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Story Hour
Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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<blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 8821834" data-attributes="member: 11697"><p>Toras rolled his eyes and took a long, preemptive swig from his mug.</p><p></p><p>“Another invitation from esteemed and oh so mortal, Material Plane dwelling associate, Lord Abat?” Florian asked, mirroring Toras’s motion a split second after asking her question.</p><p></p><p>They all knew the answer to the question before Clueless opened the envelope on Razor’s edge and unfolded the crisp stationary to lay the letter flat for all to read:</p><p></p><p><em>“Greetings my friends!</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>I hope that our time spent apart since our last meeting within the Dire Wood has seen you hale and hearty. I myself have traveled quite far afield from whence we last communed. No doubt that you may have heard of the disruption of travel and trade upon the trade town of Nimicri.”</em></p><p></p><p>“Surprise surprise…” Toras muttered.</p><p></p><p>“The mimic city!” Nisha giggled with odd, perhaps misplaced delight.</p><p></p><p>“The mimic city.” Tristol smiled and patted her head.</p><p></p><p>The letter continued:</p><p></p><p><em>“Being as this matter is liable to have untold consequences on regional trade and transit, I should urge you my friends to take it upon yourselves to commence forthwith to Nimicri to see events therein for yourselves and discover the reasons for these most recent events.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Your gracious associate,</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Lord Abat of Toril”</em></p><p></p><p>“Laying it on thick, isn’t she?” Fyrehowl shook her head and downed a gulp of ale.</p><p></p><p>“You could say that.” Clueless said, skimming over the letter a second time, “But now I’m genuinely interested.”</p><p></p><p>“You weren’t interested before?” Florian asked.</p><p></p><p>“No,” The bladesinger waved the letter in the air casually, “Before I was curious, with a heavy amount of ‘f*ck the yugoloths who are clearly up to their usual yugoloth f*ckery’ and a side of ‘how is any of this unusual for Gehenna?’”</p><p></p><p>“That’s the thing though,” Fyrehowl remarked, “It is actually unusual for the ‘loths to so brazenly and so suddenly take action like this, and doubly so because it’s on Nimicri.”</p><p></p><p>“Why is it so odd for Nimicri?” Florian asked.</p><p></p><p>“Because the ‘loths have historically taken a very hands-off approach to the moon, or at least the appearance of being hands off.” The lupinal continued, “So there’s something afoot, otherwise they wouldn’t have taken action like this.”</p><p></p><p>“To say nothing of our letter-writing friend having an interest and pushing us in that direction herself.” Clueless placed the letter down on the table, face up for all to review once more.</p><p></p><p>Collectively they glanced around the room at one another, each gauging the mood, all of them coming to the same conclusion that yes, absolutely they needed to go to Nimicri. Nods were made, assent voiced, and not even a grumble of dissent to be heard before last drinks were poured and finished, preparations were made for their trip, and finally the group left together to find the nearest portal to the Outlands, there to planeshift to Gehenna.</p><p></p><p>What they found there would rock their view of certain events that they’d taken part in when they’d first come together as a group.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The tieflings that stood guard outside the private rooms within the Azure Iris where Shemeska the Marauder held private, as opposed to public court down in the Fortune’s Wheel below it, were really a well-dressed formality. Their presence, albeit a highly skilled and lethal presence, wasn’t the real power keeping the King of the Crosstrade safe from rivals. No, she alone and the centuries of layered wards she’d ensorcelled into place were the true danger that faced any would-be assassin. Still, the well-dressed rogues who flanked the door to her suite of chambers were there to deal with more common riffraff and act as intermediaries with those seeking any audience, cutting wheat from chaff for their mistress to deal with at a later, more convenient date, sometimes cutting wheat from chaff in a more literal, bloody manner if they mood struck them.</p><p></p><p>The visitor who would promptly manifest in front of them however was not common in any capacity, riffraff or otherwise.</p><p></p><p>“Good evening to you sir and to you madam, servitors of my most esteemed peer among the Yugoloth hierarchy the King of the Crosstrade!”</p><p></p><p>The Grin manifested as an illusory smile suspended in mid-air, speaking a split second before becoming visible. It was a credit to their training that neither tiefling jerked in surprise or yelped in shock, but calmly moved hands to their sword belts and turned to glare at their visitor.</p><p></p><p>“She’s occupied at present sirrah… madam… whichever you might be.” The tiefling on the left side of the door stumbled over the precise pronoun to use in planar common with which to address their visitor.</p><p></p><p>They hadn’t stated as much, but both tieflings were well aware of The Grin and its complicated relationship with their Mistress. As an agent of the Tower in Gehenna, and more specifically a proxy at times for its master and sire Helekanalaith, its appearance was not altogether unknown, though it had been some time since it had directly appeared and requested an audience. Normally they suspected it would simply directly ask Shemeska herself by magic, rather than go through the formalities of actually showing up and asking them to ask her.</p><p></p><p>Something was clearly up.</p><p></p><p>The Grin moved the corners of its mouth up and down in a comical recapitulation of a shrug, “Any or all of those work.” They explain, “I’m not much on the specifics as you mortals are so fond of being locked into.”</p><p></p><p>“As my partner said,” The tiefling on the right stated, “Her Fiendish Majesty is presently occupied.”</p><p></p><p>Another ‘shrug’ from the Grin, “No doubt having her claws polished, fur brushed or waxed, by a servitor whose eyes she’d previously plucked out, depending on where the fur in question might be I suppose. Things of utmost importance surely.”</p><p></p><p>Neither tiefling responded to the insinuation, even if the insinuation were liable to be true.</p><p></p><p>Several long seconds passed.</p><p></p><p>“You can go interrupt her and ask for me, or I can simply waltz through the door and ask her myself.”</p><p></p><p>The Grin did as its namesake expression detailed, with a playful, sinister hint at the corners.</p><p></p><p>“One moment.” The first tiefling turned and stepped inside, leaving her compatriot there in the hallway with the illusory visitor.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>“The Gehennan. He… she… they…” The tiefling, eyes directed pointedly downwards at the floor, fumbled with uncertainty as the visiting fiend hadn’t clarified the matter to any level of mortal specificity, “They’re out in the hallway. They request an audience with you.”</p><p></p><p>The Marauder looked up from where she sat atop the back of one blind aasimar, legs crossed and one foot extended out for a second, similarly impaired aasimar to expertly polish and paint her claws seemingly based on feel and familiarity with the act and the anatomy alone. She rolled her eyes dramatically.</p><p></p><p>“Of course, they would, now…”</p><p></p><p>Sneering with equal drama she expanded her consciousness, feeling The Grin delicately probing at the layers of wards that surrounded her chambers in the Azure Iris. Of course, they weren’t actively seeking to intrude past them: it had become almost a formality over the past few centuries, a subtle knock on the proverbial door to go along with manifesting before her guards and verbalizing the request she already knew was coming.</p><p></p><p>With a soft, dismissive snarl the Marauder kicked at the aasimar painting the claws on her feet, deftly and intentionally drawing blood. Standing up and leaned down, cradling the servitor’s injured face before licking the wound and pushing them to the ground like a crassly discarded but beloved doll. Standing back up and running a hand through her hair, straightening the tangle of razorvine atop her head, she looked back at the tiefling, who to their credit, had remained emotionless at the display of casual, pointless cruelty, “Let them in.”</p><p></p><p>As the tiefling returned to the front door to admit her visitor, Shemeska stood up walked to an adjacent chamber and almost as an afterthought, she casually donned a green, silk robe to cover herself, to then sit upon a velvet-cushioned throne of hollyphant ivory. An arrogant smile playing across her muzzle, she relaxed and held out her right hand for the same blind servant who’d previously served as a chair now placed a lit cigarette holder in her hand. She lifted it to her painted lips and took a puff, ready to punctuate her guest’s arrival with a sneer and an exhaled stream of smoke.</p><p></p><p>“Greetings Shemeska!” The Grin exclaimed as it manifested within the room, the barely-clothed arcanaloth before them blowing a stream of purple smoke through her front fangs. The illusory guest gave a polite, entirely performative cough from the welcome.</p><p></p><p>“Took you long enough I suppose to bother showing up.” The Marauder said, smoke coiling up from her nostrils as she tapped the cigarette holder, sending a cascade of ashes to land upon the flesh of the attendant now sitting on the floor adjacent her throne.</p><p></p><p>“We haven’t met face to face like this nearly often enough I admit.” The Grin smiled jovially.</p><p></p><p>She rolled her eyes and blew another stream of smoke, arrogant as ever even when dealing with a nominal peer. Without any further banter she immediately launched into a stream of questions, demands really, but even as The Grin considered what to tell her, what to hide, and what to lie about, they couldn’t help but stare at the object she wore about her neck like some unholy talisman: the Shadow Sorceled Key.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"></p> <p style="text-align: center"></p> <p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The transition was always stark when leaving Sigil by portal to one of the Lower Planes. It didn’t matter if one left the Lady’s Ward or the Hive, or ultimately stepped out into the Imperial Hell of Baator, the Darwinian nightmare of the Abyss, or the Unhallowed Desolation of the Waste, there was never a situation wherein the contrast didn’t metaphorically or literally suck the air from the lungs and dim the candlelight of the spirit.</p><p></p><p>The party’s emergence into the Fourfold Furnace was no exception.</p><p></p><p>The surface of Chamada was a vast and jagged, burning expanse of rock that seemed perpetually inclined at perilous angles and unstable, loose footing on those surfaces not actively flowing with molten rivers of magma pouring off and out into the void. At random intervals that almost seemed to deliberately target creatures crawling across the slopes, seemingly solid ground would erupt in massive showers of lava, casting a brilliant, fiery glow across a landscape of black basalt and other igneous rock. Certain eyes might have found the contrast beautiful, if not for the deadly and immediate peril it presented to travelers incapable of flight or themselves not immune to flame, let alone the damage posed by flying boulders or razor-sharp ballistic splinters of stone.</p><p></p><p>Surrounded by such on the slopes of Chamada rather than the streets of Nimicri, normally they might have considered a gate, such was Tristol’s ability, but with a yugoloth embargo on Nimicri and the unknowns surrounding any magical protections to dissuade travel they thought better of the idea. Instead, they began with a planeshift to Chamada, there to stare up at the moon drifting like some lambent star tantalizingly out of reach to those upon the volcanic hellscape of the 2nd Furnace.</p><p></p><p>Well aware of the native dangers of Gehenna, to say nothing of its native fiends the yugoloths, the party had well prepared in advance for the natural dangers before they’d planeshifted. Magically inured against the plane’s pernicious spiritual effects, likewise against fire, and collectively drifting several inches off of the ground, they faced only one pressing question on how to proceed, a question that Nisha posed as she stared up at Nimicri high above some thirty miles up in orbit.</p><p></p><p>“Soooooo,” Nisha quipped, staring up, “Do we fly or do we teleport?”</p><p></p><p>“That’s a bit of a distance up there.” Toras gave a dubious glance up at the moon.</p><p></p><p>“And that void isn’t empty.” Fyrehowl narrowed her eyes, her ears flat and laid back against her head. “I can see more than a few groups moving up there, circling Nimicri. Can’t make out much detail from this distance, but the approach is being watched and patrolled.”</p><p></p><p>“What are your thoughts Tristol?” Clueless asked. “Fly up invisibly? Risk a teleport?”</p><p></p><p>The aasimar pondered the situation, the chill wind off of the void whipping the edges of his robes while errant bursts of heat from the slopes behind him providing a contrast hinting at the danger they faced simply standing there moment by moment.</p><p></p><p>“It’s going to be difficult to keep us all invisible while we fly that distance from here up to Nimicri.” Tristol said, thinking out loud. “There’s no way we won’t end up having to fight our way through a flood of nycaloths or a bunch of arcanaloths.”</p><p></p><p>“Bring it.” Toras said bluntly.</p><p></p><p>“Ehhh…” Tristol shrugged. “We have no idea what’s even going on up there, so I hesitate to spend a ton of spells just in the process of setting foot on Nimicri.”</p><p></p><p>“So, we teleport?” Florian asked.</p><p></p><p>Tristol nodded, “Yeah, I think we at least make the attempt.”</p><p></p><p>With a softly whispered prayer to Mystra and a flicker of silverfire on his fingertips, Tristol cast the spell.</p><p></p><p>While the flickerflash of the teleport was immediate and normal, what happened next was not. Rather than a sudden chill followed by stepping out onto the streets of Nimicri, what instead occurred was a nauseating, discordant rush of sensations that wracked their immaterial minds and bodies alike. Rather than crossing the void in an instant, something at or about their target destination grabbed hold of them like a giant plucking a bird out of the air to shake it, painfully twist it for its own amusement, and then hurl it back into the sky, laughing.</p><p></p><p>When the nausea and pain had passed, the party lay scattered about on Chamada’s slopes over a disparate few acres separation at random, lucky to have been deposited back on solid ground and not immediate immersed in one of the many unceasing lava flows cascading down the slopes. One by one they came to their senses, shook off the pain of the experience and reconvened back whence they’d started.</p><p></p><p>“Ok…” Tristol caught his breath, his ears flat against his head as he and the others recovered from the experience. “That was distinctly unpleasant and to be perfectly honest, sort of what we should have expected. I figure it would have been worse if we’d tried to use a gate.”</p><p></p><p>“Alright then,” Clueless blinked and stared back up at the distant moon. “Now what?”</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shemeska, post: 8821834, member: 11697"] Toras rolled his eyes and took a long, preemptive swig from his mug. “Another invitation from esteemed and oh so mortal, Material Plane dwelling associate, Lord Abat?” Florian asked, mirroring Toras’s motion a split second after asking her question. They all knew the answer to the question before Clueless opened the envelope on Razor’s edge and unfolded the crisp stationary to lay the letter flat for all to read: [I]“Greetings my friends! I hope that our time spent apart since our last meeting within the Dire Wood has seen you hale and hearty. I myself have traveled quite far afield from whence we last communed. No doubt that you may have heard of the disruption of travel and trade upon the trade town of Nimicri.”[/I] “Surprise surprise…” Toras muttered. “The mimic city!” Nisha giggled with odd, perhaps misplaced delight. “The mimic city.” Tristol smiled and patted her head. The letter continued: [I]“Being as this matter is liable to have untold consequences on regional trade and transit, I should urge you my friends to take it upon yourselves to commence forthwith to Nimicri to see events therein for yourselves and discover the reasons for these most recent events. Your gracious associate, Lord Abat of Toril”[/I] “Laying it on thick, isn’t she?” Fyrehowl shook her head and downed a gulp of ale. “You could say that.” Clueless said, skimming over the letter a second time, “But now I’m genuinely interested.” “You weren’t interested before?” Florian asked. “No,” The bladesinger waved the letter in the air casually, “Before I was curious, with a heavy amount of ‘f*ck the yugoloths who are clearly up to their usual yugoloth f*ckery’ and a side of ‘how is any of this unusual for Gehenna?’” “That’s the thing though,” Fyrehowl remarked, “It is actually unusual for the ‘loths to so brazenly and so suddenly take action like this, and doubly so because it’s on Nimicri.” “Why is it so odd for Nimicri?” Florian asked. “Because the ‘loths have historically taken a very hands-off approach to the moon, or at least the appearance of being hands off.” The lupinal continued, “So there’s something afoot, otherwise they wouldn’t have taken action like this.” “To say nothing of our letter-writing friend having an interest and pushing us in that direction herself.” Clueless placed the letter down on the table, face up for all to review once more. Collectively they glanced around the room at one another, each gauging the mood, all of them coming to the same conclusion that yes, absolutely they needed to go to Nimicri. Nods were made, assent voiced, and not even a grumble of dissent to be heard before last drinks were poured and finished, preparations were made for their trip, and finally the group left together to find the nearest portal to the Outlands, there to planeshift to Gehenna. What they found there would rock their view of certain events that they’d taken part in when they’d first come together as a group. [CENTER]****[/CENTER] The tieflings that stood guard outside the private rooms within the Azure Iris where Shemeska the Marauder held private, as opposed to public court down in the Fortune’s Wheel below it, were really a well-dressed formality. Their presence, albeit a highly skilled and lethal presence, wasn’t the real power keeping the King of the Crosstrade safe from rivals. No, she alone and the centuries of layered wards she’d ensorcelled into place were the true danger that faced any would-be assassin. Still, the well-dressed rogues who flanked the door to her suite of chambers were there to deal with more common riffraff and act as intermediaries with those seeking any audience, cutting wheat from chaff for their mistress to deal with at a later, more convenient date, sometimes cutting wheat from chaff in a more literal, bloody manner if they mood struck them. The visitor who would promptly manifest in front of them however was not common in any capacity, riffraff or otherwise. “Good evening to you sir and to you madam, servitors of my most esteemed peer among the Yugoloth hierarchy the King of the Crosstrade!” The Grin manifested as an illusory smile suspended in mid-air, speaking a split second before becoming visible. It was a credit to their training that neither tiefling jerked in surprise or yelped in shock, but calmly moved hands to their sword belts and turned to glare at their visitor. “She’s occupied at present sirrah… madam… whichever you might be.” The tiefling on the left side of the door stumbled over the precise pronoun to use in planar common with which to address their visitor. They hadn’t stated as much, but both tieflings were well aware of The Grin and its complicated relationship with their Mistress. As an agent of the Tower in Gehenna, and more specifically a proxy at times for its master and sire Helekanalaith, its appearance was not altogether unknown, though it had been some time since it had directly appeared and requested an audience. Normally they suspected it would simply directly ask Shemeska herself by magic, rather than go through the formalities of actually showing up and asking them to ask her. Something was clearly up. The Grin moved the corners of its mouth up and down in a comical recapitulation of a shrug, “Any or all of those work.” They explain, “I’m not much on the specifics as you mortals are so fond of being locked into.” “As my partner said,” The tiefling on the right stated, “Her Fiendish Majesty is presently occupied.” Another ‘shrug’ from the Grin, “No doubt having her claws polished, fur brushed or waxed, by a servitor whose eyes she’d previously plucked out, depending on where the fur in question might be I suppose. Things of utmost importance surely.” Neither tiefling responded to the insinuation, even if the insinuation were liable to be true. Several long seconds passed. “You can go interrupt her and ask for me, or I can simply waltz through the door and ask her myself.” The Grin did as its namesake expression detailed, with a playful, sinister hint at the corners. “One moment.” The first tiefling turned and stepped inside, leaving her compatriot there in the hallway with the illusory visitor. [CENTER]****[/CENTER] “The Gehennan. He… she… they…” The tiefling, eyes directed pointedly downwards at the floor, fumbled with uncertainty as the visiting fiend hadn’t clarified the matter to any level of mortal specificity, “They’re out in the hallway. They request an audience with you.” The Marauder looked up from where she sat atop the back of one blind aasimar, legs crossed and one foot extended out for a second, similarly impaired aasimar to expertly polish and paint her claws seemingly based on feel and familiarity with the act and the anatomy alone. She rolled her eyes dramatically. “Of course, they would, now…” Sneering with equal drama she expanded her consciousness, feeling The Grin delicately probing at the layers of wards that surrounded her chambers in the Azure Iris. Of course, they weren’t actively seeking to intrude past them: it had become almost a formality over the past few centuries, a subtle knock on the proverbial door to go along with manifesting before her guards and verbalizing the request she already knew was coming. With a soft, dismissive snarl the Marauder kicked at the aasimar painting the claws on her feet, deftly and intentionally drawing blood. Standing up and leaned down, cradling the servitor’s injured face before licking the wound and pushing them to the ground like a crassly discarded but beloved doll. Standing back up and running a hand through her hair, straightening the tangle of razorvine atop her head, she looked back at the tiefling, who to their credit, had remained emotionless at the display of casual, pointless cruelty, “Let them in.” As the tiefling returned to the front door to admit her visitor, Shemeska stood up walked to an adjacent chamber and almost as an afterthought, she casually donned a green, silk robe to cover herself, to then sit upon a velvet-cushioned throne of hollyphant ivory. An arrogant smile playing across her muzzle, she relaxed and held out her right hand for the same blind servant who’d previously served as a chair now placed a lit cigarette holder in her hand. She lifted it to her painted lips and took a puff, ready to punctuate her guest’s arrival with a sneer and an exhaled stream of smoke. “Greetings Shemeska!” The Grin exclaimed as it manifested within the room, the barely-clothed arcanaloth before them blowing a stream of purple smoke through her front fangs. The illusory guest gave a polite, entirely performative cough from the welcome. “Took you long enough I suppose to bother showing up.” The Marauder said, smoke coiling up from her nostrils as she tapped the cigarette holder, sending a cascade of ashes to land upon the flesh of the attendant now sitting on the floor adjacent her throne. “We haven’t met face to face like this nearly often enough I admit.” The Grin smiled jovially. She rolled her eyes and blew another stream of smoke, arrogant as ever even when dealing with a nominal peer. Without any further banter she immediately launched into a stream of questions, demands really, but even as The Grin considered what to tell her, what to hide, and what to lie about, they couldn’t help but stare at the object she wore about her neck like some unholy talisman: the Shadow Sorceled Key. [CENTER] ****[/center] The transition was always stark when leaving Sigil by portal to one of the Lower Planes. It didn’t matter if one left the Lady’s Ward or the Hive, or ultimately stepped out into the Imperial Hell of Baator, the Darwinian nightmare of the Abyss, or the Unhallowed Desolation of the Waste, there was never a situation wherein the contrast didn’t metaphorically or literally suck the air from the lungs and dim the candlelight of the spirit. The party’s emergence into the Fourfold Furnace was no exception. The surface of Chamada was a vast and jagged, burning expanse of rock that seemed perpetually inclined at perilous angles and unstable, loose footing on those surfaces not actively flowing with molten rivers of magma pouring off and out into the void. At random intervals that almost seemed to deliberately target creatures crawling across the slopes, seemingly solid ground would erupt in massive showers of lava, casting a brilliant, fiery glow across a landscape of black basalt and other igneous rock. Certain eyes might have found the contrast beautiful, if not for the deadly and immediate peril it presented to travelers incapable of flight or themselves not immune to flame, let alone the damage posed by flying boulders or razor-sharp ballistic splinters of stone. Surrounded by such on the slopes of Chamada rather than the streets of Nimicri, normally they might have considered a gate, such was Tristol’s ability, but with a yugoloth embargo on Nimicri and the unknowns surrounding any magical protections to dissuade travel they thought better of the idea. Instead, they began with a planeshift to Chamada, there to stare up at the moon drifting like some lambent star tantalizingly out of reach to those upon the volcanic hellscape of the 2nd Furnace. Well aware of the native dangers of Gehenna, to say nothing of its native fiends the yugoloths, the party had well prepared in advance for the natural dangers before they’d planeshifted. Magically inured against the plane’s pernicious spiritual effects, likewise against fire, and collectively drifting several inches off of the ground, they faced only one pressing question on how to proceed, a question that Nisha posed as she stared up at Nimicri high above some thirty miles up in orbit. “Soooooo,” Nisha quipped, staring up, “Do we fly or do we teleport?” “That’s a bit of a distance up there.” Toras gave a dubious glance up at the moon. “And that void isn’t empty.” Fyrehowl narrowed her eyes, her ears flat and laid back against her head. “I can see more than a few groups moving up there, circling Nimicri. Can’t make out much detail from this distance, but the approach is being watched and patrolled.” “What are your thoughts Tristol?” Clueless asked. “Fly up invisibly? Risk a teleport?” The aasimar pondered the situation, the chill wind off of the void whipping the edges of his robes while errant bursts of heat from the slopes behind him providing a contrast hinting at the danger they faced simply standing there moment by moment. “It’s going to be difficult to keep us all invisible while we fly that distance from here up to Nimicri.” Tristol said, thinking out loud. “There’s no way we won’t end up having to fight our way through a flood of nycaloths or a bunch of arcanaloths.” “Bring it.” Toras said bluntly. “Ehhh…” Tristol shrugged. “We have no idea what’s even going on up there, so I hesitate to spend a ton of spells just in the process of setting foot on Nimicri.” “So, we teleport?” Florian asked. Tristol nodded, “Yeah, I think we at least make the attempt.” With a softly whispered prayer to Mystra and a flicker of silverfire on his fingertips, Tristol cast the spell. While the flickerflash of the teleport was immediate and normal, what happened next was not. Rather than a sudden chill followed by stepping out onto the streets of Nimicri, what instead occurred was a nauseating, discordant rush of sensations that wracked their immaterial minds and bodies alike. Rather than crossing the void in an instant, something at or about their target destination grabbed hold of them like a giant plucking a bird out of the air to shake it, painfully twist it for its own amusement, and then hurl it back into the sky, laughing. When the nausea and pain had passed, the party lay scattered about on Chamada’s slopes over a disparate few acres separation at random, lucky to have been deposited back on solid ground and not immediate immersed in one of the many unceasing lava flows cascading down the slopes. One by one they came to their senses, shook off the pain of the experience and reconvened back whence they’d started. “Ok…” Tristol caught his breath, his ears flat against his head as he and the others recovered from the experience. “That was distinctly unpleasant and to be perfectly honest, sort of what we should have expected. I figure it would have been worse if we’d tried to use a gate.” “Alright then,” Clueless blinked and stared back up at the distant moon. “Now what?” [center]****[/center] [/QUOTE]
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Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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