Interlude for the Procurers

I'm still not very far advanced in figuring out the next session for the Procurer game. However, there is a scene (unknown to the PCs, though) that follows on from the last session that demanded to be seen. So, here it is.

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The chamber was dank and dark, barely lit by the luminescent moss on its walls. The light was enough to make out the room's general shape - an arch-roofed, square room, with a set of heavy doors on one side and a shimmering archway in another. The smell of salt competed with the odours of damp and must for dominance, and little wonder - the shimmering archway was a wall of water, leading straight into the murky depths of the sea.

A point of white light formed in the centre of the room, gradually growing in size and brightness. After a few moments, it flashed brightly, flooding the room with brilliance, then was gone, leaving only the fading brightness of the moss and a sudden rippling of the water-wall to mark its passing. That, and the man in the middle of the room.

He stood frozen for a moment, a parchment held in both hands like the decree of a town crier, one arm thrust through a coronet of silver that gleamed brighter than the meagre light it reflected. Then the parchment crumbled to dust in his hands, and he fell to one knee, his hand clutching at his side through his voluminous robes. He grunted slightly in pain as he probed the rent in his robes, and his hand came away with the wetness of his own blood.

He examined the wound more fully, then slipped one arm out of his robe to better reveal the injury. The gash on his side was far from mortal, but it was bleeding freely, and by the ginger way he probed it with his fingers, quite obviously painful. He laid the coronet on the floor gently, careful not to stain it with his blood, and then began to rummage through his many pockets. He smiled in satisfaction as he produced a glass phial containing a viscous blue liquid. He smeared the liquid over the wound, and spoke a single word.

His wound glowed an intense, bright green, then slowly closed itself, leaving unbroken skin with only a pink mark to show that the gash had ever been there. Nodding in satisfaction, he put the robe back on, then worked a minor cantrip to mend the slit in his robe.

"You have returned earlier than you led me to believe, Matzah," whispered a voice out of the darkness. The man looked up in fear, searching around in the gloom for the speaker. The voice continued, "I trust all proceeds according to your plans."

The man - Matzah - fumbled for the coronet, holding it supplicatingly, still looking all around for the source of the voice. "I have brought you your crown, my lord - but I fear the sword may be lost."

Two brilliant points of blue light appeared in the water-wall, as if of eyes of a huge man. "Lost?" The voice echoed. "All your plans, all your ideas, all the power I gifted you, all the centuries I have waited to avenge my disgrace and you tell me my sword is lost?"

The water-wall shimmered again, and the eyes began to move out of the wall, in the head of a body composed entirely of water. The body resembled a human male's, slim, taut, muscular, and about nine feet tall. The eyes blazed down on Martzah as the water-man stepped towards him.

"My lord, you do not understand - I was succeeding - I had succeeded -"

"LOST!" the water-man bellowed in response, still advancing. "I do not see your success!"

"My lord!" cried Matzah, bowing his head and proffering the crown. "Your crown! And I can win back your sword, I swear I can!"

The waterman halted, lifting the silver crown out of his hands, placing it on his own head, where it perched, causing nary a ripple. "So long…" he murmured, and his blazing eyes dimmed, as if he had closed them.

"My lord, I still have the golems you helped me create. I can trap them in the Mistking's chamber -"

"Never call him that!" boomed the waterman, his eyes doubling in intensity. "Do not ennoble that trickster and betrayer with that title."

"But my lord, it was centuries ago -"

"A moment. A breath. An idle fancy, dispersed by the breeze. Do not presume to tell me about time, mortal. The insult he did me then is no lessened by time - indeed, it has only been compounded."

"A thousand apologies, Eternal Lord," said Matzah hurriedly. "But somehow - the adventurers I had warned you about had found allies - powerful allies. They burst into the chamber, and it was all I could do to escape." He held up one bloodstained hand. "You see? I was wounded!"

The waterman gestured, and one wall of the chamber disappeared, leaving a torchlit scene almost painfully bright in comparison to the dank gloom of the chamber. The tableau so revealed was of the Mistking's burial chamber, containing nine people, frozen like flies in amber. Three were on the ground in various states of apparent pain, two were strapped onto tables with pipes and tubes emerging from all over their bodies, and four more were still upright and apparently alert.

Matzah entered the scene, crossing the room to where an unwashed dwarf was frozen mid-battle howl. "This one - he charged across the room, ignored my elementals as if they were paper and struck me!" He then moved to a lean, angry-looking man clutching a large, implausible sword. "This was their mage - he threw a fireball at me, but my protections were sufficient." He turned around. "The others - well, five of them are the ones I had told you about, but the other two are skilled and dangerous."

"And they now have my sword," mused the waterman. "Still, it is out of that damned iron shell. I wonder if they think they are robbing the dead?" He stared, his blazing eyes dancing with thought.

"My lord," said Matzah, "if I send in my golems -"

"Your golems are decimated," the waterman said matter-of-factly. "Long ago, when Duke Thorgren was beseeching me to teach him the secrets of my crown and sword, I placed my own gambit deep underneath his city, in the hope one would find that iron shell and destroy it. That day never came, but they," he gestured forcefully at the motionless people, "They released my hounds, and your golems fell hapless victim to them." He turned the full force of his sapphire gaze on Matzah. "You told me they were unstoppable. You said that your iron could defeat anything."

"I did not know about your… your gambit, my lord," Matzah replied hurriedly. "If you had seen fit to tell me -"

"Truth be told, I had almost forgotten myself," said the waterman, his anger of a moment ago forgotten, making an airy gesture with one hand. "It was a gambit that had failed."

Matzah continued doggedly, "But if some remain, I can -"

"I am recalling them. I am recalling my thralls, too. They have proved to be no more than the idle diversion so many thought they were. As for the mortals…" The waterman gazed at the tableau. "Greed will get the better of them eventually. They will seek out my crown… and this time, I will not fall to their treachery."

"My lord, that is not wise. A small amount of effort now -"

"Would be nowhere near as fulfilling as bringing them into my kingdom. If I go to them, I would be weak. If they come to me…" the waterman smiled. "They will have to face the King Under the Sea in his own kingdom."

Matzah bowed deeply. "As you command, my lord, so it must be," he said grudgingly.

"It must. As for you… you have returned my crown to me. You shall be rewarded."

Matzah looked up, horrified. "No, my lord, really, that is not necessary -" he began.

"It is necessary. Those who please me are rewarded, those who do not are punished. It is the way of things." He raised one hand, and three female figures, hooded and swaddled deeply in ragged clothing shuffled out of the darkness.

"Yes, my lord," said one. "Coming, my lord," said another. "How may we serve you?" finished the third. Their voices were breathy like a corpse made to sit up, sweet like rotting fruit, and heady like arsenic wine.

"This mortal has pleased me," said the waterman. "Take him and give him pleasure."

They shuffled over to Matzah, who stumbled back from them, his jaw working in silence. "At once, my lord," said one. "We live to serve," said another. The third reached out and cupped Matzah's jaw with one hand, throwing back her hood with another. "We're going to do you," the third hag whispered to the mage, and he screamed.

He was still screaming hours after they had finished.