Jump to content


The Kandron Affair - Part the Eighteenth.


  • Please log in to reply
4 replies to this topic

#1 Guest_TheBeastlordJohnny_*

Posted 20 December 2003 - 01:12 AM

Hullo people and party members!

Part the Eighteenth is the next flashback sequence to Kandron’s previous exploits in the Underdark, among other things. And two pointless fight sequences.

By the way, further apologies to Blue – I haven’t finished the next segment of the Goldoran Epic yet. It’s quite difficult to compose decent epic verse you know. Sorry!

Chapter 18 – 8 Mile Tunnel

I looked around.

Goblins dressed in the same black cloaks, trousers, and glasses. All completely unarmed, yet somehow rather… menacing. One of them spoke.

“I’m sorry Mr Devore, but this is where your path ends. It wasn’t nice knowing you. Oh, and when you get to the Hells, tell them that Agent Scrik sent you.”

I looked him straight back in where his eyes would be.

“No.” I said, extracted my twin blades and scissor-slashed his head clean off his body. I expect that he was feeling rather stupid given his fairly recent words.

“I expect you think I’ll be feeling more than a little stupid after that,” said one of the other identical goblins. “As I said before, you cannot beat us… join us!” And he stabbed his outstretched fingers into my chest, expecting them to penetrate the flesh, yet winced in pain as he succeeded only in breaking his knuckles against my chainmail. I took the opportunity to slice off the offending limb, which sent blood spraying across the courtyard, then turned and stabbed another one of the identical goblins, and another, and another, but not before one of them had bruised a shoulder rather. Evidently they thought their numbers so great and their expendability so high that they would try to nibble me to death like that. However, it did not seem to be working, as their numbers rapidly dwindled to just three.

“More,” Agent Scrik #35 said. And more carbon copies of himself just appeared from nowhere, all of whom died within minutes but succeeded in slashing a cut across my upper lip. “This all you got Agent Scrik?” I said to him. “Oh no, not by a long way,” Agent Scrik #66 replied, and yet more copies of himself blinked into existence. This was going to be a long day.

And so it went on into the night, until finally Agent Scrik #288 stood in front of me and blinked out of existence all the copies of himself. “Fine then Mr Devore, you may have won the battle, but I will win the war. Expect to see more of me… many more of me! Bwahahahahahahaha!” he remarked, then vanished. I scraped the blood off my blades and put them away.

“He is the One,” I heard Shayla whisper under her breath, and I turned to face her, face a mask of mystification. “One what?”

“Never mind,” replied Shayla.

It was decided among us four remaining party members that we should rest in the now-clear gatehouse of the Horde Fortress, two in each side. Given that I refused to rest with either Darik or Oberron (neither of which returned the favour), I had to bed down next to Shayla that evening – and anyhow, I wasn’t in the best of states. Quaffing a healing potion, I threw my blanket over the floor in a dark corner, and noticed Shayla doing the same in the other corner. I snuggled down and went out like a light.


I woke up about three hours later in a cold sweat after a particularly nasty dream, the basic thrust of which was that my one goal had been compromised completely unbeknownst to me. Shayla was woken and quite close to me, looking rather worried. Apparently I had been calling things out in my sleep, specifically, things about Olaria and her death at the hands of some obscure dark god whose name had far too many hard consonants in it for its own good.

Shayla regarded me a while.

“What?” I grumbled back at her.

“You loved Olaria didn’t you?” she asked me, in the pointed tone of questioning that expects an affirmative. I glowered back at her.

“Love,” I said, “is not something that I am all that familiar with.”

“Well,” Shayla replied. “When she was with you, did you feel as if… everything was right with the world?”

I thought over this for a few minutes.

“I might have done,” I began, and I could tell that my eyes were misting over with the nostalgia. “Olaria and I might have been lovers in the feelings-related sense of the word,” I conceded, “and we definitely were in a physical sense, but our relation was more one of mutual strength. You see… we both had a dream…”


The evening I unexpectedly encountered Olaria in Istvana Jae’llat’s House of Entertainment, she was not in a particularly happy mood. Indeed, my sudden arrival and recognising her only served to increase her ire, and she beckoned me to follow her to her private room in the House.

Shutting the door behind us, she threw her masque into a corner. “By Lolth, Kandron, what were you doing in here? And bereft of house colours as well?” I opened my mouth to reply but was cut off instantly. “Let’s be honest, Kandron, you’re up to something nefarious. No true noble would ever enter the slum caverns unless it was absolutely necessary or they had been ordered to. Well?”

The stench of sexual tension hung in the air. Nine years previous to this, Olaria and I had been… well, not exactly lovers, but… regular sparring-partners, in more ways than one, and I suppose it would have been fair to say that I missed her rather. As a result, there was quite a silence.

“Kandron, I don’t care what you’re here for but you should leave. I’m… They’re after me. My mother, that is. She worries that I’m trying to usurp her position in the city, and she wants me dead. If they found you in my company you’d most likely be charged with assisting a wanted person, because you didn’t scrag me on sight.”

I looked back at her. “Olaria, I came here because I was thoroughly narked off with my mother. I would give anything,” I hissed, “to pluck every single last gunmetal-grey hair out the fossil’s head, gouge out her eyeballs, and eat them deep-fried with mushrooms. Whining bitch she was.”

“Same old Kandron,” she remarked. “Always thinking he knows best when most of his plans would result in the non-consented rearrangement of his organs.”

“Same old Olaria,” I retorted. “Always too spineless to ever do anything properly.”

Olaria turned to face me. “That’s why I’ve not been disappeared as a potential threat to the Spider Queen’s Peace,” she snapped. “That’s why I’m eking out a living as a flashdancer when I could have had half the city at my feet. Don’t you think it pains me?”

“Of course it pains you,” I said, trying to fish for a reason to come down. “But you don’t have to be in such an insalubrious position all the time. I’m just as heartily sick of the counterintuitive House System as you are. We of the ilythiirri have been denied justice upon the surfacers for ten thousand years by our own constant infighting. It is our destiny to avenge the ancient founders of our nation and purge those weakling darthiir from Toril forever, but we can only do that if we are united utterly in everything!” I said all this with the fervour that I would if I were a revolutionary addressing a horde of devotees.

“What about the rivvin?” Olaria asked.

“They are of no consequence. Let them live as they will. After all, we will need a cheap labour force.”

There was another pause, and then Olaria cracked into a razor smile. “My sentiments entirely,” she said. “But come now, let us begin our cause by glorifying Lolth in the spirit that this tower was constructed for…” And with that she led me to the family-sized bed in the corner of the room.


We had gorged on each others’ libido, yet we both still had support to drum up. That night, we ghosted through the many inns and Houses of Pleasure, trolling for supporters of our cause, especially nobles of similar ages to myself and Olaria, with no success apart from one middle-aged wizard named Malavon Despana, who told us that he’d “consider it.”

After the eighth day of investigations, I slumped at a table in a flophouse near the docks and clasped my head in hands. Olaria sat opposite me, and I was able to admire her delicate, slender build, yet possessed of such lethal speed and strength. Strapped to her thighs were twin Florentine blades like I was accustomed to wield, and through the screen of creamy white hair which cascaded to the tabletop her ire and frustration was visible. Olaria was a fine figure of a woman, with long legs, moderately curvy hips, a narrow, tight waist, and a generous bosom. Her face was squatter in a way than mine, and her cheeks were not as sunken as mine, her nose slightly wider, and her lips fuller. She wore a deep-purple one-piece tunic which ran between her legs and over all of her torso yet covered none of her arms or legs and so did not impede movement, and over this an equally proportioned suit of chain mail, and richly engraved adamantite greaves over her shins and knees, and long, black leather gloves which came to past the elbow and which were armour-plated up the back of her forearms. She slumped in resignation as well, and I took her hands.

“Some revolution you had planned here,” she spat at me.

“We don’t need to replace the existing power base over time by weight of numbers when we could just destroy it and declare ourselves in charge,” I pointed out. “Talking of which, I had a plan – “

“Stuff your plans!” she yelled. “You’ll just get us both killed knowing your plans!”

I stood up, and yelled back at her. “Fine! I’ll do it myself! Your problem, Olaria, is you’re too cautious!”

“Your problem, Kandron,” she hissed at me, “is you seem to think you’re bloody indestructible! Okay, I’ll listen to your beknighted plan, but it’d better be good!”

And so I told her.


Afterwards, we were leaving that particular bar when we got hopelessly lost in the maze of backstreets, and it was getting late and we were getting very tired. So we ducked into a small back door behind a disused building of some description, which looked like it had lost a fight with an umber hulk, and tougher individuals would only have to sneeze in its general direction to demolish it. Rilauven was littered with such buildings.

Inside we came to what appeared to be a decrepit old toilet area. Looking around revealed the sinks to be falling off the walls, and mud and sand and crap all over the floor. Clues, such a crudely drawn female genitalia on the walls, indicated that this was a male bathroom and so Olaria scuttled outside.

Within minutes of her departure an albino drow knocked on the door, and wordlessly extracted me and led me down a long tunnel to a hall-type room, where I was stood (quite shocked) on a stage before a huge crowd of other albino drow, and two other albino drow on the stage with me. The crowd booed and I reached for my blades, and one of the two on the stage glared at me.

“Okay, so this is my good friend K. Gerbil, and before you deride him just ‘cos he not albino, remember – he a vithing genius! Okay!” he said, gesturing to the other albino on stage, “Spin that shit!”

A random and pointless beat emanated from the back of the hall, the crowd cheered their approval, and the other albino stared me down while hurling all manner of abuse in flowing hexameter poetry. He exhausted the standard Drow repertoire and accused my family tree of looking “like a fishing net with rothe nailed to it” and similar such, culminating in an order to “haul my coal-caked arse back through the 8 mile tunnel”. A minute and a half of abuse-hurling later, I was looked at and it was gestured that it was my turn to reply in kind.

I snarled and glared at both the crowd and the albinos. They glared right back and began to chant, “Kill, Kill, Kill” at me. So then I snapped, extracted my weapons, and scragged the on-stage albino, his blood arcing up and dribbling all over the stage. In terror a bunch of the crowd ran as if a murderous psychopath was on their heels (this, of course, being the case.) A few stragglers tripped and were cut down. I dusted off my hands and exited via the back way through which I had come. Olaria was there and looking rather disturbed, muttering something about a “horde of albinos”. I simply smiled knowingly, and took her arm, and we wandered back towards the noble district, stopping for a “rest” on the way at Istvana Jae’llat’s House of Entertainment.

Yet things became rather more difficult at that point. As Olaria and myself filed through the tall, isosceles entry gate, Olaria gritted her teeth and swore audibly, pointing onto the stage.

“That filthy rothe-vithe, illithid-gom’hrre!” she yelled. Naturally I enquired as to why she had accused one of the performers of slave-shagging and mind-flayer- sodomising, and I tracked the performer she indicated – an extremely dark-skinned, even by Drow standards, female, with curlyish hair who was performing exactly the same routine as Olaria had been on the day I met her in this inn. Wearing exactly the same clothes as well.

“Because,” she snarled at me, “that insipid tramp Lopetia Jae’nnifr only stole my act! LOPETIA!” she yelled across, in a berserk fury. The bar fell as silent as a tomb, and a few patrons made a beeline for the door.

Lopetia turned to face her. “What?” she said, putting her hands on her hips.

Olaria did not respond, but drew one of her twin blades, and launched it as a spear towards Lopetia, whom it impacted between the breasts, and who subsequently collapsed in a pool of blood and splintered bone. Olaria walked across calmly and extracted her blade, cleaned it off, and put it back.

It was then I realised that I had become an accessory to a murder. Now, contrary to surface beliefs, murder is completely forbidden in Drow society, except with the express permission of Lolth Herself. However, it is often overlooked because either all those present are bribed to look the other way, or all witnesses are disposed of at the scene. Lolthite scriptures stipulate that nobody can be guilty of murder unless there are eyewitnesses who come forward at the time – an extremely convenient loophole. Except it would appear that in mine and Olaria’s current situation, we had a barful of witnesses to our act.

And just to add to this general beshitment, down came Istvana “Thunderthighs” Jae’llat from her quarters upstairs, her titanic mass drawing eyes towards her from all directions. The entire patronage acted inconspicuous – Istvana was a very important lady in Rilauven, being the eldest daughter of her House, which was the third House of the city. And she spoke:

“Ahh, the delightfully charming Kandron Devore… Enchanté…” With that she took my hand and kissed it gently in an almost mocking manner, while I inwardly prayed that she let go of me before my hand rotted off. “How nice… I assume you have come here to discuss our marital arrangements? No?” She cast her gaze round the Inn. “Well at least you could tell me why poor Lopetia over there seemed to have been stabbed to death.”

I nudged Olaria and hissed, “Looks like this could turn nasty… You know the drill.” Olaria and I had fought side by side before, for we were on the same Blooding expedition team. We had taken down a leading rivvil paladin completely unnoticed, plundered his corpse, taken his head and his Holy Avenger sword, which we summarily sold to an eccentric wizard upon our return who collected surface artifacts avidly and studied them to try and determine techniques which could be useful in the creation of new Drow enchantments.

“Indeed,” sighed Istvana. “Very well. Lopetia shall not be forgotten. Now toss her corpse over there with the others,” she continued, indicating the pile of defunct individuals who were less than successful in the pit fights. “And as for you, you can tell me the meaning of this bloody debacle,” she inquired in her most imperious of voices.

“NOW!” yelled Olaria. Quick as a flash my blades – and hers – were out, and Istvana never stood a chance. She may have been immensely muscular and strong as an umber hulk, but it never played a part thanks to our speed, myself removing her legs and Olaria slashing off her arms.

Olaria grinned as Istvana bled her life away into the steel floor. “Now, the boot’s on the other foot, is it not? Come Kandron, let us leave this filth as it is. We ought not soil our hands with it.” And with that we swept out of the inn to much applause, cheering, and offers of sexual favours from the patrons of the House of Pleasure.


Shayla looked at me for a few seconds.

“So… was that why you were exiled? Wanton murder of albinos in the east-side of the city?” she asked me.

“Not at all,” I replied. “In fact, I would have been decorated for it. Albinos are considered second-class citizens in Drow society and often relegated to the ghetto areas. Not that Olaria or myself were that bothered by it.”

Shayla raised an eyebrow – a habit of Talyn’s that was getting more and more irritating, and more and more infectious as well. “Maybe so,” she sighed. “Was it the murder of Lopetia then? Or Istvana?”

“Lopetia was insignificant,” I told her. “Istvana, however… that would have been okay had she not been engaged to me… it transpired that our actions screwed the policy of the Council of Matrons so wholesomely that it led to years of infighting… and then the Menzoberranzanites deciding to stick their oar in… it’s still not solved itself, I don’t believe. But that’s a tale for another time,” I yawned, and curled up in my blankets.


Okay, that’s that part over and done with. Coming in Part the Nineteenth - An explanation of why bugbears are called bugbears, and a wholesome redemption scene.

#2 Guest_The Blue Sorceress_*

Posted 20 December 2003 - 06:57 AM

By the way, further apologies to Blue – I haven’t finished the next segment of the Goldoran Epic yet. It’s quite difficult to compose decent epic verse you know. Sorry!


Don't worry. I understand you pain. I just had to write a poem about renaissance poetry, starting with a line taken from a renaissance poem of my choice, and in the form that would be recognizable to a rennaisance poet, for, what else, my renaissance poetry class. Blah.


Okay, that’s that part over and done with. Coming in Part the Nineteenth - An explanation of why bugbears are called bugbears, and a wholesome redemption scene.


I've always wondered about that...

Anyway, lovely chapter.

-Blue

#3 Guest_argan_*

Posted 20 December 2003 - 11:22 AM

Good chapter...although I don't really like movie references. Especially not anything matrix (after the first movie, that is.)

By the way, I am pretty sure it is ilithiri

#4 Guest_TheBeastlordJohnny_*

Posted 20 December 2003 - 12:00 PM

Good chapter...although I don't really like movie references. Especially not anything matrix (after the first movie, that is.)

By the way, I am pretty sure it is ilithiri.


Hmm, the slogan goes, "L'elamshin del Ilythiiri zhah ulu har'luth jal." (The destiny of the Drow is to conquer all). So we're both wrong I suppose.

Anyhow, thank you for commentary.

#5 Guest_TheBeastlordJohnny_*

Posted 20 December 2003 - 12:04 PM

Don't worry. I understand you pain. I just had to write a poem about renaissance poetry, starting with a line taken from a renaissance poem of my choice, and in the form that would be recognizable to a rennaisance poet, for, what else, my renaissance poetry class. Blah.


Eeep.

"All the world's a stage,
And all the sonnets 14 lines."

I've always wondered about that...


It's a lot nastier than you think.

Anyhow, thank you for commentary.




0 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users

Skin Designed By Evanescence at IBSkin.com