Bar Saturn & The Sorcerer Lords

Downtime 06 ❖ May 25, 2020

Erebos, having perfected the art of hiding with the invisibility spell, sought to perfect the art of running by learning haste. He requires only the wing of an impossibly large insect to complete his research.

Garviel studied the rubbings taken from the pillars in the Catacombs. They contain two spells, used by the Fleischguild in preparing sacrifices: Fatten the Herd, which renders the target plump and succulent, and Sacrificial Bliss, which causes the target to experience pain as pleasure. He may learn on or other of these, or a reversal of one: Thin The Herd or Ascetic Curse.

He also delivered the blood to Crestefal, who sniffed it, and took samples to test, shooing Garviel away as he returned to his work. The next day he sent for him and said, “I can temper the shield in a concoction made from either sample. Which, depends upon you. Tell me, would you save the lives of others at the cost of your life, or the souls of others at the cost of your soul?”

The blind man nodded inscrutably at his answer, and set to work. Garviel receives:

Aeris invested 1000gp in the opening of the Bar Saturn. Staff were hired. The bar was cleaned and restocked. The lounge was filled with opulent furnishings, and a wrought-iron gate placed across the archway leading to the cavern. A sturdy iron door was installed in place of the armoire protecting the outpost of the Guildless, which placated them over the loss of their trap room. The traps and corpses were cleared away and the straw removed, the domed room starting to take on some of its former grandeur. Candles were lit behind the remaining panels in the hallway of lights, filling it with a festive glow, and the portcullis to the river was cleaned and repaired. Guards were posted.

Bar Saturn was an immediate sensation in Rastingdrung. Customers poured in - jaded Ulimites seeking to sample the pleasures of Zyan, would-be adventurers who craved to explore the lands of Wishery but lacked the nerve to risk having their bones sawed by the bone saws of the Deboners of the Fleischguild. A safe, well-catered expedition into the lands beyond Ultan’s door was just what many citizens of Rastingdrung had been waiting for. The bar is packed, and the customers clamour for more exotic Zyanese fare and, possibly, guided tours?

The Guildless were initially wary, but soon found themselves doing a thriving trade in their harsh liquor and pickled hands of the White Swine. Ultan was enthusiastic, and invested generously in the project, eagerly pocketing the influx of door fees.

Aeris gains the Holding Bar Saturn, with an additional +3 to its initial rating of 1.

Caenn set to work studying the Carnal Star, the eerie stone sealed in lead, sealed in cold iron, immersed in water. By night, he transported it to a remote field and let it shed its alien light over the soil, and rats in sealed cages, some unprotected, others warded by stone, lead, or salt.

By morning every rat touched by the rays had grown plump. The effect penetrated a short distance through stone, but lead appeared to block it entirely. Dissections revealed muscles rich in marbled fat, the deposition of fat appearing oddly natural for so unnatural a process. A three-day study yielded gruesome results, however, and caused him to put a hold on any human testing.

One morning returning to the long-term study Caenn saw that one of the rats had ruptured, its body bursting open to unleash three tiny entities of living fat, like those seen in the Catacombs. Worse, they had embraced one of the other rats, forcing their substance inside its small, furry body to in an apparent attempt to join with the fat already there. This proved fatal to the beast, and while the burst-open bodies were a grisly sight, there was something else, some deeper wrongness that made Caenn’s hair prickle.

The faculty at the university could provide only incomplete, tantalizing hints at the knowledge he sought. The central question of whether such transformations arise from the resculpting of gross form as opposed to the alteration of some inner essence proved elusive, and ill-researched, and the study of such things in many places deemed blasphemous.

Velimus the librarian, with whom Caenn is on excellent terms, was sympathetic, and waxed wistful; the secrets of bio-transmutation are unknown, or at best lost; for who can really tell these days, and how much do we really know of the world as it was, or as it is, after so long in the cold dark ages?

In the scant history of the subject, two names stand out. Velimus was able to direct Caenn to the tome The Lives of the Sorcerer Lords, which told of an order of rival magi who dwelled among the Shattered Isles, far to the north:

“Sarpedon was a pioneer in the construction of biological forms. He held in contempt the usual method of sewing rotting pieces of flesh together with wires or hinges, and referred to its practitioners as morons and hatchet men. In its place, he developed a method of mixing living forms that he compared to the blending of notes into harmony. He likened himself to a composer in the music of flesh and bone...”

The other name was one Mosekes, reputed to be the author of several obscure works on the subject. One such work, entitled Autonomous Organs, seemed particularly apposite, but sadly absent from the collection. Another, The Secret Changes, was present but only in an incomplete, water-damaged form.

The author claims in The Secret Changes that our understanding of natural history is woefully incomplete, and indeed the very life-cycles of common creatures as we understand them are similarly incomplete. It proposes as an example the common velvet moth, with its life cycle egg-larva-pupa-adult. An experiment is described whereby the pupa is immersed in an oneiric bath derived from a mixture of the slime of an oneiric jelly and the brains of a flying lobster and giant white wasp, all creatures that are only to be found in the dreamlands.

Several pages here are missing, but the implication is that this process will reveal the true life cycle of the moth, and references are made to something Mosekes calls a Resplendent Queen.

The author then raises an obvious objection: How can such an interaction be said to be part of the hidden natural lifecycle of the moth, when it requires such bizarre intervention, involving entirely different organisms from other worlds? Is this not, in fact, a source of aberration and mutation, rather than the unfolding of the previously stymied natural life cycle of the creature?

In answer Mosekes defends the heresy of Transworld Ontogenesis. According to this doctrine, all organisms are transworld phenomena, developing simultaneously--and sometimes serially--on multiple planes of existence. What we know as organisms are really only the thin terrestrial shells of unimaginably complicated beings, unfolding through countless stages across many worlds. Thus, what appears to our blinkered view as arcane and artificial interventions unlocking one of the secret changes in fact introduces elements that belong properly to the development of the organism as it unfolds in other worlds.

There seems a chill in the air of the library despite the season, and Caenn’s dreams that night are of a twisted landscape of ribbed walls and ominous forms, beneath the light of an eerie, peach-coloured sun.

Dungeon Master’s Notes

I think the eerie world of his dream is the world he would have created had his penultimate evolution been left free to have its way with the biosphere...