Poh-TAY-to, Poh-TAH-to (Opening the Realms, Part 2)

Discussion in 'Stories & Fan Fiction' started by Lorrelian, Jan 30, 2012.

  1. Lorrelian

    Lorrelian Member

    (New chapters weekly every Monday! Story will probably run for the next month or so. Unless it winds up shorter. Or longer. Or something.)

    The Master Slipgate was a work of arcane genius, fashioned to allow any creature of sufficient thaumaturgical might to access the Otherness. It was capable of reaching as little as one quarter and as far as 42 dimensions away from its reality of construction. Due to budget constraints, its creators had apparently powered it using a number of slave-gnomes running on a giant wheel. That power system had long since been lost when Dredmor aquired it, forcing him to find an alternative. Fortunately, the dungeon never seemed to run out of mustaches to animate.

    He had never been sure why.

    According to the Tome of Too Much Information, the proper method to contact a Diggle Deity was long and bloody, so Dredmor had opted for the direct but possibly improper route. He would step into the Twisting Ether and shake him down, continuing with this simple (but elegant) method of operation until he found the God of Digging, or a deity willing to direct him to the same.

    Programming the Slipgate was simple. Before opening it he had placed a small drill and an offering of lutefisk (a necessary part of all interdimensional jaunts.) Making sure he was fully prepared was another thing entirely. So far he had armed himself with his favorite weapon (the legendary Staff of THX*) and the always useful (if very dry) Tome of Too Much Information. A few Coral Wands he had acquired from recent adventurers, an Overclockworked Power Limb, The Mighty Ring of Krong and a Champion’s Belt should be enough to round out the ensemble. The Great Dredmor, after all, needed no help in the area of magical might.

    As an afterthought he grabbed his cloak up from the rack by the gate and tossed it back over his shoulders. He stopped for a moment and sniffed. Did something smell sweet?

    Never mind. It wasn't important, and anyways he hadn't had nostrils for centuries.

    Dredmor squared his shoulders and pushed his way through the Slipgate, passing from his own world into one of earth, rubber and eggs. Skrillinex would learn that the truly superior didn't sit and ask. They went and took. An evil grin touched the lich's skull, failing to change his expression a single bit.

    The Slipgate left him in a dark and dimly lit cavern at least twice as wide as the dungeon where he made his home. Immediately Dredmor could see that he had been working with the wrong racket when he contracted the Diggles to expand his crypt into a worthy structure. Here was true excavating power. A bit dank, perhaps, but quite serviceable.

    At the far end of the cavern Dredmor could see a massive figure wearing a strange yellow helm. Rubble the size of draft diggles lay scattered about the floor by his feet. For the first time Dredmor felt a twinge of apprehension. Perhaps this would not be as simple as he had thought.

    Then again, this was a Diggle God. How bright could these things be?

    As if it had heard his thoughts (preposterous!) the figure turned its head to look back at Dredmor. Until the day he redied Dredmor would swear that the creature did not, did not, wink at him knowingly before it turned back and smashed through the cavern in front of it, laughing maniacally.

    "Wait!" Dredmor called, hurrying after the departing diggle. "Digging God, we have things to discuss!"

    The lich mentally crunched some numbers and teleported himself to within a few feet of the Diggle God’s last known location, carefully placing his feet on the uneven floor as he did so. In the gloom of the new tunnel very little was visible, even to Dredmor’s Lich Vision. He stepped into the passage wondering what, exactly, he was going to do to Skrillinex to get even with him after this was all said and done with. Dredmor was uncomfortable, and when a lich gets uncomfortable someone suffers for it.

    Dredmor had barely covered thirty feet of the new, very massive tunnel opened by the God of Digging when something on the ground caught his eye. As he bent to inspect it (and it appeared to be a very nice piece of adamantine ore, which he would use in the construction of a Dred Sacrificial Sword when this was all over and done with) something massive crashed into the wall above him. Had he not bent over at just that moment he would have been pulverized.

    As it was, he was showered in bits of egg and eggshell.

    Dredmor sniffed the scent of sulfur and stood up. A side tunnel stretched away to his right and a massive diggle figure stood there, an egg the size of a Footy tucked under one misshapen muscular arm. Pale pink light shone from the Diggle God’s eyes. Dredmor absently picked a piece of eggshell from the end of his staff and tossed it on the floor. “I take it,” he said mildly, “that you are not the Diggle God of Digging.”

    “No,” the answer seemed to rumble and echo endlessly in the tunnel, yet it was still perfectly understandable. “I am the Diggle God of Fertility.”

    “I’m sure you could do a better job if you didn’t make such a mess out of the place,” Dredmor said, waving to the broken egg all around him. A lesser lich might have been upset at the surprise attack but one didn’t unlive this long in the evil game without accepting assassination attempts as a part of the job. “Still, I wouldn’t think a fertility god would go around smashing eggs. And shouldn’t you be female? I’ve met she-diggles before and you don’t sound like one.”

    “Growth is not my concern,” the deity rumbled. “Plenty is. For diggles, plenty of food, for interlopers plenty of death, for war and famine is the opposite of peace and plenty.”

    “A deity of fertility and war. What a novel concept.” Dredmor quickly took out a pen (ballpoint, quills being used exclusively for the Little Black Book) and made a note of it in the Tome. There might be something there for future use, and a wise evil overlord left nothing to waste. “Still, it must be a hard thing to keep separate.”

    “Poh-TAY-to, poh-TAH-to, Ah-SHER-a, Ah-SUR-a. It’s all the same to me. As you will be, when I am through with you.” The Diggle God hefted his egg and advanced menacingly.

    Dredmor was unimpressed. An incredible thrumming roar filled the air as the Staff of THX answered to his will and sprang to life. Eldritch energies coursed over his bones and armor. “Enough of your empty prattle, god of ground scratchers. I AM DREDMOR! I alone am evil, in all Heaven and Earth! Mortals speak my name in whispers, demons beg my favors and so-called gods will do my bidding or know despair!”

    The Diggle God of Fertility roared, barely audible over the enhanced voice the Staff had given Dredmor, and charged headlong towards the lich, lobbing more eggs as it came. Dredmor watched it coming, sidestepping the occasional egg that came too close, until it was only a dozen feet away. Then Dredmor deftly slipped further up the tunnel the God of Digging had left, slamming the knob of his staff into the wall on the way.

    The ground shook as the sound was amplified a thousand-fold and the Diggle God’s sense of balance vanished. Dredmor, who had long since disposed of his sense of balance (along with all but 16 of his 143 senses, including his sense of sympathy and his sense of fairness,) watched as the incarnation of Diggle Fertility crashed headlong into the cave wall, unable to stop itself in time. It landed in a pile of slime and eggshells.

    Dredmor shook his skull in annoyance and took up a Coral Wand. “My work would be much harder if you all weren’t such idiots.”

    Within seconds the regenerative power of the wands had knitted the eggshells together into one massive white mass, slightly wider at the base than at the top. Dredmor calculated his position versus the Master Slipgate then referenced it against his Tome’s star chart for the month of the Great Forge. With the math complete he opened a minor slipgate to Venus and, one foot braced against the Egg of the Gods and the other against the floor, he shoved the whole reeking mess through and out of his hair.

    Not that he had hair.

    Dredmor snapped the Tome closed with an annoyed growl and headed after the God of Digging. Who knew that hiring someone to remodel could be so much work?




    *Staff of THX - This legendary weapon, created by Indus Tri-Awl, god of Light and Magic, during his brief expansionary push into the realm of sound, was gifted to the Three Pronged One's favored priest, Thaddeus Hubert Xavierson during his fabled war among the stars. So great were its powers of sound it was said to leave the enemies of Xavierson breathless.
     
    OmniNegro and blob like this.
  2. Android089

    Android089 Member

    Great! Keep these stories rolling.

    I like "The staff of THX". I get the reference!
     
  3. blob

    blob Member

    Very funny and imaginative :)
    I also really really like how it fits the original dredmor's humour and universe.

    What is the staff of THX referencing to ?
     
  4. Lorrelian

    Lorrelian Member

    One of my minor goals in writing this is to slip in as much stuff that I just make up because it sounds cool while still keeping things in the DoD tone. The Staff of THX was created in much that vein, it references Industrial Light and Magic and, of course, THX Sound, both created by Lucasfilm Ltd in the process of creating the Star Wars trilogy. As far as I know no one named Thaddeus Hubert Xavierson was involved in the project, I just needed a name that abbreviated to THX.

    And yes, it's kind of important to Opening The Realms. Watch out for continued references to it through the rest of the story.
     
  5. blob

    blob Member

    Oh I didnt know of THX Sound. I should be knowing that, duh.