So tell me, what is it you want?

Partially apocryphal to the continuity of my storyhour and the characters therein.

The following comes from the collected notes of the sage Martens Terpense, delivered to the offices of The Planewalkers Guild in Sigil shortly before his apparent death in the gatetown of Glorium. Reports of those present at the time indicate that he was “devoured by his own shadow” while sitting down for his morning tea. All of our attempts at his resurrection have failed, as have our attempts to correlate his notes and findings with outside sources. – Nexal Durpath, adjunct scribemaster to the Planewalkers Guild

“The passage herein comes as an excerpt from a previously unknown and obviously variant copy of The Book of Derelict Magics purchased from a (tiefling?) planar merchant while in Pluton, the 3rd layer of the Gray Waste. The merchant was loathe to give his name, and I have not included it here out of respect for the risk he took in dealing with such rare books given the usual attempts of the ‘loths to suppress such material as it relates to their race.

The passage itself is referenced as being quoted from an unknown book or collection of essays or writings titled ‘The Whispers of the Waste’, attributed to an Arcanaloth known as Vorkannis the Ebon who himself is listed as being ‘Advisor to Mydianchlarus, formerly advisor to Anthraxus, and He who came before Him.’ This is the first indication of this particular fiend’s existence on record, and he is neither mentioned in The Book of Derelict Magics in any other place, here or otherwise, nor is his name mentioned at all within The Book of Keeping according to other sources of mine.

I find it odd that a fiend of such apparent stature, especially given his apparent long history of service to at least two Oinoloths, and possibly more, would have no prior acknowledgement of his very existence, even in such obscure and normally verbose documents. My questions to a number of Yugoloths on this matter brought me only a wall of silence. Either he does not exist, or his name is considered a taboo subject. I will be passing copies of my unfinished research by way of caravan back to the Planewalkers Guild, and then seek to confirm several other linked findings on the same author which I have not included here for the sake of brevity, and that the research on these has not yet reached its conclusions.

On to the passage itself:

‘What is the root of evil? What is the festering heart that underpins the rage of a Tanar’ri, the tyranny of a Baatezu, and the subtle guile and manipulations of a Yugoloth? It is nothing so grand, nothing so profound, nothing more perhaps than desire.

What is it you want? A simple question, nothing more and nothing less by appearance. And such a trivial thing is the blackest of ideas upon which all of this little game revolves around. It is inseparable from what we are. It is the first halting step down the path of betrayal for the most wretched of traitors, the triumphant step of the genocidal tyrant as he condemns the unmourned to obliteration, and the last step upon the battlefield for the soldier who has violated his deepest held ideals in the name of his survival and in the name of his leaders and their ideology.

What is it you want? It is delicious in its subtlety, sublime in its ability to corrupt and pervert. Nothing is immune to its power to devour and destroy, nothing but he who has embraced it so utterly that he would become its slave in order to become its master.

What is it you want? Is the answer important in the end? That an answer exists is enough. The desire to possess something. That abhorrent abstraction is the key to it all. The answer has no meaning in the end save that it exists. The rope held by every being to make their own hangman’s noose. The tether to the anchor stone to drag them down into a damnation of their own making.

In the end, the answer is of minor importance. You see it is not the answer but the question. It is the question that drives us.

Powers have died, nations have fallen to the sword, and worlds have burned. And I have watched. And it all began with each and every one with the asking of but a single question. In most cases the question was latent, asked in some self-revelation by a damned souls own heart or mind. In other cases WE have played our chosen role, asking them this question and opening that door in the soul that can never be shut but can always be thrown wide open.

We ask the question, and then we watch and we wait for the inevitable. Nothing is immune. Nothing. Even the most righteous mortal and celestial is subject to the question.

To know that good will win, that nothing could shake its foundations means that they go on with their lives, uninvolved and unconcerned. Selfish, but with a glad heart. With a soothed, unsullied conscience. And they feel free. And in their selfish freedom they embody yet an aspect of what we are. They forge and fashion their own answer to our question as they unknowingly whisper it to themselves.

Into the hearts of mortals ever creeps the taint. But they are mortal, they are flawed. They are incapable of throwing off their shackles of deities and powers and embracing themselves, embracing the darkest desires of their hearts and being FREE.And we Yugoloths, we are free. I am free. Embrace the question, embrace your desires, embrace yourself. Elevate your Hellbound soul as you prostrate yourself in chains before that which we embody. For it is the question that drives us.

Now tell me, what is it you want?”