Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)

Tsuga C

Adventurer
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

Adventurer
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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Shemeska

Adventurer
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. :)
 


Shemeska

Adventurer
More than a month with no updates ! The Oinoloth shall hear about this :angel:

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. :D
 


Shemeska

Adventurer
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

Adventurer
****​


“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

Adventurer
“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.
 

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