DM and the Dirty 20s CH 67.5

This release closes out the 20k stretch of backlogged support content. I'm sure we'll be seeing more soon though!

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Aka the project formerly known as Untitled D&D Group Story

Chapter 67 (Continued)

“Sixteen, Arcana,” Elyse announced.

“Fifteen, History,” Rhia said.

“Dirty Twenty, History,” Jade grinned in relief.

“Alright,” I grinned. “Let’s talk about Sphinxes.”

“Olivia, you’ve at least heard of a sphinx. You know they are some sort of mythical creature, supposedly from down in the Southlands, though as far as you know, there weren’t any in Parnassus. Other than that, you know the basics - they have a thing for riddles and puzzles, they crop up in the stories of heroes at inconvenient times, and they are supposed to be as dangerous as dragons.”

“How dangerous is a dragon?” Elyse asked the table.

“Well, it’s in the name of the game, so…” Tori smirked at her roommate.

“Pretty fucking dangerous,” Rhia grimaced.

“And how big is this sphinx?” Elyse asked me. “As big as a lion?”

“He’s shaped much like a lion, with skin and fur that looks like stone, but he’s about…think four Escalades long, and two high?”

“Fuck,” Elyse said, trying to imagine the size I’d described. I didn’t want to bust out the map and the minis quite yet to let her see the scale that way.

“Renee, with your sixteen in Arcana, you know the same as Rhia, and you’ve never seen or met someone who has seen one,” I said. “But, when you focus on him, the sphinx seems to emit some sort of aura of power. You’ve met others who use arcane magic before, and it’s sort of like if you look at someone like yourself with while using your Detect Magic spell - you may not see an aura if they aren’t actively casting a spell, holding a magic item or have a spell cast on them, but when you focus there is an element of potential magic. The Sphinx is like that, but you can feel it, and it’s a good thirty-five feet away from you right now.”

“So what you’re saying is that it’s very magic,” Elyse groaned.

“That’s what I’m saying,” I chuckled and nodded. “Now, Jade, with a dirty twenty on history - you know the basics just like Olivia, though you can’t feel its aura since you aren’t attuned to Arcane magic. You also haven’t met one before, or know anyone who has, but you do know more specifics about them from the stories. First, Sphinxes are known to stand guard over important, esoteric locations, the tombs of ancient heroes who consorted with Sphinxes, and the ruins of ancient repositories of knowledge. Second, you know that they have several abilities beyond an understanding of arcane magic - they can fly, their claws and teeth are as dangerous as the sharpest of elven blades, and their roar is said to be so loud that it can not only cause physical injury and fear, but it can also addle the senses. Some stories even claim that they can see both forward and backwards in time, making them extremely difficult to surprise, but also prone to being addled by an overload of possibilities.”

“You do realise we didn’t need to fear this thing any more, right?” Tori asked.

I chuckled and shrugged. “That’s all that comes to mind with a dirty 20,” I said.

The girls took a long five minutes to discuss, out-of-character, what the hell they were going to do. In the end, I cleared my throat and pointed at my watch, reminding them that we were already running long on the session (we’d passed our usual dinner time and were probably into the now-traditional naked hot tub time) and that their characters didn’t have the ability to stop mid-conversation to discuss. Especially within hearing of the Sphinx.

“Fuck it,” Rhia said. “We talk to it. That’s the only thing we can really do. We can’t fight it, and if we run away, then this whole trip was wasted, and we go back empty-handed other than saying we fucked some ghosts. We might have been able to set up a trick or something if we’d known to expect it, but we didn’t, and we’re too low level.”

“Wait, what was the last thing he said, again?” Elyse asked.

I cleared my throat, preparing to put on my ‘booming huge creature’ voice.

“Who are you, to answer the riddles and come into this sacred place and disturb the rest of a Blessed One?”

The three adventurers glanced at each other nervously, and then Olivia stepped forward. “We are champions of the people, Oh Great… Blessed One? We’ve come hoping to find help from the past to fight the evils of the present.”

“Hmph,” the Sphinx harumphed. “I am not the Blessed One, so-called Champion. This is the final resting place of Hastor Unger, Blessed One, the last Speaker of the Sands. What makes you think that his past may enlighten your present?”

Renee cleared her throat, stepping up next to Olivia to address the immense creature. “We hope, Guardian. Hastor Unger’s history has been hidden from even his own bloodline. One of them lies above, dead at the hands of the ancient spirits interned above, which was enough to convince the family to forget this hero.”

“We know nothing of his deeds,” Jade added. “We don’t even know if he was a hero or a despot, though we’d be willing to learn who he was and bring the knowledge and story back to his kin. What we really need, though, are any magical weapons, armour or tools he might have been buried with. We fight an enemy who can withstand our blows, heal from all wounds, and who has rallied an army of criminals to depose Hastor Unger’s Great-... Great-Niece? One or two Greats, anyways.”

I hated it when a party I was DMing for tended to try and all talk and get in what they thought was important, all at once. It made the conversation feel a lot more clunky to me. It also happened in every game I’d ever run, and still did in The Game even though we’d had conversations about it over the two decades we’d played together. Gamers were just gonna Game, sometimes.

“You… hope,” the Sphinx growled. “You come in ignorance, but with hope, to steal from one of the finest heroes of the age, though few of this world would know him for it. Tell me, ‘Champions,’ do you feel you have earned his arms? His armour?”

“Tell us how he became the last Speaker of the Sands,” Renee said. “And then we will know if we might be worthy.”

The Sphinx released a noise that made the marble stage that the three women were standing on shake, like it was about to shatter into pieces, and all three of them tensed again before they realised the immense cat-creature was purring.

“I think he likes it when we pick up on details,” Elyse whispered to Tori and Rhia.

“Or ask good questions,” Tori grinned at her roommate.

“Hastor, once called the Steel Prince, was travelling across the sands of the Thumian Desert, once called the Sea of Lost Sorrows by the Carthians, and the Wastes of Tirell before them by the Six Cities of Splendours. This was a risk for the Steel Prince, a necessary gamble, as he had become cut off from his mercenary company through black treachery worthy of a tale all its own. With time pressing on his conscience, still he paused when he found the steeple of the Temple of Obstinance protruding from the sands of the desert. He forced his way into the steeple and fought his way through the thirty-three levels of the ancient temple, facing the worst fears his mind could imagine, the living mind of the Dark of a Moonless Sky, and finally discovered the heart of the temple where the Avatar of Obstinance had sat in furore for six millennia. 

“Obstinance offered Hastor a choice: accept a deal with the God and become its ordained Champion and bear his powers out into the world above, but forever leave the Temple and never speak of it to anyone. It would have seemed an easy choice to many, especially those who understood the power of a true Avatar of the Gods such as the Steel Prince did, having studied the ancient battles and the effects of the near-rise of the Avatar of Wrath. But Hastor also saw through the one-faced God, whose stubbornness should have been directed at the Steel Prince’s violation of its chosen course, and saw that the God was trapped in a situation of its own making - and it hid that situation behind its back.

“Hastor refused, as he had refused many a one-sided deal in the past, refusing to accept without understanding the missing details. Instead, he attempted to bargain and cajole the Avatar, to goad it into rising from its seat at the heart of the temple. To stand, or face that which was behind it, but Obstinance was anything but willing to move. To change. And so the Steel Prince used that tool which he had learned was the most effective when dealing with the jealous, greedy and stubborn of the world - he agreed to the Avatar’s terms. He lied. And, when he approached the relieved Avatar to receive his blessing, he drew forth the cloak he had made of the Dark of the Moonless Sky and cast it upon the Avatar’s face, blinding it for an eternity and a moment, and used that time to discover an Orb of Shifting Sands embedded into the very middle of the chamber floor. Sensing that the Avatar, and therefore the God, was both the prisoner of its own devices and the jailer enacting its nature upon another, Hastor threw himself upon the Orb with a cry, intending to break the surface and discover who, or what, was inside. What the Blessed One did not know at the time was that this was the Orb of Shifting Sands, the original relic that Tirell had used to wipe that old City of Gold, Casmagan, from the maps, erasing the Seventh City of Splendours root and stem.

“Throwing himself upon the Orb, crying out in defiance of the God that had helped Tirell in the creation of the Orb, the Steel Prince touched the deep magics for the briefest moment and absorbed enough of the collective knowledge of Casmagan to understand the old Arcane tongue of its Speakers. This, ‘Champions,’ is how Hastor Unger became the last Speaker of the Sands.”

“Wait,” Jade called. “Please, Guardian, finish the story. Who, or what, was imprisoned in the Orb of Shifting Sands?”

I had to take a break, giving myself time to take a long sip from my water after monologue storytelling for so long, and I could see the impatience on all three of their faces, so I drew that sip out as long as I could without breaking into a laugh.

With a sigh as I set down my near-empty water glass, I raised my eyebrows at them.

“Shane!” Rhia said.

I cleared my throat.

The Sphinx purred again, the three adventurers feeling it in their bones. “That, small one, is an astute request,” he said. “When the Steel Prince absorbed enough of the powers of the Orb, the beings inside it were ready after a millennium of patience, and they struck in unison at their prison, shattering the Orb. My brethren of the Order of Enigma and I were finally released, and we set upon the Avatar side by side with the Steel Prince, flaying it in a battle that shook the sands above and rocked the foundations of the very earth, opening a great chasm in the temple. Together we cast the Avatar into that chasm, into the cleansing fires of the world’s core, ending its long imprisonment to its own choices.

“This, young things, is how the Steel Prince became the Blessed One, as Obstinance found itself freed of a binding that should never have been and would never be again, and the Deity laid its hand upon Hastor Unger and cursed him with attention of the Gods. Together, the Steel Prince and my Order ascended out of the crumbling temple, emerging onto the sands that had once been the Seventh City Splendour, and the Order witnessed the terrible works of Tirell for the first time with our own eyes. In thanks to Hastor Unger, we promised the Blessed One two acts of service - first, that we would bear him from the sands to reunite with his Company, a task of ease for us, but of great honour for the Steel Prince, for never before nor since has a Sphinx allowed a mere mortal to rid upon their back. The second promise was that, when the last Speaker of the Sands met his mortal end, the Order of Enigma would sit in vigil over his rest until a worthy successor made themselves known.”

“Fuck me,” Olivia murmured.

“You think he’s into that?” Renee asked with a sly smirk.

“Not what I meant,” Olivia hissed back, motioning for the sorceress to cut it out. She raised her voice to address the Sphinx. “Thank you, Guardian, for telling us this story. Are you… bound here by that promise, then? Trapped, just like you were in the old temple?”

The Sphinx opened his mouth like he was about to respond, but for the first time, the adventurers noticed a more traditional emotion from the creature - hesitation. “I am not trapped,” he said. “Bound, in a way, but not trapped.”

“But you’re alone?” Renee spoke up. “Unless the rest of your Order is… around? Are you all sitting vigil, or…?”

The Sphinx breathed in, and the adventurers winced at what they hoped wouldn’t be a roar that would break their eardrums, but instead he let out a great sigh, warm air washing over the entire room in a gust. “When we made our promises to the Steel Prince, my Order agreed that we would… take turns. None of us relished the idea of entombing ourselves once more, so soon after our imprisonment. I am the third to sit vigil for the last Speaker of the Sands.”

“So it’s like a rotation,” Olivia said. “That’s not that bad, I guess.”

“How long until you get to switch out with someone else? Are you on, like, the front half and looking at a long time, or are you counting down the days?” Jade asked.

This time, as the Sphinx purred, he moved, doing a very cat-like move of stretching out his front legs, giant claws emerging from his paws and tapping against the stone of his plinth. Then he settled back down onto his haunches, looking both comfortable but also ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. “My vigil should have ended thirty-seven years, five months and seventeen days ago,” he said, a mild grimace crossing his face. “My replacement has not arrived from my Order, and I cannot leave until they do.”

“Oh,” Jade said, blowing out a breath and giving an awkward look to the others.

“Wait, what does the Order of Enigma do when you’re not, um, sitting vigil? Or Imprisoned in a magical orb for thousands of years?” Renee asked.

Again, that purr, rattling the foundations of the room. “Before the Orb, before Tirell, we were protectors of lost knowledge. Our library was vast, for the eldest of our Order could remember the past ages, those lost to all mortal memory but ours. Even the Dragons do not have as long a memory as we. When we were set free from our prison by the Steel Prince, we sought our library and discovered the magics of Tirell had destroyed it, even though it had lain deep in the earth beneath the Seventh City. From there, the Order spread out across the world, seeking all memories of Tirell - his writings, his possessions, his artefacts - and any trace that he still lingered in the world.”

“Fuck,” Olivia said. “So you guys were hunting any hint of some super-powerful ancient wizard who destroyed an entire city and turned it into a huge desert, and now all your friends are missing?”

Again, a moment of hesitation. “It would seem so.”

The women all looked to each other, silently communicating, and then turned back to the Sphinx. “It sounds to me like we can help each other out here, Guardian,” Jade said boldly. “You need someone to be worthy of Hastor Ungor’s, what, gravitas? Boldness? Maybe you can explain what it means to be ‘worthy,’ and we can show you how we are, and then we can get the help we need, and you can… well, let’s be real, you can fuck off to find your people and leave us ‘young mortals’ to our business.”

“Unless, of course, your majestic presence would be open to lending yourself one last time to aid the bloodline of the Steel Prince,” Olivia added, worried that ‘fuck off’ line had possibly offended the Sphinx.

The monstrous cat-creature narrowed its eyes slightly and slowly cocked its head to the right, its big stone-like ears rotating as he examined the three women like they were potential prey. “Generally, in these kinds of situations, I don’t provide… hints.”

“Generally, I’m pretty sure you’re not stuck wondering if your fellow Sphinxes- Sphinxies? Sphinxers? Is it just Sphinx, like both singular and plural? - Anyways, you’re not wondering about what’s caused a backup in them following through on their promises for longer than any of us have been alive,” Renee said. “So maybe, I dunno, we cut to the chase a bit? Because I would honestly love to just sit and talk with you for days to hear the stories you know, and learn from all your wisdom, but we’re kind of on a time clock and there’s an angry werewolf bandit king trying to kidnap a hot widow to force her to marry him so that he can be the next Duke.”

“That does sound a little complicated for you,” the Sphinx said, smirking just a touch at the corner of its lips.

“Well, in that case, do you have any hints or pointers for three Go-Getter girls just trying to save a damsel, the people and the land stretching horizon to horizon from a total dickwad?” Jade asked.

This time when the Sphinx made a noise, it was deeper, more rumbling. Dust fell from the ceiling.

A growl, not a purr.

“Or maybe you could just clarify, oh Great Guardian,” Olivia said quickly. “Which part of Hastor we’re supposed to be worthy of? Is it him, his martial or military ability as the Steel Prince? Or the fact that he was Blessed and/or cursed with the attention of the Gods, or that he had the Speaker of the Sands thing at all? Or is it more of an ‘only winners keep winning’ and one of us has to be all of that, and not need his stuff, to get access to his stuff?”

The Sphinx shifted a little, settling and relaxing again. “If my Order were to wait for a worthy successor who could meet all of Hastor Unger’s qualities, we would have been swearing ourselves to quite a long vigil, indeed.”

“Wait,” Elyse said, breaking character. “Hold on, I’m- I think I’m on to something.”

“What is it?” Rhia asked.

“Just, OK- it can’t be about the mercenary part of the guy, right?” Elyse worked her thoughts through for the other two. “It’s gotta be about either the Speaker of the Sands’ knowledge, like having it already and just needing his stuff to use it, or how he got the knowledge.”

“So we need to figure out a way to free the Sphinx from his own promise?” Rhia asked. “I mean, I get the whole reflective symbolism thing between the story and the situation, but we don’t have time for some side-quest to find this guy’s Sphinx buddies.”

“Shane’s not gonna have us get all the way down here and then make that the hook,” Tori frowned. “Unless this guy can, like, Timey-Wimey us back in time to go do it or something?” She looked at me for that last part, and I smirked a little and shook my head. There was no way I was introducing time-jumping shenanigans into my setting. I had way too much lore built up and crammed into my skull to risk needing to change it all because someone decided to go off track and metaphorically ‘kill baby Hitler’ to change the effects or causes of other campaigns.

“OK,” Elyse said. “I think I know what to do.”

“Which is?” Tori asked.

“You’ll see,” Elyse grinned.

“If you aren’t willing to give us any hints or tips, Guardian,” Renee said boldly, raising her voice a little bit more as she edged closer to the lip of the short stage they were still standing on, “Then I guess I’ll just have to act like Hastor.” She stepped down off the stage, and Jade stopped Olivia from reaching out in a panic to try to pull her back. The Sorceress walked towards the Sphinx, taking a big breath. “Hastor met the Avatar of a God in the depths of a temple. Obstinance. Stubbornness. He refused to make a deal he didn’t understand, blinded the Avatar, and took a leap of faith. Well, I apologise if I don’t want to seem like I’m attacking you by using my magics to blind you since you could probably kill me where I stand as soon as I started, and I’m not carrying a cape or blanket made of the Dark of a Moonless Sky. But what I can do is face your obstinance with my own leap of faith. We need what Hastor had himself buried with, I believe you want out of here, so I’m just gonna go jump through that curtain down there, open the last door and grab the stuff, OK? You can decide if that makes me worthy of the last Speaker of the Sands.”

Rhia’s eyes were bugging out and she’d clapped both hands over her mouth to stop from interrupting, her heels up and tucked against her butt as she leaned against her bent thighs and knees on her chair. Tori was biting down hard on her lip, her eyes almost as wide as Rhia’s, clutching her pencil in both hands and looking like she was about to break it out of sheer nerves for Renee. Elyse had stood up as she’d narrated, stepping down from the stage, going to the far end of the room.

“I walk slowly but purposefully,” she said, slowly starting to walk toward me along the side of the table. “What does he do?”

“The Sphinx watches you, eyes narrowed, until you get about halfway to him,” I said, waiting for her to reach that point in the room. “And then he shifts, tensing a little, looking like he might pounce. The closer you get, the more you realise just how big he truly is. His fun, his skin, even his eyes look like they are carved from marble, and as you continue to walk closer, that sense of his sheer power begins to overwhelm you. This creature knows things, and is capable of magics that you could only dream of.”

“I continue walking, not right up to him, but slightly to the right of the statue base that he’s sitting on,” Elyse said, coming all the way up to the corner of the table next to me. “Then I look over at him and say, ‘Thirty-seven years, five months and seventeen days is a long time to be locked up in forced celibacy. If you can shapeshift into a more mortal form, I’d fuck the everloving hell out of you before you fly off looking for the Order of Engima.’ Then I keep walking, passing him.”

She passed behind me, trailing a hand over my shoulders and the nape of my neck as she grinned.

“The Sphinx releases another chamber-tumbling purr, and you notice that behind him his lion-like tail twitches,” I said, smirking a little. “But you think it might be more because you remembered specific details of what it said, not the offer of sex. You aren’t entirely sure the Sphinx actually has a gender, or would be interested.”

“Hey, give me half a chance and I’ll convince him,” Elyse flashed a grin at me over her shoulder. “Alright, I keep walking with a smooth pace, towards the other end of the chamber.” She slipped past Rhia and Tori in their seats, heading for the opposite end of the room.

“The Sphinx doesn’t make a move or a sound, and you reach the other end in silence,” I told her. “The black, gauzy cloth hanging over the entry to the stairwell reveals four short steps down, about four steps of tunnel, and then a simple double oak door.”

“I look back down the chamber to Jade and Olivia,” Renee said.

“We both go to her,” Rhia said quickly.

“For sure,” Tori agreed.

“As soon as you both move to set a foot on the floor of the chamber, the Sphinx growls again and rises to a half-crouch, ready to leap forward,” I said, holding up a hand in warning. “Only the first shows boldness of mind and action. Those who follow show prudence, but the Steel Prince was never a prudent man.”

“Fuck,” Rhia grunted.

“We pull back onto the stage,” Tori said. “And I kind of shrug across the room and try to let Renee know we believe in her.”

“Totally,” Rhia agreed.

“I kiss my fingers and press them towards my friends,” Elyse said. “Take a big breath, and then dip in through the curtain thing.”

“Your friend disappears behind the gauzy cloth,” I said to Tori and Elyse. “And as you step back, the Sphinx settles down once more onto his perch, keeping his eyes trained on you both. Renee, the first thing you notice is that even though the fabric you have passed under was mildly translucent, from this side it is a thick black that doesn’t let in any of the light from the outer chamber. Four stone steps lead down to a stone floor, a pair of flickering illusion torches light the small space, and the doors are before you. Each one has a large iron ring set into it.”

“I gulp,” Elyse said, returning to her seat. “And then I step down onto the floor. Do I die in some horrible trap?”

“No,” I chuckled, shooting her a grin. “The floor is stable, no traps go off.”

“Then I go to the door, grab the ring on the right one, and I try to pull it open,” she said.

“It opens,” I nodded, and then pulled a sheet of paper from the back of my DM binder and handed it over to her. Started reading it voraciously, eyes darting across the page.

“Out loud,” Rhia laughed impatiently.

Elyse snorted, looking up at her with a grin. “It literally starts off at the top with ‘Do not read this out loud.’”

“Shane,” Rhia complained, and she and Tori both grabbed popcorn from the snack bowl and threw a few kernels at me as I snickered away.

“OK,” Elyse said, then held out a hand to me. I pulled the smaller slips of paper I had prepared from the back of the binder as well, the item stats that I’d pre-prepared late last night, and handed them over. She took them with a grin and didn’t even look at them, but held them reverently in her hands. “I come back out from under the sheet,” she said, more to the others than to me. “And I’m holding a weird-looking backpack with colourful stitching that kind of looks like a face. And I think I look OK?” I nodded, and she sighed in relief. “Alright. So I put down the bag, and then I’m going to try something - I want to take that sheet down from over the entryway if I can manage it, Shane.”

“Alright,” I said. “Can I ask why?”

“Because I think that’s the cloak or whatever made from the Dark of a Moonless Sky,” Elyse said. “Either that or it’s some other sort of special cloth, and I want to use it to get a new robe made.”

I smirked a little and pulled out the last item stat sheet I’d made and handed it over, and Elyse’s eyes lit up.

“What a loot whore,” Rhia chuckled.

“I think it’s Loot Slut,” Tori snickered.

“Excuse me,” Elyse grinned at the others. “It’s ‘Slut, who also happens to be a little loot gremlin. Thank you very much.”

Sometimes the three of them were a bit much.

“So what happened in there?” Rhia asked.

“She can tell you next session,” I cut in before Elyse could respond. “Especially because Elyse will be going through a mini-session to find that out.”

“Can I give out this loot, though?” the blonde asked me, holding up the cards I’d handed her.

Renee came back across the chamber, passing even closer to the Sphinx this time than earlier, and she almost looked tempted to reach out and touch him, but she held herself back. “You’ve kept your promise,” she told him.

He looked deep into her eyes, his unblinking marble orbs reading something unknown in her. “The promise is fulfilled,” he agreed after a long moment. “Last Speaker of the Sands.” The Sphinx sat up straight, then up on his back haunches, and great feathered wings unfurled from his back and spread from wall to wall in the long chamber. His forelegs and paws waved an intricate pattern in the air, and a silver glowing glyph formed floating in the air before him. He looked at the three adventurers and let out another heavy breath that washed across the room. “May you find simple answers to the complicated problems you face, young mortals,” he said. Then he leaned down and seemed to dive into the rune nose-first, his body twisting into an incomprehensible spiral of fractals before sliding through space and disappearing from the chamber altogether.

Renee scampered back and then over to her friends, placing the strange sack up on the stage at their feet.

“You got… stuff?” Jade asked, crouching down.

“I got stuff,” Renee said, then opened the top flap of the sack and stuck her hand into the magical portal, fishing around for the first reward.