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Story Hour
Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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<blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 6830551" data-attributes="member: 11697"><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p>“You’ve been what?!” Florian shot a cock-eyed look of worried concern at Tristol before she pivoted and repeated the same to Fyrehowl, complete with the exact same tone, expression, and inflection. “Maybe I completely misheard the completely stupid and dangerous thing that you just told me, so let me say it again. You’ve been what?!”</p><p></p><p>Fyrehowl’s ears drooped, “Yeah we’ve been hallucinating about howlers ever since Pandemonium…”</p><p></p><p>“And not sleeping well.” Tristol’s eyes were heavy and weary. The aasimar’s face was ashen and weary, his ears drooped, and his tail hung limp without its normal vulpine liveliness.</p><p></p><p>Florian turned to look at the wizard with alarm and then doubly so to Fyrehowl at the lupinal’s next bombshell admission.</p><p></p><p>“And now,” Fyrehowl fretted, nervously tapping the claws of one hand upon the table while she cradled the other arm below and out of sight, “At least as of this morning, it seems like we’re having physical symptoms of it all.”</p><p></p><p>“Physical symptoms?” Florian peered at the lupinal, her eyes moving to where Fyrehowl hid her other arm out of view.</p><p></p><p>“It started out as just dreams and then waking hallucinations,” Tristol explained. “It’s difficult to explain what it actually is, but for lack of a better term for it all, the hallucinations are actually affecting things now.”</p><p></p><p>“Pardon?” The cleric’s tone shifted from concern to alarm. “What do you mean actually affecting things now?”</p><p></p><p>Tristol pointed down at his robe and the ragged marks made by the touch of something very large with very large claws.</p><p></p><p>“That’s not the worst of it either.” Fyrehowl held up her arm to display the angry red weal of a fang’s puncture mark.</p><p></p><p>The marks were too large and too unevenly spaced to be anything self-inflicted on the lupinal’s part during any nightmare of psychotic episode. Florian’s concern deepened as she realized that despite the strangeness of Fyrehowl and Tristol’s claims, those claims were real. They’d told her their problem, but had yet to address with her how to resolve it.</p><p></p><p>“Does Nisha know?” Florian asked, concerned both for the Xaositect’s safety and that Tristol had the courtesy to trust her enough to let her know, given the advancement of their relationship.</p><p></p><p>Tristol nodded and softly smiled, “I told her as soon as I started having physical symptoms. She made me promise to not go crazy because she was the crazy one in our relationship.”</p><p></p><p>Florian couldn’t help but softly chuckle.</p><p></p><p>“So do you think you can help us get rid of this?” Tristol asked. “Apparently all we need is a sufficiently powerful cleric able to remove a curse.”</p><p></p><p>“Of course I can!” Florian tapped a finger on her holy symbol. “Nothing special, just a remove curse?”</p><p></p><p>“Apparently.” Fyrehowl shrugged.</p><p></p><p>“Then let’s do it right here and now.” Florian held her holy symbol of Tempus in the palm of her hand and prepared to cast.</p><p></p><p>Smiling for the first time in days, Tristol and Fyrehowl nodded for the cleric to continue. They desperately wanted to be rid of their affliction, curse, or whatever else it might be. Florian was indeed a powerful cleric, and they had fast and sure hope that in moments they’d be free to return to their lives with all things back to normal – at least as normal as their lives ever were. Tristol wasn’t likely to return to anything but a semblance of normality, especially since Nisha had vanished that morning to attend to “slaad club things that I can’t talk about except there are no rules to slaad club so I’ll tell you later”, leaving a magic mouth on Tristol’s pillow making kissing noises and a promise that he had ‘better get rid of that curse or I’m talking in Xaos speak until it starts to make sense to you’.</p><p></p><p>Nisha wouldn’t have to make good on her threat.</p><p></p><p>The spell worked. </p><p></p><p>That part was simple. That part was expected. </p><p></p><p>What Florian could not have expected was what the result of that success would be. The ancient sources that Tristol had poured over in his search for a cure certainly hadn’t mentioned it except in circumspect way. Days later the wizard would look back and suspect that they hadn’t out of some fear that the thing they’d managed to rid themselves of might somehow know and thereupon be drawn back to them and any others simply for possessing knowledge of it, like a phrase or ear-worm tune that comes unbidden to the mind simply for having the suggestion of it placed there.</p><p></p><p>The massive, ectoplasmic horror that eventually manifested began as a diffuse cloud of tiny, glimmering motes of light that sprang forth from Tristol and Fyrehowl’s mouths. Each of them like the mad, unblinking eyes of howlers clambering about the depths of Pandemonium, they gathered together and eventually congealed into first a tangible, liquid substance, and then rising up from that, a thing of gibbering horror that was not at all pleased to be deprived of its hosts and vectors.</p><p></p><p>In the end the fight was swift and sudden, and while the creature was slain or at the very least banished back to the point of its origin at Howler’s Crag, that end was not as satisfying as they might have hoped. Even as the psionic mind virus evaporated in death, its howler’s form was still laughing.</p><p></p><p>Still, it was gone and things were at the very least looking on the up and up, but such good fortune didn’t last long.</p><p></p><p>Two days later, things went from splendid to a sudden screeching, stinking hell.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p>“What in Andros’s name is that smell?” Toras asked with a cough as he abruptly held a cloth to his nose. Wincing at the sudden flesh-permeating stink, he stood up from his table and walked into the common room, ignoring his breakfast fresh from the Portal Jammer’s kitchen.</p><p></p><p>Throughout the taproom, other patrons both regulars and new likewise struggled to hide their expressions of disgust at the odor wafting through the establishment. Through wincing, watering eyes and swiftly rising bile, the source was immediately obvious: it wasn’t from anywhere within the Jammer itself, but from the building cattycorner now billowing a greasy exhaust from open pipes in the roof and wafting through every open door and window facing the street.</p><p></p><p>“Oh powers preserve us…” Florian covered her face with the back of her arm. “What –is– that?”</p><p></p><p>Clueless frowned as he stepped out from behind the bar, a heavy rag tied over his face to at least temper the stench. “Someone go with me. I don’t know what the hell is going on over there, but I want it to stop. Now.”</p><p></p><p>One of the Portal Jammer’s patrons clapped before turning green in the face and swiftly covering his nose with his napkin. Around him, most of the bar’s clientele was making for the exits and swiftly.</p><p></p><p>“Whatever it is, it’s killing business and it needs to stop.” Clueless reiterated as he stepped into the street with Toras and Florian in tow. For the moment, freshly released from their bizarre curse acquired in Pandemonium, Fyrehowl and Tristol were both presently fast asleep, still recovering from the lingering aftereffects and little help in the current problem. Nisha was gone, having left earlier that morning with a satchel of grain, a grappling hook, and a bucket of red paint, heading off towards the Hive; none bothered to ask for an explanation or when she’d get back, it was probably for the best that way.</p><p></p><p>It didn’t take the trio very long to discover the source of the stench.</p><p></p><p>“The Brothers Durgrim Brewery?” Florian read aloud the dwarven, or more appropriately, duergar script on the freshly painted sign that hung upon an iron post near the main entrance.</p><p></p><p>“What the bloody blazes is this sh*t?” Toras looked through the windows at the giant tubs of sour mash and various distillation columns and iron and copper stills. “When the hell did they get all of this crap moved in without anyone noticing?”</p><p></p><p>No sign remained of the prior tenants, and by whatever sorcery or simply exceptionally well-funded moving crew they’d employed, the brewery had gone from non-existent to fully operational overnight. The steel hinges on the new doors shined, not yet pitted and discolored by the embrace of Sigil’s acidic rain, and the smell of roofing tar and freshly painted walls was there as well, though the pungent stench wafting out of the brewery itself served to almost wholly mask its presence.</p><p></p><p>“Wasn’t this a tailor’s shop and a warehouse until like yesterday?” Florian peered in through one of the broad windows looking in on the very much operating brewery. “There’s no way this place is legit, and if so, it’s going to be a pleasure to shutter the doors and move on with our lives.”</p><p></p><p>“Actually, I hate to break it to you, but the place is genuine. They’ve got all of their proper permits from the authorities in the ward.” Clueless sighed as he looked over the brass placards bolted to the walls just below and to the right of the brewery’s nameplate. “They’re set up to last. This is going to be a problem.”</p><p></p><p>Toras frowned and tapped his fingers across the hilt of his sword, “It’s just so much easier when we’ve got pretext to walk in and kick their asses.”</p><p></p><p>“Well we can’t just let them vent their production out onto the block,” Florian winced at the stink as the wind changed direction and sent another reeking gust their way. “We’ll be out of business in a week if this doesn’t change.”</p><p></p><p>Inside of the brewery, a number of tieflings and goblinoids went about the drudgery of daily business, watched over and directed by a very obvious pair of dark-dwarven brothers, presumably the brewery’s namesakes.</p><p></p><p>“This is a brewery right?” Clueless pointed to the nameplate and then to the vats and tanks visible inside. “We run a bar and tavern. Why is this so much of a problem?”</p><p></p><p>“Because it f*cking stinks and it’s right next door!” Florian protested.</p><p></p><p>Clueless waved a hand for calm, “Yes, but we can deal with that surely. Either we can convince them to spend some on the odor, we can see if Tristol can help with it, or we just pay for a few hired wizards to help and mitigate the smell or direct it elsewhere. They’re duergar and they’re businessmen, surely we can just discuss things over with them and come to a reasonable solution.”</p><p></p><p>“I still say that we should just light to place on fire come anti-peak.” Toras, “Violence works so much better with these situations.”</p><p></p><p>Clueless shot the fighter a skeptical look, “Yeah, and violent solutions to situations also got us sent to Baator to unknowingly fight a yugoloth lord, if you don’t remember that most recent escapade?”</p><p></p><p>Toras opened his mouth to object, paused, balled his fists and nodded his head with a tacit admission that the bladesinger was absolutely correct about it all.</p><p></p><p>“Yeah sorry about that on my part as well,” Florian gave a sage nod of agreement.</p><p></p><p>“This shouldn’t take long.” Clueless stepped towards the brewery doors. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll try to work things out. If you hear blades being drawn or explosions, feel free come in through the windows and go Toras’s favored route.”</p><p></p><p>Clueless stepped inside to go the route of diplomacy while the other two waited outside, half-hoping that things would descend into violence. They did, but not in the way that they expected.</p><p></p><p>“YOU THERE!” A voice bellowed from the doorway of another one of the buildings adjacent to the Portal Jammer.</p><p></p><p>Toras and Florian glanced across the street to meet the crazed, blood-shot eyes of a priest dressed in tattered crimson robes. Smoldering sticks sprouted from his unkempt beard, giving off streams of smoke and falling ashes to mar his already filthy clothes.</p><p></p><p>“I CHALLENGE YOU!” The other cleric screamed out, pointing first a finger and then the edge of an axe at Florian. “I CALL YOU OUT COWARDLY SLAVE OF A COWARDLY GOD!”</p><p></p><p>“Huh?” Florian glanced at the mad cleric and then to Toras. “Is he talking to me? Seriously?”</p><p></p><p>“Given that he’s charging this way with an axe? Yeah, looks like it.” Toras smiled broadly.</p><p></p><p>“Is that a symbol of Garagos he’s got hanging from his neck?” Florian narrowed her eyes and then broke into a grin of her own. “Yeah, yeah it is.”</p><p></p><p>“And what does that mean?” Toras shrugged. “I’m not all that familiar with Torillian gods.”</p><p></p><p>Florian brandished her mace, “It means that sh*t’s about to go down is what.”</p><p></p><p>Garzuvek, 1st Bloodchanter of Garagos the Reaver, Faerunian God of Slaughter sprinted across the street with frightening speed, bellowing something between a stream of incoherent curses and a rambling sermon on the virtues of wanton violence for its own sake.</p><p></p><p>The cleric found a double helping of what he wanted standing on there on the sidewalk waiting for him.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p>A slow curl of smoke rose up into the air from the ivory bowl of a long-stemmed pipe held in the Marauder’s manicured, painted claws. The bowl was carved into the screaming, tortured face of a petitioner whose elongated body lay as if stretched upon a rack to form the pipe’s body and stem.</p><p></p><p>“Is this sort of petty torture necessary?” The question came from one Ramander “The Wise”, a relative newcomer to Sigil’s circles of power and influence. “Wouldn’t it be all that much more efficacious to simply have them killed, their bodies dumped into the Ditch, and the building burned to the ground?”</p><p></p><p>The wizard sipped from a glass of brandy as he sat upon a cushioned chair only several feet from where the Marauder sat atop the back of an aasimar, the twin brother of the blind aasimar girl who routinely saw to the fiend’s claws. Claw marks and half-healed burns laced his flesh, but he gave no complaints to the ‘loth seated atop him, using him as so much insensate, suffering furniture.</p><p></p><p>Ramander stroked a finger bearing more than one bejeweled and magical ring through his close-cropped beard. Immaculate in presentation, much like his fiendish benefactor, his dark velvet robes were dressed in gold trim and gemstones. Layer upon layer of contingent spells added a frightening level of practicality and obsessive caution atop the outwardly obvious pompous decadence. Perched atop his shoulder, a tiny purple nalg groomed itself like a normal wizard’s cat, but Ramander was neither a normal wizard in his own view, and he would have no normal familiar. The ‘loth whose own decadence outshone his own like a burning star situated next to a candle had been more than happy to provide the tiny yugoloth version of the diabolic imp and abyssal quasit.</p><p></p><p>“Pragmatic yes in the long-run I suppose,” Shemeska reached up a claw to brush at a stray hair and then take a puff of her pipe, sending swirls of scented smoke into the air where they formed minute, screaming figures before fading away. “But if I did that, well where would the fun of it be? If they die, no matter the immediate pain of it, they don’t suffer.”</p><p></p><p>Ramander noted the particular gleam in her eyes and the subtle but present inflection upon the singular word ‘suffer’.</p><p></p><p>“Oh my pupil… suffering you see,” The fiend focused on the wizard, not breaking eye-contact as she emptied the hot ashes of her pipe upon the exposed back of her living chair. Her lips curled into an exquisite grin as the acrid-sweet smell of burning flesh rose into the air to mix with her pipe tobacco, “Suffering is the driving goal of my existence.”</p><p></p><p>“You’re quite adept at it too.” Ramander toasted her with a gesture of his glass. “I genuinely wouldn’t want to be any of these sods.”</p><p></p><p>“Oh this is only the start of things.” Shemeska gestured with the tip of her pipe to her ubiquitous mirror, held aloft by a conspicuously silent Colcook, as she refilled the pipe’s bowl and sparked it alight with a single tap of a purple-painted claw. The mirror’s sheen was hollow, and while the fiend’s luminous eyes reflected back therein, the magical glass acted as a scrying device, looking in on the Portal Jammer and events in its immediate vicinity. “You have much yet to learn Ramander, so do watch and enjoy. I most certainly am.”</p><p></p><p>In fact he’d only been in Sigil less than a year, but in that time he’d fallen under Shemeska’s tutelage as something –as he perceived it– of a protégé. In truth his position was more that of useful idiot, albeit one profoundly skilled in the arcane arts. He’d been slowly building up a fortune based on purchasing properties, divining the location, nature of, and keys to any portals therein and promptly charging for their use. Eventually it was likely that he would end up either mazed or flayed, and when that happened, his holdings and fortune would transfer into his mentor’s claws.</p><p></p><p>“Watch and learn Ramander,” Shemeska chuckled and exhaled another stream of smoke between her fangs, “This only gets better.”</p><p></p><p>Unseen by the wizard despite his undisputed status as an archmage by most any measure, the ‘loth cradled something in her left hand, never once having relaxed her grip upon its cold and crawling surface. Cloaked in layer upon layer of illusions and abjurations, the alien metal of the Shadow Sorcelled Key rested firmly within the Marauder’s grip. Moment by moment she yearned to use its power, even if she could barely comprehend it.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shemeska, post: 6830551, member: 11697"] [center]****[/center] “You’ve been what?!” Florian shot a cock-eyed look of worried concern at Tristol before she pivoted and repeated the same to Fyrehowl, complete with the exact same tone, expression, and inflection. “Maybe I completely misheard the completely stupid and dangerous thing that you just told me, so let me say it again. You’ve been what?!” Fyrehowl’s ears drooped, “Yeah we’ve been hallucinating about howlers ever since Pandemonium…” “And not sleeping well.” Tristol’s eyes were heavy and weary. The aasimar’s face was ashen and weary, his ears drooped, and his tail hung limp without its normal vulpine liveliness. Florian turned to look at the wizard with alarm and then doubly so to Fyrehowl at the lupinal’s next bombshell admission. “And now,” Fyrehowl fretted, nervously tapping the claws of one hand upon the table while she cradled the other arm below and out of sight, “At least as of this morning, it seems like we’re having physical symptoms of it all.” “Physical symptoms?” Florian peered at the lupinal, her eyes moving to where Fyrehowl hid her other arm out of view. “It started out as just dreams and then waking hallucinations,” Tristol explained. “It’s difficult to explain what it actually is, but for lack of a better term for it all, the hallucinations are actually affecting things now.” “Pardon?” The cleric’s tone shifted from concern to alarm. “What do you mean actually affecting things now?” Tristol pointed down at his robe and the ragged marks made by the touch of something very large with very large claws. “That’s not the worst of it either.” Fyrehowl held up her arm to display the angry red weal of a fang’s puncture mark. The marks were too large and too unevenly spaced to be anything self-inflicted on the lupinal’s part during any nightmare of psychotic episode. Florian’s concern deepened as she realized that despite the strangeness of Fyrehowl and Tristol’s claims, those claims were real. They’d told her their problem, but had yet to address with her how to resolve it. “Does Nisha know?” Florian asked, concerned both for the Xaositect’s safety and that Tristol had the courtesy to trust her enough to let her know, given the advancement of their relationship. Tristol nodded and softly smiled, “I told her as soon as I started having physical symptoms. She made me promise to not go crazy because she was the crazy one in our relationship.” Florian couldn’t help but softly chuckle. “So do you think you can help us get rid of this?” Tristol asked. “Apparently all we need is a sufficiently powerful cleric able to remove a curse.” “Of course I can!” Florian tapped a finger on her holy symbol. “Nothing special, just a remove curse?” “Apparently.” Fyrehowl shrugged. “Then let’s do it right here and now.” Florian held her holy symbol of Tempus in the palm of her hand and prepared to cast. Smiling for the first time in days, Tristol and Fyrehowl nodded for the cleric to continue. They desperately wanted to be rid of their affliction, curse, or whatever else it might be. Florian was indeed a powerful cleric, and they had fast and sure hope that in moments they’d be free to return to their lives with all things back to normal – at least as normal as their lives ever were. Tristol wasn’t likely to return to anything but a semblance of normality, especially since Nisha had vanished that morning to attend to “slaad club things that I can’t talk about except there are no rules to slaad club so I’ll tell you later”, leaving a magic mouth on Tristol’s pillow making kissing noises and a promise that he had ‘better get rid of that curse or I’m talking in Xaos speak until it starts to make sense to you’. Nisha wouldn’t have to make good on her threat. The spell worked. That part was simple. That part was expected. What Florian could not have expected was what the result of that success would be. The ancient sources that Tristol had poured over in his search for a cure certainly hadn’t mentioned it except in circumspect way. Days later the wizard would look back and suspect that they hadn’t out of some fear that the thing they’d managed to rid themselves of might somehow know and thereupon be drawn back to them and any others simply for possessing knowledge of it, like a phrase or ear-worm tune that comes unbidden to the mind simply for having the suggestion of it placed there. The massive, ectoplasmic horror that eventually manifested began as a diffuse cloud of tiny, glimmering motes of light that sprang forth from Tristol and Fyrehowl’s mouths. Each of them like the mad, unblinking eyes of howlers clambering about the depths of Pandemonium, they gathered together and eventually congealed into first a tangible, liquid substance, and then rising up from that, a thing of gibbering horror that was not at all pleased to be deprived of its hosts and vectors. In the end the fight was swift and sudden, and while the creature was slain or at the very least banished back to the point of its origin at Howler’s Crag, that end was not as satisfying as they might have hoped. Even as the psionic mind virus evaporated in death, its howler’s form was still laughing. Still, it was gone and things were at the very least looking on the up and up, but such good fortune didn’t last long. Two days later, things went from splendid to a sudden screeching, stinking hell. [center]****[/center] “What in Andros’s name is that smell?” Toras asked with a cough as he abruptly held a cloth to his nose. Wincing at the sudden flesh-permeating stink, he stood up from his table and walked into the common room, ignoring his breakfast fresh from the Portal Jammer’s kitchen. Throughout the taproom, other patrons both regulars and new likewise struggled to hide their expressions of disgust at the odor wafting through the establishment. Through wincing, watering eyes and swiftly rising bile, the source was immediately obvious: it wasn’t from anywhere within the Jammer itself, but from the building cattycorner now billowing a greasy exhaust from open pipes in the roof and wafting through every open door and window facing the street. “Oh powers preserve us…” Florian covered her face with the back of her arm. “What –is– that?” Clueless frowned as he stepped out from behind the bar, a heavy rag tied over his face to at least temper the stench. “Someone go with me. I don’t know what the hell is going on over there, but I want it to stop. Now.” One of the Portal Jammer’s patrons clapped before turning green in the face and swiftly covering his nose with his napkin. Around him, most of the bar’s clientele was making for the exits and swiftly. “Whatever it is, it’s killing business and it needs to stop.” Clueless reiterated as he stepped into the street with Toras and Florian in tow. For the moment, freshly released from their bizarre curse acquired in Pandemonium, Fyrehowl and Tristol were both presently fast asleep, still recovering from the lingering aftereffects and little help in the current problem. Nisha was gone, having left earlier that morning with a satchel of grain, a grappling hook, and a bucket of red paint, heading off towards the Hive; none bothered to ask for an explanation or when she’d get back, it was probably for the best that way. It didn’t take the trio very long to discover the source of the stench. “The Brothers Durgrim Brewery?” Florian read aloud the dwarven, or more appropriately, duergar script on the freshly painted sign that hung upon an iron post near the main entrance. “What the bloody blazes is this sh*t?” Toras looked through the windows at the giant tubs of sour mash and various distillation columns and iron and copper stills. “When the hell did they get all of this crap moved in without anyone noticing?” No sign remained of the prior tenants, and by whatever sorcery or simply exceptionally well-funded moving crew they’d employed, the brewery had gone from non-existent to fully operational overnight. The steel hinges on the new doors shined, not yet pitted and discolored by the embrace of Sigil’s acidic rain, and the smell of roofing tar and freshly painted walls was there as well, though the pungent stench wafting out of the brewery itself served to almost wholly mask its presence. “Wasn’t this a tailor’s shop and a warehouse until like yesterday?” Florian peered in through one of the broad windows looking in on the very much operating brewery. “There’s no way this place is legit, and if so, it’s going to be a pleasure to shutter the doors and move on with our lives.” “Actually, I hate to break it to you, but the place is genuine. They’ve got all of their proper permits from the authorities in the ward.” Clueless sighed as he looked over the brass placards bolted to the walls just below and to the right of the brewery’s nameplate. “They’re set up to last. This is going to be a problem.” Toras frowned and tapped his fingers across the hilt of his sword, “It’s just so much easier when we’ve got pretext to walk in and kick their asses.” “Well we can’t just let them vent their production out onto the block,” Florian winced at the stink as the wind changed direction and sent another reeking gust their way. “We’ll be out of business in a week if this doesn’t change.” Inside of the brewery, a number of tieflings and goblinoids went about the drudgery of daily business, watched over and directed by a very obvious pair of dark-dwarven brothers, presumably the brewery’s namesakes. “This is a brewery right?” Clueless pointed to the nameplate and then to the vats and tanks visible inside. “We run a bar and tavern. Why is this so much of a problem?” “Because it f*cking stinks and it’s right next door!” Florian protested. Clueless waved a hand for calm, “Yes, but we can deal with that surely. Either we can convince them to spend some on the odor, we can see if Tristol can help with it, or we just pay for a few hired wizards to help and mitigate the smell or direct it elsewhere. They’re duergar and they’re businessmen, surely we can just discuss things over with them and come to a reasonable solution.” “I still say that we should just light to place on fire come anti-peak.” Toras, “Violence works so much better with these situations.” Clueless shot the fighter a skeptical look, “Yeah, and violent solutions to situations also got us sent to Baator to unknowingly fight a yugoloth lord, if you don’t remember that most recent escapade?” Toras opened his mouth to object, paused, balled his fists and nodded his head with a tacit admission that the bladesinger was absolutely correct about it all. “Yeah sorry about that on my part as well,” Florian gave a sage nod of agreement. “This shouldn’t take long.” Clueless stepped towards the brewery doors. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll try to work things out. If you hear blades being drawn or explosions, feel free come in through the windows and go Toras’s favored route.” Clueless stepped inside to go the route of diplomacy while the other two waited outside, half-hoping that things would descend into violence. They did, but not in the way that they expected. “YOU THERE!” A voice bellowed from the doorway of another one of the buildings adjacent to the Portal Jammer. Toras and Florian glanced across the street to meet the crazed, blood-shot eyes of a priest dressed in tattered crimson robes. Smoldering sticks sprouted from his unkempt beard, giving off streams of smoke and falling ashes to mar his already filthy clothes. “I CHALLENGE YOU!” The other cleric screamed out, pointing first a finger and then the edge of an axe at Florian. “I CALL YOU OUT COWARDLY SLAVE OF A COWARDLY GOD!” “Huh?” Florian glanced at the mad cleric and then to Toras. “Is he talking to me? Seriously?” “Given that he’s charging this way with an axe? Yeah, looks like it.” Toras smiled broadly. “Is that a symbol of Garagos he’s got hanging from his neck?” Florian narrowed her eyes and then broke into a grin of her own. “Yeah, yeah it is.” “And what does that mean?” Toras shrugged. “I’m not all that familiar with Torillian gods.” Florian brandished her mace, “It means that sh*t’s about to go down is what.” Garzuvek, 1st Bloodchanter of Garagos the Reaver, Faerunian God of Slaughter sprinted across the street with frightening speed, bellowing something between a stream of incoherent curses and a rambling sermon on the virtues of wanton violence for its own sake. The cleric found a double helping of what he wanted standing on there on the sidewalk waiting for him. [center]****[/center] A slow curl of smoke rose up into the air from the ivory bowl of a long-stemmed pipe held in the Marauder’s manicured, painted claws. The bowl was carved into the screaming, tortured face of a petitioner whose elongated body lay as if stretched upon a rack to form the pipe’s body and stem. “Is this sort of petty torture necessary?” The question came from one Ramander “The Wise”, a relative newcomer to Sigil’s circles of power and influence. “Wouldn’t it be all that much more efficacious to simply have them killed, their bodies dumped into the Ditch, and the building burned to the ground?” The wizard sipped from a glass of brandy as he sat upon a cushioned chair only several feet from where the Marauder sat atop the back of an aasimar, the twin brother of the blind aasimar girl who routinely saw to the fiend’s claws. Claw marks and half-healed burns laced his flesh, but he gave no complaints to the ‘loth seated atop him, using him as so much insensate, suffering furniture. Ramander stroked a finger bearing more than one bejeweled and magical ring through his close-cropped beard. Immaculate in presentation, much like his fiendish benefactor, his dark velvet robes were dressed in gold trim and gemstones. Layer upon layer of contingent spells added a frightening level of practicality and obsessive caution atop the outwardly obvious pompous decadence. Perched atop his shoulder, a tiny purple nalg groomed itself like a normal wizard’s cat, but Ramander was neither a normal wizard in his own view, and he would have no normal familiar. The ‘loth whose own decadence outshone his own like a burning star situated next to a candle had been more than happy to provide the tiny yugoloth version of the diabolic imp and abyssal quasit. “Pragmatic yes in the long-run I suppose,” Shemeska reached up a claw to brush at a stray hair and then take a puff of her pipe, sending swirls of scented smoke into the air where they formed minute, screaming figures before fading away. “But if I did that, well where would the fun of it be? If they die, no matter the immediate pain of it, they don’t suffer.” Ramander noted the particular gleam in her eyes and the subtle but present inflection upon the singular word ‘suffer’. “Oh my pupil… suffering you see,” The fiend focused on the wizard, not breaking eye-contact as she emptied the hot ashes of her pipe upon the exposed back of her living chair. Her lips curled into an exquisite grin as the acrid-sweet smell of burning flesh rose into the air to mix with her pipe tobacco, “Suffering is the driving goal of my existence.” “You’re quite adept at it too.” Ramander toasted her with a gesture of his glass. “I genuinely wouldn’t want to be any of these sods.” “Oh this is only the start of things.” Shemeska gestured with the tip of her pipe to her ubiquitous mirror, held aloft by a conspicuously silent Colcook, as she refilled the pipe’s bowl and sparked it alight with a single tap of a purple-painted claw. The mirror’s sheen was hollow, and while the fiend’s luminous eyes reflected back therein, the magical glass acted as a scrying device, looking in on the Portal Jammer and events in its immediate vicinity. “You have much yet to learn Ramander, so do watch and enjoy. I most certainly am.” In fact he’d only been in Sigil less than a year, but in that time he’d fallen under Shemeska’s tutelage as something –as he perceived it– of a protégé. In truth his position was more that of useful idiot, albeit one profoundly skilled in the arcane arts. He’d been slowly building up a fortune based on purchasing properties, divining the location, nature of, and keys to any portals therein and promptly charging for their use. Eventually it was likely that he would end up either mazed or flayed, and when that happened, his holdings and fortune would transfer into his mentor’s claws. “Watch and learn Ramander,” Shemeska chuckled and exhaled another stream of smoke between her fangs, “This only gets better.” Unseen by the wizard despite his undisputed status as an archmage by most any measure, the ‘loth cradled something in her left hand, never once having relaxed her grip upon its cold and crawling surface. Cloaked in layer upon layer of illusions and abjurations, the alien metal of the Shadow Sorcelled Key rested firmly within the Marauder’s grip. Moment by moment she yearned to use its power, even if she could barely comprehend it. [center]****[/center] [/QUOTE]
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Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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