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Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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<blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 8052155" data-attributes="member: 11697"><p>Dregoth stepped forward, the cracked flesh of his draconic muzzle split to a predator’s smile, and as he descended the steps from his throne it became transparently obvious that his eyes were fixed on Daru’s box and not at all on the companions who had arrived carrying it. They were immaterial to him and his concerns; anything otherwise and they would not have arrived in his presence.</p><p></p><p>“Whoever you are, you have arrived with my prize.” He gestured to Clueless, his unnaturally long fingers little more than bone held together with a glimmer of black energy at the joints. “I will relieve you now of your burden.”</p><p></p><p>The sorcerer-king’s words echoing the same phrase as the madman they had visited on their prior stop, Clueless handed over the baernaloth’s box, even as Tristol reached out to put a hand on Fyrehowl’s shoulder as she’d tensed to do something to intervene.</p><p></p><p>The light within the Dread King’s empty eye sockets flared as he cradled the box in his arms, whispering to himself as if his congregation of thousands did not matter, nor did the ones who had brought him his prize.</p><p></p><p>“You have followed through on your portion of our deal and I will follow through with mine. You will have your bounty and I will become the god of this world. This time they cannot stop me and the streets of their cities will flow with the blood of every living creature, every sacrifice a drop in an ocean of my debt to you.”</p><p></p><p>They waited, utterly unsure of what to do, and equally unsure of what they –could– do. Dregoth preempted their uncertainty as he whispered to the box, nodded, and then addressed his children.</p><p></p><p>“IT IS TIME! GATHER YOURSELVES FOR TODAY THE SURFACE SHALL RUN WITH THE BLOOD OF YOUR ENEMIES! SLAUGHTER ALL IN MY NAME, IN THE NAME OF YOUR GOD AND CREATOR!”</p><p></p><p>The stone shook with the roar of the assembled dray.</p><p></p><p>The horror and moral agony in the companions’ eyes would have slaked the thirst of a yugoloth and in shock they could only stand and wait as Dregoth turned and almost absentmindedly motioned to one of his high priests and spoke to the companions for the second and last time.</p><p></p><p>“My priest will guide you to the planar mirror to provide you egress. I will activate it when you are close.” Dregoth’s eyesockets flickered and if he had eyes they would have seen how little regard he seemed to give them, as if they were naught but insects. His last statement would haunt them though. “Give the Lie-Weaver my regards.”</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The following minutes were spent in a haze as they followed one of the dray priests away from the central cavern and through a labyrinth of secret passages until finally arriving at a chamber with what had been until minutes earlier, the sorcerer-king’s greatest possession: the Planar Gate.</p><p></p><p>A towering mirror set in a dark frame of polished black wood, it was one of the few extant artifacts of Athas’s lost Green Age, and one of the only ways for a native of that blighted world to reliably access the planes, many of which were otherwise barred from their access. Wrought with techniques and knowledge lost to time, Dregoth was capable of using it, but not replicating or repairing it, and with his prized artifact he had explored the planes. It was there on the planes that he had found the baernaloth and there struck a bargain, the hideous details of which remained blessedly opaque to the companions who had delivered him his prize.</p><p></p><p>The mirror flared with light as soon as they approached it, activated with the sorcerer-king’s will, and rather than simply funnel them through the Black and the Gray and deposit them back into the Ethereal from whence they’d arrived, instead it opened onto a view of a location known to the companions and even more so intimately by Dregoth himself: Dubai’s Obscure Woe in Torch.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The portal closed like the blinking of a great and malignant eye, depositing them all in the cobblestone courtyard of the baernaloth’s demesne on the outskirts of Torch. In the distance the volcanic mounts lit the clouds of soot and smoke with a dull, angry red glow while the gate to Gehenna flickered like an open sore in the sky.</p><p></p><p>The dull silence of the proto-fiend’s crumbling manor remained, uninterrupted by any of them as they each individually filtered through the rush of recent events, confused and terrified over the implications and consequences of their own role in what had occurred.</p><p></p><p>“What the hell did we just facilitate?!” Toras snarled</p><p></p><p>“Nothing good…” Clueless sighed, shaking his head.</p><p></p><p>Fyrehowl’s eyes flashed with repressed anger like a wolf in that moment before it bares its teeth and snarls at a threat. “This better be worth it.”</p><p></p><p>Tristol inhaled deeply, hoping that he’d get the answers that they’d bargained for.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They descended into the depths to stand in the dark, the slow drip of something from the ceiling, thicker than simply condensed water, falling and echoing. For several seconds once they reached the bottom they saw nothing, and then the baernaloth opened its eyes and smiled, lighting the darkness with twin opalescent orbs and an eerily luminous hircine smile of jagged, weathered teeth.</p><p></p><p>The baernaloth let them stand there, awkwardly, for a long moment before abruptly breaking the silence and preempting their objections to the “three simple tasks” to which he had sent them on.</p><p></p><p>"Did you enjoy my errands children? Is your conscience sullied?” Daru asked, a trail of thick, ropy mucus sliding down his chin to join a puddle of the same already present upon the floor. “Rest assured I can put your fears and worries at ease. Trust me, listen and all will be taken care of. All it takes it a question and an answer and your sins in my name shall be forgiven."</p><p></p><p>“F*** you…” Fyrehowl scowled, bringing a smile to the ur-fiend’s face.</p><p></p><p>The lupinal’s blunt statement was met with multiple nods and smirks from the others.</p><p></p><p>“What did we give to Dregoth and what did we cause?” Clueless asked.</p><p></p><p>"Dregoth was a prize to be certain. He wishes so much, and is yet so blind at the same moment. His hatred for his fellow Sorcerer-Kings of Athas knows no bounds. They killed him you know, not that that lasted. They feared him, they feared his power. And what we fear we strike out against. That is the nature of so very many mortals."</p><p></p><p>Daru chuckled and finally turned fully to face the party, and that was when they saw it: the box. Cradled in the baernaloth’s hands, the very same hideous artifact that they had handed over to Dregoth was there once again in its master’s hands. Surrounded by a swirling cloud of shimmering energy that seemed to slowly funnel into the leering face atop of it, a rent in the fabric of space hung behind the ur-fiend, the source of the torrent of energy that now flowed up for collection.</p><p></p><p>“But as to your question, he struck a deal with me many, many years ago. He and I, we are well acquainted. As tempting as it might have been to play Lazarius and speak to Dregoth through the planar mirror that gave him and now most recently you egress out of Athas to wander the planes, I waited for him to come to me here, following a trail of whispers and beautiful, gilded lies.”</p><p></p><p>“Sounds familiar…” Clueless rolled his eyes, his voice bitter.</p><p></p><p>Daru chuckled knowingly, “History repeats itself in cycles and echoes, each all the more damning than the last you see…</p><p></p><p>Fyrehowl snarled.</p><p></p><p>“But as to your overwhelming and unstated concern, no, he will not become a god.” Daru whispered, a subtle sneer as his lips pronounced that final word, shaking his head at the very notion, “Not on Athas. Not ever.”</p><p></p><p>Tristol stared at the baernaloth’s box, his eyes flickering with flecks of silverfire as he examined the magic that swirled around it. Previously it had been opaque, hiding its secrets, but as it seemed to feed on the energy flowing through the crack through Athas’s Black and Gray, he finally saw it for what it was. The box was a siphon, either to devour and contain the souls which Dregoth had promised or perhaps even the power of the undead sorcerer-king’s nascent divinity itself, stolen and denied him, but there was more. The magic that facilitated it all, the magic swirling –out– of the box itself was not that of the Lie Weaver. It danced and changed moment to moment like a living thing, and Tristol had seen it before. It was the very same magic that drove the manifest horror of the Oblivion Compass itself, and it was the same magic that had composed the body of the baernaloth that they had watched effortlessly slaughter Ghyris Vast the builder of the Divinity Leech: Lazarius ibn Shartalan the Architect.</p><p></p><p>With that realization the magic that Tristol stared at suddenly shifted, the patterns resembling a myriad of eyes that turned, focused, and stared back at the aasimar. Immediately ending his spell, Tristol shuddered.</p><p></p><p>“Duplicity leads to complicity…” The Lie Weaver’s milky eyes narrowed and it stared at them, a soft and subtle chuckle passing through its lips like the shudder of a fault line as a prelude to a megathrust tectonic slip. "But Dregoth will never have what he wishes for. He toils now to do that which is his price for my wisdom. There has never been a power upon that world, and there never will be. He doesn't understand that, nor will he ever. But that is not MY concern. I asked him a question, and he answered, and I provided. Now I watch with eagerness as he stumbles headlong to a fate of his own making."</p><p></p><p>The baernaloth turned to lovingly stroke the box, "Now, you had a question for me, did you not? Ask me and I shall weave for you an answer. And perhaps a question for you as well. That is what I do."</p><p></p><p>“We’re not answering anything for you.” Toras scowled, “We bargained for an answer from you. It’s your turn to talk.”</p><p></p><p>“I will give you an answer and it will not be what you want to hear, because your answer is not mine to give as I was not involved in the construction of the Oblivion Compass. Not in the slightest. That was the work of the Architect and my sibling the Blind Clockmaker. The latter will give you your answer directly and I impart to you the knowledge of where to find him in the Clockwork Gap within the Demiplane of Time.”</p><p></p><p>Without a spell and without a touch, a blizzard of images shot through their collective minds, images of the demiplane and another pocket reality drifting within its heart, and there a pair of milky, unseeing eyes staring into space while a nightmare gear work apparatus ticked away in the background.</p><p></p><p>“WHAT?!” Tristol shouted. “You promised us an answer and you send us on another wild goose chase?”</p><p></p><p>The baernaloth chuckled, “Do you have any other option?”</p><p></p><p>Toras spat an invective and walked away back up the stairs.</p><p></p><p>“We should never have trusted you to uphold your end of the bargain.” Florian shook her head.</p><p></p><p>“The eventual response of every being to have ever spoken with me indeed…” The ur-fiend flashed a smile, seemingly proud of itself. “But I do suppose that I owe you some knowledge as a fee for your inconvenience for having to traipse across the planes and find my sibling. Consider it a consolation for your efforts and for your regrets.”</p><p></p><p>Fyrehowl narrowed her eyes, immediately distrustful of the fiend’s feigned offering. Nothing was free. Nothing came without strings.</p><p></p><p>"How much of the tongue of the Gloom Fathers do you know?” Daru asked, pointedly staring at Tristol before lapsing into a long fit of phlegmatic coughing before recovering.</p><p></p><p>“I’ve only heard a few words of it before and it defies direct translation.” The aasimar admitted.</p><p></p><p>“Well then let me provide a translation of one simple phrase. A name really. A title.” Daru’s eyes shined in the darkness and his smile was that of a poisoner handing over an envenomed sweet, “Did you know that in the language of my brothers and sisters, Vorkannis, his name itself is a word? He has worn it well that one. For in the tongue of the baern, Vorkannis means HUBRIS."</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shemeska, post: 8052155, member: 11697"] Dregoth stepped forward, the cracked flesh of his draconic muzzle split to a predator’s smile, and as he descended the steps from his throne it became transparently obvious that his eyes were fixed on Daru’s box and not at all on the companions who had arrived carrying it. They were immaterial to him and his concerns; anything otherwise and they would not have arrived in his presence. “Whoever you are, you have arrived with my prize.” He gestured to Clueless, his unnaturally long fingers little more than bone held together with a glimmer of black energy at the joints. “I will relieve you now of your burden.” The sorcerer-king’s words echoing the same phrase as the madman they had visited on their prior stop, Clueless handed over the baernaloth’s box, even as Tristol reached out to put a hand on Fyrehowl’s shoulder as she’d tensed to do something to intervene. The light within the Dread King’s empty eye sockets flared as he cradled the box in his arms, whispering to himself as if his congregation of thousands did not matter, nor did the ones who had brought him his prize. “You have followed through on your portion of our deal and I will follow through with mine. You will have your bounty and I will become the god of this world. This time they cannot stop me and the streets of their cities will flow with the blood of every living creature, every sacrifice a drop in an ocean of my debt to you.” They waited, utterly unsure of what to do, and equally unsure of what they –could– do. Dregoth preempted their uncertainty as he whispered to the box, nodded, and then addressed his children. “IT IS TIME! GATHER YOURSELVES FOR TODAY THE SURFACE SHALL RUN WITH THE BLOOD OF YOUR ENEMIES! SLAUGHTER ALL IN MY NAME, IN THE NAME OF YOUR GOD AND CREATOR!” The stone shook with the roar of the assembled dray. The horror and moral agony in the companions’ eyes would have slaked the thirst of a yugoloth and in shock they could only stand and wait as Dregoth turned and almost absentmindedly motioned to one of his high priests and spoke to the companions for the second and last time. “My priest will guide you to the planar mirror to provide you egress. I will activate it when you are close.” Dregoth’s eyesockets flickered and if he had eyes they would have seen how little regard he seemed to give them, as if they were naught but insects. His last statement would haunt them though. “Give the Lie-Weaver my regards.” [center]****[/center] The following minutes were spent in a haze as they followed one of the dray priests away from the central cavern and through a labyrinth of secret passages until finally arriving at a chamber with what had been until minutes earlier, the sorcerer-king’s greatest possession: the Planar Gate. A towering mirror set in a dark frame of polished black wood, it was one of the few extant artifacts of Athas’s lost Green Age, and one of the only ways for a native of that blighted world to reliably access the planes, many of which were otherwise barred from their access. Wrought with techniques and knowledge lost to time, Dregoth was capable of using it, but not replicating or repairing it, and with his prized artifact he had explored the planes. It was there on the planes that he had found the baernaloth and there struck a bargain, the hideous details of which remained blessedly opaque to the companions who had delivered him his prize. The mirror flared with light as soon as they approached it, activated with the sorcerer-king’s will, and rather than simply funnel them through the Black and the Gray and deposit them back into the Ethereal from whence they’d arrived, instead it opened onto a view of a location known to the companions and even more so intimately by Dregoth himself: Dubai’s Obscure Woe in Torch. [center]****[/center] The portal closed like the blinking of a great and malignant eye, depositing them all in the cobblestone courtyard of the baernaloth’s demesne on the outskirts of Torch. In the distance the volcanic mounts lit the clouds of soot and smoke with a dull, angry red glow while the gate to Gehenna flickered like an open sore in the sky. The dull silence of the proto-fiend’s crumbling manor remained, uninterrupted by any of them as they each individually filtered through the rush of recent events, confused and terrified over the implications and consequences of their own role in what had occurred. “What the hell did we just facilitate?!” Toras snarled “Nothing good…” Clueless sighed, shaking his head. Fyrehowl’s eyes flashed with repressed anger like a wolf in that moment before it bares its teeth and snarls at a threat. “This better be worth it.” Tristol inhaled deeply, hoping that he’d get the answers that they’d bargained for. [center]****[/center] They descended into the depths to stand in the dark, the slow drip of something from the ceiling, thicker than simply condensed water, falling and echoing. For several seconds once they reached the bottom they saw nothing, and then the baernaloth opened its eyes and smiled, lighting the darkness with twin opalescent orbs and an eerily luminous hircine smile of jagged, weathered teeth. The baernaloth let them stand there, awkwardly, for a long moment before abruptly breaking the silence and preempting their objections to the “three simple tasks” to which he had sent them on. "Did you enjoy my errands children? Is your conscience sullied?” Daru asked, a trail of thick, ropy mucus sliding down his chin to join a puddle of the same already present upon the floor. “Rest assured I can put your fears and worries at ease. Trust me, listen and all will be taken care of. All it takes it a question and an answer and your sins in my name shall be forgiven." “F*** you…” Fyrehowl scowled, bringing a smile to the ur-fiend’s face. The lupinal’s blunt statement was met with multiple nods and smirks from the others. “What did we give to Dregoth and what did we cause?” Clueless asked. "Dregoth was a prize to be certain. He wishes so much, and is yet so blind at the same moment. His hatred for his fellow Sorcerer-Kings of Athas knows no bounds. They killed him you know, not that that lasted. They feared him, they feared his power. And what we fear we strike out against. That is the nature of so very many mortals." Daru chuckled and finally turned fully to face the party, and that was when they saw it: the box. Cradled in the baernaloth’s hands, the very same hideous artifact that they had handed over to Dregoth was there once again in its master’s hands. Surrounded by a swirling cloud of shimmering energy that seemed to slowly funnel into the leering face atop of it, a rent in the fabric of space hung behind the ur-fiend, the source of the torrent of energy that now flowed up for collection. “But as to your question, he struck a deal with me many, many years ago. He and I, we are well acquainted. As tempting as it might have been to play Lazarius and speak to Dregoth through the planar mirror that gave him and now most recently you egress out of Athas to wander the planes, I waited for him to come to me here, following a trail of whispers and beautiful, gilded lies.” “Sounds familiar…” Clueless rolled his eyes, his voice bitter. Daru chuckled knowingly, “History repeats itself in cycles and echoes, each all the more damning than the last you see… Fyrehowl snarled. “But as to your overwhelming and unstated concern, no, he will not become a god.” Daru whispered, a subtle sneer as his lips pronounced that final word, shaking his head at the very notion, “Not on Athas. Not ever.” Tristol stared at the baernaloth’s box, his eyes flickering with flecks of silverfire as he examined the magic that swirled around it. Previously it had been opaque, hiding its secrets, but as it seemed to feed on the energy flowing through the crack through Athas’s Black and Gray, he finally saw it for what it was. The box was a siphon, either to devour and contain the souls which Dregoth had promised or perhaps even the power of the undead sorcerer-king’s nascent divinity itself, stolen and denied him, but there was more. The magic that facilitated it all, the magic swirling –out– of the box itself was not that of the Lie Weaver. It danced and changed moment to moment like a living thing, and Tristol had seen it before. It was the very same magic that drove the manifest horror of the Oblivion Compass itself, and it was the same magic that had composed the body of the baernaloth that they had watched effortlessly slaughter Ghyris Vast the builder of the Divinity Leech: Lazarius ibn Shartalan the Architect. With that realization the magic that Tristol stared at suddenly shifted, the patterns resembling a myriad of eyes that turned, focused, and stared back at the aasimar. Immediately ending his spell, Tristol shuddered. “Duplicity leads to complicity…” The Lie Weaver’s milky eyes narrowed and it stared at them, a soft and subtle chuckle passing through its lips like the shudder of a fault line as a prelude to a megathrust tectonic slip. "But Dregoth will never have what he wishes for. He toils now to do that which is his price for my wisdom. There has never been a power upon that world, and there never will be. He doesn't understand that, nor will he ever. But that is not MY concern. I asked him a question, and he answered, and I provided. Now I watch with eagerness as he stumbles headlong to a fate of his own making." The baernaloth turned to lovingly stroke the box, "Now, you had a question for me, did you not? Ask me and I shall weave for you an answer. And perhaps a question for you as well. That is what I do." “We’re not answering anything for you.” Toras scowled, “We bargained for an answer from you. It’s your turn to talk.” “I will give you an answer and it will not be what you want to hear, because your answer is not mine to give as I was not involved in the construction of the Oblivion Compass. Not in the slightest. That was the work of the Architect and my sibling the Blind Clockmaker. The latter will give you your answer directly and I impart to you the knowledge of where to find him in the Clockwork Gap within the Demiplane of Time.” Without a spell and without a touch, a blizzard of images shot through their collective minds, images of the demiplane and another pocket reality drifting within its heart, and there a pair of milky, unseeing eyes staring into space while a nightmare gear work apparatus ticked away in the background. “WHAT?!” Tristol shouted. “You promised us an answer and you send us on another wild goose chase?” The baernaloth chuckled, “Do you have any other option?” Toras spat an invective and walked away back up the stairs. “We should never have trusted you to uphold your end of the bargain.” Florian shook her head. “The eventual response of every being to have ever spoken with me indeed…” The ur-fiend flashed a smile, seemingly proud of itself. “But I do suppose that I owe you some knowledge as a fee for your inconvenience for having to traipse across the planes and find my sibling. Consider it a consolation for your efforts and for your regrets.” Fyrehowl narrowed her eyes, immediately distrustful of the fiend’s feigned offering. Nothing was free. Nothing came without strings. "How much of the tongue of the Gloom Fathers do you know?” Daru asked, pointedly staring at Tristol before lapsing into a long fit of phlegmatic coughing before recovering. “I’ve only heard a few words of it before and it defies direct translation.” The aasimar admitted. “Well then let me provide a translation of one simple phrase. A name really. A title.” Daru’s eyes shined in the darkness and his smile was that of a poisoner handing over an envenomed sweet, “Did you know that in the language of my brothers and sisters, Vorkannis, his name itself is a word? He has worn it well that one. For in the tongue of the baern, Vorkannis means HUBRIS." [center]****[/center] [/QUOTE]
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Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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