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Story Hour
The Tale of an Industrious Rogue (updated 3-12-2014)
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<blockquote data-quote="Cristian Andreu" data-source="post: 6275511" data-attributes="member: 23822"><p>(the next part is a bit long, so I'll split it in two)</p><p></p><p><strong><u><span style="font-size: 15px">Part XX-1: Let's Leng Them a Hand</span></u></strong></p><p></p><p><em>“Tell me, Hassan. How much are rubies worth these days?”</em></p><p></p><p>What’s going on? In order to properly understand what Valanar was planning, I need to momentarily take you guys back to the early stages of the campaign, long before salts and nightmares were anywhere near the focus of the story, before the STC had highjacked my plot and started making money out of thin air.</p><p></p><p>As I previously mentioned somewhere in a footnote or two, the career of these fantasy Rockefellers started as humble slaves; better said, began as a band of resolute and dreamy-eyed adventurers who, after being involved in a shipwreck along the Osirian coast (allegedly caused by the ship's elf bard's horrible poetry), were forced into humble slavery by a band of marauding gnolls. However, after a series of events -including no less than five different references to Gladiator- that led to their freedom, the party ended up doing some work for a local Temple of Desna.</p><p></p><p>A few days into their service (which was more-or-less payment for the help they were given in escaping the claws of slavery. Interestingly, back then they vowed to fight such practices everywhere. Salt was all it took to forget those promises), they got involved in the investigation of a string of nasty murders, in which the victims were all boiled down and stripped of their flesh. Initially, it seemed to be tied to a bunch of crazy cannibals that worshipped Urgathoa, Goddess of Undeath, Gluttony and Disease, living underneath the sewers of Katapesh (it was precisely during these investigation that Nidaros, the aforementioned priest the STC appointed into the Saltspit Metropolitan Council, got kidnapped and his arm and half his face chewed-off). At the climax of that particular plot, the party managed to escape the cultists (which was, as it is par for the course, chock-full of Temple of Doom references) through an underground river, but Valanar got left behind, because he was checking some relics in the inner quarters of the cultist’s High Priest.</p><p></p><p>Long story short: Valanar was almost eaten alive, but thanks to a mixture of clever answers, risky promises, and some lucky saves, he managed to talk out the High Priest, who eventually offered him a deal: His life –and, more importantly, immortal soul- in exchange of a host, a new body to occupy.</p><p></p><p>Now, the explanation the High Priest gave to Valanar was very cryptic and confusing, but it gave him just enough information to be able to do additional research on his own. As it turned out, none of that had anything to do with Urgathoa; the cult was merely a tool for a more obscure and convoluted plan involving none other than the Denizens of Leng, creatures hailing from a mysterious and terrifying realm that in the scant volumes that mention it seems to be suggested as the last remnant of a long-collapsed reality, prior even to the current Multiverse. As it seemed, the High Priest himself was one of such creatures, and for some reason it needed a new body.</p><p></p><p>Among the things Valanar eventually uncovered was the fact that, while rare and far apart, the Denizens of Leng did have a presence in Golarion, some of them hidden among the courts of the mighty, influencing the course of history with goals no one understood. Katapesh was not stranger to them, either, where apparently they dabbled in selective slave trade: for some unfathomable reason, they were particularly interested in specific kinds of people, which they traded for absurdly valuable rubies (or at least what everyone thought were rubies).</p><p></p><p>As he kept delving deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the Denizens, always making sure to keep it a secret from the rest of the party (who were convinced Valanar had defeated the creature back in the underground temple), Valanar began conducting occasional meeting with envoys from the High Priest, random individuals whose minds had been blanked out, mere puppets made of flesh and bone. Soon enough, he started to connect the dots and understand what was going on: The High Priest wasn’t working for anyone in particular, but for himself. As it happens, the Denizens of Leng were beings whose bodies were made of a malleable fleshy substance they can control at will –which is one of the reasons they are really ugly when “relaxed”-, but existing too long away from Leng –or regions of the Multiverse that are somehow connected to Leng- has detrimental effects on said bodies. So the High Priest, a Denizen himself, trapped in Golarion since time immemorial, had been working on means to fix that shortcoming; so far, stealing the flesh of certain individuals he had previously identified as useful had helped as a patch measure (which explained the strange murders and using the cultist as a cover), but he was getting close to a point where this could simply no longer sustain his physical form. And so he needed a host.</p><p></p><p>To this end, the High Priest had been dabbling in the creation of a perfect host capable of sustaining the twisted essence of a Denizen, one that would be able to sustain itself in Golarion without decomposing into sticky black jelly, something no other Denizen had been able to manage so far (and as Valanar found out during his investigations, there were many other Denizens interested in such a solution, but they were all too fragmented to work together). For this host to work out, however, it would have to be conceived through a natural process. The High Priest had been trying to implant the host into pregnant women kidnapped from the city above, but it all ended up in horrible miscarriages. </p><p>But now there was Valanar...</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Cristian Andreu, post: 6275511, member: 23822"] (the next part is a bit long, so I'll split it in two) [B][U][SIZE=4]Part XX-1: Let's Leng Them a Hand[/SIZE][/U][/B] [I]“Tell me, Hassan. How much are rubies worth these days?”[/I] What’s going on? In order to properly understand what Valanar was planning, I need to momentarily take you guys back to the early stages of the campaign, long before salts and nightmares were anywhere near the focus of the story, before the STC had highjacked my plot and started making money out of thin air. As I previously mentioned somewhere in a footnote or two, the career of these fantasy Rockefellers started as humble slaves; better said, began as a band of resolute and dreamy-eyed adventurers who, after being involved in a shipwreck along the Osirian coast (allegedly caused by the ship's elf bard's horrible poetry), were forced into humble slavery by a band of marauding gnolls. However, after a series of events -including no less than five different references to Gladiator- that led to their freedom, the party ended up doing some work for a local Temple of Desna. A few days into their service (which was more-or-less payment for the help they were given in escaping the claws of slavery. Interestingly, back then they vowed to fight such practices everywhere. Salt was all it took to forget those promises), they got involved in the investigation of a string of nasty murders, in which the victims were all boiled down and stripped of their flesh. Initially, it seemed to be tied to a bunch of crazy cannibals that worshipped Urgathoa, Goddess of Undeath, Gluttony and Disease, living underneath the sewers of Katapesh (it was precisely during these investigation that Nidaros, the aforementioned priest the STC appointed into the Saltspit Metropolitan Council, got kidnapped and his arm and half his face chewed-off). At the climax of that particular plot, the party managed to escape the cultists (which was, as it is par for the course, chock-full of Temple of Doom references) through an underground river, but Valanar got left behind, because he was checking some relics in the inner quarters of the cultist’s High Priest. Long story short: Valanar was almost eaten alive, but thanks to a mixture of clever answers, risky promises, and some lucky saves, he managed to talk out the High Priest, who eventually offered him a deal: His life –and, more importantly, immortal soul- in exchange of a host, a new body to occupy. Now, the explanation the High Priest gave to Valanar was very cryptic and confusing, but it gave him just enough information to be able to do additional research on his own. As it turned out, none of that had anything to do with Urgathoa; the cult was merely a tool for a more obscure and convoluted plan involving none other than the Denizens of Leng, creatures hailing from a mysterious and terrifying realm that in the scant volumes that mention it seems to be suggested as the last remnant of a long-collapsed reality, prior even to the current Multiverse. As it seemed, the High Priest himself was one of such creatures, and for some reason it needed a new body. Among the things Valanar eventually uncovered was the fact that, while rare and far apart, the Denizens of Leng did have a presence in Golarion, some of them hidden among the courts of the mighty, influencing the course of history with goals no one understood. Katapesh was not stranger to them, either, where apparently they dabbled in selective slave trade: for some unfathomable reason, they were particularly interested in specific kinds of people, which they traded for absurdly valuable rubies (or at least what everyone thought were rubies). As he kept delving deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the Denizens, always making sure to keep it a secret from the rest of the party (who were convinced Valanar had defeated the creature back in the underground temple), Valanar began conducting occasional meeting with envoys from the High Priest, random individuals whose minds had been blanked out, mere puppets made of flesh and bone. Soon enough, he started to connect the dots and understand what was going on: The High Priest wasn’t working for anyone in particular, but for himself. As it happens, the Denizens of Leng were beings whose bodies were made of a malleable fleshy substance they can control at will –which is one of the reasons they are really ugly when “relaxed”-, but existing too long away from Leng –or regions of the Multiverse that are somehow connected to Leng- has detrimental effects on said bodies. So the High Priest, a Denizen himself, trapped in Golarion since time immemorial, had been working on means to fix that shortcoming; so far, stealing the flesh of certain individuals he had previously identified as useful had helped as a patch measure (which explained the strange murders and using the cultist as a cover), but he was getting close to a point where this could simply no longer sustain his physical form. And so he needed a host. To this end, the High Priest had been dabbling in the creation of a perfect host capable of sustaining the twisted essence of a Denizen, one that would be able to sustain itself in Golarion without decomposing into sticky black jelly, something no other Denizen had been able to manage so far (and as Valanar found out during his investigations, there were many other Denizens interested in such a solution, but they were all too fragmented to work together). For this host to work out, however, it would have to be conceived through a natural process. The High Priest had been trying to implant the host into pregnant women kidnapped from the city above, but it all ended up in horrible miscarriages. But now there was Valanar... [/QUOTE]
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