Terror Povos: The Flight of Lithos

Lithos walked stoically into the darkness. Amergin and Archibald were still with Vinnie, still going to meet with Gorm, but he just couldn't. Not after... everything. 

He hadn't ever wanted to be the villain. He didn't want to now. He didn't know how to think of himself as the kind of person who would tell a demilich to go and murder a century of prisoners and guards just so that he and his family could finally get out of that damned prison. That wasn't who he was. 

Or at least, that wasn't who he was supposed to be. 

They'd tried so hard, too. The disease, the sick guards... it was supposed to be a bloodless escape. But Vinnie, who was supposed to be their contact on the inside, had withheld all but the smallest and most useless sorts of magical help, and since the sleep gas only affected certain areas there was no way out without fighting -- and killing. Their carefully-engineered escape had turned into a prison riot, and then a battle between them and the most powerful of the guards, and then between them and the warden, who was a ridiculously strong fighter for someone who should have been a useless administrator. Then, when the warden finally fallen, they still had to find out a way to get out past the rioting prisoners and the guards who manned the ballistae at the gate.

That was when Lithos had snapped, when he'd suggested to Vinnie the Demilich that he go use the Gas lever. They'd been framed and sent to this ridiculous prison; Vinnie -- and Gorm -- had set them up so there was no way to escape without killing people and further tarnishing their names. If there was no way to avoid becoming villains, Lithos had reasoned, they might as well just get on with it. 

And he had. 

And in the aftermath of all that death? Vinnie had taunted them with the knowledge that he'd been the one to murder the senator and get them sentenced to prison. He'd called Lithos a shitty wizard, and even though Lithos knew that he was young and inexperienced and nowhere near the level of mastery he aspired to... it still hurt. Not because Vinnie was right -- he was, but it was a stupid complaint to level at somebody who hadn't had the time to put in the work to be any better -- but because Vinnie was the only one in his life who'd ever really tried to build him up as a wizard. That accursed skull was the only one who'd ever tried to make Lithos feel better about being a wizard instead of a fighter, a goblin instead of a dwarf.

And the whole thing had been bullshit. He'd just been stringing Lithos along, and Lithos -- being an idiot -- had eaten it up. 

Vengeful? Defeated? Remorseful? Lost? Ashamed and furious at the same time? Lithos didn't know. All he knew was that Whisper and James had left in the night, vanished, and that he couldn't stay either. Not after all that. Master Windborne would repudiate him, and rightly so, if he knew that his student still lived. His parents would be heartbroken. His brothers and sisters... he'd driven them off, and made everything so much worse for them. 

No, there was nothing left for him back there. A new place, a new name... He'd watched Whisper and James leave, but he'd made no attempt to join them. Whisper's judgement hurt, and hurt more -- he thought -- for being correct. He was a fallen thing, a broken thing, a traitor to everything his parents had taught them. He didn't deserve to live, but he was going to do it anyway. Unless Whisper comes after me, or Vinnie does. If Whisper tries to kill me, in all fairness I'll just have to let him. If Vinnie tries to kill me... I won't be able to stop him. 

He knew, though, that Vinnie wouldn't come after him. He wasn't that important. He never had been. 

So he kept walking, not bothering to cover his trail, pack heavy upon his back. 

Terra Povos: The end of the Hole

 So it’s been a while, but we’re still trying to escape from The Hole. That means finding the warden and basically getting the index so we can get our stuff back, and using the lever so the single actual exit will open. 

Lithos, at Whisper’s suggestion, casts Detect Magic and starts going through the storeroom. We go through looking for magic items, and come up with Oil of Slipperiness (+2 on Escape Artist checks) along with some leather harnesses and thirty yards of surgical tubing. Vinnie swoops over and looks at this robe: “I love these things! It’s a robe of bones.” It’s like a robe of useful items, but all the items are uncontrolled skeletons or zombies. Amergin keeps that. 

Small goblin skeleton

Medium human skeleton

Medium human zombie

Medium wolf zombie

We find Whisper’s stuff. Also, the communication pipes are all over the walls, so if people are paying attention they can hear us. Whisper starts swapping out for his original equipment. We continue the hunt. We add an Elixir of Truth, then Dust of Dryness. Then a Hand of the Mage, which Vinnie is also very excited about. Next: a Bead of Force, which we pass off to Whisper. An Elixir of Fire Breath, which Lithos promptly claims. 

Lithos keeps looking, and finds bracers of armor +1. At that point the warden’s door opens and he emerges to swing at James. Lithos hurriedly stuffs them in his bag. James is badly surprised and very nearly goes down. The warden is carrying a magical shield, wearing plate armoir, and swinging a war axe. Baldy sicks his rats on the warden, and they start swarming his armor. Whisper pulls the last of his equipment into place. 

Monster goes to help James. “Hey! I like the tiny one!” He charges the warden and hits him pretty solidly. James disengages and moves back: “Bad touch! Bad touch! No means no!” Cloak of Resistance +1, which Lithos also adds to his inventory. The warden power attacks Monster, and takes him down. The rats do some damage to the warden, however. 

Whisper considers the Bead of Force, and also the possibility of just locking the warden in with the swarm of rats. Whisper commands the horse to charge and attack the warden; it misses. James charges the warden and attacks, but misses. Lithos searches and finds a pearl of power for a second-level spell. The warden cuts at the horse: “Hey! How’d you get this horse!? Ain’t none of you strong enough too– HEY! How’d you smuggle a floating skull in here??? These fucking rats…”

The horse fails to hurt the warden, but it does keep him distracted and covered in rats. Whisper attacks but misses. Monster is just about three seconds from giving a death rattle. Lithos calls back one of his spells, steps to the doorway, and lets loose with a Scorching ray, burning the warden. The warden cuts down our horse. 

Whisper throws the Bead of Force behind the warden, where it explodes, damaging the warden and blocking off the stairs behind him. Monster has been partly revivified, and swings at the warden… and drops his sword. James swings, misses, and takes a step back; Amergin heals him. Lithos goes back to searching and finds a bag of holding type 2. The warden attacks and manages to finish the rat swarm. Then he attacks Monster, who’s still lying on the ground. Monster dies. 

Baldy lifts the pipes and tries to call for more rats. Whisper fires another crossbow shot and misses. James: “Can we talk about this?” 

Warden: “Drop your weapons and lock yourself in the vault!” 

James throws down the cursed mace and retreats to the vault.  Lithos: “How bad is it?”

James: “I’m fine! It’s fine! We’ve almost got him. And his ass looks very fine!” 

Lithos: “Vinnie… Monster Zombies.” He continues searching and finds a Necklace of Fireballs, Type I. 

Vinnie raises a zombie which moves to attack the warden. The warden promptly cuts the zombie down. It is at that moment that warden notices: “Wait! You didn’t actually put your mace down!” He starts towards James. 

Baldy fires off his crossbow again, while playing the pipes and waiting for more rats to arrive. Amergin swings his shilleleagh and misses. Lithos throws a fireball out there and catches the warden; the warden attacks him but misses. Baldy shoots but misses. Whisper moves to flank, then fires a crossbow bolt that goes right through the chainmail at the back of his helmet. The warden screams: “Beardless testicles!” -- a ferocious dwarven curse.

James moves up next to Lithos and swings at the warden, but misses. Lithos backs away and throws another fireball, burning both the warden and Amergin. The warden steps towards Lithos and pulls a potion out; Amergin smacks him, but he drinks the potion of Cure Moderate Wounds. James swings and misses. 

Lithos drops the fireball at his feet. The warden swings at Lithos, who fails to dodge the blade and drops like a rock. Warden M'Hole swings at James and misses. 

Vinnie: “You got this– NOOOOO!” 

He casts Clone on Monster’s corpse, and this Cronenberg body-horror version of Lithos stands back up. James: “WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?”  He fails, however, to get the warden to turn and look. He swings the cursed mace but misses. 

Amergin steps in and keeps Lithos from dying. Lithos withdraws from the rats but still gets bitten. Warden Hammer M’hole attacks James, missing and then hitting; James is swaying but he doesn’t go down. Whisper stabs the warden, and the warden goes down. 

Vinnie: “That dude was kind of bad ass!” He kind of slurps at the fallen warden, and another one of his teeth starts glowing. We turn back and search the Vault, and this time find the rest of our stuff. We kit back up, and get Vinnie to, well, zombify the warden. 

Upstairs in the warden’s quarters, we find... well... It’s very richly decorated; the index of the vault is totally doctored. The Canary Diamond is up here, but not in the inventory. There’s three flasks of fine whiskey worth about 100 GP each; into the bag with ‘em. We use the lever to open the outer door, so we can finally escape the prison. 

 

"Okay," asks Amergin. "Now how do we get out past the riot?"

 

And Lithos, who has had more than enough of all this, looks at Vinny and thinks, You could pull the lever.

 

Vinnie: The sleep lever? 

 

Lithos: The one marked gas that we thought was the sleep lever. 

 

Vinnie: Oh. Good thinking, kid.
He pats Lithos on the shoulder with a Mage Hand.   

Vinnie takes his new zombie out through the secret door and into the tunnels. About five minutes later the last sounds of rioting suddenly cut off in agonized screams. Vinnie and Warden Zombie return a few minutes later. “Okay, it’s all clear now.” 

Whisper, also in telepathic contact: What’d you do, Vinnie?

“Nothin’! I got no hands! They was just screamin’ because of the sleep gas. 'Cause they saw it coming again.” He nods to the warden zombie. “He's the one who did it. I think this is a bad guy. We should kill him.”

We check through the tunnels. There are two sets: guards, cells, etc. The second set connects the warden’s chambers to the guard chambers with the ballistae guarding the gates. Baldy does a bit of ventriloquism so it seems like the warden is speaking: “We need you to let us out when we come through.”

The guards are convinced, but Whisper stops to have a little chat with Lithos – having slit the throat of his clone. A chat to the tune of, "It's a good thing you're dead back there. You'd better think about who you're going to be when we get out of here, because you can't be you anymore." 

 

We exit The Hole and head up the passages. Somebody has left a rock arrangement that looks a bit like a golem's shattered hand, and we find a scroll from Gorm telling us where to meet him. The whole group stops, looking at that note. Looking at Whisper, and Amergin, and Vinnie, and Lithos. It's decision time. 

 

"Do we meet him?" Whisper chalks on his slate. "Or do we just fade out? Our reputation is fucked. Mom and Dad are going to be heartbroken." 

 

We go back and forth, with Lithos pointing out that we'd been set up to become the bad guys: Gorm sent us into the prison telling us that we could escape fairly soon, but with wholly inadequate equipment to manage that and a "man on the inside" who was a fucking demilich. Everyone else, rightly, points out that we -- by which they mean Lithos -- just genocided a hundred or so political prisoners. Lithos, who is pretty well fed up with taking shit from everybody he meets (with the exception of his siblings, except that even that seems to be giving way all of a sudden) points out that they'd already killed several guards and started a riot; there was no way they were going to come out of this with their reputations intact.

Vinnie takes this as his cue to admit -- brag -- that, well, he was the one who killed the senator. He's a connoseur of souls. That's why he devoured the warden's soul over our objections. That's why he couldn't resist the senator. They were powerful, forceful souls and -- unlike us -- up to his exacting standards for taste. What he wants now is the tarrasque’s soul and the Rogue Caminante Guy’s soul. We'll help him get them; that's why he came with us. In exchange, he’ll use Wish to make it so the events in The Hole never happened. 

We tentatively agree, and Vinnie settles in to rest and prepare his spell. We wait until he’s well and truly resting, and shove him in the bag of holding. Muffled voice: “Are you fucking serious? You still want me to work on that spell?” 

Amergin: “Yes.”

So now we have an incredibly powerful demilich in a bag of holding. Ironically, this will not hold him; but it does give us a chance to discuss things with some confidence that he won't be able to listen in. Whisper takes off, because he doesn’t see any way out of this that doesn’t end in disaster. He can’t take on Vinnie; none of us can. The best he can hope for is to be a loose end, and maybe discourage Vinnie from doing anything to our parents just by being out there. James goes off with Whisper, because Whisper is more terrifying than the rest of us.

Lithos, Amergin, and Archibald agree to the deal, because that's the only way to undo this massacre.

However, with the party thoroughly split and the Demilich largely in charge, this campaign is probably over. 

A Dream, A Nightmare, A Transformation, part two

Viewed from the outside, it was amazing that the training center could remain anonymous, even in the middle of nowhere in western Oklahoma, even with magical protections. It wasn't even a single training center; it was two parallel academies, one for magi and one for outsiders, even if nobody liked to use the word academy for such things anymore. 

It had taken Chris a few minutes to work his way up into the hills, but once he was safely out of sight he'd dropped down onto four legs and let his wolf's body race. Wolves couldn't do that here in the Mundus, unless they'd learned to store Grey the same way that magi did to inform their spells. Chris didn't care; he'd been out in the Grey enough recently that even if somebody noticed, it wouldn't seem out of place. As long as he didn't do anything that would require Cleanup's attention, he should be fine... and he was betting that anything within half a mile of the training center would be thoroughly scrubbed so that Cleanup never had to deal with it. 

He stopped on the edge of the Witchita Wildlife Refuge, and resumed a human configuration. That wasn't all the Dark Heart needed, though, so he dropped from the taller, leaner body of a wolf in human form to his own, original form: purely human though a magus, and nothing more. 

Very good, the Dark Heart pronounced. Now, through your own power, I will be one with you. 

He staggered back as it moved within him, mimicking the power that he'd used to absorb its essence, to take it into himself. He had pulled it in and captured it so that it could rest; that had been the bargain. Now it poured itself into him, destroying itself as it transformed him. Thousands of years of divinity washed through him, revenge and reconciliation side by side, destruction and mercy walking hand in hand: dark fires, cold imperatives, the nightmare weight of divine judgement. 

He felt the fallen god's last, ambivalent emotions as it finally let itself go: regret and relief, mixed and inseparable. Then it was quiet, and he stood in the wilderness burning silent and strong, wings spread behind him, tail lashing at the ground, claws and fangs extended. He reached for the Reconcilation side of this strange new power, this strange new self, and felt himself fall back into his original body. He'd need to find a mirror to make certain it was unchanged, but standing here, now, he felt like his old self. 

Thank you, he thought, to the last of the departed god, and you're welcome.

A Dream, A Nightmare, A Transformation, part one

Chris was drifting on the edge of sleep when the Dark Heart spoke to him again. It is time.

...What?

You are worthy. The voice echoed through him, shaking him, too impossibly large for even a wolf's toughened flesh. 

All right. I... What do you need?

You offered me rest, but I need -- I CRAVE -- release. You are a worthy successor to my power... and my duty. You play at being a wolf, but for this you must drop the act. 

Alone in his bed, Chris considered that. He was still inside the training center, and even Antoinette had come to believe that they had no real privacy here. Whatever the Dark Heart had in mind, it was likely to attract attention from the magi, and he couldn't afford that. So, All right, he thought, and pried himself out of bed. Let's go find a place where I can do that.

It was a matter of small minutes and quick movements to get himself out the door, out of the dormitory, and across the campus to the gates. A tired-looking magus looked up from his phone as Chris trudged towards him. "What?" he asked, bored and impatient behind his desk.

"Christopher Black, Registered Outsider, requesting a one-hour pass to go outside."

"Vehicle?" 

"None. I'm not going anywhere in particular, I just need some time to myself -- and I can't get that here."

The magus set his phone aside and turned to his computer, typing slowly enough to make Chris slightly crazy with impatience. It had been a long day, with the trip into Tulsa and the skinless corpse and the ice skating, and he wanted nothing more than a full night's sleep... but apparently the entire Universe was conspiring against him on that. 

"Yeah, all right," said the magus, as something flashed on his screen. He plucked a piece of paper and gathered a bit of Grey, then inscribed two separate glyphs on the paper: one at the top, the other at the bottom. "This one will let you out, and this one will let you back in... but if you take more than the hour you're allotted, we'll know -- so watch your time out there." He sat back, dark-skinned and brown-eyed, with curly hair cut short. "Word of advice? We don't get a lot of these requests, and most don't get approved. Somebody likes you, so don't screw that up."

"I won't," Chris told him. "That's why they like me."

He took the paper and walked out through the gate, watching as the upper glyph burned away.

Taking down the office

 Apropos of nothing, really: 

(Okay, so I haven't actually poured gasoline on anything, but just cleaning out the desk is feeling pretty damned good.)

Music for moving to a new job: 2 Weeks Notice

 Infinite Skillz:

Okay, true story: at the send-off lunch yesterday, I stood up to give a speech. I'd thought about this in advance, and I intended to keep it short and sweet. I was just going to say, "It's been a pleasure working with all of you. I hope your time at the city has been better for my time at the city." Emphasis on for, as in because of.

I had not reckoned with the presence of loud-ish Mexican music in the background and possibly the secret expectations of my co-workers, because apparently what everybody at the table -- including my own dear wife, who was sitting right beside me -- what everybody heard was this: 

"I hope your time at the city is better than my time at the city."

And you know what? Fuck it. I'm not even going to try to correct it. First off, nobody would believe me. Second, even if it's the exact opposite of what I meant to say, it's not entirely untrue and maybe people needed to hear it. But mainly, I'm not going to try to correct it because it's the single most objectively funny Freudian slip I have ever made in my life.

Driving Needs, part sixteen

"Okay, where to now?" asked Chris, once they'd returned their skates and left the ice rink. 

"Karoake," said Antoinette. 

"Karaoke?"

"Karaoke," she affirmed. 

"I have," Chris said, "this vague image of karaoke as a thing where people get up on stage and sing songs."

"Yeah, that's pretty much it." 

"Oh!" said Elyssa. "That sounds like fun." 

"Singing?" asked Chris. "Or watching other people sing?" He couldn't help sounding dubious. 

"Well, both really," Elyssa said. 

"All right, you win," Chris said. "Now I'm afraid." He was only half-kidding. 

"Really?" Antoinette looked at him across the roof of the car. "You'll fall all over the place on ice skates, but you won't sing? Why not?"

He shrugged and unlocked the doors, then climbed into the driver's seat. After a few minutes he said, "I think it's because I don't mind sucking at skating. You all know I'm athletic, and it's something I could learn, so it doesn't bother me as much. Singing is... I can't look at how badly I sing and reassure myself that I have a good voice and could pick it up with practice." He glanced at Antoinette. "And also, I'd want to get some practice if I was going to step onto a stage and sing in front of people."

Antoinette considered that, then nodded. "All right. No karaoke. Take us back to the training center." 

Elyssa mimed a pout. "Aww..." She gave it away by grinning at Chris in the rear view mirror. 

"Karaoke's best kept for when we're old enough to drink, I'm told," Antoinette said. "And anyway, magus Frummelt has something else in mind for our training, starting tomorrow."

"All right," said Chris, and pulled up GPS before setting his phone in its cradle on the dashboard. "We're heading back."