Spoiler: Chapter Seventeen: The Haunting of Pompur
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March 1115
Having returned from his business in the northlands, Russel summons Sonya to him, not caring a bit that the woman whose skin the shadow wore when they first struck their bargain is no longer alive.
He explains their mission, that in exchange for power and knowledge, he will hire her friends as mercenaries to assault Neraka, the Warlord of Pompur. While The Scourge lays waste to the city, her group is to meet up with a group of elite Scourge Irregulars on a ridge outside of town, make their way to the tower which is the Warlord’s lair, and then slay Neraka. Sonya’s mission is to then destroy her soul as she did to Akatosh, ensuring that the Warlord’s immortality will not save her.
Sonya agrees, or at least the shade which is piloting her does. She goes forth and presents the mercenary contract to Valentine, explaining that it was amongst Anani’s things. She also asks Kim to carve her a set of periapts from Jet and Obsidian so that she may channel the shadow magic which lies inside, saving her power for the god-like ritual she is being asked to perform.
With Zara being away in the Nameless City training Coraxe, they purchase horses and make the journey of several hundred leagues to the south.
The tropics are an alien environment for them, lush and humid, and inhabited by numerous exotic animals, particularly birds, that color the jungles with their plumage and fill the air with their cries. The city of Pompur itself was unusually isolated, and was spared much of the war that scarred Pangaea in the wake of The Cataclysm. Though not large, it is densely populated and built with modern architecture; high-rise buildings dot the skyline and the Warlord’s tower is more skyscraper than a castle. It is said to have been built around a great university, and after leaving the Old Empire, it is one of the few places in Pangaea where science and magic work together rather than at odds.
When they find their companion’s camp, there is no mistaking them for anything else. They are:
Firalith, a demigod child of Surtur with wings of flame and a gruff, mercenary demeanor.
Arithus, an elven acrobat possessed of supernatural good luck and a haunted past.
Wolf, a totemic barbarian from the wild who rides an enormous silver-furred dire wolf that is her namesake.
Jimmy, a slight man with powerful mental abilities and psionic powers.
Deonis, a famed gunslinger with a reputation for shooting out the eyes or, if he is being merciful, groins of anyone who gets in his way.
And Big Jim, a large man who is their manager and has the demeanor of a snake-oil salesman, all smiles and humbug.
Together, they have taken on the team moniker of The Wandering Idiots.
The two groups are standoffish, and do not get to know one another well as they camp, although they share a few stories of their past exploits and boast of their capabilities.
The attack comes at sunset. Scourge Zealots emerge from the jungle without warning, slaying anyone who stands up to them while their heavily armored Immortals set fires around the city. Unlike Golgotha, Pompur is unified, and soon its army moves out to defend it, and The Scourge must be constantly moving lest they be overwhelmed by a disciplined force that greatly outnumbers them and has both psychic and demonic support.
Once the army has moved out to engage The Scourge, it is the irregular’s cue to move in and take the capital.
They don’t find much resistance, but at one point they do encounter a blockade in their path, manned by hellions. It is a short battle, as both Krystal and Arithus, hidden by their demonic powers and magical Harlequin’s Cloak respectively, move around and flank them while Jimmy uses his pyrokinesis to set their hastily constructed barricade alight.
While binding their wounds and catching their breath, Arithus hints to Quincy that he knows who he is, and suggests that he might be a double agent in the employ of Balthazar, but the dragoon keeps his cards close to his chest and refuses to say anything committal, and thus Arithus does not open up about the true nature of their mission.
The tower is guarded by a quartet of literal giants, each warrior standing two stories high and equipped with a heavy steel mace that can turn the stoutest man to jelly. They are guarding a trio of men who stand on the building’s steps, and Jimmy identifies them as members of The Order, a cabal of mentalists who have pledged themselves to Neraka. They are currently generating a psychic field that compels people to leave the area, but these determined warriors push themselves through it.
Krystal scouts the compound, which is surrounded by low spiked walls, and announces that while there are several side entrances, they will be unable to cross the courtyard as a group, so they take the main approach.
Aurora, Arithus, and Jimmy can also see a demonic Malebranche lurking in the spirit world and guiding the giants' strikes.
Kim starts by collapsing the steps with a magical tremor, stunning and disorienting the mentalists.
Quincy and Deonis take down one of the giants quickly, with Big Jim providing covering fire.
Their new companions work together to bring down another giantess in close combat, with wolf riding about and drawing its attention while nimbly dodging its hammer, while Arithus climbs her back and hangs from her hair, causing her head to jerk back, allowing Firalith to rise into the air and slash her exposed throat with his two-handed sword.
At this point the psychic members of The Order manage to reorient themselves, invading Valentine’s mind and forcing her to give conflicting orders while implanting the compulsion to attack her allies in Kim’s mind, forcing her to goad Feur into fighting back.
Krystal slips forward, and their psychic powers do not give them prescience enough to see her coming; the half-demon assassin slays them one by one.
With their spell broken, the group manages to take down the remaining pair of giants with no injuries more severe than a few broken ribs that resulted from glancing kicks, injuries that Aurora’s magic can easily repair. Firalith is glad to have a trained medic in the party, as his first aid skills are minimal and he much prefers inflicting wounds to treating them.
The capital is arranged much more like an office building than either a palace or a seat of government. Work is done by bureaucrats sequestered in offices and meeting rooms; there are no council chambers for matters to be discussed or debated openly, for those who toil here are directed by the will of Neraka alone and have no reason to hear any voice but hers.
The mercenaries climb to the upper levels, and find themselves in an extremely long darkened hallway, when a quiet falls over them and they all feel on edge. They are suddenly surrounded by their fears; Arithus sees his hands fall to the ground as his body decays before his eyes, Aurora hears her abusive mother berating her and tenses in anticipation of the blow she knows is coming, and Feur is certain that this is the moment when his friends will leave him behind to go on without him.
Valentine spots a strange object hanging from the ceiling in the center of the hallway and casting odd shadows; the closest analogy she can think of is the rotating mirror balls that hang above some ballrooms. She is certain it is the cause of their sudden panic, and orders Quincy to take down the mind-trap before it can break their wills entirely. Quincy, his hands shaking worse than ever, misses his shot, and rather than try again he begins to paw through his bags looking desperately for his medicine. Firalith does not wait; and instead summons up his divine heritage, blowing the strange relic to bits with supernatural fire.
As they slowly come down, their nerves frayed but no worse for wear, Jimmy and Sonya look over the odd device, and realize that it is technological rather than a true artifact, likely the product of some strange pseudo-Atlantean alchemy.
As they move along, Big Jim suggests that they raid the treasury while they are here. He has an entire persuasive speech prepared about how they need to raid it first as they might not get the opportunity later, but finds that his new allies need no convincing.
The treasury is modest and guarded by a heavy iron door as well as four members of The Phoenician Guard and a monstrous Balrog.
The Phoenician Guard is made of warriors who have attained the rank of Trierarch and allowed themselves to be possessed by a third circle devil in service of Leviathan. They wear ornate spiked armor whose design gives the impression of conch shells, and Jimmy is horrified to find that their helmets are modified to shield their thoughts, meaning his powers will be all but useless against them.
The balrog is a powerful demon of the fourth circle, a huge crimson-skinned beast with a head resembling a skinned and roasted boar. It fights with an oddly protective style, keeping the hellion warriors close to it, watching them and shielding their bodies with its own, only striking out in retaliation when an enemy comes too close or lets its guard down.
Still, as powerful as the balrog is, the hellions are outnumbered three to one, and the invaders have supernatural backing of their own, and the fight is relatively brief before the Phoenician Guard are killed and the Balrog is banished eyeless back to Hell.
Big Jim moves to crack the vault door, but Firalith is impatient and instead simply melts its hinges.
Though modest by most Warlords’ standards, the treasury holds more than they could possibly carry. They focus on platinum and orichalcum coins, letters of credit, and strange devices which Jimmy explains are psionic in nature, and though they wish they could take more, the group knows it would be suicide to weigh themselves down before trying to engage a Warlord in her lair.
Neraka’s throne room lies at the apex of the tower. It is a long room with a triangular ceiling and a dark magenta carpet over a white marble floor. At the far end of the room one can see a delicate throne of twisted golden wire, sitting in front of a broad, pyramid-shaped, window that overlooks the entire city. Tonight, the view is completely obscured by clouds of thick smoke and drifting ash.
Along the sides of the room stand a dozen members of the Phoenician Guard, and next to the throne squats another balrog, this one incorporeal and ethereal, and serving in an advisory position to the Warlord.
Neraka rises from her throne and turns to face her unannounced visitors. She is tall and imposing, with smooth ebony skin and straight alabaster hair. She is impossibly slender, and though undeniably beautiful, there is something about her that transcends physical perfection, a naked hunger that burrows its way into the minds of those who stand before her; man, woman, and beast alike.
Her voice is a sibilant hiss, and she says that she knew this day was coming, but not expect it so soon. She asks if Umbriel sent them directly, or merely manipulated them into coming for her on the very day that the Lady of the West withdrew protection from her city.
Valentine, recalling what she learned from Eorl in Havensbrook, does her best to look impassionate and states that their motivations are their own.
“Very well,” Neraka responds “I can rip what secrets I need from your corpses.”
Big Jim moves forward and tells her that there is no need for violence, that surely they can come to some sort of an arrangement, when Neraka moves forward with unnatural rolling grace, and with a flick of her wrist so fast that only the most perceptive amongst them can even see what happened, she draws her enchanted blade Frost-Kiss and takes Big Jim’s head off in a single stroke. His heavy body falls to the ground with a thud, and his head nearly shatters as the blood within it freezes solid.
Only graceful Arithus has the speed to keep up with the Warlord, and even he cannot land a blow upon her.
She fights with rhythmic movements that are as much a dance as a combat stance, mesmerizing her enemies even as she inspires those under her command. Occasionally she will pause to throw out a spell to stun one of her attacks, or to fire a shot into the melee with her delicate Atlantean pistol.
The attackers find that even considering striking the Warlord is punished by mental fangs biting into their minds and injecting them with psychic venom, and so they instead focus their efforts on battling her Phoenician Guard or exorcising her demonic vizier.
This is not an easy battle. The elite hellions are bolstered to superhuman levels of prowess by the devils within, and though each of the invaders manages to win their fight, all of them are wounded, even the elusive Krystal.
Indeed, it is only through their magical artifacts, primarily the Staff of Noboru which protects them from steel, and the Bloodstone Pendant which heals her allies for every wound that Sonya inflicts, are they able to survive the battle at all.
Growing tired of Arithus, Neraka casts a metamorphosis spell to transform him into a pig, but Firalith, having already defeated his opponent with balefire, can counter the spell before his elven comrade can be butchered.
Firalith then moves to assist Arithus, flanking Neraka and allowing him to score a telling blow, impaling her with his longsword. But, to his horror, Firalith sees his sturdy blade melting under the venom that is her blood, even as the gaping hole in her lithe belly knits itself shut with supernatural speed.
Once her guard is entirely dealt with and the Warlord finds herself cornered, she says a prayer to Leviathan and casts a transformation spell on herself, stretching out and becoming even more slender and graceful as her body is transformed into a gigantic sea-snake, a full twenty paces long.
Feur tries to catch her, but finds himself crushed in her coils, and loses consciousness as the breath is pushed from his lungs.
Quincy shoots her several times, but she is too thick to be blown apart even by his heavy rifle, and the bullet holes patch themselves closed in an instant. He considers switching to the last of his vorpal rounds, but realizes that penetrating her black and white banded scales is not the issue, and wisely decides to save them for a future fight where they might actually turn the tide.
As the group backs away from the snake, she sprays burning green saliva in their direction, and it is all Aurora can do to keep the hearts of those it strikes beating.
They won’t last long under this barrage, and so Deonis, true to form, resorts to shooting her in the eyes, forcing the massive snake to her to hide her head lest she be blinded.
Wolf takes the opportunity to dart forward, impaling the monster with her spear, and then her mount lunges at the great snake's throat, tearing it wide open. This act of feral aggression, no doubt spurred on by the aura of hunger that hangs about Neraka, may well have been the turning point of the battle, but it also spelled the doom of this noble beast, for it drowned upon the tide of venomous blood that poured forth.
As she does this, Firalith spies the Warlord’s discarded sword Frost-Kiss lying on the marble floor, a patch of rhyme spreading out from it. He grabs it and flies forward, cutting a vast slash down the serpent’s belly with her own blade, a choking cloud of toxic vapor rolling forth.
Sonya, who is now wholly possessed by the dark spirit of Anani, sees her chance. Drawing out every last drop of power from her periapts, she opens a rift into the Abyss, and a veritable horde of shades poor out around the writhing Warlord. They climb upon her and upon themselves, creating a living throne of tangled shadowy hands. They lay the serpent out, her head seeking the sky and escape, and their dark hands tear at the edges of her wounds, holding them apart so they cannot heal, ripping and pulling her ribcage in two directions and exposing the still beating heart within.
Anani knows that this is her moment, and she gathers up all her willpower into this single spell, a piercing bolt of pure nothingness designed to tear a soul asunder.
She casts the same ritual that she performed in Akatosh’s house so long ago, and with even greater proficiency, but something is wrong. She did not count on the presence of the Arch-Devil Leviathan that had bonded itself to its mortal avatar. Sensing its danger, the great demonic sea serpent attempts to pull away, but the frightened mortal soul of the human girl that Neraka once was clings to it for protection, and is caught between the force of the Hellish god’s escape and that of Anani’s spell, the soul is not wholly unmade, but is instead merely torn to pieces. And with it, globs of Leviathan’s divine ichor are also ripped away, and the psychic residue of Neraka’s soul clings to them, like water around a mote of dust before a storm.
Those with the second sight can see what is happening; shards of the former Warlord’s soul mix with divine blood and rain down upon the tower, envenomating the spirit of whatever it touches. But even those without the ability to perceive the spirit world can tell something is wrong, they all suddenly feel like they are at the bottom of the ocean; intense pressure, biting cold, and an almost complete inability to draw breath.
They have to get out.
As they make their way down the stairs, they are accosted by numerous ghosts, each convinced it is the real Neraka looking for a way to escape this endless Hell of its own making, each wearing the emaciated and drowned face of one of her countless victims.
The walls erupt as huge cadaverous worms burst through them like the core of a rotten apple, and Aurora recognizes them as Takklemaggots, fallen lemure who feed upon psychic energy.
Sonya, who is just now starting to regain some sense of self, raises her holy symbol, an ornate silver and obsidian pendant designed to look like a stylized lunar eclipse, and calls out the forgotten true name of her dark and terrible god. A small bubble of colorless un-light surrounds her companions, and they discover that if they stick close to her the terrible apparitions dare not approach.
Moments later they burst forth from the haunted tower, their veins burning with a feeling of too-rapid ascent.
Nobody can quite put their finger on how, but the tower appears somehow darker and more ominous. The mediums amongst them look up to see it rising forever into the sky, like the spine of a massive, writhing serpent. Those servants and prisoners of the Warlord who remain trapped within will wander its cursed halls forever, in a nightmare from which they can never wake.
Most want only to rest, but Kim urges them to set out and try and save the university’s library from the flame. She asks Firalith to go with her, to command the fire to extinguish itself in his father’s name, but he will only do so in exchange for a hefty payment which she can ill afford but will grudgingly pay.
The city is in chaos. The Scourge attack has ended, but nobody knows when or if they will return, and the army is still out searching for them or riding hard to their outposts with furious orders to return home. The fires will burn for weeks.
The groups decide to travel back together, at least as far as Golgotha, save for Wolf, who must return to the deep Wild with the body of her longtime companion.
In the dark of the night, a harbinger of the silent legion comes for Sonya. It wears a tarnished funeral mask of antediluvian design, and priest’s robes so old and faded that they have taken on the texture of ancient parchment. It sits upon the back of a winged monstrosity that calls to mind images of a vulture, though the horror looks almost nothing like the carrion bird. It holds out its hand to the young girl, and she takes it without fear.
They ride with the speed of the night wind, and below her she sees the Wasteland stretching out. Tortured landscapes. Plains of jagged black glass scarred by veins of pulsing red magma. Forests of twisted flesh. Nameless things cavorting just out of sight. Vast chasms in the Earth with writhing masses of serpents for bottoms. Pillars of radioactive fire that burn with sickly colors for which there are no names. Oceans of black water so addictive that a single sip would corrupt the soul. And monsters that words cannot describe.
And at the center of the vast Wasteland, at the foot of Mount Krackenrock, still smoldering a century after the Cataclysm, lies Necropolis, the city of the dead. A thousand years of temples, monuments, and statues, all jumbled and piled atop one another in a maddening heap, as if each was trying to outdo the rest with no thought given to the styles of the past or the harmony of the whole, each screaming for attention. The streets are buried under volcanic flows, and nothing here lives, but corpses still move, and the city is still home to the ghosts of the past.
As her unspeakable mount descends, Sonya’s gaze falls upon the only living thing in the city, a haunting woman who stands a lonely vigil of an ancient hilltop tomb.
They land before a great obsidian pyramid. It is a thousand paces high, easily the largest monument in a city of overblown monuments, but still dwarfed by the great volcano. Her deathless guide stops, and in a dry whispering voice that may just be the wind, tells her that no living being has ever left King Arthur’s tomb, and it presents her with a small crystalline vial.
Sonya drinks it, and her heart stops, and she falls still upon the cold stone. Untethered, her shadow drifts freely into the pyramid. Its great reception chamber is long and dark, bounded by two streams of still water, and lit only by burning braziers that rise from the inky liquid. At the far end stands a great throne, two stories high. Slumped upon it is the armor of the Black King, a crown of albatross bones upon his brow, the fabled book of the dead clasped in one hand, and a scepter of twisted skulls in the other. Beneath his dark cloak, one can see the symbols of The Scourge etched in glowing scarlet onto his pauldrons, the only color upon an otherwise onyx frame. Upon his chest is a hollow socket where once rested the Heart of Darkness itself.
At his feet are the skeletal remains of a priestess who died trying to in vain to get his attention. She seems tiny, almost a child, but that is only because of the great scale of the figure to whose ankle she still adoringly clings.
The armor is slumped; empty; dead.
But, when her shadow approaches, it raises its head ever so slightly, the dust of years caking off of the impenetrable plates. And when she meets that silent figure's terrible gaze, its eyes come to life, burning red. And when she looks into the deadlights, it reveals to her terrible truths about the nature of the universe, dark secrets that nobody was ever meant to know.
When Anani exits the pyramid, she feels as if her knowledge and power have grown a hundredfold. She drifts over to Sonya’s body, now as cold as the stone upon which it lays, and demands the antidote. Her guide questions her, saying this soul is nearly consumed, and it would be a waste of her energy to draw anything more from it, but Anani insists that she return to Sonya all the same.
When she returns, it is not on the black wings of a monster, but instead she simply steps into the shadows and walks through the Abyss itself, returning to her camp without giving her companions a chance to even realize that she had left.
They continue on to Golgotha, and once there Sonya is summoned to meet with Russel Faraday.
Before they part ways, Arithus gives her a warning. Russel is not the provincial wanderer struck by visions of a dead king that he appears to be, he is something far older and more sinister. Arithus has heard tales that after The Scourge defeated the hengeyokai, Faraday performed a ritual to destroy their most sacred site, The Flooded Palace, by perverting the soul of the land itself, and then drinking deep from the blood that began to rain from the sky.
Sonya thanks Arithus, but tells him that she has nothing to fear.
They meet that evening, in a nightclub above a casino with a long dusty bar. As they sit sipping Brandy, Faraday thanks her. Tells her that their recent victories will have Balthazar and Livonia furious and with nothing to do but vent their frustrations upon one another, for the last thing The Scourge wants at this late date is to have the Warlords unite against them before Project Scalpel is ready.
Russel tells Sonya that he had a gift crafted for her, and shows her an ornate suit of black and crimson armor that stands in the corner, impossibly heavy and with a strange crest and built-in flamethrowers. He tells her that it is a scourge immortal, a vessel into which she can bind a shade to grant it increased power, protection from sunlight, and the ability to touch the physical world. It can also serve as a shelter for her own shadow should the flesh she wears grow too weak.
Sonya casually asks Russel about his past, and how he came to work with the Black King. He grows somber and strokes his chin, and explains that his mission is one of penance. He was cursed for betraying the King when they were both mortal men, and he has lived a thousand years with that curse, looking for some way to put it right.
Sonya asks what he did to the King to deserve such a curse, and Russel bluntly states that he tried to rape his wife, but doesn’t elaborate.
“I was once known as Lancelot Du Lac, child of the lake, and was the greatest of the Empire’s knights. But now they mock me, and have corrupted my name to Dracul, which means child of The Devil. But soon, they will mock me no longer, and they will call me nothing at all.”
Before she can ask a follow-up question, the room is lit by a blinding light. A second later, the whole casino shakes, and there is the crashing of glass as bottles fall behind the bar and a few of the windows buckle, and downstairs there is silence, broken by the clanging of jackpot bells and then screaming.
“What happened?” Sonya asks, her voice a high-pitched shriek in her surprise.
“Talasanta accomplished her mission.”
In the coming days, they will learn that The Scourge finally exacted its revenge upon Christine and her cathedral. In public view, a priest approached her, announced its allegiance and what it means to defy The Scourge, and then detonated a terrible bomb of ancient Atlantean design. Both Christine and the priest were incinerated, without even ash to identify them by, and most of the crowd who had gathered to witness the confrontation was struck blind or badly burned.
The Cathedral itself collapsed, and there were no survivors.
The city’s secret masters quietly celebrate the news, while the common folk mourns the loss, for Christine was well-liked as a pillar of the community, and many people are already talking about elevating her to the status of a martyred saint.
Even Arithus and Dave Nash grieve for her, for Christine had touched their lives in different ways.
Brad Weston descends into alcoholism and paranoia, he will teach Quincy no more, instead spending his evenings crafting weapons and booby-trapping his home. He vows vengeance against both The Scourge for committing the act as well as Lucia, whom he blames for putting this idea into her head in the first place. Whatever happens, his reconciliation with his estranged brother Raven-Dies-Talking will never come.
Valentine’s company swears to never work with The Scourge again, and her companions all start to distrust Sonya for carrying out Anani’s legacy.
Kim's immediate reaction is to try and salvage as many books as she can from the ruins of the Cathedral, for it served as a public library in addition to its role as a shelter. She takes what books she can recover to a rare book dealer in Concordance so that they can be copied. While there, she spies an extremely rare abjuration grimoire called the Secrets of the Stone, and she must have it. She could never afford it, even if she hadn’t given most of her gold to Firalith, but she talks Valentine into giving her a massive advance on her wages. In exchange, she must sign a new contract, one nearly as binding as Feur’s.
Sonya also spends a small fortune at the book seller's, buying many books for far more than they are worth, but reading makes her happy. Amongst them, she finds one particular tale that has a special interest to her. It is the story of Prince Mordred, born of King Arthur and Morgana Le Fay, when the witch took on the Queen’s shape to seduce the noble king. After Arthur’s death, Mordred tried to succeed him, and nearly destroyed the nascent Imperium by plunging it into civil war. The story ends with his death at the hands of the Paladin Sir Galahad and the Dolorous Stroke.
This much is common knowledge, but the book goes on to tell that Mordred was not the only child of Morgana’s deceitful union, for she also bore him a twin sister named Ariel. And when the Black Prince died and was interred atop a hill in the mortuary city of Necropolis, his sister, who had her mother’s gift for magic, vowed to eternally stand guard over his body, for there is almost nothing that the Black King would like more than to raise young Mordred as the dark leader of his Silent Legion.
Originally Posted by TexAvery
Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)
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