Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
Shemeska
Adventurer
Unlikely, as I have an unannounced Pathfinder project final draft due on Monday, and a pharmacotherapy exam on Tuesday. A week after that is not an unreasonable thought however.
Shemeska
Adventurer
“F*ck…” Clueless spat, staring down at Daru’s damnable box. The inhuman face carved into its surface stared back at him maliciously, lips and teeth stained red with slowly drying blood.
They’d of course been responsible for delivering it to its victim, though of course the necromancer had known that his fate was predetermined when he’d made whatever bargain he’d agreed upon with the baernaloth, so his death couldn’t be wholly laid at Clueless and the others’ feet. But what did that say about their own pact with the ur-fiend? The bladesinger shuddered.
“Well that would seem to solve the question of what Crazy McGenocide told us that we needed to do next: give our burden to some dragon.” Toras rolled his eyes. “Probably to the same effect as what happened next time.”
Fyrehowl scowled, “I don’t like being the delivery celestial for a proto-fiend’s assassination box. It creeps me out even being near it. It feels like it’s staring at me.”
And of course it was, with the eyes depicted in such a way as to seemingly follow any observer. The effect was deeply unnerving given what they’d witnessed the box commit upon Toril.
“And the box is back, just in time for us to give it away…” Florian muttered, “Clearly the madman wasn’t just insane, but was getting his dreams carefully crafted by a baernaloth. Lovely.”
Collectively they sighed. There was seemingly little left to chance in everything that they’d performed thus far, with it all a carefully crafted dance engineered by Daru ib Shamiq from beginning to end. Had the fiend previously divined the future to such an extent as to include them as his messengers? And if so, what did that portent about their attempts to gain knowledge of the Oblivion Compass as a means to stymie the Oinoloth’s plans? Was everything preordained?
That concern weighed heavily upon them all, but they could concern themselves with that once they’d finished their task, and they had time before they reached their next destination.
Conversation continued for another hour until they collectively faded into silence and their lives and the passage of time were swallowed up by the monotony of the Ethereal deep. Three days, three days, and three days more, the madman had promised them, and for nine interminable days the group drifted forward, ever forward through the featureless depths.
What they found at the end of their journey on the 9th day would leave absolutely no question as to if it was the intended destination of their trek.
Previously, below Sigil’s Palace of the Jester:
Clueless looked up at the figure that stood before him, dressed in a baroque greatcoat that fit the style of Sigil’s Golden Lords from a nearly forgotten, bygone era, before the current factions philosophies had even first sprouted their ideological seeds. The so-called Lady’s Jester smiled with amusement, that smile and his chin being the only portion of his face not obscured by the black, wide-brimmed hat he wore atop his head.
“Who are you and why are you in my head?” Clueless repeated his question.
The Lady’s Jester said nothing, only continuing his enigmatic smile. Clueless stared back, his hand tight on Razor’s grip as if daring the figure to respond with anything other than a legitimate answer. A legitimate answer would come, in a way, but not before Clueless relaxed his hand and his urge to draw his blade, as with his last moment of tightened grip on the sword, the Jester’s ever-present companion, the short, robed, tentacled… thing… grew agitated and softly snarled.
“I was already curious.” Clueless explained, his hand now much more relaxed, and in turn the creature’s master seemed to calmly pat its head like a cherished, beloved hunting hound. “I would have come back just based on that, but finding out that you were lodged in my head, and not the only other figure there, well that made the visit personal. Why?”
The enigmatic smile continued, drawing out the tension, which the Jester seemed to feed upon in a momentary measure and conflict of willpower. There was never any question as to who would win.
“Because I was curious.” The Jester’s smile became a knowing smirk, taunting his visitor for but a moment before providing a longer answer, “And because I am here, isolated from the politics of the Cage, and bereft from a view beyond the Lady’s rusted palace. It has been a profoundly long time since I gazed beyond this place and saw all that once concerned me, and in you my boy, I found opportunity and something more.”
“Just how long have you been down here?” Clueless narrowed his eyes with suspicion. “And what do you see in me beyond opportunity?”
“Longer than most any being currently extant,” He paused and considered things and persons long forgotten, ignored and blissfully ignorant of. “Not the oldest, not the only one, but which you might encounter readily, the only one that matters. And for your second question, I see a man to whom destiny unerringly stumbles across his path and to whom the fates would see fit to loan a needle and thread for their unfolding, flowing tapestry should he wish to avail himself of it. Just how many archfiends have you stumbled across the path of and lived? That does not occur by happenstance and chance alone.”
Clueless raised an eyebrow at the flattery, the smooth and cultivated words that struck him as something that could be used like an assassin’s blade on the will of a weaker man. He would need to be exceedingly careful.
“You sound like someone who could talk a devil out of their most prized contract.” Clueless remarked, slowly walking a casual circuit around the Jester, noting that no matter how he moved, the Jester’s figure remained unmoved and equidistant, at precisely the same angle, as if the very substance of the floor warped to his will like the domain of an archfiend in microcosm. “Hell, you sound like someone who should be lecturing the best and brightest in Grenpoli.”
“And you would be correct, in a fashion.” The Jester’s voice was mellifluous, like a nobleman of some bygone era, self-assured in his power, but graceful and polite nonetheless to a being far beneath him. “But I am not a slave to the so-called King of Nessus.”
There was a hardness in the Jester’s voice as he spoke of Asmodeus and Clueless took note of it.
“So why are you here, entombed below the Palace of the Jester?” Clueless asked the obvious.
“Because here in the City of Doors I am powerful and safe from those who betrayed me, and ironically for my nature, secure in the one place that I could never truly rule.” The Jester stared down at Clueless’s ankle, to where Shemeshka’s gem still lay lodged within his flesh. “That same irony was not first visited upon or realized by myself, nor will I be the last, no matter what manner of crown, real or metaphorical might be involved.”
Clueless scowled at the man’s allusion to the Marauder.
“Any comparison between yourself and her doesn’t make me inclined to stay here, much less trust a single word you’ve said.”
“She does -not- compare to me.” The Jester smirked, the dismissal hard on the air. “Though I would caution you in dealing with her, even more than you ever have. She is far more than she appears, and her abilities are never truly on display.”
“I’m more than wary of her, but let me ask you another question: are you aware of another tenant lodged within my skull?” Clueless asked, wondering if the open-ended question might draw out a lie, or a truth. The baernaloth Sarkithel had noticed both without pause, but had done nothing to remove either, only caring for its own secrecy and seemingly erasing the memory of those events in the Vale of Frozen Ashes for both of them, had they been viewing through Clueless’s eyes.
“The Keeper of the Tower, Helekanalaith?” The Jester asked, his answer both correct and not indicative of any unfamiliarity on his part, but also carrying a certain amount of both respect and disdain. “I have dealt with him, never directly, but by proxy with his ilk. Liars, not worth the soot that lines the symbols in their mewling contracts.”
The Jester’s diabolic sensibilities radiated like a freshly forged blade drawn white hot from the forge, whatever his actual allegiances at present or in the past.
“At least you’re a more polite companion lodged within my skull compared to the Keeper of the Tower. But I can’t shake the feeling that both of you have every intention of using me for your own purposes, whatever the differences in tact or style might happen to be.”
“Every man proves his worth and value by his word and by his deeds,” The Jester glanced across to one wall, where suddenly the mural of himself stood anew, hunting horn raised, his familiar, or whatever it was, darting towards the painted figure of a doomed, screaming man in desperate flight. “And as of yet, here we stand speaking as pleasant men. I see little need to change the status quo to something more dire. I could have done so well before now, but I did not. As I said, I was and remain curious.”
“And yet I’m still wary.” Clueless spread his hands and glanced to the Jester’s small companion, the thing’s tentacles undulating in the air like some terrestrial nautilus. “I’ve found that any dealings with powerful beings, especially those with any fiendish connections, whatever the type, to ultimately befoul the lesser party. And I still haven’t the slightest clue as to who or what you actually are.”
“In time I might share such details, but truthfully they matter little in the present day, long after my descent into this place and my abandonment of the great games of the City of Doors.” The Jester gave a shrug, “And as for your concerns, I haven’t taken out the proverbial pen and parchment, nor promised you anything with a looming, lingering price. Such clichés are beyond me, even in my youth. You’ll have none of that with me. You’ll have only what you take and take willingly, the costs are for you to decide and make. You are free to leave at any juncture. But I will say that I despise the creatures that you have found yourself within the coils of their schemes time and again.”
“The ‘loths?” Clueless was genuinely curious, and somewhere metaphorically, a chain began to loop and tighten.
“Leave as you wish, but we have a shared disposition there…”
Clueless considered, and metaphorically the contract was waved and skimmed.
The present day, within the Ethereal Plane:
“Yeah, you know,” Nisha quipped, “I’m thinking this is probably it…”
The Xaositect’s opinion was a vast understatement.
“What the hell is this?” Florian wondered, her mind failing to grasp just what lay before them.
It was massive, whatever it was, rising up out of the mists, which parted to reveal a solid wall in space. It wasn’t a wall though, just the smallest fraction of a shimmering, spherical shell, the curvature only barely registering from their miniscule vantage point. Swirling black and grey, it crackled with dark lightning when the smallest wisp of ethereal protomatter drifted and made contact with the shell, the crackling contrast a momentary cenotaph to that flickering moment of annihilation.
“Whatever that is, I don’t suggest anyone touch it…” Tristol warned. “Though now that we’re apparently here, I don’t have any idea what we’re supposed to do.”
“The ravings of a genocidal madman weren’t clear enough?” Toras shook her head, “This was a bad idea.”
“A solid wall shall stand before you with but a single window shining a pure perfect light of truth.” Clueless quoted the madman as he glanced down at Daru’s box, “Enter and give to the one who greets you there your burden.”
The sphere, whatever it was however, was not entirely uniform.
“Does anyone else see that?” Fyrehowl asked, her eyes focusing on a single point of brilliant white light upon the sphere’s surface. “It’s the only thing that’s different on the surface.”
Unable to discern it, bereft as they were of the lupinal’s keen senses, the party drifted closer to the massive sphere. Eventually they were able to see it: a small but distinct square seemingly cut into the surface, shining a brilliant white light.
“Just as the madman said…” Clueless gazed down at the window, for lack of a better descriptor. “Whatever he meant.”
Tristol drifted closer, though still out of the range of the crackling mantle of sporadic black lightning, whispering the words of several divination spells, only to find that they returned a vacuous absence of information, with one exception.
“That one spot is a portal…” The aasimar explained, one ear askance in mild confusion. “But at the same time, it isn’t. I’m not really sure what to make of it to be perfectly honest.”
“So, we go through it and we finish this mad scavenger hunt is what you’re saying?” Toras asked.
“Does anyone have any better idea?” Tristol shrugged.
“I just want to be rid of this stupid thing,” Clueless grimaced down at the baernaloth’s gift, their titular burden. “The sooner the better.”
And so, with trepidation, they drifted closer, the white light streaming over them with a welcoming sensation, warm and seemingly warding away the touch of the lightning otherwise dancing across the sphere’s surface. Little did they know that the door was one way as first Toras, and then Fyrehowl vanished upon touching it. Little did they know that the sphere was a singularly unique surface of a mortal world as Tristol, Nisha, and Florian vanished. Little did they know what awaited them as Clueless reached out to touch the white light and join his fellows, but Clueless at least had a warning, far too late as it was.
Abruptly, echoing within the bladesinger’s mind, the Lady’s Jester screamed out, “NO!!! Do not go….” and then the warning was silenced. Cut off completely.
What none of them understood at that moment was that the madman’s edict, given to him in dreams by the Lieweaver had never been for them to give their burden to “the dragon”, the “one who greets you there”, but rather to “the Dragon.”
They would soon discover the truth of the matter when they met him upon the burnt world of Athas.
They’d of course been responsible for delivering it to its victim, though of course the necromancer had known that his fate was predetermined when he’d made whatever bargain he’d agreed upon with the baernaloth, so his death couldn’t be wholly laid at Clueless and the others’ feet. But what did that say about their own pact with the ur-fiend? The bladesinger shuddered.
“Well that would seem to solve the question of what Crazy McGenocide told us that we needed to do next: give our burden to some dragon.” Toras rolled his eyes. “Probably to the same effect as what happened next time.”
Fyrehowl scowled, “I don’t like being the delivery celestial for a proto-fiend’s assassination box. It creeps me out even being near it. It feels like it’s staring at me.”
And of course it was, with the eyes depicted in such a way as to seemingly follow any observer. The effect was deeply unnerving given what they’d witnessed the box commit upon Toril.
“And the box is back, just in time for us to give it away…” Florian muttered, “Clearly the madman wasn’t just insane, but was getting his dreams carefully crafted by a baernaloth. Lovely.”
Collectively they sighed. There was seemingly little left to chance in everything that they’d performed thus far, with it all a carefully crafted dance engineered by Daru ib Shamiq from beginning to end. Had the fiend previously divined the future to such an extent as to include them as his messengers? And if so, what did that portent about their attempts to gain knowledge of the Oblivion Compass as a means to stymie the Oinoloth’s plans? Was everything preordained?
That concern weighed heavily upon them all, but they could concern themselves with that once they’d finished their task, and they had time before they reached their next destination.
Conversation continued for another hour until they collectively faded into silence and their lives and the passage of time were swallowed up by the monotony of the Ethereal deep. Three days, three days, and three days more, the madman had promised them, and for nine interminable days the group drifted forward, ever forward through the featureless depths.
What they found at the end of their journey on the 9th day would leave absolutely no question as to if it was the intended destination of their trek.
*
Previously, below Sigil’s Palace of the Jester:
Clueless looked up at the figure that stood before him, dressed in a baroque greatcoat that fit the style of Sigil’s Golden Lords from a nearly forgotten, bygone era, before the current factions philosophies had even first sprouted their ideological seeds. The so-called Lady’s Jester smiled with amusement, that smile and his chin being the only portion of his face not obscured by the black, wide-brimmed hat he wore atop his head.
“Who are you and why are you in my head?” Clueless repeated his question.
The Lady’s Jester said nothing, only continuing his enigmatic smile. Clueless stared back, his hand tight on Razor’s grip as if daring the figure to respond with anything other than a legitimate answer. A legitimate answer would come, in a way, but not before Clueless relaxed his hand and his urge to draw his blade, as with his last moment of tightened grip on the sword, the Jester’s ever-present companion, the short, robed, tentacled… thing… grew agitated and softly snarled.
“I was already curious.” Clueless explained, his hand now much more relaxed, and in turn the creature’s master seemed to calmly pat its head like a cherished, beloved hunting hound. “I would have come back just based on that, but finding out that you were lodged in my head, and not the only other figure there, well that made the visit personal. Why?”
The enigmatic smile continued, drawing out the tension, which the Jester seemed to feed upon in a momentary measure and conflict of willpower. There was never any question as to who would win.
“Because I was curious.” The Jester’s smile became a knowing smirk, taunting his visitor for but a moment before providing a longer answer, “And because I am here, isolated from the politics of the Cage, and bereft from a view beyond the Lady’s rusted palace. It has been a profoundly long time since I gazed beyond this place and saw all that once concerned me, and in you my boy, I found opportunity and something more.”
“Just how long have you been down here?” Clueless narrowed his eyes with suspicion. “And what do you see in me beyond opportunity?”
“Longer than most any being currently extant,” He paused and considered things and persons long forgotten, ignored and blissfully ignorant of. “Not the oldest, not the only one, but which you might encounter readily, the only one that matters. And for your second question, I see a man to whom destiny unerringly stumbles across his path and to whom the fates would see fit to loan a needle and thread for their unfolding, flowing tapestry should he wish to avail himself of it. Just how many archfiends have you stumbled across the path of and lived? That does not occur by happenstance and chance alone.”
Clueless raised an eyebrow at the flattery, the smooth and cultivated words that struck him as something that could be used like an assassin’s blade on the will of a weaker man. He would need to be exceedingly careful.
“You sound like someone who could talk a devil out of their most prized contract.” Clueless remarked, slowly walking a casual circuit around the Jester, noting that no matter how he moved, the Jester’s figure remained unmoved and equidistant, at precisely the same angle, as if the very substance of the floor warped to his will like the domain of an archfiend in microcosm. “Hell, you sound like someone who should be lecturing the best and brightest in Grenpoli.”
“And you would be correct, in a fashion.” The Jester’s voice was mellifluous, like a nobleman of some bygone era, self-assured in his power, but graceful and polite nonetheless to a being far beneath him. “But I am not a slave to the so-called King of Nessus.”
There was a hardness in the Jester’s voice as he spoke of Asmodeus and Clueless took note of it.
“So why are you here, entombed below the Palace of the Jester?” Clueless asked the obvious.
“Because here in the City of Doors I am powerful and safe from those who betrayed me, and ironically for my nature, secure in the one place that I could never truly rule.” The Jester stared down at Clueless’s ankle, to where Shemeshka’s gem still lay lodged within his flesh. “That same irony was not first visited upon or realized by myself, nor will I be the last, no matter what manner of crown, real or metaphorical might be involved.”
Clueless scowled at the man’s allusion to the Marauder.
“Any comparison between yourself and her doesn’t make me inclined to stay here, much less trust a single word you’ve said.”
“She does -not- compare to me.” The Jester smirked, the dismissal hard on the air. “Though I would caution you in dealing with her, even more than you ever have. She is far more than she appears, and her abilities are never truly on display.”
“I’m more than wary of her, but let me ask you another question: are you aware of another tenant lodged within my skull?” Clueless asked, wondering if the open-ended question might draw out a lie, or a truth. The baernaloth Sarkithel had noticed both without pause, but had done nothing to remove either, only caring for its own secrecy and seemingly erasing the memory of those events in the Vale of Frozen Ashes for both of them, had they been viewing through Clueless’s eyes.
“The Keeper of the Tower, Helekanalaith?” The Jester asked, his answer both correct and not indicative of any unfamiliarity on his part, but also carrying a certain amount of both respect and disdain. “I have dealt with him, never directly, but by proxy with his ilk. Liars, not worth the soot that lines the symbols in their mewling contracts.”
The Jester’s diabolic sensibilities radiated like a freshly forged blade drawn white hot from the forge, whatever his actual allegiances at present or in the past.
“At least you’re a more polite companion lodged within my skull compared to the Keeper of the Tower. But I can’t shake the feeling that both of you have every intention of using me for your own purposes, whatever the differences in tact or style might happen to be.”
“Every man proves his worth and value by his word and by his deeds,” The Jester glanced across to one wall, where suddenly the mural of himself stood anew, hunting horn raised, his familiar, or whatever it was, darting towards the painted figure of a doomed, screaming man in desperate flight. “And as of yet, here we stand speaking as pleasant men. I see little need to change the status quo to something more dire. I could have done so well before now, but I did not. As I said, I was and remain curious.”
“And yet I’m still wary.” Clueless spread his hands and glanced to the Jester’s small companion, the thing’s tentacles undulating in the air like some terrestrial nautilus. “I’ve found that any dealings with powerful beings, especially those with any fiendish connections, whatever the type, to ultimately befoul the lesser party. And I still haven’t the slightest clue as to who or what you actually are.”
“In time I might share such details, but truthfully they matter little in the present day, long after my descent into this place and my abandonment of the great games of the City of Doors.” The Jester gave a shrug, “And as for your concerns, I haven’t taken out the proverbial pen and parchment, nor promised you anything with a looming, lingering price. Such clichés are beyond me, even in my youth. You’ll have none of that with me. You’ll have only what you take and take willingly, the costs are for you to decide and make. You are free to leave at any juncture. But I will say that I despise the creatures that you have found yourself within the coils of their schemes time and again.”
“The ‘loths?” Clueless was genuinely curious, and somewhere metaphorically, a chain began to loop and tighten.
“Leave as you wish, but we have a shared disposition there…”
Clueless considered, and metaphorically the contract was waved and skimmed.
****
The present day, within the Ethereal Plane:
“Yeah, you know,” Nisha quipped, “I’m thinking this is probably it…”
The Xaositect’s opinion was a vast understatement.
“What the hell is this?” Florian wondered, her mind failing to grasp just what lay before them.
It was massive, whatever it was, rising up out of the mists, which parted to reveal a solid wall in space. It wasn’t a wall though, just the smallest fraction of a shimmering, spherical shell, the curvature only barely registering from their miniscule vantage point. Swirling black and grey, it crackled with dark lightning when the smallest wisp of ethereal protomatter drifted and made contact with the shell, the crackling contrast a momentary cenotaph to that flickering moment of annihilation.
“Whatever that is, I don’t suggest anyone touch it…” Tristol warned. “Though now that we’re apparently here, I don’t have any idea what we’re supposed to do.”
“The ravings of a genocidal madman weren’t clear enough?” Toras shook her head, “This was a bad idea.”
“A solid wall shall stand before you with but a single window shining a pure perfect light of truth.” Clueless quoted the madman as he glanced down at Daru’s box, “Enter and give to the one who greets you there your burden.”
The sphere, whatever it was however, was not entirely uniform.
“Does anyone else see that?” Fyrehowl asked, her eyes focusing on a single point of brilliant white light upon the sphere’s surface. “It’s the only thing that’s different on the surface.”
Unable to discern it, bereft as they were of the lupinal’s keen senses, the party drifted closer to the massive sphere. Eventually they were able to see it: a small but distinct square seemingly cut into the surface, shining a brilliant white light.
“Just as the madman said…” Clueless gazed down at the window, for lack of a better descriptor. “Whatever he meant.”
Tristol drifted closer, though still out of the range of the crackling mantle of sporadic black lightning, whispering the words of several divination spells, only to find that they returned a vacuous absence of information, with one exception.
“That one spot is a portal…” The aasimar explained, one ear askance in mild confusion. “But at the same time, it isn’t. I’m not really sure what to make of it to be perfectly honest.”
“So, we go through it and we finish this mad scavenger hunt is what you’re saying?” Toras asked.
“Does anyone have any better idea?” Tristol shrugged.
“I just want to be rid of this stupid thing,” Clueless grimaced down at the baernaloth’s gift, their titular burden. “The sooner the better.”
And so, with trepidation, they drifted closer, the white light streaming over them with a welcoming sensation, warm and seemingly warding away the touch of the lightning otherwise dancing across the sphere’s surface. Little did they know that the door was one way as first Toras, and then Fyrehowl vanished upon touching it. Little did they know that the sphere was a singularly unique surface of a mortal world as Tristol, Nisha, and Florian vanished. Little did they know what awaited them as Clueless reached out to touch the white light and join his fellows, but Clueless at least had a warning, far too late as it was.
Abruptly, echoing within the bladesinger’s mind, the Lady’s Jester screamed out, “NO!!! Do not go….” and then the warning was silenced. Cut off completely.
What none of them understood at that moment was that the madman’s edict, given to him in dreams by the Lieweaver had never been for them to give their burden to “the dragon”, the “one who greets you there”, but rather to “the Dragon.”
They would soon discover the truth of the matter when they met him upon the burnt world of Athas.
*
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carborundum
Adventurer
Whaaaaat? No way, man!
carborundum
Adventurer
Shemeska
Adventurer
We played with 3e rules, and since I never actually played 2e, I never used any of the specific, thematic but IMO ultra fiddly rules that Planescape had regarding clerics and other things as you moved around the planes. As for how I handled Athas, you'll see soon enough.
The players were like 'ah ***!
The players were like 'ah ***!
Which is ultimately the correct response to being stranded on Athas.
Stranded on Athas? I have a bone to pick with you regarding such circumstances...
Here's hoping that all and sundry are staying well amidst the lockdown.
