[IC]Shadow over Stygia
Posted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 4:04 pm
Kheshatta, City of Magicians... whose dusky-skinned whores know debaucheries that would shrivel the soul of their rivals in Luxor; whose slave markets groan with black-skinned Kushites from the south and pale-skinned Shemite daughters from the north; where sacred serpents sleep lazily on gore-stained altars, attended by indifferent priests who care less for the glory of Set than their own sorcerous powers...
Each of you had come to this city for your own reasons; some cast about by the winds of fate to wash up on strange shores, others in search of treasure, willing to barter your skills and strength of arm in return for coins of Stygian gold. A few may even have come seeking some lost truth of the soul, and there are dark sorcerers that would share such sardonic wisdom as they have for the right price.
You were bid to this place by a slave, who claimed their master had need of your services, and promised a reward too high to ignore, and so you followed him past the plazas of carven stone into the streets and alleys of baked mud-brick. In the walled courtyard of a nondescript building, a flat-topped structure in better repair than those around it, you tied up your animals and slaves so that the servants could see to their needs, and were led within, down a brief hallway whose doorways are covered with beaded curtains to a back room.
A single pale flame rose up from a stone on the floor, and the room was half-hidden in shadows, but as your eyes adjusted you sucked in your breath. On the walls were painted brightly-colored murals of the god Ibis, recalling the legends of his battles with the minions of Set, and at one end of the room lay a low altar of white stone, on either side of which pots of cinammon-sticks smoked, to fill the room with their incense. On the other side of the room lay rack upon rack of papyrus scrolls, full to bursting. Yet for all these sights your attention is most drawn to the hunched figure on the low throne seated before the flame, obviously the slave's master.
Shrunken and shriveled in his age, there is no mistaking the silvery skull-cap on his bald pate, or the hawk-like hook of the nose - aye, and if there was any further doubt of his identity, the thin ibis-headed wand on his grasp and the pale white cotton robes woven with feathers on his emaciated frame would declare this to be Karanthes, the last priest of Ibis, shrouded in legend for his struggles with the arch-sorcerer Thoth-Amon, who to still be alive must be nearing his second century. Yet there is still the gleam on intelligence and wisdom in those staring eyes, and the hint of mirth in the wrinkles around mouth and eyes, and years of pain etched in the fine crosswork of scars that peek out from beneath his robes.
"Know, ye thieves, warriors, and scholars, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of Conan II to the throne of Aquilonia, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars - Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs...aye, Stygia! And before Stygia-was-Stygia there was Acheron, heir to the Giant Kings...and before them the histories, already half-legend, slink away into dark and foreboding myths of those prehuman entities that warred and struggled long before any of the races of man or man's gods came to this earth. They say Father Set knew them in the dawn times, and the Old Serpent has shared some smattering of that lore with his sorcerer-priests, the fabled Black Ring."
"Yet the power of the Black Ring has been broken for a generation. Thoth-Amon's final incarnation slain by King Conan's hand, his fabled ring lost, and with him fell the flower of Stygian sorcerers, so for decades acolytes have reigned where high priests once stood, and ancient scrolls crack and fade without being read or copied, and they who would have been among the least now consider themselves great. Yet there is one among them, Kasetshuset by name, who makes up for power with cunning. Though he has not yet progressed to that rank in the priesthood of Set where he should learn of the Great Old Ones, who are and were and ever shall be, yet somehow he has...and worse, with this imperfect knowledge and without the dire warnings that accompany the usual instruction, he has set out to find and master their pre-human sorcery, and in so doing reconstitute the Black Ring, with himself as its master. Should this come to pass, the world will tremble, not at a sorcerer's ambitions but at what he may unwittingly unleash..."
"Before life flees this body, I must thwart Kasetshuset's plan. For this, I call on you. I know the nameless temple he seeks, and the treasure buried within, for it is hinted at in the Scrolls of Skelos, and warned against in the books of Vathelos the Blind. A book...the first book, if the legends speak truly...wherein the first magicians recorded all their lore of pre-human sorcery, set down in letters of cold fire, and bound about by alien science so as to be indestructible. Find this tome, and steal it before Kasetshuset can uncover it, and return it here...and I will give you each your weight in gold."
Exhausted by the long speech, the venerable priest awaits your questions.
Each of you had come to this city for your own reasons; some cast about by the winds of fate to wash up on strange shores, others in search of treasure, willing to barter your skills and strength of arm in return for coins of Stygian gold. A few may even have come seeking some lost truth of the soul, and there are dark sorcerers that would share such sardonic wisdom as they have for the right price.
You were bid to this place by a slave, who claimed their master had need of your services, and promised a reward too high to ignore, and so you followed him past the plazas of carven stone into the streets and alleys of baked mud-brick. In the walled courtyard of a nondescript building, a flat-topped structure in better repair than those around it, you tied up your animals and slaves so that the servants could see to their needs, and were led within, down a brief hallway whose doorways are covered with beaded curtains to a back room.
A single pale flame rose up from a stone on the floor, and the room was half-hidden in shadows, but as your eyes adjusted you sucked in your breath. On the walls were painted brightly-colored murals of the god Ibis, recalling the legends of his battles with the minions of Set, and at one end of the room lay a low altar of white stone, on either side of which pots of cinammon-sticks smoked, to fill the room with their incense. On the other side of the room lay rack upon rack of papyrus scrolls, full to bursting. Yet for all these sights your attention is most drawn to the hunched figure on the low throne seated before the flame, obviously the slave's master.
Shrunken and shriveled in his age, there is no mistaking the silvery skull-cap on his bald pate, or the hawk-like hook of the nose - aye, and if there was any further doubt of his identity, the thin ibis-headed wand on his grasp and the pale white cotton robes woven with feathers on his emaciated frame would declare this to be Karanthes, the last priest of Ibis, shrouded in legend for his struggles with the arch-sorcerer Thoth-Amon, who to still be alive must be nearing his second century. Yet there is still the gleam on intelligence and wisdom in those staring eyes, and the hint of mirth in the wrinkles around mouth and eyes, and years of pain etched in the fine crosswork of scars that peek out from beneath his robes.
"Know, ye thieves, warriors, and scholars, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of Conan II to the throne of Aquilonia, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars - Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs...aye, Stygia! And before Stygia-was-Stygia there was Acheron, heir to the Giant Kings...and before them the histories, already half-legend, slink away into dark and foreboding myths of those prehuman entities that warred and struggled long before any of the races of man or man's gods came to this earth. They say Father Set knew them in the dawn times, and the Old Serpent has shared some smattering of that lore with his sorcerer-priests, the fabled Black Ring."
"Yet the power of the Black Ring has been broken for a generation. Thoth-Amon's final incarnation slain by King Conan's hand, his fabled ring lost, and with him fell the flower of Stygian sorcerers, so for decades acolytes have reigned where high priests once stood, and ancient scrolls crack and fade without being read or copied, and they who would have been among the least now consider themselves great. Yet there is one among them, Kasetshuset by name, who makes up for power with cunning. Though he has not yet progressed to that rank in the priesthood of Set where he should learn of the Great Old Ones, who are and were and ever shall be, yet somehow he has...and worse, with this imperfect knowledge and without the dire warnings that accompany the usual instruction, he has set out to find and master their pre-human sorcery, and in so doing reconstitute the Black Ring, with himself as its master. Should this come to pass, the world will tremble, not at a sorcerer's ambitions but at what he may unwittingly unleash..."
"Before life flees this body, I must thwart Kasetshuset's plan. For this, I call on you. I know the nameless temple he seeks, and the treasure buried within, for it is hinted at in the Scrolls of Skelos, and warned against in the books of Vathelos the Blind. A book...the first book, if the legends speak truly...wherein the first magicians recorded all their lore of pre-human sorcery, set down in letters of cold fire, and bound about by alien science so as to be indestructible. Find this tome, and steal it before Kasetshuset can uncover it, and return it here...and I will give you each your weight in gold."
Exhausted by the long speech, the venerable priest awaits your questions.