Post by Tazmuck on Jun 10, 2020 21:39:07 GMT
Taz had come to appreciate the company of his friends Sheryl, Arcadias, and Markas. Arcadias was a great drinking buddy, Markas was ever-cheery, and Sheryl… well he imagined if he had a big sister, having Sheryl around was what having a big sister would feel like.
But he had also learned they were always fussing over something. Adventuring was a simple thing to Taz: you did your job, you got paid, usually quite well. But whenever a new job came up, they were always going on about what’s good, and wherever they were or whatever they were doing, they could always find something that needed ‘saving’.
This was no exception. They had entered the Ettin, which was full of adventurers. Apparently another war was coming, and he imagined they all wanted their share of whatever prizes or spoils were on offer.
And then some woman had walked in - looking somewhat mad or possibly drunk - and declaring she had a plan. He would have ignored her completely, had Mace not noticed the rather valuable belt she was wearing.
The woman turned out to be ‘Khazifa’, and although slightly mad it turns out she was pretty powerful and quite wealthy. Mace’s instincts were always right about this stuff. She’d kidnapped a devil from hell, and wanted some information from her, and so wanted the adventurers to get the information.
As usual though - as soon as Mace asked the sensible question about prices for the job - the others started up. This time, the thing that needed saving was the ‘multiverse’. ‘What’s a multiverse exactly?’ Thought Taz. ‘I don’t know but if I don’t even know what it is I can probably live without it okay’. They negotiated a good price. And then they went into the place the information was.
The next bit was quite confusing to Taz. He wasn’t really sure where they were - they seemed to be on another plane again, and people kept calling it ‘the mind of the devil’. Maybe it was an area in hell? Anyway, they traversed this area of land until they found the what they wanted - a lot of quite strange things happened - he couldn’t remember them all but he thought perhaps he’d been poisoned at some point, at that most of it wasn’t real.
One thing did strike him, though - the story of the devil that had been in front of them when they started. She had been a paladin, a holy warrior who served an evil god - Zariel. And at death she had been transformed, corrupted into serving the hells. She seemed full of regret, of confliction, and she begged for her own life to be taken, to end her service. What could drive a warrior to such conflict?
Well, they got the information they needed and travelled back to the normal plane. The others seemed extremely concerned about this Zariel person - who he wasn’t sure he’d heard of before today. And from their conversations with Khazifa he gleaned a few important things. Firstly, there was some kind of war coming. Something to do with a portal in Kul Goran (always Kul Goran!) to hell. Secondly, for some reason that wasn’t really established, they themselves were going to have to do something to stop it. Actually not just something, they were expected to march an army into hell to distract Zariel.
This worried Taz on many levels. Did devil hordes from hell even carry any treasure? If not then who was going to pay them for this war? What was to be gained from any of this?
He thought deeply about it later. There did seem to be a lot happening - adventurers everywhere, new people popping up out of nowhere. And Zariel was - some sort of God. Perhaps this really was his chance to be famous? Leading an army into battle, fighting the hoard of a god. And the famous adventurers - Baine, Sunday, Varis - they never seemed short of jobs or coin. Yes, even if the gold was light, he thought, in the long term, it would pay off.
But he had also learned they were always fussing over something. Adventuring was a simple thing to Taz: you did your job, you got paid, usually quite well. But whenever a new job came up, they were always going on about what’s good, and wherever they were or whatever they were doing, they could always find something that needed ‘saving’.
This was no exception. They had entered the Ettin, which was full of adventurers. Apparently another war was coming, and he imagined they all wanted their share of whatever prizes or spoils were on offer.
And then some woman had walked in - looking somewhat mad or possibly drunk - and declaring she had a plan. He would have ignored her completely, had Mace not noticed the rather valuable belt she was wearing.
The woman turned out to be ‘Khazifa’, and although slightly mad it turns out she was pretty powerful and quite wealthy. Mace’s instincts were always right about this stuff. She’d kidnapped a devil from hell, and wanted some information from her, and so wanted the adventurers to get the information.
As usual though - as soon as Mace asked the sensible question about prices for the job - the others started up. This time, the thing that needed saving was the ‘multiverse’. ‘What’s a multiverse exactly?’ Thought Taz. ‘I don’t know but if I don’t even know what it is I can probably live without it okay’. They negotiated a good price. And then they went into the place the information was.
The next bit was quite confusing to Taz. He wasn’t really sure where they were - they seemed to be on another plane again, and people kept calling it ‘the mind of the devil’. Maybe it was an area in hell? Anyway, they traversed this area of land until they found the what they wanted - a lot of quite strange things happened - he couldn’t remember them all but he thought perhaps he’d been poisoned at some point, at that most of it wasn’t real.
One thing did strike him, though - the story of the devil that had been in front of them when they started. She had been a paladin, a holy warrior who served an evil god - Zariel. And at death she had been transformed, corrupted into serving the hells. She seemed full of regret, of confliction, and she begged for her own life to be taken, to end her service. What could drive a warrior to such conflict?
Well, they got the information they needed and travelled back to the normal plane. The others seemed extremely concerned about this Zariel person - who he wasn’t sure he’d heard of before today. And from their conversations with Khazifa he gleaned a few important things. Firstly, there was some kind of war coming. Something to do with a portal in Kul Goran (always Kul Goran!) to hell. Secondly, for some reason that wasn’t really established, they themselves were going to have to do something to stop it. Actually not just something, they were expected to march an army into hell to distract Zariel.
This worried Taz on many levels. Did devil hordes from hell even carry any treasure? If not then who was going to pay them for this war? What was to be gained from any of this?
He thought deeply about it later. There did seem to be a lot happening - adventurers everywhere, new people popping up out of nowhere. And Zariel was - some sort of God. Perhaps this really was his chance to be famous? Leading an army into battle, fighting the hoard of a god. And the famous adventurers - Baine, Sunday, Varis - they never seemed short of jobs or coin. Yes, even if the gold was light, he thought, in the long term, it would pay off.
