Author Topic: The Black Book  (Read 2413 times)

Offline Bozwevial

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The Black Book
« on: September 09, 2012, 11:43:00 PM »
You examine the book. It is coated with a thin layer of some peculiar substance. At some angles, it reflects light exactly like a mirror. At others, it doesn't seem to be there at all.

The book itself, below the silvery coating, is a slim black volume with a leathery covering that doesn't quite seem like it came from a farm animal. At least, not one they'd farm on the Prime.

You open the book up to the first page. A precise, copperplate hand has written, in maroon ink, "Table of Contents." The list of items is extremely long and spills over to the next page.


I: Introduction
II: Clerical Duties in the Dweomerheart
III: Xuuvosic
IV: From Stoning to Stones
V: Inhuming the Inhuman
VI: Ris-Janna
VII: On the Underdark and Other Untidiness
VIII: Temporal Mechanics: A Primer
IX: Raoul Bonerges II
X: Toril's Most Famous Ruins (And How to Avoid Them)
XI: Wishing for More Wishes, or: Why Your Economy Is Wrong And You Can't Unfuck It
XII: Cade
XIII: Fiends with Benefits
XIV: Marlowe
« Last Edit: October 16, 2012, 02:52:00 PM by Bozwevial »
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Offline Bozwevial

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Re: The Black Book
« Reply #1 on: September 10, 2012, 12:43:14 AM »
Introduction

Hello. If you are reading this, one of two things is the case. Either things have gone entirely wrong, in which case you are now roughly seventy-three percent more likely to die horribly, or they have gone entirely right, in which case I deserve several promotions.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me ask you a question. When was the last time the sun came up?

If my question is meaningless, then treat this volume as an amusing anecdote. I would, however, appreciate it if you would deliver it to the nearest priest or priestess of Mystra as soon as possible. In the event that Mystra no longer exists, the closest friendly deity of knowledge, magic, secrets, or time will do.

If that question sparks fear in you, however, then I haven't done my job properly. It also means that each and every word you read brings you closer to knowing too much, although quite frankly, if you were going to die, you'd have done so before reaching this sentence. That may have left you feeling uneasy. Now would be a good time to take a deep breath. Appreciate it fully. Enjoy the fact that what you are breathing is air and not, just as an example, bees. Would you like it to stay that way? Good.

You have a job to do now. That job, whether it is finishing the task I have seemingly left undone (or perhaps never started) or delivering this book to someone who will, is probably going to kill you. This is a good thing. Death is impermanent. It's a metaphysical revolving door that can be navigated with a fistful of diamonds and a friendly wave to the busboy. It will leave you weak, it will set you back, and it will give you the worst fucking headache of your life, but it cannot, in a very real sense, actually kill you. Trust me. I've been dead to prove a point before. What this book is about can kill you. Thoroughly and completely, without any stopover on the Outer Planes. Do Not Pass Celestia, Do Not Collect  Your Eternal Rewards. It can kill you so completely that you'll never have been around to die in the first place. It can, in fact, erase you from existence.

This is not the worst thing that can happen to you. The entity who stopped the sun from rising has virtually limitless power. He is easily bored. And he has the stupidest hat in the multiverse. Say hello to the worst thing that can happen to you. If you are still reading this book, you have the good fortune or the common sense not to say hello to this entity and attract his attention. In the latter case, good. You may be able to pull this off yet. In the former case, well, I'll take what I can get.

What follows is an account of my own experience with this entity, the companions I traveled with, and what happened as we attempted to stop him. It is entirely possible that it will sound like a work of fiction. I may reference events which never happened and people who have never been born in a dating system that isn't used on continents that don't exist. You may not speak Common, in which case I will ask you optimistically to put the book down carefully and not drool on it. It is entirely possible that you are, in fact, a slaad turning the pages with your giant claws, to which I reply, <what follows appears to be several drawings of an oversized frog,> and so you really shouldn't.

In short, this is a manual about the monsters you are likely to encounter. It is a handbook for taking down the "player," as my friend Xuuvosic puts it, who has slapped the cosmos into submission. And it is a guide to the divers laws of reality which will attempt to annihilate you even as you step into their dungeon to master them. With my companions' expertise guiding you from beyond the bounds of paradox space, you may yet be able to excise the timeline's decay right out from under its green, garishly-attired pimp.

This job is definitely not worth eleven-five a year.
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Offline Bozwevial

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Re: The Black Book
« Reply #2 on: October 16, 2012, 02:51:33 PM »
Clerical Duties in the Dweomerheart

It occurs to me that I should clarify. When I say "clerical duties," I do not mean the duties of a priest, although I probably paid more attention to my job than any of them did to theirs1. My usage is much more literal; I was a clerk to Mystra, the recently-deposed goddess of Magic. My position consisted of storing and retrieving a vast deal of information on all sorts of beings, locations, artifacts, etcetera. In essence, if there was anything magical worth knowing about on Abeir-Toril, it would end up in my in-tray2.

In many ways, my job was paradise. The pay, for one, was rather extravagant, as there were few who could handle the work and even fewer who wished to do so. There were a great many benefits as well - very few industries on the Prime Material can offer immortality as a part of their health packages. But most of all, it was interesting (albeit untidy) in a way that no merchant's guild accounts would have been, while - and this is the important part - also interesting in a way that becoming a barrister in the Infernal courts would not have been3. My job security, too, was as flawless as it could possibly be. My position was of great necessity, and virtually no one was lining up to become my replacement. So long as Mystra existed, so would my job.

I think you start to see the problem.

I had returned the day before from a six-week paid vacation to the Putuvian Demon Whore's famed Pleasure Palace4. Quite a bit of paperwork was waiting for me, and so I spent the morning paying much less attention to the general atmosphere than I otherwise would have. I overheard two of my coworkers talking about Imhotep and a kobold, but shortly before I had left they had been talking about Ghorus Toth and a treant.

Everyone tried to avoid those two5.

Mystra, as it turns out, can yell spectacularly loudly. I would be surprised if anyone in the entire Dweomerheart didn't hear her berating a group of her servants when they returned from a mission of some sort. What that mission entailed, I don't know, but it doesn't take an especially brilliant mind to piece the clues together. The servants she had selected, and then proceeded to scream at, included a handful of solars6, the Blackstaff, and Elminster himself, and evidently she had warded them herself. Alone, any single one of them would have given pause to a potential threat. Together, it would be hard to imagine a more potent force - unless of course you added on Mystra's own protections, in which case "hard" becomes "virtually impossible." And yet, the target of the operation had not only known they were coming, but also managed to repel them so forcefully they had no time to activate some device she had given them. In any case, Mystra's rage went well beyond apoplectic. "Apocalyptic" is a much more fitting word.

Before she had a chance to do anything about it, however, a Gate to another plane opened in the Dweomerheart. This, of course, is impossible. Through the Gate, only thick smoke, flashing lights, and dancing figures could be seen, and the sort of music played in the seedier parts of the Putuvian Demon Whore's Pleasure Palace echoed throughout the entire plane as Mystra's own voice had moments ago, a projection which is also obviously impossible. The being that had opened it would have come up to my chest had he been standing next to me7, and was dressed in an outsized fur coat, mirrored glasses, gaudy jewelry, and a purple hat he could have used as a boat. This, admittedly, is not impossible, but it was enough of a Goddamned affront to good taste that it ought to have popped out of existence entirely.

Mystra wasted no time on empty banter, instead leveling a blast of magical energy at the kobold that by my estimate could have glassed a good portion of the Anauroch. It never finished crossing the intervening space, melting away harmlessly without so much as ruffling the stupid plume atop his hat. He merely smiled, revealing enough gold in his mouth to furnish a respectably-sized room in the Pleasure Palace, and slapped her.

Actually, let me rephrase that. His arm stretched to ludicrous proportions, crossed the distance between them, bypassed every single one of her magical protections, struck her with the back of his hand, and completely disintegrated her, leaving behind a pile of confetti. This is not only impossible, but also completely insane. The kobold didn't stay to watch as some sort of aftershock jumped to the servants standing nearby, instead leaving through the Gate he'd opened in the first place as the entire Dweomerheart began to collapse around my ears. I remember very little after that except being thrown through a rent in the fabric of the plane. I awoke floating through the Astral Plane, adrift on a section of the archives in a silver sea.

After that, my paperwork seemed rather pointless. I gathered up the handful of useful things I could scrounge from the remnants8 and made my way to a color pool, from there reaching the Prime Material. Only then did I have the leisure to devote my entire being to hating the titanic asshole who had destroyed my livelihood.

Nothing I could do directly would come remotely close to posing a threat to him. All the other supernatural heavyweights I knew of were likewise supremely outclassed. Even a synchronized assault would be useless. The only solution I could think of was discovering a way to negate his powers, but that seemed as unlikely as planting a crossbow bolt between his eyes.

Unless, of course, I did so before he had them.9




1And did so from a position any of them would have given three limbs to occupy.

2After some time, I had to have one specially made, as the previous in-trays had been crushed, melted, and in one case, turned into a fish.

3While they are rarely upfront about it, devils take the phrase "severance package" much more literally than humans.

4Where I made a healthy sum at the gambling tables. Card counting makes a refreshing change from dealing with divination P-wave collapse reports. I also had a wonderfully stimulating series of conversations with one of the Palace's more renowned hostesses, Eccentrica Gallumbits, and in regard to the question so often asked of her, I will only say five.

5And really, what Imhotep did with Kurtulmak was none of my business.

6One of them was Sachiel. We occasionally played Monopoly together.

7Without the hat, he would have had a good look at my belt buckle.

8One of them was a gift bag from the Pleasure Palace which contained a crossbow, needle-darts, a wide variety of poisons, and a vial of bath salts.

9Whether the powers or the eyes didn't matter very much.
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Offline sirpercival

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Re: The Black Book
« Reply #3 on: October 17, 2012, 08:13:20 PM »
Marlowe - apologies.  I opened the book from the back,
and didn't realize what it was.  Feel free to tear this
page out.

Yours,
Surin
Æther Gem
Oversized greatclub x10
Milk
Continuum Transfunctioner
Mineral oil
Lourm's hair refreshener


**Important - Remember to ask Marlowe about origins of Lochnar
I am the assassin of productivity

(member in good standing of the troll-feeders guild)

It's begun — my things have overgrown the previous sig.