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Story Hour
Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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<blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 6834859" data-attributes="member: 11697"><p>“FIGHT ME PITIFUL CLERIC OF A PITIFUL GOD!” Garzuvek bellowed as he charged, blood bubbling up from his hands with a crackle of negative energy channeled from his unholy patron’s fury.</p><p></p><p>“Really? Seriously?” Florian frowned and looked past the deranged priest. “Did this *sshat actually set up a shrine to Garagos the freaking reaver across from the Jammer? First the stink and then this?”</p><p></p><p>Toras raised an eyebrow and began to draw his blade. He stopped when Florian held up a hand for him to stop.</p><p></p><p>“No no, this one is all mine.” She clutched her holy symbol tightly and began to whisper.</p><p></p><p>“GARAGOS LAUGHS AT YOU AS HEAAAARRRGGGG!!!!!!...”</p><p></p><p>The air before Garzuvek shimmered and took form as a great gleaming hammer. With time seeming to run in slow-motion, Florian’s artfully manifested <em>destruction</em> spell slammed into him with a bone-jarring concussive force and a burst of divine fire.</p><p></p><p>Garzuvek’s clothing smoldered and he coughed blood onto the cobblestones. Having somehow survived Florian’s spell, he might have wished otherwise given the severity of his injuries. He lay there on the ground moaning in pain and spitting out a few half-hearted curses at Tempus as Florian walked over to where he lay.</p><p></p><p>“Enjoy that?” Florian asked as she looked down at him. “Because once you recover I’ll be doing the exact same to you until you get out Sigil and leave with your shrine to a deity that pisses in the face of actual battle and glory. You think about that, and think about why a god who grants healing magic rather than inflictions might have been a wiser choice given your present state.”</p><p></p><p>Garzuvek twitched and gave an incomprehensible moan.</p><p></p><p>“Same time next week then?” Florian gave a solid kick to the cleric’s midsection before shaking her head and rejoining Toras on the curb.</p><p></p><p>Smiling happily, the half-celestial clapped in approval.</p><p></p><p>“This day couldn’t get worse.” Florian again shook her head at the unconscious cleric as a tout leading a group of humans paused and routed around the bloody, unmoving figure, giving looks of worry and fear in Toras and her direction. “Sorry, I really enjoyed doing that. Jack*ss cleric of Garagos sets up a shrine to the Reaver across from my inn? Not going to happen. What the hell was going through his head…”</p><p></p><p>“Someone put him up to it is what happened.” Toras stared across the street to the well-dressed tiefling standing under a shop awning, having been there to watch the previous scene ensue. The tiefling met his eyes and politely tipped his hat.</p><p></p><p>Despite the overwhelming urge to bum rush the Marauder’s lacky, Toras smiled and returned the gesture with a polite nod of his head. Smirking but realizing most likely that any further response might invoke a fight that would likely carry consequences past his comfort even if he managed to curb-stomp the f*cker, Toras stood his ground as calmly as he could as the tiefling withdrew into the nearby alleyway and vanished.</p><p></p><p>“What the hell was that about?” Florian looked up from the unconscious cleric and glanced at the retreating tiefling just as they moved out of sight.</p><p></p><p>“One of the Marauder’s toadies watching you kick that idiot there’s *ss. Ten rounds back at the Portal Jammer says that she’s behind all of this.” Toras made a face and gestured at the nearby shrine of Garagos and the overnight appearance of the duergar brewery. “We pissed her off and she’s being at her most petty in response, and by we of course I mean you and Fyrehowl.”</p><p></p><p>“Hey now.” Florian furrowed her brow, “She f*cking deserved what I said at the Advisory Council meeting.”</p><p></p><p>“You called her a ‘super b*tch’ in public.” Toras inclined his head.</p><p></p><p>“Is that descriptor wrong by any standard whatsoever?” Florian questioned.</p><p></p><p>“… no.” Toras sighed.</p><p></p><p>“She deserved it, so I said it.” Florian’s expression was one of resolute justification.</p><p></p><p>“She deserves a holy water tequila and a punch in the face, but we’re not going to live very long if we do either.”</p><p></p><p>“So that leaves it at that.” The cleric held up her hands, “There’s nothing more to be said. I regret nothing and she can go f*ck herself.”</p><p></p><p>Toras opened his mouth to object but given Florian’s expression and the fact that he’d just watched her nearly disintegrate a man with holy fire he thought better of it and remained silent. The mess with the ‘loth wasn’t going to get better on its own, and she was likely to escalate things further and further. Hopefully he thought he might be able to mollify it all with an apology letter that was probably best sent that afternoon and not a day later.</p><p></p><p>Toras’s train of thought abruptly jumped tracks as the brewery doors opened, releasing a wave of stench and also Clueless. The bladesinger walked out with a polite turn and a wave back inside before facing his companions with an oddly smiling face and a bottle of beer in one hand.</p><p></p><p>“I don’t know why you’re smiling,” Florian remarked, “It still stinks.”</p><p></p><p>Clueless waved away her concerned with the hand clutching the bottle, “For the moment, but that’s going to be taken care of. It actually went much better than I expected.”</p><p></p><p>Florian whispered a short orison and looked Clueless over, “They didn’t manage to charm you did they?”</p><p></p><p>Despite her suspicions, the bladesinger wasn’t displaying any magical auras different from normal.</p><p></p><p>“Ok, let me explain. First off, the beer is actually good.” He held up the bottle, emblazoned with a stamp of a stylized dwarven forge hammer and the owners’ initials. “So I met with the owners, Fegrim and Olk, the brothers who own the place. The beer isn’t my every day taste profile, but it’s interesting enough and if we offered it at the Jammer, we could sell it… and what’s with the burning corpse in the middle of the street?”</p><p></p><p>“He deserved it.” Florian deadpanned. “Go on.”</p><p></p><p>“I’ll explain later, and yes, he did deserve it.” Toras added, motioning for Clueless to continue.</p><p></p><p>“Ok…” Clueless took a swig of the beer and a slow stare at the inexplicably still breathing cleric of Garagos. “So the owners of the brewery are open to a distribution deal with the Jammer so long as we offer to set a standing order.”</p><p></p><p>“The place f*cking stinks!” Florian protested.</p><p></p><p>Clueless held up a hand, “And in exchange for a distribution deal they’ll modify the vats to vent less gas and vent that all elsewhere.”</p><p></p><p>“That’s some serious extortion right there.” Florian continued to frown.</p><p></p><p>“Yeah, it clearly is. Given the speed of this all, it’s an absolutely transparent extortion attempt since they already knew how to prevent the smell yet couldn’t be bothered. But despite the extortion, it makes sense for the Jammer if we sell their beer and they clean up their act.”</p><p></p><p>Several minutes of back and forth discussion of such a deal ensued. Words flew, beer was tried, and acrimony faded away shortly thereafter. It was a forced deal but it wasn’t a bad deal, and so things seemed to be on the up and up as the three of them departed back to the Portal Jammer.</p><p></p><p>The day’s fun of course was just getting started.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p>“Is the staff ready to perform? The candles lit and perfume upon the air?” Madam Eszedia of Broken Reach looked into the mirror at the quasit perched upon her bedpost as she applied a fresh coat of narcotic-laced black lipstick. “That shipment of wine, strawberries, and those bottles of honey I asked for… have they arrived yet?”</p><p></p><p>“Yes madam, they are, they are, and they have.” The quasit that served as her attendant quipped from where it perched on a dresser full of its mistress’s “instruments”.</p><p></p><p>“Good, good, and good.” Eszedia remarked as she looked over her appearance, wanting to make sure that everything was in place and immaculately arranged. Boots polished, corset cinched, makeup just perfectly so. She’d be selling the service of others, but she’d happily be enticing customers through the front door as needed. “Give the honey to Xareshen and have her slather it over those two twin incubi and that new tiefling Pennythistle. They’ll be a package deal today. In for a Penny in for a pound.”</p><p></p><p>The quasit snickered as it looked over Eszedia’s shoulder, out the window that looked across the street where the Portal Jammer sat. Things had returned to normal more or less, and the Jammer was flush with customers once more with the removal of the stench of the brewery that sat catty-corner to what would in an hour’s time become a tanar’ri brothel.</p><p></p><p>“Have Zurketh get the banners ready to hang and make sure that the spells to amplify the sounds inside are properly working.” An expectant glimmer sparkled in the succubus’s eyes as she punctuated her anticipation with a thrust of her hips. “We’ll be making jink today, damning some souls to the Abyss, and if all goes right, I’ll be earning that ‘loth’s promised bonus, so make sure to have the staff visit next door and peddle themselves.”</p><p></p><p>Two hundred thousand jink if she managed to shut down the Portal Jammer within the space of a week, and a reduction in the uncomfortably large cut of her profits that the ‘loth was otherwise receiving. That was the promise at least, and it was part of what had gotten the tanar’ri into Sigil in the first place. The sheer enjoyment of the act, as well as the vain hope of getting on the Marauder’s best side and possibly her backside as well didn’t hurt either, though the ‘loth had firmly squelched that latter hope like a literal moth to a flame.</p><p></p><p>The succubus walked to the mirror again and did a slow pirouette, extending her wings and appreciating her reflection. A touch up of eye shadow and the addition of additional earrings and a dangling charm on the tip of her spaded, barbed tail were the only late additions before she judged herself ready and by extent her business.</p><p> </p><p>“Get the girls, boys, and everyone in-between ready.” Eszedia pointed her tail at the quasit. “Doors open at peak.”</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p>Clueless stood behind the Portal Jammer’s bar, passing the time pouring drinks, washing ale mugs, and idly chattering with customers and his companions alike. Finally feeling better, Fyrehowl sat at the end of the bar talking with Skalliska who’d finally taken some time away from tending to her litter of kobolds.</p><p></p><p>“The smell isn’t better yet.” Fyrehowl complained with a soft whine as she covered her nose with a wet towel.</p><p></p><p>“It’s better, just not for you quite yet.” Clueless gave a sympathetic frown. “They said it would take a few days to fully disperse as they make their modifications. At the very least this place isn’t a ghost-town anymore.”</p><p></p><p>“If you plan to get soused an unpleasant smell is probably the least of your worries, and the folks we’ve got right now are some heavy drinkers.” Skalliska said, adjusting the brim of her hat as she looked out across the room.</p><p></p><p>“At the very least, things are finally looking on the up and up.” Clueless smiled as he poured himself a drink and put it to his lips.</p><p></p><p>Abruptly the sound of screaming echoed through the Portal Jammer. Not screams of agony but those of wild ecstasy from several dozen distinct voices.</p><p></p><p>“What the f*ck is that?!” Clueless spit out his drink, spraying a fine mist of ale in front of where he stood. Fyrehowl of course had just a moment prior preemptively dodged on her supernatural Cipher’s instinct and Skalliska deftly shielded herself with her own hat.</p><p></p><p>Both the Jammer’s owners and patrons alike looked about for the source, growing more and more uncomfortable by the moment by a mixture of ecstatic gasps, moans, and mutterings of profane intimacy from both female and male voices alike. Some of them were shrieked out in planar common but most of them were in abyssal. They were also largely resonating telepathically inside of their minds, with the more muted but still very much audible sounds of rhythmic pleasure and periodic climax coming from somewhere outside and across the street.</p><p></p><p>Clueless was outside in the space of a heartbeat, having used a dimension door spell to burst across the intervening space from the bar into the middle of the street. Outside, surrounded by a veritable wall of screams and gasps, both mental and audible, the bladesinger looked up at the newly painted facade of a neighboring building, its doors swung open to the public, and the former apartment building now festooned with a bright new banner: ‘The House of Carnal Exultation; Madam Eszedia of Broken Reach, proprietor.’</p><p></p><p>“What the f*ck…” Clueless said at full volume as he looked up at the Jammer’s newest neighbors.</p><p></p><p>“Why hello there pretty little thing!” Madam Eszedia’s voice rang out with practiced clarity and seductive potential from where she sat on the second floor window, straddling the window sill, dressed in a gown slit from ankle to neck and held together from waist on up by a cross-hatch of silk ribbon. “You’ve certainly come to the right place for what you just said! Any kind that you can imagine, we can provide for a price.”</p><p></p><p>“Do you mind?” Clueless shouted up with as much calm decorum as he could manage, looking up to see a pair of babau cavorting on the roof with a pair of tieflings in full public view, and more than a dozen other similar scenes playing out in the open windows that looked down upon the street facing the Jammer. “Seriously?”</p><p></p><p>“I don’t mind at all you delightful specimen of the mortal male physique.” The succubus placed both hands on the window frame and lifted her legs into the air, reaching her shoulders at the apex of their stretch before bringing them down. Turning to face the half-fey, she flashed him as the loose, low-cut front of her outfit fell forward, obviously designed to do just that, “Clueless, yes? Oh I’ve heard all about you.”</p><p></p><p>“My reputation proceeds me then.” Clueless pursed his lips as the tanar’ri began to fully strip naked, not by her own efforts but by the action of two pairs of lithe and practiced hands from the darkened room behind her. “Yours has not, though that’s difficult for me to understand with the show you’re giving to me, my customers in the Jammer, and everyone else on this block. You are?”</p><p></p><p>“As the sign says, Madam Eszedia of Broken reach, a distant relation of Red Shroud herself. That being said, I prefer my customers know me in the best way, rather than by name or reputation alone.” On that note the hands behind her finished, pulled her clothing off completely and pushed her forwards through the window frame, forcing her to hold herself up, arms behind her back. Looking down, her eyes focused on Clueless as she smiled with obscene delight.</p><p></p><p>“Really?” Clueless’s expression wrinkled as he watched the succubus’s tail lift up and one of the previous hands in the room behind her settle firmly on her hips from behind.</p><p></p><p>“Oh… you really… should… visit… oh! OH! Yes!” Eszedia’s eyes widened and her speech was interrupted repeatedly as she rocked forward and back in her window frame perch. “It’s a wonderful… location you… seeeeeeeEEEEEE… and we’ve got a ten year lease!”</p><p></p><p>Clueless rolled his eyes as the succubus and her unseen partner continued to rut in full view of the Portal Jammer’s main entrance and the tanar’ri continued evocatively screaming out her pleasures as well as her establishment’s sales pitch to everyone in hearing distance.</p><p></p><p>Grumbling, the bladesinger turned around, ignoring Eszedia’s string of compliments on the shape of his *ss and what she would do to it given the chance as she changed positions in the window and promptly changed genders to better accentuate her taunting temptation to the half-fey as he walked away back to the Jammer.</p><p></p><p>Eszedia watched him walk off, cackling even as she continued her activities, screaming out a running transcript of her actions as well as telepathically projecting her annunciations of pleasure into the Portal Jammer’s common room.</p><p></p><p>“This is a sh*tshow…” Clueless brushed past Toras as he stepped back inside the Jammer. “I don’t know how we’ll handle it yet. I need time to think.”</p><p></p><p>Still standing in the Jammer’s doorway Toras frowned, listening to the chorus of moans and screamed names from across the street. His several minute long cross-section of the new neighbors’ staff and clientele seemed to include everything from tanar’ri, every sapient humanoid race, and at least five non-sapient animals.</p><p></p><p>Toras sighed and put a hand to his forehead. The tanar’ri brothel was going to drive away business even quicker than the evil shrine next door or the brewery at full stinking output, and it was going to keep it down so long as it remained there. This wasn’t going to end with scorching an evil cleric with holy fire or striking a deal with two conniving but level-headed brewers; it wasn’t that easy this time. Short of putting the fiends to the sword and burning the brothel down to the ground, he’d have to deal with the problem in some other way, and that way ran straight to the Marauder’s damn doorstep.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p>An hour later, still surrounded by the myriad, horrific sounds of tanar’ri pleasures both given and received, Toras sat at the now depopulated bar with a line of shot-glasses in front of him, each filled with a sharp, sweet Arcadian whiskey. The letter he’d been planning to send to the Marauder was written and waiting to be mailed, but it had to be more than that.</p><p></p><p>“I’ve got ideas beyond sitting here, getting drunk, and trying to ignore a den of tanar’ri prostitutes.” The fighter took another shot and turned to the lupinal sitting beside him.</p><p></p><p>“You could, you know, just put a sword through her face.” Fyrehowl glanced up at the fighter, her ears wrapped with linen and stuffed with cotton balls to dampen the audible sounds. “I wouldn’t be against that idea.”</p><p></p><p>“Oh trust me. It’s a very, very tempting thought.” Toras took another shot of booze. “I already had a good, long conversation about it with Clueless. He’s actually the one who put me off of the idea.”</p><p></p><p>The lupinal tilted her head to the side. “Really now? He hates her more than you do, and that brothel is pissing him off something fierce.”</p><p></p><p>“He knows and I know that I wouldn’t get away with it.” Toras shook his head. “Not now. Not when she’s expecting it. Even if she wasn’t, she’s been sitting pretty for gods know how long with contingencies in place for most anything that you can think of. I won’t survive, and I’d like to survive till I can have the enjoyment of punching her in the face at least once and living to tell the tale.”</p><p></p><p>Fyrehowl nodded, “So what’s your plan then?”</p><p></p><p>“Florian isn’t going to apologize. I’ve asked her and she flat out refuses even if it’s the death of her. She had bloody portals opening up underneath her right after the Council Meeting, and apparently another incident with that same this afternoon when she left to book a room elsewhere in the Ward away from this mess across the street. I don’t know how she managed it, but the ‘loth is behind it and everything else that’s been going on, and Florian refusing to apologize doesn’t help me settle this cr*p.”</p><p></p><p>“So…?” Fyrehowl raised an eyebrow. “I’m not apologizing either.”</p><p></p><p>“I’m less concerned about you.” Toras took a sip of ale. “You didn’t publicly call her a ‘super b*tch’.”</p><p></p><p>The lupinal chuckled with far too much happiness given the gravity of the situation.</p><p></p><p>Toras joined with a chuckle of his own. They’d all wanted to say what Florian had said, but none of them had had the guts or the death-wish to actually do so. “Yeah I expected that reaction, but I’m genuinely concerned that we’ll all wake up dead at some point if we don’t play this right.”</p><p></p><p>“So what are you planning on doing since Florian isn’t going to apologize?”</p><p></p><p>“I’ll do the apologizing on her behalf. I figure if I bribe the ever loving f*ck out of the Marauder, she’ll leave us alone, she’ll stop ‘gifting’ us with new and improved neighbors, or at the very least she’ll stop trying to kill Florian.”</p><p></p><p>Fyrehowl quaffed her last shot and slammed the tumbler down, “What would you bribe the richest fiend in Sigil with?”</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p>The silver bell over the entrance to The Friendly Fiend rattled cheerfully as the door swung open and Toras and Fyrehowl stepped into the quaint little shop.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shemeska, post: 6834859, member: 11697"] “FIGHT ME PITIFUL CLERIC OF A PITIFUL GOD!” Garzuvek bellowed as he charged, blood bubbling up from his hands with a crackle of negative energy channeled from his unholy patron’s fury. “Really? Seriously?” Florian frowned and looked past the deranged priest. “Did this *sshat actually set up a shrine to Garagos the freaking reaver across from the Jammer? First the stink and then this?” Toras raised an eyebrow and began to draw his blade. He stopped when Florian held up a hand for him to stop. “No no, this one is all mine.” She clutched her holy symbol tightly and began to whisper. “GARAGOS LAUGHS AT YOU AS HEAAAARRRGGGG!!!!!!...” The air before Garzuvek shimmered and took form as a great gleaming hammer. With time seeming to run in slow-motion, Florian’s artfully manifested [i]destruction[/i] spell slammed into him with a bone-jarring concussive force and a burst of divine fire. Garzuvek’s clothing smoldered and he coughed blood onto the cobblestones. Having somehow survived Florian’s spell, he might have wished otherwise given the severity of his injuries. He lay there on the ground moaning in pain and spitting out a few half-hearted curses at Tempus as Florian walked over to where he lay. “Enjoy that?” Florian asked as she looked down at him. “Because once you recover I’ll be doing the exact same to you until you get out Sigil and leave with your shrine to a deity that pisses in the face of actual battle and glory. You think about that, and think about why a god who grants healing magic rather than inflictions might have been a wiser choice given your present state.” Garzuvek twitched and gave an incomprehensible moan. “Same time next week then?” Florian gave a solid kick to the cleric’s midsection before shaking her head and rejoining Toras on the curb. Smiling happily, the half-celestial clapped in approval. “This day couldn’t get worse.” Florian again shook her head at the unconscious cleric as a tout leading a group of humans paused and routed around the bloody, unmoving figure, giving looks of worry and fear in Toras and her direction. “Sorry, I really enjoyed doing that. Jack*ss cleric of Garagos sets up a shrine to the Reaver across from my inn? Not going to happen. What the hell was going through his head…” “Someone put him up to it is what happened.” Toras stared across the street to the well-dressed tiefling standing under a shop awning, having been there to watch the previous scene ensue. The tiefling met his eyes and politely tipped his hat. Despite the overwhelming urge to bum rush the Marauder’s lacky, Toras smiled and returned the gesture with a polite nod of his head. Smirking but realizing most likely that any further response might invoke a fight that would likely carry consequences past his comfort even if he managed to curb-stomp the f*cker, Toras stood his ground as calmly as he could as the tiefling withdrew into the nearby alleyway and vanished. “What the hell was that about?” Florian looked up from the unconscious cleric and glanced at the retreating tiefling just as they moved out of sight. “One of the Marauder’s toadies watching you kick that idiot there’s *ss. Ten rounds back at the Portal Jammer says that she’s behind all of this.” Toras made a face and gestured at the nearby shrine of Garagos and the overnight appearance of the duergar brewery. “We pissed her off and she’s being at her most petty in response, and by we of course I mean you and Fyrehowl.” “Hey now.” Florian furrowed her brow, “She f*cking deserved what I said at the Advisory Council meeting.” “You called her a ‘super b*tch’ in public.” Toras inclined his head. “Is that descriptor wrong by any standard whatsoever?” Florian questioned. “… no.” Toras sighed. “She deserved it, so I said it.” Florian’s expression was one of resolute justification. “She deserves a holy water tequila and a punch in the face, but we’re not going to live very long if we do either.” “So that leaves it at that.” The cleric held up her hands, “There’s nothing more to be said. I regret nothing and she can go f*ck herself.” Toras opened his mouth to object but given Florian’s expression and the fact that he’d just watched her nearly disintegrate a man with holy fire he thought better of it and remained silent. The mess with the ‘loth wasn’t going to get better on its own, and she was likely to escalate things further and further. Hopefully he thought he might be able to mollify it all with an apology letter that was probably best sent that afternoon and not a day later. Toras’s train of thought abruptly jumped tracks as the brewery doors opened, releasing a wave of stench and also Clueless. The bladesinger walked out with a polite turn and a wave back inside before facing his companions with an oddly smiling face and a bottle of beer in one hand. “I don’t know why you’re smiling,” Florian remarked, “It still stinks.” Clueless waved away her concerned with the hand clutching the bottle, “For the moment, but that’s going to be taken care of. It actually went much better than I expected.” Florian whispered a short orison and looked Clueless over, “They didn’t manage to charm you did they?” Despite her suspicions, the bladesinger wasn’t displaying any magical auras different from normal. “Ok, let me explain. First off, the beer is actually good.” He held up the bottle, emblazoned with a stamp of a stylized dwarven forge hammer and the owners’ initials. “So I met with the owners, Fegrim and Olk, the brothers who own the place. The beer isn’t my every day taste profile, but it’s interesting enough and if we offered it at the Jammer, we could sell it… and what’s with the burning corpse in the middle of the street?” “He deserved it.” Florian deadpanned. “Go on.” “I’ll explain later, and yes, he did deserve it.” Toras added, motioning for Clueless to continue. “Ok…” Clueless took a swig of the beer and a slow stare at the inexplicably still breathing cleric of Garagos. “So the owners of the brewery are open to a distribution deal with the Jammer so long as we offer to set a standing order.” “The place f*cking stinks!” Florian protested. Clueless held up a hand, “And in exchange for a distribution deal they’ll modify the vats to vent less gas and vent that all elsewhere.” “That’s some serious extortion right there.” Florian continued to frown. “Yeah, it clearly is. Given the speed of this all, it’s an absolutely transparent extortion attempt since they already knew how to prevent the smell yet couldn’t be bothered. But despite the extortion, it makes sense for the Jammer if we sell their beer and they clean up their act.” Several minutes of back and forth discussion of such a deal ensued. Words flew, beer was tried, and acrimony faded away shortly thereafter. It was a forced deal but it wasn’t a bad deal, and so things seemed to be on the up and up as the three of them departed back to the Portal Jammer. The day’s fun of course was just getting started. [center]****[/center] “Is the staff ready to perform? The candles lit and perfume upon the air?” Madam Eszedia of Broken Reach looked into the mirror at the quasit perched upon her bedpost as she applied a fresh coat of narcotic-laced black lipstick. “That shipment of wine, strawberries, and those bottles of honey I asked for… have they arrived yet?” “Yes madam, they are, they are, and they have.” The quasit that served as her attendant quipped from where it perched on a dresser full of its mistress’s “instruments”. “Good, good, and good.” Eszedia remarked as she looked over her appearance, wanting to make sure that everything was in place and immaculately arranged. Boots polished, corset cinched, makeup just perfectly so. She’d be selling the service of others, but she’d happily be enticing customers through the front door as needed. “Give the honey to Xareshen and have her slather it over those two twin incubi and that new tiefling Pennythistle. They’ll be a package deal today. In for a Penny in for a pound.” The quasit snickered as it looked over Eszedia’s shoulder, out the window that looked across the street where the Portal Jammer sat. Things had returned to normal more or less, and the Jammer was flush with customers once more with the removal of the stench of the brewery that sat catty-corner to what would in an hour’s time become a tanar’ri brothel. “Have Zurketh get the banners ready to hang and make sure that the spells to amplify the sounds inside are properly working.” An expectant glimmer sparkled in the succubus’s eyes as she punctuated her anticipation with a thrust of her hips. “We’ll be making jink today, damning some souls to the Abyss, and if all goes right, I’ll be earning that ‘loth’s promised bonus, so make sure to have the staff visit next door and peddle themselves.” Two hundred thousand jink if she managed to shut down the Portal Jammer within the space of a week, and a reduction in the uncomfortably large cut of her profits that the ‘loth was otherwise receiving. That was the promise at least, and it was part of what had gotten the tanar’ri into Sigil in the first place. The sheer enjoyment of the act, as well as the vain hope of getting on the Marauder’s best side and possibly her backside as well didn’t hurt either, though the ‘loth had firmly squelched that latter hope like a literal moth to a flame. The succubus walked to the mirror again and did a slow pirouette, extending her wings and appreciating her reflection. A touch up of eye shadow and the addition of additional earrings and a dangling charm on the tip of her spaded, barbed tail were the only late additions before she judged herself ready and by extent her business. “Get the girls, boys, and everyone in-between ready.” Eszedia pointed her tail at the quasit. “Doors open at peak.” [center]****[/center] Clueless stood behind the Portal Jammer’s bar, passing the time pouring drinks, washing ale mugs, and idly chattering with customers and his companions alike. Finally feeling better, Fyrehowl sat at the end of the bar talking with Skalliska who’d finally taken some time away from tending to her litter of kobolds. “The smell isn’t better yet.” Fyrehowl complained with a soft whine as she covered her nose with a wet towel. “It’s better, just not for you quite yet.” Clueless gave a sympathetic frown. “They said it would take a few days to fully disperse as they make their modifications. At the very least this place isn’t a ghost-town anymore.” “If you plan to get soused an unpleasant smell is probably the least of your worries, and the folks we’ve got right now are some heavy drinkers.” Skalliska said, adjusting the brim of her hat as she looked out across the room. “At the very least, things are finally looking on the up and up.” Clueless smiled as he poured himself a drink and put it to his lips. Abruptly the sound of screaming echoed through the Portal Jammer. Not screams of agony but those of wild ecstasy from several dozen distinct voices. “What the f*ck is that?!” Clueless spit out his drink, spraying a fine mist of ale in front of where he stood. Fyrehowl of course had just a moment prior preemptively dodged on her supernatural Cipher’s instinct and Skalliska deftly shielded herself with her own hat. Both the Jammer’s owners and patrons alike looked about for the source, growing more and more uncomfortable by the moment by a mixture of ecstatic gasps, moans, and mutterings of profane intimacy from both female and male voices alike. Some of them were shrieked out in planar common but most of them were in abyssal. They were also largely resonating telepathically inside of their minds, with the more muted but still very much audible sounds of rhythmic pleasure and periodic climax coming from somewhere outside and across the street. Clueless was outside in the space of a heartbeat, having used a dimension door spell to burst across the intervening space from the bar into the middle of the street. Outside, surrounded by a veritable wall of screams and gasps, both mental and audible, the bladesinger looked up at the newly painted facade of a neighboring building, its doors swung open to the public, and the former apartment building now festooned with a bright new banner: ‘The House of Carnal Exultation; Madam Eszedia of Broken Reach, proprietor.’ “What the f*ck…” Clueless said at full volume as he looked up at the Jammer’s newest neighbors. “Why hello there pretty little thing!” Madam Eszedia’s voice rang out with practiced clarity and seductive potential from where she sat on the second floor window, straddling the window sill, dressed in a gown slit from ankle to neck and held together from waist on up by a cross-hatch of silk ribbon. “You’ve certainly come to the right place for what you just said! Any kind that you can imagine, we can provide for a price.” “Do you mind?” Clueless shouted up with as much calm decorum as he could manage, looking up to see a pair of babau cavorting on the roof with a pair of tieflings in full public view, and more than a dozen other similar scenes playing out in the open windows that looked down upon the street facing the Jammer. “Seriously?” “I don’t mind at all you delightful specimen of the mortal male physique.” The succubus placed both hands on the window frame and lifted her legs into the air, reaching her shoulders at the apex of their stretch before bringing them down. Turning to face the half-fey, she flashed him as the loose, low-cut front of her outfit fell forward, obviously designed to do just that, “Clueless, yes? Oh I’ve heard all about you.” “My reputation proceeds me then.” Clueless pursed his lips as the tanar’ri began to fully strip naked, not by her own efforts but by the action of two pairs of lithe and practiced hands from the darkened room behind her. “Yours has not, though that’s difficult for me to understand with the show you’re giving to me, my customers in the Jammer, and everyone else on this block. You are?” “As the sign says, Madam Eszedia of Broken reach, a distant relation of Red Shroud herself. That being said, I prefer my customers know me in the best way, rather than by name or reputation alone.” On that note the hands behind her finished, pulled her clothing off completely and pushed her forwards through the window frame, forcing her to hold herself up, arms behind her back. Looking down, her eyes focused on Clueless as she smiled with obscene delight. “Really?” Clueless’s expression wrinkled as he watched the succubus’s tail lift up and one of the previous hands in the room behind her settle firmly on her hips from behind. “Oh… you really… should… visit… oh! OH! Yes!” Eszedia’s eyes widened and her speech was interrupted repeatedly as she rocked forward and back in her window frame perch. “It’s a wonderful… location you… seeeeeeeEEEEEE… and we’ve got a ten year lease!” Clueless rolled his eyes as the succubus and her unseen partner continued to rut in full view of the Portal Jammer’s main entrance and the tanar’ri continued evocatively screaming out her pleasures as well as her establishment’s sales pitch to everyone in hearing distance. Grumbling, the bladesinger turned around, ignoring Eszedia’s string of compliments on the shape of his *ss and what she would do to it given the chance as she changed positions in the window and promptly changed genders to better accentuate her taunting temptation to the half-fey as he walked away back to the Jammer. Eszedia watched him walk off, cackling even as she continued her activities, screaming out a running transcript of her actions as well as telepathically projecting her annunciations of pleasure into the Portal Jammer’s common room. “This is a sh*tshow…” Clueless brushed past Toras as he stepped back inside the Jammer. “I don’t know how we’ll handle it yet. I need time to think.” Still standing in the Jammer’s doorway Toras frowned, listening to the chorus of moans and screamed names from across the street. His several minute long cross-section of the new neighbors’ staff and clientele seemed to include everything from tanar’ri, every sapient humanoid race, and at least five non-sapient animals. Toras sighed and put a hand to his forehead. The tanar’ri brothel was going to drive away business even quicker than the evil shrine next door or the brewery at full stinking output, and it was going to keep it down so long as it remained there. This wasn’t going to end with scorching an evil cleric with holy fire or striking a deal with two conniving but level-headed brewers; it wasn’t that easy this time. Short of putting the fiends to the sword and burning the brothel down to the ground, he’d have to deal with the problem in some other way, and that way ran straight to the Marauder’s damn doorstep. [center]****[/center] An hour later, still surrounded by the myriad, horrific sounds of tanar’ri pleasures both given and received, Toras sat at the now depopulated bar with a line of shot-glasses in front of him, each filled with a sharp, sweet Arcadian whiskey. The letter he’d been planning to send to the Marauder was written and waiting to be mailed, but it had to be more than that. “I’ve got ideas beyond sitting here, getting drunk, and trying to ignore a den of tanar’ri prostitutes.” The fighter took another shot and turned to the lupinal sitting beside him. “You could, you know, just put a sword through her face.” Fyrehowl glanced up at the fighter, her ears wrapped with linen and stuffed with cotton balls to dampen the audible sounds. “I wouldn’t be against that idea.” “Oh trust me. It’s a very, very tempting thought.” Toras took another shot of booze. “I already had a good, long conversation about it with Clueless. He’s actually the one who put me off of the idea.” The lupinal tilted her head to the side. “Really now? He hates her more than you do, and that brothel is pissing him off something fierce.” “He knows and I know that I wouldn’t get away with it.” Toras shook his head. “Not now. Not when she’s expecting it. Even if she wasn’t, she’s been sitting pretty for gods know how long with contingencies in place for most anything that you can think of. I won’t survive, and I’d like to survive till I can have the enjoyment of punching her in the face at least once and living to tell the tale.” Fyrehowl nodded, “So what’s your plan then?” “Florian isn’t going to apologize. I’ve asked her and she flat out refuses even if it’s the death of her. She had bloody portals opening up underneath her right after the Council Meeting, and apparently another incident with that same this afternoon when she left to book a room elsewhere in the Ward away from this mess across the street. I don’t know how she managed it, but the ‘loth is behind it and everything else that’s been going on, and Florian refusing to apologize doesn’t help me settle this cr*p.” “So…?” Fyrehowl raised an eyebrow. “I’m not apologizing either.” “I’m less concerned about you.” Toras took a sip of ale. “You didn’t publicly call her a ‘super b*tch’.” The lupinal chuckled with far too much happiness given the gravity of the situation. Toras joined with a chuckle of his own. They’d all wanted to say what Florian had said, but none of them had had the guts or the death-wish to actually do so. “Yeah I expected that reaction, but I’m genuinely concerned that we’ll all wake up dead at some point if we don’t play this right.” “So what are you planning on doing since Florian isn’t going to apologize?” “I’ll do the apologizing on her behalf. I figure if I bribe the ever loving f*ck out of the Marauder, she’ll leave us alone, she’ll stop ‘gifting’ us with new and improved neighbors, or at the very least she’ll stop trying to kill Florian.” Fyrehowl quaffed her last shot and slammed the tumbler down, “What would you bribe the richest fiend in Sigil with?” [center]****[/center] The silver bell over the entrance to The Friendly Fiend rattled cheerfully as the door swung open and Toras and Fyrehowl stepped into the quaint little shop. [/QUOTE]
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Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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