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Story Hour
Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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<blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 6573848" data-attributes="member: 11697"><p>The most stable route to Grenpoli led via the permanent gate from Ribcage to Avernus. From there, through the great door adjacent to Tiamat's domain, the route followed a tightly regulated and brutally defended path designed to funnel the armies of Baator out and prevent the entry of those tanar'ri armies that dreamed of invading the 9 Hells. For single travelers or smaller groups however, those rarer and much more fickle portals in Sigil allowed for a complete circumvention of the conventional routes.</p><p></p><p>Adjacent to the Park of the Infernal and Divine, formed by the bounded space of an iron garden lattice and a breed of violet, hell-bred roses, one such portal stood wide and welcoming with a pale blue glow and the faintest smell of perfume and hot steel.</p><p></p><p>"And you're absolutely sure that you want to go to Grenpoli?" Skalliska stood next to the portal with a complex silver hoop in one hand and a triad of mewling kobold infants in the other. The ring was inscribed with the names of various planes and dangled with multiple metallic rods and crystalline lenses. A skilled portal-hunter could use them in combination to both find portals, determine their destinations and keys, and -at least outside of Sigil- temporarily force them open or closed.</p><p></p><p>The kobold gate-crasher had been largely absent from their lives ever since laying her clutch. Today however she'd taken a rare trip out into the city to help her former party members find a safer route into Grenpoli the so-called City of Diplomacy.</p><p></p><p>"So let me get this straight," Skalliska adjusted her hat to put its wide, ornamented brim outside of the range of one of her children's teeth. "You're going to Maladomini, to the city of Grenpoli, to visit the court of an infernal Duke to possibly kill one of his dinner guests because a person you just met in Plague-Mort of all places, asked you to trust him and do this, because the soon-to-be-corpse might do something terrible in the future?"</p><p></p><p>Silence fell over them all and the kobold raised one scaled brow-ridge to emphasize her incredulity.</p><p></p><p>"It's complicated." Florian protested, "You really had to be there. He was rather convincing to say the least."</p><p></p><p>Toras coughed, "Besides, we didn't commit to anything. We're going there sure. But if anything is off, we don't have to assassinate anyone if we're falling for a trap or anything of the sort."</p><p></p><p>Skalliska nodded, "Fair enough. Just watch yourself since it's Grenpoli. It has a reputation for leading mortals astray or just right into the service of the baatezu."</p><p></p><p>"I haven't actually been there before." Fyrehowl yawned, looking quite bleary eyed and exhausted. "What exactly should we expect in Grenpoli?"</p><p></p><p>"By reputation it's rather polite to mortals." Skalliska explained.</p><p></p><p>"-polite-" Toras provided air-quotes and a humorless, sarcastic chuckle.</p><p></p><p>"Compared to the rest of the layer, very much so." The kobold continued, "Sure it's all a creepy attempt to ensnare your souls and exert influence and control over people to serve in Baator's best interests out in the rest of the cosmos, but you won't find yourself attacked and enslaved just for walking around."</p><p></p><p>"So don't sign any contracts, try not to strike a conversation with a friendly erinyes or osyluth?"</p><p></p><p>"More or less. Just get in and get out." Skalliska nodded and went on to describe in detail the structure of the city, its history, and the route from the other side of the portal to the Duke's manor on the city's outskirts.</p><p></p><p>As the gate-crasher provided more information that might be of use to them all for their descent into Hell, Fyrehowl and Tristol exchanged worried glances. Both of them looked as if they hadn't slept a wink of sleep overnight. Despite hours of rest, they were both exhausted and mentally distracted.</p><p></p><p>The previous night had been the same for them both. All was black and silent, and then accompanied by the twitching of their eyes beneath slumbering lids, the howler had crawled into their somnambulant minds. Gibbering, whispering, and promising things, all coherent meaning was lost to memory with the first light of morning.</p><p></p><p>Whatever the grinning, mad thing from Pandemonium desired from them, sleep and sanity were apparently far from the gifts that it offered in their dreams. As yet however, they were no closer to finding any answer. Even as they stepped through the portal towards Grenpoli and transitioned between Sigil and the Hells, they felt it there within their skulls, prowling within the black and hidden interstices of the mind.</p><p></p><p><em>Do you hear the code?</em></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p>The Gatehouse rose up within the heart of Sigil's Hive Ward, grim and fortresslike in appearance, looming atop a great rise in the landscape like the archetypal haunted castle. The great cage-like structure at its center bore the fantastic, bizarre hallmarks of a prison cell for a creature larger than the greatest of titans, and conspicuously missing any portcullis gate that might have once contained it. Whatever use and purpose it may have once filled however, for millennia the Gatehouse had served as a place of mercy and compassion, most recently by the Bleak Cabal.</p><p></p><p>The Bleakers no longer held any formal power and the faction had been formally disbanded. But the Bleakers remained in place nonetheless, serving food and tending the injuries and disease that ran through the poor and destitute of Sigil's poor and abandoned.</p><p></p><p>Beyond the ancient, forgotten prison-cell of the Gatehouse's earliest foundations, however rose one wing of the structure that few new much about nor cared about, and one which catered almost exclusively to the Bleakers and former Bleakers alike: the criminally and irretrievably insane wing. </p><p></p><p>There the Bleakers applied a different sort of mercy by imprisoning their own members who had fallen into the spiraling madness that lurked just below the surface of their own brutal, existential view of a meaningless, absolutely free cosmos. Their view allowed for either perfect freedom or a tidal wave to consume and swallow the mind with the sheer uselessness of it all.</p><p></p><p>Many of the imprisoned Bleakers survived and recovered, returning to their former lives not necessarily healed but at peace with themselves and their fate. Others though starved to death before finding themselves, though their compatriots provided them food and water each day. A third and exclusive group comprised only a few individuals - those deemed too dangerous in their madness to ever be released and whose shattered sanity removed any chance of recovery.</p><p></p><p>Buried in the heart of the structure, now only recently fully repaired from the explosion that had ripped through the structure less than a year earlier, three individuals sat within the cells. The three were imprisoned but most certainly not forgotten. All very much alive, and most disturbingly, it was not for lack of trying for the opposite on the part of their former faction members.</p><p></p><p>"Can't you feel it Bladed Queen? Can't you feel the end approaching? 295 days, 7 hours, 13 minutes, and 5 seconds until the clock in the Waste strikes midnight. I feel it, dragging like a dying, spinning star on the fabric of reality. It echoes forward and backward in time, but not an absolute outcome, not yet. Not ever…"</p><p></p><p>Tollysalmon's eyes glowed a puissant, featureless white in the darkness of her cell. Erratically so, a burning white corona of energy formed around her head, forming crackling loops of electrical, psionic force before discharging and grounding itself upon the floor or ceiling with the sharp smell of ozone. Dirty and dressed only in rags, she'd been imprisoned there for nearly two centuries, not having touched a bite of food or a drop of water during that time. Yet still she remained, eerily distant, self-assured, and by all appearances utterly, utterly mad.</p><p></p><p>During her tenure she'd ignored the Bleakers for the most part, speaking only to herself, invisible -and possibly nonexistent- creatures only she perceived, and voices only she could hear. She'd never once spoken to the Gehreleth whose death had peeled back the ceilings and obliterated the walls, at least not until she spoke its name, its actual name, with a wry, gloating smile when she looked it in the eyes the moment that death arrived for it courtesy of the Cheshire Fiend.</p><p></p><p>She had however spoken with the other two former Bleaker factols who occupied their own cells opposite hers. Both were already mad and consumed by their own flavors of existential grief and misery before they'd been forced from their positions and locked away. Years or decades of proximity to their githyanki predecessor had not by any measure improved their state.</p><p></p><p>Out of earshot of their terrified Bleaker caretakers, Tollysalmon stared, whispered, taught, and manipulated. Esmus had never possessed his own eerie psionic abilities prior to his incarceration, and while as of yet, Lhar had not manifested any similar powers, slowly his mind was bending and changing, all unlikely for the better.</p><p></p><p>Nine times since her imprisonment, githyanki warriors from Tu'narath had sought to capture her and drag her before the lich queen to have her soul devoured. Unable to do so, the next four attempts simply tried to kill her, but these attempts failed as well. Precisely what occurred during the attempts was unknown, as none of the assassins ever returned to tell the story of their failure, nor were any of their bodies ever found. Tu’narath ceased the attempts thereafter, and through it all, Tollysalmon remained in her cell, smiling in the darkness with the same eerie, supernatural self-assurance and contempt.</p><p></p><p>"Oh yes Bladed Queen, I feel your eyes upon me always. Never blinking, never speaking a word, nonetheless I know you've been watching over me for so very, very long. Perhaps you should have been paying attention to other threats." The githyanki chuckled and put her hands up in a display of indifference. "This assumes that you even care. Even if you don't, I in fact do. I wonder if that galls you, given what I want? The Oinoloth clearly has been working on his own designs for a very, very long time. Longer than most creatures can fathom. But of course, so have I. Longer than I can usually remember. Bitch..."</p><p></p><p>Tollysalmon snarled and the debris that littered the floor of her cell shifted and moved, orienting to the psionic wind from her mind like iron filings along the field lines of a magnetic field. For the briefest moment, the walls of the cell flickered and shifted from the inner light of hundreds of thousands of crystalline grains embedded into the stone: a coating of psi-crystal broken down into dust and painted there, invisible to anyone but her.</p><p></p><p>The cell returned to darkness except for the former factol's eyes, and there she brooded in silence. Only the soft, sporadic whimpering of Lhar across the hallway broke the still, until finally her successor spoke.</p><p></p><p>"A friend of my friends may be visiting us soon." Esmus whispered from his cell, a soft, barely discernible chuckle added to punctuate the statement. "Assuming that he survives whatever the baatezu have in store for him. I don't think he understands why he went to Maladomini in the first place."</p><p></p><p>"Alex, yes. The one that you’ve been sending dreams to." Tollysalmon looked up at the sound of Esmus's voice. "Maybe he'll come and tell us what his soon-to-be-companions are involved in. Things and places they visit have a tendency to hide themselves away."</p><p></p><p>"Such curious, interesting times." The human remarked, madness dancing in his eyes. "We so rarely have visitors, but you seem to draw them in like a tidal current. The important ones anyway."</p><p></p><p>"For longer than you can imagine." The githyanki sighed.</p><p></p><p>"Alex will be interesting to finally meet." Esmus tapped his fingers on his cell walls in a discordant rhythm. "He's powerful, if not at all subtle about it.”</p><p></p><p>“I doubt that he has any clue what he’s going to be involved in once he joins up with the others.” The githyanki’s voice was devoid of concern, “Sooner or later, he’s going to die you know.”</p><p></p><p>Esmus snorted, somewhere between a cough and a laugh, equally uncaring, “He doesn’t matter.”</p><p></p><p>In the darkness of her cell, Tollysalmon smiled a slender, transient yet malicious smirk, eyes glowing a cold, featureless white. "Neither do you puppet, neither do you…"</p><p> </p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p> </p><p>Flames licked at the air like thousands of infernal tongues from the city's spires. Dancing in reflections and refractions through the glass of the gothic architecture of Maladomini, they shed a hard, red glow across the tower roof where Agrefaz stood at his post. The barbazu yawned and ran a hand through his beard, the wriggling, prehensile mass likewise scratching at the intruding limb.</p><p></p><p>The Duke was up to something. As it was, his star was rising in the court of the Lord of the 7th, and there was talk of him being elevated in position, possibly even granted additional holdings and responsibilities. But this material, these details of the past and speculation upon the future meant little for the Duke's sentry, save that he was likely to be more harshly disciplined for any minute lapse in order and the smallest violation of stricture. But, on the other hand, success by his master would likely trickle down to him and the others in the Duke's service. A word here, a word there, a favorable notation upon a report discretely filed with the clerks and bureaucrats of the Ministry of Promotions - these things would oil the gears of Hell's bureaucracy with something sweeter than honey on the tongue.</p><p> </p><p>Agrefaz smiled at the thought of earning another elevation through the ranks, possibly to cornugon or erinyes. It wouldn't be his choice, but that of his commanders, those who already had passed through the flames of Phlegethos before him and knew the way and how best to re-forge him, to temper the steel of the soul.</p><p> </p><p>The Duke's affairs were not his concern, but only speculation for his own future indeed. Yet for all his prideful hope, those vain aspirations were collectively something that would never come to pass if he was not watchful in his current duties atop the northwestern wall, adjacent to the vineyards in the second tier of the Duke's estate.</p><p></p><p>Security had been increased most recently, only in the past two days, but no reasons were forthcoming, at least not overtly. Rumors though had filtered down through the ranks, rumors of a powerful guest soon to grace the estate for a period of time, supposedly an ambassador of one of the Lords of the 9. The rumors of course did not speculate precisely which one, or under what auspices the representative would be there under, just that they would be an honored guest and nothing -absolutely nothing- was to be amiss during the duration of their stay.</p><p></p><p>Lost in his musings, Agrefaz idly swatted at one of the myriad of insects flitting about with hungry idiocy, drunken on the bloated black flowers that grew at the base of the Duke's vines. The air was especially thick with them tonight, perhaps he thought, the vineyard slaves had poured the blood of innocents upon the soil to fertilize this year's harvest.</p><p> </p><p>Below the wall, the air veritably whirled with the passage of those same insects, hellish variants of the bees that pollinated mortal flowers. Normal and mundane, at least to the barbazu above them, there was nothing to differentiate them from the thousands of their kind spread out across each and every acre of the Duke's estate. </p><p></p><p>Unnoticed by the baatezu above them, the insects began to congeal and melt away as they reached the walls of the estate. Seamlessly they merged with the shadows cast upon the ramparts by the flickering city lights, pooling and rising up towards the sentry like a wave of living shadow, perfectly camouflaged with its surroundings.</p><p></p><p>Agrefaz heard only the sudden and eerie cessation of the buzzing insects as he turned to look and then it was upon him. For all his hopes and aspirations about his future, his soul would never reach the lake of fire - only the fangs of something whose transfiguration was achieved two planes away.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p>Precisely five minutes later and not a second after, Agrefaz would have met and switched positions on the ramparts with one of the other sentries. The infernal clockwork of the Duke's sentries was a well oiled machine, and despite the doom that had befallen the barbazu only minutes before, at the appointed time a door unlocked with the turning of an iron key and the falling of heavy, magically reinforced tumblers.</p><p></p><p>Prepared for a twelve hour stint on this small portion of the eastern ramparts, the osyluth Celatszu stepped out of the manor and raised his glaive up to the dancing lights visible across the Grenpoli skyline.</p><p></p><p>"All hail to Duke Melikaros the Pale Winged, and eternal reign to Baalzebul the Lord of the..."</p><p></p><p>The osyluth's voice trailed off to a whisper as he beheld his barbazu compatriot. Agrefaz dangled in mid-air, suspended and impaled by a trio of barbed spikes, twitching and frothing at the mouth. The creature that held him aloft on its iridescent, oddly fluid claws was something from nightmare, itself bubbling up from a larger mass that flowed up and over the ramparts, its mass almost perfectly matching the color and texture of the stone below it, as well as the patterns of the ambient light.</p><p></p><p>An amalgamation of dozens of spiked tentacles, clawed hands and feet, and a trio of scorpion's tails, the entity changed its shape more so than moving to turn and look at the intruding baatezu. Its body rippled, gazing at him with a dozen newly formed eyes and a dozen smiles. The osyluth could barely form a cohesive thought in the moment beyond pure, stark horror, before the entity's mouths collectively intoned a single puissant word, splattering the ramparts with the lesser fiend's imploded remains.</p><p> </p><p>Blood red eyes illuminated the darkness, shedding light on myriad rows of fangs as it glanced at the remains. The creature slipped out a pseudo-pod that became a hand. It extended a finger to touch the osyluth gore splashed upon the ramparts, slipping out a tongue from the mouth newly formed in its hand, tasting it, absorbing it, and morphologically usurping it. Within moments and all without a sound, an osyluth stepped through the door leading away from the ramparts, with nothing unique about it, save that it had never had that same unique shade of red to its eyes, sunken back into its skull.</p><p></p><p>Taba, the Infiltrator of the Planes, the sole surviving altraloth smiled and continued towards its prey.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shemeska, post: 6573848, member: 11697"] The most stable route to Grenpoli led via the permanent gate from Ribcage to Avernus. From there, through the great door adjacent to Tiamat's domain, the route followed a tightly regulated and brutally defended path designed to funnel the armies of Baator out and prevent the entry of those tanar'ri armies that dreamed of invading the 9 Hells. For single travelers or smaller groups however, those rarer and much more fickle portals in Sigil allowed for a complete circumvention of the conventional routes. Adjacent to the Park of the Infernal and Divine, formed by the bounded space of an iron garden lattice and a breed of violet, hell-bred roses, one such portal stood wide and welcoming with a pale blue glow and the faintest smell of perfume and hot steel. "And you're absolutely sure that you want to go to Grenpoli?" Skalliska stood next to the portal with a complex silver hoop in one hand and a triad of mewling kobold infants in the other. The ring was inscribed with the names of various planes and dangled with multiple metallic rods and crystalline lenses. A skilled portal-hunter could use them in combination to both find portals, determine their destinations and keys, and -at least outside of Sigil- temporarily force them open or closed. The kobold gate-crasher had been largely absent from their lives ever since laying her clutch. Today however she'd taken a rare trip out into the city to help her former party members find a safer route into Grenpoli the so-called City of Diplomacy. "So let me get this straight," Skalliska adjusted her hat to put its wide, ornamented brim outside of the range of one of her children's teeth. "You're going to Maladomini, to the city of Grenpoli, to visit the court of an infernal Duke to possibly kill one of his dinner guests because a person you just met in Plague-Mort of all places, asked you to trust him and do this, because the soon-to-be-corpse might do something terrible in the future?" Silence fell over them all and the kobold raised one scaled brow-ridge to emphasize her incredulity. "It's complicated." Florian protested, "You really had to be there. He was rather convincing to say the least." Toras coughed, "Besides, we didn't commit to anything. We're going there sure. But if anything is off, we don't have to assassinate anyone if we're falling for a trap or anything of the sort." Skalliska nodded, "Fair enough. Just watch yourself since it's Grenpoli. It has a reputation for leading mortals astray or just right into the service of the baatezu." "I haven't actually been there before." Fyrehowl yawned, looking quite bleary eyed and exhausted. "What exactly should we expect in Grenpoli?" "By reputation it's rather polite to mortals." Skalliska explained. "-polite-" Toras provided air-quotes and a humorless, sarcastic chuckle. "Compared to the rest of the layer, very much so." The kobold continued, "Sure it's all a creepy attempt to ensnare your souls and exert influence and control over people to serve in Baator's best interests out in the rest of the cosmos, but you won't find yourself attacked and enslaved just for walking around." "So don't sign any contracts, try not to strike a conversation with a friendly erinyes or osyluth?" "More or less. Just get in and get out." Skalliska nodded and went on to describe in detail the structure of the city, its history, and the route from the other side of the portal to the Duke's manor on the city's outskirts. As the gate-crasher provided more information that might be of use to them all for their descent into Hell, Fyrehowl and Tristol exchanged worried glances. Both of them looked as if they hadn't slept a wink of sleep overnight. Despite hours of rest, they were both exhausted and mentally distracted. The previous night had been the same for them both. All was black and silent, and then accompanied by the twitching of their eyes beneath slumbering lids, the howler had crawled into their somnambulant minds. Gibbering, whispering, and promising things, all coherent meaning was lost to memory with the first light of morning. Whatever the grinning, mad thing from Pandemonium desired from them, sleep and sanity were apparently far from the gifts that it offered in their dreams. As yet however, they were no closer to finding any answer. Even as they stepped through the portal towards Grenpoli and transitioned between Sigil and the Hells, they felt it there within their skulls, prowling within the black and hidden interstices of the mind. [I]Do you hear the code?[/I] [center]****[/center] The Gatehouse rose up within the heart of Sigil's Hive Ward, grim and fortresslike in appearance, looming atop a great rise in the landscape like the archetypal haunted castle. The great cage-like structure at its center bore the fantastic, bizarre hallmarks of a prison cell for a creature larger than the greatest of titans, and conspicuously missing any portcullis gate that might have once contained it. Whatever use and purpose it may have once filled however, for millennia the Gatehouse had served as a place of mercy and compassion, most recently by the Bleak Cabal. The Bleakers no longer held any formal power and the faction had been formally disbanded. But the Bleakers remained in place nonetheless, serving food and tending the injuries and disease that ran through the poor and destitute of Sigil's poor and abandoned. Beyond the ancient, forgotten prison-cell of the Gatehouse's earliest foundations, however rose one wing of the structure that few new much about nor cared about, and one which catered almost exclusively to the Bleakers and former Bleakers alike: the criminally and irretrievably insane wing. There the Bleakers applied a different sort of mercy by imprisoning their own members who had fallen into the spiraling madness that lurked just below the surface of their own brutal, existential view of a meaningless, absolutely free cosmos. Their view allowed for either perfect freedom or a tidal wave to consume and swallow the mind with the sheer uselessness of it all. Many of the imprisoned Bleakers survived and recovered, returning to their former lives not necessarily healed but at peace with themselves and their fate. Others though starved to death before finding themselves, though their compatriots provided them food and water each day. A third and exclusive group comprised only a few individuals - those deemed too dangerous in their madness to ever be released and whose shattered sanity removed any chance of recovery. Buried in the heart of the structure, now only recently fully repaired from the explosion that had ripped through the structure less than a year earlier, three individuals sat within the cells. The three were imprisoned but most certainly not forgotten. All very much alive, and most disturbingly, it was not for lack of trying for the opposite on the part of their former faction members. "Can't you feel it Bladed Queen? Can't you feel the end approaching? 295 days, 7 hours, 13 minutes, and 5 seconds until the clock in the Waste strikes midnight. I feel it, dragging like a dying, spinning star on the fabric of reality. It echoes forward and backward in time, but not an absolute outcome, not yet. Not ever…" Tollysalmon's eyes glowed a puissant, featureless white in the darkness of her cell. Erratically so, a burning white corona of energy formed around her head, forming crackling loops of electrical, psionic force before discharging and grounding itself upon the floor or ceiling with the sharp smell of ozone. Dirty and dressed only in rags, she'd been imprisoned there for nearly two centuries, not having touched a bite of food or a drop of water during that time. Yet still she remained, eerily distant, self-assured, and by all appearances utterly, utterly mad. During her tenure she'd ignored the Bleakers for the most part, speaking only to herself, invisible -and possibly nonexistent- creatures only she perceived, and voices only she could hear. She'd never once spoken to the Gehreleth whose death had peeled back the ceilings and obliterated the walls, at least not until she spoke its name, its actual name, with a wry, gloating smile when she looked it in the eyes the moment that death arrived for it courtesy of the Cheshire Fiend. She had however spoken with the other two former Bleaker factols who occupied their own cells opposite hers. Both were already mad and consumed by their own flavors of existential grief and misery before they'd been forced from their positions and locked away. Years or decades of proximity to their githyanki predecessor had not by any measure improved their state. Out of earshot of their terrified Bleaker caretakers, Tollysalmon stared, whispered, taught, and manipulated. Esmus had never possessed his own eerie psionic abilities prior to his incarceration, and while as of yet, Lhar had not manifested any similar powers, slowly his mind was bending and changing, all unlikely for the better. Nine times since her imprisonment, githyanki warriors from Tu'narath had sought to capture her and drag her before the lich queen to have her soul devoured. Unable to do so, the next four attempts simply tried to kill her, but these attempts failed as well. Precisely what occurred during the attempts was unknown, as none of the assassins ever returned to tell the story of their failure, nor were any of their bodies ever found. Tu’narath ceased the attempts thereafter, and through it all, Tollysalmon remained in her cell, smiling in the darkness with the same eerie, supernatural self-assurance and contempt. "Oh yes Bladed Queen, I feel your eyes upon me always. Never blinking, never speaking a word, nonetheless I know you've been watching over me for so very, very long. Perhaps you should have been paying attention to other threats." The githyanki chuckled and put her hands up in a display of indifference. "This assumes that you even care. Even if you don't, I in fact do. I wonder if that galls you, given what I want? The Oinoloth clearly has been working on his own designs for a very, very long time. Longer than most creatures can fathom. But of course, so have I. Longer than I can usually remember. Bitch..." Tollysalmon snarled and the debris that littered the floor of her cell shifted and moved, orienting to the psionic wind from her mind like iron filings along the field lines of a magnetic field. For the briefest moment, the walls of the cell flickered and shifted from the inner light of hundreds of thousands of crystalline grains embedded into the stone: a coating of psi-crystal broken down into dust and painted there, invisible to anyone but her. The cell returned to darkness except for the former factol's eyes, and there she brooded in silence. Only the soft, sporadic whimpering of Lhar across the hallway broke the still, until finally her successor spoke. "A friend of my friends may be visiting us soon." Esmus whispered from his cell, a soft, barely discernible chuckle added to punctuate the statement. "Assuming that he survives whatever the baatezu have in store for him. I don't think he understands why he went to Maladomini in the first place." "Alex, yes. The one that you’ve been sending dreams to." Tollysalmon looked up at the sound of Esmus's voice. "Maybe he'll come and tell us what his soon-to-be-companions are involved in. Things and places they visit have a tendency to hide themselves away." "Such curious, interesting times." The human remarked, madness dancing in his eyes. "We so rarely have visitors, but you seem to draw them in like a tidal current. The important ones anyway." "For longer than you can imagine." The githyanki sighed. "Alex will be interesting to finally meet." Esmus tapped his fingers on his cell walls in a discordant rhythm. "He's powerful, if not at all subtle about it.” “I doubt that he has any clue what he’s going to be involved in once he joins up with the others.” The githyanki’s voice was devoid of concern, “Sooner or later, he’s going to die you know.” Esmus snorted, somewhere between a cough and a laugh, equally uncaring, “He doesn’t matter.” In the darkness of her cell, Tollysalmon smiled a slender, transient yet malicious smirk, eyes glowing a cold, featureless white. "Neither do you puppet, neither do you…" [center]****[/center] Flames licked at the air like thousands of infernal tongues from the city's spires. Dancing in reflections and refractions through the glass of the gothic architecture of Maladomini, they shed a hard, red glow across the tower roof where Agrefaz stood at his post. The barbazu yawned and ran a hand through his beard, the wriggling, prehensile mass likewise scratching at the intruding limb. The Duke was up to something. As it was, his star was rising in the court of the Lord of the 7th, and there was talk of him being elevated in position, possibly even granted additional holdings and responsibilities. But this material, these details of the past and speculation upon the future meant little for the Duke's sentry, save that he was likely to be more harshly disciplined for any minute lapse in order and the smallest violation of stricture. But, on the other hand, success by his master would likely trickle down to him and the others in the Duke's service. A word here, a word there, a favorable notation upon a report discretely filed with the clerks and bureaucrats of the Ministry of Promotions - these things would oil the gears of Hell's bureaucracy with something sweeter than honey on the tongue. Agrefaz smiled at the thought of earning another elevation through the ranks, possibly to cornugon or erinyes. It wouldn't be his choice, but that of his commanders, those who already had passed through the flames of Phlegethos before him and knew the way and how best to re-forge him, to temper the steel of the soul. The Duke's affairs were not his concern, but only speculation for his own future indeed. Yet for all his prideful hope, those vain aspirations were collectively something that would never come to pass if he was not watchful in his current duties atop the northwestern wall, adjacent to the vineyards in the second tier of the Duke's estate. Security had been increased most recently, only in the past two days, but no reasons were forthcoming, at least not overtly. Rumors though had filtered down through the ranks, rumors of a powerful guest soon to grace the estate for a period of time, supposedly an ambassador of one of the Lords of the 9. The rumors of course did not speculate precisely which one, or under what auspices the representative would be there under, just that they would be an honored guest and nothing -absolutely nothing- was to be amiss during the duration of their stay. Lost in his musings, Agrefaz idly swatted at one of the myriad of insects flitting about with hungry idiocy, drunken on the bloated black flowers that grew at the base of the Duke's vines. The air was especially thick with them tonight, perhaps he thought, the vineyard slaves had poured the blood of innocents upon the soil to fertilize this year's harvest. Below the wall, the air veritably whirled with the passage of those same insects, hellish variants of the bees that pollinated mortal flowers. Normal and mundane, at least to the barbazu above them, there was nothing to differentiate them from the thousands of their kind spread out across each and every acre of the Duke's estate. Unnoticed by the baatezu above them, the insects began to congeal and melt away as they reached the walls of the estate. Seamlessly they merged with the shadows cast upon the ramparts by the flickering city lights, pooling and rising up towards the sentry like a wave of living shadow, perfectly camouflaged with its surroundings. Agrefaz heard only the sudden and eerie cessation of the buzzing insects as he turned to look and then it was upon him. For all his hopes and aspirations about his future, his soul would never reach the lake of fire - only the fangs of something whose transfiguration was achieved two planes away. [center]****[/center] Precisely five minutes later and not a second after, Agrefaz would have met and switched positions on the ramparts with one of the other sentries. The infernal clockwork of the Duke's sentries was a well oiled machine, and despite the doom that had befallen the barbazu only minutes before, at the appointed time a door unlocked with the turning of an iron key and the falling of heavy, magically reinforced tumblers. Prepared for a twelve hour stint on this small portion of the eastern ramparts, the osyluth Celatszu stepped out of the manor and raised his glaive up to the dancing lights visible across the Grenpoli skyline. "All hail to Duke Melikaros the Pale Winged, and eternal reign to Baalzebul the Lord of the..." The osyluth's voice trailed off to a whisper as he beheld his barbazu compatriot. Agrefaz dangled in mid-air, suspended and impaled by a trio of barbed spikes, twitching and frothing at the mouth. The creature that held him aloft on its iridescent, oddly fluid claws was something from nightmare, itself bubbling up from a larger mass that flowed up and over the ramparts, its mass almost perfectly matching the color and texture of the stone below it, as well as the patterns of the ambient light. An amalgamation of dozens of spiked tentacles, clawed hands and feet, and a trio of scorpion's tails, the entity changed its shape more so than moving to turn and look at the intruding baatezu. Its body rippled, gazing at him with a dozen newly formed eyes and a dozen smiles. The osyluth could barely form a cohesive thought in the moment beyond pure, stark horror, before the entity's mouths collectively intoned a single puissant word, splattering the ramparts with the lesser fiend's imploded remains. Blood red eyes illuminated the darkness, shedding light on myriad rows of fangs as it glanced at the remains. The creature slipped out a pseudo-pod that became a hand. It extended a finger to touch the osyluth gore splashed upon the ramparts, slipping out a tongue from the mouth newly formed in its hand, tasting it, absorbing it, and morphologically usurping it. Within moments and all without a sound, an osyluth stepped through the door leading away from the ramparts, with nothing unique about it, save that it had never had that same unique shade of red to its eyes, sunken back into its skull. Taba, the Infiltrator of the Planes, the sole surviving altraloth smiled and continued towards its prey. [center]****[/center] [/QUOTE]
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Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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