Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour (Updated 29 Jan 2014)

Reality Key said:

Were they made as mockery of the Yugoloths or where the Yugoloths made in mockery of them?

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It's always struck me as a natural effect of the Rule of Threes. Every action's equal and opposite reaction would logically come out to be a "mockery" of its counterpart.

Re: the slide of Belarian.... Eco - you've pretty much got it right. And as for the Duke... heh - you'll see

"Do you mind if we come in and keep you company?" Nisha asked, opening the door to Tristol’s study a crack and peering in, followed moments later by the grinning face of a faerie dragon in tow.

Tristol glanced up from the book that he'd been reading. "I suppose so, just so long as no books or potions start dancing on their own, and I don't lose anything dangerous."

"Will he consider a wand of web dangerous?" Amberblue whispered to the tiefling.

"Shhhh... don't tell." She said, hushing him with a fingertip to his nose. “Besides, no more than the sovereign glue, and I get enough of that regularly.”

“Do I need to speak to A’kin about that?” Tristol warily asked. “…And is he even aware that you’ve been taking that stuff from his shop?”

Nisha paused and put a finger to her lips, apparently having to think for a moment of that particular question. “I assume so…”

“That doesn’t exactly comfort me on the issue.” He replied. “He’s still a fiend, and what do you need sovereign glue for anyway?”

“Oh he’s a sweetheart.” The tiefling said with cheerful dismissal, ignoring the second half of the question.

Tristol raised an eyebrow and chuckled in resignation. No use arguing against Xaositect logic.

“But you were reading.” Nisha chirped. “Don’t mind us, go back to your book as it’s sooooo much more important than little ‘ol me and Amberblue.”

Tristol raised an eyebrow once again but took her advice, though he was certain that he’d regret it sooner or later. Nisha never acted innocent without some ulterior motive, even if that motive was random rather than malign.

The books spread out on the wizard's desk were the papers and notes that they had taken from the astral study and carcerian palace of the Ultroloth, Yethmiil Kal'suth. The former were written largely in the affected style of a Rakshasa, with tiny glimmers of the underlying cold, clinical and merciless attitude of the yugoloth's true demeanor that was fully evident in the sickening notes that they'd found in Cathrys. The biological experiments in Carceri were seemingly a pastime of the fiend, something that he'd been involved with long before what he referred to as his "hideous loss of status with the rise of a new Oinoloth".

While sick and disturbing, those warped experiments had nothing to do with what he'd been doing in Rakshasa guise on the Astral, nor anything to do with his 'sister', who like him, was more likely than not, something other than an exiled scion of a fallen noble house of Acheron. What exactly was going on, what he and she were doing on the Astral, and why it was important enough to try on multiple occasions to kill those who disrupted their activities, that was a question still lurking in Tristol's mind, and it was for that reason that he was once again pouring through the notes and records currently piled atop his desk.

The research might have gone easier of course, but he kept hearing giggles and whispers and odd noises from behind him. But of course inevitably whenever he’d look back, Nisha and Amberblue weren’t doing anything at all, except for the one time that she was grinning and the faeriedragon was holding a tin halo over her head.

Innocent? Hardly. But she was cute enough to overlook it.

Well, that was Tristol’s intent anyways, to overlook whatever mischief that they were up to, but that was before he heard a startled, ‘Wait, no no not the tanglefoot bag!’ right before something hit the floor, snarled around a chair and knocked into the table, sending piles of books onto the floor, very nearly including Tristol alongside them.

With a bewildered sigh, Tristol stooped down to pick up the books from where they had fallen. He’d have to move the tangle of roots later.

"Soooooorry..." Amberblue chirped from where he'd darted behind a crystal ball on one of the shelves, distorted like a funhouse mirror in the process.

"No, it's alright." Tristol said. He really had trouble actually getting angry at the tiny drake, and even more so with Nisha, even as borderline nuts as she was sometimes.

Nisha meanwhile wasn't saying a word, but there was a conspicuous globe of darkness standing right where she'd been. Like a cat sticking its head in a box and being convinced that because it couldn't see you, you couldn't see it, the tiefer was naught to be seen except for the tip of her tail that was breaking the boundary of shadow.

It wasn't a big deal really, nothing had been broken, nothing had caught on fire, and nobody had been hurt. He'd just have to spend a few minutes organizing papers before getting started on his reading again... but what was this?

Tristol held up the book he'd been reading, staring at a slight imperfection on the edge of one of the pages that he'd read about an hour before. It wasn't a flaw in the grain of the paper, it was two pages that had for whatever reason become stuck together and he'd never noticed.

"What's that?" Amberblue asked, the tip of his snout and his eyes blown up ten times and out of proportion by the scrying globe.

"There's an extra page in here." Tristol said, tossing the book down and carefully peeling them apart.

"A new page? What's it say?"

"I don't know yet, lemme read it. This is all new to me though."

"Aha!" Came a distinctive voice from inside the globe of darkness. "My plan went off flawlessly!"

Tristol paused and silently giggled, smiling at the tiefling.

But the page was written in the matter-of-fact tone and distinctively angled handwriting of the Ultroloth when he'd assumed the form of a Rakshasa. It was a chronicle of some of the last things that had occurred on the godisle of Maanzicorian.

Given that I was unable to finish my reports from before, and the original document appears to have been destroyed, this will serve as an addendum to current activities. Postdated by several weeks, surface stripping of the godisle is complete, and the outermost rock and crystalline layers of the corpse have been sent for processing and evaluation at the Citadel of Broken Faith. Already though, it seems unsuitable for use in the Crown, but there are others that have already been deemed suited for that purpose, and alternate use remains, though she has not deigned to inform me of just what purposes she intends to use them for beyond the immediately obvious.

Now in the present time it seems that the prisoner has been transferred away from the Citadel and into Pitiless. He may have outlived his use to my mistress; she's gutted his brain for all it’s worth it seems, though she hasn't shared but a fraction of that with me. I don't think she understood all of what he told her, which is odd. She’s brilliant, even as unstable as she might be, but I cannot grasp that a mortal would be capable of creating some of the things that she has forced him to collaborate upon with her. I will have to visit Vast after this current matter of revenge is completed.

The small notation of D-37r was scribed in the margin of the page. Tristol paused on the number, the odd mentions of a prisoner, the vague mentions of godisle mining, and creations. Without the context the 'loth had known, the words were devoid of meaning in many ways, but whoever he was, this Vast, he might be able to tell them something more.

“So what the hell is Pitiless?” He mused.

“A really bad character adjective? Personality traits for devoted Mercykillers?” Nisha suggested.

Tristol chucked as he glanced up at his bookshelves. “Something about it sounds familiar…Nisha, could you get me the 5th book from the right on the shelf behind you? Yeah, the one with the red binding.”

It was obviously a location, but he’d never really heard of the place except some vague recollection of it being in the Astral. He’d heard the name Vast before too, but again it was only a vague memory. About an hour later, having combed through several books, he had an answer on both topics.

From Zelif Ashikar’s ‘Travels Upon the Astral’:

The Doomguard has operated Pitiless as a prison and storehouse for approximately nine centuries. Its role as a prison is largely incidental, as the entire purpose behind the sprawling structure is to facilitate the observation of physical objects and persons in the supposedly timeless, zero-entropy environment that the silver void presents. If objects decay even in the Astral, it would represent a major confirmation of the faction’s ideology and their prophecy towards the ultimate fate of the multiverse.
Pitiless exists at the center of an apparently naturally occurring bubble of empty space in the Astral, devoid of color pools, godisles, and the normal Astral winds. It is isolated from external influences, locked and frozen outside of time, the perfect location for the observation of the decay of all things. At least this is the hope of its wardens, Aorth and Jaitch.
The prison complex accepts additional subjects from time to time for a nominal fee to the Faction. Operating costs are virtually nonexistent outside of the pay given to some of its non-faction guards, as there is no need for repairs, food, or other normal costs for typical prisons.
The objects and persons incarcerated in Pitiless are, with virtually no exception, some of the most dangerous of their kind in the multiverse. They are individuals cursed by deities, things imprisoned for the safety of entire spheres on the prime, artifacts of dreadful potency, and things best left unknown. And Pitiless gathers them like unstable moths to a flame.
Still, it is possibly the most secure location on the planes, with the sole exceptions of Malsheem in Nessus, or Chronias atop the Seven-Tiered Mount. No prisoner has ever escaped Pitiless in its history nor been killed, nor have any objects been stolen. By unspoken contract, Pitiless is viewed as neutral ground by all parties who avail themselves of its purpose. The threat of uniformly angering Powers, Archfiends, Factions, and even Celestial hierarchs has served to additionally keep the prison secure above and beyond their own security measures. Pitiless is sacrosanct for prisoner and experiment alike.

“Lovely place…” Tristol muttered as he marked the page containing a brief sketch of the prison and a rough map of its location.

“I don’t think that sounds like a nice place for a date you know.” Nisha said, peering over her boyfriend’s shoulder. “I was hoping maybe the Pinwheel in Limbo, or maybe the Gilded Hall if we wanted to get out of Sigil. But not Pitiless.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take you someplace better for a date when we’re done with this stuff.”

Behind them both, Amberblue made a very distinct, “Awwwwwwwwww…”

“Don’t get too saccharin there.” Nisha told the dragon. “You might make us kiss or something cute and icky like that.”

That seemed to hush the dragon, though his reaction to that, viewed through the crystal ball was priceless. But that aside, Tristol went back to reading.

From the last book he had an answer on Pitiless, but the name of Vast had also rung a bell in Tristol’s head, and as he glanced over an entry in another book covering the Astral, his answer to who the man was had a strange synchronicity with other things.

The Rakshasas. The sibling Rakshasas of the exiled House of the Blackened Paw; their names were attached to that of one Ghyris Vast.

From Telligar the Alienist’s History of Madmen:

Among the ranks of the Bleak Cabal, madness is common, virtually an expected condition among their higher-ranking members. Their philosophy can be one of incredible release, or one of mind crushing despair. Recent history has led several factols into the grip of the so-called Grim Retreat (and this pair is described in further detail in the next chapter) but others have remained extant, outside of Sigil and the well-meaning incarceration of their fellows.

First among this group is the mad inventor Ghyris Vast. Entirely self-taught, Vast began his career spouting bizarre theories in the lecture halls of the Civic Festhall, and several times it seems that he was expelled from the Fortress of Enlightened Discipline by the orthodox members of that other faction, seemingly above the objections of their Mathematician sub-sect. Vast’s theories…

Tristol flipped a few pages, skipping over the man’s theories. He could always go back and look at them later, but they seemed more mathematical and abstract than anything concrete, and they weren’t something that he’d ever studied in depth given how they didn’t seem to relate to arcane magic, at least not directly.

Expelled from Mechanus, and with the looming threat of incarceration in the Gatehouse by members of his own faction eager to avoid official problems with the Guvners, Vast retreated into the Astral. Once there he began to construct a device that he referred to as ‘The Divinity Leech’, something that he claimed could extract some nebulous form of latent divine energy locked within a targeted godisle.
The device itself is reported to be a device out of a god of invention’s nightmares, a sprawling thing which appears to have gone through multiple revisions of dramatically different form and style. Vast has stayed consistent in his claims, but most sages admit that they cannot understand his arguments for how it works, and others claim he’s simply spouting off ideas that he himself doesn’t understand, essentially making the device a worthless piece of junk. Of course, very few scholars have deigned to visit him, afraid as they are that his device, if it works, or even if it doesn’t, will attract the attention of the Guardian of Dead Gods, and by extension the Astral Dreadnaughts.
On top of that last threat, there are also the Githyanki who claim exclusive right to remove any magical or alchemical radicals from the surface of the dead gods of the Astral. To hedge against them, Vast has apparently hired a troupe of Reave mercenaries from Acheron, and a pair of exiled Rakshasa from the same plane. Siddhartha and Brampandra don’t appear to legitimately believe in Vast’s claims, but they’re well positioned to profit from them if in fact he has managed to do as he claims.

And there was the connection.

Regardless of the actual truth or fiction in the identities of the Rakshasas, there was the connection between them, the godisles, and the so-called ‘prisoner’, Ghyris Vast. Tristol’s mind rolled over the facts and their repercussions, mentally tasting them like sugared treats.

“Nisha, you’re awesome.” He said suddenly, taking hold of the book before standing up and planting a kiss on the tiefling’s face. “Follow me, we need to get the others.”

And like that, Tristol was out the door leaving Nisha blushing and grinning in her fading globe of conjured darkness.

“Was that another one of your ‘Aha! I planned that all along!’ moments?” Amberblue asked, alighting down upon the remaining stack of books on the table.

“Yep!” The Xaositect replied. “And even if it wasn’t, which it wasn’t, I doubt I’d be complaining!”




"Guys! Hold up!" Tristol shouted.

The portal framed by the doorway flickered, backlighting Kiro and Clueless as they turned to glance at the mage.

"What is it?" Clueless asked. "We were just about to go check up on things in the demiplane. According to the staff, it looked like someone had been there and tried to pick one of the locks."

"A pretty amateur attempt they said." Kiro added. "They said it might have been some... Nathri I think it was? We just wanted to check on the place, plus I've never had the chance to see it, though I've heard enough about it."

"I don't think Nathri will burn the place down if we wait a few more days." Tristol said. "I've found something..."

Twenty minutes later, he’d explained the matter to first the bladesinger and the cleric, and then to Fyrehowl and Toras, and finally to Florian. Of course each time he explained the affair, he had to, and was prompted to each time, to recognize Nisha and Amberblue as 'master sages and finders of nifty hidden stuff'. Of course, each time he did, he had a grinning tiefling rub his ears and give him a kiss on the cheek, so he wasn't exactly complaining.

"Alright I think we're agreed then?" Tristol said as something else suddenly popped into his mind. "Wait... anyone know where Skalliska is?"

"I saw her earlier." Kiro replied. "I think she was going to her room."

The kobold had been seriously busy with something over the past few days, and she'd suddenly seemed chipper, which was quite a bit of a change from the moody and irritable thing that she'd been previously. It had been a bit of a swing: she'd started out elated at finding a god of her pantheon still alive and she'd seemed to have found something to believe in, but then when she'd had trouble actually finding a temple or a cleric of that god in Sigil she'd lost some of that high. But now something seemed to have changed.

"Let's go fetch her." Florian said, glancing over at Fyrehowl.

"Give us a minute." The lupinal said. "We'll see if she's up for the trip, and I'll ask her if she knows anything about the place too."

A few minutes later, Florian stepped up to the door and gave it a series of polite knocks. About the same time she did, Fyrehowl's ears perked and she glanced around with an odd expression on her face.

"Did you hear something?" The cipher asked.

"Hear what?" Florian said. The cleric’s ears were distinctly smaller than the lupinal’s, and she hadn’t heard a thing.

"One minute." Came Skalliska's voice from inside her room, followed shortly after by the clatter of kobold feet on the floorboards.

"It was like she was talking to someone in there." Fyrehowl whispered.

Florian looked askance at her, "Who did it sound like?"

"Maybe she has guy friends over?" The lupinal suggested.

"Guy friends?" Florian asked with a wrinkle to her face, poking two fingers together and missing each time. "I don't know how that works with kobolds, and I'm not sure I want to know."

"Hell,” Fyrehowl said. “It'd explain why she's been happier lately."

Florian shook her head dismissively. "Eh…like you know much about that."

Fyrehowl grabbed the knob and held it fast, turning to the cleric. "Wait wait... excuse me?"

"When's the last time you went on a date?" Florian asked with a good-humored chuckle.

Fyrehowl just stared at her. "..."

"And you were acting as goofy as a schoolgirl with a first crush when you had that thing for Clueless back when we all first met. You can't tell me that you've got much experience. Experience... if you know what I mean."

The doorknob rattled.

"Guys? I think the door's stuck." Came Skalliska’s voice, muffled though it was by her door.

Fyrehowl lowered her voice to a whisper, "I'm not justifying that with a comment. You were the one who was cross-dressing, and you had a thing for him too! So hush!"

Both of them had managed to remove the blush from their faces and clear the air of the lingering aura of girly banter when Fyrehowl let go of the door and it opened.

Skalliska peered out at them. "Weird, the door was a bit squeaky last week, but this is the first time it stuck. Anyways, what's up?"

The cleric and the cipher both stared past the kobold and into her room. It was empty, which surprised Fyrehowl since she'd been certain that she'd heard another voice besides Skalliska's a moment earlier. But no, the room looked lived in, but she didn't notice anyone else, hidden or not.

“Tristol found something.” Florian said. “Have you ever heard of a place called Pitiless, or a guy named Ghyris Vast?”

The kobold thought for a minute. “Pitiless? It’s a prison on the Astral. Why?”

Florian and Skalliska talked, but Fyrehowl wasn’t paying as much attention to them as she was to Skalliska’s room. The room was empty, at least it seemed empty, and there wasn’t anything to suggest much other than that. But still, something didn’t sit right with the lupinal.

When the cleric and the kobold had finished talking, Fyrehowl was still staring into the open room. There’d been someone else in there. Had to be. She was certain of it.

“You ready? Fyrehowl?” Florian asked. “Hey, radar-ears! You with us?”

“Hmm?” Fyrehowl asked, snapping out of her preoccupation with Skalliska’s room.

“We’re ready to go.”

“Ah, ok.” The lupinal muttered, turning and walking away.

What Fyrehowl didn’t notice was a very brief smile and wave by the kobold back into her room when she closed the door. Had Skalliska been a mammal, she would have blown a kiss back to the dusky scaled kobold that stood there in the shadows, waving back at her and giving a protective blessing in the name of their shared patron deity.




"Oh for lust..." Alpthis snarled. "They stopped!"

"Oh?" Apteris asked.

"They closed the bloody portal and stayed in the damn city." The sorcerer hissed, eyes glowing red momentarily from the irritation.

"So much for our own pastiche of Yethmiil's escapades then." His brother replied.

"Oh that’s to be lamented there..." Alpthis mocked.

“Probably wise. Outside of his ascension to Ultroloth status, there’s precious little of his I’d care to ape. But do try to be more patient than him brother.”

The sorcerer huffed at the suggestion but did his best to take his brother’s advice regardless.

Conversation trailed off however as they continued watching, eventually growing bored and incinerating a few stray executioners ravens that sought to join them on the rooftop, till a freshly opened portal gathered there attention once more. Both brothers narrowed their eyes and glanced at the bound space hovering like a transparent rectangular membrane in the air on the second story of the building. They couldn’t see the interior of the Jammer, nor its occupants, but they could tell between active and inactive portals, and when they transmitted a body.

"To the demiplane, all of them." Alpthis muttered, watching the portal flicker with the passage of each of their quarries.

"Hmm... awkward.” His brother fretted. “Perhaps another time would be better."

"I have to wonder what they're doing there though."

Apteris shrugged. "Perhaps we should visit and avail ourselves of the late Imshenviirs' living quarters? They did have style, at least for Mercane.”

"Perhaps.” Alpthis answered. “But I'm more curious if they're just using it as a convenient egress from Sigil and from there to somewhere else... and I'm a veritable seer! They just shifted out and... wait..."

The sorcerer’s canid ears instinctively flattened back again the side of his head and his eyes narrowed in confusion.

"Wait what?” Apteris asked. “Have your powers of prognostication failed you dear brother?"

Alpthis snarled. "They bloody well vanished!"

"Give me that!" Apteris said, snatching at the smoky crystalline globe in his brother's hand.

"Like a virgin f*cking succubus!” The sorcerer ranted. “Nonexistent!"

"That can't be right." Apteris said, furrowing his brow and snarling as he looked into the sphere. But sure enough, like his brother had said, they'd planeshifted out and then... vanished. Normally that would mean that they'd entered a portal to Sigil.

"Are they back here?" The sorcerer-monk asked without looking up.

"No. That was the first thing that I suspected." Alpthis replied with a frown. "They're not back here to share our company. They're just gone."

Unless they'd dipped their toes into a power's domain: that was the other possibility, but it was one that didn't help the 'loths at all. Antipathy to deities notwithstanding, they weren’t going to disturb one, not now, not directly.

"Deities..." The brothers both said with disgust, coming to the same revolting conclusion.

"Then let's wait for them to come back.” Alpthis suggested. “They'll have to come back eventually."

"Or they die and settle the matter for us." The other suggested.

A moment passed and the two ‘loths frowned. Their task wasn’t going to be finished at any point in the immediate future. Circumstance was conspiring against them more than any puppet master, and puppet masters could be idolized and mimicked, whereas circumstance was simply a bitch.

"So what now?” Alpthis asked, gazing out at the lights of the Clerks Ward. “Orphans into the ooze portals? It's been some time since we could be so pettily cruel."

"If only.” His brother replied. “I don't care to piss off either of the city’s resident puppeteers, the Marauder or that grinning little bastard child of the Keeper of the Tower either."

"They probably heard that." Alpthis warned, lowering his voice and glancing around with wary, shifting eyes.

"Let them!" Apteris said. "We haven't done anything but roast a few pigeons out of boredom and snarl at a Hiver or two. They can spit all they want, but they'll have to take it up with the mistress, assuming that they're not already too occupied."

"Probably f*cking one another senseless."

"I wouldn’t doubt it."




The glow of Tristol's planeshift slowly faded from their eyes and the group was left adrift in the silver void of the Astral.

"So how far off are we?" Nisha asked.

"Doesn't matter much, distance is only relative here." Tristol answered.

Clueless glanced around at their surroundings, his wings glowing a pale shade of yellow. "Does anyone feel... off...?"

Fyrehowl nodded. "It's quiet."

Normally the Astral winds manifested as something akin to a pleasant breeze, the mind of the planewalker warping their metaphysics into something physically recognizable. And with the wind came thoughts, errant gusts of thoughts, notions and ideas from a hundred thousand sources meandering through the intangible medium of the plane, filtering through the brains of wandering souls traversing the void. But at present the 'air' was still and calm, the rush of wind absent and with it there was an almost deafening silence, cold and lonely.

"Notice anything else?" The bladesinger asked.

"No. Nothing." Florian said, peering around.

"That's because there isn't anything." Fyrehowl replied. "It's empty. No godisles, no color pools, no githyanki, nothing at all."

“Well, that sounds like what the books said about Pitiless.” Tristol said.

“Yep.” Skalliska agreed. “It’s in a bubble of empty space, just the prison and nothing else. We’re not far off from it then.”

And true to the kobold’s word, soon enough the unforgiving ramparts of Pitiless emerged out of the nothingness like the prow of some cursed slave ship filled to the brim with a cargo of damned and hellbound souls. Cold and still, emblazoned with a great symbol of the Doomguard, the gates of the prison beckoned in the perpetual half-light, and deep inside, Ghyris Vast waited.

Wheeeee!

An update!

*does happy dance*

Shemeska said:

"If only.” His brother replied. “I don't care to piss off either of the city’s resident puppeteers, the Marauder or that grinning little bastard child of the Keeper of the Tower either."

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Well, you've been hinting at it ever since Vorkannis became Oinoloth and started handing out prizes. :\

Eco-Mono said:

Well, you've been hinting at it ever since Vorkannis became Oinoloth and started handing out prizes. :\

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Don't read too much into that I suppose.

I've already stated that the Cheshire Fiend is a/the child of Helekanalaith [in fact he's the surviving child of Helekanalaith and Larsdana Ap Neut in my story 'The Dreamer and the Fiend']. Whether the Cheshire Fiend and A'kin are to be conflated in my version of Sigil is up in the air. A'kin is A'kin, and his story (a very complicated one) has yet to be told in this storyhour (and the 2nd storyhour as well). I'll be hinting, probing, winking and whispering about him and his background for some time to come.

A new reply! Excellent!

And a bit of grammar policing:

Conversation trailed off however as they continued watching, eventually growing bored and incinerating a few stray executioners ravens that sought to join them on the rooftop, till a freshly opened portal gathered their attention once more.

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Another excellent post, complete with humor and suspense. Especially since it seems that the down-time has come to a close, and the PCs are headed towards some action (of one kind or another). I was thinking that Xideous and the Gehreleths might show up sometime soon -any possibilities on getting a rough estimate of how long till the story reaches that point?

Also, I am just curious; what level (on average) are the PCs at this point in time?

Dialexis said:

Another excellent post, complete with humor and suspense. Especially since it seems that the down-time has come to a close, and the PCs are headed towards some action (of one kind or another). I was thinking that Xideous and the Gehreleths might show up sometime soon -any possibilities on getting a rough estimate of how long till the story reaches that point?

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I don't have my notes with me, but I want to say that Xideous comes into the picture sometime within the next plot arc (after the business on the Astral is fully finished).

As for level... maybe 14th? Clueless should be able to answer that one more easily.

Shem, I've just finished catching up, and I must say I'm impressed. You've got another admiring fan here.

Out of curiosity, did the PC's ever try to ask A'kin what he knew about his fellow 'loths? I'm thinking in particular about the statue of the Baernaloth in the Jester's Maze. Did they think to ask the Friendly Fiend what it was?