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Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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<blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 7235206" data-attributes="member: 11697"><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p>The soft and intimately regular hum of distant, tectonic clockwork ran through the fingertips of Factol Nacius Garabutos of the Fraternity of Order as she placed a book back in its proper, organized location and then braced herself on the wall as she descended a ladder and back to her desk. The tome was a compilation of recent events related to the reorganization and some would say healing process of the modrons after their corruption following the temporary death of Primus and usurpation of the modron energy pool in Regulus.</p><p></p><p>The wizard and Factol sat down at her desk and smiled, re-reading the book’s second chapter in her mind by virtue of her own eidetic memory. She wasn’t in her judgment as adept as her predecessor Hashkar, but she’d only held her position for a few years following his assassination, and he’d had more than a century under his belt by that point, though age didn’t precisely matter to a petitioner, and she was only mortal.</p><p></p><p>Human and in her seventh decade of life, her olive-toned brow creased, deep in thought even as a dozen Ioun stones drifted in precise orbit about her head. Eschewing the finery of most Factols and perhaps more so most wizards of her profound ability, her robes were a simple pale white and gold, embroidered with tiny bits of clockwork about the cuffs and collar. Intelligence sparkled in her pale, steel-grey eyes and she smiled.</p><p></p><p>“You did a perfect job Nathan.” Nacius bobbed her head, nodding to herself with satisfaction as she brushed a lock of gray hair from her face, “Your mother would be proud, whatever ultimately happened to her.”</p><p></p><p>The book she presently mused over was penned by her secretary and Factor, Nathan the Inescapable, himself the son of Factol Hashkar’s predecessor Lariset. While the Fraternity had no manner of inherited positions and titles, the former Factol’s scion had risen up the ranks on his own work and dedication, aided in no small part by his mastery and utilization of originally githyanki magic to retard the retroactive aging process otherwise experienced upon leaving the Astral plane, which is where he’d spent most of the past century on Faction business in one of their secret archives. For having outlasted Hashkar and honestly having set himself up as Nacius’s likely successor, he barely looked over the age of 40. His likely spot was also aided by the deep and long-standing animosity between Nacius and her own rival for the position of Factol after Hashkar’s death, Jamis. She’d vaulted past her rival once and it amused her to potentially do so a second time by proxy whenever she herself passed away.</p><p></p><p>Her mind absently rereading and penning internal comments to discuss with the man in a week’s time for their next scheduled meeting, the Factol never noticed the door to her office open and close with barely a whisper of sound to grace the air and then her ears. Thus distracted, it took her a moment to react, though she didn’t yet look up.</p><p></p><p>“Was there something else Nathan?” She asked, “Your summary of the ordered disorder among the Quartons was nearly poetic in the use of equations alongside the prose. I..”</p><p>“I am here to retrieve something that does belong to you.” The voice was cold and devoid of mercy, tinged with simmering anger and subtle madness. The voice was not that of Factol Garabutos’s secretary.</p><p></p><p>The wizard looked up, a spell pulled to mind to trigger a nested series of lesser, contingent spells and in the back of her consciousness the notion to trigger one of the Universal Loopholes she held in stock, should they be required to deal with her intruder. Neither would be necessary nor viable however, and with a frown she ceased the attempt as her Ioun stones clattered to the ground, a consequence of the antimagic field conjured by the woman standing before her.</p><p></p><p>“Justice does not follow your petty Laws and presumptions of Order.” The intruder sneered, her eyes bloodshot and red, obvious even despite the ruddy fiendish glow of each red and lambent iris.</p><p></p><p>“This runs contrary to dozens of axioms and long-proven laws.” Factol Garabutos narrowed her eyes and spoke with a curt matter-of-factness, “Please be gone from my office.”</p><p></p><p>“I am Justice,” The Intruder stepped forward and placed her hands on the desk, her claws marked by gray dust and ashes, “And Justice transcends your petty Rules.”</p><p></p><p>“No, you are dead.” The Factol frowned. “Your death was witnessed by over two hundred individuals and one distant branch of a limited hivemind, of whom one hundred and twelve of the former and the full consciousness of the latter were interviewed in the following week and their impressions recorded and archived in triplicate. I have a copy of the record here in my office given the profound nature of your actions and the manner of your passing following your reappearance after being presumed dead since the end of the Faction War.”</p><p></p><p>“And yet here I am Factol Garabutos.” The intruder chuckled, a manic edge to the sound. “Do I appear dead to you?”</p><p></p><p>“You were flayed alive and reduced to a bloody, homogenous pulp by Her Serenity, The Lady of Pain.” The Guvners’ Factol resolutely stated. “So yes, you are quite profoundly dead. Thus please leave my office.”</p><p></p><p>Both Factol and former Factol stared at one another, human and tiefling, peers in a manner of speaking taking the other’s measure even if both of them knew what the end would bring.</p><p></p><p>“The Bladed Lady’s crimes are too great and so yet here I stand, alive and working towards the greatest act of Justice that can and will be.” The tiefling smiled, exposing a row of pointed teeth as she drew a vorpal blade, the same as she’d carried in Sigil upon the day of her recorded public death. “Death is no barrier towards my work, and my work requires the key to Hashkar’s private vault. You will provide me that key and I will provide you the justice of a swift and painless death.”</p><p></p><p>“And if I refuse?”</p><p></p><p>“Then I will personally slaughter every member of the Fortress of Disciplined Enlightenment before I tear the structure apart down to the last golden brick to find what I came here to recover. It does not belong to you, and if need be I will execute your faction members for their complicity in your crimes and the crimes of this present reality.” The tip of the sword touched the Factol’s desk and began to neatly bleed through the stone like a knife to flesh. “But it does not have to come to that.”</p><p></p><p>“However you are here…” Nacius sighed as she retrieved a single golden key stamped not with Hashkar’s personal sigil, but with Lariset’s, “Whatever madness this entails, this is not Justice.”</p><p></p><p>“Yes, yes it is,” The former Mercykiller Factol smiled, “However indirectly it might be. Your death is not Justice in and of itself, but a stepping stone towards the greatest Justice of all, the grandest axiom that there is and could be.”</p><p></p><p>Factol Garabutos went ashen as she came to a sudden, profound, and horrific realization as she stared up into the eyes of Alisohn Nilesia. </p><p></p><p>The mad tiefling smiled and as she had once before in Sigil to a dabus, with a single measured strike she neatly beheaded the Guvner’s Factol. The body slumped and blood sprayed across the room in patterns that could of course be ordered and predicted if the initial angle of the body, blood pressure, stroke volume, ambient temperature, and other variables were accounted for. Surely the Factol’s servants would make such calculations when they cleaned up the mess hours later.</p><p></p><p>Unlike when she’d slain a dabus in Sigil, this time Nilesia knelt down and drew out a single, darkly glittering black sapphire. Although the Fraternity of Order made it strictly against their own internal laws for any member above of Factotum and above to retain their position after returning from the dead, there could be no witness to this death, nor any witness to what she would be leaving with once she accessed and plundered Hashkar’s vault and what he’d inherited from his predecessor.</p><p></p><p>“You will have what you wish my Master.” Alisohn Nilesia whispered to herself, somewhere between a desperate plea, a promise, and a prayer.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shemeska, post: 7235206, member: 11697"] [center]****[/center] The soft and intimately regular hum of distant, tectonic clockwork ran through the fingertips of Factol Nacius Garabutos of the Fraternity of Order as she placed a book back in its proper, organized location and then braced herself on the wall as she descended a ladder and back to her desk. The tome was a compilation of recent events related to the reorganization and some would say healing process of the modrons after their corruption following the temporary death of Primus and usurpation of the modron energy pool in Regulus. The wizard and Factol sat down at her desk and smiled, re-reading the book’s second chapter in her mind by virtue of her own eidetic memory. She wasn’t in her judgment as adept as her predecessor Hashkar, but she’d only held her position for a few years following his assassination, and he’d had more than a century under his belt by that point, though age didn’t precisely matter to a petitioner, and she was only mortal. Human and in her seventh decade of life, her olive-toned brow creased, deep in thought even as a dozen Ioun stones drifted in precise orbit about her head. Eschewing the finery of most Factols and perhaps more so most wizards of her profound ability, her robes were a simple pale white and gold, embroidered with tiny bits of clockwork about the cuffs and collar. Intelligence sparkled in her pale, steel-grey eyes and she smiled. “You did a perfect job Nathan.” Nacius bobbed her head, nodding to herself with satisfaction as she brushed a lock of gray hair from her face, “Your mother would be proud, whatever ultimately happened to her.” The book she presently mused over was penned by her secretary and Factor, Nathan the Inescapable, himself the son of Factol Hashkar’s predecessor Lariset. While the Fraternity had no manner of inherited positions and titles, the former Factol’s scion had risen up the ranks on his own work and dedication, aided in no small part by his mastery and utilization of originally githyanki magic to retard the retroactive aging process otherwise experienced upon leaving the Astral plane, which is where he’d spent most of the past century on Faction business in one of their secret archives. For having outlasted Hashkar and honestly having set himself up as Nacius’s likely successor, he barely looked over the age of 40. His likely spot was also aided by the deep and long-standing animosity between Nacius and her own rival for the position of Factol after Hashkar’s death, Jamis. She’d vaulted past her rival once and it amused her to potentially do so a second time by proxy whenever she herself passed away. Her mind absently rereading and penning internal comments to discuss with the man in a week’s time for their next scheduled meeting, the Factol never noticed the door to her office open and close with barely a whisper of sound to grace the air and then her ears. Thus distracted, it took her a moment to react, though she didn’t yet look up. “Was there something else Nathan?” She asked, “Your summary of the ordered disorder among the Quartons was nearly poetic in the use of equations alongside the prose. I..” “I am here to retrieve something that does belong to you.” The voice was cold and devoid of mercy, tinged with simmering anger and subtle madness. The voice was not that of Factol Garabutos’s secretary. The wizard looked up, a spell pulled to mind to trigger a nested series of lesser, contingent spells and in the back of her consciousness the notion to trigger one of the Universal Loopholes she held in stock, should they be required to deal with her intruder. Neither would be necessary nor viable however, and with a frown she ceased the attempt as her Ioun stones clattered to the ground, a consequence of the antimagic field conjured by the woman standing before her. “Justice does not follow your petty Laws and presumptions of Order.” The intruder sneered, her eyes bloodshot and red, obvious even despite the ruddy fiendish glow of each red and lambent iris. “This runs contrary to dozens of axioms and long-proven laws.” Factol Garabutos narrowed her eyes and spoke with a curt matter-of-factness, “Please be gone from my office.” “I am Justice,” The Intruder stepped forward and placed her hands on the desk, her claws marked by gray dust and ashes, “And Justice transcends your petty Rules.” “No, you are dead.” The Factol frowned. “Your death was witnessed by over two hundred individuals and one distant branch of a limited hivemind, of whom one hundred and twelve of the former and the full consciousness of the latter were interviewed in the following week and their impressions recorded and archived in triplicate. I have a copy of the record here in my office given the profound nature of your actions and the manner of your passing following your reappearance after being presumed dead since the end of the Faction War.” “And yet here I am Factol Garabutos.” The intruder chuckled, a manic edge to the sound. “Do I appear dead to you?” “You were flayed alive and reduced to a bloody, homogenous pulp by Her Serenity, The Lady of Pain.” The Guvners’ Factol resolutely stated. “So yes, you are quite profoundly dead. Thus please leave my office.” Both Factol and former Factol stared at one another, human and tiefling, peers in a manner of speaking taking the other’s measure even if both of them knew what the end would bring. “The Bladed Lady’s crimes are too great and so yet here I stand, alive and working towards the greatest act of Justice that can and will be.” The tiefling smiled, exposing a row of pointed teeth as she drew a vorpal blade, the same as she’d carried in Sigil upon the day of her recorded public death. “Death is no barrier towards my work, and my work requires the key to Hashkar’s private vault. You will provide me that key and I will provide you the justice of a swift and painless death.” “And if I refuse?” “Then I will personally slaughter every member of the Fortress of Disciplined Enlightenment before I tear the structure apart down to the last golden brick to find what I came here to recover. It does not belong to you, and if need be I will execute your faction members for their complicity in your crimes and the crimes of this present reality.” The tip of the sword touched the Factol’s desk and began to neatly bleed through the stone like a knife to flesh. “But it does not have to come to that.” “However you are here…” Nacius sighed as she retrieved a single golden key stamped not with Hashkar’s personal sigil, but with Lariset’s, “Whatever madness this entails, this is not Justice.” “Yes, yes it is,” The former Mercykiller Factol smiled, “However indirectly it might be. Your death is not Justice in and of itself, but a stepping stone towards the greatest Justice of all, the grandest axiom that there is and could be.” Factol Garabutos went ashen as she came to a sudden, profound, and horrific realization as she stared up into the eyes of Alisohn Nilesia. The mad tiefling smiled and as she had once before in Sigil to a dabus, with a single measured strike she neatly beheaded the Guvner’s Factol. The body slumped and blood sprayed across the room in patterns that could of course be ordered and predicted if the initial angle of the body, blood pressure, stroke volume, ambient temperature, and other variables were accounted for. Surely the Factol’s servants would make such calculations when they cleaned up the mess hours later. Unlike when she’d slain a dabus in Sigil, this time Nilesia knelt down and drew out a single, darkly glittering black sapphire. Although the Fraternity of Order made it strictly against their own internal laws for any member above of Factotum and above to retain their position after returning from the dead, there could be no witness to this death, nor any witness to what she would be leaving with once she accessed and plundered Hashkar’s vault and what he’d inherited from his predecessor. “You will have what you wish my Master.” Alisohn Nilesia whispered to herself, somewhere between a desperate plea, a promise, and a prayer. [center]****[/center] [/QUOTE]
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Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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