((This is entirely in character, information contained represents Armans knowledge of events, take with a grain of salt. :P ))
“So, you berks want to know why I choke-slammed a street performing clown into a brick wall?”
The man in the heavy plate armor sitting before you at the table in KhazeetÂ’s bistro is smiling at you ever so slightly, a tired look in his eyes. His nose has clearly been broken at least once and then healed back without proper care, his gray eyes have a tendency to slip into a thousand-foot stare, the mark of a veteran of war. His armor is utilitarian and unornamented, his kettle helm on the table in front of him. His short hair is slightly frazzled and doesnÂ’t quite conceal a length of scar tissue over his left temple. The only thing about him that looks extravagant at all is the holy symbol hanging on a chain around his neck, chased out in what appears to be mithril.
“I know you’ve heard me talk about my home, about Scarn, before.” He continues, taking a swig from a pint glass full of something foul smelling and strong.
“Well, we thought we left it behind when we came here. We thought that it would be either unwilling or unable to pursue us out here, out into the planes. Last week, when I saw that… performer… accosting Vilanth, it was a wakeup call. There is nowhere we can go to be rid of our past. We’ll have to face it, sooner or later.”
He sighs.
“But I am getting ahead of myself. You need to understand something: that thing wasn’t a clown. Not the way you think of it. It wasn’t a man in a costume, wearing whiteface and a little red nose. That was the whole of its being; the makeup was its skin.”
Arman shakes his head.
“I can see you don’t believe me. Fine, the next time you see one, try and take the red nose off. Just try it.”
He takes another swig before continuing.
“Back on Scarn, the prime world where I come from, there is a place called The Blood Bayou. It’s a salt-water marsh nearly a thousand miles across a couple of hundred deep. It used to be low-lands, before Khadum’s Blight. See, back, oh, a hundred a fifty years ago during the Divine War, Khadum was restrained and had his heart torn from his chest. This didn’t kill him, but it did severely weaken him. The gods chained him to a rock the size of a mountain and threw it into the very deepest part of the sea. His streaming blood instantly tainted those waters, and the wave from the impact swept out, a tsunami a quarter of a mile high. It obliterated whole civilizations, it remade the land where it struck, and on the continent of Termana, it shattered a range of hills that protected the low-lands from the sea. This flood of tainted filth, powerfully enchanted with corrupt magic, washed through and annihilated the townships of the lowlands. Nothing survived un-corrupted, un-mutated.”
Arman looks wistful for a moment then continues.
“All contact was lost, we just assumed everything there was dead. So many other places were destroyed, it was simply added to the list. A couple of decades passed, and then out of the silent marshlands came the first carnival caravans, unbidden. People didn’t know what to make of them at first; all this horror, this nightmare, the realms of man and elf shattered in the wake of the Divine War, and suddenly there was this whimsical thing, offering toys and games and candy. It was a ray of light in the dark, children laughed, taken with the simple joy of it all.”
“The next day was when they noticed all the diseased, all the squatters too poor to sleep indoors, all the insane, were just gone.”
“And so people said to themselves ‘I’m sure they just went with the carnival to the next town, they’ll come back.’. The more cynical said ‘Good riddance, less mouths to feed.’. Scarn is a deadly land, and since the Divine War, farmland is more valuable then gold. Food is life, and with less mouths to feed, well, people were willing to overlook it.”
Arman shakes his head again, the smile has left his face.
“The next time the Carnival came, it was bigger. When it left, it wasn’t just the infirm and the insane that were gone: It was the children too. Not all of them, but one or two, here or there. The local guards would ride out after them, weapons ready. The few times they returned, they reported that carnival caravans couldn’t be found, that the trails simply disappeared the first time they entered the woods. Other times, they simply never returned at all.”
“The local nations were up in arms over this, understandably. One thing led to another, the peasants were up in arms. The men-at-arms of the local lords were rallied. They had to build up the defenses of their towns, to stop this menace. They did this just in time to greet the armies of the Ghoul King, a threat nobody had been able to see coming. Their paranoia over the Carnival of Shadows, as it had become known, had forced them to be ready for the biggest threat to the existence of the nations of Termana since the Divine War; the never ending army of the screaming dead that lurched out of the southern ocean and fell upon them like an unstoppable tide. They couldn’t defeat this army, not alone, but their preparations bought them enough time to evacuate, for refugees to make it farther and farther, for the disparate counties there to band together to face this threat. In the end, the people of western Termana were forced into the very swamps of the Blood Bayou itself, were the terrain helped them to stay hidden.”
“That is when the Jack of Tears made himself known to them. He offered them succor, he came in person to the leader of the Sisters of the Sun, the Paladin Order that was leading the ragtag army of civlians and refugees, and he told them that he would offer them safety in the Bayou and help them defeat the Ghoul King, but only on the condition that no nation of Termana could ever raise a hand against him or his caravans.”
Arman takes another swig, then grabs a piece of bread and chews it for a moment, before swallowing.
“What choice did they have? The Jack had an army, he owned these lands, if they refused his offer it was entirely possible that they would not survive to the next morning. So they made a deal with the devil to save the lives of nearly a million innocent souls. For the next six months, the Jack of Tears gave them food, gave them shelter, and launched his forces against the Ghoul King in hit and run attacks, disrupting his supply lines and his ritualistic magic. The united forces of the Kingdoms of Padrinola, Azale, Karsian, and a half a dozen others rested, trained, and armed themselves during this period, and then, under the banner of the Sisterhood of the Sun, launched themselves with a fury against the Ghoul King. They smashed his armies from the field, burning their corruption as they went, until they forced him all the way to the great eastern wastes of the Iron Sands Desert, where he made his last stand, with a surprise for of tens of thousands of mummies and other undead. It was then that Madriel the Redeemer, the great goddess herself arrived on the field and shattered the Ghoul King’s army in a flash; obliterating almost all of his host in an instant, converting those he’d killed by ritual back to life and normalcy. The Ghoul King escaped that day, but only just.”
“With the threat of the Ghoul King smashed, they turned now to face the Jack, and make war upon him, but were stopped. The Sisterhood of the Sun refused to allow it; Madriel herself commanded them that though they had made a deal in extremis, honor required her followers to stick to the deal made. That was the accord; the Jack could not take any mortal for his shadowy realm by coercion or force, only through their own free will, but conversely, nobody could bar his carnival from coming to their towns or cities.”
Arman shakes his head again.
“It’s been almost a hundred and thirty years. In that time, the Jack has made diplomatic contact with every nation on Scarn, including the one I am from, Mithril. Nobody has raised a hand to stop him; why would they? He controls a corrupted swamp that is worthless to anyone but him, his navy keeps down the worst of the pirates and he has grown so powerful that he can control the very land within the Bayou with a thought. He’s not a god, he’s not a titan. Scholars don’t know what he is. Me? I believe he is temptation, the power of evil turned to the greater good in an insidious and corrupting way. He heals the sick, you know. Anyone, no matter how sick, mutated, or twisted, can come to him for healing and he will give it, and he will charge nothing at all for it, only that you must live in the Bayou. If you ever leave, but by his will, your disease will come back.”
“I can see by the look in your eyes that you think you’d never make a deal like that. You grew up here, where magic is common, and had the strength of will to make your life your own. Imagine what it must be like to be born poor, to be physically and mentally unexceptional, to be the seventh son of a farmer who married a pretty girl from the next village over in exchange for a cow, the cost of which would support you for a year, and then your pretty wife comes down with Tuberculosis, and she is dying, and the local church wants to charge you more then you’ve ever seen in your life, or your fathers life, to heal her, and then suddenly there’s a fellow in a strange mask that offers you a deal…”
“Evil like that exists because we allow it to, because it is a hard world and charity doesn’t go far enough. Yes, the Jack is everything he is now because of us, because of our hubris and our lack of character. You’ve seen Baatezu here, you know the way the fiends deal with mortals, try to bargain with them. The Jack will do that to you too, only he’ll watch you first and he’ll wait for your most vulnerable.”
Arman finishes the pint-glass of liquor in one long gulp.
“The Accords protected the citizens of only the nations that signed them. Don’t get involved with his people, don’t get in the way if I do. I beg you, you’ve got nothing but your sword arm and your spells to protect you. It won’t be enough, in the end.”
“Don’t let that bastard get his claws into you. You will go marching happily towards damnation without ever knowing he’s done it until it’s too late.”
On the Jack of Tears
