A shorter update. I'm trying to keep things to 1000 words or so.
Mostly backstory.
***
ORTWINE
Some millennia before – at a time when most of Wyre sat beneath hundreds of feet of ice – a sidhe-cambion named Suoninguhol had ruled the demiplane of Afqithan.
His succession had been swift and brutal, and accompanied by all manner of atrocious acts – as was common in the history of the place. The previous tyrant – the Loquai sorceress Mileze – escaped to Azzagrat where, in Graz'zt's court, she plotted revenge. Mileze had enjoyed several powerful Abyssal sponsors – a fact which, in itself, testified to her ability – but was, at that time, sworn to Zelatar.
When Graz'zt inevitably moved demons into Afqithan – the Prince was notoriously possessive of worlds he had annexed – most observers were shocked by the fact that Suoninguhol resisted all attempts to displace him from his fortress. Over the course of a year, Graz'zt attempted in various ways to wrest the castle – which contained a strategically vital gate to Azzagrat* – from Suoninguhol's grasp. Balors and mariliths were thrown against the stronghold, teams of kelvezu were dispatched to eliminate Suoninguhol, and powerful magics were invoked: the Prince even went so far as to manifest a body within Afqithan in an effort to directly assail the barrier which the cambion had erected. Nothing was effective. To make matters worse, Mileze was ambushed and slain by Suoninguhol's sister, Koilimilou, forcing Graz'zt to identify a new instrument of his will.
Frustrated, Graz'zt retreated his spirit to the Argent Palace, and contrived a spell which would peel Suoninguhol's fortress away from Afqithan and fling it into some nameless Abyssal plane wracked by negative energy. Despite his prognostications to the contrary, Graz'zt's spell failed, sending the Prince into a violent rage.
When he finally emerged from his tirade, Graz'zt swallowed his immense pride and negotiated a settlement with Suoninguhol – content to wait and extract his revenge at a more opportune time. He occupied himself with attempting to learn the identity the cambion's sponsor (the Prince had no doubt that Suoninguhol possessed one), and to groom his own chosen candidate – a Loquai named Irknaan – in the duties expected of a loyal subject of Azzagrat.
Time passed. Graz'zt became distracted in wars with Orcus, Soneillon and Fraz Urb'luu. Suoninguhol entrenched himself yet further, tightening his grip on Afqithan and compacting hundreds of fiends from a variety of interested demonic parties. His ascendancy seemed assured until, abruptly and without warning, Suoninguhol vanished. News quickly found its way to Zelatar, prompting Graz'zt to again invest the demiplane and, this time, successfully install Irknaan as king. Koilimilou was captured, but Irknaan chose to humiliate rather than eliminate her.
The gate was reopened and, for a while, Graz'zt was content. Afqithan's status was monitored by the Prince's demons, and Irknaan paid a hefty tribute for which he gained recognition in Azzagrat. Graz'zt's minions became favoured compactees of Loquai sorcerers; Loquai mercenaries found themselves fighting in wars from Yutuf to Throile. Suoninguhol's abode became known as Irknaan's Fortress, and the new king was left to explore and expand the nineteen sub-levels below it.
*
When Irknaan's Fortress passed into Ortwine's possession, the Sidhe inherited something of a mixed fortune.
The castle was established upon a precipitous bastion of rock, unscalable from three sides, and reached by a narrow path cut into the sheer wall of the fourth; although assault from the ground was as an afterthought to its real defense. Its highest towers, which soared many hundreds of feet into the purple skies, were linked with bridges less than a foot wide: each hung like a strand of silk which glistened in the dusk. All of the fortress – except for a reception chamber to which a previous queen had pactbonded a dozen of the largest jariliths – was dimensionally locked against unwanted intrusion, but demons could still be conjured and bound within. Its interior could not be scried. The outcrop itself was reinforced by a spell of tremendous power, wrought long before by a goddess named Shuae.
The art of the Loquai suffused the place, with moving murals and columns of shadow, fashioned by magic over long centuries. The air whispered as one walked through the lofty and insubstantial upper halls, but the deep chambers seemed to have walls of impossible density: here all sound was muted, and light subdued. Carven reliefs, which displayed scenes of glorious hunts – or grotesque tortures – writhed as their stories unfolded to the observer. Broad stairs led to a wide platform upon which were roosted the four remaining tenebrous griffons, and the evil specimen once owned by Duke Ytryn – a chimaeric monster of unique form and singular foul disposition. Ortwine had tried, without success, to subdue the beast; it remained tethered by a two-hundred pound chain of adamant to a plinth of unbreakable marble.
At its deepest point, in a cleft which had been hewn into the bedrock by some unknown force, lay the now-sealed gate to Azzagrat; above it lay the summoning rooms, with a jackal-headed arcanadaemon confined in a circle of binding by Mileze long before. There was a cavern in which eerie shades moved across still waters; a repository of tomes written in dead and forgotten languages; a forge, where Ainhorr had maintained a team of Azer smiths; quickling warrens, and chambers filled with torture devices. An armory of Faerie weapons, in a vault which was guarded by a symbol of insanity placed by Mostin, now housed the ten-foot vorpal sword Heedless.
Gnome thralls moved silently and efficiently throughout the castle, and a handful of quicklings – enchanted to obey Ortwine's desires – were still retained by the Queen. Gaggles of minor sprites hovered and chattered continually, and bearded feys with cudgels and pipes sang and caroused with nymphs and sylphs in the many small courtyards. Walled gardens, once home to bloodthorns and viper trees, now also contained more benign shrubbery – although Ortwine had allowed a few demonic saplings to remain, mainly as a curiosity.
The Queen knew that Irknaan's Fortress sat upon a crossroad of realities, and for her, the World of Men was never more than a step away. Yet if one rode beyond the limit of burgeoning Faerie, the umbral taint of Afqithan still clung.** Invoked at the climax of the incident, as Mostin had wrily dubbed it, the planar rift was a growing at an exceptional rate: it would take a mere two millennia for Afqithan to be entirely subsumed by Faerie. Understanding the cartography of the place had been Ortwine's first task to herself: mentally cataloging every gate and portal (there were many); identifying areas where other worlds were closest; understanding each nuance in Afqithan's planar symmetry. Knowing which paths which led to sylvan glades, and which led to haunted copses.
Her hegemony stretched into Faerie, across wide tracts of forest and heath-covered moorlands, within which were hidden deep, wooded ravines. Beyond them lay mountains, a wide river, and the courts of noble sidhe in realms which stretched through space and time. In Afqithan itself – where the remnants of the Loquai numbered a few hundred – her rule was uncontested. Menicau, three times a turncoat, still dwelt in her citadel, but even she presented no threat, and had bowed her head in deference. A dozen other families retained estates with Ortwine's permission. But the Queen herself kept no Loquai, demon or cambion in her train.
Ortwine surveyed the land south of her walls. Trees which had sprung over the heaped corpses of fiends; the great contusions in the ground – caused when Azazel smote Irzho from the sky, and the balor had fallen like a black comet – now covered with green creepers. The chasm, caused by Soneillon's final realization of nonexistence, become a deep pool to which mist clung, with an air only of deep sorrow. Nwm's hand, at work.
The Sidhe-Queen pulled a pair of leather gloves over her hands, shifted her scimitar, and tied her hair back. Her perception changed momentarily as she walked between worlds: from Afqithan, to an area of grassy knolls in Methelhar, near the borders of Nizkur Forest. She retrieved a small, ornate box from her belt pouch, performed a complex manual operation, and whispered nine syllables of power.
A shadow avenue opened to Deorham. There, she would meet with Nwm, who would bear her to Sisperi: the Goddess Lai had requested an audience with her, and Ortwine had grudgingly agreed.
*The gate to Azzagrat is of ancient origin. It is constructed, not natural: the result of an immensely potent spell. It cannot be freely disjoined, and the ward protecting it would require a large and powerful cabal to penetrate. It can be sealed – presumably the intention is to allow it to function as a door which can be locked from either side.
**The initial bubble of Faerie invoked by Teppu was four virtual miles in diameter, with Irknaan's Fortress at the dead centre.
