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78—What killers think about in the dead of night.
As the party regards the physical and spiritual carnage within the duergar city, a bizarre howling begins to rise, coming from the far gates of the City of Mists. Within moments, the howling is repeated from several more sources, forming an eerie chorus off to the North.
“Dogs of the deeps,” Thelbar says after a moment’s reflection. “I have learned of them—those are canoloths.” When it becomes obvious that no one knows what he means, he says, “Fiends. Soul eaters.”
The party moves toward the sound, and Taran thinks to his brother, “Now how the hell did you know that?”
Thelbar replies, “How did you recognize your army, and how did we know to kill those Ishlokian dogs we met in Ratik? ‘How’ is a question that impedes understanding. ”
As the party moves toward the Northern gates, they realize that the souls of the dead, as thick in the air as the carrion spiders are on the ground, seem to be flowing in the opposite direction of the party.
“The souls are fleeing,” Taran says.
As the group comes within sight of the walled cavern, they see two dozen and more fiendish creatures bounding over the wall and rampaging just beyond it. They appear to be a slime-encrusted, horse-sized cross between an unusually ugly bulldog and an exceptionally mean toad—they are definitely of lower-planar origin, and seem to have no trouble locating the fleeing souls with their tiny, close-set eyes. As they bound about, making leaps of up to fifty feet at a time, they snap the souls into their mouths after seizing them with freakishly long, projectile tongues.
Emerging over the tip of the wall as the party arrives, a trio of wretched-looking women ride herd over the canoloths. They are grey-skinned, hideously wrinkled and warty to the last inch of exposed skin—not that there is much of that visible underneath their mastercrafted plate armor. The hags ride on the back of flying nightmares—smoky black horses formed of dreaming corruption, with glowing coals for eyes, and choking smog for breath.
Thelbar points his finger at the nearest hag, and feebleminds her. After a moment, where he is locked in a battle of wills with the thing, his spell fizzles, and he is thrust from her mind like a squalling child banished from the adult’s table.
“Oh, brother,” he thinks, although whether this is intended as a call to action or a warning makes little difference to Taran. The bull-necked ranger is already charging at the lead hag, with Black Lisa and Little Sister free of their scabbards.
Elgin raises his hand, and invokes a blade barrier directly into the path of the onrushing hags. The withered women themselves disregard the spell entirely—as if the plane of razor-sharp blades were no more than a street-corner phantasm, created by slight of hand and colored smoke. But the blade barrier is real enough, as one of the nightmares and two canoloths are shivered flesh from bone by contact with the plane of conjured steel.
As the dying nightmare plummets from the sky, its rider draws a pair of long fighting-knives from her saddle and leaps clear just as the infernal mount crashes into the ground. She tumbles to her feet, and moves to menace Taran. The other two ride around and over him, leap to the ground amongst the rest of the party. The first hag to arrive at Thelbar’s position cuts into him with her own matched set of fighting knives, and the vile things glow with the most powerful of enchantments to Thelbar’s arcane sight. Worse yet, they are certainly blessed by the cruel Lords of the Lower Planes, and they deepen each cut with unholy energy. Thelbar gasps and pulls back. His protective stoneskin helps him somewhat, but he is still terribly wounded by the thing.
Gorquen, however, is not impressed. She steps into the fray confidently, and while keeping the backup hag at bay, she sunders both of the daggers stained with Thelbar’s blood in a flashing maneuver. The hag cries out in shock—a piercing screeching that seems to twist perception and carry on for far longer than it actually does. At this moment, Taran changes direction, and abandoning the hag menacing him, shifts down to flank the armed hag Gorquen is facing. He cuts the creature twice along its back, but does not kill it.
In response, the hag he abandoned leaps upon his back, wrapping her legs around his thick midsection and slicing him multiple times along his chest and neck, worming her way into whatever holes and gaps his armor allows. Taran makes a short choking cry, and falls to his knees, a spray of blood gushing forth from a half-dozen wounds. The hag then kicks him dismissively as she moves past him, and he falls face first into a rapidly spreading pool of his own blood, choking for breath.
Gorquen fares somewhat better, but she fights two of the creatures—the weaponless one proves no less aggressive in melee for it, and attacks Gorquen with fists and teeth while the wounded crone tries to penetrate the elf’s guard with her deceptive knife-work.
Thelbar has recovered himself by this time, and swiftly domintates the hag that just dropped Taran before she can repeat the feat elsewhere. This time, his spell is up to the task, and he bends the hag’s mind to his own.
Elgin Trezler moves to aid Gorquen, smiting the empty-handed crone with his mace, while Merkatha shoots at her from a safe distance away.
Gorquen strikes her armed opponent a fierce blow about the knees, ripping tendons and knocking the creature to the ground. She weathers another series of bare-handed blows with her characteristic stoicism, but keeps her eye on the armed foe. The creature rises, disengages from melee, then lays hands upon itself, closing the wound in her leg enough to support her weight.
“Did I say you could get up?” Gorquen asks, taking a page from Taran’s book. “The Last of the Ahk-Velar” is no small title, but Gorquen is no small warrior. In a sudden flurry, Gorquen has wounded the hag’s other leg, deposited her back on the ground, and taken her head off with a stroke.
The dominated hag lays hands on Taran, knitting his flesh and replenishing enough of his lost blood to bring him to consciousness. Before Taran can attack her, Thelbar speaks into his mind. “She is under my control, brother.”
“Then you’re a bastard, because that bitch almost killed me!” Taran replies.
The dominated hag calls the canoloths to her side while the group bears down on her unarmed companion, cutting her down. As she dies, the hag merely cackles to herself, as if the scene were part of some deeply satisfying joke that only she understood.
As Elgin heals his companions, Thelbar regards the controlled hag, and forces her to lower her spell resistance and open her mind to a charm monster spell.
Satisfied she has done so, Thelbar asks, “Why do your canoloths eat these souls?”
“They do not eat them,” she replies in a hoarse and rasping whisper. “These yugoloths are containers and vessels for our prize, no more—no less.”
“So you extract them at a later date?”
“No, I have not the art. Of our coven, only the Night knows how to extract these souls.”
Taran, who thinks she said “knight”, rubs his wounds and wonders—if these were the commoners, what would the nobility fight like? He exchanges a worried glance with Gorquen.
“There are other sisters, yes,” the hag rasps in response to Thelbar’s questioning. “Two more of the chosen and many younger sisters. The yugoloths who are masters of these beasts are also in this plane—five nycaloths and two ultraloths. They are led by the Shiversong, an Arcanaloth. They are our primary buyers, and have agreed to accompany us to the bonanza that we all might be saved some trouble. There were more fiends here until that fool glabrezu stirred up the sleeper.”
“A glabrezu, you say? Where is he?”
“In a low, cruel place in the Abyss, if there is any justice in the multiverse.” She hisses her cynical amusement between yellowed teeth. After all, she knows first hand that there is none. “Most likely he is a manes now.” The hag laughs out loud at the thought. “The fool tried to take these halls. He named himself the King of Tell AqMed, heh. But the old soul woke up and the Dwarven Father struck the fool down for his trouble. Now we must be careful and make watchful eyes, always watching.”
“The ‘old soul’? Do you mean Ceredain?”
“We do not speak her name, mortal.” The hag rolls her eyes back into her head and says, as if chanting a litany, “she is the greatest prize of them all, and the Night will take her when all other bounty has been claimed.” Returning her gaze to Thelbar, she continues. “We prepare the way.”
Thelbar regards his dominated foe carefully, looking for signs of deceit.
“How does the Night mean to do this?”
“She is the Night, she does not answer our questions.”
“Hey,” Taran says. “Is your knight scared of the Uqeraq? Is that why you waited to raid this place?”
“That trifling lich?” the hag scoffs. Then after a moment’s thought, she turns to Taran with a scowl. “I do not approve of your tone—perhaps I should ride your back.”
“You couldn’t stay on me,” Taran says, forgetting for the moment their last encounter.
“Maybe we should just let Ceredain know about these hags,” Merkatha offers. “Let the death-caller eliminate them.”
“And how would we do that?” Elgin asks. “We don’t even know that she’s fully sentient, nonetheless listening to mortals.”
“She would listen to her Uqeraq,” Thelbar says.
“Yeah she would,” Taran says. “It’s that whole thing about divine slavery.”
Elgin and Thelbar look at him curiously.
“Well, I’ve been thinking,” he explains. “Palatin Eremath teaches us that we were slaves to the gods before the pasoun—that they kept our souls like herds of livestock to feed their multiverse. But it seems to me that the pasoun liberates the gods as well. I mean, they can’t all want to suck up to mortals all the time, making the rain and handing out spells to every faithful a-shole with a holy symbol and a vow of chastity (no offense, Elgin). Maybe the reason deities keep followers around is that they need them to keep their little corner of infinity from being encroached on. All warfare is the result of limited resources, or the neurotic perception of scarcity. Right?”
“Do continue, brother,” Thelbar says, a proud smile turning up the corner of his mouth.
“Well, that’s why every deity in the multiverse has the same damn hierarchy among their priests. Even the really unstructured f-ckers give some spells to only a chosen few, but other spells to pretty much anyone who asks nicely—and they are pretty consistent across faiths in terms of who gets what.”
“This is borderline blasphemy,” Elgin says behind his hand to Thelbar, who merely smiles and motions him to listen.
“Now if you’re like me, and you can’t sleep that much, it really makes you wonder,” Taran continues. “What would the gods have to gain by establishing such a limited expression of their might? Well hell, it’s a chain of command! It works like this: if you have every soldier on the battlefield giving you reports, you’re not going to make heads or tails of what’s happening. But if you have a few individuals, trained in tactics who also understand your strategy reporting to you, suddenly you get a more clear picture of what’s going on.
“That’s why the gods only pick wise people like Elgin here to give the really good spells to. They don’t want to listen to the rabble—they need people with the ability to see clearly through the “fog of war”—call it the “fog of life”—and tell them what the hell is going on.”
Taran looks at his companions. “So the whole thing about gods being able to see everything is bullsh-t, I think. The gods are just as hooked on mortals as the mortals are on them, and if Ceredain doesn’t listen to her high priest, she’s the dumbest deity ever.”
As the party regards the physical and spiritual carnage within the duergar city, a bizarre howling begins to rise, coming from the far gates of the City of Mists. Within moments, the howling is repeated from several more sources, forming an eerie chorus off to the North.
“Dogs of the deeps,” Thelbar says after a moment’s reflection. “I have learned of them—those are canoloths.” When it becomes obvious that no one knows what he means, he says, “Fiends. Soul eaters.”
The party moves toward the sound, and Taran thinks to his brother, “Now how the hell did you know that?”
Thelbar replies, “How did you recognize your army, and how did we know to kill those Ishlokian dogs we met in Ratik? ‘How’ is a question that impedes understanding. ”
As the party moves toward the Northern gates, they realize that the souls of the dead, as thick in the air as the carrion spiders are on the ground, seem to be flowing in the opposite direction of the party.
“The souls are fleeing,” Taran says.
As the group comes within sight of the walled cavern, they see two dozen and more fiendish creatures bounding over the wall and rampaging just beyond it. They appear to be a slime-encrusted, horse-sized cross between an unusually ugly bulldog and an exceptionally mean toad—they are definitely of lower-planar origin, and seem to have no trouble locating the fleeing souls with their tiny, close-set eyes. As they bound about, making leaps of up to fifty feet at a time, they snap the souls into their mouths after seizing them with freakishly long, projectile tongues.
Emerging over the tip of the wall as the party arrives, a trio of wretched-looking women ride herd over the canoloths. They are grey-skinned, hideously wrinkled and warty to the last inch of exposed skin—not that there is much of that visible underneath their mastercrafted plate armor. The hags ride on the back of flying nightmares—smoky black horses formed of dreaming corruption, with glowing coals for eyes, and choking smog for breath.
Thelbar points his finger at the nearest hag, and feebleminds her. After a moment, where he is locked in a battle of wills with the thing, his spell fizzles, and he is thrust from her mind like a squalling child banished from the adult’s table.
“Oh, brother,” he thinks, although whether this is intended as a call to action or a warning makes little difference to Taran. The bull-necked ranger is already charging at the lead hag, with Black Lisa and Little Sister free of their scabbards.
Elgin raises his hand, and invokes a blade barrier directly into the path of the onrushing hags. The withered women themselves disregard the spell entirely—as if the plane of razor-sharp blades were no more than a street-corner phantasm, created by slight of hand and colored smoke. But the blade barrier is real enough, as one of the nightmares and two canoloths are shivered flesh from bone by contact with the plane of conjured steel.
As the dying nightmare plummets from the sky, its rider draws a pair of long fighting-knives from her saddle and leaps clear just as the infernal mount crashes into the ground. She tumbles to her feet, and moves to menace Taran. The other two ride around and over him, leap to the ground amongst the rest of the party. The first hag to arrive at Thelbar’s position cuts into him with her own matched set of fighting knives, and the vile things glow with the most powerful of enchantments to Thelbar’s arcane sight. Worse yet, they are certainly blessed by the cruel Lords of the Lower Planes, and they deepen each cut with unholy energy. Thelbar gasps and pulls back. His protective stoneskin helps him somewhat, but he is still terribly wounded by the thing.
Gorquen, however, is not impressed. She steps into the fray confidently, and while keeping the backup hag at bay, she sunders both of the daggers stained with Thelbar’s blood in a flashing maneuver. The hag cries out in shock—a piercing screeching that seems to twist perception and carry on for far longer than it actually does. At this moment, Taran changes direction, and abandoning the hag menacing him, shifts down to flank the armed hag Gorquen is facing. He cuts the creature twice along its back, but does not kill it.
In response, the hag he abandoned leaps upon his back, wrapping her legs around his thick midsection and slicing him multiple times along his chest and neck, worming her way into whatever holes and gaps his armor allows. Taran makes a short choking cry, and falls to his knees, a spray of blood gushing forth from a half-dozen wounds. The hag then kicks him dismissively as she moves past him, and he falls face first into a rapidly spreading pool of his own blood, choking for breath.
Gorquen fares somewhat better, but she fights two of the creatures—the weaponless one proves no less aggressive in melee for it, and attacks Gorquen with fists and teeth while the wounded crone tries to penetrate the elf’s guard with her deceptive knife-work.
Thelbar has recovered himself by this time, and swiftly domintates the hag that just dropped Taran before she can repeat the feat elsewhere. This time, his spell is up to the task, and he bends the hag’s mind to his own.
Elgin Trezler moves to aid Gorquen, smiting the empty-handed crone with his mace, while Merkatha shoots at her from a safe distance away.
Gorquen strikes her armed opponent a fierce blow about the knees, ripping tendons and knocking the creature to the ground. She weathers another series of bare-handed blows with her characteristic stoicism, but keeps her eye on the armed foe. The creature rises, disengages from melee, then lays hands upon itself, closing the wound in her leg enough to support her weight.
“Did I say you could get up?” Gorquen asks, taking a page from Taran’s book. “The Last of the Ahk-Velar” is no small title, but Gorquen is no small warrior. In a sudden flurry, Gorquen has wounded the hag’s other leg, deposited her back on the ground, and taken her head off with a stroke.
The dominated hag lays hands on Taran, knitting his flesh and replenishing enough of his lost blood to bring him to consciousness. Before Taran can attack her, Thelbar speaks into his mind. “She is under my control, brother.”
“Then you’re a bastard, because that bitch almost killed me!” Taran replies.
The dominated hag calls the canoloths to her side while the group bears down on her unarmed companion, cutting her down. As she dies, the hag merely cackles to herself, as if the scene were part of some deeply satisfying joke that only she understood.
As Elgin heals his companions, Thelbar regards the controlled hag, and forces her to lower her spell resistance and open her mind to a charm monster spell.
Satisfied she has done so, Thelbar asks, “Why do your canoloths eat these souls?”
“They do not eat them,” she replies in a hoarse and rasping whisper. “These yugoloths are containers and vessels for our prize, no more—no less.”
“So you extract them at a later date?”
“No, I have not the art. Of our coven, only the Night knows how to extract these souls.”
Taran, who thinks she said “knight”, rubs his wounds and wonders—if these were the commoners, what would the nobility fight like? He exchanges a worried glance with Gorquen.
“There are other sisters, yes,” the hag rasps in response to Thelbar’s questioning. “Two more of the chosen and many younger sisters. The yugoloths who are masters of these beasts are also in this plane—five nycaloths and two ultraloths. They are led by the Shiversong, an Arcanaloth. They are our primary buyers, and have agreed to accompany us to the bonanza that we all might be saved some trouble. There were more fiends here until that fool glabrezu stirred up the sleeper.”
“A glabrezu, you say? Where is he?”
“In a low, cruel place in the Abyss, if there is any justice in the multiverse.” She hisses her cynical amusement between yellowed teeth. After all, she knows first hand that there is none. “Most likely he is a manes now.” The hag laughs out loud at the thought. “The fool tried to take these halls. He named himself the King of Tell AqMed, heh. But the old soul woke up and the Dwarven Father struck the fool down for his trouble. Now we must be careful and make watchful eyes, always watching.”
“The ‘old soul’? Do you mean Ceredain?”
“We do not speak her name, mortal.” The hag rolls her eyes back into her head and says, as if chanting a litany, “she is the greatest prize of them all, and the Night will take her when all other bounty has been claimed.” Returning her gaze to Thelbar, she continues. “We prepare the way.”
Thelbar regards his dominated foe carefully, looking for signs of deceit.
“How does the Night mean to do this?”
“She is the Night, she does not answer our questions.”
“Hey,” Taran says. “Is your knight scared of the Uqeraq? Is that why you waited to raid this place?”
“That trifling lich?” the hag scoffs. Then after a moment’s thought, she turns to Taran with a scowl. “I do not approve of your tone—perhaps I should ride your back.”
“You couldn’t stay on me,” Taran says, forgetting for the moment their last encounter.
“Maybe we should just let Ceredain know about these hags,” Merkatha offers. “Let the death-caller eliminate them.”
“And how would we do that?” Elgin asks. “We don’t even know that she’s fully sentient, nonetheless listening to mortals.”
“She would listen to her Uqeraq,” Thelbar says.
“Yeah she would,” Taran says. “It’s that whole thing about divine slavery.”
Elgin and Thelbar look at him curiously.
“Well, I’ve been thinking,” he explains. “Palatin Eremath teaches us that we were slaves to the gods before the pasoun—that they kept our souls like herds of livestock to feed their multiverse. But it seems to me that the pasoun liberates the gods as well. I mean, they can’t all want to suck up to mortals all the time, making the rain and handing out spells to every faithful a-shole with a holy symbol and a vow of chastity (no offense, Elgin). Maybe the reason deities keep followers around is that they need them to keep their little corner of infinity from being encroached on. All warfare is the result of limited resources, or the neurotic perception of scarcity. Right?”
“Do continue, brother,” Thelbar says, a proud smile turning up the corner of his mouth.
“Well, that’s why every deity in the multiverse has the same damn hierarchy among their priests. Even the really unstructured f-ckers give some spells to only a chosen few, but other spells to pretty much anyone who asks nicely—and they are pretty consistent across faiths in terms of who gets what.”
“This is borderline blasphemy,” Elgin says behind his hand to Thelbar, who merely smiles and motions him to listen.
“Now if you’re like me, and you can’t sleep that much, it really makes you wonder,” Taran continues. “What would the gods have to gain by establishing such a limited expression of their might? Well hell, it’s a chain of command! It works like this: if you have every soldier on the battlefield giving you reports, you’re not going to make heads or tails of what’s happening. But if you have a few individuals, trained in tactics who also understand your strategy reporting to you, suddenly you get a more clear picture of what’s going on.
“That’s why the gods only pick wise people like Elgin here to give the really good spells to. They don’t want to listen to the rabble—they need people with the ability to see clearly through the “fog of war”—call it the “fog of life”—and tell them what the hell is going on.”
Taran looks at his companions. “So the whole thing about gods being able to see everything is bullsh-t, I think. The gods are just as hooked on mortals as the mortals are on them, and if Ceredain doesn’t listen to her high priest, she’s the dumbest deity ever.”
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