Topic: The Rift

Varick · Date: 2006-02-25 22:00 EST

Controlled passage through the Nexus has never been easily obtained, especially for those who do not seem predisposed for the interdimensional troublemaker to snatch up at random and deposit in Rhy'Din. There are those few throughout the Universe who seem destined to be selected by the Nexus, to draw its good or bad fortune as the case may be. The rest are doomed to mundane lives in isolated worlds, islands in spacetime, unenlightened in Man's inability to escape their bounds and plunge themselves into the surrounding darkness of the infinite where true knowledge lies.

Existence on Earth in the Victorian Era, especially in Europe, was at best mundane to an extreme. Tales of magic and gods and the increasingly rarer tales of secret pasts in the depths of time were increasingly frowned upon, and most who carried such tales and such information in their minds held their tongues and withdrew the knowledge from collective memory forever. Mankind had fooled itself into believing itself nearer and nearer its zenith, climbing the pyramid of progress, when in fact they were shaking off the important truths in favor of deeper, sweeter, more merciful ignorance. The true nature of things was far removed from the minds of more and more men.

One man in this era, however, occupied himself with the matters of the ancients who preceded all imaginable ancients and their dark, powerful secrets. For generations his family had passed down the knowledge that contained potential for great power, the lords of Sternmont concerning themselves with producing suitable heirs to carry on the tradition and the evil until it could awaken, never tapping into that power, passing it on like an heirloom whose true purpose was lost to the ages... until the birth of Varick von Sternmont.

The latest Graf von Sternmont tapped his family's secrets and instead of praying for the portal between worlds to grab him, drew the portal to him for use at his relative leisure, and crossed through the Nexus to the realm of Rhy'Din. He explored the realm and conducted further research and began to establish himself. But the establishment was not yet permanent. Every time he crossed over, a certain piece of him was... left behind to linger, eventually drawing him back, and while he attained the ability to stay away from Earth and his increasingly hostile home for days at a time, he had not succeeded in making Rhy'Din his permanent home.

All of this was about to change. Graf Varick von Sternmont was determined to become a denizen of Rhy'Din, wherefrom he could gain more power... at any price.

Varick · Date: 2006-02-28 15:48 EST

A girl by the name of Jillian Briar knew entirely too much. Count Talomar Longden had sworn to exact his vengeance upon her - to earn her "respect," or some other thing so trivial in the eyes of Graf Varick von Sternmont. But the Graf needed someone like her, someone with magical properties and that strength and intensity of a sort of magnetic energy most attribute to a being's soul... so the Count was encouraged to have his revenge, and deliver her, still alive, to Varick. It was a deal swiftly conducted in whispers in the midst of the Inn, with Jillian herself not far from either of them, under countless watchful eyes... and yet no one was any the wiser. Varick seemed only under some vague suspicion for his association with Talomar, and that could be written off to enjoyable dialogue between educated men. Indeed it usually was... but for that moment, it was strictly business between these two powerful and dangerous men, and then Varick did not mention it again. Anxious though he was, unnerved by German government authorities taking more of an interest in the village of Sternmont and its mysterious lord, he waited. And, not too long after, Jillian Briar arrived.

The confused, battered young woman was delivered to a brick building in the West End, an abandoned workshop or small factory of same nature, in which he had created a makeshift laboratory. Seeing her condition, it was simple to lure her up the stairs by deserting the downstairs and simply going about their business. Drawn in by the noise, it was an even simpler matter of setting her down on the cold steel slab in the middle of the room and strapping her down. Varick set the intensity of the devices used to draw out her energy low enough to not stretch what he knew should be enormous energy too far... but it barely magnetized her natural energy at all. Whatever brutal fetish or assault the Count had indulged in had, for all intents and purposes, broken her spirit. In a panic-stricken rage Varick loosed her from her bed and ordered her execution in a place where she would not be found.

There were many such places in the West End. It should have been easily accomplished by the German noble's goons. They drugged her into a state of semi-consciousness, spirited her back out, and Varick did not think about her again until one day, he walked into the Inn and saw her there.

Talomar was there, and he was as angry as Varick was bitter. She recognized them both - that much was clear from her every action and the looks she gave them - but was afraid to say anything... so far. Death would arouse suspicion, Varick insisted, no matter how apparently accidental... so it was decided that her memory be removed. This task was left to the scientist - as a scientist, it should not be too difficult a task for Varick, the Count had said in so many words - while Talomar took to finding a suitable replacement.

Plans were threatening to unravel, but Varick had every intention of holding up his end of the bargain and ensuring the continued safety of both men from suspicion.

Varick · Date: 2006-03-06 02:20 EST

It was late at night, on the property of the simple woman Mykah. For a week Varick had stalked the girl Jillian Briar, and found that lately she took to wandering the woods on this property. Ironically, it seemed these wanderings were the fault of the Graf and the Count... and, even more ironically, it seemed she sought refuge from her memories here.

He would grant her permanent refuge soon enough... refuge buried deep within the realm of madness.

He was only several yards from her that night when he finally got his long-awaited opportunity. Cruel whenever it was inopportune and kind whenever it was unwittingly unwise, the unlucky Jillian had found a rabbit twitching in its trap. The creature would not last long in the wild... but emotion ruled over reason, and she set her weak little fingers about setting the animal free.

The dark form of Varick moved swiftly, knowing his heavy steps would make no small amount of noise, and he knelt to spring the rabbit from its trap with his strong hands... looking the girl in the eye. The sight of him again alone was almost enough to drive her mad. She straightened, but she could neither bring herself to scream nor to flee.

And that is when Graf Varick von Sternmont revealed to her the image of his goddess, and beneath her udder-like bosom the image of oblivion itself. Sa'atha, the goddess of chance, sat in the form of an icon in his broad hands, sculpted from jade, but horrible in appearance, a monkey's head with a round, gaping, screaming mouth and a dark-pearly, oddly curved mirror where her stomach ought to be. In the depths of this mirror into which Varick himself still would not yet dare to glance, Jillian knew her own potential for evil and horrific acts, for the forms that she would take in other realms and other circumstances that should have been so far removed from her, and yet there it was, within the realm of possibility for her to become. She knew the darkest depths of her own soul and her potential, visions of herself that no mortal mind should experience... and her simple mortal mind snapped.

Varick did not have to speak to her to find out that her memory was as good as gone. Though the images were still there, she could no more easily distinguish the moment of her birth from the present, nor from the possibilities of past, present and future she had just viewed. His beloved goddess was wrapped in cloth and secured in the depths of his satchel, and he left her there, kneeling and weeping in the freezing night.

Varick · Date: 2006-03-09 20:53 EST

The Graf had secured safety for the reputations of the Count and himself in the realm of Rhy'Din... but Varick von Sternmont's personal safety back in Sternmont was another issue altogether.

Sternmont had always been a very isolated village, not even recorded in most maps and paid little attention by the Holy Roman Empire and, later, by Prussia. When war came and soldiers were requested, his ancestors delved into their vast riches acquired from other realms. Paid in exotic, alluring varieties of precious metals and jewels, kings and bureacrats alike quickly forgot they had wanted anything from Sternmont at all. But upon the organization of the vast German lands as a single German nation, it was noticed that Sternmont had given no men to the Franco-Prussian war, nor previously to the war against Austria-Hungary. The first government agent had arrived while Varick was in Switzerland some years ago, inquiring the befuddled people about taxes and even about Germany. They had little knowledge of the former, mentioning old taxes of long-dead kings that no one else remembered that they had paid to past Grafs of Sternmont; and they had no knowledge of the latter, dimly aware of Prussia and having no concept of Germany. At this they became most upset, insisting they were a part of Sa'atha, while the agent angrily insisted that they were all good, Christian Germans and should behave that way, and whatever Sa'atha was, was clearly a blasphemy.

The villagers did not take kindly to this. When Varick returned, it was to find that a great deal had been destroyed in a riot, and the agent's battered and torn body had been hanged from the roof of the tallest house. This man's disappearance would, no doubt, bring more agents and detectives and collectors and the like from the German government, and more serious questions than Varick could deal with in gold and silver. Government had grown too organized to overlook Sternmont any longer, and Varick knew his only option lay in leaving Sternmont once and for all. And so, in the last several years, he had worked and researched and experimented, until at last he focused the product of his experimentation on himself and was whisked away to the realm of Rhy'Din. But each visit was temporary, a few days at most in length, as every time he went to Rhy'Din, he left something behind on Earth. The transfer was never complete, for the links to Rhy'Din he created were much more temperamental and much weaker than when the Nexus grabbed people at random and took them to Rhy'Din, never to return them to their homeland.

He needed something stronger, much more permanent, the product of potent energies, and the Count had promised him someone - a "Vixen," he had called her, and though Varick insisted sexual prowess would play no part in one's potency for attracting the energies of the Nexus, Talomar gave him assurances that she would do nicely.

Weeks passed, and the German government grew more suspicious of the village of Sternmont and made frequent visits; the villagers were becoming restless - one could taste a riot brewing in the air - and Varick von Sternmont lacked the permanent Nexic rift to move everything he needed from his laboratories in Sternmont to Rhy'Din.

So when Varick heard rumors of a new summoner who had come to the Red Dragon Inn in Rhy'Din, he decided he would take matters into his own hands.

Varick · Date: 2006-03-10 03:04 EST

The summoner named Charlotte joined Varick in his laboratory at three o'clock in the morning. Most of the city was asleep but in the very seediest and most forgotten alleyways, and even in this portion of the West End, few were awake to hear the noises that would dully resound for many blocks. The timing was as perfect as the location. At last, the Graf would be acquiring what he needed... and once he had that, the multiverse would be open to his every power-hungry desire.

It was on the second floor of his laboratory, by the stone slab where Jillian Briar once lay - and where countless other victims had fueled his travels back to Earth, and at times, made possible his sudden return to the laboratory from locations throughout Rhy'Din - where Charlotte the summoner now knelt. She was a strange woman, but charming in her own way with her alternately icy and fiery disposition. She drew on the cold, smooth floor with chalk in complex series of angles and arcs, inscribed with words to give her notes about an interconnectivity so complex that even the scientist had trouble understanding.

She opted for her thick, dark robes for this sinister task, for which she was handsomely paid, and reached within the pouches at her side to extract one material after another - strange varieties of blood sprinkled on certain points where arcs and angles intersected, a pair of small skulls that had been affected by some crystallization process, and gems often intertwined with strange metals that seemed to give off a strong electric field all of their own. With all of these arranged to her satisfaction, she cast a glance at Varick, standing at the edge of all this, who nodded... and she picked her way carefully through the summoning diagram to lay a large, murky white crystal carved into a cube on the stone slab in the center of the diagram. She hurried away, surprised to catch a pair of dark goggles tossed her way by the Graf... but when she watched him place his own over his eyes, she quickly mimicked him.

His large fingers tightened around a thick metal lever, Varick yanked it, and it creaked into place. As the four cone-like brassy structures arranged around the slab began to give off a whining hum, he nodded at her, and she lifted her hands and uttered a few dark words... but those were merely guidance for her mind and her preternatural abilities. The crystal began to tremble and shake, tipping over onto another of its faces, taking on a brilliant glow and humming louder than the electric cones around it... and then Varick threw the other switch.

Electricity raced across the room, strange studs in the floor forcing it not to jump directly to the other cones, but to cross the room in the direction of the device opposite its source, four bolts intersecting on the crystal. It glowed brilliantly, too bright for either of them to watch, and Varick threw a third and final switch. Sparks flew from the four devices as a fifth of different shape hummed directly over the slab, emitting no sparks itself but drawing on these energies. Forced to feed more into the crystal than they could, the four devices shorted out, and as they did, there was a sound like ten needlelike fingernails being dragged across a chalkboard, and then a resounding thud as the excess energy dispersed itself through the floor and straight into the ground, shooting out in every direction for a few blocks, dully vibrating floors and streets but harming nothing.

Varick threw himself on the switches, leaning his arm over them to turn them all off at once... and heaved a sigh. He removed his goggles, his long hair standing on end from the residue of the massive amount of energy recently contained in this single room... and looked on with a smile as there appeared over the slab a strange variation in the colors, a spectrum outside our spectrum that intermittently crackled. The rift had been created, and it was large enough to fit any man through.

* * *

Across time and space, similar arrangements in the basement laboratory of the von Sternmont manse opened up the other end of the rift. Travel to and from Rhy'Din would now be a piece of cake for the Graf... and with only subtle manipulations of electric charge and the knowledge of other realms passed on in secret by the von Sternmont family, more doors than he could begin to imagine had just opened themselves to him.