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Story Hour
Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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<blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 6903255" data-attributes="member: 11697"><p>It was dark, nearly Anti-Peak when Clueless finally made his way up from the depths and then out of Jeremo’s Palace. He’d never thereafter consider the Ring Giver Factol’s palace as ‘The Jester’s Palace’ having met its original namesake. Jeremo was a good man with endless ambition and probably more wealth than any other single individual within Sigil, but he was not and never would be the man who dwelled in isolation deep below. He’d met that man and come to an agreement of sorts, even if he wasn’t entirely aware of it quite yet.</p><p></p><p>His head rushed with what he’d learned and what he would be learning in time as he recalled how their meeting had gone.</p><p></p><p>“I’m not one of Asmodeus’ lackeys, scrambling to poach each and every errant mortal soul for the hope of promotion or simply because it is by the very definition writ within the fabric of their being, their duty.” There’d been a curious flicker of a smile across the Jester’s face, and the wriggling tentacles of his familiar –for lack of a better term for the robed abomination at his feet– had reacted in what might best have been read as a polite, chuckle in response to an inside joke.</p><p></p><p>The Jester had turned around and paced, comfortable and entirely at ease within the walls of his hidden palace deep below the modern incarnation of the original far above. “You’ll find that I don’t appear in a rush of brimstone seeking to make deals. I don’t brandish contracts. I don’t bother myself with the ebb and flow of the Blood War. I am done with those concerns and I have been done with them for a very, very long time.”</p><p></p><p>Clueless frowned and narrowed his eyes. It was subtle, but the Jester’s robed companion (his familiar?) always remained between the two of them like an understated bodyguard. “You still haven’t answered my question.”</p><p></p><p>“Why should I?” The Jester chuckled, an amused smile playing across his face. </p><p></p><p>“Fair enough,” Clueless admitted with a shrug. “But I came down here more to ask that you get out of my head than to interrogate you about your history in Sigil, though I’ll admit that I’m fascinated to know.”</p><p></p><p>The Jester nodded sagely and tapped his fingertips together, “If it makes you feel any more secure, I was only in your mind out of a similar sense of curiosity. It isn’t often that you come across a man with a largely quiescent artifact lodged in his leg and a yugoloth lord silently taking up space in their brain unbidden.”</p><p></p><p>“Helekanalaith can go f*ck himself.” Clueless rolled his eyes to which the Jester smiled approvingly.</p><p></p><p>“My presence in your mind also afforded me a window into the outside world. You must understand that my seclusion which began for reasons that remain my own has largely kept me isolated from news of the various happenings on the planes at large, and even from all but the largest events in Sigil itself.”</p><p></p><p>“I’m glad that I could have afforded you that window.” Clueless frowned. “But I’m not sure how your crashing in the free space in my brain is necessarily any different from the Keeper of the Tower doing the exact same.”</p><p></p><p>The Jester paused and pondered that point. Softly, he whispered to himself in a language that Clueless had never before heard, and which caused the man’s robed familiar to for a moment quirk its head in response.</p><p></p><p>“Done.” The Jester said, motioning in Clueless’s direction. “My link to your mind is severed and my apologies for doing so without your knowledge.” Left unsaid was the phrase ‘without your approval’.</p><p></p><p>Clueless gave a dubious glare, “That’s virtually the same thing that Helekanalaith said.”</p><p></p><p>“I trust that the Keeper never actually apologized though.” The Jester chuckled.</p><p></p><p>“No.” Clueless frowned. “No he did not. But still that…”</p><p></p><p>The Jester cut him off, “You’re more than free to have my claim examined by any wizard or priest that you might find in Sigil or anywhere else. I would however advise you to avoid Baator.”</p><p></p><p>Clueless shuddered, remembering his recent trip to the 9 Hells and what they’d found there, “Yeah I’ve had enough of Baator for quite some time thank you very much.”</p><p></p><p>“Killed by a yugoloth lord,” The Jester chuckled and shook his head. “In all fairness I sincerely doubt that any of you would have survived had Taba decided to fight rather than simply snarl and be upon her way. From what I gather through the window you provided me, she’s managed to evade the entirety of the yugoloth hierarchy with a price upon her head. Curious isn’t it as to why the Oinoloth seems to be butchering his own kind?”</p><p></p><p>“Yeah, I find myself wondering the same thing.” Clueless gave a noncommittal shrug. “But at the end of the day I can’t say that I particularly mind the ‘loths slaughtering one another in a game of who can betray who the most.”</p><p></p><p>His face shrouded by shadows and his hat, a curious smile passed over the Jester’s face, juxtaposing a mixture of anger, triumph, and resignation. </p><p></p><p>“Betrayal is quite possibly the only thing then that I have in common with their kind.” He said, spreading his arms and gesturing to his surroundings as his familiar softly hissed and hugged his ankle. “Betrayal is something which I am very, very well acquainted with.”</p><p></p><p>Whatever his past might have held, the Jester radiated an aura of power and authority above and beyond the thing at his feet. Whatever the tiny familiar was, Clueless had watched a vision of the past in his prior trip to the Jester’s underhalls and he knew just what the thing was capable of doing to a man. Still though, even after having seen the creature employed like a hound on a hunt and tearing a fleeing man to shreds, Clueless was under no illusions that he had much, much more to fear from the Jester himself.</p><p></p><p>There was something else as well. The Jester possessed a certain sense of nearly tangible charisma, an air of fascination borne of mystery. Despite the tentacled horror of a familiar that followed at his heels, Clueless couldn’t help himself but realize that there was more brewing in his mind than academic curiosity and professional admiration.</p><p></p><p>There was more to their meeting of course, but those parts of their lengthy interaction were what bubbled and brewed in the bladesinger’s mind as he walked out of Jeremo’s palace and back towards the Portal Jammer. It was late and he was tired, but he’d managed to learn and although he had more questions than when he’d stepped into the Jester’s palace, there was a certainty in his mind that he hadn’t had before.</p><p></p><p>Clueless knew that he would be going back. The man who’d stepped into Jeremo’s palace and then ventured below it had taken a step into the realm of something ancient and powerful. That first step had changed him, and it would continue to change him in the future with each further step. There was a gleam in his eyes as he stepped out into the grey-green haze of Sigil’s evening sky, and a darker countenance than he’d bore when he’d started that journey.</p><p></p><p>Down in the darkness below the streets of Sigil, the Jester smiled.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p>“HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN!?” Muriov Garianis screamed out before unleashing a stream of invectives as he trembling with rage and panic. Over the past hour more and more information had filtered in regarding his losses, both material and in lives, including those related by blood, and the cleric of Hades was doing his best to keep himself together.</p><p></p><p>A half-dozen terrified faces glanced back at the crime lord with hollow, broken eyes from what they’d experienced over the previous twenty four hours. Almost half of their organization lay dead or brutally injured at the hands of the Athar, they’d lost their hold over the Shattered Temple, and dozens more of their members had vanished, presumably taken captive. They feared their patron Muriov’s rage at the losses and the rapidity with which their hold over the Shattered Temple District had simply evaporated, but they worried more for the safety of their missing comrades, loved ones, and family members, including their patriarch’s nephew and his heir-apparent daughter.</p><p></p><p>“F*CK THE ATHAR! F*CK THEM ALL!” Muriov slammed his fists down upon his desk and screamed incoherently, throwing his arm wide and scattering papers and books to the floor with a clatter. The normally cool, collected high priest of Hades was slipping into the arms of despair and panic. “F*CK THE MARAUDER! F*CK THE F*CKING LOTHS! ALL OF THEM!”</p><p></p><p>He’d been ranting and raving for hours as his closest advisors struggled to give him anything resembling a tangible explanation of what had happened in the Shattered Temple and how they might recover from their horrific losses, let alone anything close to resembling good news.</p><p></p><p>“Where are the Dustmen now?!” Muriov spat, “Crawling back to the Marble District and not so much as responding to a sending or messages by courier. If I so much as see their factol Oridi or that c*nt of an aasimar Qaida I’ll give them the true death that they prattle on about. F*CK!”</p><p></p><p>His advisors had little to tell him beyond the fact that their allies had abandoned the field of battle and severed communications. They all knew that they’d have done the same had the situation been reversed. The Dustmen, for all their dispassion, they knew a lost cause when they confronted one.</p><p></p><p>“Where is my nephew?” Muriov demanded for the hundredth time that day, “Where is my daughter? WHERE IS SHE?!” Tears welled up in his eyes.</p><p></p><p>Again his advisors had no news to provide and then the cycle of ranting and demands for news began again as the Garianis clan patriarch fumed and mourned. He prayed to Hades for wisdom, insensate that at the moment that he expected to snatch a portion of the Lower Ward from the ‘loth’s claws, she’d snatched it away from him effortlessly. For a moment he felt less like a burgeoning rival who had spent years maneuvering to eclipse her influence in the Ward, and more a plaything to be batted about, torn to shreds, and callously tossed aside as nothing of importance.</p><p></p><p>That was when the box arrived.</p><p></p><p>“Grandfather Muriov, this just arrived at the front gate.” One of the patriarch’s grandchildren stood at the door to his office, holding a wooden box in their hands. “It’s addressed to you.”</p><p></p><p>The priest turned and stared, narrowing his eyes with suspicion and whispering the words to a prayer of detection. Only when he found no curses layered upon the box did he motion the boy over.</p><p></p><p>“Who delivered it?” Muriov took a deep breath as he examined the simple wooden container.</p><p></p><p>The boy shrugged with a look of worried confusion, “We didn’t see. It was simply there when it hadn’t been a moment before. I… I don’t know.”</p><p></p><p>The box bore no obvious marks of identification. The wood was reclaimed scraps from most likely everywhere in the city and unlikely to prove easy to trace by magic back to where it had been crafted or used. Gently he shook the box, feeling something heavy awkwardly shift inside and bump against the side. </p><p></p><p>“A ransom demand perhaps?” The young man asked as a tremble overtook his grandfather’s hands as the lid was opened.</p><p></p><p>Muriov’s face went ashen in an instant as he saw his nephew’s severed head and the sensory stone lodged in its mouth.</p><p></p><p>That night a wail echoed across the Ward: the wail of a broken man.</p><p></p><p>Hearing Muriov’s despondent, anguished cries, a tiefling dressed in rags and holding a bottle of cheap wine looked up. Sitting at the stoop of a rowhouse cattycorner to Muriov’s estate the nameless, socially invisible mongrel’s ear’s twitching at the hideous, heartbreaking sound. They spread their lips to show a glimmer of suddenly canid fangs. They smiled with a look of rapturous ecstasy, and then, before they vanished into thin air, they placed a hand daintily to their chest as their eyes flickered and glowed a puissant shade of lavender.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p>“I wish to see her.” The man’s voice trembled as he glanced at the two wary tieflings who stood there barring his way.</p><p></p><p>Both tieflings’ hands immediately went to their blades as they blinked, recognizing the man for who he was. Both tieflings stood at the foot of the stairs leading up to the elevated, private dining booth where their mistress sat with a bottle of wine and her evening meal.</p><p></p><p>“Please,” Muriov Garianis exhaled with deliberate resignation, turning his head and glancing up at the fiend high above. All around him the gambling floor of the Fortune’s Wheel bustled with activity and the shouts and screams of winners and losers. For the first time in his life, he found himself distinctly among the latter, but unlike the gamblers losing their day’s, week’s, or life’s pay over a game of cards or dice, he’d lost something that had no price. Like those very same gamblers though, upon drawing his losing hand, he knew that somehow there had to be a way to recoup it all, or at least stop the bloodshed from cutting even deeper.</p><p></p><p>Garianis had left his mansion an hour earlier, leaving without giving notice to his employees or even his family members. He’d dressed in the simple, black clothing of mourning, with only his holy symbol on his person and nothing else as he’d walked from the Lower Ward to the Fortune’s Wheel. He hadn’t worried about being waylaid even if he never traveled without bodyguards. He could have hurled a prayer and incinerated any thief foolish enough to approach, or clapped his hands and summarily imploded them into a bloody, compact smudge upon the cobblestones… but the truth was, he no longer cared about his own personal safety.</p><p></p><p><em>“Send him up.”</em> The Maraduer’s voice echoed within her guards’ minds.</p><p></p><p>Muriov ascended the stairs to see the Marauder sitting there as if nothing untoward had occurred in the prior twenty four hours. There was no smile upon her face. There was no cackle of triumph. There was no mocking of his losses. He stood there watching her sip her wine and enjoy her meal without so much as actually looking up at him. She didn’t care he realized. Her black heart cared nothing for his losses to even consider him worthy of mockery. He’d lost and they both knew that. There wasn’t any need for spectacle. There was only a need to an end.</p><p></p><p>“Please…” Muriov began, trailing off as the fiend quirked an eyebrow and then slowly put down her knife and fork.</p><p></p><p>“Ah yes, your daughter.” A smile played across the fiend’s purple, painted lips. “Delphinia.”</p><p></p><p>“Please, please tell me that…” Muriov stammered, dreading her response.</p><p></p><p>“You wish to have your daughter alive and whole.” The Marauder glanced up for only a moment before resuming her meal. “This can happen.”</p><p></p><p>Muriov paused, prepared to ask what the fiend’s price would be, but he left that question unspoken, irrelevant and pointless. Whatever it was, he would pay it.</p><p></p><p>“Please, make this all stop.” Muriov begged. “I’ve lost too much. You’ve won and I acknowledge that fact. I’ve lost too much. I’ve suffered too much. Please just let this end.”</p><p></p><p>Around them in the Fortune’s Wheel, the stray idle gambler, prostitute, and would-be social climber gave them scarcely any notice at all. If they watched, they saw as the ‘loth continued eating, only pausing to point out where the once powerful Muriov Garianis was to sign the paperwork one of her attendants provided for him. He read them in passing, but it was clear that he simply no longer cared. It didn’t matter to him what the terms were and what they implied. What he wanted was priceless, and he would give anything.”</p><p></p><p>Garianis began to sob, provoking the first reaction on Shemeska’s part that evening as she looked up and sneered. The expression playing across her muzzle returned to a cold, non-committal smile as soon as he looked up and met her gaze and put down the quill, having signed everything handed to him.</p><p></p><p>Shemeska gave a subtle nod and one of her guards took away the papers. Garianis looked at her expectantly as she reached out and opened her hand, revealing a slender crystalline vial. Trembling, he took the vial and stared at the liquid therein and then back at the ‘loth but she no longer looked up at him, but had resumed her evening meal.</p><p></p><p>Sullen and softly crying, Muriov Garianis turned and walked away. Shemeska’s luminous purple eyes trailed him with each and every step he took as he walked across the Fortune’s Wheel and took a seat at a table in the common room, just off the gambling floor.</p><p></p><p>He sat there for nearly an hour, softly praying, sobbing, staring off into space, and staring at the vial in his hand. Finally he turned to look up at fiend high above staring intently down at him.</p><p></p><p>“Delphinia, I’m so sorry…” He whispered, removing the crystalline stopper and drinking the vial’s contents in one swift motion. He gagged, shuddered, and dropped dead.</p><p></p><p>High above and still staring down as employees of the Fortune’s Wheel rushed to his motionless corpse laying there on the floor, the Marauder toyed with a glittering black sapphire in her left hand, “Good work little man. It’s been a pleasure.”</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shemeska, post: 6903255, member: 11697"] It was dark, nearly Anti-Peak when Clueless finally made his way up from the depths and then out of Jeremo’s Palace. He’d never thereafter consider the Ring Giver Factol’s palace as ‘The Jester’s Palace’ having met its original namesake. Jeremo was a good man with endless ambition and probably more wealth than any other single individual within Sigil, but he was not and never would be the man who dwelled in isolation deep below. He’d met that man and come to an agreement of sorts, even if he wasn’t entirely aware of it quite yet. His head rushed with what he’d learned and what he would be learning in time as he recalled how their meeting had gone. “I’m not one of Asmodeus’ lackeys, scrambling to poach each and every errant mortal soul for the hope of promotion or simply because it is by the very definition writ within the fabric of their being, their duty.” There’d been a curious flicker of a smile across the Jester’s face, and the wriggling tentacles of his familiar –for lack of a better term for the robed abomination at his feet– had reacted in what might best have been read as a polite, chuckle in response to an inside joke. The Jester had turned around and paced, comfortable and entirely at ease within the walls of his hidden palace deep below the modern incarnation of the original far above. “You’ll find that I don’t appear in a rush of brimstone seeking to make deals. I don’t brandish contracts. I don’t bother myself with the ebb and flow of the Blood War. I am done with those concerns and I have been done with them for a very, very long time.” Clueless frowned and narrowed his eyes. It was subtle, but the Jester’s robed companion (his familiar?) always remained between the two of them like an understated bodyguard. “You still haven’t answered my question.” “Why should I?” The Jester chuckled, an amused smile playing across his face. “Fair enough,” Clueless admitted with a shrug. “But I came down here more to ask that you get out of my head than to interrogate you about your history in Sigil, though I’ll admit that I’m fascinated to know.” The Jester nodded sagely and tapped his fingertips together, “If it makes you feel any more secure, I was only in your mind out of a similar sense of curiosity. It isn’t often that you come across a man with a largely quiescent artifact lodged in his leg and a yugoloth lord silently taking up space in their brain unbidden.” “Helekanalaith can go f*ck himself.” Clueless rolled his eyes to which the Jester smiled approvingly. “My presence in your mind also afforded me a window into the outside world. You must understand that my seclusion which began for reasons that remain my own has largely kept me isolated from news of the various happenings on the planes at large, and even from all but the largest events in Sigil itself.” “I’m glad that I could have afforded you that window.” Clueless frowned. “But I’m not sure how your crashing in the free space in my brain is necessarily any different from the Keeper of the Tower doing the exact same.” The Jester paused and pondered that point. Softly, he whispered to himself in a language that Clueless had never before heard, and which caused the man’s robed familiar to for a moment quirk its head in response. “Done.” The Jester said, motioning in Clueless’s direction. “My link to your mind is severed and my apologies for doing so without your knowledge.” Left unsaid was the phrase ‘without your approval’. Clueless gave a dubious glare, “That’s virtually the same thing that Helekanalaith said.” “I trust that the Keeper never actually apologized though.” The Jester chuckled. “No.” Clueless frowned. “No he did not. But still that…” The Jester cut him off, “You’re more than free to have my claim examined by any wizard or priest that you might find in Sigil or anywhere else. I would however advise you to avoid Baator.” Clueless shuddered, remembering his recent trip to the 9 Hells and what they’d found there, “Yeah I’ve had enough of Baator for quite some time thank you very much.” “Killed by a yugoloth lord,” The Jester chuckled and shook his head. “In all fairness I sincerely doubt that any of you would have survived had Taba decided to fight rather than simply snarl and be upon her way. From what I gather through the window you provided me, she’s managed to evade the entirety of the yugoloth hierarchy with a price upon her head. Curious isn’t it as to why the Oinoloth seems to be butchering his own kind?” “Yeah, I find myself wondering the same thing.” Clueless gave a noncommittal shrug. “But at the end of the day I can’t say that I particularly mind the ‘loths slaughtering one another in a game of who can betray who the most.” His face shrouded by shadows and his hat, a curious smile passed over the Jester’s face, juxtaposing a mixture of anger, triumph, and resignation. “Betrayal is quite possibly the only thing then that I have in common with their kind.” He said, spreading his arms and gesturing to his surroundings as his familiar softly hissed and hugged his ankle. “Betrayal is something which I am very, very well acquainted with.” Whatever his past might have held, the Jester radiated an aura of power and authority above and beyond the thing at his feet. Whatever the tiny familiar was, Clueless had watched a vision of the past in his prior trip to the Jester’s underhalls and he knew just what the thing was capable of doing to a man. Still though, even after having seen the creature employed like a hound on a hunt and tearing a fleeing man to shreds, Clueless was under no illusions that he had much, much more to fear from the Jester himself. There was something else as well. The Jester possessed a certain sense of nearly tangible charisma, an air of fascination borne of mystery. Despite the tentacled horror of a familiar that followed at his heels, Clueless couldn’t help himself but realize that there was more brewing in his mind than academic curiosity and professional admiration. There was more to their meeting of course, but those parts of their lengthy interaction were what bubbled and brewed in the bladesinger’s mind as he walked out of Jeremo’s palace and back towards the Portal Jammer. It was late and he was tired, but he’d managed to learn and although he had more questions than when he’d stepped into the Jester’s palace, there was a certainty in his mind that he hadn’t had before. Clueless knew that he would be going back. The man who’d stepped into Jeremo’s palace and then ventured below it had taken a step into the realm of something ancient and powerful. That first step had changed him, and it would continue to change him in the future with each further step. There was a gleam in his eyes as he stepped out into the grey-green haze of Sigil’s evening sky, and a darker countenance than he’d bore when he’d started that journey. Down in the darkness below the streets of Sigil, the Jester smiled. [center]****[/center] “HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN!?” Muriov Garianis screamed out before unleashing a stream of invectives as he trembling with rage and panic. Over the past hour more and more information had filtered in regarding his losses, both material and in lives, including those related by blood, and the cleric of Hades was doing his best to keep himself together. A half-dozen terrified faces glanced back at the crime lord with hollow, broken eyes from what they’d experienced over the previous twenty four hours. Almost half of their organization lay dead or brutally injured at the hands of the Athar, they’d lost their hold over the Shattered Temple, and dozens more of their members had vanished, presumably taken captive. They feared their patron Muriov’s rage at the losses and the rapidity with which their hold over the Shattered Temple District had simply evaporated, but they worried more for the safety of their missing comrades, loved ones, and family members, including their patriarch’s nephew and his heir-apparent daughter. “F*CK THE ATHAR! F*CK THEM ALL!” Muriov slammed his fists down upon his desk and screamed incoherently, throwing his arm wide and scattering papers and books to the floor with a clatter. The normally cool, collected high priest of Hades was slipping into the arms of despair and panic. “F*CK THE MARAUDER! F*CK THE F*CKING LOTHS! ALL OF THEM!” He’d been ranting and raving for hours as his closest advisors struggled to give him anything resembling a tangible explanation of what had happened in the Shattered Temple and how they might recover from their horrific losses, let alone anything close to resembling good news. “Where are the Dustmen now?!” Muriov spat, “Crawling back to the Marble District and not so much as responding to a sending or messages by courier. If I so much as see their factol Oridi or that c*nt of an aasimar Qaida I’ll give them the true death that they prattle on about. F*CK!” His advisors had little to tell him beyond the fact that their allies had abandoned the field of battle and severed communications. They all knew that they’d have done the same had the situation been reversed. The Dustmen, for all their dispassion, they knew a lost cause when they confronted one. “Where is my nephew?” Muriov demanded for the hundredth time that day, “Where is my daughter? WHERE IS SHE?!” Tears welled up in his eyes. Again his advisors had no news to provide and then the cycle of ranting and demands for news began again as the Garianis clan patriarch fumed and mourned. He prayed to Hades for wisdom, insensate that at the moment that he expected to snatch a portion of the Lower Ward from the ‘loth’s claws, she’d snatched it away from him effortlessly. For a moment he felt less like a burgeoning rival who had spent years maneuvering to eclipse her influence in the Ward, and more a plaything to be batted about, torn to shreds, and callously tossed aside as nothing of importance. That was when the box arrived. “Grandfather Muriov, this just arrived at the front gate.” One of the patriarch’s grandchildren stood at the door to his office, holding a wooden box in their hands. “It’s addressed to you.” The priest turned and stared, narrowing his eyes with suspicion and whispering the words to a prayer of detection. Only when he found no curses layered upon the box did he motion the boy over. “Who delivered it?” Muriov took a deep breath as he examined the simple wooden container. The boy shrugged with a look of worried confusion, “We didn’t see. It was simply there when it hadn’t been a moment before. I… I don’t know.” The box bore no obvious marks of identification. The wood was reclaimed scraps from most likely everywhere in the city and unlikely to prove easy to trace by magic back to where it had been crafted or used. Gently he shook the box, feeling something heavy awkwardly shift inside and bump against the side. “A ransom demand perhaps?” The young man asked as a tremble overtook his grandfather’s hands as the lid was opened. Muriov’s face went ashen in an instant as he saw his nephew’s severed head and the sensory stone lodged in its mouth. That night a wail echoed across the Ward: the wail of a broken man. Hearing Muriov’s despondent, anguished cries, a tiefling dressed in rags and holding a bottle of cheap wine looked up. Sitting at the stoop of a rowhouse cattycorner to Muriov’s estate the nameless, socially invisible mongrel’s ear’s twitching at the hideous, heartbreaking sound. They spread their lips to show a glimmer of suddenly canid fangs. They smiled with a look of rapturous ecstasy, and then, before they vanished into thin air, they placed a hand daintily to their chest as their eyes flickered and glowed a puissant shade of lavender. [center]****[/center] “I wish to see her.” The man’s voice trembled as he glanced at the two wary tieflings who stood there barring his way. Both tieflings’ hands immediately went to their blades as they blinked, recognizing the man for who he was. Both tieflings stood at the foot of the stairs leading up to the elevated, private dining booth where their mistress sat with a bottle of wine and her evening meal. “Please,” Muriov Garianis exhaled with deliberate resignation, turning his head and glancing up at the fiend high above. All around him the gambling floor of the Fortune’s Wheel bustled with activity and the shouts and screams of winners and losers. For the first time in his life, he found himself distinctly among the latter, but unlike the gamblers losing their day’s, week’s, or life’s pay over a game of cards or dice, he’d lost something that had no price. Like those very same gamblers though, upon drawing his losing hand, he knew that somehow there had to be a way to recoup it all, or at least stop the bloodshed from cutting even deeper. Garianis had left his mansion an hour earlier, leaving without giving notice to his employees or even his family members. He’d dressed in the simple, black clothing of mourning, with only his holy symbol on his person and nothing else as he’d walked from the Lower Ward to the Fortune’s Wheel. He hadn’t worried about being waylaid even if he never traveled without bodyguards. He could have hurled a prayer and incinerated any thief foolish enough to approach, or clapped his hands and summarily imploded them into a bloody, compact smudge upon the cobblestones… but the truth was, he no longer cared about his own personal safety. [i]“Send him up.”[/i] The Maraduer’s voice echoed within her guards’ minds. Muriov ascended the stairs to see the Marauder sitting there as if nothing untoward had occurred in the prior twenty four hours. There was no smile upon her face. There was no cackle of triumph. There was no mocking of his losses. He stood there watching her sip her wine and enjoy her meal without so much as actually looking up at him. She didn’t care he realized. Her black heart cared nothing for his losses to even consider him worthy of mockery. He’d lost and they both knew that. There wasn’t any need for spectacle. There was only a need to an end. “Please…” Muriov began, trailing off as the fiend quirked an eyebrow and then slowly put down her knife and fork. “Ah yes, your daughter.” A smile played across the fiend’s purple, painted lips. “Delphinia.” “Please, please tell me that…” Muriov stammered, dreading her response. “You wish to have your daughter alive and whole.” The Marauder glanced up for only a moment before resuming her meal. “This can happen.” Muriov paused, prepared to ask what the fiend’s price would be, but he left that question unspoken, irrelevant and pointless. Whatever it was, he would pay it. “Please, make this all stop.” Muriov begged. “I’ve lost too much. You’ve won and I acknowledge that fact. I’ve lost too much. I’ve suffered too much. Please just let this end.” Around them in the Fortune’s Wheel, the stray idle gambler, prostitute, and would-be social climber gave them scarcely any notice at all. If they watched, they saw as the ‘loth continued eating, only pausing to point out where the once powerful Muriov Garianis was to sign the paperwork one of her attendants provided for him. He read them in passing, but it was clear that he simply no longer cared. It didn’t matter to him what the terms were and what they implied. What he wanted was priceless, and he would give anything.” Garianis began to sob, provoking the first reaction on Shemeska’s part that evening as she looked up and sneered. The expression playing across her muzzle returned to a cold, non-committal smile as soon as he looked up and met her gaze and put down the quill, having signed everything handed to him. Shemeska gave a subtle nod and one of her guards took away the papers. Garianis looked at her expectantly as she reached out and opened her hand, revealing a slender crystalline vial. Trembling, he took the vial and stared at the liquid therein and then back at the ‘loth but she no longer looked up at him, but had resumed her evening meal. Sullen and softly crying, Muriov Garianis turned and walked away. Shemeska’s luminous purple eyes trailed him with each and every step he took as he walked across the Fortune’s Wheel and took a seat at a table in the common room, just off the gambling floor. He sat there for nearly an hour, softly praying, sobbing, staring off into space, and staring at the vial in his hand. Finally he turned to look up at fiend high above staring intently down at him. “Delphinia, I’m so sorry…” He whispered, removing the crystalline stopper and drinking the vial’s contents in one swift motion. He gagged, shuddered, and dropped dead. High above and still staring down as employees of the Fortune’s Wheel rushed to his motionless corpse laying there on the floor, the Marauder toyed with a glittering black sapphire in her left hand, “Good work little man. It’s been a pleasure.” [center]****[/center] [/QUOTE]
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Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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