Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 6565020" data-attributes="member: 11697"><p>The sense of timeless drifting and sudden, bitter cold that accompanied the transition between Sigil and the far end of its innumerable portals was there and then gone in the space of a heartbeat. The group stepped from a doorway in the Lower Ward only a few blocks distant from 'The Friendly Fiend' into the mouth of a cave roughly a mile Hinterward of Plague-Mort itself, bathed in flickering red and yellow light while the portal remained open. Smelling faintly of mineral-rich water dripping through the rock and the scattered ranks of mushrooms sprouting from the walls at uneven intervals, the floor was littered with the bones of rodents, other small animals, and several corpses picked clean by natural predators or fiends.</p><p></p><p>"Lovely place." Fyrehowl whined as her nose painted a picture of the previous few months of routine violence that marked the most obvious egress -out- of the abyssal gate-town.</p><p></p><p>"It only gets better as we get closer to the Abyss I'm sure." Tristol remarked as he peered down at the bones.</p><p></p><p>"You know, that's one place that I can't say that I've been." Toras shook his head as he looked at the bones that carpeted the ground. "I'm not in any particular rush either. Carceri and Pandemonium are about as close as I care to ever get if I can help it."</p><p></p><p>Eyes glowing in the dim light, tail flitting and fretting like a disapproving relative, Nisha frowned. "Hey now, the Abyss has issues, but as the only vaguely theoretically tanar'ri-blooded person in the room... err... cave thing, I have to defend it just a little bit."</p><p></p><p>Tristol gave her a hug, "You're the best thing to ever be associated -however distant- with the Abyss. You're much better than Plague-Mort."</p><p></p><p>"You're all good Nisha." Florian patted her on the shoulder, "What I don't get though is why the Illuminated decide to set up kip in Plague-Mort of all places?"</p><p></p><p>They talked as they moved away from the closing portal and out towards the blasted landscape that guarded the approach to the gatetown.</p><p></p><p>"Nobody cares who rules, so long as the portal remains open." Clueless shrugged. "Anywhere else you have to deal with entrenched and loyal groups already in power, a population that cares for the status quo, all that fun stuff. It's actually a smart thing to stake their claim here, especially if it's transitory."</p><p></p><p>"You think they want to move into Sigil once they're established here?" Toras mused, considering the group's pretensions of being a true faction.</p><p></p><p>"That's exactly what I'd figure." Clueless motioned to the landscape in view as they emerged from the cave. "This place isn't the sort of place I'd care to stay. I suspect they're of the same mind."</p><p></p><p>The broken landscape was littered with rubble and ruined walls, all the detritus of a thousand former gate-towns devoured by the Abyss piecemeal since time immemorial or abandoned by the population when the portal shifted location of its own cruel, fickle accord. A path worn into the ground by the passage of feet and wheels stretched out several miles ahead, winding through the barrens.</p><p></p><p>At first it was only a few scattered piles of bleached bones and occasionally a "fresh" corpse only a week or so bled out on the ruddy soil. Once the ruins and hills yielded an open view to Plague-Mort itself though, the broken piles of brick and stone yielded to a landscape of corpses and scavengers, both of the avian variety and isolated humans picking through the dead for anything of value.</p><p></p><p>The siege of the gatetown, the so-called "Tradegate of the Lower Planes" had been bloodless as far as an Abyssal coup was concerned, but before the Illuminated had risen up from within, Archlector Yamoril had vainly sent an army of mercenaries and his own citizens out into the field against the first wave of fiends. The bodies of the dead littered the landscape of the town and great flocks of vultures, ravens, and sympathetics darkened the skies as they circles and waited for larger, earthbound carrion-eaters to retreat, even now weeks after the slaughter.</p><p></p><p>"Welcome to Plague-Mort, the happiest place in the Outlands..." Florian's voice dripped sarcasm. "As evidenced by the field of corpses littering the approach to the city."</p><p></p><p>"Pay baatezu to fight and they fight but that's it." Toras shook his head. "Cleaning up after the fact apparently wasn't in their contract."</p><p></p><p>The gatetown's walls were high and oppressive, a testimony to the previous Archlector's brutal dance of merciless oppression and manic desire to build up the city into a citadel capable of overshadowing and eventually overtaking Broken reach when he eventually slide the city into the Abyss as a formality. Unlike during Byrri Yarmoril's rule, the current approach to the city wasn't subject to sanctioned gangs that "taxed" those approaching the city in greedy, haphazard fashion. In fact, it almost seemed ordered and peaceful, with a single contingent of guards at the open gate on the main approach, and colored flags flying above the adjacent towers, all bearing the symbol of the Illuminated.</p><p></p><p>"Nisha, what are you doing?" Florian glanced over at the Xaositect as the tiefling nibbled on something wrapped in wax paper, occasionally giggling as she did so, largely oblivious to the impressive vista before them.</p><p></p><p>"Hrmph?" Nisha looked up at the cleric, a smear of chocolate on her cheek. "Want some?" Talking with her mouth full, she held up a miniature, dark chocolate Factol Sarin, modeled after the late Harmonium Factol, assassinated in the opening days of the Faction War.</p><p></p><p>"Akin is selling candy now?" Fyrehowl tilted her head to the side, questioning. "That's why you had us make a detour to his shop before hitting the portal here? Not spell components or a wand or something else, but candy?"</p><p></p><p>The Xaositect nodded with a smile, just before she munched on the iconic Hardhead's left arm. "I also got a white chocolate Factol Zanzibar. It even came with a peppermint hourglass lodged in his head!"</p><p></p><p>Fyrehowl glanced sidelong at Nisha, "I'll try some of the chocolate Factol Sarin."</p><p></p><p>"Sigil, the lovely city where a smiling yugoloth sells candy for a tanar'ri blooded tiefling to share with a lupinal." Florian laughed as Nisha handed over some of the candy to Fyrehowl and then to Tristol and Clueless in turn. Apparently the Friendly Fiend had a surprisingly adept hand with sweets.</p><p></p><p>Chocolate-nomming tiefling ignoring it all aside, as they drew close to the city, they saw both its history and more subtly how the change in rule had impacted its appearance. The walls of Plague-Mort were an elaborate affair of flying buttresses, carved screaming faces, and ornamental blades clearly modeled on the same general style of stylized architecture as Sigil's. While the ruling forces of the gatetown had seen a change and subsequent purge of their supporters, the only visible difference in their passing was a change in the flags that flew from the unevenly spaced towers and that hung from the gates.</p><p></p><p>"At least it's a pretty flag." Fyrehowl had to give the yellow and orange banner credit for decent design. At the very least, the Illuminated had to be given credit for having thought out the details of their rule well prior to actually seizing power. Very little seemed to have been accomplished in a half-assed manner or a spur-of-the-moment decision.</p><p></p><p>Off to the side, Nisha continued to steadily devour chocolate Factol Sarin, now making voices for the late factol as she did so, "Noooo... not my other arm you dumb chaos person you! Noooooo! You'll face the justice of law and order! Ack not my shoulder! Noooo..."</p><p></p><p>"I suspect a few days ago they had corpses hanging from the gates." Clueless pointed to faded, rust-red smudges along the walls and clustered at the top of the gate. "They made their point to the populace, but keep them there and it starts to hurt trade."</p><p></p><p>Nisha giggled madly, joined shortly thereafter by Tristol joining in to ruffle her hair as his face beamed with the bright-eyed smile of a man in love.</p><p></p><p>"What does Plague-Mort even trade in the first place?" Florian asked.</p><p></p><p>"Tanar'ri?" Tristol chuckled and gave a shrug.</p><p></p><p>Collectively they shrugged and shook their heads in the absence of an answer. Clearly though, the city had grown fat on commerce to and from the Abyss over the past century, and the Illuminated seemed keen to do nothing to dissuade that trade. In fact they appeared eager to encourage it to their own benefit.</p><p></p><p>"Well, whatever they're trading, however they're intending to rule, and for what end, they're doing pretty well so far though." Clueless took note of the training and discipline clear in the gate guards' stance, as well as the quality of their weapons and armor.</p><p></p><p>"Why do you say that?" Tristol asked as Nisha licked an errant bit of chocolate from his nose.</p><p></p><p>"Simple," Clueless remarked, "Because Red Shroud hasn't marched an army from Broken Reach on the other side of the portal to the Abyss and butchered or enslaved every living thing in sight."</p><p></p><p>"Someone knows how to handle infernal politics like a master of the trade." Florian raised her eyebrows in respect. "Because otherwise there's no way that you'd get away with marching a Baatezu army to the gates of the city without risking the Abyss itself taking notice."</p><p></p><p>"The Abyss didn't take note, because the Hag Countess's army never stepped one diabolic foot in the city." The explanation came not from within the party, but from one of the guards standing at the gate. "We made very sure of that."</p><p></p><p>Towering even above Toras, Koradus inclined his horned head towards the group. The half-elemental minotaur was engulfed in a flickering halo of flames that licked the air from every portion of his flesh not covered by the elaborate red and orange platemail that he wore. Effortlessly cradled in his arms, a gleaming halberd stood balanced with the implication of a man eminently skilled in its use.</p><p></p><p>"Wow!" Toras muttered under his breath. "Self-cooking beef."</p><p></p><p>Florian elbowed the half-celestial even as Nisha giggled and Clueless and Fyrehowl quickly tried to stifled any laughter of their own.</p><p></p><p>The other guards at the gate were already occupied with a number of merchants and their horse-drawn carts loaded with all manner of trade goods, seemingly eager to profit in the immediate economic imbalance of the recently lifted siege. Only the minotaur, the captain of the city watch and factor of the Illuminated, remained free to see to the entry of the newest party to approach the gate.</p><p></p><p>"May I ask what your business is within Plague-Mort?" Koradus still hadn't moved, either his feet or his halberd, nor responded to Toras's joke, though his ears had swiveled forward to hear it. "If you're hoping for mercenary work, I'm afraid that our use for your kind is a week elapsed. On the other hand, if you're here to inquire about the Illuminated, you are welcome to be judged fit to join with the Elect. It is not my choice of course, and I can guarantee nothing."</p><p></p><p>"We're here by invitation actually." Toras held up the letter sent by the Illuminated factol. "Apparently your factol wants to meet with us."</p><p></p><p>Immediately Koradus's eyes subtly narrowed and he focused on Toras and next to him, Florian, precisely as a swordsman would measure an opponent before a duel. He'd heard of two people killing several Illuminated factioneers in Sigil, albeit members abusing their power and flaunting their destined status.</p><p></p><p>"Then consider yourselves lucky my friends." Koradus gave a short, respectful bow. "Factol Marvent is a great man, and we shine in his bright shadow. If he wishes to meet with you, I would not think of questioning your right to be here. Allow me then to escort you to his side."</p><p></p><p>"Much appreciated." Florian smiled and allowed the minotaur to lead them all past the other guards and into Plague-Mort.</p><p></p><p>The gatetown was split into four districts. The central portion of the city was one such distinct, and outside of its confines the remaining portions were more or less evening divided. The gate to the Abyss existed as part of the wall that divided the innermost quarter from the others, and in truth, very few people ever saw the gatetown's core, inclusive of both visitors and natives alike. That at least was the historical situation under the previous Archlector and all those before him. What the city looked like under its new leadership... that remained to be seen.</p><p></p><p>Moving by a clearly pre-planned route, Koradus led them through the gates and then quickly off of the major thoroughfares, passing through a maze of tangled streets that seemed built up without regards to any rationale sense of city planning. Rather, Plague-Mort obeyed the demands of ego when it came to each ruler of the gatetown tearing down whatever structures of the previous regime to replace them piecemeal with their own as it suited their aesthetics.</p><p></p><p>Eyes stared at them from windows and doorways, some of them dressed in the same colors as Koradus and clearly members of the new ruling order -a faction as it styled itself- and others in little more than rags or battered armor, the native population still adjusting to the change in rule. Plague-Mort's underclass seemed the least perturbed by the change in the ruling political structure. For them at least for the time being, nothing had changed in their daily lives.</p><p></p><p>X lead them through the gatetown's Residential Quarter, conveniently and purposefully avoiding the streets that would have crossed over into the Temple Quarter. Under Archlector Yarmoril, only Outlands gods were officially allowed a place for temples or shrines, but in practice the farcical rule ignored that the largest temples and the majority of the temples were those of Abyssal powers and even a myriad of demon lords. That was no longer the case, and the Illuminated were keen to avoid this being common knowledge until they finished the second of their purges.</p><p></p><p>Four blocks over, the temples of several Abyssal powers lay in smoldering ruins, their clergy dead and stripped of identifying symbols, distributed outside the city for the ravens to feast. There would be no rivals to the Illuminated within the city walls, and there would be no chance of the newly won city ever sliding into the Abyss. A certain amount of bloodthirsty rites would be ignored, but never anything reaching a critical mass of worshipers.</p><p></p><p>Eventually the hovels and tenements of the Residential Quarter -colloquially known as the "Slums"- grew less offensive to the eyes of any architect or engineer and then they ended altogether at the wide, open ring of a plaza that demarcated the border of the three other quarters of the city with the central area known simply as The Keep.</p><p></p><p>A city within a city, the black granite walls of the Keep rose two hundred feet up, taller than the gatetown's exterior walls so recently besieged from without. Not a true defensive wall, it was more an ideological one, serving to separate the interior courtyard with its merchants' fairs, public executions, and the homes of the city's most powerful -including the Palace of the Archlector- from the common residents of the city whose blood fed the parasites at the city's core, sometimes literally more so than just in metaphor. Though the Archlector was dead, the walls remained and for the moment so did the sense of separation they imposed of the high over the low, rich over poor, Elect over not.</p><p></p><p>"And there's the portal." Fyrehowl shivered as the portal's light washed out over the courtyard.</p><p></p><p>Thirty yards away, set within an archway in the wall, framed in a massive outgrowth of tangled razorvine, stood the gatetown's portal to the Abyss.</p><p></p><p>"It's pretty, kinda sorta," Nisha said as she balled up the wax paper that had wrapped her now finished. "In a doorway to certain horrific doom sort of way."</p><p></p><p>"More of the latter than the former." Koradus said as they passed within full view of the gaping, perpetually open wound in reality. </p><p></p><p>Beyond the rippling meniscus of adjacent realities, the Plane of Infinite Portals stretched out forever beneath the angry light of a bloody sky and ground soaked through with the same color and paved with bones and souls. Visible in the distance, more than one army of fiends could be seen either in transit across the layer, or in the midst of conflict with an opposing force of fiends.</p><p></p><p>"Whatever it looks like from here, that's not where it takes you." Koradus smirked. "Not that many people will tell you if you don't already know before you take the plunge through."</p><p></p><p>"Where does it actually go?" Florian raised an eyebrow. "I couldn't think it would be anywhere worse than that."</p><p></p><p>"Better or worse is an open question I suppose. It goes to a holding area below Broken Reach." Koradus frowned, an element of distaste and intimate familiarity with the topic playing across his features. "Malcanthet's daughter makes sure that anyone using the portal from this side pays her her cut in transit. Many don't find out about it until they're already on the other side. Those unable to pay end up working off their debts if they're lucky, having their property seized, or just sold off to the highest bidder be it tanar'ri or even 'loths doing the buying. Fiends..."</p><p></p><p>"No love lost for them?" Fyrehowl picked at the minotaur's commentary, hoping to measure him better, and by extension to measure his sect-come-faction.</p><p></p><p>"They're part of reality." Koradus shrugged as they approached the Palace of the Archlector, "Like the weather, it's something you don't have to like or even appreciate to know that you have to deal with it, even when it gets messy. Thankfully I don't have to be the one dealing with them unless it's on the end of a blade. I served in a mercenary company in the Blood War for a decade, mostly on Othrys and some time in Acheron; I've seen enough fiends for a lifetime."</p><p></p><p>The Palace seemed out of place in the gatetown that they'd seen up to that point. Far from being like the Keep's granite walls, the Palace wasn't imposing in the sense of fear, rather it was elaborate to the point of pomposity. Elegant spires glazed in silver, walls covered with intricate mosaics of green steel and gold, columns of pink and blue-green marble, and everywhere the same spikes and ornamental blades as the greatest mansions of Sigil's golden lords.</p><p></p><p>"There's only so much I can say about the Archlector's taste." Koradus snorted. "Lot of good his obnoxious display of wealth got him in the end when he ended up hanging from the gate to rot. Power doesn't need to show off. It doesn't need external validation."</p><p></p><p>"So what can you tell us about your Factol?" Tristol asked as they neared the doors of the Palace.</p><p></p><p>"He's a great man," Koradus answered with a pause, as if he were momentarily lost in a memory. His expression carried with it the dreamy, absolute conviction of a man saved from something by virtue of a religious experience. "But he doesn't need me to promote him with stories or boasts. Like I said before, power doesn't need to show off. He doesn't."</p><p></p><p>The great brass and green-steel doors of the Palace stood ajar, held open by adamantine chains and attended by only a pair of guards to either side. There was no sense that to intrude would invite death, no sense of the separation that the great Keep walls imposed upon the populace. Either the Faction was so self-assured of their own safety to the point of self-delusion, or their ruling figures genuinely felt no fear, and felt no fear for good reasons.</p><p></p><p>"Welcome to the palace of the Archlector, faction headquarters of the Illuminated." Koradus opened the doors and stepped to the side. "Factol Marvent will speak with you inside. When you are ready to depart, I will escort you out."</p><p></p><p>"Wait," Clueless looked at the minotaur. "You're not coming in with us?"</p><p></p><p>Koradus shook his head, "No need."</p><p></p><p>"How will we find the Factol?" Florian shot an incredulous look. "It's a big palace."</p><p></p><p>"He'll find you." Koradus shrugged as if the thought of them wandering about aimlessly within wasn't a concern.</p><p></p><p>"Oh come on," Toras frowned at the minotaur and then the other guards, "I don't have a clue what he looks like. How will I know it's him?"</p><p></p><p>"You'll know." Again, the look of awe passed over Koradus's face.</p><p></p><p>"What do you mean, we'll know?" Toras held his hands up in exasperation, "I don't even know what species he is."</p><p></p><p>Koradus locked eyes with the half-celestial, "I've looked a balor in the eyes beneath the mocking stars of Othrys. I was terrified and I fully expected to die as it roared to the fifty thousand fiends under its command. I knew fear in that moment, but I was never awed in another being's presence before I met Factol Marvent. When I say that you'll know him when you meet him, I'm quite serious."</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p>Without escort and left to their own devices, they proceeded through the doors of the palace, hoping to find the Illuminated factol within. Unsure of what he looked like, where he would be within the sprawling, baroque confines of the former Palace of the Archlector, or if they weren't simply walking into a trap, they went as slowly as possible.</p><p></p><p>The walls were adorned with more mosaics panels where they weren't simply marble shot through with veins of precious metals, all produced by the labor of the exploited. Yarmoril had been a cruel, fiend of a man, but at least he had superficial taste, though his passing in recent days was still subtly visible on those very same walls. Clearly the Illuminated had done their utmost to remove all traces of the violence that had erupted during their coup, but here and there, there remained traces to see if you knew what to look for: a sword cut in a marble column, a bit of soot arranged in a faint ring to mark where a fireball had erupted, and the bubbling, discolored blotch on a stone wall to mark the passage of a lightning bolt.</p><p></p><p>Only a minute later as they walked into the main gallery of the Palace, Clueless paused. Down at his belt, the dagger that he'd taken from the Cathedral of the Chained God moved and tugged at its confinement. He pushed it down and tightened the belt, watching as the blade vibrated in place like an eager child.</p><p></p><p>"The hell...?" The bladesinger frowned as he continued to fuss with the blade.</p><p></p><p>"Problem?" Tristol glanced down at the black glass dagger.</p><p></p><p>"The dagger from the Outlands." He answered, "Yeah, -that- one. It's trying to move on its own. I didn't think that it was magical though."</p><p></p><p>"It isn't..." Tristol stared at the blade, whispered a cantrip and confirmed his earlier assessment. "It's not magical at all."</p><p></p><p>"Then why the hell is it trying to move on its own?" Clueless frowned as he tugged at a leather cord keeping his belt pouch secured shut, intending to lash the blade in place.</p><p></p><p>Clueless never had the chance to carry through with the idea.</p><p></p><p>"Greetings!" An average, plain-looking man that might easily be confused with a faction functionary or servant called out to them all as he stepped out from a stairwell. "Allow me to introduce myself and welcome you to Plague-Mort. My people..."</p><p></p><p>As Green Marvent of the Illuminated stepped into view, the obsidian blade tugging at Clueless's belt burst free of its constraints and flung itself through the air, aiming directly for the man's chest.</p><p></p><p>"Oh sh*t!" Clueless stumbled forward, grasping for the blade a second after it shot forward, hopelessly out of reach.</p><p></p><p>Marvent blinked and stepped back as the dagger used to sacrifice the divine patron of the tiere hurtled towards him, whistling as it did. Just as abruptly as the blade had acted of its own accord, the factol held up his right hand and plucked it out of the air with a nearly whimsical smile. More concerned with the dagger than with his guests, he cradled the still dancing blade in both hands, turning it over and examining it with awkward, startled curiosity. </p><p></p><p>Holding the blade firmly in his hands to keep it still, he looked up at the bladesinger. "That's not quite the entrance that I had planned..."</p><p></p><p>"Woah woah woah!" Toras shouted as he glared at Clueless and then much more apologetically at Marvent, "We didn't come here to try and kill you!"</p><p></p><p>Nisha cringed emphatically, holding her hands over her head, "Please don't throw us in a dungeon!"</p><p></p><p>No guards were immediately forthcoming, not even at the sounds of shouting. Marvent chuckled when several long moments later two guards did peer in. He dismissed them with a half-hearted wave, still holding the dagger tightly.</p><p></p><p>Clueless stepped forward with this arms out, palms up, eyes wide with shock, "I'm so so sorry, I don't know what just happened."</p><p></p><p>Marvent stared at the blade for a moment more before pinching it between two fingers and holding it out. Offering the cold, black glass handle first, he smiled at Clueless. "You've a dangerous thing here. It's an artifact if you didn't know that already." He traced his fingers over the cold glass, running them along the grooves where he felt runes should have been but had never been cut. It screamed inchoate rage, a litany of invectives, a harrowing depth of loss and despair. Marvent clicked his tongue at the blade, "It's seen so much death and misery that now permeates its heart. It feels vengeance and hatred, though it doesn't seem to know why or for whom. It reeks of betrayal and despair, even though it never pierced the one it was originally crafted to kill."</p><p></p><p>Marvent frowned, seeming almost sad by the blade's presence, smiling again once Clueless took the dagger back.</p><p></p><p>"I don't know what just happened." The bladesinger hastily wrapped the blade in multiple layers of cloth before stuffing it into a bag of holding. "My apologies sir."</p><p></p><p>"No need for titles, be it sir or anything even larger or more put on. No need for apologies either." Marvent smiled with a ludicrous sense of confidence and utter calm, despite what had just happened. "Simply know that you have a dangerous, powerful item there. Keep such a thing safe, because you may one day need it."</p><p></p><p>Having fully recovered from the accidental assassination attempt that the Factol of the Illuminated didn't seem so much as even rattled by, the others gathered around the man. Like his own faction members, despite his plain appearance and lack of ornamentation or physical presence, they felt his presence nonetheless. As he spoke, his blue eyes seemed all the more piercing, his voice all the more rich, warm, and calming. It was all like sitting before the greatest bard ever to walk the planes, but Marvent wasn't playing an instrument, nor was there any evidence of spellcasting as far as Tristol perceived.</p><p></p><p>"Well," Toras held up the letter of apology that Marvent had sent after he and Florian had killed a half-dozen of the man's faction members, "We received your letter. What all did you want to meet with us about, and what about me specifically?"</p><p></p><p>"Toras my son, you have a brilliant path laid out before you, if only you would reach for it. There is so much that you could accomplish above and beyond the concerns that most people in this world consider." Marvent smiled warmly and folded his hands in front of him, looking more a priest speaking to a child on the cusp of adulthood than the ruler of a faction, self-declared or not. "You don't need me to be happy, to be wealthy, to have friends and loved ones and to keep those around you safe. You're a skilled man with a good heart. You have a skilled sword arm and the blood of angels runs through your veins. Not everyone has these qualities nor these gifts, and many who do, they spoil them on selfish vanities rather than reaching for something greater."</p><p></p><p>Toras eyed the factol skeptically, "That sounds like a pitch you've made to most of the people in your faction."</p><p></p><p>"In a way, yes." Green Marvent chuckled and inclined his head towards the warrior. "In the general sense that's what we're about. Taking what you are and reaching for something greater. You might see elements of the Signers, Godsmen, or Fated here, but people see what they want to see very often. What I do is guide people to find their potential, to find their greatness, and then share that with the world. We are destined for something greater, and I've seen that you are a part of it."</p><p></p><p>As Marvent focused on Toras, Tristol moved to the side and gazed curiously at the self-titled Factol, activating the most common of divinations without words or motion. Where he expected to see the man wearing a wealth of magical items, protective talismans, contingencies, and even a lurking suspicion that he wasn't a human at all... what Tristol saw wasn't what he expected, nor was it anything that he genuinely understood.</p><p></p><p>Marvent literally radiated a magical aura that was nearly blinding in its potency, but under magical divination, he himself vanished in all but outline, existing as a hollow void within the glow itself. Tristol blinked against the potency of the magic, but also in abject confusion. He'd never seen anything remotely close to what he was now staring at, with his friends in conversation with the otherwise seemingly normal man who looked like nothing less than what an ambulatory magical artifact might appear as.</p><p></p><p><em>'What are you?'</em> Tristol thought to himself as he continued to stare.</p><p></p><p>"I see the flow of future events," Marvent gave a self-effacing shrug. "It isn't the same as a diviner obtaining a specific event and specific details, but more of an intuitive grasp of how timelines flow, entwine, and interact. I can see potential, and I see it here in each of you."</p><p></p><p>"But you already knew that didn't you?" Nisha quipped with a whisper, followed by a giggle.</p><p></p><p>"As a matter of fact yes Nisha, I did." Marvent leaned to the side and peered at the tiefling with a smile that she returned with a slight blush, realizing that she'd never given him her name. "Don't get me wrong, I can't see the entire future clear as day. I'm not a Power of foresight or wisdom, but I can do my best to alter the flow of things for the better."</p><p></p><p>"So why in specific did you ask for us, all of us, to be here today?" Toras asked, "Was all of this planned out to bring us here?"</p><p></p><p>"I wanted to offer an apology for what some of my people did in Sigil." Marvent frowned and sighed. "I can't see everything, not even close to it. Obviously I didn't see what abuses that they'd commit, thinking themselves some sort of Elect and free of ethics or consequences. But when you stopped them, that's when I saw something about you. I also know something that you can do. Specifically you."</p><p></p><p>"Apology accepted." Toras offered his hand, joined next by Florian. Marvent gave a half bow and shook their hands firmly.</p><p></p><p>"In taking Plague-Mort, we employed mercenaries working under the banner of the Hag Countess. For a moment I saw something tangent to this all, and something that the six of you can take action upon, given the things that you've already done, people you've met, and creatures that you've interacted with and survived."</p><p></p><p>Marvent reached into the inner pocket of his robe and produced a folded parchment. "This map describes the route from Sigil to Baator's 7th layer of Maladomini. There in two days time, a mortal elf will be the guest of Duke Melikaros the Pale Winged, a minor baatezu noble in the court of Baalzebul. For the moment he is evil and largely inconsequential. But this meeting will put him on the path of future events wherein he will cause the future deaths of millions of innocents on his home world on the prime material plane. After this window of opportunity, he may well be lost to us."</p><p></p><p>"You want us to kill him?" Toras asked rhetorically, a shadow of doubt crossing his features.</p><p></p><p>Marvent nodded, "He cannot be allowed to live to do what he is otherwise destined for. I've seen what will happen when he looses the Blood War onto his world, turning a blue and green sphere in the darkness into a dead husk of ash and cinders."</p><p></p><p>The half-celestial looked down and his forehead creased with doubt, "I'm not sure how I feel about assassinating someone."</p><p></p><p>"I can't and won't force you into this. You ended the suffering of dozens when you killed twelve people in an ambush in Sigil. You didn't know their names or their associations, but you killed them nonetheless thinking you were doing good in the long run. This is one man and you would prevent the suffering of untold millions from ever happening." Marvent put the map into Toras's hand. "The choice is yours and you're free to go unimpeded. I wish you well on your journey back to Sigil. I know that you'll be back here though. That I've seen. Neither men, nor fiends, nor howling dreams will bar that potential future from solidifying into truth."</p><p></p><p>Meaningless words to the others, Tristol and Fyrehowl immediately stared at one another as Marvent alluded to the dreams that they'd both been having. It might have simply been poetic license, but the man -if that's what he was- knew things that he couldn't possibly know. Perhaps he was right about a single man in Baator, and what that man might do in the future.</p><p></p><p>"We'll think about it." Florian said with a measured tone, followed by a nervous swallow, "It's a lot to take in, and it's a lot to ask of us when we've only just met you."</p><p></p><p>"You have two, perhaps three days in total before this opportunity is lost. Please make your decision as swiftly as you can." Marvent smiled at each of them in turn, and each of them felt virtually transparent as he gazed into their eyes. For that short moment, they each felt paradoxically empowered and diminished under his gaze. "It was my pleasure meeting you all, but if you'll pardon me, I have other duties to attend to. Such is the busy life of running a faction. Tell next time we meet, be well."</p><p></p><p>Marvent smiled one last time and left by the stairwell he'd first come through, leaving the party behind to discuss things amongst themselves. He ascended the stairs and then stood quietly on a balcony, just out of view from below, watching them as they departed. He stood there for only a moment alone and by himself before Koradus opened an adjacent door and approached with a deft, almost automatic bow. Like he'd done with the party moments before, he brushed off the bow with a gesture as something unnecessary.</p><p></p><p>"Do you wish to have them followed Factol?"</p><p></p><p>"No need to do so." The blue of his eyes sparkled as he turned to look at the minotaur. "They've already made up their mind, more or less; the half-celestial has at least. The others have questions, but they'll go along with him simply to make sure he doesn't fall prey to a pack of devils. Some are curious and they want to see what happens. Things will happen. Timelines will shift and entwine. Pieces of a puzzle will fall into place. Destiny approaches my friend; for them, for me, for you, for all of us."</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p>The walk from Plague-Mort back to the gate to Sigil was uneventful, but filled with discussion of both Marvent's proposal and about just who or what the Illuminated Factol was.</p><p></p><p>"I don't think he's human." Tristol bluntly stated and a shrug and a slight bottlebrush of his tail. "When you were talking to him, I looked at him under a number of divination spells and well... it was bizarre to say the least."</p><p></p><p>"What did you see?" Fyrehowl's tail bristled as well, both from Tristol's statement and from the factol's casual mention of the howler hunting through Tristol and her dreams.</p><p></p><p>"There was an almost blinding level of magic radiating from him, but absolutely nothing on him. It looked as if he wasn't there at all, just an outline that was as magic dead as an artifact; and I've looked at an artifact today and it wasn't nearly as unnerving and paradoxical as it was just looking at him." The aasimar shivered slightly. "I'm not scared; I'm just not used to being utterly unable to give an answer as to what I'm even looking at."</p><p></p><p>"What is he then?" Clueless asked, unconsciously glancing down at the dagger at his belt that had once killed a god.</p><p></p><p>"Mystra only knows..." Tristol shrugged with a genuine moment of confusion. "Maybe he's a proxy, maybe he's the avatar of an actual Power, something. But he's not just some human with a knack of influencing people, some magic, and some political saavy to make an upstart Faction."</p><p></p><p>"Whatever he is," Toras shrugged, "I think we should at the very least go to Baator and see if there's some substance to what he mentioned."</p><p></p><p>"You think he's telling the truth?" Florian asked, "He had some pretty extreme claims for us to accept at just face value."</p><p></p><p>"I do." Toras inhaled and mulled over his words, "I can't say exactly why I trust him, but I do. The self-immolating minotaur was right in what he talked about with just being around their factol."</p><p></p><p>"Mind if I go with you?" Clueless strummed his fingers on Razor's hilt. "I haven't had enough practice with this for a while."</p><p></p><p>"Very appreciated if you would. I can't say that I want to walk into a noble baatezu's mansion and kill his dinner guests with at least someone at my back." Toras glanced at the others. "Anyone else?"</p><p></p><p>"I'm not letting you go alone." Florian clenched one fist. "I'm absolutely up for some righteous justice."</p><p></p><p>Fyrehowl's ears went back as she nodded, baring fangs, "I'm rather fed up with fiends at the moment, but I'm in. I can't let the three of you have all the fun."</p><p></p><p>"Is there candy involved?" Nisha's tail curled into the shape of a question mark, with the bell at her tail-tip forming the dot at the bottom rather well. "Or at least a Tristol involved?"</p><p></p><p>"I'm going if you're going." Tristol smiled and curled his tail around the tiefling's.</p><p></p><p>And that was that, decided just before they stepped through the portal back to Sigil and into the oddly friendly, welcoming grey and verdigris colored gloom of the City of Doors. Collectively they agreed that they would spend one last night in Sigil, enjoying dinner and a well deserved rest. They'd enjoy a warm breakfast in the morning, and then venture off to a portal to Baator's 7th layer and whatever there they might find in the gothic hellscape of an infernal duke's estate in Grenpoli.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shemeska, post: 6565020, member: 11697"] The sense of timeless drifting and sudden, bitter cold that accompanied the transition between Sigil and the far end of its innumerable portals was there and then gone in the space of a heartbeat. The group stepped from a doorway in the Lower Ward only a few blocks distant from 'The Friendly Fiend' into the mouth of a cave roughly a mile Hinterward of Plague-Mort itself, bathed in flickering red and yellow light while the portal remained open. Smelling faintly of mineral-rich water dripping through the rock and the scattered ranks of mushrooms sprouting from the walls at uneven intervals, the floor was littered with the bones of rodents, other small animals, and several corpses picked clean by natural predators or fiends. "Lovely place." Fyrehowl whined as her nose painted a picture of the previous few months of routine violence that marked the most obvious egress -out- of the abyssal gate-town. "It only gets better as we get closer to the Abyss I'm sure." Tristol remarked as he peered down at the bones. "You know, that's one place that I can't say that I've been." Toras shook his head as he looked at the bones that carpeted the ground. "I'm not in any particular rush either. Carceri and Pandemonium are about as close as I care to ever get if I can help it." Eyes glowing in the dim light, tail flitting and fretting like a disapproving relative, Nisha frowned. "Hey now, the Abyss has issues, but as the only vaguely theoretically tanar'ri-blooded person in the room... err... cave thing, I have to defend it just a little bit." Tristol gave her a hug, "You're the best thing to ever be associated -however distant- with the Abyss. You're much better than Plague-Mort." "You're all good Nisha." Florian patted her on the shoulder, "What I don't get though is why the Illuminated decide to set up kip in Plague-Mort of all places?" They talked as they moved away from the closing portal and out towards the blasted landscape that guarded the approach to the gatetown. "Nobody cares who rules, so long as the portal remains open." Clueless shrugged. "Anywhere else you have to deal with entrenched and loyal groups already in power, a population that cares for the status quo, all that fun stuff. It's actually a smart thing to stake their claim here, especially if it's transitory." "You think they want to move into Sigil once they're established here?" Toras mused, considering the group's pretensions of being a true faction. "That's exactly what I'd figure." Clueless motioned to the landscape in view as they emerged from the cave. "This place isn't the sort of place I'd care to stay. I suspect they're of the same mind." The broken landscape was littered with rubble and ruined walls, all the detritus of a thousand former gate-towns devoured by the Abyss piecemeal since time immemorial or abandoned by the population when the portal shifted location of its own cruel, fickle accord. A path worn into the ground by the passage of feet and wheels stretched out several miles ahead, winding through the barrens. At first it was only a few scattered piles of bleached bones and occasionally a "fresh" corpse only a week or so bled out on the ruddy soil. Once the ruins and hills yielded an open view to Plague-Mort itself though, the broken piles of brick and stone yielded to a landscape of corpses and scavengers, both of the avian variety and isolated humans picking through the dead for anything of value. The siege of the gatetown, the so-called "Tradegate of the Lower Planes" had been bloodless as far as an Abyssal coup was concerned, but before the Illuminated had risen up from within, Archlector Yamoril had vainly sent an army of mercenaries and his own citizens out into the field against the first wave of fiends. The bodies of the dead littered the landscape of the town and great flocks of vultures, ravens, and sympathetics darkened the skies as they circles and waited for larger, earthbound carrion-eaters to retreat, even now weeks after the slaughter. "Welcome to Plague-Mort, the happiest place in the Outlands..." Florian's voice dripped sarcasm. "As evidenced by the field of corpses littering the approach to the city." "Pay baatezu to fight and they fight but that's it." Toras shook his head. "Cleaning up after the fact apparently wasn't in their contract." The gatetown's walls were high and oppressive, a testimony to the previous Archlector's brutal dance of merciless oppression and manic desire to build up the city into a citadel capable of overshadowing and eventually overtaking Broken reach when he eventually slide the city into the Abyss as a formality. Unlike during Byrri Yarmoril's rule, the current approach to the city wasn't subject to sanctioned gangs that "taxed" those approaching the city in greedy, haphazard fashion. In fact, it almost seemed ordered and peaceful, with a single contingent of guards at the open gate on the main approach, and colored flags flying above the adjacent towers, all bearing the symbol of the Illuminated. "Nisha, what are you doing?" Florian glanced over at the Xaositect as the tiefling nibbled on something wrapped in wax paper, occasionally giggling as she did so, largely oblivious to the impressive vista before them. "Hrmph?" Nisha looked up at the cleric, a smear of chocolate on her cheek. "Want some?" Talking with her mouth full, she held up a miniature, dark chocolate Factol Sarin, modeled after the late Harmonium Factol, assassinated in the opening days of the Faction War. "Akin is selling candy now?" Fyrehowl tilted her head to the side, questioning. "That's why you had us make a detour to his shop before hitting the portal here? Not spell components or a wand or something else, but candy?" The Xaositect nodded with a smile, just before she munched on the iconic Hardhead's left arm. "I also got a white chocolate Factol Zanzibar. It even came with a peppermint hourglass lodged in his head!" Fyrehowl glanced sidelong at Nisha, "I'll try some of the chocolate Factol Sarin." "Sigil, the lovely city where a smiling yugoloth sells candy for a tanar'ri blooded tiefling to share with a lupinal." Florian laughed as Nisha handed over some of the candy to Fyrehowl and then to Tristol and Clueless in turn. Apparently the Friendly Fiend had a surprisingly adept hand with sweets. Chocolate-nomming tiefling ignoring it all aside, as they drew close to the city, they saw both its history and more subtly how the change in rule had impacted its appearance. The walls of Plague-Mort were an elaborate affair of flying buttresses, carved screaming faces, and ornamental blades clearly modeled on the same general style of stylized architecture as Sigil's. While the ruling forces of the gatetown had seen a change and subsequent purge of their supporters, the only visible difference in their passing was a change in the flags that flew from the unevenly spaced towers and that hung from the gates. "At least it's a pretty flag." Fyrehowl had to give the yellow and orange banner credit for decent design. At the very least, the Illuminated had to be given credit for having thought out the details of their rule well prior to actually seizing power. Very little seemed to have been accomplished in a half-assed manner or a spur-of-the-moment decision. Off to the side, Nisha continued to steadily devour chocolate Factol Sarin, now making voices for the late factol as she did so, "Noooo... not my other arm you dumb chaos person you! Noooooo! You'll face the justice of law and order! Ack not my shoulder! Noooo..." "I suspect a few days ago they had corpses hanging from the gates." Clueless pointed to faded, rust-red smudges along the walls and clustered at the top of the gate. "They made their point to the populace, but keep them there and it starts to hurt trade." Nisha giggled madly, joined shortly thereafter by Tristol joining in to ruffle her hair as his face beamed with the bright-eyed smile of a man in love. "What does Plague-Mort even trade in the first place?" Florian asked. "Tanar'ri?" Tristol chuckled and gave a shrug. Collectively they shrugged and shook their heads in the absence of an answer. Clearly though, the city had grown fat on commerce to and from the Abyss over the past century, and the Illuminated seemed keen to do nothing to dissuade that trade. In fact they appeared eager to encourage it to their own benefit. "Well, whatever they're trading, however they're intending to rule, and for what end, they're doing pretty well so far though." Clueless took note of the training and discipline clear in the gate guards' stance, as well as the quality of their weapons and armor. "Why do you say that?" Tristol asked as Nisha licked an errant bit of chocolate from his nose. "Simple," Clueless remarked, "Because Red Shroud hasn't marched an army from Broken Reach on the other side of the portal to the Abyss and butchered or enslaved every living thing in sight." "Someone knows how to handle infernal politics like a master of the trade." Florian raised her eyebrows in respect. "Because otherwise there's no way that you'd get away with marching a Baatezu army to the gates of the city without risking the Abyss itself taking notice." "The Abyss didn't take note, because the Hag Countess's army never stepped one diabolic foot in the city." The explanation came not from within the party, but from one of the guards standing at the gate. "We made very sure of that." Towering even above Toras, Koradus inclined his horned head towards the group. The half-elemental minotaur was engulfed in a flickering halo of flames that licked the air from every portion of his flesh not covered by the elaborate red and orange platemail that he wore. Effortlessly cradled in his arms, a gleaming halberd stood balanced with the implication of a man eminently skilled in its use. "Wow!" Toras muttered under his breath. "Self-cooking beef." Florian elbowed the half-celestial even as Nisha giggled and Clueless and Fyrehowl quickly tried to stifled any laughter of their own. The other guards at the gate were already occupied with a number of merchants and their horse-drawn carts loaded with all manner of trade goods, seemingly eager to profit in the immediate economic imbalance of the recently lifted siege. Only the minotaur, the captain of the city watch and factor of the Illuminated, remained free to see to the entry of the newest party to approach the gate. "May I ask what your business is within Plague-Mort?" Koradus still hadn't moved, either his feet or his halberd, nor responded to Toras's joke, though his ears had swiveled forward to hear it. "If you're hoping for mercenary work, I'm afraid that our use for your kind is a week elapsed. On the other hand, if you're here to inquire about the Illuminated, you are welcome to be judged fit to join with the Elect. It is not my choice of course, and I can guarantee nothing." "We're here by invitation actually." Toras held up the letter sent by the Illuminated factol. "Apparently your factol wants to meet with us." Immediately Koradus's eyes subtly narrowed and he focused on Toras and next to him, Florian, precisely as a swordsman would measure an opponent before a duel. He'd heard of two people killing several Illuminated factioneers in Sigil, albeit members abusing their power and flaunting their destined status. "Then consider yourselves lucky my friends." Koradus gave a short, respectful bow. "Factol Marvent is a great man, and we shine in his bright shadow. If he wishes to meet with you, I would not think of questioning your right to be here. Allow me then to escort you to his side." "Much appreciated." Florian smiled and allowed the minotaur to lead them all past the other guards and into Plague-Mort. The gatetown was split into four districts. The central portion of the city was one such distinct, and outside of its confines the remaining portions were more or less evening divided. The gate to the Abyss existed as part of the wall that divided the innermost quarter from the others, and in truth, very few people ever saw the gatetown's core, inclusive of both visitors and natives alike. That at least was the historical situation under the previous Archlector and all those before him. What the city looked like under its new leadership... that remained to be seen. Moving by a clearly pre-planned route, Koradus led them through the gates and then quickly off of the major thoroughfares, passing through a maze of tangled streets that seemed built up without regards to any rationale sense of city planning. Rather, Plague-Mort obeyed the demands of ego when it came to each ruler of the gatetown tearing down whatever structures of the previous regime to replace them piecemeal with their own as it suited their aesthetics. Eyes stared at them from windows and doorways, some of them dressed in the same colors as Koradus and clearly members of the new ruling order -a faction as it styled itself- and others in little more than rags or battered armor, the native population still adjusting to the change in rule. Plague-Mort's underclass seemed the least perturbed by the change in the ruling political structure. For them at least for the time being, nothing had changed in their daily lives. X lead them through the gatetown's Residential Quarter, conveniently and purposefully avoiding the streets that would have crossed over into the Temple Quarter. Under Archlector Yarmoril, only Outlands gods were officially allowed a place for temples or shrines, but in practice the farcical rule ignored that the largest temples and the majority of the temples were those of Abyssal powers and even a myriad of demon lords. That was no longer the case, and the Illuminated were keen to avoid this being common knowledge until they finished the second of their purges. Four blocks over, the temples of several Abyssal powers lay in smoldering ruins, their clergy dead and stripped of identifying symbols, distributed outside the city for the ravens to feast. There would be no rivals to the Illuminated within the city walls, and there would be no chance of the newly won city ever sliding into the Abyss. A certain amount of bloodthirsty rites would be ignored, but never anything reaching a critical mass of worshipers. Eventually the hovels and tenements of the Residential Quarter -colloquially known as the "Slums"- grew less offensive to the eyes of any architect or engineer and then they ended altogether at the wide, open ring of a plaza that demarcated the border of the three other quarters of the city with the central area known simply as The Keep. A city within a city, the black granite walls of the Keep rose two hundred feet up, taller than the gatetown's exterior walls so recently besieged from without. Not a true defensive wall, it was more an ideological one, serving to separate the interior courtyard with its merchants' fairs, public executions, and the homes of the city's most powerful -including the Palace of the Archlector- from the common residents of the city whose blood fed the parasites at the city's core, sometimes literally more so than just in metaphor. Though the Archlector was dead, the walls remained and for the moment so did the sense of separation they imposed of the high over the low, rich over poor, Elect over not. "And there's the portal." Fyrehowl shivered as the portal's light washed out over the courtyard. Thirty yards away, set within an archway in the wall, framed in a massive outgrowth of tangled razorvine, stood the gatetown's portal to the Abyss. "It's pretty, kinda sorta," Nisha said as she balled up the wax paper that had wrapped her now finished. "In a doorway to certain horrific doom sort of way." "More of the latter than the former." Koradus said as they passed within full view of the gaping, perpetually open wound in reality. Beyond the rippling meniscus of adjacent realities, the Plane of Infinite Portals stretched out forever beneath the angry light of a bloody sky and ground soaked through with the same color and paved with bones and souls. Visible in the distance, more than one army of fiends could be seen either in transit across the layer, or in the midst of conflict with an opposing force of fiends. "Whatever it looks like from here, that's not where it takes you." Koradus smirked. "Not that many people will tell you if you don't already know before you take the plunge through." "Where does it actually go?" Florian raised an eyebrow. "I couldn't think it would be anywhere worse than that." "Better or worse is an open question I suppose. It goes to a holding area below Broken Reach." Koradus frowned, an element of distaste and intimate familiarity with the topic playing across his features. "Malcanthet's daughter makes sure that anyone using the portal from this side pays her her cut in transit. Many don't find out about it until they're already on the other side. Those unable to pay end up working off their debts if they're lucky, having their property seized, or just sold off to the highest bidder be it tanar'ri or even 'loths doing the buying. Fiends..." "No love lost for them?" Fyrehowl picked at the minotaur's commentary, hoping to measure him better, and by extension to measure his sect-come-faction. "They're part of reality." Koradus shrugged as they approached the Palace of the Archlector, "Like the weather, it's something you don't have to like or even appreciate to know that you have to deal with it, even when it gets messy. Thankfully I don't have to be the one dealing with them unless it's on the end of a blade. I served in a mercenary company in the Blood War for a decade, mostly on Othrys and some time in Acheron; I've seen enough fiends for a lifetime." The Palace seemed out of place in the gatetown that they'd seen up to that point. Far from being like the Keep's granite walls, the Palace wasn't imposing in the sense of fear, rather it was elaborate to the point of pomposity. Elegant spires glazed in silver, walls covered with intricate mosaics of green steel and gold, columns of pink and blue-green marble, and everywhere the same spikes and ornamental blades as the greatest mansions of Sigil's golden lords. "There's only so much I can say about the Archlector's taste." Koradus snorted. "Lot of good his obnoxious display of wealth got him in the end when he ended up hanging from the gate to rot. Power doesn't need to show off. It doesn't need external validation." "So what can you tell us about your Factol?" Tristol asked as they neared the doors of the Palace. "He's a great man," Koradus answered with a pause, as if he were momentarily lost in a memory. His expression carried with it the dreamy, absolute conviction of a man saved from something by virtue of a religious experience. "But he doesn't need me to promote him with stories or boasts. Like I said before, power doesn't need to show off. He doesn't." The great brass and green-steel doors of the Palace stood ajar, held open by adamantine chains and attended by only a pair of guards to either side. There was no sense that to intrude would invite death, no sense of the separation that the great Keep walls imposed upon the populace. Either the Faction was so self-assured of their own safety to the point of self-delusion, or their ruling figures genuinely felt no fear, and felt no fear for good reasons. "Welcome to the palace of the Archlector, faction headquarters of the Illuminated." Koradus opened the doors and stepped to the side. "Factol Marvent will speak with you inside. When you are ready to depart, I will escort you out." "Wait," Clueless looked at the minotaur. "You're not coming in with us?" Koradus shook his head, "No need." "How will we find the Factol?" Florian shot an incredulous look. "It's a big palace." "He'll find you." Koradus shrugged as if the thought of them wandering about aimlessly within wasn't a concern. "Oh come on," Toras frowned at the minotaur and then the other guards, "I don't have a clue what he looks like. How will I know it's him?" "You'll know." Again, the look of awe passed over Koradus's face. "What do you mean, we'll know?" Toras held his hands up in exasperation, "I don't even know what species he is." Koradus locked eyes with the half-celestial, "I've looked a balor in the eyes beneath the mocking stars of Othrys. I was terrified and I fully expected to die as it roared to the fifty thousand fiends under its command. I knew fear in that moment, but I was never awed in another being's presence before I met Factol Marvent. When I say that you'll know him when you meet him, I'm quite serious." [center]****[/center] Without escort and left to their own devices, they proceeded through the doors of the palace, hoping to find the Illuminated factol within. Unsure of what he looked like, where he would be within the sprawling, baroque confines of the former Palace of the Archlector, or if they weren't simply walking into a trap, they went as slowly as possible. The walls were adorned with more mosaics panels where they weren't simply marble shot through with veins of precious metals, all produced by the labor of the exploited. Yarmoril had been a cruel, fiend of a man, but at least he had superficial taste, though his passing in recent days was still subtly visible on those very same walls. Clearly the Illuminated had done their utmost to remove all traces of the violence that had erupted during their coup, but here and there, there remained traces to see if you knew what to look for: a sword cut in a marble column, a bit of soot arranged in a faint ring to mark where a fireball had erupted, and the bubbling, discolored blotch on a stone wall to mark the passage of a lightning bolt. Only a minute later as they walked into the main gallery of the Palace, Clueless paused. Down at his belt, the dagger that he'd taken from the Cathedral of the Chained God moved and tugged at its confinement. He pushed it down and tightened the belt, watching as the blade vibrated in place like an eager child. "The hell...?" The bladesinger frowned as he continued to fuss with the blade. "Problem?" Tristol glanced down at the black glass dagger. "The dagger from the Outlands." He answered, "Yeah, -that- one. It's trying to move on its own. I didn't think that it was magical though." "It isn't..." Tristol stared at the blade, whispered a cantrip and confirmed his earlier assessment. "It's not magical at all." "Then why the hell is it trying to move on its own?" Clueless frowned as he tugged at a leather cord keeping his belt pouch secured shut, intending to lash the blade in place. Clueless never had the chance to carry through with the idea. "Greetings!" An average, plain-looking man that might easily be confused with a faction functionary or servant called out to them all as he stepped out from a stairwell. "Allow me to introduce myself and welcome you to Plague-Mort. My people..." As Green Marvent of the Illuminated stepped into view, the obsidian blade tugging at Clueless's belt burst free of its constraints and flung itself through the air, aiming directly for the man's chest. "Oh sh*t!" Clueless stumbled forward, grasping for the blade a second after it shot forward, hopelessly out of reach. Marvent blinked and stepped back as the dagger used to sacrifice the divine patron of the tiere hurtled towards him, whistling as it did. Just as abruptly as the blade had acted of its own accord, the factol held up his right hand and plucked it out of the air with a nearly whimsical smile. More concerned with the dagger than with his guests, he cradled the still dancing blade in both hands, turning it over and examining it with awkward, startled curiosity. Holding the blade firmly in his hands to keep it still, he looked up at the bladesinger. "That's not quite the entrance that I had planned..." "Woah woah woah!" Toras shouted as he glared at Clueless and then much more apologetically at Marvent, "We didn't come here to try and kill you!" Nisha cringed emphatically, holding her hands over her head, "Please don't throw us in a dungeon!" No guards were immediately forthcoming, not even at the sounds of shouting. Marvent chuckled when several long moments later two guards did peer in. He dismissed them with a half-hearted wave, still holding the dagger tightly. Clueless stepped forward with this arms out, palms up, eyes wide with shock, "I'm so so sorry, I don't know what just happened." Marvent stared at the blade for a moment more before pinching it between two fingers and holding it out. Offering the cold, black glass handle first, he smiled at Clueless. "You've a dangerous thing here. It's an artifact if you didn't know that already." He traced his fingers over the cold glass, running them along the grooves where he felt runes should have been but had never been cut. It screamed inchoate rage, a litany of invectives, a harrowing depth of loss and despair. Marvent clicked his tongue at the blade, "It's seen so much death and misery that now permeates its heart. It feels vengeance and hatred, though it doesn't seem to know why or for whom. It reeks of betrayal and despair, even though it never pierced the one it was originally crafted to kill." Marvent frowned, seeming almost sad by the blade's presence, smiling again once Clueless took the dagger back. "I don't know what just happened." The bladesinger hastily wrapped the blade in multiple layers of cloth before stuffing it into a bag of holding. "My apologies sir." "No need for titles, be it sir or anything even larger or more put on. No need for apologies either." Marvent smiled with a ludicrous sense of confidence and utter calm, despite what had just happened. "Simply know that you have a dangerous, powerful item there. Keep such a thing safe, because you may one day need it." Having fully recovered from the accidental assassination attempt that the Factol of the Illuminated didn't seem so much as even rattled by, the others gathered around the man. Like his own faction members, despite his plain appearance and lack of ornamentation or physical presence, they felt his presence nonetheless. As he spoke, his blue eyes seemed all the more piercing, his voice all the more rich, warm, and calming. It was all like sitting before the greatest bard ever to walk the planes, but Marvent wasn't playing an instrument, nor was there any evidence of spellcasting as far as Tristol perceived. "Well," Toras held up the letter of apology that Marvent had sent after he and Florian had killed a half-dozen of the man's faction members, "We received your letter. What all did you want to meet with us about, and what about me specifically?" "Toras my son, you have a brilliant path laid out before you, if only you would reach for it. There is so much that you could accomplish above and beyond the concerns that most people in this world consider." Marvent smiled warmly and folded his hands in front of him, looking more a priest speaking to a child on the cusp of adulthood than the ruler of a faction, self-declared or not. "You don't need me to be happy, to be wealthy, to have friends and loved ones and to keep those around you safe. You're a skilled man with a good heart. You have a skilled sword arm and the blood of angels runs through your veins. Not everyone has these qualities nor these gifts, and many who do, they spoil them on selfish vanities rather than reaching for something greater." Toras eyed the factol skeptically, "That sounds like a pitch you've made to most of the people in your faction." "In a way, yes." Green Marvent chuckled and inclined his head towards the warrior. "In the general sense that's what we're about. Taking what you are and reaching for something greater. You might see elements of the Signers, Godsmen, or Fated here, but people see what they want to see very often. What I do is guide people to find their potential, to find their greatness, and then share that with the world. We are destined for something greater, and I've seen that you are a part of it." As Marvent focused on Toras, Tristol moved to the side and gazed curiously at the self-titled Factol, activating the most common of divinations without words or motion. Where he expected to see the man wearing a wealth of magical items, protective talismans, contingencies, and even a lurking suspicion that he wasn't a human at all... what Tristol saw wasn't what he expected, nor was it anything that he genuinely understood. Marvent literally radiated a magical aura that was nearly blinding in its potency, but under magical divination, he himself vanished in all but outline, existing as a hollow void within the glow itself. Tristol blinked against the potency of the magic, but also in abject confusion. He'd never seen anything remotely close to what he was now staring at, with his friends in conversation with the otherwise seemingly normal man who looked like nothing less than what an ambulatory magical artifact might appear as. [I]'What are you?'[/I] Tristol thought to himself as he continued to stare. "I see the flow of future events," Marvent gave a self-effacing shrug. "It isn't the same as a diviner obtaining a specific event and specific details, but more of an intuitive grasp of how timelines flow, entwine, and interact. I can see potential, and I see it here in each of you." "But you already knew that didn't you?" Nisha quipped with a whisper, followed by a giggle. "As a matter of fact yes Nisha, I did." Marvent leaned to the side and peered at the tiefling with a smile that she returned with a slight blush, realizing that she'd never given him her name. "Don't get me wrong, I can't see the entire future clear as day. I'm not a Power of foresight or wisdom, but I can do my best to alter the flow of things for the better." "So why in specific did you ask for us, all of us, to be here today?" Toras asked, "Was all of this planned out to bring us here?" "I wanted to offer an apology for what some of my people did in Sigil." Marvent frowned and sighed. "I can't see everything, not even close to it. Obviously I didn't see what abuses that they'd commit, thinking themselves some sort of Elect and free of ethics or consequences. But when you stopped them, that's when I saw something about you. I also know something that you can do. Specifically you." "Apology accepted." Toras offered his hand, joined next by Florian. Marvent gave a half bow and shook their hands firmly. "In taking Plague-Mort, we employed mercenaries working under the banner of the Hag Countess. For a moment I saw something tangent to this all, and something that the six of you can take action upon, given the things that you've already done, people you've met, and creatures that you've interacted with and survived." Marvent reached into the inner pocket of his robe and produced a folded parchment. "This map describes the route from Sigil to Baator's 7th layer of Maladomini. There in two days time, a mortal elf will be the guest of Duke Melikaros the Pale Winged, a minor baatezu noble in the court of Baalzebul. For the moment he is evil and largely inconsequential. But this meeting will put him on the path of future events wherein he will cause the future deaths of millions of innocents on his home world on the prime material plane. After this window of opportunity, he may well be lost to us." "You want us to kill him?" Toras asked rhetorically, a shadow of doubt crossing his features. Marvent nodded, "He cannot be allowed to live to do what he is otherwise destined for. I've seen what will happen when he looses the Blood War onto his world, turning a blue and green sphere in the darkness into a dead husk of ash and cinders." The half-celestial looked down and his forehead creased with doubt, "I'm not sure how I feel about assassinating someone." "I can't and won't force you into this. You ended the suffering of dozens when you killed twelve people in an ambush in Sigil. You didn't know their names or their associations, but you killed them nonetheless thinking you were doing good in the long run. This is one man and you would prevent the suffering of untold millions from ever happening." Marvent put the map into Toras's hand. "The choice is yours and you're free to go unimpeded. I wish you well on your journey back to Sigil. I know that you'll be back here though. That I've seen. Neither men, nor fiends, nor howling dreams will bar that potential future from solidifying into truth." Meaningless words to the others, Tristol and Fyrehowl immediately stared at one another as Marvent alluded to the dreams that they'd both been having. It might have simply been poetic license, but the man -if that's what he was- knew things that he couldn't possibly know. Perhaps he was right about a single man in Baator, and what that man might do in the future. "We'll think about it." Florian said with a measured tone, followed by a nervous swallow, "It's a lot to take in, and it's a lot to ask of us when we've only just met you." "You have two, perhaps three days in total before this opportunity is lost. Please make your decision as swiftly as you can." Marvent smiled at each of them in turn, and each of them felt virtually transparent as he gazed into their eyes. For that short moment, they each felt paradoxically empowered and diminished under his gaze. "It was my pleasure meeting you all, but if you'll pardon me, I have other duties to attend to. Such is the busy life of running a faction. Tell next time we meet, be well." Marvent smiled one last time and left by the stairwell he'd first come through, leaving the party behind to discuss things amongst themselves. He ascended the stairs and then stood quietly on a balcony, just out of view from below, watching them as they departed. He stood there for only a moment alone and by himself before Koradus opened an adjacent door and approached with a deft, almost automatic bow. Like he'd done with the party moments before, he brushed off the bow with a gesture as something unnecessary. "Do you wish to have them followed Factol?" "No need to do so." The blue of his eyes sparkled as he turned to look at the minotaur. "They've already made up their mind, more or less; the half-celestial has at least. The others have questions, but they'll go along with him simply to make sure he doesn't fall prey to a pack of devils. Some are curious and they want to see what happens. Things will happen. Timelines will shift and entwine. Pieces of a puzzle will fall into place. Destiny approaches my friend; for them, for me, for you, for all of us." [center]****[/center] The walk from Plague-Mort back to the gate to Sigil was uneventful, but filled with discussion of both Marvent's proposal and about just who or what the Illuminated Factol was. "I don't think he's human." Tristol bluntly stated and a shrug and a slight bottlebrush of his tail. "When you were talking to him, I looked at him under a number of divination spells and well... it was bizarre to say the least." "What did you see?" Fyrehowl's tail bristled as well, both from Tristol's statement and from the factol's casual mention of the howler hunting through Tristol and her dreams. "There was an almost blinding level of magic radiating from him, but absolutely nothing on him. It looked as if he wasn't there at all, just an outline that was as magic dead as an artifact; and I've looked at an artifact today and it wasn't nearly as unnerving and paradoxical as it was just looking at him." The aasimar shivered slightly. "I'm not scared; I'm just not used to being utterly unable to give an answer as to what I'm even looking at." "What is he then?" Clueless asked, unconsciously glancing down at the dagger at his belt that had once killed a god. "Mystra only knows..." Tristol shrugged with a genuine moment of confusion. "Maybe he's a proxy, maybe he's the avatar of an actual Power, something. But he's not just some human with a knack of influencing people, some magic, and some political saavy to make an upstart Faction." "Whatever he is," Toras shrugged, "I think we should at the very least go to Baator and see if there's some substance to what he mentioned." "You think he's telling the truth?" Florian asked, "He had some pretty extreme claims for us to accept at just face value." "I do." Toras inhaled and mulled over his words, "I can't say exactly why I trust him, but I do. The self-immolating minotaur was right in what he talked about with just being around their factol." "Mind if I go with you?" Clueless strummed his fingers on Razor's hilt. "I haven't had enough practice with this for a while." "Very appreciated if you would. I can't say that I want to walk into a noble baatezu's mansion and kill his dinner guests with at least someone at my back." Toras glanced at the others. "Anyone else?" "I'm not letting you go alone." Florian clenched one fist. "I'm absolutely up for some righteous justice." Fyrehowl's ears went back as she nodded, baring fangs, "I'm rather fed up with fiends at the moment, but I'm in. I can't let the three of you have all the fun." "Is there candy involved?" Nisha's tail curled into the shape of a question mark, with the bell at her tail-tip forming the dot at the bottom rather well. "Or at least a Tristol involved?" "I'm going if you're going." Tristol smiled and curled his tail around the tiefling's. And that was that, decided just before they stepped through the portal back to Sigil and into the oddly friendly, welcoming grey and verdigris colored gloom of the City of Doors. Collectively they agreed that they would spend one last night in Sigil, enjoying dinner and a well deserved rest. They'd enjoy a warm breakfast in the morning, and then venture off to a portal to Baator's 7th layer and whatever there they might find in the gothic hellscape of an infernal duke's estate in Grenpoli. [center]****[/center] [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
Top