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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(contact)" data-source="post: 1121857" data-attributes="member: 41">85— The Memory Charm, part IIOne night, when half my life behind me lay, I wandered from the straight lost path afar. Through the great dark was no releasing way; Above that dark was no relieving star. If yet that terrored night I think or say, As death's cold hands its fears resuming are.--Dante Alleghri, InfernoTaranTaran and Thelbar would keep the names they were born with through all of their incarnations.  The title “Tar-Ilou” would come later—in their first lives, their family was neither wealthy nor important enough to keep a familial name, and the village they were born into was too small to require them.In his first life, Taran was born a robust and healthy child in a small Prime world insular enough to have no proper name.  As he grew, he became known for his unusual size, and fierce disposition.  He came of age under the watchful eye and instruction of his older brother; a child who possessed a deep cunning beyond his years, and an affinity for learning that eventually brought him to the attention of wizardly tutors.  Thelbar ruled Taran then—the younger sibling, while physically powerful and possessed of a formidable courage, buckled time and time again under his brother’s will.  Given instruction in the arts of war by a drunken and gregarious friend of the family, a retired mercenary, Taran learned quickly that real men fought for their lving, and took from the cold world what they could.  Taran idolized his “uncle”, and aspired someday to take up his mantle and prove his manhood in the dangerous and fickle world beyond civilization.As the brothers reached young adulthood, they began to adventure, shunning the company of others and growing steadily more skilled.  Pragmatism and ambition were the cornerstones of their morality, and their growing power served only those ends.  The scheming and bestial gods of this world spurred them on to ever greater heights, testing their will and ability time and time again.  Friend and foe alike were forced to yield to the brother’s purposes, and in a world of city-states and isolated communities the duo began to forge a cult of personality devoted to the adventurer’s credo: If you take it, it is yours.  Thelbar left the outward trappings of leadership to his brother, but controlled the younger fighter completely, managing all non-military affairs, and applying new uses for his growing magical power within the political sphere.  The cult soon became a bandit-lordship, then a kingdom.  The kingdom grew hungry and became an empire absorbing or conquering all dissenters, be they monstrous, human or deific.  But the empire was not to last—an economic and political structure built entirely for the purposes of military victory fears only two things: running out of enemies, or bumping into a greater power.  Taran’s empire did the latter, and as it became clear that he had overextended himself and underestimated both the numbers and the capabilities of his enemies, Thelbar came to him with an escape route:  flight from the world.  In his studies, Thelbar had learned the existence of places unimagined by the folk of their world, and unmentioned within their religious and wisdom teachings—places where no enemy could follow.  Taran and Thelbar abandoned their empire then, left their armies to slavery or death, and never looked back.The multiverse was their playground.ThelbarIt chafed Thelbar that there should be any authority greater than his own will.  That things outside of himself could compel him was repugnant to him, even as a very small child.  He could perceive, and perceive clearly, that the adults around him were far his inferior.  Those he could not manipulate, and these were few in number, he could avoid, intimidate, or blackmail.  In this fashion, he became adept at having his way while ever seeming the beneficiary of charity.  Within his brother, he found a willing and uniquely useful tool.  In his own way, Thelbar loved his brother, but he loved his ambition more.The empire he built satisfied him for a time, but only briefly.  He supported the endless war of conquest, looking, he would later admit, for some vaguely sensed achievement that might sate his ambition, and grant him release.  When his studies broke through the limitations of his world’s scholarly understanding, he realized that what he required was a larger stage—the largest stage—the only stage that mattered to Thelbar.  Once he realized his intention, it was only a matter of time before a rock sufficiently large to crush his current empire could be found, and dashed against.  With the empire tottering on the verge of collapse, it was a simple matter to convince his brother to follow him into the unknown.The Maker and DestroyerTaran was surprised and Thelbar was relieved to discover that while the fullness of reality was far larger than they had ever expected, they were still among the top powers in it.  The dragons and godlings of their world were on par with the demon princes and celestial dukes that ruled the wider multiverse.  The de-facto carte blanche that they had grown comfortable with would remain the same—they had little to fear, and there was no authority with the power to enforce their mandates in the face of Taran and Thelbar’s wrath.For a while, they went their separate ways.  Taran founded a mercenary band, composed primarily of other humans who, like himself, had seen the worst their prime-material worlds could offer, and had come to the planes looking for bigger fights, louder arguments and more passionate love.  In a quest for the latter, Taran fell into the company of a coven that worshipped an unnamed goddess—a temptress who offered her worshippers their heart’s desire.  While Taran had a falling-out with the coven’s leader shortly after the beginning of their ill-fated affair and eventually sacked their temple in the Outlands, the goddess herself paid a call upon Thelbar.A prime world had fallen from its maker’s graces, and the pantheon of gods and goddesses that ruled it wished for it to be destroyed.  Prevented by ancient covenant from doing so themselves, they had prepared a series of enchantments that would unravel the very fabric of the world’s reality and destroy every sentient being within it.  All they needed was a wizard sufficiently advanced in his understanding to complete the task and sufficiently foolish to accept it.They found Thelbar.HellThe seeds of madness were planted within the mage as these invocations were made complete.  The world was gone, and Thelbar had wielded power well beyond the mortal norm.  He had been privy to the councils of these gods, had tasted the power and majesty due a god, but he had also glimpsed the inherent fragility and currency of godhood—indebtedness to mortal worshippers.  This compelling need for ever greater power, combined with Thelbar’s life-long affinity for domination and control led him to an unusual conclusion:  There were god-like entities who did not require worshippers the way the gods did—the devil princes known as the Lords of the Nine.  By all measurements, they were as powerful as the gods, but owed allegiance to no one.  Within their layer, their will was supreme.Thelbar set out then to steal a layer of Hell.  To make himself a Lord would be to seize what he wished, and put himself in a position to truly be counted a player on the largest stage there was.  His target was Belial, Lord of the Fourth.  It was not an overt coup, but rather a subtly and deftly played transfer of power and betrayal that left Belial alive, humiliated, and displaced.  Thelbar had succeeded, but with his greatest accomplishment,  he had finally overreached.  This was Hell, after all, and Hell is the place where all grand dreams turn to ash.Taran, meanwhile, had found contentment.  His true loves were the physical things—carousing, fighting, wine, women and song.  His mercenaries loved him, and he discovered in his brother’s absence, a genuine aptitude for winning and holding the loyalty of fighting men.  If he tended to overspend, well, more treasure could be won.  If his strategies left him in a poor position, his own sword-arm could extricate himself. But this rough-and-tumble idyll was interrupted when a young human paladin calling himself Kyreel Silverstone found Taran and told him what his brother had done.  Kyreel meant to throw down this new Lord of hell, and could he count on Taran’s support?Trapped by his own maneuvering, Thelbar found himself unable to fully understand the Baatezu mind—he could nudge but not control, and in a place where the only currency of any value is fear, he simply could not force these immortals to obey.  He was a ruler in Hell for a day, and its victim thereafter.When Taran and Kyreel hacked their way into Hell, blood in their eyes, and an adventurer’s fire in their hearts, they discovered that Belial was back on his throne, and he had made of Thelbar a broken and fragile plaything.  Taran killed Belial’s strongest lieutenants, and meant to kill Belial himself-- but the Lord of the Third did not stay to fight.  Taran and Kyreel gathered Thelbar up, and fled for the celestial planes, where they were able to rest and assess the magnitude of what they had done.The Baatezu were eternal creatures, and they had long memories.  Thelbar had doomed the duo—doomed them to a damnation that no amount of prayer or “old adventurer’s piety” could forestall.   While they still lived, at least they would be able to defend themselves.  Once they died, the Baatezu would spare no expense to attain their souls, and drag them to the lowest places to be kept in torment for all eternity.Thelbar’s escapade had soured even the more beatific gods on his cause.  He had shown the expanse of his ambition, and there were no masters willing to take the brothers under their wing.  They were to be left alone until they died, and they could find no patron.  But again, Kyreel came to the rescue.  He had a goddess, he told them, unlike any other.</blockquote>

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