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<blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 4267739" data-attributes="member: 11697"><p style="text-align: center">***</p><p></p><p></p><p> He felt as if he were falling, and he felt cold -bitterly cold- if only for a split second. A sudden impact forced the air from his lungs and he gasped for breath as he roughly collapsed on a hard, dirty stone surface.</p><p></p><p> <em>Where the hell am I?!</em> was the only coherent thought in his mind as his lungs refilled with air, but he never had the chance to vocalize them either as a rag was roughly forced into his mouth. Still in shock, he barely struggled as he felt a pair of hands grab his arms and begin to tie them together with rope; he also dimly felt a dozen other things pulling at his clothing and legs -cold and inhuman like cold tentacles- constraining his movements as those same hands did their work.</p><p></p><p> For a moment after he was fully bound, there was only silence as his captor must have paused and looked down with content satisfaction. But that was soon over and he heard the crunch of leather boots on loose gravel and then the muttered words of a cantrip as a globe of light flickered into being just overheard.</p><p></p><p> A small cave. The rock was the same color and consistency of the crag. He hadn’t been moved far at all. No smell on the air, no sign of habitation, and no obvious evidence of the tanar’ri that had just attacked the camp. Who the hell then had…</p><p></p><p> Then, without preamble, as simple as that, his captor crouched down in front of him and leaned forwards into the light. It wasn’t a face he’d been expecting.</p><p></p><p> “Hello.”</p><p></p><p>Jalo’s eyes went wide as his captor whispered a phrase and smiled as magic touched both of their minds, linking them telepathically. Gagged and bound as he was, the sage’s thoughts were of shock and terror.</p><p></p><p><em>They’ll see you missing! They’ll see me missing! They’ll come find me and they’ll stop you! What the f*ck is wrong with you?!</em></p><p></p><p>“No, no they won’t.” His captor said with an incongruously pleasant smile. “They’ll just assume that one of the tanar’ri killed you and dragged your body away to devour. They won’t give it a passing thought, and by the time anyone would even consider raising you from the dead… things will have changed.”</p><p></p><p><em>They’ll suspect you immediately. Walking away during the middle of an attack like that?! They’ll stop you.</em></p><p></p><p>“No they won’t.” He said, chiding softly and clicking his tongue. “You see, I’m not missing at all.”</p><p></p><p><em>What?</em> Confusion crossed the captive’s face even as he continued to struggle.</p><p></p><p>A soft hiss of metal on leather cut the silence as the sage inched back against the wall and squealed as his tormentor knelt before him. He expected death to come quickly as the man held up a slender blade, but that would have been merciful. Instead of gutting him then and there, the man smirked… and calmly severed one of his own fingers.</p><p></p><p>Not a flinch. No hesitation. No blood.</p><p></p><p>Falling to the ground, the severed finger immediately began to melt, dissolving into a slurry of ice, rapidly bleeding away its form and color.</p><p></p><p><em>Simulacrum…</em> His thoughts raced and his heart sank. They wouldn’t miss him at all, because he was probably there in the thick of things, obviously present. </p><p></p><p>“And that is why they won’t suspect a thing.”</p><p></p><p> He let his words sink in for a long, silent minute, and simply stared at his captive, calmly reading the surface thoughts as they bubbled forth. Desperation and fear were the primary flavors, but as the man looked into his eyes and the yawning void behind those windows into the soul, the little self-contained bubbles of thoughts and emotions shifted like an outgoing tide into sadness, resignation, and memories of home and family.</p><p></p><p> <em>Why are you doing this?</em></p><p></p><p> “You aren’t the first, and you won’t be the last.” He answered as he leaned forward and began to inscribe a deft series of symbols into the ground in preparation for the coming ritual. “More of the others will die in the coming days, snuffed in the name of my master as I prepare myself to enact his will in this world. I am not yet worthy of his presence, nor his full gifts.”</p><p></p><p> Confusion again mixed with sorrow, and that latter emotion angered him. That sense of sorrow and self-pity was too close a reminder of his own situation, but that would soon end. Perhaps as soon as this next death he would be free of his anchorstone of mortal frailty and morality. There was only one way to determine if it would be so soon, or if others would die for that purpose –as opposed to having entirely meaningless deaths-</p><p></p><p> Jalo glanced down at the symbols his captor was so carefully inscribing in the dirt. He recognized some of them: odd versions of abyssal and infernal, or perhaps a root tongue of them both. But there were also letters he couldn’t read. Now that wasn’t to say that he didn’t understand what they meant -Jalo could read a dozen languages- rather it was that his eyes couldn’t focus on the letters themselves. At the core of the fiendish script was a block of text that his mind simply refused to recognize. It was difficult to explain because he saw it, he just couldn’t describe it as anything distinct. It was like trying to describe what your eyes observed when looking over the edge of Sigil’s ring. There were letters and words, but beyond that, nothing more could be said.</p><p></p><p>“There is nothing to distract me now. Not for the moment at least.” He finally said, having finished the last of his scribbling in the dirt. “My hesitation, my humanity, my conscience… it will not save you. I am progressing beyond its power you see, becoming what the whisperer says that I must become. It is not enough to wait for the signs.”</p><p></p><p> <em>The Whisperer?</em> What was he talking about? Surely the poor fool had gone mad from the plane’s howling winds.</p><p></p><p> He chuckled softly and shook his head. “Oh no. No no no. That which calls to me I made my pact with long ago, years before now. It spoke to me in Gehenna, or more specifically, a piece of Hades ripped from its proper place -in every meaning of the word- and deposited there in an exiled solitude of ice and ashes. Pandemonium has nothing to do with this. Pandemonium in only the incidental backdrop to my worship of It.”</p><p></p><p> Jalo’s features didn’t change. He still clearly thought that madness had gone to the man’s head, rather than any sort of secret pact with some god or fiend. If it was madness, he could feel pity and he could forgive, even though he was going to die regardless.</p><p></p><p> “Keep your pity to yourself.” The man said with knowing contempt. “Believe me or not Jalo, you will see my Lord revealed to you before you die.”</p><p></p><p> He smiled down at his captive and whispered an indistinct phrase. To Jalo it still sounded like the ramblings of a madman, and indeed nothing happened at first. A full minute passed and still nothing, but then Jalo realized –as his breath turned to glittered fog- that the temperature had dropped precipitously in a manner of seconds.</p><p></p><p>“And now my friend,” His captor said with a coldly welcoming smile. “Listen as it speaks through me.”</p><p></p><p>Then, like demons called by a summoner’s hand, the air seethed with movement and the lantern flame guttered and dimmed, touched by an immaterial wind, throwing off dozens of erratic, shifting shadows on the cave’s walls. Fingers and hands of darkness, tendrils of shadow, fangs and teeth as black as the void of Agathys reached for their sacrifice…</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">***</p><p></p><p></p><p> The camp was a shambles in the aftermath of the tanar’ri attack. Tents and their contents were scattered –two of them burned to cinders by the campfires when they collapsed- , the bodies of four mortals lay in repose, covered by tarps, and many more tanar’ri lay piled together in a bubbling, dissolving mess near the edge of camp. Three more men were still missing, either hiding or carried away by one of the fleeing demons when the tide of combat had turned against them.</p><p></p><p> “This is hideous.” One of the sages remarked as he removed a partially eaten body from underneath a fiend’s corpse.</p><p></p><p> “And damn this smells.” Frollis said, wincing as he hurled a spade-full of dirt over the slowly dissolving corpse of the vrock, now free of any entangled human remains.</p><p></p><p> “Have some respect.” Settys said to the rogue with a pronounced frown.</p><p></p><p> “I do you moralizing twit.” Frollis shot back. “I’ve been helping shovel tanar’ri guts for the past hour so it wouldn’t disturb anyone else as it spontaneously caught on fire or belched out insects. If I’d been disrespectful I’d be acting like there wasn’t anything wrong. I’m being surly and practical like I usually am.”</p><p></p><p> Settys said nothing and looked away.</p><p></p><p> “It could have been a whole hell of a lot worse.” Tristol said as he whispered another cantrip to try to dull the smell and clean up as much of the spattered blood as possible.</p><p></p><p> “I’m not entirely sure how.” Another man said with a sigh. He’d lost a friend in the first few moments of the attack. Even though resurrection was a possibility, even the most jaded of men couldn’t stomach the knowledge of the sort of pain a deceased companion went through before they expired.</p><p></p><p> “Don’t look despondent yet.” Florian said, with Fyrehowl and Nisha nodding in agreement.</p><p></p><p> “I’ve lost men before.” Doran lamented. “But it’s still hard. And this.”</p><p>The elf gestured to the ruined camp. “This was senseless. We’ve made little progress to show for the people who… damnit…”</p><p></p><p> As used to picking on the elf as he was, up on his master’s shoulder, Ficklebarb gave him a sympathetic look. “Don’t be so sad Doran. It was really rough in Carceri too, and still, things turned out well in the end. We can clean stuff up, and maybe bring folks back when we’re done? Can we do that?”</p><p></p><p> “Usually.” The man who’d lost a comrade remarked. “But not always. Even with magic and even with priests, death isn’t something to trivialize.”</p><p></p><p> The comment was as accurate as it was sobering, and wise or not, it cast a momentary pall over them all.</p><p></p><p> “As long as we don’t wait too long, and as long as we have something even so small as a fingernail from their pinky finger, we should be able to bring them back.” Nisha chirped. </p><p></p><p> All eyes turned to the Xaositect, never previously known as any sort of expert on raising the dead, or clerical magic at all.</p><p></p><p>“You know, speaking as a person who never cast a single prayer in her life, even by accident…” She said as the tips of her ears went a shade red. “But I know clerics! Like Florian, and Settys, and maybe Skalliska, and that one frumpy cleric of Tyr who called me a rotten dirty heretic a few years ago. Didn’t get along with her all that well, and she didn’t particularly care for the mural we decided to draw in her chapel, but that’s neither here nor now.”</p><p></p><p> She paused. “What was I talking about again?”</p><p></p><p> Tristol patted her on the head.</p><p></p><p> “It hasn’t been too long right?” Ficklebarb said, like a small child trying to rationalize the death of a pet they’d been told had “joined the circus”. “We can pay a priest to bring them back to life. They didn’t get turned to stone, or turned into zombies, or anything like that. It’s not too late is it?”</p><p></p><p> Leobtav rubbed the pseudodragon’s head. “We’ll do everything we can. And with Florian and Settys here, we can do it even before we have camp put back together.”</p><p></p><p> “Really?” Ficklebarb lifted his head up and turned a smile in the two clerics’ direction.</p><p></p><p>All said, the tiny drake seemed pretty torn up by having watched the worst of the attack as it happened, and he looked physically drained by it all: his wingtips drooped ever so slightly, his eyes were a bit rheumy, and his tail a little less active than it had been before the attack.</p><p></p><p> “We’ll do our best.” Florian said. “I promise.”</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p> Twenty minutes later, they had the least damaged body laid on a table in one of the repaired tents. A sheet covered most of the corpse to prevent any of the obvious wounds from showing, but the face was visible and with the mouth opened and eyes pressed shut, they almost looked as if they were sleeping.</p><p></p><p> Settys dabbed a stylus in a small vial of ink and delicately painted the elaborate pictograms of his religion across the corpse’s forehead, writing their name within a cartouche and invoking the names of Anubis, Osiris, Nephthys, and Thoth in calling their soul back from the light of Heliopolis.</p><p></p><p> The cleric/paladin lit incense and whispered a prayer as he proceeded through each stage of the ritual, calling the dead man’s name and asking each of his pantheon’s gods to shepherd the soul back to a restored physical body, watching over the man’s spirit as it made its journey back to the flesh. The ritual was elaborate, precise, and respectful, but as he spoke the last words of the prayer and closed the corpse’s mouth as the spirit should have made its way back into the body, absolutely nothing happened.</p><p></p><p> Settys sighed and looked away as Florian gave him a confused look.</p><p></p><p> “What happened?” She asked, perplexed that he hadn’t been able to bring the man back to life. The damage to the corpse was heavy –they’d been almost completely disemboweled- but it was entirely mundane rather than magical.</p><p></p><p> “Their manner of death seems to preclude my ability.” Settys lamented. “That, or they refused to return.”</p><p></p><p>Ficklebarb frowned and a tear whelmed up in one of his eyes.</p><p></p><p>“Would you please attempt Florian?” Settys asked as he stepped to one side, giving the tiny pseudodragon a look of sympathy. “You’re capable of channeling your deity on a stronger level than I am. You might succeed where I failed.”</p><p></p><p> “Please try?” Ficklebarb asked. “Please?”</p><p></p><p> She couldn’t say no to that, and on another level entirely she had good reason to try on her own as well. But those questions were rapidly pushed to the back of her mind as she nodded and prepared to enact her own ritual of casting.</p><p></p><p> “I’ll do my best Ficklebarb.” She said, smiling at him.</p><p></p><p>At the conclusion of her own ritual, Florian felt the spark of divine magic flow through her body, invoked by her prayers to Tempus. She felt it flow into the corpse and as it always was, she waited for the body to become whole and the man to open his eyes. She felt it enter the corpse, but it was like pouring water down a drain. The deific blessing simply vanished, wasted and gone without having taken effect. Sometimes the lower planes or a corpse’s manner of death precluded a simple spell to raise the dead, but she had enough experience to know when that was the case, or when a dead man’s soul simply refused to return. Neither of those was the case at present though, and what she felt –or didn’t feel- sent a chill down her spine.</p><p></p><p> Settys looked at the corpse and then to her.</p><p></p><p>“We might not be able to bring them back till we’re no longer in Pandemonium.” Florian said, lying about what had actually happened. “It’s going to take a more powerful priest. But for the moment, we can keep the bodies in repose and safe from decomposition.”</p><p></p><p> Ficklebarb sniffled, but seemed to understand that all would be better once they left the plane. He didn’t catch her lie, nor her extreme worry at what had actually happened.</p><p></p><p>“Inepwt preserve.” Settys whispered reverently, passing a hand over the dead man’s eyes and closing their lids.</p><p></p><p>Florian looked at the other cleric and looked at him hard. His prayers had been genuine, the words inflected properly, and his gestures appropriate for what she knew of the Egyptian priesthood, but his spell had never manifested. Like a farmer performing an archmage’s gestures and words, expecting to invoke a meteor shower, he’d faithfully aped the magic, but there hadn’t been any power invoked by his actions. What the hell? She wasn’t sure what to make of it, and as she thought about it, she hadn’t actually seen Settys cast a single spell that wasn’t invoked from an item since they’d been in Pandemonium. Combined with the grotesque failure of her own magic, it wasn’t the time to ask, or say anything in public, but she’d be damn sure to keep her eyes on him.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shemeska, post: 4267739, member: 11697"] [center]***[/center] He felt as if he were falling, and he felt cold -bitterly cold- if only for a split second. A sudden impact forced the air from his lungs and he gasped for breath as he roughly collapsed on a hard, dirty stone surface. [i]Where the hell am I?![/i] was the only coherent thought in his mind as his lungs refilled with air, but he never had the chance to vocalize them either as a rag was roughly forced into his mouth. Still in shock, he barely struggled as he felt a pair of hands grab his arms and begin to tie them together with rope; he also dimly felt a dozen other things pulling at his clothing and legs -cold and inhuman like cold tentacles- constraining his movements as those same hands did their work. For a moment after he was fully bound, there was only silence as his captor must have paused and looked down with content satisfaction. But that was soon over and he heard the crunch of leather boots on loose gravel and then the muttered words of a cantrip as a globe of light flickered into being just overheard. A small cave. The rock was the same color and consistency of the crag. He hadn’t been moved far at all. No smell on the air, no sign of habitation, and no obvious evidence of the tanar’ri that had just attacked the camp. Who the hell then had… Then, without preamble, as simple as that, his captor crouched down in front of him and leaned forwards into the light. It wasn’t a face he’d been expecting. “Hello.” Jalo’s eyes went wide as his captor whispered a phrase and smiled as magic touched both of their minds, linking them telepathically. Gagged and bound as he was, the sage’s thoughts were of shock and terror. [i]They’ll see you missing! They’ll see me missing! They’ll come find me and they’ll stop you! What the f*ck is wrong with you?![/i] “No, no they won’t.” His captor said with an incongruously pleasant smile. “They’ll just assume that one of the tanar’ri killed you and dragged your body away to devour. They won’t give it a passing thought, and by the time anyone would even consider raising you from the dead… things will have changed.” [i]They’ll suspect you immediately. Walking away during the middle of an attack like that?! They’ll stop you.[/i] “No they won’t.” He said, chiding softly and clicking his tongue. “You see, I’m not missing at all.” [i]What?[/i] Confusion crossed the captive’s face even as he continued to struggle. A soft hiss of metal on leather cut the silence as the sage inched back against the wall and squealed as his tormentor knelt before him. He expected death to come quickly as the man held up a slender blade, but that would have been merciful. Instead of gutting him then and there, the man smirked… and calmly severed one of his own fingers. Not a flinch. No hesitation. No blood. Falling to the ground, the severed finger immediately began to melt, dissolving into a slurry of ice, rapidly bleeding away its form and color. [i]Simulacrum…[/i] His thoughts raced and his heart sank. They wouldn’t miss him at all, because he was probably there in the thick of things, obviously present. “And that is why they won’t suspect a thing.” He let his words sink in for a long, silent minute, and simply stared at his captive, calmly reading the surface thoughts as they bubbled forth. Desperation and fear were the primary flavors, but as the man looked into his eyes and the yawning void behind those windows into the soul, the little self-contained bubbles of thoughts and emotions shifted like an outgoing tide into sadness, resignation, and memories of home and family. [i]Why are you doing this?[/i] “You aren’t the first, and you won’t be the last.” He answered as he leaned forward and began to inscribe a deft series of symbols into the ground in preparation for the coming ritual. “More of the others will die in the coming days, snuffed in the name of my master as I prepare myself to enact his will in this world. I am not yet worthy of his presence, nor his full gifts.” Confusion again mixed with sorrow, and that latter emotion angered him. That sense of sorrow and self-pity was too close a reminder of his own situation, but that would soon end. Perhaps as soon as this next death he would be free of his anchorstone of mortal frailty and morality. There was only one way to determine if it would be so soon, or if others would die for that purpose –as opposed to having entirely meaningless deaths- Jalo glanced down at the symbols his captor was so carefully inscribing in the dirt. He recognized some of them: odd versions of abyssal and infernal, or perhaps a root tongue of them both. But there were also letters he couldn’t read. Now that wasn’t to say that he didn’t understand what they meant -Jalo could read a dozen languages- rather it was that his eyes couldn’t focus on the letters themselves. At the core of the fiendish script was a block of text that his mind simply refused to recognize. It was difficult to explain because he saw it, he just couldn’t describe it as anything distinct. It was like trying to describe what your eyes observed when looking over the edge of Sigil’s ring. There were letters and words, but beyond that, nothing more could be said. “There is nothing to distract me now. Not for the moment at least.” He finally said, having finished the last of his scribbling in the dirt. “My hesitation, my humanity, my conscience… it will not save you. I am progressing beyond its power you see, becoming what the whisperer says that I must become. It is not enough to wait for the signs.” [i]The Whisperer?[/i] What was he talking about? Surely the poor fool had gone mad from the plane’s howling winds. He chuckled softly and shook his head. “Oh no. No no no. That which calls to me I made my pact with long ago, years before now. It spoke to me in Gehenna, or more specifically, a piece of Hades ripped from its proper place -in every meaning of the word- and deposited there in an exiled solitude of ice and ashes. Pandemonium has nothing to do with this. Pandemonium in only the incidental backdrop to my worship of It.” Jalo’s features didn’t change. He still clearly thought that madness had gone to the man’s head, rather than any sort of secret pact with some god or fiend. If it was madness, he could feel pity and he could forgive, even though he was going to die regardless. “Keep your pity to yourself.” The man said with knowing contempt. “Believe me or not Jalo, you will see my Lord revealed to you before you die.” He smiled down at his captive and whispered an indistinct phrase. To Jalo it still sounded like the ramblings of a madman, and indeed nothing happened at first. A full minute passed and still nothing, but then Jalo realized –as his breath turned to glittered fog- that the temperature had dropped precipitously in a manner of seconds. “And now my friend,” His captor said with a coldly welcoming smile. “Listen as it speaks through me.” Then, like demons called by a summoner’s hand, the air seethed with movement and the lantern flame guttered and dimmed, touched by an immaterial wind, throwing off dozens of erratic, shifting shadows on the cave’s walls. Fingers and hands of darkness, tendrils of shadow, fangs and teeth as black as the void of Agathys reached for their sacrifice… [center]***[/center] The camp was a shambles in the aftermath of the tanar’ri attack. Tents and their contents were scattered –two of them burned to cinders by the campfires when they collapsed- , the bodies of four mortals lay in repose, covered by tarps, and many more tanar’ri lay piled together in a bubbling, dissolving mess near the edge of camp. Three more men were still missing, either hiding or carried away by one of the fleeing demons when the tide of combat had turned against them. “This is hideous.” One of the sages remarked as he removed a partially eaten body from underneath a fiend’s corpse. “And damn this smells.” Frollis said, wincing as he hurled a spade-full of dirt over the slowly dissolving corpse of the vrock, now free of any entangled human remains. “Have some respect.” Settys said to the rogue with a pronounced frown. “I do you moralizing twit.” Frollis shot back. “I’ve been helping shovel tanar’ri guts for the past hour so it wouldn’t disturb anyone else as it spontaneously caught on fire or belched out insects. If I’d been disrespectful I’d be acting like there wasn’t anything wrong. I’m being surly and practical like I usually am.” Settys said nothing and looked away. “It could have been a whole hell of a lot worse.” Tristol said as he whispered another cantrip to try to dull the smell and clean up as much of the spattered blood as possible. “I’m not entirely sure how.” Another man said with a sigh. He’d lost a friend in the first few moments of the attack. Even though resurrection was a possibility, even the most jaded of men couldn’t stomach the knowledge of the sort of pain a deceased companion went through before they expired. “Don’t look despondent yet.” Florian said, with Fyrehowl and Nisha nodding in agreement. “I’ve lost men before.” Doran lamented. “But it’s still hard. And this.” The elf gestured to the ruined camp. “This was senseless. We’ve made little progress to show for the people who… damnit…” As used to picking on the elf as he was, up on his master’s shoulder, Ficklebarb gave him a sympathetic look. “Don’t be so sad Doran. It was really rough in Carceri too, and still, things turned out well in the end. We can clean stuff up, and maybe bring folks back when we’re done? Can we do that?” “Usually.” The man who’d lost a comrade remarked. “But not always. Even with magic and even with priests, death isn’t something to trivialize.” The comment was as accurate as it was sobering, and wise or not, it cast a momentary pall over them all. “As long as we don’t wait too long, and as long as we have something even so small as a fingernail from their pinky finger, we should be able to bring them back.” Nisha chirped. All eyes turned to the Xaositect, never previously known as any sort of expert on raising the dead, or clerical magic at all. “You know, speaking as a person who never cast a single prayer in her life, even by accident…” She said as the tips of her ears went a shade red. “But I know clerics! Like Florian, and Settys, and maybe Skalliska, and that one frumpy cleric of Tyr who called me a rotten dirty heretic a few years ago. Didn’t get along with her all that well, and she didn’t particularly care for the mural we decided to draw in her chapel, but that’s neither here nor now.” She paused. “What was I talking about again?” Tristol patted her on the head. “It hasn’t been too long right?” Ficklebarb said, like a small child trying to rationalize the death of a pet they’d been told had “joined the circus”. “We can pay a priest to bring them back to life. They didn’t get turned to stone, or turned into zombies, or anything like that. It’s not too late is it?” Leobtav rubbed the pseudodragon’s head. “We’ll do everything we can. And with Florian and Settys here, we can do it even before we have camp put back together.” “Really?” Ficklebarb lifted his head up and turned a smile in the two clerics’ direction. All said, the tiny drake seemed pretty torn up by having watched the worst of the attack as it happened, and he looked physically drained by it all: his wingtips drooped ever so slightly, his eyes were a bit rheumy, and his tail a little less active than it had been before the attack. “We’ll do our best.” Florian said. “I promise.” [center]****[/center] Twenty minutes later, they had the least damaged body laid on a table in one of the repaired tents. A sheet covered most of the corpse to prevent any of the obvious wounds from showing, but the face was visible and with the mouth opened and eyes pressed shut, they almost looked as if they were sleeping. Settys dabbed a stylus in a small vial of ink and delicately painted the elaborate pictograms of his religion across the corpse’s forehead, writing their name within a cartouche and invoking the names of Anubis, Osiris, Nephthys, and Thoth in calling their soul back from the light of Heliopolis. The cleric/paladin lit incense and whispered a prayer as he proceeded through each stage of the ritual, calling the dead man’s name and asking each of his pantheon’s gods to shepherd the soul back to a restored physical body, watching over the man’s spirit as it made its journey back to the flesh. The ritual was elaborate, precise, and respectful, but as he spoke the last words of the prayer and closed the corpse’s mouth as the spirit should have made its way back into the body, absolutely nothing happened. Settys sighed and looked away as Florian gave him a confused look. “What happened?” She asked, perplexed that he hadn’t been able to bring the man back to life. The damage to the corpse was heavy –they’d been almost completely disemboweled- but it was entirely mundane rather than magical. “Their manner of death seems to preclude my ability.” Settys lamented. “That, or they refused to return.” Ficklebarb frowned and a tear whelmed up in one of his eyes. “Would you please attempt Florian?” Settys asked as he stepped to one side, giving the tiny pseudodragon a look of sympathy. “You’re capable of channeling your deity on a stronger level than I am. You might succeed where I failed.” “Please try?” Ficklebarb asked. “Please?” She couldn’t say no to that, and on another level entirely she had good reason to try on her own as well. But those questions were rapidly pushed to the back of her mind as she nodded and prepared to enact her own ritual of casting. “I’ll do my best Ficklebarb.” She said, smiling at him. At the conclusion of her own ritual, Florian felt the spark of divine magic flow through her body, invoked by her prayers to Tempus. She felt it flow into the corpse and as it always was, she waited for the body to become whole and the man to open his eyes. She felt it enter the corpse, but it was like pouring water down a drain. The deific blessing simply vanished, wasted and gone without having taken effect. Sometimes the lower planes or a corpse’s manner of death precluded a simple spell to raise the dead, but she had enough experience to know when that was the case, or when a dead man’s soul simply refused to return. Neither of those was the case at present though, and what she felt –or didn’t feel- sent a chill down her spine. Settys looked at the corpse and then to her. “We might not be able to bring them back till we’re no longer in Pandemonium.” Florian said, lying about what had actually happened. “It’s going to take a more powerful priest. But for the moment, we can keep the bodies in repose and safe from decomposition.” Ficklebarb sniffled, but seemed to understand that all would be better once they left the plane. He didn’t catch her lie, nor her extreme worry at what had actually happened. “Inepwt preserve.” Settys whispered reverently, passing a hand over the dead man’s eyes and closing their lids. Florian looked at the other cleric and looked at him hard. His prayers had been genuine, the words inflected properly, and his gestures appropriate for what she knew of the Egyptian priesthood, but his spell had never manifested. Like a farmer performing an archmage’s gestures and words, expecting to invoke a meteor shower, he’d faithfully aped the magic, but there hadn’t been any power invoked by his actions. What the hell? She wasn’t sure what to make of it, and as she thought about it, she hadn’t actually seen Settys cast a single spell that wasn’t invoked from an item since they’d been in Pandemonium. Combined with the grotesque failure of her own magic, it wasn’t the time to ask, or say anything in public, but she’d be damn sure to keep her eyes on him. [center]****[/center] [/QUOTE]
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Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour (Updated 29 Jan 2014)
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