Background Story

Khovak marched along the patrol route, mentally cringing as his first round of the morning took him towards the Bal Harbor Alchemist's shop. Tuesday was when the proprietor mixed up a new batch of yellow potions; by the time the sun had cleared the rooftops, this process had usually covered the whole block with a foul-smelling haze of anise and alcohol. If he had only been a little bit cleverer the night before, Khovak would have realized that there was something off about those ladies by the Climbing Wall who had been so quick with a gratuity. But, poor Khovak was too dim or too drunk, and was fooled by what turned out to be a phantasm placed on an old, broken-down cart by the Red Sash Corps Mage as a test of his honesty. As it was, he was lucky that he had merely been busted off of today's raid on the gnoll stockade in the hills west of town, and given this ground-pounding assignment.

Doubly lucky, because the expected stench was utterly absent. Neither were there sudden conflagrations, rogue elemental spirits, or the other stray magicks that had so depressed property prices in this area. In fact Benson (the town alchemist and author of these woes) was sitting in the sickly grass of his front yard, pale and shuddering. From inside the shop came only a baritone chanting and the occasional wail; those Khovak could handle. As he strode jauntily up to the door, he proudly uttered a phrase he had practiced over and over until he could produce it without a trace of his native Kharao: "'Ere now, wot's all this, then?"

Benson moaned disconsolately. "I'm all for knowing my roots, but I can't take any more ancestors popping up through my lab floor! I'm going down to the Inn and see if they can't make me some tea. Sash, why don't you make yourself useful and watch the shop. And don't think you can take anything, because that necro-, er, historian in there will see." Thinking Benson was done, the Sash nodded and moved towards the open door. Benson, seeming to reconsider his last remark, quickly added "Or if he doesn't, my ancestors certainly will, and they'll put such a curse on you that you'll have the whores gnawing off their own legs to get away the instant that robe comes off. My dear departed Gran, who was hovering near the ceiling by the reserve stock of mandrake root when I came outside, had the evil eye - probably still does - and specialized in afflicting folks with foreign skin diseases! So, remember, hands off, or else your hands.. will.. be.. OFF!" With this, the alchemist got unsteadily to his feet and headed off down the street.

Khovak hadn't followed more than half of that, but during the monologue the lone wail from inside had expanded into a dire chorus of mourning. The shop's front door hung wide, but the morning sun had not yet penetrated into the interior. Something glowing and green was visible through the parlor window. Long years of service in Bal Harbor had inured the Sash to this sort of thing, so in he went.

As soon as he cleared the doorway, the source of the nearest wail was apparent. A man made of flickering blue light looked to be trapped in the plane of the ceiling, or perhaps projected onto it. The apparition's face was distorted far beyond the flexibility of mortal muscles with an unending scream. Khovak watched for half a minute, during which time the green spirit (which turned out to be a flickering sphere with no discernible human character) that he had glimpsed from the yard drifted into the room and, startingly, adhered itself to his left arm.

Goosebumps began to rise on the afflicted arm, which Khovak was shaking violently in an attempt to dislodge the phantom. At that moment, the door to Benson's lab flew open. From the darkened room beyond a skeletal head poked around the door frame, rasping "Get in here, or go back out into the sunlight, but you mustn't stand there outside the ward! You're agitating the necrota, idiot!" Turning back to the interior of the darkened laboratory, the figure said "Maestro, there's a foreign warrior out here! Shall I bring him in?" The back of the speaker's head clearly showed bare bone, covered by only a few wisps of grey hair, themselves attached by sparse gobbets of flesh. A faint green glow shone through cracks around a large dent in the top of the skull. While the Sash gaped in shock at this sight, the skeletal creature apparently received a response from within: it gestured, and after a brief flash of its internal light source, Khovak's legs involuntarily marched him at double-time into the lab. The lich, for Khovak knew now that was what it must be, slammed the door and began to trace over a chalk rune that lay across the door and the wall by the latch.

In all his time guarding this heathen city, Khovak had never actually been into Benson's lab. The soldier's mounting fear was quickly over- whelmed by the incredible stink of the place. On top of the usual chemical smells, quite offensive in themselves, was a thick miasma of rotting meat; and that symphony of stench itself was failing to mask the distinctive odor of human urine. As he fell to his knees and retched dryly, Khovak counted himself fortunate that he had already gotten rid of the contents of his stomach at the end of last night's bout of drink.

As he recovered his feet, Khovak looked up into the irritated countenance of a black-robed woman holding a scroll and a quill. Unsurprisingly, the left shoulder of her robes bore the insignia of the city's recently licensed Necromancers' Guild. The necromancer hissed, "Stand still and be quiet." While Khovak felt no magical compulsion behind the words this time, his long experience with mages and their spells, which was all that had allowed him to enter this shop in the first place without fleeing in terror from the phantasms out front, also told him that in circumstances like these one always does what the wizard says.

Apparently satisfied when the soldier made no sudden moves, the necromancer turned to the center of the room and resumed chanting. Her voice, which clearly was NOT the same voice that had hissed the command moments earlier, was a man's baritone. The chant droned on for minutes; during this time, the lich scurried around the edges of the room, drawing and redrawing chalk runes on the walls, floor, and ceiling (which it could only reach because it seemed to be able to extend its arms a good six feet above its head when the need arose). The necromancer's attention was focused on a coalescing mist that, as Khovak watched, slowly assembled itself into a translucent human form sitting on a similarly translucent stool. "What?", said the mist in a faint but definitely annoyed voice.

"Are you the first Benson to run an alchemy shop in the city of Bal Harbor?" asked the necromancer, who had resumed what Khovak assumed was her normal voice upon cessation of the chant.

"The first? You mean there were more?" responded the apparition.

"You are constrained to answer!" shouted the necromancer. "You must abjure further dissembling!"

"Fine. Yes. I'm familiar with this spell; looking at you, I'd say you'll have maybe four more questions?"

"Seven!" said the necromancer indignantly.

"Seven then; I am, was, a garrulous old fellow, we can just keep this friendly."

"Enough chit-chat, spirit. Tell me, truly and as completely as you are able, of your time in Bal Harbor, and especially of The End."

"That's not a question."

"I know that. I was going to say, if you agree to do this faithfully I shall release you from further questions, and furthermore will take an oath never deliberately to disturb you again."

"Done!"

The shade began. "When I was a child, my father sent me to study with Paracelsus, the famous alchemist. For the first part of my history, the cosmogony, I'm just going to relay what he told me. Say, he was supposed to be immortal - isn't he still around? Why don't you just ask him?"

"That was not the deal, Spirit."

"Very well. Humanity first arose, or at any rate first started taking notes, right here in Bal Harbor. The world was young, and small; the gods too were young. But first about the world: the earliest ships sailed from this port, but found few destinations worth settling and no other men. They explored up and down the coast, and also reached one large island that was uninhabitable due to the fierce giant lizards that lived there."

"Of men they found none, but the gods (in what was soon known to be characteristic form) had seen fit to people the world with every manner of savage beast. Much of this city's adult population spent their brief and violent lives riding forth to slay these creatures and expand the domains of civilization. This brought pouring in a stream of treasure, and the city grew."

"The gods of those days were very much in evidence, often walking the streets of the city with mortal men. As I said, they were young; and in their youth, capricious and cruel. They often acted arbitrarily: if presented with a notorious villain for punishment, a god would be equally likely to smite him or to turn him into a fearsome dragon that would proceed to raze the town. The gods, according to their own words, believed in the perfectability of their creation. This belief was reflected in not only their actions but also in the underlying rules of reality: every mortal could, by dint of diligent work, master all of the known powers. Birth held no man back."

"In their attempts to perfect not just man but the rest of the universe, the gods made constant adjustments. One morning, I remember, there was a mountain on the eastern horizon that hadn't been there the night before. Even worse, the basic workings of reality changed in a similar manner. A spell that did one thing on Thursday morning do something completely different, or not work at all, by suppertime. Even the more mundane skills of warriors and thieves changed often and unpredictably."

"These constant changes caused great consternation among the populace. One day, when I had been running this shop for about a decade, the priests came up with a plan: they would create a great tablet on which they would inscribe all the prayers of the city, so that the gods would be sure to hear all of the desires of man. The gods had always heard, of course, being gods, but it was thought that this tablet would help them not to forget."

"After a consecration ceremony lasting many days, this tablet (which had been erected at the west gate) was made available for public use. It quickly filled up with all manner of requests: ideas for improvements in the world, but also complaints about past changes and about the general injustices of life. At first it seemed to be working: the changes were no less frequent, but the gods often followed the advice on the prayer tablet. Over time, however, the ideas began to be outnumbered by the complaints. More and more, mortals issued idle threats to the gods: 'If you don't change things back to the way they were yesterday, I shall surely take my own life from grief!' 'The world today is plain garbage, not like it was when I was a lad! You gods keep wrecking everything!'"

"No doubt the complaints were mostly the work of a small fraction of the men; those of us who were happy with the way of things felt no need to put any prayers on the tablet. Whether that was so or not, however, the gods were increasingly seen around the tablet, looking angrier and angrier. The foolish inhabitants of the city took no note of this, and posted ever stronger complaints about the state of the world."

"One day, a great voice was heard across the land: 'This creation hasn't worked out like the gods had hoped. Clearly our efforts to perfect it are just causing more grief. Goodbye.' And then the sun went out. Erk!"

With this last, the shade collapsed. Its substance was apparently not held back by the material boundary of the floor, but passed right through. In less than a second there was no evidence it had ever been.