Interlude - Dylrath

Think of this as the calm before the storm. Things are about to get interesting. :)

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Interlude

Dlyrath sits in class, bored.

"Now, the advanced figment is usually characterized by..."

He tunes out the professor. The subject is illusion magic, usually a worthwhile subject, but today he can't stop his mind from wandering. He is due to graduate this year with a full-fledged diploma, thus gaining both prestige and a number of rights and privileges in Oursk. Only another six months! But now he has to decide what the future will bring. Spymaster? Information Mage? Back-alley seller of odd and unusual objects? Avoider of Kestellin's assassins? So many possibilities. So many opportunities. He just hopes things don't get boring.

"Common flaws typically have to do with reaction time in the non-self-aware figment. For most wizards, it's simply..."

Yeah, whatever. He wonders what the rest of the Defenders are up to right now. Probably something fun. Last three times he tried to scry for them with the Mirror, it was no-go. Annoying. Around him, students studiously scribble down notes, all except for one girl who won't stop staring at him with big doe eyes. He's pretty sure that she tried a love spell on him last week. No way to be sure, though. Then out of the corner of his eye, Dylrath realizes that she's still staring at him, but on her parchment she's sketching a heart with his initials in it and.. is that a dagger? – yes, a serrated dagger sticking out of it. Creepy.

"Hello, Dylrath. Miss me?"

Dylrath knows that voice: arrogant, self-satisfied, and dripping with sarcasm. Teliez, the half-god son of Toraz, Lord of Murder. A drop of acid drips onto Dylrath's notebook, and he glances up. The adolescent demigod is sitting cross-legged on the ceiling, staring straight down at him.

"Teliez." Dylrath says it out loud without even thinking about it, and the fleeting thought occurs to him that just saying his name may be a kind of worship. That's just wrong.

"Tell us what, Master Birdhouse?" Startled, Dylrath realizes that the instructor is staring at him expectantly.

"They can't see or hear me," Teliez smirks. "Just you."

"Tell you.." Dylrath's mind races back over what the teacher had just been saying, and he exercises the skills of lying that he learned from the late Alix Loial.. "..that I thought that as standard practice, most self-aware figments aren't even self-aware! They just mimic intelligence from their caster. They can't really think for themselves."

"Very good, Master Birdhouse! That is true. Most blah blah blah..."

Dylrath tunes him out again. What are you doing here? he thinks to Teliez. How's the God business?

"I'm getting out of it." Dylrath does a double-take as Teliez smirks, his pocked and acne-scarred face looking smug. "Well, not technically. I'm just getting out of trying to be the God of Adventurers. It was a good idea, but they keep dying on me." Teliez shrugs. "I need organized worship. There's a better opportunity, and I'm going to grab it while I can." Teliez's voice drops down to a whisper. "This is big. I handle this right, and I'll never be under my Dad's yoke again. I just wanted to give you the chance to be my first priest, if you wanted it." He flips greasy hair out of his sunken eyes.

Dylrath shudders. Err.. what's this opportunity?

Teliez's upside-down face contorts as he winks. "Can't tell you yet. But you'll find out. Ohhh, yes." His voice is excited, and cruel. He glances behind him. "Crap, they're coming. Gotta go." He grins again, his teeth flashing sharply. "It'll all be a fait accompli before long. Give it some thought. Opportunities like this don't happen too often – for either of us." He reaches up to rub at some acne, and vanishes.

With a nervous glance at the girl behind him, Dylrath refocuses on the lesson, only to realize that the teacher is chewing out a student with unreasonable harshness, just for dropping a quill. The young rogue/wizard shivers a little.

A better opportunity? What's that supposed to mean? Time to go talk to a cleric at the Temple of Calphas the Wallbuilder! Umm.. just so long as he can have the conversation without letting on that he has somehow turned into a career advisor for evil gods. They may not understand that so much, and rumor has a nasty habit of traveling. Yeah, Dylrath muses as he slumps in his uncomfortable chair. Some things should be kept private.

Sialia:
Does anyone need a recap of Dylrath's earlier dealings with Teliaz, or are we all up to speed on how Dylrath got himself in to this mess?

Piratecat and I wrote up a long series of emails discussing the matter, and I don't recall how much of it, if any, ever saw the light of storyhour.

Very short form: Teliaz was assigned by his dad, Toraz God of Murder (ptui), the job of assasinating the Defenders.

Teliaz didn't have any objection to doing so, except that it looked to be a scut job and he was feeling rebellious. He gave Dylrath the opportunity to talk him into blowing it off. Which Dylrath did, only he let his mouth get away for a bit and incidentally persuaded Teliaz to try to get out from under Toraz's thumb by setting up his own shop as the "God of People With Suicidal Hobbies."

This roughly got translated to "God of Adventurers."

Dylrath was kind of hoping Teliaz would either get himself killed bungee jumping into magma (he spent a while trying to sell Teliaz on some xtreme sports), or discover that gods who save & protect their worshippers have more fun (or at least, more worshippers).

At a bare minimum, it kept him distracted from killing the Defenders for a few months.

It's been a few months.

Piratecat:
The PCs first ran into Teliez about six years ago in real time, about four or five years ago in game time. The group was in the western edge of Kanach'Hur, the desert of the screaming sands. Teliez was leading a team of Deathgranter assassins. He was fifteen at the time.

The problem is, Teliez was the kind of rebellious fifteen that you don't see very often, the kind that has a god of murder for a father. His very sweat was poisonous acid; his acne was uncontrollable; pretty girls kept dying whenever he tried to kiss them; and he was growing tired to obeying his father's every whim. He was less than happy.

So he ended up helping the Defenders, and in return they tossed him through a teleportation portal into the middle of the desert. It might not have been the nicest thing to do, but it seemed like the safest at the time. But he survived, and he's coming in to his power, and for some reason - some odd, unknown reason - he seems to have latched onto Dylrath has his confidante. Not the safest thing, perhaps, but probably more trustworthy than his father's priests or just any old mortal.

In an attempt to distract Teliez from becoming the demigod of torture, or the demigod of poison, Dylrath hit upon the idea of making him the patron deity of adventurers. It seems.. perhaps.. he's found a new gig.

Sagiro
C'mon, PCat, tell the whole story. The last thing Teliez did was suddenly turn on us and attack! Now as it turned out, that was because the spririt of another worse enemy, Dale Greldin of Imbindarla, had possessed him and forced him to betray us. But at the time it was all extremely confusing; I recall that Velendo expelled Greldin from Teliez's body, and in the same round someone else (our storm giant ally, I believe) booted Teliez through a magic portal and into the desert. None of us intended or expected that he'd die -- he was a demigod, after all -- but there wasn't time just then to stand around figuring out if Teliez had meant to attack us or not.

Since, as you well know, the world was about to end.