“They think themselves safe…”
The statement was said with derisive amusement by one of the small group of figures who sat silently upon a hillside of obsidian and ash in the Barrens of Doom and Despair. They had arrived out of nothingness and their presence was unknown to any of the true deities that called home to the plane, even Bane, the god of tyranny, whose divine realm they overlooked with cold, dead, serpent-like eyes devoid of pity.
“Children afraid of the dark, pulling their bed sheets above their heads to hide from the shadows and the beasts of their imagination.” Another of the figures said with a sneer upon colorless lips, bleached of health and ravaged by age and disease.
“Not every beast is imaginary, and much to their misery, neither are we.” The third of the group said with some grim sense of pride. It hunched upon a rock and tilted its head to gaze at what they had found when Toril had simply vanished.
Below them, marching across the plane were groups of wriggling larvae, flopping about on the barren expanse like so many slowly suffocating fish, all of them deprived of water. The first of the Gloom Fathers turned to regard the others, naked just as they were, a mockery of all that was good and clean: spiritual perversion made flesh.
“Let them think that they’ve succeeded. Let them feel confident in their attempts to remove themselves from the reach of powers and beings that existed before they first had the temerity to call themselves divine. Let them have their taste of pride, that most bitter of sins.”
The second looked over the miles in an instant, piercing the walls of the fortress of Bane and regarding the face of the Faerunian god of harsh and brutal law. The deity never noticed. Watching that look of smug confidence upon the face of the god, the Baern turned to its brethren and addressed them.
“This presents us with an opportunity. A new set of variables, a new chance to begin the great experiment and examine the progress from an earlier stage and without our presence being known.”
The third looked up, “Reproduce the fiends of the former creation here in this place, this shallow pool upon the rocky shore of a much vaster ocean.”
The first replied, “Sooner or later the tide will come rushing in to swallow it…”
And so they took action, catching many of the wriggling larvae in their hands and creating an example each of the three fiends: Tanar’ri, Baatezu, and Yugoloth. This time they were different, though to anyone not of the proper appreciation for their art, for those exquisite perversions, they would have simply comprehended the brushstrokes of geniuses, unaltered from the previous masterworks, even if the second attempt was intentionally altered and weaker.
They worked their influence subtly, driving the bitter seeds of their influence into the fertile soil that had been forged in the idle actions of Toril’s overgod and given to his wards to play with, safely isolated in their playground and sheltered from the things of their nightmares. But, as with all such thing, evil seeps through.
Baator was born anew, nearly a carbon copy of the true plane on the other side of the invisible barrier of the two cosmoses, and at the same time the Abyss festered and erupted into being. Where the two merged and clashed, the Blood Rift was extruded from the passage of its own analogue of the Styx, forming a dim reflection of Gehenna and the Waste.
The Baern saw what they had created and they watched as the deities of Toril, Ao’s foundling children stood and were uncertain as to what it meant. Lathander demanded that it be scoured from existence. Set declared it a vile trick of his former pantheon that should be cast away, even as he wriggled his influence among the fiends that emerged from the larvae. Shar howled in rage as something more for her to destroy in the end of all things presented itself, and Selune was troubled by it all. Oghma glanced out over those planes and was concerned, for they had not been in their plans to create themselves a haven for themselves and their worshippers. But perhaps it was simply a natural occurrence, something that they would have to account for. Surely, that was all it was. Surely nothing had followed them…
And so it progressed, just as before, and the Gloom Fathers watched as a new Blood War erupted, only this time they did not actively guide their children, nor did they consider them favored. All of it was an idle experiment and eventually they might sterilize it and begin again, but not before punishing the ignorant babes, the so-called gods, who had dared to create what they did not understand and who had thought themselves free of things beyond their ken.
The first smiled as he gazed out over the blasted landscape of the Blood Rift and listened to the screams, a pale visage of what would come in time when they danced upon the bodies of the unlamented dead within the silvery void of the Astral. And at that moment, the gods of Toril felt a shadow pass over their graves, a familiar one, and then it was gone like smoke on the wind.
“Did you miss us?…”
. It is an interesting take on the baern's and the gods of Toril. Very cool.
I would've like to have known how far perhaps, Lathander may have gone.
But all in all, a very wonderful adaptation.