Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour (Updated 29 Jan 2014)
Just spent the last two days catching up (reading from page 5 to 9). Great stuff. Really enjoying it. Makes my PS campaign pale in comparison 
After you are done Shem would it possible to strike a bargain and have a compiled word version put together for those interested? I want to add it to my Planescape collection.
After you are done Shem would it possible to strike a bargain and have a compiled word version put together for those interested? I want to add it to my Planescape collection.
Shemeska
Adventurer
solomanii said:Just spent the last two days catching up (reading from page 5 to 9). Great stuff. Really enjoying it. Makes my PS campaign pale in comparison
After you are done Shem would it possible to strike a bargain and have a compiled word version put together for those interested? I want to add it to my Planescape collection.
Thanks!
Sure thing, I'm writing this all in Word anyways. However it's going to be at least a year or so before the storyhour is caught up with the actual campaign, which is likely to be over in under 5 months or so. And I've already got followup plots ready... all depends on the end of this one though.
The next update is in progress and should be posted tommorow or thursday.
Shemeska
Adventurer
Blame GenCon for the delayed update!
At the same time, two wards away in the spireward reaches of the Market Ward, a short, green scaled kobold sat at her desk and opened a small, sealed scroll that had arrived for her that morning by way of one of the Bellringer’s messengers. Her feet kicked slowly in the air, nearly a foot above the floor, as the chair she occupied was oversized for her stature. She was dressed in a rather flamboyant coat and vest while a wide brimmed and plumed hat perched atop her head, slightly askance. She was nothing if not fashionable.
Skalliska smiled in curiosity, a reptilian smirk crossing her face as her tiny teeth flashed a line of white across her snout. “Hmm… wonder who sent this, and with advance payment along with it…”
The kobold counted the coins with a practiced eye and spread the parchment out before herself. “My newest employee Skalliska, allow me to introduce myself. Payment should be included with this letter, unless the Bellringer hires untrustworthy runners, in which case he’ll be down a runner by the day’s end. The funds therein should be double your usual fee for a week’s time of services. I hope this is recompense for the short notice of employment. But this would be much easier if we were to speak in person. Please touch the sigil at the end of this document to do just that…”
Skalliska paused and glanced at the twin symbols at the end of the page, one of them a comical looking symbol that resembled a blue grin, and the other a ring of concentric circles composed of runes in infernal and abyssal. A quick glance was enough for her to translate their meaning, “Wheels within Wheels.”
The kobold tapped the center of the symbol and watched as nothing happened. She tapped it again and pressed on the symbol, but still to no avail. Then she heard the thin, “Mrrpphhmmmpphhhh,” emanate from under her thumb.
“Oh.” She said with some amusement as she removed her thumb to see the blue grin symbol rise up off the paper, sneeze, and hover before her, smiling even more.
“Very pleased to meet you my scaly employee. Don’t you think this is a better way of going over things?” The grin said as Skalliska chuckled and leaned back in her chair.
“This works, and it’s amusing if nothing else.” She pointed towards the pile of platinum coins, “You’ve certainly bought your time, so do tell.”
“I thought I’d found your favorite color there, guess I wasn’t wrong. Good.” The grins floated down towards the kobold’s desk and seemed to settle atop the coins like a tiny dragon on its hoard.
“I’ve got a group of other employees of mine that are set to track down a demiplane in which a few people they don’t really like are holed up. I’ve my own reasons to see those berks get their comeuppance, but that’s rather beside the point. I need you to help my employees find that demiplane, make sure they don’t fall prey to any traps, both magical and mundane, and that they get out alive and back to Sigil. I don’t wish to see them come to harm.”
Skalliska nodded and plucked a coin out from under the Cheshire Fiend’s animated chin. “How long do you think this will take? I don’t have a problem taking the job, but if it’s longer than a certain period I start to charge more you understand.”
The grin gnawed on a coin like a small puppy on a bone before answering her, “Heh heh, I could pay you now, or I could offer you a share of what the mercane in that demiplane have hoarded with them… it is substantial and I don’t personally care what happens to it. Money isn’t an issue for me, suffice to say.”
“A share in whatever they… well, no… a share in what we recover? That’s really tempting, it really is. What sort of surprises are these, mercane you said, going to have waiting for us?” Coins danced in the kobold’s eyes and the Cheshire Fiend jumped on that glimmer of gold in her head.
“A bevy of mercenaries, likely some traps, their own magics, and for the eldest of the three brothers a guardian golem and at least two or three stone golems. Beyond that, likely not much more. All of them are wizards, so judge your expectations accordingly.”
Skalliska leaned back in her chair and pushed her hat down over her face as she contemplated taking the offered job. It was ever so tempting, and her illusory, or seemingly illusory employer wasn’t helping any by warping into a blue dragon and snarling and breathing sparks as it sat on top of the pile of coins on her desk. While quirky and amusing, the grinning fiend was shrewd enough to get her hooked on the offer.
“I’m in.” She was fairly blunt as she grinning back at her employer from under the brim of her hat.
“Well, that’s good because they’re already on their way over here. A bit of an assumption on my part that you’d agree to my terms, but, no problems encountered after all. And with that, I have other places to be, do take care of them, they’ll fill you in on any details.”
And with that, the Cheshire Fiend dove into the pile of coins and dissipated into a shower of sparkling blue fragments that melted away into the air. The parchment displayed no lingering traces of magic, nor the grin’s symbol still on the page. But rather than any lingering questions, only the sound of cascading coins filled the kobold’s ears, just as thoughts of revenge and desperation had filled the thoughts of her soon to be compatriots.
A few hours later Nisha stood outside the address in the Market Ward, pointing up towards the sign above the entrance. In bright gold lettering, the sign read ‘Five Fellows Market of the Curious and Rare”.
“Apparently I’m doing my Kylie impression today…” Nisha said as she continued to point up at the sign. Her companions chuckled softly behind her as they moved towards the door and stepped inside.
The interior of the shop was brightly illuminated from a series of skylights in the roof which appeared magically augmented; the haze outside the shop wasn’t half as bright as the inside light. Tables and shelves scattered about the room, each of them littered with various exotic and strange baubles from a dozen or more different planes or primes. The desk nearest to the door had a map of the shop and fliers detailing the additional services the shop’s proprietors provided to clients. Clueless was already moving towards the desk, smiling at the elven wizardress who sat behind it. Tristol rolled his eyes as the half-fey bowed and kissed the elf’s hand, inquiring about their contact at the shop in as flirtatious a way as possible. After his question he paused, leaned in and whispered something to the woman who immediately blushed.
“I’m flattered,” the wizardress said as Clueless kissed the back of her hand, “But I don’t think my husband would approve, even if he is out of Sigil for the next few weeks. The attention is appreciated though it’s too bad for you that I’m not a sensate.” She laughed and Clueless chuckled, “Alas, were if you were.”
Fyrehowl chuckled, the tips of her ears growing slightly flushed, as she obviously had overheard Clueless’s whisper. As she obviously found humor in whatever he had said, she and Florian made eye contact as they both looked over towards Clueless. A slight consternation passed between them, not unlike two rag pickers in the hive both looking at the same dropped copper right before leaping for it.
Florian coughed to interrupt Clueless’s amorous pursuits, “We’re here to meet a certain Skalliska that we were told was a partner at your establishment. Is she in at the moment?”
“I believe so, yes.” The elf pointed towards a yellow door on the far end of the display room, “Through that door, end of the hall, and the door on the right is hers. And feel free to browse anything in the shop while you’re here.”
Skalliska looked up at the silhouettes in the glass of the door to her office and smiled a reptilian grin as the door tentatively opened. “We’re looking for a certain Skalliska, is this the right place?” said Florian as he stepped through into the kobold’s office.
Skalliska looked up from her chair, her face mostly hidden by the wide brim of her hat. “That would be me, I take it that you’re the folks I’m being paid to guide into the Ethereal?”
“Yep, that would be us.” Said Clueless as he walked into the office. “I take it that you’ve already spoken to our mutual employer?”
“Very recently actually, he was… rather unique. Smiled a lot.” She replied as her hand picked up her familiar from her shoulder, a small red-orange lizard with tiny tongues of flame licking up from its snout and seemingly at random from the rest of its body.
“Umm… your familiar set itself on fire, you might want to…” Nisha began before Tristol tapped her shoulder and whispered something into her ear and be blushed. “Whoops, nevermind.”
“So tell me about yourselves and where we’re going, after that we can be headed off as soon as you’d like. I’ve coin in my pocket from our grinning friend and nothing else keeping me here for the moment.” Skalliska lifted up her head to show her smile.
“He’s not what I think of when I think of a kobold.” Nisha said, opening her mouth too much for the second time that day.
“She, I’m female.” The very much female kobold snapped back.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Nisha apologized before whispering in Tristol’s ear, “How do you tell?!” Tristol held back his chuckle but ignored her question. “Later.”
“So what –did- you expect?” Skalliska inquired, sitting up straighter in her chair as her fire lizard munched at a bug she offered it from a small pocket in her brightly colored vest.
“Cave dwelling, baby eating, trap setting, pesky elemental?” Nisha quipped before sticking out her tongue sideways. “Joking, mostly.”
“Not me, baby is too piking expensive in Sigil this time of year.” Skalliska fired back without a bit of hesitation and it took the tiefling a moment to realize that the kobold was actually joking. Clueless and Fyrehowl softly snickered.
The rest of their meeting went well with only a few more random, true to form, statements from Nisha. They introduced themselves and their abilities to their guide, and in turn Skalliska told them of her specialties including her knack of finding and picking portals. In truth there was only a very fine overlap in her skills compared to Nisha, and that was in noticing and disarming traps, not something that anyone involved would lament there being two experts in the group on. But having made their introductions, the newly assembled group set out to procure last minute supplies before meeting up back at Skalliska’s office before she had them through a portal to the Ethereal a block or so away from the building and from there into the deep in search of their targeted demiplane.
True to her word, and a fine testament to her professional skill, Skalliska had her new companions hovering in the ethereal mist near to the demiplane’s border in the space of around eight hours. During their trek through the trackless sea, they managed to avoid any ether cyclones or even encounters with anything that they considered a threat. More than once they had to comment to the kobold that they were rather happy to have her aid. For her part Skalliska smiled and tipped her hat as her fire lizard gave a squeaky roar like a miniature toy red dragon perched on her shoulder.
“And here we are as promised. One step through the curtain and we’ll be inside the demiplane, though normally you can’t tell just where you’ll appear inside. I can get us inside at more or less where you want to be though, if you prefer anyplace in particular?” The kobold smirked happily and tapped a few implements on her planar compass as she examined the shimmering border of the demiplane.
Fyrehowl and Clueless exchanged glances with Toras, Tristol, and Florian while Nisha ignored them all in favor of making faces and noises at Skalliska’s fire lizard. “Raaaaarrrrr….”, the tiefling was oblivious to anything else, and Skalliska was completely ignoring her as she went about determining the properties of the demiplane’s border.
“Somewhere near the gates? I don’t recall there being any other way into the keep from the outside.” Fyrehowl mused as the other pondered Skalliska’s question.
“That works for me too, there wasn’t all that much solid ground in there, and honestly I’m not in the mood to find out what happens when you fall in there. Andros only knows how big that place actually is.” Toras suggested, his sword already drawn.
“You’d probably hit the border and either slide with gravity around it, or appear out the other side…” Tristol said.
“Can I have a familiar?” Nisha’s random question broke the discussion as they all turned to stare at her. She simply smiled and swished her tail slightly from side to side.
“Yeah… we should get moving, I’m actually starting to feel a little under the weather.” Tristol said, looking first over towards Florian and then to Skalliska.
“Same here, it’s probably starting to have an effect, so the sooner we find the antitoxin the better. You ready there Skalliska?” Florian said, trying his best to be upbeat.
Skalliska turned back and pushed her hat back, the border was shimmering a soft blue where it had been largely colorless before. “Ready when you all are, we’ll be somewhere from a few inches to a few feet from the main gates. After you.”
The kobold pointed to the colored patch in the demiplane border, motioning for her new companions to jump through, then she looked over towards her familiar which was breathing tiny rings of smoke at Nisha. “Best for you to stay somewhere safe till this is over with, alright?”
The fire lizard snarled grumpily and moved towards a small pocket in Skalliska’s vest that opened up into a bottomless extra dimensional expanse. “I’ll let you out to wander around when this is over, and then you can play dragon again on some gold, alright?”
“Can I play dragon on a pile of gold too?” Nisha asked and somewhat startled the kobold.
“Oh, you’re still here.” Skalliska patted the pocket shut and looked a bit oddly at the tiefling. “Play dragon?”
“Yeah, like your lizard, it sounds kinda fun actually, it’ll just take more coins for it to work with me…” Nisha chuckled happily.
“Umm… yeah. How about we get going before this destabilizes, ok?”
“Alright.” Nisha said as she tumbled through the demiplane boundary, grinning all the way.
The passage through the boundary was brief and warm, like a breeze on a midsummer’s day. Once through, they all stood a few dozen feet from the gate of the mercane’s keep. Unlike when they had first ventured that way, the gate was wide open. Clueless was already in the air, his wings extended, and Tristol was already examining the area for latent dweomers while the others drew their weapons and scanned for guards.
The entrance was dead silent and unmanned, the mercane’s apparently saw little need to man the front gate of a fortress inside an otherwise uninhabited demiplane. From their money minded perspective, it apparently made little sense to do so.
“No teleportation spells near the entryway, we should be fine to go.” Tristol said, glancing in each direction as he whispered a spell to detect magic.
“No guards either, let’s go on in before we’re noticed.” Fyrehowl said as she glanced to the windows high above them and their arrow slit features that promised certain death, if only they had been manned.
Quickly and quietly the group rushed into the main entry chamber past the gate and slipped down the central hallway, ignoring the branching corridors except to glance down them for guards. They weren’t there to sneak in and gain an antidote; they were there for blood as well.
The hallways were largely unadorned and utilitarian, though clean and free of even a speck of dust or scuffing on the flagstones. As they approached a larger intersection, Fyrehowl sniffed at the air and perked her ears before pointing to the left and the forwards. “Kitchens that way, and there’s someone sharpening a weapon straight ahead… someone snoring too, barracks maybe.”
Florian hefted his battleaxe and charged off towards the doorway to the barracks with Fyrehowl and Toras right beside him as he kicked the door off its hinges and burst into the room to the utter horror of the six off duty guardsman. The room was spattered in blood in mere seconds and Toras’s blade was at the throat of the one sleeping guard as he woke up to find his fellows dead or unconscious around him.
“Who are…” he said before the edge of Toras’s blade silenced his question. Florian stood over him to ask his own question. “How many guards are here? Numbers and layout of the floors. Tell us and you live.”
“Twelve. Six of us on duty, and six off at any time…” he whimpered as he looked to the left at the bodies of two of his comrades.
Toras furrowed his eyebrows, “Only twelve? This keep is huge. You’ve got to be kidding me. What else do they have guarding this place? What else on this floor?”
The sharp stench of urine hit the air as the mercenary wet himself, Fyrehowl wrinkled her nose and frowned as he replied, “Some traps, but those are in the rooms that are off limits to us. And they don’t let us on the floors above this one. We’re just here pretty much to make sure the serving staff doesn’t wander and to make sure that any Nathri don’t decide to make this demiplane their next raiding target. That’s it, I don’t know anything more… please don’t kill me…”
The guard went limp as Nisha knocked him in the back of the head with a sap. “Tie him up and leave him then? We can always dump him through a portal later.” She tossed a length of rope to Clueless and then went body to body snagging purses while chiding the mercanes on the salary they apparently paid their hired help as she counted out only silvers and coppers.
“Hmm… makes me wonder what’s on the higher floors.” Clueless said as he bound the guard’s hands and legs.
“Same here. I can see wizards being secretive and cloistered, but that sounds a bit extreme.” Tristol said with a shake of his head.
A muffled cry from outside the barracks gathered the groups’ sudden attention as Skalliska poked her head in through the door. “Advice? One of the kitchen staff came to deliver lunch to the guards, and a crossbow pointed at her head is keeping her quiet for the moment…” The kobold grinned.
The others walked out into the hallway to find Skalliska pointing a modified Cho-Ku-No up at the blanched face of a middle-aged woman dressed in a starched blue and gold uniform with the symbol of Dalmar Imshenviir promenantly displayed on her smock. She was holding a full platter of food in her arms and trembling slightly. Her eyes darted to the smirking, crossbow wielding kobold and then to Toras and finally to Fyrehowl. The sight of the lupinal seemed to both reassure and confuse her at once.
“We’ll have our kobold lower her crossbow…” Florian said before Nisha interrupted to add, “And not cook you and eat your children, they do that sometimes if you don’t watch them.”
“We’re not here to hurt you, so don’t scream and we’ll lower our weapons, ok?” Fyrehowl said as Skalliska lowered her crossbow, glowered at Florian, and then even more at Nisha who was snickering, quite pleased with herself.
“Ok…” the woman said, “What do you want?”
“Your employers tried to have us killed and we’re here to take revenge on them, and to find a cure for the poison they slipped into the food for two of us. We don’t need to do anything to you or any of the other people here on the serving staff, but take us there to the kitchens for us to explain this to them too. We don’t need anyone wandering around the halls when there’s going to be bloodshed.” Clueless said as his wings retracted.
“Oh… ok… follow me…” she said, still shocked and a bit confused as she led them back to the kitchens where shocked silence and a few dropped pots met the group. After around ten minutes or so they had fully explained the situation and even gained sympathy from the head of the kitchen staff who introduced herself as Marlene. All of them there had apparently been paid for a stretch of time, contracted out as a group rather than individually. The same had been done with the guards as well, and, like the guards, none of the kitchen and serving staff had ever seen anything above the first floor of the keep.
“All of you stay here and you’ll be fine. If we finish this here we’ll see to it that you’re still paid your full pay and sent on your way to wherever you like. If we don’t manage to survive, well, your employers can’t fault you for having been ‘hostages’ down here, right?” Clueless continued as Tristol and Florian talked to one of the maids about the layout of the first floor and which rooms were labeled as off limits.
Having settled things with the staff without a drop of blood being spilt, the assembled group started back down the main hallway, headed towards one of the hallways that was apparently out of bounds for the guards and serving staff alike. As they moved down the halls, both Nisha and Skalliska kept their eyes peeled for any sign of traps, both magical and mundane, but neither saw much of anything.
As they entered the off limits hallway, the layout and decoration was radically different from the rest of the first level of the keep, which had been clean but otherwise bland and colorless. As they stepped out into the hall, the stone floor below their feet was inlaid with several different colors of stone and woven carpets lay at even spaces down its length. Down the length of the gallery a number of statues, wall mounted carvings and mounted hunting trophies graced the periphery. Preserved and stuffed exotic animal heads from Arborea and the Beastlands were in abundance along with a snarling Gelugon head, an Ocanthan Razorwing, a Hollyphant head, and a stuffed and mounted Sympathetic.
“Oh these guys must be sodding loaded…” Nisha said with sparkles in her eyes and her hands on her cheeks in disbelief as her inner thief did backflips of joy in her head.
Of just a similar nature, but less chaotic in every way, Skalliska looked and mentally cataloged each and every item in the hallway, appraising their worth and estimating how easily a buyer might be found. Jink danced a victory jig in the forefront of her mind as she walked to the oversized raven with glittering red gems for eyes, the sympathetic. She registered that both of the bird’s eyes were garnets or rubies just before the eyes flashed red and she turned around.
“Hey you guys, come take a look at these three statues over here, I think there might be a hidden door behind this one here.” Skalliska said as she put away her crossbow and walked over to the group of man sized carvings on the west wall of the hallway that leered like grinning demons flanking the doorway to another room.
“No there isn’t…” Nisha said, stowing for the moment her running tally of the jink in the room.
“Sure there is, come over here and look. Trust me, I know these sort of things.” Was the kobold’s reply as Toras and Florian wandered over to look closer. They walked within a few feet when the gargoyles sprang to life and attacked the charmed Skalliska’s overly curious companions. A scant few dozen seconds later and Toras and Florian stood over three piles of rubble on the scarlet carpet as Skalliska shrugged off the charm affect that had been enspelled as a proximity trap on the stuffed bird.
“I think this one belongs to you…” Nisha said as she offered the Sympathetic to Skalliska, impaled on the end of her rapier.
“Thanks… but where’s the two rubies it had for eyes?” The kobold replied.
“What rubies for eyes? Dunno what you’re talking about. Haha, it must have charmed you better than you thought!” Nisha bluffed as Skalliska took the bird and snapped its neck to shower the tiefling with the downy stuffing inside with a smirk.
As they moved down the hallway, now more fully aware of the potential for traps, they entered a small room at the end of the gallery. Apparently a waiting chamber or study it was furnished with a number of comfortable tables and chairs and a small pile of books. Pausing a moment to glance their titles, Tristol turned up his nose at the volumes; all they contained were details on the trade routes across several prime worlds, very dry and specialized stuff. At the center of the room a slim spiral staircase led up while at its base there stood a statue of a slim, white marble, Erinyes holding a pitcher of water with her other hand behind her back.
Skalliska nodded to Nisha and the two of them flanked the statue as they motioned the others to stay back. Skalliska chuckled as she noted the hand behind the otherwise slim and demure stone fiend’s back held a very real and very sharp dagger.
“Florian? If you would take down the statue?” Skalliska said as Nisha opened a sack and dumped it over the top of a large silver candlestick sitting on one of the tables in the room. The candelabra began to move and wriggle violently for a few seconds before the tiefling swung the sack around her head twice before smashing the contents against the floor a dozen times till it stopped moving. Back behind her, Florian decapitated the Erinyes that twitched and jerked as its animating magic sparked and died.
Toras checked at the two doors leading out of the room as Fyrehowl stood underneath the stairwell with her ears flat against her head. The same smell she had noticed before when they had first met the mercanes was back and heavily present on the air wafting down the stairs from the keep’s second level. Mezzoloth if she wasn’t mistaken. Yet she hadn’t seen any fiends here at all, or even seen anything that hinted at their presence, except perhaps that the guards and serving staff had been forbidden to enter the higher levels of the keep. More questions, and it wasn’t fully making sense in her mind…
“Something wrong?” Clueless said as he broke the lupinal out of her thoughts.
“Oh, no, just trying to figure out what the scent on the air was. More than mercanes, but I can’t tell just what exactly just yet. So be careful.” She said back as she took a step upwards and motioned the others to follow.
As they followed the stairs upwards the hallways grew even more posh, except for the one hallway they followed, away from the thick scent on the air and towards a smell of unwashed bodies. Fyrehowl was nervous and worried about what they would find, but the alternative was curious as they followed her towards what she was certain might be a slaves quarters or a prison. As they approached an iron-reinforced, thick wooden door she suspected the latter.
“Go ahead and try and kick this one down Florian?” Toras jibed at the cleric and was rewarded with a scoff and “No no, this one is all yours, please.”
“It’s unlocked, you can just open it, unless you want me to knock, I’m sure they’ll be happy to see us.” Nisha said as she rapped at the air like knocking on the door.
The rattle of a chain from the other side of the doorway broke the discussion as the door swung open inwards to a small chamber lit by magelight and holding a corridor of prison cells. The chamber also held a small desk and large chair in front of which stood a nearly eight foot tall Minotaur holding the chain it had opened the door with and an spiked club nearly as large as Skalliska. It laughed at them and rattled the chain, taunting them with a slurred series of insults in planar common.
Skalliska raised her crossbow and Tristol prepared a small as the gaoler lofted his club over his massively muscled frame like it weighed nothing. “Gorvash kill you quick, come and fight Gorvash weak little ones.”
Toras raised an eyebrow, “Gorvash not speak well. Gorvash hit in head as child too many times.”
The Minotaur smiled and replied with a swing of his club in the air that would have splattered Toras’s head with a solid blow had it been aimed at him.
“Hey Nisha, you need some new clothes? I think we could get some good leather out of this guy if you needed a new jacket or some pants.” Clueless said with a smirk as Nisha giggled and raised a wand at the Minotaur as it lost its smile and growled.
Clueless turned back to the gaoler again, smiling all the while before he landed another insult, “Moo.”
The Minotaur dropped its chain and roared at the top of its lungs before charging at the party, exactly what it had been hoping they would do, rather than forcing him to do. As physically impressive as he was, any semblance of tactics was lost in his rage and he was brutally pummeled with several crossbow bolts, a series of spells, and a dozen sword and axe slashes. While its one wildly aimed blow did manage to connect solidly with Toras, the Minotaur was dead on the ground before it had the pleasure of hearing the snap of bone in the fighter’s shoulder as the long bone in his arm was dislocated from its socket.
“Gorash actually pretty piking strong… Florian, some help please, this hurts like hell…” Toras said with both a grin and pained grimace as he dropped his sword to cradle his wounded arm. As Florian first set Toras’s arm back into place with a jarring –pop- and then began to whisper a prayer of healing, Nisha grabbed the thick ring of keys from the dead gaoler’s belt.
“And now the lunatics are in control of the asylum! Mwahaha!” The tiefling cackled with glee as she jangled the keys and clip clopped down the hall with a bounce in her step before turning to look at the first cell and stopping cold.
“Oh, oh s***!” she said, reaching immediately for her blade as her companions rushed over next to her.
As Skalliska raised her crossbow towards the interior of the cell, she noticed that the door was shut and barely hanging upon the hinges recessed into the stone. In fact, beyond the iron bars was only an empty cell containing a broken set of rusted shackles and leg irons attached to a ring set into the wall, as well as a fine layer of dust across the floor. For all she could see, the cell had not been used in some time. But looking around at the reactions of her companions, which ranged from shock and horror, to anger, to disbelief, they very obviously were seeing something inside that she did not. At the very least, something magical was about, perhaps similar to the enspelled sympathetic she had fallen prey to earlier, and either totally hiding something from her view, or, more likely, not affecting her in the slightest.
“Guys… snap out of it. The cell is empty. Listen to me, there’s nothing in there.” Skalliska said, looking to each of her companions in turn as they all began to fall to whatever enchantment or illusion had snagged their attention.
As Fyrehowl looked into the cell, beyond the metal bars she could smell almost before she could see, a spattered mess of blood splayed across the floor and two walls, extending up and out from the ragged, torn corpse of a lupinal laying limp on the flagstones. The silvery blue fur on her ruined body was tattered and shredded from combat or extended torture, and her throat was mangled. What immediately wrenched into Fyrehowl’s heart was not that she was a fellow lupinal, not the bloody hand and footprints of numerous fiends that despoiled and tracked across her coat, but the pale, unmoving face of her own sister that looked back up at her.
She had been dead for some time. The smell of Tanar’ri wafted about the prison cell, permeating the air, and the lupinal’s mind leapt unbidden to the thought of her having been at the mercy of however many of the … things…. since she knew she had been abducted. Tears muddied Fyrehowl’s vision, as the loss struck hard and true and she had to face the fact that despite how hard she had tried, she wasn’t there to save her.
As Tristol approached the closed, and seemingly locked cell door, his keen senses recoiled at the scent of blood and incense, and a deep, cold crawling sensation that set the fur on the back of his ears and on his tail bristling. The cell seemed empty at first, but something was simply WRONG. He could feel it at a most basic level, like some insidious vapor on the air trickling its way into his lungs and filling him with revulsion reserved for the most debased of fiends. Then, the air shimmered.
Standing in front of him suddenly at the very center of the cell was a thin, dusky complexioned woman dressed in jet wizard’s robes. The very light dimmed in the cell, seemingly absorbed by the folds of the sorceress’s robes, or even her dusky skin. Beneath her, her shadow twisted and curled against the floor, rising up in physical form to snake about her side like some twisted fiendish pet or familiar. She sneered and stroked a hand over the shadow creature at her side. Very easily now Tristol could make out on the woman’s robes the prominent symbol of Shar, the Mistress of Loss, Sorrow, Secrets, and Festering Hatreds.
The woman produced from the folds of her robe a single crystal vial and held it aloft. “Something troubles you, servant of the Lady of Mysteries? Seeking this perhaps?” And with that she hurled it against the ground, shattering the vial and contents into a glittering shower of glass and spray of pale liquid. Tristol gasped in horror as what he knew to be the cure he needed was ruined upon the floor of the cell.
“Abandon your Mystra little one. You have much potential, but abase yourself to the Nightweaver and save yourself from the same death as your parents suffered in your absence.”
“All of you, get a sodding grip, there’s nothing in the damned cell but dust.” Skalliska’s voice rose as the effect took greater effect on her fellows.
As Florian stepped closer to the cell door, which from the hallway appeared firmly locked and barred, he smelled the acrid scent of incense mixed with blood. Standing in plain sight in the center of the cell was a black shrouded priestess of Talona, Faerunian Mistress of Poisons and Disease. She chuckled as she made eye contact with Florian and the Aasimar, holding a potion bottle out in front of her. A green speckled quasit upon her shoulders cackled quietly and snapped its fangs as it regarded them. “Looking for this perhaps?” she intoned as she hurled the potion vial against the far wall where it shattered, spraying its contents across the rough finished stone.
Florian gasped in agony as the Talontar turned back to her, “Oh how it must gall you, servant of the Foehammer. To know your death calls and Jergal’s pen begins to write your name in his book in the crystal spire. To know that you will die without glory, without passion, without heroics. That you will simply waste away and die, huddled by yourself, isolated and alone having failed in the handiwork of your god with a death as unbefitting and shameful as his creed could find.” And as Florian began to chant one of her most powerful spells, the talontar priestess threw back her head and laughed, joined in by the tiny fiend sitting upon her shoulder.
“Don’t make me bite your ankles! I’ll live up to the stereotype if I have to!” Skalliska grew more and more desperate to break the spell taking hold of her companions.
As Toras hurriedly approached the cell, the first thing that struck his senses was not that the door hung partially open, but rather the rank, pungent smell of slowly putrefying flesh that hung in the air. As he ignored his comanions and stepped up to open the cell door with trepidation, the slow, crawling sensation of dread from an unhallow spell scittered across his skin like a shower of insects, drifting up from the blood spattered unholy symbol of Bane placed in the center of the floor. And beyond it, slumped against the far wall, slashed, mangled and surrounded by ritual candles was the body of his former love. The bitter taste of bile rose in his throat, galled by this desecration of the one he had loved. And, almost as an afterthought, pinned to the body was a thin scroll case.
“That’s it, I’m biting here in a few seconds damn you all…” Skalliska said with resignation as she dove for Toras’s leg .
Clueless looked into the cell, and beyond the metal bars, at first he could only see pitch darkness, but after a few seconds of staring, the darkness seemed to lift or dissipate and he began to make out details of the cell’s interior. In the shadows that still swathed the cell, he could make out two dim patches of blue glow near the floor, radiating from two figures in the center of the cell. One of them, as Clueless’s stare lingered, seemed to be standing, while the other crouched on the floor in front of it. More shadows lifted and he could tell that the standing one was humanoid, while the other appeared to be either a centaur or bariaur.
Then in that moment a flicker of recognition passed over the bladesinger, clearing the haze of his memories and the dim light of the cell, and he recognized the figures as his two companions from Carceri, each with a glowing blue orb embedded in one ankle, just like himself.
The half-elf stood, a glassy look of concentration upon his face as he leveled his sword to the throat of the bariaur who trembled and struggled versus unseen bonds that shackled his hoofs and arms to the ground. While he silently pleaded to his glassy eyed friend with a look of terror and confusion on his face, the elven cleric pressed the blade to his throat, drawing the slimmest of beaded red lines from the exposed skin. Glancing around quickly as the sword stopped and only the ragged panting of the bariaur broke the still, a third blue glow pierced the gloom, emanating from the far wall of the cell, hovering aloft in front of the robed form of a cowled arcanoloth that seemed to emerge from the shadows themselves like he or they were a part of each other.
The ‘loth looked up, a fiendish smirk playing across his muzzle, and a knowing look flashed in his gleaming, red tinged eyes, as he met Clueless’s gaze and the light played across his ebon fur. He clutched the hovering gem protectively, then inclined his head first left, then right, drawing the half-fey’s gaze to two other similar gems, hovering in mid air and then clutched by the taloned hands of a largely shadow obscured second and third ‘loth, before all three clutched their palms tightly around the gems, snuffing the light and plunging the room into complete darkness once again.
All of them were jolted out of their rage, fear or agony in an instant as Skalliska triggered a scroll to dispel any latent dweomers in the area. It apparently worked as her companions looked around in confused before regaining their senses. Thankfully none of them watched as the kobold spit out a bit of leather that had formerly been attached to the cuff of Toras’s boot.
A sudden crackle of mental static washed over them with a voice that Clueless would later recognize as the voice that had whispered to him in one of his recovered memories.
“Fools. You should be dead, but this is apparently the result of trusting the mercanes to fully lay wardings instead of making them yourself. But regardless, since you’re still alive, please do tie up loose ends for me here. You’ll find one of them at the last cell down the hallway.”
At the same time, two wards away in the spireward reaches of the Market Ward, a short, green scaled kobold sat at her desk and opened a small, sealed scroll that had arrived for her that morning by way of one of the Bellringer’s messengers. Her feet kicked slowly in the air, nearly a foot above the floor, as the chair she occupied was oversized for her stature. She was dressed in a rather flamboyant coat and vest while a wide brimmed and plumed hat perched atop her head, slightly askance. She was nothing if not fashionable.
Skalliska smiled in curiosity, a reptilian smirk crossing her face as her tiny teeth flashed a line of white across her snout. “Hmm… wonder who sent this, and with advance payment along with it…”
The kobold counted the coins with a practiced eye and spread the parchment out before herself. “My newest employee Skalliska, allow me to introduce myself. Payment should be included with this letter, unless the Bellringer hires untrustworthy runners, in which case he’ll be down a runner by the day’s end. The funds therein should be double your usual fee for a week’s time of services. I hope this is recompense for the short notice of employment. But this would be much easier if we were to speak in person. Please touch the sigil at the end of this document to do just that…”
Skalliska paused and glanced at the twin symbols at the end of the page, one of them a comical looking symbol that resembled a blue grin, and the other a ring of concentric circles composed of runes in infernal and abyssal. A quick glance was enough for her to translate their meaning, “Wheels within Wheels.”
The kobold tapped the center of the symbol and watched as nothing happened. She tapped it again and pressed on the symbol, but still to no avail. Then she heard the thin, “Mrrpphhmmmpphhhh,” emanate from under her thumb.
“Oh.” She said with some amusement as she removed her thumb to see the blue grin symbol rise up off the paper, sneeze, and hover before her, smiling even more.
“Very pleased to meet you my scaly employee. Don’t you think this is a better way of going over things?” The grin said as Skalliska chuckled and leaned back in her chair.
“This works, and it’s amusing if nothing else.” She pointed towards the pile of platinum coins, “You’ve certainly bought your time, so do tell.”
“I thought I’d found your favorite color there, guess I wasn’t wrong. Good.” The grins floated down towards the kobold’s desk and seemed to settle atop the coins like a tiny dragon on its hoard.
“I’ve got a group of other employees of mine that are set to track down a demiplane in which a few people they don’t really like are holed up. I’ve my own reasons to see those berks get their comeuppance, but that’s rather beside the point. I need you to help my employees find that demiplane, make sure they don’t fall prey to any traps, both magical and mundane, and that they get out alive and back to Sigil. I don’t wish to see them come to harm.”
Skalliska nodded and plucked a coin out from under the Cheshire Fiend’s animated chin. “How long do you think this will take? I don’t have a problem taking the job, but if it’s longer than a certain period I start to charge more you understand.”
The grin gnawed on a coin like a small puppy on a bone before answering her, “Heh heh, I could pay you now, or I could offer you a share of what the mercane in that demiplane have hoarded with them… it is substantial and I don’t personally care what happens to it. Money isn’t an issue for me, suffice to say.”
“A share in whatever they… well, no… a share in what we recover? That’s really tempting, it really is. What sort of surprises are these, mercane you said, going to have waiting for us?” Coins danced in the kobold’s eyes and the Cheshire Fiend jumped on that glimmer of gold in her head.
“A bevy of mercenaries, likely some traps, their own magics, and for the eldest of the three brothers a guardian golem and at least two or three stone golems. Beyond that, likely not much more. All of them are wizards, so judge your expectations accordingly.”
Skalliska leaned back in her chair and pushed her hat down over her face as she contemplated taking the offered job. It was ever so tempting, and her illusory, or seemingly illusory employer wasn’t helping any by warping into a blue dragon and snarling and breathing sparks as it sat on top of the pile of coins on her desk. While quirky and amusing, the grinning fiend was shrewd enough to get her hooked on the offer.
“I’m in.” She was fairly blunt as she grinning back at her employer from under the brim of her hat.
“Well, that’s good because they’re already on their way over here. A bit of an assumption on my part that you’d agree to my terms, but, no problems encountered after all. And with that, I have other places to be, do take care of them, they’ll fill you in on any details.”
And with that, the Cheshire Fiend dove into the pile of coins and dissipated into a shower of sparkling blue fragments that melted away into the air. The parchment displayed no lingering traces of magic, nor the grin’s symbol still on the page. But rather than any lingering questions, only the sound of cascading coins filled the kobold’s ears, just as thoughts of revenge and desperation had filled the thoughts of her soon to be compatriots.
****
A few hours later Nisha stood outside the address in the Market Ward, pointing up towards the sign above the entrance. In bright gold lettering, the sign read ‘Five Fellows Market of the Curious and Rare”.
“Apparently I’m doing my Kylie impression today…” Nisha said as she continued to point up at the sign. Her companions chuckled softly behind her as they moved towards the door and stepped inside.
The interior of the shop was brightly illuminated from a series of skylights in the roof which appeared magically augmented; the haze outside the shop wasn’t half as bright as the inside light. Tables and shelves scattered about the room, each of them littered with various exotic and strange baubles from a dozen or more different planes or primes. The desk nearest to the door had a map of the shop and fliers detailing the additional services the shop’s proprietors provided to clients. Clueless was already moving towards the desk, smiling at the elven wizardress who sat behind it. Tristol rolled his eyes as the half-fey bowed and kissed the elf’s hand, inquiring about their contact at the shop in as flirtatious a way as possible. After his question he paused, leaned in and whispered something to the woman who immediately blushed.
“I’m flattered,” the wizardress said as Clueless kissed the back of her hand, “But I don’t think my husband would approve, even if he is out of Sigil for the next few weeks. The attention is appreciated though it’s too bad for you that I’m not a sensate.” She laughed and Clueless chuckled, “Alas, were if you were.”
Fyrehowl chuckled, the tips of her ears growing slightly flushed, as she obviously had overheard Clueless’s whisper. As she obviously found humor in whatever he had said, she and Florian made eye contact as they both looked over towards Clueless. A slight consternation passed between them, not unlike two rag pickers in the hive both looking at the same dropped copper right before leaping for it.
Florian coughed to interrupt Clueless’s amorous pursuits, “We’re here to meet a certain Skalliska that we were told was a partner at your establishment. Is she in at the moment?”
“I believe so, yes.” The elf pointed towards a yellow door on the far end of the display room, “Through that door, end of the hall, and the door on the right is hers. And feel free to browse anything in the shop while you’re here.”
Skalliska looked up at the silhouettes in the glass of the door to her office and smiled a reptilian grin as the door tentatively opened. “We’re looking for a certain Skalliska, is this the right place?” said Florian as he stepped through into the kobold’s office.
Skalliska looked up from her chair, her face mostly hidden by the wide brim of her hat. “That would be me, I take it that you’re the folks I’m being paid to guide into the Ethereal?”
“Yep, that would be us.” Said Clueless as he walked into the office. “I take it that you’ve already spoken to our mutual employer?”
“Very recently actually, he was… rather unique. Smiled a lot.” She replied as her hand picked up her familiar from her shoulder, a small red-orange lizard with tiny tongues of flame licking up from its snout and seemingly at random from the rest of its body.
“Umm… your familiar set itself on fire, you might want to…” Nisha began before Tristol tapped her shoulder and whispered something into her ear and be blushed. “Whoops, nevermind.”
“So tell me about yourselves and where we’re going, after that we can be headed off as soon as you’d like. I’ve coin in my pocket from our grinning friend and nothing else keeping me here for the moment.” Skalliska lifted up her head to show her smile.
“He’s not what I think of when I think of a kobold.” Nisha said, opening her mouth too much for the second time that day.
“She, I’m female.” The very much female kobold snapped back.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Nisha apologized before whispering in Tristol’s ear, “How do you tell?!” Tristol held back his chuckle but ignored her question. “Later.”
“So what –did- you expect?” Skalliska inquired, sitting up straighter in her chair as her fire lizard munched at a bug she offered it from a small pocket in her brightly colored vest.
“Cave dwelling, baby eating, trap setting, pesky elemental?” Nisha quipped before sticking out her tongue sideways. “Joking, mostly.”
“Not me, baby is too piking expensive in Sigil this time of year.” Skalliska fired back without a bit of hesitation and it took the tiefling a moment to realize that the kobold was actually joking. Clueless and Fyrehowl softly snickered.
The rest of their meeting went well with only a few more random, true to form, statements from Nisha. They introduced themselves and their abilities to their guide, and in turn Skalliska told them of her specialties including her knack of finding and picking portals. In truth there was only a very fine overlap in her skills compared to Nisha, and that was in noticing and disarming traps, not something that anyone involved would lament there being two experts in the group on. But having made their introductions, the newly assembled group set out to procure last minute supplies before meeting up back at Skalliska’s office before she had them through a portal to the Ethereal a block or so away from the building and from there into the deep in search of their targeted demiplane.
****
True to her word, and a fine testament to her professional skill, Skalliska had her new companions hovering in the ethereal mist near to the demiplane’s border in the space of around eight hours. During their trek through the trackless sea, they managed to avoid any ether cyclones or even encounters with anything that they considered a threat. More than once they had to comment to the kobold that they were rather happy to have her aid. For her part Skalliska smiled and tipped her hat as her fire lizard gave a squeaky roar like a miniature toy red dragon perched on her shoulder.
“And here we are as promised. One step through the curtain and we’ll be inside the demiplane, though normally you can’t tell just where you’ll appear inside. I can get us inside at more or less where you want to be though, if you prefer anyplace in particular?” The kobold smirked happily and tapped a few implements on her planar compass as she examined the shimmering border of the demiplane.
Fyrehowl and Clueless exchanged glances with Toras, Tristol, and Florian while Nisha ignored them all in favor of making faces and noises at Skalliska’s fire lizard. “Raaaaarrrrr….”, the tiefling was oblivious to anything else, and Skalliska was completely ignoring her as she went about determining the properties of the demiplane’s border.
“Somewhere near the gates? I don’t recall there being any other way into the keep from the outside.” Fyrehowl mused as the other pondered Skalliska’s question.
“That works for me too, there wasn’t all that much solid ground in there, and honestly I’m not in the mood to find out what happens when you fall in there. Andros only knows how big that place actually is.” Toras suggested, his sword already drawn.
“You’d probably hit the border and either slide with gravity around it, or appear out the other side…” Tristol said.
“Can I have a familiar?” Nisha’s random question broke the discussion as they all turned to stare at her. She simply smiled and swished her tail slightly from side to side.
“Yeah… we should get moving, I’m actually starting to feel a little under the weather.” Tristol said, looking first over towards Florian and then to Skalliska.
“Same here, it’s probably starting to have an effect, so the sooner we find the antitoxin the better. You ready there Skalliska?” Florian said, trying his best to be upbeat.
Skalliska turned back and pushed her hat back, the border was shimmering a soft blue where it had been largely colorless before. “Ready when you all are, we’ll be somewhere from a few inches to a few feet from the main gates. After you.”
The kobold pointed to the colored patch in the demiplane border, motioning for her new companions to jump through, then she looked over towards her familiar which was breathing tiny rings of smoke at Nisha. “Best for you to stay somewhere safe till this is over with, alright?”
The fire lizard snarled grumpily and moved towards a small pocket in Skalliska’s vest that opened up into a bottomless extra dimensional expanse. “I’ll let you out to wander around when this is over, and then you can play dragon again on some gold, alright?”
“Can I play dragon on a pile of gold too?” Nisha asked and somewhat startled the kobold.
“Oh, you’re still here.” Skalliska patted the pocket shut and looked a bit oddly at the tiefling. “Play dragon?”
“Yeah, like your lizard, it sounds kinda fun actually, it’ll just take more coins for it to work with me…” Nisha chuckled happily.
“Umm… yeah. How about we get going before this destabilizes, ok?”
“Alright.” Nisha said as she tumbled through the demiplane boundary, grinning all the way.
The passage through the boundary was brief and warm, like a breeze on a midsummer’s day. Once through, they all stood a few dozen feet from the gate of the mercane’s keep. Unlike when they had first ventured that way, the gate was wide open. Clueless was already in the air, his wings extended, and Tristol was already examining the area for latent dweomers while the others drew their weapons and scanned for guards.
The entrance was dead silent and unmanned, the mercane’s apparently saw little need to man the front gate of a fortress inside an otherwise uninhabited demiplane. From their money minded perspective, it apparently made little sense to do so.
“No teleportation spells near the entryway, we should be fine to go.” Tristol said, glancing in each direction as he whispered a spell to detect magic.
“No guards either, let’s go on in before we’re noticed.” Fyrehowl said as she glanced to the windows high above them and their arrow slit features that promised certain death, if only they had been manned.
Quickly and quietly the group rushed into the main entry chamber past the gate and slipped down the central hallway, ignoring the branching corridors except to glance down them for guards. They weren’t there to sneak in and gain an antidote; they were there for blood as well.
The hallways were largely unadorned and utilitarian, though clean and free of even a speck of dust or scuffing on the flagstones. As they approached a larger intersection, Fyrehowl sniffed at the air and perked her ears before pointing to the left and the forwards. “Kitchens that way, and there’s someone sharpening a weapon straight ahead… someone snoring too, barracks maybe.”
Florian hefted his battleaxe and charged off towards the doorway to the barracks with Fyrehowl and Toras right beside him as he kicked the door off its hinges and burst into the room to the utter horror of the six off duty guardsman. The room was spattered in blood in mere seconds and Toras’s blade was at the throat of the one sleeping guard as he woke up to find his fellows dead or unconscious around him.
“Who are…” he said before the edge of Toras’s blade silenced his question. Florian stood over him to ask his own question. “How many guards are here? Numbers and layout of the floors. Tell us and you live.”
“Twelve. Six of us on duty, and six off at any time…” he whimpered as he looked to the left at the bodies of two of his comrades.
Toras furrowed his eyebrows, “Only twelve? This keep is huge. You’ve got to be kidding me. What else do they have guarding this place? What else on this floor?”
The sharp stench of urine hit the air as the mercenary wet himself, Fyrehowl wrinkled her nose and frowned as he replied, “Some traps, but those are in the rooms that are off limits to us. And they don’t let us on the floors above this one. We’re just here pretty much to make sure the serving staff doesn’t wander and to make sure that any Nathri don’t decide to make this demiplane their next raiding target. That’s it, I don’t know anything more… please don’t kill me…”
The guard went limp as Nisha knocked him in the back of the head with a sap. “Tie him up and leave him then? We can always dump him through a portal later.” She tossed a length of rope to Clueless and then went body to body snagging purses while chiding the mercanes on the salary they apparently paid their hired help as she counted out only silvers and coppers.
“Hmm… makes me wonder what’s on the higher floors.” Clueless said as he bound the guard’s hands and legs.
“Same here. I can see wizards being secretive and cloistered, but that sounds a bit extreme.” Tristol said with a shake of his head.
A muffled cry from outside the barracks gathered the groups’ sudden attention as Skalliska poked her head in through the door. “Advice? One of the kitchen staff came to deliver lunch to the guards, and a crossbow pointed at her head is keeping her quiet for the moment…” The kobold grinned.
The others walked out into the hallway to find Skalliska pointing a modified Cho-Ku-No up at the blanched face of a middle-aged woman dressed in a starched blue and gold uniform with the symbol of Dalmar Imshenviir promenantly displayed on her smock. She was holding a full platter of food in her arms and trembling slightly. Her eyes darted to the smirking, crossbow wielding kobold and then to Toras and finally to Fyrehowl. The sight of the lupinal seemed to both reassure and confuse her at once.
“We’ll have our kobold lower her crossbow…” Florian said before Nisha interrupted to add, “And not cook you and eat your children, they do that sometimes if you don’t watch them.”
“We’re not here to hurt you, so don’t scream and we’ll lower our weapons, ok?” Fyrehowl said as Skalliska lowered her crossbow, glowered at Florian, and then even more at Nisha who was snickering, quite pleased with herself.
“Ok…” the woman said, “What do you want?”
“Your employers tried to have us killed and we’re here to take revenge on them, and to find a cure for the poison they slipped into the food for two of us. We don’t need to do anything to you or any of the other people here on the serving staff, but take us there to the kitchens for us to explain this to them too. We don’t need anyone wandering around the halls when there’s going to be bloodshed.” Clueless said as his wings retracted.
“Oh… ok… follow me…” she said, still shocked and a bit confused as she led them back to the kitchens where shocked silence and a few dropped pots met the group. After around ten minutes or so they had fully explained the situation and even gained sympathy from the head of the kitchen staff who introduced herself as Marlene. All of them there had apparently been paid for a stretch of time, contracted out as a group rather than individually. The same had been done with the guards as well, and, like the guards, none of the kitchen and serving staff had ever seen anything above the first floor of the keep.
“All of you stay here and you’ll be fine. If we finish this here we’ll see to it that you’re still paid your full pay and sent on your way to wherever you like. If we don’t manage to survive, well, your employers can’t fault you for having been ‘hostages’ down here, right?” Clueless continued as Tristol and Florian talked to one of the maids about the layout of the first floor and which rooms were labeled as off limits.
Having settled things with the staff without a drop of blood being spilt, the assembled group started back down the main hallway, headed towards one of the hallways that was apparently out of bounds for the guards and serving staff alike. As they moved down the halls, both Nisha and Skalliska kept their eyes peeled for any sign of traps, both magical and mundane, but neither saw much of anything.
As they entered the off limits hallway, the layout and decoration was radically different from the rest of the first level of the keep, which had been clean but otherwise bland and colorless. As they stepped out into the hall, the stone floor below their feet was inlaid with several different colors of stone and woven carpets lay at even spaces down its length. Down the length of the gallery a number of statues, wall mounted carvings and mounted hunting trophies graced the periphery. Preserved and stuffed exotic animal heads from Arborea and the Beastlands were in abundance along with a snarling Gelugon head, an Ocanthan Razorwing, a Hollyphant head, and a stuffed and mounted Sympathetic.
“Oh these guys must be sodding loaded…” Nisha said with sparkles in her eyes and her hands on her cheeks in disbelief as her inner thief did backflips of joy in her head.
Of just a similar nature, but less chaotic in every way, Skalliska looked and mentally cataloged each and every item in the hallway, appraising their worth and estimating how easily a buyer might be found. Jink danced a victory jig in the forefront of her mind as she walked to the oversized raven with glittering red gems for eyes, the sympathetic. She registered that both of the bird’s eyes were garnets or rubies just before the eyes flashed red and she turned around.
“Hey you guys, come take a look at these three statues over here, I think there might be a hidden door behind this one here.” Skalliska said as she put away her crossbow and walked over to the group of man sized carvings on the west wall of the hallway that leered like grinning demons flanking the doorway to another room.
“No there isn’t…” Nisha said, stowing for the moment her running tally of the jink in the room.
“Sure there is, come over here and look. Trust me, I know these sort of things.” Was the kobold’s reply as Toras and Florian wandered over to look closer. They walked within a few feet when the gargoyles sprang to life and attacked the charmed Skalliska’s overly curious companions. A scant few dozen seconds later and Toras and Florian stood over three piles of rubble on the scarlet carpet as Skalliska shrugged off the charm affect that had been enspelled as a proximity trap on the stuffed bird.
“I think this one belongs to you…” Nisha said as she offered the Sympathetic to Skalliska, impaled on the end of her rapier.
“Thanks… but where’s the two rubies it had for eyes?” The kobold replied.
“What rubies for eyes? Dunno what you’re talking about. Haha, it must have charmed you better than you thought!” Nisha bluffed as Skalliska took the bird and snapped its neck to shower the tiefling with the downy stuffing inside with a smirk.
As they moved down the hallway, now more fully aware of the potential for traps, they entered a small room at the end of the gallery. Apparently a waiting chamber or study it was furnished with a number of comfortable tables and chairs and a small pile of books. Pausing a moment to glance their titles, Tristol turned up his nose at the volumes; all they contained were details on the trade routes across several prime worlds, very dry and specialized stuff. At the center of the room a slim spiral staircase led up while at its base there stood a statue of a slim, white marble, Erinyes holding a pitcher of water with her other hand behind her back.
Skalliska nodded to Nisha and the two of them flanked the statue as they motioned the others to stay back. Skalliska chuckled as she noted the hand behind the otherwise slim and demure stone fiend’s back held a very real and very sharp dagger.
“Florian? If you would take down the statue?” Skalliska said as Nisha opened a sack and dumped it over the top of a large silver candlestick sitting on one of the tables in the room. The candelabra began to move and wriggle violently for a few seconds before the tiefling swung the sack around her head twice before smashing the contents against the floor a dozen times till it stopped moving. Back behind her, Florian decapitated the Erinyes that twitched and jerked as its animating magic sparked and died.
Toras checked at the two doors leading out of the room as Fyrehowl stood underneath the stairwell with her ears flat against her head. The same smell she had noticed before when they had first met the mercanes was back and heavily present on the air wafting down the stairs from the keep’s second level. Mezzoloth if she wasn’t mistaken. Yet she hadn’t seen any fiends here at all, or even seen anything that hinted at their presence, except perhaps that the guards and serving staff had been forbidden to enter the higher levels of the keep. More questions, and it wasn’t fully making sense in her mind…
“Something wrong?” Clueless said as he broke the lupinal out of her thoughts.
“Oh, no, just trying to figure out what the scent on the air was. More than mercanes, but I can’t tell just what exactly just yet. So be careful.” She said back as she took a step upwards and motioned the others to follow.
As they followed the stairs upwards the hallways grew even more posh, except for the one hallway they followed, away from the thick scent on the air and towards a smell of unwashed bodies. Fyrehowl was nervous and worried about what they would find, but the alternative was curious as they followed her towards what she was certain might be a slaves quarters or a prison. As they approached an iron-reinforced, thick wooden door she suspected the latter.
“Go ahead and try and kick this one down Florian?” Toras jibed at the cleric and was rewarded with a scoff and “No no, this one is all yours, please.”
“It’s unlocked, you can just open it, unless you want me to knock, I’m sure they’ll be happy to see us.” Nisha said as she rapped at the air like knocking on the door.
The rattle of a chain from the other side of the doorway broke the discussion as the door swung open inwards to a small chamber lit by magelight and holding a corridor of prison cells. The chamber also held a small desk and large chair in front of which stood a nearly eight foot tall Minotaur holding the chain it had opened the door with and an spiked club nearly as large as Skalliska. It laughed at them and rattled the chain, taunting them with a slurred series of insults in planar common.
Skalliska raised her crossbow and Tristol prepared a small as the gaoler lofted his club over his massively muscled frame like it weighed nothing. “Gorvash kill you quick, come and fight Gorvash weak little ones.”
Toras raised an eyebrow, “Gorvash not speak well. Gorvash hit in head as child too many times.”
The Minotaur smiled and replied with a swing of his club in the air that would have splattered Toras’s head with a solid blow had it been aimed at him.
“Hey Nisha, you need some new clothes? I think we could get some good leather out of this guy if you needed a new jacket or some pants.” Clueless said with a smirk as Nisha giggled and raised a wand at the Minotaur as it lost its smile and growled.
Clueless turned back to the gaoler again, smiling all the while before he landed another insult, “Moo.”
The Minotaur dropped its chain and roared at the top of its lungs before charging at the party, exactly what it had been hoping they would do, rather than forcing him to do. As physically impressive as he was, any semblance of tactics was lost in his rage and he was brutally pummeled with several crossbow bolts, a series of spells, and a dozen sword and axe slashes. While its one wildly aimed blow did manage to connect solidly with Toras, the Minotaur was dead on the ground before it had the pleasure of hearing the snap of bone in the fighter’s shoulder as the long bone in his arm was dislocated from its socket.
“Gorash actually pretty piking strong… Florian, some help please, this hurts like hell…” Toras said with both a grin and pained grimace as he dropped his sword to cradle his wounded arm. As Florian first set Toras’s arm back into place with a jarring –pop- and then began to whisper a prayer of healing, Nisha grabbed the thick ring of keys from the dead gaoler’s belt.
“And now the lunatics are in control of the asylum! Mwahaha!” The tiefling cackled with glee as she jangled the keys and clip clopped down the hall with a bounce in her step before turning to look at the first cell and stopping cold.
“Oh, oh s***!” she said, reaching immediately for her blade as her companions rushed over next to her.
As Skalliska raised her crossbow towards the interior of the cell, she noticed that the door was shut and barely hanging upon the hinges recessed into the stone. In fact, beyond the iron bars was only an empty cell containing a broken set of rusted shackles and leg irons attached to a ring set into the wall, as well as a fine layer of dust across the floor. For all she could see, the cell had not been used in some time. But looking around at the reactions of her companions, which ranged from shock and horror, to anger, to disbelief, they very obviously were seeing something inside that she did not. At the very least, something magical was about, perhaps similar to the enspelled sympathetic she had fallen prey to earlier, and either totally hiding something from her view, or, more likely, not affecting her in the slightest.
“Guys… snap out of it. The cell is empty. Listen to me, there’s nothing in there.” Skalliska said, looking to each of her companions in turn as they all began to fall to whatever enchantment or illusion had snagged their attention.
As Fyrehowl looked into the cell, beyond the metal bars she could smell almost before she could see, a spattered mess of blood splayed across the floor and two walls, extending up and out from the ragged, torn corpse of a lupinal laying limp on the flagstones. The silvery blue fur on her ruined body was tattered and shredded from combat or extended torture, and her throat was mangled. What immediately wrenched into Fyrehowl’s heart was not that she was a fellow lupinal, not the bloody hand and footprints of numerous fiends that despoiled and tracked across her coat, but the pale, unmoving face of her own sister that looked back up at her.
She had been dead for some time. The smell of Tanar’ri wafted about the prison cell, permeating the air, and the lupinal’s mind leapt unbidden to the thought of her having been at the mercy of however many of the … things…. since she knew she had been abducted. Tears muddied Fyrehowl’s vision, as the loss struck hard and true and she had to face the fact that despite how hard she had tried, she wasn’t there to save her.
As Tristol approached the closed, and seemingly locked cell door, his keen senses recoiled at the scent of blood and incense, and a deep, cold crawling sensation that set the fur on the back of his ears and on his tail bristling. The cell seemed empty at first, but something was simply WRONG. He could feel it at a most basic level, like some insidious vapor on the air trickling its way into his lungs and filling him with revulsion reserved for the most debased of fiends. Then, the air shimmered.
Standing in front of him suddenly at the very center of the cell was a thin, dusky complexioned woman dressed in jet wizard’s robes. The very light dimmed in the cell, seemingly absorbed by the folds of the sorceress’s robes, or even her dusky skin. Beneath her, her shadow twisted and curled against the floor, rising up in physical form to snake about her side like some twisted fiendish pet or familiar. She sneered and stroked a hand over the shadow creature at her side. Very easily now Tristol could make out on the woman’s robes the prominent symbol of Shar, the Mistress of Loss, Sorrow, Secrets, and Festering Hatreds.
The woman produced from the folds of her robe a single crystal vial and held it aloft. “Something troubles you, servant of the Lady of Mysteries? Seeking this perhaps?” And with that she hurled it against the ground, shattering the vial and contents into a glittering shower of glass and spray of pale liquid. Tristol gasped in horror as what he knew to be the cure he needed was ruined upon the floor of the cell.
“Abandon your Mystra little one. You have much potential, but abase yourself to the Nightweaver and save yourself from the same death as your parents suffered in your absence.”
“All of you, get a sodding grip, there’s nothing in the damned cell but dust.” Skalliska’s voice rose as the effect took greater effect on her fellows.
As Florian stepped closer to the cell door, which from the hallway appeared firmly locked and barred, he smelled the acrid scent of incense mixed with blood. Standing in plain sight in the center of the cell was a black shrouded priestess of Talona, Faerunian Mistress of Poisons and Disease. She chuckled as she made eye contact with Florian and the Aasimar, holding a potion bottle out in front of her. A green speckled quasit upon her shoulders cackled quietly and snapped its fangs as it regarded them. “Looking for this perhaps?” she intoned as she hurled the potion vial against the far wall where it shattered, spraying its contents across the rough finished stone.
Florian gasped in agony as the Talontar turned back to her, “Oh how it must gall you, servant of the Foehammer. To know your death calls and Jergal’s pen begins to write your name in his book in the crystal spire. To know that you will die without glory, without passion, without heroics. That you will simply waste away and die, huddled by yourself, isolated and alone having failed in the handiwork of your god with a death as unbefitting and shameful as his creed could find.” And as Florian began to chant one of her most powerful spells, the talontar priestess threw back her head and laughed, joined in by the tiny fiend sitting upon her shoulder.
“Don’t make me bite your ankles! I’ll live up to the stereotype if I have to!” Skalliska grew more and more desperate to break the spell taking hold of her companions.
As Toras hurriedly approached the cell, the first thing that struck his senses was not that the door hung partially open, but rather the rank, pungent smell of slowly putrefying flesh that hung in the air. As he ignored his comanions and stepped up to open the cell door with trepidation, the slow, crawling sensation of dread from an unhallow spell scittered across his skin like a shower of insects, drifting up from the blood spattered unholy symbol of Bane placed in the center of the floor. And beyond it, slumped against the far wall, slashed, mangled and surrounded by ritual candles was the body of his former love. The bitter taste of bile rose in his throat, galled by this desecration of the one he had loved. And, almost as an afterthought, pinned to the body was a thin scroll case.
“That’s it, I’m biting here in a few seconds damn you all…” Skalliska said with resignation as she dove for Toras’s leg .
Clueless looked into the cell, and beyond the metal bars, at first he could only see pitch darkness, but after a few seconds of staring, the darkness seemed to lift or dissipate and he began to make out details of the cell’s interior. In the shadows that still swathed the cell, he could make out two dim patches of blue glow near the floor, radiating from two figures in the center of the cell. One of them, as Clueless’s stare lingered, seemed to be standing, while the other crouched on the floor in front of it. More shadows lifted and he could tell that the standing one was humanoid, while the other appeared to be either a centaur or bariaur.
Then in that moment a flicker of recognition passed over the bladesinger, clearing the haze of his memories and the dim light of the cell, and he recognized the figures as his two companions from Carceri, each with a glowing blue orb embedded in one ankle, just like himself.
The half-elf stood, a glassy look of concentration upon his face as he leveled his sword to the throat of the bariaur who trembled and struggled versus unseen bonds that shackled his hoofs and arms to the ground. While he silently pleaded to his glassy eyed friend with a look of terror and confusion on his face, the elven cleric pressed the blade to his throat, drawing the slimmest of beaded red lines from the exposed skin. Glancing around quickly as the sword stopped and only the ragged panting of the bariaur broke the still, a third blue glow pierced the gloom, emanating from the far wall of the cell, hovering aloft in front of the robed form of a cowled arcanoloth that seemed to emerge from the shadows themselves like he or they were a part of each other.
The ‘loth looked up, a fiendish smirk playing across his muzzle, and a knowing look flashed in his gleaming, red tinged eyes, as he met Clueless’s gaze and the light played across his ebon fur. He clutched the hovering gem protectively, then inclined his head first left, then right, drawing the half-fey’s gaze to two other similar gems, hovering in mid air and then clutched by the taloned hands of a largely shadow obscured second and third ‘loth, before all three clutched their palms tightly around the gems, snuffing the light and plunging the room into complete darkness once again.
All of them were jolted out of their rage, fear or agony in an instant as Skalliska triggered a scroll to dispel any latent dweomers in the area. It apparently worked as her companions looked around in confused before regaining their senses. Thankfully none of them watched as the kobold spit out a bit of leather that had formerly been attached to the cuff of Toras’s boot.
A sudden crackle of mental static washed over them with a voice that Clueless would later recognize as the voice that had whispered to him in one of his recovered memories.
“Fools. You should be dead, but this is apparently the result of trusting the mercanes to fully lay wardings instead of making them yourself. But regardless, since you’re still alive, please do tie up loose ends for me here. You’ll find one of them at the last cell down the hallway.”
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