Mirklight

The things in the swamp built a city.

That's how it always begins, with things in the swamp. Crawling things, scaly things, things with flukes and fins or tentacles or too many legs or too many rows of teeth, or amorphous things with no clearly defined appendages at all. The swamp is very old. The things native to it have not changed since life on the planes was very young.Why, then, did they build a city? What is it about a portal between planes that inspires organization, and ultimately urbanization in the most unlikely of species? Perhaps it is the essential conflict in unlike philosophies bleeding together that creates instability, adaptation, and something that is more than the sum of its parts.The swamp is, without doubt, the greatest wetland in the Land. On the soggier, wilder end of the great sea Tir fo Thiunn, it contains the realm of the grandfather of lizards, the great god Semuanya. Even older gods are thought to dwell within it as well, gods of species that don't even have names, species with strange modes of thought and stranger modes of worship.These species don't normally build cities. But here, where the nearness of Gehenna fills the swamp with blood and suspicion, they do.They have not needed to in a long time. The things in the swamp do not change, and despite all the other races that come to conspire in the somber red light of the Furnaces, the city changes only slightly in the many cycles since its creation.As far as can be proven, the city has slid through the barrier only once, and hardly anyone remembers it.Once there was another city in the swamp, built around a different set of volcanic spires, lower and closer to the swamp, with a more viscous flow of molten stone. This was long ago, before Semuanya devoured its rival, the creator god of the khaasta, who would have created a race that could have rivaled Semuanya's own people if only it had been able to finish them.This other city was called Mirklight by those who used names.Mirklight was many things. It was the place of trading and exploration, where the far-flung tendrils of the Illithid Empire were just beginning to gingerly probe the Great Ring, to taste it for vulnerabilities. It was the last refuge of a race of three-sided creatures who once ruled the material starways, and who would shortly find extinction at the hands of their last king. It was the home of a library famed across the planes, a library whose knowledge was stored in the cold flesh and acidic sweat instead of books. It was the home of two great religions, one of which worshipped all the gods, and one of which worshipped their absence. Both declared themselves the only faith of any note in Mirklight, since neither was able to recognize the other as a religion at all. It was also a port of the River Styx, which reached further in those days.More importantly to our story, Mirklight was the site of the first and last attempt by the yugoloths to conquer the Outlands.The scheme was millennia in planning. Indeed, a significant number of the many reasons that the 'loths moved the bulk of their race to Gehenna involved the opinion that Mirklight was a more likely invasion point than the town that was even then called Hopeless.The 'loths were different then, more direct and full of hubris. They openly dominated the Blood War, directing their thralls on both sides to battle where they wished it. With enough preparation, they knew, they could pour through the portal all the armies of the Lower Planes at once.The celestials, for their part, were mostly unaware. Those who knew something of the 'loths' plans remembered well the lessons of the last time they tried to interfere with the Blood War and held back, leaving Armageddon for another time.The rilmani, however, were much the same as they are now. They understood subtlety, having learned it long before by defeating rivals whose powers were too sly even for the Spire to drain. This time they directed their arts at the swamp itself.Argenachs met in secret with the various powers of the swamp, with Semuanya and the others. Not much stirs Semuanya from his repose, basking in the Land's neutral light. It has seen more species rise and fall than its children have scales. The infinite legions of the Blood War would not compel the god even to blink. But the rilmani tempted it with food such as a god might eat and warnings of danger such as a lizard would understand. And on they moved, from the primal god to gods more primal still.When the yugoloths, led by their General, seized control of Mirklight, all seemed according to plan. And then the swamp rose, and changed them. They grew hunched and primitive looking, covered with hair and slime. Their power to cross the planes at will was stripped from them; their ancient canniness became mere animal cunning. Only the General survived unscathed, and in alarm he led the remnants of his legions back to Gehenna.The changed ones were cast after them as the plane itself rejected them, city and all. In the shattered ruins of Mirklight, heaped without ceremony on the first Furnace's expanded edge, the swamp-twisted former 'loths built a new city, and before the eons caused them to be forgotten in their senility they spawned, and spread their new kind throughout the plane. The unchanged 'loths called them vaporighu, children of stink.The things in the swamp built a new city on the volcanic spires that grew, tall and unworn by time, in the shadow of the gate. Those who saw the red glow rising high above the marshes called the city Torch, and the name has stuck like boots in the blood-tinged mire.The 'loths, defeated and chagrined, learned subtlety. The rilmani continued to watch them. And the things in the swamp do not change.