#31 - Bones and Blades in the House of the Mockery

Excerpt from the Cypher's Codex: The Scrawlings of a Warforged Scholar

Cold. Wet. Endless.

There is much talk and speculation about the mortal soul and what transpires after the flesh is no longer viable. Religions and entire nations have warred over differing opinions about this since the Age of Dragons. Daanvi, Baator, Dolurrh, perhaps even Khyber itself: these terms are all used by different creatures to signify different planes, different realities, but all of them seek to define a unifying concept—everlasting life, continued existence for the soul.

The concept of a warforged soul is as novel as warforged themselves. It is a question that haunts my curiosity as I journey through this plane of existence. I believe it is the direct consequence of their own mortality that humans and their like tend to dwell so deeply on the matter of soul. Their lives on this world are so fleeting that they must speculate on eternity in order to soothe their anxiety. Of course as any warforged, I could become irreversibly disabled, and then the matter of an "afterlife" would become relevant to me as well. I have heard soldiers lamenting their fate, worrying what will become of them when they died. They assumed they would pass into Dolurrh, the Shadowfell, the realm of the dead. Some feared that the atrocities of war would send them into the clutches of Baator, the Nine Hells, to be tormented by evils.

But what my mortal peers can not relate to is the fact that their speculations of an everlasting Hell is in fact a distinct possibility in this realm for me and my kind.

20 Olarune, 994 YK, the Day of Mourning: My platoon was camped out on the Cyran banks of the Brey River when the fateful holocaust of arcane energy overtook the entire nation. My entire being was enveloped in unquenchable flames—not precisely hot, nor the opposite, but deadly all the same. I charged towards the river with every last ounce of resolve left in my body.  By the time I jumped into the Brey, the wood fibers in my body had stiffened and my composite metal plating felt molten hot. I was completely disabled as the water overtook me. Like all warforged, I can live on even when inert. How much damage the matrix of our being can actually sustain before total dissolution, none can say, but it does happen.

I needed neither sustenance nor sleep, nor air to breathe. So there I lay on the bottom of the Brey River for two years, four months, and three days, unable to move, unable to repair. And unable to die.

This memory which is ever-present in my thoughts became a twisted reality for me again. One moment I was inspecting the religious idol in the House of the Hand and the next moment I was again lost to the world for eternity. I spent another 7 years on the bottom of that fetid river before being rescued again by the gentle magewright, Halmon of Vathirond. Then reality faded again and I was prone but uninjured on the floor before the altar of the Mockery. I noticed the monk Master Ennet had reappeared. I made a trained assessment of the battle and realized that I had only been in my private Hell for a matter of seconds.

Xoma was shaking off what must have been the same phantasmal effect that had made me a vulnerable prisoner of my own mind. He then made a feeble attack at Ennet. The shifter Cyzicus was just in front of me but clearly he was still within the effects of the idol’s power. He was striking wildly around his head, fighting off some unseen beasts. But I noticed wounds taking hold on his face and knew this was some powerful magic. I took hold of his shoulders and turned him towards me, trying to shake him into reality. There was no change to his demeanor and I felt powerless once more. But the battle was raging and I had to leave him to his own Hell. What is Hell for an Eldeen shifter?

Magnus came around opposite Xoma to flank Ennet and wailed on him with a massive blow from the hobgoblin’s dragon bone club.  If ever there were a weapon for a barbarian from the Seren Isles, that was it. Master Ennet then proceeded to flay the flesh off of Magnus’s right arm with a single scrape of his kama before deftly jumping the twenty feet down to the main floor. Magnus’s arm had become a grotesque sight: a tattooed piece of flesh the length of his forearm hanging free that will not be easy to forget.

Rendar then made a resolute dash down the stairs to the garden. He succeeded in blocking Ennet’s escape path, but was unable to take the monk down quickly by himself. From above on the altar, I was able to sink a magical bolt from my armbow into Master Ennet’s torso while Doongul threw one of his divine bolts at the monk—after shoving Trug to safety behind a pillar.

It was at this point that the dread blossoms from the garden started to swarm again—sensing the fresh blood from the battle or triggered by the monk’s hand claps. Ennet amazingly took hold of Rendar’s violet-hued byeshk scimitar and wrenched it from his hands before running past him between the dread blossom flower beds.

We all ran after the monk, firing and striking out, but none of us was able to connect. Xoma missed with his boomerang after applying to it the scorpion poison he’d bought to inscribe new spells onto his “spellbook”—his own tattooed body. Doongul called forth one of his last available spells and conjured the thunder of Onatar into the courtyard! Even Xoma’s margoyle, perched uselessly atop the the courtyard’s overhang, was rocked back by the sound.

Magnus with his powerful legs was able to run through the blossom garden and flank the monk, blocking an easy retreat. Master Ennet looked back between Rendar and Magnus, with his arm skin still flapping. He smiled and said, “The Mockery curses you. Only pain will cleanse you.” He then brutally slit his own throat using Rendar’s scimitar.

Suspiciously, at the same moment as the life was pouring out of Master Ennet’s throat, Doongul noticed behind him that the grisly statue started lurching forward off of the altar.  The idol-golem made up of flesh from different creatures attacked Doongul but the dwarf blocked the creature’s considerable strength with his shield. I fired off an unerring magic missile while the rest of the party ran back to the altar to deal with the new threat.

Doongul, Cyzicus, and Rendar all landed powerful blows to the idol’s frame but caused no visible damage! While I was under the influence of the altar’s phantasmal power, Magnus had thrown a flask of oil from his bandolier at the inanimate statue. When Rendar’s physical attack didn’t cause any damage, he deftly wove through the golem’s defenses and lit a spark on the creature, causing the oil to conflagrate—which flared all the brighter in proximity to Doongul and his forgelit hammer.

My view of this scene was blocked by the pillars of the shrine room but I ducked out from the pillar and fired a perfect shot from my magical armbow into the creature’s center of mass. The shot caused it to step back; clearly I inflicted some major damage. Cyzicus then attempted to use Xoma’s mysterious decanter of necrotic “healing,” hoping to damage the golem. He didn’t realize that the power of the mysterious fluid required a strong will to control—which, I am sorry to report, is not necessarily one of the shifter’s strongest qualities.

However, Cyzicus was able to deal some harm to the golem, evidenced by minor abrasions all over the creature—and simultaneously healing himself, albeit with obvious pain. Xoma, meanwhile, was standing by the courtyard’s edge making his third (and in vain) attempt to will the margoyle to help us in our attack. Perhaps it would have been more useful to have had kept the dagger as a weapon that he could actually control instead of sacrificing it to create the oversized gargoyle.

Calling upon magics I cannot quantify, Doongul sanctified his warhammer in the holy name of Onatar, hoping that the blasphemous creature was susceptible to the Host’s holy power. The warhammer, glowing now with both forgelight and holy light, crunched satisfyingly into the idol’s body. Clearly, it was in some way anathema to Onatar’s power—or to Doongul’s belief in such power. There is no way to know what force supplies clerics with their magic.

Nearby, Trug was up against the wall swatting at the dread blossoms that were hounding him, killing some of the swarm over his head. The idol punched Cyzicus in the face while he was stunned by the drain of blood the dread blossoms had taken from him. I had a swarm of blossoms about me but they soon left for more sanguineous pastures. Evidently they didn’t care much for alchemical fluids that keep me operational.

Rendar slashed at the idol, this time with his recovered byeshk scimitar, and caused a massive wound. I fired another bolt directly into the idol’s face, cracking into its skull. The idol shuttered and began to fly into a rage. What followed was a supernatural effect I had never witnessed before: blood started spraying directly into the creature’s body from the open wounds of my companions (those nearest the golem). Fortunately for Doongul, he was yet unharmed but Cyzicus, Magnus, and Rendar were not so fortunate. Cyzicus turned to run but was drained further by the dread blossoms and he dropped, disabled and bleeding.

Doongul used his cleric’s spell of minor healing to stabilize the shifter and then drove another blow into the idol with his sanctified hammer. Magnus landed another hit with his dragon-bone club. By this point the creature’s innumerable skins were starting to become an amorphous mess of blood from itself and my companions. It siphoned the blood from those nearby, rendering Cyzicus unconscious seconds after he’d come to again. Finally Rendar landed the final blow to the creature and it dropped to the floor.

My party wasn’t in the clear yet, though.  The dread blossoms had been harassing us throughout the entire battle. Deeming it to be too difficult a shot with the armbow, I killed off some of the blossoms attacking Cyzicus with a magic missile. Unfortunately, the remaining blossoms knocked poor Cyzicus down for a third time. I finished them off by channelling a surge of pure infusion energy. Xoma used his own variant of this effect—shocking grasp—through his weapon to kill off the blossoms attacking him and Doongul sent Onatar’s light above Trug’s head, finishing those off.

But by far the most creative means of getting rid of this insidious horticulture came from our barbarian. Obsessed—I would say even religiously—with fire, Magnus let out a great roar reminiscent of a dragon and set himself alight with his tinderbox and a flask of oil. What an awesome, if horrific, sight to see the tall, red-tattooed human attempting to immolate himself  The feat worked exactly as planned, the blossoms burned up along with the barbarian, forearm skin still flapping wildly. Magnus promptly—and deftly, as if he’d done this before—rolled to the ground to douse the flames, but I thought I could discern a slight smile on his charred face.  Strange human.

The brutal battle finally over, we regrouped and made plans for a short rest to repair. Xoma declared that if we could rest for at least half an hour, in hopes of salvaging the scorpion venom he’d applied to his weapon by inscribing another spell upon his skin—lest he waste the resource. Understanding his plight, I convinced the party to spare the time. During this time, Doongul looted the bodies while Magnus and Rendar resumed their earlier task of cutting down the skin tapestries which formed the perimeter of the shrine room. In short order, they found a secret door in the corner of the room behind one of the skins.

Meanwhile, I spent my time doing a hasty autopsy of the idol-golem. It was a spectacularly complex creature.

When Xoma finished, we looted the vault room beyond the secret door: our physical reward for entering this damned temple. The room was filled with hanging chains, hooks, corpses, and a collection of fine blades from across Khorvaire, even Xen’drik.

For our records, I compiled a list of plunder on parchment.

• A longsword of masterwork, and Flamic design.
• A Xen'drik boomerang, this one carved with symbols of a tribe of drow that only Xoma seemed to recognize. He observed that this weapon was enchanted and warm to the touch.
• A Talentan sharash.
• The haftless blade of a Brelish glaive.
• A Valenar scimitar of masterwork quality.
• A masterwork Karrnathy bastard sword carved with the symbol of the Academy of Rekkenmark.
• An Aundairian dagger.
• A Cannith warforged parsing blade.
• An assortment of unlabeled alchemical and preservative fluids.
• Needles and thread.
• Flaying blades.
• Whetstones.
• 340 platinum pieces.