Eye of the Lakoradak's page

MISTAKEN!

Come, let’s not be silly. I do not make mistakes. If your interest is in treasures of the more mundane variety, then venture deep within the Palace of the Vampire Queen, for there are treasure beyond your imagination laid in the tombs of the ancient Kings of Balyor.

There is a long silence, the eye is unmoving, and then after this long pause, a rumble and then

Was there, in fact, something else troubling you little one?

alright then.

Your second question is answered by what I’ve already told you. If what you seek is an end to the curse that perpetuates the existence of the one known as the Vampire Queen, then collect the wedding gifts, and present them before the remains of the Countess. That is all you need to do.

Your final question, Omara, hmmm

There is a pause here, and when the voice resumes speaking it seems as if it has taken on a different, more diabolical tone.

She would serve me well. She would be, a prize. Yes. Omara’s double cross is simply her desire to control the Vampire Queen, and by extension, control what the Vampire Queen controls. She has power, and she uses it with great control. Omara has been able to convince Perretta, the Vampire Queen, that together they are working toward the same goal. But, haha, hehehe, ah haha. Yes, can you see it now Hallister Silverspike? Yes, yes. Omara is exactly the kind of person Mister Silverspike was trying to warn your half sister about. A person who has set her sights on unlimited power, before she understood the price she would pay to acquire it.

Omara’s double cross is doomed to failure. She meddles in things she does not understand, and yet, she will continue on her path, unless something stops her.

The power of Omara’s treachery is a false power. She seeks a reward she cannot obtain, ah, if only she had come to me first, but alas, the Lussons were diligent in their role as jailers. They kept the secret of my existence to their graves, and for their reward they now serve me, as many do. I think they are content with the roles I have given them, but that is not of interest to you.

Yes, I do

I presume to sit here, threaten and…

do

nothing.

For that is my will, and you, little Maelodakh of the coming storm, it would seem that your will is to be a loud voice. I will answer your questions. Your friend Silverspike has the gist of it, but only the gist. He is correct, knowledge, the knowing of a thing, has in its seeds the price that is paid when one moves from the ignorant to the enlightened. There are few who can know a thing and understand it at the same time. I will take nothing from you, in exchange for the answers you seek. What you do with the knowledge is the only price you will pay.

Your first question is built upon a false premise. The Vampire Queen’s lover does not lie within the wreckage of any of the four ships that carried the wedding party of the Countess Olaphila Foresca D’Vorja.

A little more than three centuries ago, four ships sailed from Burova for the Island of Moritosse. These ships carried the wedding party of Countess Olaphila Foresca D’Vorjka. The ships were caught in a storm south of Isla Karrita Morianna, and wrecked. Many perished in the storm, while some survived clinging to the wreckage of the ships that washed ashore on Karrita Morianna, near a dwarven village that was called Handwind. However, their trauma and exposure, coupled with a strain of influenza that was already spread among the ship’s crews, eventually resulted in the deaths of all of the survivors. The intended bride, who was among the survivors, was one of the first to die. Also among the survivors of the storm was a woman named Perretta Antollette Kruskova, and she was the Maid of Honor, the closest and dearest friend of Olaphila.

Now, to understand what happened next you must understand that these people, from Burova, have their own customs and traditions.

Perretta was not only the Maid of Honor, but the First Lady in Waiting to the Countess, and the tradition of the Burovan people dictates that the First Lady in Waiting cannot take a husband while her Mistress is unwed. When the survivors of the shipwreck were being tended, by the dwarves of Handwind, Perretta was feverish, and on the edge of madness, for she knew that if her mistress perished, and should she survive, she would be required to remain unwed for the rest of her life, and as it would obviously turn out to be, she was deeply in love with a man who did not travel with the wedding party. This man, Geordraj Sulav, is the one you asked about, the love of the Vampire Queen, and he did not die in the shipwreck or upon the beaches of Karrita Morianna.

When the Countess pased from this world, Perretta lost her mind. She blamed the dwarves for their incompetence and inability to save her mistress, and as she too succumbed to the ravages of the sickness and the trauma of surviving the storm, she called down upon the people of Handwind, and by extension all the dwarves of Karrita Morianna, a powerful curse spoken to the dark god of the human people, Ewis Yarvos.

The dwarves of Handwind, disturbed by the speaking of this curse to a human god of death and destruction, devised a plan that they hoped would shield them from this curse, and they buried the humans who washed ashore deep in the tombs of the great Goblin King Outogal. This act offended the Goblin Gods. Perretta was raised from the dead as the Vampire Queen, and the sixty three other humans entombed in the mountain were raised to be at her command. The only one who was not raised to a state of undeath was the intended bride herself.

Since her return to this world, Perretta has been consumed with a desire to find a way to raise her mistress from the dead. She has sought to raise the countess and complete the wedding ceremony. She does not care what man the countess is married to, and she intends to allow Omara to supply her with a suitable dwarven man to fill in for the groom. The countess, for her part, will not return to her body willingly, and a bargain was struck between three immortal deities, Ewis Yarvos, who is the power behind the curse, Fath’Reen the Trickster who is the protector of the Goblins of this island, and Freeda Songwind who protects the spirit of the countess.

The bargain is simple, if the wedding gifts, lost in the storm, can be collected, and presented to the bride, Freeda will return the countess's spirit to her body, Fath’Reen will unbind the spirits of the dead humans from the wedding gifts, and Ewis will lift the curse of Perretta, allowing her spirit to be united with her love in the afterlife.

So in answer to your first question, the Vampire Queen’s love is not among the cursed who died in the shipwreck. The ships lie below two hundred sixty feet of water, south southwest of Alicaz Rock, off the south coast of Karrita Morianna.

At this point, assuming Mae was even remotely patient enough to sit through all that dialog, and with her head slightly tipped and a long thin line of droll hanging from her lip, Mae will be asked

Are you now ready to hear the answers to the rest of your questions?

The eye moves so slowly toward Miagnik that for a moment it seems that some line has been crossed, a place reached where there is no point of return, and then,

"a pointless inquiry, for in the answer nothing is gained. How did I become - this? Was it because I struggled, I endured, I schemed, I betrayed, I demanded, I manipulated, I controlled, I killed, I saved, I brooded, I planned, I waited, I fled, I hid, I conquered...no. I t - was - none - of - these - things."

"I am this because of the only thing that allows power to grow unchecked, uncontrolled, unimaginable. I am this because of apathy."

"Because I learned that when the world forgets that it is afraid of you, when the heroes do not care if you are real or not, when the Gods can only hear the prayers of their flocks, when you are silent, when you stop trying to be cared about, that is when you become more than they can understand."

"and because of the apathy of the universe, I see everything, I know much, and I, care, little."

-Posted with Wayfinder

I – suppose

Ah, yes, time, and what I have seen of time. I once would have robbed your minds the very instant you set your eyes upon me, and for what purpose? What exist that I cannot see? Nothing, and nothing, forever and ever, and so in time I became less interested in doing and more interested in seeing, until the seeing became all that there is, all that will be. I see all, I know much, and I care little, but for this time, I will spare your lives, you may stay or go, as you desire. When you leave here you will speak of me, and some will try to possess me. I will entertain them.

The Lussons, yes, Petrokov and Sacha. They are mine now, a small price to pay for the things I gave them access to, Rownig Fleetfoot. It would seem that at least you, among your friends have no fear, but it is so obvious why. Ignorance is as they say, bliss, is it not? How did I come to be here? It is a reasonable question. I was once placed deep in the mountain below the place your kind call the Palace of the Vampire Queen. For a thousand years I lay there undisturbed until a goblin carried me away. I liked the little fellow, he was curious, intelligent, determined, but in the end, careless, and I passed from one hand to another. Ah, there was a time when I would abolish any who dared to think they could possess me, but this was a different time and my curiosity stayed my temper. Finally, I was brought here, by an ancestor of Sacha. HE worshipped me, and begged me for power, but I denied him, and let my secrets unavailable to him torture his mind until in the end he sacrificed everything to me and in return I gave him a wish. He squandered it of course, the end was much worse than I could have given him, if I cared, but his soul passed into the dark realm. When I choose to visit him it is not to gloat, but to pity his stupidity.

The ball rolls away from Rownig, and looks at Stephanie, and it is almost as if a great sigh escapes from somewhere and then the eye returns to Rownig

You use the word investigate as if you know what it means, but you do not. If you understood what is before you, you would not need to investigate. It…is…odd

The voice trails off for a moment, grows faint as a whisper

Rownig Fleetfoot, hero of Inarossa, know me, and know this, I see everything, I know much, and I care little. What I granted the Lussons was beyond your understanding and in return they gave me their souls. I possess hundreds of souls. These souls are bound to me by rituals made freely, and no God or Power of any other plane will challenge me for them. I use them to see into every world, every plane, and every dimension. They are I and I am all these and more. In my youth I demanded they worship me, and in my youth I set myself above all living things. I feasted upon the bodies of my enemies, countless thousands died at a single one of my thoughts. Time meant nothing to me, until time itself became my only friend.

Take whatever you desire, but touch me and you will know your doom. I am Askorathgarx, an Eye of the Lakoradak. I do not suffer fools, nor do I tolerate thieves, but as my former jailers are now in my protection, I imagine that what is left of their belongings must pass on to the living. If you take what you want and leave quickly I may not be bothered with taking the time to destroy you.

Why have you come?