Umber

The adventurers, ripped from the Prime Material and stranded on a demiplane, search for a way back to a destination that theoretically allows no interplanar travel.

The storm raged all night, subsiding with the coming of dawn. By mid-afternoon Hanen was still clearing fallen branches and cleaning outdoor tables at the Grey Kingfisher Tavern and Inn, humming a quiet tune as he worked. Starton sat atop one of the tables with a glass of wine, reading a book and watching the bard’s labors. Every so often without moving from his seat he gathered a few leaves into a pile, or for amusement knocked over a chair Hanen had just set back on its legs. The bard looked equally annoyed by either action. “You know,” Starton said, “if you’d taken me up on my offer you wouldn’t need to be doing any of this.”

“Does that mean you need to actively thwart me?” He finished peeling soggy sycamore leaves off a seat and turned to the scholar. “Besides, it is good to share in your neighbors’ tribulations.”

The balor-in-human-form rolled his eyes skyward. “Good for the soul? By the Abyss, do all mortals grow so maudlin in their dotage?”

The bard grinned. “Good for keeping your neighbors from destroying your tavern because you don’t share in their tribulations. Who is more reviled than the man of unnatural good fortune?”

Starton raised his glass. “Now that is a motivation I can respect.” The two were still laughing together when the tall garden gate swung open and Erik and Kirin appeared.

Hanen bowed theatrically as they reached him. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company at this early hour of the day?”

Erik looked around the disheveled area and whistled softly at the sight of cracked limbs, beaten down flowers and overturned tables. “We’d heard the tavern was hit pretty hard in the storm. We’re all finished cleaning up at our places, so we decided to drop by and see if there was anything we could do.”

“How kind of you to come to our good host’s aid in his moment of adversity,” Starton said wryly.

Erik shot him a suspicious glance, but Kirin set her shoulders and smiled. “Thank you again for seeing us home, sir. And how did you fare during the night?” she asked.

The scholar nodded genially at her. “Slept the sleep of the virtuous, I did,” he said. “Of course, where I grew up, I weathered far worse storms than this.”

Hanen coughed and interrupted Kirin before she could ask where that was. “Yes, well, I certainly appreciate the offer, but – ”

“We won’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” Kirin insisted.

“Besides,” Erik said, “we have an ulterior motive.” They grow up quickly, don’t they? Starton transmitted to Hanen, who glared at the scholar triumphantly when Erik said merely, “We want to hear more of the story you were telling last night.”

“You don’t need to trim my broken lilacs and forsythia for that,” he protested. “I don’t hold my half-told tales hostage.” When Starton cleared his throat noisily he added, “That was different. We had a semantic disagreement over what constituted ‘the same tale.’”

“Jasper has been having nightmares,” Kirin said hesitantly, “and Anna wants to hear ‘something prettier’ for a change. But we – ”

“I see,” Hanen smiled. “I hope you’re not trying to spare my feelings, because – ”

“Absolutely not,” Erik interrupted vehemently. “If this is the real world, we want to know about it. And if they don’t, well…”

“Then they will be blacksmiths and seamstresses,” Kirin sighed. “Which was your point?”

The bard moved to lift an overturned picnic table, and Erik quickly grasped the far side while Kirin set the accompanying benches upright. “I told you before,” he said a little irritably, “I didn’t have a point. I never have a point. I merely – say things.”

Starton poked his nose over his book again. “What he means is, he is a man who operates purely on instinct. Not for him the lofty heights of introspection and analysis. But his instincts are canny, or even uncanny, come to that. Strange, isn’t it, that ‘canny’ and ‘uncanny’ aren’t actually opposed in meaning? But they don’t share an identical one either, as in, say, ‘flammable’ and ‘inflammable.’ In fact – ” he broke off when he saw Hanen staring at him. “Forgive me. Linguistics isn’t an especial interest of yours either, is it?” He slid the book upwards until only his eyes, dark and disturbing and somehow not quite human were visible. He was the only wizard Kirin had ever seen; she wondered if they all looked like that. “I still think,” he continued, “that applying yourself to the subject would make for richer tales.” Then he obscured his face completely and returned to his reading.

With three of them working, and especially with the youths’ abundant energy, the yard was clean and neat again in a little over an hour. “Do you have time to tell us more now?” Erik asked.

Hanen poked his head inside the inn. Business was usually light after a storm, it was an off time of day, and indeed the few customers were nothing his assistant couldn’t handle. Starton snapped his book shut. “Well, then, shall we adjourn to my rooms for the next installment?” All three humans turned their heads toward him in astonishment. Hanen dropped by Starton’s quarters when they had something private to discuss or when some exotic liqueur not for the eye or tongue of the locals came their way, but as far as the average resident of Greyhawk was concerned, the scholar’s residence might as well still be on the Abyss. The balor shrugged at their expressions. “What can I say? Except that I’m hooked on the story, and your chairs are uncomfortable.” And yes, he added to the bard, the unicorn leather cushions are still well-covered.

Kirin and Erik waited nervously just inside the door to the scholar’s sitting room. Kirin thought that she’d never seen so many books in her entire life. Erik wondered what precisely the collection of skulls on a floor-to-ceiling corner shelf were skulls of, but found himself distracted by the large loveseat toward which Starton gestured the two young people. The boy rubbed a finger along it. A little like leather, but not exactly, with a strange, mottled ebony and grey color. “Black dragon hide,” the scholar remarked casually. The pair stood wide-eyed alongside it until Hanen threw himself down on a matching easy chair and nodded reassuringly at them. “It is dead, you know,” Starton added. I’m beginning to see the appeal of these children, he said to Hanen. One forgets the pleasures of simple toys.

The bard reminded himself to have a serious chat with the balor about that later, and resumed his story. “So I believe when I left off, although I might not have made it entirely clear, our adventurers were stranded and separated on a chunk of unknown demiplane far from the Prime Material. Krunk and Yzzof made their way to one of the island’s towers and Basil, Carignane, Tenebrae and the wizard who had lost his ghuul, a man named Hasperdal, to another, while Quesnel scouted more of the outdoor terrain.”

“What did they find?” Erik asked.

“Well, Krunk and Yzzof found rotten wood floors that the sorcerer mostly managed to avoid and the dwarf mostly fell into. And rather unfriendly flying centipedes known as gharcos. The other party was a bit more fortunate. They headed for something like a lighthouse, with a brilliant blue beacon at its apex.”

“It would have to be blue, wouldn’t it?” the scholar interjected.

“Now that you mention it,” Hanen replied, “keep in mind while you’re imagining this little bit of plane that all of it is blue. Even our heroes and their equipment took on varieties of periwinkle, cobalt, turquoise, teal, midnight, and any other shade you can imagine. Fix that image in your mind, since it becomes important later on in the story.”

“If we could find our way back to it, perhaps we could strand that meddling, bromthymolphilic archmage there,” Starton grumbled.

The bard let that remark pass without comment. “Tenebrae examined the door, and was startled to hear a voice in her head, asking what they were doing here. ‘We are lost,’ she said, ‘and trying to find our way home.’ The voice said, ‘Do not release the prisoner,’ and granted them entry. They found themselves in a curious place, a place of – there is no other word for it – chaos.” When Erik scowled, Hanen said, “Oh, not the kind of chaos that results from an individual imposing his will on others, and their resistance, and the messy, violent conflict that follows.”

“What other kind is there?” the boy asked.

“The kind that is the essence of creativity,” Hanen said eagerly, “the light touch that molds the world to one’s desire without disturbing the sparks of life around one, the – ” Seeing Starton glaring at him, he said, “Yes, well, they found themselves in a room of what appeared to be formless matter. They discovered that if they concentrated, an object existing only in the mind’s eye would materialize before them.”

Erik’s eyes widened, as such a thing had never occurred to him before. “What kind of shapes?”

“Tables, chairs, lanterns – the larger the object, the harder it was to sculpt, and the shorter the time it retained its form, but the three of them were delighted in the effort.”

“Why?” Kirin asked. “I wouldn’t want to sit in a chair that might collapse under me if I stop thinking about it. How horrible.”

“No it isn’t,” Erik said. “I think it sounds like fun.”

The girl wrinkled her nose. “Was the entire tower like that?”

“Yes and no,” Hanen said. “When they went upstairs, they found an old man whom they assumed to be the tower guardian. He had the discipline and expertise to shape the contents of the tower to his will indefinitely.”

Kirin smiled with satisfaction. “He must have had a very orderly mind. Was he able to help them?”

“He could give them some information regarding where exactly they were. And when they proved eager to reunite with their comrades, he offered them safe haven within the tower should they desire rest. After gathering up Krunk, Yzzof and Quesnel, they accepted his hospitality.”

“And what did he tell them about where they were?” Starton growled.

“On a piece of the Prime Material, actually, but one that had been torn away around the time of the Rain of Colorless Fire.”

“For any particular reason?” the scholar asked. “Or on a whim?”

Erik thought he was being sarcastic, until Hanen laughed and said, “Isn’t it usually a whim? This time the whim of the goddess of the plane of Blue, Equus. Someone offended her somehow – not a difficult achievement with a deity of chaos – and as a punishment she trapped them on this demiplane.”

“What could anyone have done to deserve that?” Kirin asked.

“The guardian couldn’t say,” Hanen replied. “Unfortunately, our heroes took that to mean he didn’t know. They found out only later just how literal his words might be.”

“Who was the prisoner?” Erik said.

“Good question. Their host was quite vague on the subject. Aside from the intense blue light upstairs, the guardian himself, and the raw matter of chaos he used to shape his abode, there appeared to be nothing.”

“Could he tell them how to get home?” Kirin asked.

The bard shook his head. “Only that they needed to speak with the priestesses of Equus, on the southern side of the island. After enjoying their host’s company for the evening, they set off the next day. Nervous about what their reception might be, when they found a back way in, they took it.”

“But doesn’t that mean they’d likely be taken for unwelcome intruders?” Kirin asked. “Wouldn’t it be better to go in through the front door?”

“Maybe they wanted to steal stuff,” Erik said.

“Or perhaps they weren’t fools,” the scholar scoffed.

“What Starton means,” Hanen interjected hastily, “is that adventurers – the successful ones, anyway – develop a certain instinct for suspicious circumstances, and in this case – ”

“What Starton means,” the wizard interrupted, “is that any reasonably careful strategic assessment of this situation would lead one to conclude that caution was indicated. To wit: the lack of enough data to make a careful strategic assessment.”

“But wouldn’t it be better to begin with a show of good faith?” Kirin asked the scholar.

“Good faith means not cheating your neighbors,” Starton replied severely. “Elsewhere, if it’s worth strapping on a sword, it’s worth knowing in advance whether you might have to use it.”

“Advance reconnaissance can save unnecessary bloodshed,” Hanen said mildly.

“Particularly one’s own,” Starton concluded. He turned his disturbing gaze on Erik. “A human or a gnome can make you just as dead as a devil.” The boy’s cheeks flushed. Seeing Hanen looking at him with surprise, Starton added, I have no interest in what they learn, but we’ll never get to the end of this tale if you keep wrapping your lessons in your addle-brained sugar coating.

“So what did they find?” Erik asked.

“Underground passages with a smattering of undead, a few unpleasant sea creatures and yes, treasure. Carignane put himself at some risk strapping on poles as stilts to cross a pool in which a tojanada, a kind of large, snapping turtle with a spiked carapace, had taken up residence. The rest of the party tried to distract its attention, and nearly got themselves killed for their trouble, but they did acquire a tidy bit of gold and some very interesting items.”

“But why?” Kirin said. “I don’t understand why they would risk getting themselves killed for things.”

“Why do I have black dragon hide furniture?” Starton asked. “And I can tell you that I didn’t purchase it at the local merchant. I did it because it was a challenge. I suppose you,” he jabbed a finger toward Kirin, “would only engage in tojanada slaughter if it was terrorizing some poor population of innocents. And you,” he glared at the boy again, “only if it was terrorizing you. But how much of the misery created in this world alone, let alone the rest of the multiverse, is rooted in fear and good intentions?” He reached over to the shelf of skulls and plucked a pipe from the clenched jaw of a nightmare. “Give me someone trying to amuse themselves over that any day of the week. They don’t have the attention span to cause any real trouble.” He scowled at each of the room’s occupants in turn as he lit the pipe, and was relatively confident that even if they didn’t agree with him, they would at least keep silent on the subject for a while. Meeting Hanen’s disapproving glance, he said, Don’t worry, they aren’t even enough for an ottoman. Or enough of a challenge.

“Sometimes there are consequences to sheer amusement, though,” the bard remarked. “Take the other pool our heroes encountered. Tenebrae, being a rogue of a cautious nature, made what tests she could of the strangely blue water, and finally took a flask for later study. Carignane, being of a more carefree disposition, tired of her mincing about and flung himself bodily into the water. Seeing him suffer no ill effects Quesnel, apparently to amuse himself, pushed Tenebrae in.”

“But the pool wasn’t dangerous,” Kirin said hesitantly.

“Not precisely. But as the waters closed over Tenebrae’s head she felt certain layers of long-cherished beliefs slough away from her like so much grime, as if she were molting a dead, useless skin she never knew she had. She pulled herself out of the pool, drew her dagger and stabbed Quesnel for his impudence, an act which would never even have occurred to her before her, shall we call it, baptism. When Basil moved to heal the ranger she threatened as much to him if he rendered any aid. And the effects didn’t end there. The next time they engaged a foe, occasionally her most accurately placed blow would turn aside at the last moment, or a clumsy miss strike home as if guided by an invisible hand.”

“I don’t understand – what happened?” Erik asked.

Starton laughed. “Sounds as if, for all intents and purposes, she swallowed some sort of essence of chaos.”

The bard nodded gravely. “It was rapidly becoming obvious that this was a dangerous place. There were many tombs. They stumbled upon a room apparently devoted to torture, stone riddled with spike marks and one desiccated corpse with faded strips of a tattered blue robe clinging to her bones.”

“Their priestesses murdered one another? This Equus sounds as much demon as goddess,” Starton commented.

“Finally they came to a room in which two priestesses danced and chanted about a cold, blue flame. Numerous alcoves were set into the walls, all of them filled with bones.”

“Did our little heroes speak with them, or just murder them outright?” the scholar asked with such offhandedness that the children squirmed in their seats.

“For the moment, they crept away. They were in search of more information, and while submerged in the pool of chaos Tenebrae had a kind of revelation. Several of the party were grievously injured, and since resting in the guardian tower had amazing recuperative effects, she suggested returning. She had a plan, she said, for making the guardian more pliable.”

Kirin and Erik were confused, but a small smile crossed Starton’s face. “A flask of distilled chaos and a fine wine?” he asked. When Hanen nodded he added, “So much for the discipline of the guardian. But did they think through all the potential consequences?”

Kirin still looked puzzled, but Erik said abruptly, “They spiked his drink!”

“Actually,” Hanen said, “Tenebrae was concerned about the difficulty of altering a single glass, so she poured the pool water into the entire bottle.”

“Wouldn’t that affect everyone?” Kirin asked. “Even her friends?”

“Possibly. But she thought the rewards were worth the risk. Of the adventurers, only Quesnel seemed adversely affected.”

“And the guardian?” Starton said.

“He seemed much friendlier and far less distant than he had before.”

The wizard took a draw at his pipe. “And his control over the tower?”

“You anticipate me again,” Hanen laughed. “They were just sitting down to dinner when a sword suddenly formed itself from the wall and shot toward Carignane. Fortunately, the ranger was dexterous enough to roll out of its path. The guardian apologized profusely over what was clearly an unintentional assault, a moment of lost concentration. Basil stared at Tenebrae, who shrugged and said, ‘Okay, maybe I didn’t consider all of the ramifications.’”

Kirin was shocked and then dismayed when, looking to Erik for support, she found that he was trying not to laugh. When she glared at him, he said, “But nobody got hurt. And it is kind of funny.” Your paladin-in-training seems to be a distinct minority in this room, Starton smirked at Hanen.

“Did they at least find out something useful?” she asked.

The bard nodded. “The old man’s reticence at their first meeting was not merely circumspection. He was in fact under a compulsion to avoid many topics. Krunk navigated a path of conversational indirection that yielded less information than they hoped, but left them with the strong suspicion that the individual they had been calling the guardian was in fact the prisoner they were not supposed to release.”

“Which of course, given what has gone before,” Starton remarked drily, “meant that the entire lot of them were instantly fired with a desire to free him.”

The bard grinned, but made no direct reply. “The guardian/prisoner reiterated that they should communicate with the priestesses for further information. Since nothing untoward happened after the incident with the sword ex nihilo, aside from Quesnel nearly drinking himself en nihilo, they spent another night with their host and returned without incident to the underground room where they last saw the pair of priestesses chanting around the blue fire.”

“They weren’t still there, were they?” Kirin asked.

“A different pair, but certainly the chanting and dancing seemed to continue around the clock.”

“To what end?” Starton said.

“They found that out shortly, after putting their bardic abilities to good use.” That’s why you have such an attachment to this tale, Starton grumbled in his mind. More bards than you could bring down with a well-placed fireball. Hanen smiled broadly and continued. “Basil, Carignane, Krunk and Quesnel sang a pleasing tune that caused the priestesses to fall into a rapture just long enough for Tenebrae to hide herself in one of the alcoves in case something went wrong. Then,” he nodded to Kirin, “they politely introduced themselves.”

Kirin smiled but Starton, having listened to the bard’s tales for decades now, recognized certain subtle signs from the man’s posture that the result was not going to be as salutary as the girl expected. “Whereupon?” he said.

Hanen sighed, beginning to wish he’d never started this story. “Whereupon the priestesses invited them all to a feast whose featured dish was medallion of ghuul. This, not surprisingly, enraged their companion Hasperdal who, whatever his relationship with the leashed extraplanar creature, at no point intended to dine on it. And as the pièce de résistance, they were informed, the high priestess who awaited them upstairs would probably only need to sacrifice two or three of the guests by feeding them to the blue flame after dinner in order to secure everyone’s return to the Prime Material.”

“But that’s appalling!” Kirin exclaimed. “How – how – evil!”

Starton leaned back in his chair and blew a smoke ring or two. “Trapped there since the Rain of Colorless Fire, eh? Of course,” he remarked, “they’d probably all gone completely batty centuries before from the effects of being confined to a tiny and unusually dull demiplane. So perhaps, in a sense, they weren’t entirely responsible for their actions.”

“That was, in fact, the case,” Hanen confirmed. “They had been making sacrifices in the flame to their goddess Equus for years beyond count to no avail. But all they had to use, you see, were natives of Blue. Our heroes were unfortunate enough to be the first aliens they’d encountered. They thought perhaps that might make the essential difference.”

“As if that excuses anything,” Erik snorted.

“Of course it doesn’t excuse anything,” the wizard replied stiffly. “But it does assist one in formulating an appropriate response – assuming one has a sufficiently muscular brain to think with. Why don’t you exercise it now?” He stabbed his pipe in the boy’s direction. “How would you deal with the situation?”

Erik looked taken aback. He’d spent the early years of his life running, not confronting, and suddenly realized he wasn’t sure what he’d do. “Tenebrae was hiding, wasn’t she? I suppose she could shoot one of them.”

“Leaving the other to possibly turn tail and run to the high priestess and her minions,” Starton scoffed. “Now there’s a brilliant idea.”

“But what else could they do?” Kirin asked. Everyone looked expectantly at Hanen.

“Krunk and Carignane had figured out by now that the priestesses were more than a little tired of the color blue. So as the two women turned to ascend the spiral staircase leading to the high priestess, the men shouted that they saw a spark of red inside the blue flame.”

Starton snorted. “You don’t mean they fell for that?”

“What can I say?” Hanen shrugged. “The priestesses were desperate. They were, as you say, a little crazy. And Carignane and Krunk were apparently friendly, attractive, persuasive men. Who pushed the women into the fire as they bent over for a closer look at this red spark. They were utterly disintegrated before they had time to let out so much as a tiny shriek of surprise.”

Kirin covered her eyes with her hands, Erik nodded grimly, and Starton laughed. “Kirin,” Erik said, “they were fighting for their lives. Would you sit around quietly waiting to see whether you were one of the evening’s sacrifices?”

“I know, I know,” she said. “But I still would have tried to find a different way to handle the situation.” She sighed. “I suppose they went upstairs and slaughtered everyone else.”

Hanen started to answer, but Starton had cocked an ear toward the window and interrupted him. “I believe I hear a largish party arriving downstairs, and I have some personal business to attend to.” He rose, and the others stood as well. “So I suggest we take this up at a later date.”

Kirin and Erik had walked halfway home in silence before Erik said, “So don’t you want to hear the rest of the story either?”

“Yes, I do. But,” she paused and looked at him unhappily, “do you really think we’ll have to be like that? Is that what he means?”

“I don’t know,” the boy said. “But I don’t think so. I mean, paladins exist, and so do clerics of Pelor and Heironeous, right? But you know, the more I hear, the less I think a lot of the stuff they do is so wrong. I know Anna thinks they’re despicable, but…they take a lot of chances, they do really daring stuff, and is there any more to being a hero than that? Maybe that’s what he wants us to think about. He knows that you and I talk about leaving soon, heading out and looking for some adventure, something different. But if we can’t even listen to a story without ending up on opposite sides of an argument, are we going to be okay together – out there?” At the look of dismay on her face he said, “I’m not saying we can’t – I’m just saying we need to think about it.”

She nodded, and they fell silent again, preoccupied with their individual thoughts and concerns.