To my dearest friend the editor of the Lady’s Sharper Eye,
Secondarily addressed to the public at large, for their general illumination,
I’ve come to the conclusion that anti-genesis as a spell should be made available to every powerful mage with both the ability to cast it and the good sense to know when a demiplane should be ripped from its ethereal moorings and imploded like some living, animate piñata. I’ve found such a demiplane, and I’m going to openly suggest that it first be mocked, then abused, then put down, carved up, and devoured (much like whores in Plague-Mort who don’t perform well for cambion clients).
Union… the name rolls off my tongue like a bit of larvae that still hasn’t gotten the notion that it’s dead yet. Now, I don’t know if any of the cutters reading my words will have necessarily heard of this particular place, but a bit of sordid little background for the (blessedly in this case) unenlightened.
I first heard about the demiplane of Union eighty-seven years ago as the butt of a joke by a few members of the Planar Trade Consortium, and I’ve still heard the same joke bandied around. It’s rather nice, but it’s a bit too crude to grace these pages. The whole place was grown up by Mercanes, though I have good reason to believe that they didn’t actually create it themselves, but simply used a pre-existent demiplane and did a fancy little job of housekeeping and interior decorating. Not that they have taste mind you. And we all know how mercanes are, though it’s hard to get to know them when you invite them to lunch and they step unknowingly into Sigil and then proceed to scream like idiots for the next thirty minutes before you yourself stop laughing at them and kick them through a portal.
They are ever so amusing…
But yes the demiplane itself and why I had the unfortunate experience of traveling there. Suffice to say I have people in debt to me, and people in my employ all over the sodding planes; that much should be obvious. I am a respected businesswoman after all.
It all started when I gated into the sodding place in the middle of the High Quarter. Boring and entirely filled with squealing mercanes. Their pretenses of having warded the place from intrusion are laughable, and if that’s what they call sorcery, I should suggest to a few ears and ears that listen to them directly, that the place is ripe for conquest by this or that lower planar power. If so, I get a cut.
One quick teleport into the so-called Magic Quarter later, I was browsing some of what passes for magic items and enchanted baubles. The selection wasn’t bad per se, but it was atrociously overpriced. A chat with a few wizardly bloods, and a mindrape spell on a victim/customer of theirs later, it’s entirely obvious that maybe a third of the wizards in the quarter are the only people I can respect in Union. It’s a scam and they know it and they perpetuate it. While not bad, they sell moderate magic at over inflated prices to berks fresh from the prime who believe Union to be a pinnacle of Planar Society.
I won’t grant the mercanes the genius of such an act, but some bloods have taken advantage of a good situation, and good for them. Union is nothing more than a sanitized little playground for rich clueless from the prime who don’t know that they’re being gutted and mocked even as they sit and enjoy themselves in their arrogant ignorance. Before I left in disgust at them, I did have some fun at their expense.
Leaving the Magic Quarter with a few things that can be vaguely called ‘purchases’, I then wheeled through the Market Quarter (where I collected cuts from a few people selling things on my behalf in the city) and then to the Commerce Quarter to do much the same.
Suplindh… some warped gargoyle of… half-loth heritage… selling magic items, always smiling, always talking to his customers and getting to know them… Is the multiverse mocking me? It’s like Union has its very own messed up version of that teal and gold wrapped smiling little Gehennan bastard!
Or…
Or HE’S BREEDING!!!!! ARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!
Pardon me, it’s not a pleasant thought on a number of different layers.
That unpleasantness aside, let’s talk about Union’s guards. The Sentinels… they’re a joke right? They march around, and like broken little clockwork automatons they stop and ramble on about their deeds and triumphs over ‘evil’ on the prime material on whatever backwater world they managed to escape. Their captains seem incapable of speaking without a giant smile, posed with their hands on their hips, speaking of themselves in the third person. And then they tried to first levy a fee for my not having a ‘trade writ’. I laughed at their joke and walked away… and one of them touched me… actually touched me!
I turned and spit in his face! The subsequent events I’m sure are on record with the Sentinels offices in the Military Quarter, and I’m sure that once they pay for a well-trained transmuter or powerful cleric, they can make their squadron of toy soldiers distinct individuals again.
Some time, and a few more ‘incidents’ later I arrived at Chindra’s Palace of Delights in the Perfumed Quarter for a nice pleasant chat with Oslan Turvae, a good friend of mine. The palace is really a cheap knockoff of the Fortune’s Wheel, just on a lower budget and without the same quality of clientele. Of course, I also had to deal with the insufferable buffoons who serve as the Union’s unwitting jink spigot.
Just a sample of the fumbling questions I had to endure over the course of a half hour from those idiots:
“So what sort of devil are you?”
“Just what kingdom are you the King of?”
“I know a cleric in the Temple Quarter who can cure your lycanthropy.”
“I’m the richest person in Union! Jeremo the Natterer? No I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of him. Why?”
“Have you met Suplindh? Are you related to him? Do you know his father?”
“The Gray Waste? Never heard of it, is that part of Hell? Or is it near the Happy Hunting Grounds?”
“What’s that vine stuff on your head? Are you a druid? Why are you uncoiling a stand of it like… ack!”
Only by severe effort did I not simply start tossing spells around. Bless Oslan, he managed to calm me down before I strangled a few berks with too much money and neither good sense or any knowledge of the planes. It’s a wretched combination, and I have no desire to subject myself to it ever again. Of course my subsequent actions have made me more or less persona non grata within the demiplane itself, but I have no care to mention the details of that herein.
So in closing, take my advice and avoid the misery of visiting the place. (Though if you’re going, I might like to accompany you simply to experience the misery, it’s to me like chocolate to a mortal…) And I’m declaring it open season on the Mercane of Union, and on clueless with too much jink, peel them for all they’re worth on my behalf.
Her Fiendish Majesty, the King of the Crosstrade,
Shemeska the Marauder
P.S. And, in case you read this, Supreme Councilor Revenia, you can have the gemstone holding the juiciest portions of your Supreme Commander Dilella back for free. But you have to come visit me. In person. In Sigil. Divine all you like, I wasn’t involved. Cheers!
