Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour (Updated 29 Jan 2014)
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Shemeska
Adventurer
Zarnam said:
I told Clueless's player some stuff after the campaign ended. However the Jester was largely a big unknown for the PCs over the course of the campaign.
P.S. and since the SH has slowed down due to Shemmy's new job at VORKANNIS C.O Astroloth breeding vats,
... For my job I actually am trying to grow things up in vats... *giggle* Stem cell work.
Shemeska
Adventurer
He shuddered at the disquiet that surrounded his memories of that particular spot in the Lower Ward. Unless by force, he was never going to visit that ruined temple again, even if it would make the transit to the Waste or Gehenna easier. That of course, left open several other options, most of them either fairly roundabout or simply out of the question.
“Tradegate isn’t all that bad this time of year…” Clueless remarked as he strode off in the direction of the portal to Bytopia’s gatetown.
And indeed, the industrious gatetown, swarming with merchants, gnomes, members of the Free League, and buyers and sellers of goods from across the multiverse, was rather nice as he momentarily paused to look around once he’d arrived through the gate. But the pause was brief, and in a flash of magic the bladesinger was sent hurtling across the planes and into the disease-ridden expanse of the Waste’s first layer of Oinos.
A deep breath, a cold and bitter stare at the endless Gloom and the spire of Oinos far in the distance, and Clueless cast another spell, transferring him deeper into the plane, to the 2nd Gloom, and ironically enough, away from the immediate danger of the Blood War while he searched for a native of plane that he might bargain with.
Clueless shivered as he emerged into the darkness of Niflheim, reacting more to the innate moral chill and his memories of the place, than to the cold mist drafting through the stunted, malformed evergreens of the forest that surrounded him. He hoped that he wouldn’t be exposed to the touch of the plane very long, but at the very least, if it took him too long to find a seller of what he needed, or the raw source itself, he’d simply leave the plane and recover from the exposure back on the Outlands.
As it was though, he was looking for a Night Hag. While the ‘loths could have easily sold him just what he needed, the pineal gland of a Hordeling, he was in no mood to deal with any of their kind, especially when it was going to pacify another of their wretched ilk. Hordelings themselves were common enough, especially on the first layer of the Waste, but they typically traveled in roving packs, and given that, plus the other obstacles that the first Gloom presented, that wasn’t an attractive option either.
Thus the Hags.
The crones of the Waste were its itinerant merchants of larvae, they had their hands mixed into the cross-planar trade of soul gems as well, and they seemed to be nominally free of the ‘loths influence. Either that or the ‘loths simply didn’t care, but in any event, they were at least one step removed from the true children of the Waste, and Clueless had fewer qualms in dealing with them.
Once he steeled himself against the draining chill of Niflheim and walked through the tangle of trees, seeking one of the Hags. He didn’t have to search long, almost as if the plane itself delivered him into the clutches of what normally would have been a dire thing for any random planar traveler.
It stood in the middle of a wide, fenced in clearing in the forest, a small wooden hut on a plot of blasted, dead soil, decorated at the eaves with wind chimes and dream catchers of bone and string. The wriggling motion of several larvae at the fringe of the hut gave clear confirmation of just what manner of creature called it home, and where Clueless would have to go knocking.
As he approached the hut there was a sharp and discordant avian squawk and rattle of chains. A pair of tattered, starving diakka regarded the bladesinger with sunken, hollow eyes, craning their elongated necks up and staring at him from across a yard swarming with wriggling but otherwise silent larvae.
Clueless slowed his approach as he reached the gate, a construction of bones, frayed lengths of flesh, and errant bits of silver wire. Upon closer inspection, the fence itself was held together in similar fashion, cobbled together from the various bones of animals, lesser fiends, and a fair number of mortals.
Across the yard, up an ill defined pathway cobbled in half-buried craniums, flanked by the diakka, the open doorway to the hut yawned dark, threatening, and coldly enticing.
Clueless gave another glance at the diakka, staring hard but not moving to open the gate. He wasn't there to cause trouble, he just wanted to purchase something, assuming the resident Hag could supply it.
The darkness in the hut swam with the hints of movement and the sounds of myriad footsteps, claws on bare earth, the shuffle of pages of parchment, and the whimper of a small child.
"What is it you're looking for dearie?"
The voice was indirect, an echo from the interior of the hut, a sort of chilling pseudo-maternal warmth that reminded Clueless of his own mother, a noblewoman among the Unseelie courts. His mother was not evil in the same sense, but the false concern in the Hag's words played the same timbre on his heartstrings.
"I wanted to purchase something from you." He said, still not able to discern the source of the hag's voice. "
A sharp snap of bone, a wet wriggle across a dusty floor, another whimper, a matronly chuckle. The darkness continued to swim, hiding its occupants.
"You're hardly the sort to be purchasing what I sell." Came the darkly amused reply. "Neither fiend nor lich... you remind me of an Eladrin I once had o..."
The Hag trailed off, her words slipping into incomprehensibility.
"Then I can take my business elsewhere." Clueless stated. "Come out and we can talk, otherwise I'll find one of your sisters."
A gnarled hand emerged from the darkness of the hut's interior, long, brittle, yellowed fingernails curling around the doorframe to preface the emergence of the Night Hag herself. Had she wished to conceal herself as simply an elderly, hideous woman, she might have been able to do so, but the smoldering touch of her eyes, the larva cradled in her arms, wrapped in cloth like an infant, and the aura of sickness she exuded made it clear that she was anything but.
"No need for that child, I'll deal with you." She said with a grin, lips parting to show a row of chipped and rotting teeth. "What might you be looking for?"
Clueless stood firm at the edge of the gate while the hag strode up the path, making hollow echoes of her footsteps on the buried skulls.
"Not quite a larva." He said, giving an incidental glance at the wriggling petitioner cradled in her arms. Tiny drops of blood despoiled the blanket from where the crone's touch had cut or punctured the creature's flesh, incidental or intentionally, it didn't change the discordant image that was presented.
"I sell plenty of them." She replied, squinting one eye and peering at him with the other like some sort of gypsy evil eye. "But I didn't figure that's what you wanted."
"Something a bit more evolved than a larva."
"What do you want one of them for?" She replied, clearly knowing just what he wanted.
"Not the whole creature actually." He said, "Just its brain, a specific part of it. The pineal gland."
The hag raised an eyebrow. “For yourself or for another? You don’t strike me as the type to be needing that sort of thing, pardon me for saying so.”
“A bit of both.” Clueless replied. “But in any event I need it, and while it’d be simple enough for me to find a random hordeling and just cut the whole brain out on my own, I don’t care to go digging around in gray matter trying to find a specific portion of it and risk having to go get another if I slice the wrong direction.”
The hag’s suspicion seemed to abate, though she continued to stare at him for several more moments, judging his character, or simply trying to determine how much he might be able to pay.
“I can get you what you need.” She finally said. “How much are you willing to pay?”
“How much are you asking?”
“Depends on what you’re offering in payment in the first place.”
Clueless reached a hand down to open his coin purse but the hag shook her head in the negative.
“Worthless to me.” She said. “I might visit Center or somewhere else that values coin once or twice a century… give me something practical.”
He nodded and reached into the smaller bag of holding at his belt. He’d been prepared for having to trade items rather than simply purchasing the gland with raw coin, but at least the hag wasn’t asking for favors or anything disgustingly personal.
“How about this?” Clueless asked, removing a series of wands, all lower level spells with varying amounts of charges remaining.
The hag looked at him skeptically. “What else do you have?”
Clueless shrugged and put held up several scrolls.
“Something else that I ‘ave a reasonable chance of being able to use myself.” The hag complained dismissively. “I’m neither a wizard nor a priestess. Make this worth my time.”
“Alright.” The bladesinger said. “Let’s see what else I have to offer.”
Over the next few minutes, Clueless removed a dozen minor magical items that he’s picked up in various places. Rings, wands, a pair of bracers, anything that the hag might conceivably take as payment for a bit of a hordeling, but for all of them the hag simply shook her head with increasing boredom as if her time was being wasted.
Finally, getting desperate, Clueless took out the only other item he had that wasn’t far more valuable than the ability to pacify the Marauder with her favorite drink: the idiotic cursed little bauble that he’d bought off of A’kin on a lark only a few hours earlier.
“What’s in there?” The hag asked, pointing a ragged fingernail at the box in the bladesinger’s hand.
“If you don’t mind, I’d rather not open it up.” Clueless said. “It’s a cursed item.”
“Keep talking.” The hag prodded.
Clueless gave a surprised look and then deliberately rattled the box containing the ioun stone. Predictably the stone rattled back violently, and the air was split by a jarring, discordant buzz as angry flashes of colored light leaked out from the seams of the container.
“It’s a cursed ioun stone.” The bladesinger explained. “It’ll latch onto the person it’s put near and then do its best to circle around them. Supposedly it has the habit of running into them, running into things of theirs around them, and annoying the hell out of whoever has the misfortune of being in the area.”
The hag muttered something under her breath.
“Pardon?” Clueless asked.
The hag smiled a mouthful of broken, blackened teeth. “Just talking about a dear sister of mine… that sounds like a lovely gift for her…”
Clueless said nothing as he handed the box over to the hag.
“Wait here and I’ll get you yer pound of flesh.” She said, wandering back towards her hut, rattling the box and listening to its angry buzzing as she did.
Over the next few minutes it was relatively silent, and nothing, not a sound, escaped the still unnaturally dark opening into the hag’s demesne. Eventually though, there were some whispers, just inaudible, and a series of animal whimpers and something dragging nails or claws against wood. Then another pause before there was a sudden, sharp *snap!* of bone followed by the sickening crunch of breaking, tearing cartilage, and the sound of a wet, fleshy scoop.
Clueless winced in distaste before the hag returned from her hut, cradling the box with the ioun stone under one arm, and in the other hand holding a sack weighted down with something heavy and wet.
“Enjoy it dear.” The hag said, handing over the sack and its soft, giggling contents. “What you want is about the size of one of your eyes, a bit off color from the rest of the brain in there.”
He muttered his thanks, collected the other things he’d offered, and then taking hold of the dripping, bloody satchel in one hand, Clueless strode away from the night hag’s home, only briefly turning back to watch her snickering as she clutched the cursed ioun stone. He had what he needed, wrapped in a cushioning layer of brain and length of cheesecloth, and the hag had something she would using to torment another one of her kind with. All in all, in a perverse sort of way, the Waste had outdone itself and its joy in misery had gone towards something in Clueless’s favor for once.
Unless of course things were ultimately just going to fall apart when one of the Waste’s children back in Sigil got her manicured claws involved. Clueless certainly hoped not.
"What -is- that?" The head cook asked, his head tilted askance, as Clueless stood in the doorway of the Portal Jammer’s kitchen and held up the warm, mucus filled jar of Bebelith eggs.
"Very funny." Clueless said. "You ever tried to poach one of these before?"
The kitchen was dead silent as the staff stood and stared at the clutch of fiendish eggs, and also at the other bloody satchel that their boss carried like some sort of mad butcher’s boy.
"I'm serious." The cook replied. "Not only haven't I poached one of those before, I don't have any bloody idea what they are or what they came from."
“Bebelith eggs.” Clueless explained. “Fresh and raw. You’ve never cooked one of them?”
“I’ve never even seen one of them…”
"Lovely." Clueless muttered. "We have two days before fuzzy McB*tch visits the inn, and none of you can cook the food she wants."
"I can try." The cook offered. "If we can get more I can see what makes it work best."
Clueless shook his head. "It's a limited supply. Very limited. That won't fly."
The cooking staff made their apologies, but clueless wasn’t much paying attention. No, the bladesinger was thinking about what to do so that his kitchen staff wouldn’t have to overextend themselves into an area of the culinary world that they rightfully had no experience in.
"Guys, I'm going to go find another cook." Clueless said as he walked back into the common room.
"What, our own can't handle it?" Tristol asked as he glanced up from a newly delivered batch of cutlery, glasses, and plates. He and Fyrehowl had, in a very short period of time, gone about some major cosmetic improvements to the common room of the inn.
The bladesinger glanced back into the kitchen. "It's so far out of the range of the food they normally handle... no."
Fyrehowl glanced up from one of the new chairs, her tail happily swishing behind it, courtesy of a partially open back.
“What’s in the sack?” The lupinal asked, her nose twitching in obvious disturbance as the lump of hordeling brain slowly leaked its rancid fluid through the cloth to evaporate into the air.
“Ah… yes, that.” Clueless said. “Some hordeling brain for a certain fiend’s favorite drink.”
“Does it have to slowly go putrid here in the taproom?” Fyrehowl asked.
Clueless nodded and walked around the bar, putting the sack and its runny contents into an unused cabinet.
“Whenever Florian gets back can you ask her to keep it from spoiling?” The bladesinger asked.
“At the very least.” The lupinal replied. “That’s pretty awful. I might hire the first priest I see to make sure it doesn’t spoil here in the next hour.”
Clueless shot her an apologetic look. “My apologies. Good luck with that. But in the meantime I’ll be over at the Black Sails trying to buy the time of one or more of their people. I should be back in about an hour or so. And since I haven’t said anything about it since I got back, nice job on the redecorating!”
"Funny. You don't look like a Baatezu." Zaren, the proprietor of the Black Sails tavern said as he looked up at the bladesinger from his desk, there in his office high in the stern of the galleon that served as the building’s frame.
"No no no." Clueless said, raising an eyebrow. "I said I wanted to -hire- one of your cooks, not -buy- one of your cooks."
"Ah." The man said. "Large difference."
"A considerable one." Clueless replied.
"Don't you have cooks of your own?"
"Yes, but I need someone to cook food for one evening that's rather different than what we normally serve."
The human gave a nod of his ashen complexioned face and listened.
"While neither of us is the Bottle and Jug or the Styx Oarsman, let's be honest, you cater to more fiends than we do. I was hoping that we might be able to reach some arrangement where I'd hire one of your cooks for an evening, either paying you directly or paying him plus a fee of convenience to you if it causes scheduling issues with your own staff."
“I don’t have a problem with it myself.” Zaren said. “You’re not competitors, and so long as you don’t try to hire my best cooks at your place on a permanent basis, what they do on their own time off shift isn’t my concern.”
Clueless nodded as the man continued.
“Plus, both of our establishments have the ignominious honor of being excluded from membership in the Innkeeper’s Fellowship.” The owner of the Black Sails added, holding up a signet ring emblazoned with the symbol of the Free League. “Some mutual friends have also spoken well of you. Go ahead and see if any of the cooks want the extra work, and they’ll set their price.”
It seemed that he had permission to speak to their cooks, and not only that, he had a tacit confirmation of his own acceptance into the informal ranks of the Indeps. Nothing more than that needed to be said, and so they exchanged handshakes, shared a shot of whisky, and that was that. Suffice to say, Clueless was smiling when he made his way into the kitchen, looking for a particular member of the staff, a minotaur named Garzech.
It wasn’t difficult to find him, being that he towered a full two heads or more over any of the other staff in the Sail’s kitchen.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Clueless said to the minotaur as he was currently hacking apart the hindquarters of what looked like some breed of nic’epona.
For his part the cook didn’t immediately respond except for a cursory glance as he methodically took the corpse apart and separated it into separate cuts of meat, slid them down the line to a pair of apprentice cooks, and bellowed out his orders.
Clueless patiently waited and eventually the cook turned to him.
“So what is it that you want?” He asked, sinking his cleaver an inch into the butcher’s block.
“I’m looking to hire a cook, and you came recommended by your boss.” Clueless explained.
“Go on.”
“My own cooks don’t have a clue how to cook for a fiend’s taste.” He continued. “And I have to cook a meal for one here rather shortly.”
“Just one evening?”
“Only for one evening yes. And I’ve already cleared it with your boss, assuming that you’re up for the additional work.”
The minotaur nodded. “Potentially. Tell me more.”
“I’ll make it worth your while, and my normal staff will be at your beck and call for whatever you need them to do for you. The kitchen will be yours for the duration of your stay, and we’ll get you whatever you need.”
Garzech chuckled. “That’s appreciated. What sort of fiend do you want me to cook for, and did they give you a menu ahead of time?”
“A greater yugoloth. You’ll have heard of her. And can you poach Bebelith eggs?”
The minotaur rubbed a thumb across the polished, elaborately engraved length of his left horn, clearly considering the offer.
“Yes I can, so long as you have them and they’re not more than three days old.” He answered. “That said, I’m interested. Let’s talk specifics over a few drinks once I’m finished in the kitchen tonight in a few hours.”
Clueless smiled. Things were working out well, and so long as Toras, back at the Portal Jammer, didn’t feel the need to repeat his previous verbal deconstruction of a minotaur with the new chef, there didn’t seem to be any problems looming on the horizon, at least not outside of the fiend they’d be catering to.
"Well tonight is the night." The fiend said to her reflection in the mirror.
The Marauder closed her mouth and held still as one of her flock of groomers reached up to paint her lips a glossy black with reflective undertones of red. Of course, that only caused her to switch over to telepathy, and what was previously her act of thinking out loud in the conventional sense, was suddenly all the more true to its name.
"Go with the blue diamond and fire opal necklace."
They took her comments as gospel, and they swarmed over her, adjusting clothing, changing out items as they fit or failed to fit their mistress’s specifications or momentary whimsy for how she cared to appear that evening. And all the while, she rambled about that evening and anything else on her mind.
“Seems that the owners of the Portal Jammer have been scurrying about like brainless little Formians for the past week.”
There was a malign little snicker from the fiend and she rolled her eyes.
“We’ll have to see if they can hold up to my standards of course. I did give them enough notions of how to cater to me.”
She pursed her lips, evening out the layer of gloss before turning her head slightly towards the mirror and giving an approving head nod to the servant.
“If they’re willing to kowtow, I’ll turn my attentions elsewhere for people to take especial pleasure in f*cking over. I have more options than them, and other people can absorb my ministrations while that pack of fools enjoys a respite.”
She paused and tapped a claw against a fang. “At least for a while. There’s too much incidental history, too much delicious sin to completely let them go. So a grace period then, a moment of détente, that brief period of silent, numb oblivion after each little death.”
Her tongue lashed out to tap the end of her nose. “Hold the mirror higher Colcook.”
“And in any event, send out another polite little letter to our friend in Carceri.” The King of the Crosstrade said. “The darling dear needs to remember her place in the world and in this city, my city. Despite her current elevation in status, she’ll always be something less than me, even if she unconsciously patterns a few points of personality based on my example. In fact I’m sure she has a special place in her rancid little black heart for me based on the duration of her apprenticeship under my thumb. Lingering affection, spite, or both, I’m getting tired of her sending minions in her employ into Sigil, whatever they’re doing. She gets a pointed letter this time, but next time she’ll be getting back their limbs, gift wrapped in a box.”
Her groomers let her ramble as they adjusted her dress, attached each and every bauble, polished her claws and made certain that her fur was brushed –exactly- to her specifications by mundane means rather than by magic. Circumstance wasn’t letting her move, and so in the absence of that freedom she was letting her tongue make up the perceived difference, cutting the air with her spite, letting its crass hatred boil over her pack of tieflings.
“Of course, it may also be jealousy on my part for her current position in Carceri.” She said, giving first a sneer and then a chuckle. “But if so, I think jealousy is rather becoming of me. I’ll happily continue to brew my own personal stock and vintage of that delicious little vice.”
“What about the Oinoloth ma’am?” Colcook asked her.
She twisted her features at the question.
“The Ebon.” She said with particular reverence. “Has nothing to do with this. These current incidents were entirely on his b*tch’s time. He has my respect and has purchased my loyalty, while as for her, well… I can smile as she slowly rots away, and she can thank me for that.”
None of her toadies made a comment, both on account of knowing their place and that when she desired them to comment, she would make her wishes known verbally, or they would be able to tell by virtue of her body language, a talent that they’d each honed out of necessity during their employment. Plus, none of them, Colcook included, had been alive in the centuries previous when that bit of history had occurred.
The Marauder smiled at herself in the mirror once again as on her tieflings crowned the top of her head with a freshly braided tiara of living razorvine, a single strand left intentionally loose in the likely event that she felt the need to lash out with more than her tongue.
“History is the heart’s cupboard of vice,” The ‘loth began. “All stored up and preserved, sins treasured for lean times. And I’ve a history with both of them I suppose, both that tattered little b*tch from Carceri, and the berks serving tonight’s dinner, especially the half-fey. I rather enjoyed him. Shame I had to let that songbird fly, I was just getting to appreciate him. At least we get to see him and his fellows tonight.”
Fully dressed, she turned to those of her tieflings who would be accompanying her as an entourage.
“Stay at hand, scatter through the rest of the inn, but don’t actually cause any trouble. Make a decent show of suggesting that you might, but just to keep them on edge. I want them jumpy.”
“Tradegate isn’t all that bad this time of year…” Clueless remarked as he strode off in the direction of the portal to Bytopia’s gatetown.
And indeed, the industrious gatetown, swarming with merchants, gnomes, members of the Free League, and buyers and sellers of goods from across the multiverse, was rather nice as he momentarily paused to look around once he’d arrived through the gate. But the pause was brief, and in a flash of magic the bladesinger was sent hurtling across the planes and into the disease-ridden expanse of the Waste’s first layer of Oinos.
A deep breath, a cold and bitter stare at the endless Gloom and the spire of Oinos far in the distance, and Clueless cast another spell, transferring him deeper into the plane, to the 2nd Gloom, and ironically enough, away from the immediate danger of the Blood War while he searched for a native of plane that he might bargain with.
Clueless shivered as he emerged into the darkness of Niflheim, reacting more to the innate moral chill and his memories of the place, than to the cold mist drafting through the stunted, malformed evergreens of the forest that surrounded him. He hoped that he wouldn’t be exposed to the touch of the plane very long, but at the very least, if it took him too long to find a seller of what he needed, or the raw source itself, he’d simply leave the plane and recover from the exposure back on the Outlands.
As it was though, he was looking for a Night Hag. While the ‘loths could have easily sold him just what he needed, the pineal gland of a Hordeling, he was in no mood to deal with any of their kind, especially when it was going to pacify another of their wretched ilk. Hordelings themselves were common enough, especially on the first layer of the Waste, but they typically traveled in roving packs, and given that, plus the other obstacles that the first Gloom presented, that wasn’t an attractive option either.
Thus the Hags.
The crones of the Waste were its itinerant merchants of larvae, they had their hands mixed into the cross-planar trade of soul gems as well, and they seemed to be nominally free of the ‘loths influence. Either that or the ‘loths simply didn’t care, but in any event, they were at least one step removed from the true children of the Waste, and Clueless had fewer qualms in dealing with them.
Once he steeled himself against the draining chill of Niflheim and walked through the tangle of trees, seeking one of the Hags. He didn’t have to search long, almost as if the plane itself delivered him into the clutches of what normally would have been a dire thing for any random planar traveler.
It stood in the middle of a wide, fenced in clearing in the forest, a small wooden hut on a plot of blasted, dead soil, decorated at the eaves with wind chimes and dream catchers of bone and string. The wriggling motion of several larvae at the fringe of the hut gave clear confirmation of just what manner of creature called it home, and where Clueless would have to go knocking.
As he approached the hut there was a sharp and discordant avian squawk and rattle of chains. A pair of tattered, starving diakka regarded the bladesinger with sunken, hollow eyes, craning their elongated necks up and staring at him from across a yard swarming with wriggling but otherwise silent larvae.
Clueless slowed his approach as he reached the gate, a construction of bones, frayed lengths of flesh, and errant bits of silver wire. Upon closer inspection, the fence itself was held together in similar fashion, cobbled together from the various bones of animals, lesser fiends, and a fair number of mortals.
Across the yard, up an ill defined pathway cobbled in half-buried craniums, flanked by the diakka, the open doorway to the hut yawned dark, threatening, and coldly enticing.
Clueless gave another glance at the diakka, staring hard but not moving to open the gate. He wasn't there to cause trouble, he just wanted to purchase something, assuming the resident Hag could supply it.
The darkness in the hut swam with the hints of movement and the sounds of myriad footsteps, claws on bare earth, the shuffle of pages of parchment, and the whimper of a small child.
"What is it you're looking for dearie?"
The voice was indirect, an echo from the interior of the hut, a sort of chilling pseudo-maternal warmth that reminded Clueless of his own mother, a noblewoman among the Unseelie courts. His mother was not evil in the same sense, but the false concern in the Hag's words played the same timbre on his heartstrings.
"I wanted to purchase something from you." He said, still not able to discern the source of the hag's voice. "
A sharp snap of bone, a wet wriggle across a dusty floor, another whimper, a matronly chuckle. The darkness continued to swim, hiding its occupants.
"You're hardly the sort to be purchasing what I sell." Came the darkly amused reply. "Neither fiend nor lich... you remind me of an Eladrin I once had o..."
The Hag trailed off, her words slipping into incomprehensibility.
"Then I can take my business elsewhere." Clueless stated. "Come out and we can talk, otherwise I'll find one of your sisters."
A gnarled hand emerged from the darkness of the hut's interior, long, brittle, yellowed fingernails curling around the doorframe to preface the emergence of the Night Hag herself. Had she wished to conceal herself as simply an elderly, hideous woman, she might have been able to do so, but the smoldering touch of her eyes, the larva cradled in her arms, wrapped in cloth like an infant, and the aura of sickness she exuded made it clear that she was anything but.
"No need for that child, I'll deal with you." She said with a grin, lips parting to show a row of chipped and rotting teeth. "What might you be looking for?"
Clueless stood firm at the edge of the gate while the hag strode up the path, making hollow echoes of her footsteps on the buried skulls.
"Not quite a larva." He said, giving an incidental glance at the wriggling petitioner cradled in her arms. Tiny drops of blood despoiled the blanket from where the crone's touch had cut or punctured the creature's flesh, incidental or intentionally, it didn't change the discordant image that was presented.
"I sell plenty of them." She replied, squinting one eye and peering at him with the other like some sort of gypsy evil eye. "But I didn't figure that's what you wanted."
"Something a bit more evolved than a larva."
"What do you want one of them for?" She replied, clearly knowing just what he wanted.
"Not the whole creature actually." He said, "Just its brain, a specific part of it. The pineal gland."
The hag raised an eyebrow. “For yourself or for another? You don’t strike me as the type to be needing that sort of thing, pardon me for saying so.”
“A bit of both.” Clueless replied. “But in any event I need it, and while it’d be simple enough for me to find a random hordeling and just cut the whole brain out on my own, I don’t care to go digging around in gray matter trying to find a specific portion of it and risk having to go get another if I slice the wrong direction.”
The hag’s suspicion seemed to abate, though she continued to stare at him for several more moments, judging his character, or simply trying to determine how much he might be able to pay.
“I can get you what you need.” She finally said. “How much are you willing to pay?”
“How much are you asking?”
“Depends on what you’re offering in payment in the first place.”
Clueless reached a hand down to open his coin purse but the hag shook her head in the negative.
“Worthless to me.” She said. “I might visit Center or somewhere else that values coin once or twice a century… give me something practical.”
He nodded and reached into the smaller bag of holding at his belt. He’d been prepared for having to trade items rather than simply purchasing the gland with raw coin, but at least the hag wasn’t asking for favors or anything disgustingly personal.
“How about this?” Clueless asked, removing a series of wands, all lower level spells with varying amounts of charges remaining.
The hag looked at him skeptically. “What else do you have?”
Clueless shrugged and put held up several scrolls.
“Something else that I ‘ave a reasonable chance of being able to use myself.” The hag complained dismissively. “I’m neither a wizard nor a priestess. Make this worth my time.”
“Alright.” The bladesinger said. “Let’s see what else I have to offer.”
Over the next few minutes, Clueless removed a dozen minor magical items that he’s picked up in various places. Rings, wands, a pair of bracers, anything that the hag might conceivably take as payment for a bit of a hordeling, but for all of them the hag simply shook her head with increasing boredom as if her time was being wasted.
Finally, getting desperate, Clueless took out the only other item he had that wasn’t far more valuable than the ability to pacify the Marauder with her favorite drink: the idiotic cursed little bauble that he’d bought off of A’kin on a lark only a few hours earlier.
“What’s in there?” The hag asked, pointing a ragged fingernail at the box in the bladesinger’s hand.
“If you don’t mind, I’d rather not open it up.” Clueless said. “It’s a cursed item.”
“Keep talking.” The hag prodded.
Clueless gave a surprised look and then deliberately rattled the box containing the ioun stone. Predictably the stone rattled back violently, and the air was split by a jarring, discordant buzz as angry flashes of colored light leaked out from the seams of the container.
“It’s a cursed ioun stone.” The bladesinger explained. “It’ll latch onto the person it’s put near and then do its best to circle around them. Supposedly it has the habit of running into them, running into things of theirs around them, and annoying the hell out of whoever has the misfortune of being in the area.”
The hag muttered something under her breath.
“Pardon?” Clueless asked.
The hag smiled a mouthful of broken, blackened teeth. “Just talking about a dear sister of mine… that sounds like a lovely gift for her…”
Clueless said nothing as he handed the box over to the hag.
“Wait here and I’ll get you yer pound of flesh.” She said, wandering back towards her hut, rattling the box and listening to its angry buzzing as she did.
Over the next few minutes it was relatively silent, and nothing, not a sound, escaped the still unnaturally dark opening into the hag’s demesne. Eventually though, there were some whispers, just inaudible, and a series of animal whimpers and something dragging nails or claws against wood. Then another pause before there was a sudden, sharp *snap!* of bone followed by the sickening crunch of breaking, tearing cartilage, and the sound of a wet, fleshy scoop.
Clueless winced in distaste before the hag returned from her hut, cradling the box with the ioun stone under one arm, and in the other hand holding a sack weighted down with something heavy and wet.
“Enjoy it dear.” The hag said, handing over the sack and its soft, giggling contents. “What you want is about the size of one of your eyes, a bit off color from the rest of the brain in there.”
He muttered his thanks, collected the other things he’d offered, and then taking hold of the dripping, bloody satchel in one hand, Clueless strode away from the night hag’s home, only briefly turning back to watch her snickering as she clutched the cursed ioun stone. He had what he needed, wrapped in a cushioning layer of brain and length of cheesecloth, and the hag had something she would using to torment another one of her kind with. All in all, in a perverse sort of way, the Waste had outdone itself and its joy in misery had gone towards something in Clueless’s favor for once.
Unless of course things were ultimately just going to fall apart when one of the Waste’s children back in Sigil got her manicured claws involved. Clueless certainly hoped not.
***
"What -is- that?" The head cook asked, his head tilted askance, as Clueless stood in the doorway of the Portal Jammer’s kitchen and held up the warm, mucus filled jar of Bebelith eggs.
"Very funny." Clueless said. "You ever tried to poach one of these before?"
The kitchen was dead silent as the staff stood and stared at the clutch of fiendish eggs, and also at the other bloody satchel that their boss carried like some sort of mad butcher’s boy.
"I'm serious." The cook replied. "Not only haven't I poached one of those before, I don't have any bloody idea what they are or what they came from."
“Bebelith eggs.” Clueless explained. “Fresh and raw. You’ve never cooked one of them?”
“I’ve never even seen one of them…”
"Lovely." Clueless muttered. "We have two days before fuzzy McB*tch visits the inn, and none of you can cook the food she wants."
"I can try." The cook offered. "If we can get more I can see what makes it work best."
Clueless shook his head. "It's a limited supply. Very limited. That won't fly."
The cooking staff made their apologies, but clueless wasn’t much paying attention. No, the bladesinger was thinking about what to do so that his kitchen staff wouldn’t have to overextend themselves into an area of the culinary world that they rightfully had no experience in.
"Guys, I'm going to go find another cook." Clueless said as he walked back into the common room.
"What, our own can't handle it?" Tristol asked as he glanced up from a newly delivered batch of cutlery, glasses, and plates. He and Fyrehowl had, in a very short period of time, gone about some major cosmetic improvements to the common room of the inn.
The bladesinger glanced back into the kitchen. "It's so far out of the range of the food they normally handle... no."
Fyrehowl glanced up from one of the new chairs, her tail happily swishing behind it, courtesy of a partially open back.
“What’s in the sack?” The lupinal asked, her nose twitching in obvious disturbance as the lump of hordeling brain slowly leaked its rancid fluid through the cloth to evaporate into the air.
“Ah… yes, that.” Clueless said. “Some hordeling brain for a certain fiend’s favorite drink.”
“Does it have to slowly go putrid here in the taproom?” Fyrehowl asked.
Clueless nodded and walked around the bar, putting the sack and its runny contents into an unused cabinet.
“Whenever Florian gets back can you ask her to keep it from spoiling?” The bladesinger asked.
“At the very least.” The lupinal replied. “That’s pretty awful. I might hire the first priest I see to make sure it doesn’t spoil here in the next hour.”
Clueless shot her an apologetic look. “My apologies. Good luck with that. But in the meantime I’ll be over at the Black Sails trying to buy the time of one or more of their people. I should be back in about an hour or so. And since I haven’t said anything about it since I got back, nice job on the redecorating!”
***
"Funny. You don't look like a Baatezu." Zaren, the proprietor of the Black Sails tavern said as he looked up at the bladesinger from his desk, there in his office high in the stern of the galleon that served as the building’s frame.
"No no no." Clueless said, raising an eyebrow. "I said I wanted to -hire- one of your cooks, not -buy- one of your cooks."
"Ah." The man said. "Large difference."
"A considerable one." Clueless replied.
"Don't you have cooks of your own?"
"Yes, but I need someone to cook food for one evening that's rather different than what we normally serve."
The human gave a nod of his ashen complexioned face and listened.
"While neither of us is the Bottle and Jug or the Styx Oarsman, let's be honest, you cater to more fiends than we do. I was hoping that we might be able to reach some arrangement where I'd hire one of your cooks for an evening, either paying you directly or paying him plus a fee of convenience to you if it causes scheduling issues with your own staff."
“I don’t have a problem with it myself.” Zaren said. “You’re not competitors, and so long as you don’t try to hire my best cooks at your place on a permanent basis, what they do on their own time off shift isn’t my concern.”
Clueless nodded as the man continued.
“Plus, both of our establishments have the ignominious honor of being excluded from membership in the Innkeeper’s Fellowship.” The owner of the Black Sails added, holding up a signet ring emblazoned with the symbol of the Free League. “Some mutual friends have also spoken well of you. Go ahead and see if any of the cooks want the extra work, and they’ll set their price.”
It seemed that he had permission to speak to their cooks, and not only that, he had a tacit confirmation of his own acceptance into the informal ranks of the Indeps. Nothing more than that needed to be said, and so they exchanged handshakes, shared a shot of whisky, and that was that. Suffice to say, Clueless was smiling when he made his way into the kitchen, looking for a particular member of the staff, a minotaur named Garzech.
It wasn’t difficult to find him, being that he towered a full two heads or more over any of the other staff in the Sail’s kitchen.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Clueless said to the minotaur as he was currently hacking apart the hindquarters of what looked like some breed of nic’epona.
For his part the cook didn’t immediately respond except for a cursory glance as he methodically took the corpse apart and separated it into separate cuts of meat, slid them down the line to a pair of apprentice cooks, and bellowed out his orders.
Clueless patiently waited and eventually the cook turned to him.
“So what is it that you want?” He asked, sinking his cleaver an inch into the butcher’s block.
“I’m looking to hire a cook, and you came recommended by your boss.” Clueless explained.
“Go on.”
“My own cooks don’t have a clue how to cook for a fiend’s taste.” He continued. “And I have to cook a meal for one here rather shortly.”
“Just one evening?”
“Only for one evening yes. And I’ve already cleared it with your boss, assuming that you’re up for the additional work.”
The minotaur nodded. “Potentially. Tell me more.”
“I’ll make it worth your while, and my normal staff will be at your beck and call for whatever you need them to do for you. The kitchen will be yours for the duration of your stay, and we’ll get you whatever you need.”
Garzech chuckled. “That’s appreciated. What sort of fiend do you want me to cook for, and did they give you a menu ahead of time?”
“A greater yugoloth. You’ll have heard of her. And can you poach Bebelith eggs?”
The minotaur rubbed a thumb across the polished, elaborately engraved length of his left horn, clearly considering the offer.
“Yes I can, so long as you have them and they’re not more than three days old.” He answered. “That said, I’m interested. Let’s talk specifics over a few drinks once I’m finished in the kitchen tonight in a few hours.”
Clueless smiled. Things were working out well, and so long as Toras, back at the Portal Jammer, didn’t feel the need to repeat his previous verbal deconstruction of a minotaur with the new chef, there didn’t seem to be any problems looming on the horizon, at least not outside of the fiend they’d be catering to.
***
"Well tonight is the night." The fiend said to her reflection in the mirror.
The Marauder closed her mouth and held still as one of her flock of groomers reached up to paint her lips a glossy black with reflective undertones of red. Of course, that only caused her to switch over to telepathy, and what was previously her act of thinking out loud in the conventional sense, was suddenly all the more true to its name.
"Go with the blue diamond and fire opal necklace."
They took her comments as gospel, and they swarmed over her, adjusting clothing, changing out items as they fit or failed to fit their mistress’s specifications or momentary whimsy for how she cared to appear that evening. And all the while, she rambled about that evening and anything else on her mind.
“Seems that the owners of the Portal Jammer have been scurrying about like brainless little Formians for the past week.”
There was a malign little snicker from the fiend and she rolled her eyes.
“We’ll have to see if they can hold up to my standards of course. I did give them enough notions of how to cater to me.”
She pursed her lips, evening out the layer of gloss before turning her head slightly towards the mirror and giving an approving head nod to the servant.
“If they’re willing to kowtow, I’ll turn my attentions elsewhere for people to take especial pleasure in f*cking over. I have more options than them, and other people can absorb my ministrations while that pack of fools enjoys a respite.”
She paused and tapped a claw against a fang. “At least for a while. There’s too much incidental history, too much delicious sin to completely let them go. So a grace period then, a moment of détente, that brief period of silent, numb oblivion after each little death.”
Her tongue lashed out to tap the end of her nose. “Hold the mirror higher Colcook.”
“And in any event, send out another polite little letter to our friend in Carceri.” The King of the Crosstrade said. “The darling dear needs to remember her place in the world and in this city, my city. Despite her current elevation in status, she’ll always be something less than me, even if she unconsciously patterns a few points of personality based on my example. In fact I’m sure she has a special place in her rancid little black heart for me based on the duration of her apprenticeship under my thumb. Lingering affection, spite, or both, I’m getting tired of her sending minions in her employ into Sigil, whatever they’re doing. She gets a pointed letter this time, but next time she’ll be getting back their limbs, gift wrapped in a box.”
Her groomers let her ramble as they adjusted her dress, attached each and every bauble, polished her claws and made certain that her fur was brushed –exactly- to her specifications by mundane means rather than by magic. Circumstance wasn’t letting her move, and so in the absence of that freedom she was letting her tongue make up the perceived difference, cutting the air with her spite, letting its crass hatred boil over her pack of tieflings.
“Of course, it may also be jealousy on my part for her current position in Carceri.” She said, giving first a sneer and then a chuckle. “But if so, I think jealousy is rather becoming of me. I’ll happily continue to brew my own personal stock and vintage of that delicious little vice.”
“What about the Oinoloth ma’am?” Colcook asked her.
She twisted her features at the question.
“The Ebon.” She said with particular reverence. “Has nothing to do with this. These current incidents were entirely on his b*tch’s time. He has my respect and has purchased my loyalty, while as for her, well… I can smile as she slowly rots away, and she can thank me for that.”
None of her toadies made a comment, both on account of knowing their place and that when she desired them to comment, she would make her wishes known verbally, or they would be able to tell by virtue of her body language, a talent that they’d each honed out of necessity during their employment. Plus, none of them, Colcook included, had been alive in the centuries previous when that bit of history had occurred.
The Marauder smiled at herself in the mirror once again as on her tieflings crowned the top of her head with a freshly braided tiara of living razorvine, a single strand left intentionally loose in the likely event that she felt the need to lash out with more than her tongue.
“History is the heart’s cupboard of vice,” The ‘loth began. “All stored up and preserved, sins treasured for lean times. And I’ve a history with both of them I suppose, both that tattered little b*tch from Carceri, and the berks serving tonight’s dinner, especially the half-fey. I rather enjoyed him. Shame I had to let that songbird fly, I was just getting to appreciate him. At least we get to see him and his fellows tonight.”
Fully dressed, she turned to those of her tieflings who would be accompanying her as an entourage.
“Stay at hand, scatter through the rest of the inn, but don’t actually cause any trouble. Make a decent show of suggesting that you might, but just to keep them on edge. I want them jumpy.”
***
Darmanicus
I'm Ray...of Enfeeblement
Oh man, I can't wait for the next episode it should be a blast!
Nice one Shem.
Nice one Shem.
KitamiBurzum
First Post
Greetings, and well met!
Hello guys, and ladies, of course!
From Italy, you just got another faithful reader, Shemeska! I've subscribed just to give my thanks to all of you, for bringing life to the planes, it's the least I could do...
Excellent work, DM, and congratulations to the players, too!
Bye, see you soon
Hello guys, and ladies, of course!
From Italy, you just got another faithful reader, Shemeska! I've subscribed just to give my thanks to all of you, for bringing life to the planes, it's the least I could do...
Excellent work, DM, and congratulations to the players, too!
Bye, see you soon
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