[quote]A collaboration between Oraculum and Terminal[/quote]

[center][h1]The Vale of Nergthron[/h1][/center]

If there was something that anyone approaching the Vale of Nergthron could be thankful for, it was that the dead could not smell. This was in truth a blessing for ghouls wherever they may have been, for to walk about cloaked in the eternal stench of one’s own decay would at length have driven even the stoutest spirits mad. Doubly so was it for the laborers of Leria’s meatworks, who moved daily among masses of rancid flesh that would have put the foulest abattoirs of mankind to shame. To walk among the dead without being one of them would have been a waking nightmare, and the affliction of the senses was only one of the ways in which this was made obvious.

Yet neither the prison of one’s own carcass nor the most unclean pits of Necron could compare with the air that hung around the seat of the Locus. Even at a distance of leagues, with the shadow of the mountains only just coming into sight, the noisome exhalations of the veritable oceans of rot that lay ahead, spreading unstirred for decades under the windless skies of Eagoth’s realm, would have sickened any living thing beyond its strength to forge ahead. Perhaps there, more than anywhere else, it was clear that this land belonged to the living dead, and to them alone. The corruption had permeated the soil, choked even the hardiest of weeds, stifled the last faint breezes with its cloying, invisible grip.

None of this gave the convoy any pause as it crawled its way upon the beaten road towards the towering fissure that was the gateway to the Vale. Little marvel, for even without the overpowering foulness that radiated from its destination, its own presence would have been noxious enough to be unendurable. Two pairs of meat-crafted horrors, mockeries of the equine form, pulled as many sturdy wooden carts, each laden with an enormous cauldron that barely fit into its confines. Within the vessels, churning and spluttering with every step, roiled draughts of the same infernal substance that coursed through Nergthron’s veins, ancient bodies nigh-liquefied by corrosion into a nauseating sludge interspersed with stray bones or limbs with the occasional scrap of still-intact flesh clinging to them. With every shuddering step the equine horrors took towards the vale, the more the contents of the cauldrons seemed to squirm and writhe on its own, though the bulk of it remained inert - for the moment. 

A handful of scraggly ghouls led the draught-beasts, flanked by the convoy’s guardians, four gigantic creatures doubtless assembled from many a corpse. The many-limbed things, several layers of hide and large, ruvid dry leaves sewn to their very bodies for greater sturdiness, towered several heads over their charges, almost reaching to the lip of the cauldrons, and despite their malformed posture had no trouble keeping pace with the carts. A figure akin to a hunchback, bent under a bulging protrusion upon its shoulders concealed beneath a mouldy cloak and propping itself up with a walking-staff, led the cortege. These grisly sights, more than the upper half of a desiccated crucified cadaver mounted on the foremost cart in the stead of a standard, marked the party as having come from the dread city of Comiriom.

A merciful pall of darkness fell upon the monstrous procession as it neared the foot of the cleft mountain. The gaping passage bore the seeming of a giant’s handiwork - as if a massive being had simply slammed the edge of their hand down through the mountainside, leaving a great cleft through its length. Evidence of an older network of roads that had wound up the mountains and through passages higher up remained evident, still connected by unused and moldering wooden bridges that hung like webbing between the gaps.

This network of roads and bridges had been abandoned ever since the great causeways had been completed, traveled solely by undead vagabonds and miscreants who had made hideaways for themselves amidst the heights - which had been completely ignored by Rixis and his retainers. Which was why the unexpected presence of a newly-erected wooden watchtower up along the lowest of the obviated paths, and the uncharacteristic detail of guards there, had caused considerable anxiety amongst the haulers, flesh-masters and meat-workers seeking passage into Nergthron. Thankfully, the convoy from Comiriom was not stopped, the sentinels waving them through the crude palisades across the road in favor of holding up a drawn carriage emblazoned with the banners of one of Eagoth’s Revenants Major. 

As the convoy moved on, the guards had forcibly drawn the carriage’s occupants out from the interior and restrained them. It was a brazen defiance of the Pax Mortis - guards acting under the behest of a Revenant Major [i]could[/i] apprehend ghouls and their coterie with sufficient cause, but it was evident that these watchers were acting on only the barest of pretenses. The decision to approach Nergthron under the guise of an ordinary flesh convoy seemed all the more prudent for the unexpected development - clearly the master of the Locus’ vale was up to something.

Unhindered, save by the need to make its way among the ghouls shambling about on the paths and walkways, the carts moved deeper in, approaching the web of trenches where flowed the animate mass of the Dead Sea. The hunchbacked leader motioned over towards one of the closer barracks, and the pack-leaders turned thither, along with three of the hulking monstrosities. As the body of the convoy drifted off in search of a revenant to direct it in the task of pouring its noisome charge into the greater bulk beneath - a task that ought to have been none too arduous, but that nevertheless was best not trusted to mindless drudges, especially with the cauldrons’ contents growing more restless by the moment - the cloaked being, followed by the fourth abominable guard, shambled across bridges and raised passages towards the heart of the vale, where the master of the Locus resided.

The master and warden of the Vale was well-known to be reclusive, and to normally reside in the subterranean depths of the vale where none could readily reach or seek audience with him. However, amongst other indiscrepancies, there was now an active routine of armed ghouls on patrols amidst the bustling, shuffling traffic of the vale. Utterly unnecessary patrols, as the invisibly hanging Locus above was untouchable by any conventional means and there was nothing of great import in terms of infrastructure to defend. The only reason for so many guards to be out and about was if they were protecting somebody - and their lord was known through Leria for his craven nature. Only he would call for a ring of guards in the midst of his own territory and the seat of his power.

Evidently aware of the Locus Warden’s way, or instructed about what countenance to keep within his domain, the cloaked messenger seemed to do his best to appear unthreatening. This was to no small degree eased by his deformed frame. It was difficult to believe that so wretched a body, arduously shuffling under its own misbegotten weight, could have held the strength to menace. Even the creature trailing behind it attempted to seem subdued, to the best of its abilities, though with far scarcer success.

As he drew near to a larger handful of roving ghouls, the hunchback raised a bony hand to beckon to them, and hobbled with somewhat hastened steps to approach them.

“I come for the Warden,” a dry, parched voice hissed from underneath the frayed hood once the being had drawn close enough to be heard, “The master of Comiriom bids me deliver a missive for him alone.”

“The Master of Comiriom, says this one.” The patrol in question, comprised of ghouls in mismatched armor and wielding jagged, unkempt weaponry, was lead by the lowest of Revenants Minor, who approached the hunchback with a shortblade drawn. Being assigned to the Locus Vale and the command of its warden was the nearest thing there was to a punishment or penal detail in Leria under the Pax Mortis, and so those Revenants who did wind up there trended towards humorless and detail-averse. “Well, present your seal, and I will consider not tossing you to the hunger below.”

Without a further word, the hunchback lifted a fold in his cloak, and out from beneath it came a hand - one too many to have belonged to his body, and clearly disproportionate to the others, but a hand nonetheless. He reached out with the unnatural appendage, and presented it back; upon it, gouged with a searing branding-iron, was a crude simulacrum of the sign that had heralded the convoy’s entrance into Nergthron, the upper half of a withered body with outsplayed arms.

“[i]Is[/i] that the seal of Comiriom’s Revenant Major?” One of the patrol leader’s lackeys rasped inquisitively. 

“You know, I’m not certain, I wasn’t expecting them to have one at all…” The Revenant Minor said absently as they gazed at the burnt sigil.

“What are we to do? The Warden bade us to apprehend-”

“We can start with [i]you[/i] shutting up, for one thing.” The patrol leader snapped before turning his attention back to the hunchback. “You claim you have a personal missive for the Warden? Are its contents urgent?” He bade.

“Utterly,” the messenger rasped, withdrawing its branded appendage and lowering the folds of his garment once again. “The Harvester commanded that it be delivered as soon as we came to the Vale, and that only its lord may know what it is.”

“So be it.” The patrol leader sighed. “Come with us, I will send a runner ahead. The Master has been preoccupied with work at their surface workshop, I imagine they will receive you there.”

The troupe turned towards the center of the vale, leading the hunchback onwards. As they passed a certain point, the area suddenly careened from dimly lit to black as the early ‘eve. Looking up, the hunchback would see the sun seemed to have been eclipsed - though by what could not be discerned, as though some invisible obstruction was choking out the sunlight before it could reach the ground. Crackling, iridescent motes seemed to hover and glide through the air here, falling from some indeterminable point above.

Placed almost directly underneath the epicenter of the vale and the inexplicable eclipse was an actual tower - not one of the slapshod wooden hovels on stilts that dotted the vale, but an actual tower as might befit a citadel’s watch, with competent masonry. It was not particularly tall, perhaps only three floors in height, but from the network of trenches and pulley-drawn bridges surrounding it, this was clearly the workshop of the Vale’s master.

The hunchback was led across each of the trenches in turn, each bridge lowering one by one to permit passage over the churning, grime-black cruor in the canals below. At the tower entrance, the patrol turned the hunchback over to the party of sentries within.

“Search him.” The garrison commander ordered, a pair of faintly better-appointed and more put-together ghouls approaching the hunchback.

As if to anticipate their intentions, the messenger let go of his cane and tossed up his arms, letting his cloak fall off his body. The sight beneath was more hideous even than one may have expected from a herald of Ghural. His body was that of a mere ghoul, better-kept than one may have believed from him hobbling gait, but marked by death none the less, bare from the belt up and criss-crossed by sutures like a flagellant’s scars. The third arm, grafted to the underside of his ribcage, looked feeble and vestigial, gnarled and bent in the elbow.

But it was his back that most drew the eyes. What had, under cover of the cloak, seemed like a hump was in truth no less than a second, limbless torso surmounted by another head. The ribs of that body were interlocked with the spine of the wretch’s true frame with a morbid precision, and its sides tapered out to folds of skin that were sewn to his flanks over what remained of his own. The upper head was little more than an emaciated skull, with no eyes nor ears and with the jaw removed from its mouth. Underneath it, the ghoul’s own nearly fleshless features seemed almost lifelike by comparison.

His appearance drew the fluttering, wheezing remnant of what would have been a whistle had the ghoul uttering it been alive. 

“Well, I don’t see any weapons, good enough-” The commander began.

“Sir, he could definitely have some weapons inside their cavities, I mean just look at the patchwork-”

“Oh, if only. Take a [i]hint[/i] man.” The Commander rolled his one good eye while the other lazily drifted in its rotten socket. He turned back to the hunchback. “The Warden is on the roof, he has some new hoighty-toighty bodyguard. Mummy revenant of some kind. Seeing as you are completely and utterly unarmed and we will be searching you on the way back out, I don’t think it’s necessary for us to send you up with an escort.” The messenger’s two heads gave a nod in reply.

The ascent to the roof was unremarkable. The second floor contained an armory and barracks, the third contained an archway doubtlessly leading to the Warden’s personal lab  - which was unfortunately shuttered and locked by a heavy iron door. The only way to go was up.

The roof of the tower was crowded with curious devices and mechanisms - telescopes, astrolabes, several tables with lain-out arcane scrolls alongside twisting amalgams of metal and crystal. Resting atop a raised wooden platform near the edge of the roof was the Warden himself.

Magus Rixis, little more than a steaming, undulating pile of offal, rested in place while a Minor Revenant - a mummy dressed in long robes and fine linen bandages as the Commander below had indicated - was precariously poised in an awkward arrangement. They were bent over, with one foot raised and protruding behind them upwards, with a bottle wrapped in rags perched on their sole - while they simultaneously held up some mechanical contrivance before the roiling heap of refuse, angled upwards in the vague direction of the noontime sun, all whilst balanced on their one remaining foot. 

“...will require a sufficiently potent catalyst-” A gurgling voice emanated from without the mound of necrotic tissue. The Mummy Revenant glanced to the hunchback as they emerged up onto the roof, but said nothing.

Shambling ahead, more precariously, it seemed, than before, and keeping on his feet mainly thanks to his staff, the two-headed messenger approached the scene by a few staggering steps, but then stopped short, as if wary of unsettling the already tense balance. Instead, he lightly tapped the floor with his stick, and gave an inchoate, dusty wheeze from his two throats which briefly coalesced into words.

“Lord Warden,” the lower head spoke, as the upper one continued to rasp for a moment before returning to silence, “The Harvester has-”

As if the cursory break of the relative silence on the rooftop had brought down the wrath of a vengeful god, the hunchback was abruptly lifted off their feet and sent hurtling across the length of the rooftop as a wall of unseen force bowled them over, hitting them like a stone from a catapult. Two of the nearby tables fell as their legs gave out and splintered from the residual force, scattering delicate vials and parchment on the ground and to the winds of the vale as metal and crystalline baubles tumbled to the ground beside them or even tipped right off the edge of the tower to fall unceremoniously into the stew of death below. The Mummy Revenant immediately lost its footing, tumbling forward and slamming their jaw against the bannister for the raised wooden platform, the rag-wrapped bottle that had been perched on their foot shattering on the flagstones below and spilling a bright, phosphorescent mixture onto the stonework.

“WHO [i]DARES[/i] APPROACH ME WITHOUT WARNING?!?” The voice that tore through the air was pitted by the underlying slur of lurching, liquefied meat as Magus turned his repulsive mound of a body towards where the hunchback lay, the small crevice in its side where his skull peered out orienting, bobbing wildly about the towertop in search of the intruder.

Despite its apparent motley composition, the messenger’s body had proved surprisingly sturdy. Not a single stitch had come loose in his fall, and even his staff had remained firmly in his grip. He propped himself up on his two free hands as he set it upright and rose to his feet, balancing his uneven body with what was almost skill. Righting himself as much he could, he again trudged a few steps forward and stood hesitantly at the edge of the chaos strewn by Rixis’ outburst.

“Lord Warden,” he repeated, almost obtusely retreading his words and tone alike, “The Harvester has sent me to bear a missive for you alone, in utmost secrecy.” 

“Feh, just a mindless messenger. Chased the daylight right out of me.” Rixis burbled. “This must be the commander’s idea of a crude prank. They will answer most dearly for it…” He paused, turning the direction of the gap in his roiling mass towards the Mummy Revenant as they stood back up and began to recover from their fall before turning their attention back to the hunchback.

“The Harvester, you say? Utmost secrecy? And what possible matter of import could they have for one such as me? Speak!”

“I cannot say myself,” the hunchback answered in the same windy scraping, “I do not know. But it is here.” He raised a hand to his second head, which had fixed its empty sockets on the Magus’ shifting mass, and pointed at the dome of its skull. “He said that you would see.”

“A message kept secure in the other body’s mind? But it has no jaw, how is it…” Rixis began to murmur. “Ah. Through the other one. The Harvester is clearly a creature of ways and means.”

The hunchback felt a sudden rush of insight as some looming imperative took hold within them.

“Speak your burden’s message.” Rixis slurred.

The two heads briefly twitched in separate directions, then realigned in synchrony as if a single will were taking hold of both. The lower one’s mouth gaped open, then began to speak, more animated than before. Even its voice seemed for a moment to have grown less spectral.

“In old graves from the west, my ghouls have found a thing never seen before.” The messenger hobbled ahead, to where one of the fallen reagents had fallen over, spilling a grainy silvery powder. It had mingled with some concoction from a shattered vial, forming a thick layer like damp sand. With motions too sharp and precise to have wholly been its own, the ghoul drew some lines through it with a finger, producing a strikingly clear depiction of the pendant that had surfaced in Comiriom.

“A trinket, a jewel of some kind, that has a hidden power. A heat comes from it that even we can feel, and a slumbering strength that waits to be roused. You who know of things sorcerous - what sort of burial gift is that, and what is it worth?”

“A burial gift? This amulet was found within a grave?” Rixis’ voice had adopted an almost awe-struck kind of apprehension, as though they had just stumbled across a dragon’s hoard, complete with its serpentine guardian dozing lightly atop it. “What kind, and where?”

The heads twisted towards each other, as if straining to recollect.

“We do not know. The bodies came with many others. It might have been anywhere North of the Narze. Maybe from the coast, maybe from inland.”

“...A few possibilities do occur to me, though it would require direct examination. I will send my aide to appraise your master’s find. If it is one of the more valuable possibilities, I will charge them to bargain with the Harvester for it.” The roiling mass turned away from the hunchback. “Unless there was more, return below and await my aide Lineaus here, they will be returning to Comiriom with you for this purpose.”

“Speak to none of this. Many others may covet that find,” the altered hunchback admonished, before being struck by another spasm which shook his whole body. The heads spun again, and then his whole body seemed to slump, losing the spark of foreign vigour that had animated it for a few moments. He leaned heavily on his staff again, and in his withered voice croaked “It will be done,” before shuffling back towards the descending stairway.

“What is this all about?” Lineus demanded as they groped at their own jaw, probing for evidence of any lingering damage to the aged tissue. 

“Not out here, we are too exposed - the wind might carry our words. Into the lab below.” Rixis seethed.

The two traveled down the flight of stairs, Lineaus fetching the key to the locked archway to permit them both entry before closing and locking the portal behind them. Both walls of the room were lined with book and scroll laden shelves, while the middle held a great cauldron perched atop a metal grille and a bench filled with alchemical apparatus and glassware. Trunks heaped with wooden slots filled with various ingredients and substances were heaped about here, and against the far wall was a podium mounting a large, ornate pewter basin. Patches of disturbed dust signified where previously, a number of now missing items and furniture had occupied the room - the clutter that had likely been moved up to the rooftop for Rixis’ purposes.

“What do you know,” Rixis slurred, “Of the Sidereal Amulet?”

“The Sider-” Lineaus began in surprise. “Tha- that is an older artifact, I believe. Younger mages would scarcely recall its history. From what little I have heard, it was an opal, set on a pendant of gold. The histories do not agree on its exact properties. Its bearer could control the weather, read minds, channel lightning, any number of outlandish things most common folk come up with. It was apparently sealed away as a burial gift in some remote, undocumented realm of Leria - I did not know of it at all some years ago, until somebody in Eagoth’s court mentioned offhand how he had acquired it during the campaign.”

“Yesss, so it was said. What you do not know,” Rixis churned across the room towards a certain trunk, blasting its lid open to bounce wildly on its hinges with a gust of power before levitating out numerous volumes that he then began to jumble and sort through in the air. “...was that the Amulet was an ambition of mine, before and after I entered Eagoth’s service. He learned of this, much in the manner as I learned of your own machinations - at the time, I believed he had set out and found the pendant for himself, so as to strike my remaining aspirations out from under me. He had his Vizier announce its discovery to the court, and of course everybody believed the claim though we never lay eyes upon it…”

“...So Eagoth lied about obtaining this artifact just to make you fall in line?” Lineaus queried.

“Not precisely, Eagoth has never held me in such great esteem. It is hard to venture as to all the purposes for the claim, but the pendant used to be, amongst other things, Regalia.” Rixis went on distractedly as he continued pulling books from the trunk with unseen force to jumble about in the air. “It would be one of many ways to shore up his rule as legitimate even amongst the living realms, having conquered all of Leria.”

“And you are certain it was deception and that this is it?” Lineaus ventured.

“It is [i]possible.[/i]” Rixis murmured in response. “Plausible enough that it is worth sacrificing a useful pawn like yourself.” Rixis hurled a selection of the books he had pulled out from the trunk into a heap by the door.

“Those are a collection of tomes containing descriptions of similar gems and artifacts you could reasonably pretend the item to be - or that it might actually be if I am wrong. When you arrive to examine it, if it [i]is[/i] the Sidereal Amulet, you will lie and bargain with the Harvester to obtain it. If such proves impossible, you are to take it by force.”

“By force?” Lineaus guffawed. “This is a Revenant Major we are discussing here, and one does not simply [i]break[/i] that Pax Mortis so brazenly-”

“Oh, just like you were willing to [b]DO AGAINST ME?”[/b] Rixis roared wrathfully, sending the mummy to his knees with a blow of force from above coupled with an imperative to kneel. The moment passed, the air settling from the sudden rush of power that had flown through it.

“But you raise a valid point. So I will address the specific issues with taking such action. If you should fail to escape with the Amulet, it will be because you decided to break the Pax Mortis of your own volition - for as you said to me, you [i]did[/i] come to settle your own score with Eagoth’s court in much the same way, yes? By all appearances it will be that you were sent to me as punishment, and attempted to rebel by taking the Amulet for yourself. As, in fact, will be the case even if you are successful I imagine. Your only recourse will be to flee and return to me - and if you return without it, I will send you down into the Dead Sea below to be remade.”

“You - you don’t-” Lineaus struggled to draw breath into his dead lungs in order to speak, some invisible pressure still clamping down on him from all sides. “...don’t have the nerve...to risk all this…”

“Oh, it is a gamble, but one well worth it. My plan for the Locus, as you well know, will require a potent catalyst. The Sidereal Amulet, if that is truly what this is, will serve that purpose ably. And if it is not...I will be able to weather the consequences, even if you do not.” Rixis rumbled darkly as he drew the heap of his body away from the trunk and towards the basin near the back of the chamber.

“Now come, there are a number of enchantments I must cast upon you so as to promote your chances of success, if theft becomes necessary. [i]Do[/i] endeavor to stay out of trouble before then, many of these will only remain useful for a handful of instances…”