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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 2373017" data-attributes="member: 1210">The Rescue of Delilah8/3/371 O.L.G., the astral fortress of Hiktakka Getsch“It was Nydroth who first told me of you, before he was a lich himself, before he could create undead.”  Dzaram’s tone is neutral, but if Nydroth were still alive, he would blush.  It was not inexperience that prevented him; it was a wyrd laid by a priest of Galador.  The lesson there, of course, is that necromancers should never accept such things from priests of gods who despise the undead.  Nydroth does not need to be told this; he had to sit through it for decades.  At least it led to his experiments with life forms.Delilah steeples her fingers and looks at Grisly.  “I will never forget that you scried me out and came for me.”“Without Lord Dzaram,” Nydroth rasps, “I could not have reached you.  Only his knowledge of sea gates allowed us to traverse the exceptional distances involved.”She sighs.  “And I will never forget that, either.  I owe you both my very existence.”  She bats her eyelashes at them.  Nydroth grins his rictus grin, but Dzaram merely nods.And it is true.  She never will forget it- never.  ***It seemed like forever.  She was entombed for the gods know how long, and though she did not need to eat or breathe, she could not sleep.  She could turn herself off- but the danger was that, if found, she would not know it.  If she were not careful, she could awaken to find herself buried, or worse, be burned to ash without ever knowing that she had been freed of the ice.  Therefore, for vast stretches of time like eternity, she stayed conscious.  Her eyes were frozen open; the block of ice around her held her absolutely motionless.  She was likely still floating, but how could she possibly tell?  It was impossible, and interminable, going on and on without end, without a break.  There was nothing to see but the frozen water all around her.  The translucent ice allowed her to see a myriad of cracks and lines within the structure of the ice itself, but it was far from clear.  There was no outside to look at, not even empty water: there was only ice.  Unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to speak and thus hear her own voice, Delilah was utterly isolated.  There was an occasional sound, one a week or so, as her icy sledge smashed into something, or as some bit of ice cracked or shifted; but other than that, Delilah had no sensory input at all.  Nothing to see or hear, nothing to smell or taste, nothing except the omnipresent ice.Did she go mad?  From a scholarly point of view, she has always wondered.  As an undead, she should be immune to madness, but it is more than clear that the undead state of mind is not the same as a normal, healthy state of mind at all.  Many of the living would say that Dzaram, Delilah and Nydroth are all mad.  Well, perhaps it is a matter of perspective; but then, isn’t madness just a different point of view anyway?In the end, it did not matter; because, one day, suddenly, the ice around Delilah disintegrated, and she collapsed onto the dry floor of Dzaram’s boat of excellent seamanship.  She was in one of her periods of awareness, and she was so shocked to be free of the ice that for several moments she could not move.  She could not believe it.  The boat was gently rocking on the water.  Slowly she looked up- and beheld the dirty and matted visage of Nydroth.  Nydroth- and someone she did not recognize.”Delilah?” Nydroth queried.  “Are you all right?”Overwhelmed, Delilah could not respond.  She had thought she might be freed some day by strangers, but a rescue, perpetrated by an old ally- an old friend, even-Had she been able, Delilah would have wept.“You have been lost for a long time,” the other figure said gently.  “We have saved you.”***The other figure, of course, was Dzaram, and it had been somewhere over fifty years since Delilah had moved of her own volition.  She devoured life again, seeking out Billy- but much time had passed.  Things with him would never be the same.  If she had only not been gone so long-She was shocked by how much time had changed him.  She offered him immortality, of a sort.  He refused.  She wanted things to be like they had.  They could not.  They quarreled, but Delilah did not kill him.  She owed him that much.  And she threw herself wholeheartedly into Dzaram’s cabal.  Herself, Nydroth, Dzaram.  Nydroth and she were so much less powerful than the Lich of Forinthia- she could not understand what he wanted from them.  But slowly, as their powers grew, she began to understand.Potential.They had far more potential than most wizards more formidable than them.  Even the so-called ‘greats’ of their time had no ambition, no vision to follow through on.  They might have power and competence, but they had no imagination. Delilah and Nydroth had imagination.  Oh yes they did.The spells she created, she tended to create with an eye towards making certain nobody else would cast them.  Material components that were difficult to obtain without being evil were a favorite.  Oozing lilacs was a favorite, requiring the regurgitated semen of a murdered lover.  Dexter’s debilitation was designed to oppose psionic contact; Dexter, though long dead by this time, was the obvious inspiration for it.Nydroth, meanwhile, experimented with life forms.  His innovations were fantastic.  He even managed to discover a transcription of the original notes regarding the creation of the owlbear (as well as a more obscure monster, the gorilla bear). It took him decades, but even without ever creating undead, Grisly became a name amongst necromancers.  He created new breed after new breed, using two new spells of his own creation, Nydroth’s Grisly Crossbreed and Nydroth’s Dark Impregnation.  Soon enough, the quickling/troll cross became the bodyguard of choice.  It was not long, however, before Nydroth made a terrible mistake.  ***10/12/217 O.L.G., 11 a.m., a hidden workroom on PeshNydroth stepped into his workroom, muttering to himself as the vermin in his robes squirmed and crawled over his body.  He froze at he looked at the cage.  Empty.“Impossible,” Grisly the necromancer growled.  He shuffled forward.  Yes, it was empty.  Immediately Grisly locked the chamber and strode off to find Delilah.  There was no need to inform Dzaram; no need at all.  At least, not yet.Nydroth cursed under his breath.  How did it get out?  A simple cage should have sufficed, and it was undamaged... clearly the subject did not break free, as might be expected from something half-troll in nature.The answer was simple but not obvious.  The creature that Nydroth had kept in the cage was- to all appearances- a cross between a giant spider and a troll.  Unfortunately, when Nydroth had captured the spider, he had unwittingly captured not a giant spider- but a phase spider.Thus, he, Delilah and the group of allies they rounded up found and recaptured the beast, but it was only the first example of Nydroth’s creations getting out of hand.  A phasing, regenerating, poisonous beast was no laughing matter.  Neither, later, was a paralyzing, rusting poisonous monster.  Neither, later still, was a spellcasting, flying, super-fast archer fey.  And the list goes on.Nydroth was not careless- he was overly ambitious.  Yet, despite the occasional inconvenience, Dzaram never chastised him for that.It was not long before they met Jerakai Ilmixie.****“Ah, Jerakai,” sighs Delilah fondly.“He earned his dismissal,” Dzaram states flatly.  Delilah says nothing.“He was certainly a good ally to have, though,” Nydroth says after a moment.  “Why, with that rod and that flying carpet...”“Ilmixies are always trouble,” Dzaram says.  “Believe me.  The old Baron makes it too hard for them to be anything else.”“We didn’t even have a name for his kind back then,” Delilah remarks.“Scholarship always advances,” Dzaram responds, his voice- as always- neutral.“Now we call them tieflings.  It makes me wonder if their kind could be summoned.”“A new topic,” remarks Nydroth, “for research.”Delilah smiles sweetly.Next Time: Delilah begins her body collecting and we meet Jerakai Ilmixie for the first time!*For those of you familiar with it via my other story hours, this is the Jerakai who created the spell Jerakai’s embrace, among others.</blockquote>

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