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11/06/99, Lord Bloodstone on Lichdom A lot of folks like to ask me, "What was it like, casting off
mortal flesh and embracing undeath in your pursuit of power?"
Well, some folks do. Actually, now that I think of it, none at all.
But anyway, I’m going to talk about that particular business
venture, and because I cast a Hold Person spell, you’re all going
to listen.
Once upon a time I was mortal. And I didn’t like it. Can’t
remember why, but it had something to do with having to empty the
cat litter box. At some point, I decided I was going to become a lich.
I think I had read about in a magazine or something. Anyway, the POWERS
OF DARKNESS—who actually prefer to be called the DARK POWERS—had,
for some reason, decreed that no non-humans could achieve this state.
Why beats the hell outta me. Something about poor constitution, crappy
system shock, I really didn’t pay much attention to the statistics.
But anyway, I happened to be an elf at the time, which made things
complicated. Yup, that’s right, these ears used to be pointed,
before gangrene set in. I don’t miss them at all, though. Made
it difficult whenever I got lost and wandered into one of those weird
high-tech cantinas filled with things called ‘Ferengis’
and ‘Romulans.’ Everyone kept calling me ‘Vulcan’
for some reason, which sounds a lot like a different word. Ever had
anyone ask you if you’re "out of your Vulcan mind?"
Really fast? It brought on several altercations involving the local
authorities… and yes, I know I’ve gotten way off track,
and don’t care.
So anyway, after ten years of research… um, actually… after
two days of research, I wandered out to this abandoned temple of one
of the gods of undeath. I had it all—the books, the wand, the
potion, the sacrificial maiden of unquestionable virtue… well,
she was mostly unquestionable, I figured it wasn’t really that
important.
In any event, all I had to do was wait until the stroke of midnight.
That was the one part that bothered me. Did the guy who developed
the ritual really have to make it the stroke of midnight on the first
new moon of the century? Why not the first month of the new century?
Or even the first day? My guess is he just did it that way to be a
jerk.
Well, anyway, all that day I’d been celebrating the last of
my mortality in the elven king’s wine cellar. I hadn’t worried
about the consequences of drinking all of the king’s favorite
wine, because by the time anyone would notice, I’d be a lich,
and I’d be able to wipe out the whole kingdom if I wanted to.
So, by the time I got up there and had finished scratching the symbols
into the dirt and strapped the maiden to the altar, I was feeling
pretty lightheaded, and I slurred a lot of the magical words. To make
a long story short, I ended up falling asleep—or passing out—sometime
around 11:30 and missed the whole damned thing. No pun intended. Needless
to say, I was still mortal the next morning, and had to spend a week
in prison for the missing wine. The maiden had managed to free herself
in the middle of the night and ran off, so no one ever found out about
that. The imprisonment turned out to be a good thing; it gave me time
to sober up and do some thinking about my predicament.
Well, I wasn’t about to wait around another hundred years to
become a lich. Things were happening. I couldn’t slouch around
for another century with my heart still beating. Mortality was so
passé. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure I’d live that long.
We elves are a pretty vague race. If you look us up in the book, it
says ‘Elves can live for up to 1200 years,’ but says nothing
about the minimum dying age. For all I knew I’d be shuffling
along in a pair of plaid pantaloons, complaining about taxes and young
people by the next month. Anyway, once my sentence was up, I marched
on down to the District Office of Undead Services (or DO US) over
on the east side of the third level of the Nine Hells, intent to plead
my case. I knew they’d make an exception for me, ‘cause
I was happenin'.
So once I got there, I marched right into the lobby and went up to
the secretary and said ‘I need to speak with Mr. Dark Power of
Undeath right away.’ And the prissy little skeletal secretary
grins up at me, lipstick smeared all over her exposed teeth, and has
the nerve to say to me, "I’m sorry, sir, but Mr. Power is
in a meeting right now, and he’ll be tied up all decade. If you’d
like to take a seat I’ll see if I can get you in as soon as possible."
And do I give her a dirty look? Do I complain? Do I mention that
there’s a large vulture picking at her head? No! I smile and
say ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ and turn around and take a
seat and cross my legs and sit back and wait. That’s what I do.
Well anyway, the years slowly tick past, and of course there’s
absolutely nothing to do in this guy’s waiting room. No etch-a-sketch,
no pick-up-sticks, nothing. Just a couple of dog-eared copies of Revenant
Millennially and a couple of vampires waiting to speak with Mr. Power
about opening a blood bank or something. I don’t know if you’ve
ever spoken with one, but vampires are quite the bores. Always bragging
about their coffins. Celebrity coffins were the in-thing with vamps
in those days. "I’ve got the limited edition casket that
Sturm Brightblade was buried in, and it’s autographed by Death,"
one of them mentioned to me, which is complete nonsense, since everyone
knows that Sturm was laid out on a stone slab in a tomb in the High
Clerist’s Tower. I know; I read the tourist pamphlet.
Finally, after what was more like fifteen years, the secretary tells
me that Mr. Power will see me. I get up, nod politely, and head through
the door to the office. Mr. Power’s there, naturally, and he’s
hovering over a brown leather chair that’s positioned in front
of a big desk. I say hovering because he’s this floating skull.
With red pinpoints of light for eyes. Actually, I think it was more
of a magenta.
Over the fifteen years I’d spent in the lobby, I’d been
able to think of what I was going to say once I got in here, and I
got to thinking that hey, I’m an elf, and Mr. Dark Power of Undeath
might frown on me asking around about lichdom. I ended up borrowing
this old fedora from one of the vampires and tucking my ears up underneath
the brim. Anyway, I introduce myself to Mr. Power and reach out to
shake his hand, and then I remember that he doesn’t have any
hands, so instead I kind of pat the top of his skull, only a little
too hard, and he ends up bobbing up and down for a couple of minutes.
After he calms down, and I apologize, he says "Pleasure to meet
you, Mr. Bloodstone. I must say it’s not often we get any of
the living down here." And I say something to the effect of "Well
I’m hoping to change that, sir." And he sort of beams at
me and says "Oh, really?" And so I say "Yeah, but there’s
just one little problem…" And that’s when I explained
my situation to the friendly floating skull, and shamelessly switched
back to the past tense again.
"And so," I finished, "I was wondering if it would
be possible to make an exception to the usual procedure, my case being
somewhat special in that I was ambushed by twenty gold dragons because
I am the Chosen One foretold to destroy all goodly wyrm-kind."
At this point Mr. Power leaned back in his chair… or, uh, tilted
himself at an angle in mid-air… and said, "I don’t know,
Mr. Bloodstone… We are a business, and we do have certain rules
that must be upheld. What do you think would happen if I allowed every
person who came in here talking about being ambushed by gold dragons
to simply ignore the standard ritual?"
So then I started to come up with an argument, but before I could
say anything, those red pinpoints narrowed at me, and Mr. Power says,
"Mr. Bloodstone, might I inquire about your race?" I thought
about arguing that I was simply a skinny human, half-starved from
being made to wait in his lobby for fifteen years, but instead I ripped
the old fedora off my head and shouted, "Oh, is that what this
is about? Is this a racial thing? Is it because I’m elven?!"
At this, Mr. Power looked really startled, and started to blubber
out some denial, and I shrieked some gibberish in elven and pointed
to the big sign on his desk that said EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER.
"I can’t believe something like this can happen to me in
modern times! It’s like I’m living back in the Century of
the Hemorrhaging Yak or something!"
Mr. Power was getting very alarmed by my outburst. I think he was
afraid that a lawyer might happen to be walking by and overhear me.
There are a lot of lawyers hanging around the DO US, and I’ve
since learned that that’s because most of them are vampires.
So Mr. Power shot out of his chair like a cannonball, with which,
incidentally, he shared the approximate dimensions. He profusely apologized
to me, and called for his secretary to send in his personal necromancer.
I managed to calm down, and we actually enjoyed some polite chit-chat
while we waited. Which team he liked in baseball, etc. Finally, this
old black-robed dude came shuffling in. He lurched over to me, muttered
a couple of words and tossed some vile-smelling stuff on me. Before
I knew it, I was dead. Then I was undead. The whole operation took
maybe twenty seconds.
As I sat there, kind of dazed, my body happily decaying and filling
out the standard release forms and waiting for my membership card
to print out, I realized what a farce the whole thing really was.
All that studying and research for a twenty-second transformation.
This got me thinking more profound thoughts, and as I got up to leave,
I turned back and gave Mr. Power one last look. "Mr. Power,"
I said, "Is it worth it, shedding my mortal shackles to become
this creature?"
"’Shut up, Bloodstone," he replied. "It’s no
real pleasure in life."
And that was when I also realized that Mr. Power liked to plagiarize
great writers, but I didn’t say anything and just repeated the
question. "Well," he said, "You do get a free ten-year
membership in the Spoons from Around the Planes club."
And so I left, content to at long last be able to endure the tortured
existence that I had for so long sought. About that time it occurred
to me that I wouldn’t need to eat ever again, and would therefore
have no use for spoons. And is it worth it, you ask? Don’t argue;
you do ask that. It’s definitely worth it.
Yeah, it takes time. But you get respect.
And if not, there’s always the spoons.
The feared Lord Bloodstone won last years "Most Horrific Tomb
Award" in the All-Planes Adventurer's Choice Awards. Congratulations
and tribute may be sent to him at Lord_Bloodstone@hotmail.com
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