Post by Elarris on Aug 28, 2024 22:21:45 GMT
Elarris walked into the Gilded Mirror like he was walking onto a yacht. The centre of old Daring Heights, the casino hotel floated serenely on the corner of an ancient-ish crossroads. It was gaudy, with plush red carpets, green felt tables, gold lined bannisters and over decorated walls.
He saw Adelard, the submersible paladin, and nodded.
He saw Erron, the subterranean ocean going rogue, and nodded.
He saw Adelard nod to Erron.
He saw Erron nod back.
He felt they had reached the limit of what was possible with nodding.
--
An elven woman in blue sturdy trousers introduced two more for the party – Robin, golden glass, wicked looking rapier, and Aegis, a behorned paladin. Fortunately, Robin had some wizarding skills. Elarris had promised Mendal never to quest sans-wizard again. You always needed one. They were like a Swiss Army Knife except less useful for opening bottles. Mostly.
It appeared the client, Susan Denim, was down on her luck. The family were cloth merchants selling cotton in the winter and fur in the summer.
Denim had discovered a source of concentrated luck in the Feywild and wanted to offer it to the goddess Tymora.
“So let me just check,” Elarris raised his hand. “You want us to go to the land of fuckery and find concentrated fuckery?”
She nodded. “Follow the bending of reality.”
Adelard mentioned Beshaba, the goddess of bad luck. Robin blanched. Discussion flowed back and forth about Denim keeping the lucksicle, or choosing which god should bless her line.
Eventually nothing was decided and before long they were dodging wagons as they hurtled out of thin air in Portal Plaza.
--
By now Elarris was an old Feywild hand. The colossal trees, the dangling vines, the blinding colours, the nose bending scents… check. The fairy in a sequinned gold suit not so much.
“Welcome to Seren Springs,” the fairy said. “Perhaps you’ll enjoy a Seren dip.”
A knight approached them, one Holland Henceforth. “This is a magical, wonderful place,” he exclaimed. All your problems are solved. This is the place for the questor who is despairing in their quest. I was looking for seeds of destruction – they’re on a tree in greenhouse!”
“That is lucky,” Elarris mused. “How long have you been here?”
Henceforth hailed a passing Eladrin and found out it had been some four years since he’d been called. The Eladrin had been searching for Chenvaala, a vanished grove of trees. Since arriving they’d met three people who’ve heard of the place.
“That is indeed fortunate,” Elarris nodded.
Another Holland, this one named Dorsetry. It transpired that all Holland Dorsetry craved was someone who spoke primordial.
“What are the chances?” Elarris sighed mournfully. “I speak primordial.”
Within minutes he was translating a phrase in Dorsetry’s grandmothers journal that was supposed to be a clue to great treasure. Elarris felt certain it wasn’t, but wrote it out diligently.
Just a few steps away on a sports field a cavalcade of merry folk were engaged in a spot of competitive axe throwing. Blindfolded. As passersby shot arrows at them and missed.
Elarris started to get nervous.
--
Beyond the Seren springs he could see a cave entrance into side of the cliffs that hemmed the greensward in.
The rest of the party were engaged in deep conversations of varying levels of increasing suspicion. He wandered over to the cave where a swarm of fairies blocked his path.
“You cannot go into the cave,” they sang, “The cave has not been entered for a long time.”
At which point Adelard pounded up. “There’s fuckery afoot,” he cried. “I’ve been interrogating the fairies. They’re enchanting these people to prevent them from leaving. The answer is in this cave! There is a spirit of joy and luck in here.”
Joy and luck, Elarris shrugged. Sounded like his sort of club.
The rest of the party assembled, and they began the long journey through an underground rainforest, picking their way over branches and moss.
Elarris noticed a skeleton holding a box, the cause of death not obvious but almost certainly natural. The box… it caught his gaze. But they hurried on.
Until lo! Rising up from a mound of moss a huge mossy mound emerged from the back of the cave transmitting a smell of extreme floral intensity, and Elarris suddenly realised he was happy for the first time in 20 odd years.
An enormous sense of hope and possibility welled up within him and all his cares and woes seemed both beautiful and manageable.
It was as if his shoulders eased, and his soul unclenched and both suddenly realised they had been tight since… since before he could tell. Since he was child? Certainly before the strange raid on the dragon horde that cursed him forever and sent him into the long lonely journey that seemed to never end. He realised now that he had been twisted in sorrow for years.
A fairy named Julia landed on the mossy mounds… top bit? And spoke for the joy spirit. The creature was born to make people happy and had been doing so in a small, careful way for many years until the box arrived. At which point, the power to spread joy was magnified many times over. Now the spirit could reward the tired and defeated, lost on quests that could never be fulfilled.
And Elarris could see the benefits the joy spirit wrought.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to take the box,” he sighed. “Our client is paying us to. We’re from Kantas.”
Adelard poked his head out from the tunnel. “The box is sacred to Tymora,” the young paladin cried, at which point a swarm of fairies attacked them screaming “the box shall not leave, the box shall not leave.” They murmured ancient fey magic and their dancing conjured up runes and rituals older than the wisest of the wise.
Elarris slapped three of them with his longsword and they all passed out. Aegis took out a Warhammer and delivered some gentle taps. Erron fired his crossbow and the joy spirit blocked the bolt, so the party set to work with the slapping, whacking and swatting until all the fairies were unconscious.
They left the joy spirit looking sad and hunted out the fairies home in a vast hollow tree where their evil scheme was laid bare. The creatures were helping everyone feel good and making tonnes of money on the side by betting on sporting events across the Feywild!
--
Elarris paused.
“It doesn’t sound that evil,” he said eventually. “Maybe, and hear me out, maybe we don’t barge into an unknown land, beat up anyone we see and steal their most valued possession so an unknown client can pay us the price of a small shield. I mean, I know we’re Dawnlanders. Stupid idea. But still…?”
Adelard spoke against the motion. The box was sacred to Tymorra. It should be in her temple.
“But,” Elarris ventured. “Can we be certain the client who we met for, like, five minutes – which is admittedly quite long for a Kantas client – but can we be certain she’ll take it to the temple of Tymora? She was considering the bad one too.”
He lost the vote on a knife edge – four in favour of taking the box, one against.
“Can I talk to the joy spirit?” he asked mournfully.
After some time weeping on the moss, the creature – seeming a little bored – fashioned a wand from some twigs and handed it to Elarris. “Whensoever ye shall cast with this wand, a creature shall have a moderate chance of smiling!” Julia cried. “Think of it as a mid-ranking comedian on an OK night in a suburban comedy club.”
Elarris bowed gratefully,
“Oh, except, if you do it three times a day there’s a chance it will entirely reverse its power and make people very sad.”
“This all just sucks,” Elarris mumbled.
--
Susan Denim was delighted to see them. “Ah, my friends,” she cried. ‘Indeed, as we are friends, call me Sue. Sue Denim.”
Elarris blinked. How could he have been so stupid? But before he could say “that sounds a lot like pseudonym” Sue Denim was no longer a fairy, but was in fact a rakshasa with eyes of gold with black slits shinning a fiendish glimmer of disturbing, infernal intellect and their palms facing out from the body with finger joints bent backwards in a ghastly imitation of opposable thumbs.
And then they were in the throne room of Asmodeus.
There in the lightless depths of the Nine Hells stood the Lord of Lies, the ancient and cunning, cloaked in shadow, his true form hidden by swirling clouds of the mind. His power, unmatched by devilkind, seethed and throbbed throughout the vast empty hall, but the screaming of a millions of souls, locked in torment for all eternity, spoke of his schemes and power unfolding over spans of time immeasurable.
They were alone with the Great Deceiver, except for a slender man in a long black frock coat leaning casually against a pillar of frozen, screaming human faces.
A single golden coin span in the air.
“Why, there you are,” the Cloven One drawled. “Please allow me to introduce myself. I’m a man of wealth and taste.”
And then he Looked At Them. And they froze in terror.
“Ah man, this really sucks,” Elarris mumbled.
--
But Adelard resisted the power of the Lord of the Ninth and he raised his head up and met his eyes and spoke “I am a paladin of Helm, and I resist you, Deceiver.”
Asmodeus sighed. “Paladins. I know what you’re like. All the sex and money and drugs. You think people who live like that never end up happy. You need to think that. It's understandable. All those pleasure seekers incite an envy so urgent that you can escape it only by translating it into pity. People who live like that never end up happy, you say to yourself. And yes, you're right. But neither do you. And in the meantime, they've had all the sex and drugs and money. Now let me look at you. I wish to see the brutal efficiency of the Dawnlands adventuring community.”
And he Looked At Them.
“Fiend, you deserve your suffering,” Adelard hissed,
“You can't blame me,” Asmodeus shrugged. “I mean that literally. You're incapable of blaming me. You're human. Being human is choosing freedom over imprisonment, autonomy over dependency, liberty over servitude. You can't blame me because you know, and you've always known that the idea of spending eternity with nothing to do except praise God is boring. You'd be catatonic after an hour. You can't blame me because - now do please be honest with yourself for once - you'd have left, too. Now, meet my… acquaintance.”
Elarris shuddered. Asmodeus used the word acquaintance in a way serial killers would have found using the word victim a little too harsh.
“This is the gambler. The luckiest man in the world. So lucky he sold his name for luck at cards. He wanted to bet the devils own luck on a coin flip.”
All eyes turned to the golden coin spinning in the air.
“The result is undecided,” Asmodeus gave a gentle smile that would disembowel a dragon.
“So this is how I went about things,” the archduke of evil drawled. “I have people I want to know more about, and I have a problem to solve. Who better to solve the problem than the people who stole from me a few weeks ago. Do you know Oziah Daybreaker?”
They shook their heads.
“I have other names, but let’s not waste time. Who has it?”
Adelard spoke through gritted teeth. “I swore an oath that I will take this to Tymorra.”
Asmodeus shrugged. “Mirror!”
A mirror appeared beside him, clouds swirling and parting to reveal ineffable power.
“Ty, darling, I have your box. You will have it within three hours.”
“You pledge to that?” a voice like a thousand angels made itself heard in their minds.
“I pledge to that,” the fiend’s voice grated like coals over eyeballs.
“I have one more condition,” Adelard spoke. “You let my friends recover from this paralysis.”
“My, you really are as annoying as the reports say - sweet boy, I can’t turn.. this.. off,” Asmodeus gestured to his form. “This is as low as I can go.”
And then the coin fell, and Asmodeus was the winner, his hand seared by the box as by holy light. The gamblers face was as bleak as wheat in a fire.
A small pouch appeared in front of them.
“All of this aside, this was going to be a wonderful moment to meet you all, get to understand you and let you know that I’m a devil who is always honest and will always hold up their end of a bargain. The Hells are always open to the Dawnlanders. Drop by any time.”
And he began the incantation to return them to the material plane when Robin slipped forward, picked up the box and the throne room dissolved as Asmodeus cried “for fuck’s sake…”
--
They stood in Portal Plaza in silence for some time.
“So, we just went to the throne room of the Lord of the Nine Hells, defied him and stole from him,” Elarris mused. “I think this is one for the diary.”
He saw Adelard, the submersible paladin, and nodded.
He saw Erron, the subterranean ocean going rogue, and nodded.
He saw Adelard nod to Erron.
He saw Erron nod back.
He felt they had reached the limit of what was possible with nodding.
--
An elven woman in blue sturdy trousers introduced two more for the party – Robin, golden glass, wicked looking rapier, and Aegis, a behorned paladin. Fortunately, Robin had some wizarding skills. Elarris had promised Mendal never to quest sans-wizard again. You always needed one. They were like a Swiss Army Knife except less useful for opening bottles. Mostly.
It appeared the client, Susan Denim, was down on her luck. The family were cloth merchants selling cotton in the winter and fur in the summer.
Denim had discovered a source of concentrated luck in the Feywild and wanted to offer it to the goddess Tymora.
“So let me just check,” Elarris raised his hand. “You want us to go to the land of fuckery and find concentrated fuckery?”
She nodded. “Follow the bending of reality.”
Adelard mentioned Beshaba, the goddess of bad luck. Robin blanched. Discussion flowed back and forth about Denim keeping the lucksicle, or choosing which god should bless her line.
Eventually nothing was decided and before long they were dodging wagons as they hurtled out of thin air in Portal Plaza.
--
By now Elarris was an old Feywild hand. The colossal trees, the dangling vines, the blinding colours, the nose bending scents… check. The fairy in a sequinned gold suit not so much.
“Welcome to Seren Springs,” the fairy said. “Perhaps you’ll enjoy a Seren dip.”
A knight approached them, one Holland Henceforth. “This is a magical, wonderful place,” he exclaimed. All your problems are solved. This is the place for the questor who is despairing in their quest. I was looking for seeds of destruction – they’re on a tree in greenhouse!”
“That is lucky,” Elarris mused. “How long have you been here?”
Henceforth hailed a passing Eladrin and found out it had been some four years since he’d been called. The Eladrin had been searching for Chenvaala, a vanished grove of trees. Since arriving they’d met three people who’ve heard of the place.
“That is indeed fortunate,” Elarris nodded.
Another Holland, this one named Dorsetry. It transpired that all Holland Dorsetry craved was someone who spoke primordial.
“What are the chances?” Elarris sighed mournfully. “I speak primordial.”
Within minutes he was translating a phrase in Dorsetry’s grandmothers journal that was supposed to be a clue to great treasure. Elarris felt certain it wasn’t, but wrote it out diligently.
Just a few steps away on a sports field a cavalcade of merry folk were engaged in a spot of competitive axe throwing. Blindfolded. As passersby shot arrows at them and missed.
Elarris started to get nervous.
--
Beyond the Seren springs he could see a cave entrance into side of the cliffs that hemmed the greensward in.
The rest of the party were engaged in deep conversations of varying levels of increasing suspicion. He wandered over to the cave where a swarm of fairies blocked his path.
“You cannot go into the cave,” they sang, “The cave has not been entered for a long time.”
At which point Adelard pounded up. “There’s fuckery afoot,” he cried. “I’ve been interrogating the fairies. They’re enchanting these people to prevent them from leaving. The answer is in this cave! There is a spirit of joy and luck in here.”
Joy and luck, Elarris shrugged. Sounded like his sort of club.
The rest of the party assembled, and they began the long journey through an underground rainforest, picking their way over branches and moss.
Elarris noticed a skeleton holding a box, the cause of death not obvious but almost certainly natural. The box… it caught his gaze. But they hurried on.
Until lo! Rising up from a mound of moss a huge mossy mound emerged from the back of the cave transmitting a smell of extreme floral intensity, and Elarris suddenly realised he was happy for the first time in 20 odd years.
An enormous sense of hope and possibility welled up within him and all his cares and woes seemed both beautiful and manageable.
It was as if his shoulders eased, and his soul unclenched and both suddenly realised they had been tight since… since before he could tell. Since he was child? Certainly before the strange raid on the dragon horde that cursed him forever and sent him into the long lonely journey that seemed to never end. He realised now that he had been twisted in sorrow for years.
A fairy named Julia landed on the mossy mounds… top bit? And spoke for the joy spirit. The creature was born to make people happy and had been doing so in a small, careful way for many years until the box arrived. At which point, the power to spread joy was magnified many times over. Now the spirit could reward the tired and defeated, lost on quests that could never be fulfilled.
And Elarris could see the benefits the joy spirit wrought.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to take the box,” he sighed. “Our client is paying us to. We’re from Kantas.”
Adelard poked his head out from the tunnel. “The box is sacred to Tymora,” the young paladin cried, at which point a swarm of fairies attacked them screaming “the box shall not leave, the box shall not leave.” They murmured ancient fey magic and their dancing conjured up runes and rituals older than the wisest of the wise.
Elarris slapped three of them with his longsword and they all passed out. Aegis took out a Warhammer and delivered some gentle taps. Erron fired his crossbow and the joy spirit blocked the bolt, so the party set to work with the slapping, whacking and swatting until all the fairies were unconscious.
They left the joy spirit looking sad and hunted out the fairies home in a vast hollow tree where their evil scheme was laid bare. The creatures were helping everyone feel good and making tonnes of money on the side by betting on sporting events across the Feywild!
--
Elarris paused.
“It doesn’t sound that evil,” he said eventually. “Maybe, and hear me out, maybe we don’t barge into an unknown land, beat up anyone we see and steal their most valued possession so an unknown client can pay us the price of a small shield. I mean, I know we’re Dawnlanders. Stupid idea. But still…?”
Adelard spoke against the motion. The box was sacred to Tymorra. It should be in her temple.
“But,” Elarris ventured. “Can we be certain the client who we met for, like, five minutes – which is admittedly quite long for a Kantas client – but can we be certain she’ll take it to the temple of Tymora? She was considering the bad one too.”
He lost the vote on a knife edge – four in favour of taking the box, one against.
“Can I talk to the joy spirit?” he asked mournfully.
After some time weeping on the moss, the creature – seeming a little bored – fashioned a wand from some twigs and handed it to Elarris. “Whensoever ye shall cast with this wand, a creature shall have a moderate chance of smiling!” Julia cried. “Think of it as a mid-ranking comedian on an OK night in a suburban comedy club.”
Elarris bowed gratefully,
“Oh, except, if you do it three times a day there’s a chance it will entirely reverse its power and make people very sad.”
“This all just sucks,” Elarris mumbled.
--
Susan Denim was delighted to see them. “Ah, my friends,” she cried. ‘Indeed, as we are friends, call me Sue. Sue Denim.”
Elarris blinked. How could he have been so stupid? But before he could say “that sounds a lot like pseudonym” Sue Denim was no longer a fairy, but was in fact a rakshasa with eyes of gold with black slits shinning a fiendish glimmer of disturbing, infernal intellect and their palms facing out from the body with finger joints bent backwards in a ghastly imitation of opposable thumbs.
And then they were in the throne room of Asmodeus.
There in the lightless depths of the Nine Hells stood the Lord of Lies, the ancient and cunning, cloaked in shadow, his true form hidden by swirling clouds of the mind. His power, unmatched by devilkind, seethed and throbbed throughout the vast empty hall, but the screaming of a millions of souls, locked in torment for all eternity, spoke of his schemes and power unfolding over spans of time immeasurable.
They were alone with the Great Deceiver, except for a slender man in a long black frock coat leaning casually against a pillar of frozen, screaming human faces.
A single golden coin span in the air.
“Why, there you are,” the Cloven One drawled. “Please allow me to introduce myself. I’m a man of wealth and taste.”
And then he Looked At Them. And they froze in terror.
“Ah man, this really sucks,” Elarris mumbled.
--
But Adelard resisted the power of the Lord of the Ninth and he raised his head up and met his eyes and spoke “I am a paladin of Helm, and I resist you, Deceiver.”
Asmodeus sighed. “Paladins. I know what you’re like. All the sex and money and drugs. You think people who live like that never end up happy. You need to think that. It's understandable. All those pleasure seekers incite an envy so urgent that you can escape it only by translating it into pity. People who live like that never end up happy, you say to yourself. And yes, you're right. But neither do you. And in the meantime, they've had all the sex and drugs and money. Now let me look at you. I wish to see the brutal efficiency of the Dawnlands adventuring community.”
And he Looked At Them.
“Fiend, you deserve your suffering,” Adelard hissed,
“You can't blame me,” Asmodeus shrugged. “I mean that literally. You're incapable of blaming me. You're human. Being human is choosing freedom over imprisonment, autonomy over dependency, liberty over servitude. You can't blame me because you know, and you've always known that the idea of spending eternity with nothing to do except praise God is boring. You'd be catatonic after an hour. You can't blame me because - now do please be honest with yourself for once - you'd have left, too. Now, meet my… acquaintance.”
Elarris shuddered. Asmodeus used the word acquaintance in a way serial killers would have found using the word victim a little too harsh.
“This is the gambler. The luckiest man in the world. So lucky he sold his name for luck at cards. He wanted to bet the devils own luck on a coin flip.”
All eyes turned to the golden coin spinning in the air.
“The result is undecided,” Asmodeus gave a gentle smile that would disembowel a dragon.
“So this is how I went about things,” the archduke of evil drawled. “I have people I want to know more about, and I have a problem to solve. Who better to solve the problem than the people who stole from me a few weeks ago. Do you know Oziah Daybreaker?”
They shook their heads.
“I have other names, but let’s not waste time. Who has it?”
Adelard spoke through gritted teeth. “I swore an oath that I will take this to Tymorra.”
Asmodeus shrugged. “Mirror!”
A mirror appeared beside him, clouds swirling and parting to reveal ineffable power.
“Ty, darling, I have your box. You will have it within three hours.”
“You pledge to that?” a voice like a thousand angels made itself heard in their minds.
“I pledge to that,” the fiend’s voice grated like coals over eyeballs.
“I have one more condition,” Adelard spoke. “You let my friends recover from this paralysis.”
“My, you really are as annoying as the reports say - sweet boy, I can’t turn.. this.. off,” Asmodeus gestured to his form. “This is as low as I can go.”
And then the coin fell, and Asmodeus was the winner, his hand seared by the box as by holy light. The gamblers face was as bleak as wheat in a fire.
A small pouch appeared in front of them.
“All of this aside, this was going to be a wonderful moment to meet you all, get to understand you and let you know that I’m a devil who is always honest and will always hold up their end of a bargain. The Hells are always open to the Dawnlanders. Drop by any time.”
And he began the incantation to return them to the material plane when Robin slipped forward, picked up the box and the throne room dissolved as Asmodeus cried “for fuck’s sake…”
--
They stood in Portal Plaza in silence for some time.
“So, we just went to the throne room of the Lord of the Nine Hells, defied him and stole from him,” Elarris mused. “I think this is one for the diary.”
