Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
From: hutch@ibeam.intel.com (Steve Hutchison)
Subject: [KQ] 'Raelf [GMOAB 2.6]  Sorcerors Imprint Us
Message-ID: <BwwrGJ.Mn5@ibeam.intel.com>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1992 00:17:06 GMT

[ADMIN] the timestamps I've included in my posts are intended to give
a general sort of idea of how long this stuff has been happening.
Time 0 was when Mother first revealed herself in all her ?glory.


[Time 6:00 - See no Evil]

They had deadlocked so far.  Sandar's mastery of illusion couldn't penetrate
the surfer-mage's veil of Truth, and he was himself immune to the commoner
mind tricks the fellow had thrown at him - disorientation and confusion by
raucous music and fascinating, chaotic images were nothing compared to the
centuries in Mother's tender care.  But Sander began to realize, something
was missing.  The others, they were fighting too well, they should be at
the point of death.

[[Choktaw, WakeUpAndAttendUs.  StopTryingToKillThatPriestAndHelpMeWithThese-
Invaders, TheirMindsAreHidden.]]

She found herself born on the edge of Mother's mass, and stayed down, only
allowing her torso from the shoulders up to emerge.  She would not engage
these things in combat.  She looked out, with her eyes and with her deeper
senses, honed over the eons since she had been Mother's high priestess.

She saw them, fighting, not with great success, but holding their own.
She couldn't sense them, only this damned mental fog, that was exhausting
to look through.  She lost patience.

Choktaw spoke in a vile ancient tongue.  *> SEER - COME TO ME! <*
she commanded, and the sycophantic clairvoyant crawled into view.
*> LOOK AROUND YOU.  WE KNOW THAT THERE ARE OTHERS HERE, HIDDEN.
   MAKE THEM VISIBLE TO US.  SEEK THEM THROUGH THIS FOG. <*

Seer began giggling, peering through his fingers, trying to see each
of Kron's party with both his first sight and his second sight.  They
were revealed, each in turn, but as his attention shifted, they were
once again gone.  But Choktaw got to see each of them, for a moment,
and reached inside and twisted.  She was unable to see, though, whether
her induced psychoses remained after...

'Raelf accidentally let his gaze lock with the gnomish little man.

Seer looked past the fog.  There, the shell of the protective wall, past
it, the mind.  Like peeling an onion.  The outside, a wall of noise, trivial
and vacant, a trap for any nosy mindreaders, like listening to a gaggle
of spoiled teenagers chatter.  Past that, a blurred nothingness, deep, but
searching inside it, a vortex, a swirling that led to something real.
He followed it, and found himself touching a hard barrier: a mind behind
it.  He pushed, searching for a crack.  There.  An opening?

'Raelf felt the presence of another mind, not sane, but not the impossibly
powerful mind of the Great Mother.  He interposed his last ward, the memory
of something that had happened, for him, months ago: the momentary death of
everything in the universe.  A moan of pain escaped his lips, and Seer began
shrieking "Death! Death! Aiiee!" and writhing face-down on the ground.
'Raelf quickly reinforced the wall of incomprehension that protected him
personally from the probing thought tentacles, cringing as the onslaught
tried to hit him and missed.

Several hundred insects fell around him, struck dead by the blast.

Meanwhile, Sandar Tol was sending out feelers, magical constructs of purest
will, driving against the sphere of protection around the blond man.
A sudden flare of feedback, and his eyes began bleeding, as the mental
attack fed back through his own magical power.  He sought out the source.
-- Choktaw! StopThat, TheMageIsMineToDestroy, YouWorkOnTheOthers --
-- ButSeerShowedHimToMe, HeWasTheDesignatedTarget --
-- JustWakeSeerUpAndSendHimAfterTheOthers --
-- I'llDoWhatYouSayThisTimeButThereWillBeATimeWhenYouObeyMe --
-- DoNotThreatenMeYouAncientCroneYourPowersAreNothingToMe... --
-- Ia Ia Ia Shublen Earr AAA! eie Lanemnath gurath fguurath --  ZOT
The Moderator's interruption forced them to return to the matter at hand.

[ Time 7:00 - Photon Torpedo]

'Raelf had pulled inside his own shield, and manifested a sphere of rock
about an inch in diameter, made of quartzite.  "Hey, Mr. Presto.  Catch!"
The sphere moved, at light-speed, the fifteen feet to the edge of 'Raelf's
protective sphere, then with an explosive CRACK launched, a time-dilated
projectile, striking the form of the mage full in the chest, exploding into
shards.   Shudders rippled through the bulk of the Great Mother, and smoke
and steam erupted around.  A loud BOOM followed almost instantly as the
bits of the projectile struck the far wall, blowing a huge hole and making
the roof overhead shake.  The building began to quake, no longer a stable
structure, its impossible architecture required all the butresses to remain
in place, and three had been lost...

[Time 8:15 - Perspective]

When the  smoke cleared, Sandar Tol was standing, knee-deep, in the mass
of the Great Mother, and the clean-skinned hole in his chest was closing
itself.  He smiled gently, "NotBad, EnemyMage, YouHavePotentialAndCouldMakeA-
WorthyAdditionToOurNumber."  He held out a hand, beckoning.

"Truce for a minute.  Are you actually asking me to join your side?"

"Certainly.  TheGreatMotherWillAlwaysAcceptThoseWhoComeToJoinHerFreely."

"Do you really know what you're asking me?"

"OfCourseIKnow, IMadeMyOwnChoiceToJoinHerManyYearsAgo, IKnowWhatSheKnows."

"You stepped in That on purpose?  Mondo dommage, man.  Here's my answer."

'Raelf concentrated for a moment, then tossed a crystal sphere to the
protrusion that (from the waist up) was Sandar Tol.  The mage waved a
quick gesture and the crystal floated in the air before him.

"What IsThis?"

"Just a little sense of perspective."  'Raelf tugged loose the thread he'd
left, and the crystal sphere became unstable.  Sandar Tol gasped, frantically
trying to keep the sphere from releasing its contents - unsuccessfully.

--  He stood before the great pool of flesh.  But this time, he saw not
    only with his human vision, not just with the simple magical senses
    he had developed, but he saw deeply into Fire and Water, Air and Earth,
    and into Spirit realm.  He saw the gliding shells of the fundamental
    ideas that make up reality, slipping into and through one another.
    
    He saw the Great Mother.  This wasn't the simple-minded, half-sapient
    entity of ancient times, not the minor and fallen deity waiting for
    his pillaging will and his trained magical prowess to dominate it into
    providing him with immortality and power.  Sorceror had lied to him.

    He saw an immense spirit, the ideals of Feeding and Birthing and Will
    and Fertility and Power and a thousand impossible images, the resultant
    complex a definition of Mother, a hideous caricature of the loving and
    caring archetypic mother that the mammalian tribes idealized, rather,
    an enormous cavernous devouring entity, whelping off children so she
    could devour them, an embodiment of emotions and ideals so strange that
    they made his heart freeze, his tongue cleave to his mouth, fear swell
    in his entrails.  Floating in her midst, a half-dozen smaller spirits,
    in various stages of dissolution, feeding off each other and off of HER
    in order to keep from being completely eaten themselves...  He looked
    up - she was calling him, gently and compellingly,  ia, ia, and his feet
    began to move forward, whether he wished it or not.  And he knew that
    he wished it, though it meant his destruction, he knew that he would
    go to her, go to Mommy, Dearest Mommy ...

"DAMNYOU TRAV ELLER"  His eyes flew open.  "YouCallTruce, ThenBreakIt."

"Get over it, dude, you the one asked ME to join YOU."  'Raelf frowned in
distaste - he'd gotten the edge of Sandar's hallucination, and the taste
of that personality was sour and self-important.  A strong mind, revelling
in his power over others.

"TruceIsOVER," Sandar Tol snarled, and began casting what looked like a
Fireball.  'Raelf responded, generating a mass of IceWater in retaliation.

[Time 9:50 - Tug of War ]

But Sandar Tol was being mendacious, and the Fireball was illusion - the
spell captured the elemental gates as they began to form, and he drew on
the power, pumping fluidity and depth into his form (and into Great Mother).

'Raelf's eyes narrowed.  SoKaiDo - a magical jui-jitsu he'd heard of once
in the legends of Arkham-Earth.  Sandar Tol was using the magics sent at
him to his own advantage.  Well, two can play that.  He allowed Sandar to
continue drawing on elemental-water from his gate, and began throwing in
minor perturbations.   <<Select Water::solvent at 5.0>>  - the element
draw began to pull a pure acidity into Sandar's focus.  He screamed, and
stopped the flow before it could do more than slightly damage him.

He retaliated - the stream of acid began to spray towards 'Raelf, who
managed to deflect it off his hemispheric protection.  The acid ran down
towards the pool again, stopping to dissolve the remains of Bogo the
Halfling.  Before it could reach further, Sandar Tol stopped the draw,
and the substance evaporated away.  He subsided, for a moment, into
the mass, in order to regroup his energies and plan.

'Raelf took advantage of the respite to see what was happening.
Thk was nowhere to be seen.  Malieu was fighting with a ten-foot giant
 elephant-headed fellow who looked like a travesty of Ganesha.  Colin
was lying stunned against a wall, Rhoan defended him from something
he couldn't see.   Captain and Azzar were back to back, defensive,
something else he couldn't see was attacking them.  Kron, being pulled
steadily towards the pool, locking stares with a young woman, not much
more than a girl, really, who was reaching towards him.  The fog was
gone completely from around his mind, pushed away by a cylindrical
wrapper of thought-tendrils surronding him.  

Then 'Raelf noticed the woman, not one of those he was protecting, she
must have come in with the exploded halfling.  She whipped her sling,
and POW a pocket of magical nastiness hit the fleshy mass, and she popped
back into invisibility - she repeated this, too many times, not realizing
that the thing was beginning to notice her.  A pseudopod formed, gave birth
to a stream of corrosive slime.

Marcel somehow saw this, shouted something incoherent, and dove in front
of her.  He took the gout full-on, and it began to eat away at his armor.
They retreated, and Marcel's armor suddenly fell off him in all directions,
leaving him in boxer shorts and a tee-shirt.

"Marcel, dude, now's not the time to get naked!  Duck and Cover!"  'Raelf
began laying down a covering fire, manifesting a hail of something like
bullets that stunned the two tendrils that were reaching up out of the
Mother's mass, towards Marcel.

"Get inside my shield, man, you're too easy a target!"

[Time 11:00 - Defensive Stance ]

Sandar Tol re-emerged from the Mother's mass, and called fire down from above
onto 'Raelf, who gratefully absorbed the living elemental energies into himself.
He was losing true-mass at an alarming rate, screening the others from this
creature.  (It wouldn't do to let it show, though.)

"Your mother eats Army boots!"  'Raelf jeered, and began twirling the staff
in a complex pattern.   Streaks of fire began showing along one end, and
darkness on the other.  He began breathing deeply, the effort growing evident.
<<<Warning. Battery is at 50 percent charge>>> the staff chimed, but 'Raelf
ignored it.   He kept the pattern, waiting for Sandar Tol to try something,
anything. 

Sandar Tol, for his part, was unsure what to do next.  He'd seen that
kind of pattern before, a yin-yang construct.  Purely defensive, it would
capture anything thrown at it, and return it twisted against the caster.
Not quite the same kind of work he'd learned from the SoKaiDo masters,
before he turned their arts against them.  Smart of the creature to go
into this kind of defense - he had begun to understand the thing's magical
nature, and had begun to figure out what to do in order to twist it to
his own use.  But he needed subtlety.  Ah.  There.  Can't use its magical
qualities, then go for the nonmagical ones.  He snaked a thought out, and
took hold of Scorpion.

Scorpion felt nothing, really - his perspective simply changed, from that
of a man, to that of his namesake.  Rational thought was focussed on the
few drives that made his world.  He wanted food.  The giant sloshing Mother
thing over there was not food.  The female nearby was not food, she was to
mate with, but only after the dance.  The things moving over there were not
food, and they were too far away to be dangers.  Food was that thing with
the spinning stick.  He moved towards it (skin began flaking off his body
with greater speed as the chitin below solidified).  A sting would stun it,
and he could begin feeding.

He prepared the blast, and shot.  It hit the swirling and bounced off.
The thing with the stick shuddered a bit, and did something that made
the swirling all sparkly.  He prepared a second blast, and skittered
around to the side where it wouldn't see him as well.  The thing with
the twirling stick did something that made a hole in the wall, and one
of the not-food things went inside.

Scorpion took advantage of the opportunity to release his second blast.
Fortunately, the energy hit the yin-yang construct.  It sucked in the
bolt and warped it around then threw it at Sandar Tol, who parried it
off the spell-turning glyph burned into his left hand.  Ricocheting, it
struck between the Shoggoth and the devourer, and the Shoggoth followed
up with an alleluia that shattered the devourer's center.  It melted
and evaporated, leaving the Shoggoth momentarily puzzled.

Sandar smiled, grimly, to himself.  Now we pour it on.  He reached out
and a delicate tendril of thought caressed Rook's mind, making her power
grow and telling lies to her senses.

Rook felt time slow around her.  Everything was everywhere and nowhere.
It was/wasn't time/space likely/unlikely select/choose/now/then....
She disappeared.  Sandar scowled - that wasn't supposed to happen.

Scorpion renewed his assault, going up next to the screen and beginning
to pour pressure on it, not only with energy pulses but also with his
immense strength.  And Sandar signalled to the Moderator, the Shoggoth,
to begin singing its song at the annoying mage.

'Raelf collapsed to one knee, still holding the mind-fog spell, and the
protective circle.  But he was beginning to flicker, visibly, fire,
water, air, earth, nothing - and around him, the only energy sources
were hostile, and taking them in was the same as giving himself to that
noxious mass in the tub. 

And all around, the Mother's forces were preparing for their final victory.
Kron put one foot out, poised over the pool of flesh...