Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour (Updated 29 Jan 2014)
Shemeska
Adventurer
Joker[ZW] said:Wow, what a party!
Just one question: where is Rhys? was she not invited?
IIRC in hindsight (since this happened in game about two years ago), Rhys was invited but was one one of the polite no shows, having been busy with a previous engagement. Aka Rhys had a bad feeling about it and didn't show up. Or at least that might be inferred. I'll give some IC reference to that over the next update or two, though in this case I'm going to hit my notes, and pick my players' brains to see what it was exactly that I mentioned regarding the former factol.
But of course, there's more going on than angry, social climbing, preppy fiends and titans.
They're just a rather obvious, loud, and explosive, happenstance.
Shemeska
Adventurer
Stupid Titan! Bark Bark Bark!
Toras’s eyes went wide as they all stopped dead in their tracks near Zadara’s prone form. She wasn’t breathing.
“Oh sh*t she’s dead! Florian can you…” Toras blurted out before being cut off by the cleric.
“She’s not dead.” Florian said as she pointed to Zadara’s eyes.
The titan of potential was motionless and still, but her eyes were open and filled with pools of rage. Whatever spell had felled it, it had simply paralyzed or otherwise immobilized her, not snuffed her life.
“…cr*p…” Tristol muttered again for the second time in as many minutes as there was a sudden flash of light roughly thirty feet from where they stood.
Standing in the fading light of her teleportation spell, the Marauder snarled as she walked closer to Zadara. The King of the Crosstrade’s previously elegant evening gown was disheveled, scorched in several places, and she looked more like a slavering hellhound in a dress that had run headlong through a patch of razorvine than one of Jeremo’s invited guests.
“Ok, whatever the two of you got into, I think that we can all calm down and go our separate ways.” Tristol said hastily, and perhaps a bit overly optimistic in his tone.
Shemeska glanced at the mage briefly, baring her fangs as her eyes leaked scarlet flame, and completely ignored him as she launched into casting another spell.
“Tristol, she’s not listening and I don’t think…” Toras was cut off abruptly as the fiend spat out an intonation in a harsh, guttural language and flicked an obscene gesture at the motionless titan.
Tristol, acting entirely on instinct and shock, did the first thing that sprang to mind: he defended himself. The bubble of antimagic rippled outwards from the mage and enveloped his companions and a solid chunk of the titan where she lay on the ground. Whatever spell the ‘loth had cast was negated wholly and with a scream she hurled a second spell, cast in a more mundane language that Tristol recognized.
“Sh*t!” Tristol cringed as the disjunction erupted around him and evaporated his own antimagic field like a raindrop hurled into a fire. It was unexpected and the Marauder tossed it with more than a comfortable level of ease, and that frightened Tristol. He had always assumed the fiendess to be a sorceress, that much came with being what she was, but he hadn’t thought her to be on the level of an archmage.
However, as surprised as Tristol might have been at the moment, while the fiend’s spell had obliterated his hasty defense, it also dispelled whatever previous magic had ensnared the titan…
Zadara’s eyes widened and she was on her feet and reaching for her hammer in under a second. There was a crackle of spell energy as the Marauder vanished and reappeared a distance away, out of viable range of any immediate attack.
The two women glared murderously at one another as the clatter of armor and steel shod boots heralded the arrival of two-dozen guards, both from inside the palace and from the front gates of the courtyard.
“F*ck…” The King of the Crosstrade snarled as the guards arrived. Witnesses to murder would not be easy to bribe when they worked for someone with more money than some gods of wealth…
Zadara dropped her hammer as the guard’s arrived, though she was still looking like something that would have put a pause in one of the members of the Olympian pantheon if they blundered into her in some dark alley.
“Back to the party then? I’d like to go hear more from the Jester about his story he was telling us before you started barking…” Zadara said mockingly to the hovering fiendess.
“This isn’t over you gold guzzling whore…” The Marauder said as she adjusted the coil of razorvine above her head. “I hope you choke on your wine. But you’ve already spoiled the party for me, and I’ll make that clear when I otherwise praise Jeremo when I talk to him next.”
Zadara snorted.
“Ta-ta…” Shemeska said with a sneer, grabbing herself briefly in an obscene gesture directed towards the Titan, before vanishing in the flash of a teleport.
Zadara glanced at the approaching guards and then at Tristol and the others. “Thank you for the aid. I’ll properly thank you later after I’ve calmed down. I’ll need to speak with these gentlemen first. Go back and enjoy the party…”
“Staring down death at the hands of an angry fiend is not an experience I care to repeat. Remind me never again to want excitement in my life. After tonight, I’ve had all that I can handle for a while.” Tristol said as he tried to calm himself down as they walked down the hallway back towards Jeremo’s party.
“Awwww…” Nisha said, garnering herself a worried stare from several people.
Clueless changed the subject away from whatever it was Nisha had in mind to randomly excite their lives. “Even if we pissed off Shemmy tonight, we’ve got a titan who is pretty damn well pleased with us.”
“It still pisses me off that there won’t be any charges filed on anyone.” Toras complained.
“Yeah, well, nobody actually saw the two of them fight, just the aftermath. Plus, they both probably have witnesses bought and paid for if it ever came to that in the courts. Still, we stopped her from getting away with murder…” Florian said.
“True, and I’m sorry, but Tristol, I’ll take to my grave the look on her face when her spell failed. Good job.” Skalliska said with a toothy grin.
“You’re welcome, but frankly that was just instinct on my part. I wasn’t expecting her to just randomly throw out a 9th sphere spell. I didn’t know that she was that sodding powerful a sorceress.” He said with a shudder.
“Hehe, you said sodding. Sigil cant is rubbing off on you.” Nisha giggled.
“She’s that powerful, she just doesn’t use it that openly, all that often. Plus, her spellcasting isn’t entirely normal.” Clueless muttered.
“The language she was using…” Tristol said.
“Exactly. I’ve heard it before, and while she’s not an expert in it, she learned it from someone who was.” Clueless replied.
Fyrehowl softly growled.
“She has powerful friends. I’m not going to say his name though if you don’t mind.” Clueless said grimly with distaste.
“Hey at least the party was really nice, and profitable, before that all happened, right?” Skalliska said with a grin as she held out the gem that had been her gift from the Jester.
Florian chuckled, “You’d have thought that with security as tight as it was, Jeremo could have made sure that his guests didn’t get into public brawls.”
Tristol stopped and glanced around.
“Hmm?” Fyrehowl asked, motioning the others to stop.
Tristol motioned to one of the locked and magically sealed doors. “Even if he was worried that some of his guests might be lost in this place, which might be easy to do if it wasn’t sealed up more than Nessus, or if he was worried that they might get into a fight with one another, that still doesn’t make a really valid reason for all of this…”
“It is a bit extreme I guess.” Skalliska said as she started to examine the multiple wards on the doorway.
“Extreme is a light way of saying it. And Jeremo doesn’t strike me as the sort who’s just paranoid or fanatical about the security of his home.” Tristol said as he motioned again to the doorway.
“Self assured, yeah. A bit talkative, yeah. But you’re right it does seem extreme. Heck, if we asked him he might tell us what was going on. I’m sure he’s got a valid reason for it.” Florian said jovially.
“Umm… guys…” Fyrehowl said warily.
That was when they saw the creature that was staring at them.
Looking up at them with glassy pink eyes was a small rat, barely the size of one of their hands. The rodent was nestled in a small hole that had seemingly been gnawed out into the hallway from the other side of the wall, and it pushed at a small pile of chipped wood as it emerged out fully into the passageway. The rat’s braincase was fully exposed, enlarged beyond normal, and pulsing with a soft, subdued glow: a cranium rat.
“What the hell…” Nisha said as she stared at the rat, already reaching for something to throw at it. In her hair, Factol Karan ducked down and held on.
“Guys, I really think we should back up away from that thing. If there’s more than one of them anywhere near here, we’re screwed if it decides to mess with us. One cranium rat isn’t an issue, but a dozen or more and you’ve got a serious problem.” Skalliska was similarly reaching for something, anything really, to throw at the vermin should it make a hostile move. But, like Nisha, she was lamenting having worn clothing appropriate for a party, not for hunting psionic vermin…
The rat was suddenly scooped up in a bag by a man dressed in the standard outfits of one of Jeremo’s servants. The rail-thin githzerai seemed bowed and immediately took an apologetic tone. “My apologies. My lord Jeremo has had me scurrying about for the past week trying to catch this little fellow. We’ve been trying to catch him since it wandered into the palace earlier, but he seems to have taken an interest in you just long enough for me to capture him.”
The gith bowed again and smiled, “My apologies lords and ladies. This disruption of the evening’s festivities is uncalled for and I am deeply sorry for the trouble it may have caused. Now, if you will excuse me, the Natterer has other duties for me.”
The servant was gone and down the hallway before they had much of a chance to respond.
“That was odd…” Toras remarked.
“Yeah, especially considering that he ran off for the palace exit. There weren’t any other open doorways down that passage.” Clueless said, looking back down the hallway where the servant had hurriedly vanished off.
“Weird. He was dressed like one of the servants around here. Maybe they have access to doors that we don’t.” Fyrehowl mused.
“Well, it’s something to ask Jeremo about. Whoever he was, I his tone seemed more than a bit suspect. When’s the last time you saw someone catch a cranium rat with a bag and their bare hands?” Skalliska said warily.
They hadn’t noticed the githzerai apologize to the rat after he had passed out of sight and let it out of the bag. The rat crawled up his arm and perched on his shoulder, staring up at his head before he cupped it in one hand and held it before his face like a friend.
“No, of course not. The servant will not be found till after I am gone. It was unwise for You to have made Your presence known to those few. If word of Your activity here grows outside of these walls it may bring unwanted attention, and perhaps even draw the wrath of …” The githzerai paused as the rat began to chitter and its brain began to sparkle with trails of psionic energy.
“Yes, as You wish. My apologies. Though our goals are shared, I am but a servant. And despite my concern, I overstepped my bounds. I am sorry to have doubted You.” Parrak’s face was lined with regret, honest regret as the collective mind lurking behind the eyes of its single representative in his hand whispered a rebuke back to him. This time it did not bring him pain, and it would not unless it was earned on his part. He was loyal and It knew he acted only out of concern, thus he would not be punished.
He spoke to the cranium rat for a few more moments before releasing it back down onto the floor with seeming reverence. The rat vanished through another hole and back into the walls where the others waited.
Jeremo had little need to provoke chit-chat or ladle out topics of conversation after the group got back to his party. The public spat between two of Sigil’s most powerful women had seen to that. Jeremo did however spend his time apologizing to many of his guests in person over the antics and problems of ‘some people’.
But, for all the problems that it might have caused, The Jester seemed to emerge out of it all as clean as could be, and most seemed to take it as a memorable occurrence rather than a sour note on the party. It was a winning situation for the Natterer if he could leave such a positive impression on most of his guests over the course of the evening. It didn’t stop him from getting his hands dirty and talking to most of them personally though.
Still, Jeremo wasn’t the only person making rounds about and amongst the party guests. Giving the Lady’s Jester a rival for most active and apologetic was A’kin. The Friendly Fiend seemed positively mortified by what had happened and he was going table-to-table, guest-to-guest and apologizing ‘on behalf of the entire yugoloth race’ for the ‘dreadful attitude and actions’ that his counterpart that evening had demonstrated.
Sigil’s other resident arcanaloth seemed embarrassed almost to the point of tears by the time he got around to speaking with Tristol and the rest of the group.
“I’m so terribly terribly sorry for what happened outside. I just heard from one of the guards about it all. Please, please let me just express to you how embarrassed I am over this. I try to be nice, I try to be friendly, but sometimes every step I take towards making people realize that not all of us are bloodthirsty fiends out to snag their souls, she just ruins it all…” A’kin ended in sniffles with his head on Florian’s shoulder.
Fyrehowl looked on with a mixed reaction of disbelief and honest sympathy.
“We know you’re not like that A’kin. We like you for who you are, even if she’s in contention for the biggest b*tch in the multiverse award most of the time. You aren’t her, the Foehammer be praised, and whatever she does it doesn’t rub off on you by association. Trust me. People like you.” Florian said as she rubbed the Friendly Fiend’s ears like a sullen puppy-dog.
“It’s ok A’kin, we love you anyways.” Nisha said comfortingly to the ‘loth before adding with a touch of guilt, “And I’ll put the chocolate mephit back in your shop by tomorrow, or I’ll leave the money for it on your desk. Sorry.”
A’kin sniffed and tried to compose himself again, “Thank you Florian. And that’s fine Nisha, just keep him. I can make more. But the sympathy really means a lot. I’ll find a way to make this up to you all. The sentiment is appreciated.”
“Why? Why does she have to pull cr*p like that? All the time.” Fyrehowl asked a weepy-eyed A’kin. “Attitude, fake tail, fake t… oh fake pretty much everything!”
“Compensating for me?” A’kin offered up with a shrug. “Long, complicated story and much to my lament perhaps, it’s not something that’s going to change with her anytime in the foreseeable future. It doesn’t stop me from trying to compensate for her, just as much as she seems to do for me. Again, I really do hope you know how sorry I am over all of that. We’re not all like that.”
“Maybe I’ve read you wrong A’kin. Thanks for not being like her.” Fyrehowl said with a smile.
A’kin smiled graciously, “I’m not much like her except perhaps for shared origin. I’m glad that you don’t think that I’m like her. If I can change your mind, being where you’re from, it gives me some hope for everyone else.”
“Anyways, if you don’t mind, I have to go wake up Seamus and make sure that he’s fine. Everyone seems to have forgotten about him and left him lying there in a dusty little pile of mephit, the poor thing… Maybe I’ll see some of you later.” A’kin said before giving them all a hug and wandering over to where the Merchant Most Excellent was still passed out cold from where Shemeska had belted him against the wall. As far as most of the other guests were concerned, the elemental annoying was better left that way, and he was certainly less of a pain in the *ss in such a state.
Meanwhile, Florian excused herself away from the group and made her way over to where Jeremo was talking to several of his guards about what had gone on outside. It would be curious to see what Jeremo had to say about the oddly spectacular level of warding on the palace, plus about the rat they had seen…
Toras’s eyes went wide as they all stopped dead in their tracks near Zadara’s prone form. She wasn’t breathing.
“Oh sh*t she’s dead! Florian can you…” Toras blurted out before being cut off by the cleric.
“She’s not dead.” Florian said as she pointed to Zadara’s eyes.
The titan of potential was motionless and still, but her eyes were open and filled with pools of rage. Whatever spell had felled it, it had simply paralyzed or otherwise immobilized her, not snuffed her life.
“…cr*p…” Tristol muttered again for the second time in as many minutes as there was a sudden flash of light roughly thirty feet from where they stood.
Standing in the fading light of her teleportation spell, the Marauder snarled as she walked closer to Zadara. The King of the Crosstrade’s previously elegant evening gown was disheveled, scorched in several places, and she looked more like a slavering hellhound in a dress that had run headlong through a patch of razorvine than one of Jeremo’s invited guests.
“Ok, whatever the two of you got into, I think that we can all calm down and go our separate ways.” Tristol said hastily, and perhaps a bit overly optimistic in his tone.
Shemeska glanced at the mage briefly, baring her fangs as her eyes leaked scarlet flame, and completely ignored him as she launched into casting another spell.
“Tristol, she’s not listening and I don’t think…” Toras was cut off abruptly as the fiend spat out an intonation in a harsh, guttural language and flicked an obscene gesture at the motionless titan.
Tristol, acting entirely on instinct and shock, did the first thing that sprang to mind: he defended himself. The bubble of antimagic rippled outwards from the mage and enveloped his companions and a solid chunk of the titan where she lay on the ground. Whatever spell the ‘loth had cast was negated wholly and with a scream she hurled a second spell, cast in a more mundane language that Tristol recognized.
“Sh*t!” Tristol cringed as the disjunction erupted around him and evaporated his own antimagic field like a raindrop hurled into a fire. It was unexpected and the Marauder tossed it with more than a comfortable level of ease, and that frightened Tristol. He had always assumed the fiendess to be a sorceress, that much came with being what she was, but he hadn’t thought her to be on the level of an archmage.
However, as surprised as Tristol might have been at the moment, while the fiend’s spell had obliterated his hasty defense, it also dispelled whatever previous magic had ensnared the titan…
Zadara’s eyes widened and she was on her feet and reaching for her hammer in under a second. There was a crackle of spell energy as the Marauder vanished and reappeared a distance away, out of viable range of any immediate attack.
The two women glared murderously at one another as the clatter of armor and steel shod boots heralded the arrival of two-dozen guards, both from inside the palace and from the front gates of the courtyard.
“F*ck…” The King of the Crosstrade snarled as the guards arrived. Witnesses to murder would not be easy to bribe when they worked for someone with more money than some gods of wealth…
Zadara dropped her hammer as the guard’s arrived, though she was still looking like something that would have put a pause in one of the members of the Olympian pantheon if they blundered into her in some dark alley.
“Back to the party then? I’d like to go hear more from the Jester about his story he was telling us before you started barking…” Zadara said mockingly to the hovering fiendess.
“This isn’t over you gold guzzling whore…” The Marauder said as she adjusted the coil of razorvine above her head. “I hope you choke on your wine. But you’ve already spoiled the party for me, and I’ll make that clear when I otherwise praise Jeremo when I talk to him next.”
Zadara snorted.
“Ta-ta…” Shemeska said with a sneer, grabbing herself briefly in an obscene gesture directed towards the Titan, before vanishing in the flash of a teleport.
Zadara glanced at the approaching guards and then at Tristol and the others. “Thank you for the aid. I’ll properly thank you later after I’ve calmed down. I’ll need to speak with these gentlemen first. Go back and enjoy the party…”
***
“Staring down death at the hands of an angry fiend is not an experience I care to repeat. Remind me never again to want excitement in my life. After tonight, I’ve had all that I can handle for a while.” Tristol said as he tried to calm himself down as they walked down the hallway back towards Jeremo’s party.
“Awwww…” Nisha said, garnering herself a worried stare from several people.
Clueless changed the subject away from whatever it was Nisha had in mind to randomly excite their lives. “Even if we pissed off Shemmy tonight, we’ve got a titan who is pretty damn well pleased with us.”
“It still pisses me off that there won’t be any charges filed on anyone.” Toras complained.
“Yeah, well, nobody actually saw the two of them fight, just the aftermath. Plus, they both probably have witnesses bought and paid for if it ever came to that in the courts. Still, we stopped her from getting away with murder…” Florian said.
“True, and I’m sorry, but Tristol, I’ll take to my grave the look on her face when her spell failed. Good job.” Skalliska said with a toothy grin.
“You’re welcome, but frankly that was just instinct on my part. I wasn’t expecting her to just randomly throw out a 9th sphere spell. I didn’t know that she was that sodding powerful a sorceress.” He said with a shudder.
“Hehe, you said sodding. Sigil cant is rubbing off on you.” Nisha giggled.
“She’s that powerful, she just doesn’t use it that openly, all that often. Plus, her spellcasting isn’t entirely normal.” Clueless muttered.
“The language she was using…” Tristol said.
“Exactly. I’ve heard it before, and while she’s not an expert in it, she learned it from someone who was.” Clueless replied.
Fyrehowl softly growled.
“She has powerful friends. I’m not going to say his name though if you don’t mind.” Clueless said grimly with distaste.
“Hey at least the party was really nice, and profitable, before that all happened, right?” Skalliska said with a grin as she held out the gem that had been her gift from the Jester.
Florian chuckled, “You’d have thought that with security as tight as it was, Jeremo could have made sure that his guests didn’t get into public brawls.”
Tristol stopped and glanced around.
“Hmm?” Fyrehowl asked, motioning the others to stop.
Tristol motioned to one of the locked and magically sealed doors. “Even if he was worried that some of his guests might be lost in this place, which might be easy to do if it wasn’t sealed up more than Nessus, or if he was worried that they might get into a fight with one another, that still doesn’t make a really valid reason for all of this…”
“It is a bit extreme I guess.” Skalliska said as she started to examine the multiple wards on the doorway.
“Extreme is a light way of saying it. And Jeremo doesn’t strike me as the sort who’s just paranoid or fanatical about the security of his home.” Tristol said as he motioned again to the doorway.
“Self assured, yeah. A bit talkative, yeah. But you’re right it does seem extreme. Heck, if we asked him he might tell us what was going on. I’m sure he’s got a valid reason for it.” Florian said jovially.
“Umm… guys…” Fyrehowl said warily.
That was when they saw the creature that was staring at them.
Looking up at them with glassy pink eyes was a small rat, barely the size of one of their hands. The rodent was nestled in a small hole that had seemingly been gnawed out into the hallway from the other side of the wall, and it pushed at a small pile of chipped wood as it emerged out fully into the passageway. The rat’s braincase was fully exposed, enlarged beyond normal, and pulsing with a soft, subdued glow: a cranium rat.
“What the hell…” Nisha said as she stared at the rat, already reaching for something to throw at it. In her hair, Factol Karan ducked down and held on.
“Guys, I really think we should back up away from that thing. If there’s more than one of them anywhere near here, we’re screwed if it decides to mess with us. One cranium rat isn’t an issue, but a dozen or more and you’ve got a serious problem.” Skalliska was similarly reaching for something, anything really, to throw at the vermin should it make a hostile move. But, like Nisha, she was lamenting having worn clothing appropriate for a party, not for hunting psionic vermin…
The rat was suddenly scooped up in a bag by a man dressed in the standard outfits of one of Jeremo’s servants. The rail-thin githzerai seemed bowed and immediately took an apologetic tone. “My apologies. My lord Jeremo has had me scurrying about for the past week trying to catch this little fellow. We’ve been trying to catch him since it wandered into the palace earlier, but he seems to have taken an interest in you just long enough for me to capture him.”
The gith bowed again and smiled, “My apologies lords and ladies. This disruption of the evening’s festivities is uncalled for and I am deeply sorry for the trouble it may have caused. Now, if you will excuse me, the Natterer has other duties for me.”
The servant was gone and down the hallway before they had much of a chance to respond.
“That was odd…” Toras remarked.
“Yeah, especially considering that he ran off for the palace exit. There weren’t any other open doorways down that passage.” Clueless said, looking back down the hallway where the servant had hurriedly vanished off.
“Weird. He was dressed like one of the servants around here. Maybe they have access to doors that we don’t.” Fyrehowl mused.
“Well, it’s something to ask Jeremo about. Whoever he was, I his tone seemed more than a bit suspect. When’s the last time you saw someone catch a cranium rat with a bag and their bare hands?” Skalliska said warily.
****
They hadn’t noticed the githzerai apologize to the rat after he had passed out of sight and let it out of the bag. The rat crawled up his arm and perched on his shoulder, staring up at his head before he cupped it in one hand and held it before his face like a friend.
“No, of course not. The servant will not be found till after I am gone. It was unwise for You to have made Your presence known to those few. If word of Your activity here grows outside of these walls it may bring unwanted attention, and perhaps even draw the wrath of …” The githzerai paused as the rat began to chitter and its brain began to sparkle with trails of psionic energy.
“Yes, as You wish. My apologies. Though our goals are shared, I am but a servant. And despite my concern, I overstepped my bounds. I am sorry to have doubted You.” Parrak’s face was lined with regret, honest regret as the collective mind lurking behind the eyes of its single representative in his hand whispered a rebuke back to him. This time it did not bring him pain, and it would not unless it was earned on his part. He was loyal and It knew he acted only out of concern, thus he would not be punished.
He spoke to the cranium rat for a few more moments before releasing it back down onto the floor with seeming reverence. The rat vanished through another hole and back into the walls where the others waited.
***
Jeremo had little need to provoke chit-chat or ladle out topics of conversation after the group got back to his party. The public spat between two of Sigil’s most powerful women had seen to that. Jeremo did however spend his time apologizing to many of his guests in person over the antics and problems of ‘some people’.
But, for all the problems that it might have caused, The Jester seemed to emerge out of it all as clean as could be, and most seemed to take it as a memorable occurrence rather than a sour note on the party. It was a winning situation for the Natterer if he could leave such a positive impression on most of his guests over the course of the evening. It didn’t stop him from getting his hands dirty and talking to most of them personally though.
Still, Jeremo wasn’t the only person making rounds about and amongst the party guests. Giving the Lady’s Jester a rival for most active and apologetic was A’kin. The Friendly Fiend seemed positively mortified by what had happened and he was going table-to-table, guest-to-guest and apologizing ‘on behalf of the entire yugoloth race’ for the ‘dreadful attitude and actions’ that his counterpart that evening had demonstrated.
Sigil’s other resident arcanaloth seemed embarrassed almost to the point of tears by the time he got around to speaking with Tristol and the rest of the group.
“I’m so terribly terribly sorry for what happened outside. I just heard from one of the guards about it all. Please, please let me just express to you how embarrassed I am over this. I try to be nice, I try to be friendly, but sometimes every step I take towards making people realize that not all of us are bloodthirsty fiends out to snag their souls, she just ruins it all…” A’kin ended in sniffles with his head on Florian’s shoulder.
Fyrehowl looked on with a mixed reaction of disbelief and honest sympathy.
“We know you’re not like that A’kin. We like you for who you are, even if she’s in contention for the biggest b*tch in the multiverse award most of the time. You aren’t her, the Foehammer be praised, and whatever she does it doesn’t rub off on you by association. Trust me. People like you.” Florian said as she rubbed the Friendly Fiend’s ears like a sullen puppy-dog.
“It’s ok A’kin, we love you anyways.” Nisha said comfortingly to the ‘loth before adding with a touch of guilt, “And I’ll put the chocolate mephit back in your shop by tomorrow, or I’ll leave the money for it on your desk. Sorry.”
A’kin sniffed and tried to compose himself again, “Thank you Florian. And that’s fine Nisha, just keep him. I can make more. But the sympathy really means a lot. I’ll find a way to make this up to you all. The sentiment is appreciated.”
“Why? Why does she have to pull cr*p like that? All the time.” Fyrehowl asked a weepy-eyed A’kin. “Attitude, fake tail, fake t… oh fake pretty much everything!”
“Compensating for me?” A’kin offered up with a shrug. “Long, complicated story and much to my lament perhaps, it’s not something that’s going to change with her anytime in the foreseeable future. It doesn’t stop me from trying to compensate for her, just as much as she seems to do for me. Again, I really do hope you know how sorry I am over all of that. We’re not all like that.”
“Maybe I’ve read you wrong A’kin. Thanks for not being like her.” Fyrehowl said with a smile.
A’kin smiled graciously, “I’m not much like her except perhaps for shared origin. I’m glad that you don’t think that I’m like her. If I can change your mind, being where you’re from, it gives me some hope for everyone else.”
“Anyways, if you don’t mind, I have to go wake up Seamus and make sure that he’s fine. Everyone seems to have forgotten about him and left him lying there in a dusty little pile of mephit, the poor thing… Maybe I’ll see some of you later.” A’kin said before giving them all a hug and wandering over to where the Merchant Most Excellent was still passed out cold from where Shemeska had belted him against the wall. As far as most of the other guests were concerned, the elemental annoying was better left that way, and he was certainly less of a pain in the *ss in such a state.
Meanwhile, Florian excused herself away from the group and made her way over to where Jeremo was talking to several of his guards about what had gone on outside. It would be curious to see what Jeremo had to say about the oddly spectacular level of warding on the palace, plus about the rat they had seen…
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