From: pcalvert@economics.adelaide.edu.au
Date: 11 Sep 92 05:15:22 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: [KQ] ...sage [in transit] Thk's Trident and Quruuminias

Characters : ...sage, Quruuminias, (KronQuesters)

Travelling across the Planes was never a simple task.
Even those who considered the Ether their home recognized the
dangers that were involved in crossing the dimensions.

The planes are not perfect either. Wars between the Gods and other
mighty beings take their toll on the very fabric of the cosmos,
thus it is not very surprising to hear of crystal spheres containing
powerful warlike beings suddenly shattering as if for no apparent
reason. Nature imposes that reason herself; to protect herself.

..sage had been researching 'safe' routes through the various planes
for many decades now, and realized that the elemental planes contained
the greatest opportunity for shortcuts through the Ether, however their
very nature made them extremely hard to work with.

Fire never kept a stable environment and made one sweat awfully.
Earth could get rather painful if you got caught in a tectonic shift.
Air was too waspish to be able to find a fixed and solid reference.
And Water really tended to put a dampener on the most jovial wanderer :)

But ...sage wasn't out for a jaunt. He had discovered a thing of Water
on the Plane of Fire, and he knew where it came from : Generica.

And he knew who it belonged to (at least who could currently lay the
most legitimate claim to it) : Thk.

And he knew that others were out to get it.
Too long he had watched from afar the attempts of the Sea Mage to wrest
power from the ocean for his own machinations, and the Trident was one
of those things that the Sea Mage had tried to research.
Unfortunately for him, the Generican Great Library didn't have much on
the Trident at the time. A thing that ...sage would hopefully rectify
before returning the Trident to Thk, and a thing that the Sea Mage would
hopefully not find out about.

Moving through the Ether after leaving the Plane of Fire, ...sage was
approaching the region nearest Nexus, where Generica was located, when
an Illithid materialized nearby.
In its mauve hands were clutched some large books and on his back was a 
box that was very securely tied.
"Too late to hide" thought ...sage, "and anyway, I'd love to know what 
a mind flayer is doing 'porting in from Generica central."

Quruuminias looked up in surprise to see a figure in a mottled green 
cloak standing nearby. His dead white eyes opened even wider as he spied
Thk's Trident floating gently by the figure's side.

"NO!" screamed Quruuminias, too spent to try a psionic blast after his 
hurried blink to his store room, where he picked up his books and phials
of drugs, and his shift to the ethereal plane.

..sage noted with a curious sense of detatchment that the Illithid seemed
to be paying more attention to the Trident than to him. "Odd" he mused,
and immediately began probing the Illithid's mind.

..sage reeled as the image of Thk, jaws agape and tongue caressing the
mind flayer's skull leapt into view. - snap - Mind numb - and ...sage
put a blanket on the troubled mind flayer's consciousness in the same
way that Listener's music calmed violent tempers in the Inn.

Quruuminias gibbered as the memory of the druglab battle slowly ebbed
from his troubled brow. Shoulders sagged and eyes began to unfocus as
the figure in green moved towards him, also blocking his view of the 
hated Trident.

"Now suppose you tell me everything that happened" said ...sage in a 
voice that dripped with cranial fluid (Illithids don't drink honey :)

 - And so Quruuminias told ...sage about the Kron Questers, and how
they had been so negligent of other people's property, how they had
entered without knocking, how they had spoiled his experiments, how ...

 - And ...sage learnt that 'Raelf had taken up with Kron, and a new guy,
Marcel, had joined the group, and they were still looking for Kron's
sister, and that the singing of smurfs can weaken the strongest person's
resolve if left unchecked.

..sage felt sorry for Quruuminias. After all, he was after knowledge,
wasn't he? He just applied it to the wrong things, a victim of his
cultural background, and aeons of breeding to boot. Something stirred in
..sage's memory, but kept eluding his grasp. That scenario seemed so
familiar somehow, but it was gone again.     Oh well, maybe later.

..sage reasoned that the knowledge that Quruuminias had accumulated
would be dangerous in the mind flayer's hands until he learnt to 
control his lust for domination, and so, after putting Quruuminias in a
form of statis field, with a promise to release him soon, and a request
to change his way of looking at life, ...sage picked up Quruuminias's
books and he and the Trident faded from the Ethereal plane to once
again stand in the familiar dim coolness of the basement of the Great
Library of Generica.

"Books can wait" said ...sage to himself.
"I don't want to be disturbed" he telepathically sent a message to the
Library's receptionist, "Please broadcast to whoever is on duty".
And settling down with some ink and a quill and some parchment, he placed
the Trident on his knees and started to ever so slowly probe.

                                                   ...sage