Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Stabitha
Legendary Dagger of Wounding
Damage: 2d10+2
To Hit: +2
Special: wounding.
A wounding weapon deals 1 point of bleed damage when it hits a creature. Multiple hits from a wounding weapon increase the bleed damage. Bleeding creatures take the bleed damage at the start of their turns. Bleeding can be stopped by a successful DC 15 Heal check or through the application of any spell that cures hit point damage. A critical hit does not multiply the bleed damage. Creatures immune to critical hits are immune to the bleed damage dealt by this weapon.
Special: +10 to cleanliness (the blade cannot be dirtied)
Special: loyal
A loyal weapon will never strike its owner, and any attempt to attack said owner is treated as a natural 1.

Description
Randy the incubus keeps the blade of this +2 dagger of wounding buffed to a high mirror shine. He cherishes “her” like a daughter and has been known to make everyone around him very uncomfortable by polishing her every day in a variety of suggestive ways. Due to its enchantments the dagger has +10 to cleanliness; even when freshly drenched in a victim’s blood, it will appear clean and dry. Stabitha rewards relentless strikes against a single target; when attacking a creature that is still bleeding from a previous strike, the dagger deals an additional +1 point of damage against the target for each bleeding wound the creature possesses to a maximum of +10.

If Stabitha scores a critical hit, she will exclaim loudly as if in intense pleasure. Randy can then choose to deal 1d6 points of additional damage for each still-bleeding wound his target possesses to a maximum of +5d6 damage. This additional damage is not multiplied by the critical hit, but is in addition to the damage normally added for bleeding wounds.

Randy is willing to allow others to use Stabitha for a time, albeit always grudgingly and under protest. This is, at least in part, a ruse. He knows that the blade is enchanted so that it may never strike at him, and he has been deeply amused by the many times that someone has attempted this only to stab themselves to death.

History
Stabitha is believed to contain the soul of a departed, and spiteful, mortal. Rather than delivering the soul to sell or trade, as is common practice for incubi, Randy was apparently able to entrap it and so fuel his weapon’s unassuming deadliness. Though he claims that Stabitha is a classy lady who possesses a way with words, no one can hear her speak (if indeed she is speaking at all) unless she scores a critical hit. For all that, the weapon is clearly devoted to him and, if Stabitha has any awareness of her predicament, she does not care.

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To: Nuby the Succubus
Contents: One (1) t-shirt reading “Happy Waifu, Happy Laifu”
Note: May this garment guide you in all your future romantic endeavors.

To: Randy the Incubus
Contents: One (1) necklace made of human teeth
Note: You are looking a bit long in the tooth, dearie.

To: Nuby the Succubus
Contents: One (1) extra large jar, minced garlic
Note: Nobody sucks like you do, except vampires, but this should eliminate the competition.

To: Randy the Incubus
Contents: One (1) pair large scissors, bloodied.
Note: The last guy couldn’t cut it. Maybe you’ll have more luck.

To: Nuby the Succubus
Contents: One (1) framed, autographed 8×10 glossy
Note: So you can see what success looks like.

To: Randy the Incubus
Contents: One (1) mirror, broken
Note: I saw success in this the other day, maybe it’ll work for you?

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To the sanctum innermost
No human soul may go
But human body one must boast
If one desires to know

No undead wraith nor ghost there
No puppets dance on strings
To breathe the inner sanctum air
One must be a human thing

The Witch Queen made her sanctum
And this trap it does protect
What lies within is mute and dumb
For all but its architect

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“Do you remember, before the ordeal?” Raguel said. He tapped gently at Lectra’s armor. “Before…this?”

The Grand Scholar turned away. “Yes,” she said. The word sounded hollow, turned aside from within the armor like a glancing blow.

“You used to be so much sweeter, so much more affectionate,” the tiefling said. “The Dark Room changed all that.”

“It changes everything,” said Lectra. She didn’t need to add that was the point of the whole ordeal, letting it linger, unsaid and powerful.

“Now, seeing you again after so long…you seem to be a slave to your studies, to the arcane. Tell me, is there one hour, one moment of the day that you’re not thinking of your poisons and subtle curses?”

Lectra’s head lowered, and the armor rattled as her shoulders slumped a moment. “No,” she said, a single syllable with the outline of a sigh.

“Experimenting with poisons and curses on everyone and everything. Including me, of course. Your big experiment. To change the nature of a being and twist it to your will. Was it worth it? Was it worth making something–someone–so low that they had to look up to you like unto a goddess?”

The Grand Scholar turned, meeting Raguel’s line of sight with the eyeholes in her helmet. Then she lifted the visor, revealing the face the tiefling well remembered from the old days – melancholy, brow furrowed and eyes keenly intelligent, with a kind of quiet beauty. She was paler, thinner, almost ghostly. No hint of a smile, but not sorrowful either.

“I liked you enough to try and hide the worst things,” she said. “The Lectra you remember is only half what she ever was.”

“I sense a strange, restless, depression in you,” Raguel said. “I sometimes wondered if you resented the immortality, the armor, Nevra gifted you with. Now I think I know.”

Lectra closed the visor of her ornate helmet with a dull clang. “Think what you like,” she said, her tone once more harsh, metallic. “I have work to do.”

“As do I,” Raguel said. “A noble aasimar laid low to live as a tiefling. We are both living a mockery of what we once had, looking up to something at once alluring and unattainable. Is that not true?”

At this, the Grand Scholar stiffened a moment. Then, she slumped back and walked away. “It was nice to see you,” she said over her shoulder. “Don’t be a stranger.”

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Armed and Breadly? Oh, traveler, you certainly do focus on the oddest parts of our beloved Mercura, don’t you? Armed and Breadly is an institution in these walls, responsible for arming the citizenry and feeding the poor at the same time. You may have even heard that it is officially endorsed by the Witch Queen! That is, of course, a lie. It would be better to say is it acknowledged by the Witch Queen, or perhaps tolerated.

The owners are Puto Skulljelly and Donny Bonesnap; half-orcs who met on the field of battle but once their swords crossed they realized that they couldn’t go through with that combat, or any combat, ever again. They snuck away from Clan Skulljelly and Clan Bonesnap to be with one another, you see, leaving their fellows leaderless. The clans were decimated after that, and both men still fear retribution for abandoning them–not that they’d trade one moment of their domestic bliss for it, of course!

In Mercura, Puto and Donny found a place that they could live, one that would accept them, and Donny–ever the dreamer–decided that he would be a baker. Since he was a mere orcling whelp he’d loved confections and delicious baked goods, you see, as sweet rolls and savory pies are among the few pleasures that life in the clans allows. Donny was determined to make a new life for himself, and his husband, as a baker.

I wonder, traveler, if you can sense the twist in his tale? Donny was enthusiastic, but he was a terrible baker.

Nautrally, a bakery with a head baker that cannot bake is a source of problems, but Puto loved Donny enough to make it work. Of course, Puto was no baker either, and he lacked even Puto’s enthusiasm and willingness to experiment. But he kept the store afloat for years through unsavory side jobs. He worked as a mercenary, a bouncer, a potion seller, a pimp. Anything to keep the rock-hard bread flowing out of the shop. Donny was only able to sell his noxious goods to the very poorest of the poor, and he gave away his day-old stock as a charity besides, so Puto was allowed to do what he did. In fact, a few even saw him as a bit of a Robin Hood.

Eventually, oh traveler, things took a turn for the better. After one particularly bad batch, and a creditor that was a bit too eager to collect, Puto and Donny realized that the breads made excellent and inexpensive melee weapons. So Armed and Breadly now sells bread clubs, bread swords, and of course the famous Breadward plate armor, all for a fraction of the cost of steel. And it can be thrown to the birds or eaten after use! They still give the leftovers to the poor, of course, though some say that Puto still trades food for information in his underworld dealings and that the place is still a front for money laundering.

The other thing that improved the lovers’ fortune was Mbira. One of the many half-orc foundlings that dot the streets of the city, likely cast off by her mother as proof of infidelity, Donny found her eating from the refuse heap and took her in. Mbira brought many things to Armed and Breadly; she was as tough as both her adopted fathers, but could also play the kalimba beautifully, as she had made her own and played it for coin in the streets once upon a time. Most impressively of all, she has actual skill as a baker, meaning that the goods she makes–sweet rolls and pastries, mostly–are actually edible and delectable.

Donny, they say, taught her everything he knows; the Witch Queen is to be thanked that she was not a good student.

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To all students, honored guests, and curious passersby whom the threads of fate have brought here, I bid you welcome. You may ask what purpose there is in celebrating the life of an immortal; to that I say what greater challenge could there be, to speak of what has been spoken of forever and still find something new in the telling? These words are, in many ways, my gift.

I have known many joys in my time here in the halls of the Mercura Academy, from my earliest days as an initiate polishing floors to my current tenure as a Grand Scholar polishing minds. It has been ageless centuries of knowledge and wisdom for me here, lit by the light of discovery and warmed by the intense love I have felt–we all have felt–for Nevra, our beloved Witch Queen.

I still remember, when I had first gotten it into my mind to enter the Dark Room for my Ordeal, Nevra drew me aside and asked what I foresaw. That has always been my gift and my curse, to see plainly the threads of fate which stretch out and intertwine before us, much like it has always been the Witch Queen’s gift and curse to inspire her students to ever-greater heights of learning and achievement. I told her that I saw two threads leaving that room; one bore me to ever-greater feats of arcane discovery, and one was a miserable shadow of death.

That day, I survived – I survived the Ordeal that we must all pass through to prove our worthiness to the Witch Queen, the fire in which we are tempered. But I have often thought of those two threads in the Dark Room, the thread of discovery and the thread of death. When my research seemed at a dead end, when all seemed lost, I reflected upon the alternative, and all that beloved Nevra has given us.

Now I wonder if perhaps I was mistaken. Could it be that I have followed the thread of death’s shadow all these long and many years?

After all, we Grand Scholars of the Witch Queen are bound to the Academy for all eternity. Once we have survived the Ordeal, our sole purpose is to produce research and the arcane. We worship our Queen with our minds and bodies forever. I ask you: is that not a purgatory? Is that not a hell? For what is an afterlife but an eternity in the service of, under the heel of, a capricious deity?

None here have ever seen the Dark Room of the Witch Queen, none but we Grand Scholars, and I hope that you never do. It is a cruel machine, a murder engine, and Nevra’s most promising students are its meals and repast. What just and loving goddess would need such a thing? What just and loving goddess would want it? The Ordeal requires an hour in that chamber of horrors, but it might as well be a year for all the hundreds of lives it has claimed. The souls of those who have failed haunt me in my waking life, even as I have relied upon them to drive my quest for discoveries. Lectra knows of what I speak, and Richenda. My dear brother, here with me today, knows in the most bitter way of all.

The Nevra we have all seen is a Witch Queen indeed, insatiable in her hunger for knowledge of the arcane arts. We have put aside our health, our friendships, and even our love of anything but Nevra herself, in the pursuit of knowledge. She directed us to cast aside our familiar bonds as relics of an old world, of dead lives. New life was denied us, for who could need a child when they were in possession of life eternal? There could only be love of, and love for, our dear Witch Queen.

And what has the Witch Queen done with all her knowledge of life and death? What has she done with secrets carved from the bodies of innocents in order to make strides in their research? I have loved pursuing new ways of enriching and lengthening lives with Nevra. Once I thought it was a noble and worthy calling, but slowly the lives that we have achieved have become cursed. The Witch Queen has build a gilded cage for all of us, and I have been complicit in this, singing sweetly the whole time.

What do the threads tell me now, when I look into the future farther than I have ever been able to, or dared? I see that the people, Nevra’s people, need death. They–you–ache for release. I can see this as clearly as I’ve ever seen anything. Death must walk among the people once more, for without death, life is void of meaning. I see clearly now that this entire place exists only to please Nevra, to feed her insatiable need for adoration. Immortality is lonely, and we are the toys and trinkets with which the Witch Queen surrounds herself in order to feel whole.

You don’t know that you want death, but you do. You’ve longed for it for so long. This whole kingdom is built from bones and we’re the living corpses that haunt its streets. You and I are dancing ghosts stuck in an endless waltz. The time has come to end things, to give death back its reign, before the Witch Queen gathers the threads of fate into her own hands and ushers in a terrible world where she has slain death itself.

But I am forgetting myself! This is a celebration, after all, and what is a celebration without gifts? Gifts for Nevra, gifts from her three Grand Scholars!

The first birthday gift is from Lectra the Infector. It’s called the Long Farewell; you may have heard of it. A poison so deadly that the gods themselves would wither and die if it touched their lips. Sometimes it takes week to take effect, sometimes only days, but death is a guarantee. Everyone who has touched the wine will bid adieu, even if they merely brushed a bottle in passing.

“It’s been a pleasure, my queen. May my gift leave you trembling, breathless, flushed. Do not weep for your lost years, for the last moments will be as aeons. Pain is the ultimate immortality.”

And, of course, Richenda has a gift to bestow as well, do you not, my pale and wan cutter of threads?

“My lady, whisper low and hear my plea. My gift unwrapped is but a token, for what follows is the barren rage of death’s eternal cold. Death your bones with dust shall cover, for no love toward others in that bosom sits. A wyvern’s bone, not yet still in its grave, for those for whom a death envenomed is too slow.”

And now, my dear Witch Queen, dearest Nevra, I give to you my gift: this final prophecy. I have followed the threads of fate to their conclusion, and they tell me thus. You, who has long sought to conquer death, shall see your long life ended by the one you love most.

We leave you now with our gifts; enjoy them to the full. Happy birthday, my beloved.

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Nevra, our witch and also our queen
Her abode holds never before seen
A powerful magic protects and keeps whole
For none may enter who have human souls
And yet a contradiction here we must stand
The doors you must open with only human hands
If the worthy can puzzle this conundrum away
They’re welcome to come in and welcome to stay
But woe be to any who fails at this test
For Nevra will send them to eternal rest

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Hopefully this missive reaches you, sister. The Skineaters don’t exactly take regular post but we have our ways, and anything is possible for the right bribe. We were beyond relieved to hear that you and Cirrus were alive, since we’d had no news for nearly a year.

I’ll say first: don’t apologize for anything you’ve had to do to survive. Murderer or not, you did what you had to do with that halfling and anyone else that has gotten in the way. As long as you and Cirrus are alive, it is all good. Your new friends sound like a funny bunch. Perhaps some of them will be worth sparing? If you do kill the dwarf, remember to strike down between the breastbone and the ribs for the heart from above. It will leave no trace and you can disguise the corpse as sleeping while you make your escape. Perhaps your pretty dwarf would make a good slave? Innocent ones always do.

As we sisters have gotten older, we’ve had to get tougher. It works most of the time. Members of the horde know not to trifle with us when we’re together. Bad things don’t happen to us nearly as often. I lead a whole squadron of girls now, and we are good enough at growing and felling trees that we usually have wood left to burn and food left to cook. Strange as it seems to say, I feel like I have a place here among the Skineaters now, almost like I belong. Not to Gash, but to all the people under him and his boys. They look up to me almost like you sisters do. Things are going well enough that I want them to change.

Zeffir is still her quiet self, but she is a whirlwind when she has to be, and has become very sneaky. We suspect she’s behind some well-deserved stabbings of late. Perhaps it’s her way of dealing with the loss of Skye, by taking on some of her twin’s old traits. She’s started writing, too, and transcribes letters for Gash’s illiterate boys. I think she might have a fella or a gal on the side that she is writing little love notes to, but I have let her keep her secrets.

Most importantly, Stormy’s had a new baby girl since you’ve left. We think the father was one of Nosebrass’s hangers-on or one of the mercenaries that he sometimes hires, but it doesn’t matter. She is the world’s prettiest little half-orc in her auntie’s eyes, and very smart. The spitting image of her cousin! Stormy called her Cumulus, and we call her Lissy for short.

There is a problem, though. Nosebrass has been making noises about selling off another round of infants, says there’s getting to be too many mouths to feed. Normally, if one of Nosebrass’s orcs or some merc hunter tries to touch Zeffir or Stormy, I will fillet them like a day-old mackerel. But babies are another matter. It’s difficult to protect them, and Stormy is still so weak. Even though the girl is walking now, the childbearing took a lot out of her.

You remember the last time Nosebrass did this, before Cirrus was born. The children were sold into the breaker’s yards at Caldhollow. None survived. Your example has inspired us, and we think we can buy Lissy ourselves, perhaps send her to live with her auntie and cousin. But we don’t have the coin, and time is of the essence. If you’ve any to spare, though we’ve no right to ask, I would beg that you send it by the same route when you can. It wouldn’t be difficult to buy a baby. Nosebrass would welcome it, ask no questions. He’s cruel but fair that way.

Sorry if the letter isn’t pretty. I’ve not your skill with letters but I had Zeffir help me. Girl has a way with words and is an incredible sister and the best person. We love and miss you dearly.

-Lightning Thaighs

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“It was just a spot of fun is all,” laughed Ashhgrom. “You saw how that slave girl was! No matter how much I kicked her, or cursed her, she just sat there and took it. Then, when she thought I was out of earshot, oh did she let fly! Such unladylike things she said to her mates, all bottled up from before, as would melt the tongue of a proper lass!”

“Ain’t no proper lasses in Gash Nosebrass’s kip, Ashhgrom Emptygirdle,” said Mugh Dullspoint, Ashhgrom’s sentry-partner. “Only slaves, wombs, and playthings, you know that. So what if she held her tongue and then lashed out with it when she was out of boot-range? That just shows she’s got smarts enough not to invite the boot when she’s on knees in the potato fields.”

“Hmph, you suck the fun out of everything,” grumbled Ashhgrom. “She weren’t bad looking, either. Half human I wager, or a little more. Came in with the batch Gash bought in town last year.”

“And if she was all that good-looking, Ashhgrom Emptygirdle, she’d not be in the potates but be shacked up in Gash’s tent making him sons! You can go on calling it what you will, but I think that empty girdle of yours is just aching to be filled with something that ain’t your mitts.”

“And I think, Mugh Dullspoint, that you says about me wha tyou think about yourself!”

As the two guards argued, bunched around the fire outside the hut that served them as both watchtower and barracks, the half-orc girl they had been talking about, Zeffir, was inside their tent. Careful to keep her eyes away from the light, she was already jingling softly with every last piece of gold, copper, and silver Ashhgrom had hoarded for himself. He would also find that the rawhide straps of his hammock were sawn two-thirds of the way through, the clasps had been bent on his armor, and a starchy mixture of potatoes and peppers had been smeared about his codpiece.

He was about to find out why Zeffir Thaighs bottled up her rage around folks that could do her mischief…and why she was known to hold no words or blows otherwise.

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