol nodded, “HUBRIS lies not dead but waiting… though the hidden hands of fate dictates action and not greed or envy.”

The words had been scrawled across the ancient stone, the meaning opaque prior to the present.

“Then we came across it in UnderSigil.” Toras added, remembering the phrase they’d seen inscribed in a wide and elaborate circle surrounding a statue or golem they’d found miles below the streets of Sigil. “In silence, in solitude, entombed here in the depths of Her Serenity’s vaults I wait, patient as the Great Spire and fearing none, for I see where others do not. Only by our Lady’s Will does darkness cloud my eyes as I wait for *HUBRIS* to shake the Heavens and Hells.”

“Why can’t anyone ever write warnings or prophecies or whatever with great importance in plain language?” Florian scowled, “I can’t make heads or tails of it. If I’d known what Vorkannis meant in ancient f*cking baernaloth a year ago it might have served as a decent spooky warning but still…”

Nisha gave a soft chuckle, trailing off before she thought of something with a blink and a brief rattle of the bell at the tip of her tail, “Hey Tristol!”

The aasimar glanced over.

“Do you think he can listen in on any conversations if you say his name? Like how Elminster or Khelben or the Simbul or Storm or…”

Tristol put a hand over her mouth, “I have no idea but please don’t get me in trouble with those others because we haven’t even met.”

“So no speaking the Oinoloth’s proper name, in baern or otherwise.” Fyrehowl took a breath, “Got you.”

“Enough about him though,” Clueless looked to Tristol, “Is everyone ready for the next leg of this prolonged bad idea of a scavenger hunt?”

“Yes but not really,” Toras grumbled looking off into the distance where the portal to Gehenna loomed like a livid eye above the volcanoes of Torch, “A large part of my brain says that we shouldn’t do this.”

“We don’t have much of a choice.” Clueless shrugged, “But in the long term I think that the benefits outweigh the moral grey muck that we’re knee deep in at the moment.”

“If you say so.” The fighter grimaced, “But yeah, let’s get on with this. The demiplane of time it is.”

And so it was/would be/again.





****​




They didn’t directly gate into the Demiplane of Time. Such was its fearsome reputation regarding transit into and through it that instead the party manifested, by intent, on the demiplane’s border in the swirling depths of the deep ethereal. There they consulted with a wizard known as the Sapphire Mage whose tower drifted at the demiplane’s periphery, allowing him to study it. Unused to -but more than welcoming- of visitors, they consulted with him for several hours before proceeding further.

Unsurprisingly, the Sapphire Mage wasn’t aware of anything lodged –within– the Demiplane of Time like some malign nucleolus buried at its heart, but he knew enough to guide them safely inside and to avoid the worst of the temporal storms that often raged within. And there, at the demiplane’s border, armed with his advice and warnings in mind was where they stood.

Around them swirled the semi-solid fog of the deep ethereal, distant shapes muddied and distorted by the movements of the metaphysical fog banks that moved to the tune of vast, immaterial currents of manifest potential. Behind them the Sapphire Mage’s tower loomed, its gravity well keeping them locked in place where they hovered, and the magical lights that surrounded its crown shedding a brilliant blue radiance into the fog like a lighthouse to a fleet of strange, planar ships or a lantern hung in the window of a solitary cabin in a dark and dangerous wood.

“Give me a few minutes here,” Tristol glanced at the others as he lifted one hand, a solitary finger limned in a flicker of silverfire as he drew a complicated progression of symbols in the air, “I should be able to get us damn close to the Clockwork Gap or however its maker wants to call it.”

“So…” Florian wrinkled her face, “Why even is there a baernaloth in the Demiplane of Time? It’s absolutely distant to their native plane, and I would assume that they’re even more bound to the plane in terms of their power than the ‘loths are!”

“Why was there one in Torch in the Outlands?” Toras shrugged.

“For the latter?” Fyrehowl mused, “I assume that it’s a more opportune place to suckle on misery and pull on puppet strings. There’s less foot traffic in the middle of nowhere in the Waste.”

“Ugh…” Toras frowned, realizing that the celestial was correct.

Minutes then passed in relative silence, the group distracted from unsettling thoughts by the wondrous visual appearance of the actual Demiplane of Time. By comparison to the Sapphire Mage’s tower that drifted in orbit about it, the Demiplane of Time was gargantuan, dwarfing even the spherical ethereal footprint of Athas when they’d encountered it not long before. Unlike the black, featureless void that it had been, the Demiplane of Time swirled with internal lights that spread the entirety of the spectrum, but with a preponderance of silver. Within its swirling interior they could see fleeting images, or reflections of images, of places that were, had been, or would be.

“It’s pretty.” Nisha chirped, smiling in a moment of tranquility that had been notably absent in recent events.

She didn’t get much opportunity to sight see however as Tristol finished his magical preparations.

“Everyone get your sightseeing finished up because we’re about to jump inside.” Tristol called out, and then with a eruption of silverfire about the temporary gateway between plane and demiplane, it was ready for them.

Clueless took a deep breath and stepped into the gate, “I have a genuinely bad idea about this.”

How right he was.





****​




“The water trembles at approaching footsteps, the soft pitter-patter not of boots, not of charging horses, not the padded paws of a slavering predator, oh no no not them.”

The voice was thin and ragged, the result of vocal chords almost atrophied to an extent from prolonged silence. Hands drifted, feeling, clasping, fingertips brushing across surfaces like an artist as the speaker pulled upon a set of glistening, ephemeral cords: timelines pulled from the Demiplane of Time itself. Without words but with a wet, sickly chuckle it stared forward, milky white eyes reflected back at it from the surface of the great device rising up above the swirling vortex at the chamber’s heart, the nightmarish, hircine visage that stared back at it unblinking and sightless.

“The little ants come marching, one by one, ignorant of the world above them, following a chemical trail of hints, rumors, and lies to feast upon a poisoned sugared treat. Everything is as we have foretold. Everything is as –I– have foretold. Everything.”

The unnaturally elongated fingers of one hand left the silvery timelines and reached down the floor, ragged and unkempt claws sketched equations into the dust, a thumb rubbing some out just as soon as they’d been solved.

“This timeline they survive, others lost in the storm never to be…” The speaker tilted its head to the side, clucking its tongue, “Ah now that one is amusing but alas it is not to be. Not this time. Not in this cycle moving forward to the next. I’ve had my fun and tinkered and what-is-to-be is now restored now to the principal. One can swirl a whirlpool in the river once, twice, thrice, a hundred-thousand-fold marching moments to moments diverted in the blink of an eye for my amusement before such petty visages evaporate like so many illusory fantasies resume their forward flow with the river’s currents, stillborn realities never to be as the timeline marches forwards.”

Belying the blindness of its eyes, the living nightmare burst into a frenzy of action, ambulating with a staggered, awkward ferocity, the motion of its limbs erratic and uncanny, born of it moving not in accordance with its eyes but the internally memorized map of its home. It danced about the periphery of the swirling ether gap above which was centered the probes and razor sharp crystalline points of the fiend’s great device, a thing of collaboration with the same ungodly mind which had wrought the Divinity Leach.

Hands manipulated levers and alien controls just as much as a glance, a whisper, or a motion manipulated currents of less physical nature to shift the great device’s function moment by moment to some desired outcome. Extending one hand, a spherical illusion appeared cusped in the ur-fiend’s claws showing the mortals where they stood at the periphery of the Clockwork Gap, ghostly afterimages of various shades of consistency appeared as well, depicting a myriad of possible split timelines of fates-that-could-be.

“March forward little ants.” The speaker commanded, “Follow this trail of sweet and pungent lies, bit by bit, fed scraps and crumbs of truth from the table of titans. Everything is foreseen. Everything is certain. Everything is constructed, contrived, moment to moment concatenated, a masterwork of misery painted by the flicker of a butterfly’s wings, nudged to and fro, batted aside, or erased from existence as needed to raise the coming hurricane. Soon.”

Standing at the edge of the swirling crevasse the room’s second occupant, silent and contemptuous, gave an ephemeral smirk.





****​




From the relatively placid depths of the Deep Ethereal, once they stepped through Tristol’s gate and into the Demiplane of Time, they emerged into something wholly different. They drifted in a void that seemed to stretch out beyond sight, swirling with distant storms of blue and silver, tangled things like moving, writhing tangles of metallic thread. The air felt heavily and odd, and with every motion they made, thin wisps of energetic, temporal potential wafted off of them, like the vapor of dry ice evaporating under a noonday sun.

Distantly a pale, dull-grey, curiously mottled and somehow… moving… marble of another demiplane, the Clockwork Gap was visible, beckoning in the alien void.

“Ok, we need to move quickly.” Tristol instructed them. “Just will yourself forward, and if any of those storms comes close, or if you start seeing your own timeline start to manifest like a silver chord in the Astral, stay away from it. Leave it alone or you’ll risk mucking with your own timeline.”

“That would be bad.” Toras deadpanned.

“Yes, that would be bad.” Tristol confirmed, “Very bad. And mucking with your timeline here isn’t the worst that could happen.”

“Not the worst thing?...” Clueless left the question dangling.

“What?” Florian gave the aasimar a startled glance.

“Yeah, this place isn’t uninhabited.” Tristol explained, “It has guardians.”

Nisha preempted his fiancé’s explanation, “Please nobody get us in trouble with the Time Police.”

“It’s not the Time Police it… please don’t touch anything Nisha, or anyone else.” Tristol’s ears were flat against his head, “Let’s not play with the surroundings and just get to where we need to be and leave it at that.”

Fyrehowl’s fur bristled, and she glanced about, a look of supernatural concern in her eyes. “We shouldn’t be here.” She said, “The Cadence of the Planes… it’s wrong here. Unsettled.”

The nature of the demiplane then made itself more apparent.

Emerging out of the raw, featureless temporal winds of the demiplane itself, a silvery-blue chord manifested out of the void for each of them. Spiraling and twisting of their own accord, bursting apart into multiple, interwoven lines before weaving themselves back together again, they emerged from the bodies of each of the companions and spun off into the distance, vanishing abruptly at the periphery of the Clockwork Gap, and looking back behind them, they spiraled off into the distance before vanishing into the stormy haze.

That was when they saw it.

Erupting from where Clueless’s timeline was swallowed by the Clockwork Gap’s boundary, a shadowy image of the bladesinger erupted from the chord, clambering its way along its length like a drowning, desperate sailor gone overboard and pulling upon a rope tossed from a passing ship. Soundlessly the shadow Clueless opened his mouth, screaming some warning that could not be heard and too far distant to read his lips.

Horrified at what they saw, they could only watch in silence as Clueless’s temporal doppelganger seemed to fight against the draw of the chord-like manifest timeline, fighting to race back to warn his past selves of something. Desperately waving his hands in warning, screaming, with his eyes wild with horror, they could only watch as the Clueless of a potential alternate future was suddenly grasped by dozens of clawed, grasping hands from out of his own timeline. Taking hold of the might-be bladesinger, they violently took hold of him and dragged him back from when he might have come.

Clueless’s timeline stabilized once more and continued its wriggling, twisting course both fore and backwards. Whatever fate might await him, and whatever warning that some possible-self of his might have sought to provide remained unknown.

“What the f*ck was that?” Toras blurted out, speaking what was on everyone’s mind.



****​


----------



## Karsten

What the f*** was that indeed!!!
Wondering if that would spring yet another memory also...

On another note, please remind me, if and where they learnt about the Sapphire Mage...


----------



## Shemeska

****​




Their fingers, spindly and sickly thin, gray and wasted with sallow, diseases claws, reached down into the swirling ethereal proto-matter of the vast ether gap at the chamber’s center. Like a fisherman drawing in a net filled with struggling, gasping fish, the fingers lifted forth a series of glistening, shimmering manifest timelines, sifting among them, searching for a specific possible outcome.



“Alone, following none, and still a fisher of men.”



The subsequent chuckle was filled with malicious mockery even as the hands drew the gleaming timelines not to the speaker’s sightless eyes but to its face. Gathering them up it deeply inhaled, sniffing intently at each as it rubbed its fingers along the length of each, divining just what specific outcome each held with each fractional increment of time.



“Precision and perfection.” One hand released the timelines and reached up to adjust one of the myriad of knobs and levers that sprouted from the side of the great device that hung over the yawning ether gap. “Every scream measured, every moment of despair calculated, every quantum of hope dissolved like chaff to the fire as the Oblivion Compass tick-tocks its way to the desired end. Soon.”





*****​




The ratatosk elder stood and looked down at the clouds that swirled below him gathered about the vast trunk of the World Tree, Yggdrasil, the Great Mother of his people. One of the so-called squirrel-folk who populated the limbs and branches of their plane spanning home, he had lived nearly a century, his fur now streaked with lines of gray, and now, like never before, he felt the weight of his age, or the burden of his duty. It was growing time again as it always did. Their duty to the Great Mother was paramount above all things, even their own lives, which they willingly gave in Her defense. But the pain of that sacrifice at times was great enough to make him wonder if what they did was worth, if it was too hasty, or if there might be another way.



He sat down on the branch and waited for the arrival of those who he knew would be coming shortly. Knowing or unknowing, they always came when time was due and what was necessary would be done. Good, evil, chaos, law it didn’t matter to him and his people, only their Great Mother who created and sheltered them mattered. She was them and they were Her in so many ways, like the very leaves and fruit upon Her branches that fed and sheltered them, and they in turn watched over her. But sometimes…



He shuddered and wept, a single tear dropping from his eye and falling down the untold miles below to strike ground on one of the planes that the World Tree touched with its branches and roots. As the single drop of gleaming saline spread down the miles and froze in the passing air, the elder remembered the tale told to him by his grandfather five times over before that one’s passing, a tale passed down the generations from time unknowable to when the Great Mother was first injured.



The branches had shaken, the Mother had trembled and her pain was felt keenly by Her children when the Serpent had coiled about Her base with its unending hunger and rage, seeking to destroy the World Tree in the hopes of destroying the universe that had created it. The Great Mother’s blood had flowed in rivers in those days as Nidhogg clawed and ravaged the roots of the Tree where they had sunk into the soil of the Waste.



His people had been helpless, for nothing they did could harm the Wyrm, and it ignored them while spawning its own children with the fiends of the lower planes and evil dragons who flocked to its call. It and its brood seemed like they might succeed in killing the Great Mother, and they, the ratatosks, they wept in their impotence.



Salvation came to them unasked for, but needed, and cloaked in nightmare. His people had never spoken its name since that time, neither in thanks nor in fear, but its existence still haunted them through the millennia. They had never written it down, but somehow they all knew its name. They had never drawn it, nor carved it, nor passed down tales that described the Horror that offered its corrosive salvation to their Great Mother and them, but still they knew its face in their nightmares. When the time came for their bargain to be paid again, they would all dream of it, each and every one of them, hearing its whispers in the darkness of their slumbering minds.



The elder looked down and sighed, knowing how close that time was, and the dreams that had come the night before like a black winged angel, one wing dipped in blood and the other glowing with their love for the World Tree. He understood that he, the one chosen of his generation, the first in many years, would go willingly with whatever and whomever would come in the following days. He and the others they did so with a glad heart, knowing that it was necessary.



The old tales of that first meeting spoke of how the elders of a thousand villages, the leaders and wise ones of their race had gathered to discuss their last, frantic attempts to stop the Wyrm that feasted upon the Great Mother. They had been desperate, willing to do anything to save all that they knew, everything they cared for and loved whatever the cost. Desperation was all they knew in that moment. Somehow their anguish, frustration, fear, and misery was heard, and something came to save them, but not out of mercy…



The elder shuddered at what had been implied in the latter half of that tale. That it might not have heard them and come to save them, but had waited until their fear had collapsed into desperation and they no longer cared what they would have to give of themselves to save all that they loved. The darkness that had blindly clambered up the trunk of the World Tree and offered them a way to save the Great Mother might have been the one to engineer the horror that it offered to save them from in the first place.



“We agreed… we willingly agreed…” The elder cried out into the void beyond the branches as he wept once more, a man who had long ago resigned himself to the cross that he would willingly bear if the darkness came to give its bloody and poisoned salvation once again. “It always does, and we agreed, we willingly agreed…”





****​




Clueless stared in silence at where his own doppelganger from a possible-future had manifested and then vanished back into non-existence. The haunting notion that he might potentially be in reverse positions at some point in the future lingered in his mind, along with what it might imply.



“You alright there?” Toras glanced over at the bladesinger who continued to stare, deeply breathing to remain calm despite having just watching himself being dragged into nothingness.



“Yeah, as much as I can be after witnessing that.” Clueless shook his head in disbelief. “Not that I really know what it was.”



“Hopefully nothing that comes to pass.” Tristol noted, watching as each of their manifest timelines seemed to froth at close inspection, rippling with things and currents barely constrained, futures that might possibly come to pass. “But the longer we’re here in the demiplane of time we’re more and more prone to seeing that level of strangeness.”



It wasn’t just strangeness.



Fyrehowl said nothing, knowing that it wouldn’t help anyone. The feeling of things not being right that she’d gathered from the Cadence of the Planes wasn’t simply a background from the Demiplane of Time itself. In fact it wasn’t connected to the demiplane at all, but rather with the baernaloth’s pocket plane they were seeking out, and as they drew closer, the gnawing feeling of wrongness only increased. Whatever they sought, in some possible future what they’d found had caused the Clueless of that stillborn potential-reality to actively seek to warn his past self to prevent it from ever occurring.



“How about we get out of this mess of timelines?” Clueless asked, hand on Razor’s pommel. “Is it possible to teleport to, or better yet, into the pocket plane we’re looking for?”



“Yeah, I’d rather not try and physically search for it.” Florian said, glancing about warily.



Tristol nodded and immediately started casting, silverfire at the tips of his fingers and the terminus of his tail before the flicker-flash of the teleportation spell washed over them all with a sudden, shockingly cold sensation and a violent physical tug.



Nisha blinked as they reappeared, then looked over at Tristol. “Umm… that didn’t feel like it normally does…”



“I just blindly teleported us into a place I knew nothing about except by its name, trusting a baernaloth named the Lie Weaver that this place even existed.” Tristol gave an emphatic shrug and was rewarded by a pat on the head from Nisha as the others looked about at where they had reappeared.



They had indeed managed to arrive at, or perhaps rather, inside of, the Clockwork Gap. Gazing about, they stood on the edge of a huge disk of flat rock centered within a gossamer, transparent bubble separating it from the wider expanse of the Demiplane of Time. Beyond the exterior boundary of which stood directly behind them, and high overhead, the temporal storms of the surrounding demiplane appeared like strange discordant clouds and distant, alien constellations.



Stretching out before them atop the rock was a massive, labyrinthine hedge maze that surrounded a large, several story keep at the very center of the disk. The keep itself seemed to hover slightly above a hole cut into the rock, situated above a swirling whirlpool of ethereal mist that glowed with an almost blinding intensity: an ether gap.



“Well, I’d intended to get us to the middle of this place, rather than the very edge, but we were redirected.” Tristol said as he stared at the ether gap barely visible in distance. Whatever it was, the gap was truly massive, easily larger than any other such gap that he’d ever seen or even heard of, and it seemed perched on the knife’s edge of either expansion or utter collapse.



“Honestly, I’m not sure what’s more frightening.” Clueless mused, “This place itself, or the fact that there’s not a single glimmer of magic from anything here…”



“No, there’s magic here.” Tristol interjected, a faint flicker of silverfire at the edges of his pupils, “A tremendous amount, but it’s not any sort that I’m familiar with, even comparing it to what we saw in the Lie Weaver’s cavern. I can’t even tell you what school of magic it belongs to, if that would even apply to it really. It feels… wrong… but that’s all I can gather really. It doesn’t want to be seen, and for whatever reason, I’m not seeing it when I should, and not in the right amount of detail when I do.”



Taking the mage’s words into account they collectively looked up at the black marble archway that stood above the entry into the hedge maze. A single, carved refrain stretched across the stone, written in obscene letters only vaguely reminiscent of the written tongues of the fiends: ancient baernaloth.



“Anyone care to translate?” Toras asked.



The moment he posed the question though, the letters rippled in place, like the pitch black stone was made of liquid, only to be replaced with the same refrain, written in a mixture of infernal and abyssal.



_“What you can see can kill you. What is illusion is reality. What
you behold is reality, or is it?”_



“I don’t suppose anyone has a dispel reality spell handy, hmm?” Toras deadpanned as they slowly passed under the archway and proceeded forward and into the maze.



“Hey, think about it this way. We can pretend that Toras sucker punched a dabus and we all got mazed!” Nisha laughed and rattled the bell at the tip of her tail as they moved deeper into the hedge work.



“No thank you, already tried that and it wasn’t what I’d call fun.” Toras said before quickly adding, “Being in a maze I mean. Not sucker punching a dabus. I don’t want to ever do that, thank you very much.”



“Wise idea!” Fyrehowl quipped, “Ironically as we’re dumb enough to be here in this misbegotten place.”



With that refrain of optimism from the lupinal they continued, taking several hours to pass through the twisting verdant maze that grew up from the rock itself, flourishing and alive despite the lack of topsoil, water, or light besides the dim flicker of light from the far-off temporal storms and the ghostly, moonlight glow of the swirling ether gap at the demiplane’s center. Through it all they felt watched constantly as they walked, and the interior of the maze seemed to twist the concept of space itself as they found that any attempt to fly above the maze, or to pass through its walls by any but the obvious physical routes provided to them ultimately proved fruitless, either returning them to the maze’s entrance or simply failing to function.



Regardless, they eventually passed through a series of twisted puzzles, some based upon their own experiences, and others that seemed designed to test their concepts of morality and their own intelligence. At every step they were forced to question what was real and what was not, with illusions that seemed partially real and substantive prowling the mazes and stalking them.



It was not a pleasant few hours as they crept steadily closer to the castle waiting for them at the Clockwork Gap’s malignant heart. Finally they emerged shaken and disturbed at the gates of the black marble fortress and the whirlpool of light that it perched atop, but now the doors were open, swung wide and waiting for them.



“Those weren’t open before were they?” Nisha asked as she warily stepped behind Tristol.



“No, they weren’t.” Fyrehowl tentatively climbed the steps and approached the gates, “And you’d think that I’d have at least heard them swinging open. I didn’t.”



Tristol stared at the mirror-smooth black marble of the keep’s walls. Again that brief flicker of silverfire and his eyes grew wide in amazement. “This isn’t even stone. It’s solid ethereal proto-matter, and it’s stable.”



“How is that surprising?” Fyrehowl turned to the wizard, “It’s more or less right next to the ethereal. The stuff’s easy to find.” Fyrehowl punctuated the statement by tapping the keep walls with her sword.



“Common yes,” Tristol explained, “But ethereal proto-matter isn’t stable. It’s liable to dissolve into nothing or erupt into a living thing at any given second. It’s worse than chaos matter.”



“Mmmm… karach.” Nisha interjected with an impish smile, “Fun stuff.”



“Proto-matter is stabilized by force of will alone.” Tristol explained, “When the githzerai solidify their cities they make from chaos matter, they have thousands of chaos shapers working together. Proto-matter is more difficult, and I haven’t seen any evidence of a living thing here at all yet.”



“So who’s making this stable?” Florian asked.



“Exactly…” The archmage said with a sharp and ominous breath as he walked up the stairs.



Ascending the steps, before they’d even passed over the threshold of the open doors, true to the pocket plane’s name, they heard from out of its interior the faint, steady sound of clockwork. The routine tick and clatter of gears and pendulums echoed from out of the halls to grace their ears with its eerie refrain, cold and distant.



Fyrehowl paused and shook off a feeling of dread as she was the first of them to boldly step into the fortress, throwing aside intuition in the name of necessity for a time. The first step was agonizingly difficult, though again she didn’t voice her concerns, even as the Cadence screamed at her to pause, turn around, and take no further steps forward.



The others followed and the group steadily and warily progressed through the otherwise vacant and sterile halls of the keep interior, all alone but for the mechanical ticking and methodic grinding noises of gear against gear that echoed all around them, growing louder the deeper they traversed. More than an hour passed and they’d yet to discover anything besides blind corridor ends, empty chambers devoid of decorations, and the ever uninterrupted clatter of clockwork processes within the walls themselves.



“We’ve been walking for over an hour and we haven’t actually found anything.” Florian complained, looking up at the walls.



“Same as the hedges outside, it’s changing as we’re walking, or the space in here that it’s built in isn’t normal.” Fyrehowl replied.



“One or the other, it really doesn’t feel right, and it’s been getting worse.” Florian added.



With the cleric’s statement, seemingly as if on cue, the hallway they had been walking down shifted, the section some thirty feet distant branching out with a series of side passages. With measured curiosity and trepidation, the group approached, finding that each ended in a door.



Ever the spontaneous one, Nisha approached the first of the four doors and swung it open without warning.



“And behind door number one!... Ok wait, what?” The tiefling blinked and stepped back. Beyond the first and now open door was a solid expanse of clockwork from wall to wall that blocked entry into the chamber except to watch and observe the gears, counterweights and pendulums all clicking along in sterility.



“Strange…” Clueless said as he swung open the second door and looked into a round chamber that resembled a laboratory. The walls were covered in glowing script in the same bizarre language they had seen upon the archway leading into the maze, but this time the language did not translate itself for them to read. The center of the room was dominated by a metallic pedestal that held a dozen or so leathery eggs in a field of purple light. Inside the eggs, heavily backlit by the glow to the point of translucency, moved black, shadowy forms, very obviously alive.



“Unnerving is more like it.” Tristol said, “And the fact that I can’t read a single word of the text on the walls doesn’t make me feel any better. Because of course a normal spell to translate doesn’t touch that stuff.”



“Of course it wouldn’t.” Fyrehowl rolled her eyes at the situation as she and the others glanced warily at the eggs and the rambling, indecipherable notations scrawled upon the walls.



It seemed as if at any moment they might hatch and unleash something hideous to attack them. True to that worry, when they finally stepped into the chamber, the things in the eggs seemed to take notice and oriented in their amniotic prison to face them; it was unsettling to say the least.



Toras paused and concentrated on the eggs before wincing and backing away.



“What?” Nisha asked. “You look like you just drank sour milk.”



“I had to stop.” The fighter answered.



“Huh?” The tiefling asked again. “Why was that?”



“Because I don’t like knowingly making myself sick and nauseated.” Toras replied, rubbing his forehead with discomfort, “Trying to detect evil here, it’s like trying to see a candle flame held in front of the sun. This whole place is abhorrently evil and I couldn’t feel anything above the background.”



“And those would be dragon eggs if anyone’s curious. Gold or Red, one of those two.” Tristol added as they all moved out of the chamber and on to the next.



The next door was ominously open when they stood in front of it and beheld the wretched scene contained therein. The chamber was lined with individual cages wrought of black metal, carved with runes and symbols in baernaloth, with each holding a single warped and twisted individual that by all rights should not have existed or even been alive.



“Mystra forbid…” Tristol muttered in shock as he looked into the first cage and the occupant therein that seemed to have been the result of either a forced attempt at breeding a vrock and a hamatula together, or the sorcerous fusion of the two.



The lupinal stared for a moment in shock at the caged abomination before turning away, feeling sick.



The horror did not end there. Various other baatezu and tanar’ri hybrids, fusions, or piecemeal grafting attempts were locked within the other cages and tanks situated elsewhere within the room. Volumes of notes were, like the previous chamber, written upon the walls above and out of reach of the twisted, sickly occupants who seemed to exist in a state of constant agony, each of them kept alive only by magical interference. Curiously the text, as they were able to look at it closer, seemed written by an unsteady hand, deeply cut into the stone in such a way as to be read less by sight, and more by the touch of hands physically brushing across them, claws scouring the furrows slashed deep into the marble.



Nisha turned a slight shade of green more than her already olive toned skin and walked out into the hall, soon to be joined by the others.



“Ugh,” The lupinal looked at the others, “After that I’m not sure I care to know what’s in the other room…”



“Yeah, but I’m curious. Morbidly curious, but still.” Clueless said as he opened the door opposite the last.



As opposed to the active and clearly ongoing experimentation in the last chamber, the next room was more a display of completed work than an active lab. Several crystalline tanks held what could only have been described as half a dozen trial runs and false starts along the way of creating a mezzoloth. Dozens of massive books and tomes lay stacked on shelves between two dissecting tables, both of which held magically constrained and still living subjects. One table held a gutted, mewling and struggling proto-mezzoloth, each of its organs separated out, tagged and levitating slightly above its torso. The fiend was somehow still alive despite the dissection.



The second table held a series of still living sagittal and coronal slices of a completed and finalized mezzoloth, somehow kept animate and alive by magic. Next to it stood a nearly solid illusion of a whole example of the subspecies in smaller scale.



Nisha gagged and dashed from the chamber when the sectioned eye of the dissected yugoloth turned to look at them. The others followed soon after, though Tristol stayed just a second more to note the sheer size of the books and bound notebooks littering the room. Each of them was easily four times the size of his own spellbooks, and that worried him simply on the matter of how physically large the author would have to have been.



“I don’t want to meet the owner of this place.” Toras said flatly.



“I mean did you expect the so-called brother of the Lie Weaver to be a pleasant fellow?” Florian asked sarcastically.



“I expected evil but this…” Toras gestured back towards the last chamber. Pointedly he did not actually look towards it.



They shook away the images still lingering in their heads of what they had seen on display, and walked deeper into the keep. As they strode onwards, they began to notice that the ubiquitous ticking of the clockwork devices echoing throughout the halls was not as constant as it first had seemed. In fact the initially continuous background pattern and rhythm of ticking would pause, reverse, increase or decrease in volume, and spontaneously change frequency and volume, subtly but it did. Perhaps most disturbingly, the changes they noticed were not always the same for each of them.



Fyrehowl’s ears perked at each of the changes, but the motion of her ears was not directly corresponding to that of Tristol’s ears, and he noticed it as well. “You’re not hearing the same patterns that I am, are you?” He asked.



“Doesn’t seem that way.” She replied.



“Nisha? You have any opinion on it?” Tristol said to the tiefling.



“It might seem like an exercise in xaos, but trust me here, it’s not. Is it whatever, not it that’s. … Whoops, sorry, bad habit.” She said, lapsing into scramblespeak as they drew near to a large, vaulted chamber.



They stopped and stared as they reached the doorway, horror shifting to amazement as they gazed up at a series of silvery astrolabes that stood at the compass points in the chamber, each of them with several great crystal lenses focused on some distant scene. While half of the lenses seemed inactive at the time, others opened up onto various scenes within the Ethereal Plane. One by one they saw moving images of Lycester’s Gap, the White Ship, the Pyramidal Gap, and the ethereal protomatter comet that hurtled through the depths, studded with shapes reminiscent of buried cities, known only as the Body Luminous.



Each visual would pan in, focus on minor details of each, and then draw out from each scene before repeating once more. Each time it opened up a view onto each distant, bizarre vista, with the open question being if it was looking at them in real-time, or looking at some manner of view separated not only in space but also in time.



“Tristol?” Clueless asked, “What’s so special about those specific demiplanes and locations? What’s common about them that might gather a baernaloth’s interest?”



Tristol put a finger to his lips and looked down at the floor, staring at his own faint reflection in the polished stone as he pondered the question. He didn’t however have a chance to respond to the bladesinger’s query as abruptly the surrounding, omnipresent clockwork ticking within the walls stopped, the scenes dimmed and paused, and the inactive lenses rotated and glowed with a sudden flare of activity.



“This can’t be good…” Nisha said with a wince.



“It’s not…” Fyrehowl said as she glanced around nervously.



The newly active crystal lenses then showed their contents, each a series of grim and morbid potential futures: Toras watched in one lens as he was torn to pieces by a pack of invisible beasts. Fyrehowl watched as she lay upon a stone table, held in place by bands of force as a gathering of arcanaloths in bejeweled finery slowly and deliberately cut away pieces of her flesh to dip in fondue pots as they held a meeting. Nisha watched as in another scene she was pulled up into the air, only to be ground to meat inside the gears of one of the astrolabes. Scene by scene the lenses played out a dozen or more grim fates, and eventually the six of them stopped watching and continued walking after they watched a scene where they all killed one another in fratricidal glee.



“Someone’s having fun at our expense.” Toras said with a smirk.



“Yes, but what I worry about is that each of those was an actual possible future, however bizarre and remote.” Clueless said.



The next twenty minutes were filled only with their own lurking dread at what they might find at the center of the fortress, and the constant nightmare ticking of the clockwork that filled the spaces between the walls, like it were the clockwork muscles of a living thing, slowly pumping fiendish hemolymph. Despite their dread and discomfort, they finally reached their destination.



“Oh what the hell…” Clueless breathed as they entered the grand chamber at the heart of the keep and stopped in their tracks at what turned to face their approach.



The air was still and cold, but skirting the edge of their hearing, just audible above the sound of the omnipresent clockwork, was the combined chorus of innumerable whispers that rushed forth from the swirling ether gap at the very center of the room that opened up below a circular portal nearly thirty feet across. Set in place above the swirling ethereal abyss, crouching like a giant iron spider was a great clockwork device of gears, pendulums, and crystalline lenses that hovered and shuddered with its own infernal motions above the pit. Extending out up and across the room, connecting to the overhead vault of gearwork, it was all eerily silent as its machinery moved in precise patterns except for the subsonic vibrations that ran through their bodies with the infrasound whir and clatter of a hundred thousand maddeningly spinning and grinding gears.



But the insensate, unspeakably complex device was not what drew their attention immediately. Rather, it was the creature that peered out at them from behind it, standing at the edge of the pit.



Harishek ap Thulkesh, the Blind Clockmaker smiled.



Nearly twenty feet tall with wasted, elongated limbs, the baernaloth turned at their approach and flashed a grin of yellowed but razor sharp fangs. It sniffed at the air as it noticed them and flicked it blackened tongue at the air like a serpent, and then they all noticed its eyes.



The monstrous fiend’s eyes were clouded and opaque, horizontal caprine pupils dotted with intraocular bleeding and plaque-like blemishes of cataracts. Blind and unseeing as they randomly twitched in their sockets, wandering and not focused on the fiend’s guests as it blindly felt its way along the pit’s edge by taking hold of the nightmare device’s metallic protuberences like a guide rail as it awkwardly loped towards them.



“It certainly took you long enough to find your way here, though time is entirely subjective in this place.” The proto-fiend’s words washed over them with a feeling of a hundred razor-sharp surgical implements poised above their skulls, just like the great machine perched above the ether gap, slowly sketching in lines of blood across their scalps the pattern of subsequent surgery. “So my dear brother Daru has sent you, no? Do not make me wait anymore than I must. Ask your questions and I will give you my price. And stay where you are…”





****​


----------



## Tsuga C

A price, always is there a price and the true cost is never on the tag...


----------



## bluegodjanus

oh no, i know where this is going


----------



## carborundum

The ratatosk...


----------



## GhostOfRickover

Never thought I'd read 16 years worth of forum posts in the span of 2 weeks, but this hooked me like a good book that I just couldn't put down.


----------



## Tsuga C

GhostOfRickover said:


> Never thought I'd read 16 years worth of forum posts in the span of 2 weeks, but this hooked me like a good book that I just couldn't put down.



I'd love to see this campaign put in book form with 2 or 3 illustrations per chapter done by DiTerlizzi, Brom, or perhaps Wayne Barlowe in the style of his "God's Demon" illustrations.


----------



## Karsten

Am I the only one, or are there more looking forward to more updates of this SH?

Come on Shemi...


----------



## Shemeska

Karsten said:


> Am I the only one, or are there more looking forward to more updates of this SH?
> 
> Come on Shemi...



I have February off from clinical rotations, so expect 3-4 updates over the next month.


----------



## Shemeska

"So eager to meet me you seem to be... so be it."


----------



## Shemeska

“His price?” Toras whispered to the others with suspicion, with Clueless and Fyrehowl nodding angrily. The Lie Weaver had spoken nothing about any price, only that they would find answers to Tristol’s questions where they now stood.

Softly snickering at the thoughts passing between his guests, the baernaloth tilted its head and sniffed at the air, then turning to glance sightlessly at each of them before slowly taking several short, shuffling steps in the group’s direction. One step, two steps, and suddenly the space between them seemed to fold inwards on itself contracting the distance and the ur-fiend loomed over them.

Fyrehowl whimpered at the creature’s stench, feeling sick to her stomach in its presence, Toras likewise felt nauseated as his own half-celestial nature rebelled at the proximity, and most strikingly as Florian’s fingers clasped reassuringly about her holy symbol of Tempus, the metal was burning hot to the touch. They’d had similar reactions when in the presence of the Lie Weaver, and in the presence of others of their ilk, but those times had been on planes far removed from the source of the baernaloths’ power, and in their current locale in a demiplane lodged at the heart of the Demiplane of Time that should have been even more so, yet it wasn’t.

“This place isn’t a demiplane,” Tristol whispered with sudden realization, his eyes widening in abject worry, “Not a true one. It’s a piece of the Waste torn off and carried across the planes to here. We’re in its native plane…”

“Your aasimar whelp of a wizard is a sharp one. Indeed you are.” Smiling at their discomfort, the blind horror hunched over, lowering itself to their stature and inclining its vaguely goat-like head.

“What are you doing?” Toras objected first, taking a sudden step back as the proto-fiend continued to grow closer.

The Gloom Father’s head jerked around at the half-celestial’s voice and it turned itself to blindly examine the source of the objection. It paused inches from Toras and sniffed before abruptly seizing him by the shoulder and licking up the side of his face. Toras shouted and struggled effortlessly before it threw him down to the floor like a discarded rag doll and a malevolent chuckle echoed through the fighter’s mind.

The others watched as one of the strongest men they’d ever known was manhandled by the huge yet spindly baernaloth. Literally ensconced in a place of its own creation, crafted from the substance of its native plane, there was precious little that they could do to fight the creature if it came to that.

“I’m getting to know my guests.” Harishek ap Thulkesh sneered in Toras’s direction as the half-celestial got up from the floor, “Unless you would prefer that I rip your memories from your mind before butchering and devouring you as another method before I wind back the clock of time and return you to some weak semblance of your existence moments prior? Mortals typically object to this, not that I care, but I am ever so busy and I would not wish to be overly distracted at the moment.”

Toras glared at the fiend as he stood up and watched it similarly examine the others by pawing, feeling, smelling, and looking into their minds without so much as a struggle. Tristol in particular felt his own mental protections buckle and rupture in the space of heartbeat when the fiend’s rancid breath washed over his face.

Each of them saw something different as they watched the baernaloth progress in its circuit of examining the group. Some simply saw it poke, prod, and taste, while others saw at least one of their companions touched, only to have every wound they’d ever experienced erupt in a shower of gore before instantly flashing back to a second before, time and probability warped to prevent that possible future from occurring.

So it went until the baernaloth came to Tristol and it stopped, the wizard suddenly and without his own agency suddenly limned in a halo of Mystra’s divine silverfire.

“A thousand times we stand here in this fractional moment, iterations upon iterations in which I snuff the spark of divinity within your blood, forcibly. You survive none of them.” The baernaloth hissed before seeming to look deep not into Tristol's eyes but past them, “You know how this has ended before. Ask yourself, here in this place, do you love your servitor?”

The fiend wasn’t speaking to Tristol, and after a momentary pause, the silverfire retreated and went quiescent in his blood. A divinity blinked.

Harishek then lifted the wizard in one hand, claws tracing the aasimar’s face. Shivering in fear at what had just occurred, he stared at his own horrified face reflected back at him in the fiend’s milky white, opaque eyes.

“I know your question wizard, but these things have power in how they are done. Ask. Verbally and of your own volition, desperate as it must surely be to find you here listening the promises of my Brother.” Teeth gleamed, jagged and cracked, as Harishek held Tristol dangling in the air, one hand gripped about the top of his head, holding him aloft a half dozen feet off of the floor.

Tristol’s voice quivered, “I need to know about the Oblivion Compass. The…”

The fiend cut him off, “I am aware of what it is, considering that I designed half of the inner guts of the device along with He that designed the other half and constructed it all, The Architect.”

Tristol closed his eyes, whispering a prayer to his goddess and then continued, opening his eyes and staring at the fiend with as much courage as he could muster in the moment, “I need to know how to read it and how it pertains to Vor…”

Harishek put a claw to Tristol’s lips, “No need to encourage that one to hear us. Names have power. Especially here.”

“… and how it pertains to the Oinoloth’s plans so that we can stop him.” Tristol concluded, omitting the Ebon’s name, his question now formally asked.

A knowing smirk on its face, the baernaloth released the wizard and dropped him to the floor where Nisha caught him and put him back on his feet.

“Thank you.” Tristol hugged the tiefling, not saying that when he’d fallen, his magic to slow his fall had failed. The baernaloth could have had them dancing like puppets on its marionette strings had it so desired, and on some level Tristol wasn’t sure it that wasn’t precisely what had been occurring ever since they had first visited the Lie Weaver in Torch.

Harishek turned its back to them and shuffled off, walking a short distance and then facing them again and sitting down upon the stone. Facing them with its hands folded upon its lap, the Blind Clockmaker’s spindly fingers tapping against one another in a rhythm to match the ticking of the gears.

“Yes,” The baernaloth finally said, “I can tell you how to read it and when it will strike a specific time, when it counts down to the culmination of THAT ONE’S desired plans. That is what your thoughts hold of significance at the present moment anyways… yes?”

Trying to remain standing despite the aura of spiritual filth that radiated off of the blind fiend, the six nodded warily. The Clockmaker smiled back at them, only vaguely positioning its head to grin at each of them as it clasped its hands together and stood once again.

“But, if you do not already know my name, you should since you will very shortly be performing a task for me. I have been known by many names through the eons, but most know me as Harishek Ap Thul’kesh, the Blind Clockmaker.”

“Nice to meet you! My name is Nisha!” The Xaositect quipped, a choice of words not appreciated by the fiend.

“Your names are already known to me. Remain silent.”

The baernaloth then stood and for a moment its clouded, snake-like eyes jerked towards the ether gap and it unsteadily walked towards its edge before pausing and muttering something to itself only barely heard, “…and other wretches. But you will not be silent…fool…”

The Clockmaker turned to stare down at the swirling morass of the ether gap below where an animate darkness seemed to move of its own accord, a black spiral reflected back on the milky surface of its eyes. Several minutes passed before he hissed and spat into the depths of the ether gap before turning back to his unwitting soon-to-be emissaries.

“What exactly do you want us to do for you?” Clueless asked, “Because your brother’s tasks weren’t anything that we enjoyed.”

“To say the least…” Toras grumbled.

“Nothing you do for me will be on that level.” Harishek smiled knowingly.

No. It wouldn’t.

Not in the least.

Lifting one spindly, unnaturally long arm and equally long fingers into the air the baernaloth whispered to itself a litany of words in its own native tongue and drew a single finger through the air, stirring the substance of space itself into a rapidly congealing fluid between its hands. A single moment of concentration and forming within its hands, drawn into substance from out of nothing, Harishek held a gleaming and flawless crystal vial in his wasted hand and offered it to them.

“Take it,” he said, “Pour its contents onto the wounds on the roots of Yggdrasil the World Ash where its blood drips and the great tree bleeds out into the dust of the Waste.”

Hovering in the air for one of them to take, the vial was carved into the shape of a tree with a crystal dragon curled about its base. Filled to the brim with a thick, almost syrupy liquid, it swirled with reddish, glimmering sparkles and exuded a light of its own that felt at once both a feeling of absolute unquestionable love yet chill and bitterly, sterilely cold.

Clueless took the vial and the baern spoke again, its dead, blind eyes twitching with intensity even as they wandered. “Pour it on the roots but do not allow Nidhogg or its spawn to notice your attempts or else your lives are in most all probability forfeit beneath their claws and fangs. Climb the tree and then follow the vial’s tug and pull to the first ratatosk village you find and accept what gift they give to you. The vial will know where to go, and the squirrel-folk should be expecting you. Take their gifts and return them to me and then I will give you the information you seek. One task alone. Simple and uncomplicated, unlike the progression of drudgery my sibling foisted upon you.”

“What is this in here?” Toras asked, concerned, staring at the swirling, sparkling starlight held within the vial, and even more so the wildly confusing sensations that the light gave as it washed over him.

“You expect some act of evil? You expect that it is poison? Perhaps you think that I wish you to ruin the great tree? No, I do not, and your wretched touch of the divine should tell you that I’m telling you the truth. In fact, what I will have you do might even be portrayed as an act of charity on my part.” The Clockmaker said with a grin, exposing crooked and malformed fangs, its breath like wind over the rotting remains of a hundred fresh battlefields. “My portion, my payment for a bargain struck eons ago.”

The fighter winced and turned away from the fiend’s direct gaze, which even though it might have been blind, he could feel its mind burrowing into his to paint a picture for its senses that was likely more accurate than their own, even if its sight was useless to it.

“That’s all? No hidden terms or costs to us?” Tristol asked.

“Do with the flask as I have told you and then bring back to me that which the ratatosks give you willingly in return. Do that and you will have your answer from me truthfully.” The baern said with a malign chuckle.

Toras nodded: inexplicably the fiend father was telling the truth.

“I am not my brother the Lie Weaver, painting you a pretty image with falsehoods and half-truths. I am honest in this and will give you what you purchase with your deeds and your acts on my behalf. But do not fail me,” The Clockmaker stressed the last statement as it turned away from them, its voice taking a darker tone, “For the vial would find its way back to me and I would find others to do my tasks, and my retribution would be swift and horrific. You are worthless to me outside of this task, and you have seen my creations elsewhere and what I have done to those that I cherish. What would I do then to you? Wretched husks of meat and bone wrapped around souls that come to dot the planes like mewling little vermin, impure…”

But the baern was talking to itself by that point, turned away from the receding footsteps of his pawns. He couldn’t see them leaving, but he heard them clearly and saw their thoughts as well, as they removed themselves from his presence, uniformly disgusted by the experience.

Harishek pondered for a time after they had gone just how many of them would return to him looking for their answers? How many of them would sully their values to gain his promised answers? Just how would their thoughts differ at that time compared to their expectations currently?

The baernaloth smiled.


***​

Deep in a cavern deep below the surface of Dubai’s Obscure Woe at the edges of the blood marsh on the outskirts of the gatetown of Torch, keen ears and keener eyes observed the events in their sibling’s domain with delight and hidden knowledge.

“Everything continues as we have foreseen.” Eyes gleaming in the darkness, Daru ib Shamiq smiled.

Illuminated only by the Lie Weaver’s glowing eyes, Tellura Ibn Shartalan sat with a cherubic smile upon her face, her shadow swallowed up by the surrounding darkness yet its eyes and mouth visible, darker against the darkness. Her shepherd’s staff lay upon the ground, replaced for the moment in her hands with a crude doll wrought of sticks, rags, and the skull of a ratatosk.

“Everything.”


****​


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## Tarath

Trust not the mother/fathers, we know this lesson very well indeed. I'd dare say that mewling mezzoloths freshly spawned on the Gray Waste know this.


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## carborundum

What they did sounds reasonable, and it's going to be true...and awful.


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## CallumPH

I wonder how many people reading this now have already read the original version of this part of the story and know what's coming, versus how many are reading it for the first time -- and which we should feel more sorry for.

@Shemeska -- the "price" is one that, while all the characters are horrified by it, feels particularly aimed at one character in particular -- in the original game how did that work out with the player of the character in question?


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## Karsten

CallumPH said:


> I wonder how many people reading this now have already read the original version of this part of the story and know what's coming, versus how many are reading it for the first time -- and which we should feel more sorry for.
> 
> @Shemeska -- the "price" is one that, while all the characters are horrified by it, feels particularly aimed at one character in particular -- in the original game how did that work out with the player of the character in question?



I've read both versions, but I am never certain over what is coming or not.
I also disagree with your view that the "price" aims one character only. 
Having read through this story, there are still some open and untouched points, which are rather serious...think for example the lupinal and what happened to that layer of Elysium, for which so far we haven't seen the aftermath nor the upper planes reaction.

per different chapter, there may be more focus over one or the other character, but overall, noone has escaped the whirlwind of the wheels within wheels...


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## Shemeska

CallumPH said:


> I wonder how many people reading this now have already read the original version of this part of the story and know what's coming, versus how many are reading it for the first time -- and which we should feel more sorry for.
> 
> @Shemeska -- the "price" is one that, while all the characters are horrified by it, feels particularly aimed at one character in particular -- in the original game how did that work out with the player of the character in question?




Honestly at the time it wasn't to the best of my recollection. I was aiming for a general emotional sucker punch to absolutely emphasize just how much of an abomination the baern were, and it worked. It absolutely focused the PCs on getting righteous revenge in the long-game as the campaign progressed towards an end. But yes, given Toras's divine patron, it hammered that PC in particular. The player talked justified smack and I let him know that revenge was possible in-game, and deserved. You'll see.


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## Shemeska

Karsten said:


> I've read both versions, but I am never certain over what is coming or not.
> I also disagree with your view that the "price" aims one character only.
> Having read through this story, there are still some open and untouched points, which are rather serious...think for example the lupinal and what happened to that layer of Elysium, for which so far we haven't seen the aftermath nor the upper planes reaction.
> 
> per different chapter, there may be more focus over one or the other character, but overall, noone has escaped the whirlwind of the wheels within wheels...



We will come back to the Upper Plane's role in all of this, and why very pointedly it seems like they've been vacuously absent from fighting back even in the face of a layer of Elysium being ripped out, debased, and stolen. Very little in the campaign was ever a true red herring that didn't tie back into something else on a deeper level for later explanation and exploration. It will be a little bit, but you'll absolutely see what's going on with the Guardinals. There's a future Fyrehowl-focused plot art that goes there, and it ties into a previous short bit about one or more of the Guardinal Lords clearly understanding something involving the Oinoloth and it bringing up terrible memories of some past event for them. That past will be absolutely revisited and explained. Also there was a previous short bit involving a portal to the Waste in Elysium that took the form of a tranquil pool of water, that started boiling IIRC as the Oinoloth went about his consolidation of power in the Lower Planes of Conflict.

And there will be an update some time this next week.


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## Tsuga C

Shemeska said:


> Very little in the campaign was ever a true red herring that didn't tie back into something else on a deeper level for later explanation and exploration.




When did the players realize just how deep a campaign you'd constructed and start taking notes to avoid being caught flat-footed by events of the past, be it theirs personally or of the Planes in general?


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## Shemeska

Tsuga C said:


> When did the players realize just how deep a campaign you'd constructed and start taking notes to avoid being caught flat-footed by events of the past, be it theirs personally or of the Planes in general?



They started taking notes quite early on. I want to say multiple players were jotting things down by the time they saw Factol Nilesia (seemingly) being flayed by Her Serenity. I still have one player's notes as an adjunct to my own for writing the storyhour.


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## Shemeska

The bladesinger cradled the vial in his hands, watching what seemed to be liquid starlight held within shift and flow with the motions of his hands turning it. It was syrupy, whatever it was, a consistency thicker than water or wine, with the slightest amount of viscosity. The light it shed played over his face and with it came the bizarre mix of emotions: a paradoxical combination of courage, regret, horror, and adoration all at once.

“Let’s get the hell out of here and finish this and be done.” Toras said, his hand on the bladesinger’s shoulder breaking him from an almost trance-like reverie from where he’d stared into the vial’s interior even as the baernaloth loomed over them all with the faintest of smiles playing across its diseased and ancient lips.

Tristol glanced at the proto-fiend, “Before I waste my magic, can I even gate out of this place?” Concern weighed heavily on him as he called the formulae into his mind’s eye and prepared to whisper the words and perform the gestures required by the spell even if his nature eschewed the use of any mundane components and even the foci typically needed.

The Clockmaker ignored Tristol for several moments, tinkering instead with the great device that hung perched like a spider above a doomed and struggling victim over the ether gap the demiplane was drafted about. Finally the proto-fiend responded with a dismissive gesture and a curt, “I will allow it.”

“Please Tristol.” Fyrehowl’s ears lay flat against her head, the demiplane’s nature as a portion of the Waste and the proximity of the baernaloth starting to take its toll on her, with thin wisps of silvery vapor wafted from her like the vapor of ice sublimating under the heat of a forge. “The quicker the better.”

The freakish spectacle was enough to jolt the wizard into action, and with Nisha’s tail curled about his ankle and her hand on his side, he intoned the spell and opened a gate to deposit them at the location of their choosing: the roots of Yggdrasil where the World Ash rose up improbably from the blighted soil of Nifflheim the Second Gloom.

“I’m standing on the naughty word Waste and I feel better.” Fyrehowl took a deep breath of relief, “I never thought that I’d say that.”

The others nodded in agreement. As strange as it was to say, even as the Waste stretched out eternally about them, they felt relieved to have left the Clockwork Gap. The difference was profound.

Safe from Harishek’s anathemic presence as they were, they had not arrived in a place of safety in any way, nor were they alone as they stood on a grey bluff of weathered rock and dusty top soul overlooking the plain surrounding the World Tree’s base.

Glancing the kilometer or so that stretched between them and the tree, the Waste oddly seemed to yield in some tenuous way, with the faintest traces of color in the soil and an equally faint increase in the luminosity of the plane’s sickly halflight gloom. The source of that difference, Yggdrasil’s roots sunk deep into the plane’s dust and ash, a putrid soil solidified with the bloodshed of the War Eternal, the flesh and spiritual essence alike of untold billions rotting away to form what passed for the soil of the Waste. From such a rotting source, the World Tree improbably rose up and out of sight into the wispy, mournful clouds that hung above, a thing of plane-spanning greatness, somehow drawing sustenance from the frigid dark of the Second Gloom. But as they huddled there in the roots’ long-shadows, they beheld the others crowded about the tree’s base.

“What the hell are those things?” Florian squinted to make out the details as the terrain seemed to move.

It wasn’t the land itself that moved however.

All about the World Ash crawled hundreds of dragons, wyrms, and linnorms. The blighted progeny of Nidhogg, the unholy beast that daily sought to bring down the tree by clawing, gnashing and gorging upon the roots. Most of the scaled terrors seemed content to sit there, oblivious of their surroundings in the greater expanse of the Waste, and there in their focused oblivion to gnash upon and claw madly at the roots, though they collectively seemed to do little more than barely scratch the bark to no great effect.

As they gazed out, Nidhogg was not immediately to be seen, though as the vast trunk of the World Ash dominated the horizon and blocked out sight of much of the Waste, it was presumed that the dragon was there, distantly gorging upon the tree, miles out of sight on the far side of the expanse.

“Please tell me that we don’t have to actually, you know, fight our way through those like few thousand different dragons down there?” Nisha spoke the obvious.

“Yeah I think that’s a wise idea.” Fyrehowl shook her head.

“Cowards.” Toras said, half-jokingly with a self-effacing grin.

Clueless produced the baernaloth’s vial and watched as its light flickered about on his hands, cold and alien. “I assume we go airborne, teleport over there onto one of the tallest roots, away from the dragons, and do what we came here to do.”

“Tempus isn’t going to argue with discretion here rather than wading into the fray.” Florian clutched her holy symbol and whispered a preemptive prayer.

That was when they saw it.

“Powers above…” Fyrehowl said with fright, jerking up one hand topoint to the horizon where the base of the World Tree curved out of sight. Where the trunk met the horizon, a staggeringly gargantuan tail and part of an equally vast wing of the mother of Norse dragons itself lay upon the Waste partially obscured amidst a river of sticky, slowly flowing sap. As they all watched, Nidhogg’s tail twitched in irritation every few minutes and with each such motion they could feel the earth shake ever so slightly from miles away as it vented its apocalyptic desires upon Yggdrasil’s roots.

“Let’s just pour this vial out before that thing or any of its children notices us, alright?” Clueless said.

“Sneaky would be good right now. That thing would give the Mother of Serpents a dance partner…” Nisha said as she scanned the tree for a safe place to alight. “We ready to go?”

Nodding in assent, they all gathered around Tristol and with a word from the aasimar they vanished in the flicker-flash of a teleport, leaping the miles across the plain to reappear upon one of the largest roots that still bore a recent and open wound from Nidhogg herself.

“Ok go!” Florian shouted, glancing out at the nearest of Nidhogg’s children several hundred feet away. “Dump it and let’s go!”

Clueless was more measured in his approach and slowly and deliberately uncorked the vial, watching the sparkling, starlit liquid within begin wafting up from the cork and interior alike. He didn’t have a moment to act further however before Toras took the vial from his hands and clambered further up the root.

“Can’t wait!” Toras said, looking back as he climbed higher up to where the flesh and bark was stripped raw and sap bubbled forth from a deep slash that went several feet into the massive root, itself thick as a house. Looking around once more, ever warily for any sign that Nidhogg’s children had taken notice of them, or that their mother itself had, he whispered a soft prayer to his god and upended the crystalline vial, hastily pouring its contents onto the wound.

It didn’t take long to notice the effect. The syrupy fluid was instantly absorbed, streaks of starlight washing through the xylem and racing through the root in every possible direction as the wound sealed almost as quickly with a sparkle of cold, violet light.

“What the hell?” Toras said as he stepped back from the rapidly spreading glow, watching the root regenerate, grow, and furiously shed itself of its wounds and the dust of the Waste itself.

Yggdrasil was healing.

They watched in amazement as the glow increased, rocketing up and across the swath of roots in range of their vision. Within moments they beheld the tree’s myriad wounds heal as suddenly the air was rent by the confused and angered roars of the drakes that had spent their lives at their mother’s feet, madly seeking to tear down the World Tree. A moment after her children cried out, so did Nidhogg.

“Oh naughty word!” Toras shouted as the very ground shook and with a single agonized roar of frustration, the clouds overhead swirled and parted as the great dragon unleashed her fury, watching as long centuries of her and her broods’ wrath were reversed and erased.

“Umm… let’s move. Now! Before that thing comes hunting for us!” Nisha whispered harshly as she waved her arms wildly, pointing up the side of the tree into the sky.

She didn’t have to wait long.

Like a rogue wave erupting from a churning sea of scales, Nidhogg’s head peered around the trunk, eyes the size of great wyrms blazing with fury to focus on the party and as one the tide of wyrms turned to where Yggdrasil’s saviors stood upon the roots.

She had little need to say so as Clueless and Fyrehowl were already hurtling up into the sky as Tristol hastily cast a spell to give the rest of them flight. Moments later they too joined in their skyward jaunt, glancing downwards only once to watch the healing of Yggdrasil’s roots continue and to watch the blind, but ultimately impotent, hatred of Nidhogg and its children erupt with a continuing chorus of rage and bursts of flame, acid, and more shooting skywards, but already the targets of their fury were long gone.

The spiritual gnawing of the Waste decreased meter by meter as they hurtled skyward, emotions racing back to them with relief as they finally lost sight of the Second Gloom far below and gradually a white haze of clouds replaced it below them. Meter by meter the light began to brighten, a serene and blue sunless sky manifesting about Yggdrasil’s trunk as they transitioned from the Waste and onto the planar pathway of the World Tree itself, a route between planes if not quite one in and of itself.

Slowly but surely as they fled from the Second Gloom and from Nidhogg’s fury far below, fear and urgency fled their thoughts and the next portion of their task for the Clockmaker made itself manifest.

“Guys, slow down a bit.” Toras called out as the group gathered and matched the speed of their ascent. “The vial. It’s tugging at my hand like a compass.”

“Well, the fiend said that the vial would know where to lead us to.” Fyrehowl nodded, glancing at the now empty crystalline and seemingly prosaic-looking vial held in the half-celestial’s hand. “Now we just need to find some ratatosks.”

“Someone remind me what they even are?” Toras asked as they passed the first of many branches the size of city roads reaching out into the air and sprouting green shoots and new growth as a direct result of their actions.

“Big, sodding, squirrel people.” Nisha said, dramatically sticking her upper jaw out in an overbite and twitching her upper lip like one of Yggdrasil’s fuzzy tailed guardians.

“Heh. Well, regardless, that’s who we need to find. And so far, this hasn’t seemed like a bad thing we’re doing. Hells, we just healed the World Tree, I can’t see any way that would be evil.” Toras said with cheerful optimism as he smiled and laughed at Nisha’s pantomime.

It would be the last laughter they shared for some time.



***​


As they climbed up the Great Tree, led onward without pause by the pull and tug of the crystal vial they held, they were being watched. Perched upon a branch high above them and looking down was a solitary woman of fey or vaguely half-elven features. Her hair was long and green, tinged with the red of autumn in places, and her skin was a milky nut brown. She was naked but unashamed as she watched the six travel upwards, ever upwards towards her children, her guardians and caretakers.

And there, as she silently watched, unable to act by virtue of a pact made in desperation in the early days of the cosmos, she wept. Yggdrasil wept. Far below, on another plane or two or three, her tears would fall like glistening raindrops upon the ground and sprout spontaneously into saplings and flowers which then withered and died, blooming and passing in an instant, evaporating in the sunlight or the gloom wherever they might touch the earth.



***​


“Everything proceeds as you would desire my Oinoloth.” The telepathic voice of the ultroloth, Parviset ib Pluton was succinct yet oddly servile. She stood at the summit of Khin-Oin surrounded by a quartet of her own arcanaloth servitors, there at the foot of the great throne, the Siege Malicious, where the arcanaloth who was the Oinoloth, Vorkannis the Ebon, sat and stared down at them all with casual malevolence in his vivid pink eyes. She felt belittled by the contrast between her nature and his, and his station and hers as she knelt, and the Oinoloth’s smile publicly displayed that he understood her feelings and relished them.

Curiously the Ebon’s consort was nowhere to be seen.

At the center of the platform at the summit of the Wasting Tower, Vorkannis sat upon the Siege Malicious, surrounded by a fawning court of arcanaloths and ultroloths, the latter cowed not only by his own presence but by the presence of one of their own standing at the edge of the tower’s precipice, its eyes dull, a shard of cobalt crystal lodged through its skull and into its brain, swirling with magic and agony.

Vorkannis shifted on his throne, preparing to speak and then, abruptly, he paused. It was subtle but it was there: a faint hum in the air, a tremor in the ossified stones of the Tower. He felt something and with no regard to the ultroloth at his feet he ignored her and gazed out into the Waste.

In his jackal’s ears the sounds of the courtiers faded away and he concentrated on the horizon, shifting his attentions to each layer of the Waste in turn, sifting, sensing, feeling…

One of the braver arcanaloths raised his voice for attention.

Vorkannis glanced down, snarled, and snapped his fingers.

Time ceased its flow. The wheels of forward causality ground to a halt far above and beyond the momentary tinkering of a mortal wizard’s mightiest attempts to do the same. About him the arcanaloths’ hung mid-motion, the ultroloths’ eyes shimmered, locked into one color and their chorus of telepathic pleading weighed heavily in silence.

All about was silence.

The Oinoloth stared out into the distance.

“What are you doing?... Ah. Yes. It is that time again isn’t it…” Vorkannis whispered to himself, his senses cast into the depths of Niffleheim where he could feel the great and suddenly more virile roots of the World Ash pulse deep within the soil of the Waste as they began to regenerate their accumulated wounds.

Surrounded by the temporally frozen yugoloth court, Vorkannis closed his eyes and basked in the sensations that he felt from the Second Gloom. His ear’s twitched as if they could physically hear Nidhogg’s rage and agony as its Sisyphean task reset once again by the actions of the Gloom Father’s and their puppets.

It had happened so very many times, the interlude like the finely run gearwork of a great clock of suffering. It was beautiful. It was a thing of respect for him. Even if the entity responsible for it, Harishek ap Thulkesh, was one of disdain. The Oinoloth briefly snarled at the mental image of the Blind Clockmaker, though it had been many, many years since they had stood in one another’s presence. They would again, and when they did, circumstances would be far, far different if his plans held true.

He despised the perpetual mad tinkering of the baern on a reality he held that they had tacitly abandoned their claims upon. He was aware of such things if he cast his attentions wide, and the greatest of such actions, like the regeneration of Yggdrasil was something he felt even without such.

The present action was expected. The time was right.

Perfectly coordinated as the final act in a repeating cycle before it began once again, and though it was the puppeteering of the Demented, it was not a concern of his. It was nothing he had not seen before. Again and again and again.

The work’s blind creator might have been worthy of his ire, but the actions themselves were worthy of his respect, worthy of his appreciation, worthy of his attention and a moment of bliss to savor.

The Oinoloth’s form grew ever so slightly indistinct, his margins fading, and his own darkness blurring and sinking into the shadows of the Siege Malicious. Relaxing, the puissant radiance of his eyes erupting like a burning beacon atop of Khin-Oin, his fingers sunk into the suddenly liquid substance of the Siege and down into the matrix of the Wasting Tower itself.

Merging and mingling with the substance of the Waste itself, he felt the distant rage and inchoate agony in Niffleheim. The Oinoloth felt it resonating through his bones, echoing there in the abject hollow of his soul, a darkness devoid of empathy.

His eyes closed and his ivory teeth gleaming in the darkness within and without, Vorkannis the Ebon smiled.


----------



## carborundum

Cheerful optimism, Toras, when a baernoloth is involved? Oh you sweet, sweet man.


----------



## The Watcher

Wow. I started reading this story hour in high school- just finished catching up on years worth of material. I can't tell you how glad I am you're still updating it Shemeska. Your stories have stayed with me for a long time- can't wait to see where it goes.


----------



## Ohtar Turinson

I was reminded about this storyhour recently, and look at that! You’re still around!

Glad to see this still updating Shemmy- your plot weaving style had a significant impact on how I run my games (along with a few others on the WotC and planewalker boards way back when).


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## Karsten

Hi Semi,

its been sometime since last update...


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## Tsuga C

Karsten said:


> Hi Semi,
> 
> its been sometime since last update...



Shemeska is currently walking their canoloth and will be absent for a bit longer. Unless exercised vigorously on a regular basis--big walk plus demolition of a halfling village, for example--they are absolute ruin on the household furniture.


----------



## Shemeska

[*Content Warning:* This scene and scenes in the next update made my players cry. Please read with forewarning of implied death of children.]

Hours passed as they walked along the tree as the vial directed with its insistent, magnetic pull towards some distant goal, sometimes walking along or between branches, other times flying up the trunk. Several times they would encounter other travelers along the branches, some of them benign and others hostile, most of them using the tree as a method of transit between planes. They would pass some of the portals that dotted Yggdrasil’s limbs like fruit, great spinning pools of light to other planes where the great tree touched with stem or root. But eventually they stumbled upon a pair of those who they sought: ratatosks.

Barring their path along one of the branches was a pair of bipedal red squirrels. The ratatosks carried spears and shields carved from the giant sterile acorns of the Great Tree, and the chattered quickly and incomprehensibly to one another as the six approached them.

“Hello, we…” Clueless began, only to be cut off as both ratatosks chattered angrily and pointed their spear at him.

“You no go this place. Go back way came.” The squirrel that was half Clueless’s height said in stunted, broken planar common, angrily gesticulating towards the downwards trunk.

“Well no, this is the way we’re supposed to go, at least it’s the way that this thing is saying.” The half-fey held up the crystalline vial, “Supposedly we’re supposed to find some of your kind and then you’d know what to do. We were told that your kind would be expecting us.”

The two ratatosks stared back, their spears now at their sides and their agitated demeanor gone, replaced with a deathly silence at the sight of the vial.

“I take it that you do know what this is about, yes?” Clueless asked again.

The pair of guards lowered their spears and looked at one another like they had seen a ghost; one of them was trembling slightly.

“Are you…” Clueless began.

“Follow, we take you…” The one, steadier squirrel warrior said as it quickly motioned them down the branch.

The group collectively followed, albeit spooked by the sudden reaction they’d received at the sight of the baernaloth’s vial.


“Well, something’s got them spooked. But they did recognize us.” Nisha said as they followed the one scampering ratatosk. “For better or for worse I don’t know.”

The ratatosk scurried onwards, along and up the tree at breakneck speed, stopping every so often to allow them to catch up, chattering its high-pitched language at them impatiently to hurry. Eventually they reached a village perched upon a platform built across a series of branches, sheltered from sight by an overhanging limb and partially tucked into a knot and hollow within the trunk of the tree itself. Nearly invisible from outside, the village easily held hundreds of the squirrel-folk.

As they walked into the town, the curious ratatosk villagers peeked out from their homes and from behind the great tree’s leaves. Their expressions changed from curious to frightened though when they saw the glowing vial clutched in Clueless’s hand.

Several minutes later and they’d reached the middle of the village, led there by the warrior, and met not with discussion or fanfare, but with complete and abject silence. Fifty odd faces stared out from windows and doorways, no malice in their expressions, but fear and uncertainty.

“At last you have come.” An elderly ratatosk walked out to meet the warrior that had escorted them, nodded and approached, “As others did before you many centuries ago as told by my father and their fathers before them many times over. The time has come again.”

“Thank you for welcoming us.” Tristol gave a smile, his ears perked and hearing nothing but the eerie whistle of the wind on the great tree’s branches, “Though we’re uncertain as to what to do next.”

The elder’s response did not allay their worries, rather it increased them.

“I am ready to go with you. Pick the others and we will follow.” He said in high pitched but weary planar common, his eyes suddenly haunted.

“Excuse me?” Toras said, “What do you mean follow us? Pick?”

The elder sighed, “You weren’t told… All the better to motivate you to do what you must. You’re good people, even with a celestial amongst you; you likely would have refused the task if you’d been told anything beyond how to heal the Great Mother Yggdrasil.”

The six looked at each other with dread.

“Told what?” Fyrehowl asked as she noticed the entire village coming out from their houses and assembling around them.

“The truth of our bargain and our curse to keep our Great Mother alive. Our price and self sacrifice to Yggdrasil that we must give when the time arises once every dozen generations and you, the ones with that vial, come to bring back to the blind darkness that which he requires.” The elder inhaled deeply and sighed heavily.

“What is it you have to give us?” Toras asked with sudden intensified worry.

About them, the villagers had assembled, each family standing with their children. No single adults, no couples without children or old and their children grown to adulthood. Only families with children stood there, waiting.

“When the time arrives, the eldest of us must leave and travel with you. I have dreaded this moment, but I am resigned to whatever may happen. I am ready and I go for the sake of She who gave us life and harbors us as her children.” The Elder said before gesturing to the rest of the village where each mated pair had stepped forward with their children.

Collectively their hearts sunk and recoiled with dawning realization of just what the Clockmaker’s price had been to save Yggdrasil.

“Oh gods no…” Fyrehowl stumbled and choked back emotion as she looked into the worried faces of the innocent, the children of the village being offered to them, there to be selected and then handed over to the elder horror that was the Clockmaker.

“You must each choose one of our young ones to go with you. They and we know what we must do, and despite…” He turned from the parents and sought to compose himself, desperately trying not to weep, “And despite the agony of this, we do it willingly for the Great Mother. We must. The Great Mother would have died…”

“I…No… I have to speak with my god…” Toras stared blankly at the faces of the ratatosk children in disbelief and horror. For the first time ever, his companions watched him with genuine fear in his eyes. The fighter clutched his holy symbol and turned towards an opening gate to the domain of his divine patron, Andros, protector of the weak, the infirm, and of children. “I may not be back…”

Nisha looked at the assembled families and their children, all of whom only vaguely seemed aware of what was truly going on as they looked at their mothers and fathers and then at the strangers who had come to the village. The tiefling walked to her husband and clutched his shoulder tightly as she turned away from the Ratatosks.

“I feel sick Tristol… I can’t look at them…” She said softly, trying not to gag.

Clueless and Fyrehowl looked at each other and then walked towards the others.

“We need to talk, all of us.” The half-fey said, motioning them together.

“Clueless, I can’t do this. I may not be on the greatest terms with what I see as the inaction of the upper planes in the face of a tide of evil, and I’m sure that they wouldn’t approve of some of the actions that I’ve taken, but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I willingly handed over a child to one of the baern. I can’t imagine what that thing would do to them…” The lupinal’s face contorted into a savage mask of anger and grief.

“We don’t have a choice though.” Clueless said, his own mind struggling to rationalize an act of hideous, loathsome pragmatism.

“But what kind of choice is that?!” Nisha hissed, the bell on her tail rattling in fury at the proto-fiend’s deceipt, “Damn it all, I won’t sacrifice one of them, not any of them! If I have to give over a child if I go back to the Clockmaker, then I won’t be going back there at all.” The Xaositect buried her face in Tristol’s shoulder.

“They’re choosing to do this though,” Clueless said with a sigh as he glanced back at the villagers, “Evil as it might be to involve us in this at all, for their part it’s a sacrifice to save Yggdrasil. Even if the means are blasphemous, in the end, the lives this will save are greater and more precious. They’ve chosen their way of life willingly.”

Tristol nodded softly, “The information we would buy with this, it can prevent a greater evil from happening. Even if we don’t do this, it will still happen eventually, with others sent in our place with considerably less concern for these people. It might even harm the Tree and them as well in the short term if we refuse.”

Nisha looked up at Tristol and he stroked her forehead and tightly clutched her hand, “But Tristol, that doesn’t make we want to do this, or like it, or think it any less evil. I refuse to do this. Their choice is not a choice, it was forced upon them eons ago in a moment of desperation. I would never forgive myself for doing this, but I won’t deny you your choice and your reasons if you take part it in.”

“I understand.” Tristol kissed his forehead and held her as she cried.

Eventually she stopped, composed herself and stepped back, giving Tristol a kiss, “I’ll see you back in Sigil. Please be safe.”

Tristol nodded and handed her a scroll. She unfurled it, whispered awkwardly over the incantations and vanished in the glowing halo of planeshifting magic back to the Outlands, and from there on to Sigil.

Clueless nodded and looked at Fyrehowl again, “You don’t want to stay here for this, and that’s fine. The Clockmaker just said to accept what they give us and return to him, but I’ve had enough dealings with yugoloths to play the same games as they do, and if some of us aren’t returning to him then the ratatosks have nothing to give to us and we don’t have to bring a child. You can leave and we’ll meet you back in Sigil when it’s over.”

“Well,” The lupinal nodded, “See you then, I’m sorry you have to do this…”

Fyrehowl ran her fingers over an amulet around her neck that swirled with colored light, like a miniature color pool set in silver, and like Toras and Nisha before her, she too vanished in a ripple of magic as well. The three of them remaining looked at one another as she left and sighed.

“You haven’t said anything yet, but I know you’re thinking the same thing.” Clueless gestured to Florian, “Take your time in consulting your god, Tristol and I have some things to talk about as well.”

“Alright, I’ll be over here concentrating for a while.” The cleric said as she walked over to a spot to pray.

Tristol looked at Clueless as they removed themselves from Florian’s presence and from the immediate local earshot of the Ratatosks. Almost simultaneously they said, “Toras…”

Tristol continued, “Yeah, my thoughts as well. This is absolute blasphemy to his god and his beliefs. What is he going to do if we see this through?”

“It’s us or someone else. It’s going to happen eventually, and it’s not something we can stop. Not yet at least. And besides, we need the information that we’ll get from the Clockmaker.” Clueless said.

Tristol nodded sullenly, “I know, but it doesn’t make it any easier at all. I hate myself for doing this as much as I hate the Clockmaker.”

“It’s the ratatosks’ choice.” Clueless replied, “They made whatever deal they made, and they’ve been doing this for eons it would seem. They know what they’re doing. It’s part of their life, culture, and religion at this juncture.”

“Is it really a choice on their part? Nisha certainly didn’t think so. And if it is, do they even have a moral right to make that choice?” Tristol said. “Should they rightly have the choice to sacrifice their own children to save Yggdrasil and all others of their kind? And this is assuming the fiend is even doing what is good for them in exchange for their sacrifice and there aren’t hideous things waiting in the future contingent upon our actions here today.”

“Or our inaction if we refuse.” Clueless shrugged, “We can’t get bogged down in over thinking our actions here based on what the baern may or may not have planned based on what they think we’ll do. But as to the moral ability to the present-day ratatosk to make this sacrifice, I think we have to assume that they can. And even if it’s wrong, we can’t stop it now. Maybe in the future, but we can’t afford to stop it now.”

Tristol nodded sullenly, his tail flitting behind him, angry and bottle-brushed. “I know, I know. You’re right. But it still leaves us with how to deal with Toras if he decides to come back and end this now in some way.”

“He’s strong, very strong, and the best fighter amongst us except for perhaps Fyrehowl.” Clueless said as the unseelie portion of his heritage started to speculate.

“And she’s not here, so it’s you, me, and maybe Florian.” Tristol said, looking over towards the cleric. “I won’t hurt him, let’s be clear about that, or at the very least I’d prefer not to.” Tristol said as he mentally cataloged his current spells in memory over the hypothetical conflict.

“Best then to keep him away or entrap him so she can’t get to us, or anyone else.” Clueless replied.

“Force bubble would do the trick, and he doesn’t have any real way to get out of one of them. A forced planeshift as well would certainly work.” Tristol said. “Hells… an imprisonment if it comes to it. I can let him out once this is finished. naughty word… I really don’t want to think about going after one another.”

“I know, and I guarantee that discord is something the baern is counting on as well.” Clueless looked back towards Florian before continuing, “But as far as Toras goes, I can pull out a few walls of force myself if we just need to box him in. But something tells me that we won’t be seeing him again until all of this is over.”

As the aasimar and bladesinger talked, Florian basked in the mental attentions of her divine patron and asked her questions. The moral quandary they’d been hurled into was not something typical for servitors of the Foehammer. Battle was often more straightforward, and the political wrangling prior to battle something better left to the priests of the Red Knight. Now however, there was an apparent need to balance the immediate but horrid evil of sacrificing willing innocents, versus the need to find information about a greater evil that they might be able to prevent. Her hand rubbing her holy symbol like a secular worry stone, her divine patron’s spiritual attentions were like the distant comforting call of signal horns across a battlefield, the fight ended and the battle won, now being a time of somber reflection and comfort in the aftermath. Florian listened intently to the words that followed in her mind, and more so every nuanced feeling that she felt from the god of battle.

In the end though, the answer she received most clearly was less firm than she had hoped for. “It is their choice,” Tempus called to her, “And you likewise have your own choice in a quandary with few of them. A general standing with their troops on a battlefield knows that whatever choices they make in the coming fight, there will be loss, there will be sacrifice, and they hope for victory by the strength of their arms, their convictions, and their choices. Make your own fate my child with your choice here and I will support you.”

No firm ‘do this’, or ‘do that’, the decision was still left to her. She sighed, stood up, and walked over towards the mage and the bladesinger. They turned at her approach and the mental question of the moment went unsaid.

“I’m in this till the end.” Florian said with a sigh.

“Alright, and we’re glad to have you with us.” Clueless nodded, a clear burden lifted from his mind apparent in his face and his eyes.

“Thank you,” Tristol lay a hand on the cleric’s shoulder.

They turned and walked towards the assembled ratatosks. The village elder returned to their side as they gazed at the villagers who went rigid and tense at the uncertainty. Would their children be among those taken away?

“We can’t take children from families who only have one.” Tristol said, the stares of parents clutching their young ones burning into his mind.

Clueless and Florian nodded.

“Agreed,” The half-fey added. “We can at least try to minimize the cruelty of this.”

“Before we choose,” Tristol held up a hand and addressed the villagers, “Any family who has an only child, go back to your homes, we won’t take them. We can’t bring ourselves to take them from you.”

There was the immediate sound of several parents weeping in gratitude. Without a moment’s hesitation they clutched their child in their arms or took them by the hand and hurried away village square and back to their own homes. Watching them leave, clutching their son or daughter with profound, loving intensity did not make what happened next any easier.

One child, a young ratatosk girl of perhaps ten years of age still stood alone with no parents or family standing near to her. She seemed to be an orphan.

Clueless looked to Tristol. “If it comes to it, we go with any orphans first since there’s no family involved.” The half-fey whispered.

Again Tristol raised his hand and addressed the village, “As difficult as this is for you and ourselves, we don’t want to force a child from its family. So… if any of you wish to willingly volunteer to go with us…” Tristol said, fighting back tears. He’d never had a perfect relationship with his own parents, but the mental image of leaving them behind and their hand being perhaps forced to give him away to his death came rushing into his mind.

A silence echoed across the assembled before one child stepped forward, a young boy of perhaps nine. His parents chattered imploringly at him, his young sister began to cry, and he turned back. He didn’t stay long, only giving his parents a last hug and his sibling a kiss before he walked quietly and without a word to stand at Florian’s side. Tristol squinted his eyes tightly and his ears swiveled back and away at the sobbing of the child’s parents.

A second child, a boy of perhaps seven, stepped forward and chattered to his parents and younger brother proudly. Florian whispered a spell to allow them all to understand, and they listened. In hindsight not knowing what he said might have been a better idea, because the words would haunt them profoundly.

“I’m going to be a hero and go with them.” The child said to his younger brother. “I’m going to go so someone else doesn’t have to go. Whatever happens I’ll be brave.”

The boy’s parents said nothing, what could they, as they wept and and embraced their child for what would be the last time.

“You’ll see.” He said, biting his lower lip and fighting back his fear and second-guessing his choice. “When you grow up you can tell people how brave your big brother was, and that you had a hero in your family.”

“Florian, I wish I didn’t know what he was saying… gods I’m going to be haunted by that…” Tristol said as the boy hugged his family, lastly clutching his younger sibling tightly and spinning him around before telling him to be brave when he was gone. His farewells said, the child proudly walked towards the three and stood at Tristol’s feet, coming up to his thigh at most.

“Are you sure little one?” Tristol said down to the child as he rubbed its head comfortingly with a hand. “You can go back now if you wish. It’s not too late.”

“No. I’m going to be a hero. I’m going to be a hero so my little brother doesn’t have to go.” He said as he clutched the mage’s tail. Regardless of his words, the boy trembled with fear but was doing his damnedest to hide it from his younger sibling and the others. Tristol clenched his fist in anger at the Clockmaker that such had to happen.

There was a pause and a silence as the three looked over the remaining families, hoping for another volunteer so they wouldn’t have to forcibly choose. The remaining parents clutched their children, and the two families who now had children at the companion’s sides clutched their remaining little ones and wept.

The orphan girl stepped forwards. She had no relatives, no family or siblings to say her goodbyes to. The girl looked at the others and their families and gave a grim, forlorn smile as she walked up to Clueless.

“I don’t have a family or anyone else here.” She said, “My parents died when I was little. Please let me go with you, I don’t belong here anyways. No one would have me.”

Clueless’s wings dimmed abruptly and lost their glow of faerie fire. He was at a loss for words, his own childhood still remained a mystery to him, having lost much of his memory when the Marauder had used him as a puppet. Given his nature as half-fey though, he suspected that he hadn’t fit in, regardless of which branch of his family he’d grown up with, mortal or fey. He saw so much in the child that reminded him of himself, and here she was going willingly into the mouth of oblivion with him. Would he have had the same fortitude in her position at that age? He wasn’t sure, but he looked down at her questioningly, offering her a second chance.

“Are you sure?” Clueless’s wings glowed a soft bluish-purple. “You can turn back now if you want. You know what may happen, yes? You understand what’s going on?”

The girl nodded and took his offered hand tightly.

“I’m proud of you. They all should be.” Clueless whispered down to her before looking out to the assembled families.

“We’ve chosen the three that we must, and for that we are truly sorry for what we must do.” Tristol called out, “The rest of you, take your children and go home with them. Cherish them and be proud of these three who have gone so that others did not.”

Clueless felt the orphan at his side tightly squeeze his hand.

“The two families who have lost a child to us, you may take however long you with to say any last words, but then we will be leaving. These three are heroes, truly; never forget them. And one day please, forgive us for having to do this… I beg of you…”

The families fled back to their homes, clutching their children, and two families rushed forward to embrace their children once more, chittering in their own tongue words of lament, pride, and adoration. Anything that could be said was said, though the choice had already been made.

Clueless sat with his orphan and talked to her softly as the other two children said their final farewells to parents and siblings. Tristol cried as he watched his proudly boast to his young brother and play the hero, though he knew the boy was terrified beyond belief. They gave the two of them what time they and their families needed, forestalling if but for a moment what would come for them. Through it all the ratatosk elder sat with his hands pressed to the tree, feeling and perhaps hearing the words of Yggdrasil herself, but even if not, he had known what was coming and he had long ago made peace with it.

“Hold our hands little ones.” Tristol said, “It won’t be long now.”

It might have only been a chance reflection of the light, but as Tristol spoke, Harishek’s vial glimmered.



****​


The black vault of Othrys extended out infinitely above, starless, but with the individual spheres spiraling away into the bottomless depths like a string of haunted, moonlit pearls. There on the first layer of Carceri, the incomplete body of the Tower of Incarnate Pain rose up from the ruddy, rocky soil like a cancerous tumor rising up miles high, undying, from the flesh of a agonized and forever dying man betrayed by his own cells.

The tower itself softly gasped with the erratic synchrony of the untold millions of mortals souls grafted into place like so many living, perpetually suffering bricks. Somehow above that sound, from the black vault high above, the ethereal Bells of Othrys could be heard faintly, mockingly ringing from the unplumbed depths of the void.

It was below that sky, in the long shadow of the Tower of Incarnate Pain that a great mustering took place, with thousands of mezzoloths waiting in ordered rows, each with a dergholoth overseer, and grouping of them under the command of a yagnoloth. Hovering above the ranks, dozens of nycaloths stood watch unconnected to the command structure below, answering to the clutch of robed arcanaloths who gathered about the organic steps leading up to the tower’s gates.

The mezzoloths collectively chittered in confusion as they beheld the process underway before them. Of the thousands of them assembled there at the tower’s base, one by one the arcanaloths grouped about them, with one singular figure in their midst clearly in a dominant position of control. One by one they moved down the ordered ranks of mezzoloths, with the occasional detour to one of the higher ranking dergholoths or yagnoloths, and each time it was the same: high above the watching nycaloths flinched at what they witnessed occur.

Still, whatever occurred sequentially, the mezzoloths remained in ordered rank and file, understanding that if they disobeyed they would be slaughtered immediately. Some of them had stood there as mezzoloths before, and portions of their essence, recycled through the great breeding engine-pools of Khin-Oin, the furnaces of the Tower Arcane, or the Reflecting Chasm at the heart of the Tower before them now, they remembered the agony and failure of prior deaths for just such an act. This time it would be different. This time they would learn. This time they would earn promotion to dergholoth, and then they would turn their anger, misery, and hatred upon the caste they had transcended; it would be glorious.

The group of arcanaloths, some twenty or thirty of them, the color of their robes and the extent of their bejeweled decoration and accoutrements denoting their position and power. Half of them acted as scribes, taking notes and observations on the actions of the others who, lesser ‘loth by lesser ‘loth performed a brief magical ritual in support of the singular arcanaloth who stood amidst them and indeed clearly apart from them. Following her lead with obedience fueled by equal mixtures admiration and abject fear, the arcanaloths moved their focus to the first mezzoloth in the next rank of three hundred of its kind.

The mezzoloth stood there, cowed and amazed at the attention, instinctively kneeling, its multiplicity of insectile arms clutching its trident in submissive position horizontal before itself on the ground.

She stood before the mezzoloth, gazing down at it not as a fellow yugoloth, but a malevolent higher being gazing down at something betwixt tool and subcreature. While the jackal, fox, and various other canid-headed arcanaloths wore robes befitting their place as scribes, scholars, and wizards, their leader wore no robes. A mixture of transparent blue sashes on her arms and at her waist, and a single strip of dark blue leather that wound about her body with the barest amount of coverage and support.

The arcanaloth lord gazed down, her eyes, unlike every other one of her kind, rapidly shifting between a variety of colors, casting a scintillating radiance across the mezzoloth’s glossy carapace at her feet. She nodded to the others and they began to chant.

Failing to understand the magic, and not yet feeling its effects, the mezzoloth glanced to one side, looking at those who had preceded it. They lay upon the ground, some of them contorting in agony, some of them standing in place, stunned and staggered, and others slowly regaining themselves and clambering back onto their feet, weapons in hand and at the ready once more.

They were mezzoloths, but they were not the same. Every one of them had been transfigured, their bodies fused with some manner of shimmering crystal, their carapace dotted with outcroppings of minerals.

The mezzoloth was unable to fathom just what had happened to its fellows, what was imminently to happen to itself, and why any of it was occurring and for what ultimate purpose. It only knew that it would be painful, exquisitely so, as the Overlord of Carceri gestured and began to speak.

The words she spoke were not in yugoloth, but rather something far older and far more primal that resonated in the mezzoloth’s exoskeleton and sent shockwaves through the core of its being as it began to shriek in agony.

Her ears swiveling to take in the beautiful sound of her work, Shylara the Manged smiled. Laying her hands upon the mezzoloth’s brow, she spoke the final phrase in baern that would trigger the spell and initiate the transformation, “And you I sacrifice upon the altar of our purity.”



****​


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## Quartz

You foreshadowed this earlier. I was half-expecting the PCs to refuse en bloc. The ramifications of that action might have shaken the heavens.


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## carborundum

I'm not sure how my players would react, this is deeper and darker than the first errands. Your players reactions in character are perfect, and spared a few lives too. Something like this could end many a game, did you discuss it first/after? 

I hope they somehow get back at the baern one day!


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## Shemeska

This was literally my first solo campaign that I ran, and so no, we didn't discuss anything beforehand, so the emotional suckerpunch and surprise was in real time with no out of game discussion. I would take a much more careful hand nowadays. But at the time it was a case of my players trusting me and having had a pretty good idea at that point what sort of game it was, the tone, and yes that they were probably going to regret a deal with a baernaloth. Today I'd have had a discussion with my players out of game prior to the session where this all went down, and I'd have asked any specific content 'please don't use this' limitations from them at the start of the campaign prior to character creation. But we were like two years into the game at that point and there was a pretty good unspoken understanding. But yes, with different players it could have gone terribly, terribly wrong, and I got lucky to be perfectly honest.


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## carborundum

In my Savage Tide game I added a table with a hole in the centre, with clamps, and a small golden spoon nearby. Ten years later it's still the height of implied horror here, and the point where a few players mailed to say, "make it a but more high fantasy please". I'm glad you got the right players for this!


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## Tsuga C

Shemeska said:


> This was literally my first solo campaign that I ran, and so no, we didn't discuss anything beforehand, so the emotional suckerpunch and surprise was in real time with no out of game discussion. I would take a much more careful hand nowadays. But at the time it was a case of my players trusting me and having had a pretty good idea at that point what sort of game it was, the tone, and yes that they were probably going to regret a deal with a baernaloth. Today I'd have had a discussion with my players out of game prior to the session where this all went down, and I'd have asked any specific content 'please don't use this' limitations from them at the start of the campaign prior to character creation. But we were like two years into the game at that point and there was a pretty good unspoken understanding. But yes, with different players it could have gone terribly, terribly wrong, and I got lucky to be perfectly honest.



Your players were fortunate to have a DM with talent and the will to avoid "candy coating" Evil. The Baern--indeed all fiends--are supposed to be various flavors of vileness. You didn't harp on it nor did you glorify it. Simply showing the unvarnished reality of what the party was up against was the best thing you could've done and you didn't shy away from it. Maybe I'm insensitive compared to subsequent generations (Gen X here), but I think you maintained the integrity of the game and setting by including this sub-plot. Well done.


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## Shemeska

CONTENT WARNING: This is rough. This scene and the previous one made some of my players cry. This content is rough. So please, please be aware that it will be straight up horror material with torture and dismemberment, and implied of the same towards minors.


They departed with the three willing children and the village elder in the swirling glow of Tristol’s gate spell, opened directly into the heart of the baernaloth’s demiplane. Unlike what they had experienced in their first attempt at breaching the Clockwork Gap, this time they experienced no redirection, and instead the gate opened up at the front of the keep, rather than outside, at the fringes of the hedge maze. Expecting them, the baern allowed them to enter directly. Still, the ur-fiend intended for them to walk through the entirety of the fortress to subject their ratatosk charges to the uncertainty and fear of what was waiting for them.

Tristol, Clueless, and Florian took their charges by the hand, holding on tightly to comfort them as they walked into the fortress and tried to ignore the mocking, half-heard whispers that issued from the swirling depths of the ether gap that the castle perched atop.

“It’ll be alright.” Tristol gently said, blatantly lying as the young ratatosk quivered and clutched his tail.

All three of the children grew more and more frightened as they wandered through the keep’s empty halls, and the vacant passages seemed to stretch onwards just until the young ones’ resolve was at its breaking point. At that moment, timed for the worst, they passed by the chambers that held the Clockmaker’s twisted experiments and gruesome displays, the doors swinging wide open at their approach. The moans, shrieks and other noises from the still living abominations reached out into the hallway and the children went pale at what they saw before screaming and averting their eyes. Clueless, Tristol and Florian quickly clasped their hands over the children’s eyes and ears to shelter them from the assault as they hurriedly moved them down the passageway. Minutes later, as they still cursed the baernaloth’s sick pleasure, still trying to comfort the little ones, the central chamber and the end of their task loomed before them.

The ratatosk elder whispered a prayer to Yggdrasil as they stepped into the massive, cathedral-like vault with its bizarre, arachniform clockwork device perched atop the swirling core of the ether gap. The baernaloth was not to be seen as they stepped hesitantly towards the center of the room. All they heard were the echoes of their footsteps, the maddening whispers from the swirling whirlpool of ether, and the cold, uncaring clockwork grinding.

Having fully entered the room, they stood next to the massive device, all turning to look back at the entrance, half expecting the door to be gone, or the baernaloth standing there. There was nothing there however when they turned and looked, but then one of the children screamed in horror.

The Clockmaker stood only scant feet from them, its hands clutching the device above the gap to steady itself, its blind eyes wide with anticipation. Its jagged, yellowed teeth shown in a wide grin as it twitched its nose, sniffing at the air.

“Great Mother!” The ratatosk elder stumbled backwards and fell to the ground in shock at the size of the fiend, its composition ripped from his nightmares and the long-held stories of his race. The blind darkness from myth leered down at him and the three terrified children.

“We’ve brought what the ratatosks gave to us. They came willingly. We wouldn’t have forced them.” Tristol said angrily.

“As I knew you would…” Harishek chuckled, reaching back to adjust the myriad of knobs and dials on the monster clockwork device, hinting at the same level of precognizance as it had before, when they first came to it and made their hideous bargain.

“I hate you for this.” Tristol sneered, “I hate you for making us do this for our answers from you.”

The baernaloth didn’t seem to care one way or the other as it paused and sent its mind flowing across the chamber to brush against the fearful thoughts of the seven that stood there before it. Harishek tilted his head in either curiosity or irritated disappointment as it noted that Toras, Nisha, and Fyrehowl had not returned with the others. Their thoughts were absent, the brightness of their souls absent from a place of uttermost darkness.

“Only three of you… the godslave, the godpuppet, and the half-breed. Where are the idealist fool, the Elysian filth, and the chaos touched bitch?” The baern swiveled its head and focused its clouded, blind eyes in Tristol’s direction as it sneered the last of the three titles before turning back once again to fumble with and adjust the gears of the massive device.

“You said we could leave the deal at any point without retribution or breaking the agreement. They couldn’t justify this.” The archmage’s voice trembled with emotion as below him, the ratatosk child clutched at his leg, crying and cowering in fear. “I can’t fully justify what I’m doing, what you’ve made me do. I will regret this and seek atonement and forgiveness for the rest of my life. The only thing that makes it ache less is that I might save more people by doing this, and that the ratatosks give of themselves willingly to preserve their Great Mother as an act of worship. I cannot fathom the sacrifice they put upon themselves out of love for Yggdrasil, nor can I fathom the evil that would make you enjoy your deal with them…”

The Gloom Father smiled and laughed, “So I did say that, promised you an answer… as for the bargain they and I made, some things happen because they must. Accept that mortal and live your life under all those moral pretenses you hold onto. Nothing comes without sacrifice. For anything to happen, anything –great– to happen, there must be two things: blood and terror.” The Clockmaker paused and turned its sightless eyes towards the elder Ratatosk. “We are well acquainted with both…”

The Baern suddenly moved closer to the elder ratatosk, the space between then contracting in an instant and depositing the ur-fiend there, rather than it taking a single step, as the children whimpered in abject horror, clutching onto Clueless, Tristol and Florian. “Uncover their eyes. Make them watch this.”

“WHAT?!” Tristol’s eyes went wide with fury.

Looks of revulsion crossed the faces of the three and they paused, pondering their options, and ultimately did nothing. What could they?

The baern slowly snarled, “Do as I command or I shall pry open their eyes myself mortals!”

Slowly and with an ache in their souls they complied, turning the ratatosk children towards their elder, uncovering their eyes and holding them up to watch what would follow.

“Now now now…” The baern looked down towards the elder ratatosk, its blind eyes unfocused and wandering, before snatching the elder up with one hand around its neck, its other hand held out to one side, hand open and palm up, fingers curling open and closed. “Give me the vial now and watch closely for what your great sacrifice begets you.”

Florian took the vial from Clueless and made to hand it to the baern but didn’t finish the task as the ur-fiend flicked one elongated finger and caused the crystalline vial to hover in the air near the ratatosk dangling in its grip. The elder struggled for air, gasping for breath before the hand around its neck was released and he hung suspended in space, still searching for breath as his previous brave resignation broke, replaced with whimpering terror.

“And there we see the fruits of your faith.” The baern cooed, seeming to revel in the change in his spirits as it broke into a wide, almost ecstatic smile as the elder began to writhe and scream in agony. “Yggdrasil is not here. Yggdrasil is not coming to help you.”

“Bastard!” Tristol hissed.

The children and the three could only watch, compelled to witness the torture of the ratatosk elder suspended before them.

“GREAT MOTHER!” The elder wailed before giving a spasmodic shriek as his limbs jerked and danced as if on invisible puppet strings.

“Yggdrasil cannot even hear your prayers.” The Clockmaker hissed, its voice rising above the elder’s screams, delivered telepathically to its audience’s minds. “Not here.”

The elder continued to scream while his body was struck by such pain that his back arched and seemed at the verge of snapping from the tension. And then, with a sickening, audible snap, it did, as first one vertebra and then another and another in turn broke and cracked from the torment. Bones along the length of the elder’s body shifted internally and seemed to shatter and contort beyond their natural limits as the baern broke him in every sense of the word.

The baern placed a hand over top of the elder’s forehead, its lips moving silently as it spoke into its victim’s mind, the torture mental and spiritual as well as physical.

“STOP!” Tristol screamed, only to be ignored by the baernaloth completely.

The elder should have died from the damage, he should have felt less pain as his spine broke in half, but he screamed till his vocal chords bled and tore and silenced his agony into bloody gurgles, staining his lips with ruddy foam.

“And there you see! There you have it!” The baernaloth pronounced, as with each dying scream a tiny sparkle of light sprang from the elder’s mouth, eyes, and nostrils to flicker on the air and fly into the vial hanging suspended in space.

“Oh f*ck…” Clueless cursed as he and then the other two fully realized the ratatosks’ sacrifice and what it would accomplish. Yggdrasil survived only on the agony of her children.

When the elder’s screams finally stopped, his eyes glazed over in death, the baernaloth released him and his body crumpled to the floor with a sickening crunch.

Gleaming in the air as it hovered like a grim trophy, the vial was ¼ full, and the three ratatosk children remained. Ten minutes the hellish execution had taken and the children forced to watch it all, a harbinger of their own fate…

“Please no… please no…” Florian whispered, clutching her holy symbol in the vain hope that they would not be forced to witness the same, one by one, with the ratatosk children.

“Tempus cannot hear you here either godslave.” The baern chuckled, seeming pleased with itself as it crouched down next to the body, pawing with outstretched hands before finding it and dragging it close. The Clockmaker sniffed at the ragged corpse and turned it face up before glancing back up towards the children and the three companions who had brought them to their doom. “Send the children over into one of the corners of the room. I will deal with them later.”

With supreme trepidation and loathing in their hearts, the three gathered the children and walked them over into one of the corners of the room, holding them tightly and whispering words of encouragement that they knew would, in the end, be absolutely meaningless. Pale and shaking, the children cried out with raw voices, tiny streaks of tears working down their cheeks. They should not have ever been there. No creature should have ever been there.

“I’m so sorry…” Clueless whispered as he put down the orphan. “You three are strong and so very brave. Whatever happens, we’ll remember you and make sure that your people do as well. You can do this.” The bladesinger shut his eyes, not wanting to see their faces as he forced himself to walk away, leaving them to her fate.

Tristol alone managed to glance back, his heart screaming to do something other than abandon them, but powerless to do anything, he, Clueless, and Florian alike walked back and past the Clockmaker as it hunched over the elder’s broken body. Averting their eyes once again, the Clockmaker picked up the corpse in its hands, and with a wet, tearing sound followed by a sickening crunch began devouring it.

“You promised me answers to my questions.” Tristol called out to the ur-fiend, hate and defiance in his voice. There was no point in disguising his loathing. “How do I read the Oblivion Compass?”

“Did I promise you now?” There was another crunch as the fiend’s naked incisors snapped through the elder’s ribcage to rip out muscle and viscera and chew upon it noisily. “You demand much godpuppet.”

Another bloody crunch and below it, the sound of whimpering, crying ratatosks.

“The clock, the Oblivion Compass, will strike 11 in two weeks, three days, five hours, four minutes and 3 seconds from now.” The fiend snapped two bloody fingers at the final word of its declaration and focused its blind, milky eyes at Tristol’s again, chewing upon a hunk of muscle and lung from the corpse.

“What happens then?” Clueless asked, “What does that even mean?”

“You have been there, have you not?” The baern snuffled and gestured at the bladesinger, “You reek of it, all of you, your timelines frayed and eroded like the embankments of a river touched by a seasonal flash flood. But you witnessed what our creation shows. You felt it in your bones, it screams in your memories even now!”

The Clockmaker stopped, panting with zealotry, caught up in the moment, half-chewed ratatosk dribbling from its blood-smeared maw to spatter upon the ground. Its eyes moved in their sockets, wide and ecstatic.

“You saw them! You saw them all yourselves! A multitude of possible futures waiting, flowing, spiraling, converging to one singular moment.”

Behind the baernaloth, below his great nightmare device, like a smaller version of the Compass itself, the ether gap swirled with ever greater potency as if it reflected the Clockmaker’s madness itself.

The ur-fiend ceased speaking and once again the room was shrouded in silence, punctuated only by the sound of crying ratatosks and the roiling churn of the ether gap.

Tristol scowled.

“You still wish to know how to read the clock yourself?” The baernaloth asked, tilting its nightmare-caprine head to one side.

“Yes…” The wizard replied angrily.

The baern reached down and lifted the desecrated elder’s corpse up to its mouth and bit down, cleaving pelvis and hip, leaving one leg to dangle in the air by torn tendon and muscle alone. It noisily chewed its bite of bloody flesh and bone, open-mouthed, mixing its mouthful with its own syrupy black mucous before reaching up and pulling forth a gobbet of the mass forth and held it up in the palm of its hand towards Tristol. “Eat…”

“The f*ck?!” Florian cursed.

“EAT!” The baern repeated, “Or leave.”

Tristol grimaced and stepped forward, Florian and Clueless looking away, feeling sick as the aasimar took the bloody handful without a word. Mentally whispering a prayer to Mystra, begging for forgiveness, he shuddered as he put it into his own mouth, chewed it twice and swallowed it.

Tristol gagged and fought to keep it down as the baern stared in his direction, a sneer upon its face: waiting.

“What does…” Tristol began only to stop as the baern’s sightless eyes locked onto him and its mind forced itself into his like a burning hot iron spike. A flood of images rushed into his head: living modrons being welded into place on the compass, the horrified secundus screaming in agony as it was fused, conscious and aware, into the nightmare engine, the moignos being bound into the device’s core, a blizzard of chaotic, nonsensical mathematical equations to be processed again and again, sifting and filtering, and through it all the horrid spinning of the mutltiplicitous gears and hands.

Tristol screamed in pain, doubled over on the floor, gagging and choking. Then, through the sensory overload and physical effects, a pattern emerged. Suddenly he understood the meaning of the dials and hands, if not the purpose of just what they were counting down towards.

“Tristol are you ok?” Clueless asked, a hand on the wizard’s shoulder.

Tristol waved a hand and nodded, remaining on the floor as he fought a wave of nausea.

“And there you have it. Your answers and the prize for your success in my task.” The baernaloth laughed harshly at the aasimar while it drew forth a length of slippery innards from the partially devoured corpse like a glistening string of popcorn. “It would appear then that we are finished here. No?”

“Let’s get out of here.” Florian said, pointedly not looking at the ratatosks.

“DON’T LEAVE US!” One of the children screamed out.

Still on the floor, Tristol’s eyes went wide and his vision blurred with tears.

“I however am not finished with my work.” The ur-fiend chuckled, “No. Not finished at all.”

“F*ck you!” Tristol shouted.

“Oh?” The Clockmaker paused, drool and bloody viscera dropping from its open maw. “You know, you could always spare the children the pain that will come to them .”

Tristol stood up and narrowed his eyes, still staggered from his experience of absorbing a memory from the Clockmaker. “What do you mean? How?”

The baern resumed chewing on the bloody loop of intestines and then turned its gaze towards the whimpering children. “Kill one of them now. Kill one of them with your bare hands. Snap their neck with one clean motion and give them a quick end, a merciful passing into oblivion. You may kill one of them now and spare them the experience at my delicate hands.” It extended up a single bloody finger, “Each of you one or none at all.”

“We have to.” Florian swiftly answered, not looking at the ratatosks.

“Wait.” Clueless narrowed his eyes.

The fiend further punctuated his offer by dropping the elder’s corpse with a wet thud and unfolding its hands as if offering up a sacrifice, the slim, clawed digits drenched in gore. “And your answer?”

“If we do this,” Clueless demanded, “Will the vial’s contents be filled as it would have been otherwise? Or will this sacrifice be in vain, and more forced to this end?”

The baernaloth chuckled and licked its withered lips, “It will not fulfill my bargain with the ratatosks.”

Tristol’s eyes flared with horror and rage, “No.”

“One way or another…” The Clockmaker muttered to itself as it turned back to its meal.

“I have a question now.” Clueless spoke up as Florian was already walking towards the exit and Tristol at her side.

“Ask away fool.”

“Just what is this place? What even is the ether gap you seem so concerned with, and what is it whispering?” He stared at the baern who glanced up briefly at the question before it scoffed.

“Not all answers are for you to know. That particular question would cost you far more than you have to give. This,” The baernaloth gestured towards the ratatosks, “This is paltry by comparison.”

“Clueless,” Florian called out. “Let’s go.”

“Listen to the godslave.” Harishek wiped the blood from its face, “I have other business to attend to. Be gone now, and realize as you go that since you have entered this room I have butchered you seven times each in variant realities and withered, broken timelines, hewed and thrown to nothingness like chaff to the flames. Such futures were not to be. Probability collapses to a single destined future, one out of many. And while those other futures are not to be, this one is. I promised you no harm and an answer to a question. I provide both because it suits my wishes in what is to come. Unlike the baatezu, or their forerunners… I hold to laws only so long as I see fit to do so. Remember that keenly puppets.”

“We’re done? Just like that?” Tristol asked, deliberately trying not to look towards the children.

The baern looked in the aasimar’s general direction, its face painted crimson on gray, stray bits of fur and flesh dotting its wasted flesh. “Unless you wish to watch what comes for your little ones, then yes. You are free to go. I’ve had my fun with most of you.”

Tristol said nothing more and joined Clueless and Florian on the other side of the room. However as he began to incant the words to open a gate and bring them to the Outlands he felt the baernaloth’s blind eyes upon him and its poisoned mind brush against his own as it muttered softly, “Oh what your timelines say…and what they do not…”

The gate swirled open in a burning radiance of colors against the ashen grey of the baernaloth’s lair, the sounds of Tradegate suddenly drowning out the screams of the abandoned, doomed ratatosks.

The three of them stepped through the gate and it snapped shut behind them, ending the cries for help, and any chance of it being granted.

Florian burst into a string of expletives and curses while Clueless stared at the ground, his right hand on Razor’s pommel. Tristol was deathly silent.

“Are you two alright?” Clueless asked as he looked up and out at the Infinite Spire that graced the horizon.

“I will be eventually.” Florian scowled, “But damn it! In a universe that holds good as a virtue, that … thing… has no right to exist. We fed it, we delivered innocents to it. We didn’t just watch it happen and do nothing, we actively had a part in it.”

“Let’s not tell Toras or the others what happened after they left. We can spare them what we have to live with at least. Yes?” The bladesinger suggested.

“Agreed.” Tristol finally spoke, his voice numb. “Toras would go crazy with anger, Fyrehowl has already seen enough loss and doubt, and I won’t put Nisha through that.”

The aasimar finally smiled, if only slightly, as he spoke Nisha’s name.

“Still,” Clueless said, “It’s over for us at least.”

It was not over.

Tristol exhaled in relief for that blessing, and then it happened.

“Now my little ones, you belong to me.” The Clockmaker’s voice rang out clearly inside of Tristol’s mind as if he were still there in the demiplane.

“…” Tristol clenched his teeth as the voice continued, crackles of silverfire at the corners of his eyes as the Clockmaker pumped into his mind what he would have heard had he never left the baernaloth’s corrupt presence.

“NO!” Tristol shouted out, stumbling. “NO NO NO NO!!!!”

Florian and Clueless turned to him in alarm, not understanding that the baernaloth intended to give the wizard a moment by moment description of each and every horrific act it would perform to fulfill the ratatosks’ corrosive salvation for Yggdrasil.

“What’s happening?!” Clueless grabbed hold of Tristol as the aasimar dropped to the ground clutching at his head, covering his ears as if that could stop the horror.

“You are mine now, and you will all eventually die, one by one.” Harishek’s mocking voice flooded into Tristol mind, the sounds of the Clockwork Gap now rushing into his mind more strongly than before, now joined by the smells: the baernaloth’s rotten, sour breath, the reek of the gutted elder’s bowels, and the fresh smell of fear-voided urine. “There is nothing for you but pain and then oblivion, if even that.”

The whimpering cries turned to unintelligent screaming and the baernaloth blindly stumbled towards them, a rictus smile on its blood-stained face.

Tristol’s inchoate screaming joined the trio in his mind.

“No one will come to rescue you. Those that brought you here have abandoned you willingly. They knew what would happen to you and they left you to me. They chose not to help you and here you are.”

Florian and Clueless shouted at Tristol, picking him up and trying to understand as they panicked and their companion wept.

Tristol screamed, hoping in vain to silence the dialogue within his mind, but it only grew in intensity and volume to compensate. The Clockmaker had every intention of forcing him to listen, to make him hear all that happened, every detail, every scream, and there was nothing that he could do.

“I CAN HEAR THEM!!!!” Tristol screamed, and as he did, understanding and horror washed through Florian and Clueless.

“Oh Tempus preserve!” Florian shouted.

“Which of you will be first?” The Clockmaker asked, one bloody hand reaching out, one finger extended to hover over one head, then another, and then another. “Which of you will I rip apart first, piece by screaming piece?”

“Do something!” Clueless screamed at Florian, “It’s making Tristol f*cking watch!”

Florian clutched her holy symbol and in an instant blanketed the area with a zone of null magic, snuffing out, at least temporarily, any curse or malignant magic that could have possibly reached them.

“I know which I will choose!” The baernaloth seemed delighted as it lifted one of the ratatosks into the air by its head, its limbs scrambling to no avail, eyes wide in terror. “You. You the one who would be a hero.”

“I CAN STILL HEAR IT!!!!!” Tristol screamed as the spell even doused the flickers of silverfire in his eyes. It shouldn’t have been possible.

“SH*T!” Clueless screamed, his panic reflected in Florian eye’s. "HOW!?"

“One by fragile one you will suffer and you will die.” The baernaloth chuckled, a claw beneath the ratatosk’s chin, forcing it to make eye contact.

The baernaloth had slaughtered the ratatosk elder swiftly, but everything afterwards would be measured and sickeningly slow. It would whisper blasphemies and stories of unrewarded suffering, breaking its victims’ sanity and faith before it broke them physically, and it intended for Tristol to witness it all.

“Where’s the gate?!” Clueless shouted, glancing about to orient himself to where Tristol had deposited them in Tradegate.

“What?” Florian asked, confused.

“The portal to Sigil!” Clueless explained, “Do you really think The Lady would let this thing’s influence into Her city?!”

The shrieks of pain began in Tristol’s mind.

“Know, all three of you that your sacrifice is meaningless.” The baernaloth whispered, its face pressed against a small ear, “You prolong your people’s suffering and they will never know.”

The screaming in Tristol’s mind dipped in volume as a hand squeezed a windpipe and snuffed the flow of air to a trickle.

Tristol screamed as Clueless and Florian grabbed him and dragged him through the streets of Tradegate, rushing headlong towards the permanent portal to Sigil, hoping to stop their companion’s agony.

“A little tale before you die, and for your audience as it screams in the Outlands. I’ve saved this story just for you, fragile ones.” The grip tightened and now added to sound and smell was sensation as Tristol gripped at his throat, immaterial talons on his flesh as the baernaloth suffocated the first ratatosk. “Your Great Mother Yggdrasil was never sterile before I came to your people and offered you my salvation.”

Feet and arms scrambled, fighting in vain and Tristol did the same, feeling the same sensations as the first of the ratatosks. The portal was in sight as the aasimar felt a second grip applied, not on his throat, but on his left leg, testing, finding its place before it would rip the limb free like a dismembered child’s doll in the mouth of a dog.

Nearly there, the two rushed towards the portal, carrying Tristol, unable to see bruises forming on his leg to join those upon his neck as Tristol’s screaming dropped to a gurgle and invisible hands clenched upon his throat, mirroring the actions in the nadir of the Clockwork Gap.

“And so, my little mortal hero,” The Clockmaker laughed, “Do you think that your soul will ever see paradise?”

Tristol felt his femur begin to dislocate, tendons tight and near to the breaking point, the force higher up now crushing his spine as well as his windpipe.

And then it was gone. The voice of the ur-fiend. The screams. The crying. The agony. The hellish sensory blizzard ceased, snuffed out in an instant.

Silence descended upon them as they entered the portal and reappeared in the City of Doors.

Tristol blacked out.

Only later when he came to, would he be even vaguely aware of laying atop his bed, his head on Nisha’s shoulder, her arms wrapped about him. She held him for hours, holding him tight as he cried, unable to verbalize what he had witnessed, but she held him nonetheless.

“I love you.” The tiefling whispered. “You’re safe now. You’re safe with me.”



*****​


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## Tristol

Tsuga C said:


> Your players were fortunate to have a DM with talent and the will to avoid "candy coating" Evil. The Baern--indeed all fiends--are supposed to be various flavors of vileness. You didn't harp on it nor did you glorify it. Simply showing the unvarnished reality of what the party was up against was the best thing you could've done and you didn't shy away from it. Maybe I'm insensitive compared to subsequent generations (Gen X here), but I think you maintained the integrity of the game and setting by including this sub-plot. Well done.



I tend to agree on the fortune front. Shems had DM'ed for us before in other fashions, which were also fun, but more traditional D&D flavors of things. Good party, bad guys, save people from dragons, etc. And I think at that time we were all new players generally to most D&D, so getting involved meant finding our feet. And that's what those early games were for all of us. This game being most of the players' first game where we all knew what we wanted and how we wanted to play certainly helped put all of it together.

As for the evil part, I agree there as well. There were a few moments in the game that were 'rough' like this (although not quite like this one), but I think it helped bring into light that classic D&D concept that 'some people are just evil and you can't reason with them'. We certainly did try to reason ways around it, but at the end of the day, we had a time constraint, and as players and characters there was no way we'd be able to work that kind of magic. And you're talking about an evil force of nature. If you don't take it out of the equation it'll just be disappointed and find another way to make them (and probably us) miserable (likely even more so). And none of us were up to the task of taking on a baern, especially in its own little pocket of the multiverse.

And FWIW, Tristol was a TN character, but with NG leanings. I was trying to play up the angle of magic, power, knowledge, and such above all else. He didn't want to do it, and he certainly wanted to make the baern pay for every moment there, but as in the discussion above, there wasn't much way around it. Shems pulled off that part in the above brilliantly. I would be lying though, if I didn't also say that for Tristol, being able to read that clock also tweaked that knowledge bug as well. No one else is going to claim that ability, and if he can unravel a mystery of the multiverse and share it with deserving people, he's doing Mystra's bidding. There are a few other times in the campaign that decisions like that had their cost.

I as a player have always been a firm believer in a well balanced character. For every amazing thing, they need a flaw or some such that can be tugged on. Shem's tugged pretty hard on a lot of those flaws, which make the internal conflict and resulting in character reckoning extremely fun to both write about (see Tristol's Diary), and to experience.


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## Shemeska

The following day, Tristol opened his eyes to find Nisha still there at his side, looking down at him with a smile.

“How are you?” Nisha asked, reaching out to stroke the wizard’s forehead.

“We did something terrible.” He looked away, unable to meet her stare. “And I feel even guiltier about it, because I keep trying to justify it for the knowledge that I gained. The Lie Weaver knew what it was doing when it sent us in the Clockmaker’s direction. It knew that I wouldn’t be able to refuse the opportunity for ancient knowledge that like; something that I’d never be able to gain by any other means, from any other source. For just a moment I felt like one of the ancient Netherese arcanists, delving into things forgotten or no longer even possible now.”

Tristol sighed. “And then, like Karsus, I found out the price of it all.”

Nisha nodded, “I know, and I trust that you think that what you gained was justified. We all knew that the bargain with the baern would be twisted and terrible.”

She paused and before Tristol could respond, she put a finger to his lips, “I’m sorry that I had to leave.”

“I don’t blame you at all.” He replied, now reaching up to brush his hand against her cheek. “You saved a life by doing so, and I wouldn’t have wanted you to witness what we did when we returned.”

She closed her eyes and nodded. “You can tell me about it. If you need to. When you’re ready.”

“Not now.” Tristol shook his head, “It’s too fresh, and honestly I’m not certain if I ever want to burden you with it. But if I do talk to anyone, it’ll be you first.”

Nisha wrapped her arms about him and kissed his forehead. Nothing more was said, but together they sat in intimate silence with one another for another two hours before finally venturing downstairs to meet back up with the others.



****​


Since Clueless’s return to Sigil he’d tended bar in the Portal Jammer, trying to distract himself from the events of the past few days, though he’d been remarkably reserved when it came to talking to bar patrons. Anyone buying a drink from him would have sworn that the bladesinger looked haunted, and indeed he was.

Fyrehowl had already been there when Clueless, Tristol, and Florian had returned, and from the look of it, she’d been drinking for much of the time she’d been there. A bottle of Clueless’s private stock of fey wine sat next to her with a dozen empty shot glasses where she sat in the Jammer’s back room. She too said nothing, and in fact averted her eyes from direct contact. Despite her alienation from her own celestial race, verging on or flowing over into properly falling from good to neutrality, there was a look of shame in her countenance and her tail lay tucked tightly against her legs.

Quietly, one by one, they gathered together downstairs, with Clueless eventually leaving the bar and joining them. Toras was the last one to rejoin the party, and as he stepped into the room, he cast a withering gaze over the others but said nothing at first as he walked in, poured himself a drink, and took a seat.

And uncomfortable silence fell over the room and worried glances passed from person to person, all of them waiting for the fighter to say something.

“We should talk about this…” Fyrehowl began.

“No.” Toras was blunt and immediate. “We don’t.”

Nisha took a deep breath, her tail flitting anxiously behind her.

“This was traumatic for everyone and…” Clueless began, only to be cut off as Toras raised a hand.

“If you want to talk about it one on one with each other, go right ahead.” Toras explained, “But I neither want to nor need to know the specifics.”

Silence again as the others struggled to figure out how to approach the issue. The fighter’s divine patron was devoted to the protection of innocents, and particularly children: the entire episode had been an abject anathema to Toras, his faith, and his god. Somehow the rest of the party, especially the ones who had stayed to complete the Clockmaker’s task would need to come to terms with him over what they had done.

They would eventually, but it would not be today.

Toras had many, many things to say to each and every one of his companions. Despite his celestial heritage, a radiant hatred burned in his heart, and in communion with his deity, on his god’s home plane, he’d pledged his life to one day take righteous revenge on the Blind Clockmaker. It didn’t matter how long it took, and it didn’t matter if he ended up losing his own life in the process. However he managed it, one day he would make the baernaloth, that baernaloth in specific, pay for what it had done in the past, and for what it had made them do, no matter their own complicity in those horrors.

“Was it worth it?” Toras asked, looking directly at Tristol.

The aasimar blinked, took a deep breath, and swallowed hard as the fighter put him on the spot. The entire quest had been his idea in the first place. Everything from walking into the Lie Weaver’s lair to performing his poisoned tasks, and later to visit his so-called sibling and carry out the Clockmaker’s horrors from start to finish… it had been initiated at Tristol’s urging, following the clue’s laid out by Laughing Jane.

Tristol mulled over his words, his tail flitting uncomfortably behind him and drawing a soft bat from one of Nisha’s hands. Yes, ostensibly it all stemmed from Laughing Jane’s seeming hatred of the Oinoloth, and by virtue of that, a desire from all of them to pursue that lead if it could counter the Oinoloth’s designs in any way. But yet, beyond that, at the heart of it all, Tristol knew that he’d been greedy for knowledge. In the same way that the Ebon had tempted and manipulated Karsus down the path to oblivion for himself, all of Netheril, and a prior incarnation of Toril’s goddess of magic, Tristol realized that he’d fallen down the same path, walked in Karsus’s footsteps, and followed along with the lies of not one but two baernaloths.

Still, the price had been paid and knowledge gained. If he did nothing with that knowledge he’d gained, despite the terrible actions that it required, all of it would be for naught. He owed it to the ratatosks to see this through and make use of what they had paid for.

“Only if I put the knowledge gained to actual use.” Tristol said, meeting and keeping Toras’s stare. “Otherwise the hideous price we paid… we’ll have paid in vain.”

Toras looked into Tristol’s eyes long and hard, measuring what he’d said, and presumably balancing the wizard’s answer with the guidance that he’d himself gained in communion with his divine patron, “What do you intend to do?”

“I know how to read the Oblivion Compass now.” Tristol explained, “I can see it in my mind, and I can figure out what it’s ticking down to. I won’t necessarily know the meaning of those time points, but I’ll know when they’re supposed to happen, and we can hopefully act upon that.”

Toras looked down, paused in thought, and then he whispered a soft prayer. When he looked back up, he inclined his head towards Tristol in a motion of tacit approval. It was really the best that he could have hoped for.

“What do you need to do to scry that thing?” Clueless spoke, the first of the others to finally break the stillness.

Tristol smiled, “It shouldn’t be anything difficult at all. But I wanted us to have a chance to talk before I did anything. If I do this, I’d like to have everyone here to watch with me.”

Once again, as they had before, the group exchanged glances, but this time there was less apprehension than there was some fractional amount of hope. If something came from their experience, indeed it might soothe their spirits.

“I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while already.” Tristol said, smoothing his robes while, standing behind him, Nisha rubbed his ears in encouragement. “I’m ready whenever everyone else is.”

A short bit of group discussion and it was decided: whatever they had done, Tristol would use the knowledge that he’d gained. The table was cleared and they gathered together as Tristol gathered the necessary foci and reagents, and ten minutes later they were ready.

The wizard took a deep breath and incanted the words to a scrying spell. Abruptly the spell failed.

“What the…?” He muttered.

Florian raised an eyebrow, “Did you just whiff a spell?”

“No.” Tristol shook his head, “The spell failed. Someone doesn’t want that location scried.”

A look of determination on his face, Tristol began the spell again, but this time significantly empowered, and with a crackle of silverfire manifesting along his fingertips as he wove them through the air. A bead of sweat broke upon his forehead but finally the resistance broke and his spell succeeded, producing a wavering image above the table for the rest of his companions to view alongside of him.

There within the shallow, desolate valley that held the nightmare construct of the Oblivion Compass they could all see once more what they had experienced firsthand. As during their visit, the landscape perpetually shifted, with shadowy, ephemeral silhouettes of the landscape and things and creatures from alternate timelines and possible futures appearing for a moment before being snuffed back into the nothingness from which they emerged. Unlike during their brief visit to the Compass, this time at least, the device was far from unattended.

Looming over the primary cogwheel and dial, in fact seeming to bodily emerge from out of it, arms stretched wide and eyes luminous was a baernaloth, its body shimmering with a fluid skein of ever-shifting runes and sets of magical symbols. This one they had seen before in the Fortress of Pitiless when it had butchered the inventor of the Divinity Leech, Ghyris Vast: The Architect. It was not the only one of its ilk.

Atop one of the smaller spindles adorned with irrational clockwork gears that jutted from the ground sat a slender aasimar girl, her legs kicking idle in the air and her hands neatly folded atop the folds of her robes in her lap along with a crooked shepherd’s staff. Below her, moving about independent of her physical form, a monstrous shadow moved about in reflection of the Architect, aiding in whatever ritual it was in the midst of enacting.

The third baernaloth superficially resembled the basic forms of the Lie Weaver or the Blind Clockmaker, but its exposed throat was a savage mess of bleached white scar tissue. Like the Architect and Dire Shepherd, it too moved its limbs in the motions of a ritual casting, but unlike them its lips did not move with the intonations of verbalized speech.

The final member of the Demented present and obviously visible was yet more grotesque than the others, a flash of color against the desolate grey of the Waste. Its body smeared in and dripping a steady flow of blood, its teeth a predatory hunter’s fangs, and its fingers sprouting jagged claws, it silently watched the work of its siblings, pausing periodically to lash at its own flesh, seemingly savoring the self-inflicted pain.

All of that noticed in a fraction of a second as Tristol viewed the image provided by his spell, the following happened an instant later: The Architect looked up and through the scrying spell, taking immediate notice despite all of Tristol’s attempts to make their viewing of the Compass as stealthily and incognito as possible.

“Oh sh*t!” Tristol blurted out, his worry only partially relieved a moment later as the Architect looked back down to its work, seemingly uncaring at the mortals’ observation of it and its kindred’s work.

Able to see the patterns of active magic, even through his scrying, Tristol squinted and focused on minute, barely visible flashes of color in the air surrounding the Compass. Rather than side effects of the baernaloths’ work or the bizarre, time-bending afterimages that shed from the gears like shed and decaying skins of possible-serpents, the flickers of color were the telltale signs of manifested scry foci from others doing precisely the same as Tristol.

“We aren’t the only one’s watching this.” The wizard tilted his head, his ears twitching in curiosity.

Summoning a pen to his hand and paper to the table with a snap of his fingers, Tristol hurriedly began to draw the symbols present on the other scry foci that he’d seen. Almost invariably a mage’s scry foci were personalized, imbued with some essence of their creator’s nature, and intentional of not, they betrayed the identity of the caster to those who could recognize the symbols or nature of the focus.

The first symbol was obvious: the triquetrous symbol of the Oinoloth, Vorkannis the Ebon, combining the symbols of the three neutral evil Planes of Conflict.

“Well, no surprise there.” Toras rolled his eyes.

“Have to wonder what the relationship there is.” Clueless mused, taking a sip of ale and shrugging. “Seemingly no love lost.”

The next wasn’t recognized by Tristol, but by Fyrehowl, immediately so.

“That’s the symbol of Prince Talisid.”

Nisha’s tail quirked into a question mark shape, “Remind me who that is? Should I know?”

“One of the unique Guardinal Lords of Elysium,” The lupinal explained, “The Leonal Prince, greatest of our kind.”

“That…” Toras blinked, a smile spreading across his face, “That makes me genuinely happy to see. That’s the first f*cking time that we’ve seen absolutely any evidence that the upper planes are even aware of this sh*t the ‘loths are doing, much less actively planning to counter it.”

“It isn’t just Talisid.” Tristol added as he finished a third sketch, “This is the symbol of Queen Morwel of the Eladrin Court of Stars.”

Toras whistled, “These are some seriously big players here.”

A fourth foci then manifested in close proximity to that of the Oinoloth, itself a variation of his, though it contained only a version of the symbol of Carceri rather than the Oinoloth’s fusion of three: the symbol of the Overlord of Carceri, Shylara the Manged.

The fifth symbol came as a surprise. Rather than one of the other planar lords that might have been expected, the symbol was one that they’d seen up close, and seen the caster himself in person: Green Marvent of the Illuminated.

“What the…” Florian blinked. Neither she nor the others could have expected that particular individual to take an interest, let alone be aware of the Compass or the machinations of the baern.

They didn’t have much time to consider the ramifications of the myriad interested parties however.

While the Architect had noticed the scrying instantly, but had ignored the attempts to focus on the work that it and its kindred were in the act of performing, the Dire Shepherd eventually grew restless with the divinatory intrusions. Both her slender, mockingly aasimar in appearance physical form’s eyes and the eye-like holes in her independently moving shadow glanced at and followed the myriad of scry foci watching the ritual. She scowled and snapped her physical fingers, snuffing the scry foci of Talasid, then Morwel.

“Tristol hurry and read the values on the Compass!” Nisha tapped his shoulder nervously.

Moving from watching the other curious parties, the aasimar turned to the bizarre values present on the various faces and dials of the clockwork, his mind spinning with the knowledge he’d gained from the device’s co-creator, the Blind Clockmaker. Not saying a word, he took his pen and began jotting down a litany of numbers and figures as he read the nightmare device.

Scowling, the Dire Shepherd moved on, snuffing the scry foci of the Manged, and then of the Oinoloth himself, the latter seeming to require a greater effort on her part. Almost instantly the Oinoloth’s scry foci reappeared, conjured back into place, and this time drawing the attentions not only of the Shepherdess, but also the third baernaloth, whose name was yet unknown to them. This time when the Oinoloth’s foci was dismissed, it did not reappear, though it was up for debate if it was due to the actions of the Demented, or if the Ebon had simply given up with a shrug at the futility of a continued back and forth.

“Almost there!” Tristol announced as the Shepherdess looked not at his foci, largely uninterested in that of a mortal by comparison to the others.

A look, somewhere between curiosity and confusion passed over her face as she stared at Green Marvent’s scry foci, and rather than snuffing it, she actually paused to analyze it. Unlike the others dismissed by the baern, the self-titled Factol of the Illuminated dismissed his own scrying spell.

“Hurry hurry!” Nisha shouted as the Shepherdess turned to stare at Tristol’s foci, a snug look of contempt passing over her physical form’s face. As if she could stare back through the spell itself she locked eyes with the wizard and with only a modicum of effort, she collapsed the wizard’s spell, ending his scrying attempt.

All eyes moved to Tristol, hoping that he’d gotten the information that he needed. He stared down at his notes, a mixed and confusing expression crossing over his face. He put down his pen and looked up.

“The Oblivion Compass strikes 11 as the Clockmaker said, now 2 weeks, 1 day, 12 hours, 9 minutes and 5 seconds from now.” He paused, “And there are four additional demarcations of tolls of the clock after that, prior to it reaching its end. What that means however, I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, ‘The End’?” Florian asked, the concern in her voice echoed by the others’ expressions.

“I… don’t know.” Tristol shivered as he looked at the final number he’d written down, “But whatever is going to happen, the Compass is counting down to a final moment and it strikes a final hour, midnight, in 431 days, 19 hours, 2 minutes, and 37 seconds…”



*****​


Gone was the elegant, poised and fastidious fiend that had claimed the title of Oinoloth in sudden and startling fashion. No longer wrapped in velvet and silk, no longer well groomed with silky fur and gleaming white teeth, he strode through the ashen dust of the Waste naked and savage. Any pretense of civility or culture had been discarded when he summarily left Khin-Oin without warning and strode off into the hinterlands of the Waste, looking for something, or rather, someone.

Vorkannis wasn’t walking to his destination so much as bending the structure of Oinos itself, leagues flowing by in a dozen steps or so. There were quicker, immediate ways to venture there, but he wanted the time to allow his anger to fester and stew. He wanted to walk, his fingers feeling the plane flow and slide about him, supping on the collective misery absorbed by the soil over the eons like so much agonized rain devoured by a desolate and lifeless desert. He was preparing himself for what he would say and what he might need to do. He would have denied it, but a minuscule portion of his consciousness was in fact almost, *almost* apprehensive about what would occur when he got there.

Dozens of his fawning vassals, supplicants and would-be advisors had clamored to go with him, despite not having a clue where he intended to go. He’d had to kill one of them in a particularly spectacular fashion just to make it clear that they were not welcome. Still, it didn’t stop some from trying. The overlord of Carceri, Shylara the Manged, had gated into Khin-Oin and literally fallen to her knees and begged to accompany him. She, unlike the others, did in-fact know why he was going, though not where. Even she was only privy to so much.

Shylara… the ass kissing bitch. Not traditional words of endearment, but still, and most importantly, whatever words he applied to her, she was *his*. She had her charms, and as far as tools went, she was rather useful, and very much obedient. True, they were lovers in every way imaginable, but the very idea of love was a foreign, alien, and sickening concept for the Oinoloth. He simply had no grasp of it within his sphere of experience and understanding. The same went for the Manged as well, though she was not like him and might have actually had the capacity for a warped version of the emotion. He was incapable of it. She ‘loved’ him, as much as a yugoloth was capable of that emotion, though it was solidly grounded in greed, selfish desire, animal lust, and awe bordering on idolatrous worship. And for all of that, he was proud of her. A useful servant he’d created in her, and as close to a companion as he might conceivably find or create from amongst their kind, all of them still being simply his tools to use or discard notwithstanding.

He licked his muzzle as his mind wandered back for an idle moment to her kneeling naked and prostrate before him, pleading to travel with him into the hinterlands of Oinos. He smiled, and it was an open question whether his subsequent arousal was due to her nakedness in his mind or her supplication and worship.

Hours passed and the Oinoloth felt a magnetic sensation, a gentle tugging force of a river’s current flowing towards a hollow bowl or depression in the Waste where its despair and blind agony grew even more intense, a veritable gravity well of misery. The Ebon knew what it was, and he knew exactly where it was contained on the Waste. There were three of them in all, one upon each layer of the Waste, each of them unique and specific, each of them created by the thing that he sought.

As he walked, he witnessed tanar’ri and baatezu armies on the periphery of his vision. Imperfect beings fighting imperfect beings but feeding the Waste nonetheless in their pointless slaughter. Children all of them. He’d witnessed their birth. He’d even witnessed the emergence of those before them which they in turn had replaced. But there was a time to bear witness and a time to act, and the latter was what was needed.

The sprawling infinity of Oinos passed by him as he mumbled to himself, composing and recomposing what he might say, though the words were all iterations of things he had considered for eons, things which would inevitably need to be said. An infinite stretch of desolation held many things, but it was purely happenstance that the Oinoloth’s trek placed him in the proximity of another traveler upon the Waste.

His movement slowed and he looked with distaste at the lone figure in his path, a singular night hag, her pockets full of gold from the sale of her flock of captured souls and she on her way back to her coven to replenish those numbers and repeat ad nauseum, fueling the slaughter of the Blood War that went on and on about the first layer of the Waste.

The hag narrowed glowing yellow eyes as the Oinoloth approached her, the dust stirring at his feet, churned physically by the roiling shadows that licked like tongues of dark flame from his body, the omnipresent cloud of mock plague spores that marked his ascension to Oinoloth. Gingerly her fingers clutched her heartstone and her other hand flexed should the need arise. She knew more than most beings to never trust a yugoloth, especially the jackal-headed sorcerers of their kind.

“Do I know you…?” The night hag blinked, “Have I seen yer before…?” She glanced in the direction of the oncoming fiend as he strode towards the invisible presence of the Oinian Loadstone several miles beyond her.

She walked closer, squinting her eyes at the dirty, snarling jackal as he looked in her direction. Her moon-like luminous eyes met his, burning pinpricks of scarlet on an ebon field. She suddenly felt unimaginably cold at his attention. He was familiar, but she could not yet place his identity.

“Your presence is undesired…” He said in a language she had no way of understanding.

“Whotcher say there?” She scowled, “Speak up yer naked ‘loth.”

The visage of pinkish red eyes on darkness sneered, drawing back his lips over white fangs. He spoke in a language she could comprehend, “Larvae spawned sh*t.”

She would have responded to his statement, snarled at him for the insult, perhaps cursed at him in return, except that she couldn’t. Where the hag had stood there was now only a smear of carbon where she had been incinerated with barely a fleeting thought on the Oinoloth’s part.

“Return to that which births us…” He said with an almost religious tone as he flicked a bit of white ash off his hand.

He paused his walk and sunk his toes into the ground, the individual clawed digits blurring and indistinct against the ash and dirt, feeling the results of his action as the Waste fed on the hag’s obliteration. Piece by suffering piece the Waste ripped apart and digested her soulstuff, paring away consciousness and individuality, reducing it to base granules and absorbing it. The feeling was intimate to him and he cast his senses further afield, back in the direction from which he came, feeling in an instant as a mezzoloth emerged from the spawning pools beneath Khin-Oin in direct relation to the hag’s death, her spiritual essence feeding the plane and serving him to create another cog in the engine of his will.

He continued, and then he was there.

The Loadstone of Misery was massive, perhaps a story or two high, seemingly grown up out of the very soil of the Waste rather than having been built upon it; a cancerous boil upon the flesh of Evil. The Ebon strode up to the obelisk of ash gray stone and the hillock that it was built atop, reading the burning blue runes scrawled across every inch of the monolith’s surface area. He recognized them, he understood their meaning, and he knew perhaps more about it and its purpose than any other of his race.

“LAZARIUS!” The Ebon screamed, “Make yourself known!”

He snarled and addressed the monolith as if it was a living thing, almost seeming to speak –through– the stone, rather than to it. His words were filled with a burning hatred and they would have caused spontaneous bleeding and pain in the ears of any non-yugoloth that might have overheard it. That she had been snuffed from existence in a single, fleeting moment had probably spared the hag a longer period of painful, spasmodic agony.

He did not whisper, he screamed out the words with fury enough to send ripples through the dust and ash of the landscape around him.

“Arrogant son of a b*tch! You had your chance long ago and you abandoned it. What I do now is of no concern to you and yours.” The Ebon clenched his right fist tightly enough to draw blood by his own claws, causing the ground to bubble and sizzle from the errant drips running down his hand and wrist. “I will take what is mine and mine alone and do not even begin to presume that you have either the right, or the will to stop me!”

Silence met the Oinoloth’s outburst, a silence that only goaded the archfiend into a further tirade as his eyes flared with a livid, sickly pink radiance. Erupting from where he stood and extending outwards, inch by inch, second by second, the soil of the Waste stirred and frothed at the agitation of an unseen force, the ash and dust taking on the appearance of a carpet of magical runes and symbols spiraling out in ever more and more complex patterns: magic coaxed into being unconsciously by the Ebon’s fury.

“What? Do you think that I’ve not been aware of the attempts of the 13 to influence the actions of my servitors? You are not the only one waiting for the Compass to strike midnight. You are not the only ones aware of the signs and of the intent?” Vorkannis snarled savagely, “This is mine. You know this.”

Once again silence was the obelisk’s only reply, a response that only increased the Ebon’s fury. To one such as he, there was no greater insult than to be ignored.

“Ancient miserable wretches all bottled up in your own delusions and self-cannibalizing madness!” Vorkannis screamed, and now the ever-expanding field of boiling runes about him ignited, outlining the lines of magic is flickering pale blue flames to match the color of the trio of ioun stones that swirled about his head. “You rage against it silently and I hear you. You have sat back and done nothing for far too long, content to let the multiverse rot when it could have been yours already. You squander the power given to you, and now it seems that you resent those of us who dare to aspire to higher.”

The burning magic now changed color, blue igniting brighter than before and shedding a fiercely pink, albino radiance across the bleak and bleached landscape as if it were a window into the eyes of something far greater than the mere physical form of the Oinoloth standing there upon the Waste at the foot of the Loadstone.

“You and yours have become irrelevant Lazarius.” The Oinoloth said as the burning runes reached out and touched the base of the obelisk.

Finally then, the Ebon’s audience made its presence obvious as something stirred and seemed to focus its distant, powerful consciousness upon the Oinoloth. It was primordial, unfathomable, and terrible to behold, and for a brief moment, for perhaps the first time in his long, long existence, Vorkannis felt fractionally uncertain as that massive presence seemed to momentarily dwarf him, a foreign body casting an eclipse over his own dark and burning sun.

The detached presence of The Architect then focused on the Oinoloth and spoke, the words reverberating through the Loadstone and the surrounding landscape, curdling the air between them, “Have we Oinoloth?”

A spiraling field of symbols and warped, twisting formulae swirled across the face of the Loadstone, similar to that radiating out from the Oinoloth, reaching out inch by inch until it reached the flames and then it paused, not so much of its own accord, but at the faintest, incremental retreat of the Oinoloth own surrounding field of magic.

Vorkannis’s defiant glare directed at and through the Loadstone did not waver however.

“A conflict here and now between the two of us would be distinctly unwise.” Be it bravado or knowledge of something deeper, the Ebon’s lips curled into a sneer as he stood firm, “You and I both know this.”

The baernaloth did not answer him in so many words, but there was almost the hint of a beguiling, smug smile in the mental sensation of Lazarius’s presence. It didn’t need to respond in deep back and forth dialogue as the Ebon was there to threaten rather than act, despite his mockery of the Demented. For all he was, the Architect mentally chuckled at how little he knew, or perhaps how much he thought he knew of the great plan of the Demented forged in the earliest days of reality. Still, Lazarius would not answer him bluntly because there were still unknowns upon the board of their little ancient game and nothing, absolutely nothing was completely certain.

The planned future might be known, but it was not made until it was made, and at the present time, the future, a future, was something that very much desired something from Vorkannis himself. The one principle question lingering in the Architect’s vast mind was just how aware of the particular and precise intricacies of those steps and his place in those steps that the Oinoloth was. If he was, even partially so, then their hand was not so much a definite wager as it might have been. There was still too much to chance in their game, so much blind uncaring luck, and so many variables still open in their great experiment still unfolding.

“As you wish Oinoloth…” Lazarius’s voice spoke through the Loadstone, “Do as you will. It matters not.”

Silence blanketed the landscape and the fields of roiling magic from both the Loadstone and the Oinoloth retreated, flickered, and vanished back into quiescence, drawn back to their sources.

“Oh, I will.” Vorkannis whispered with a smirk, and for the briefest of moments something stared back at the Loadstone through the Ebon’s eyes, there and gone, a whisper and an echo of something utterly familiar.

In a last moment of defiance, the Oinoloth spat on the ground before turning his back on Lazarius and walking back into the desolation of the Waste, back to his throne atop the Wasting Tower. As he did so, as the presence behind his eyes withdrew, the ashes below his feet were frozen.



****​


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## Coroc

Wow if that isn't the most creative way of putting the party under time pressure i ever read.

Incredible good episode, resolving some of the plot and opening new uncertainties.


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## Tsuga C

Wheels within wheels? More like gears getting ready to grind violently against one another. So much for common cause...


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## Karsten

It's been long due, but finally we got a glimpse of the Upper Planes...


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## Karsten

Hello Semi,
Hope All is well on your end!!

I would like to express my anticipation over the next updates...


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## Shemeska

Karsten said:


> Hello Semi,
> Hope All is well on your end!!
> 
> I would like to express my anticipation over the next updates...



All is well, I'm just super busy with starting a new job and getting licensed for said job (pharmacist).


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## Tsuga C

Shemeska said:


> All is well, I'm just super busy with starting a new job and getting licensed for said job (pharmacist).



A yugoloth pharmacist? Nope, nothing at all tainted or toxic about those tinctures, pills, and salves. No way, no how, not ever...

_meaningful silence_

Ahem.


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## Tsuga C

Seasons's greetings, happy holidays, and may the auld lang syne of this campaign continue on in the not-too-distant future, Shemeska.


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## Shemeska

Oh, it will absolutely continue. But working as a pharmacist, in retail pharmacy, during a pandemic, has me pulling 50-60 hour weeks at times and I'm virtually unable to do any creative work, for myself or otherwise at the moment. Blarg. :/


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## carborundum

Completely understandable, if Blarg-inducing 
I just discovered some loth goodness in the Kobold Press Warlock zine "Planar Bestiary" yesterday. I thought it would scratch the itch, but now I just want more! 

In the meantime, stay safe and have a great New Year's Eve. Working?


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## Shemeska

Oh yes, I had the opportunity to detail yugoloths for Kobold Press's Midgard setting in their Warlock zine. I had fun doing a 'redesign NE fiends from the ground up' for a second time 

Only the name yugoloth was available to use, not any of the prior proper D&D names for 'loth subtypes, so I got to make new ones, set up their motives, names for yugoloth lords, etc. I refashioned their whole motif as something akin to a racial mystery cult.


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## Tsuga C

Your plate is overly full, Shemeska, but you do not lack for purpose in your day-to-day routine. Should you be interested in a storyline concerning a dual-expression virus ending civilization as we know it as a much-needed break from the incessant demands of the covid fiasco, pick up a used copy of the first book of the Black Tide Rising series by John Ringo, "Under a Graveyard Sky". Your Trelmarixian might be uneasy reading about this virus, and I think you might just purchase the rest of the ongoing series. Give it a whirl.


----------



## Karsten

Hi Shemi, 
Closing almost a year since last update, I have to ask whether there is any plan of an upcoming one. 

I do know that real life, as it is for some time now, leaves hardly any space to breathe over anything else, but still...


----------



## Shemeska

Karsten said:


> Hi Shemi,
> Closing almost a year since last update, I have to ask whether there is any plan of an upcoming one.
> 
> I do know that real life, as it is for some time now, leaves hardly any space to breathe over anything else, but still...



Between periodic freelancing and working as a retail pharmacist with a decent daily drive on top of my hours, I've been terribly preoccupied. I'll do my best to drop an update here in the next two weeks. <3


----------



## Quartz

Don't worry, we'll wait. After all, we're still hopeful of an update of Wyre from Sepulchrave after 8 years .


----------



## DrHyperion

My life is lacking loths!  There was so much going on!  We miss you, Shemmy!


----------



## Shemeska

I miss you all as well, and I'm writing as we speak today since I have the holiday off. My past year has just been the perfect storm of busy, between working full time as a pharmacist mid-pandemic, having an hour and a half daily commute, the occasional freelance project, and running a weekly game I've just had precious little time to do any writing for myself, the storyhour included.

Teaser:
'The Oinoloth returned to the summit of Khin-Oin heralded with a snarling eruption of black fire and the sound of a chorus of wailing voices, an atypical presentation for a teleportation spell for certain, but one that reflected the archfiend’s mood after his encounter with the Architect.'


----------



## Ohtar Turinson

So I and my sibling have been rereading this, or at least the last… eight years of it? and I just finished. Some highlights from my speculation:



Spoiler: Here there be speculation!



HUBRIS. This classical Greek word is usually translated as pride, but it's more than just regular "Proud of achievements-" it's pride so strong that you think yourself above the very gods. Appropriate for the godless yugoloth! And it certainly plays into the whole "Divinity Leech" aspect, for whatever value that has for them. (I'm afraid I've forgotten the details of what exactly they extract or if it's ever explained how they use the results, and a quick search isn't turning anything up right now.) But it also seems to tie into his belief that he is greater than the Demented.

Whatever the Ebon is, he has an absurd degree of control (above and beyond that granted to the Oinoloth) over the stuff that 'loths are made of- his creation of the Astraloth is major proof, but at the spot we're at now there's also modification of mezzoloths for use in the inner planes going on. There may be a hint of his nature in the words Shylara uses in transforming Mezzoloths: "And you I sacrifice on the altar of our purity." There are perhaps also clues in Vorkannis's interactions with the Architect- he seems to flinch ever so slightly in that interaction.

So: He's been working on this plan for a VERY long time- so long that he was responsible for Shylara's ascension… and for Shemeska's far, FAR longer ago fall to mezzoloth status and her struggle all the way back up to Arcanaloth. This extreme age and ridiculous foresight suggests he's something adjacent to the Baern. Here's my current theory: He WAS a baern, in the very earliest days of reality. He was a baern who was broken down and used to CREATE a prototype of the Yugoloth. (Even if it's not true, I think it's a good plot hook for my own later use.) 

What he's up to? I'm not sure. I don't actually have any idea what the Oblivion Compass's deal is, or where it's counting to.

All that said: I do not think that the Ashsinger or Apomps are allies of Vorkannis. [This was related to a former player in my games own speculation] Apomps as a former associate, perhaps. But not an ally. The Ashsinger, I'm still unclear- but I think that it's perhaps related to the Far Realm somehow, or something else "outside" reality. It seems almost unrelated to the Ebon… but maybe not to whatever the Oblivion Compass counts down toward. Tollysalmon (and the swiftly deceased Alex, by extension) seem to be definitely tied to the Far Realms.  Whatever the Ashsinger is, it seems like it can mess with time (Leobtav in the past talking to Guvners), leaves both Law and Chaos susceptible to its naughty word, and is awful enough that the Yugoloths revered it. A baern that went "outside" maybe?

Hm… something else that caught my attention: the mention that there were only four remaining "hosts" for the Demented. Taba, Xenghara, Helekanalaith, and Larsdana. It seems like the Altraloths are sort of proxies (in the non-technical sense) for the Demented, and suggests to me that the entire massive battle for Khin-Oin was almost as much about cleaning house and knocking off their proxies as it was about getting access to the Fleshforges of the Wasting Tower. BUT. It's also explicitly about wanting the Yugoloth to be a closed circle, with no interference from the Night Hags.

Then there's the Original Jester. He seems to be LE, and to have a deep disdain for Asmodeus and the Devils. Possibly some variation on an ancient Baatorian? He "infects" Clueless's thoughts in some fashion, which seems appropriate. Green Marvent I can't get a read on, but I'm actually guessing not a proxy/avatar/chosen? That seems too... easy.


----------



## Shemeska

Ohtar Turinson said:


> So I and my sibling have been rereading this, or at least the last… eight years of it? and I just finished. Some highlights from my speculation:
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler: Here there be speculation!
> 
> 
> 
> HUBRIS. This classical Greek word is usually translated as pride, but it's more than just regular "Proud of achievements-" it's pride so strong that you think yourself above the very gods. Appropriate for the godless yugoloth! And it certainly plays into the whole "Divinity Leech" aspect, for whatever value that has for them. (I'm afraid I've forgotten the details of what exactly they extract or if it's ever explained how they use the results, and a quick search isn't turning anything up right now.) But it also seems to tie into his belief that he is greater than the Demented.
> 
> Whatever the Ebon is, he has an absurd degree of control (above and beyond that granted to the Oinoloth) over the stuff that 'loths are made of- his creation of the Astraloth is major proof, but at the spot we're at now there's also modification of mezzoloths for use in the inner planes going on. There may be a hint of his nature in the words Shylara uses in transforming Mezzoloths: "And you I sacrifice on the altar of our purity." There are perhaps also clues in Vorkannis's interactions with the Architect- he seems to flinch ever so slightly in that interaction.
> 
> So: He's been working on this plan for a VERY long time- so long that he was responsible for Shylara's ascension… and for Shemeska's far, FAR longer ago fall to mezzoloth status and her struggle all the way back up to Arcanaloth. This extreme age and ridiculous foresight suggests he's something adjacent to the Baern. Here's my current theory: He WAS a baern, in the very earliest days of reality. He was a baern who was broken down and used to CREATE a prototype of the Yugoloth. (Even if it's not true, I think it's a good plot hook for my own later use.)
> 
> What he's up to? I'm not sure. I don't actually have any idea what the Oblivion Compass's deal is, or where it's counting to.
> 
> All that said: I do not think that the Ashsinger or Apomps are allies of Vorkannis. [This was related to a former player in my games own speculation] Apomps as a former associate, perhaps. But not an ally. The Ashsinger, I'm still unclear- but I think that it's perhaps related to the Far Realm somehow, or something else "outside" reality. It seems almost unrelated to the Ebon… but maybe not to whatever the Oblivion Compass counts down toward. Tollysalmon (and the swiftly deceased Alex, by extension) seem to be definitely tied to the Far Realms.  Whatever the Ashsinger is, it seems like it can mess with time (Leobtav in the past talking to Guvners), leaves both Law and Chaos susceptible to its naughty word, and is awful enough that the Yugoloths revered it. A baern that went "outside" maybe?
> 
> Hm… something else that caught my attention: the mention that there were only four remaining "hosts" for the Demented. Taba, Xenghara, Helekanalaith, and Larsdana. It seems like the Altraloths are sort of proxies (in the non-technical sense) for the Demented, and suggests to me that the entire massive battle for Khin-Oin was almost as much about cleaning house and knocking off their proxies as it was about getting access to the Fleshforges of the Wasting Tower. BUT. It's also explicitly about wanting the Yugoloth to be a closed circle, with no interference from the Night Hags.
> 
> Then there's the Original Jester. He seems to be LE, and to have a deep disdain for Asmodeus and the Devils. Possibly some variation on an ancient Baatorian? He "infects" Clueless's thoughts in some fashion, which seems appropriate. Green Marvent I can't get a read on, but I'm actually guessing not a proxy/avatar/chosen? That seems too... easy.




Oh you have precious little idea how -DELIGHTED- it made me to see your post and your speculation on the storyhour's metaplot. I absolutely eat this sort of thing up! 

I'm never going to publicly answer such speculation, and to my recollection nobody has yet been absolutely spot on correct regarding the specifics of the Ebon's plans and his true nature. There have been some solidly close guesses over the years however.

I will make a correction to your speculation though: when you mentioned the various altraloths and other hosts of The Demented, you left out Charon/Cerlic who was largely sidelined early on and hasn't made a reappearance. Helekanalaith, one of The Ebon's allies, was host to The Chronicler and there hasn't been anything to suggest that isn't still the case even as he personally talks with the Oinoloth regularly. Make of that as you will. But yes, the Ebon taking the throne of Khin-Oin and the battle for it was -very much- about cleaning house and centralizing power. They're still there, still watching, still taking notes as they sit in the Vale of Frozen Ashes.

You'll find out more about the Jester in relatively short time, though not the immediate next update (which I'm close to finishing up, so thank you all for your saintly patience with me).


----------



## Ohtar Turinson

Shemeska said:


> Oh you have precious little idea how -DELIGHTED- it made me to see your post and your speculation on the storyhour's metaplot. I absolutely eat this sort of thing up!
> 
> I'm never going to publicly answer such speculation, and to my recollection nobody has yet been absolutely spot on correct regarding the specifics of the Ebon's plans and his true nature. There have been some solidly close guesses over the years however.
> 
> I will make a correction to your speculation though: when you mentioned the various altraloths and other hosts of The Demented, you left out Charon/Cerlic who was largely sidelined early on and hasn't made a reappearance. Helekanalaith, one of The Ebon's allies, was host to The Chronicler and there hasn't been anything to suggest that isn't still the case even as he personally talks with the Oinoloth regularly. Make of that as you will. But yes, the Ebon taking the throne of Khin-Oin and the battle for it was -very much- about cleaning house and centralizing power. They're still there, still watching, still taking notes as they sit in the Vale of Frozen Ashes.
> 
> You'll find out more about the Jester in relatively short time, though not the immediate next update (which I'm close to finishing up, so thank you all for your saintly patience with me).



I mean I have at least _some_ idea- I’ve been reading this sporadically since 2004, and you’ve mentioned it before. That’s why I posted it!


----------



## Shemeska

The Oinoloth returned to the summit of Khin-Oin heralded with a snarling eruption of black fire and the sound of a chorus of wailing voices, an atypical presentation for a teleportation spell for certain, but one that reflected the archfiend’s mood after his encounter with the Architect.

Silence immediately fell upon the assembled court surrounding the great throne, the Siege Malicious. Dozens of regally robed arcanaloths and ultroloths, each of them bedecked with enough magical paraphernalia to make an archmage weep, looked up with surprise at their master’s return, seeking to divine in that first split second his mood and their appropriate response.

Vorkannis of course ignored them and the eruption of voices seeking to entreat him for a word, an audience, a request for information as to how his most recent venture out into the surrounding Waste had gone, not that any of them knew his actual reasons or intent. He walked past and through them, his immaterial and shadowy cloud of plague spores parting them like a split ocean before a prophet.

As he walked through the crowd, one arcanaloth at his feet lay dying from a silver blade plunged into its throat and a burned hole in its chest still sizzling with black, arcane fire. The Oinoloth gave only a cursory glance before then looking directly at their killer further back in the throng with the faintest sneer of approval. Perhaps the internecine slaughter was amusing to him, or simply the act of betrayal and the pain of the dying ‘loth like honey on his lips, or more likely the life and death struggles of comparative insects amused him in its futility.

As her Oinoloth took his seat upon the Siege Malicious, one arcanaloth, Venya ib Malkanthe stepped forward and spoke the first words that actually garnered his attention, “My Oinoloth, there are… issues… of concern to you in Gehenna.”

Vorkannis briefly glanced down at her, his thoughts clearly still preoccupied by his recent encounter at the Loadstone. “Let Helekanalaith deal with any such issues in his domain,” He said, dismissively, “I have precious little concern where so much as it regards his competence.”

“It regards Chamada and the living moon,” She paused, uncertain how to proceed, her hands fidgeting to smooth out the folds of her pale blue and black robes, before finally spitting out a name, “Nimicri.”

To this the Oinoloth physically turned and narrowed his eyes, taking full attention, “Speak.”

“The moon is in open rebellion,” She explained, choosing her words carefully, suddenly wary at how swiftly her master had chosen to direct his full attention to her. She could feel the telepathic fingers of his consciousness brushing at her thoughts like a coiled serpent sniffing the air as it waited for its prey to step forward for its waiting strike. “It began this morning without warning. It devoured dozens of mezzoloths and their overseers. Several of my own,” She would have said ‘our’ kind but the very notion of comparing them and herself to the Oinoloth seemed blasphemous to her, “They barely managed to escape and it seemed as if the moon were targeting them in specific in its wrath.”

“Of course it would…” Vorkannis sneered, his meaning opaque to those gathered around him.

“At present our garrison has retreated to the surface of the second furnace and…”

“Blockade the moon in its entirety.” Vorkannis cut her off, “Allow no transit in or out. Any attempting to escape are to be killed, swiftly, and others seeking entry are to be turned away with whatever appropriate lies you can muster, unless killing them as well is more expedient. Do your best to cull the rumor mill that has likely already spread to the City of Doors.”

The Oinoloth snarled and rapidly tapped the claws of his left hand upon his throne. It seemed possible that he might have to leave Khin-Oin once more, even as he’d only just returned.

“Petulant creature…”





****​




The mortal named Eldiria Windsong, cleric of Sehanine Moonbow, clutched, white-knuckled at her shield, her elven heart beating in her chest and humming in her ears as her mind raced to understand what she’d seen over the past hour that she and her companions had spent on the surface of Nimicri.

Unlike many who visited the moon, she was under no illusions as to the danger or to the true nature of the unique trade city that orbited Gehenna’s second furnace of Chamada. She knew to avoid spilling her own blood, lest the city eventually generate a flawed simulacra of her to one day escort visitors, man a shop, or whatever other mundane tasks it set its little finger puppets upon.

Three times since they’d arrived, she’d seen Nimicri devour an outsider, and eight other times she’d seen it brazenly make the attempt. For the entirety of the moon’s history, as far as she was aware, it had never engaged in what she could only describe as an open feast upon its visitors and occupiers. For certain the cunning entity would innocuously slurp at any blood lost in fights or left behind following a visitor’s drunken fall upon a streetside curb, taking from them knowledge, memories, and the blueprints to spawn a copy of them from itself like some titanic mimic. But since she and her companions had stepped foot upon the moon, they’d witnessed doorways spawn teeth and snap down upon mezzoloths, the spires of towers warp into spiked tentacles to impale flying nycaloths, and streets suddenly collapse not into sinkholes but yawning mouths to feast upon an arcanaloth betrayed by its fellows and hurled within to die, screaming.

Why though the bloodshed? Why now? And why, now that she thought about it, had the moon only targeted the ‘loths who at any point stood as the planetoid’s primary visitors, if only by proximity to one of their three native planes?




****​



She stood in the shadows, cloaked from the sight of mortals and monster alike, her arrival unheralded by the familiar opening of portals or even the ostentatious flicker-flash of a teleportation spell. She was never one to advertise her arrival. Lesser beings could rejoice in the noise of their arrival, their own presentation as targets and victims. She was nothing of the sort. She was a predator as she hung there, one with the darkness, there in the gravity well of another of a sort.

The mortal stepped into view, itself clutching at shield in one hand and a holy symbol about its neck with the other. One pathetic being feebly clutching for the protection of an even more pathetic thing.

Closer.

One step closer.

Almost there little gnat.

Only one step closer little one.

Come forward little insect.

This will be swift.

This will be unseen.



****​


Eldiria sprinted forward, moving down the alleyway between a pair of buildings until she reached its end where it intersected a larger boulevard, motioning for her companions to wait as she glanced in both directions. While Nimicri itself had largely ignored them since their arrival, the ‘loths themselves had been both open targets of the moon itself, and likewise dangers lashing out in fury towards all others spared its wrath.

Good she thought to herself, there were no signs of the neutral evil fiends in either direction, both on the ground or in the air. She motioned back to where her three companions waited to wait a moment and then follow. The motion made, she turned the corner.

Suddenly, just ten steps forward and barely out of line of sight of her fellows, she paused, the faintest feeling of a nearby presence raising a sense of alarm. She glanced about, then up and behind, but no, there was nothing amiss. She shrugged and stepped forward.




****​



Inwardly smiling, Taba revealed herself and struck. Jaws yawned wide, a myriad of newly formed arms grasping and holding tighter than iron, boney spikes piercing arming and puncturing lungs to silence a scream before it even began in the firing of higher neurons, and joints dislocating to accommodate her victim as the mortal slid down her gullet without a single drop of blood spilt, denying Nimicri the opportunity to do what she would do to an even higher degree of mastery.

The yugoloth lord began to digest her victim even before the mortal’s feet slipped past her teeth, acid, enzymes, and things more subtle digesting not only flesh but objects, memories, mannerisms, and knowledge, all of it sorted and memorized. In the space of an instant as she snapped shut her jaws, starting from her feet and moving upwards, her form recapitulated that of her victim in every detail. She blinked and she smiled, and then standing there just beyond the corner as her companions caught up with her stood Taba in perfect mimicry of the elven cleric she had murdered in an instant.

“Come on,” She said, her vocal chords identical to the dead clerics. “The way is clear. No ‘loths at all.”

Her companions nodded and the group proceeded down the street, ignorant that they followed in the footsteps of an altraloth. Block by block they found the city largely deserted, devoid of the usual presence of residents and shopkeepers generated by the moon itself, and block by block they witnessed it savagely assaulting those few yugoloths who remained on its surface, those few unable to leave on their own power or unwilling to defy the orders of their masters who had sent them there to eliminate witnesses to the moon’s rage.

Silently watching the slaughter, the group continued to traipse their way through the city, stopping only when the ground shook and a building collapsed.

“How dare you defy our master?!” Zeleria ap Chamada screamed, her hands a blur of motion as she invoked a meteor shower down upon the moon’s surface, blasting stone and mortar apart like a giant kicking an anthill. The broken stones melted as they fell, their formless mass absorbed by the streets below to leave no trace of the damage beyond a slight discoloration from where the fiendish wizard’s spell still burned with arcane flame.

“How dare you strike against us?!” Zeleria bellowed, rising into the air as she stones at her feet turned to teeth and snapped at her heels. Another flicker of motion from her hands and a snarled word and a brilliant green beam lashed from an open palm and cut into the ground, disintegrating a trench, meter by meter incinerating the moon’s unholy matrix, seeking to draw blood and punish the sentient planetoid.

The arcanaloth was skilled beyond the scope of the others of its kind the moon had already slain, but in the end, it was yet one more ant raging against the mountain upon which it stood. An adjacent tower became a gargantuan tentacle and swung down to swat the flying ‘loth like a fly, the street forming a slavering maw to accept it as it fell. Swallowed up by a chewing, undulating street, its final screams were unheard except by Taba, a pleasured smile faintly crossing her lips as she watched.

Saying nothing to her mortal compatriots, she continued, her movement through the maze of Nimicri’s streets hardly random, but following the faintest tremor she felt. The moon ached. Following the unvoiced sound of agony, she walked, following streets that wrapped around but never led directly towards the source of the moon’s maddening ache.

“Are we going in circles?” One of her companions asked, a statement ignored by the altraloth wearing the flesh of their deceased party member.

Something was off.

Buildings had slunk to the side, moved, and repositioned themselves, streets lacing together like burgeoning scar tissue to hide a wound. Nimicri ached not only from physical pain, but from emotional agony.

“Have you noticed somethi…” The rogue standing beside her stopped, holding his tongue as an eave above them animated into a fanged maw and struck at Taba.

Her shoulder rippled and shrugged off the blow, something utterly unexpected by every witness to the act, Nimicri included. No blood was drawn, but it smelled her. Altraloth. Yugoloth. The cause of its pain. One of the thieves. One of the abductors.

The streets around them exploded into a frenzy of violence, snuffing out the lives of the mortals Taba had used to hide her metaphysical scent from the hungry moon. The altraloth however remained untouched, her corporeal form shifting into a metamorphic liquid to surge through the air, moving in a dozen disparate streams to avoid Nimicri’s strikes.

Avoiding the moon’s rage, Taba surged forward, diving through openings made available by Nimicri’s strikes, time and again avoiding harm and growing closer and closer to what she’d felt ever since she’d arrived.

Then, returning to her native form but for a second to behold the moon’s secret with her own, original eyes, not aping any other form, she understood. A dozen eyes went wide, blinked, thoughts racing as to the implication as Nimicri’s myriad limbs and mouths moved to end her, and then with a thought she planeshifted out of Gehenna, leaving the moon to scream in impotent rage.

Taba understood the what, but not yet the why.




****​



“… upon the altar of our purity.” The Overlord of Carceri intoned as the final mezzoloth received her warped and twisted blessing of transformation, her attendants gazing up at her in awe and fear, even as she merely aped the magics taught to her by the Oinoloth without wholly understanding their intricacies and basis.

As a final flourish, a student signing her master’s name on the canvas, each of them had, after their transformation, received a glowing brand upon their flesh, hide, or carapace, physically melted or burned in place and glowing with puissant magic in the shape of the Oinoloth’s personal symbol.

Shylara closed her eyes and listened, smiling at the shrieks as they were applied by the various contingents of arcanaloths in her service. The sum totality of the agony she felt from her own forces mustering there at the base of the Tower of Incarnate Pain and the billions upon billions of souls that comprised the screaming matrix of the tower itself, it was nearly overwhelming in its pleasure for the archfiend.

“It is completed Mistress,” One of her servitors spoke, interrupting her moment of self-indulgence.

The Overlord of Carceri softly snarled as she opened her eyes, casting a shifting, multicolored radiance to the servitor who instinctively dropped to their knees and bowed their head. The movement of immediate submission worked and Shylara’s mercurial rage passed over the quivering arcanaloth who would live to die another day.

It was time.

It was finally time to enact this first step of her master’s plan, a plan in which she was a vital component, a centerpiece jewel in a forming crown. A plan of which, of course, she ultimately did not understand and had not been told the significance of even as she raised her hands and drew upon the ferocious power invested in her by virtue of her symbiotic link to the 3rd great yugoloth tower that rose from the red and festering flesh of Othrys.

The air above them all and the void above it, they ached, as space was rent apart, immaterial, ephemeral claws of magic and malignant will twisting, tearing, cutting, and reconfiguring, borrowing a hole across all of reality. First one, then another, and another, and another, a multitude of great gates to accommodate the yugoloth armies there massed and answering to a being which cared nothing for them. High above, the Bells of Othrys ceased their distant, ominous chime, cannon to crown to lip and alien clappers alike held motionless and silent like still tongues and pursed lips, hushed in waiting for what would come next.

Laughing maniacally, Shylara the Manged placed one foot in the jeweled stirrup of the saddle atop her personal slasrath, one of the selectively bred, monstrous, intelligent, and carnivorous beasts of burden first created in Gehenna. Launching herself up onto her seat, she glanced to the similarly saddled slasrath hovering in the air some two dozen feet distant, one which already hosted the blue-robed ultroloth, a spike of cobalt crystal buried in its forehead, manipulated like a puppet by their collective master. Utterly silent, it allowed her the illusion of control and had yet to speak with the Oinoloth’s projected voice in the past days in which their forces had marshalled and prepared for the journey.

Shylara tugged at the reins of her mount and urged it skyward, turning to face her assembled forces as the Oinoloth’s host took its place beside her, silently glancing over as if in prompt.

“NOW IS OUR TIME! NOW IS WHEN WE BEGIN THE GREAT TASK SET UPON US BY OUR MASTER, THE OINOLOTH, THE GREATEST OF US, VORKANNIS THE EBON! NOW I OPEN THE WAY! SPILL FORTH LEGIONS OF THE PLANES OF CONFLICT, GEHENNA, THE WASTE, AND CARCERI! SPILL FORTH AND SPILL THE BLOOD AND ESSENCE OF ALL WHO STAND IN OUR WAY!”

Mania dancing in her eyes as vividly as the mad chorus of colors that radiated from them, Shylara the Manged raised her hands and invoked an eldritch litany in baernaloth. Words and gestures she had learned from the Oinoloth himself, words and gestures that she only partly understood, they nonetheless had their desired effect. The air about the Tower of Incarnate Pain rippled and boiled as she called forth holes in reality, burned across the stretch of infinities between the Outer and Inner planes.

At the Overlord of Carceri’s urging, the portals yawned wide, spilling forth a light far too clean and unsullied by Evil or any alignment whatsoever in fact out onto the wastes of Othrys, dozens of them at once opening onto a landscape of gleaming, glittering gemstones. On the border of the Elemental Plane of Earth and the Positive Energy Plane, the Gemfields awaited them.




****​



The skies of Sigil hung heavy with soot and smog, both conspiring together to form dark clouds to pour down an acrid, vinegar smelling rain upon the streets of the Clerk’s Ward. It made for a dreary day, masking the light that would have normally radiated through the front windows of the Portal Jammer as the day stretched towards Peak.

The weather and dimmed daylight certainly set the prevailing mood over the Portal Jammer’s owners as they sat together in the main room, except for Clueless who tended the bar. Since scrying upon the Oblivion Compass and witnessing what they had, several days had passed as they’d mulled over the ramifications of what they’d seen, and perhaps more important, just what their next step would be.

News passing from the lips of touts, rumors spilling from increasingly tipsy tavern patrons, and eventually headlines in block print spelled out on the front page of newsprint something that interrupted their thoughts on the Oblivion Compass.

“Nimicri blockaded by yugoloths?” Toras asked, reading out the paper headline. “Scary sounding perhaps, but more importantly what the hell is a Nimicri and why are the ‘loths placing a blockade on travel there?”

“Oh! That’s the mimic city.” Nisha said, matter-of-factly, before returning to trying and failing to put a knot in the stem of a cherry from her cocktail using only her tongue. Three seconds later and a spat out cherry tumbled across the table before Tristol lifted it up with a mage hand and back into her waiting hands and open mouth.

“Keep trying.” The wizard said with a smile.

“The mimic city?” Toras asked.

“The mimic city!” Nisha mumbled, now two cherries in her mouth.

“Let me explain,” Tristol chuckled, “It’s…”

The wizard trailed off as Clueless walked over from behind the bar, a serious expression on his face as he glanced down at the envelope in his hands.

“This arrived in the mail just now.” He gingerly placed the mail in the table’s center, avoiding the sporadic few bits of cherry there.

Addressed to the collective owners of the Portal Jammer, the letter’s sender was immediately obvious from the seal and sigil that it bore: the most recent nom de plume of the altraloth Taba.




****​


----------



## Shemeska

Toras rolled his eyes and took a long, preemptive swig from his mug.

“Another invitation from esteemed and oh so mortal, Material Plane dwelling associate, Lord Abat?” Florian asked, mirroring Toras’s motion a split second after asking her question.

They all knew the answer to the question before Clueless opened the envelope on Razor’s edge and unfolded the crisp stationary to lay the letter flat for all to read:

_“Greetings my friends!

I hope that our time spent apart since our last meeting within the Dire Wood has seen you hale and hearty. I myself have traveled quite far afield from whence we last communed. No doubt that you may have heard of the disruption of travel and trade upon the trade town of Nimicri.”_

“Surprise surprise…” Toras muttered.

“The mimic city!” Nisha giggled with odd, perhaps misplaced delight.

“The mimic city.” Tristol smiled and patted her head.

The letter continued:

_“Being as this matter is liable to have untold consequences on regional trade and transit, I should urge you my friends to take it upon yourselves to commence forthwith to Nimicri to see events therein for yourselves and discover the reasons for these most recent events.

Your gracious associate,

Lord Abat of Toril”_

“Laying it on thick, isn’t she?” Fyrehowl shook her head and downed a gulp of ale.

“You could say that.” Clueless said, skimming over the letter a second time, “But now I’m genuinely interested.”

“You weren’t interested before?” Florian asked.

“No,” The bladesinger waved the letter in the air casually, “Before I was curious, with a heavy amount of ‘f*ck the yugoloths who are clearly up to their usual yugoloth f*ckery’ and a side of ‘how is any of this unusual for Gehenna?’”

“That’s the thing though,” Fyrehowl remarked, “It is actually unusual for the ‘loths to so brazenly and so suddenly take action like this, and doubly so because it’s on Nimicri.”

“Why is it so odd for Nimicri?” Florian asked.

“Because the ‘loths have historically taken a very hands-off approach to the moon, or at least the appearance of being hands off.” The lupinal continued, “So there’s something afoot, otherwise they wouldn’t have taken action like this.”

“To say nothing of our letter-writing friend having an interest and pushing us in that direction herself.” Clueless placed the letter down on the table, face up for all to review once more.

Collectively they glanced around the room at one another, each gauging the mood, all of them coming to the same conclusion that yes, absolutely they needed to go to Nimicri. Nods were made, assent voiced, and not even a grumble of dissent to be heard before last drinks were poured and finished, preparations were made for their trip, and finally the group left together to find the nearest portal to the Outlands, there to planeshift to Gehenna.

What they found there would rock their view of certain events that they’d taken part in when they’d first come together as a group.



****​


The tieflings that stood guard outside the private rooms within the Azure Iris where Shemeska the Marauder held private, as opposed to public court down in the Fortune’s Wheel below it, were really a well-dressed formality. Their presence, albeit a highly skilled and lethal presence, wasn’t the real power keeping the King of the Crosstrade safe from rivals. No, she alone and the centuries of layered wards she’d ensorcelled into place were the true danger that faced any would-be assassin. Still, the well-dressed rogues who flanked the door to her suite of chambers were there to deal with more common riffraff and act as intermediaries with those seeking any audience, cutting wheat from chaff for their mistress to deal with at a later, more convenient date, sometimes cutting wheat from chaff in a more literal, bloody manner if they mood struck them.

The visitor who would promptly manifest in front of them however was not common in any capacity, riffraff or otherwise.

“Good evening to you sir and to you madam, servitors of my most esteemed peer among the Yugoloth hierarchy the King of the Crosstrade!”

The Grin manifested as an illusory smile suspended in mid-air, speaking a split second before becoming visible. It was a credit to their training that neither tiefling jerked in surprise or yelped in shock, but calmly moved hands to their sword belts and turned to glare at their visitor.

“She’s occupied at present sirrah… madam… whichever you might be.” The tiefling on the left side of the door stumbled over the precise pronoun to use in planar common with which to address their visitor.

They hadn’t stated as much, but both tieflings were well aware of The Grin and its complicated relationship with their Mistress. As an agent of the Tower in Gehenna, and more specifically a proxy at times for its master and sire Helekanalaith, its appearance was not altogether unknown, though it had been some time since it had directly appeared and requested an audience. Normally they suspected it would simply directly ask Shemeska herself by magic, rather than go through the formalities of actually showing up and asking them to ask her.

Something was clearly up.

The Grin moved the corners of its mouth up and down in a comical recapitulation of a shrug, “Any or all of those work.” They explain, “I’m not much on the specifics as you mortals are so fond of being locked into.”

“As my partner said,” The tiefling on the right stated, “Her Fiendish Majesty is presently occupied.”

Another ‘shrug’ from the Grin, “No doubt having her claws polished, fur brushed or waxed, by a servitor whose eyes she’d previously plucked out, depending on where the fur in question might be I suppose. Things of utmost importance surely.”

Neither tiefling responded to the insinuation, even if the insinuation were liable to be true.

Several long seconds passed.

“You can go interrupt her and ask for me, or I can simply waltz through the door and ask her myself.”

The Grin did as its namesake expression detailed, with a playful, sinister hint at the corners.

“One moment.” The first tiefling turned and stepped inside, leaving her compatriot there in the hallway with the illusory visitor.



****​


“The Gehennan. He… she… they…” The tiefling, eyes directed pointedly downwards at the floor, fumbled with uncertainty as the visiting fiend hadn’t clarified the matter to any level of mortal specificity, “They’re out in the hallway. They request an audience with you.”

The Marauder looked up from where she sat atop the back of one blind aasimar, legs crossed and one foot extended out for a second, similarly impaired aasimar to expertly polish and paint her claws seemingly based on feel and familiarity with the act and the anatomy alone. She rolled her eyes dramatically.

“Of course, they would, now…”

Sneering with equal drama she expanded her consciousness, feeling The Grin delicately probing at the layers of wards that surrounded her chambers in the Azure Iris. Of course, they weren’t actively seeking to intrude past them: it had become almost a formality over the past few centuries, a subtle knock on the proverbial door to go along with manifesting before her guards and verbalizing the request she already knew was coming.

With a soft, dismissive snarl the Marauder kicked at the aasimar painting the claws on her feet, deftly and intentionally drawing blood. Standing up and leaned down, cradling the servitor’s injured face before licking the wound and pushing them to the ground like a crassly discarded but beloved doll. Standing back up and running a hand through her hair, straightening the tangle of razorvine atop her head, she looked back at the tiefling, who to their credit, had remained emotionless at the display of casual, pointless cruelty, “Let them in.”

As the tiefling returned to the front door to admit her visitor, Shemeska stood up walked to an adjacent chamber and almost as an afterthought, she casually donned a green, silk robe to cover herself, to then sit upon a velvet-cushioned throne of hollyphant ivory. An arrogant smile playing across her muzzle, she relaxed and held out her right hand for the same blind servant who’d previously served as a chair now placed a lit cigarette holder in her hand. She lifted it to her painted lips and took a puff, ready to punctuate her guest’s arrival with a sneer and an exhaled stream of smoke.

“Greetings Shemeska!” The Grin exclaimed as it manifested within the room, the barely-clothed arcanaloth before them blowing a stream of purple smoke through her front fangs. The illusory guest gave a polite, entirely performative cough from the welcome.

“Took you long enough I suppose to bother showing up.” The Marauder said, smoke coiling up from her nostrils as she tapped the cigarette holder, sending a cascade of ashes to land upon the flesh of the attendant now sitting on the floor adjacent her throne.

“We haven’t met face to face like this nearly often enough I admit.” The Grin smiled jovially.

She rolled her eyes and blew another stream of smoke, arrogant as ever even when dealing with a nominal peer. Without any further banter she immediately launched into a stream of questions, demands really, but even as The Grin considered what to tell her, what to hide, and what to lie about, they couldn’t help but stare at the object she wore about her neck like some unholy talisman: the Shadow Sorceled Key.



****​


The transition was always stark when leaving Sigil by portal to one of the Lower Planes. It didn’t matter if one left the Lady’s Ward or the Hive, or ultimately stepped out into the Imperial Hell of Baator, the Darwinian nightmare of the Abyss, or the Unhallowed Desolation of the Waste, there was never a situation wherein the contrast didn’t metaphorically or literally suck the air from the lungs and dim the candlelight of the spirit.

The party’s emergence into the Fourfold Furnace was no exception.

The surface of Chamada was a vast and jagged, burning expanse of rock that seemed perpetually inclined at perilous angles and unstable, loose footing on those surfaces not actively flowing with molten rivers of magma pouring off and out into the void. At random intervals that almost seemed to deliberately target creatures crawling across the slopes, seemingly solid ground would erupt in massive showers of lava, casting a brilliant, fiery glow across a landscape of black basalt and other igneous rock. Certain eyes might have found the contrast beautiful, if not for the deadly and immediate peril it presented to travelers incapable of flight or themselves not immune to flame, let alone the damage posed by flying boulders or razor-sharp ballistic splinters of stone.

Surrounded by such on the slopes of Chamada rather than the streets of Nimicri, normally they might have considered a gate, such was Tristol’s ability, but with a yugoloth embargo on Nimicri and the unknowns surrounding any magical protections to dissuade travel they thought better of the idea. Instead, they began with a planeshift to Chamada, there to stare up at the moon drifting like some lambent star tantalizingly out of reach to those upon the volcanic hellscape of the 2nd Furnace.

Well aware of the native dangers of Gehenna, to say nothing of its native fiends the yugoloths, the party had well prepared in advance for the natural dangers before they’d planeshifted. Magically inured against the plane’s pernicious spiritual effects, likewise against fire, and collectively drifting several inches off of the ground, they faced only one pressing question on how to proceed, a question that Nisha posed as she stared up at Nimicri high above some thirty miles up in orbit.

“Soooooo,” Nisha quipped, staring up, “Do we fly or do we teleport?”

“That’s a bit of a distance up there.” Toras gave a dubious glance up at the moon.

“And that void isn’t empty.” Fyrehowl narrowed her eyes, her ears flat and laid back against her head. “I can see more than a few groups moving up there, circling Nimicri. Can’t make out much detail from this distance, but the approach is being watched and patrolled.”

“What are your thoughts Tristol?” Clueless asked. “Fly up invisibly? Risk a teleport?”

The aasimar pondered the situation, the chill wind off of the void whipping the edges of his robes while errant bursts of heat from the slopes behind him providing a contrast hinting at the danger they faced simply standing there moment by moment.

“It’s going to be difficult to keep us all invisible while we fly that distance from here up to Nimicri.” Tristol said, thinking out loud. “There’s no way we won’t end up having to fight our way through a flood of nycaloths or a bunch of arcanaloths.”

“Bring it.” Toras said bluntly.

“Ehhh…” Tristol shrugged. “We have no idea what’s even going on up there, so I hesitate to spend a ton of spells just in the process of setting foot on Nimicri.”

“So, we teleport?” Florian asked.

Tristol nodded, “Yeah, I think we at least make the attempt.”

With a softly whispered prayer to Mystra and a flicker of silverfire on his fingertips, Tristol cast the spell.

While the flickerflash of the teleport was immediate and normal, what happened next was not. Rather than a sudden chill followed by stepping out onto the streets of Nimicri, what instead occurred was a nauseating, discordant rush of sensations that wracked their immaterial minds and bodies alike. Rather than crossing the void in an instant, something at or about their target destination grabbed hold of them like a giant plucking a bird out of the air to shake it, painfully twist it for its own amusement, and then hurl it back into the sky, laughing.

When the nausea and pain had passed, the party lay scattered about on Chamada’s slopes over a disparate few acres separation at random, lucky to have been deposited back on solid ground and not immediate immersed in one of the many unceasing lava flows cascading down the slopes. One by one they came to their senses, shook off the pain of the experience and reconvened back whence they’d started.

“Ok…” Tristol caught his breath, his ears flat against his head as he and the others recovered from the experience. “That was distinctly unpleasant and to be perfectly honest, sort of what we should have expected. I figure it would have been worse if we’d tried to use a gate.”

“Alright then,” Clueless blinked and stared back up at the distant moon. “Now what?”



****​


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## Karsten

Now What, indeed...

keep it coming please!


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## carborundum

Damn, this is great!
I'm intrigued, what does Tristol know that should have let them expect this?


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## Tristol

carborundum said:


> Damn, this is great!
> I'm intrigued, what does Tristol know that should have let them expect this?



I don't know anything, I swear! I didn't do it!

Actually, in this case, it's mostly just that the 'loths have blockaded Nimicri. And Abat has asked us to take a look. What could go wrong? I also figure it's kind of hard to blockade the place when people can gate, teleport, and use other creative means to get there. The 'loths are pretty thorough, so it's natural to expect some kind of negative consequences when you take the easy route. We'd run into a few other teleport redirections and such when trying to get to places we shouldn't by this point. So, it's kind of 'expected' that it wouldn't work. First time I think it decided to scatter us about instead of the usual nosebleed or spell failure. But it's worth a chance anyway!


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