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Story Hour
Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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<blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 7108859" data-attributes="member: 11697"><p>Over 1700 years earlier:</p><p></p><p>The chamber was vast, its ceiling vaulted, and yet despite its profound size it managed to appear cluttered, filled as it was with bookcases, tables covered in open tomes and scrolls, and dozens of sprawling, fantastical magical and alchemical apparatuses, all surrounding a central pool of glistening, golden heavy magic. Arcane lights burned bright, banishing each and every shadow from the sight of the chamber’s master: the archwizard Karsus.</p><p></p><p>“Ah hah!” Karsus exclaimed as he penned a correction to a series of arcane formulae in one of more than a dozen books that lay upon the table before him or drifted in the air, held open and aloft by a coterie of conjured and permanent unseen servitors.</p><p></p><p>The Lord of Karse Enclave and arguably the greatest wizard to have ever walked the face of Toril was a study in manic brilliance. He never paused, he never stopped moving, his fingers fidgeting and tugging at his hair or the sleeves of his robe when he didn’t have them set to a more useful task. The great arcanist talked to himself, holding entire conversations out loud as he worked through the wording of his current project, a task which he’d been researching for years, even as he tinkered with side projects which would have ensured that any lesser wizard be remembered in legend for but one of them.</p><p></p><p>“Ioulaum will eat his heart out with jealousy!” Karsus laughed, shouting the phrase another three times, “Do you hear me oh Father of Netheril?! Ha hah!”</p><p></p><p>“I’m certain that he will hear you if you speak his name enough times.”</p><p></p><p>Karsus’s laugh trailed away but the jubilant, frightening smile on his face never faded even as he looked over his shoulder at the source of the other voice.</p><p></p><p>“Bah!” The archwizard waved both hands to dismiss the concern, “I’ve warded my sanctum to avoid the prying eyes of every arcanist in the empire, and Ioulaum is first on the list of those seeking to build off of my greatness. He can go f*ck himself, wherever he’s seen fit to bolt himself away to in secrecy. This, this will put him to shame.”</p><p></p><p>Secluded on the other side of the chamber a single figure sat within an elaborate series of concentric binding circles drawn in salt, ash, wax, powdered electrum, dragon’s blood, and the liquid glimmer of heavy magic set in channels carved into the stone. Within that bound space, unlike every other place within the chamber, shadows did indeed fall.</p><p></p><p>“Now that the framework for the dweomer is penned and the concept sound,” The figure within the binding circle asked, their words as smooth and exquisite as the spells drawn by the mad, brilliant human dancing as he penned his burgeoning masterwork. “Do you have a name for your spell in mind?”</p><p></p><p>Karsus paused for but a moment, tapping his toes upon the stone and then hopping from one foot to the next before racing to the pool of heavy magic and dipping in a single finger. Without saying a word, he drew his finger through the air and his thoughts became manifest through the golden liquid. Drawn in blazing flame, slowly transmuting in color and material as it hung suspending in mid-air for both Karsus’s own edification and his guest’s illumination were the words in Netherese runes, larger than life:</p><p></p><p><strong>12th Sphere Dweomers: Karsus’s Avatar</strong></p><p></p><p>The creature in the binding circle nodded in approval, smiling a smile of ivory fangs in lieu of saying anything out loud. In Karsus’s view, the fiend needn’t say a word. Speaking would have diminished the triumph of that sublime moment in Netherese and Torillian history. The fiend’s wide eyes and astonished smile at a mortal’s work were statement enough. In fact, the smug grin on the archwizard’s face spoke to the fact that he wanted the fiend to feel as much jealousy as astonishment.</p><p> </p><p>“When you first summoned me Karsus,” The bound fiend used the Archwizard’s first name without honorific, using a tense in old Netherese that denoted a mixture of formal admiration but informal association: admiration from one friend or professional peer to another. “When you first summoned me from Carceri I thought to fight your attempt.”</p><p></p><p>“You would have failed.” The Netherese archwizard laughed, his tone matter-of-fact.</p><p></p><p>“In time, if you’d persisted, yes.” A being of lies incarnate, the words came easily to the fiend’s lips and from there to the arcanist’s ears. “Why waste my efforts and your time knowing that you would have torn me across the fabric of the planes in more unpleasant ways than not if I’d resisted? Besides, your power begat curiosity on my part, and indeed I feel rewarded in some measure having been here and watched this unfold.”</p><p></p><p>Ivory fangs smiled and Tristol’s vision lurched forward, remaining in Karsus’s study but skipping to discrete moments in time as the archwizard set about refining his masterwork, defining the material components, practicing the somatic elements, and setting in motion the events that would lead to his own doom. Through it all, while he might display a portion of the material components to visiting archwizards, none of them were privy to the actual spell, knowledge of its nature, or entry to the sanctum itself. Through it all, only the bound fiend remaining with him to watch, comment, advise, feed, and influence without ever casting a single spell of its own.</p><p></p><p>“Your so-called rivals among the other enclaves, some of them have actual talent.” Barefoot and seated upon the floor, surrounded by the concentric circles, dressed in a simple robe compared to Karsus’s madcap extravagance, the fiend waved a manicured claw to dampen the burgeoning sneer on the human’s face, “Admit it! They do. Some of them at least. Ioulaum of course principally, but also Larloch, Aumvor, and perhaps your former student Telamont have lesser but true talent. I know this. I recognize this because my friend, this is what I am. Sorcery taken form in metaphysical flesh. I feel you and your kind like iron to a loadstone. It is beautiful. It is exquisite.”</p><p></p><p>Karsus turned to glance at the pooling darkness within the binding circle which snapped into discrete form only when he looked at the fiend directly. He frowned at the suggestion that his supposed rivals among the archwizards could be spoken of in the same sentence as him, much less by a conjured fiend, no, and archfiend reduced by his magical prowess to a second set of eyes and a sounding board for his word, a familiar in all but a tether to his soul.</p><p></p><p>“But…” The fiend extended a single claw towards the archwizard, “None of them operate on a level close to yours. They are candles to your burning star and I am eager to see you display your mastery.”</p><p></p><p>Karsus’s frown flickered and turned to a lazy, prideful smile. The Ape Who Would Fly laughed to himself, turned, and resumed his work. For the next six hours he gestured and controlled the filling of a stone-filled gizzard of a gold dragon with a mixture of tarrasque blood and 12-headed hydra bile, all to simply complete the enchantment of one of the material components for his Avatar spell.</p><p></p><p>For the next six hours he would idly exchange banter with the inchoate horror looming behind him within the binding circle. The fiend watched and the fiend smiled, working the archwizard with teasing words and platitudes, having reduced itself in Karsus’s view to simply another tool to be used as he created his masterwork, rather than a bottled archfiend watching and slavering only a few dozen feet away.</p><p></p><p>Time skipped and the inevitable drew close as slowly, inexorably, the fiend led Karsus towards completion and casting and dismissing any rational thought of stopping. Karsus was blinded to his own looming folly.</p><p></p><p>“I am pleased that my aide and council have proven crucial to your work on the avatar spell.”</p><p></p><p>“I would have perfected it in time without your aid, but dragging you across the planes and binding you to my service for this task proved worth my effort and the considerable expense of reagents to ensnare you.” Karsus shook his head as he recalled the cost, exhaling through clenched teeth, “The price in objects it took to anchor you here would have provided a trio of lesser arcanists the means to raise mythallars and enclaves of their own. But your knowledge has sped my efforts and unlike so many of your kind you recognize your place.”</p><p></p><p>Without the archwizard’s eyes upon him to force it, the fiend snapped back into discrete form and almost imperceptivity the trio of ioun stones that orbited above its head slowed for but a fraction of a second in lieu of a sneer.</p><p></p><p>“I suppose that I do. Had I done otherwise I would not have witnessed your triumph.”</p><p></p><p>“I appreciate that sentiment,” Karsus chuckled, glancing briefly at the summoning circle, “You know, you weren’t the first fiend that I bound to aid me.”</p><p></p><p>To this the archfiend actively sneered as if his pride were wounded; a choreographed display as would have been expected of any normal member of his race and caste.</p><p></p><p>“The pit fiend made demands and so I simply slew it.” Karsus explained, waving his hands through the air to conjure tiny, animated illustrations of the event like pictures from a child’s book of legends and tales of heroes, “The balor raged and beat against its bindings uselessly until it killed itself in the process and sought to slay me in its death throes, though its explosive demise never breached the bindings either. You have had the sense to obey and do what you know, understanding that once your task is complete, I might eventually release you.”</p><p></p><p>“I came here because I was interested in your work Karsus,” The fiend smiled and stepped to the edge of the innermost circle, pausing before it touched it, “I have never wished <strong>not</strong> to aid you. The spell is brilliant. <strong>Your</strong> spell is brilliant. I find it fascinating, if of course distasteful on some level to myself as a yugoloth. But fascinating nonetheless and you have my respect for seeing this through to completion.”</p><p></p><p>Time skipped again and the process drew to finality. Public proclamations were made that Karsus would be undertaking a profound work of magic that would end the slow destruction of the Empire’s lands to the life-devouring magic of the phaerimm, a race largely unknown except to a select number of the archwizards who had collectively been impotent to stop.</p><p></p><p>“You’ve yet to decide on the target of your casting.” The fiend raised its eyebrows, staring at the archwizard for an answer. “You have many options, all of which I will appreciate being bereft of their power for the spell’s duration.” The fiend laughed, earning a roll of Karsus’s eyes.</p><p></p><p>“I have options yes.” Karsus mused, pantomiming the actions and moods of various gods and goddesses, “Kozah for pure raw power to destroy the phaermim…Tyche for luck and good future for Netheril’s future… Jergal to bring death to all who would oppose Netheril... Jannath to make the land fertile against all efforts of the phaerimm…”</p><p></p><p>“Mystryl.” A single damning word from the fiend, a single name, a single target. It smiled at Karsus, hands spread, offering the suggestion to a mind plied and seduced by years of beguiling words.</p><p></p><p>Helpless as he watched, Tristol screamed.</p><p></p><p>Karsus turned and faced the bound archfiend, his mouth open, his eyes narrowed, his lips pursed to respond in dismissal for but a moment before he reconsidered.</p><p></p><p>“This was what you wanted Karsus.” The fiend explained, a single finger extended and a knowing look in its eyes. “You told me yourself, years ago when I asked you what it was that you wanted.”</p><p></p><p>“What is it you want…” Karsus mumbled the archfiend’s question to him, one of the first things that they’d ever discussed. Satisfied of the fiend’s binding he’d answered flippantly and honestly.</p><p></p><p>“Tell me Karsus, what is it you want?” The fiend asked, not hiding its hungry smile.</p><p></p><p>“Power and understanding of magic,” Karsus whispered his original answer, “All magic at my command, all arcane knowledge in my thoughts. It’s almost poetic now isn’t it?”</p><p>A single soft chuckle on the human’s part, a nod from the fiend, and then wide eyes and racing thoughts through Karsus’s brain.</p><p></p><p>“Mystryl it shall be.”</p><p></p><p>Agonized as he watched the past replay, Tristol wailed in horror as Karsus smiled and behind him, so did the fiend. “No you stupid fool! NO! NO!”</p><p></p><p>The phaerimm would be destroyed.</p><p></p><p>Karsus would be elevated to godhood in order to accomplish that task, usurping the divinity of the goddess of magic herself.</p><p></p><p>Netheril would reign supreme and unchallenged.</p><p></p><p>Karsus would be on the lips of every wizard, every bard, and every creature from the planes beyond.</p><p></p><p>“And with her name in place, it is finished.” Karsus looked upon the formulae of the single 12th level spell in existence, the words splayed across the pages of more than two dozen pages suspended in the air. He read them and recited the words in his mind, burning them into his memory for later recitation at the highest point in Karse Enclave. As it transferred to his mind, the words burst into flame and the pages reduced to fine ash to scatter at the mad archwizard’s feet. “I am ready.”</p><p></p><p>Absorbed in his work and no longer paying attention to the archfiend bound in his study, Karsus never saw the fiend smile, stand up, and deliberately step upon and across the border of the circle. The fiend’s footprint smudged the salt, wax, and every other material, never setting off the wardings or sending so much as a ripple through the surroundings binding magics. The archfiend smiled, his albino eyes glittering, as he casually motioned with one hand and the binding circle’s mundane components crawled and skittered back into place, repairing themselves where he’d deliberately smudged them with his foot.</p><p></p><p>Helpless to stop the flow of past events, Tristol Starweather watched as the future Oinoloth smiled.</p><p></p><p>Vorkannis the Ebon was not then, nor had he ever been bound there in Karsus’s study. Rather he sat there on the mad archwizard’s floor by choice, for years aiding him in his grand work, knowing full well what would likely happen. He’d cultivated the arcanist’s pride, nudged him towards an intended end, dangled bits of insight or snuffed alternative thoughts to fuel the archwizard’s “invention”. He’d fed the man’s drive and foolhardy attitude just as much as he’d aided him in understanding the brilliance and nuance of the spell itself. How much of the spell was actually composed by Karsus and not the fiend whispering in his ear for more than a decade was up for debate.</p><p></p><p>The spell flickered and time skipped, flowing at high speed through the actual casting of the spell, Karsus’s transient and fatal usurpation of a goddess’s power, the unraveling and collapse of the Weave, and the archwizard’s brief, horrified understanding of what he had done as magic abruptly stopped.</p><p></p><p>Mystryl’s dying wail echoed in Tristol’s ears as Karse enclave plummeting down to its doom, falling from the sky. Each and every other enclave followed suit as Karsus screamed and died, swollen and petrified into the crude shape of a weeping, horrified man before he too fell to earth. </p><p></p><p>As the Weave broke and magic died, slaying a goddess and destroying a civilization and culture in the process, Vorkannis the Ebon drifted in mid air, the wind of the heights flapping about his robes as he watched his work unfold with a rapturous look upon his face.</p><p></p><p>To Tristol’s senses the wind whistled and the screams faded away, leaving only one sound remaining above it all: Vorkannis’s laughter.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">*****</p><p></p><p></p><p>The spell ended and Tristol’s senses returned to the present day, the knowledge of what he’d witnessed burned into his memory.</p><p></p><p>“It was him!” Tristol screamed, his speech slurred and nearly incoherent, “He killed her!”</p><p></p><p>“Who?” Clueless asked, startled by the aasimar’s sudden and horrified reaction only moments after he’d cast the spell at Taba’s suggestion.</p><p></p><p>“Tristol!” Nisha grabbed onto the wizard’s robe and struggled to get him up to his feet. “What happened?!”</p><p></p><p>“Taba what did you do?!” Toras shouted, hoping that the altraloth lord could hear them.</p><p></p><p><em>“I’ve done nothing but lead him to the truth about certain events mortal.” Taba’s telepathic voice echoed in their collective minds, an almost tactile sensation of her sneering from a dozen mouths present on her words, “He’s seen what I have seen. Only in this location would the effect have managed to evade the deliberate obfuscation of those events, though I’m uncertain whom to blame for hiding the past, my kindred or the next incarnation of Toril’s goddess of magic herself.”</em></p><p></p><p>Eyes wide, his face ashen, Tristol looked up at Nisha and then to the others around him. He’d watched his goddess die and his entire view of his own peoples’ history was forever altered by what he’d learned. Karsus in all his reckless brilliance had been a puppet in the act, following a trail of formulaic breadcrumbs to “invent” a spell whose seeds were given to him by the future Oinoloth himself. The fiend had used Karsus like an overly eager, foolhardy test subject.</p><p></p><p>Perhaps the avatar spell was something that the ‘loth’s own nature made impossible for him to cast on his own, perhaps the result was considered revolting given the uniform anathema towards the gods held by his kind, or perhaps by leading a mortal to create, prepare, and cast the spell on their own, the ‘loth avoided the sort of deific retribution that might have otherwise been invoked by the murder of a goddess at a fiend’s claws.</p><p></p><p>Tristol looked up into Nisha’s eyes, and the concern and empathy he saw gave him pause. He mumbled, uncertain of how to explain it all, uncertain how to describe what he’d lived through as it had happened. He would explain it, but as he struggled to pick himself up off of the floor and avoid his own vomit now mingling with the depleted heavy magic still present there, he put his hands together, closed his eyes, and prayed to his patron goddess.</p><p></p><p>‘I will kill him. Whatever he is I will bring him to justice for what he did and what he has done since. Whatever his goals then or now by desecrating this place, I will dismantle his plans and see him destroyed. This I swear to you Mystra…’</p><p></p><p>In that moment as Tristol put his hands together for a single unspoken prayer, though he didn’t notice it at first, and though he wasn’t aware of what it meant for him, for the first time in his life his fingers flickered with the gift of silverfire.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">*****</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shemeska, post: 7108859, member: 11697"] Over 1700 years earlier: The chamber was vast, its ceiling vaulted, and yet despite its profound size it managed to appear cluttered, filled as it was with bookcases, tables covered in open tomes and scrolls, and dozens of sprawling, fantastical magical and alchemical apparatuses, all surrounding a central pool of glistening, golden heavy magic. Arcane lights burned bright, banishing each and every shadow from the sight of the chamber’s master: the archwizard Karsus. “Ah hah!” Karsus exclaimed as he penned a correction to a series of arcane formulae in one of more than a dozen books that lay upon the table before him or drifted in the air, held open and aloft by a coterie of conjured and permanent unseen servitors. The Lord of Karse Enclave and arguably the greatest wizard to have ever walked the face of Toril was a study in manic brilliance. He never paused, he never stopped moving, his fingers fidgeting and tugging at his hair or the sleeves of his robe when he didn’t have them set to a more useful task. The great arcanist talked to himself, holding entire conversations out loud as he worked through the wording of his current project, a task which he’d been researching for years, even as he tinkered with side projects which would have ensured that any lesser wizard be remembered in legend for but one of them. “Ioulaum will eat his heart out with jealousy!” Karsus laughed, shouting the phrase another three times, “Do you hear me oh Father of Netheril?! Ha hah!” “I’m certain that he will hear you if you speak his name enough times.” Karsus’s laugh trailed away but the jubilant, frightening smile on his face never faded even as he looked over his shoulder at the source of the other voice. “Bah!” The archwizard waved both hands to dismiss the concern, “I’ve warded my sanctum to avoid the prying eyes of every arcanist in the empire, and Ioulaum is first on the list of those seeking to build off of my greatness. He can go f*ck himself, wherever he’s seen fit to bolt himself away to in secrecy. This, this will put him to shame.” Secluded on the other side of the chamber a single figure sat within an elaborate series of concentric binding circles drawn in salt, ash, wax, powdered electrum, dragon’s blood, and the liquid glimmer of heavy magic set in channels carved into the stone. Within that bound space, unlike every other place within the chamber, shadows did indeed fall. “Now that the framework for the dweomer is penned and the concept sound,” The figure within the binding circle asked, their words as smooth and exquisite as the spells drawn by the mad, brilliant human dancing as he penned his burgeoning masterwork. “Do you have a name for your spell in mind?” Karsus paused for but a moment, tapping his toes upon the stone and then hopping from one foot to the next before racing to the pool of heavy magic and dipping in a single finger. Without saying a word, he drew his finger through the air and his thoughts became manifest through the golden liquid. Drawn in blazing flame, slowly transmuting in color and material as it hung suspending in mid-air for both Karsus’s own edification and his guest’s illumination were the words in Netherese runes, larger than life: [b]12th Sphere Dweomers: Karsus’s Avatar[/b] The creature in the binding circle nodded in approval, smiling a smile of ivory fangs in lieu of saying anything out loud. In Karsus’s view, the fiend needn’t say a word. Speaking would have diminished the triumph of that sublime moment in Netherese and Torillian history. The fiend’s wide eyes and astonished smile at a mortal’s work were statement enough. In fact, the smug grin on the archwizard’s face spoke to the fact that he wanted the fiend to feel as much jealousy as astonishment. “When you first summoned me Karsus,” The bound fiend used the Archwizard’s first name without honorific, using a tense in old Netherese that denoted a mixture of formal admiration but informal association: admiration from one friend or professional peer to another. “When you first summoned me from Carceri I thought to fight your attempt.” “You would have failed.” The Netherese archwizard laughed, his tone matter-of-fact. “In time, if you’d persisted, yes.” A being of lies incarnate, the words came easily to the fiend’s lips and from there to the arcanist’s ears. “Why waste my efforts and your time knowing that you would have torn me across the fabric of the planes in more unpleasant ways than not if I’d resisted? Besides, your power begat curiosity on my part, and indeed I feel rewarded in some measure having been here and watched this unfold.” Ivory fangs smiled and Tristol’s vision lurched forward, remaining in Karsus’s study but skipping to discrete moments in time as the archwizard set about refining his masterwork, defining the material components, practicing the somatic elements, and setting in motion the events that would lead to his own doom. Through it all, while he might display a portion of the material components to visiting archwizards, none of them were privy to the actual spell, knowledge of its nature, or entry to the sanctum itself. Through it all, only the bound fiend remaining with him to watch, comment, advise, feed, and influence without ever casting a single spell of its own. “Your so-called rivals among the other enclaves, some of them have actual talent.” Barefoot and seated upon the floor, surrounded by the concentric circles, dressed in a simple robe compared to Karsus’s madcap extravagance, the fiend waved a manicured claw to dampen the burgeoning sneer on the human’s face, “Admit it! They do. Some of them at least. Ioulaum of course principally, but also Larloch, Aumvor, and perhaps your former student Telamont have lesser but true talent. I know this. I recognize this because my friend, this is what I am. Sorcery taken form in metaphysical flesh. I feel you and your kind like iron to a loadstone. It is beautiful. It is exquisite.” Karsus turned to glance at the pooling darkness within the binding circle which snapped into discrete form only when he looked at the fiend directly. He frowned at the suggestion that his supposed rivals among the archwizards could be spoken of in the same sentence as him, much less by a conjured fiend, no, and archfiend reduced by his magical prowess to a second set of eyes and a sounding board for his word, a familiar in all but a tether to his soul. “But…” The fiend extended a single claw towards the archwizard, “None of them operate on a level close to yours. They are candles to your burning star and I am eager to see you display your mastery.” Karsus’s frown flickered and turned to a lazy, prideful smile. The Ape Who Would Fly laughed to himself, turned, and resumed his work. For the next six hours he gestured and controlled the filling of a stone-filled gizzard of a gold dragon with a mixture of tarrasque blood and 12-headed hydra bile, all to simply complete the enchantment of one of the material components for his Avatar spell. For the next six hours he would idly exchange banter with the inchoate horror looming behind him within the binding circle. The fiend watched and the fiend smiled, working the archwizard with teasing words and platitudes, having reduced itself in Karsus’s view to simply another tool to be used as he created his masterwork, rather than a bottled archfiend watching and slavering only a few dozen feet away. Time skipped and the inevitable drew close as slowly, inexorably, the fiend led Karsus towards completion and casting and dismissing any rational thought of stopping. Karsus was blinded to his own looming folly. “I am pleased that my aide and council have proven crucial to your work on the avatar spell.” “I would have perfected it in time without your aid, but dragging you across the planes and binding you to my service for this task proved worth my effort and the considerable expense of reagents to ensnare you.” Karsus shook his head as he recalled the cost, exhaling through clenched teeth, “The price in objects it took to anchor you here would have provided a trio of lesser arcanists the means to raise mythallars and enclaves of their own. But your knowledge has sped my efforts and unlike so many of your kind you recognize your place.” Without the archwizard’s eyes upon him to force it, the fiend snapped back into discrete form and almost imperceptivity the trio of ioun stones that orbited above its head slowed for but a fraction of a second in lieu of a sneer. “I suppose that I do. Had I done otherwise I would not have witnessed your triumph.” “I appreciate that sentiment,” Karsus chuckled, glancing briefly at the summoning circle, “You know, you weren’t the first fiend that I bound to aid me.” To this the archfiend actively sneered as if his pride were wounded; a choreographed display as would have been expected of any normal member of his race and caste. “The pit fiend made demands and so I simply slew it.” Karsus explained, waving his hands through the air to conjure tiny, animated illustrations of the event like pictures from a child’s book of legends and tales of heroes, “The balor raged and beat against its bindings uselessly until it killed itself in the process and sought to slay me in its death throes, though its explosive demise never breached the bindings either. You have had the sense to obey and do what you know, understanding that once your task is complete, I might eventually release you.” “I came here because I was interested in your work Karsus,” The fiend smiled and stepped to the edge of the innermost circle, pausing before it touched it, “I have never wished [b]not[/b] to aid you. The spell is brilliant. [b]Your[/b] spell is brilliant. I find it fascinating, if of course distasteful on some level to myself as a yugoloth. But fascinating nonetheless and you have my respect for seeing this through to completion.” Time skipped again and the process drew to finality. Public proclamations were made that Karsus would be undertaking a profound work of magic that would end the slow destruction of the Empire’s lands to the life-devouring magic of the phaerimm, a race largely unknown except to a select number of the archwizards who had collectively been impotent to stop. “You’ve yet to decide on the target of your casting.” The fiend raised its eyebrows, staring at the archwizard for an answer. “You have many options, all of which I will appreciate being bereft of their power for the spell’s duration.” The fiend laughed, earning a roll of Karsus’s eyes. “I have options yes.” Karsus mused, pantomiming the actions and moods of various gods and goddesses, “Kozah for pure raw power to destroy the phaermim…Tyche for luck and good future for Netheril’s future… Jergal to bring death to all who would oppose Netheril... Jannath to make the land fertile against all efforts of the phaerimm…” “Mystryl.” A single damning word from the fiend, a single name, a single target. It smiled at Karsus, hands spread, offering the suggestion to a mind plied and seduced by years of beguiling words. Helpless as he watched, Tristol screamed. Karsus turned and faced the bound archfiend, his mouth open, his eyes narrowed, his lips pursed to respond in dismissal for but a moment before he reconsidered. “This was what you wanted Karsus.” The fiend explained, a single finger extended and a knowing look in its eyes. “You told me yourself, years ago when I asked you what it was that you wanted.” “What is it you want…” Karsus mumbled the archfiend’s question to him, one of the first things that they’d ever discussed. Satisfied of the fiend’s binding he’d answered flippantly and honestly. “Tell me Karsus, what is it you want?” The fiend asked, not hiding its hungry smile. “Power and understanding of magic,” Karsus whispered his original answer, “All magic at my command, all arcane knowledge in my thoughts. It’s almost poetic now isn’t it?” A single soft chuckle on the human’s part, a nod from the fiend, and then wide eyes and racing thoughts through Karsus’s brain. “Mystryl it shall be.” Agonized as he watched the past replay, Tristol wailed in horror as Karsus smiled and behind him, so did the fiend. “No you stupid fool! NO! NO!” The phaerimm would be destroyed. Karsus would be elevated to godhood in order to accomplish that task, usurping the divinity of the goddess of magic herself. Netheril would reign supreme and unchallenged. Karsus would be on the lips of every wizard, every bard, and every creature from the planes beyond. “And with her name in place, it is finished.” Karsus looked upon the formulae of the single 12th level spell in existence, the words splayed across the pages of more than two dozen pages suspended in the air. He read them and recited the words in his mind, burning them into his memory for later recitation at the highest point in Karse Enclave. As it transferred to his mind, the words burst into flame and the pages reduced to fine ash to scatter at the mad archwizard’s feet. “I am ready.” Absorbed in his work and no longer paying attention to the archfiend bound in his study, Karsus never saw the fiend smile, stand up, and deliberately step upon and across the border of the circle. The fiend’s footprint smudged the salt, wax, and every other material, never setting off the wardings or sending so much as a ripple through the surroundings binding magics. The archfiend smiled, his albino eyes glittering, as he casually motioned with one hand and the binding circle’s mundane components crawled and skittered back into place, repairing themselves where he’d deliberately smudged them with his foot. Helpless to stop the flow of past events, Tristol Starweather watched as the future Oinoloth smiled. Vorkannis the Ebon was not then, nor had he ever been bound there in Karsus’s study. Rather he sat there on the mad archwizard’s floor by choice, for years aiding him in his grand work, knowing full well what would likely happen. He’d cultivated the arcanist’s pride, nudged him towards an intended end, dangled bits of insight or snuffed alternative thoughts to fuel the archwizard’s “invention”. He’d fed the man’s drive and foolhardy attitude just as much as he’d aided him in understanding the brilliance and nuance of the spell itself. How much of the spell was actually composed by Karsus and not the fiend whispering in his ear for more than a decade was up for debate. The spell flickered and time skipped, flowing at high speed through the actual casting of the spell, Karsus’s transient and fatal usurpation of a goddess’s power, the unraveling and collapse of the Weave, and the archwizard’s brief, horrified understanding of what he had done as magic abruptly stopped. Mystryl’s dying wail echoed in Tristol’s ears as Karse enclave plummeting down to its doom, falling from the sky. Each and every other enclave followed suit as Karsus screamed and died, swollen and petrified into the crude shape of a weeping, horrified man before he too fell to earth. As the Weave broke and magic died, slaying a goddess and destroying a civilization and culture in the process, Vorkannis the Ebon drifted in mid air, the wind of the heights flapping about his robes as he watched his work unfold with a rapturous look upon his face. To Tristol’s senses the wind whistled and the screams faded away, leaving only one sound remaining above it all: Vorkannis’s laughter. [center]*****[/center] The spell ended and Tristol’s senses returned to the present day, the knowledge of what he’d witnessed burned into his memory. “It was him!” Tristol screamed, his speech slurred and nearly incoherent, “He killed her!” “Who?” Clueless asked, startled by the aasimar’s sudden and horrified reaction only moments after he’d cast the spell at Taba’s suggestion. “Tristol!” Nisha grabbed onto the wizard’s robe and struggled to get him up to his feet. “What happened?!” “Taba what did you do?!” Toras shouted, hoping that the altraloth lord could hear them. [i]“I’ve done nothing but lead him to the truth about certain events mortal.” Taba’s telepathic voice echoed in their collective minds, an almost tactile sensation of her sneering from a dozen mouths present on her words, “He’s seen what I have seen. Only in this location would the effect have managed to evade the deliberate obfuscation of those events, though I’m uncertain whom to blame for hiding the past, my kindred or the next incarnation of Toril’s goddess of magic herself.”[/i] Eyes wide, his face ashen, Tristol looked up at Nisha and then to the others around him. He’d watched his goddess die and his entire view of his own peoples’ history was forever altered by what he’d learned. Karsus in all his reckless brilliance had been a puppet in the act, following a trail of formulaic breadcrumbs to “invent” a spell whose seeds were given to him by the future Oinoloth himself. The fiend had used Karsus like an overly eager, foolhardy test subject. Perhaps the avatar spell was something that the ‘loth’s own nature made impossible for him to cast on his own, perhaps the result was considered revolting given the uniform anathema towards the gods held by his kind, or perhaps by leading a mortal to create, prepare, and cast the spell on their own, the ‘loth avoided the sort of deific retribution that might have otherwise been invoked by the murder of a goddess at a fiend’s claws. Tristol looked up into Nisha’s eyes, and the concern and empathy he saw gave him pause. He mumbled, uncertain of how to explain it all, uncertain how to describe what he’d lived through as it had happened. He would explain it, but as he struggled to pick himself up off of the floor and avoid his own vomit now mingling with the depleted heavy magic still present there, he put his hands together, closed his eyes, and prayed to his patron goddess. ‘I will kill him. Whatever he is I will bring him to justice for what he did and what he has done since. Whatever his goals then or now by desecrating this place, I will dismantle his plans and see him destroyed. This I swear to you Mystra…’ In that moment as Tristol put his hands together for a single unspoken prayer, though he didn’t notice it at first, and though he wasn’t aware of what it meant for him, for the first time in his life his fingers flickered with the gift of silverfire. [center]*****[/center] [/QUOTE]
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Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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