Umber

Psydney contemplates the fate of exiled deities and the loss of Jake.

Dear T’lar,

I write this from my perch on a retriever corpse in the brief moments I have before we enter the Bastion and begin the search for Ashardalon. In the course of the hunt I hope to encounter our kinfolk, although I have little hope that we will find them alive. But do not despair – Kuhlefaran is powerful, and can do much with little, so the lost sheep of the enclave may yet be returned safely. By the time you receive this, if you ever receive it, all of these matters will of course have been settled. There is small doubt in my mind that at the conclusion of this, either we or Ashardalon will be dead. I hope that luck will be with us, but fear that the damnable claw of Iggwilv may reach out even here, preying on us in our weakest moments as she has already done twice before. When it will end, I cannot imagine.

We are – well, I’m not sure where we are. I say that to you often, don’t I? Not on the Prime Material. Even the learned Bane cannot identify our current location. It has been a not especially merry chase that led us here. With inordinate luck, we defeated the Cathezar, although not without bringing Bane to the brink of death, and the Demogorgon head Aamuel sent two balor after us before we realized that our continued presence in Greyhawk was putting its citizens at unacceptable risk. We hastily planeshifted to Pandemonium in search of Deseaus, holder of the only piece of the Totem within our grasp. Too hastily, it turned out, as we were inadequately prepared and had to planeshift back.

The second venture was more successful. Bane and I used our nascent clerical abilities to shield most of the party from the ongoing sonic damage characteristic of Pandemonium, freeing Kuhlefaran for other purposes, and with her wind walk spell we quickly traversed the distance from our point of arrival to Desaeus’ prison in Phlegethos. Eco, the Gatekeeper to Desaeus, was surprised to see us, sympathetic to our need, but adamant: no admission without explicit invitation by the god of our choice. The exercise of law at its worst (I know, you think there is no exercise of law at its best): needing a deity’s permission to tend to a task that the deities are forbidden to discuss. 

Jake, more successful than I at keeping his temper and his wits, brazenly announced that we were deities. The solar’s eyes flashed, and I was sure she was about to commence stringing arrows of elf/human/dwarf/slaad-masquerading-as-humanoid slaying, but instead a look of surprise crossed her face. Evidently some residue of the Eternal Champion remains visible to the celestials, and while not deific it’s the next best thing. Good enough to gain us entry, at least. A more literal gatekeeper than I imagined, the substance of Eco altered and flowed to create a portal.

Pastimes of the Gods

We stepped through, and were greeted by a still life of utter chaos. Smashed harps and lutes, tattered tapestries, sculptures ground to powder. It became quickly evident that we had suffered a lapse of imagination when preparing for this meeting. We feared a god gone mad in his isolation, angry, embittered, railing at his unjust fate, perhaps even turned from the law and the good that had once been his domain. We did not envision a deity who would be, were he mortal, mortally bored. His few surviving followers who had gone into exile with him suffered in much the same state, and I began to wish we had brought something to entertain them. In retrospect, though, I’m not sure anything could have relieved their ennui, not even your golden-tongued Bard. Could you be diverted from the knowledge that you were doomed to spend eternity in three small rooms? I’m not sure I could. Were I in a position to argue with the gods, I think I would question the wisdom of their decision. However terrible the crime, everlasting torment seems an excessive punishment, and offering no hope of redemption merely vindictive.

True to the form of this entire accursed undertaking, Deseaus was utterly uninterested in aiding us by relinquishing the Totem. He’d grown fond of it over the aeons, and didn’t think we were powerful enough to vanquish Ashardalon anyway, even with a descendant of Did present to weaken him. “If you could defeat me, you could probably defeat him,” he said, a challenge in his eyes.

We had no desire to fight him. Crazed he may have been, but he was not evil, and the Totem, after all, is arguably his to give or withhold to whom he will. On the other hand, the stakes for the entire population of Oerth are so high…After a hurried, whispered conversation, we decided to retreat and rethink the situation. We started backing toward the portal, too late realizing our error; Deseaus saw it and hurled himself at it, and freedom. Unable to match his awesome speed, we had a few brief moments to contemplate our standing with the deities now that we’d let their eternally imprisoned god loose before Deseaus leapt at the doorway, slammed against the portal and…knocked himself nearly senseless. The advantage, I realized, of having a door made of solar rather than wood or even iron: even when it’s open not everything can get through.

Jake and Serge eyed the Totem around Deseaus’ neck. Even so, it is no small matter to pickpocket even a half-conscious deity. Before they could act, however, Nurn, our slaad of unknown intentions, uttered a strange, broken phrase, and suddenly the Totem was in his hand. We dove through the portal, Desaeus’ howl of rage echoing in our ears. After Bane pressed him on the subject, Nurn confessed that he had made use of a powerful item given him by his mentor, granting him the ability to stop time for a few precious moments. As that mentor turned out to be an old acquaintance, Blastir, we are now somewhat less uneasy about Nurn’s presence among us.

Uncertain Victory

Armed with the Totem, we used its power to shift to the plane where we currently stand. Access to the Bastion was protected by a formidable array of demonic guards: a nalfeshnee and a hezrou, four glabrezu and, hovering above them anchored by one foot in the gravity-less plane, a seventy-foot spider. Serge, who I thought rash enough when, at the Temple of Pelor in Greyhawk he asked to accompany us on this fool’s errand, offered to sneak past them all for a quick reconnoiter at the doorway. I was amazed, but impressed, when he reached the entry and returned unscathed to report that there appeared to be a recess into which our piece of the totem could be inserted. Like it or not, this was the way in, and we resigned ourselves to the apparent necessity of slicing our way to the door. “This is a stupid idea,” Jake snarled, but when we asked for alternatives he had none to offer, so the fighters leapt (in this strange gravity, I suppose “skidded” would be more appropriate) into the fray.

Finally, fate was with us. Magnus dispatched the nalfeshnee before it had time to do more than look startled at our appearance, while Serge and Purcell pressed hard on the hezrou. Nurn virtually neutralized the glabrezu by uttering a word of power and blinding all but one, and Jake began systematically cutting them down. Bane and Kuhlefaran stood to the side of battle, protecting the party from the creatures’ dismaying array of spells by countering them as they were cast and preventing an effort to banish Purcell and Serge to the Prime Material.

We had hoped the spider would prove a native noncombatant, but those hopes were dashed when powerful rays, first of fire, then of cold, shot from its eyes at Magnus and I where we harried the nalfeshnee and we realized that, no mere spider, it was yet another demonic entity. Thinking myself standing atop its bloated body, I unleashed the i and drew my sword. Eight strokes and near miraculous good fortune later, the retriever hung dead.

Our relief was even more short-lived than we imagined, however. The mysterious gray-robed beings visible only to Jake who had been hovering at the periphery of our activities ever since Greyhawk suddenly materialized before us all. One stepped toward our rogue and said, “Important as this matter is, our business is more important still. Will you come?”

Jake looked from us to them. It was a long moment of silence, but I could feel his mind pulling away from ours. He nodded. “Yes, I’ll come.”

Without further word, faster than we could react, the robed figure pulled out a knife and stabbed Jake through the heart. Then as quickly as they had come, they vanished. The plane made a mockery of our horror, as Jake’s body stood before us as casual as life, but lifeless now. It didn’t take a wild leap of the imagination to understand that these were the Gray Immortals, and they had come for him for some unknown purpose. Was he truly dead? Given his history, we were doubtful. Bane pawed through his pack for his crystal ball and a few minutes later was rewarded with the sight of Jake, clad now like his companions, standing on an expanse that the wizard recognized as part of the Gray Waste, site of a centuries-old conflict between demons and devils. Their compelling business has taken our rogue far from us indeed; never, we fear, to return. As Bane has been studying the scene further, one of the Immortals must have felt the magical sensor, as he just reached over and pinched it out of existence. There is no time to re-establish it. Our own duties require our attention.

Maddening to have come so far together, only to have one of our number taken by unexpected forces for a hazy purpose, but mysterious are the ways of fate, and perhaps that is just as well. It is time to press on. Understand that I desperately wanted to come to your aid at the enclave, but I still believe that it, and others, are better served by my presence here. I hope you agree.

– Psydney