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Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour (Updated 29 Jan 2014)
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<blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 6243719" data-attributes="member: 11697"><p>Frollis Terpense shivered in the darkness. A single tiny figure swallowed up within the gloom that itself swallowed up Howler's Crag. The darkness did not judge. The darkness did not condemn. The darkness did not point out one's failures and mock you. The darkness was something between a lover's kiss and a pillow there to smother and end the pain.</p><p></p><p>"I couldn't help them." His fingers fumbled as he reached into one of the small satchels at his belt. "I try to seek justice, but it's just to forgive myself for my own failures. And now here I am again, hiding in the shadows, too afraid to pray, and probably hastening my end more than calming my nerves."</p><p></p><p>Yet the darkness now didn't seem right. Even to a being touched by the hand of the god of thieves himself, one whose touch could part and slip along the subtle essence of Shadow like a raptor riding a thermal high in the air, he didn't feel safe. Something was out there. It was something that mocked his abilities, and that something, it terrified him.</p><p></p><p>"F*ck this..." His fingers fidgeted with the object in his hands, shaking both from worry and for other reasons entirely. "This'll be the death of me, or something else, but at least I'll die happy in this black, shrieking hell. I..."</p><p></p><p>Immediately behind him came the sound of a boot on loose gravel. Normally he would have acted without thought, either diving into the border Shadow for a few yards, or simply rolling out of the way, spinning up to his feet and drawing one or both of his blades on his attacker. But not this time. Lost in his thoughts and with his hands already occupied, the shadowdancer did nothing but look up into the looming form, glaring eyes, and gleaming khopesh of Settys al Khilian.</p><p></p><p>"Die!"</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p>Flattening his wings and gliding silently through the darkness, Clueless slowed his descent, deftly avoiding the most errant bursts of howling wind as he touched down between a series of boulders. Razor was already drawn and ready in his right hand, eager to taste the blood of the mortal abomination who had prayed upon the innocent and mocked them each and every time.</p><p></p><p>“There you are you son of a bitch…” He watched in the black and white hues of darkvision as the shadowdancer crouched over something, mumbling to himself. </p><p></p><p>Whatever Frollis was doing, the game was up, and he would not escape. Razor would cleave his head from his corpse and Pandemonium’s wailing would serve as his only funeral dirge. There would be no tears for one such as him.</p><p></p><p>That of course was the half-fey’s intent before not one but two figures burst out of the darkness.</p><p></p><p>“Oh what the hell!?”</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p>Toras neither crept silently across the rubble-strewn landscape, nor flew, nor slipped through the border Shadow – he moved like a force of nature, resolute, unstoppable, and utterly undeterred by wind, darkness, fear, and uncertainty. Too many lives had been lost. Too many innocents had been sacrificed to whatever insanity or dark powers the false priest allowed to dictate his actions.</p><p></p><p>Ten yards ahead, he watched as Settys stood with his khopesh at the ready. But he wasn’t running or hiding, he was moving carefully and purposefully, but for what reason he couldn’t discern.</p><p></p><p>“What the hell are you doing?” Toras brandished his own blade as he watched the fallen cleric burst into motion. Whatever it was, he had to be stopped.</p><p></p><p>“HALT!”</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p>"AAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!" Frollis shrieked like a wounded child, making no effort to defend himself, crouched as he was, hands clutching not a ritual knife, not a mutilated corpse, not an evil artifact, but a cup of hot water mixed with the unmistakable silvery blue crystals of powdered dreammist.</p><p></p><p>Settys' eyes went wide, his expression wilted from a furious scowl to a confused, conflicted wince, and moments before it would have separated Frollis' head from his shoulders, its swing adjusted and purposefully missed.</p><p></p><p>Just a few yards past Frollis, Clueless stood with his sword drawn and a puzzled look on his face. To his right, Toras likewise drew his blade, looking as equally confused as his bladesinger companion.</p><p></p><p>"You are not him." Settys glanced away from the addict at his feet to Toras and Clueless. Both of them exchanged glances between each other, Settys, and Frollis, all of them equally puzzled.</p><p></p><p>“Why the hell are you here?” Clueless called out to Frollis, not yet lowering his sword.</p><p></p><p>“Why the hell are –you– here?” Toras glanced at Clueless and then to Settys.</p><p></p><p>“I came to kill Frollis.” Clueless explained.</p><p></p><p>“Why the heck would you do that?” Toras asked, “Settys is the killer.”</p><p></p><p>“Settys?” Clueless frowned. “Why the hell would you think that?”</p><p></p><p>The three of them paused, sighed, and glanced at Frollis and then at one another. Their stances relaxed and soft curses were muttered. They’d all been wrong. None of them was the killer.</p><p></p><p>“If Nisha was here she’d find this funny.” Clueless frowned. “I swore that it was Frollis.”</p><p></p><p>“I was convinced that Frollis was the murderer as well. Toras apparently thought that it was me.” Settys hung his khopesh from his belt, nodding his head towards Frollis. “The only blood on my hands would have been his if either of you had been a moment later. I’m thankful to not have killed an innocent man.”</p><p></p><p>Frollis whimpered, eyes full of shame. “I just needed to get high…”</p><p></p><p>Clueless put his palm across his face. “That’s why you’ve been sneaking away from camp on your own? That’s why you’ve been wandering away from your guard duty at random? Son of a…”</p><p></p><p>“I’ve had this problem before.” Frollis clutched the mug of steaming drugs tightly. “I got better. I truly did. But it’s hard to completely divorce yourself from it, and the past week here has been too much. People keep dying that I’m being paid to protect, and I don’t have a damn clue who it is that’s butchering them! I failed them! I failed everyone!”</p><p></p><p>“It isn’t any of us here. You haven’t failed them yet. We can still avenge them.” Settys lamented, putting a hand on Frollis’s shoulder. “We should get…”</p><p></p><p>The fallen cleric’s voice trailed off and his head turned up and to the side. In the distance, high atop Howler’s Crag there was a flicker of light. Someone was there.</p><p></p><p>“I saw it too.” Clueless glanced at the others, seeing that they too had noticed it as well.</p><p></p><p>They all looked up into the gloom, knowing that whoever was there was likely the murderer that they’d each come looking to find.</p><p></p><p>Frollis sighed and hurled the mug in his hands into the darkness. Settys smiled and helped him to his feet.</p><p></p><p>“Let’s get back to camp, gather the others, and head up the Crag. Let’s end this as soon as we can and then get our people out of here.” </p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">***</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The man smiled and looked up at his handiwork. She was so beautiful now. Blade and magic had freed her from the constraints of life and flesh. A spirit of freedom and inspiration, the lillend should have thanked him for his gift. But no, she’d screaming and writhed through it all, even if only with a frenzied twitching of her eyes once he’d severed her spine to ease his work.</p><p></p><p>“So beautiful…” The blade in his hand was wet with blood, though so was he, having painted with the colors she’d supplied. Even now, so close to finishing his task he could not help displaying his handiwork in such an artistic fashion.</p><p></p><p>He smiled as his conscience whimpered and wept. His work, now hung from the walls of the cave near the sample of Gautish was wonderful, and he too felt wonderful, accomplished, free of morality and free of regret. It reminded him of the last time he’d felt such. But that was many years before and on a different plane altogether. Those years in Hopeless, the Gatetown to the Waste had been special.</p><p></p><p>“They’d called it The Charnel House when they pried open the doors and looked inside.” He snickered and looked behind him. “We made them feel, didn’t we? To sink the hearts of the apathetic, to make them fear, to make them worry… oh that was something.”</p><p></p><p>His finger reached out to write another line upon the wall and he looked up into the lillend’s glassy eyes. “I could have been free Laril, but no, I had to regress. I had to return to normality. I had to pass among the sacral lambs.”</p><p></p><p>He had gone too far then. He was needed in the future, this current moment, and for this to come to pass he’d had to pacify himself, return to society, reintegrate himself into its fold, and the voice of his Master had been distant and remote. The further away it was, the easier it was to be his original self, but the process had spawned his conscience as a thing of its own. It had tried to reassert itself, perched upon his shoulder, seeking to block out…</p><p></p><p>His thoughts paused immediately from self-indulgent memory as he felt a new set of claws upon him. Cold. Darkness.</p><p></p><p><strong><em>YOU TARRY</em></strong></p><p></p><p>His hands released the knife and his senses focused on his master. Nothing existed except for the voice, even within the thoughts of his own mind now, it was difficult to say which voice was his own, drifting as it was amongst a multitude of whispers and screams that rippled across his brain always, quiet only when his master did not whisper, did not tempt, did not promise, but commanded.</p><p></p><p><em>They do not matter. Leave them. Only this matters. One key for one tumbler. The beat of a single butterfly wing heralding the storm. Something that must be done for this to come to pass.</em></p><p></p><p>The image of a circle formed within his mind, brief and momentary, a thing of symbolism made of darkness, eyes, and teeth. Darkness. Hunger. Ineffable rage.</p><p></p><p><strong><em>YOU KNOW THE LOCATION. GO THERE. NOW.</em></strong></p><p></p><p>It spoke and he listened. There in the shadow of the Spire the tieres’ god-trap waited, and within was the source of their self-damnation and what his master required. Nothing else mattered. Yes he’d enjoyed butchering the lillend, listening to her scream in utter mute silence. He’d heard her; he’d listened to her mind. But his self-indulgence was at an end, and the others no longer mattered. Let them die in the darkness. Let Pandemonium claim their lives for all it mattered. He was done with them.</p><p></p><p>Caring not that he was spattered with the lillend’s blood across his clothing, hands, and face, he gathered his notes on which he’d finished the translation and discerned the precise location of the tiere’s imprisoned deity. There were other notes and books back at the camp, but no, he didn’t need them. Returning there would only cost him time, and in his present state of appearance… no, it was not important. Soon he would be in the Outlands, and soon he would have his prize.</p><p></p><p>“Goodbye.” He muttered, not deigning to look away as he drew a diagram in the lillend’s blood, conjuring a portal deep into the Outlands, deeper than should have been possible. His conscience moaned and pleaded. It was not too late. He could go back to how he had been. He could ignore the abomination that had touched and marked him within the Vale of Frozen Ashes. He scowled at it, turning to address it one final time. “You will not follow me to the Outlands, and we will not meet again. Finally I will be free of you.”</p><p></p><p>The man motioned with his fingers and whispered an incantation, summoning forth a shimmering portal. The figure of frozen, solid darkness that perched upon his shoulder stroked his head like a master to a favored hound, and he smiled as he glanced down one final time at the floor where his conscience wept. What little of it remained could stay here and die in the darkness as well.</p><p></p><p>“It’s not too late…” The tiny pseudodragon cried out as the portal closed.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">***</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shemeska, post: 6243719, member: 11697"] Frollis Terpense shivered in the darkness. A single tiny figure swallowed up within the gloom that itself swallowed up Howler's Crag. The darkness did not judge. The darkness did not condemn. The darkness did not point out one's failures and mock you. The darkness was something between a lover's kiss and a pillow there to smother and end the pain. "I couldn't help them." His fingers fumbled as he reached into one of the small satchels at his belt. "I try to seek justice, but it's just to forgive myself for my own failures. And now here I am again, hiding in the shadows, too afraid to pray, and probably hastening my end more than calming my nerves." Yet the darkness now didn't seem right. Even to a being touched by the hand of the god of thieves himself, one whose touch could part and slip along the subtle essence of Shadow like a raptor riding a thermal high in the air, he didn't feel safe. Something was out there. It was something that mocked his abilities, and that something, it terrified him. "F*ck this..." His fingers fidgeted with the object in his hands, shaking both from worry and for other reasons entirely. "This'll be the death of me, or something else, but at least I'll die happy in this black, shrieking hell. I..." Immediately behind him came the sound of a boot on loose gravel. Normally he would have acted without thought, either diving into the border Shadow for a few yards, or simply rolling out of the way, spinning up to his feet and drawing one or both of his blades on his attacker. But not this time. Lost in his thoughts and with his hands already occupied, the shadowdancer did nothing but look up into the looming form, glaring eyes, and gleaming khopesh of Settys al Khilian. "Die!" [center]****[/center] Flattening his wings and gliding silently through the darkness, Clueless slowed his descent, deftly avoiding the most errant bursts of howling wind as he touched down between a series of boulders. Razor was already drawn and ready in his right hand, eager to taste the blood of the mortal abomination who had prayed upon the innocent and mocked them each and every time. “There you are you son of a bitch…” He watched in the black and white hues of darkvision as the shadowdancer crouched over something, mumbling to himself. Whatever Frollis was doing, the game was up, and he would not escape. Razor would cleave his head from his corpse and Pandemonium’s wailing would serve as his only funeral dirge. There would be no tears for one such as him. That of course was the half-fey’s intent before not one but two figures burst out of the darkness. “Oh what the hell!?” [center]****[/center] Toras neither crept silently across the rubble-strewn landscape, nor flew, nor slipped through the border Shadow – he moved like a force of nature, resolute, unstoppable, and utterly undeterred by wind, darkness, fear, and uncertainty. Too many lives had been lost. Too many innocents had been sacrificed to whatever insanity or dark powers the false priest allowed to dictate his actions. Ten yards ahead, he watched as Settys stood with his khopesh at the ready. But he wasn’t running or hiding, he was moving carefully and purposefully, but for what reason he couldn’t discern. “What the hell are you doing?” Toras brandished his own blade as he watched the fallen cleric burst into motion. Whatever it was, he had to be stopped. “HALT!” [center]****[/center] "AAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!" Frollis shrieked like a wounded child, making no effort to defend himself, crouched as he was, hands clutching not a ritual knife, not a mutilated corpse, not an evil artifact, but a cup of hot water mixed with the unmistakable silvery blue crystals of powdered dreammist. Settys' eyes went wide, his expression wilted from a furious scowl to a confused, conflicted wince, and moments before it would have separated Frollis' head from his shoulders, its swing adjusted and purposefully missed. Just a few yards past Frollis, Clueless stood with his sword drawn and a puzzled look on his face. To his right, Toras likewise drew his blade, looking as equally confused as his bladesinger companion. "You are not him." Settys glanced away from the addict at his feet to Toras and Clueless. Both of them exchanged glances between each other, Settys, and Frollis, all of them equally puzzled. “Why the hell are you here?” Clueless called out to Frollis, not yet lowering his sword. “Why the hell are –you– here?” Toras glanced at Clueless and then to Settys. “I came to kill Frollis.” Clueless explained. “Why the heck would you do that?” Toras asked, “Settys is the killer.” “Settys?” Clueless frowned. “Why the hell would you think that?” The three of them paused, sighed, and glanced at Frollis and then at one another. Their stances relaxed and soft curses were muttered. They’d all been wrong. None of them was the killer. “If Nisha was here she’d find this funny.” Clueless frowned. “I swore that it was Frollis.” “I was convinced that Frollis was the murderer as well. Toras apparently thought that it was me.” Settys hung his khopesh from his belt, nodding his head towards Frollis. “The only blood on my hands would have been his if either of you had been a moment later. I’m thankful to not have killed an innocent man.” Frollis whimpered, eyes full of shame. “I just needed to get high…” Clueless put his palm across his face. “That’s why you’ve been sneaking away from camp on your own? That’s why you’ve been wandering away from your guard duty at random? Son of a…” “I’ve had this problem before.” Frollis clutched the mug of steaming drugs tightly. “I got better. I truly did. But it’s hard to completely divorce yourself from it, and the past week here has been too much. People keep dying that I’m being paid to protect, and I don’t have a damn clue who it is that’s butchering them! I failed them! I failed everyone!” “It isn’t any of us here. You haven’t failed them yet. We can still avenge them.” Settys lamented, putting a hand on Frollis’s shoulder. “We should get…” The fallen cleric’s voice trailed off and his head turned up and to the side. In the distance, high atop Howler’s Crag there was a flicker of light. Someone was there. “I saw it too.” Clueless glanced at the others, seeing that they too had noticed it as well. They all looked up into the gloom, knowing that whoever was there was likely the murderer that they’d each come looking to find. Frollis sighed and hurled the mug in his hands into the darkness. Settys smiled and helped him to his feet. “Let’s get back to camp, gather the others, and head up the Crag. Let’s end this as soon as we can and then get our people out of here.” [center]***[/center] The man smiled and looked up at his handiwork. She was so beautiful now. Blade and magic had freed her from the constraints of life and flesh. A spirit of freedom and inspiration, the lillend should have thanked him for his gift. But no, she’d screaming and writhed through it all, even if only with a frenzied twitching of her eyes once he’d severed her spine to ease his work. “So beautiful…” The blade in his hand was wet with blood, though so was he, having painted with the colors she’d supplied. Even now, so close to finishing his task he could not help displaying his handiwork in such an artistic fashion. He smiled as his conscience whimpered and wept. His work, now hung from the walls of the cave near the sample of Gautish was wonderful, and he too felt wonderful, accomplished, free of morality and free of regret. It reminded him of the last time he’d felt such. But that was many years before and on a different plane altogether. Those years in Hopeless, the Gatetown to the Waste had been special. “They’d called it The Charnel House when they pried open the doors and looked inside.” He snickered and looked behind him. “We made them feel, didn’t we? To sink the hearts of the apathetic, to make them fear, to make them worry… oh that was something.” His finger reached out to write another line upon the wall and he looked up into the lillend’s glassy eyes. “I could have been free Laril, but no, I had to regress. I had to return to normality. I had to pass among the sacral lambs.” He had gone too far then. He was needed in the future, this current moment, and for this to come to pass he’d had to pacify himself, return to society, reintegrate himself into its fold, and the voice of his Master had been distant and remote. The further away it was, the easier it was to be his original self, but the process had spawned his conscience as a thing of its own. It had tried to reassert itself, perched upon his shoulder, seeking to block out… His thoughts paused immediately from self-indulgent memory as he felt a new set of claws upon him. Cold. Darkness. [b][i]YOU TARRY[/i][/b] His hands released the knife and his senses focused on his master. Nothing existed except for the voice, even within the thoughts of his own mind now, it was difficult to say which voice was his own, drifting as it was amongst a multitude of whispers and screams that rippled across his brain always, quiet only when his master did not whisper, did not tempt, did not promise, but commanded. [i]They do not matter. Leave them. Only this matters. One key for one tumbler. The beat of a single butterfly wing heralding the storm. Something that must be done for this to come to pass.[/i] The image of a circle formed within his mind, brief and momentary, a thing of symbolism made of darkness, eyes, and teeth. Darkness. Hunger. Ineffable rage. [b][i]YOU KNOW THE LOCATION. GO THERE. NOW.[/i][/b] It spoke and he listened. There in the shadow of the Spire the tieres’ god-trap waited, and within was the source of their self-damnation and what his master required. Nothing else mattered. Yes he’d enjoyed butchering the lillend, listening to her scream in utter mute silence. He’d heard her; he’d listened to her mind. But his self-indulgence was at an end, and the others no longer mattered. Let them die in the darkness. Let Pandemonium claim their lives for all it mattered. He was done with them. Caring not that he was spattered with the lillend’s blood across his clothing, hands, and face, he gathered his notes on which he’d finished the translation and discerned the precise location of the tiere’s imprisoned deity. There were other notes and books back at the camp, but no, he didn’t need them. Returning there would only cost him time, and in his present state of appearance… no, it was not important. Soon he would be in the Outlands, and soon he would have his prize. “Goodbye.” He muttered, not deigning to look away as he drew a diagram in the lillend’s blood, conjuring a portal deep into the Outlands, deeper than should have been possible. His conscience moaned and pleaded. It was not too late. He could go back to how he had been. He could ignore the abomination that had touched and marked him within the Vale of Frozen Ashes. He scowled at it, turning to address it one final time. “You will not follow me to the Outlands, and we will not meet again. Finally I will be free of you.” The man motioned with his fingers and whispered an incantation, summoning forth a shimmering portal. The figure of frozen, solid darkness that perched upon his shoulder stroked his head like a master to a favored hound, and he smiled as he glanced down one final time at the floor where his conscience wept. What little of it remained could stay here and die in the darkness as well. “It’s not too late…” The tiny pseudodragon cried out as the portal closed. [center]***[/center] [/QUOTE]
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