Beyond the Open Door

[Academia Nut]

Ahem. I mentioned in The Open Door that if anyone wanted to contact me and do a side story, they should feel free to do so. Well, someone did, and here's the result of the collaboration. The primary author is Shyft, an artist

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Lars, husband of Skuld, Norn of the Future, and daemon of Chaos Undivided, looked over the camp. Well, ‘looked’ being used loosely. He extended his psychic senses as far as they would go, easily encompassing the whole camp and a good portion of Nesmé. Gunnhild was with her mother, both of them standing out like beacons in the poor-man’s Immaterium he saw in his mind. Not that it really was The Actual Warp.

Refugees and a few villagers clustered around large camp fires, ostensibly to keep warm, but some of the more paranoid ones would admit to staying hear to have a handy burning branch, in case a troll wanted to try something. Oddly though, one of the larger fires seemed apparently left unattended. He watched it for a few more minutes, and if anything, people tried to shy away from it.

Dropping back into full, real-sight, Lars ambled towards that fire, and saw the armored man/construct/whatever that had tagged along. A thick hooded cloak, woven of some sort of mesh draped over his shoulders with pauldrons layered across. While they weren’t as massive as a Space Marine’s armor, they were pretty big. The armor was made of some odd material that looked to have been bone, at some point, but dipped in metal and forged. Edged in gold and bronze, covered in runes and etchings, it had the look of something extremely well enchanted. And that’s just what Lars could see on the shoulders. The armor also looked well worn, uncountable scratches, scuffs, dings and dents covered the thick, layered plates. The cloak too was somewhat tattered, a few rents and frayed holes in the dusty black material.

"Why are you sitting so close to the fire?"

Shyft tilted his head a fraction of an inch, watching Lars sit down, a few spaces away.

"The armor-" The man stopped, shaking his head. His voice was dark and had an almost mechanical quality to it, far different from Lars' own daemonic voice. Regardless, it sounded very, very unnatural.

When he spoke again, the armored... person… had a far more normal, though still distorted voice. "The armor absorbs heat. I am never as warm as I would like to be.”

Lars nodded, but he thought back to the caves, and how the white-hot blade purged the heat after use. "Obviously it is not endless in its thirst for heat, or you would not need to do the venting, would you?"

Shyft nodded, acknowledged the observation, and raised his right arm. The blade shot out. About as wide as a hand at the base and about a foot long, it was segmented, collapsible. The tip sank into the preceding section, and that section into the one before it, and again as Shyft put it away. Now seeing it close up, Lars could tell it was an incredible feat of engineering, considering the overall level of advancement of this realm.

"Too much heat will turn the inside of this armor hotter than a forge, or those... furnaces, you helped create."

They stared into the fire for a while, before Lars spoke again. “Ah, if you don’t mind me asking, what exactly are you? I mean, you already acknowledge you are wearing armour, and where I come from you wouldn’t stand out much, so what lies beneath the metal?”

Shyft was silent.

“I don’t even know what gender pronoun to use! You have no idea how frustrating it is to keep reminding yourself that you may not be a ‘he’. Your armour is so concealing I can’t even begin to guess at any possible secondary sexual characteristics you might be hiding,” Lars pointed out in protestation.

“Male will suffice, but remember that assumptions get the best of us.... And there is no wrath like that of a woman mistaken for a man.”

Lars winced and nodded. “Duly noted. “ He was still acutely aware that the mercenary could still be any number of beings, although at least a construct seemed out of the running unless the creature had the sort of devious mind that would make Tzintchi proud.

“And what are you?”

Lars smiled, less a smile and more a grin physically too wide for his head and filled with shark teeth. Not that Shyft or anyone else around other than Skuld would know what a shark was. Lars was himself silent though, in imitation of Shyft’s own prior silence.

Shyft let out a short laugh at that and nodded, conceding the point.

The fire crackled and spat. The armored man reached in and raked the coals with his armored hand. “Resistant to fire are we?” Lars waved to the hand submerged in coal.

“The heat will not bother me for such a short time, no.”

When he pulled his hand back, the metal was different. No longer ash black, it shone and swirled like quicksilver. The metal slithered and slipped around his fingers, fashioning itself into sharp claws, then a spider web lattice of tendons, and other odd configurations, before finally settling back into a metal-shod gauntlet and cooling.

Lars was silent a long moment before he spoke again.

“I can’t read you. At all. My other senses work, but as far as psychics are concerned you’re not there.” He waved his arm aimlessly. “I can’t even feel any emotions from you.”

Shyft reached up and tapped the odd armor plate along his hood. I looked like a metal armadillo shell with a bit of overhang, like a baseball cap. “I have extensive shielding against the mental arts. They were more than necessary, long ago.”

“Long ago?” Lars prompted.

“I have been around for… long enough” There was a lot implied by those words.

“There are many creatures that have been around for long enough,” Lars pointed out.

Shyft didn’t answer, but he tilted his head, the shadows cast by his hood seemed to morph into a smug little smirk. Lars took the hint and moved on.

“And that thing on your hood? Aside from armor obviously.”

“Call it a sniper shield, if I may borrow one of the new words you and your goddess have brought. It defends my head from the rear above, so I may focus my attention forward.” He paused for a moment, as if thinking. “It may yet come in handing in the years ahead, if your plans bear fruit.

“I doubt any arrow would break through your helmet... a rifle bullet is more likely, or my fifty-cal, although Skuld hasn’t made any new ammunition for it yet. Of course, if that doesn’t work there’s always 20mm and up. They have a saying where I come from, ‘There’s always a bigger gun’,” Lars noted with a smirk.

Shyft nodded. “One can never be too well prepared in offence or defence. If you’re not sure, assume the other guy is and be very careful.” Even distorted, he spoke with the voice of an experienced warrior.

“You’ll live a long time then. Presuming you never meet something faster than you,” Lars mused.

“Indeed.”

There was a moment of comfortable silence before Shyft started up again. “Oh, about that weapon of yours.”

Lars raised an eyebrow, but simply nodded.

“I must admit, I would very much like a weapon like your rifle. Maybe not one scaled along the lines of…”

“Well and truly overkill?” Lars offered, grinning.

Shyft nodded. “I prefer to be subtle more often than not.”

“You have a blade on your arm that gets hotter than the sun, how is that subtle?” Lars asked half in disbelief, half in amusement.

Shyft shrugged. “I use it when I need it. A knife will kill a man as sure as the lance.”

Lars nodded. “Well, I don’t see why we can’t get a few people working on something for you. Our primary problem is actually ammunition; we need more nitrated propellants and brass before we can start really making the good guns so black powder technology has to do for the mainline troops for the moment. You’re skilled enough that the investment of a better gun with better ammo would be worth it though. Although you might have to pay for it like everyone else though. Or work it off.” He smiled a bit and added. “There is no such thing as enough dakka.”

Shyft agreed while moving back to the original topic. “You and your daughter could break my mental defenses, eventually.” He paused. “My physical ones too, for that matter.”

Lars nodded; there was a degree of trust implicit in that admission. “When I first really noticed you earlier this evening, I almost thought you were.... something else.”

“What?”

“Something from a very unpleasant place, a creature called a Culexus Assassin.”

“What is that?”

Lars gathered his thoughts and took an unnecessary breath. Old habits die hard. “Where I come from, there is this plane where emotion and life spills over into a sort of roiling, boiling soup. Everything with a soul has a reflection on this plane. This world we live our mortal lives in is the Materium, that other place is the Immaterium, or Warp, the place of creatures like me.”

Shyft quietly acknowledged this admission of an otherworldly nature.

“Anyway, since everyone with a soul has an impact on the warp, aside from one upstart race that’s got almost zero, everyone is... connected by it. But in the… past I suppose you could say, there were creatures that had no souls, in fact they were like holes in the Warp, called Blanks, with the worst ones called Pariahs. Some were trained as assassins, called Culexus assassins and were used to kill beings that tapped into the Warp.”

“And I am like this, you thought?” Shyft inquired.

“Not exactly, the assassins have a much more pronounced effect and their tactics and equipment are different, but your blankness to me and your deadliness did remind me of the stories about them. If you were a Culexus assassin I wouldn’t be able to sit this close to you as you would be actively damage my ability to well… stay intact,” Lars explained.

“Understood. Go on.”

“You’re ‘the lack of’ instead of the ‘drawing into nothing’. You’re still unsettling, but only to someone like me with extensive psychic abilities.”

They sat, digesting that bit of info for the moment. “You seem to have a fair degree of knowledge about these... stories.”

“My people are very good at keeping records.”

Lars sank back into his psychic senses for a moment, for another sweep of the camp. It was well past whatever counted as local midnight there. He looked back at Shyft and asked the question that had been weighing on his mind since the fight with the golem and the fiends. “You have a mercenary air about you, so the question I suppose is not why you are here but what do you expect to gain?”

Shyft seemed to give him a ‘why are you asking such an obvious question?’ look before he said, “I am mercenary, I go where the next payment is, and such things always follows war.”

“True, but we haven’t paid you.”

The shadows beneath the hood seemed to smile. “Some things you have to take on faith and to be honest you have already given me much. Reputation can be more valuable than gold if you know where to spend it.”

“You have faith. But is it faith in your blade, faith in your armour, or something more? If you don’t mind me asking, do you serve any particular deity?” Lars asked.

Shyft shook his head ever so slightly before he said, “No specific god or goddess, no. I may seek... favour, however.”

Lars smirked, which on his face was capable of sending small children and some adults screaming into the night. “I’m reminded of a phrase from my world. “ ‘In god we trust, all others pay cash.’”
“A wise sentiment for one such as me,” Shyft remarked.

“You seek favour? Of perhaps the new goddess that just so happens to be a few hundred feet away?” He asked.

Shyft gave a tiny nod. “She is here and she is useful to me, as I would be useful to her.”

“And how would you serve her to gain such favour?” Lars continued.

“Whatever she wanted that was within my power to accomplish,” his voice took on the growling bass rumble again. From beneath the hood, red crystal lenses burned like hot coals. Lars’ smirk grew at that.

“We may have to test your capabilities then. You handled that golem very well.”

Shyft waved the compliment off. “My thermal lance was designed to deal with such threats. I must admit, I am actively resisting the urge to boast.”

“Really,” if Lars had to describe Shyft with a word, it would be laconic. Boasting didn’t seem to fit with the man’s character.

“It is part of my method of combat. I have pages and pages of litanies and battle cries memorized; some of them even function as spells,” Shyft explained.

Lars laughed. “We have a few battle cries of our own; I personally was always fond of ‘All is Dust’. Though the group who used that isn’t.... around, anymore… exactly.”

“Suitably ominous, I agree.”

“Consider that the guys who used it were actually dust contained with armour, it scores double points for creepiness. Our best one is actually a tribute to one of our goddesses, though she appropriated it from her predecessor god: ‘Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!’” Lars replied, putting on his best berserker voice without actually shouting and waking up half the camp.

“Ah, that one is very catchy. Would it be blasphemy if I borrowed it?” Shyft asked.

Lars considered before he said, “No, but then again, even if I don’t think she can hear you, are you sure you want to draw the attention of a goddess who is always angry, all the time?”

Shyft perked up a bit. “Ah, that’s what your daughter was talking about, why she wanted skulls.”

“Yeeaaah,” Lars drew the word out.

For a moment the armored warrior looked hesitant. Lars was getting better at reading his body language. “I... Must admit, I followed your daughter when I could, when she stole away into the Drow camps and the like.”

“Why?”

“Until I saw her tear into a Drow blade master, I was hoping to protect her.”

Lars took on an annoyed look and said. “She’s not a normal little girl, but I would have preferred you not have let her get to the camp like that. There was a pissed off avatar wandering around at the time.”

“Apologies, the mercenary side of me felt that a daring rescue would have been better than simply bringing her back. But no, she is not in the least normal. I wasn’t there when she was born though.” Shyft admitted.

“Right, don’t let it happen again. How did you meet up with us, anyway?” Lars asked will poking at the fire with a bare hand, utterly unconcerned by the mortal flames.

“I was negotiating a security contract with Bregan D’aerthe. House Roreril, however, co-opted their services before my contract could be finalized,” Shyft explained with a shrug.

“And things inevitably spiraled out of control from there as just about everyone’s story seems to go in this camp. Sorry?” Lars replied with a sigh, knowing just how much chaos his mere presence just seemed to naturally stir up.

“I appreciate the gesture, but apologies are not necessary. It’s not like it was your fault even if you were involved in the events at the time,” Shyft replied.

“That reminds me, what is with your movement?”

“Pardon?”

“You don’t move right, you’re... floaty,” Lars said while making a wavy motion with his hand to emphasize his point.

That got a short rumble out of the armoured man.

“What?” Lars rumbled. Shyft only laughed harder.

“You are some sort of eldritch horror, a terror from beyond the beyond, you’ve brought tools of great power and destruction with you, by all means every word should be of gravitas and power... And you then describe my movements with the word floaty,” Shyft explained, still lightly chuckling with mirth.

Lars laughed. “Well, when you look at it that way... although where you got that I should have gravitas I don’t know.”

“One can learn all sorts of interesting things if they listen.” He let that statement linger for a moment. “And, I asked the Erinyes.”

“I’m going to have words with them about mission critical information...” Lars muttered.

“I would not be concerned. They only told me that you were something like an ‘Elder Evil’. Which means almost nothing to me, because I have no idea what that is. It merely proves that you are well outside the norm. Although I suppose why a creature that evil beings from outside our realm consider an evil being from outside their realm is sitting here with me is perhaps a greater concern,” Shyft mused for a moment. “To answer your question, I am ‘floaty’, because my armor has layered enchantments on it, I become lighter or heavier as circumstances demand.” It went without saying that was a very brief explanation; it was good enough for the moment though.

Lars nodded and said “That seems handy.”

“It is.”

“We seem to be talking a lot, rather aimlessly,” Lars pointed out.

“Why not? We have no short term plans, no battles to fight, no problems to deal with,” Shyft stated as a counter-point.

“Good point. A pity neither one of us seems to drink and I can’t get intoxicated anyway, cause a beer would go real well right about now. Ah well…”

[TheClueless]

Lars, husband of Skuld, Norn of the Future, and daemon of Chaos Undivided, looked over the camp. Well, ‘looked’ being used loosely. He extended his psychic senses as far as they would go, easily encompassing the whole camp and a good portion of Nesmé. Gunnhild was with her mother, both of them standing out like beacons in the poor-man’s Immaterium he saw in his mind. Not that it really was The Actual Warp.

Is Lars looking at the Astral and/or Ethereal plane(s)?

“I don’t even know what gender pronoun to use! You have no idea how frustrating it is to keep reminding yourself that you may not be a ‘he’. Your armour is so concealing I can’t even begin to guess at any possible secondary sexual characteristics you might be hiding,” Lars pointed out in protestation.

So I guess I was wrong about Shyft being a construct. Oh well.

Lars smiled, less a smile and more a grin physically too wide for his head and filled with shark teeth. Not that Shyft or anyone else around other than Skuld would know what a shark was. Lars was himself silent though, in imitation of Shyft’s own prior silence.

Nesme isn't on the coast, I'll admit, but I think that someone living there would have seen a shark at some point. During a sea-journey from Waterdeep to places like Luskan, for example.

“I can’t read you. At all. My other senses work, but as far as psychics are concerned you’re not there.” He waved his arm aimlessly. “I can’t even feel any emotions from you.”

Shyft reached up and tapped the odd armor plate along his hood. I looked like a metal armadillo shell with a bit of overhang, like a baseball cap. “I have extensive shielding against the mental arts. They were more than necessary, long ago.”

The major players - if memory serves me correctly - in regards to psychic powers on Toril are (in no particular order): Illithids, Aboleth, Duergar, and Yuan-Ti. The only major human psionic power (that I know of) on Toril (at least on Faerun) was Jhaamdath; which was destoryed in -255 DR.

“Call it a sniper shield, if I may borrow one of the new words you and your goddess have brought. It defends my head from the rear above, so I may focus my attention forward.” He paused for a moment, as if thinking. “It may yet come in handing in the years ahead, if your plans bear fruit.

I have my doubts that "sniper" is a new word on Toril. Too many elven archers, you see.

“Anyway, since everyone with a soul has an impact on the warp, aside from one upstart race that’s got almost zero, everyone is... connected by it.

I take it that the "upstarts" are/were the Tau?

“It is part of my method of combat. I have pages and pages of litanies and battle cries memorized; some of them even function as spells,” Shyft explained.

The last part (litanies/battle cries functioning as spells) sounds like something out of the Tome of Nine Swords.

“Consider that the guys who used it were actually dust contained with armour, it scores double points for creepiness. Our best one is actually a tribute to one of our goddesses, though she appropriated it from her predecessor god: ‘Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!’” Lars replied, putting on his best berserker voice without actually shouting and waking up half the camp.

“Ah, that one is very catchy. Would it be blasphemy if I borrowed it?” Shyft asked.

Lars considered before he said, “No, but then again, even if I don’t think she can hear you, are you sure you want to draw the attention of a goddess who is always angry, all the time?”

Well, as long as Asukhon's angry at my *enemies* - and not at me or my allies - it wouldn't be so bad.

Actually, that raises an interesting point. Will Lars, deliberately or not, be the cause of the gods of Neo-Chaos gaining worshippers on Toril? Would those worshippers have to worry about being placed on/in the Wall of the Faithless? Would enough worshippers allow Neo-Chaos to lock onto Toril's position in Chaotic Space, and/or the fact that this is where Lars is (currently) at?

In any event, thanks both to yourelf and Shyft for this chapter/one-shot.

[Darth Fanboy]

fuckit, removed.

[consequences]

As I recall, the Greater daemons of NewChaos are literally the Children of the Chaos Gods, and regarded with much the same affection and protectiveness as humans regard their own children. If one of her Bloodthirsters was permanently killed, instead of temporarily dispersed/banished/whatever, especially as a direct result of Tzintchi's machinations, Asukhon would be somewhat beyond the realm of human rage.

[Academia Nut]

Yes, I was going to comment that a little bit of warning before you posted this would have been nice so I could have caught little errors like that. Technically if she sent a high ranking daemon to investigate it would be a daemon prince as the Greater Daemons are still all kids. And she would be really pissed about losing a daemon prince because they tend to be on first name terms and friendly with them, and that's a lot of energy lost.

Otherwise an amusing side story. 'Mission report' style stories would be interesting, to see all the little places where Chaos has scouts just observing and the minor trouble they might get into. I still haven't figured out where to put the idea of a dimension hopping Ork, Jaegermonster, and a small band of Nac Mac Feagle (they live in the Jaeger's quite impressive hat) who like to crash bars across the multiverse would fit in. My spellchecker is already protesting that sort of thing though. Perhaps an urban legend amongst the Chaos scouts.

[Darth Fanboy]

Yeah I wrote it and posted it rather drunk. Changed it from a Bloodthirster to a Prince.

And yes she is very pissed, the story indicates as such, you think she will play nice when she sees Dethklok? Think again. Their survival depends on whether or not Tzinchi decides to use them.

But the idea of a powerful getting killed and Asukhon being pissed is part of the story. In this little tidbit NewChaos got hurt, there are beings out there that can do damage, and the idea of the lake troll of the third episode of MEtalocalypse being a Daemon amuses me greatly.

[consequences]

Let's put it this way, when one of her kids was put into not really significant danger to further Tzintchi's machinations, she moved into a mental state of 'wanting to do him physical harm as only the god of carnage can'. Your fic doesn't really portray anything much beyond momentary outrage and a bit of ongoing anger. We're talking 'past universal borders, the psychically sensitive lashed out without apparent cause at all around them' territory if you want to really show a god's ire.

[Academia Nut]

I suppose the point could be made that Asukhon is a deity of 'anger', if more of a righteous anger than her predecessor Khorne, so there should probably be more swearing and FUCK CUNT BADGER DICKS!

Right now the story is in the 'S-canon' level, to steal a term from elsewhere, in that while I find the idea of Mustakratish being a summoned daemon amusing, the details still seem a bit off. Still, I put this here to encourage audience participation, so if you have a good idea, just contact me first so that these sorts of details can be sorted out ahead of time.