Overcoming suddenly opening crevasses, spying their way through the mangled remains of this place, and trying to keep running, they evade the Cagers for a while, but seem to get found again, and again.
Meanwhile, they run by Deadus Cred talking to a beggar in very bad shape. They see Wella using sign language to communicate with enigmatic Dabus. When she spies them, she tries to get them to come over, but with some reluctance, they resist.
At a key point Fell reappears (where did he go?). They get sucked into a strange warp-field, but then Nar and Simoria use their arcane skill to gain control of it. Sensing the location of the Kosmoskamaros, he brings them close.
But not quite.
The desiccated, ancient, one eyed, one handed
beggar accosts them. (especially Buckthorn, who he catches as the hafling tries to sneak by).
“Give something to an old beggar. One who knows your world, who knows many things. Who knows of the presumptuous, of one who would think they could be more than a novelty, more than a mere setter of traps and clever tricks.”
“Give something to an old beggar.”
“He will fail. You will complete the test.”
“You will not be felled by this place. You will not”
He is quite insistent. After they leave, they speculate (again, with a delay) on who this may be. They pick up on the missing hand. And eye. And a possible, rivalry? Unclear if they make the lich link (together with the Githyanki lich link).
Dred reappears. His tone is different. He explains how his life is now an ongoing curse for great crimes of centuries past. His life retained by his oath to the
“lowest power”. An oath still binding even in the face of atonement. And under that, he instructs them that they must now succeed with the challenge that lies immediately before them
“the test must be completed.” He then returns to his normal composure. He says he is envious of what they are about to see, learn.
He point to stairs leading down. They take them, and feel the sort of shift they did in the various Tombs, as the passed to the Shadow or Fey Aether, or Hades. This shift doesn’t go to any of those places.
They are in the Kosmoskamaros. They stand on a sort of ledge, surrounding a fantastic device. Strange mechanical spindrals of crystal and adamantine move oddly, connecting off into the darkness. They are connected to some large, fluttering thing.
Eventually they realize the that the fluttering is pages, the pages of a massive...book.
Meanwhile, Nar has taken his own Book out.
Even as he prepares for what has brought him here, the others are trying to figure out what is going on. It seems to take a long time, even if it is mere seconds.
This chamber seems to be the heart of Sigil, the ultimate source of the portals and hence connected throughout the cosmos. The big book and the shadow book…turning back to Nar’s notes:
“In Moil they were said to summon forth the great Codex, that which could only be born on the back of mighty beasts and none could read and maintain a grasp of their immediate reality; and from this Codex did they take much dark lore before others took the Codex in turn.”
(click the button and see the complete book excerpts and most of the notes. First posted in 2011).
[sblock]1. In Old Deamorria none paralleled the city Moil for the erudition of its scholars or its wealth of lore. Then it fell under the sway of necromancers and the shadow Aether swallowed the city, forever cursed.
2. Most modrons will not accept a bribe.
3. The firmament that separates the mortal worlds from the immortal ones is not a wall or sphere, but a lattice with many strange twists and distortions.
4. From deep in the Cosmos a great source of darkness and necrotic power has emerged, touching many worlds. In coming years, no land will be immune.
5. Some mortal worlds are more isolated by the firmament then others.
6. With the breath of the dread god Zorrath did He imbue Orcus and Vecna with immortality and the incarnates of undeath and dark lore did they become.
7. Vecna once walked Thraeya, to the great cities of Karnakos , strange temples of and tombs of Khembia, dark holds of Kazduaen, of course, ruins of once great Deamorria.
8. Vecna is said to disguise himself as a beggar to walk among others both amassing and dispensing dark lore.
9. These followers of Orcus and Vecna, those that dare whisper the name of Zorrath, how many such death cultist may there be?
10. In Moil they were said to summon forth the great Codex, that which could only be born on the back of mighty beasts and none could read and maintain a grasp of their immediate reality; and from this Codex did they take much dark lore before others took the Codex in turn.
11. In Moil they were said to travel to a throne carved for the gods. They held dark rites there.
12. Ours may not be the only mortal world. This is practically a fact among the learned. Ours may not be the only Cosmos. This is heresy.
13. The power of a god must both be given and taken.
14. The thesis there are angels, not fallen angels that are devils, but just angels, that are evil, is untrue, or at least exaggerated.
15. Where the darkest remnants of Kron and the Beast arose the Abyss, from the nether regions of Chaos. But is this the true realm of slaads?
16. A mortal world barely connected to and unknown to ours saw great and horrible death that still reverberates.
17. The diseases of ghouls, vampires, and mummies are “natural” manifestations of their nature, a bit of the shadow Aether brought into the living.
18. The first demons were said to come from the dead body of Kron like maggots from rotting meat. But what of what was spawned from the offal of the Beast slain by Kron and Yavara?
19. Negotiations with a Slaad are unlikely to be fruitful.
20. Height, length, width, even time may not be limit of dimensionality. Strange tales tale of the tesseract, a “cube” that extends into one of these other dimensions.
21. Nothing would be better then delivering the Hive directly into Lolths lair.
22. …and this creature became the lich. Acererak. Over the scores of years which followed, the lich dwelled with hordes of ghastly servants in the gloomy stone halls of the very hill where the Tomb is. Eventually even the undead life force of Acererak began to wane, so for the next 8 decades, the lich’s servants labored to create the Tomb of Horrors. Then Acererak destroyed all of his slaves and servitors, magically hid the entrance to his halls, and went to his final haunt…
23. Whence this so called Sigil? The deep lore makes no mention of it. It is not the making of Ordos, or Chaos, or angel or fiend. Yet they say it is there. Even if it always was not.
24. Tiefling racial appearance may be much wider ranging then most Thraeyans imagine.
25. The Aether, strange and fragmented as any part of the Cosmos, courses with eldritch energies. The elements called on by arcane formula, the dark shadows that lead souls ever deeper to the beyond and the warping touch of true gods and risen incarnates.
26. The Aether, its domains of dread and feywilds entice, its mists dazzle and daze. It leads to all lands, but its paths may never end. The depths that can be plunged, greater than anything under Kazduaen.
27. No avatar of good could bring back the mercy chalice. It took a Queen of Thieves.
28. Mortal worlds may range as widely as any distant Astral realm.
29. The dark Aether may bring one to the level of the Styx, and the layer of Pluton. This is obvious.
30. To satisfy the dread god, is it merely a question of spreading the shadow and its influence?
31. It is well known that Gith made dark bargains to free her people from the Illithid and lead them to Astral Realms. As it is well known that these races battle still.
32. The mistress of the Githyanki, greater then Vecna?
33. The Cant is an atrocity. As to be expected.
34. The need for the sacrifice of sentient humanoids is undisputed. But one should not underestimate the appeal of eating them, especially for greater hags and slaads.
35. This book seems to want things.
36. Cosmic rifts, also heresy?
37. Some dwarves are said to make smoke powder, and alchemist other things, but the idea that great weapons as powerful as any magic seems both ludicrous and compelling.
38. The Amber family is largely deranged.
39. The portals between planes may be slowly vanishing. Or at least faster than they can be made.
40. No on associated with Melkar house can be trusted.
41. Some ancient liches maintain their form, others seem to revert to pure dust. The demi-lich is a deadly hybrid, a minimal physical presence while its soul roamed strange planes and worlds unknown to even the wisest of sages.
42. If one could map the dark places of the Aether…a tracing from which undying power would be unlimited. But to create a rift. That would also be interesting. [/sblock]
Slowly, slowly…they begin to realize they are looking at the Codex of the Infinite Planes. That the Book they carry was someone spawned from it, and specifically from its darker content. That is has become a powerful sentient being. That they have served it in the course of their adventures.
So, rejoining the Codex, is this good or bad?
Forge has grabbed Nar, who is trying to maintain ahold of the Book even as he tries to rejoin it to the Codex. Buckthorn grabs the Book. Sim is at first ambivalent. Maybe its OK to rejoin?
Dabus who are not Fell enter. Fell at first pays no mind and is ecstatic at the thought of the rejoining and the resulting liberation of Sigil it would bring. When asked if any would get hurt by the rejoining, he seems to waffle, then admit that there will be harm, but only to those that deserve it.
He tries, not very well, to get Buckthorn off the book.
The Lady of Pain enters. Gliding towards them from one side as the Dabus approach from another.
Fell’s ecstasy slowly turns to terror.
At some point Nar breaks free! And goes sprawling. The book floats up, the elf still barely touching it.
And the Lady, with a sweep of her bladey hand, begins to shred it.
With another, she opens a portal to Fell’s tattoo parlor and casts the Dabus back into his living purgatory.
Meanwhile, two more portals begin to form. One is a door of iron rising from the floor.
The other portal…
Cannot be resisted by Nar as he is cast into a Maze with his now useless Book. A kind of death, 1 more to join the other two of the day….
The Iron door opens. Hades awaits. They step through.
The
other dark artifact they carry is very pleased.
Through the maze to the center one must dare
Serve both dark and light, its only fair
But in the end, only one way you can choose
Otherwise, all can loose
