Arcanis: Gonnes, Sons, and Treasure Runs (COMPLETED)

[talien]

To Drakmar: Prologue

Stone trembled with the beat of a heart. Up ahead there was a ghost of pale light and a chill breeze. The corridor opened into a great, empty chamber. Entering, Vlad could finally straighten and stand. Kham entered behind him, Sebastian and Beldin soon after.

The crying was muted, but it didn’t matter anymore. Vlad knew that it was indeed a trick. Dril wasn’t calling to him. Dril hadn’t been there at all.

It took a moment to look into the light—weak as it was, it had an odd quality. It issued from a portal opposite. White and flat, it spilled into the cavern. Something moved there, not in the cavern but beyond it—through the doorway.

The cavern itself was a roughly circular space around sixty feet across and forty feet high. Four tunnels led into it, including the tunnel they had entered, a second and third close on either side of that, and the fourth on the other side of the cavern. The last held a great silhouette.

“What the hell is that?” asked Vlad.

A great bulk shifted sluggishly. With its elephant-like head and corpulent body it appeared to be some kind of nightmarish abomination. Its veined ears flared up, its trunk shifted, the round disc at its end questing. There was the faint sound like that of stone sliding across stone. Small creatures moved across it.

“I’d guess that’s Chaugnar Faugn,” whispered Kham.

The outline of a human emerged from under the thing and stood, dwarfed beside it, for this thing was the size of ten men.

Tcho-tchos entered from all three tunnels on their side of the cavern, more than a dozen at each. They were armed variously with boomerangs, knives, and fire-hardened spears, but made no move to attack. A priest with each group came forward a little, curious.

“Stay calm,” said Sebastian. “Don’t make any sudden moves.”

The human figure walked from beyond the light and into the cavern. His appearance was awful.

He was naked. His eyes were put out, as were his teeth and half his tongue. His nose was flaccid and hung to his upper lip. His ears were distended and corded, twitching and flaring unnaturally.

“This is… was Professor Roberto Anzalone,” whispered Sebastian. “I recognize him from the picture.”

The thing approached each of them in turn and looked closely. Once, Anzalone tried to speak, but the sounds he made were thick and unintelligible, and a thin stream of blood drooled from his ruined mouth. The figure trudged back to stand beside the gate.

Several of the tcho-tchos went to the gate and one of the priests beckoned Kham towards it. Kham joined him at the gate.

A priest took one of Kham’s hands, palm up, and slashed it with a bone knife. Kham winced, but he kept still.

The priest let it bleed, then dipped a finger in the blood before smearing a pattern on the wall beside the portal.

Kham remembered his encounter with the King in Yellow, when it had worn the form of Elise. There, in the blowing snow, it had promised not to forget him. “You are the key, Kham,” it said.

The gate was activated. A high keening came through the gate, loud and constant, and as it sounded the white light became blue. A murky picture of a human standing with several tcho-tchos replaced the outline of the strange elephant being.

“Livius Carbo,” said Kham.

The priest did not hesitate but walked straight through the blue light, followed by several companions. Kham and his companions were strongly urged at spear-point to join them.

Taking a deep breath, ignoring his bleeding hand, Kham walked through the gate.

 

[talien]

To Drakmar: Part 1 – The Plateau of Leng

They stood in the middle of a vast, featureless plain. The landscape beyond the gate was unexceptional in every way. Scanning the terrain, there was nothing to interrupt a vista of flat, frozen earth. It was very cold, and there was a dusting of snow on the ground but mercifully, no wind.

“I think we’re back in Kadath,” said Kham.

There was no sign of the portal they had stepped through. The keening had stopped. No features marked the edge of the tundra; no trees or mountains stained the horizons. It was night and thousands of stars were in the sky, each pure and sharp, a beautiful sight.

Sebastian looked up at the night sky. “Those are Arcanis constellations, but their relations have subtly changed.” The orange star Aldebaran was visible low, low in the sky, sitting just above the horizon.

Livius stood surrounded by the squatter tcho-tcho cannibals, a father amongst his warped children. He was tall and slim with dark hair. Despite being the progenitor of a play that had killed thousands, he looked normal, clean and shaven, and wore a white chuba. He smoked a cigarette.

“Hello again,” Livius addresses Kham. “I see you’ve come to stop me. Or have you been converted the One True Way?”

Sebastian stepped forward. Livius seemed unperturbed by the dark-kin’s more demonic appearance, complete with forked tail and bat wings.

“We have come to join you,” he said. “After the deaths of so many, we welcome our new master home.”

Livius took a puff from his cigarette. “Really? I remember you throwing my play into the dirt of the arena. You didn’t seem so sure then.”

“We weren’t,” said Sebastian. “It took a lot of trials for us to comprehend His majesty. But if it will save Onara from itself, we will gladly welcome the King in Yellow.”

“And yet you’ve murdered so many. Montague Edwards, for all his misguided attempts. Lucius Roby, who only wanted to live in Carcosa forever. Even Talbot Estus. He was a gifted playwright.”

“You forgot Elijah Quelch,” added Kham.

Livius chuckled. “Did I? And what of you, Kham? Are you not here to murder me in cold blood?”

Kham kept his arms folded. “If I was going to do that, you’d be dead already. Don’t you worry, Livius, I plan to see this through to the end, just like you.”

The tcho-tchos were nervous and anxious to move. More spear poking encouraged them towards Aldebaran.

“I think we’re bound for a temple or town,” said Livius. “I wonder if others might already be there. When we arrive, I will of course summon the King in Yellow.”

“Of course,” said Sebastian.

“You spoke of war,” said Livius. “Then war has finally come to Onara?”

Sebastian nodded. “Coryan is in the middle of a civil war. The Emperor accused Felician val’Mehan of conducting secret negotiations with the heretical priests of the Dark Triumvirate of Canceri. Calsestus branded the Patriarch a heretic and a traitor.”

“Ah yes. Then it is done.” He smiled to himself. “Hastur appeared to the masses.”

“In one of his guises,” Sebastian spoke carefully. “A valinor said: Let none doubt that Calsestus’ will is the will of the Gods.”

So the conversation went as they marched across the unchanging and bleak landscape. The tcho-tchos led silently but betray an urgency and edginess, constantly scanning the horizon and sky.

With time suspended under the stars and no change of night to day, they grew tired, hungry, and thirsty.

 

[talien]

Drakmar: Part 2 – Shantanks

After six hours, a tcho-tcho made a noise and pointed into the sky.

Sebastian squinted. “What is that?”

It looked like a bird flying towards them, growing bigger and bigger. It flew off to their right and as it came abreast its form could be properly made out.

It looked like something from legend: massive, its huge wings beat slowly. It had a mammal’s heavy head, which it turned on a long neck to regard them as it flew by.

“That’s no byakhee,” said Vlad.

“That was a shantak, actually,” explained Livius. “As Hastur awakens, Kadath thaws and the beasts of old stir from their hibernation.”

The tcho-tchos pressed on. They seemed tireless, but their companions were not.

“We must rest,” said Livius. Even his boundless enthusiasm had limits. He leaned over, put both hands on his knees. “Just for a moment.”

The tcho-tchos conferred and then left them alone.

“So I guess you’re not superhuman, huh?” Kham was exhausted, be he refused to show it in front of Livius.

Livius smirked. “I am as human as you are, Kham. And, I imagine, I’ve murdered far less in the name of my god.”

Kham was about to reply when a tcho-tcho called out a warning.

From out of nowhere, a shantak decapitated a tcho-tcho with its maw.

The tcho-tcho priests screamed orders, creating a protective circle around them. There was not one but two shantaks, lazily circling overhead, looking for a weakness in their defenses.

Sebastian turned to face Livius. “You really think you’re blameless? Perhaps I should list the friends who are dead because of the cult you created!” He stalked forward, eyes brimming with rage. “It’s because of YOU that Holden Ash’ur and Calactyte died defending Semar from an attack of Ssethregoran cultists. It’s because of YOU that Nauris Dril was blown to bits by those same cultists. It’s because of YOU that Kham’s father, Corinalous, was murdered by Michael Coombs’ blast powder bomb! It’s because of YOU that we had to kill Ilmarė Galen’s sister Anulee!”

The tcho-tchos turned to separate the two, but a dive by the shantak distracted them, tossing warriors high into the air in a spray of blood.

Livius put up his hands, tears in his eyes. “I never meant for them to be harmed. Those who follow Hastur sometimes lose their way, like any religion. I am sorry for their loss. You have to believe that.”

Sebastian wasn’t finished. “You started a plague that still ravages Onara to this day. You started a war that may end in the destruction of everything and everyone we hold dear. You’re sorry?” He lifted one hand. A sphere of white light appeared in it. “I’m sorry too.”

“No,” began Livius, “wait—“

“Frigus sphaera!”

Sebastian slapped the freezing orb into Livius face.

The tcho-tchos spun to watch the grisly conflict. Livius’ expression was literally frozen, his entire head an ice sculpture of his features.

Then Livius’ head exploded into bloody chunks of ice. His headless body slumped to the ground.

Kham pulled out two pistols. “That’s our cue.” He fired and two tcho-tchos died.

Beldin and Vlad needed no further encouragement. Wielding weapons both hands, they whirled, felling two tcho-tchos at the same time. The other warriors struggled to rally, but the diving shantaks had them on the defensive.

“This ends now,” said Sebastian. He flapped up into the air and pointed at a cluster of tcho-tchos. “Incendiares globus!”

The ensuing explosion ripped the remaining tcho-tchos apart. The shantaks, sated and fearful of the flames, veered off.

Nothing but smoking bodies lay strewn around them.

“Now what?” said Kham.

“Now,” Sebastian’s demeanor was rigid, cold. He pointed at the one star that shone brightest on the horizon. “We follow Aldebaran.”

 

[talien]

Darkmar: Part 3 – The Upper House

Time passed. The landscape was unaltered. The star was slowly dipping—it touched the horizon. Although solitary shantaks were sighted twice more, they were far off and there were no other alarms.

Something was interposed between them and Aldebaran, blotting out a portion of the star. A construction of a fair size was ahead, surrounded by monoliths.

The building was large and slab-sided, built of stone. It was two hundred and fifty feet on a side with fifty-foot high walls sloping slightly inward and stained a dull orange. There was no door immediately visible and no windows anywhere.

Vlad looked up at the monoliths. “These look familiar.”

The monoliths about it stood twenty feet tall and were smoothly-tooled, four-sided, tapering from a base four feet square to a flat top two feet on a side.

“It’s strange that even though there’s nine of them, they’re regularly spaced around the structure in a circle, not in the shape of a V,” observed Beldin.

“That’s because they’re not trying to summon the Unspeakable One,” said Kham. “He’s already here.”

A single doorway on the side of the structures faced Aldebaran, an unobstructed opening twenty feet square beyond which was a passageway that maintained the same large dimensions.

The walls of the passageway were vividly painted with scenes: from outside only a few can be discerned for they soon disappear into darkness, but the ones that could be seen showed cities fought over by armies that were not quite human. The paint was bright and clear.

“Do you hear that?” asked Vlad. “Faint piping from inside, rising and falling.”

“The King in Yellow,” said Kham.

They went in. After fifteen yards the corridor leading into the Upper House was masked by darkness. Lights penetrated only dimly, vaguely. The first step into the gloom effectively placed them into a labyrinth.

Kham looked back. The exit and his companions were gone.

 

[talien]

Darkmar: Part 4 – Navigation Through the Upper House

Inside, the fluting of the pipes was more clearly audible. As Kham walk, the sound sometimes seemed closer, or sometimes it was dim, or disappeared entirely.

Kham traveled for miles.

Skiz popped his head out of the haversack. “Where we going, boss?”

“Not sure, Skiz. But I’m hoping we find our way to the end before I run out of food or I’m going to have to eat you.”

Skiz sniffed up at him. “More likely the other way around, boss.”

“Very funny.”

Kham walked on and on. He passed through a massive chamber that took hours to cross, all the while out of sight of walls or ceiling. He journeyed beyond a corridor that opened into a succession of thousands of empty cells.

Sometimes the way was illuminated: a shaft of weak light slid down into a chamber from an unknown source, a gleam of phosphorescence seeped from cracks in the floor, and flat stones gave off a gray glimmer. But most of the time Kham journeyed in darkness. With Daemonscar, he could see no matter how dark it became…but the others might not be so lucky.

He imagined how they would survive. Beldin and Sebastian could see in the dark. But Vlad was not so gifted. The Milandisian would eventually be plunged into total darkness. And then how would he find his way?

Kham came across a fountain set in the wall. The water smelled sweet.

“Water!” shouted Skiz. The rat hopped out of Kham’s haversack and began to drink.

“Is it okay?”

“If it’s good enough for a rat, boss, it’s good enough for you.”

Kham leaned down next to his talking rat and palmed some water. After taking a deep breath, he took a drink of it. It tasted bitter, but his thirst was sated. He refilled his wineskin.

Kham shared a piece of jerky with Skiz, tearing off a piece of it for him. “That’s the last of our food. Don’t eat it all at once.”

They ate in silence. Skiz reared up on his hind legs to look around.

“This place has weird paintings, boss.”

Kham had become so accustomed to not looking anywhere but ahead that he didn’t notice. Friezes depicted black sailing ships navigating interplanetary space. Another frieze showed amoeboid creatures emerging from the hulls of black ships and conquering and then ruling a face of bronze humanoids.

“K’n-yan. They were the race before humans discovered the Unspeakable One. Looks like even the k’n-yan are new to the scene compared to those blobs.”

Skiz froze. “I hear piping nearby.”

“We’ve been hearing that for days,” muttered Kham. But it was true, the pipes were louder.

Kham picked up Skiz and deposited him back into the haversack. They took off towards a stairway leading upwards. As he climbed, the music grew in volume and become frenzied. When he reached the top, the noise stopped.

Kham found himself in a space quite unlike any other.

 

[talien]

Drakmar: Part 5 – The Heart of the Upper House

Kham was outside. He was in a formal plaza. It was illuminated by the light of stars and by the reflections of those stars in the black polished floor. Sebastian, Beldin, and Vlad were all there. Sebastian and Vlad looked terrible, with cracked lips and sunken eyes. Only the dwarf held his own, his constitution accustomed to long periods of hardship.

Sebastian barely managed a wave. He was weak from hunger and thirst. “Good to see you, Kham. I don’t suppose you have any food?”

“No food, but I found some water.” Kham threw the wineskin to Sebastian. The dark-kin slurped from it thirstily.

As they passed the wineskin around, Kham took a look at their surroundings. Aldebaran was visible very low down—its twin was reflected in the floor, the two touching and merging. A breeze brought a scent of cypress trees. Away from them, something stood out white, and there was a light, but it was distant and indistinct.

Kham took a step forward. He accidentally kicked a small object that slid and spun across the floor. As it went, there sounded a single clear note, swelling then falling.

Sebastian picked up the object. “Pipes,” he said.

The pipes were intricately carved in black with two mouthpieces curving down around a slotted barrel to become six pipes. The design resembled the byakhee, their mouths the mouths of the pipes, the ribbed wings the barrels.

Suddenly their surroundings changed. They were in the center of a large space on a white stone dais, fifty feet square, which stood just above the surrounding floor. On the dais were two rounded pillars eighteen inches apart. Each was about ten feet tall and six inches in diameter. The gap between them gave off a faint white light. Just to one side of the pillars stood an empty stone lectern.

A moment later there was a figure that could be observed clearly.

“The King in Yellow,” said Kham.

 

[talien]

Drakmar: Part 6 – The King in Yellow’s Path to Arcanis

The King in Yellow was a thin figure, more than eight feet tall. He had human proportions and shape and wore tattered robes of yellow and white that whipped around him in a non-existent wind. His cowl was up, throwing a deep shadow over his face. Long sleeves covered his hands and arms that fell by his sides. His attention seemed at the same time focused and distant.

As Kham watched him, the hood momentarily flapped back as if in a breeze, and just for an instant showed a black space where the King’s face should be—here were depths unimaginable, deeper than the sky, and there was a brief sensation of falling.

The King’s words were heard and understood in their minds.

“Who will guide me?”

They all looked to Kham. This was his task to complete, they said without speaking. He was the key, after all.

Kham stepped forward.

“Give me your hand.”

Mesmerized, Kham could not refuse.

The King took Kham’s wrist, palm upward. In his other hand a small hooked knife appeared.

“Have you found the Yellow Sign?”

Kham nodded. The King cut Kham’s palm and held it out over the lectern that stood besides the Gate. The blood fell in a thin stream and though Kham’s hand didn’t move, the trail painted a perfect Yellow Sign on the marble. The light in the gate turned from white to blue. There was suddenly an unearthly keening that echoed all around.

The King let go of Kham’s wrist. He stood side by side with the ancient deity before the shrill gate, washed with its blue light.

“Will you guide me to your home?”

Kham paused. He couldn’t do it.

“NO!” he shouted. He reached for his pistols…

The King slashed Kham’s throat. Gurgling, clutching at his neck, Kham fell to the ground. Blood poured out of him.

Vlad and Beldin ran over to his dying body.

“Who will guide me?” the King asked again.

Sebastian stepped over Kham’s body. “I will.”

Beldin looked up. “What? No! Stop!”

The King took Sebastian by the hand. They stepped through the gate and disappeared from view.

 

[talien]

To Drakmar: Part 7 – Stepping to Arcanis

All the time, the King looked into Sebastian’s eyes, and he was unable to not look back. He had the sensation of stepping into a void, followed by momentary brief confusion.

Again and again, Sebastian struggled to look away. But he kept finding his gaze slowly, inexorably, dragged back.

Finally, summoning up every fiber of his being, Sebastian stared at the spinning universe around them.

There was a moment of clarity. Sebastian saw stars, star clusters, and planets.

He remembered the phrase from Talbot Estus’ playbook, The Queen and the Stranger.

The stars that burn their charcoal death
Shrink back, they feel the hoary breath
Of he who ransoms great Carcosa
He flees where queen and prophet meet
Where twin suns fall but never set
Escapes the tomb of lost Carcosa.​

“Twin suns?” thought Sebastian. “It has to be a binary star…”

Sebastian scanned the infinite horizon and was rewarded with a glimpse of twin stars amidst a patch of black.

And then he intentionally misstepped.

He was leaving Arcanis behind; it couldn’t be reached any longer. The King seemed aware of that fact, but he did not react.

They walked on together in silence until a cluster of stars was visible. Red Aldebaran was at its center, and then lovely Carcosa sitting beside a lake of clouds and water. Twin suns sat in the sky.

The King spread his arm out to encompass the place.

“You are the unluckiest of souls. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

 

[talien]

Drakmar: Part 8 – Escape

The healing potions worked on Kham’s flesh, but his throat wound seeped a vile yellow pus.

”We’ve got to get him out of here,” said Vlad. “Or he’ll die for sure.”

The gate pulsed with a white light. Vlad started dragging Kham towards it.

“Wait!” Beldin grabbed Vlad’s arm. “We need the Yellow Sign to be daubed in blood.” He cut a palm and dripped blood in a rough approximation of the Yellow Sign, as the tcho-tcho and the King in Yellow did.

Nothing happened.

The dwarf frowned. “It has to be human blood.”

“It has to be Kham’s blood. He’s the gate.” Vlad cut Kham’s palm, reopening the wound on his hand, and dripped the blood before the gate.

The light between the pillars changed from white to blue. A deafening keening echoed around the chamber.

They rushed through the gate. There was a sensation of falling into a void, followed by momentary confusion. Then they were on the shore of the Island of Chaugnar Faugn.

Kham slowly, groggily, got to his feet. His throat was awful to look at, but at least he was alive. They found their longboat and began rowing back to the mainland of Nyambe.

“Do you think Sebastian really did it?” asked Vlad.

“In leading the King in Yellow to Arcanis?” Beldin looked up at the stars. “Sebastian would never do that. Since we’re all still here, he must have led the King somewhere else.”

“But where?” asked Vlad.

Kham rubbed his throat. He tried to speak but couldn’t. He just pointed over their heads.

A galleon sailed behind them. Aboard the Nǎoké was an exotically dressed Khitani pirate. He had a knife to a woman’s throat. It was Yolanda, the woman Kham had met in Carcosa.

“I have your friends,” Cho Sun said with a thick accent. “If you do not give me Chaugnar Faugn’s treasure I will begin killing them one by one, beginning with this girl! You have ten minutes to decide.”

 

[talien]

Drakmar: Conclusion

The King in Yellow leaned in to embrace Sebastian. Tentacles curled out of the cowl and reached for his face…

When Sebastian awakened, he found Carcosa once again stopped in time between the Stranger’s arrival and the unmasking. He walked freely through its streets and found the city much the same as it was on Arcanis except for one thing.

The embrace of the King in Yellow was worn as a mark that all in Carcosa could perceive. It was a taint, a disease, an infection. Residents weren’t able to say what they found uncomfortable about him…was it his manner? His appearance? His soul? Regardless, they shunned him. Sebastian became accustomed to seeing others move away as he approached.

Each night, Sebastian saw the stars, Arcanis, the King in Yellow. Sometimes the King appeared in his chamber—the King was the only one who would be with him. Sebastian even grew to rely upon his familiar presence.

He took to regular walks in the city in flowing white robes, which were always set aside for him by the King. Carcosa was spread out beneath him, and over the roofs the lake itself was a great stain of shadow, except on its far, far shore. There reflected the lights of the Palace.

Although Carcosa contained many impressive structures, its Palace dominated the city. It was extensive, boasting three huge, loosely defined wings, each with towers, parapets and spires supported at points with buttresses and joined to one another by soaring walkways. The mostly separate wings were unified by jointly fronting three sides of a vast square. The square itself became a balcony that depended out above the still waters of the lake that bordered its fourth side. The whole building was a mixture of styles, but somehow a triumph of form.

The streets around Sebastian were small and twisted, rising and falling unexpectedly. It seemed a more modest part of town, but the buildings still offered their own grandiosities—aerial walkways in iron, wooden carvings of fabulous beasts or nature, chimney pots that were cast simulacra of its owner’s trade: shoes and boots, muskets, silver fish.

As Sebastian turned a corner, he came upon a small group of masked figures. As the rest moved off, the last turned to greet him.

“And I am Noss,” he said, swaying drunkenly. Noss doffed a blank, white disk of a mask.

“Sorry, who?” asked Sebastian.

“Noss. I’m Noss. Didn’t you ask just now?”

“No,” said Sebastian. “I didn’t.”

“Ah. Well, you look like you’re not from here. Were you born here?”

“No,” said Sebastian. “I’ve just moved in.”

Noss nodded. “I’m sure it looks quite different from last time. There is a great festival happening that has given rise to much excitement. A Stranger has come to the city who promises further upheaval—we wear masks in the Stranger’s honor, hoping that all will be to the good.”

“Me too,” said Sebastian.

“If you need help, I can act as your guide.”

“Yes, that would be nice. But there’s just one thing…”

Noss turned, and Sebastian was very close to him. “I need your mask.”

“What?” Noss’ expression turned to fear. Then his eyes became unfocused. He slid off the knife Sebastian always carried with him.

Sebastian picked up the mask and put it on. He walked away, whistling to himself as he stepped over Noss’ body.

Wearing all white with a featureless mask, Sebastian set out to amuse himself with the denizens of Carcosa.

Several residents, all masked, suddenly appeared at adjoining windows in one building and leaned far out. One was pointing behind them, while the others strained to see what the masked woman was indicating. There was a shout of recognition, a shrill scream, and some slightly hysterical laughter.

“Mother, there is a Stranger in the city!”