The dark vengeance of Grast Kalocly

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Scott of Hyperborea
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The dark vengeance of Grast Kalocly

Post by Scott of Hyperborea »

It is a strangely cold summer evening, not long ago, and no one stirs in the twilight forests outside Demonsfall. But if someone were there, they would feel, oh, say, the hair stand up on the back of their neck. They would hear an odd hissing sound, as if the world had just been a cheap inflatable world after all, and all the air was being let out. They would taste a bitter, metallic taste, and smell something undefinable, something that smells the way the color black looks. They would see something misty and vague, something they couldn't be sure was ever really there.

And then they would see nothing, ever again. So quick that it would be nothing but a flash in the corner of one eye, they would be torn apart limb to limb, their questions ended. But there is no one there, and the gate to Balgurd closes unmolested, and no one notes an unnatural and loathsome contact between two mutually repugnant worlds save a thing that now sits in the middle of the clearing.

The thing strains and concentrates, and gradually takes a form more like that of a man. By the time it relaxes, it looks practically human, except for its beady and bulging eyes, the faint trace of scales on its skin, and unnaturally elongated armpits that look almost like gill slits. Although it doesn't know it, it also smells like ten-day-old rotten fish.

The thing begins to walk.

Although it walks unhurriedly, even jauntily, it moves at astonishing speed. Ten steps and it reaches the banks of the Elwynn. Twenty, and it is well into Alalehzamin. Thirty, and it is at the door of a big house on the outskirts of Islus that somehow manages to reach mansion-level opulence without quite losing the spirit of the inner-city projects.

It knocks on the door.

A thin, rat-faced man opens the door. "Hir for the party, an't ya? Ya bit ealee, buh dat's all rae. Gimme ya name."

"Grast Kalocly" says the thing.

"Ohhhh," says the rat-faced man. "Ah don see yah name on de list."

"Hmmm," said the thing. "And yet, if you check one more time, I think you will find it was on there after all."

The man, a bit confused, looked at the list a second time. While he was distracted, the thing ripped off his head. It could have used magic to make its name appear on the list, of course, it just saw no reason to do so. Placing the head neatly atop the chest of the corpse, it walked into the house, down a long hallway, and knocked on the fourth door on the right.

"Come in," said a voice from inside, and the thing did.

The man inside - fat, old, well-dressed, wearing a pair of ugly spectacles - looked up with the uncurious gaze of someone who's not exactly sure what's going on but suspects he is too important for it to affect him. He is wearing three necklaces, each of gold and diamonds, in a way that not only sends the message that he is wealthy, but sends the additional message that he is so wealthy that he does not care about being crass and utterly tasteless, because if anyone calls him crass and tasteless he can afford to have them shot. A woman who appears to be either some sort of stripper or a maid who has suddenly begun suffering from severe hyperthermia stands beside him.

"Who are you and what do you want?" he asked, motioning for the woman to leave.

"Grast Kalocly," says the thing. The man considers shaking Grast's hand, but decides against it. Something about the limb repels him; perhaps the scaly, flaking skin, or perhaps the way the webs between the finger seem so pronounced that it almost looks like a flipper. "Right, Grast," says the man, who needs no introduction. "I've got a party in half an hour and I'm busy right now. Unless there's a hell of a lot of money in whatever you're here about, you can scram and kick my butler's ass for letting you through that door."

Grast apparently doesn't hear him. "They say," Grast tells him "that you are the undisputed master of all the criminals, pickpockets, pimps, gangsters, and smugglers in south Elwynn. They call you the king of the underworld."

"Yeah, that's...". The man gets no further.

Grast lunges forward and grabs him by the throat. "Oh yes, you said it and you told everybody. And they told everybody, and eventually it got to the ears of the real king of the underworld, whose every thought makes your most perverse orgies of violence on your worst day look like the whimsy of a playful kitten. And this being has taken a special interest in your case, Afshin Nahtami."

About halfway through this monologue, the man had shot Grast three times through the heart. The bullets lodged there, apparently pretty deep, but no blood came out, nor did Grast see any need to stop speaking. On the fourth bullet, Grast finally saw fit to at least acknowledge the effort.

"Oh no, Afshin, you won't escape that easily. No, you need to bargain with me. Bargain for your life. Offer me money? Oh no, I have riches enough. Power? Nothing you can give would compare to what I can summon with my little finger. What I want, Afshin, is fear and suffering. How will you give it to me?"

"I'll give you money!" said Afshin, choking. "Piles and piles of it. As much as you want."

"Didn't listen!" said Grast, and touches Afshin's throat, ever so lightly, barely even a touch. A black welt forms, the sort of welt no doctor in Alalehzamin would recognize because the bubonic plague hadn't been popular in the area for seven centuries, and begins to weep blood.

"My soul!" shouts Afshin. "You can have my soul!"

"Silly boy," says Grast, and runs his hand through Afshin's hair. Several more buboes form on his scalp. "I already have your soul. I've had it for a long time. You need to do better than that. I want to snuff out joy, destroy beauty, spread suffering in all of its hundred bat-winged forms. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO HELP ME DO THAT?"

"I'll spread chaos," burbled Afshin. "Half the police of Islus are in my pay. I can get them to be corrupt...well...more corrupt, arrest the virtuous, set the criminals free. I can destroy the economy of the city, make thousands homeless and starving."

Grast thought for a while. "Nah," he said. "You Alalehzamini are no fun to torture. There's no hope to kill. You've been beaten so long you just sit back and take the whip. Reducing this city to a state even more dismal would hardly be worth forgoing the pleasure of killing you."

"Wait!" said Afshin, as more and more of his skin blackened and bled. "This guy from the north. Otter Sundrawer. He came by last week, asking to buy weapons to use against Hyperborea. He didn't have a lot of money, not nearly enough for the stuff he wanted. I turned him down. I can give him his weapons....at reduced price...free! free! I'll give him his weapons free, and he'll destroy the fucking Hyperboreans with them."

Grast Kalocly removed his webbed hand from the mobster's throat. "Sahib Nahtami," he said, "you are a man after my own heart, and it has been a pleasure to do business with you."

Afshin just gasped for breath.

The demon closed his hand, and when he opened it, there was an hourglass inside. Inscribed upon it was the symbol of a skull, marked by a small dent on the left temple. Afshin's hand went to his own left temple, where he had taken a minor injury in a brawl in his youth.

"See you in..." Grast gazed intently at the hourglass "four years, eight months, and twenty-one days, Sahib Nahtami. In the meantime, I hope you and Sahib Sundrawer will be having a sudden thaw in your business relations, or perhaps we will have to see one another sooner."

Grast Kalocly did not so much disappear as turn, growing thinner and thinner until there was nothing left. Even so, it was a good ten minutes until Afshin Nahtami gathered the courage to stand up and leave the room.

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Ari Rahikkala
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Re: The dark vengeance of Grast Kalocly

Post by Ari Rahikkala »

Cue ari frantically googling due to having forgotten which civ founds Kalocly (is it the Malakim?)...
No-one should be without a parasol, Sirocco.

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Elliot Markham
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Re: The dark vengeance of Grast Kalocly

Post by Elliot Markham »

Those Hyperboreans definitely are in for a surprise. Quite an entertaining piece, Scott.

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Harvey Steffke
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Re: The dark vengeance of Grast Kalocly

Post by Harvey Steffke »

I never knew demons took so much offense from urban slang.

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Scott of Hyperborea
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Re: The dark vengeance of Grast Kalocly

Post by Scott of Hyperborea »

Cue ari frantically googling due to having forgotten which civ founds Kalocly (is it the Malakim?)...
Huh! I did not think you played. In fact, I thought I had specifically told you to play, and you said no.

I believe it's a barbarian city (and the one where Acheron most often spawns), which is why it came to my mind as an appropriate name for a demon. I very didn't expect it to be noticed.

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