After returning to Candlekeep, feasting on deep-fried sweet rock crab cakes and gulping
down a full flagon of particularly sweet and warming mead, I made my way up the many flights
of old, age-worn, bowed stone steps to my more or less permanent quarters, the northwest
outer tower, now just recently thawed out, it was in quite a state when I opened my door,
several winters had passed, there was a pile of windblown soot shaken loose from the chimney
from the coastal storms of several seasons, quite a few piles of white and grey feathers
of seagulls eaten by my Pseudodragon friend Makrotaxel, but at least he kept the vermin
from eating all my books, and my collection was looking dusty, but healthy.
I got the chambers into more of less a swept, dusted and aired out state, lit a cheery yellow
fire from southern softwood that had an aroma similar to frankincense, nutmeg and lemon,
relieved myself of all my travelling gear and emptied out my bags of holding, which
is where I froze, staring at the number of full travel journals there were alongside
my travelling spellbooks.
I resisted the urge to grab one of the journals at random, instead organising them by the
numbers I wrote on the spine, where I reached the last one I remembered writing at least,
and then I opened the cover of the first journal I had no recollection of filling.
I had visited Deep Imaskar, and I had no memory of it, I knew before I got home that something
had happened, I mean, three years had passed.
From these chronicles, I present here for the first time to any beyond the deeply layered
demiplanes, an accounting of the domesticated Beholders commonly found among the many cultures
of the deep imaskari descendants.
First, a note on one of the dangers of dimensional travel, time dilation can occur when the occupants
of an artificially created demiplane alter the flow of time within it, compared to the
ethereal and prime material planes it is connected to outside of it.
For the Deep Imaskari, the planet Toril exists in their ancient past, forever locked in its
original, glacial flow of time.
The deep imaskari experience thousands of years of life and yet many many generations
of them have lived and died within their own private planes housed deep within the endless
ethereal expanse, while they live for thousands of years, each of those years passes by in
a moment back outside the demiplane, this is the second reason the Imaskari descendants
no longer have any interest in leaving their own private dimensions.
Over those eons, the artificer kings and their families have advanced their science to a
very impressive, often frightening degree, they also managed to develop new types of
biological magic that took me some getting used to, not since I had the misfortune of
learning a lot about the science of the Mind Flayers have I seen anything even close to
what the modern descendant races have done with Beholders.
And that is as good a place as any to start I guess, that was the first entry in my journal,
the creatures the imaskari descendents simply call Holders, the first I saw was modified
to be some sort of hovering vehicle that carried the group of people who came to investigate
what and then who I was, this was not as difficult as I thought it would be, they used magic
so we understood each other, they could clearly see I was one of the original pink skinned
version of their own species, they were, well, from my sketching and descriptions, they were
quite spectacular, their modification of the Beholders was just a more extreme version
of what they had been doing to themselves for generations, there was not one person
I met who I could say was not modified in dozens of ways, skin color was currently following
some sort of shifting metallic style, so they struck me at first glance as resembling the
golden skinned Rilmani, and then the chaotic metalic rainbow hues of the spellscale race,
but it was also under their mental control and their colorations shifted with their moods
also.
Their clothing was mainly just simple body suits with practical pockets, with a loose
sort of transparent and very light cloth robe that billowed as they moved, their body was
further decorated with all manner of small circlets, rings, bracelets and such, all of
precious metals and jewels, they casually displayed material wealth that would have
made Mammon envious and their mastery of the magical arts was clearly far beyond anything
I had ever seen, even the mages of Halruaa would have been walking around with their
mouths gaping open.
I witnessed these people gesture at solid objects that simply liquified and reformed
into new objects with what appeared to be nothing but their own desire and imagination
being the limit, these were people who had achieved the power of the gods.
Holders were everywhere, the more I looked, the more I found, even for the very brief
time I was there, I found dozens of them, there was small, ground-based holders who
just seemed to act like street cleaners and pest control, it was explained to me that
their realms had few issues, other than ethereal vermin, as they called them, the thought eaters,
something they called the leech ravid which fed on their strongest flows of Udura, or
liquid magic, which is something I recall reading about in my studies of the last days
of the Netheril empire.
The descendants knew exactly what I meant when I said the word Imaska, they smiled at
me like I was a clever child and one of them stepped forward, looming over me as they were
about seven feet tall, they reached out and touched my forehead with a single finger and
my mind flooded with images from their history.
From my journal, I take it this was quite an experience and I am profoundly frustrated
that this memory has been robbed from me, but, after some time, I have found notes I
scribbled down hastily about their history and it did prepare me much better for my later
encounters with the Molf and the world chambers.
This individual also slipped a gift around my neck, some sort of simple golden neck torc
that they said I must wear at all times, lest the world I left behind fade to dust before
I returned.
I was not aware of the extreme time differential of course, but I am very very lucky I only
lost three years of my life, so to speak.
If I had remained without that protection, it would have been centuries that I was gone,
not just a few years.
Climbing aboard their living vehicle, I felt the senses of the Holder scanning me and I
must admit, I felt wary of the thing, how could I not?
This was an aberration, something that simply should not be on the material planes, but
then of course, I had no more business being in this place than it did, and this was not
the material plane.
Travel on the hovering holder was brief, as it simply veered toward a passage between
two large rocky structures and we passed right through a portal and into a completely different
environment.
Gone was the outskirts of some massive city of exotic spires, towers, citadels and lush
parks; now we drifted smoothly across what looked like a large manicured lawn with a
drop-away edge and some huge void beyond it in which drifted entire planets that were
being constructed, bit by bit, as we passed by, I saw the closest planet go from a ball
of brown to a patchwork of land masses and a shallow ocean separating them, an ocean
which was becoming deeper by the minute.
The group I was with often glanced at me to witness the effect such a sight had on me,
but otherwise did very little, they ignored my questions about the planets and just laughed.
Why they were building new worlds I had no idea, I still don't.
We passed through another massive portal, this one was more like a series of golden
triangles that rotated around and through each other in a manner that caused my brain
some difficulty in figuring out where one triangle ended and another began, it was portal
magic I had never seen before, something they had devised themselves over a very, very long
time.
As we passed through, I was confronted with new demiplane structures that seemed impossible
to me, these were not tightly confined spaces that existed like bubbles within the deep
ethereal plane, these were nested somehow within each other and seemed to overlap, like
some crazy sort of Venn diagram, to cross from one to another, no portal was required
and our floating holder vehicles rode a strong flow of wind that powered off the slopes of
some great mountain peak and down through layer on layer of drifting land masses which
were surrounded by nothing but mist and clouds, until we passed into a lush tropical environment
where the winds funnelled into specific channels, and I realised that the floating islands were
actually engineered to modify and direct the air flow, as one would bounce light from mirror
to mirror.
Also, I should mention, I saw a great number of people who were simply flying under their
own power, completely at ease with this chaotic reality they had made for themselves.
And that was when a demiplane passed us by, it was the size of a moon I think, and I was
informed this was just a vehicle that was designed specifically for easily transporting
populations and facilities through their nested demiplanes, while some were simply their equivalent
of pleasure cruises, they were largely left to their own devices as some were from realms
with a further, as they put it, time differential, meaning the occupants inside experienced slower
or faster passage of time compared to those outside the mobile demiplane, which I understand
was common among those engaged in the massive projects, such as the world building I witnessed
earlier.
Of course, this was all just the tip of the iceberg and I could feel some excitement again
from my guides as they turned to watch my reaction because we had arrived at one of
their nexus gates.
I have two whole journals full, I mean, every bit of those journals is crammed with my writing,
even the covers have some smeared notes hastily scrawled on the leather.
This is a subject for later, though, where I can tell you as much as I recorded about
the Molf traders and the implications involved, but for now, I shall skip ahead to where we
settled down and I got to spend a short time living in a fairly typical settlement of the
descendants of the Imaskari.
There are times when things in their diverse cultures seemed remarkably human, the way
they played games, ate meals together, their appreciation for community and that strange
urge of humans to live all together in a big fortified hive called a city, even though
they had limitless resources, absolute mastery of a stable and everlasting environment and
had every desire met by clever artifice, still they were relentless explorers and sadly,
they had fallen victim many times to their own dramas, born of nothing other than their
own nature, their inevitable branching out into separate groups and the conflicts between
families which became cultures in and of themselves.
Tribalism seemed to be something even the most advanced and spectacular humans could
do anything to avoid.
I would call it bittersweet, that sense of sadness, because I was also happy that, even
with all their power and the eons of isolation, these were still humans, unmistakably humans,
they still had all the same emotions, they still went through childhood and their teenage
years, they still had that restless spirit of adventure that humans cherish so much,
it gave me great hope for the future.
My great interest in all things biological did not go unnoticed and the place I eventually
was housed for a couple of nights was the home of Wullun Izman and her family, two husbands
and a small tribe of children who were obsessed with me for the first day, and barely noticed
me the next, it seems I was not as interesting as I thought!
I can't blame those kids, not when they had better things to do, such as playing wargames
with their own golem teams, let me tell you, THAT is a sport!
Anyway, the Holders come in a vast array of types, some are little more than semi-sapient
tools, others are highly intelligent but have had all of the Beholders most undesirable
traits bred or engineered right out of them somehow.
Wullun Izman showed me racks of crystals which she said I could read via telepathy, I told
her I didn't have that power so she just instructed this large jelly cube in the corner of her
laboratory to produce a series of books in which I could slowly read through thousands
of years of information on mage bred monsters, the anatomy of aberrations and the specific
role of the beholders in the multiverse.. this was stunning information, beholders were
created for a reason; unfortunately, their creator god was now locked away, cut off from
all of it's creations and referred to mainly as the Chained God.
I think I may have probably staggered away from the books at this point, clutching my
head and screaming apologies to Vecna himself, but, it seemed in that place at least, I was
safe from the influence and punishments of all the gods.
I would later travel to the multiplanar nexus of Sigil and confirm the information I gathered
with one of the ancient Baatorians who fought in the eternal blood war, but, that is a story
for another day.
As aberrations beholders don't seem to be possible, the near endless magical energy
they can shoot out of their many eyes, their ability to simply float and glide around,
the near metallic density and durability of their flesh and thick hide.
Beholders were brought with the Imaskari when they fled from a catastrophic slave uprising
and an unexpected war with a pantheon of gods.
Little is known of the first centuries of the Imaskari exile, though it is known they
were forced to adapt their biology to a life spent in to Underdark at first, their population
was so low in the early years that all Imaskari descendents carry this legacy, but they have
long since departed Toril and with thier studies of the ancient portal and planar magic of
the Batrachi race, they gradually became more at home in demiplanes, finally constructing
a permanent gateway which they then sealed off via the magic of the feywild, from what
I gather, somehow they manifested some sort of effect in the feywild which powers their
original gateway basically forever, as long as some version of a specific story continues
to be told, sadly I don't know what this story is, I never put anything about it other than
that in my journals, and of course, the power of the feywild causes those who pass back
through that gateway onto planet Toril forget everything about the Imaskari people and the
precise location of that gateway, take it from me, it's very effective and their is
nothing the Imaskari descendants care to do about it, it has served them exactly as intended
for thousands of years.
This effect also influenced the original stock of Beholders, as this fey energy was used
to modify the very dreams of the aberrations, which in turn crafted special types of Beholders
called Makers, the makers still exist in a highly modified state, their senses are controlled
by the Imaskari artificers and their dreams entered via self-contained color veils within
demiplanes crafted to perform one of the natural functions of the zone between the border and
deep ethereal plane.
I know this is complicated, but trust me, this is just training wheel stuff they teach
their kids in Deep Imaskar.
The primary form of goods that the Molf trade with other transdimensional species is exactly
this sort of magical technology, finely crafted, bespoke laws of reality, made to order, or
sold as compressed, prefabricated nodes which avoid such tremendous personal cost to whichever
individual or group is creating a new Demiplane.
There have been many, many eras within their very accelerated timeline, including wars
where planar magic was turned to the art of war; again, beholders were pivotal tools,
able to survive in extreme reality breakdowns and create pockets of stability in squadrons
directed by imaskari artificers who did their best to restore shattered, warped and reprogrammed
demiplanar warheads...
there are a lot of question marks on these pages of the journals, I tried to absorb as
much of this information as I could, but I simply don't have a mind capable of handling
that sort of thing all at once.
I hope I can find a way to trade these notes with the lich Larloch one day, but doing so
will most likely see me transformed into a cursed Nothic.
I have a few journals to go through; as I unlock their secrets over the coming months,
you can learn about the lost civilisation of the deep imaskari Descendents along with
me, I'll do my best to piece it all together and hope that this is all actually true and
not just a load of insane babble brought on by near-fatal numbers of stings from angry
dragon beetles...
I choose to believe the former.
In the meantime, thank you for joining me once more; just a reminder to viewers this
is ALL a work of my own fiction here, based on the stubs of lore recorded about the end
of the Imaskari empire and some notes on the deep imaskari human sub-race from the 3.5
edition Underdark sourcebooks.
Thanks for listening; please like and subscribe for more, and I will be back with more for
you very soon.