Umber

Psydney reflects on the destruction of the Witchking and Mordenkainen’s irritation in a letter to her brother Erenil.

Dear Erenil,

Yes, the latest rumors you’ve heard are also true – the organized battle is mostly over. Evidently the disorganized skirmishes have just begun, but that’s a different matter, and for now not our immediate concern. We’re back at the Glitterhame, gearing up for a sojourn in the Abyss. It’s maddening to me that you might be not that far away, but I just don’t have time for a personal visit. Someday soon, perhaps.

The Grandfather of Assassins, after failing to reconstruct the Soul Totem using Bane as the third piece (the look on his face as Kuhlefaran successfully banished him back to the Abyss for a full day was priceless, and we mopped up his minion mages without much difficulty), and failing to collapse his damned mountain on us, paid us a visit under our own mountain and very nearly wiped out the lot of us. It was a close thing, and only a well-placed spell by Bane saved us, I think. Pity we couldn’t have met him on his own plane, and annihilated him rather than merely preventing his return to the Prime Material for a few hundred years, but at least we can take some grim satisfaction in knowing that he probably didn’t enjoy a happy homecoming. The price of failure runs high in the infernal realms, I suspect. Oh well, he saved us the bother of looking for him.

Next on our agenda was his erstwhile accomplice, the Witchking, a lich of unusual cunning (or perhaps usual? my experience with liches is thankfully limited), who also nearly killed us all. Not in the mood for dancing with his hordes of flying guardian demons, we teleported directly into the top of his tower, dispatched his pet white dragon, and worked our way down to his throne room.

Klavicus Starton the Second, Jr,
MA, AW, COE (honorary), GWG Esteemed Fellow

The creature had a fetish with acid as entrenched as Tenser’s love of blue (and the latter strikes me now as positively endearing compared to the former), but Serge led us around the numerous pits and baths. Along the way we encountered Klavicus, a pipe-smoking balor with a library to rival any in Greyhawk (and, knowing demons, doubtless partially stolen from Greyhawk). Like all tanar’ri, he was evil to the bone, but I found myself almost liking him in spite of it. He was thoughtful (he’d actually read the books that lined his shelves), courteous, and peculiarly sensitive to our distaste for the usual demon banter. If there is such a thing as refined evil, he embodies it. Having been banished here by Orcus hundreds of years ago to guard the Witchking’s castle because, as far as we could make out, the demon prince considers him a personal threat, he was also pretty bored.

Since he looked nothing like your garden-variety balor (and according to Bane was armed to the teeth and arrayed with sundry items of powers far beyond anything in our possession), and we were not interested in depleting our resources before combat with the Witchking, we did our best to avoid antagonizing him, although I couldn’t resist the urge to pull the skull of prophecy out of my backpack and let it predict for him some uniquely horrible death. I did it partly out of pique, partly out of calculation, and he did seem delighted with it, asking if he could keep it, and responding to my assent by tossing me in turn something he thought I might like to have; the skull, he remarked casually, of some old paladin. Before we leave for the Abyss, I need to ask Kuhlefaran to attempt to speak with it, to try and discern something of its identity.

In, to me at least, a somewhat less felicitous trade, we obtained a partial translation of an ancient prophecy (in which we appear to be entangled) in exchange for a book which will, unhappily, allow the demon to increase his powers in some small way. But we’re feeling more than a little manipulated by forces beyond our control, and decided amongst ourselves that it was an acceptable price to pay if it might grant us a modicum of insight into our destinies untainted by others’ plans and desires, benevolent or otherwise.

Perusing the document, which in the manner of prophecies is both suggestive and cryptic, Bane was stunned to see at the end of a long line of honorifics attached to Klavicus’ name the title “GWG Esteemed Fellow”: a title bestowed by none other than the Greyhawk Wizards’ Guild. We made the mistake – or perhaps not – of mentioning this to Tenser. The old archmage is livid that a demon has not only been freely roaming the halls of the Mages’ Guild, but has been accorded high scholastic status; I’m not sure I’d want to be Mordenkainen when Tenser arrives robed in blue and righteous wrath.

The Witchking

The battle with the Witchking was short, but brutal. Angry at our refusal to deliver the Soul Totem into his hands, he opened the conflict by stripping us of all of our personal magical and psionic protections and powers, and permanently destroying the magical power of many of our items. It is well and good to say that it is the man and not the weapon who maketh the warrior, but facing a mage and his blackguard both fully protected by all that magic can offer while I was stripped down to the most defenseless I’ve been since that unfortunate incident in Sigil, I would not have been persuaded by the sermon. Bane, seeking an edge, stopped the flow of time, and was horrified to realize that the Witchking, exercising a powerful ability to “come along for the ride,” as it were, on another caster’s spells, had joined him in what was supposed to be a private time stream. So there they were, Bane, the Witchking and the Soul Totem, alone together with the rest of us powerless to help, and the lich began destroying our wizard at an almost leisurely pace.

What he didn’t realize was that they were merely almost alone together. For Kuhlefaran, wielder of the mysterious Traveler’s Star, found herself willing herself to come to Bane’s aid, and succeeding in the attempt. Realizing the impossibility of mustering enough magical protection to mount an adequate defense, let alone offense, she decided to equalize the playing field in her vicinity by calling into existence a region in which magic would be utterly neutralized. We would be deprived of whatever few magical items survived the Witchking’s onslaught, but so would our enemies. Bane fired off the spell that had so decimated us, then stepped within the protection of the antimagic zone, discovering in the process that the lich had projected an image of himself before the throne and was hiding near the ceiling all along. His own magic now failing him, he drifted slowly to the floor.

As a byproduct, Bane had also dispelled the alternate time stream, leaving the rest of us free to act. Enai, Magnus and Serge all charged the enemy wizard. I paused to restore my psionic armor and my weapon, then joined them. We were having an impact, but the cost was high. Enai was paralyzed and dropped to the ground, apparently lifeless. Magnus died. Serge died, but was instantly reborn through the Guardians’ gift. I was slapped into temporal stasis. That Kuhlefaran could remedy at least temporarily by enveloping me in her neutralizing field, and she suppressed the magic that held me immobilized long enough for me to cut down the lich’s blackguard. Serge, heedless as usual of personal safety, charged the lich and with a well-placed thrust rendered him unconscious, then finished him off.

Consequences

Kuhlefaran was able to restore the potency of many of our items with that remarkable staff, and we returned, weary and worried about how rapid an assault on the Abyss was required, to Tenser. The mage was pleased to see us and appreciative of our recent accomplishments, offered his hospitality and aid, and urged us to rest fully and provision ourselves in preparation for the difficult task ahead. That’s more than I could say for his company, Mordenkainen, who scolded us for our impetuousness and lectured us on both the instability we’ve created on the world stage by eliminating the Witchking and the havoc we’ve wreaked in Greyhawk by killing Grandfather.

We can quibble over whether we had to destroy the Witchking right now, but it isn’t as if Grandfather gave us a choice. No doubt the noble Mordenkainen would have bared his chest to Grandfather’s blade to prevent the petty squabbling among thieves and assassins he claims is paralyzing the city right now. And I suppose he’s right – there wouldn’t be any open conflict among the guilds if Grandfather were still roaming free on the Prime Material, but that would be small comfort to the towns and villages he has been terrorizing for months.

The long and short of it is, we’re supposed to report to the Eight before taking anymore actions of similar scope, and ask their permission. Although Tenser’s zealotry worries me, I was grateful to him for leaping immediately to our defense. And my psionic hackles rise at the mere thought of playing lapdog to a roomful of pusillanimous mages. Maybe I’ve been hanging around Tenser too much, thinking of the Eight as cowards, but listening to Mordenkainen droning on about how we should have cooled our heels while wiser heads debated the fate of the Witchking made me feel better about what we’ve been doing than I have in a long time.

Time to train. Write soon, if you can, for in a few weeks we’ll be off to the Abyss, and it’s difficult to say when we’ll be back.

Be well – Psydney