From: Mike Sander <344LWKC@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU>
Date: Sunday, 11 Oct 1992 19:48:01 EDT
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: [DQ] Week 10, part 5-- 'Raelf: Half a league

[ADMIN: Wow, is IMMEDIATELY fast enough for you? Posted for Stephen,
 here's the 'official' end of week 10.]

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The grave contained no body.  It had been thoroughly desecrated, if it had
ever been consecrated in the first place.  There wasn't a headstone, just
the turned-up earth, six feet by two and a half feet, sunken in a slight
depression.  That, and the scratched marks on the wall warning of dire
consequences should the grave be disturbed.  Lancos had blithely ignored
the warning, searching out the secret trigger that opened the concealed
door behind the grave.

There was a portal behind the door, a dimensional gateway.  It gave off a
white glow, a somehow dirty white glow, similar to the light of late winter
reflecting off the driven slush.

'Raelf waved the others back a bit, pulling peculiar amulet from under his
voidsuit.  It held a long amber crystal, which began to glow in response to
the emanations from the portal.

"Stay clear.  I can't see the other side.  I'll need to send a sensor."

Something bright, sparkling, impossibly shaped, a pinpoint of light and dark,
launched itself from the crystal, like a meteor, shot into the portal, and
retunred in an instant, trailing fire.  'Raelf pulled out the now-familiar
flat case - his MageFam 5000 - and activated its holographic illusion sphere.
The amulet, with spark, clipped into place on the back of the case, and the
hologram began showing a nauseating twisting tunnel, going in an impossible
direction.  The other side of the tunnel - looked a lot like this cave.  The
dim light showed no features on the other side, beyond the grotto entrance.

'Raelf wasn't really looking at the visual image, though.  He was looking at
the runic descriptions that accompanied the tunnel schematic.

"No.  Not that.  Of course, it would have to be there.  Damn."

He took a deep breath, preparatory to speech.  The case chimed, and in the
periphery of the image, among a faint collection of dim images, one began
to blink.  'Raelf touched the case - the blink expanded into a closeup view
of a country road, gravelled, with a ditch beside it, and a peculiar box
sitting atop a pole which was jammed into the ground beside the ditch, a
metal box, long and slightly domed, closed by a flap hinged on the bottom.
A stylized red metal flag was attached to the side of the box by a rivet,
and pointed up in a jaunty fashion.

"Huh.  Who could be sending me mail HERE?" 'Raelf muttered.  He tapped at
a flat spot on the case, and the mailbox opened, a scroll inside unfurled and
replaced the image.  It was written in a careful hand, straightforward and
strong, but austere, with no unwanted flourishes.  The message was in an
old, old elvish dialect.  'Raelf read aloud slowly, translating.

   The Inhuman Condition.

   Everything I ever loved was torn from me by time.
   The only lasting word that I can say is goodbye.
   I have repeated that word too many time: I know
   Its echo will mute all the greeting I have yet to speak.

   Extend exiled existence long enough
   and feel your fiercest brightest hope
   grow old and frail and die.

   Live long and you must take the long view of things,
   and the long view is always bleak,
   for every worldly tale turns to tragedy in the end.
   And what other world would welcome such as I?
   No peace in Pandemonium: no rest for the wicked.
   The only reason I live is that
   to die might just be worse.

   Resignation is my sole salvation.
   Hope is a door opening only onto sorrow.
   Friendship, the mere foreshadowing of mourning.

   I dive into the darkness that lies beneath the earth,
   I sleep the sleep of death, brief respite from my pain,
   and desire and dread the final death of my humanity:
   I want the grief to end, I fear an end to love.

   (I dare not dream of wonders in my unlife).

"Strange.  It's from Kadrys.  I wonder how he got it to - never mind."
'Raelf inhaled, slowly, exhaled, purging emotion from his center.

"This is an interesting comment.  He seems to have timed it just right.
 If y'all want to know about the place we're going to, listen up.
 You might decide not to go, and I wouldn't blame you.

 Beyond that portal is the place where nightmares breed.  It's got a half
 dozen names, most of them curses.  You might know it as Ravenloft, or as
 the Dark Place, or as the Dimension of Shadows.  Mages call it the Demi
 Plane of Horror.  On the closed and sealed Torg line they call it Orrosh.
 My people sometimes call it Cut-Rate Hell.  It seems to be a common feature
 of every branch and iteration of the universe, it appears in some form,
 with some common features, on all universal plexes, at a fairly high level
 on the high-mana axis.  It isn't really a hell, because the hells are all
 found off the Astral, and the things that rule it aren't purely spirits.
 It exists as a sort of a cosmic leech on the sides of the Prime Materials.

 In fact, that's why I'm here - I blew out the ParaCosmos Rune, the "engine",
 sigh, the thing that makes it go places, on my big board.  I hit what amounts
 to a slippery spot, when I was giving a ride to a friend, and bounced off
 of something that left Shadow traces all over the board, and melted the PC
 Rune.  And I don't have anything else powerful enough to carry me past it,
 and I can't carry my stuff through the Worldgate.  Besides, I'm allergic
 to that route.

 OK, I'll get back to the point.  It happens, for no good reason, that
 the place this portal leads seems to match the configs, the maps, argh,
 the "signature" is closest to that for Ravenloft.  Serious differences,
 but no way to say what they mean.  Could be a different country.

 Anyway, in the usual timelines, Ravenloft is ruled by one Strahd, who is
 a vampire.  If the guy we're facing is really the local analog for Strahd,
 then we're most likely toast.  I don't THINK it's him, though, because the
 stories I've read about the Strahd analogs say that he's got a lot of style,
 and that he never uses raw power where subtlety is possible.  There's not
 a lot of subtlety to what we've seen.  But lots and lots of raw power.

 Anyways, Ravenloft in particular, and the Dark Place is general, has some
 rules you need to know about.  Remember, it's sentient.  It has a mind, of
 sorts.  Probably what drew the Tan-Ru probe in the first place, they're
 a similar sort of intelligence.  And the mind that runs the Dark Place is
 evil, pure and simple, and it FEEDS on evil.  So if you're evil and you get
 there, it won't want to let you go.  If you're not evil, it will ENCOURAGE
 you to be evil, and it's very very effective - it rewards any act of hatred,
 treason, murder, anything dark and demeaning and wrong that you do, might
 catch its attention.  And then it will REWARD you - you'll find yourself
 able to do things you couldn't before, or you'll be given magical items,
 or followers.  And once you've become evil, it will never let go of you.

 So if you go there, even you, ShockWave, you have to remember.  Never ever
 act out of anger or greed or envy.  Never kill unless you have to, and if
 you do, apologise to the spirit of what you killed.  Don't trust your sense
 of pleasure there.  And if you find the mists closing around you, or you find
 yourself changing, pray to whatever gods you pray to, but don't expect them
 to answer.  The prayer itself is what can save you - they won't be able to,
 themselves, but your own faith can be more powerful than anything that the
 Shadows can do to you."

'Raelf sat down, unaccustomed to such lengthy discourse.  He returned the
crystal amulet to inside his Voidsuit, and replaced the flat case in its
pocket, then pulled out his short board, the one he had used before to fly
around.  Something looked different.  Where he usually stood, there were
six handles, sticking up from the surface.  It couldn't be ridden, now.

"What have you done to your board?" Lancos asked, curious.

"Field effect boosters for the screens, and a toroidal thrust adapter.  It
ought to let us go through that portal there, without triggering any capture
or mutate traps.  The portal is a combination of PCD twisting, and the mist
gate that the Shadows uses to steal its victims from reality.  The mods I
made ought to protect us from the worst of the Dark Place's sneakier tricks
and for sure from anything the PCD can do to us.  Oh, and once we're there,
we won't be able to just planeshift out, but we should still be able to use
a portal.  I started working on this jig the day after we saw the PCD in
the Plaza.  I put on one handle for each of us.  Alita wasn't supposed to
get cacked.  Anyway, if we were to go through the portal unprotected, the
PCD would probably put us into the main capture cage, and suck our souls
out our ears or something.  Gods, I'm babbling."

There was a collective displeasure at 'Raelf's example, but otherwise all
were quiet. They could guess what was next.

'Raelf did the breathing thing again, finding his center, and held it.

"Anyone who wants to come, get ready."

The others made their preparations.

"Hang on tight."  'Raelf waited for them to take hold, and then the board
began to shoot blue fire around its runes, faster and faster, that suddenly
looped around them - they were a large spark, rushing over the open grave,
past the eerie glow, and into the place beyond.

With a snap, the gate closed behind them.
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Stephen Hutchinson hutch@ibeam.intel.com

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Michael Sander 344lwkc@cmuvm.csv.cmich.edu