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Story Hour
Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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<blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 7830922" data-attributes="member: 11697"><p>The snarl that cut the air was cold and aberrant, followed by the chittering clack of mandibles as a ghostly, phosphorescent figure manifested behind Toras, an equally ghostly trident clutched in two of its four insectile arms. Without warning to Tristol’s magic or even to Fyrehowl’s preternatural sense of the Cadence of the Planes, the ghost yugoloth’s weapon plunged forward into the half-celestial’s back.</p><p></p><p>Toras screamed in pain. While it made no immediate and obvious appearance outwardly upon his features, given the nature of his own supernaturally-long lifespan, as the immaterial trident ignored his armor and plunged through his flesh, with the icy pain it spread, he also felt it take something from him altogether more valuable as it feasted upon three years of his life.</p><p></p><p>“F*CK!” Toras shouted, turning and tumbling backwards, even as he lashed out with his blade in a wicked backhanded slice. The blade passed effortlessly through the fiend without any response, except for a soft, malicious hiss of a laugh from the creature.</p><p></p><p>“What the hell is that?!” Nisha blurted out.</p><p></p><p>“Don’t let it touch you!” Toras shouted in warning as he glanced at the Xaositect and Tristol at her side, the least defended members of the party. “It’s a ghost. It’ll age you if it touches you.”</p><p></p><p>Fyrehowl shrugged and interposed herself between the mezzoloth and the others, her own immortality uncaring of such an attack. As she stepped closer to the fiend however, while she would have normally felt the physical effects of its evil, this time she felt that but also a profound sensation of alien, unnaturalness as if the creature’s sheer existence violated the very laws of reality.</p><p></p><p>It did.</p><p></p><p>“That’s just not possible.” Tristol stammered, “We’re on the Outer Planes. There’s no ethereal plane here. You can’t have ghosts without an Ethereal overlap!”</p><p></p><p>Laughing, its gem-like eyes glittering like a pile of a necromancer’s black sapphires, the ghost mezzoloth lunch forward a second time, jabbing at Fyrehowl. The lupinal only barely dodged each attack, with the creature being far beyond a simple mezzoloth in skill and ability.</p><p></p><p>“To say nothing of it just not being possible to have a ghost fiend in the first place!” Tristol continued to object to the reality of the creature attacking them, protesting it without having moved from where he’d stood when it had manifested. “You can’t have a ghost outsider! You can’t have an undead outsider in the first place, regardless of the type! I mean…”</p><p></p><p>“I love you but shut up!” Nisha grabbed her fiancé and dragged him back and away from the fight as Fyrehowl continued to dodge and Clueless stepped up next to her.</p><p></p><p>“Florian a little help here perhaps!” The bladesinger called back to the cleric as he and Fyrehowl traded attacks with the mezzoloth. The fiend hadn’t managed to strike either of the two hyper-nimble party members, but of the five attacks of theirs that struck deep into the fiend’s immaterial core, only one of them, a stab from Razor, had actually affected the spectral entity.</p><p></p><p>The cleric blinked, thus far in the fight too stunned by the unnatural mezzoloth’s appearance to act. Shaken from her surprise she held up her holy symbol and directed the power of Tempus towards it, an action that would have incinerated any single undead being short of the most ancient of liches or demiliches without any hesitation, such was the power of her deity’s investiture in her.</p><p></p><p>Absolutely nothing happened.</p><p></p><p>Florian’s mouth opened, hung open wordlessly as her brain tumbled in disbelief. Her call to the Foe Hammer had been clear, but Tempus had not heard her. Her invocation of the god’s power had simple been snuffed by where she stood. Something terrible and unnatural within the sanctum of Dubai’s Obscure Woe had rapaciously devoured the god-granted powers at her beck and call.</p><p></p><p>Somehow sensing her inability to call upon her divine patron, the ghostly mezzoloth stared and laughed, seconds before a blazing bolt of blue-white energy lanced from Tristol’s outstretched hand to strike the fiend in the center of its chest. It contorted and shrieked for but a fraction of a second before evaporating into nothingness, burned away by silverfire.</p><p></p><p>“Thank you Tristol.” Florian said, taking a moment to catch her breath.</p><p></p><p>“When did you learn that?!” Nisha whispered to the wizard, poking his side with her tail. “That was awesome!”</p><p></p><p>Tristol smiled, his ears flattening and drooping in slight humility, “It’s a little tiring, but yeah, that’s pretty recent. Ask me later and I’ll tell you all about it.”</p><p></p><p>“There’s something deeply, deeply <strong>WRONG</strong> about this place…” Florian stared at the others, “We almost got our asses handed to us by a damn mezzoloth: a GHOST mezzoloth that shouldn’t even be able to exist, and this place silenced by connection to Tempus like it didn’t even exist.”</p><p></p><p>“Oh you hadn’t noticed that before?” Toras sarcastically muttered, shaking his head. “We’re pretty much f*cked if turning around and walking straight from here and through that floating portal to Gehenna sounds like an improvement upon our situation…”</p><p></p><p>Fyrehowl and Clueless grimaced and nodded their heads in agreement.</p><p></p><p>“Hey… uh… everybody?” Nisha raised a hand and gestured to a doorway in one of the room’s walls, a door that hadn’t been there before. “That door wasn’t there before now. And there’s a staircase going down.”</p><p></p><p>“I’d say that something noticed us.” Tristol took a single, uneasy breath. “Who wants to go first?”</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><strong>*</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>“Precious, precious pet of ours. Beloved tormented flesh. My oldest, dearest friend. We love you. We love you so very much. Listen and repeat. Know. Listen. Suffer. Suffer for us…”</p><p></p><p>Ancient lips, cracked and bleeding dark, syrupy ichor smiled in the darkness, the only light being the milky white radiance from the baernaloth’s eyes and the pale, equally milky green light from a gemstone clutched lovingly within its withered, unnaturally elongated and spindly hands and fingers.</p><p></p><p>Transfixed in space before the ur-fiend wavered an image from Gehenna. Three volcanoes flickered distantly in the void as a cabal of jackal-headed arcanaloths hovered in the air above and around a titanic, gibbering blob of flesh, each of them carefully reciting names in Abyssal, Infernal, and Yugoloth. Suspended above the creature and equidistant to the arcanaloths hovered a gleaming, multifaceted emerald stone, the Vuulge, a mirror of the one clutched by the baernaloth. Each name was read and remembered, even as the Maeldur et Kavurik cried in each moment of agony.</p><p></p><p>Daru Ib Shamiq the Lie Weaver smiled with each of the doomed, damned solar’s whimpers, and periodically he whispered into the mirror-Vuulge, stroking his fingers through the air like petting the head of a distant, beloved pet.</p><p></p><p>The light from the fiend’s eyes and the mirror-Vuulge served only to illuminate a sparse portion of the cavern within which the baernaloth laired. The floor, dark and covered with debris and a spattered carpet of coughed and spat up phlegm seemingly absorbed the light, leaving the rest of the cavern unseen. But then from above and slowly descending, a series of light-sources more brilliant than those of the Lie-Weaver’s stretched out and showed the nature of the cavern itself, scattering and refracting across untold numbers of words and phrases physically manifested and lodged within the fluid, gelatinous matrix like clots in the walls of a slowly festering abscess.</p><p></p><p>Not looking up at the light of the descending party, the baernaloth smiled, a sheen of yellow mucus glimmering upon its teeth. Had it hircine ears, they would have swiveled in the direction of its visitors. The image of Gehenna before him flickered and vanished.</p><p></p><p>“Who are you?” Clueless was the first to speak, the gemstone within his ankle glowing painfully with the baernaloth’s presence.</p><p></p><p>“I’ve been wondering when you would stumble across my doorstep and knock upon my door,” Daru spoke without yet looking up, “Ever since you met my Brother/Sister the Chronicler. Suffice to say I know of you. Greetings to you as well Fyrehowl of Elysium.”</p><p></p><p>The celestial’s eyes narrowed, her fur already bristled as she realized that despite the ur-fiend’s presence she did not feel the waves of nausea that she expected. Part of it was the fiend’s intent, and part of it was her own partially fallen status, a status that she herself had not yet come to realize, a status that the baernaloth immediately saw and savored like a sugared plum.</p><p>“But I am remiss in only acknowledging the two of you.” The Lie-Weaver looked up, his eyes white and snakelike, glancing at his audience. “Greetings to you Toras, Florian, and Tristol, godslaves all of you in one form or another, and to you Nisha, child of Limbo’s whimsy.”</p><p></p><p>Amidst the frowns and narrowed, suspicious eyes, Nisha tilted her head, shrugged, and bowed.</p><p></p><p>“You know precisely who I am mortals, or rather you know a title perhaps, or only a pseudonym.” Daru chuckled, all the while a dull pressure filled the backs of his guests’ skulls. “Humor me. What have you been told?”</p><p></p><p>“You’re a baernaloth…” Toras spat, “That’s all we need to know.”</p><p></p><p>“Says the mortal touched by my little creation from above, seven years and twelve days taken.”</p><p></p><p>Toras glared daggers at the baernaloth but said nothing.</p><p></p><p>“A half celestial, you will have centuries of life and health ahead of you, should they not be snuffed by blade or teeth and so the diminishment of those years is by comparison nothing.” Daru spread his spindly fingers, “But as you reach your appointed time and struggle against destiny as all mortals things do, will you regret that loss, even one day longer? The aged move mountains, the aged sacrifice thousands for half the time you have remaining be added on. Ask and I will restore it for you.”</p><p></p><p>The fiend reached out, its withered, diseased hand stretching towards Toras.</p><p></p><p>Tristol’s hand went to the handle of his blade and he stepped back, “Don’t.”</p><p></p><p>With a look of sorrow upon his face, the baernaloth sighed and withdrew his hand, “Alas, I would have done it for free…”</p><p></p><p>Unseen and unnoticed, the baernaloth’s words –his lies– took physical, tangible form, crystallizing within the mucoid matrix of his lair, there to join the untold millions slowly being processed and rendered down for purposes dark and unknown, his own personal Loadstone of Misery in microcosm.</p><p></p><p>“But to answer your question, I am Daru ib Shamiq, the Lie Weaver.” The fiend’s eyes burned bright and fierce in the darkness, the latter title the first time that the party had ever heard of it. The implications of it were of course not lost upon them in the slightest.</p><p></p><p>“How do we read and interpret the Oblivion Compass?” Standing at the party’s rear, Tristol called out loudly and with confidence.</p><p></p><p>If the aasimar wizard or any of the others expected to see a look of shock pass across the baernaloth’s features at his request, they were sorely disappointed. Daru ib Shamiq’s eyes remained milky white and clouded, without any recognition… and then came not a gasp, a sneer, a snarl, or an abrupt refusal: the baernaloth smirked, knowingly so.</p><p></p><p>“Very well.” Daru spread his hands once again and stared up at the mortals and celestial seeking his wisdom, “I can tell you. I <u>will</u> tell you. But in exchange you will first perform a series of tasks for me.”</p><p></p><p>Fyrehowl immediately snarled. It wasn’t so much her celestial nature that warned her of the fiend’s looming bargain, but the prescient shudder that she felt through the Cadence of the Planes at the ur-fiend’s words.</p><p></p><p>“Besides… what other option do you have?” Daru’s eyes sparkled, reflecting the dull glow of the gemstone in his lap. “You have been there, have you not? Observation will accomplish little. You would need to listen to the wailing of the moignos and plumb their thoughts for years or more, and no doubt you have no desire to return, given its effect upon you…”</p><p></p><p>The party members stared at the fiend, an uncomfortable silence rising up, broken only by a sudden coughing fit by the baernaloth that left black, ichor flecked upon his lips and a gobbet of mucus spat unceremoniously upon the floor.</p><p></p><p>“What would we need to do?” Clueless asked, ignoring the suddenly painful throb in his ankle as the words left his lips.</p><p></p><p>“It is but a simple task.” Daru explained with a smile, “I give you an object and you deliver it to another mortal with whom I have had my dealings. They will be expecting it, and they will accept it from you. Upon doing so I will give you the next task. You are free to abandon the first task or any subsequent ones at any time of your choosing, but understand that I will not give away my secrets without such reciprocity in full.”</p><p></p><p>“And if we refuse to perform your task?” Toras glowered at the baernaloth, the withered figure still slouched in darkness, its limbs anemic and non-threatening. It had not made any display of power like its brethren the Chronicler, and so for the moment, the half-celestial’s bravado held steady, even if the rational portion of his mind told him to flee from where he’d come and never look back.</p><p></p><p>“Then you leave without the answers you seek, answers to questions that no doubt Laughing Jane thought to plant within your head. She knows enough to point you correctly to where such answers dwell, but unlike her I have no compulsion to offer my advice.”</p><p></p><p>“Why have us perform these tasks? Why not perform them yourself? Why not hand them to a yugoloth who’d piss themselves and scamper about doing precisely as you told them?” Clueless felt the gemstone’s pain abate at his tone of doubt, if only for a moment.</p><p></p><p>“I am ancient beyond your comprehension mortal.” Daru sneered, the flesh stretched tight against his goat-like skull, “Do you see me getting up and about the planes on my own? Do you see me breaking the yugoloth sense of self-sufficiency? What good are they if they know their creators watch them still and might intervene? I would never be alone again. Every greater yugoloth would seek me out and I will have none of that.” The baernaloth coughed and spat once more, even as whole passages of words crystallized within the ceiling above him, unseen. “Allow me to the pull the puppet strings of my youth but once more, let me rattle your feet and have you dance in a manner of speaking, even if such is far from guiding the tides of the ‘loths within the Blood War, or listening to the death rattle of a pantheon of gods. Give me this one small thing and you will have your secrets.”</p><p></p><p>Turning away from the fiend, though its eyes and the dull pressure within their heads never wavered, the party conversed amongst themselves, debating the risks and the possible reward.</p><p></p><p>“It’s a f*cking baernaloth.” Toras insisted, not caring if the creature heard. “It’s going to have us do something hideous.”</p><p></p><p>“That would be obvious.” Florian sighed, “But is it worth doing if we can stop something worse?”</p><p></p><p>“I’d normally say yes,” Fyrehowl gave an uncertain shrug, “But I have a bad feeling about this, even if my vote is yes when it comes down to it.”</p><p></p><p>“I don’t think Laughing Jane -whatever her reasons for sending us here in the first place- would send us to our doom.” Tristol eyes the baernaloth’s gleaming eyes warily, “She clearly loathed the Oinoloth, and that in and of itself satisfies me to at least see what that thing wants from us.”</p><p></p><p>They argued back and forth for several more minutes, weighing the benefits versus the risks and finally, they turned back to the ur-fiend and nodded as one.</p><p></p><p>“Tell us what you want us to do.” Clueless spoke for them all.</p><p></p><p>“Deliver something for me.” Daru ib Shamiq explained, “Deliver for me something old and treasured. Give it unasked and unwanted, but very much expected, to one who must have it. This is a simple task, and then he, the recipient, will give you the next to perform. Such it will be: three minor errands in all until you return here to me and receive the answer to your wizard’s question. Thus as it is with all things seemingly: the rule of three, the unity of rings, and myself now the center of this all.”</p><p></p><p>And then without gesture or invocation, and indeed without the sparkle of any magic that Tristol’s eyes could discern, the object of their task appeared within the baernaloth’s outstretched hand: a black hardwood box.</p><p></p><p>The baernaloth held the box within that hand for several seconds as none of the party members wished to be the one to approach the creature and take it. Finally Clueless stepped forward and gingerly accepted it, careful to avoid actually touching the baernaloth in the process.</p><p></p><p>The bladesinger immediately stooped from the unexpected weight of the box, substantially heavier as it was for its dimensions of 6 inches by 4 inches by 3 inches. It was carved from a deep black hardwood, with corners of soft molded lead, tipped with points of gold. The top surface was emblazoned with an elaborately carved figure with a snarling face and blinded eyes, almost like an imp or a small child with fiendish features, and along the sides of the box, a thin silver line denoted a seam and two halves to it all, though it displayed by keyhole, no latch, and no hinges.</p><p></p><p>The box was cold, with a soft tracery of frost tracing lines of snowflake crystals upon its surface only to melt from the heat of the half-fey’s hand as he moved the box about to examine its curious, macabre appearance.</p><p></p><p>Fyrehowl’s ears perked and she stared at the box as Clueless moved it about, detecting the faintest sound of gears and sporadic motions or even scuffling, skittering movement within its confines along with a slow ticking, either of dripping water or a pendulum within a clock. It had made no such sounds when the baernaloth had yet held it within his hand.</p><p></p><p>“Deliver the box to Muroth Chalmar, a mortal necromancer upon your wizard’s own prime sphere of Toril, within the borders of the nation of Narfell to be exact in the region known as the Rawlinswood.” Daru ib Shamiq explained, “The half-elf lives within a reclaimed and rebuilt tower at the fringes of the city of Dun-Tharos. Once you are there within relative proximity, the box itself will draw you towards his location. It is meant for him.”</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><strong>*</strong></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shemeska, post: 7830922, member: 11697"] The snarl that cut the air was cold and aberrant, followed by the chittering clack of mandibles as a ghostly, phosphorescent figure manifested behind Toras, an equally ghostly trident clutched in two of its four insectile arms. Without warning to Tristol’s magic or even to Fyrehowl’s preternatural sense of the Cadence of the Planes, the ghost yugoloth’s weapon plunged forward into the half-celestial’s back. Toras screamed in pain. While it made no immediate and obvious appearance outwardly upon his features, given the nature of his own supernaturally-long lifespan, as the immaterial trident ignored his armor and plunged through his flesh, with the icy pain it spread, he also felt it take something from him altogether more valuable as it feasted upon three years of his life. “F*CK!” Toras shouted, turning and tumbling backwards, even as he lashed out with his blade in a wicked backhanded slice. The blade passed effortlessly through the fiend without any response, except for a soft, malicious hiss of a laugh from the creature. “What the hell is that?!” Nisha blurted out. “Don’t let it touch you!” Toras shouted in warning as he glanced at the Xaositect and Tristol at her side, the least defended members of the party. “It’s a ghost. It’ll age you if it touches you.” Fyrehowl shrugged and interposed herself between the mezzoloth and the others, her own immortality uncaring of such an attack. As she stepped closer to the fiend however, while she would have normally felt the physical effects of its evil, this time she felt that but also a profound sensation of alien, unnaturalness as if the creature’s sheer existence violated the very laws of reality. It did. “That’s just not possible.” Tristol stammered, “We’re on the Outer Planes. There’s no ethereal plane here. You can’t have ghosts without an Ethereal overlap!” Laughing, its gem-like eyes glittering like a pile of a necromancer’s black sapphires, the ghost mezzoloth lunch forward a second time, jabbing at Fyrehowl. The lupinal only barely dodged each attack, with the creature being far beyond a simple mezzoloth in skill and ability. “To say nothing of it just not being possible to have a ghost fiend in the first place!” Tristol continued to object to the reality of the creature attacking them, protesting it without having moved from where he’d stood when it had manifested. “You can’t have a ghost outsider! You can’t have an undead outsider in the first place, regardless of the type! I mean…” “I love you but shut up!” Nisha grabbed her fiancé and dragged him back and away from the fight as Fyrehowl continued to dodge and Clueless stepped up next to her. “Florian a little help here perhaps!” The bladesinger called back to the cleric as he and Fyrehowl traded attacks with the mezzoloth. The fiend hadn’t managed to strike either of the two hyper-nimble party members, but of the five attacks of theirs that struck deep into the fiend’s immaterial core, only one of them, a stab from Razor, had actually affected the spectral entity. The cleric blinked, thus far in the fight too stunned by the unnatural mezzoloth’s appearance to act. Shaken from her surprise she held up her holy symbol and directed the power of Tempus towards it, an action that would have incinerated any single undead being short of the most ancient of liches or demiliches without any hesitation, such was the power of her deity’s investiture in her. Absolutely nothing happened. Florian’s mouth opened, hung open wordlessly as her brain tumbled in disbelief. Her call to the Foe Hammer had been clear, but Tempus had not heard her. Her invocation of the god’s power had simple been snuffed by where she stood. Something terrible and unnatural within the sanctum of Dubai’s Obscure Woe had rapaciously devoured the god-granted powers at her beck and call. Somehow sensing her inability to call upon her divine patron, the ghostly mezzoloth stared and laughed, seconds before a blazing bolt of blue-white energy lanced from Tristol’s outstretched hand to strike the fiend in the center of its chest. It contorted and shrieked for but a fraction of a second before evaporating into nothingness, burned away by silverfire. “Thank you Tristol.” Florian said, taking a moment to catch her breath. “When did you learn that?!” Nisha whispered to the wizard, poking his side with her tail. “That was awesome!” Tristol smiled, his ears flattening and drooping in slight humility, “It’s a little tiring, but yeah, that’s pretty recent. Ask me later and I’ll tell you all about it.” “There’s something deeply, deeply [b]WRONG[/b] about this place…” Florian stared at the others, “We almost got our asses handed to us by a damn mezzoloth: a GHOST mezzoloth that shouldn’t even be able to exist, and this place silenced by connection to Tempus like it didn’t even exist.” “Oh you hadn’t noticed that before?” Toras sarcastically muttered, shaking his head. “We’re pretty much f*cked if turning around and walking straight from here and through that floating portal to Gehenna sounds like an improvement upon our situation…” Fyrehowl and Clueless grimaced and nodded their heads in agreement. “Hey… uh… everybody?” Nisha raised a hand and gestured to a doorway in one of the room’s walls, a door that hadn’t been there before. “That door wasn’t there before now. And there’s a staircase going down.” “I’d say that something noticed us.” Tristol took a single, uneasy breath. “Who wants to go first?” [center][B]*[/B][/center] “Precious, precious pet of ours. Beloved tormented flesh. My oldest, dearest friend. We love you. We love you so very much. Listen and repeat. Know. Listen. Suffer. Suffer for us…” Ancient lips, cracked and bleeding dark, syrupy ichor smiled in the darkness, the only light being the milky white radiance from the baernaloth’s eyes and the pale, equally milky green light from a gemstone clutched lovingly within its withered, unnaturally elongated and spindly hands and fingers. Transfixed in space before the ur-fiend wavered an image from Gehenna. Three volcanoes flickered distantly in the void as a cabal of jackal-headed arcanaloths hovered in the air above and around a titanic, gibbering blob of flesh, each of them carefully reciting names in Abyssal, Infernal, and Yugoloth. Suspended above the creature and equidistant to the arcanaloths hovered a gleaming, multifaceted emerald stone, the Vuulge, a mirror of the one clutched by the baernaloth. Each name was read and remembered, even as the Maeldur et Kavurik cried in each moment of agony. Daru Ib Shamiq the Lie Weaver smiled with each of the doomed, damned solar’s whimpers, and periodically he whispered into the mirror-Vuulge, stroking his fingers through the air like petting the head of a distant, beloved pet. The light from the fiend’s eyes and the mirror-Vuulge served only to illuminate a sparse portion of the cavern within which the baernaloth laired. The floor, dark and covered with debris and a spattered carpet of coughed and spat up phlegm seemingly absorbed the light, leaving the rest of the cavern unseen. But then from above and slowly descending, a series of light-sources more brilliant than those of the Lie-Weaver’s stretched out and showed the nature of the cavern itself, scattering and refracting across untold numbers of words and phrases physically manifested and lodged within the fluid, gelatinous matrix like clots in the walls of a slowly festering abscess. Not looking up at the light of the descending party, the baernaloth smiled, a sheen of yellow mucus glimmering upon its teeth. Had it hircine ears, they would have swiveled in the direction of its visitors. The image of Gehenna before him flickered and vanished. “Who are you?” Clueless was the first to speak, the gemstone within his ankle glowing painfully with the baernaloth’s presence. “I’ve been wondering when you would stumble across my doorstep and knock upon my door,” Daru spoke without yet looking up, “Ever since you met my Brother/Sister the Chronicler. Suffice to say I know of you. Greetings to you as well Fyrehowl of Elysium.” The celestial’s eyes narrowed, her fur already bristled as she realized that despite the ur-fiend’s presence she did not feel the waves of nausea that she expected. Part of it was the fiend’s intent, and part of it was her own partially fallen status, a status that she herself had not yet come to realize, a status that the baernaloth immediately saw and savored like a sugared plum. “But I am remiss in only acknowledging the two of you.” The Lie-Weaver looked up, his eyes white and snakelike, glancing at his audience. “Greetings to you Toras, Florian, and Tristol, godslaves all of you in one form or another, and to you Nisha, child of Limbo’s whimsy.” Amidst the frowns and narrowed, suspicious eyes, Nisha tilted her head, shrugged, and bowed. “You know precisely who I am mortals, or rather you know a title perhaps, or only a pseudonym.” Daru chuckled, all the while a dull pressure filled the backs of his guests’ skulls. “Humor me. What have you been told?” “You’re a baernaloth…” Toras spat, “That’s all we need to know.” “Says the mortal touched by my little creation from above, seven years and twelve days taken.” Toras glared daggers at the baernaloth but said nothing. “A half celestial, you will have centuries of life and health ahead of you, should they not be snuffed by blade or teeth and so the diminishment of those years is by comparison nothing.” Daru spread his spindly fingers, “But as you reach your appointed time and struggle against destiny as all mortals things do, will you regret that loss, even one day longer? The aged move mountains, the aged sacrifice thousands for half the time you have remaining be added on. Ask and I will restore it for you.” The fiend reached out, its withered, diseased hand stretching towards Toras. Tristol’s hand went to the handle of his blade and he stepped back, “Don’t.” With a look of sorrow upon his face, the baernaloth sighed and withdrew his hand, “Alas, I would have done it for free…” Unseen and unnoticed, the baernaloth’s words –his lies– took physical, tangible form, crystallizing within the mucoid matrix of his lair, there to join the untold millions slowly being processed and rendered down for purposes dark and unknown, his own personal Loadstone of Misery in microcosm. “But to answer your question, I am Daru ib Shamiq, the Lie Weaver.” The fiend’s eyes burned bright and fierce in the darkness, the latter title the first time that the party had ever heard of it. The implications of it were of course not lost upon them in the slightest. “How do we read and interpret the Oblivion Compass?” Standing at the party’s rear, Tristol called out loudly and with confidence. If the aasimar wizard or any of the others expected to see a look of shock pass across the baernaloth’s features at his request, they were sorely disappointed. Daru ib Shamiq’s eyes remained milky white and clouded, without any recognition… and then came not a gasp, a sneer, a snarl, or an abrupt refusal: the baernaloth smirked, knowingly so. “Very well.” Daru spread his hands once again and stared up at the mortals and celestial seeking his wisdom, “I can tell you. I [u]will[/u] tell you. But in exchange you will first perform a series of tasks for me.” Fyrehowl immediately snarled. It wasn’t so much her celestial nature that warned her of the fiend’s looming bargain, but the prescient shudder that she felt through the Cadence of the Planes at the ur-fiend’s words. “Besides… what other option do you have?” Daru’s eyes sparkled, reflecting the dull glow of the gemstone in his lap. “You have been there, have you not? Observation will accomplish little. You would need to listen to the wailing of the moignos and plumb their thoughts for years or more, and no doubt you have no desire to return, given its effect upon you…” The party members stared at the fiend, an uncomfortable silence rising up, broken only by a sudden coughing fit by the baernaloth that left black, ichor flecked upon his lips and a gobbet of mucus spat unceremoniously upon the floor. “What would we need to do?” Clueless asked, ignoring the suddenly painful throb in his ankle as the words left his lips. “It is but a simple task.” Daru explained with a smile, “I give you an object and you deliver it to another mortal with whom I have had my dealings. They will be expecting it, and they will accept it from you. Upon doing so I will give you the next task. You are free to abandon the first task or any subsequent ones at any time of your choosing, but understand that I will not give away my secrets without such reciprocity in full.” “And if we refuse to perform your task?” Toras glowered at the baernaloth, the withered figure still slouched in darkness, its limbs anemic and non-threatening. It had not made any display of power like its brethren the Chronicler, and so for the moment, the half-celestial’s bravado held steady, even if the rational portion of his mind told him to flee from where he’d come and never look back. “Then you leave without the answers you seek, answers to questions that no doubt Laughing Jane thought to plant within your head. She knows enough to point you correctly to where such answers dwell, but unlike her I have no compulsion to offer my advice.” “Why have us perform these tasks? Why not perform them yourself? Why not hand them to a yugoloth who’d piss themselves and scamper about doing precisely as you told them?” Clueless felt the gemstone’s pain abate at his tone of doubt, if only for a moment. “I am ancient beyond your comprehension mortal.” Daru sneered, the flesh stretched tight against his goat-like skull, “Do you see me getting up and about the planes on my own? Do you see me breaking the yugoloth sense of self-sufficiency? What good are they if they know their creators watch them still and might intervene? I would never be alone again. Every greater yugoloth would seek me out and I will have none of that.” The baernaloth coughed and spat once more, even as whole passages of words crystallized within the ceiling above him, unseen. “Allow me to the pull the puppet strings of my youth but once more, let me rattle your feet and have you dance in a manner of speaking, even if such is far from guiding the tides of the ‘loths within the Blood War, or listening to the death rattle of a pantheon of gods. Give me this one small thing and you will have your secrets.” Turning away from the fiend, though its eyes and the dull pressure within their heads never wavered, the party conversed amongst themselves, debating the risks and the possible reward. “It’s a f*cking baernaloth.” Toras insisted, not caring if the creature heard. “It’s going to have us do something hideous.” “That would be obvious.” Florian sighed, “But is it worth doing if we can stop something worse?” “I’d normally say yes,” Fyrehowl gave an uncertain shrug, “But I have a bad feeling about this, even if my vote is yes when it comes down to it.” “I don’t think Laughing Jane -whatever her reasons for sending us here in the first place- would send us to our doom.” Tristol eyes the baernaloth’s gleaming eyes warily, “She clearly loathed the Oinoloth, and that in and of itself satisfies me to at least see what that thing wants from us.” They argued back and forth for several more minutes, weighing the benefits versus the risks and finally, they turned back to the ur-fiend and nodded as one. “Tell us what you want us to do.” Clueless spoke for them all. “Deliver something for me.” Daru ib Shamiq explained, “Deliver for me something old and treasured. Give it unasked and unwanted, but very much expected, to one who must have it. This is a simple task, and then he, the recipient, will give you the next to perform. Such it will be: three minor errands in all until you return here to me and receive the answer to your wizard’s question. Thus as it is with all things seemingly: the rule of three, the unity of rings, and myself now the center of this all.” And then without gesture or invocation, and indeed without the sparkle of any magic that Tristol’s eyes could discern, the object of their task appeared within the baernaloth’s outstretched hand: a black hardwood box. The baernaloth held the box within that hand for several seconds as none of the party members wished to be the one to approach the creature and take it. Finally Clueless stepped forward and gingerly accepted it, careful to avoid actually touching the baernaloth in the process. The bladesinger immediately stooped from the unexpected weight of the box, substantially heavier as it was for its dimensions of 6 inches by 4 inches by 3 inches. It was carved from a deep black hardwood, with corners of soft molded lead, tipped with points of gold. The top surface was emblazoned with an elaborately carved figure with a snarling face and blinded eyes, almost like an imp or a small child with fiendish features, and along the sides of the box, a thin silver line denoted a seam and two halves to it all, though it displayed by keyhole, no latch, and no hinges. The box was cold, with a soft tracery of frost tracing lines of snowflake crystals upon its surface only to melt from the heat of the half-fey’s hand as he moved the box about to examine its curious, macabre appearance. Fyrehowl’s ears perked and she stared at the box as Clueless moved it about, detecting the faintest sound of gears and sporadic motions or even scuffling, skittering movement within its confines along with a slow ticking, either of dripping water or a pendulum within a clock. It had made no such sounds when the baernaloth had yet held it within his hand. “Deliver the box to Muroth Chalmar, a mortal necromancer upon your wizard’s own prime sphere of Toril, within the borders of the nation of Narfell to be exact in the region known as the Rawlinswood.” Daru ib Shamiq explained, “The half-elf lives within a reclaimed and rebuilt tower at the fringes of the city of Dun-Tharos. Once you are there within relative proximity, the box itself will draw you towards his location. It is meant for him.” [center][B]*[/B][/center] [/QUOTE]
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Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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