Session 69 (October 16, 2014)
Tar-Skard 10
Reports from the capital are improving considerably.
Kit contacts her agents in Masque about the stillbirths.
"The Order of Man has done all it can, but cannot figure out why. The Order of the Serpent has been called in; Baron Klahn has commanded that the top sorcerer-scientists examine it. This is towards the Gray Lands (the area around the Brown Lands), but this has never happened beyond the Gray Lands. Now this is affecting towns on this side of the barriers. The Queen-Empress has been considering relocating people, but the difficulty is that if the people who farm the lands, maintain the buildings, and raise the cattle and horses move away, there will be no one to support the Orders. The Queen-Empress has demanded answers, but the Grand Marshals fear that if the army must withdraw, the Gray Lands will fall to the Brown Lands and the clear lands will fall to the Gray Lands. Baron Klahn says that this must be unnatural—not simply natural spread of taint. The borders have been there for 1500 years. He fears that the thing that strengthens the Lost, those that dwell in the Brown Lands and seek to come forth, causes this as well. 1000 years ago, though powerful, the Lost were mindless, or at least without purpose. They come forth now in organized bands, seeking to break regiments. They have failed so far, but…"
There is a rapid knock at the door.
The Farsensor enters. “There is something powerful but subtle trying to bypass the wards. It was startled by their strength. It has not tried to break them—it could not. But as soon as I detected it, I came to tell you.”
--
The Council doesn’t know who such a creature could be, but it was not always there, obviously.
The indications from the wards are that someone was trying to trace Kit. She warns the agent and break the connection, and immediately the connection breaks.
"It must have been a device--something dealing with psionic slime, perhaps. Illithids are usually lawful. Could law be buried beneath planning and actions that are themselves chaotic? As far as I know, no illithid has ever demonstrated a tendency towards chaos—and the energy that was trying to trace you was chaotic."
The Council calls for Bishop Waters to address the theological question of law and chaos.
"More likely a traded device, than illithid directly. Likely a human or human seeming psionicist, but perhaps very old—maybe a lich?"
The Council discusses the fate of the God-Emperor’s throne-globe.
Alistair suggests that the Hastur might be the experts on the spread of chaos and energy and psionic. The Farsensor agrees, and agrees to seek an audience with the ruler of the House.
We roll a 2 (out of 12) on sanity, and a visibly elderly elf lady with a cat on her head is giggling in the teleportation cage.
The Council arranges for tea, a comfortable chair, and a place to put the cat when she realizes that it isn’t her hair. There’s a lot of art in the room—there wasn’t before.
Comments on Kit: "What dogs your steps… someone from your past, now seeking, creeping like a dog, like a rat. I think it proper that the one who hunts you be hunted and brought here. This creature from your past—it creeps in a place where there are many streets, water but it is not clear." Kit works on clearing out the area.
She reels off a string of ancient elven, which causes the room to lighten. "He has said that a device of the illithid, plus an ergolith, have fallen into the hands of chaos. Such a loss, so few were made. Ergoliths were artifacts, three were made, they can preserve a mortal almost indefinitely. Made by the Eldron, to preserve servants that they did not want to lose from the younger races."
"And all the blights have been cleaned out, except that one in the Old City. But he’s harmless—he’s one of the lookers, one of the beholders. It’s cataloguing all of the different rodents in the sewers, and inscribing them on copper plates. He’s meeting rats as they’re born, and accidentally made some of them intelligent. He’ll be up to the surface in several months. A couple of them are becoming very tiny wizards."
They steer her to discuss the Brown Lands.
"Humans are not very strong. We use them to contain the Shadowlands. They have been containing this threat as well. But this is not an open dimensional rift in the same sense—there is an open dimensional rift within it, but it is not the same thing. It does not go to the Abyss, although there is an enormous amount of energy coming out of it. It is an energy of change, but not in the same way as the Abyss. It is an energy of life, but not as we know it. It will change and alter life. I believe it is attached to your greater enemy, but it is not her. It must be attached to one of the other two? How do the other Pariah Deities survive? Why are they not consumed by her? Could they produce life, but simply life that cannot survive in this plane? I know too little of the ancient ones, but I believe that it may be the One Beside. If we seal the gates to the Goddess of the Pale Bone, it may deal with the problems."
(The Council arranges for an archivist to study the records of the Hastur about the history of the palace.)
[cont'd]