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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MarauderX" data-source="post: 1867921" data-attributes="member: 9990">Round 2.4, MarauderX vs. PiratecatA Walk in the ParkThis was the first time Marak had been out of the religious district.  He had familiarized himself with the layout of the city of Kargam by talking to the porters and servants at the temples.  With the long avenues and the ring-like cross streets it wasn’t a difficult plan to commit to learn.  The causeway to the merchant district turned out to be a sight worth seeing in itself.  At one point he passed through a market where many of the stalls were still open and found himself pausing in front of a cloth vendor.  The lengths of silk and cotton and brocade sparkling with gold thread were displayed to advantage in the light from dozens of brass lamps.  Next to the reams of expensive cloth was a frazzled woman selling <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17354" target="_blank">simple wood and stone carvings, and Marak was fascinated with the plain toys</a>.  He found himself wanting to buy them for his master, though for a foreign servant to give a gift to his new lord was unthinkable.  But then, he wasn’t servant anymore.  You don’t have the money, anyway, he reminded himself, and kept moving.  Walking down the broad paved length in the cool damp night air, Marak passed between rows of stone giants, each more than fifteen feet tall.  In the light of the torches mounted between them, he could see some were meant to look benevolent while others were grotesque two-headed monsters.  In another place he would have thought they were meant to represent gods, but here, there was no telling.  If he remembered, he would ask Shamuss when he returned.  Marak received the package with a nod from a well dressed servant at the noble’s stoop.  It was large, flat and heavy even in his brawny arms, and Marak had to shift it around often before getting a cramp.  The walk back to the temple was much faster, as he headed straight there with his load.  * * * * *Marak handed Shamuss a cup of tea and sat down as the young sage paced.  <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17350" target="_blank">Shamuss sipped carefully at his tea and felt the liquid scorch his tongue.  </a> The shades had been drawn at the sage’s request, as he said it helped when he was scrying the ether between worlds.  Marak knew of the yearly Conhenci rite performed by a cult of Lorleena, an ancient demigoddess of beauty and riches.  They sought to bring her back to the material world, and if she were to return, according to Shamuss and the others, it would be a perversion so terrible it would destroy the whole city.  Shamuss opened the oval package and strained to angle the mirror towards him.  Marak lifted it into his lap and the sage stared at himself for a moment.  <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17351" target="_blank">With a few arcane words his image disappeared and the grey fog beyond rolled and slid until a view of the ethereal landscape could be discerned.</a>  Marak still didn’t know what he was looking at.  Shamuss sighed impatiently.  “If the heathens get far enough along in their ritual, we will see the first signs of Lorleena in the ethereal plane.  That’s where I come in, to sever the demigoddess’s link and close her gate into the ethereal.” he said.  Marak was puzzled.  “If it’s in the ethereal, why should it matter?  It can’t hurt us from there can it?” he asked.  Shamuss sighed and sat next to him.  “It’s like crossing a river.  The first step to bring Lorleena to our world is to pull her into the ethereal plane, a riverboat of sorts, and then use that boat to ferry her across to our world.”“Ah, and when that happens we’re all dead.  Why do they want to do it?” Marak said.Shamuss paused and replied, “This cult thinks that if they perform certain rituals at precise times they can remake the demigoddess into her former self and live fat and blissful the rest of their days.  And some of them probably think they can use her to smite their foes or outwit rivals or bolster their political standing, or use her in other selfish ways.”  He sat back further and closed his eyes, his fingers wrapped around the warm cup.  “So the others are probably there already, disrupting the ceremony, and with Jessa leading them they won’t have any trouble.  You said there were only a dozen of these cultists, right?”“Yes.” said Shamuss as he relaxed.“Ah,” Marak said, “and should the others fail to stop the ritual you are waiting to stop them with magic.  And they have no idea that you’ll be there to stop them, magically that is, and send Lorleena back to her dimension.  And we all know you’re the best at this plane stuff, right?”“Yes.” said Shamuss as he sank into the comfortable chair.“Ah.” Marak said one last time then waited for the sage to drift into sleep before slipping the nearly full mug from his hands.  He shook his head, as he had forgotten to ask about the stone statues.  * * * * *Shamuss woke in the late morning.  The drawn shades diffused the light, and the dim room was empty.  <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17351" target="_blank">Marak must have hung the mirror on the opposite wall and it still showed the dull ethereal scenery in the frame</a>.  Shamuss cursed himself for falling asleep on one of the more important nights of the year and ardently hoped that Jessa had succeeded in stopping the Conhenci ritual.  The young sage crossed the floor and used the magic oval portal to glide through the ethereal, looking for stretches and tears in the seamless grey fabric, signs that the ritual had begun.  So far nothing, at least not near the city.  He would take a moment later and scan as much as he could, but he was weak with hunger and scrounged food from the kitchen onto a clay plate.An hour later Shamuss perused the ethereal plane via the mirror.  His mind idly wondered where Marak had gone.  Perhaps Jessa had succeeded already and they were off celebrating at Hook’s Tavern, he thought.  It figures they would leave me behind.Thoughts of Jessa and Marak together bounced in his head as he gazed into the magic mirror.  That was when Shamuss noticed that the mirror never showed any stretches or tears into or out of the ethereal, not even to the prime material plane.  Surely there had to have been someone or something that had pierced through to the ethereal recently, and there had to be signs of it somewhere.  The sage zoomed to view near a spot favored by the Magisters’ Guild and saw that there were no traces where there was normally heavy traffic.  He had just assumed the mirror had worked properly, especially for the price he paid, and he hadn’t bothered to look closely until now.  Alarmed, Shamuss tossed it aside and paused to grab his small bag before darting out the door into the bright noon sun.  * * * * *Shamuss needed to find Marak to see if Jessa had succeeded.  They had been tricked, and the large foreigner was likely at the temple waiting patiently like a lap dog for Jessa to return.  Shamuss had known the man for over a decade, half of his young life.  As a servant, Marak rarely left the house, and when he did most of the time he could be found praying to Pelor at the temple.  Shamuss ran there, hoping to find him as well as use the holy water as a weak scrying device.  The sage burst into the temple, franticly looking about for Marak, but gave up quickly.  He took a golden bowl and filled it with holy water before retreating to a private antechamber.  Once he had the bowl in his lap it took him longer than he liked to clear his thoughts and peer down calmly into the water.  In the subtle ripples of the holy water he saw the steps to the cult of Lorleena, and traced his way through the front doors.  Beyond was a sight that pushed the air from his lungs and he nearly lost the vision.  Inside was a bloodbath.  The bodies of the thirty or so men that went with Jessa were strewn about, slaughtered in a one-sided battle.  Shamuss bent closer to the surface of the water and examined their wounds.  They had been trapped inside the large foyer and cut to ribbons with wicked long spears from moveable side panels, something he hadn’t seen in his magical spying.  His incompetence had gotten them killed.  He looked around for Jessa’s body, but found only a score of the others.  Tears from his cheeks fell into the water, and Shamuss watched the image begin to fade.  He shouted and threw the bowl across the small antechamber where it broke into pieces.  The water soaked the wall and he saw the last of the bloody picture fade from it.  * * * * *Shamuss knew he didn’t have time to venture to the Magisters’ Guild to gain access to a crystal ball.  He would have to make the jump into the ethereal and investigate himself.  The young sage ran to Hook’s Tavern and rented a private room, paying for two nights in advance and demanded privacy.  He would have it, as Shamuss was a generous customer, and they were surprised that not even Marak was to disrupt him.  He sat on his folded legs and gathered his strength for the upcoming journey, as it was always rough on his health.  Shamuss concentrated and pierced through the barrier of the material plane and found the ethereal on the other side.  He felt the usual sensation of his skin being stripped from his flesh as he pushed his consciousness into the adjacent plane.  Despite all of his planar travels, Shamuss never grew comfortable with the many feelings of jumping from one to the next.  The ethereal plane had never been a safe place to Shamuss, as his first ghostly encounter had nearly killed him.  It never seemed a place that anything beyond monsters and ghosts could call home, and there was precious little on the plane for anyone to be territorial.  He likened the plane to an ocean, with the shore being closest to the material plane.  He had only wandered in the shallow ethereal and had never attempted delving into darker depths.  Jaunting there had always been unnecessary after he had learned how to use magical devices effectively, and now he wished he had spent more time becoming comfortable with ‘walking the fog.’  Shamuss moved slowly through the ether.  First he climbed upward to gain his bearings then walked in the direction of the cult of Lorleena, keeping his eyes open through the blur for any signs of the Conhenci rite.  He crossed through the ether, staying in the shallowness of the plane near the material world to keep his bearings.  Shamuss stopped in front of the familiar doors, behind which he knew of the death.  He hoped none of the deceased had crossed to into the undead world as ghosts to have their revenge on him now.  He glided through the doors and into the dark foyer.  Seeing nothing he continued onward to the main ritual chamber.  The ethereal winds whipped around him; the sage knew the Conhenci rite would have started by now, and he walked swiftly down the narrow corridors.  He paused at one of the columns, fuzzy in the ethereal realm, and peered beyond it to the main chamber.  Shamuss saw a circle of cultists surrounded by candles, not in the material world, but like him, in the ethereal.  He blinked to make sure that it wasn’t a trick, that the fog of ether hadn’t clouded his spectacles or his mind.  Sure enough it was real, and the ritual was happening.  He watched the rite for a while as each of the twelve members added a piece to the spell and stepped back to rejoin the circle.  As his mind weighed the options before him, Marak rested a heavy hand on the sage’s shoulder.  Shamuss turned with a start.    “Marak!” he whispered, “what are you doing here?”  Shamuss could hardly believe his servant was also in the ethereal, though he seemed just as uncomfortable.  The sage was reminded that he needed to keep his guard up as he wouldn’t hear the footsteps of anyone approaching.  Marak’s face was stoic.  “I’ve just come to make sure you do what you’re supposed to.”Shamuss nodded and adjusted his glasses.  “Good.  Well, give me a minute to come up something.”  Both of them watched and waited.  Soon they saw the fabric of the plane stretch, and on the brink of tearing.  Shamuss said, “Let’s try a distraction.  If you can disrupt them by dragging one of the heathens from the circle I’ll stop the rest of the rite with magic.  It won’t take me long, so we have a pretty good chance.”“No, we don’t.” Marak replied.Shamuss squinted, “Sure we do, don’t be so…”  He stopped in mid sentence when he looked at Marak.  The large man’s face spoke volumes, but Shamuss stammered, not understanding.  “We have to stop those heathens!” Shamass said.“I am a foreigner, a servant to you for a long time, and I have listened.  I have understood what you mean by heathen.  Am I not a heathen too?” Marak replied.Shamuss looked up at the large man.  In his mind he knew that Marak was right, that by his own definition Marak was a heathen, and would always draw suspicion from him.  He focused on the larger picture once again.  He had to convince the jaded man that this was no time to argue.  “I… We… But the rite… we have to stop it!”Marak was stern.  “No.  I am no longer a servant to you.  I have a new master now, and she knows I am not a heathen.  I don’t want to see you hurt.  Please be still and don’t fight.”  Shamuss sprinted toward the ceremony, moving through the ether.  He could sense Marak chasing him, moving just as slowly, but he had to try.  His enchantment began but was never completed as Marak tackled him from behind, and they both spun through the fog.  With his legs wrapped around Shamuss, Marak landed three blows to knock the sage unconscious.  * * * * *Shamuss woke on his side, his hands bound in the straps from Marak’s sandals.  The taste of blood was fresh in his mouth.  In front of him Jessa was also bound with leather straps and had had most of her belongings removed.  Her auburn hair was stained with blood and her eyes were closed peacefully.  She was still so beautiful to him.  He heard the voices of the Conhenci rite continuing behind him, and he struggled to move in the ether to see how far along they had come.  He was horrified.  <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17353" target="_blank">The great head of the demigoddess had pushed through the tear in the ethereal from another plane.  It looked strangely like a rabbit, ghostly, and with gnashing jaws and terrible spines along its back. </a>  Shamuss knew that the form it took in the ethereal plane would be pleasant compared with how it might appear in the material world, and he wrestled his imagination to stay calm.  The Conhenci rite was gathering speed, the chants had become feverish, and time was running out.   Shamuss saw his bag in Marak’s large hands.  “Did you look through all of my things just like you did hers?  There’s something inside that you and your new mistress might want to see.”“Ah.” Marak responded, but didn’t move.  “You see, like Jessa, I always have a back-up plan.  It will destroy the beast of Lorleena in the ethereal before she can get to our world.  The only problem with the plan is that it will obliterate anything in the ethereal, including us.”  Shamuss was bluffing, but he did know there was one last back-up plan.  Marak swiveled to look at the sage.  “So you would kill us all instead of letting the rite be completed?”“If it’s completed we’ll all be doomed anyway, so we may as well die protecting the city.” Shamuss said.  Marak eased his hand into the bag.  He pulled out several scrolls and Shamuss’s journal, and then gazed down at what he found in his hand.  He slowly let the bag slip from his hands and Shamuss could see that <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17354" target="_blank">he was holding the three figurines Marak had seen last night</a>.  Marak and Shamuss looked each other in the eye.  Shamuss spoke each word slowly, deliberately.  “I couldn’t help but spy on you last night Marak.  I know how limited your experience is with the city, and I wanted to make sure that you would arrive back safely.  I saw you looking at them, and decided to get them for you.  I didn’t mean that you are a heathen, Marak, I know that I am confusing sometimes.  I called them heathens because of their cruelty and selfishness.  You are different than that, you care about us, about the welfare of others.  I know how much I take you for granted sometimes.  I wanted to thank you for all of the things you do for me.  I wanted to give them to you after we had stopped the rite.”A rush of emotion overcame the big man, tears streaming down his cheeks.  He clenched the figures and pressed them to his chest and wept.  He glanced between the unmoving Jessa, Shamuss, and the ongoing rite.  He was ashamed of his choice now, having been coerced into undermining Shamuss.  He didn’t want Jessa to know, and he wanted to run far away to another land to escape his errors once more.  Not this time, thought the strong man.  This time I will pay for my mistakes, with my blood if need be.  Marak loosened his shoe straps and refused to look Shamuss in the eye.  Shamuss said “Look, don’t worry about Jessa or me or anything else right now.  We have got to stop them.”Marak snuffled several more times before he looked up. “Ah,” he said.“Remember the time when Jessa kissed you long enough for me to sneak by the high priest at the temple?  Let’s try that again.”“You want me to kiss her?  Now?  She’s not even awake, and somehow I think that’s wrong.” Marak replied, blinking.“Yes, of course it’s wrong.  But what I want you to do is kiss the head priestess there.” Shamuss said.  Marak gazed at his new master.  “Ah, alright.  Will that break up the ritual?”“No, but it’s a start.  I will do the rest.”Marak jumped into motion.  His legs moving as fast as they could, he was upon her in the same stealthy fashion he had used to surprise Shamuss.  He gripped the priestess by the waist and planted his lips solidly on hers.  She screamed and the other priests lowered their chanting to glance at her while maintaining their concentration.  Still Marak clasped her to him, forcing their faces together.  Jessa stirred and felt her head pound with pain.  Her eyes focused first on Marak and the cultist, then on the huge rabbit head with white spines.  She thought she must be dreaming and let the pain overtake her once more.  The priestess clawed at Marak’s eyes and spun away from him.  He still clung to her silken robes and tried to reel her back to him.  With enough space between them she cast a spell, and he was slammed in the face with a heavy force that sent him sailing in the direction of Lorleena’s head.  The priestess was in tow, as Marak had refused to let go, and they tumbled recklessly toward the demigoddess’s open maw.  She struck the nose of the titanic creature, her body being the size of one of its nostrils.  Marak let go of her and glanced along one of the creatures lips, struggled for a hand hold.  His hand found one of the whiskers and he clasped it with both hands.  Marak watched horrified as she, only the second woman he had ever kissed, screamed desperately.  He saw a tongue wrap over her head and pull her down into its mouth, and now only the chanting of the other cultists could be heard.  Shamuss hovered above the gigantic head of the demigoddess and focused on magic to seal the tear in the ethereal plane.  Marak’s distraction had given him a foothold against the cultists, but he would have a tough fight as they redoubled their efforts.  He worked at pushing the humongous head back through the void and was met with some success.  Several of the other priests broke their concentration to target him with hexes.  Shamuss grinned when their spells failed to do what the casters hoped, as he knew the rules for magic were different in the ethereal.  With their hold weakened, the sage pulled the tear closed.  Marak had closed his eyes and waited for the end to come and held onto the large whisker with all his might.  He felt something pulling at him, trying to yank him loose, but he held fast.  Eventually something gave, and he was thrown wildly backward.  <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17352" target="_blank">He opened his eyes and saw the horrid whisker lying next to him on the ethereal ground.</a>  Marak looked up and saw Shamuss giggling with glee as the other cultists fled back into the material world.  * * * * *Jessa awoke to an empty room.  A fire was burning in the fireplace and she recognized the hooked pokers.  She was in a private room of Hook’s Tavern.  She recounted the ambush and her strange, but realistic, dreams.  It all seemed a fog to her now, and she pivoted to put her feet on the floor.  “Glad to see you’re finally awake,” said Shamuss, “and I’ll bet you’re hungry too.”“Yes,” she said, “I had the strangest dreams.”“I’m sure you did.  We had a pretty tough time without you, didn’t we?” Shamuss asked as Marak entered.“You bet.” Marak answered.  Jessa saw the scabs around his eyes from where the priestess had scratched him and gasped.  “But… it was a dream…I was so sure…”Marak smiled.  “Nah, it was real.  Hey boss, you want some tea?”“You know I don’t, and stop calling me boss.  You are a free man and have earned my respect as an equal, so do us both a favor.” Shamuss said.  “Ah, what’s the matter, are you afraid I’m going to try to drug you again?” Marak chided.  Jessa asked, “What’s he talking about?”“Nothing,” replied both simultaneously.  After finishing his stew Marak pointed out the window, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17354" target="_blank">beyond the figures on the windowsill.</a>  “So I never got to ask you, what are those stone statues down the street for?  I noticed them on my way to the nobles’ district.”  Shamuss looked to Jessa for the answer.  “That’s the final back-up plan.” Jessa answered.  “I’m glad it didn’t come to that.”</blockquote>

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