Bryon_Soulweaver
First Post
Set cleric guy? I forgot his name, but I'm pretty sure you gave him the boot.Clueless said:Yeah, but I wasn't able to charge any of them rent. And I never *did* get rid of one of em.
Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour (Updated 29 Jan 2014)
- Thread starter Shemeska
- Start date
Clueless
Webmonkey
I think he was *born* snickering behind the screens.
And the sad part is the only reason I ended up with the scry ball was b/c I really wanted the vials of pain but the kobold insisted on having those so I picked up item #2 cause if Tristol was ever out of things we needed someone who could scry... *facepalm*
And the sad part is the only reason I ended up with the scry ball was b/c I really wanted the vials of pain but the kobold insisted on having those so I picked up item #2 cause if Tristol was ever out of things we needed someone who could scry... *facepalm*
Shemeska
Adventurer
Clueless’s head was swimming with dozens of thoughts and dozens of worries as he stood up from his chair. Glancing first at the paper in front of him, and then the pen in his hand, he finally looked over towards the box that they had all taken from the Tower Sorcerous, the box that contained a list of true names.
But Karsus… Clueless looked down at the book he’d been reading, and his mind was flooded with what he knew of the history of that mage from what Tristol had mentioned to him before. The implications of the single quotation were disturbing.
“Son of a b*tch!” He cursed, bewildered more than angered.
Before the Ebon usurped the throne of Khin-Oin and reshaped the Yugoloth hierarchy in a short, bloody period; before he’d dragged a layer of Elysium across the Great Wheel; before any of that, he’d handed Karsus the Mad the tools to snuff out the life of Toril’s goddess of magic.
Karsus, from what Tristol had said, had acted out of massive hubris yes, but he’d also intended to use the power he would have gained from Mystryl to save the Netherese from the ravages of their conflict against the Phaerrim lurking below the increasingly expanding Anaurach desert.
But something had gone horribly wrong.
The spell worked. Yes, the spell worked as Karsus had intended, ripping away the godhood of Mystryl and swelling his form with the sudden influx of divine power. But too late did he realize that he could not control it, that for the split second that he was a deity, magic itself across the face of Toril was failing and dying in the absence of its divine caretaker. And ultimately, in that split second, Mystryl sacrificed herself to protect the future use of magic on Toril.
The weave momentarily failed when Mystryl and Karsus died, saving itself from permanent obliteration only when a new goddess of magic, Mystra, rose to take its stewardship. But in the interim of course, hundreds of thousands had died across the face of that world when the tap of magic had run dry, the greatest mortal mage in the planet’s history had ascended only to plummet and die in abject misery, and a goddess had been snuffed like a candle flame.
Karsus could not have known the tragic results of his actions before he finished the casting of his Avatar spell. But the fiend who had handed him the key components of it like crumbs from a table, he had known exactly what would happen in the end.
All of these notions flew like Sympathetics through the bladesinger’s head, subverting his thoughts as he hurried from the door of the Portal Jammer and into the streets of the Clerks Ward.
It would have taken him far too long to walk across the entirety of the distance separating him from the Lower Ward in one direction, and he was in no mood at present to deal with crossing through the Hive by going the other way. Portals were always an option, but touts were scant at that time of night, and he didn’t have the time to hunt one down on the off chance that they knew of a relevant portal and its associated key.
“This should be a joy.” Clueless said, stopping in the middle of the street and looking up. “It always is…”
He spread his wings and shot upwards into Sigil’s ‘sky’, bolting across the gap between opposite sides of the city’s ring.
At first the air was cool, the wind blowing gently as he gained altitude over the rooftops of the Ward. Then, a few hundred feet later, he entered the clouds swirling overhead, their thin cloak of congealed moisture caking him with a dusting of vaguely acidic raindrops, like cheap, diluted vinegar.
Closing his eyes and wincing at the dousing of lukewarm rain and then the sudden evaporative chill brought on by his speed, he reached the center point of the ring, the region of null gravity.
“This is awkward.” He muttered, trying to avoid looking to either side and out of the plane of the city, into the formless nothing beyond.
He hung there for a moment, suspended at the balance point, drifting. But then his momentum carried him forward, and to his perspective he was suddenly caught and dragged into the sky, literally falling up before his mind reoriented itself and he caught sight of the ring below.
Face forward to the ground, wings swept back, he plummeted down towards the streets of the Lower Ward below, holding his breath as he broke the boundary of the smog that hung above it like a sickly yellow shroud. A moment later he flicked those same wings and righted himself, turning his feet to the ground and slowing his descent, ultimately landing with a brief skip onto the ash dusted cobbles a few blocks from the Great Foundry.
Clueless coughed and snorted, expelling the soot his fall from the sky had forced into his nose and lungs. Then, brushing his face with his sleeve, and checking the box clutched against his chest, held tight in his other hand, he walked off into the warren of side streets on the Hive side of the Ward.
Ten minutes later, he found himself approaching the location of the fiend’s portal.
The place was familiar, of course, disconcertingly so. Though it lay at the end of a blind alley, nestled in a cul-de-sac like a desiccated mummy within its charnel niche, the path by which Clueless had found it this second time had been very different than in the past.
The temple was the same, the immediate environs were likewise exact, but the silent, haunting walls that abutted it and the winding network of desolate streets that led to it, the capillary beds of an urban teratoma, they were wholly different. It was as if the location were mobile, a fixed thing within an ever shifting flesh of cobbles, urban blight, and the stain of the Lower Ward's air.
But regardless of the troubling nature of its migration within the borders of the Ward, it was there, looming and disturbing in its desolation. At once the crumbling sanctuary was both welcoming and anathema, and standing at the threshold, seeking its portals, the hair stood up on the back of one's neck from the undefined and lurking sense of wrongness that hung about it like a shroud. But at the same time, it provided a necessity in its portals, another seemingly fixed feature in its parasitical burrowing across the city, open for the parasites of its portals like a plague carrier to its infestation, wandering the streets without pause.
"Nothing good ever comes from this damn place..." Clueless muttered as he glanced at the husks of insects and rats gathered dead at the threshold of the sanctuary.
Much to his relief however, he didn’t have to actually enter the building, where from past experience he knew there lay at the very least a semi-permanent, if not wholly fixed, portal to the Gray Waste. That of course brought back memories, and he briefly paused and looked in, before skirting past the archway and along the eastern retaining wall.
There was not much space between the crumbling eastern wall and the surrounding buildings as Clueless clambered over piles of brick, plaster and slate shingles, squeezing between the temple and the abutting walls, which from all appearances had been built virtually right up to the edge of the much older structure. The other possibility, an unhealthy one, was that the temple had simply pushed the other buildings aside, warping the underlying structure of the city and making a place for itself amidst the mundane structures of Sigil like some burghal parasite.
Catching his hand against the ragged exterior of the temple to steady himself as he passed the first of the buttresses, it was clear that the temple as it currently stood, abandoned and collapsing, was in fact a later construction built atop of a much earlier one. The buttresses were not original, and in fact seemed to be the youngest portion of the entire structure. Stopping and looking at them, they weren’t there to support the weight of the temple’s canopy pressing against the lower structures, nor were they simply decorative, so much as they were built to prop up the crumbling walls of the previous renovations to the site.
Clueless stumbled slightly as his weight on the wall caused it to partially give way, producing a shower of failing bricks and interior fill stone. Catching himself again, and avoiding the hazard, he could see what was probably the original, underlying stone of the temple. Unremarkable gray rock, something imported into Sigil, rather than resembling any of the typical magically created stone commonly conjured for the same purpose.
Unbeknownst to him at that moment, it was also the same rock that formed the bound space of the temple’s portal to Oinos, and also the portal that he and Nisha had used to get to Elysium’s sealed layer of Belarian. Coincidence?
Clueless studied the otherwise unremarkable stone, idly wondering what the original structure had looked like, or even been, before gingerly making his way to the stretch of wall between the third and forth buttresses.
Standing there atop a sprawling pile of brick, he stared at the tracery of cracks, pealing paint and the pitted stucco of murals and decorations that had long since failed to time and the unnatural elements of the Ward. The later additions, the later construction, the layers of brick and mortar, worm-eaten wood, stucco and paint, they were all fallen and stripped from the original stone backing like rotting flesh on an abscessed wound revealing the underlying stone like the temple’s bone and fascia.
Flat gray stone gazed back at him, the same as he’d seen before. This time however, the rock was bound by the later additions, and displayed a faint tracery of scratches, maybe claw marks, maybe just errant wear patterns, framing a bound space and forming the boundary of Helekanalaith’s portal.
“Key…” Clueless muttered. “The portal key. Son of a…”
A bit of ash, he’d forgotten to take some from the fireplace in the inn before he’d left. His head had been preoccupied by other thoughts, and it was now far too late to fly back across the city again.
Pausing for a moment and thinking, he realized that he was standing in the Lower Ward. With any luck, running his finger across any flat surface perpendicular to the sky would probably collect more than enough soot to serve his purpose.
And in fact, looking down at his feet, he didn’t have to go very far. At the base of the wall was a loose pile of particulate ash, likely blown there from above and caught by the currents of wind in the abscess between the buttresses.
“Well, at least the filth is convenient filth.” He quipped with a chuckle, reaching down and dabbing a finger in the soot.
Taking a deep breath to ready himself, Clueless marked the key upon his forehead and stepped through the portal as it activated with a harsh, flickering glow. A moment later and it closed, preventing him from ever noticing that the stone itself was the source of the ash, which bubbled up from the rock like tears of blood welling in the eyes of a weeping icon of the Theotokos.
Clueless never saw that, and it might not have mattered even if he had as he hurtled across the planes. It was bitterly cold for but a moment, and then the feeling was gone and he emerged from the portal standing under a black, starless sky, volcanic heat washing over him like a wave. Directly in his line of sight, distorted by the heat across a span of iron and obsidian that crossed a well of molten fire far below, sizzling from the environment, were the gates and the looming structure of the Tower Arcane itself.
"Sh*t..."
Standing there, waiting for Skalliska’s response, the cleric was dressed in long green and gray robes, patterned across by silver thread to give the appearance of dragon scales. Atop her head was a headdress likewise patterned after the more robust, and certainly distinct skeletal structure of the skull of a true dragon, though hers was more decorative and symbolic, a wire fusion of the chromatics in general.
And indeed, the cleric was female, though the distinction between kobold genders was generally lost on other races. Their secondary sex characteristics were subtle, nothing so overt as most humanoid races, usually doing more with color patterns on their hides and minor differences in the lines of certain bones and the weight of specific muscles. Suffice to say it would have been lost on any non-kobolds, but it stuck out like a sore thumb to her.
Skalliska’s eyes narrowed to slits as she looked skeptically at the other kobold, who was, to her, something between a wretched abomination and what she herself could have become and spent much of her life trying to distance herself from.
"Kurtulmak's blessings upon you my wayward child." The cleric intoned. "Have you finally come to pay homage at this most humble shrine Skalliska?"
"How do you know my name?" Skalliska immediately responded with.
"You are a kobold, you live within Sigil on a permanent basis, or at least mostly so." She replied. "As one of my prospective flock, and a rather well to do one, I keep myself familiar with your name at the least, though I wait for you to come to me, rather than the other way around."
Skalliska raised one of the ridges over her right eye.
"That is why you have come here today yes?" The cleric asked. "To seek my advice, to seek the blessing of your god, to pay tribute to the father of our kind?"
Suddenly the cleric seemed less omniscient and threatening, and more an idealistic object of pity. She knew her name. Big deal, so did a few thousand people at least on a daily basis passing by her office. There weren't many kobolds in Sigil, certainly few as flamboyant as herself, and it probably was within the range of a middling cleric to simply find out about her with a routine divination.
This wasn't the time to punch Kurtulmak in the snout by proxy, nor was this the time to simply run the other way. No, playing along was best, because ultimately she wanted to have fun at the cleric's expense.
Skalliska broke into the widest smile she could force herself to produce.
“I’m so glad to have found you!” She said, clapping her hands together. “I’m not sure how much you know of my past, but the world I originally came from, belief was dying. I was never really exposed to Kurtulmak’s…”
She paused, thinking of how to further bullsh*t her way out of the situation.
“Wisdom.” She added quickly. “I’ve always felt something was missing in my life because of it.”
“And so you have finally come to me.” The cleric responded, gesturing for Skalliska to follow her into the shrine proper.
“Yes…” Skalliska replied, glancing warily at the interior of cleric’s small temple. “But I didn’t think that I would manage to find you so quickly.”
“Oh?” The cleric cocked her head to the side.
“Indeed.” Skalliska continued. “And so I didn’t bring with me any of what I had hoped to tithe.”
At that last word, the priestess of Kurtulmak broke into a wild grin.
“Might I return later to bring those things?” Skalliska asked, adding more than a dash of false penitence. “I wish to make my first entry into a house of the Horned Sorcerer a proper entry.”
The cleric laid a hand on Skalliska’s shoulder, and the other kobold did her best not to squirm or punch her in the gut.
“Do so if that is your wish child.” The priestess said, only barely disguising her greed. “I will wait for you, and prepare a ritual service that you may participate in alongside me.”
“Oh thank you! And please, pray for me if you would!” Skalliska said gleefully, turning away to roll her eyes as she scrambled out and back into one of the main arteries of the Spiral Cathedral.
Outside, her shoulders slumped and she did so likewise on the ground, pulling her hat down over her eyes. Kurtulmak would not allow a rival for his faithful to exist anywhere in close proximity to a shrine of his, and so it was a lost cause to expect to find a shrine or cleric of her own deity within the Cathedral. She was running out of places to find spiritual support in her quest, but she certainly had someone now to take her frustrations out upon.
“Tell hell with you.” She snarled. “Prepare a ritual service for me? I think not.”
Hissing and gritting her teeth, she unfurled a scroll from her waist and whispered the words to a spell of sending while picturing Nisha in her head. That tiefling’s own particular brand of Xaos was called for.
“Nisha, are you available right now?” Skalliska began, giving the message to the spell. “I need you for something, preferably destructive and untraceable to me.”
This was handing mischief to the Xaositect on a silver platter of course, so it had to work. When did Nisha ever have anyone –requesting- for her to do something stupid, willingly letting her do her worst? It was guaranteed to have her burning the place down with hog-tied fire mephits in funny hats, something, anything idiotic and typically atypical. Anything would work of course, anything to thumb her nose at that f*cking cleric of Kurtulmak, her and her damned deity who was the source of their mutual race’s problems since time immemorial.
This was Skalliska’s hope of course. But then Nisha’s reply to the sending came, in typical atypicality.
“Can’t talk, making out with Tristol. Go away!”
Tristol's tail looked like he'd taken a stray lightning bolt, or shared a room with a dozen lightning mephits, given how every bit of fur stuck out, bristled on end. His tail was also seemingly possessed with a life of its own at the moment as well, rapidly wagging side to side, completely betraying his emotional state as he walked with Nisha.
The aasimar was blushing heavily, looking happily overwhelmed as they approached the Portal Jammer. It had only been a single, quick kiss, but it was a turning point in their relationship. They were far past friendship now.
“Mind if we avoid the front door?” Tristol asked.
Nisha turned and glanced down at his tail.
“For your sake and mine,” She said. “Given how badly we’re already going to be teased by the others, that sounds like a good idea. Your tail is going to get us in trouble if they see us, to say nothing of mine.”
Nisha’s own tail wasn’t so much wagging as it was erratically twitching, setting the bell at its tip at a constant, soft rattle. She was just as nervously giddy as her boyfriend, and this time around her ‘boyfriend’ wasn’t the type to get tossed off of a catapult or turned into a pie. Turn people into pies, perhaps if she talked him into it, but not made into one.
“I’m rather obvious.” Tristol said. “But so are you. Just in a different way.”
Nisha giggled as the aasimar twitched his ears.
“But yeah. Going back through the kitchen sounds like the best idea.” Tristol said. “Besides, the staff should have already packed up and gone home for the evening by this hour.”
And so they snuck around to the back and made their way through the rear entrance of the inn, doing their best not to make any noise in the event that any of their companions might still be down in the common room.
“I don’t hear anyone.” Nisha said, her ear stuck up against the inside of the kitchen door leading out to the taproom.
“Three people including Toras.” Tristol said. “He’s distinctive.”
“Fuzzy eared showoff.” She retorted, turning around and sticking out her tongue.
“Hey, they come in use sometimes!” He replied with a grin.
“Useful? Hmm, well they are an off button.”
“An off button?”
Tristol then slumped forward with a look of content bliss on his face as Nisha reached up and began to rub his ears like he was some overgrown, magic using puppy.
“That’s not fair…” He said, grinning like a drunkard.
“And you haven’t told me to stop.” She replied, leaning in and giving him a kiss on the nose. “But more for you later. My idea of fun and relaxing after a date doesn’t take place in a kitchen.”
“What are your ideas for fun and relaxation after a date?” He asked.
“Hell if I know!” Nisha replied with a grin and an emphatic shrug. “I’ve never done this before!”
“You just know that it doesn’t involve a kitchen?”
“Pretty much.”
Tristol smiled. “So, any ideas for getting past them all?”
“Cutting holes in the ceiling and climbing through is out as an option I suppose.” She mused, before reaching into a small pouch at her waist. “So drink this and follow me.”
“What’s this?” He asked, looking at the bottles that the tiefling had removed from what seemed to be a small bag of holding.
“Potions of invisibility.” She replied. “You should know that oh great and powerful wizard.”
“This would imply that you brought potions of invisibility out on our date?” He said, quirking an eyebrow with open puzzlement. “Why? What would you do with a potion of invisibility on a date?”
“Oh I don’t know… lots of things! Sneaky things!” She replied. “Like let’s say that I…”
“On second thought,” Tristol said, hushing her. “Tell me all about it when we’re somewhere… well anywhere outside of a kitchen.”
“Bottoms up then.” Nisha quipped, gulping down her potion and vanishing in an instant.
Likewise Tristol did the same, and the two of them nervously opened the door to the common room. A few late night patrons, including two of them probably sleeping off their alcohol, were sitting scattered around the room, and Toras was sitting behind the bar. He normally didn’t handle that post, but apparently Clueless and the others were out and about doing other things that evening.
Toras didn’t quite notice the door to the kitchen open, it was pretty silent after all, but he did however notice the shuffle of feet and clatter of hooves on the staircase. Slow at first, very obviously trying to be quiet, but then about halfway up the first flight transitioning into a run, punctuated by a distinct set of paired giggles.
“That’s disturbingly cute…” The half-celestial commented to himself as he listening to the pair bolting up the stairs.
Up above, still invisible and catching their breath, Nisha and Tristol stood in the hallway next to his room.
“So…” Nisha said. “What do we do now?”
“Good question.” Tristol replied. “Umm…”
They were both in love, but neither of them had ever formally gone through anything even remotely resembling courtship, or dating, or anything of the like before. So there was a bit of an awkward silence, but since they were both still invisible, they couldn’t see one another’s expressions as they each pursed their lips and mulled over what to say next.
Eventually Tristol and Nisha were both about to say something, each willing to make the next move, but that was when Skalliska’s sending spell kicked in.
“Oh of all the sodding times…” Nisha exclaimed, her tail’s bell rattling like an angry serpent’s.
“Huh?” Tristol asked, a bit confused.
“Skalliska. Sending. Umm…” The tiefling said, apparently listening to the kobold’s request at the same time.
Five seconds later Nisha suddenly became visible when she grabbed Tristol and kissed him.
“There.” The tiefling said, breaking the kiss and catching her breath, blushing heavily. “I’m busy and can’t deal with Skalliska. And that was fun. How’s that for what to do next?”
Tristol smiled, returned the blush, and emphatically returned the favor.
Clueless slumped his shoulders and stared up at the Tower Arcane, the resounding thought of ‘why me?’ running through his head in competition with the notion that a sudden planeshift might be in order.
The Tower itself was massive, dominating almost the entirety of his field of vision despite the fact that the bridge spanning the distance to its gate was itself several miles long. Constructed of a bizarre shade of blue-white steel, the surface was inscribed on nearly every inch of its surface in blazing, burning runes, symbols, and incantations in the yugoloth tongue that literally throbbed with a life all their own, setting the air trembling with its own infernal heartbeat, dizzying the bladesinger’s vision.
Far from some simple monolithic construction, and striking its own unique style apart from the Wasting Tower of Khin-Oin, the Gehennan tower sprouted blades, spires and decorative spikes that would not have looked out of place in Sigil itself. The Tower was a monument to the Yugoloth domination of Gehenna, the focus of their manipulation of the Blood War, and the second infernal spike their kind had driven into the flesh of the planes of conflict, marking what was theirs.
Gazing up, Clueless felt suddenly and overwhelmingly watched, stripped, and deconstructed by a hundred thousand, a million different eyes gazing down in contempt, curiosity, hunger, hatred, apathy, mockery… and then something dwarfed them all, turned its attention on him, and gazed down.
“Good. You are at least punctual.”
The air seemed to tremble from the voice’s force, rumbling with a presence that seemed to resonate through the entirety of the Tower and down through the bedrock it was anchored to, sucking from the arteries of Gehenna itself.
“Produce the name. Place it upon the ground.”
Clueless hesitated for a single moment.
“Look up and realize where you are mortal. Now take the name and place it upon the ground in front of you. It is a simple request and a simple action.”
Clueless winced at the sick feeling in his gut the proximity to the Tower seemed to induce, along with what may or may not have been simply a psychosomatic twitch within his ankle against its still embedded gemstone.
He was out of his element and he was out of his league. Helekanalaith wasn’t exactly honorable, not in the slightest, he was a yugoloth after all, but he was pragmatic and Clueless recognized that. Give the fiend what he wanted, he reasoned, and he won’t have cause to do waste effort on doing you harm, especially when you still offer him value in a passive way at the very least.
Even as he thought those things, he was already opening the box, though he had only included the paper containing Larsdana’s name, not any of the others.
“Enjoy.” Clueless said, putting the slim piece of paper down upon the edge of the bridge where the obsidian merged with the glowing basalt of Chamada itself.
In an instant the paper turned to ash, immolated by the sudden exposure to the full blistering force of the plane as it left the relative protection afforded by close proximity to Clueless and his own wards against such. It was gone, consumed in a flash, but the ink that penned her name, Larsdana Ap Neut, the designer of the Tower Arcane, its first and former Keeper, it lingered behind for a single suspended moment, glittering alone and detached, poignant before it too was devoured. The presence, the diffuse manifestation of the Keeper, extended through the Tower, the bedrock, and the heat washing from burning rune and molten river, it seemed to smile in triumph.
“You’re welcome.” Clueless said, averting his eyes from the ambient glow of magic radiating from the tower as much or more than the heat pouring from the 2nd Furnace of Perdition under his feet.
“My thanks for your compliance.” The Keeper’s voice rumbled, jarring the bladesinger’s bones.
There was a hum in the air next to Clueless, and he turned to look as a swirling portal opened in mid air, opaque and giving no details as to where it might lead.
“You have done as I wished and you may now depart. I have no further immediate use for you.”
Clueless glanced at the gate, wary to where it might lead now that the yugoloth lord had what he wanted. The fiend sensed his apprehension.
“You would not survive in your present location for more than a few brief minutes at most.” Helekanalaith said, causing the portal to flicker, punctuating his statement. “I may yet gain something from you mortal. It would do me no good to allow you to perish on my doorstep. The portal will remain open for another two minutes. Accept it or not at your discretion.”
Clueless glanced around, noticing the teleportation flashes of first dozens, then hundreds of fiends: slavering mezzoloths crouching atop volcanic outcroppings, nycaloths folding their wings and looking at him with contempt, and of course some of the robed sorcerers of the Tower itself, hovering high above and watching the lone mortal living at the sufferance of their master.
Clueless took the point and stepped through the portal, accepting his metaphorical gift horse without question.
But Karsus… Clueless looked down at the book he’d been reading, and his mind was flooded with what he knew of the history of that mage from what Tristol had mentioned to him before. The implications of the single quotation were disturbing.
“Son of a b*tch!” He cursed, bewildered more than angered.
Before the Ebon usurped the throne of Khin-Oin and reshaped the Yugoloth hierarchy in a short, bloody period; before he’d dragged a layer of Elysium across the Great Wheel; before any of that, he’d handed Karsus the Mad the tools to snuff out the life of Toril’s goddess of magic.
Karsus, from what Tristol had said, had acted out of massive hubris yes, but he’d also intended to use the power he would have gained from Mystryl to save the Netherese from the ravages of their conflict against the Phaerrim lurking below the increasingly expanding Anaurach desert.
But something had gone horribly wrong.
The spell worked. Yes, the spell worked as Karsus had intended, ripping away the godhood of Mystryl and swelling his form with the sudden influx of divine power. But too late did he realize that he could not control it, that for the split second that he was a deity, magic itself across the face of Toril was failing and dying in the absence of its divine caretaker. And ultimately, in that split second, Mystryl sacrificed herself to protect the future use of magic on Toril.
The weave momentarily failed when Mystryl and Karsus died, saving itself from permanent obliteration only when a new goddess of magic, Mystra, rose to take its stewardship. But in the interim of course, hundreds of thousands had died across the face of that world when the tap of magic had run dry, the greatest mortal mage in the planet’s history had ascended only to plummet and die in abject misery, and a goddess had been snuffed like a candle flame.
Karsus could not have known the tragic results of his actions before he finished the casting of his Avatar spell. But the fiend who had handed him the key components of it like crumbs from a table, he had known exactly what would happen in the end.
All of these notions flew like Sympathetics through the bladesinger’s head, subverting his thoughts as he hurried from the door of the Portal Jammer and into the streets of the Clerks Ward.
It would have taken him far too long to walk across the entirety of the distance separating him from the Lower Ward in one direction, and he was in no mood at present to deal with crossing through the Hive by going the other way. Portals were always an option, but touts were scant at that time of night, and he didn’t have the time to hunt one down on the off chance that they knew of a relevant portal and its associated key.
“This should be a joy.” Clueless said, stopping in the middle of the street and looking up. “It always is…”
He spread his wings and shot upwards into Sigil’s ‘sky’, bolting across the gap between opposite sides of the city’s ring.
At first the air was cool, the wind blowing gently as he gained altitude over the rooftops of the Ward. Then, a few hundred feet later, he entered the clouds swirling overhead, their thin cloak of congealed moisture caking him with a dusting of vaguely acidic raindrops, like cheap, diluted vinegar.
Closing his eyes and wincing at the dousing of lukewarm rain and then the sudden evaporative chill brought on by his speed, he reached the center point of the ring, the region of null gravity.
“This is awkward.” He muttered, trying to avoid looking to either side and out of the plane of the city, into the formless nothing beyond.
He hung there for a moment, suspended at the balance point, drifting. But then his momentum carried him forward, and to his perspective he was suddenly caught and dragged into the sky, literally falling up before his mind reoriented itself and he caught sight of the ring below.
Face forward to the ground, wings swept back, he plummeted down towards the streets of the Lower Ward below, holding his breath as he broke the boundary of the smog that hung above it like a sickly yellow shroud. A moment later he flicked those same wings and righted himself, turning his feet to the ground and slowing his descent, ultimately landing with a brief skip onto the ash dusted cobbles a few blocks from the Great Foundry.
Clueless coughed and snorted, expelling the soot his fall from the sky had forced into his nose and lungs. Then, brushing his face with his sleeve, and checking the box clutched against his chest, held tight in his other hand, he walked off into the warren of side streets on the Hive side of the Ward.
Ten minutes later, he found himself approaching the location of the fiend’s portal.
The place was familiar, of course, disconcertingly so. Though it lay at the end of a blind alley, nestled in a cul-de-sac like a desiccated mummy within its charnel niche, the path by which Clueless had found it this second time had been very different than in the past.
The temple was the same, the immediate environs were likewise exact, but the silent, haunting walls that abutted it and the winding network of desolate streets that led to it, the capillary beds of an urban teratoma, they were wholly different. It was as if the location were mobile, a fixed thing within an ever shifting flesh of cobbles, urban blight, and the stain of the Lower Ward's air.
But regardless of the troubling nature of its migration within the borders of the Ward, it was there, looming and disturbing in its desolation. At once the crumbling sanctuary was both welcoming and anathema, and standing at the threshold, seeking its portals, the hair stood up on the back of one's neck from the undefined and lurking sense of wrongness that hung about it like a shroud. But at the same time, it provided a necessity in its portals, another seemingly fixed feature in its parasitical burrowing across the city, open for the parasites of its portals like a plague carrier to its infestation, wandering the streets without pause.
"Nothing good ever comes from this damn place..." Clueless muttered as he glanced at the husks of insects and rats gathered dead at the threshold of the sanctuary.
Much to his relief however, he didn’t have to actually enter the building, where from past experience he knew there lay at the very least a semi-permanent, if not wholly fixed, portal to the Gray Waste. That of course brought back memories, and he briefly paused and looked in, before skirting past the archway and along the eastern retaining wall.
There was not much space between the crumbling eastern wall and the surrounding buildings as Clueless clambered over piles of brick, plaster and slate shingles, squeezing between the temple and the abutting walls, which from all appearances had been built virtually right up to the edge of the much older structure. The other possibility, an unhealthy one, was that the temple had simply pushed the other buildings aside, warping the underlying structure of the city and making a place for itself amidst the mundane structures of Sigil like some burghal parasite.
Catching his hand against the ragged exterior of the temple to steady himself as he passed the first of the buttresses, it was clear that the temple as it currently stood, abandoned and collapsing, was in fact a later construction built atop of a much earlier one. The buttresses were not original, and in fact seemed to be the youngest portion of the entire structure. Stopping and looking at them, they weren’t there to support the weight of the temple’s canopy pressing against the lower structures, nor were they simply decorative, so much as they were built to prop up the crumbling walls of the previous renovations to the site.
Clueless stumbled slightly as his weight on the wall caused it to partially give way, producing a shower of failing bricks and interior fill stone. Catching himself again, and avoiding the hazard, he could see what was probably the original, underlying stone of the temple. Unremarkable gray rock, something imported into Sigil, rather than resembling any of the typical magically created stone commonly conjured for the same purpose.
Unbeknownst to him at that moment, it was also the same rock that formed the bound space of the temple’s portal to Oinos, and also the portal that he and Nisha had used to get to Elysium’s sealed layer of Belarian. Coincidence?
Clueless studied the otherwise unremarkable stone, idly wondering what the original structure had looked like, or even been, before gingerly making his way to the stretch of wall between the third and forth buttresses.
Standing there atop a sprawling pile of brick, he stared at the tracery of cracks, pealing paint and the pitted stucco of murals and decorations that had long since failed to time and the unnatural elements of the Ward. The later additions, the later construction, the layers of brick and mortar, worm-eaten wood, stucco and paint, they were all fallen and stripped from the original stone backing like rotting flesh on an abscessed wound revealing the underlying stone like the temple’s bone and fascia.
Flat gray stone gazed back at him, the same as he’d seen before. This time however, the rock was bound by the later additions, and displayed a faint tracery of scratches, maybe claw marks, maybe just errant wear patterns, framing a bound space and forming the boundary of Helekanalaith’s portal.
“Key…” Clueless muttered. “The portal key. Son of a…”
A bit of ash, he’d forgotten to take some from the fireplace in the inn before he’d left. His head had been preoccupied by other thoughts, and it was now far too late to fly back across the city again.
Pausing for a moment and thinking, he realized that he was standing in the Lower Ward. With any luck, running his finger across any flat surface perpendicular to the sky would probably collect more than enough soot to serve his purpose.
And in fact, looking down at his feet, he didn’t have to go very far. At the base of the wall was a loose pile of particulate ash, likely blown there from above and caught by the currents of wind in the abscess between the buttresses.
“Well, at least the filth is convenient filth.” He quipped with a chuckle, reaching down and dabbing a finger in the soot.
Taking a deep breath to ready himself, Clueless marked the key upon his forehead and stepped through the portal as it activated with a harsh, flickering glow. A moment later and it closed, preventing him from ever noticing that the stone itself was the source of the ash, which bubbled up from the rock like tears of blood welling in the eyes of a weeping icon of the Theotokos.
Clueless never saw that, and it might not have mattered even if he had as he hurtled across the planes. It was bitterly cold for but a moment, and then the feeling was gone and he emerged from the portal standing under a black, starless sky, volcanic heat washing over him like a wave. Directly in his line of sight, distorted by the heat across a span of iron and obsidian that crossed a well of molten fire far below, sizzling from the environment, were the gates and the looming structure of the Tower Arcane itself.
"Sh*t..."
***
Standing there, waiting for Skalliska’s response, the cleric was dressed in long green and gray robes, patterned across by silver thread to give the appearance of dragon scales. Atop her head was a headdress likewise patterned after the more robust, and certainly distinct skeletal structure of the skull of a true dragon, though hers was more decorative and symbolic, a wire fusion of the chromatics in general.
And indeed, the cleric was female, though the distinction between kobold genders was generally lost on other races. Their secondary sex characteristics were subtle, nothing so overt as most humanoid races, usually doing more with color patterns on their hides and minor differences in the lines of certain bones and the weight of specific muscles. Suffice to say it would have been lost on any non-kobolds, but it stuck out like a sore thumb to her.
Skalliska’s eyes narrowed to slits as she looked skeptically at the other kobold, who was, to her, something between a wretched abomination and what she herself could have become and spent much of her life trying to distance herself from.
"Kurtulmak's blessings upon you my wayward child." The cleric intoned. "Have you finally come to pay homage at this most humble shrine Skalliska?"
"How do you know my name?" Skalliska immediately responded with.
"You are a kobold, you live within Sigil on a permanent basis, or at least mostly so." She replied. "As one of my prospective flock, and a rather well to do one, I keep myself familiar with your name at the least, though I wait for you to come to me, rather than the other way around."
Skalliska raised one of the ridges over her right eye.
"That is why you have come here today yes?" The cleric asked. "To seek my advice, to seek the blessing of your god, to pay tribute to the father of our kind?"
Suddenly the cleric seemed less omniscient and threatening, and more an idealistic object of pity. She knew her name. Big deal, so did a few thousand people at least on a daily basis passing by her office. There weren't many kobolds in Sigil, certainly few as flamboyant as herself, and it probably was within the range of a middling cleric to simply find out about her with a routine divination.
This wasn't the time to punch Kurtulmak in the snout by proxy, nor was this the time to simply run the other way. No, playing along was best, because ultimately she wanted to have fun at the cleric's expense.
Skalliska broke into the widest smile she could force herself to produce.
“I’m so glad to have found you!” She said, clapping her hands together. “I’m not sure how much you know of my past, but the world I originally came from, belief was dying. I was never really exposed to Kurtulmak’s…”
She paused, thinking of how to further bullsh*t her way out of the situation.
“Wisdom.” She added quickly. “I’ve always felt something was missing in my life because of it.”
“And so you have finally come to me.” The cleric responded, gesturing for Skalliska to follow her into the shrine proper.
“Yes…” Skalliska replied, glancing warily at the interior of cleric’s small temple. “But I didn’t think that I would manage to find you so quickly.”
“Oh?” The cleric cocked her head to the side.
“Indeed.” Skalliska continued. “And so I didn’t bring with me any of what I had hoped to tithe.”
At that last word, the priestess of Kurtulmak broke into a wild grin.
“Might I return later to bring those things?” Skalliska asked, adding more than a dash of false penitence. “I wish to make my first entry into a house of the Horned Sorcerer a proper entry.”
The cleric laid a hand on Skalliska’s shoulder, and the other kobold did her best not to squirm or punch her in the gut.
“Do so if that is your wish child.” The priestess said, only barely disguising her greed. “I will wait for you, and prepare a ritual service that you may participate in alongside me.”
“Oh thank you! And please, pray for me if you would!” Skalliska said gleefully, turning away to roll her eyes as she scrambled out and back into one of the main arteries of the Spiral Cathedral.
Outside, her shoulders slumped and she did so likewise on the ground, pulling her hat down over her eyes. Kurtulmak would not allow a rival for his faithful to exist anywhere in close proximity to a shrine of his, and so it was a lost cause to expect to find a shrine or cleric of her own deity within the Cathedral. She was running out of places to find spiritual support in her quest, but she certainly had someone now to take her frustrations out upon.
“Tell hell with you.” She snarled. “Prepare a ritual service for me? I think not.”
Hissing and gritting her teeth, she unfurled a scroll from her waist and whispered the words to a spell of sending while picturing Nisha in her head. That tiefling’s own particular brand of Xaos was called for.
“Nisha, are you available right now?” Skalliska began, giving the message to the spell. “I need you for something, preferably destructive and untraceable to me.”
This was handing mischief to the Xaositect on a silver platter of course, so it had to work. When did Nisha ever have anyone –requesting- for her to do something stupid, willingly letting her do her worst? It was guaranteed to have her burning the place down with hog-tied fire mephits in funny hats, something, anything idiotic and typically atypical. Anything would work of course, anything to thumb her nose at that f*cking cleric of Kurtulmak, her and her damned deity who was the source of their mutual race’s problems since time immemorial.
This was Skalliska’s hope of course. But then Nisha’s reply to the sending came, in typical atypicality.
“Can’t talk, making out with Tristol. Go away!”
***
Tristol's tail looked like he'd taken a stray lightning bolt, or shared a room with a dozen lightning mephits, given how every bit of fur stuck out, bristled on end. His tail was also seemingly possessed with a life of its own at the moment as well, rapidly wagging side to side, completely betraying his emotional state as he walked with Nisha.
The aasimar was blushing heavily, looking happily overwhelmed as they approached the Portal Jammer. It had only been a single, quick kiss, but it was a turning point in their relationship. They were far past friendship now.
“Mind if we avoid the front door?” Tristol asked.
Nisha turned and glanced down at his tail.
“For your sake and mine,” She said. “Given how badly we’re already going to be teased by the others, that sounds like a good idea. Your tail is going to get us in trouble if they see us, to say nothing of mine.”
Nisha’s own tail wasn’t so much wagging as it was erratically twitching, setting the bell at its tip at a constant, soft rattle. She was just as nervously giddy as her boyfriend, and this time around her ‘boyfriend’ wasn’t the type to get tossed off of a catapult or turned into a pie. Turn people into pies, perhaps if she talked him into it, but not made into one.
“I’m rather obvious.” Tristol said. “But so are you. Just in a different way.”
Nisha giggled as the aasimar twitched his ears.
“But yeah. Going back through the kitchen sounds like the best idea.” Tristol said. “Besides, the staff should have already packed up and gone home for the evening by this hour.”
And so they snuck around to the back and made their way through the rear entrance of the inn, doing their best not to make any noise in the event that any of their companions might still be down in the common room.
“I don’t hear anyone.” Nisha said, her ear stuck up against the inside of the kitchen door leading out to the taproom.
“Three people including Toras.” Tristol said. “He’s distinctive.”
“Fuzzy eared showoff.” She retorted, turning around and sticking out her tongue.
“Hey, they come in use sometimes!” He replied with a grin.
“Useful? Hmm, well they are an off button.”
“An off button?”
Tristol then slumped forward with a look of content bliss on his face as Nisha reached up and began to rub his ears like he was some overgrown, magic using puppy.
“That’s not fair…” He said, grinning like a drunkard.
“And you haven’t told me to stop.” She replied, leaning in and giving him a kiss on the nose. “But more for you later. My idea of fun and relaxing after a date doesn’t take place in a kitchen.”
“What are your ideas for fun and relaxation after a date?” He asked.
“Hell if I know!” Nisha replied with a grin and an emphatic shrug. “I’ve never done this before!”
“You just know that it doesn’t involve a kitchen?”
“Pretty much.”
Tristol smiled. “So, any ideas for getting past them all?”
“Cutting holes in the ceiling and climbing through is out as an option I suppose.” She mused, before reaching into a small pouch at her waist. “So drink this and follow me.”
“What’s this?” He asked, looking at the bottles that the tiefling had removed from what seemed to be a small bag of holding.
“Potions of invisibility.” She replied. “You should know that oh great and powerful wizard.”
“This would imply that you brought potions of invisibility out on our date?” He said, quirking an eyebrow with open puzzlement. “Why? What would you do with a potion of invisibility on a date?”
“Oh I don’t know… lots of things! Sneaky things!” She replied. “Like let’s say that I…”
“On second thought,” Tristol said, hushing her. “Tell me all about it when we’re somewhere… well anywhere outside of a kitchen.”
“Bottoms up then.” Nisha quipped, gulping down her potion and vanishing in an instant.
Likewise Tristol did the same, and the two of them nervously opened the door to the common room. A few late night patrons, including two of them probably sleeping off their alcohol, were sitting scattered around the room, and Toras was sitting behind the bar. He normally didn’t handle that post, but apparently Clueless and the others were out and about doing other things that evening.
Toras didn’t quite notice the door to the kitchen open, it was pretty silent after all, but he did however notice the shuffle of feet and clatter of hooves on the staircase. Slow at first, very obviously trying to be quiet, but then about halfway up the first flight transitioning into a run, punctuated by a distinct set of paired giggles.
“That’s disturbingly cute…” The half-celestial commented to himself as he listening to the pair bolting up the stairs.
Up above, still invisible and catching their breath, Nisha and Tristol stood in the hallway next to his room.
“So…” Nisha said. “What do we do now?”
“Good question.” Tristol replied. “Umm…”
They were both in love, but neither of them had ever formally gone through anything even remotely resembling courtship, or dating, or anything of the like before. So there was a bit of an awkward silence, but since they were both still invisible, they couldn’t see one another’s expressions as they each pursed their lips and mulled over what to say next.
Eventually Tristol and Nisha were both about to say something, each willing to make the next move, but that was when Skalliska’s sending spell kicked in.
“Oh of all the sodding times…” Nisha exclaimed, her tail’s bell rattling like an angry serpent’s.
“Huh?” Tristol asked, a bit confused.
“Skalliska. Sending. Umm…” The tiefling said, apparently listening to the kobold’s request at the same time.
Five seconds later Nisha suddenly became visible when she grabbed Tristol and kissed him.
“There.” The tiefling said, breaking the kiss and catching her breath, blushing heavily. “I’m busy and can’t deal with Skalliska. And that was fun. How’s that for what to do next?”
Tristol smiled, returned the blush, and emphatically returned the favor.
***
Clueless slumped his shoulders and stared up at the Tower Arcane, the resounding thought of ‘why me?’ running through his head in competition with the notion that a sudden planeshift might be in order.
The Tower itself was massive, dominating almost the entirety of his field of vision despite the fact that the bridge spanning the distance to its gate was itself several miles long. Constructed of a bizarre shade of blue-white steel, the surface was inscribed on nearly every inch of its surface in blazing, burning runes, symbols, and incantations in the yugoloth tongue that literally throbbed with a life all their own, setting the air trembling with its own infernal heartbeat, dizzying the bladesinger’s vision.
Far from some simple monolithic construction, and striking its own unique style apart from the Wasting Tower of Khin-Oin, the Gehennan tower sprouted blades, spires and decorative spikes that would not have looked out of place in Sigil itself. The Tower was a monument to the Yugoloth domination of Gehenna, the focus of their manipulation of the Blood War, and the second infernal spike their kind had driven into the flesh of the planes of conflict, marking what was theirs.
Gazing up, Clueless felt suddenly and overwhelmingly watched, stripped, and deconstructed by a hundred thousand, a million different eyes gazing down in contempt, curiosity, hunger, hatred, apathy, mockery… and then something dwarfed them all, turned its attention on him, and gazed down.
“Good. You are at least punctual.”
The air seemed to tremble from the voice’s force, rumbling with a presence that seemed to resonate through the entirety of the Tower and down through the bedrock it was anchored to, sucking from the arteries of Gehenna itself.
“Produce the name. Place it upon the ground.”
Clueless hesitated for a single moment.
“Look up and realize where you are mortal. Now take the name and place it upon the ground in front of you. It is a simple request and a simple action.”
Clueless winced at the sick feeling in his gut the proximity to the Tower seemed to induce, along with what may or may not have been simply a psychosomatic twitch within his ankle against its still embedded gemstone.
He was out of his element and he was out of his league. Helekanalaith wasn’t exactly honorable, not in the slightest, he was a yugoloth after all, but he was pragmatic and Clueless recognized that. Give the fiend what he wanted, he reasoned, and he won’t have cause to do waste effort on doing you harm, especially when you still offer him value in a passive way at the very least.
Even as he thought those things, he was already opening the box, though he had only included the paper containing Larsdana’s name, not any of the others.
“Enjoy.” Clueless said, putting the slim piece of paper down upon the edge of the bridge where the obsidian merged with the glowing basalt of Chamada itself.
In an instant the paper turned to ash, immolated by the sudden exposure to the full blistering force of the plane as it left the relative protection afforded by close proximity to Clueless and his own wards against such. It was gone, consumed in a flash, but the ink that penned her name, Larsdana Ap Neut, the designer of the Tower Arcane, its first and former Keeper, it lingered behind for a single suspended moment, glittering alone and detached, poignant before it too was devoured. The presence, the diffuse manifestation of the Keeper, extended through the Tower, the bedrock, and the heat washing from burning rune and molten river, it seemed to smile in triumph.
“You’re welcome.” Clueless said, averting his eyes from the ambient glow of magic radiating from the tower as much or more than the heat pouring from the 2nd Furnace of Perdition under his feet.
“My thanks for your compliance.” The Keeper’s voice rumbled, jarring the bladesinger’s bones.
There was a hum in the air next to Clueless, and he turned to look as a swirling portal opened in mid air, opaque and giving no details as to where it might lead.
“You have done as I wished and you may now depart. I have no further immediate use for you.”
Clueless glanced at the gate, wary to where it might lead now that the yugoloth lord had what he wanted. The fiend sensed his apprehension.
“You would not survive in your present location for more than a few brief minutes at most.” Helekanalaith said, causing the portal to flicker, punctuating his statement. “I may yet gain something from you mortal. It would do me no good to allow you to perish on my doorstep. The portal will remain open for another two minutes. Accept it or not at your discretion.”
Clueless glanced around, noticing the teleportation flashes of first dozens, then hundreds of fiends: slavering mezzoloths crouching atop volcanic outcroppings, nycaloths folding their wings and looking at him with contempt, and of course some of the robed sorcerers of the Tower itself, hovering high above and watching the lone mortal living at the sufferance of their master.
Clueless took the point and stepped through the portal, accepting his metaphorical gift horse without question.
***
Shemeska
Adventurer
Just to let everyone know, my updates may or may not be on schedule for the next few weeks. I just started my new job (first post grad school, first 'real' job) and the transition to a 9-5 job is hitting hard as I get adjusted to it. I've been coming home and feeling too tired to actually sit down and write anything, and third of this update was written during my lunch breaks during the week.
I just barely finished this update two days late, and I never had time this week to actually sit down and plan for my own normal campaign today. Apologies to my players.
I'll do my best to keep on regular updates, but be aware that I have distinctly less free time right now (school or briefly unemployed versus nice full time job).
I just barely finished this update two days late, and I never had time this week to actually sit down and plan for my own normal campaign today. Apologies to my players.
I'll do my best to keep on regular updates, but be aware that I have distinctly less free time right now (school or briefly unemployed versus nice full time job).
Serenity
First Post
De-Lurking
Just thought I would de-lurk and let you know how much I enjoy this story hour. Of course, catching up to the present post could have cost me my job (supervisor's are amazingly intolerent about reading message boards when you are supposed to be working) but it is well worth it.
Shemmy,
I hope the job works out, you will get used to it. I now have a full time job, a little one (19 months) and another on the way. You just find a way to get it all in. Hang in there and you will find a routine that works for you... and us!! More updates!!!
Just thought I would de-lurk and let you know how much I enjoy this story hour. Of course, catching up to the present post could have cost me my job (supervisor's are amazingly intolerent about reading message boards when you are supposed to be working) but it is well worth it.
Shemmy,
I hope the job works out, you will get used to it. I now have a full time job, a little one (19 months) and another on the way. You just find a way to get it all in. Hang in there and you will find a routine that works for you... and us!! More updates!!!
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