Nation of the Dead: Time and Madness [IC]

[Eldan]

Ashator

Sighing, Ashator looks at the amphibian creature.
"Can't form a normal sentence, can he...
You said there are guards heading towards the merchant's district. Is anything up there?"

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The guard leads the invisible, flying Anaru down through the halls. It takes several minutes to locate the king's throne room. Eight well-armed guards stand outside, and it can only be assumed even more stand within. The sound of chatter can be heard from within, perhaps a large dinner or party. The guard walks up and salutes, but is asked to hand over his weapons before gaining entrance. He takes two knives from his person, handing them over in addition to his pike and his sword. The guards open the gates to let him in and it is obvious there is some kind of dinner party going on with the king at his throne and many nobles eating an exquisite dinner. Hand servants attend to many nobles, most of which are to the king and as is to be assumed, more armed guards line the walls of this grand hall, still and at attention. You notice a man in blue robes whisper into the kings ear moments after you enter and the middle-aged king scratches his graying beard.

The sahaugin scratches the back of his head with one of his many arms and looks at Ashator, a bit embarrassed. "A few animals. He was very strange, but the choices were pretty dangerous considering the territory. Plus all the other strange stuff. I don't know if you really need to handle it... but you are part of the guard now and I wanted to warn someone." He looks up at Qsu'Kilik and rubs his lower jaw. "You're... new. You weren't with the brain before, were you?"

[Eldan]

Ashator

With a sigh, Ashator turns away from the Sahuagin.
"You know, sometimes I really wish language wasn't always the first thing to go in our servants. In any case, I'm going over to the merchants district. Anyone else coming?"
Before even awaiting an answer, the Daelkyr sets off towards what he assumes is a disturbance involving the city guard.

[Cespenar]

Raath

Shrugging, Raath joins Ashator to see what is going on in the merchant district.

"Since the Archmage flew, there's not much to do here at the moment... oh, wait, did you know that the Crystal Archmage is actually a demon?" he asks Ashator in a casual conversational tone.

"That is, at least, if I understood it correctly," he adds with a dry grin.

[Eldan]

Ashator

"Really?"
Ashator chuckles.
"It's been long since I've dismembered a strong demon. You'd think an entire city full of mages would have found out by now."

[Cespenar]

Raath

"Well, he is also a powerful mage, so he probably uses all kinds of cloaking spells to get unnoticed."

He pauses a second. "We'll need more than one person to take him out. Plus, he knows us now. It will be interesting."

[Eldan]

Ashator

"Granted. So, I guess we try to take him down again when he comes back?"

[The Demented One]

Qsu'Kilik

The daelkyr burbles thoughtfully, crystalline spheres occasionally slipping loose from her mouth, only to be hastily sucked back down. "Idea! What if instead of waiting for him to come back, we go back and find him before he finds out about us? Before he even becomes...that thing that he became. Green flames, big pointy teeth, all that. All we'd have to do is introduce a halting coefficient of temporal capacitance into a closed system of decreasing entropy with supermassive sub-nodes arrayed along a cryptocosine series of stable event horizon points. Once we have that, all we need to do is throw an orphaned child into a strange matter loop constructed parallel to the superluminal field of the nearest star, and we're off! And since it's a stable temporal loop, we even get the orphan back.."

She grins, pleased to have said so much without conveying anything. In truth, the process involves far less science and far more asking Yog-Sothoth if he wouldn't mind suspending causality for just a bit, but the cthonobabble tends to impress the locals. And the bit about the orphan is true, anyway. "So, in essence, we all hop into the time-traveling demiplane of madness that I just happen to have tucked away, and go back in time to kill the archmage. Sound like a plan?"

[Eldan]

Ashator

The second Daelkyr present scratches the back of his head with one hand.
"Sorry to say so, but that sounds like a load of squid**** to me.
Wouldn't we need to redirect the power of at least a large sized supernova to power the kind of time loop you describe? Also, Cryptocosines of sufficient amplitude tend to decrease in frequency if brought near a supermassive singularity, which would cause the wavefront to collapse. And that would not be pretty if we were travelling on an imaginary course relative to the Astral Plane.
Also, isn't it easier to just ask the Old Ones to do it for us?"

Spoiler

Show

Just for my convenience:
Intelligence:
(1d20+7)[23]

Knowledge: THe Planes:
(1d20+27)[37]

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

OOC for Ashator

Spoiler

Show

You know full well that what Qsu'kilik is squid****, and that the Elder gods just tend to let slip the passage of the 'device' the other daelkyr uses. From his shape and build, you can only assume he is the waste product of Yog Sothoth.

[Eldan]

OOC:

Spoiler

Show

I assumed that much. I'm just playing a little more ignorant than I am. Ashator doesn't particularly love other Daelkyr and likes to throw them off balance when they pretend to be all-knowing.

[Cespenar]

Raath

Raath can't help but let his chuckle turn into a full, loud laughter as the technobabble rage around him. Holding his head, he tries to stabilize himself.

"You know... you know, the real funny thing is... that most of what you said was actually... actually... nah, it wasn't." Another laughter. "Anyway," He straightens himself again and looks back at Qsu'Kilik. "If it's that easy, let's do it."

[Eldan]

Ashator

The Daelkyr grins broadly as Raath starts to laugh loudly besides him.
"I know! I mean, out of four sentences, at least two made no sense at all! Though I really should have mentioned black holes somewhere in there."

[The Demented One]

Qsu'kilik

Ever-confident in her own explanation of the inexplicable, Qsu'kilik defends her thesis. "If you can't derive supernova-magnitude energy from sacrificing an orphan child in a regressive temporal loop, then you just aren't tormenting the orphan enough. You can stabilize cryptocosine frequency by applying meta-integral parsing strings to the underlying matrix differentials with a repeating division-by-zero error. And the Old Ones like it better if you babble on a bit before you invoke their power. Makes them feel like they belong in scientific reality."

With a wave of a hand, the Daelkyr invokes a violet-tinted portal, a gateway into some exotic demiplane. Without hesitation, she crosses the cosmic threshold, leaving the portal open for any who would follow.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The portal seems to open a hole in empty space, and at first seems only like a strange tear in the fabric of it. After a moment to adjust you realize the portal the daelkyr has just opened is in fact a gaping maw, similar to a lamprey and full of several rings of teeth. Looking inside reveals it to be dark, but those with darkvision can see the inside looks to be organic, perhaps like the inside of a massive ...organ.

[Cespenar]

Raath

Always interested about portals and planar magic, Raath begins to examine the shimmering gate, walking around it and looking at it from different angles, spending almost half a minute before finally stepping through.

"Quite a handiwork." Raath feels the need to voice his praise. "Are we somehow inside Yog-Sothoth, or is it just a crazy theory of mine?"

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

Upon entering the disembodied maw that floats in space, you notice that this is no normal demiplane... The entirety of it is spherical, as if you were on the inside of a thirty-foot ball. As you get in you realize that gravity radiates outward from the center, making you capable of walking on the fleshy, moist insides of the sphere all over. You look down and realize the ground is far from the normality of gravitationally impossible flesh-floors and consists entirely of closed mouths. The teeth clenched tight together and only one mouth actually open; this mouth has a long, tentacle-like tongue with greenish-grey skin reaching across the entire sphere to another mouth, which bites down on the end of the tentacle and letting it writhe in place. The smell of both salt water and bile is thick in this tiny realm.

[Eldan]

Ashator

Ashator stretches his arms and shakes his head. His clothing seems to flow into his body, melting into white, chitinous plates and black skin. Even his hair and eyes seem to vanish, while ten tentacles emerge from his back and claws slide out of his fingertips. Then, three new eyes pop out of his now featureless, black skull.
"Aaah. Much better. I never understand why the gods gave humans only four limbs."
He grabs a flap of loose skin and holds it down over an armour plate, until it fuses with the layers below.
"Anyway, the last time I saw Yog-Sothoth, he looked much more like a seven-dimensional arrangement of soap bubbles and less like a ball of mouths. So, I guess this is really only a demiplane."

[Cespenar]

Raath

Holding on to his borrowed appearance, Raath throws a look at Ashator's writhing form and smirks.

"Don't get too comfortable, we'll be getting out again soon."

"While on the subject," says Raath, suddenly turning to face Qsu'Kilik, "...don't bring us too much into the past, because mere seconds from the point that you started the assault on the Archmage, there were another mage with him, possibly a strong one too. We wouldn't want to, as they say, 'double the trouble'."

[Eldan]

Ashator

The Daelkyr sighs.
"Yes, I know, I know. Changing again..."
Ashator's tentacles dance around his body ripping and clawing at his skin, tearing bits away and attaching them elsewhere, until he has changed into the form of an ancient looking woman with only a handful of white hair on her skull and a face wrinkled as a piece of old, cracked leather. His flail is carefully hidden in the shape of a cane, the rest of his equipment molded into a white robe.
"Good enough? It should work."
Even his voice sounds different now, feeble and barely audible, as he steps into the open mouth on the other side of the demiplane.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

One everyone enters the gaping maw in space it closes behind the last to enter. You are suddenly very aware that you are no longer in the world you were in before entering the mouth, like nothing else exists only... the sphere of maws. Your brain is filled with images all of a sudden, ones you have a hard time differentiating from reality. Strange symbols float through your consciousness, after a few moments you try to grasp exactly what they mean and the meanings filter through your thoughts like you thought of them yourself. You know at this point in time, you stand nowhere... out of time and space and merely in the plane. You know your previous location and you feel something coming at you quickly... the plane has taken you elsewhere. Another maw opens elsewhere on the 'floor' and you see blue sky and sunlight filtering in. You think, due to the hallucinations, that this must be 24 hours previous to your arrival to the brain below ground.

[The Demented One]

Qsu'Kilik

Crystalline spheres swirl about the maws, winding around the demiplane's grotesque pseudo-tongue in an elaborate, migraine-inducing cryptocosine sequence. "Just making a few adjustments...hold on a secnd..." A pair of portal-maws open up on either side of the demiplane, each one a sickly, vitriolic yellow. There is the briefest sound of screaming as something flies out one of the portals–those of you with supranormal sight are able to distinguish it as a small human child, clad in rags and screaming violently. Within seconds, it flies into the opposite maw, which seals shut with a satisfied slurp. As the World Beyond Worlds devours, for the twenty-three thousand seven hundred and sixth time, the orphan child that sustains its perpetual energy loop, countless more portal maws open along the walls, each one displaying a different scene.

"All right, calibrated and charged. Now it's just a scry and die. So, when do you want to go? A year ago? Ten? Fifty? Assuming a mortal lifespan, even with that shapeshifting schtick of his, he shouldn't be any older than a century, I guess. We've got a portal to any time in the past hundred years that you want."

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The sahaugin is awed by all of this, and apparently a bit frightened by the hallucinations that swarm his vision, muttering inaudibly. He switches again to awed both when the orphan is shunted from one door to another and more mouths open. "This... boggles the mind..."

[Cespenar]

Raath

Stroking his chin, Raath reflectively eyes the orphan... who is serving some obscure need in Qsu'Kilik's equations. After a moment, he phases back. Though his interest seems to be piqued, he doesn't seem to be repulsed by what he sees.

"Even if we got all these portals to any time we would like, how would we actually find him in that time? We don't know his real name, his original appearance, and we don't even have some physical part of him. How will your divination succeed?"

[RelentlessImp]

Anaru

Drifting over the dinner party toward the King, Anaru slides up as high as possible along the ceiling, looking straight down. Pointing a finger at the liege lord, focusing his sight down along his finger, and attempts the same trick he used to dominate the guards, extending along to the man in blue robes next to the King.

Spoiler

Show

Psionic Dominate, augmented to 17 PP again.
Base 7, +4 for 1 day/manifester level, +4 to affect extra creature types, +2 to include the guy in blue.
Will Save: DC 29
24 Base, +5 for spending 10 PP to augment.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

As soon as Anaru casts the spell upon the king he looks as though stiffening as if from an electric shock. He then embraces his head, and the mage looks directly up at Anaru and his eyes flare with orange flame. Suddenly he finds himself consumed by fire right after having four burning red stones fly at him, colliding hard with his body and bursting with eldritch fire((120 damage, 28 is bludgeoning and 92 is fire. Four different sources)). From below there is a shout from the mage in blue that stood beside the king, "Fool! You have trespassed into the hall of the King of Dawn of Glory! Did you believe you could so easily cripple the head which is shielded by the shield of the Order of the Magi? The Sapphire branch will be the end of you, fellow mage."
As the mage speaks, the guards of the King take the addled man away to another room and the dinner party screams and runs from the great hall at the burst of the flames above them. If not your ultimate goal... surely this is the first step at spreading chaos.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

Alkolgg scratches his lower jaw as he thinks about it. "Well... maybe... even if we're from this person's future we can track him down using what we know of him from the future to find him in the past. This is of course assuming the multiverse as a whole is keeping track of things depending on where we are and where we've been instead of sticking to a linear timeline..." He laughs, "No... no, don't suggest that, that's stupid. Look I don't... No, alright? I just..." He pauses and looks up and away from his belt, "We could also try to... go in and... kill all the...children." His face is less thoughtful and more sorrowful.

[RelentlessImp]

[b]Anaru[/b

Anaru's eyes widen as the pain shoots through his body. Too much - too much! Gasping for breath, he points a finger down at the mage, eyes narrowed dangerously. "Damn you!" he spits down at the mage, speaking a rapid spell, directing transfiguration magics at the mage in an attempt to warp him into something much less dangerous.
"Enjoy being man's best friend!"

Then, another spell, deciding that retreat is a good idea for now - teleporting himself back to the underground chamber where this madness started.

Spoiler

Show

Quickened Baleful Polymorph to turn the mage into a toad. Fort save DC 25.
Greater Teleport to retreat.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

His eyes widen and warp suddenly as his body warps and shifts into the shape of a harmless amphibian and simply sits where the mage once stood... content and almost motionless with his new animal brain. The guards begin hurling spears and javelins at you from below but none reach you as you disappear... returning to blackness and the stench of decay.
Before Anaru now... a mouth opens in mid-air. A circular maw full of teeth leading to a large circular room. Within are your allies from before, the very ones you met here in this chamber. Within it's obvious there are many other mouths open to many other locations.

[RelentlessImp]

Anaru

Anaru hits the ground, clutching at his wounds, grumbling under his breath about prepared wizards. Dispersing the rapidly dwindling invisibility spell, floating up into the air off the ground, he takes a sitting position, blinking at the others. Tilting his head to the side, he mentally commands those few dominated guards to slay the people that are fleeing, and then to go after the King. Putting them from his mind, he returns his attention to the group, taking in the room.

"Uh. Hi. What's .. going on?"