A Marran cleric on Earth
Permalink

Meicona wakes to crashing weapons, discordant layers of music, and shouted verbal components. She sleeps sitting up, without a blanket; she stands immediately and looks around. Fireballs whine and explode, lighting up the walls of her tent with silhouettes of combat.

Her guards, grim and jerky with tension, weapons in hand, stand facing away, except for one who was about to wake her. One guard says "Good!"; another says "Evil!", and they glance at each other wide-eyed.

Meicona grabs her unholy symbol, already around her neck, and peeks out the tent flap. The only spells she has are a leftover Marra's Inquisition (useless for combat) and Enthrall (dubious), which she rarely uses but her other second-circle domain spell, Align Weapon (Law), is even worse, since Marra's greatest enemy is the Lawful Asmodeus. She has all her raw channeling, though! An Evil cleric's negative energy channeling is usually useless, except in combat!

Spells and swords fly. Meicona sends a pool of shimmering rot at the identifiable enemies, a paladin and several Chelish soldiers - weird but she can figure that out later - and then someone lurches and falls, knocking her over in a tangle with her guards, and misfires a Plane Shift. 

Total: 48
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

She's now alone in a quiet patch of trimmed grass by a manor house with a tiny garden. Similar houses stand oddly close by, separated by fences and hedges.

It's daytime and warm.

Permalink

Well this sucks. If the Marran parish gets scattered or destroyed, that's a lot of Meicona's work lost and experiments that she'll have to start over again. And, more importantly, souls who might not get to Marra, and might even get claimed by Asmodeus instead.

Marra does not abandon anyone, is the doctrine, but She is not the most powerful god (yet) and sometimes the unthinkable happens.

On that topic, where is Meicona? Not Hell or Nirvana, the most likely places to take a Marran you're trying to corrupt... The ordered, luxurious surroundings look like Heaven, but that doesn't make sense either. Marra works well with Iomedae, a fellow Lawful god with a similar style despite their divergent values, and why would Iomedae kidnap a Marran, at the cost of an expensive Plane Shift, rather than just threatening to? Why would anyone kidnap a cleric?

New theory: the paladin and the Asmodeans were not working together, but had separate plans that happened to collide. And now she's in Heaven by accident.

Marra will get her back eventually, but she might be here for a while.

Permalink

So what now?

A lot of Marra's outsiders used to be angels, according to scries of Marra's Infernal domain. They had to get the idea somehow, so maybe Meicona is supposed to recruit some more angels? That might actually be a deliberate plan by Marra!

Permalink

Okay then, she should find a public place to set up - with a sign - wait no, Heaven is more Lawful than that; she just needs to find a celestial and ask for instruction.

This is going to be fun. She brainstorms ideas for talking to angels.

Permalink

There are no people around. The houses continue in curving rows, with a wide road separating pairs of rows. The road feels like stone, but looks softly puddled, like it was made with precisely controlled lava.

A dog barks continuously in the distance.

Permalink

There are dogs in Heaven? It doesn't sound happy, which is odd for either Heaven or Nirvana... She follows the sound.

Permalink

Apparently so. This one is large with black and white patches. It runs up to the window and barks at her, wagging.

Permalink

Hmmmm. "Hello. I found myself in Heaven unexpectedly, possibly for the purpose of being an ambassador from my god, Marra. Direct me." she says in Celestial, then belatedly adds "please".

Enhanced Diplomacy. She should have done that first. She'll take time during her prayers to consider how to avoid that mistake in the future. Speaking of prayers, it's midday now, so it's going to be a while before she can get more spells... How does that even work? Lawful planes are supposed to have consistent time.

Permalink

"She's a new Lawful Evil god, you might not have heard of Her? I will act as She commands, according to all relevant agreements with your gods, and I intend no harm to anyone here."

Permalink

Woof woof. Wag.

Permalink

That's not the behavior of a Lawful celestial. Is she in Elysium? There are buildings in Elysium, and since it's infinite it makes sense that people might just leave them behind, empty.

She leaves the dog or whatever entity it is behind without another word.

Permalink

Woof. Woof woof woof woof. Whine.

Permalink

Nice try, whatever you are, but she's resistant to the manipulations of Good.

Permalink

Meanwhile, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) has picked up a huge signal. It's just a single sharp pulse, not at all like the chirp-burst-ringing-decay of colliding black holes.

At first, they think it's a seismic event on Earth, but no other data corroborates. Perhaps something from the sun? But it's daytime in the United States, with both detectors facing the sun, and the signal came sideways at them. The direction is different at the two detectors, and the timing is off. Theorists ponder a cataclysmic "universe quake", while other theorists follow the numbers, odd as they seem, and propose that the signal was in fact a tiny tiny gravitational event very close by, somewhere just south of the great lakes. Perhaps an extremely energetic cosmic ray. They sketch out a paper with their idea.

The data is consistent with a person-sized mass suddenly appearing, but of course that's just a coincidence.

Permalink

One scientist with a guilty love of UFOs thinks that, while this is of course a coincidence, it's an awesome coincidence, and tells her buddy in the military.

The next day, two very polite men in suits collect the data and instruct everyone to remain silent for purposes of - with grave voices and fatherly nods - national security.

Permalink

Fuck national security what about science for the benefit of all humanity yes sir.

Permalink

Meanwhile...

A middle-aged woman drives past Meicona in a gorgeous white magical carriage, stops, and leans out. "You need directions?"

Permalink

Yes, a person! Hm, she didn't recognize that language. Enhanced Diplomacy. "Celestial? Infernal? Taldane? Halfling?"

Permalink

The woman frowns. "Are you okay?"

Permalink

She uses her Enhanced Diplomacy benefit, and repeats carefully, "Do you speak Celestial? Do you speak Infernal? Do you speak Taldane? Do you speak Halfling?"

So she's somewhere they don't speak Celestial or Infernal. A very weird part of the Abyss? It doesn't look like an elemental plane and she's not dead, hm.

Demons aren't Lawful. They might kill her out of a random destructive impulse, especially if she can't communicate.

Permalink

The woman looks thoughtful. Pulls out a small beige card with rounded corners and points at it, raising her eyebrows at Meicona.

Permalink

As long as the demon keeps trying to communicate, she won't run and hide quite yet, but she's feeling pretty nervous about having so few spells.

She studies the card as best she can without stepping any closer.

Permalink

It's kind of shiny, from some angles. It has writing in a variety of hands and sizes, and a picture of a face.

Permalink

Ohh it's money! She wants money to transport her to someone who can translate. How refreshingly civilized!

So she's not in the Abyss. Where could she possibly be?

And the immediate question: should she go with the first person she meets, still short on spells, or risk angering her (and the other locals) by leaving and hiding somewhere until next morning? In favor of staying: a few spells probably won't make the difference, especially if she's taken by surprise. In favor of staying: she probably would be trespassing if she hid, and these people are rich. Which means they're a personal danger to her, but also means they're more likely to be interesting and capable and vain and worth protecting.

She has no idea how much money to offer, but she has plenty and can sell spells to get more. She holds out five gold pieces.

Total: 48
Posts Per Page: