Holding Their Shackles and Yet Hiding Their Keys

Here it is: my first post ever on Planewalker. I've fallen in love with the setting lately due to this site and all the fiction contained within, despite having only played D&D for a short time. (Having started just before 3.5)

Anyways, the end result was that I felt inspired to do a piece of my own. This is more or less the first piece of fiction that I have put out anywhere, so here's hoping that it doesn't turn out to be too bad. (The use of planar cant might be lacking a bit also, in both quantity and proper meaning.)

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“Holding Their Shackles and Yet Hiding Their Keys”
Or “A Treatise on the Rarity of Change in Exemplars” (To you Guvners out there)
Or “Why Fallen Angels are So Difficult to Find.” (To the rest of you berks)

I got to thinking one day about those types from the Outer Planes; not those born on those planes of course, but those born of them. You know what I mean: ‘loths, guardinals, slaad, modrons, or any of the others falling in with their lot.

The question that came up was innocent enough; or at least seemed that way at the time.

“Why don’t they change?”

Now, before you get to attacking me with the fact that all that slaad practically do is change, let me explain a bit more. I’m talking about a change in their basic beliefs; the rare occurrences that make such things as ‘fallen’ angels or ‘risen’ fiends. In the aforementioned slaad’s case, this would refer to the froggy bastard becoming a bit less random or even going into a rigid and regimented lifestyle that would make a modron blink.

Personally I believe that it’s all a spiritual thing; a literal ‘killer conscience,’ if you will.

You see, those exemplar types have their souls bound to their bodies tighter than those of us mortals. Since they are born of their associated Outer Planes, their souls are tied to an abstract concept, such as ‘evil’ or ‘chaos.’ Shouldn’t that mean the same concept relates directly to their bodies via their souls?

That theory makes plenty of sense if you think about it though; why else would so many exemplars be so pigheaded and steadfast in their dogmas, and why would they plunge into the depths or heights of these ideals, following them to an extent that could never be dreamt of otherwise?

You probably still think that this is all a bunch of screed, so I’ll go ahead and offer a prime example; not intending that pun, of course.

My searches lead me to this Prime world. Toril, I believe they call it.

Well, a friend of mine there knew of a supposedly ‘fallen’ celestial going under the scathing pseudonym of ‘The Apathetic Taleweaver.’ I found her after a bit of searching, and fitting with the latter part of her name she sold me her story for a handful of jink.

Apparently she had been captured by some spellslingers while attempting to fight in the local spillover of the Blood War. One of the pair that oversaw her kidnapping then proceeds to rip the celestial’s soul from her body and place it into a gem, and then the wizardess puts her own soul in the celestial’s body right after that!

The next problems started to arise from the affinity between the Taleweaver’s soul and body; she felt as if she was constantly broken and bleeding as she was when first captured, and yet simultaneously felt as perfectly groomed and clean as the woman now wearing her flesh like an actor’s costume. While she felt nothing in the void she was trapped within, she felt every touch, brush, and caress upon her corporeal form. The spellslinger also had a child while using the Taleweaver’s body, a thought which I don’t wish to entertain the implications of, especially upon her dual sensations.

Sad story, ain’t it?

Now, having such a large part of you torn away tends to have an effect on your mind. The rift between her two halves was also one in her beliefs; for once, she saw several of the fallacies of believing in absolute good. I mean, it’s bad enough that the mortals she was planning to sacrifice herself for now had her trapped in a sick and twisted form of torture…

Anyways, she decides that the fight against evil is a futile one; a concept is not something you can hack away at with a sword, expecting it to bleed all the while. It had existed forever before she had; would it not exist forever after? I think her own words on the matter were that the struggle was “as useless as pissing holy water into the River of Blood.”

Poor thing is a wreck now, though. After being freed by her child and running the gauntlet while trying to give a few vengeful wizards the laugh, she settled down in some shoddy kip off in the slums of some metropolis. The reuniting of her body and soul was a horrible mistake, it seemed, for it brought back that inborn desire to do good. The Taleweaver’s newfound beliefs contradicted with the voice now pounding at the back of her brain-box, her conscience constantly shouting that ‘if good is futile, then you are futile!’

The celestial is now withered and emaciated, the effects of what could be called a ‘spiritual famine.’ She sells her stories in order to afford something known as ‘ambrosia,’ a supposedly non-addictive liquid that takes the emotional edge off of life. Anymore, she spends most of her life in something of a stupor between her doses of the substance and various spells meant to banish the voice out of her head. She speaks in a monotone, is unwilling to hold to anything that has no foreseeable benefit, and tries to keep herself from drifting into thoughts of depression and possibly suicide.

Yes, she’d make a damn fine Bleaker. That’s not the point I’m trying to make here.

Think about it, cutter. Why is it that all of the tales of these ‘fallen’ or ‘risen’ creatures include some sort of traumatic event that precipitates their change?

Something in them has to die for that transformation to happen, be it hope or fearlessness or worry or pain. Something dies, and they may well die wholly with it.

But then again, I’m just a simple mortal. What do I know?