Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 8805702" data-attributes="member: 11697"><p>The Oinoloth returned to the summit of Khin-Oin heralded with a snarling eruption of black fire and the sound of a chorus of wailing voices, an atypical presentation for a teleportation spell for certain, but one that reflected the archfiend’s mood after his encounter with the Architect.</p><p></p><p>Silence immediately fell upon the assembled court surrounding the great throne, the Siege Malicious. Dozens of regally robed arcanaloths and ultroloths, each of them bedecked with enough magical paraphernalia to make an archmage weep, looked up with surprise at their master’s return, seeking to divine in that first split second his mood and their appropriate response.</p><p></p><p>Vorkannis of course ignored them and the eruption of voices seeking to entreat him for a word, an audience, a request for information as to how his most recent venture out into the surrounding Waste had gone, not that any of them knew his actual reasons or intent. He walked past and through them, his immaterial and shadowy cloud of plague spores parting them like a split ocean before a prophet.</p><p></p><p>As he walked through the crowd, one arcanaloth at his feet lay dying from a silver blade plunged into its throat and a burned hole in its chest still sizzling with black, arcane fire. The Oinoloth gave only a cursory glance before then looking directly at their killer further back in the throng with the faintest sneer of approval. Perhaps the internecine slaughter was amusing to him, or simply the act of betrayal and the pain of the dying ‘loth like honey on his lips, or more likely the life and death struggles of comparative insects amused him in its futility.</p><p></p><p>As her Oinoloth took his seat upon the Siege Malicious, one arcanaloth, Venya ib Malkanthe stepped forward and spoke the first words that actually garnered his attention, “My Oinoloth, there are… issues… of concern to you in Gehenna.”</p><p></p><p>Vorkannis briefly glanced down at her, his thoughts clearly still preoccupied by his recent encounter at the Loadstone. “Let Helekanalaith deal with any such issues in his domain,” He said, dismissively, “I have precious little concern where so much as it regards his competence.”</p><p></p><p>“It regards Chamada and the living moon,” She paused, uncertain how to proceed, her hands fidgeting to smooth out the folds of her pale blue and black robes, before finally spitting out a name, “Nimicri.”</p><p></p><p>To this the Oinoloth physically turned and narrowed his eyes, taking full attention, “Speak.”</p><p></p><p>“The moon is in open rebellion,” She explained, choosing her words carefully, suddenly wary at how swiftly her master had chosen to direct his full attention to her. She could feel the telepathic fingers of his consciousness brushing at her thoughts like a coiled serpent sniffing the air as it waited for its prey to step forward for its waiting strike. “It began this morning without warning. It devoured dozens of mezzoloths and their overseers. Several of my own,” She would have said ‘our’ kind but the very notion of comparing them and herself to the Oinoloth seemed blasphemous to her, “They barely managed to escape and it seemed as if the moon were targeting them in specific in its wrath.”</p><p></p><p>“Of course it would…” Vorkannis sneered, his meaning opaque to those gathered around him.</p><p></p><p>“At present our garrison has retreated to the surface of the second furnace and…”</p><p></p><p>“Blockade the moon in its entirety.” Vorkannis cut her off, “Allow no transit in or out. Any attempting to escape are to be killed, swiftly, and others seeking entry are to be turned away with whatever appropriate lies you can muster, unless killing them as well is more expedient. Do your best to cull the rumor mill that has likely already spread to the City of Doors.”</p><p></p><p>The Oinoloth snarled and rapidly tapped the claws of his left hand upon his throne. It seemed possible that he might have to leave Khin-Oin once more, even as he’d only just returned.</p><p></p><p>“Petulant creature…”</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The mortal named Eldiria Windsong, cleric of Sehanine Moonbow, clutched, white-knuckled at her shield, her elven heart beating in her chest and humming in her ears as her mind raced to understand what she’d seen over the past hour that she and her companions had spent on the surface of Nimicri.</p><p></p><p>Unlike many who visited the moon, she was under no illusions as to the danger or to the true nature of the unique trade city that orbited Gehenna’s second furnace of Chamada. She knew to avoid spilling her own blood, lest the city eventually generate a flawed simulacra of her to one day escort visitors, man a shop, or whatever other mundane tasks it set its little finger puppets upon.</p><p></p><p>Three times since they’d arrived, she’d seen Nimicri devour an outsider, and eight other times she’d seen it brazenly make the attempt. For the entirety of the moon’s history, as far as she was aware, it had never engaged in what she could only describe as an open feast upon its visitors and occupiers. For certain the cunning entity would innocuously slurp at any blood lost in fights or left behind following a visitor’s drunken fall upon a streetside curb, taking from them knowledge, memories, and the blueprints to spawn a copy of them from itself like some titanic mimic. But since she and her companions had stepped foot upon the moon, they’d witnessed doorways spawn teeth and snap down upon mezzoloths, the spires of towers warp into spiked tentacles to impale flying nycaloths, and streets suddenly collapse not into sinkholes but yawning mouths to feast upon an arcanaloth betrayed by its fellows and hurled within to die, screaming.</p><p></p><p>Why though the bloodshed? Why now? And why, now that she thought about it, had the moon only targeted the ‘loths who at any point stood as the planetoid’s primary visitors, if only by proximity to one of their three native planes?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>She stood in the shadows, cloaked from the sight of mortals and monster alike, her arrival unheralded by the familiar opening of portals or even the ostentatious flicker-flash of a teleportation spell. She was never one to advertise her arrival. Lesser beings could rejoice in the noise of their arrival, their own presentation as targets and victims. She was nothing of the sort. She was a predator as she hung there, one with the darkness, there in the gravity well of another of a sort.</p><p></p><p>The mortal stepped into view, itself clutching at shield in one hand and a holy symbol about its neck with the other. One pathetic being feebly clutching for the protection of an even more pathetic thing.</p><p></p><p>Closer.</p><p></p><p>One step closer.</p><p></p><p>Almost there little gnat.</p><p></p><p>Only one step closer little one.</p><p></p><p>Come forward little insect.</p><p></p><p>This will be swift.</p><p></p><p>This will be unseen.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Eldiria sprinted forward, moving down the alleyway between a pair of buildings until she reached its end where it intersected a larger boulevard, motioning for her companions to wait as she glanced in both directions. While Nimicri itself had largely ignored them since their arrival, the ‘loths themselves had been both open targets of the moon itself, and likewise dangers lashing out in fury towards all others spared its wrath.</p><p></p><p>Good she thought to herself, there were no signs of the neutral evil fiends in either direction, both on the ground or in the air. She motioned back to where her three companions waited to wait a moment and then follow. The motion made, she turned the corner.</p><p></p><p>Suddenly, just ten steps forward and barely out of line of sight of her fellows, she paused, the faintest feeling of a nearby presence raising a sense of alarm. She glanced about, then up and behind, but no, there was nothing amiss. She shrugged and stepped forward.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Inwardly smiling, Taba revealed herself and struck. Jaws yawned wide, a myriad of newly formed arms grasping and holding tighter than iron, boney spikes piercing arming and puncturing lungs to silence a scream before it even began in the firing of higher neurons, and joints dislocating to accommodate her victim as the mortal slid down her gullet without a single drop of blood spilt, denying Nimicri the opportunity to do what she would do to an even higher degree of mastery.</p><p></p><p>The yugoloth lord began to digest her victim even before the mortal’s feet slipped past her teeth, acid, enzymes, and things more subtle digesting not only flesh but objects, memories, mannerisms, and knowledge, all of it sorted and memorized. In the space of an instant as she snapped shut her jaws, starting from her feet and moving upwards, her form recapitulated that of her victim in every detail. She blinked and she smiled, and then standing there just beyond the corner as her companions caught up with her stood Taba in perfect mimicry of the elven cleric she had murdered in an instant.</p><p></p><p>“Come on,” She said, her vocal chords identical to the dead clerics. “The way is clear. No ‘loths at all.”</p><p></p><p>Her companions nodded and the group proceeded down the street, ignorant that they followed in the footsteps of an altraloth. Block by block they found the city largely deserted, devoid of the usual presence of residents and shopkeepers generated by the moon itself, and block by block they witnessed it savagely assaulting those few yugoloths who remained on its surface, those few unable to leave on their own power or unwilling to defy the orders of their masters who had sent them there to eliminate witnesses to the moon’s rage.</p><p></p><p>Silently watching the slaughter, the group continued to traipse their way through the city, stopping only when the ground shook and a building collapsed.</p><p></p><p>“How dare you defy our master?!” Zeleria ap Chamada screamed, her hands a blur of motion as she invoked a meteor shower down upon the moon’s surface, blasting stone and mortar apart like a giant kicking an anthill. The broken stones melted as they fell, their formless mass absorbed by the streets below to leave no trace of the damage beyond a slight discoloration from where the fiendish wizard’s spell still burned with arcane flame.</p><p></p><p>“How dare you strike against us?!” Zeleria bellowed, rising into the air as she stones at her feet turned to teeth and snapped at her heels. Another flicker of motion from her hands and a snarled word and a brilliant green beam lashed from an open palm and cut into the ground, disintegrating a trench, meter by meter incinerating the moon’s unholy matrix, seeking to draw blood and punish the sentient planetoid.</p><p></p><p>The arcanaloth was skilled beyond the scope of the others of its kind the moon had already slain, but in the end, it was yet one more ant raging against the mountain upon which it stood. An adjacent tower became a gargantuan tentacle and swung down to swat the flying ‘loth like a fly, the street forming a slavering maw to accept it as it fell. Swallowed up by a chewing, undulating street, its final screams were unheard except by Taba, a pleasured smile faintly crossing her lips as she watched.</p><p></p><p>Saying nothing to her mortal compatriots, she continued, her movement through the maze of Nimicri’s streets hardly random, but following the faintest tremor she felt. The moon ached. Following the unvoiced sound of agony, she walked, following streets that wrapped around but never led directly towards the source of the moon’s maddening ache.</p><p></p><p>“Are we going in circles?” One of her companions asked, a statement ignored by the altraloth wearing the flesh of their deceased party member.</p><p></p><p>Something was off.</p><p></p><p>Buildings had slunk to the side, moved, and repositioned themselves, streets lacing together like burgeoning scar tissue to hide a wound. Nimicri ached not only from physical pain, but from emotional agony.</p><p></p><p>“Have you noticed somethi…” The rogue standing beside her stopped, holding his tongue as an eave above them animated into a fanged maw and struck at Taba.</p><p></p><p>Her shoulder rippled and shrugged off the blow, something utterly unexpected by every witness to the act, Nimicri included. No blood was drawn, but it smelled her. Altraloth. Yugoloth. The cause of its pain. One of the thieves. One of the abductors.</p><p></p><p>The streets around them exploded into a frenzy of violence, snuffing out the lives of the mortals Taba had used to hide her metaphysical scent from the hungry moon. The altraloth however remained untouched, her corporeal form shifting into a metamorphic liquid to surge through the air, moving in a dozen disparate streams to avoid Nimicri’s strikes.</p><p></p><p>Avoiding the moon’s rage, Taba surged forward, diving through openings made available by Nimicri’s strikes, time and again avoiding harm and growing closer and closer to what she’d felt ever since she’d arrived.</p><p></p><p>Then, returning to her native form but for a second to behold the moon’s secret with her own, original eyes, not aping any other form, she understood. A dozen eyes went wide, blinked, thoughts racing as to the implication as Nimicri’s myriad limbs and mouths moved to end her, and then with a thought she planeshifted out of Gehenna, leaving the moon to scream in impotent rage.</p><p></p><p>Taba understood the what, but not yet the why.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>“… upon the altar of our purity.” The Overlord of Carceri intoned as the final mezzoloth received her warped and twisted blessing of transformation, her attendants gazing up at her in awe and fear, even as she merely aped the magics taught to her by the Oinoloth without wholly understanding their intricacies and basis.</p><p></p><p>As a final flourish, a student signing her master’s name on the canvas, each of them had, after their transformation, received a glowing brand upon their flesh, hide, or carapace, physically melted or burned in place and glowing with puissant magic in the shape of the Oinoloth’s personal symbol.</p><p></p><p>Shylara closed her eyes and listened, smiling at the shrieks as they were applied by the various contingents of arcanaloths in her service. The sum totality of the agony she felt from her own forces mustering there at the base of the Tower of Incarnate Pain and the billions upon billions of souls that comprised the screaming matrix of the tower itself, it was nearly overwhelming in its pleasure for the archfiend.</p><p></p><p>“It is completed Mistress,” One of her servitors spoke, interrupting her moment of self-indulgence.</p><p></p><p>The Overlord of Carceri softly snarled as she opened her eyes, casting a shifting, multicolored radiance to the servitor who instinctively dropped to their knees and bowed their head. The movement of immediate submission worked and Shylara’s mercurial rage passed over the quivering arcanaloth who would live to die another day.</p><p></p><p>It was time.</p><p></p><p>It was finally time to enact this first step of her master’s plan, a plan in which she was a vital component, a centerpiece jewel in a forming crown. A plan of which, of course, she ultimately did not understand and had not been told the significance of even as she raised her hands and drew upon the ferocious power invested in her by virtue of her symbiotic link to the 3rd great yugoloth tower that rose from the red and festering flesh of Othrys.</p><p></p><p>The air above them all and the void above it, they ached, as space was rent apart, immaterial, ephemeral claws of magic and malignant will twisting, tearing, cutting, and reconfiguring, borrowing a hole across all of reality. First one, then another, and another, and another, a multitude of great gates to accommodate the yugoloth armies there massed and answering to a being which cared nothing for them. High above, the Bells of Othrys ceased their distant, ominous chime, cannon to crown to lip and alien clappers alike held motionless and silent like still tongues and pursed lips, hushed in waiting for what would come next.</p><p></p><p>Laughing maniacally, Shylara the Manged placed one foot in the jeweled stirrup of the saddle atop her personal slasrath, one of the selectively bred, monstrous, intelligent, and carnivorous beasts of burden first created in Gehenna. Launching herself up onto her seat, she glanced to the similarly saddled slasrath hovering in the air some two dozen feet distant, one which already hosted the blue-robed ultroloth, a spike of cobalt crystal buried in its forehead, manipulated like a puppet by their collective master. Utterly silent, it allowed her the illusion of control and had yet to speak with the Oinoloth’s projected voice in the past days in which their forces had marshalled and prepared for the journey.</p><p></p><p>Shylara tugged at the reins of her mount and urged it skyward, turning to face her assembled forces as the Oinoloth’s host took its place beside her, silently glancing over as if in prompt.</p><p></p><p>“NOW IS OUR TIME! NOW IS WHEN WE BEGIN THE GREAT TASK SET UPON US BY OUR MASTER, THE OINOLOTH, THE GREATEST OF US, VORKANNIS THE EBON! NOW I OPEN THE WAY! SPILL FORTH LEGIONS OF THE PLANES OF CONFLICT, GEHENNA, THE WASTE, AND CARCERI! SPILL FORTH AND SPILL THE BLOOD AND ESSENCE OF ALL WHO STAND IN OUR WAY!”</p><p></p><p>Mania dancing in her eyes as vividly as the mad chorus of colors that radiated from them, Shylara the Manged raised her hands and invoked an eldritch litany in baernaloth. Words and gestures she had learned from the Oinoloth himself, words and gestures that she only partly understood, they nonetheless had their desired effect. The air about the Tower of Incarnate Pain rippled and boiled as she called forth holes in reality, burned across the stretch of infinities between the Outer and Inner planes.</p><p></p><p>At the Overlord of Carceri’s urging, the portals yawned wide, spilling forth a light far too clean and unsullied by Evil or any alignment whatsoever in fact out onto the wastes of Othrys, dozens of them at once opening onto a landscape of gleaming, glittering gemstones. On the border of the Elemental Plane of Earth and the Positive Energy Plane, the Gemfields awaited them.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The skies of Sigil hung heavy with soot and smog, both conspiring together to form dark clouds to pour down an acrid, vinegar smelling rain upon the streets of the Clerk’s Ward. It made for a dreary day, masking the light that would have normally radiated through the front windows of the Portal Jammer as the day stretched towards Peak.</p><p></p><p>The weather and dimmed daylight certainly set the prevailing mood over the Portal Jammer’s owners as they sat together in the main room, except for Clueless who tended the bar. Since scrying upon the Oblivion Compass and witnessing what they had, several days had passed as they’d mulled over the ramifications of what they’d seen, and perhaps more important, just what their next step would be.</p><p></p><p>News passing from the lips of touts, rumors spilling from increasingly tipsy tavern patrons, and eventually headlines in block print spelled out on the front page of newsprint something that interrupted their thoughts on the Oblivion Compass.</p><p></p><p>“Nimicri blockaded by yugoloths?” Toras asked, reading out the paper headline. “Scary sounding perhaps, but more importantly what the hell is a Nimicri and why are the ‘loths placing a blockade on travel there?”</p><p></p><p>“Oh! That’s the mimic city.” Nisha said, matter-of-factly, before returning to trying and failing to put a knot in the stem of a cherry from her cocktail using only her tongue. Three seconds later and a spat out cherry tumbled across the table before Tristol lifted it up with a mage hand and back into her waiting hands and open mouth.</p><p></p><p>“Keep trying.” The wizard said with a smile.</p><p></p><p>“The mimic city?” Toras asked.</p><p></p><p>“The mimic city!” Nisha mumbled, now two cherries in her mouth.</p><p></p><p>“Let me explain,” Tristol chuckled, “It’s…”</p><p></p><p>The wizard trailed off as Clueless walked over from behind the bar, a serious expression on his face as he glanced down at the envelope in his hands.</p><p></p><p>“This arrived in the mail just now.” He gingerly placed the mail in the table’s center, avoiding the sporadic few bits of cherry there.</p><p></p><p>Addressed to the collective owners of the Portal Jammer, the letter’s sender was immediately obvious from the seal and sigil that it bore: the most recent nom de plume of the altraloth Taba.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shemeska, post: 8805702, member: 11697"] The Oinoloth returned to the summit of Khin-Oin heralded with a snarling eruption of black fire and the sound of a chorus of wailing voices, an atypical presentation for a teleportation spell for certain, but one that reflected the archfiend’s mood after his encounter with the Architect. Silence immediately fell upon the assembled court surrounding the great throne, the Siege Malicious. Dozens of regally robed arcanaloths and ultroloths, each of them bedecked with enough magical paraphernalia to make an archmage weep, looked up with surprise at their master’s return, seeking to divine in that first split second his mood and their appropriate response. Vorkannis of course ignored them and the eruption of voices seeking to entreat him for a word, an audience, a request for information as to how his most recent venture out into the surrounding Waste had gone, not that any of them knew his actual reasons or intent. He walked past and through them, his immaterial and shadowy cloud of plague spores parting them like a split ocean before a prophet. As he walked through the crowd, one arcanaloth at his feet lay dying from a silver blade plunged into its throat and a burned hole in its chest still sizzling with black, arcane fire. The Oinoloth gave only a cursory glance before then looking directly at their killer further back in the throng with the faintest sneer of approval. Perhaps the internecine slaughter was amusing to him, or simply the act of betrayal and the pain of the dying ‘loth like honey on his lips, or more likely the life and death struggles of comparative insects amused him in its futility. As her Oinoloth took his seat upon the Siege Malicious, one arcanaloth, Venya ib Malkanthe stepped forward and spoke the first words that actually garnered his attention, “My Oinoloth, there are… issues… of concern to you in Gehenna.” Vorkannis briefly glanced down at her, his thoughts clearly still preoccupied by his recent encounter at the Loadstone. “Let Helekanalaith deal with any such issues in his domain,” He said, dismissively, “I have precious little concern where so much as it regards his competence.” “It regards Chamada and the living moon,” She paused, uncertain how to proceed, her hands fidgeting to smooth out the folds of her pale blue and black robes, before finally spitting out a name, “Nimicri.” To this the Oinoloth physically turned and narrowed his eyes, taking full attention, “Speak.” “The moon is in open rebellion,” She explained, choosing her words carefully, suddenly wary at how swiftly her master had chosen to direct his full attention to her. She could feel the telepathic fingers of his consciousness brushing at her thoughts like a coiled serpent sniffing the air as it waited for its prey to step forward for its waiting strike. “It began this morning without warning. It devoured dozens of mezzoloths and their overseers. Several of my own,” She would have said ‘our’ kind but the very notion of comparing them and herself to the Oinoloth seemed blasphemous to her, “They barely managed to escape and it seemed as if the moon were targeting them in specific in its wrath.” “Of course it would…” Vorkannis sneered, his meaning opaque to those gathered around him. “At present our garrison has retreated to the surface of the second furnace and…” “Blockade the moon in its entirety.” Vorkannis cut her off, “Allow no transit in or out. Any attempting to escape are to be killed, swiftly, and others seeking entry are to be turned away with whatever appropriate lies you can muster, unless killing them as well is more expedient. Do your best to cull the rumor mill that has likely already spread to the City of Doors.” The Oinoloth snarled and rapidly tapped the claws of his left hand upon his throne. It seemed possible that he might have to leave Khin-Oin once more, even as he’d only just returned. “Petulant creature…” [CENTER]****[/CENTER] The mortal named Eldiria Windsong, cleric of Sehanine Moonbow, clutched, white-knuckled at her shield, her elven heart beating in her chest and humming in her ears as her mind raced to understand what she’d seen over the past hour that she and her companions had spent on the surface of Nimicri. Unlike many who visited the moon, she was under no illusions as to the danger or to the true nature of the unique trade city that orbited Gehenna’s second furnace of Chamada. She knew to avoid spilling her own blood, lest the city eventually generate a flawed simulacra of her to one day escort visitors, man a shop, or whatever other mundane tasks it set its little finger puppets upon. Three times since they’d arrived, she’d seen Nimicri devour an outsider, and eight other times she’d seen it brazenly make the attempt. For the entirety of the moon’s history, as far as she was aware, it had never engaged in what she could only describe as an open feast upon its visitors and occupiers. For certain the cunning entity would innocuously slurp at any blood lost in fights or left behind following a visitor’s drunken fall upon a streetside curb, taking from them knowledge, memories, and the blueprints to spawn a copy of them from itself like some titanic mimic. But since she and her companions had stepped foot upon the moon, they’d witnessed doorways spawn teeth and snap down upon mezzoloths, the spires of towers warp into spiked tentacles to impale flying nycaloths, and streets suddenly collapse not into sinkholes but yawning mouths to feast upon an arcanaloth betrayed by its fellows and hurled within to die, screaming. Why though the bloodshed? Why now? And why, now that she thought about it, had the moon only targeted the ‘loths who at any point stood as the planetoid’s primary visitors, if only by proximity to one of their three native planes? [CENTER]****[/CENTER] She stood in the shadows, cloaked from the sight of mortals and monster alike, her arrival unheralded by the familiar opening of portals or even the ostentatious flicker-flash of a teleportation spell. She was never one to advertise her arrival. Lesser beings could rejoice in the noise of their arrival, their own presentation as targets and victims. She was nothing of the sort. She was a predator as she hung there, one with the darkness, there in the gravity well of another of a sort. The mortal stepped into view, itself clutching at shield in one hand and a holy symbol about its neck with the other. One pathetic being feebly clutching for the protection of an even more pathetic thing. Closer. One step closer. Almost there little gnat. Only one step closer little one. Come forward little insect. This will be swift. This will be unseen. [CENTER]****[/CENTER] Eldiria sprinted forward, moving down the alleyway between a pair of buildings until she reached its end where it intersected a larger boulevard, motioning for her companions to wait as she glanced in both directions. While Nimicri itself had largely ignored them since their arrival, the ‘loths themselves had been both open targets of the moon itself, and likewise dangers lashing out in fury towards all others spared its wrath. Good she thought to herself, there were no signs of the neutral evil fiends in either direction, both on the ground or in the air. She motioned back to where her three companions waited to wait a moment and then follow. The motion made, she turned the corner. Suddenly, just ten steps forward and barely out of line of sight of her fellows, she paused, the faintest feeling of a nearby presence raising a sense of alarm. She glanced about, then up and behind, but no, there was nothing amiss. She shrugged and stepped forward. [CENTER]****[/CENTER] Inwardly smiling, Taba revealed herself and struck. Jaws yawned wide, a myriad of newly formed arms grasping and holding tighter than iron, boney spikes piercing arming and puncturing lungs to silence a scream before it even began in the firing of higher neurons, and joints dislocating to accommodate her victim as the mortal slid down her gullet without a single drop of blood spilt, denying Nimicri the opportunity to do what she would do to an even higher degree of mastery. The yugoloth lord began to digest her victim even before the mortal’s feet slipped past her teeth, acid, enzymes, and things more subtle digesting not only flesh but objects, memories, mannerisms, and knowledge, all of it sorted and memorized. In the space of an instant as she snapped shut her jaws, starting from her feet and moving upwards, her form recapitulated that of her victim in every detail. She blinked and she smiled, and then standing there just beyond the corner as her companions caught up with her stood Taba in perfect mimicry of the elven cleric she had murdered in an instant. “Come on,” She said, her vocal chords identical to the dead clerics. “The way is clear. No ‘loths at all.” Her companions nodded and the group proceeded down the street, ignorant that they followed in the footsteps of an altraloth. Block by block they found the city largely deserted, devoid of the usual presence of residents and shopkeepers generated by the moon itself, and block by block they witnessed it savagely assaulting those few yugoloths who remained on its surface, those few unable to leave on their own power or unwilling to defy the orders of their masters who had sent them there to eliminate witnesses to the moon’s rage. Silently watching the slaughter, the group continued to traipse their way through the city, stopping only when the ground shook and a building collapsed. “How dare you defy our master?!” Zeleria ap Chamada screamed, her hands a blur of motion as she invoked a meteor shower down upon the moon’s surface, blasting stone and mortar apart like a giant kicking an anthill. The broken stones melted as they fell, their formless mass absorbed by the streets below to leave no trace of the damage beyond a slight discoloration from where the fiendish wizard’s spell still burned with arcane flame. “How dare you strike against us?!” Zeleria bellowed, rising into the air as she stones at her feet turned to teeth and snapped at her heels. Another flicker of motion from her hands and a snarled word and a brilliant green beam lashed from an open palm and cut into the ground, disintegrating a trench, meter by meter incinerating the moon’s unholy matrix, seeking to draw blood and punish the sentient planetoid. The arcanaloth was skilled beyond the scope of the others of its kind the moon had already slain, but in the end, it was yet one more ant raging against the mountain upon which it stood. An adjacent tower became a gargantuan tentacle and swung down to swat the flying ‘loth like a fly, the street forming a slavering maw to accept it as it fell. Swallowed up by a chewing, undulating street, its final screams were unheard except by Taba, a pleasured smile faintly crossing her lips as she watched. Saying nothing to her mortal compatriots, she continued, her movement through the maze of Nimicri’s streets hardly random, but following the faintest tremor she felt. The moon ached. Following the unvoiced sound of agony, she walked, following streets that wrapped around but never led directly towards the source of the moon’s maddening ache. “Are we going in circles?” One of her companions asked, a statement ignored by the altraloth wearing the flesh of their deceased party member. Something was off. Buildings had slunk to the side, moved, and repositioned themselves, streets lacing together like burgeoning scar tissue to hide a wound. Nimicri ached not only from physical pain, but from emotional agony. “Have you noticed somethi…” The rogue standing beside her stopped, holding his tongue as an eave above them animated into a fanged maw and struck at Taba. Her shoulder rippled and shrugged off the blow, something utterly unexpected by every witness to the act, Nimicri included. No blood was drawn, but it smelled her. Altraloth. Yugoloth. The cause of its pain. One of the thieves. One of the abductors. The streets around them exploded into a frenzy of violence, snuffing out the lives of the mortals Taba had used to hide her metaphysical scent from the hungry moon. The altraloth however remained untouched, her corporeal form shifting into a metamorphic liquid to surge through the air, moving in a dozen disparate streams to avoid Nimicri’s strikes. Avoiding the moon’s rage, Taba surged forward, diving through openings made available by Nimicri’s strikes, time and again avoiding harm and growing closer and closer to what she’d felt ever since she’d arrived. Then, returning to her native form but for a second to behold the moon’s secret with her own, original eyes, not aping any other form, she understood. A dozen eyes went wide, blinked, thoughts racing as to the implication as Nimicri’s myriad limbs and mouths moved to end her, and then with a thought she planeshifted out of Gehenna, leaving the moon to scream in impotent rage. Taba understood the what, but not yet the why. [CENTER]****[/CENTER] “… upon the altar of our purity.” The Overlord of Carceri intoned as the final mezzoloth received her warped and twisted blessing of transformation, her attendants gazing up at her in awe and fear, even as she merely aped the magics taught to her by the Oinoloth without wholly understanding their intricacies and basis. As a final flourish, a student signing her master’s name on the canvas, each of them had, after their transformation, received a glowing brand upon their flesh, hide, or carapace, physically melted or burned in place and glowing with puissant magic in the shape of the Oinoloth’s personal symbol. Shylara closed her eyes and listened, smiling at the shrieks as they were applied by the various contingents of arcanaloths in her service. The sum totality of the agony she felt from her own forces mustering there at the base of the Tower of Incarnate Pain and the billions upon billions of souls that comprised the screaming matrix of the tower itself, it was nearly overwhelming in its pleasure for the archfiend. “It is completed Mistress,” One of her servitors spoke, interrupting her moment of self-indulgence. The Overlord of Carceri softly snarled as she opened her eyes, casting a shifting, multicolored radiance to the servitor who instinctively dropped to their knees and bowed their head. The movement of immediate submission worked and Shylara’s mercurial rage passed over the quivering arcanaloth who would live to die another day. It was time. It was finally time to enact this first step of her master’s plan, a plan in which she was a vital component, a centerpiece jewel in a forming crown. A plan of which, of course, she ultimately did not understand and had not been told the significance of even as she raised her hands and drew upon the ferocious power invested in her by virtue of her symbiotic link to the 3rd great yugoloth tower that rose from the red and festering flesh of Othrys. The air above them all and the void above it, they ached, as space was rent apart, immaterial, ephemeral claws of magic and malignant will twisting, tearing, cutting, and reconfiguring, borrowing a hole across all of reality. First one, then another, and another, and another, a multitude of great gates to accommodate the yugoloth armies there massed and answering to a being which cared nothing for them. High above, the Bells of Othrys ceased their distant, ominous chime, cannon to crown to lip and alien clappers alike held motionless and silent like still tongues and pursed lips, hushed in waiting for what would come next. Laughing maniacally, Shylara the Manged placed one foot in the jeweled stirrup of the saddle atop her personal slasrath, one of the selectively bred, monstrous, intelligent, and carnivorous beasts of burden first created in Gehenna. Launching herself up onto her seat, she glanced to the similarly saddled slasrath hovering in the air some two dozen feet distant, one which already hosted the blue-robed ultroloth, a spike of cobalt crystal buried in its forehead, manipulated like a puppet by their collective master. Utterly silent, it allowed her the illusion of control and had yet to speak with the Oinoloth’s projected voice in the past days in which their forces had marshalled and prepared for the journey. Shylara tugged at the reins of her mount and urged it skyward, turning to face her assembled forces as the Oinoloth’s host took its place beside her, silently glancing over as if in prompt. “NOW IS OUR TIME! NOW IS WHEN WE BEGIN THE GREAT TASK SET UPON US BY OUR MASTER, THE OINOLOTH, THE GREATEST OF US, VORKANNIS THE EBON! NOW I OPEN THE WAY! SPILL FORTH LEGIONS OF THE PLANES OF CONFLICT, GEHENNA, THE WASTE, AND CARCERI! SPILL FORTH AND SPILL THE BLOOD AND ESSENCE OF ALL WHO STAND IN OUR WAY!” Mania dancing in her eyes as vividly as the mad chorus of colors that radiated from them, Shylara the Manged raised her hands and invoked an eldritch litany in baernaloth. Words and gestures she had learned from the Oinoloth himself, words and gestures that she only partly understood, they nonetheless had their desired effect. The air about the Tower of Incarnate Pain rippled and boiled as she called forth holes in reality, burned across the stretch of infinities between the Outer and Inner planes. At the Overlord of Carceri’s urging, the portals yawned wide, spilling forth a light far too clean and unsullied by Evil or any alignment whatsoever in fact out onto the wastes of Othrys, dozens of them at once opening onto a landscape of gleaming, glittering gemstones. On the border of the Elemental Plane of Earth and the Positive Energy Plane, the Gemfields awaited them. [CENTER]****[/CENTER] The skies of Sigil hung heavy with soot and smog, both conspiring together to form dark clouds to pour down an acrid, vinegar smelling rain upon the streets of the Clerk’s Ward. It made for a dreary day, masking the light that would have normally radiated through the front windows of the Portal Jammer as the day stretched towards Peak. The weather and dimmed daylight certainly set the prevailing mood over the Portal Jammer’s owners as they sat together in the main room, except for Clueless who tended the bar. Since scrying upon the Oblivion Compass and witnessing what they had, several days had passed as they’d mulled over the ramifications of what they’d seen, and perhaps more important, just what their next step would be. News passing from the lips of touts, rumors spilling from increasingly tipsy tavern patrons, and eventually headlines in block print spelled out on the front page of newsprint something that interrupted their thoughts on the Oblivion Compass. “Nimicri blockaded by yugoloths?” Toras asked, reading out the paper headline. “Scary sounding perhaps, but more importantly what the hell is a Nimicri and why are the ‘loths placing a blockade on travel there?” “Oh! That’s the mimic city.” Nisha said, matter-of-factly, before returning to trying and failing to put a knot in the stem of a cherry from her cocktail using only her tongue. Three seconds later and a spat out cherry tumbled across the table before Tristol lifted it up with a mage hand and back into her waiting hands and open mouth. “Keep trying.” The wizard said with a smile. “The mimic city?” Toras asked. “The mimic city!” Nisha mumbled, now two cherries in her mouth. “Let me explain,” Tristol chuckled, “It’s…” The wizard trailed off as Clueless walked over from behind the bar, a serious expression on his face as he glanced down at the envelope in his hands. “This arrived in the mail just now.” He gingerly placed the mail in the table’s center, avoiding the sporadic few bits of cherry there. Addressed to the collective owners of the Portal Jammer, the letter’s sender was immediately obvious from the seal and sigil that it bore: the most recent nom de plume of the altraloth Taba. [CENTER]****[/CENTER] [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
Top