Smoldering Corpse

A tout was calling out to passerbys as we meandered down a street.

“Step right up, come see the burning man! Try to put him out, buy him a drink. He’s thirsty. He’s on fire. He’s red hot. Come on in. Come on in, see what I mean!” I paused, glancing at the building behind the tout. Seeing me stop, he yelled to me.

“Come on in cutter! Come on in cutter, you’re goin’ ta love this!” The building was evidently a bar; this seemed like a good place to gather information. I entered. To my surprise, there was in fact a flaming corpse, twisting in mid-air above red hot grills set in the floor.

There was a woman standing nearby, with fading bruises on her face and arms and a look of despairing longing in her sunken eyes. She might have been pretty once, but those days were long ago. She turned slowly to face me. Life poured into her features, and the spark of sardonic light that danced in her eyes now made me wonder if my eyes were deceiving me.

“Welcome to the Smoldering Corpse, scarred man.”

“Who are you?”

“I? I am Drusilla. And you must be clueless. Don’t ask me how I know that. It just shines off you.” Ignoring the interjection, I asked a question.

“What can you tell me about this place?”

“Here? This is the Smoldering Corpse, though the person smoldering ain’t dead yet. He’s just keepin’ himself alive ‘til someone comes along to help him out. Sods who like to see people in pain come here. Fiends like it. Folks who don’t much care for bein’ bothered come here too… the name alone keeps out most of the berks.”

“Who is that burning by the entryway?” That despair I saw on her face before flitted across it again like a black-winged shadow before she mastered herself.

“That’s Ignus, one of the greatest wizards ever to come out of this slummy excuse for a cesspool. They caught him and they opened a channel to the plane of Fire through him, and now he’s just a doorway for it, keepin’ himself alive by force o’ will alone. If someone could douse him for a few moments, it'd give him his life back again — but they don’t make enough water to do that.” I considered the burning corpse a moment. It seemed to me there should be some way… never mind.

“What’s your connection to him?” Her voice in reply practically throbbed with a deep ache.

“I was Ignus’ lover and he, my beloved. He loved the flame more than me and now he has become the flame — and because I love him, I love the flame… but that’s all done with now. Now I wait for him to douse himself. I sell what little I have just so I can be near him.”

I turned away from her sorrow, heading over to the bartender. I saw a leather-skinned man with just a hint of ashen color to his face. His teeth seemed sharper than normal, and his eyes were filled with the boredom that comes with having seen too much. His voice was nasal and clipped.

“You again, eh? Whaddya want this time?”

“ ‘You again?’ What do you mean?” I spoke with resignation, since I had been recognized yet again.

“Yeah, ‘you again'. You got a hearing problem or something now? You was in here ‘bout fifteen years ago, got all bubbed up, smashed up the place, and left a pile o’ coin that wasn’t enough to pay for the damages. So you plucked out your own bleedin’ eyeball and tells me you'll be back to reclaim it when you got two hundred coins together. With fifteen years of interest, you got about five hundred coins. You got the jink, pal, I got your eye.”

“Five hundred? That’s ridiculous!” He paused for a moment, considering.

“That it is. Tell you what. Give me three hundred, and the eye’s yours.” Something prompted me to agree.

“It’s a deal. Here’s your money.”

“It’s a deal.” He produced a darkened, wax-stoppered, wide-mouth bottle from his pocket. I heard the sound of liquid sloshing around inside it, along with a heavier, squishier noise. Opening it, the stench of some sort of preservative agent nearly made me gag. Floating in the viscid muck was an eyeball. “You'd better figure out what you want to do with that… now you've exposed it to the air, you might as well put a pickled egg in the jar for all the good it'll do you. Make up your mind, cutter… pickled egg or not?”

For a moment I stared at the eyeball, unable to believe I had spent nearly all my remaining money for it. Then I acted, before I could think myself into inaction.

I reached into my socket and popped my eye into the palm of my hand. The bartender helpfully severed the optic nerve, and directed my hand to the jar of goo that sat on the bar. I deposited my eye in the preservative, wrapped my fingers around the old one, and slid it into my empty socket. The pain of this entire operation was incredible. After a moment, though, I could feel the optic nerve reattaching itself to this new eye… and suddenly, I was hit by a flash of memory!

Memory flash: A vast expanse of chaotic, ever-changing wasteland stretching before me, a group of humanoid vultures plummeting toward me, cruel weapons ready to strike, and my own shining blade clutched tight in my fist…

Memory flash: Three toughs surrounded me, in the colors of an enemy I couldn’t quite place. Long daggers glistened in their hands, and the light glinted cruelly from their exposed teeth. I glanced at my scarred hands, and knew that soon they would be covered in blood…

Memory flash: An enormous frog-like creature came bounding over/through/under chaos-stuff, headed for me with a mouth full of teeth. I hurled my javelin through the shifting matter and pinned the creature to a sudden stone plinth…

I realized I had recalled some of my lost fighting skills.

I asked more questions of the barkeep, who was named Barkis. There were numerous customers in the bar, including a couple of fiends, and I asked him who might help me. He gave me a short list of the patrons who might be able to help, and I moved out to talk to them.

I saw a slightly stooped old man with a full grey beard and a lion’s mane of grey hair. He wore a couple of shoulder guards as armor, and he kept a helmet nearby. He smoked a pipe and carried a pouch of tobacco around his waist. He looked pretty strong, but he was a little plump and also appeared to have some sort of breathing trouble.

“Well, now, aren’t you a sight, lad! Never have I seen so many scars blanketing a fella — like a scar cloak ye’re wearing! Where you been — hanging out in a grain thresher?!” He laughed. “Oh, I'm just jesting with ye, lad, no offense meant and I hope no offense taken. I'm Ebb.” He extended his hand.

“Greetings, Ebb.” His handshake was firm.

“Now, I hereby tender my apologies for the unfair jesting, lad. Hope no hard feelings; can I buy you a tankard or two of something to smooth any ruffled feathers?” I hadn’t taken any offense, and nodded agreement.

“That’s the spirit, lad! Bide a moment.” He rose to his feet and headed to the bar. After a moment, he returned to his seat with a pair of tankards. “Here you go, lad. Drink up!” He took a massive swallow from his own tankard, puffed on his pipe, and said, “What can ol’ Ebb do for you on this fine Sigil day?”

“I had some questions about this place.”

“Oh, well I gathered that, jest to look at you. I mean, you don’t look like you’re from around these parts, lad… you look a little too out of sorts to be a seasoned native!” Ebb chuckled, then took another drink. “So what can I help you with, lad? You need to know the lay of the land?” Ebb winked.

“Who are you, and what are you doing?”

“Ebb Creakknees, Third Measure of the Harmonium, now retired and being a tout with one’s voice since I don’t step as lightly as I might these past two or three decades!” He chuckled.

“Third Measure of the Harmonium?” Ebb puffed up slightly in pride and got a semi-stern look on his face.

“Aye, Third Measure of the Harmonium…” He relaxed a little. “Though I haven’t served a tour of duty in many a decade. Pushing a quill wasn’t quite up my alley after all the fights and skirmishes I been in, so I just bide my time keeping tabs on things down here in the Hive and helping out a little where I can. An’ you look like someone who might need a hand… are you in some kind of trouble, lad?”

“What fights and skirmishes have you been in?” I asked, refusing to be deflected.

“More than I can remember, lad!” Ebb rolled his eyes. “Well… almost more than I can remember, leastwhys. I did an all too-long tour in the Blood War, that infernal muck-up War of Lies on Terras, far too many years in the Black Centuries War…” Ebb began to tick off the wars on his finger and counted silently to himself. “…eh, then there was the Three-Planes War, and many others, I even took part in the Harmonium War of Liberation. Oh, towards the end there, I was also in the Sigil City Watch… some could argue that was the most dangerous of them all!” He laughed loudly. The mention of the Blood War felt like a cold dagger slipping into my heart. I asked him to tell me more of the Blood War.

“Aye… the Blood War: The most dangerous family feud this side of the primordial soup. A mean-spirited mob of fiends on one side, a batch of war-monger fiends on the other. It’s the war that creation sparked, and they've been digging into each other ever since.”

“The tanar’ri, vicious killers who care for none but themselves, and the baatezu war machine, all for law and order under their infernal rules. The whole mess spills out into other planes from time to time, and it’s made the multiverse a less-pleasant place to live.” I thought he might know something of the man I sought.

“What do you know of a collector named Pharod?”

“Well, now I don’t know everything there is to know about ol’ Pharod, but I know some of the dark surrounding him. If you’re determined to track down that spider and nail him to a wall, then I suppose I could spill some of the chant so you know what you’re tangling with.” He paused to tamp his pipe. “Pharod dug his nest deep into Ragpicker’s Square not too long ago, got a bunch of collectors and gangs together and started what one could almost consider a collecting faction… be that as it may be…”

“Where can I find him?”

“Well, lad, if you’re looking for Pharod, which I would say is pretty barmy of you, you’re a little off the beaten path. You want to be finding Ragpicker’s Square. Chant is that Pharod’s set up his kip somewhere in the Square. Even an ol’ fella like me who’s been around the ring a few times don’t know exactly where. I figure that Pharod wants to keep the dark on his location dark. If you’re all bound and determined to find Pharod, go to Ragpicker’s Square, and try and dig up Pharod’s location from some of the locals. Try and be careful about it, since there’s plenty in the Square that would make a gut-harp outta you as soon as look atcha.” I then asked a question I had been wondering about the city.

“Tell me of Sigil’s layout.”

“Whew. Let me wet my tongue.” He took a pull from his tankard. “The city floats above an infinitely tall spire — the Spire. It lies on its side like a discarded wagon wheel, but there’s no spokes that connect it to the Spire. It’s divided into six wards, each of them with its own function. Right now, you’re in the Hive. I think the purpose of the Hive is to be squalor to the rest of the city’s grandeur!” He laughed. “Factions — philosophical clubs, or gangs if you prefer — divide up the running of the city between ‘em.”

“Were you in a faction?” Ebb raised his hand as if to stop me and laughed slightly.

“Oh, now, hold on, lad — I'm no has-been faction member… they say, and they’re right, that once ye’re one of the Harmonium, ye’re a Harmonium for life. We’re the bloods that try and make sure Sigil stays outta trouble. No rocking the spire, no folks getting too over-enthusiastic about hurting each other, keeping the city down to a low roar. We try and keep the peace, lad, and most times, we do a decent job.” Another question bubbled to the surface of my mind.

“Tell me of the Lady.”

“Well, now, not many know much about her, lad, and I'm figuring even those that know more than a little don’t know too much more. She’s a mystery, she is, and even should you run across her… Powers forbid… she’s silent and deadly. She’s not evil, far’s I can tell, but she keeps the dark about herself and Sigil pretty tight. None’s been able to penetrate it, and if they have, they've been mazed.” I asked him about mazing, which I had already experienced for myself.

“Aye. Sometimes bloods will be packed off to a place where they can’t do no harm. The Lady, see, she'll take a bit of Sigil, and make a little dimensional pocket out of it, a maze. She places those that have crossed her in there and lets ‘em rot.” Ebb puffed his pipe. “Now… you can’t escape getting mazed once the Lady sets her gaze on you, lad. She'll get you eventually, no matter how hard you try and dodge her. You'll be walking down an alley, or about to step through a portal, or take a left turn down a street you've gone manyfold times before, and suddenly you’re someplace you don’t recognize. Now, mazes aren’t escape-proof. There’s always a way out of each one… a portal the Lady places there. You just have ta figure out where it is and how to use it.”

“Getting back to the Lady, chances are you won’t meet her unless ya do something really bad… Hurting a lot of people, killing a dabus, challenging her rule, worshipping her… She hates that, we figure, or interfering with a dabus’ work (which may as well be the Lady’s work)… If you’re lucky, just the Mercykillers will come for you, but if she comes, you'll be dead as soon as her shadow falls on you.”

“Now, the Lady can do almost anything in Sigil, lad, near as we can figure. Make it bigger or smaller, make new portals, seal off old ones, make sure the Blood War don’t break out in the streets, keep folks from teleporting into the city, keeping the Powers out.”

“Powers. It’s another way of saying Gods, lad. And there’s a great horde of them across the Planes.” Ebb took a puff from his pipe. “They can’t come to Sigil, though… the Lady has a way of keeping them out that she hasn’t spilled the chant to yet. Be that as it may, it’s kept Sigil from being seized by outside interests.”

I now turned to another who had been sharing Ebb’s table, silent up to now. I saw a soft-looking man with gentle, far-staring eyes. He dressed in supple leather clothing, and carried various implements of use and destruction about his body, such as ropes, spikes, tinderboxes, and empty vials of air. He looked half-gone — literally. There was an insubstantiality to his existence, as if his essence had been partially leeched away. He focused those eyes on me, and suddenly I found them gripping and determined.

“Greetings to you, o seeker,” he said. He carefully set down the mug he was holding, and gave me all his attention.

“I have seen the far reaches of the multiverse and returned to tell the tale. I have walked upon the bodies of dead gods and spun moonbeams in the Astral ahead of a thousand shrieking githyanki knights. I have passed the edges of existence and watched my essence shiver away before me. What is it I can do for you?”

“Who are you?”

“I am Candrian Illborne, traveler, dreamer, talespinner, and so forth.”

I talked to him for a long while about the different planes. The Inner Planes of matter, substance, true physicality. The Ethereal Plane, through which the Inner Planes were filtered, to form the elements of the Prime Material, the worlds of mortals. In the Prime Material belief was born, from which the spirits that created the Outer Planes were born. When mortals died, their spirits passed through the Astral Plane.

The Outer Planes and the beings which inhabited them were created by and of belief and thought and faith. The Outer Planes were divided by travelers into the Great Ring, of which Sigil was a part. This Great Ring was of immediate interest to me, and I questioned Candrian closely on the planes which make it.

The lawful Upper Planes. Candrian gave a small shudder when describing them. “I am not the best person to speak of the planes of law,” he said, “for the innate structure and ultimate patterns they impose frighten me. I steer clear of them, because I value my individuality more than I value the knowledge they'll bring me. They include regimented Arcadia, nearest of the good planes to the unbending order of Mechanus, and Mount Celestia, home of the archons, an island in the Silver Sea.”

The neutral Lower Planes. “The neutral planes, eh? They’re vile and barely understandable, and they’re more insidious on their own than you could ever imagine. Take Gehenna, for example: Four volcanoes in stages of dormancy floating in an infinite void, each of them somehow alive, and each of them wanting your soul by whatever means they can get it. Populate it with yugoloths — the worst of the fiends, in my opinion, and you've got the place. The plane of ultimate evil — at least, that’s what they call it — is the Gray Waste, a no-place that drains color from your body and spirit, stealing away even your apathy — and it’s the site of the worst battlegrounds in the war down there. Don’t get me started…Then you've got Carceri on the chaotic side…”

“Ah, Carceri and its poisonous jungles, acid swamps, destructive waters, strung like a string of rotten pearls nestled within one another…” He paused and looked at me carefully, again fixing me in place with his eyes. “Remember this, seeker: Carceri is a prison, home to the gehreleths, one of the most dangerous types of fiends there is. The strength of the prison is the strength of the captor, as strong as the prisoner lets it be. Destroy the prisonkeeper, and a body can escape the Red Prison. There is almost no other way out, not when the gates close themselves against you and watch you spin off into the vast space surrounding the orbs. Be wary of Carceri, traveler, for its bonds can be greater than flesh.”

The lawful Lower Planes. “As much as I detest the order of the lawful Upper Planes, at least they present a modicum of goodness. Their lower planar counterparts, though… Acheron’s a place of ricocheting cubes that never see an end to battle, swarming with the souls of dead humanoids. Baator…” he shivered involuntarily. “Baator is a place best avoided. Those fiends you see over there are but the merest expression of the deviant corruption embodied in that soulless machine of order. All that is bad about bureaucracy and order originates from Baator, and it spreads like a stain across the hearts of mortals. Though there is some knowledge to be found there, it is rarely worth the spiritual rape the plane inflicts.”

The chaotic Lower Planes. “The Abyss isn’t someplace you should consider going. Where Baator’s all orderly, the Abyss is full of chaos and change, and none of it’s pleasant. When it becomes something that approximates normality, that’s when you should be most wary of it. It’s home to the tanar’ri, what most primes call ‘demons', and they've got that name for a reason. They are unpredictable and murderous, and the few you can trust are few and far between. The few I have met who I'd trust, I still don’t trust entirely — they are creatures of chaos and evil incarnate, and if they’re putting on a friendly face, who’s to say it’s not part of a larger agenda?”

The Boundary Planes. “There are two Boundary Planes to my mind, and they are diametrically opposed. One of them, Mechanus, is the very essence of law, a place where beliefs fit together, interlocking, turning, in a massive machine that is the entire plane. Some folks'd have it that the gears of Mechanus are the engine that drives the planes. The other plane is Limbo, a swirling morass of Chaos that follows no rules, none, and just when a body thinks he’s classified its behavior, it goes and changes on him — or it doesn’t. You just can’t tell. I was in Limbo not too long ago…”

He closed his eyes, remembering: “I had a githzerai guide with me, an anarch who could shape the illogical matter of the plane into forms of his desire. We had fought off the harrying of the slaadi, the chaos-creatures who call that plane home. It seemed there were more than usual, but then, one can never tell what’s ‘usual’ in Limbo… but I digress. In the midst of all this chaos, we came across a series of huge, metal, interlocking cubes, like some sort of puzzle box. It wasn’t something we had shaped, consciously or not, and we couldn’t find a way inside. It was like… like a bastion of order within the confines of disorder, a seed of law. That is the best I can explain it.”

The Outlands. “The Outlands are absolute neutrality. Probably the best place for a body to visit in the Outer Planes, outside of Sigil, if you don’t want to have a plane’s morality forced into your heart. Everything balances out in the Outlands — as it should be, for the plane that sits at the center of the Outer Planes. Powers’realms are scattered about here, and there are handfuls of ‘gate towns’ that open into the rest of the Outer Planes. The gate towns usually mirror the philosophy of the plane their gates open on to — and if the balance of belief isn’t kept in the town, the town slips into the nearby plane. It’s a bad situation for everyone, because few of the folks in the towns really want that change.”

He had also just come back from the Negative Material Plane. When I asked him of it, his eyes clouded over. “I went to the Inner Planes to discover my true essence. I made the mistake of visiting the Negative Material Plane in order to understand my body’s urge to decay and the cycle of death in life. I thought myself protected against the ill effects of the plane with my magic, but I was wrong. The blackness of infinite nothing pressed on my soul, and I was beset by shadows that sought to snuff out my very soul. I lost my way for a time — for an eternity — and nearly lost my existence. I could feel my essence falling away from me, and am even now half-gone. Never will I return.”

“How did you survive?”

“How did I survive?” He smiled tightly. “With a piece of nothing that held back the nothing. Nothing can stop nothing, you know, and so I carried nothing in my hand to protect me. Do you plan to journey to the ultimate negation yourself? You have the smell of desperation about you, and so I make you this gift. Hold it in your hand when the shadows press in, and it should protect you and your friends somewhat, should they remain close to you. Heh.” He passed me a small, black token that looked as if it had no dimensionality to it all.