NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 7069738" data-attributes="member: 11697">The burning cloud washed over the top of the butte, stretching from the base of the onyx pyramid and flowing like a seeking, life-hungry liquid down the face of the cliff towards the mezzoloths clambering up the side upon and atop each other.“My Oinoloth,” Venrisala turned towards the Oinoloth’s vessel, still averting her eyes from direct contact as she spoke, despite the fact that the archfiend was present by proxy rather than in person. “Shall we attempt to dispel the killing wind? I fear it will overwhelm the mezzoloths before the spell’s force is depleted.”“No need.” The Ebon’s vessel waved one hand dismissively. “The spell was cast thousands of years ago in a period when Toril’s Weave still supported that capacity of magic. It will wither and fade before it does too much damage. I do not care unless it endangers the device. The mezzoloths are utterly disposable. If they die, we will bring them back in the same capacity as we have thus far.”Venrisala nodded, though she had little doubt that the Oinoloth, even by proxy and separated by the space of the Astral at the very minimum could have dispelled the Netherese killing spell without much effort. Yet in the absence of the Oinoloth’s vessel saying a word or displaying any outward emotion on its featureless face, the scribe had the distinct notion that the Ebon was smirking.“As you wish my Oinoloth,” Obsessively eager to plumb the Ebon’s mind, but unwilling to badger or second guess the unquestioned ruler of the Lower Planes of Conflict, the scribe returned to her role of recording her impressions of the day’s events.Scratching her words with wide eyes, not bothering to look upon the page, Venrisala watched as nearly fifty mezzoloths shrieked and died. Losing their grip they plummeted towards the ground but never reached it before they disintegrated into their base essence and were drawn towards a trio of arcanaloths situated at the very base of the godisle. Each of them held a black onyx staff inscribed with runes and leaking a drifting aura of greasy darkness.Each dying mezzoloth’s essence lanced towards a point equidistant between the staves, erupted in a pulse of flickering light that caused the runes on each staff to glow like burning coals, and then from nothing a newborn mezzoloth burst out of thin air at a random point within fifty feet. While the godisle prevented easy or reliable access to summons, teleportations, and gates, somehow the Ebon had provided a method to bypass such restrictions entirely and respawn each dying mezzoloth as if they’d died upon the Waste, Gehenna, or the first layer of Carceri within the range of the Third Tower’s influence.How? She had absolutely no idea.“How…?” She briefly glanced at the Oinoloth’s vessel, “Forgive me for asking, but how have you managed to replicate the properties of the Three Towers here on the prime, however in microcosm it might be?”“Study the architecture of each tower.” The vessel replied, its telepathy worming its way up and down her spine like a finger tracing the outline of Khin-Oin. “Learn and understand the patterns woven into the bone of Khin-Oin as it meets the flesh of the Waste. Learn the patterns crafted into the foundation stones and the echoes of the screaming contract-binding souls in the archives as set down by Larsdana ap Neut when she designed the Second Tower. Stare into the Reflective Chasm of the Third Tower until your eyes go blind and you taste and experience the beautiful suffering of each and every screaming brick. Know those things and you will understand how I have done this.”Venrisala’s eyes bulged.“Learn those things and then,” The Ebon’s mental smirk returned as puissant as it had ever been. “Then you might be worthy.”The arcanaloth scribe looked away from the Oinoloth’s vessel, suddenly struck by a sense of numbing worthlessness. She clenched her hands together, feeling unworthy of being in the Ebon’s presence, by proxy or not, and as she watched the mezzoloth burn and die en masse, she realized that in her present state she was just as much of a disposable tool as them.Despite the scribe’s sudden introspection, what happened on the face of the butte was astonishing in two parts. As the ancient Netherese spell decimated their ranks, what occurred next was profound. As each mezzoloth died, their bodies disintegrated into clouds of visible, dull grey light that sprang forth on the air and bolted towards a trio of arcanaloths standing at the cliff base. Each jackal-headed wizard clutched a black, twisted metal staff in their hands, each emblazoned with runes and leaking drops of greasy darkness upon the ground moment by moment and lines of jagged magical energy traced between them.As each mezzoloth’s essence sprung forth from the point of their deaths, they all lanced towards the center point of the area bound by the staves, and as they made contact, they created a pulse of black energy that seemed to consume the ambient light, and then at a random point within the surrounding hundred yards a new mezzoloth spontaneously burst into being, their essence reforged and created anew as if at the spawning pits of Khin-Oin, the forges of the Tower Arcane, or the Chasm of the Tower of Incarnate Pain.Mezzoloths were tools at best, and here upon the prime their status as a renewable resource made them utterly disposable.‘Whatever master you serve, you will die and they will suffer for this intrusion.’The voice of Wulgreth washed across the assembled fiends. Against mortal adventurers it might have been terrifying, but against the ‘loths it would have been an open question in the first place, and in the presence of an extension of the Oinoloth it was only pointless bluster.“Ignore the demilich’s taunt!” Vernisala shouted at the yagnaloths and their insectile soldiers. “Continue your climb to the summit and draw him out.”As she screamed at the lesser yugoloths, acting in her capacity as an intermediary for the Oinoloth who’d barely acted through his vessel except to offer commentary, the scribe realized that the undead arcanist would need little goading to appear. The words were barely from her lips when the bejeweled skull of Wulgreth of Netheril appeared atop the butte and gazed down at the fiends dying from his magic.“Target the demilich!” Venrisala barked angrily, even as she physically backed away and positioned herself behind a trio of ultroloths. The motion was not at all lost upon the highest caste of yugoloths, and all three glared at her before turning their eyes to the other member of their caste, the one with the jagged spike of crystal impaled through its forehead.“Go.” The Oinoloth’s telepathy sneered, flickering into their brains the images of the ruling ultroloths of Khin-Oin dead and hanging from the spires, and the stench of their rotting corpses carried on the cold and fierce wind miles up. All three ultroloths bowed and turned towards the demilich high above. The Oinoloth’s command impressed upon them their place, even as they cleared disdained the position of favor that the arcanaloth scribe –their lesser in both power, experience, and caste – was granted.Stepping free of the coterie of arcanaloths that traveled alongside them, the ultroloth sorcerers immediately hurled their own spells up towards the demilich: bolts of black energy, spheres of molten lead laced through with lighting, and words intended to break and push aside the undead arcanist’s own potent wards. As terrible as their magic was to behold, the first volley struck upon the demilich’s protective spells with little effect beyond rampant destruction all around but not actually touching it.Wulgreth’s skull drifted forward, its laughing washing though the fiends’ minds as it wordlessly cast first a crackling bolt of lightning that struck one of the yagnoloths and then forked and lanced out to strike a dozen others, leaving them dancing and dying, with black smoke and ozone rising up from the joints in their carapace. Without a pause a green beam of energy erupted and struck one of the expedition’s nycaloths flying above the battle, reducing it to a powder-fine cloud of ash. All of that in space of a moment, before any mortal wizard would have finished a single casting.Spurred into motion by both the Oinoloth’s orders and the frightening alacrity and potency of Wulgreth’s magic, the ultroloths raised their arms and began to cast again. Each hurled spells against Wulgreth’s defenses a second time, but either their spells were ineffectual against the undead horror, or else their acts of dispelling one shell of its multilayered defenses caused more to spring up in their place.“Behold the pinnacle of yugoloth promotion.” The Ebon’s telepathic voice sighed before it snarled. “Worthless.”Venrisala turned, eyes wide as the Ebon’s telepathy contained the impression of rolled eyes and growing impatience. He was absolutely nothing like the faceless, distant ultroloths whose influence he’d utterly bypassed on his way to Khin-Oin’s throne.As the Oinoloth watched from behind the ranks of his forces, the fawning arcanaloth scribe at his side recording it all, the trio of ultroloths continued to do battle with the demilich. As the minutes stretched on and their spells continued to flicker and fly across the space between them and Wulgreth, it rapidly became obvious that it was a monstrous and utter stalemate. The ancient Netherese wizard was far and away superior to any of the ultroloths in magical combat, but collectively, and bolstered by magic items looted from their comrades executed atop Khin-Oin’s ramparts, over time the ultroloths might have eventually defeated Wulgreth or forced him to retreat. Outside of collateral damage to the other, lesser fiends watching the battle, the magical back and forth produced little obvious gain for either the demilich or the ultroloths.Twenty minutes in, Wulgreth’s protections stood solid, and the ultroloths were uninjured, with the exception of one of them losing a hand when a magical item overloaded and exploded in the act of nullifying a use of the demilich’s soul-devouring powers. The fight would likely have continued another hour at least before one side or the other stood victorious.It did not continue.“Enough.”The Oinoloth’s telepathic voice called out. Immediately the ultroloth trio moved aside to allow a fourth member of their caste into view, this one unadorned in any finery or marked by any place of station, bereft of any trinkets or objects of power save one: a shard of cobalt crystal thrust into its skull. As it stepped forward, the flickering, multicolored radiance of the ultroloth’s eyes dulled, died, and then reignited with a singular, sickly glow in reddish-pink.Taking the pause in combat to its advantage, a magical bubble of force erupted into being around Wulgreth’s floating skull. The spell added another layer of protection from the presumed magical barrage to come, but the demilich went no further in his spellcasting because something about the yugoloth’s voice struck him as odd: the fiend suddenly addressed him in fluent Netherese.“I would have expected more from you Wulgreth.” The Oinoloth spoke through his chosen vessel, his words expressed through the debased ultroloth’s telepathy like claws breaking through a layer of ice and carrying a feeling of almost palpable pollution. “You’ve had more than a thousand years to prepare this place as your refuge and clearly we find those defenses wanting. Still, I must admit my surprise at your allowing a second lich residence in your citadel atop Karse: Wulgreth of Ascalhorn.”Wulgreth hovered in the air, exuding a soft green radiance, and as the demilich stared at the Ebon’s ultroloth puppet, the other fiends uniformly paused and waited. Although neither of them had begun to cast, all presumed that a renewed magical battle was imminent, all but Venrisala.Standing next to the Oinoloth, the fur across her arms and neck bristled and moved with an unseen wind, like hair drifting and moving in the presence of wool and amber. Though not moving or speaking, the Ebon was doing something that she could only just barely discern: below the level of the Oinoloth’s telepathy channeled through the ultroloth, there was a soft, oh so faint susurrus of what first seemed like a low, droning mental static. She turned to look, eyes wide at the Oinoloth, and realized that the static had patterns and words. She turned away and shut it out as it burned her mind like grazing one’s fingertips unknowingly upon a burning piece of metal. Below the level of the demilich’s senses, the Ebon was casting his mental fingers to pluck and weave the ambient and broken tatters of the Weave in the presence of the godisle at a profound level of nuance that she had quite frankly never witnessed.The scribe smiled to herself and wiped the drool from the corner of her mouth. There would be no grand spell-battle.'How do you know me fiend? Speak. Explain your blundering intrusion now.'“Speak I will.” The ultroloth vessel’s eyes flickered with their albino radiance as the Ebon caused it to spread its arms and half bow in a sarcastic gesture of humility and apology. Had the Oinoloth been physically present he would doubtless have done the same, but the ultroloth lacked a mouth with which to mockingly smirk. “Our surprise when the Wulgreth we first fought in the ruins of Karse was far below what we would have expected. How convenient to muddy history and your own lore with a second wizard of the same name. My servitors found him difficult on his own and then we found you and all of your traps here as well. Unlike him and his death knight however, you are not some mere pretender to Netherese might. You are Netherese yourself. But alas Wulgreth, for all your blind hatred of your long-dead nemesis, you could never hope to equal Karsus.”Wulgreth hovered in the air, still and silent, his jeweled teeth flickering with a myriad of colors similar to those that only moments before the ultroloth’s eyes had possessed, but now they met the gaze of the ultroloth’s orbs which shown with only the sickly albino radiance of the Oinoloth’s as if the Ebon were looking through a pair of windows into the Prime Material. Wulgreth gazed back through those windows and then in that voice, that mocking arrogance, and the gaze of those eyes, he recognized the creature for who and what it truly was.Memories kindled in the demilich’s brain from more than a millennium earlier, there in the palace of Karsus, atop the archwizard’s floating city and the last moments of his mortal life: a single glimpse of those same albino eyes and a single, beguiling ivory smile in those last moments before his doom at the hands of Karsus and the mad archwizard’s experiment.“YOU!”The mental presence of the Oinoloth smiled just as it had so many years before as its ultroloth vessel raised one arm, extended a single withered hand and then clenched it tight, pulling tight the cords of the magical webs and wires woven about the demilich. With a resounding thunderclap and eruption of raw magical power, the entirely of the demilich’s protections imploded in upon it, leaving behind nothing but a warped smear of ash upon the ground in the shape of the Oinoloth’s symbol and a tortured, shifting afterimage of Wulgreth frozen in the air above it.“The way is clear. Wulgreth’s essence now resides in the depths of one of his own spelltraps. Return to clearing the way towards the heart and ready the device. As for the demilich, he can rot in solitude for all I care.”Within the depths of Khin-Oin, the Oinoloth smiled, knowing well the irony of the statement.</blockquote>

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