Factols after the War

[Dendread]

Hey! Does anyone know what happened to Factol Darius of the Sign of One, Factol Ambar of the Believers of the Source, or Factol Nilesia of the Mercykillers after the Faction War? Thanks!

 

[Oryan77]

I still run Pre Faction Wars myself, but I'll bump this up in hopes of one of the other PS guys seeing this & helping you out. I own Faction Wars but I haven't read it yet. It doesn't give that info in there?

 

[Shemeska]

Hey! Does anyone know what happened to Factol Darius of the Sign of One, Factol Ambar of the Believers of the Source, or Factol Nilesia of the Mercykillers after the Faction War? Thanks!

Darius and Ambar = Mazed by Her Serenity

Nilesia = sold into slavery somewhere on the Lower Planes by her husband, Rowan Darkwood. Likely she's still alive, and damn will she be angry if she ever manages to escape whoever happens to have her.

This is all within Faction War btw.

I ended up opening my last campaign with the PCs being blackmailed into recovering 'property' on Acheron. That 'property' ended up being Nilesia, and oooooh the fun I had with her over the course of that campaign. I've also used former Factols L'har, Esmus, and Tollysalmon of the Bleak Cabal over the course of that campaign, and much more heavily in my current one.

And as for Nilesia, this was a fun moment in that campaign, as per my storyhour:


“You have sinned against the planes themselves! You have committed crimes against the multiverse, this city, and me! Release Rowan Darkwood to me from where you shelter him from my justice and I shall make your death quick and painless! You know you must answer to me bitch! Show yourself!” Nilesia’s screaming had begun to turn her voice raw and her mouth was flecked by bits of spittle at their edges, such was the state of frenzied mania she had worked herself into. Her words had begun to rattle even her own troops however, and not only the gathered onlookers.

“If you will not face me I will take out your sentence on those I can find!” Screaming up to the sky, Nilesia drew and brandished a gleaming, red bladed sword covered in glowing symbols of the Red Death. Turning around, her bloodshot eyes focused on a being that moved down the street, adjacent to the pack of her followers, without paying any attention whatsoever to the crowds: a solitary Dabus.

An instant, paralytic hush fell over the crowd in its entirety as Nilesia leapt forwards at the Dabus, opening its stomach with a single slice before spinning in a circle and slicing its head clean from its shoulders. The Dabus dropped to the ground, its head toppling over in a spray of crimson as Nilesia screamed in frustration while the crowd of onlookers began to panic and flee the scene.

The crowd didn’t move far. Before the eyes of the decapitated Dabus had glazed over in death a massive figure appeared in the center of the street, some five yards from Nilesia and the head of her pack of collaborators. Nearly fifteen feet tall, coldly emotionless, unspeaking and serene, with blades sprouting from its face, head and shoulders, Her Serenity, The Lady of Pain gazed down upon the factol. The hem of The Lady’s robe wavered gently in a nonexistent breeze as Nilesia paused and seemed to pale ever so slightly, to waver in her composure for a split second before madness overwhelmed her and galvanized her actions.

“You know it! You yourself came to me and admitted your crimes! Bow your head and I shall serve your sentence! Justice does not sleep!” Nilesia screamed up at the Bladed Queen as the crowd’s eyes grew to the size of plates almost collectively. Then, she charged at The Lady, hurling her sword directly at The Bladed Queen.

Screams rose from the onlookers as a the air was split by the sound of breaking, tortured metal as a shadow leapt from The Lady of Pain to rip Nilesia’s sword apart, peppering the factol and her Mercykiller faithful with white hot fragments of steel. The factol’s eyes quivered and her knees buckled as The Lady’s shadow surged forwards, transfixing the young tiefling like a skewered hunk of meat. There was a scream from Nilesia to shake the very hells as her skin erupted into a gushing flurry of slashes, cuts, and gouges where the Bladed Queen’s shadow fell upon her.

A red, spattering mist broke from her flesh where they shadow fell and she vainly threw out a hand, somehow managing to scream for help from her assembled faithful who could only stare at her, then at The Lady, as their factol began to slowly melt and peal to the bone on left leg, arm and torso, transfixed by The Lady’s razor edged pall. Try as she might to pull herself free, screaming till her voice croaked and broke from the hellish pain as her body was torn to bloody shreds, the shadow lanced forwards even more to fully envelop her. In the space of seconds the screaming ended with the sounds of splitting flesh and bone, and the metallic clatter and sparking of shattering armor.

The throng of Mercykiller faithful stood in shock, none of them yet fully believing that their factol was dead, that the factol was wrong, and that she lay there in a pool of her own blood, a mess of exposed bone and shredded muscle and viscera upon the naked flagstones of The Lady’s Ward. Then The Lady turned to regard them, shifting a few degrees in the air and all hell broke loose.

Nilesia’s troops screamed and broke rank as The Lady’s shadow moved again, lancing through their midst, catching several of them with agonizing results. Limbs were sheared off, flesh was ripped asunder to leave the victims moaning in their own guts upon the ground; but the lancing shadow did not follow them, nor even seen directed at them. The bladed shadow continued on, the Mercykillers’ catharsis only incidental. Like a flowing, ever expanding penumbral river it speared through the scattering mob of innocents and onlookers that had stood behind the members of the Red Death to fall directly upon a single figure that had stood, watching, from the rear of the gathered.

The doomed figure attempted to flee, but try as it might, it could not escape The Lady’s pitiless gaze and it erupted into a spattering torrent of black ichor as it fell to the ground, a fiendish scream passing from their lips as they shuddered, twisted, and convulsed in dying agony. Minutes stretched onwards like an eternity till finally the figure ceased its rictus dance and a wheezing death rattle passed its lips to leave it laying still in a spreading pool of its own sizzling blood.

The Lady hovered for but a brief several seconds before She turned, not bothering to regard the stunned and horrified crowd of assembled citizens who averted their eyes and cowered, lest Her shadow fall upon them as well. She drifted, silently, serene, and utterly unconcerned for some twenty feet down the avenue before She vanished into nothingness.

 

[Grover Cleaveland]

Not to take anything away from the awesomeness of Shemmy's story hour, but I had the idea that Darkwood sold Alisohn Nilesia to Amaggel, the same fiend that he himself was enslaved to for ten years. For her own good. Wasn't he a better person for his struggles? Didn't the ten years of torment allow him to reinvent himself, to become the great hero he is today? The girl needs this.

From this story:

"Would you tell me about your homeworld?" Alisohn asked him dreamily, lying by his side in their marriage bed. "Tell me about… Toril."

The name still felt wrong, but not as wrong as the name of his birth world. "It's where I was happy, for a time," he told her. No messy relationships, he thought.

"You punished the evil there," Alisohn prompted.

"Yes, I did."

"Tell me how you punished them." Alisohn Nilesia had the bloodiest mind for details of anyone Darkwood had known. Well, that wasn't quite true…

That sparked an idea, an idea that had been growing in secret for some time. Now it began to crackle in his head, like flames.

Everyone Rowan Darkwood had ever met had had a destiny, a place that fit them best. He tried to help them find it. His son Rory, unfortunately, was meant to be a knight, and Reuel a priest. The giant Angrim really fit better on the Aesir side of the eternal battle. The cambion Rule-of-Three was better at finding out information than he was acting as a mere errand boy for the Abyssal lords. Dori the gnome was meant to be a duke. A special few made their own fates, though. Merilyn, probably. Tara, disasterously. Young Alisohn had never been anything but a weapon for the abstract principle she worshipped, or, once he figured out how to manipulate her, for him. But perhaps she could become something more.

He knew just the one to teach her.

He sat up in bed. "Put your clothes on," he told his bride. "I'll show you all the punishment you could ever want."

The tiefling girl's eyes gleamed. "I love you," she said.

"Of course you do," he said gruffly. Now, who did he know who could contact the lower planes quickly? Ah, yes. Perfect. It must be fate.



"A baatezu, you say?" asked Rule-of-Three, tasting the word. He was in his githzerai disguise. "A devil, a soldier of Law."

"An independent thinker," Darkwood clarified. "One with potential. An opportunity for you."

"Oh, yes? Maybe? I think not. His mistakes have truncated his rise in the hierarchy. One offering would help him little. Still, a factol…"

"The Factol of the Mercykillers, a thought-guild the baatezu have been fascinated with for centuries. Punishment as a sacred act, as the fulfillment of the multiverse's will. And torment, at least, is an interest they have in common with your side…"

"That was three sentences, at least," Rule-of-Three allowed. "Two periods and one ellipsis. It didn't feel like three different things."

"Here's three things, then: a promising contact among the baatezu; the answer to a great future mystery in Sigil's political circles… and a debt from me."

The cambion raised a single eyebrow three times. "Then you have my will, my action, and my fulfillment of the deal. Where is she waiting? Where is she resting? Where…"

Darkwood cut him off. "She's in the Styx Oarsman, glaring at the slaadi. When you're ready, I have people prepared to take her wherever you go. If you try to harm her in any way but the way we've agreed, you'll suffer the same fate she does, and the baatezu don't think so highly of you."

Rule-of-Three nodded and bowed his usual number of times, and left. Darkwood forced himself to appreciate the irony. Amaggel was going to have a new guest. No regrets, though. Don't look back.

 

[Shemeska]

Not to take anything away from the awesomeness of Shemmy's story hour, but I had the idea that Darkwood sold Alisohn Nilesia to Amaggel, the same fiend that he himself was enslaved to for ten years. For her own good. Wasn't he a better person for his struggles? Didn't the ten years of torment allow him to reinvent himself, to become the great hero he is today? The girl needs this.

Damn that's poetic

On some level I wish that I'd done something like that and given her meaning to what she went through. Or rather, I wish I'd given what she went through meaning to her as opposed to just the benefit to others at her expense.

I'll revisit what happened to her, and why, eventually in the storyhour. And I promise that it'll be in a big way that will not disappoint. I got blank stares and sputtering from my players when it originally went down. Punishment? Oh yes.

 

[Dendread]

Wow, this is super useful and are some fantastic ideas. Thanks for all the help guys!

 

[Shemeska]

My players cannot read this. Be warned.

Spoiler

So what happens to one of those Factols if they manage to escape their mazes? Their faction may be dead, it may have forgotten them, and their world view may be shattered in the process. What if Darius, who believed in many ways that the universe revolved around her, that her own mind created the world around her, what if she is shown a fatal flaw in her beliefs when she is mazed and left behind? What if her ace in the hole, the debt owed to her by none other than Bel, the Lord of the 1st, himself a Signer, were to be either ignored, or perhaps Bel betrayed her and let her rot in her maze. Embittered, betrayed, forgotten, what does that do to a person who is that self centered in their world view, that bloody powerful, who can predict and alter reality on their own, if they finally manage to escape their imprisonment?

I've also had fun as well with Vartus Timlin, former Factol of The Expansionists. My players know this, but it's SH2 spoilers.

Spoiler

The man spent nearly 2000 years in his maze before escaping. And given his beliefs, he's a special case as well. He makes an appearance in my 2nd SH eventually, as always a self made man, but selling his services to several members of the Dark 8 and serving in some capacity as their representative to the Githyanki Lich Queen. But that's what's on the surface of course. Timlin's experience in the mazes was a humbling experience, but his worldview remained intact over those two millennia, and he's just as power hungry as before but he's a bit more cautious and a bit wiser about it now. And that makes him even more dangerous.