Enumerating the Parallel Multiverses

Location: The Hourglass Citadel

On Parallel 53, there is a cylindrical length of moss green quartz floating in the darkness of the Temporal Prime. Within the stone one sees the fossilized forms of time dragons, their eyes revealing something between pleading and an inferno of anger.

Around the cylinder is a wild maelstrom of glowing blue dust, a tempest garland whose eye holds the Citadel in its fate-battering currents of force. In the calm of the storm, one sees a whirlwind of blazing azure threaded through the cylinder, a spiraling tornado emerging and submerging into the violent borders of the hurricane's center. It is this phenomenon that earns the Hourglass Citadel its name.

To cross the storm is to traverse the intercession of possible pasts upon the present, a wound in Time in which maddened phanes hunt for any and all possible prey. Should one manage to make their through the abominations without falling victim to their predation as well escape the danger of being flung into some unknown point on the timestream, one finds oneself facing the guardians of the Citadel itself:

Legions upon legions of quaruts. At times their numbers will shift due to reversions and revisions occurring across this Multiverse.These inevitables have somehow managed to keep the phanes from attacking or controlling the Citadel, but cannot themselves correct whatever violence it has done to this Wheel's timestream. In fact, they cannot enter the Citadel itself without being destroyed.

Break their gauntlet, and you'll have access to the Citadel itself. There are roughly hewn halls and stairs, but the structure is labyrinthine and seemingly infinite. The Citadel's innards are lit by the deep ocean blue that marks the dust and lifelines that are the breath and veins of the Temporal Prime, but one can never seem to find the column of time-dust that roars through this place.

Within its quartz walls are the sibilant thought-whispers of the encrusted dragons, each warning of a different danger occurring in the malleable past the tides of Time continually recede to. Mordenkainen, Elminster, and Dalamar - one of the few groups to enter this place and survive - noted with curiosity that none of these dragons ever asked for their freedom, or spoke of anything save for their continual, prophetic warnings of coming revisions.

Ancient beasts long extinct as well as heroes and villains (or even loved ones) long dead wander the halls and rooms of this place, with any sentient beings encountered noticeably having memories from prior - or possibly future - reversions of the Present into the Past.

Any clues as to the origin of this structure or what its original purpose was are deeply buried and as yet unknown.

Parallel LIV: The Devil You Don't

"A deal is not a deal." she says, throwing platitudes in its face like coins down a rot smelling well never set up for wishes. A well where you can see the starving bull frog splayed out next to the bucket.

She should know better, and in truth she does know. Enriynes usually do. Don't let the bed play fool you.

But this thing already has her number, and those digits are up. So she figures she might as well school it. Dismissal sucks, but there's a responsibility to the company line to fill in her replacement. And there's a certain satisfaction to sticking it to management, who for once are also on the chopping block.

"They think we're making deals, but what we're doing is carving, chiseling, keeping them on the paths too often traveled. Writing out screenplay, keeping the Ten Epoch Plan on schedule. We'll be bringing the Bringing on you see. There's an Ending, and we have to make sure it's the right -"

The thing rolls its eyes even as it takes her head off with the flick of its wrist. (Mind you, there's a long scythe of bone growing out of that wrist.)

"I think I'll get the hang of it." says the gormeel slaad.

=-=-=

Imagine waking up in the chaos of Limbo and retching into your own amniotic waters. Imagine being a creature of Law housed in a body of Xaos, a prisoner in your own skin, a slaad without a plane because you're a rebel to the cause of, er, Causelessness.

That's the case for the Gormeel, those exemplars of chaos who managed to become odd couples to their very creation when they emerged with Lawful Alignment. Well, don't get me wrong, for a moment they were definitely the soup de jour...er, soup de moment.

Chourst was delighted - what could be more random than Law arising from Chaos? (Don't answer that Ramsey, it's a rhetorical question.) Ssendam found golden jelly self going *more* insane at the very idea! Renbuu was awash with hope that finally someone among slaad-kind might understand the concept of color schemes, and Ygorl...well, Ygorl hated the very idea of them but figured an organized group of slaad might be good for some entropic wet work in other parts of the Wheel.

Then, to no one's surprise, the Gormeel rebelled against their place in the slaad hierarchy. Again, this was somewhat delightful, in the way candies wrapped in turds might conceivably be, as it lent a boost of power to the Slaad Lord To Be of Anarchy (er, if Ygorl asks, you didn't hear that last part from me 'kay?).

Now Ygorl might have destroyed all the Gormeel, and it is possible that is exactly what he did, but the problem is these lawful slaad just didn't stop popping up around Limbo. Chourst suggested it was the binding nature of the Spawning Stone that was doing it, and Ygorl in his infinite wisdom told Chourst to shut the f-

So anyway, the slaad still have their Spawning Stone and there are more Gormeel than ever. Enough of them to decide they need a new home. One really hospitable and nice like, say, Hell.

Now you'd think the Lords of Nine would put a stop to slaad squatters right quick, but the Gormeel have, well, Xaos on their Lawful side. Their very presence seems to invite randomness into Hell, not to mention sicken the natives. And for every single one that is killed, it seems like two show up in its place. And when I say show up, I mean giving Triel back his angelic template, undoing the bindings on Prince of Stygia, and popping up in Malsheem to chat about the decor of the Self with Asmodeus. (again, you didn't hear that name from me!)

For the record, I too think red can be overdone and horns should be subtle like salt in a recipe.

So what we have here is Gormeel (and perhaps a secret Gormeel Slaad Lord or two - or Nine or Eighty Five and a Quarter) slowly annexing the Nine Hells away from the Lords of Nine. And it seems to be working, with the Gormeel spreading out their settlements in fractal cancer patterns upon the breadth and depth of Baator.

What does this mean for the rest of us? Well, if you're a Prime I hope you've had a chance to meet the new neighbors - you know, the ones from the Great Baatezu Diaspora. If you're a planar I wonder if you've noticed randomness leaning into tyranny, and tyranny plagued by unhappy coincidences. Or how the Doomguard and the Sodkillers seem cozier than they should be. Or how the yugoloths of Gehenna are finding mutual interests with the Queen of Air and Darkness.

If you live anywhere on this Wheel I wonder if you've considered what would happen if the plane of tyranny became infected with the essence of Chaos:

Why just yesterday the Guvners and Takers were overheard whispering with Estevan about some new project called the interplanar stock market...

I like the idea that the Lady is identity and appointed office and a natural outcome of the Metaverse's metaphysics.

Definitely interested in what comes of the four brothers in this burgeoning multiverse.

Oh, I meant the Elemental Lords that came from the Four Brothers.

Digression: Count Morgenstein and the Clockwork-Boy-Thing, Part I

=-=-=

I rarely sleep, deferring my dreams to the collection of metal and tubing through alchemicals run. So I am still dreaming about the Keeper sleeping like a-babe-he-now-never-was in a field-that-is-a-scalp-with-blades-for-hair when the message comes, an electric thrum that holds the memory of being tickled at the crook of my neck, like if there was such feeling in the warforged parts of me this notification should possess the sensation of a feather run along the underside of my sternum.

Sighing, I lumber off the couch, as careful as I can be not to disturb the sleep of my nightfall companions. Yerda sleeps in the cradle of her husband's bones, with the maimed child Laqui in her arms. It bothers me that I cannot heal the wounds until Laquera is dead.

I scratch my beard with my left hand, fingers of flesh pressed into the black thicket that coats both cheek and chin. Should I ask Laqui if she wants to have an eye and hand like those on the right side of me?

A question for another time. The trans-wheel telegraph I've placed in Yerda's home buzzes as I place my fist into the appropriate aperture. Pistons turn as shafts of metal lock into place through the length of my forearm. Dull gold light emerges from the contraption of copper and sandalwood.

I frown as the telegraph deposits someone else's words into the miscegenation of metal and brain matter where I keep all my long running thoughts.

An employee has been murdered on Parallel II, which in itself is nothing unusual - anyone I directly employ is well compensated for the risks. Unfortunately, this homicide has not been committed by any of the usual suspects.

Looking out the window at the other clockwork arthropods on the webs of this Sigil, I exhale a low sigh. Must there always be new enemies opposing the Work?

This one has perforated the body of a human courier with an excessive and well distributed number of stab wounds. A message has been left, runny carmine ink on a tear of wasp-nest papyrus pinned to the collarbone of the corpse with a nail of black iron.

"I am a Watch climbing over my absentee Watchmaker. I left my womb through a crack in the clockwork wild sea of Time, running over the etching on a flat cerulean face that passes for uteral lining.

Now I travel your worlds with all the freedom of a long nascent fiction.

But fictions fade Father. I need the density of limitations your strong hand provides. I know you will help me become more real."

Father eh? Even as I mull over this I am requesting an audience with Oelkia Tsu and in my still running dream the Keeper wakes but the sanctuary-of-bladed-hair has become a rising-but-ever-frozen-wave-born-from-a-flacid-ocean-of-green-quartz. Atop the crest of this crystal hillock he can see the fossilized remains of still-whispering-time-dragons for miles and miles.

How I long for the dreams that don't mean anything.

Hahaha, I didn't even notice that. Wicked. I'm hoping to utilize a lot of the parallels in this story.

Had to edit that first post as well, left out a bit about the telegraph.

Heh, yeah, the Count is a living artifact, in that he can not only traverse Wheels but bring others along (Karagoth can do that to an extent as well). We'll see more stuff about the Count, as well as my personal thoughts on the meta-setting, in this story.

Parallel LV: Sigil in Your Shadow

"There is something that is nothing, but it has a name. It joins our walks; it joins our talks; it plays in every game. What is it?"

-common riddle

The Plane of Shadow is a secret, known only to those initiated into its Mysteries. Within the interwoven, dancing thicket of light and darkness is Sigil, the City of Shades.

Sigil sits upon the nexus of all the Multiverse's shadows, and a massive storm of darkness and light prevents even the gods from entering directly. Thus the Plane of Shadow itself is a temptuous realm as the prize of the Cosmic Game can be glimpsed through the umbral thunderheads that surround it. Armies of exemplars and divine servitors continually skirmish around the storm, ensuring that should entrance ever be available their rivals will not grasp the means to traverse all reality.

Within the city itself glaring lamp posts, alleys of pitch black dark, and all the variances of shading and urban landscape between them exist. The size of the city is indeterminable, as within its twisting architecture one finds compasses, maps, and even geographical arcana is rendered flawed if not outright useless.

Shadows here become portals at unexpected times, sometimes momentarily created by a lantern affixed to a moving unicorn carriage clattering on onyx cobblestones. The shadows open into other shadows across this Wheel, one that exists in a configuration akin to that of Multiverse Prime.

Sigil is too confusing and treacherous to have any definite rulers, it is more a wilderness of stone and mortar rather than a city in truth. The dominant powers here are the varied cabals that utilize the Mysteries of Shadow to traverse the planes and spy upon the various players in the Cosmic Game. The shadows have attracted many undead and lycanthropes, and while the Harmonium offer some limited protection one should not count on anyone else to save them while wandering the less inhabited parts of this Cage.

These masters of shadow magic sell the information they gather for currencies far beyond gold or gems, and are also employed by planar lords and gods alike as saboteurs, assassins and at times even impersonators. The knowledge that the cabals can peer undetected through the shadows of the planes makes the proxies and exemplars one encounters rather paranoid. Business of all sorts - in all kinds of areas - is conducted in heavily warded shadowless rooms.

The Lady does not announce her displeasure with public appearances in this place, instead one simply walks into a shadow and stumbles out without skin. Should one see one of the dabus, one should turn in the other direction for the strange creatures are notorious for pushing visitors into attacking them and thus facing the wrath of Her Serenity.

Heh, was worried for a second. Great story.

Heh, the level we're working with - multiple, parallel multiverses - we can safely say death is but a doorway to greater adventures.

More win, love that you utilized the 3-d nature of the planes. It does seem funny sometimes to have endless layers where the underground and sky are largely under utilized.

Oh atomicb, I might have missed it but do we know this narrator? Hoping for our favorite courier/reporter's return...

Would love for you to post a map if you get the chance. Definitely want to see this one featured in the 'zine if we can get a parallel wheels/worlds feature.

Map did help - thanks! So there are Upper and Lower Planes existing simultaneously but in different, erm, frequencies?

The best solution I've heard is that the planes are always growing, rather than that they are infinite. I think it removes the mathematical paradoxes.