Session 238, Part One
The Lair of Discontent
Before they touched down on Wilanir, Rumdoom sent one of his entourage to find out what had happened on the worlds the unit had recently visited. Since Mavisha he had declined to participate in each exploration, saying he would remain behind to guard the Coaltongue, which seemed reasonable, but the group had already begun to sense there was something more to his decision.
The young dwarf sought out the most approachable of the unit: The king was off-limits; Uru and Leon were invisible; Quratulain was terrifying. That left a choice between a strange blue guy and a young human woman. The dwarf picked Gupta at first and explained that the Avatar of the End wished to know how what had transpired on Mavisha, Avilona and Apet. Gupta was in no mood – her thoughts had been increasingly dark of late – and she snarled at the dwarf, “Wasn’t he there?” So the dwarf withdrew and approached Uriel, from whom he received a very detailed response, to the point where his eyes began to glaze over.
Something was clearly amiss. During the team briefing before their descent to Wilanir, Rumdoom sent a proxy in the form of his wife, Hildegaard. She said that he would again be staying on the ship. As Hildegaard had been an ally in dealing with Rumdoom in the past, Korrigan asked her discreetly if he had suffered a relapse. Hildegaard replied, “The Wielder of the Stone of Not has taken proper account of his station. He will choose his own course of action from here on out. You may of course petition him for aid as always, but he will respond on a case-by-case basis.”
So be it, thought Korrigan. There was no time to deal with this matter now, as Wilanir loomed large.
A land of pine forests, with a central mountain range, permanent winter snow sat sullen on Wilanir, and although herbivores like rabbits, deer, and birds still roamed the landscape, all predators had perished. This included the elves that once lived here, as evidenced by their ruined dwellings and palaces, all abandoned and snowed in.
Kai and Uriel began their usual meditations. Kai quickly established the trait of this world – that guilt weighed heavily, like a fog. Fog appeared more readily and more thickly, especially around those who had committed wrongs. (Indeed, it appeared to be gathering around them even now.) Meanwhile, Uriel pieced together the story of this world: how it was destroyed by a vampiric red dragon named Doverspike. This wasn’t Doverspike’s intention. He had threatened a nation ruled by an elvish archmage, whose people made regular offerings of blood as a sign of obedience. When Doverspike used an epic spell to slay the emperor and everyone in his bloodline, the effect cascaded through most of the population of the world. The dead animated as zombies and inexorably wiped out all the other survivors. Eventually their bodies rotted away, leaving Doverspike as the only sentient being on the whole world. Soon thereafter the world was drawn into the Gyre.
Gupta wondered aloud if this powerful spell, which had slain so many, due to their connection to a single individual, was related in any way to the Sacrament of Apotheosis. While they discussed this matter, the fog thickened around them, and – just as they came to the conclusion that it was not, due to the lack of any divine element – the fog coalesced into a great dragon’s maw which bit deeply into Gupta. She snarled back at it even as it bit down on her. The bite damaged not only Gupta but all of her friends – save Uriel, who could not be easily harmed by necrotic magic. Leon responded instinctively with his fiery tiefling curse, but it did no harm to the incorporeal red dragon; Gupta, now versed in the vengeful ways of the Vekeshi, punished the creature with radiant fire.
Radiant magic was just the trick. Although the damage was inconsequential, the dragon recoiled, gibbered an apology and then screamed, ‘It wasn’t my fault!’ in Draconic. Then the fog flowed away at speed. Korrigan pursued it with his clairvoyant eye and saw it travel back to a fortress lair in the central mountain range – one of several, according to Uriel, who had seen images of them during his ritual.
They gave pursuit. The ground-level access was buried in ice, but they were easily able to get in through a higher access point. The fortress was vast, cold and empty save for the occasional zombie, which they were able to dispose of with ease. It did not take long to find Doverspike, curled and shivering atop an ice-trapped treasure hoard, black miasma pouring out of his nostrils and across the scales of his face, which were deep red, flecked with dead white at their edges. A few zombies lurked at the foot of this mound.
“Whose fault was it, then?” asked Uriel, in Draconic.
“Leave me alone!” the dragon cried, before turning to one of the zombies as if it was the one who had spoken. He told it to shut up, then blasted it with fire. When he saw what he had done he was stricken, and scurried into a corner, horrified.
A quick telepathic conference ensued. Wilanir begged the question, do the plane’s traits derive from what happened on the world, or were they inherent? Which came first – Doverspike, or the guilt-heavy fog? Gupta wondered what Lanjyr’s trait would be. “A vast conspiracy will arise and naughty word up the world?” she joked in answer to her own question.
“That’s easy,” said Kai. “The stories on Lanjyr are always the best stories.”
“Which may explain why on Av, timings are always the most melodramatic,” said Uriel. “It does, after all, mirror Lanjyr.” Then he turned to the matter in hand and asked Grappa if he knew how to fix Doverspike’s mind. Grappa said he could create refined machine intelligence, but could not fix the broken minds of the living. Otherwise he might have had more influence of Nicodemus…
“He’s an evil dragon who destroyed a world. Do we want to heal him?” asked Korrigan. It was decided that the attempt might be made if a clear benefit became apparent.
Korrigan asked Doverspike how they could help him. “Do you require the sweet release of death? If not, what are prepared to do to assuage your guilt?”
“DO?!?” screamed Doverspike, as if the suggestion, not he, were insane. It was evident that the dragon had no concept of penance.
“Human beings make mistake too. There are ways to lift the burden that such a mistake places on your soul. Are you willing to learn from us?”
A slow, halting conversation followed, in which they explained their quest to defeat the legion. They said that the golden legion did a lot of wicked things and that if Doverspike were to help them defeat the demons, it would go some way to make up for the wrongs he had done on Wilanir. “Doing so would restore balance. There odds are overwhelming, but we will fight the legion despite them, because it is the right thing to do.”
Doverspike said he knew of the golden legion, having eaten a few when they came here. They were the last sentient beings he had tasted. (Tellingly, they never came back.) The idea of making up for his crimes appealed to the creature and he said that he would help.
“Are we going to travel with him throughout the Gyre,” asked Calily, appalled.
It was agreed that this was a bad idea and they made a plan with the dragon for Leon to return for him when they were ready. (They could go back for Etiotek and the Huldregaarl, too, they realised.) Quratulain wondered if they weren’t being naïve. What if the dragon sided with the legion? Korrigan did not think that was likely.
Uriel left the dragon with a gift – transmuting a large amount of snow into fresh blood. Calily wrinkled her nose up at this, perturbed by the macabre gesture.
“Do we need a golden icon?” asked Uriel, as an afterthought.
Some of the unit thought that heavy guilt might help keep people in check and responsible for their actions. Leon shook his head. “It’s a terrible trait. Some people are naturally weighed down by guilt, and this would make things worse; others feel barely any at all when they clearly should. Who’s to say that this plane would even affect them?”
“It affected Doverspike,” said Uriel.
“But only after he destroyed a world.”
Uriel made an icon anyway – just in case.
