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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 3433378" data-attributes="member: 1210">It's short, but better than nothingSomewhere on the Abyss Seclaidra peers into her mirror of minions and, somewhere inside, she smiles. Well done, pet, she thinks approvingly. Enemies of mine or not, the champions of Chaos are our best hope at laying low the forces of Law. Her lips only twitch, despite her joy. The smile does not touch her eyes. For her joy at the terrible blows being dealt to Law is mixed with her distaste at the source of those blows. After all, those fools have had the audacity to challenge her in her own desmense!  Well, she doesn’t expect that to happen again. As long as she keeps her nose out of their affairs, Seclaidra fully expects to avoid any further unpleasantness with the heroes. There is no need, she reflects. They will all die of old age at some point, and until then, I can wait. I can bide my time. She thinks about Darkhold, where our heroes are seeking sanctuary, and about the countless eons she spent there. She thinks about Fuligin and Felenga, and she frowns as she thinks about the signs of trouble that her agent has seen in Darkhold. Since the heroes released her, the succubus has been to the entryway and back and has seen the devastation. Seclaidra wonders. She believes it was something breaking out of Darkhold, not in to it, the demon queen thinks. She, a ruthless being of almost infinite age, with a heart blacker than pitch and fouler than lowest level of Hell, does not want to contemplate how awful the possibilities are.***DarkholdOur heroes move up the ladder, through a long narrow shaft and up into a wide hallway of staircases flanked by traps, magical and mundane. They see strange, wide caverns of water that inflicts drunkenness. Darkhold is uncomfortably large, miles larger on the inside that it is on the outside. And, although it does not seem as insidiously dangerous and careless of their safety as other trips within it have shown it to be, Darkhold remains a place that they occupy uneasily, at best.Who was the succubus referring to? Was she lying? Our heroes wonder, and wander, until they finally meet the moltarri.Half molten rock, half crystal, the moltarri are taller than any normal man, though smaller than Thrush or Sybele.* They are even friendly- and when our heroes question them, it becomes clear why.The so-called ‘New Gods’ are their friends.Well, not friends, precisely; but allies. And much closer allies than our heroes would expect gods to be to mortals.“Then again,” Baron Lillamere points out wryly, “we’ve met the New Gods, so why not?”“Yet Galador never shows himself,” Gerontius snorts disdainfully.“Galador is a prisoner in Heaven,” Alcar declares. “I tried to get in to see Him years ago, when I was in good standing with Heaven and the other angels. No one gets through to see Him. I don’t even know when the last time He appeared was.”“That might explain a lot,” nods Sybele. “Like how He can be all good and allow all the suffering caused by the Great War of Ethics!”“Or maybe he’s just too busy to see most people,” suggests Wankerman. “He is a god, you know.”“His appointment book is probably full for centuries,” notes Lillamere. ***The moltarri give gifts to our heroes, impressive gifts, and answer what questions they can. They do not know precisely who rampaged through or within Darkhold, but they know enough that it chills our heroes.“Two Angels of the Apocalypse,” the moltarri tell our heroes.“TWO!” erupts Alcar is dismay.“What’s an Angel of the Apocalypse?” Thrush asks.“Felenga,” Alcar replies. “Fuligin.” “Oh,” Thrush says. He looks pensive. After a few moments, he adds, “I guess there are more of them?”“Back in the other world, the other time,” Alcar groans. “The world where Tharizdun ate Nature.”“Humm,” nods Thrush. “Sounds ugly.”“It was the end of the multiverse,” nods Lillamere. “Yeah, we’ve heard the story before, from Lester.”“We have?” Thrush asks. He chuckles. “I kind of blow off a lot of his stories, to be honest.” Jibber Junior laughs at that.“Well, you should pay attention to this one,” Alcar grunts. “The Angels of the Apocalypse were the agents of Tharizdun, which was some kind of bound dark god thing that devoured all of Nature in the old universe. Only Darkhold escaped, and Cydra came about as a- kind of an experiment, I guess. It only got made ‘real’ when Lester, Thinbleton, Hobbes, Stone and all of those guys went back in time and collected a bunch of stuff- look, it was pretty complicated.”“Huh,” says Thrush. “So, I guess we should kill these ‘Angels of the Apocalypse’ then?”Alcar sighs. Chakar interjects, “Wasn’t it a quest of over a century to slay Fuligin? And Felenga took years to defeat, too, did he not?”“Look, it doesn’t matter right now,” Lillamere breaks in. “We have more important irons in the fire, remember? The Arrows of Law?”“Oh yeah!” exclaims Sybele.“We could rest,” the baron goes on, “but our super disguise and secure telepathic bond will only last so long...”“Let’s get them,” Gerontius pipes up enthusiastically.“I agree,” nods Alcar. “The longer we wait, the more time they have to prepare.”“Then where are we striking next?” asks Chakar.The party is silent, contemplating, for a moment. Then Baron Lillamere speaks up again. ”The Tiger Empress.”Next Time: Our heroes strike again!*Both of whom are large sized these days.</blockquote>

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