DM'S NOTE: This is intended to be a disturbing (though not an explicit) scene. Please let me know if this is the wrong amount or wrong kind of disturbing for you.
Yarek leads you and Horst out of the baths and down a short corridor, making a number of turns probably intended to confuse you as to where exactly you are. It's pretty effective; you have no clear idea how far underground you are, but it might be hundreds of feet by the time you arrive at a door marked with the hellfire blazon of the Thott family. Yarek touches it, and it opens inward. You hear the insistent beating of a drum and see an odd dark-red illumination at the end of the corridor, with figures moving in the gloom in some large space. Yarek is very tense, more keyed up and anxious than excited; Horst (who is about your age) seems more comfortable, oddly, since it's not the basement of his ancestral keep. Or perhaps it's exactly that that's putting Yarek on edge…his house, his party, his responsibility for what happens.
This line of thought is cut short by your arrival at the party proper. A tall, thin..woman?…with the head of a cat slinks toward you, kissing each of you on both cheeks and the mouth. If her cat-ness is an illusion, it's a very thorough one; her tongue has the rasp of a cat's. "Welcome, brother," she says teasingly. "Always a fine thing to have another cat among all these dogs." She grins flirtatiously at Horst and Yarek; Horst growls at the back of his throat, and all three of them break into laughter.
"Thank you," Altan smiles and bows his head deferentially. "I find there is a finesse in the feline touch. The canine is more ferocious, but what the cat lacks in force, it makes up for with deftness." He glances sidelong to Horst but smiled at the laughter. "A pleasure indeed."
"Well spoken, well spoken," the cat-lady says. Turning, she gestures to the room. "All the delights of a fallen world lie before you, brothers. Take what you will. The corruption of the flesh is purity of spirit."
Looking about, you see that her statement about the delights of a fallen world is probably true. The lighting is dim and there are several interconnected rooms, making it hard to guess how many people are here, but you see several people writhing to the beat of the drum in the next chamber, and others drinking some dark liquid. One man near you crouched, staring into space, and trembling spasmodically; a line of drool hangs from his gaping mouth.
Altan watches the drooling man, managing to contain his disdainful sneer. Instead, he gives the man a wide berth and glides around the outer edge of the circle. This is not quite what he expected from the Slaves' celebrations. He enjoys food and drink, but he had had no idea how intense matters could get. He purses his lips and gravitated toward the drum sounds, curious to find the source of the music. Before he got out of sight, he glanced back toward Yarek and Horst, committing their masks to memory so he could find them again later.
Food and drink are certainly available, as are other forms of refreshment--a delicate creation providing a series of odors, narcotics in a variety of forms, some familiar, others less so. There are also couples, trios, and larger groups engaged in a variety of sexual activities, including (another frisson) groups which, to your eye, would include both Rashemani and Mulani participants, and others in which the participants do not appear to be fully human.
Altan selects a bite to eat, a small familiar cake dusted with cinnamon, one of the few familiar things here. This was startling. Altan had thought he was no stranger to over-indulgence, but this spoke of levels even he never imagined. This wasn't just drinking and partying hard. This was giving oneself fully to depravity. It was a more religious experience than Altan expected. And Altan was no lover of religion. Also there were Rashemani here. That made it a little distasteful. He took a bite of his cake and paused long enough to get a sense of the orgy, then moved on to the next part. Was the whole Helholt involved in this? There must be more than just Yarek if the symbol was on the door. After a few minutes of wandering he puts the number at about forty or fifty, most of whom are probably Mulani, although some of the disguises are quite elaborate and make determination of race and even gender problematic.
Someone has made a small fire--perhaps not very wise in a place which may already be under-ventilated--and cast something sweet-smelling on it. After a first whiff you identify hashish, and probably something else as well. A handsome woman wearing an oddly fashioned belt, an oddly familiar mask, and very little else approaches you, smiling, and lays a hand on your chest. "Why, Altan. Don't you know me?" she says, smiling flirtatiously.
"I am afraid I don't," Altan says, smiling a little self-deprecatingly. "But your mask is familiar. Do you like seeing cats and wolves together?"
She laughs. "Oh, you guessed. Usually it takes a little longer for the penny to drop." Undoing the belt, "she" reverts to "her" natural state. "A clever little thing. One of us found out how to make the Tiresian belt work only as long as you're wearing it. It allows all kinds of…interesting results. Including a new initiation we have been promised."
There is something deeply unsettling about the way he says this; for Horst, at least, this obviously really is a religious ceremony, and the religion is not a kind one.
"So if I had taken you just then...?" Altan smiles in faint amusement. "And what is the new initiation?" he asked. "Anything particularly intriguing?" This was a little more unnerving than Altan hoped, but he’s a displacer beast. He hides his true emotions well.
"You'd have had the time of your life," Horst says. "Still can, if you like. As for the initiation…we'll have to wait for the priestess to tell, but I hear it will be…deeper than anything. Deeper than sex, deeper than opium, maybe even deeper than death." He runs his tongue across his lips--not seductively; in fact, it reminds Altan more of the man in the first room staring into space and drooling.
"How much have you already done since we came down here?" Altan asked, still amused.
"Not much. But the night is yet young. By the third watch [midnight] things will be hopping, and then in the fourth watch they'll get really deep." Horst stops and gives Altan a considering look. "You're new at this, aren't you?"
"A bit, yes," Altan says. "I had some, ah, unfortunate encounters while I was at the Academy." He scowled, letting just enough of his anger seep through to show.
"I see," Horst says. "I'm sorry to hear that. Have some wine! Forget your troubles!"
Altan smiles. "I shall. Thank you. And if I can forget them enough, perhaps I will seek you out and make some new troubles. Tiresias belt or not."
"Oho! So that's the the wind blows. Very well! Wine's that way! Until we meet again!" Horst waggles his eyebrows salaciously, then dons his belt again and disappears into the gloom.
"Indeed." Altan smiled and watched Horst walk off, then meandered toward the wine. He took a cup, sniffed it, and had a taste, then went in search of Yarek.
It takes some time to find Yarek, and when you do it’s clear he won't want to be spoken to at the moment. The tension in the room is mounting; the dancers are more frenzied, the drums more insistent, and from time to time you hear someone scream--whether in ecstasy, pain, or both, you cannot tell. Working your way down to the farthest chamber you find yourself confronted with a disturbing image chalked on the wall--the Iron Lord, as you have seen him depicted hundreds of times in chapels across the land, but hermaphroditic and wearing only the traditional helmet. A long, low wooden altar with manacles and foot-chains dangling from it lies beneath this ikon.
Altan draws his lips into a tight line and stepped back. The blasphemy did not disturb him because it was blasphemous. Altan himself has imagined many other horrible things about the Lawgiver. But the worship of this bizarre ikon and the complete shedding of inhibitions shook Altan. After witnessing the Tables, the sorcerer had spent too much energy building up his walls. It would take more than a few glasses of wine to tear those down so quickly.
He turns and made his way back to the other chamber, hands clasped behind his back. He wasn't certain whether to stick around, but some dark part of him was curious to see this 'initiation.'
Suddenly there is a shout, and a space clears for two figures--one, broad-shouldered and short, wearing a black helm and black armor, leading another--a young red-haired woman, dressed in a white shift--by the hand.
The armored figure draws the young woman forward; as she passes Altan he can see by the vacant look of her eyes and her unnatural movements that she has been either heavily drugged or is under magical compulsion--possibly both. She is laid on the altar and her hands and feet shackled. Seizing her shift, the black-armored figure rips it away, then strips away its own armor, revealing it to be a Rashemani woman. Someone thrusts a Tiresian belt into her hands; as she dons it the celebrants crowd around the altar, obscuring Altan’s view.
Altan has seen enough. Looking around, he realizes that he’d have to actually attack someone to draw any attention; muttering a series of spells, he flicks a hex of ill fortune at the black-helmeted priestess/priest and determines to find Yarek as soon as possible. He hears a mutter of confusion --something has gone wrong with the ceremony, and he smiles to himself at the result of his ill-luck-inducing spell. It isn't easy to find Yarek in the dark, noisy, crowded, and smoky rooms--the more so as he is masked--and it seems it might be as long as quarter of an hour before Altan finds him, standing in the shadow of a doorway and staring fixedly at the scene, his jaw tense as the drumbeat rises and falls in tempo and the onlookers shout at a scene Altan is careful not to observe too closely, though he does note that they seem to be forming a queue.
Yarek is obviously in an altered state high and doesn't look very well at all; he has bitten his lip until the blood runs as he stares at the scene.
As he catches sight of Yarek Altan keeps his distance, drawing a veil of invisibility around himself. Under its cover, he sidled closer to the Thott and enacted the second part of his plan. A quiet spell and then the door appeared to open and a tall, grey-garbed inquisitor stood in the doorway, torchlight flickering on the antlers tattooed on his brows. Others began to file in. "The Inquisition!" Altan called, attempting to disguise his voice, and slipped closer to Yarek.
"Come with me," he whispered, taking Yarek's arm. "It is I, Altan."
Jerking back, Yarek lashes out and by pure luck catches Altan squarely on the chin, dropping him. The scene, already chaotic, is threatening to become a free-for-all. Many of those present, their minds already drugged, are screaming, pleading for mercy, trying to flee, or attacking the walls, themselves, or their neighbors; a few who are less inebriated or cleverer are trying to calm their fellows and convince them that it is only an illusion, to little effect.
Rubbing his chin, Altan grimaces and makes another attempt. “Yarek!” he says. “This is Altan. We need to
go.”
Something clicks in Yarek, and he nods. “Right. Right. Let’s go.” Together they stumble toward the exit, leaving the screams and cries of the cultists behind them.
