Iuz the Old, Lord of Pain's page

Iuz's feral red face, as large as a beer barrel, splits in a nasty, shark-toothed grin as he growls, Ah. Good. Then there's no need for introductions, as both birds know each other already before I CRUSH BOTH WITH ONE STONE!! As if sliding by magic in such a way that the Lord of Cheating is able to cleave the two paladin kings with a single swing, Iuz sends both Artur and Lynwerd hurtling several feet to land roughly in the trampled turf.

Iuz tightens both large red claws about the giant's bone hilt of Serpentine Sword of Desiccation as he raises it high for a vicious stroke upon the stunned King Artur.... Fear not, dear boy! Even if I hack you in twain, you'll be brought back from death--many times--before I've finished playing with YOU, oh most amusing of toys!

In an instant, what at first appeared to be the demigod Iuz in his true demonic form billows away on the wind like a tapestry flung from a parapet, as the true Lord of Pain delivers a mighty blow to the charging Kirin's hindquarters with his crackling, hissing blade, momentarily petrifying Ju-Kahn's hind legs and tail into white salt crystal. The kirin squeals pitiably in agony as its front legs buckle and the salt-crystal hind legs snap off like icicles struck from the eaves of a roof. HAHAHAHAHAAAA!!! It seems a horse divided has trouble standing, my dear King of Furyondy! Now, you shall face me on foot, face-to-face .... So I can see the despair on your sad face as I crush you beneath my cloven hoof!

Freeday, the last day (28th) of Flocktime: Meanwhile, many leagues to the west, on the prairie land between Chendl and Crockport ....

Iuz's Greater Boneheart high priests and archmages engage the mightiest Knights of the Holy Shielding, Knights of Veluna, Knights of Furyondy, Paladin Peers of the Silver Chalice, and elven
Knights of Luna, and his Lesser Boneheart priests and mages work in greater numbers to harry and divert the powerful archmages of Good--Karzalin the Fire Elementalist Mage (Pyromancer), Tenser, Burne, and Prince Melf--opening a way for the Lord of Evil to challenge the young King Artur Jakartai in single combat ....

COME, KING ARTUR! Let us meet in chivalrous contest to determine who shall take the field this day! The cambion emperor of the Land of Iuz bellows in his fiendish form--that of a 12-foot-tall muscular, red-skinned, horned-and-fanged, clawed-and-hooved satyr-like giant with eyes that blaze like fire opals, brandishing a corroding wavy-bladed greatsword (modeled after or borrowed from his father, Grazz't??) ....

Waterday the 5th of Flocktime in 600 CY (the same day as the party's first harrowing foray into White Plume Mountain):

Iuz "the Old" led his forces from Admundfort to the city of Critwall, one of the last bastions of resistance to his dominance in the mostly-conquered Shield Lands. At around 3:30 in the afternoon on Waterday, Flocktime 5th, his host of orcs, goblinoids, lesser demons, and evil men and women arrived at the walls of the city and laid siege. After only three days and nights, Critwall fell to the forces of Iuz (on Starday the 8th), and its resident Shield Landers were either enslaved or slaughtered..

Emboldened by this swift and brutal victory, Iuz then led his forces on to the town of Bright Sentry, the last stronghold of the resistance, and again laid siege. Smaller and less fortified than Critwall, Bright Sentry fell after only two days and nights (on Waterday the 12th), and again, the townsfolk were either massacred or taken captive to be sold into slavery in the lands of the Empire of Iuz.

Having brutally crushed the last hopes of resistance to his demonic rule that had remained in Critwall and Bright Sentry, the conquering cambion demigod had secured uncontested dominion over what had been properly known as the “Restored Holy Realm of the Faithful of the Shield Lands.” Iuz “the Old,” the “Lord of Evil,” had finally succeeded in his goal of conquering the whole of the Shield Lands. Reveling in victorious slaughter and seized with insatiable bloodlust, Iuz gave his first official command as undisputed sovereign of the fully-annexed Shield Lands, ordering his thralls and minions to hunt down and capture any and all surviving Knights of the Holy Shielding, and drag them in chains before his throne in Dorakaa, to be tortured and sacrificed for his amusement.

Rumors claim that one of the few surviving defenders to escape from the siege of Critwall reported that the Countess Katarina of Walworth, Lord Commander of the Shield Lands, had been struck down in hand-to-hand combat by Iuz himself, and that her body had been captured and whisked away to an unknown location (most likely the dungeons beneath Dorakaa) by an evil archmage of the Greater Boneheart named Null. It is also rumored that several other brave Knights of the Holy Shielding fell in combat against the “Lord of Pain’s” most powerful minions, their bodies likewise captured and hidden away to prevent them from being resurrected by powerful allies or receiving proper funeral rites. Whether these rumors are true or false, it is known that Countess Katarina of Walworth, Earl Franz of Torkeep, and several other prominent Knights of the Holy Shielding did go missing when Critwall and Bright Sentry were captured by the forces of Iuz, and have remained so even up to the present.

~9:00 PM on the night of Starday, 1st of Flocktime, 600 CY .... Two days before the party arrives back in Nulbish following their foray into the Darkenrift in Grandwood Forest, while they are still sailing west down the Thelly River aboard the carrack Triton ....

The City of Admundfort, circa 600 CY

The walled city of Admundfort sprawls along the south shore of Walworth Isle, an island in the north central waters of the Nyr Dyv (a.k.a. "The Lake of Unknown Depths"), its pair of imposing twin keeps overlooking the seemingly endless expanse of deep blue freshwater that stretches as far as the eye can see in every direction except north. Formerly the de facto capital of the Shield Lands, and the chief stronghold of the religious military order known as the Knights of the Holy Shielding, Admundfort was once governed by a Commonwealth of lords ruled by the highest ranking noble of Walworth Isle, which is currently Countess Katarina of Walworth, Knight Commander of the Shield Lands.

Everything changed for the Shield Lands during the Greyhawk Wars, specifically 17 years ago, in Flocktime of 583 CY, when the cambion demigod Iuz invaded the Shield Lands with his army of evil humanoids, led by the mages and priests of the "Old One's" Greater and Lesser Boneheart, and by the assassins, thieves, and mercenaries of his Boneshadow, augmented by various greater and lesser demons bound in service to the "Lord of Pain." The Shield Lands quickly fell under the brutal onslaught of Iuz and his wicked horde, in part because they refused help from the Kingdom of Furyondy for fear of reabsorption. (The Shield Lands were once part of Ferrond, which broke off from The Great Kingdom in 254 CY. The Shield Lands later broke off from Furyondy sometime in the fourth century.) Part of the Sheild Lands was reclaimed during The Great Northern Crusade, but much of it remains occupied by the forces of Iuz.

Tattered shreds of clouds are blown swiftly across the night sky by the strong winds whipping over the fathomless waters of the Nyr Dyv, like an army of ghosts charging the northward lakeshore. The greater moon Luna ("The Mistress") is waxing full, and the swift-flying ghost clouds passing in front of her cause her silvery moonlight to flicker like a guttering torch flame. The lesser moon Celene ("The Handmaidsn") is a thin aquamarine crescent, barely visible to all but perhaps elven eyes. The lake winds howl and shriek through the crenelations and murder holes of the twin keeps of Admundfort like tormented souls of the damned, and whistle or moan as they sweep through the lakeside city's narrow streets and alleys. In spite of the continuous chorus of winds from the Nyr Dyv, a random cacophony composed of a wide variety of other more or less subtle noises sounding here and there throughout Admundfort is gradually increasing in frequency and volume .... It is the sound of the city's populace donning armor, arming itself with weapons, and beginning to mobilize ....

Up until tonight, it appeared that Iuz had displayed either an ignorance of or a flagrant disregard for the obvious tactical strengths of Admundfort as a walled port city on an island in a vast and deep lake. Admundfort has a naval barracks and a handful of surviving caravels, but these are not used much by Iuz's forces.

On the northern lakeshore of the Nyr Dyv, a shriveled and hunched figure shrouded in a wrinkled black robe emerges from the darkness, like a ghost materializing out of thin air, shuffling with the arthritic gait of an ancient geezer and leaning heavily on a staff that is taller than the bent figure by several inches, and appears to be crafted from humanoid vertebral columns and capped with a human skull with flickering red flames dancing in the hollow eye sockets .... A black cowl is pulled over the pale, wrinkled, balding pate and conceals the upper half of the ancient codger's face, shrouding the eyes in dark shadow .... and yet, two pale points of reflected moonlight mark the somehow inherently malevolent gleam of the ancient one's gaze as he fixes it upon the black silhouette of Admundfort's crenelated wall, gambrel rooftops, and twin keeps, his pale and wrinkled jowls quivering as his cracked and withered lips curl back in a predatory grin that exposes blackened ruins of vaguely bestial teeth protruding from receding, grayish-yellow gums .... A raspy wheezing cackle, as soft and silent as a death rattle, escapes from the gaping, rotten hole of a mouth, and the ancient coot shudders momentarily as if chilled by the blasting lake winds that tug at his wrinkled black robe and cowl .... A gust blows the cowl back, exposing the pallid, wrinkled visage, with unnaturally sunken eyes like the dead, black eyes of a shark, beneath a bald pate crowned with sparse and straggly snow-white wisps of hair that whip about in the wind ....

The bent and ancient watcher on the lakeshore lifted his wrinkled, almost skull-like face to the silver glow of the nearly-full greater moon, Luna, and the rotten mouth gaped open suddenly with a disturbingly inhuman wideness, as if the jawbone were suddenly dislocated beyond repair, and a demonic howl like the howling of a pack of lunatics pierced through the shrill shrieking chorus of the night winds, echoing across the inky black waters of the Nyr Dyv for what must have been several leagues in every direction .... Several seconds passed before the reverberating echoes of that demonic howl became lost in the shrieking winds .... The skull-like visage lifted again to glower with unholy malice at the waxing silver moon behind the racing ghost-clouds, and again, the jawbone seemed to gape open with a wideness incompatible with human anatomy as the bald-pated geezer gave voice to a second demonic howl ....

After the echoes of this second ghastly call had been carried off into the black night on shrieking lake winds, an amber beam of light like that of a hooded lantern swept across the black surface of the Lake of Unknown Depth from the south and west .... As the amber beam fell upon the bent and decrepit figure leaning on the skeletal skull-topped staff on the northern lakeshore, a second such beam swept out of the gloom from south and east, and then a third from around the western end of Walworth Isle, followed by a fourth from the far east end of the isle .... Within minutes, several more lantern beams appeared out on the lake, as a small fleet of barges, rafts, and flat-bottomed riverboats piloted with long poles emerged from around both ends of Walworth Isle, converging in the narrow channel between the north lakeshore and the north shore of the isle, gathering and maneuvering with practiced ease, until some two dozen barges, rafts, and flat-bottomed boats had formed a broad flotilla that linked island with lakeshore like a great undulating bridge!

These were Rhennish vessels, piloted by an extended clan of corrupted Rhennee families that were fanatically loyal to Iuz the Old. In a matter of minutes, they had secured their flotilla by tethering the two dozen barges, rafts, and flat-bottomed riverboats firmly together with expertly-knotted ropes and grappling hooks. Having done this, the patriarch of the extended Rhennee clan sounded a shrill whistling signal on a bone whistle that hung on a leather cord about his neck. This was the signal to let the "Old One" know that the flotilla would now serve as a sturdy bridge for the garrison of Admundfort to cross over to the north lakeshore .... Iuz had been leaning heavily on the skull-topped vertebral staff, gripping it with both of his pale, almost skeletal, claw-like hands, and leaning almost half-bent, but he released one claw-like grip on the vertebral haft of the staff to procure seemingly from thin air a curving spiral ram's horn, the narrow end of which he pressed to his withered and scabrous lips, and sounded a long, low note that rose in a bestial cadence at the end, reminiscent of the primal cry of some prehistoric behemoth from long-forgotten eons ....