Deranged Disciples 3

Deranged Disciples 3 is an encounter in the Madness & Magma mission hub. It comes after Deranged Disciples 2.
==Enemies==
*Guilda's Warrior (1235 Gold, 152 XP, 95 Energy, 9 HP Normal)
*Guilda's Mage (1300 Gold, 160 XP, 100 Energy, 9 HP Normal)
*Guilda's Unbound Cleric (1365 Gold, 168 XP, 105 Energy, 9 HP Normal)
*Priestess Guilda (4290 Gold, 528 XP, 330 Energy, 1 HP All) *Locked until others are defeated.*
==Transcript==
===Introduction===
Guilbert's Journal, 388214th of Bottles of Beer on the Wall
Curse them! Damn them! Blast them! Fry them! Poke them! Stab them!
I found my way into the caverns, into the dark rock places. There were goblins. But then I cast spells, and there were no goblins. Just bits of goblin, raining down like snowflakes. I caught one on my tongue. It tasted of green rabbits.
The walrus guided my path. This made me suspicious. What would a walrus know about being underground? Was he conspiring with my enemies all along? No matter...
We passed through many tunnels and caverns. One was made of cheese. But it was bad cheese, that looked, felt, smelled, and tasted of rock - so I could only eat a few handfuls. Others contained gnomes, orocs, and other foolish things. Some tried to stop me. I hope they like being inside out...
Then I sensed it...Power. Great power. But it was strange. Unusual. Fleshy. Living. It wasn't Kwizkazak. It was something else. Something greater.
It had to be mine!
I blundered through the dark passages, nearly tripping over that accursed walrus, until I found myself in a tunnel that smelled of mushrooms and excrement. Kobolds!
First the lizard people were as surprised to see me as I was to see them. Then they tried to stab me. Their tunnel was much prettier painted with their brains.
I came out into a large cavern, filled with the wretched scaly things. Too many to kill... So I put my magic sack over my head. I couldn't see a thing, but that meant no one could see me. Science!
I stumbled around, with only the walrus' shouts to guide my footsteps. Several times I stood in things that squelched. But at last I made it through the cavern, then through another that smelled of wet dog. Or was it baked dog? One or the other.
We moved across that chamber, my ears full of growls and howls and snarls. Perhaps I was in a school?
Then I tripped over, and nearly shattered my knees on hard stone. I was in a steep tunnel, rising upwards. And I could feel the power that lay at its summit,
I tore the sack from my head. We were alone, the walrus and I. Together we ascended, climbing the steep path.
There was an archway, and a great chamber. And then... Then things went wrong.
Dragons. Here be dragons! Huge slumbering reptiles, an army of draconic might! With such power at my command, the world would be mine. All the blue cheese and oysters I could eat!
So I roused them, woke them with my magic. But... But they were ungrateful! They refused to obey me, to accept my terms. I even offered them half the Tourfort -- one of the finest cheeses ever squeezed from the bodies of gnomes!
The black one attacked, breathing out its burning, burning fire. The walrus was incinerated! Gone in a flash! I had to run, flee, to escape. I barged through the caverns, firing spells in all directions. First the wet dog one, then the kobold one, then the one with glowing pantaloons (but that one might have been in my head).
I ended up on a vast passage, a great thoroughfare cut into the stone, running along its length with the sound of braying and hissing behind me. Then I remembered the spell... The one I used to keep mother in her room when she had one of her turns...
It blocked the passage, sealing it behind me. I was safe! Safe! Alas, poor walrus! But I was safe!
Damn dragons! Wretched wyrms! Stupid drakes!
But they'll see reason. It was I who woke them. They're indebted to me! Eventually they'll make terms, and accept me as their master. Until them, I just have to wait...
There was a small cavern near the barrier, opening in the side of the great passage. A good place to wait. I went inside, and sat to write in my journal.
But now I see that this journal is almost full. Packed with thoughts. My thoughts! It's been stealing them, hiding them in its pages, hiding them from my sight! Even now I'm writing, writing, writing and it's stealing, stealing, stealing. It wants my brains! My precious, delicious brains! It's betraying me! Siding with the dragons! Working for them!
I have to get rid of it, to throw it where I'll never find it again. Yes... Cast it away, throw it away. Ha! Yes, stupid journal -- I'm telling you of my plans, carving them into your bones. And what can you do about it? Nothing, that's what!
But I still need a record, a way to keep everything alive. I can't forget, not when I'm so close. Yes! The walls of this cavern. With magic, burning, carving magic. Yes... round cavern walls, where I can see everything at all times. Where my thoughts won't be hidden, stolen, buried in paper.
First I'll dispose of this traitor journal. Then I'll begin.
-- Guilbert the Mad
---
"Intruders! Violators! Sane ones!"
The man screams the words from a frothing mouth as he hurtles towards you, a sword flashing in his hand. A backhand from Rakshara's heavy crystal shield breaks his momentum. And judging from the groans which float up from his supine form, it's broken him as well.
Other similar dressed but less impetuous cultists stand opposite you, at the far end of the circular rock platform, flanked on either side by two of the conical monoliths that encircle this sacred space. From the look of them they were shaped by hand, fashioned to adorn the place of the cult's intended ritual.
In their midst is a woman whose robes seem more elaborate than those of the others. A golden mask covers her face, its aureate visage broken by three glowing purple orbs -- her eyes and the gem upon her forehead. She waves a long, warped staff, causing the glowing magenta stone at its end to burn violent trails across empty space. Her gesture appears to hold the others back.
"The mark of insanity is upon you," she says.
Her voice bears a curious echo, as though several people were speaking at once through the same mouth. Her triple eyes sear themselves into your vision like miniature indigo suns.
"Murderous madness beats in your heart, pulses in your mind. You've slain so many that killing is as natural to you as breathing. You wreak such slaughter that others would gaze upon you with horror, and flee lest they become your next victims. Welcome brother."
"I'm-" you begin.
Purple orbs... They're in front of you. Inches from your eyes. Filling your vision. Coloring everything with their luxurious light. How did she get so close? Wasn't she over.... over there...
"Your mind snapped long ago." Again the voice, as though many women are coming together in a soft chorus. It's gentle, soothing. Like an embrace, a maternal caress. "Your sanity is a delusion, a cruel trick designed to veil your eyes from what you are, what you've become. Like the laws of a tyrannical king, trying to keep you from your ascension."
Yes! She's right! Crenus... Damn upstart king, thinking he can rule your mind, rule your sanity! Does he think he can control your thoughts, bind you to the pathetic laws he and others like him have created to ensnare you? No! You'll seize freedom and smear it over your body!
"You came here as an enemy," the many-voiced woman says. "But friendship and enmity are tenuous things. It's so easy to drift from one to the other, to accept our comfort and forgiveness. Soon Guilbert will arise, and he'll look upon you no differently than the rest of us. Together we'll ascend from this place, back to the surface, and with his power we'll free every mind in West Kruna."
"Yes," you say. And your voice is many as well now, a chorus of male and female. A vague sliver of understanding in the further depths of your consciousness tells you that the others are speaking as well, all pledging themselves to the priestess, to the cause of freedom and madness, destiny and derangement.
The robed men and women, your new brothers and sisters, are drawing their weapons. Shiny bright swords, staves that glow like they're dressed in magical finery. They come towards you. They want to welcome you, to bring you into their fold.
You smile. You're home at last. The place where you belong. You open your arms, ready to take them into your embrace. Shining swords, raised to kiss you.
"Kasan!" a voice roars.
A wave of discord undulates over the world. Your robed brethren pause, their eyes and gems flashing. The companions around you shudder. The universe throbs.
"Give me our voice, you fumbling fool!" it cries. An infernal voice, each syllable wrapped in incinerating elegance.
"No," Hugh whines. "Stop interfering! You always interfere! Trying to hold me back, to-"
"You weak-willed fool! All of you, listen-"
The priestess is distant now, the purple orbs far away -- thrown back to the other end of the platform like a bowstring snapping back to its resting place.
"You..." she says, the word an enveloping whisper. "What are you?"
"I am Prince Brach'Xell'Ctharat'Sezrachus. And your sorceries are nothing to me. I've walked through madness the likes of which your foolish mortal mind could never even conceive."
"Slay him first!" the priestess says, her voices rising in a harmonious crescendo.
The robed men and women converge towards Hugh, their voluminous garments passing between you and the purple orbs. Sanity, insanity... Madness. The words are meaningless, bouncing around your head like frolicking imps. But one thought cuts a bloody swathe through them all. The woman's right... You're a killer. And right now, you feel like killing the people wearing robes.
===Conclusion===
Combat all around. Flapping robes, swinging weapons, spurting blood. The world is wobbling. Your head is filled with mist, fog... the spray of crashing waves. Are the others seeing the same thing? Are their thoughts as scattered and muffled as yours? You don't know. No time to ask them. But they're fighting, and surviving. They're hitting the right people instead of each other. So the rest can take care of itself.
There's a scream to your left. Rakshara is struggling with three cultists, who're clambering on her as though she were a tree, their bodies caught in her branches as she stumbles to and fro. One grasps each of her arms, preventing her from bringing her sword and shield to bear -- though from their desperate cries and frantic scrabbling it seems that they're finding her strength difficult to manage. The screaming comes from the third, a woman whose limbs are entangled around the oroc's chest in a passing resemblance of a wrestler's hold. Blood gushes from her throat. Rakshara's mouth bears the same guilty red, spilling down her chin.
The one with the ravaged throat falls, her limbs slipping free from their holds. She splutters on the ground, dying and forgotten. Then Rakshara swing her arms in front of her, bringing the other cultists' heads together with a satisfying crack.
Yes... Shaken or not, your friends are able to look after themselves.
You look past the clashing, billowing forms, scouring for your target. You glimpse her through a narrow gap in the melee, one soon devoured by the raging bodies. Purple orbs, leaving burning trails as they dance...
You push your way through the pack, nudging past friends, putting a quick blade in an enemy's back or chest -- all the while gazing ahead in search of her. Everything's hazy, indistinct. But the robes show you whom to kill, betraying their wearers with cheerful good humor.
Another gap. And there she is. At a distance from the others, at the very edge of the platform -- her back pressed against a monolith. Perhaps she's insane, but her wits are keen enough for her to stay out of the carnage.
Three purple orbs fasten on you when you push your way free of the fray. A smile appears across the invisible mouth of her golden mask.
"Ah, the murderer," she says. There seem to be more voices in her now -- as though a hundred women are trilling in harmony. "The one who slaughters dozens and still calls himself sane."
"Hundreds," you reply. "Not dozens. Maybe thousands? I never keep track."
"You're someone special, aren't you? Yes... The walrus watches over you." Her golden face frowns with its nonexistent brow. "No... Not a walrus. Something big and blue, with orange eyes..."
"Be honest," you say. "You're not as crazy as you pretend to be, are you?"
Her eyes shine like purple stars. Indigo light flashes across your vision, monsters trying to push their way into your eyeballs.
"Or perhaps you're just crazier than you think you are?" she replies. "Let's find out."
You're close now, in striking distance. Her face is against yours, close enough to kiss or smash. You thrust. And stumble, when your blade meets empty air.
She's standing a dozen feet away from you... Maybe two dozen... Three dozen... A mile... A league... The purple orbs are like three pinpoints, impossibly distant -- far away across a long, narrow tunnel around which everything seethes and blurs into incomprehensibility.
The end of her staff waves through the air, forming a figure of eight that shifts and mutates into a design inscrutable in its complexity. Its purple glow merges with her eyes, becoming a single convoluted mass of insane geometry.
It rushes towards you, a violet tidal wave sweeping away everything that was and is, obliterating creation and hurling you into...
You're in a meadow. The sun gazes down on your from a soft cyan expanse. The grass stretches out in all directions, a luscious emerald mantle that reaches the distant trees which sway at the ministrations of a gentle breeze. A girl sits near you, her bright, pretty eyes as blue as the sky, her smile as radiant as the sun's. Shyness teases her face, making it all the more lovely. She closes her eyes and leans in towards you. You mirror her motion, closing the space between you, bringing your lips towards hers.
Then you're standing above her, a rock in your hand. Crimson drips from it, falling onto her white dress like brutal tears. There are tears rolling down her cheeks as well, those ones an innocent silver in the sunlight. Her pretty eyes look up at you, pleading, beseeching. You laugh as you raise the rock again.
Madness.
You're standing before your parents, bawling your eyes out, wailing that the drunken stablehand tried to kill you. They gasp in horror when they see the wound on your back -- a light cut, but enough to fill devoted parents with anguish and wrath.
Armed men and women are summoned while the nurse tends to you. Your father leads them to the stables. There they find two horses lying upon the straw, their throats punctured by savage knife blows. In the little room where the stablehand dwells they find him insensible, sleeping the deep sleep of intoxication next to empty ale jugs and a bloody dagger.
He's hanged the next day. And you laugh. It was easy enough to drug his water, steal his knife, slay the horses, and run your back along the blade whilst it was wedged between the bricks of an old wall. He'd done you no wrong, yet you'd always hated him.
Madness.
You're clambering on the cliffs, high above the sea that dashes against the rock face below -- surging around the petrified fangs and talons which rise up from its frothing, foamy depths. A chill, briny wind cuts at you. But it's invigorating, fortifying. The touch of nature that hardens the youth of East Kruna.
You pick your way with careful steps, making sure of your footing lest a foolish mistake send you to your doom. But not your brother. He springs across the rocks as though he was born to it, laughing the healthy, powerful laugh of rugged childhood. And for all his speed, all his apparent recklessness, his movements are perfect, flawless. No wonder your parents are forever praising him. No wonder the girls bat their eyelids at him. Your strong, agile, skillful, handsome, perfect brother.
In a few days he'll be tested by the grandmasters. And he'll impress them like he's impressed everyone else in his life. They'll train him, make him into a magnificent warrior and leader, ready to one day take his place as head of the Kasan family. As for you... Well, you'll be sent to learn about logistics and mercantile matters. For that will be your role as the second child -- to manage the coffers and the ledgers, to strain your eyes over columns of figures and endless missives while he wins glory.
He stops at last, realizing that his powerful springs have outdistanced you. He waits for you to catch up, an honest, loving smile on his face. He reaches out, his strong hand grasping your arm and helping you up a difficult incline. How you despise him...
So you shove him, and relish the shock in his eyes as he falls over the edge -- towards the hungry rocks below.
Madness.
Dozens more scenes flash into being around you, immersing you in a lifetime of cruelty, of viciousness, of killing.
You're a murderous lunatic. A man who conceals his wickedness, his love for slaughter, behind words like 'adventurer', 'warrior', and 'hero'. So much blood, spilled not to protect yourself and others, not to right wrongs and impose justice, but to satisfy your own sadism. You were born to kill, cursed from the moment of your birth with the desire to take lives and feed the malevolent beast within you. You're not better than a savage demon, an inhuman fiend that merely wears the flesh of mankind as a disguise.
This epiphany blasts its way into your brain, your mind, your soul. And you revel in it.
Yes... You're a murderer. What else would you ever want to be?
You blink. Reality falls back into place, tightening and hardening into solidity. You're in a cavern, standing on a circular platform of rock. A woman in grey and purple robes is in front of you, a dagger in her hand.
You laugh. She stumbles. Her purple eyes flash their shock, and that emotion is somehow echoed on the aureate visage of her mask. You feel your mouth widening into a mirthless smile, like that of a shark.
She thought the past would torment you, that seeing your crimes laid bare would ruin you, break you -- leave you defenseless before her murderous blade. The fool! You know what you are, accept what you've always been. You're a murderer. And murderers murder...
Your sword cleaves through the air. The woman screams. The dagger and her fingers tumble together to the stone. A swift thrust would end her misery. But that's not enough for you. Instead you let your sword and shield fall, and grab her by the neck.
Strong fingers tighten around the soft flesh beneath the face of her golden mask. Your thumbs drive into her tender throat, crushing it. Her voice is almost inaudible, a near noiseless gasp and splutter. Her eyes scream for her. They aren't purple now. The magic is gone. Terrified hazel irises shriek, and beg, and plead -- all the while being driven back by the blackness of dilating pupils.
You squeeze. She's weak. You've strangled men with necks like bulls when wrestling. This frail woman's muscles and tendons, as soft and fragile as a child's, offer no resistance to your murderous grasp. You squeeze. And you laugh.
The staff falls from her whole hand. It clatters on the ground. Its powers of madness have failed her. It will only look on as she dies.
She claws at your face with her undamaged digits, scratching at your mouth, your eyes. You shake her, swinging her body from side to side, making her head bob this way and that like a doll's. You lift her off the ground, feel her soundless gasps intensifying beneath your fingers. She kicks, thrashes. You laugh once more. Then you stride towards the nearest dark monolith, and smash her head against it.
Again and again the back of her skull thuds against the unyielding rock. Her mask falls, clanging on the stone as though in apology for deserting her. The face is young. And you believe it was beautiful, before the redness of strangulation and the knowledge of approaching death took hold of it.
She's still conscious. Good...
You move away from the monolith, towards the edge of the platform, and fling her off. Murder... Beautiful murder. The dark lover you've been chasing all your life.
"[Your hero's name]?"
The magma flows and bubbles below, your conspirator licking its burning lips as it digests the woman's corpse.
"{Your hero's name]? Are you okay?"
You look round. Tessa gasps. She can see it, can't she? The eyes of a murderer, the dark smile of an enemy of life... Then let it be the last thing she sees!
You lunge, hands grabbing for her throat -- ready to choke, strangle, crush, kill.
She slips aside. There's a clattering, the sound of wood landing on stone. Part of you registers this as a bow being tossed aside. Then white light erupts in your head. You buckle as something hits your leg, knocking it out from under you. Your knee meets the stone, explodes with pain. Then you're on your chest, driven against the hard, black surface. There's a sharp pain at your shoulders and upper arms. The limbs are twisted behind your back. Entangled in some mysterious arrangement.
Waves of dark hair fall around you.
"Don't struggle," Tessa whispers. Her lip brushes your ear. "Just take a deep breath."
You try to pull free. Fresh jolts of pain are your reward.
"Close your eyes. Remember where you are. Think, [Your hero's name]."
There's another wrench on your shoulders. You screw your eyes shut.
Your victims float before your eyes. The girl in the field... The stablehand... Your brother... The people you... No. There's something that's not quite... not right. Even as you envision those scenes, allow the recently reawakened events to enact themselves before you, you sense that they're wrong. The images are crystal clear. Too clear, too perfect. And they're isolated... Alone. Little pieces of memory attached to nothing. No, not memory. Not reality. Just a simulacrum. A second veil, another obscuring layer, seems to pull away from the surface of your brain.
"I'm... I'm a murderer?" you ask. The question sounds ridiculous, but it tumbles from your lips nonetheless.
"Not as far as I know," she replies. "But I don't watch you all the time."
You didn't kill those people. The crimes weren't yours. And yet...
Dozens of bloody acts flash before your eyes. And these ones are most certainly real. Men, elves, orcs, orocs, goblins, dwarves, and countless other creatures... So much killing. So much death, wrought by your steel and your spells. You took pleasure in it, reveled in the demise of your foes. A kernel of truth at the heart of the madwoman's deceptions and fabrications. That's why you survived, why her dagger wasn't plunged into a quivering, distraught heart. You were willing to accept the mantle of murder, to exult in it. Because you sensed that it could be true.
"I'm going to let you up now," she says.
Tessa's hair vanishes, uncovering your head like a conjurer whisking away a sheet. Your arms twinge as they shift back into their customary positions, free once more. You struggle your way to your feet. The moment you're upright you feel your legs tremble, ready to buckle once more. But gentle arms take hold of you, help bear your weight.
You avert your eyes, unable to meet her gaze, to see the righteous accusation there. You tried to kill her...
But a soft hand takes your chin, tilts your head with its tender but firm insistence, until you're facing Tessa Tullian -- your faces just inches apart.
"It's okay," she says. "You're okay now, aren't you?"
You nod. She pulls you into a hug. It seems to go on forever.
But at last you feel another's hand clasping at your right shoulder.
"Had me worried there," Hugh says. "Thought we might have to tie you up and carry you home."
"The priestess' sorcery was powerful," Brachus says. "And you bore the brunt of it. Small wonder that your mind became unsettled."
"Are you ready to keep going?" Tessa asks.
You nod once more.
But as you travel back down the stone causeway, images of flashing blades and butchered bodies fill your thoughts.
Category:Madness & Magma