Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn From: hutch@hfglobe.intel.com (Stephen Hutchison) Subject: [DQ] Week 14 - Agony Auntie Message-ID: Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 00:26:36 GMT The Dark Master had fed her with the spells he deemed appropriate. Noira was ready. Loviatar be feared, things were following plan for once. She left her pain-slaves in their stys, and carefully removed the long silver spikes from her scalp, gently anointing each piercing with a tiny drop of a perfect healing herb, painful but not quite crippling. The holes healed shut without scars - a scar would be less sensitive in future - and she placed the implements into their special box. A handful of the crystalline essence of evil from the Great Black, wiped across her eyes - the pain dissolved the hatred into her, and she fed on the misery released thereby. Eventually, she would contact her goddess, and this upstart vampire lord would be her toy, but until then she would serve him abjectly, in fear of his temper, suffering, as was her proper role in life. The abrasions vanished as she drew strength from them. She stepped into the seclusion of her chapel-workroom. Around her, the frames of various torture devices were covered with dark and light stains. She crossed to one of the altars set in the room's many alcoves. There was a box, next to a tripod, and in the box, a ceramic jar in very ugly colors. She lifted it out, placed it on the tripod without letting go. She composed herself, choosing the correct frame of mind and the right spell. The Soul Jar was between her hands. She cast the first stricture of the spell of coercion, and sent her will into the Jar. She touched the mind inside. It was sleeping, no, it was doing some kind of a meditation. Wake it. "Traveller. You will obey me. To obey is pain. To refuse is agony beyond pain. Answer my command. Call me mistress. Fear me. Fear me." The image from inside - a dolphin on the waters, standing on its fluke, laughing perpetually. Improbably, a voice spoke, the Jar echoing the speech that should have been denied to her victim. +Hey, dudette, like, Fear is the mind-killer, y'know? Pain is like, all in the way you look at it, right?+ Rage ignited in the priestess. The creature was quoting the secret mysteries of Loviatar, so badly mangled that their deep significance was twisted into trivial banality. She tried to ignore the affront and failed. She found her eyes forced open by the backlash. This was NOT what she had expected to find. Undaunted, she cast the second stricture of the spell of coercion. "By my will you have the senses of your body. Let them wrack with the pain of your disobedience." +Hey, mama-jama, no pain, no gain. Reach fer the burn, right babe?+ "What ARE you talking about?" She touched his mind again - he was on a sweltering hot beach, with a group of sweaty overmuscled men, all of them taking turns at pushing around a huge iron bar with weights hung on either end. He was sore to the point of active nausea, and yet he still pushed, taking strength from the pain almost like an acolyte of Loviatar. This would never do. Clearly he could handle pain. Time for the more subtle methods of attack. Frustrated, she cast the third stricture of coercion. "I take from thee all awareness of thy surroundings. I give thee to the empty nothingness." +Far out, a sense-dep tank! Gnarly - I used to pay money to sit in one of these, y'know? Back when Doctor Timmy O. was runnin' things?+ "STOP THAT!!" +Stop what? Hey, you got any good weed? Or maybe some blotter? Oh kewl, it comes when you call it! Wanna share, dudette?+ Noira's head suddenly swam as the link fed back a hallucinatory pattern of euphoric lights and colors, sensory scrambling... She came to consciousness sprawled in the center of the room, the Soul Jar still on its tripod, giving off strange emotional patterns and mind-bending colors. "He will NOT evade me this way." She searched her memory for the words that would activate the communication spell. AH! there they are. _Let The Astral Voice Speak_ ... "BLACKSILVER! I want a capture crystal here in my workroom, scaled to fit on my work tripod. Put it in alcove four." The dragon pulled his attention away from his torment of the spirit of SunStorm long enough to hiss his displeasure, then struck the mirrored surface of the ancient device with a long white rod, four times, at four carefully chosen angles. A facet of the crystal seemed to detach, and spun off in an impossible direction, and the Soul Jar was suddenly inside the faceted form of a pyracubicdiamond in miniature. "Feed him his past until he chokes on it." <> "Make him relive his past until he no longer feels any emotion other than subservience to my will." Noira stalked out of the room, confident in the power of the Traveller probe to twist the minds of its victims to any end. << MemoryLoad InitiateSequence >> Hey, it's the crystal thingy! What's up, doc? << Processing MnemonicSequence Sort=(obedience) >> Hey, PCD. Tan-Ru! Hey you! << Select_Set Identified Load_MnemonicSequence >> Tan-Ru! This is worker! Open for maintenance! << Illegal input. Maintenance mode operating. Who are you? >> Far out. Identify "Dave" unit Ventura environment. << Dave? **# ## Loading Ventura Boulevard. Complete. Run. Hello Dave. I know a song. Shall I sing it for you? >> Sure, dude. Engage! << Let's Go Surfin' Now, Everybody's Learnin' How, .... > Awrite! Hey, Tan-Ru, access priv memory codekey tepesh. << Access complete, ready >> << Help me Rhonda YEAH get 'er out of my heart >> OK, Tan-Ru, run from tepesh, program Miro von Munchausen. << Complying >> ---- In a clearing on a hillside in the forests west of Ak Ir'Neg, a crystalline form appeared, an eye-hurting configuration of diamonds and pyramids and cubes. Around it, the mists rose, concealing it from sight. From across five planes, the construct pulled, and finally a gold-skinned elf stepped forward, staggering slightly. "Where am I? What am I doing here?"