The Curse of Quamaire

[Maharg67]

0011

EllessTane sighed. “You can cease looking distraught. This was no medallion made by any minor priestess in a local market though made to look like it. The vibes from this tell me that somebody replaced the real medallion with this one. I can 'sense' nothing with this new medallion to do with DalentaTi.”

At that CaembraZiv was relieved and it showed.

The armies of attacking undead kept on coming so that even the tentaculars became overwhelmed and withdrew from the battle, vanishing into their brackish pools.

EllessTane frowned hard and taking up the antiundead weapon, she carefully took off its cover. Then, with a look of wary disgust she took it up, aimed it at the oncoming hordes and focused with a grimace. From the undeathly antiundead device spat pale energies like phantom electrical bolts, fanning out across the undead hordes. The lesser undead began to crumble away in the hundreds as the terrible energies spat from victim to victim. In seconds the great majority of the undead were gone. Then the terrible weapon disintegrated into pale dust and was no more.

EllessTane was far from happy at having used such an antinatural device but she did not seem surprised that it had self destructed. “The undead would not want us to keep such a device so as to gain any knowledge from it for they like to keep their secrets. It has done its job. The way is clear of the undead and many souls have been freed. The weapon did try to claim some of them but I put a stop to that.”

The way was clear, at least of the undead creatures. They began to move further across the great, exotic chamber. Soon they were following a slowly winding stone raised walkway, complete with stone safety rails, that went out across the cavern. It meant fast going, and the avoidance of many obstacles, but it also meant the group was high and exposed. The Tooze had gone that way and, to catch up to them, they were forced to do the same.

They got about half way across the great, bizarre cavern when they reached a place where the raised walkway had totally crumbled away. It had been destroyed by no obvious means but EllessTane picked up traces of very powerful but unknown forms of destructive magic that had done the trick.

From then on they were forced to move through pools of brackish water, past crumbling statues half sunken into greasy mud, on great big leathery leaves that were amazingly strong and through an area dotted with big stone cylinder shaped towers topped with domes that were linked together by flying buttress like bridges.

Which was when an arrow flew to hit the ground with a message attached. The group reacted defensively but then went back to being less defensive as CaembraZiv read the message. The message was straight forward. There were people up in the network of towers that were friendly and wanted to negotiate to make some kind of important deal. The message ended by asking that the newcomers not to jump to any conclusions upon seeing the 'locals'.

EllessTane read the message, smiled, and suggested they do as the message asked.

Edited April 11, 2013 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

0012

 

Nombies, friendly zombies, were a strange contradiction of undeath and were uncommon compared to savage, ever hungering zombies. Skelets were friendly versions of skeletors. Nemphires were friendly versions of vampires. They were all to be found in the communities of the NetworkTowers along with tough mortals such as humans, orcs and even some peaceful goblins; that is more peaceful than typical goblins.

 

Then there were the Nocomer, reformed Necromer, who repaired and managed the ancient Mer technologies of the NetworkTowers.

 

For many centuries the cavern had been a reasonable haven for the peoples of the NetworkTowers but in the past years the undead had been gathering in force in neighboring caverns and had been raiding with increasing numbers and savagery. Not even the tentaculars, or the amazing sunray magic of the Nocomer, had been able to hold them back from getting increasingly closer to the towers themselves.

 

They wanted to migrate but not too far; there was a safer haven, bigger and friendlier, more fertile and with its own version of the NetworkTowers. There were people there but they wanted more to join them. Trouble was the people did not know if the story was totally accurate, was actually true, but they thought they had little choice.

 

Except that is until now the newcomers had appeared.

 

A tall, graceful Nocomer Matriarch came, gracefully in long silken robes, to meet with the newcomers. She smiled and gave a quick bow from her waist. “We thank you for getting rid of that great army of the undead though you had to use such a dreadful weapon to do so. We were glad to see it self destruct once used.”

 

EllessTane smiled, nodded. “Your story is a fine one but it is not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

 

The Nocomer Matriarch nodded. “How could one easily speak of the deep darkness of such. We Nocomer felt obliged to do something to make up for our evil past as Necromer. The NetworkTowers are part of a lock on a magical gateway that leads to the Dimensional Realms of Undeath sometimes known as the Great Desolation of Greater and Lesser Desolations. To our deep shame, eight of our kind betrayed the others and stole three of the KeyCrystals that keep the lock active, along with other artifacts of a great vault chamber. The traitors fled and then sold the artifacts to a large force of Tooze in exchange for the means to escape to the surface. Except that the Tooze betrayed the traitors and slaughtered them. Then the Tooze were attacked by many undead and most were destroyed. Enough survived to get away with the stolen artifacts.”

 

EllessTane told Krestyle, the matriarch, about the pursuit of the Tooze in order to find out what the Tooze had been up to and how the expedition had ended up going deep into the ground in a way that it had not planned to do.

 

Krestyle was puzzled. “I do not know why the surviving Tooze would return this way unless their minds are being manipulated, just as you suggested.”

Edited April 13, 2013 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

0013

EllessTane nodded, a thoughtful expression on her face. “All those mortal amongst you.”

Krestyle sighed as if resigning herself to something she did not want to. “Friendly versions of doppelgangers known as googlegangers. They are very good at looking like others but they do make many little mistakes when it comes to body language.”

“They are horrible actors and they would need acting lessons before any actors troop would hire them.” CaembraZiv spoke calmly but with a mild grin. “The two over there, pretending to be angry orcs, they look more like constipated orcs.”

The matriarch smiled more. “Yes and the two trying to look like petting lovers are most interesting to look at as they flirt with each other's knees.” She lost her smile. “Will you assist us to go to the other place?”

“Show me the message that they sent to you.” EllessTane was going on a 'feeling' she had.

She took a small, unusual crystal message-globe and held it in her left hand while touching it with the fingers of her right hand. After a few minutes she frowned hard, shaking her head.

“I 'sense' you have been wary of the message and those that sent it. You had good reason to be. The message was created, and sent, by a powerful vampire. Her real intentions were accidentally implanted into the fringes of the message. These ancient artifacts can be quite difficult to use, one has to be careful, but the vampire was amazingly over confident when she used it. Then again, many vampires become that way which is one reason why there are so few ancient vampires. What happened to the Necromer?”

Krestyle looked troubled. “We do not know much for we Nocomer were isolated cousin clans dwelling far from the major clans and the big Necromer settlements. That was where it happened, the great experiment that would make sure that the MerLink would be able to destroy powerful enemies, combine and swap resources and take back full control of Tamriel. They wanted most of all to exterminate all humans. It was an insane plan and not all Necromer were supportive of the idea. We were exiles, moderate minorities and those who preferred the relative freedom of being so far from the oppressive Necromer Oligarchy. The MerLink was made up of the Necromer, the Dwemer, the Ayleid and others unnamed for good reason.”

EllessTane sighed very softly. “Please name them.”

The matriarch was obviously uncomfortable with doing so but she did. “The GlimmerLords and their followers, the Azezizozu and the Zynemer.”

EllessTane was shocked, angry and deeply puzzled and made no effort to hide it. “All of those entities are extremely dangerous to work with, are criminally insane, are known in many realms as a great enemy, a great threat. To work with the three of them would be madness. What would drive the more normal Mer to do such a thing?”

Krestyle shook her head. “We were isolated, quite deliberately, from what was going on by the Oligarchy with their great network of collaborators, spies, assassins and death squads.”

[Maharg67]

0014

At that moment a group of warriors came into the NetworkTowers and they brought with them the dead, desiccated bodies of the Tooze that they had been chasing. Something had fed on liquified flesh, blood and life energies. The Tooze had been destroyed by something powerful and undead.

EllessTane frowned hard. “I can not truly define what did this except to say that it is Mer related but to what kind of Mer, that I do not know.”

CaembraZiv looked puzzled. “The Curse of Quamaire! Was it not that one day a great army of undead, led by undead lesser gods, would rise up out of the very depths of the ground of the Quamaire Islands?”

“Part of the curse, yes!” EllessTane was deep in thought for a while before she spoke again. “We must send a warning to the Palace, to the High Elders Council and to the High Wizards Council.”

Krestyle spoke then with some urgency. “There is a way to the surface through an ancient vertical tunnel as built by the MerLink. It has an elevator though that might not be working now. It also has a great spiral rampway. Perhaps we all need to go that way for our scouts report that something else dark, and monstrous, comes this way. You could take us part of the way. There may be big caverns up there that our people can settle in.”

“Such as the ones you already know about.” EllessTane sighed. “We will take you there. You did not need to trick us into doing so.”

“I wish it was a trick!” Krestyle responded. “Something is coming that is beyond our knowledge. We do not think that it is of the undead but neither alive either. We fear it is one of the ancient tentaculars that has survived to grow into a truly gigantic version of its kind.”

EllessTane responded. “I have a feeling that we need to meet this great, ancient tentacular and communicate with it. There must be a reason that it is coming here. Perhaps it knows something that we need to know.”

The locals agreed, though they were not too pleased with the idea. Nombies, skelets, nemphires and googlegangers all raced around and then hid inside the big, strong towers except a minority who stood with an odd collection of armor, weapons and magical devices. The last was a token effort to show they were ready for trouble for the super tentaculars were truly awesome in their power.

They need not have worried for it was the super tentacular who was in trouble, who needed their help. Along with a great swarm of lesser tentaculars, and thousands of other creatures, the great wounded creature came slowly into the great chamber and curled up, preparing to die.

Not long after EllessTane, and hundreds of healers of many peoples, were busy healing the great neutral friendly super tentacular, that was a great glob of a globe with three great tentacles and, growing off those, many smaller but still huge tentacles and, off those, even more tentacles. The super tentacular could not, would not, communicate for a day or so and that was the best for as it rested, it was healing itself and was easier to help heal.

[Maharg67]

0015

The super tentacular had been driven, with great surprise and malice, from its home cavernland by something undead, amazingly savage, huge and mighty. Yet the big, slow thinking super tentacular had no idea of what it was and neither did the lesser tentaculars, many of them being very old and powerful in their own right, were floating tripocs, strange hybrid trinoids of humanoids, wingulars of winged bunches of tentacles and a whole lot of naturally mutated things called thinglars. All of them served the super tentacular as they might a living god and, in a real fashion, it was one.

They were all upset, fearful and very angry in their own fashion.

The warlord, and wizardess, walked along a great tentacle along with warriors as bodyguards and some aids. As they approached the great hub of a partly flattened globe, EllessTane kept making healing spells at small areas of wounding.

It turned out that the big battle had not gone one way only. The super tentacular had taken the monstrous attacker by surprise and had done it a great deal of damage for its over confidence. The undead thing had been hurled back but it was going to return and with it, it would bring a great army of lesser undead. The super tentacular had gotten to be ancient by being stupid and had soon been calling up all of its people to take them to safety with it. It refused to leave until every one of them, even the weakest of the thinglars, was not going to be left behind. The followers of the super tentacular had good reason to love their living god, in their own way.

Large processions of its followers were taking the SazaTentacular along with soothing semiliquids of crushed plants of different kinds and lots of water. Others sang in exotic tones to further soothe their great mentor.

SazaTentacular asked to have some friendly undead to eat but was firmly, gently, refused by EllessTane and CaembraZiv. SazaTentacular knew better than to push the issue. Also the great female knew that it needed the assistance of the friendly undead in any coming conflict for sooner, or later, the great undead would come.

SazaTentacular's home was not too distant away for its one great weakness was it was slow to move and could not move very far before needing to rest for a while. The enemy was only about fifty, or so, kilometres away but in a diagonal manner downwards as well as outwards.

EllessTane communicated with SazaTentacular in an exotic telepathic fashion that was difficult and gave her a minor migraine when she was done. Tentaculars, and related creatures, did not communicate with audio-verbal languages or known sign languages.

It was the much trusted LalaneTama, a warrior leader of the Aratoro with many victory emblems, who led a group to take communications up the 'vertical tunnel' to the surface and from there to communicate with the home city of ZenrenQua. With the party went some friendly undead who would guide them so far but who would not go as far as the surface for they were burned by sunlight and feared 'the Great Big Open'. Who could blame them given that they had dwelt down in the depths of the underground for at least hundreds of thousands of years. When LalaneTama was gone, with her people, it became time to review everything and to make new plans. Yet more surprises were to arrive, one of them being quite soon.

[Maharg67]

0016

They did not wait passively for the invasion of undead, to come, and the return of the the group led by LalaneTama. They made preparations for defense, with the tentaculars becoming part of the flexible defense formation that could change to suit different enemy tactics.

The number of stolen artifacts was clarified to being eighteen of which three were KeyCrystals. Another five were undead summoners, five were undead controllers and the last five were undead regenerators. It was no accident that exactly five of each, of the less powerful artifacts, had been stolen. The big questions were where had they gone to and why?

They explored more of the great cavern with its exotic, often dreadful, features. It had once been important to a secondary region of the Necromer and had served many purposes as a hub; that is religious, commercial, industrial and much else. The Nocomer had explored the chamber many times, with its many ruins buried under more ruins and hidden places, destroying much of what they had found because it was too dangerous even to justify keeping for study reasons.

Yet the Nocomer, as they freely admitted, had far from searched all that was there. There was the complexity, the strange transformations to the environment, ancient security threats, monstrous entities and the sheer complexity of the ruins. Two well prepared expeditions had gone out but had failed to return, one departing only about two months ago.

EllessTane was only too happy to go exploring, which she did with a large and well prepared group including warriors and smaller tentaculars as protection. Soon she was making discoveries that surprised even the Nocomer, who had dwelt there for many centuries, but she had a habit of doing such things.

She found special uses for many kinds of flora, and other kinds of lifeforms, growing in the cavern. She discovered two large storerooms filled with useful equipment and supplies, including devices, that the Nocomer would find useful. Only a few items needed to be destroyed, some were carefully put aside for study and others went into fixing up the NetworkTowers.

The Warlord focused on building up defenses and organizing some kind of effective defense force.

Edited May 18, 2013 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

0017

Aratoron warriors fought zombies, and skeletors, coming up out of a half buried temple that was also heavy concealed by rampantly growing moss-trees. With them were nombies fighting with armor and weapons of their own, being slower than the human fighters but stronger. The nombies focused on dealing with the, just a slow, zombies while the Aratorons took on the faster, more agile, skeletors who had armor and weapons.

It had started out as a skirmish but was fast becoming a battle. Warrior-mages, along with mages, came to assist the defenders along with other kinds of friendly undead. The defenders could slaughter the attackers because the zombies, and skeletors, were coming out of just one doorway. The door had seemingly come open by itself before the structure could be safely checked on the outside but it had been no coincidence; a dark magical trap had been triggered.

CaembraZiv, himself, took charge of the conflict while making sure that not too many forces were committed to the fight. He had no desire to leave the NetworkTowers exposed to other threats, along with the people there. When a 'small' tentacular joined the fight, only too happy to devour a few zombies and skeletors, it seemed that the battle was won.

CaembraZiv did not become a great military commander by making foolish assumptions, at least not after learning some hard lessons in his early career. One of those was that the more powerful of the evil undead had no hesitation in using up lesser such entities in their strategies.

When part of the stone roof of the temple building exploded up and open, out came a high pitch screaming LichQueen. Blackened red robes flying out from its skeletal puss colored body. It had once been a woman but that was long ago, with some pitiful signs left of that being true, and now it was antinatural and greedy for blood, liquified flesh and life energies.

With the LichQueen came two powerful vampires, in thrall to it of course for the LichQueen would not trust their service otherwise. They wore necromantic plate armor and carried undeathly greatswords, two handed weapons of horror.

CaembraZiv had been waiting for such a trick to happen. He rushed upon the LichQueen and stabbed it with his own magical sword. The thing screamed terribly, inhumanly, in agony and rage. Then it burned away with amazing speed.

A Vampire Knight struck at CaembraZiv, proving to be formerly of the Tamriellan Empire by its weapons and armor now cursed, his greatsword narrowly missing the warlord. Then Aratoron arrows struck the undead knight, from another land, and it burned away. The other Vampire Knight attacked CaembraZiv, probably realizing it was doomed and wanting to take the Aratoron with him. CaembraZiv's word met its undead guts and soon it was gone.

They went into the temple, led by the warlord himself, and killed the last of the undead there. What else they found was to take even CaembraZiv, and EllessTane, by surprise along with others in that place including the Nocomer and friendly undead.

Edited June 5, 2013 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

This post was a mess because I accidentally posted two 'segments' of the story linked together. One had already been posted. I can only explain this by saying that I was bombarded by telephone calls at the time and was not given a chance to focus on my writing at a critical moment. The post has been fixed!

0018

The temple was much bigger inside than had been suggested by its outward appearance. A massive temple chamber reached out before them, dotted with garishly decorated metallic wooden coffins, now both open and empty, along with ugly statues of the same material.

There were much larger statues of glistening stone including a type that was a sitting fat man that should have been smiling happily except that its mouth gaped with great fangs. Others were of skeletal undead gods and goddesses, great big coiled serpent creatures and much else of the kind.

Amongst them were standing five great magic-mechanical metallic humanoids, clearly with much Dwemer design influencing them, but they looked more demonic in appearance with spikes and fangs, with great metallic whips on the left arms and great claw-hands on the right arms. Each was equipped with huge, exotic, weapons and tools for the right hand to use including a bizarre looking oversized pistol. Each was embraced by a massive metallic archway, with a disk shaped floor beneath both creatures and arches, that was quite Dwemer in style.

Then there was the archway with the metallic door that appeared to be openable into open air. It was at least partly Dwemer in nature but had bizarre, disturbing statues half melded into the outer archway on both sides. On top squatted a demonic gargoyle like creature that was not a gargoyle at all.

Neither CaembraZiv or EllessTane liked what they saw in the chamber and for good reason.

Krestyle spoke with obvious worry. "It is some kind of gate to one of the demonic dimensional realms, perhaps to one of the Realms of Oblivion of the DaedraGods that the Tamriellans know as the Sixteen Daedric Princes though some are female and in truth there are more than sixteen DaedraGods."

Yet EllessTane shook her head just a little. "Perhaps it is not so simple, Krestyle. I could be part of a network of such gates and they could be here, on the world of Nirn, just as much as they could be anywhere else. Did you notice the small control console with the Dwemer style controls?"

The Nocomer nodded, after a moment. "I see it now, for sure. It could be a way of choosing destinations, amongst other options. We will have to be greatly careful for those monstrous humanoids may be here to guard the gate."

There were two big, and two smaller, metallic doors inset into chamber walls. All were closed. One of the smaller, but not small, doors slid open and out stumbled a lich like creature in rotting, raggedy metallic silken robes. It emanated no 'feel' of threat and when it saw the newcomers it cried out. "I am Rellemeo of the Nocomer and I bring you a warning of a terrible danger. I have been away from the Nocomer for many centuries and I want to die amongst my own kind."

Edited May 30, 2013 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

The last post, before this one, was a mess because I accidentally posted two 'segments' of the story linked together. One had already been posted. I can only explain this by saying that I was bombarded by telephone calls at the time and was not given a chance to focus on my writing at a critical moment. The post has been fixed!

Edited May 24, 2013 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

0019

 

The stumbling Nocomer fell to his undead knees and, there being no 'feel' of evil or threat about him, the others approached him carefully.

 

EllessTane spoke with compassionate caring showing in her voice. "You are Nocomer? What happened to you?"

 

The other spoke weakly. "I am Kerrissa Overishada and I was in one of the first Nocomer expedition seeking into the secrets of Necromer and others. I can only guess if there were others."

 

Krestyle responded with obvious mixed emotions of much strength. "I am Krestyle Overishada, your descendent, and there have been other expeditions of which another vanished only months ago."

 

"I hope they did not find what we discovered." Kerrissa would have sighed but he was undead and had no air to do so with. "We became lost in a bizarre labyrinth until we came to a great chamber full of machinery built by many peoples. The mixed influences of design made for unique achievements of grand stature but all was dark and fallen in nature. We thought we were alone in that vast space, at least at first, and let our guard down. Then the undead came being Mer zombies of great strength, and speed, who were harder to destroy than 'normal' zombies. They overwhelmed us. We were turned into unusual lich like undead entities and became slave workers, joining many others in a dreadful project trying to revive the failed project of long ago that caused so much death and destruction."

 

Then he paused before speaking again. "I would be pleased to say I escaped but I was freed by a mysterious stranger. I did not know even if he, or she, was a Mer or not. She, or he, asked me to come and warn you of what is happening and also about some entity called the UndeathlyGod. She also send that the 13 Pathways of Light would guide you to new resources to fight necromancy, the undead and related dangers. I know nothing of such matters."

 

Kerrissa spoke of other things known such as details of the project but he knew surprisingly little for the slaves only did more basic work at the edges of the vast project chamber. As he sat speaking quietly with living Nocomer, he grew steadily weaker until he lay down, with his head in Krestyle's lap and others holding his hands, and died peacefully.

 

Kerrissa wept, as did a few other Nocomer.

 

 

Edited June 5, 2013 by Maharg67