Antipathy, Sympathy, and Trying to Get Through the Work Day
The mercane were experts at making the best out of a bad situation, so of course they set out their spies to record citizens become test subjects in the wake of the enchanters releasing their spell-bombs:
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Subject One: Bezalus, Guardsmen at Union District 7
"You want chicken right?" The young man smiled at Bezalus, the smile of someone who simultaneously had a romantic interest in you while being old enough to know they were too young to act on said interest.
Bezalus, normally willing to give a polite smile to respectfully acknowledge and simultaneously deflect the boy's affection, instead continued to stare at the pan in which the legs and wings of poultry rested in a buttery red sauce dusted with chopped coriander.
"Chicken, sir?" The boy asked again, worried in the self obsessed way of teenagers that the harmless flirting in his smile had finally offended the guardsman. The boy knew Bezalus had a husband after all.
This was not the case. At all.
While Bezalus's fidelity was unassailable, the strength of his marriage was at the moment a distant thought far, far behind the rumble in his belly and the spit pooling in his mouth. It was the boy's question echoing in his mind.
Chicken? Yeah, right now I want It more than anything.
An exaggeration, to be sure, but one that shone truth on the guardsman's despondency. It had, after all, been three weeks since he had chicken or anything cooked in its broth or fat. Three weeks since he'd been caught in the blast.
Now he found it, not revolting...but not something he could bring himself to eat either. It gave him no joy, its meat seemed to dull the flavor of its accompaniment as Hades leeched color into shades of grey. Eating chalk would be preferable.
It was only upon the denial that he understood the depth of his now departed enjoyment. How the pulling off of skin was a daily treat to be eaten as the last thing on the dinner plate, how the cracking of boiled bones with his teeth vented his occupational frustrations. Chicken had been the one meat his mother had eaten and thus the one he was raised on, and the plentiful nature of the bird on his home world had ensured its place as everything from garnish to pan-grease to main course.
When he'd first come to Union, it was chicken that had soothed him, that had made him realize the commonality tying together such far flung infinities...
With a sigh, he asks for a piece of charred pork.
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Subject Two: Calidrani the Vampire Winer.
She didn't even live in Union, barely ever visited to check on her mercantile holdings. It galled her that Fate, who until the day of the prank (attack!) had proven a faithful servant, would decide to force her to play victim to such a ridiculous crime.
Magic charged to bursting, a wild magic surge of enchanter's arcana.
And now here she was, wandering through her life with a constant desperation she could barely keep sated. Her blood lust had become a refined beast beneath her sweatless chocolate skin, a discerning animal that refused all attempts at domestication.
Calidrani could only drink the blood of those she held some level of admiration and affection for. She could sate herself on others, of course, taking sips from her larder, but this brought on a nausea that quickly led to splatters of red vomit on the tiles of her home.
Seeing that the red splatters had yet to accentuate those mosaics of elven courtly life, Calidrani was forced to take precious time from her nights - nights she'd used to manage her accounts and contracts - to travel on bat's wings to the city. She dare not feed too close to her home, and had found little to inspire her heart amongst her cadre of human chattel.
The vampiress had first gone to the docks and the tributaries of streets that led to the sea, knowing the deaths of foreigners - especially likely pirates - would do little to spark a fire of investigative vigilance in the city guard. Sadly, while she could admire the cut throat nature of the merchants and sailors she found little to quicken her heart with any hints of affection.
A few sailors who were at least loyal to their captains or captains who were genuinely kind to their crews, but these were few and far between and took too much effort to find. She did, after all, have a business to run and a city watch to avoid.
So she was quick to move on to kindhearted whores. And from there to protective older siblings in the slums, which led to teenage mothers whose spiraling descents had been inverted by the birth of their children.
She knew she was exhausting the virtuous in the slums with her visits, and during the day she dreamed she was some fat stupid fish, a carp or a koi, devouring the the very stars that lit her own way through the void.
After a few months of this dream, Lady Calidrani finally began to hire some of her Chosen to work on her lands and tend to her vineyards. Some were struck with surprise at their fortune, but others more aware touched their hands to paired pinpricks on their skin and smiled knowingly.
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Subjects Three and Four: The Dwarven Cousins
Honum and Irgar sat in a Union Tavern, trying to talk about what had happened in the roundabout way that politeness to kin had always demanded.
"Remember that time we had to fight our way past the crystal packs? All for that jaundiced bit of topaz Lady --"
"Whitehawk." Irgar offered.
"Whitehawk! More like White Ostrich - wasn't she a weird looking one eh? A dwarf woman's promise below the waist, but then all spindly by the the time you get to the neck!"
Honum sputtered, expecting this might be a good time for both of them to roar with laughter, but Irgar merely smiled politely as if his cousin was a king who'd gifted a foreign dignitary with a fart joke.
Honum was forced to continue.
"You fought well that day." Twenty-five years isn't as long to a dwarf as it is to a human, but the hours in the day don't change for them. It was a long time to finally admit something like that. Twenty-five years ago Irgar might have beamed at the compliment, but now he only dipped his head a fraction - Hornum figured this was better than the younger man recalling that Hornum had berated his cousin for getting stabbed in the leg and becoming "dead weight".
Irgar had in truth admirably covered the retreat of their company. Hornum had proven adequate in combat, it was the aftermath in which he'd shone.
"You fetched us a better price for the risks she'd failed to mention." Irgar said quietly. Hornum wasn't necessarily one for figures and ledgers, but he knew how to ingratiate himself with clients and how to bully them into coughing up funds that were owed. Sadly he'd been arguing in Union when the spell bomb went off and caught both of them in the blast.
Sadly? No, sad wasn't really what it was.
The elder dwarf grunted, unused to the amicable quiet in which Irgar thrived. Hornum was used to the boisterous fellows of his company, a company in which he'd taken Irgar on as a favor to his mother...though now, when he thought about it, he'd perhaps overused the word "favor" to drive down the lad's wages. But why feel so guilty about it after so many years?
Had to be the enchanters and their attack. What did they want anyway?
Ah well, at least it made the cousins realize the importance of family...
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Subject Five: The Mercane Murelo
Abjurations, Dispelings, Disjunctions and in case of emergency Wishes. Murelo might have acted on any of his options immediately, but instead he allowed his fellows and their assistants to lay copper wiring under his smooth cerulean skin. He even endured their probing with a brown stained smile, and a predatory one at that. Despite being born with a general disinclination toward violence - or rather violence done by one's own hands - the mercane were in fact lions in the jungles of commerce, spiders laying out webs for the economically unwary. It was clear enchantment based spell bombs secreted around Union were bad for business, and doubly so when mercane were caught in the blast. Likely the attackers sought to send some sort of ethical message, clearly not realizing that the ideals behind their explosions were destined to fall on deaf ears.
The Mercane did not see combatants with a moral ideology. Rather, they saw instead competitors seeking their own profit to be paid in a different currency, a satisfaction made from the forced alteration of Union's business practices via their spell bombs.
Murelo, sitting at one of his favorite cafes, had fallen victim to one such explosion of arcana. While the Sentinels teleported in to deal with the lesser victims, Murelo had approached the owner and requested a plate of chocolate.
The Sentinels had returned for him eighteen hours later. By then he'd eaten twice his own weight in sweets while pondering the military application of gastronomical fetishes in lowering the moral of the besieged.
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Subject Six: The Pitfiend of Stygia
Mortals, angels, even lesser devils often made the mistake of using the form of the pitfiend to ascertain some generalization about the collective pinnacle of Hellish non-nobility. They something brutal, driven by hate, forever seeking to rend and burn and chain and dominate.
These desires were there, truly, but oftentimes it was thought that the pitfiend was ever climaxing toward frenzy and violence, that all its subterfuge and intrigue were not just foreplay but pretext to the "final encounter" - usually some minor off-Baator assignment - with wayward adventurers.
To a pitfiend, violence and hatred were tools - enjoyable tools that carried their own baroque flavor. Tools that the pitfiend could wield over much of creation, for across the Multiverse there were few who did not fear the species of devil. Yet the palette of the greater baatezu was refined in the Pit of Flame, and thus sought after other tastes as well - a pitfiend could spend centuries scheming and researching without laying either hand or spell on anyone else.
All that mattered was the ordered accomplishment of the Work - for the means were in truth ends in themselves, actions once taken contributing to the spread of Evil and Law.
If only H'arzma had not spent so many centuries establishing a business in slavery before being caught by the enchanters' attack. If only he had been given a penchant for some delicacy, or concluded that the feel of green steel in his hand made him nauseous.
Instead as innocent bystander seeking to augment his wears had been rendered squeamish, a pitfiend no longer able to stomach the industry that had won him a great deal of reknown.
He'd just entered one of the open air markets, accompanied by two bearded devils and an amnizu accountant. He hadn't even glanced at the day's catch when his world become a roaring torrent of nacre light. A slave had sought to flee in as chaos ensued, and the devil had of coursed raised the lash...
What he felt now was not compassion. He did not feel pity for his shackled charges, his heart remained locked in his callousness and did not dare to go out to them. He found himself, instead, in a worse position than being forced to endure such...angelic temptations.
He simply could not bear the proximity of violence. He was like the gourmand who gorged himself daily on a mountain of meats but could not bear to see to the slaughter of livestock. The first day had been a curiosity, a trial to be endured. He'd been surprised to number himself among the afflicted, and it made him wonder exactly who these arcane wielding terrorists were.
Then his dispelling had failed. A wish might have worked, but H'arzma had used this annual gift to work out the death of a rival. He'd been forced to try and free his underlings from the new found predilections. An abishai who loved sausages, another who now despised amethysts. An amnizu with a new taste for fine wine. None of them had dared to ask him how he had been affected - there was no need.
They'd all seen him cringe, dropping the mask for an instant, when he tore open the back of that slave.
And now the spies in his entourage were certainly reporting their suspicions to his rivals! This galled him, infuriated him, burned him until his mind was calling out for violence while simultaneously whimpering at the thought of seeing blood.
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Subject Seven: The Sympathizer
"Still no kissing? I feel like the client of a whore!" There was still humor in the words, but soon that'd be overrun by the edge in his voice. Which in itself was also funny-with-an-edge since as far as she was concerned the fault lay with him and his principles. A year ago, she'd not been one for causes, righteous or otherwise.
She looked away from his lips, even speaking they disturbed her. She hadn't looked at a mirror for days, lest she be forced to face the fat pink maggots under her nose. Even her tongue had been trained through triggered dry heaving, it now kept itself dutifully behind the corral of her teeth, refusing to grant those now horrid appendages a taste of its moisture.
She wondered why it had mattered to her, the romantic egalitarian notions of this Anarchist. Well, that wasn't it exactly was it? What I really want to know is why I had to pay the price.
Of course the reports coming in told her she'd gotten off easy, and even if she were hungrily scarfing down shit right now it'd be better than what the mercane would be doing to her if she'd have been caught.
Really, the fact that she wasn't in a torture chamber explained everything about her relationship to this guy still in bed wanting his kiss.
You hear the word Faction in the Hinterlands, and at first it seems like joke. Groups of opinionated fools, including angels tied to devils no less, by philosophies and ideas. You see how they pop up in places, wide spread missionaries with a bone to pick with how everyone else is living their lives. You shake your head, throw their pamphlets into rubbish heaps and trash fires.
Then you hear whispers. Planar real estate shifting over, great proxies converted. You hear of dreaded things rising or being put to the sword. And in these stories, like a backdrop and setting, you hear the name of a faction or two.
Are there really so many? Do their fingers dip into so many pies?
And one day the man you are seeing, a pleasant enough chap for the slim pickings of Union, tells you that he is an Anarchist. Capital A no less. His ideas had merit as theories - the burden of the laborers known to waitresses like her, the noose of addiction that drags down the prostitutes in our midst, the fate of the slaves in the open air market...
Now he presents himself as solution. Lovemaking takes a new turn, to know your body is pressed against that of a hero. And then one day, spooned by his slender musculature, he asks you to help.
At first you say no, talking of risks but really thinking Me I'm too small -
He laughs, assuring you its only a bit of smuggling. Barely merits a fine if you're caught. His truth of his favor comes as relief but a part of you rankles. I could do more.
It's a wonder, getting away with even the little breaks in the Law. Anarchists - a Faction. A force strong enough to walk unnoticed under the eyes of the mercane. More than that, there's a warmth in your heart born of these continued infractions - you're helping someone, you're risking your neck, if only the town you ran away from could see you now -
There was a heady rush when he asked her to plant the bomb. It seemed more a prank at the time. And even now someone on the outside looking in would laugh at that inopportune twist of the ankle, the flood of mother-of-pearl light soaking her soul and her insides until she thought she might burst.
He got me out. To an apartment in the Hive, but he got me out. At least the mercane can't come into Sigil.
It should trouble her more, this being on the run. The long reach of those sentinels of Union. But she can't think of the big things, not really, not while she has to get drunk to even speak, drunk enough to forget that talking makes her feel like the slugs over her chin are scurrying over her face.
The Politics of Apocalypse
Stepping from Her domain in Elysium, Gerrun entered the Odeon of Pelion on the back of a sun bright cow with no little trepidation. Riding bareback upon the Positive-touched bovine the goddess of the farmland nervously chewed Her lip, doe brown eyes darting at the arriving gods, completely unaware that Her wheat-woven crown was askew. The pantheon, She knew, were going to discuss an inevitability that would leave Her with little to no domain in the world.
As She thought of the pain to come Ujuer's avatar emerged from one of the portals astride his rune carved nightmare Erozsh. The calligraphy that blazed silver on the fiendish stallion covered the war god's flesh as well, the divine language of violence uniting rider and ridden until the dawn of the Gods Death. Though the god was destined to be eaten by His steed He seemed as bound to Erozsh as the blood-lovers of His sister Leajan.
Gerrun gave Him an evil look, wrinkling Her nose at the god's Abyssal stench, but saved the better part of Her hate for whenever Leajan would deem to leave Her Winter Mazes in Pandemonium and grace the pantheon with Her presence. The goddess of Death and Cold held Herself above most gods whose portfolios she regarded as trifling or banal. Gerrun especially was seen as a deity to be bullied by the surprise attack of winter, the onset of which bit the lands of Her mortal wards with frost and frozen soil.
At times the blood-lovers would come, wedded pairs of husband and wife arriving off the coasts to raid what better mortals had tended and grown. Gerrun always took pleasure when Her clerics would kill one, then capture the weeping other.
A crack of thunderous applause on the other side of a portal marks Zezi, god of theatrics and music, arriving from His great auditorium in the Outlands. Gerrun glanced at the deity quizzically, then dismounted to take her seat even as she shook her head. Her mount, like Erozsh, turned back to leave through the portals from which they came.
Her seat was next to Yaneeshia, the Lioness of Summer and Glory. The goddess of "righteous war" was armored, as always, in plate that outshone the cow Gerrun had arrived on. The feline headed matriarch took up Her hands in Her own paws, assuring the wheat-crowned goddess that the Lioness would seek to preserve as much of civilization as possible. This was met by a snort from the seats above them, where Their glances found Ahwr the Plague Bearer seated.
"It's not a chastisement this time. This is a Cataclysm to punish the world entire for sins of the Northern Magi. Whoever survives the wars and natural disasters will be nothing more than My toys for a decade at least.
Not to mention My blights will see to Your farms and orchards before then. We'll probably send those off as omens."
It was sickening to watch Ahwr, for He was masked by maggots that had made a breeding ground of his skinless face and arms. The rest of Him was hidden under a stained woolen shift. The smell of rotten flesh warred against the scent of summer roses though neither could truly challenge the earthy scent of Gerrun's soil. For now I am stronger. For a little while more. The Lady of Harvest stared sullen daggers at the plague god, but the Lioness proved true to Her name.
"If there are survivors they will be blessed with crops to eat, and soon enough - as We measure things - there will be farms and orchards once more. Your days never last, Ahwr, and will cease to be in the Gods Death."
The deity of agriculture found the Lioness words less that assuring, as the Gods Death was far and the Apocalypse was now, but at least it was something. There were likely few others in the pantheon who were giving much thought to the consequences their actions would have on Gerrun's domain.
Perhaps I should have turned more of my attention to the raising of mushrooms in the Underdark.
They were coming quickly now, those members of the pantheon that wished to have a say in the matter of the imminent Doom. Many who came Gerrun expected - the elemental gods, the gods who presided over the works wrought by mortals soon to be razed and thrown down, the gods of the wild places that would burn...
And many who came Gerrun felt should have remained in Their realms. Zezi, yes, but also Mianini the Princess of Vampires, Kithinai the General of Vermin, and all the other lesser gods who had come to support Their patrons in council. Of course, this did mean that Hiaree the Lady of Perfumes and Jerax the Baker would prove useful to Her and the other major lords and ladies overseeing civilization. For that She was grateful, doubtful as it was that the damage to be wrought would be greatly mitigated by Their aid.
"Let us begin with the charges." At that, several deities groaned.
It was to be expected that Josunth wanted to begin with the charges. As the deity of Law and Justice He would see the letter of the law carried out, adhering to formality to better mollify His conscience once He was back in his Arcadian realm. That Gerrun was forced to come and plead for the gods to spare Their own worshipers meant there would be little justice found in this Ending of Days.
Unperturbed, the Hammer of Justice continued. A shining scroll appeared in his hands, its soft starlight accentuating the mother of pearl that had been set over every piece of the Most High Justicar's plate.
"The Magi of Valgard have continued work on their Cants of Apotheosis, despite the signs We sent as warning."
Gerrun winced at that. Stillborn calves, locusts, plague-spoiled wells. Her fellows and family always punished Her when They punished the mortals - the rusted armories and first born dead always came after Their attack on the farmlands.
"In the time of the First Reckoning , when the Riolor sought to climb to the heavens by turning their empire into an abattoir, the pantheon came together and birthed dragons to remake the world in fire and lightning."
Again, Gerrun remembered the flights of red and bronze dragons ravaging the world just as She remembered the gods who'd aided the Riolor in their madness.
"When the Chosen returned from the Underdark to bear witness to a world cloaked in ash, it was then that We sent Life in the form of rain, and a Covenant was made so that man and god should forever know their places."
The Lioness and Gerrun looked to each other, each ushering the other to silence. Yes, They had both loved Ina like a sister, and both had sought to bar the path of the others when She was executed for daring to love a mortal. This act of loyalty was one of the reasons Gerrun would find so few allies to assuage the wrath of the gods.
This wasn't the time to reopen those wounds, though despite Their keeping quiet the pair of Them felt the divine attention of the pantheon upon Them.
"The Covenant is broken once more, yet the dragons are now one with the world in both virtue and sin. Truth be told, their blood runs in the veins of the North as does the allegiance of many great wyrms.
Lords of the world and its peoples, what form will Our sentence now take?"
These words released competing clamors - calls from the darker gods to tear rifts between the world and their realms on the Lower Planes, calls for rains of fire and great rents in the earth, calls for all the nations of the world to strike out against the hubris of Valgard.
The gods of stone craft and forge called for plague and vermin, in order to leave the greater part of their domains intact (Depopulation would be far better than ruins.) but They were swiftly rebuffed. If mortals could easily regain the tracks of their civilizations, would they truly have learned?
While there would be war, this too was seen as dangerous gambit. All too easily the gods could see other mortals taking up where the Northern magi had left off, completing the spell and warring with the pantheon for the heavens.
The challenge of the gods was the difficulty in influencing the world. They could only touch the world where Their domains were strongest, and even then without quorum there was little any one god could do directly to alter anything on the Prime Material Plane. For the most part, it was Their clerics who were Their eyes and ears and hands. In the North, where druidism held sway over civilization, the gods had little power. This was how the magi had progressed so far, that and the betrayal of those dragons who wished to share in their apotheosis.
The elemental gods fell into argument with each other as the Lioness and Ujuer continually called out for war - one seeking glory and the other seeking slaughter. Gerrun and the other gods of civilization tried to turn the direction to preserving the most faithful of the cities and villages, but in a place of competing gods what One saw has faith oftentimes Another would see as blasphemy.
Gerrun of course was more than comfortable with the rising cacophony, for if the majority of gathered gods could not reach agreement it might still be poss-
"Before the world burned, now it must drown in ice."
Leajan had arrived, wrapped in a cloak of snow over Her frostbitten skin. She looked like some village maiden barely passed her teens, bound and left to die in a blizzard. She takes the form of the very sacrifice She demands.
Gerrun frowned at that, and behind Her She felt Ahwr bristle. A world submerged in glacial expanses would benefit neither farmland nor plague.
At the Death Goddess's words, Zezi projected His disagreement over the crowd of divinities, but He was largely ignored. Gerrun knew the god of bards had hoped to raise up a new Order of wandering troupes that would bring the lessons of the gods to the Cataclysm's survivors. The glaciers now made His bid for power impossible.
But many of the other gods of civilization were quick to lend Leajan their support, realizing that glaciers would preserve at least some of the works of Their followers. Arcana could be used to keep a few cities alive. Likely They had been waiting for Leajan, likely They had come to Her before. They abandoned Me before I even arrived here.
The gods of Water and Air also supported the notion, likely hoping the ensuing vortices into Ice would give Their elemental planes an advantage.
Ujuer glared at His sister, sitting back sullenly as the gods of Order began to lend cautious support to a goddess who resided in Pandemonium. Death by cold was preferably to the anarchy of the last Apocalypse. It would also keep the dragons from overrunning the broken world, and kill off many of their kind as well. They had shared in the sin, and now they must share in the punishment.
Gerrun cared little if the draconians went extinct. Dragons, after all, did not farm.
Ahwr began calling for plagues to be sent as omens, final warnings given to the North. He realizes the quorum would favor the glaciers, and now seeks to eek out what He can before the Ice kills off many of His diseases.
Josunth reminded the Plague Lord that the time for omens had passed, to which Ahwr called for mercy, for a final chance to encourage the magi to redemption. The gentler gods of the Upper Planes found themselves siding with the Maggot Keeper, but too many of Their brethren had little desire to see the suffering Ahwr's outbreaks would cause. A death wrapped in Ice seemed far more merciful.
Gerrun sought some way to preserve something of Herself in the world. Some stores of food might survive, through the work of stalwart clerics and magi. She knew the other gods would not allow arcana to easily preserve much beyond gardens, otherwise the lesson would not be learned...still...
She looked to the Lioness, then spoke.
"Let the blood of the Northmen warm the soil of the world."
At those words many of the gods turned. The Lioness was quick to lend Her support, was was Ujuer - both saw the opportunity for war. The gods of cities and craft began to murmur agreements, as agriculture was the foundation of all that They were. Even Ahwr agreed, for where there were crops there lay the possibility for blight.
Gods of earth and fire saw They might preserve more of Themselves than Leajan had allowed for, and Josunth found a thread of justice in Her proposal, a justice Zezi now claimed as poetic...The gods of undeath knew They needed Their chattel...
For Her part, Gerrun let Them agree and argue. In Her mind She could see the pogroms, the blood spilled to turn tundra to arable soil. Valgard had spread its people across the world, its bloodlines intermingled into nations and peoples far from the North.
Throats of children would be cut for the hope of a meager harvest.
I have saved more than any of Them, brought some justice to this farce.
Suddenly Gerrun dreaded the end of this meeting, dreaded Her return to Her realm in the Upper Plane of Elysium.
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