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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3340352" data-attributes="member: 143">From chapter 79:* * * * * Chapter 102CONTENTION“What in the hells are you doing?” Talen asked. “Stuff it, captain,” Dar said.  “And if you take another step to the side, Shay, you’re going to be taking a bath in the cleric’s blood.”The scout abruptly stopped her subtle movement.  “This is madness,” Talen said.  “We cannot afford to turn upon ourselves, especially not now.” Dar ignored him.  Valor’s blade seemed to shimmer up its length with a faint blue radiance deep within the metal.  “It seems that my sword does not like you, cleric,” the fighter growled. “Many people do not like me,” Varo said.  “Why don’t you tell me what this is about, Dar?”“What it’s about, Varo, is that you haven’t been clean with us.  Even back when it was just you, me, and Tiros, all you gave us was the barest minimum of info needed to get us to go along with you.  It’s the same damned thing now.  I put up with it when it was about survival, but no longer.  You told us about that book, that Coda thing or whatever, or some driblets that your god gives you, but there’s more to it than that.  I know I’m just a dumb grunt and all, but even I can see that there’s something bigger going on here, and that you’re right up to your neck in it.”Varo simply stood quiet, calm during the fighter’s diatribe, careful to keep his hands at view at his sides.  “Very well,” he said, finally, when Dar had finished.  “What is it you wish to know?”“First off, what is going on here?  What is this cult after?”“The followers of Orcus are attempting to use the power of life essences trapped by the sphere we saw—a device known as the Sphere of Souls—to open a way for their god, the demon prince Orcus, to enter the Prime Material Plane.  In other words, for him to come here, to this world, in the flesh.”There was a moment of stunned silence.  “I thought... I thought that wasn’t possible,” Shay said.  “Gods... in the mortal realm?”“Demon princes are an interesting conundrum, theologically speaking,” Varo said.  “I could go into greater detail if you wish, but suffice it to say, yes, it is possible.  But it involves tearing the very fabric of reality to make it so.”“What happens if the demon comes through?” Talen asked. Varo shifted his gaze slightly away from Dar to glance at the captain.  “Basically?  It would be the end of the world as you and I know it.”Dar let out a sigh.  “And you didn’t feel that it was important to share this tiny freaking detail with the rest of us?”“I can only ask you to believe me when I say that I have been, until very recently, as much in the dark as the rest of you.  If you would care to lower your sword, I give you my word that I will attempt no evasion, and will tell you what I know until you are satisfied.”Dar looked hard at him for a long minute, before he finally lowered his sword.  But he did not move to shealth it, keeping the blade close at his side.  “Speak, then.”“What I know about the cult of Orcus comes mainly from a text known as the Codex Thanara.”“You had told us about this before,” Talen said.  “I remember, in the interview with Marshal Tiros after Allera’s capture.”“Yes,” Varo said.  “I first encountered the book almost twenty years ago, when I was still an acolyte of the Shining Father.  The book was fragmentary; the copy that I found had only approximately ten percent of the entire text intact.  But what was there, was... disturbing.  It sent me down a trail that ended up with me changing faiths, and working to uncover more information to fill out the gaps in the book.  Every step I made, every nugget of information I uncovered, led me to the next.  And with each step, the more convinced I became that the threat that I was revealing was nothing less than the end of our world.”Dar looked at him with suddenly dawning comprehension written on his face.  “You... you wanted to come here, all along.”Varo said nothing.  The fighter turned and walked several paces away, and then spun and came back, until his face was only a few inches away from Varo’s.  “You set it up!  You set us all up!  Ukas, Navev, the others that died... it was all because of you!”For a moment, it looked as though the fighter would strike the priest.  Varo stood there motionless, not offering any provocation.  Valor gleamed in the fighter’s fist, as if eager to strike down the priest.  The others watched tensely, but did not move to intervene. “Well?” Dar all but shouted.  “What do you have to say?”“I did not arrange to have you sent to Rappan Athuk,” Varo said.  “Nor any of the others.  I made arrangements to be included with you, but the Duke was no ally of my religion; most of my companions in the faith of the Watcher died in the torture cells deep under the palace citadel.” “You’ve already proven yourself a liar.”  Varo shrugged.  “Then nothing I can say will sway you, for good or for ill.”“I should kill you where you stand.”“Then you will never leave this place!” Varo said, suddenly vehement.  He took a deep breath and mastered himself.  “I wish you no ill will, Dar.  You were damned to this place through the whim of the Duke, but I fought beside you and Tiros to get out, and to help you return to Camar safely.  I used my powers to bring the marshal back to life, and helped you overthrow the illegitimate and evil rule of the Duke.  I even brought you back from death, and purged the lycanthropic corruption that was vying for your soul.”“You brought me back as a tool,” Dar said.  “I remember what you told me, when you explained why you had cured me of the wererat-sickness.  You said that you needed me, for what was coming.”“We all need each other,” Varo said.  “What we face cannot be overcome by one man’s actions.  The cult of Orcus has been preparing for this for centuries.” “What about Allera?” Dar asked, pointing to the body.  “What does she have to do with all this?  Why did they go through so much effort to take her, in particular?”“An hour ago, I would have said that they took her because of her unique identity.  She is one of the most powerful healers in Camar; there are fewer than a dozen individuals alive today that can match her talents, and only the Patriarch himself exceeds it.  That, combined with her virtue, and the purity of her bloodline—the pale hair is a dead giveaway—would have made her soul a particularly potent source of power for advancing their plan.”“Wait a minute,” Talen said.  “You said, ‘would have said.’  Why?”Varo looked at him.  “Because what I have seen here has changed my view.  Because now, I would say that they wanted us to come here.  All of this, from the start, from the original sentencing of our company to doom us to Rappan Athuk, to Allera’s capture, to our inevitable response.  We have been playing right into the hands of the cult, doing their bidding all along.”“What?” Shay interjected.  “That doesn’t make any sense.  We destroyed two of their temples, killed a bunch of their priests.  And those demons we fought, I don’t know what in the hells those things were, but I bet they don’t come cheap!”“No, they do not,” Varo said.  “The vrock, the vulture demon, we’d tusseled with once before.  It is a potent being quite adept at unleashing destruction.  The other was a glabrezu, analogous to an aristocrat of the abyssal hierarchy.  They are even more powerful, and not entirely common even in the lower planes.  Sending one here, to the Prime, for any length of time represents an awesome expenditure of power.”“Then I don’t get it,” Shay said.  “If we beat it, how can we be advancing the cult’s agenda?”“I think I understand,” Talen said.  “It’s all about power, power for their sphere and their ritual.  They are using all of it, the life energy of every being that dies in Rappan Athuk is all going to open that gate, to bring their master through.” “Well, they can take their sphere and shove it up their collective asses,” Dar said.  “I’m done with this; I’m getting out of here.  And if you give me any crap about it, Varo...”“Think about it, all of you!” the cleric said, emotion cracking through his calm façade once more.  “Have you not paid heed to what you have seen in this place?  This,” he said, gesturing around him at the contents of the temple, “this will be the fate of our entire world, should they succeed!” There was a long silence, thick with tension. “I have seen it,” a quiet voice said.  They turned to see the elf, standing a short distance away, lost in shadows but for the faint outline of his cape against the darkness beyond.  His thin white hands were clutched tightly together in front of him.  “Some years ago...” he said, his voice so tight that they had to strain to hear him, “I came upon a secret place.  It was a place of... of shadows, of evil.  There was a sphere there, like the one that we saw... only much smaller.  I was much stronger then in magic than I am now; by the standards of your Guild, I was an archmage.  I was complete, full of myself and my power.  I could sense the potency of the magic in the device.  I allowed myself to ignore the taint of evil upon it.  Rather than report my discovery, I made to seize it, to take that power for myself.”“I knew almost at once that I had made a mistake, but it was too late.  The power in the sphere was not only far beyond my own, but it was evil, hungry.  For a time, I battled it... I do not know how long.  But then, it came into me, and I could no longer resist it.”“I saw... things.  I saw the world I had known, changed.  Darkness replaced light; clouds as thick as a sludge of oil blocked out the sky.  The trees, blasted and unrecognizable black forms, their bare branches twisted and reaching up like claws.  The creatures of the forest were gone, replaced by abominations that hid in dark holes under the ground, darting from shelter to shelter, devouring each other and anything else they could find.”“All beauty... gone.  All life... fugitive, fleeting.  And the masters of this realm... horrors beyond horror, the undead, walking through the world of their creation...”“My people tried to help me, but they could not see what I saw.  In my visions, they too became sinister, insubstantial, mere echoes in a world more real to me than theirs.  Madness took me; the touch of our gods through the hands of our strongest clerics could do nothing to abate its coming.  I escaped... fled, driven by my madness...”“Driven here,” Varo said.  “To the source of your visions.”“The Duke’s men brought him here,” Dar said.  “They only brought him to where he was already destined to come,” Varo said. “How was it that you were able to heal him, when his people could not?” Shay asked. “They did not understand the source of his affliction,” Varo said.  “I stumbled upon it by accident, when I recited a passage of the Codex in his presence.  “His contact with that unholy artifact had infused him with knowledge of the fate of his world, knowledge that drove him into insanity.  He could not be rendered sane again, until that knowledge had been drained from him.”“Until you took it from him,” Talen said.  “Yes.  I recorded every word he said... And as he spoke, the missing passages of the Codex Thanara were filled.  I still do not know everything about the cult or its plans; there are still considerable gaps, details that no one living, save perhaps for those few who are conducting the ritual, can know without being driven into complete and utter madness.”“How is it that you were not driven mad as well by that which destroyed Malerase?” Talen asked.  Varo looked at him.  “Because, my dear captain... I am already insane.”</blockquote>

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