Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 18June2024)
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Shemeska
Adventurer
Already in there, but he isn't aware of it. Two more plot arcs for that. I have this all outlined, no worries.
Because God knows there's so much that I'd never be able to keep it all straight unless I'd done that outline years prior when I started writing this (nearly a decade ago at this point).
Shemeska
Adventurer
A few moments of confusion passed swiftly and Tristol teleported them all up to Alex’s level, relieved to at least find someone not wishing them dismemberment, eternal slavery, or swift death. As odd as it might seem to find an apparently friendly face in the depths of Baator, the fact that the mage was smiling and stood next to the broken door of a prison cell that it seemed obviously had been his only quite recently until Taba had torn through the floor, made him all the more trustworthy.
“That way! It can’t be far!” Alex pointed down the hallway where a trail of ashes, blood, and several torn apart baatezu corpses slowly burned, returning their essence to Baator itself.
In the thick of it all, it seemed to go unnoticed or just overlooked that Alex himself was spattered in devil blood as well. His of course had come from the gleeful worrying of his jailor’s neck in a Tindalos hound’s phosphorescent jaws rather than incidental spatter from Taba’s rampage.
Looking at Alex, their weapons remained out but not raised in anticipation of violence. A moment earlier, Toras had surreptitiously glanced at the strange wizard, glancing at his soul for the hints of any level of evil or servitude to an evil god but had found neither.
“So who exactly are you?” Clueless asked as they and Alex made their way down the corridor, following the sounds of bloodshed.
“My name’s Alex,” He gave a soft bow. “And until a few moments ago I was a prisoner here, or at least as my jailers called it, ‘indefinite detention as an honored, uninvited guest of his Infernal Majesty, Duke Melikaros. I’m rather glad to be out, it was getting quite boring. Baatezu aren’t very good conversationalists.”
“What did you mean by you’d been waiting for us?” Florian gave the mage a suspicious, sidelong glance.
Toras poked Alex on the shoulder, “Did Green Marvent send you?”
Alex gave an emphatic shrug, “I can’t say that I know who that fellow is. I came here because my friends told me to come here and meet you, plus that she, it, whatever you want to call them” He motioned in Taba’s direction, “would be coming as well.”
“Your friends?” Clueless asked warily. The last thing that they needed was some barmy, or some barmy with a fiend in his head. They’d had enough of those for a lifetime.
“My friends?” Alex smiled warmly. “They’re the ones that talk to me all of the time. Usually in my dreams, but sometimes through other people, my shadow, or just out of the corner of my eyes. They’ve been rather chatty of late.” Looking past them at nothing they perceived, he gave a soft, erratic giggle. Unconsciously his fingers curled to stroke the head of the intangible, invisible hound as it lapped at the essence of the fiend blood on his hip.
Nisha of all people looked askance, narrowed her eyes a moment and twirled a finger in the air, whistling a soft ‘coo coo!’.
“Yeah, well we’re glad to have helped you escape in some small way, but I don’t think that we need any help. So yeah, if you’re glad to be out, best of luck to you and everything, but we’ll be on our way.” Clueless motioned back the way that they’d come and the unguarded exterior entrance.
That would have been that with Alex dismissed and left behind to fend for himself, if not for what came next when he proved his worth and value. Consumed as they were in talking with the wizard as they turned the corner, they never noticed the barbazu turning in their direction from a blind entrance at exactly the same time.
Following the slow, phlegm-filled snarl of the hound at his fingertips, Alex didn’t miss a beat as he pointed at the fiend and whispered a phrase.
“Halt in the Duke’s name!” The baatezu shouted as it raised its spear before stumbling with the impact of Alex’s spell. A coruscating green beam lanced from his fingers to strike the fiend in the chest, incinerating the devil in its tracks, leaving behind only a pile of smoking ashes.
“Ok…” Florian held up a hand. “Score one for the new guy.”
“He does seem to be useful.” Toras shrugged. “So let’s play this out as we go. Worst that happens is we get out of here and go our separate ways then. But too soon to say. Nice shot by the way.”
Tristol tilted his head to the side, measuring Alex’s skill and the particular power of the spell he’d just seen the man cast. ‘Not bad at all. Particularly good at piercing magical resistance. He has the particular flavor of a conjuration specialist, despite his using a transmutation spell. Still, if we have to pick someone to be willing to help us run through a baatezu mansion in Hell itself, we couldn’t have hoped to find a better option. Even if he’s a bit odd, even judging present company with Nisha.’
“A pleasure to be of service.” The alienist smiled at the half-celestial and then turned to smile at his familiar, no longer a Tindalos hound nor a warped raven, but a twitching, softly whispering gibberling that was of course, seen by none but himself. “I aim to continue to help out.”
A mixture of shrugs and smiles all around and they continued down the passage in pursuit of Taba.
So close so close so close I can smell the scent of Malagard bubbling up below the reek of your fear. The barking pretender purchased her loyalty with the blood of my sibling Xenghara. You thought yourself safe. You thought yourself free. I do not forget. I do not forgive. Not for the blood of my siblings on your hands oh no, oh no, no, no…
Whispering to her prey all the while, announcing her intent and desires, the Infiltrator of the Planes clambered through the warren of elaborate hallways of the inner estate. Spinning from floor to wall to ceiling, she cart wheeled and shifted form with each tick of whatever infernal clock timed her pace. Each motion, each deft slice of razor claws, each steel-tipped arachnid leg planted upon an unshielded head, each whisper of a spell was by intent. A whirling dervish of flesh and malice, she spun through the passageways, following the scent of her desired quarry, littering her wake with dozens more butchered devils as incidental, irrelevant victims.
“Bar the door! Bar the door!” A terrified shriek came from beyond the archway of one of the Duke’s guest chambers. The sound of heavy furniture being pushed into place and the adjustment of steel-shod hooves at the base of the door confirmed what Taba could sense and taste on the air and aether already.
The door held intact and safe, but neither its hinges or the wall that contained them remained anchored or whole. Taba wrenched the door from its moorings and exhaled, spilling a torrent of acid from a head that now looked much like a black wyrm. The furniture that barred her way splintered from the force of the blast and its corrosive nature alike, forcing aside one of the two armored pit fiends that served as ambassadors within the Duke’s court for the guest that stood behind them.
Taba’s prey was not an elf, not even a mortal, but a night hag.
The gray lady’s eyes loomed wide with horror as the archfiend forced herself into the chamber. A barbed tail wrapped around the waist of one of her attendants, constricting even as blades of jagged bone grew from its length, severing the fiend in half like a doll in the jaws of a bear. A suddenly grown eye in the altraloth’s flank gazed at the second devil and then it was stone, frozen in place before an insectile leg kicked out and shattered it to pieces.
Screaming as she wove defensive magic, only the hag dressed in the raiment of the Lord of the 6th remained. “Malagard! Lord of the 6th! Master of Malbolge protect your servant. Protect your coven sister!”
Taba’s jaws yawned wide and her ruby eyes glittered, catching the hag’s rheumy orbs for but a moment before lunging forward and snapping shut with dagger teeth and the snap of bone.
The hag’s dead, headless body slumped to the floor and Taba perched atop it, whispering like a mocking benediction while on her back, tentacles erupted forth to weave the patterns of necromantic energies necessary to ensure that her victim would never again return.
“There is only one of you left now. Only your master hiding herself within the arms and chains of Hell itself. You who conspired with the pretender, the usurper of Khin-Oin, the Ebon. You who would forsake me and my siblings for scraps and favors from the wretch seated upon the Seige Malicious. I will slaughter you all.”
Licking at the hag blood, Taba smiled, content in her success even as the group which had forced her to reveal herself finally stumbled into the room with a chorus of exclamations.
“Oh what the f*ck happened in here?!”
“Are those pit fiends?!”
“That isn’t an elf…”
“Get her!”
Snarling in irritation from her dragon’s mouth and two newly formed in her elongated neck, Taba began to cast. Words of a Gate spell flowed from her mouths like poetry even as her forelimbs reached out to wrench at the fabric of Hell and rip open a breach to another plane of existence. With a moment of resistance that faded beneath her personal power, the gate opened into an eerily beautiful, tranquil, twilight landscape. Taba turned back for one last glance at the assembled group and launched herself through the gate.
The party stared in shock at the carnage in the room, the twin bodies of pit fiends, and the nature of Taba’s victim. With each moment that passed, it seemed that Clueless had been right after all. There had never been an elf for them to kill. There had only been the yugoloth lord Taba, the Infiltrator of the Planes.
“Marvent lied to us.” Clueless tapped the motionless hag corpse with Razor’s tip. Unlike the pit fiend bodies, it was not dissolving into its base essence, flowing back to its plane of origin or whatever power claimed it. Taba had made certain that this hag in particular was dead, and based on what the altraloth had said, it all came back to the ‘loths and their civil war.
“He sent us here for a reason though. He had to have.” Toras did his best to rationalize the situation, even as they stood in Hell, surrounded by dead devils, with the sounds of more baatezu closing in.
Standing off to the side, Alex glanced down at his familiar. It looked up at him, then to the gate. ‘You’re safer on that side.’ Content with the eight eyed cat’s opinion on the matter, he smiled at waited for the others to come to the same decision.
Fyrehowl glanced back behind them, her ears swiveling to the approaching sound of marching boots. “I don’t think the baatezu are going to believe us if we’re here when they get here and see this. ‘A yugoloth did it!’ isn’t going to cut it with them, even if it’s the truth.”
“Through the gate!” Clueless shouted.
“Where does it go?” Florian shot the bladesinger a cautious look. “I don’t want to end up surrounded by more ‘loths somewhere in Gehenna.”
“It isn’t going to be worse than being in Hell, surrounded by angry devils.” Clueless motioned towards the now contracting gate. “It isn’t going to stay open forever. Hurry!”
“Ger her?” Nisha giggled as she was the first to tumble through the slowly closing gate, “That was your plan Toras?”
Toras shook his head and shrugged as he hefted his sword and jumped in after the Xaositect, followed shortly after the others.
Passage out of Hell was swift and timeless, with a burst of cold and the rattle of chains in their ears as the gate deposited them in the middle of a grassy meadow below a starry evening sky overhead. The air of Karasuthra was cool and distantly the sound of nighttime insects chirped and called, while a few errant flickers of light emerged in the air from drifting fireflies.
“We’re in the Beastlands…” Fyrehowl muttered, recognizing the plane’s unique feeling before anything else. “That’s strange.”
The gate sealed shut and quickly their eyes adjusted to the sudden nighttime darkness. In one of the nearby trees a nightingale chirped.
“Why would a ‘loth be in the Beastlands?” Toras mused as he held up a hand to bath the meadow in conjured daylight.
“This is just a waypoint. One spot to reach another portal.” Tristol pointed to freestanding stone archway some twenty feet distant. Instinctively he could tell that it harbored a portal, and then it flickered with the first stages of a keyed opening as a creature slinked out of the gloom and passed in front of it.
“Sh*t, look lively folks.” Toras called out in warning.
Moving into the periphery of Toras’ light stood the lean form of a celestial wolf, or something that upon first glance seemed to be one. Unhealthy green light leaked from its open mouth and it seemed on the verge of starvation as it stood between them and the active portal, planting its paws and giving a low snarl.
6 seconds.
Alex narrowed his eyes, alternating his glances from the wolf to his familiar. The familiar returned his look with the ambiguous statement, ‘Taba is here.’
“Everyone spread out.” Florian warned. “Get on every side and surround this thing. We can’t take it unless we get its concentration diverted from any one person.”
“Something isn’t right.” Clueless muttered, staring at the wolf as it snarled even louder. Green light streamed from its mouth almost as if something were building up. Something about the wolf didn’t quite mesh with their last encounter with the archfiend. Perhaps its presence on one of the upper planes was responsible for its less twisted and artful form? In any event the artifact in Clueless’s ankle pulsed with a painful, angry warning of proximity.
The nightingale chirped again behind them, singing out into the night. The portal swirled and churned, flickering with energy as it neared opening.
12 seconds.
Florian called out to Tempus, invoking a protective blessing. “Tristol give us some space if that thing breaths on us.”
“That portal is about to open.” Alex shouted. “Don’t let it flee!”
Tristol nodded and held up a hand, calling into being a glistening hemisphere of force to cage the altraloth into place not a moment too soon before the portal behind it –and most importantly behind the force wall as well– fully activated.
18 seconds.
High up in the branches of a elm tree, the nightingale smiled and her ruby eyes glinted with satisfaction as she stared at Clueless’s exposed back. Chirping out her avian song once more, she wove the words of a spell into place, and it was from there in her arbor perch rather than from the dominated and warped celestial wolf that the lance of energy shot out.
Tristol’s eyes widened as he sensed the magical expenditure and he barely managed to turn to look into the altraloth’s glittering eyes before the bolt rocketed past him to strike its doomed target.
The bladesinger’s head exploded like an overripe melon.
“That way! It can’t be far!” Alex pointed down the hallway where a trail of ashes, blood, and several torn apart baatezu corpses slowly burned, returning their essence to Baator itself.
In the thick of it all, it seemed to go unnoticed or just overlooked that Alex himself was spattered in devil blood as well. His of course had come from the gleeful worrying of his jailor’s neck in a Tindalos hound’s phosphorescent jaws rather than incidental spatter from Taba’s rampage.
Looking at Alex, their weapons remained out but not raised in anticipation of violence. A moment earlier, Toras had surreptitiously glanced at the strange wizard, glancing at his soul for the hints of any level of evil or servitude to an evil god but had found neither.
“So who exactly are you?” Clueless asked as they and Alex made their way down the corridor, following the sounds of bloodshed.
“My name’s Alex,” He gave a soft bow. “And until a few moments ago I was a prisoner here, or at least as my jailers called it, ‘indefinite detention as an honored, uninvited guest of his Infernal Majesty, Duke Melikaros. I’m rather glad to be out, it was getting quite boring. Baatezu aren’t very good conversationalists.”
“What did you mean by you’d been waiting for us?” Florian gave the mage a suspicious, sidelong glance.
Toras poked Alex on the shoulder, “Did Green Marvent send you?”
Alex gave an emphatic shrug, “I can’t say that I know who that fellow is. I came here because my friends told me to come here and meet you, plus that she, it, whatever you want to call them” He motioned in Taba’s direction, “would be coming as well.”
“Your friends?” Clueless asked warily. The last thing that they needed was some barmy, or some barmy with a fiend in his head. They’d had enough of those for a lifetime.
“My friends?” Alex smiled warmly. “They’re the ones that talk to me all of the time. Usually in my dreams, but sometimes through other people, my shadow, or just out of the corner of my eyes. They’ve been rather chatty of late.” Looking past them at nothing they perceived, he gave a soft, erratic giggle. Unconsciously his fingers curled to stroke the head of the intangible, invisible hound as it lapped at the essence of the fiend blood on his hip.
Nisha of all people looked askance, narrowed her eyes a moment and twirled a finger in the air, whistling a soft ‘coo coo!’.
“Yeah, well we’re glad to have helped you escape in some small way, but I don’t think that we need any help. So yeah, if you’re glad to be out, best of luck to you and everything, but we’ll be on our way.” Clueless motioned back the way that they’d come and the unguarded exterior entrance.
That would have been that with Alex dismissed and left behind to fend for himself, if not for what came next when he proved his worth and value. Consumed as they were in talking with the wizard as they turned the corner, they never noticed the barbazu turning in their direction from a blind entrance at exactly the same time.
Following the slow, phlegm-filled snarl of the hound at his fingertips, Alex didn’t miss a beat as he pointed at the fiend and whispered a phrase.
“Halt in the Duke’s name!” The baatezu shouted as it raised its spear before stumbling with the impact of Alex’s spell. A coruscating green beam lanced from his fingers to strike the fiend in the chest, incinerating the devil in its tracks, leaving behind only a pile of smoking ashes.
“Ok…” Florian held up a hand. “Score one for the new guy.”
“He does seem to be useful.” Toras shrugged. “So let’s play this out as we go. Worst that happens is we get out of here and go our separate ways then. But too soon to say. Nice shot by the way.”
Tristol tilted his head to the side, measuring Alex’s skill and the particular power of the spell he’d just seen the man cast. ‘Not bad at all. Particularly good at piercing magical resistance. He has the particular flavor of a conjuration specialist, despite his using a transmutation spell. Still, if we have to pick someone to be willing to help us run through a baatezu mansion in Hell itself, we couldn’t have hoped to find a better option. Even if he’s a bit odd, even judging present company with Nisha.’
“A pleasure to be of service.” The alienist smiled at the half-celestial and then turned to smile at his familiar, no longer a Tindalos hound nor a warped raven, but a twitching, softly whispering gibberling that was of course, seen by none but himself. “I aim to continue to help out.”
A mixture of shrugs and smiles all around and they continued down the passage in pursuit of Taba.
****
So close so close so close I can smell the scent of Malagard bubbling up below the reek of your fear. The barking pretender purchased her loyalty with the blood of my sibling Xenghara. You thought yourself safe. You thought yourself free. I do not forget. I do not forgive. Not for the blood of my siblings on your hands oh no, oh no, no, no…
Whispering to her prey all the while, announcing her intent and desires, the Infiltrator of the Planes clambered through the warren of elaborate hallways of the inner estate. Spinning from floor to wall to ceiling, she cart wheeled and shifted form with each tick of whatever infernal clock timed her pace. Each motion, each deft slice of razor claws, each steel-tipped arachnid leg planted upon an unshielded head, each whisper of a spell was by intent. A whirling dervish of flesh and malice, she spun through the passageways, following the scent of her desired quarry, littering her wake with dozens more butchered devils as incidental, irrelevant victims.
“Bar the door! Bar the door!” A terrified shriek came from beyond the archway of one of the Duke’s guest chambers. The sound of heavy furniture being pushed into place and the adjustment of steel-shod hooves at the base of the door confirmed what Taba could sense and taste on the air and aether already.
The door held intact and safe, but neither its hinges or the wall that contained them remained anchored or whole. Taba wrenched the door from its moorings and exhaled, spilling a torrent of acid from a head that now looked much like a black wyrm. The furniture that barred her way splintered from the force of the blast and its corrosive nature alike, forcing aside one of the two armored pit fiends that served as ambassadors within the Duke’s court for the guest that stood behind them.
Taba’s prey was not an elf, not even a mortal, but a night hag.
The gray lady’s eyes loomed wide with horror as the archfiend forced herself into the chamber. A barbed tail wrapped around the waist of one of her attendants, constricting even as blades of jagged bone grew from its length, severing the fiend in half like a doll in the jaws of a bear. A suddenly grown eye in the altraloth’s flank gazed at the second devil and then it was stone, frozen in place before an insectile leg kicked out and shattered it to pieces.
Screaming as she wove defensive magic, only the hag dressed in the raiment of the Lord of the 6th remained. “Malagard! Lord of the 6th! Master of Malbolge protect your servant. Protect your coven sister!”
Taba’s jaws yawned wide and her ruby eyes glittered, catching the hag’s rheumy orbs for but a moment before lunging forward and snapping shut with dagger teeth and the snap of bone.
The hag’s dead, headless body slumped to the floor and Taba perched atop it, whispering like a mocking benediction while on her back, tentacles erupted forth to weave the patterns of necromantic energies necessary to ensure that her victim would never again return.
“There is only one of you left now. Only your master hiding herself within the arms and chains of Hell itself. You who conspired with the pretender, the usurper of Khin-Oin, the Ebon. You who would forsake me and my siblings for scraps and favors from the wretch seated upon the Seige Malicious. I will slaughter you all.”
Licking at the hag blood, Taba smiled, content in her success even as the group which had forced her to reveal herself finally stumbled into the room with a chorus of exclamations.
“Oh what the f*ck happened in here?!”
“Are those pit fiends?!”
“That isn’t an elf…”
“Get her!”
Snarling in irritation from her dragon’s mouth and two newly formed in her elongated neck, Taba began to cast. Words of a Gate spell flowed from her mouths like poetry even as her forelimbs reached out to wrench at the fabric of Hell and rip open a breach to another plane of existence. With a moment of resistance that faded beneath her personal power, the gate opened into an eerily beautiful, tranquil, twilight landscape. Taba turned back for one last glance at the assembled group and launched herself through the gate.
****
The party stared in shock at the carnage in the room, the twin bodies of pit fiends, and the nature of Taba’s victim. With each moment that passed, it seemed that Clueless had been right after all. There had never been an elf for them to kill. There had only been the yugoloth lord Taba, the Infiltrator of the Planes.
“Marvent lied to us.” Clueless tapped the motionless hag corpse with Razor’s tip. Unlike the pit fiend bodies, it was not dissolving into its base essence, flowing back to its plane of origin or whatever power claimed it. Taba had made certain that this hag in particular was dead, and based on what the altraloth had said, it all came back to the ‘loths and their civil war.
“He sent us here for a reason though. He had to have.” Toras did his best to rationalize the situation, even as they stood in Hell, surrounded by dead devils, with the sounds of more baatezu closing in.
Standing off to the side, Alex glanced down at his familiar. It looked up at him, then to the gate. ‘You’re safer on that side.’ Content with the eight eyed cat’s opinion on the matter, he smiled at waited for the others to come to the same decision.
Fyrehowl glanced back behind them, her ears swiveling to the approaching sound of marching boots. “I don’t think the baatezu are going to believe us if we’re here when they get here and see this. ‘A yugoloth did it!’ isn’t going to cut it with them, even if it’s the truth.”
“Through the gate!” Clueless shouted.
“Where does it go?” Florian shot the bladesinger a cautious look. “I don’t want to end up surrounded by more ‘loths somewhere in Gehenna.”
“It isn’t going to be worse than being in Hell, surrounded by angry devils.” Clueless motioned towards the now contracting gate. “It isn’t going to stay open forever. Hurry!”
“Ger her?” Nisha giggled as she was the first to tumble through the slowly closing gate, “That was your plan Toras?”
Toras shook his head and shrugged as he hefted his sword and jumped in after the Xaositect, followed shortly after the others.
****
Passage out of Hell was swift and timeless, with a burst of cold and the rattle of chains in their ears as the gate deposited them in the middle of a grassy meadow below a starry evening sky overhead. The air of Karasuthra was cool and distantly the sound of nighttime insects chirped and called, while a few errant flickers of light emerged in the air from drifting fireflies.
“We’re in the Beastlands…” Fyrehowl muttered, recognizing the plane’s unique feeling before anything else. “That’s strange.”
The gate sealed shut and quickly their eyes adjusted to the sudden nighttime darkness. In one of the nearby trees a nightingale chirped.
“Why would a ‘loth be in the Beastlands?” Toras mused as he held up a hand to bath the meadow in conjured daylight.
“This is just a waypoint. One spot to reach another portal.” Tristol pointed to freestanding stone archway some twenty feet distant. Instinctively he could tell that it harbored a portal, and then it flickered with the first stages of a keyed opening as a creature slinked out of the gloom and passed in front of it.
“Sh*t, look lively folks.” Toras called out in warning.
Moving into the periphery of Toras’ light stood the lean form of a celestial wolf, or something that upon first glance seemed to be one. Unhealthy green light leaked from its open mouth and it seemed on the verge of starvation as it stood between them and the active portal, planting its paws and giving a low snarl.
6 seconds.
Alex narrowed his eyes, alternating his glances from the wolf to his familiar. The familiar returned his look with the ambiguous statement, ‘Taba is here.’
“Everyone spread out.” Florian warned. “Get on every side and surround this thing. We can’t take it unless we get its concentration diverted from any one person.”
“Something isn’t right.” Clueless muttered, staring at the wolf as it snarled even louder. Green light streamed from its mouth almost as if something were building up. Something about the wolf didn’t quite mesh with their last encounter with the archfiend. Perhaps its presence on one of the upper planes was responsible for its less twisted and artful form? In any event the artifact in Clueless’s ankle pulsed with a painful, angry warning of proximity.
The nightingale chirped again behind them, singing out into the night. The portal swirled and churned, flickering with energy as it neared opening.
12 seconds.
Florian called out to Tempus, invoking a protective blessing. “Tristol give us some space if that thing breaths on us.”
“That portal is about to open.” Alex shouted. “Don’t let it flee!”
Tristol nodded and held up a hand, calling into being a glistening hemisphere of force to cage the altraloth into place not a moment too soon before the portal behind it –and most importantly behind the force wall as well– fully activated.
18 seconds.
High up in the branches of a elm tree, the nightingale smiled and her ruby eyes glinted with satisfaction as she stared at Clueless’s exposed back. Chirping out her avian song once more, she wove the words of a spell into place, and it was from there in her arbor perch rather than from the dominated and warped celestial wolf that the lance of energy shot out.
Tristol’s eyes widened as he sensed the magical expenditure and he barely managed to turn to look into the altraloth’s glittering eyes before the bolt rocketed past him to strike its doomed target.
The bladesinger’s head exploded like an overripe melon.
****
Shemeska
Adventurer
Three rounds followed by a death attack are the sweetest three rounds in a GM's life.
Niiiice, nice, nice, very nice
As fantastic as it looks in the storyhour, the actual sessions must have been a blast ! What CR was that thing, if I may ask, because it seems so much more powerful than your players' characters at that time.
Would you be willing to shed some light on that specific archfiend's role in your campaign, and something more about his oh so deliciously twisted powers ?![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
As fantastic as it looks in the storyhour, the actual sessions must have been a blast ! What CR was that thing, if I may ask, because it seems so much more powerful than your players' characters at that time.
Would you be willing to shed some light on that specific archfiend's role in your campaign, and something more about his oh so deliciously twisted powers ?
Shemeska
Adventurer
Niiiice, nice, nice, very nice
As fantastic as it looks in the storyhour, the actual sessions must have been a blast ! What CR was that thing, if I may ask, because it seems so much more powerful than your players' characters at that time.
Would you be willing to shed some light on that specific archfiend's role in your campaign, and something more about his oh so deliciously twisted powers ?
It varied slightly depending on what plane they encountered Taba on (same for any of the major archfiends). The PCs were at that point in or around level 15? Maybe slightly higher.
Taba was CR 20 something, with some amount of plot armor given to the PCs so they'd have an encounter, realize the gravity of it all, but wouldn't be slaughtered (Clueless being temporarily killed with a death attack being the exception).
Taba sticks around for a while, and her presence exposes some of the fault lines still running through the 'loth hierarchy after the Ebon became the Oinoloth. The what and why of that develops as the campaign and storyhour continues.
Another storyhour update should happen in the next few days.
Shemeska
Adventurer
“F*ck!” Florian screamed as Clueless’s lifeless body fell to the ground like a beheaded rag doll discarded by a yeth hound.
Cackling in her moment of gory success, the nightingale that was Taba burst forth from the branches of its elm tree bower and rocketed across the meadow. In the confusion and panic its deathblow had caused, the altraloth passed through the now open portal and vanished, with the archway bursting forth a shower of light as she entered.
“Clueless?!” Fyrehowl yelped as she looked down at the splatter of the half-fey’s brains now on her clothing.
Nisha dashed to the corpse, frantically babbling in panicked Xaos speech, picking up pieces of shattered skull and pulped brain like puzzle pieces she might somehow, someway put them back to the way they were.
“It’s alright Nisha.” White as a ghost but remaining a sense of calm where his girlfriend had thrown her own to the wind, Tristol knelt behind the tiefling and put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t get your hands messy. Florian can bring him back, just as good as new.” Without making eye contact with Nisha, he turned back to look, pleadingly at the cleric.
“I. Don’t. Know…” She mouthed as she pulled out her holy symbol and began half-praying, half-begging her divine patron Tempus to return her companion to life, alive and whole once again.
A golden nimbus flowed from the holy symbol and covered the body. Bits of brain, blood, and bone evaporated and regenerated or simply crawled back into place from where they’d fallen, slowly stitching themselves back together until Clueless was once again whole.
“Please come back big brother…” Nisha whispered.
The stars overhead twinkled in sympathy it seemed and a sudden rush of wind blew across the meadow, stirring the grass and flowers. The wind grew still and with a gasp of surprise and shock on his lips, Clueless inhaled.
“Motherf*cker!” Clueless was livid with anger as he opened his eyes. “Motherf*cking ‘loths! Every f*cking one of them! AAARRRGGHHHH!” His lips pursed with another pending torrent of curses, this time in a decidedly vulgar and dark dialect of sylvan.
In the flickering light of the still active portal, Clueless balled his fists and pounded them into the ground. Fyrehowl put a hand down to help him up as Florian kissed her holy symbol, uncertain if under normal circumstances she’d have been capable of actually bringing the bladesinger back given the creature which had killed him. A moment of grace from the Foehammer might have been at play.
“F*ck Taba.” Clueless spat as he took the lupinal’s hand. “That f*cking hurt!”
“You’re alive and you have something new to add to your list of things to kill and keep killing until they give up.” Toras extended the bladesinger a second hand and helped him to his feet.
“That’s a lot of f*cks.” Nisha giggled. “You might get shushed by angels, but this is the Beastlands. It’s a chaotic place. Sort of. I’ll vouch for you.”
“Thanks?” Clueless looked up at the Xoasitect that he considered nothing-so-much as his little sister and smiled.
Nisha’s tail rattled the bell at its tip and she returned his smile warmly. “Welcome back.”
Toras glanced towards the portal. “Shall we go after that thing now?”
“Sounds good to me.” Clueless picked up Razor and wiped it clean of his own blood onto the grass. “But this time, let’s be a bit more wary. I don’t want to run into another ambush.”
“Let’s go then. Everyone be ready!” Toras shouted as he dashed towards the archway.
No sooner of course had Clueless jinxed the entire party by uttering the words ‘ambush’, Toras and Florian along with their respective bags of holding were the first to dive through the portal that Taba had carefully crafted centuries earlier as a hidden entry point to one of her many refuges and boltholes across the planes. The portal, while active, was dual keyed such that any creature could activate the portal by proximity and intent, but only the presence of a second and very specific key would prevent it from redirecting them to another location. In the case of that particular portal, it would lead them to a closed extradimensional space which would normally cause them to eventually suffocate and die, except of course for the presence of their own extradimensional spaces in the forms of bags of holding.
Taba had no intention of being followed without throwing up a deadly array of metaphorical deadfalls in her pursuer’s paths.
--BOOM!--
The laws of reality preventing the overlapping of such freakish planar geometry, and the result was a explosion of Astral energies and a rejection of entry into the bound space.
“F*ck!” Toras shouted as he and the others were forcibly expelled from the portal in firestorm of roaring flames and raw force.
As the group collectively picked themselves up, groaning from burns and bruises, their chorus of discomfort was soon joined by shouts of anger as the sky began to rain not just the bones of those few random mortals who had fallen prey to the portal since its construction but also coins and random assorted items: the contents of their now destroyed and dispersed bags of holding and handy haversacks. Relatively little seemed to have been lost, but it would take time to recover it all, and even more time or expense to repair or replace the destroyed bags.
Picking himself off of the ground and brushing dirt and soot from his hair, Alex winced in pain and looked across at his new companions, “It just gets more and more interesting being around you folks doesn’t it?”
“Oh you haven’t seen us at our best!” Nisha chirped with a grin, completely nonplussed by the current events.
“What in the blazes just happened?” Florian demanded as she began casting the first in a series of healing spells.
Tristol was already next to the glowing portal, whispering divination magic and trying to determine the answer to that same question. The answer was obfuscated behind a layer of misleading magic woven into the stones by the altraloth, hiding the trap from casual inspection and dooming any who attempted access.
“The portal was keyed.” Tristol explained, turning back with a sigh. He knew the key and they didn’t have it. “Without the proper key it redirects you to an extraplanar space.”
“Hence the explosion.” Alex chipped in with a sigh.
“What’s the key?” Clueless asked.
“Nothing we happen to have.” Tristol frowned.
“Ok, but what is it?” Toras tapped his fingers against the pommel of his sword with impatience.
The aasimar’s ears drooped, “The blood of a greater yugoloth.”
“Oh…” Fyrehowl’s ears drooped to match Tristols.
Clueless smirked, “How convenient for Taba…”
“Sh*t…” Toras hung his head and sighed.
Seconds passed into a minute and the grumbling and muttering continued. The wind picked up against, rustling grass and hair with equal measure. That was when the cleric paused and beamed a smile.
“I know where we can get some!” Florian tapped a finger to her forehead. “Quick! Back to Sigil!”
Nestled in a quaint corner of the Lower Ward as it had for centuries, and having rarely wandered more than a few blocks from there at The Lady’s whim, The Friendly Fiend magic and curio shop stood open for business. Having only opened the doors moments earlier and switched the dangling placard from ‘closed’ to ‘open’, the titular smiling and oddly talkative and downright cheerful yugoloth brushed with a broom at the night’s ashfall from the nearby smokestacks and workshops from the stoop.
“That looks almost ready to go.” Akin muttered to himself as he looked down at the freshly brushed and cleaned doormat. “Hmm, or not perhaps.” He paused and focused his mind, taking a finer grained approach and flicking away a few errant, singular grains of dirt and snowflakes of soot and ash with a momentary finger’s flick of telekinesis. “Now we’re ready to open.”
The ‘loth turned and walked back into his shop, the opening of the door ringing the polished brass bell situated above it. A faint glimmer of force walls lay across the surface of each shelf and hemispherical shells draped each table surface. Given the not-infrequent periodicity that his shop suffered from “random” firebombings or spontaneous mob violence in the middle of the night, the otherwise obnoxiously overwrought use of magic to protect the shop’s knickknacks and curios seemed downright judicious. With a casual flick of his claws, the ‘loth triggered the permanent protections to toggle off until closing.
“It should be interesting to see who comes in today.” A’kin mused to himself as he walked away from the door and across the shop. “It always is.”
Just as the Friendly Fiend stepped behind the proprietor’s counter, his ears swiveled in warning. Suddenly, the shop’s door swung open hard enough to hit the front wall and partially rebound as Florian rushed inside.
“Akin!” She shouted, “We need your blood!”
“AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!” A’kin shrieked in horror as he dove behind the counter, not turning around to see who had burst shouting into his shop. The claws of his feet scrabbled against the wooden surface to carry him across and over, and with a soft whimpering noise, a single hand reached back over, wildly waving a wand in warning.
“Dude! No! I’m so sorry!” Florian called out, realizing her error.
“A’kin it’s just us.” Clueless added in, “We’re not thieves or well dressed tiefling assassins in service to anyone who doesn’t like you.”
Warily, the ‘loth poked his head over the edge of the counter. Once he recognized who it was he seemed to calm down at least somewhat, catching his breath and finally giving a soft, self-effacing chuckle at his actions. “What’s this about now?”
“He’s just so obnoxiously friendly!” Nisha giggled as she strolled around the shop with a delicate clip-clop of her hooves. “Even if he thinks that we’re here to rob or murder him. It’s so cute!”
“We don’t have a lot of time.” Clueless explained, unconsciously rubbing the back of his head where the altraloth had sent a bolt of lightning through his skull. “We’re chasing something that went through a keyed portal.”
Toras put his fist down on the counter in front of A’kin, “You can help us with that.”
“Maybe? Perhaps?” A’kin twitched his whiskers in confusion, “What sort of portal key do you need?”
“The blood of a greater yugoloth.” Florian explained. “Hence my bursting into here.”
“Well now,” A’kin’s ears perked in surprise and rubbed his well-manicured hands together with slight unease, “That’s rather specific isn’t it?”
“You’re the only greater yugoloth that we know.” The cleric explained before Toras added in a choice qualifying comment of his own.
“You’re the only one we know who isn’t a gigantic flaming b*tch.” Toras made a face. “Over the edge of Sigil, one of these days I swear.”
The ‘loth gave a short bow and allowed himself a smile at the latter comment of comparison. Inwardly he laughed as well as smiled at the visual it brought to mind.
“It was either we come to you or else we wander around the Hive and jump a nycaloth with potentially dubious results.” Nisha shrugged. “It’s much more fun to visit you. Also there’s less ooze portals.”
Pausing a moment, A’kin reached up a claw to adjust his glasses before glancing at Clueless’s ankle and the residual magic that radiated from the artifact lodged there. He twitched his whiskers with some curious concern but otherwise gave no comment.
“So do you think you can help us out with the blood thing?” Nisha quipped, “It’s an odd request sure. Hopefully it won’t be too much to ask. I’ll even return the things that I snagged from you the other week.”
“I think I have just the thing.” A’kin smiled as he walked towards the curtain leading back into his stock room. “Give me just a moment. And no worries Nisha, I know that you bring things back evening. Even if you don’t, they find their way back here on their own eventually. Don’t you worry about it.”
Nisha smiled as she shamelessly swiped a large red and white peppermint candy that A’kin had left on the countertop just within her reach as he walked off.
Several minutes later A’kin emerged from the back of the shop cradling a large, sealed glass bottle. Drifting within its murky, preservative-filled interior, sat the gnarled form of a severed nycaloth hand. “This should serve you just perfectly for opening a portal keyed as you say it is.”
Fyrehowl tilted her head to the side and raised an eyebrow skeptically, “Why do you have a pickled nycaloth hand?”
“Best not to ask.” A’kin shrugged. “It’s a long story, but it’s hardly the strangest thing I’ve got stuffed into a dusty corner or another in the back. You’ll get more use out of this than I will. I was just using it as a paperweight back there to be perfectly honest.”
Florian gingerly took hold of the bottle, staring at the hand contained within, worried that at any moment it might twitch and try to escape. “You sure this will work?”
A’kin shrugged. “I don’t see why not really. If it doesn’t, come back and we’ll see if I can’t help out some other way. Hopefully you’ll be good to go with that old thing though.”
“Ohm kaye, shounds wike a pwan.” Nisha slurred, moving the candy around her mouth with a cheerful smile on her face.
“What she meant to say was thank you very much A’kin.” Tristol extended a hand to the fiend who took it, shook it, and walked back behind the counter.
“You’re very much welcome, and whatever of whoever it is that you’re hunting, best of luck to you.” A’kin smiled cheerfully. “At the very least make sure that Nisha gets back in one piece. She still owes me a lot of things she walked off with last week, and I still owe her a chocolate mephit she actually paid for.”
“A chocolate mephit?” Tristol peered at A’kin and then turned to Nisha to ask the same question, “A chocolate mephit? Really now?”
The tiefling hung her head in shame as she poked her stomach as if she had an exaggerated paunch from eating too many sweets, even as the peppermint candy made a slight bulge against the inside of her cheek.
“A chocolate mephit.” A’kin shrugged. “They’ve been rather popular lately. Milk chocolate with a filling themed to whatever particular type of mephit it happens to be. Nisha wanted a raspberry filled fire mephit.”
Tristol laughed.
“I hate to change the topic of conversation.” Florian motioned towards the door. “But we need to catch an archfiend.”
A’kin quirked an eyebrow at the mention of “archfiend” but otherwise remained quiet for the second time in nearly as many minutes. Ignoring or simply not noting his silence on the matter, the group took their portal key in a jar and made for the door.
“Best of luck to you!” A’kin called out after them. “Come back soon!”
From Sigil to Faunel to Karasuthra, the time passed quickly and Tristol’s teleportation aided the transit immeasurably. From when Taba had ambushed them to when they stood once again before her portal, now with the proper key, it was less than an hour.
“Everyone be ready.” Clueless warned them as Florian held up the nycaloth hand and pressed it past the margins of the bound space. The portal flickered and opened, this time with a distinctly different hue to the glow emanating from its boundaries.
“I rather strongly suspect that Taba isn’t the sort of creature to only put into place a single ambush.” Alex remarked. “She’s probably waiting on the other side.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her.” Toras drew his sword and made for the portal. “See you all on the other side.”
“Let’s go.” Florian called out as she dove in after the fighter.
They had the correct key. A’kin had supplied them well. Taba however was not a creature to leave any route of egress open for easy or swift pursuit, and as soon as they emerged from the portal into the altraloth’s demiplane, they realized these facts immediately.
A labyrinth of twisting glass corridors greeted them, glittering and embossed with softly glowing runes and upon the floor below them, a prominent symbol of a series of clustered wheels, each of them broken and shattered in a mockery of the Oinoloth’s conspiracy.
All of these details were however secondary –if even noticed at all– as they each screamed in agony as the acid which filled the entire volume of the demiplane began to drown and devour them in its corrosive embrace. Six seconds later the runes on the walls began to glow red and the acid began to boil.
Cackling in her moment of gory success, the nightingale that was Taba burst forth from the branches of its elm tree bower and rocketed across the meadow. In the confusion and panic its deathblow had caused, the altraloth passed through the now open portal and vanished, with the archway bursting forth a shower of light as she entered.
“Clueless?!” Fyrehowl yelped as she looked down at the splatter of the half-fey’s brains now on her clothing.
Nisha dashed to the corpse, frantically babbling in panicked Xaos speech, picking up pieces of shattered skull and pulped brain like puzzle pieces she might somehow, someway put them back to the way they were.
“It’s alright Nisha.” White as a ghost but remaining a sense of calm where his girlfriend had thrown her own to the wind, Tristol knelt behind the tiefling and put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t get your hands messy. Florian can bring him back, just as good as new.” Without making eye contact with Nisha, he turned back to look, pleadingly at the cleric.
“I. Don’t. Know…” She mouthed as she pulled out her holy symbol and began half-praying, half-begging her divine patron Tempus to return her companion to life, alive and whole once again.
A golden nimbus flowed from the holy symbol and covered the body. Bits of brain, blood, and bone evaporated and regenerated or simply crawled back into place from where they’d fallen, slowly stitching themselves back together until Clueless was once again whole.
“Please come back big brother…” Nisha whispered.
The stars overhead twinkled in sympathy it seemed and a sudden rush of wind blew across the meadow, stirring the grass and flowers. The wind grew still and with a gasp of surprise and shock on his lips, Clueless inhaled.
“Motherf*cker!” Clueless was livid with anger as he opened his eyes. “Motherf*cking ‘loths! Every f*cking one of them! AAARRRGGHHHH!” His lips pursed with another pending torrent of curses, this time in a decidedly vulgar and dark dialect of sylvan.
In the flickering light of the still active portal, Clueless balled his fists and pounded them into the ground. Fyrehowl put a hand down to help him up as Florian kissed her holy symbol, uncertain if under normal circumstances she’d have been capable of actually bringing the bladesinger back given the creature which had killed him. A moment of grace from the Foehammer might have been at play.
“F*ck Taba.” Clueless spat as he took the lupinal’s hand. “That f*cking hurt!”
“You’re alive and you have something new to add to your list of things to kill and keep killing until they give up.” Toras extended the bladesinger a second hand and helped him to his feet.
“That’s a lot of f*cks.” Nisha giggled. “You might get shushed by angels, but this is the Beastlands. It’s a chaotic place. Sort of. I’ll vouch for you.”
“Thanks?” Clueless looked up at the Xoasitect that he considered nothing-so-much as his little sister and smiled.
Nisha’s tail rattled the bell at its tip and she returned his smile warmly. “Welcome back.”
Toras glanced towards the portal. “Shall we go after that thing now?”
“Sounds good to me.” Clueless picked up Razor and wiped it clean of his own blood onto the grass. “But this time, let’s be a bit more wary. I don’t want to run into another ambush.”
“Let’s go then. Everyone be ready!” Toras shouted as he dashed towards the archway.
No sooner of course had Clueless jinxed the entire party by uttering the words ‘ambush’, Toras and Florian along with their respective bags of holding were the first to dive through the portal that Taba had carefully crafted centuries earlier as a hidden entry point to one of her many refuges and boltholes across the planes. The portal, while active, was dual keyed such that any creature could activate the portal by proximity and intent, but only the presence of a second and very specific key would prevent it from redirecting them to another location. In the case of that particular portal, it would lead them to a closed extradimensional space which would normally cause them to eventually suffocate and die, except of course for the presence of their own extradimensional spaces in the forms of bags of holding.
Taba had no intention of being followed without throwing up a deadly array of metaphorical deadfalls in her pursuer’s paths.
--BOOM!--
The laws of reality preventing the overlapping of such freakish planar geometry, and the result was a explosion of Astral energies and a rejection of entry into the bound space.
“F*ck!” Toras shouted as he and the others were forcibly expelled from the portal in firestorm of roaring flames and raw force.
As the group collectively picked themselves up, groaning from burns and bruises, their chorus of discomfort was soon joined by shouts of anger as the sky began to rain not just the bones of those few random mortals who had fallen prey to the portal since its construction but also coins and random assorted items: the contents of their now destroyed and dispersed bags of holding and handy haversacks. Relatively little seemed to have been lost, but it would take time to recover it all, and even more time or expense to repair or replace the destroyed bags.
Picking himself off of the ground and brushing dirt and soot from his hair, Alex winced in pain and looked across at his new companions, “It just gets more and more interesting being around you folks doesn’t it?”
“Oh you haven’t seen us at our best!” Nisha chirped with a grin, completely nonplussed by the current events.
“What in the blazes just happened?” Florian demanded as she began casting the first in a series of healing spells.
Tristol was already next to the glowing portal, whispering divination magic and trying to determine the answer to that same question. The answer was obfuscated behind a layer of misleading magic woven into the stones by the altraloth, hiding the trap from casual inspection and dooming any who attempted access.
“The portal was keyed.” Tristol explained, turning back with a sigh. He knew the key and they didn’t have it. “Without the proper key it redirects you to an extraplanar space.”
“Hence the explosion.” Alex chipped in with a sigh.
“What’s the key?” Clueless asked.
“Nothing we happen to have.” Tristol frowned.
“Ok, but what is it?” Toras tapped his fingers against the pommel of his sword with impatience.
The aasimar’s ears drooped, “The blood of a greater yugoloth.”
“Oh…” Fyrehowl’s ears drooped to match Tristols.
Clueless smirked, “How convenient for Taba…”
“Sh*t…” Toras hung his head and sighed.
Seconds passed into a minute and the grumbling and muttering continued. The wind picked up against, rustling grass and hair with equal measure. That was when the cleric paused and beamed a smile.
“I know where we can get some!” Florian tapped a finger to her forehead. “Quick! Back to Sigil!”
****
Nestled in a quaint corner of the Lower Ward as it had for centuries, and having rarely wandered more than a few blocks from there at The Lady’s whim, The Friendly Fiend magic and curio shop stood open for business. Having only opened the doors moments earlier and switched the dangling placard from ‘closed’ to ‘open’, the titular smiling and oddly talkative and downright cheerful yugoloth brushed with a broom at the night’s ashfall from the nearby smokestacks and workshops from the stoop.
“That looks almost ready to go.” Akin muttered to himself as he looked down at the freshly brushed and cleaned doormat. “Hmm, or not perhaps.” He paused and focused his mind, taking a finer grained approach and flicking away a few errant, singular grains of dirt and snowflakes of soot and ash with a momentary finger’s flick of telekinesis. “Now we’re ready to open.”
The ‘loth turned and walked back into his shop, the opening of the door ringing the polished brass bell situated above it. A faint glimmer of force walls lay across the surface of each shelf and hemispherical shells draped each table surface. Given the not-infrequent periodicity that his shop suffered from “random” firebombings or spontaneous mob violence in the middle of the night, the otherwise obnoxiously overwrought use of magic to protect the shop’s knickknacks and curios seemed downright judicious. With a casual flick of his claws, the ‘loth triggered the permanent protections to toggle off until closing.
“It should be interesting to see who comes in today.” A’kin mused to himself as he walked away from the door and across the shop. “It always is.”
Just as the Friendly Fiend stepped behind the proprietor’s counter, his ears swiveled in warning. Suddenly, the shop’s door swung open hard enough to hit the front wall and partially rebound as Florian rushed inside.
“Akin!” She shouted, “We need your blood!”
“AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!” A’kin shrieked in horror as he dove behind the counter, not turning around to see who had burst shouting into his shop. The claws of his feet scrabbled against the wooden surface to carry him across and over, and with a soft whimpering noise, a single hand reached back over, wildly waving a wand in warning.
“Dude! No! I’m so sorry!” Florian called out, realizing her error.
“A’kin it’s just us.” Clueless added in, “We’re not thieves or well dressed tiefling assassins in service to anyone who doesn’t like you.”
Warily, the ‘loth poked his head over the edge of the counter. Once he recognized who it was he seemed to calm down at least somewhat, catching his breath and finally giving a soft, self-effacing chuckle at his actions. “What’s this about now?”
“He’s just so obnoxiously friendly!” Nisha giggled as she strolled around the shop with a delicate clip-clop of her hooves. “Even if he thinks that we’re here to rob or murder him. It’s so cute!”
“We don’t have a lot of time.” Clueless explained, unconsciously rubbing the back of his head where the altraloth had sent a bolt of lightning through his skull. “We’re chasing something that went through a keyed portal.”
Toras put his fist down on the counter in front of A’kin, “You can help us with that.”
“Maybe? Perhaps?” A’kin twitched his whiskers in confusion, “What sort of portal key do you need?”
“The blood of a greater yugoloth.” Florian explained. “Hence my bursting into here.”
“Well now,” A’kin’s ears perked in surprise and rubbed his well-manicured hands together with slight unease, “That’s rather specific isn’t it?”
“You’re the only greater yugoloth that we know.” The cleric explained before Toras added in a choice qualifying comment of his own.
“You’re the only one we know who isn’t a gigantic flaming b*tch.” Toras made a face. “Over the edge of Sigil, one of these days I swear.”
The ‘loth gave a short bow and allowed himself a smile at the latter comment of comparison. Inwardly he laughed as well as smiled at the visual it brought to mind.
“It was either we come to you or else we wander around the Hive and jump a nycaloth with potentially dubious results.” Nisha shrugged. “It’s much more fun to visit you. Also there’s less ooze portals.”
Pausing a moment, A’kin reached up a claw to adjust his glasses before glancing at Clueless’s ankle and the residual magic that radiated from the artifact lodged there. He twitched his whiskers with some curious concern but otherwise gave no comment.
“So do you think you can help us out with the blood thing?” Nisha quipped, “It’s an odd request sure. Hopefully it won’t be too much to ask. I’ll even return the things that I snagged from you the other week.”
“I think I have just the thing.” A’kin smiled as he walked towards the curtain leading back into his stock room. “Give me just a moment. And no worries Nisha, I know that you bring things back evening. Even if you don’t, they find their way back here on their own eventually. Don’t you worry about it.”
Nisha smiled as she shamelessly swiped a large red and white peppermint candy that A’kin had left on the countertop just within her reach as he walked off.
Several minutes later A’kin emerged from the back of the shop cradling a large, sealed glass bottle. Drifting within its murky, preservative-filled interior, sat the gnarled form of a severed nycaloth hand. “This should serve you just perfectly for opening a portal keyed as you say it is.”
Fyrehowl tilted her head to the side and raised an eyebrow skeptically, “Why do you have a pickled nycaloth hand?”
“Best not to ask.” A’kin shrugged. “It’s a long story, but it’s hardly the strangest thing I’ve got stuffed into a dusty corner or another in the back. You’ll get more use out of this than I will. I was just using it as a paperweight back there to be perfectly honest.”
Florian gingerly took hold of the bottle, staring at the hand contained within, worried that at any moment it might twitch and try to escape. “You sure this will work?”
A’kin shrugged. “I don’t see why not really. If it doesn’t, come back and we’ll see if I can’t help out some other way. Hopefully you’ll be good to go with that old thing though.”
“Ohm kaye, shounds wike a pwan.” Nisha slurred, moving the candy around her mouth with a cheerful smile on her face.
“What she meant to say was thank you very much A’kin.” Tristol extended a hand to the fiend who took it, shook it, and walked back behind the counter.
“You’re very much welcome, and whatever of whoever it is that you’re hunting, best of luck to you.” A’kin smiled cheerfully. “At the very least make sure that Nisha gets back in one piece. She still owes me a lot of things she walked off with last week, and I still owe her a chocolate mephit she actually paid for.”
“A chocolate mephit?” Tristol peered at A’kin and then turned to Nisha to ask the same question, “A chocolate mephit? Really now?”
The tiefling hung her head in shame as she poked her stomach as if she had an exaggerated paunch from eating too many sweets, even as the peppermint candy made a slight bulge against the inside of her cheek.
“A chocolate mephit.” A’kin shrugged. “They’ve been rather popular lately. Milk chocolate with a filling themed to whatever particular type of mephit it happens to be. Nisha wanted a raspberry filled fire mephit.”
Tristol laughed.
“I hate to change the topic of conversation.” Florian motioned towards the door. “But we need to catch an archfiend.”
A’kin quirked an eyebrow at the mention of “archfiend” but otherwise remained quiet for the second time in nearly as many minutes. Ignoring or simply not noting his silence on the matter, the group took their portal key in a jar and made for the door.
“Best of luck to you!” A’kin called out after them. “Come back soon!”
*****
From Sigil to Faunel to Karasuthra, the time passed quickly and Tristol’s teleportation aided the transit immeasurably. From when Taba had ambushed them to when they stood once again before her portal, now with the proper key, it was less than an hour.
“Everyone be ready.” Clueless warned them as Florian held up the nycaloth hand and pressed it past the margins of the bound space. The portal flickered and opened, this time with a distinctly different hue to the glow emanating from its boundaries.
“I rather strongly suspect that Taba isn’t the sort of creature to only put into place a single ambush.” Alex remarked. “She’s probably waiting on the other side.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her.” Toras drew his sword and made for the portal. “See you all on the other side.”
“Let’s go.” Florian called out as she dove in after the fighter.
They had the correct key. A’kin had supplied them well. Taba however was not a creature to leave any route of egress open for easy or swift pursuit, and as soon as they emerged from the portal into the altraloth’s demiplane, they realized these facts immediately.
A labyrinth of twisting glass corridors greeted them, glittering and embossed with softly glowing runes and upon the floor below them, a prominent symbol of a series of clustered wheels, each of them broken and shattered in a mockery of the Oinoloth’s conspiracy.
All of these details were however secondary –if even noticed at all– as they each screamed in agony as the acid which filled the entire volume of the demiplane began to drown and devour them in its corrosive embrace. Six seconds later the runes on the walls began to glow red and the acid began to boil.
*****
Shemeska
Adventurer
In an instant their world had become agony. Suspended in acid eating away at their flesh and drowning at the same time, only a moment later did the corrosive liquid begin to boil, compounding the hell which Taba had prepared for each and every would-be pursuer.
Arms flailed and legs kicked, blindly seeking out the portal by which they’d entered, only to find that it had been one-way only. They were trapped and in seconds they might all be dead, with death only fractionally delayed for those resistant to acid, courtesy of the runes setting the liquid to a boil.
Screams were lost to the bubbling, frothing liquid’s embrace, and if Taba had been there, she would have cackled at the sight and sound.
Reacting on instinct, Tristol ignored the pain and began to cast, begging for Mystra’s aid to keep his concentration intact despite the liquid fire eating into him moment by moment. The first spell triggered and then he began a second, and then the pain was gone, the liquid vanished, and slowly his sight and hearing began to return.
“I can’t see anything…” Toras coughed, expelling a mouthful of acid. “What the f*ck just happened. Tell me there’s something responsible that I can punch.”
“Florian, if you could please help out a bit.” Tristol slumped to the bottom of the spherical force wall that he’d surrounded them with. The magical barrier glistened and held back the boiling acid around them in all directions.
“Tristol, bless you to the highest heavens.” The cleric panted as she blindly grasped for her holy symbol. “What did you do?”
“Force wall followed by teleporting the acid outside of it.” He paused to shudder from the pain. “That was purely on instinct. I barely know what’s going on. Healing if you could. Please.”
Florian did just that, though it took more than what might have been typical. Between the horrific amount of injury and the nature of the demiplane itself sapping at the effectiveness of her divine magic, it took more than one casting to heal their wounds and allow them to take measure of where they were.
Finally able to fully examine the altraloth’s demiplane, it was clear that Taba was long gone. The glass walls formed a maze that wrapped around on itself at the pocket plane’s edges, with only a set few of them ending in bound spaces crafted into keyed portals leading to more than half of the Outer Planes.
“It’s a bolt hole.” Clueless sighed as they looked at one portal leading to Mechanus of all places. “She darts to one place, comes here, and darts to another, hopefully leading anyone following her into this lovely little death trap.”
“It almost worked.”
“Does anyone know what that means?” Alex pointed at the ubiquitous symbol carved into the floor at each intersection of the glass corridors.
“Taba doesn’t seem to like the Oinoloth.” Clueless explained. “It’s a parody of the Wheels Within Wheels. Hell it looks like we have something in common with her.”
“Yeah I’m not so sure that I want to say that I’m on the same side as that thing.” Fyrehowl shook her head and pointed towards a bas-relief on another adjacent wall. There stood an image of the General of Gehenna as a crowned ultroloth holding aloft a great and glistening gemstone, the Heart of Darkness.
All Glory to the General of Gehenna. All Power to the First Ultroloth. All Praise to the Father of the Yugoloth Race. Doom and Death to Those Loyal to the Pretender to Khin-Oin. Broken Be the Wheels Within Wheels.
“F*cking fiend politics.” Toras rolled his eyes. “Oh I’m the most evil. No, I’m the most evil. Blah blah blah. F*ck ‘em.”
Nisha giggled, joined in by Fyrehowl and Tristol shortly thereafter.
“So what now?” The lupinal glanced at Tristol and then Clueless. “Taba could be anywhere. Not much we can do now other than go back to Sigil and get drunk.”
“No, we’ve got somewhere to go.” Toras frowned. “We’ve got a man to talk to about an elf.”
Taking the portal to Mechanus and from there to the Outlands and then Plague-Mort, it took relatively little time to reach the former Palace of the Archlector. It seemed as if Green Marvent expected them to return, mostly likely unsuccessful. Whatever the reason for his deception, his faction members provided a swift escort to see their Factol.
Marvent stood in the middle of the chamber in which he’d first met the party, hands folded in front of him, with an enigmatic but contrite smile playing across his face. His eyes moved from Toras to Florian and he gave a soft, resigned sigh.
“You lied to us.” Toras frowned and crossed his arms. “There was never an elf was there?”
“Dude!” Florian protested. “You sent us into Hell, right into a death trap. You told us that you could see into the future and that we’d be preventing millions of innocent deaths by killing a man who never existed. All we managed as a consolation prize was a yugoloth lord who popped Clueless’s head over here like a tomato against a wall.”
Nisha motioned towards the bladesinger, “He got better.”
“Why?” Toras asked in a measured tone. “Why lie to us? You owe us some answers.”
“I’m sorry that I lied to you.” Marvent seemed genuinely sorry, and the aura of tranquility that he’d always possessed seemed all the more present now, even though he’d just openly admitted to lying. “Yes, I sent you into Baator to find and kill the altraloth Taba, not an elf.”
“You could have just told us the truth!” Florian shouted.
“Would you have honestly agreed to go into Hell to kill a yugoloth lord at the behest of a man that you’d only just met and whose renegade faction members you’d murdered in the course of stopping the movement of slaves through Sigil?” Marvent smirked. “I rather suspect that with your past encounters with Taba’s kind that you would have wished me the best of luck in finding someone else for the job. You seem rather sick of them, and I can’t blame you.”
“What do you know about our past run-ins with them?” Clueless stared hard at the Illuminated Factol.
“That they aren’t over yet.” Marvent sighed, and then turned to Fyrehowl. “Even though they’ve harmed you and yours, you’ve harmed them as well. I’ve dreamed of a statue that isn’t a statue and a sleeping yugoloth screaming for release from the captor you sold her to. That day approaches and she will seek to make you pay for that insult.”
“You shouldn’t know that.” A look of confusion crossed over Clueless’s face as Marvent talked calmly about their imprisonment of Shylara the Manged.
“I shouldn’t know a great many things.” Marvent shrugged. “Yet I do. The important thing is that I try to act on what I can, or much more frequently I try to nudge people in a direction where they can alter the future that I’ve seen for the better. I could think of no other people than you better suited to trying to erase such a thing of evil from the planes as Taba. By fluke happenstance circumstances led you here to me in Plaguemort and I suspected that given Taba’s nature, there wouldn’t be an opportunity to confront her outside of her native plane again soon, and not with persons well acquainted with her kind and well equipped to actually fight her.”
Toras stared long and hard at the Factol. He’d answered their questions, though it only opened up more each time that they stood before him.
Through it all, Tristol stared at the Illuminated Factol, struggling to understand exactly what it was that he saw. Under magical detection there wasn’t a man standing there, just a magical aura the like of which he’d never seen before, and at the heart of it a blank spot where magic or possibly the fabric of space itself didn’t touch. The closest thing that he could guess was that Marvent was either the chosen or proxy of a deity or possibly one’s avatar.
“I wish you the best of luck in the future.” Marvent said, turning to go. “I am here if you have any need to advice for what that future holds.”
Uncertain as to the Factol’s motivation and even his exact nature, they departed and returned the way that they came, going back to Sigil. High above them, Marvent stood upon an upper balcony overlooking the gate town and watched them leave. Next to him stood his half-fire elemental minotaur lieutenant.
“Do you think that they’ll come back?” The minotaur asked.
“Absolutely my friend. I’ve seen that they will.” Marvent nodded and sighed as he stared off into the distance, the image of the Infinite Spire reflected in his pupils. “All of them but one.”
Two weeks passed largely without incident, with Alex accepting an offer for a room in the Portal Jammer as thanks for his help in Baator. Other than his habit of talking to a familiar that only he seemed capable of seeing, none had any complaints about him and he seemed an amiable if odd fellow, though one with a considerable knowledge of magic.
Prior to their collective adventures in Hell and beyond, they’d made plans to attend a meeting of the Sigil Advisory Council, and soon enough the day for the meeting arrived. Although Alex wasn’t a land owner in the City of Doors like the rest of them, they brought him along as a guest anyway.
Situated in the Park of the Infernal and the Divine, security was tight and members of both the Sons of Mercy and the Sodkillers made their own separate rounds along the periphery to ensure that absolutely nothing untoward would happen. Both groups seemed to be paying just as much wary attention to one another as to the members of the public as they streamed in and took seats.
“These things are usually a mix of boring speeches and people yelling at each other over absolutely minor disagreements.” Nisha explained to Alex as she sat down next to him with Tristol on her other side. “It should all be a pretty good introduction to the mess of Sigil’s politics.”
“It all seems so very… petty.” The wizard gave a shrug as the public spectacle lurched towards its start.
“Just don’t pick a fight with anyone wearing a razorvine headdress.” Florian warned the newcomer as they took seats three rows back from the front, facing the stage where the council members would sit. True to form, Chairwoman Rhys was already there and seated in the center chair.
“Don’t pick a fight with anyone wearing razorvine as a fashion accessory, not unless you can sucker punch her first.” Toras smiled dreamily. “One of these days in a dark alleyway. One of these days I’ll have the chance.”
“You really truly don’t seem to like her,” Alex looked up at the half-celestial as he daydreamed about mugging an arcanaloth, “whoever she is. You haven’t actually named her. This isn’t the first time that you’ve griped about her though.”
“I’m not saying her name.” Toras frowned. “She might be listening and it might give her power.”
“Saying her name gives her power?” Alex looked worried. “I very much don’t want to mess with something that powerful.”
“She doesn’t.” Clueless shook his head. “She’s just an insufferable b*tch and talking about her just inflates her ego even more. Speaking of which, I don’t actually see her yet.”
The bladesinger looked across the crowd and true enough he didn’t see the Marauder. People were still taking their seats and the meeting still hadn’t started, but all of the council members were there. Aside from Rhys, Zadara and Harry Hatchys sat in their respective chairs, and soon they were joined by the rest of their number.
Former Factol Rhys began the proceedings with a listing of minor issues before the council, followed by the first major announcement regarding a proposal to restrict future land ownership in Sigil to planars only. Although it wasn’t stated, the smirk on Cirily’s face made it absolutely clear that she was behind the proposal.
While the majority of those in attendance and on the council itself were planars, the proposal was dead before it reached a vote. Zadara was steadfastly against the measure, and while Cirily tried to make several impromptu speeches from her place on stage, Rhys cut her off each and every time by procedural matters or motions.
The measure failed before the council without requiring a public vote, and it was against the backdrop of the silently fuming firre eladrin councilmember that the Marauder made her fashionably late entrance.
True to form, and looking up at the frustrated eladrin with a sarcastic faux smile, the ‘loth waltzed into the part accompanied by her flock of groomer-guards and toadies. The fiend herself wore a jet black gown made of onyx stones stitched together with golden wire, and a golden sash draped across her shoulders and arms. The gown’s lengthy train trailed behind her like a shadow, nearly as long as she was tall. Two of her tieflings walked behind her, carrying the train aloft to ensure that it appeared to float two inches off of the ground which was precisely the height that the ‘loth herself floated. Walking it seemed was too prosaic for her feet at the present time.
Clueless rolled his eyes. “Anyone touching that gown would be flayed like the Lady’s Shadow if she didn’t think she’d get mazed for the mockery. Cutting it damn close as it is…”
“Yeah, that’d be her.” Toras motioned towards the ‘loth for Alex’s benefit.
The alienist chuckled, “I see why you don’t like her.”
Taking a seat front and center before the council, Shemeska’s tieflings calmly evicted the people already sitting in the first and second rows. Far be it for the King of the Crosstrade to sit near anyone else if she didn’t so choose.
Daintily crossing her legs, the Marauder reclined back in her seat and extended a hand to her right to accept a glass pipe already prepared and lit by one of her attendants. Pursing her lips, the fiend glanced up at Rhys with a daring smile as she began to puff at the pipe, blowing a stream of smoke in Zadara the Titan’s direction. The aromatic purple-gray smoke coiled and twisted in the air, though when expelled from the ‘loth’s nose or streamed from between her fangs the smoke formed the shapes of tiny screaming spirits as it dispersed.
Spectacle upon spectacle, and she would have it no differently.
Through it all, Chairwoman Rhys never actually stopped talking. Refusing the fiend the chance to be the spectacle she wished to be, her next statement might have been intentionally spoken out of whatever order she’d originally planned; it was far too poetically timed for the Marauder’s appearance to have been left to chance.
“Next before the council is a motion raised by Councilwoman Zadara.” Rhys inclined her head towards the titan. “The motion would propose to levy a tax upon fiends of 1 gold piece upon entry into Sigil, and a monthly charge of 2 silvers or a 3% tax upon their property holdings within the City of Doors, whichever is greater.”
A soft snarl issued from the front row of seats and a faint smile crossed over Zadara’s face. A collective muttering issued from the audience, both for the implied shot across the bow between two of the richest creatures in Sigil and the impact –not altogether bad– that the legislation would incur.
“Those two aren’t going to start fighting again are they?” Nisha whispered to Tristol as she tapped a hoof nervously in the air.
“Gods above I hope so.” Toras beamed a grin. “I’m voting for this by the way. I’m absolutely voting on this because it would ruin that b*tch.”
“The two of them actually fighting didn’t end well for Zadara last time.” Fyrehowl frowned. “Which is why I don’t think anything is going to come from this.”
The council debated the measure for a time, and through it all Shemeska said nothing, but silently fumed from her seat in the front row, staring daggers at the titan. In the end the measure failed by a substantial margin, and it was not a surprise given the amount of telepathic chatter emerging from the Marauder to others in the audience, let alone every other fiend of every origin there as well. It was too controversial a measure and liable to spark immediate violence in the streets.
Rhys breathed a visible sigh of relief as she brought up the next series of measures: Complaints against the Minders Guild and possible abuses of power; complaints against the Ring Givers, Sodkillers and Sons of Mercy as tempting the wrath of the Lady; petition for sale of the land occupied by the ruins of the Armory to Faith, wife of the late Sarin, former factol of the Harmonium; and an open call for investigation into the explosion in the Gatehouse.
Alex remained conspicuously silent about the last, though he smiled at his familiar more than once during the debate about the particulars. In fact he held back a chuckle on more than one occasion, almost as if he knew something about Esmus and Tollysalmon like an inside joke whose humor was lost on everyone else in attendance.
Most of the petitions went without incident yeah or nay, with the final gaining funding and an extension to follow up at the next council meeting. The next petition was sure however to raise some hackles.
“Next,” Rhys called out, looking at a number of tavern owners throughout the audience, “There comes a proposed 10% tax on the sale of potent alcoholic spirits and drugs, with the funds used to improve sanitation within the Hive.”
The Marauder shrugged, unconcerned, and handed over her pipe to conspicuously change out the tobacco it contained with something distinctly harder.
“That tax is going to kill our profit margins…” Clueless stared at the stage and the smirk that played across the eladrin Cirilly’s face. Most of the taxed items were consumed by mortals, and for whatever reason the celestial had a particular bug in her craw regarding them regardless of alignment.
The measure failed, much to the eladrin’s displeasure. Many of the council’s measures it seemed were less for the public’s immediate wellbeing than designed as taunts and barbs against each other and their own personal concerns.
Finally the floor was opened up for public commentary, further petitions and an address of grievances by landowners. The first petition to the council opened up a firestorm when Friar Muriav Garianis stood up and made his request. The patriarch of the Lower Ward’s ‘Garianis Family’ was one of the lesser known members of Sigil’s golden lords. Since the Storm of Doors years earlier, the cleric of Pluto had been buying or otherwise acquiring the title to land in the Shattered Temple District, formerly owned by various members of the Athar or by the faction as a whole. Since the faction’s self-exile from Sigil rather than officially disband after the Lady’s Edict, their hold on their former land in Sigil had been thrown into question. The Garianis clan had seized the moment and squatted and developed the area on their own.
“I wish to petition the council for license to demolish the Shattered Temple in order to construct a Temple of Pluto. As the council is no doubt aware, I have claim to 85% of the land parcels adjacent to the former Athar stronghold. Might I also stress that the Athar completely abandoned the location following Her Serenity’s Edict. In their absence I wish to make claim to the land that I have de facto held for the past four years. The ruins are an eye sore wherein too much blood was spilled, and I wish to renovate the land and the entire district itself at no cost to Sigil’s citizenry.”
Seated in the front row, the Marauder smirked. Garianis was a rival at least when it came to the seedy underside of that district of Sigil. As his power had expanded, invariably his people had come into conflict with hers. Building a temple to his divine patron would absolutely legitimize the cleric in higher circles in Sigil, those same circles where the Marauder swam like a shark among swans, and allow him the chance to actually become a legitimate rival in time.
The moment Rhys opened the matter for public commentary, Shemeska was up on her feet, walking towards one of the podiums reserved for speakers in the audience. So was Fyrehowl, prompted both by an uncanny feeling she had, as well as a subtle look by Rhys that implied more than requested that she at the very least be in a position to speak.
“I wanted to address the council and suggest…”
“This idea is piss.” Shemeska called out, interrupting the lupinal. “Garianis has no legal claim to 70% of the holdings in the district that he claims to own legally. He and I have competing titles to multiple properties, and curiously most of his claims derive from land given over to him in the testaments of those who died under unsettled circumstances. Funny that.”
“Pardon me?” Fyrehowl turned to face the Marauder, “I believe that I was speaking.”
“This council would be giving a historical property with living claimants to a man who would destroy it and leave them uncompensated.” The fiend turned to briefly glance at Garianis, ignoring the lupinal entirely. “If the Friar in question wishes to improve his social standing I would suggest that the Council provide him title to unclaimed land within the Slags.”
“Lady Shemeska, you can wait your turn.” Fyrehowl frowned at the ‘loth, raising her voice as she spoke.
Shemeska turned and looked at her, raising an eyebrow. “Sit down little girl and let your betters speak.”
“Oh?” Fyrehowl stared at the fiend calmly, “By what standard do you think that you’re better than me?”
“B*tch!” Florian coughed from three rows back. “Super b*tch!”
The Marauder didn’t turn around to give Florian the satisfaction of seeing her snarl with displeasure, but the fiend very much heard her.
“I would suggest that the council hold on any decision until such time as the other claimants to the Shattered Temple present their claims in person or via a registered proxy with voting rights before the council.”
“Seriously, shut the f*ck up.” Florian sighed and unfortunately it came at a lull in ambient chatter amongst the crowd. The ‘loth heard her and so did the rest of the audience.
Shemeska’s lips moved into a sneer and her eyes widened as a flicker of purple flames ignited in her eyesockets. The guards flanking her turned to stare at Florian, moving their gaze away from Garianis and his people. Colcook stared in shock at Florian’s audacity, but whatever the Marauder’s immediate designs might have been, another voice took hold of the Council’s attention from the back of the park.
“No! You fools!” An elderly githzerai mage stood in the back of the room, surrounded by several dozen other men and women. Dressed in plain olive robes, his head was shaved except for a braided stop down the center than trailed behind him on his shoulders. “The Shattered Temple does not belong to that man.”
Silence descended over the crowd and slowly people moved away from the source of the voice as others recognized him or the symbols that his attendants wore: the symbol of the Athar.
Garianis regarded the man with a look of shock and then shot the Marauder a look of anger. That the fiend put one bejeweled hand to her breast and another to her lips in mock surprise confirmed his suspicions. The cleric’s followers drew their blades as discretely as possible and fanned out around their patriarch, fully expecting bloodshed.
“Welcome back Factol Hobard.” Rhys’s voice was calm as she nodded to Terrance’s successor.
Arms flailed and legs kicked, blindly seeking out the portal by which they’d entered, only to find that it had been one-way only. They were trapped and in seconds they might all be dead, with death only fractionally delayed for those resistant to acid, courtesy of the runes setting the liquid to a boil.
Screams were lost to the bubbling, frothing liquid’s embrace, and if Taba had been there, she would have cackled at the sight and sound.
Reacting on instinct, Tristol ignored the pain and began to cast, begging for Mystra’s aid to keep his concentration intact despite the liquid fire eating into him moment by moment. The first spell triggered and then he began a second, and then the pain was gone, the liquid vanished, and slowly his sight and hearing began to return.
“I can’t see anything…” Toras coughed, expelling a mouthful of acid. “What the f*ck just happened. Tell me there’s something responsible that I can punch.”
“Florian, if you could please help out a bit.” Tristol slumped to the bottom of the spherical force wall that he’d surrounded them with. The magical barrier glistened and held back the boiling acid around them in all directions.
“Tristol, bless you to the highest heavens.” The cleric panted as she blindly grasped for her holy symbol. “What did you do?”
“Force wall followed by teleporting the acid outside of it.” He paused to shudder from the pain. “That was purely on instinct. I barely know what’s going on. Healing if you could. Please.”
Florian did just that, though it took more than what might have been typical. Between the horrific amount of injury and the nature of the demiplane itself sapping at the effectiveness of her divine magic, it took more than one casting to heal their wounds and allow them to take measure of where they were.
Finally able to fully examine the altraloth’s demiplane, it was clear that Taba was long gone. The glass walls formed a maze that wrapped around on itself at the pocket plane’s edges, with only a set few of them ending in bound spaces crafted into keyed portals leading to more than half of the Outer Planes.
“It’s a bolt hole.” Clueless sighed as they looked at one portal leading to Mechanus of all places. “She darts to one place, comes here, and darts to another, hopefully leading anyone following her into this lovely little death trap.”
“It almost worked.”
“Does anyone know what that means?” Alex pointed at the ubiquitous symbol carved into the floor at each intersection of the glass corridors.
“Taba doesn’t seem to like the Oinoloth.” Clueless explained. “It’s a parody of the Wheels Within Wheels. Hell it looks like we have something in common with her.”
“Yeah I’m not so sure that I want to say that I’m on the same side as that thing.” Fyrehowl shook her head and pointed towards a bas-relief on another adjacent wall. There stood an image of the General of Gehenna as a crowned ultroloth holding aloft a great and glistening gemstone, the Heart of Darkness.
All Glory to the General of Gehenna. All Power to the First Ultroloth. All Praise to the Father of the Yugoloth Race. Doom and Death to Those Loyal to the Pretender to Khin-Oin. Broken Be the Wheels Within Wheels.
“F*cking fiend politics.” Toras rolled his eyes. “Oh I’m the most evil. No, I’m the most evil. Blah blah blah. F*ck ‘em.”
Nisha giggled, joined in by Fyrehowl and Tristol shortly thereafter.
“So what now?” The lupinal glanced at Tristol and then Clueless. “Taba could be anywhere. Not much we can do now other than go back to Sigil and get drunk.”
“No, we’ve got somewhere to go.” Toras frowned. “We’ve got a man to talk to about an elf.”
****
Taking the portal to Mechanus and from there to the Outlands and then Plague-Mort, it took relatively little time to reach the former Palace of the Archlector. It seemed as if Green Marvent expected them to return, mostly likely unsuccessful. Whatever the reason for his deception, his faction members provided a swift escort to see their Factol.
Marvent stood in the middle of the chamber in which he’d first met the party, hands folded in front of him, with an enigmatic but contrite smile playing across his face. His eyes moved from Toras to Florian and he gave a soft, resigned sigh.
“You lied to us.” Toras frowned and crossed his arms. “There was never an elf was there?”
“Dude!” Florian protested. “You sent us into Hell, right into a death trap. You told us that you could see into the future and that we’d be preventing millions of innocent deaths by killing a man who never existed. All we managed as a consolation prize was a yugoloth lord who popped Clueless’s head over here like a tomato against a wall.”
Nisha motioned towards the bladesinger, “He got better.”
“Why?” Toras asked in a measured tone. “Why lie to us? You owe us some answers.”
“I’m sorry that I lied to you.” Marvent seemed genuinely sorry, and the aura of tranquility that he’d always possessed seemed all the more present now, even though he’d just openly admitted to lying. “Yes, I sent you into Baator to find and kill the altraloth Taba, not an elf.”
“You could have just told us the truth!” Florian shouted.
“Would you have honestly agreed to go into Hell to kill a yugoloth lord at the behest of a man that you’d only just met and whose renegade faction members you’d murdered in the course of stopping the movement of slaves through Sigil?” Marvent smirked. “I rather suspect that with your past encounters with Taba’s kind that you would have wished me the best of luck in finding someone else for the job. You seem rather sick of them, and I can’t blame you.”
“What do you know about our past run-ins with them?” Clueless stared hard at the Illuminated Factol.
“That they aren’t over yet.” Marvent sighed, and then turned to Fyrehowl. “Even though they’ve harmed you and yours, you’ve harmed them as well. I’ve dreamed of a statue that isn’t a statue and a sleeping yugoloth screaming for release from the captor you sold her to. That day approaches and she will seek to make you pay for that insult.”
“You shouldn’t know that.” A look of confusion crossed over Clueless’s face as Marvent talked calmly about their imprisonment of Shylara the Manged.
“I shouldn’t know a great many things.” Marvent shrugged. “Yet I do. The important thing is that I try to act on what I can, or much more frequently I try to nudge people in a direction where they can alter the future that I’ve seen for the better. I could think of no other people than you better suited to trying to erase such a thing of evil from the planes as Taba. By fluke happenstance circumstances led you here to me in Plaguemort and I suspected that given Taba’s nature, there wouldn’t be an opportunity to confront her outside of her native plane again soon, and not with persons well acquainted with her kind and well equipped to actually fight her.”
Toras stared long and hard at the Factol. He’d answered their questions, though it only opened up more each time that they stood before him.
Through it all, Tristol stared at the Illuminated Factol, struggling to understand exactly what it was that he saw. Under magical detection there wasn’t a man standing there, just a magical aura the like of which he’d never seen before, and at the heart of it a blank spot where magic or possibly the fabric of space itself didn’t touch. The closest thing that he could guess was that Marvent was either the chosen or proxy of a deity or possibly one’s avatar.
“I wish you the best of luck in the future.” Marvent said, turning to go. “I am here if you have any need to advice for what that future holds.”
Uncertain as to the Factol’s motivation and even his exact nature, they departed and returned the way that they came, going back to Sigil. High above them, Marvent stood upon an upper balcony overlooking the gate town and watched them leave. Next to him stood his half-fire elemental minotaur lieutenant.
“Do you think that they’ll come back?” The minotaur asked.
“Absolutely my friend. I’ve seen that they will.” Marvent nodded and sighed as he stared off into the distance, the image of the Infinite Spire reflected in his pupils. “All of them but one.”
****
Two weeks passed largely without incident, with Alex accepting an offer for a room in the Portal Jammer as thanks for his help in Baator. Other than his habit of talking to a familiar that only he seemed capable of seeing, none had any complaints about him and he seemed an amiable if odd fellow, though one with a considerable knowledge of magic.
Prior to their collective adventures in Hell and beyond, they’d made plans to attend a meeting of the Sigil Advisory Council, and soon enough the day for the meeting arrived. Although Alex wasn’t a land owner in the City of Doors like the rest of them, they brought him along as a guest anyway.
Situated in the Park of the Infernal and the Divine, security was tight and members of both the Sons of Mercy and the Sodkillers made their own separate rounds along the periphery to ensure that absolutely nothing untoward would happen. Both groups seemed to be paying just as much wary attention to one another as to the members of the public as they streamed in and took seats.
“These things are usually a mix of boring speeches and people yelling at each other over absolutely minor disagreements.” Nisha explained to Alex as she sat down next to him with Tristol on her other side. “It should all be a pretty good introduction to the mess of Sigil’s politics.”
“It all seems so very… petty.” The wizard gave a shrug as the public spectacle lurched towards its start.
“Just don’t pick a fight with anyone wearing a razorvine headdress.” Florian warned the newcomer as they took seats three rows back from the front, facing the stage where the council members would sit. True to form, Chairwoman Rhys was already there and seated in the center chair.
“Don’t pick a fight with anyone wearing razorvine as a fashion accessory, not unless you can sucker punch her first.” Toras smiled dreamily. “One of these days in a dark alleyway. One of these days I’ll have the chance.”
“You really truly don’t seem to like her,” Alex looked up at the half-celestial as he daydreamed about mugging an arcanaloth, “whoever she is. You haven’t actually named her. This isn’t the first time that you’ve griped about her though.”
“I’m not saying her name.” Toras frowned. “She might be listening and it might give her power.”
“Saying her name gives her power?” Alex looked worried. “I very much don’t want to mess with something that powerful.”
“She doesn’t.” Clueless shook his head. “She’s just an insufferable b*tch and talking about her just inflates her ego even more. Speaking of which, I don’t actually see her yet.”
The bladesinger looked across the crowd and true enough he didn’t see the Marauder. People were still taking their seats and the meeting still hadn’t started, but all of the council members were there. Aside from Rhys, Zadara and Harry Hatchys sat in their respective chairs, and soon they were joined by the rest of their number.
Former Factol Rhys began the proceedings with a listing of minor issues before the council, followed by the first major announcement regarding a proposal to restrict future land ownership in Sigil to planars only. Although it wasn’t stated, the smirk on Cirily’s face made it absolutely clear that she was behind the proposal.
While the majority of those in attendance and on the council itself were planars, the proposal was dead before it reached a vote. Zadara was steadfastly against the measure, and while Cirily tried to make several impromptu speeches from her place on stage, Rhys cut her off each and every time by procedural matters or motions.
The measure failed before the council without requiring a public vote, and it was against the backdrop of the silently fuming firre eladrin councilmember that the Marauder made her fashionably late entrance.
True to form, and looking up at the frustrated eladrin with a sarcastic faux smile, the ‘loth waltzed into the part accompanied by her flock of groomer-guards and toadies. The fiend herself wore a jet black gown made of onyx stones stitched together with golden wire, and a golden sash draped across her shoulders and arms. The gown’s lengthy train trailed behind her like a shadow, nearly as long as she was tall. Two of her tieflings walked behind her, carrying the train aloft to ensure that it appeared to float two inches off of the ground which was precisely the height that the ‘loth herself floated. Walking it seemed was too prosaic for her feet at the present time.
Clueless rolled his eyes. “Anyone touching that gown would be flayed like the Lady’s Shadow if she didn’t think she’d get mazed for the mockery. Cutting it damn close as it is…”
“Yeah, that’d be her.” Toras motioned towards the ‘loth for Alex’s benefit.
The alienist chuckled, “I see why you don’t like her.”
Taking a seat front and center before the council, Shemeska’s tieflings calmly evicted the people already sitting in the first and second rows. Far be it for the King of the Crosstrade to sit near anyone else if she didn’t so choose.
Daintily crossing her legs, the Marauder reclined back in her seat and extended a hand to her right to accept a glass pipe already prepared and lit by one of her attendants. Pursing her lips, the fiend glanced up at Rhys with a daring smile as she began to puff at the pipe, blowing a stream of smoke in Zadara the Titan’s direction. The aromatic purple-gray smoke coiled and twisted in the air, though when expelled from the ‘loth’s nose or streamed from between her fangs the smoke formed the shapes of tiny screaming spirits as it dispersed.
Spectacle upon spectacle, and she would have it no differently.
Through it all, Chairwoman Rhys never actually stopped talking. Refusing the fiend the chance to be the spectacle she wished to be, her next statement might have been intentionally spoken out of whatever order she’d originally planned; it was far too poetically timed for the Marauder’s appearance to have been left to chance.
“Next before the council is a motion raised by Councilwoman Zadara.” Rhys inclined her head towards the titan. “The motion would propose to levy a tax upon fiends of 1 gold piece upon entry into Sigil, and a monthly charge of 2 silvers or a 3% tax upon their property holdings within the City of Doors, whichever is greater.”
A soft snarl issued from the front row of seats and a faint smile crossed over Zadara’s face. A collective muttering issued from the audience, both for the implied shot across the bow between two of the richest creatures in Sigil and the impact –not altogether bad– that the legislation would incur.
“Those two aren’t going to start fighting again are they?” Nisha whispered to Tristol as she tapped a hoof nervously in the air.
“Gods above I hope so.” Toras beamed a grin. “I’m voting for this by the way. I’m absolutely voting on this because it would ruin that b*tch.”
“The two of them actually fighting didn’t end well for Zadara last time.” Fyrehowl frowned. “Which is why I don’t think anything is going to come from this.”
The council debated the measure for a time, and through it all Shemeska said nothing, but silently fumed from her seat in the front row, staring daggers at the titan. In the end the measure failed by a substantial margin, and it was not a surprise given the amount of telepathic chatter emerging from the Marauder to others in the audience, let alone every other fiend of every origin there as well. It was too controversial a measure and liable to spark immediate violence in the streets.
Rhys breathed a visible sigh of relief as she brought up the next series of measures: Complaints against the Minders Guild and possible abuses of power; complaints against the Ring Givers, Sodkillers and Sons of Mercy as tempting the wrath of the Lady; petition for sale of the land occupied by the ruins of the Armory to Faith, wife of the late Sarin, former factol of the Harmonium; and an open call for investigation into the explosion in the Gatehouse.
Alex remained conspicuously silent about the last, though he smiled at his familiar more than once during the debate about the particulars. In fact he held back a chuckle on more than one occasion, almost as if he knew something about Esmus and Tollysalmon like an inside joke whose humor was lost on everyone else in attendance.
Most of the petitions went without incident yeah or nay, with the final gaining funding and an extension to follow up at the next council meeting. The next petition was sure however to raise some hackles.
“Next,” Rhys called out, looking at a number of tavern owners throughout the audience, “There comes a proposed 10% tax on the sale of potent alcoholic spirits and drugs, with the funds used to improve sanitation within the Hive.”
The Marauder shrugged, unconcerned, and handed over her pipe to conspicuously change out the tobacco it contained with something distinctly harder.
“That tax is going to kill our profit margins…” Clueless stared at the stage and the smirk that played across the eladrin Cirilly’s face. Most of the taxed items were consumed by mortals, and for whatever reason the celestial had a particular bug in her craw regarding them regardless of alignment.
The measure failed, much to the eladrin’s displeasure. Many of the council’s measures it seemed were less for the public’s immediate wellbeing than designed as taunts and barbs against each other and their own personal concerns.
Finally the floor was opened up for public commentary, further petitions and an address of grievances by landowners. The first petition to the council opened up a firestorm when Friar Muriav Garianis stood up and made his request. The patriarch of the Lower Ward’s ‘Garianis Family’ was one of the lesser known members of Sigil’s golden lords. Since the Storm of Doors years earlier, the cleric of Pluto had been buying or otherwise acquiring the title to land in the Shattered Temple District, formerly owned by various members of the Athar or by the faction as a whole. Since the faction’s self-exile from Sigil rather than officially disband after the Lady’s Edict, their hold on their former land in Sigil had been thrown into question. The Garianis clan had seized the moment and squatted and developed the area on their own.
“I wish to petition the council for license to demolish the Shattered Temple in order to construct a Temple of Pluto. As the council is no doubt aware, I have claim to 85% of the land parcels adjacent to the former Athar stronghold. Might I also stress that the Athar completely abandoned the location following Her Serenity’s Edict. In their absence I wish to make claim to the land that I have de facto held for the past four years. The ruins are an eye sore wherein too much blood was spilled, and I wish to renovate the land and the entire district itself at no cost to Sigil’s citizenry.”
Seated in the front row, the Marauder smirked. Garianis was a rival at least when it came to the seedy underside of that district of Sigil. As his power had expanded, invariably his people had come into conflict with hers. Building a temple to his divine patron would absolutely legitimize the cleric in higher circles in Sigil, those same circles where the Marauder swam like a shark among swans, and allow him the chance to actually become a legitimate rival in time.
The moment Rhys opened the matter for public commentary, Shemeska was up on her feet, walking towards one of the podiums reserved for speakers in the audience. So was Fyrehowl, prompted both by an uncanny feeling she had, as well as a subtle look by Rhys that implied more than requested that she at the very least be in a position to speak.
“I wanted to address the council and suggest…”
“This idea is piss.” Shemeska called out, interrupting the lupinal. “Garianis has no legal claim to 70% of the holdings in the district that he claims to own legally. He and I have competing titles to multiple properties, and curiously most of his claims derive from land given over to him in the testaments of those who died under unsettled circumstances. Funny that.”
“Pardon me?” Fyrehowl turned to face the Marauder, “I believe that I was speaking.”
“This council would be giving a historical property with living claimants to a man who would destroy it and leave them uncompensated.” The fiend turned to briefly glance at Garianis, ignoring the lupinal entirely. “If the Friar in question wishes to improve his social standing I would suggest that the Council provide him title to unclaimed land within the Slags.”
“Lady Shemeska, you can wait your turn.” Fyrehowl frowned at the ‘loth, raising her voice as she spoke.
Shemeska turned and looked at her, raising an eyebrow. “Sit down little girl and let your betters speak.”
“Oh?” Fyrehowl stared at the fiend calmly, “By what standard do you think that you’re better than me?”
“B*tch!” Florian coughed from three rows back. “Super b*tch!”
The Marauder didn’t turn around to give Florian the satisfaction of seeing her snarl with displeasure, but the fiend very much heard her.
“I would suggest that the council hold on any decision until such time as the other claimants to the Shattered Temple present their claims in person or via a registered proxy with voting rights before the council.”
“Seriously, shut the f*ck up.” Florian sighed and unfortunately it came at a lull in ambient chatter amongst the crowd. The ‘loth heard her and so did the rest of the audience.
Shemeska’s lips moved into a sneer and her eyes widened as a flicker of purple flames ignited in her eyesockets. The guards flanking her turned to stare at Florian, moving their gaze away from Garianis and his people. Colcook stared in shock at Florian’s audacity, but whatever the Marauder’s immediate designs might have been, another voice took hold of the Council’s attention from the back of the park.
“No! You fools!” An elderly githzerai mage stood in the back of the room, surrounded by several dozen other men and women. Dressed in plain olive robes, his head was shaved except for a braided stop down the center than trailed behind him on his shoulders. “The Shattered Temple does not belong to that man.”
Silence descended over the crowd and slowly people moved away from the source of the voice as others recognized him or the symbols that his attendants wore: the symbol of the Athar.
Garianis regarded the man with a look of shock and then shot the Marauder a look of anger. That the fiend put one bejeweled hand to her breast and another to her lips in mock surprise confirmed his suspicions. The cleric’s followers drew their blades as discretely as possible and fanned out around their patriarch, fully expecting bloodshed.
“Welcome back Factol Hobard.” Rhys’s voice was calm as she nodded to Terrance’s successor.
****
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