Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
Shemeska
Adventurer
Hah ! I call shotgun
That is a fantastic update.
Never expected they would actually make a deal with those duergar brewers. Smooth, Clueless, pretty darn smooth
*chuckle*
I'm glad you enjoyed it. Most of the next update is already written (in A'kin's shop).
This whole string of events were a giant case of 'I'm going to throw horrible things at the PCs with no planned out resolution and see how they handle it'. I expected more violence than what ended up happening, but they were pretty smooth about it all.
Analysis and Rampant Speculation (Improbably Spoilers)
The last time I tried this, I sent Shemmy a private message, which was wise, because most of my theories are wrong. The best thing about the planescape story hour, in my opinion, is that most of Shemmy's short fiction indirectly connects to the over-arching story. Being obsessive, I found and read all of it.
Here is my understanding of the Baernaloths. Shemmy, on the off chance any of this is correct, my identity guesses have been obscured.
________________________
The Baernaloths repeatedly create the Blood War, which they refer to as the Great Experiment. The war is an experiment about Evil and a lure to corrupt Good. The Baernaloths have repeatedly created the evil planes, Baator, Gehenna and the Waste, in order to spawn the Tanari (Lawful Evil), the Baatezu (Chaotic Evil), and the Yugoloths (Neutral Evil). The Tanari and the Baatezu are byproducts from the creation and purification of the Yugoloths.
Shemmy's early "Flesh Sculptor" Baernaloth cycle story and his short Baernaloth story "Evil Seeps Through" demonstrate these themes. Methikus Sar Telmuril, the most direct and terrifying Baernaloth, demonstrates contempt for Tanari, referring to them as side-effects and weapons, before fatally evolving them into mezzoloths. Other Baernaloths use the same language to refer to Baatezu and Tanari throughout the Story Hour and the Baernaloth Cycle.
This fully explains the Rule of Three, One of Three, One from Three, the one being the Yugoloths. The Yugoloths are the product and purpose of the Blood War, and the only one of the three evil races the Baernaloths hold in interest, rather than contempt. One of three races, created from three races. In the Baernaloth creation myth, a leader-Baernaloth, most likely Chorazin or Lazarius ibn Shartalan, possessed Carpocrates of Zrintor. He/she directed Carpocrates to create the Tanari and the Baatezu to bleed law and chaos from the Yugoloths, and then transformed Carpocrates into the first Ultroloth, a completely emotionless evil being. Carpocrates is now the General of Gehenna, the primary recipient of guidance from the Demented.
Returning to "Evil Seeps Through" we see a group of Baern in the Far Realm expressing scorn for various deities, and re-creating the evil planes, from which their creations will spawn. This introduces another Baernaloth theme, contempt for deities. The Baernaloths can be harmed by extremely powerful good beings like Celestials and Solars, as demonstrated in the Baernaloth Cycle Story "The Lie Weaver." The Maeldur, a Solar, is clearly capable of killing Baernaloth Daru Ib Samiq, the Lie Weaver, though he is ultimately corrupted and fails to do so. In order to survive while managing the Blood War, the Baernaloths work exclusively through proxies.
Thus, a Baernaloth who draws attention to him/herself, especially through public elevation to deity status, is in violation of the rule of three and subject to imprisonment or exile from the other 'lots. This explains why the Demented constantly admonish the Flesh Sculptor, who displays his power openly, and hate Apomps, the Triple-Aspected, who has elevated himself to deity status and unified Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic evil within himself and within the Ghereleths / Demodands. Any unification of Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic evil, like the seal at the bottom of the Ghoresh chasm, is antagonistic to Baernaloths in general and the Demented in particular. as is the attention associated with being a deity or dealing with deities. The 'lots HATE deities, like their favored children, and enjoy killing them more than they enjoy performing other evil deeds.
Baernaloths also punish other Baernaloths, such as Gormisekt Ap Portent, imprisoned beneath Portent. Though Gormisekt's crime is not specified, he/she recognizes Vorkannis the Ebon as [sblock]a formerly imprisoned baernaloth[/sblock], confirming what has been implied throughout the story hour. Vorkannis uses Baernaloth language and expressions (what is it you want), radiates evil, drinks from the Styx, vocalizes contempt for the Atraloths (night hag corruptions of Yugoloths) and kills several of them. Telluria ibn Shartalan reciprocates familiarity and hostility toward Vorkannis during the Ebon's seizure of Khin Oin.
Around this incident, and in a discussion of things they did not predict, the Demented mention [sblock]"The Ghoresh Incident"[/sblock] as something contrary to their purpose. The fate of [sblock]Ghoresh[/sblock] is deliberately avoided. In post 1507 from the original story hour, it is revealed that Chorazin, Lazarius, Tellura and Ghoresh formed the four furnaces of Gehenna from the bodies of living titans,[sblock]meaning Ghoresh was present for the Baernaloth creation myth, but is not a member of the Demented and no longer among the Baernaloths who observe the Rule of Three.[/sblock]
[sblock]Ghoresh / Vorkannis'[/sblock] opposition to the Demented and the Rule of Three is strengthened by his relationship with the Ashsinger, a yet-unknown Void God who possesses Cilret Leobtav and communes with Apomps. All three of these beings have documented feuds with the Demented, and Apomps clearly falls in the category of evil unified (lawful, neutral and chaotic), rather than divided. The fact that they all three commune with each other further illustrates the divide between the hierarchical Baernaloths who manage the Blood War and rouge Baernaloths who seek power / actively participate in it.
In conclusion, the real mystery of this story is the identify of the Ashsinger, who drives Cilret Leobtav to commit some truly horrible deeds and to murder at least one living deity. The Ashsinger is possibly Tharizdun, who was corrupted by Larsdana Ap Neut at the behest/possession of Chorazin ibn Shartalan in this unnamed story, tens of thousands of years before the events of the Story Hour. The Ashsinger could really be anything, but is from beyond the current reality, it created the Frozen Vale, it communes with the most antagonistic and independent Baernaloths, and it no longer obeys the Demented. The Ashsinger is a truly frightening and apocalyptic idea, a villain's nightmare.
Anyway, all credit to Shemmy. Accurate or not, it would not be interesting to do this sort of literary analysis without such a broad, far-reaching, varied body of writing to read. This is only my poor attempt to see the boundaries of what he has been doing. Shemmy, you should really hire an editor, make this into an anthology, and publish it. Entirely possible that you already have, and I just missed that boat.
Sabre
The last time I tried this, I sent Shemmy a private message, which was wise, because most of my theories are wrong. The best thing about the planescape story hour, in my opinion, is that most of Shemmy's short fiction indirectly connects to the over-arching story. Being obsessive, I found and read all of it.
Here is my understanding of the Baernaloths. Shemmy, on the off chance any of this is correct, my identity guesses have been obscured.
________________________
The Baernaloths repeatedly create the Blood War, which they refer to as the Great Experiment. The war is an experiment about Evil and a lure to corrupt Good. The Baernaloths have repeatedly created the evil planes, Baator, Gehenna and the Waste, in order to spawn the Tanari (Lawful Evil), the Baatezu (Chaotic Evil), and the Yugoloths (Neutral Evil). The Tanari and the Baatezu are byproducts from the creation and purification of the Yugoloths.
Shemmy's early "Flesh Sculptor" Baernaloth cycle story and his short Baernaloth story "Evil Seeps Through" demonstrate these themes. Methikus Sar Telmuril, the most direct and terrifying Baernaloth, demonstrates contempt for Tanari, referring to them as side-effects and weapons, before fatally evolving them into mezzoloths. Other Baernaloths use the same language to refer to Baatezu and Tanari throughout the Story Hour and the Baernaloth Cycle.
This fully explains the Rule of Three, One of Three, One from Three, the one being the Yugoloths. The Yugoloths are the product and purpose of the Blood War, and the only one of the three evil races the Baernaloths hold in interest, rather than contempt. One of three races, created from three races. In the Baernaloth creation myth, a leader-Baernaloth, most likely Chorazin or Lazarius ibn Shartalan, possessed Carpocrates of Zrintor. He/she directed Carpocrates to create the Tanari and the Baatezu to bleed law and chaos from the Yugoloths, and then transformed Carpocrates into the first Ultroloth, a completely emotionless evil being. Carpocrates is now the General of Gehenna, the primary recipient of guidance from the Demented.
Returning to "Evil Seeps Through" we see a group of Baern in the Far Realm expressing scorn for various deities, and re-creating the evil planes, from which their creations will spawn. This introduces another Baernaloth theme, contempt for deities. The Baernaloths can be harmed by extremely powerful good beings like Celestials and Solars, as demonstrated in the Baernaloth Cycle Story "The Lie Weaver." The Maeldur, a Solar, is clearly capable of killing Baernaloth Daru Ib Samiq, the Lie Weaver, though he is ultimately corrupted and fails to do so. In order to survive while managing the Blood War, the Baernaloths work exclusively through proxies.
Thus, a Baernaloth who draws attention to him/herself, especially through public elevation to deity status, is in violation of the rule of three and subject to imprisonment or exile from the other 'lots. This explains why the Demented constantly admonish the Flesh Sculptor, who displays his power openly, and hate Apomps, the Triple-Aspected, who has elevated himself to deity status and unified Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic evil within himself and within the Ghereleths / Demodands. Any unification of Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic evil, like the seal at the bottom of the Ghoresh chasm, is antagonistic to Baernaloths in general and the Demented in particular. as is the attention associated with being a deity or dealing with deities. The 'lots HATE deities, like their favored children, and enjoy killing them more than they enjoy performing other evil deeds.
Baernaloths also punish other Baernaloths, such as Gormisekt Ap Portent, imprisoned beneath Portent. Though Gormisekt's crime is not specified, he/she recognizes Vorkannis the Ebon as [sblock]a formerly imprisoned baernaloth[/sblock], confirming what has been implied throughout the story hour. Vorkannis uses Baernaloth language and expressions (what is it you want), radiates evil, drinks from the Styx, vocalizes contempt for the Atraloths (night hag corruptions of Yugoloths) and kills several of them. Telluria ibn Shartalan reciprocates familiarity and hostility toward Vorkannis during the Ebon's seizure of Khin Oin.
Around this incident, and in a discussion of things they did not predict, the Demented mention [sblock]"The Ghoresh Incident"[/sblock] as something contrary to their purpose. The fate of [sblock]Ghoresh[/sblock] is deliberately avoided. In post 1507 from the original story hour, it is revealed that Chorazin, Lazarius, Tellura and Ghoresh formed the four furnaces of Gehenna from the bodies of living titans,[sblock]meaning Ghoresh was present for the Baernaloth creation myth, but is not a member of the Demented and no longer among the Baernaloths who observe the Rule of Three.[/sblock]
[sblock]Ghoresh / Vorkannis'[/sblock] opposition to the Demented and the Rule of Three is strengthened by his relationship with the Ashsinger, a yet-unknown Void God who possesses Cilret Leobtav and communes with Apomps. All three of these beings have documented feuds with the Demented, and Apomps clearly falls in the category of evil unified (lawful, neutral and chaotic), rather than divided. The fact that they all three commune with each other further illustrates the divide between the hierarchical Baernaloths who manage the Blood War and rouge Baernaloths who seek power / actively participate in it.
In conclusion, the real mystery of this story is the identify of the Ashsinger, who drives Cilret Leobtav to commit some truly horrible deeds and to murder at least one living deity. The Ashsinger is possibly Tharizdun, who was corrupted by Larsdana Ap Neut at the behest/possession of Chorazin ibn Shartalan in this unnamed story, tens of thousands of years before the events of the Story Hour. The Ashsinger could really be anything, but is from beyond the current reality, it created the Frozen Vale, it communes with the most antagonistic and independent Baernaloths, and it no longer obeys the Demented. The Ashsinger is a truly frightening and apocalyptic idea, a villain's nightmare.
Anyway, all credit to Shemmy. Accurate or not, it would not be interesting to do this sort of literary analysis without such a broad, far-reaching, varied body of writing to read. This is only my poor attempt to see the boundaries of what he has been doing. Shemmy, you should really hire an editor, make this into an anthology, and publish it. Entirely possible that you already have, and I just missed that boat.
Sabre
Last edited:
Shemeska
Adventurer
Before I respond to that seriously awesome post, let me say that the guesses aren't hidden if you're reading with a theme using a black background and white text.
I'll happily confirm or deny any of your claims by PM if you'd like, otherwise I won't in public (because I absolutely adore speculation as things continue to progress!).
A couple of things to consider however:
I wrote both 'Evil Seeps Through' and Evil Still Seeps Through as an in-world what-if response to 3e Forgotten Realms removal of itself from the Great Wheel (which I considered a mistake on a number of levels). I would not consider either of those two stories to be set within the same continuity as the storyhour and most of my fiction. Likewise the unnamed story with Larsdana Ap Neut speaking with a baernaloth and then to Tharizdun is also another what-if story written in the prelude to 4th Edition when it was still up in the air as to what would be done with the 'loths in that edition. Clearly I would have gone a different direction there. The characters used in those three stories act fully in accordance with how they're characterized in the Storyhour's continuity of course, so take that as you will (we've only seen Larsdana in hindsight thus far in the Storyhour proper - but she's one of my favorites among the fiends I'll admit, and I look forward to showing her off more in the future in hindsight or otherwise, whatever the case might be).
Additionally, just a point of clarification regarding the pre-history discussed in post 1507. Keep this line in mind: "But for all the apocryphal tales, the exact version was of little meaning, irrelevant really, within the confines of a patch of frozen ground obscured upon the flank of the third furnace of Mungoth." The preceding descriptions of Gehenna's formation are all mostly mutually exclusive. Consider them as different takes upon what happened, like the variant and mutually exclusive versions of history within the Synoptic Gospels. One, two, or all three of those tales might have happened in some capacity, but those are three versions of history remembered, told, and venerated by the 'loths. Of course it might be that none of them occurred. The 'loths lie. That's what they do, even to themselves.
Consider those clarifications upon your conclusions, but regardless of what measure of truth you've come to, I'm seriously impressed that you've gone to that amount of effort to dig through my older stories scattered around the internet across Enworld, Planewalker, and the now defunct WotC forums. Thank you! *blush*
I'll happily confirm or deny any of your claims by PM if you'd like, otherwise I won't in public (because I absolutely adore speculation as things continue to progress!).
A couple of things to consider however:
I wrote both 'Evil Seeps Through' and Evil Still Seeps Through as an in-world what-if response to 3e Forgotten Realms removal of itself from the Great Wheel (which I considered a mistake on a number of levels). I would not consider either of those two stories to be set within the same continuity as the storyhour and most of my fiction. Likewise the unnamed story with Larsdana Ap Neut speaking with a baernaloth and then to Tharizdun is also another what-if story written in the prelude to 4th Edition when it was still up in the air as to what would be done with the 'loths in that edition. Clearly I would have gone a different direction there. The characters used in those three stories act fully in accordance with how they're characterized in the Storyhour's continuity of course, so take that as you will (we've only seen Larsdana in hindsight thus far in the Storyhour proper - but she's one of my favorites among the fiends I'll admit, and I look forward to showing her off more in the future in hindsight or otherwise, whatever the case might be).
Additionally, just a point of clarification regarding the pre-history discussed in post 1507. Keep this line in mind: "But for all the apocryphal tales, the exact version was of little meaning, irrelevant really, within the confines of a patch of frozen ground obscured upon the flank of the third furnace of Mungoth." The preceding descriptions of Gehenna's formation are all mostly mutually exclusive. Consider them as different takes upon what happened, like the variant and mutually exclusive versions of history within the Synoptic Gospels. One, two, or all three of those tales might have happened in some capacity, but those are three versions of history remembered, told, and venerated by the 'loths. Of course it might be that none of them occurred. The 'loths lie. That's what they do, even to themselves.
Consider those clarifications upon your conclusions, but regardless of what measure of truth you've come to, I'm seriously impressed that you've gone to that amount of effort to dig through my older stories scattered around the internet across Enworld, Planewalker, and the now defunct WotC forums. Thank you! *blush*
Shemeska
Adventurer
The silver bell over the entrance to The Friendly Fiend rattled cheerfully as the door swung open and Toras and Fyrehowl stepped into the quaint little shop.
“I’m fresh out of spare yugoloth blood I’m afraid to say.” A’kin chuckled from behind the counter with a cheerful gleam in his eyes. “I assume by your expressions that everything worked out well with that other little affair?”
“Eh…” Toras shrugged. “About as well as it could have. But that’s not why I’m here.”
“Well it’s a shame that it didn’t go better for you Toras.” A’kin softly and sympathetically frowned, his whiskers drooping for a moment before he gestured with a hand and the feather-duster it held. “But come in, come in, you and Fyrehowl both. I have to at least make an effort to be a shrewd businessman while we otherwise sit and gab for as long as you’d like.”
Toras and Fyrehowl stepped inside the shop as A’kin smiled cheerfully, even as he continued to dust the shelves. The shelves didn’t particularly need it, but the act itself was quaint and charming in its own right, and distinctly at odds with the fact that both of them were alone with a smiling yugoloth.
“This is all related to that crap involving the Sigil Advisory Council meeting and us pissing off a certain someone that you and I both know.” Toras rolled his eyes. “And by us, I mean Florian and Fyrehowl.”
Glancing at a collection of chocolates molded to resemble the upper tier members of Queen Morwel’s eladrin Court of Stars, Fyrehowl stuck out her tongue.
A’kin tilted his head, “Well it’s funny that you mention that Toras, because I had something related come up recently. It all began with a little issue outside of my shop yesterday, when one Stavros Garianis was stabbed to death by a gang of thugs being watched over by a particularly well-dressed tiefling of the groomer-guard variety. Ugly business that. Ugly, ugly…” The ‘loth shook his head sorrowfully. “It took me an hour to clean the blood off of the windows. It’s just the latest in a string of incidents though. The Athar and their lot have been at each others’ throats since that same Sigil Advisory Council meeting that you and I were at. It really was a shame, and paying attention to it all, it seems clear that the back and forth between them is just both groups feeling the other out in preparation of something larger.
A’kin shook his head a second time sorrowfully before brushing a pair of claws through the fur of his chin.
“Now I wouldn’t have paid any further attention to it all except for a second thing that occurred the same day just before closing when I was paid a visit by a gentleman who works in the Night Market and runs a business importing items from Gehenna. Well he came here to throw gold at me for a specific item and also apparently to engage in gossip, both things of which I’m particularly fond of. He was here to purchase a sprig of Ysgardian mistletoe,” He held up a finger, “–the most jolly of abortifacients– since he was rather upset that he’d gotten his mistress –not his wife– pregnant, and well he happened to mention over a cup of hot chocolate that I’d made him that Garianis planned a groundbreaking five days from then, which is now tomorrow I suppose, at the former location of the Shattered Temple. In fact, he seemed rather insistent on that point. He repeated it five times in the space of so many minutes like he was deliberately trying to impress that point upon me.”
A’kin shrugged, “If he was going out of his way to feed me information, he could have simply told me before I made him cookies in an attempt to make him more talkative. I would have happily just taken the information and gossiped happily at a later point, just like I am now.”
“I’m not worth cookies?” Fyrehowl’s ears drooped and she mock frowned.
“I never said that now did I?” A’kin paused and held up a finger. Walking into the back room, he returned only seconds later carrying a tray of warm and obviously just baked cookies. “So here you go, and you as well Toras.”
Toras picked up a cookie as Fyrehowl enjoyed her own chocolate chip cookie baked into the shape of a dragon, its mouth oozing just a bit of dark chocolate as she bit into it.
“You baked these ahead of time.” The fighter pointed out. “Just for us, or do you keep a working bakery in the back just to hand out to customers?”
“Back to what I was saying though about the Shattered Temple.” A’kin’s eyes sparkled as he smiled, not actually answering the question. “We aren’t that far from there, and so understandably, I’ll be closing the shop early and making sure that the door is sufficiently barred. It does seem that nearly every instance of public violence in this part of the Lower Ward corresponds with looting attempts on my shop. Funny that.”
A’kin sighed and shrugged, both taking it all in stride with a nearly celestial patience, but clearly alluding to the responsible party –who was backing the Athar– without actually saying her name. “But I’m babbling on Toras, what was it that you were here to get?”
Having just swallowed a mouthful of chocolaty goodness a moment before with Cipher prescience, Fyrehowl was the first to speak, “We’re here to prevent an escalation game from going well past the point where a particular greater yugoloth…”
Toras abruptly put a hand on the lupinal’s shoulder to stop her from explaining everything. “I need to buy the most expensive, most grotesquely, most stupidly pointless and ostentatious gift that I can possibly buy… for Shemeska the Marauder.”
“Pardon?” A’kin tilted his head to the side, “I must have heard you wrong.”
“Yes. Her.”
“…” A’kin made a face best described as a physical manifestation of dumbfounded confusion.
“Yeah… Yeah I know…” Toras sighed. “It’s the best way for this situation to go.”
A’kin squinted and adjusted his spectacles, “Hasn’t she tried to kill you on more than one occasion?”
“We figured that you might know what she liked, you know,” Toras hesitated a moment before he continued, “You being a ‘loth and all.”
“I’d hardly think to compare the two of us.” A’kin’s response was distinctly and deliberately quick. “But… I suppose that I can help you find something that might work.”
Toras and Fyrehowl smiled as A’kin motioned them towards the curtain leading to his back room.
“Nothing in the front here likely matches the sort of things that she seems to appreciate.” A’kin pushed aside the curtain. “And by that, I mean nothing in the front room is hideously expensive.”
“You know, come to think of it, I’ve never actually seen your stock room back here.” Toras remarked as they followed the fiend.
One step through the doorway Fyrehowl paused as the fur on the back of her neck prickled. She stepped back out, then back through to confirm her suspicions: it wasn’t just a curtain over a doorway leading into a stock room: it was a portal.
The storage room was huge, easily four times the size of the rest of the shop itself. At the distant rear of the cavernous chamber a spiral stairwell extended up and down to presumably other floors or rooms. Fyrehowl tried to collect her bearings but without magic she hadn’t a clue if they were still in Sigil, some manner of demiplane, or wherever else.
“This…” The lupinal paused, searching for the words. “This isn’t what I expected back here. I’m impressed.”
“Most people don’t ever come back here.” A’kin shrugged and smiled. “Nisha helped herself into here once or twice, but she doesn’t know all of the portal keys. That’s probably for the best.”
Rows and rows of shelves, book cases, boxes, barrels, and chests filled the chamber. Random objects from a hundred different worlds and planes cluttered the shelves and fought for space in a chaotic jumble of bric-a-brac of which A’kin’s public shop space was simply a microcosm.
Starry-eyed and still taking in the sheer size of A’kin’s shop, still with cookies in hand, Toras and Fyrehowl followed along like puppies as the cheerful ‘loth led them from aisle to aisle, shelf to shelf, showing off dozens of grossly expensive and equally pointless items, all of them with increasingly hefty price tags. Jewelry, clothing, rare bottles of alcohol, all of them Toras passed up as oddly enough, not being expensive enough.
“What’s the most stupid and stupidly expensive thing that you can sell me right now on short notice?” Toras glanced at a bustier studded with rubies and emeralds before turning back to A’kin, having already discarded that option as probably sending the wrong signal. There was a distinct line between bribery and flirtation that he didn’t wish to cross.
A’kin paused and thought for a moment before leading them to a large glass tank as tall as Toras and twice again as wide. Inside of its frozen oceanic diorama, a giant clam rested on a bed of coins and coral. A grapefruit sized pearl rested inside of the clam’s depths along with the skeletal leg of a long dead would-be pearl diver.
“Gods above that’s tacky,” Fyrehowl smirked and stuck out her tongue. “Where do you even get stuff like this A’kin?”
The fiend smiled only his contagious smile and didn’t answer.
“How much?” Toras asked without a care in the world.
“Well, it’s certainly expensive, eighty thousand gold actually.” A’kin scratched his chin with a well manicured claw before giving a frown and tracing his other hand in the air around the outline of the gaping giant clam. “Perhaps it wouldn’t have the desired statement you’re hoping for. With what it is and all, you could read into it a bit too much perhaps. That wouldn’t be good.”
“Oh.” Fyrehowl snickered at the smiling fiend’s insinuation. “Yeah…”
“And Toras,” A’kin turned and put a hand on the half-celestial’s shoulder with a look of concern in his eyes, “I really don’t think you should spend this much. Believe me, you’d be paying my bills in a rather large way, but then again, I genuinely care for my customers and I don’t want to see you wasting your money on well, a girl who won’t return your feelings.”
“No! No no no!” Toras waved his hands as he blushed with more horror than embarrassment. “It’s not like that! I’m immune to disease and even I’m not going there!”
A’kin attempted to and failed to conceal a soft chuckle. “She’s a ‘loth Toras. She’s going to take your bribery as the closest thing to a love letter left upon her windowsill. Well, either that or a petty attempt to manipulate her and buy her off, which would likely earn most berks a knife in the back. She’s also likely to see it as a desperate attempt and she’ll just enjoy making you miserable. You really shouldn’t flirt with her. You’re better than that Toras and you deserve someone better than her.”
“Seriously A’kin, it isn’t like that.” The half-celestial’s face was flushed beet red. “That’s a horror story that I want absolutely no part of.”
“If you say so Toras.” A’kin shrugged with a faintly sorrowful expression on his face, as if he felt bad for the Marauder’s seemingly-to-him would-be paramour. “But of course, what would I know?”
“Wrench that horrible thought out of your mind A’kin, please.” Toras shuddered. “I’d rather throw her down the side of the spire than kiss her on the cheek, and I’m essentially going to be kissing her ass with this gift as it stands.”
“Please don’t use that phrase Toras.” Fyrehowl grimaced. “That’s not an image I want to think about.”
A’kin turned to the lupinal and then back to the half-celestial as they chattered back and forth about the very plausibility of bribing the Marauder. Toras won out in the end and turned back to A’kin, once again making it clear that he had no amorous intentions. A’kin seemed both amused and concerned, but willing to go along with making a massive amount of money nonetheless.
“Again, if you say so Toras.” The ‘loth waved his hands, “I won’t judge. I just worry about you is all.”
Fyrehowl burst out laughing as Toras did his best to convince A’kin that he wasn’t trying to bribe his way into Shemeska’s black, poisonous heart. As the two of them bantered, she glanced one shelf over at a number of dolls similar to those in the Jammer that they’d purchased from A’kin previously. Most of them seemed half-completed, but one in the exaggerated imitation of Jeremo the Natterer sat ready for sale.
“How much is this one A’kin?” Fyrehowl held the Jeremo doll up in the air when it decided on its own to animate.
“Did I hear someone mention the Marauder?” Dancing around on the shelf and grinning, the doll’s crown threatened to fall off of his mop of fussy blond felted hair. It glanced down at Fyrehowl and Toras and wiggled its eyebrows, “I heard that her former significant other in crime and in bed, Mantello the Jeweler, was still alive. Oh did he have some things to say about her! I hope she hasn’t pined away her nights without him! Rowr!”
A’kin shot Fyrehowl and Toras a look of utter mortification, “Ok no, definitely not that one either. How about some simpler jewelry or perhaps yet another mirror? Nothing that will get me shanked in an alleyway by association with the gift. It’s also probably best if you don’t tell her that you bought it from me.”
The browsing continued for another hour before Toras finally left with something befitting the Marauder. He also left with considerably less jink than he’d started the day with.
“Aaaaand, it’s sent.” Toras breathed a sigh of relief as he stared at the receipt for delivery of both his purchased bribe and the letter of apology on Fyrehowl and Florian’s behalf. The bribe itself was a wine decanter crafted from dozens of hen-egg sized sapphires and diamonds, held together with a wire matrix of gold and platinum. A century old bottle of wine had been thrown in for free, with the promise that ‘if it turns out to be corked or gone to vinegar, I’ll pay for the resurrection’ on A’kin’s behalf.
And so the fighter sat nursing a substantially less time-matured drink of his own, waiting to hear something, anything really, in response. In total, it took less than an hour, and came in a form that he hadn’t expected.
“What are you… please don’t kill me!!” Toras’s messenger and deliveryman arrived in the middle of the Portal Jammer’s taproom with a burst of light and a scream. He covered his face with both hands, ineffectually warding off a death spell that had never arrived, and in the fading light of the forced teleportation back to where he’d begun his journey, he looked up with a sense of slowly fading terror.
Both the bribe and the apology letter were still on the deliveryman’s person.
“Well that could have gone better than it did…” Toras sighed and gestured for an explanation from the man. “What did she say?”
“She snarled and sent me back.” The courier frowned apologetically. “I only said who I was and who I was delivering for before she started casting spells.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing else.”
Something else did arrive however a dozen seconds later when a second flicker-flash of a teleportation spell’s light heralded the arrival of a tiny floating pseudo-yugoloth, a nalg. The tiny fox-headed familiar with an imp-like scorpion’s tail floated in the air, drifting weightlessly.
“How may I help you?” Toras put on a smile that he didn’t mean at all and nodded to the fiendling, the same nalg that unbeknownst to him was currently tethered to the soul of one Rammander the Wise, serving as both the wizard’s familiar and the Marauder’s not entirely metaphorical leash upon her latest would-be protégé. A coveted status, it rarely seemed to end well for any of them.
“I bring a message for you from my master’s Mistress, the King of the Crosstrade.”
“Did she appreciate my gift?”
The nalg ever so briefly smirked as it turned its eyes to glance at the courier still holding that same gift. The gesture was swift, but clearly not just incidental. The slight was there and deliberate.
“The King of the Crosstrade says to tell you that you have legs of your own, and to use them.”
Toras sighed. “If you’ll allow me a moment, I’ll need to get myself dressed appropriately to meet her, assuming that she’ll grant me an audience?”
The nalg flashed a sanctimonious grin, “Please do so. In fact, Shemeska requests your presence at her table this evening. Bring yourself and whatever you desired to send her before, but this time, please do deliver it in person for her reception.”
Toras smiled, though inwardly the only thought running through his head was a profound, “F*CK!”
“I’m fresh out of spare yugoloth blood I’m afraid to say.” A’kin chuckled from behind the counter with a cheerful gleam in his eyes. “I assume by your expressions that everything worked out well with that other little affair?”
“Eh…” Toras shrugged. “About as well as it could have. But that’s not why I’m here.”
“Well it’s a shame that it didn’t go better for you Toras.” A’kin softly and sympathetically frowned, his whiskers drooping for a moment before he gestured with a hand and the feather-duster it held. “But come in, come in, you and Fyrehowl both. I have to at least make an effort to be a shrewd businessman while we otherwise sit and gab for as long as you’d like.”
Toras and Fyrehowl stepped inside the shop as A’kin smiled cheerfully, even as he continued to dust the shelves. The shelves didn’t particularly need it, but the act itself was quaint and charming in its own right, and distinctly at odds with the fact that both of them were alone with a smiling yugoloth.
“This is all related to that crap involving the Sigil Advisory Council meeting and us pissing off a certain someone that you and I both know.” Toras rolled his eyes. “And by us, I mean Florian and Fyrehowl.”
Glancing at a collection of chocolates molded to resemble the upper tier members of Queen Morwel’s eladrin Court of Stars, Fyrehowl stuck out her tongue.
A’kin tilted his head, “Well it’s funny that you mention that Toras, because I had something related come up recently. It all began with a little issue outside of my shop yesterday, when one Stavros Garianis was stabbed to death by a gang of thugs being watched over by a particularly well-dressed tiefling of the groomer-guard variety. Ugly business that. Ugly, ugly…” The ‘loth shook his head sorrowfully. “It took me an hour to clean the blood off of the windows. It’s just the latest in a string of incidents though. The Athar and their lot have been at each others’ throats since that same Sigil Advisory Council meeting that you and I were at. It really was a shame, and paying attention to it all, it seems clear that the back and forth between them is just both groups feeling the other out in preparation of something larger.
A’kin shook his head a second time sorrowfully before brushing a pair of claws through the fur of his chin.
“Now I wouldn’t have paid any further attention to it all except for a second thing that occurred the same day just before closing when I was paid a visit by a gentleman who works in the Night Market and runs a business importing items from Gehenna. Well he came here to throw gold at me for a specific item and also apparently to engage in gossip, both things of which I’m particularly fond of. He was here to purchase a sprig of Ysgardian mistletoe,” He held up a finger, “–the most jolly of abortifacients– since he was rather upset that he’d gotten his mistress –not his wife– pregnant, and well he happened to mention over a cup of hot chocolate that I’d made him that Garianis planned a groundbreaking five days from then, which is now tomorrow I suppose, at the former location of the Shattered Temple. In fact, he seemed rather insistent on that point. He repeated it five times in the space of so many minutes like he was deliberately trying to impress that point upon me.”
A’kin shrugged, “If he was going out of his way to feed me information, he could have simply told me before I made him cookies in an attempt to make him more talkative. I would have happily just taken the information and gossiped happily at a later point, just like I am now.”
“I’m not worth cookies?” Fyrehowl’s ears drooped and she mock frowned.
“I never said that now did I?” A’kin paused and held up a finger. Walking into the back room, he returned only seconds later carrying a tray of warm and obviously just baked cookies. “So here you go, and you as well Toras.”
Toras picked up a cookie as Fyrehowl enjoyed her own chocolate chip cookie baked into the shape of a dragon, its mouth oozing just a bit of dark chocolate as she bit into it.
“You baked these ahead of time.” The fighter pointed out. “Just for us, or do you keep a working bakery in the back just to hand out to customers?”
“Back to what I was saying though about the Shattered Temple.” A’kin’s eyes sparkled as he smiled, not actually answering the question. “We aren’t that far from there, and so understandably, I’ll be closing the shop early and making sure that the door is sufficiently barred. It does seem that nearly every instance of public violence in this part of the Lower Ward corresponds with looting attempts on my shop. Funny that.”
A’kin sighed and shrugged, both taking it all in stride with a nearly celestial patience, but clearly alluding to the responsible party –who was backing the Athar– without actually saying her name. “But I’m babbling on Toras, what was it that you were here to get?”
Having just swallowed a mouthful of chocolaty goodness a moment before with Cipher prescience, Fyrehowl was the first to speak, “We’re here to prevent an escalation game from going well past the point where a particular greater yugoloth…”
Toras abruptly put a hand on the lupinal’s shoulder to stop her from explaining everything. “I need to buy the most expensive, most grotesquely, most stupidly pointless and ostentatious gift that I can possibly buy… for Shemeska the Marauder.”
“Pardon?” A’kin tilted his head to the side, “I must have heard you wrong.”
“Yes. Her.”
“…” A’kin made a face best described as a physical manifestation of dumbfounded confusion.
“Yeah… Yeah I know…” Toras sighed. “It’s the best way for this situation to go.”
A’kin squinted and adjusted his spectacles, “Hasn’t she tried to kill you on more than one occasion?”
“We figured that you might know what she liked, you know,” Toras hesitated a moment before he continued, “You being a ‘loth and all.”
“I’d hardly think to compare the two of us.” A’kin’s response was distinctly and deliberately quick. “But… I suppose that I can help you find something that might work.”
Toras and Fyrehowl smiled as A’kin motioned them towards the curtain leading to his back room.
“Nothing in the front here likely matches the sort of things that she seems to appreciate.” A’kin pushed aside the curtain. “And by that, I mean nothing in the front room is hideously expensive.”
“You know, come to think of it, I’ve never actually seen your stock room back here.” Toras remarked as they followed the fiend.
One step through the doorway Fyrehowl paused as the fur on the back of her neck prickled. She stepped back out, then back through to confirm her suspicions: it wasn’t just a curtain over a doorway leading into a stock room: it was a portal.
The storage room was huge, easily four times the size of the rest of the shop itself. At the distant rear of the cavernous chamber a spiral stairwell extended up and down to presumably other floors or rooms. Fyrehowl tried to collect her bearings but without magic she hadn’t a clue if they were still in Sigil, some manner of demiplane, or wherever else.
“This…” The lupinal paused, searching for the words. “This isn’t what I expected back here. I’m impressed.”
“Most people don’t ever come back here.” A’kin shrugged and smiled. “Nisha helped herself into here once or twice, but she doesn’t know all of the portal keys. That’s probably for the best.”
Rows and rows of shelves, book cases, boxes, barrels, and chests filled the chamber. Random objects from a hundred different worlds and planes cluttered the shelves and fought for space in a chaotic jumble of bric-a-brac of which A’kin’s public shop space was simply a microcosm.
Starry-eyed and still taking in the sheer size of A’kin’s shop, still with cookies in hand, Toras and Fyrehowl followed along like puppies as the cheerful ‘loth led them from aisle to aisle, shelf to shelf, showing off dozens of grossly expensive and equally pointless items, all of them with increasingly hefty price tags. Jewelry, clothing, rare bottles of alcohol, all of them Toras passed up as oddly enough, not being expensive enough.
“What’s the most stupid and stupidly expensive thing that you can sell me right now on short notice?” Toras glanced at a bustier studded with rubies and emeralds before turning back to A’kin, having already discarded that option as probably sending the wrong signal. There was a distinct line between bribery and flirtation that he didn’t wish to cross.
A’kin paused and thought for a moment before leading them to a large glass tank as tall as Toras and twice again as wide. Inside of its frozen oceanic diorama, a giant clam rested on a bed of coins and coral. A grapefruit sized pearl rested inside of the clam’s depths along with the skeletal leg of a long dead would-be pearl diver.
“Gods above that’s tacky,” Fyrehowl smirked and stuck out her tongue. “Where do you even get stuff like this A’kin?”
The fiend smiled only his contagious smile and didn’t answer.
“How much?” Toras asked without a care in the world.
“Well, it’s certainly expensive, eighty thousand gold actually.” A’kin scratched his chin with a well manicured claw before giving a frown and tracing his other hand in the air around the outline of the gaping giant clam. “Perhaps it wouldn’t have the desired statement you’re hoping for. With what it is and all, you could read into it a bit too much perhaps. That wouldn’t be good.”
“Oh.” Fyrehowl snickered at the smiling fiend’s insinuation. “Yeah…”
“And Toras,” A’kin turned and put a hand on the half-celestial’s shoulder with a look of concern in his eyes, “I really don’t think you should spend this much. Believe me, you’d be paying my bills in a rather large way, but then again, I genuinely care for my customers and I don’t want to see you wasting your money on well, a girl who won’t return your feelings.”
“No! No no no!” Toras waved his hands as he blushed with more horror than embarrassment. “It’s not like that! I’m immune to disease and even I’m not going there!”
A’kin attempted to and failed to conceal a soft chuckle. “She’s a ‘loth Toras. She’s going to take your bribery as the closest thing to a love letter left upon her windowsill. Well, either that or a petty attempt to manipulate her and buy her off, which would likely earn most berks a knife in the back. She’s also likely to see it as a desperate attempt and she’ll just enjoy making you miserable. You really shouldn’t flirt with her. You’re better than that Toras and you deserve someone better than her.”
“Seriously A’kin, it isn’t like that.” The half-celestial’s face was flushed beet red. “That’s a horror story that I want absolutely no part of.”
“If you say so Toras.” A’kin shrugged with a faintly sorrowful expression on his face, as if he felt bad for the Marauder’s seemingly-to-him would-be paramour. “But of course, what would I know?”
“Wrench that horrible thought out of your mind A’kin, please.” Toras shuddered. “I’d rather throw her down the side of the spire than kiss her on the cheek, and I’m essentially going to be kissing her ass with this gift as it stands.”
“Please don’t use that phrase Toras.” Fyrehowl grimaced. “That’s not an image I want to think about.”
A’kin turned to the lupinal and then back to the half-celestial as they chattered back and forth about the very plausibility of bribing the Marauder. Toras won out in the end and turned back to A’kin, once again making it clear that he had no amorous intentions. A’kin seemed both amused and concerned, but willing to go along with making a massive amount of money nonetheless.
“Again, if you say so Toras.” The ‘loth waved his hands, “I won’t judge. I just worry about you is all.”
Fyrehowl burst out laughing as Toras did his best to convince A’kin that he wasn’t trying to bribe his way into Shemeska’s black, poisonous heart. As the two of them bantered, she glanced one shelf over at a number of dolls similar to those in the Jammer that they’d purchased from A’kin previously. Most of them seemed half-completed, but one in the exaggerated imitation of Jeremo the Natterer sat ready for sale.
“How much is this one A’kin?” Fyrehowl held the Jeremo doll up in the air when it decided on its own to animate.
“Did I hear someone mention the Marauder?” Dancing around on the shelf and grinning, the doll’s crown threatened to fall off of his mop of fussy blond felted hair. It glanced down at Fyrehowl and Toras and wiggled its eyebrows, “I heard that her former significant other in crime and in bed, Mantello the Jeweler, was still alive. Oh did he have some things to say about her! I hope she hasn’t pined away her nights without him! Rowr!”
A’kin shot Fyrehowl and Toras a look of utter mortification, “Ok no, definitely not that one either. How about some simpler jewelry or perhaps yet another mirror? Nothing that will get me shanked in an alleyway by association with the gift. It’s also probably best if you don’t tell her that you bought it from me.”
The browsing continued for another hour before Toras finally left with something befitting the Marauder. He also left with considerably less jink than he’d started the day with.
****
“Aaaaand, it’s sent.” Toras breathed a sigh of relief as he stared at the receipt for delivery of both his purchased bribe and the letter of apology on Fyrehowl and Florian’s behalf. The bribe itself was a wine decanter crafted from dozens of hen-egg sized sapphires and diamonds, held together with a wire matrix of gold and platinum. A century old bottle of wine had been thrown in for free, with the promise that ‘if it turns out to be corked or gone to vinegar, I’ll pay for the resurrection’ on A’kin’s behalf.
And so the fighter sat nursing a substantially less time-matured drink of his own, waiting to hear something, anything really, in response. In total, it took less than an hour, and came in a form that he hadn’t expected.
“What are you… please don’t kill me!!” Toras’s messenger and deliveryman arrived in the middle of the Portal Jammer’s taproom with a burst of light and a scream. He covered his face with both hands, ineffectually warding off a death spell that had never arrived, and in the fading light of the forced teleportation back to where he’d begun his journey, he looked up with a sense of slowly fading terror.
Both the bribe and the apology letter were still on the deliveryman’s person.
“Well that could have gone better than it did…” Toras sighed and gestured for an explanation from the man. “What did she say?”
“She snarled and sent me back.” The courier frowned apologetically. “I only said who I was and who I was delivering for before she started casting spells.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing else.”
Something else did arrive however a dozen seconds later when a second flicker-flash of a teleportation spell’s light heralded the arrival of a tiny floating pseudo-yugoloth, a nalg. The tiny fox-headed familiar with an imp-like scorpion’s tail floated in the air, drifting weightlessly.
“How may I help you?” Toras put on a smile that he didn’t mean at all and nodded to the fiendling, the same nalg that unbeknownst to him was currently tethered to the soul of one Rammander the Wise, serving as both the wizard’s familiar and the Marauder’s not entirely metaphorical leash upon her latest would-be protégé. A coveted status, it rarely seemed to end well for any of them.
“I bring a message for you from my master’s Mistress, the King of the Crosstrade.”
“Did she appreciate my gift?”
The nalg ever so briefly smirked as it turned its eyes to glance at the courier still holding that same gift. The gesture was swift, but clearly not just incidental. The slight was there and deliberate.
“The King of the Crosstrade says to tell you that you have legs of your own, and to use them.”
Toras sighed. “If you’ll allow me a moment, I’ll need to get myself dressed appropriately to meet her, assuming that she’ll grant me an audience?”
The nalg flashed a sanctimonious grin, “Please do so. In fact, Shemeska requests your presence at her table this evening. Bring yourself and whatever you desired to send her before, but this time, please do deliver it in person for her reception.”
Toras smiled, though inwardly the only thought running through his head was a profound, “F*CK!”
****
The posts above inspired me to look up the relevant stories, but many of the links at Planewalker.com aren't functional. If Shemeska ever does finish the stories of the 13 Demented and their associates, I'd like to see them posted here as this seems to be a stable web site.
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Shemeska
Adventurer
Here's a link to the finished Baernaloth stories (but not inclusive of all of the other random bits of fiction and associated stories that I've done). They have not been edited since their original creation (some are from 2004) and my writing has improved since then. But here they are since not all of them may otherwise be extant online with various websites going down or having database errors creep in order time.
The Baernaloths of the Demented
Shemeska
Adventurer
I just posted another one of the 13 Demented stories. The first one that I've written in a number of years actually. http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?483594-Shemeska-s-Baernaloth-Cycle-Lazarius-Ibn-Shartalan-The-Architect-1st-of-The-Demented
Yes, it's considered to be within the Storyhour continuity.
Shemeska
Adventurer
He’d mulled over his next course of actions for a solid twenty four hours, sleeping on the pending decision before waking up and confirming to himself that it was for the best. He’d slipped out the door before the break of down, unseen and unfollowed, though constantly looking over his shoulder for the latter with a hand perpetually drifting across his sword’s grip.
Each touch of mildly acid breeze from Sigil’s false sky that tousled his hair gave rise to an inner paranoia of something lurking inside of his head, itching slightly against his skull, rattling within his brain like a grinning, chuckling imp. He was worried to be certain, but the day’s actions had long been in the making, originally out of curiosity, but now out of burgeoning fear. He’d already lived too many days of his life with something inside of him, watching always, but sometimes playing him like a puppet. He had no desire to return to that state of affairs if he could prevent it, even if blood might be shed.
The Palace of the Jester was virtually a public location, despite being Jeremo’s home. Still, given the time of day the perimeter was guarded largely as a formality. With all of the Natter’s newest so-called faction members and followers coming and going, the guards would scarcely have glanced at a single man even if they’d seen him, which they never did. The guards never looked up as he fly above their heads and through the main entrance, and even if they had, he’d been completely invisible.
A scuffle was the last thing that he needed or wanted. Jeremo wasn’t his reason for being there, and without any real reason, he actually trusted the man, for good or for ill and he’d been given no reason otherwise since he’d first arrived in Sigil.
The maze-like interior was filled with corridors blocked off to the public, both because not all of them were mapped, and many of them contained poorly identified portals or simply blind endings that would have sent visitors and factioneers into confused wild goose chases, never reaching their destinations except for hours late if ever. One of those deliberately barred hallways was his destination of course, away from the risk of discovery and away from the risk of involving anyone not involved in his current task. It wasn’t anything within Jeremo’s abode that concerned him anyway, nor anyone within the Ring Givers as a neophyte faction, nor anyone even there on the surface of Sigil.
No, it was something far, far below.
The descent into the warren of passages below the Palace of the Jester was not easy. It never was given that the precise layout of the halls shifted and moved, eschewing any real attempt at mapping. Whether it was some aspect of their being located within the formless, unfathomable depths of “UnderSigil” or something innate to the Palace of the Jester, a building from a bygone era known only by a name devoid of original context and nothing more… the answer eluded him and all others who might have asked the same questions and followed the same path into the depths.
The walls seemed alive.
The walls had eyes.
The walls had ears.
They watched him as she descended down into Sigil’s past and a realm sheltered from the passage of time, the rise and fall of Factions and Guilds, and perhaps allowed to be so by the Lady’s grace if simply the fact that so far removed from the city, unknown and no longer remembered from their original heyday of blood and tyranny, the quiescent horrors there posed no threat and the bladed shadows passed them by.
It knew he was there to find its master, and so by that master’s grace it allowed him to do so.
The hallways were regal if antique; something out of the wildest dreams of Sigil’s golden lords in modern day mimicry of the splendor that still stood, forgotten, far below their feet. They meandered as he walked forward, almost as if they prolonged his route simply in order to display themselves for the greater grandeur of their master.
He didn’t care.
He simply wanted answers and a face and a name to a presence.
Finally he stood before it. A silver casket with its locks sprung open and a damning emptiness within.
“Where are you?” He called out, feeling a looming presence standing behind him as he enunciated those very words. His hand flew to his sword and a deep baritone chuckle cut the air, smooth as honey and the mental sensation of smoke and steel.
He’d seen the statue before, and seen the antique painting of the same figure. The painting had drawn him in, showing a scene from the past, showing the figure and his tiny, inhuman familiar. Whatever the experience had been, the figure, the tall man in the antique great coat and wide-brimmed hat, had taken notice. In fact, they’d never stopped taking notice, watching ever since through his eyes.
He turned around and saw the man standing there, only part of his face visible below the brim of his hat, and the short, robed figure of his familiar at his side, peering out from behind one of his legs, tentacles wriggling from its sleeves.
“Just who the hell are you and why are you in my head?” Clueless demanded, never taking his hand off of Razor’s grip.
There in his home, there below the Palace that had once and still remained his own, The Lady’s Jester smiled.
Toras arrived early at the Fortune’s Wheel with his gift/bribe carefully and professionally arranged for the fiend to unwrap and receive. The Marauder’s retinue of course made him wait until the precise minute of his meeting to actually take him up to the Marauder’s elevated balcony dinner-seating, despite the fact that she was actually already sitting down and had no other guests there to occupy her attention. Toras stood awkwardly but quietly until the time arrived.
“You will not speak unless spoken to.” Colcook spoke in warning as he’d escorted Toras, taken the gift and letter, and shown him to his seat.
Having invited him or not, the Marauder didn’t actually so much as glance at Toras when one of her groomer-guards introduced him by name. There was not yet a second chair at the table, and so Toras continued to stand. His bribe, the bejeweled decanter and vintage bottle of wine sat next to the fiend, unopened and ignored.
Shemeska sat at her usual table alone, dressed in a blue and purple sleeveless keyhole gown, providing Toras with an uncomfortable view of the fiend’s cleavage highlighted by a glowing black sapphire at the top of the window in the fabric. Beyond the egg-sized gem and the sapphires and emeralds dangling in golden wire cages from her ears though, the ‘loth was dressed relatively modestly as far as her standards of obscene, self-promoting pomposity went.
Toras tried not to stare and kept looking past her, though it was difficult as she ignored him and sipped a cocktail with four distinct layers, with a tiny insect of some sort impaled on the decorative glass sword holding an olive in the drink. Smiling to herself, she prodding the sword’s basket hilt every so often simply to hear the slowly dying creature squeal and inject another cloud of glimmering blood into the drink’s various immiscible layers.
Toras continued to stand.
The fiend’s disregard continued as with her feet propped up on the table and dress slid back to just above her knees, without words she sipped her drink and stared at the ceiling or the gambling floor of the Fortune’s Wheel down below. Time marched on and the fiend’s meal was delivered with great pomp. She picked at it, telekinetically lifting choice bites from the plate to her mouth and continuing to savor her drink. Eventually the ‘loth finished her meal, and with her feet still on the table, she motioned for a chair to be brought.
“Sit.” She finally focused her eyes on Toras.
Toras smiled and sat down, trying not to look directly at her except for her eyes, even as the fiend baited him with a view directly up her dress and the flesh-displaying window in her gown. Internally he gagged at the thought of either.
“The decanter is well crafted, and the wine is actually an acceptable vintage.” Shemeska motioned casually and one of her attendants approached and made a show of opening the bottle and using the decanter for its intended purpose. The fiend remained silent through the process until the tiefling poured her –and only her– a half glass of the ruby liquid.
“The moment of truth Toras…” Shemeska held the glass up, staring at the half-celestial through the ruddy distortion of the wine in her glass, and in turn providing her guest with a view of her lips and fangs, turned bloody through the lens of his gift. “If it’s corked, they’ll never find your corpse. But you already know that…”
Toras gritted his teeth, wanting nothing more than to reach down and flip the table over, dumping both the wine and the fiend’s remaining food into her lap.
Shemeska smiled and sipped the wine tentatively, keeping her eyes locked with Toras, her expression unreadable for a long, pregnant moment before she closed her eyes, smiled, and took a second, longer taste.
“I commend you on your taste in wine Toras.” Shemeska opened her eyes and inclined the glass towards him. “I’m flattered that you would think of me. I can only imagine how much you spent for such a gesture.”
Toras smiled and remained silent, imagining in his mind upending the bottle and placing it open, lip down through the flesh window in the ‘loth’s evening gown.
“I forgive you Toras.” Shemeska smirked, the words coming almost with a bit of effort on her part, so alien to her nature they seemed. “Consider this a pardon for anything that you may have done, and consider the offer extended to your guardinals bitch of a companion as well. Her immortality has shifted in its nature enough that I’m not so much forgiving out of beneficence on my part as wanting to see where she goes from here.”
Toras furrowed his eyebrows, blindsided and confused by whatever the hell the ‘loth was rambling on about. Fyrehowl herself wasn’t entirely aware of the fact that since Rubicon her link to Elysium had frayed and unraveled. She wasn’t fallen, not completely, but she no longer reflected the plane itself in her essence. The ‘loth however was absolutely aware of Fyrehowl’s status as having slipped into neutrality, smelling it like a feral jackal sniffing out the hint of rotting meat in the garbage heap in a poorly trafficked alleyway.
“So you and the mangy bitch have my forgiveness for the events at the last Council meeting.” Shemeska paused and watched for Toras’s reaction as he waited for her to continue. “As for anyone else…”
The ‘loth drew out the pause and took another sip of mine, swishing it around her mouth to stain her gums before she swallowed and smiled, giving the impression as if she’d just feasted on bloody meat.
“The godslave wants forgiveness?” The Marauder curled her lips back and snarled, abandoning any cultured veneer as she put her feet back onto the ground, placed both hands on the table and leaning forward. “Forgiveness?! If that’s what she wants than she can come crawling on her hands and knees across a bed of broken glass, begging for it, and with me riding atop her back on a saddle!”
Infuriated, Toras’s eyes went wide as he continued to struggle not to punch the Marauder in the throat for both her arrogance and the hideous image that she’d just put in his mind.
“Toras…understand that people who insult me as she did end up dead. They’re tortured for my amusement and allowed to live crippled just long enough to witness the execution of everyone that they ever loved.” Shemeska snarled loudly enough to spray flecks of spit into Toras’s face, leaning in close enough so that he could smell the cloying intensity of her perfume and the brimstone that it covered. “She’s doing well for herself to have survived so long since then, or perhaps I’m simply feeling merciful. You can’t buy her my forgiveness, but by all means Toras, do keep on trying. It’s amusing watching insects wriggle and dance.”
The ‘loth picked up the decorative glass sword from her Martini, holding it up and letting the insect impaled on its length wriggle and squirm in agony. Eyes locked with Toras, she held it up and slipped it into her mouth, devouring the creature and finally putting an end to its agony.
Holding his hands clasped together, Toras held his breath as the ‘loth flicked the tiny glass sword at his face.
“Please understand the enormity of what I’ve told you Toras. Count yourself lucky that you and one of your companions won’t find themselves on the wrong end of a portal to the Abyss or somewhere worse.” Shemeska spat at his face before waving a hand dismissively, “And if you buy me something else from that smiling little f*ck in the Lower Ward as a bribe ever again I’ll send it back to him, on fire, hurled through his front window. Don’t. You’re dismissed.”
Never before in his life had Toras so badly wanted to punch someone in the mouth and feel the satisfying crunch of their breaking teeth on his knuckles. Somewhere between wanting to scream and wanting to cry at the injustice of it all, he felt absolutely powerless. Somehow, against all odds, he looked into the Marauder’s eyes and replied a simple, “Thank you Shemeska.”
With that he stood, turned around without another word, and walked out, feeling the fiend’s eyes on his back and soon thereafter a peal of her laughter ring out in sick pleasure.
The Marauder laughed and licked her lips, full of self-assured sadism. In her left hand a freshly prepared crystal flute filled with white wine, honey and asuras’ blood, and in her right hand, held against her thigh and out of sight the cold, crawling metal of the Shadow Sorcelled Key.
“Run along little man and sleep as well as you can. You’ll need your rest in order to speak at a funeral or two in the coming days. You will suffer and you will suffer so beautifully.”
Each touch of mildly acid breeze from Sigil’s false sky that tousled his hair gave rise to an inner paranoia of something lurking inside of his head, itching slightly against his skull, rattling within his brain like a grinning, chuckling imp. He was worried to be certain, but the day’s actions had long been in the making, originally out of curiosity, but now out of burgeoning fear. He’d already lived too many days of his life with something inside of him, watching always, but sometimes playing him like a puppet. He had no desire to return to that state of affairs if he could prevent it, even if blood might be shed.
The Palace of the Jester was virtually a public location, despite being Jeremo’s home. Still, given the time of day the perimeter was guarded largely as a formality. With all of the Natter’s newest so-called faction members and followers coming and going, the guards would scarcely have glanced at a single man even if they’d seen him, which they never did. The guards never looked up as he fly above their heads and through the main entrance, and even if they had, he’d been completely invisible.
A scuffle was the last thing that he needed or wanted. Jeremo wasn’t his reason for being there, and without any real reason, he actually trusted the man, for good or for ill and he’d been given no reason otherwise since he’d first arrived in Sigil.
The maze-like interior was filled with corridors blocked off to the public, both because not all of them were mapped, and many of them contained poorly identified portals or simply blind endings that would have sent visitors and factioneers into confused wild goose chases, never reaching their destinations except for hours late if ever. One of those deliberately barred hallways was his destination of course, away from the risk of discovery and away from the risk of involving anyone not involved in his current task. It wasn’t anything within Jeremo’s abode that concerned him anyway, nor anyone within the Ring Givers as a neophyte faction, nor anyone even there on the surface of Sigil.
No, it was something far, far below.
The descent into the warren of passages below the Palace of the Jester was not easy. It never was given that the precise layout of the halls shifted and moved, eschewing any real attempt at mapping. Whether it was some aspect of their being located within the formless, unfathomable depths of “UnderSigil” or something innate to the Palace of the Jester, a building from a bygone era known only by a name devoid of original context and nothing more… the answer eluded him and all others who might have asked the same questions and followed the same path into the depths.
The walls seemed alive.
The walls had eyes.
The walls had ears.
They watched him as she descended down into Sigil’s past and a realm sheltered from the passage of time, the rise and fall of Factions and Guilds, and perhaps allowed to be so by the Lady’s grace if simply the fact that so far removed from the city, unknown and no longer remembered from their original heyday of blood and tyranny, the quiescent horrors there posed no threat and the bladed shadows passed them by.
It knew he was there to find its master, and so by that master’s grace it allowed him to do so.
The hallways were regal if antique; something out of the wildest dreams of Sigil’s golden lords in modern day mimicry of the splendor that still stood, forgotten, far below their feet. They meandered as he walked forward, almost as if they prolonged his route simply in order to display themselves for the greater grandeur of their master.
He didn’t care.
He simply wanted answers and a face and a name to a presence.
Finally he stood before it. A silver casket with its locks sprung open and a damning emptiness within.
“Where are you?” He called out, feeling a looming presence standing behind him as he enunciated those very words. His hand flew to his sword and a deep baritone chuckle cut the air, smooth as honey and the mental sensation of smoke and steel.
He’d seen the statue before, and seen the antique painting of the same figure. The painting had drawn him in, showing a scene from the past, showing the figure and his tiny, inhuman familiar. Whatever the experience had been, the figure, the tall man in the antique great coat and wide-brimmed hat, had taken notice. In fact, they’d never stopped taking notice, watching ever since through his eyes.
He turned around and saw the man standing there, only part of his face visible below the brim of his hat, and the short, robed figure of his familiar at his side, peering out from behind one of his legs, tentacles wriggling from its sleeves.
“Just who the hell are you and why are you in my head?” Clueless demanded, never taking his hand off of Razor’s grip.
There in his home, there below the Palace that had once and still remained his own, The Lady’s Jester smiled.
****
Toras arrived early at the Fortune’s Wheel with his gift/bribe carefully and professionally arranged for the fiend to unwrap and receive. The Marauder’s retinue of course made him wait until the precise minute of his meeting to actually take him up to the Marauder’s elevated balcony dinner-seating, despite the fact that she was actually already sitting down and had no other guests there to occupy her attention. Toras stood awkwardly but quietly until the time arrived.
“You will not speak unless spoken to.” Colcook spoke in warning as he’d escorted Toras, taken the gift and letter, and shown him to his seat.
Having invited him or not, the Marauder didn’t actually so much as glance at Toras when one of her groomer-guards introduced him by name. There was not yet a second chair at the table, and so Toras continued to stand. His bribe, the bejeweled decanter and vintage bottle of wine sat next to the fiend, unopened and ignored.
Shemeska sat at her usual table alone, dressed in a blue and purple sleeveless keyhole gown, providing Toras with an uncomfortable view of the fiend’s cleavage highlighted by a glowing black sapphire at the top of the window in the fabric. Beyond the egg-sized gem and the sapphires and emeralds dangling in golden wire cages from her ears though, the ‘loth was dressed relatively modestly as far as her standards of obscene, self-promoting pomposity went.
Toras tried not to stare and kept looking past her, though it was difficult as she ignored him and sipped a cocktail with four distinct layers, with a tiny insect of some sort impaled on the decorative glass sword holding an olive in the drink. Smiling to herself, she prodding the sword’s basket hilt every so often simply to hear the slowly dying creature squeal and inject another cloud of glimmering blood into the drink’s various immiscible layers.
Toras continued to stand.
The fiend’s disregard continued as with her feet propped up on the table and dress slid back to just above her knees, without words she sipped her drink and stared at the ceiling or the gambling floor of the Fortune’s Wheel down below. Time marched on and the fiend’s meal was delivered with great pomp. She picked at it, telekinetically lifting choice bites from the plate to her mouth and continuing to savor her drink. Eventually the ‘loth finished her meal, and with her feet still on the table, she motioned for a chair to be brought.
“Sit.” She finally focused her eyes on Toras.
Toras smiled and sat down, trying not to look directly at her except for her eyes, even as the fiend baited him with a view directly up her dress and the flesh-displaying window in her gown. Internally he gagged at the thought of either.
“The decanter is well crafted, and the wine is actually an acceptable vintage.” Shemeska motioned casually and one of her attendants approached and made a show of opening the bottle and using the decanter for its intended purpose. The fiend remained silent through the process until the tiefling poured her –and only her– a half glass of the ruby liquid.
“The moment of truth Toras…” Shemeska held the glass up, staring at the half-celestial through the ruddy distortion of the wine in her glass, and in turn providing her guest with a view of her lips and fangs, turned bloody through the lens of his gift. “If it’s corked, they’ll never find your corpse. But you already know that…”
Toras gritted his teeth, wanting nothing more than to reach down and flip the table over, dumping both the wine and the fiend’s remaining food into her lap.
Shemeska smiled and sipped the wine tentatively, keeping her eyes locked with Toras, her expression unreadable for a long, pregnant moment before she closed her eyes, smiled, and took a second, longer taste.
“I commend you on your taste in wine Toras.” Shemeska opened her eyes and inclined the glass towards him. “I’m flattered that you would think of me. I can only imagine how much you spent for such a gesture.”
Toras smiled and remained silent, imagining in his mind upending the bottle and placing it open, lip down through the flesh window in the ‘loth’s evening gown.
“I forgive you Toras.” Shemeska smirked, the words coming almost with a bit of effort on her part, so alien to her nature they seemed. “Consider this a pardon for anything that you may have done, and consider the offer extended to your guardinals bitch of a companion as well. Her immortality has shifted in its nature enough that I’m not so much forgiving out of beneficence on my part as wanting to see where she goes from here.”
Toras furrowed his eyebrows, blindsided and confused by whatever the hell the ‘loth was rambling on about. Fyrehowl herself wasn’t entirely aware of the fact that since Rubicon her link to Elysium had frayed and unraveled. She wasn’t fallen, not completely, but she no longer reflected the plane itself in her essence. The ‘loth however was absolutely aware of Fyrehowl’s status as having slipped into neutrality, smelling it like a feral jackal sniffing out the hint of rotting meat in the garbage heap in a poorly trafficked alleyway.
“So you and the mangy bitch have my forgiveness for the events at the last Council meeting.” Shemeska paused and watched for Toras’s reaction as he waited for her to continue. “As for anyone else…”
The ‘loth drew out the pause and took another sip of mine, swishing it around her mouth to stain her gums before she swallowed and smiled, giving the impression as if she’d just feasted on bloody meat.
“The godslave wants forgiveness?” The Marauder curled her lips back and snarled, abandoning any cultured veneer as she put her feet back onto the ground, placed both hands on the table and leaning forward. “Forgiveness?! If that’s what she wants than she can come crawling on her hands and knees across a bed of broken glass, begging for it, and with me riding atop her back on a saddle!”
Infuriated, Toras’s eyes went wide as he continued to struggle not to punch the Marauder in the throat for both her arrogance and the hideous image that she’d just put in his mind.
“Toras…understand that people who insult me as she did end up dead. They’re tortured for my amusement and allowed to live crippled just long enough to witness the execution of everyone that they ever loved.” Shemeska snarled loudly enough to spray flecks of spit into Toras’s face, leaning in close enough so that he could smell the cloying intensity of her perfume and the brimstone that it covered. “She’s doing well for herself to have survived so long since then, or perhaps I’m simply feeling merciful. You can’t buy her my forgiveness, but by all means Toras, do keep on trying. It’s amusing watching insects wriggle and dance.”
The ‘loth picked up the decorative glass sword from her Martini, holding it up and letting the insect impaled on its length wriggle and squirm in agony. Eyes locked with Toras, she held it up and slipped it into her mouth, devouring the creature and finally putting an end to its agony.
Holding his hands clasped together, Toras held his breath as the ‘loth flicked the tiny glass sword at his face.
“Please understand the enormity of what I’ve told you Toras. Count yourself lucky that you and one of your companions won’t find themselves on the wrong end of a portal to the Abyss or somewhere worse.” Shemeska spat at his face before waving a hand dismissively, “And if you buy me something else from that smiling little f*ck in the Lower Ward as a bribe ever again I’ll send it back to him, on fire, hurled through his front window. Don’t. You’re dismissed.”
Never before in his life had Toras so badly wanted to punch someone in the mouth and feel the satisfying crunch of their breaking teeth on his knuckles. Somewhere between wanting to scream and wanting to cry at the injustice of it all, he felt absolutely powerless. Somehow, against all odds, he looked into the Marauder’s eyes and replied a simple, “Thank you Shemeska.”
With that he stood, turned around without another word, and walked out, feeling the fiend’s eyes on his back and soon thereafter a peal of her laughter ring out in sick pleasure.
The Marauder laughed and licked her lips, full of self-assured sadism. In her left hand a freshly prepared crystal flute filled with white wine, honey and asuras’ blood, and in her right hand, held against her thigh and out of sight the cold, crawling metal of the Shadow Sorcelled Key.
“Run along little man and sleep as well as you can. You’ll need your rest in order to speak at a funeral or two in the coming days. You will suffer and you will suffer so beautifully.”
****
Shemeska
Adventurer
****
“’Vote for action, not barking!’... no.”
“’More guardinal, less ‘loth’… no.”
“’Vote for me and not the razorvine crowned asshat.’… tempting but no.”
“ Vote Fyrehowl for Sigil Advisory Council – action, not words’… maybe.”
Fyrehowl smiled as she stared down at the mockup campaign poster she’d commissioned, prepared for printing except for a campaign slogan which was still obviously a work in progress. She’d already set aside the coin needed to plaster them across every corner and public square in the Clerk’s Ward and possibly the Guildhall Ward if she called in some favors. The Hive didn’t have enough land owners with votes to make it worthwhile, and there and the Lower Ward alike, a celestial running for a seat on the Advisory Council probably didn’t stand much chance with the population there anyway. The other Wards would likely divide their votes among the other candidates that it was a losing proposition to even both to spread jink around on the effort there.
It wasn’t going to be easy, and it would probably create more enemies for her than not, but it would be worth it if only to elevate her onto a level where she could actually stand up to the Marauder. Best case scenario would be that she won a seat and denied one to the ‘loth.
Fyrehowl smiled and wistfully sighed at the thought, pausing only to take a sip of ale as Florian sat down next to her and admired the poster.
“She’s going to murder you if you win and she doesn’t.” The cleric made a snarling face and put her hands up next to her head, pantomiming the Marauder.
“I’m well past the point of caring.” Fyrehowl smirked, errantly swatting at a still grimacing Florian. “Besides, I’m a long shot anyways.”
“No, you’re not.” Florian’s said bluntly. “You’ve got a good shot of landing a seat. People know you. You’re a member of the Chairwoman’s old faction, and hell, you’re not a ‘loth that people hate and fear.”
“I’m used to a certain level of disappointment when it comes to their kind,” Fyrehowl shrugged, “And besides, she’s far more likely to win a seat and then proceed to rub it in my face for the next decade.”
Florian shook her head and handed the guardinal a mug, “There’s not a quota for council members with tails, so chances are that you’ll probably both get in with one of the open council seats. And try that on for size.”
Fyrehowl shrugged and sipped from a mug of the newest addition to the Portal Jammer’s beer on tap: one of the brews produced by the formerly adversarial duergar neighbors. It was overly hoppy compared to her usual tastes, but it wasn’t bad, and the bitterness suited her mood to an extent as her brain dwelled far too much on the idea of beating one specific fiend rather than just getting a seat on the Council in general.
“You’ve got name recognition among the people who can actually vote.” Florian glanced down at the poster approvingly. “You aren’t as high profile as some, sure, but you’re a safe vote without links to too many power players in the city. You might get more votes than you think.”
“I just don’t want the Marauder to actually be on the Council.” Fyrehowl gave a soft snarl and rolled her eyes. “She’s bad enough sitting in the front row and making a public scene over marginal issues.”
“Is she actually running?” Florian raised a point which in the guardinal’s bout of simultaneous hope and preparation for her own disappointment, she’d seemingly failed to consider.
“I…” Fyrhowl paused and stared over at the cleric. “I would assume so.”
“Maybe she isn’t?” Florian shrugged. “Gods above that would be amazing… but no, I think it’s an absolute given that she will. Estevan and Zadara are already on the council, and powers forbid that they have some social advantage that she doesn’t.”
Florian rolled her eyes one more time at the ‘loth and shuffled through some of the other mock posters, pointing out her favorites and suggesting spots to hang some of them in each of the various wards. Eventually she broached the topic of candidates beyond the guardinal and the ‘loth. “Do you know who else is openly running?”
“Only a few names that I’m aware of, and none that we’ve particularly run into or run afoul of.” Fyrehowl made a mental tally of the confirmed and rumored names that she’d heard of through official and unofficial channels when she’d decided to put her name into the metaphorical hat. “There’s a deadline tomorrow for people to put themselves in the running, but it’s so late in the game that I don’t think that anyone else will, barring a miracle.”
“So what you’re saying is that you have a damn fine shot of making the council.” Florian raised her glass in a toast.
Fyrehowl’s ears perked and a slow smile crossed her muzzle. “You know, I think that you’re right.”
“When you’re ready, I’ll help you hang posters.”
Unbeknownst to either of them, the full roster of announced candidates was far from finished.
****
Clueless stared at the man who stood opposite him, his limbic system screaming to his brain’s higher functions every blood-flecked scream of horror that it knew. His hand clutched Razor’s hilt unconsciously, though it wouldn’t have helped him in the slightest if he’d drawn and closed the distance. His last trip to those halls, he’d seen a glimpse of what the man, or at least the man’s robed, inhuman familiar… if familiar was the most apt word.
Time seemed to stand still and ambient noise faded away until all that remained was the Jester’s implacable, wry smile and the soft wriggling of tentacles unseen just below the fringe of his small servitor’s robes. Perfect lips parted to reveal perfect teeth and the charisma and unspoken aura of grandeur and power reserved for the Lords of Hell themselves. But the Jester wasn’t one of the Nine. The Jester was something else entirely.
“So, I must ask,” The Jester asked, “How exactly did it come to your attention that I’d been watching you, ever since you left my halls?”
The Jester’s voice was smooth and cultured, touched with an accent unheard in Sigil’s streets for untold millennia, but there was something more than just the touch of the exotic. The man was beguiling, nearly hypnotic, and Clueless found himself gliding along the fine line that separated fear, respect, and allure.
“Watching…” Clueless frowned, puffing himself up to respond. “You were lodged inside of my head like an uninvited guest, not unlike more than one fiend that I’ve known.”
“At the very least, unlike those others who’ve found lodging inside of your skull, I’m not a fiend.” The Jester chuckled and his familiar peered out from behind the edge of his greatcoat, “And do remember that you entered my halls of your own volition, an uninvited guest to where I’ve been for many years, uninvolved in Sigil’s politics, simply enjoying my existence.”
“Fair enough.” Clueless inclined his head. “As for your question, I learned it from a source that I don’t care to ever meet again, but which I feel inclined to think knew what it was talking about: a baernaloth.”
Unbidden, the Jester’s familiar hissed and withdrew behind him. Unseen below the edge of his wide hat, the Jester’s eyes narrowed and he chose his next words with careful deliberation.
“And you trusted it?” He laughed and shook his head. “Lies are their vocabulary beyond any other measure of their substance, and trust me when I say that I have known some of the greatest liars in the cosmos. Your point however is true. If you encountered one of them, if it deigned to tell even a half truth, it would know what it was talking about.”
“I didn’t say that I trusted it, but the fact that you admit to knowing about their being a fiend in my head, I don’t have to blindly trust the ‘loth.” Clueless raised an eyebrow and watched a slow grin cross the Jester’s face.
“The Keeper of the Tower of the Arcanaloths…” The Jester nodded his head approvingly, “His presence lodged firmly in place, and all around him the fading but still visible footsteps of another one of their kind tracing back to the gemstone lodged in your ankle. You’ve collected quite a bit of attention from the ‘loths it seems. You have my sympathies.”
Clueless continued to stare at the Jester, continually balanced between fascinated intrigue and absolutely justified terror. For his part, the master of the underhalls remained preternaturally patient, or perhaps just a predator toying with his prey with words rather than fangs.
“Who and what are you?” Clueless asked, fully understanding that the man standing opposite him was easily thousands of years old, but outwardly human and a picture of statuesque vitality.
“Such a loaded question.” The Jester shrugged, noncommittal and still cloaked in mystery. “It very much depends on who you ask, and precious few of those who know remain alive.”
“That doesn’t even touch upon an answer.”
“That’s not a topic that I’ll be touching today, interwoven with so much of who I am and what I no longer am.”
Clueless furrowed his brow at the double meanings in the Jester’s cryptic non-answer.
“Do you know how I can get Helekanalaith out of my head?”
“It’s funny that you ask that actually. Whether I could help you or not, it doesn’t matter,” The Jester laughed, even as his expression remained tauntingly and unreadably enticing, “Because he’s no longer there.”
Clueless took a step back, confused and concerned, “What?!”
****
The Keeper of the Tower sat at his desk of polished black glass, a burning stylus held in his right hand and a mortal soul stretched out upon an iron frame fresh and ready for the creation of a contract. Gehenna’s starless black void gazed down upon him from wide and distinctly one-way windows that opened out onto the endless vault and the slopes of Krangath, the former’s emptiness reflected in the absence of pity in the Keeper’s soul.
Above Helekanalaith’s desk, shedding a flickering blue-violet light down upon him and his work, the flawless, gemstone prison of his predecessor and lover, Larsdana ap Neut, hovered in its ever present position.
The Keeper twitched his whiskers, bothered by something just at the edge of his mind. His mind was deep beyond mortal comprehension, comprised of a vast and labyrinthine memory palace sorting his thoughts and memories, and keeping fast all those things he refused to enter into the archives of the Tower itself. Something was missing. It wasn’t that a door remained locked or a room empty there within his memory construct, but only the faintest impression that a room itself was missing and the blueprints that would have shed light on that vanishing themselves a palimpsest, with only the vague impression of an outline of something out of place.
Helekanalaith snarled, feeling that faded outline of metaphorical ink fading by the moment and depriving him of even the suspicion of loss. For a moment, panic flooded his senses before he returned to his calm, controlled self.
“You know, don’t you?” The Keeper narrowed his eyes and glared at the gemstone lamp, burning ceaselessly with his mentor’s essence. “Your silence on the matter is damning Larsdana.”
The Keeper focused his mind and concentrated, peering into the first Majestrix of Gehenna’s tortured mind for what glimmers of meaning he might there discern. Only her ragged screams greeted him there, devoid of meaning and empty of any clue as to what gnawed at him.
“Or you may continue to scream.” The Keeper sighed, smiling with a moment of romantic pleasure as he enjoyed the closest thing to love that a creature such as himself could experience: the brutal and unceasing torture of his former mentor and lover. He closed his eyes and listened to each subtle note in the other archfiend’s agony. “You are so very, very beautiful to me. Please, never stop.”
Seconds of the Keeper’s self-indulgence passed into minutes, into nearly an hour spent listening to Larsdana’s agonies. The act itself was not-infrequent on his part as a refuge away from the struggles of holding and enforcing his position in the Tower from every other member of his caste with aspirations for his throne. He had no desire for there to ever be a repeat of the act of beautiful betrayal that saw him replace Larsdana. His moments of listening to her agony only reaffirmed his confidence and each of her brutal screams only told him in words that he would have been unable to comprehend, that she was proud of him, the only creature that she had ever loved.
Smiling to himself, Helekanalaith opened his eyes.
“I worry too much you know Larsdana. I fear for my position purely because of your failure so long ago and I…”
Helekanalaith’s voice trailed off as she looked into the gemstone that held Larsdana’s trapped spirit, seeing his face reflected back at him, but also another entity entirely. There in the mirrored, faceted surface of the gemstone was the face of one of The Demented.
“Father/Mother…” The Keeper whispered with equal parts reverence and abject fear as he watched and then felt the primordial abomination reach up and caress his face, lean forward and open its mouth, issuing forth a wash of bitter fumes like the out gassing of a putrefying corpse.
Alashra the Dream Reaver smiled, extending a purple-black tongue to lick across the Keeper’s face. From a nearly skeletal face framed with tangled, ashen hair, the baernaloth’s eyelids were sown shut with ragged black string and the eyes beneath them visibly twitched in the spasms of deepest slumber. A low, chill fog wafted off of her body, thin tendrils of ethereal protomatter twisting and wriggling like the tongues of a thousand serpents evaporating from a wasted, starving body with unnaturally elongated limbs.
The Keeper of the Tower sat, transfixed in space as the baernaloth which had once inhabited Larsdana like a parasite slowly curled its fingers and drew out thin filaments of gossamer energy from his mind, erasing even the empty places within his memory construct, completing the hasty work that her brother/sister the Chronicler had begun.
The Chronicler hadn’t been sloppy she realized, he’d left the scuffs and paintings tilted at odd angles in an otherwise spotless mental room to torment the Keeper and also to draw her gaze to the mental link that he’d forged with a mortal, formerly a puppet of the Marauder. The link itself showed promise, as well as the fingerprints of others that touched it, hiding their presence just as surely as the Keeper had himself, or at least seeking to hide their presence.
The Dream Reaver smiled and released the Keeper back to his romantic moment with her former vessel Larsdana, then stepped back and subsumed herself into the base substance of Gehenna, finished with her task. The Keeper blinked and glanced around, momentarily distracted before he returned to the contract sitting upon his desk, none the wiser as to what had happened and what he had lost.
Having born witness to it all, but still entrapped and screaming in her endless torment, Larsdana smiled.
****
