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Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour (Updated 29 Jan 2014)
- Thread starter Shemeska
- Start date
Shemeska
Adventurer
Gez said:Αποκαλυψις (apocalypsis). Now here's a word you don't see everyday -- at least, spelt in Greek.
*grin* I used the original Greek version largely because the english translation apocalypse tends to carry a different meaning (end of the world/cataclysm) rather than the original meaning (revelation).
recentcoin
Explorer
Deliciously creepy...
(in an HP Lovecraft and not Stephen King kinda way)
RC
(in an HP Lovecraft and not Stephen King kinda way)
RC
Shemeska
Adventurer
They weren't entirely sure what to think as they walked down the corridor and away from Ghyris Vast's cell, leaving the madman to his babbling, delusional psychosis.
"So what do you think?" Clueless asked.
Florian shook her head. "I think he's a nutter."
"Well yeah." Clueless said. "Besides that."
Behind them, back in his cell, Vast began to whimper.
"The 'loths were interested in him," Toras said. "And they certainly took his ideas seriously, and they acted on them."
Fyrehowl nodded. "They did, and they were cautious enough to hide their involvement as best they could, and then to bottle him away in case they needed him later. I'd say that's enough to get us interested in what he said as well."
"It'd be easier if he wasn't a bloody loon." Florian said, rolling her eyes.
"But still, I..." Clueless began and then abruptly stopped. Vast had begun to scream, and then it was snuffed like a flame with an explosive, wet splatter.
Florian spun around to look. "What the hell...?!"
Vast was no longer sitting in the center of his cell, and in fact they couldn't see him at all. Gazing in horror through the transparent walls of force that had girded the cell, they saw only a fine crimson mist. Only slowly condensing and dripping down the walls like a red rain, aerosolized blood hung like a fogbank within the cell, completely obscuring the interior except for the darker stains and outlines of larger bits of flesh and viscera.
Barely registering above their shock, Aorth was shouting and running, and an alarm bell began to ring.
Florian stammered, "Bloody f*ck!"
They watched as the wall of force ran with a liquid covering of blood as it continued to fall out of the air and condense, peppering the conjured surface with bits of flesh like the alluvial silt of a perverse, hellish river delta.
Suddenly a shape loomed out of the red and a hand slammed up against the interior of the wall, smearing the blood, slowly and deliberately wiping the surface and clearing it of the madman's remains.
The hand was too big to be human, easily three of four times as large, and thin, sickly, elongated and completely untouched by the slaughter. In the space, a window into the cell, the carnage could be seen, and standing amidst it, leering out of the gap was something out of nightmare.
It was huge, barely fitting inside despite its hunched, stooped position as it leaned forwards and gazed out of the cell. A wasted, nearly skeletal head craned close and a serpentine, milky white eye peered outwards before retreating and gracing the gap with a smile of teeth set in rotting, dripping gums.
But the eye, in those few brief seconds, when it moved and twitched, it seemed to swim with symbols, like runes tattooed upon the corneas, formed within the capillary beds upon the retina, and floating and adrift in the humour, all of them glowing and forming the whole. But then with a blink the notion was gone, the flesh was real and the face retreated from the impromptu window.
"Holy f*ck!" Toras stammered.
The others wanted to say something, they wanted to verbalize some fraction of the thoughts in their heads, but their tongues, like their legs, simply refused to move. They had no words to describe it as the claxons blared louder and the distant footsteps of giants gave a rattle of metal on metal.
The red curtain still covered the cell and they watched it dribble and pool with the faintest of sounds like heavy raindrops on temple steps, gradually obscuring the cleared swathe once more. All was still within the cell, no movement, no sound, nothing.
Where had Vast's killer gone, and what was it? He'd known it. He'd known it was coming for him whatever it was.
Florian’s eyes went wide, "What the bloody f*ck was that?!"
No sooner had she spoken though, when the wall of force rippled like water and Ghyris Vast's executioner stepped through, summarily ignoring the wards in their entirety as if they didn't even exist, emerging from the constricting quarters of the cell and standing up to its full 15 foot height. Despite its massive size, easily as large or larger than the frost giant guards that formed the backbone of the security forces of Pitiless, the fiend was hideously thin and wasted, looking like some fanatical ascetic or a man dying either from disease or starvation.
Tristol blanched. He hadn't seen any magic being performed. The wards had simply parted, bending to the side and flowing around the creature that had stepped through them like they hadn't existed. That wasn't possible.
The Baernaloth's flesh was sickly and pale, stretched tight across its underlying muscle and bone, almost bleached white under the prison's illumination, and as it looked first down the corridor in each direction, and then towards the cell across from Vast's, its flesh seemed to crawl and move.
Tristol saw something different though. He didn't see the Baernaloth's sickly frame, skin gray as the Waste, nor the cold and dead eyes, nor the shimmer of movement on its flesh. He didn't see that, in fact he didn't even see a physical body standing there under the lights of Pitiless. Tristol saw a hollow, an empty space defined only by a seething, writhing carpet of alien glyphs and runes all moving, mating, merging, and cavorting across an oily skein of nothingness. The Baernaloth didn't glow with magic so much as it was composed of it, defined by ancient and alien symbols that burned the eyes and refused to be understood by the mind of a mere mortal.
The aasimar looked away. It was like staring into the sun.
The Baernaloth glanced to either side, looking at the guards marshalling at the corridor's end, and then towards Vast's last guests and beyond them another troupe of giants. The look was barely cursory, more curiosity than worry as it paused for a moment outside of the cell, stretching with an almost callous disregard for the alarms and approaching guards; it didn't seem worried in the slightest.
Aorth's screams could only distantly be heard over the ringing alarms and the rising screams of the other prisoners, those who had seen the event, and those who simply used the opportunity to add to the chaos out of spiteful rage. But the cells closest to the scene of the slaughter, they were deathly silent, and no more so than the cell in which Felthis ap Jerran sat.
With one last look back at Vast's mangled, pulped remains, the proto-fiend turned and looked directly at the imprisoned ultroloth. It chuckled and waved, strumming the fingers of one hand upon the air and gazing into the eyes of its flawed and risen child as if to say, "Hello there. Funny that -you- would be here isn't it? So good to see you again, did you miss me?"
But within his cell, the ironic gesture was something else entirely to the 'loth who sat there paralyzed with fear. Had he lips he would have gibbered, stricken as he was with a sense of revulsion and horror from the proximity of one of the Father/Mothers, a being who he'd thought mythical to that point, and one which had just so casually strode into the prison and slaughtered a man before his very eyes.
Would he be next? Would it so calmly butcher him as it had Ghyris Vast?
For a single long moment the Baernaloth stared at the lesser fiend, looming over him in physical stature and sheer presence alike. Felthis ap Jerran was frozen in place, unable to move, with his eyes spontaneously bleeding from shock and unwillingly fixated on the white orbs set in the sunken sockets of his ancient creator’s skull. Neither of them said anything as the Baern broke into a sadistic, uncaring smile, and if any communication had passed between the two of them, it hadn't been verbal; the Baernaloth had never made a sound.
Lazarius Ibn Shartalan gave one last derisive sneer of contempt at the risen ultroloth and then turned away, taking two steps before abruptly vanishing without a trace, slipping into the spaces between the planes with a method of transit older even than the paeans of the lesser fiends to the Maeldur et Kavurik. When the guards arrived only moments later there was nothing there for them to fight or detain, not a scrap of flesh or speck of dust to use as a material focus for a scry, nor even a single lingering dweomer to show that something had ripped open the impregnable prison's wards like they'd been crafted in haste by an apprentice mage. There were only the soulless remains of the man formerly known as Ghyris Vast and the whimpering of a risen fiend who'd looked the Devil in the eyes.
The next few minutes were a confused blur as they rushed towards Vast’s cell and stared at the carnage and heard the nearly insensate whimpers and mutters of ‘The Architect…’ from the ultroloth who’d born witness to it all. They had precious little time on the scene though, as the wardens of Pitiless were fiercely quick to order a full facility lockdown and security sweep to ensure that the intruder was no longer within the prison, nor was anything else in their care at risk. Something had punctured a thousand years of foolproof security in a place kept safe by agreement amongst factions, sects, races, even entire pantheons… and something had shattered those thousand years of sanctity with a brutal murder. Given the horrors bottled up elsewhere in the prison, they couldn’t risk that the same intruder wouldn’t plunder as well.
Hours of interrogation followed the incident, and the wardens were loath to admit their failures. Aorth and Jaitch only wanted someone to blame, but they didn’t know how the murder had happened, or even what manner of creature had been responsible. What had happened should not have happened, and the brothers were performing damage control as best they could.
Jaitch had been particularly unhappy after their ‘talk’, as no amount of magic had given him any definitive answers. “On behalf of the Doomguard, we strongly urge you to not speak of this event. There might be repercussions from other outside groups that we cannot control. And beyond that, we may have other questions for you. Please don’t drink from the Styx before that point. Anything else we can work around.”
Their subsequent expulsion from Pitiless was as quick and harsh as the slam of its gates.
Back in Sigil, they all went straight to the inn's private meeting room at the rear of the bar. They hadn't talked much on the way back, and the mood was cold, quiet and glum, at least until liberal amounts of alcohol began to loosen their tongues.
Clueless downed a shot of whisky. "I need a break from anything remotely dangerous. And I don't really want to burden myself with anything involving deep thought."
"Go pick fights in the Hive." Toras replied.
Nisha waved a finger at the fighter. "I've seen you doing that. One of these days you're going to run into something bigger than you."
Clueless just looked at the tiefling. "Nisha, I've seen you throw pumpkins off of rooftops at Cornugons while shouting 'In Hashkar's name!'"
Tristol's ears perked and he looked at the tiefling. "You what?!"
The Xaositect slunk down in her chair and gave a guilty grin. "It seemed like a good idea at the time..."
Clueless shook his head and downed another shot. "Nisha that's your motto in life."
"Hasn't failed me yet." She replied, sitting back up. "Hashkar would be proud - Xaos be unto him."
The bladesinger paused and looked at the empty shot glass. "I want to get drunk. Why the hell am I drinking this, it doesn't even faze me."
Florian finally asked the question burning on their minds. "So what the bloody f*ck did we see in Pitiless?"
No one answered immediately.
"Vast is dead. Something killed him.” She continued. “In bloody Pitiless of all places. It just ignored the wards."
"That's not possible." Skalliska said. "At least it's not supposed to be possible."
Florian threw her hands up in resignation. "Well, someone go find him and tell him that, because he didn't get that memo apparently."
"So what the hell was it?" Toras asked.
"I don’t know.” Fyrehowl said with considerable apprehension. “I can't answer that, but I'm guessing that's who Vast was worried about would kill him if he talked to anyone."
Kiro was disturbed. Why leave Vast open and available to even talk to anyone in the first place? Why not just kill him before that point? Perhaps doing so would have revealed that being's hand before it wished to step out from behind the puppeteer's drape.
"And do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." Clueless deadpanned. "That statue under the Palace of the Jester…"
Realization dawned upon them as they recognized the creature for what it had been: a Baernaloth.
“Aww sh*t…” Florian said.
Fyrehowl dug her claws into the tabletop. “F*cking ‘loths.”
“Something doesn’t make sense though.” Tristol said. “Vast was talking like the yugoloths he was working for weren’t aware of certain things.”
“We saw a damn Baernaloth.” Clueless. “But I don’t think it was working with the yugoloths we’ve been tangling with.”
Nisha was holding her head and dramatically swaying to either side. That didn’t make sense: Yugoloths doing something on the Astral, getting help from a human madman who’d been the vector for a Baernaloth’s manipulation of the yugoloths, all of who seemed to be unaware of its role in those events. But still, why had Vast still been alive to spill those secrets then?
Kiro was thinking the same thing. Perhaps the information Vast had been killed for revealing wasn't a secret in the first place, or at least not one of great importance, not except for the strings that would be tugged were it known to various players across the cosmic stage. Kiro didn't know, but since when did the Gloom Fathers remove a playing piece from their board till they were finished with them? Maybe Vast’s hellish execution had just been a way to pull the strings of those who had seen it, including him. Everything was an idle game to the Gloom Fathers, but in this instance, they weren’t the only ones on the playing field, just the ones that he knew the least about. His own lords presumably knew more, but they’d neglected to tell him if they’d suspected such.
“So what now?” Tristol asked.
“I need a break.” Clueless said. “After everything that just happened I need to take my mind off of things and get some perspective on it all.”
The feeling was almost universal. They all needed to think about what had happened, and what it meant, especially in light of their own conflicts with at least two powerful yugoloths, one of which was still lurking out there.
“I’ll be visiting the temple of Andros.” Toras said.
Skalliska looked up at the fighter. “Divine guidance is a good thing.”
“And you suddenly gained religion… when?” Nisha asked. “Or did I miss a memo somewhere as well?”
The kobold smiled and looked slightly evasive. “Don’t worry about it.”
Back at the bar, Clueless was preoccupied with looking at the wine bottles and ale casks.
“Something wrong?” Florian asked.
He held up an empty bottle. “We’re running low on booze.”
“That bad?” The cleric asked. “I can have the staff pick up some more from the stocks back on the demiplane.”
“Don’t bother.” The half-fey replied. “Before we went to Pitiless I’d wanted to go there anyway.”
Fyrehowl tapped a claw against the table. “I remember the staff mentioning something about squatters.”
“My fault.” Tristol said.
“You hardly look like a squatter dear.” Nisha replied.
The aasimar gave her a look as he chuckled. “No no. Not that I’m a squatter, just that Clueless and Kiro were on their way there when I drug us all out to the Astral. Sorry for all that.”
The bladesinger waved a hand dismissively. “Not an issue. I don’t expect the alcohol to just have vanished.”
“It better not have!” Florian said. She’d handled the contracts for their suppliers in the first place, and she’d be pissed if it had all been stolen.
Fyrehowl tapped Tristol’s sleeve. “Besides, the trip to Pitiless was something…” She paused. “…It’s something alright… don’t fret over it.”
The wizard smiled and tried to relax. He’d probably just relax and maybe work on a spell or two in the next few days.
“Mind if I come along this time too?” Kiro asked, looking towards Clueless. “I’ve never actually seen the place.”
Clueless smiled. “Please do. I could use an extra pair of eyes.”
The cleric stood up and gathered his things.
“So when should we expect you back?” Florian asked.
Clueless thought for a moment. "Nothing more than a few hours. It's probably just some Nathri messing with the place."
"Or the mercane's creditors." Florian mused. "Which I suppose is actually a legitimate notion. We never looked heavily into their background after we assumed control of the place."
"In any event,” Clueless said. “We'll be back after we find out who was messing with the locks and some of the exterior of the keep."
From there it was only a quick trip up to the second floor and a portal away from the demiplane. But it wasn’t Nathri they had to worry about.
The creature inhaled, if the analogy really held, smelling/tasting the ether upon the edges of the demiplane. The fringes of the near and the deep had rung like a bell, a single pure note to its psionic awareness when it was broached by one of Sigil's portals. It was a thing of beauty, but the yugoloth construct had never been given any sense of beauty, no notion of art, no notions at all outside of obedience and ferocity as it hung there in the roiling mists, half suspended between a trio of planes like a spider feeling the touch of insects upon the strands of its web.
It hungered. All of its kind hungered. And it had been given a target.
The mistress had told it what to hunt, the mistress the chosen and favored of the Maker, the Creator, the Father. He had granted her authority, and by virtue of that, she was to be obeyed till that authority was rescinded.
She desired the removal of a shallow scratch, a minor thing that could fester if allowed to. She wished for blood and death, and so the creature desired the same.
The demiplane loomed larger as it plunged through the mists, the ether shifting consistency as it neared the fringe of the little bubble the mercane had constructed a century prior. It felt its prey, it felt them close, and so with one last flick of its trailing pseudopods, it added one final burst of speed and hurtled downwards into the demiplane.
Kiro gazed up at the demiplane's violet sky with wonder, and then with equal amazement at the castle hovering in the void across the bridge from where the portal from Sigil had opened.
"It's one thing hearing about this place. But it's really something else to actually see it in person."
Clueless grinned. "Whatever else I can say about them, the mercane we took this place from, they had a pretty good design sense."
"It's certainly something." Kiro said as he looked over the side of the bridge. "Thanks for taking me along."
"I'm surprised that we hadn't shown you this place before."
Kiro shrugged. "It happens. We had other things to worry about."
"Very true." Clueless said. "But still, thanks for coming along. The staff said it looked like someone tried to break into the place, but we don't keep anything here except some things the mercane left behind, and a bunch of foodstuffs and the generic booze, none of the more expensive types. There isn't much to steal, so whoever came after the place, if anyone did, it's probably only a cleanup job for one person."
The gate did indeed show signs of tampering as they approached it, and very crude tampering at that. In fact it looked as though someone had tried to burn down the door, than hack a hole in it, and then finally tried to pick the lock. The last attempt had been successful.
"Ah... damnit." Clueless said, noting the damage to the gates and that they were ajar.
"I thought you said there wasn't anything to steal?"
Clueless gave a resigned shrug. "I'm less worried about theft than I am about vandalism now. This is pretty inept for burglary. They better not have trashed the place..."
It wasn't petty theft however that had Kiro concerned, nor was it a desire to see the mercane's demiplane that had led Kiro to accompany the bladesinger. Not at all. He was there for the same reason that he'd first stepped into the Portal Jammer in the first place: he needed to watch over them.
Unfelt by them both, something sensed them and began to move to intercept.
"They used to have this place pretty well trapped." Clueless said, motioning towards a stuffed Simpathetic and a broken statue. Both had originally been animated to attack intruders, but since the mercanes had died, they'd just sat and collected dust.
"So I gather." Kiro replied. "But if you have problems with vandals, it might be a good idea to try the same, especially if you'll be leaving the keep unoccupied for long stretches of time."
Clueless nodded and pondered the idea as they stepped into what had once been a courtyard near the center of the keep's ground floor. Some of the plants that had grown there looked trampled, and someone had scattered some broken dishes on the ground. Obviously they'd had visitors, probably a small tribe of Nathri.
Useless humanoid vermin of the ethereal, there wasn't any real way of getting rid of them, except for the obvious method: killing them. But that hardly seemed fair in some ways; a bit heavy-handed in Clueless's mind. Perhaps Tristol might be able to create some sort of antipathy warding to exclude them from approaching the demiplane, or...
Clueless paused and extended his hand. There was a breeze in the courtyard all of a sudden. He turned to Kiro, "Does it feel cold in here to you?"
The cleric's eyes suddenly went wide as he looked past the bladesinger.
Translucent, jellyfish-like tentacles congealed out of nothing, shifting between the dimensions like fingers dipped below the surface of a pond. They lashed out blindly at first, stabbing and slashing at the open air before the rest of the creature fully solidified and gave the pseudopods lethal direction.
Kiro darted instinctively to one side, rolling out of the way of a dozen tentacles. Half of them struck open air, still others seemed to slip ghostlike into the hard surface of the floor, and one grazed his shoulder, sending a cold and painful numbness spreading through his flesh. His arm was barely bruised, the flesh wasn't broken, and there were no traces of poison; the creature fed upon soulstuff.
They had no cleric. Protections against energy draining effects were usually superfluous and unnecessary unless you were planning on encountering the undead. It was a demiplane, their demiplane, there were no undead.
But while Kiro had managed to dodge, Clueless caught the brunt of its surprise attack. At least five of its tentacles slapped against his flesh and sent shockwaves of negative energy through his body as he managed to flick his wings and retreat just out of range.
"What the hell is that thing?!" He screamed out in shock as he drew razor. He felt like he'd been dunked in frigid water, and the numbness was spreading from where the thing had sunk its tendrils into his skin.
Kiro didn't verbalize a response, and for once, his calm demeanor seemed broken. His eyes were wide and he could only shrug; he hadn't the faintest idea what the thing was. But that was no surprise since the astraloths had never been used outside of the halls of Khin-Oin and the demiplane of their mistress. Yes, they'd fed on restrained tanar'ri and baatezu, screaming petitioners, and enslaved mortals, even some lesser yugoloths, but they'd never tasted the life force of anyone who harbored hope of survival. It was sweet, and the creature hungered for more.
Clueless flicked his wings and darted further back out of range as the astraloth's tentacles drifted and undulated around the bulk of its elongated, sickly frame. The thing was only partially corporeal, portions of it seeming to drift in and out of phase with everything else as it hung suspended in mid-air as the bladesinger dodged out of the way of its stupendous reach.
The creature let him retreat, giving only a few half-serious slaps of its tendrils, all of which failed to strike. Its nostrils quivered and it grinned. The attacks weren't meant to truly harm, not again, not yet, they were only intended to taunt. It enjoyed the struggle. It anticipated it.
Having had a moment to recover, Clueless pointed razor at the creature's chest and began to chant. The tip of the sword danced in a tight spiral, jumping slightly to either side at each pause and break in the song, and all the while a charge was building.
The lightning bolts erupted both from the tip of the blade and from Clueless's other outstretched hand, crossing the space between the astraloth and him in a flash of light and delayed clap of thunder. The creature made no move to evade the spells however as the first bolt of lightning was snuffed several feet from its target, failing against its innate resistance to magic, and the other made contact but likewise failed to harm it.
"Son of a b*tch!" Clueless shouted as he barely managed to dodge a trio of the thing's tentacles.
"Try something other than lightning!" Kiro shouted back as he faded from sight and tried to move into a flanking position.
Clueless dodged again, hacking at one of the slower moving tentacles, only to watch his blade slip through it like he was flailing at an illusion. But undeterred, he followed through with the intricate motions of a bladesong, invoking another spell in the hopes of finding something to pierce through the creature's resistances.
Kiro struck first however, and though he was invisible, the impacts of both of his swords into the astraloth’s back were visible like trails through mist or ripples though water as they repeatedly stabbed and slashed. The thing hadn't moved to defend itself, perhaps it hadn't noticed him, but neither had it responded to any of his attacks, not in any negative fashion.
The blades hadn't caused any damage, none at all, and Kiro realized that fact a moment too late as the creature grinned and stared down at him. The 'loth's empty eye sockets should have made it apparent that it wouldn't have been affected by invisibility. It had no eyes, and so it didn't rely on vision or any other mundane senses to target its prey.
Kiro's flesh tingled with the touch of psionic fingers a moment before the astraloth's claws and tentacles lunged for him. He tried to dodge, and normally he would have been able to do so, but it had lured him in too close, and he only had two arms and two swords to block with, while it had its own claws and a shifting, swirling mass of pseudopods all lashing independently of one another; it was inevitable that some would break through his defenses, no matter his level of skill.
The astraloth struck quick and hard, raking its claws across Kiro's arms and chest while several of its tentacles passed through the cleric causing him to jerk and shudder in pain. He exhaled in ragged stutters and dropped to one knee, completely open to further attack as he struggled to shake off the effects of the life-sapping energy drain.
The fiendish construct loomed over him, cackling with a wet, rasping laugh, and it would have continued against its injured and drained opponent, but a burst of flame erupted across its shoulders causing it to hiss and turn to face Clueless. Its translucent frame was clouded and discolored at the point of impact, and while a second flame arrow was snuffed against its magic resistance, the result was clear: it had no innate protections against flame.
Visible once more, the spell absorbed or dispelled by the creature's attacks, Kiro limped out of range. He wasn't visibly injured except for a deep gouge on his chest from one pass of its claws, but he shivered from the effects of the energy drain, only some of which he'd managed to resist.
"It's not immune to fire!" Clueless shouted as he dodged several attacks. "Use it if you have it!"
Kiro shook his head. "My swords aren't doing -anything- to it. And I don't have much else to use, not today... Sutekh preserve..."
That his swords hadn't worked had been a shock. They were enchanted near to the pinnacle of his people's ability and considered a bane to most every exemplar race across the Wheel, and they'd failed to so much as draw a scratch. On top of it all even, the thing didn't seem to possess any vulnerable points to its anatomy, it was more construct than living thing, and that made his own abilities almost worthless. It was a harrowing feeling.
Clueless inhaled deeply, still fighting the cold shock of the astraloth's first attacks, realizing that he only had two more fire based spells left, and that his own attacks against the creature had failed to affect it as well. Normally his blade bit through any normal resistances to damage.
The astraloth was grinning, hovering there amidst the writhing cloud of its own tentacles, drifting in place like it was soaking up the fear and worry leaching off of its targets. It was toying with them, and that moment of respite when it indulged the tastes imbued by its makers, it was the moment that Clueless and Kiro needed.
Clueless motioned to Kiro as he began to chant. It wasn't an offensive spell, and typically it wasn't necessary, but for whatever reason, be it random chance or brilliant foresight, he'd memorized it earlier that day. The spell was designed to increase the magical potency of a weapon, and at its completion Razor was glowing more brightly than ever, and with a brief touch of blades, so were Kiro's 'Twins'.
The astraloth inclined its head, sensing both the movement of its targets, the change in their emotional state, and the scent of the waxing dweomers upon their weapons. It snarled and dropped its fickle toying with them, lashing out in a frenzy of pseudopods and claws.
Kiro and Clueless responded in their own way, darting to either side and circling around it, slashing and stabbing at every opportunity, working off of one another's attacks as much as possible. They both relied on speed more than strength, and while their fighting styles were different: Clueless with his unseelie supplied style, and Kiro with his own techniques that seemed alien to a cleric of a mystical aspect of Set, the styles meshed.
It was difficult at first to determine who was causing more damage, the yugoloth construct with its claws and energy draining pseudopods that both seemed to ignore material armor, or the cleric and the bladesinger who dancing around the creature in a flurry of slashes. While previously, the astraloth had been able to completely ignore their weapons, the temporary boost to their enchantments had removed that immunity, and the ground was slick with a translucent, half-corporeal oily blood.
It might have been seconds or minutes, but it seemed much longer to Clueless and Kiro. Time had seemed to slow down as they repeatedly struck against the creature, drawing deeper and deeper wounds even as their bodies burned and they felt cold and sick from the astraloth's killing, sapping touch. They fought as if in a trance, moving automatically in a way that would have made Fyrehowl or Rhys smile, but in the end they broke out of it as their eardrums rattled with a bloodcurdling shriek of pain that resonated on the inside of their skulls like an ultroloth's screaming.
Numb with shock and injury, they staggered and fell to the floor, only vaguely aware of the astraloth as it flicked its tentacles in unison towards the floor like some perverse deep-sea squid, hurtling towards the ceiling and rapidly slipping out of phase and back into the depths of the trackless sea. Facing death it had fled, the selfishness of its yugoloth creators trickling down into their creations as a flattering little flaw.
Pain followed swiftly on the realization that they were both still alive, a combination of burning pain from cuts and slashes from its claws, and the utter chill of its draining touch. They didn't say a word as they staggered to their feet and helped each other limp towards the portal back to Sigil, eventually collapsing in the hallway across from a very startled Nisha.
"So what do you think?" Clueless asked.
Florian shook her head. "I think he's a nutter."
"Well yeah." Clueless said. "Besides that."
Behind them, back in his cell, Vast began to whimper.
"The 'loths were interested in him," Toras said. "And they certainly took his ideas seriously, and they acted on them."
Fyrehowl nodded. "They did, and they were cautious enough to hide their involvement as best they could, and then to bottle him away in case they needed him later. I'd say that's enough to get us interested in what he said as well."
"It'd be easier if he wasn't a bloody loon." Florian said, rolling her eyes.
"But still, I..." Clueless began and then abruptly stopped. Vast had begun to scream, and then it was snuffed like a flame with an explosive, wet splatter.
Florian spun around to look. "What the hell...?!"
Vast was no longer sitting in the center of his cell, and in fact they couldn't see him at all. Gazing in horror through the transparent walls of force that had girded the cell, they saw only a fine crimson mist. Only slowly condensing and dripping down the walls like a red rain, aerosolized blood hung like a fogbank within the cell, completely obscuring the interior except for the darker stains and outlines of larger bits of flesh and viscera.
Barely registering above their shock, Aorth was shouting and running, and an alarm bell began to ring.
Florian stammered, "Bloody f*ck!"
They watched as the wall of force ran with a liquid covering of blood as it continued to fall out of the air and condense, peppering the conjured surface with bits of flesh like the alluvial silt of a perverse, hellish river delta.
Suddenly a shape loomed out of the red and a hand slammed up against the interior of the wall, smearing the blood, slowly and deliberately wiping the surface and clearing it of the madman's remains.
The hand was too big to be human, easily three of four times as large, and thin, sickly, elongated and completely untouched by the slaughter. In the space, a window into the cell, the carnage could be seen, and standing amidst it, leering out of the gap was something out of nightmare.
It was huge, barely fitting inside despite its hunched, stooped position as it leaned forwards and gazed out of the cell. A wasted, nearly skeletal head craned close and a serpentine, milky white eye peered outwards before retreating and gracing the gap with a smile of teeth set in rotting, dripping gums.
But the eye, in those few brief seconds, when it moved and twitched, it seemed to swim with symbols, like runes tattooed upon the corneas, formed within the capillary beds upon the retina, and floating and adrift in the humour, all of them glowing and forming the whole. But then with a blink the notion was gone, the flesh was real and the face retreated from the impromptu window.
"Holy f*ck!" Toras stammered.
The others wanted to say something, they wanted to verbalize some fraction of the thoughts in their heads, but their tongues, like their legs, simply refused to move. They had no words to describe it as the claxons blared louder and the distant footsteps of giants gave a rattle of metal on metal.
The red curtain still covered the cell and they watched it dribble and pool with the faintest of sounds like heavy raindrops on temple steps, gradually obscuring the cleared swathe once more. All was still within the cell, no movement, no sound, nothing.
Where had Vast's killer gone, and what was it? He'd known it. He'd known it was coming for him whatever it was.
Florian’s eyes went wide, "What the bloody f*ck was that?!"
No sooner had she spoken though, when the wall of force rippled like water and Ghyris Vast's executioner stepped through, summarily ignoring the wards in their entirety as if they didn't even exist, emerging from the constricting quarters of the cell and standing up to its full 15 foot height. Despite its massive size, easily as large or larger than the frost giant guards that formed the backbone of the security forces of Pitiless, the fiend was hideously thin and wasted, looking like some fanatical ascetic or a man dying either from disease or starvation.
Tristol blanched. He hadn't seen any magic being performed. The wards had simply parted, bending to the side and flowing around the creature that had stepped through them like they hadn't existed. That wasn't possible.
The Baernaloth's flesh was sickly and pale, stretched tight across its underlying muscle and bone, almost bleached white under the prison's illumination, and as it looked first down the corridor in each direction, and then towards the cell across from Vast's, its flesh seemed to crawl and move.
Tristol saw something different though. He didn't see the Baernaloth's sickly frame, skin gray as the Waste, nor the cold and dead eyes, nor the shimmer of movement on its flesh. He didn't see that, in fact he didn't even see a physical body standing there under the lights of Pitiless. Tristol saw a hollow, an empty space defined only by a seething, writhing carpet of alien glyphs and runes all moving, mating, merging, and cavorting across an oily skein of nothingness. The Baernaloth didn't glow with magic so much as it was composed of it, defined by ancient and alien symbols that burned the eyes and refused to be understood by the mind of a mere mortal.
The aasimar looked away. It was like staring into the sun.
The Baernaloth glanced to either side, looking at the guards marshalling at the corridor's end, and then towards Vast's last guests and beyond them another troupe of giants. The look was barely cursory, more curiosity than worry as it paused for a moment outside of the cell, stretching with an almost callous disregard for the alarms and approaching guards; it didn't seem worried in the slightest.
Aorth's screams could only distantly be heard over the ringing alarms and the rising screams of the other prisoners, those who had seen the event, and those who simply used the opportunity to add to the chaos out of spiteful rage. But the cells closest to the scene of the slaughter, they were deathly silent, and no more so than the cell in which Felthis ap Jerran sat.
With one last look back at Vast's mangled, pulped remains, the proto-fiend turned and looked directly at the imprisoned ultroloth. It chuckled and waved, strumming the fingers of one hand upon the air and gazing into the eyes of its flawed and risen child as if to say, "Hello there. Funny that -you- would be here isn't it? So good to see you again, did you miss me?"
But within his cell, the ironic gesture was something else entirely to the 'loth who sat there paralyzed with fear. Had he lips he would have gibbered, stricken as he was with a sense of revulsion and horror from the proximity of one of the Father/Mothers, a being who he'd thought mythical to that point, and one which had just so casually strode into the prison and slaughtered a man before his very eyes.
Would he be next? Would it so calmly butcher him as it had Ghyris Vast?
For a single long moment the Baernaloth stared at the lesser fiend, looming over him in physical stature and sheer presence alike. Felthis ap Jerran was frozen in place, unable to move, with his eyes spontaneously bleeding from shock and unwillingly fixated on the white orbs set in the sunken sockets of his ancient creator’s skull. Neither of them said anything as the Baern broke into a sadistic, uncaring smile, and if any communication had passed between the two of them, it hadn't been verbal; the Baernaloth had never made a sound.
Lazarius Ibn Shartalan gave one last derisive sneer of contempt at the risen ultroloth and then turned away, taking two steps before abruptly vanishing without a trace, slipping into the spaces between the planes with a method of transit older even than the paeans of the lesser fiends to the Maeldur et Kavurik. When the guards arrived only moments later there was nothing there for them to fight or detain, not a scrap of flesh or speck of dust to use as a material focus for a scry, nor even a single lingering dweomer to show that something had ripped open the impregnable prison's wards like they'd been crafted in haste by an apprentice mage. There were only the soulless remains of the man formerly known as Ghyris Vast and the whimpering of a risen fiend who'd looked the Devil in the eyes.
The next few minutes were a confused blur as they rushed towards Vast’s cell and stared at the carnage and heard the nearly insensate whimpers and mutters of ‘The Architect…’ from the ultroloth who’d born witness to it all. They had precious little time on the scene though, as the wardens of Pitiless were fiercely quick to order a full facility lockdown and security sweep to ensure that the intruder was no longer within the prison, nor was anything else in their care at risk. Something had punctured a thousand years of foolproof security in a place kept safe by agreement amongst factions, sects, races, even entire pantheons… and something had shattered those thousand years of sanctity with a brutal murder. Given the horrors bottled up elsewhere in the prison, they couldn’t risk that the same intruder wouldn’t plunder as well.
Hours of interrogation followed the incident, and the wardens were loath to admit their failures. Aorth and Jaitch only wanted someone to blame, but they didn’t know how the murder had happened, or even what manner of creature had been responsible. What had happened should not have happened, and the brothers were performing damage control as best they could.
Jaitch had been particularly unhappy after their ‘talk’, as no amount of magic had given him any definitive answers. “On behalf of the Doomguard, we strongly urge you to not speak of this event. There might be repercussions from other outside groups that we cannot control. And beyond that, we may have other questions for you. Please don’t drink from the Styx before that point. Anything else we can work around.”
Their subsequent expulsion from Pitiless was as quick and harsh as the slam of its gates.
***
Back in Sigil, they all went straight to the inn's private meeting room at the rear of the bar. They hadn't talked much on the way back, and the mood was cold, quiet and glum, at least until liberal amounts of alcohol began to loosen their tongues.
Clueless downed a shot of whisky. "I need a break from anything remotely dangerous. And I don't really want to burden myself with anything involving deep thought."
"Go pick fights in the Hive." Toras replied.
Nisha waved a finger at the fighter. "I've seen you doing that. One of these days you're going to run into something bigger than you."
Clueless just looked at the tiefling. "Nisha, I've seen you throw pumpkins off of rooftops at Cornugons while shouting 'In Hashkar's name!'"
Tristol's ears perked and he looked at the tiefling. "You what?!"
The Xaositect slunk down in her chair and gave a guilty grin. "It seemed like a good idea at the time..."
Clueless shook his head and downed another shot. "Nisha that's your motto in life."
"Hasn't failed me yet." She replied, sitting back up. "Hashkar would be proud - Xaos be unto him."
The bladesinger paused and looked at the empty shot glass. "I want to get drunk. Why the hell am I drinking this, it doesn't even faze me."
Florian finally asked the question burning on their minds. "So what the bloody f*ck did we see in Pitiless?"
No one answered immediately.
"Vast is dead. Something killed him.” She continued. “In bloody Pitiless of all places. It just ignored the wards."
"That's not possible." Skalliska said. "At least it's not supposed to be possible."
Florian threw her hands up in resignation. "Well, someone go find him and tell him that, because he didn't get that memo apparently."
"So what the hell was it?" Toras asked.
"I don’t know.” Fyrehowl said with considerable apprehension. “I can't answer that, but I'm guessing that's who Vast was worried about would kill him if he talked to anyone."
Kiro was disturbed. Why leave Vast open and available to even talk to anyone in the first place? Why not just kill him before that point? Perhaps doing so would have revealed that being's hand before it wished to step out from behind the puppeteer's drape.
"And do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." Clueless deadpanned. "That statue under the Palace of the Jester…"
Realization dawned upon them as they recognized the creature for what it had been: a Baernaloth.
“Aww sh*t…” Florian said.
Fyrehowl dug her claws into the tabletop. “F*cking ‘loths.”
“Something doesn’t make sense though.” Tristol said. “Vast was talking like the yugoloths he was working for weren’t aware of certain things.”
“We saw a damn Baernaloth.” Clueless. “But I don’t think it was working with the yugoloths we’ve been tangling with.”
Nisha was holding her head and dramatically swaying to either side. That didn’t make sense: Yugoloths doing something on the Astral, getting help from a human madman who’d been the vector for a Baernaloth’s manipulation of the yugoloths, all of who seemed to be unaware of its role in those events. But still, why had Vast still been alive to spill those secrets then?
Kiro was thinking the same thing. Perhaps the information Vast had been killed for revealing wasn't a secret in the first place, or at least not one of great importance, not except for the strings that would be tugged were it known to various players across the cosmic stage. Kiro didn't know, but since when did the Gloom Fathers remove a playing piece from their board till they were finished with them? Maybe Vast’s hellish execution had just been a way to pull the strings of those who had seen it, including him. Everything was an idle game to the Gloom Fathers, but in this instance, they weren’t the only ones on the playing field, just the ones that he knew the least about. His own lords presumably knew more, but they’d neglected to tell him if they’d suspected such.
“So what now?” Tristol asked.
“I need a break.” Clueless said. “After everything that just happened I need to take my mind off of things and get some perspective on it all.”
The feeling was almost universal. They all needed to think about what had happened, and what it meant, especially in light of their own conflicts with at least two powerful yugoloths, one of which was still lurking out there.
“I’ll be visiting the temple of Andros.” Toras said.
Skalliska looked up at the fighter. “Divine guidance is a good thing.”
“And you suddenly gained religion… when?” Nisha asked. “Or did I miss a memo somewhere as well?”
The kobold smiled and looked slightly evasive. “Don’t worry about it.”
Back at the bar, Clueless was preoccupied with looking at the wine bottles and ale casks.
“Something wrong?” Florian asked.
He held up an empty bottle. “We’re running low on booze.”
“That bad?” The cleric asked. “I can have the staff pick up some more from the stocks back on the demiplane.”
“Don’t bother.” The half-fey replied. “Before we went to Pitiless I’d wanted to go there anyway.”
Fyrehowl tapped a claw against the table. “I remember the staff mentioning something about squatters.”
“My fault.” Tristol said.
“You hardly look like a squatter dear.” Nisha replied.
The aasimar gave her a look as he chuckled. “No no. Not that I’m a squatter, just that Clueless and Kiro were on their way there when I drug us all out to the Astral. Sorry for all that.”
The bladesinger waved a hand dismissively. “Not an issue. I don’t expect the alcohol to just have vanished.”
“It better not have!” Florian said. She’d handled the contracts for their suppliers in the first place, and she’d be pissed if it had all been stolen.
Fyrehowl tapped Tristol’s sleeve. “Besides, the trip to Pitiless was something…” She paused. “…It’s something alright… don’t fret over it.”
The wizard smiled and tried to relax. He’d probably just relax and maybe work on a spell or two in the next few days.
“Mind if I come along this time too?” Kiro asked, looking towards Clueless. “I’ve never actually seen the place.”
Clueless smiled. “Please do. I could use an extra pair of eyes.”
The cleric stood up and gathered his things.
“So when should we expect you back?” Florian asked.
Clueless thought for a moment. "Nothing more than a few hours. It's probably just some Nathri messing with the place."
"Or the mercane's creditors." Florian mused. "Which I suppose is actually a legitimate notion. We never looked heavily into their background after we assumed control of the place."
"In any event,” Clueless said. “We'll be back after we find out who was messing with the locks and some of the exterior of the keep."
From there it was only a quick trip up to the second floor and a portal away from the demiplane. But it wasn’t Nathri they had to worry about.
***
The creature inhaled, if the analogy really held, smelling/tasting the ether upon the edges of the demiplane. The fringes of the near and the deep had rung like a bell, a single pure note to its psionic awareness when it was broached by one of Sigil's portals. It was a thing of beauty, but the yugoloth construct had never been given any sense of beauty, no notion of art, no notions at all outside of obedience and ferocity as it hung there in the roiling mists, half suspended between a trio of planes like a spider feeling the touch of insects upon the strands of its web.
It hungered. All of its kind hungered. And it had been given a target.
The mistress had told it what to hunt, the mistress the chosen and favored of the Maker, the Creator, the Father. He had granted her authority, and by virtue of that, she was to be obeyed till that authority was rescinded.
She desired the removal of a shallow scratch, a minor thing that could fester if allowed to. She wished for blood and death, and so the creature desired the same.
The demiplane loomed larger as it plunged through the mists, the ether shifting consistency as it neared the fringe of the little bubble the mercane had constructed a century prior. It felt its prey, it felt them close, and so with one last flick of its trailing pseudopods, it added one final burst of speed and hurtled downwards into the demiplane.
***
Kiro gazed up at the demiplane's violet sky with wonder, and then with equal amazement at the castle hovering in the void across the bridge from where the portal from Sigil had opened.
"It's one thing hearing about this place. But it's really something else to actually see it in person."
Clueless grinned. "Whatever else I can say about them, the mercane we took this place from, they had a pretty good design sense."
"It's certainly something." Kiro said as he looked over the side of the bridge. "Thanks for taking me along."
"I'm surprised that we hadn't shown you this place before."
Kiro shrugged. "It happens. We had other things to worry about."
"Very true." Clueless said. "But still, thanks for coming along. The staff said it looked like someone tried to break into the place, but we don't keep anything here except some things the mercane left behind, and a bunch of foodstuffs and the generic booze, none of the more expensive types. There isn't much to steal, so whoever came after the place, if anyone did, it's probably only a cleanup job for one person."
The gate did indeed show signs of tampering as they approached it, and very crude tampering at that. In fact it looked as though someone had tried to burn down the door, than hack a hole in it, and then finally tried to pick the lock. The last attempt had been successful.
"Ah... damnit." Clueless said, noting the damage to the gates and that they were ajar.
"I thought you said there wasn't anything to steal?"
Clueless gave a resigned shrug. "I'm less worried about theft than I am about vandalism now. This is pretty inept for burglary. They better not have trashed the place..."
It wasn't petty theft however that had Kiro concerned, nor was it a desire to see the mercane's demiplane that had led Kiro to accompany the bladesinger. Not at all. He was there for the same reason that he'd first stepped into the Portal Jammer in the first place: he needed to watch over them.
Unfelt by them both, something sensed them and began to move to intercept.
"They used to have this place pretty well trapped." Clueless said, motioning towards a stuffed Simpathetic and a broken statue. Both had originally been animated to attack intruders, but since the mercanes had died, they'd just sat and collected dust.
"So I gather." Kiro replied. "But if you have problems with vandals, it might be a good idea to try the same, especially if you'll be leaving the keep unoccupied for long stretches of time."
Clueless nodded and pondered the idea as they stepped into what had once been a courtyard near the center of the keep's ground floor. Some of the plants that had grown there looked trampled, and someone had scattered some broken dishes on the ground. Obviously they'd had visitors, probably a small tribe of Nathri.
Useless humanoid vermin of the ethereal, there wasn't any real way of getting rid of them, except for the obvious method: killing them. But that hardly seemed fair in some ways; a bit heavy-handed in Clueless's mind. Perhaps Tristol might be able to create some sort of antipathy warding to exclude them from approaching the demiplane, or...
Clueless paused and extended his hand. There was a breeze in the courtyard all of a sudden. He turned to Kiro, "Does it feel cold in here to you?"
The cleric's eyes suddenly went wide as he looked past the bladesinger.
Translucent, jellyfish-like tentacles congealed out of nothing, shifting between the dimensions like fingers dipped below the surface of a pond. They lashed out blindly at first, stabbing and slashing at the open air before the rest of the creature fully solidified and gave the pseudopods lethal direction.
Kiro darted instinctively to one side, rolling out of the way of a dozen tentacles. Half of them struck open air, still others seemed to slip ghostlike into the hard surface of the floor, and one grazed his shoulder, sending a cold and painful numbness spreading through his flesh. His arm was barely bruised, the flesh wasn't broken, and there were no traces of poison; the creature fed upon soulstuff.
They had no cleric. Protections against energy draining effects were usually superfluous and unnecessary unless you were planning on encountering the undead. It was a demiplane, their demiplane, there were no undead.
But while Kiro had managed to dodge, Clueless caught the brunt of its surprise attack. At least five of its tentacles slapped against his flesh and sent shockwaves of negative energy through his body as he managed to flick his wings and retreat just out of range.
"What the hell is that thing?!" He screamed out in shock as he drew razor. He felt like he'd been dunked in frigid water, and the numbness was spreading from where the thing had sunk its tendrils into his skin.
Kiro didn't verbalize a response, and for once, his calm demeanor seemed broken. His eyes were wide and he could only shrug; he hadn't the faintest idea what the thing was. But that was no surprise since the astraloths had never been used outside of the halls of Khin-Oin and the demiplane of their mistress. Yes, they'd fed on restrained tanar'ri and baatezu, screaming petitioners, and enslaved mortals, even some lesser yugoloths, but they'd never tasted the life force of anyone who harbored hope of survival. It was sweet, and the creature hungered for more.
Clueless flicked his wings and darted further back out of range as the astraloth's tentacles drifted and undulated around the bulk of its elongated, sickly frame. The thing was only partially corporeal, portions of it seeming to drift in and out of phase with everything else as it hung suspended in mid-air as the bladesinger dodged out of the way of its stupendous reach.
The creature let him retreat, giving only a few half-serious slaps of its tendrils, all of which failed to strike. Its nostrils quivered and it grinned. The attacks weren't meant to truly harm, not again, not yet, they were only intended to taunt. It enjoyed the struggle. It anticipated it.
Having had a moment to recover, Clueless pointed razor at the creature's chest and began to chant. The tip of the sword danced in a tight spiral, jumping slightly to either side at each pause and break in the song, and all the while a charge was building.
The lightning bolts erupted both from the tip of the blade and from Clueless's other outstretched hand, crossing the space between the astraloth and him in a flash of light and delayed clap of thunder. The creature made no move to evade the spells however as the first bolt of lightning was snuffed several feet from its target, failing against its innate resistance to magic, and the other made contact but likewise failed to harm it.
"Son of a b*tch!" Clueless shouted as he barely managed to dodge a trio of the thing's tentacles.
"Try something other than lightning!" Kiro shouted back as he faded from sight and tried to move into a flanking position.
Clueless dodged again, hacking at one of the slower moving tentacles, only to watch his blade slip through it like he was flailing at an illusion. But undeterred, he followed through with the intricate motions of a bladesong, invoking another spell in the hopes of finding something to pierce through the creature's resistances.
Kiro struck first however, and though he was invisible, the impacts of both of his swords into the astraloth’s back were visible like trails through mist or ripples though water as they repeatedly stabbed and slashed. The thing hadn't moved to defend itself, perhaps it hadn't noticed him, but neither had it responded to any of his attacks, not in any negative fashion.
The blades hadn't caused any damage, none at all, and Kiro realized that fact a moment too late as the creature grinned and stared down at him. The 'loth's empty eye sockets should have made it apparent that it wouldn't have been affected by invisibility. It had no eyes, and so it didn't rely on vision or any other mundane senses to target its prey.
Kiro's flesh tingled with the touch of psionic fingers a moment before the astraloth's claws and tentacles lunged for him. He tried to dodge, and normally he would have been able to do so, but it had lured him in too close, and he only had two arms and two swords to block with, while it had its own claws and a shifting, swirling mass of pseudopods all lashing independently of one another; it was inevitable that some would break through his defenses, no matter his level of skill.
The astraloth struck quick and hard, raking its claws across Kiro's arms and chest while several of its tentacles passed through the cleric causing him to jerk and shudder in pain. He exhaled in ragged stutters and dropped to one knee, completely open to further attack as he struggled to shake off the effects of the life-sapping energy drain.
The fiendish construct loomed over him, cackling with a wet, rasping laugh, and it would have continued against its injured and drained opponent, but a burst of flame erupted across its shoulders causing it to hiss and turn to face Clueless. Its translucent frame was clouded and discolored at the point of impact, and while a second flame arrow was snuffed against its magic resistance, the result was clear: it had no innate protections against flame.
Visible once more, the spell absorbed or dispelled by the creature's attacks, Kiro limped out of range. He wasn't visibly injured except for a deep gouge on his chest from one pass of its claws, but he shivered from the effects of the energy drain, only some of which he'd managed to resist.
"It's not immune to fire!" Clueless shouted as he dodged several attacks. "Use it if you have it!"
Kiro shook his head. "My swords aren't doing -anything- to it. And I don't have much else to use, not today... Sutekh preserve..."
That his swords hadn't worked had been a shock. They were enchanted near to the pinnacle of his people's ability and considered a bane to most every exemplar race across the Wheel, and they'd failed to so much as draw a scratch. On top of it all even, the thing didn't seem to possess any vulnerable points to its anatomy, it was more construct than living thing, and that made his own abilities almost worthless. It was a harrowing feeling.
Clueless inhaled deeply, still fighting the cold shock of the astraloth's first attacks, realizing that he only had two more fire based spells left, and that his own attacks against the creature had failed to affect it as well. Normally his blade bit through any normal resistances to damage.
The astraloth was grinning, hovering there amidst the writhing cloud of its own tentacles, drifting in place like it was soaking up the fear and worry leaching off of its targets. It was toying with them, and that moment of respite when it indulged the tastes imbued by its makers, it was the moment that Clueless and Kiro needed.
Clueless motioned to Kiro as he began to chant. It wasn't an offensive spell, and typically it wasn't necessary, but for whatever reason, be it random chance or brilliant foresight, he'd memorized it earlier that day. The spell was designed to increase the magical potency of a weapon, and at its completion Razor was glowing more brightly than ever, and with a brief touch of blades, so were Kiro's 'Twins'.
The astraloth inclined its head, sensing both the movement of its targets, the change in their emotional state, and the scent of the waxing dweomers upon their weapons. It snarled and dropped its fickle toying with them, lashing out in a frenzy of pseudopods and claws.
Kiro and Clueless responded in their own way, darting to either side and circling around it, slashing and stabbing at every opportunity, working off of one another's attacks as much as possible. They both relied on speed more than strength, and while their fighting styles were different: Clueless with his unseelie supplied style, and Kiro with his own techniques that seemed alien to a cleric of a mystical aspect of Set, the styles meshed.
It was difficult at first to determine who was causing more damage, the yugoloth construct with its claws and energy draining pseudopods that both seemed to ignore material armor, or the cleric and the bladesinger who dancing around the creature in a flurry of slashes. While previously, the astraloth had been able to completely ignore their weapons, the temporary boost to their enchantments had removed that immunity, and the ground was slick with a translucent, half-corporeal oily blood.
It might have been seconds or minutes, but it seemed much longer to Clueless and Kiro. Time had seemed to slow down as they repeatedly struck against the creature, drawing deeper and deeper wounds even as their bodies burned and they felt cold and sick from the astraloth's killing, sapping touch. They fought as if in a trance, moving automatically in a way that would have made Fyrehowl or Rhys smile, but in the end they broke out of it as their eardrums rattled with a bloodcurdling shriek of pain that resonated on the inside of their skulls like an ultroloth's screaming.
Numb with shock and injury, they staggered and fell to the floor, only vaguely aware of the astraloth as it flicked its tentacles in unison towards the floor like some perverse deep-sea squid, hurtling towards the ceiling and rapidly slipping out of phase and back into the depths of the trackless sea. Facing death it had fled, the selfishness of its yugoloth creators trickling down into their creations as a flattering little flaw.
Pain followed swiftly on the realization that they were both still alive, a combination of burning pain from cuts and slashes from its claws, and the utter chill of its draining touch. They didn't say a word as they staggered to their feet and helped each other limp towards the portal back to Sigil, eventually collapsing in the hallway across from a very startled Nisha.
***
Shemeska
Adventurer
shilsen said:Is that a polite way of saying you decided not to kill off two PCs and gave them an out? Or maybe that's just me being cynical
Nope, once they'd bumped their weapons up to +5, they had the edge on it. Once it dipped to under 10% HP, I had it flee. It had them both pretty heavily level drained by that point though.
I'd actually expected them to flee from the thing, but managed to squeek it out after they used a 'greater magic weapon', and broke the thing's pretty hefty DR.
shilsen
Adventurer
Shemeska said:
I thought that was the toughest aspect of the encounter. Level draining, with the way it gives negatives to just about everything, is one of the nastiest things in 3e. Speaking of which, was this played under 3.0 rules or using 3.0 DR? In 3.5, DR X/magic has replaced all the X/+1 to X/+5 versions.
Shemeska
Adventurer
shilsen said:
3.0 (I've never actually used 3.5 DR). Though I've altered some monster's DR anyways to reflect some of the 2e flavor (such as 'loths and Baatezu being harmed by silver, and Tanar'ri by cold iron, etc). So a 'loth that normally would take a +2 weapon to break DR, you might only need a +1 or even a normal weapon to pierce if the weapon is made of silver, etc. The Astraloths however, they were a special case, I'll have to look through my notes and find their stats [It was something like a combination DR 5/- and DR 20/+5, maybe higher on the last one).
